Chaos erupted like a shaken bottle of cheap booze.
Patrons scrambled for the exits, knocking over chairs and tables in their haste to be anywhere but in the blast radius of what was clearly about to cost so people their lives, if it hadn't already.
lisa kept her eyes fixed on Koros, but her peripheral vision caught Vira ducking behind the bar counter. Not running, just... hiding. Watching.
[What the hell is she doing? Can you just-]
"Get her!" Koros bellowed, his face contorting with rage.
[Shit.]
Three more goons rushed her from different angles. lisa turned to draw a spellsign, but that distraction ant one of them got to her. A aty fist swung toward her shoulder.
But, of course, what these people didn't know was that lisa wasn't just a mage. For all the ti she'd spent morizing incantations and practicing spellsigns in the last year, she'd also spent nearly as many hours in combat training at the Academy.
Against Syux's top talents, with the best training magic could buy? She was still a work in progress.
But against these amateurs?
[This is nothing.]
She ducked under that swing, driving her knee up into the first attacker's groin with enough force to make every man in the vicinity wince. He dropped like a sack of particularly miserable potatoes, wheezing curses through gritted teeth.
The second attacker managed to grab her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides.
His breath was hot against her neck, reeking of cheap alcohol.
"Got you now, traitor," he growled.
lisa smiled.
"Do you, though?"
She slamd her head backward, feeling a satisfying crunch as her skull connected with his nose. His grip loosened just enough for her to twist free. She followed up with a sharp elbow to his solar plexus, then a sweep of his legs that left him sprawled on his back, staring up at the ceiling with an expression of profound confusion, like the fact that a girl as small in stature as lisa could do that was unthinkable.
The third attacker hesitated, briefly reconsidering his life choices. Unfortunately for him, lisa wasn't feeling particularly rciful. She closed the distance between them in two quick steps, grabbed his outstretched arm, and used his own montum to flip him over her shoulder. He crashed into the bar with a spectacular shower of glass and liquor and then, she stomped his face in.
"Sorry about the ss," she muttered to Vira, who was still peering over the counter with wide eyes.
A fourth guy tried to sneak up behind her with a chair raised over his head. Without even looking, lisa kicked backward, her boot connecting solidly with his kneecap.
The resulting crack was followed by a howl of pain and the clatter of the chair hitting the floor—shortly followed by the man himself.
[Raven would be proud of that one.]
lisa turned back to Koros, who was now down to just two goons. Both looked significantly less enthusiastic about their employnt prospects than they had a few minutes ago.
She brushed a strand of hair from her face, not even breathing hard.
"That the best you've got? Because I've had more challenging workouts in the bedroom."
One of the remaining goons took a hesitant step forward, then apparently thought better of it and stepped back.
Koros's face had darkened to an interesting shade of purple. The vein in his forehead looked like it was about to stage its own revolution and burst right out of his skin.
"You think you're so special," he spat. "Learned all that from the humans? Just because you can throw so spells around, you think you're one of them? Just because the humans let you play at being important? You're still just a nim to them. A pet. Nothing more than a curiosity."
lisa's smile didn't waver, but sothing dangerous flickered in her eyes.
"Maybe," she acknowledged. "But, I gotta tell you, I don't really care right now. This stopped being about protecting humans the mont I found out you nearly burned my family alive."
Koros visibly pulled back, though he was still scowling.
"The fucked up part is, you could try to apologize and tell how it was all an accident or you didn't an to kill anyone, but... The workers, rember? The warehouse?" lisa shook her head. "You'd have a pretty hard ti convincing that your committing attempted murder was in any way an accident."
She glanced around at the groaning bodies of his fallen comrades, then back to Koros and his two remaining loyal idiots. They looked like they'd rather be anywhere else, but were too scared of their boss to actually flee.
So be it.
---
{listair}
The afternoon sun beat down on listair's back.
Sweat trickled between his shoulder blades, adding to the uncomfortable dampness of his work shirt. Around him, the construction site buzzed with activity. Hamrs pounding, saws screeching, n shouting instructions and obscenities in equal asure.
[Another day in paradise,] he thought wryly, carefully positioning a support beam.
"Watch it there, Blackfla!" A guy called out from above. "We're building a house, not a damn circus tent!"
listair grunted in acknowledgnt. After almost a decade on this job, one would think he'd learned to tune out most of the human foreman's bellowing. The man had exactly two volus: loud and louder. But, well, whatever.
He hamred a nail with perhaps more force than necessary, a bit annoyed. Until a commotion at the edge of the site drew his attention.
Rax, who had "gone for a leak" like an hour ago, was back, but not in the sheepish, trying-to-sneak-in-unnoticed way listair had expected. Instead, the young nim was sprinting toward him, face flushed purple with exertion, clothes disheveled. He looked like he'd run halfway across Syux or sothing.
"—" Rax tried to speak as he skidded to a stop, but doubled over in a coughing fit, hands on his knees.
listair turned back to his work, driving another nail.
"What do you want?" he asked, his tone making it clear that whatever it was, he wasn't interested.
He hadn't quite gotten over that drunken betrayal of his.
"Y-Your daughter," Rax wheezed between gasps for air. "The bar, fighting!"
The hamr froze mid-swing. listair turned slowly, the tool suddenly heavy in his hand.
"What did you just say?" His voice was quiet. Disbelieving.
"The bar," Rax managed, his breathing still ragged. "Your daughter—she's there. Fighting Koros and his gang. Right now."
The hamr hit the dirt with a dull thud.
listair was moving before he'd consciously decided to, pushing past Rax and breaking into a run. He heard the foreman shouting sothing behind him, probably threats about docked pay or worse, but listair couldn't bring himself to care.
lisa was... Well, lisa. She could probably handle whatever she'd gotten into herself.
But, if there was even a chance his baby needed him, he had to be there.
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