"Angel. FUCK!" I turned around, skidding on the mud in my urgency, and broke into a mad sprint.

The screams of injured men echoed through the trees, carried on the wind alongside the stench of gunpowder and blood. Scared as she felt, Lulu formed to my chest, head and forelimbs like a suit of armor, determination thrumming through the collar link.

"I sure hope you can soak bullets, because I’m weak to Metal-element stuff." I ran straight at the river and bounded over it, using my tentacles to launch into a long, high leap across the water.

"Yuu!" Lulu replied fiercely.

Over the racing double-thump of my heart, I heard multiple human voices from the direction of the grotto. All male, all shouting. I veered off course and rapidly scaled a tree to flank the battle and gain visual. But when I spotted who was actually attacking us, I let out a hiss of surprise.

A gang of five men aimed bows and arrows up the cliff toward the pond-side ledge, but they weren't Hell Pigs. They were decked out like Roman legionnaires, kind of, in bronze and leather armor. They wore Roman style crested helmets, but instead of horsehair, the crests were made from rows of stiff blue feathers.

Three of the five provided covering fire for the other two as they attempted to scale the rocks that led to our camp. The three shooters were armed with a rifle and two bows. Bullets and arrows shattered against the overhang leading up to our campsite. The trio’s two buddies scaled the cliff to either side.

“Just come out already!” One of them hollered. “We know you’re up there, you dumb bitch!”

From our tree-top vantage, I saw Angel kneeling behind a boulder with her bow, using it for cover while waiting for them to run out of ammo.

"Wait: Are those Centurions? Why the fuck are Angel's own team after her?" My sensory hairs bristled with alarm. Three other men lay dead on the ground, arrows protruding from their eye sockets. Angel’s handiwork.

Lulu grumbled. "Doonoo."

"Yeah, I dunno either. Something about this stinks." Eyes narrowing, tail lashing, I clambered quietly around the tree into position. "Hold onto your buttcheeks, kid."

By weaving my head and tuning into my hunter’s senses, I was able to intuit the best angle of attack. I lined up, waggled my butt like a cat, and launched myself from cover. I began to get nervous when I was thirty feet into freefall and still hadn't landed on anything, but it was far too late for regret.

The only solution was murder.

My goal was the rifleman. Not all goals are achieved. I misjudged the distance and my own strength, and landed right in front of the guy instead of on top of him. His eyes flew open, and I actually watched them glaze as his training kicked in, and instead of shooting up at Angel, he swung the barrel down and blew a round twenty feet into my shoulder instead.

You take 500 reduced damage! (x3 Metal)]

[Lulu takes 115 damage! (-1.5x Metal)]

The rifles were crude single-shots, so he only got the one round off, but it was enough to blow that forelimb out from under me. The pain was the worst I’d ever felt: blinding, stunning, fiery.

“ARRRGH! FUCK!” A tentacle replaced my foot on the down step: even as I staggered and bled, I surged in with jaws and claws. My sheer weight bowled the man down and mashed him into the dirt. The others scattered. They got maybe five steps before my tentacles lashed out and caught them. With one full-body flex, I crushed their ribcages to pulp.

“Fucking piece of shit-!” I cursed the pain – and the gun that had caused it, and flung the limp Centurions at their climbing friends. One hit, smacking into the guy on the left and sending him tumbling to the dirt in a tangle of limbs. The other corpse missed, but made a satisfying meaty THUMP as it hit the rocks and ragdolled to the ground.

"What the fuck-?!" The remaining climber looked back wildly over one shoulder, nearly losing his grip on the rocks when he spotted me. He got one girly scream off before I bounded forward, launching myself up the cliff face at a speed no human could match. I nailed him through the chest with a tentacle, pulled him off the wall, and flung him out into the forest. Dead as a stone.

Silence fell over the jungle once more.

[Team Gladiator Kill: You gain 75 EXP. Lulu gains 75 EXP.]

"Angel! Are you alright!?" I telepathically shouted at her, before remembering she could voice speech, but not understand it. Cussing, dragging my injured leg, I launched myself up to the grotto platform with three big leaps. Angel stumbled back from me as I appeared over the ledge. A second later, she burst into tears, threw her bow to the ground, and ran over to throw her arms around my neck.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Hey-hey-hey, it's alright." I managed telepathic ASL this time, letting her cling. She was a slip of a thing, so slim she felt like a feather in my tentacles when I awkwardly hugged her with two of them. “We got ‘em all.”

"Those motherfuckers!" Angel spat aloud. She leaned back from me, and I realized she'd been hurt. One side of her face was bruised up, and she had a dried bloody wound on the side of her head.

A low rumble gathered in my throat. "What happened?"

"I-I went down to forage and see if there were any small copper nodes I could use to repair the tools you gave me, and I ran into that patrol." Angel paused to shakily tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. "Th-they were friendly at first... I told them I was a cadet in the Centurions, that I'd escaped the Hell Pigs and was on my way to Fort Hope. They wanted to escort me there, but I said no. didn't want to just like... ditch you and leave. I figured you were out hunting."

