“And that’s the last of it.” I said cheerfully as I tightened down the last exterior panel replacement on the Azure Horizon.

The ship wasn’t completely fixed though. No, that would take a bit longer since I didn’t have access to certain materials that a simple town like Thornbell simply wouldn’t have a need for, which meant high altitude flight was still off the table. But the outer hull had been completely fixed so now I could at least take it on a short flight without it feeling like the ship was trying to tear itself apart.

“How’s it look, Alex?” A voice below me shouted, causing me to shimmy to the edge of the ship and look over the side.

“Fits perfectly, Chief! Tell the boys I appreciate the quick turnaround!”

The head mechanic of Thornbell’s airport, who everyone eventually just defaulted to calling Chief, just scoffed at my words. “Don’t mention it, girl. Our fault the last one wasn’t up to spec.”

I shrugged at that since it kinda wasn’t. Somewhere along the line someone got the machining dimensions of the hull plating I ordered wrong and I was shipped a panel far too small for me to actually use. I knew from working with Chief and his crew that they had at least triple checked the order before sending it out so the issue was with the supplier. They even showed me the measurements when I went to tell them the plate didn’t fit.

There was no point in getting mad at them when they didn’t have a hand in my problem. The supplier on the other hand…

I shook my head to clear those thoughts. They deserved it and the rest of the mechanics agreed with me.

“That the last of it then? I noticed you didn’t place another delivery order, or did that lemon finally drain you dry?”

“That ‘lemon’ can outperform any three bullheads you can scrape together even if she is a bit beat up.” I shot back. “In fact…”

I went on rambling about the ways my ship outperformed any vehicle I had seen in Thornbell. Which wasn’t all that impressive because it was the same as me bragging that my high-performance custom car was better than farm equipment and commercial vehicles. Yes, it absolutely was better but it wasn’t a fair comparison to begin with.

Still, it was an argument that we’d had several times over the weeks Leona and I spent settling in and preparing to face a new world. More a ritual that Chief and I did at this point than either one of us trying to convince the other we were right.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before.” Chief eventually waved me off before he got a look in his eye. “But I guess that means your hangar princess is good to go now. You and Leona gonna be heading out soon then?”

“So quick to get rid of us now that we’re not a potential customer? I’m hurt.” I smirked back. But he was right, now that the Horizon was flight capable again we were ready to move on to a bigger town where I could order more custom components or the materials to make them without paying a premium to have them shipped all the way out here. But just because we were planning on moving on hadn’t stopped us from becoming friendly with the locals. “But yes, once we finish up a few things and get things sorted out at our next destination we’ll be off.”

“Guess we’ll have to throw you a going away party before then, huh? We’re going to miss your help dealing with local grimm. And Jason is definitely going to challenge you to another marksman competition though.”

“Hah! If he really wants to get thrashed by me again I’m not going to tell him no!”

Dealing with the odd grimm that wandered close to the town was one of the ways I helped earn enough Lien to actually pay for the repairs I needed to make. All I had to do was stand on the walls and snipe the things when they got close enough. It was a great way for me to practice my long distance shooting on a moving target and the local huntsmen didn’t have to leave town for a few hours to deal with the creatures.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Everybody won.

Of course not everyone was one hundred percent thrilled with me taking over their jobs. One of the younger Hunters, Jason, had seemingly made it his life’s mission to prove he was the better shot. Not that I was all that upset about it since, one, a little friendly competition pushed me to improve far quicker than mindlessly taking practice shots ever would, and two, I was never planning on hanging around forever. It’s a lot harder to get worked up over someone’s ego trip when you keep beating him and know you don’t need to deal with it forever.

“Hey now, he’s a good kid.” Chief protested. “He’s just a little–” Our conversation was cut off by an alert coming from my scroll. More grimm heading towards the town.

“Another one? There’s been a lot of alerts lately.” the head mechanic muttered, concern on his face.

A look I shared. “Yeah, lots of grimm wandering nearby. I heard some rumors that a nest formed nearby but no one has been able to find it.”

As expected for barely cognizant beings made of darkness and hatred, Grimm reproduction cycles were really weird. Most of the time they just seemed to form out of nothing, appearing in remote areas where they wandered until they were drawn towards some nearby settlement. But sometimes a Grimm Alpha would decide to make a nest or lair where it would spawn more Grimm like itself that tended to be stronger than average.

