{Only two people to go!} I said as we left Peggy and Sue’s house.

“Names?” Mary inquired.

{Niel North, James Drakon} I was glad the last few names seemed to be masculine, I was starting to get worried my life would turn out like one of those harem stories. That would be especially Inconvenient because I can’t… ya’know… feel that way.

I tried to get to know Sue as we walked. I mainly learned two things about her: she was trying way too hard to be “bad” and, generally, she was an ass. She would take any chance at all to insult Mary or me. It was mostly targeted at the goblin as I just tended to ignore her statements or laugh at my own expense.

Mary on the other screen, despite her generally pragmatic demeanor, could not take an insult at all. Almost anything Sue said was enough to make her explode which only caused the cyborg to bother her more, she was clearly enjoying it.

One of their interactions went a bit like this:

“There’s my favorite restaurant over there!” Mary said while giving me a pseudo tour of the city.

“The dumpster?” Sue asked raising a sarcastic eyebrow.

“No!” Mary growled “I was talking about that place over there,” She turns and starts explaining to me, “It’s pretty pricey but the food is amazing.”

“Pricey? How did you afford it then? Do they give out food to the poor? Oh, I know! Who’d you have to suck off to get a meal?” she asked making an accompanying gesture with her hand.

“I WENT THERE ON A DATE; I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW!” she was shouting now but Sue just looked on with a blank expression.

“Suuuure…” the cyborg smirked, “No need to lie.”

“What could I possibly be lying about!”

“for one the idea that anyone would want you.”

“I'll have you know, I'm highly sought after.”

“Really? It must be your creepy yellow eyes and stunning personality, those things are so charming that they were just dying to ask you out again, right?

“T-they did…”

“If you're as bad at dating as you are at lying, I can see why they didn't call.”

At that point, Mary would huff or hiss like an out of date goblin stereotype and stomp off in front of us Sue grinning like a Cheshire cat until Mary inevitably slowed down to talk and the whole process would start over again.

**End simulation**

You get it. It was draining.

In between the chatter I was able to start catching Sue and, thanks to their memory sharing abilities, Peggy up on the general gist of each member of our slowly forming group. I didn't go into a huge amount of detail. I didn't know either well enough as a person to just mindlessly trust the information of others to them. But after asking Mary and Max, through Shelly’s drone, I got permission to share the names of their powers and a few abilities. I also shared Shelly's intelligence since I'm sure she would be bragging about it anyway. I was more open with my own gifts. I explained exactly how my telepathic scan worked; the most important fact being that I could only see what a person knew about. For example, if someone hadn't checked their status for weeks and had changes they hadn't seen, then I wouldn't be able to see them either. The only exception to this was pathfinder which I finally got around to explaining in detail. I told them that I would go over what I had seen for each of them when we got back to my place.

I also felt obligated to explain the danger we might be in. Based on my conversations with Com and Shelly, there was definitely someone after us, even if I didn't know who or why. They had already tried to actually kill Shelly based on her explanation of the situation.

Mary seemed unperturbed. She had already heard this story but still, you'd think she would react to it. Instead, she just shrugged.

Sue, on the other hand, looked… excited. Why in the world would she look excited? And why didn’t I feel matching excitement coming from her with my telepathic senses?

I got my explanation very soon.

“I wouldn't mind knocking some heads in.” she said with a malicious grin stretching across her face, the kind that just screamed ‘Hey, look over here! I'm crazy’.

Still trying too hard.

I might have jinxed it. Maybe it was the universe playing some sort of trick on me. Maybe some guy on a keyboard needed me to fight something and decided that now was the best time to do it.

No matter what the reason, Sue got her wish soon.

It happened as we were going down the main street, the place was strangely abandoned, but I didn't question much of it because it was still a time of day when people would be at work. In hindsight, I should have been more on alert especially after having just explained Shel’s story. Still, who would have expected-

BANG!

If it weren’t for Mary, my drone would have been destroyed. She leaped in front of Sue and I as the bullet struck her right in the chest. At the very same millisecond, I felt the tightening cut-off that Shelly had described. There was no dome this time, but it was definitely the same feeling. Everything was gone. For Shelly, this had been a dangerous inconvenience but, for me… I was being cut off from myself, like a rope tied tight around the limb to make it go numb. I couldn't feel my ‘body’ and every system burned like a raw wound whenever I tried to contact it. It felt like I was just a head, like I was paralyzed from the neck down. It was a terrible, horrible feeling. For split second, I thought about if this was what Shelly experienced all the time. If so, no wonder she wanted a body so badly. No one should be forced to live like this.

What I still had access to was my drone, in the few droninjas I had been carrying. I had brought five and had given one to Mary to tinker with. So, I was left with four for whoever had sprung this ambush.

[DRONINJAS AVAILABLE: 4]

Oh. That’s handy.

Mary was lying on the ground, gasping and cursing as well as making some other sounds that I don’t think I’m allowed to describe.

She squirmed as her body rebuilt itself, and for the first time, I got a real look at how Mary’s powers affected her physically. Where a normal person would be screaming in abject agony the goblin was growing red-face and glassy-eyed as her body twitched. Even Sue is starting to look concerned.

“Are… you okay greenie?”

