THE CADETS: Children of the New Aion

CHAPTER THREE - PERIL OF THE PRETTY PETTY THIEVES

The Trill Helen Chambers decided that there wasn't much of a point to going to her last two classes; Advanced Law Study was a free period, and there was a sub in Ancient and Current Greek Tragedy who's biologically three-hundred years old and acted like it. She decided it was best to check out her hunches on the Vector case before The Cadets meeting after school to disturb her leader, the Inch-Foot. Helen gets quite a kick from how off-putting her intuitive behavior is to Earth people.
She slipped out of the school through a loose window in the storage room of the library, ducked into one of the alleyways out back to change, then climbed up a radiator pipe three miles away from the school to the roof of an apartment building.
Hopping from rooftop to rooftop, she was now the Mystery Girl, the avenging eye of justice.
She whipped out her Digiphone and typed in the address to the last known hideout of the Pretty Petty Thieves: an abandoned garment shipping warehouse at the very edge of the docks, which was only a mile away from where she currently was.
The warehouse was half submerged underwater, with a massive crater in the roof exposing the second floor of the building. It was a terrible hiding spot, and mostly used as storage, but the IAI hid their knowledge of the base's existence in case Hector ever broke out of prison again. Since all their other bases had been shut down or destroyed, the logic went that the PPT could be a temporary hiding spot after a bg score or two, until they find a better place.
Mystery Girl only planned to take a couple snapshots, then bring them back to the gang.
When she arrived at the Warehouse, Lorenzo was guarding the door. He was a slender brooding twenty-something with long braided blonde hair, a blue form fitting hotsuit with his chest exposed, and a pistol tucked into the front of his pants. Mystery Girl hid behind some crates and boosted herself up to the roof. Hearing the lift off, Lorenzo checked the surrounding area with his pistol while Mystery Girl hid on the roof, trying not to vomit from the intense physicality of her boost.
She dropped through the crater, where there was no visible security. Considering the fact that most people looking for the PPT can fly, Mystery Girl couldn't help but smirk.
She walked along the catwalk barely attached to the ceiling of the main room of the warehouse, moving slowly to avoid observing the floor where the PPT were hanging out. She pulled out her digiphone and took snaps of the scene.
Casper, Roland and Julian were holding hands and spinning around in a circle. Their eyes were wide, and their laughs were high-pitched and delirious. Mystery Girl took note of the fact that Casper and Julian were wearing the same clothes from the heist. She wondered if anyone else had changed their outfits in the three days that have passed.
Roland was wearing a blue and white striped crop-top sweatshirt, with tight black leather pants and black combat boots. He wore a white cowboy hat on his head, with a bronze buckle around the room. His outfit matched his delirium.
Hector was watching them from the side with his husband and bodyguard Constance cuddled up on his right shoulder. Hector was dressed in a white three-piece suit with a blood red necktie, while Constance was dressed in a knee-length wrap-around black dress with a blue pendant around his slim neck. They were smiling deliriously while watching their trio of loyal accomplices dancing in front of them.
Hector's sister Amelia sat in front of them, staring at the cracked concrete floor in wonderment. Her entire body from ankle to neck was covered in blue electrical tape, with a green skirt patterned with fluffy white clouds and fluffy dandelions. She scratched the ground with her hyper long pink fingernails and examined the dirty underneath with a joyous grin.
On a workbench on the other side of the dancing trio were all the other stolen items from the Vector Labs robbery: Dr. Uncertainty's black hole gun, the pendant of Heh, some empty plasma containers, and an ancient 1989 Dr. Philosophy: The Motion Picture Pez dispenser from one of the Anthropology department.
Mystery Girl was too far away to read any of their minds, nor did she want to risk getting closer to the thieves. She took snaps of everything, and saved the photos to a secure server hidden in the metadata in her school's digiphone app. She started backtracking on the catwalk, when she felt a spike go through her brain.
"What are you doing here, Mystery Girl?" The question rang in her ears from seemingly nowhere. Even her natural psychic abilities couldn't tell what was crawling around in her mind. She perceived it with disgust and horror, unable to comprehend the beauty of what she had just been given.
Mystery Girl went to the ground, holding her head in her hands. Drool formed at the sides of her lips as her eyes glazed into the back of her skull.
My shadow wrapped around her ankles as I began dragging her back to me. She moved her mouth methodically, not making a sound. This made me rather impatient.
"Come on, don't make this a mystery, Mystery Girl," I chuckled.
I called up Constance and Roland to hold the Mystery Girl up, then called Lorenzo in to give him a slap on the cheek. Hector placed a wooden chair in the center of the warehouse floor, and Amelia bound the Mystery Girl to the chair with her body tape.
I approached her, placed her fedora on her head, and tried to give her a read, then pulled back when I felt a spike go through my brain.
"Bitch!" I yelled, soothing my temple.
I went to give her a slap, but I felt a mighty force push me back on my heels.
Lorenzo put his gun to her temple. "Want me to end her?"
"Thank you for asking," I said, resting my hand on my chin, "but I need to see what she's found out about me."
I approached her, and fighting through the pain, placed my hand on top of her head.
"After that, I'm going to find out everything about The Cadets."