Upon exiting the building, Mark looked around. He had been brought to the center of the town, and the town was built on a hill. So, he could clearly see Georgia dashing away from him, in the direction of the bridge he had come across.

Before following, Mark looked up river. Spotting the boats in the distance, he zoomed in with his artificial eye. There were three of them, shaped a bit like a squared off canoe. They also had tarps spread out over poles, for sun protection maybe? Mark didn’t know much about boat shapes and functions, so he turned his gaze on the boat’s occupants instead. the lead boat held five figures; three humans and two were leopards. Only two of them, a human and leopard, looked in decent shape. The others lay on the floor boards, either injured or sick.

They paddled franticly, trying desperately to separate themselves from the boats closing in on them. Each of these held the little brown lizards, kobolds, most were either paddling or pushing off the ground with long poles. The rest were firing on the fleeing humans and weres. The majority had slings, but there were one or two bows. It looked like the tarps were obstructing their shots, or those fleeing would likely have long been struck down.

They were headed into the fork the mayor had run towards. A further look showed Mark, a large dock pushing out into the water there. The current was stronger on that side as well, so boats must naturally drift that way. having picked up everything he was likely too in a short time; Mark took off toward the river. The mayor had bypassed the bridge, running out onto the dock with several villagers. Mark instead chose to run onto the bridge that crossed above the river.

Readying his slingshot, Mark sighted in the boats following the fleeing people. it was a long shot, and his reticle showed orange, not giving him a green lock. Not wanting to waste ammunition, or alert the enemy, Mark waited until he had a good lock before loosing his grip on the steel ball. It whistled through the air, connecting with the bow wielder on the right most boat with a crunch.

Next, he readied another shot and fired off at the bow wielder on the left boat. He targeted those holding bows first, because they were getting the closest with their shots. The second one also flopped back, like a puppet with its strings cut. Mark appreciated the impact more than he expected. With the mark III there wasn’t an impact, just a burned hole. It was difficult to tell when he had made a hit sometimes, especially when the one shot didn’t realize they had been hit for a second or two.

After that, he just pumped out steel ball after steel ball. His reload and aiming times were slow, much slower than with a semi auto rifle. Each time he fired; he had to wait until the cable came to rest, fish another ball from a pouch, and load it in securely before pulling back to his ear. all told, it was maybe six seconds between shots. That didn’t sound like much; but when the targets were moving, under their own power and with assistance from the river’s current, he only managed to down five kobolds before the fleeing craft slid under the bridge.

A second passed, while Mark decided what to do. Then, before the last boat could slip by him, Mark dropped from the bridge onto that boat. It wasn’t much of a drop, perhaps five feet from the bridge to the tarp covering the boat. Still, he didn’t manage to get a clean landing. He hadn’t managed to line up his fall with the center line of the craft, and his feet got tangled up in the tarp. With a jolt, the entire boat capsized, sending a tarp tangled troll into the river.

It was the first time since he had transformed that Mark had been in the water. So, when he hit the water and immediately sank to the river’s bottom; he didn’t know if he should blame his new weight or the tarp that had completely tangled him up. he could feel the currant carrying him along as he flailed, the water preventing him from getting enough leverage to split the water strengthened leather.

He hadn’t managed it before crashing into a rock. The impact didn’t hurt so much as startle him, still, a stream of bubbles flew from his mouth. He felt hands on him at that point, heaving him out of the water and onto the dock. Thankfully, his artificial eye was water proof, and hadn’t been blinded when he entered the river, so he could tell that it was the villagers who had pulled him up.

When he noticed the mayor closing in on him with her machete drawn, he started to worry all over again.

“That was stupid,” she said, bringing her blade down. Mark squinted, in anticipation of the pain, but the blade didn’t bite into his flesh. Instead, it connected with the ropes holding the tarp to his bulky frame. “But your actions gave us the edge we needed to save our people. so, I’ll overlook it this time.” She punctuated her statement with another chop.

