With our jars all lined up, it was almost time to go.

“Nicole,” I said, breaking the twins out of their bickering, “Time to get ready. Hop on, get Ridley ready to run for it. Seekers on my mark, okay?”

She nodded, her big orange dog flopping down to make it easier for her to get on. I didn't expect it, but there was room up there for Chloe, too. Awesome. They hunkered down, knowing they would have to keep small to fit through the door, unless Archie was a lot skinnier under all his fluff than I thought.

We filled only six of the jars. None of us were sure whether or not the conversion from liquid cleaning product to gaseous poison would be enough to explode the jars on its own, or how quickly it would become enough, so we didn't want too many of them lying around. Two for each of us on foot seemed like a good number, though Todd ended up giving both of his to Nicole's Seekers since he couldn't hold them and the sledgehammer at the same time.

Working quickly, Todd prepped each jar with bleach, then poured the vinegar into each one, and Renee and I followed right behind him screwing the lids on.

Once they were all prepped, I called to Nicole, “Seekers, now!”

She popped up two of her fiery-fluffed puppies, and Todd handed each of them a jar, then opened the door. The Seekers rushed out, kiting the leaf-hounds off away from the direction we were going. Once they were good and mobbed, they crushed their jars, and a dozen or so leaf-hounds fell over gagging. Thankfully, the wind was in our favor and didn't send the invisible cloud of caustic, noxious poison back towards us.

“I'm up,” I said, rushing out with my shield raised. As soon as I was out, I used my Missile to launch one jar, then the other, into the spots where still-standing leaf-hounds were thickest.

“Ridley!” I called.

Nicole's Laborer trundled down the ramp while I held the bottom of it, turning left as the wheels hit the road. One leaf-hound that was still up tried to charge me and got a lag-bolt through the forehead for its troubles. Are those hitting harder now too? I didn't get to dwell on it for long, even though the leaf-hound dissolved into blue smoke from just the one shot.

Then the twins came bounding down the ramp on dog-back, Archie quickly catching up with Ridley as soon as they were clear of the ramp. He did have to belly-crawl to get out the door, and the girls did have to squish real low over the saddle, but in the end it was no worse a squeeze for him than a proper doggy-door would've been for a normal-size dog, and he was back on his feet before his tail even cleared the doorway.

Todd and Renee brought up the rear, with Renee passing me her jars as she went by. Not wanting to risk keeping them around – especially given how long they'd been full – I launched them into where the entire pack of leaf-hounds were still squirming on the ground. It was weird; not only did they pant and wheeze and scratch at their eyes in obvious agony, it looked like their leaves were withering, too. 'Sensitive to poison' might've been an understatement.

Since we had gotten away without any loud noises, we didn't expect any real resistance in trying to leave the area.

Our formation got itself together quickly, with me leading the way, Todd on the right, Renee on the left, and Ridley in the middle with the hauler. The addition of Archie changed the dynamic, though: the twins started acting as outriders. I didn't tell them to do that, but there was no holding Nicole back now that she had her riding dog.

And... it turned out to be a good thing she did. As they were on their way back from scouting ahead a block, the ground rose up to swallow them.

It happened so fast I could hardly follow the motion, and only Archie being so damn big kept them from being snapped right up. Both of the girls shrieked as the new monster tried to figure out how to get a bite on a dog that probably weighed as much as a Volkswagen, and the rest of us rushed to help.

Up close, the thing was still hard to make out. It looked like it was divided into four sections designed to meet up at the top, almost like flower petals but... fleshier? Underneath it had a cluster of what might have been eyes, but if it had a way to move itself it didn't demonstrate it; it just stood there and let us beat it to death.

Well, more like shoot it to death. Todd's attempt to beat it with a sledgehammer did exactly nothing, revealing that the outer petals weren't so much fleshy as they were rubbery. And while Renee was able to stab through it with her shovel and her two-abilities strength, she nearly skewered Archie doing it and only missed because it went between his legs. If the ground-mimic had grabbed a person, that would've gotten them, too. It was enough to make it writhe in pain, though, and when I got there I slipped an arm through a gap between the petals and put a lag-bolt through the middle of it from the inside. That was enough to make it explode like the world's gooiest pinata, and – thankfully – dissolve into blue smoke a moment later.

