The ride to HQ with the Boss was, in two words, painfully awkward.

Both of them had kept relatively quiet, guilt for two very similar but not quite the same reasons forcefully wedging itself between them in the car. The Boss barely even hummed along to his mix tape track list that Shaundi invited him to play after she couldn't take the silence anymore - he didn't even sing along with the chorus to "What I Got"! Watching him as he drove, Shaundi silently took him in like it was the first time now that she witnessed that he was definitely a different person than the one she knew in Stilwater. His face was near entirely strong angles: a good square jaw and a chin that had a dimple hidden underneath a purple beard, with frown lines etched into the sides of his mouth and scars scattered around his face, and a nose that his mom probably fawned over before it got smashed and reset several times over. Gold eyes, slicked back hair that gave an iridescent purple-black sheen, shoulders like a linebacker (did he ever mention playing sports in college?), a bit more than not bad when it came to muscular structure, and... blue. An icy, pale blue that Shaundi furrowed her brow and mentally tried to paint tan with freckles kissing up his arms and cheeks again. How had none of them noticed before he got so clearly not human colored anymore? She felt a twang of guilt at one of the possible answers: since Johnny died and they were left stranded with barely a couple grand in this sleazy city, everyone was hell-bent on doing what needing doing for revenge's sake. Did they get so wrapped up in avenging a fallen friend that they forgot to notice what was going on with the still living ones?

"Hey, Boss."

"Yeah?"

Shaundi faltered.

"You... how's that bruise?"

"Probably gone by now. Can't even feel it." the Boss replied with a cracked smile, and rolled up his tank so she could get an eyeful of his purple star tattoos, no longer standing against a bruise blue background. Shaundi frowned and bit her bottom lip briefly.

"That's good. You better tell me if you're not feeling up to driving all the way to HQ or back from wherever you're going."

"It was just two shots, Shaund. I'm a grown man, I promise I can get myself around town." the gang leader retorted. Shaundi sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes, but resigned herself to buckling into the seat. She sat silently for the rest of the ride, other than giving a sharp "no" when she saw the Boss's hands oh so slowly start to turn the wheel and drift towards the curb where a lone picketer held up an anti-Saints sign on the way to HQ.

If the Boss was more affected by those weird drugs he stuffed himself with than he'd admit, then Shaundi couldn't tell considering he drove as erratically as he normally did. When they arrived at the towering building, the Boss screeched the car to a halt right up near a line of decorative shrubs. He moved to unlock the car, but stopped and instead looked over at Shaundi with concern.

"Are you gonna be all right?"

"I'm a grown woman," Shaundi sassed back, "I'm fine.

"C'mon, they're not that shady," the Boss started to argue back, but Shaundi's cold glare made him falter before he could reprimand her for talking to her superior like that. He ran a hand inked purple with an image of his hand's bones on it through his hair and gave a low huff, adding, "look, I know what I've gotten myself into."

Really, Boss, Shaundi thought to herself grimly, you really think you know what you're doing if you couldn't think of better excuses for having blue skin other than a bad spray tan and paint beforehand?

"Don't worry, really. Oh," he finally unlocked the doors, "tell Pierce and Oleg I'm staying out a bit later tonight? I'll probably be down at the Broken Shillelagh later for a few pints if they want to meet up."

"Got it," Shaundi forced a smile onto her face, but she felt a heavy weight in her gut and her pockets. "Try not to hit any more protestors than absolutely necessary."

"Can't give you any promises on that, love." The Boss replied with a playful grin, reaching over to crank up his tunes as Shaundi left the car.

"Then wait 'till there's no cops next time!" The brunette desperately wanted to enjoy this moment of normalcy, of playfulness between the two of them after all the strange events on the docks, but her conscience gnawed away at her. He's not the same. He probably hasn't been for longer than you knew.

Stepping away from the car, Shaundi watched for but a moment as the Boss left, before turning sharply and walking inside.

Pierce and Oleg had yet to return from their match despite the fact the sun was well beneath the horizon line, but Shaundi didn't really care at the moment. Her heels clicked sharply against the tile, and she strode straight past the other Saints, many of them not acknowledging her not out of disrespect, but because they knew that look on her face.

