Chapter 28: 28: This World is Not a Playground

 

Jitters proceeded to hog my time like she was a jealous girlfriend, but I didn’t mind too much. After all, it was a lot of fun watching her discover her way through all this stuff. I only provided direction and what little knowledge of science I could remember from high school. I really needed to get her in touch with one of my classmates who was nerdier than me.

Today though, I was out helping Bassi deal with a problem. It wasn’t necessarily our problem, but we sort of felt obligated to help now that we were doing this whole community outreach thing.

“It feels strange to be out here in broad daylight,” Bassi commented as we walked down the city street in broad daylight.

We were in the Halligord district, an area nearby to our home base, but not close enough that we usually went out here. It was also mid afternoon and the city was abuzz with activity. Stalls dotted the sides of the street selling anything from meat on a stick to relics from before the war.

Bumping my shoulder to hers, I gave her a smile and said, “Well, you’re practically a local hero now. Leader of the slate snakes! People like someone who gives out free money.”

“Yes, well… this next part is going to be a lot less happy,” she murmured, eyes sharp and surveying the area around us. We wore our cloaks, everyone knew who we were. We were even getting a few apprehensive glances from those we walked past. They knew why we were here.

I grunted, turning from her to view the street ahead. The area was getting noticeably more run down as we walked, and the stares less friendly. Made sense too, we were here to cause trouble, of a sort.

“This is where Ward said they were,” Bassi murmured, pulling up her mask and donning her hood. I followed suit, putting all else behind me as I focused my mind on what I was probably going to have to do. Which was, namely… killing fellow humans.

“Do we know what to look for?” I asked, peering at the people around us. “Other than a bunch of docksgord who’re… you know. Looking for girls.”

Looking for girls was a euphemism, an understatement, because my stomach turned when I pictured what they were actually doing. The docksgord gang usually didn’t abduct girls from near their own territory, and most of the time they went outside the walls of anamoor entirely to prey on the few settlements outside them. Not that going outside the walls made what they were doing any less awful, but if it was happening here, we could do something about it.

“Bunch of guys grabbing girls,” the leader of the slate snakes told me, briefly meeting my gaze. “Thank you for… existing, being here. I’d never have been comfortable doing this without another competent fighter next to me.”

“Not a problem,” I said, heartbeat rising to an ache for a second. I liked being useful to her.

“Wait, shh…” she said, placing a hand to my chest to bring me to a halt. She cocked her head, listening intently. Personally, I couldn’t hear shit over the sounds of the city, but I wasn’t the wind fae. “This way,” she told me urgently, taking off at a run. “They have someone, and I don’t think we’re going to make it in time. Fucking scum. No kill rule is off, show no mercy.”

“Aye, aye boss,” I agreed, feeling my mind harden as we rushed down an alleyway.

Bassi began to speed up, rushing as fast as she could, but strangely… I was able to keep up with her, sort of. Every time I thought I’d lagged behind, I’d turn a corner and there she was, running at full tilt down streets and alleyways.

She slowed as we approached a tavern, and I could hear raucous laughter coming from behind the place. Bassi turned, her eyebrows rising as she found me right behind her.

“Didn’t expect you to keep up,” she whispered in surprise.

“I’m with you,” I shrugged, although yeah… something weird had just happened there. “I’m ready. Time to kill some monsters.”

“Yeah,” she breathed, her surprise giving way to stony resolve. She didn’t speak another word, just turned and flew around the side of the building.

When I followed her around the corner a split second later, I almost fell over as I took in the scene. Behind the tavern was a dusty hard packed dirt courtyard and a well that had seen better days. A bucket of water lay spilled across the ground, forgotten by all involved.

The girl who’d been carrying it couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old. Three men held her down on the ground, while a fourth struggled with her legs, trying to keep them apart.

I was staring, I should move, do something. I just… her face, terrified, tears… hand over her mouth to muffle her begging screams for help.

Then Bassi stabbed one of the men who were holding her down through the arm, drawing the blade upward in a vicious slice that carved the meat off the limb like she were butchering an animal. The man screamed, flailing and letting go of the girl as he stared at the wound in horror, then down the chunk of arm that hit the ground with a wet slap.

The rest began to swear and hastily fumble for knives and swords, the one who’d been trying to force himself on the girl stumbling backwards, his pants tripping him.

I moved then, instinct guiding me as I lunged for one that had gotten a blade free. One of my knives took him in the back, down near a kidney, while I kicked his legs out from under him.