Once freed, Mark hauled himself up. patting himself down, he took stock of his equipment. He’d been wearing his armored jacket and protective gear, he still couldn’t get over thinking of it as biker gear, so it was all in place. His slingshot and most of his ammunition was still in place too. The pouch he had been pulling steel marbles from was empty though. Not an insurmountable loss then, since his bag was still sitting on the bridge.

“Thanks for pulling me out, Mayor.” He said with an inclination of his head. looking around to get his bearings. He could see the first boat had docked, and its people were now being treated by the town’s folk. The boat he had flipped was bobbing nearby, but the last boat was nowhere to be seen. “What happened?”

“That stunt you pulled tipped one of their boats. Kobolds are cowardly creatures, when half their number went down, the other boat fled at top speed. Most of the ones who flipped were able to escape by swimming to shore,” she was obviously pissed about that, “but we did save our people. not to mention, recovered two of the lost boats… “she paused again to flag down a were leopard woman. “Take our guest to get cleaned up please, thank you Jan. I will be with you shortly, perhaps there is something you can contribute after all.” that last remark had been aimed his way, but he let it go.

“If you would follow me Mister.” Jan the wear leopard said, motioning him to follow her. He did so, looking her over as they walked. He didn’t know if he could accurately grasp age on a person that looked more than half cat, but he guessed she was in her mid-twenties.

A hard lived mid-twenties, her fur was scarred in places and her eyes never sat still in her head. they constantly jumped around; her hands never leaving the hilt of her own machete. She was dressed in near identical fashion to Georgia; come to that, Mark had seen at least five town’s women dressed and armed the same. Were they in the town guard maybe?

“Keep your eyes to yourself, mister, unless you’d like to lose them.” Jan snapped, when his eyes had lingered on her too long for her liking.

“I’m sorry miss,” Mark said, wiping the sopping mess of his hair out of his face. He really needed to get a hair clip or something. He hadn’t ever grown it this long before, so its care was new to him. “I didn’t mean to cause offence. I just noticed that your dressed just like the mayor. I was just wondering what the garb signified, if anything.” He said honestly, leaving out his observations of her bedraggled state.

“Oh,” her back straightened with pride at his comments, though she didn’t apologize for her words. “I’m one of Georgia’s girls.” She said proudly. “There aren’t many of us, yet, but it’s only been a year. Eventually, we will close the damned dock houses and get rid of the poppy for good.” Mark wasn’t following all of that, but he had a few guesses. He didn’t press for more, just followed her back to the center building, with a quick detour for his bag.

She left him to get cleaned up, going back out as soon as she’d dropped him off. Mark stripped down, squeezing the water from his clothing. He changed out his under clothes before putting his still wet armored jacket over a chair to dry for a bit before he put it back on. He didn’t really like the idea of sitting around doing nothing while there were folk being kidnapped, but he didn’t think the mayor would take kindly to his interference. So, he waited.

“Thanks for waiting,” mayor Georgia said as she entered the room. Picking up the discarded glasses and the clear liquor she refilled the glasses, and after handing Mark’s over, slumped back into a chair. Tossing a collar onto the table, it had a small digital display near the lock.

“Were there any casualties?” Mark asked, sipping at his drink.

“Not this time,” she said with a gulp of her own shine. “Pulled that off Aaron and Tim’s mom. Poor thing, they put a control collar on her. A damned control collar! What are kobolds doing with something like this anyway, these don’t come cheap. Only law enforcement officials or high-end slave dealers even have access to these things.”

“Control collar?” Mark asked, his brow furrowed as he stared at the device.

