The Amazoness, Pt. 1

    "200 food slips."

    "What?"

    "200 food slips. Throw a jug of booze in there and I'll make sure nothing happens to you."

    "You're out of your mind. What makes you think I'd hire you at those Tanuki rates? I could exchange two whole tanks of gasoline for that much."

    "Well, good luck on making it through the wastes. Protection for you human boys don't come cheap nowadays, I ain't gonna risk my skin if nothing comes out of it."

    This was only the third candidate of the day, and it was getting dark already. Now the noise behind him from the market commons was fizzing out and the crowds were funneling their way back to inns, gin joints, whorehouses, wherever it is a monster girl goes after milling about a food stall for a day, doing whatever she can do after bumming a scrap to eat from a vendor who isn't looking. Maybe some of them made their permanent homes in this backwater frontier town, though judging by the heavy armor and shifty eyes on the market goers he'd probably think they were "tourists" or folk more like himself. Travellers looking to get a deal on something, moving on from this hellhole and never looking back once the deal's through.

    "That's the problem with Oni like you. Can't fucking think about anything but getting boozed, can't hold a steady job. Don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to come see you, I was told you were the best in town. I honestly didn't think you'd have the clit to make me pay an arm and a leg for you." Talking big to cover up the dejection.

    "Yeah? Fuck you too, kid. Why don't you go get a job at the peepshow down the street, suits a mouthy slut like you." Sneering down at him now, arms crossed, fangs flashing.

    She'd been leaning on the remains of a stone wall, one of the many that must have formed some big impressive looking structure before the storms rolled through and tore them apart. Now they served to block off the shanty stands of the commons from the opposite side to form a narrow alley where shady types like to congregate. As the nice Oni lady had indicated, there was a hole at the end of the alley where a girl could "have a good time", as the locals might say. Neon lighting up for another night of business, we've got boys here every kind of boy you need come 'n' see.

    This is where he'd thought to hire muscle. He was sure it was a good tipoff from that Minotaur bartender, he just had to shake his ass around a little to get her to talk about the mercenary folk who were in town. Info was tight but essential to his journey.

    The arm-for-hire towering above him, this red Oni he'd managed to piss off to no end, was said to have been an experienced body guard. She wore a couple of ratty shoulder pads, leather chestplate, a large hoop on one ear, a hipflask hung through a chain belt, blonde hair spilling around her jagged horn in an unwashed mess, and now a cocked eyebrow and malicious grin. Oh, and infamously short of temper. Probably a good time to book it, unless he wanted to end up in a ditch or on a leash.

    But he was mouthy, and he wasn't going to let this go.

    "Look, just tell me where I can find more guns like you. I've been out in the sun all day, by myself, looking, and I'm not about to leave here until I've got protection."

    She stood up straight at this, pushing off the wall. Taking a step forward, standing erect above him, craning her head down dramatically to make him feel the height difference, looking him straight in the eyes. Toothy grin.

    "You all alone here, boy? That ain't no good. I'll give you some protection, all right."

    "Didn't you fucking hear me? I said--"

    "Shut up."

    He took steps back with her in time. He was up against an empty stall now, seemed like this part of the commons had shut down for the day.

    He landed a stomp one of her boot toes and was off, barreling over countertops and pushing over empty crates.

    He didn't think monsters of that size could run fast, but she had the advantage of being basically unimpeded, using her massive strength to crash through stalls without having to change pace. Looking back, he saw the stands he'd been jumping through were nothing but scattered boards now, with the Oni behind him settling into a sprinting attitude.

    It didn't help that his traveling pack kept getting caught on odd corners, forcing him to slow down and unhook it while the raging Oni gained distance on him.

    Him and his big mouth. She followed him to the part of the commons still active with business, now he had merchants to curse at him as he kicked over bins of fruit and exotic trinkets as he headed for his lodges. It was one of the few paladin-run joints in town, he'd be safe if he could just get to their doorstep.

    He had just made it to a dried up fountain square when the monster gained enough on him to lunge and come crashing down on him. There was a group of bums massed around here, a small nomad homeless community who'd been setting up camp, rolling out yellowed mats and tents filled with holes, rusty cooking pots going with mysterious food-like substances boiling in them, all the solitary homeless: Elven wanderers, an Oomukade curled up asleep, a shaggy old Jinko seated on an overturned crate who'd seen better days. A scar-covered Dragon was rocking herself gently in a canvas chair. A couple of ragged Harpies were looking on the spectacle of the chase with mild disinterest, but for the most part these hobos didn't take notice.

    It felt like a building falling on him, though she made sure to roll with him as they met the ground so as not to snap his fragile human bones. Definitely a pro, she knew how to pursue and take falls.

