Link stares down at the half-mask in his hand, broken off from Lady Destine. And he looks behind him, at the Ready Room and the broken window where a grenade went in. The red indicators in his heads-up display are flashing, but he doesn't pay attention.
Otto pulls up, with Pneuma driving. Both are in combat mode, ready for anything. Link waves them down wearily. Only when he tries to disengage Niki does he realize what's going on. The young robot is offline entirely. His anger is dissipating, and a sense of panic sets in. Pneuma helps him strap the half-disassembled exoskeletal form to the top of the car, and they take off for the workshop.
"What happened out there?" Pneuma demands tersely. Otto doesn't need to speak; even in silence, Leo can read his apprehension.
"The Gnome is working with the Shadow Syndicate. Judson Snow, my dad. He's back.. But there's more."
The STF drains out of Link's helmet and he pops it off. Sweat runs down his face. In the passenger-side mirror, he looks at himself and sees a train of blood coming from the scalp. "The Lemurian submarine. The thieves must have hit it hours after we actually got it out of the water. So I started thinking, how could they have known about it? I thought maybe a leak in Lemurian embassy security. I was wrong."
"There was a signal Quorum detected from the Antarctic. You saw what they did with the security scanners we placed around our site, right? They beat it with a simple signal loop. The Antarctic was exactly the same M.O., just on a much bigger scale. Solar Girl was weak around the sub - and around that big bruiser we just fought. ACTION should be taking him into custody."
Leo realizes he's talking at a mile a minute. But Pneuma and Otto are tensely listening, so he must be making some kind of sense. He lets it all out, a verbal torrent. "He took off his gloves. He was radiant. They'd done something to him. They used the Lemurian power source to power him up. The Gnome's been doing that for years. He had a drone there - like my surveillance units, only a lot more advanced - and he was ordering those guys around. He gave them orders to go easy on me."
He feels like he's rambling. He swallows, tries to organize his thoughts, starts again. "The Gnome is working with the Syndicate. They must have had me under observation. They saw us raise the Lemurian submarine. They took the power core from it. Maybe they had prior intelligence about it, maybe not. Either way, they got something valuable. They then used it to enhance at least one test subject."
"Then they sent foot soldiers and two tough cookies to attack the Ready Room - well, no, to get an ice gun away from one guy. One of Ice Pirate's mooks. I had to call in a marker with Agent Waters to get a list of names. We hit the streets, narrowed it down. We tracked the guy back to the RR. Solar Girl destroyed the weapon. But still, that was way too much force for just one ice gun. So it wasn't just the gun as a weapon. They wanted the ice control technology. That's when the Antarctic connection hit me. They're down there, they need a way to stay insulated, maybe this gun has the key. Or maybe they found something down there that makes the gun work better. Either way, the common factor is me again. I went after Ice Pirate. If the Gnome had me under surveillance, that's when he became aware of the technology. All he had to do after that was tail me right to the Ice Pirate's man."
Pneuma finally speaks up. "If that's true, they were thwarted now, so they might try to break Ice Pirate out. Didn't you say Quorum tracked down a source of the parts to make the gun as well? They might be next."
Leo nods. "Yeah. We have to tell Una Mar. We have to tell ACTION."
---
Back at the workshop, Leo studies the damage to Niki in mounting horror. The new untested attack he used - venting hydrogen from the capillaries and using the vernier control circuit to ignite it - backfired when he blew up the car. I blew up a car, he reminds himself with growing feelings of guilt. The result was a series of micro-explosions throughout most of Niki's shell as the car's explosion ignited the hydrogen still being circulated through her interior. There were spare parts enough for a full replacement, and a night's hard work would finish the job, but --
He stares sadly at the charred hulk of his new friend, watches as her optics light up. "I'm really sorry, Niki. Are you okay?"
"That hurt pretty bad, boss," the robot answers weakly. "But the racing... that was fun.. thank you for that.."
Otto is parked nearby. Leo realizes that as he's been wheeling Niki around the workshop to various diagnostic units and spare-parts bays, Otto's been re-parking himself to be close by.
Leo pats the charred shell gently. "We'll get you fixed up. You're just getting started, kid. There'll be plenty of races for you to win. I promise."
"She'll be okay, right boss?" Otto asks. It's strange to hear a plaintive tone in his voice. "If she needs any spare parts, I got plenty."
"She'll be fine, Otto. I promise." Leo clutches his head, trying to stop himself from thinking too much about how things ended up this way. "I'm gonna make this right, buddy. I swear. To both of you."
---
Pneuma's face is the first thing Leo sees. He's in the hammock in the workshop. He's covered in grease. He discovers through probing with his fingers that there's a bandage on his forehead, one he didn't put there.
"You work too hard, Leo."
"I do that when it's my fault," he replies, with whatever energy his tired body can muster. It's not much, he discovers. "I was stupid. I heard my dad and I attacked. We maybe could have walked away. A bunch of civilians in the bar, and I forgot about them completely. I'm a complete jerk." There, he observes silently, there's the energy.
Pneuma runs her hand gently through his hair. "You charge in. It's who you are. This time, it was a bad thing to do." If Leo's hurt at hearing this shows, she chooses to disregard it. "You need to hear that. It sounds like you already knew it. That's good. That means progress. Niki's back on her feet. I heard Solar Girl stopped a grenade. So... it could have been worse."
Leo tries to gracefully exit the hammock. He falls, with only Pneuma's strong arms to catch and cradle him. As she helps him to his unsteady feet, he hears her voice very near his ear. "People make mistakes. We learn from them. Learn from this one. Sometimes.. charging in is the right thing to do."
---
Someone collected newspaper clippings of Link's recent exploits on one wall in the workshop. The most prominent one is of Otto in combination, punching through an ice wall at the bank. Leo's studying it over a cup of coffee. "Go home, Leo," advises Beta as he walks past, but the young man ignores the advice. He's still struggling with the implied heroism of the picture. How different he feels today.
Contemplation sets in. Ice walls - the ice gun - Antarctica - the frozen cops - the barriers Ice Pirate's men created.
Then it hits him. The galaxy of ideas explodes in his mind, so forcefully that he loses the mug. "I have it!" he bellows. "I have it!" He sprints to his desk, pushing all the other paperwork off it in a single pile to the ground, and grabs a sheet of draft paper and some pencils.
Every few minutes he yells instructions across the lab. He's not even sure who's listening. "Increase carbon farm production 100%! No, more! Crank it to maximum! I need the servo production sped up." He breaks the graphite tip of one pencil, snatches up another one, and continues furiously sketching. "Damn that old man, damn him if he thinks he's so smart! Selfish old bastard, all he wants is money and recognition. He doesn't care. I'll show him. He may be older, he may be smarter, he may be better equipped. But nobody, nobody, is more determined than me!"
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