Lani leapt through the window as she observed the man with his hand cupping the teens breast, as he choked her screams away. “Excuse me motherfucker!” she shouted as she made her way through the glass of the window and snatched the man by his belt, throwing him towards the window. As the man slammed his way through the rest of the window glass and down from the second floor to the ground, Lani gave a look to the girl, a soft smile. She said no words to her before leaping back out the window and landing next to her prey.

Michael shoved his equipment into the back seat of his getaway vehicle. An old suburban, armor fitted with a ballistic windshield, armored seats and some blast proofing in the undercarriage. The engine was very well customized to efficiently move this metal box at high rates of speed. The fuel tank was enhanced beyond the normal 40 gallons of diesel that it was meant to hold, though Michael had stored fifteen spare gallons of fuel on board. The reinforced run-flat tires were dual purpose, for highway comfort while being able to leave pavement at will. He hadn’t lifted the truck, though it naturally sat high enough to cross country his ride as he saw fit. He started it up, with the soft purr of a well silenced diesel that it made with the high end muffling technology that he had installed to keep his truck from being the attention getter that most super trucks were.

He came around the corner to see Lani kicking the ribs in on this man who had just been thrown through the window. He could hear Lani’s loud roaring voice as she loomed over her prey. “I’m gonna do what I want with you!” “You’re too weak to stop me!” “You’re so cute on the ground!” and “Shut the fuck up with that crying shit!” resounded clearly through the air of at least four front yards.

Michael noticed the front door looked as though it had been forced into. He looked up to see the young girl sticking her head out to watch Lani brutalize the almost-rapist. He got out of his vehicle and walked briskly into the house and up to the girl. The girl stood there looking at Michael with confusion. He spoke softly to her, “This wasn’t your fault, you didn’t ask for this.”

The girl began to sob as she nodded. “Thank you,” she managed to say as she pushed words through tears.

“You have to call the police,” Michael said sternly, “They have to know what happened.”

The girl shook her head. “No, I can’t do that,” muttering through stammered words and more tears, “your friend,”

Michael interrupted. “We’re effectively exempt from the battery charge someone might get.” They weren’t, but they had more ways to stay out of trouble than the average person. “We’re trained to know when to intervene, and you definitely needed intervention.” This was another lie, but Michael had to bullshit this girl so she’d do the right thing and keep herself from being silenced by fear. He turned and left quickly, he had one minute to be gone.

Lani looked deep into the man's eyes as he sobbed and struggled to breathe. “You’re lucky,” she said through her teeth as she scowled hatefully at him, “I have reservations to be somewhere or I’d make ‘spit on your grave’ look like a goddamn family movie!” She cocked her foot back and kicked the man in his head. In field goal fashion, his head detached and smashed into the door frame of the teen girls house. Lani grinned with excitement as she turned and got in the suburban.

Michael accelerated down the street as he handed Lani a towel and a plastic bag to clean the blood from her shoes. He scanned the area in front of himself as he drove the lightly enforced speed limit out of the neighborhood. The target was killed, a child was preserved and they were gone before law enforcement could respond to the potential shot-spotter alert.

As the suburban drove away, gray in color with minimal noise for its size, someone had watched from the safety of obscurity. This was not a child, but she had a very youthful face and long black hair. She was barely over five feet tall, and had very slender dimensional measurements. She wore a dark blue dress that reached just below her knee, with high topped cloth boots that reached the edge of her dress. What couldn’t be seen was the black yoga style leggings underneath, or the blades that sat on her hips. Her skin was pale, her eyes were black and her face was void of emotion. She wore no kind of makeup, and the only decorative thing she did was wear a black bow in her hair.

She watched the entire incident, and stood in dead silence with perfect stillness. Many things were going through her mind, but an observer would never know that she was capable of thought, much less movement. After watching the suburban leave the area, her lips parted and a word escaped in a whisper. “Home.”

In the meantime, Michael continued to put a great amount of distance between his vehicle and the area they had just left behind. He glanced over to Lani as she cleaned off her boots. Thoughts and words stirred, he struggled to pick which ones to say. Lani looked up at him and started giggling. “Michael,” she said softly, “you have that look.”

He raised an eyebrow and wondered. “The fuck are you talking about?” he asked in a low tone.

“You’re doing that thinking thing that you act like you don’t do.” She handed him a water bottle with the lid removed. “You need this,” she said with a gentle sternness, “then I can give you caffeine.”

“What we need,” Michael began to say as he took the water, “is to get in contact with dipshit and let him know that the chief distributor of that stupid hyperdrug is in the next life without a brain stem.” He drank the water down almost instantly before crushing the bottle down and putting the lid back on it. He turned on the music and smiled. “I’m proud of you Lani.”

Lani was caught off guard. Simple emotional expressions were not easy for Michael, which meant to her that if he was saying this, that he was thinking about something. “Yeah?” she answered, “what are you proud of?”

“If I didn’t have you with me, that girl would have suffered a fate worse than death.” Michael uttered this in a flat tone, locking his eyes forward. He had begun to take deep considerations on their next move while Lani sent an encrypted message to Bernard.