"I have footage you should both see." Aria stated shortly after.

Taylor was still heading towards the Docks and moving very quickly. She was pushing the power assists I had installed in the legs of her armor to their limit. The sun was only just setting, and she wasn't making any effort to remain invisible as she alternated between roof hopping and sprinting along roads, thankfully she had used a lot more caution leaving my area.

I keep watching Taylor's progress as Aria opened up a second window showing two very weirdly dressed figures standing on a shed roof with the sun just starting to set behind them, it looked almost professional. Across the top of the screen was written 'Uber and Leet.'

"They are doing Teletubbies?" I asked just prior more text appearing almost in answer, 'presents Bomberman!'

"This is time delayed footage from about fifteen minutes ago. I have tracked it's origin to the general area to where you are heading Lycaeni."

As Taylor kept running towards the storage yard, we both watched what had happened previously.

The scrawny one, Leet, started his intro, "Welcome fans. Today we bring you the classic game Bomberman! Bomberman's enemies tonight are the Undersides. Watch as we blow right through them! Then stay tuned for a visit by a special guest."

As some cheesy arcade music played, presumably the theme from the game, the view zoomed out to show the concealing themselves behind the peak of the roof.

The view then zoomed in as Tattletale, Grue and Regent came into view and approached the building that Uber and Leet were on top of. Leet was peering at a small display, presumably the live feed from the camera. There was no sign of Bitch or her dogs. The music changed pace in a way I think was meant to increase the drama.

The camera followed the Undersiders as they passed rows of storage lockers, each big enough to fit a small car in. Grue purposefully approached and opened the one opposite Uber and Leet. The camera shot was lined up just right to show that it contained nothing but dust and a single lightbulb hanging from the top.

The camera zoomed in on Tattletale and it was like the volume had been turned up on her microphone. I wondered how that was done. If Uber and Leet's floating camera had the ability to zoom in audio I really wanted to get my hands on that. How useful would that be for concerts.

They were discussing who was responsible. The camera zoomed out to show Uber and Leet cresting the edge of the roof as Tattletale was still speaking, "Yep, villains. And they're still here."

Uber started clapping, "Brilliantly deduced."

I had to split my attention then as the feed from Taylor's camera showed her now entering the storage park.

She paused as she looked towards an ABB gang member standing guard at a crossroads and staring down one of corridors between lockers, "That's not a real person. Bugs fly straight through him. I can feel a tripod with something on top, it's a weird shape."

A small radar like indicator appeared, it showed the area around Taylor and included a red dot blinking some distance away from her. I presumed Taylor would be seeing it on her HUD whilst Aria was just adding it to my sight. Strangely enough it made me think of the similarities between that and how I was presented my power visions which was something I really didn't need to be thinking about right then.

Aria's voice was a welcome distraction, "I have pinpointed the feed from Uber and Leet's Snitch. I can't view the feed in real time, but I can track its location."

Taylor took off in that direction passing around one area of destroyed lockers. The damage was severe and recent. Lockers, walls, roof and even the ground was chewed up and littered with broken and burnt pieces of lockers and their contents. Paper, clothing, and old boxes were smoldering but not on flame.

"What's taking you so god damned long?" came a loud shout. It sounded like it had been processed by a cheap vocoder overlayed with a hiss and only somewhat female.

As Taylor crested another roof the low light enhancement on Taylor and my view adjusted to account for the well-lit spectacle ahead of her.

To the right a figure posed atop a Jeep against what looked like a hastily or just badly engineered mounted mortar launcher. The figure was in similar Bomberman costume to what Uber and Leet had been wearing but looked even more ridiculous due to an oversized gas mask and large red glowing googles that stuck out from a bright blue hoodie.

Leet was just stepping away from a tripod with what looking a sculpture made of a dozen microphones sitting on top, "It's done okay. Best audio recording gear ever, you can't just rush this shit." That caught my attention though I already knew better than to believe half of the rubbish he said. The research Aria had done on him and his partner had taught me that.

He threw his arms up and half stalked, half limped across to Uber. Both looked rather roughed up. Their costumes were torn and Uber had one wrist bandaged up whilst Leet had bandages wrapped around his torso.

