Broken Sword Hilt

"Did not end up being attached to an invisible sword."

The bazaar of Havenfort in the bright morning sun was more intimidating than it'd been in the evening. Every step you took meant pushing past someone, nudging them out of the way. Stan couldn't believe how many people were in the street lined on either side with market stalls. He was having a hard time keeping up with the young woman they were supposed to be following, and it was made harder by having Butters pulling him back by the arm. He felt the need to personally apologize to every person they bumped into. Stan refused to let go of his hand though.

The woman finally burst from the crowd and into a small bubble of open space. Stan tugged Butters into the pocket of breathable room. They were in front of a stand chocked full of different sized wire cages. Most had some type of bird stuffed into them. They looked like hawks, too big for their cages. "This is what we needed?" Stan asked her.

Jessie rolled her dark eyes at him. "No, I was trying to let you two catch up. Nobody wants a trained bird. Fuck birds."

The already downtrodden middle-aged man minding the stall sunk even further into his chair.

"Sorry Rob, but it's true. This isn't fucking Hogwarts."

Early that morning, when Stan and Butters wandered aimlessly into the main room of the tavern, a somewhat familiar looking woman called out to them. She was short and trim, showing off her toned abdomen with a brown shirt that barely came below her small chest. She fit in well with the rest of the strange world, wearing a light teal hood and a low rising skirt that was adorned with straps of leather holding blades and small animal skulls. Long leather gloves went halfway up her arm, one somehow slipped under her computerized bracer. "Always nice to see a familiar face! Sorry to hear that you're stuck in this dump as well!" she had called out to them. She lowered her hood to show off thick dark hair, tied with bands placed every few inches. The mock braid was twisted halfway around her neck.

"Jessie?" Butters chirped. He left Stan's side to go to her. "It's been a real long time!"

"Yeah, my family moved away from South Park in middle school to get away from shit like this. Ha! Guess it caught up to us."

Jessie Rodriguez called them out on still wearing 'starter gear' and offered to help them get on their feet. Stan didn't want to turn down any help they could get, so that led to them chasing after the quick girl in the sea of market goers. In front of the bird stand, she tried to lay out a plan for where they were going. "You need armor first of all. Nobody's going to take you seriously in old world gear." She put her hands on her hips, resting her thumbs out onto her bare stomach. Stan thought he might have seen a budding six pack. "I'm thinking we go up three stalls. Malkinson will always give me the best prices, and he usually has a beast or two for sale. You were a ranger, weren't you Stan?"

His dog Sparky had been the one to fight by his side when they played their pretend game all those years ago. Of course, his dog was long dead. He hadn't had another one since, and every time Butters brought up wanting one, he assuaged this with another cat. He nodded to Jessie.

"Uh gee, it sure is really nice of you to help us out, but you don't need to buy us anything."

"Do you have any coin?"

"No, but we could earn some."

Jessie laughed, but the warmness of it didn't reach her eyes. "You need weapons to get money. Any other way needs coin to start up. Or you could sell your body, I suppose."

The skin of Butters' pasty face paled further.

"We'll pay you back," Stan said.

"Don't worry about it." She shrugged. "My parents and I have been doing alright here. Although, I guess there is one thing you can do to for me." She turned around and ran off into the crowd, skirt flowing behind her, without saying what it was she wanted. Stan's stomach shifted.

Scott Malkinson never grew to be a large man, although he did manage to get rid of his lisp. Mostly. His brown hair looked as though it was already beginning to thin. "More of my fellow South Parkians. It'll be pleasure to help you," he greeted them. Jessie shushed him and fugitively looked about. While nobody else was shopping at his stall, plenty were within earshot. He muttered, "Sorry."

"Don't you dare try to rip me off again, or I'll stop retrieving your insulin," Jessie warned through clenched teeth, bringing her face close to his. Scott actually quivered.

"I'm glad to see you're alright!" Butters said. He pretended to be oblivious to any tenseness in the situation. "I got kinda worried when I stopped seeing you at the pharmacy."

He chuckled but it was strained. "Back home I was close to earning my Pharm D, and now here I am, in charge of an armory again. If you can call this that." He pointed back to his stall, which was tall tent behind the table that stood in front of him. The flaps were closed and there was no other way to see anything he had for sale.

There wasn't any more chitchat. Scott went into his tent. Clangs and clatters sounded from within before he emerged with a familiar blue studded helm. It even had a red feather coming out of the top, although this one looked like it might have actually come off a bird and not from a craft kit. Scott had a cured leather chest piece stiffly sitting on his other arm. It had some sort of leaf like pattern burned into it. He explained that these were sent from Larnion in case Stan should ever show up at his stall. "No charge. The high king paid me to hold onto these."