“FUCK! Y-yeah Ah-I’ll be fineEeeeiiiii… Just be glad it wasn't you. This would h-have hurt like a Mmm-MF-er without my... Cou-could y-you please not look at me…” It took a couple more seconds for Mary to recover enough that she could stand, she was still blushing, a bit wobbly on her feet, and gasped with any intense movements. But we didn’t have a lot of time to worry about her.

“Heh, I’ll ‘ave what she’s ‘aving.” a voice said as the speaker stepped out from around the corner. It was a tall muscled man, holding a rifle that was still smoking. His clothes were all dark, blacks, browns, and blues, and his hair was long and tied back in a messy tail. his nose was twisted in a way that suggested it had been broken… several times and scars coated practically every piece of skin that was visible. He was an intimidating sight.

“W-what? A bullet in the heart?” Mary said through a groan as she plucked something that looked like a homemade pistol with an extended magazine out of her purse, “Because that can be arranged.”

“Nah hun, I was talkin’ about the org-“ he was cut off as he was forced to dodge out of the way to avoid a bullet nailing him in the forehead.

“IT'S NOT SEXUAL!!!” Mary screeched sending a rain of bullets at the man. She only managed to Graze him once or twice, that was enough to get things moving.

I started by scanning him.

[ Name: Howard -Unknown-

Species: Human: technologically enhanced

Powers: Accuracy enhancement, -unknown-

Abilities: -unknown-, consciousness binding (granted by item)

Traits: Sureshot, -unknown-

Personal strengths: -unknown-

Personal weaknesses: -unknown-

STR: -unknown-

Power ranking: C-?(major combatant)]

[Warning: This meta being is at least two full ranks above you and is hostile. This has prevented you from getting a full scan.]

Oh… oh shit!

I sent the information to the girls via my telepathy, causing both of them to stumble. This had a much worse result when it came to Mary as I caused her to miss her shot, giving our assailant, Howard, time to reload his gun, he seemed to reconfigure it in a second. It looking less like a sniper now and more like a semi-automatic. He returned fire at Mary, who’s arm shifted into a shield of flesh protecting her head and upper body, she grunted but this was apparently nowhere near as debilitating as a shot to the heart, pain or no.

I decided that I should help. Splitting my focus I created a wormhole right behind the killer placing the other end beneath me and sending two of my droninjas into it, at the same time I began charging one of the energy balls I had discovered back at home.

The ninjas came flying at the assassins back, their blades piercing his skin as I began to climb up. Howard grunted with every stab reaching over his shoulder to grab at the bots, At the same time, he was still forced to Dodge Mary's fire. This was also when Sue decided to step in, the ground began to shake as she focused, the small sprouts that had grown in cracks in the concrete begin the quiver than grow expanding to the thickness of her arm and lengthening towards Howard, they wrapped around his feet and arms further hampering him before they began to constrict.

It seemed like we had him on the defensive, I should have known it was too easy.

With a growl, Howard strained against the vines holding him, metallic spikes sprouted from his flesh severing the plants as he rolled away from Mary’s line of sight, the droninjas would have been crushed underneath him if they hadn't ducked into his shadow as he moved, popping back out in the shade of my drone.

“I ‘otta admit you kids are tougher than I expected. I’d assume’d this would be a quick job. In and out, but it seems like you all have some spice. Hey, ‘m not complain’ at least I get to have some fun.” The assassin said, he grinned as he plucked one of the spikes out of his shoulder, hurling it at me with Strength that belied the limit of a normal human. I reacted in the only way I could think of, creating a portal in front of myself and letting the projectile fly into it, it was only then that I noticed that I hadn’t created an exit. so where had the spike gone? It wasn't a mystery for long, within seconds the slip of metal came flying right back out of the hole in space I had made, even faster than it had went in and aimed right at Howard, it struck his arm and I was glad it didn't hit me as it shattered into a million bits of metal shrapnel.

He howled and as shocked as I was, I wasn't going to miss this opportunity just to wonder what just happened. I sent my now fully charged energy ball, filled with heat, sailing for the distracted man’s wide-open eye.

Now, to you reading this, I don't know if you are biological, but if you are let me give you a quick life tip. Never let something hot, even (or maybe especially) if it's a tiny ball of pure heat energy, touch your eye.

You see, biological eyes are essentially balloons filled with weird jelly, and like any fluid, when exposed to heat that jelly tends to expand, causing strain on the outer layer of the eye. As the jelly absorbs more heat, the worst that strain gets, until eventually…well you get the idea.

POP!

The sickening sound splashed across our makeshift battlefield. As tortured screams ripped their way out of our assailant’s throat, Sue not being one to waste an opportunity sent her vines snaking in wrapping around Howard like boas. With a face wracked with strain, she lifted him up a few feet before slamming him as hard as she could into the ground. While the man was still somewhat stunned from that, the plants tide themselves into looping knots. He began to struggle once more, looking up to glare at us with eyes full of pure malice. it was only then that I noticed that the damaged eye seemed to be slowly repairing itself.

“I'm ‘onna kill all of you for t’is!!!”

“Oh great, he’s a regenerator!” Mary bawked.

“Yeah they tend to be annoying,” stated Sue, receiving a pointed look at the goblin.

I made my next decision based on a few things.

He was two ranks above Mary who was the highest-ranked out of our group.

He was already starting to break Sue’s Vine ropes.

And the ability he was using the bind to me to my drone most likely had an area of effect limit.

those three pieces of information made the next word that I stated supremely logical.

{RUN!}

And we ran.