Step 5.3

What?!

Lafter knocked again and started tapping her foot on the ground.

This is not the plan!

I spun on my heel and snapped. "Veda!"

The van opened behind me. I climbed into O Gundam and closed the chest plate.

The Haros hovered overhead. No sign of anyone patrolling the streets. No bystanders. Minimal traffic. Why did Laughter just cross the street like that? Who knocks on the bad guy's door and asks for permission to enter?

Lafter knocked a third time, harder this time. Her head perked up, and she stepped aside.

The slot on the door rattled open. Green zoomed in. His camera caught a pair of brown eyes looking out and seeing no one. The slot closed, and Lafter raised her hand to knock again.

"What is she doing?!" I exclaimed.

"Knocking," Veda noted.

"Purple!" I called.

My Haro descended from the sky, but not fast enough.

The guy opened the slot and peered out again, and Lafter kept tapping her foot and humming to herself.

O Gundam's feet touched the ground, and I started the GN drive.

"Forget the bazooka," I decided. "Can't use it with Lafter with me."

The mechanical arm holding the tube stopped.

Lafter knocked again, and this time the door swung open.

The man stepped out with an angry glare, looking to his left and then right.

My jaw slackened.

Lafter smiled, hidden behind the door. The guy stepped out a little further. His face came around the corner, and she clocked him right in the nose. He gasped and stumbled back. Lafter followed, swinging her leg right between his legs. His eyes popped as he went toward the ground. Lafter's elbow met his chin on the way down.

"Hello!" She sang as she walked through the open doorway.

Purple touched down and rolled from her cradle to follow.

Green light surrounded me, and I shot forward and slid through the doorway—It's weird not smashing through the wall.

I didn't get much time to take stock. Two dozen men, half of them ABB, about two thirds armed. A few girls staring in confusion.

Bang.

Lafter turned to the side, a bullet flying right past her and into my chest plate. The men with the guns stared at me and cursed, some throwing up tables filled with money and jewelry for cover. The cards fluttered into the air, and Lafter flipped the switch on her saber.

Another man came through a doorway on the left, a gun pointed right at me.

Lafter spun on her heel. He pulled the trigger.

The gun didn't fire.

He turned the weapon. "What?"

Lafter took three quick steps. She ducked under his arm and punched him in the kidney, with a smile on her face.

Bullets dinged against my armor. I raised my shield and slid forward, knocking an armed man aside and drawing my carbine. I stepped over him and fired a medium strength shot into his chest to keep him down.

Gunfire continued sounding from the left.

I didn't see her on my cameras. A flash of black, a little purple speck. She pushed the one guy through the door he'd come in from, and apparently found more ABB on the other side.

I kept thinking the moment the shooting stopped would be the moment Lafter died. I rushed things. This is my fault.

After the first few thugs hit the ground, people started running.

If they looked unarmed, I let them go.

The first three escapees only made it a few steps. The Haros swarmed the doors, diving from the sky and knocking the patrons to the ground. Their ears popped, metal hands drawing out E-Carbon cords. The runners found their limbs tied. Each added to the obstacles the others needed to get past to avoid capture.

Pink and Navy remained above, watching the surrounding blocks. Movement on one of their cameras caught my eye, but the hail of bullets cutting through the air kept my attention on the thugs in front of me.

Which is when I saw no less than four men stumble and fall.

One stepped on his shoelaces and fell face first. He hit the doorframe with a clunk and wailed. Another tripped over him and hit the wall with his nose, followed by a third who got kicked in the groin by the first guy twisting around on the ground. The fourth tried to grab something off the floor, only for the third guy to fall back and knock him over.

The walls shook. Did Lafter's power include bringing the roof down on top of everyone?

A scream drew my attention. One of the patrons rolled on the ground, one foot raised in the air. Glass shards stuck out of the soles of his fancy shoes, the shattered remains of a shot glass on the floor before him.

How?

One of the girls took a swing at me with a table leg while I tried figuring it out. I intended to ignore her. What can table leg do to hurt my armor?

The answer is that it can snap in half on my armor.

The broken end spun back, smacking the girl in her face with an audible crack.

I paused again, turning my head to get a better look at her. She rolled on the ground clutching her nose as blood poured between her fingers.

What…

At least she wore ABB colors.

