It had been a month since the bandits had rolled into town and made it their new base. Dozens of thugs, bearing all the weapons of modern war. They drank, they fought, they killed the ever fewer citizens for sport, they killed every Homeguard or official who showed up, and they left every night to burn a village to the ground.
The only people left were the ones who had nothing left. Townsmen with no worldly possessions but their homes. One-time farmers whose whole wealth was tied up in plots they wouldn't live long enough to reach, let alone tend. Refugees who would never survive the travel even if they had the guts left to try it. From their headquarters in what was left of the old Milk Bar the bandits sat on their growing piles of rupees and laughed at the dying around them. Sometimes they took lovers, of there was a woman they could find. They were led into the bar by a cheering crowd and were never seen again.
So that's when they came. The Hunters, the mercenaries.
There were twenty of them at most. They skittered up the western road, their movements furtive and yet bold. Bandoliers hung from their narrow shoulders, revolvers hung from cut-away holsters on their slim hips or tied to their tails. They wore long tunics of studded leather, thick enough to tangle knives, under long cloaks. Some, with hides tanned grey-brown, carried carbines with long bayonets. Their leader had a tuft of long Cuckoo feathers tied to her head and carried a sturdy hammer with a long handle, while her other foreclaw hovered near a very expensive revolver with a long barrel.
The bandits were monsters, so the authorities had called on bigger monsters to be rid of them. The Lizalfos bounty hunters, the Lynna Gagaras, walked into the town just before noon. They ran into the doorways and alleyways before the bandits had fully roused to repel them. Then they fought, they
ate, and were ready to leave by dusk. To the citizens they never spoke a word, except an order from their leader to expect the new Homeguards soon. Then they left to collect their bounty.