There are kids in one room labeled "treasure," and this is when I'm very sure that the Gods here won't mind us cracking the skulls of the people keeping them there.

Adults, too, of each of the kiths: mostly humans and fellown foxfolk, but the occasional towering scaley Koboldt in irons, or ubast with drooping whiskers, or diminutive Pixie. There's a rainbow of skintones and facial features, too. At a glance, it's easy to tell that a lot of them are very, very tired and hungry. 

And they blink, and cringe, at my approach.

There isn't much I can do about that, but I do shatter the locks on their manacles with a kick.

One of them, a human teenage girl with olive skin, looks directly at me after I free her. 

"You're not with the other Adventurers?" she asks.

"Fuck those guys," I say. 

I get all the locks - a long, labor-intensive process - then step back.

"I'm here to get you home. All of you," I say to the crowd, pointing out the front door. "Guards are gone, we're getting you out of here and home, move it!"

"That's... I don't know where home is from here," she says.

I sigh. 

"Where are you from? What's your name?" I ask, crouching down to her level.

After a moment, she decides to tell me. 

"Shadi," she says. "Shadi bin'Tayeb Rahman. I came here from Viacruz to sell cloth, and -"

I offer a shoulder to cry on. 

"A ship back to Viacruz is coming," I tell her. "I'm on my way there myself. If you're very fast, we might be able to get the stuff they stole from you before we get out. Be quick."

She rubs her wrists, then her ankles, then hugs me - once, hard, leaving me blinking and slow to hug back - before she heads out along with the others. 

I take a moment, before heading out along with the rest of the prisoners.

And am only just in time to block some kind of spell with my face. 

---

My head swims and I drop to one knee. It burns, whatever I was hit with -

A hideous, strangled battlecry and the woman it came from flying towards the one what did it to me snaps me to my senses.   I grit my teeth and call on Cleansing Winds. The paralytic, necrotoxic venom in my system flushes in an instant and I rise to my full height, placing myself between the foe and the escaping prisoners.

"Stay on the coast, up to the town of Costa Dulce, we'll stop them here!" Alesha says, striding up past me with Hikaru in tow.

"I am really sick of your face," comes the snarled response of -

- I just met someone who looks more ridiculous than Ace, if only barely. This joker twirls into battle in a steel-plated dress over very pink and green and cream colored robes. Her hair is blonde and up in twin tails.  

The design of her strawberry-topped scepter is, apparently, canon.  And she's shooting poison blasts from it.

"All the things you could pretend to be, and you want to be a slaver," I snarl at her.

"Like you're pretending to be a hero?" she asks, as she gets into an honest-to-goodness batting stance with her goddamn princess wand.

Ace leaps and screams.  The enemy cleric parries Ace's strike, sliding her scepter across it, drawing sparks. Behind her, her companions - in much lower-key, less garish equipment - get off the boat and into position, narrowly avoiding a charge scattering them like tenpins as Ace crashes against a woman in very Conquistador-looking armor.

I hear a snap, see a bubblegum-pink ward flare to life to stop a crossbow bolt inches from Strawberry's thigh, and hear Sekhmet's disappointed "tch" from the bailey behind me.   My ears flicking that direction betray Sekhmet's position to Strawberry Shortfuse. 

I take her angry glare at my newly feline companion as an opening for the only welcome to this world she deserves.

"Kaiser... KICK!"

"What the -"

She sees me descending on her foot first in the instant she has, and spins to parry with that gaudy-ass scepter. 

I actually land on it.  And through it, driving it out of her hands and into her face, sending her sprawling towards Alesha.

I land in a crouch, breathing heavily, muscles burning from exertion. Draw my hand back so a bullet can talk to it, because my body really doesn't want to hear the pistol's thunderous report, a ward of wind blowing it off course. 

And I feel even more tired.

"Keep up the pressure!" Alesha bellows, and a shaft of sunlight illuminates her face, and for a moment I think I can. 

I draw myself up, watching Alesha clash her sword against the vambrace of The Champion Of Strawberries Or Whatever, and rise to my full height again.  I turn to the team of 6 that Ace is trying to keep busy but can't.

Not on her own.

I scream my own incoherent battlecry, leaping into the fray while they're distracted and joining the melee near the docks.  I become a whirlwind of kicks and punches and elbows and knees.

But something is wrong - the archer wheels my fist away, the goth pixie dude with the skull on his rod ducks, and... 

Actually that was a very satisfying kick to the conquistador's chest.  I send her staggering back.

I hear sizzling sounds behind me and hope they're Hikaru trying something.

"Damn, can't deal with a scrub monk, Valerie?" hoots the necropixie.

"Don't. Call. Me. That," the armored conquistador girl snarls, swinging a sword where I was a second ago.

The anime leaping out of range took more out of me than I realized. I'm swaying.

It's hard to think. 

Right now I need to think.

I think I'm going to punt the necromancer into next week so that Sekhmet, slipping behind him, can finish the job.

With a kiai, I spring back into new life and bring my knee into the pixie's stomach; he hovers in midair for one long instant.

And Sekhmet stabs him in the back, and twists.

I look away and grit my teeth and even now, I hope that guy wakes up in a cathedral two days later, unharmed. 

To answer for crimes against the Auroran church, maybe.

The enemy archer looses an arrow.

I grab it.

Not expecting that outcome, or the dopplered yell from Ace, I drop the arrow the moment Ace drops the archer, and look back to Alesha near the door. 

She's in a whirling, furious duel with the Worst Magical Girl, punctuated with flashes of pink and gold; I see Alesha lunge too low, leaving an opening while she recovers from being off balance.

Which the girl in pink exploits to catch Hikaru in the back with a glowing, pink, rose-shaped blast.

I don't even remember using Zephyr's Grace: I was just there in an instant to drop healing on the both of us and stammer something to Hikaru, that he has to wave off as I pull him up. Alesha slams her shield with her sword and says something I can't make out, as I turn to kick the magical girl in the -

Sceptre, apparently.

She smirks.

Hikaru whips his wand at her belly, says one sussurant syllable, and flattens her with a lightning blast.

I drop to my knees. 

"Are you okay...? Are you okay? Are you okay," you murmur to Hikaru, over and over.

"I'm fine thanks to you. Miles should be here soon. Are you alright?" Hikaru asks.

"Never better," I say, grinning.

And then I pass out.