They marched along and Kon discreetly checked his brand as they did, his other hand over it like before to hide the glow. (Fortunately, due to having superpowers, the stormtroopers didn't carry guns so they didn't have to.) Moving didn't seem to be helping. They just weren't getting a read on the thing.

"Still not getting a bead on the shard," Kon said, and when he looked up for another scan of his X-ray vision, his eyes widened behind the mask.

"We're in trouble," he said. "These guys know what they're doing. I've got a group of stormtroopers coming at us from around the corner and if we run back the other we're gonna be line of sight for two others. We're gonna have to fast-talk our way out of this."

The stormtroopers rounded the corner.

"Hey! What are you doing off route?" one of them called out.

"Heard a noise," Kon quickly lied. "But it's nothing. Turned out to be just a stray. But, you know, we didn't wanna take any chances."

"Well, get back on course," said the stormtrooper. "Phillips will kill us if we leave any gaps in our patrol patterns. Especially after last time."

Kon nodded a curt nod and the stormtrooper almost turned around to go back the other way with his companions, but spotted something that made him stop. He pointed to Haruto's belt buckle.

"What are you doing, wearing that? It's against regs."

Kon looked over at Haruto and Nightwing, hoping desperately one of them had a good lie. He couldn't think of one.