A lot of things happen very quickly in the first six seconds. It's still hard to believe how much of it I caught, with my brain somehow managing to slice each of those seconds into what I can't help but think of as sixty frames.

Sekhmet catapults themselves from their perch in the trees, throwing themself and a fistful of leaves at a girl - and it is a teenage girl, with a pistol, a breastplate, and now a look of terror. She raises the pistol hand to block as Sekhmet lands, skids, and fires off three shots from their shortbow in rapid succession. Each find their mark - the shoulder of the girl, another at an older female archer hidden in a copse of trees further up, and the lucky third in the arm of the man now probably double-checking his math.

"Think fast," Sekhmet says, sometime during all of this. I'm not sure when.

But with two wounded and tightly clustered together, I see a chance to thin them out. Immediately I plant your feet, gather energy, and ki-ai, and my breath turns to whipping winds cupped in the two palms of my hands as I shoot them forward in the classic fireball stance. A Gale Blast rips through the girl and the archer, lifting them off their feet and then down, and out.

I jog backwards before turning, muttering my second spell and slapping Ace's shoulder with a glowing rune while she tenses to spring forward. Zephyr's Grace. Additional speed that she's probably going to need, given the direction she's pointing: Towards another cluster of foes, in the field to the cart's port side.

"You know this dance by now," I tell Ace.

She grins, and blurs.

A young bandit in full armor manages to raise his shield in time, Ace's new battle-axe striking sparks off of it. But the others in the path of her cleaving whirlwind attack are not so lucky, and she uses the momentum to flip off the armored one's shield and carve a swath through a maceman, an archer and a man with a flintlock, forcing a fifth bandit - in a straw hat, with a rod - to duck behind a branch that catches Ace's ax, instead of her face. Ace wrenches it free and bellows a warcry, setting the shaft of her axe on her shoulder again, ears and eyes darting around for threats.

"FORGETTING SOMEONE, BIG BOY!?" Ace snarls.

"Braggart!" the man with the shield says, spinning and lunging with his sword. It's a clumsy strike, and Ace's duck - while equally clumsy - makes the sword bounce off the broad side of her axe's head.

It's about then that the gun goes off. I turn to see the man leading these bandits, who Sekhmet wounded, pointing his smoking pistol at Sekhmet - returning the favor. Sekhmet doesn't cry out, but they do clap a hand to their bow arm, wincing, and blood drips through their fingers.

There's a second gunshot, in Ace's direction, but you see the bullet splinter a tree instead of Ace's armor.

Alesha stands on top of the cart, shielding our teamster in Tayeb, hand on her sword hilt. "Everything's going to plan," she says - and though it's not yelling, it carries, it reverberates. "Deedee, you're in position - use it!"

I nod, taking a breath, centering myself. This is nothing I can't handle. None of them can even dare approach the cart.

"I do not aim with my point, for she who aims with her point has forgotten the face of her mother," I hear Siobhan murmur - and grin, a little, at that bit of earthside lore you have in common.

She releases the string of her longbow.

"I aim with my eye," she roars, as the arrow glides effortlessly through the air into the gap between the shoulder plate and chest guard of the armored guy on Ace. 

"GOTTEM!" Sio whoops.

This is the cue for two arrows from opposite sides of the battlefield to strike a gap in Ace's side armor and another on her unarmored knee. Grazes, but they look painful; Ace glares at the archer girl backing away from her as fast as accuracy allows.

Hikaru chooses this moment to flip open his grimoire and chant a new, unfamiliar spell in the dog-Latin of this world. One gesture, and a runic circle appears before his hand - and the field to his left, behind the armored one on Ace. A second - and a shouted word - and two blue spheres rocket through the circle at his hand, blinking to the one hanging in the air and into the shield of that man - as the other slams into his back, as he lunges to cover the bandit maceman next to him. The force of the elfshot barrage nearly knocks him over; it would have, if the maceman hadn't held him up.

"In nomine Aurora," the maceman hisses, cupping the armored one's face in his hand and returning some color to his face, "CASTIGO TE!"

He whips his mace in Ace's direction, like a sling, lobbing a pink and gold sunbeam where she was half a second... no, three-five frames, my perception is playing tricks on me... ago.

Which is all the distraction the mage woman needs to lunge with a coldly glittering rod, tagging Ace's unarmored thigh and freezing it and her black sabaton to the ground before retreating.

"Motherfucker!" Ace snarls, struggling - before a WHOOMP! catches all of our attention.

Another mage leapt at Sekhmet, to throw a fireball at them - it detonated in midair, setting the grass before her on fire.

(And that's 6 seconds, a part of me thinks, 360 frames.)

Before her, because she grins and holds up an arm full of glittering, warded bracelets, and the fire parts as Sekhmet steps through it.

"You're seriously getting closer to me? So I can beat your ass that much quicker?" they say, grinning.

