This is the first fic I've published. It's not that I don't write very often, I just write what I feel like, and that usually isn't fanfiction, or even short stories very often.

Good parts? Bad? Too many commas? Constructive criticism is as good as compliments.

I apologize for any issues with continuity that occur as of the time of writing.

Order of the Stick is property of Rich Burlew. SRD terms are public domain when not property of Wizards of the Coast.

Word Count is 1780 without introduction.

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Wu was pleased. Recently out of training, he had been knocked unconscious at the start of the battle for Azure city. Here was some good he could do, even if it meant something as borderline-dishonorable as guerilla warfare. "Have at the, ye slimy abomination unto nature!" He was ridiculed for talking this way during fights, but for some reason it made him feel more confident, almost like an adventurer fighting a giant beast.

He struck again at the wight, and again, repeatedly, until he could concentrate well enough to try Smite Evil for the first time on a real undead. "Thou hast already died once, so stay dead, and befoul this city not with your wretched presence!" The wight wailed, and a dark-haired girl in a short, black dress appeared. Her eyes blazed with fury as she yelled: "What did you do to him! You'll pay!"

Her hand became engulfed in deep purple, almost black fire, and took away his last hit points as she pressed it against his forehead. At zero hit points, Wu could still hear voices for a few moments before his consciousness faded.

"Xykon, could you make Redcloak stabilize this guy? I want to deal with him later."

"Yeah, sure, whatever. Has anyone seen my superball..."

*click*

It had been a while since Tsukiko had been able to use any of her "fun" toys, and this outfit had been too good to pass up even though the leather restricted her spellcasting. The door open, she dragged the soldier upright into a binding chair brought in earlier and activated the healing spell Redcloak had given her.

"What- You won't learn anything from me! I've been trained by the finest in the Azure Guard! I'll bite my tongue and drown before I tell you anything!"

Tsukiko leaned forward until she could smell his disgustingly warm skin. "What's your name?"

"I don't know anything!" he shrieked. "Oh, um, I mean..." He wondered. Did she have a name magic sourcebook? Did it matter? As long as he was strapped to the chair... "It's Wu." He sighed.

"Thank you." She pinched his cheek. It drew blood. "Now, this chair was custom-made for me for my eighteenth birthday. It lowers the inhibitions of anyone sitting in it, which is why you were so helpful just now in telling me your name. It also heals any damage done to you in the same amount of time it took to inflict it, rounded to the next six seconds for convenience. Do you know why you are in this chair?"

Wu shook his head. "I don't know. Was it because I killed one of your soldiers?"

The slap nearly broke his nose. "Wrong answer! Rafe? Get in here, sweetie, and tell this bad man what he did."

"Can I stay in here?" The voice from the next room sounded as though it was from a throat too decayed to really speak, yet had a childlike lilt to it.

"I'm sorry, but you really have to be in here so he's really sorry. You'll feel better afterwards."

A long moment later, a wight stumbled into the room. "He was hitting me with a sword, but- he said words that you told us were bad words. You said they could hurt and he was saying them. And he called me mean things."

Tsukiko walked to the undead and stroked its cheek. "There, there, it's okay. He knows what he did, now, and you feel better, don't you?" The wight nodded. "You go back to your room, okay? Mommy needs to make the mean man apologize." It rushed out the door, stumbling as it went, and Tsukiko closed the door behind it. She turned the key in the lock, then removed it and put it on the lintel.

"Now. Are you going to say sorry? Or am I going to have to ask politely?"

Wu looked at her in horror. "I was defending my city! Those ugly things don't even feel!"

With a clucking sound, Tsukiko took a fingerless leather glove from the shelf and pulled it on with a snap, then removed an obsidian blade from her boot, sharpened edges running from end to end. "Oh, I do so hate it when people are difficult." The front tip of the blade touched Wu's neck, drawing a bead of blood, and as she pulled it down Tsukiko could feel only the lightest of tugs as the razor-sharp blade split the captured knight's shirt...

"You're the most stubborn, bastard-coated bastard I've ever had the displeasure to interrogate!" Tsukiko shrieked. "I wasted a Writhing Pain scroll on you!"

