//------------------------------//
// Personal Justice (New) 
// Story: SAPR 
// by Scipio Smith 
//------------------------------//


Personal Justice


Neon sat on the ledge of the walkway running outside the apartment. Ciel stood straight, but with her back up against one of the columns that helped support the balcony above them. 
Together, they watched as the paramedics wheeled Mrs. Peterson’s body out of her home. 
She was covered, wrapped in a red bodybag, strapped down to the stretcher. Neither of the two paramedics said anything to the two of them as they bore the body away. 
Neither Ciel nor Neon said anything to one another. It was … difficult to know what to say under the circumstances. 
As the paramedics departed, the police officer who had arrived on the scene stepped out of the apartment. Only one police officer had arrived when they had called to report that Mrs. Peterson was dead. Only one. 
One police officer, two paramedics, and Ciel and Neon. The only people who seemed to care, and it was doubtful if the paramedics or the officer actually did care, although Ciel found she hoped they did, at least a little. 
It was not quite true that no one else would care; her mother would care, when she found out, and her father too and Florentin and the rest; Neon’s family would care; the congregation would care, but right now … a few people had wandered out when they heard the sirens of the ambulance to gawk, but they had all gone in again by now. In this whole building where she had lived, nobody cared. 
Just as they hadn’t cared to take care of her when she was alive. 
Ciel felt her brow knotting above her. She felt angry. Because of this, but also because … because of everything else, it was forming a knot in her stomach; she could feel it like the discomfort after overeating, except that there seemed less prospect of release. She was angry, angry at Mantle, angry at Penny … angry at God.
We are your faithful! We pray to you, we worship you, we honour you! So why does it seem as though you’re picking us off one by one?
She was not an idiot; she understood that the existence of God did not negate the existence of evil; she wasn’t so jejune and naïve that she could be turned aside from her faith by the question ‘ah, but why does God let people suffer?’ but at this time, under everything that was assailing her, under all the water that was deluging her, Ciel couldn’t help but wonder why the faithful seemed to be suffering more than the sinners. 
Ciel closed her eyes. That was … that was not right, that was not… not the right thing to think; it was… her mind was clouded, her thoughts were unclear, but she knew that she should not be thinking this way. 
But the anger in her stomach remained nonetheless. 
Of course, there was one more person she was angry at: whoever had done this.
“You’re the two kids who called it in?” the police officer asked.
Ciel opened her eyes and looked up at the officer. He was dressed in plain clothes, in a suit that looked better cared for than the man who wore it; his age was difficult to determine, as old as Ciel’s father, perhaps a little older. His hair had almost completely disappeared, and the lines on his face seemed almost to resemble scars. His eyes were a cold blue, and the sharpness of his nose gave the impression of an eagle, or some such bird of prey. 
“That’s right,” Neon said. “We called you. We hoped a couple more of you might show up.”
The police officer didn’t rise to Neon’s barb. He just said, “So, how did you get into the apartment?”
“With a key,” Neon said.
“You have a key to the old woman—”
“Mrs. Peterson,” Ciel said softly.
“Excuse me?”
“Her name was Esmeralda Peterson,” Ciel said softly. “Not ‘the old woman.’”
The police officer said, “Do either of you have a key to her apartment?”
“We found it under the welcome mat,” Neon said.
“And how many people knew that there was a key under the mat?” asked the officer.
“We don’t know,” Ciel admitted.
“Did you know it was there?”
“No,” Ciel said.
Neon shook her head. “I thought it might be, but I didn’t know.”
“Hmm,” the police officer murmured. “So why did you go into the apartment?”
“Mrs. Peterson is … has been … was sick,” Ciel said. “My mother asked me to bring her some stew.”
“In the flask inside.”
“Yes,” Ciel said. “I dropped it when I saw … her.”
The police officer looked from Ciel to Neon. “Does it always take two people to deliver a flask full of stew?”
“Why does that matter?” Ciel asked.
“Because he thinks we did it,” Neon growled.
“I don’t think anything,” the police officer insisted, “but there’s no sign of forced entry, which means that whoever did this probably got into the apartment the same way that you did, using the key. And maybe that means that they got in at exactly the same time that you did, because they are you.”
“We did not do this,” Ciel growled. “We are—”
“Atlas students,” Neon said.
“Honourable women,” Ciel declared.
The police officer looked at them, his cold blue eyes flickering from one to the other. “Well, I don’t think we’ll ever find out exactly what happened. Lucky you, maybe.”
“What do you mean, we’ll never find out what happened?” Neon said, leaping down off the ledge she’d been sat on. “Isn’t it your job to find out what happened? Can’t you get, like, forensics in to look for evidence of who was in the apartment or something?”
