Every City's Dirt (Quill)

Terrel forced herself to flinch at the man's behavior, remembering that Marcus was supposed to be someone who put everyone on edge. Quickly, she reached her free hand across the table, resting it on Andolais' shoulder in somewhat of a warning gesture. Tilting her head to the side, she grimaced ever so slightly, "Don't antagonize the mage, would you? I've seen him take a kid's head clean off just by staring him down; it's bloody terrifying." She started to remove her hand, hesitated, and then completed the gesture anyway, resting her hand back on the table while doing her best to look nervous. The woman could feel heat flooding to her cheeks already--a good enough guise as any.

"His name's Marcus," she said matter-of-factly, "and he's been with me since I left Darunia. He's plenty loyal, no need to worry, but he doesn't much take to horsing around, you understand. Find us work and we'll get it done right well for you, just let me worry about him. He can be a bit... ah... sensitive." She shivered a little bit at that, as if to suggest a bad memory. Leaning back in her seat, she tried to relax a bit, taking a sip of her drink and guarding her face from a wince of the rancid mixture. These people in Castle-Town didn't know how to mix the simplest of drinks.

She tried to change the subject, though depending on how he still felt about the mage thing, that might backfire. Terrel didn't much want to linger on that part of the conversation, though. "So, what kinds of work can we help you with, mister?"

Marcus was sweating. The bar was hot, and the hood was making him feel like his whole head was overheating. He couldn't see, but he could hear, and he could sense. His Hylian sixth sense was going wild with so many dangerous men so close by, but he could feel the danger and menace radiating off this man like malevolent candlelight.

His heart jumped. The man was addressing him! Him! Marcus' eyes widened in fear, but he took special care not too flinch away when the outline of the man's face became disturbingly clear. Terrel began to talk quickly to try and bail him out, and Marcus decided to help in his own way.

Terrel said he was dangerous? He would verify her claim. He knew that outright magic would be stupid, especially since his magic was (as Terrel pointed out) hardly the kind of thing this crowd would be impressed with. Every person had a unique life signature, energy that radiated from their body like an aura. People well-versed in magic or born with an extraordinary amount of natural ability were able to actually *see* such auras, but even the most mundane of Hylians could sense a person's energy when it was threatening. It was a basic survival technique, passed down through the ages by the primal Hylians of old. Marcus tapped into his magic and thought deep, dark thoughts. He went back in time to when he had seen his sister processed down through the caves, went back to the loss, the anger, the hatred he had experienced then. He used his magic to imbue his aura with these feelings, which the mundane Hylian would receive as threatening and (hopefully) intimidating vibes.

Marcus couldn't see what happened, but he heard the man say, "Right." His voice wasn't trembling, but it was a far cry from the arrogant, angry commands from a minute earlier. Marcus threw a quick prayer of thanks to Farore for both his magic and Terrel's skills at diplomacy. "Nothing too complicated," the voice went on, "let's call it... redistributing goods. If you get my drift. That too much for you?"

The woman felt a chill run up her spine as Marcus did something over there, though she couldn't exactly put her finger on what it was, just that it made her feel incredibly uncomfortable all at once. Sometimes she got that feeling when a man would follow her through the woods or an alley, but that didn't really help her sort the emotion. Whatever it was, though, it seemed like Andolais probably got a whiff of it too, and he took the bait to switch the topics.

"Redistributing, eh?" she said, easing her voice back into a more comfortable tone, now that the tension was fading. "Sure can. What's the gig?" Terrel took another drink from her glass, forcing herself to smile over the rim of it. As she set it down, the woman folded her arms and leaned onto the table a bit, adding to her previous question, "Or is that part for later?" She'd heard that in larger criminal organizations they could be as bureaucratic as they people they stole from. She didn't really see the point in all that--after all, why not just work for the government or a bank and then steal from the people that way? Didn't seem like much of a difference to her.

It would tell her a bit, though, depending on if he could give her a job immediately or not for a few days. If it were delayed, the likelihood that she would do something important was quite a bit higher, seeing as they could set things up and delegate the tasks properly. Anything immediately would probably just be roughing up some guy who had just a little to much money, or it could be attacking the next poor merchant Andolais could point out. Either way, though, it was out of her hands now.

Andolais leaned back and propped his feet up against the table. "Nothing major," he said casually. "Just a little retrieval. You may have seen Fish-lips earlier; stupid guppy botched up a job for me and," he chuckled, "it's gonna cause me a world of grief." He pulled a wrinkled piece of paper, folded it up, and tossed the paper airplane to the girl. "It's a map of the merchant's place," he said. "Get that Skull for me, and you're in. Well," he grinned, "more than in. I'll bump you up a bit, as a personal favor." He drawled the last bit and looked at the girl through lazy eyelids. "What's your name, puppet?"

Before Terrel could answer, the door to the pub banged open. A group of soldiers broke into the bar, their shining armor and glistening helmets at odds with the rest of the dingy establishment. "Andolais," the lead guard announced loudly to the suddenly silent pub, "you're under arrest on suspicion of organizing acts of larceny and murder."

Now, Marcus was not a crass Hylian. Swearing was something that he rarely ever degraded himself to. But at this moment, when the pub exploded in chaos, he could not help but let loose an expletive. Andolais flew to his feet, cussing like the worst of sailors, and fled for the back door. The guards must've followed them here to this place, having heard the captured mage's testimony as to Andolais' location. The pub's patrons were flowing out like water freed from a dam, rapidly pursued by the guards. Marcus sighed, crossed his arms, and waited for this catastrophe to end. Terrel was not going to be happy about this.

She wasn't. Under better circumstances, she might've bothered to raise an eyebrow for Marcus' outburst, but she was far too preoccupied with a string of her own curse words sliding off her tongue. Thankfully for the two of them, though, it seemed like the guards were more interested in capturing their wayward prey than trying to detain everyone else in the bar. Hopefully it would stay that way. Without capture seemingly imminent, however, Terrel could feel her face growing red hot in frustration. She'd been so close to following that blasted snake back into his hole!

Rage building in her temples, she let out a furious yell and stomped her feet on the ground, standing up quickly and flipping the table on its side in her anger. While her own outburst was immediately absorbed into the din of the bar, not standing out one bit, Terrel stood by her seat. Breathing heavily, she focused on trying not to go flip something else over just for the sake of it. It wouldn't solve her problem, even though it would make her feel better.

Grimacing now, the woman glanced around the common room, which was an absolute mess, though not many people were left in it besides her and the kid. Something caught her eyes, though, and she turned to look at it more closely.

On the seat next to where Andolais had been sitting lay a parcel, a blue bandanna tied together at the top like a miniature napsack. She recognized the fabric, though from where she couldn't say for certain. Without thinking she hastily grabbed it and untied the thing, hoping that it might offer some clue as to where the snake might actually make its home. Out of the bandanna fell a pair of earrings, blue firedrops by the looks of them, though there were some symbols she didn't recognize on them. Pocketing the whole thing, she decided to figure it out later.

"Come on kid," she said, irritation and bitterness evident in her voice, though not directed toward him, "we better get out of here before this gets ugly for us too."