Koria of the Lost Tribe ran for her little life as bullets whizzed by the silver kobold’s head. She was making strides across the rooftops of Colmaton’s Little Italy, her bare feet kicking across the gravel. The three foot and six inch tall ninja/sorcerer was being pursued by three big frog anthros in suits, each trying to take aim on her with their 9mms. Fortunately, they were lousy shots, afraid to hit what was hidden away in her backpack, and even then the way she darted, ducked, zig and zagged it would have taken a marksmen of the legendary Sandstalker’s skill to slow her down.

Now she ran, and smiled enjoying the chase, her kusarigama clutched in one hand and partly in her jaw so her fingers could weave the spells she needed to escape. The ‘Italian mobsters’ as she was told they were called cursed at her in their puzzling language. More shots rang out as she closed on the final ledge, her only options now was either ten story fall straight down, or to try and angle for one of the windows of a sky reaching castle. She opted for the express route even as her pursuers stopped and called out that she had nowhere to run. “Why run boggards?” she called out still running for the ledge and saluted them with the scythe end of her weapon. “When you can fly?” she added as they tried to shoot at her one more time, missing again. She flung herself off the ledge and into the night and then began to fall to the ground, the rush of wind pumping her adrenaline up even more. She muttered words of ancient power, and felt her dragon blood stir as she made the sigils in the air with her fingers.

With a burst of feathers made of light, her descent slowed as if she had pulled the rip cord of a parachute. Her escape was almost complete as she touched the ground on the street, on top of a horseless chariot she had found out before was called a taxi. She rolled and dove from the roof through the mercifully open back seat window, sparing only a moment to look up at two angry frogs that didn’t dare fire down on the streets with so many people around.

“Hey kid where the fuck did you come from?” the pit bull cabby growled after having his cab jostled so. Mimicking what she had heard before on the streets she shouted. “Cabby Drive! I pay!” She reached into her pack and showed a wad of rolled up greenbacks. “Yo kid I’ll take you to moon and back for that.” He laughed and soon Koria was on her way to safety, as the wheels of the chariot screeched away, leaving a plume of smoke for cover.

On the roof the two frogs were joined by a 7 foot tall and broad as ox third. “Mr. Bullywug…I mean Boss…we tried.” The first frog tried to explain and for his troubles the third shoved his cigar out on the first’s forehead, making him scream and drop to the roof’s floor. “Do you mooks know what she just stole!” he loudly croaked and gave a kick to the first frog that still rolled on the ground in pain. “That little lizard bitch just made off with our trump card to cut into those Triad chinks…find Gergi…someone talked. And now we got to move up the time table and hope the BOS stays on some supervillain's ass for a coupla nights and leaves us regular crooks alone.” The big frog grinned.

Meanwhile in a cab, Koria panted for breath. “So…you telling me yousez some kind of superhero? Don’t get many of those in my cab.” The pit bull chuckled, he had a rap sheet as long as his taxi's front fender from his misspent youth. “Yup I call myself…um…” the kobold grinned as she realized that unlike all the other strange people she had seen with powers and the like she didn’t actually have a ‘hero’ name. “Don’t tell me you don’t have a cool name or somethings.” He pressed. The kobold shrugged. “I just a ninja, trying to find a very bad person, and get back home,” The pit bull hummed to himself. “Oh yeah? Where you live little girlie? I mean…I know yousez saying you’re an adult an all.” The kobold sighed and shrugged again. “I found something called an overpass, where people with no sky castle of their own live…they are nice to me.”

The cabby looked her over, sure he noticed her deformities but surely with her gifts, her parents hadn’t thrown her out onto the streets by herself, the fact she seemed utterly amazed by even simple things like his meter also concerned him. “Well now Lil’ Silver, I have you know I have a room all to myself in my very own sky castle.” The pit bull’s announcement made Koria perk up. “Really? What’s it like?” The entire way the kobold grilled the cabby over the nature of what an ‘apartment’ was. For his part the cabby was amazed that the kid kept calling herself a kobold, some mythological creature descended from dragons…Germanic myth if he remembered right. The cabby finished his routes passing Koria off as his ‘adopted’ kid on a ride along and let her sit beside him. For a ‘ninja’ she really wasn’t one for secrets, she told him of tales after tales of her and her friends tangling with monsters and an evil warlord that used a magic portal to get to his world. Fanciful stuff sure, but when she started showing him her spells…well this day and age with heroes that could throw cars like matchboxes, it was slowly becoming hard not to believe her.

Eventually he had parked his cab in the covered parking garage of the apartment and finally asked her again. “So I’ve told you about me, and you told me about you, but if you going to be a hero like the ones you’ve been watching yousez going to need a name.”

Koria thought for a moment and looked at her silver scales, and the silver moon peaked through the clouds, “I think I will call myself Silvernight…that sound like a hero’s name?” she smiled with her needle sharp teeth glinting. The pit bull patted her on the back. “Sounds like as good as any a name to me.” Then without missing a beat Koria asked. “What’s your hero name?” the cabby for once in a long time blushed. “Ah shoot kid…”

Johnny Bozer the pit bull cab driver that ran his rounds through Little Italy snored on the couch stretched out, remote in one hand, the other firmly gripping a roll of hundred dollar bills Silvernight had plucked from a 'banker' one time. Afterall there was 'morals to live by' and there was 'the morals people were going to live by'. The former middleweight boxer, and retired leg breaker could of slept through an earthquake, his new friend Silvernight had kept him up way into the early morning hours, correcting her that televisions were not ‘magic speaking boxes’ and his fridge was not powered by the spells of a ‘cryomancer’. She had had a hard enough time with a cell phone she had ‘swiped to check for its magical properties’ for the sheer fact that with a few button pushes she could talk to strange people apparently in exotic places like ‘fuckoff’ and ‘whothehellisthis’. It was no surprise then really that Silvernight, who ‘should’ of been asleep in his bed, was now on the apartment’s roof meeting with a fox that had paid her the morning before to tangle with the mobsters. “I have magic locket you described is it right? Right?” she asked and the fox male smiled. He was thin and lithe, his coal black sunglasses made it impossible for Koria to see them and that made her nervous. The fox looked the jewelry over and wiped a pepperoni topping off it, such a small thing in his hands, he opened it and found the tiny red stone inside, just as his master required. “It’s just fine…and who should my boss call for if we need your...heroics again?” he asked.

Koria smiled and posed with her kusarigama spinning it above her head to show off. “You tell all the bad men, the Silvernight has fallen on them.” She held the pose, the ball and chain of the weapon chopping the air as the fox gawked at her... “How long do heroes do this posing thing?” she asked him.

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Short short short story to intro Koria aka Silvernight into the Colmaton universe. Hope everyone enjoys the story and art.

This was a bit tough, I had to get some advice from  cylnx to finally pull this off. Because I really struggled to show how small Silvernight is in her environment, she is only 3'6" and so everything is super sized for her. I'll put up a more in depth bio later though.

Koria is © to me
Sandstalker (mentioned) belongs to  vivavulpes

And really give a big props to  cylnx as I was about to tear this pic up and chuck it at one point.