The girls were, rightfully, extremely freaked out by the whole thing, and Renee and I spent some time giving out some much-needed hugs and headpats until they calmed down.

Todd, Archie, and Percy kept watch, but it looked like the leaf-hounds were either still a mess from our amateur chemical warfare or wanted nothing to do with the aftermath of our first ground-mimic encounter. Either way, there was nothing more to fight before the girls were ready to go again.

This time they stayed closer to the hauler, Archie trotting along at a more subdued pace, and Nicole kept a Seeker out at all times, ranging ahead of us from one landmark to the next. It got eaten three separate times by the time we got to the highway.

After the third one, Nicole said, “I need a rest. Keeping the Seekers out isn't bad, but replacing them is getting rough.”

We all looked around. Renee and Todd both nodded, so I did too. “That's fine,” I said, “We've got clear lines of sight here and plenty of range to work with. And I think we could all use some water anyhow.”

It took only fifteen minutes or so before she was rested up enough to continue.

We made our way onto the highway, having Ridley shove an abandoned car off to one side rather than trying to lift the entire hauler over or around it. Two miles back to A to Z should've been an hour's walk, tops, but – just like getting out here in the first place – it was so much worse.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

We continued to avoid crows and other scavengers. We still had to fight leaf-hounds, though Nicole and Chloe being able to see them coming from farther away made it trivial to keep them from ambushing us. Any time we spotted them from far away I could pick them off with bolts, and any time they got too close Todd and Renee were ready with hammer and shovel. Todd didn't end up having to fire his gun-arm again.

In the course of walking to our exit, Nicole only lost two more Seekers to ground-mimics.

“Do you get the feeling they're just not setting up out here?” I said, not to anybody in particular.

Todd was the one to respond. “Yeah, it's like they can't be bothered. Wonder why.”

“Too few people or too little space would be my guess. There's not really room for them between all the cars, and, well, nobody lives up here, so, nothing to trap. Not like they're gonna eat the leaf-hounds.”

One small mercy of these new monsters was that after they were sprung they didn't seem to do much else. They hardly moved, mostly being wiggled from within by the squirming of the eaten Seekers. They didn't fight back against stuff outside of them at all. Killing them was pretty easy once you realized that they were there. They were more like a really mean trap than an actual monster, in that sense.

After killing one, Renee pointed out, “These new monsters still give twelve points and one money each. We should switch up who kills them.”

Todd nodded, but Chloe asked why.

“Well, Nicole's going to get a cut of all of them since it's her Seekers they keep trying to eat. So, we should switch up who gets the other half of each one so we all level evenly.”

Nobody had any objection to that. It was a good idea, and we all still had some sense of fairness. The only odd thing was the need to pass Renee's shovel around. Todd's hammer and Chloe's bat weren't good for this, and nobody wanted to get close enough to the ground-mimics to kill them with Nicole's hatchets.

When it was my turn, I still used the lag-bolts Nicole had found for me at the box store. They were already going a lot further than my original can-full. My Telekinesis, even to start with, was strong enough to pull one of my launched bolts out of the ground. So long as I didn't lose track of the bolt completely, I could pull it back into my hand to be used again. And since the monsters didn't leave... bits... behind, that thought wasn't disgusting.

I tried not to think too hard about... bits left behind... but it must not have worked very well. I looked up at one point to find the group had stopped, and Renee had her hand on my shoulder.

“You were spacing out pretty hard,” she said, “You okay?”

“Lost in thought,” I said, “Sorry to worry you.”

She didn't look like she bought it, but it was enough to get my head back in the game, so we both let it lie for the time being.

Still, her fretting over me – even if it wasn't uncalled for – made us go even slower.

By the time we reached A to Z it was almost noon and I was so hot I felt like I had even sweat through my armor.

Two of the older boys had taken over Todd's job of guarding the door, and when they realized it was us coming back they hurried to let us in.

I waved ahead and Renee and Todd went first. Chloe and Nicole hopped down and went in, then Archie belly-crawled in behind them. He really was shockingly fluffy for a tiger-striped war machine. Ridley could get in but the hauler was too big, so Renee – after sending a kid ahead to let the Director know we were back – wrangled a handful of the bigger kids to help unload while I stood guard with Jacob and Gareth, the two boys who had greeted us initially.

