26 – Never Cross a Grandma Because They Are Dangerous.
"You do realize you're about at least five times stronger than me, right?" Crow said, "If something happens, I'm not the one they should be worried about."
"Yes." She glanced back, just a flicker of red eyes under the hood. "But they don't know that. And if they come for you, I get to handle it while they're looking the wrong way."
The logic almost warms me. Faking being a weak noble girl, while I am the bait... the stronger one hidden, it is a very good plan, she has stealth abilities too, and she single-handedly bought time against the Hero in that fight, that feat alone was too much, the thing is...
"So I'm the decoy," he said.
"You're the guard." She faced forward again. "Try to look like you're protecting me and not the other way around."
"Right..." He fell into step beside her, adjusting his posture to something that might pass for a vigilant knight. "And if someone asks why the noblewoman is walking?"
"Then she doesn't answer." Sharon pulled the hood a little lower. "Nobles don't explain themselves to strangers on the road."
Crow considered that. "That's actually better than my horse excuse."
"You had a horse excuse?"
"I was working on one, like you didn't think about it and just walked..."
"Don't."
Crow didn't answer that one. Ahead, the trees were thinning, grey light bleeding through the branches.
They walked without speaking, the undergrowth thinning until the trees pulled apart and gave way to scrub grass, and the scrub grass gave way to the road, old mud and neglect had taken most of it back, but the wheel ruts still ran deep in the wet clay.
Finally a normal forest, normal air, normal ground, normal everything, I almost forgot what was normal.
Crow looked at the tree line on reflex.
"Hey." A man's voice, carrying. "I saw you two right there, come out of the forest! Nobody comes out from there, who are you?"
A man leaned against a wagon with his arms crossed, he was a middle-aged man, built broad through the shoulders, a sword at his hip that had accumulated a fine layer of rust along the guard. Behind him, scattered around a campfire and several other wagons, four more men had stopped eating to watch.
Crow looked at them.
Then at the man.
"That's not really your business," he said pleasantly. "Don't you think it's rude to interrogate people in the middle of a road? Especially armed ones?"
The man's face went red. "Are you calling us bandits? We're an escort, we're camped here so the merchant can rest, I can't explain the details, but—"
"You can't share your details," Crow said, "but apparently we have to share ours. Very generous of you, old man."
The man shoved off the wagon. Three strides closed the distance.
Smack.
His knuckle met Crow's cheek and stopped there on his face. Crow's expression didn't change.
"Is that it?" Crow almost laughed when he said that.
Smack.
The man hit the ground.
"Self-defense," Crow said, to nobody in particular. "He swung first."
The camp erupted. Bowls dropped, boots scraped clay, and four men came from different directions with the confident expressions on their faces; it was obvious that they were used to solving problems this way.
Crow sighed.
"Genuinely," he said, ducking under the first swing, "what kind of honest escort doesn't just let two people walk past?" He redirected a second punch by the wrist, let the man's momentum carry him past. "This is embarrassing for everyone."
Still holding his bowl, one of the heavier men peeled off toward Sharon.
"I know your type," he called back at Crow, grinning. "Big mouth, hides behind the girl when things get real—"
He reached for her.
"AAARRGHH! SHE'S INSANE!"
The scream cut through the camp noise. Crow looked over. The man's hand sat in a dark puddle on the ground, separate from the man. The man himself knelt staring at it.
A tent flap opened.
The figure that ducked through had to duck, because he stood roughly two meters tall, built like something that had eaten a blacksmith and kept growing. He looked at the scene, five men in various states of collapse, one screaming on his knees, Sharon standing with her cloak still perfectly settled, and shook his head slowly.
"Pathetic," he said, "Can't even rob two people... I will make things easier for you… your money or your life."
Crow smiled.
"See?" He drew the Zweihänder from his back and held it one-handed. "I knew you guys were bandits."
Three cuts. Five counts. The spacing between them barely enough for a breath.
[Level up]
Crow wiped the blade on the nearest man's coat and looked up at the giant still standing by the tent. He checked the giant’s status—read the Intelligence score—and muffled a laugh, struggling to keep it under control.
***
[Status]
Level: 5
Name: Thomas
Title: The Bully
Class: Warrior
Strength: 23
Intelligence: 6
Agility: 11
Constitution: 40
***
The giant's jaw tightened. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing." Crow waved it off. "Just looking at your face."
"I'll kill you." The giant rolled his neck, the pop audible from three meters. "I’ll take everything you have. And the girl comes with me."
