The situation deteriorated quickly from that point. Ricky and Rocky took aim at the bots and put several down before they could retaliate. Several members of the crowd that had not scattered and fled laid their hands on one of the soldiers. He tried to fight them off, but they were too close and too many. They had stripped him of his weapons and were beating him senseless on the ground. Another one of the soldiers began opening fire indiscriminately into the crowd.

Ricky activated his HUD combat panel and took aim. He had to wait a few precious seconds for the moving heads of the crowd to part before a diamond reticle began flashing, letting him know he had a clean shot.

“Three-round burst.” He spoke the command to his sidearm, changing the rate of fire and squeezed the trigger.

Although wearing the expensive Imperial armor, the soldiers had neglected to don their helmets this evening, and it proved fatal for this one in particular. The three rounds punched through his head and he fell. As the soldier dropped, Ricky noticed something else up by the stage.

“Zoom in.” Ricky commanded his monocle and it did so.

There was a female Foxen, wearing a tight one-piece jumpsuit on the stage unlocking Jardan’s cuffs. With her flowing long red hair, he recognized her instantly.

“Amiga!” Escaped from Ricky’s mouth, halfway between a sigh of relief and a growl of frustration.

Ricky charged the stage and her eyes locked on him through the moving mass of confusion. She seemed shocked to see him again. He was about to leap onto the stage when he noticed reinforcements arriving. The first ones to respond to the situation were aero drones, which seemed omnipresent within the city of Kallerish. Ricky took aim at one that flew down and began firing at the pair of Titans onstage.

Pulling the trigger, his magnetic bullets began pelting the hard shell of the drone. It was quick and maneuverable, and only about half of the rounds he sent at it connected. The ones that did hit bounced off the hard carapace, the sleek design was designed to defect bullets. He ducked to the side as the drone, spinning back towards him in a zig-zag pattern that had been scientifically programmed to be difficult to keep targeted, returned fire from a pair of onboard guns.

Ricky found a piece of concrete to hide behind as a burst of fire struck all around him, sparking off the cold pavement and chipping his concrete cover. From his vantage point he could see Rocco in the middle of the fight now, pummeling two combat robots with his electro-batons. The drone above him stopped shooting his direction, instead focusing back towards the two Titans fleeing the stage.

“Semi-auto.” Ricky spoke aloud, triggering the voice-activated firing mechanism to change in his sidearm.

He leaned out from his cover and took careful aim, squeezing a few shots on target before the drone could fire on the other two who were still out in the open, now running across a lawn, fleeing towards a nearby building. Ricky fired a few more shots, one of them got lucky and hit something vital. The drone began smoking and sparking and spun out of control until it crashed to the ground and caught fire.

“Come on guys!” He spoke into his comm-unit.

Amiga and the street performer were now in the clear, though there were more security units closing in fast. They made it to the nearest AstroBloc, pausing at the door to punch in a code.

“Zoom.” Ricky commanded his eyepiece. “Record.”

The sight zoomed in on Amiga’s hand and the code that she pressed in order to open the door. They were too far away for him to catch up, but he began running that direction. Gunfire erupted again as more units arrived. They were not messing around, five large armored vehicles pulled up to the scene and more combat robots deployed instantly. Several more aero drones were flying his direction and firing at him as they came. Most of the rebellious crowd by this point had fled in all directions, not wanting to face the fury of Zenith Corp and its subsidiary, the Trade Alliance’s might.

Ricky was exposed from the stage to the door of the massive building. He ran as fast as his legs could take him across the lawn. Even as bits of dirt kicked up all around him from the bullets landing all around and whizzing past him. He made it to the door and ducked as a bullet ricocheted from it.

“Playback.”

His eyepiece played back the recording in his left eye, and with his right he frantically punched in the code as he saw it being played back. There was a loud clunk as a massive locking mechanism pulled back and the door opened. Ricky pushed it closed behind him just as another drone came around for a strafing run. A few bullets whizzed by his head as he slammed the door and heard the lock re-engage. Hopefully, it would take them a little while to bypass the locks and get in.

Ricky turned around to see if the other two were still nearby. This building was set up like a large square, there were shops lining the outer wall, and a park in the middle.

