“Go without me today. I’m still working on the new app for my psych skill,” Jen said.

Tamako frowned as Jen sat in a lotus position in the middle of their bed with her eyes closed, and Tamako said, “This is the third day in a row that you’ve skipped training to work on your app. Don’t get like Sam and ignore your training.”

Jen distractedly replied, “Sure. Oh, on your way out, please ask Sam to come in here. Thanks.”

At that moment, Sam passed by Tamako, heading towards Jen carrying a handful of enchanted bracelets and rods, and said, “Good morning Tamako, I got her text. She is just being bossy.”

“I’ll bring some dinner home for everybody tonight.” Tamako said as she left the house on her way towards the arena.

Tamako made it a habit to leave early enough to beat the city crowds, and she enjoyed the quiet of the early morning darkness before sunrise. Vampires didn’t risk being out this close to dawn, but a lady had her dreams.

“Are you sure the little lady will walk down this road?” asked the tall, fat, hooded woman.

“Yes, my far sight picked her up easily. She is alone today, so it should be easier. I want to capture her now. My caravan leaves for RaceHound City at the end of the month. I’ve been watching the tiny little blossom from afar for several days, and today she will be mine.” replied a very short, thin, fidgety man standing next to the fat woman, as he looked down over the road from atop the building.

“I know. I know. You’ve told me the quest requirements several times, but I don’t need to hear your pervert reasons,” said the fat woman as she activated a formation, and then started casting a spell. After she noticed her spell was complete, she activated her sound wave and ordered, “Get her… and hurry! She won’t be able to use her hands, her sound wave, or access any storage rings for 5 minutes.”

There merchants usually waited until sunrise to start getting their shops ready for the day, and Tamako’s sixth sense for danger kicked up when she heard some people moving off somewhere out of sight. She immediately tried to call Jen using her sound wave, but the static feedback showed someone was using a sound wave jammer on her. As she started to draw a spear out of her ring, two force shields appeared, encompassing each of her hands. The realization that she couldn’t access her storage device, or hold a weapon, caused her to pause in confusion, but when a gang of gamblers appeared out of an alley, she immediately moved to place her back against a nearby wall. Then, using her bowling ball shield-fists and feet, she smashed a merchant stand into pieces, trying to create some type of barrier between her and the gang of ten or twelve gamblers running towards her.

Thankfully, with her night vision skill and mental overclock skill, she slowed down her perception enabling her to dodge and/or strike down several darts that were fired at her. “Those darts have to be poisoned. So… they must plan to capture me,” Tamako thought as she dodged another dart.

The fat lady said to the fidgety man, “Why didn’t you tell me the woman could move so fast! Without the darts to knock her out, this is going to get loud if they can’t take her down quick, and my mana is too low for casting anymore spells.”

Tamako shifted both her motion and direction after dodging a dart, and punched the nearest gambler so hard in the head with her shield-fist his eyes burst from his face, while at the same time his head and neck bent sideways, noticeably breaking.

The fat woman physically jerked back in shock as she saw the eyes pop out of the gambler’s face and said, “Oh shit! What kind of monster is this little lady! What the fuck have you got us into, McRat!”

“Shit! She’s so small, and I thought it would be easy. We can still pull this off. She’s outnumbered 12 to 1.”

“You mean 11 to 1,” said the fat lady with no confidence in the weak gamblers below them.

Tamako quickly realized the shields around her hands allowed her to strike aside weapons and punch armor without causing damage to her hands. There were now two more dead on the ground, and another that obviously wished he were dead, if you considered the volume of his screaming.

The remaining eight gamblers tried to surround her and force her away from the wall so they could attack her from all directions. Tamako went on the offensive again, kicking parts of the broken merchant’s stand at those on her left, and quickly jumped into melee range of those on her right. She smashed the closest woman’s knee backward with a kick as she landed. She then parried a short sword coming from a fat sweaty man on her left. The sword’s edge slid off her hand-shield and sliced a deep cut down her forearm, but she’d brought her other hand into a smashing strike directly down on the man’s neck, crushing his collar bone deep down into his chest.

Tamako grinned to herself as she used her healing tattoo to close up the wound on her forearm.

“Damn! I’m out of here,” said the fat lady as she watched Tamako quickly kill the gamblers in the street.

“Wait for me!” said McRat as he hurried after her.

One of the remaining six gamblers turned and ran, and then another ran. Before they could all run, Tamako struck down and killed two more. She then walked over to a woman on the ground screaming in pain and stepped on her head, crushing it like a bug. She huffed in frustration, as she knew these gamblers wouldn’t know anything other than what was in their quest.

A minute later, the shields around her hands disappeared, just as the City guards arrived.

The guards leveled their weapons at Tamako, but noticed she was unarmed and she was not trying to flee. The sergeant of the night guard eyed the little woman covered in blood-splatter for just a moment, before demanding, “What happened here?”

“I was simply walking down the street when they smashed the merchant’s cart and attacked me.”

The sergeant raised his eyebrow skeptically while listening to Tamako’s explanation.

Tamako huffed in frustration at the guard and said, “Can anyone in your squad cast the spell to check for a gambler’s quest? I would gladly exchange any of their loot I’m entitled to in exchange for the cost of casting the spell.”

The sergeant perked up at Tamako’s words and replied, “You’re in luck. I can cast the spell and I accept your terms… that is… if it is determined that they actually were on a gambling quest.”

