eX-0281 and eX-0704 basked in their triumph and shared the tail flick that had started this all. "We really did it!" Their voices resounded in close unison.

At the same time, the Disco Menace knelt down to her friend who she had left for dead.

"I thought I'd never see you again," Charlotte said with a wavering voice. "Thanks, Vickie."

"That's what I said when you were adopted ten years ago, Lottie, yet here we are." The Disco Menace—Vickie—said whilst ruffling her hair.

"Yep. Here we are." Charlotte extended her weak arms for a hug.

When the Disco Menace returned the embrace, she swung the smaller woman into her arms. "Thanks for saving her, lizard boys. You don't know how much that means to me."

In tandem, eX-0281 and eX-0704 raised their tails. Both took some excited steps to follow when she walked towards the hoverbike.

"See ya later. Or not."

"Wait!" eX-0281 cried. This was his bright idea to begin with; it had better work. "Take us with you."

For a second, the Disco Menace turned back to acknowledge them—more like dismiss them with a laugh. "Ha, no. Good luck out there! I hope you last more than a day without the monsters eating you or the GPC exterminating you."

With both Charlotte and the bundled up kid on the hoverbike, the Disco Menace powered it up.

"You really are a menace!" eX-0281 gasped.

"This is why I didn't think we should bother with the Disco Menace!" eX-0704 whined, his voice curling into an enraged growl.

"Disco Menace? Hm!" Her low voice mused over their nickname for her, only humored by the badge of cruelty that she had earned.

In preparation to fight, eX-0281 performed a [Scan] on the target and started to read off the relevant information.

Target: "Vickie" "Disco Menace" [Human]

Vitality: 70%

Mana Reserves: 106 Mu

"Down to three-quarters vitality. She already has 100 Mu back!"

"Don't forget to [Scan] the kid."

"The kid?" eX-0281 echoed.

Target: Marcel [Human]

Vitality: 17%

Mana Reserves: 498 Mu

"Crap," eX-0281 breathed. "His mana regen is almost five times as fast!"

"Yeah, and he'll zap the crap out of you too."

Their wings were ready to flap and claws scratch. The sub-dragon duo would force the Disco Menace to help them if they must. For all the trouble they had gone through, they deserved at least that much!

"Stop!" Charlotte cried. "They saved my life! There's no reason they can't come with us."

"Not enough room on the bike," the Disco Menace said indifferently. The mana-powered energy beneath the vehicle had lifted it into the air, ready to take off. "It's nothing personal. Toodles!"

The hoverbike launched forward faster than either eX-0281 or eX-0704 could go with their wings. At the same time, a body went careening for the poisonous grass.

"Lottie!" the Disco Menace shrieked.

Just like that, Charlotte had thrown herself from the side of the bike. Her air tank was cradled like a baby in her arms.

At the last minute, eX-0281 dove headlong and caught her. Rather ineloquently, he lay across the grass, but his tail curled over his head in a smile nonetheless. "Gotcha again!"

"My hero," she said, failing to manage the dreamy tone which she tried to fake. "Seriously, Vickie! These guys saved me. They deserve to come with us!"

"They'll slow us down, and you know they're chipped!"

"I already disabled the GPS unit from 281's helmet," Charlotte snapped. "Did you cut the tracker out of Marcel yet?"

At his side, eX-0704 put a thoughtful claw to his nose. "That's how the drones caught up to her." Thereafter, he exploded in anger. "You made me get rid of my helmet, but your brother was being tracked the entire time!"

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Brother? Now, eX-0281 understood why the Disco Menace felt so desperate to get out of here. Even though he only truly met eX-0704 earlier today, he felt an irrevocable sense of kinship.

The mask of the Disco Menace hid any facial reaction, but based on her shaky hands hurrying to set Marcel on the ground, she seemed to have forgotten that her own precious brother could have been chipped. She started to feel across his skin in desperation.

Marcel allowed her to search him, not moving much beyond the way that she lifted his arms.

"Um, actually," Charlotte said, shifting awkwardly from where eX-0281 had set her on the ground. "You guys probably have a secondary GPS embedded in your flesh somewhere, I imagine. We should check for it."

eX-0281 shared a quizzical glance with eX-0704.

"I really had no reason to lose my helmet," eX-0704 said mournfully.

"Sorry. Vickie isn't the smartest tool in the shed. The images from your camera will still upload to their servers and all that but if they can't get a fix on us, it'll take them a while to figure out our location…." Charlotte would have kept talking like that if she were not cut off.

"Don't bother with them," the Disco Menace barked. "We won't be able to remove their neural transmitters anyway."

