Step 5.5
"It works," Dinah said. She tucked her glasses into a pocket and tilted the notepad in her hands. "It works really, really well."
I admit I didn't expect that.
"Really?" I asked.
"There are conventions," she revealed. "And children's card games." She set her pad aside and reached into her pocket. "I need five gigabytes of free space on my phone."
"Wh—" My eyes bugged out a bit. "There's a phone game?"
"Yes."
"I still say it's an action figure," Lafter mumbled as she poked at the Tieren model. "And how does making a bunch of action figures make all that other stuff?"
"There's a logo," Dinah said. "Two logos, usually. One is like this."
She picked up her pad and started drawing.
I stepped around and watched over her shoulder.
"This is the first one."
It looked like a spike, with wings on the sides and a halo on top. I didn't recognize it.
"The other is like this."
Dinah drew a big "Y" with a star behind it. That I'd seen somewhere before, in the Docks.
"StarGazer?" I picked up the pad and turned it toward Veda's camera.
"The logo on the left is unknown," Veda identified. "The logo on the right belongs to Yashima."
"Yashima?" I asked.
"Yashima Corporation, owned by the Yashima family," Veda clarified. "Founded in 1994 as an export company. It acquired Nintendo, Sony-Anaheim Electronics, and Bandai in 2002 following the bankruptcies of many Japanese companies. The firm produces several products originally from Japan in the United States and Canada. They are heavily involved in Japanese reconstruction."
And apparently they got involved in my possible modeling – if only Emma could hear that – business.
Did they buy into the idea after I made the models, or did I convince them to invest? I thought about pursuing investors for the Haro factory, but I didn't think anyone would give a masked teenager money. Not until I put out an actual product and proved I was serious, at least.
"Did your boyfriend give you this idea?" Lafter asked with a smile.
"He's not my boyfriend," I replied. "But he did give me the idea."
I glanced to Dinah and no. No the hell no no no do not think about it you do not want to know that just say no don't ask Dinah about your potential future love life.
"He's not my boyfriend," I repeated.
"If you say so," Lafter sang. "Hey, Dinah—"
"Not a word out of you," I said, pointing a finger at Dinah.
She shrugged and flipped the page on her pad.
The van closed behind us.
"Loading complete," Veda announced.
Oh good, another distraction!
"We'll figure out the models later," I said. "There's an assassin who needs to be removed from the streets before anyone else dies. But first, I make sure no one followed us, thank you Assmaster."
I walked over to my workstation. Green, Orange, and Purple circled the workshop.
Orange and Green didn't notice any vehicles following us back from the PRT building. No sign of any fliers either. Glancing to the chat and media feeds for all three gangs, I didn't see anything about my van.
Maybe luck would swing my way. The van was closed and gone before any news vans showed up. A kindly-worded message to the few people who took pictures with their phones thus far succeeded in getting a handful of images removed from social media. I didn't expect that to last.
For now, though, no one knew to be looking for my van. I'd probably be able to maintain some mystery even once the news broke by changing the paint job and keeping the vehicle out of sight.
Anyone finding my workshop now… that would be a setback.
And I hated how little I could do about the clock now that someone set it to tick.
"StarGazer," I called, "have you managed to find anyone matching our assassin?"
"No."
I frowned. I'd never dealt with the problem of a completely unknown cape before.
In a way, I suppose it really wasn't my business. In another way, it wasn't my business. Not my business in the same sense a girl getting shoved into a filth-filled locker wasn't anyone's business.
Not much choice there.
It shocked me to even think it, but whoever wanted Relena Peacecraft dead might just beat out Hookwolf and Lung for callousness. Those two might be murderers, but they didn't set a death trap in the middle of the street and stroll off without a care for who might get hurt.
The mystery killer couldn't be ignored. If they didn't care about killing Merchants hired to help, then I didn't imagine they cared much more about anyone else.
"Not a tinker," I mumbled.
