The gate was still a ways off. Mun-gi, several archers, and I had hidden in a copse of trees after everyone split up. We would be waiting long enough for everyone to get into position before moving. The missions were going off basically simultaneously, so I needed to make as much noise as possible.

I was practically shaking from anticipation. I thought it was a bit embarrassing to be the only one who wasn’t cool-headed at a time like this until I saw Mun-gi. He was leaning against a tree with his eyes closed, but he had a hand on one of his kukris and was popping it slightly out of its scabbard and pushing it back with a clicking noise. It was barely moving more than a centimeter, but if I listened carefully I could hear the noise.

Pop, click, pop, click, pop, click…

When one of the elves nodded to me and everyone stood up smoothly and stretched. We had been mostly ready for a while now, I just needed to be at the right size to do my battering ram impression.

I shifted into a more open part of the trees. We’d been hiding from any travelers, but there really hadn’t been as many as I thought there would be. It was either because most of the traffic went elsewhere, or the city was fairly empty relative to its size. I could think about the economic and sociopolitical implications of that later though.

Growing to my maximum size always felt like stretching and flexing really, really hard. Small branches were pushed aside by my swelling mass. The tiny snapping of twigs and the way I filled up the enclosed space made my growth much more impressive than last time. Once I towered over everyone, I shapeshifted my exoskeleton into the ‘kaiju’ arrangement. Honestly, it wasn’t as scary as I wanted, but it was intimidating. I didn’t need to make people wet themselves so much as to make sure everyone was looking at me. Any pants that got soiled were just a bonus.

I shoved my way through the trees and out into the sun. A man sitting on a mule sat and stared as I emerged onto the road in front of him. I didn’t even bother looking at him, but the sounds of him and his mount squealing in unison told me that I hadn’t needed to do anything to scare him. The sound of them fleeing away felt like a pretty good omen to me.

The people on the wall could definitely see me. I could hear shouts in the distance and even some kind of alarm bell. It was time to introduce myself.

One trick I’d been working on was to reproduce the shrieking noise that had made such a great impression on the Macedor army. My hope was that if I mimicked the way crickets rubbed their wings together. Unfortunately, I’d failed miserably; the noise that my body had made cutting through the wind was just too distinct.

It was a shame, but I would have to go for the classic; making the nastiest hissing noise I could.

I took a deep breath, making my abdomen swell up even further. Every spiracle along my body gulped air like mad. I started moving towards the city gate, slowly at first but quickly building speed.

I let the tension build before releasing all the stored air as violently as I could.

“Shhhhhhhsssskrreeeeeeeee!”

...huh. That sounded a lot better than I thought it would.

I shot toward the gate like a runaway train. The ‘knuckles’ on my claws were covered in the thickest, toughest armor I could create. I’d used my exoskeleton to make myself into a rock ‘em sock ‘em robot.

They had shut the gate almost immediately upon seeing me. If I wasn’t planning on smashing the gates I’d probably just jump over them to show how pointless that was.

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The gate was designed ornately. It was mostly made to look fancy. This city wasn’t a fortress, so the walls were mostly made to keep people from coming and going as they wished. The gates were far too small, so I raised my folded claws and hit the archway directly.

Boom!

Even though I had armored myself and the gate sacrificed solidity for ostentatiousness, running into that much stone still hurt. The mortar cracked and the stone shifted, but the gate held. The doors hung crooked on broken hinges. I could probably kick it in and walk through, but that wasn’t enough for me though.

I aimed an uppercut for the massive keystone. That special part of the arch holds the whole thing together. It helps an arch hold weight incredibly well, but by its very nature, it is weak from underneath.

The first slam had broken the mortar holding everything together. The uppercut that followed pushed it up out of place and the archway crumbled. The gate and part of the wall collapsed with a rumbling crash, making dust fly everywhere.

I stomped heavily over the rubble, shrieking once more. People were running and screaming. That was phase one done. Now it was time to let the bigwigs know that they were next. I needed them to know that hiding wasn’t enough, they had to send out their powerhouses.