“They’re busy,” the police officer said.
“'Busy'?” Ciel repeated. “A woman is dead!”
“Yeah, she is,” the police officer said, his voice harsh. “So is the sixteen-year-old girl who overdosed two nights ago after some scumbag sold her a bad batch of Purple Magic, so is the guy who got hit by a car the day before that as he was crossing the street. And the week before that, a woman was raped walking home. And before that, someone was held up at knifepoint and robbed. I got a backlog of cases six months old sitting on my desk, and this one doesn’t get to jump to the top of the line just because it’s the one that you two care about. I’m sorry, but … that’s the way it is.” 
He, too, walked away, following in the footsteps of the paramedics as he headed towards the stairs that wound their way down the building to street level. 
Neon folded her arms as she watched him go. “Well, this sucks,” she said.
“Indeed,” Ciel muttered.
“Someone walks into an old woman’s apartment, bashes her head in, walks out, and now they’re going to get away with it because the police are backed up,” Neon said. “This … this isn’t right.”
“You’re wrong,” Ciel said softly.
“Huh?”
“They aren’t going to get away with this,” Ciel declared. “If the police won’t find out who killed Mrs. Peterson then we will.”
Neon was silent for a moment, her eyebrows disappearing under her bangs. “Look … you know I’ve got your back, C, but … how?”
“Ciel!” Rainbow Dash shouted as she emerged from the staircase and ran down the balcony towards them, leaving a rainbow trail in her wake that seemed — for all that Ciel was glad of her haste — inappropriate in the current circumstances, before she came to a halt beside them. “I got your text,” she said. “Are you guys okay?”
Neon let her hands drop to her sides. “Not really,” she said.
“Yeah, right, of course not,” Rainbow murmured. She glanced at the open door to Mrs. Peterson’s apartment; nobody had bothered to close it yet. “Is this … this the place?”
Ciel nodded mutely.
Rainbow paused for a moment. “She was a friend of yours?”
“We knew her,” Neon said. “She was a nice old lady.”
“We need your help,” Ciel said. 
Rainbow looked at her. “Help with what?”
“With finding who this,” Ciel replied. “The police have no resources to do anything to catch her killer; who will bring justice if not us?”
Rainbow frowned. “We’re not cops.”
“But we are the defenders of the world,” Ciel insisted. “Defenders of the weak, protectors of the helpless. Who is more weak and helpless than a sick old woman, frail and unable to leave her bed? Who is more in need of a protector?”
“Protection?” Rainbow asked. “Or revenge?”
“Does it matter?” Ciel demanded. “A wrong has been done; it must be righted. You told me I could call on you for help. Or was that more empty bluster devoid of substance?”
“Ciel,” Neon murmured, but Rainbow held up a hand to stay anything else she might have said. 
“You’re right,” Rainbow said. “I did say that I would help you. And I will. So how do you want to start?”
Ciel hesitated, having insisted upon doing this, and insisted with such vehemence in the teeth of the objections of the others, she felt a little foolish to admit that she had no idea how to begin. And yet, that was the truth; as Rainbow said, they were not trained investigators, they had no knowledge of the criminal mind, they had no forensic equipment, they had not even any access to resources that the police had at their disposal — nor would they until they graduate. 
They were the only ones with the drive to do anything to solve Mrs. Peterson’s murder, and yet, their drive alone did not give them the capacity to do so. 
“I … I do not know.”
Rainbow nodded. “Okay then,” she said. “Mind if I go in and take a look around?”
“Sure,” Neon said. “But what do you expect to see in there?”
“My life wasn’t always Pinkie Parties and hanging out with Twilight,” Rainbow said as she walked through the open door into the apartment. 
Neon and Ciel glanced at one another for a moment, before Ciel followed her in, and Neon trailed after them. 
Rainbow did not know her way around the apartment as they did, but it was not a very big apartment, and it didn’t take her very long to find her way to the bedroom. Mrs. Peterson was gone, and the book that she had been reading — the Epistles of the Lady — had been thrown to the floor and trampled on by the paramedics, the sheets had been thrown back, but at the same time, you could still see some stains of blood on the pillow, the red turning to brown. 
Rainbow put her hands on her hips. “So, this is where … where you found her?”
“Yeah,” Neon said. “This is it.”
Rainbow nodded. “Did she have anything valuable?”
“Why does that matter?” Ciel asked.
Rainbow turned to face her. “It matters because we’ll never work out who did it if we can’t work out why, so did she have anything worth taking?”
