I took a moment to peek through the ladies' senses, getting a feel for what kind of cages Moon and Tem were being held in. If for no other reason than to take a peek at my own possible future.

Moon's was...pretty pleasant, all things considered. Deep, deep underground, at the limits of my range, but a cushy little room, lots of books, a four-poster bed...actually the whole chamber seemed very western. It hardly seemed like a prison at all.

Well, except the attire. She was literally sewn into a skin-tight outfit and mask, with knobby gloves and fuzzy socks, all white, like some kind of combination mental patient/bank robber, late for her wedding. I didn't quite get it until I probed her memories and found that she'd been hijacking anyone who came close, using her powers to render them braindead, and the outfit was the easiest way to prevent skin contact. She'd even been headbutting and biting people, I really couldn't have been more proud.

Tem on the other hand was in more traditional attire even if her room was anything but. She was nearby, surrounded by sheets of what looked like plastic or glass, hung up on every surface. She sat limp in the middle of it all, hardly worth considering alive. This one I didn't need to delve any deeper to figure out -- given that the whole building wasn't up in flames, those pieces of glass must somehow have diffused her beams, making her give up on the whole everything, thing.

I had to wonder why they bothered keeping Tem alive even, given what a hassle she was, but another peek into Moon revealed that she was only there to act as blackmail. If Moon didn't behave, they'd kill her friend. Given that Moon had been pouncing on people and erasing their minds, I wasn't exactly sure what constituted behaving, but baby steps, I guess.

And that left me with my own situation. Still dragged behind the toadish, broad, muscley man I couldn't phase for some reason, still being followed by a handful of useless XPCA white-knights who weren't whiting or knighting nearly hard enough for my tastes, and still on my way to Ichiro, I had to assume.

Toady tossed me bodily through a doorway, releasing me for the first time since we'd met. My arm stung for a moment, and I cradled it to keep up the act of it being broken while everyone filed in.

At first, I thought this had to be the wrong place. Ichiro wasn't here. Nobody was, it was just a sleek, empty chamber. Dark, stone. Underground. Not too many other adjectives really applied.

And then the room lit up with a holo the exact size of, and exactly mounted on the far wall. I'd never seen Ichiro before, but I assumed this was him, given just how big the holo was and how much the guy seemed to like aggrandizing himself. The high-res display really showed off every subdued tone of his exceedingly bland suit.

"Explain yourself, Sheng," he asked, his voice deeper than I expected from a relatively pale and narrow Japanese dude. Between him and Idris, I wondered if there was some kind of body-mod these people got to have a booming, sonorous voice, or if that was just a prerequisite to being a power-hungry shithead.

Sheng, the toad, bowed reverently and didn't answer until he he was fully facing the ground. "Honorable Ikeda-San," he rumbled "This girl trick your servants and enter your compound."

"She did not," my XPCA colleague butted in. "She's with us. A Colonel in the XPCA."

"Is that so?" Ichiro asked, glaring back at Sheng.

"She is full of lie. She say many lie to these men."

"I think the XPCA would know their own," Ichiro said with a wry smile. "But let me verify. One can never be too safe. Miss, your name and military ID, if you please?"

I hesitated. Passing myself off as Cosette was a pretty bad idea, in retrospect. It might have worked on these guys because it wasn't like the XPCA would be advertising every internal squabble they'd had, but anyone who bothered to pull her record…

"She claim to be Cosette Dawn, XB2099," Toady answered. The others nodded their assent, and I tried to force a normal-looking face over my surprise he'd remembered that. It was a kind of particular detail, and one that came out right around a fight where he smacked a few people around for a few minutes. That wasn't the kind of thing most anyone could keep straight in those circumstances.

Or maybe I was just surprised because I still couldn't read the guy at all, and so everything out of him was more surprising than anything out of anyone else. In the most frustrating possible way.

"Let me see," Ichiro said, putting on a small, round pair of glasses and facing off the holo. Any second now, he'd pull the record and see. I swallowed hard. I was going to lose my XPCA buddies and then all of them would pound me good. Or worse. I had to do something now.

