The street was dark. Even with the lampposts on either end of the block and the four-way intersection. Even with the occasional late-night driver out, cruising. Somehow, it seemed like the night conspired to make the shadows deeper. They seemed to push into the street, the crossroads, and at the edges of the blocks. The dark crawled over the unlit guardhouse, which was sitting at the western end of the intersection.

Shaggy and his pack had been watching the tiny checkpoint for almost an hour now. They were well-aware of its function. When a car tried to pass into the neighborhood, the metal gate arm would fall and a surly trooper in black armor would saunter out. After a brief conversation, the guard would either let the car through or send them packing. Mostly, it was the latter option, though. Throughout the hour, Shaggy had only seen one car be allowed access. When he sent Cekrass and Sybil to scope out why, they had reported that the driver was a stubborn civilian. Someone that lived in the neighborhood and refused to be denied entry.

They also learned that the small square shack housed, at most, two troopers. Their statures and scents were distinct enough that Shaggy could confirm it himself. But Ephemara and Tom had also moved in close to make doubly sure. Although Tom found the shack was also fitted with motion sensors, pointing in either direction. Ephe had offered to take the shack, but Shaggy had a better idea, one that wouldn’t tip their hand.

A dark form appeared at the eastern edge of the intersection. Its lumpy, indistinct visage quickly solidified into that of a stumbling man. He slow-walked his way across the middle of the intersection. Heedless of the traffic lights or of any cars. Shaggy watched as the figure stumbled a few times, careful not to completely fall over. The figure was halfway through the middle of the intersection when the guard booth came alive.

“This is petty.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“You’re punishing the kid for not warning you about the meeting.”

Shaggy bit his lip. “No, I am using the least conspicuous member of the pack to gather intel. One who can take the heat and is the least recognizable. Do you want me sending Cekrass?”

Rita snorted. “I would have preferred you to send me.”

“You don’t have the kid’s armor.”

“Which is pointless because we can all heal ourselves.”

Shaggy turned around to argue further, but Stanley had begun shouting.

“HEY! You jack-booted fucks in that tin box! Hows about you get out here and tell us all why you're fucking with our neighborhood?”

Stanley slurred his speech and stumbled closer forward. Gesturing around as if he was surrounded by his friends and colleagues. The young boy raised a paper bag to his lips and tilted it back against his mouth before continuing further. As the sharp scent of whiskey hit his nose, Shaggy glared at Rita. The older woman looked equally appalled as Ephemara and Cekrass merely shrugged.

“What?! Boss, you wanted it to be authentic.” Ephemara whispered angrily.

“He’s seventeen!” Rita admonished.

“So he can drink in a year, anyway. Besides, our metabolisms make getting drunk hard as hell. You all know that.”

Ephemara glared at all the rest of them, crouched on the dark rooftop. Sybil and Tom were still watching the street, not saying anything. But Cekrass still looked a little chagrined while Rita was annoyed. Shaggy merely shrugged his shoulders and turned back around. She wasn’t wrong. Even if the boy slammed back the entire bottle, he probably wouldn’t feel a thing. Although, Shaggy briefly wondered how the Quinica would react.

“Movement at the shack.” Sybil whispered.

Shaggy turned his gaze to the dark booth in time to see the mechanical door slide open. A fully armored trooper seemed to groan as he took in Stanley’s slim form. The boy was still berating the booth and the trooper like he was a drunken sailor. Ephemara and Tom tensed, but Shaggy put up a hand.

“We need both of them out.”

The sneakiest members of his pack relaxed slightly. But they still felt like coiled springs through the pack link. The trooper was halfway to Stanley when he raised a hand, palm out, and reached for something on his belt. Stanley kept approaching, heedless of whatever warning he was given and the threat of violence.

The black-armored trooper pulled a baton from his hip and stepped closer to Stanley. Which was a mistake. The boy lurched forward, still in character, and slammed a punch into the troop’s armored face. The HLO thug’s head snapped to the side, and he staggered a few steps in surprise. Shaggy winced. He told the boy to hold back, but that still looked rough. The trooper collected himself as Stanley waited and then turned back to the shack.

“Enhanced human! I need help!”

The trooper’s voice was slightly modulated under the face mask. But Shaggy thought he heard a bit of worry in the guard’s tone. Tom and Ephe stood poised again as the guard booth’s entrance slid open and the second guard hurried out. They both were over the side of the roof and halfway across the street before Shaggy could verbalize the order. They pulled on black masks as the two guards approached Stanley with their batons. Rita’s worry spiked when the smell of electricity wafted through the air. The batons were electrified.