“She had an antique gun,” Neon said. “A pistol from the Great War; she kept it in the drawer in her nightstand. I don’t think she had any bullets for it, unfortunately.”
“And she had some watches,” Ciel added. “Expensive watches, I think; somewhat expensive, anyway; expensive for Mantle, at least. Small, but rather pretty. Anniversary gifts from her late husband. And some silverware, knives and forks, that sort of thing.”
“Real silver?” Rainbow asked.
Ciel nodded. “And quite old, I think.”
“Right,” Rainbow murmured. “Do you know where she kept them, and are they still there?”
Neon approached the bedroom doorway. Rainbow made way for her, and Neon walked in and around the bed, her tail hanging limp behind her as she approached the nightstand. She pulled open the top door, looked down, and rummaged around inside for a moment. 
“Not there?” Rainbow asked.
“Hang on; she might have put it back in the wrong place,” Neon said, opening up the middle drawer, and then the bottom. “No. It’s not here.”
“What about the watches and the silver?”
“She kept her watches in a box under the bed,” Ciel said. “And the silver underneath the kitchen sink.”
Neon got down on the floor, resting her head upon the grey carpet as she peered beneath the bed. “There’s nothing here.”
Ciel felt a scowl settling upon her face as she strode into the kitchen. She grabbed the plastic handles of the cupboards under the sink and flung them open with excessive force. She knelt down, confronted by the sight of bottles of bleach, washing up liquid, kitchen towel, plastic bin liners. But no box of silverware. 
Ciel rose silently, slammed the cupboard doors shut, and stalked back into the bedroom. 
“That’s gone too?” Rainbow asked.
Ciel inhaled through her nose. “Robbery. Of all the … of all the reasons to … murdered for what? For an antique pistol, some watches, and a set of silver forks? Is that what this city has come to? Is that what we have come to?”
Rainbow took a moment to reply. “You knew about this,” she said softly. “I mean you knew that she had this stuff and where it was. Does that mean that other people knew about it too?”
“She wasn’t shy about talking about it,” Neon admitted.
“She liked having someone to talk to,” Ciel declared. “Her husband was dead, her son … she wanted to talk. So she would tell you stories or show you things that she thought might interest you. Tell you their history. She just…” She turned away. “She just wanted to talk to someone.”
“Which means that whoever did this knew her,” Rainbow said.
“Why so sure?” Neon asked. “Yeah, it looks like burglary, but it could have been just random.”
Rainbow shook her head. “If someone had broken in here just looking for anything that they could take, they would have torn the place up looking for stuff. But if you didn’t know where the stuff was, you wouldn’t know that it had been touched at all. There’s no damage; there’s no vandalism. Whoever did this knew what they were after, and they knew where it was; they got in, they took it—”
“And they killed her,” Neon said sharply. “But why? She was old, she was sick, she was in bed; it wasn’t as though she could have stopped anybody.”
Rainbow held out her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe … maybe she cried out, and they were afraid somebody would hear.”
“In this town, who’d do anything if they did hear?” Neon asked.
“I don’t know,” Rainbow admitted. “But I’m pretty sure I’m right about this: whoever did this wanted the stuff they knew was in here.”
“Murdered for an antique pistol and some silver forks,” Ciel murmured.
I hate this city.
“So what does this tell us?” Ciel demanded. “It was not a small number of people who knew where Mrs. Peterson kept her valuables.”
“No,” Rainbow allowed. “But whoever stole it probably didn’t steal the stuff because they have a gun collection or a watch collection; they’re going to want to sell it on as quickly as they can. So let’s check out the pawnshops and see if they have it or if they remember anyone coming in trying to sell them. Do you two know any in the area?”



“This is the third pawnshop we’ve checked,” Neon said, as they approached the store. “What if this one turns up empty as well?”
“Then we will check others,” Ciel said sharply.
“And if they turn up empty too?” Neon asked.
“Then we’ll ask Twilight to have Midnight monitor the online selling sites in case they get advertised there,” Rainbow replied. “And if that doesn’t turn up anything either, then … I don’t know. I don’t do this for a living; I don’t have all the answers. Maybe there are other places you can go to sell this kind of thing, maybe they had a buyer lined up already, I don’t know. I just know that this is the best I can come up with, but if either of you have any better ideas, then I’m open to them.”
Neon looked away. “No,” she said quietly. “No, I don’t.”
“Nor I,” Ciel murmured. “I think … I think that this is our best course. Your logic is sound, and we have little alternative, short of bursting into people’s apartments and searching them for Mrs. Peterson’s possessions. Because the option you have not mentioned is that whoever did this is keeping their ill-gotten gains for now, until it may be safer to dispose of. But if they did that…”
“We’ll never find them,” Neon added glumly.
