Chapter 97: 4.13 – A dusty subject

Eventually, the lovers had to go to their respective homerooms.  There was just enough time left that they’d not miss much.

 

Leona was chastised for her truancy in her homeroom, as usual.  She knew that keeping this up could land her in detention sooner or later, but that punishment hadn’t materialized yet, since her grades were good and she worked hard, but there might be another reason why her infractions were overlooked.  No one knew her alter ego superhero identity. If they did, that might excuse her, but the remaining question was, why?

 

Sarah was her primary concern, these questions aside.  It was clear that Sarah would have to make a painful choice for her own good if her father had resorted to such violence.  Choosing to leave her parents wouldn’t be easy.  The alternative to that was to give up their relationship, which might temporarily solve the problem, but just as soon another inconvenient fact of life happened, would her father get violent again? Would her mother continue to look the other way?

 

Leona was sad and deeply angry.  This anger where her father was concerned resonated strongly with her own towards her father.  She buried that anger, choosing not to allow it to influence how she lived or acted, but yet, there still was a core deep of anger inside that she couldn’t quite reject nor dismiss.

 

Time passed and despite her infraction, the teachers were by-and-large pleasant towards her, assuming they’d caught wind of it.  For the most part, they left her alone when asking about lessons from the previous week, and only called on her when it came to the current day’s work.

 

The day moved quickly towards lunch, and when she got to the lunchroom, her SoS card buzzed as if on cue.  She snuck off to the closest bathroom before her friends met up with her in the lunch line. Occupying a stall, Leona checked her communicator to see that she’d received two messages: one from Kirby and the other from Chuntao.

 

We’ve found some evidence that someone has been in the facility the

robots seem to have come from, but no trace evidence points towards

anyone. Enclosed are photos of footprints on the dusty floor of it and a

few other relevant details.

 

CSI is done for now, and the facility is sealed off for now until a more

thorough investigation can be arranged. Please let me know if you’re

gonna investigate.

 

Leona sighed.  There was some solid information enclosed here. This meant that she’d be back into action just as soon as the school day finished.

 

The message from Chuntao had a few statements enclosed that were taken from the fire investigators, which indicated that the fire was suspected to be in the basement, but it was not completely confirmable.  It might have been an accident, but it didn’t look like it was an electrical issue.  What was odd was that the flames seemed to have risen quickly, and yet there was not any significant damage to the lower floors.

 

Included, was a roster with a name highlighted on it, “Roger Carson.”  There was information on the various people mentioned.

 

Roger Carson was the property-owner and a resident, occupying the top floor penthouse.  There were some offers made recently on the property from the ‘Silas Brenner Group’ which also owned the contract to the building that collapsed before it was built.

 

Leona considered the information Chuntao shared with her. It was all interesting, of course, but there wasn’t enough to really work with quite yet.  Her fingers flew across the simulated keyboard and she texted the reporter back.

 

It was a nice article! Very fun, actually. As usual, Detective Ruffino was

complaining, I see.  :D

 

She didn’t comment on the information, yet, since she was in a hurry to get on with lunch.  After flushing the toilet she’d sat on for a while, she stepped over to the sink amid the rush of other girls using the restroom during lunch.  They giggled and gossiped as they fixed their hair or their makeup.  Leona made a pretext of washing her hands and left.

 

Leona returned to class and rode out the day until another text came from Chuntao.

 

Yeah, I also left out the complainer you rescued who hates heroes and

thinks you probably caused it because you showed up just in time. But

kept Ruffie’s so she can get some negative press ;) you’re welcome

 

She smiled after reading the cute and witty message. It was wonderful to have a friend in the media.

 

The food wasn’t bad, and she ate with her friends as usual.  Sarah was more animated at lunch, managing to go back to her ‘normal’ self, meaning the self after she came back from the camp rather than the one before she went.  That Sarah seemed to be dead and long gone, not that that was a problem, since she was repressed back then.

 

When they finished eating, Sarah pulled Leona over for a quick kiss right there in the lunchroom.

 

The comments that the kiss sparked were instantaneous. The subject wasn’t of Sarah’s abuse by her father, which meant that those two guys hadn’t blabbed yet.  What was being discussed was loud and it was about how they were lesbians and how ‘disgusting’ it was.  Most all the denigrating comments came from other girls who didn’t understand or approve of lesbianism.

 

Leona searched quickly for the gossipers and deliberately caught their eyes with hers and grinned impishly instead of protesting.

 

The boys who were interested this morning were present and they looked unhappy for some reason as they spoke quietly together at their table.  Leona made a point of grinning at them, and one of the two who glanced at Leona and Sarah blinked and chuckled slightly in response.

 

Back to classes, the school day continued without further incident.  Leona’s elective for Tuesday was art. Mr. Darling asked the class to draw their concept of a robot, given the recent events and the class was split between those who favored an older-style like the retro robots Aurora had fought, and those who preferred more streamlined types like someone might see in a movie or animation, likely trying to capture a younger demographic.

 

He spent a good bit of the class lecturing about media influence on art and design, and with that class concluded, the school day ended, except for homeroom.

 

They assembled in their homerooms and then were released to the buses without any important notes about upcoming events.

 

Leona considered approaching Sarah again, but she decided against it, since all that needed to be said about her parents already had been.  Leona didn’t want to get her girlfriend in more trouble with her parents, so she focused on the two cases she had.  She made her way to the shed, her favorite transformation location, to consider what to do next.  There wasn’t a ton she could do where the fire was concerned, and nor was there much to go further with Mr. Mechanical’s case.  

