With a running start, I make my way off the building I’m on. I run down the wall, across the street, up the wall to the Dukes property, and then I’m inside. I don’t stop running, activating my sounds dampening to limit the noise I make as I sprint towards the manor. I’ve timed it right, I run a straight path between two of the roving patrols.

Up the wall and avoiding windows, I head for the roof. It’ll give me a chance to determine if I was spotted, recover my spent SP, and scout for any rooftop access I couldn’t see from the distance.

The roof has a flat center sitting or recreation area, arches from the roof and windows make the rest of the rooftop. Luckily, there is a rooftop access. I slow and drop my enchantments, the sound dampening being the last I stop. I don’t see any hidden traps and my eyepiece confirms it. No outcry or alarm goes up, so no one spotted me make my entrance.

I check the roof hatch that’ll let me into the manor proper. Locked, of course. My shit luck couldn’t let this be too easy. Fortunately, the hinge is on the outside and it’s basic in construction. I take one of my knifes and pull the hinge bolts out so I can yank the door off. Barely any noise made, I glance inside to make sure there wasn’t a guard waiting for me.

Empty hallway, no one present. I slip inside, setting the access door back into place to prevent obvious cause for alarm. I remain still and count to thirty in my head, calmly checking if there is anyone heading my way or active. No noticeable sounds of movement, I think I’m in the clear.

Since I’m not being timed, I’ll search room by room to help my job possibly gain experience. A soldier has many facets, so I’m hoping that my infiltration ability will be added to. I’m also going to liberate any shiny I come across, which should help with the experience and financial gains as well.

The hallway cuts through the middle of the manor, rooms located up and down the hall. I’m pretty much in the center of the house on the third floor, so I pick the closest room and slowly open it. The hinges make no noise, so they must oil them regularly.

I peek my head in, no one present. Slipping through and leaving the door open a crack, I pull an empty can from inventory. Leftover supplies from Zombie world, I had a snack while doing recon. Since I didn’t see anything even remotely like the empty can littering the streets, I chucked it into inventory to avoid cultural contamination. If that is even a thing in the universe.

The empty aluminum can will make a great alarm while snooping through rooms. I set it in front of the door, by the swinging corner, so it’ll scrap the ground or fall over and rattle. Glad I kept it now. This is one of those times it pays to not litter.

Not a large or small room, my eyepiece not spotting anything of any significance just laid out for all to see. I check drawers, closets, containers, even under the bed. Nothing.

Shrugging I do this up and down the hall. Each room not having anything worth removing from the premises. All were clean and tidy, likely guest rooms or were family rooms before they grew up. Not too interested in the details, just a bit disappointed there was nothing to be found.

There is only one staircase leading up to this floor. No hidden rooms or trip wires, though this floor did have a cleaning supply closet. Bet the kids put that to use with hide-and-seek, not to mention the more adult things that could happen in there.

I stand at the top of the stairs and listen for thirty seconds. That is the average time it takes for people who may have heard something to spike their adrenaline and then think it was nothing if no other sounds were heard. Adrenaline makes people think time flows faster than it really does, the whole ‘it felt like an hour but was actually a minute’ thing.

I glide down the stairs, not literally - I just move that damn smoothly it makes it appear I was gliding. Took me forever to master that.

On this floor, I can faintly make out snoring. People are present somewhere, so I’ll need to be a bit more cautious in the rooms now and be more alert for patrols inside the manor.

The first room I dip my head in through the door, my heart nearly leaps into my throat. We got a live one, folks! She’s undressing, facing her vanity and giving me a side profile. I’m grateful I have the chameleon effect on and slip back out while being extra quiet. This isn’t peeping hour, after all.

The next room must have belonged to a woman or was used as a quick place to role in the proverbial hay. All I found was a very sexy and very crusty pair of pantsu. I cringe and quickly vacate. And no, I did not take them with me.

Only one other room had a person in it out of the eight on this floor. An elderly man fiercely cutting them logs in his sleep, the eyepiece registers him as the Duke. With him being dead asleep, I make doubly sure there are no traps or trip wires about and slowly ease my way inside. No empty can used for this one, as it would likely wake the Duke as well.

Keeping the sound dampening skill on, I start looking for nice things. Finally find something in his underwear drawer, a knotted bag - likely a coin purse or similar. I slip it into my inventory and keep on looking.

