Goodie sighed.

The emotional high he had experience had been brief, a temporary relief that had quickly diminished as his mind went over all the ways that his earlier confrontation with the merchant could have gone wrong. With his now near-constant depression returning, his pace had slowed, his thoughts turning to all the other problems that vexed his life. Why had he given that girl one of his few remaining coins? What was he going to do from now on?

His pity party, however, was interrupted by the sound of feet barrelling across the ground, he looked to his right…

“Goodiegoodiegoodie…”

One of the girls from squad dipshit raced over and latched onto him; He had not bothered to remember any of their names despite their constant attempts to recruit him, instead, he classified them by their roles, the human octopus currently smooshing her breasts into his arm was the female alpha, the one who had her nose permanently up in the air and had an attitude of absolute superiority to those around her.

But he was in no mood for whatever new tactic they had to try and convince him to join their stupid party today and tried to get her to let go, but she hugged him even tighter, letting out a mewling sound as she did so. To some, it may have been viewed as being cute or adorable, but to him, it was disturbing, the act unnatural and embarrassing. He wondered how anyone could do something like that without feeling shame.

He continued his struggle, which not only resulted in an even tighter grip on her part, but also the addition of jumping to her list of offences, the activity sending her chest all over the place. She then issued a series of nonsensical baby sounds at him, halting his walk forward as he tried to make sense of what he heard.

What the hell was with her attitude all of a sudden? Goodie could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise, sensing some threat he could not perceive; he tensed himself, raising his guard for whatever might come. He already knew that she was trying to manipulate him by using physical contact to sway his emotions, but his body was telling him that he was missing something, his stress rising and his mind racing as he tried to figure out what. Thankfully, his life of cowardice had for once helped him, his instincts forcing his feet to move as they responded to those warning signs by triggering his flight or flight response.

“No, no, no, look, we have a thing!”

Her previous actions having no effect, she had dropped whatever that former display was and finally spoke to him as a normal person.

Goodie stopped, “A…thing?”

She looked around, then leant in and whispered, “A cheat,” she said, her doe-like eyes and partially puckered lips promising delights beyond compare.

“I’m assuming you mean a cheat other than the one we all get?” His tone clearly dismissive of her grand revelation.

Her brow creased, no doubt his disregard for what was probably her go-to manoeuvre for getting boys to do what she wanted them to do ‘did not compute’ and she was having a hard time adjusting.

“Look,” she continued, “we would have told you about it after you had joined us, but you never did, so yeah, um…look if you just come and look, just a look, and if you still don’t want to join us, then fine, we won’t bother you again. All we ask is that you don’t tell anyone about it.”

He thought about it; he doubted that they would keep to their word, but maybe they would, or maybe they would take their time thinking up a new plan before their next attempt. And it was not as if he had anything better to do.

“Pleaaasssss!” She begged.

“Fine!”

It was not really his choice to make. With emotional high over and his will power literally hitting rock bottom, he would have bent to any outside pressure at this point.

So, he followed her as she took the lead and walked to a small clearing ten minutes away from camp. The meeting place was far from discrete, he noted, but while they were in the open for all to see, they had passed over a small rise as they walked here and with the various species of bushes that littered the area, the position would be sufficient enough to hide their activities from the casual observer at least.

He was not the first to get there, however, aside from the morons already waiting, he had sent Her Majesty to scout the area beforehand. He doubted that they had planned any sort of beat down or anything as there would be nothing to gain from doing so, but who knew what these people thought? While he would never claim to be the exact opposite of them, their life of being the social elites and his life of…being less, meant that there was little compatibility between their respective views on how life worked and how it should work.

Differing opinions may have been healthy for certain societies, but having them in a society that even encouraged their children to run around heavily armed, was not one of them. He had nearly been attacked once for expressing a dislike for a certain drink back in the city and had since learnt to keep his mouth shut about such things. And while this lot had yet to lose their new arrival smell, he would not have put it past them to try something eventually. The old man back in the city had called it the shift from new-world to old-world sensibilities, laying most of the blame on this undeveloped land, but the still present twitch from Goodie’s knee was a constant reminder that the old world was not as benign as people liked to think it was.

