We rode for a long time, taking a final break before reaching our destination just when the dawn light started to peek through the clouds. As everyone refueled, ate, or took a pit stop in the bushes, I started to smell something. It was faint at first, but it didn’t take long for me to pinpoint it. Roughly twenty five humans were approaching, slowly and deliberately.

I walked over to Angela, whose eyes were still bloodshot and wide from the redeye she’d taken earlier, and patted her shoulder.

She jumped, her hands twitchily going for her holster. “What!?”

“We have twenty five people incoming, humans. They’re moving slowly, but they’ll be nearby soon.”

Angela put two fingers in her mouth and let out a whistle. Her men jumped into action at the sound. They drew weapons, took cover, and manned the heavy machine gun. I took a position by my bike, drawing my rifle and aiming down the sights in the direction in which the smell of people was the thickest. We were stopped in the middle of a road that ran through thick patches of trees, and there were a lot of places for an attack to come from.

Even looking directly where my nose was telling me to, I still didn’t see them clearly for some time. Then, a flicker of movement, and I aimed and fired. A woman wearing full body paint fell from the treeline, loosing an arrow into the brush before she landed.

Angela lifted her own pistol and started firing as well, then her squad followed suit. Several arrows started breaking against the bike and truck, though a few of them struck true, with one of Angela’s men taking a non-lethal shot to the eye. Still, when it comes to arrows against a .50 Caliber machine gun, the arrows don’t stand much of a chance, particularly after the element of surprise is lost.

Eventually, the Kaijin ran, dispersing into the forest with whooping yells and mutters in their strange dialect. I checked my notifications and saw nothing, they were systemless. I moved over to the first one I’d downed. Her neck had snapped as she’d landed, and sat on one of her shoulders at a disturbing angle. Her body paint was a perfect camouflage for the surrounding woodland, and her clothes, though cloth, were similarly patterned to hide her. The bow she’d had was well made as well. I picked it up and turned it over in my hands. I’d attempted to use bows a few times, but could never measure my force correctly when using them. I always broke the bowstring, or bow, or even the arrows. I could probably have had something made of blackwood that would be strong enough for me to use. Though, it was hard to consider an alternative weapon when the superiority of my own armament had just been so readily displayed.

I looked around and saw the Ren among Angela’s men. I tossed the bow to him, which he caught with ease, and made my way back to Betty.

“How much farther?” I asked as Angela made her way back to her truck.

“Only an hour or so.” She ran a hand through her mohawk. “No more breaks assholes! We ride until we’re there.”

Her men, already amped up from the fight, didn’t argue much and simply got back into position and started back on the road. After around forty five minutes on the road, we turned down a well driven path through a swamp. I started to see decorations in the trees that surrounded the path. Wood carvings, feathers, and totems along with the skulls of men and irradiated beasts lined everything as we rode. Old power lines had feathers and charms hanging from them, and road signs had been bent and carved into the shapes ot flowers or simple sculptures. It was impressive, and beautiful in that unique way I’d always appreciated about the Kaijin. We reached the end of the path, where a massive clearing had been made. In the trees around us were dozens of homes, connected by wooden bridges that swung gently above swamp below. We pulled out vehicles onto a patch of raised dirt that clearly existed for that purpose.

I stepped off Betty as Angela barked orders to her men, and saw a group of men and women approaching. They each held clubs of thick wood with shards of sharp metal placed into them. Angela went to approach them, but I moved to meet them, cutting her off.

“You’ve done your part following the Khan’s word. You and your men can rest.”

She shook her head. “Fuck you, I’m not missing this shit.” She turned to her men. “Get shit in order and take a nap.”

The Ren among them shook his head. “Can I join you in meeting these barbarians?”

She sighed. “Fine, I don’t fucking care, but don’t expect me to let you take a break later.”

He nodded and fell in line behind both of us, with me at the lead.

The woman in the lead of the group of Kaijin approaching us opened her mouth and let out a phrase in Kaijin I only vaguely recognized. I responded with the Kaijin phrase I knew to be a greeting, along with a spiel Deux had taught me asking them to speak my language.

“Chief Bastien has already told the Horde he will not send us to fight for you. You may park and rest for one night, then you must leave.” The words were heavily accented, but I was able to get the gist easily enough.

I took a step closer and looked down at the woman. I was tired, and irritated, and sick of sitting on my motorcycle. It must’ve shown on my face because the woman nearly took a step backward.

“That was before. He hasn’t spoken to me yet.”

“You…challenge his decision?”

“I challenge him. He has a question about serving the Khan due to his lack of strength. I’m here representing the Khan’s strength.”

She looked at her retinue and spoke in kaijin words that sounded like thick mud being spat out. They responded, then they turned to me. “We will take you to him. A challenge must be met, though… he may be in the middle of a different challenge of his own.”

I exchanged glances with Angela and her Ren, and we followed the group as they escorted us deeper into their territory. We passed through a number of their houses, and small markets, seeing men and women about their business working or fishing or hunting, and eventually saw what looked to be a fence around a pit with a number of raised seats around it. I could hear cheering and smell dozens of men and women around it, as well as a distinctly strong scent of two radbeasts of some kind in the center.

We got closer and I started to hear roaring and fighting, I looked down into the pit. I was right, there were two radbeasts in the pit. One was a massive gator, a cousin of Gus only slightly smaller and green rather than white, and the other was the Chief whose support I was there to earn.

At first glance I thought Chief Bastien was one of the hulking deadmen, the ones that seemed to only be created through cannibalizing another deadman’s flesh, but as I watched him move I realized he wasn’t. He was roughly my height, with yellow skin that reflected the sunlight, and he was incredibly muscular, looking much like the heroes on the covers of some of the fantasy books I’d read.

The gator charged him, and he charged it back, roaring and laughing as he slid to the side of the beast's bite, grabbed its head and suplexed it. The Gator rolled out of his grip and whipped at him with its tail, which Bastien dodged before leaping onto its back. From there, he wrapped his arms around its neck and squeezed. The beast struggled beneath him for several minutes, throwing itself to the side, against the walls off the pit, and attempting to let go, but he just wouldn’t. The gator slowed down, then stopped completely.

Bastien raised an arm to the crowd and a man tossed a spear to him. He raised it high, and stabbed through the gator’s head in a single swift strike, provoking an uproar from the crowd.

He roared some words in Kaijin and the crowd cheered even louder for him. As his eyes swept the audience, our eyes met. I felt something electrical pass through me as we sized each other up. We recognized each other at that moment. Not in an exact way, he didn’t know I was Donovan, a Marshall, representing Pott’s Field and the Iron Horde, but we knew what the other was at a deeper level with that. We recognized a fellow predator, and knew that put us in one another’s paths.

I found myself smiling, showing my teeth, in spite of my annoyance at being given this task rather than returning to Pott’s or the front. I was excited, not a lot of individuals could give me a good fight, but here in the ass end of the Khan’s holdings, it seemed like I’d found someone.