SueLeeta’s Interesting Day Part 1 (Between Mayor and Village)

(So turns out writing a single 5k story is not what I do.  I'm going to write a SueLeeta short story with something like 3-5 chapters interspersed with HATS.  I do like discovering new things about my characters, and SueLeeta is no different).  

“Yawning,” SueLeeta stretched out and instantly realized she wasn’t in her own bed.  That wasn’t necessarily a problem, she just had to remember which bed she was in.  She was naked, but that didn’t necessarily mean much as that was her preferred method of sleeping.

She was also sore, but as an adventurer there were lots of ways to get sore.  Especially with how much hunting she had been doing lately.  She must be tired from that, then she rolled into her own hair and spit out a mouthful of the annoying stuff.  She was unbraided, that could only mean one thing.

“OttoSherman, why didn’t you wake me up,” she groaned, sitting up and letting the blanket fall to her waist.

“Because I did, and you threatened to jump me” said the Lumberjack, who was dressed for work.  Just not chopping trees.

“That sounds like fun,” SueLeeta grinned.

“I have a guest,” said OttoSherman.

“How late is it,” she asked, finding her panties on the floor.

“Very, I’m already five minutes late for my first appointment of the day,” said OttoSherman.

SueLeeta grumbled and threw on her shirt, she’d have to do her hair up.  She pushed open the door to the room only to spot his guest, EsterSasha, waiting patiently in the main room.

“I made Wakeup Juice,” she smiled before walking past SueLeeta and closing the door behind her.

Shaking her head and hoping to have that much energy when she got older, SueLeeta walked across the hallway into her room and looked at her face in the mirror while she braided her hair.  She was getting older, or maybe it was just being in the legendary city of Windfall was causing her too much stress.

Obviously she had remedies for that.  However the past few days since Jim brought the survivors here, she’s been worried.  Living in Windfall was akin to living in a legendary city, like Windfall.

Of course, in the stories the city wasn’t quite so run down.  The whole place was collapsed buildings and fallen walls.  She had literally no idea what the fool ‘mayor’ was thinking, but she would have torn the whole place down and started over.

Well, maybe.  There was supposed to be a great castle.  Castles were cool.  She was totally going to bone someone on Grebthar’s throne if she could get away with it.

Hair braided, SueLeeta walked over to her armor stand and grabbed her traveling armor.  It wasn’t her good set, of course, only a fool would wear that for day to day operations.  Exhaling and apologizing to the girls, she squeezed into the armor and regretted deeply that she’d chosen archery over hand to hand fighting but you only needed to catch yourself in the tit one time before serious precautions were acceptable.

Grabbing her bow, she drew it back and glanced down, ensuring that the string had a proper path.  The solid leather panel on the front of her armor had several markings from where the string rubbed against it as she shot, but that was to be expected.

Next the tied on her bracers, again more to prevent herself from getting caught by her own weapon than their actual defensive value.  Finally she grabbed her shooting glove that granted her a +4% accuracy buff and shoved it on before flexing her fingers.

Stepping out of the room, she found the Wakeup juice pot and sniffed several times.  Food was scarce enough for the professionals that even having a pot of Wakeup juice was a bit of a luxury that she should take advantage of.  Sniffing, she still wasn’t sure it was, but still she poured a cup.

It was miserable.  It tasted bitter, though she did feel more alert.  Groaning, she downed the overly hot beverage in one gulp before walking over to the front door and throwing it open.  The town wall stood proudly before her, though entirely unnecessary with the barrier.

A strong breeze struck her face, and in that moment she felt like an adventurer.  An adventurer with cold legs.

“Pants,” she hissed, turning around and slamming the door.

***

Grumbling as she stalked through the woods, SueLeeta kept looking for something to hunt.  There wasn’t enough food to go around, so there wasn’t enough food for her to have a filling breakfast before she left.

More accurately, EsterSasha cooked something using something and it tasted like feet.  SueLeeta would do anything to not have to eat any more feet, and if that meant spending all day hunting, she would do that.

• SueLeeta: Hunter, Level 8
• Hit Points: 95/95
• Stamina: 80

She was level 5 two days ago.  This was nuts.  Normally the problem with leveling was finding the appropriate kind of monster that would give you experience points without killing you.  In Windfall, they were just wandering about.  It made no sense to her.  She felt like a Falconian princess being carefully fed a select grouping of monsters.

Not that she was going to complain, at this rate she’d be level ten by the end of the day and possibly level fifteen in a week.

Of course, the people were counting on her.  Jim’s Windfall didn’t have any food.  They barely had any supplies and if it wasn’t for the existing supplies being scavenged no one would have a roof over their head.  Hell, Jim was sleeping in a Tanning shop solely for the fact that the roof was fully intact.

Which is why you shack up with a lumberjack, they always have an ample supply of wood.

As a Hunter, the best thing she could do for the town at the moment was hunt.  Hunt and avoid Jim.  Jim confused the hell out of her, and when SueLeeta didn’t understand something she did her level best to steer clear of it.  She’d leave that chore to Fenris, but he was busy patrolling the woods with Jim looking for goblins.

Of course, if she found any goblins she could deal with them, hopefully.  The Windfall goblins had been an issue forever it seemed.  Narwal had several bounties posted for them, even a higher bounty for Shadow Goblins, but those probably didn’t exist.  In any case, SueLeeta wasn’t worried about them at the moment.

She spotted a white stag.  Those were rare, and rare meant additional experience points.  Unfortunately, she had to find the thing and it was very good at hiding.  Starting with the standard approach of tracking, she filtered her sight to spot any flecks of white fur where she’d seen the creature last.

The first time she’d seen it, the stag had been out of range.  The second, she caught a glimpse of it right as it dove into the forest.  Since then, she’d caught fleeting glances of the creature a few times.

She adjusted her grip on Fenris’ old bow and started after a likely trail.  SueLeeta was always thankful for Fenris’ gift, it was just a bow.  Despite being a hunter, and a ranged hunter at that, she never liked bows.  They felt clunky.

Plus the nipple incident.

You had to wear specific gear to fire them safely as a woman.  Further, holding them drawn for any length of time was really taxing on your stamina reserve.  Jim said something about a crossbow, which was an engineering contraption, but she’d have to find one of those.

If she ever did find one, she wasn’t going to give it up.

As she crept into the next clearing, she spotted her first target.  A normal deer.  A fat, juicy, plump deer made entirely of meat so that she couldn’t possibly ignore it but at the same time it wasn’t helping her quest any.  Sighing, she sighed on the beast.  She hadn’t even walked ten minutes outside of Windfall and there was so much game it was insane.

She calmed her breathing as an arrow struck the deer, toppling it.

SueLeeta felt her arrow, just to make sure and then watched as several goblins emerged from the trees and headed straight towards the corpse.  Shrugging, she brought up the arrow again and took aim.

It looked like today was going to get interesting.