With a heavy sigh, Stan took the helm and attempted to lower it onto his head. It caught on his ears, but, with the help of Butters, they were able to tuck them inside of it. That was a plus at least. He felt ridiculous in it though. "Yeah, this isn't going to fit," Stan said when he took the chest piece from Scott. It looked as though it was designed for a teenager, or maybe Butters. His chest had filled out too much for him to even try to tug it on. There was also the problem of his forming gut, but he tried to focus on the chest.

"I can take it," Butters said. "I like how it looks." It was sort of pretty, right up Butters' ally. It was shaped like a vest, one half overlapping the other and then held in place with a tie.

"You can't wear that!" Scott exclaimed, spitting a bit.

"It's elven," Jessie said.

"And you're a paladin. You'd do better in cloth."

"I don't mind. It's something until I earn enough to buy something else."

"You wouldn't happen to have something from Zaron back there would you?"

"No."

"Of course not," Jessie sighed. "I guess it can work for now. But if you get caught in that, don't bring up my name."

When they'd finished with Scott's stall, Stan had been outfitted in a long dark coat that went a bit past his knees. He'd dragged his feet with replacing his jeans and shirt, but Jessie had made him at least get the coat. It was kind of nice, almost like the matrix. Only it wasn't that dark and he didn't have sunglasses. And it had pointless embellishments like everything else everyone seemed to be wearing.

Butters donned Stan's vest thing. It elongated his torso nicely and showed off his arms, which Stan had always liked. They were thin, but not like a woman's. He replaced his corduroy pants with a pair of dark green cloth ones that closed with a tie. Sure, there were toilets and running water but not zippers. Typical.

"Come by my house later. I have some pets you might like," Scott offered after they'd already turned around to leave.

Next, the three stopped at an arms booth. Stan came away with an average looking sword that looked like something any teenaged boy would doodle. Jessie helped him fit a sheath through the belt loops on his jeans. She purchased a ridiculous looking weapon for Butters that they called a war hammer. It was made out of dull iron with a simple wooden handle. The size of it was what made it ridiculous. The head was at least two feet long and a foot tall. In the real world, it would be a struggle for either of them to carry it. Wherever they were though allowed Butters to almost effortlessly lift it above his head. Jessie got him a harness that let him carry it on his back and simply lift it off whenever needed. Stan complained about the unlikely scenario that would allow for this to happen. She took Butters' arm with the bracer and pushed a button three times. The hammer appeared on the screen, slowly rotating. "Whatever gets registered to you is easy for you to wield. Stupid as hell I know, but the bigger weapons look pretty cool in combat." She shrugged when Stan just stared at her.

When they had armor enough to blend in and weapons, Jessie suggested that they take a shopping break for lunch. By this, she meant that she wanted them to go to her house with her. It was a long trek that took them pretty much through the entirety of Havenfort. Much to Stan's irritation, there were at least three other bazaars in the large town.

Once the crowds thinned, he played around with his bracer for most of the journey, relying on Butters to keep him on track with Jessie. It was a distraction against the annoyance of having the sword bump against his thigh every time he took a step. At least it would give him an excuse if he was walking sort of strangely. That morning, he thought his foot was fine, but after having walked more than he had in the past month, the cut was making the entire thing burn. It sizzled when the sword bumped.

His bracer was finally lit up and working. Most of the pages he shuffled through were blank. One showed a confusing looking map and another his new sword. He was a little disappointed when he got to his friends page. Butters had had pages upon pages to scroll through filled with smiling faces. Stan apparently only had six friends: Butters, Kyle, Wendy, Token, Kenny, and a kid whose name he couldn't even remember. Ouch.

The homes that were further from the main part of the city looked a lot more like the kind of houses he was accustomed to. They had yards and two stories and windows. Jessie's house was surrounded by a fence made out of logs. It was shaded by the pines surrounding it. "Home sweet home," she said when leading them to the door.

They settled into the corner booth with a dining table set up in the kitchen. A woman wearing a heavy dress entered and offered a tight smile to all of them. "Are you already done for the day, Jessie?" she asked as she walked to the cupboards. She pulled out a tin and scooped some of its contents into an oversized kettle. The kettle was then filled with water from the modern sink and put onto a high rack which stood in the heath that filled the opposite corner of the kitchen.

As her mother used a flint to start a fire, Jessie rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, I know. The random appliances we do and don't have are a pain in the ass."

"So your mom came with you when you got here?" Butters asked.

"Both of my parents actually. We woke up together in the forest, just like everyone else. I suppose I'm lucky. Most people come alone."

