"Did McDohl arrive, yet?"  Viki smiled at the inn keeper, eagerly awaiting for him to say "Yes" so she could grab McDohl and head home.

The innkeeper was getting really annoyed with Viki as he began to loosen the leather clasps around his sword.  "You asked me that three minutes ago..." he replied, a rather large hint of anger on his face.

"Well, yea, but during those three minutes, he might have arrived.  You never can tell, these days."

"Of course you can tell!"  The innkeeper looked ready to explode from Viki's incessant stupidity.  "All you have to do is wait here and see if McDohl ever enters!  You don't have to keep bugging me about it!  Hey look, you're looking for McDohl, right?  Well, maybe he went off posing as a young lad in order to join the Unicorn Brigade.  I hear they are heading for Tenzan pass."  The innkeeper made a pathetic attempt to finally get rid of Viki.

"Really?  McDohl is at Tenzan pass?  Wow, thanks!"  Hook, line, and sinker.

"Why don't you just go get breakfast or something then leave?"

"Well... alright."  Viki sat down at one of the tables and waited for a waiter to come serve her.  Then suddenly, she got inspired.

"Shazzam!"

With a wave of her wand, breakfast had instantly appeared on the table in front of Viki.

"Oh wow!  This blinking rune makes teleporting specifics so much easier!"  At first, Viki didn't notice that when she casted that spell, a ton of silverware, plates, pots, and pans from some kitchen appeared above everyone in the Kyaro inn.  She did notice it when gravity took place and caused all said dinner-ware to fall on everyones' heads, though.  Soon, everyone in the inn was either knocked unconscious or rubbing their beat heads, groaning in pain.

Viki took off the pot that was on her head and flung it to the side.  "Ow.... oops.  Hmm.  I forgot, this rune was supposed to be used for offensive purposes, only."

The angry innkeeper once again reached for his old sword under his desk.  "What the hell you gone and do that for?!?"  He angrily yelled.

"Sir!  Sir!  All the dishes in the kitchen!  They're gone!"  The chef dashed out of the inn's kitchen and noticed all of his broken silverware and beat-up pots lying around the floor and on top of the patrons.

Their faces filled with anger, the innkeeper, patrons, and chef surrounded Viki, and began to close in, armed with various weaponry in the form of old swords, pots, pans, broken dishes, and meat cleavers.

Viki quickly pointed to the far end of the inn.  "Uh oh.... um... er....  LOOK!  A decoy!"¹

"Huh?"  Everyone turned to look at where Viki was pointing as she ran outside.
 
 

1.  Decoy joke stolen from "Pinky and the Brain".  They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
***
 

Viki spent most of the day trekking towards Tenzan pass.  It had continued to rain, but Viki got lucky with one of her teleporting spells and managed to teleport in a parasol from somewhere, unaware that she stole it from some poor damsel in distress who was now getting soaked in the rain since Viki had her parasol.  The rain stopped long before nightfall, however, and Viki threw the parasol away because she didn't like carrying all that extra weight.  After all, her feet were tired enough.

I hate walking.  I really hate walking.  Especially walking long distances.  Especially up a hill.  If people were meant to walk, they wouldn't have been given teleportation spells.  And I can't just teleport there because I can't teleport myself to somewhere without a focus, so I have to walk.  I wish McDohl were here.  Then I could just make him go everywhere, and then use him as a focus so I could teleport there, too.  I hate walking.  I really hate walking.  Especially walking long distances.  Especially up a hill.  Oh great, and now I'm hungry, too.  I haven't eaten anything since breakfast, and it's already night time.  And I don't have a place to stay, either!  Oh!  But there's a camp over there!  And they must be having a really big barbeque or something, judging from all that fire.  And maybe some nice person will let me stay in his tent or something.

Completely unaware of the sexual innuendo of that last thought, Viki entered the blazing camp hoping for some relief from the day's journey.  Seeking help and desperate enough to ignore the heat from the flames, Viki approached the nearest corpse out of many corpses lying face down to the floor.  "Excuse me.  I'm really really lost, tired, and hungry.  Won't you please help me?"

Usually at that moment, any other guy that Viki asked would usually happily comply for some wierd reason, but this particular corpse was too dead to reply.  Viki poked the dead boy with her wand.  "Um... hello?  Are you asleep?"

That's when the corpse turned over.

The horrifying terror on the face of the dead boy, the arrow in his heart, the blood oozing from his wound, the look of fear in the dead boy's eyes was something Viki never saw before.  When she participated in the Toran revolution, Viki stayed in the back lines helping Luc and Crowley direct the magic squad, "Children of the Rune", and Viki was generally too far away to see the mass chaos that her team's magic was causing.  So Viki did the most logical thing she could think of.  But just before she fainted, she saw the image of a blue streak dashing towards her, screaming...
 

