Serpentine was closer and faster than me. He had moved just a fraction of a movement before I did, but the gap between us only grew as we flashed through the air.

I could see Musical Isle’s dull green eyes popping wide open as some sort of strangled squawk tried to pour from his mouth. His surprise might slowed him, our sudden attack might have confused him, but whatever else he was, Musical was a Guardian. He sprang to his feet, harmonica stretching into a heavy flute, and he held it up, clashing against the two fang-shaped daggers Serpentine had struck at him with.

I landed mere inches from the two of them and cut out with both my daggers, thrusting them towards Musical’s side. He pivoted, body bending with impossibly flexibility to evade my stabs.

Then he whipped his flute forward and upward, smashing the butt of it into Serpentine’s chest with enough force to knock him into the air. He flicked it down, its front end cracking against the top of my skull.

“Come on, little children, surely you can do better than that,” he taunted.

I met Serpentine’s gaze again as I shook my head, trying to drive away the dazed feeling. And again the two of us launched a nearly-simultaneous attack. Serpentine kept one fang close to his torso, in a position to guard, dropping into a low stance and kicking out with one foot while stabbing towards Musical’s groin. I simply sprang forward, slashing with one knife, but mostly relying on momentum and shock.

Musical shifted into the kick somehow and let it swipe his legs out. He fell to the ground, rolling under my stabbing tackle and away from Serpentine’s stab. In the instant before the two of us collided, I saw a chance to avoid the impending impact. I also saw a chance to land a blow.

I decided to trust my comrade. Serpentine would make sure we were able to recover. And I hurled out a knife.

It whistled as it cut through the air. Musical was rising back to his feet, caught in an awkward half-crouch. He didn’t have time to dodge.

So instead he disappeared.

My knife flew through the air where he was, and bounced off a crumbling wall. I spun around, my other blade held at the ready to knock aside the inevitable counterstroke, but none came.

There was a long and awkward silence.

Serpentine coughed and started to say something, but Ghostly interrupted him. They had made a thick fog around themselves, and were staring at us through it, their eyes just barely visible.

“Something very strange just happened, when that guy disappeared. It was...”

They fell silent, and no one else spoke up. Everyone was watching everyone else, tense and jumpy. We were waiting for someone to lose their temper, for Musical to reappear, for something, anything to happen.

But there was only the grinding weight of confusion. Only empty air.

Finally, Serpentine spoke up.

“Fuck that guy!” he spat out. “Who the hell does he think he is, acting like that?”

“I think he might have done something to our minds. Karl, can you tell us anything?”

My Familiar reappeared, and he spoke into our minds, his voice gentle.

[“I believe that is correct. He was using some sort of magical spell. It’s good that you were able to recognize it. More I cannot say. I can’t remember anything about him. This is...concerning.”]

“Thank you, Karl, alright. So, this might be wrong, but I think whoever he is, he’s trying to keep us from working together. Anything like this, he’ll show up and make trouble. So we need to lure him out.”

I grinned wide and hungry. “So, why don’t we sit down, chat, get to know each other. And I’ll explain my plan for dealing with this renegade.”

As frustrating and insulting as he had been, especially with the way he had effortlessly trounced me and then escaped before I could even land a counterblow, there were some advantages to this. I might have to rely on my own resources for projects instead of drawing on everyone’s, but he had attacked all of us. And there was nothing quite like a common enemy.

We had numbers and we had communications, and we were not going to let him get away again.

My plan was pretty simple, all things considered, and there were no objections, but plenty of refinements. Serpentine laid out a display they had, stretching it out until it covered half the courtyard, showing a top down view of Thiva. We could see ourselves on it as a rainbow blotch, and scattered instances of magic from items we had given out. We sketched out divisions of responsibility, chatted about our lives, pointed out workplaces and favored bars. Perhaps an hour drifted by as we sat in the sun.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

A couple of loose agreements were made, beyond my plan. To not seek out our identities, to keep an eye out for new Guardians, to avoid arming the police. And I mentioned my hope to use points to for things bigger than personal weapons, although I hid the true scope of my ambitions.

“We can make food, we can build houses, we can cure any illness. I can’t do it for everyone and everything, but I can do it for some. And I intend to.”

I suspect you would not be able to become a Guardian if you would reject a concept like that. Even when I expanded on it, and explained my intention to purchase something that could make stuff for people instead of buying the stuff directly, no one batted an eye.

Instead, people started to drift away, exhausted from the unexpectedly intense meeting and needing to return to their lives.

We shook hands and exchanged hugs and promised to back each other up. Ghostly pulled out a pen and paper and gave me a phone number to call. “You have big dreams, I can tell. I hope you keep them alive,” they said to me.

“Same to you. People tried to kill my dreams before. I think they’ll have a much harder time now.”

Slowly the number of Guardians dwindled. Swan slumped in a corner, insisting she was fine every time I asked. All the while, she stared at nothing in particular and picked at the surface of her skirt.

“Do you want to try some practice?” I suggested, and got nothing but a disinterested grunt.

“I would be open to it, if you like,” a familiar voice said.

I turned around and found Serpentine Shield standing stiffly, head up and back rigid. He hesitated, and then added, “I think we got off on the wrong foot, but we worked well together.”