“Thermal.” Ricky spoke, his voice activated HUD instantly turned to an infrared display. He saw the faint images of a heat signature going towards an elevator and stopped. They had only been a few minutes ahead of him, and the heat signature was still strong enough to make out clearly.

Ricky ran that direction and stopped at the elevator. They were already aboard, traveling up to the towers above. Ricky pulled up his virtual keyboard and began trying to hack into the elevator computers. After several tries, he realized that he would not be able to get into the system before it made it to its destination. Instead he hacked into the onboard security camera.

“Access camera.” Ricky’s HUD brought up a list of drop-down commands. “View.” He commanded as he navigated to the correct channel. The building’s security cameras were using an old type of wireless signal, easy to connect to.

The HUD in his eyepiece changed to the camera view in the elevator. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the image of the female Foxen and Jardan the street performer inside, waiting for their floor. The view from the camera was a poor resolution, and he began working to make the connection more stable, at first thinking a bad connection may be to blame but soon realized that the camera was just probably at least sixty years old and cheaply manufactured.

Ricky managed to zoom in and clean up the frames slightly, not enough to make out very many details of the occupants, but enough to see the one thing he needed to see, the holo-display next to the door that tracked and read the floor number. When it finally stopped and they got out, he saw a twenty-five clearly. Ricky then ran over to another lift and pushed the service button. The doors open and he got in, just as his view screen began lighting up little diamond shapes at the entrance to show that several security units were entering the building through the front doors.

Pushing the two and then the five, the doors closed, and a strange sensation rocked him as the elevator began to lift upwards. This elevator technology must have been truly ancient as it started crawling upwards through the shaft. It clearly was not magnetic technology or even advanced hover tech. It was simply being pulled up by a thick cable along a fixed rail. Ricky found a handle to grip and tried not to think about cables breaking or falling to a fiery death.

It seemed like it took the elevator forever to reach the twentieth floors, he stared at the display as they ticked away one number at a time. Eventually his ride came to an end and the doors opened. Stepping out, Ricky thanked his fortunes that the rickety old thing had held up. He looked around at the run-down tenement block he was now in. The apartments were stacked three stories tall on either side of a commons walkway down the middle.

There was no natural lighting, only some lights next to some of the doorways to the apartments and spaced apart high overhead were industrial lights that shed some dim light down from far above. This was where it was going to get tricky, he thought, since there were no longer any reliable heat signatures to follow, and he was not even sure where the other elevator that the others had taken came out.

“Boys.” Ricky spoke into their private channel. A long silence followed, and he began to get worried. In his haste to follow the Foxen, he had not stopped to make sure his brothers had made it to safety.

“Rick. Where’d you go?” Rocco was the first to answer.

Ricky brought up his 3d holographic interface and a sat map of the surrounding area. With a few twists and buttons, he punched in commands to bring up the GPS of his brothers’ net-comm units. Two red dots began blinking on his virtual screen.

“I see you guys. Why are you still outside? Are you still trying to get away?”

“We managed to get away. We slid out into a little industrial district. We’re actually just a few streets away from that row of bars we were in earlier.”

“Are they still after you?”

“A lot of them came after you. I hope you got a plan to get out of there, because a whole squad came in through the front door to the place you ran into. It looked surrounded when we left.”

“Bloody great.”

“Rocky’s trying to figure out how we can get through to the bar district. We still have a few groups following us. We figure if we can melt in with the locals in the bar district, we may be able to get back to Towerview Center with some drunks going home or something.”

“I didn’t even see which one I’m in now. I think…” Ricky moved around the 3d GPS map, pulling the view down to street level and turning it around to look at the building. “Golden Groves. That’s where I am.”

“Do you need us to find a way up to you?” Rocky now joined in the conversation.

“No. Get to safety. I’ll rendezvous with you two later. For now, I have someone to find first.”

Ricky closed his 3d interface after dialing up the ambient night vision on his monocle’s display. He could now see slightly better in the dim corridors of habitation blocks. He traveled down the walkway, taking note of his surroundings and anything that may be a clue to his target’s whereabouts. There were few people outside of their habitats on this end of the street, but he could make out a few groups of what appeared to be younger Titans down the hall. He kept alert as he moved, they were possibly gangs, he figured.

