“Where’s Bumblebee? Is he alright?” Luke asked, more worried than he wanted to admit.

  “Relax, he’s fine. He got hit and Kruro’s repairing his suit before we go back out there,” Shepard said dismissively.

  The other three glanced over and then turned back without a word. Luke narrowed his eyes. Why were they out here?

  “She might need some help with my inverted runes. I’ll go check,” Luke said.

  He shouldered past Shepard and walked into the runewright’s shop. Kruro was in the middle of the room as usual, her long tail coiled around her obsidian workbench. Bumblebee’s suit was draped across the bench while the man himself was sitting on the floor and leaning up against the back wall. He was cradling his left arm, which was covered in branching red burns.

  “Dude! Are you ok?” Luke said and rushed over.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. One of those lightning bats snuck up on me. Their magic is lowkey savage, but I’m not shook. I’m sure my health will fix up my arm by the end of the day,” Bumblebee said with false bravado.

  Luke grimaced as he got a better look at the wound. It was a serious electric burn. If Bumblebee didn’t have a class and the magic healing that came with it, Luke would insist they go to the hospital. “Is the pain manageable? I can buy you a healing potion if you need one.”

  Jinx hopped off his shoulder and padded over. She sniffed his arm and then wandered off.

  Bumblebee shook his head, “I’m fine, no cap. Don’t waste a potion on me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Bet. Although... maybe we could switch up the squads a bit?” Bumblebee said cautiously. “I mean, I stan for you, Skywalker. You are straight bussin’. But these guys. They don’t want me on their team. I think they mighta let that one through on purpose. Kruro thinks so, that’s why she banished them from the shop.”

  Luke clenched his metal fist. He hadn’t known that Bumblebee wasn’t fitting in with Shepard’s squad. And if they had let Bumblebee get hurt on purpose, he might fire them all now.

  Only, he couldn’t afford to do that. Not only were the four of them most of his trained fighters, he would need them to help teach the new hires. If he blew up on them now, he would be killing his company.

  The easiest thing to do would be to take Bumblebee off the team and let the four of them hunt on their own. Luke didn’t want to leave them without a ranged weapon though. The main reason he had stuck Bumblebee with them was so they would have the ice spell rifle embedded in his gauntlet. Too bad he couldn’t just swap it out with one of their gauntlets. The four of them still used the old style with the runes on the outside, so the mech Luke constructed wasn’t compatible.

  “How about for today, I take your place on the squad. You hang out here in Kruro’s shop. Vanessa can keep you company, and maybe the two of you can convince Jinx to stay here where it’s safe,” Luke said.

  Bumblebee immediately shook his head, “Nah, man. I gotta get back out there. It’s that shit with falling off a horse. You gotta get right back on.”

  Vanessa piped up, “If everyone else is going, I want to come too. You know I need to get out there.” She mimed the system assessment notice with her hands.

  Luke sighed. “Fine. I guess if we are all going, it won't be that dangerous. Particularly since I can scout the way with my drone.”

  He walked over to help Kruro with the runes, but she didn’t need it. Only one rune had been damaged and she had already fixed it. She was just replacing some of the pistons that had blown when the Lightning Bat fried them. While she finished up the work, Luke walked out to talk with Shepard.

  “I hear y’all got banished from the workshop,” Luke said casually.

  Shepard flicked his hand dismissively. “That moody snake is imagining things.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “Bumblebee got hit, it happens. He musta been slacking,” Shepard said with a slight shrug.

  Barrow stepped up, “It’ll do the kid good, make him realize he needs to be more serious. Besides, he’s got a class, right? He’ll heal.”

  Luke bit back what he wanted to say. These assholes had all but admitted they wanted him to get hurt. He wanted to rip them a new one. Instead he said, “That’s not the attitude I want to foster in my company. We are all a team, we fight for each other, not against each other.”

  Shepard stood up straighter. “You accusing me of something?”

  “Yeah. You were the squad leader and you let one of your guys get hurt. You failed. I want you to do better.”

  “It’s not my fault you stuck me with a second rate-”

  Luke interrupted, “You are the squad leader, unless you want to give up that position, you need to take responsibility. We are going to have new hires in the field soon. I don’t want you to blame them when they fail, I want you to teach them how to do better.”

  Shepard grumbled but agreed to try harder in the future. Luke informed him they were all heading out together soon, to check the hydra body for a relic. He didn’t have high hopes, but they had to check. They would kill bats on the way back.

  They didn’t have to wait long for Bumblebee’s armor to be fixed. He climbed into it and walked out to join them. Vanessa followed him out with Jinx perched on her shoulder.

  Luke smiled and said, “Already picked a new favorite, Jinx?”

  She gave him a look and then turned away. He chuckled and they all headed out. Luke mentally ordered his magic drone to scout ahead. He commanded it to send him footage if it saw any monsters along their path.

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  They jogged in silence, eating up the ground with their long mechanical legs. Bumblebee extended his legs and showed off by taking one step to their three.

  Luke realized that might be a source of some of the conflict. Bumblebee had an awesome suit and they all still had the ones Kruro made.

  He cleared his throat and said, “By the way, team. Do you have any runewright requests for me? I’m going to focus on making new suits for the recruits, but I can modify your armor while I am at it.”

  “Like what? Could you make me another one of those super mechs you are running around in?” Barrow asked.

  “Eventually, sure. Given enough time, everyone’s going to have a super mech. But for now, I was asking if there are minor things you would like changed on your existing suits.”

  They all thought about it for a bit. Green was the first to speak up. “Can you make me faster? Like not just running faster, but moving faster. I always feel like my suit is lagging behind my movements.”

