Chapter 371
Rain drizzled down the early morning streets of northern Little Yukoto. Neon signs flickered up and down the place like the power might cut out at any moment. The car’s engine abruptly cut off, and I stepped out of the cruiser onto the abandoned street. There was no one out and about ‘cept us Crusaders.
“Must’ve heard us coming.” Hope brushed her black hair out of her face and reached up to adjust her mask. “Funny how quickly we can clear the streets.”
”Can you blame them?” I shuffled around to the back of the car and grabbed a rifle. We weren’t expecting any resistance, but it never hurt to be prepared for the worst.
“If they didn’t do illegal things, they wouldn’t need to hide.” Hope shrugged. She had a point, but unfortunately the world didn’t work like that. The Crusade was known for brutality and getting things done no matter what. It wasn’t exactly a stellar reputation.
Up on one fourth floor of the building in question, a curtain was pulled to the side and a half-chrome face glared down on us. It vanished just as quickly as I noticed it. “Well, they know we’re here.”
“‘Course they do. You ready for this one, Z—Shiro?” Hope stretched out and cut out a yawn.
”Are you? You look like you might fall over at any minute.” I nudged her arm with my shoulder and leaned against the car with my arms and rifle tucked under my poncho. The cold drizzle caught on it and dripped to the crumbling street below.
”I didn’t get much sleep last night.” Hope tore off her mask and rubbed at her eyes. They were back to that slight dead fish look. Or maybe they’d been like that for a while, and I just missed it thanks to her mask.
”I didn’t either.” I was up all night working on my Roughriders. Three of them were done. The one for the knight, the Jade Fang, and Uncle Ezra were ready to go. I still had one I needed to make for Mira on top of that. “How far behind us were they?”
“Should be—ah, there they are now.” Hope nodded down the street. Engines growled, and several heavy armored trucks prowled down the road like sharks circling chum. As soon as they pulled into a park, doors burst open and Crusaders spilled out in a mess of swords, rifles, and silver.
They didn’t wait for any fancy speeches, and instead directly moved on to the building in front of us. It was a worn down looking slum dwelling that seemed like it might collapse at any moment. That little fact didn’t make the Knights go any easier. The one at the front slammed the door with his foot, and it flew off its hinges into the building. A flashbang followed a moment later, and the Knights and their squires poured into the place.
”I hope the runners were right about this, Shiro.” Hope crossed her arms. “If I get fired because we were sent on a wild goose chase, I’ll hunt Lavender down myself.”
Is she mocking me? Nah, surely not, right. There was something a little more uncomfortable to focus on, anyway. “You sure that’s wise?”
“Hunting him down—“
”Calling me Shiro.” I quickly cut clarified while I watched muzzle flashes through the windows. Something exploded, and glass rained out onto the street alongside a small purple fireball. Lavender’s work by the look of things.
”If anyone asks, it’s a nickname since you have white hair.” She nodded to the loose strands of silver streaked through my black bangs. “Or close enough.”
”As long as you’re not worried about it.” I pointed to a set of cameras that looked extremely out of place on the rundown building. ”Those look brand new. There’s something here at least.”
”Just not our traitor.” Hope ran a hand through her hair once more and started to pace back and forth in front of me.
”Ligh’s personally going to taking care of him.” I got hit with the brief shortly after meeting up with my Inquisitor. It wound up being some assistant to the vice-commander that I’d never met. It wasn’t that surprising, really. I didn’t spend near enough time around the Crusade to know everyone. If Ligh was on the case, he’d probably not only bring down the traitor, but a whole contingent of them.
“I feel a bit bad about her sister.” Apparently, the traitor’s sister was super sick. Some kind of cyber rejection. That was the leverage Lavender used on her, and likewise what ultimately pointed out the traitor out from the data we collected.
”I don’t.” Hope snorted coldly. “Our insurance extends to family. Should’ve just taken her sister to Medtech.”
”Sometimes it’s not that easy.” Could’ve been a ton of reasons why the assistant acted the way she did. It didn’t matter at the end of the day. A traitor was a traitor—especially one who repeatedly sabotaged Crusader interests. “Now, will you chill out?”
“Easy for you to say…” She threw her hands up into the air, though didn’t stop pacing. She rubbed at the crook of her elbow, and winced slightly. For the briefest of moments, I thought I caught a tang of blood. It faded just as quickly.
”Are you—you want to go in there, don’t you?” I nodded my head to the building. Lights flashed on the third floor, and a scattering of bullets crossed the street and slammed into the opposite building. Each impact made small sprays of dust and debris.