I pulled up the images Green recorded. Toybox built the death machine. A tinker might need parts, but they wouldn't need the whole machine.
"They're not a tinker, but they use tinker tech. If they could fly, they'd have flown away. If they were a blaster, they would have just blasted the limo. Not a brute, they dragged the equipment up the stairs rather than lifting it. I noticed them in the first place, so not a stranger… Shaker or striker would probably have easier ways to hurt their target than buying tinker tech... Master or a thinker."
The first option might explain the Merchants and presented a few problems to go along with it.
"Unless they want to go unnoticed," Lafter pointed out.
"Maybe."
Hadn't thought of that. Every cape power was different, but some were distinctive. I certainly wouldn't want to be associated with assassinating someone, let alone someone as well known as Relena Peacecraft.
"We need information." I turned my attention to Dinah. "Ready?"
"Yes," she answered.
I turned my chair and started asking my questions.
"What happens if Laughter attacks the person trying to kill Relena Peacecraft?" I waited between questions to let Dinah write the answers. "What happens if Newtype attacks the person trying to kill Relena Peacecraft? What happens if Laughter and Newtype attack the person trying to kill Relena Peacecraft?"
I paused to glance at the camera feeds. Nothing seemed out of place. Still no chatter on the gang phones I knew about.
"What are the news headlines for the next week?"
Five questions including the one I asked about the models. That left me with two more for the day.
Dinah wrote her last answer and ripped the first page off.
I read it over and then looked at the other sheets. "He's not a master." Good news.
"Oh?" Lafter stepped around my chair and leaned over my back. "Huh. I thought she saw the future."
"More like possibilities," Dinah and I said at once.
The fights Dinah saw that involved me went basically the same. He used guns and grenades, a knife, and "tinker stuff" she clearly had a hard time describing on the page. Still, a master would simply master me. They wouldn't resort to any of that stuff.
Only three of my "possibilities" saw me getting hurt. Dinah described the device as a bomb, but I guessed it was more like a grenade. Figured. If anyone could get through GN particle infused E-Carbon plates, a tinker could. So, a thinker with tinker tech could do the same. Unfortunately for him, now that I knew about it, he couldn't surprise me.
I lifted my head. "He?"
"Definitely," she confirmed. "He's a jerk too."
I nodded. Jerk. Got it. "Probably a combat thinker. Where did we fight him?"
"A few places," Dinah explained. "The street. A big empty room, second story maybe, and a warehouse. I can't tell if any of them are related."
I nodded and looked at the sheet covering Lafter fighting him alone. Lafter did not fare as well as I did. He hurt her in almost half the possibilities Dinah saw. Killed her in three of them.
Which confirmed he didn't have any qualms about killing.
"Here." I handed Lafter the sheet. Dinah wrote the fights down in as much detail as she could. "That's what Dinah sees if you fight him alone."
Lafter took the page and nodded. She read them, frowned, and lowered the page. "Who do I call to register a complaint?"
"One eight hundred don't blame the messenger," Dinah quipped.
Lafter stared at her. "You're sassy for a twelve-year-old."
"I see people die every day," Dinah deadpaned. "I'm allowed to be sassy."
Lafter grimaced. "Okay…That's fair."
"If we both attack him," I said, "he only wins in two of eighteen possibilities." I really didn't want a reminder of my inability to help Dinah with what she saw. "We fight him together and we win."
"There were others," Dinah noted.
I paused. "Others?"
"Possibilities. But I didn't see anything. They were just black." She pointed at the page. "A lot of those start out fine and then they go black later. I can't see the endings."
Black? "Like when I asked you if anyone hurt Lafter because of Teacher?"
Dinah nodded. "I think it means the question isn't right."
"Not right?" I found Lafter hiding in the abbey. No one hurt her because no one knew she was there. "You mean invalid? The question doesn't apply?"
"I think so."
So, in two other possibilities, the question didn't apply, and in others it suddenly stopped applying?