Since the Grimm didn’t actually need to eat or drink there was always a risk that a nest would continue to grow until it was discovered and destroyed, or became powerful enough to drive everyone else from the area.

“Well I won’t keep you then. Knock ‘em dead, girl.”

I gave him a two fingered salute before running off towards the wall section that raised the alert. I was probably only going to do this a couple more times before I left, might as well do a good job till the end.

-o-

As I got closer to my destination I spotted not only the uniformed town guard but a small group that included Jason, Sean, Leona, and one of the captains all staring out over the wall at whatever was approaching.

That was concerning.

Heads turned to face me as I moved to join them. “Hey, what’s going on?”

It was Sean that answered, an uncharacteristically dark look on the older man’s face. “Bandits.”

I looked around at the other men for a more verbose answer but got nothing. They had all turned to look back over the wall. There was definitely a bit more to that so I followed their line of view.

It didn’t take long to see what everyone was so interested in.

Three vehicles, one motorcycle and two rough looking buggies, were racing towards the city walls. The motorcycle I vaguely recognised as something a few of the local huntsmen used when going to the even more remote settlements in the area. The buggies I didn’t know, but considering that I could just barely see a passenger popping out to take a few shots at the fleeing motorcycle was enough to clue me in that they probably weren’t friendly.

“Ah, I guess someone finally found the bandit hideout the huntsmen were looking for.” I mused. “Any reason we’re all standing around instead of going out there to help them or at least shooting back? Jason, I know you can at least get close enough to a target the size of a car from here even if you can’t guarantee where it lands. A few shots would at least make them flinch.”

“Already tried.” My self-proclaimed rival replied. “They dodged every shot. Best guess is one of them has some kind of danger sense Semblance that lets them see when I shoot. As for why we’re up here…bandits have some kind of jammer blocking scroll calls. Our guy out there got cut off before he could tell us where the bandit camp is and I don’t think he’s going to live to tell us about it. Sean has a team rushing to get out there but…we figure we need to at least watch the whole thing, yeah? Make his sacrifice be remembered.”

That was something I saw in a lot of the people here. That if they couldn’t change a situation, they would make sure the people lost were remembered. I guessed it had a lot to do with being a smallish town where people could go missing for any number of reasons. Knowing people would try to remember them after the fact helped them keep going and made them return the favor on their own. It was pretty noble thinking at the end of the day.

And perhaps unnecessary in this case.

“You said they managed to dodge your shot?” I said as I unslung my bow and pulled out a particular arrow, something I was still in the habit of keeping around since I didn’t want to blatantly advertise my magic even if I could fudge some of it off as a Semblance. “Well let’s just give them something they can’t dodge then.”

“Mistress, are you sure?” Leona whispered under her breath. “You mentioned you wanted to keep a low profile while we were here.”

I pulled back the string and sighted in on my target. “Yeah, but the Horizon is as fixed as she is going to get for now and we’ll be heading off soon. Besides, I’m not going to let someone die in front of me just to keep a few things hidden.”

That said, I made one final adjustment in my aim and fired off the arrow – quickly followed up by several more.

Only for all of them to land a short distance in front of all three vehicles, not even coming close to hitting any of them.

I smiled a bit when the two bandit vehicles made no moves to avoid the arrows.

“What was that, Cross?” I could practically feel Jason’s confused stare. “You missed.”

“Give it a second.”

Giving in to an urge for a little showmanship I raised up my hand and just as soon as the motorcycle cleared the field of arrows, snapped my fingers.

Every one of the enchanted arrows I just shot went off with the force of a hand grenade and just like I hoped without a direct danger directed at the bandit, his semblance didn’t give him enough warning to move out of the way or alert his buddies.

I knew this probably wasn’t enough to take out any of the bandits unless they didn’t have an active aura, but that was fine. The buggies they were driving weren’t nearly durable enough to escape unscathed. That many explosions to the lightly – if at all – armored underside of the vehicles tore them to pieces and allowed the Huntsman to finally escape and make a bee-line for the walls without getting shot at.

Meanwhile I could see three bandits dragging themselves out of the wreckage and immediately began running in the opposite direction back the way they came.

“Can’t dodge a carpet bombing.” I smirked as I watched the bandits flee. “Should we check on the Huntsman now?”

There was a beat of silence and then Sean spoke up again.

“Lass…tha was damn terrifying. Glad yer on our side.”