Chapter 17

At first, Mom, Zedd and the warriors eradicated bandits in the towns and cities for free, but later on they decided and announced that cities and towns should pay for their services. There were three main reasons for this: Firstly, it was due to the fact that, city mayors and town leaders were constantly calling on them and disturbing them to come to their cities and towns to deal with the bandit insurgency in their area, after taking notice of the excellent work and achievements of this guys. Secondly, it was also due to the warriors constantly getting injured on missions and it wasn't like medical care or treatment was free or cheap. And lastly, it was due to traveling far distances for this missions, and procuring supplies for this missions weren't cheap as well.

This didn't deter the cities and towns at all though, as the cities and even some rich towns were willing to pay as much as ten million silver coins (One hundred thousand gold coins) for the services of this party. This tremendously aided Mom and Zedd in their finances and imbued the warriors with more zeal and encouragement to continue in their endeavours.

After two years of working tirelessly to eradicate and eliminate this bandit groups, the news of their achievements reached the ears of the capital through its spies and scouts. It was also around this time that five year old Senro and seven year old Sasha, began their own hellish and horrendous training, although Senro had a worse training session than Sasha, as Sasha was born with incredible and abnormal strength and was showing signs of development in that aspect every day.

The capital's army officials, then, called Mom to the army's headquarters, as she was the leader of the group, and requested her and her team to hunt down and capture a particular person for them. It was then that the bounty hunting business began.

The person meant to be hunted was a rogue soldier named Jack, who was suspected to have killed his comrade in cold blood and was on the run from the capital's army. The army scouts had tracked him to the town of Ransdale, one of the one hundred and seventy one towns, outskirt of the capital, but his tracks had run cold and they couldn't seem to pinpoint his location in the town. They implored mom to set up a search and capture operation and Jack should be brought back to the capital, whether dead or alive, in order to face his punishment. They were willing to pay two hundred thousand gold coins (Twenty million silver coins) for her services.

Mom wanted to decline the offer at first. She hated the capital for neglecting its outskirts and she felt they were partly to blame for the death of the middle aged woman and her daughters. But, she later decided against it. 'Business is business.' she thought. It didn't matter the person or institution she was doing business with, as far as they paid well, satisfied her monetary demands and fulfilled their end of the bargain, then all was well; even if the person she was going to do business with was the devil himself, all dressed up in black and gold. She couldn't let her personal feelings interfere with business, as that would be completely unprofessional and stupid. So instead of rejecting the offer, she jacked the bounty way up to a hundred million gold coins, which didn't sit well with the officials of the capital's army, as they felt her price was too high. Mom, then, stated that her team were going to expend a lot of effort and resources in searching for just a single person in a largely populated town, the expenses for both the trip and the operation itself would be expensive and there was no telling how long the mission would last. She, then, ended by stating that two hundred thousand gold coins was too small a price for her and her team to agree upon. The officials thought that what she said made sense, but there was no way they would pay a million gold coins for her services. So, the officials and Mom haggled on the price back and forth, for close to thirty minutes, until they decided on a middle ground, which was six hundred thousand gold coins (Sixty million silver coins). The officials, though, promised that if she and her team could bring Jack back to the capital alive, then they would add a hundred thousand gold coins to the mix.

After returning back from the capital, Mom divided the warriors between herself and Zedd. Zedd was to continue the business of dealing with bandits, while she would handle the business of the capital. Within a month of Mom and her team tirelessly and thoroughly searching through the entirety of Ransdale town, they found Jack in the night, in a local, small bar, almost a mile away from the outskirts of the town. The fool was as drunk as a stupid mule and was incoherently hitting on the blonde bar maid, pouring the drinks for him. This made it easy for the team to capture and secure him and before Jack could understand what was going on, he was forcefully dragged back to the capital, to face his impending punishment. Within two weeks, he was publicly executed.

The capital's army officials were flabbergasted at how fast she was able to secure the target, as the army themselves had been tracking him for close to two years and she just delivered in a single month. From then on, bounty hunting business after bounty hunting business came finding its way to Mom's doorstep; with the latest, a bigwig named Boris Cutthroat, a former vice commander in the capital's army.

Back to the present.

When Senro narrated the long story told to him by the friendly old folks of Benison town; the story about her and Zedd's arrival to the town, the story of the middle aged woman and her daughters, the story behind how she began the bandit hunting and bounty hunting business and also about the school of fighting and self-defense, close to their home, Mom just smiled and simply told him, not to listen or believe the rumors of the old people of Benison town. Senro could still recall though, that even when Mom smiled, he could notice and see that she had a deep-seated melancholy hidden within her eyes and this led him to believe that the story told to him might actually be true and might not simply be some fantasy.

Senro didn't really understand though, why Mom and Zedd hid details about their past lives and where they actually originated from, from him and Sasha. At first, when he was younger, he believed that maybe they both felt it wasn't too important and was unnecessary to divulge it to them, but when one day, he decided to confront Mom about the details of his father and his father's whereabouts, and she just smiled sadly and ignored his inquiry, no matter how many times he tried to ask, he perceived and had a deep feeling in his gut, that something was definitely amiss and the both of them were maybe, trying to protect him and Sasha from something terrible or from a disastrous truth. He felt that Sasha also felt the same way he did, as she had longed stopped inquiring about who their father was, where their father was, whether he was alive or dead or about the sensitive details concerning the past lives of Mom and Zedd.

After a long while of reminiscing and thinking back to past events, sleep finally caught up with Senro and he fell into a deep sleep, not minding the uncomfortable ground he was sleeping on or the shrill cries and noises coming from the creatures lurking in the jungle.