Fiona took great pleasure in the fact that these guys made it easy, where the attackers could only come at them from effectively two directions. So, dealing with Rock should be easy, when she tossed the coin purse with the gentlest of tosses--and it screamed at him like an unkind golden missile.
He must never have realized how much this was going to hurt, because the coin impacted like a fist of the north star, and he was sent reeling into the wall a few meters away, cracking the brownstone bricks. He collapsed on the ground, groaning.
That was going to leave a bruise in the morning. The second and third guy jumped into the fray with a burst of magical speed–these guys were not so dum-dums after all, and taking out the leader clearly didn't crush morale. She grappled with the catfolk, wishing she had the biggest water gun of all time to put this little furball in his place!
Greg beside her was grappling with the other assailant, using fisticuffs to punch, lurch to the side of a particularly nasty short sword, and dodge the following strike with grace. Greg wasn’t strong, but he was limber, and quickly disarmed the woman before smacking her into the nearby wall, dazing her. He brought a Jackie Chan level of grace to the fight, grabbed a trash lid from a nearby refuse pile, and bashed her with it, the lid making a distinct gong sound. And, he even had time to adjust his tie, too!
Ties were not meant for street fighting at all, no matter how cool they looked. The catfolk tried to slash at her, and she lurched to the right, forcing his hand wide and running his claws against the wall in an ear-grating sound of nails on a brickboard. Everyone winced, as did the cat, who now was properly declawed. She landed a solid kick to give space, then shifted the coins to her palm. “Hey, I think I overpaid for these services! Nah you know what, this is my money-back guarantee!”
She flung the gold coins like tiny little coiniukens, hitting the catfolk in the chest, the nose, his jaw, and another one in the torso, doubling him over and causing him to wheeze, on the ground and at her utter mercy. “Greg, how are you doing over there?”
“The situation is handled,” he said stiffly, before he glared accusingly at a torn collar. “Though, my attire has suffered some consequence.”
All three assailants were down, and Fiona leaned down at the man grabbing his chest, looking nonplussed. “Look Rock, your services are kinda sucky. Don’t they teach you that crime doesn’t pay?”
“Oh, got a feisty one, do we?” he glared back up, and whistled with his fingers. “Okay boys, got ourselves one elf who can’t shut her trap, so let’s up the difficulty, shall we?”
Half a dozen more assailants came in through a second-floor balcony like ninjas. But she was in a fantasy world, why were ninjas here? She had to admit, they still stood no chance against her.
She grabbed some of the coins from her now-busted purse, and eyed them all with disgust. “Look, creeps, this is getting awkward. Like the door-to-door used car salesman who won't take 'no' for an answer. Go with peace, young folk! Or you know, get stomped on by me. Your call.”
“Um…is that…” one young man, no older than his mid-teens gasped, and pointed at her. “You idiots! That’s the hero of Fiefdala, who wiped the floor against the dragon army! Hell with this, I’m going home, and going back to school!”
“Uh–I uh–I forgot a very important appointment!” another girl stammered before darting back the same way the first kid came. Thus began a deluge of excuses of ‘It was a dare, they made me do it!’ to someone leaving their automaton running, and they totally took a wrong turn down the alley looking for a bathroom.
She knew the score: the only three too stupid to continue were the ones picking themselves off the ground, now standing shoulder to shoulder. “Ket, let’s just kill her,” the catfolk snarled. He had several coin-sized welts forming on his face, and he rubbed at his nose.
“Fellas, please. I beat up dragons for fun,” Fiona yawned. “The only thing more deadly than a dragon around these parts is the tax rates around here, that’s the real killer!”
“Ah, forget it, let’s rush her! She can’t take all three of us!” Rock snarled, and all of them drew their weapons again. Greg grabbed his notebook and scratched something into the paper in a quick flourish.
To her amazement, the paper fluttered and then started twisting and growing, like a giant serpent of pulped wood. It quickly wound around the offenders and tethered them together, and they all shouted and tried to cut at the paper. When they grabbed it, they all winced and screamed in pain.
“Oh, will you look at that? Paper cuts across the board,” Greg mused almost playfully. Fiona tried to not laugh, but it was too funny, and she broke down and pointed at them and cackled, while they were utterly miserable and confined. The paper snake wrapped tighter, and they lost their grip on their weapons, all strained together.
“Wanna let me do the honors, Greg?” she asked sweetly. “I’ll aim high, so they don’t bounce into a building.”
“I would normally suggest the town guard,” Greg pushed back with a frown. Meanwhile, Fiona grabbed the bag of equipment and loot intended for the store, and hefted it onto her back. They looked on in surprise. “Oh, ladies and gents, please, don’t ever let us catch you again. A watchman squad will be picking you up from your ill-timed swim in about…oh, five minutes,” he added as he tapped something on his arcane relay with his free hand. “You may proceed, Fiona.”
She grabbed a few coins off the ground, along with the busted purse, and stashed them away in the bag, and only held onto a few. “Well fellas, I’m gonna have to decline your prior offer. I don’t like telemarketers, door-to-door salesmen, or promotions promising me fame and fortune if I donate to a really shady website. Don’t worry about the fare on this flight, this one’s for free,” she added with a polite smile.
