Fox and Ultraman walked into the room where they kept the Skulljacks. The men looked thin and shaky. They glared at the masked people confronting them.

“I am Fox,” said Fox, hands in her sleeves. “This is Ultraman. The Pythons were hired to kill one of your members. Do you know why?”

“That's rot,” said one of the Jacks. “They always wanted our turf. They saw a chance and took it.”

“We have one of them,” said Fox. “He gave us the name of the man who took the contract. We're looking for him right now.”

“Why should we believe you?,” said the other man.

“Because the next step is to let Luna come in here with her slimes and let them feed on you,” said Fox. “After all, it won't hurt us if you disappear forever.”

“And the great and mighty Luna is a little angry at what you did to Jumbo,” said Ultraman. “She might want to do more than feed you to her summons.”

“Be that as it may, we need you to talk to your group and tell them to pull in until we find the Python who took the deal, and the man who wants you two fighting,” said Fox. “Then we will see about getting you repayment for what happened.”

“So we're supposed to forget they shot at us over a car?,” said the second man. “We need more than that.”

“We're hoping to find the contractor and letting you have him,” said Fox. “If that is not worth a few days, then we should turn Luna loose and see how much damage she can really do.”

“You guys will miss all of that because you will be the first in the meat tanks,” said Ultraman. “Good luck being digested. Slimes can take days to take you apart and you'll feel everything.”

“There won't be anything left of you to identify,” said Fox. “It will look like some rival took care of you two after your escape from Luna. No one will ever expect that she hunted you down and dissolved you.”

“If we go that route,” said Ultraman. “We might have to feed your friends in too. Luna will love that most of all.”

“We can relay the message, but we can't guarantee there won't be more,” said the first man. “Jerome was plenty mad someone shot at him at his club. He might not want to back down from this.”

“If that's the best we can do, we will take that,” said Fox. “Ultraman will drop you anywhere you want to go in the city. If you can keep the fighting down, we will not turn Luna loose on your gang.”

“What if they come at us?,” said the second man. “Can we shoot back?”

“Yes,” said Fox. “Shooting back is all right. Don't try to use that to violate our agreement.”

“When we find the man who made the deal, we will let you know who he is,” said Ultraman.

“All right,” said the first man. “We'll talk to Jerome and see if we can get him to wait things out.”

“Thank you very much,” said Fox. She put them both to sleep in a cloud of smoke.

“Let me drop them off where they can walk home,” said Ultraman. “Hopefully they will stay out of trouble while we do what can to keep the peace.”

He picked the two men up and slung them over his shoulders. He flew to the upper exit and took to the air over the city. He descended on where he thought the Pythons controlled the local streets. He dropped the men there and flew back to the Tower.

Vizor, Luna, and Sana were squeezing the Python for what they could get out of him. They needed to know what Buckshot's car looked like so they could hunt it down.

Then they needed to squeeze him for what he knew about the man who hired him.

The rest would depend on what the Pythons and Skulljacks decided to do. They might declare a peace.

He thought it more likely they would find another reason to fight and have at it again. There was nothing he could do about that except test their resolve with a dangerous Luna in their midst.

It wouldn't be the first time they had decided to feed the slimes with people they hated.

The slimes loved it.

Ultraman joined the rest of the group outside of their prisoner's cell. Luna hopped for joy. Sana and Vizor looked dubious.

“We have a small lead,” said Vizor. “The guy travels around on the highway like Luna thought. He's driving a neo cadillac. Only he's not the one doing the actual driving. It's being done by a bot.”

“It's been programmed to evade and escape anyone trying to run from it,” said Luna. “We have to hit it point blank so it doesn't roll over, and escape from us.”

“We can stop it,” said Ultraman. “How do we make Buckshot talk?”

“I say we give him over to the Skulljacks and see what they can do with him,” said Vizor.

“That would almost certainly lead to his execution,” said Ultraman. “I think we can do better than that.”

“Should we?,” asked Fox. “Taking the contract led to a battle in a club full of people. There should be some kind of payment for that.”

“I think we should wait until we have him in hand before we start thinking about what we want,” said Fox.

“We need to find the car first as part of the plan,” said Sana. “Vizor thinks he can hack the highway cameras to find a real position of our target. Then we would have to get him.”

