A/N: Thanks for the reviews~ This story's tied with the other story right now, but slightly behind.

Also, disregard everything I said last chapter about nothing happening to Shirley. It turns out that whether something happens or doesn't happen, it doesn't matter, and it helps continuity a bit more if the Shirley thing does happen.

Double Trouble

by N. Silvutra Mayhem

Collision 02: It Ain't Pretty

Lower Elements, Haven City
LEP Headquarters, Police Plaza

"D'Arvit!"

Foaly rarely left his office. When he commuted to work, he always went along a pre-determined path that was the shortest way to where he wanted to be; with his gadgets. If he did leave his office, he still remained on the same floor, as many of the briefing rooms were nearby. In fact, there were several betting pools going on to see how many times he would leave at all.

Trouble Kelp, a quick system-check i.e. hack later, was not in his office due to the event of a particularly nasty prank, and working away on the fourth floor. Centaurs did not mind going up, but elevators were always awkward things when all four hooves rose felt momentarily weightless at the same time, and it always felt like others were checking out his hindquarters if there were a large number of people with him.

Not a pleasant sensation.

But, upon reaching the fourth floor, it was not a difficult effort to find the room he needed. Trouble's scream could be heard all the way from the elevator shafts, and Foaly made a note to look into better soundproofing once he fixed the wings.

"Frond," muttered Trouble, just as Foaly invited himself in. "Does Kuler have no respect for the People—?"

"Apparently not," said Foaly. "Looks like you didn't sit down."

Trouble jumped, and then visibly sighed in relief. "You have this recorded somewhere?"

"What do you take me for, a stinkworm?"

There was a wince. Then Foaly remembered that Trouble had left his office because someone dumped an entire bucket of stinkworms in there for some infernal reason.

"Should I activate the self-destruct on Kuler's gear?" asked Foaly.

"No. We don't want them to know they're being monitored. Private Alxim is too far away to catch any audio, and if that child could catch Kuler shielded then there's no telling what they can do."

There was no opportunity for a mesmer, either. One had to unshield in order to pull it off, and from the still-playing live feed on the screen behind them, it was more than obvious there wouldn't be enough time for an elf still green from the Academy to go in and take out the three of them, especially since the questioner was wearing a mask.

Speaking of the questioner...

"I ran a check on the databanks for them," said Foaly. "They're still running, but the one with the mask is some guy called Zero."

"Zero? Do we have an identity for him?"

"Nope. All we got is that he's a list of achievements, but I wouldn't call them that."

Foaly opened his laptop and remote-connected it to the screen. A few keystrokes later, Zero's profile appeared to the side of the feed.

"Killed a Prince Clovis la Britannia, humiliated a guy called Jeremiah Gottwald to save the life of an Eleven..." Trouble muttered, then raised an eyebrow. "A 'knight of justice'?"

"So he says." Foaly shrugged. "I did a lookup on Gottwald, and it turns out he's the guy with the blue hair."

"And he's working for someone who made him lose his noble rank?"

"Don't ask me. But don't forget, Zero's still a mask. He was declared dead once, this one might be different."

Trouble sighed. "Have you tried looking up the Knightmares?"

God-awful things, Foaly thought. Out loud, he said, "Nothing that could tell us what we don't know."

Back to square one. "What about the shuttles, then?"

"That's why I'm here. The Ruins of Yggdrasil were once a popular tourist destination, but now they're a nightmare to get to. The shuttle port under them, E226, has a vein of sakuradite running parallel to all the way to Haven."

Sakuradite. Everyone knew sakuradite, the superconductor that just so happened to be hyper-flammable. Trouble definitely did; combined with magma flares, it had been responsible for many chute collapses over the years.

"Didn't anyone notice that when they were building the chute?" asked Trouble.

"Nope. It wasn't there. The vein was created by the deposit under the ruins, after decades of Mud Men messing with the ground."

Trouble shook his head. Stupid Mud Men. "And the nearest port?"

"E231. Eighteen minutes away."

"How long by wing?"

"That was by wing. We don't exactly have the Chinese Federation mapped out, you know."

Trouble groaned and sank into his chair. "This is bad. You can't have come all the way up here just to tell me that, Foaly; tell me you have some good news."

"Actually, Qwan and No・1 were in Police Plaza, doing some training. They should be here right about... now."

Instead of two demon warlocks walking through the door, something else happened. Something much, much worse. From Kuler's helmet-cam, it began a small dot of red. The only indication there was something wrong lay within how Gottwald stiffened.

A second later: a phenomenal explosion.

Cracks appeared in the ruins, cracks that quickly spiderwebbed to the stone into pieces, and the millennia-old relic collapsed upon itself. The ground opened up below as the old underground city caved in, and sand began pouring down as if a drain had been unplugged. The three Knightmare Frames were swept along the wave; the others in the vicinity didn't stand a chance. Everything would be buried alive.

There was only one thing that could cause that sort of destruction. They didn't need to see the distinctive shockwave to know.

"Did that—"

"Was that—"

Elf and centaur looked at each other, blinked once, and the same message was visible in both their eyes: sakuradite.

"I want answers now, Foaly."

Foaly was already typing. "It seems Private Alxim thought it was a good idea to blow up the sakuradite under the ruins, Commander."

"D'Arvit!" Trouble hissed. "He should have waited!"

Foaly snorted. "Initiative can be a double-edged sword."

"How is he?"

"We've lost all signal; he's probably buried in the sand, maybe suffocated. I'm pulling up the most likely projected simulations of the explosion now."

All the Zero data disappeared to be replaced by several cross-section animations of the ruins, E226 clearly visible in the picture. The sakuradite deposits were highlighted in pink, the explosion in yellow, and of the four simulations there none of them looked particularly optimistic.

"As you can see," said Foaly, "there's a three out of four chance that the Mud Men will end up in Haven after E226 collapses. Otherwise, best case scenario is that you'll end up with sand flooding that will put half our chutes out of commission for two years."

"Is there any way to prevent E226's collapse?"

"If there were, it's too late now."

"Frond," Trouble muttered. Then he straightened and got out of his chair, automatically assuming command. "Right, Foaly. You keep in contact, I want regular updates. Go back to your office if you can work better."

"Alright. All my seismic equipment is there, anyway." Foaly paused. "Good luck, Commander."

Trouble nodded. "Likewise."

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A/N: Fear not, both our favourite super geniuses will feature next chapter.

Review? ;D

Next—Collision 03: Mesmerising