“We will find them,” Rainbow insisted. “There’ll be a way. There’s always a way. We just haven’t thought of it yet.” She smiled. “And besides, let’s not worry about that yet, just because the closest two places we checked were busts; we might still get lucky here.”
The place where Rainbow hoped they might get lucky looked every bit as seedy as everywhere else in Mantle — certainly in this part of Mantle. The cartoon prawn on the sign above the door was faded and half-obscured by grime and soot, while the name of the establishment was barely legible. There was an electronic sign in the window, but only some of the letters were working, although enough of them to make out that they were offering sale or pawn. There was a metal grill set up in the window, presumably to protect it from being smashed, while the only sign that was still fully readable was the warning sign in the door advising that security cameras were in operation. 
That might be good for them, if they got lucky. 
At this particular moment, Ciel would very much have liked to pray. But would prayers without faith of sufficient strength be heard?
Rainbow reached the pawn shop ahead of them, pushing open the door and walking in. Neon followed after, and this time, it was left to Ciel to trail in after them, letting the door close behind her. 
The glass cases that stood before the interior walls were laden with the kind of things that you found in places like these: watches, jewellery, scrolls, antiques — or at least, things that looked as though they might be antiques. There were guitars on the walls and drum kits set up behind the glass display cases. But as Ciel looked, bending down to get a better look at what was on display, she couldn’t see any of Mrs. Peterson’s watches, or her silverware.
A quick glance suggested that Neon hadn’t spotted the pistol yet, either. 
“Can I help you three with anything?” a man emerged from the back of the store and came to stand behind the counter. He was heavy set, with a visible belly expanding out beneath his red shirt, and although his head was bald, his arms were hairy and thick. He wore yellow-tinted glasses that hid the colour of his eyes somewhat. He leaned his meaty hands upon the glass as he regarded them. 
He focussed upon Rainbow Dash in particular. “You’ve got a license for those guns, I hope? I don’t deal in black market weapons. I don’t do black market anything; this is a respectable business, not a laundry for stolen goods.”
“Respectable,” Neon muttered.
The man bristled. “You got a problem with what I do?”
Neon straightened up. “Desperate people give up some of their most valuable possessions, and you loan them less money than the stuff is worth and then screw them in interest afterwards. I’m not sure I’d call that respectable.”
“You can’t live on valuables,” the pawnbroker said. “You need lien to live, not treasured possessions. And I have to live too, you know. Are you here to do business or just insult me?”
“We want to ask a few questions,” Rainbow said. She fished a green lien card out of her pocket and placed it on the counter. “Does this buy us a few minutes of your time?”
The pawnbroker regarded the card. “Depends on what you want to do with it,” he grunted.
“You said that you didn’t deal in black market guns,” Rainbow said. “Anyone come in trying to sell you one lately? A Great War pistol, maybe?”
The pawnbroker snorted. “So it was stolen.”
“You’ve seen it?” Ciel demanded. “When?”
“Depends,” the pawnbroker said. “What’s it to you?”
Rainbow rolled her eyes and put another lien card down on the table.
The pawnbroker grabbed both the lien cards before Rainbow could take them back. “This kid came in here a couple of hours ago, opened his backpack, practically dumps a load of stuff out on the counter: silver spoons, some nice watches, and an old pistol just like you said. Wanted to sell them, said they belonged to his granny, she needed the money.”
“But you didn’t buy them?” Ciel said.
The pawnbroker gave her a slightly pitying look. “I’ve been doing this a long time. I know the difference between someone selling their grandma’s stuff because the old bird needs the lien and someone who's knocked over someone else’s grandma’s house. He was nervous, in a hurry. I told him to come back with his mom or dad, then maybe I’d believe him.”
“But he didn’t come back?” Neon asked.
“Not yet.”
“And did you recognise him?” Ciel demanded.
“Never seen him before,” the pawnbroker said. “Just some kid in a hoodie. Red hoodie. Or pink. Something like that.” He paused. “So he did steal all that stuff.”
“And killed the woman he stole it from,” Ciel growled.
The pawnbroker paled a little. He swallowed, his throat quivering. “Really? 'Killed'?” 
“Yeah,” Rainbow said softly. “I know that we’re not the police, but we are Atlas students, if that means anything down here,” — she got out her scroll and showed him her ID to prove it — “and we’re trying to catch the person who did this.”