Three of the gangsters built a literal table fort in one corner of the room. They hid behind it and shot at me while I slid left, right, and center around the room disabling everyone else with a gun.

When I turned on the guys with the fort, I fired four shots with my carbine. Two of the men hit the ground and the third ducked. Black and pink flashed on my rear cameras, and I breathed in momentarily relief before charging the fort.

The third guy shot back to his feet, arm wrapped around a girl and a gun pointed at her head.

Fuck.

I slid to a stop. "Let her go."

"Fuck you! Get your white ass o—"

Lafter swung herself around my shield, saber cutting upwards as she did. The blade went right through the guy's gun, the finger in the trigger, and left a gash on his cheek. The man screamed, and the girl bit his hand. He screamed louder. She pulled free of his grasp and I jabbed him in the chest with the barrel of my carbine.

Lafter tackled him as he stepped back, slamming his back into the wall and throwing her knee between his legs. The last stand of the ABB in the parlor ended with a wheeze and a groan.

"This thing"–Lafter held up the beam saber–"is awesome!"

"Yes," I mumbled. "Awesome."

I checked the timer. Thirty seconds to subdue the entire parlor. Not bad, with – I glanced to Mr. Glass Foot and Ms. Table Leg – minimal injuries.

I throttled back the drive to preserve the GN Field.

Purple rolled forward, not even a dent in her ball, and started tying the guys up.

I turned my head, scanning the whole room to be sure no one still held a gun in their hand. The girl scrambled away from Lafter and me, running to huddle with two others by the wall. A few of the patrons kept their heads down or stood off to the side with their hands up. Most of the ABB looked bloodied or bruised. One of them managed to shoot himself somehow.

Lafter spun the saber in her hands, saying, "So maybe we should call an ambulance? A few of the dirt bags are bleeding."

"StarGazer," I said.

"Calling," she answered.

I glanced to the girls huddled by the wall. Before I said anything, Lafter strode forward and started greeting them in more than one language until one responded.

Guess when your home is destroyed, and you wind up wandering, you pick up a few things.

My other Haros entered in a swarm from the front and back doors of the building. They tied up everyone else. Green collected the guns and stacked them in a corner. I swung a saber through the lot and left the remains.

The entire building divided into only three rooms. The parlor itself, and a kitchen and loading dock. I checked them all, just to be sure. The loading dock came up empty, but the kitchen…

"What did you do?" I asked.

Lafter crouched over Purple, writing something on the back of a card atop the robot's round body.

"Do what?" she asked.

My head stayed forward, but my eyes were on the kitchen door behind me.

"To the kitchen…"

Lafter stood up and handed the card to the girl. She nodded and stepped over the four guys by the door.

"Oh, that? It's pretty funny actually. They must have had a screw loose or something, 'cause when I tackled that guy with the jammed gun and pushed him into the wall, all the cabinets just fell off! Plates and stuff smashing everywhere! It was great!"

I noticed that part, and the three gunmen she'd somehow managed to take down without getting hit even once. Least, it didn't seem like she got hit. Her costume looked pristine aside from some dust and a blood stain or two.

The guys tripping at the door, the glass, and the girl with the table leg. The kitchen too. Lafter's power did act up when she acted. A lot. More than I expected, unless I believed in a hell of a lot of coincidence.

My suit didn't seem affected at all though.

Unlike the lab, nothing ended up out of alignment. The drive behaved normally. No glitches in the compressors. No flaws in the software. Weird, I expected a little something here or there. It seemed normal, and if it stuck to just the tiny errors that cropped up in the workshop then it would be manageable. But this? Lafter's power went further than I expected and yet it seemed to have no effect on my suit.

Did it recognize me as an ally and leave me alone, or maybe the GN particles? Lafter's power didn't affect Veda's quantum processors at all from what I saw, and the drive operated on similar mechanics.

I'll file that away for later.

I rolled my camera feeds back to when I first entered the room.

"Veda," I whispered. "Slow that down ten times. Start from one second before the gun fired."

"Starting."

I watched everything in painfully slow motion, my eyes struggling to keep an eye on both the trigger finger, and Lafter's body. One fraction of a second passed. Another. Another. Another. There.

"Lafter started moving right before the gun fired," I mumbled.

"Is that significant?" Veda asked.

