Disclaimer: The usual don't own yada yada blah blah
She Really Isn't Though...
Storen the slave trader walked down the line, looking over the latest shipment of recent acquisitions with a practiced eye. He'd gotten a request for a large number of Noxian females, approximate age sixteen to thirty, with the usual allowable deviation, from one of his regulars. Given who the request was from, it was obvious what they were to be used for. Scouring the market had left him short, so Storen had contacted one of his acquisition squads to fill in the numbers. He was pleased with the results. Female after female proved to be high-quality, and in good condition as well, which he could not always count on with his undisciplined acquisition squads. He was in a very good mood, until he reached the end of the line.
The last person in the line did not fit. She wore the chains and shackles the others did, but that was the only similarity between her and her fellow slaves. Instead of the standard grey slave shift the others all wore, she was wearing a purple dress, and a...was that a pink backpack? And holding a teddy bear. Why would his men let her keep a teddy bear? Besides this, she was clearly too young, probably not more than seven years old, well outside the requested age range! Then too, there was her abnormal coloring. Her skin was orange, rather than a typical human skin color, marking her as a mageling. However, by far the thing making her distinct from the girls around her was what she wore on her face. They all showed looks of hopelessness or horror, sometimes both, clearly knowing their fate. She,on the other hand, was smiling up at him with the most innocent, joyful expression he had ever seen, like he had just offered her candy.
"What. Is. This?" He asked his squad leader with deadly calm, pointing at the little girl.
"Uhhh...a girl?" The man replied uncertainly.
Storen sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why is she here? I did not ask you to get babies!"
That got her attention. "Hey, I'm not a baby!" She said angrily. Her smile was gone, and she was staring at Storen with narrowed eyes. He found it a bit disconcerting, and turned away so he didn't have to see her.
"Look," He said in a lower tone. "She does not come close to meeting the physical requirements I gave you. I am not in the habit of being disobeyed, so this is obviously a misunderstanding. My instructions were clear. Perhaps you can explain to me," He put his arm around the other man's shoulders and squeezed until he got a wince. " How you were able to misunderstand them so badly."
"Ack," The squad leader wilted in his grip, attempting the impossible job of escaping it without being confrontational about it, and failing miserably. "I don't know where she came from! We didn't pick her up, I swear!"
Storen laughed without humor, and his grip strengthened even further, bringing gasps of pain from the man. "So, you expect me to believe-" He cut off as he felt a tugging on the back of his tunic. He frowned, released the squad leader, who gave a sigh of relief, and turned. Not seeing anyone at first, he finally looked down. There was the little orange girl, who had somehow gotten out of her shackles.
"Are we there yet?"
Storen was a businessman. An important, busy, businessman. Ordinarily, he wouldn't give a second of his time to a random grownup, much less a random child, but the sheer peculiarity of the situation had him out of sorts, and instead of ignoring her like he normally would, he found himself answering. "Well, that depends entirely on where you mean when you say 'there'."
"These guys said they were taking everyone to 'have some fun'. I wanna play too!" She stamped a foot on the ground.
Storen stared at her. "So, you heard them talking about where they were bringing the s-errr, girls...and you just decided to come along?" He inquired in a disbelieving voice.
"Yep!" The girl agreed happily. "You wanna play too? It'll be fun!"
He thought about this for a while. His facilities were built for transport, not long-term holding of cargo, and he had no current requests for a mageling child. Of course, a few of his more detestable customers were into that kind of thing, he thought in disgust. Though he himself was no saint and would do nearly anything for his profit margin, he saw no hypocrisy in having nothing but contempt for the scum of the earth that he dealt with. Then too, there was the possibility of retribution. Not from her, of course, since everyone knew that even the most powerful mage couldn't do more than light a candle before puberty, and didn't have any REAL power until well into adulthood, but from whatever family she might have. That, combined with the cost of holding her for who knew how long before finding a buyer, made him inclined to just let her go. He turned to the squad leader to issue the order, to find him huddled up with the other men.
"Sir," said the man, approaching him with an ugly gleam in his eye. "Me and the men have an idea. We'll buy her off you."
A few of his more detestable customers, and the men of his own raiding squad, Storen realized. "Even all of you together don't have the cash for that." He sneered. He paid well, but these idiots blew every payday at the nearest tavern they could find. Not a one of them had any kind of savings, he knew.
"I know that." The man licked his lips. "We'll do the next three jobs for free."
"Ten," Storen replied without thinking. He would be consigning a little girl to a living hell for whatever was left of her short life, but the money he would save...
"Ten?" The squad leader glared. "That would take years! How about we go as high as-"
"Ten." Storen said firmly. "Or," He companionably wrapped one arm around the man's shoulders again. "We could go with this other idea I had. You see, I've been thinking I might find a different leader for my raiding party, one that doesn't bring me things I didn't ask for. Of course, I'd have to get rid of my current one first..."
