Fuzzy, Rig, Little and Rider – August 24th – Saturday Afternoon – Downtown Tacoma, Seattle Metroplex

After a quick change in the corporate car, Fuzzy donned her hunting leathers and attached her spearknife to her hip in its "safe" blunt form. All she wanted was a walk around the block to clear her head and think about her situation...And Sasha. Holding Sasha's hand, however briefly, made Fuzzy feel warm inside in a way that she couldn't define, but definitely liked.

Fuzzy didn’t want Sasha and Julie to feel guilty about having fun without her. Maybe she could come back in half an hour or so after they'd eaten, though she had no idea how long it actually took to cook an invisible, magic fish. Maybe she could even find something cheap to eat and bring it back. After all, she was hungry.

Before she left, she took stock of her surroundings so she could remember exactly where she was. So she looked up at the building and almost turned on her reading app, but she decided to take her time and try sounding out the word. So she put her new skills to the test instead of immediately using her app.

"Mag...Magi...Cians...Ffff...Feee-ast," she sounded out.

She checked with her reading app and it chirped "Magician's Feast" in her ear. She'd mostly gotten it right except she'd forgotten that the letters E and A together made an E sound. Getting it mostly right was progress though and she'd been told that in just a month or so if she kept progressing like she did then she'd be at a fourth grade reading level. As Julian had told her previously, roughly half of the people in Seattle couldn't even do that. So she felt like she was making excellent progress.

Then she picked a direction and began to walk around the block. Despite how awkward the dinner and Sasha's attempt at a gift had been, Fuzzy was feeling pretty good about herself and since the streets around here weren't particularly busy she began to hum tunelessly. Meanwhile, she counted her steps which was habit when she was in a strange place in case she needed to return somewhere.

Fuzzy passed by a few people who ignored her as well as a wheeled delivery drone that was small enough to be on the sidewalk. Then she turned left, still counting, she again felt good about her choice to strike out on her own for a few minutes. After all, she was used to long hunts alone and being unable to explore a new place did eventually grate on her. Fuzzy liked knowing where she was at all times. If you know where you are, you're never lost, but sometimes you have to get lost in a new place before you know where you are.

And if she got truly lost by some chance then she could simply try and give Sasha a call. After all, Sasha had been very interested in Fuzzy's comm number and without thinking much about it, Fuzzy had given it to her and asked for Sasha's as well. However, her personal pride in her sense of direction would only mean Fuzzy would call Sasha for help only if she truly didn't know where she was. Even then, she'd give it a while before she asked for her out of pride for her ability to navigate.

Then she took another left turn, walked for a while, taking in the tiny magical district of Tacoma. Compared to Downtown Seattle, this seemed genuinely sleepy. Then she took another another turn, noticing basically the same thing. A few people hanging around or going into or out of shops as well as a few drones busily making deliveries, always moving and never stopping.

She checked the time and it'd only been fifteen minutes, so she decided to slow it down a bit. She found a augmented reality street sign, just a pair of green bars with white letters on them denoting as she was at an intersection. And again, Fuzzy spent a few seconds staring at the AR sign, which to someone not also staring into AR, would have caught her staring at absolutely nothing. But staring at nothing was pretty common in a world overstuffed with otherwise invisible augmented reality objects. One street was called Kit’s Corner which she sounded out quickly and this linked up to…En…Canted? No, there was an H in there.

“En-chan-ted,” she sang out, phonetically, “I know that word. That's from school.”

She felt very clever indeed because that was the longest word she'd ever read before and then read all the words she could find on the street, partly out of pleasure and partly just to kill time, checking her work with her app and being correct more times than she wasn't. Several minutes later, with a light heart, she headed back towards what she was pretty sure was the Magician's Feast as the steps she'd counted lined up in her head pretty well.

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However, a few hundred feet from her destination, she heard the sounds of a scuffle in an alley. With reflexes trained by instinct, she hid around a corner and only when she was sure no one saw her, she peeked around the corner and down the alley.

Fuzzy took in the scene in an instant. Someone was on the ground and being kicked by three human men and they all had shaved heads. Two wore pure white, armored jackets, those favored by street toughs and white jeans. The other wore a white tank top and white shorts. Between the similar haircuts, sameness in dress and color and some sort of patch on the shoulder of the two men in armor jackets marked them out as gang members.

