Winter 45, 124
Fluffy was kind of lost. She had wandered over to where the moonflower clan lived, switching from body to body as she tried figuring out where civilization was. She was currently in the body of a rookie guard and was just following orders. She had been stationed and was told to 'keep the peace.'
That was pretty vague but Fluffy assumed that it wouldn't take a genius to recognize when things were getting too violent when the drinking started. She didn't even want to be here. She just wanted to get her hands on a map so she could figure out where exactly she was. She'd need that information so that she could help rendevouz with the others that Kage had sent to Jian. She couldn't slip away though – there were too many people around and if she abandoned her post, one of the other guards would know that something was up. It was easy for someone to go missing in the forest. In town? Not so much.
That was her plan, anyways. She wasn't as skilled as Kage at doing any of this sort of thing. She sometimes mumbled what was going on and when Kage got a spare minute to speak to her through the little plant in her ear he would give her advice. He suggested she play out the shift and learn a little about how things operated around here.
Most of the evening went on without much trouble. She might as well have not even been there as she was so unnoticed as a guard and looked more like a foreigner in her mannerisms than a person in charge of upholding the law. She often had to remember to adopt the mannerisms of her form, which wasn't always intuitive as she rarely spent time impersonating people.
The only people that actively recognized who she was were those who offered her drinks and tried talking to her. Still, it was probably better this way as Fluffy didn't think that being an imposing and intimidating figure in a happy place was going to be very well liked. As night came, the fighting started and Fluffy kept a close eye on what was being done. None of the fights were that bad violence wise and she was thinking that her first bar duty was going to be a great success. That was, until something was hurled right at her from across the bar.
Whatever it was crashed on the wall beside Fluffy and she thought nothing of it at first. She just went back to watching the bar fights and thinking to herself if she really would know when things were getting too far.
She'd been in the area for what seemed like months now but many of the social nuances were new to her. She fit in better here than she did in other parts of Jian but that wasn't saying much as someone like her had a predisposition for aelves… not this sorry mix of weird people. She just sighed and tried to push any bad thoughts about this place out of her mind and focus on what was happening. She was on a mission, she had to remind herself of that fact. Out of the corner of the eye she saw something else coming at her. This time, it wasn't going to hit the wall.
Fluffy didn't very much appreciate getting a chair thrown at her. It hadn't been intentional, but it hurt all the same. Had she not been one of the few sober people in the bar she probably would have gotten knocked out, but she had the reaction time to hold out her arm. Her instinct was to shoot out a couple octopus tentacles from her arm, or rather turn her arm into tentacles. However she had to stop herself. This wasn't a magic friendly area, that much was clear to her.
So instead she did her best to push the chair aside no matter how much it hurt. Her quick reflexes had caused the bar to erupt into a cheer and before Fluffy knew it she had been pushed into the bar fight. She tried to assert herself and bring attention to the fact that she was a guard and didn't want to take part in any of this tonight. She had been assigned here to maintain order and she didn't want to know what kind of trouble she would get into if she was found drunk and passed out in a corner by her superiors.
She did her best to weave herself in and out of the drunken punches that were thrown her way and managed to escape to the corner of the bar where she had previously been standing at. She held onto the walls of the bar as she panted and tried to catch her breath. Just making it over here had been a hassle enough.
All was well for about twenty seconds. While she was turned away she was struck by another chair that had come from the same direction. She swiveled around and saw that the same guy had thrown it and now it had officially been taken too far. Fluffy glared at him angrily and stormed into the bar fighting and ended things just with her presence. Everyone seemed to want to see how this newbie was going to handle her first dissident.
"Why did you throw that chair at me," Fluffy demanded in the most intimidating voice she could muster. It wasn't intimidating at all. If anything, she was intimidated by the fact that everyone was staring at her and the person she was confronting was really quite massive.
"It twas an accident lady guard," the drunkard said very insincerely, "what am I not allowed ta throw chairs no more? Ya don't look like ur around here… from around here. Do ye even know what the laws o dis place arrgh?"
