My plan had been relatively simple. Find the enemy, learn what I could about them while causing enough chaos to slow them down, run away to report back when I found something particularly interesting or things started getting dangerous, and then try again. That plan started falling apart right from the beginning. First they walked around a corner on a long street without a whole lot of cover and only my paranoia had kept me close enough to a side alley to get away before they saw me. I was supposed to hear them or smell them or look around a corner to notice them before they had a chance to notice me, not this. But lets pretend that this is a good thing. Sure, they are closer to our new location than anyone expected and nearly gave me a heart attack; but at least I found them.

The next part of my plan was both fruitful and not in equal measures. That was true right up until it suddenly got so fruitful that I was being buried under all the fruit. Ok, stretching the metaphor a bit, but it still holds. The enemies seemed to ignore anything that wasn't obviously harmful but did turn a bit whenever a piece of trash got thrown within about ten feet of them. The group consisted of two with heavy shields, two with medium defenses, and two with the bulkier armor and large weapons that were less defended; but up to this point nothing caused them to react beyond turning when something got close enough. The real change happened when I threw the exploding spiky ball. One of them with medium defenses dodged away when they saw what had been thrown while the two with the heavy bubble shields turned and two others flinched back. The final enemy, the one with the biggest weapon and less defenses, didn't even react. This caused an eerily quiet chewing out from the one with the fast reflexes and the one who just stood there mimed being grievously hurt. This unleashed another silent round of angry finger pointing and aggressive stances on the part of the leader. Meanwhile the others reacted with varying degrees of cowering down and repositioning for a better look at what was going on, with the other medium armor doing a bit of both.

I'm pretty sure this was also when they called in more backup as they stopped moving forward so much as they started wondering around in circles. Only the fact that I was very much on the move allowed me to avoid the other three groups from encircling my old position. Two of the three groups were a mix of armor types and had six or seven members apiece, but the third group was three strong and all medium. It was this final group that immediately took charge and who had some sort of ability to track my steps exactly. Their process wasn't fast but it was accurate and I couldn't see any indication of how it worked let alone a wat to avoid it. They were also smart enough to watch where the path was headed and send out the other groups to try to catch me. While I had been trying to get a response and maybe draw some of them away, this was a much bigger response than I had intended.

My attempt at step three of my simple master plan, the 'run away' portion, was not going so well. You could say that it was because step two had succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations, but that was the optimist's way out. I was more concerned by the way that they kept blocking me off from getting back to the rest of my group. At this point I couldn't tell if there were more than just the original four groups or if they were just supernaturally good at predicting my movements, but it was clear that it was intentional.

The trick to running away from multiple pursuers who are trying to box you in is to not run. This is especially true when your sphere of awareness outranges theirs. If you blindly run than they can more easily heard you and the harder you run the less stamina and other resources you have when a confrontation does happen. It was for this reason that I walked briskly away from the enemies, though that still allowed me to outpace the trackers who were coming at a medium walking pace. I did other things, like avoiding crossing my own path and cutting through narrow passages when I could, but I wasn't sure what else I could do to throw them of that wouldn't slow myself down more than them.

That said I fully understand that my technique in evading pursuit might be less then perfect since most of my experience came from video games, though it seems to have served me at least a little bit. This was a little like playing a team elimination match where the difference between a loss and a low scoring tie was if I could keep my character alive as the enemy team tried to hunt me down. Or maybe it was more like a close game where my character was doing well but had a high kill bounty and the enemy team knew that eliminating my character would let them pull ahead and then use that advantage while I was removed from the match.

It was at this point in my semi-successful escape that I learned a major problem with my 'peek around a corner' strategy: specifically that you had to look in the right place. I had been using the light redirection trick to look down the street with specific focus being put on checking each alleyway and entrance onto the street for enemy groups. I forgot to look up. Fortunately my super senses were able to notice the sniper the very moment when I turned around the corner, allowing me to pull back before the shot of burning acid left a hole in me rather than the pavement. Unfortunately the shot had been supersonic and would be like a giant alarm calling my pursuers right for me.

