Unity had first heard the term “people watching” a few years ago. He hadn’t understood the appeal when it had been explained to him then, but in the time since he had to admit he’d developed quite a fondness for it. Watching authentics was… calming. They had a way about them, a certain style of doing things, stumbling through life with their eyes placed firmly at the ground and their brain turned thoroughly off. Seeing how slow their thoughts and actions were made the world feel like it had slowed down along with them, like seeing a duck slowly glide across the surface of a calm lake.

Today, however, the authentics he was watching were slightly more lively. Five of them in all, fighting a single creature as a single unit and every one of them doing their own part. He’d seen them start out simply charging in dick-first and getting trashed one at a time, and then as the battle progressed they had gradually come to understand one another, as well as the value of teamwork. It made him ever so slightly sick. Then again, they were fighting a Lusomorph. He supposed he could forgive them using one another as a crutch against something like that.

It looked vaguely similar to a rhino, in that its shape was roughly the same. That, however, was where the similarities ended. For unlike a rhino, the Lusomorph’s body was covered in gold coloured scales. Not yellow, gold. Glinting in the sun and just as capable of refracting magic as they were light. Additionally, the creature’s legs were decidedly longer- more resembling those of a carnivore than a docile prey animal. The large talons on the ends of their forelimbs made this difference apparent even to a layman, four inches long and hooked like scythes. This was all on top of a body which was not only covered entirely in thick slabs of muscle, but further enhanced in resilience by magic. Something about it pissed Unity off, something he couldn’t put his finger on. Probably its stupid face.

It would have taken a weak gladiator scale mystic to cause serious injury to it with a single attack. Unity was at best a middling sage, the scale directly below that, and each of the people he now watched was a high level grit- another scale below even him. It was for that reason that their attempts to harm the Lusomorph had been less than successful. At first.

While it was often said that a cannon was required to bring down a fortified wall, the truth was that musket balls did not simply bounce off and do nothing. It was not as efficient, but their weak attacks had been slowly adding up for the past twenty minutes. Each one slightly weakened the plates that deflected them, then eventually one would get lucky and find a weak point- cracking one. This weak point would make that plate easier to further damage, and as one plate fell away the ones surrounding it would become less able to disperse any impacts among their neighbours. Over time the armour was damaged more and more, and while two of the young mystics took turns striking the creature, the other three would either shield or heal their allies to let them focus on offence. Eventually the Lusomorph began to slow, then it slowed further, and then further still until it was a sluggish, pitiful thing.

Finally, the slowed, enfeebled fight fell into stillness. The creature collapsed and remained unmoving but for the heavy rise and fall of its chest.

"We did it." One of the mystics announced, appearing to take great joy in stating the obvious. He exaggeratedly wiped some sweat from his brow and flashed a wide, confident grin that made Unity want to blind him. Before he could entertain such thoughts however, one of the grinner’s teammates, a small girl, answered him.

"Yes we did." She panted in a native Bermudan accent. "Now go ahead and end it. You deserve the honor."

The grinner shook his head with such self righteousness that Unity wanted to remove it from his spine. "No Sheva, you had my back the whole time, you deserve it."

The girl Unity supposed was called Sheva chuckled stupidly. "Come on Lanci, do it for us. I know we’ve only just met, but you’ve been the greatest leader we could have asked for. You even made Darkness open up!”

The last part was accompanied with a gesture to a teenaged boy who stood with his arms folded and an obviously forced scowl on his face. His outfit was practically made of buckles, many of which had been torn free in his many attempts to attack the Lusomorph alone before realising how much less retarded teamwork was.

The grinner nodded, placed a hand on Sheva’s shoulder and stepped towards the immobile creature- arms raised in preparation for the finishing blow. That was Unity’s cue. He flexed his fingers, feeling the familiar entropic buzz run through them as he concentrated magic from both the Utalis and Atirstam spheres. The former was simple enough to be almost reflexive, the latter so fiendishly difficult that Unity felt, even now, he may well lose control of it with but a momentary lapse in concentration.