“Atlas,” the pawnbroker muttered. “It’s Atlas's fault that this place is the way it is. If we’ve got people killing each other over watches and the like, that’s Atlas's fault too.” He hesitated. “But it isn’t going to help. It’s just going to make everything worse.” His face twitched. “I didn’t recognise the guy, but he’ll be on my cameras. Come on in the back, and I’ll show you the footage.”
Ciel let out a breath she didn’t know that she’d been holding in. “Thank you, sir.”
“I’m not doing it for you,” the pawnbroker replied tersely. 
Nevertheless, he led them into the back of the store, where a computer sat upon a flat-pack desk. The pawnbroker sat down behind it, his meaty fingers skipping over the keyboard, typing too swiftly for Ciel’s eyes to track what he was actually typing. After a few moments, he pushed his chair back from the computer. “Here. That’s him.”
The three of them gathered around the computer to be treated to a still image of a young man with a long nose and lank, greasy looking dark hair, dressed in a fuchsia hoodie and a black cap, emptying a black backpack out onto the counter. 
“Either of you recognise him?” Rainbow asked. “Seen him around? Know him from church?”
“No one from our church would do such a thing,” Ciel said sharply.
Rainbow didn’t reply to that except to say, “Do you recognise him?”
“No,” Neon said.
Ciel leaned closer, squinting a little as she tried to take in every detail of his face. “No,” she said, sighing as she spoke. “No, I have not seen him.”
“Right,” Rainbow muttered. To the pawnbroker, she asked, “Can we take a copy of this photo?”
The pawnbroker hesitated for a moment. “Sure,” he said, after a moment. “Take it. Do what you gotta do.”
Rainbow downloaded the image onto her scroll, and the three of them took their leave of the pawnbroker and his shop. 
As they stood in the street outside, Rainbow still holding her scroll with the picture available to view, she said, “What did I say? We did get lucky in there. Now we know who we’re looking for.”
“But we do not yet know who he is,” Ciel pointed out.
“No,” Rainbow admitted. “But it’s more than we knew before we went in, and now that we know what he looks like, there has to be a way that we can…” She trailed off, her gaze falling upon the security drone that was hovering just a few inches off the ground, staring at them. 
It was little more than a flying camera, the square camera proper resting upon a light metal frame with a little gravity dust built in. It, and many others like it, were tasked with patrolling Mantle for any signs of crime or unrest.
Obviously, it hadn’t saved Mrs. Peterson, but they provided a valuable supplement to the static cameras mounted to various buildings. 
“Do you think if we show it our student IDs, it will go away?” Neon whispered as the drone continued to stare at them. 
The drone made a kind of buzzing sound, then turned and flew away. 
“I hate those things; they give me the creeps,” Neon muttered. “Why do we have so many tiny robots? Like those mouse droids rolling around the academy bleeping at you, what are they up to?”
Rainbow frowned slightly. “Aren’t they cleaning the floor?”
“That’s what they want you to think,” Neon said.
Rainbow didn’t reply to that, although for a moment, Ciel thought she might. She looked in the direction of the departing drone. “You know,” she said. “I think I know what we can do next.”
“What?” Ciel demanded.
Rainbow didn’t answer; she was too busy with her scroll, flicking the photo of the suspect aside for a moment as she placed a voice-only call. 
“Hello?” Twilight’s voice emerged from out of the device.
“Hey, Twi, it’s Rainbow Dash,” Rainbow said. “I know it’s getting late, and I’m sorry, but I’m down in Mantle with Ciel and Neon, and I need some help.”
“Good evening, Twilight,” Ciel said. “I apologise for the disturbance.”
“Hi, Twilight,” Neon called.
“Hey, girls, um,” Twilight murmured. “What’s up? Is something wrong?”
“You could say that,” Rainbow said softly. “Listen, I don’t want to get into the details right now. I’m going to send you a picture of somebody.” She flicked away from the call screen to bring back the photo, then tapped a few times into her scroll to send it as an email. “I need you to access the Mantle security cameras and see if you can locate this guy.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line. “You want me to hack into the Mantle security system?” Twilight asked.
Rainbow winced. “Basically, yes.”
“And run facial recognition software looking for this person?”
“Yes.”
There was another pause. “You do realise that’s illegal, right?”
“We wouldn’t ask if it were not important, Twilight,” Ciel insisted, taking a step closer to Rainbow and her scroll. “Not in the grand scheme of things perhaps, but to us — to me — it is … it is of vital importance. Please, Twilight, we must find this man.”
Once more, Twilight paused, before she said, “Okay. If it means that much to you then … okay. But I’m going to want to know why it was so important eventually.”
“And we’ll tell you,” Rainbow assured her. “I’ll tell you. I promise.”
