Y.T. is having problems.
She had escaped the Black Sun through the bolt hole in the floor, but she doesn't know how to get to her destination by way of the sewers/utility tunnels/whatever beneath the city, so after being lost in there for a while she came back to the surface through a handy manhole, hopped on her hoverboard and started making her way to the meeting place in the way that she does best. But, as she has just found out, she is now on the PAB's Most-Wanted list, because the first cop car she passed started chasing her. And it called in a bunch of others to help.
She's managed to shake off most of them (or get them to crash into things), but the pilot of this particular car is a cut above the average, and he's been on her tail for the past five minutes. She heads into a traffic tunnel against the flow of cars, ignoring the shouts, curses and beeping of horns that the angry drivers direct at her, and swerves into a narrow gap between a truck and a minivan, hoping that the cop won't be able to follow her. But he's not giving up that easy – he tilts his car so it's at a right angle to the ground and zooms between the two vehicles, keeping pace with her. Shit.
Y.T. swoops to the side wall of the tunnel. A compact car swerves to avoid her and ends up in a fender-bender with a sedan. The cop car grazes the compact as it follows her. She ascends to the ceiling of the tunnel and crouches so as to fit in the space between it and the top of a garbage truck. The smell makes her want to puke, but if that's what she has to do to shake the pursuit…
When she gets to the other side and takes a quick look behind her, she can't see the cop car anymore. She feels a sense of relief as she exits the tunnel and peels away to the left, but a burst of machine gun fire – it misses her by a foot or less – tells her that the bastard is still in pursuit. Y.T. starts weaving and swerving around so that she won't make an easy target for those guns.
There's a couple of closely spaced buildings nearby. She zips between them – the walls are so close on either side that she could reach out and touch them, if she wanted to. A quick peek behind her reveals that the car has stopped at the entrance to the gap. It's too narrow even for this daredevil driver.
She breathes a sigh of relief as she exits the gap, but her heart jumps when she sees another PAB car not far away. Thinking quickly, she zips behind an Aku-Cola billboard and hides in the forest of scaffolding by which it is mounted on the wall. She listens for a nearby siren but doesn't hear it – the PAB car didn't see her. Y.T. breathes a sigh of relief. She'll stay here for a little while, maybe until the patrol car moves on, and then she'll go on her way.
"Well. You still have a thing for getting in trouble, I see." The voice, placid, amused and familiar, chills Y.T. to the core and makes her heart try to do something it wasn't designed for. She turns her head to the right to face the speaker, who is leaning out a window at the edge of the area covered by the billboard. He is grinning at her – it could be considered a friendly grin, but she knows it isn't.
He's a big, broad-shouldered man, with lightly tanned skin, an angular face and long, straight, blue-black hair that moves slightly in the wind. His eyes are hidden behind a pair of sleek sunglasses. She thought – hoped – that she'd seen the last of him a year ago. "I thought you were dead," she blurts. His grin widens, and she backs the board a little farther away from the window. She's considering the possibility of bolting, PAB or no, because she's more scared of this guy than she could ever be of the police.
The man doesn't respond to her remark. "Don't worry, sweetie, I'm not after you – not at the moment, anyway." He lowers his sunglasses a bit, and his brown eyes pin her like a deer in the glare of headlights. "I'm after a certain sword-wielding bastard. Not our mutual acquaintance, though." By 'mutual acquaintance' she knows he means Hiro, and it takes her only a moment to figure out who he is after. She hopes he doesn't see the realization in her face.
He doesn't seem to, though. He just looks at her for a few moments, making her skin crawl even more than it is already. "Speaking of that sword-wielding bastard…you're a messenger, and I have a message I want you to give him."
The way he says it is so condescending that anger obscures her fear for a moment. "Fuck you," she responds. Not particularly clever, but it gets the point across.
He just laughs at her like she's said something incredibly funny. Then he stops suddenly, his face deadly serious. "Tell him," he says, "that when I'm done with my other business, I'm going to settle the score with him." The grin returns to his face. "I just want to give him a head start."
Y.T. finally decides to leave and brave the PAB rather than spend another second talking to this psycho. She breaks her gaze away from him, ascends into the air and weaves her way among the towering skyscrapers, toward the place where she will find her friends and, hopefully, safety.
