The clothing I puppeted walked alongside the highway, latex gloves held my captured phone, The conversation with 'Jefe' opened. The fingers of the latex glove danced over the phone's keyboard.

Hey Jefe, place is compromised. Heading to "the place" to report.

Send.

Almost immediately the phone buzzed.

What?! How?! Why?! Don't come here! You'll lead the feds to us!

Again, the latex glove danced.

Where to then boss?

Send.

The taco place on the corner of 5th and Washintob. Be there or everyone you ever knew is dead!

Disregarding the typo; Hook. Line. And sinker.

I pulled up the map app and searched for "5th" or "Washington" Hm. Looked like "the taco place" was a family owned business. Maybe a front for the cartel? Or was it just a public place to meet?

Choices...

If I could've, I would've smiled as I stuffed the phone into a back pocket.

Now with a reason to maintain plausibility, I continued to puppet the clothing in a manner that I would've walked as Lucas. Casual, and unworried, even as I walked along side the highway in the middle of the night.

I even feigned casual intrigue as police cars and ambulances screamed by, their alarms blaring like trumpeters in a cavalry charge.

What better way to dredge up the silt of society?

You know perfectly well why I'm doing this.

What do you want from me? 'Myah! Kill everyone you see! Myah! How dare you feel bad for listening to me! Myah! I can't seem to understand the difference between want and need!'

Yeah, with the kidnapper's fucking boss! If I had never seen that poor girl being taken, I would've never bothered! But if they're being so flippant that even I notice their bullshit? Yeah, I'm going to take the opportunity to steal resources bought with blood money! Am I being bad? Maybe, which is why I need to take those things to expedite my need to go into hiding! Before I start targeting innocent people!

Yeah? Then you can go fuck yourself you literal leech.

A high pitched wail interrupted me before I could rant any further. I glanced behind down the highway to see a blur of red and blue scream past. The police cruiser the lights belonged to grew smaller as it zoomed away, closely followed by more of its fellows.

I was about to inwardly chuckle, but that stopped as an ambulance rushed by, its lights also flashing aggressively.

I honestly should've expected the presence of an ambulance... But it was still a sobering thought that it was my fault it was out and about. Even if it was only to pick up the girl to take to a hospital.

I pushed the thought down and opened the phone to glance at the time and the directions. Was it healthy to keep avoiding my issues? Absolutely not. But what else was I going to do? It was ether keep moving or curl up here and now and wait for the feds to show up with Celestia in tow. I may not like it, but the only real choice was to keep moving, regardless how much I had to suppress my rampaging emotions.

It was better to be a functional wreck than a quivering wreck.

So I shored up the walls on my emotions and pressed onward. But with being essentially stranded on the side of the road didn't leave me too many options to distract myself. So I did my best by glaring at the rocks beneath my stolen shoes.

But there was even more wrong with me underneath the ad hoc duct tape sutures in my soul.

Forget my crime spree for a moment. I still hadn't gotten over that I was on the run from the federal government. I still hadn't gotten over Celestia being here on Earth. I still hadn't even gotten over being an alien horse girl for crying out loud! Never mind all the issues I dealt with as Lucas! Like how did one even deal with a species change?! How does one come to terms with a gender change?! Did that mean Lucas was transfem?! Did that make whoever I was transmasc?!

Laying down right here on the side of the highway to wait for my fate seemed more and more appealing. If only so I could just... Stop.

To stop, to finally come to a rest. To curl up in bed and not leave for a century, regardless of my obligations! To stop like a battered train finally pulling into the station, its huffing and puffing engine clearly on its last legs. To set myself back onto a workbench like a broken golem or a robot, just turn off and wait for someone to come along and fix what shouldn't have been broken in the first place.

But I couldn't.

I couldn't stop. Not here, not now.

The feds and Celestia would never give me a moments peace if I stopped now. I needed to disappear. But to do that I needed to plow through the local gang like a freight train, ransacking their holdings as I did so. Causing enough mayhem to muddy the waters and obscure my escape. To where? Some abandoned log cabin in Alaska? Maybe a deserted island in the middle of the ocean? It didn't matter. Just so long as I could finally come to a screeching halt I did not care.

But first I needed to wreck mayhem like a run-away train.

So I threw fuel into my metaphorical boiler and began to pick up steam again.

Ruh roh...