When she'd finally made it into the barn, with the creeping feeling of whoever had been watching her still crawling on the back of her neck, Cassie quickly made her way up into the hayloft where Slade and Shara were waiting for her. She needed to give them their morning meal, yes, but she also needed one of them to tell her if there was another Teknoman following her.

It'd probably be Shara, since the other girl was more level-headed than Slade seemed to be.

"Hey," she called, getting the siblings' attention as gently as she could, since she already knew just how sensitive their hearing was.

(Good morning, Cassie,) Shara said, as she and Slade sat up on the blanket she'd gotten for them to use as a bed. (Is something wrong?)

"I think someone might have been following me," she said, as the siblings ate their morning meal with their usual speed.

Shara's eyes narrowed slightly, the rose-colored glow of her telepathy showing through her eyelids for a long moment. (It's Fritz again,) she said, the sadness she felt just as plain to Cassie as any of the girl's other emotions were when she used the telepathy that had been forced on her and Slade by the Radam.

"I think I could draw him off," she said, speaking in as low a voice as she could, so no one outside the hayloft would be able to hear her.

(But, you're going to need to morph me to do it,) Shara said, the slight smile on her face accompanied by the sense of subdued amusement projected along with her words.

"Yeah," she said, already starting to morph as she stood back up.

Her vision sharpened almost painfully, along with her hearing, and the sense of Slade, Shara, and now Fritz burst to life inside her mind. Leaping lightly down from the hayloft, Cassie hurried to leave the barn before Fritz could start coming after her.

Transforming as soon as she'd gotten far enough away from the barn that she wouldn't risk drawing Fritz back to it, Cassie flew up into the air as the sense that she'd gotten of Fritz when she'd morphed into Shara burst across her mind like some kind of a firework. It was eerie, and with only the barest, most rudimentary experience with the powers that the Radam forced on all the people they transformed, Cassie was forced to rely more and more on the imprinted instincts of her current morph.

The sense of Fritz was closing in on her, even as fast as she was flying, and so Cassie looked for a clearing where she could land.

xxxxXxxxx

Sighing as Shara came to a neat stop in a nearby clearing, Gunnar swung his legs forward and dropped out of the air. As the pair of them faced each other, Gunnar could all but feel the combat instincts that all Teknomen unfortunate enough to survive the transformation process were imbued with surging forward as the pair of them faced each other.

(Fritz!) Shara called, nearly as soon as the pair of them had turned to face each other.

(Oh… you remember,) he said, shuddering as the full implications of what had happened to Slade's younger sister hit him; she'd somehow escaped before the mind-wipe that all the rest of Darkon's forces had seemed to go through before they were released could happen, even when Slade hadn't. (I'll make this quick, then,) he said, drawing his bow.

xxxxXxxxx

Throwing herself out of the way of the exploding arrow that the Teknoman Gunnar fired at her – as soon as she'd seen him wearing the armor she'd seen so closely on that horrible night in the ruins of Fenestre's mansion, she'd recognized him and remembered his name – Cassie grabbed instinctively for something to help her fight off Gunnar, and found herself holding onto the same kind of dagger she'd seen Shara use before. It was strange, but it seemed like the dagger she was holding was Shara's personal weapon.

It was starting to seem like every Teknoman had some kind of personal weapon: Shara's dagger, Slade's double-headed lance, and Gunnar's bow. It was strange to think about, but the brief contact that she'd had with Gunnar's mind was what stuck out the most to her. He seemed to feel just the same as Shara: he had offered to kill her, rather than taking her back to Darkon and the rest of the Radam.

He also believed that everyone would have been better off if he hadn't survived the transformation process, himself.

As the pair of them clashed, Cassie found herself growing more and more sympathetic to Slade, now that she could see how much he'd clearly struggled, given the way that Gunnar could both fire those exploding arrows that Slade had told her about, and also pull out some kind of needles – that also exploded when they hit anything – from some kind of holder or generator on his wrist. She also didn't know it there was a way for her to use the same kind of attack that Slade had used to drive Gunnar off that night when the pair of them had been forced to fight.

The night that Slade had killed Fenestre and leveled that evil creature's mansion.

Breaking off from Gunnar as soon as she'd spotted an opening to do so, Cassie flew as fast as she could with the rockets that had been built into Shara's back, then cut her thrusters and rolled across the ground to bleed off her residual momentum. Transforming out of Shara's Teknoman form, just as she'd begun to hear the high, harsh whine of Gunnar's thrusters as he came charging after her, Cassie quickly demorphed before he could sense her.

Morphing into her Osprey form, Cassie hopped and fluttered her way up into the tree she'd taken shelter under, just as Gunnar himself landed amid those same trees, looking around for the escaped Teknoman he thought he'd been chasing. Shuddering briefly, Cassie quickly flew back to the barn.

xxxxXxxxx

When Cassie had morphed into her, Shara had quickly locked down her own mind and advised Slade to do the same. Psychically-blind as she was, without even the sense that she'd had of her last brother that she'd had ever since the Radam had transformed them both, Shara could only wait for Cassie to get back. She could only hope that the younger girl would be all right.