"All right! Good work you apes!" The bandit leader cried out to his gang of joyous flunkies. "It's times like these that make me glad I decided to become a bandit."
Indeed, times were good for this bandit gang as well as any other rogue who wished to make a living by stealing, murdering, vandalizing, or any combination of the three. This particular bandit gang had just successfully overrun a small village near a temple to the east, a village known to few by anyone aside from its inhabitants. The bandits had merely run across the village by complete mistake.
The bandit leader tossed handful after handful of golden coins in the air for his minions to gather amongst their cheering and festivities. That little village had been amazingly rich for some dead little town in nowhere. In addition to large stores of currency, the village also had strange and impressive looking relics that the bandit leader had found in the temple near the town; he decided to keep the relics to himself.
The bandits continued their drinking, cheering, and merry-making; none of them noticed the figure stalking in the shadows.
"Humph, have fun while you still can," the figure muttered to itself. It began chanting silently and a tennis ball-sized sphere of compacted flames appeared in its hand. It yelled at the top of its lungs "FIREBALL" just before throwing the sphere of flames into the middle of the bandit encampment.
The bandits at first didn't quite seem to realize what was going on. They stared in amazement and the incoming fireball. Then the fireball hit the ground. The explosion completely incinerated the bandits standing near the epicenter of the blast; those not so close were severely burned and violently thrown to the sides.
"What the hell?!" the bandit leader stared in shock at what was transpiring, then he looked around him to try to discern the source of the fireball.
The second in command of the bandit gang, a tall, scarred bandit sporting an eye patch over his right eye ran up to the bandit leader. "Boss! Over there!" He pointed into a side area of the encampment that was being illuminated by the flames from burning bandit huts and burning bandit corpses.
"Huh? Wha&emdash;YOU! No, it can't be! No, not you!" The bandit leader, as well as his second in command, was sweating profusely and cowering behind the bandit leader's rather crude throne. "You! The enemy of every pilferer who lives! The terror to thieves everywhere! The infamous bandit killer! Toshi Yokutsu!"
"That's correct," Toshi calmly stated before throwing another fireball directly at the bandit leader. The second in command was able to leap out of range in time, but the leader was almost instantly turned into a human brazier.
Toshi threw a few more fireballs here and there just to make sure that all of the bandits were occupied before starting to search for the gang's treasure horde. Toshi was a very skilled sorcerer. He was about average height, average build, he had moderate-length semi-spiky black hair and green eyes. He wore gray clothes and a flowing black cape (which he treasured highly), black boots that went half-way from his ankles to his knees, silver colored leather gloves that had the ends of the fingers removed, and black shoulder pads. With the exception of his shoulder pads (on the left one was a gold carving of a wolf's head and the right one had a silver carving of a serpent's head) Toshi looked like any average sorcerer you might find on the streets of any city. This made him all the more dangerous. More than one foe had fallen to Toshi for underestimating his skills.
It didn't take Toshi long to locate the bandit's treasure horde. He at once set about breaking the locks on the chests by casting small ice spells on them then shattering them.
"Ahh, nice! Very nice!" Toshi commented to himself as he set about scooping heaps of coins from the chests into a brown sack he carried with him.
"Hmm, what else can I find here?" he began searching through other chests for other sorts of treasure to claim. "Ah-ha! This looks intriguing!" He picked up a small rock that was a shiny bluish-gray color.
"Could it be a chunk of platinum?" he asked himself as he put it in his sack. Next he found some sort of enchanted flail made of amethyst; he promptly stashed it away.
"Hey, now this is exactly what I wanted!" he excitedly commented as he barely managed to stuff an orihalcon statue into his loot-sack that was almost overflowing, "These things are worth a shit-load on the market!"
"Well, I suppose that's all for now. I can't carry any more of this stuff." Toshi turned and left the encampment. As he walked into the forest surrounding the camp, he couldn't help but to smirk as he looked back at the bandits running every-which-way attempting to put out the roaring flames.
"Hmm, it looks like I'm being followed."
Toshi calmly kept walking along the forest path to the nearest city. He knew that someone was stalking him from the trees, it was probably the survivors of his raid on the bandit fort. Toshi suddenly stopped walking and turned around.
"Alright, you can come out now!" he called to the stalkers.
The bandit second in command (now the leader) leapt from behind a tree brandishing a curved sword in Toshi's direction.
"What do you want?" Toshi asked impatiently.