"Out - out of our way," the mage blusters.

"My morning coffee burned worse than that," Sekhmet says, flowing past him. Her shortswords flash, and suddenly she's standing behind where the bandit leader was - with another pistolero downed, one sword in the side of the leader's bodyguard, and the other caught on his shield. The bodyguard slashes, and his sword draws sparks against a ward, a gemstone on Sekhmet's bracelet exploding; they step back, disengaging their blades.

"Hey asshole," Ace says.

The mage girl who froze her looks up into her face as she kicks her, shattering the rest of the ice off her boot. Ace grips her axe like a baseball bat, whirling it around to the hammer-headed counterweight.

"Bon voyage," she says, as she slams the mage with enough force to send her tumbling into the maceman and healer near Sekhmet's little tangle of trees, knocking the wind out of both and sending her sprawling.

Leaving both the armored bandit on Ace and his pocket healer distracted.

I launch myself, gauntleted claws out, into a spin kick followed by a flurry of swipes, forcing the healer to back off and hammering at the armored man, cracking a chunk off his mostly wooden shield and slashing at his bare legs to great effect.

He howls, and leaps into your belly shield first, throwing his weight into you and -

Crack!

I'm dazed, for a moment. That wasn't a good sound - it was my back against a large boulder next to the road. My vision swims for a moment - enough time to see the same happen to Sekhmet, slammed into a tree by the bandit leader's bodyguard.

But the bandit leader looks around, sees an unconscious archer and two unconscious gunners - downed in less than six seconds - and revises his math. He runs, loading his gun with a paper cap of powder down the muzzle and then another ball, wheeling to backpedal towards a tree in the distance down the road, slumping against it, one arm flopping.

"Your boss just bailed," Sekhmet observes, as conversationally as the strain in their voice allows.

Alesha's eyes dart towards mine, and she bites her lip and considers the range - but shakes her head. The cart is approaching the rock you're against, but she can't abandon the objective. Instead, she shifts her shield and turns to Siobhan.

"Great shot," she says. "Another!"

"Gee, thanks, Mom," Sio says, grinning as she notches another arrow. "I do not kill with my bow, for she who kills with her bow has forgotten the face of her mothers -"

The armored bandit on you backpedals and raises his shield; you gasp and let yourself lean, sliding, against the boulder.

Alesha levels her sword at him, a very clear order: feather me yon oafe.

Siobhan looses the arrow.

I swear that you see it grow more fletching - leaves, a pink rosebud - adjusting its flight path.

The bandit sets his stance and grins a second before the arrow impacts the shield. And stops grinning as it keeps going, pinning his shield, arm, and heart together.

"I kill with my heart, motherfucker," Sio says.

The armored bandit teeters and falls, the arrowhead poking through his back popping off as a rose blooms there. Sio went all-in on the Thornite druidic third of the Ranger skill tree, apparently.

"So that's where the woods come from," I say in a daze.

"Maybe," Sio allows.

The bandit archers see this, and decide - wisely - to fall back along with their leader. But their retreat is more disciplined, and they loose arrows as they fall back - Sekhmet ducking a lazy shot while a more precise one finds a gap in Ace's shoulder plate.

I wince but there's nothing I can do for her right now; between the concussion and the new pills I'm kind of wobbling on my feet.

Hikaru sweeps his eyes from the skirmish in the field - the one we've essentially won - to the one in the trees, where Sekhmet is still badly outnumbered. He sweeps his hand after it, and the magic circle before it, and its mirror on the field before his hand - near the treeline. He takes his staff and sets eyes on a point between most of the enemy still fighting.

"Accende," he commands, and suddenly that copse of woods and everything in it is on fire.

The remaining bandit casters decide this is as good a reason as any to join the general retreat, and focus attention on running and healing - though the male mage tries to ice Sekhmet with a parting shot she ably dodges, and Ace stiffens as the girl flings an arc of lightning at her - but only for a moment.

Ace leans on her axe, but is all right, for some values of alright.

Another 6 seconds.

Sekhmet tilts her head to the remaining foes, then jerks it and her thumb towards the distant treeline their leader retreated to.

"Might want to head thataway," they say.

The armored one in melee with Sekhmet looks at them.

Then sheaths his sword and nods.

"You've proven you're more than our equals," he says through gritted teeth. "No trouble for no trouble."

"Glad we're all sensible," agrees a new voice from the distance.

"Who the fucking-" Ace, and you, whip your heads towards the source.

---

There's a vulpecian standing on the tallest branch of the tallest tree that the bandits have been retreating towards, decked out in hard boiled leather armor with a truly ludicrous feathered cap and a Lincoln-green cloak. He leans on a longbow and waves, his tail wagging along with him.

He extremely radiates player character energy and I hate it.

