Noel used his cane whenever he walked alone down a city street. He waved it slightly ahead of himself to avoid any waste cans or fire hydrants. 

     This time, he came up against someone standing in the middle of the sidewalk, blocking his way. 

     "Would you excuse me, sir?" Noel asked. "I'd like to continue forward." 

     The figure did not budge or speak. 

     Trouble. 

     The four of his physical senses that were of use to him rose to immediately access the situation. By not budging the way he did, the guy in the middle of the sidewalk indicated that he intended to be aggressive...

     with a blind man.

     Was this person alone? 

     No way of knowing. Not yet.

     Noel reached out to touch the guy. Not grab him. Just touch him.  

     He got the reaction he expected.

     The guy grabbed Noel's wrist to keep Noel from touching any part of him. Noel now knew approximately how tall and strong the guy was. Head taller. Muscular.  

​     Noel felt a fist smash against the side of his jaw.  

     If Noel was "normal", that blow would have broken his face, and that would have been the end of the fight...

     only Noel was anything but normal.  

     He was a Valid.

     Which meant, in his case, that he and anyone who touched him or was touched by him could not be harmed.

     Turns out there were three of them.

     Noel planted himself as they worked on him.

     Noel went into pure battle mode.    

     He figured out what the physical properties of each of the men who fought him were, as well as how adept they were at fighting. Because he couldn't be hurt, he could take his time, at least as long as he could keep anyone from pinning him in some manner, and he'd had years of training on how to defend himself against that. The idea was to stay as slippery and loose as an eel with defensive focus on the knees and elbows.

​     Finally, he felt it was time to retaliate a little. Noel grabbed one guy's wrist the moment the guy sank his fist into Noel's gut, then stiff-armed the guy in the cheek hard enough to shatter it. As the guy turned away, Noel heard a foot shuffle and brought his own foot down on some toes. The guy made a yip! sound as he lurched forward, which allowed Noel to zero in one where ​his face was. Noel head-butted him so hard it made a sound generally only heard in a bowling alley as the ball hit the pins.                                                                             Two down.

     Only the original guy remained. He pounded on Noel until he winded himself. From the guy's panting, Noel had no problem locating the guy's skull. He opened his hand to cover the guy's entire face, then used two fingers from his other hand to poke into the guy's eyes. The guys yelped and stumbled away.

     Now Noel could concentrate on not just taking his three attackers down, but taking them out. 

​     But he was getting bored, too.  

​     Not to mention a little hungry. 

     "Done," he told his holo. 

​     The three men dissolved back into the holo matrix from which they came. 

     Noel climbed the stairs out of the basement to see how his three friends were coming along with the packing. He'd already finished his. Clothes in two suitcases, everything else in a third. That was it. He'd packed the day he'd learned their training was over and that it was time to go their separate ways, live their separate lives. 

     The other three, of course, waited until the very last minute to pack.

​     Damn, he'd miss them. Damn it, he would. 

                                                   CONTINUE