"Training, but yeah. Lulu and me were figuring ourselves out as a team."

Angel nodded. "After I told them no, they got pushy. The mood changed, and one of them grabbed me. I kneed him in the balls and he let me go, but one of them hit me as I tried to get through the group. Another took me down into the mud and started trying to tear my clothes off. There was fighting… I don't remember exactly how I got away, it was all a big rush. The next thing I remember, I was nearly back at the camp, trying to get to high ground or... or something."

"Disorientation and missed time when you're being attacked is normal. You handled it well," I mentally signed. "Nice shooting, too. You're a damn prodigy."

“Thanks.” The girl sniffed, and looked up at me. Then her brows furrowed. "Noodles… You're hurt."

"Eh. Don't worry about it." There was a red pulsing icon of a beefy human arm in my HUD. I hadn't really been paying attention to it.

"No no no, that's limb damage, a Crippling Injury. It has a special status. You'll be crippled until we get some proper heals for you," Angel signed, pausing to gently examine the entry wound. "These kinds of injuries don't heal by themselves. You have to use potions to heal crippling damage. I think the ones for Legions are different to the ones for humans, too."

"Do you have any?" I scanned my Inventory, looking for potions. "I didn't get any potions in my tribute box bullshit."

"I have a couple of human heals that I looted off the Hell Pigs. We could try ‘em?"

"Uuu?" Lulu asked curiously. She’d formed a seal over the entry and exit wounds, keeping me from bleeding out, but she couldn't understand Angel's sign.

"Sure. Let's try it." I tried putting my weight down on the blasted arm, but it was no use. The thing was busted. "Lulu, something about crippling damage? Don't suppose you have any healing potions for Legions, do you?"

"Nuu." She extruded a psuedopod and shook it from side to side, but then opened a pair of arms and waved them at Angel. "Oooh-ooh!"

"Hey Angel, Lulu wants your attention," I thought to her.

Angel's pale eyes darted up. She made to hand me the potion, but Lulu snatched it off her with a limb that darted forward like a frog's tongue. The slime began to efficiently administer first aid: I felt her plunge into the injury and widen it, extracting the remains of the bullet like a vacuum pump. Strangely enough, it didn't hurt.

"What is she...?" Angel stopped signing as another part of Lulu craned up to gently take her face. The slime scrutinized her pupils, then cooed and led her through what was obviously a well-trained concussion test. She had Angel follow her 'finger' one way, then the other, then guided her to move her neck and head around to check for mobility. The whole time she was doing that, she'd cleaned and packed my bullet wound, opened the potion, and was administering the bright red liquid directly to the injury site.

"Huh." I looked back. "Well, in bad news, the potion isn't healing me up. In good news, it doesn’t really hurt that much anymore. Lulu... were you a doctor or something?"

"Nooze!" Lulu burbled back. She let go of Angel's face and gave her a little pat, retreating back to me and focusing on my wounds and injuries.

"You were a nurse?" I broadcast the communications to Angel, and for the first time since I'd met her, she actually smiled.

"Noooze!" The slime made a happy trilling sound. "Buuu... pooo-tooo nuu goooo."

"Yeah, the potion's no good. We have to find one for Legions." I lashed my tail, resigned to using my tentacles on that side to replace my injured leg.

"They'll have them at Hope," Angel signed. "If we can make the journey now you're down a leg."

"I'll be fine. I've got spares." I flared all six nostrils and snorted out a cloud of steam. "But hey: are we SURE we want to go this place? You just got jumped by guys on your own team."

"Sam warned me that the border forts can be rough for women travelling alone," Angel signed miserably. "But what choice do we have?"

"We could go solo. Try and make it on our own."

Angel glanced down at my injured leg. "With what? The Centurions and the Pigs are the two largest guilds on the island. They camp the bosses and the big resource deposits, the oil and copper and crystal. Solos and small clans get crushed. I've got a foot in the door with the Centurions because of Sam and the outpost... and I at least want to try, for your sake and for mine."

"My sake?" I tilted my head.

"Well, yeah. You need to find this Dimitri person and help your sister, right?" Angel tightened the straps of her pack and looked to the northwest. "There's a lot of people at Hope. Someone's got to know something about him."

I grunted. "Yeah. Well, hop on and let's go."

"I'm not riding you while you're hurt." Angel scowled.

"I'm fine. Tis but a scratch, and Mountain Trekker Noodles can still tentacle along faster than you can walk." I went into my inventory and dumped out half the t-rex meat.

Angel sighed, but she didn't argue. Lulu chirruped and helped her up onto my back, then lashed around her legs like a gooey saddle to hold her in place.

"Have you used the mandala yet?" Angel signed around my shoulder.

"Nope. Not yet."

"You need to use it as soon as possible. If someone kills you, they could loot it off your body. And believe me: if any of the Sponsoreds find out you're carrying a mandala, they'll do everything in their power to take it."