For reasons that are beyond me, I find myself staring at a group of rabid human thugs armed with strange metallic rods shouting something about blood purity while charging me and the rest of the crew of the Incredulous. The source of their immediate aggression I understand, Tlokbur rushed the de facto leader of this little gang that was of the same species as her. That was the official start of the struggle, but despite what I was told about certain bigoted beliefs of the people on this station. I did not believe they would be stupid enough to return and publicly challenge us, or at least semi-publicly, and with such few numbers as well. Bigots should work in mobs, not small forces like these.

As six of the human thugs are preparing to rush me, Morgera and Mrs. Two-Shoes. I take a moment to stop my annoyed deliberations about the inefficient tactics of these bigots, to look over and appreciate the battle between Tlokbur and her counterpart. The two gigantic plant creatures are in a wrestling match that seems more like two bucks locking horns, their myriad of tentacles have gone from smacking their target to digging into the plant mass of their opponent. Their massive bulks are pushing and grinding against each other, while their large venus flytrap mouths are snapping and hissing at each other.

I can't observe that rather fascinating struggle for any longer, unfortunately, as the six thugs finally rush at the three of us. Three of them seem to be aiming for Mrs. Two-Shoes while only one is heading for Morgera, which means the final two thugs are aiming for me. Their rods do not look particularly dangerous but fighting two armed thugs without weapons or my old powers seems foolish. Unless... I remember that I am not too far from a bend in the corridor which would let me fight without being seen by my compatriots.

Therefore, when the thugs come for me I turn and flee quickly down the corridor, I make sure I am not running too fast as I make my way to the bend. As I run I dig one of my talons into my arm so I can draw blood. As I run I begin chanting under my breath while carefully moving the fingers of the hand that is not drawing blood, in several arcane gestures. I channel the principle of containment into a rather simple cantrip where I use my feeble control over magic, to make mana coalesce in the blood of my arm where I cut myself.

As I run through the bend in the corridor I rip my talon out and toss blood behind me creating several thin lines on the floor. I spin around as my pursuers jump over the bloody lines and I grin at them. While my ability to wield true magic in my present state is limited, I feel that the cantrip worked. No sound of what is to come will pass the lines of blood, which means I have some room to experiment with my newly volunteered test subjects.

First, I must disable them, so I put both of my hands behind my back and I allow my instincts to take over as I access the mana within me to cast a spell. "Transform Hand," I say which clearly confuses my two assailants who both hesitate at my strange choice of words. Internally I am seething in rage at the undignified way I seemingly have to cast spells now, saying a spells name to use it makes no sense. Despite the silliness of the incantation I can feel the mana flow into my left hand and begin reshaping it to fit the image on my mind's eye.

The transformation only takes two seconds and before the two thugs can resume their aggressive advance, I start rushing towards them and I swing my now inflated and spiked left fist right into the side of the leftmost thug. I feel a satisfying squelch as my newly grown bone spikes penetrate his flesh, and those are accompanied by an audible crack which I presume is because I broke one of his ribs. The thug sinks down to the ground with a loud groan and gasp of pain, I kick him in the head before he can scream out in pain.

The other thug widens his eyes in surprise but he swings his rod at me and I lazily grab it with my enhanced hand. To my surprise what happens next is that a jolt like a lighting spell flows through my arm forcing me to let go, and stagger backward with my left arm dangling limply along my side. The thug seems to have overcome the shock and his surprise and he wanders confidently towards me while twirling his rod. "Now I have you, you Nolift piece of shit", he says clearly gloating and engaging in battlefield banter.

Battlefield quipping and banter is the most idiotic thing that anyone can ever do in a fight, any time you leave your opponent to recover could be your end. Which, in this foolish bigots case would be so as I merely roll my eyes in annoyance and whisper. "Lesser Absorption", the thug rushes forward as I do not respond to his words and jabs me with his rod. I can feel the lightning energy within the rod flowing into me, but rather than the incapacitating pain I had originally felt. I now experienced the power flowing into my body and being absorbed, the excess of what I could absorb began reinvigorating and healing my arm.

The thug stares at me in shock as I merely stand there and let the power from his weapon flow into me. He says while his face grows paler and paler in fear and his pupils dilate, "what...what are you?" I don't bother responding to the fool, I just kick him in the groin and as he falls forward while grasping his genitals my arms move to catch him in a wrestling chokehold.- I hold him and strangle the poor fool while I look at the injured thug, who has first now started to recover from my initial assault.

