(Why am I doing this...?)

Helen of Troy was never just any woman. At six feet tall, with a muscular build, and close-shaven hair, it came naturally to her to enlist in the army of the Spanish Matriarchy. After the signing of the treaty of alliance, Spain agreed to collaborate with male-dominated nations such as Nazi Germany, New Vatican Italy, or Belle Époque France. So Helen of Troy threw on her uniform, her satchel, and threw herself into combat.

(Why do I keep fighting...?)

At first everything was simple, it was her duty, her manifest destiny. The scriptures of the Matriarchy pointed them out as the chosen sex, the beings of light determined by providence to put an end to the injustices of the macho world. Before the attack of the Principality of Elon, that is just what they did in a fractured Europe, they fought day and night for their sovereignty, on borders of blurred and contradictory lines.

(But it didn't matter, the mission was clear.... Now everything is so complicated)

Men so detestable became necessary in the eagerness to fight the princes of heaven, who fought as a perfect block, capable of falling on any point of the world with their ships and armor manufactured in the vacuum of space, superior in a multitude of sense to the tools possessed by those clinging to Earth, and their armies of automatas.

Side by side with people who had taught him to hate, to look askance at those he had fought. Without going very far the huge white stripe that crosses his face diagonally was made by a soldier of the kingdom of Catalonia with a javelin; At least half a dozen of the white dots that dot his broad back and squared abdomen were bullets from neighboring nations; And his left half ear he owes to the hordes of the Jehad.

(It's not that I'm angry at them, I knew what I was in for. I knew it since I was a little girl)

And that was the problem, the lack of anger. Even with the doctrines, even with the terrible stories she was told of pre-matriarchy Spain, Helen of Troy never hated men, and in fact, actually found them extremely attractive. She thought that enlisting and fighting them would fix her mental brokenness, but that was not the case.

(For example this one... He's very attractive)

The halberd strikes and numbs the Nixx's arm.

(I'd like a boyfriend like him.... But of course, who would notice me?)

She learned it in the battalions. Sometimes Helena would give her kindest smile to arriving enlistees, but upon receiving it they would pale and seem to regret joining the war.... For it had been many years since her sweetest smile had ceased to be sweet at all. Helena suspected that, if they had to choose between the nobles and her, they would have thrown themselves into the arms of the enemies.

(I mean, I'm not so bad)

The halberd comes down again, this time she makes sure to fully tense her arms. The rapier breaks in half, and the weapon penetrates the prince's shoulder until it is embedded in the solar plexus.

(I've got nice tits, even if these straps get in the way, and a nice ass..... What difference does it make that I'm taller than most? And sinewer, and stronger. With my marks I wouldn't be a catalog model, but most of the world isn't)

She places her foot against the nobleman's abdomen, and kicks as she pulls the halberd free of the stiff. Helena with both hands swings the weapon above her head, forming a circle of blood. Enemies approach the red line, three of the four left standing (Not counting Chester).

(My marks... Would everything be different if I didn't have them?)

Not that he was ashamed of his scars either, they served to map and remind him of his 25 total years of fighting. The fragmentation grenades in the Britannia skirmishes, which left her arms traced like a tiger; The assault on the Hyperion ship, where she was the first to enter, and the first to fall under the assault of the enemy's laser rifles, which narrowly missed turning her legs into two juicy smoked hams; The spear that pierced her abdomen and came out of her back during the suicidal wave fights over the sidereal Castle, and which she had to carry buried on her back to the barracks to avoid leaks from her space suit. Many of those marks left her weeping, wailing, cursing in the medical ward awaiting treatment, with the screams of hundreds of other wounded as background music.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

(The difference between me and them, is that even with everything, I'm still here, and they are dead.... Even after earning the hatred of my homeland, and exile for saying that the men I met in the war are no better or worse than me, I'm still here)

She shakes the halberd from left to right, the wide grooves keeping the warriors around her at bay, and who she assumed, would seek to collaborate in defeating the branding monster.

(Good strategy)

She stops waving the weapon, instead placing it straight against the floor, resting her arms on the lower base of the bar to catch her breath and save her strength. Helena's green tabby eyes move from left to right, following the men's movements, one of them moves out of her field of vision, but she doesn't turn her head, she predicts he will attack her from somewhere on her back.

(At times like this, I'd love to have a skinny model's back)

She smiles, resigned to her bad luck. But her opponent on the right must have thought it a rather beastly gesture, because he swallows saliva past the mask in his mouth, and fear drives him to attack. Big mistake.

Helena plants a hand against the hilt of the halberd using so much force that the hand hurts, but that was okay, pain is a sign of life. The masked lord, assuming that such a huge weapon could only draw wide arcs, leaps to attack her with the scimitar.

The crest of the halberd strikes his belly like a spear, Helena stretches out her arm to its full extent, destroying the stomach of her adversary. But the Spaniard does not stay in that position, she retracts and uses the low base of the bar as a staff or battering ram, to ram the neck of the second warrior. There was luck, she didn't have time to glance at who to hit, let alone where, but the flat part crushes Adam's nut with an unpleasant crunch, and the man falls to the sand to savor his last moments of life.

(There are only...)

A white shadow catches his attention out of the corner of his eye. Tilting his head, he receives a resounding blow to the face.

Crack.

...

Mass plus acceleration equals force.

The giant wrapped in steel plates had much more mass, but in acceleration? In acceleration Jaxter had no rival. There was purity in her jumps, in her movements, nothing was superfluous, and that feeling of untainted lethality was transmitted in her white hair, in her skin like snow, in her white uniform that the slavers could not identify, but which they washed with bleach to present as an offering to the woman of the parson. Spotless, like his eyes with silver pupils and irises. Jaxter's mind has room for only two factors: Himself, and enemies.

His knee collides against the giantess' face with an audible crack. The giant collapses, her nose caved in and pits dripping blood. Jaxter lands on bent knees, and reaches his right hand to his left sleeve, draws his knifed knife from a secret demeanor, gleaming, twisted, designed to hurt. He takes it, makes it dance between his fingers testing its weight and balance, and leaves it pointed down, at the chest of the giantess, a warrior who never stood a chance against him. Because Jaxter keeps a secret. He is...

"¡...!"

...

"Fill me with henchmen, Achu! Delay our meeting as long as you can! Sooner or later it will be your turn to compare your worth with me, if you have any worth!"

A voice capable of being as strong as it is kind. A voice of anger and honor. A voice of a good man. Ricote believes that this formidable man could carry the word of God. He was nervous before that he would not find a formidable adversary in Australia, but clearly the Lord heard his prayers, and brought him to that coliseum to be tanned by an opponent to match. Come what may, the sky's the limit.

With that in mind, his hand penetrates the albino's back, piercing cloth, skin, and flesh, and metal, holding the spine with his fingers between the vertebrae. Without thinking, and in a single movement, he rips the spine from its owner, who falls to the dust with his eyes open and blood gushing from his mouth, in addition to the hole left by the inquisitor's hand.

Ricote throws the spine to the ground like someone throwing a fish fresh from the river to the shore, and faces the Lancastrian at the same time as he turns to face his new challenge. From his hood, the inquisitor's small eyes sparkle as he notices the surprise in the blue lion's countenance, an emotion that then transmutes to a twitch of alertness.

That's good. It would be terrible if Chester, such a good person, took it lightly and went to heaven or hell without knowing what hit him. Of one thing Ricote is sure, and that is that Chester would be the last stop on his pilgrimage before returning to the New Vatican, or before departing into the arms of the Lord.

The inquisitor puts his hand to his chest and sanctifies himself. He asks the creator for strength, and rushes like a train over the swordsman.