Wu looked at her through glazed eyes and smiled a half-grin. The other side of his jaw was still broken, and while the chair healed all wounds, he still had many burn scars and traces of cuts along his body, including a pair of clamps holding the skin of his left arm open to a nerve. The most noticeable change, though, was that his clothes- what was left of them anyway- were now in tattered and burnt shreds across the chair and the floor. "mn f wf wmmfl"

Tsukiko ripped the sleeve of Wu's undershirt from inside his mouth, bringing forth a moan, half of pain and half of pleasure as the skin above his broken jaw separated and began to knit almost immediately. "Ih was wunnerful." The necromancer groaned and kicked him in the shin, more out of spite than anything else. She sat in his lap, re-breaking the partially healed thigh bone, and curled against him with her hand on the center of his chest. It was moving, she could actually feel his pulse with enough focus. "Have you decided to apologize yet?" It had an ingratiating and syrupy sweetness, the kind of sweetness of the honey baiting a fly trap.

"I apologize with every aching cell in my body-" With effort, Wu pulled up his right arm. "-and this little finger, which is feeling much better." She bit it and he laughed, the expression on Tsukiko's face growing angrier by tenths of a second.

Lolling back in the seat, Wu inquired what they would do next. "I do hope it's the bamboo splinters again, I've grown quite fond of that. Or is there any ginger soda left?"

"You've apologized, so I think it's time for something new. How would you like a reward?" Tsukiko hastily amended her statement. "How would you like a real reward?" She leaned back, so that Wu could see the entire front of her outfit, conveniently dislocating the kneecap of the broken leg, and undid the top two hooks in her now-immaculate top, which until an instant ago had shown the bloodstains with pride. Wu nearly passed out, but the gem Tsukiko pulled from between her breasts and pressed against his forehead caught his attention. It was cut with a single vertex pointing up from its base, sharp enough and with enough pressure behind it to wedge its way into the bone between the tops of his eyes. It was only the size of his smallest fingernail, the one that was still intact, but had a radiating cold that felt like it could freeze his head and shatter it- like an ice cube that got between a troll and a pile of meat. Tsukiko pulled off the fingerless glove from her right hand, making sure that the hand bounced across Wu's face as it came free, and after standing removed the leather top the rest of the way. Beneath it was a sheer camisole, black as were nearly all of her clothes. "This is the part I hate, so i only do it to the people who really deserve it." She pulled a larger glove from a top shelf, perking up several bits of her anatomy as she stretched to reach it, and put it on her left hand opposite where the fingerless glove had been. It was red, and had a design on the back in black that Wu didn't recognize.

She went back to Wu and straddled is knees, picking up the obsidian blade from the floor. She leaned forward, her mouth mere centimeters from Wu's throat, and plunged the blade deep into his chest, ripping his stomach from sternum to navel. Tsukiko licked the blood from her palm- her blood, as removing the fingerless glove gave her nothing to push the blade with more resistant to cutting than her own skin- and reached up below Wu's ribcage, sliding towards his heart.

It was getting harder for him to breathe, and the disgusted look on Tsukiko's face increased as she pushed her hand deeper into his chest. He tried to tell her to stop if she hated it, but couldn't breathe at all to say so. Then, as Tsukiko's fingertips reached Wu's slowly beating heart, she pressed the gem deeper into his forehead and uttered a series of unintelligible syllables. The icy feeling in his head intensified, and sharpened to a single, moving image: He was five years old, and stealing a piece of candy from the shop near his home. Then he was eight, drawing a moustache on his childhood enemy's painting of Dragon- which wouldn't be so bad if it weren't the shape and thickness of a hairbrush on its upper lip. Sixteen, and it was the one time he'd experimented with dried blue flowers. Fourteen, and a dead frog in the teacher's desk. Eighteen, and he killed the applicant who had just outranked him for the Azure Guard entry I never did that! But he still couldn't speak, couldn't move, things were growing less clear and the images were moving faster. Nine, burning his neighbor's house for refusing to return a ball. Fifteen, leaving a dismembered dog on Dog's offering plate in the temple of the Twelve Gods. Whispering to his bunkmate in training as the bunkmate slept until he killed himself. Violating Tsukiko. Throwing a horrible little halfling to an innocent family of half-ogres. Violating Tsukiko. Letting a lich and his army into Azure city, slaughtering the other guard to do so. Violating Tsuki- He spasmed, and a large red glove grabbed his face and snapped it towards the wall; then nothing.

Some time later, he opened his eyes. Tsukiko was standing over him, in a clean necromancer's robe with the sleeves pulled up. He felt so wonderful with her there, and smiled. Tsukiko caressed Wu's gray skin and kissed his cold forehead, the indentation from the gem gone. "Would you like to come with me, and meet your new family?" She practically glowed. Wu nodded, knowing that if it made Tsukiko happy, he would follow her to hell.