Nathan gingerly swept Tate into his arms with little to no effort and straightened. Tate let out a groan, but he didn't wake up, and Lexie was getting even more worried. She shot Nathan anxious looks as they walked, one of which Nathan caught.

"Don't worry," he told her. "I'm being as careful as I can." He nudged his chin toward the entrance. "You and Mide go back in and say goodbye to your friends. She'll also inform Aoife and Ralph that we'll be leaving in a separate car while they go on with Tamsin. That way, if whatever your friend has is contagious, then it doesn't affect her. That is, if it's something that can only be contracted by getting near him. If not, then everyone here's pretty much already screwed."

"It's not contagious," Lexie told them. "But thank you. Seriously."

"No problem."

Mide and Lexie split from Nathan as he went to arrange a second vehicle that would take them to a private quarantine, which Mide informed Lexie was only a few miles away from the Firebringer Estate.

As Lexie walked back up to her VIP booth, guilt gnawed at her insides.

She felt like whatever happened to Tate had been her fault, at least the passing out aspect. He'd passed out because he'd been waiting for her for hours now, through God knows what was going on with him.

If only she'd spoken to him earlier instead of brushing him off.

If only she hadn't been stubbornly trying to prove a point by lingering to watch all the matches before going to talk to him. She hadn't even enjoyed the fights all that much, apart from Urmas'. She'd just stayed to punish Tate for keeping secrets from her, and now he was potentially dying because of her.

No. He couldn't die. She wouldn't let him.

The booth came into view, and Lexie saw her friends still engaged in watching the ongoing match.

The contrast, going from Tate in tattered clothes to Xena, Dewie, and Tamsin in a luxurious booth, was stark. And that's where Lexie had been, enjoying her time with her friends in a VIP booth, with four private bodyguards as escorts, driving her around in expensive cars, living in a large estate with international, well-renowned celebrities...

Meanwhile, Tate had nothing.

He was alone, sitting outside with the crowd, wearing ragged clothes and looking like he hadn't eaten in weeks. He had a strong odor and looked as though he'd been living in squalor.

And still, she'd made him wait.

The thought dug in like an arrow, and her guilt intensified.

Her mind was moving a mile a minute as she climbed. There were so many things she'd wanted to do before heading home. She planned to stop at Isaac's on the way home, but it didn't look like that was happening. She'd also wanted to spend more time with her friends, hang out, and finish the card for Urmas, but that didn't look like it was happening either.

How on earth did she explain this to them now?

"Hey," Xena said as they entered. Lexie kept her distance, lingering by the doorway as Mide moved to talk to the other two bodyguards. "They're almost done. I think there's a nice burger place around the corner from here. Do you guys wanna go eat there next?"

Dewie nodded.

"Um…" Lexie bit her lip. "Actually, I have to go."

"Go where?" Xena asked.

"Home. I mean to the Firebringer's home. There's an emergency and I… I have to go."

Worry stamped on their expressions as Xena and Dewie both stood.

"Is everything okay?" Xena asked.

Lexie shook her head. "No. A friend of mine is in a serious medical condition. I have to take him to a healer immediately."

"Which friend? You mean the one who fought?"

"No, Urmas is fine. This is another friend. Tate. He's…." Their relationship was so complex that Lexie didn't even know where to start. "He was one of Conrad's students, but he had to drop out. The mundane."

"Oh, him. Darn, is he okay? Is there anything I can do? You want me to call Dee?"

"No, thanks, Zee. I think the Firebringers have a healer they call. But I'll reach out to let you know." Lexie gave them both an apologetic look. "I'd hug, but I'm not going to, just in case I'm infected with anything. And listen, I'm sorry about this. I wanted to stay longer, but this kinda came up and…"

"It's fine," Dewie spoke up. "We understand. Right, Xena?"

Xena nodded slowly. "Right, but you'll have to make it up to us later. I feel like we haven't properly hung out in forever."

