"No, you can't bring the tank. Yes I know you just got it, but this is a stealth mission, not an assault.

  I don't care how inconspicuous it looks under a tarp, its still not gonna get used.

  Fucking fine you can park it in the ops center 'just in case', can you give us the order to move out now, Sir?"

  — Jason Torrent, Infiltration Specialist, preparing for a mission.

  The three sat in the park together, discussing their plans for Jefferson City. Various students wandered though, most not giving them a second glance, but occasionally one would spot Quinn or Aisha's second set of ears and whisper to whoever was with them. A few took pictures, one asked Aisha for an autograph.

  The issue they hadn't yet gotten to was how to get Cassie transported in a way that didn't set off any alarm bells.

  "Can we just drive the truck over?" Aisha inquired as she picked a loose thread out of her tank top.

  "I wouldn't advise it, its too distinctive as is." Elliot replied. "Unfortunately. You may want to invest in a more discreet transport option at some point."

  Quinn nodded. "Could we just uh, strap her to a semi and cover her in a tarp?"

  "I'll do you one better." Irys interjected. "Cassie is designed to be able to be partially disassembled and re-assembled for just this purpose."

  "Huh." Quinn paused. "Wait why didn't we do that during the incursion?"

  "Did you really want to have your primary source of firepower disabled during a period of disassembly and reassembly during such a time?"

  Right.

  "That makes sense, sorry."

  Irys chuckled "I will never fault you for asking questions, especially questions that do make sense from your perspective."

  "Right, so we need to rent a semi." Quinn paused to pull up her bank details. "I can probably afford it if I dip into my savings, but I guess I was doing that anyway."

  "I don't really want to interrupt a productive planning session, but I do want to mention something."

  Quinn's heart leapt into her chest. Fuck did she hate how anxiety turned random phrases into spikes of fear and adrenaline.

  "You still need to acquire Watchdogs 'Goober' from Indianapolis before the operation can proceed. If I can make a suggestion?"

  Quinn nodded mutely.

  "I think you should take the rest of the day off."

  Quinn's mood went from anxious to frustrated near instantly. "What, no we can't just…"

  "I have to agree with her." Elliot spoke up from next to her, and she rounded on him with a look of betrayal. He winced as he took in her face, but continued on. "Look I know it feels bad, but thinking about it she's right, we really shouldn't head out till we have the goober in hand to give to Magus. We've all pushed pretty hard recently, and we were supposed to be relaxing today until you got that message." He quirked his mouth up in a sad half smile. "I know you're worried about Jing Qi, but there's a phrase we PMCs use, 'hurry up and wait', sometimes you just gotta sit around while stuff you depend on gets sorted out." He paused again. "And if there's one thing I learned there, its that you should snatch any proper opportunity for a break you can, because fuck knows when you'll get another one."

  Quinn took a deep breath, in and out. "Okay, I think I can try. So break and relaxation?"

  Elliot nodded and his smile turned happy again. "Yeah, any suggestions for shit you wanna do?"

  "Oh!" Aisha jumped up from her seat. "So you two said you hadn't watched any old anime, and its basically a crime to be my friend and have not seen stein's gate, so we're gonna go do that."

  "Uh, sure?" Quinn blinked a little at the enthusiasm, but she figured she should expect it from the smaller girl at this point.

  "Great! We have an actual monitor in the anime club room, and there should be half decent snacks if Tommy didn't forget to restock them, so we can go there."

  A few hours later, and Quinn was drying tears from her face as the credits rolled, head on Aisha's lap with Aisha's hands roaming through her hair and scratching around her new ears. Something she'd discovered felt absolutely amazing. Aisha had claimed she didn't remember how sad the anime could be on first watch, but Quinn half believed that was a lie and that her current positioning was just as planned. Even Elliot wasn't unaffected, as he had clearly let out a couple of tears too. Her heart skipped a beat when she realized he didn't feel a need to hide it, either.

