"Justice! It's a shock to the system! Prepare to be ... uh ... grounded?"

  I winced the moment the words left my mouth. My voice had hitched on 'grounded,' turning into a pathetic, airy squeak that echoed off the damp concrete walls of the empty parking garage I was currently walking through.

  "Yuna," I hissed, tapping at my Bluetooth earpiece with a trembling finger. "Please tell me the stream is on a five minute delay and you can scrub that? I sound like a ten year old trying to be a villain in a school play."

  "No can do, Sparky!" Yuna's voice chirped in my ear, bright and far too amused. "We're live and direct! And just for the record, the chat just hit its new peak - 371 users. Someone also just donated fifty credits with the message: 'Voice crack is love, voice crack is life. Stuttering Queen is my goddess."

  "I hate it here," I groaned, slumping my shoulders. "I'm a joke. I'm a high-voltage meme."

  "You're a brand, Kurumi! Now stop moping and keep moving. We're almost at the border to Sector 4. High probability of bicycle theft and public intoxication. Stay alert!"

  I sighed, adjusting the strap of my reinforced utility belt. It had been five days since the fight with the Stray and my life had become a repetitive loop of the Daily Grind. I wasn't saving the city from supervillains; I was basically a glorified neon-lit hall-monitor.

  My week had consistented of:

  * Monday: Shooing away teenagers who were trying to use a power transformer as a grill.

  * Tuesday: The 'Hiccup Incident' as Yuna called it. A drunk businessman had begged me to shock his hiccups away. I'd given him the tiniest jolt I could manage, but the static had sent his expensive hairpiece flying into a sewer grate. When I left, he was crying for his toupee.

  * Wednesday: Paying my first 'Meta-Human Liability Insurance' premium. Eight thousand credits. I'd nearly cried.

  And, through it all, there was Eye-Bee.

  The spherical drone was currently bobbing three feet behind me as my heels echoed in the garage. I turned to the left; it pivoted right. I turned to the right; it dipped low.

  "Yuna, seriously," I growled, glancing over my shoulder. "The drone is doing it again. It's practically skimming the pavement in here. Is there a sensor malfunction? Is it too heavy?"

  "The AI is ... uhm ... optimizing the field of depth!" Yuna's voice was suspiciously fast. "It's trying to capture the way the neon reflects off your vinyl stockings. It's artistic, Kurumi!"

  Artistic, my ass, I thought. I knew exactly what was happening. Every time I turned away to subtly pick at the bodysuit - which was currently riding up my ass in a way that was both distracting and highly unprofessional - Eye-Bee would zip around like a heat-seeking missle to catch the struggle.

  It's just a technical bug, I told myself, a desperate mantra for the internal Kenji. The drone must be attracted to the highest concentration of static. It just so happens that the friction of the fabric against my ... uh ... back ... must create a hotspot. It must be science. Pure, cold, un-horny science.

  I reached a hand back, trying to discreetly hitch the fabric down, only for Eye-Bee to emit a soft *chirp* and the whir of cameras as it zoomed in on my ass.

  "Yuna! Get it away!"

  "I'm calibrating! I'm calibrating!"

  I was about to let out another frustrated spark when a notification pinged in my ear.

  "Hold on, Kurumi. Just a sec," Yuna's tone shifted, becoming sharp and professional. "GachaGod just sent a priority message. He's been running that S-Korp packet on a server farm for the last three days. He didn't break the encryption, but he found a set of leash coordinates in the metadata."

  "Leash coordinates?" How did this relate to dog-walkers? I slowly turned, trying to get away from Eye-Bee to pick at my wedgie again but the drone followed me relentlessly.

  "It's a tracking tether. It means that the packet was meant to be delivered to a specific hardware address at a specific location." Yuna paused, and I could hear her typing away. "It looks like it's a specific office at Meridian Plaza, over in the old abandoned commercial hub."

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  I didn't know the place, but Yuna quickly filled me in. It was a block of drab, ten-story concrete buildings - offices for insurance adjusters, dental labs, and mid-tier logistics companies. It was the kind of place so boring that people forgot it existed five minutes after driving past it. Which is why when it was apparently condemned fifteen years ago, nobody noticed.

  "That's C-Rank territory, though," Yuna warned. "Still a bit above your pay grade, but mayb-"

  "A crime in progress!," I interrupted, spotting a group of four punks in neon-splattered hoodies trying to pry the service door off an electronics repair shop half a block away.

  Finally. A real fight. A chance to show the stream I wasn't just a girl struggling with her bodysuit. I broke into a sprint, my heels clicking against the pavement. I felt the power building in the 'stocking seams' in my legs, a rhythmic violet throb that synced with my heartbeat. I raised my hand, the air beginning to smell of ozone.

