People had never truly asked me about all my strange gear before. I made a snap judgment–deciding not to ever tell the whole truth about it. Truth mixed with lies or misdirection would be best. Before traveling with Aldina, I probably wouldn't have even thought about it, but now that I knew my abilities were so different from others, spilling my guts to strangers probably wasn't the smartest thing to do.

"I have a skill that might let me craft new armor and items in the future," I said. “The skills I’m building so far are too basic, but eventually I can help myself and maybe even make some money in the process. It seems to me that armor and steel will be worth a lot more than TVs soon. It probably is already.”

The old man, Jim, nodded slowly, and a look of understanding came over his face. "Is that why you're here then?" he asked. He eyed the antiques covering me, especially the cast-iron pan hanging from my belt. "And you've come here to trade, you said?"

"That's right," I said.

Jim eyed my pistol on the ground and got a glint in his eye that I didn't like. "Not sure why we should be trading when everyone else out there keeps trying to steal from us. Maybe if we can't beat 'em, we should join 'em," he muttered

"Pawpaw, no," the woman growled. "You don't talk like that. We aren't like that and never will be."

I sensed a misunderstanding and said, holding my hands up, "I'm being nice right now for my own conscience and sense of morality, so we don't have conflict. If I were a marauder, I could have probably killed all of you by now and helped myself. If you're going to be dealing with other people, you have to remember that this is a different world now. And talking about stealing my stuff right in front of me is a bit trashy."

The man in overalls laughed. "Don't get me wrong, sir. I'm not trying to antagonize here, but that's some tough talk for someone standing here unarmed between three guns."

I didn't like where this was heading and wasn't sure how to demonstrate my point without hurting anybody until I noticed that Bacon was done resting, or at least he'd rested as long as he needed to be active again. He didn’t have much gas in the tank, but it was enough now I got the strong feeling it wouldn't harm him or me to make an appearance. So, with that thought in mind, I instructed Bacon to materialize about ten feet away.

Bacon appeared and it was like I’d dropped a bucked of ice water on the entire world. The effect was immediate. The woman yelled and fell back, her shotgun firing in Bacon's basic direction. The old man screamed more shrilly than I could have imagined and actually dropped his firearm as he fell down, trying to run away. The man in overalls slowly swung the barrel of his weapon around but seemed unable to continue to do anything else due to his shaking. His lower lip quivered as he stared at Bacon.

Meanwhile, my oblivion hound, who seemed to have grown even larger than the last time I saw him, sat on his haunches and opened his mouth to let out his tongue in a canine grin. His weaponized, prehensile tail rose behind him, pointing first at the woman on the ground and then at the man in the overalls before darting forward, hovering about a foot away from his face. The surrounding daylight was noticeably darkened in the area around where Bacon was sitting.

"Good boy," I said. I walked to my friendly, murderous creature of the abyss and gave him a friendly pat on the head. "Good to see you again, buddy, but I think you should go back to sleep right now. You're still need rest."

Bacon turned his head to the side before letting his tongue roll out again. I got a very clear message from him that he understood and would be standing by whenever I needed him.

"Okay, see you later, buddy," I said fondly. And then I brought him back to sleep in my soul with a single mental command.

The area noticeably lightened, and a heaviness that I was aware of, but didn't affect me, lifted.

When Bacon disappeared, I noticed something new that was a little frustrating. I’d gotten a new system message.

In the past, I'd been able to call Bacon in and out of my soul space at will. But apparently, since he was still a little tired after putting him back, I had a countdown showing, communicating a period of time before I could materialize him again. Instead of a convenient set of numbers, the countdown was like a loading bar on a PC. It was barely moving and I figured it would take at least two hours.

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On one hand, this was irritating and even maybe a little concerning in case I needed to call the Bacon anytime soon. However, getting more information about my abilities was a good thing, even if that information was their limitations. I'd rather be hit with limitations when I wasn't in the middle of a life-and-death struggle.

The three people around me were still, unmoving. The older teen boy who'd taken up his guard position some distance away down the fence was staring with his mouth open, trembling like the man in overalls whom I assumed was his father. The moment of stillness was ended by running footsteps as a short man with long, dirty blonde hair came pounding up from the direction of the distant guard post I'd noticed.

Now I could hear sobbing too. I'd forgotten about the little girl that I'd seen spying on us before. Apparently, she'd seen Bacon. That made me feel a little bad.

