Barclay:

  Three people stared up at a mural.

  One of them, blonde with vivid green eyes and a regal outfit that screamed of impracticality, was grinning ear to ear with a look of reverence and pride.

  Another of them, tanned with broad shoulders and messy brown hair, was grimacing and weakly clutching his stomach.

  Barclay was half smiling, half trying to stifle his own laughter, and both of those halves were failing to hold himself in check. He had to admit, doing a fetch quest was turning out a lot more entertaining than he’d first thought.

  The mural depicted a redhead with more freckles than anyone had any right to. She was standing in a superhero pose, hands on her hips and muscles bulging in cartoonish emphasis, like some caricature designed to make fun of the Popeye television series. It was excessive, and the woman had a military cap over ripped up camo gear, like she’d just walked out of a war zone grinning with pearly white teeth.

  Around the woman, separated into quadrants, were different scenes. The redhead in miniature carrying six children out of a burning building. The same woman standing proudly between different groups of armed people with her arms outspread as if to risk herself to stop a violent confrontation.

  The last two were a little harder to parse, but one looked like leading a rebellion and the last depicted a city split into two groups, one above and another below, with the same redhead joining the group below.

  “What am I looking at?” Vilke asked, sounding like he really didn’t want to know the answer.

  “Dame Clarke!” Leivarin said proudly, his smile unfaltering. “A true hero!”

  Barclay had long gotten the impression that something was off about the city. The people above had received them about as well as anyone might’ve expected Sylphariens to treat outside guests, but that seemed to only include the people in the rooftop park. The emperor had received them with a friendly smile, and showed no animosity at all, despite living as a prisoner within a single city.

  Most people he’d seen so far had taken Barclay without reservation, and offered their insight without hesitation. Something was off about the entire city, and he almost cared enough to ask.

  “Hero of what?” Vilke inquired.

  “Fire fighter, conflict resolution, conflict incitement, and underqueen?” Barclay posited, taking in the work of graffiti again.

  The bulky young man sighed, then turned to their host with a questioning look.

  The emperor just chuckled. “Quite! She was around before my family was relocated here. She was renowned as a leader of the poorer communities. Things didn’t go well when we first were resettled, and a lot of people lost their homes tragically. The fire is one such incident, where tensions boiled over. Dame Clarke saved lives while people argued in the streets.”

  Barclay could see that. Miranda Clarke was a real champion of the people. She couldn’t help but dive into trouble and thoroughly smash it into submission until the trouble decided to stop being so troublesome. That was, generally, her entire ethos.

  “That sure sounds like our woman.” Barclay said, working his jaw as he remembered the way she’d once broken it over a minor miscommunication about his sleeping habits. Rather, his habits about who he slept with. In his defense, he didn’t know the woman was Miranda’s sister until afterwards. There hadn’t been much family resemblance. If you ignored the hair and freckles. Barclay wasn’t too sure he’d really noticed anything beyond Clarke’s musculature before that night.

  “Right, uh… where can we find her?” Vilke asked, frowning.

  The emperor shrugged, his face finally losing its grin. “Nobody has seen her in a long time. She basically gathered up every group of dissatisfied people in the city, marched on the leadership, then unseated them and started appointing new leaders. Once she did that, she went back to the lower city and stopped making public appearances. It’s been over a decade.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Vilke sighed audibly, and tried asking more questions while Barclay busied himself with a short walk. He’d seen enough on their way in to know that the lower city had good neighborhoods and bad ones, just like any other city.

  What caught his eye after a few twists and turns was a graffiti sign that announced ‘Redlight District’ in bold splash art with an arrow pointing down a narrow stairway.

  A woman was just striding down the first steps, her thighs pressed together with a nervous tremble to her that had his instincts tensing. She had a small, slightly upturned nose and youthful skin, giving her an innocent vibe. She hardly seemed like the type to be safe anywhere remotely dangerous.