"Does it mean we die?" Lafter asked.
"No," Dinah answered. "I can see lots of possibilities where you die. Some though, the possibility just stops."
"I asked if we fought him," I pointed out. "So, if the fight stops, the question doesn't apply anymore?"
"Maybe," Dinah replied.
"But why would we just stop fighting?"
"I don't know. I can't see. It just goes black."
That unsettled me. What could be significant enough to stop all three of us from fighting?
I set the pages aside and focused on my fourth question, news headlines.
Relena Peacecraft Narrowly Survives
Relena Peacecraft Assassinated
Relena Peacecraft Averts Disaster
Sanc Kingdom Formally Protests
Well, she survived in about half of them. I'd seen worse. Weird how no one mentioned any other names though. No headlines about the PRT or Protectorate? Me? Lafter? The name of the assassin? Hoping for too much with that one, I guess.
Tragedy at Brockton Pavilion?
I pointed at that one. "Did you see anything else?"
Dinah shook her head. "It's just a picture of the building and lots of cops. The text is too small for me to read."
Maybe unrelated.
"Oh!" Lafter exclaimed. "That's clever."
"It saves on questions." I started reading down the list again. "I ask it every Saturday. Gives us a better idea of what to expect in the coming… week."
They mostly followed the same batter. Relena Peacecraft either lived or died.
Except for the last one.
I stared at the last one.
Newtype announces new hero team.
That…was not part of the plan. Not yet. Not for a while even.
Lifting my head to meet Dinah's eyes, I found her holding the drawing of the logos, one finger pointed at the logo on the left. She'd written two words under the logo.
Celestial Being.
…
Why the fuck would I name a hero team Celestial Being?
"Seriously?"
Dinah shrugged. "It's your team."
"Sister Margret is going to love it," Lafter said wryly.
"It is not currently in use," Veda revealed.
"I am not announcing a new hero team," I denied. "Even if I were forming a more formal team."
"This looks like something of a team to me," Lafter replied. "I mean, I suppose we don't really need a name, but names are cool."
I shook my head. "We can figure this out later."
I didn't know what the "dead ends" of perfect black in Dinah's possibilities meant, but by the rest of the accounts Lafter and I could deal with the assassin. We just needed to find him.
Ask Dinah? Two questions left. I might need them later though, use them to sus out what the dead ends meant. Something unforeseen might happen and I'd need the questions then.
Or I could stop being presumptuous and let Dinah rest at five questions. She hid it well, but she already looked a little pained.
I checked the monitors. Navy, Pink, and Red surrounded a three-story building in Shanty Town. Graffiti covered the brick walls, and half the windows looked broken. The other half looked boarded up. A familiar truck sat on the street outside, a few Merchants guarding the building.
Let's go ask them where their friend is.
"Dinah, can you stay here for a little while?"
"Yeah." She pulled up her backpack and took out some schoo—Aren't those the same schoolbooks Vista had?. "I'll just do homework and hang out with StarGazer."
"Then Lafter and I will go pay the Merchants a visit," I said.
I got into the van first, climbing into the back and seating myself in O Gundam. Of course, that meant I laid down more or less while Lafter took the passenger seat and the van lurched forward.
"Green, stick around the workshop and keep an eye on things. Orange and Purple come with us."
Getting to Shanty Town from the Docks in good traffic should only take about thirty minutes. Give or take eight or so minutes depending on how many red lights we hit.
Of course, I forgot to factor in the time of year.
Lafter leaned forward, elbows resting on the dash. "Huh. It is summer, isn't it?"
Huh. "I forgot."
"My apologies for the delay," Veda said.
"It's not your fault."
Brockton Bay schools might run for one more week, but lots of schools in the nearby towns ended a week ago. Summertime usually went well for Brockton Bay. Tourists came to see the museum at the PRT building, and the one or two art galleries in Downtown. The Boardwalk angled itself such that you didn't see the Boat Graveyard from the beach, and they kept the place clean and tidy. Plus, everyone wanted to tour the Rig.
