Steal and replace.

The moon rose over the skyscrapers in Podrido city, that was when she woke up, that was when she was to begin her mission. She immediately looked at her holographic wrist interface, expanding and closing the various hovering blue displays, checking if she had received any more instructions or been given any extra information. Nope, I guess everything is going as initially planned, she thought to herself. She then opened her home-hub app and set her speakers that rested on the sill next to her to shuffle music before closing the interface and have it collapse into the white bracer on her wrist. 

As the opening riffs played she waltzed over to her walk-in wardrobe and slipped on her dark jeans before tapping the screen that expanded the wardrobe into a circular room that was almost the size of her single room apartment. The grid of bright white lights on the ceiling flickered on and she stepped onto the metallic flooring with the introduction of percussion to the song. She looked at her beautiful collection on the wall in front of her, all the various weapons were hung on the wall by transparent plastic pegs, the beauty of both the collection and her were replicated across an infinite expanse of rooms on each of the mirrors on either side of the room. Hmm, what to take? She grabbed her essentials, her belt which she whipped around her jeans along with a disc containing her compressed board, then taking her plain and trusty pistol off of it’s peg. 

She really wanted to just take her entire arsenal somehow and cause as much immediate mayhem as possible for the Roedor company after all they did, but she knew what she had to do, take the damned KDKR Core from them and get out as efficiently as possible. This mission would help forge an alliance between her gang and a new company on the block, Gato. This alliance will allow her to destroy these vampires sucking the life out of the communities she loved so much from childhood, much worse than a single rampage. Plus there’s also the money it would bring to her, her little gang and the communities. Boy, I don’t even know where I’d start, she thought to herself as she began swaying side to side with the rising vocals as she twirled the gun around her finger before sliding it into it’s holster on her belt.

Okay, c’mon, time to think. She stared hard at the rack, trying hard not to slip into staring at it’s beauty once again. Pulse grenades would be good if she needed to cut the power to any security systems with the much more destructive plan B, she took two. A gripper would be very helpful if she couldn’t even get close enough for the pulse grenade but damn, it was so clunky and obvious that she just had to put it back. She sighed, only being able to fit a few magazines for her pistol that she’d only be using in the case of an emergency.

She exited the hidden room, and passed her hand over the screen once again to close it. She threw on a black t-shirt and a plain but stylish red leather jacket, before fitting a cap onto her head, dark ponytail through the back and a logo on the front, the logo for a new budding media site making their debut scientific company report. Today she wasn’t Jessica, the cool, confident and dare I say stunning leader of the rabbits, she was actually Amy, a nervous, energetic and still beautiful reporter for the Fantasma report, a small company climbing it’s way up the ladder.

She picked up her ID, media pass and a few tools this fictional reporter girl would use, and walked out of the door of her apartment.

****

‘Hello, Amy, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you!’ called Derrick, one of the higher ups of Roedor. He really put in some effort for this reveal event, his clothing was disgustingly clean and so was everything else about him as he stood before her smiling, like he hadn’t committed the many horrible acts she knew him for.

‘Oh my god. Hi Derrick!’ Amy waved frantically, giddily pacing toward him. 

They embraced before Derrick pushed her back, glaring into her eyes in excitement, ‘You ready to see our exciting new invention?’ 

‘Are you kidding me? Of course I am!’ she exclaimed, before sheepishly shifting her gaze away from him, ‘...Uh, could I get a look at where you’ll be revealing it?’ she prompted, returning her eyes to him in what was genuine anxiety.

‘Sure, but no peeking with whatever weird equipment you newer journalists are using nowadays, okay?’ he giggled.

‘Yeah, of course not!’ she nodded, smiling with relief and faux excitement.

Derrick walked her through the crowds in the hall they were in, eventually taking her through the violet curtains that lead to a second hall full of seats, at the bottom of the hall was a stage. He turned to her, ‘Come to the back and you’ll be able to look at it.’ grinning as he tilted his head toward the stage and began walking a little faster. Amy hurried to the stage with him, briefly checking her wrist interface to make certain she was using her device. Derrick paid no attention to her check, many of these younger people habitually checked their interfaces.

