Waking up, I immediately noticed there had been changes in my spatial awareness and my peripheral vision was pretty much crystal clear.

My senses in general felt crisper and strangely connected, in the sense that I could hear sounds, such as voices, coming from downstairs and my eyes could almost pinpoint the location where the sound was coming from; likewise, I could look at a spot and focus on sounds coming from that direction.

It was bizarre to experience, but it feels incredible!

***

During breakfast, which these days, was more a ritual for the young ones than adults actually eating, I chatted to Marri about my new abilities and what her plans were for the day.

I had still decided not to mention her to Marri, or anyone for that matter.

It made me uncomfortable when I thought about discussing the topic and I had spent a lot of time, internally debating about it, but ultimately I concluded that it was not necessary, and she would only worry about my mental health. The best course of action would be to wait and see if others experience the same. But interestingly, people had started to be a lot more vague and secretive about their abilities and attributes, leading me to wonder if everyone had a similar entity in their own gardens of growth, but nobody wanted to be the first to put their hand up and admit it.

***

Midday arrived, and today I was to go on a food run with Catara and I was running a bit late in meeting her.

I remember being shocked when I found out she was the shield user that helped me way-back-when we fought the swarm of Skullwearers.

Her class was a [Aegys], focused heavily on defense and generally bashing the shit out of things with her shield.

Once, on a previous run with her, I made the mistake of calling her ‘Captain Britain’ in reference to another superhero.

All in good jest, of course, but she clearly needed to retaliate, so she got revenge by colluding with Marri into grilling me, pretending that she’d come to her after I’d “made romantic advances on her, begging to be her lover.”

Marri, being a terrible liar, didn’t last 10 seconds before her facade cracked, but my shocked face was enough satisfaction for Catara as she came round the corner, pissing herself, having spied on the whole sting operation.

As I approached the gates, I spotted her leaning back against the wall, arms folded and looking deadpan at me with her piercing blue eyes. Her sandy blonde hair, done in a tight french braid, was hanging over her shoulder and her shield and bag were on the ground next to her.

She was wearing her usual protective attire, which consisted of a full getup of modified biker leathers with boots, a stark contrast to my trainers, worker trousers, long sleeve pullover and my bracer armour gloves that had served me well since I obtained them back in the hospital.

Not once have I needed to perform maintenance on them, since they draw in Majik constantly, self-healing and repairing.

I did have a makeshift bandolier with a large breast plate all made of leather, except for a thin sheet of steel sandwiched in the plate that served to give added protection mainly for my heart.

It was a good balance for me personally since I needed to be as mobile as possible and I couldn’t function as well in full body armour.

“Take your time lover boy.” The corner of her mouth twitched, showing her struggles with maintaining a deadpan face.

“Ha-ha, very funny.” I rolled my eyes but still smiled sincerely.

It was good to be able to make light of the situation still, for me it meant that humanity was still alive and kickin’.

“Sorry for keeping you waiting, I needed to run something past Sylvie.”

I shifted on my feet and scratched the back of my head, unsure how she would react to my next question.

The last time she’d volunteered for a risky task, she’d nearly been killed at least several times.

“Soooo. Uh. Howwwww, do you feel about going to the Aldi store?-But it would be completely fine if not so no biggie either way!” I drew out my words, reluctant to put pressure on her.

After all, we’ve never been that far out and we could get into considerable danger. It was extremely low risk for me due to being pretty quick on my feet, but for Catara, her speciality lay in heavy defense.

She barely registered any emotions on her face except for raising an eyebrow as she answered.

“The shop? Sure. Why not. I assume there’s specific items we are after?”

“Oh. Cool. Uhm you sure?-” I was genuinely surprised, but relieved she was completely unphased about going.

She shrugged and nodded, “Yup, no complaints from me. I’m going to grab any expensive red wine I see though.”

“Ha! Sounds fair. And yeah, we’re loosely after vitamins, supplements and bathroom items. Sylvie is concerned about sanitisation or comfort for the kids, especially around the new toilet.. But mainly around people coming back covered in blood and general shit, heavily increasing risk of infection.”