"I know. I swear I'll make it up to you tomorrow or the day after that. I'll come to Hovelton and we'll be together the whole day, but right now I need to go. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, I get it. You have people to save." Xena smiled. "Go on, Hero."

Lexie gave them one last grateful look, then switched her attention to Tamsin. "I'll see you at home, okay?"

Tamsin nodded uncertainly. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. Everything is just fine.

"I had fun, Lexie."

"Me too." Lexie smiled. "I'll be home soon."

After settling that, she and Mide left the booth again. Lexie stopped by the fighter's rooms to let her dojo friends know she was leaving, and she gave the card back to Urmas via inventory transfer.

"I still need to fix it," she told him. "Don't use the card for more than ten minutes at a time, until I do that. It's attached to your pathways now, so that means no strenuous training or fighting."

Urmas gave her a thumbs-up. "Got it."

She told her friends goodbye and then ran off back to the VIP parking, where Nathan was standing next to a hotpink van with two silver bows curving out from its sides.

Lexie blinked as they approached. "Wow."

"You're joking," Mide said.

"Nope." Nathan popped the last syllable. "It's a security rental, the only one we could get on such short notice. Can you believe it?" He shrugged. "I know it's a little embarrassing to ride in but–"

"No, it's fine," Lexie hurried to say. "It's just…loud."

"It belonged to a stateman's daughter. She decorated it herself when she was nine." Nathan smiled wryly. "Wait till you see the inside."

The inside was even worse than the outside. It was all pink everything, glittered steering wheel covers, a bedazzled roof, and seat cup holders that were designed like dolls with hands open.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Mide said, looking at the interior in disgust.

"Relax," Nathan said. "We'll be there before you know it. In the meantime, Lexie, watch our new charge and make sure he doesn't roll off the seat."

Lexie nodded. Tate had been buckled into the backseat, and Lexie was sitting beside him, with Nathan and Mide in front. Tate still wasn't giving any signs of coming to, and if anything, he was turning paler by the minute.

"You said there was a healer there to see him?" Lexie asked, anxiety creeping into her voice.

"Yeah, I called him. He should get there right when we do." Nathan glanced at them in the rearview mirror. "It might make things faster if we knew more about his condition."

"I don't know anything beyond what I've told you. I promise."

"Is there a family history of disease?"

"I don't know. I don't know his family."

"He never told you anything? I thought you were friends."

"I'm not even sure we're really friends."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "This seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for someone who may not be your friend."

"Well, I couldn't just leave him out there." Lexie wondered why she sounded so defensive.

"I'm not saying you should have, but we could have dropped him off at the nearest medical center."

"He wouldn't stay, and he might not be able to afford it."

In most of the city-states in District 9, health care was heavily subsidized and made affordable by the government, but she didn't know if this state was one of them, and even if it was, there was a difference between subsidized and free.

Besides, she wasn't sure that local medics would be able to fix what was wrong with Tate.

As they meandered out of the parking lot and drove out onto the double-decker roads, she kept watching over Tate. She put her finger under his nose to ensure he was still breathing and then pressed her hand on his forehead as well to check his temperature.

His breath was shallow and his forehead clammy.

They needed help fast.

Lexie drummed her fingers, wishing they could go faster, but the van wasn't built for speed like the Road Rocket, and she was already asking for a lot; she didn't want to bug her bodyguards while she was at it.

Mide was staring at her in the rearview mirror, and her face softened when Lexie's eyes met hers. "Your friend will be fine. He's stable for now, and the Firebringers have some of the best healers on call. Stella has ordered us to take good care of him."

"Thank you," Lexie said, and she reminded herself to thank Stella too while she was at it. Her godmother didn't need to do all this for her, but she was truly going above and beyond. Lexie needed to show her appreciation.

They drove for another ten minutes on the main road before Mide murmured, "You see that?"

"Huh?" Lexie asked, but Mide wasn't talking to her.

"Yup," Nathan responded.

"Who do you think it is?" Mide followed up with.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Not sure, but I bet we'll find out soon." Nathan took a sharp turn at the last minute into the right lane and another turn onto a separate street. Lexie braced herself against the door to keep from falling over Tate.

