“A billion stores in this place and you pick this one?” Ronda complained.

Kid had to remind himself once more that she was not a bad person, just an often confused person when it came to her emotions in trying situations.

Another gunshot rang out, peppering one of the stores closest to the one they were currently hiding behind.

“Why do you sound like you want me out there with a bullet hole?” he asked.

“I don’t want you to have a bullet hole, Kid,” she answered with less frustration. “But I do want you out there. Maybe at that store.”

She pointed and Kid followed her finger. When he saw where she was pointing, he chuckled darkly. It was the store currently being shot at.

“We’ve got three guys shooting at us and you’ve still got jokes.”

Ronda shrugged. “What can I say, I get the best out of any situation.”

“Nope, I’m pretty sure that’s Zed, and—”

A round of bullets peppered their store flinging sparks that made Kid duck a little.

“Do you think they’ve figured out we’re hiding behind this one?” he asked.

They were hiding beside the store. Kid was on the side closest to the front, while Ronda was closest to the back.

“I’ll have a look and let you know.”

She looked out her side of the store and dragged herself behind cover immediately. The action was followed by a spray of bullets.

“And this is why you’re my least favorite Olympian, Cabuella,” she groaned.

Kid paused. “What the hell did I do?”

“Well, if they didn’t know we were here before, they certainly do now. And it’s all because I listened to you.”

Kid laughed. “I don’t remember asking you to stick you head out for me.”

“I swear, if we didn’t have a reputation, I’d choke you in your sleep and say you asphyxiated all by yourself.”

Kid paused as another round of gunshots were fired at the store.

“That’s gross, Ronda.”

“I still stand by what I said.”

Their assailants were drawing closer. It was evident in how loud the gunshots were getting. Kid and Ronda were hiding behind the only store with enough solid cover to withstand enough gunshots.

When they’d rushed in this direction they’d been hoping to lose their pursuers in the crowd, or at least take them out without too much strain or casualties. In their run they’d realized that the men were hesitant to shoot with all the people around.

Then some fool of a store owner had decided to be very confrontational with one of the gunmen and had taken a bullet to the leg for it.

For a moment Ronda had forgotten that this place was actually governed by a dictatorship. When the crowd had scattered, merchants locking up their shops and fleeing along with buyers, Ronda had thought to lose their pursuers in the chaos.

Unfortunately, it hadn’t been as chaotic as she had expected. The merchants knew the buyers, and while some people had run off, most of them had simple stolen into their shops and locked themselves inside.

The shop she was hiding beside with Kid was one with its owner still inside.

“We can’t stay here forever, Ronda,” Kid said in a low voice. “They’re getting closer and I think I really, really need to pee. I’d just go here but the last thing to ever happen to a man is to be caught with his pants down.”

Ronda snorted. “I don’t think you need your pants all the way down to take a piss. You’re not that big.”

“Ha!” Kid barked, low and sarcastic. “We’ve got three guns on us and you’ve got jokes.”

“I’ve always got—fucking asshole!”

A bullet pierced through the wall and slightly missed her.

“Alright, I’m done with this.” She was fuming. “I was hoping to take them out without killing them but that’s just stupid. If you’re willing to shoot at people, then you’re willing to die.”

Kid looked thoughtful. After a while, he shrugged. “Yeah, I see no flaw in that logic.”

He bent down and picked up a few stones, hefted them in his hand as if testing their weight.

Ronda looked at him. “How’s your mana channel?”

“A bit sore but nothing I can’t work with. Yours?”

“Let’s just say I’ll rip an anti-mage’s head right off the next time I see one.”

Kid nodded. He wouldn’t disagree with that. “Switch?”

Ronda nodded, and they exchanged places.

“Come on out, fools!” one of the gun men shouted. “If you surrender, you won’t get filled with holes.”

“You think we can pull an action movie scene on them?” Kid asked.

Ronda didn’t even contemplate it. “The moment we step out of here, they’re filling us with holes. That bullshit where you come outside, hands up and starting a conversation is for the movies. No one’s stupid enough to fall for it.”

“And yet it sounds like something Zed can pull off. Just walk out there saying a lot of things no one understands.”

Ronda spied outside their cover. “Yea, he’ll probably try to convince the guy that his gun is overloaded or something like that. I always thought there was some unreasonable bravado behind that.”