She took the spare gold coins, and wrapped them in a ball of paper that wound around them, trailing to the paper bindings. Greg then ripped the trailing page from his notebook, as they all watched Fiona wind up in horror.
“Uh, what swim?” the catfolk asked nervously.
“Oh, the upcoming one,” she added with a manic grin. “Looks like team rocket’s blasting off again!”
She flung the bundled coins sky-high, arching over the street toward the lake to the north of them. The coins flew with incredible speed, and a split second later, the trio was sent screaming skyward, dragged into a trajectory over the streets of Fiefdala. The screams soon grew too distant to hear–or, maybe they had to catch their breath to continue screaming?
"I must comment, Fiona, that the mundane toss of a coin, is indeed super effective," Greg quipped.
Fiona dusted herself off and let out a sigh of delight. “Well, that was fun. I hope I don’t miss the lake with that toss.”
“Fiona…we should probably go talk at the apartment,” Greg said, finally letting out a labored breath and looking fatigued. “Because whatever your merchant class is, is not normal.”
“Are you sure it’s not some kind of beastly magical strength? I work out, Greg,” she proposed. Greg gave her the sullen look, to signify he wasn’t putting up with deflections this time. “Alright, call Bonnie on the way. We’ll talk at my place.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
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Several seconds later…
The trio of criminals saw they were flying in about the most awful way to fly: without wings.
Rock was praying to every god and goddess that they land in the water, and not on land. His prayers were mercifully answered with a graceful dunking into a deep part of the lake–which was freezing this time of year.
His head broke the surface a few seconds later, along with his associates, and he wailed–he had papercuts everywhere! This was both painful and humiliating!
“'Easy mark', you said. 'We’ll take this one to the bank', you said!” The catfolk yowled, and was trying to get out of the water frantically. “I’m soaking wet, I have papercuts, and this water smells like fish,” he hissed, a look of utter disgust crossing his face.
“Uh, what do we tell the cops? Because I see them coming already,” Ket groaned, and she pointed to the shore, where the town guard were hustling in, drawn by the spectacle of three people flying through the air.
“Well, we tell them that we’re very, very sorry, and that we will do community service, and be model citizens after this. Because I don’t have a death wish, ever crossing paths with the Hero of Fiefdala ever again.” Rock sighed, and wrung the water out of his clothes. The town watch were not happy to see them, and he put up his hands in surrender.
“We got a call about someone running an ‘extortion’ service. That you three?” One of the watch members queried while folding their arms, and looking cross.
“We uh… disagreed on a business transaction,” Rock said with a sigh. “I want my legal counsel, by the way.”
“Sure thing. As soon as you no longer smell like fish,” a second watchman replied with a chuckle, and broke out the cuffs. “Sheesh, how did you three end up taking a swim, anyway?”
“A crazy elf chick and a suave-dressed man beat us up, tied us up, and flung us at insane speeds while tethered to a bundle of coins that the elf heaved with ungodly strength?” Ket proposed.
“I think they’re lying,” the first town watchman sighed.
“This is Cepalune, Rick. It ain't the strangest thing to hold true,” the second watchman countered, and cuffed them all. “Ew. Smelling this bad is almost punishment enough for you three.”
“It’s never coming out of my fur!” the catfolk wailed, and indeed, did look like a drowned cat. “Damn you, crazy hot elf chick!”
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Later, at Fiona’s apartment…
Greg was not happy. Fiona could sense it even if he wore the hardest of emotional expressions, after she laid out the details at the clerk’s office. It was almost as hard as having to recount the exact circumstances of how she came to this world. By the time she got to the end, Bonnie had an arm wrapped around her shoulder where they sat on the couch, and Greg’s expression softened.
“This explains a lot. I had a feeling there was much you weren’t telling me in the months preceding this. Your choice of words, different names for things, the lack of knowledge of the classes. You never were taught about them, because you never knew yours was missing.” He let out a frustrated exhale, before pacing back and forth. “You could have counted on us, as your friends, to tell us this and not be judged.”
“Yeah, Greg, in most parts of the universe, when you tell someone you’re reborn after being crushed by a thirty-meter-tall dragon on steroids, you’re called crazy in response!” she countered with a fierce glare. “Not to mention, summons were never brought up until the past week.”
“Because they’re not common. But, they do happen. I should have explained this sooner. I’ll take a knock on the head on that front, because you were being…stubborn.” It was a rare concession from Greg, one that tempered her next response.
“Not anymore. I want to know who brought me here. And why. I feel like they put me smack dab right where I was needed, right before Douglas the Red started wrecking stuff.” She ran her fingers across her temples, rubbing gently. “Greg, the weird part? I still look like me. I mean, sort of. The expansion of certain accessories was kind of a nice boon, but I coulda lived without them. It makes wearing armor a bit of a pain,” she added with emphasis.