Nothing else of note in his room, talk about a boring person. Wait, my luck could be so shitty they may have had everything locked up for the night for no other reason than ‘I felt like it’ and it would be legit since I’m here. Dammit all.

I move to the staircase to the first floor and pause only for a moment. No sense waiting on this one. Full enchantment activation and I’m moving down the stairs while listening for anyone actively moving in the vicinity.

Still no trophy room yet, meaning it’ll likely be in a basement or something since I started at the roof. I scour the first floor relatively quickly, of which only one more coin purse looking bag was all I found. I stuffed that into inventory and started looking for the basement access.

Locked double doors at the farthest point from the staircase, they ease open quietly and show a circular stair heading down. Off we go down the rabbit hole.

*Graphic content ahead - you have been warned*

About halfway down, I start to hear noises. As I get closer to the basement door entrance, I can faintly make out what sounds like grunting and a rhythmic skin-on-skin sound. The muffled crying raises all manner of flags in my head and my eyes narrow. I ease the door open to a decently lit corridor and quickly check for anything that will bring attention to myself.

The muffled crying and slap of skin on skin continue.

The corridor opens into a massive well-lit room. Wall hangings, paintings, sparkling lit candle holders, and the mounted heads of various beasts decorate the walls. Pillars that are the foundational support for the rest of the manor are spaced equally apart. Thick fur rugs cover a majority of the floor, leaving very little of the cold and barren stone exposed. Couches, tables, desks, and displays take up the center part of the basement.

Bent over one of those couches is a woman, hands held behind her back while a man rocks back and forth into her from behind.

My eyes dilate and time slows to a crawl.

I try to think about this objectively; there are many people in the worlds who are into this kind of thing. Maybe it’s consensual and I’m the one who’s rudely interrupting. No reason to take the life of a man if you don’t know for sure, right?

The man is a guard, his helmet is off and his armored pants are around his ankles. The maid has a dark dress that’s flipped up over her back, underwear around her right ankle. Her mouth is gagged and she has tears streaming down her face, horror and despair etched on her features. A bloody lip and bruising eye give me a really good idea this isn’t what she wants. Her dress has a few tears, the fabric fluttering from movement. Hand prints, deep red, can be found up and down her arms.

My mind halts, eyes in full dilation. Just don’t be seen or caught, Mab’s words reverberate through my head. I may not have any fucks to give, but this is beyond the pale. I will not allow a rapist to live if I can manage it.

Mab chimes in, speaking as if through molasses - very slow and drawn out. “There she is! On the table, get her and mission accomplished.” Is what she’ll end up saying when I get back to normal processing time.

I pull my survival knife from inventory, activate all enchantments including the increase of movement speed, and move behind the man. Why the survival knife? Because it has a blade almost thirty cm long or almost a foot in length. Just the blade. Yeah.

Casually, I stab the knife into the right side of his neck, angled for his heart so it severs through the carotid artery and his trachea all in one go. No screaming out for help, no one to save you from a quick bleed out. The blood shower that is about to start will cause the woman to flee. Whether she goes to get help or just escapes is no longer any concern to me. This rapist is dead and that’s all that matters to me.

I yank the survival knife out, whipping it to the side so there is little blood left on it and place it back in my inventory. By the time the guard realizes he’s mortally wounded, I’ve already made it over to the table that has a large glass container. A fairy is flying around inside, I faint purple hue to the strobe light. Not caring of gender or their health, I scoop up the container. I’m halfway up the stairs out of the basement when the first spray of arterial blood hits the ceiling.

*Graphic Content over, you may resume reading*

With my mind still processing at accelerated time, I’ve made it back to the roof in less than twenty seconds. I replace the hinge bolts then head off to the extraction point. Nothing eventful occurs while traversing the city. I bound up and cling to the wall surrounding the major community. Utilizing the same method I circumvented the Duke’s wall with, I’m on the other side and sprinting away through the plains.

With the enchantments still active, burning through MP and SP, there would have only been a slight blur of motion if anyone happened to looking in my direction. I just want this done and over with.

I drop the enchantments before I lose the last 30% of SP I have, still running at a dead sprint to the extraction point. Mab has not tried to contact me, only breaking radio silence that one time. Fifteen minutes later, I stop in the clearing we arrive at. My eyepiece clearly showing this as the exfiltration point.

“Let’s get out of here Mab. I’m already tired of this bullshit.” I’m moody, just not missing-an-eye kind of moody.

