Shinn: "UWHOA! What the hell!?..."

Dr. Saotome: "Hold on, Shinn! Brace yourself against whatever you can!"

Shinn: "Doc, talk to me! What's with this earthquake all of a sudden!?"

Dr. Saotome: "You heard 'im, Carla. Spill it! Is it the Coral!?"

Cinder Carla: "Look I'm being shaken up here too and I don't know what's going on! But my guess is, the tourist might have accidentally set something off at the Engebret Tunnel."

Dr. Saotome: "It looks like it's stopped. Still reading some aftershocks. No wait...I'm getting massive Coral readings! That's one of a hell of a geyser of Coral! Carla, our earlier conversation is now more important than ever! Please, give me the data you found!"

Cinder Carla: "I told you, I can't. Why can't you see I'm saying no for your sakes!?"

Dr. Saotome: "I'm just an old man now. I'm not the puppyeyed naive intern you used to look out for. I've seen my fair share of death and nearly been killed on atleast one occasion. You don't have to worry about me, not when I'm ready to sacrifice as much as you. If young Walter is so determined to find the Coral, then I certainly don't deserve to be sitting safe in some retirement home!"

Cinder Carla: "Believe me, I fully understand your feelings. As does he. I cannot stop him. But I can stop others from dying because of what we did. Just get off Rubicon while you can, and take your boy with you."

Dr. Saotome: "And what about, Kira? You keep calling him 'tourist', yet he's going to become entombed with the rest of our friends at this rate. You know he has nothing to do with this, but you need him. So, use us too! Three good minds, two strong pilots and the rest of what we have at RaD! Surely that makes things loads easier and increases survivability!"

Cinder Carla: "Saotomekun, I just...what...? We need to put this on hold for now. I just lost contact with a drone of mine. Later."

Dr. Saotome: "Wait a min...! That damn old lady. I could have given her the answers to our latest problem if she just waited a few seconds!"

Shinn: "Give me the short story, doc. Whatever job you wanted me to do a while back, I think we should do it now."

Dr. Saotome: "Get in the Destiny. I'll brief you. Ok, that massive earthquake we just felt was a Coral surge, like the one that happened in Belius. Your friend was on a mission for young Walter to sabotage a sensor the PCA were setting up in the Engebret Tunnel. It's the same story as what happened at Watchpoint Delta. As soon as the sensor was destroyed, the Coral ignited and released. The good news is that since there's plenty of tunnels and cave systems under the Ice Field, the Coral had a way out and it didn't take out entire landmasses. But, you can bet many mines and underground facilities were royally screwed up though."

Shinn: "Kira should be safe. If there's one thing Athrun, me and that guy are good at, it's escaping huge explosions from inside bases. Now about this job. I'm to go to that location offshore where our sensors can't penetrate, right?"

Dr. Saotome: "That's right, Shinn. The interference is due to an ECM fog. Walter hasn't realized it but Carla should have found out by now. You're going to a certain hidden city. The Xylem. It was created by the Rubicon Research Institute. A place to study Coral and also residence for the researchers and their families. There are more secrets to it, but for now the important thing is that place can help us learn more about the Coral under the Central Ice Field. Be careful, my boy. That place is designed to defend itself well."

Shinn: "Did you find that out by tracking Carla's drone? The one she lost contact with?"

Dr. Saotome: "And from the survey data we stole from Arquebus... If Carla's not going to share info, then we'll get it ourselves."

Shinn: "I like that!"

* * * *

Shinn: "Second fog controller down. Still can't contact the doc. Where's the last one...Hmmm? A quad copter? That might be Carla's drone! Extracting data. Awesome! It has coordinates for the final ECM fog control dev.....!? Oh, you guys again..."

* * * *

Shinn: "Doc, do you read me? All ECM devices are down! Doc?"

Dr. Saotome: "I hear you, my boy. And I saw the footage of you against those GHOSTs. Whoever is controlling them, they also know about this place. They know it very well."

Shinn: "Shall I return?"

Dr. Saotome: "No. I've just found out there's heavy PCA presence meant to guard the Xylem. Walter has just given your friend a task to explore it too. But 2 squads of PCA LCs and 3 heavy combat helicopters would be too much for him. Stick around so that you can soften them up. Try to eliminate atleast one group and one helo. I'll come there in a bit to get the data from the city's core computers. We won't have much time."

Shinn: "Got it. And speak of the devil, that giant helicopter is the first to arrive! One all for myself! Kira should be able to handle 2 of these and some LCs easy. Let's have some fun!"