It didn't take long for her to reach the river, the soothing rush of water beckoning her forward like a promise of relief.

  Over the weeks, she had grown accustomed to her own specialized musk of travelling grime that clung to her skin. But the reminder from the tavern patrons made her acutely aware of just how desperate her need for a proper wash had become.

  The woman carefully set the briefcase down on a nearby stone. Before she went to wash herself in the river, there was something she needed to check.

  She unclasped the latches of her briefcase with practiced hands, her heart quickening from a mixture of anticipation and hope. With a quick motion, she lifted the lid.

  But as her eyes fell on the contents, her posture slumped in an immediate wave of disappointment. Her excitement drained away, and with a soft click, she relatched the briefcase, turning away from it.

  With her daily obsessive compulsion fulfilled, she could finally focus on getting herself cleaned. She eagerly approached the river so that its rushing water was within a step of her reach. Though her body ached to dive in and allow the waters to carry her pains away, she hesitated at the bank, her gloved fingers nervously clutching her cloak.

  She smelled so poorly precisely because she refused to remove her clothes for any reason other than the most dire necessity. The doe scanned her surroundings cautiously, eyes darting for any signs of unwanted observers. In the heavy rain, it was hard to listen out for anything, but visually, the only movement she noticed was the faint rustling of a bush too small to be hiding a predator.

  She took another hesitant sniff of herself and immediately deemed the situation adequately dire. Still, the paranoid doe fought the instinct to move further upriver, and though a lingering fear of potential threats stirred inside her, practicality won out—the urgent need to rest outweighed any worry of daring animals lurking nearby.

  The woman turned away from the bush and gazed out at the river once more. Taking a deep breath, she finally made the decision. Slowly, she lifted her hands to remove the doe mask.

  It slipped off easily, revealing a smooth, hairless blue face beneath. Her small, almond-shaped eyes were unsettlingly tiny for a human, and her pupils—thin vertical slits—cut sharply across her brown irises.

  With a careful, almost reverent motion, she placed the doe mask on the ground beside her, then repeated the process with the other two pauldron masks.

  The woman started by removing her patchwork gambeson from under her cloak, unwilling to reveal herself even if it were only to the trees and birds. Despite being alone, she doffed it with a shy hesitance, embarrassed by what hid beneath.

  The process was slow and cumbersome. Thick, multi-fastened pieces of armour, never meant to be worn together, had locked and knotted against each other in a tangled mess. Wrestling them off under her cloak only made the task more frustrating.

  Eventually, she did manage to free herself from her equipment, and once she was fully stripped, it was finally time to remove her cloak.

  Her hand hovered reluctantly over the brooch that held it in place—a simple silver butterfly, colourless save for the few splotches of blackened tarnish. Stolen, of course, taken from some overspoilt child who had no more need for brooches.

  The woman took a deep, rallying breath and released it, letting the cloak fall to the floor.

  Her body was a stark shade of dark blue, marred by a web of red scars and jagged cuts, their fiery traces mingling with black splotches of old skin burned into tough, leathery patches. Along her spine, a faint, lighter blue line stretched from the nape of her neck, tracing all the way down to the tip of her tail.

  Now free from the confines of her cloak, the woman unfurled her thick, prehensile tail, finally allowing herself to relax the strained muscles which had been coiled in tension for far too long. Along the lighter blue ridge of her tail, old, blunted spikes—once filed flat—were starting to regrow, small and delicate. They had just entered the itching phase, and she couldn't help but halt her endeavour of undressing to give her tail spines a much-needed scratch.

  Amidst her vigorous scritching of that long, bothersome itch, a sudden gasp cut through the air.

  The woman froze. She whipped around, muscles coiling, eyes locked onto a rustling bush. Someone was there.

  The frantic scurrying of feet reached her ears, and instinct took over. She bolted toward her masks, snatching up the mantis and pressing it to her face. The moment the mask locked into place—without straps, without effort—her tension vanished. A chilling, unnatural calm settled over her, an immediate overwhelming apathy.

  Strength surged into her weary limbs, a faint green aura flickering around her legs as the mantis took control. She bent her knees, then leapt—soaring effortlessly into the woods. In a single fluid motion, she seized the two fleeing bodies, her grip like iron as she yanked them from their escape.

  In each of the woman's hands dangled a young boy—one with blond hair, the other with black. Neither could have been older than thirteen.

  "Please don't eat us! We're just weak little kids!" the blond one wailed, his face already streaked with tears.

  The other boy, though managing to hold back his own sobs, was just as stricken with terror. His high and trembling voice cracked as he stammered, "Y-yeah! Children don't even taste that good!"