She spied again very quickly. “Now I see its not bravado.”

“Yea,” Kid said absently. “Even if I have amazing regeneration like him, I don’t think I could’ve done what he did at the crash site. I don’t think any normal person can withstand all that pain.”

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“What are the chances he has an attribute that numbs pain?”

Kid shook his head.

“Switch,” Ronda said, and they swapped positions.

“You’re only delaying the inevitable,” one of the gunmen announced. “We know you are unarmed. Come out with your hands up.”

Kid laughed quietly as Ronda took quick peeks around her corner. “What are they, the cops?”

“I guess they’ll fit the description on this side of town.”

“Anyway,” Kid finished. “I saw the look on his face before he went out there. Trust me, he was bracing himself for all the pain he could take. If he has an attribute that numbs pain, it doesn’t numb all of it… You done?”

Ronda nodded. “In four seconds the guy on your side will be close enough for you to distract. All you need is one throw, right?”

“You’re the marksman.”

“And you’re the trickster… Throw.”

Kid turned without hesitation. His core came alive, mana flowing through his channels. His mind grew calculative and he threw one of the stones in his hands at one of the stores.

It bounced of the wall and ricocheted in the general direction of the gunman.

“What the fuck?!”

It was all the announcement of the man’s distraction for Kid. He stepped out quickly and threw another stone with all his might, and darted back behind cover.

The rock pinged off something, then another. Then there was a heavy crash followed by the high cry of a man in pain.

“He didn’t shoot,” Kid said. “Do you think he was out of bullets?”

Ronda shrugged. “I’m Clairvoyant, Kid. Not a seer. How am I supposed to know?”

“I was just asking, no need to strangle me for it.” He tossed another stone up gently. “Switch?”

“We’ve got two on this side. You think you can handle it?”

Kid thought about it, then shook his head. “I think those guys still have bullets in the chamber. How about you go around this side and flank them?”

A small smile stretched Ronda’s lips. “Let’s play suppressing fire.”

Kid groaned. “No.”

“Come on. Don’t be a chicken.”

“It’s not about being a chicken. It’s about playing a game that involves a gun with nothing but—” he looked at the stones in his hands, then showed them to her“—pebbles.”

“Oh please. We won last year’s team competition with marbles. We can pull off pebbles.”

Ronda was already moving in his direction and Kid was forced to switch with her. “How do men fall for you when you’re so toxic?”

“It’s the hair and the lips.”

Kid groaned. “Men are stupid.”

Ronda had already slipped out his side of the cover.

“Alright, Cabuella,” Kid sighed. “Here goes nothing.”

He counted to five in his head, then threw the first rock with all his might. His attribute was a bit of a mental one as well as a physical one. It gave him very high proprioception, and allowed him an amazing level of hand eye coordination.

It also gave him very high marksmanship in an odd way. He could shoot as well as any normal person. But when it came to ricochets, he was the king.

The stone he threw bounced off a wall, and he ducked out to throw another one immediately. One of the men saw him and opened fire, but he was already back behind cover.

He picked up another handful of stones, certain that some of them were clumps of sand and continued.

Ronda called it suppressing fire because it involved a constant barrage of distractions, using anything he had on hand. He didn’t like it because against people with guns, it was likely to put a hole in him.

But his attribute allowed him execute it, and hers allowed her play her role in the roleplay.

Kid was already throwing more stones. Ronda had taken a look and knew that unlike the other guy who Kid had worked a throw that led to a rack outside one of the locked stores falling on him, they wouldn’t have much luck on this one.

So they worked with a different plan.

Kid ducked out and chucked a few more, then hid again.

“Why don’t you come out and fight like a man?” one of the men said in disgust. “Throwing stones is just disgraceful.”

Kid laughed easily. He really wanted to have a conversation with that guy. Come out and fight like a man? Did he think Kid was stupid? One of them was armed with an actual gun.

“How about you drop the guns and we duke it out like real men?” he called back. “Good ol’ fashion fisticuffs.”

He heard what sounded like the start of a response but quickly turned into a lot of groaning and grunting.

Ronda had gotten to them. With her clairvoyant attribute, she was an annoyance to fight against.

The attribute gave her short term predictive skills, and her puppet body attribute allowed her body move with a very high reaction speed.

Kid was about to let out a sigh of relief when a gunshot rang out.