"Ack! Ten is good! I like ten!"
"Excellent. Now that that's settled, I have paperwork to do." He released the man, who rubbed both his shoulders, trying to get the feeling back.
"Ok men, negotiations complete! To the 'training' room!"
Storen ignored the men and the girl alike, walking toward his office. Years of operating in this business had made him immune to bouts of guilt like the one that attempted to plague him now at the sight of an innocent seven-year-old enthusiastically "Hop, skip, jump!"ing toward what would be a living nightmare. He walked through the door and locked it behind him, settling into his chair and immediately drawing up the papers for ten free raiding trips. As soon as it was done he put the entire thing out of his mind, pouring himself into his other work.
Hours later, there was a knock at his door. "What?" He said irritably. There was no reply, except some faint sobbing, and the sound of someone trying to turn the knob. He snarled and stomped his way over to the door, unlocking it and throwing it open.
There stood the little orange girl, sobbing hysterically, obviously having been through some some kind of trauma. That was to be expected, of course, but a number of things tugged at Storen's subconscious as being severely out of place. First of all, why was she allowed to leave the 'training room at all, let alone by herself? And yes, she was crying, but there was no evidence of physical trauma whatsoever. Even her clothes were completely intact. However, the sight of her tears shut down whatever warning bells were going off in the back of his mind, and, in a move that was pure reaction, he knelt down and placed his hands on her shoulders in comfort. "What's the matter?"
"They...Won't...Play...With...Me...No...More!" She stuttered, hardly able to get the words out between sobs. "They're..A...Bunch...Of...Meanies!"
His mind tried to make sense of this. Had this seemingly innocent child somehow 'worn out' twenty adult men with overgrown libidos in the space of a couple of hours? It didn't seem possible, but the very idea that that might be what happened, combined with the incredibly cute, tear-stained face in front of him, flipped a switch in Storen that he didn't know he had. "Hey, how about I play with you instead?" He grinned at her.
"Re..R..Re..Really?" She started to calm down.
"Sure." He stood up.
"Okay, let's go!" She grabbed his hand, beaming up at him, her tears disappearing suspiciously fast. Well, that's a kid for you, he thought. Sad and then happy again at the drop of a hat.
She tugged hard on his hand as they walked. He wasn't going as fast as she wanted. "Try to keep up!"
He sped up along with her, previously unknown desires pushing him along, his mouth watering at the thought of what he was going to do. They reached the door of the 'training' room in short order.
As he put his hand on the doorknob to pull it open, he heard a groaning from in side. "What was that?"
"Oooh, maybe one of them still wants to play after all!" She giggled.
He opened the door...and stood frozen at the sight before him. The twenty men from the raiding party were all still there. In the room. In pieces. Everywhere. Various body parts littered the ground, many of them burned beyond recognition. A few were even stuck to the walls and ceiling. The little girl slipped past him and skipped her way into the room.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are." She unconcernedly lifted up detached arms and legs, looking for the source of the groaning sound. "Come on, don't be a scardy cat!"
Finally, she found the man making the noise hidden behind a largish pile of body parts. He was able to hide because he was a small man to begin with, much smaller now that all that was left was his torso. Storen could see that he had not died from blood loss because his limbs had been burned off, cauterizing the wounds. He was delirious with agony, but still reacted as the girl came into his view.
"NO! DEMON! MONSTER! STAY AWAY!" He screamed.
"Awww, those are mean things to say! You're mean!" She replied. "That's ok though, you can call me whatever you want, because I'm rubber and you're...on fire!" She thrust her palm at his face and a fireball came out, incinerating his head.
Storen watched all of this with the detached calm one occasionally finds themselves in when knowing that death is coming, entirely inescapable. As his cute little doom turned toward him, he did absently wonder, if fire was her weapon of choice, why so many of the men were torn apart instead of burned to a crisp.
"What should we play first? Ooooh, I know! Have you seen my bear Tibbers?" She lifted the teddy she'd been dragging around everywhere toward him. It jumped out of her arms and grew larger and more monstrous, until it was nine feet of clawed, fanged, snarling muscle. Well, that answers that question, he thought ironically. He almost had time to complete one last thought before the giant Ursa descended on him. Man, Karma is such a-
ANNIEANNIEANNIEANNIEANNIE
"I AM NO SUCH THING!"
In far away Summoner's Rift, a clairvoyant warden halted in the middle of a five on five battle in the mid lane to roar at the sky.
"Why does everyone always say that? I've done nothing, NOTHING to earn such a reputation!"
She came out of her rant to find all five of her opponents clumped together. She bit off a Mantra and viciously shot her Inner Flame right into middle of them. The announcer's voice came over the speakers.
"Pentakill."
Four sets of eyes turned to stare at her. She glared back at her teammates. "What? I'm not!"