  The mantis held the two children aloft by their oversized flax cloaks, barely registering the iron emblem clasping them shut—a flaming sword, its burning tongues forming the silhouette of a pine tree.

  The woman resisted the urge to kill them on the spot.

  Their frantic squirming tugged at their cloaks' seams, and she knew if they struggled much more, the fabric would tear, giving them another chance to escape.

  With measured effort, the woman attempted to soothe them—or at least, as much as someone wearing the cold, expressionless face of a mantis could.

  "Relax, twerps," she said, her voice flat yet firm. "I'm not going to eat you."

  "You're not?" the blubbering blond boy asked, his voice hitching as a sliver of hope crept in. He sniffled, hurriedly swallowing the tears threatening to spill again, then turned his head—tentatively—toward his captor.

  The moment his eyes landed on the woman, completely nude save for her terrifying animal mask, he recoiled. His head snapped away so fast it was a wonder he didn't give himself whiplash. His face flushed crimson—just as red as the woman's was blue.

  The woman noticed but ignored the child's discomfort, "Why would I even eat you?" She snapped, irritation turning her voice gravelly.

  The other boy, emboldened now that it was confirmed his fate no longer involved a cooking pot, puffed out his chest in a flimsy show of defiance. "Because that's what you evil mokoi do! You eat nice people."

  He tried to hold her gaze, to meet her with stoic resolve—but his pubescent mind kept betraying him, flickering awkwardly between her exposed body and the looming mantis mask that hid her expression.

  The woman growled, irritation boiling over into fury. "I am not a mokoi!"

  The very accusation blinded her with rage. The mantis tried to bear her fangs to the children; even through the mask, the seething anger was felt.

  The cowardly blond boy crumpled further into his sobs while the once-defiant black-haired boy clenched his eyes shut, bracing for the worst.

  She froze.

  She forced herself to bury the hostility before she did something rash to a pair of children.

  Closing her eyes, she took a slow, deliberate breath. When she opened them again, the fire in her veins had dulled—leaving that completely dead apathy.

  She opened her eyes to find the black-haired boy hungrily ogling her body.

  The apathy was already wavering, "Hey kid, you better keep your eyes up, or I really will eat you."

  The boy released a panicked yelp and quickly shot his head away from her body. Instead, he forced his gaze to lock with the mantis mask's unblinking stare. Something about the way she whiplashed from highly emotive wrath to eerily flat and utterly devoid of feeling—made him believe, with absolute certainty, that she wasn't joking.

  The blond boy still refused to look at her, keeping his head turned as far away as possible. His voice came out small, barely above a whisper. "You're… not a mokoi?"

  "No," the woman answered, her tone firm but even. "I'm not."

  "Then what are you?" the black-haired boy spat, trying—and failing—to sound brave.

  She exhaled slowly, forcing herself to stay calm. They were just children, repeating what they had been taught.

  "I am human," she said, keeping her voice level. "You shouldn't judge people just because they look different."

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  Even as she spoke the words, she couldn't stop the grimace that pulled at her lips. Their fear wasn't their fault, but the trained bigotry behind it left a bitter taste in her mouth.

  "I've never seen a blue human before." The blond boy finally braved facing the woman again but ensured to keep his eyes firmly above her neck.

  "Or one that smelled so bad." The black-haired boy added unhelpfully.

  The woman's tail instinctively twitched in agitation. "Well, now you have. It's called a mutant. And it doesn't make me any less human."

  The blond-haired boy furrowed his brow, unconvinced by what clearly looked to him like a mokoi. "I've never heard of a mutant before."

  "They're rare," she said flatly.

  "Fake, you mean," the black-haired boy shot back. He turned to his friend, "She's totally an evil Mokoi, Daft! Don't let her trick you." He crossed his arms defiantly, "We've travelled all over the world. If there were more blue people, we would have seen them."

  The woman was putting in a lot of work to stop the mantis from taking over and slaughtering these idiotic kids. "We're not all blue. You've probably seen other mutants before and didn't even know it."

  Daft seemed to consider her words, his expression scrunched in thought. "It's too confusing—Mokoi, monsters, and now mutants. Too many 'M' things that all look the same."

  The woman's patience finally snapped, and she gnashed her teeth, shouting at the child, "I do not look like a mokoi!"

  The black-haired boy huffed and muttered under his breath, "Well, you act like one."

  The woman was completely flabbergasted by the boy's apparent lackadaisical attitude towards his own plight. "What's your problem, kid? Don't you have any fear that I'm going to kill you?"