“Look stranger, I don’t have time to waste giving you a history lesson. So, listen up, Passthrough is just a stopping point between two bigger towns. I know I told you that already.” She was nearly growling the words at Mark, who just listened silently. “Well, for a long time it was a real shit hole. A place for rich folk to stop at to enjoy some jungle poppy and a dock girl. I put a stop to it last year when I took over as mayor, but some of our long time ‘customers’ didn’t like that. not long after, the damned kobolds showed up and began stopping boats before they reached us…”

She went on for a long time, for someone who didn’t feel like giving a history lesson. Mark thought, but he didn’t interrupt, he just listened and sipped his drink. The mayor was blind drunk, having started her third bottle by the time she’d had enough venting her anger onto the stranger. Who had learned everything he needed to know to wrap this quest up, he hoped so anyway.

“So, stranger… what are you still doing here?” she slurred angrily. “Get out there and clear up that kobold mess up river, so I can get back to cleaning up this damn town… these girls… they need my help, damn it.” she was still grumbling when Mark stood up, and didn’t even notice as he gathered up his things, including the control collar, and walked out.

Jan was standing guard outside the door, along with another bedraggled young woman also dressed in a thin robe armed with a machete.

“The mayor has tasked me with ending the kobold threat.” Mark told the two former jungle poppy addicted dock girls, turned town guard. “She was tired after our conversation, so if she wonders where I have gone, would you please tell her I went to do as ordered?” he didn’t think telling girls the mayor had saved that she was blind stinking drunk was a good idea, so he was as tactful as he could be. besides, he wanted to get out of this town before he got dragged into the political situation here.

His only answer was a nod from Jan, who made no move to leave the doorway she guarded. He admired her loyalty to the mayor. Who, although she hadn’t said it, Mark felt certain had been a dock girl herself once upon a time. Pulling up his interface’s map to the corner of his vision, he located the dot that denoted Tinker’s position. The little scree was making good time. It had only been a few hours, and yet he was miles away into the jungle. Without waiting any longer, Mark shouldered his bag and set off at a sprint to meet up with his companion.

Mark moved through the jungle at break neck speed. He saw a few animals, including a giant snake and a small hunting cat up a tree. they didn’t mess with him though, so he left them alone in turn. As he ran, he was keeping an eye on Tinker’s dot. The scree was moving around, almost randomly, likely following his recon drone to new areas looking for the jungle poppy.

This didn’t change for a few hours, then out of nowhere, Tinker’s dot shot off at high speed in a straight line. Mark felt worry tugging at his chest when he saw that. he could only assume that it had encountered some trouble and was running. Mark was already moving at a run, but he reached deeper into himself and added on a burst of speed. Hoping he could reach the scree before something happened to it.

The scree wasn’t any larger than a big dog, but it could really move. watching the dot on his mini map, Mark realized that he wasn’t going to catch up. thankfully, Tinker must have noticed his dot on the map to, because it changed direction and moved towards Mark. As the two came together, Mark finally got a look behind the scree at what had it so riled up.

It was a trio of blue gorilla sized monkeys. Swinging through the trees at speed, they were slowly closing the distance to the scree. They hadn’t reached Mark’s effective range yet, so he didn’t stop running. it didn’t take long for him to reach Tinker, who didn’t even stop as it raced passed him. Mark snorted at the scree’s antics, but held his position, getting ready to meet the blue monkeys.

He watched them come, observing their movements. Thankfully, it looked like these particular beasts were just that, beasts. Mark was getting tired of fighting animals with human levels of intelligence. When the first ape passed an invisible line marked in his interface, Mark lifted his arms and fired off a projectile. The shot was long, so the ball arched through the air for a long second before slamming into the beast, knocking it from the tree.

The others screamed in rage and came on faster. Throwing themselves from branch to branch, rather than swinging themselves. A second ball flew through the air, dropping a second ape. Unfortunately, the last monkey had reached him. throwing itself onto him with a lot of momentum behind its jump.

When it crashed into Mark, he could feel his breath being knocked away again. When the two large fists came together to hammer down into his head, Mark regretted not having a helmet, no matter how stupid it might look. that blow rattled his teeth, but he recovered quickly. Swinging an armored fist up into the monkey’s jaw.