To the left I spotted Tattletale, she also looked worse for wear with obvious bruises and burns, next to her was Grue favoring one leg and being supported by Regent who was wincing. Bitch looked the worse of all with her hands, head and leg badly wrapped in makeshift and bloodied bandages.

There was no sign of her dogs and they were surrounded by a guard of half a dozen pistol wielding gang members with ABB colors.

There were forty to fifty other people around. Though only a quarter of the rest were wearing the colors. Those were the better armed with most carrying pistols, though I noted two with shotguns. The rest were carrying an assortment of makeshift weapons, axes, baseball bats, wrenches, and the like.

My focus returned to gas mask girl as she straightened up atop the jeep. I now noticed that the back of the jeep was covered in metal boxes and several crates loaded up with what looked like rockets. The rockets were likely for the mounted mortal or the grenade launcher that she had hanging from a shoulder strap. The complicated wiring and blinking lights on many of the boxes and some of the rockets made it obvious that this was a very dangerous situation.

The woman turned to face the floating camera and by happenstance looking roughly in the direction of Taylor, "I am Bakuda! Before I inherited the ABB Lung taught me a very important lesson. To be an effective leader you need to be feared. Only when some is truly terrified will they be truly loyal. Scared enough not to worry about their own self. Scared enough to dedicate themselves to you and your wants. Today the ABB is not feared enough and we get vermin that think they can take from us." She indicated the Undersiders with a wave of her hand."

Taylor spoke quietly into the helmet, "I've got insects on most everyone, but I don't have the numbers to disarm more than a couple of the guns. If I bring more too quickly, they'll be seen."

Bakuda climbed down from the keep and grabbed a young man out of the crowd, he was in Immaculata High uniform and holding a wrench, he looked maybe a year or two older than me. Bakuda shoved a pistol into his hand and shoved him towards the undersiders. It was clear that he was uncomfortable just holding it and just looked with wide eyes between Bakuda, the Undersiders and the pistol in his hand.

It was very obvious now to me that most of the people were not there by choice.

I noted Taylor getting ready to move, "Taylor, your suit can't take a blast from whatever destroyed those lockers, and neither can any of those other civilians. You need to disarm Bakuda's grenades first."

At this time my powers choose to be distracting and present me with a new vision. This vision was of a large round workshop with various tools and machines around the walls. However, the large complex multi-use workbench in the room took centre stage. It was pretty clear that this was something I was going to be using going forward for all my construction. It had everything and all within convenient reach. I really tried to ignore it and focus on Bakuda and Taylor but I was already seeing how much use this was going to be.

"We need to stop this." Taylor's voice was a bit frantic and I reluctantly returned to watching the unfolding scene.

"Aria, how fast can we get some drones there?" I now was regretting focusing on stealth over speed when I designed them.

"Fifteen minutes if we fly over the city, we could cut that down by a few minutes if we flew directly across the bay though that will take them close to PHQ."

"Take the safer way and send one of the highflyers and three of the others."

"Drones retasked."

Screaming came from the crowd and my attention flicked away from the HUD map with the proposed Drone route on it back to Taylor camera feed. The view seemed to be focused in on a large puddle of some glutinous substance.

"What happened?" I asked and unfortunately Aria run a video playback of the student being turned into a puddle. Until that moment I hadn't really believed that anyone was in danger. It had felt like a show she was putting on to scare people I wasn't really expecting anything bad to happen. Turns our she wasn't just posturing.

I could hear Taylor taking deep unsteady breaths. A gun shot had rung out and Aria quickly showed that it had been fired into the air. The yelling quietened down till only Bakuda's crazed laughter could be head. She was literally bent over with her hands on her knees as she cackled with abandon.

I decided I hated her right then and that she needed to be put down. I considered what mods I could add to my pistol to make it lethal as Bakuda explained, with prompting from Regent, that she had put bombs in her gang and all the civilians.

I didn't really care about the gang members but the civilians were an issue. "Aria, did you pick up the signal that she used to trigger the bomb?"

"No. my sensors are not capable of broad frequency scanning. There is no regular signal being sent that I can detect with sweeps. There was a sound preceding the effect that was a seventy percent match to a mobile phone vibration motor which could indicate she is using mobile phone technology for the triggers. I have no capability to remotely detect or control such technology."

