Charlie sat on a large, lopsided, rock on the side of the road. Taking a moment to rest after her clash with the wild dogs. Traveling was more dangerous than she’d believed it to be. The world was much more dangerous than she’d believed it to be. Which was … alarming … considering that Charlie’s first and secondhand experiences with the world at large hadn’t left her with a particularly rosy view of things, to begin with.

After the fight, she was tired enough to consider breaking camp for the evening early, but based on the position of the sun in the sky, the afternoon was still a few hours away, meaning it’d be a waste for her not to at least put a few more miles between her and her former-home before the day was spent.

Charlie sighed and the sigh was cut short. The hairs on the back of her neck began to stand on end. Her skin began to goosebump and tingle. The wind died and the fields and woods at her back fell into a state of unnatural stillness and quiet. That’s how Charlie knew…’it’...was here. The spirit in red. The strange being that had been haunting Charlie for more than five years now. A figure whose gaze never quite left her, its presence filling her with equal shares of fear and ease, because she now had started to unconsciously associate its arrival with good things, and resolved dangers.

Charlie took a while to find it, to find… him… but she eventually did, because it was only in these moments where the feeling of being watched would come from a single discernible direction. She turned and found the unnaturally tall figure standing amidst some tall grass and in the shadow of some trees several dozens of feet away. A small giant, seven feet tall, cloaked in red, masked in red. The appearance of an impassive and gloomy psychopomp, as played by a nightmarish red clown.

A whisper, dry and low, like a dying wind, soft and almost musical, like a song that you can’t quite remember, made its way to her from the tree. By now, Charlie had learned that this was the voice of the being. The crimson clown only occasionally spoke to her, but he did it often enough that Charlie could determine that the creature was more than just the result of a bored farmgirl’s overactive imagination. Charlie opened her ears to listen, past experience had taught her to pay close attention when this alien being spoke.

“Continue riding down the road, then take a right when you reach a set of scorch marks on the road…Ride straight from there and you’ll find a cave…Inside the cave, there’ll be a bandit camp…Don’t worry, the bandits are already dead…What you need to do is free their captives. There’s a wagon you can hitch the horse up to…The captives can ride inside it…In exchange for all your efforts, you can take whatever you want from the camp…”

“Uh…Okay…I guess I’ll do that then,” said Charlie.

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I turned into mist and left my position by the tree. Retreating back to my proper position as the Client’s shadow. I’ve never understood why the protagonists in comics hid important secrets from the people who needed to know that information the most. I mean, all that hiding one’s secret-identity from the most trust-worthy people in your life does, is assure that when you’re inevitably found out, those trust-worthy people, i.e. one’s closest friends and family, will have no clue that they’ve gotten a Client painted on their backs.

For that reason, and several others, I’d endeavored to make the Client an active part of the process of her defense. This was the reason that I’d arranged for the Client to acquire the spear. This was the reason I made sure Charlie was able to acquire various combat and survival skills. This was the difference between giving the Client a fish, and teaching the Client to fish. While I would do my best to watch over the client, it was conceivable that something could distract me or pull me away. Thus my main long-term strategy for protecting her was turning her into a self-sufficient powerhouse, and making sure the client would be able to defend herself in the long run.

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Charlie drove an empty wagon, looking over her shoulder at the wagon, every few minutes or so. Paying little concern for the road, because by now she was confident that Buckett could find her way through the crooked, barely paved, streets of the small town just fine, even without Charlie’s guidance. Charlie’s thoughts continually drifted back towards the wagon that had previously been occupied by a desultory collection of downtrodden men, women, and children. Mostly women and children.

She’d just finished dropping the bandit’s captives off as she’d been asked, and she couldn’t help worrying about them. They’d been a downcast group. Eerily quiet. All of them seemed to be suffering from a case of the “soldier’s disease” though, thankfully none seemed too far-gone. Oddly none of the captives seemed too surprised to see Charlie when she arrived. She suspected the spirit had told them of her ahead of time.

When Charlie asked the group if they wanted a ride back to civilization, most said yes…The ones who didn’t, simply wandered off into the wild. When she asked where the group wished to be dropped off, all had named this town that sat a fair deal further down the road than Charlie had expected to make her way to. None had mentioned the villages and hometowns that they’d originally hailed from. Charlie somewhat understood.

Back in her own hometown, occasionally bandits and raiders would carry off some of the folk. Sometimes people would escape, and their families and friends weren’t always welcoming. Especially when it came to the women-folk. Especially if they came back pregnant. Especially, when it was possible that those same families had traded those girls away for the sake of avoiding conflict with the bandits.

Charlie had decided to give each all of them a portion of the loot that she was able to collect from the bandit’s camp. The Red Masked One seemed to approve. Charlie was able to give each of the captives more than enough money to steadily start a new life in a new place. Still, she was worried. The plight of the captives, and the worn, bent, look of their backs stayed with her long after they were gone.

“Um…I know I probably don’t have any place to be asking you this…but isn’t there anything else we can do for those folks?” said Charlie. Talking aloud to the empty air.

“No…But don’t worry, I’ve already done what I can for those people…In all likelihood…They should be fine…”

Charlie nearly fell off the wagon driver’s seat. She hadn’t actually expected a response when she spoke. This was far from the first time she’d tried to call out to the Red Masked Clown, but it was the first time he’d responded so quickly, and directly.

“Er…That’s good uh…Mind if I ask what you did?” said Charlie. Eager to keep the conversation going.

“I don’t mind…Their bodies are whole…and I’ve done what I can to repair any mental and spiritual damage that they’ve endured…I cannot say that they are completely alright, but they are better than you might have thought they were…” said the voice of the red masked clown.

“Er…Is that true?” said Charlie. Not quite skeptical, but not quite believing the strange spirit.

“I have no reason to lie to you,” said the spirit.

“Ah…Uh, sorry, I guess…I was just worried,” said Charlie. Sighing. Hoping she hadn’t offended the red masked clown.

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“No need for apologies…I understand your concern, and to some extent, I find them admirable. That being said, I do feel compelled to remind you that you should probably pay some attention to looking after your own self as well…For instance, I don’t know if you’ve noticed already, but you’ve got a tail behind you…” I said. Stifling a sigh.

It seemed my young ward was something of a good person. Someone who tried to achieve a standard above merely being “decent”, like most folk. That was a good thing and a bad thing, because with a little bad luck, and a confluence of bad circumstances it wasn’t hard for those kinds of people to get into bad situations. There was a reason people often said that the good tend to die young.

For instance, my client had just given away enough money to the captives we’d rescued that it would have been irresponsible for me to just set them loose without setting some protections in place for them. It would have been cruel to free them from bandits, with bait for other bandits and thieves to come hounding them, without doing anything to keep trouble off their backs.

Of course, I wasn’t going to discourage her good-hearted nature, or try to mold her to fit my mission. That’s something my original family might have done…and the longer I spent living this new life, the more I grew aware that many of the things my mother and her people did in the name of protecting our lands, and the Empire beyond, were somewhat reprehensible. On the other hand, I saw no reason to abstain from letting the girl learn about the bright and dark parts of life on her own. I needn’t mollycoddle her overmuch, I just needed to keep her alive, healthy, and sane.