Add in all the extra traffic, and a thirty to thirty-eight-minute drive through the city becomes an hour and a half.
Gave us time to watch the building at least.
And to work on the other idea I got from Kid Win.
Thirty-eight minutes twenty seconds, and eight milliseconds. I'd failed utterly to push the GN Field any further than that, no matter what I tried. The field simply couldn't maintain itself with the count of GN particles constantly building inside, not to mention all the particles it couldn't hang onto as I moved.
That's why the antennas kept warping.
GN Particles pulled at one another. As they infused into the armor, including the antennas maintaining the GN Field, they kept pulling. The armor didn't suffer much given the structure, but the antennas did.
I hit a roadblock on how to fix that.
Feed the radiation back into the system, I said. Damn, I'm fucking stupid.
No matter how strong I made the field, the problem persisted. The problem came down to simple – well, simpler – math. The GN drive pumped out more particles than any field I designed could hope to contain.
I needed to reduce the number of particles pouring from the drive.
Install condensers, high capacity ones, directly into the drive to collect particles and I'd end up with fewer just flying off. Most of those particles got wasted anyway. With a larger reserve of particles behind me, I'd even be able to build meaner weapons. Bigger weapons, easy to develop out of the many ideas I already had.
The solution didn't even cost that much. I needed to open the drive, rearrange the interior a bit, fit in a trio of high-density condensers, and problem solved.
In theory.
The math took a little longer to do but having O Gundam's data right there in front of me sped things up.
I sent the final solutions off to Veda to look at.
sys.v/ received
sys.v/ beginning simulations
sys.t/ I've got a few other ideas
sys.t/ pull the full armor design out of archives
sys.t/ I think I can make it work now
sys.t/ we'll look at them later
A familiar sensation came over me. An image of something, a picture just on the edge of my mind. Something that felt like a puzzle with no picture to it. Something my power didn't want me to see… Something it desperately, didn't want me to see.
Why does everything keep coming back to this?
Why did powers seem like they had minds of their own?
"You're being quiet," Lafter observed.
"Sorry. I had an idea and needed to work on it. Tinker thing."
"I think I'm happy not being a tinker," Lafter mused. "I don't like the idea of losing control of my head."
"It's not that bad," I said. "I just, get an idea and I have to work on it. It seems to happen less to me than to other tinkers though." Maybe because of my power's "learn-as-I-go" quirk. "I kind of like it. The rest of the world doesn't matter when I tinker. I can forget about how messed up it is."
"Hmm. I suppose there's some appeal in that."
"It works for me."
More so now that Dad knew the real reason I might disappear for hours. No need for lame excuses when a fugue takes out hours of my day.
"So, Celestial Being? Kind of pretentious, don't you think?"
"I'm not announcing a new hero team."
"Are we not a team?"
"No. Yes. I don't know."
I didn't think of it quite like that. I didn't need to seek out Lafter to form a team per se. I wanted allies. People who looked at the world and wanted to change it, or at least, who wanted to do something about the mess. That might be called a team.
"You seemed to have this a lot more thought out when you yanked your mask off in front of me."
"I wanted you to see how serious I was."
"Oh, I see how serious you are. It's kind of amusing actually. Like you don't know how to let your guard down, but you're completely fucking earnest in everything you do."
I didn't want a team. I might have one, but what I wanted was larger than that.
I wanted a movement. I wanted others to rise up and say they saw what I saw, and they wanted to change it. I needed people to get up and at least try and fix the world.
"It's a stupid name," I mumbled.
"I don't know." Lafter leaned back, her head appearing above mine. "Shouldn't something as pretentious as changing the world have a pretentious name?"
I frowned. "I'm not pretentious."
Lafter rolled her eyes. "Taylor, you're so pretentious you could sell the stuff and have leftovers."