    Now he was on top of her, she on her back, him locked in her arms like a lover. While he could barely catch his breath, she seemed to be in fine condition, as if it were a leisurely jog she'd had.

    "I've got you, I've got you, you dumb bitch." She had him in a firm hug from behind, his arms locked to his sides, her massive forearms bulging out at him.

    He thought about screaming. He thought about it, then decided against it. No way was he going to beg for help from these dirty hobos, he had too much pride.

    The sun was long gone by now. One of the hobo's tents cast a dim a light on them. Sensing that they'd get a show, a couple of middle-aged Lamia slithered up to watch him struggle in the Oni's arms. They were snickering and jabbering to one another in a foreign tongue. I haven't seen a good rape in a long time, they were probably saying.

    Another hobo was standing some distance behind the Lamia, watching. He couldn't make out the species from his vantage, although it appeared she was shrouded from head to toe in rags. The sun had been intense that day.

    With one arm fixed on his neck, she used the other feel him down. Groping hard at his chest, pinching him through his cheap shirt, running her calloused hand down to his waistline.

    "Quiet, huh? I like good boys like you. I'll keep you around, you'll be my companion once I fuck your brains out." Tears were welling up in his eyes, he'd started to realize that he actually couldn't talk his way out of this one. He decided to try and scream but the arm pressed against his throat reduced him to gurgling pitifully. Is this all I'm good for? Getting rolled and fucked?

    The shrouded hobo in the back had stepped beside them now. Just standing there, staring down at the two of them thrashing around. She made no move to interfere, just stood and stared through piercing grey eyes.

    "Whoa, stand back if you're going schlick off, sis. This is my catch, see? You gotta pay if you want in." She had trouble undoing his belt with one hand, so she started ripping at his pant legs and the fabric around his crotch.

    This woman had a different aura from the dirty old Lamia behind her. She stared straight into his eyes, almost as if she had a question for him. She was waiting for some cue, maybe from him.

    "Hey, no, seriously. Fuck off." When the shrouded woman failed to respond the Oni slowly curled up, arm still on his neck, and stood. Now he just hung from her grip, toes a few inches off the ground.

    From his lower position in the Oni's headlock he could see that the women stood at roughly the same height. The shrouded woman stood maybe an inch or two taller. She continued to stare at him, completely ignoring the Oni calling out obscenities now. How dare this nobody shrug her off? The rage that had briefly converted to lust was returning in a fresh wave.

    "That's it. I'm gonna fuck you up." The Oni let him down. She didn't seem to care if he ran off while she was preoccupied, just needed to satisfy her rage. He broke eye contact with the shrouded woman to look in fear at the Oni. The woman followed his gaze and met the Oni's eyes for the first time in the exchange.

    "Hey." The Oni stepped in with a punch, taking a long moment to pull her arm back to see if the woman might back off. You got the sense that the Oni was hesitating, or sizing her up. In any case the stranger never averted her cold stare.

    All at once the Oni stepped in and grabbed at the collar of the stranger's cloak. Some of the shroud fell away to reveal light brown skin, the trace of an arrowhead snaking up to her jawline. Presumably a tattoo of some sort.

    "Do not trouble this boy."

    "What?"

    "This boy is clearly defenseless. Do not trouble him."

    "Listen, you..."

    The Oni's grip on the stranger's garment was trembling so hard with rage and anxiety that the shroud continued to undo itself.

    First the stranger's jawline came into view. Chiseled features. The beginnings of another design, along her cheekbones. On the right, a solid black circle edged with triangular spines. On the left, a sharp, bent crescent. They looked lighter than the arrowheads, almost like birthmarks. Streaks of fine silver hair crossed the sides of her face. Hair disheveled, not unlike the Oni. But it was silver to the Oni's gold. And now that her face was free in the pale moonlight, he could see that she was very beautiful.

	"Ah ha... what do we have here. I thought you bush fuckers were all supposed to be dead. Didn't know I'd be kicking the shit out of an endangered species today."

	The Oni continued to antagonize the stranger but neither woman moved. Eventually he realized that the Oni was waiting for the stranger to make the first move, as she had no way of knowing how heavily armored she might be beneath her rags. He spent these few minutes completely absorbed in this silver haired woman. A Dark Elf? But he'd never been mixed up with Dark Elves of that size. What's more, Dark Elves had a firmly aristocratic reputation, whereas this woman looked like a common drifter. The stranger carried the same pointed ears but the designs on her face suggested something fiercer lying beneath. This was not a woman for vain displays of power.

	"It is dishonorable for a woman to treat a man so. Even if he has done you wrong."

	"Just shut the fuck up."

