A banner hung on the wall of the entrance of the Cumberland Raceway to promote Race a Cop day with the smiling face of Sergeant Arthur Hawk, the popular public relations officer of the Portland police department.
Standing outside of the entrance, the middle-aged businessman Howard Gutman passed the time by playing a holographic video game projected by a headband with an attached transparent eyepiece that overlaid statistics onto his view. He steered a holographic racecar right or left by raising his fingers up and down in small motions at the edges of his field of vision.
A woman wearing white elbow-length gloves tugged at the arm of his shirt. "Howie, he is here!" Seemingly and actually out of place and time, Princess Strawberry Fragar was dressed in a red gown with pink speckles on the skirt and she wore a golden crown on top of her head.
Howie held up his left hand, steering his fictional car into a fictional railing. "Just a minute. I'm almost done with this level."
"Howie! He is here now!" Strawberry impatiently implored Howie to move, but he was focused on his video game. Strawberry turned away from him and looked to the side.
Sergeant Hawk held his helmet at his hip as he walked along with a group of teenagers and adults. He gave a friendly lesson to a teenager. "You did the right thing by slowing down. Your life is more important than the race, and I will see you again next month. Right?" The teenager smiled and nodded.
Strawberry left Howie's side to do the job herself. She daintily lifted off the ground with one long step and then stumbled forward clumsily as she landed poorly after rediscovering that she could not float in a dimension without magic. When she finally regained her balance, she found herself standing in front of a surprised Sergeant Hawk and his guests.
Strawberry began her sales pitch before she was fully upright. "Hello, Sergeant Hawk! May I interest you in some outside work?"
Hawk had no idea who this silly woman was or what she might have wanted. "Uh... How far outside? Is there a costume party or something?"
Strawberry smiled. "It is an 'or something.'"
Scene: Unpaved Forest Road
The short-statured black-haired traveler walked alone along a wide and well-trodden dirt road that cut through a forest. Weighed down by a heavy backpack with enough gear for a long trip, the traveler wore a black cloak and black-painted steel pauldrons -- shoulder guards – that had been decorated with a network of thin gold plating to focus and reroute magical energies. Underneath all of that equipment was a thin young woman named Catherine Black. People called her Cat.
Cat carried a sword at her side and wore a protective vest of leather straps covering a layer of chain mail. These roads were dangerous, and the danger could come from any direction. Monsters existed and would attack a lone traveler. Most trouble would come from other people, and supernatural encounters were not uncommon.
The encounter up ahead did not seem supernatural, but something about these people was far from normal. As the three old men walked toward her, Cat dropped her pack and reached for her sword. All three of them were smiling and staring at Cat like they intended to kidnap her. However, none of them looked like a threat. They were too old to fight. She could sense no magic from them. Moreover, they all looked really weird.
The old man on her left had a drinker's belly and a face that showed a history of fighting. In one hand he carried a simple club that had been milled to a smooth and long shape. He wore a white shirt and pants decorated with very thin blue vertical stripes and the word "Bandits" sewn into the shirt in large letters.
Contrasting with the lumbering lumber-wielding Bandit, the taller old man in the middle maintained a straight posture. His facial features were thin and sharp, with a short salt-and-pepper mustache and a growing touch of gray at the sides of his short black hair. He wore smooth black armor that was made of a hard material that was not metal, and he carried an instrument strapped to his back that was probably a weapon, but was not any kind of item that Cat recognized.
The old man on the right wore mottled clothing of chaotically mixed grays and greens, a unique design that would hide him well in the forest. He wore a headband around his silver hair and a wide grin on his face. An unrecognizable L-shaped device sat in a external pocket at his hip where a weapon should be. The many pockets and pouches on his belt and vest suggested that he might be the only one of the three who was prepared for travel, although whatever provisions he could carry in them might last only a day or two.
The old man with the club chuckled and gave away their intentions. "There's a sweet-looking little girl walking alone. Is that the one you want?"
Cat pulled a few inches of her sword out of her scabbard as a warning, but she wanted to hear some answers before she killed them. "Alright, what's going on here? I have never seen a bandit who was dumb enough to write the word 'bandit' on his clothes, and --"
The Bandit proudly grinned. "Hey, don't knock the Bandits. We won eleven World Series." His smile was missing a couple of teeth.
Cat had no idea what that meant, so she finished what she had been saying. "-- and anyone that dumb would not live to be as old as you guys are, so what's really going on here?"
The man on the right asked a question of the man in the middle. "Is that Cat Black?"
"Of course that's Cat Black," said the man in the middle.
Cat drew her sword while glancing behind her to make sure that she was not being surrounded. There was no one else around. "You know who I am. What do you want with me?"
The man on the left began to open his mouth, but the man in the middle stopped him with a warning. "Hold your tongue if you intend to keep it."
"I was just gonna..." the Bandit started.
The man in the middle would have no patience for it. "You were planning to antagonize her with a lewd comment."
The Bandit shrugged guiltily. "Well... yeah." He raised his club to his shoulder and rested it there.
The man on the right quickly rerouted the conversation. "Miss Black, to get to the point, we want to hire you."
"Hire me for what?"
The man on the right answered vaguely. "To fight some people."
Cat resheathed her sword to talk business. "If that’s the case, I need to know who it is you want me fight and what their powers are – if they didn't have powers you wouldn't be talking to me – and I charge a negotiation fee."
The man in the middle reached into a pouch on his belt. "This always works." His black-gloved hand held out a small pile of gold wafers.
Cat eagerly took a close look. "Is that real gold? You're not fooling me with that?" Her magic sense could tell that it was indeed real gold.
The man smiled at how easy this was. "I believe that this will cover your negotiation fee--"
"It does, that!" Cat eagerly took the gold.
"--and we have more where that came from." The man let Cat pick the wafers from his hand.
Cat smiled happily. "You weirdos have hired yourself a sorceress!" She lifted her pack and joined the old men. "Now where are we going?"
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