Far ahead, poking out above the roofs, the palace of Macedor stood. It was just as ostentatious as I had expected it. It was a monument to their attitude of ‘we’re better than everyone else’ that made them such a joke among merchants and diplomats back home.

I stomped slowly towards the palace, making my target obvious. Reached out to smash the edge of buildings occasionally, in case anyone didn’t understand that I was here to break stuff. It was probably less elegant to zigzag down main street so that I could carve up storefronts, but why would I need subtlety when I was leaving a trail of destruction and making a ruckus like this.

I made plenty of progress before I felt Mun-gi signal me. He and the elves had spotted our targets preparing an ambush while I was busy kicking carts over and generally being an oversized bully.

It’s time to bust some heads.

~~~

I’d done more jobs than I could count and I thought I had seen it all. Eventually, I even formed my own team. The Blue Daggers were skilled specialists, which meant we got plenty of well-paying jobs. Of course, that came with its own dangers.

Saboteurs like us always had the riskiest jobs. We made near impossible odds easier by destroying supplies, fortifications, siege weapons, and whatever else we were paid to. The problem is that anything important enough to hire saboteurs to destroy is going to be well protected. A small team infiltrating an enemy army or fortress can be suicide if you are careless or unlucky.

Granma Bennie always said you never make much money by playing around, playing it safe, or playing nice. I took her words to heart, and she had turned out to be right so far.

Most people don’t like saboteurs since we cheat and fight dirty. We do the tough, dangerous jobs that save their lives and they repay us by mostly tolerating us. It was just the way it was. If the pay wasn’t so good none of us would do it. We’d gotten used to it though, we knew what to expect.

That was, up until the Vortex himself came to offer us a job. None of us were ready for this mission. It felt like this was the direct opposite of our normal missions.

Vortex Mun-gi, the King of Mercenaries himself, was the one who approached us. Normally you got nobodies acting as intermediaries between saboteurs to give the employers plausible deniability. You don’t get one of the most famous men on the continent. Half the team was squealing like fangirls, which was pretty disturbing.

That was just the start of the weirdness.

The magic beast ‘Manto’ was probably the freakiest thing we had seen, like ever. The fact that he could speak wasn’t unheard of, but beasts that could were ancient and had this dignity and magnificence that Manto lacked. He was basically a clown.

His abilities were incredible and frankly unfair, not to mention his ridiculous physique. There was no other explanation for how he could actually hold his own with Mun-gi. He could be incredibly creepy at times and weirdly goofy some other times. It didn’t help that he was hard to read with that creepy bug-face he had.

I’ll say this though: he made an amazing distraction.

Everyone in the city was hiding. Sure, a few people tried to see what the noise was. They were few and far between though, and they scattered as soon as they saw Manto. I practically strolled to my target.

I didn’t even have to kill the men who would have been guarding the warehouse. I just smashed the lock and walked inside. The rows of shelves that greeted me were full of fancy goods and ingredients. I slipped my backpack off and started pulling out my explosives.

Before I started planning out the positioning, I needed to check out some of the larger stockpiles. I also made sure to pocket a jar of what looked like real top-of-the-line Ninkasi. It would be a real crime to let this stuff burn. The brewers who made it practically treated it as a religion.

I was glad I made sure to scope out the area. Aside from the amazing find, there were a couple of walls that looked sturdier than the others. Where I really lucked out, was when I found the sacks of flour.

Flour, especially the really fine stuff like this, is practically a ready-made bomb. I had to wipe the grin off my face as I shifted the bags around and placed my alchemical mixtures under them. All that was left was to put out the delayed fuses.

The only bummer about this job is that I won’t get to see the faces of those twits in charge when they find out what happened to their fancy eats.

But like Granma Bennie always said: if you light a fire under a bear’s rear, make sure to be up a tree before you smell burnt fur.