“What would you recommend for someone heading out into the wilds?”
“Well,” the middle-aged shopkeeper said, pointing out some items in the display case, “these scent-removing brushes are quite popular. So are these camouflage cloaks, to reduce your visibility. Both come in quite handy when hunting skittish prey.”
Dario nodded, but waited for the shopkeeper to go on. The cloak wasn’t necessary for him. The brush might come in handy, though he suspected that the noble or his guards might already have one or two.
“I’d also recommend this shell here. Lots of the water out there can’t be trusted. You just pour it in on this side,” the man said, pointing at an opening about twice the size of a coin, “and it’ll come out pure and clean from this side,” he finished, indicating a smaller hole.
“You can put that one aside,” Dario said.
“Here we have a launcher that fires hook and rope, though it does need to be recharged with air and fire Ki every few uses. Then we have here a shield that will-”
“Ooh, what’s this do?” Dario interrupted, pointing at a shiny pen.
“If used to write a contract, it will light up in case the contract is-”
“Meh.” He waved his hand dismissively, then excitedly pointed at another item. “That one looks fancy!”
“That is a kind of escape talisman, which will create a shroud of mist. I can walk you through our most popular ones…”
The shopkeeper stopped talking as Dario had suddenly walked over to a different part of the display.
“Okay, please tell me this one has a cool effect!” he said with wide eyes, pointing to a pair of stylized glasses, mostly black with some flashy gold inlays.
“Oh, that one’s been around for a while. All it does is protect from the glare of the pillar and conceal your eyes so people cannot see whether you are staring at them. It’s the concealing effect that has some people calling them ‘pervert glasses’,” the man said with a sigh.
Dario couldn’t help but grin as he thought of that effect. One downside of his eye Kaku was that they would light up when he ran Ki through them, making it obvious when he was investigating someone up close.
They went back and forth like this for a while, until there wasn’t anything left that caught his eye. In the end there were four items that he wanted to get: the water-purifying shell, the glasses, a set of basic antivenoms and then something that was apparently a new invention: a book that would show descriptions and uses of nearby natural treasures.
“That’ll be one hundred and twenty pearls, please,” the shopkeeper said, looking relieved that it hadn’t been a waste of his time.
“My friend!” Dario said with an even broader smile as he opened the latch on his backpack. “Why would you want something as boring as pearls when you could barter instead?”
He left the shop not much later with a satisfied grin, having traded for some of his own artefacts that were valuable but not so useful to him, such as a dagger that could store and release heat and a book that turned spoken words into writing.
Too excited to get more than a few hours of sleep that night, he decided to get an early start, wandering through the city on the way to the eastern gate.
There were few people on the streets this early, so when he spotted from afar a young noble in an overly dressy outfit in front of a fancy inn, it didn’t take him long to figure out that it was Hokori. While he was deciding whether to walk up to him or simply wait by the gate, a moving shadow caught his eye.
A bit of Ki to his eyes revealed a young boy creeping up on the noble and moving away just as stealthily with a fat purse and an artefact in his hands.
Definitely had that coming to him, Dario thought with a chuckle, but then he frowned as he thought it through. The noble would be in a foul mood. It’d be another mark on his honor, so they might even have to waste time combing the town to find the thief. Tenjin’s beard, he could even imagine being blamed for this somehow.
Better get that stuff back now.
He let out a long sigh before stashing his backpack somewhere safe and making his way up to the nearest roof.
It was lucky that the thief had taken an artefact. The aura of Ki was easy to follow, and then he was running over the rooftops, tracking the thief as he ducked through alleyways and climbed over fences. Clearly, the boy had an escape route mapped out and was moving through it quickly. Not bad.
Seeing that the alley ahead would turn to the right with no other sidestreets, he slid over the roof, letting himself drop down to stand right behind the corner with his arms crossed. If he was going to do this, better to do it with style. The boy bumped right into him and fell on his ass.
Dario stood there with his arms crossed over his green tunic covered with dark brown leathers, spiky hair sticking to every side, eyes covered by his fancy new black-and-gold glasses, smirking down at the surprised boy.
“Your plan wasn’t bad. Well executed, too. Probably would have worked just fine, if I wasn’t around,” he said, then held out his hand. “Just hand over the stuff and I’ll let you off the hook.”
“I-I’m really s-sorry, mister… I-it’s just that… we’re so hungry,” the teary-eyed boy stammered as he gathered the goods which were wrapped in a small black sack.
Dario relaxed a bit. “I get it, kid. Life can be hard. But I just can’t let you have this one.”
The boy nodded sadly, getting to his feet with the bag. He took a step forward, pretended to stumble, then chucked the bag right through Dario’s legs. His head snapped back to see a young girl grabbing it and running off, then around again to see the boy raising two middle fingers at him.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Screw you, uncle!”
With a curse, Dario went racing behind the girl, only slowly gaining on her despite his longer legs as she nimbly jumped into each alley they passed. Right after she cut to the left, he got ready to lunge and grab her by the collar, but then she ducked and crawled through a small opening under a fence.
He scampered up, just in time to see her disappear behind the next corner, then decided to get back on the rooftops instead of giving chase through the alleys. Once he was on, it was easier to track her as his eyes could still trace the faint aura of Ki from the artefact in the bag.
The girl slowed down, seeming to think that she’d gotten rid of him, which is when he jumped down, landing right in front of her. The girl just stood there, looking at him defiantly, which is when he noticed that she wasn’t holding any sack at all.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said angrily, scanning the surroundings until he caught a trace of the artefact’s Ki.
Once again he was racing through the narrow streets, swerving left and right, jumping over fences before finally climbing up to the rooftops again. He could tell that the crafty little thieves were on to his trick, looking up to track him instead of just over their shoulder.