“I know you will,” Twilight replied. “Now give me a second, I’ll get Midnight on it.”
“We’ll be here,” Rainbow said, before she put the call on mute. 
“I don’t know if I like this,” Neon muttered.
“It’ll work,” Rainbow said. “Trust me, it will work.”
“I’m sure it’ll work; that’s part of why I don’t like it,” Neon replied.
“Explain?” Ciel asked.
“There are too many cameras in this city,” Neon declared. “It isn’t right that the man is watching our every move like this, and it isn’t right to use it as though it is right. You can’t use evil means to achieve good ends; isn’t that in the scripture somewhere?”
It was, as a matter of fact, and more than once — it turned up in several of the epistles: not only could good not achieve its ends through evil means, and any attempt to do so would only lead to their undoing, but evil could not achieve its ends through evil means and would invariably sabotage itself in the process. 
Of course, that assessment depended upon accepting Neon’s moral premise.
“The innocent have nothing to fear from the surveillance of the state,” Ciel said stiffly. 
Neon raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. 
“Good evening, Rainbow Dash,” Midnight said, her voice issuing from out of the scroll. “Ciel.”
“I’m here too,” Neon muttered.
Rainbow took her scroll off mute. “Hey, Midnight, what have you got for us?”
“You should ask nicely, considering that we’re doing you such a big favour,” Midnight said.
Rainbow sighed. “What have you got for us, please?”
“The man you’re looking for is named Peter Butterworth, seventeen years old, resides at apartment one-sixty Falwell Tower.”
Falwell Tower was where Mrs. Peterson had lived; so he had known her, after all.
“Where is he now?” Rainbow asked. “Do you know?”
“Peter Butterworth was last spotted by a camera three minutes ago entering Deep Wells Market.”
“Thanks, Twilight—”
“I am Midnight.”
“Thank you both,” Rainbow said. “I’ll tell you why we needed this when I get back to Atlas.”
She closed up her scroll, and the three of them made their way to the market as fast as they could, dodging the cars on the roads, pushing through the shambling crowds, taking shortcuts through dark alleys that Ciel would have avoided in less urgent circumstances. It took them less than fifteen minutes to reach Deep Wells Market, a covered space with lights of blue and red that lent it a much greater vibrancy than the rest of Mantle at this time of night. It was not a mall; it was not subdivided into stores and food courts. Rather, it was a more traditional kind of market, relocated into an indoor setting: a lot of stalls, temporary in appearance if not in setup, with only a single or perhaps two employees, all set cheek by jowl without much in the way of space between them. This stall sold freshly made cakes, this one sold home-made pins; here was a butcher, there was a candle maker. The last time Ciel had been here there had been a rather nice woman selling stuffed animals that she had made herself; she had bought a cute frog for Alain. 
In other circumstances, she might have seen if the woman was still there. 
Now, however, they spread out, each of them searching for Mister Butterworth. 
It occurred to Ciel, as she walked alone past stalls selling this and that, that their quarry might be armed. He had killed Mrs. Peterson somehow, after all, and probably not with his bare hands. 
But she was not a frail old woman confined to her bed. He would not find her so easy to dispose of. 
She hoped that she found him first. She very much hoped that she found him first. 
Seventeen years old. Only a year younger than she was. Perhaps she ought to have pitied him, but she did not. She did not pity him, she did not see herself in him, she was not forced to reckon with the ways in which her life might have proceeded differently. 
She had nothing but contempt for him. She, too, was of Mantle stock, and so was Neon, and yet, they had made something of themselves, were poised to escape the hateful grasp of this dying city. They had worked, they had struggled, they yet worked and yet struggled, but they had not given up, they had not sunk into sin and barbarism. They had not turned their back on their humanity. 
Seventeen years old. There was no excuse for failing to try. 
And then she saw him. She was standing by a stall selling soft drinks in cans — one of the few stalls selling a commercial product — and she saw him perhaps thirty feet away, or a little more, standing in front of a stall selling gold jewellery, brandishing a gold watch in his hand. 
Mrs. Peterson’s watch. 
Ciel’s face tightened into a snarl as she produced her pistol from out of her purse. “Peter Butterworth!” she roared, her voice cutting through the sound of the market. “Put your hands where I can see them!”
Peter stared at her. His eyes were hooded by the cap he was wearing, but she could feel him staring nonetheless. 
For a moment, for two moments, for moments that turned into seconds, one, two, three, he froze, still as stone. 
Then he turned to run. 
Ciel’s finger tightened on the trigger. One shot. She was a sharpshooter; at this range, she could hardly miss without trying; people had moved out of the way when they saw her gun, scattering this way and that to avoid her line of fire. 