They were behind the curtains and there it was, a huge high quality plastic pillar of white with an opaque black window in its front. The KDKR Core couldn’t be seen until they disabled the opaque display, or if someone broke into it. She looked at the thing to analyse what security it had clearly installed, feigning awe as her eyes flickered to various subtle details of the mostly uniform pillar. ‘Wow! Can I please take a picture?’ She pleaded.

‘Oh, of course you can, you guys deserve this first scoop… Just be sure to hype this up as much as possible in this article!’ 

‘For sure! Would you mind getting into the photo?’ she requested as she raised her wrist toward the pillar.

‘Me, Really? It’d honestly be an honour.’ he danced giddily into frame as Amy lined up the shot and took two photos. The first being the one she would genuinely put in an article, the second being done with the weird equipment Derrick told her not to use, both taken at the same time so as not to rouse any suspicion in Derrick or any of the other workers prepping the event. I’ll be sure to drag you down especially, she thought. He couldn’t just trash communities and torture their inhabitants left and right without facing especially dire consequences.  

‘Okie, I’ll get to writing this article then… Got anywhere I could uhh, write it up?’ 

‘Sure, just go out of this hall, and up the stairs to the left there should be a nice quiet area to write everything up’

‘Thank you so much! One question…’ He nodded with a friendly smile once she paused, ‘How much involvement with this mystery project have you had and how do you feel about it?’

He waffled on about how much he worked on this project over the years, whilst trying not to give away the mystery. He talked about how much planning and management he had put into this project from beginning to end. She smiled and nodded during his entire explanation with an interpreter app on her wrist interface extended out toward him, converting his words to text. That’s right, She thought, lie your way into successfully ruining yourself. She knew exactly his involvement in this project before this, but knew if he would attempt to gain more respect in the city by exaggerating his involvement, allowing her to pull him down further than he otherwise would have been after tonight.

Once they were done, she hugged him before walking to the quiet spot so that she could write up and send off two reports. She opened up her interface and rested it on the table, turning on single viewer mode like a journalist would, only those sitting in her position could view the contents of her interface. The first report she made was the more urgent, she wrote up all the details she and the photo had identified as security measures they had set up to defend the pillar. She sent off this report as quickly as possible, through a virtualized device that wasn’t even located in the same city she was in, this would certainly be good enough to disguise Jessica’s activity. The second report she wrote hyped up the mysterious reveal in a stylish article that flattered Derrick, one of the good men who oversaw the project beginning to end, signing off as Amy.

****

‘Welcome Ladies and gentlemen to our reveal!’ One of the excited young engineers yelled. He fidgeted with a combination of nervousness and excitement before continuing, ‘Today we’ll uhh, be revealing something to you that will change the city forever… So uhh, prepare to be blown away!’ the crowd and Amy gave him a round of applause, Amy grinning widely at the curtain, overlooking the audience of people who currently supported Roedor. 

The presentation continued with a few other employees gathering to giddily talk about their little project. Then the first engineer took control of the presentation once again, much more comfortable on stage at this point, ‘Uhh, I’m sure you’re all as excited for this reveal as we are now, so here it is!’ She found his new found comfortability adorable.

He clicked the button and the contents of the pillar were revealed. A high powered modification to one of the existing Roedor engines perplexed all the engineers on stage. ‘Uh-uhhh’ the lead engineer stammered as he gazed at the imposter, unsure of how to handle this new situation. 

Amy walked out of the room into the hall she had initially met Derrick. She began to hear and uproar behind the curtains. ‘All these months of build up for this?’ one voice questioned.

‘This is bullshit!’ said another.

‘I’m tired of these guys not delivering!’

She placed on a mask of a scared and fleeing reporter for the remaining security personnel running past her as the gunshots and sounds of brawling began. She ran until she crossed the road from the building, where she heard the whooshing sound of rushing vehicles above her, looking up she saw a small flock of glowing objects flying away from the building and toward the sky traffic ahead. She grinned gleefully as she whipped her board out of it’s compressor and flew it at maximum speed to catch up with her gang in no time.

‘Good job boys, We’ve made it big today!’ she yelled over the rumbling engines once she caught up to them. A fire breaking out in the Roedor business park behind her. Time to bring some money back to the slum she flew back to.