"Heh, heh. I've come to carve a little pay-back out of you!" the new bandit leader said just before he sheathed his blade, "But to be honest, I really don't want to fight you. . ."
"Oh, well then. . .see ya." Toshi turned around and began to walk off.
"Wait, wait, wait!" the bandit leader grabbed at Toshi's cape in an attempt to stop him. Toshi grabbed the end of his cape and gave it a rough tug sending the bandit forward face first on the ground. ". . .don't touch the cape. . ." he warned, his voice dripping with danger.
"Oh right, sorry. Well, anyway, you see, I originally came out here to get revenge on you for the boss, but you'd stomp my ass in a regular fight."
"Well, it's good to see that you have some brains."
"Look, I know that this is a rather blunt way of putting it, but, I want you to join us in the Dragon Talons."
"Dragon Talons? Look, buddy, I don't associate with criminals."
"Please? Just give us back our treasure, join us, and then everything from before will just be water under the bridge. It's not like a bandit's life is all that hard anymore. Ever since Queen Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun was assassinated 80 years ago and the Kingdom of Seyruun fell into ruins because of it, there's been no major power to keep bandits in check."
Toshi pondered that statement. It was true that ever since the fall of Seyruun there had been no policing force around the area. That was the original reason why Toshi had wanted to become a Bandit Hunter, he would be serving a sorely needed position. Also, the pay was quite nice (being anything you could confiscate from the bandits.)
"Look, I'm only going to say this once," Toshi began explaining to the bandit in a tired tone, "if you don't get the hell away from me in thirty seconds, I'm gonna kick your ass so hard you won't be able to sit for a month."
"What? You son of a bitch! I offer you an excellent position with an easy lifestyle and you insult me! Guys, get out here!" the bandit leader yelled to his flunkies hiding in the trees as he drew his blade.
About a dozen bandits came rushing out from the foliage with assorted weapons drawn. Toshi studied the bandits with a bored expression. This was all the bandit gang was: fourteen stupid looking thugs with swords, clubs, and axes.
"Hmm, not very many of you are there?" Toshi smirked at the leader.
"W-what? Shut up! I'll have you know that I have dozens more men who at my call will rush out and slice you to shreds!" the bandit leader was obviously bluffing and Toshi only responded by giving an evil smirk and chuckling.
"Get him guys!" the leader yelled as he and his minions began to charge.
"WAIT!" a call came from further down the path.
"Huh?" the statement was mutual as the bandits as well as Toshi blinked in curiosity at the person who interrupted them. The intruder was a woman about an inch shorter than Toshi. She wore blue plated mail on her upper torso and blue robes that were worn underneath the armor but flowed out beneath to cover her legs and waist. She wore long white boots and blue gauntlets. Her light blue hair was tied in a long ponytail that ran down to the backs of her knees.
What's with all the blue? Toshi thought to himself. Still, she is pretty cute.
"Who the hell are you?" the bandit leader yelled at the woman.
"I have no reason to tell my name to those whom I am about to kill," she responded.
"Alright! The sorcerer can wait. Kill this bitch first!" the leader commanded his goons.
The bandits charged the woman as she drew a scythe from a clasp on her back.
"ASTRAL VINE!" she yelled. The spell completed the blade turned a deep crimson color allowing her to easily slice through the armor of the first bandit and into his chest cavity. The woman then used the staff of the scythe to parry a club from the next bandit; before the bandit could recover she drew a dagger hidden in her boot and sank it into his face.
Toshi stood silently, quite impressed by the performance. The unidentified woman continued to slaughter the pathetic bandits with amazing blade skills. Toshi found it quite curious how this woman seemed to have dozens of various sorts of bladed weapons hidden on her that she used with deadly accuracy. Soon only the leader was left.
"P-Please! Have mercy!" he begged.
The woman lifted him up by his shirt collar and threw him up into the air. She drew a short sword hidden within her robes and performed a single slice. The bandit landed unhurt on the ground. For a minute he stood there dumbfounded, not quite understanding what had just happened. Then his belt fell apart and his trousers dropped.
Grabbing his pants and pulling them back up, the bandit leader ran off into the forest like a bat out of hell.
"Why'd you let him go?" Toshi asked seeming somewhat disappointed by the woman's sudden mercy.
"He won't go far. I excpected a few would try to run, so I set a spike trap up in the direction he ran," the woman responded, "Now, then. Your turn."
"Huh?" Toshi managed to draw his own katana just barely in time to parry a sword strike from the woman. "What the hell are you doing?"