"It's not luck if it's some kind of precognition."

Dragon did say many parahumans needed years to fully grasp their powers. Lafter got her power years ago when Behemoth attacked Frankfurt. If she kept a low profile, and never worked with anyone, then maybe she didn't notice the way she started moving before things actually happened.

Not by much of course, but fractions of a second can be a big advantage in a fight.

When that guy came through the door, Lafter began turning on her heel moments before his gun failed to fire.

But all the rest…That couldn't be coincidence. The guys stumbling over one another at the door. The kitchen cabinets crashing and shaking the building. The gla—Wait. The guys crashed into the door. Then the cabinets crashed. Then the glass rolled over the floor. Did each of those tiny events feed into another? Is it a luck power, or weaponized karma?

"So, any fuck ups?" Lafter asked.

"No," I replied. I'd need to see more of her power to really understand it. "No, everything is working fine, and your power definitely worked," – I glanced around the room again – "around me."

The Haros finished tying up the last of the ABB, and I set Veda to watching the gang's chatter. The fight happened on the edge of their territory. A convenient place to know if Lung intended to come after me or not.

The three girls left after Lafter handed them the card.

"Where are they going?" I asked.

"Home I think. They're not unwilling, if you get what I mean."

"They didn't seem very worried about their customers getting beat up."

"Willing and happy are two different words. Everyone needs food on the table." Lafter glanced to the kitchen. "I let the cooks go too."

"Cooks?"

"They went out the back door."

I forgot about the back door.

"That okay?" she asked.

"Probably. I want criminals, not people unfortunately associated with them."

The Haros kept an eye on things inside the parlor, while Purple joined us outside. I checked Pink and Navy's cameras. I didn't want to be suddenly ambushed by Oni Lee with no warning. I swore I saw movement on a rooftop to the north, but scanning now I didn't see anything.

"Did you spot anything StarGazer?" I asked.

One of the little screens on my HUD rewound, showing someone in dark clothing coming out of a rooftop access and then climbing down a fire escape. They disappeared somehow, or went into another building. No one ever emerged on the surrounding streets.

Weird, but could be anything. If they never showed up, not my problem.

"What's up?" Lafter asked.

"Some guy on a roof two blocks over. Might be unrelated."

"I'm bleeding," the one guy who stepped on the glass shouted. "A little help you bitch?"

Lafter spun. "Hey! Language!"

He was white, with blond hair and blue ey—Hold up a minute.

"Green. Pull that guy's sleeve up."

My Haro rolled forward and did just that. Gave me a great view of the guy's iron eagle tattoo.

Empire? Here?

"So, is this how it usually is?" Lafter asked. "You smash, StarGazer watches from somewhere?"

"She's managing the Haros for me," I answered. "Among other things."

I didn't want to talk about information dominance within earshot of anyone. I could mute the speakers on my suit, but anyone could hear Lafter's words.

"Well. Is this a success then?" she asked.

"So far? Yes…though in the future, maybe wait for us both to be ready before charging in?"

Lafter hummed. "What, like a plan and stuff?"

"Yes."

"Huh. Didn't think of that."

"You just walked up to the door?"

She shrugged. "I had to get in somehow."

That—Okay wow. Lafter is impulsive.

File that away and keep it in mind.

"You stopped that guy from hurting that girl, but next time, it might not be that easy." I really hoped that sank in. Hostage situations sucked. I didn't want to be in them. "And not that I'm complaining, but the PRT doesn't like people being dismembered."

"I thought I only needed to keep myself from getting dismembered?" Lafter asked.

"That too."

"Huh. This is going to be harder than I thought."

"The PRT is on the way," Veda announced.

"Is this the part where we high tail it out of here?" Lafter asked.

"Not this time," I said. "I want it to get out that I'm recruiting. Best way is to still be around when the cops and the PRT show up. The lights will draw people. People have cell phones."

I helped clear the four stooges out of the doorway and then slid my suit out onto the street. A few people already stood at the corners watching and talking on their phones. Lafter stepped out behind me, one leg crossing over the other as she leaned on my right arm.

"That was fun," she said. "We should do it more."

"We will. You do know that we might die, right?"

"Eh. Carp and denim."

"What?"

"Did I say it wrong?"

"Did you mean carpe diem?"