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For the first time I ran. Stealth is only useful in so much as you can keep it up and conserving stamina is only helpful when it can be used deliberately. The enemy was behind me and likely had been hoping to push me into this ambush. And I, having gotten used to their tactics, didn't even stop to think that they would use a sniper against me. It wasn't even the first sniper I had seen them use, the general had been taken out by one before, but with so many buildings around it would have been hard for one to target me and so I had discounted the threat. Only the grade school habit of 'look both ways before you cross the street' had saved me. With one entire street blocked off and, the enemy coming from the directions to push me into this street, I figured that the only save direction to go was parallel to the guarded road and straight toward the sniper.

The thing about having bad luck is that you learn to expect it, even know that it is coming. So when I saw a group rushing forward toward my old position from directly in front of me I was neither surprised nor caught unprepared. Buildings make for great cover and the obstruction created by locked doors means little to a mini lightsaber in an eight inch dagger form. The groups passed me without having any clue how close they came to finding me. I still checked after a couple buildings but was unsurprised to find that the sniper was still there waiting for me. I was also unsurprised to find another group at the bottom of the building where the sniper was located, standing around like a bunch of bored army grunts who were given a useless job and were forced to at least pretend to do it.

I couldn't help but wonder why they were dedicating so much manpower to coming after me. Sure, they had a lot, but I was just one guy. They didn't even have to come after me. I had nothing that they knew of capable of hurting them. Maybe they had just gotten bored taking out the other two groups and had people to spare? Maybe they thought this would be a good training exercise for the newer recruits? Maybe I had just pissed someone off and they got irrational. But they weren't going away and it was becoming clear that staying on the defensive wouldn't work forever. Not that I needed to be dumb about it, rushing into the middle of one of their groups with my knife seemed like a horrifically bad idea, but something needed to change.

And this is why I decided to sneak around the group guarding the most obvious side entrance to the building with the sniper and cut my way into the back. Perhaps this was a bad idea, but I had noticed something when I checked to see if the sniper was still there waiting for me to reappear in his sightlines: He didn't have a spotter. Magically and superpower enhanced soldier with a gun, he probably didn't need a spotter, but my time playing different games as a sniper and even a fairly popular PvP sniper arena had taught me what they did. Traditional spotters, as far as I understood them, had three jobs: they found targets and gave the needed information to shoot the targets to the sniper, they watched for counter snipers or artillery that might be aimed at the sniper, and they watched the back of the focused and prone sniper to prevent ambushes.

The other thing that informed my decision was the long talk I had had with the weapons crafter. It turns out that he wasn't too worried about someone trying to steal his display weapons because we were all in a low level tutorial. I literally couldn't bind anything in the room to my character, even if I wanted to. The custom made weapons he sold to us newbs were the only weapons he sold to us newbs. And, despite the high point cost of his wares, they were all civilian or industrial grade and not military grade weapons.

And so I snuck into the building, made my way to the third floor, and then found my way toward the front of the building. By peeking around a corner into the front of the building I eventually found the sniper sitting on a chair with his weapon aimed down the road outside. While I couldn't pick up any signals I still set my equipment to try to block anything it could. Whatever way they communicate seemed not to be effected, as the sniper didn't react. The only thing separating us now was fifteen feet and an open doorway. So I prepared myself for a moment and then rushed toward him with my knife at the ready.

He reacted, but in a surprised manner and didn't even manage to completely stand up before I buried my knife in his neck. I thought about going for the head or heart but I was worried that his helmet might be of thicker material, since it didn't need to bend, or that his heart might be in some other place in his anatomy. It took less than a moment and then he was gone. All that was left was one suit of heavy looking armor and a large gun.

If they were going to give me the bad luck of chasing me down than the least I could do is find a way to give some of that misfortune back.