The sky is cloudy, the moon is at its highest point. No stars can be observed besides the most shinning ones. A girl in a coat is walking down the street, the fires along it shining on her, casting shadows left and right. One of the fires is constantly attacked by a droplet and evaporated even before reaching it.

Amelia surely is going to kill me for this.

Laughs reach her ears. Raising her eyes, Tomoe catches a group of people down the street, gathered around a dog. The dog barks, and one of the group raises a leg and kicks in retaliation. A whine can be heard.

“Wa’s up you ol’ dog!? Not so tough now eh!?”

Multiple “yeah!” can be heard from the others.

Tomoe reaches them, raises her hand and grabs the kicker by the shoulder. At the same time, she reaches for the badge hanging around her neck.

“Uh!?” starts saying the man, as he stumbles while turning around, revealing an almost complete red face, “Wa? Wa do-” he continues, but then stops, once he set his sight on the badge that Tomoe brought out.

“Crap, a Beheader…” The man mumbles.

“That’s right. If you don’t want any problems, I suggest that you scram.”

“Ugh… sure, sure” says the man, raising his hands “Don’ wana trouble our fea’less Beheader’ nigh. You hear the lady! Les go.” He says while turning back again, only to find himself all alone.

“Wha!?”

“Such loyalty, uh?”

“Those bastards!” says the man, as he continues down the street, losing himself in the night.

A whine can be heard. Tomoe, casting down her eyes, meets the eyes of the dog, now sitting looking at her.

Kneeling, she reaches to his head, as the dog continues to whine.

“What a softy. Why Oscar named you Brutus is way beyond me.”

Another whine, as Brutus actively seeks Tomoe’s hands.

“Did Oscar send you out to get me?”

Silence.

Tomoe knew that dogs couldn’t talk like people do, but to her, this silence felt like he just caught Brutus red-handed… Even so, it is not like she can blame him.

There she was, alone, again, in the death of the night, The light of the moon shrouded by the clouds.

It is about to rain.

She tried to take another breath of air, but her chest suddenly tightened, her breath turned heavy. Biting her lips, she raises her eyes, only to see a long dark road ahead, shadowy figures of the Aquamarines walking up and down the street, Tomoe unable to make the faces of any of them. Her heart, beating fast.

Should I wait for Amelia after all? but she wouldn’t end that thought without her ears being invaded by the sound of rain and thunders. A sudden pressure creeps over her back. Her shoulders stiffen, her mouth opened slightly. Turning her eyes back, she sees the street she just came from, but the end covered in darkness. From the corners of the shadows surrounding her, shining eyes open in pairs, appearing more and more and looking at her back. She turns back to face forward, but she casts her eyes down.

Brutus, who is still in front of her, has been whining the whole time and resorted to a loud bark. Startled, Tomoe falls into a sitting position. Raising her eyes, she snorts and continues to caress him.

Dry, of course, everything is always dry.

Making a wry smile, Tomoe says “You dumb dog, why are you out here all alone?” Then she adds “Gotta have a talk with your owner about this, he will hear a couple of words from that’s for sure.” Raising her eyes to the clouds, she says “go back in first, it is about to rain. Stand beside your owner, I can’t guarantee things will go smoothly, but I’ll give it my all.”

Brutus barks and stand on its four, and goes back with some trouble. After walking for a bit, he enters to a pub on its right.

Tomoe takes a deep breath again, “I will not drown” she whispers, and then resumes her walking.

Rain starts to pour down, a light drizzle that covers the street.

Fires left and right start to go out, all but one. This fire is left up, by someone, also in a coat, that is keeping it alight.

Besides it, there’s only another source of light left on the street. From each droplet that falls on Tomoe, a dim blue light joins it, just before falling back into the ground.

Tomoe stops for a moment in front of the pub that Brutus entered before. Raising her head, the name of the pub greets her back: The One-Eyed Wolf.

A snort escapes Tomoe, moments before she enters the pub.

