Alyssa silently slid into the shadows behind Karl, quietly observing the evolving battlefield as he gave orders to his Honor Guard. Lord Shubin somehow managed to squeeze his massive bulk into the building with Karl to his left. On his right was the strange Dark Elf man, Keeg, that he’d picked up in Show Low. Junipher stood a short distance away with Kaia, spear ready and a twinkle of excitement in her eye. She loved watching her man fight, and this was shaping up to be a big one.

When she’d raced up on them, with Choox’il hot on her heels, they had just finished reporting the disposition of the enemy forces to Eli and Captain Devers. She squashed a momentary flash of concern for one of her closest friends, then focused on the enemy movement in front of them. Hundreds of men and women, armed in everything from aluminum baseball bats to high tech alien rifles were spread out across several city blocks, waiting for the order from their leaders to attack. Behind them were a couple dozen mean looking mechs.

After the partially successful assassination attempt on all of the local city leaders, where the Governor of New Phoenix had lost his life, the only surviving member of the assassination team was viciously interrogated by Allison, who was now New Phoenix’s new leader. The resulting information gleaned from her [Enhanced Interrogation Techniques] revealed firm intelligence in all that King James was up to, as well as all the important players in his organization.

It was revealed that the assassins that partook in the attempt to eliminate all the leaders were under the leadership of one Shantel Smith. The intelligence gathered was reasonably certain that Smith would be moving about the battlefield, targeting VIP’s and other leadership where she could, so Alyssa decided it would be smart to stay close to Karl, as he was probably the biggest VIP on the field. She just had no intention of revealing her presence, which was why she was currently hiding within the shadows.Meanwhile, Choox’il, now her permanent companion and mentor, would blend in with her people’s forces, only moving to assist when the master assassin revealed herself. Until that point, they wouldn’t directly get involved in the fighting for fear of revealing themselves and scaring off Ms. Smith.

As Alyssa crouched in a corner, with Lulu similarly hidden in an alley outside, she saw Karl look in her direction and smile. For a moment she froze, not believing he could sense her until he simply winked and returned to what he was doing. How the fuck?

“Ah, they are beginning to move, Karl. Let’s hope there is a warrior of our worth out there.”

“Heh, we’ll see, either way, let’s crush these assholes and see if any of the slaves remain to be saved. I can’t imagine there are many left.” Karl responded, then began directing his people into positions.

“Indeed, my forces are in position to initiate the ambush. I leave you now to lead them. May you find an opponent of worth, Karl.” Shubin rumbled as he turned to slide out of the building, one of his large horns coming only inches from Alyssa’s face as he passed by.

“You too, big man! Knackers! Let’s see if we can move up and support his flank. Here. And here.”

Unsurprisingly, a map appeared in Alyssa’s mind indicating the overall battleplan and where Karl was moving to next. Apparently he knew her intent, even though they’d never discussed it, and was in full support of her actions.

“I will move to the top of the building here and keep an eye out, you should stay in his shadow.”

Alyssa silently acknowledged and followed Karl and his team as they shifted down the road a block, then turned up an alley to take up positions in another blasted out stripmall while they waited for Shubin’s people to make first contact with the enemy. Fortunately, the wait wasn’t long.

After less than a minute, whoever was commanding the enemy troops ordered the advance. They strode down the main street like they owned it. Both men and women, wearing their pants in a sagging style, multi-colored boxers exposed. None had a care in the world for the impending ambush, clearly convinced that their previous slave/suicide attack had struck a decisive blow to Karl’s forces. Typical thugs, their arrogance will be their downfall.

When the attack came, even Alyssa wasn’t immediately certain what was happening. A series of glowing pentagrams began drawing themselves on the street as groups of gang bangers walked over them, and as soon as they were completed they erupted into a riotous lightshow of death and dismemberment. Anyone who was standing over any part of the pentagrams was in danger of being sliced to pieces when the spells that created them completed. Alyssa grimaced as over a dozen of the slavers found them split from crotch to forehead, falling apart in the streets, all of their internal organs spilling out across the cement.

Before any of the survivors could recover properly, hordes of imps poured out of alleys, doors, or windows, armed with varying pointed implements. What they lacked in size and strength, they made up for in numbers. While many of the imps died, they soon were dog-piling the less agile and stunned thugs, stabbing them screaming and crying to death. They then scattered as the mechs, that were following less than a hundred meters behind the front line, opened up on their own troops.

