The fighter grabbed a quart of milk off the shelf, opened it, tossed a silver at the employee who tried to stop him, and took a long swig. Before the fighter tossed the carton to the ground, he took a look at it.
There was a picture of him on the side. That didn’t usually happen.
“If this is you, please contact Bright Futures.” was written under the photo of the fighter. Along with a small map marking the address of the corporate office.
“Huh,” the fighter remarked, “Odd place to find a quest.”
The fighter met back up with the cleric and the rogue, showing them the milk carton.
“I think I found a quest,” the fighter said.
“It looks more like a quest found you,” the rogue commented.
“It doesn’t say why they want to meet you,” the cleric said, “Or what they want you to do.”
“Oh please,” the rogue said, “When does anybody know what they want us to do?”
“A lot of people wanted us to die,” the cleric said, “I don’t think you should go.”
“Seriously?” the fighter asked.
“Of course,” the cleric said, “It’s obviously a trap.”
“Sure it is,” the fighter said, “Cleric, if someone sent you a letter saying “Please come here so I can kill you,” would you really not go?”
“Oh, of course I would go,” the cleric said, “Can’t get anything done by not going. Still, if I knew it was a trap I wouldn’t want to go. Same reason I don’t think you should go.”
“But we’re still going?” the rogue asked.
“Oh, of course we’re going,” the cleric said, “If someone wants to kill us, they’re obviously evil.”
“Alright,” the fighter said, “When I get there, you two hide in a close alley in case I need backup. They called for me specifically, and if this is a trap I don’t want to scare them off by bringing others.”
The adventurers returned to the Bright Futures corporate office, sticking to side streets and alley ways to avoid the press of bodies that walked through a workday and any potential ambushes. The fighter entered the building, creeping through a side entrance to avoid notice. It might have been weird to sneak into a place when you were invited, but the fighter knew that was no excuse. The people who invited him never wanted him to be anywhere.
This did make the process of finding whoever wanted to talk to him much more complicated, the fighter realized. There were a whole lot of rooms in this building, and most of them were filled with people. People always presented a problem of some kind. At least, the fighter noted, gently pushing a door open, there were no human, or human-like, sacrifices going on. Yes, the people here wore, more of less, the same standard outfit, but nobody wore the hooded robe of a cultist.
“What are you doing?” a woman asked.
…
Janet Mard watched the fighter sneak into the break room and eavesdrop on people. He was everything she had imagined and more. The face, the hair, the jaw, the body, the bulging muscles. The, and Janet had to tell herself she was only guessing, complete lack of awareness of social etiquette and rampant paranoia.
The moment she opened her mouth, he spun around and pressed a sword to her neck. Even then, Janet had to stop herself from swooning at wolfish bravado and that smoulder in his eyes.
“Who are you?” the man demanded.
“I- I’m Janet,” she said, “I sent out the milk cartons with your face on it.”
“Why?” the man growled.
“I wanted to meet you-” the sword moved just enough that Janet could feel it. “To hire you,” Janet gasped out.
“Really?” the man asked, pulling the sword back, “Alright.”
Janet took a deep breath, gently touching a hand to her neck. “Ah, thank you,” Janet said, extending a hand, “I’m Janet Mard, a senior manager here at Bright Tomorrow.”
“Are you trying to hypnotise me?” the man demanded, glaring down at her hand, “Charm me?”
“Excuse me?” Janet asked.
“Do you have any idea how many evil wizards I’ve dealt with?” the man demanded, “That’s the oldest trick in the book, palming a spell so that it will hit me when I shake your hand.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not a wizard,” Janet said.
“That’s exactly what an evil wizard would say,” the man said.
“Isn’t it also what someone who isn’t an evil wizard would say?” Janet asked.
“Yes,” the man said, “But I’m not about to take that chance.”
“Well,” Janet said, retracting her hand, “You’ll have to excuse me then.”
“What’s the job?” the man demanded.
“Well, before we actually discuss your job function, I was hoping to introduce you to the CEO,” Janet explained, leading the man to an elevator, “Currently, he’s in a meeting with some of the other stockholders. We didn’t know when you would arrive, so we couldn’t schedule our time table around you.”
“So,” the man said, “You don’t have a job for me?”
“We do, don’t worry about that,” Janet said, “Bright Futures intends to start up a daughter company, and break into the paramilitary market. If what you said during your first interview was true, I think you would make for a valuable asset. Ah, how rude of me. I never caught your name.”
