Groceries, The Hard Way

[Etheryn]

“Let’s repeat,” Aaron said, with a click of the fingers to punctuate the list. “Walk in a straight line from here toward the fishmonger. When you pass someone with a red kerchief hanging out of their front pocket, say the words.”

“To who?”

“To anyone. The words, Dan!”

“It’s a nice day for a splinter in the foot,” Dan grumbled. He scarcely believed the impracticality of the whole scheme.

“Perfect. Whoever has the red kerchief will wave you down,” Aaron said. He pulled Dan back by the shoulder and him out of the way of a moving cart. They retreated into their nook, away from the unmanageable chaos of Radasanth’s trade squares. Today, like all others, was a busy day.

“So, basically, your master plan amounts to me walking into an outlaw’s den of illegal weaponry…” Dan muttered on, weasling as best he could to sway Aaron's mind.

“… And trying your luck on how crooked the dealer is,” Aaron concluded. He finished with the sigh of a parent trying to drum understanding into a petulant child. “Yes, that’s all there is to it. Do what you’re told, little brother.”

“Right. Because if I were a shady pusher for rogue splinter cells and other non-desirables, I would absolutely repair and resupply a stranger who was wearing a Ringwraith’s hooded cloak—in the middle of summer, which is not suspicious, mind you,” Dan said. He fidgeted to get the thick, almighty black robes in a position less chafing. No such luck.

“Shut up, man! I’ve got you covered. You’re talking like this guy doesn’t know you’re coming. I already spoke to him, I set up the time, the place, the trade. You show him good coin and you’ll come off fine. Just don’t be so—

“Jumpy? Why wouldn’t I be? I just spent months rotting with you in a god damn underground tomb, clawed through a battalion to get out, and here I am again, about to throw away my short lived freedom on my big brother’s say,” Dan snapped. "You're fit for this kind of stuff. You seen my poker face? I couldn't win a game with a god damn royal flush!"

Aaron scanned their surrounding. No tails, no cautious eyes on them yet. As far as the general public were concerned, their charade was good enough to stick. For now.

“There’s no choice. Look around, Dan. We’re here. How much longer can two walking curtains bicker between themselves before someone says, ‘Hey guards! These here walking curtains can’t get on with their completely necessary plan, so you should probably poke ‘em with your sword a few times.’ Seriously, you need to get on with it.”

In one ear, out the other. Dan was like that sometimes, especially when he was being stubborn. He hadn’t even heard Aaron speak to him and just kept waffling on.

“... Ain't gonna work, man! I would rather put out a campfire with my face than even entertain the idea of exposing myself to the risk…no, the [i]risk of a risk, of going back in a putrid freakin’ cell!”

“Are you done?” Aaron rolled his eyes.

“Not at all. If this potentially hyper-paranoid top secret underworld arms dealer—who likely has a squad of goons hiding in the shadow ready to dismember me—changes his mind, we’ve got nowhere to go from here.” Dan’s eyes darted around through the slit of his folded hood. “Guards everywhere. This is and always was a one way trip.”

“What about now?”

“What do you mean, ‘what about now?’?” Dan snapped.

“I mean, are you done now?”

“Definitely not. Look where we are, man. The middle of Radasanth. Heart of the Empire. The Bazaar is like, thirty percent guards, fifty percent cover-blowing traders, and twenty percent crooks with twitchy shiv arms and too many targets. We’re asking too much. Let’s ditch this gear in the ocean and buy a great big sword or axe or something. What the usual band of wanted fugitives carry. We don’t need the attention your fancy gizmos bring.”

“Oh for the love of…” Aaron grunted, and toe-punted Dan in the back of the leg. It gave way, Aaron followed up with a gentle push, and Dan rolled into the street in a flailing bundle.

“You’re gonna pay, man. I swear it,” Dan oathed. He cursed to himself while he lay there. The flow of human traffic stymied only a moment, then started rolling over him like he were a tiny pebble in a river. Dan shoved people off, hurried upright and scrambled to pick up the rolls of folded leather that dropped from his person during the fall.

Dan looked to where Aaron should’ve been standing. He was gone.

“Fine! I’m seriously getting on with it,” he mocked in a high-pitched, droning imitation of Aaron’s voice,” Dan muttered to himself. “I get top bunk when we go back to jail.”

[Etheryn]

Aaron laughed internally, and moved cautiously to assess and reassess the situation. Every so often he'd change positions, all the watching Dan from a different perch. As a Corone Ranger, disavowed since the splintering and death of the entirety of his war group, Aaron had been trained to melt into a shadow even in places shadows couldn’t be drawn. He maintained overwatch on his brother, who was entirely green in matters of secrecy and finesse. It was understandable why he’d been so adamantly against Aaron’s planned rendezvous with a contact for rearmament. It just wasn't Dan's style.

When Dan is being a wuss about things, I’ll just kick him in the backside. That’ll rev him up.

The bulb above Aaron’s head lit up with the thought. It was something a big brother would usually figure out earlier, yet they’d shared very little time together, since being reunited in the pit of an abandoned salt mine at the southern peninsula of Corone. The relationship was less ordinary than others and they were still deducing what kind of man the other was, having not seen the other since teenage years. They’d fought together against faceless enemies together, and slipped the jaws of death with scars to show for it, but it’d been long years since they simply bickered like siblings do.

Like a drop in the ocean, Aaron vanished.

Dan walked as naturally as he could for someone cradling a small arsenal of broken down, prohibited weaponry in a basket between his legs. Each item was bound in leather hide to soften the jangle of nicked blades and pneumatic, pistol-shaped crossbows that needed restringing and gassing.