  “Yeah, sure. I can adjust the power flow to the Adept Agility runes. It’ll mean you have to swap out the mana core faster, but we don’t have a shortage of those.”

  “Tight. Thanks.”

  Shepard said, “How about guns? Can you make us some magic rifles?”

  “Kinda, yeah. The treaty says I can’t give you real guns, but I can give you a spell rifle like the ones you’ve seen me use. What element do you guys want?”

  “Is explosion an element? Cus I kinda want to blow monsters up.”

  Luke laughed and was about to reply when a popup appeared in his vision. It was video feed from his magic drone.

  “Shepard. There are four monsters ahead. They look like spiny giant frogs. Should we go around?”

  “Negative. We can take them. I wanna get that bonus,” Shepard said.

  ‘Hell yeah,” Barrow chimed in.

  Shepard bumped metal fists with him and said, “Don’t worry about it, Luke. These monsters are called Steeltongue Toads. They’ll try and get you with their tongues, but it’s easy to avoid. Just don’t try and punch them. Those spines are no joke. Right Davis?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t punch the toads,” Davis droned out. Apparently there was a story there.

  Luke nodded. “Alright, give me a second to check a few things first.”

  He had used the first half of Repair Craft hours earlier, it was still active for another few hours. He glanced over to Vanessa. Too bad he couldn’t use Repair Craft on her armor too. Unless he was wrong about how that worked.

  He pulled up the description for Repair Craft and Machine Bond. Neither of them mentioned that the skills would only work for one machine at a time. Maybe he could make this work.

  He reached over and put his metal hand on Vanessa’s armored shoulder. He felt the Machine Bond skill in his core and tried to push it over the link towards her. Tendrils of mana stretched out and were then absorbed into his own exosuit.

  With a grumble, Luke removed his gauntlet and stuck his hand out of the hole in the armor. His mech was big enough that his human hand looked tiny in comparison.

  As he touched her, she said, “What are you doing?”

  “Experimenting,” Luke said distractedly.

  He felt a rush leave him and he was suddenly very aware of Vanessa’s mech. It had worked, he had used Machine Bond on her mech. The proprioception that came with it made him aware of the forest around her, and of her body inside the mech. If she wasn’t his girlfriend, he would be embarrassed now. He activated the first half of Repair Craft and smiled as he put his gauntlet back on.

  A problem quickly cropped up. He couldn't feel his own power armor anymore. It looked like there was a hidden limit to his skill, Machine Bond only worked on one mech at a time. His shoulders slumped.

  He couldn’t keep the bond on her armor because he needed it for the integrated spell rifles in his arms. He hadn’t even built triggers because it hadn’t been necessary. He sighed and moved his bond back to his own mech and recast Repair Craft. His experiment had been a waste of time and mana.

  The System of the World disagreed.

  It seemed like the system really liked it when he stretched his skill and used it in new ways. Maybe if he leveled up the skill enough, he would be able to stretch Machine Bond over two mechs. For now, he moved the bond back over to his own mech. He signaled he was ready to go.

  Shepard waved them into motion and everyone grabbed their weapons. Luke gave up his Ice Sledgehammer to Vanessa so she could protect herself.

  They walked through the old growth forest with trees taller than skyscrapers. Dappled light danced across the forest floor. The canopy far above moved slowly, the pine branch tendrils grasping for the birds that flitted about. Luke’s magic drone stayed out of range, but still high above. He was able to see the four monsters well before they saw the squad.

  The toads were nestled in the bushes near four large trees. They were hidden around the game trail the humans were using, waiting patiently to spring their trap.

  Once Luke pointed them out, Shepard gestured for everyone to spread out. He set most of them up behind the trees and then yelled at Luke and Bumblebee to attack. Bumblebee fired his ice bolt, and Luke used both his lightning bolt and buzzsaw spell.

  He aimed at two different spiny toads, one to the left and one to the right. The one on the right caught the spell in the face, a cutting force splitting it top to bottom. The monster attempted to croak, but burbled blood out instead. It leapt forward unevenly, careening off to the side.

  The other toad he aimed at was a bit farther away and had time to react before the lightning ball hit it. Instead of jumping out of the way, it shot its tongue at the crackling magnet. The long sticky tongue hit the spell dead center and disrupted the spell.

  The monster twitched slightly but was mostly unaffected by the lightning spell it had blasted apart. Luke growled and stalked towards his left, firing the ice bolt and the sawblade spell at the same time.

  This time the toad hopped out of the way, leaping high above both spells. At the apex of its jump it spat its tongue at Luke. The fleshy appendage shot out as fast as his spells did, giving Luke almost no time to react.

  He pushed mana into Frictionless Slide and jolted out of the way. The toad’s tongue flew by him and stuck to a nearby tree. The monster instinctively reeled in its tongue, pulling itself out of the air and directly towards the tree.

  Luke smiled and opened fire. The huge spiny monster couldn’t change its trajectory anymore, it was flying through the air on a collision course with the tree behind him. Lightning, ice, and blades all hit the toad. It collided with the tree hard enough to make the branches shake far above. He put it out of its misery with a point blank buzzsaw to the back of the neck.

  He immediately shifted his attention to the other monsters. Shepard was working towards one of them by bouncing back tongue strike after tongue strike. Davis, Vanessa, and Bumblebee were surrounding another one, with Bumblebee taking its attention as the other two hacked it to pieces.

  A solid impact hit Luke in the middle of his back. He could feel the metal dent and the chitin crack. Then he was yanked off his feet and pulled backwards through the air.

  Luke! You gotta keep your battlefield awareness up. No tunnel vision!

  Today’s chapter title comes from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)