The twins looked at me like I'd just kicked a puppy.

Todd and Debby exchanged a sympathetic look.

Renee reached out and patted my shoulder.

“I need to see if my mother made it home yet,” I said, “Make sure nobody got into our house. … Maybe even scavenge whatever might still be useful.”

“You don't have to justify wanting to go home,” Debby said, “Besides, we managed just fine, and we'll continue to.”

“You still have the rest of my away team,” I said, “Renee and Nicole both have three abilities, same as me. Aside from what their abilities are, that means they're... a lot stronger and a lot tougher than a normal person would be. I'm not sure how much. But. A lot. Nicole is pretty much an army on her own, and Todd still has an ability pick available.”

I hadn't meant to throw him to the wolves like that, but all eyes turned to Todd.

“You were out there fighting and didn't pick an ability?” It was definitely his mom talking. Not 'the director.' I knew that tone of voice all too well.

“I told them all why,” he said, “I'm going to pick another augment and I didn't want to learn what it's bite-you-in-the-ass factor was while we were pinned down in hostile territory. I'm here and we're all safe, so, now's the time.”

“What are you thinking of picking?” Debby asked.

“I'm torn between Biological Augment: Strength, or Armored Skin.”

“Take Strength,” I said, “You can Integrate armor later.”

“Armor,” Debby said, “You have to live to see later.”

“Armor,” Renee said, “You already have your gun-arm and a hammer.”

“Strength,” Nicole said, “So you can do stuff and not get tired.”

“Strength,” Chloe said, “You already have a hammer; why not go full Thor?”

Todd and Chloe shared a fist-bump while Nicole and I shared an eye-roll.

“You two are so weird,” Nicole said.

“I was agreeing with you!” Chloe countered.

“For a silly reason!”

“It's not silly! Thor is cool.”

Debby cleared her throat and the two of them went quiet. Everybody was looking at Todd again.

“Alright. Everybody made good arguments, but... I'm going with Armored Skin. Here goes.”

His eyes took on that far-away gaze of interacting with his System, then straightened out again.

“Oh that feels weird,” he said, one hand coming up to scratch at his chest. “It itches. It itches everywhere.”

After another minute, he started to look grey. Not just a little pale, but grey like there was something seriously off about his skin. Then he got up and bolted for the bathrooms, still scratching with his good hand.

We all exchanged concerned looks, then Debby got up to follow him.

While we waited, nobody said anything and the tension only grew. By the time they came back there was practically more tension in the air than humidity.

The Todd that came back looked positively monstrous. His grey skin was still flaking off him here and there like a shed snakeskin, with Debby following behind brushing and picking at it. His hair had all fallen out, replaced with a trio of jagged cranial ridges that ran from his forehead to halfway over the top of his head. He was still wearing his jeans and boots but had left his shirt behind – probably with more shed skin. Everywhere he was exposed looked like rough-edged black scales, the light glinting off of them in an oily rainbow-purple tint. Even his lips were drawn taut and cracked, not quite pitted like a snake's but dry and rough. As he got closer, I could see that even the metal of his shotgun-arm had taken on a snakeskin-like texture, each little scale having a sharp ridge up the middle like viper scales.

Chloe and Nicole held hands, staring at him with wide eyes.

Over in their corner, Gareth and Jacob stared, too, but both of them had big grins on. Boys!

“This still feels... really strange,” he said, feeling his face with his fingers as he worked through a few words. He had trouble with his s-sounds; anything that was more lips than tongue gave him trouble, showing the stiffness in his face as he forced those sounds out slowly.

He ran his good hand thro... over his cranial ridges, paused in obvious surprise, then relaxed and put on a grin that looked awkward on his scaly face. “Sorry for ss... for frightening everybody. I'm fine. Really. It's still weird but I feel fine.”

“So,” I gulped, “What's the drawback on this one?”

He shrugged. “Other than feeling like my ssskin is half a sssize too small? Nothing that I can tell. I feel great. Even the heat isss bothering me leff... … less.

“OH! And both of my Abilitiesss are at 200% now! I think I can Integrate anov... another thing. When I find a good thing, I mean.” He continued to struggle to speak. Not to speak at all – he could still breathe and vocalize just fine – but he struggled with... enunciation. He had to talk slowly to make himself sound the way he wanted to. “I'll work on that in my own time, though. For now, you... ought to get a move on, if you want to make it home before it gets too dark.”

Renee patted my shoulder, and I stood up.

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The twins were at my sides so fast I hardly even saw them get up, squished against my armor so tight it was almost like they were trying to hug each other and I was just in the way. Tight enough that I couldn't move, though.

“Hey, hey,” I said, gently patting their heads, “I am planning to come back.”

“But what if your mom says no?”

“What if there's ground-mimics?”

They looked up at me with those shiny too-wide eyes that were still entirely not fair dirty rotten cheating...

I sighed. “I'll be careful. I won't go anywhere without bolts in my hands in case I get grabbed. And... you let me worry about my mom.”

They did let me go, eventually, but followed me to the door with Chloe carrying my shield. Only once the boys had undone the locks did she give it back. I gave one more round of hugs, then strapped on the shield and headed out.

An idea occurred to me as I was walking through the parking lot, and I took out a couple of bolts. With my Telekinesis at 300%, I could target multiple objects with it, so I deployed three of my bolts and set them orbiting around me, right at ground level.

I still went slow as I made my way back onto the highway. I wasn't really familiar with this part of town, but I remembered the gas station where we came up here, so I kept an eye out for it while I went. The walk gave me plenty of time to think about how much I had gotten used to having the twins and the others watching my back in just... one day?

And then I got eaten.

Well, and then a ground-mimic grabbed me.

I was very not prepared for how that felt.