"What's going on here?" Stan asked. It felt wonderful to be sitting. His body screamed at him with more aches than it normally had, but at the same time it felt wrong to be sitting around chatting like nothing was wrong. "Is this all really from that stupid game we used to play?"

"That's what it seems like. Whatever powers we thought we had as kids seemed to have carried over for the most part. I wish I'd been more inventive."

"So can I heal then?" Butters asked. His voice cracked with his sudden excitement.

Jessie shrugged. "Probably."

"What about all these other people? They weren't a part of the game; what do they have to do with anything?"

"I dunno. At first I thought that they might not be real, but they seem to be. They have backstories just like anyone else. Most catch on pretty quick, but don't tell anyone you're from South Park. People think that we have some kind of jump start on them because of the royal jackasses."

"Honey, please don't call them that. We don't need any trouble," Jessie's mom called from her place beside the now burning fire.

"Your old buddies let this whole thing get to their heads. They think just because they got handed some land that they're the rulers of the realm or something. It's bullshit! They make up these stupid laws and have their henchmen go around enforcing them." Stan thought that sounded a lot like Cartman, and, if he pressed himself, he supposed that Kyle's pride could make him capable of running with power too.

Maybe to distract from the fact that he'd once been close to the grand wizard who was no doubt acting as a dictator, Butters said with a tremor in his voice, "You sure do have a nice house! How long have you been here?"

Jessie looked away from them, out towards a window on the wall Stan sat against. "Just about two years now."

"Jessie and her father work very hard to support us. It's because of them that we're so well off."

"Oh yeah. What do you do?"

"I'm a scout. I help people who can't stand against the beasts get from town to town for coin. Dad's a hunter in the forests of Zaron." She began to rub her thumb in the palm of her other hand.

Jessie's mother poured them what turned out to be coffee from the kettle and then put together a large plate of food for them to share. There were pieces of crusty bread, dried venison, and cubes of white cheese. After the food reached them, she disappeared further into the house without another word. "Sorry about her," Jessie commented before popping a chunk of cheese into her mouth. "She's been very conflicted lately. At first she thought this was all a punishment from el diablo, but now we're actually doing better than we were back home."

When most of the food was eaten, Butters excused himself to use the bathroom. Jessie escorted him there and then came back. She didn't retake her seat, but leaned against a counter, arms folded and staring at Stan. She didn't sound angry when she asked, "So are you two gay or something?" but Stan still jumped at the question. He wasn't used to people not knowing; South Park was small and word had gotten around about him after that incident in middle school. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

"Yeah. We're, uh, actually engaged and stuff."

"Interesting." She shrugged. "I guess those bitches were right."

"What?"

"Back when we were kids, all the girls used to talk about Wendy behind her back, saying how she was dating a gay. I always stuck up for you though." Jessie's face reddened and she stood up straight. "Not that there's anything wrong with that! I just really thought you actually liked Wendy. You two were cute."

"I did like her."

She rolled her eyes. "I mean, I thought you liked her how… well you know."

"Oh," Stan looked away and pushed at the helmet on his head. It was heavy and starting to give him a worse headache than he already had. "I think I did."

Butters came back into the room and they both looked to the floor. He didn't seem to sense an awkward conversation had taken place, thanking her for letting him use her restroom. Jessie fell back into her leaning position. "So do you two know what you're going to do? Are you getting a job or are you going to be like the rest of the idiots that run off after that stupid stick?"

"Stan and I are going to find it! And then we'll be able to bring everyone back home to their families and loved ones. And I'll be able to see my kitties again."

That made Jessie smirk. "We have cats here too, you know."

"That's swell, but I don't think anyone could replace Mittens or Snowbell or Tobin. Oh, or Lola. Sorry Lola, I almost forgot you."

Stan idly wondered if Butters had been able to bring his wallet over with him. He had pictures of all four of the grey cats in there. As much as he'd hate to admit it, he was probably going to end up missing the damn things too. They were annoying, especially Tobin who was a yowler, but they'd provided him some good company during his periods of sloth.

"Well, I think you're dumbasses if you go. I'll help you load up on some supplies first though, if you let me get you to Zaron."

Butters' grin spread widely, showing most of his perfect teeth. "We were gonna stop there anyways! There and Larnion to see Kyle!"

"I'm not going near those elf pricks, but I'll take you to Cartman. He'll probably be able to help you more than me." She pulled up her hood for the first time since they'd joined up with her. "Let's go," she commanded as she whipped around toward the door.

"Oh boy, we sure are lucky we met her," Butters chirped. Stan tried to smile back at him, but ultimately failed. The prospect of wandering around the even tempered land on foot wasn't appealing to him. He thought back to his warm bed he'd been close friends with not so long ago. Fucking South Park.