“I’m the fighter,” the man said.
“Well, we can pay you under an alias,” Janet said, stepping into the elevator, “Just know that you’ll need to set up a bank account under that alias.”
“What are you paying me in?” the fighter asked, bristling as he stepped into the elevator.
“Typically, we pay in cash using direct wires,” Janet said, “That said, we do hire some eccentric personnel. We can set up a different method of payment if you’d like.”
“I want to be paid in gold,” the fighter said, “And loot. Anything I can carry away from a fight will be mine.”
“That doesn’t leave a lot of room for payment,” Janet said, “We’ll be sending you into delicate situations, military hotzones, and some hostage rescue. I’m no expert, but I doubt you’ll have time to-”
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“I’m not going to work if you’re not going to pay me,” the fighter said.
Janet gave the fighter a sidelong glance. Meeting the fighter had lit the fires of her fantasy, but talking to the fighter had smothered them with a wet blanket. It was quite an odd feeling, and Janet thought that if she didn’t give the fighter too much attention then she could stay in her happy fantasy.
The fighter was not happy. He had been called in for a quest, and he was beginning to think there was no quest. Or pay. How hard was it to say that there was a dragon, or a princess had been kidnapped, or “This is the job, this is the pay, get to work.” Not to mention, this room was awful. There was only one entrance, the walls were thin, and if he was ambushed he’d need to defend the woman.
They couldn’t say how much the pay was, they couldn’t say how they were going to pay him, they couldn’t even say how long the job was expected to take. Was he being conscripted? This felt an awful lot like being conscripted.
The door opened with a soft “ding!” The woman stepped out, gesturing for the fighter to follow.
“I’ll tell the CEO that you’re here,” the woman explained, “The meeting should only last about an hour.”
“What do I do till then?” the fighter asked.
“I don’t know,” Janet said, taking a moment to think, “Catch rats or something?”
“Catch rats” was a term that Janet had heard when she was a supervisor in the warehouse, slang for “look busy” and used when there wasn’t enough work to do. The fighter grunted, pressing a button on the elevator.
People gawked at the fighter as he stalked through offices, meeting rooms and cubicles. Murmurs followed the fighter everywhere he went.
“Who’s that?”
“What’s with the-”
“-Let him in here?”
“It’s him.”
“-Does he have-”
“-we call security?”
The fighter gazed down at people, watching as some looked away, some recorded him on phones, some dared to meet his gaze.
“Catching rats,” the fighter grumbled. He was far too powerful to just catch rats. He hadn’t fought rats in, well, longer than the fighter could remember. It was odd, the fighter could remember trudging around in some awful sewer fighting rats, then marching across mountains into black fortresses fighting terrors from beyond.
Quite a lot had happened in his life, the fighter mused. Still, no matter how much work he had done, there was always more to do.
…
“I caught rats,” the fighter said.
Janet looked at the fighter in disbelief. He had, somehow, grabbed three people, two in a headlock while he dragged the third by the ankle, and pulled them all the way up from the main offices to outside the CEO’s meeting with other shareholders.
It hadn’t even been half an hour.
“You-” Janet said, “You need to let go of those people! What are you doing?”
“You told me to catch rats, and I caught rats,” the fighter explained, “Now, are you going to pay me for this or not?”
“You can’t drag people around like that!” Janet shouted, “Those are our employees!”
“You employ rats?” the fighter asked, “Then why’d you ask me to catch them? Nevermind. If you’re not going to pay me for this, just say so.”
“Put them down,” Janet hissed.
“Fine,” the fighter said, “You’re not going to pay me. I’m not going to work for you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
The fighter threw two of the people aside and snapped the neck of the third person before slamming him to the ground with skull crushing force.
“You-” Janet squawked.
“Get back inside,” the fighter commanded, readying his sword and shield, “I can’t guarantee your safety if you stay here!”
“What?” Jane cried, “What are you-”
The dead man’s head twisted around, turning to face the fighter. Janet watched as the corpse’s skin turned to a greasy, gray liquid. She watched as his limbs turned to tendrils and his eyes turned glassy and black.
The other two did the same, their bodies flowing like water.
The fighter’s sword erupted with fire, and he leapt forward, driving the blade through one of the aliens. The alien howled in pain, its body boiling with the heat. The other two aliens leapt at the fighter, one splashing against the fighter’s shield bash while the other coiled around the fighter’s arm.