I knew I'd be in serious trouble if not for my shield giving me a little bit of room, and my armor not letting it squeeze me directly. Like I promised the twins, though, I had kept two extra bolts in hand, though. Luckily, the pressure squeezed my arms to my sides and didn't pin my hand against my chest. I would've been so hosed if it managed that.

As it was, I had a decent angle from my hand downward, so I shot my emergency bolts down between my feet as hard as I could. The result was the ground-mimic exploding in goo and dissolving into smoke before it could figure out how to squish me through my armor. As the blood returned to my head, I was left with the giddy thought that after all the books I've read where monsters dissolve into colorful smoke, I'm just glad these don't stink.

I took a few minutes to compose myself after that. Let the adrenaline run its course so my hands stopped shaking. Clanked a bolt against my helmet a couple of times to stop the chills down my spine. How am I getting worse about this? I keep winning, and yet here I am. UGH!

Pretty soon I got moving again, though, and I got off the highway right where we had gotten on earlier. I was probably walking off the highway down an on-ramp, but it's not like there was anybody driving up who was gonna care.

I fully expected that the leaf-hound that was on top of the gas station would be there again, and I was not disappointed; one shot to knock him off his perch, one shot to pop him like a confetti balloon, and an easy twelve points in my pocket. Oh, leaf-hounds, please keep being super predictable and never change... I could probably have spent the afternoon casually farming just that one, but that wasn't my goal. Even if 48 points an hour for doing basically nothing would've been nice.

I gave up on the orbiting bolts as I reached the residential stretch. It had seemed like a good idea, but it never actually caught a ground-mimic, and after the first one I ended up spending some time hopping from one broken-down car to another. It sure seemed like they would only mimic the ground, so anything that wasn't the ground was probably safe. It didn't occur to me until three or four hops into this weird leg of my journey that leaping from car to car in full armor was not a normal thing to be able to do. Chalk up one more point for the three-powers strength theory. Hypothesis. Whatever. Thank you, Ms. Yun. That's a distinction that will live in head forever.

Back in residential territory, I saw that something akin to a neighborhood watch had started up. A handful of people were out in a group, armed with the usual post-apocalyptic assortment of crowbars and baseball bats. They looked like they were taking turns tapping their weapons on the ground ahead of them, and I saw them trigger a ground-mimic, at which point the one guy in their group who wasn't armed held out a hand and the thing burst into flames.

They saw me watching and one of them raised a crowbar in salute. I saluted back with my shield, and continued frog-hopping my way towards home. It was fun, but it still got to be a bit much, so after a few more hops, I decided to give my strength a real test. I picked a car that looked like it had seen better days even before the Maffiyir, and hopped over to grab its hood. I set my feet, pushed with all my core strength, and... broke the latch without any serious strain. What.

Once I had the hood open, it was an easy bit of Telekinesis to wiggle the bolts out of the arms that held it up, and for a handful of minutes' work and one successful science experiment, I had myself a car hood.

Floating it with Telekinesis, I set it ahead of me and pushed it along the ground, scraping the concrete and making an awful noise. It drew out a few leaf-hounds, but I was keeping to the middle of the road so I had plenty of time to see them coming. I generally let them get close enough that I could land those perfect head-shots and pull my bolt back before it even got out of range.

A few blocks from home, my idea to use the car hood as a plow paid off where my tapping bolts hadn't, as it managed to dislodge an unopened ground-mimic. That was how I got to see the thing move, by folding its weird body-petals downward and scuttling along like a starfish. It was... unbelievably gross, in a “that really shouldn't exist on this planet” sort of way. Of course I shot it to smoke before it could pick a new spot to settle down. No sense leaving free points on the table, and no sense leaving the darn thing to become somebody else's problem later.

Even if the sound of it did kind of sound like the wailing of the damned, I continued pushing my metal plow along to be sure I wouldn't get grabbed again. It was tiring, but with frequent breaks in the shade – which, really, twist my arm why don't ya? – I was able to maintain it. It did make getting home slow, though. Well, slower. Feels like everything is slow these days. Is it the lack of machinery? Or does everything feel slow when you're in a hurry? Both? Time is weird.

I came into view of my house with the sun still above the rooftops. Our block had no visible leaf-hounds and nowhere for them to perch to drop from, but still plenty of cars for them to hide between. Somebody really should do something about those. I wonder if my Telekinesis could move a car? Whoever was patrolling this area seemed to have gotten most of them, though, as I only got jumped at once. And I didn't even scream this time! Just, whack with the shield, pow with the bolt, and... It's almost like I'm getting good at this.

The first thing I noticed as I got closer was that our front door was open. I definitely did not leave it like that, so this already had me on-edge. I dropped my car hood a few doors down and proceeded more quietly towards the door. I knew I was taking a chance that there might be a ground-mimic between here and there, but the added stealth if there wasn't one made it worth it to me. Our front windows were practically right above the sidewalk, so I scooted up against the wall, ducked under the window, and sneaked toward the door.

I... really didn't need to bother.

As I was still a couple of yards from the front door, a guy stumbled backwards out the door. He was middle-aged, wearing the button-down-shirt and slacks of a salaryman, but wielding a tire iron. He was also soaking wet from head to toe and smelled like the river.

Right on his heels, my mother came pushing out of the house wielding one of her rattan swords in one hand and a chef's knife in the other. She slashed with the knife, using the longer reach of the rattan to keep his tire-iron too fouled to swing. As they both found their footing on the foot-tall rise of the front stoop, she slapped his weapon aside, then brought up one foot and gave him an honest-to-god 'this is Sparta' kick square in the chest.

He lost his footing as he missed the step from the stoop to the sidewalk, stumbled back another two steps, then fell from the curb.

Directly into a waiting ground-mimic.