She had shit to do.

Two weird drugs, apparently ordered through some weird app on her weirdly colored leader's phone. It was crazy. It was a puzzle Shaundi wanted to ignore her boss's not-so-subtle encouragement to leave unfinished, but she knew if she wanted to do it, she would need some help. The only way to fight crazy was with crazy, after all.

And no one knew crazy like Kinzie Kensington.

Despite Pierce and the Boss's teasing, Shaundi was never exactly pissed they invited another girl into their clubhouse - they allowed other girls into the Saints before, even if none of them were able to scale the ladders as fast as Shaundi did - it was more of a case of envy. Shaundi fought tooth and nail with the Saints since before Steelport, and couldn't help but feel herself get a bit green over the fact that Kinzie was still essentially a newbie in her eyes but clicked with the crew like she'd known them for years within a matter of weeks. Sure she also provided them with a shit ton of helpful information and proved herself as useful as she was conspiratorial in that time, but... hey, it was weird suddenly having an extra (okay, and maybe a bit annoying and nutty) gal in the mix, and she and Shaundi didn't really share much in common.

At least she'll probably have a field day with this, Shaundi thought. Patting the pocket she had put the swiped syringe in, the brunette eyed Kinzie's warehouse warily. It was still cold by the docks despite it being a sunny day, but this time Shaundi brought her own purple leather jacket, leaving the Boss's black one tossed onto his bed at the penthouse. The female lieutenant barely got any sleep last night, mainly because of all the preparations she had to make. She found an old bracelet box from an ex to put the syringe in so she wouldn't have to worry about the damn needle still attached pricking her, took a picture of it and a quick drawing she made of the app's picture and sent it to Kinzie, and organized a time for them to meet in the morning considering if all the boys went out drinking last night they'd probably be passed out 'till at least noon so she wouldn't need to worry about giving them any excuses or talk to Pierce about what happened just yet. Hopefully, she mused as she walked towards the garage door to the warehouse, Kinzie will be better about keeping this on the down low than I know Pierce'd be.

"Yo, anyone home?" Shaundi called out as she entered the garage, her voice echoing off the dark walls.

"In here!" Kinzie called out. Shaundi followed the sound of the cyber-freak's voice until the sound of someone furiously typing away on a keyboard led her to the other woman.

"Welcome to my Inner Sanctum," Kinzie greeted, putting her laptop onto one of the tables before springing up, walking over to Shaundi excitedly, "glad you called last night. Now that you're here you gotta tell me more - is the Boss like, really a vampire now, or- ?"

"Slow down, Kinzie," Shaundi said, digging into her jacket pocket and fishing out the box for her, "he's not a vampire, still alive. He sure as hell isn't looking human, though."

"You're telling me," Kinzie agreed, and eagerly swiped the box from Shaundi, taking off the top and ogling the used contents within, "I just thought the Boss was an alien and his human disguise was busted or something when I saw him." Kinzie paused.

"Well, actually, he still very well may be, but we won't find that out until we can't see about getting some DNA off of this thing first."

"Kinzie, I know what he's doing is pretty out there, but I don't think he's from out of this world-"

"You said he stuck himself with this, right?" The ex-agent asked, plopping back into her office chair with the opened box. Wheeling herself over to a workspace with relatively less computers than the other tables, Shaundi followed behind her, watching as the other female pulled over what appeared to be a small forensics kit.

"Yeah, in his gut. Uh, what are you doing, exactly? I thought you left DNA stuff to the guys in the white coats when you were in the FBI."

"I know enough to get by," Kinzie replied, snapping on a pair of latex gloves and picking up the syringe from the box, carefully inspecting it and reading over what it said on the side, "I think I'll probably just get some samples and send 'em out to some guys I know who're working in a lab not too far from here. It may take a bit longer, but if this gunk in here is really causing the Boss to get weird powers and fangs, it may be a good idea to get a full DNA profile on him and from there look for anomalies." Pushing down on the syringe, Kinzie held a cotton swab up next to the small hole in the needle and pouted when nothing came out.

"I suppose that would've been too easy." Shaundi offered consolingly.