Nodding to the teenagers watching from the gate, they raised the make-shift portcullis.

“Hmm. I always thought the healing tonics or med team could cleanse infections?” She said as we ducked under and started walking through the wooded path to our right.

“I’m not completely sure on the technicals myself-” I admitted, tilting my head to the side in thought, “-but from a high level perspective, there are different categories I think, one focused on repairing damage and one for removing harmful invaders from the body-” I let out a puff of air “-but yeah, medical stuff to me, was pretty much Majik before Majik even made an entrance.”

She pursed her lips and nodded in agreement whilst maintaining a careful watch over our surroundings.

We were walking for barely several minutes before I started to hear faint scratching and rustling. Thanks to my newly improved senses, it didn’t take long for me to notice 4 Notpidgys and 2 nasty looking ex-squirrels honing in on us from the trees from both the left and right sides up ahead.

The ex-squirrel things I’d never seen before, we didn’t venture into the wooded areas unless absolutely necessary, but the Notpidgys were common enough that we would fight one at least once.

These ones however, looked slightly different; a typical Notpidgy was still grey, and their bodies were inflated to very large chicken size, with wings that were simply sinewy muscle and bones, forming into a small claw at the tips, which they used to climb trees and grip onto things.

But these ones were much darker, almost raven-coloured, and their beaks had a sharp hook at the end. Their wings were split into 3 boney thin limbs, each limb had a single claw on the end, but instead of visible bone, the appendages were covered in a dark scaly skin, like a snake almost.

The ex-squirrels were hideous. The first thing I noticed was that the tail looked like that of a scorpion, with a nasty looking tri-headed stinger waving around the tip of a half bushy, half carapace tail.

Their heads had no skin and their jaws split into 4 parts with rows of tiny little thorn teeth.

On the one hand, they were still small little critters, but on the other hand they clearly wanted something to eat.

And I guess we look appetising.

Slowly, I deployed my shields and signalled to Catara that there were creatures up ahead.

Around 98.4 more paces away, to be exact.

“Huh. Oh yeah... Good eyes...” She muttered as she squinted, looking towards where I was pointing.

“What the fuck. Those things are ugly as shit. Never seen them before.” She uttered under her breath, still mostly deadpan.

“Yeah me neither, let’s hope they leave us be. Can’t be fucked to deal with that shit.” I grumbled, already feeling my anger levels rising.

They were certainly looking dangerous and I really didn’t want to find out what those stingers could do, but we didn’t have much choice, since the alternate route would take us twice as long.

Although part of me was hoping they would try something, just so I could justify removing them from the ecosystem.

As we walked closer, the dark Notpidgys started to gain a red outline and I could hear them hissing and clicking their beaks as they sped up.

Surprisingly, the ex-squirrels did not glow red and I realised they were moving more towards the scuttling birds, rather than ourselves, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

Catara muttered something as she raised her shield closer to her face. The shield started crawling with dark blue lines of Majik that formed a translucent dark blue honeycomb structure that extended around the shield.

“I’ll stun them. You smash them.” She grunted with a slight exertion as the shield extension finished and became fully transparent. However, if you looked carefully enough, you could still see the distortion in the air.

My heart rate quickened as the wingless birds thudded onto the ground 18.9 paces away; they still made the typical pigeon noises but distorted like going through a broken speaker.

Their claws were digging into the dirt, propelling them forward faster as they leaned forward and started sprinting on their longer legs.

Catara braced against the shield like a and dashed forward a few steps. I could see debris on the dirty floor being pushed or singed, as the extended shield's edge brushed against it, causing the invisible lattice pattern to flicker out in a radial translucent wave in response to each interaction.

The first creature went for the seemingly empty space but impacted the shield and screeched in confusion as it was battered to the side by the invisible extended shield, leaving it tumbling on the ground.

Blurring forward, I shoulder charged without stopping and caught the monster by its head and still charged forward, dragging it as it squawked until finally slamming it into a tree with a crunch and using my right shield to sever its dazed head.