“So you're Sir Emma?” Jacob asked.

“The little ones started calling me that, so, yeah?”

“What's your power?”

“I have three,” I said.

“Seriously?” That from Gareth.

“Yeah. The more monsters you kill the stronger you get, and the more power you can pick. I've been fighting outside practically since this all started, so, three picks.”

Jacob went “Wow,” and asked, “So... what'd you pick?”

“Missile, Force Shield, and Telekinesis,” I said, “You?”

“Fire Bolt,” he said, “That's why I got picked for guard duty.”

“Channel Lightning,” Gareth said, “Probably likewise.”

“Going all Sith Lord?” I teased him.

“You know it. Un-limited POWA...” he put on a cheesy grin and fake-rough voice and wiggled his fingers.

All three of us laughed, until a leaf-hound dropped off the roof in front of us and I … might have shrieked a little as I jumped away from it. Gareth was quick on the draw, though, and fried the thing extra-crispy in no time flat with his lightning. Geeze, Emma, it's been like twenty minutes since the last one and you're already getting lazy. ALWAYS look up...

Once it popped into smoke, he swooned and leaned on Jacob's shoulder. “What the... woah...”

“Yeah,” I said, “Using your powers a lot makes you sleepy. It gets easier as you get more picks, but so far it looks like you'll always have to be careful.”

While I was chatting with the guards, Ridley and the bucket-brigade came back and started unloading the hauler. I snagged the first two unfinished shields and a couple of handles – not the good ones though – and straps for the guard boys.

“Like so,” I said, kneeling down to show them how to finish the shields. Jacob stood guard while I helped finish Gareth's, then they switched.

Soon all of our stuff was unloaded, and Renee came to wave the three of us inside.

Once we were in, Jacob locked the doors behind us, and only then did I pull my helmet off. It dropped on the ground with a loud clang. Two of the younger kids met us inside and hit the three of us with Cleanse, then led us into a corner of the lobby that had obviously been hit by Freeze, since it was much colder there and the walls were coated with frost. The rest of my away team were lounging there, too, except for Archie who was curled up into a circle in the far opposite corner.

“We did good, yeah?” I said as I flopped on the floor, pressing my back to a cold wall.

“We did great,” Renee said, “The Director, Debby, is on her way to debrief us.”

“What's that?” Chloe asked.

“It's where you tell your boss about everything that happened while you were away,” I said. “A briefing is when they tell you what you're supposed to be doing before you go out, and a debriefing is when you tell them how it actually went afterwards.”

“Good summary,” Debby said, plunking down a folding chair and sitting so she faced the rest of us in a half-circle. When she joined, Jacob and Gareth got up from their short break and went back to guarding the front doors from the inside, where their own pair of chairs awaited them.

The Director continued, “So, how did it actually go?”

Renee and I exchanged looks, but she went first. “It was... easy at first, rough in the middle, and smooth-but-harder at the end. There's a new type of monster, too.”

She described the ground-mimics, and Chloe piped up with what she had gotten about them from Analyze, including the resistance to blunt instruments that we had already kind of figured out.

“Can't say I'm happy about our kids improvising chemical weapons,” the Director said, “But I see why you went that route. Chloe, you really are becoming invaluable as an information broker, aren't you?”

She smiled and gave a couple really big nods.

“How's things here?” I asked.

“Fine for now,” she said, “We could always use more food, more supplies, and so on, but I know that's going to get harder instead of easier.

“But there has been one thought going around that's gaining a lot of momentum.”

“What's that?” I asked.

“You,” she said, “The kids like you. The staff appreciate what you've done for Renee and to protect the kids. And... frankly, you're the deadliest person here. Even Renee is only as strong as she is because you rescued her and taught her. I'm too old for this sh... crap, and none of the staff are ex-military or ex-police or anything. There's a lot of talk of asking you to stay with us, to teach us the things you know so we can keep protecting these kids, and so the kids can protect themselves and each other.

“What do you say, Sir Emma? Become our knight officially?”

Only Renee knew what I was going to say, but she managed to keep it off her face.

“There's... something I have to do first.”

The Director prompted me with a head-tilt.

“Go home.”