Another boy had the sack now, dashing fast as a hare through the narrow alleyways. Right when he closed in from above, ready to pin the boy down, the little thief threw the black sack over a fence and into the arms of the first boy Dario had been chasing.
It was a neat trick, which, unfortunately for the kids, Dario saw through immediately. The sack he’d thrown was a decoy. The artefacts were still with the second boy. With a grin, Dario cast a faint image of himself jumping from rooftop to rooftop, as if pursuing the second one. Then, cloaking himself and moving more quietly, he patiently trailed the boy with the artefacts until he finally entered what looked like an abandoned old office. The windows and doors were mostly boarded up. The kid had entered through a hidden crawlspace, but Dario found a gap in the roof. The other two children soon found their way in as well.
“Wow, that was wild! Who was that uncle with the weird thing on his face?”
“No idea, he came out of nowhere. He was kinda fast for having such a big belly, huh?”
“Yeah. But we’re faster!” They laughed and shared high fives. “Stupid pudgy uncle!”
Dario frowned as he skulked through the shadows while they were busy celebrating, snatching up the sack with the pearls and artefact before revealing himself.
“Yoink! Who’s slow now, huh?”
The three children gasped and scattered while Dario laughed victoriously, until he heard the clinking of metal and realized they were just grabbing knives.
“Hey! What are you-”
He danced out of the way of a vicious two-handed stab from the girl, then slapped away a slash from one of the boys. The third one jumped in, screaming like a beast, but Dario simply side-stepped to leave the boy stumbling past.
“Stop that you feral little-”
The kids exchanged looks and began to coordinate their attacks to the point where he actually needed to push more Ki to his eyes, watching how their little muscles twitched to predict their movements. When they didn’t give up after a few rounds of him dancing around their attempts to skewer him, he got fed up.
“Enough!” he bellowed as he sent out a blinding flash of light that had the children stumbling back and clutching at their eyes.
“Tenjin’s balls, but you kids don’t know when to stop!”
He let the light linger around him, making him seem larger and more threatening.
“I’m not going to hurt you, so just back off,” he said, seeing that they finally seemed to be coming to their senses. “You’re lucky it’s only me coming after you. I’m from the Belt, I know what it’s like to live in poverty, alright? But that noble you stole from? He’s got two bodyguards, each of them an Amber!” he said, giving each of them a serious look, glad to see how their eyes widened when they realized their mistake.
He sighed, shaking his head. “Next time, choose your targets more carefully, alright?”
He made for the window, which seemed to be the easiest way out of this hideaway, when one of the boys spoke up.
“Uncle, you’re from the Belt? How did you learn to use Ki?”
Dario paused, then turned back and spoke to the kids for a while longer, sharing some of his background. Their names were Enzo, Andrea and Elio and they’d been orphaned a few years ago. Apparently it happened more often here that parents would set out into the wilds looking for riches or a Koto for themselves, but never returned.
“Will you come back?” Andrea asked sheepishly. She’d been the first to open up, the boys were a bit more cagey still.
“Could you teach us about Ki?” Enzo tried.
“Well, that’s, uhh…” Dario muttered, scratching at his head. “Look, it’s a trashgoat!” he shouted suddenly, pointing behind them. By the time they turned back around, Dario was nowhere to be seen, though he had left a few pearls behind on the floor.
His thoughts were still with the kids as he picked up his backpack and walked back in the direction of the gate. It would be nice to help them, but he wasn’t looking to become a full-time uncle or start an orphanage any time soon. There was no time for any of it. Besides, they had bags of tricks up their sleeves and had given him a good enough run for the loot. They’d be just fine.
He cursed as he realized the red crest was already up, hurrying once again through the many alleyways and streets until he finally arrived panting and sweating at the gate, where he spotted the noble with two of his guards.
“You’re late,” an angry Hokori said. “Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”
“You lost something on the way,” Dario said simply, tossing him the bag, then watching with satisfaction as Hokori’s eyes widened and his hand went to his belt. The young noble hadn’t even noticed.
“A thief?” Hokori said, bristling. “I’m starting to think my guards have a point if this is how little respect we get in this damn city. Maybe we should spend some time hunting that mongrel down.”
“They were appropriately punished,” Dario said. “It might be better not to waste any more of your, ah, precious time on this.”
The young noble’s eyes moved to the bag, then to the senior guard.
“It is true that your time is precious, my Lord. There is far more glory to be found in the wilds than in flogging a common thief. There are more of those than there are grains of rice on this pitiful floor.”
He sighed. “Fine, let’s be on our way then.”
Dario nodded, suppressing a relieved smile. He looked out at the landscape, fields for farming turning into sand and stones and tough, low brushes further out. When nobody moved or said anything, he looked back. Both guards and Hokori were staring at him expectantly.
“Hmm?” he raised an eyebrow.
“Well?” Hokori said, frowning at him.
“Well… What?” Dario shot back.
“You’re supposed to be our scout and guide. That is how you avoided more severe punishment, if you recall?”
Dario’s eyes widened a fraction, and he almost admitted to knowing nothing about the wilds, until he noticed the guards hands on their weapons and quickly recovered.
“Of course! Of course, I was merely, uhh, enjoying the view. Off we go! Off to find the very best Kotos!” he exclaimed, pivoting and marching off in what he hoped was the right direction. “By the way, what kind of beast did you say you wanted to hunt?”
The answer wouldn’t even matter, really, since Dario didn’t know anything about the beasts out in the wilds.
Probably should have at least bought a map, he thought.
But then he shrugged and marched on with a spring in his step. Wouldn’t it be less of an adventure, if he did?
