Incoming Attack Dog.

"Well, that was better than I anticipated," SK commented after he and Rachel left the ramen shop with bellies full of noodles, meat, and lightly greasy soup. "Did you want to get footage for dessert stuff too, or..."

"Nah, too busy reviewing the superhero footage," Rachel replied with an obsessive tint to her voice. "I need to publish a video about this incident tonight!"

"Figured as much," SK sighed.

Throughout their entire lunch, Rachel had been obsessively watching the footage of Platiknight saving her over and over again. Whether this was due to Rachel having a deep desire to know who Platiknight was or due to the aforementioned independent social media journalist being absolutely smitten with the eight-foot super knight was unknown to SK, but he did know he had complicated feelings over the matter.

SK felt it was oddly validating to know that one of the superheroes he had created had become such a potent object of desire. However, he was also mildly afraid that he had accidentally created an unforeseen monster of obsession, the likes of which usually led to a psychopathic stalking superfan being born, or an archnemesis. 

Between the two, SK hoped it was more of the former than the latter.

'My liege.'

'Huh?'

As the thought of his friend from college turning into a stalker flitted through his head, SK eventually felt the mental tug of Platiknight wanting to contact him.

...

'My liege, do you still need me to hide away?'

'I think you're good now. Meet me at the location I'm about to transmit to you, okay?'

'Of course. my liege, but it will take me about ten minutes to get there.'

'Hmmm. Rachel will probably get suspicious if I just stand around and wait for you to come for ten minutes. Never mind, just meet me back at home after I drop her off at home.'

'Very well. I will use this time to explore the city and familiarize myself with the locations of interest. I'll be sure to keep myself out of sight from the citizenry.'

'Alright.'

...

"Its good thing the System did that information dump about familiars; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to coordinate like this with Platiknight," SK accidentally muttered aloud.

"What was that?"

Thankfully, he said it quietly enough that his friend Rachel wasn't able to hear anything. Then again, that might've been due to the fact that she was still watching the footage of her own rescue on loop.

"Nothing," SK answered as quickly as possible to deflect Rachel's question. "You wanted to call it early tonight, yeah?"

"Yes please."

'Good, because I definitely need to explore those rewarded features when I get home,' SK quietly thought to himself as the two began walking back to his car. 'Hopefully nothing happens tonight to impede that.'

Unfortunately for SK, he wasn't going to have a quiet night tonight. 

While he was in the process of dropping off his friend at her home and while Platiknight was making his way back to SK's home, a certain fortune-teller had started the process of tracking the latter down.

And she was very determined to do so.

…Meanwhile, with all the subtle hinting of a freight train…

After most of the pedestrians had cleared away from the site of the cable car incident, Miss Myster used that as an opportunity to close up her store early and go figure out who or what the knight in shining armor that ruined her streak was exactly.

More specifically, she made use of a familiar that took on the form of a large black dog that she lovingly named Mortis.

"Come on, Mortis. Come on, boy. Find that stupid knight's scent."

"Sniff, sniff."

The dog-shaped familiar sniffed around the crosswalk where that knight appeared, registering the scent deep within itself.

"Grrr..."

Once he had a lock on the scent, Mortis began to release a low growling sound that sounded like an eighteen-wheeler truck's engine and point his master towards the direction where that scent was even stronger. Upon hearing this unnevering sound and seeing this behavior, Miss Myster let out a wicked grin.

"Good boy, Mortis," she said in a sickeningly sweet voice. "Now, let's go find these fools, and if there's anything left of them after we destroy them, you can gnaw on them."

At the promise of delicious corpse scraps, Mortis's growl became a little deeper.

"Of course, we should probably wait until it gets a little darker. We wouldn't want anyone to see what we're about to do, after all..."

…Several hours later...

"Oof, what a drive," SK sighed as he finally parked his car at his apartment's parking lot after driving for more than two hours straight.

Rachel lived in a town that was a solid twenty minutes outside of San Francisco's borders, which didn't sound on the surface, but that estimation was done without including rush hour traffic and the car accidents that could occur during such a time.

Through sheer luck, SK managed to get to Rachel's place in under twenty minutes.

But through sheer bad luck, SK was forced to drive through traffic that was crawling at a literal snail's pace.

By the time SK had gotten home, the sun had already set and the first few glimmer of stars began to form against the darkening sky.

'Platiknight, sorry for taking so long. Are you here?'

'I am, my liege.'

On the plus side, by the time he had gotten back home, Platiknight was already home and waiting for him too.

To be more precise, the platinum-armored superhero was waiting on the rooftop of SK's apartment building.

The moment SK stepped out of his car, Platiknight descended from the roof in order to properly greet him in person.

"Hey, Platiknight. You have fun on your little adventure today?"

"Mostly, my liege," Platiknight began to answer. "Although I couldn't help but notice that the city's infrastructure and civic services needed a bit of-LOOK OUT!"

"Huh?"

"AWOOO!"

"WHOA!"

Before Platiknight could finish giving his answer to SK, a giant black dog the size of a bear suddenly appeared out of nowhere and lunged at the latter with its toothy maw wide open.

If this dog managed to take a bite out of SK, then SK was going to be in for a world of hurt...or at the very least, he was going to be missing his head.

"Holy—!"

"Platinum Aegis!"

Thankfully, Platiknight managed to get between SK and the giant demon dog in time and knock the former away with his shield.

The lunging dog proceeded to chomp air before being pushed back by Platiknight's shield and forced to jump backwards several feet away.

Once the dog had landed on its feet, it began to actively growl and look for an attack angle that avoided Platiknight's pesky shield.

"My liege, get behind me!" Platiknight declared while taking on a fighting stance and keeping his shield ready.

SK needed no prompting now that his life was on the line again, but he did have one question he wanted answers to.

"What the fuck is that thing?!"

Unfortunately, he was going to get that answer from someone he really didn't want to get it from.

"If you're wondering who he is, his name is Mortis," a voice like spiced honey called out to SK and Platiknight. "But if you want to know what he is, he's a creature known as a barghest, an omen of death that takes the form of a dog. Isn't he lovely?"

"That voice..." SK muttered as he turned his head towards the direction he heard it coming from.

Walking towards him, Platiknight and the Barghest, known as Mortis, were a comely fortuneteller with a condescending look in her eyes.

Needless to say, it was Miss Myster.

"You know, I thought something about you felt wrong to my sixth senses when we first met, but I just couldn't figure out what it was," Miss Myster said in a mocking tone. "But now I know what it was. You're a User, aren't you?"

"Yeah, and from the look of it, so are you," SK retorted. "Is that why you're able to predict the future so accurately?"

"Predict...yes, you could say that my access to my System is how I am able to'see' the future," Miss Myster said with a sarcastic tone. "But you of all people should know how we're able to do a bit more than passive little actions like that. After all, you prevented one of my 'fortunes', from coming true this very afternoon."

"What are you—oh."

It took SK all of two seconds to put together that this crazy fortune-teller was the reason why his friend almost got splattered by a cable car and ended up as another statistic in a long history of cable car accidents.

Not only that, but she was probably responsible for all those other stories of her fortunes always leading to injury or worse.

Needless to say, he wasn't very happy about this realization once it had all clicked together.