The payload was tied to his belt and dangled in such a way that, should an overly snoopy guard go for a frisk search, they’d come up blank. The ten pound billowing gown that covered Dan head to toe worked well enough as a disguise, it seemed, as his awkwardly, limping gait attracted no attention. A crown of stringed beads, native to some obscure yet common religion that Aaron knew had centres of worship within Radasanth's border, gave Dan’s bizarre clothing some context in the sapping heat.

Dust clouded in a wake behind the billowing tail of the garment, and Dan spotted himself in a clean spot smudged into the grimy mirror of a street-side barber.

You look ridiculous, he thought. No turning back now. Just act natural. Be the curtain.

It’d been a long time since he’d had cause to navigate the roiling mass of traders, hawkers and haggling customers in Radasanth. In fact, it’d been a long time—months—since he’d stepped foot in anything close to civilisation. He’d been on a lonely, violent trail south, then imprisoned in the dark for months. The sky seemed too big above him, too empty, like if he looked up too long it’d crash down on him like the ceiling of the salty, frigid catacombs of the prison he vowed never to revisit.

Still, Dan knew how it worked here. He barged a shoulder into anyone who needed to get out of his way. By the time someone turned around with indignation smeared on their face, ready to spray abuse, Dan was gone.

On he went, moving with the vigilance a weekend marketeer doesn’t need. He squinted through the stinging of his own perspiration in the eye. The red kerchief was nowhere to be sighted. Minutes passed, and Dan’s concentration sieved like sand between fingertips. The cacophony of white noise made it hard to think, and he imagined his name in snippets of overheard conversations as he passed people both jolly and sour in their chatter. He was growing nervous. This should be done by now. Sideways glances of the guardsmen raked his skin with goose bumps, and Dan couldn’t help but feel everyone was a threat.

Technically, they were. A tattered bounty poster flapped on a cork board’s nail. Dan strode past it too quickly to catch the exact figure, but there were enough zeros to worried about. His own name and a sketch closer to caricature than likeness made his heart backflip, turn into a brick, and drop through the pit of his stomach.

Yep. Definitely no chance now. Definitely not. No turning back now, he thought again. Dan's fear was a beast that never heeded reason.

[Etheryn]

Dan stopped for a moment beneath a shade cloth to enjoy a respite from the roasting noon, and scanned for that desperate flash of red. He’d passed the fishmonger already, wrinkling his nose to consider the fading stench of low tide. For all the earthen brown and orange brick and dried thatch that filled the arid image of the market grounds, the kerchief would be hard to find. He tried all at once to be the periscope, the keen-eyed hunter, the all-seeing eye, yet for all he tried he saw nothing.

He’d been stationary too long. Dan felt timid as a mouse, and hawker drawing a rickshaw cart full of folded fabrics and tapestry swooped in.

“Handful of coin for the best silks in the square! You, sir, you shan’t find better! Look!”

“Not interested, buddy,” Dan shielded, and went to raise the palm of his hand.

He forgot what he was and raised a handful of robe instead. A whole boot showed, along with his lower leg, framed by a woodlands camouflage legging. Dan made like the soldier at attention and snapped his arm to his side.

“You will be interested, I assure! Thousand-thread for the price of five hundred! Look! Look!”

The hawker was an out of place character, like someone transplanted the head of a sickly old man on the body of a young, tanned athlete and dashed him with a century of scars. His muscle striated impressively as he leaned into the cart to retrieve a bale of example squares. He wore no shirt, just plain twill pants with too many pockets to be necessary. All were empty and slack. As the merchant waved a range of example squares of aquamarine satin, to cross-stitch and multi-coloured hessian mats and ruby red silk, Dan kept shaking his head dismissively.

“No, no, not interested. I don’t want,” Dan cringed in a poorly faked accent from some imagined foreign country.

A fistful of red cloth, creased like cheap, stiff tulle, came next. “Cheap! Cheap!”

Dan shook his head. It was getting painful. Truly, he wouldn’t take the merchant’s wares for free, even if threaded with gold. Instead, Dan bunched up the burden of his robe and doubled back to the fishmonger, and barged past the textile merchant in doing so.

Dan walked his same route twice then three times more. Nothing. He stood by the fishmonger and pretended to be interested in a spotted mackerel, buzzed over by flies. He stared into the milky white of its dead eyes, and wondered if his own would soon look the same.

From a distance, while of swatting away desperate vendors of various and sundry like they were jungle mosquitoes, Dan spied the textile merchant harassing another poor victim. Dan saw the square of red tulle come out again, and once more saw it denied. The merchant shoved it into his front pocket.

Dan lurched back toward the merchant. The contraband jounced in its basket, pulling his belt tight with each step. A crowd of bickering vendors, too occupied with their debate on who was price gouging and who was just being competitive, blocked Dan’s path. Without a care Dan marched his considerably heavy frame straight through them.

The cloth vendor was gone.

“You! Look at what you’ve done!” barked a particularly livid elderly man in a pressed doublet and fine-stitched slacks. His face was red and pocked with liver spots. A clawed finger, decorated with jewellery of exquisite make, pointed at Dan accusingly.

Dan gulped. He looked upon the mess of powders and creams, all spilled from ornate, crystal vials with gemmed stoppers that’d been cradled in the elderly man's arms as he stood among the group of haggling merchants. The kinds of vessels only for heinously expensive contents. All spilled and drying up in the dirt and countless footfalls of the trade square, marched away on the careless soles of faceless shoppers.

An entourage of stalwart guards stepped out from nowhere. Each was bound in buckled leather strappings and almost as much black cloth as Dan, and they formed a you're-not-going-anywhere circle. Barely noticing, the swarm of shoppers made a wide berth to let the confrontation carry out. Even the guards paid no mind. Confrontations like these, although bad for business, were commonplace.