Lafter pointed at me. "Yeah that."

That's one way of looking at it.

"Incoming, incoming!" Navy sounded the alarm, drawing my attention to his cameras.

"What is it?" Lafter asked.

"A car." No. "Two cars." One followed the other by about twenty feet, but, "One is a limo."

"A limo?"

"Yeah."

As they drew closer, I got a better look, and yeah. Definitely a limo. Out here in the Docks?

I directed Navy to fly closer and get me images of their license plates.

The Limo belonged to a company in Boston that provided limousine service. The truck following it on the other hand, belonged to someone named Cracker Jack. No, really. That's his "street" name. Minor drug dealer associated with the Merchants. Criminal record taller than my suit.

In the Docks though? "Something's wrong."

They were driving along the road to our right. They'd pass in a few—

"Pink. Zoom in on that truck. Right there."

Another vehicle on the street to our left. Ahead of the limo and speeding.

"What the hell is this?" I mumbled.

A coincidence? An attack? From the Merchants? That didn't make any sense. Not this far into the Docks. They couldn't know I was here and have this prepared, so what—

"Lafter. Get those two guys off the road!"

I pointed at two of the patrons tied up on the street. She moved and I slid forward and turned left.

"Purple. Green. Back in the air."

My Haros returned to their cradles and took off and I raised my shield and carbine.

The truck barreled around the corner, a few of the bystanders jumping back and running. The brakes squealed, and the guys inside started shouting. The vehicle reversed, the front end whipping around before the engine roared and the truck went back the way it came.

What?

Lafter peaked around the side of my suit. "Think you scared them off."

"No…They weren't here for us."

I turned around, and Lafter's feet moved to keep her body behind me. Not a bad tactic actually. My suit made it easy to obscure her. She could move left or right, even over or under me. Anyone I got locked in a fight with wouldn't see it coming easily.

The limo moved around the corner at a slower pace. I kept my carbine raised as it came to a stop, and adjusted my aim when the door opened. The headlights made it hard to make out the figure at first, but as she stepped forward her mask reflected the light.

Cape.

I didn't recognize her.

A woman. Tall, long dark hair. She wore something like an eighteenth-century military uniform, tall black boots, white pants, and a red jacket with gold embroidery. A silver mask covered her face, more like a helmet. No cape in Brockton matched that description.

"Veda?" I asked.

"Searching."

She smiled and held both hands up. "Apologies, but would you mind being of help? We seem to have some unsavory individuals chasing us."

Lafter leaned around the other side of my suit. "What?"

The woman turned her head. "Stay inside," she said. The door closed as she stepped forward and stood in front of the vehicle.

"Identity unknown," Veda said. "I find no record of a cape matching this profile."

"Someone new?"

"Unknown."

Fuck. I figured new players might try to get into Brockton as I weakened the gangs, but this early? I hadn't done that much damage yet.

"It is nice to run into a pair of heroes," the woman said. "We've been trying to lose our tail for the past hour."

Hour?

The truck rolled up to the street corner and stopped. Someone leaned out of the window, saw me, and then ducked back inside. And then they sped right through the intersection and kept going.

The woman smiled. "Well. That dea—"

A trap.

One truck gets ahead of the other, they pin the limousine on both ends and attack? Both saw me and ran off, so Lafter wasn't the only one with luck on her side. Or maybe the mystery cape wanted to trick me. Or maybe not. If she didn't then the Merchants wanted someone dead. I didn't imagine them giving up.

Split second decisions suck.

"Lafter, stay here. StarGazer watch her." I looked at the unknown cape.

"What?" Lafter asked.

I drove the GN drive to full, and pushed forward. I flew over the limo and turned at the corner, chasing after the second truck. They sped up after I appeared behind them, driving through a red light and—

Lightning snapped across the road, blue bolts of energy pouring out of a building and coursing over and through the truck.

I threw my feet forward. My body slammed into the back of the chest plate, the compensators not enough to account for such a radical stop. As the GN thrusters reversed my acceleration, a trail of dust kicking up while my feet slid over the ground. The truck lurched forward, turning to the right and slamming into a building. The bolts of energy kept streaming through the dark street.

WHAT?!

Then, the lightning cut out as abruptly as it started.

I stared, seeing no one in the truck through the open windows. I turned to the building, Carbine raised and scanned the…windows…

This is the same building as before, with that guy.