The whole crew was present, even that old guy that was with them, their body language uncomfortable, stressed even. Goodie wondered if it was because they were going to reveal what they viewed to be their secret ace in the hole, or if they had something else planned. Her Majesty still had not spotted anything out of the ordinary, but his paranoia was having a field day with the whole situation.

His rising unease causing another boost to his willpower, the rise in his spirits making him feel like a house whose power has just come back on after a black-out.

The group was milling about the side closest to the camp, moving over as he and the alpha-girl made their way in. A group of targets had been lined up along the edge of the opposite side of the clearing, a collection of small rocks and dead bushes. Goodie assumed that they were going to show him some type of attack power.

Pointless, he thought, no matter how deadly an attack, it could always be circumvented by stealth, poison, traps, an even longer-ranged attack…a bunch of ways, but he had nothing better to do, so he waited.

Alpha-girl walked ahead, then, after touching each of the item within the line-up, she returned. A moment later, she raised her hand and clicked her fingers.

Goodie watched as the marked targets exploded one by one. His only response to the event, aside from ducking to avoid any shrapnel, was confusion. Having a bomb that you could trigger from a distance was useful, sure, but he could hardly see how that would constitute a cheat.

It was then the realisation of what had been done hit him like a truck, feeling as if his guts had been seized in a vice as the memories of how she was constantly stealing touches from him flashed in his mind.

He summoned Her Majesty, not to bite, but to look. Returning from scouting the area within the blink of an eye, she at first could see nothing, the frantic pace and the stress that he was subconsciously sending through their shared link distracting her from her search, but she was eventually able to confirm what he had already suspected.

They were small, easy to miss even under the gaze of Her Majesty’s maxed out perception, but through her and their shared link, he saw them, little dots of magic, pinpricks really. They covered his body, some on his clothes, but others on his neck and face, his hands, even his ankle…how the hell did that one happen?

They were all over him, wherever that girl had touched him. All ready and capable of detonating, ripping him apart as they had ripped apart the bushes and rocks. Even now, dust and debris still drifted in the air, but that could also have been remnants of the meteor strike, even now there was still a permanent cloud cover partially blocking the skies above.

He sighed.

He was not angry. He wanted to be, but whatever fire he had built up earlier had died down and his apathy had returned full force to fill in the void left behind. Even if he could become mad, what was a death threat from a bunch of whiny, popular kids when compared to the existence of that hollow-eyed abomination and the general disdain of life itself. He was just annoyed. And tired.

“Right, what do you want?” he asked them, his tone dull, uninterested.

The morons seemed confused, he had obviously gone off whatever script that they had running through their heads and now they had to come up with something on the fly. Probably the most thinking this lot had ever done in their whole lives, he thought.

The lead douche, Alpha-Male stepped forward.

The looked as if he was about to open his mouth, his body language left no doubt in Goodie’s minds that the prick was about to roll out whatever speech that he had planned beforehand, something long-winded that listed all the justifications for their actions and how Goodie would be thanking them in the end. Goodie raised a hand to put an end to it before it even started.

“To the point, please, I’d like to get this over with as quickly as possible.”

The boy sputtered, “if I could let me speak, please,” he implored, “we just…”

“What. Do. You. Want?” Goodie asked again.

The alpha douche huffed, “Look, I realise this isn’t an ideal way of going about things, but we’re in a less than ideal situation here, and right now, nearby, is an opportunity just waiting for us…a chance for us to…”

Goodie ignored the idiot’s blathering while he tried to think. A nearby opportunity, he had said. What the hell was nearby? Oh…

“So, you want to go to the burrows.” He stated, rather than asked, “When? Now?”

“Well, yes, we…”

“Fine then, let’s go.”

Goodie should have been more cautious, more aware of his situation, but he was just so goddamned tired of it all.