Casual Heroing

Some revolutions are quick and violent, some, instead, take a long time; the latter ones are more insidious, more deeply rooted once they start manifesting. They are like a cancer that gets discovered only after metastases have taken place. The most famous one is the Christian revolution. Romans tried to persecute the practitioners, but the damage was already done.

And you know who spread religion among them? Women. Women were bored out of their mind, and religion made them feel important. Christian housewives are similar nowadays. The most ironic thing is that, once women – and slaves, to be fair – had started spreading their new creed, other men, feeling the importance of this new religion, took it away from them. Men decided that women shouldn’t meddle with the higher spheres of their religious organization. Consequently, Christianity failed to take over. They also failed in persecuting religion, however. Both sides were governed by men. The fact that Christianity had been in the hands of women, however, made it easier to spread like a plague among the Roman empires. Why? Slaves and women, who had been relegated to the fringes of society, finally heard someone say ‘you matter.’ Women amplified that message, which reached every corner, poisoned their minds, and created zealots and martyrs in spades.

I remember this lesson from high school.

And I also remember the solution I found back at the time.

If I had been a Roman Emperor, I would have given women the job of persecuting Christians. Men, they know violence, sure. But when dealing with religion, it was the other side who recruited the ones expert in manipulation and capable of the type of warfare which even the most experienced Roman general was unaware of.

Psychological warfare.

A man will always be inferior compared to a woman in that regard. Men have dicks. That fails them. As long as a men can be governed by an appendage of his, he will be useless in finer manipulations. A woman, instead, rarely is controlled by her passions—after being trained, at least.

If women had taken over the job of eliminating the filthy Christians from the face of Earth, they would have done the job splendidly. All the women who had been converted would have found an equally terrible foe—another woman. And that would have been their end. You cannot fight the war of minds with raw violence and crucifixion. That was so obvious even to a younger me. Instead, recruit the women who have been abandoned by the church, let them be the executioners of the men who have shunned them away; no one can be more cruel than a woman who has been betrayed, who has been stripped of the power that should have been hers.

What a sword through the head, crunching the skull, can do is extinguishing one life. But not even a genocide managed to eradicate Christian belief. All religions are the blackest poison, and once they enter the veins, the poison will never get fully eliminated, not without singing the flesh and crushing the bones in the process…

Women would have solved that.

And all the most widespread religions still fear women, still want men in charge. Because they day a woman takes over, no man will be their equal in leading with faith. No greatest zealot will exist than a woman with a mission. No greater martyr than a woman who believes in something so firmly.

I sometimes contemplated the idea of waging a war on religions. All of them, not just one. Start with the closest places of cult, like the Vatican. Strip naked their leaders and have them beg on their knees, have them pray. Not to kill them after, no. I’m not a man. I’d torture them until they would scream every invective in existence against their Gods, have all Humans see what kind of pathetic and weak men are manipulating them. Have women, especially, see that a woman can be much more than a follower. A woman can be a leader. A woman can be judge, jury, and executioner.

Men without scruples are tyrants, women without scruples are monsters.

Delacroix painted a woman with the French flag in her hand, leading the revolution, personifying the concept of Liberty. Men are in the background, some fading along the lines the brush left behind.

As I finish cleaning the gun I used to kill the idiot harassing me, I breathe in the fresh air of a new day. There is a job for me in this city, this place that has been left to die slowly but surely. And there’s only one person fit for the job.

Remember, leading a revolution is clearly a woman’s job.

…

I look at the notes on the rough paper, noting how my finances are being drained much quicker than I expected. There’s no immediate job I could take around here, not without resorting to murder—which I have yet to exclude from the list. I need funds, but this city’s job market is dead. I have yet to explore the Glass and Steel District, but I’m sure there’s nothing for me there as well. Brassieres? Maybe in a rich city with people ready to pay good coins for it.

I could act as the poor woman in need of rescue in the middle of the forest and put a bullet through some Humans’ bodies. But the risks in that case are too great.

I look at the rough map I drew from the books I’ve read in Licinium’s shop. I have yet to see one customer go through his door—how is that old man surviving with all those expenses? The [Cleansing] potion he uses is not cheap. It’s almost a luxury in a city so poor. But I respect the care applied to his loved ones. I’m talking about the books, obviously. He doesn’t mention his sons, usually; when he does, it’s to remind himself – and me – of how useless they are.