“Take care of them, I’m getting her out of the way,” Bassi ordered as she got her hands under the girl’s armpits to drag her away. The man she’d engaged on was now on the ground, feebly trying to stem the flow of blood from his now open-air throat.

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I did as she asked, summoning my shadow form and claws in the same motion I used to casually disembowel the last of the men who’d been holding the girl down. I was seeing red now, a mix of raw fury and hatred welling up inside me.

I’d always felt like this when I saw news of something like this happening. Browsing reddit in the morning, just casually looking at pictures of cute animals or catching up on world news, and I’d stumble on a landmine. A story about some poor girl being raped and killed, the audio of her terrified last phone call to 911 plastered all over the internet. Another story of how a prominent member of a community from one of my favourite games being stabbed dozens of times by an ex-boyfriend.

Every time I hit one of those, I found myself shaking, sometimes crying. These poor people, they had deserved so much better, they had deserved a full happy life, without the trauma that such an event would inflict on them, if they even survived it. But also, my recent struggles with my gender had revealed something else.

I empathised with these girls, not because I’d been one of them, or even been subjected to something like that. It was because all my life, I’d had a taste of what trauma could do to a person. How it could twist your entire life down a path you didn’t wish to tread.

So I always thought for that person, that victim. I shed my tears for what that awful experience must have been like, and for the survivors, the countless years that they would live through after the fact.

Then there was the fact that I shared their anatomy now, and I shivered internally at the glimpse of what it would be like to be in this girl’s place. I knew what men said when women weren’t around, the casual allusions to acts they would like to perform on classmates, willing or not. Consent rarely even featured in their locker-room so-called banter.

So here I was, filled with desperate hatred for the people who could do something like that to another human. I thought of all the victims who had never gotten real justice, their abusers and killers getting nothing more than a few years of jail… and I snapped.

I stalked towards the man with his trousers around his ankles, dick hanging out.

“You… are vile.” My voice came out strange, echoing and rough.

“Fuck you!” he screamed, throwing his hand forward.

A burst of golden fire poured forth from his hand, aimed squarely at my chest. It didn’t connect though, because I vanished from that plane, entering the realm of light and dark. I quickly positioned myself behind him, but stopped for a moment when I noticed something. Long, pointed ears.

When I came back into reality, my claws closed around his neck. “You’re from earth, from games and media, class 4.”

He squirmed for a moment, trying to get his hand up in an attempt to blast me again. I slapped his hand down.

“Answer me,” I growled, squeezing at his windpipe.

“Yes!” he gasped as I let him get some air. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Oh, don’t remember me? My name was Dan,” I sneered, glancing around to make sure his comrades were still on the ground.

“Dan?” he frowned, still trying to gulp air. “Dude, what are you doing to me?”

“Why were you trying to rape that girl, why are you running with docksgord?” I demanded, ignoring his question.

Rather than answering my question, he began to flail and writhe, trying to get free of my grip. He only managed to get himself gouged by my claws.

Whatever, I wasn’t actually interested in his motivations. There was no valid reason to be doing what he was doing. I stood up, letting go of his neck in the process. He tried to twist free, to push himself up, but I placed my foot down on his neck and he froze, staring up at me in desperation.

“You should have known better,” I told him calmly, summoning a long spike of shadow.

“Please!” he begged, even as his hands came up and lit with radiant fire. “I… you can’t kill me, we’re… that’s not… I should get a trial, or…”

I didn’t bother with the spike, opting instead to simply stamp down with terrible force onto his neck. His eyes bugged out as the cartilage of his windpipe snapped and broke, closing off his air supply.

“This isn’t earth, there are no courthouses or prisons,” I told him as he flailed wildly, what little air that got through his crushed throat making a whistling sound. “And I am not a cop, nor am I a particularly good person. Especially after killing you and your friends.”

Stepping back, I surveyed the scene for a moment. Two of the docksgord people were still alive, although the one whose innards I’d torn out wasn’t far from death. Fuck, what a mess. Bassi had the girl over near the back entrance to the tavern, a few patrons and what appeared to be the girl’s father looking out at the carnage.

As sad as it was, the girl was lucky. From what we knew, these docksgord monsters had gotten to at least ten other girls and women before her. All of them were missing, probably sold off after these four had gotten done with them. My stomach rolled again, and it took altogether too much willpower to hold myself together.

I felt nothing but disgust as I turned to look back down at my dying classmate. “You should have thought a little harder about what you were doing, because this is a world where what little justice exists, it comes at the end of a blade,” I explained to him, hoping that the lesson might follow him to wherever he went next. Not for his benefit, but for that of any poor soul who had to share air with him. “So long.”

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