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“Hey, driver lady, stop the car,” Phon shouted from the back seat. She had been quiet for a while, laying back with her eyes closed. It would often be hard to tell if she was taking a nap, or scouting around with her curse. This time, it appeared to be the latter, and she had seen something of interest.

“Getting all high and mighty back there, huh?” Kada protested. “I’m not your personal driver. I’d be more than happy to let one of you take over for a while if any of you were even remotely capable.”

“Whatever, just pull over somewhere,” Phon didn’t appear to be in the mood to argue. “I’m going to go scout ahead, you guys just hang out for a bit.” This wasn’t the first time she had done this, so the rest of them didn’t find it unusual. However, she was gone for longer than normal. About twenty minutes later she popped back into her seat. “Well, this is exciting. It seems that they’re filming an action movie nearby.”

She immediately had the interest of the other three. “Tell you guys what,” Phon continued. “There’s only a bank or two in the next town. Why don’t Kada and I go take care of it, and you two can go check out the filming. Sound good? Okay, have fun.” Before the boys could even respond, Phon had teleported them away to an adventure.

“What the hell, Phon? I wanted to go too!” Kada griped. “The odds of running into something like that out here is super rare. Why’d you have to pick me to drag along? Honestly, couldn’t you have done this by yourself?”

“That’s because you’re going to get to experience something even more rare,” Phon expressed. “I’m going to rely on you.”

◆◆◆

“I see… So that’s the reason then…” Kada had stopped protesting entirely the moment she had been teleported into the town, or rather, what was left of it. Almost every building had been burned, and as for the people, they were all around her. In any direction she looked, there were corpses. Some were mangled, some were defiled, some were burned or broken beyond recognition. Above all else, what she noticed is how quiet it was, eerily quiet. There was no one left, nothing was stirring, it was all just… dead…

“Raiders did this,” Phon announced when she appeared next to Kada. “I’ve hunted a few in my time, but I’ve never seen anything to this degree.”

“Raiders?” Kada wondered. “Aren’t they basically just bandits?”

“No, they are much worse than bandits,” Phon corrected her. “Most bandits just act as highwaymen, robbing rich people who go down their roads. They’re basically just a group of people down on their luck, who have forgotten how to live any other way. They’re a bit rough around the edges, but most will act decently civilized. They rarely kill, but when they do, it’s usually out of necessity.”

“Raiders are at the extreme end of the spectrum. They’re not human anymore, don’t even think of them that way. They pillage any town or group they come across and take everything they own. A lot of times they’ll murder everyone in their path, not for any real reason. Look at these corpses, you can tell they didn’t even try to put up a fight. Those raiders probably just killed them for the fun of it.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” Kada ascertained.

“Yeah, well, when I first was flung across the world, a group of bandits were the first people to find me,” Phon explained. “They were nice people, gave me a bit of food, some new clothes, and sent me on my way. I went to look for them a few months later, after I’d made some money, to try and repay them. Only then did I find out they’d been butchered by a group of raiders. I wasn’t strong enough then, but I didn’t forget. A few years later, the leader of that raider group was my very first bounty.”

“So, why didn’t you want the boys in on this?” Kada questioned. “I’m pretty sure they’d be eager to put a stop to these raiders.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t want them here,” Phon admitted. “When it comes to doing the right thing, those two lose themselves. Xard is basically a paragon of justice. If he sees any injustice, he gets tunnel vision until he corrects it. Drim’s similar, but still a fair bit different. He deals more in absolutes. Most crimes don’t bother him, and he’s fine letting most people sort out their own problems if they’re able. The exception, though, is when he meets someone so evil that he can’t help but take notice. At that point, he can’t turn a blind eye. Whoever did this, could be nothing less than an undeniably absolute evil.”

“So let me ask you, Kada,” Phon stared at her with a serious gaze. “What do you think would happen if those two saw this?”

“There’d… be a massacre…” Kada realized. “Well, another one.”

“Exactly,” Phon agreed. “So, if you want our boys to keep being our boys, we’ll have to handle this one ourselves.”

“I get it,” Kada acknowledged. “Especially with how Drim’s been lately. Well he’s been... not quite himself, I suppose, not really sure how to put it.... More on edge?”

“I believe that’s our mother’s handiwork,” Phon concluded. “Imagine if you were stuck with the person you hated most in the world, all day every day. It’d make anyone agitated.”

“Yeah, that’d be… just awful…” Kada jokingly glared at Phon. “So, did you know about the movie to begin with?”

“No, we just lucked out,” Phon answered. “That’s why I took so long, I had to find something decent to distract them with. The first two options I came across were a flea market and a fishing jamboree. I didn’t think either of those would hold them for any lengthy amount of time so I had to keep looking. That movie was just what we needed.”