He didn’t think, he just acted. He darted out from behind cover and threw one of the stones in his hand against one of the sturdier stalls. It bounced of the wall, ricocheting towards the three people in front of him.

Kid charged forward as Ronda ducked a swing of a gun and his pebble pinged off the head of the second man who was already raising his gun at her. She was too close to him, and the rifle was too long. But rather than take a swing at her like his partner, he was going to take his chances with his aim.

The pebble pinged off his head, throwing his aim wide, and Kid tackled him immediately. He knocked the man to the side, and the gunman’s head bounced off a raised platform of one of the stalls.

He was motionless by the time he hit the ground.

Kid rolled off him, coming up with his gun, and pointed the barrel at Ronda’s guy. She had him in a sleeper choke hold he was struggling to get out of.

“I think that’s enough struggling, friend,” he said.

Ronda’s hold stopped tightening at the same time the man stopped struggling and she gave Kid a flat look.

“Friend?”

Kid shrugged, but kept the weapon trained on the man.

“It’s a stupid thing to say to someone you’ve got a gun pointed at.”

They looked in the direction of the voice and saw Eitri coming out of a corner.

“Did we miss the fight?” the dwarf asked.

“All of it,” Kid answered.

“Personally,” Zed came out of the corner after him, “I think it’s just apt. It gives the enemy a momentary confusion as to why you suddenly think of him as a friend. They start to wonder if they’ve met you somewhere before. I know the thought process might last for only a moment but a moment is a lot in a fight.”

He paused a few paces away from them and waved. “Hi.”

Kid waved back slowly. “Hi?”

Eitri walked up to the man Ronda was holding.

“You can let him go now,” he told her.

When she did, he bashed the man in the side of the head with the butt of his gun.

The man groaned, and fell to the side, clutching at his head.

Zed let out a slow hiss. “That’s going to hurt.”

He walked up to Eitri and looked down at the man.

“I thought you were good at knocking people out with the whole gun to the head thing?”

“Who said that?”

“You insinuated it.”

“You were the one that told me it would be cool if I did that.”

“And you still went ahead and did it?” Zed gestured at the groaning man still clutching his head. “Look at him. His in so much pain he didn’t have to go through.”

Kid looked at Ronda and they both sighed.

“Alright.” Kid walked up to the man. “Let me have a crack at it.”

“Wait!” Zed held his hands out in a halting motion.

Kid paused with his gun held back for the blow and the man holding his hands up to stop him.

“What?”

Zed walked up to the man. “There’s something I want to try.” To the man, he added: “Brace yourself, cause I’m actually new to this.”

His eyes darted down and away, as if checking something Kid could not see, then he nodded.

“We still have time.”

That said, he raised his hand and pointed a finger at the man.

“Don’t try to run,” he said in a voice so casual it was menacing. “It’ll only hurt more.”

His finger trailed a line in the air and it blazed a bright red.

Was he rune casting.

It took him all of six seconds before the rune was complete. Kid’s head began to ache just from looking at it and he looked away. Zed’s victim was already groaning, trying to scramble away from Zed.

When Zed activated the rune, Kid felt it in the air. The man let out a quiet oomf and keeled over.

“That’s an abominable rune you picked up,” Eitri said, displeased.

Zed got up and shook out his hand as if he was shaking of a lit flame. “I know. I don’t like it, too. But a rune’s a rune. And I have to practice if I want to get good at it.”

He looked from Ronda to Kid and waved again. “Hi.”

Kid wasn’t sure what an appropriate response was. Zed had just terrified a man with a rune that went ahead to knock him out.

Zed narrowed his eyes. “Can you take a step to the left, Kid?”

Kid moved without really thinking about it.

Zed’s eyes darted down and to the left. “Wow. That bought us five minutes. This is getting cool. Anyway, let’s go find the others.”

He walked past them without even a glance at the free weapon on the ground.

Ronda and Kid exchanged a look as Eitri followed Zed.

“I concede the point,” Ronda said finally. “He’s the movie character that talks a lot during an action sequence.”

Kid decided it wasn’t a good time to tell her they’d been chatting while people had been shooting at them.

Instead, he nodded and followed after Zed.

They were going to find the others. And while he wasn’t very worried about Daniel, he was worried about Jennifer. They’d already lost too many people in just one day.