It took the blow like a champ, only screaming out again and biting down into Marks shoulder. The armored jacket prevented its teeth from sinking into his flesh, but he felt his bones creaking at the pressure. A foot, clenched into a fist, slammed into his gut, doubling him over. Another fist dropped onto the back of his head then, laying him out face first.

“What the hell?” he said through a mouth full of red soil. This damned blue ape was at least as strong as he was, and it was considerably faster. Mark thrust himself up onto his knees, wishing he still had a gun in his hand, or even better, the Taser. He didn’t have that anymore though, so he reached back to the Broken blade. Pulling it from its harness he put the handle between himself and his attacker.

Rearing back, the ape brought its fists together over its head and slammed them down towards Mark. He intercepted the blow with the shaft of the Broken blade. The impact was accompanied by a loud, crack! And his Broken blade, that had held up to so much abuse, broke in half. The blow continued on, robbed of much of its force, and slammed into his face. Blood sprayed from Mark’s nose as he heard it crunch.

Taking the remanences of his Twice Broken blade, little more than a knife now, he slammed it into the beast’s abdomen. driving it up under its ribs with his full might, Mark gave it a twist and cut out to the side. Blood and gore coated him, as the blue monkey spasmed. Flailing around for a time before it lay still. Spitting to clear his mouth of filth, Mark heaved the overly strong primate off himself. Sitting up and looking around for further threats.

What he found, was the Tinker, already hard at work skinning out the first monkey he had shot.

“Thanks for the save… Mark.” It said as it worked.

“Tinker,” he said with a gasping nod. “How did you get these blue monkeys after you anyway?” he asked. Pulling the twice broken blade from the beast before him, he set to work skinning it himself.

“Ape… Mark.”it said in its normal tone, that still managed to sound lecturing. “As you can see from their broad chests and the way they swung through the trees, coupled with the lack of any tails. These are clearly… blue apes.” Mark took a deep breath, trying to remember that the scree wasn’t human and didn’t realize how annoying it was being. Maybe… probably.

“Oh, how did I miss that.” he said instead. “So, Tinker… how did you get these Apes, to chase you anyway?” he tried again. his blade worked better for skinning now that it didn’t have a two-foot handle attached to it, and he was making quick work of his last kill.

“These… apes had a jungle poppy near their… nest. I took it, they wanted it back.” The Tinker was clearly still censoring its use of the word ‘surface dweller.’ Oddly enough, when it was blanked out it sounded a lot more like a curse word to Mark than it had before.

“I see… so, how many jungle poppy have you managed to harvest?” he asked, getting the skin off the ape, seeing that Tinker had already moved onto the last one, Mark started scraping the flesh from the hide using a nearby stone as a fleshing beam.

“I have found eleven so far, they are much harder to find then I thought. Besides these… apes destroyed my recon drone. Now finding them is going to take even longer.” It punctuated its words with a kick from one of its rear limbs, on the fallen ape it was skinning. “Have you finished your distraction… Mark? It will go faster if you actually help me look.”

Mark looked over at the Tinker, it looked mostly the same, but it was obviously moody. Was that from the heat and dampness? It had said it didn’t like this environment. He couldn’t drop his quest though.

“Not quite, I actually came here to see if you could help me reconfigure this for my use?” Mark tossed over the control collar. Where the Tinker paused in its work to look it over. “But I think that our tasks might overlap. If I’m not wrong, the attacks are coming because some local big shot lost access to his hookers and blow… I think if I can take down that camp, we just might find a few jungle poppy laying around.”

“What is a ‘hookers and blow?’ and this is a control collar, a high quality one. There are several settings available on it, but mainly it will punish for doing something you don’t want and reward for doing something you do. I can reconfigure it for you. it will link to your control implant, using some of your mind attribute. This an advanced model though, so be prepared to lose a lot of mind unless you have a good control implant. What do you plan to use this for, anyway?”