As soon as the new man with the gun ran up, his rifle pointed at me. I decided that since I brought out Bacon, I might as well not balk at a little bit more intimidation. As the man was distracted by the woman lying on the ground, I swept [Private Malone's Last Stand] in a sweep to one side at the same time as I activated the bayonet's ability. Instantly, an arcane blade extension erupted from the steel, and with the last few inches of the blade, I parried the newcomer's rifle to one side before stepping in and grabbing his shoulder with enough pressure to get his attention.

"Everybody should just calm down, alright?" I said. "None of this would have been necessary if the old guy over there hadn't casually mentioned the possibility of robbing me. Maybe worse. Who knows?" I gave the old man a look. "But I'm actually doing you all a favor too. This is a new world. Just because you have guns doesn't necessarily mean anything anymore. In fact, I'm pretty sure if you shot me at this point, you wouldn't live very long, and I'd likely survive."

It felt kind of cringey for me to be saying these things. I felt a little bit like a cartoon villain. And now I wondered how Aldina had felt when she waltzed into the gun shop and started inter-dimensional invasions. She seemed so self confident, maybe it hadn’t even made her itch.

In a show of good faith, I stepped back from the long haired man and sheathed my bayonet after deactivating its ability. The people on the ground slowly got up and stared at me. I wasn't so sure that anything I'd just done to the long-haired guy had made much of an impression, but the appearance of Bacon definitely had.

It was almost hard for me to remember now–even though it hadn't been that long ago–but my first reaction upon seeing the oblivion hound hadn't been exactly warm and fuzzy either. Bacon was actually bigger and stronger now, too. His presence felt deeper. I wondered what Bacon might eventually become as we continued to grow together. It was worrying that the situations perfect for massive, focused growth might dry up. It could be that opportunities for Bacon to run wild and kill God-knew how many monsters in a single night wouldn’t come around every day.

But if Bacon got strong and fast enough, who knew?

Finally, the older man shakily said, "Maybe I shouldn't have said all of that. Apologies, sir."

"Apologies to you too, sir," I said. "So... Can we talk about trading now?"

The old man sighed and said, "Sure. My name's Jim. My daughter here is Sandy. The man who just ran up is Randy. And that’s Andrew."

"I'm Miles," I said, "but if you want, you can call me Shrug."

The words were out of my mouth before I'd even thought about it, and inwardly I cringed again. One of these days, I needed to stop introducing myself as Shrug just out of habit.

The old man turned to the woman who was looking a bit green and trembling. "Sandy, you mind pulling some of those folding chairs over here?"

"Okay, Pawpaw."

Jim turned to me. "So what do you have to trade?"

"I have some antibiotics that I can trade you, which will probably be more than fair for whatever junk I am ever going to want," I said.

"You want junk? And you have antibiotics?"

“That's right.”

The man closed his eyes and sighed. Even though he was the one who had said the near-murderous stuff before, maybe it had just been out of frustration. What I was noticing now was that all the other adults obviously depended on the old man for leadership, and I was impressed by the fact that he was at least attempting to think rationally while some of his family members were still too shaken by the sudden appearance of Bacon to do much of anything.

"After some consideration," Jim said, "Andrew, you should get Caleb to walk with Miles. Actually, never mind."

The big man, Andrew, had been tensing to say something but relaxed. Randy nodded mutely.

"Can I check out the house next door too?" I asked. "There used to be a lot of garage sales here, right?"

Andrew shook his head before nodding. "Yeah, go ahead. That's my house. I don't know what you'll find though. After someone on the other side of the ‘yard lot threw Molotov cocktails, only like a day after…everything happened. Only a day and people were already acting like they ain't got no sense."

"I'm sorry, man." I shook my head. "A giant destroyed my house. So I kind of know at least some of those feels."

"A giant?" asked Jim.

"Yup," I said. "First few minutes of everything going down."

"Damn." Andrew eyed me up and down. "Well, maybe there's a reason why you can summon demons or something." To Jim he said, "I think he was telling the truth that he could clean our clocks, Pop."

"Yeah, I know he was," said Jim. "Probably good that we get this lesson now versus later." The old man looked exhausted.

I suddenly felt pity for the people. Even though they'd acted in ways that had made me nervous, they hadn't actually done anything terrible to me. I said, "Tell you all what, if I find anything that I like enough, on top of some antibiotics, I'll also give you something even more precious."

"And what's that?" Jim asked.

I thought about Aldina again when she made her first appearance at Tom's Guns.

"Knowledge," I said. Even as the word left my mouth, I knew I hadn’t said it with anywhere near the gravitas that Aldina had. Maybe she’d practiced in front of a mirror or something.