  "So, what's next?" Elliot asked, stretching his arms.

  Quinn didn't have any immediate ideas, so she glanced up at Aisha, finding the girl looking conflicted.

  "Hey, everything okay?" Quinn's brow furrowed in concern.

  "Yeah, nothing major cutie." Aisha replied, attention only half on the conversation. "Just my mom getting antsy."

  "What about?"

  "Oh, I video call them a lot, and I haven't done so for a little bit and she's getting weirded out by it."

  Quinn paused. "Why not?"

  Aisha shrugged, before returning her hands to Quinn's head. "Its stupid, but I want to tell them about being a sam in person, it just doesn't feel right doing it over a call."

  "Then go."

  Aisha glanced down, confusion on her face. "Are you sure? I didn't want to take off on you while this shit is going down."

  Quinn flashed her a smile "It's fine, go spend some time with your family. We'll pick up the rescue stuff tomorrow."

  Aisha answered with a wide grin. "Okay, I'll be around tomorrow, promise."

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Quinn started to sit up, only to find Aisha's hands on her shoulders holding her down, she was opening her mouth to question the situation when Aisha bent down and planted a quick kiss on her forehead. Her mind went fuzzy for a second before she realized Aisha had released her shoulder, and she sat up with the feeling of sparks on her forehead.

  "Fuck that's so much fun." Aisha cackled as she got up herself, watching Quinn pull herself back together. "Well, I'll go talk to my folks, stop mama worrying." She moved towards the door. "See you two later!"

  Elliot held out a hand for Quinn, and she took it. He hoisted her to her feet with a grin on his face.

  "You know, maybe I should start trying to fluster you too." He murmured, voice low and husky, and she went a little weak in the knees.

  "I'm not sure I'd survive that." She mumbled, finding her footing.

  "Fair enough. Though it is quite fun, I see why Aisha does it."

  She shot him a glare, and his smile just widened in response.

  They ended up spending the evening playing video games together, and Quinn was a little surprised how easily she could keep her mind off the looming situation. Aisha messaged them a couple of hours in, letting them know her parents were currently attempting to throw an impromptu banquet party to mixed results. A little later, they got the message that a drone had delivered the goober, and one impromptu and somewhat comical stealth mission later they had the marble sized black cube in their possession.

  Quinn slept fitfully, dreams of cross examining a witness who was giving testimony on the wrongful death suit of Jing Qi.

  The next day Aisha was back with them, inciting serious jealousy by finally remembering to tell the other two all about Foxfire's visit and the food involved.

  They were able to acquire a hover semi with… significantly less issues than Quinn was expecting. Sometimes she forgot how fast and loose the rule of law was outside of Cascadia.

  It was as they were pulling out of the lot she had a concerning realization.

  "Could Amazon be spying on us and see we're up to something, somehow?"

  "Yes." Vyshnu's respond was instant. "But thankfully Aisha asked me…" he cleared his throat. "Her cyberwarfare AI to be scrubbing cameras of any potentially suspicious activities, as well as spoofing the frankly offensively bad spyware they've repeatedly been attempting to infect your augmentations with."

  "Oh, good thought Aisha, thanks."

  She shrugged. "Can't really take credit, Elliot suggested doing so."

  He smiled sheepishly.

  They parked the semi in the street behind the Iron Swan, and with a command the transport dropped Cassie off next to them.

  "Now seems like a good time to apply your purchased upgraded." Irys mentioned.

  A nod from Quinn, and a large set of boxes were sitting in the street.

  "I'd recommend starting with the one in front of you."

  She nodded and did as suggested, jumping back as a pair of the winged orb like drones flew up out, using a solid looking arm to open the other boxes and extract the contents. First a set of esoteric looking plates of machinery that was quickly welded onto the arms and back, followed by extracting the blocky, jet engine autocannon, huge telescoped howitzer, and racked missile launcher.

  "Elliot, Darling. Would you mind lowering the gravitational pull to give the drones some assistance?"