“He’ll be fine, Rita. A few shocks will not hurt him, let alone kill him.”

“I should’ve been the one to do this!” Rita hissed.

“No. We are all too recognizable. I would’ve preferred to use Tom. But he can’t take the punishment. Stanley will be fine.”

Shaggy split his attention between Stanley pretending to drunkenly fight the two guards and Ephe and Tom racing toward the closing shack door. Judging their speed, Shaggy was sure Tom would make it, and if he didn’t, Ephe would phase through. But they both cleared the entrance just as the two guards started beating Stanley with their batons. The kid used his arms to stave off the blows at first. But when they came back singed, he started dodging.

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“He’s not used to fighting without his armor.” Sybil mentioned.

Shaggy nodded in the darkness and Rita hissed at a low-blow from the guard. Stanley swept his leg out drunkenly, sending both troopers down into the street. He jumped back and took another long pull from his bag-covered bottle.

“You fucking pussies can’t hit for shit.” The boy complained.

One of the guard’s put a hand to the side of his helmet and started speaking.

“This is Checkpoint Delta! We ha- Urk!”

Stanley’s flying knee caught the guard in the side of the head, and they collapsed. Shaggy blew out a sigh. They didn’t want this to become a great big thing. So Shaggy ordered the boy to go down with the next hit. He signaled Ephemara and Tom to hurry as the second guard angrily charged Stanley and swung his baton. The electricity snapped in the air as the baton smacked into Stanley’s head. The boy hesitated for a split-second, but he eventually stumbled to the ground and flailed angrily.

The guard slammed his baton down onto Stanley twice more and then went to check on his compatriot. But the move had him facing the guard shack. Tom wouldn’t be able to get out if the door was being looked at. Before Shaggy could send another order over the pack link, Stanley reached out and roughly tripped the guard. The second guard’s face-plate slammed into the pavement as his feet flew into the air. His body recoiled harshly and his body rolled over.

Shaggy hissed. “I really hope he’s not dead.”

“Fuck’em.” Rita spat.

Shaggy rolled his eyes. “If we wanted to kill them, we would’ve just rolled through the checkpoint. We need them alive so that this just looks like an isolated incident and not an attack.”

On the ground in the street. Stanley rose to his feet and quickly checked the guard’s vitals. Relief flooded the pack bond, and Stanley rose to his feet. With a worried expression, Stanley started running north just as a dark figure emerged from the shack. Shaggy sighed as the tension in his whole pack faded away. Cekrass’ knees seemed to give out as the big lizard fell to his ass.

“Next time. Let’s just kill.” The big lizard growled.

Shaggy agreed silently. This cloak and dagger shit was for the birds. Although Ephe and Tom’s satisfied feelings coming over the bond made things slightly worth it. But they couldn’t stay here, one of the guards had made half a call. The HLO was bound to send someone. Shaggy sent the order for the pack to run north and meet up with Stanley. He got back feelings of acceptance and Rita, Cekrass, and Sybil dashed away.

Ephemara and Tom felt a little annoyed at having to postpone what they found. But Shaggy merely shrugged and took off running. Reaching the northern lip of the roof, Shaggy took a running leap and easily cleared the gap between buildings. He and his pack ran through the dark streets, their silhouettes barely visible in the night. They reached the edge of their block and had to jump down and cross the street. Which is when Ephe and Tom joined them.

Halfway up the next block, they met Stanley in a dark alley, looking chagrined.

“Sorry, boss. I didn’t mean to knock them out.”

Shaggy shook his head and was about to say the kid did good when Rita bolted past him. The matronly woman fussed about the kid’s head and shoulders, looking for injuries. She even lifted the boy’s shirt up to check his chest. Stanley struggled for a few moments but eventually gave up as Rita gave him a thorough look over. When she was done, she patted his head and nodded.

“You did fine. I doubt they’ll follow up with a drunken kid who whooped their asses.”

“Pfft! They sure as hell won’t now.” Tom exclaimed. “We deleted their camera footage.”

Shaggy gripped the sides of his head. “I said to leave no sign. They are going to notice when the footage goes missing from their servers!”

Ephemara and Tom shared an evil look. “No, they won’t. The footage is saved on site.”

