Taking out the sniper had been a risk but it had succeeded far beyond what I had hoped. Not only did he leave behind his gun but also his armor and a few blocks of what looked like provisions and such? Yeah, they were labeled as 'universal food grade product' with rehydration instructions. There were some other sundries but nothing that seemed of any importance. It may not have been fountains of gold but I would take it. The armor is what actually excited me the most. Sure, the gun was nice, but I wasn't going to be able to kill off the army and their tank. But if I could be nearly invulnerable than maybe that would be just as good. Winning the round was more about survival than anything else as the people to pass would be the last ten percent who survived, no matter their actual combat ability.

Also, I saw a couple of my pursuers jumping on top of a building from the ground. Maybe it was magic or superpowers, but I kind of hoped that it was technological. Armor that would let me leap tall buildings in a single bound sounded really cool.

There was a problem. I couldn't figure out how to get the armor open. It almost looked like the armor was built in one single piece, but then I didn't have a lot of experience with armor to know where to find any hidden releases. The next thing I tried was to get my computer with its universal electronic connector gadget to try to make sense of it. That, however, was frustratingly fruitful in the most useless of ways. There were hundreds of options and toggles and even a few sliders that I couldn't make sense of and trying to mess with any one thing usually sent back an error about locking toggles still being initiated and multiple dependencies needing adjusted. Three or four hasty adjustments was all the time I had time for before giving up. Some of the options were labeled with actual words but most were meaningless letter/number combinations, but that did me no good with how many there were. I quickly gave up my ironman dreams due to the fact that I was on a timer before the others figured out where I was and caught up with me. It still went in my inventory, though, with the hope that I could maybe figure it out later.

The gun, while large, was something I could carry and hopefully use more immediately. There were not nearly as many unintelligible toggles and sliders, and the most important ones were helpfully labeled. The main ones seemed to be the range and power sliders, and there was even a separate indicator for battery capacity. I decided to look over it more as soon as I got out of the building.

Getting out was surprisingly uneventful and I used the head start that I had to run down the street that I had taken to get into the building, hiding next to a side alley when I had gotten as far as I could get while still keeping my earlier path in my sights. I then settled down to wait as I tried to familiarize myself with the weapon. Well, only as familiar as possible without shooting it; I didn't want to give away my position, after all. I had very little hope that they wouldn't know their sniper had been taken out but I still wanted as much surprise as possible.

Up to this point they had been hunting me, herding me even, and I knew I couldn't keep going forever. Eventually I would make a mistake or they would outguess me and I would be caught. But before this, what else could I do? I knew it and they knew it. They had no reason to not chase me down, other than that it was a waste of time, and the army had enough people to make even that problem be not an issue. I needed something else to keep them from so boldly coming after me. I needed to give them at least some minor measure of fear.

And so I waited. My gun had seven shots in the battery with some time between each shot and a separate type of fuel that also seemed to be full? The gun itself didn't come with any instructions and the previous owner hadn't had any extra ammo lying around so there was a lot about it that I didn't understand. What I did know was that I had the weapon ready to go and trained on the path that I had taken only minutes before.

When the small group of trackers came around the corner I was surprised about how calm they seemed to be. Nothing of my desperation was reflected in the casual manner that they walked along or in how they interacted casually with the group following them. I waited, letting them move forward and away from any easy cover, then took my shot. I aimed at the one who seemed to be leading the trackers and who was most likely leading the other soldiers as well.

The projectile, an orb the size of a golf ball flew through the air in a slight arc before hitting the target in the upper chest. The enemy didn't seem to react for a quarter second and their armor looked untouched during that time... and then the shield glow disappeared and the spot they had been hit on their armor started melting. I waited only long enough for my weapon to be ready for another shot before firing at the next most prominent member of the tracking team.

I didn't get a third shot. The soldiers, covered from retaliation by the one with the bubble shield, got in between myself and the final tracker. I did notice that the first tracker had gone limp and wasn't likely to be a problem for a while. I immediately disappeared down the side alley to get away. They would be sending others after me soon and I could only hope that I had slowed them down.

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Shooting some big shot had the alternate and diverse effects of both making them more cautious and enraging them at the same time. More enemies started converging on the area but they all moved more deliberately and were keeping both to natural cover and that protection afforded by the heavily shielded soldiers. It was almost as though they were no longer fighting defenseless prey that couldn't hurt them no matter what they tried. Their newfound carefulness gave me the chance to bypass their converging encirclement, and also the next layer of it as well. I was never so glad that my knife was silent as those times I used it to bypass a door or other obstacle to get around the soldiers.