"There it is again," Mide said after a few seconds.

"What are you guys talking about?" Lexie asked.

"We're being followed."

"What?"

"Ever since we left the stadium," she said. "Wasn't sure before, but definitely sure of it now."

Lexie twisted around to look behind her, but she couldn't see what they were seeing. They were currently in a three-lane street, a single-decker road, with no allowances for hovering cars. Everything looked normal to her.

"Which one?" Lexie asked.

"Blue vehicle, third row, second column," Mide answered. "Red, first row, third column. And maybe that black one next to it."

"How can you tell?"

"Been doing this for years, enough to know when we're being followed."

"But...why are they following us?"

"That's what we have to find out," Nathan said in a very casual tone not befitting the circumstance at all. "How do you wanna play this, Mide? The honeybadger or the hare?"

"Honeybadger's too messy and the car's too slow for hare." She scratched her chin. "Let's just wait it out for now. Get ready to go, but we'll let them make the first move."

"Sounds good."

"They might not do it for a while. Too many people around, unless their goal is mass casualty."

"We're coming up on a highway soon. That might be their target."

"Mhm." Mide didn't seem too concerned about that either.

In the meantime, Lexie was staring at both of them like they'd lost their minds.

How were they both being so calm about this? People were following them, had followed them from the stadium clearly, and neither of them thought that there was a potential threat?

Nathan caught Lexie's eye in the mirror and grinned at her panicked expression. "Relax. We really do deal with this all the time. There's nothing to be worried about."

"People stalk you guys often?"

"Relatively. It's actually slowed down recently, because the villains have been diverting their attention elsewhere. But typically, we get stuff like this at least three times a season."

Wow. And all the Firebringers were still alive and well, so that gave Lexie comfort.

On the other hand, they were Firebringers, more powerful and resilient than most people. And in those previous times, they probably hadn't had an unconscious mundane in the car.

"Get in touch with Aoife," Nathan told Mide. "Tell them to watch for a tail, too."

"Already ahead of you." Mide peered at the air, like she was mentally typing into a system screen.

Lexie sat back and tried to relax, but she couldn't. She just kept her eyes on the cars, noticing they were switching lanes to get closer to them. Why? Were they trying to box them in?

"Everyone's got their seatbelt on, right?" Nathan asked.

"Yup," Mide answered first.

"Ye-Eek!"

The word was barely out of Lexie's mouth before Nathan swung the car into what looked like an alleyway, leading to another street. Angry honks sounded behind him, and he put up a hand and called "Sorry," even as he one-handedly navigated their vehicle around obstacles like trash cans and potholes.

They entered a new road abruptly with a sharp right, spurring another round of angry honks, as Nathan continued to drive.

"That should buy us some time," he said.

"Spoke too soon," Mide said, pointing upward. Two of the three cars had floated above the buildings, descending into a hover right above their van.

"Oooh, not bad," Nathan said, speeding up. "Persistent buggers, aren't they?"

"That's illegal," Lexie pointed out. "This is a single-decker road."

"Somehow, I don't think these folks care too much about road rules."

No, but hopefully local law enforcement would care enough to intervene.

Nathan swerved and yanked them into other lanes, moving erratically to evade their captors. Their pink van was a non-floating vehicle, so there was no escaping by air; therefore, Nathan was trying very hard to get away by land.

But the hovering vehicles had the clear advantage.

Clunk!

A metallic object bounced off the roof of the car, making Lexie start. "What the hell?"

"They shot a grappling hook at us," Nathan said, sounding bored even as a click sounded. "They're going to try to lift us in the air. Mide."

"Got it." She rolled down the window and put a hand through the open window. With the flick of her wrist, a sharp shuriken appeared in her palm. She sent it up to the sky and waited.

A slicing sound resonated, and Lexie felt an invisible tension leave the car.

"Nice," Nathan said as the shuriken returned to Mide's hand, unscathed, like a boomerang.

"Huh," Lexie said. "You can control blades."