  "Of course!" He stepped forward and gestured at the weaponry, and the new drones grabbed one each before raising them up to the plates on the arms, where they promptly vanished.

  "I swear, I'm never going to get used to that." Aisha muttered as the huge howitzer also vanished into a plate, before the two original drones zooped out of the back ports to join their juniors.

  Disassembling Cassie took about five minutes, as the drones zipped around undoing connections and occasionally lifting a chunk of limb or weaponry off to be deposited onto the flatbed of the semi.

  They'd acquired a crowd of onlookers at some point, a number of them clearly recording. Aisha took one look at them and snorted.

  "Poor bastards."

  Quinn hummed a questioning hum.

  "Vyshnu, sorry, my cyberwarfare AI is corrupting their videos as we speak, and a few other files to make it less obvious what we're trying to hide."

  She giggled a little bit at that thought, returning to watching the drones as the last of Cassie was disassembled.

  The trip to Jefferson City took them most of the morning, with only a brief stop to eat a protector produced lunch in the cab of the semi.

  Elliot found an appropriate warehouse not too far from the Amazon facility they were targeting, then found a second after a double check revealed the first warehouse to be owned by Amazon.

  "Would probably be fine, but no point risking opsec being that cheeky."

  A discreet exchange of credits and they had a floor rented for a week, no questions asked. It was mostly a bare space, with a small office slash lounge area in one corner that smelled vaguely of piss. Aisha inquired as to whether a suspicious warehouse rental would be a problem, to which Elliot just chuckled and replied that there were probably a dozen such deals happening every day all over the city, and one corp is hardly going to keep track of them all.

  With Cassie assembled and hidden from prying eyes under a tarp, the trio headed out to scout the location, but not before Elliot had facepalmed and set out alone, returning with a pair of baggy hoodies for the girls to cover their ears with.

  They spent the rest of the day flitting between various shops and food places in the buildings around the Amazon tower, observing it from various angles while Aisha probed its network. Limited access to cameras confirmed the presence of an air-gapped server room, as well as a number of heavily armed and armoured security personnel in addition to the lighter standard security. They mapped the building as best as they could before calling it a night and retiring to a seedy hotel room.

  Quinn once again slept poorly, dragging herself reluctantly out of bed later than she wanted to. She opened her messages to find one from Magus, confirming Requiem and his arrival earlier than expected in a few hours. She mentally thanked Elliot and Irys for making her take a break before, the mix of boredom and anxious anticipation had been wearing her down.

  After a brief breakfast and a short while double checking their gathered information the three found themselves in the rented floor, just waiting on the arrival of their infiltrators. Even Elliot was getting antsy, checking and rechecking his rifle and revolver enough times that Quinn wouldn't be too surprised if he could do so blindfolded by now.

  At long last however the tension was cut as the garage door opened up enough to admit a sleek, black hovercar. It came to a halt near the semi and touched down, before a pair of figures emerged from the front doors and walked round to the lounge area.

  "Sup." Magus called out as he stepped into the office. "A bit empty for a command section isn't it"

  Quinn forced herself to walk on over at a reasonable pace, sticking out a hand to shake. Magus took it, as did Requiem when offered the same immediately afterwards.

  "Its what we could throw together on short notice. I really appreciate you coming."

  She swept her hands back to gesture at Aisha and Elliot. "This is Boyscout and Vixinertia, we're here to be backup in case things go south." She turned to her two friends. "This is Magus Mortis and Requiem, our impromptu infiltration team."

  Magus gave a slight bow, while Requiem just inclined her head. Elliot waved and cracked a smile. Aisha flashed a mock salute.

  "I didn't see why not." Magus replied after introductions were had. "I'm a little fucking tired of corps trampling all over the rest of us to be honest."

  Requiem snorted. "He was also getting stir crazy with nothing to do."

  "That too." he shrugged. "Figure this is as good a thing as any to try and see how I like it. So, what's the plan?"