"I—" Wait.
She's smiling, and not in the mean, fake, way Emma smiled. Is she joking with me? Is this what being joked with is like? I didn't know. So, I just kind of shut up and thanked myself for my visor hiding the confused look in my eyes.
"You know your mouth does this little twitching thing when you're baffled." Lafter pointed at my face. "It's cute. Show that to your boyfriend the next time you go tinkering."
So, she is joking with me? "Okay." Brilliant response, Taylor.
"It's easier than you're making it you know. No need to force it."
"Force what?"
She shrugged and pulled back. "You'll figure it out."
"Figure what out?"
"Talking to people like they're people."
"What?"
"Exactly."
No idea what that meant.
"Ten minutes," Veda said.
I started the early spin up for the drive and checked all the systems.
The Haros surrounded the building, watching it from all three angles. No one came in or out in the past hour and a half. Seemed kind of odd. Given the nearby Merchant guards, I suspected the location was one of their drug or gun stashes I didn't know about. Surely such a place saw regular visitors, right?
"It's livelier than I expected," Lafter said.
It was. I'd never been to Shanty Town in the day. A group of teens played basketball in a lot court down the street, dealers at every corner exchanging envelops with cars that came by. A police car came by not long after we parked and just kept going.
It all looked seedier and more alive than I expected.
I didn't have time to think about that though, or how deep in Merchant territory we were.
I still hadn't made up my mind. Go right in and start asking questions? They might be higher than kites for all I knew, and completely unable to answer questions. I didn't want to start a fight in the middle of Shanty Town either, which presented a time problem. Sitting might not get me anywhere anytime soon though. The assassin might not even plan to work with the Merchants again, so no guarantees I'd gain anything from waiting.
Of course, never discount the ability of criminals to make up your mind for you.
"Movement," Veda announced.
I watched the figures go right to the truck.
"Really?" I asked. "Do they know we're coming?"
"How could they?" Lafter asked. "Also, why do you ask?"
"Three men are exiting the building. They went right to the truck."
"Huh. Lucky us?"
I didn't like it. Did the Merchants make note of my van? I'd driven far enough into their domain that someone might have spotted me and sent the word out. Nothing on their texts though, for as much as that helped me.
But they might be going right to the assassin, or maybe something I might want to know about.
Maybe…
I bit my lip, cursing under my breath.
"Dinah."
"Ready."
"If Laughter and Newtype follow the men in the truck in front of them, what do they find? StarGazer. Stay on them for now."
I waited a little bit.
"Yes," Dinah answered. "You find him."
"StarGazer, follow them."
"Yes."
We drove right past the apartment building and shadowed the vehicle as it moved even deeper into Shanty Town. I finished the prep to launch O Gundam, and Dinah managed to describe the building well enough that Veda identified it well before we arrived.
An old two-story office building overlooking the bay. Looked like whoever owned it abandoned the place years ago.
"We'll park over there," I decided. "In that empty lot. There's no one there right now, so as soon as you unload O Gundam, drive away."
"Understood," Veda replied.
"Red and Navy. You two will watch from above. Pink. I want you to land on the roof and use your sonic cameras to map the interior. Let's take care of this."
Pink landed on the roof and rolled out of her cradle. Veda pulled into the lot and I closed the chest plate while the van lifted O Gundam into a standing position.
"So, what's the plan?" Lafter asked as she closed the door behind her.
I thought back to everything Dinah wrote, going over every single event Dinah wrote. She probably missed a few things, or just didn't see others, but she supplied me with more than enough.
"I'll stay up front, force him to deal with me. Stay behind O Gundam. He won't be able to get a good look at you with me in the way, so you can strike from any direction. The problem is the explosive that sometimes kills me."
"It's kind of a box," Dinah grumbled. "It melts through your armor."
"So, if he throws that out I have to back away."
"According to that sheet he usually stabbed me," Lafter said. "So, I just need to not get too close, right?"