He sees me strangling his comrade and my bloody left hand, he seemingly comes to the conclusion that he should retreat back to his friends. Unfortunately for him, I could not allow him to escape with the knowledge he now possessed, so as he starts to flee away from me. I reach out with my left hand and make a grasping motion towards him while saying, "Grasping Hands." I notice that each time I say the name of a spell to use them a strange otherworldly tone is added to my voice, this observation is filed away as I focus my attention on the result of the casting.

The fleeing thug falls over as right underneath him, several limbs seeming to grow out from nowhere and starts grasping for every inch of flesh they can touch on him. Everything from taloned and bestial paws to tentacles sticks up from the floor and soon enough have completely wrapped the Thug in their constrictive embrace. The struggling and whimpering thug in my arms has seized to be of interest to me, he is no warrior and has no wrestling training at all. As such killing him with my bare hands in a stranglehold is easy while I oversee the effects of my Grasping Hands spell.

I feel a noticeable trickle of mana flow out of me on a pretty consistent basis while the spell is activated, at my present level of strength it seems I do not have the power to maintain the spell with the base expenditure of mana alone. I absentmindedly try to make the summoned appendages crush the life out of their victim, but they don't seem as strong as they should be. The crushing is pitiful but sufficient enough to at least incapacitate the target, I also notice that my control over the limbs seems limited.

When I feel that the life of the thug in my arms has truly left his body, I drop his corpse to the floor and cut his throat with one of the bone spikes on my hand to make sure my assessment was correct. After that, I feel my left hand return to its normal shape and I start wandering towards the second victim after dismissing the limbs holding his battered and unconscious frame. On the way to him I pick up both the rods that they had wielded against me and my NVR now informs me that these rods are called "stun sticks."

Had it not been for my magic and the foolishness of these thugs, they would have easily been able to defeat me with these weapons. A metallic stick that contains the equivalent to notable lightning magic within them, would be a useful tool even back in my world when I was powerful. I walk over to the unconscious thug laying on the ground and I absent-mindedly decide to give these strange weapons a little test.

I prod his body with both of them at the same time and I push the stun sticks into his flesh as I watch in fascination while the thug's body spasms on the floor. Soon enough after a while, I can smell charred flesh from the man and I sense the life force flow out of his body. With the last thug dead and my magical experiments concluded, for now, I decided that it would be best to speedily return to the crewmembers.

I keep both stun sticks in my hands as I walk back over the bloodlines I created on the floor and I sense the mana disappear within them as I cross over the lines. The feebleness of my magic worries me more than I expected to, even with two principles at my command my general weakness seems to interfere with my ability to truly wield them. Only being able to contain the sound of my battle with the thugs, is such a simple work of magic that it truly bothers me that it was all I could accomplish.

As I walk around the bend in the corridor and I can see the battle the crewmembers had been engaged in, my thoughts quickly went away from the topic of my weakened magic. Tlokbur stood on a pile of torn plant matter and raised her tentacles in triumph. Before, my eyes she also withdrew a pink bow from within her mass and quickly put it in the place of the black bow she had been wearing. I remember that Tlokbur must now be male and I adjust my thought patterns accordingly. Beyond the torn plant matter I see three unconscious thugs laying on the floor the rest must have fled.

Morgera is kneeling over a seated Mrs. Two-Shoes and he seems to be bandaging a few minor cuts on her arms. She looks over at me and whistles softly. "Welp, it seems you can pull your own weight. Impressive, it would have been really shitty if the fuckwads beat you up and ran away. Hunting them down would take more time than I would have liked. You can call me Mary now as we have both fought together," She adds that last statement with a genuine smile and a nod to me.

I frown a bit at the strange warrior's code or should I say strange etiquette that Mary displayed, but in the end, I content myself with having won some clout within the group. One small but important step towards securing my continued existence as a warlock. Before I can ask about the pile of torn plant matter Morgera says what we all probably were thinking. "At this point, we should retreat to the ship before the station authority comes to investigate the area."