◆◆◆

Phon and Kada stared down at the raider’s hideout. The raiders were camped out in what appeared to be an abandoned, rundown prison. Phon had teleported them to the top of a nearby tree for observation. A quick scan gave them an estimate of about 70 raiders, but there were more likely others that they couldn’t see. Wanting to be thorough, Phon used her curse and counted them individually, bringing the total to 91 in all.

“Well, no wonder that town was wiped out,” Phon stated after verifying the total. “With that many of them, they may as well be a small army. So, how do you want to go about this?” she asked Kada. “My normal strategy is to just jump in and slaughter, but I’m good with whatever.”

“Well, I’m gonna be honest,” Kada relayed. “I’m still not exactly on board with killing people myself. I understand that they’re bad, but killing them all doesn’t exactly get me motivated.”

“You know what, I can respect that.” It was a remark from Phon that clearly left Kada surprised. “That little voice in my head that said killing was bad died long ago, but hey, if you’ve still got it, then don’t feel bad. You don’t have to do any of the killing yourself, but I’ll still ask for your assistance. Also, we can give each of them a choice if you want: surrender or die.”

“Okay, I can live with that,” Kada accepted this tactic. “If we give them a clear choice, I think I’d even be alright with doing it myself.”

“Welp, let’s get this started then, shall we?” Despite their rational talk just now, Phon still grew an eager grin on her face. It had been a while now since she had really gotten to let loose. She picked one of the raiders at random, and teleported her up to the tree, standing on the same limb as Phon.

“Hello there, I’m sure you’re confused but I’m going to give you a choice. Surrender or die. If you choose surrender, throw your weapon down on the ground.” The raider grabbed at her axe, and swung it at Phon. Clearly expecting it, Phon teleported behind her. “I see you’ve chosen ‘die’ then,” Phon kicked her in the back, and the raider plummeted to the ground, splattering all over a group of raiders sitting below them.

“Well, I guess that would hold up in court…” Kada mumbled. “So, I don’t have any moral obligation to feel bad… yup, I’m going with that… Okay, well, I think it’d bother me more if I just kept watching, so let’s cause some ruckus!” Kada pulled out her anchor, switched it to its cannon mode, and loaded it up with an orb from her purse. She had prepared a few for an occasion like this, where she wanted to be more annoying than deadly. She fired her anchor down at the crowd, who were gathering by the body, and a mist exploded over all of them. The orb was filled with itching powder, and it clearly took effect.

All of the raiders caught up in the mist immediately began yelling and scratching their bodies relentlessly. Some started to strip, wanting to get out of their tainted clothes, and others started rolling on the ground. Phon teleported herself and Kada down into the epicenter of the blast, since the powder didn’t affect them. “Alright then, line up all you bastards. Surrender or die! Either way, your life ends here!”

◆◆◆

“You know, in a way, I’m kind of disappointed…” Kada sighed.

“You’re telling me,” Phon joined her as she leaned back in her seat. “I was all amped up for a fight, but that was barely a warm up.”

Moments after they appeared, the majority of the raiders had immediately scattered in cowardice. A couple others were too preoccupied with their scratching to make a conscious decision. Only a handful stayed to fight, and Phon had cut them down in seconds. Now, they were going through the tedious process of rounding up the remaining raiders, and forcing them to make a choice.

◆◆◆

“This is, so boring!” Phon groaned as she teleported their newest customer in front of them. “Where’s your pride as raiders?!” she yelled at the new arrival. This outburst seemed to inspire this raider who immediately charged at Phon. Without even getting up from her seat, she had him completely entangled in her yo-yo’s string. “Hey, a live one,” she seemed a bit more interested now. “Well, not for long.”

Phon was just about to finish him off with her knife, when Kada stopped her hand. “Let me, umm… Let me take this one,” Kada said, seemingly unsure of her decision.

“You don’t have to force yourself, you know,” Phon reminded her.

“No, I… I do think I need to,” Kada admitted. “To grow as a person, and as a Fiend, I have to be able to do stuff like this. It’s better to get used to it now when I’m positive that the person deserves it. I don’t want to be unable to decide at a point in the future when I’m not so sure.” Kada lined up the base of her anchor with the man’s neck, and lopped off his head with a single push.

He had been the 28th unlucky contestant on what was most likely the most twisted game show on Rathe. Since that first altercation, Phon would teleport a raider in front of them and present them with their choice. So far, he had been the only one since the first group to choose ‘die’. Kada would take all those that chose the surrender option over to an open area and then melt their feet into the ground, securing them in place.

