After a few seconds of shooting my azure turtle shell, they stopped. One flared his nose in anger, “This fuckin’ kid…”

“These fuckin’ guys…” I replied in kind, then grabbed my pistol and shot one of them in the leg. The other man fled and I had the TK capture him the minute he left the house through the back entrance. The woman fled behind me, sticking to my back like glue. She quivered, eventually falling to her knees. Who wouldn’t expect that a bunch of criminals would try to make loose ends disappear? She wouldn’t. By the way her body froze up, I knew that her naivety got the better of her. I slowly encroached the man, ensuring there weren’t any other hostiles hidden to my left and right. Once I disarmed him, I breathed a sigh of relief. Suddenly, the other one who escaped smashed into the backdoor, breaking it with his body and pitching inside. He was unconscious. My TK sure did deal with him…

Once I tied them up with whatever rope I could find, I contacted Serrette and had her send over a unit to my location. Looking back at Ms Parker, she still trembled a little. “Did you tell them I found you or something?” I squatted next to her. She nodded, her body seemingly only capable of small movements. “You’ll probably be a target from now on,” I sighed. “Furthermore, I doubt you’ll be able to keep your job once Neo-Chem finds out. But that depends…”

“Huh?” she tilted her head. I stood up and offered a hand for her to get up as well. I leaned onto the kitchen counter and she sat at one of the dining table’s chairs, far away from the men.

“Did you strike a deal with them for the chemicals or did they threaten you?” I asked, giving her the answer to keep her job. But she didn’t recognise that opportunity.

“I, made a deal,” she admitted. The clock’s ticking gave the situation a tenser-than-needed atmosphere. I shrugged and chose to leave it at that. Whether or not she was the damsel in distress now didn’t change the fact that she conspired with criminals and broke what I’m sure was a law by getting them chemicals not available to the public.

“Who did you give them to and where?” I asked, and the man whom I shot grunted at that question, or more accurate, he grunted at her not to answer. I said nothing further, only left her to choose between us. Her eyes shifted targets. Would she side with the person who just saved her life or would she adhere to the fear that was a bigger criminal organisation she knew the men hailed from? Would she yield to Cennet, or help me?

After she spent a minute of wracking her brain over what to do, I stood upright and began leaving. I turned the doorknob and some light came into the house. “Wait!” Ms Parker yelled out, “Don’t leave me here, with them…”

“Unless you’re going to help me, I’ve no reason to continue staying here. A TEO unit will be here shortly. You can either choose to cooperate with them or go into hiding and pray that Cennet’s men don’t find you.” I painted her options in a bleak manner, furthering the need for her to have protection. She looked away and mouthed a curse.

“Alright, kid. Alright. I’ll tell you whatever you want. But in return, I want you to vouch for me,” she combed her fingers through her hair nervously, “I don’t want to go to prison…” she shrivelled.

“Then,” I closed the door, “who and where?” I repeated.

Again, she froze up, but after a couple deep breaths, she began. “There’s an apartment complex downtown. The receptionist there was who I delivered it to.” She showed me the location on her phone. I took note of it and simply waited on the TEO squad; the Andinos were amongst the five who Serrette sent.

“Wassup, Ugo?” Ferris fist-bumped me. “Hey uhm,” he went a bit quiet whilst the others detained the men, “I don’t know how you did it but, you saved Cindy and found Stan. I owe you big time. So, if you need a favour, just let me know, yeah?” he ruffled my hair and approached Ms Parker.

Samuel looked at me next. “It’s a mystery how they let you run around with a gun and sword,” he shook his head, “they might as well give you a badge.”

“Hey, aren’t you going back to being a teacher? What will I do if bullies target me and you’re not around?” I asked, the second question making the first seem much more unimportant that it actually was.

“Once this whole Cennet thing blows over, then sure. Besides,” he scratched his chin, “Cindy hates the TEO stuff. Thinks it’s too dangerous. Besides,” he said with emphasis this time, “that piece of shit got my son mixed up in all this.”

So, it’s personal now… I thought. “Fair enough. Can you two take a trip with me downtown?” I focused their attention elsewhere, “I might need the power of the badge.”

They looked at each other. One of the TEO they came with rolled her eyes, “Fine, fine! We’ll take them down and do all the paperwork!” she lamented, leaving with the armoured van they came with.

We decamped soon after, going to this apartment complex. My phone rang on our way there and I placed it to my ear. “Jared, Rissy’s class just got shot up and you’re not here,” Anna’s tone was one of suspicion. “What are you doing that could be more important, I wonder…”

“Uh,” I dragged the sound, “things…”

“Not too believable, honey!” Another voice came through.

Huh? Mom? “I’m, on loudspeaker, huh?” I mentally palmed my face. “How’s she feeling?” I asked them.

