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"Hey, watch where you're going!"
"Sorry!" Ava shouted back, still running.
The horde of Wraith demons was all over the square and more kept coming. They'd been chasing them all day and there really was no time to be cautious. Who cared that someone was mad at them for bumping into them? They were saving the world for God's sake, not that these people knew that.
Beatrice and Camilla disappeared into an allley, and Ava was about to follow when a man pointed some bleeping thing at her and started waving it up and down while walking in circles.
"Hello," he said in a British accent, a smile plastered on his face. "Don't mind me, just a routine check."
"For what?" If that was supposed to be a pickup line, it wasn't working. Besides, the guy looked at least a decade older than her and he was wearing a suit. On a Saturday, in an area where there were no offices. In the middle of a heatwave.
Ava looked in the direction of the others. When would they notice she didn't follow them?
"Oh, uh..."
The penlight bleeped louder when he was behind her.
Ava turned around to see what he was doing. The guy ran around to her back again.
"Hey, can you stop? What are you doing?"
"Oh, right." He moved to face her. "Listen to me very carefully. This is important."
This guy is crazy, but she could easily fight him. He's so skinny, and again, suit guy with those old spectacles won't be able to do much against a professionally trained warrior nun with literal superpowers.
"There is something in your back. A ring. And I don't know what it does, but you need to let me take a look at it because it could be dangerous."
"Yeah, it's not."
"What do you mean it's not? You knew that thing was in there?"
The woman from earlier stomps toward us. "Doctor, leave that girl. You were taking me to the spa when we were done, remember? I don't have all day."
He barely looked at her. "Sorry, Donna, it'll have to wait. Now, what is that thing?"
The woman, Donna, scoffed and walked away, complaining loudly.
"It's a, uh... medical thing. For my back. New tech, not something you'd have heard of."
"A medical thing?" Oh no he doesn't believe me, does he? "Who's making stuff from extraterrestrial metal?"
"How do you even know it's in there?"
He takes the penlight out again and holds it up for me. "Sonic screwdriver. It detects stuff. Really useful thing." It disappears back into the inner pocket of his jacket. "For example, the metal that ring is made out of is also used to store energy, like a battery. So, what does it do in your body?"
"Yeah, sorry," Ava replied, taking a step back now that he'd stopped circling her. "But I'm not going to tell a total stranger." Another few steps back, he didn't stop her. "And I think you better get back to your wife."
"My-?" He looked behind him, where the frowning woman agressively waved the guy over. "Oh, you mean Donna. She's not my wife. More like a... not an assistant, what's the right word?" Frownlines appeared on his forehead. "Companion, that's it!"
Camilla appeared in Ava's line of sight, slowly approaching as she eyed the man.
"Well, whatever she is, you should go back to her. I'm kind of in the middle of something." And you know way more than you should so I don't want anything to do with you. "Bye."
She ran off.
"Who was that man?" Camilla whisper-shouted while they speedwalked towards the alley.
"No idea. He had this strange screwdriver thing, though, that could sense the Halo. We should probably tell Mother Superion when we get back to Cat's Cradle. Just to be safe."
The other girl nodded feverishly. "Right, okay. He didn't do anything to you, did he?"
"Nah. Did you see him? He's no match for me." With a divinium dagger in her hand, Ava rounded the last corner. "Now, let's hunt some demons."