Hidden in Plain Sight

Planning, Crime, and Pixal

I drove back to Brutle HQ, feeling off-putted by my experience. Harumi's ultimatum circled my head. There was no way I'd hurt Nya or break up with her. There had to be some way to convince Harumi to work with me that didn't affect Nya.

I meandered into Borg Tower, coming comfortable with walking into the massive building. I pictured myself interning there, walking in every day. With a smirk, I wandered to the conference room Team Brutle borrowed.

Pixal was there still going through the security footage. She glanced over her shoulder briefly at me as I entered.

"Did you get access to the footage?" she said.

"Nope." I collapsed on the spiny chair and whirled around in a circle.

"Figured," she said, "Well, I'm getting real results."

"Oh?" I mumbled, keeping my eyes trained on the fluorescent lights above.

"I believe I've found a way to hack into the Royal Archives. Inside of which, is all satellite footage."

"Cool," I said, sitting up, "But isn't that illegal?"

"That's the least of our problems," Pixal said, finally turning off the security footage. She sat down in the chair next to me. I couldn't comprehend how she could sit completely still in a rolly chair. Somehow, when I sat in the chair, it rocked back and forth without me consciously moving.

"If we do this, we cannot do it here. Or else risk Mr. Borg being charged as a criminal," she said.

"Not ideal," I admitted.

"We need to find a way to scramble our attack to make it untraceable," Pixal said, "My theory is our best chance of not being caught is to use Zane's processor for the attack. I've scanned him-"

"You've scanned him," I echoed suggestively. Pixal gave me a puzzled expression.

"When he started, yes. And his mechanical makeup is unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's a unique system, built from the ground up. He'll be impossible to track since the firewall won't know how to respond to his system."

"So, we just need to convince Zane to commit a crime," I said.

"Yes. We'll also need to find a new location since we can't risk Mr. Borg finding out about... our plan."

"That'll be easy," I said, "Convincing Zane will be hard."

"I could talk to him," Pixal offered.

"No, no, I'll handle it," I said, "I just need to find someone who'd be willing to lie on my behalf."

*

The Mojo Dojo was as empty as it always was. Dareth didn't see much traffic. I entered the front doors to see Dareth practicing the worse attempt at martial arts I'd ever seen. He thought he created a new art form, and I didn't have the heart to take that delusion from him.

I could've tracked down Cole or Kai to lie on my behalf. But I didn't think either of them would be into committing a crime. Plus, Dareth was already a part of Team Brutle, and he needed something to do for the team.

"Hey Thunderbolt," I said. Dareth looked over at me and grinned.

"Did we find where Samurai X is?"

"Not quite. But Pixal is fairly confident she can steal footage from the Royal Family undetected. But there's a whole problem with Zane being vital to her master plan and he's firmly against theft, for some reason. Which puts us in a pickle and actually that's why I'm here," I said, "How good are you at lying?"