1 year after the death of Di Ravello:
Rico Rodriguez sat at the table outside his favourite café in Manaea, with his best friend since childhood: Mario Frigo. They were both sipping at delicious, ice-cold glasses of beer, and chatting about the day's events. In the months following the defeat of Di Ravello, and the election of President Rosa Manuela, the rebellion had largely disbanded (save for a small self-defence force and a police force), as there would be no point of a rebellion when there was nothing against which they could rebel anymore. Frigo was able to fulfill his dream of first restoring the Mugello Raffinati Vitesse in his grandmother's front garden, and then founding the "Frigo and Etcetera" car dealership with Rico. This dealership had turned out to be quite profitable for him, as he had been given full access to the entirety of the former rebellion's rather sizeable stockpile of civilian cars free of charge, as a thanks for his service in the liberation of Medici.
Rico, however, tired quickly of working in the car dealership, lasting only a couple of weeks before succumbing to boredom. His previous lifestyle of riding on missiles and soaring through the sky, levelling military bases in a matter of minutes, had taken its toll on his attention span, and he found the day to day events in Frigo's dealership to be mind-numbing in comparison. So he decided to put the near-infinite supplies of GE-64 plastic explosives and the grappling device given to him by Dimah to good use, and founded a demolitions company. However, as the months wore on, he was finding this tiring as well, even though he was working with his favourite things in the whole world (explosions), he found himself missing the rush of zipping around a military base like a chipmunk on amphetamines, dodging rounds fired by hapless soldiers, detonating fuel silos, radars, satellite dishes and a whole host of other military assets. He had known that he would never quite experience the rush of punching a ruthless dictator in the face atop a nuclear missile, then directing said missile into the middle of a colossal oil field again; since he had left the agency for good, but he still felt that he could be doing something more fun with his life.
As he lamented the banal turn his life had taken to his best friend, he felt his phone start to vibrate. As he excused himself to Mario, he looked at the screen, which read "INTERNATIONAL". When he tapped the green button to accept the call, he was greeted by a familiar Texan drawl.
"Well hello there, Amigo"
"Sheldon? What do you want, I told you already, I'm done with the agency."
"I know what you said, but I also know how you feel. You're bored stiff, you haven't been able to shoot a man or detonate something fun in months! I have a bit of a proposition for you, how about you return to doing what you do best; the agency's got an assignment for you that fits you to a tee."
Rico hesitated for a moment, pondering Sheldon's words, on the one hand, he had sworn that he would quit the agency work after Medici, but on the other, he had been yearning for a return to his crazy, perilous lifestyle; he had in fact been lamenting his boring life to his best friend just before Sheldon's call, so he reluctantly replied: "Fine, Sheldon, I'm in, tell me more."
"Okay amigo, just as I thought. Anyway, while you've been relaxing in Medici, a few rather mysterious events have been occurring at a high school back here. Long story short, some gal came through a strange portal from another dimension, and brought something known as "Equestrian Magic" with her. This magic has been behind some rather bizarre events, such as giving humans wings, granting them incredible superpowers, tearing open dimensional rifts, that sort of weird shit. As I'm sure you could imagine, this sort of thing would be invaluable to Uncle Sam. Anyhow, what we want you to do is visit this dimension, and do a bit of recon, determine how much of this magic there really is, and see if Uncle Sam can strike up a deal to get as much of this magic as possible with whatever senior leadership they have over there. As with all Agency operations, collateral damage is regrettable, but sanctioned. Come meet me up on that mountain above Porto Darsena down in Dracon to get started."
"I'll see you there, Sheldon."
Rico tapped the red button to terminate the call, and turned to Mario. "Looks like it's back to the old days, Mario. I'll be gone for a little while liberating some nation, but I promise I'll be back. Goodbye for now." Rico paid for his beer, got up, and left the café.
Rico arrived at the mountain to find Tom Sheldon, accompanied by a cadre of agency technicians and scientists, who seemed to be performing modifications to a control panel next to a huge metal hatch.
"Glad you could make it Rico, now, in order to get you to this other world, we have to send you through a portal. We found one of these portals in a statue at the school, but it's quite small, and some of our Intel suggests that it changes your form if you go through it, which would be less than ideal for this operation. As luck would have it, we found that this portal is remarkably similar to some of the designs you found in the research notes about 'Deterministic Location Control' from that eDEN facility on Lacrima. Using those notes, and what little information we could get from the portal in the statue, we've been modifying this here eDEN portal to take you to this dimension, without changing you in any way. These agency boys are just putting the finishing touches on it now…"
As if on cue, one of the technicians called from the hatch. "We're all finished up here, ready when you are sir!". Sheldon turned back to Rico, and got out Rico's Bavarium Wingsuit, "The missiles, machine guns and boosters all still work like a charm, no doubt you'll find it useful during this operation. I see you brought along your explosives and grappler, you'll probably find those useful as well."
"Any other equipment I'll need?" Asked Rico, putting on the wingsuit.
"Yes, actually, in addition to your standard commlink, which hasn't changed a bit since last time, and your weapons, you're also gonna need this" said Sheldon, as he handed Rico a small dark purple device, that looked like a contraceptive pill container, emblazoned with a light purple star.
"What the hell is this?" Asked Rico.
"This, so I'm told by the lab boys back at Langley, is a magic containment device, we found its schematics in the notes of some girl who recently transferred in from another high school, who's involved in these magical occurrences. We want you to use it to collect as much magic as you can to bring back for analysis, and for Uncle Sam to use for whatever purposes he wants."
"Ok," said Rico "what sort of Agency support can I expect?"
"We can send you any weapons you want through the portal, although we can't send you anything big, like a vehicle. We can set the portal to send them to wherever you are, so you don't have to worry about having to go back to a specific location to retrieve them. You'll have full access to any of the weapons the rebels were able to supply you while you were liberating Medici, apart from the Thunderbird and the M488, those are too highly classified for the government to even dream of allowing you to use them on this operation. Anyway, that's just about everything, remember, we need that Equestrian Magic more than anything else, so don't hesitate to take whatever measures you can to get it. Now go get 'em, Amigo"
Rico picked up an Urga U-39 Plechovka assault rifle, a pair of CS9 PDW-Ks and a CS110 archangel sniper rifle from the pile of weapons atop the hill, and placed them on the clips on the back of his wingsuit harness and the holsters on his trouser legs. He felt ready for whatever things this dimension would throw at him.
Sheldon gestured at the Agency technicians to start up the portal, to send Rico to this unknown dimension. As a technician punched a series of buttons in a seemingly random order, and the giant metal hatch opened, Rico stood on the concrete surrounding the hatch, peering into the pit below. "Good luck, Rico", he heard Sheldon yell.
"The portal's ready!" Shouted a technician.
Rico dove into the pit head-first.
Rico looked around him, he was in what looked like a swirling tunnel of lightning. "Salva Mia..." He said to himself, as he wondered what exactly he had gotten himself into.
Suddenly, the tunnel of lightning disappeared and Rico was flung out into a small room, with walls of what appeared to be pure crystal. He looked back, and now what looked like a large, ornate mirror, out of which he must have been flung. He heard what sounded like a young boy's voice say "Huh? What was that noise?" Rico quickly hid himself in a corner of the room, as the door burst open and a small purple and green dragon ran into the room. Rico, startled by the appearance of this small creature, and unsure of the threat it posed, raised his Plechovka and fired two well-placed shots into the dragon's chest. The dragon let out a cry, and collapsed onto the floor, dead.
"What the hay was THAT?!" Rico heard what sounded like a woman yelling, clearly surprised by the gunfire.