The next three weeks were a time of superficial calm, hiding tumultuous currents below. For Sophia and her family-situation, little changed, her father took one more and more of a religious, or rather cultish, bent, trying to get his wife and child to join him when going to their meetings and calling them names or accusing them of trying to suppress his salvation if they declined. I managed to sneak a new phone to Sophia, so we were able to keep in contact, but she was not ready to fully defy her father and simply tell him to go pound sand.

My campaign against the Omegas had two more successful operations, neither involving Detective Kendall, to keep her from being targeted. One operation was incredibly simple, I had managed to get my paws on the financial files from one of the police sergeants in charge of gang-related investigations. His data looked absolutely fine, not doctored or anything, but it was a little suspicious that his four year old son had a bank-account that got regular payments from an offshore entity. One had to wonder what services that four year old was exporting for such a cash-flow. The financial information accidentally found their way into an envelope, looking very much as if a bank-employee had played whistleblower, and that envelope found its way to the anonymous tip drop-off at the prosecutor's office.

The other operation was even simpler, it involved an emergency-call, spliced into the phone-line in the building next to one of the gang-hideouts, a voice distorter that let me sound just like the woman living there and two small breaching-charges, sounding exactly like a firing gun.

The whole thing was a thing of simplistic beauty, I had hidden the charges the night before, one at a window and the other on the roof of the building the Omegas were using before calling the emergency-line the next evening, saying that I was hearing yelling and things breaking in the house next door, that I was worried someone was fighting there and might be killed.

Within ten minutes, a patrol car was rolling up and just as they did, the first charge on the roof went off, making the officers call for backup and get out of their car and take cover.

Shortly after, the second charge went off, shattering a window and convinced the thugs inside that someone was shooting at them. They added things up and got to the conclusion that the police-officers, taking cover behind their vehicle were shooting at them. The officers got the same conclusion regarding the people in the house.

The result was an escalating shoot-out between the police and the Omegas, to the point that the League was called in to help clear the house. I felt a little bad that I had gotten the police into a shootout, but there were limited ways to get things done.

I, on the other hand, was pretty much laying low. By taking down Battlemaster like I had, I had poked the League and I was not interested in open conflict with them. Galatea had also convinced me that it would be incredibly stupid to release the video of a defeated Battlemaster, as it would be virtual proof of my aerial surveillance capabilities, something they had to suspect but there was no need to confirm it, and because it would increase the personal component of the conflict. For now, the conflict was a professional one, evidenced by the fact that Voltic had no problem to talk with me and that Skylar was not putting serious resources into hunting me. If I started to actively spread information and humiliate the League, they would take serious action, even at the cost of war. It was a delicate balance between the estimated cost of an open campaign of annihilation against me and the problems I was inflicting on them. Once the problems got big enough, they would no longer play nice, but would do everything to take me down. And they would likely manage.

I had a little fun, going out in a slightly different costume, consisting of a dark cape, shiny, black armour and a full-face helmet with an air-filter system that sounded as if the words ‘filter maintenance’ had never even been muttered together in the general vicinity. The armour was completely unpowered but armed with a modified plasma-torch and with a modified version of my gauntlet, but those jaunts were pure misdirection.

The whole ensemble was not really suited to go against anyone serious, so I did my ‘heroic’ deeds very carefully, waiting in hiding until my drones saw a situation that would devolve into a mugging or something similar without any hints of League activity in the area, only getting out in the open once I saw an opportunity to act.

Overpowering muggers with an air-taser, modified to have visible arcs and arc chaotically into an area, wasting quite a bit of power in the process, was child’s play. The modified plasma-torch was more of a lava-lamp, it projected a glowing length of cold plasma, but hitting anyone with it would have disrupted the magnetic bottle holding the plasma together and extinguished the ‘blade’. But it looked red and dangerous.

The first time I saved someone in that get-up, I asked if they had seen my son, and muttered something about the return of the empire, before wandering off. The resulting police-report was a thing of beauty, causing both, the mugger and those who were supposed to be mugged to be carted off for drug-testing. The officer did not quite believe their statements and suspected that they were all high enough be in a Galaxy far, far away.

But I had little time for such games, so I only went out twice in that role, I had a seriously interesting project to work on. I wanted to fly. And the work I had done while in isolation for my DNA-treatment and the two weeks after that, had laid a good groundwork. My current design had two types of thrusters, one based on the idea of a ramjet for longer distances and higher speed, the others based on regular jet-turbine. The biggest problem was that I needed a material that was solid, as light as possible and able to contain plasma.

Going back to the work done for my ceramic-metal compound, I worked out a similar formulation, mostly based on a titanium-alloy that should work. Now, three weeks later, I had manufactured enough of the new compound to create a prototype for the smaller thrusters.

As with any new device, especially those dealing with a lot of energy, I tested it in a safe room, only containing the stand holding the device, a couple of measuring-equipment and cameras.

Without much ado, I activated the thruster, watching as the air-intake spun up before first the ionisation and then the accelerator activated. Behind the thruster, an exhaust plume of relatively cold plasma, shone with a dim, red glow and the equipment started to measure generated thrust, exhaust temperature and energy-consumption.

Just looking at the data, I was quite elated. The exhaust-temperature was quite cold, only a few hundred degrees and the glow was dim enough that it would not be easy to see at a distance. The best thing was that the whole ensemble was rather quiet, sounding like a hair-dryer on steroids, but not a jet-engine about to take off.

The thrust was a little limited, it would get my armour off the ground, slowly, but not with any additional gear. But there were ways around it, like installing multiple thrusters or maybe increasing the size and throughput of the thruster.

With that, the first step of my flight-system was done. Now, I would have to figure out if I wanted a complete system first, with the serious thrusters that would move me faster than a run or if I wanted to build a set of thrusters as auxiliary equipment, fitted for my armours gauntlets and boots to let the armour, hover, it couldn’t be called flying at that point. Both had interesting challenges, mainly when it came to guidance and control. That was especially true for the bigger version, if I replaced the armour or myself with, say, a large quantity of explosives, I would be in the market for a cruise-missile. And those were rarely re-usable.

So I needed a good control-system to make sure that I would not splatter myself all over my first landing-area. It would be a bit embarrassing to die in such a way.

After the successful test, I was getting my workout in, pounding on a heavy bag, when my phone started ringing. Not on any line I could ignore at any point. No, the line that was ringing was the one Sophia had, so I instantly answered.

Before I could even get out a greeting, I heard a sobbing Sophia. “Cat, can you come to me?” she asked. I was out of my seat before she had said more than my name, just her tone of voice and the sobbing was enough to spur me into motion. Someone had hurt Sophia!

I must have looked a sight, hair disheveled, work-out clothes soaked in sweat and a look of murder on my face. There was better nobody standing between me and getting to her. Or I might just kill my first man.