This is where the Volpari, the spider women, stepped up from the rooftops or other various perches and began raining enchanted arrows down on the mechs and their drivers.The remaining infantry, of which there was still quite a bit, somehow found the sense to pull up their pants and run for cover. The ones armed with ranged weapons returned fire, while the ones armed for melee fighting protected the ranged fighters from the Imps.

Now magic and other projectiles were being directed at individual targets, with an emphasis on the large mechs with their impressively sized cannons that were tearing holes in the buildings where Shubin’s people were slinging magic from. Plaster and glass mixed with the blood of human, imp, faceless, and volpari alike. Yet neither side backed down from the other, even though it was clear the Litchfield Slavers hadn’t the manpower to continue the fight much longer.

A lull in the battle ensued where the slavers and their mechs somehow managed to hold their positions relative to Shubin’s horde. Imps would occasionally maneuver to single out an individual fighter, swarming over them, stabbing repeatedly until they’re prey had fallen dead. Then they’d be driven back by withering mech fire. Somehow, more fighters on the Litchfield side were slowly making their way to the front lines.

Karl spoke only one word. One word that unleashed hell on the Litchfield slavers the likes of which they’d never experienced. That was something, considering they were facing down what amounted to them to be hellspawn.

“Now.”

Karl’s heavy machine gun appeared in his hands, spitting white hot death against the closest mech to him, over two hundred meters away. The mech turned away as plasma splashed, burned, and melted it’s way through the armor plating, which in turn began to melt under the intense heat. A particularly well placed glob of molten alloy dropped over the right side of the pilots face, burning it away in seconds. The woman let out a terrifying wail that seemed to stall the battlefield for just a moment, then her machine toppled over, just as lifeless as she surely was now.

At the same time, dozens of enraged beastmen poured from the storefront to smash viciously into the flanks of the gathered thugs and gang bangers. This was the first time she’d seen the beastmen truly take action, the sight of which sent a shiver down her spine. They barrelled into their enemies with tooth, claw, and blade. Savaging them where they stood, rending life and limb in a brutal ballet of violence. She remembered how passive they had been when they were labeled as Refugees, fighting only to defend themselves. These were not the same people.

A large black man with too many tattoos, whom she was certain Karl would have killed on principle, swung a heavy hammer at the bear-man Karl had referred to as Knackers. Knackers didn’t even flinch, rising to his full height while backhanding the offending weapon away to tumble wildly across the street, he brought both pairs of claws down to literally rip skin across the man’s face and chest cleanly from his body. The man stood numbly in shock at the sudden overwhelming violence perpetrated on him. As he looked to be about to sag to his knees, Knackers roared, then bent down to cleanly bite the nearly dead man’s head off. With a loud crunch and snap, the bearman flung the man’s headless, flayed body back towards another trio of slavers, then lazily dropped to all fours, licking the blood from his chops.

The two men, and one woman of the group stared terrified at what had just happened to what was presumably their strongest fighter. The woman turned to run, only to be swarmed by a dozen imps. One of the men pissed his pants, the wet spot forming clearly on his exposed boxers, darkening the inside of his pant legs where his urine drained. He finally threw down his weapon, raised his hands in the air and shouted, “I GIVE UP! PLEASE! DON’T KILL ME!”

A look from Karl resulted in a trio of arrows sprouting from the man’s chest. As he toppled over in the street, the last man in the group had the good sense to run for the mechs. They, of course, were still mostly standing and fighting back. Unfortunately for that man, Lord Shubin tried to use him as a springboard to join the fight against the mechs. Against the giant Daemon Lord’s bulk, his upper body was simply turned into a bloody, pink paste, pulled across the street in two streaks as Shubin skidded to a halt, brandishing a massive, single bladed, two-handed axe.

As transfixed on the battle, the likes of which she had never seen before, a flurry of comm traffic that Garfield, her VPA was monitoring for her, caught her attention.

“Lion two-two, Two Actual is down. No sign of enemy contact!”

“Lion four-six to Lion four actual, Optimo Banks is down, suspect contact with enemy assassins!”

“Valkyrie three to Lion two-two, we’re enroute to you now!”

It looks like the assassins are targeting leadership, Alyssa. Should we go after them, or wait here with Karl? Garfield asked her in a moment of sudden glibness. Her VPA wasn’t particularly talkative and had seemed to take on the full personality and behaviour of her favorite cartoon cat.

