Baggage Acquired

As David stealthily makes his way through this town square, he sees a group of guards ganging up on some poor soul. They’re kicking this person mercilessly, shouting obscenities and taunting her. He thinks, “I wonder what’s going on there.”

In front of him appears a magical screen. It has a list of every person involved, the central figure, a young elven girl, the victim. She’s been accused of stealing bread. Her bag, and its contents, are strewn upon the ground. She can’t be but 12 years old. Her family are refugees. She’s crying out for help, but bystanders are ignoring her, keeping their gazes averted. The guards, on the other hand, have fully replete biographies, with a long list of criminal histories before they were hired.

They’re scum. Worse than scum, they’re unfit to cast judgement on innocent people. David’s temper flares. He slowly, ruefully approaches this beat-down. The girl is crying, begging for her life. They keep kicking away.

David stands before them. They haven’t noticed him yet. As one gives a solid swing of his leg, aimed at her head, his leg shatters into pieces. Frozen splinters ring and shower upon the pavement. He collapses to the ground, clutching what’s left of his former limb.

He cries out in pain. Immediately, the rest of them turn to David, shouting out in protest.

“DID YOU DO THIS?”, one of them shouts, angrily.

He freezes in place. His buddies turn to look at him. His mouth is stuck open, his whole body frozen, his hand on his sword. Like a julienne cut, long, thin strands of him fall to the pavement with a sickening, wet series of thuds.

The guards are speechless. One of them gets the courage to rush David. This one disappears in an instant, which gives the others a momentary pause. They stutter, catching their balance, stumbling. The elf girl is now sitting up, bruised and battered. She’s watching this carefully.

David thinks to himself, “I wish these scum were out of my sight.”

That very moment, the crowd of guards vanishes into thin air. Their corpses, in whatever various states they were, were dumped in a valley hundreds of miles away, in mid-air. They collapsed into a lifeless pile of flesh. He steps up to the little elven girl and extends his hand.

An indelible expression of terror fills her face. The guards were bad enough; this guy just made them disappear. She hesitates for a moment, then takes his hand.

He hauls her to her feet, eyeing her intently. He leans in closer.

“What’s your name?”

“Sara”, she replies, meekly.

“Thank you for saving me.” There are tears welling up in her eyes.

She darts forward and gives David a deep, sorrowful hug. She’s weeping, loudly.

Her long, green, frazzled hair comes to rest all over David’s leg armor. He can’t help but feel sorry for her. He lays his hand upon her head.

“Everything will be alright. We should go. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

She fights through her tears and agrees. Before they set off, David heals her wounds. Leading him by the hand, the two of them duck through narrow alleyways and end up at a terrible, run-down warehouse. Her parents are there. They’re truly shocked at this strange man she’s just dragged into their home. Once she explains the situation, however, her father vigorously shakes his hand and begs his forgiveness.

David takes this opportunity to ask the same questions he asked the Orcish king. He gets the same answers. The populace is enslaved by the Slimes. The guards were hired directly out of the prison population, set loose upon the civilians as a form of punishment, and anything they do is swept under the rug.

Disgusting.

Sara’s father begs David to take her with him. “Any place you’re going will be better than here. You can protect her better than I can. Please, I beg you, ensure my daughter survives.”

He takes pity on them. Despite explaining the danger of what he plans to do, Sara’s family is hell-bent on pawning her off on him. David does his best to give the family a healthy sum of money, generated from worthless household goods, to tide them over. Her father insists on taking everyone out to dinner; David reluctantly agrees, despite the inherent security risk.

This quaint little family drags him to an “izakaya”, a place where you’re encouraged to eat as much as you can, and drink as much as you can. They chat him up relentlessly, probing where he’s from, what he did before he came here, how he got his powers, how he saved their daughter. He indulges them, laughing all the way. The barkeep can scarcely believe what he’s hearing.

Before long, the entire restaurant is crowded around David’s little table. Adventurers, old men, and mages have filed in, begging my slightly-tipsy son for demonstrations of magic they’d never seen before.

A beer glass is transformed into a statue of the barkeep, a spitting image of him. That statue is then transformed into a pile of gold coins. Then, they’re turned into a gun. David fires the gun off into the ceiling, to applause. The barkeep is upset. David tosses a coin up into the air, which hermetically seals itself to the bullet hole, transforming perfectly into the gap in the ceiling, fixing it without a trace. The barkeep cheers. The whole group cheers.

All the while, Sara, the little elven girl, is beset with a mixture of admiration and sorrow, watching this strange man. Who is he? Why did he pick her? Does she really deserve his help? These thoughts weigh heavily on her.

After a while, the family is tapped out. The father is unconscious, Sara’s mother is tearing her hair out, wondering how they’ll get home. David gives a respectful, entertaining farewell to the restaurant’s patrons, leaving a generous tip, and teleports the family home. Sara hears the generous, cheering applause of the drunken townsfolk, before they all pop into existence in their living room again.

At once, David and Sara’s mother set to work to drag the dad to his bed. He’s out like a light, drooling on himself. David’s given a spare bedroom and a mat to sleep on. As he climbs into bed, he thinks to himself.

“I’ve got to protect these people, no matter what. They don’t deserve what’s happened to them.”

Unbeknownst to him, the instant he uttered this, a protective barrier erected itself around the family’s quaint townhome. Directly encasing it was a stealth barrier, a figment of his thoughts for the family to remain hidden and out of harm’s way.

Hours later, in the dead of night, outside the family’s modest townhome, a creepy, quiet clinking noise echoes against the alleyway walls. Clink, clink, clink. Bones on pavement.

Gozu, Uragas’s henchman, clinks his way down the cobblestone street, his great axe hung across his back. Mindlessly, he shambles forward. He pauses for a moment, peering at this run-down townhouse with his red, glowing eyes, then continues on. Everywhere he goes, a wispy, black fog fills the street, at ankle level, dissipating as he trudges forwards. The icy blade of his axe sweats in the air, leaving little droplets on the dry cobblestone.

He had sensed the barriers, but didn’t know what it was there for. He hadn’t received orders yet, anyway. A few more steps, and he pauses again. This quarter’s search is complete. Time for the next one. Anyone stupid enough to challenge him is another opportunity to hone his axe blade on their skull. He opens up a portal in front of him, and gingerly steps his way into it. All that’s left in the street is a steady stream of water droplets, and the remnants of that bitter, black fog.

The next morning comes. With a gentle farewell, and Sara’s well-being entrusted to him, David sets out into the street with her. Her parents could not be convinced to keep her, even with the morning’s sobriety. The living conditions in this city must really, really be terrible, he thinks to himself.

She’s having the time of her life. Going out alone was forbidden, as a rule. She’d only been to the market and the public food pickup. She ogles the sights and sounds of this horrible, run-down city, hanging off of David’s shoulders. He doesn’t get why she’s so excited.

A pickpocket tries the classic bump-and-grab tactic on him. He stops after a few steps. David turns to look at him. The would-be robber’s eyes are wide with fear, he can’t speak. His shoes have been welded to the pavement. Sara instinctively knows what just happened. She blows a raspberry with her tongue at him.

David transforms the robber’s shirt into gold coins, jingles them in his face, destroys them in an instant, then delivers a solid kick to his stomach, sprawling him out on the pavement, knocking him out of his shoes.

Both he and Sara share a laugh at this ruffian as he scurries away.