The sound of loud sirens echoed off the towering buildings as the APC sped through the streets of Industrial Sector 8’s civilian zone 3.
Toothbrush’s head floated above the dashboard as he informed Arron and Kix of the situation.
“The reports coming in say that rioters are in the market district. They have already destroyed several stalls. It’s only time before they start to head to the nearby warehouses and try to loot them.”
“Why are they rioting this time? Did some politician of the Party of Mother and Father, say something to provoke them again?” asked Kix.
“As far as I know nothing like that happened this time,” said tooth.
“How big is this one?” asked Arron.
“Should be around 100 people. I’ll let you know if anything changes while you head there,” said Toothbrush before ending the call.
“This is the 4th riot we’ve been to in the last month right? Why are they allowed to keep doing this even when it is highly illegal?” asked Arron.
“Technically these aren’t considered riots. They all get labeled as an [Disturbance] in the paperwork. These disturbances are nothing new on the 1st level. There are several such disturbances like this happening every other day and none of them make the news. Trust me you don’t want to see a real riot. As for why they do it? The majority of Troubled that do get captured have a D-rank SCS that is far past the point of saving. They have given up on changing their life and do whatever they want.”
“Come to think of it, I never saw disturbances like this on the 4th level or in the news for any of the other levels,” said Arron.
“Because they are completely stomped out and Normalized the second something starts.”
Tooth’s head appeared once again for a few seconds, “We just received an update to your orders, disburse the crowd and arrest the ringleaders.”
“What? We’re just going to let the others go?” asked Arron.
“There’s over 100 of them this time. We can’t handle rounding all of them up at once, it would be a never-ending chase to track them all down. Plus it’s probably just a bunch of angry sheep being herded along by a few wolves. Mother and Father could care less about them. We just need to normalize the troublemakers that organized and are leading the disturbance. It’s a good way to weed out the Troubled that might get funny ideas and re-educate them before they do anything stupid.”
The APC swerved around a parked hovercar and slid to a stop near the entrance of the Market district.
The entrance to the Market district, which was usually teeming with thousands of people at almost every time of the day, was now empty save for the stall owners who were cleaning up their nearby destroyed stalls. They gathered what they could save and threw everything else into a large dumpster that had also been damaged by the rioters.
Kix switched off the APC’s siren while Arron opened the passenger window and called out to one of the stall owners.
“Which way did they go?”
The nearest person, an elderly man with gray hair and a face full of wrinkles, silently pointed down the main street, not bothering to speak to them.
Kix pressed the pedal and they shot down the main street past several hundred stalls that were destroyed.
“Two security bots were just rammed and disabled by a hovercar. You have permission to use lethal force if needed to Normalize the occupants,” said Tooth.
“Rodger!” said Kix as he jerked the steering wheel to the right, causing the APC to drift around a corner of a large building.
As they rounded the corner of the building they saw a crowd of over 100 people at the far end of the street.
The crowd was in the act of tearing down the stalls, stomping on merchandise, and spilling half-cooked mystery food all over the ground.
In front of the group was a red Bevy hovercar slowly creeping down the road. The owner of the car was sitting in the open window shouting and directing the people behind them.
At the rear of the crowd was another person on a hoverbike wearing all black leather and a black helmet. They were herding the stranglers who were lagging behind the others as they were too focused on one stall.
As Arron watched the person on the hoverbike whacked a few of the stragglers with a pipe to keep them moving.
“We found them. We will begin the Normalization of the situation,” said Kix.
He tapped a holographic button on the dashboard and the sirens once again blared out echoing back and forth from the tall buildings all down the street.
The over 100 rioters stopped what they were doing and looked down the street at the speeding APC that was headed right towards them.
Without a word, the crowd immediately dispersed down several side streets and into buildings as they ran away or tried to hide.
“S***!” shouted the man sitting in the window.
“See ya Kal!” shouted the female on the Hover-bike. She turned her hoverbike around and sped off down a side street.
“Callie, you’re just going to leave me like that?” Kal shouted after Callie as she tried to escape.
“You go after hoverbike. I’ll take care of the guy in the hovercar,” said Kix as he slowed the APC down enough for Arron to hop out.
Arron grabbed onto the portable hoverbike case and jumped out of the APC as it was still moving.
The door was slammed shut and the APC sped off down the road after the fleeing red Bevy.
Arron pressed the only button on the case and threw it into the air. The box began to morph and extend out to be reshaped as new parts clicked into place.
