Tales of the Comfy Cartel

Chapter One: Valkyrae - Birth of Babushka

Chapter One: Valkyrae Part I

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

Rae's not exactly thinking clearly when her heart is pounding in her throat, and her legs feel like they're made of lead. The gravel crunches under her sneakers, the cool evening air whips across her face, and she's very much trying not to fall over as she's running for her life.

She knew this is a possibility. When you steal for a living, eventually you're going to end up taking from someone who can actually track you down and make you regret it. But that doesn't mean she's ready to just roll over and die.

One second she's sprinting as fast as she can across the abandoned parking lot, and the next, gravel slides under her feet, and she's on her back with a painful thud.

"You cost me ten grand bitch!" he's advancing quickly, a glint of steel flashes in the dull moonlight.

Rae scrambles to her feet only to feel a searing pain explode in her left cheekbone and the force of the blow throws her back. Her vision goes white as she stumbles back onto the gravel, bits of rock embedding themselves into her hands.

He's closer now, monologuing about teaching her a lesson, and all Rae can think is where the hell did I leave my knife!? Her hands scrape across the ground, as she struggles to find her balance. Her fingers clip the edge of something coarse, she reaches over blindly, and grasps around a misshapen rock. A large rock. A heavy rock.

He makes the mistake of bending down to eye level. Rae doesn't remember much after this. Only that she swings her hand and bears the rock down, and doesn't stop swinging.

There's blood splattered on her shirt, soaked in her jeans, caked on her hair, running down her face, lodged in her nails. She doesn't care. The only feeling that matters, is the exhilarated, exhausted, relief of I'm not dead.

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Rae is the last person anyone would ever expect to be part of the Cartel.

One look at this tiny, loud, bubbly woman with blonde streaks in her hair and any association with the Cartel would have someone immediately assume that she's a victim of some sort. Or maybe a family member even, unwittingly dragged into the mess by circumstances she can't control.

Valkyrae is nothing of the sort. Neither victim, nor associated family, though, she can't deny that she's been unwittingly dragged into this mess.

Her story starts, as some do, with an accident.

As a child, Rae pockets fruits and packets of chips off convenience store shelves to stave off the hunger pains. Charitable Comforts help out a little, with their soup kitchens and donations of food and clothes, but there's not much to go around and Rae doesn't feel comfortable taking from a charity for the homeless. As a young teen, she ups the stealing to loose change and notes from the pockets of random chumps on the street and unobservant tourists. In her late teens it's padded with scraps from the registers of the five jobs she holds down to feed what remains of her family.

One of these jobs is at a local warehouse, loading and unloading goods onto trucks. Rae is finishing an evening shift on an unremarkable night, when she spots a co-worker skulking in the back. Thinking he's off smoking and likely getting into trouble, she hurries over to tell him to leave so she can close up. What she finds is an entire crate of handguns being unloaded onto his truck.

What he should've done, is take one of the guns and shoot her in the head.

But Noah's always been too soft for his own good, and instead Rae is sworn to secrecy. She even covers for him and pockets a few hundred in exchange. Eventually their little smuggling racket is discovered and Rae finds herself initiated as a member of the 100 Thieves guild.