Susan moved her golem to tackle the stranger.

Rory the Golem tackles you moving a bit faster then it had been.

It is HEAVY.

The masked man rubbed his chin, "30 seconds... Waaooo!" The man fell to the floor cracking the wooden floor beneath him, his legs pinned by the giant earth creature. *CRASH!*

He remained silent for a few seconds after the fall. " ...I suppose that I should chalk this one off as a success... " The camera focused in to reveal the inside of the mask, where a slightly concussed Rory mumbled an activation code. "Open Sesame!"

A second later, the mask began to mechanically peel away, revealing Rory's face. He seemed to have a slightly sheepish look on his face. "Hum... Surprise?"

Zoey watched in surprise as the mask began to open, revealing her best friend. "R-Rory? Dude, what the hell?  Cool costume."

Susan gasped in shock and surprise.
"Rory..??   RORY!!!!"
She called off her golem as quickly as possible.
"Oh Rory!!  I'm so sorry!!  I'm so........"
She quickly knelt by Rory's side to see if he was okay.  Then the young woman paused, as if realizing something.  She suddenly got angry.
"HEY!!!  Wait just a darn minute!!!!  What are you THINKING, coming in here looking like the Termnator's Tinder Date??!?!   What is WRONG WITH YOU?!?!  We could have killed you!!!"
Looking like she was near tears and started beating on the armored man's broad chest.

The golem stood up and shrugged a bit.

Zoey stepped closer and set her hand on Susan's shoulder. "Her, come on. Let him up."

She looked at Rory and shook her head. "Susan's right Rory. That was kind of a Darwin award winner moment right there. Do you know how mad my dad would be if we busted up the shop?"

Susan got up, reluctantly.  She still looked annoyed.

"Well, in my defence, someone forgot to send me the memo on our shoot first ask questions later policy. It's  not like I made any aggressive moves."

Zoey laughed and shrugged. "Chalk it up to being highly defensive right now. You okay though?"

"So when did you find the time, or money, to make that? It's pretty bad ass."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare anyone." Rory laughed too. " I'll heal."

"I have Bruce to thank for this. He has given me access to material and discarded prototypes from his company and in exchange, I have been running additional tests and experiments on them." The pinned man went on to speak about the suit with clear excitement in his voice. "As for the suit, I recycled the data I got from our school project on energy extraction and integrated it with my knowledge of magical item crafting to make the suit. In lay terms, it's magiteck. So far, it can't do much apart from blow stuff up by channelling the power from my bracers and make my friends attack me."

Zoey helped her friend up and chuckled. "Well it looks awesome, even if it does have a few bugs in it. Besides scaring the hell out of us, what are you up to? We were talking about Malcolm Danvers and the new dangers that comes with him knowing about us."

She looked curious, "Do you know how he would have known about the two of us, but not Susan?"

Rory accepted Zoey's help. "Thanks."

He didn't seem too concerned about Malcom. "Malcom is the one who taught me about magical crafting. Our abilities have been present since childhood, I guess that he must have picked up on it at some point. I'm not sure how much he actually knows about us but I trust him to keep our secret."

Zoey looked more than surprised at Rory's response. "He taught you? Wow, I did not know that. Im surprised honestly."

She looked at Susan then, "Well I guess that takes care of some of what we talked about. Right?"

Susan relaxed, but still didn't look happy.
"Rory,  our 'don't shoot first' policy was what was getting us 'shot first' by that cowboy, if you'll recall.  But let's forget about that for now. "
She seemed anniyed, but dropped the subject.

Looking at the suit with more relaxed eyes, she nodded.
"Okay,  so tell more about it.  what else does it do?"

Zoey grinned, "And where's ours? I want mine in blue and green."

He turned to Zoey offering an apologetic grin. "You're next I promise. If you come to my lab tomorrow we can work on the details."

