The boy that had stolen the necklace that I modified for Lena ran off into the throngs of people shopping in the market. Lena hopped on her tiptoes, scanning the crowd for signs of the child. I held up a finger to remind her that the necklace was trackable but she didn’t take notice.

Before I could stop her, she shot off into the air via her boost jets, heedless of the tight fitting dress she wore. She sprung off of a shop face and boosted again over the street and onto the roof of the opposing building. As she vanished over the edge, I spotted her sleeves split open as her arm blades snapped out.

“I should probably do something before she kills someone,” I muttered to myself.

I trotted off, excusing myself and apologizing as I maneuvered through the afternoon shoppers and vendors. In my HUD, I had already activated the tracking feature of the necklace since I was still testing it when it was absconded with. The interface was overly simple, but it was in the alpha stages after all. For now a simple green circle bounced and floated in front of me. It provided me with a straight line indicator between me and the tracker. Numbers below the circle fluctuated, indicating the distance in meters. The program output the distance to the ninth decimal point and the circle icon provided zero feedback beyond a laser pointer dot; neither of which were ideal.

Maybe I could replace the dot with a 3D arrow? No wait, that would be dumb unless the system was integrated with a map route function; it would just always be pointing away from me. An icon of who the tracker was assigned to could work with a feature to shrink or grow the icon based on distance. If I had multiple trackers going, that would be a great visual indicator. I made a mental note to give it more thought later.

My little green dot led me down a narrow passage between some buildings. There were a large number of steps going up and down all over the place. I was thankful that I wouldn’t get winded going up and down them all chasing after this kid. I was also impressed with the apparent stamina and leg strength the locals must have living around here.

I wound my way around and through the buildings in a way that made me consider jumping up on top of a building like Lena had until the distance indicator started dropping at a faster rate than I was traveling. The kid casually trotted around a corner just ahead of me, smiling and inspecting a silver coin. The necklace was around his neck.

As soon as he spotted me, he panicked and bolted. I used my jump jets to propel myself faster, rapidly gaining on him and closing the distance. I converted my left arm to grappling claw, ignoring what that might do to my illusion disguise and shot it out, grabbing the kid by the back of the head.

His legs shot forward as his head suddenly lost all momentum and he landed on his backside with a yelp. I casually walked up to him while reeling in my claw. He wasn’t that much shorter than me but having him on the ground made me feel more intimidating.

He couldn’t turn around to look at me thanks to my grip on his head but that didn’t stop him from flailing around and trying to pull me off of him. He made the mistake of punching my claw and instantly regretted it and started crying. I looked around but didn’t see Lena catching up.

“Alright, shut up. You did that to yourself,” I scolded.

“What’s wrong with you?” he wailed. “Do you hate kids or something? You’re a monster! Monsters hate kids!”

“Yeah? Got a problem with that?” I sneered, pushing my head around to look him in the eye.

His crying stopped, but he did keep sniffling. I gently held down one of his feet with one of my own and released his head. After converting my arm back to normal, I removed the necklace from him and “pocketed” it.

“Where’s the lady that was chasing after you?” I demanded.

“I dunno, leave me alone!” he countered, trying to pull his leg free.

As if in answer to his question, I heard the growl of something big mixed with crashing sounds and dull explosions. I stood up and the kid scrambled to his feet and tore off the instant he was free. I no longer cared about the kid and ran off in the direction of the noises.

I rounded the corner I’d seen the kid come from, following a passageway that led to an open commons area surrounded by buildings on all sides. It would probably be great for barbecues at night for the residents. Or ambushes. The term “killbox” came to mind.

Smoke wafted from a shallow crater in the side of one of the buildings, a communal table was reduced to splinters with a black clad body resting amidst the wreckage. More black clad people stood around with weapons ready along with a similarly dressed golden furred gorilla that was easily ogre sized or maybe even as big as IronHide mark 1 around fifteen or sixteen feet tall. It was massive.

It occurred to me that beyond the gorilla, all of the people in black uniforms were simians of some species. Varieties of monkeys and apes in armor snarled and flexed, ready to attack. The gorilla had its back to me, but all the others seemed to be glaring at it. Some sort of internal conflict perhaps?

A monkey looked away from the gorilla for a moment and stared at me. Like a wave, they all turned to look in my direction. Even the gorilla looked over its shoulder, back at me. It had a pretty nasty gash across an eye.