  "Halt, criminals!," I shouted, cringing as I went for the classic line. "The law ha-"

  *BOOM*.

  A streak of silver-and-chrome light blurred past me, the sonic wave hitting me like a physical wall. I tumbled with a spectacular lack of grace, my upper body diving straight into a discarded plastic recycling bin. My head and shoulders vanished into the blue plastic container with a hollow thump, leaving me inverted, legs splaying wildly in the air, with my rear pointed toward the sky in a textbook-perfect pose.

  "Mmph! Fffph!" I tried to scream, my mouth muffled by the recycling bin, kicking my legs in a frantic, undignified scramble to free myself.

  Despite my position, I could tell Eye-Bee didn't a miss a beat. I could feel that fucking perverted drone hovering inches from my exposed, vinyl-clad thighs, pivoting with predatory precision to capture the entire scene.

  "Oh my god," Yuna's voice crackled in my ear, sounding like she was physically vibrating from holding in a laugh. "Kurumi, stay still! The donation bar is ... it's literally vertical! We're making so much money on tips!"

  "G-get ... ffph ... me out!" I finally managed to kick the bin away, sprawling onto the wet asphalt on my ass, gasping for air and dying of pure, unadulterated shame.

  "Five seconds, twenty-two milliseconds," a voice droned above me.

  I looked up, blurred and dizzy. Standing over the now-zip-tied punks was a hero. Or at least, I assumed he was a hero. He wore a shimmering, aerodynamic suit with literal speed-fins on his shoulders. Various logos were scattered all over his outfit, reminding me of a race car with the extreme levels of sponsorship. He didn't offer a hand. He just looked down at me, his glowing blue visor reflecting my disheveled state.

  "Nice costume, newbie," he said, his vocoder-filtered voice dripping with condescention. "A bit ... eccentric for this district, don't you think? You should stick to the slums. The insurance premiums over here will eat a D-Rank like you alive."

  "I had it under control," I snapped, standing furiously and dusting off my hips, trying to ignore the fact that my bodysuit was now several inches higher than it was designed to be. Can't pick the wedgie now. CANNOT pick the wedgie... My hand twitched, wanting to relieve the pressure on my ass crack, but I managed to avoid embarassing myself any further. "Who are you supposed to be anyway?"

  "I'm the Silver Streak," he said as if I should have known. Then he leaned in, his voice dropping so his own camera drones wouldn't hear. "Listen, Voltana was it? I've seen your clips. You're cute and the reverse mount on the catgirl and whatever that 'bucket' thing you just did - it's great for a laugh. But this is Sector 3. You're just an amateur in a leotard stealing my bandwidth."

  He glanced over at Eye-Bee, still hovering around my hips, and continued. "And fix your drone. It's spending more time looking at your ass than the suspects. It's unprofessional." If only he knew...

  With a mocking salute, he turned into a blur of silver and vanished. When I glanced over, the four zip-tied punks were also gone.

  I stood there in the silence of the alley, my face burning with a mix of shame and absolute, jagged fury. I could see the chat scrolling by on my internal HUD - dozens of people calling the Silver Streak a "Pay to Win Douche", mixed with an equal number of people spamming "Bin-Queen" emojis. There was even a super high resolution shot of my crotch as my lower half protruded from the recycling bin, shared by ScholarOfCurves69 with the caption "I must worship my queen's Holy Grail."

  I minimized the chat, face turning red. I didn't need to see that.

  "Yuna," I said, my voice low and dangerous.

  "I know," Yuna whispered, her laughter finally replaced by a hard, supportive edge. "The coordinates are in an abandoned and condemned office building on the outskirts of town. The last registered owner is from about a decade ago, Apex Logistics. But as I dug into it, there's something still actively drawing a lot of power there."

  "You want me to break into a building? Aren't we the good guys?"

  "It's abandoned," Yuna protested. "It's basically a victimless tresspassing offense at worst. If anything, you're just ... urban exploring, with an intent to save the world."

  "Okay," I agreed with a nod of my head. "I can get behind that. Urban exploring. No victim, no crime. Just checking on some abandoned property that seemed weird. If you look at it the right way, it's basically the same as a hero patrol."

  "That's my girl!" Yuna cheered from over the headset, making me blush.

  "If Silver Streak thinks I'm an amateur thirst-trap, I'm going to prove him wrong. I'll show him just how good an investigator I am!"

  As Eye-Bee whirred into the air, leading the way out of the alley, I took a moment to pick my wedgie and adjust the bodysuit, sighing in relief. Thank God the bot isn't watching my ass anymore, I mumbled in my head as I made my way toward the mysterious building.