So I did. I booked it. As fast as I could move, anyway, right into the arms of the nearest dude in black, who caught me, seemingly on reflex.

"Out!" I shouted at him, the command startling his mind into motion, his legs moving before he could even process. As Sheng rose and lunged at us in one motion, he was caught in a fracas as the others, driven temporarily insane, began thrashing in a death mosh.

"W-w-wh--" stammered my escort as the situation exploded behind him.

"They'll be fine!" I shouted down his worries, forcing my words into his brain in a way he couldn't contest. It wasn't quite a compel, but as long as I played whack-a-mole with his resistances for long enough for him to get me out, I had a chance. There were hundreds of bodies here I could put between me and Toady, as long as I kept him physically off of me, I might just--

My mental train seized as another monster of a man appeared between us and the stairs up, and my mind bounced off his as well. It wasn't like...like how Karu pretended to be, where she could focus her surface-level thoughts and thereby keep me out. It was like there weren't thoughts there at all, almost like a machine, or an insect really. Infuriating, was what it was. And why were there so damn many of them!?

"Left!" I shouted, and the arms around me swayed as my mount veered. "We need to stay away from those huge, muscley servants."

"Yeah," he agreed. Kenny, his name was, I discovered. Not the best name for a ride, but it'd do. I prompted Kenny to slightly misremember what happened in that room, making it seem like the toad had acted first, jumping the other XPCA, and he'd run out to protect me. As his mind felt more at ease with itself, the confusion and turmoil cranking away at the surface crystallized into resolve. All of us had sacrificed to save this woman, he thought. I will make sure she's safe, no matter what.

Men were so easy.

This floorplan, however, was not. We were only a couple stories down, but I was ready to bet there wasn't exactly a whole lot of different stairways out of here. Convenient though it would be to find a secret escape tunnel or some shit right about now, I was pretty certain that even ridiculous giant mansions didn't have things like that just lying around.

I frowned. Except Karu's place, I guess. Maybe I should have had Kenny pounding the floor.

But he was doing a great job already, running full-tilt with the slightest suggestions for guidance. Granted I was the one giving those suggestions, and I had fuck-all idea where we were going. At times like these, I liked to just set everyone's mind on fire and take it slow, but if I did that, the only two people left would be those asshole servants, which is exactly what I didn't want.

"Watch out!" I shouted, and he ducked and lunged as one of said asshole servants suddenly crashed through a wall at us. I barely picked up on its presence before he came at us, they were almost invisible to me, the fuckers.

And what the fuck, that was a wooden wall. Just who were these guys?

"We need to get out of this basement!" he shouted up at me, and I nodded and clung tighter to him.

"Where's your gun?" I asked.

"Gun locker, topside. Nobody's supposed to be carrying at the event. Now I know why."

"There's gotta be something around here we can use. The guy's an arms dealer, and this is his warehouse. Start checking rooms when we can for anything that looks like a weapon."

"Yes ma'am. Pretty sharp, Colonel."

"You can kiss my ass later. Run!"

His boots slapped the ground with a heavy, echoing jolt in strides longer than I'd ever made. One of our friends was behind us, now up from the debris he'd created, and we were looping around down a plain, wide, stone-floored hallway, not exactly dim but not well-lit either, fancy sconces hanging from the ceiling at regular intervals flickering with simulated flame. There were so many cross-passages, it was more like a lattice down here than a maze, really.

Kenny slowed down a fraction to peek in a door we passed, and then skidded to a stop, almost dropping me as he suddenly reversed. I saw why when he put me down and walked in.

Wooden crates, stamped with warnings in half a dozen languages and padded with what I recognized as rice chaff. The main label was in English, and I recognized front-and-center, the declaration of the contents as protected under Section 13.

More importantly, the contents were roughly gun-shaped and had a trigger. Kenny grabbed one and threw it to me, and I staggered behind its weight as I caught it in both arms, fortunately composing myself before he finished retrieving his.

"Shall we teach those bastards not to cross the XPCA?" he asked. I grinned and nodded enthusiastically. Apparently the correct response was 'Vigilo Ignoto', because he then said that himself, which I then properly repeated.

