Zachary had been walking out in the morning shade pushing the trolley, trying to remember his way to the skyway unit he had found earlier. He, together with Kaa'is, had been sure to make careful note of the landmark buildings and the general whereabouts of it when they had found it, but it took him some time to find where those landmarks were. For navigation Zachary mostly used any tall buildings still standing. They pierced into the sky, or at least it would be sky if the Wall wasn't there, and were generally able to be distinguished from each other. The method was not perfect, however. Shorter buildings which are close by can obscure the view of the skyline from the ground, and in the shadow of the morning and evenings, not to mention the darkness of night, the skyscrapers are difficult to distinguish or even see. Regardless, for general navigation it typically sufficed.

Zachary eventually found what he had been looking for, and it was unsurprisingly untouched since yesterday. The polarity cores are rather specialised and not especially powerful in terms of weapons or survival, so are not very useful for the average scavenger. For an engineer, however, they are marvellously useful cores. He approached the unit and took his plasma cutter out of his bag. He did not want the entire unit, with its hundreds of kilos of metal, just some of the key components. He laid his left hand on the skyway unit and allowed the image of it in his mind to guide his right hand with the plasma cutter.

While he was working away, trying to remove the parts, he felt the wind cannon being lifted out of his back. His mind immediately snapped away from the skyway unit. [b][i]We've been sneaked up on two days in a row. You're getting slack.[/i][/b]

A voice from behind him spoke. "This is a mighty fine weapon you've got here. Put your hands behind your head and give us all you've got and we may consider letting you live." The voice prodded Zachary in the back with his own wind cannon. Kaa'is probed out with his magnetic powers, just gently tugging on anything metal, acting a bit like a metal detector. [b][i]Aside from the guy behind us, I can feel two others, one on each side and a bit behind. Both of them have some medium-length metal object, presumably a club or blade.[/i][/b] Zachary complied for the moment, putting down his plasma cutter and placing his hands behind his head, but he also remotely disarmed his wind cannon by disconnecting the battery. For all the thug behind him knew, though, it was till functional.

Zachary then turned around so he could see his opponents. As Kaa'is had detected, there were indeed two more of them, although the two mentioned weapons were not yet drawn. They were all muscular and all their clothes all had tears. Some appeared to be tears from use, but some appeared to be tears from knives. The central one, who seemed to be the leader, was the oldest, around his forties. The one to Zachary's right seemed to be of a similar age. The one to the left was of similar age to Zachary. The thug who was holding the wind cannon tensed up for a moment as Zachary turned, but returned to how he was before when Zachary made no further moves. He motioned to the other two thugs and they began to approach Zachary, or more specifically his bag of tools. Before they could take more than a three steps, however, their weapons, metal bars used as clubs, rose out of their pockets and struck them on the back of their heads, causing them to collapse to the ground. The leader glanced to the side and saw this, and almost in a state of panic pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

Zachary and Kaa'is realised that this guy had realised that he noticed that Zachary must be a host, and the manner of his response indicated he was not prepared for that. "It must be broken," Zachary said, almost taunting now that he had the upper hand, "Let me take a look at it for you."

The thug instead swung the wind cannon overhead at Zachary, but he caught it with one hand, easily able to stop the metal object. The thug tried to pull back, but Zachary held the cannon firmly in place. After a few moments Zachary wrenched it from the thug's grip and wielded it himself. "Let me show you what this does." Quickly moving the battery terminals back in place, Zachary fired the wind cannon, sending the man flying across the rubble. He quickly picked himself back up and called to his partners, "He's a host! Let's get out of here!" The other two, who had just regained enough of their senses to get to their feet, heard the cry, saw the situation, and fled along with him.

As the thugs fled, Zachary leaned back, smiled and said, "That didn't go too badly."

[b][i]You know what, I can't really argue. That did go alright.[/i][/b]