The sergeant waved his hands and mumbled some words as it took several minutes for him to finish casting the spell on one of the dead bodies. While waiting, Tamako contemplated how she was so used to the speed at which Sam and Jen cast their spells or activated their formations. A few seconds later, her musings were interrupted as everyone received a system message.

System Message

Failed Quest to kidnap tiny woman…..

While the guards looted the bodies, Tamako began to walk off when the sergeant said, “Ms., this was a privately funded quest. We don’t have the resources to investigate matters like this. You really need to be careful in case they try again.”

“Thank you for your help with the spell and clearing this matter up. I will definitely take your advice and be careful.”

Tamako cringed at her blood-ruined clothes, and was getting irritated that They System kept referring to her as a "Tiny" woman, but then smiled inwardly as she reviewed a system notice she received while dealing with the city guards, and said to herself, “Very good. Ability points are a rare reward for defeating a quest!”

System Notice

Someone has failed their quest… you receive 3 ability points.

Since the attack was over, Tamako didn’t see any reason to call Jen and Sam and interrupt their work on the app. She knew Jen would want to track down whoever was behind the attack immediately. Unfortunately, Tamako also knew from her experience as a City Guard Captain, that there was no easy way to track down the parties responsible for funding the attackers through a private gambling quest.

When Tamako returned home to change her clothes, she was relieved when neither Sam nor Jen quit work to greet her. She cleaned up, changed her clothes, and headed back out to the City Arena without distracting them.

Dicey stuck out her hand to help Tamako up off the arena floor in a gesture of sportsmanship, and asked, “How have you been withstanding most of my attacks over the last week? I’ve struck you with enough force to knock someone of your weight back 5 or 6 feet, but most of the time it’s like I’m hitting a brick wall.”

“I’ve been working on a new technique where I offensively block your attack in a way to counteract the force of you strike,” lied Tomako. She wasn’t going to tell Dicey about her shield. In fact, she wasn’t even trying to win the sparring matches anymore. She was working on the timing needed to activate her shield at just the perfect moment to absorb the kinetic force of her attacks.

“Huh,” grunted Dicey in response to Tamako’s explanation, but she didn’t believe Tamako was telling her the complete truth. However, she wasn’t offended. She understood most fighters kept many of their skills secret.

Tamako asked Dicey and Poker as they were leaving the practice arena floor, “Have you ever heard of a mage casting a shield spell encircling their opponent’s hands?”

Poker raised an eyebrow at Tamako with a knowing look. Tamako’s question had confirmed his suspicions. “So that was you.”

“What was me?” replied Tamako.

“The gambler attack this morning.”

“How did you hear about that?”

“I heard the arena guards this morning gossiping about how a tiny little woman viciously killed a gang of gamblers just before sunrise. You always get to the arena at the crack of dawn, but today you arrived late.”

“I’m not ‘tiny’!” replied Tamako.

Poker held up his hands in mock self-defense, and said, “The guards’ words, not mine!”

“Whatever, please don’t spread the rumor that it was me. The incompetent guards were so greedy for the loot, they never even asked me for my name, and I want to stay out of the rumors.”

Poker made the universal gesture across his mouth as he said, “My lips are sealed.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your discretion.”

Poker nodded and asked, “So, what happened?”

Tamako described the attack and said, “Except for the mana shields keeping me from using my hands to draw weapons from my storage device, it wouldn’t have been much of an attack. Even then, they were vastly slower and weaker than me. I don’t know what they were thinking, creating a quest directed to such weak gamblers.”

Dicey failed to hide her amusement as she rolled her eyes and sarcastically said, “I don’t know? A tiny woman walking by herself in the dark through the city. Maybe they imagined you would be an easy kidnap victim.”

“Tiny!” said Tamako as she punched Dicey on the shoulder good-naturedly.

“Yes, tiny!” Dicey said as she punched her back just as hard, and then said, “but you are obviously way stronger than they expected.”

“O.k., your words hold some wisdom and truth. It probably was just a random kidnapping attempt,” she replied in a thoughtful tone.

Poker was thinking back to her description of the attack and her original question, and said, “There’s only one thing that makes me wonder if it was not a random attack.”

“What’s that?” asked Tamako, surprised that there was something else she was not considering fully.

“They must have quested for an expensive high-powered mage, if you weren’t strong enough to break the shields against one another, or against a brick wall or something.” Poker noticed Tamako frowning at his words, and he guessed aloud, “You didn’t even try did you? I sometimes forget that with all your skill and strength, you’re not used to big cities.”

Tamako was mad and embarrassed at her rookie mistake, and angrily ridiculed herself, saying, “No, I didn’t. Like an inexperienced idiot, I just assumed they were too hard to break.” Tamako just ignored his attempt to get her to comment on whether they were from a big city or not.

Dicey didn’t want to embarrass her, so she tried to argue, “Well, they were strong enough to crush bones and bodies. It’s understandable that you didn’t think you could easily break them.”

Tamako shook her head with appreciation for Dicey’s attempt to make her feel better, “Thanks, but we both know I didn’t even try to break the shields before the gamblers reached melee range.”

“Ah well… at least you can someday hope to be as perfect as me,” replied Dicey with a snarky smile.

Tamako laughed and shook her head as she said, “See you two later,” and left the arena facilities, heading to Lucky’s bar to find out any gossip on kidnappings.