Mide winked. "Not just blades."

Nathan veered onto another lane and another as more and more wires got shot from the car above, attaching themselves to the roof of the van.

This time, when Mide sent her shuriken up, there was a clank before it returned.

"Strong metal," Mide said. "I'm going to have to go out there and corrode it personally."

"You can do that?" Lexie asked.

"Yup," Nathan answered. "She can turn her sweat into acid rain. Or her tears. All her exes got melted into soup."

Mide punched him in the arm and rolled the window down all the way. "I'll melt you into soup if you don't stop telling people that."

As she began to climb through it, there was an explosion of gunfire that had her jerk back in her seat.

"Mide!" Lexie yelled.

"I'm fine." She breathed. "Damn. They mean business."

"Right?" Nathan laughed. "It's been a while since we've had this much fun."

Lexie stared at him. This was fun for him?

Mide tsked. "Crazy bastard."

In a quick move, she whipped a gun out and leaned out the window, firing three shots in rapid succession.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Mide ducked back in just as gunfire rained down on them, and the other cars on the road began to panic, honking, yelling, and swerving to get away.

Mide sighed in annoyance. "I sure wish they'd waited till we were on the highway to start this nonsense. Too many people around and too much potential collateral damage."

"So much paperwork," Nathan muttered, and Lexie vaguely wondered if they had paperwork like what the heroes had.

She kept her eyes on Tate, even as more shots peppered the ceiling. Lexie briefly glanced up, though, and wondered why the bullets weren't going through.

"The car is bulletproof," Nathan said without taking his eyes off the wheel.

"But not grappling hook proof?" Lexie asked.

"Weird, huh? No wonder they got rid of this model."

The shots continued, and Mide continued firing back every now and then. Eventually, Nathan merged them onto the highway, and Mide said, "Are we clear?"

"We're clear."

"Good." Like her Uncle Max used to do, Mide clicked a button on her gun, and it turned into what looked like a mini grenade launcher.

She pulled the trigger, and a resounding blast echoed in the atmosphere, which made Lexie slam her hands over her ears.

"Got one," Mide announced. "But there's a backup. Like ten of them.

"Get ready, Nathan!"

"Gotcha." Nathan closed his eyes, focusing.

"Are you going to drive with your eyes closed?" Lexie asked.

"Yup," he said. "There's almost no one on the road. Just tell me if I'm about to hit something."

"Uh...okay," Lexie had been between watching the chaos and watching after Tate, but now her attention was firmly glued to the path. It was a relatively straightforward road, and the vehicle, like most these days, must have had some self-driving capabilities because it remained steady on the road.

Meanwhile, Mide was trying to shoot another grenade, but it was hard to get her hand out without someone trying to shoot it off.

And Lexie didn't know what Nathan was doing with his eyes closed. She was starting to get scared of what would happen.

Suddenly, the car began lifting again, and it wasn't grappling hooks this time. It was a forcefield bubble that engulfed them and began to float upwards.

Lexie called, "Uh, Nathan..."

"Yeah, I know. Just let me focus. This is the hard part."

Hard part of what? Lexie thought, but she didn't want to break his focus. In the meantime, she searched for what she could do. Could her new fire powers help?

Maybe, but she didn't think she would know how to turn it off once it was done. Plus, she'd promised Theo that she wouldn't do it without his supervision.

The telekinetic card might be more helpful in this scenario. She hadn't named hers yet (though she'd named Anais' <All For One>) and hadn't incorporated it into Earth's system, but it would work with the attachment to the land card she still had.

"Nathan, you're wasting time," Mide said, no longer firing since her shots would get stopped by the force field.

"Hang on, I'm trying to make sure we get dropped off somewhere grassy or wet, so the landing isn't too bumpy."

"Don't worry about that," Lexie said, and Mide turned to her. "You can just do whatever you want to do. I'll make sure we land well."

"You sure?"

"Yup." She began activating the card.

"Mide?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll keep us safe, just go."

"Alright. In three, two–"

It felt like a heat flare from the sun itself that preceded the mother of explosions.

