Crash and Burn

I don't own FFXI or any of the creatures or races that exist there. Any character names and history used in this story are of my own creation. Arlette and Kodie are characters in the game, so they can't be used in any other stories without my permission. Not that anyone would want to anyway, but I should probably cover all grounds.

This is my first story of this nature. Reviews are welcome, flames and nastiness are not.



Arlette was from what some would refer to as "the wrong side of the tracks." Born poor, she never knew her parents. They died when she was very young, and ever since that time she had done whatever she had to do to survive. She would definitely steal, but if she had to, she would do worse things. And she had learned from experience to never trust anyone but herself.

Case in point, when she was 13 she finally started to develop a womanly figure. After all, she was a Mithra and that fact was pretty hard to hide. She would wear caps to cover her ears, and tuck her tail into men's trousers…but it was becoming harder and harder to hide her breasts and hips.

And of course, many of the Hume men loved Mithra women. Arlette didn't quite get it, since she herself wasn't attracted to anyone (and never intended to be), but it was fact. And it was them you had to watch out for. Some of the lowlife men from the slums of Windurst had no qualms with forming rape gangs and going after whatever woman they saw fit (and who was weaker than them, of course.) Mithra, Hume, even Taru women (that last one boggled Arlette's mind) weren't safe.

One morning, very near the approach of dawn when she knew no one else would be around, Arlette snuck down to a stream to wash herself and her clothes. In all her years, she had never had a problem doing things that way, so she may have let her defenses down a bit. Because of that, she didn't notice the Hume man napping behind a nearby rock. He had a hat over his eyes, but the sounds of movement in the water startled him awake. Pushing his hat back onto his head, he peeked out from behind his resting place and saw a young Mithra girl bathing herself. He barely wasted a second before quietly sitting up, and making his way toward her.

Arlette had just pulled the large button-up shirt she always wore back over her head, when she was suddenly grabbed from behind by a strong arm, and on the other side a hand was placed over her mouth. She immediately started to struggle. She kicked back at the man's groin, but missed. She attempted to throw her head back and give him a hard head-butt, but he also dodged that attack. The man pushed the much smaller Mithra down on the ground. He readjusted his hold on her so that she was on her back with her arms over her head, which he was holding down with one arm. His other hand was still clamped over her mouth, and he was sitting on her legs. He was much bigger and much heavier than the girl, so there was little she could do to escape him.

His intentions were obvious to Arlette, though she would have rather died than let him have his way with her. Eventually he would have to let go of her a bit so that he could do his dirty work, and that's when she would strike.

Before too long, he did loosen his grip on her so that he could reach down and start unfastening his pants. At that moment, Arlette lunged away from him with all her strength. She flailed and kicked her legs out behind her in hopes of connected with him, or at least keeping him away. Arlette did not scream, however. She knew that to scream would probably bring more men who wished her harm, rather than someone wanting to help her.

The man grabbed at Arlette's long white hair, which she generally kept in a braid and tucked into her cap. But because she had been bathing, it flowed freely down her back, almost to her tail. She knew that keeping such long hair would come back and haunt her someday, and sure enough it had. But she had kept it for sentimental reasons. The only memory she had of her mother was of long white hair, and smiling green eyes. Arlette missed out on having green eyes, so she always assumed that her father's must have been brown, like hers.

The man pulled back on Arlette's hair, snapping the Mithra's hair back and badly wrenching her neck. She let out only the smallest yelp of pain, then composed herself again. She fell down on her stomach, and reached out frantically with her arms in hopes of pulling herself away from her attacker.

It was then that Arlette felt something cut into her right hand. A piece of broken metal that someone had discarded by the stream, perhaps from someone's sword or armor. She flinched at first, but then grasped the shard tightly in her hand. In a blind fury, the Mithra girl spun to face the man, and jammed the shard of metal deep into his eye.

The man released her hair, and stumbled back in to the stream, screaming bloody murder. Arlette took off running then, because it wouldn't be long before the man's screams attracted a lot of unwanted attention. She never looked back, not even to see if the man had fallen into the stream and drowned.

It was several minutes later (and much deeper into the woods) when Arlette stopped to catch her breath. It was then she noticed that she still had the metal shard in her hand. She must have pulled it back out when the man stumbled away from her, and in all the excitement just forgot to drop it.

The young Mithra, barely out of childhood, looked intently at the metal piece for at least a minute. Then, she reached up behind her head with it, just at the spot where her head and neck met, and started sawing off her hair.

It took at least five minutes, but soon the shard of mental dropped to the ground next to a large pile of shimmering white hair, and the Mithra walked away from it all.

She knew that she could never get caught again. She would never be weaker than anyone else. Ever.

10 Years Later

"Stop her!" An old Mithra woman screamed, pointing viciously at a retreating Mithra with short white hair.

A couple people passing by started to run after the retreating figure, who had obviously just stolen from the old woman. Crime had been up recently with all the fighting going on, and unrest between the countries.

The young Mithra was quick, though, and was putting a healthy distance between herself and her pursuers, the bread she had stolen clutched against her chest.

Then, suddenly, before she even knew what happened, she was flat on her face in the dirt.

"The hell…?" she muttered to herself, looking up. She came face-to-face with a young Hume man with short red hair, wearing the armor of a Dark Knight.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding very sorry at all. "I didn't want to trip you like that, but I saw you running away from old lady Nacuun's store and thought maybe you had something you'd like to return to her."

The young Mithra woman glared at him, and he smirked back at her. He offered her his hand, but she slapped it away and got up on her own. The young man's smile grew wider. The Mithra continued to glare. She hated men. Especially Hume men. Especially cocky Hume men.

"I'm Kodie," he finally said.

"I don't care," the woman said back to him.

"There she is!" Came a male voice from directly behind the duo.

Before she could do anything, the Mithra girl was grabbed from behind, and started being dragged back into the center of the village.

"Hey, stop!" The boy named Kodie called after them. "What are you going to do to her?"

"What we should do to all criminals," the man called back, "Execute her!"

Kodie looked down at his feet and saw a loaf of bread. Picking it up, he ran after the man and the struggling Mithra.

"Wait!" He yelled, "Surely you won't execute someone over a tiny loaf of bread!" Quickly catching up to the man in front of Nacuun's grocery store, he laid the bread down in front of the old woman. "See? No harm done."

A small crowd had begun to gather due to all the commotion, but the man did not loosen his grip on the struggling young woman. Normally she was lithe and could slip away from an untrained person, but this man was quite large all over. His height, and his width. At five feet tall and 100 lbs., there wasn't much she could do but wait and see what the strange fellow named Kodie was going to say.

The red-haired man went to stand by the captured Mithra's side and said, "If you release her to my custody, I assure you I will personally make sure she is banished from Windurst."

The older man looked at him for a long while as if sizing him up, then finally decided that the Dark Knight could forcibly take the girl away if he wanted to, anyway.

"Fine, take her. But I'd better not see her around here again. If I do, no good Samaritan will be able to stop the things I'll do to her."

With that, Kodie grabbed one of the girl's arms (quite roughly) and escorted her through the gate and out of the village.

Once outside the village walls, the Mitha jerked her arm free and took off running.

"Hey!" Kodie called out to her. "I saved your life! You at least have to tell me your name!"

Without stopping, the girl simply looked back over her shoulder, her white hair catching glints of light from the sun, and yelled back at him.

"My name is Arlette!"