VIXEN - The Legend of the Five Totems

Chapter 9 - Presentation

General Mustafa Maksai smiles at the guests standing before him. He has gathered this presentation at the front of a training course that has been set up on the fringes of his compound. While there are a number of soldier training devices created from logs and rope, platforms suspended from the air, climbing walls, and climbing ropes, today's entertainment will be entirely in what his men have dubbed the Sand Pit, a forty meter circle of dirt where Maksai culls the strongest from his soldiers.

Today, he will be using this pit as a ring by which he will better feel out the combative value of his four newest additions, individuals who have offered their services to his efforts of establishing the Free Country of Zambesi on the ashes of the Democratic Republic that President Omar Uwalujai has been presenting to the world. With the power of all five totems of his home village of Tantunu, he will replenish the waning productivity of the country into a firm source of wealth, bounty and self-sufficiency that will be the standard across Africa. These four volunteers will be adding their supposedly considerable talents to his already prodigious military might.

"We are ready, General," Maksai's third-in-command, Colonel Jabari, says. The man is in his thirties – about a decade older than Maksai's daughter, Tabu – but content with his role thanks to Maksai providing him with sanctuary from the military in his homeland of the Central African Republic, where he was wanted for a number of black market gains that had resulted in an expensive bounty on the man's head. The man's wide nose is a little out of place on his narrow face, but he is a loyal servant, one who instills just enough fear in the troops to keep him in around.

"Thank you, Colonel," Maksai tells the man. At one end of the large dirt circle stands two dozen of his finest, twenty men and four women, stripped down into beige tank tops, green military pants and the heavy-soled boots of his army. Each one has a machete strapped to their hip, and they are currently standing at attention in the sweltering heat, seemingly unfazed as they were trained to be.

Opposite this two dozen stand his four guests. Of everyone who came to his invitational, these four are the only ones who have expressed any interest in staying on to physically help him with his ambitions of privatized power that would come from establishing the Free Country of Zambesi.

They are the most peculiar group of individuals that he has ever seen, considering that only one looks human despite the ugly black hangman's mask on his head. He is impressed with Guillermo Barrera's seeming ability to cover a huge portion of his body with bladed weaponry without impaling himself on any of the points, and hopes that he does not fatally wound any of the two dozen combatants he will be battling today.

The other three are far less human despite the claim of two to having been born human. Barbara Minerva, the Cheetah, has at least retained her human form, and what a form it is. Since her arrival, she has done little save for lounging by the pool, distracting every single member of his unit who walks along the wall surrounding the courtyard, or who patrols through the lush area. Indeed, even Maksai, himself, has been taken in by the arching of her back, the twists of her tail, or a subtle flirtatious glance. She was dangerous, this orange-furred beauty, and he could not help but be drawn to her as much as any other man in his force. Were it not for her reputation as both a deadly killer and an untouchable tease, he would have already found a way to see if her kisses were as sweet as the fluid arching of her furred body.

Here today, she has deigned to meet his request of dressing for combat, and has settled on a black tank top and pants, with her feet and hands completely free so that her claws could eviscerate any who get in her way.

The other female of the metahuman quartet is one that his daughter signed off on, though he finds himself wondering why Tabu would do such a thing. From the report she made from her interview, Hyena is a young woman cursed to a grotesquerie of human and hyena. Unlike the cheetah avatar, whose beauty has only been accentuated by the hybrid form, Hyena is hideous with the face of the eponymous scavenger and rough mane and fur stretching across a body that is every bit as lean, spotted, and stocky as the animal. He gags slightly each time he looks at her, especially considering her utter lack of feminine traits and a complete refusal to cover herself with any clothing like a decent person would. That revulsion is quickly followed by a hunter's yearning to unholster his pistol and shoot her between the eyes. She belonged with the rest of her scavenging ilk, near the bottom of the Serengeti heirarchy, just above steaming piles of manure.