The current block of habitats ended and a new one began, just like the last one, three rows high with the doors all facing the common walkway in the middle. This row was better lighted, and the first group of young Titans saw him as he approached. At the same time, he saw a small enclosure along the outer wall, the elevator that Amiga and the comedian had taken up to this floor, he realized.

“You lost ‘tardo?” One of the young punks called out to him. Ricky ignored it as he scanned the area with his eyes, trying to guess the best direction they might have traveled.

He could not ignore it for long though. The young punk began making his way towards him, and several of his friends joined close behind. He knew their type, truthfully, he and his brothers had been his type not too many years ago back home in Gunrock. Full to the brim of anger and alpha testing each other and ready to make a name for themselves. They were in the wrong place to make a name for themselves, Ricky thought, and if they were about to start something with him, they definitely had the wrong Titan to try to make a name off of.

“Did you fellas see a pretty young Foxen come through here a few minutes ago with another guy?”

Ricky made note of the cocky look that the leader cast aside to his followers, they all seemed to exchange a knowing look towards each other for the briefest of moments. A less streetwise Titan would have missed the gesture, but not Ricky. Good, he thought, they must know something about her. It was just now a matter of whether they would willingly give this information to him, or whether he would have to do something terrible to them in order to force them. The suspense was suddenly unbearable.

“Look guys, let me save you a little trouble here. You guys are coming over here, with your puffed-out pack mentality, wanting to run some dominance game over me in order to inflate your own egos. Well let’s just skip that and you just tell me what you know about that Foxen and where I can find her. Okay?”

The lead Titan gang member barked an immature laugh and exchanged another look with his friends, probably reassuring himself that he had what he thought was ample support behind him. Not nearly ample enough.

“Why don’t I save you some time and give me what you got? We’re gonna take it anyway.”

“Pup, this just isn’t gonna go the way you had thought.” Ricky smiled and waved him closer with his fingers into his palms.

Ricky let the kit make the first move and expose himself. Ricky and his brothers were not professionals in fighting or warfare, but the experience that they each held made up for it. Gunrock was not nearly as civilized a place as this, and adulthood was not granted freely to anyone unlike most of the civilized world, you had to fight for it. Many did not see adulthood in Gunrock, the percentage that did were tough and seasoned. You purchased adulthood with blood in Gunrock.

The kid threw a sloppy punch that was telegraphed for a blind Titan to see. Ricky used as little energy as possible to move aside, letting the tough guy swing through the air and fall off balance. That’s when he went into action, striking three times in the ribs and grabbing his wrist before the kit could react. With a violent twist, Ricky snapped the kit’s wrist and brought him to the ground. He turned to face the other four that were coming ahead now, faces contorted with anger.

One of them extended a baton similar to Rocco’s only it did not electrify. Ricky stepped aside and drove a knee up into his breadbasket, and then dropped him with a viscous head-butt. The next one was much bigger than he was and went for a grapple. Ricky leaped and wrapped himself around the big ganger’s arm. They both fell to the ground with the Gunrock Procyon controlling the younger Titan’s arm and shoulder joint. The guy screamed as both were painfully manipulated. Ricky rolled aside as another one went for a soccer kick as he was on the ground, the kick connected to his friend instead and Ricky came back up now armed with a baton.

He did not wait or ask permission to take the offensive. He charged ahead at the two still on their feet, twirling and looking for openings as they tried to put up meagre defenses blocking with their arms. Ricky did not care what he connected with, arms, shoulders, ribs, it all hurt just the same. He connected to a head and that Titan took a forced nap. Suddenly the biggest Titan grabbed him from behind, so intent on his attack he was not paying close enough attention to his flank. The Titan lifted him off his feet and swung him around.

The leader was back on his feet, holding his broken wrist and wincing with pain. He made a gesture as the others began getting to their feet as well.

“Get that sucker.”