"Right," I agreed. "We'll take him out together and keep an eye out for whatever prematurely ends the fight."
I couldn't quite account for that, but I wanted to deal with him before anyone else died.
The truck stopped and the men got out and went up to the building. Meeting with the assassin to plan the next attempt, or maybe they wanted to be paid? Pink traced the interior for me. I saw our cape, sitting on a couch on the second floor in front of a box. Watching TV, I guessed.
The men went through the halls like they'd been inside before, quickly finding the stairs and ascended to the second floor.
The van closed behind O Gundam and lurched away.
"Are you ready?" I asked.
Lafter grinned. "Sure. The worst that can happen is I die a virgin."
I could think of… worse things.
"Alright. I'll give you a head start. I want to smash through the wall with you ready to go right into the room. We'll corner him and force him to use that grenade. Once he's thrown it, we can avoid it and take him down."
Lafter nodded and turned on her heel.
The sound of thunder filled the air.
I watched through Pink's eyes as all three men fell to the floor. No blood or anything. The sonic camera couldn't show me that, but I recognized the block in the cape's hand. I didn't need to know all three men just got shot.
The sound came again.
The one man who'd kept moving after hitting the floor stopped moving.
"What just happened?" Lafter asked.
"He cleaned up his loose ends," I growled. Three more dead. My lips twisted into a snarl. "Go."
Lafter broke into a sprint, and I spun up the GN drive.
The cape walked away from the corpses, and it took considerable self-control to keep myself in place. He opened a closet and pulled out some sheets? No. Bags. Body bags…
"He called them over here to kill them."
"I am alerting the PRT," Veda said.
"Won't matter. I'll drop him on their roof just like Alabaster and Victor."
Lafter sprinted across the road and ran into the building. The guy flinched; one body half lowered into one of the bags.
"He knows you're there," I warned. My feet left the ground, and the light surrounded me. "Be careful."
"You too."
I shot into the air, swinging back and swooping over the rooftops. The wall approached quickly, my shield smashing through and throwing his TV across the room. I raised my carbine and shield.
He stood a few feet away, body still in his hands.
His costume reminded me of Miss Militia's, mostly just because of the army style fatigues he wore, with lots of straps, pouches, and some body armor. I didn't see anything that might be a box shaped bomb, but the body obscured a lot of his form. A knife hung from his belt on the right, and a gun on the left.
He didn't have his mask on.
He looked grizzled, his dark red hair wild and unkempt and his face rugged. His eyes stood out though. They felt fierce, and I got flashbacks to facing down Sophia and Hookwolf from him.
Whatever surprise he felt at seeing me vanished into an unnerving smile.
"Well then," he mumbled. "Maybe the locals aren't such pussies after all."
No idea what that meant, and I didn't care.
I took aim at his chest and asked, "Don't suppose you'll surrender?"
He seemed to contemplate it for a moment.
"Nah."
The door swung open and Lafter ran at him.
I fired three shots, but the corpse came up. I got a pretty good look at the frozen expression on his face. Shock mixed with terror. When the body fell, the cape had drawn his knife and gun, the latter pointed right at Lafter.
She switched the blade on her saber on and kept going, both bullets going right past her. Lafter spun the blade and swung, the cape stepping back out of her reach and firing again. Her hair fluttered, but I saw no blood. I did see the knife going toward her stomach as the cape started to step into her backswing.
He ducked under her blade and thrust his own, striking my leg as I swung in to shield Lafter.
"Now!"
I swept forward, firing my carbine at the cape. He stepped up closer to me, getting under my arm and stabbing his knife at one of the joins of my armor. Were they all going to try that?
Lafter stepped out from my right, thrusting her saber forward and forcing him back.
"My, my." He laughed. Lafter stepped back behind me. "I'm starting to think I'm at a bit of a disadvantage."
"Then give up," I suggested.
"Or I can run."
