As they left the lavish restaurant, Zayn exclaimed with a smile, "Now to get you lot sorted with a proper set of wheels."
"Speaking of wheels," Yan muttered, mainly to himself, as he started to move in the direction of a sleek hovercraft that was parked prominently close to the entrance. "What do we have here?" he asked.
The car was gorgeous: it was painted a fiery red, sat very low to the ground, had windows tinted almost black, and its sleek, aerodynamic lines were tastefully accentuated with chrome trim. However, it was parked diagonally across two prime parking spots, a traditional tactic used by owners to shield their pricey investments from the irresponsible closeness of "common folk."
Zayn laughed knowingly and said, "Ah," "so 'e's 'ere." He reached into his pocket for his van's keys, strode to the shining hovercraft, and purposefully scratched a brief phrase deep into the pricey paint job along the driver's side door. He took a step back and grinned contentedly at his creation.
Luna read out loud, without emotion, "I molest kittens," from the recently carved graffiti.
"Why the hell did you do that?!" Yan cried out in genuine shock. One of his personal "unforgivable sins" was willfully damaging a beautiful car.
With a casual explanation, Zayn walked back to their van. "That particular piece o' machinery belongs to a right rat bastard name o' Lyn Danzel."
Nayla abruptly interrupted, "Wait a second," as her head snapped up. "Did you say the Lyn Danzel?!"
"Well, I certainly 'ope there's only one," Zayn said sardonically. "I take it you've 'ad dealin's with 'im before, eh?"
Yan frowned and said, "Damn right," as his earlier admiration for the car vanished in an instant. "He tried to force our family off our own land for his personal gain back when we were kids." He looked at Nayla. "Remember when…" He hesitated. "Where'd Nayla go?"
Glancing back towards the hovercraft, they saw Nayla frantically writing her own messages on the back fender of the vehicle with her combat knife in hand.
With an uncommon smirk, Kieran said, "Oh, that's cold," clearly enjoying the methodical vandalism of the immaculate car. Nayla's additions now read: The nice cat has returned etched onto the roof; Honk if you like it up the butt across the rear panel. It was obvious that Nayla was very hostile to Mr. Danzel.
On their way out of the parking lot, Nayla pulled out one of her silenced hovercrafts as their van passed Danzel's vandalized one. 22 caliber handguns and coolly fired three rounds that broke through the back window of the car. The relative quiet of the city street was abruptly broken by the shrieking sound of the car's piercing alarm system. Expectantly, Zayn pulled their van to a stop close to the exit. Less than ten seconds later, medium-height, slightly overweight, and immaculately dressed in a pricey suit, Lyn Danzel himself came out of the restaurant. Gold-rimmed spectacles sat on his thin nose, and his thinning blond hair was carefully combed. His eyes locked on Zayn's van parked nearby, and his first reaction was obvious shock, which was soon followed by sputtering rage. He let out a stream of profane curses. Yan and Nayla flipped him off curtly from the van's windows almost at the same time. Zayn gave a hearty laugh and did the same. Not even Kieran, Luna, Torin, and Amelina were able to keep their amused smiles from appearing.
"Revenge," said Nayla quietly, "is sweet."
Kieran cautionarily suggested, "Might want to be careful just pulling out a gun like that in public,"
Zayn waved his hand dismissively. "My friend, don't worry about it. There's nothing wrong with open or concealed carry, Doryn.
"How does that possibly work?" Perplexed, Nora inquired.
The answer was "simple, really," Zayn said. According to local law, when someone is murdered, either the man deserved it or the deceased's friends will take care of things on their own. In most cases, police only step in when someone specifically requests their assistance.
"Sensible," said Torin with approval. Unarmed and unarmored, he felt particularly vulnerable, as do most professional fighters.
"But," Zayn continued in a more solemn tone, "you guys might want to think about carryingin' full time while you're here." You never know what might happen after what we just did to that jerk Danzel's ride. The 'long arm o' the law' that Mista Danzel frequently wields over Doryn goes straight from her own wallet. "E has more police officers working for him than you can shake a stick at, from here to Earth itself."
Yan pondered out loud, "And here I thought I was technically breaking the law," Right now, he had both of them. He had his combat knife, two extra magazines, and 38 pistols hidden inside his coat. Of the original group, only Torin, Luna, and Kieran were unarmed at the moment.
While driving to the car dealership Zayn had chosen, Nayla and Yan talked about their tumultuous past with Lyn Danzel. He had attempted multiple times to take over the Zantara family ranch, frequently with the help of dishonest people in the Core government bureaucracy. Prior to adopting an arena fighting lifestyle, Nayla and Yan's family had been well-known Swift breeders, which are animals that have been bioengineered for racing. Swifts were large raptors with prominent ears and fur that resembled dogs. They had strong limbs and could run great distances on two or four legs. There were several breeds, all omnivorous. Although they hadn't kept tabs on him after he left their home world, Danzel had finally given up on his efforts after a string of "arguably criminal" retaliatory actions planned by the young Nayla and Yan. They clarified that it was during this lengthy battle that Nayla refined her extraordinary abilities in computer system infiltration and manipulation, and Yan gained his vast practical knowledge of explosives. As they pulled into the dealership lot, they completed sharing the specifics.
As they parked, Nora asked, "Kieran, is there really enough cargo room in the Kyara to accommodate all these vehicles?" If everyone bought one, there would be seven full-sized cars and motorcycles in total.
"Of course," Kieran said without hesitation. "Her cargo volume is one thing she has in abundance. Prismmatic portions of the hull house our living quarters and storage for our vital systems, freeing up all the curved interstitial spaces for...
"Save it," Nora interrupted. Kieran stopped talking.
It was a massive General Motors dealership. Being the biggest car manufacturer in the galaxy and one of the few old Earth companies to successfully recover from the collapse of society centuries ago, GM had led the way in the creation of compact fission reactor power sources.
Amelina was the first to pick out her car, going with a sleek, elegantly matte-black Pontiac Solstice convertible. Instead of using the more recent hover technologies or the three-wheeled designs that are quickly gaining market share, it used a conventional four-wheeled configuration. With a high-compression hydrogen engine producing 675 horsepower in a vehicle weighing only 450 kilograms, the car was aggressively overpowered despite its conventional layout. Yan immediately paid for it without hesitation, and his sizeable personal fortune readily covered the expense.
Luna chose a dark red motorcycle because she had grown fond of them after their recent escape on Solyn. This model demonstrated the more recent, aggressive riding technique in which the rider knelt instead of sitting normally. It had sophisticated proximity sensors for collision avoidance, which could be readily adapted for more covert monitoring tasks like determining whether someone was following it.
When Nora decided on a bright yellow Chevrolet Dune II, nobody was at all surprised. It was a small, effective two-seater with significant torque from its integrated fission reactor power source, high ground clearance, and sharp angular body lines. As long as she owned it, it would never need refueling, barring catastrophic damage.
Yan made the equally obvious decision to buy a shiny, fire-engine red Chevrolet Corvette HV that had every factory option. Recently, the venerable Corvette line split into separate hover (or "HV") and conventional wheeled versions.
Even though his red and white Mercedes sedan needed a new rear windshield after the chase, Torin decided to keep it, and it was securely kept in the cargo hold of the Kyara.