After we gave the foolish foursome of the Heroes’ League the slip, Anath and I hurried through a small, dark alley, following my planned route ever deeper into maze-like alleys.

“They may have some kind of electromagnetic sensing, else I am not sure how they found my drone. You should take appropriate countermeasures and use escape-path three.” said Galatea and changed our route by setting another waypoint onto a manhole-cover, leading down into the sewer-system.

As I lifted the cover, Anath looked at me and I could just imagine her scowl, mixing disgust and reluctance. I understood her quite well, the smell wafting up from the sewer was, let’s just say, pungent and unpleasant. But there were only so many ways to hide the power stored in my armour and the easiest way was to put a lot of dense matter between me and the scanner. When I got back to my base, I’d have to look for a different way to hide it but that was for later consideration.

Anath climbed down first, taking care not to fall down the ladder and I followed before closing the manhole again, hiding the trace of our passing. I had picked the route well enough, we were in one of the main-sewer tunnels, large enough to have a small walkway next to the liquid sewage. I praised every deity out there that it hadn’t rained a lot in the previous days or the whole trip would be a lot more, well, shitty. Even in my armour, I had no desire to wade through sewage.

Trying to tune out the unpleasant parts of our surroundings as much as possible, we made our way down the tunnel, watching for things that remained on the walkway from the last rain-flooding down here and looking out for anthropomorphic turtles that might ambush us.

I had to be content with the onboard-version of Galatea, we were severed from the connection that piggy-backed onto the normal cell phone coverage so she was limited to the saved information and route.

We had to stay below ground for almost half an hour, moving through a series of tunnel until we got to another access shaft and climbed up.

As soon as we were back above ground, Galatea rejoined her other self and they synchronized their processes again. The moment I wanted to replace the manhole cover, Anath’s voice screamed at me through the audio-system in my helm. “DODGE!”

Well, if someone screams at you to dodge, that’s just what you do. I threw myself aside, hoping to get out of the way of whatever had spooked Anath. I heard the whistling sound of a large object flying over me and the crash of the same object hitting the ground behind me.

A look over my shoulder as I stood up showed me what had happened. Someone had just thrown a dumpster at me. Rude!

“Now, what do we have here, boys? The pint-sized bitch and her new toy. What a happy, happy coincidence, is it not?” An unpleasant voice drifted over. It was the type of voice I hated the most, Smooth like honey, dripping with faked sincerity, masking deep arrogance and scorn. Just hearing that voice made me want to take a shower, it felt that slimy.

My sight trained onto the direction the voice came from and I saw a group of males standing around, obviously gathered around their two leaders in the center. All of them were wearing gang-colours and bandanas to mask their faces. One of their leaders was the speaker, he looked like he had an rather average body-build, nothing out of the ordinary. What made him stand out was his costume. He was wearing a ridiculously overblown costume, purple mixed with black, It looked like the unholy love-child of a monk’s habit and a gang-bangers getup. I just wanted to laugh at him but he had an aura of danger around him that made me take note. Despite his getup, it would be a bad idea to underestimate him.

The other leader looked just as intimidating and even more deranged. He was lacking the aura of danger his partner had but he made up for it with sheer physicality. Where his partner was average, he was most certainly not. If I had to guess his height, I’d say around two meters twenty, or to use old measurements, 7’3. And he was no beanpole, he looked like he was some kind of hardcore bodybuilder, his muscles had muscles. While his body was extraordinary, his clothes were less flamboyant than his partner’s, but just as strange. He was wearing ‘normal’ gangbanger-clothes but had an leather-apron over his baggy-jeans and hoodie. To round the look out, he had a large meat-cleaver in his right hand and it looked like it had been used and not been cleaned since.

“Shit…” I heard Anath mutter. My own feelings mirrored her sentiment. The colours they wore gave away who they were. It was the same gang we had busted up before, the ones we had taken the money from and it looked like they wanted some payback. I had no idea how they had found us, or how they even knew to look for us but somehow I doubted that they would just say ‘Hello’ and let us go in peace.