"Yeah, probably," Kinzie confessed, "I'll just ask my guys to try and analyze this stuff too. Now, there is one thing we talked about that I could get to, though." Judging by Kinzie's mischievous grin, Shaundi could tell she was possibly more excited about the fact she could go back to her toys than the fact the Boss might be a superhuman/alien/some other conspiracy theorist's dream catch. Wheeling her way over to her main computer, she started furiously typing away and pulling up different screens.

"Lucky for us, the Boss still hasn't listened to my advice about ditching the phone or at least changing his password," Kinzie said, "now, once I get in it should just be a matter of trying to find where the main codes and program files are, that way, I could copy them onto here and get a more thorough look, that way once I get it on my system I should be able to backtrack where that weird app was created by-"

Shaundi was pretty clever, but Kinzie had lost her about halfway through her explanations of backtracking and how different groups would all add their different flairs to the data. Not wanting to break the mad mojo Kinzie had going on though, Shaundi just nodded her head along and scrolled through her phone.

"-It'll be a cakewalk. Thankfully, with all these screens I can watch as we go through all his shit and- woah, Shaundi!"

Jerking her head up at Kinzie's tone, the tech geek hit a key on her keyboard and froze one of the screens while the others flashed .jpgs and song titles and Jane Austen eBook texts. Gawking at the screen, Shaundi felt her face redden considerably as a rather naked version of herself stared back at her, smugly grinning behind the glass screen. She'd know that photo anywhere: it was her pic inside the Church back in Stilwater.

"Do you have something you want to share with the class?" Kinzie teased, her grin growing wider as Shaundi grew redder.

"I swear to fucking God I had no idea he had that on there!" At least Shaundi was honest. She didn't exactly like pilfering through people's things when she trusted them - it was hard enough to drag herself here about the drugs - though still: why the hell would the Boss be carrying around one of her nudes on his phone? She could think of one reason, though she thoroughly balked at the concept the Boss might see her as anything but a friend or a sister. Then again, most siblings didn't carry around pics of their sisters without any clothes on...

"It's- it's an old picture," Shaundi stammered out an explanation over Kinzie's giggles, reaching over to try and make Kinzie switch pictures, "I fucking swear I'm gonna fucking kill him super health or not- Kinzie, take it off!"

"All right, all right!" Kinzie cackled, defensively hugging her keyboard closer at Shaundi's assault, pressing another button. Looking back at the monitor, the picture soon switched, a few other naked women briefly flashing on the screen before the pictures became much tamer. Shaundi looked at a few pictures of a cat dressed as Johnny Gat that came after, though wouldn't be wondering until later where the hell the Boss found a cat to take those pictures with. At the moment, she was still pretty pissed that the Boss had her naked photo on his phone, and more so that she didn't know he did and what to make of it.

"I knew it was an old pic, though, " Kinzie managed to get her giggling under control enough to offer sincerely, "I gotta say - I think your hair looks much better without the dreads."

Shaundi gave a slight smile.

"Yeah, me too."

It didn't take Kinzie long before she finally pinned down the main components of the Upgrade app. Giving a whoop when she found it, she eyed the small little icon like she was meeting a new friend.

"There you are, you cute little bastard." Kinzie crowed at it eagerly. With a few more keystrokes, most all of her screens had the little icon of the white arrow with the purple circle around it, her mouse hovering right above it.

"Can you actually get into that app now that it's in your system, Kinzie?" Shaundi asked curiously, pausing the episode of Professor Genki's S.E.R.C she was streaming on her phone, she got up off the upside down milk crate she was sitting on and sauntered closer.

"You bet I can," Kinzie said proudly, "it looks like I'll be able to access his previous purchasing records too, so we can see just how much of those drugs he's pumped into his system already."

"You think we'd be able to trick this thing into letting us meet a dealer?" Shaundi asked. Kinzie shrugged, taking a small canister from one of the tables and opening it up, taking out two pieces of pink gum and popping them into her mouth.

"Maybe. If the Boss was paying that sorta cash for it though and this thing is linked to his account, he'll definitely know if we tried to buy anything." Shaundi nodded, and grimaced at the thought. Yeah, it was bad enough she was helping a nutcase hack into his stuff: she really didn't want to know what would happen if he found out because she had used his cash.