"You're also a thief!"
"What are you talking about? I'm a Bandit Hunter!"
"You took something of mine from those bandits, that makes you a thief as well!"
"Oh, come on! It's not wrong if I take it from thieves."
The woman thrust her sword at Toshi stomach. He dipped his katana to parry the strike just as the woman swung her Astral Vine enchanted scythe in an overhead chop with her other hand. Toshi dove to the side to dodge, he knew that it was useless trying to parry a weapon enchanted by an Astral Vine without a magical weapon.
"Come now! Stop trying to kill me and I'll give you back what you want!" Toshi offered not really wanting to be in a blade fight with someone as skilled as this woman.
"I don't trust you!"
"Come on! Just tell me what it is!"
"No, if I tell you then you could rig it with one of your spells before you give it back! I know how you sorcerers work."
"MONO BOLT!" Toshi threw the weak electrical stream at the woman's had which held the short sword. The shock didn't cause any real damage to the woman, but it caused enough pain that she dropped her weapon.
"FREEZE ARROW!" Toshi aimed the ice spell at the scythe that was still buried in the ground. The scythe froze in the soil, unable to be removed until the ice melted.
"Dammit!" The woman then drew three throwing knives from her belt.
"Jeez! You're loaded lady!" Toshi exclaimed, astonished that the woman still had more weapons on her.
"Well, what do you expect of a Blade Dancer?" the woman asked, she showed obvious pride in her statement of class.
"A Blade Dancer?" Toshi asked, "Interesting. . ."
"Die and be silent. . ." the woman replied as she threw one of the throwing knives at Toshi's head. Toshi tilted his head just in time as the knife whizzed past his ear and buried itself in the trunk of a nearby tree. The woman threw another. This time the knife came even closer despite Toshi's desperate attempts to dodge. The knife cut a small lock of hair off of Toshi's head.
"Come on, I don't want to hurt you. Just put away your multitude of weapons and we can talk things over," Toshi offered.
The woman responded by throwing her last knife at Toshi's torso. By pure luck Toshi managed to move his katana in position in time to deflect the knife and send it flying harmlessly wide.
The woman hesitated for a moment. She began hastily patting her robes and boots in search of another weapon she might have overlooked. Not finding any, she ran towards where she had dropped her short sword from the Mono Bolt.
"No you don't," Toshi scolded the woman as he sent a Flare Arrow to ignite the grass between the woman and the sword.
"Damn you!" she shouted. She then clenched her fists and lowered her body in a crouching position.
"Oh dear god. . .you know martial arts too?" It was getting ridiculous how this woman seemed to be prepared for every possible situation in combat.
"DIE!" the woman sprang at Toshi like a coiled viper.
Toshi blocked her first punch with the flat of his katana. After that Toshi wasn't overly sure what had happened. The two of them were rolling in a pile, trying beat the crap out of each other. There was a sudden and unexpected pause. Toshi was lying with his back on the ground, the woman was sitting with her knees on top of his chest. She had her hand an inch away from a point on Toshi chest that he knew was a vital pressure point in the human anatomy. If she punched downward just the right way, he would die.
Toshi was confused, he didn't quite understand why she didn't just finish him off. Only then did he realize that the blade of his katana was pressing at the soft flesh of her neck.
"You punch, I slice," Toshi warned.
"You slice, I punch," she replied.
The two of them sat quite silently for a moment, neither of them wanting to make a move for fear of the consequences. A few minutes passed.
Finally, Toshi spoke, "It would be a shame to slit the throat of such a beautiful woman. . .how about a temporary truce?"
The woman was silent for a moment, then she slowly and carefully nodded her head.
"Please, get off of me. With your plate mail, you're quite heavy," Toshi groaned under the weight.
The woman got up and stood to the side. To Toshi's surprise she offered him a hand to help him stand up.
"Wasn't expecting that," he commented when he was on his feet again.
Understanding what he was referring to, she replied "You are a skilled opponent, you deserved it."
"Right, well, what say I sheath my katana," Toshi gazed around the battle site at the woman's weapons lying all over, "and you collect your weapons?"
"Fine,"
"Look, about this whole situation with this item you want back. There's a city nearby, let's go there and we can negotiate in a more relaxed setting, okay?"
"Alright, just keep in mind, I don't trust you for a second,"
Toshi sighed and waited for the woman to collect all of her blades before the two of them walked off in the direction of the city in an uneasy silence.