Alyssa had an urge to chase down these assassins, though she knew that every Century and Cohort had their own rogues that would be actively hunting the enemy assassins, so she refrained from running off. She and Choox’il had discussed this possibility at length and had determined that the best assassin, the most dangerous one, Shantel Smith, would definitely be looking to take out Karl. He was just too big of a target for someone like her.

So she watched as Karl maintained a heavy volume of fire on the mechs, while Shubin closed in, easily dismantling each with comical ease. The beastmen and imps had nearly cleared the streets of the remaining thugs, only a handful managed to retreat behind the quickly dwindling line of mechs, hightailing it straight for the large fort in the distance.

Karl was now standing in the street, letting plasma fly as Keeg, his latest companion, maintained a glimmering white shield that deflected the heavy mech rounds, while Junipher sang a song that restored and maintained the dark elf man’s mana stores. It was the flickering of the shield, light intensifying everytime it was struck that cued her into the approaching darkness behind the group.

Unlike how she fully immersed herself in the shadows around her, this individual was merely a black blur of bending light, dust, and haziness. The effect was actually quite effective, except for the flickering light reflecting off the glimmering steel dagger held low, ready to be thrust in Karl’s back. She found it hard to look at the blur that was quickly approaching Karl, which Alyssa assumed was the point. If it was hard to look at, and only appeared to be a blur, then it would be easier for the brain to unconsciously ignore it, like movement caught on the far edge of your peripheral vision. If it doesn’t register as a threat, you’re just not going to be inclined to give it any of your attention.

She sent a quick message to Choox’il who acknowledged that she could also see their target, then she moved up behind the blur, even as it was closing in on the big man who was focused on dumping round after round into the enemy mechs. In a flash, Alyssa drew her falcatas in a sweeping motion meant to decapitate her opponent in a single attack.

Instead of the instant death she sought, the blur flattened, even as it began to resolve itself into the shape of the target she’d suspected it to be, Shantel Smith, master assassin for King James. Smith managed to spin around, bending backwards while swiping up in a quick counter strike that bounced off Alyssa’s bionic arm.

“FUCK! BITCH!” Smith screamed in frustration.

Alyssa followed her previously unsuccessful attack with a kick that would have made any footballer, American or European, envious. The woman, who was about to bring her dagger back to stab into Alyssa’s thigh, was caught in the ribs with so much force that she felt her ribs cave in before she was rocketed across the street to smash head first through a storefront window nearly twenty meters away.

“Hey kiddo! Nice to see you again!” Karl smirked over his shoulder to her, never releasing his finger from the firing switch on the heavy machine gun in his hands. Junipher similarly smiled, waved, then went back to singing. Even the strange Dark Elf Paladin flashed her a too white toothy grin before going back to what he was doing.

“Uh… yeah, okay! I’ll be back!” Was the only response Alyssa could come up with. In that moment, Alyssa realized that Karl truly trusted her as part of his team, knowing she had his back. She hadn’t been avoiding him since Dilkon, but she hadn’t exactly sought him out either. He had congratulated her on securing the threat of the Raiders, then took off to organize the action that was being taken this very day. So, filled with no small amount of personal satisfaction, she turned to face her next opponent who was only just picking herself out of the wall she had collapsed through.

Shantel Smith spat a phlegmy wad of blood onto the parking lot at her feet, while simultaneously uncorking a red health potion which she promptly knocked back with a surly grimace.

“Ick! That tastes like shit! And they’re fucking expensive!” She yelled to no one in particular before turning her head up to look at Alyssa, “So. You must be the Challenger. Heard of you. Don’t look like much, though I’ll give you this, you got one hell of a kick.”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Well, before we do this, I just have to ask; Why the fuck are you following that big ass honky around, what with all of his gathering of freaks and all?” The sneer on her face spoke volumes to the quality of her character.

Alyssa rolled her eyes, she was getting tired of all the racist, bigoted shit talk she’d heard over the last couple of months. It seemed that the System revealed everyone’s true nature, or maybe it was just the old adage she’d heard someone say once, Absolute power corrupts absolutely? She sighed heavily before responding, “What-the-fuck-ever. Let’s just get this over with.”

Smith smirked as her form began to blur, Alyssa charged forward, fading into the shadows at the same time. Karl just smiled as the two women began their violent clash mere meters from where he stood. She’s got this.