“There’s not a chance in the bloody world you’ve got enough coin to pay for what you just knocked in the sand, ya blasted idiot!” the wealthy man barked from behind his payroll of retainers.

Dan’s throat went dry and turned to sandpaper. He choked out the only thing he could, and his head span on a swivel, looking around for an escape. “Er… I, uh… It’s a nice day for a splinter in the foot?”

One of the stone-faced guards raised an eyebrow. Another laughed, and poked his neighbour in the shoulder. They muttered behind cupped hands to each other and parted away for their wealthy boss to pop out from behind the meat wall they formed.

There was nothing else for it. Dan loosened his robe, turned his face to the sky, and bellowed as loud as he possibly could. “It’s a nice day for a splinter in the foot!”

The wealthy merchant was confident in his old age and walked up close to Dan. He only made it to shoulder height and levelled an examining glare. “Are you mad, son?”

“Ahem. As I said…” Dan took a step back, and this time, drew an even deeper breath. “IT-IS-REALLY-A-NICE-DAY-FOR-A-SPLINTER-IN-THE-FOOT!” He found himself with his eyes shut, teeth clenched, nails dug into the ball of his fists.

“I want you to pay me in coins, ya mongrel! Not in stupid!”

Were Dan somewhere else it might’ve drawn attention. Here, in the The Bazaar of Radasanth, a man robed head to toe in black against the sweltering summer didn’t look too mad when he raved nonsense at the sky. A fellow black robe streaked along the background.

Aaron had Dan covered.

[Etheryn]

“Five thousand coin?!” Dan spluttered. He shrugged his shoulders and retreated in half-steps to nowhere in particular. He needed to stall. He’d just toppled an array of what could’ve been salt and sour cream, or could’ve been disgustingly priced leisure powders and anti-aging ointments. The value of the lost stock was asserted by their owner, corroborated by his gaudy jewellery and faux crystal vials, but until there was some proof of the actual content, Dan found room to argue against accepting that value.

“You heard me, fool. Pay up or I’ll take it from you some other way,” the elderly man said. He preened the creases of his doublet and kicked a clod of dirt from the hem of his slacks, as if to emphasise the elevation of his own station. With an angered sneer, he nodded to one of the guardsmen, who advanced on Dan.

Like they’d seen Dan’s thoughts floating above his head in the bubble of a graphic novel, two halberd wielding Empire soldiers, all polished plate and chainmail and blazing emblems, stepped in with synchronised movements. They levelled their weapons at the staunch bodyguard who at once slank back in line.

Now the guards turn up and these guys lose their pump, Dan pondered. Keep your cool. Deny, deny, counter-allegations. You got this. Be the curtain.

“Guards! Please, help! Man drop thing in front of me! Try make me pay! No pay!” Dan pleaded, persistent with his false accent. He’d locked himself into using it for the time being, having already done it once. If overhead with a different accent again he’d draw suspicion of a whole different kind.

“Witnesses?” one of the soldiers said through the grate of his visor, halberd still pointed and prodding back at the chest of the elderly merchant’s bodyguard.

“All around!” the elderly man said. “Ask them! They saw it all!” His accusing finger sought help from a the same group of snickering traders who’d taken barely any notice of anyone’s conflict but their own.

“Saw what?” said a man of the group with skin black as tar, a gold monocle and bald pate. “All I saw was you stepping in everyone else’s way, you blind old geriatric. Now don’t be dragging me into your problems!”

Suddenly, all the wind blew out from the sails of the elderly man’s cry for recompense.

The elderly merchant petitioned another witness, this one taller and busy exchanging coins with a customer, who said “Yeah, I saw you get yer cheap crap git knocked out of yer hands. Me wife spent half a week’s wage on yer powders. No more than dried chicken stock and a bit of sugar! Miracle dust? Ye must've sniffed a bucketful for me ta not come over there and brain ye!”

That was about it for the soldiers. “Your matter is civil, sir. Not criminal. Take your troop and leave this man alone, and heed my warning. You who instigate violence will be met with violence of a higher level.”

Dan exaggerated his bow and gratitude, and scurried off into the crowd, leaving his aggressor behind. More and more it dawned on him that the person who’d pressed him for money was, in reality, little more than a shyster who dressed like a rich man with rich things that needed rich compensation when they just so happened to be knocked into the dirt.

More and more it dawned on him that he needn’t have blown the passwords at the top of his lungs to get out of the situation. He imagined Aaron's head almost exploding with frustration. Dan needed to learn to keep his cool in matters such as this. He’d done things of similar nature before, even in Radasanth. He’d been part of a plot involving a political and even mystical power far greater than the elderly man and his guards, and somehow, got through fine.

During that escapade he wasn’t a wanted enemy of the state, with only a lame disguise between death or life imprisonment.

Dan surged around the trading floor, and eventually gained line of sight of the textile merchant with the red kerchief in his hand. Dan closed in, pat him on the shoulder, and put on a limp. “It’s a nice day for a splinter in the foot, isn’t it?”

The man whirled around and regarded Dan, absolutely puzzled. “What?”

Dan had no plans past this point. It was supposed to just...work. “Er, as I said. I just thought I’d let you know.”

“Let me know about what? About splinters in your foot? I already heard you screaming your lungs out about that some moments ago. Saw the whole thing.”

The weight of gear dangling between his legs suddenly was getting very heavy and cumbersome. He was making backwards progress, if such a thing existed. Dan searched for Aaron, ready to whistle the abort. “Yeah. I got a splinter while I was talking to you earlier. I thought I should, uh, warn… you?”

