Alright! Good news! Wait's over!

Let's get something straight, shall we?

I have a badge.

Now, we all know that badges are usually a sign of importance. They're given to people with a kind of authority that basically lets you tell people that you're better than them and that they'd better listen to you if they know what's good for them.

At least, if you're that kind of jerk.

If you're not, then they're signs that what you say should probably be listened to, but it's not really a requirement. At the very least, it might be best that you listen to what they say.

With that in mind, one could probably understand why I stood in the middle of a mostly undecorated apartment, glaring viciously at the person in question while my left eye twitched violently and five almost complete strangers stared at us with a mix of confusion and interest.

"What. Are. You. Doing. Here." Not so much a question as it was a subliminal suggestion that the person make themselves scarce. Quickly.

My so-called "best friend" simply smiled. "I thought I'd help out a bit."

I walked over to where Ibuki stood, dragging my gradually weight-gaining, feeling-losing leg behind me slightly. It's hard to get a failing leg to look like it's working just fine, let me tell you. Once I was right in front of her, I enthusiastically slapped my hands down onto her shoulders and began digging my fingers into her.

"I told you to go home." I growled and dug in harder. She began yelping in both pain and panic, considering that my grip started to drive her to her knees with a box in her arms.

"Stop!" She cried, slowly sinking to the ground. "I'm gonna drop this!"

"You'll be lucky if I don't drop you."

I kept digging, letting my frustration take over for a little while. That turned out to be a mistake on my part. As soon as she was low enough, Ibuki flung one of her legs out and swept me off mine. It goes without saying that my backside once again acted like a cushion and broke my fall.

"Now," she gloated a bit. "Who was going to drop who again?" I was too busy giving her a pained glare to actually answer her.

A few snickers and chuckles came from the people watching around us.

"You know," Z said, looking at Jack. "They kinda remind me of you and Sky a while back."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Oh please. We were nothing like that."

Syd giggled a bit. "Sure you were. Only, you two weren't that mature."

Sky rolled his eyes. "Yeah. Funny."

Great. Now I'm being compared to two guys who I barely know. I half expected my friend to pull a rubber nose out of my box and hand it to me.

I mean, what do I look like? A clown Reploid?

I huffed quietly for a second, none too happy with the people surrounding us. After the brief sulking, which also gave my poor backside a moment to recover from its second painful landing of the day, I finally pushed myself up to my feet and offered Ibuki a hand.

"Sorry." I said. "I just wasn't expecting you to be here or anything like that."

Ibuki set down her box and took my hand so I could pull her up. "No problem. To be honest, I didn't think that I'd be here either."

Wait, what?

She could see my confusion. "Yeah, I wasn't sure whether or not you needed my help. When I got home, I decided I might as well come out here and see what's up"

"I ran into her while we were unloading our stuff." Syd added. "She wanted to help, so I showed her where we were setting up."

I sighed. Ibuki was one of those stubborn types that you couldn't get to change her mind if you payed her millions of Zenny to do so. "Alright. But you can't say a word about this to anyone. Got it?"

Ibuki smiled again. "Iris. Give me a little more credit than that. I can keep a secret, you know."

Right. I forgot. Secret keeping came with the whole 'ninja' thing.

"Now then," Jack said. "If we're just about ready, we should put a plan of action together."

"Right." Ibuki said. "Lemme finish this first." She picked up the box and started toward the door.

"Uh, what's in the box?" I asked.

Ibuki shrugged. "Nothing."

Wait, she didn't want to drop an empty box? Seriously?

We waited as Ibuki opened the door and disappeared for a moment. Not because she used some kind of cool ninja technique that caused her to vanish, or because she took off like a plasma bolt from a Buster Gun, but because she closed the door behind her.

Sometimes, though, I wished she'd do something ninja-like, instead of constantly beating me up at the most inconvenient times.

A couple seconds later, she returned sans box. A little too quickly for a normal person to go throw out a cardboard box, but that's part of her whole thing, I guess.

Once we were ready, the eight of us (I count Tango as a person, thank you very much) circled around a table. Jack set a small circular projector at the center of the table and pressed a button. The projector displayed a small hologram of the tower and the surrounding area.

"Right." Jack started. "So, we're here." He tapped on the image of the apartment complex we were in, causing it to light up. "I'd think the best idea would be to get eyes all around the area. We could set up watch spots here, here and here." He tapped three spots surrounding the tower, and three small green lights turned on where he touched.

"Okay," Sky said. "So who gets to sit outside all day?"

"Well, I think you, Bridge and I should be the ones on the outside. We're less likely to fall asleep."

Z scoffed. "Gee, thanks."

"No, he's right." Syd said. "He's more likely to get bored and fall asleep or something."

This time, Jack was the one to scoff. "Gee, thanks."

"I could go out, too." Ibuki quickly offered, probably to try and steer away from an argument. "I can keep watch over any blind spots you guys might have."

Jack nodded. "Good idea. Z, Syd and Iris stay here. We'll set up cameras near our positions, that way if we miss anything you guys can let us know."

We all nodded in agreement. That worked out pretty well for me.

"Is there anything you could do to help?" I asked him. He meowed in response and raised a paw. I figured he was saying 'yes', but I had no idea what the paw meant. He waved it back and forth a bit before I realized what he was doing.

I followed his paw with my eyes and found that he was pointing to a window. He wanted to be let out for whatever it was he wanted to do.

"What do you think he's going to do?" Ibuki asked. I shrugged.

"I dunno. I'll just run with it, though." What else could I do? With my leg feeling like it was freezing up again, it was better that I didn't move around too much and make it worse. Not until I could get it looked at. Until then, I could only hope that my leg wouldn't get any worse than it already was.

Big hope.