~***~
By the clock, it's been three quarters of an hour since Juanita reached Ng's hideout, but she feels like she's been pacing the floor of his office for years. Y.T. should have gotten here before her, and of course she's worried about Hiro and Jack. She shouldn't have just let them stay behind.
"That won't do any good, you know," Ng tells her from behind his desk. He drums the fingers of his left hand on the polished wooden surface, creating a rhythmic series of clicks.
Ng is one of the most prominent figures in the resistance movement, and the biggest dealer in black-market technology on the continent. He's a small, calm man of fifty-four, with neatly cut gray hair. Several years ago he worked for Aku as a robot engineer, but that ended when the authorities found out that he was keeping a secret library of banned books. He barely escaped with his life, and not in once piece – his fingers make clicking noises on the table because his left arm is a metal prosthetic, as are his right leg below the knee and his right eye. The eye seems lifelike, if you don't look too closely, but his replacement limbs are obviously artificial.
Juanita stops her pacing for a moment and turns to face Ng. "Isn't there any way for us to find them?"
Ng shakes his head, leans back in his chair. "I have been thinking about that myself, but I'm afraid the answer is no. We will just have to wait."
Juanita grits her teeth, crosses her arms and starts tapping her foot. After a few moments she starts pacing again. If only she'd taken the disc – at least then she and Ng would be able to start working on it by now, so she'd have something to take her mind off her anxiety.
She is startled by the opening of the door; she turns to see Hiro walking in, followed by Jack. She breathes a sigh of relief, runs up to Hiro and hugs him – he's a mess, covered with dirt and soot, but she doesn't care. After a few seconds she pulls back (a little regretfully) and turns to address Jack. "I'm glad to see that you two are all right," she tells them. Jack responds with a little bow, and Hiro with a smile.
"As am I," Ng says, getting up from behind his desk. Juanita moves aside as he approaches Jack. She's a little worried about how the samurai will deal with Ng, but he handles it gracefully, and the two men bow to each other. "It is an honor to meet you at last," Ng says. He introduces himself, then asks, "So, you have chosen to join us in our current venture?"
Jack nods. "I feel that I can do no less." Then he looks around. "Excuse me, but where is Y.T.?" The relief that Juanita felt on seeing Hiro and Jack melts away like a snowball in hell.
"She has not yet arrived," Ng informs him. "But while she is quite adept at getting into trouble, she is even better at getting out of it. I'm sure that she is fine."
The door swings open again, and the object of their discussion walks in. "Well," Hiro says happily, "Speak of the devil, and…" Then he stops, probably because he has just noticed the expression on the girl's face.
Y.T. makes a living out of pulling dangerous stunts, so there's not much in the world that can scare her. But she's obviously scared now – her face is drained of color, and her eyes are very wide.
"What is it? What happened?" Juanita asks her in a calm voice. She can't even imagine what it might be.
Y.T. closes her eyes and bites her lower lip before replying. "Raven is after Jack," she tells them. Although Juanita is standing three feet away from Hiro she can feel him tense up. She goes to Y.T. and guides her gently to sit down in a nearby chair. Juanita herself has never met Raven, but what she has heard about him has made her glad to miss the experience. They all listen as Y.T. relates the circumstances and the dialogue of her meeting with him.
"Who is this person?" Jack asks her when she's concluded. "A bounty hunter?"
Y.T. answers "A psychopath" as Hiro says "Sort of." The two of them look at each other. Y.T. waves dismissively, indicating that Hiro should answer this one.
"We've had…dealings with him before," Hiro tells Jack. "He's a mercenary, more or less, but he doesn't just fight for money. I don't think he's after you for the googleplex on your head, either."
Jack lowers his eyes thoughtfully. "Then why does he seek me?"
"For your reputation, I think," Hiro answers. "He wants to try and kill you, just to see if he can do it. That's the kind of person he is."
"As I said, a total psychopath," Y.T. adds vehemently.
"I suppose we will have to add him to our list of things to worry about," Ng says. "But at the moment, we must deal with the central problem. Do you have the disc?" Y.T. nods, unbuttons the little pocket on her belt and hands the disc to Juanita. She goes to join Hiro and Jack.
"So much trouble, over so small an object," Jack says wonderingly.
"It's not about the disc, though," Hiro reminds him. "What's on it – well, that's worth the trouble. We just have to make good use of it. Let's get to work."