Dan barely recognised that not only what he was saying was absolutely ridiculous, having been stonewalled at use of the password on the mark, but he was also saying it without the false accent. The one he’d already used and forgotten to keep using. What was already a strange conversation became impossibly, inexcusably awkward.

“Go away,” the vendor shooed with a click of the tongue and shake of his head, and moved on to other customers. "Nutter."

Before Dan give himself the double-uppercut he so rightly deserved, he was corralled on all sides by unassuming shoppers who felt the need, all of a sudden, to truly invade Dan’s personal space and usher them along with a buffeting of their shoulders. None of them were paying attention to each other, or to Dan’s considerable efforts to shove them away, but they all walked with a formation and unison and carried Dan along with them in their common direction.

“Oi! Get lost! I know it’s busy, but—

“Shut the hell up,” one of them spat with absolute venom through clenched teeth. “You’ve already done enough. Boss is gonna tear you a new arsehole, if I don’t do it first.”

Dan caught glimpse of Aaron, who was still following along, weaving in and out, pretending to barter here and there, and generally doing enough to maintain no association to Dan. The play hadn't gone belly up just yet.

[Etheryn]

They'd come to an empty drawn cart, set with a few cushions on the rear planks, and with a driver wearing a taxi's uniform; cheap suit coat with tails, railroads ironed into the trousers and shiny leather boots. Coincidentally, all of the group of shoppers that'd just become quite friendly with Dan were finished with their errands, and decided to go home on the same transport at the exact same time. It would’ve been rude for Dan not to follow along.

His lips remained firmly zipped, having just caused enough trouble for a week and more. Dan followed the shoppers, who by now could be assumed as footmen for the arms dealer, without actually looking at them at all. The cart took off without spoken directions. They rattled over cobblestones and made headway out of the asylum that was The Bazaar, into peace and order by comparison. Someone chucked Dan and apple from their sack of fresh fruit, and it landed in the trough of folded robed in his lap. He puzzled on how to eat it with both arms pinned beneath the robe. If he lifted them out, he’d reveal the basket strung to his belt. Dan ignored the apple altogether until whoever sat next to him took it up and chomped loudly.

Bastard, Dan thought. He absolutely hated the sound of other people eating, and whoever was munching on the fruit sounded worse than a draught horse. They left the main road, descended an off ramp, and doubled back onto an auxiliary road that ran beneath an overhead pedestrian footbridge. In ten minutes they'd left the commercial area and trotted into an ill maintained residential district, one that neighboured all sides of The Bazaar, where a mix of poor and middle-class in lived in plain brick townhouses.

One by one, the taxi passengers paid their fare and alighted without acknowledging the others, striking off with casual intent. Soon there was only Dan and one other passenger. Dan hadn’t dared to look yet, and now there was space to breathe without being watched, Dan stole a glance. The stout, rotund shape of a dwarf.

“Me friend an’ I will stop here, driver,” the surly sounding dwarf rumbled, and handed over a fistful of coin.

You have got to be kidding me, Dan thought. I know that voice from anywhere.

Alfonse, the blades dealer, one of the first friends Dan ever made in Radasanth, shuffled from the rickety timber of the cart. Dan followed wordlessly. They set off down the street, ignored by the populace. They stepped out of the way of a group of children in raggedy school uniforms with scabby knees, all dirty and about to be roused upon by their mothers for wagging school. Working class men came home for lunch with blistered hands from their labour, day only half done. They were away from soldiers, away from the hook and dagger of The Bazaar, and most of all, away from prying ears and suspicion.

More importantly, Dan was far away from the safe zone agreed upon between him and Aaron. Were Dan with anyone else it would’ve been something to panic about. Alfonse was good people, Dan thought.

“If yer man to set up this bloody appointment told me yer walking stuff-up of a self were involved, Dan James, I woulda cancelled on the spot,” Alfonse soured. “I notice ye’ve gotten no better at keepin' out of mischief, boy-o.”

“My favourite! My vertically impaired, mood disabled, most hirsute and cuddly friend! Alfonse! World’s best dwarf!” Dan gushed. He would’ve pat Alfonse atop the head, if he didn’t mind getting eviscerated as a consequence.

“Shut yer yap. We’re getting to a safe place, doing the trade, and then yer getting out of here.”

“Whatever you say, buddy,” Dan said.

[Etheryn]

“Where are we going?” Dan asked. He’d walked in Alfonse’s tow for close to half an hour now, meandering with vague purpose and stepping a circuit back through the same streets repeatedly. Just like Dan searched for the flag of red in the trade square, Alfonse was after waiting for a signal. Someone shined a mirror in Dan's eye, and Alfonse's as well.

“I told you to shut up, boy-o. Ye are a true crap magnet,” Alfonse said. “Plain and simple. Crap. Magnet.”

“You’re not very nice to me, you know. And besides that,” Dan paused, only to jab Alfonse in the shoulder and juke out of retaliation range. “I’m a money magnet, too. You’re gonna get paid so stop your whinging.”

Dan saw a troop of soldiers, four with muddy greaves and a depressed slouch, all trudging along on foot. The fifth, their commander, sat atop a Palomino, his red drape splaying over the beast’s hindquarters with almost pompous regency. Not a flake of dirt tainted him or his armour. Plainly, his infantry soldiers did all the work while he sat back and barked orders.

Dan tensed up as they passed in the opposite direction, his breathing resumed only when the canter of the Palomino’s shod hooves sounded against the cobblestone distant enough for them to be out of earshot.

“Yer poster is everywhere, Dan,” Alfonse said. “What did ye do?”