What the fuck is this?

I checked the Haros' cameras. Lafter looked fine. The unknown cape simply stood where I left her, tapping away at a phone. A trap? Obviously, a trap, But for who?

Phones.

"Veda." I stepped back, carbine still pointed at the building and eyes scanning the windows. "Is there anything about this on Merchant phones?"

"Negative," Veda answered.

A cape in the building? No, I saw someone leave. Tinker tech? A shaker power? I glanced back, realizing I'd misjudged the plan. The trucks didn't want to pin the limo, they wanted to scare the driver. Make them speed up and drive right into whatever the hell that lightning was.

Sonic cameras.

I flipped the camera mode over and started sweeping the building. A few objects lying about inside. Boxes. Maybe some old lamps. No people. Not a cape then, or a cape who got away very quickly.

"Green. Orange. Come to me. Purple, fly over to the mystery cape."

I checked the surrounding streets with Pink and Navy's cameras. Nothing else going on. No sign of ABB reprisal, and the police and PRT were only a few minutes away. I didn't see any more people on the street than before. They walked towards the parlor. Anyone might slip into the crowd, even if it only amounted to a dozen or so people.

I throttled down the GN drive, but stayed in my suit. I knelt down, waiting for Orange and Green to arrive.

"Lafter, are you okay?"

"Depends on your definition of okay," she whispered.

I let Pink turn slightly, giving me a better view. Lafter held her saber in one hand.

"What's wrong?"

"This lady," she whispered, "makes my hair stand on end."

Worried about the unknown cape, then. Or maybe her power told her something? She didn't say she saw the future, so maybe it didn't quite work like that. Some kind of super instinct, or enhanced intuition. Something that made her nervous about the person in front of her.

Well…

Purple got close enough, and I routed my voice through the robot.

"Why are Merchants chasing you?"

"Merchants?" The woman asked. "Ah. One of the local gangs, yes? That is who would be hired as bait I suppose."

"Bait for what?"

"I'm afraid I can't answer."

"Why?"

"National security."

National security? "Seriously?"

"Seriously." She tilted her head back. "I presume the men in the truck you followed are dead?"

I glanced to the truck. It looked empty, but they might only be huddled inside. I cut off the line when Orange and Green landed beside me. I'd figure out the limo in a moment.

I needed to know if anyone crossing the street would get killed.

"Green. Roll out of your cradle. Approach the truck slowly."

"Okay, okay."

Green landed and left his cradle. Orange hovered close to me. Green popped his feet out and started walking slowly. A few watchers from before crept closer to me.

"Stay back," I said over the speakers. "It isn't safe." I turned my head to Orange. "Bring Red over here. I want the two of you keep people back, at least until the cops and PRT show up."

"Roger, roger."

I turned my attention back to Green.

The lightning covered a twenty, maybe twenty-five, foot stretch of the street. Went from one end to the other. Did it penetrate the buildings?

"Veda, does anyone live here?"

"The building on the right is abandoned," she revealed. "The building on the left is the address of three families."

Did they get hurt?

I turned my attention that way. People inside. Some moved. Others huddled. Alive then, maybe? Might be hurt.

"Can you start enhancing the video of the guy from before?"

"I will start."

I needed to be sure I wouldn't get killed trying to pass through the area. Then I could check on anyone inside the building.

The police arrived first.

They didn't say or do anything really. Standard procedure said emergency response should focus on clearing an area and waiting for the PRT, so the first cops to arrive formed a perimeter with their cars. They set up some crime scene tape, and started directing people. The ambulance came in next, but the EMTs waited too. The PRT truck parked behind me, troopers and Stratos piling out of the back.

Armsmaster stopped at my side, his bike rumbling as he watched Green reach the truck.

"What happened?" he asked.

Hello to you too.

"I don't know," I grumbled. "They tried to flee. I chased them. Some kind of lightning coursed over the street, and then the truck crashed."

"The limousine back there?" he asked.

"Some cape I've never seen before. StarGazer can't find any cape that matches her costume." And I never asked her name. Stupid. "She said the truck was chasing her. There was another one earlier, but they peeled off after they saw me."

"And the cape in the black and pink costume?"

"Laughter," I answered. "She's with me."