The smell of the wet dirt mixed with the smell of beer and vomit reach Tomoe’s nose. Dim light reaches Tomoe’s eyes. Right now the pub is in its busiest moment of the day. From the door many customers can be seen sitting on the tables, a group starting to cause a ruckus, another one in the middle of one, and another one with everyone on the ground, sitting, unable to stand. A pub made of pure wood, with tables of wood, chairs of wood, a pretty cranky place, and a slight bit dangerous with all the little flickering fires that are being used to light up the place.

She directs her eyes across the room to the One-Eyed Wolf’s bar, and its owner, currently there, is looking at her back. From all the people in the pub, the owner stands out as the tallest person, wearing a wool brown shirt with black bottoms.

As the owner sighs, he signs her to come.

The girl smiles at the taste of the old times, and with long steps crosses the room and reaches the bar. As she reaches the bar, she catches Brutus already besides it.

“What are you doing here alone?” asks Oscar.

“It is nice to see you, master. It’s been a while.”

“It is good to see you too, but you know what would have been even better? Seeing you with your partner.”

“This is the first time I’m here. It has the right mix of inky and shabby for this area.”

“Not as shabby as your judgment it seems.”

“Come on, master…” Tomoe says as she slouches herself over the bar “all the work I have done recently has been well done. It has been going like that for months now. Have a tiny bit more of faith in me.”

“What I see is that you should have more humility. Stop taking your work from granted.”

“Didn’t know that I was that untrustworthy.”

Oscar turns to the bottles behind him, and stares at them silently. Then, he finally says “it is not about trust. No matter what, each of us have our limits. We can’t handle everything alone.”

As he turns back to her, Tomoe brings out one golden strand of hair from inside the hood and starts playing with it as she says “You shouldn’t send Brutus outside alone.”

“What do you mean?” Oscar replies as he looks at Brutus who is alongside the bar, sleeping.

Tomoe sees Oscar going towards Brutus, then kneeling, disappearing from her sight, and moments later he comes back, with a hand to his mouth.

“Thank you” he says.

“What do you say? Can you repay the favor then?”

Raising an eyebrow, Oscar stares at her for a moment, then says “It is way beyond me why you can’t understand the dangers you are exposing others and yourself to.”

“Please?”

Letting a snicker escape, Oscar answers “Remember girl, I’m not a Beheader anymore. You are here alone.”

Tomoe nods, and then asks “So, are they here?”

“Yes, ” he nods to her left, “table eight. They arrived early and have sit there since then. Drank some beers, but as the night goes on, instead of loosing off they have been more and more tense. It is clear as day, though…”

“Don’t know why they are tensing up?”

“Yes. Something is off. For the many times I have seen this happening around here since little, all the people involved never get this worked up.”

“If you say so, then I can do nothing but agree, but maybe we can take this into our advantage. Can you give me five beers? On the house please.”

“What can you do with five beers? Don’t be naive, wait for Amelia.”

“What can I do with five beers? Ending your little spice trafficking problems, that is, and I can do it right now. Do you want to wait to see the transaction take place and then see them leave like that?”

Oscar ponders the situation, and gives her the five beers, “Show me what are you going to do. You’re in my business after all.”

“The thing is master, your entire life you have been approaching the problematic situation that had raised head on, and that is well and good, but this situation, where I’m surpassed five to one… requires more nuance.” as she says this, she grabs the beers, and little dim blue lights start coming out of her hands and to the beers “With this, I’ll be able to put the situation in my favor.” Says as she smiles to the Oscar.

He stays in silence for a moment. After pondering for a bit, he says “You women and the nasty sneaky ways you come up with.”

“Nothing like that at all” says Tomoe, with a slight blush in her face “this is only an application of your teachings that I came up with.”

“Didn’t expect that passing the torch would look like this.”

“Neither did I.”

“You will still go in alone aren’t you?.”

“Yes.”

“And knowing you, nothing will change your mind.”

After a slight pause, Tomoe answers “I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“Girl… You should leave what happened behind. Look what it has done to you.”

“I know…”

Another silence. Oscar rubs the back of his neck, an uncomfortable look in his face.

Then, finally, he adds “Don’t get yourself killed, girl. Even monsters can die.”

“Thanks for your understanding” says Tomoe, with a smirk in her face.

“Keep in mind, you can’t go on like this. Someday, you will face something that is so out of your control that you’ll not be able to handle alone. In fact, you already had one of those terrible days.”