Hope paused mid step and looked toward the building. “Am I that obvious?”
”The robots didn’t get that combat itch of yours?” I’d long known she was a battle nut. A bit like Mira in that regard… I could totally introduce them to each other, couldn’t I? Now that my identity was exposed, there wasn’t much holding me back. They’d probably get along together frighteningly well. I wasn’t sure if I wanted my two worlds to collide like that quite yet, though.
“Not with Lavender getting away.” She groaned and collapsed back onto the car to lean beside me.
”Oh… sorry.” There was so much going on… I should’ve hit him with a tracker or something. Err—I needed to make one in the first place. Maybe some kind of magnetically attached throwable disc? It’d work well with Throwing Weapon Master.
“Don’t apologize. You made the right call to go after the data instead of him. It was just a bit… anti-climatic?” Hope reached into the cruiser through the windows and pulled out a cup of coffee to sip on. “‘Sides, you see what that bastard did to Phyxaflame?”
The entire HQ was burned down, as well as several smaller repair shops scattered around the place last night. He’d cleaned his tracks well. The kind of data we wanted likely didn’t survived the purple blazes that the madman created. Worse than that, there were no clues on what his next plan was.
“He’ll probably lay low for a while,” I suggested. “We did a number on his suit. He’ll probably need a techie to fix it up.”
“The analysts said the same thing.” Hope sipped at her coffee and started to fidget again like a crackhead. “Waiting for him to attack again doesn’t sit right with me.
I shrugged. Unless the Netrunner’s got a hit, there wasn’t much more we could do. He was a ghost in the wind at the moment after cleaning his hands of his insider in the Crusade. “Will you sit still? You’re stressing me out.”
“We should be up there.” Hope pointed up toward a shadow flicking across one of the broken windows. “‘This is our case.”
“And we will be just as soon as they’re done.” I sighed and rubbed my hands together. As far as I knew, Ligh ordered the strike to give us a bit of a rest after the fiasco at the water purification plant. Not that I minded. I was much happier out here away from the bullet sprays. “How’s Garrick?”
”He’s already got a new arm. Ligh personally paid for one.” My inquisitor sighed and slumped back against the side of the cruiser next to me. “Have you thought about it?”
“A bit.” I instantly locked onto what she was talking about. “I think—could I stay as just Zuku in the files? Shiro Tsukuyomi is a bit complicated.”
”The CEO of Cold Moon Solutions, huh? Never thought I’d be next to someone so high and mighty.” Hope nudged my arm and hopped up onto the hood of the cruiser with her legs dangling.
“Please.” I laughed and shook my head. Figures she looked me up. Can’t really blame her. “If you did that much research, you should know I have almost nothing to my name.”
“True… That’s fine. I’ll talk to Ligh about it and see what we can do.” She glanced back toward the building and forced herself to look away. “What are your plans for that, anyway?”
”I’m going to sell flyers.” She’d find out anyway, so there was no point keeping it a secret. Especially since I was about to hand over my first flyer to a knight just as soon as Saint got back to me with a contract. “Why? You want one?”
”If I can afford it, which I probably can’t.” She sighed and nodded to me. “How’d you get into that field, anyway? You design them yourself?”
“My grandfather left a bunch of blueprints for that kind of stuff before he died.” No way was I going to expose my level of technical skills. At least, not yet. I exposed myself, but that didn’t mean I wanted to give away my life's story. Especially not with all the illegal stuff I got up to in my free time.
”Sounds like he was a wise man.”
”Very.” Sorry, grandpa. I’ll have to use your name for a bit. And he really was a wise guy. He was the lead designer for most of the stuff Cold Moon Solutions used to pump out back before he died… I missed him. Then my parents died. Kuzo took over and destroyed the company by shifting the direction like an idiot.
We chatted for a bit until one of the knights popped out of the door and waved us over. “Clear!”
”It's about time.” Hope hopped off the cruiser and stalked across the street with her trench coat flapping behind her.
Inside the building, shouts and aggravated cries echoed off the bricks. Suspects were zip-tied and left standing out in the halls, watched closely by squires. Most of them looked like druggies one wrong step off an OD instead of being involved in this, but they’d all probably be booked and searched for a connection thanks to their proximity. It was a case of wrong place, wrong time.
”What are we looking at?” Hope asked the knight who waves us in,
”The first and second floors are a drug den for a local gang. From the third to fifth, though, it's some kind of private storage facility.” The knight nodded to a set of stairs running up through the middle of the place. “No elevator.”
”’Course there isn’t,” I muttered under my breath.