I shrugged. I still felt antsy and angry in a vague, directionless way. I didn’t care much who I worked with, as long as I had someone.

“Do you know any boxing or anything? It might be a good place to start.”

I showed him how to stand and how to step, how to pivot so your weight was behind your punches. He learned fast - I barely had to smack him across the skull to remind him to keep his hands up.

As he grumbled after the third or fourth whack, I shook my head. “When I first started, I was getting hit every ten seconds. You are doing well, man. Soon you’ll be a heavyweight champion!”

He laughed and told me he wanted a chance to hit back. I saw a glimmer of interest in Swan’s eyes as she looked over to us.

“You want to ref?” I offered.

She hesitated, and me and Serpentine both started cajoling her. Soon, she agreed.

“Ready...when my shoe hits the ground, you start!” she told us, loosening the straps on one.

Me and Serpentine stepped back until there was about twenty feet between us. I expected her to flip her shoe off, or just drop it. Instead, she kicked it up.

And up. And then up some more. I tilted my head back, and was able to barely glimpse it against the light of the sun.

It started to plummet down. I kept one eye on Serpentine, who was slowly inching closer to me, and one on the falling shoe. It looked like it was going to land pretty close to me, or maybe even...

“Ouch!” I hissed, and then Serpentine was on me.

I sprang backwards, landing in a cloud of dust, struggling to regain my balance. He didn’t let up, throwing jabs and crosses as fast as he could. They landed hard as I held my arms up, taking bruising blows as best I could.

There was no time to think or plan. He hesitated for the tiniest fraction of a second and I shifted my weight to my left in the gap he gave me. A punch whizzed towards my face, glancing off my cheek. My head snapped back, and I barely managed to stay on my feet, but it wasn’t enough to defeat me.

My punch was weak, my angle off, my stance unsteady. But none of that matters when you are driving an uppercut into someone’s solar plexus. His head flew forward, his torso bent back, and he let out a great whoosh of air.

And with one hand he swung out at me in a desperate haymaker. I stepped into the strike and rammed my forearm into his.

Serpentine had the right idea, earlier. When you have the upper hand in a fight, you don’t let up.

“This is just a sparring match,” I reminded myself, resisting the urge to finish him.

Instead, I stepped back.

“Good work, let’s take a break and talk about how you did!”

I had a lot of compliments for him, and only a few scraps of advice about not getting tunnel vision and learning to read an opponent, the sort of things that can only come with time and getting punched in the face.

He checked the time and said he had to go.

“I’ll see you around,” I told him, and then he pulled me into a very surprising hug.

Despite what some might report, I did not squawk like a chicken in a thunderstorm, or any other sort of bird in any condition.

After extracting myself from the unexpected but not unwelcome display of affection with great dignity, I said my own goodbyes.

Then me and Swan departed. Once more taking to the roofs and enjoying the rush of the wind in our faces, we moved fast. This time, Swan didn’t want to stop and perform, and I let her take the lead on that.

“I’m going to go see my friends once we get back and I detransform,” she told me, between one leap and the next.

I bit down on the objections that immediately rose. It was probably a good sign that she was going out to spend time with friends. She didn’t need me hovering over her, right?

So instead I asked if she would be able to find her way by herself, if she needed money, and then we hopped down into an alley, detransformed, and she walked off. I watched Ella go, trying to convince myself I was handling things well, and then I trudged up to my apartment, feeling drained.

I had so many things I needed to do. I needed to get a grocery list together, start looking for a new job, check how much money I had for the month and see where I could cut some loose for Ella. I needed to start making more concrete plans for saving lives and how I would handle all the details. And I needed to talk with Karl about who the mysterious interloper was and about how I had fallen asleep at the mall but up across town.

“Hey, how much for a machine that can just make food out of magic or something?” I asked Karl.

Food was a good place to start. Everyone liked food. As I asked him, I flopped down onto my bed, wincing at the unyielding mattress, and took out my phone.

[“You currently have about 1800 points. You could unlock the Tier 1 Automated Industrial Equipment Vault for 500 points, and then there would be a variety of options.”]

I started looking through my bank account, wincing at the numbers I saw there. “How did I get so many?”

[“Aside from closing a second Reality Tear and taking part in extensive conflict, in which you saved many lives, you helped defeat an incursion that could have devastated the world. You, and all Guardians who participated, were rewarded for that.”]

I wondered if that included Musical Isle. Then I dismissed him from my mind. I did not have the energy to worry about that right now. I fought down a yawn and started thinking about what expenses I could afford to cut. There wasn’t much...maybe I could start working in construction? I bet there was plenty of damage that needed fixing.

“Tell me about my options in the vault,” I instructed Karl.

He hopped up on the bed next to me. I felt the warmth of his body against mine.

His voice was softer than before, gentler.

[“We don’t need to go over this now. But if you insist. If you wish to create a sort of automated garden, you could purchase a small-scale model for 300 points. The only human intervention required would be to place it somewhere it has access to sunlight and occasionally empty the storage containers of produce. There are cheaper versions, but they would require more work. Alternatively, you could purchase a magic-powered food synthesizer...”]

He snuggled against me as I spoke, and I fought to pay attention to what he was saying.

I lost.

It wasn’t even a contest.

A/N: Sorry about missing a week, the job search is a terrible and miserable thing