 

She thought that maybe investigating the factory would be the best thing she could do, since it was the most solid clue she had. The biggest clue that could be followed would be the robot head itself, probably. If it wasn’t the ringleader, maybe Utility would be helpful in extracting information from him, or it.  But that was assuming that Utility wasn’t the culprit.

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Considering further, she wondered if she might find some clues at the cell tower that had been converted to an energy transmission center, but the culprit hadn’t entered the facility. They only attached their devices to the tower and hijacked it for their own purposes.  Utility himself had suggested as much.

 

While sitting in the shed, Leona waited and thought and as she did, another text came, and it was from the Midnight Avenger.

 

I looked at the photos of the crime scene. Seems that one person on site 

was a woman, going from the size of the footprints and the length 

between steps. Probably a teen or someone very short. No known 

associates who would be in any condition to explore the facility. 

The case is cold for now, so I’ll keep an eye on my tap.

 

Leona held the card while she transformed and her wings sprouted from her shoulder blades and light filled the shed.  She darted outside and rocketed into the sky, looking around while deciding. She spread her wings to let the breezes push her gently through the sky.

 

A teenager.  Was this someone who went to her own school? Or not? That would be too much of a coincidence to be likely. There were other schools around, certainly. Maybe it was someone affected by the incident at Padua with the Xevolve substance that had changed Sarah’s personality mostly.

 

She called up the list of victims from Padua in her database on her communicator and checked to see if any of the girls were likely candidates.  Looking over only the girls, there was a variety of schools connected with the data, but none of them were close to the facility the robots had come from.  There was a school sort of close to it that wasn’t highlighted by the data she ran through the map.  It was one of the few ‘affluent’ schools of San Isidro left over from better days long past, and the next closest was a public high school.

 

There weren’t any clear links between these girls and the incidents.  She’d have to shelf the line of thought, but it was interesting that there were schools near the facility.  Could she find something definitive there, if she had to investigate it? 

 

She could, but the facility itself was more likely to contain more clues than had been found already.  She flew that way, thinking. Kirby wanted to be told if she wanted to look things over, so she texted him.

 

Going to investigate the factory. Probably won’t see much you didn’t 

already, but worth looking into.

 

Aurora pocketed her communicator and rushed to the site of the facility.  She was there in no time, and was flying over it.  This didn’t give Kirby much time to respond, but he was quick, probably having expected that she would message him today. 

 

The posted officer was notified to expect you.

 

She flitted over the facility, eyeing it from above, and found the entrance.  The facility was a white-painted warehouse, at least from the outside, however the front door was hanging open slightly.

 

She landed and the officer posted nodded to her, almost disinterested, focusing rather on the road again, having dismissed her.

 

Had she become such a commonplace sight by now? Aurora giggled softly as she walked on through.  She examined every detail she could on her way, though she didn’t trust her perception versus a trained investigator.  She did have her communicator SoS card and despite this lack of training, she wanted to think that she handled herself well enough.

 

Heading inside the building, she saw that there were alot more footprints in the dust at this point.  She started in the entry area which looked like it was set up to be a reception area. The computer and chair behind a counter both had a layer of dust… in fact, the computer itself was just a cardboard box and not an actual computer.  It was just a prop.

 

Looking around further, an inner door had been forced, but there was another door.  In this room, there was an uncomfortable-looking row of minimalist seats and a coffee table with magazines that had news that was at least a decade old.

 

This place was certainly abandoned, except for all the footprints.  It made sense that the robots had come from this facility.  The robots were old… or at least their aesthetics were, but what about this teenager who could either have been a kid using this place as a clubhouse or might be the culprit? Where she was concerned, was the person just short? A short villain like a Napoleon-type? She imagined a gibbering little man monologuing.  Then, she deliberately added some techy goggles, a utility belt, some furry big feet… no! The tracks weren’t barefooted through the dust, and the feet were dainty and small as Midnight Avenger pointed out. 

 

It was distinctly possible that this mystery person had stumbled on a cache of technology and put it to their use.  Maybe more was hidden here.

 

She moved through the door that was forced and saw that the interior was slightly larger than she’d have thought, in that this was a storage room and it went down a further floor.

 

The ramp that the truck would have come up was here, and in fact, there was another truck beside a set of tire tracks left in the dust.  Many crates here had been smashed open.

 

She flitted down to the remaining truck and inspected it, keeping her eyes on her surroundings, being cautious.

 

The truck seemed to be normal from the outside.  It wasn’t like the modified car back on Glass Bridge.  On one side of the truck, it seemed that the dust had been wiped away by something tattered, given the patterns left.  This was likely the side they broke into the other truck.

 

Leona looked for more clues and walked around, seeing the panels from the police photos in a corner, “classic” styles with knobs and levers. Some of them were fiddled with, according to the clues left in the dust.

 

On the other side, where the crates were smashed, the crates actually showed signs of having been smashed open from the inside.  Aurora studied the patterns in the dust and the breakage of the wood.  She searched through the wreckage and found a shipping label on the bottom of the one of the larger wooden shards.

 

Lot #193: Goose Estate Sales

℅ Extensive Enterprises

 

She snapped a picture of it with her communicator, zooming particularly in on the address of the Estate Sales company and this warehouse, which she guessed was owned by Extensive Enterprises.

 

Having found this clue made this trip worthwhile.  She ran searches on Extensive Enterprises and Goose Estate.  It was certain that something had come from one of these crates, or perhaps the robots had been stored in these.  The two companies were possible accomplices.

 

As she started looking up their offices, there was the faint sound of metal scraping against concrete.

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