"Dammit, Tater. Where are you?" I muttered to myself, checking my watch for the fifth time since we'd landed.
"Okay, Tarble, I don't get why you're so worked up about this? It's just some old guy making robots, right?" Lynn asked, leaning against my shoulder. Even in my SSJP form, she was taller than me, but not by enough to make it too awkward.
"We don't even know if anything's there, man. The satellites didn't find anything, right?" Zeck reminded me, sitting on a bus bench nearby.
"Yeah, maybe." I admitted, "It's called electromagnetic shielding, Zeck. The same thing we have in the central lab. Besides, I've told you a thousand times, never underestimate a threat that you don't know anything about."
After getting the exact times and dates from Tater, I'd looked over whatever footage our satellites recorded from the guy's various slaughterings of the Red Ribbons.
Apart from that 'Blue' guy's apparent telepathic abilities, I'd seen a couple of things that interested me.
First off, Muscle Tower in the far north was home to one android, and some gigantic blob monster that Tater had to rip apart piece by piece. 'Eighter' apparently hadn't been built yet, but the other android, the one that pushed Goku to his limit in the original timeline, had been scrapped by Tater. That meant that, while he hadn't gotten as far as originally, Gero had still been involved with the Red Ribbon Army when Tater destroyed it. The fate of his son, who he'd blamed Goku for killing originally, was something that I hadn't been able to learn anything about.
Even the Army's internal servers didn't have any files on anyone related to Gero. At all.
No big dude with a red mohawk, either. A few little dudes with red mohawks, but none of them were Gero's kid. Just street thugs.
Honestly, a big part of me was fairly sure that I was worrying over nothing, but I didn't like the idea of some random dude spying on me, and kidnapping random people just to modify their bodies and send them to destroy my teammate.
If the Red Ribbon Army was going to die, it'd have to completely die.
Unfortunately for me, Tater dealing with them without informing me about it made that far more difficult than I'd hoped. If I'd known, I could've done damage control while he was off blasting bases. Now, whatever was left had scattered like roaches.
Anyway, it was in the name of ensuring that whatever was left of the Army didn't do anything stupid in order to get revenge that we'd all agreed to gather in North City to go over the nearby mountain range where it was known to a select group of scientists that Gero's secret research base lied, with a fine toothed comb, after a two week wait, so that Tater's leg could rest up long enough to at least mostly heal.
"He's right. Advanced preparation. It saves lives. I once got caught in a magic jug that could seal anything, as long as you knew the name." Tater dropped into the city park, clearly healed.
"Aww. You're talking again." Lynn teased, "I'll miss the broken jaw."
"Missed you too, sis. Where are Tommy and Pepper?" Tater asked, unperturbed. He knew that it'd take a while before his siblings got over the fact that he'd abandoned the team.
"Tommy has a manga deadline. Essence Of Cholan or something. Pepper offered to model." I explained. I left out the fact that she'd only offered to model for Tommy's manga because she didn't want to speak to me. She still hadn't quite gotten over the fact that I hadn't let her fight in the tournament. Tommy hadn't protested because he knew it'd be higher quality, using Pepper as a model. One of the main characters was based off of her, after all.
Not to say that she didn't still randomly appear in my apartment at random hours. She just didn't speak… as much as a 'Pepper' could stay silent. Which meant lots of half-finished sentences and 'Hmph's.
"Volume four?" Tater asked.
"Nah. Four's already finished and ready for publishing. They're holding it for now, but he wants to finish five as soon as possible." I told him, honestly a bit surprised that Tater knew about Tommy's manga.
I'd known that it was popular, with how much money he brought in, but popular enough that even Tater knew what he'd been up to? I didn't realize that his work was that famous.
"Huh." Tater nodded, "Anyways, why are we meeting in a city park, instead of the mountains?" He changed the subject.
In response, I nodded to a building across the street, "That's Gero's mailing address. I figured it'd be as good a place to start as any. I also wanted to count cameras. See just how paranoid the guy is."
"Really?"
"Twenty-seven cameras facing every direction. Every angle. And the building itself's empty. Worthless." I explained.
"How do you know what's inside, with all that surveillance? Did you tip him off already?" Tater asked, "If that guy runs-"
"We used rat drones. Celatian cloaking tech, too. The building's filled with cobwebs, empty boxes, and rotting wood. The guy's just crazy paranoid." Zeck explained for me, "Which is why, if we're raiding his lab, we'll have to be careful and fast. Here." He tossed a small black cube to Tater.
"That's a cloaking box. I made it. Long as it's on, you should be immune to getting detected by normal cameras." I explained. "Time to go find us a doctor."