  That comment made Daft stiffen, but his friend retained his defiant resistance. "If you were going to hurt us, you would have done it already."

  The mantis's shoulders regretfully sagged at the child's na?ve confidence. "Well, sorry, kiddo, that's where you're wrong. Sadly, you met the wrong person at the wrong time, and I can't have anyone mentioning that they've seen me. So, I will actually have to kill you two."

  The two children blanched, any essence of their once lively blood sinking deeper into the ill-perceived safety of their bodies. The woman felt sympathetic to their situation but didn't let it deter her conviction. "You guys really tied my hands here."

  The mantis adjusted her grip, her delicate hands tightening around their necks as a faint green glow enveloped them. She began to squeeze.

  The black-haired boy, who had now lost any semblance of fortitude, desperately pleaded through strained, gagging breaths, "Wait! Wait! We won't tell anyone anything, we promise!"

  Daft, in turn, choked out whatever assurance he could possibly muster to save his life. "Yeah. It's not… like… the mercenaries ever listen… to us anyways." His legs kicked uselessly beneath him, his small hands grasping at the woman's wrists in a desperate bid for relief.

  Surprisingly, the woman loosened her hold on the boys, her grip slackening as she processed their choice words. "Mercenaries?"

  Seizing the opportunity to potentially talk his way out of death, Daft scrambled to explain, his voice frantic. "Yeah, the Clotted Forest Mercenaries have totally claimed this place as theirs. We're super famous, and if you kill us, then they'll hunt you down across the whole world until they catch and kill you!" He coughed, his throat still sore and red, struggling for breath. He hurriedly added in with a panicked rush of attempted intimidation, "Probably do even worse stuff to you before that!"

  The threat wholly unmoved the mantis, skepticism dripping from her voice. "Worse stuff? I don't think someone your age should be saying things like that." She tilted her head, studying the boy with detached amusement. "Besides, I thought they didn't care about you?"

  Daft opened and closed his mouth, clearly stumped, his mind scrambling for an answer. His friend, though still dangling helplessly from the woman's grip, straightened as much as he could and quickly jumped in to salvage the situation. "They'll still come after you." he blurted, his voice high with desperation. "It's about defending their reputation. It's an insult to attack their own."

  The mantis stared at them both for a long moment, then sighed. "Crap, you're right." She adjusted her hold on them, lifting them slightly like weighing the scales of Justitia. "Even if they don't take your murder that seriously, they'll still know it was me and then my mask getup will get more notoriety."

  Her voice turned quieter, more to herself than to them. "The Tabulate Syndicate shouldn't know that I have the masks, but any unnecessary attention is just giving them more dots to connect."

  The black-haired boy didn't quite understand what she was on about, but he at least understood that killing him was a bad idea. "Exactly, if you kill us then it won't just be two kids who knew you were here but an entire army! So, really, it's in your best interest to let us live and trust that we won't say anything."

  The mantis, called out of her monologuing, faced back to the boy and responded with her bland, uncaring voice. "You really don't know me, kid. I don't trust people. That's not my thing. But you definitely have a point."

  The hopeful black-haired boy excitedly agreed with her line of thought, nodding his head. "Exactly!"

  The mantis also nodded, her voice flat and unfeeling. "So, I guess I'll have to kill them all too."

  Daft immediately burst into tears, his sobs wracking his small body. The deflated black-haired boy's eyes went wide with panic. "What!? No! That's not what you should do at all!"

  The mantis ignored the child's plea while solemnly nodding her head. "Yeah, it's my best bet for leaving as little trace of me as possible. There'll be no witnesses to visually describe me, and the Tabulate Syndicate probably wouldn't connect the destruction of a random town to me. They'd probably just blame it on Calamity Kid."

  "There has to be another way! The Tabulate—whatever—won't trace you here. Besides, how are you going to take on an entire village of mercenaries? Remember, it's not just any mercenaries; the Clotted Forest Mercenaries! We've got an army of four thousand strong!"

  The mantis remained unfazed, her voice cold. "There are four thousand soldiers in that village?"

  "Well, not all of them are here, but still! There's a band of fifty of the most famous mercenaries in the world. And if something happens to them, the rest will definitely know. And that can't go ignored."

  The mantis shrugged, uncaring. "Sorry, kid, but unless some miracle happens and I find another way to keep the Syndicate off my back, I'm left with no choi—"

  The woman was interrupted by the sudden chime of a bell. Instinct took over—she sprang back, flinging the two children aside as light-green energy surged through her arms. From the glow, two massive, ethereal, sickle-like claws burst into existence, gleaming with harsh, serrated teeth.