Nevertheless, she could not be certain that someone would not step into it. 
Just as she could not be certain that…
Ciel let out a growl of frustration as she lowered her pistol. With one hand, she grabbed a metal can from off the stall beside her. “Excuse me,” she murmured. 
Precognition On! 
Ciel activated her semblance, and her eyes glowed a brighter blue than normal as she saw not where Peter Butterworth was but where he would be, where he would run to, what direction he would turn. 
She threw the can. It soared through the air of the high-domed market to strike her target squarely on the head, just as he was about to turn a corner. 
He went down in a heap. 
“Keep the change,” Ciel muttered, tossing a lien card that she hoped would cover the cost of the drink to the stallholder as she strode across the market — people still made way for her — to where Peter Butterworth lay, moaning, on the ground. 
He wore a black backpack on his back, a backpack that looked heavily-laden. In his hand was the gold watch, the last watch that Mrs. Peterson had gotten from her husband on their golden anniversary. It was a slight thing, the golden strap was narrower than Ciel’s thumb, and the face itself was only slightly larger than a thumbnail, but it had been made with old fashioned craftsmanship by one of the few people who still made mechanical watches — and of course, it had possessed enormous value to her to whom it had belonged, far beyond the value of the gold from which it had been made. 
Ciel snatched up the watch, putting it in her purse until it could be reunited with the rest of the collection, and then grabbed Peter by the neck and dragged him out of the market and into a secluded alleyway beyond. 
It was dark, lit only by the lights emerging from out of the market, and secluded. There was no one there but them. 
Ciel tore the backpack off his shoulders and set it on the ground, before she shoved him up against the dull stone wall. 
“Why?” she demanded. 
“They said it was worth a fortune!” he said. “Everyone knew about the stuff she had in there, silver, gold; she’d show it to anyone! She bragged about it!”
She was lonely, and she wanted to talk to people. “Why did you have to kill her?!” Ciel shrieked, her voice cracking. “Why? She couldn’t have stopped you; she was harmless!”
“She wouldn’t stop shouting!” Peter cried. “I just … I just wanted her to stop shouting.”
Ciel stared at him for a moment, eyes wide, mouth open, mind … uncomprehending. 
For a moment, her grip upon the scruff of his neck loosened. 
Then the anger coiled in the pit of her stomach flared like a fire exposed to oxygen, and a wordless shout escaped her mouth as she hit him across the face. He cried out in pain, turning his face away from the blow, cringing against the wall. 
“Stop shouting,” Ciel snarled as she hit him again. He crouched down before her blow, his knees buckling, bringing his hands up to shield himself.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I didn’t mean—”
“Quiet,” Ciel growled as she hit him again, and with him cowering on the ground, she kicked him in the stomach too to make him double over. She hit him again, knocking him to the ground where he curled up in a ball, trying to shield his gut and chest.
Ciel kicked him. She kicked him again, and each kick produced a whimpering mewl of pain. 
“Stop shouting,” Ciel snarled out from between gritted teeth as she grabbed him by the hood and hauled him up so that he could hit him again. She broke his nose, producing a howl of pain from out of his lips. 
“I only want you to stop shouting!” Ciel bellowed into his face. She adjusted her grip on his neck as she hit him across the jaw hard enough to send some of his teeth flying out to scatter across the ground. 
Tears were falling from her eyes, streaming down her cheeks. Tears for Mrs. Peterson; tears for Alain; tears for her faith, the armour that had been stripped away from her. 
She cried, and as she cried, she kept on hitting him while his eye swelled up and his ribs cracked and his nose bled and he would not stop shouting. 
She was going to kill him. She knew that, with the part of her mind that remained cold and rational. She was going to kill him, and she didn’t care. She didn’t care. She was tired. She was tired and sad and angry, and if she wanted to take that out on someone, then so what? What was his wretched, miserable life worth anyway?
And he wouldn’t stop shouting. 
A pair of hands seized Ciel’s arms and dragged her forcibly away from him. 
“That’s enough, Ciel!” Rainbow cried. Her voice softened. “That’s enough.”
Neon’s eyes were fearful as she moved to stand between Peter and Ciel, as though she were the murderer and he were some innocent victim. Yes, she grabbed him by his hood so he couldn’t escape, but all the same … she was protecting him. She was protecting him, after what he’d done?
“No,” Ciel murmured, the tears flowing down her face, the phlegm filling her throat. “No, it’s not enough. Not yet, not until—”
“Until what?” Rainbow demanded. “Until he dies? Is that what you want, you want to kill him?”
