Hastily, Ed threw his hands up to buy time, palming the cube as he collapsed to the floor . He flipped the switch. Then, and just as Mr. Garry’d described, he watched as the dust sort of froze in about a ten meter bubble around him.

There was another crack and suddenly a little bullet appeared in the bubble. When he didn’t collapse again the soldier almost instantly stopped.

“Put your hands in the air, drop the artifact. You’re surrounded, please cooperate.”

Ed glanced around, wincing, as he pulled himself back to a knee. He was not, in fact, surrounded, and he was pretty sure it was just this one woman. At least he assumed as much, the voice was somewhat feminine. If still very gruff and no-nonsense.

Ed dragged himself towards the door. It was maybe twenty meters away.

“Don’t move.” She ordered. Her rifle was now trained on him.

Ed continued to move anyways.

There was another crack, and Ed flinched as another bullet lodged itself in the field. He reached the edge, quickly stepping aside, he flickered the switch and there was a light tinkle as the door’s glass almost instantly spiderwebbed. A small hole was in one of the bottom quadrants. Ed let out a breath, ok, so he had another ten meters.

The soldier backed up. “Freeze! If you surrender cooperatively you may be tried under the letter laws. Support is currently enroute.”

Yeah, no. Besides having zero clue as to what she was blabbing about, Ed did not want to go head to head with whatever support she was packing.

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There was another shot and Ed stepped aside again. Flickering the barrier before stepping closer to the doors. This time the glass shattered.

“Can I plead ignorant?” Ed shouted behind himself. While she was still keeping a rather safe sort of distance behind him, despite being halfway through the exit now she showed no signs of leaving.

She seemed to pause for a second. “Yes.” Huh, Ed wasn’t expecting that. “That is covered in section three. If you renounce all unnatural phenomena, their effects, and their derivatives and subject yourself to sanctification you may be tried under mortal law.”

“I don’t think I broke any mortal laws though?” He was already outside the building now and the soldier was now halfway through the doors.

“You have an artifact.” She said as if that explained it all.

“Look lady, this has been a pretty nutty day for me. Came to the mall, got shot at. Got shot… I was given this thing by my ethics teacher and I’m pretty sure I gotta give it back. Can we just, like, uh say we never saw each other? Is that cool?”

“No.” She said and Ed saw a flash of brown hair next to the door. His eyes widened.

“Wait no!” Ed sputtered, throwing his hands up. “Look at me!”

There was a loud, and very familiarly toned “FUUUUCK!” Followed by a hollow thunk and then the lady was half bowled over, Kim following through with the swing of her baseball bat as the rifle clattered to the floor.

Ed dropped the barrier, Gasping as he put his weight on his right calf, he pumped his legs towards the soldier and gave the rifle a good kick. He fell to a knee again, hissing as it skittered back into the building.

And then Kim was pulling him to his feet, all but dragging him into a honking minivan. He collapsed into the leather as the door slammed shut behind him.

“Go go go! Mom hit the fucking gas!”

“Language pumpkin!”

“Mooom.” Kim groaned as the van screeched out of the parking lot.