We both popped out into the hallway and caught the fat brothers by surprise, or whatever passed for it in their alien minds. His and my guns both fired bursts of...of something, alright. It made the air hiss like static, made my vision jump and blur when I looked at it, like I was seeing something that wasn't quite all the way seeable. The gun discharging smelled like copper and felt like opening a door on a hot summer day.

But oh boy, that blast. The two targets expertly disappeared off opposite sides of the hallway right before it erupted, and that kind of forward-thinking definitely saved their lives. Where they'd stood just kind of...imploded on itself in a violet-red burst with a muted be-woop, like a holo feed getting cut dead. There was an aftershock, a violent cracking and boom, almost exactly like thunder, as the vacuum we'd suddenly ripped in the air collapsed in on itself.

"Were these the prizes?" he asked me. I had no idea so I just shrugged and kept shooting. Because why the hell would you ever stop shooting when you had one of these puppies in your hands?

The hallway around me evaporated quickly, storage rooms disappearing into nothingness and the two bouncing like the toads they were between cover as quick as they could go. The gun was heavy and I had a hard time tracking them, but where I lacked, Kenny was there to cover for me, firing with a lot better aim and a lot more control than I had.

"...did you...literally just shout 'yee-haw'? I asked.

"Sorry ma'am."

"Yeah, we'll discuss your behavior when we get back. But for now," I heaved a huge pretend sigh "light 'em up, cowboy."

I watched with bemusement for another minute as more and more of the chambers evaporated, though the growing dark was becoming a concern as we inexpertly put out all the lights in our rampage. And then something terrible happened.

Click went Kenny's gun. He pulled the trigger a few more times. Click. Click. Click.

"Uh," he said, turning it over and around in his hands. There on the side, where neither of us had really thought to look after finding the safety was a tiny holo which read '0'. Which was not the most reassuring number. I checked mine and found '4'.

"Black on ammo," he said with a frown. "Where even is the mag?"

"Pick me up," I instructed him, and again he dropped the gun and hefted me before he even thought about it. We'd gotten carried away in our fun, and now I needed to get carried away, to the stairs, before we paid for fucking up.

But as portly as those two were, they were fucking sharp, and were somehow already right where we needed to be. I had Kenny charge them, he didn't even question where his thoughts came from at this point, and I fired a couple shots blindly at them to make them scatter.

Which they did, but not far enough, closing the gap in front of us right before we got there. And at this range, I'd implode all of us if I fired again.

"Damn it," I hissed. "Uh, back that way. Towards the undamaged corner."

"More guns that way maybe?" he asked.

"I wouldn't count on it, but we need to get them off the stairs somehow. That's the only section with walls left."

As we ran, Kenny vaulting over not-entirely destroyed walls, I realized, holy shit, how secure was this place? We'd blasted away most of the entire floor, and the ceiling didn't so much as budge, even with hundreds of guests up there. I understood that as a fancy-ass mansion, this place would be built to excessive tolerances, but this was excessively excessive.

"Each floor of the basement has titanium plates between it," Kenny explained, again, not able to question just how much I was in his mind. Not that I liked him reading my thoughts, but at the moment it was a necessity.

"Is he worried about being nuked from orbit or what?" I asked.

"Dunno. Maybe he was just preparing for this. He does have a lot of guns pass through here, it seems."

We reached the standing walls and ducked behind them, a dozen or so feet ahead of the toad chasing us, the other presumably off by the stairs still. There were only a few of the storerooms standing over here, but all of them looked vacant to our cursory glances.

"Damn it's so dark now," Kenny complained, and I agreed. It would massively suck if we were passing by other awesome weapons just because we couldn't make out the boxes in the dark, but that's about what we had to deal with.

Though there was something nearby, I could sense it. We were just right about on top of it, I just had to pin it down.

"I think there's something here," Kenny said, putting me down again and stepping into the room. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out his mobile, cutting the dark with a cone of light. "No, just empty boxes. Wait, there's one in the back…"

"The toads will be on top of us any moment," I said, urging him back. He wavered for a moment as his own desire and mine clashed.