Armsmaster turned his head. Yes, I'm recruiting. Want to comment on it?

"The limo is unrelated to your raid on the gambling parlor?"

Guess not.

Green reached the truck and popped one of his ears. He tapped the door with his hand. No response. No lightning.

"What was the source of the phenomena?" Armsmaster asked.

On the other hand, I appreciated just getting down to business. Not like I could ask him to leave. Besides, Armsmaster might be useful if a tinker was involved.

"Where my carbine is pointing," I answered. "StarGazer. Send him the video from our cameras."

"Sending."

"The video of our mystery rooftop adventurer too."

"Rooftop adventurer?" Armsmaster asked.

"Two of my Haros are above us, watching. One saw a guy walk out of the rooftop access earlier and down the fire escape on the side. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I think he set some kind of trap. Tinker tech, or some kind of shaker effect."

The man nodded, then turned his head. Veda confirmed she sent the data, and Armsmaster started mumbling to himself for a few seconds.

"I see," he finally said. "Console. Armsmaster. The gambling parlor is being dealt with. Police and EMTs on site. We additionally have a seemingly unrelated parahuman incident. I need crime scene teams asap. Potential DOAs."

"There're people who live in that building," I added with a nod. "I don't know if they're okay. Want to be sure whatever happened won't happen again."

"Understood. Console, additional EMT personnel may be warranted."

"Green, climb onto the hood. I want a look inside."

Green turned, rolled over, and then popped his feet out to launch himself into the air. He landed on the hood and turned towards the cracked windshield.

I gagged a little.

No one inside. I only saw piles of black dust, some burnt cloth, and a few pieces of jewelry in the piles of dust.

"What do you see?" Armsmaster asked.

"There's no one inside," I said in a low voice.

"Did they run?"

"No. And there were definitely at least two men in the truck." Judging from the piles of black stuff, I'd guess four in total.

And they're dead.

"Console, tentative confirmation on DOAs. Number undetermined."

He made it sound so neat. And clean.

Maybe four people dead, just like that. Merchants sure, but still. A trap set for the limousine, by someone who hired the Merchants to chase them and didn't tell them about it?

The other truck. I need to find them.

"Green. Leave the truck. I want you to slowly approach the apartment building and start searching."

Armsmaster didn't protest. He killed his bike's engine and stepped off. His halberd popped up, and he took it in hand and stood beside my suit. The crowd only grew with the flashing lights, but Orange and Red kept everyone back long enough for some PRT troopers and some cops to start setting up tape at either end of the block.

Green made it into the building without incident. It looked very abandoned, a thick layer of dust covering the empty rooms. At least that made things easy. Someone slid something big and heavy along the floor, leaving a trail that Green followed up the stairs and into one of the suites.

"Tinker tech," I described. "Looks like those mobile lamps you can carry and set up. There's a power source hooked up to them."

"Any identifying markings?" Armsmaster asked.

"Not that I can see. Green, circle the room."

Green walked around it all, giving me a good view of the lamps, and the cables running across the floor. Two large cases lay open on the floor, empty.

I got an idea how it worked, and I didn't like it. Whoever built it deserved to be caged. Such a device served no purpose but to kill people. The lightning penetrated solid walls, glass, maybe even the ground. It only affected anything carbon based, anything organic.

The energy fried the men in the truck to the point of vaporization.

Someone wanted someone else very dead.

"I think it's burned out."

At least, none of the lights or anything flashed, and smoke rose from what looked like the generator.

Something designed to be set off, used, and then abandoned.

"You're certain the tech is dormant?"

"Looks pretty fried. Green, pull all the cables out of the power source. One at a time. Disconnect it all."

"That is dangerous," Armsmaster said.

"I think this stuff was designed to fire off once and fry itself. Pretty sure." If not, Green might be destroyed, but I'd restore his backup and he'd be fine. "Green can make sure. Usefulness of having little robots around."

Armsmaster waited while I watched Green pull the cables free one at a time. Once all five lay on the ground, and nothing happened, I figured it was safe enough.

"I think it's safe…ish."

Armsmaster nodded. "It'll take time for a cleanup team to arrive." He glanced to the other side of the street. "Console, I need two troopers to check on residents of a building. Sending the address now... Confirmed."

