Reroll

“We just made a really loud bang that left nineteen dead bodies,” Ed points out, “And talking to the police when they seem to be in cahoots with the folks hunting our kind isn't exactly a grand idea.”

I pause a moment, “Yeah… let's be gone…” I cast a short-lived Glamour over the three of us and our pets (Complex Illusion, it's so nice to be able to pull talents out of thin air six times a day) so we look nothing like ourselves.

Then we nonchalantly walk away.  The Illusion lasts only seven minutes… but that's plenty, really.  The folks seen leaving that area don't have anything to do with us.  When the bodies are found because somebody was attracted to the noise of two gunshots and an explosion… we won't be there, and there should be basically no connection to us.

Hopefully.

And if not… well, they struck first.  We were just defending ourselves. And we can all get new faces (easily for me, painfully for Ed and Betty).  I survey the damage as we leave… yeah, it looks like a bomb went off.  The ground is scorched, concrete cracked, and unattended objects are all also wrecked. Bizarrely, the gear on the hoodlums is fine, although the hoodlums themselves are burned beyond recognition. That's RPG weirdness for you: You can loot the bodies, no matter how badly the bodies are wrecked.

We dismiss the illusion in an alleyway a few blocks down after confirming we're unobserved… pick a different one, Warp to the alley across the way, and go to an unobserved alley a few more blocks down where we dismiss that, Warp to the alley across the way again… and then we walk home.  Quietly.  It's a long, silent walk… because the adrenaline wore off, and now we're actually thinking about the smell of burnt flesh, the sight of skinless bodies, and the thought that while the folks we killed were certainly not GOOD people, they still were PEOPLE, with thoughts, friends, family, and dreams.  At least, that's why I'm quiet: I'm not a mind reader.

Currently.

I heal up my companions as we go (Ed and the animals took a lot of damage from Betty’s blast; Betty was untouched).  Infinite spell points is handy, and we manage to get home without incident. We all eat our cold supper of trail rations, feed the beasts, everyone settles in for their entertainments for a while, and goes to bed.

Well, everyone else.

My Animal Companion needs her rest, but I don't… so I release her, let her sleep, and go, unseen and unfelt, to spy.  It's just a light walk; I'm not doing anything strenuous, so it should still count as rest… but I do leave a note before I go, just to be safe.

It feels weird being naked in public… but I can't be seen or touched, so… it should be fine.

I walk to the school, and watch the Guardians from a distance. I know they can detect magic, and that's what it takes to see me… so I stay out of the range of their glasses.  I watch them for ten hours… they don't change shifts, they don't take breaks, and they don't stop and eat.  They just… follow orders, apparently.  What….

“Outsiders, constructs, or undead of some kind,” one of my more knowledgeable ‘Als’ informs me, “Summoned or created in such a way as to look human, and leave a corpse when slain. Their methods hide exactly what they are… but these creatures are not human.

Their handlers seem mortal, though: The plain white van with too many antennas parked well away from the possible action has the handler entering and exiting a few times, getting coffee and snacks, visiting the bathroom, and even changing shifts once.

When I'm done resting, I recover spell and shadow points, swapping many of my talents out for items in the Life sphere: Diagnosis, Restore Health, and Restore Spirit.  It's four of my talents tied up (which isn't too bad: I have a dozen, plus the special case talents from my base race), but with Starfinder's proficiencies and Shadowstuff Armament my offensive capabilities are great… and I'm feeling a bit guilty, so I plan to visit the hospital: Show the baddies that supernatural creatures can be a good thing, too.

When I'm done with that preparation I risk a peek into the van… where I see the controller wearing a headset with microphone, idly watching four very wide screen curved monitors, mostly watching his phone. The screens views are odd; each is basically a hundred and eighty degree panorama from a shifting perspective. But he's barely paying any attention to those, so I focus on what he is doing… watching his phone. It's a video… three big beefy naked guys tag-teaming a young woman with humongous hooters, actively screaming for more as they wreck her rear and slice up her back.  Fake knives, obviously. No actress would willingly let herself get cut like that, it'd ruin her career.  But wow that's high quality effects.

Oh, she's blond... wait, “BAMBI?”

Oh, that was out loud.

The man jumps, shouting, “Return to base, NOW!” into his mic, and all four of the curved screens suddenly shift perspectives, like the cameras are being held by runners.  Odd… the glasses didn't have cameras, but those are obviously the Guardians’ perspectives.

Hmm. They'll be here in seconds, and will be able to see me… so I probably shouldn't be here to risk them having a way to hit me.  And I cannot let this sicko continue to abuse that defenseless woman.  So I use Shadowstuff Armament, getting a Starfinder grenade… which I activate and throw, letting it bounce around in the van for a moment before it detonates.

Now, I'm cheating outrageously by combining systems that were not intended to work together. Starfinder runs all gear on item levels for costs, Shadowstuff Armament only cares about proficiencies (I have to know how to use it) and categories (the thing must be non-magical, and either a light armor, a light shield, a weapon, or ammunition). So while I'm level seven, that grenade is a level twenty Mark VIII Frag Grenade, which is a one-shot weapon that costs like five times seventh level total wealth in Starfinder, deals two or three times as much damage as I can be reasonably expected to throw, and in a decent area to boot.  Moreover, that particular grenade deals non-magical piercing damage; as an incorporeal creature, I am completely immune to it.

The van, the unattended gear, and the controller? Those are all very, very vulnerable.

The van puffs outward from the sudden change of pressure and is perforated by a zillion small pellets as the fragments of the grenade's shell fly outwards with the speed of bullets.  The screens are reduced to shattered glass and plastic basically instantly, and the handler….

Yeah, he's dead.  Very.  The shrapnel appears to have gone THROUGH him.  Normally that would be better than taking the hit entirely, but there were plenty of those “bullets” from the blast, and he has at least a dozen holes in his skull from the impacts, not to mention the ones in his chest, arms, stomach, and legs.  He's a bloody mess, splattered around the inside of what little is left of the van.  Ironically, his clothes phone, and headset are fine.  Real world physics have no business with games, and while there are holes in his chest, his shirt is fine (if stained with blood).  I grab his phone, and toss it in my Warp storage… that should make it very hard to track, and I think I will want to crack it later.

It's a good thing I don't have a physiology right now, or I'm sure I'd lose my lunch.

I head straight up through the wreck of the ceiling, and survey the damage from sixty feet up.

The pavement around the van is wrecked in a perfect circle, a twenty foot radius.  After that, it's like someone drew a line: No damage at all.  A real grenade would not do that… but hey, mine came from a game.  Magic doesn't follow the rules of the real world.  At least there won't be any shrapnel to trace: Items created by Shadowstuff Armament dissipate into nothingness six seconds after I lose contact with them; ice bullets that are actually effective.  I suppose I would make one crazy-capable assassin.

Come to that, I just did, didn't I?

Hmm.

Well… let's go balance some scales at the hospital… wait….

There are four identical big beefy dudes in police uniforms laid out on the ground several dozen feet from the carnage: They're not moving at all.  I head down for a closer look.

“They're dead,” my ‘Al’ that has the Heal skill informs me plainly, “whatever was animating them is gone: They're just lifeless chunks of meat, now.”

Well… I guess I don't need to feel bad about killing these things, at least.  Their handler was certainly a monster too… and now I know exactly who to target if I see more of these things.

Of course, this also implies that the Inquisition in these parts - the organization that suppresses all things supernatural - makes very heavy use of supernatural methods.

That is SO not fair.