"Damn. Can we maybe trick it into thinking we're the Boss? Add a fake account to it and use that?"

"Possibly, but that may not work depending on how deep into background checks and if there are any validation methods this thing does," Kinzie explained, "though, with most all of the Boss's stuff available for transfer onto my system, I may be able to work something out. I'd need to put the fake bank account on the real phone itself though too for the best form of mimicry: while not likely, there is a possibility that the app may recognize there's something not right if one version of the account has two accounts, while the original on the Boss's phone just has one."

"Is there a possibility that it'll know that you're not the Boss now because you just copied it to your computers?"

"Pfft, nah," Kinzie snickered, "technology is good, but simple apps aren't exactly world-domination smart. Right now it basically just thinks that we've accessed the app from a new system, and considering the Boss's password security is pretty much nonexistent as long as we don't try to buy anything or add any accounts we should be golden."

"Well, if you're certain..." Is this really where she was in her life? The star of a hit tv show, lieutenant of one of the biggest pop culturally iconic gangs of the century, now a cohort of a super-nerd and getting anxious over opening a phone app? Man, if Johnny were here, he'd probably either get some sick kick out of it, or have fallen asleep with all the talk with no action.

"I'm positive," Kinzie affirmed, "let's just see what this little Upgrade is all about!" With that, she clicked the arrow.

The app had some sort of generic music playing in the background that wasn't entirely unpleasant, but it was rather redundant. The screen had crisp, clean white letters, the kind you'd see on some hotshot lawyer's business card, and a purple and black background. Now that she wasn't peeking at it with the Boss tapping through the screen so quickly, Shaundi could actually read the main list:

Abilities Upgrades

Health Upgrades

Damage Upgrades

Combat Upgrades

Vehicles Upgrades

Gang Abilities Upgrades

Bonuses Upgrades

"Vehicles?" Kinzie asked curiously. Shaundi looked over at her and shrugged.

"I just saw the first few, the Boss was moving pretty quick about getting one of these things." The brunette explained.

"Well, looks like not all of these upgrade things can be stuffed into your system unless the Boss is trying to become an Autobot," Kinzie commented, "You said that the Boss got something from Health, yesterday, right? Was there any others he mentioned?"

"Yeah," Shaundi nodded, and snapped her fingers, frowning in thought, "he said he wanted that one or... Damage, I think it was."

"Then let's check that one out first," Kinzie said with a mischievous grin, clicking on the word and bringing up a whole other list.

While the list itself looked like any other checklist, it was what it said it provided and its implications that shook the women.

"Holy shit..." Shaundi said under her breath, ogling the list speckled with checked boxes. Kinzie rolled over each word, each upgrade offering a small photo and brief summary of what each offered. The Boss had been rather fond of making himself damage-proof if the fact he had at least one box in each section - Bullets, Explosions, Falls, Fire, and Vehicles - checked off, but there were still a few unchecked boxes for the more expensive upgrades. Plus, a few even had little locks next to the names where the white box was supposed to go.

"Hey Kinzie, roll over that one," Shaundi instructed, pointing to one titled "Fire - Level 4", "it has a little lock on it. What's it mean by that you need a bigger 'Respect level'?"

"Looks like this is set up like some sorta goal system," Kinzie said, moving her mouse to circle over a number in the top right corner of the app, "looks like the Boss gains 'respect levels' somehow, and when he does, he can buy different things from Upgrade. Looks like he's pretty close to being able to get more stuff, seeing as he's already in the mid-thirties and if these other locked upgrades are any hint, this thing might just cap at 50."

Shaundi clenched her jaw and silently nodded, counting up all the little check marks on-screen just from the Damage section. Thirteen little check marks. Thirteen needles from God-knows-where sunk into the Boss's skin, filling him with strange liquids and if they all did as told, increasingly invincible to most anything an enemy could throw at them. Part of her selfishly wanted to be happy, considering it meant the Syndicate could potentially be facing someone unstoppable by mere weapons and that it probably wouldn't be much longer before the Boss ground the remnants of the Syndicate and any signs of the rival gangs into the pavement for good. But, seeing him after the Vampire injection, knowing there was once a tan skinned, dark haired, once soft-spoken young man from Stilwater under there somewhere... or did that part of him get lost in a torrent of super-drugs after Johnny was lost in the plane?