"Piece of shit!" snarled the man in the tank top.

"Fucking metatrash trog bitch!" yelled the smaller full gang member.

One of them, the largest, stood back and supervised the rest of the beating while the smaller full gang member and what she assumed was a prospective new member rained blows down on their victim. She couldn’t see the person being kicked, but she assumed from the word "trog" that these humans were beating an ork. The person protected their head with their hands as the white boots of the full gang member and the sneakers of the prospect fell heavily on the ork's stomach, legs, arms and groin. She heard the person’s groans, masculine, low and definitely in pain. And it seemed like the end of the beating was at hand, because the victim had more or less curled into a ball of pain.

That's when her eyes drew down to the victim's dirty uniform, the lack of any weapon and what looked like a shiny, new wicker basket, thrown carelessly to the ground. Strewn about it were colorful flowers, fancy chocolates, a long, dark bottle and a few pieces of fruit. The supervising gang member reached down and picked up a piece of fruit from the alley's floor, inspected it and tossed the apple over his shoulder.

"All right, all right," said the leader, who Fuzzy thought of as Big, "Good warm up on the trog. Now we do what we're here to do. Rider, you want in to Human Nation?"

The gang members stopped beating the ork and yelling, because they'd never stopped. Panting, the prospect in the tank top, apparently Rider, looked back to the leader and slowly nodded. Fuzzy pulled back and out of sight so Rider didn't see her. While she pulled away, she briefly looked for someone, anyone who might help, but she was in a strange place and the sleepy little magical community had no one in sight. She was the only one here. Then she thought about maybe calling Sasha so she could get Beef and Duncan's help.

However, thoughts of this stopped when she looked back down the alleyway. Apparently in the few seconds while she'd looked away. The smaller gang member, who she thought of as "Small", was howling in laughter while Rider pulled something from his pocket. In the dim light of the narrow alleyway, Fuzzy could see the distinct shine of a knife.

“Fuck yeah, Rider. Yeah, fucking do it,” sneered Little.

“Knife this trog and earn your coat,” said Big, with a ritual tone, “Blood in, that’s how it works.”

“Please…” groaned the ork, “Please no…”

“What, can’t have some fun first?” ask Rider.

“Long as you kill him I don’t give a shit,” said the big man, “Quick or painful, I don't give a shit so long as he's dead. But you make sure he's dead. Human Nation doesn’t take pussies.”

Fuzzy's blood ran cold. She knew a gang initiation when she saw it. Some got beat in or burned in. That was violence within the gang. This was different. This was a murder initiation, meaning that a new member needed to murder someone to join. She looked around the street once more, saw no one close, looked back and for a moment she imagined that she'd seem that "Rider" person stab the ork, but realized that the knife still gleamed. No blood. Rider had just slapped the ork with the flat of the blade as the prospective gang member made a game out of the ork's terror.

"Oh, I want to make it slow," said Rider.

"Cut a piece off him," giggled Little, "Take those pointy ears of his."

The ork was being toyed with and in Fuzzy's estimation, Rider was working up to his kill as the other two pushed him to do it. The men laughed and Fuzzy realized that even if she called Sasha and Beef and Duncan arrived, it'd probably be too late. So with teeth gritted, she checked her gear. No bow, but she did have her spearknife currently in its safe form, though it could certainly become unsafe it a moment. It was untested and that made her nervous.

Part of her wanted to go in there and help and part of her didn't want anything to do with this. After all, Rat Man needed his roof fixed because if that didn't happen, her old home would become unlivable for Rat Mat, his son Ignacio and all of the kids that they took care of. She had people depending on her. And besides, they were all bigger than her, two had on armor and they were all almost certainly armed.

If Fuzzy was any other person, she might have called the police, but Fuzzy barely knew what the police were and certainly didn't know how to call them. Part of her wanted to leave, because she could meet her end in that alleyway as well. But the pleading of the man for his life and the laughter of his would be murderers made her tighten her hand around her spearknife in a firm grip.

With a simple command to her commlink, it lengthened from its safer form into a weapon that was long and thin. She stopped thinking and went with her gut, what felt right. So she shoved away doubt, felt her fear, mastered it and burned like fuel to sharpen her senses. She entered the alleyway not as a vigilante or a warrior, but quickly and quietly as a huntress, weapon in hand.