Taking in a habitual breath as though he were about to plunge into water, Unity leapt from the building. His clothes flapped annoyingly in the wind on his way down, his falling body’s skin being slightly chilled as it pushed air out of its way, and then he hit the ground. It had not been an especially great drop, only fifty feet or so. Nonetheless Unity still felt the impact even as he bent his knees to reduce it. He had no time to curse his frailty, however. He had aimed to land directly in between the mystics and the Lusomorph, and like usual his aim had been perfect. While they stared at him, mouths agape and dull eyes wide, he darted to the fallen creature, reached out to plant both his palms against one of the numerous spots now uncovered by armour and channeled his magic into its body.

A shudder went through the Lusomorph’s body, and then, without even a moment’s further delay, it came apart into a spray of gore.

It wasn’t easy to do what Unity did. Besides the difficulty of controlling Atirstam magic alone, it also required perfect timing to achieve the desired results. In this case Unity’s timing was, indeed, perfect.

And the desired result of disabling or inverting each of the principles responsible for holding his target’s form together was achieved perfectly. It was always entertaining to see something come apart like that, half melting, half falling apart. Leaving nothing but a crimson puddle with a few thousand bloody chunks lying in it. As ridiculous as it was, even Unity found the sight slightly sickening.

Unity turned to the authentics and had to fight the urge to burst out laughing at the look on their faces. They were so…. Defeated. All that work, all that effort, only to have the fruits snatched away by someone else before they could claim it themselves. Hilarious.

The grinner spoke first, his voice a hollow and fragile thing.

“What did you do?”

Unity smiled and held his arms out on either side of him as he answered, not paying much attention to the sight of the viscera clinging to his clothing and skin.

"Are you sure you wanna know? Cause it's not as funny if I explain it."

The grinner seemed to take exception to this.

"What the hell did you just do?!"

Sighing, Unity resigned himself to giving a very boring, very simple explanation. Hopefully the authentic would understand that.

“I stalked your group for a while, taking no small amount of amusement in your squabbling, and hid while you fought the Lusomorph.” He paused, then pointed a blood-covered hand to the puddle behind him. “That’s what this thing was called. Anyway, I watched you slowly wear it down, then once it was too weak to fight back I jumped in and stole your kill. Avoiding any serious damage and securing myself a total of-” he glanced at his gauger, spending a few seconds rubbing the slate to clean it of the bits of entrails covering it before reading its display. He grinned.

“One thousand credits!”

For some bizarre reason, the grinner didn’t seem to understand exactly why what Unity was saying was so funny. And so, rather than laughing along with him, he instead pulled one of the amusing faces authentics often did when they were on the verge of losing their shit.

“And what,” the grinner asked through clenched teeth and ragged breaths, “did you think would happen?”

Unity felt his laughter start to die down, giving serious thought to the question before answering truthfully.

"I don't know actually, I don’t really think these things through.”

The grinner’s face twisted even further, now resembling a rather dangerous sneer- the sort which would be more in place on the elongated face of a carnivorous monster than a human.

"Well then let me tell you." He licked his lips, as if relishing the act of explaining. “We’re going to beat the credits back out of you, and then some.”

Frowning, Unity decided to try speaking slowly to make sure the grinner understood him.

“Right… are you aware that credits are not tangible objects that I have in my possession and can be physically deprived of?”

The grinner didn’t answer, simply glancing back to the rest of his team.

"Sheva and I will handle this, the rest of you stay here and rear up, we'll teach this little shit a lesson." He turned back to Unity and flashed a smirk that made him want to jab his fingers into the boy’s ears until they met in the middle. Unity began pondering how best to express this desire as the grinner approached him.

"Hey! I'm gonna jab my fingers into your ea-" Unity was cut off by a sudden green flash and a searing pain in his torso. He felt his feet lift from the ground, and his head touch it a moment later. The impact with the floor left him gasping for air, his eyes filling with tears and a stream of drool escaping from his lips. The bastard hadn’t even let him finish.