“Well boys, looks like we’ll have a second fairy to sell to the Duke! We hit pay dirt tonight!” Oh, you have got to be kidding me. I glance in the direction of the talking dead man and sure enough, there’s Mab in a glass container like the one I have in my arms.

Thirteen soon-to-be-dead men start to surround me from the lightly forested sides. I sigh and set the container on the ground.

“Giving up already? I’m not sure we can let you do that. You might have something else me and the boys might like.” Dead-leader decides to keep running his mouth. I’ll give them a chance to run off, try to be civil about things.

“Properly, it’s ‘the boys and I’, not ‘me and the boys’.” The dead-leader’s face sneers harder. “Now, I’ll be civil and ask that you set the fairy on the ground and calmly walk back to town. You can even joke around and talk amongst yourselves as you do.”

“...or else what?” Sneer harder, dead-leader. Come on, you can do it!

“... you know what? Fuck this noise, I’m done.” I take my hand guns out of inventory and take aim.

Thirteen shots in less than two seconds later, a mass of thuds can be heard as I let the bodies hit the floor.

Two more shots ring out, destroying the glass containers and tinkling glass to the ground.

“Get your shit together and search the bodies. We’re leaving in five.” I put my guns back in inventory and start to search the closest body. Rummaging through their stinking clothes, I don’t find anything on the first body. Then I remember.

“Gah, if I cared about being cool, I would have ruined it with that shit. Stupid auto-loot. Now I’ll have to sort through my inventory later to see if I got anything good.” Grumbling to myself, I walk to the center of the clearing and look for my Contracted.

Light pink and light purple glow lights are flying around each other at an extremely high pace. ““...EEEEeeeee! I missed you so much!”” In stereo. Their squealing was so high pitched that I only caught the end of it as they were about to finish their sentence.

“Ahem.” I cough, loudly, into my hand. “Look, not to ruin the moment or anything, but you two can do that later. Leave now, squee later. Let’s move, people!”

The fairies join me in the center and Mab transports us back to the hub.

I sigh, eager for a bath and quiet time so I can process the shit I had to deal with. Walking through the hissing doors, we walk right into the middle of hell.

A yell to my left has my eyes dilating, my gaze shifting to the offensive person. They’re about to get an ear full of toxic vitriol that’s ready to spew from my mouth.

Instead of spewing anything, I’m ducking a knife aimed at my head. I spin around the man wildly wielding his stabbing implement and plant a bullet in his head.

As I take stock of the situation, a female voice speaks out. “Holy shit, mom! I didn’t even see him move.” Mom? My left eye twitches as I look around.

Blood smears the walls and ceiling. Bodies lying on the ground, the puddles beneath them and their lack of of movement tell me they’re dead or damn near.

“Mab?” My voice and eyes are flat. “Are you going to tell me why you based my assessment on a rescue mission for your daughter?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Timid paints Mab wonderfully.

“I think you misheard me.” My right arm comes up and sights another man running towards me waving his knife. “When this all calms down, you will tell me why you based my assessment on a rescue mission for your daughter.” Another head is evacuated with a bang.

“Wah! He’s scary!” Hiding behind your mother won’t save you from my ire either, little girl.

“Oh, don’t think you’re getting away without explaining yourself either. But we seem to have a situation, so this will have to wait.” I’m rather eager to find out why she was caught in a glass cage. From what I’ve seen, fairies are very agile. Yet they’ve both been caught, on the same planet no less.

“Mab, patch us through to Lt. Scott’s channel if you have it. I want to know what the deal is here.” I’ve started to walk towards the running knife wielders. Guns in hand, this looks to be another massacre.

“...sskzztt -his is Lt. Scott, who just ran all over my encrypted channel?” Sounded more like an order and not the question it was. Was that a growl at the end?

“Lt. Scott, this is Gram and Mab. We just got back from… Mab, you need to tell me where we’re going next time.” Slightly embarrassing, I bull on. “Regardless of the planet, we’re back and we just encountered hostiles when walking out of the transport bay. Mind cluing me in on who fucked who here?

“No fucking involved.” You can hear grunts and yells in the background, Lt. Scott has definitely got a growl going on as well. “Just your normal hub coup-event. Soon as we have this station locked down, it’s just a matter of cleaning up the remnants.”

“Copy, we’ll eliminate hostiles while making our way to you. Out.” I pick up the pace to a run, knowing the fae can keep up.