“You saw part one,” Dan said. “When we… you know. Part two involved me throwing an incognito Empire high ranker to a squad of Ranger assassins, and part three involved me exploding my way through an Empire battalion to steal one of their boats and sail back here. Part four is, well, still being planned.”

“Ye went all the way south and now you’re back here?” Alfonse asked. They turned left into a much darker street, one that was shielded from the daylight with an overhead canopy of drains and rope-and-plank walkways and clothes lines.

“I found what I was looking for,” Dan said. The pride of accomplishment was absent from his voice, given the cost. They continued on as the street narrowed to a dead end then an alley, and they went down there too.

“Truly, eh? Ye found him?”

“I did. You spoke to him,” Dan said. “Now you know both factors on our side of the equation are going to work out. So maybe you should unload those wrist blades and lighten up a little, friend. I bet you thought you’d never see me again.”

A slow, scraping sound, like a blade retreating to scabbard and a tensing coil, was all that came of Dan's suggestion. Alfonse simply kept walking. Blades in or blades out was no more than flick of the wrist.

“Thanks. You seemed pretty tense and stab-happy just then, Alfonse.”

Alfonse stopped and Dan almost tripped. They were now in a shoulder width alley between two housing blocks that was really purposed as nothing other than a drain off for lavatory buckets emptied out the side windows. The stink was oppressive, and Dan looked down to the congealing sewage that sopped around the ankles of his boots.

“Hand it over,” Alfonse said, his leather gloved hand extended expectantly. Dan eyed him over. Alfonse hadn’t changed in one detail at all since they’d parted ways in on a hauntingly dark night on the overpass between Radasanth and Nelligin. A pleated, black leather vest with riveted buckle armouring, triple braid ginger-brown beard, and each fold and strip of the leather almost certainly pregnant with a spring-loaded instrument of murder.

Dan unhitched the basket from his belt, complete with the weapons for himself and Aaron, a consignment order, and most importantly, the coin. Alfonse took it and barged past Dan, back the way they’d came.

“That’s it?” Dan asked, turning on the spot.

“Yep. I still don’t know if doing this is going to bite me on the arse later on. I still don’t know what angle yer playin’, or where ye really come from, or who ye really are. Yer a fisherman’s son, aren’t ya?” Alfonse said, paused, not turning to face Dan at all as if he was unwilling to look upon the face of a liar.

“I am.”

“Then why is it always you butting heads with the Empire?” Alfonse said. “Why is it that after last time I almost got myself skinned for saving yer silly bald arse, against my own lack of good sense, ye being a stranger and all? Why such a complex life?”

Dan was puzzled. He looked up then hurried forward to avoid a fresh chamber pot being dumped on his head, stepping past Alfonse and overtaking him. They were almost back to the street.

“Why, of all people, would someone like you question my motives? You profit from that kind of thing.”

“Because my clients are one dimensional. They’re bad eggs, through and through, and there’s nothing more to ‘em. I can figure ‘em out before they even tell me their names. With you the other hand… I don’t get it. Yer still goin’ up against this big red machine that will one day beat ya to yer knees and keep ya there till ya die,” Alfonse said.

Out of nowhere, a rope and carabineer dropped next to Alfonse, to which he attached Dan’s basket with the equipment, cash and order form. Someone in a high overhead window hoisted it out of sight. Dan scoffed at the autonomy of the dwarf’s business.

“Isn’t it simple?” Dan opened up, as they left the darkened alley back from to the streets proper, to somewhere Dan could get a taxi back to his meeting point with Aaron.

“There are things I need to do. There are consequences that come from those things. The Empire, that big red machine, well, it casts a long shadow. Everyone is gonna stand in it some time. We’re both standing in it right now. Doesn’t mean we don’t keep doing those things we need to do, right?”

“Right,” Alfonse nodded.

“I’m not going up against them. I’m not going up against any one them, not throwing my lot with any team, ‘cause I just don’t give a damn. But because this fight is so big and ugly and everywhere all at the same time, whatever I do,” Dan paused. “It’s gonna be putting a stink under someone’s nose.”

He extended his calloused, meaty paw of a hand from beneath the cloaking robe. Alfonse accepted a handshake, and that sealed the contract.

“Your gear will be in a crate marked ‘R’, then a twelve-dash-three-dash-forty-nine,” Alfonse said. “Sunrise, tomorrow morning, by the fruiterer with a peg leg and lazy eye. Trade square. We can talk some more if we meet under a pretense that isn’t killin’ someone, or buyin the steel to be killin’ someone. Got it?”

“Got it,” Dan finished. He and Alfonse parted ways for a second time, but not before Dan kicked out a flap of his robes, and cast some overly rank flecks of sewage into Alfonse’s beard.

“Guess I really am a crap magnet.”

[Etheryn]

So, the following things were awarded to me at the end of my last quest.


Additionally, spoils requested:

- Gold found in the schooner

300 gold awarded above

- Gas-powered pistol crossbow with a small amount of ammo left

I think the crossbow, considering the rounds are armor-piercing, is a bit overpowered. I know that Dan didn't use it a lot and isn't terribly proficient, but I hesitate in awarding it. Let's just say it's currently broken and needs repairs.

- The last remaining "serum"

You'll need to have some limitations on this in your character update, considering the power it gives, which was displayed in the thread.

- The bodysuit

Make sure to declare the relative strength (assuming leather) of this in your character update. Also, I am assuming it's just the bodysuit and not all the fun little weapons stashed in it.

- A single grenade

Heck yeah! Make some mayhem! But since it got wet in Dan's swim, it's not nearly as effective. At most, the shrapnel will be the worst of the blast.

