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“We’re your collective subconsciousness! Arguing with itself! Pure madness, eh?!”

“C’mon, even if you convince him, there’s still his partner.”

“You’re all morons.”

Hector tensed up with each new voice that chimed in. Whoever they were, there were a lot of them. His mind raced as he considered his options. If they were really invisible, then his priority was surely locating them somehow. To that end, iron dust might serve. But it would almost certainly antagonize them as well, and he wasn’t sure that was necessary just yet. Certainly, if they wanted to harm him, they would’ve done so without alerting him, right?

“This better not mess up the mission,” one of them was saying.

“How could it? If anything, it’ll give us less to worry about later.”

Hector began slowly slipping one of his gauntlets off. Thankfully, he’d already been holding his shield, so he used it to conceal his work.

“Idiots. We don’t even know who we’re dealing with here.”

“Yeah we do. Don’t you remember?”

“What?”

“Looks like you’re the idiot, idiot. Hey, Darksteel! Are you scared yet? Or are you just stupid?”

Hector pulled the rest of the gauntlet off and started on the glove beneath, going a little faster now.

“Oh, you’re right,” said another new voice. “It is him, huh?”

“How many of us do you think there are, eh? Why don’t you have a nice guess. Go on.”

Hector decided to take a pass on that.

“Hey, how much time do we have for this?”

“Plenty. Don’t worry.”

“Think he’ll try to run?”

“Ooh, I hope so!”

“Go on, Darksteel! Make a run for it! You might be able to get away!”