A long time ago:

“Would you focus, please, Sadea?” Doctor Horatius pleaded, exasperation evident on his thin, pale features and in the tilt of his shaven head. Adjusting his pistol, he shot a cultist in the face, dropping the man before he could hurl the grenade he’d been holding. Amidst a chorus of panicked screams, the explosive tumbled into freefall and detonated, shredding the cultist’s comrades who’d been taking cover with him behind a makeshift barricade of overturned furniture. “There’s work to be done.”

“But Arjun got ectoplasm all over my boots!” Sadea cried, jabbing at a suspiciously damp patch on the sleeve of her black combat fatigues. “Ew! He got my clothes, too!”

“I… I didn’t mean to,” Arjun said, shuffling his feet and looking down. He’d tucked his war-staff, a carbon rod topped with a crimson diamond-shaped psi-crystal, behind his back. “I’m sorry.”

“Arjun still needs to work on managing his psychic feedback, Sadea,” Horatius chided. “It wasn’t too long ago when you were doing the same thing, spewing ectoplasm around with every bolt of lightning. If I recall, you actually ruined one of my ceremonial robes, and I had to get another from Father Diocletius.”

Sadea glared at Arjun. The lanky youth was clad similarly to her, in black combat fatigues. His light-brown hair was cropped close to his scalp, and his large, round eyes were bright and worried. He was about the same age as Sadea, but he’d only joined the doctor’s team three months ago and had nowhere near the same amount of training she did. She sighed. The doctor was right. She was being way too hard on him.

“Apology accepted, Arjun.” She patted him on the shoulder. “You’re new to this, and instead of picking on you, I should be doing my best to show you the ropes.”

“That’s the spirit, Sadea,” Horatius said, a grin spreading on his face as he strode forward. A cultist had somehow survived the grenade, and he was trying to crawl away, leaving a trail of blood, flesh, and the tatters of his combat harness in his wake. The doctor put a boot on the back of the man’s neck and pressed down. He, too, was dressed in black combat fatigues, though his attire was also supplemented by tactical webbing, a slung rifle, and a shoulder holster for his pistol.

“Thanks, Sadea. I’ll try to do my best,” Arjun said.

Gasps from the cultist beneath the doctor’s boot rose into the smoky air.

“I think you’re doing pretty well already,” Sadea replied, pointing at a pile of charred, smoldering corpses behind them. They’d been another cluster of cultists defending the habitant block the doctor’s team was assaulting. But then Arjun had bathed them in waves of pyrokinetic flames, setting them alight and turning them into screaming human torches that crumbled and fell apart within moments. “Good job with that lot, and on your first combat mission, too! Keep that up, and you’ll be killing heretics as quickly as I can in no time.”

“I agree, Arjun. You show as much potential as Sadea,” Horatius said. The cultist beneath his heel was drumming his feet against the blood-streaked permacrete floor and clawing at the doctor’s ankles. “I’m proud of you, the both of you.”

Sadea sauntered to Horatius and gave him a quick hug. “Well, where to, next? Who do we kill?”

“Forgetting the briefing already, Sadea?” Horatius smiled and ruffled her strawberry-blonde hair. “Hmmm. Roots are showing. I’m guessing you’d want to get that recolored soon. Anyway, go over it again, Arjun, for Sadea’s sake.”

“Yes, doctor. This entire habitant block has been taken over by heretics, cultists of Gaea. It’s a small one, though, with only twenty floors. Father Diocletius’s purification squad has sealed all the exits. You, Doctor Horatius, sir, have requested that the three of us undertake the cleansing of these heretics, as part of our training program,” Arjun said. “We are to proceed floor-by-floor and kill every living thing in this habitant block.”

“Ew. Gaean cultists,” Sadea groaned. “Hate those nature freaks. At least the Bacchan cultists had colorful clothes. But ew, cultists in general. They all smell bad. And are stupid.”

“Worse than stupid, Sadea,” Horatius pointed out. The cultist beneath him gave a final, strangled rattle. “They’re heretical, and they spread their poisonous ideas to all they touch.”

“Which is why we have to kill everything in this habitant block, whether or not they wear cultist regalia, doctor,” Arjun interjected. “Young or old, man or woman.”

“Precisely, Arjun.” Horatius reloaded his pistol, holstered it, and unslung his rifle. “Now, let’s go do God’s work.”

**

“Stupid, freakin’ mutant beast,” Sadea grumbled. “Why couldn’t it have just died? Now, I’ve got to spend all day hunting the damn thing down in this shithole. I… what are you lot looking at?”

The surviving workers were clustered before her. There weren’t many. Just over a dozen or so still remained, Leal among them. They were staring at her. Or more accurately, at the candy bar she held in her hand.

“What? Girl’s got to eat. Psychic lightning burns a lot of calories, you know? Plus, whatever’s left over goes to the right places,” she snapped, patting her rear empathically.

“Er… Great Lady, it’s just that we haven’t had eaten anything in two days,” Leal said. “Would you be so kind as to…”

“Absolutely not! I paid for these rations, so they’re mine,” Sadea replied.

“But…”

“Shut up! If you’re that hungry, just leave and go find some food. There are provisions in this place, right?”

“We have a pantry, but the beast…”

“It’s too badly hurt to think about anything but licking its wounds now. Eat, then get out of this place. That’s the best thing you lot can do for yourselves.”

The workers exchanged glances and muttered among themselves for several moments. Eventually, they began to shuffle away in a disheveled heap. Leal lingered behind, though.

“Great Lady, are you a companion of the warrior with the curved sword?”

“Warrior? Curved sword? What?”

“Someone tried to help us early on, when the beast attacked. Big man, long hair, curved sword,” Leal said. “I might be imagining things, but at times, it seemed like the air was burning and boiling around his skin. I thought he might also be a sorcerer, like you.”

“No, I don’t know anybody like that.” Sadea frowned. Another bounty hunter had made an attempt already? It couldn’t be. She’d snatched the bounty letter off the bulletin board less than an hour after it’d been posted. Nobody else, not even that pesky Viktoria, would have known to start the hunt. At least until a town clerk figured out what happened and put up a new bounty letter amidst much cursing and swearing. “What happened to this man? The creature ate him?”

“No, I don’t think so. He was fighting the monster by himself in front of all of us. It knocked him down a garbage conveyer, which leads to a landfill nearly a day’s walk from here. Then it chased us, and we locked ourselves up where you found us.”

“Huh. Interesting. Fat lot of good he did, though. Beast isn’t even wounded, and it still ate more of you people. I give him a solid zero out of ten for effectiveness, but full marks for incompetence and stupidity.” Sadea took another bite out of her candy bar. “Now, go away. Can’t a girl eat in peace?”

“Yes, Great Lady. May God bless and keep you.” Leal bowed and turned to leave.