We all decide to prudently follow this very common-sense advice and we retreat down the last bit of corridor and into the port area of the station. As we rush for the ship I turn to ask Tlokbur while we are moving with him as the slowest member of our group by far. "Why did you attack that other...?" Tlokbur speaks up before I can find an appropriate term for her species. "Areia, my species are known as the Areia. As for why that gets into complicated stuffsies, but in short, because he is a bigoted piece of shit."

That was a more than adequate conversation ender so I decided to not investigate the matter further, at least for now that is. We run up the ramp and into the Incredulous as speedily crossing the port area took little time. As we step into the ship Mary yells out. "Torran close the ramp, we need to get the ship the hell out of here!" She makes her way up to the upper ring of the ship after we all enter the common room.

Namatha at that point steps into the common room and says, "What is...Ah, y'all got into a fight. Welp, it is fortunate that our next job is not on this station or in this system." She seems exceedingly casual about the rather disheveled state of her fellow crewmembers. Namatha takes some time to look at each of us up and down before she says anything else.

"Mara, please provide Glyphnax directions to the refreshing room. Tlokbur go down to the engineering deck and take some time for yourself. Morgera please give me a report on what happened when these two have gone to get their rest. When y'all are done we are going to have a crew meeting." Namatha administers the crew with consummate ease and an aura of authority that would make several generals jealous.

A purple arrow materializes in my vision and it is pointed down the corridor that I remember among other things leads to the room where I first woke up. While I am unfamiliar with the interface, I deduce that this is a message from Mara to guide me to the refreshing room. I follow the arrow down the corridor past the room where I was previously in and eventually the arrow bends to point towards a door on my right side.

I enter the room and what follows is perhaps the most condescending and humiliating ordeal I have endured so far. The NVR starts to painstakingly inform about the importance of personal hygiene and why one should regularly clean oneself.

Despite my attempts to force this humiliating explanation, the NVR seems deadset on explaining everything from how one uses a refreshing unit, to how one disposes of excrement and other waste products on ship facilities. Eventually, after what must have been twenty minutes of arguing with the infernal contraption within me. I follow the instructions as they were laid out to me.

After that, I return to the common room, now completely cleansed of impurities and utterly irate. The rest of the crew are gathered on the sofas around the common room with Captain Torran standing in the middle of the room. Tlokbur has switched her pink bow out with the black bow once more, which I reminded myself meant she was female now. Namatha and Mary are seated together on one sofa and Morgera's massive golem-like bulk takes up space on another sofa. Torran gives me a friendly nod as I find myself a place to sit that is not particularly close to anyone else in the room.

"So, with everyone here I can start briefing y'all about our next mission," Torran says casually and he flicks his hands and large almost sculpture-like words appear in the air before us. Another NVR trick I am sure, and sure enough a small system notification appears informing me that I am seeing a "Three Dimensional Powerpoint Presentation". The words say as such "Operation Investigate and potentially eath the rich number 5".

"Ohhhh that is a typo," Torran says with a brief flush and with a wave of the hand, eath is transformed into eat. The words disappear in favor of a silver-colored shield with the word "Shieldmaiden" carved into it and a yellow curved line underneath it. "Yup folks, we are investigating one of the big bads themselves. Shieldmaiden incorporated, err Glyph eh a corporation is like?" Torran clearly realizes he should explain some of the unfamiliar terms to me, but Tlokbur comes to the rescue before he can embarrass himself in the process. "A corporation is kinda like a trade guild combined with a merchant company."

I nod gratefully to her to indicate that the explanation is sufficient and Torran ahems to draw the attention back to him. "As some of us know Shieldmaiden is a corporation that started out as a small intersystem courier service. They delivered goods to people and companies in equal measure. In time they grew to completely dominate most of if not the entire pangalactic retail market and making headways into many other avenues of commerce and power." Torran lectures with a level of seriousness that I had not seen from him before.

"This level of power has not come without violating the rights of billions of beings across the galaxy, through contacts of ours we have learned about an opportunity for our crew." Images flashes in the air before us showing everything from starving children of various species working in dark workshops, to rioting crowds of commoners being shot down by armored thugs. Each image flashes into being as Torran speaks.

"The opportunity in question is a multilayered job that will be one of the most difficult tasks in our careers as Outlaws. Shieldmaiden has a facility on a planet that they have named "Brynhildr 565", this planet unbeknownst to most people would read about it in passing has an indigenous sapient species. " He stops dramatically as some images showing blurry green shapes moving about within a strange paved courtyard next to a large metallic building.