  He didn’t want to accost her, as she seemed to know exactly where she was going, but he decided he should follow, given that something bad might happen, and he’d feel bad if he didn’t do anything at all. Marielle would’ve skinned him alive if he ignored the situation altogether.

  With that in mind and absolutely nothing else, he made for the stairs and followed at a safe distance, hand gently resting on a 1911 holstered at his side.

  The woman was a blonde (go figure) and took to every twist and turn with increasingly obvious nervousness. They’d gone maybe ten minutes in near constant descent, and Barclay could clearly hear her heavy breathing.

  Then he saw them.

  Eight gruff looking guys were sitting by an open bar in tattered clothes, each with various blunt or bladed implements nearby, each passing around some sort of pipe and getting blazed out of their minds.

  The moment the woman had seen them, she’d started fidgeting and shivering in terror.

  A moment later, and the blazed gangsters saw her.

  One of them stumbled to his feet and ambled over to her, and Barclay felt the cold steel of his handgun firmly in his grip.

  “Hey there, little thing.,” the man tried, “whatcha doin’ down in a place like this? Don’t you know it’s dangerous?”

  Barclay was left slightly stunned at the utter cliche of the words he just heard.

  “Is it?” The woman asked, her eyes turning up at the man as she fidgeted more.

  “How’s about I keep you company, make sure you’re kept nice and safe?”

  The handgun was halfway out of its holster at that.

  The woman shifted slightly, turning a little and exposing her blushing cheeks. “I’d rather you didn’t.” Suddenly, her voice was husky, almost sickeningly erotic.

  The blazed idiot turned a little sour in response. “What?”

  “Kept me safe. I’d rather… that you not.” The woman shivered, and Barclay took a half step backwards as he saw the blissful look in her eyes.

  The idiot suddenly became a lot more lucid as he stepped away from her as well.

  The woman frowned. “What’s a girl gotta do to find a man who’ll throw her around these days?”

  Barclay settled his handgun back into its holster, clipping the strap over it, and turned towards the exit.

  “Fuckin crazy, the lot of these alien fucks,” he said with feeling.

  Then someone shouted.

  “Ye keep ya hands off ‘er!” The shout was in accented Sylpharien standard, which was quite the surprise.

  Barclay half turned, barely in time to see… everything as a woman in torn up camo clothing kneed the gangster guy in the head and bowled him over. And really, if Barclay could forget what he’d seen in the hole in the newcomers’s pants, he would’ve immediately purged his mind. No young woman should expose themselves, even if the area was the ‘Redlight District.’

  The intruder was a tall woman with downright offensively good looks. Her straight rainbow hair looked like it was cut with a knife by her own hand without a mirror, but her vibrant multicolored eyes matched the hair’s color scheme perfectly. She might as well have been dipped in tie-dye. There was zero chance any of it was natural.

  “Ye fiend!” The woman said, looming over the downed gang member with her fists raised. Really, raising her arms just shifted the misfitting camo clothes and pulled the holes over other parts of her that Barclay still didn’t want to see on a girl less than half his age.

  “Hey, bimbo, why are you always getting in the way of my fun?” The first woman, the blonde one, interrupted, causing the taller girl to falter.

  “Me?” Rainbow asked.

  “Yes, you! Stars, I swear, it’s like whenever I find time to try to go on the prowl, you vigilante types just show up to ruin it.”

  Barclay opted to half cover his eyes, preserving what barely counted for Rainbow’s modesty as he prepared to watch the more interesting brewing cat fight.

  The gang idiot crawled away slowly, his friends all looking as amused about the two women shouting as Barclay felt.

  “It’s so hard to find a good, strong man these days!” The blonde further confirmed his suspicions of her personality.

  Rainbow finally lowered her fists and had the decency to look apologetic. Then she sniffled. “Master, you never said being an ally of justice would be this hard!”

  Barclay froze.

  Did that fundip girl just grumble in English?

  Patreon!

  discord server is the best place to get in touch with me!