Run?
He spun on his heel, ran right at the window, and jumped. He pulled his legs in as his arms crossed over his face. The window shattered, and he fell from my sight.
I blinked.
"Because he runs," I mumbled. "The question becomes invalid because he runs?!"
Lafter leaned around me. "We're chasing him, right?"
All three bodies lay in my peripheral vision.
Even criminals had a family to miss them.
"Yes," I decided.
Lafter's arms went around my arm, and I slid forward and through the wall again.
Red and Navy followed him as he ran down the street, apparently unphased by a two-story drop. I dropped low enough for Lafter to let go and flew forward. I caught up to him, ignoring his gun as he shot back. He rolled out of the way as I shot past him, and my feet dug into the street while I swung around.
Two bullets bounced off my helmet, and he started running toward an alley to the left.
"Red," I ordered.
My Haro dropped from the sky, wires flying free and catching the cape by his wrist. His knife swung up, cutting right through the wires with ease. I flinched, lurching forward to chase. A knife shouldn't cut my lin—A tinker tech knife, seriously?
Lafter caught up, her beam saber swinging while Red kept the guy distracted. I shot forward again, taking a position right behind him. He between the wire and his awkward stance he slipped backward. A brief look of surprise came over him and he slapped a hand back against the ground and pushed himself out of line with the swing.
The saber only tapped him and in response he pointed his gun directly at Lafter's head. My panic vanished as fast as it appeared. Lafter's elbow jerked up as the gun fired and knocked the shot over her head.
Enough "Go right!"
Lafter moved, and I threw my shoulder into his side. I pushed him past her and threw my shield arm out and across my chest. The cape rolled as he hit the ground, my carbine aimed square at his—
Bomb.
He smiled, throwing the cube underhand as he came out of his roll and onto his feet. I slid back, the device flying over me and—
"Lafter!"
I spun around, my shield guarding her as the cube turned a bright red and sparked.
The heat seared right through me and into my chest. Warning alarms blared in my ears, and a half dozen notices flashed on my visor. A blinding light filled the air but my visor adjusted. Thanks to Oni Lee for reminding me blinding light hurts. I caught sight of our assassin running away, Red and Navy chasing after him.
The heat faded quickly, and…I was alive.
"Lafter?"
"M'kay," she replied groggily.
I turned but the cameras on the left side of my suit showed static. I turned the other way, finding her on the ground but in one piece.
She looked up at me and grimaced. "Um. Are you okay?"
Am I? "StarGazer?"
"Heavy damage to armor on the left quarter," Veda said. "Shield compromised."
I raised my arm. Compromised? My shield was a slab filled with holes. The heat burned the paint completely off my armor and left the E-Carbon warped and melted. The elbow didn't quite bend right either.
Veda continued down a list of systems I had backups for, eventually saying, "GN Drive casing compro—"
I jerked, asking, "Is the solar furnace okay?!"
"Solar furnace is operating at eighty-nine percent."
Oh thank g—
"The flywheel, however, is disabled," Veda finished.
Fuck.
"Are you okay?" Dinah asked.
"Y-yes," I replied quickly. "I'm fine, Dinah. If I didn't know what that cube did before coming here, I might not have backed up in time." I glanced to Lafter in my side camera. "I didn't expect him to throw it at Lafter though."
"He wanted to force you to take the hit for me," she said with a frown. "Talk about a pushy guy."
One way of saying it. "Can I fly?"
"Negative," Veda answered. "Right leg thrusters are all disabled. Maneuverability is insufficient for safe flight."
"What do we do?" Lafter asked.
I checked the Haros' cameras. Red and Navy flew frantically, Purple having apparently joined in the chase. Orange watched from above, Pink flying lower to the ground.
I didn't understand how anyone could move like he moved. The Haros kept coming at him, but in the narrow alleys, they didn't have much room. He shot them, knocked them aside, ducked under or even jumped over them.