"Actually," Charlotte started up anew and sounded like a video at two times speed. "The neural transmitters are sealed within a Faraday cage. Only the high frequency RFID for their helmets passes through, and that responds in an extremely short range. GPS signals operate on a lower frequency, so it can't even get out of the metal wrapping, much less transmit to the satellites in space."

"Blah blah blah. If you say it's safe, then strip your buddy down and search his skin!" Shortly thereafter, the Disco Menace said, "Interior of left forearm." She drew a knife from somewhere on her person and readied it to Marcel's skin.

"Um." Charlotte fumbled with her hands in her lap. "As Vickie said, would one of you mind undressing a bit? We'll check your arms first."

Obediently, eX-0281 unstrapped his wrist guards and unfastened the section of armor on his left arm. In doing so, he shifted form to take advantage of his fingers and softer, human skin.

The Disco Menace came over to Charlotte with Marcel and the knife. "Actually, would you mind getting it out of Marcel? I… don't want to hurt him."

"Yes, of course," Charlotte said. Through the plastic screen of her mask, she smiled pleasantly.

"Liz, I've got you," the Disco Menace barked. "Let's speed this up."

"Oh no. It's fine…." eX-0704 tried to wave his claws about to signal that he would wait for Charlotte, but she started fighting with him to take off his armor.

Yep. I definitely feel bad for him. A soft sigh passed by eX-0281's lips, glad that he had Charlotte cut a precise slit in his arm and push the tracker out.

Wincing away, he tried to sit as still as possible. His instincts begged for him to shift whenever his human form sustained harm no matter how small, even despite knowing that it was for the best.

Charlotte's gentle touch made it more bearable. Her fingers were surprisingly steady in spite of everything that had happened to her.

In contrast, eX-0704 stayed in dragon form and hissed out of pain. The Disco Menace hacked through his scales and sliced the GPS straight out of his flesh. Marcel was lucky he did not have his sister torture him like that.

To think, eX-0281 had assumed that talking to the Disco Menace would have been the easier task. Boy, was he wrong. He made a mental note to make it up to eX-0704 somehow.

"Here we are," Charlotte said with his tracker in hand. "Hiya!" Like everything else, she flung the latest GPS unit so that it clattered down the air shaft from which they had escaped. "There goes the last of Grandesia Power Company's location data on us."

"We need to keep moving." The Disco Menace mounted her bike and situated Marcel in front of her.

Charlotte reached both her arms up to eX-0281, like a child looking for a hug from a teddy bear. "Take me with you. I know where we're going, and I don't want Victoria to leave you behind."

Careful of her leg, he scooped her up and ran with her. Small and light as she was, Charlotte did not pose an undue burden on his chest and arms. Her air tank resting across her body did not burden him either, as he was plenty strong enough in dragon form to carry on at full speed.

While they ran past the buildings swathed in plant growth, eX-0281 and eX-0704 tried to keep up with the hoverbike. The pavement had long been upheaved by gnarled roots and covered by moss. Not slowing down for them, the Disco Menace soon disappeared in the haze.

The air burned at eX-0281's lungs. Ultimately, the pain in his chest made him start to slow with eX-0704 struggling at his side. Their vitalities had stayed the same—not losing health from mana poisoning, but their performance suffered.

"How long can we keep this up?" eX-0704 panted out his complaints first.

"You guys are B-class mages. You'll be fine," Charlotte responded. "We just need to get to a lower pollution zone in thirty minutes before my air supply runs out."

The level of mages starkly influenced how well they could handle a mana-saturated environment.

"Is the Disco Menace…." eX-0281 started to say her nickname as always, but realized he should probably use her name by now. "Is Victoria an A-class mage? And what about Marcel?"

"Only Vickie, yes." Hushed, she said, "Marcel is S-class."

eX-0281 and eX-0704 fell quiet. No sound broke through the urban, jungle landscape aside from their wings beating and feet scraping over crumbled concrete.

S-class mages occurred naturally in less than a thousandth of a percent of the population. Now, everything made sense why the Grandesia Power Company had been keeping an S-Class mage in their research and development facility. Poor Marcel must have been subject to experimentation.

The somber mood lingered.

"Keep heading west," Charlotte said. "The air quality will improve as we get further away from Grandesia. A lower risk for monsters too."

"Monsters?" eX-0281 echoed.

Beyond the city's confinement, animals had become corrupted with mana and mutated into different species entirely. Though some sub-dragon soldiers worked in pest control above ground and extermination teams within the city, eX-0281 never dealt with monsters except for mana rats.

The sun was setting overhead, deepening the hues of blue and green in the air. The dim glow of the mana particles turned the surroundings eerie. The long shadows from the information era buildings left shivers going up his spine.

He clicked his [Night Vision] on to keep watch for their whole group.