	The stranger's eyes met his again for a brief moment. Still the same questioning eyes. An almost imperceptible jerk of the chin.

	She was not going to move until he was gone. He took this opportunity to escape, dissolving into the crowd that had gathered to watch the fight.

	The oni slammed a fist against the side of her face. A burst of cheers from the onlookers. The stranger faltered, shifting weight to one leg. She had turned her head with the blow. The next blow failed to connect as the stranger stepped aside the Oni's extended arm. She got a firm hold of the Oni's exposed torso and forced her to the ground. Straddling her now, the stranger let loose. A clean blow to the opposite cheek of where the stranger was hit. The first blow might have shaken something loose in the Oni, as she could not effectively block those following. The frenzied shouts of the mercenary turned to guttural moans and finally whimpers.

	The stranger's cloak came undone in the violence. It revealed a small breastplate that didn't seem to fit right, exposing bare skin below the chest. A bargain bin pick, much cheaper than the Oni's. On her stomach was the source of the arrowheads: an intricate fractal-like pattern of sharp lines from where the arrows branched off and spread to the rest of her body. An exotic and possibly antique strip of cloth hung around her waist. The designs were patterned with beasts and humanoid figures, in attitudes of combat and worship alternatively. Curiously incomplete, as if it had been ripped from a more ornate piece. Dark green cargo pants, beaten and dusty, suggesting continual wear. Footwear as light as the breastplate that didn't fit, sandals that left her feet exposed to the elements.

       Protruding from somewhere behind her and wrapping around her sash like a belt was her tail. It was covered in plates of custom made armor, very finely crafted, perhaps the most noble thing among the stranger's rags. A lesser monster would have earned the derogatory name "spade tail" for the playing card shapes of their tips; her tip was more like a sharpened cleaver or axe. It was made for warfare rather than teasing.

	She carried herself in the shroud ominously as if she were armed to the teeth, but aside from her tail her attire matched her poverty. Had the Oni decided on a body blow the stranger would have no way of recovering from it.

	The crowd had gone silent. It no was no longer a fight now.

	He'd only heard and not seen the carnage. His temporarily stunned survival instinct kicked back in and he was off sprinting to his lodges. When he was some distance from the fountain square he threw a backwards glance to the scene of the encounter, where the crowd of onlookers had all but dispersed.

	He hoped the woman was ok.

	---------------------------------

	He slept maybe three or four hours. The night spent mostly pacing the room, studying maps and withered letters laid out on the small wooden desk the lodge had been so generous to provide.

	He took breakfast in the inn's meager dining hall with his nice Holstaurus neighbor from a room down who told bad jokes and rattled around a fake arm. She and him were the sole lodgers of this wasteside inn.

	He waived good morning to the decrepit paladin seated on a little stool by the front entrance and was back combing the town for clues of the mystery warrior.

	First thing as always, he hit up the Screaming Shota, a greasy gin joint run by an old Minotaur who was of the few permanent fixtures of the town and who probably knew everything that went on within its borders.

	"Ah, scholar boy. Still no luck with the bodyguards, eh? I heard about the stink in the commons last night. I told ya about her but you're so Illiasdamn stubborn. Eheh."

	"Please, Martha. I need information on that woman. Who is she? Where does she come from? I'll take part in your dumb strip show tonight if you help me out." The operation of this show being one of the Minotaur's side pursuits.

	"Who, the dirty hobo? Forget it boy. You don't need to get into something like that. Just stay here and work for me, forget about your little trip." It was always the same thing with this lady: she'd give up the info in the end but not before teasing him a bit. But today he had less patience than normal.

	After some more badgering the Minotaur gave in. She made a show of coming out from behind the counter and escorting him to the place's billboards which he'd previously used to scope out the first two candidates, a Lizardman and a Centaur. The former looked pitifully emaciated and under-armed while the latter was probably some kind of drug addict. Now he turned his attention from the HELP WANTED section to the WANTED section.

	Among the fliers of thugs he saw last night's savior. Whereas most of the other fliers contained dim photographs and detailed physical descriptions of their criminals, her flier had only a rough sketch and two lines that read

					  AMAZONIAN FUGITIVE
					    DEAD OR ALIVE.

	"Shit."

	The nature of his business and information procurement habits necessarily bound him up with criminal types. But a barbarian wildwoman? This was a first.

	The old Minotaur was beside him, using this opportunity to feel him up.

	"You happy now?"

	He checked out of his room that day. He said his farewells to the fake-armed Holstaurus and received a milk bottle of dubious origin as a parting gift. The ancient paladin shook his head slowly when he told him he'd found whom he was looking for. He'd learned of the old warrior's travels over sleepless late night talks and cups of tea. Tips for raiding dungeons, performing first aid, escaping Ushi-Oni. The wisdom of a generation who lived in the previous world. Now the small man clasped him on the shoulders and began slowly:

	"Son. Amazoness a shit."