Greg opened his mouth to say something, then, reconsidered before pulling out his notebook and pen. A device that was far more than a focal item for him, but a valuable tool, based on his conduct earlier. “Bonnie, now that we are all on the same page, I believe we can trust Jake on this one, to keep this discussion and our queries confidentially. Do you agree?"
"I've always trusted Jake," Bonnie replied sharply. "Yeah, we can let him in on this one."
"Glad we're in alignment. I find that information like this, working its way to Barrimeth Greybeard, would not be favorable to Fiona’s wellbeing and standing. Especially, now that I know precisely why she is so determined to stay.”
“That’s his full name?” Fiona snerked at this. “Damn, Rikkard, you put a giant bully magnet on your kid with that name! No wonder he turned out rotten!"
“It is the wolven word for ‘resolute’, actually,” Greg corrected her. She stopped laughing, if only because Greg treated it with more respect than she would normally. “I don’t share much love for our Regent King, given his use of a law clearly intended to legally harass and extort someone that the King viewed as an adversary two hundred years ago. And, using the dragon’s hoard as a technical definition of historical treasure, to apply the tax.”
“And, I bet he knew this, because he worked in the tax office,” Fiona concluded. “So, he knew how to screw us. If I hadn’t come along, he’d have targeted the whole guild. And that would have ended badly for him.”
“And, this explains your fervor at him initially beyond a rational respone. Not just your anger at being utterly betrayed by the head of state, but that he threatened to take away your entire world,” Greg deduced, his expression of chiseled marble softening and looking more human. “And you already lost that once.”
Fiona gazed at Greg for a good long second, realizing that had to be hard for him to say. She nodded after a few seconds, and let out a shaky sigh. “Greg, I’m just a woman who got thrust to the other side of the cosmos, and barely came out of it with my sanity in one piece. I might be able to smack around giant monsters like nobody’s business, and make a sale on just about anything. But, I am still very much a human being.”
“Elven,” Bonnie corrected. She kept doing that gaze, looking her up and down. “I still don’t see how a cutie like you, with no innate magic in your world, managed to wound a beast that size.”
“I had an exceptional amount of luck,” Fiona answered softly. “I dropped half a building on that mutant lizard with a few scientific fireballs, and an oil tanker abandoned nearby. The debris from the explosion pierced my torso, past the cover I was shielding in. Even if I did manage to kill that thing, I wasn't walking away alive.”
Her hand did drift down to her right flank. She remembered the pain, but there was nothing there but smooth pink skin. And freckles, and she rubbed at the spot uneasily. “Zero for ten, would never recommend transmigration again. But, why me?”
“Well…the gods and goddesses that we know of have been prone to recruiting remarkable individuals from time to time. Zar’ti, Goddess of combat and martial discipline, is one. Venuu’ri, god of love and mischief, has been known to recruit people to help…uh…”
“Get busy?” Fiona suggested with a raised eyebrow, while Bonnie snickered beside her. “Greg, let’s be real, gods and goddesses didn’t exist in my world. Though, given everything I’ve seen in the past six months, I'm pretty sure that I’d believe anything is possible, by this point.”
Bonnie gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Girl, let’s spread this out a bit. What about your class, the Merchant of Fortune? Even Clarke couldn’t tell what class it was, other than Merchant. Why do you think that is?”
Fiona gaped her mouth open, at a loss for an explanation. Then, she went through the thought process like Greg would. Logically. “I was brought back from death. A possible hidden mission from some jacked-up goddess. A vengeful strength against monsters bigger than me. I have a secret class identity? I have weird powers over gold? What’s that add up to?” she pondered these, and then, it hit her. It was utterly absurd.
But, it only added up to one thing.
She jumped for joy and shrilled gleefully. “I’m a magical girl, baby! With trauma packed in, for extra goodness!”
“What’s a ‘magical girl’ exactly?” Greg asked, ever the square. She gave him a dismissive wave.
“Ah, it's an Earth culture thing, you wouldn’t understand just yet. Ah hell yes, evil taxman, you’ve barked up the wrong tree this time!” Fiona roared in triumph, and pumped her fist in the air, while Bonnie laughed.
“I think we should just let her roll with this for a bit, Greg,” she said, while holding her muzzle from laughing too hard. Greg rolled his eyes in response.
“Yes, just like we should ‘roll’ with some of Fiona’s other insane ideas.”
“You love me, Greg. I make money, and good friends,” Fiona assured him with a flashy smile and a reassuring arm around his shoulder.
“Love hurts,” he grunted. “It is a bleeding spectacle of pain upon my soul.”
“Bah, cheer up, we’ll be fine from now on. Man, I should see what else this superpower does–”
“Fiona, we should probably test this very discreetly,” Bonnie cautioned. “From what you told me, gold weighs nothing to you, and you can fling it to low Cepalune orbit. That could be pretty dangerous, for the record.”
Fiona stared blankly at Bonnie, and then a grin emerged. “You know, I don’t think anyone would believe it was me, if I flung a chunk of gold up, and it came smack down through the roof of the palace, and wrecked Beardless’s cushy throne–”
“No, Fiona,” Bonnie and Greg groaned in unison. She pouted only a little at this instant shut-down of a rather cool idea.