"Well that's not good." I stated with a sigh of frustration. The person who seemed to be in charge, standing on some sort of stage near the center of the group, was the socialite VIP. She was the civilian protectee who spent the most time around the powerful people within the military and paramilitary group, which wasn't that surprising at the time. Some people just like power and want to be close to it. But then, when the last fight was looking bad, she ran off with some of the best of the group. This included the two people in charge of the shield, the one guy who was actually able to damage the enemy, and someone else who was probably equally important to the defense. It would not be a stretch to say that she was the reason why their group lost the way it did.

And now she seemed to be in charge of the new group that was forming.

Donnie noticed me slowing down to a stop and slowed himself, causing a chain reaction that brought the entire group to a halt. "What's wrong?" he gave me a weird look as he spoke.

My mind ran through everything that I knew and the position we were in. There were over thirty of the aliens along with mind controller woman and if they saw something that they wanted from us than we wouldn't really be able to stop them. Showing off our nice stolen alien tech seemed like a great way of getting it all confiscated 'for the greater good'.

And, lets be clear, mind control is most likely what her powers are. I remember the 'evil' options that I got for my class and so I know it is possible. Furthermore I couldn't think of much else that could convince three military men to abandon post, clearly against the general's orders and in such a way that would screw their group, but then do it in an orderly fashion. But even if that wasn't the case, I saw how the paramilitary gun nut 'Trigger' reacted as part of the mercenary faction of the Cheaters. The last time I had seen them they all acted fed up with the military group and were showing a fair amount of group loyalty. I highly doubted that something like the superpower of gold and green had been what turned their loyalty.

I started putting things in order and came up with a plan that would both keep us all safe and get me more information about everything that was going on. I needed to get into the base, if for no other reason than to talk with the robot to get any new information about the next round of the tutorial. It would also be good to find out a bit about how her ability worked. But most of all we needed to not be robbed if we were going to make a good showing in the last round of this tournament style game we were playing. "We shouldn't bring our new guns into the camp." I finally said. "Just in case. And I think that putting Jeong as our leader is our best bet for things to go smoothly. We can change our minds later if that becomes necessary."

Everyone looked over at the exhausted fire mage who had only survived after others had literally carried his unconscious body to the final stretch, and then he had gotten lucky. Veronica and Clark were too nice to say anything, but Dimitri wasn't. "Why him?" he asked with a tone that was only mostly neutral.

I wasn't sure if I had a good answer for that, but at least I tried to BS it. "He will make the best impression on the person in charge, they are both Asian, and I don't want to stick out too much with that large a group." I looked over at Veronica with her Asian looks and considered how bad my excuse was. "Similar culture and all of that."

"Wait, you can see the group already? What about all the trees in the way?" Veronica asked with a cutesy tilt of her head. She really didn't look like a 'Veronica', though she did act like the westerner name fit when she wasn't adding in anime memes to everything.

I looked back in the direction of the camp. "Super senses?" I answered questioningly. "Didn't you all know I had them, which was why I was doing the whole scouting thing from the top of the buildings?"

Clark spoke next. "Yeah, but I thought that was your tech that did that. How does that even work from a biological standpoint?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe superpowers or something."

"Guys, aren't we forgetting the whole thing about putting that guy in charge?" Dimitri asked, glancing over at Jeong.

Jeong, however, seemed oblivious to the prevailing mood. "I'm fine with being in charge. I humbly accept this honorable duty and will prove myself capable."

This declaration set off a wave of more and less reluctant rejections of the idea, which then set off a minor argument of three against one.

Donnie pulled me to the side as it was going on. "Be honest with me. What is going on?"

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I looked over to be sure that everyone else was suitably distracted before answering. "I'm pretty sure that the person in charge is a mind controller. I figure if one of us is going to get hit with the mind whammy it might as well be the useless guy that nobody likes. That way I could see how it works and be better prepared to avoid it."

"Why go in there at all then?" he asked.

"I need to talk to the robot about the next round. It only gives you information that you specifically ask for and only about the current round. I also can't get it from the market without the system thinking I'm 'cheating'. That is something I'd rather avoid."