But at least the Haros had his trail.
"Are you up for a foot chase?" I asked.
Lafter gave me a grin as an answer.
"Jump on." I turned my back to her, and Lafter climbed onto my back. I didn't have the flywheel, so she might as well get a piggyback ride.
I checked the timer and then ran forward. I turned into the alley, which barely accommodated O Gundam, and tossed my ruined shield down. The carbine seemed okay, and I still had a few beam sabers.
He'd used his one trick.
We just needed to catch him.
With the Haros chasing him, we made up ground fast. He managed to disable Red's carriage, but it cost him his knife to do so. The blade got caught in the rotor and snapped out of his grip. He kept going, running from one alley to the next. He grabbed a trash can lid at one point and used it to swat the Haros away whenever they tried to get a hold of him.
He can't fight forever.
He tossed his gun – out of bullets I guessed – and took up another trashcan lid. He bolted out of the maze of alleys into an open street. Navy tried to trip him, but he jumped over. Pink tried to knock him to the ground, but he battered her away. Purple swung in and hit him in the back, but he recovered and swung his second lid back and escaped into—
Warehouse.
I frowned as I ran past Red.
My Haro worked his way out of his cradle and rolled behind me, my thoughts consumed.
"Dinah, what did the warehouse you saw look like?"
"Um. Like that one?"
"You can see it?"
"I'm watching on the monitors."
Oh. "This is the place where things go black, isn't it?"
"Yes."
So, not because he ran away? Did he fight us inside? Because we cornered him, or because of some trap. I paused, feeling Lafter's weight fall off my back.
"What's up?" she asked.
"I don't like it."
Lafter glanced around. "So?"
"So?"
"Yeah. So, what about this situation is there to like? So, he ran in there right? So, are we going to let him go?"
I glanced at her. "No… No, we're not."
Lafter shrugged. "Well, let's go."
I nodded.
I pulled a saber from my back and took the lead. The Haros surrounded the building, watching it closely. Picking up my pace and entering, I scanned the warehouse. Warehouse probably wasn't the right word. It looked like an old loading dock, for trucks and such. Raised concrete platforms lined both walls, the doors on the other side closed tight with rusty chains.
And he just stood there, in the middle of the room.
"Finally decided to stroll in, eh?" He grinned at us.
"Decided to give up?" I asked.
What happens? What ends the fight? I scanned the room, but other than some old crates nothing looked out of place.
"Wouldn't be very good at my job if I did that."
He reached for one of the pouches on his hip, an object far too large to fit inside coming out.
He has pockets like Kid Win's, I realized. Which… Did not bode well. I didn't count the pouches on him, but it was a lot. If all of them were bigger inside than outside, he might have anything in there.
Maybe even more of those bombs.
"I thought the villains around here were blowing air talking about you, but I think I see why you have them running so scared."
I liked the situation less and less.
"I honestly thought I had more time. Thirteen hours? Found the truck and followed it right to me didn't you?" He glanced away from us. "I should have killed them sooner."
"Sucks to be you." I started moving.
He ignored me move toward him, instead exclaiming, "Makes me glad that bomb didn't quite land!"
A sinister grin crossed his face.
"I give it a year tops. Someone will have a price on you. We can pick this little game right back up. Until then"—He flipped the device in his hand and pressed his thumb against the—Oh fuck—"try not to die."
And then he vanished.
I reversed towards the door, telling Lafter to get out.
The walls exploded. Navy and Purple got thrown to the ground, the blast knocking them out of the air. The walls cracked around us, the ceiling coming down on top of my head and forcing me to my knees.
That's why the fight ended.
Because he ran the fuck away and dropped a roof on top of us.
I tried to stand, but I had about a building's worth of rock on top of me. At least I wasn't completely crushed. O Gundam seemed no worse off than before.
"I know I asked this five minutes ago, but are you okay, Lafter?"
"I admit," she replied, "maybe we should have let him go."