Unity grit his teeth as he pushed himself up to his feet, the swayed slightly as the world began to tilt one way and then the other. It was possible he was still somewhat dizzy from his head being hit. Unfortunately he had more pressing matters to worry about, for instance the pair of scowling authentics making their way towards him. He thought back to the initial attack, then felt around at the point where it had landed on him. No burns. So it was a green kinetic energy attack, from what he’d seen of the fight that meant it had come from the grinner. Bastard.

Sheva stepped forward now, and yet rather than following up with a blast of her own as Unity had expected, she held her hand out in front of the grinner and turned up him.

“Hold on Lanci, stop. Hurting this kid won’t get us our credits back, we can’t waste this time.”

The grinner, or Lanci, as his name appeared to be, shoved the girl’s hand off him and continued forward- raising his arm once more as it was illuminated by another magical build up. He snarled- actually snarled- as he spoke.

“We get three hundred for bringing this bastard down, not what we earned against the Lusomorph but it’ll be a start. And it’ll stop him from getting to enjoy the fruits of our labour.”

Lanci took another step to Unity, and once more Sheva’s hand gripped his shoulder- this time seemingly harder.

“Lanci,” she almost sounded like she was begging now. “Please. I know what happened with your father, but this- dolling out your own idea of justice- it won’t bring him back.”

Instead of shaking the hand off, Lanci turned to Sheva- tears in his eyes.

“Sheva….” he hesitated annoyingly long before continuing, and by the Eclipse Unity wished he’d continued attacking him instead.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d have assumed the boy was actively trying to bore him to death. He doubted he was that smart, but still the story appeared deliberately designed to make whoever heard it want to permanently deafen themselves. It was so dull that Unity was genuinely shocked to his core to see how engrossed both the mystics were in it. Engrossed enough, even, that they may not have been paying the most attention to their surroundings....

He crawled up to his knees, then onto his feet. All the while he kept a watchful eye on the obnoxious authentics, and finally he began to slowly back away. He had to fight the urge to laugh as, one step after another, he widened the distance between them- neither of his enemies so much as glancing his way in the heat of their exchange of sob stories. So immersed in the melodrama were they, that by the time one of them did take note of Unity’s absence- he had already gotten far enough away that he was unable to make out their change in facial expression. Only the wild gesturing they made as they turned from their conversation and began rushing his way.

Unity grinned to himself, deciding that now was the perfect time to employ his secret technique. He spun on his heel, no longer having any reason to keep watching the pair, and sprinted as fast as he could.

His speed, much like every other aspect of his physical abilities, was about as effective as a fae’s. Even enhancing it with magic was inefficient, as he got far greater returns focusing that potency elsewhere. It was for this reason that Unity didn’t dare glance over his shoulder for even a moment. He’d started with a considerable lead, and his potency was far greater than his pursuers even in spite of his youth. He just hoped that would be enough to keep him ahead.

The area they were in was probably the most modern one. With large houses made from wood and brick, cobbled roads and iron street lamps dotting the sides of the pavement. It certainly felt less foreboding than the completely alien sections Unity had walked through to reach it. Sadly he couldn’t draw much comfort from his familiar surroundings now.

All of his attention was on the chase.

His legs began to burn as he forced them to continue working to the greatest of their ability. Every so often he felt a shifting sensation under his foot, where one of his superhumanly heavy footfalls cracked or dislodged a cobble. All the while he had the mental image of his enemies fixed solidly in his mind. And yet there was something else, a strange niggling irritation. The one he always got when he forgot something. What was it?

He heard stamping behind him and, realising the authentics were gaining, redoubled his already tripled efforts to escape.

Stumbling slightly, he lurched to the right in the hopes that the change in direction would throw his enemies off. And then he came to a stop upon seeing that he’d just unknowingly turned down a dead end. Cursing under his breath, he spun and went to hurry back out- only for the world to turn into an unfocused mess as bright spots sauntered into his vision. He felt an impact on his behind and realised he’d been knocked down onto his ass, and his sight cleared just in time for him to see the foot as it slammed into his stomach.