He gave me a look that was halfway between resigned and appalled, almost disappointed. "That... that really isn't very nice of you."

I shrugged. "It isn't like he is my friend. He isn't even a good ally. From what I understand he is so excited about showing off his powers that he turns himself into dead weight. At least this way he will be useful."

Donnie looked unhappy but less at me than before. Not that he wasn't unhappy with what I had said, just less. There was so much that I could say, but I doubted that he would understand. You don't get to the top by putting every random person before yourself, all that will do is get you taken advantage of. You get to the top by taking every advantage you can get and making the most of them. Loyalty is a virtue, but only when given to those deserving of it. Being 'nice' to those who are not worthy of that consideration is the same as rewarding those people for whatever personal flaws that they are currently dragging you down with. 'Good' is not dumb and those who are dumb for the sake of 'goodness' are just morally lazy losers who deserve to fail. Not that I could really explain any of this to Donnie, his face told me all I needed to know about how he wasn't ready for that type of harshness.

So instead I waited and let him work through his internal struggles internally. His face went through several different emotions, from apathy to distaste, before settling somewhere in between. "How important is it that you talk to that robot?"

I took a moment to figure out the best way to communicate the honest truth. "I won't know till I talk to it. This is the last round. Everyone has made that clear from the beginning. But even among the people who loose there are grades of accomplishment. I need to know what the grading criteria are to get the best score possible and only the official robot can give me that information. And scoring well is important for what comes after, important enough to be worth it."

Resignation took over as he looked back at the group. "Fine, but this better be worth it."

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The argument about if our useless fire mage would be 'in charge' came down to a vote: three for, one against, and two abstaining. There might have been some trouble if the two chronically nice people had decided to vote more honestly but neither of them wanted to directly say how useless they thought the last member of our group was, so they didn't.

Even so Clark took over his normal roll as unofficial leader and smoothed things out as best as he could, even coming to a compromise that said we would 'try things out' for a few hours before heading back into the surrounding forests to reevaluate as a group.

I also held onto my roll as shadow leader by convincing everyone to not bring their guns into the camp where they could be seen. After some discussion about if we should try to disguise them or leave them in a tree somewhere they all ended up getting stuffed into my storage, mostly because I was the only one who could make them work anyways. Also there was the fact that I had been the one to make the kills which meant that I had more of a claim to them then anyone if I wanted but the fact that I didn't want them made me less likely to try to steal them then anyone else. I was starting to respect Dimitri more as he was the one to push hardest against leaving them in the woods after he saw the look in Jeong's eye.

Even so, I got the feeling like people didn't trust me all that much. Not that I didn't understand. I wasn't there for the big battle, any of them, and just showed up at the end to overshadow everything that they had done while remaining safely hidden away. If the old war sayings about trust being 'forged in the heat of battle' were true than I had, in their minds, not proved myself.

Meanwhile Jeong's role as official leader was plagued by him trying to make us all do whatever he thinks is a good plan. Fortunately his ideas about what was a good idea were dictated by whatever new 'good' idea was brought up at the moment, so to change his idea we just had to distract him and then pull his attention somewhere else. Kinda like tapping on the glass to attract a goldfish, only replace the tapping with stroking an overinflated ego. Maybe that isn't the most generous view of him ever, but I call it like I see it.

All of it made me miss Mack. For as many problems as he had as a leader, and be sure he wasn't perfect, he had a great mixture of strength and charisma that kept people together while actually getting things done. It can be hard to really appreciate what you have until it is gone.

And that isn't even bringing up the other two people in our little group. Little Miss Magical Girl, also known as Veronica, was always trying to be uplifting and a mood setter even when everyone else was in the middle of an argument. Meanwhile Donnie was trying to act like the voice of reason for everyone else, even when everyone was acting out of pure emotions with no thought whatsoever for reason.

Our discussion about everything surrounding entering the central camp took almost two hours. With all of the drama going on it just made me wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just go off by myself. I had time, though, so it would be best to at least try to see if they would work before they fell apart.

But if I were completely honest, now that we were finally heading in, I was expecting a disaster.