“That is why master, I must do this alone, so those days don’t come back” Tomoe answers back. Then, she adds “Well, I’m going in.”

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“May Lord Hazuki guide your actions to safe port.”

Tomoe proceeds to take off her coat, in order to reveal the figure of a slender woman with wavy blond hair. A single one-piece dress wraps around her, with a leather belt tied to her waist and visible leather boots. At the light of the candles her silhouette can be devised, only to reveal some sort of leather pants and two short swords, one to each side. Then she takes the beers, and goes to table eight, right behind her.

As she turns back with the beers, she notices that some heads have turned, including some of the guys in table eight.

“Well, this is going to make it a bit easier at the very least” She whispers.

As she comes closer to table eight, she uses shorter steps, accentuates the curvature of her waist, pushes her breasts together, and focuses on waving her hips, all of this with a smile on her face.

“Hi there guys!” she says as she gets to the table.

“Hi there precious” the rough muscular one speaks “what’s a babe like you here for?”

“You see, I’m friends with the owner, and he told me how the night was going great for the One-Eyed Wolf until you guys in this table turned into a funerary. So serious and stiff, in fact so much that it is starting to affect the other customers.”

“Did we really look like that?” the thin one spoke this time.

“Yeah, ” answered Tomoe with a smile on her face “That’s why he asked me if I could do him the favor of lightening you up with my company! And here: five beers for each one of you.” Says as she elevates them at the height of her breasts, between them.

“Hohoho, then we may very well enjoy it then! come, come, sit down!” spoke the rough muscular one.

“We might need more beers, five won’t be enough!” spoke this time the one with the strange teeth and big ears.

“Oh please, get as many beers as you want, that would make the owner feel very satisfied” Tomoe said.

“We will, we will! As thanks for sending us his friend to keep the lonely us company.” Spoke the thing one.

“Let me get one chair and we will get to drinking and forget the stress of daily life” Said Tomoe. As she was about to search for a chair, a man in the table next to the eight gave one of its chairs to her while saying “Please, light these gals up. I haven’t started drinking yet and they are already ruining the taste of the beer!”

“Don’t worry, leave ‘em to me.” Tomoe says, as she glances at his table and sees seven empty jars of beer on the table.

As Tomoe sits at table eight, the guys each take a beer, and suddenly notice something “Aren’t you going to have a beer too?”

“These beers are for you guys, you’re the ones that look that are in a graveyard”

“Maybe we are, maybe we are” said the rough muscular one, then he added “bottoms up?”

“You got it!”

“Cheers!” they said, as the give beers streaked with each other in the air, and each one proceeded to gulp down the beer the faster they could.

As they were doing this, a smug was drawn on Tomoe’s face, that was sitting there, supporting her head with her right hand.

“Guys?”

The thin one was the first one that gave up, unable to gulp the beer in one go, “Yeah?” he answered.

“We need to talk.”

As she said this, suddenly, the five of them tensed up. A thin trail of blood came out of their mouths.

“You will only speak when I tell you so, and only the one I give permission to do so. Other than that, stay shut. Nod… gently, if you understand.”

And there were the five nods that she wanted.

“Good. So…” Tomoe said as she saw each of the five-man that where there “The thing is guys, I’m a Beheader, and we got told by a little birdie that tonight, here in the One-Eyed Wolf, an illegal transaction concerning trafficking of spices was going down. We have already identified that everyone here in this table is involved in with it. So… who is the leader? Point him to me.”

The thin guy was shaking, the rough muscular one raised his arm, and pointed to the short black one, the one that was holding a big sealed bag.

“You’re the leader eh? Open your mouth.”

As he did, everyone in the table got to see what they had in their mouth: Somehow, a ball of frozen beer had formed inside their mouths, with a lot of needles pointing outward, hurting the short black guy. Tomoe raised her hand, and with a little twist of her wrist, the ball turned back into a liquid.

“You’re the brains of this little operation?”

“The gal you have girl, you bitch. A Beheader and a Water tamer on top of that.”

“Good to finally see your true colors, but I asked you a question.”

“Yes, yes, it is me, madam” adding the last word with sarcasm.

