Chapter 185 185 Obstructions

Before leaving, Olivia gave the unruly group of kids some advice.

She could tell that they were not the types to conform easily to living the same life as their parents and suggested mercenary work to them. Making it sound a bit more glamorous than it actually was.

Still, she felt that it might be better to give them something more constructive to work towards instead of wasting their time on petty pranks and vandalism.

They obviously acted this way as a means to lash out since they felt that they lacked control over their own lives. All of them had been raised to continue with their families' businesses and they were never offered a chance to go down their own paths.

"That was pretty nice of you at the end to give them some advice. But don't you think you were underselling how dangerous mercenary work is. The three of us know better than most the types of hell that are waiting out there." Havanna said, a scowl on her face.


"True, but they'll figure that out on their own if they have any real potential." Olivia said with hardly any interest in the matter.

She was mostly just trying to keep her word when she told the guards that she would straight the kids out. If they put their energy into becoming mercenaries, hopefully they would stop committing petty crimes that would likely one day lead them int real trouble once they got older.

With their business at the detention center concluded, Olivia thanked the guards for their time and assistance and returned to the rent vehicle with Havanna and Rorson in tow.

There next stop was the market where the man that had put the kids up to their prank had purchased the alcohol he used to bribe them.

Had he purchased an item that had no regulations on it there were ways to avoid any records, but he would have had to show his ID and used an account linked to his name to purchase anything alcoholic. A measure in place all throughout the Dramid Alliance to prevent minors from buying those types of beverages.

However, when the three of them arrived at the store and were brought back into the security room, the purchase records and surveillance videos from the window of time when the man had made his purchase were gone.

"I don't know how this could have happened! Everything should be here!" The manager that had been escorting Olivia, Havanna and Rorson shouted when he found the discrepancy.

Nevertheless, this was not enough to deter Olivia. The data might have appeared to be gone, but often times it was difficult to fully erase things. Especially from a system that had obviously been tampered with through unofficial means.

"Grito, Vi'ivando, I'm going to need your help again."

Knowing that she had two technical experts to call on, Olivia did not hesitate to ask for their help.

They were still working on the malfunctioning transit system case, but this took precedence. Plus, it would hopefully be easier.

Fortunately, once they were in, it took Grito and Vi'ivando less than ten minutes to recover the video and transaction records.

"Whoever did this used a real cheap and sloppy program. It wasn't able to actually delete anything without triggering security protocols, so it instead hid the information by overlapping it with the data from a year ago." Grito said, sounding disgusted by how unprofessional he considered the work.

Except, normally this would have worked quite well and been difficult to find. The information had only been so easily recovered thanks to how skilled Grito and Vi'ivando were.

While she had them, Olivia asked them for an update on the transit network.

"Oh, we identified the problem a long time ago. It's as that station master said. Some old code interacted poorly with some of the new code. A fairly common occurrence. But this time it was done deliberately. Whoever created the most recent update made it so that the shutdown would happen on purpose by triggering several safety protocols. We've gone through and found five other intentional bugs like this waiting to be sprung when the right program is run. It's a lot more ingenious than what was used to eliminate that store's records, so I think these two things were done by different people." Vi'ivando said.

Olivia told them to keep working on it, and the two Baccigans nodded happily and cut the transmission. It seemed they were excited to be fighting on their own battlefield against an opponent that they deemed worthy.

With the evidence that they needed collected, Olivia, Havanna, and Rorson left the store and headed back to the nearest major city.

Yet as they were flying their rented vehicle over rural farmland, several vehicles suddenly appeared on the horizon.

This would not have normally been a matter of concern, but one look was all it took to see that they were surrounded.

"I guess we finally made enough of a nuisance of ourselves to attract their attention." Rorson said with a sigh.

While their investigation's main goal had been to collect information and figure out what their enemy was up to, another was to act as bait.

There was a good chance that at some point Olivia's investigation would be seen as a nuisance, and the people that did not want her to find anything would send a force to silence the three of them permanently.

"Finally, I've been waiting for some action. I was afraid that this entire mission was going to be boring."

Havanna, a smile on her face, opened up a hidden panel on the side of the vehicle's door and pulled out a long case.

Inside was a custom-made laser rifle she had created for her personal use.

She looked ready to start shooting at any second, but Olivia told her to hold off for a bit longer.

Judging from the formation the other vehicles had taken, they were most likely enemies, but there was still a possibility that they were just random civilians that had happened to be passing through the area. It would certainly cause a lot of trouble if they shot first and asked questions later.

Her shoulders drooping, Havanna pouted but lowered her weapon as ordered.

"This is the chancellor's special investigator. To the incoming vehicles, make way. We are on official business and need to cross this area promptly and without obstruction." Olivia said over the comms.

However, the responses she received were far from cordial.

"Oh ho, she's got a pretty voice to go along with her pretty face. This is going to be fun."

"Yeah, let's kill the ugly dude first and then we can play around with the two girls before offing them. I call the shorty with the glasses. She's just my type."

Immediately upon hearing the replies from the other vehicles, Olivia and Havanna grimaced in disgust.

It was now apparently obvious that it was a group of uncouth hooligans that had been sent after them. These were not trained killers, but just a mob that had been riled up. Most likely some petty criminals that the actual perpetrators had paid to do their dirty work.

"Ugly? I'm not ugly. I kill those bastards." Rorson said, the veins in his head throbbing from how ticked off he was at being called ugly.

Though he had not been showing any fighting spirit up to this point, he was now raring to go.

He unholstered the laser pistol at his waist, and his prosthetic right arm started to transform into a deadly weapon.

"Well, seeing as how we've gotten our answers, I'll handle the driving, you two can go wild." Olivia said, giving her two subordinates permission to start the battle.

Without waiting another second, Havanna rolled down the window and stuck her laser rifle out of it.

The glasses that she was wearing sprung to life and a display on them assisted with her aim.

With the first shot, she hit the propulsion device on one of the enemy vehicles and sent it falling out of the sky. It had been equipped with a weak shield generator, but the blast from Havanna's laser rifle had pieced straight through it with ease.

Following suit, Rorson held his mechanical arm out and fired a micro missile from it.

The vehicles it was locked onto tried to fly away, and the people inside started blasting with their own weapons wildly to shoot it down. Sadly, they could not land a single hit due to their driver's frantic movements.

A few seconds later, a large explosion rang out, and the fiery remains of the vehicle fell out of the sky and landed on the field below.

"Okay, I know I said to go wild but maybe try and keep collateral damage to a minimum. No more explosives unless absolutely necessary."

Rorson grumbled at this order, but he chaged the configuration of his protistic arm into a split laser launcher instead. Instead of firing micro missiles, it would now shoot out five blasts at a time.

As Havanna and Rorson were busy taking down their attackers, Olivia was hard at work maneuvering their vehicle to avoid taking any hits themselves.

It was incredibly difficult work, and if not for her impeccable reaction speed and mental processing thanks to the augmentations she had received, it would have been an impossible task.

"Damn it! This a rental!" Olivia shouted as a few lasers grazed the vehicle.

Still, she had managed to avoid a direct hit, and the thugs trying to kill them were getting impatient.

Seeing that keeping their distance was proving unfruitful, their leader ordered them to close in. They had the numbers, so if it came down to it, they would ram Olivia, Havanna, and Rorson into the ground.