A bit overkill, but you can’t be too careful.

I pondered if any large chickens had ever killed anyone in a 1v1 but quickly brushed those thoughts aside as I saw Catara swiping at the now, more cautious remaining bird creatures.

The 3 Notpidgys, the name of which I was starting to get bored of, had spread out in a rather concerning display of cooperation or perhaps even intellect. They were trying to surround her in order to get a back attack in, but Catara was having none of it.

She was tracking all 3 of them and moving closer towards whichever one that would try and get behind, prompting angry squawks and the snapping of beaks as the creatures bumped into each other.

At one point they had managed to get into a perfect triangle formation around her, but she simply barged forwards out of it and then they were back to square one.

As I jogged over to help, their patience must have expired because they launched themselves at the shield recklessly.

“Stupid twats!” Catara laughed out as she shifted her grip on the shield's handles and violently swatted all 3 of them down at the same time. Her high strength was shown, as they thudded into the ground, and then using the edge of the extended shield, she grunted with each slam down and guillotined them all in rapid succession.

Seeing that they were definitely dealt with, I glanced around to look for the..scorpills? Stingles? Nutters? Haha, maybe I’ll need to ask the community on that one.

But they were sitting up at the top of the trees, still not glowing red.

“Nice. Good job. They were pretty easy to deal with surprisingly…I was expecting them to be different since they looked…more…menacing…shit.”

Crap! I forgot to try out [Pecho Tech I].

“Hmm?” Catara

“Ah don’t worry, I forgot to try something out..” I hated being vague and secretive, but in fairness, Catara had not mentioned her new sci-fi shield powers to me.

Looking up at the squirrels, I focused on them and triggered the Pecho Tech skill. A very subtle and very tiny blue laser light flashed in my vision, reminding me a bit of how Xno scanned objects. An instant later my mind was filled with a mental image of the squirrel and some information.

It surprised me, as I was expecting to have a HUD, like an augmented reality or something showing real time data.

But it was nothing like that at all. It was exactly like when you recall a number or memory with your eyes open, you simply view it in that black space that didn’t exist in the 3d world, but rather in my mind's view, so to speak.

LABEL = Squirrel

MAGN = 12.150

HP = 80/120

KAR = (+)

Alright, LABEL is name, MAGN is the level of experience; HP is HP and it is missing some health… KAR is unfamiliar, it's just a plus sign? Strange.

Wonder if this will work on the dead ones.

LABEL = Notpidgy

MAGN = 8.021

HP = -35/80

KAR = (--)

That’s a yes. RIP Notpidgy.

A chorus of tiny squeaks grabbed my attention and I looked back over to the Squirrels and realised 2 had become 4.

But the new two were tiny versions of the bigger ones, about half the size of their presumably parents. But they didn’t have skulls for heads nor did they did have the stingers, instead they had multiple thinner bushy tails.

LABEL = Baby Squirrel

MAGN = 0.901

HP = 1/1

KAR = (+)

“Oh my word… That is just adorable!” I glanced at her and raised my eyebrow. Cataras eyes were sparkling as she spotted the tiny little ones, but I was more surprised that she’d actually shown emotion.

The adults were herding and nipping at the little ones that had tried to rush down excitedly towards one of the corpses of the birds.

“Hmm. I think they want to eat the birds. Let's move back and see what they do.” I said to Catara.

Sure enough, when we stepped back a dozen metres and watched, the largest one gave us a long hard stare with its skull socketed eyes, before it seemingly made its mind up and hopped down and went up to the first Notpidgy corpse. It sniffed it several times before snapping open its split jaws and went to fucking town on the flesh. As soon as it did, the others jumped down and joined in, even the baby ones, but shockingly at least a dozen more squirrels suddenly appeared out of nowhere, both adults and babys and joined in on the feeding frenzy.

Me and Catara just stood there staring wide eyed in silence apart from the sounds of crunching, angry squeaking and general squirrel talk happening in the background.

“...”

“......”

“We should probably-”

“Yeah. Lets go.”

***