“Depending on where he is, we would have to move fast if we wanted to catch him,” said Vizor.

“I can catch him if you can find out where he is,” said Ultraman.

“The car will probably be moving fast,” said Vizor.

“I will be moving in a straight line across the city,” said Ultraman. “As long as he stays on the tracks, the rest will be easy.”

“Let's find a place Vizor can hack,” said Fox. “The night is fleeing from us. We need to have something before the sun comes up and I have to put my mask down.”

“Right,” said Vizor. “At least no one else started shooting at each other.”

“We don't know that,” said Fox. “There might be dead bodies from other contracts that we didn't stop.”

“There is nothing to be done about that,” said Luna. “The great and mighty Luna can only save people in her line of sight. Everyone else needs to fend for themselves.”

“I hate to admit it but Luna is right,” said Sana. “We can't save everyone. We have to try to save the ones we can.”

“We need to find a camera to hack,” said Fox. “How do we do that?”

“They are marked on infrastructure maps,” said Vizor. “Those maps ride on the net. Which means I can look at them at any time. Are we riding together?”

“I think all of you should ride together while I take to the air,” said Ultraman. “That way I can dial in on Buckshot's car and move on it as fast as I can fly.”

“What if you need help?,” asked Luna.

“I will fall back and regroup,” said Ultraman.

“All right,” said Vizor. “Let me call the van and we'll go.”

“The great and mighty Luna calls shotgun,” said Luna. She hopped up and down in her excitement.

“Fox and I will take the back,” said Sana. “We can use that for a platform to throw our spells.”

“Ultraman should be able to take on a car,” said Fox.

“I'm more worried about what could be with the car,” said Sana.

“I'll concede that,” said Fox.

Vizor led the way to the elevator. They had put it in to use the secret rooms in the Tower for their base. This allowed them to use a room next to the garage as their personal parking place. They took the elevator down to the the garage so they could take the exit on the street and drive to the closest part of the highway that encircled the city.

Vizor activated the controls with his implants as they crossed the space to the parked battlewagon. He opened the doors for them as he climbed up behind the wheel. He could drive with his brain, but he wanted to be able to reach the controls in case of an emergency.

Luna climbed up in the shotgun seat. She looked like a little kid in the big chair. She closed the door.

Fox and Sana took the back seats. They had two side doors and two back doors to shoot their spells from if there was trouble.

This part should be quiet. If they had to resort to violence trying to find a car, then they might as well give in their adventurer licenses and go back to menial side jobs being held down by the man.

“Let's get this show on the road,” said Luna. “The great and mighty Luna doesn't look this good because she doesn't sleep.”

“Beauty sleep,” said Vizor. “You must try to sleep a lot.”

“All the time,” said Luna. “Jeeves is a good pillow.”

“I'll bet,” said Vizor. He drove out of the secret room after checking for people in the garage. The group didn't want others to find the secret rooms in the walls where they conducted their business.

Eventually someone would figure it out. There was no way to prevent it with their lifestyles. They just wanted to keep it as long as they could before the authority forced them out of the place and they had to look for something new.

Vizor already had a small backup place on the edge of the city if they did lose the Tower. It needed work, but the outside shell looked innocent enough.

A few underground tunnels, some work on the electricity and water, and some fresh mats should be enough of a start until the group made it theirs like the Tower was.

Vizor picked streets that paralleled the highway walls from the outside until he saw what he was looking for. He pulled to a stop next to a light post on the other side of the wall. This was the part he didn't like.

He got out of the van and looked for people looking at him before he walked to the wall. He inspected the thing for handholds before deciding to use climbing gear in his arm to get over the wall and drop down by the light pole. He used the multitool built into his arm to hack the gear and feed it to the computer in the van. He closed everything up and climbed back to drop down to the regular street outside the wall.

“We're good to go,” said Vizor. “Let's start looking for the right car.”

The numerous views of the multiple cameras lining the road filled the central computer screen. It took a few minutes, but Fox saw the car rolling along there.

“There it is,” said Fox. She pointed at the screen. “It's heading toward the Lower Belly.”

Ultraman took off toward that part of the city.