He turned and started walking back down the street. I glanced to the other building. Some of the figures inside huddled by the door now. Actually, none of them currently resided in the same place I first saw them. They all moved. Probably alright, then. The lightning should have vaporized any organic matter on contact. That I saw them at all meant they probably didn't get hit, and no one moved about frantically or like someone was hurt.

"Green, keep an eye on that stuff and take lots of pictures. Look for markings."

"Snap snap."

I rose to my feet and turned around. My suit walked just fine with the drive on a low spin, but it definitely felt heavier. A little clumsy actually.

Cops and troopers piled ABB and gamblers into trucks while the EMTs tended to the seriously wounded. The mystery cape didn't seem to have moved from her position in front of the limo. Lafter and Stratos were talking, Lafter holding a phone up to Stratos while they laughed.

"What?"

Stratos lifted his head. "Your robots are funny."

Oh god what did they do now?

Lafter turned the phone my way, revealing a picture of the gambling parlor, and all the men on the ground. Except someone photo shopped cat ears on everyone. Well, everyone except O Gundam.

Lafter pointed at her head, asking, "Is it too late to have ears added to my costume?"

I really hoped she didn't honestly want cat ears. In my head it looked utterly ridiculous, and I already dreaded fielding questions about her presence.

Instead, Armsmaster sternly looked off to the side. "There's a vehicle parked in the alley right there. I'm detecting tinker tech."

Fuck.

Stratos and a few troopers turned that way.

"It's mine," I groaned.

They all stopped as I stepped forward and turned. Veda started the engine and backed the van out of the alley.

The proverbial cat drove out of the bag. Not a complication I expected.

Armsmaster has a tinker tech detector? No, no that's silly. It probably picked up unusual metals, radiation, or energy. The kind of the stuff that stood out in a city environment and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, must be tinker tech.

He didn't detect that stuff earlier though, or did he?

I shut off the GN drive. Nothing to be done about it now. My van would be discovered eventually no matter what I did.

The chest plate opened and I climbed out of my suit. The van backed up behind it, and the sides opened. The mechanical arms gripped the shoulders and legs, lifting O Gundam off the ground and pulling it inside.

"Cool," Stratos said.

"It was a secret," I growled. "I didn't expect all this commotion over a mere gambling parlor." Crap, Dad is going to say he told me so.

And I forgot to tell Veda to move the van. It all got too hectic too quickly. Stupid of me.

Armsmaster watched the van closely as the arms took the carbine and shield off my suit and stowed them.

"Who is driving?" he asked.

"StarGazer," I answered. "By remote."

"You'll need to register the vehicle and submit it to a safety inspection." He turned on that note, and faced the mystery cape. "Your name?"

"I fear I'm rather inconsequential when it's all said and done," she answered with a smile. "But of course, most of us aren't nearly as important as we'd like to think."

I think she deserved the confused stares.

She chuckled. "Sorry, I find myself becoming introspective in my old age."

She didn't look that old. Late thirties or early forties tops.

"If you refuse to answer the question you will be detained," Armsmaster said.

"No, I won't."

"Yes, You will."

"Diplomatic immunity," the woman stated.

"It doesn't work that way."

"I know."

She held one hand up, and reached into her pocket. She produced a small wallet–no it looked like a passport—and showed it to Armsmaster. His frown deepened, and the woman tucked the item away.

"The Sanc Kingdom is legally recognized by the UN, and the United States government, as a legitimate sovereign," Armsmaster said. "You may go. Will you need an escort?"

"Thank you, and no. We should be fine for the evening. Though, I doubt our assailants intend to give up. I'll be informing the State Department shortly of this incident. I suspect they'll inform you."

"Likely, given the probable involvement of an unknown tinker."

Wait what?

"I'm confused," Lafter admitted.

Stratos nodded. "You and me both."

Them and me, three.

The door to the limo opened, and a young woman maybe only a few years older than me stepped out.

The woman turned. "Miss."

"It's fine," the girl said. "You're Newtype, yes?"

"I—Yes?"

"I've been following you on the news. You make an impression."

"I guess?"

She held her hand out. "Thank you, I suspect those men were trying to kill me."

I raised my hand slowly. "They didn't get very far." Their trap backfired on them.

"All the same."

I took her hand and shook it.

I'm shaking hands with Relena Peacecraft.