It took me some extra minutes worth of sneaking before I finally realized that they no longer had people nearby to trap me into going one direction or another. In fact I couldn't tell if they were still following me or not. The dozens of soldiers that they had sent after me, while likely powerful enough to break through any fortified position I might try to find, was apparently unable to follow a sneaky guy who could sense them utilize a bastardized form of guerilla warfare to bypass their much more powerful and numerous forces. Seeing this I tried to reorient myself and head back to where I suspected the group to be. I had been gone for a while and I expected the group to be nearing the second fallback area. At least I hoped that was where I would find them as the alternative was that they had been encircled and flattened before I could return.

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When I finally found my allies there were nine of them and they were trapped in a small fortification made of rapidly deteriorating concrete and surrounded by squads of soldiers on every side. I only had five shots left and so I wouldn't be able to take out the four and a half dozen enemies surrounding them from three opposite sides. As I watched one of the superpowered people pried up a chunk of concrete and molded it to cover over a spot that had nearly been broken through from the enemy's fire. Those same enemies were safe behind their heavily shielded teammate's defenses. Whenever the armored space army would look like they were moving forward they would be met by some form of artillery from the defenders. Any time the defenders would look like they were going to peek out they were kept down by a hail of suppressive fire. It looked like a stalemate, at least if you were not looking too closely.

In truth the only thing keeping my allies alive was that the soldiers had simply not chosen to push through the resistance. They were likely waiting for some sort of chaos to erupt before making their final push. Nothing would prevent them from simply moving the bubbled soldiers right up and over the walls before shooting down into the recessed bunker. Heck, they could jump over the bunker if they wanted. Nothing prevented them from tossing something like a grenade into the midst of my allies either, or firing the artillery, or climbing onto one of the taller nearby buildings to get an unobstructed angle, or concentrating their fire to get through the concrete faster than it could be replaced, or probably half a dozen other things that were only possible with superpowers or magic. They were waiting for chaos before they made their move. I was waiting for the same.

The defenders were made up of nine different people and Mack was not among them. The most important person was one of the supers who was moving the concrete around to make and fill the holes in the wall at the cost of the group's footing. Without him they all would have been overwhelmed. The second most important were the three ranged attackers including two mages and a strong super with lots of rocks for ammunition, but the light mage magical girl was the one that was really effective causing the attackers to duck away whenever she fired. After that was likely Donnie, who was throwing some sort of sticky mines next to the defenses to keep the area clear.

After that it wasn't really clear how valuable the others were who were left. There was another of the mages, the one with healing abilities, but his healing was currently still slow and nobody seemed very hurt yet. There was the flying super who couldn't really do much else and another super who looked in good shape but didn't have any recognizable skills. Finally there was a mage who seemed nearly passed out from exhaustion and a techie whose stuff seemed to be broken.

The equilibrium finally broke when a lucky shot hit the super with super throwing skills, knocking him back and forcing a cry of pain from the guy. Immediately the other super who had been standing to the side ran toward the edge of the defenses and phased right through it before having a couple shots do the same. He continued running straight into the side of a nearby building and was gone. A couple groups of soldiers turned to go after him, but it wouldn't be enough to change the outcome for those who were left behind. The flier, seeing the one runner, tried to make his way out by going upward. This attempt was far less successful and soon he was knocked out of the sky by multiple lasers and other weaponry.

The soldiers took this as their que to move forward, and I used this as my que to cause what chaos that I could. Two more shots took out two more enemies, but only those right next to them stopped and the chaos was not complete. A third shot to take down the first soldier who moved ahead of the bubble shield to jump down into the pit was far more successful and brought the enemy back under the cover of the large bubbles, but they still moved forward to attack. Several of them moved out in random directions to try to find me, only one seemingly recognizing my direction but moving carefully as they came.

I couldn't be sure of all that happened next. The concrete shield super pulled up more concrete to defend with while one of the stragglers was knocked out. I shot the most forward of the shield bubbles with the hope that it would be enough to shake or distract the enemy, but instead was rewarded with the bubble shield dropping. My final shot hit a weapon's focused soldier as he aimed at Donnie and as Donnie crawled back toward the others. I needed to go, there was nothing more I could do to stop or even slow the attack and there would be that group of enemies approaching me soon.

And then the alien soldiers were gone. A belated shot fired out from the smaller mini-defenses. There was silence. The enemy was just gone.