------------- Tales of the Raptors – Loner

As the Cliff Raptors were reforming in the shadows of Xanthius, with the end goal of overthrowing Haziz Fekesh and helping Hildegard Bloque seize power, they knew they’d need help. So did Hildy. She’d already lined up several who would join them on their little quest. When Hildy summoned them to the Bloque House that night to meet one of them, they weren’t sure what they’d be getting into. Yashifa had grown up in this town and knew the many faces of the Xanth Guild. She’d never seen one quite like this before.

When Zheuretta Shar left the stinking bars of Darkpoint Station and started across the city to meet with a prospective new employer, she would never have guessed she’d end up a reality away, living in a completely different quantum matrix a few years later. Not only that, but by the time “they” were done with her, she wasn’t even Zerth any more,… not completely at any rate. She’d grown up dodging the enforcer gangs, and the occasional Gith pirate that plied those star systems and the nastiness that was Darkpoint. Even the Shadows didn’t scare her quite as much as the Githyanki did. For their part in her conversion, she repaid them a thousand times over. Since becoming a Shadow Agent, she had slaughtered hundreds of Githyanki, so weak and pliable were their pathetic minds. But the Neogi didn’t like their special projects running around acting on their own,… didn’t fit in with their grand plan to conquer several realities. But she had never cared what anybody wanted her to do. Telling her got even less of a response. And making her was the worst thing you could imagine.

So, with her newfound powers, and her innate abilities, she folded reality and ended up here, the very planet The Shadows were planning to destroy. Well, she never was very lucky at such things. On the other hand, what she soon discovered was her knowledge and powers were valuable to the very people the Shadows were trying to destroy. So, she did what any practical girl would do. She sold out to the locals.

When the Shadows finally met their sticky end along with their arch nemesis, the Ashiri, she breathed a deep sigh of relief. Unfortunately, there were still many others, not too unlike her, that were scattered all over the planet, and across a dozen star systems outside of Arrallon. And most of them took the destruction of their masters a little personally. So she made a fake ID,… or seven,… and started plying her trade as a smuggler. Things were almost back to the way they were when she was a youngling. Another planet, another thieves’ guild, another filthy back alley, another hallway of rusted metal and broken machinery,… the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

Despite it all, somewhere deep inside, hidden behind years of psychological barriers and walls against any intrusion, there was still a lonely little girl, wanting to belong to something, to someone. But when that weakness overcame her, she’d shrug it off, go get drunk and get laid, and say to herself a thousand times,… I am a loner. I am a loner.

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