The consignment order for work involves a larger amount of more complicated and advanced gear than what is listed here (it involves gear for Aaron and another NPC) but the following requests (and costs) are simpler and relate to Dan only:

1. Repair of the gas-powered pistol crossbow. Currently, the string is snapped and the trigger mechanism needs rebuilding. Apart from that, the copper gas pneumatics and trigger system, the oak stock and yew lathe are in fine condition. The quality of the item is not to be upgraded, but it is to be returned to full working order. The trigger doesn’t involving a firing pin, and the entirety of the crossbow’s firing mechanism, although it being described like a “pistol,” is merely a downscale of what would happen on a full-sized crossbow that was self-drawn by a gas-powered piston system. The complexity of the trigger is no more than what would be on a regular crossbow.

2. More ammunition for the above. Currently, Dan has only four bolts of cyper in a loose leather quiver with an oak bottom. He requests another eight bolts. Four with plynt heads and the rest with iron.

3. A simple steel claw hammer, the base of the shaft being tapered to a pike’s tip. The top of the shaft, from which the hammer and claw extend, has a hollow point through which a retainer could loop to allow Dan to carry it easily on his belt. The grip is simply glued burlap cloth. The weapon’s appearance is nothing assuming, and in reality, is nothing more than a slightly modified tradesman’s tool, and weighs just as much as one.

4. The serum, presently being a single intravenously delivered (syringe) dose of an intense stimulant that dulls pain, increases endurance during exhaustion, amplifies mental focus, reaction times and concentration levels, all along with a magnification of Dan’s magical abilities, takes an extreme tole on the user’s body and mind. The consignment order notes for this serum to be divided into three smaller doses, and transferred into small copper vials with flip-top lids for oral consumption. Due to no longer being delivered instantly to the bloodstream, the onset is of the stimulant is slower (ten minutes to take effect, as opposed to almost instant) and now lasts longer, tapering off around one hour and forty-five minutes. Of course, the dose being separated into three parts, each part gives a weaker effect, or all three can be taken for the full effect. It is unknown if the serum is habit forming or has long term side effects.

5. Six plynt shards, being tiny, irregular and unworked scraps for Dan to manipulate through the use of his leather focus bag. They are low quality offcuts and unable to be used for any other purpose than ignition, and in reality are no more useful than waterproof match heads. These come in a small linen pouch with a drawstring, and are small enough to fit in a pocket or in another container.

6. Magim beast hide gloves, mottled brown, extra-large size with full length fingers, with a loop of string at the opening mouth of each glove, again enabling them to be retained on Dan’s belt.

7. A combat knife, made of steel, with a leather grip worked to fit the contours of a hand of Dan’s large size, but not customised for him. The steel is worked through with a black dust, or dye, and the leather is also blackened. The blade is thick and ten inches long, with a single cutting edge and only the beginning half of the reverse side being sharp as well. The remainder of the reverse side is blunt. The weapon comes sheathed in a boar’s leather holster, with two adjustable straps to place it either forearm or calf. The straps aren’t long enough for Dan’s thigh. The colour of the knife is cosmetic only, and it comes with a whestone.

As far as I know, I have 1340 gold. If I don't have enough gold for above, Alfonse can select which items to reject.

If the moderator is to accept the above purchases, I'll finish off this thread with a few more posts to tie it all together and keep Dan chugging along. Cheers!

[Etheryn]

Dan and Aaron bobbed along the tack-flat evening sea, utterly alone and forgotten and ignored. It was an enjoyable state, made better only by knowing that should someone—or something—come to disturb that peace, each brother had his back covered by the other. They looked to the distant horizon of Corone’s shore, and the astral twinkling of lamplights carried by dockhands, busy about the wharves of Radasanth, loading ferries and toiling away the last hour of their day.

“This is peace,” Aaron said. “Uninterrupted. It’s good.”

“Uh huh,” Dan said, half-dozing, half-watching. Nothing had happened for hours, and he savoured a nap. They’d covered little distance since the sails died out and stalled.

Dan didn’t mind so much. The silhouette of city walls, battlements manned by soldiers loaded for bare, longbow and full quiver and edgy swords, the shouting din of a pub fight, and the just contained turbulence of the trade markets, all of the city: Dan wanted to be no closer to it than this. At the same time, being so still, not moving, he felt vulnerable to anyone who might follow.

He dangled his feet idly over the deck edge, kicking his heels against the hull. He looked up to check the haft and jigger, sighed at the slack sail, and kicked extra-hard against the hull like he wore spurs for a stubborn horse. “Come on, you frigging thing. Let’s get moving.”

Dan was always one to ruin picturesque moments like this with asininity. Aaron, sitting next to him, shook his head and stood up, stretching for the sky and half-yawning.

“Really. Dan, it’s an inanimate object. A boat. Perhaps you had a good relationship with our, uh, ‘borrowed’ Empire schooner, before you blew our cover so bad that we had to scuttle it and steal a new one—

“We didn’t steal it. We bought it without the owner’s consent. I saw you drop off the coin,” Dan interrupted, corking Aaron in the thigh with his knuckle.

“Either way, you need to be less impatient. You make me edgy when you start kicking stuff and making noise and generally being you. You just messed with my zen thing,” Aaron said, flinching away and ducking out of sight behind the cabin door.

“I’m sorry, brother,” Dan conceded, swivelling to face Aaron, who returned to the deck after he rummaged through the clutter of a trunk.

“You know how new all of this is to me. I’m trying my best to not be useless.”

“I know you are. Smoke?” Aaron flicked a filtered cigarette from a soft pack and lit one. He took a long draw, upturned his head, and shot concentric rings.