Jack sighed. "Right. Now that we know what to do, I say we get out there and do it."

"Right!" The other officers chirped. Ibuki and I nodded. Time to do what we needed to do.

As it turns out, doing what I needed to do meant retreating to the apartment's restroom so I could do a little quick maintenance on my leg. Without my toolkit, which genius me left at the dorm room back at Hunter HQ, the best I could do was whap my leg a few times. I started getting some feeling in it, which was good. I just hoped that if things came down to it, it wouldn't give out on me again.

Once that was done and I wrote it off as a personal emergency to the other two in the apartment, it became a game of hurry up and wait. A game that we played by watching the monitor. A really boring game. A couple of hours passed where nothing happened in bunches.

"This happens sometimes." Syd said in a rather laid back tone. She examined the fingernails she'd just finished tending to. "This is why most people hate stakeouts."

"Really?" I asked. "I though it was because so many things happened it was almost impossible to keep track of it all."

Z laughed a bit. "You and Sky would get along so well."

"Meh. Guy seems kinda abrasive."

"Don't let him get to you. He's actually a pretty nice person deep down."

I scoffed a bit. "Got me fooled."

"Amusing." Said sandpaper person replied over their communicators, which I learned were a feature on their badges. Why can't we have something like that? It's a little inconvenient for me to have to pick up a phone if I need to talk to someone important. "Maybe you'd like to keep an eye out. It's not like we're trying to watch for an intergalactic criminal or anything."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah. Nice guy."

It was at that point that a knock came from the door. The three of us turned in reaction. I got up to answer it.

"Be careful." Z said quietly. I nodded, but I didn't really see a point. After all, how many people in this area knew about any of us? Whoever was on the other side of the door knocked again, this time a little more urgently. I balled up a fist with each cautious step, not really wanting to risk being caught off-guard because of the fact that nobody was supposed to know that we were there. Once I got to the door, I stood off to the side that had the door's control panel. One hand came up to the panel, while the other was primed to potentially disengage some teeth.

I pressed the door's button, waiting for it to slide open to someone unprepared for a bad day.

Instead, when it opened, the three of us were greeted by a rather cheery, "Hey, guys!"

I rolled my eyes and relaxed. Of all the people that could be behind the door, it would be the one person in the world who would not only spoil my surprise attack, but would also likely throw me out into the hallway and lock me out in one smooth motion.

Z and Syd, on the other hand, smiled brightly and responded at the same time. "Hey!"

Ibuki walked into the room, a couple of bags in her hands. "I thought you guys might need some lunch, so I went out and got you guys some sandwiches."

"Cool," I said, following the food. Z and Syd got up to join us while Ibuki set the food down. The second she did, though, she spun around and looked me in the eyes. "Can I talk to you in private?"

"Uh..." That caught me off-guard. Better than being caught like that at the door. "Sure."

"Everything okay?" Syd asked, kinda concerned. Z shared a similar expression, but didn't say anything.

Ibuki spun around again, this time meeting them with a sweet look that caught all of us off-guard. "Everything's fine. We just need to talk about something kinda important." She turned back to me. "So, meet you in the hall?"

"Okay..." I said, making sure my tone made it clear that I was kinda curious about whatever it was she needed to talk about. We made our way out into the hallway, waiting until the door slid shut behind us before Ibuki said anything.

"Look, Iris," she said in a nearly whispering tone. "We've got a lot to talk about once this thing's over, but if what happened at the mall is any indication, this is probably going to be very dangerous. Are you sure you should be here right now?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I'll explain later, but for now, let's just say that I've got something of an obligation to do this."

"This doesn't have anything to do with Berkana, does it?" I could almost hear the cynicism in her voice.

"Right now, it does. But she's not exactly the whole reason I'm doing this. That being said, I'd rather you not get involved any more than you already are."

Ibuki rolled her eyes. "You're really going to tell me that after what I've seen and done and after I've volunteered for this?"

I shrugged a little. "You're my friend, and I don't want to see you get hurt." That prompted another eye roll, prompting me to defend my position. "You may be a ninja and all, but you don't exactly have the kind of protection that I do. You saw what the guys we're working with can do. For all I know, things can only get more dangerous the further this thing gets and the fact that I have a set of armor means I can take harder hits more often than you can."

"So then you're not planning on working on your defense, and instead you're going to leave it all to something that can fail without a moment's notice and leave you more vulnerable than me. And I do have some protection."

I...had no answer for that. Maybe that was why she always won when it came to our sparring matches. Ibuki sighed. As stubborn as I said she was, she knew I was every bit the same. She turned to the box that I thought she'd thrown out but instead left by the door and reached in, pulling out something I hadn't expected.

Her gloves. Fingerless gauntlets that she wore whenever her clan gave her an assignment she needed to complete for them.

Which made almost no sense. I mean, if she didn't want people to know she was a ninja, why the heck would she leave fingerprints everywhere when she's on a job?

Anyway, that was probably her way of telling me that she wasn't going anywhere, whether I liked it or not.

"I'm not going anywhere, whether you like it or not."

Or that was.

I took a deep breath, releasing it in a slow sigh. "Fine, but you have to promise me that if things start getting out of hand, you'll get out right away."

Ibuki rolled her eyes. "I'm not you, Iris. I know how to get out when things are going to get bad."

Gee, thanks.

"No problem. Now let's get back inside and have us some lunch. I know you haven't eaten since this morning."

"And how would you know that?"

Ibuki smiled. "Because you just told me."

The palm of my hand met half of my face. "That figures."

"Just kidding." And with that, she walked back into the apartment. I followed right behind her, hoping that I could both get something to eat and figure out a way to get back at her for that.

I had to stew over that last one a bit. I had to make sure my payback was good.

But first, lunch.