“Come home and you’ll find out,” mom said, a cheeky tone about her.

I looked up into the car’s ceiling, “Now that’s just unfair and you know it.” I called them out on it. We both knew I was doing something they probably felt I shouldn’t be doing, so they wanted to thwart me. Well, they certainly became keen as to when I go out and look for danger. “I’ll be home soon.”

“Last time you said that, parliament got attacked,” Anna stabbed me in the back with a knife labelled ‘truth’.

“I’m serious. Save me lunch, okay?” I hung up. We’d already arrived at the building.

Samuel was looking me dead in the eyes. “Was gonna ask why you’re here and not attending school like a normal kid should,” he sighed, as if coming to the realisation of how ridiculous my situation was. But admittedly, I didn’t make the greatest effort to return to having a normal life. The minute Cennet’s hackers took control of Theresa’s car and drove us off a damned flyover, things simply escalated. My mind began looking at Cindy as an example of what a normal kid should be. She wasn’t tinkering with computers and robotics. She wasn’t delving into circuitry and finding hacker groups to teach her how to infiltrate networks. Yet, I found myself doing those things as a means to cope; they worked great.

I exhaled and brought my mind back to the present. “Let’s go, shall we?”

The hotel lobby, not at all expecting two fully geared TEOs, became a little tense. Hmm, I looked around at the people. Must be the guns. The Andinos questioned the old lady and even showed her a photo of Ms Parker. “We need to know who she delivered those items to.”

“I’m not allowed to–”

“Ma’am, we’re not asking,” they instilled a gentle pressure on her.

At that time, someone had just appeared from the stairwell, saw the scene, and slowly backed into the darkness. Activating my boosters was unnecessary. The anti-gravitational plates were enough to reach the stairwell quickly. He was skittering up the spiral staircase. From there, I put on the boosters and flew directly upward the centre of the stairs and caught up to the man promptly. He opened the door on that particular floor and bolted through the hallway. I quickly entered after him and noticed that the hallway was long enough so that he couldn’t avoid my flying tackle.

We rolled a bit, ending up in awkward positions. He socked me in the face, making me recoil a little, but I bit down on the pain and answered him back threefold. Two of my badly positioned punches were blocked, but the third sank into his cheekbone. Within the little space, he wrestled me into an armbar, but that quickly failed when he noticed my pistol pointing right at him.

“Don’t move!” Ferris yelled out, his pistol sneering at the runner. I rolled away and stood up, doing the same.

Samuel searched the man and found his room’s key. “Let’s have a looksee.” We entered his apartment. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In fact, the place looked to be unused, with only the bare minimum amount of furnishings. However, there was one thing that caught our eyes. “Open the safe,” Ferris told the man, his gun at the ready.

“I, don’t know the combination,” the man admitted, his cheek swelling from my punch by the minute.

Ferris sighed, a really exaggerated one. “This happens every time!” he complained with a truly tired face about him. “Let’s just shoot him and say it was self-defence!”

“Will you do that every time you don’t get answers?” Andino frowned in annoyance, then turned to the criminal and sat on the coffee table in front of him. “Listen, man, you can either give us the combination now, or we can just call the company that made the safe and have them open it for us. If you give us the combination, he,” Samuel gestured with his eyes to Ferris, “probably won’t shoot you. Your choice.”

Oh, it’s good cop, bad cop. Thought they only did that in movies.

The man looked up at Ferris, then back at Samuel. He spat in his face, “Fuck you, copper!”

Samuel just sat there motionless for several seconds, nodded, then began laughing. “Ah, the good old spit-in-the-face-of-the-man-trying-to-help-you tactic. It’s really too bad it isn’t a tactic at all.” Finally, he grabbed some tissue from the bathroom and wiped his face, then washed it, then wiped it again.

I gave the safe another look, and drew Z-21. It easily cut through the lock on the safe. I could hear the man curse me under his breath. Opening it up, there were a couple bottles and canisters, as well as several documents. Hmm, I looked at the labels and confirmed these were indeed the chemicals that Cennet got from Ms Parker.

“What’s all this dangerous looking stuff?” Samuel asked. “Should we be in direct contact with that?” His question made me stop, but thinking it over, I realised it wouldn’t pose a threat.

“Should be fine. They had to keep this a hush-hush operation. They can’t just,” I strained a bit to snake my arm into the back of the safe where the documents were, “walk around in HAZMAT suits and not attract attention.”

Getting the documents out, I realised it was actually the printed reports the detective that worked on this very case for the police, Pereira. I turned around at our prisoner in suspicion and he gave me a glare that looked like he wanted to murder me. “I wonder which goon killed detective Pereira?” I commented playfully, looking at the man’s swollen face. Better yet, I wonder how the hell he even got a hold of a printed report. Pereira would’ve most likely typed this up in the station. Which means…” I stood up with a sigh. “Did you guys get a name for him?”

