Skydog flew over the shanty town, and as she watched the screen in front of her, Tasìa grew more and more amazed with just how aesthetically viable the structures of the abandoned community appeared from several hundred feet in the air.

She looked around her at the tin and wooden structures that ran up and down the side of the roadway.

All that was really necessary was a little touch-up. Only a handful of people who gave a fuck would even be needed to turn the shanty town into a suitable place for indigent souls to claim as their own.

Tasìa shook her head and chuckled to herself. Where was this - conscientious concern, coming from? Why would she even care? She was just in town for a few days to stir the pot and make some shit happen.

She needed to get back to her safe house and get her head checked with an MRI and a Brain Wave Cypher scan as soon as this mission was over. Who knows? It could very well be an invasive species that caused her to have these odd thoughts involving civic responsibility.

As much as she was joking to herself, in the Quadra, that was a very real possibility. Tasìa quickly shook off the sudden bout of paranoia her musings brought on.

She glanced back at the screen to get her mind back on her present activities. There was no time to dwell on either her current circumstances or sanity.

Shit could go down that she needed to respond to without distraction.

The drone descended towards the mansion proper. The yard that Skydog hovered over appeared an indecipherable sprawl from the drone's current angle of descent. Tasìa was left wishing she could slow the drone down to get a better sense of the yard's defensive setup.

She could not make heads or tails out of it.

No offense meant for the wonderful Miss Annebél, but the brawler was more of a ring tactician than an operative or a second-story thief.

She didn't know what Tasìa needed to see, and this time Tasìa wasn't going to try to ram her own way through this mission and take control of it. This was Annebél's operation, she was only there to keep Big Red safe and have her back when a fight broke out.

Again, where are these conscientious thoughts coming from? I wasn't even this badly decadent with this kind of thinking back when I was a nun!

Tasìa shook her head. Trying to be a better person went against her every instinct for self preservation.

Something did catch her eye that gave her something to puzzle over.

Though, only for the merest of seconds, the Skydog swooped its camera down for a proper inspection of the course edge before the yard was once more out of visual range. Tasìa finally got the glance she needed.

The guard house on the back lot was exactly where she expected it to be. No one was patrolling the wider area that Tasìa decided would make for the best approach.

At best, there were only a few cameras fixed in those positions. At worse, they had auto-turrets setup to pick off invaders placed along the outer perimeter of the yard

Tasìa chuckled to herself. That would be quite extreme for the part of the yard that shared an edge with a golf course where two dozen other neighboring yards were spread about.

Buried charged devices designed for short term paralysis were quite common for warning trespassers off. The Quadra wasn't exactly a litigious society. If a pacemaker went kaput because a sunstroking elderly gentleman wondered into the wrong grounds . . . well, it happened from time to time.

The drone revolved towards the mansion as did its camera. Tasìa's curiosity about the parameter defenses had to go unsatiated for now.

As it slowed down, Skydog approached the second story of the mansion, steadily.

The display showed a glass sunroof vaulted structure set inside the length of the wing above the second story of the mansion. Five sets of double doors and three balconies lined the second story along the front lot. The other two French doors appeared to be merely a decorative part of an older design.

Tasìa's interest peeked when she spotted a broken window.

"Hey Annebél, you see that?"

Annebél throttled Skydog's twin hover fans.

"What did you see?"

"Over by the right corner second story window, on the south wing, there is a broken window."

Annebél toggled a console control. The camera fixed upon the target window with magnified focus.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Singular letters, words, and on-going status symbols in LED green scrolled down a small screen fixed to the hand console that Annebél kept her eyes on as she navigated the drone. Tasìa narrated the actions displayed on the larger screen of her laptop.

"Something is glowing a sickly blue on the back wall inside that room. It appears to be some kind of liquid crystal. Like very large, coarse grains of salt smeared on the wall."

Annebél's lips reared back, long and thin.

"Okay. Something weird is going on."

"Are there any signs that the Javierras are even home?"

Annebél shrugged.

"If they are, they have really let the place go to shit. I'm going to fly Skydog around to the patio side."

The patio area was currently outside of the visual range of the camera's vantage point.

Annebél took the drone up another hundred feet, and she let the drone approach slowly. A large swimming pool came into view. The crystal blue waters were broken up with enormous white pustules floating in them. Each pustule was connected to the next with milky streamers between the sacs of waste.

Something large and mammalian floated in the water within the foul-looking mix.

Annebél squinted as she yelled, nervous and excited.

"What is that? It looks so unholy!"

Tasìa had her suspicions that it just might be something that she had encountered very recently. A dead phase beast was her best guess.

There is more than one of those fuckers?

