Donut was in a small room, standing before a screen projecting the Counselor.
Counselor: Private Donut, we want to debrief you now that your tour at Blood Gulch is over.
Donut: Great! Wait. . . over?
Counselor: I'm just going to ask you some standard questions to rate your experience, and I will be filling out a form based un your response. Do you understand?
Donut: Yes, sir.
Counselor: All right, then let's begin. During your deployment, you were assigned to the Red team, is that correct?
Donut: That's right! You can tell by my lightish-red armor.
Counselor: I'm a bit confused. By "lightish red" . . . do you mean pink?
Donut: No, I mean lightish red.
Counselor: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Let's come back to this during the free-form period.
Donut: Okie dokie.
Counselor: Now, as to your experience in Blood Gulch, would you say it was. . . satisfactory, somewhat satisfactory, or unsatisfactory.
Donut: I would say. . . satisfactory.
Counselor: All right. Now I want you to look at this picture.
A picture appeared on the screen, one of the ruins the Reds and Blues arrived at after they supposedly time travelled.
Donut: Oh hey! I know where that is!
Counselor: Which of the following best describes this picture? Would you say it is, A: the new location where your team was assigned, B: the source of a mysterious energy reader. Or C-
Donut: That's just where we landed.
Counselor: . . . Where you landed? Can you elaborate?
Donut: Yeah, we were defusing a bomb by this guy Omega, but then the bomb went off and it was just a huge explosion that it totally threw us into the future, and we landed there in that place.
Counselor: I'm not sure I understand. . . the future?
Donut: Sarge said that since we were surrounded by ice when the bomb went off, and then it was all sand, the Ice Age must've ended, and that would've taken a REALLY long time. So, it must've pushed us into the future.
Counselor: I. . . don't have a check box for that, so I'm just going to write down "other."
Donut: Yeah, "other" works, I like other!
Counselor: Well, I suppose there's no reason to ask the rest of our questions. Thank you for a very. . . enlightening interview.
*Present*
Donut was up on his feet with South, Kaikaina, and Caboose.
Donut: So then after that, they transferred me to that new base. I guess we left before we were supposed to do what wanted us to.
Caboose: That's a pretty crazy story Donut.
South: It wasn't even cohesive, of course if was crazy!
Donut: But when I got there, all I got was the distress beacon from Tucker. It said to get Church, I think Tucker was captured. There was something there. Something scary.
Caboose: That sounds scary.
The Epsilon unit then made an odd sound.
Donut: Hey, this thing sure makes a racket.
Kaikaina: Tell me about it! I have to deal with that, all the sounds of tools, and that old guy yelling when I'm trying to sleep!
Delta: Sleeping for a majority of the day is not very healthy. The sleep schedule Ruby has set you on is perfect to maintain your figure.
Kaikaina: She is not my mom!
Caboose: Epsilon loves it when you tell it stories. Especially about things that have happened to us, and. . . and people we've met.
Kaikaina: That's also annoying.
Donut: You've been telling it stories?
Caboose: Yeah, you know. To the best of my memory.
Donut: The best of your memory?
Caboose: Yeah. . .
South: I wasn't there so I can't correct any of it, and Sister's just as stupid.
Donut: I bet those were some pretty weird stories. So what is it?
Caboose: Oh, it's a memory component from a bigger AI that a bunch of scientists wanted to copy to make more, but they couldn't, so they drove it crazy until it developed this split personality, and then they harvested all the different personalities for their experiments. Yeah.
South: Seriously, is he a genius or a dumbass?!
Donut: Pretty weird.
Caboose: I'm using it, part of Tex's body, and parts of Sheila to make a new super best friend. . . but its not going so well. I lit myself on fire.
South: He almost burned down the base.
Kaikaina: Thrice.
Donut: Where did you all get it?
Caboose: We were all on a big adventure, kind of like your adventure, and then we needed help kind of like you need help, and we needed some help and we got help from somebody. It was very helpful.
South: Delta, can you translate anything he says?
Delta: My apologies, I do not have the function to translate idiocy to English.
South: I guess that answers one of my questions.
Donut: Could the person who helped you help us now?
Caboose: Ohhh, oh?
*Prison Facility*
Agent Washington stood in the center of his cell.
Guard: Washington! Got a call for a you.
Washington: A call for me? Who even knows I'm here?
Guard: Tuned in on your personal secure channel. They routed it to us.
Wash was about to follow him out of the cell.
Guard: You can take it in here if you want.
Washington: Thanks.
He left the cell and entered a communications room.
Guard: Three minutes!
Washington: What? Oh, yeah, okay.
The former Freelancer walked to a station and picked up.
Washington: This is Agent- Um. . . this is Washington, who's there?
Caboose: Agent Washington!
He and Donut suddenly appeared on screen!
Washington: Oh, dear lord. Caboose? How did you even find me?
Caboose: You are on my computer screen! I just looked at it!
Washington: No, I mean. . . never mind. What's going on? Are you okay? I haven't heard anything about you.
Caboose: Oh yeah, I'm good. How about you?
Washington: All things considered, guess I should be glad to be alive.
Caboose: Yeah. . . did you get a big medal from beating Project Freelancer?
Washington: Yeah, sure. I got a bunch more metal in my life now. How about you?
Caboose: They gave us shiny new bases! The Reds have their place and we have our own place! It's kind of cool, I think I'm gonna get a drum set!
Washington: Yeah. . . Wait, seriously? You have a new base?
Caboose: Well, it's not new new. They gave us the ones that were abandoned from Project Freelancer.
Washington: They gave you a base.
Caboose: What, you didn't get a new base too?
Wash glanced at the prison around him.
Washington: . . . No. No I didn't.
Caboose: Well, you can come here and share my base with me. Oh! We need your help! Can you come right away? Can you come help us?
Washington: I don't think that's going happen.
The guard approached him.
Guard: Alright, Washington. Back in your cell.
Washington: Guard, I need to see the commander. Now.
Guard: Yeah, right. Why the hell would I let you do that?
Washington: Because I think I just found the missing piece to his puzzle.