Bringing knives and swords to a gunfight always ends badly for the sharp-edge wielders. I blitz through the corridors, Mab yelling out directions as we go. By the time we get to the station door, I’ve put down eighteen other morons who decided I was fresh meat - most of them were banging on the door to the station.

Pulling up the comm, I call out to Lt. Scott. “We’re at the door, corridor is clear.”

“Gram, Lt. Scott is a were-” The door opens and a hulking, furry cat-man stands in front of the door. My gun is in his face when I register he’s wearing the white and gold trimmed onesie. We blink at each other for a moment then I put my guns away.

“-tiger. Oh good, you didn’t shoot him.” Mab couldn’t sound more relieved. Glad I was run through so many situational development courses, otherwise that could have ended badly. Not sure for who though.

“Ok, kitty-man,” I get growled at, how precious. “What’s the sit-rep?” He leads us into the station. What’s the station? “And what’s this station?”

Rumbling as he replies, Lt. Scott gives us the details. “The situation is better now since we don’t have those dead-beats trying to bum rush us through the door. We’ve tagged another seventy-two who are opposing our control of the hub. We’ve got them mapped over here, live feeds to their locations. As for what the station is, it’s the control point for this hub. All vital and necessary systems are controlled and accessed here. If you have control of it, you control the hub.” More than I was expecting but really lacking in detail there kitty-man.

“Right, so I understand you wanted to talk to me about something?” I remember Mab mentioning he wanted to see me for something.

“...Right, it was for a security assessment. I think you’ve passed anything I could think of for you to do, seeing as you’re here and not killing us for control.”

My left eye twitches again. “All good then? I’m off to take a nice long bath. Toodles!” I about-face and march towards where our rooms are at. I hope.

“Mab, where’s our room at again?” She does something because my eyepiece is suddenly showing me a path to follow. “Ah, thanks.”

“...are we really going to just leave them?” The younger of the two timidly asks.

“Not my business. But if any get in my way to our room, they won’t long for this life anymore.” My guns are in my hands again. I want my bath dammit! More than that, I want the quiet time to assess just what the hell kind of skills or abilities I activated in the basement.

Several detours later, we are approaching our room. The comm opens up before we get to it.

“Gram? I’m not sure why, but all the remaining hostiles are moving to your position. We’re already enroute, giving you a heads up.”

I sigh and look at the ceiling for a moment. “Mab, is there an open area nearby?” She doesn’t reply, just bobs a bit then heads off. I’m quick to follow. “Let kitty-man know where we’re going, would you?

We run down several corridors and go up a lift. Entering a small atrium, I nod and look for a good place to play snipe-the-bandit. Ledge, second floor. I’m there in a few seconds and I plop my ass down with my guns in my lap.

Checking my gear, I realize I never took off my facemask. I wonder why no one called me on it? Eh, not that important. My gear is all good, not a drop of blood on me. There is a bit of dirt and grass on my shoes, but I think I’ll live.

“Gram?” Mab has been acting timid since she reunited with her daughter. “Are you sure you disabled that rune?” Ah, that makes sense.

“Yes, Mab. The rune was disabled and wiped away before I put the mask on. I’m in, what I jokingly call, battle mode. I’ve been trained to turn it off and on at a whim.” I take the mask off to look at Mab.

“Why did you kill everyone then?” The daughter flutter over and asks.

“Why not? They were aiming to kill me. That made them my enemy. Simply put, enemy is for killing.” I nod sagely after giving such great advice.

“What about where I was being kept?” Hesitant, they both have been. Is the situation that stressful to them?

“I will not allow a rapist to live if I can help it.” I shake my head a moment. “Look, I’m no saint. I murder people and in turn, they try to murder me. That was my life before I got too injured to keep doing that. Then, I’m migrated here. But in all my travels, with all the wrong things I did for the right reasons, rape was never acceptable to me. Forcing your will on another in a sexual way and to derive pleasure from that control? No, I’ll put them down like the rabid dogs they are.”

Clapping starts. As soon as the first clap occurs, my mask is back on and I’ve sighted the clapper.

“Well said! You must be a Migrant as well! So good to meet you, ‘brother’.” Male, caucasian, short brown hair, goatee. Stands about two meters tall, heavily muscled and wide shouldered. Has an assortment of guns located about his person. Eyepiece registers level 24. No armor to speak of. Name: Meanrock Destructicon.

“We’ll see.” I reply flatly. “You the reason this place turned into a butcher shop?” Seriously, what kind of name is that? It’s probably worse than Trogdor the Fire Breathing Dragon.