Unity didn’t fall this time, he didn’t get the chance. The moment his body went to fold over from being winded, Lanci’s hand closed around his throat. Magic lent his grip the pressure of a vice, and his fingertips dug into the sides of Unity’s neck as though each one had a grown man pushing it in with all of his might. Unity’s own hands scrambled up to pry his attacker off, but there was a sudden tightness just above his elbows- he glanced down and saw the glowing rope which Sheva had conjured to wrap around and immobilise him. Fuck.

The circulation to his head was cut off, and he began to feel dizzy within a few seconds. He saw Lanci’s lips moving but couldn’t quite hear him, even if he could have Unity imagined he’d have been too preoccupied to care anyway. Aside from the sudden urge to giggle, he was overcome with relief at realising what exactly it had been about the Lusomorph that had bothered him. There was no pleasure quite like remembering something that had been on the tip of one’s tongue, after all.

The world began to lose its colour, and just as Unity was preparing to drop out and be teleported to safety upon losing consciousness, two rather strange things happened. The first was a faint, far-off buzzing sensation. It took him a while to realise it was coming from his gauger, and then it disappeared and left him wondering whether it was ever there at all. The second strange thing was a huge volume of blood erupted from Lanci’s chest, along with something very large and rather sharp.

Unity was dimly aware of the grip around his throat failing, and then everything happened at once. The mysterious thing which had pierced Lanci had been a horn, much like the one on the dead Lusomorph. The reason for this similarity was because it was, in fact, another Lusomorph horn- more specifically the horn belonging to the dead Lusomorph’s mate. Unity had forgotten that Lusomorphs, unlike most creatures, mated for life and were fiercely protective- known to hunt the individuals responsible for killing their kin for miles. His head and vision began to clear as he stared at events unfolding.

He saw Lanci’s brown eyes widen in confusion, saw how strangely clean the horn protruding from his chest was, saw how he disappeared in a flash of light upon being sent flying with a flick of the Lusomorph’s neck- and then he saw the creature turn its attention to Sheva, who was stood paralysed with fear.

Unity scrambled backwards, eager to put as much distance between himself and the Lusomorph as he could. Sheva was stumbling away from the rampaging monster which either hadn’t seen Unity or didn’t want to kill him quite as much as it did her, either way he didn’t care.

And then it caught Sheva, put her through a wall, and turned its attention to him.

There was no time to think, nor was there really time to act. Unity’s throat hurt, his head was barely clearing from nearly being strangled and his legs ached from one of the hardest sprints of his life. And so when the Lusomorph charged he fully expected that, against all the underground bets, he was going to be knocked out in the second round. But that didn’t happen. Instead, a large ovular patch of red light appeared before him- hovering perhaps a foot away and crackling with the kind of power that all mystics recognised immediately as magic.

Unity could think of a number of possible explanations for why it was there, and all of them meant he was just as finished as if the Lusomorph had simply run him through. All but one. While it was a long shot, that one chance was the only shot he had, so without even a moment’s hesitation he dived into the patch and felt the world shift around him.

He fell onto his face, attempting to roll but succeeding only in scraping his hands against the ground. Groaning, Unity looked around. He was on a rooftop, though he could still hear the Lusomorph extremely clearly. So more likely than not, the roof of the buildings surrounding the dead-end he’d run down. That was good to know.

Climbing to his feet, Unity turned to the most noteworthy things there- a pair of women. One was maybe five foot five, skinny, blonde and pink-skinned like she’d just polished her face. The other was half a foot shorter, more slim than scrawny and with chocolate brown hair. She also looked a lot like she’d just used her own body to shape the blast of a mining charge. By Unity’s guess, blondie was a human and the brunette was a fae. Both were staring at him like they were trying to size him up. He shot them a grin.

“Hi,” he coughed slightly, his throat giving him surprising difficulty speaking, then continued. “I’m your new teammate, I suppose?”