“One Mark Taylor,” Samuel flipped through his wallet and found his identification.

“Well, it seems Mr Taylor has access to the police department that detective Pereira worked at. Can you give them a call and ask?”

Ferris nodded and called a friend in the police force. Whilst that happened, I read through the report and learned something interesting. Pereira had tracked Mr Taylor for a long while and saw the places where he delivered the ‘parcels’ to. The detective couldn’t know for sure that those parcels indeed had the stolen Neo-Chem goods in them, but it was pretty obvious. He found that the deliveries were to four different places. Two of which were the old Boundless Hope clinic and the biology lab hideout that LocalHost found for me. The other two locations were someone’s home address by the look of it, and UGO Medical. So many questions popped up in my head at seeing UGO Medical’s address, but despite that, the home address interested me even more. Could it be Cennet’s safehouse?

“-go!”

I was so deep in thought I hadn’t realised Samuel calling me. “Ugo!” he snapped his fingers in front of me a couple times. “Ferris already called in people to search the place. You can go home.”

Oh yeah. Home. I should do that. Once I committed the house address to memory, I gave him the report. “There’s a couple interesting addresses in there. You can probably further the investigation by showing this report to Serrette. I’m sure she’d want to know more about a detective’s murder and why he died trying to solve something Cennet brewed up. But, uh,” I looked up to the ceiling, wondering just how to deal with this new information, “just, just keep me updated.”

With that, I flew back home. The TK joined me in flight once I graced the skies.

Entering the UGO residence, I saw the three women sitting in front the television whilst dad waltzed inside the house, soaked in water. “What happened to you?” I questioned.

He chuckled embarrassingly, “Leak outside was more trouble that I thought, but I handled it!” He gave a cheesy thumbs-up. “Anyway, you better go to your trial. My advice… Plead guilty and give them a sob story,” he ruffled my hair and walked off to grab a towel.

I turned around at my moms and Marissa. One had a look of gratitude by awkwardness, whilst the other two were like hawks shadowing their prey. Coolly, I took a seat on the single-seater and crossed my legs, leaning back and exhaling. “You two certainly look ready to dismember someone. I sure hope that person isn’t me,” I joked.

After that, they smothered me in questions, so much so that I lost count of how many they asked. I got up, walked over to where they were sitting and shimmied my way next to Marissa. With a big fat hug, I exclaimed, “You’re the only friend I have here!”

“Hey, take your lynching by yourself,” she pushed me off, got up, and switched positions with me on the couch.

“Traitor…” I muttered, then looked over to Diana and Anna. “Don’t you two have work?”

“The same could be asked about you and school!” Anna retorted.

Sheesh, these women… I tittered and just sort of gave up. “Fine, fine, you win. I’m starving though. When are we–”

My phone beeped, particularly the type that signalled someone was in trouble. I looked at it. Rosa. Remembering the last time I hesitated, I took no chances now. “Gotta go. Rosa’s in trouble.”

“Who the hell’s Rosa!?” mom asked just before I opened the front door.

“A friend!” I shouted back and flew off once more. Please be safe…

After a couple minutes of flying, I was following a straight and narrow road in desert lands. I wondered if I was being fed the right location. Eventually, I caught up with her signal and saw a little dot on the ground from my bird’s eye position. Finally, I found Rosa!

She was parched, her skin sunburnt, excepting her womanly bits. Nothing more than underwear covered her body and a flimsy flipflop protected her feet from the scorching sands. I was at a loss for words in this situation, but her meekness, sweat, frizzy hair forced me to open my mouth, yet I never got a chance to form words.

“Jared,” she breathed heavily, swaying as she walked to where I landed, “you came.”

“It’ll be alright now. But uh, I don’t think you can go back like that,” I gestured to her attire, or lack thereof. “Let me make a trip to a nearest department store, okay?” She nodded, seemingly too tired to conjure words. I carried her over to the nearest mountains for some shade from the blistering sun and had the TK keep watch over her.

I picked up some loose-fitted clothes, comfortable sandals and a couple bottles of water, not forgetting sunscreen lotion. In twenty or so minutes, I came back to her and she grabbed the water first, downing a bottle in one go. “Geez, don’t choke now…” I advised. She took the sunscreen after, then handed it back to me before unclipping her bra and sliding her panties down. For some reason I felt the urge to look away. “You have an idea of who did this?” I questioned with my body turned toward the infinite expanse.

“Will discuss later,” she said, pointing at the lotion. Once I handed it back to her, she began smearing it over herself. Once she finished with that, she took the clothes out and put them on. It pained her like crazy, but she had no choice. The next bottle of water was her target, and she drank periodically whilst I cruised her through the skies towards her home. “Take me to police headquarters first,” she said, her eyes showing an unshakeable resolve.