Dan watched, impressed, but had to roll his eyes at the same time. “Sure. Light me up,” he said.

Dan took a cigarette, having never actually smoked before, and fumbled with the flint of Aaron’s oil lighter until he scorched half the rolling paper and finally got the tip lit. Dan inhaled like an amateur, and just as Aaron expected, coughed up a lung. He hacked and spit and made sour faces, cursing all the while.

“You’ve never smoked in your life,” Aaron confirmed.

“Correct,” Dan managed to choke out, before he continue his fit.

“Tell me something, Dan,” Aaron began, pointing back to the city limits. “What was wrong with you back there?”

“You know where I grew up. You know what I’m like,” Dan answered. “I can’t handle all that, er, activity. I remember what happened when I first went there looking for you.”

“You were your usual self. I remember,” Aaron nodded.

“Well, yes. I got in a huge, drawn-out bar fight, got chased out of town, got everyone in trouble and got punched in the face repeatedly,” Dan said with a wry grin, like he was quietly proud of the mischief he caused. “But it wasn’t just that.”

“What was it?”

“The name you and I share together. James. As soon as it became tied to you, tied to me, and people knew about it, that was it. Enemy number one,” Dan said, looking straight at Aaron now, all of the playfulness drained from his cheek. “People whispering, finding the softest link in your armour to poke holes in your kidneys. Everyone wants you dead or captured, and now me too.”

Aaron nodded, tapped the spent ash from his cigarette, and took a deep, final drag, before tossing it to an expectant seagull. “That’s just the way it is,” Aaron said, and the seagull cawed and flew off disappointed.

“Are you serious? That’s how you think your life should be?” Dan asked.

“I didn’t say that. It’s just the way it is. Things are the way things are and very rarely can you do anything to change said things,” Aaron explained, lighting up again, eying off the soft-pack label like he’d rediscovered a long forgotten vice. “You just deal with it.”

“Don’t be so practical. It’s easy for you,” Dan said, tossing his extinguished cigarette into the water. He laid back, and looked up at the spangle of stars emerging with the night. “I’m only here because I tried to do what I thought was the right thing and now half the nation would put my head on a stick for a sackful of coins.”

“That tends to happen when you carve a path through Empire troops to tip-off your rebel older brother of his imminent demise, Dan,” Aaron joked. No one likes seeing their younger brother a victim to the way of the world itself. He needed to lighten the tone.

“That’s not the point. Back there, wearing a disguise, looking at my own bounty poster, surrounded by people ready to cash it in, and almost getting found out by the guards… I just didn’t know what to do,” Dan continued.

“Well, we got there in the end,” Aaron said.

“I know. It's just...we had this little plan, and I couldn’t figure out how to play along when things weren’t going right. And I just panicked. I got scared, I thought we would get found out, and carted back to jail or killed, and I…don’t know,” Dan finished.

“You started screaming about how it was a good day for a splinter in the foot,” Aaron scoffed.

“That was the freaking password!”

“It’s more of a subtle thing, Dan. Like, you see the mark, and give yourself a reason to stop next to him and talk. You stop and check your foot for a splinter and the password is you telling him what you’re doing. ‘Ouch, ouch, my foot,’ all that rubbish,” Aaron explained.

“You never told me that,” Dan argued. He propped up on his elbows and watched Aaron start to slacken a rope around a ‘T’ bar. A breeze began to fill their sails. Dan shot up and got to work as well, preparing their vessel to sail out and away to a destination unknown.

“It doesn’t matter. We just know subterfuge isn’t your strong point, at least right now,” Aaron said. They were quiet for a time, wrapping ropes and setting pins and the sails and soon they were off. The shoreline, and Radasanth, and all of the drama inside melted away into the dusk. Dan felt safer for it.

“You know what the worst thing is, brother?” Dan asked rhetorically. “I don’t know what my reason is now.”

“Your reason?” Aaron asked, confused.

“Yeah. I found you. Really, it was a simple thing. I set out to look for you, it got complicated, and I found you,” Dan said, taking another cigarette from Aaron and sucking it down without spluttering like a steam engine this time. “Here we are. What now?”

“Let’s go inside, Dan. It’s getting cold,” Aaron said, side-tracking the conversation to buy himself time to answer Dan honestly. The truth was that Aaron didn’t really know what to say.

[Etheryn]

They moved to the cabin and out of the quickly settling chill. Inside, their smoke coiled in a cloud above them, each tendril made clear by a dimmed kerosene lantern. They cleared a space for a map among the messy piles of star charts and navigation tools, and huddled around the skipper’s table.

“What did you think would happen?” Aaron asked. “When you were in Radasanth, when you found out about where I was, what I was doing, who I fought for.”

“I…well, yeah. That’s the problem. I didn’t think. I just did stuff,” Dan said, like his autonomy in setting about difficult tasks was praiseworthy. “I knew it was the right thing to do and that’s all there is to it.”

“The right thing and ‘the right thing’ aren’t always the same, Dan,” Aaron lectured. “Truly, I am grateful for nothing more than a chance to be with family once more. It’s brilliant, it’s a good thing,” he went on.

“But what?”

“But I think...that ‘the right thing’ would’ve been to hold back, and not dive headlong into this mess...just on my sake,” Aaron said. The truth was hard and bitter.

“Really?” Dan asked, slightly wounded.

“There was an order to things. I chose my path, and I was ready to deal with the consequences. For reasons unknown, when I went home to Baitman’s Bay, you weren’t there. Mum and Dad were gone. That was how it was, and I kept on going,” Aaron continued. He wished there was some cover to hide behind, a visor for his face, something to conceal the plain sombreness and disappointment.