A thin but sturdy Hoverbike appeared in front of him, its handles extending up along with a small leather seat popping into place. Instead of an ancient wheeled motorcycle, it had two flat hover skids. The smaller of the two was at the front and was used for steering while the larger one under the main body was used to keep it hovering off the ground.
Arron hopped on the hoverbike and revved the engine making sure that everything was working as it should. The Hoverbikes speedometer appeared on the left side of his helmet’s visor as he shot off down the road heading towards the side street that the black leathered Callie had escaped down.
All this happened in only a few seconds.
Callie looked behind her and saw Arron rounding the corner so she turned off into another alleyway trying to lose Arron.
“Tooth, do you have visuals on the female biker?” asked Arron, sending her ID to Tooth.
“Wait a few seconds… I’m redirecting one of the area’s security drones towards your target. Once it encounters her, it will lock on and send you the feed,” said Tooth in the top right of Arron’s visor.
A minute later Arron started to receive the live footage. Tooth had also pinned a moving red dot on the Sector 3 road map showing him the exact location of the target.
“I have the feed,” said Arron. He did not slow down as he turned onto another narrow alleyway and shot past several shocked citizens who jumped back and hugged the building’s wall trying to get out of his way.
The red dot on the map was doing a lot of weaving back and forth through many streets, alleys, and even did some backtracking.
“Did I lose him?” asked the woman as she looked over her shoulder.
Vroom!
Arron dropped down from a higher overpass and landed right next to the female biker. He had taken a shortcut and was able to catch up easily due to her indecisive driving.
The startled Callie reacted by swinging the metal parsteel pipe at Arron’s head.
Arron leaned to the left and ducked his head as he widened the distance between them. There wasn’t much room to dodge such an attack in the dark alley that they were speeding down.
Not giving up on catching her, Arron leaned to the right and closed the distance once again.
When the pipe swung towards his head again was ready for and grabbed onto it. The two fought over it with one hand while they used the other to keep their hoverbikes steady as they continued to speed down the alley passing several side streets which had hover cars speeding by.
“Let go!” shouted Callie.
Arron tugged even harder on the pipe and leaned to the right slamming his hoverbike into hers causing her to nearly lose control as it wobbled for a few seconds before being able to stabilize the speeding hoverbike.
After failing to ram her a second time, Arron gave up the idea of ramming and jumped off his bike tackling Callie right off her hoverbike.
Their hoverbikes continued flying down the alley for a few seconds before losing control and crashing into a wall.
The Arron and Callie crashed into the wall of the nearby building dampening some of their forward momentum before they fell to the ground and rolled several times before coming to a stop.
“F***! I think you broke my leg!” groaned Callie. Her helmet was cracked open from the impact and her leather jacket and pants had several tears from the impact with the wall and roll on the rough paraconcrete.
Arron came out mostly unscathed from the tumble due to his armor and helmet dampening the impact and protecting him from any serious damage.
He stood up and pulled a pair of magnetic cuffs off his belt. Callie was rocking back and forth on the ground as she moaned in pain.
Arron flipped her over onto her belly and cuffed her.
“OWW! I said I have a broken leg!”
“If you didn’t start causing problems I wouldn’t have had to chase after you,” said Arron as he lifted her onto one foot.
“Shut it, you’re just Mother and Father’s lapdog doing whatever they tell you to,” said Callie with grit teeth as she tried to ignore the pain.
With a sigh, Arron said, “I don’t get you guys. Why do this type of stuff? You are just hurting the other people who are just trying to make a living.”
“Screw them, let them suffer like the rest of us.”
“Your concerns have been recorded and will be relayed to those in charge of chatting with you later.”
Arron shook his head. He did not understand these kinds of people who knew that they were breaking the law and the consequences of doing so.
They could live a decent and worry-free life if they just followed the laws and regulations of Mother and Father, and yet there were always several rift-raft that had to start trouble.
Two hovering security bots made their way over to Arron and Callie, their metallic hands clicking and clacking.
“Kix, target two’s situation has been Normalized how about you?”
“Already caught them and I’m on my way to you. I saw the feed of your chase. It was quite wild man. You’re getting good at using that Hoverbike.”
“I’ve taken quite the liking to it,” said Arron.
“Meet me at the end of the alleyway you’re currently in,” said Kix.
Arron turned to Callie, “You have two options, you can either hop out of here by yourself, or the bots will carry you out.”