Phon was working from the back, forward, always making sure to grab the raider the farthest away in order to decrease any likelihood of one escaping and did a bit of crowd control when needed. Going through each one was slow, but it was the only way to be sure that each of them got their choice. It took a couple of hours to get through each one. Some raiders needed quite a bit of explaining before they fully understood and accepted their choice. In the end, only 14 had chosen to resist instead of surrendering peacefully.

The issue now was what to do with all of them. Obviously, the best choice would be to turn them over to the police, but as criminals themselves, it wasn’t exactly an easy option. While discussing what to do amongst themselves, there was a sudden commotion that drew their attention.

Three of the raiders, two men and a woman, had broken free, somehow had gotten weapons, and were charging right at the two girls. Both girls got ready to counter, but just before the raiders reached them, the heads of the two men exploded and their bodies collapsed. Vines wrapped around the woman who had been in the middle of them, immobilizing her.

It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened, and the two figures approaching them confirmed it. Xard had killed the two men, while Drim secured the woman. Both Drim and Xard had heavy strides, and their eyes were deadly serious. It was clear that they’d seen the carnage that the raiders had left behind. Without even acknowledging Phon or Kada, Drim approached the captive raider.

“You’re the leader, aren’t you?” His voice was blisteringly cold. “I can tell at just one glance. That was all your doing, wasn’t it? You’re responsible for all their deaths, and I’m sure countless more... I have this friend, you see. She can stop people’s blood. For us, it’s just insanely torturous, but for you… for you, it’d make your body burst in agony from every vein you have. Now, I don’t have that ability, but I think I can get pretty close.”

Drim pressed two of his fingers against the woman’s nostrils, and microscopically sized vines entered her body. They continued to feed inside of her, funneling into any blood stream they could find. She began to choke and wriggle her body with insane ferocity as her entire being was invaded. When the vines couldn’t get any deeper, Drim stopped. “I don’t like killing people, y’know,” he stared at the woman for a moment who was clearly in agony. “In fact, it’s the thing I hate most in this world and I doubt myself every time I’m forced to do it. But, for you... for you, I have no reserve, no sympathy, and I will never second guess your death.”

The inside of the woman’s body began to writhe around. Then, thorns erupted from every inch of her body, anywhere Drim had been able to get access to a vein. Drim then pulled the vines right out of her lifeless body, their shape still perfectly formed to match her venous system. He walked over to the group of raiders still remaining, and held out his hand. They all trembled in fear, not knowing what he was going to do. A large purple plant, which looked similar to a zoneball covered in fibers, spawned in his palm.

He threw it at the crowd, and it burst into purple smoke which surrounded them. “That is a highly toxic substance that will kill you sometime in the next two to three days. After we leave here, we’ll be heading west. I’ll leave the antidote at the first police station we come across. If you want to live, go there and turn yourselves in.” Drim turned around, and started walking away, as he walked past the other Fiends he muttered. “I’m going to make sure all of those people receive a proper burial. I’ll meet you at The Tourist when I’m done. Please leave me alone for a bit.”

After he was gone from sight, Kada walked over to Xard, and in an attempt to cut through the awkwardness, she asked, “So, how was the movie?”

“It was awesome, thanks for asking,” Xard replied, clearly still wound up and serious. “Drim provided special effects for them, and I got to be a stuntman.”

“Ahh, that’s so unfair,” Kada whined. “All I got to do was grow as a person!”

Fiends For Hire Text Conversation 9

Date: Quadruneber 15th 2077

『Ahvra: I heard you guys got to be in a movie! I will never forgive you, never ever ever ever ever!』

『Kada: I’m guessing Ahvra is in her big form right now.』

『Mallea: I can confirm that.』

『Xard: Don’t feel bad, Ahvra. It was only one of the best experiences of my life.』

『Ahvra: Well mawhg you too!』

『Ahvra: I’ll just make my own movie from the footage a few nights ago. Haha, Mallea decimated them all, it was awesome. And it’ll be a way better movie than the stupid one you guys were in.』

『Phon: Wait, what?』

『Mallea: Nothing to worry about. Just a small incident, everything is taken care of and the barrier is back online.』

『Nathym: Oh, so it did happen then? I should start a second job making predictions. Glad to hear the compound is safe and sound.』

『Drim: No seriously, what happened?!』

『Ahvra: I apologize for my outburst earlier. Everything is fine here. Please enjoy the rest of your trip.』

『Kada: Oh she’s small again.』

『Mallea: Can confirm.』

 

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Thanks for reading this chapter. Feel free to leave a comment or review. I'd love to hear from you!

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