"Can..." Shaundi stalled, unsure if she wanted to know the answer, "can you see if he had these sorta things back in Stilwater, Kinzie?"

"Sure can!" Sounding rather cheerful while Shaundi was tense and fighting back glassy eyes, Kinzie happily pulled up a data list on another page, digging through several rather-important looking files all marked with various wordings of "upgrade" on them until she got to something that showed an installation date.

"... Er, or cannot," Kinzie corrected herself sheepishly, "looks like this app was installed... not long after you all started setting up camp in Steelport, actually. There's no record of it being on his phone before - at least, this one."

"When we were talking, he made it sound like he might've done some deals with this Upgrades dealer before," Shaundi explained, "he mentioned purple hair being a side effect, but his hair was like that since he woke up from his coma in Stilwater as far as anyone can recall."

"Maybe he did personal deals with the guy there and moved on to apps once you all decided to stick around here," Kinzie suggested, "it'd probably be easier than trying to leave for Stilwater every other time he wanted a new upgrade."

"True..." Shaundi tilted her head and stared at their leader's level and frowned. He acted like the guy was there during the deal that went down though, which didn't make sense if his dealer was supposed to still be in Steelport. Maybe the Boss wasn't the only customer anymore... ? Ugh. That was as creepy as the thought that the Boss was secretly trying to make himself invincible by playing some creepy game with an anonymous drug dealer.

"I don't get why it's called 'Respect Levels', either," Shaundi finally commented as Kinzie had moved back to the main screen to investigate the Vehicle section - something, Shaundi was thankful of, just promised that most of the upgrades would make the Boss's cars superpowered and not himself, "he's already got the respect of the Saints, and what of the city doesn't fear him probably respects him already - just who is he trying to get the brownie points for?"

"For me."

That was all the androgynous voice said before cutting to static again.

"Shit!" Shaundi swore and grabbed for her pistols, but stopped short at Kinzie's aggravated shriek.

"How the hell did they manage that?" Kinzie demanded to know, swearing vigorously as all of her monitors blinked and blurred and succumbed to white fuzz.

"You keep here, I'm going to sweep the building and make sure the fucker isn't around!" Shaundi barked, and quickly moved away from Kinzie's Inner Sanctum. Her heels hit the stairs and the concrete hard, but Shaundi was prepared to knock that creepy fuck harder if he was around.

It took her about fifteen minutes of looking around and her heart racing, but the warehouse was clear of any intruders. Shaundi carefully made her way back to Kinzie, only to see her gritting her teeth and cussing out the high heavens as she furiously typed away.

"You okay, Kinzie?" Shaundi asked cautiously, only to receive the pained sound akin to a seal dying.

"Look! Look what this fucker's doing!" Kinzie gestured to her screens, and Shaundi stared at them all and realized there was a lot more countdown timers than she recalled seeing minutes ago.

"They're not planning to blow this place to Kingdom Come, are they?" Shaundi asked apprehensively.

"No, worse," Kinzie wailed, "look! Upgrade is forcibly uninstalling itself and trying to delete all the Boss's info off the system! The fucker also got into a few of my major files and into part of the mainframe and the system itself and is trying to delete that, too!" Shaundi nodded, looking at the timers again, and grimaced, connecting the dots.

"So if you want to save your own stuff-"

"- I got to let Upgrade and the Boss's go, right." Kinzie was all but baring her teeth viciously at the bug that crept into her system while she was frantically toying around, trying to save her precious documents and system files from deletion.

"I can't believe- this thing is either connected to a live person on the other side, or someone would've had to have made that app with a virus like this in mind! Either way, it's so irrational, I just- how did my scanners not see this thing? For this shitty little app to have this kind of capability, it's- this is impossible!"

"Well, sweetie," Shaundi offered, "I think a lot of 'impossible' things are going on here."