The Felid that had brought the baton began slamming wild fists into Ricky’s stomach. He tensed and tried to protect himself from the blows as best he could, but they still connected. He threw his head back again and again, feeling the back of his head connect with the front of the big ganger’s face. He felt that iron grip loose just enough. He latched his sharp incisors into the arm holding him and bit down hard enough to draw blood. The grab was now loose enough for him to get an elbow up and smash it repeatedly into his face.

The big Titan was woozy but not down. He wound up to throw a knockout blow, but Ricky was like a greased lightning bolt. Ricky kicked the side of his knee. The Titan went down, and Ricky followed with another leaping downward blow with his elbow, putting him down for a nap with his other ganger buddy.

Another wild punch struck him in the side of his face and Ricky spun around. Stars floated in his vision momentarily. A viscous exchange of blows followed between the two Titans, and Ricky chose to absorb what came his way in favor of striking precision power blows from experienced fists. The Titan went for a low grab and carried Ricky into the nearest wall. The breath was driven from his lungs, but he did not lose focus. Ricky managed to twist around and gain head control of his opponent, A moment later he bashed the ganger’s unprotected face into the wall several times until he stopped fighting back.

Ricky spun back to the two remaining on their feet. The leader was now holding the baton in his still good hand, the other launched forward into a leading punch. Ricky stepped aside exactly like he had the first punch thrown and raised a knee hard into his ribs. The Titan stepped back and tried to retaliate but Ricky was too fast and too aggressive. He launched a kick into the Titan’s family jewels that put him down whimpering.

Now it was just the leader left and Ricky circled him. The leader of the little gang began twirling the baton, maybe an attempt to show his proficiency with the weapon and intimidate his opponent? Ricky snarled and growled. The other growled back and they both attacked. A desperate exchange followed, bloody and brutal, fangs and fists flying, and when it was over, Ricky was mounted on top of the leader.

“What do you know about Amiga?” He roared.

“I ain’t tellin’ you nothing.”

“I tried to give you the option to skip all this, now I’m giving you another chance. You see, I’m about to start breaking your fingers, one by one. Then I’m going to dig your eyes out of their sockets. Then I’m going to keep going, hurting you in as many nasty ways as I can imagine until you tell me what I need to know.”

The conviction in the seemingly rabid Titan’s voice along with the display he had just given, beating his entire crew made the gang leader seem to drop his ego. He blinked up at him a few times, not wanting to feel more of his wrath.

“Would you rather skip that part?” Ricky dug his claws into the other’s throat while hanging a threatening fist above his head, an unspoken promise to bring it crashing down soon.

“Yeah ok. The Foxen has a hideout on the other side. Section 4. I don’t know the exact hab-unit.”

Ricky rose to his feet without another word. He reached a hand down to his fallen enemy. The young tough was reluctant at first but slowly wrapped his good hand around the forearm presented. With a heave Ricky helped him to his feet. He then pulled his gun belt around to the side, to display the holster that had been behind him.

“I know you need to make a name, and to protect your turf. But be careful who you decide to attack and be smart. Me and my boys would always watch our marks first. Make sure they weren’t armed, make sure they didn’t have friends around the corner. Don’t look at this as a loss, view this as a lesson and be better next time.”

Ricky nodded to the kid who seemed a little confused at the advice and the lack of hard feelings from the older Titan. Nobody had ever shown him generosity such as this before, and his maw curled into a smile despite himself. He nodded back.

Ricky was moving down the hall before he thought about something else. Turning back toward the leader who was beginning to help the others up, he yelled back. “A group of Zenith Corp soldiers are coming, and they won’t be friendly.”

The young Titan nodded back as Ricky disappeared down the hall and passed a large park surrounded by a shopping plaza and eateries in the center of this floor. All sections of the housing units branched off from here. A sign led the way above, pointing the direction to the various sections. He had apparently come from section two and he turned his head towards an arrow pointing to four. As he ran, the building’s PA broadcast system wide.

“This is Corps Commander Bratliv, we are quarantining this building until further notice. Several agitators have fled here and are currently hiding within these walls. Surrender now rebels, you are surrounded and there is no escape.”

There were loud clunks as metal plating began shifting and moving, blocking off all exits.

“We will search every domicile and habitat here until we find these Titans. We encourage the populace to cooperate in their apprehension to avoid further unpleasantries.”