Have you ever woken up after a hard work-out and been able to forget, because you slept so well, that your muscles weren't sore right away? Yeah, me neither.

When I woke up, I think I whimpered from the pain I felt radiating from my side where I had broken my ribs, that or the sheer mass of bruise that I felt like from the soreness that gripped me everywhere else.

"Cai, there's nothing coming at me, right?" I asked with a wince.

"No there is not," he answered. "However, I must urge you to leave this area quickly. There is no guarentee that the Scourge will not come across this area while you are still here and your current condition does not inspire confidence in you ability to fight again."

"Yeah, sounds good," I agreed.

I moved to stand and quickly had to give up from the stabs of pain shooting from my side where my broken ribs were.

"Yeah I don't think I'm going anywhere without help," I told him as I tried to catch my breath.

"Allow me to examine all data I have access to so that I may determine a course of action," Cai said before immediately following up with: "I have an idea."

"Is it a secret radio that we can use to call the Wardens to come get me even though the Queen is still alive?" I asked. Got to keep hoping for better things.

"No, sadly, it is not," Cai shot my hopes down.

"Damn. Alright lay it on me."

"All data I have access to determines that the best way to treat your broken bones and make you mobile once more is to bind the affected area," he told me.

"You got anything else cause that sounds painful," I said.

"I do not," Cai replied. "I believe that I can use your suit's ability to create a contained space to bind your broken bones and alleviate much of your pain."

"What do you need me to do?" I asked him. I knew I couldn't get out of this so I may as well get it over with quickly.

"I will need you to breathe in deeply, until you have filled your lungs completely," he told me.

I thought it was a little weird and way too simple that all I needed to do was breathe in, but I wasn't going to complain. At least I wasn't until I actually started. As I took the breath Cai needed me to, I nearly started crying from the pain in my chest as I moved my ribs. Luckily before I could stop or complain, Cai started his part. All I knew was that one moment I was trying to breathe in and the next I was blinking spots from my eyes and staring up at the black sky. My chest didn't hurt so much anymore either, so I guess it worked.

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"How do you feel Rickshaw?" Cai asked as I stared up at the blue sun.

"Like a rag that someone wrung out," I told him before I tried to sit up and move. That went way better than it had before this; I actually managed to get to my feet.

As I stood there I tried to take stock of what was around me and the first thing I saw was the Scourge Guardian I had managed to kill. It looked just as ugly and somehow even scarier when it was dead than it had alive. Maybe that was because I could really study it this time.

Its muscles were larger and thicker than the smaller Hellhound counterparts; each of them seemed to promise speed and power that I would have a hard time matching. Its stingers were longer and sharper too and I'm sure its venom would have done more than just paralyze me if I had been stung with one of them. Its tail was its own kind of nightmare.

"Rickshaw," Cai said, "I feel that I must point out an observation which I have made."

"What's up Cai?" I asked as I looked at the Hellhound Guardian. I think I'll call it Cerberous.

"You said that the Wardens were wrong in their assessment," he began. "That they had made a mistake in placing their hopes on your species because you were not the warriors they thought you to be."

"Yeah, and?" I asked.

"You also said that because your people were not warriors and had no training, that you were likely to die before you could tell them wrong," he continued.

"Please get to your point Cai," I urged him as I carefully knelt to get my sword out of the Cerberous' side.

"My point is that in your time on this planet you have slain a pack of Scourge hunters that is supposed to require a larger number of combatants than just you to win against. Furthermore, you have succeeded in killing the Guardian type that all Warden squadrons despair at meeting. Whether it is alone as this one was or commanded by a Queen."

"Your actions thus far have placed your species in the top percentile of the other species within the Wardens of Life by your mere survival instinct. You claim to be an average specimen of your species and to be untrained, but your accomplishments thus far lend a different light to you. If you are untrained and you have already done so much that the other species within the Wardens of Life would be unable to do, then perhaps, when you have been trained, you will be able to do so much more than you think."

"So what? You think that just because I've been lucky so far, that other humans could do the same?" I asked him.

"Perhaps not," Cai admitted. "However you have suffered an injury the likes of which would have rendered all other species within the Wardens immobile and crippled and you simply required that your injury be bound tightly enough that the broken bones not move overly much. Prior to the binding, you were able to ignore the pain of this injury and keep fighting until you were able to end your opponent's life. Something like this has only been documented in the Scourge themself."

"So you think that humans are what? Some sort of anti-Scourge supersoldiers?" I asked. "We've been over this, we're barely able to survive our own world and we built the damn thing into what it is now."

"I am merely pointing out that your people are more uniquely suited to the task of fighting Scourge than even you realize," Cai said.

I wish AI weren't so smart because then I might have had a chance to ignore what he said out of hand but I felt that he had raised some really good points.