“Oh... sorry pal. Looks like it’s not your lucky day today. If you have to blame someone, blame your rotten luck,” a lavender hued chimp-- chimpess? --said, flicking her head to one side.

In a flash, two monkey ninjas appeared behind me, ready for violence. One slashed a sword at me, but it clanged uselessly against my forearm. I slid my arm along the blade, and grabbed at the hand holding it. The other ninja got a foot to the chest, shoving him into the wall of the narrow passageway. With my prehensile foot, I clutched his chest plate and lifted him into the air, doing a split straight up.

It probably looked less impressive than it felt since I only managed to get him a few inches off the ground thanks to my height. I yanked on the sword arm of the attacker ninja, pulling him off balance and directing him head first into the wall as I pivoted around, snapping my extended leg into an axe kick that slammed the other guy into the ground.

Both ninjas crumpled to the ground and didn’t get back up.

“Oh I dunno. My luck has been decent so far,” I mused to the annoyed expression of the lady chimp.

“Prime?” Lena’s voice called from somewhere.

She grunted and made frustrated sounds as the gorilla turned around and I saw that she was thoroughly ensconced within the grip of both of its hands. It also had a large chunk of armor blasted off near its shoulder and the fur beneath looked singed.

“Take your stinking paws off of her, you damn dirty ape!” I shouted, jabbing a finger in their direction.

Prime.Cyclone:// well yeah... I mean... how often do you get a chance to say that line.

Prime.Ram:// agreed. Well played, good job daddy

Prime.IronHide:// Ha! Damn dirty ape. Nice one.

Prime:// Guys... I appreciate the support but not the time

“Where have you been? I got tired of waiting,” Lena accused.

“You didn’t need to rush. The necklace is a tracking device, remember?” I said a bit snarkily.

“I don’t really know what that means,” Lena admitted.

“You don’t seem to grasp the position you're in,” the chipess said, confused. “I admit you’re a decent mage and stronger than I thought, but this is as far as you go, your Highness. Time is up for you and your little boyfriend here.”

“Hear that Prime? She said boyfriend. I guess it is obvious that we are a couple now,” Lena said smugly.

“How are you so calm?” the boss lady demanded.

“If I were in any danger I might panic a bit, but you lot are hardly a threat. What could you possibly want by capturing me, I hold very little political value,” Lena sneered.

“Money, obviously,” the chimp snorted. “Nothing personal, your Highness, but I can’t allow you to attend the conference. Okay, bring her with us. Konga, don’t break her too much. A little bit should be fine though. The rest of you, kill the scaly.”

“How do you want to play this, my Princess?” I casually asked.

“The boss lady gets to live until we find out who hired her. Everyone else can be killed,” Lena ordered.

“Lena...” I moaned.

“You and your stupid principles. You’re making this harder than it needs to be, my love,” she accused.

The chimp lady looked me up and down again, then back to Lena.

“You’re... pretty open minded, huh Princess?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

An arrow whizzed past the leader, nearly impaling one of her subordinates. At the last minute, he deflected the arrow with his sword only to trigger an ice spell. Instantly the whole sword was encased in a large frozen block. The sudden weight pulled down on the warrior, dropping their guard.

A second arrow found the opening, and sprouted from his chest. It was also enchanted, though this time a small vortex manifested at the entry point, twisting everything around in a one meter radius. The poor guy that got hit was flung around like the blades of a fan that suddenly were granted freedom. It was pretty nasty.

I looked up, expecting to find... yup. Toadwart was perched on an overlooking building. This guy had some top shelf military tech that always left me with a bit of a pit in my metaphorical stomach.

From an opposite building, a beastly roar preceded one of the simian assassins sailing through the air, only to crash into the ground with an unceremonious splat. An arm was missing and their chest had been caved in.

The dead ape was followed by rippling muscles covered in orange and black stripes. Captain Wendy hit the ground and belted out another roar, brandishing her spear. I call it a spear as it’s proportioned to its wielder but to anyone else it would be a scimitar on a pole.

The monkeys hissed and cowered at the sound of her warcry. Maybe there was something in their DNA that told them that monkeys were the natural prey of tigers.

“Now that the gang’s all here, I guess we can get this party started,” I smirked as my disguise dissolved. “[Convoy()].”