***
 

"Hey, are you all right?  Viki?"

Viki opened her eyes to see a blue haired elf standing over her.

"Oh!  Steed!  It's you!  I just had the most awful dream.  I dreamed that I vaporized McDohl so I had to find him and then I saw all these dead people and it scared me so much that I blacked out!"

Out of breath, the annoyed elf looked at Viki.  "Steed?!?"

"Oops.  Steed?  That wasn't your name?  Um... what was it?  Oh yea, Stallion!  That's it!  Where am I?"  Viki looked around and noticed the smoke in the distance.  "Uh oh... that wasn't a dream... was it?  What happened?"

Stallion was extremely hyper.  "What happened?  I'll tell ya what happened.  Some Highland people disguised themselves as Jowston State people and massacred all those innocent young people in the Highland Unicorn Brigade!  But I was there to see it, so they wanted to kill me too!  Fortunately, I ran!  You should have seen me run!  I ran faster than I ever ran before.  Then I found you, and figured that I couldn't just leave you there.  So I picked you up, and even while carrying you I ran fast.  I ran THAT fast, I did!  Yep, even while weighed down by you, I was still able to run!  And run I did!  I ran so fast that they couldn't catch me!  Why, if I didn't run so fast, you might have..."

"Oh wow!  But wait.  Highland soldiers killed their own innocent young boys?  Why would they do that?  I mean, those boys were innocent, right?  You did say "innocent young people," right?  So why would the Highland soldiers kill some people who were innocent?"

"I'm not really sure but I think I have some ideas.  But don't you want to hear about my speed?"  Stallion was almost as out of it as Viki.

"Oh, well, sure, I guess.  Although I think it's a little sad that people who were innocent were slaughtered.  After all, they were innocent.  And young, too.  That wasn't very nice."

"Oh, well yea..."  Stallion suddenly realized just how tragic the slaughtering of the Unicorn Brigade was.  "They were killed by their own country, weren't they?  That is really cruel.... isn't it?"  Stallion bowed his head down, and didn't notice the arrows flying towards him.

Fortunately, the archers were in a rush to shoot and didn't take the time to properly aim.  However, the arrow in his leg was still enough to get Stallion to scream loud enough to hurt Viki's ears.  Stallion, clutching his leg, fell as Viki caught him.  The Highland soldiers quickly ran up to Viki and Stallion.

"S... Stallion!  Are you okay?"  Viki yanked the arrow out of Stallion's leg, resulting in Stallion screaming even louder.  Viki turned to face Stallion's pursuers.

One of the soldiers saluted to his commander.  "We got him, sir!"

"Excellent!"  The generic Highland commander replied.  "We can't have any witnesses survive!"

"Hey..." inquired another less-intelligent soldier.  "Aren't we witnesses, too?  So we can't survive either?"

The commander answered him by cutting him down with his sword.

The commander laughed.  "Hey look, I just contributed to humanity's gene pool by not letting that idiot reproduce!"  The other soldiers simply shrugged.  They were all used to atrocity by now.  They were part of the White Wolf Army, which was commanded by the murderous prince Ruka Bright himself, and were pretty much used to these atrocities.  That gimp soldier which the commander just killed most likely was a moron who somehow sneaked past the screening process.

"Sir, there appears to be another girl there, too.  And she's not injured, yet."

"Then kill her, before she can escape!"  The commander barked.

The White Wolf soldier readied his bow and pointed it right at Viki's head.  Viki suddenly realized what was happening, and stared straight at the arrow pointed at her.  Which was all she found she could do.  As the soldier pulled the bowstring back, time seemed to slow down.  Viki couldn't move, act, or think about anything.

The soldier didn't fire.  "Aw, boss, why don't you do it?  It's been a while since I shot an innocent GIRL.  I need a little more desensitization again."

"Give me that!"  The commander grabbed the bow then cut that soldier down with his sword.  "You all saw what Ruka did to that soldier who let that boy escape!  I won't let that happen to me!"  He then aimed at Viki, who still couldn't take her eyes off the bow.

"I... I think I'm going to faint again.  Y... yes, fainting is good.  This is all a dream, too."  Viki mumbled to herself as her eyes began to close.

Angrily, Stallion started shaking her violently.  "VIKI!!!!"

Viki opened her eyes again.  "Eh?  WHAT?  HEY!  How am I supposed to lose consciousness with you shaking me like that?!?"

"Teleport us out of here!  Even my awesome speed can only go so far!"  Stallion pleaded.

Viki waved her wand.  "Oh... right!  I'll teleport us to Kyaro!  I've been there, so I can focus on it easily!"

In a flash, Viki and Stallion dissappeared.

One of the soldiers looked at the commander, who was still aiming at the spot where Viki and Stallion were.  "Um, sir, why didn't you shoot them while they were talking?"