“But here we are,” Dan said. “Cast out. Corone says ‘not welcome,’ am I right?”

Aaron nodded. “Here we are. Not welcome.”

Dan went on. “Not welcome, and more than that, not sure. On what the Hell to do, why the Hell to do it, or why and what the Hell we’re doing now.” He stubbed his cigarette, and started prying away the staple from a crate in the corner of the cramped cabin, marked ‘R’, twelve-dash-three-dash-forty-nine.

“I was sure, I’ll tell you that much. When The Boss was around, all I had to do was whatever it took for him to not kick me up the arse. Now…well, it’s different,” Aaron said.

“You’re saying you’re as lost as me since your commander died? Man, it was always going to happen,” Dan said, amidst mumbling to himself as he searched through clattering lengths of metal and stretching leathers inside the crate. “No one lives to old age when they’re that much of a self-righteous, arrogant bastard.”

Aaron’s tone snap-froze to pure ice. “Don’t talk about the dead so flippantly, Dan. Especially the dead you never knew.”

Dan stopped what he was doing, turned to face Aaron, and put a sheathed knife, a hammer, and a pistol crossbow aside. He closed up the crate and pinned the staple back in. The brothers stared at each other, unwavering, and vacuum silent.

“I’m sorry,” Dan said. “I am.”

“That’s fine,” Aaron said. He paused to think back on the watery grave he’d tossed The Boss into, some two days earlier, after the sum of injuries finally caught up.

“Arrow wounds, cuts, stabs, broken bones, internal bleeding, right?” Dan asked.

“And more,” Aaron nodded, having been working first-aid on The Boss night and day since their escape from the shore and salt-mine prison.

“And with all that, the guy still whooped more arse than I knew there was arse to whoop. He was tough,” Dan said, making recompense for his earlier rude comment.

Dan was still figuring out the complexities of his brother, his morals and beliefs. They were blood, but it’d been a long time since they truly knew each other—years, even—and they were still learning.

“Tough as they come," Aaron nodded, and eyed off the weapons. "Your friend Alfonse delivered well. Why’re you pulling out the gear now?” Aaron questioned.

“We’re sitting here talking about the why. We’re not talking about the how,” Dan said. He nudged a foot at the toolkit; the knife, newly forged; the hammer, ready to rain down on heads of nails or of flesh; the crossbow, repaired and gassed and itchy to be useful.

“What idea have you got in your head? Who is it going to piss off?” Aaron said, and clicked his tongue a warning rhythm of ‘tut-tut-tut.’

“The how. We’ve got problems. We can’t just sail forever. We can’t go back to Corone, at least without compounding those problems into even bigger ones,” Dan said, and he untied the drawstring of his brown leather pouch and tossed it atop the range of weaponry as well. “So, we have to figure out how we’re going to get through. We go to land. We get shelter, we get safe. We figure out our ‘reasons’ then.”

“The how is more important than the why,” Aaron agreed. “This is what I’m talking about, little brother.” He smiled, the thin lines of his angular face creasing into a smile, and the rogue blue of his eyes bright with an approving wink. “We’ll just deal with things.”

“You agree?” Dan said.

“I agree. Let’s set up a base somewhere.”

“And on the way, you can teach me,” Dan said. “You know… To fight better. To walk the walk better. Talk the talk. All that stuff.”

Aaron pursued his lips and tapped on the table, pondering his decision with a rhythm. “How about a trade?”

“Like?” Dan asked.

“You be honest. Tell me what happened in Baitman’s Bay. All of it. Tell me where Mum and Dad went. And what happened. Tell me why you…why you can do the ‘things’ you can do,” Aaron said to Dan.

“That’s heavy, man,” Dan answered. “But I was always planning to fill you in. Let’s start…”

Dan and Aaron spent whole night talking of what they’d done and where they’d been. Aaron learned of Dan’s wandering years after leaving Baitman’s Bay, and his internal struggle to figure out what to do with his potential, and how much responsibility to heap on himself for his mother’s passing and his father’s vanishing. He learned of Dan's magic, growing in strength and focus yet still unnamed and mysterious.

Dan learned of Aaron’s service with the Empire, and his reasons for defecting to the Rangers, much of which Dan had already witnessed himself in the crooked and horrid men of 43rd garrison—which Aaron praised him for helping to dismantle.

They talked until their throats ran dry, then slaked with whiskey, talked some more. Dan smoked and coughed and Aaron laughed at his little brother like he’d sorely missed doing. They figured out where they wanted to go, what they’d do when they arrived, and how it should all pan out.

It was decided. Their father Roland, and mother Julia, would remain unknowns for the time being. They would go to the cold lands, where frigid winds sap the desire for men to give chase. A place where any would-be followers would think twice about continuing the hunt for bounty and glory. They would carve out a place, and simply live, without having justify their purpose in doing so.

“Ever heard of Salvar, Dan?”

“When I was a kid. To the north, yeah? Full of ice giants and snowmen and popsicles.”

“Not quite,” Aaron laughed. “We’ll go there.”

That's all for this thread! Derp.

[Jasmine]

Alrighty, I talked with MetalDrago for a little help in figuring this out and here we go:

Crossbow repairs: 385
8 bolts: 150
Claw hammer: 150
Serum separated: 3 copper vials: 75
Plynt shards: 225
Magim hide gloves: 200
Steel knife, blackened: 75

Grand total: 1260

If you'll just do a quick post to confirm, I'll add this to have GP taken care of.
.

[Etheryn]

Looks all good to me! Thanks!

[Jasmine]

In that case... Etheryn gains the above mentioned items and loses 1260 GP. Pleasure doing business with you :) .