“Now, bitch, we want our money back. With interest. And we will take that interest out of your hide before selling your toy to the highest bidder.” said their apparent leader.

Well, if they wanted to sell my armour, I would have something to say about it. My Plasma-Cannon was charged and I sent a bolt at him to answer his unspoken question.

Imagine my surprise when the bolt did not fly straight, like it should, but started to bend in mid-air, following a slightly curved trajectory as the speaker moved his hand like a conductor. He had to be powered and his power was some kind of spatial manipulation, magnetic manipulation or telekinesis, something along those lines. All were bad matchups for me, as they could either circumvent my armour, no-sell all my prefered modes of attack or use their power on my armour to great effect.

I marked him for Anath as priority, hoping that she could deal with him, while I dealt with the others. If the second leader was powered as well, I’d have to deal with him. I hoped his weapon of choice was the cleaver in his hand, that thing had little chance to do anything to my armour. It was just steel after all.

Anath charged forward as I started shooting at the un-powered gangbangers to give her more room to work with and maybe force blabbermouth to protect them. Muscleman moved in my direction but he was slow. I’d have to keep an eye on him, just in case he was sandbagging.

My shots showed instant effect, at first blabbermouth deflected them but after the second shot, he was forced to deal with Anath. I was moving sideways, keeping my distance from muscleman and kept shooting. Without cover from blabbermouth, the unpowered gangbangers were scattered like ragdolls as my shots hit them. They did not like that one bit and fled in all directions. Blabbermouth was fighting quite dynamically, throwing everything including the kitchen-sink at Anath, trying to keep her away from him.

Muscleman had been running after me and had been gaining speed, shrinking the distance between us. Now that the others were scattered, I’d have to trust that Anath could deal with blabbermouth and take care of muscleman. While I was certain that his knife could not harm me, I did not want to be proven wrong, so I trained my cannon onto him and shot.

His reaction proved my prudence, he had been sandbagging. The instant the glowing projectile left my cannon, he put on an insane burst of speed and dodged to the side before charging at me. He reared back in a huge slash with his knife and I wanted to use it against him so I brought up my hands, ready to fire my knuckle flash-diodes to blind him in the last moment. Then I could use his own momentum against him and toss him.

My plan worked perfectly, at least I thought so. The flash went off but he simply ignored it, swinging at my stretched arm. That was the moment everything went wrong. Instead of impacting my armour and bouncing off, his knife went ghostly transparent and simply went through my armour and arm. In the first instant, there was nothing, no feeling. After that instant, I felt a white-hot pain lance out from my arm, blinding my mind with its intensity and causing a pained scream to rip from my throat.

I had heard the words ‘mind-numbing pain’ but I had always thought it was a figure of speech. For the first time, I felt it. My mind refused to connect to my arm, it was as if it was severed from the shoulder down. Some pain was still radiating outwards, causing my mind to recoil. The first thing I processed that wasn’t pain, was the laughter of muscleman. He didn’t even try to follow up with another attack, he just stood there and laughed.

Just as I tried to regain my stance and continue the fight, he attacked again. This time, he didn’t go for my limbs, he simply stuck his knife into my gut. Again, pain doubled me over and I knew that I was in trouble. Big trouble. Gut-wounds could easily kill you.

Well, if he wanted to kill me, I would reciprocate. He had proven too fast for the plasma-cannon but good luck dodging the railgun point blank. My right arm was still working, so I drew it and, just as he swung again, shot him in the chest. Once more, the sonic-boom slapped the air around us away as the projectile started its lethal flight. But muscleman surprised me again. His chest did not dissolve in a gory, red explosion, it turned transparent, just like his blade had, letting the bullet pass through without resistance.

His next attack hit my right arm, making it useless as well and bathing my mind in a fresh load of pain.

I blinked the tears of pain away, trying to see clearly, when muscleman vanished before me, replaced with Anath. She picked my useless form up like a ragdoll and Galatea deployed the remaining flash and smoke-grenades. My mind managed to see a waypoint on my visor, no doubt set by Galatea, before it dissolved in pain once more.