"Could you get a closer look," Tasìa urged.

"Shit. We've been spotted."

A little man watched them. He dressed in black and dark gray leather street camo and glared at the drone.

The man made hand gestures to someone who remained outside of their view.

The camera panned out. There were a group of similarly dressed individuals who milled about the patio area.

With a brisk pace, another man approached the one who spotted the Skydog. He passed the spotter a long rifle with a flared-out musket-like barrel.

Tasha recognized it as an anti-electronics weapon, a KAJ Fyr 7cm, that could produce a short-burst EMP field.

"Ah, shit," she said. "We need to pull up."

Annebél cranked up the hover fans into a higher gear. Within seconds the drone accelerated to several dozen feet higher.

The rifle made an odd sound, 'woof-womp' as it blasted away. The shot let out a violent energy-riddled tract that spread out wide, but it still missed.

Annebél lowered the Skydog closer to the sunroof so the rifleman would be denied an angle to shoot it from. She shot a glance at Tasìa.

"Where to now," Annebél asked.

"We got a good portion of what we need. Let's bring it back in and go scouting on foot."

The latest intrigue was not what they were expecting. Tasìa started to get a little hope building in her heart that conditions were not favorable for Annebél's greater purpose of blowing up the Alfa Romeo Hybrclydes.

The way things were currently going, she just might be able to keep the car.

Of course, given their differences in temperament, she kept her sentiment to herself.

They could hear the sudden boom from where they sat several hundred yards away. The Skydog spun off of its axes. It caught a visual of something just before the thing faded out much as the phase beast had done.

Whatever it was had hid in hover above the sunroom as it skirted behind the Skydog before its attack.

Annebél cursed as she tried to regain control over the spinning drone. However, even as she managed to slow it down and get it to hover vertically again, the Skydog was now, once more, above the patio. The camera showed the man with the rifle taking aim once more.

Annebél yelled in frustration.

"Ah, the fucker!"

The drone came crashing down.

The last thing they witnessed on the camera before the Skydog lost contact was several sets of boots rapidly approaching the damaged drone.

With her face bearing a mean grimace, Annebél stood up and kicked at a log that was used as a makeshift stool. It rolled away onto a pallet and then off of the ridge ledge.

She shoved the hand console back into the duffle bag.

"Well. They leave me no choice. Those dumb ass clown bitches are about to get hurt."

"Hey Annebél I think those punks were Night Brigade."

Annebél shook her head and she spat off the side of the patio before she spoke.

"I can't imagine how it could even possibly be the case that terrorist, an anarchist home invasion crew, is let anywhere near that mansion. I never thought I'd live to see a time when the Javierras were not untouchable."

Tasìa thought about the resources they currently had to make the retrieval possible. She had left the Arctic Devil back at the safe house. She also had the option of the .50 DSR Precision that belonged to a short lived pal of a mercenary by the name of Parro.

She planned to bring the Artic Devil with her that evening. She did not foresee a need for a good long-range weapon for her current venture.

Just sneaking around blowing shit up. That's all.

Tasìa knew that for this venture with Annebél, she would be going deeper into the heart of the city of Asunsión where carrying long arms was typically not a viable strategy.

This venture turned out quite differently from what she expected with the suburb set-up to resemble country estates that sprawled along the parameter of a golf-course.

It provided a plentiful bounty of sniping opportunities! Though she had no doubt the local security set-up took that into account. No doubt either that other estates within it were the habitats of men of some repute.

However, even still, she did not come unprepared. The Magellani .22 revolver and a scoped, single-action, .357 Rugar Vaquero revolver were both presently concealed on her.

Along with her stiletto. After all, a daga chica was nothing without her blade.

She could use the Vaquero for her long-distance sniping instead of a long rifle. It was effectively scoped at several hundred yards given the build frame for the revolver was stupefyingly stable.

Legendary in that regard, in fact.

Its only real shortcoming was the Vaquero was a loud shot.

The Arctic Devil was the quietest platform she had ever tested. She doubted that the sonar tracking systems could even pick it up.

Now that was useful for the inner city combat scenarios that the duo potentially would find themselves in.

Though Tasìa could kick herself for not foreseeing that advantage until just now.

Annebél turned towards her and laughed with a deep-throated chortle as she urged Tasìa to get up from the floor bed.

Annebél's hands waved with palms facing up.

"You get that dreamy look about you whenever you are thinking about your guns, don't you? Come on, sweet sister. Maybe you will get a chance to use one on these fuckers."

Tasìa shrugged as she wondered what her tell-tale could have been. Then she noticed her fingers were gripped solid while her trigger finger happily played along with the thoughts of active targets bouncing around inside her head.