If I want to help the half-giants to come out of this, I need to know more about what’s happening on Carilia. The Vanedenis, distant allies, are facing their own problems. And that means I can’t count on them. I did hatch a plan to move half-giants to Kome; then I discovered Kome has a rocky coast that is 4000 m above sea level.

Insane people.

There is no other way to describe the Vanedenis.

When I look at their stories, I wonder if they even exist. The tales surrounding their deeds are preposterous; a [Gardener] threw himself into the ocean’s icy water, swam together with thousands of other [Gardeners], [Druids], and [Green Mages] to the Sirens’ capital. Then, he killed their [Queen], a woman owning a red class.

Red classes are very powerful but perverted versions of normal classes. They are reserved for monsters and they always have some drawbacks. The most common one is the lost of sanity. And a man, a [Gardener], just killed her. If Licinium said the truth, it did take more than a year. It wasn’t, like some book say, that he just went down and decapitated her. No, he fought a guerrilla and starved their armies, tied their supply lines…

[Heroes]

Would I have gotten a red class back on Earth or a [Hero] one?

The line between the two seem thinner than it should be.

“Cassandre! My favorite customer!” Ziss shouts.

I raise my eyes, seeing the man dragging his cart toward the usual spot.

“Get me a fresh skewer when you can,” I smile at him and then I go back to my notes.

Eating lunch around the plaza has become a ritual, and it helps gathering information. People are willing to stop and talk to the only Human in the city, it seems. And a lot of [Merchants] come around here, sometimes even ones from other cities. Ziss also learned that I don’t want to be disturbed while I’m working. Even though Licinium has repeatedly called him an idiot, the guy is just… simple.

Not everyone has to be a genius.

I look at the notes once again, with numbers spread all over the paper.

When I raise my eyes, I see a cat on the street. It’s a stray. Fuzzy black stripes, half-dirt and half his natural fur, color an otherwise blond coat. Three small mice scuttle in front of him, while he looks almost bored at their pathetic attempt at escaping. The cat unveils its sharp claws and pokes one on the back, while the other two try to run in different directions. The mice are fast, but the cat doesn’t seem concerned. The one who got poked instantly froze and the cat slowly and gently places a lick on its back with a malignant grin. As soon as its personal amusement with that one comes to an end, the cat decapitates it and starts strutting elegantly in direction of the other two.

The cat takes its time, knowing that there’s cat and there’s mice. And the cat eats the mice, always. One of the two remaining mice is hiding behind a small stall, but the cat catches it quickly. There’s no escaping. The mouse dies a boring and unsatisfying death. The predator swallows it whole—if not entertainment, let it be food.

Then, looking at the remaining mouse, frozen as well, probably on the verge of an heart attack, the cat walks up to it and prods it with a paw. It doesn’t kill the little creature trembling in terror. Not like this. Not without fun. Not without entertainment.

I look at my plans again, at all the notes I’ve scribbled down—and I tear them up.

With a feline smile over my face, I get up, ready to finally conduct some proper businéss.

…

My pouch is empty, and my reserve of food is going to follow soon. The ride I hitched has finally come to its destination. I got a bit further than I wanted to. Around two weeks from Leggiadra. Distant enough to conduct proper business without being traced.

One of the main reasons I’ve tried several drugs is to avoid looking like a cop. You want to participate to the right parties without looking like a ball-buster? You have to snort, ingest, shoot what you need to. No one likes a boring person. And the most important thing is that you are sending a message, ‘we are the same.’ There’s nothing worse than looking too different when you are among a crowd of real or pseudo-criminals. And you will have to go through the pseudo criminals before meeting the real players.

Huge apartments in the center of Paris where you find the new generation, twenty-something year old ingesting pills, snorting cocaine, showing off some golden guns that they have never shot. You can even find some famous rappers at those private parties. French rappers, obviously. But even though most are posers, sometimes you can find a real one keeping an eye on the idiots, or simply providing protection. If you want to be noted, you have to show that you are one of them, but you also show restraint. No one wants to do business with a woman, and even less with a junkie.

So, if I want to do business with half-giants, I need a ticket to enter the right circles. I can’t just waltz in the Glass and Steel District and wave guns around.

I have to shoot the guns.

And shoot the right people.