BOOM!

It was so loud, the fire it exuded so fierce, that Lexie feared that they would get caught up in it. The explosions ricocheted down a line behind them, consuming everything in their path.

The forcefield around them gave away so quickly that Lexie only had a second to activate the card before they fell, and she ended up accidentally pushing in more mana than intended, leading to some drain.

However, it worked and even as her brain twinged as she gently lowered he car to the ground so it could keep ambling along the streets, leaving shreds of their enemy in their wake.

"Damn," Mide said. "I wish we didn't have to kill all of them. It would have been nice to know who sent them."

"Does it matter at this point? They'll just send even more."

"Stella is going to chew our asses off," Mide said. "You know how she feels about mass casualty, even if it's only villains."

"Not like we had a choice."

Meanwhile, Lexie was still trying to accept that they were alive and safe.

"You okay?" Nathan asked, chin tipped up into the rearview mirror. "And your friend too?"

"Uh, yeah, he's fine, um...how did you do that?" That wasn't just an explosive like Jet's, which worked more like dynamite than anything flame-based.

Nathan's magic, however, had very much been an explosion of heat and invisible flame. Like sparking a hydrogen fire.

"Are you a Firebringer?" Lexie asked.

"No, but my father was," he joked. "I got some explosive ability but none of the control, so I only use it in dire situations."

"And I'm from a branch family," Mide said. "Not a Firebringer, but my parents were Northerners, so we do have some internal heat manipulation. My fire comes in the form of liquid."

"Cool," Lexie said. "Thank you. You two saved our butts."

"You saved our butts, too," Nathan said. "Literally, because this car doesn't have great shock absorbers, and a rough landing would have viciously bruised our tailbones."

Lexie giggled, and Nathan grinned in response.

"We need to stay on alert," Mide said. "There might be more where that came from."

"Hey, I got more in me, too," Nathan said. "It's mostly empty road for the next two hours, so if they come, I'm gonna blast them again. And again. And again. You know, a wise man once said, there's no problem that can't be solved with endless amounts of firepower."

Lexie inhaled sharply because Nathan had uttered a very familiar phrase.

"You've met my Uncle Max?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No. Should I?"

Lexie exhaled, leaning into her seat.

" don't know," she admitted. "He would either love you or hate you. I'm not sure which."

****

Fools.

Idiots.

Incompetent buffoons.

Vulcan was so mad he could spit, and he would have except that he hated spitters.

He'd watched the whole mess play out on a camera he'd planted in Roman's vehicle.

For most of it, he'd stared in shock and ranted angrily to no one because they couldn't hear him. He just couldn't believe what he was seeing.

They were supposed to kill her, not kidnap her!

How hard was that?

Just throw a bomb at the car that would wipe all of them out. Vulcan had even gone through all the trouble of covertly aiding his men with weapons that would overcome anything Lexie's bodyguards threw at them. He'd gotten them backup. He'd gotten Lexie and her security to board a shitty vehicle.

All for Roman to fuck it up because apparently, one of his old associates was in the car with Lexie Sparrowfoot, and the boy had something they needed to get. They didn't want to kill him without getting it.

Vulcan was so mad that he was tempted to kill all of them and be done with it. He took deep breaths as he slammed his fist into the cave he'd been in for what felt like years, meditating. All that time was wasted because people couldn't follow simple instructions.

But it wasn't even their fault, because everything had gone well in his simulations.

It was Lexie Sparrowfoot's fault.

That damn luck of hers had saved her once again.

Idiots.

But it didn't matter. Vulcan had done extensive research, and he already had a plan to isolate the father from her. In fact, he would methodically isolate her from everyone and everything that could help her. That was the only way to take her out.

He calmed himself, trying not to feel too angry at the failure.

This had only been one of many plans he'd concocted while he was away simulating, and there were many more to come. She couldn't be lucky all the time. Eventually, per the law of odds, something had to go right.

One way or another, in a month or less, Lexie Sparrowfoot would be dead.

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