The burning alien flowed away from the sword, the fighter scraping off the alien on his arm, and lashed the fighter across the face with a wicked sharp tendril. The fighter tucked his head down, the tendril crashing across his helmet. The fighter whipped around, shield raised as more tendrils cut through the air behind him. One slammed against the shield while the fighter cut through the other.
One of the aliens slithered up the fighter’s back, flowing over the fighter’s mouth and nose just as he took a breath. The fighter tried to bite through the alien as it flowed into his mouth, but the viscous flesh wrapped around the fighter’s teeth.
The fighter lunged at one of the aliens, working with what little oxygen he had left. The creature howled in fury, tendrils ripping through furniture and plaster walls as it challenged the fighter. The fighter weaved through the onslaught, ramming his sword into the alien. The sword burned through the creature’s oily flesh, and as it backed away the fighter flung his shield through its legs.
The fighter held his sword in the alien until it was nothing more than a scorch mark on the marble tile. When he turned to face the other alien, the fighter noticed it was talking to someone using some kind of scrying bead. It was, the fighter realized, as good a time as any to kill another shapeshifter.
The fighter tilted his head back and opened his mouth wide. The shapeshifter had pulled itself into his lungs, which was a problem. Still, it was nothing the fighter hadn’t dealt with before. Taking Wedblock’s burning blade in his hands, the fighter slowly dropped the sword into his open mouth. The shapeshifter balked at this.
The shapeshifter inside of the fighter panicked at this, watching the sword slowly drift down into it. The shapeshifter bubbled and boiled in the fighter’s lungs, surging up to escape. The fighter bit down on the flat of Wedblock, pinning the creature in place. Muffled shrieks could be heard as the shapeshifter tried to escape from the sword, dropping into the fighter’s stomach, only for the fighter to let the sword slide down further.
Eventually, the shapeshifter had had enough, and the fighter puked up its burning corpse.
The last shapeshifter spoke something into the scrying bead, then put it away.
“On my planet,” the shapeshifter said, its voice a quiet, breathy wail, “In my military, we have a saying. Do not die alone.”
“Not bad,” the fighter remarked.
The shapeshifter tackled the fighter, one of its tendrils wrapping around the fighter’s leg as he cut down one aiming for his arm.
The shapeshifter lifted the fighter up and dove through the air, slamming both of them into the far window. The window shattered, glass shards spraying across the street as the fighter and the shapeshifter tumbled through the air.
“I have a better saying,” the fighter said, his voice ringing out over the rush of air, “Do not die.”
The fighter snapped up the shapeshifter and spun it over his head, stretching the thing out as it whipped through the air.
Below the fighter was a street light, and this was good. The fighter noted it for the long top part, an easy target for his makeshift whip. The fighter would wrap the shapeshifter around the pole, and then swing heroically through the air.
Everyone loved a good heroic swing, the wind in your hair, the swell in your heart. The fighter swung the shapeshifter around the street light and-
The street light sheared apart when it caught the fighter’s armored bulk, and the fighter landed in a small crater. Then the shapeshifter boiled away. Then glass shards landed on the fighter.
Then the fighter stood up. He picked up the broken piece of street light.
“Hollow,” the fighter grumbled, “Does nobody here appreciate a good heroic swing? Ugh.”
The fighter quickly left to rejoin the cleric and the rogue.
“So, what was the job?” the rogue asked.
“They wanted me to catch rats,” the fighter said, “And they didn’t pay.”
“Well that’s rotten,” the cleric said, “Don’t these people know the importance of paying work? Honestly.”
“They don’t know the importance of a good heroic swing, that’s for sure,” the fighter said.
“No,” the cleric said, “Tell me they didn’t!”
“Take a look at this,” the fighter said, passing the broken street light to the cleric, “It’s hollow.”
“And cheap steel,” the rogue noted, “No wonder they didn’t pay you. These people can’t even afford solid posts.”
“I think we’re done here,” the fighter said, “Contact the others, tell them we’re returning to our base.”
...
Janet screamed, her hands still clamped over her mouth. She had not, as the fighter had recommended, walked back into the meeting room. She had seen people, coworkers she had known for years, turn into those- those awful things! She had seen the fighter turn into a complete maniac and swallow a burning sword! She had seen the carnage the fighter had wrought! The carnage the monsters had wrought! All of a sudden, quiet nights at home seemed so much more appealing than grand adventure on the high seas with attractive, muscular men.