Crossover Fan Fiction ❯ Ranting of a Shield Hero(ine) ❯ Ranting: Chapter 5 ( Chapter 5 )

We fought some giant bugs on a narrow mountain road and were paid after we cleared it for travel. A bit later, we met some blue haired girl of about 12 with some very nice clothing that I pegged for a noble. She really liked Filo, and gave her some dried jerky and stroked her feathers. The two of them played all afternoon and then came to our room. The girl, Melty, asked us to escort her to the capitol. I don’t like that place, but I was going there for trade reasons. Filo asked me to help the girl, and Raphtalia agreed so I feel like I’d better.

If things had been different and I’d been an idiot and let Raphtalia get poisoned and cursed by a dracoliche a few days before I’d be heading to meet with the local archbishop and waste money buying low quality holy water for an entire gold coin, and then have to point it out and make them hire an assassin to kill me later, using my own money to pay for it because the local monotheists are cut from the same moronic and corrupt cloth as their king and nobles. But I wasn’t and she wasn’t sick and I kept my money. And screw those church clowns.

Instead, my arrival in the city caused one of the knight guards to start chasing us, and I ended up running into that Spear twerp, Motoyasu, despite his reputation for being a criminal rapist. He started attacking me with his spear and I defended multiple strikes with the shield.

“Where is the blonde angel? Where is my angel? That fat bird kicked me, but I want my blonde angel. Chaos spear!” he shouted and his spear went flying out, destroying the marketplace and scaring a huge crowd of merchants and shoppers.

“You never learn, do you?” I yelled at him. He was predictably followed by the masochist redhead again. Her guards looked really uncomfortable.

“I declare this an official duel between the Spear hero and the Shield hero!” proclaimed the redheaded idiot, holding up a scroll.

“No you don’t! I forbid you, sister. You have gone too far. Look at the damage around you. You bring shame upon our name. I will tell Mother,” said Melty. The knights looked conflicted and knelt rather than support the unfavored redhead princess over the bluenette heir to the throne. I agree that stopping this damage is critical, but I could have taken him. Motoyasu is all talk and no trousers. And apparently protected by Plot Armor, which he gets to enjoy because his primary skillset is attacking with a pointy stick. I’ve got a shield so I’m supposed to just stand there and take it from the guy with the spear. That was so sexist. This entire world is full of sexist dumb-@5545.

“Filo! Filo-chan! The hag is working you like a horse, isn’t she,” he accused.

“I do like pulling the wagon,” she admitted.

“Just like that fat bird!” he exclaimed.

“That’s the second time you called me fat.” Little Filo transformed into her filolial queen form and kicked him between his armored legs. He flew a good long way and exited the square, still rising.

After their retreat the guard that had been chasing them insisted the king wanted to speak to me.

“Why? Why should I care?” I responded. This baffled the guard.

“The king commands it!” insisted the young knight.

“I don’t care. He didn’t even want to know my name. Your king is a fool, and you are a fool to follow him. That masochist redhaired princess is an evil witch, and she poisons everyone around her. You follow her, too. This nation is doomed to be destroyed in the waves. From what I read in your histories, you deserve to die.”

“Please,” cried out Melty, who was also a princess apparently,” Please don’t abandon my people.”

“This nation hurts its people, and it is filled with crooks. It openly practices slavery, an evil banned by all civilized nations on every world. This is a nation in decline. Your people are led by your king, and he doesn’t care about his people,” I insisted. “I have travelled enough to see the truth, and being back in your capitol and so close to your royalty pains me. And you lied to me, Melty.”

“If I had told you who I really was, would you have taken me here or ransomed me?” asked the quivering princess.

“That sounds like kidnapping, which is a lot like something a slaver would do, and that isn’t polite. Where I come from, politeness is something everyone does. It is our national spirit,” I explained. “Well, that and working too hard. And social drinking. But politeness is pretty important!” It is possible I just weakened my argument. Just a bit.

“Wouldn’t it be polite to meet with the King, then?” asked Melty.

“He was rude. I’m done with that guy.”

“So that’s all?” asked the quivering girl.

“Yep. I’ve got business to do. Then I’m out of here.” I stormed off with Raphtalia and Filo, heading for a merchant I wanted to meet and sell something. While I was waiting a knight and two more, and two witches/wizard women showed up asking to join my party and fight the waves. They were young, but old enough. If I were a jerk I’d trick them into making them thinking I was multi-level marketing con man trying to sell them junk for too much money, but I’m a waitress in the real world so I told them to get their gear upgraded and fixed up before the next wave hits and we could meet in time to Party Up and fight it together. They left, looking relieved. I got back to business with my blacksmith.

“There’s such a thing as a class upgrade, which will let you do more things. And your helper could use it to get stronger. There’s a problem though. The royals and the church of Three Heroes controls it,” explained my preferred blacksmith in this city.

“Three Heroes? Three? There are Four Heroes. Why would there be a church which ignores the fourth hero? Ah. They hate me, and every shield hero before me. Typical of this kingdom of clowns. Are there any others where we can do this? I only get clowns wanting bribes in this place,” I answered.

“Well, any of the four kingdoms also have the Dragon Hourglass so it could be done there too,” he admitted. I got the list and a map with some contact names in the other regions.

This took a few hours to agree on a price, transfer goods, collect payment, and organize some additional purchases from other merchants. We collected our goods onto the wagon and exited the city from its Eastern gate, which isn’t used much, and were away that evening.