It was hard enough for Fluffy to understand him, it didn't help that he kept hiccupping. "I don't need to have lived here all my life to know that attacking me is probably not a good idea," she snapped back, placing the chair back where it was supposed to be. Oh how she wanted to turn into an animal and just chomp his head off. Maybe his would be the next liver she devoured.
"Are ya shore you don't wanna punish me?" the drunkard asked as his hand gripped the chair again. Everything in Fluffy's bones told her that he was about to throw it again, point blank at her. What was she supposed to do? She sighed then turned to walk away.
She could turn the other cheek but if that chair got thrown at her again then she was going to fight that man as hard as she could in her current form. She took two steps then stepped to the side instinctively, anticipating the chair being thrown. She turned her head and saw that it hadn't been thrown yet, but it had been raised above the man's head. The drunkard had a mischievous look on his face, and Fluffy had had enough.
She stepped forward to add as much oomph into her punch as she could and she nailed him right in his stomach, making him wheeze and drop the chair. She chimera'd some muscles from a larger form of hers and found that even though she didn't really know where the right place to hit was… her strike was effective. A sound of shock shook the bar and everyone seemed to not want to look directly at what was happening anymore. Fluffy didn't want to be here anymore either, she still wasn't cut out for this life.
The hulking drunkard wheezed a little but then he was right back in the action. "Arrrrhhh!" he shouted as he pounced on top of Fluffy and started wrestling her to the ground. She managed to slip out and roll forwards, ending up in a crawling position. She knew the right thing to do now was to go get help but her path to the exit was blocked. The only way she was going to get out was to go through this man, and nobody else was likely to step in unless it looked like she was really getting wailed on.
She sighed and raised her fists aggressively. If fighting was inevitable then she wasn't going to be a punching bag for this creep. It was probably noticeable that she was incredibly strong for her size. Normally raw strength wouldn't be enough but it wasn't like she was going up against a seasoned boxer. Her opponent was plastered and could barely aim at her properly.
As the drunkard charged at her again she put all her power into a solid strike to the man's chest and made contact. It was a great attack and would have probably knocked out someone her size if she'd struck the head. Unfortunately the sheer mass differential meant that her attack wasn't enough to stop him in his tracks and she ended up being slammed into a table that broke instantly.
Fluffy rolled to the side, poorly, but she ended up getting to her feet all the same. She circled around behind the drunkard and started throwing jabs and crosses into his back and did her best to try causing him enough pain to yield. Her strikes were sloppy but they still made resounding thuds every time she made contact. The drunkard was having a lot of trouble turning around to get a hold of Fluffy as she did her best to stay behind him. In an act of desperation, the man fell onto his back hoping to crush Fluffy under his weight but his move was so choreographed that Fluffy read is easily.
He just laid there in pain, groaning heavily while Fluffy exited the bar to get some assistance. The bar had livened up when it was clear that Fluffy had managed to gain the upper hand and it wasn't so serious anymore. To Fluffy's surprise, her superior didn't even care about her getting into a fight. Apparently it was expected that a guard was able to hold his own. This all came as a shock to Fluffy but she guessed she could live with that. She didn't know why she was getting so vested in the life of this man she was impersonating.
Fluffy trudged back to the bar and walked right back to the corner that she had been standing at and just continued watching the activities. The hulking man had left to who knows where, hopefully home so that he couldn't cause any more trouble. Nobody else seemed to want to mess with her tonight which could only be a good thing.
She didn't want to have to be intimidating as at her core she really wanted to be friends with everyone. Unfortunately keeping the peace didn't mesh well with that want. The hours went on and the bar never ended up closing. Fluffy was only relieved of her duty when someone came to replace her. Now she could finally go explore and try to gather more intel. This bar wasn't going to be closing until morning so it was unrealistic to think that she was going to have to stand here all night on some crazy fifteen hour shift.
She was starting to collect a variety of jianese forms and the worst part was keeping them all straight in her head. All faelnir kind of looked the same to her. She would persevere though – she had to else she was going to die or get outed as a spy. No, the worst fate would be letting down her master.
1950 WC
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