“Why not?” Ciel demanded. “Why not; doesn’t he deserve it?”
Rainbow released Ciel from her grasp, and Ciel found herself slumping forwards, her arms hanging limp down in front of her like some ungainly creature. 
Rainbow moved to stand in front of Ciel, one hand upon her shoulder. “Maybe he does,” she said. “Probably he does. And if you want to … I’m your team leader, not your judge, or your conscience. If you want to kill him, that’s fine. I won’t turn you in. I won’t snitch on you to the General or anybody else. I’ll even help you make sure that it doesn’t come out, because that’s my job. That’s my duty, as your team leader. But it’s also my duty to remind you that whatever you do, you’ll have to live with afterwards. Are you ready for that? Is that what you want?”
Ciel looked up into Rainbow’s eyes. Into her face that was completely free of judgement. 
She looked down at her hands. Her aura had protected her from any bruising, but she had a little of his blood on her nonetheless. 
Ciel bowed her head and said nothing. 
“Neon,” Rainbow said. “Take Ciel home, will you? I’ll take out the trash.”
“What are you gonna do?” Neon asked.
“Never mind what I’m gonna do,” Rainbow said softly.
Ciel didn’t see what Neon did next, but she felt a pair of hands upon her shoulders, lifting her slightly, pulling her into an embrace. 
“Let’s go home, Ciel,” Neon said.
Ciel nodded a little. “That … that sounds like a very good idea.”
“What the—?!” Rainbow yelled.
Ciel felt herself shoved aside; she stumbled, falling to the ground, entangled with Neon. Her aura took the impact of the fall, and she raised her head to look beyond Neon to see Rainbow Dash, her shotgun out, and behind her, Peter Butterworth, with an arrow in his neck. 
“There’s four of us to three of you, and only one of you is armed,” the voice that spoke was female and mature-sounding, the voice of a woman, not a girl. It belonged, Ciel could only suppose, to the woman who stepped out of the shadows behind the late and unlamented thief. She was tall, with a long face framed by her pale hair, the rest of which she wore bound up behind her head. She was dressed in a long, dark coat, and in various shades of grey and green, all save for the red waistcoat which stood out upon her chest. Upon her wrist, she wore a crossbow, designed like the wings of a bird. 
Behind her, less visible and distinct, three more figures lurked in the shadows, vague forms that could not be so easily identified. 
The one who showed herself, Ciel could easily identify: Robyn Hill, the hero of Mantle and one of Atlas’ most wanted. 
She smiled. “I know that they don’t teach you to take odds like that in Atlas.”
Rainbow bared her teeth. “You say that like we have a choice.”
“You do have a choice,” Robyn said. “I didn’t come here to fight. If you want to turn around and walk away, it’s no skin off my nose. In fact, I’d prefer it if you did. I’ve no quarrel with you. In fact, I should congratulate you. This was good work.”
Ciel and Neon got to their feet and moved to stand on either side of Rainbow Dash. 
“You killed him?” Neon asked.
“He was a murderer,” Robyn said. “Isn’t that right?”
“How did you know that?” Ciel demanded.
“The Mantle police are backed up; they don’t have the bandwidth to tackle every case,” Robyn explained. “But I have friends in the police department, and they let me know if anything comes up. They told me about that poor old woman. A bad business. Something like that can’t be allowed to stand. This city survives, despite all efforts to crush it and to break its spirit, because we stand together. And only together will we rise again; actions like that,” — she gestured at the dead body in front of her — “are a crime not only against his victim, but against the entire community. And I am the protector of this community.”
“Self-proclaimed,” Rainbow muttered, although she slung her shotgun across her back once more. 
Robyn smiled. “The people don’t seem to have much of an objection. Quite the contrary.”
“What about the law?” Neon demanded.
“Atlas law, imposed upon us from above, handed down from the heavens like holy scripture which we may neither question nor amend,” Robyn spat. “And besides, the courts are as backed up as the police; he would have been released until his trial, and that could have taken months, years, years in which he would have been free to roam, to harm others. It’s simpler this way, don’t you think? Kick the altar, pay the price?”
Rainbow was silent for a moment. “You’re right,” she admitted. “These aren’t good odds. And this,” she gestured at the body, “isn’t a worthy cause. So we’re not going to fight you over it.”
“Smart kid,” Robyn said. “Turn around, walk away. You don’t even have to keep this a secret. Tell everyone that you witnessed Robyn Hill commit a murder, and none will call you coward.”
Rainbow slung her shotgun across her back. “But you will be seeing us again,” she promised. “Sooner or later.”
Robyn smiled. “I look forward to it.”