"Damn. I wish we could just blow her up with her own bombs."

I asked Aria if she had any information on the likely response time if we called the Protectorate. There didn't seem too much we could do here apart from throwing a few drones into the mix to act as a distraction.

Taylor spoke quietly and clearly, "Okay."

It took me a moment to understand what Taylor was talking about.

"What? How?" I asked.

"Give me a second."

Taylor backed down the roof and I lost sight of Bakuda and the crowd. Bakuda had been talking to a young girl and I was worried that there soon might be another repeat of the Immaculata student.

It a very long minute till Taylor spoke up. "Okay, I've got this."

She poked her head up giving us both a view just as there was an explosion from the middle of the crowd sending people falling and tumbling away. Bakuda was laughing again.

I heard another thunderous sound and then another, I first thought it was some sort of echo from the explosion. But they keep going on and I had a very bad feeling. Some of those explosions didn't seem to come through Aria's connection. They sounded a whole lot closer.

Aria presented me a map showing rough direction and approximate distances to the explosions.

"She's blowing things up all over the city. If you can do something, do it now!"

"Done." Taylor ducked down and I lost sight of the crowd of people running in every direction. The Undersiders had been enveloped in darkness and I could see a couple of the gun men firing into the darkness as they pushed through the fleeing people.

Bakuda had sat down on her jeep and was watching the chaos but didn't seem to be doing much else apart from finding it all very funny. Then she suddenly stopped laughing and started climbing towards the boxes bolted to the jeep.

Then the connection dropped .

"Taylor? Taylor! Aria, what happened?" I yelled.

"I have lost connection to Lycaeni's suit. Changing orientation on twelve." Aria calmly replied.

A window showing city blocks from above opened. The view was sweeping up and across to focus on an area of the docks where I could see sparks, fire, and movement. The zoom adjusted and I could amongst the shattered sheds and buildings a globe of literal chaos. Flames in fast forward next to frozen flames. Spears of darkness and ice cut the area. Melted concrete, steel and other substances seemed to run and then freeze and then flow upwards. Distortions seemed to travel around it causing the view to warp in and out like someone was moving huge crazy house lenses around and through the place. After a second of looking at that I had to close my eyes as I started to get dizzy and nauseous. When I reopened my eyes, Aria had thankfully shut down the window.

A knock came at the door, "Sparky? Are you okay?"

Damn. I must have yelled aloud.

"Yeah. Sorry. I must have fallen asleep, woke from a dream and fell. Didn't hurt myself so all good."

"You sure?"

Aria faded the rest of the HUD out of sight as I got up. I opened the door and smiled at mum, "Yeah. Thanks mum. All good, I'm going to go to bed now. Feeling tired."

She smiled and nodded "Okay. You look a little pale. Sleep well. Love you."

"Love you. Night mum."

I closed the door and Aria brought back up the HUD.

Highlighted in the HUD was a small figure dragging itself away from the chaos. It would have been impossible to see if Aria wasn't adding the outline for me. Aria conveniently put a little 'Lycaeni' name tag over it ensuring I knew that it was Taylor.

I was relieved to see her moving but worried how badly she was injured. Taylor reached one of the lockers, pulled herself into it and the door closed behind her.

"Aria, any connection with Taylor?"

I almost swore when another vision intruded upon me right then. I directed my will against it and though I didn't push it back I did feel some movement in some non-Euclidean dimension. I felt if I pushed further, it would slow down the onrush of powers. It wouldn't limit them, just slow down the rate. As I considered that the new room appeared anyway. Another tool room, these I instantly recognized as precision alchemical tools. Once again tools that were more curios than anything else. Maybe slowing the power creep would be a good idea but I had more important things to worry about right then.

Aria took my eyes refocusing as a cue to answer my previous question, "No, Lycaeni's suit is still not responding. From the video I believe it is also offline."

I frowned, it could have been some sort of exotic EMP. The suit I had cribbed it from had EMP safeguards that would block most EMP style weapons and allow the suit to recover quickly from the rest. It was possible that I had recreated that incorrectly, but I had a feeling it was something different.

I checked the time. It wasn't even eight. Taking a few deep breathes I used my key to open the closet and a few minutes later I opened my window and crept out of my room.