“I might not use it at all,” Mark said with a shrug. “Our enemies are using these though, so I wanted to understand how they worked, and have one on hand just in case.” They finished up their work on the hides. smearing watered down brains into the skin side of the hide before rolling them up tight to allow the mixture to soak in. they would have to open them out to dry soon, but they had a little time.

“Thanks, Tinker.” Mark said, accepting the now reconfigured control collar and his quickly repaired twice broken blade. He checked the stats page for each quickly as he received them.

Equipment

Item

Description

Effects / extra information

Mark III (sold, will disappear from next list)

high tech energy weapon used by an unknown of humanoid force as a standard issue rifle. Has 10 power cells chained together for maximum fire power and versatility. Found in crashing shuttle, only one encountered to date.

bulky weapon with 3 power settings. Low = 100 low power shots, medium = 50 medium power shots, high = 10 high power shots.

twice Broken blade (will be referred to as a knife on following list)

Broken naginata pole arm. Has a 12" blade, a nearly 6" handle. Wrapped in frog kin elite hide. Has a frog kin elite hide harness. Was improved with augmentation points for added durability

a blade with sentimental value. It almost killed you in battle, reworked and bestowed as gift by Tinker, broke again by blue ape. Tinker repaired again.

Swamp Rat suede Robe

high quality robe made from swamp rat hide, trimmed in swamp rat fur. A luxury export from swamp rat valley. Worth a high price

a gift from Lilly of Swamp rat valley. Bernard handed it over with his other gifts but he said who it was from. It has sentimental value

Lilly's Gold token

a token gifted by Lilly of swamp rat valley. Redeemable at the shop for two Trog eggs.

Species is nearly extinct in swamp rat valley. These eggs where gifted in the hope they would be settled in a safe area

Solar powered recharge kit. X3

a solar charger can recharge a power cell in the field. Each kit comes with a 12' x 12' solar collection blanket and a charging station

1 power cell can be recharged in 12 hours of full sun

Billy club (sold, will disappear from next list)

18" long modern club, designed as a non-lethal side arm for unknown humanoid force shuttle pilots

picked it up on the shuttle, only one encountered to date

Olive drab jumpsuit / smart boots

an outfit created from smart fabric. Has low power nano machines inside that adjust the fit to wearer once before going dormant. Useful for any armed force as a one size fits all uniform option. Used by unknown humanoid force.

this outfit was originally found on the shuttle. Terra has found several to replace the damaged ones from somewhere

Sling shot

weapon that utilizes the user’s strength and accuracy to potentially deadly effect. can hit like a bullet if user is strong enough

shoots hardened steel balls, comes with replacement cord

trog scale biker jacket & protective gear

biker jacket made by Tinker from elite trog scale and bloody hive carapace. Red and yellow and black in color, this biker jacket looks good and offers decent protection to bladed and bludgeoning weapons. Limited usefulness against projectiles. Carapace gloves add impact to your punches.

looks great and provides protection in combat, what more do you want (someone pretty awesome must have helped design this)

Control collar

obedience collar. Causes pain or pleasure depending on settings used. Open control collar tab to adjust settings.

designed originally to help train dangerous beasts, using concept similar to Pavlov’s law. But works equally well on people. Requires 8 mind. (2 with Terra's Gift)

Checking out his list he was happy to see it would give him a warning, before stuff just disappeared from it. also, that stuff would disappear, some of his tabs were getting awfully long already. If things he didn’t own anymore started cluttering up the works…

“Are you going to come with me then, Tinker?” Mark asked, preparing to move out.

“No, without my drones my combat effectiveness is significantly reduced. I will continue to search for our prime objective… Mark” it replied, shouldering its pack. Without waiting for a reply, it took off into the undergrowth.

“Ok then,” Mark muttered. He got what he needed anyway, and it was probably best not to let the scree get into harm’s way. its personality was somewhat… fluid, but it was his best friend in this place and he didn’t want the Tinker to die.

Pulling up the picture he had snapped of the mayor’s map, Mark compared it to his own map. Getting his bearings, he set off towards the circled area indicated on the map.