"Well... um..."  The commander replied.  "That was really interesting.  I wanted to see her faint."

The soldier cut his commander down with his sword.
 

***
 

Stallion gasped.  "Damn, I nearly had a heart attack!"

"I'm sorry!"  Viki cried.  "I never had anyone point a weapon at me before!"

"Well, look, you are going to have to learn to defend yourself some day if you want to survive in a war-filled continent like this!"  Stallion began applying medicine to his wound.  "Or at least learn to stop staring like an idiot and escape really quickly like me!"

"You are going to have to learn to defend yourself some day..."  Maybe Stallion was right.  Without McDohl, I can't go on like this forever.  I almost died back there.  I think that, maybe, staring at that arrow pointed at me changed me forever.  From now on, I can't just hide in a castle all day and command forces from the back lines!  Anyone who dares to get in my way shall have to deal with the new and improved Viki!

"Hey, Viki!"

"Who what when where why how huh HUH?"

"We have to get moving!  Those soldiers will be here any moment."

"Shoot!  I forgot what I was thinking about.  Ah well."  Viki was still shivering from the encounter and thought about the soldiers coming to Kyaro to pursue her.  "But why?  How would they know where I teleported us to?"

"Well, the fact that you said you were teleporting us to Kyaro right before you teleported us to Kyaro would probably tip them off."  Stallion shrugged.  "Hey, what are all these people doing, here?"

The innkeeper of Kyaro, his chef, and his many patrons angrily approached Viki.  "There she is!  Kill her!  And her stupid friend!"

"Oh, them?"  Viki looked at Stallion.  "They're just some guys that are mad at me because of a teleporting accident and now they want to kill me."

Stallion took a step back.  "Viki, you should get out of here.  There is probably a war coming around now, and you don't want to get caught up in it."

"Um... okay... but I can't remember how to teleport to Toran from Jowston or Highland."

Stallion looked at the angry mob, which was ready to lynch him and Viki.  "Well, you'll think of something!  But for now, I think it's safer if we split up."

"Oh.... it is?  Well then, okay, I guess."

Stallion ran off into the night and murmured to himself.  "Safer for me, at least."

The angry mob prepared to strike.  "Hey!  Her friend ran away!  Ah well, let's get her!"

Viki quickly turned to face her assaulters.

Well.... it's do or die, now.  Time for me to finally fight back.  I'll use my ultimate Judgement spell!

"JUDGEMENT!!!"  Viki screamed, raising her right arm into the air.  The shocked townspeople backed off a little.  Nothing happened.

"Hey, what's going on?"  Viki looked at her right hand, then slapped her forehead.  "DOH!  I forgot, Judgement is McDohl's spell, not mine!  Okay, okay, this time I'll get it right.  Ready!  Set!  GO!"

Viki pointed her wand at the townsfolk and her blinking rune glowed.  In a flash, they were gone.

"I... I did it!  Hooray!"  Viki exclaimed.

Suddenly, it began raining men.

And women.

And children.

And Stallions, too.

"Ow!"  Stallion yelled as he crushed the townsfolk that fell before him.  "What the hell am I doing back here?"

Stallion looked at Viki, shrugged, then ran away again.

Viki was about to smile at her new found power, until she looked at the pile of injured townsfolk in front of her.  In particular, the innkeeper fell first and hit the hard floor, then was crushed by a few other people and by now there was quite a lot of blood around there.  Viki almost fainted again, then shook her head to stay conscious.

A young adorable little twelve year old boy, Timmy Tottlesworth, ran up to the innkeeper.  "Daddy!  Daddy!"  The kid held his father's hand, then looked at Viki.  "You killed my daddy!!!  I'll never forgive you!"

The innkeeper looked at his son and groaned, but was too hurt to speak.

Viki stared nervously stared at the crowd, backed up a step, then ran away.

What did I just do?  That was in self-defense, but I can't stand killing anyone, even though I didn't really kill those guys.  I think I'll have to change my previous thought.  I'll protect myself if I have to, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  How do they do it?  How does Valeria actually enjoy that type of thing?  How can McDohl put up with always having to kill any imperial soldiers that attacked him?   Oh, McDohl!  Where are you?  If there really is a war coming, I need you!  Being alone is BAD!!!

Timmy Tottlesworth, who was remarkably mature (or maybe fanatic) for his age picked up his father's old sword and watched Viki dissappear into the distance.

"That witch destroyed my father's inn and killed my father!  She will die!"  He started to run after Viki, then collapsed three seconds later from exhaustion because his father's sword was too heavy.  The next day, upon finding out that his father was still alive and wasn't mortally injured, Timmy decided to just give up chasing after Viki and that was the last she ever saw of that annoying brat.