"Trouble, we've got a problem." Alita said.
"What's wrong?" Trouble asked.
"Well, let's start with Jehoden Bezant is out of jail and I didn't know so I don't have a guy following him."
"You expect me to be able to do something about this?"
"Nah, I already know what to do about it. I just need your okay."
"It involves Holly." It was not a question, but a statement of fact.
"Yeah, it does."
"And what does this entail?"
"Undercover operations. From what I hear that's her new specialty. Okay so Ida's gone into hiding, and the only person who could possibly know where she is is Jehoden."
"Don't you already have people undercover there?"
"I do, but I can't have them compromising an investigation when it took them years to get in, plus I'm not in charge of then anymore."
"It took them years to get in, what makes you think Holy will have better luck."
"She'll need a new alias. Or, more accurately, she'll assume the identity of someone else."
"I assume you already have someone in mind."
"Would I be here if I didn't?" Alita sat down in Trouble's chair and fiddled with the computer. "What we need," she began, "Is someone who wouldn't leave an impression. Someone so low on the food chain no one's going to remember what they look like if they got thrown in prison, but at the same time someone with potential. Like her." With a final click of the mouse an elf's picture appeared on the screen. "She's been in two years, got three more to go and no chance of parole, so she's not gonna show up and bust us. Also, hasn't even been initiated yet."
"What!" Trouble screamed.
Alita flinched, though she should have expected this. Trouble knew enough about the gangs of the area that this reaction would not have been uncommon, especially when it comes to Holly. "Bit overprotective of her are we?" Alita said with a chuckle.
"Alita if I heard any of my agents had to-"
"Give it up. Everyone knows you're-"
"Are you looking to get fired?"
"Sorry commander. Don't worry there's tons of initiations that haven't been used in hundreds of years and you're not jumped in anywhere but Suburbia anymore. Most likely all she'll have to do is kill someone."
"All she'll have to do."
"Don't worry. I got Josiah, Maike and Foaly all workin' on a solution."
"You do know those three can't do anything together, don't you? By the way, how did you even explain it to Maike and Josiah?"
"I run plenty of undercover missions, neither of them asked. And I don't have them working together. All they need to do is make sure the gun won't kill, but looks like it does. There are three possible guns she could be handed. One: a softnose. Foaly wrote the original codes for the softnoses; he'll be done with that any minute. Now two: any other type of gun that kills, they all have almost exactly the same programming. I have Maike helpin' me with that. And three: The gun could actually use bullets. Josiah's working on that."
"You seem to be putting a lot of work into this for not having asked either me or Holly."
"Actually I already talked to Holly."
"So this was…"
"Common courtesy."
A/N: There you have it. Happy late Easter and the like to you all.