We were being followed. I hate when that happens. They were obviously ninjas. Only Ninjas would be that careful to avoid being seen, yet ignored that their presence stopped all the birdcalls. The forest was silent. Raphtalia noticed them first, and I spotted them because my primary ability in this dumb place is having a working brain. It’s like a superpower. This entire setting was probably created by some teenage boy and published in Shounen Jump because nobody else seemed to be thinking like an adult would. I’ve got my issues, especially with men and my bad choices, but every woman is like that. Reminded me of when I was a kid and stopped watching Bleach after I hit puberty because it was painfully obvious the entire story was for immature boys with trouser envy. “That sword is so big!” Yeah. That actually happened in the second episode of that show. So embarrassing.

We arrived in a border town where the population was starving. They said there’s a revolution lead by some adventurer with a bow. It was that one guy, the Bow Hero. It seems being a psychopath allowed him to notice this place was nuts. I fed the refugees with soup that I used my magic to make nourishing, and then moved on. I was out the veggies and some time, but I’d probably saved their lives for a few more days. The next town was populated and I spotted the Bow and Sword heroes in the tavern. I laughed when I heard him mention great power and great responsibility.

“I don’t remember you getting bitten by a radioactive spider,” I jibed. He came over with his boyfriend and they started insulting me so I told them about all the villagers who died after they “helped” slaying monsters and leaving the corpses lying around, or deposing kings but leaving bandits in charge to start extorting taxes from the survivors and killing anyone who resisted. This planet is stupid. They looked shocked, and the Bow hero, being a psycho, insisted he didn’t believe me. The Sword hero did. Gay people are people, but I do wish they weren’t so nasty to straight women like me. It isn’t cute. My last boss was gay, of course, and I didn’t mind him much because it wasn’t my butt he was grabbing. These two were needing to wake up and stop being so selfish and arrogant, stop treating this world like the people were just NPCs. I couldn’t afford to do that, though I did mock their king for being an arrogant jerk. There were rumors about a queen, but I haven’t met her and the redhead princess was a total nutjob, and even Melty was a liar, even if she did say she cared about her people.

I lead us back with trade goods to the city of morons and my blacksmith had finished the Bandit Queen chest plate armor I’d ordered. It had room for my boobs, which was a relief. The countdown timer said we had a couple hours before we’d be summoned to the next Wave Battle. I wish people would listen to me about this whole stupid mess. This was clearly a case of the last few Shield Heroes turning into the villains because of how badly they were treated by the nobles in this place, and why this place was attacked the most. It was simple revenge. A preschooler could figure this out.

The teenagers showed up polished and ready. I sold them some healing and mana potions for a reasonable price and then added them to my party. We waited. We got summoned and teleported to that swirling purple sky, as usual. This time we were in a village at the start so we defended it from the Lizardmen and goblins and such until they were largely defeated and the villagers ran away to hide. But the purple sky was still happening. An old lady with martial arts skill like Akane Tendo finished off the last and urged us to find the invasion leader and put an end to this wave. So I thanked her and we rode Filo at high speed to where the biggest swirls in the sky were. And found the Bow Hero. There was a flying pirate ship with tentacle monsters from Urotsukidoji, I kid you not, and we rode Filo up to it. She can fly now, so that was possible.

The Motoyasu and the red princess were bickering and failing to defeat evil. Same with the sword hero. I hate video games. There will be some trick to this. It was dim though.

“Raphtalia, can you cast light?” I casually asked her. She did, with a long incantation. I was expected the Dark Flame Master by the end of it, but it was pretty much just a flare that stayed in place above the deck. The heroes noticed the faces in the shadows and stabbed them, as you would. Because shadows with faces are creepy.

Next some white ghostly tentacles rose above the ship and converged into some kind of creepy hentai monster, which howled and attacked. Naturally, the hero attacks didn’t work at all. I had Filo cast wind magic, which did. It counter attacked and knocked everyone down. Filo proceeded to leap and kick six kinds of crap out of it, which is amazing because I’ve only discovered five kinds. Unfortunately, it wasn’t hurting the monster. For a long time now I’ve known this shield possessed another power, something terrible. Something only a woman would understand.

“Pee   Emmm  Essss!” I shouted and everything went black for me.

“Sister, you are okay? You defeated the monster. That was really scary what you did. It was all bash and pow and screaming many bad words I’ve never heard before,” said Raphtalia gently. I felt really sore and groggy and as exhausted as if I was still doing benders. The kind where I’d black out yet still put my shoes in the proper place and take off my clothes and tuck myself into bed. I was a very tidy drunk, back in the day.

“Did I really shout PMS as my battle cry?” I asked in a croaking voice. She passed me a cup of water and helped me sit up.

“Yes, and a lot of other things about your old boyfriend. You were very angry,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone that angry before.”

“I guess the wave is over?” I asked.

“Oh yes. You beat it. And the king rewarded all the other heroes except you, because he hates you and wants you to die,” she said.

“He actually said that,” she clarified.

“Figures. I feel the same way about him, so fair’s fair.” So my furious hidden inner power is menstrual cramps?

“So there was that weird monster, which you killed solo, then another monster that turned into a girl with fans and when she looked at you, she apologized and left and the wave ended.”

“Apologized?” I asked between gulps of water. I was thirsty and my womb ached in pain.

“She said she totally understood how you felt and would return on a day where she’d have some hope of beating you fairly,” said Filo. “What did she mean?” Filo was still a little girl. Raphtalia blushed and patted Filo on the head.

That just figures. It really does.