  Right in front of her, in between the two fearful children there was what seemed to be a small pink rhombus that grew out of thin air, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other forms. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards the woman holding onto a glowing parchment.

  The woman lunged, claws raised to carve the intruder apart—only to freeze at the panicked cry of the black-haired boy. "What are you doing!? That's the Chauffeur!"

  She wasn't entirely sure why she had stopped—but now that she had, and the creature hadn't retaliated, she figured she might as well try to make sense of what was happening. "The what?" she muttered, her voice edged with suspicion.

  The black-haired boy, still shaking, peeled himself out of the bush he'd tumbled into and took a cautious step forward. "Just accept the invitation while you have the chance!"

  She hesitated, then, with wary fingers, plucked the glowing parchment from the creature's grasp.

  The moment she did, the strange, shifting figure reversed its transformations, folding in on itself like a collapsing star. It shrank back into a simple pink rhombus—then winked out of existence entirely, leaving behind nothing but silence.

  The sudden movement startled the mantis, who crouched low into a readied stance. Her head snapped left and right, scanning for any sign of the pink entity's return. "Where did it go!?" she demanded, her voice sharp with lingering tension.

  But the black-haired boy was no longer afraid. Instead, he stared at the empty space with wide-eyed wonder, his fear entirely replaced by excitement. "You got invited to The Tournament by the Chauffeur!? That's so cool!"

  The mantis turned her steely gaze on him, and in an instant, he remembered exactly who he was dealing with. His awestruck expression faltered under the weight of her glare.

  The mantis was still fully tensed, wound for violence, "What's a Chauffeur?"

  The question threw the boy for a loop. He blinked at the woman with newfound incredulousness, "You don't know who the Chauffeur is? But that's like… a classic story. Every kid knows the Chauffeur."

  The mantis refused to lower her guard, her stance still taut with suspicion. "We don't all get bedtime stories."

  The black boy huffed back, annoyed, "I'm part of a mercenary company. You think I get bedtime stories? I'd be lucky if I got away without bedtime beatings." He kicked at the ground grumpily and looked around the clearing. With the woman's menace finally directed elsewhere, he felt oddly relaxed. "It's not going to come back, you know?"

  The mantis remained poised for several moments, the tension between them stretching into an uneasy silence. Finally, she reached up, her fingers brushing against the mantis mask before peeling it from her face. She exhaled sharply as she lowered it, her small, slitted eyes narrowing at the boy in a scowl.

  She had a question on the tip of her tongue when a sudden realization struck her.

  Her expression darkened.

  "Where's your friend?"

  The boy shrugged dismissively, "Friend is a strong word. Totally abandoned me to suffer your wrath on my own. Daft's always been a total wuss." He barely spared a glance in the direction the blond boy had fled, already far more invested in the unfolding legend before him. His eyes gleamed with excitement. "If you're powerful enough to get invited to The Tournament, why are you hiding from the Tabu-wabu whatever?"

  A chill ran down the woman's spine. Her fingers twitched as icy panic slithered through her veins. Without another word, she turned sharply and strode back to her discarded garb. Her mind raced through the implications—this had spiralled into a disaster.

  The boy, oblivious to her turmoil, simply trailed after her, watching with unabashed curiosity. She didn't bother acknowledging him as she began dressing, prioritizing speed over comfort.

  The moment she lifted the first article of clothing, the boy's mind requeued her state of dress. His face burned red, and he spun on his heel so fast he nearly tripped. Still, his curiosity refused to be silenced.

  "What did the Chauffeur name you?" he asked over his shoulder, his voice brimming with excitement. "Is it something super cool? Something scary?" He nodded to himself, practically vibrating with enthusiasm. "I bet it's scary. You're definitely the scary type."

  With a final clip, the boy recognized the familiar sound of a cloak fastening. He took that as his cue and turned back around. "If you win, what will you wis—"

  Before he could finish, the woman shoved her sloth mask onto his face. Instantly, his body sagged, and his mind clouded as if he had struck an invisible wall. His limbs turned sluggish, his thoughts thick like syrup. He wobbled, nearly collapsing, but the woman caught him with one steady hand, the other carrying her briefcase.

  Her voice cut through the haze, cold and direct. "Does that Chauffeur or Tournament or whatever have any short-term consequences? Anything immediate? Within the next few hours?"

  The words rattled through the boy's fogged mind like an overstimulating rush of sound. He fought to process them, struggled to think—until, finally, he slurred out an answer. "... No."

  "Then I don't care."

  Without another word, the woman shoved him aside. His legs gave out, and he hit the ground in an ungraceful sprawl.

  She didn't look back. She was already gone.