	By midday he was trudging his small suitcase and traveling pack through the fountain square, looking for signs of the homeless community that camped there the night before. The only evidence of their stay remaining were some diffuse litter and a couple of stragglers just breaking down their tents.

	He approached a short, foul-smelling woman of indeterminate species and held up the Wanted poster. Nodding in vague comprehension she pointed the way out of town that the drifters had taken. She may have left in another direction, as the homeless used this town as a divergence point to end up in whatever lands they'd been drifting too. He decided to follow out the large group and hope that she was among them.

	He couldn't stay in this town, in any case.

	He caught up with the group at an old watering hole some distance out from that Illias forsaken town. The caravan shot him strange looks, some fearful, others devious. Normally he would not be caught dead traveling with such riff raff, lest someone would associate him with their kind. The hobos' communal whore. The thought made him gag. But his mind was fixated on this woman.

	It was fairly easy to spot her, she stood head and shoulders above most of the group. He recognized the heavy cloak and shroud immediately and called out to her, waving his arms.

	She'd been playing cards with a sly old Kitsune with missing and rotted teeth. She did not look up when he was standing in front of her.

	"Hey. You. From last night. Hey. I want to talk to you."

	The Kitsune looked up and ran her tongue mischievously through what remnants of teeth she had left. "Ay? You never told me you had a man, Captain." What she was captain of he did not think to ask.

	He couldn't figure out what game they were playing but there seemed to be bets involved. On the crate in front of them the Kitsune piled old coins, shells and dirty stones. The Amazoness did not put anything down.

	The Amazoness spoke to him, eyes still fixed on the game.

	"This is no place for young men."

	"Look, I know about you. I'm not here to turn you in or anything. I've got a, I've got a job. I can pay you. I can pay you, and you can come with me. I know ways around these parts, you're going to get found out if you stick with these people. I need a bodyguard, I need protection on my mission, er, journey. Just please, help me out." The words came tumbling out awkwardly, he did not have time to rehearse them in his mind to check if they might reduce his esteem in others' eyes. If he had been more reflective he would easily see he had no good reason to leave his fate in the hands of a criminal.

	The grey eyes were on him again. They made his heart beat slightly faster, possibly out of a vague instinctual fear. He'd forgotten to thank her.

	She stood up slowly. He felt the extreme height difference again, only she did not flaunt it and make him feel inferior as the Oni did. He was about to say something when she reached out a muscle-crammed arm from her formless cloak. He flinched.

	She was patting him gently on the head.

	"Boy. A woman does not accept money for her duties to a man. I will accompany you to the next town but I cannot allow you to continue your errand."

	"But..."

	"You walk into a camp of strangers without protection. You place your full trust in strangers. If you lack such common sense I do not think you will make it far in your journey."

	This seemed to drain the heat out of him. He was used to people calling him a dumb bitch. Laugh while you can fuckers I'm the one preserving all the knowledge of the old world. But he'd never been said to lack something so basic as common sense. As if he were a child. He was humiliated.

	"Find a loving wife and a home. This world is inhospitable to travellers, especially men. My pride as a woman will not allow me to put you in harm's way." She was bruised on her left cheek.

	He didn't speak to her for the next few days. He felt like a complete ass for not being grateful to her for saving his skin, but... He couldn't stand that patronizing tone. He'd read about this in ancient tomes, it wasn't like this in the old world. In those days men ruled the world and women were grateful for their protection. There were kings instead of regulatory commissions. Men of grit.

	He watched her from afar in spite of himself.

	At night when the hobos were supping he took his meal some distance from the caravan, but still within sight of the Amazoness. She seemed to stay around the canine species, the Kitsune from earlier as well as a family of Wolves whose heavy packing and relatively clean clothes suggested they were only recently unemployed. Poverty was one of the few things to count on in this world.

	It may have been more accurate to say: they were hanging around the Amazoness. Around the young Wolf children she was a gentle giant. The Wolf mother trusted her implicitly with her children. She would play hunting games with them, show them how to capture small wasteland animals to cook and eat. You will be strong women when you grow up, she told them. This was the first time he'd seen her smile.

	She didn't eat much, and he did not know where she slept, or if she even had a tent to sleep in. At night when he was studying his notes by the firelight he could sense someone moving about in the darkness beyond the caravan.

	He heard the Wolf children howl in their sleep. By midday tomorrow they would be on the road to this province's capital. He considered this a slight detour but it worked with his plans. He would check the archives in the city and...

	He would sleep on the matter of the bodyguard for another day.