A furious Siobhan immediately moves to notch another arrow before Alesha moves her sword down to cut that off. Another silent order: parley first, violence later.

"I'm guessing you're not Sylphan gracing us with a visit," I mutter.

"He wishes," Sio snarls.

"Everyone is foxes this expansion, huh," Sekhmet mutters.

"To hear the forums complain, AWO was always drowning in fluffy tail," Hikaru groans. "Don't you start too. They're popular enough to be anonymous."

The Vulpecian, who heard none of us, sweeps his hand across the western fork of the road ahead. "You're not headed down the western road to Rio Azul, I hope?"

I sigh, and then climb on top of the rock so my voice can carry better. And definitely not because I have Tall Envy.

"How's the tree?" I yell, projecting like I'm on stage.

"Quite tall, I like it," the Vulpecian Adventurer says. "A good vantage point - I got what I came for. Let my crew collect our wounded and retreat and I promise we'll leave you alone - and they'll neither bleed more, nor starve, for their trouble."

I glance at Sio and she's furious.  Which seems like an odd reaction.

"I take it that you weren't here for murder and highway robbery," Hikaru says, using his staff as a magical microphone.

"You'd think, but nah," the Vulpecian says. "They wanted me to keep an eye on Adventurers travelling north. And had pictures of a group looking like yours."

"We were expected, huh?" Ace snarls.

"Yep. For what it's worth, I like the new look better than the one in your bounty picture," the Vulpecian says, shrugging.

"Fuck off," Ace says, wincing as she shoulders her axe. You wince too, for that matter; she took a beating. "Guess Hikaru gets to hate being right."

Hikaru's muffled response is probably profane.

The vulpecian plucks an apple from his tree, inspecting it, before polishing it on his cloak. "I dunno why they're paying for me to report your movements, but they paid enough to not ask why - and not enough not to warn you after you kicked my men's asses."

The bandit leader grumbles and holds his arms... as one of the healers tends to him, proving his employer right.

"You've got some strange loopholes in your contract," Sekhmet says.

Siobhan hops up to my rock. "Who sent you?" she asks, pointing.

"Paid me not to ask," the vulpecian says, before crunching his apple. "Although - under the cloak, the vulp woman who came to me was doing her best to look like she'd walked off a Dreamcatcher set, gumiho chic and all. Can't have been easy with non canon glams restricted but by God, she was going to try."

It's clear from Tayeb's expression that he'd been following along until that last bit of gobbledygook, and he looks at Alesha with a baffled expression. Alesha sighs and sits down next to him, doing her best to explain.

"So not a local," Ace says, folding her arms and scowling.

"Absolutely not," the Vulpecian agrees.

"Good to know," Sio hisses, and you turn to look at her.

"But she talked like she was repping a group," the Vulpecian warns. "Maybe a party, maybe an FC, maybe something unofficial. And I don't know who else they hired, and there are other villages they could have stopped by. So, you know. We won't bother you again. Doesn't mean there's not more trouble down the road."

He unbuckles something from under his cloak - and then throws it.

Sekhmet catches it, twisting the strap around their arm.

It's a potion bandolier. Six pink vials. Healing potions for a party.

"Nice catch, Sekh," I say.

"No hard feelings?" the Vulpecian asks.

I sigh. "I don't see what a grudge will get either of us. No hard feelings, go in peace."

"Speak for yourself. Even if we let you go I'm gonna hold on to a few hard feelings," Sekh grumbles, as they put on the bandolier.

"That's fair," the Vulpecian says. "Look me up later, if you need another bow. Call me Guy Fox."

Ace facepalms, muttering something under her breath. I really couldn't blame her.

Guy let himself fall, catching the branch with his ankles, and then dropping into the brush, unseen. There's a soft pop, a crackle of energy and a distinctive hum, and then the fallen near us are gone - Town Portal'd, from the sound of it.

"I could have shot him," Sio says. "I should have."

"And miss all that extremely concerning intelligence? I don't blame you, but what we got was worth a truce," Hikaru says.

"And it's not like we know any players who have a grudge against us, oh wait," I mutter.

"It's not far to the next camp," Tayeb says, sighing. "We should stop and heal there, not press on into the dark with wounds like that - sustained in my name, I note."

"Had a job," Ace says. "Did it."

"I'll take your place," Alesha says, wincing. "You can ride on the cart for now."

"My own wounds aren't bad," I say. "I'll keep the patrol till camp. Then, uh, get to healing."

Sio looks like she's about to say something, then thinks better of it. "We can't navigate through the Neverneverglades by dark, so we may as well stop there and go on in the morning," she says. "We'll need meat to recover. I'll get it."

So resolved, with Alesha taking Ace's place, we marched onward - and I occasionally looked back at the cart. To Ace grinning and trying to bear it - and to the pixie girl in our party who was so very outraged at the adventurer who hired the Mundane bandits that attacked us.