He looked at Sharon when he said it.
Crow put his hand over his face.
Then he started laughing, but after a few seconds, he stopped completely.
A silence.
"...Are you serious?" he said, "You can see your friends on the ground. In pieces. You're looking at that and what you decided to say was…" He shook his head. "There are limits to low intelligence, man. There really are—"
The giant swung. A two-handed sword, fast for his size, aimed clean at Crow's neck.
SHLINK.
Crow caught it bare-handed against the flat, held it, the edge a centimeter from his throat, and tilted his head.
"—Didn't anyone ever teach you to wait until someone's finished talking?"
He pulled the blade forward, twisted, and released it upward in one smooth motion. The sword turned end over end against the sky.
The giant looked up.
Then he dropped to his knees.
"Please…" His voice had shed its threat entirely, tears running down his face in genuine tracks. "I didn't know. I'm sorry. Please!"
Crow stared at him. Then at Sharon.
She looked back.
Crow was silent for a second. "Give me everything you're carrying." A brief pause. "And I'll let you live."
He did. Crow bagged everything into a dimensional pouch Sharon had and tied the man's wrists with cord from the camp supplies.
"Hey, wait." The giant pulled at the rope. "You said you'd let me go."
"You're not dead, are you?"
"I'm tied up!"
"Yes, and not dead." Crow pocketed the pouch. "I'm not seeing the problem."
Sharon had already moved to the wagons. She pulled back the canvas on the second one and went still.
"...help..." The voice from inside came low and exhausted. "Please… get me out of here..."
A short, round man, covered in bruises from several days ago, blinked up at them from the wagon bed. They helped him out, found water and dried meat from the camp stores, and sat him on a crate until color returned to his face.
"Thank you." He held the cup with both hands. "Those men took me at the crossroads. I’m a merchant, and I was heading to the city.” A pause. “They killed my escorts, and took others from the road… brought them to the city, but I don’t know why."
And there it is. The “merchant event.”
"Why isn't the kingdom intervening?" Crow asked.
The man set his cup down carefully. "Something large is happening inside the city. The guard has pulled back from low-priority threats to focus on a single individual, the others are preparing for war and a lot of things are happening." He looked uncomfortable. "Whoever they're watching, they consider everything else secondary."
Crow kept his expression still, but something turned over behind his eyes.
The troublemaker, I remember that quest. Right on schedule.
The merchant reached into his coat and pressed a small object into Crow's hand. "Take this as a gift, it's a luxury item, a new release from the city. Please take it, for helping me."
A pocket watch. Dark casing, brass fittings, gears visible through a small glass face on the back. Far too precise for what this world was supposed to be capable of. He turned it over. Engraved on the inside of the case, small and neat.
Matsushita.Japanese name.
He kept his face still.
Someone came here before me and built things. An inventor, probably. I know about electricity and a lot of modern things, but I can’t bring them to this world, because I know about them, but not how to make and use them. Definitely, it’s an inventor. This is… out of hand; this isn’t The Last Days of Men RPG that I know anymore.
“Thanks for helping me, if you guys are going to the city, if it’s not that much… can I ask for escorting me to—”
Sharon didn’t waste time. “—Yes, we can do it for you.”
“Thank you! Thank you so much my lady.”
Crow didn’t say anything, and they climbed into the back of the wagon, pulled the curtain closed, and the wheels started turning after the horse was liberated from the cord tying it to the tree.
Modern technology… better think about this later; I need to do something more important now.
The wagon rocked in the ruts.
Crow leaned back against the side panel, watching Sharon from the corner of his eye. Something had been sitting wrong with her since the camp. He let the silence breathe for a moment, then spoke to her. "While we have time," he said, keeping his voice low, "there's something you should know about this mission, that just came to mind."
She glanced at him sideways. "Go ahead."
"The man causing trouble in the city…" He paused, with a thoughtful expression. "I know who he is… probably, more like I know what kind of person he is. Long story short, we can try to recruit him; it will be a good thing for us."
Sharon's expression didn't change, but her eyes sharpened fractionally.
She was sitting next to him in the carriage. Crow looked away from her, rested his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped, and said, "I don’t remember everything, but I know he suffered a severe head injury, because of it he lost the capacity for empathy and things like that... but he’s a good fighter; we can recruit him."
Sharon was quiet for a moment.
If we have this guy… things will become easier. I remember that when this was a game, his side quest was hard to finish because the guy was too tough, and you needed to win against him twice, because the first time he just ran away easily.