"Now, the company has officially admitted to this, but this is only to avoid legal action from various indigenous right groups across the galaxy. Our contacts believe that not only are they actively breaching several paragraphs of the Pangalactic Law of Indigenous Preservation, they are also actively breaching several laws regarding the rights of sapients and workers in general." The image of the metallic building comes into view once more and several more pictures of green valleys that then, have been transformed into dried yellow husks of what they were.

"Recently, Shieldmaiden has put out a call to get teams of freelance mercenaries and even bounty hunters to come to Brynhildr 565 for an undisclosed job. It is mine and our contacts belief that this hiring is to have the mercenaries massacre, bully if not completely exterminate large portions of the indigenous population." Torren pauses and Namatha speaks up whereas the rest of us are still in rapt silence for various reasons.

"All in all what our job will be is to intercept, disable and replace one of the incoming mercenary teams. We will halfway impersonate them and infiltrate the Shieldmaiden facility on the planet. Our job once inside will be split into four equally important parts. We need to get proof of Shieldmaidens wrongdoings on this planet, sabotage the other mercenaries so they don't harm the indigenous people there, lure several company employees into admitting to their wrongdoing...one way or another and finally try to help the people of the planet gain a more advantageous position." Namatha finishes her contributing to the briefing in the same professional manner that I had come to expect from her.

Torran speaks up next to finish the hearing and he continues with a more somber tone as the images in the air finally disappear. "I am not going to lie, this will be our biggest job yet. It will be challenging on many levels, but if we succeed we will finally deliver a real blow to some of the greatest douchebags in the known galaxy." He clenches his mechanical fist until one can hear the metal in his arm creek audibly. "We will be on the ship for seventeen days as we move to first intercept a crew of mercenaries roughly our size, which has accepted the job. Based on the coordinates we have for their usual hangout that part of the journey will take about seven days."

Torran pauses to look over all of us, "The plan is to intercept them before they leave for the job, board their ship in transit, disable them and take the necessary information needed for step two. When that has been done it will take us about ten more days to reach Brynhildr 565, at which point we will proceed to step two which is infiltration."

"Therefore, in the meantime, while we are shipbound as we move through N-Space we should all hone our skills, prepare our equipment and prepare as much as possible for the dangerous days ahead." Torran claps his hands together and with that, the heavy mood of the presentation evaporates like mist before the sun. Tlokbur moves to eagerly converse with Morgera and Mary languidly falls back on the sofa to lay still and watch me curiously. Namatha seems to be looking through something on her interface, and Torran moves directly towards me.

"Glyph if you don't mind could I have a quick word with you?" He asks friendly and indicates one of the doors leading out of the common room. I shrug deliberately and slowly move up to walk out with the human male and I turn to look at him once we are in the corridor and the door has slid shut behind him.

"I have heard from the others that you know your way around in a scrap, but this is a big and dangerous mission and while I know you want to be part of the crew. It is too much to just assume you would join such a risky mission with so little experience with galactic society" I look into his eyes as he says this and I once again wonder the strange behavior of the beings of this world. If he implied that he thought I would be a liability to the crew I would have expected him to word himself differently. So, if that is not his meaning then I struggled to comprehend the point of the conversation.

I sigh deliberately and think for a moment about how my facade would act before I speak up. "I understand it will be dangerous, but I think it is important that I help. I need to be with you on this so I can get revenge for people who treat people like me like expendable resources." Everything I said was complete rubbish, I only cared about this mission insofar as it would help secure my position within the crew and guarantee my powers as a warlock would remain.

As much as it would pain me to admit it, I needed this crew to maintain my source of power. Without that source, my magic would be all but gone and in a galaxy without magic, reclaiming said magic would be all but impossible. So, I would help this crew assemble mudbricks or clean out an orc encampments latrine if that could help ensure my powers remain.

Torran watches me carefully and then nods solemnly to me. He reaches out a hand that I grasp instinctively and he smiles, "Wel, let's give the fuckers hell." I looked into his eyes and saw the kind of fire one would expect to see from a war leader or a cleric. It detracted from my positive impression of the man after his serious presentation about the mission, but Humans are and always will be Humans. Inferior and emotional to a fault and often prone to bigotry that is just plain silly, but then again this group's Humans had proven to be refreshingly deprived of annoying bigots.