Part 45
I looked over at Taylor, for a moment. How much should I tell them?
I could ignore the teleporting demon masked elephant in the room for now, but I didn't know how much other stuff I could mention. Did I mention how we had linked up? What we were doing down here?
No, mixing civilian life stuff didn't seem right, even if it seemed kind of involved. Likewise mentioning my training and crafting efforts could bring up the crab thing, and I didn't want to deny Taylor that kind of income...
Best to start with the basics.
"We started off down in the boat graveyard," I began. "The two of us had arrived earlier jointly, but then separated to different areas. At this time I heard gunshots, fished out my emergency mask," I tapped said article, "and started towards the sound as quick as I could run."
Taylor nodded. "The same happened for me. Only this is my normal mask," she informed. "I didn't have time to put my whole costume on."
She looked back at me.
Well, it looked like I wasn't dodging the elephant any longer...
"Before we met up, I encountered a man in a red mask stylized like a Japanese Oni," I stated. "We fought. I managed to injure him, and destroy a couple of clones, but he retreated to quickly for me to be able to track."
"You drove off Oni Lee?" Assault asked sounding surprised, impressed, and a little bit doubtful.
I shrugged, "He was already exhausted, obviously so, and I think I saw him before he saw me. If he'd been even a tenth of a second faster teleporting, I'd only have hit his clone," and if he'd been a tenth slower and I'd have skewered him like an entomology display.
"Nice," the man in red grinned.
"You were lucky to get out of there intact," Battery frowned.
"Yeah," I agreed. "Trust me, I get that. If I hadn't downed him with that first lucky hit, he probably have blown my brains out." I remembered the way his gun smacked into me. It wasn't hard to guess what the villain had been planning.
The general mood slipped down a pace.
"Anyway," Assault interrupted, face a tough more serious, "What happened after that?"
"Well after that... my... compatriot?" I looked over at Taylor, taking a moment to look for the right word to use. "Caught up to me. Then we continued here, far too late to actually help at all," I lamented with a shrug.
At the same time a thought hit me, "We did tell someone to call things in as we ran here," I added in.
Technically true... from a certain point of view anyway.
"That's... basically it." Taylor agreed, not entirely comfortable with my deception.
"I see," Battery added. "Well, at least you didn't get hurt. You two should stop by the Protectorate office. Even if you don't sign up, there are things we can do to help new rogues and independents," she advised. "At the very least, you can get a PRT phone to help call in crimes like this, without it getting tied to your civilian identity," she added in pointedly.
I managed to restrain my wince, if barely.
"You should seriously consider joining though," she added in again. "If you really did drive Oni-Lee off. He's not going to forget that," she cautioned.
This time I didn't bother to hide my flinch.
"I'll take it under advisement," I stated neutrally, glancing over at Taylor to see what she thought.
I couldn't really read her through the mask, but her posture seemed a little less confident.
I needed to fix this. Our morale was going to hell...
"So... is that all for now?" I asked the dynamic duo.
"That sounds about it," Assault asked looking over at his counterpart inquiringly.
"Give it some thought," Battery stressed again, but then offered a slight smile. "It'd be nice to work with some new heroes."
Well one way or another, I hope we would.
"Right," I looked at Taylor. "I don't know about you, but after this mess, I feel like ice cream. On me?" I offered.
She seemed to consider it for a moment, "Sure, why not?"