She finally spoke, "You're saying he can be recruited, but it seems like he is a liability too hard to control."
"I'm saying he doesn't have to be." Crow looked at the pocket watch in his hand, and turned it over once. "Someone with that kind of power… someone who's been rattling an entire city, pulling the guard off every other threat, making the inquisitors reroute… that's not someone you put down if you can avoid it. That's someone you need on your side before the wrong people find him first."
"Makes sense, but that wasn’t the order we received from the Queen," she said.
Crow slipped the watch into his coat again. "We're going to the city anyway. Finding him before the inquisitors do is a plus for us. Gathering some information is good, but Alice will understand us adding a new ally while we're here."
[Persuasion level 1 is active]
Oh no, not this panel again…
Sharon looked at the curtain, to be more precise, she looked at nothing. Then, she spoke again. "You know where he'll be… right?"
"Burning down places of criminal organizations, trying to find the guy who almost killed him," Crow said, "Probably."
Silence…
"Then we find him while looking for information." She settled back against the wood. "And you explain the rest on the way."
He yawned and said, “Well, I'm a bit tired, I'm going to take a quick nap here, and when we arrive just wake me up, or if there's a fight, as for the details, well, that's basically it. I know he's hunting a gang or something like that, we just need to look for a place commonly used by many people in the area with the highest criminality.”
Crow closed his eyes.
Sharon approached him a little and said, “Crow, don’t sleep now, we are almost there. Didn’t you sleep a lot at the palace?”
“Yeah… it is more of a mental fatigue…”
The wagon rocked, his breathing slowed a little more.
He was asleep before Sharon finished the thought she'd been deciding whether or not to say.
Some time later…
Fsssh!
The curtain flew open abruptly, letting in weak late afternoon sunlight and air warmer than that of Alice’s kingdom.
"Well, well, what do we have here..." A guard's voice. "Just a couple and some goods… it seems you were telling the truth after all, merchant.”
Crow snored. His head had migrated at some point to Sharon's thighs, and he lay there completely inert, breathing slow and even, entirely unaware of the border inspection two feet away.
Sharon sat perfectly still.
The guard pulled the curtain shut. "Tch… move through."
The merchant replied, “Thank you, officer, have a good afternoon.” Then the wagon rolled.
Sharon looked down at the top of Crow's head.
She didn't move him.
"Crow." She touched his shoulder. Then less gently. "Crow. We're here."
He didn't move.
She bent closer and, very quietly, directly into his ear whispered, "Crow, fight, there's a fight."
He sat straight up and buried his face directly into her chest.
"Huh?" He blinked, still half-asleep. "...Maybe that was a dream."
THUD.
"Everything alright back there?" the merchant called.
"Fine, everything is fine..." Sharon said toward the curtain.
Crow peeled himself off the floor of the wagon.
“…Where's the fight?”
She said nothing, just looked away from him; her face had gone from white to pink.
Ah, so she is now playing jokes… great.
The wagon stopped, and the merchant called to them inside, “We’re here! Thanks for the escort. If you guys ever need anything, I work at the Onyx Company, right in front of Bricks and Many Things.”
Bricks and Mini... Many Things... It’s almost the name of that corrupt company from my previous world. Luckily, they lost, even with the police's help, I was a kid back then; better just to forget that, now I am here, and I need to make sure this world doesn’t end. Right, Bricks and Many Things... in front of it, I’ll try to remember it in case I need the merchant’s help in the future.
Sharon stood up “Thanks for the ride,” she said, and moved toward the curtain at the back of the wagon. She grabbed the cloth and said quietly, “Let’s go, Crow… how long are you going to stay lying there?” Then she left the wagon.
AHH, I remembered just now, I completely forgot about that bandit tied to the tree, but oh well, it doesn't matter, someone will find him eventually and who knows, maybe he'll actually reflect on his life of crime. Right, I’m thinking too much. Let’s just do the things I must do.
He stood up and, after thanking the merchant, he left as well. They were near the city center, where a lot of tough-looking fellas and dangerous-looking girls were everywhere; a grandma was dragging a skinny guy, who looked half-dead, into an alley.
Is this really the Hero's city? I remember it vividly; this is not what it was supposed to be. I know that a powerful gang leader here is a grandma, but seeing one actually doing this kind of thing on the street is just too much.
The grandma looked up after wiping her forehead with a bloodied hand, and they made eye contact.
Huh?