“And, get this, they are using old CD storage to copy the footage onto. It’s all retro-tech. Damn near analog.” Tom chuckled.

“We copied over everything we could to the tablets you gave us. But when the second guard went down, we had to do something. So Tom spilled the guard’s coffee onto their console, frying it. While he did that, I started a little fire in the small server rack they had in there. It’ll look like an electrical fire started from the spilled coffee.”

“Yeah, that piece of shit shack didn’t have any fire-suppression systems, and they had a bunch of shit plugged into their console. TV, D-Net Radio, coffee machine… a bunch of shit.”

Shaggy nodded. “So… what did you get then?”

Tom and Ephe glanced at each other before giving Shaggy a shrug.

“We don’t know. It’s a lot of information. Most of which are reports on who tried to enter.”

“I’ve got reports on the ones they let through.” Tom said, looking at his tablet.

Shaggy groaned and scratched the back of his head. They would need to go through all of it as quickly as possible before they hit the next guard post. There was an odd mental groan over the pack link as his pack realized he wanted to do what they just did again.

“Boss? Do we have to? I mean, we have some info, right? Let’s just act on that and then hit the next checkpoint after.”

“What if there is nothing to act upon in this information? Or maybe there is something, but we act on it and the other checkpoints go on alert? We need as much info as possible without the HLO catching on to what we are doing.”

“What if we get to the next checkpoint and they have the same information we got at the last checkpoint?” Vick asked.

Shaggy shook his head. “They can’t. Ephemara and Tom just said that the shacks are low tech and isolated. We can hit them all and collect as much as we can tonight and then hit them later.”

“No, we can’t.” Rita argued. “If we hit each checkpoint on the same night, that’ll look suspicious too. I say we take what we’ve got and act on it. Maybe in a few nights, we can hit another checkpoint. But this time we do it differently. Maybe we will cover our faces and break in this time. Or maybe we get Levy involved and have her magic the guards.”

“Damn it… that makes sense.” Shaggy groaned as he rubbed his forehead.

They didn’t want to overreach, and any hit against the HLO in the neighborhood would slow them down. Levy was back with the business owners trying to think of a legal recourse for the neighborhood. But Shaggy needed to fight the war on the other front. Which meant upsetting the HLO’s apple cart. Glancing at Vick, he asked.

“Did you get it?”

The tall man nodded and slung his rifle off his shoulder. He detached something from his rifle’s scope and passed it to Shaggy. The small device whirred softly in his hand as Shaggy turned it over. The recording device had no screen or controls. But supposedly it would record everything Vick pointed his scope at.

“It’ll take some tweaking. But we can have footage of HLO-sanctioned troops beating a teen by morning. I just need a computer and a Net connection.”

Shaggy tossed the recorder back to Vick and nodded. “Well, that’s your job for tonight. First laptop we find, and you’re editing footage. What about you two?”

Ephemara and Tom looked up from their tablets. Ephemara bit her lip and shook her head, but Tom was grinning maniacally.

“I’ve got a location for all the trucks the HLO has been letting through. Some of them look legit, but many of them are being taken to a warehouse on the northern side of the neighborhood.”

“Well, looks like that’s our target. Any idea what they are moving or doing there? Is it more weapons and armor?”

Tom shrugged. “No idea. The trucks don’t have manifests listed and they don’t have to declare anything when they go through the checkpoints. In fact, it looks like the guards just wave them on through.”

“Fine.” Shaggy rubbed his hands together excitedly. “We scope out this warehouse and then we swing back around for Levy. After that, we’ll call it a night, yeah?”

Getting nods all around, Shaggy waved a hand for Tom to lead the way. The pale werewolf strutted to the front of the pack and started running. Sybil rolled her eyes and followed as Vick, Cekrass, and Ephemara hurried after. Rita gave Stanley one last check before she, too, bolted off. Shaggy patted the kid’s shoulder and smiled.

“You did good, kid.”

“Thanks, boss. This… uhh… wasn’t a punishment, was it? For not telling you about how many people were going to be at the business association’s meeting?”

Shaggy simply grinned and hurried off. Stanley groaned as he tried to race after Shaggy and explain. His pack of wolves ran through the night. The youngest of them howling at their leader at his unfair treatment. But Shaggy could only smile. They were going to rip the HLO out of their neighborhood one night at a time. Starting tonight.