“Good. I assume you already know that trafficking of spices is illegal here in Aquamarine Port City. Every process of buying and selling must be done at the Merchants Guild, for the proper follow-up procedures to take place. The fact that you have gone all the way to make this happens means two things: one, you are going to get a far better price than what you would get in the Merchant’s Guild, and two, the buyer doesn’t want to be seen buying a large quantities of spices.”

“For a bitch, you have some brains inside there, what a surprise.”

“Thank you for the compliment. Since you haven’t denied anything, why don’t we jump ahead many steps and tell me what I want to know?”

The small black man sees at the other four, with a slight bit of blood still coming out of their mouths. After some moments of thinking, he answers “fire ahead.”

“In the cases of illegal trafficking of spice, the ones that do the selling always do so because of the opportunity for a large profit, more than what they can get at the Merchant’s Guild. In the records that go all the way to the time that cold war started, in every crime of illegal trafficking, the seller has noted to have this motive.” She stops, sees the five men in front of her, and then continues “I feel the case this time around isn’t different. But there’s always the other side of this crime, the one that buys. Motives vary from revenge to destabilize the economy of Aquamarine Port City, the buyer in these cases have always varied.” She made silence.

“You want to know who is our buyer then?”

“That is correct.”

The short black man went deep in thought, then sighed “We don’t know.”

Tomoe visibly reacted, then breathed in, then out, slowly “How so? Remember that this may well be the difference from jail to beheading.”

“Don’t need to take out the whip, girl” answered back the short black man “He never told us his name, and I have honestly never seen him around here, nor in the lower slums of the city.”

“Now that’s puzzling.” Tomoe went deep in thought, then asked “Any hint from where he could be? Man? Woman? Color of his skin? Clothes?”

“He was a man, his skin was oddly brown, but it was really dark where we met so I can be sure. His clothes… were weird.”

“How so?”

“Can’t say for sure girl, they didn’t look like the clothes us Aquamarines use here.”

“Now that’s weird. Anything else? What about a name?”

Once again, the short man went into deep thought, “it was something weird too” putting a hand on his chin, he sat there.

“So?”

“It is weird as I told you, ” said the short man after thinking it through “the only thing he told us, right there, right now, and strangely enough to me right now, is that he told us that we could call him ‘Fire tamer’”

A strange sensation ran through Tomoe’s stomach, making pressure inward “Fire tamer? Like, Water tamer, but instead of water, fire?”

“Beats me girl, we just got a way to call him, and a deal that if we did this, we would gain a lot of power in some day, nothing else. We didn’t see any of the fancy use of Aura like you Beheaders are giving the chance to have.”

At this very moment, a figure in a coat reaches for the back of the man. The hood covered this person’s eyes.

An uneasiness took hold of Tomoe, this figure came right out of nowhere.

A rough voice came out of the figure’s mouth, revealing him to be a man “I’m sorry to have eavesdropped you right now, but I have heard something really interesting and had to come close.”

The short man looked upward, the hooded figure was standing up next to him, “Wait a moment, aren’t yo-” but the hooded figure put his hand on the short man’s mouth, and said “Woman, I was going by and happened to hear something about a ‘Fire tamer’, right?”

“Yeah?…” Said Tomoe, as she was starting to get up.

The hooded man made a pause, then he added “Have you ever seen a wildfire in action?…”

From the usual lively atmosphere in the pub, Tomoe went silent, feeling the sweats starting to appear in her forehead.

A smug appeared in the hooded man’s face, and he added “Sorry woman, can’t let you go now.”

Tomoe was so occupied looking at the man’s face, that she didn’t notice that he reached for the big bag full of spice, and turned all of them into flames. A sudden increase in temperature happened, and an expansive wave of flames and hot air-launched everyone to the walls, catching the pub on fire.

Tomoe was still there, with her defense up. Blue light was in front of her, having acted as a defense against the flames.

The hooded man stepped back, with the bodies of the five-man now roasted and burning out beside him “A blue aura?!” he said, as he started to gather the flames that were burning the pub down, now between his hands.

“Take the bastard out of here!” Tomoe heard Oscar yell from behind him.

“As you wish!” She said as she started to manifest more Blue Aura out of her body.