And then the moment ended as the wall exploded. Again, the toad burst right through the wood like it was paper, leading with his shoulder, splinters raining down on Kenny in the wake. He barely had time to turn, to realize what was going on, only understanding what was happening because he could halfway see it through my senses as I watched in horror.

He died ingloriously, the weak spot on his temples not nearly as strong as the wood the toad had already punched through. A single blow left him twitching on the ground, and a precise kick snapped his neck and ended his suffering.

I panted and gasped, feeling his neck break as though it were my own, stumbling backwards in the dark away from the sound of footsteps approaching. I fired again, blindly filling the room with an implosion. I couldn't tell if I hit, my mind was still reeling from Kenny's death, one I felt, one I was completely unprepared for.

I stumbled as I ran, panic filling my senses. One shot left. One shot left. Even if I'd hit, which I doubted, there was still one more out there, and I had one shot left. I couldn't do it. I couldn't hit him, Kenny couldn't hit him, and he was a big dude and a trained marksman and everything. I was fucked, fucked, fucked. Supremely fucked. I had nothing. I didn't even have my comms to ask for help.

I reached out to those above, pleading for them to all rush down here and save me, but I hadn't worked on them enough, they felt it and stilled their conversations as confusion washed over them. There existed no such instinct I could flip on like a switch to make them run downstairs. That wasn't a primal evocation I could demand. Instead I would just die pleading for their help...I'd die again, and again, and again, until Ichiro realized what I was and used me like the XPCA would.

I didn't even have time to wonder how this got so fucked. All I could do was run, at my pathetic, lame top-speed of nothing. Waving my gun impotently as the toads appeared around me. Running towards...what?

Towards the thing I sensed earlier, I realized. Towards the only familiar thing. I couldn't even reach it, it was on the floor below me, and if I could get to the stairs, I'd be out of here already.

But I ran anyway, for lack of anything better to do. So stupid, so ironic that in the end, I'd be the panicky one driven by instinct. I saw a dark shape flash past me and turned on it, the heft of my gun too much, and I stumbled and fell.

And then they were on me, one from each side, advancing carefully to avoid my last shot.

They knew I couldn't hit them. I knew I couldn't hit them. All they had to do was avoid the business end of my gun and I was useless, and those fucks could dodge faster than I could swing this hunk of metal. Hitting them was impossible.

So I didn't. I waited. I sat. They could come to me.

"Put the gun down," said the nearer of the two, and I recognized him as my escort from before. I glared at him, feeling the other move behind me and checked him with a glance too.

"Okay," I told him, lowering the gun, resting the tip of it on the ground between my legs. It was so fucking heavy, and tireless as I was, I was tired of swinging it around. "Okay, you caught me."

"You are a powerful Exhuman, our master will be pleased to have you join us."

"What, does Ichiro have a zoo or something?" I asked.

"Oh, our master is not Ikeda-san," he clarified. And it was only then that I realized his English wasn't broken anymore. He reached for the gun, slowly, gingerly.

I hoped that whatever this gun did, it wasn't nearly as painful as it looked. And then pulled the trigger.

And holy shit were my hopes obliterated. I could feel every part of my body tearing away from every other part, all of me somehow expanding infinitely as I collapsed in on myself, feeling like I was, at once, crushed to nothingness and blown up to the size of the universe. I couldn't scream, I couldn't think, all I could do was be, as the instant of my death carried on seemingly forever.

And then I was back, sitting on the ground next to a giant hole in the floor, a messy, half-torn body, the only remains of the toad who reached for my gun. Both of his arms, one of his legs, and half his face were gone, ripped away in the vortex which had just killed me.

Except this fucker didn't come back like I did. I reached for the vest pocket where my comms were, only to have my hand crushed as the other descended on me.

"That was not a wise decision," he warned, his voice equally dense, though slightly less deep. "He was a prized asset. You will face punishment for his destruction."

"Oh yeah?" I asked. "What about for yours?"

I laughed in his face as a beam of light shot out of the hole in the floor and eradicated us both.