Rory seemed slightly irritated by Susan's comment. "Think of it like a wearable lab, or a full body Google Glass. All the most advanced computer software uploaded into a wearable suit. It also has access to all the cheesy internet quotes that you can ask for. Take this one for example, The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

There was a short pause. " Remember how the cowboy seemed convinced that Allura was evil? How shocked he seemed when she leaped in to save us? I don't think that he was evil, just misguided. He saw Allura, made an instant judgement and attacked her... Just like you did when you saw me. "

"We can't beat the bad guys by turning into bad guys." There was another pause and the next part was barely above a whisper. "We're better than that. We have to be better than that." Rory almost sounded like he was trying to convince himself with the last part.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:04, Sun 20 Aug 2017.

Susan scoffed and rolled her eyes.
"Oh, for crying out loud,  Rory,  get off your Animal Farm High Horse!  I was just recently shot at by a gun wielding  maniac, while IN the hospital room of a friend who had JUST been shot by that same maniac.  He might have reacted stupidly when he first saw her, but later that same day he HUNTED her, and me,  like an animal.   So, when i see someone who looks like Dart Vader's Butler walk in here without warning,  OF COURSE I freak.out and react.  Not to kill you, if you happened to have noticed,  but to subdue, so I can, get ready for it, see if you're a danger."
She took a breath, obviously upset, but, with effort,  calmed herself,  and looked at Rory with a kinder expression.
"We are the good guys, Rory.   And we're getting better. All the time.  So please cut us, and yourself,  a little slack,  okay?"

Rory seemed deeply hurt by Susan's words. "You wouldn't understand. You're human, tomorrow you will be human, and the day after tomorrow..." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I'm sorry that I scared you, walking in like that was clearly a bad judgement call."

He did his best to put on a brave smile for the others, changing the subject. "So Darth Vader's butler, huh? Not quite the look I was going for, I must admit."

Susan bit her lip,  obviously feeling bad that she hurt Rory's feelings,  bht also unable to drop the subject.
"Rory, I'm sorry if my words hurt you, but....I'm not sure you understand,  either.  Sure, I can 'fake human' better than most of us, but I only have to get my parents talking about their grandparents in nazi Germany to be reminded that 'being human' isn't a guarentee of safety.    And also, I'm really not sure what your heritage,  exotic or not,  has to do.with this?"

Rory looked from Susan to Zoey and sighed, as if deciding that he had no reason not to speak.

"That's the point, I don't know what my heritage means. There's no one else like me. You know that I've been changing recently, my body is healing faster than it used to, my mind is sharper, and well, then there's the telepathy... I've seen what happens to humans with a Deep one parent, when they reach maturity. I've also seen what the other Plutonians look like. Sometimes, I wake up in the morning and I have to look into the mirror to make sure I'm still me, and sometimes I wonder how everyone would react if I walked in looking like a 6 foot tall bipedal ant, possibly unable to talk, maybe unable to even understand English anymore. I ask myself how I would react if it happened. What would I do? Would I still be lucid? Where would I go? Who could I go to?" Rory shrugged. "You probably think that I'm overthinking this all." He shrugged again. "Maybe I am. As I said, it doesn't matter."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:05, Mon 21 Aug 2017.

Susan bit her lip, her eyes fillng with tears that she tried to blink back.
"Oh, Rory. ...I'm so sorry.   I had no idea this was torturing you so badly! "
After a moments hesitation,  as if thinking about and then discarding the idea of getting permission first, Susan rushed forward and hugged Rory fiercely.
".......owwww...." She said, after accidentally smacking her face in the armor.  She didn't let go, though.
"You'll always be one of us, Rory,  and always special to me, even if you turn into Kafka's Ugly Cousin.   Never forget that "

Zoey wrapped her arms around her two friends tightly and chuckled. "She took the words right out of my mouth. We love you no matter what, Rory. Always."

Rory returned the hug, he seemed somewhat relieved after having spoken about his concerns. "Thanks guys."

Releasing Rory and Susan, Zoey sighed. "So I guess we should go talk to Allura and her dad now. We should clear the air with them."