Caught in a Greedy Net

A few blocks down the bouncer looking guys followed us as we made our escape.

“Shrimp, how close are they?”

I opened up my LOCATION menu and my map loaded up. Those guys were appearing as little red circles about a block behind our group.

“82 meters away.”

They were ever so slowly gaining on us and I could see why. There was an empty intersection coming up ahead. Empty was the wrong term, because I saw a bunch of people on the map were hiding all over the place around the street.

Clearly this was a trap.

We realized that way too late and couldn’t avoid it. Every other way was blocked off by big cars and more of their guys hidden in them. They were funneling us in like wolves.

PWOOF!

CACHINK!

A puff of smoke blasted across the air, covering my vision completely. The next thing I knew, something slammed into my body and a sort of wire mesh tangled me up!

“What the hay?!” I rolled out into the middle of the street, unable to free myself from the thick netting.

“Got her!” I heard a familiar male voice announce.

“You haven’t got anyone yet, idiot! Go grab her!” A woman argued.

Some people with goggles came rushing out. One of them was the hulk mafia guy who was scared of snakes, and based on the voice, I assumed the woman must have been that Maria girl on the radio.

Scardy Hulk was holding this big bazooka, which is what he must have shot me with.

While he was trying to grab me, I activated my combat mode, attempting to tear up the netting. My attempts failed no matter how hard I tried to pull it apart. It had incredible tensile strength.

“Try all you want, but that net’s made of holy steel!” Maria laughed. “There’s no breaking out of there.

“Holy steel?” I uttered, powering down from my combat mode.

“Yup! Indestructible metal! No breaking this stuff,” Scaredy-hulk said, petting the bazooka like a pet.

I pressed my hand against the netting and scanned it, shocked at the discovery of what holy steel really was…

“Ferronium…” The very same indestructible metal my body was made of. “Where the heck did you guys get this stuff?!”

“You think we’d tell you, pipsqueak?” Maria taunted me by posing like a fashion model.

Why wasn’t anyone helping me out? We had like, 5 others who could at least try and get me out of this!

I looked back and saw that Uncle and all the others were surrounded by mafia men. That explains why I was left high and dry over here…

Scaredy-hulk lifted me up and walked me over to the center of the intersection. With the smoke just starting to clear, it was hard to see what awaited me there.

More suited jerks were climbing out of the sewers from manhole covers, all of them armed to the teeth with the ever standard Tommy Guns. We were outnumbered and outgunned by dozens.

But those small fries paled in comparison to the head honcho who orchestrated this little fiasco. What would the mafia be without their big papa, Bowler Hat Joe? Flanking him was Dart Guy, and he was especially watchful of me.

“Looks like we finally caught a birdy in our net,” Bowler Joe said to me.

“Pinhead!” I shouted at him, prompting him to chuckle.

"That's Bowler Hat to you!" He shouted.

That was about when my friends finally took notice of what happened to me.

“Old man!” Indena shouted to Uncle. “They got Yalda!”

“I can see that,” Uncle was currently wrestling a mafia guy with glowing brown eyes and rock-like skin.

Uncle punched out the man, chipping the stone flesh in the process.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Bowler Hat Joe gestured for Dart Guy to hold a dart gun to my head. “Mess with my boys, and the little birdy gets it, see?”

Maybe it was because I was indestructible, or maybe the fact that I’ve been struck by more deadly weapons, but a gun really didn’t seem all that intimidating, especially one that fired darts.

“Before you get any funny ideas and think we didn’t do our homework,” Dart Guy started, "these darts aren’t just magical, but they’re also made from holy steel.”

Oh crap! That’s actually much worse! They say only a diamond can break a diamond, and it was probably the same for holy steel too! That's one hypothesis this scientist's daughter did NOT want to test.

“You’ve got the wrong kid,” Uncle argued, keeping up a strong front. “She has nothing to do with your hunt.”

“Oh, we know,” Bowler Joe chuckled. “She’s the saviour of Urnan, and the hero of Verrenville, right? What a surprise it was to see her on a train heading for our little nest of a city.” he tapped the dust from his cigar.

These guys…they really did do their homework. Not many people on the surface world knew all that much about me yet, so I had to wonder who squealed. It was all the more of a sobering reminder that a disguise was necessary.

“You'll regret this!” Marek announced. “Attacking us makes you both an enemy of the church and the Royal Council!”

Bowler Joe was not threatened in the slightest. “Ooh, I'm so scared of a bunch a’ monks and geriatrics.”

“What do we do, Old Man?” Indena broke out into a nervous sweat, careful not to activate her tattoos out of frustration. One wrong move, and it was curtains for us.

“Mel…” Miss Lauri started, “if we need to, I can always…”

“Not yet,” Uncle told her. “What do you want from us?” Uncle asked Bowler Joe. “Why bother with her at all? She’s of no value to you.”

“Just think about it for a second…” Bowler Joe blew a big puff of smoke from his mouth, “if this kid is the Eighth Star, imagine what it would be like to have her at our beck and call? We’d make a killing ‘saving’ the world…for those who’ve got the cash.”

Did these guys expect me to just go along with them? Their dastardly plan would never work out.

“You big dummies!” I shouted. “I’ll never help you!”

“That’s why we're going to force you to, little birdy. I’m sure you don’t want us to rub out one of your friends over there, do you?” he gave a grinching smile.

Most of my friends were human, and I couldn’t let a human come to mortal harm. Their blackmail would be incredibly effective. I'd have no choice but to obey them in order to keep my friends alive. But there was a caveat to this all…

“-WARNING-” a loud male voice projected out of me.

“Huh?!” Went Dart Guy.

My eyes and heart turned red. Rings of mana spawned in front of me, priming my mana cannon to fire on Bowler Joe.

“-Any abuse of human privileges will result in termination-”

“Huh?” Bowler Joe's brow raised.

Because what they wanted was going to be unpleasant for me, my body was bypassing its most sacred of commandments to take these targets out. It wouldn’t let me fall into their hands and do their evil bidding. No matter how much I fought, the programs in place to protect me were robust beyond my skill.

“Yalda, no!” Uncle shouted.

“Not this again…” Indena uttered.

Uncle attempted to bypass my body's security systems to shut down the scripts, but he wasn’t able to get through.

The mafia guys raised their guns up once they realized the threat of my charging mana cannon. If I blasted their leader and his lap dog to kingdom come, I'd be spared a hit from that holy steel dart gun, but no doubt all the underlings would open fire, retaliating for the life of their boss.

The climbing tension meant this was going to get ugly really quickly. Uncle was ready to spawn a bubble shield around the group to keep them safe from gunfire.

Everyone wore a shade of worry, even the mafia men. Some were more fearful, others were confident, but all of us were on the edge of their seats, awaiting who would cast the first stone. God, please don't let it be me…