The stairs cut off on the third floor, and things abruptly changed. There were a dozen or so corpses. They looked like gang members, but their equipment was a bit too clean and uniform to really pull off the look. Typical case of higher ups thinking they can imitate a gang without any issue. A couple knights moved about and disassembled automatic rifles.
”Look like mercenaries.” Hope crouched down next to one and looked over the ballistic armor. “What do you think?”
”I think whoever set this up had a lot of money to dump.” This rundown building had a completely new security system and a mercenary group protecting it. That couldn’t have been cheap.
The rest of the third floor looked like some kind of office and security space. A secluded staircase near the back led up to the last two floors. The apartments had been gutted and fused together into a single warehouse room covered in closed crates.
One of them had been knocked off a shelf during the raid, and shattered against the ground. Dozens of pistols spilled out alongside the shattered plastic. “Some kind of armory?”
”I don’t think so.” Hope pulled one of her silver knives out and popped open another crate. This one was stuffed full of drugs. “More like illicit storage.”
“Think it's a fixer's place?” Or maybe some kind of fence? If so, they were going to be pissed about the Crusade hitting their storage facility. There wasn’t much dust collecting on the racks, so they must’ve just set this place up before we hit it.
I flicked on Aetherial Perception out of habit, and caught several blips of aetherially active substances spread out throughout the storage facility. It looked like whoever owned this was into all sorts of goods. Maybe it was a new vendor attracted by the AEZ?
”Found it!” An excited shout came from one of the knights. There were several of them moving around and cracking open crates.
Hope and I moved over to him just as he pulled a silver Crusade chest plate out of the box and lifted it back up into the light. It still had bullet marks from the knight's last fight.
Hope immediately stopped another knight from likewise picking up a piece of chrome. “Put it back down, idiot. Didn’t anyone teach you the importance of preserving fingerprints?”
“Sorry, sorry.” The guy carefully set the chest plate back into the crate and rubbed at the back of his head. “I was just making sure it was real.”
I shuffled over and looked through the crate. Our missing armor was definitely here. “Does anyone have the manifest?”
“I got it.” Hope pulled out her phone and scrolled through it. I shifted from foot to foot while she checked to make sure that was all of it. “Something wrong?”
“Did we really just find it? Just like that?” It just felt a bit… I dunno. Maybe if I was part of the strike team that took out the mercs I’d feel a bit different? Was I really that blood-thirsty? Or was I too used to nothing in life being easy?
Hope tapped her phone a couple times and then nodded to the knights. They carefully resealed the crate. “I want five of you to watch this at all times. If even one piece vanishes—“
”We won’t let it happen, Inquisitor Hope.” One of the knights thumped his gauntlet to his chest and lightly tapped the crate of armor. “Our brothers and sisters won’t be desecrated again.”
“Good.” Hope nodded to me and headed back to the stairs. “Well, what did you expect? That's just how most cases are. Not everyone’s a criminal mastermind.”
“I guess.” I still had a few questions, but we did have the armor and traitor. That's all we needed to find at the end of the day. The culprit behind all of this o would be dug out soon enough too. “Now what?”
Hope shrugged. ”Now I have to call Ligh and get the runners digging into whoever owns this place. Our part is just about done.”
“What about Joshua and Dev?” Last I heard they got into trouble in Sunderland. Maybe we could fly out and support—
”They’re on the way back.” Hope clapped my shoulder. “And the hunt for Lavender got moved to the Special Crimes Division. We’re free. Another job well done, Shiro.”
”I guess.” I pulled at my ballistic vest and shook my head. Right, I was just overthinking things. Not everything could end with a blaze of glory. Some flames just went out silently in the night. I followed her back out to the car.
— - —
AN: That’s the end of this arc. I have a couple things I want to say, but what did you think about it? It wasn’t the best I’ve ever written, and it reminded me a lot of the arc where Shiro and Mira first went into the Underground to be honest. I’d planned on Lavender getting away from the get go so that I could have a returning antagonist. That’s something I feel Outrun’s been a bit weak on. The original write was a bit dull, but the rewrite felt so much better.
I also kinda really liked the wrap up chapter at the end of this one. I dunno though…
And! Now that I’m no longer rewriting the next couple chapters, I don’t feel bad advertising anymore. I have a ! If you’d like to read ahead, want a more direct line to me, or anything like that, go check it out. Outrun’s 19 chaps ahead there, you can read ahead on Myth//OS, and check out my newest series I’m working on! Monster evo with a snow fox MC, btw.
.com/lostrain
As always, thank you for reading!