Private - The Criminal Influence

--Falderen Capital, Mid-day--​

So many voices, too many faces to memorize or remember. Vas remembered the first day he arrived at Brisshal, the look of other new players, their judgement of his appearance. It was interesting, just how fickle and strange everyone could be with their own personal opinions of others. A boy that looks like a thief? A thief that looks like a business man? A business man that has a family? So many connections beyond the first layer, but people never glance beyond that first layer... do they? They are just content with judging a person on mere looks, on the way they sound when they talk or whether they appear as an adult or child. How could one not be sickened by this prejudice and not claim it criminal?

Ah, but Vas was getting lost in his thoughts while laying upon the rooftop of a market building. He had been people watching, not out of hobby but out of boredom. He could have gone and picked off a few animals to help get more experience behind his fighting techniques or to gather gold to purchase more wares but he lacked the motivation currently to do either. So for now... his golden eyes would just have to focus on the many people all traveling about.

It was a good thing he did too, otherwise he wouldn't have noticed a large man having used a wire & hook styled object to pick-pocket something from someone's person and let it fall to the ground. Likely this man was hoping no one had noticed and would probably act as if he dropped it himself but Vas had another idea in mind.

Ah, that won't do will it? If I left things as is, there's likely a bad outcome to turn out, right?

Under normal circumstances, getting off a rooftop may have been difficult but Vas has poured a fair deal into his acrobat skill, while he wasn't swinging around or doing amazing flips from ledge to ledge. It allowed him to find the safest path down the building's side and he quickly ran over to the item on the road in question and picked it up.

Excuse me, but y--

Thief! Thief!

Of course, the thief was the very man calling Vas the thief, by the way he looked less suspicious than Vas, most people would be more willing to write him off as the thief than the man falsely accusing him. Vas shook his head and moved over towards the person that had the item slipped free from them by the other man.

Excuse me, but that man back there accusing me made this fall free from ya. I just picked it up before he could, hopefully he doesn't nab anyone else's stuff.

Whether Vas was believed or not, would be yet to be seen. He was beginning to lose all hope with others though... were everyone here the same with quick judgments? There was hope, but barely any of it left with Vas...

 

Most eyes in the busy market street were focused squarely on Madison, who, much to her annoyance, found herself the center of a potentially serious standoff.

The combatants: One short stack Caenis lad whose skin appeared to be more ink than flesh, the wallet he held in his outstretched hand that was most certainly hers how could she be so careless to leave it in her pockets and not her inventory, and a taller man with a sketchy eye patch and a cigarette in his mouth who was alternatively trying to pocket what looked like a silver hook attached to a black spaghetti noodle and pointing accusatory fingers at the young lad.

And here she was, everyone watching her to see what she would do about this whole thing. The urge to tell everyone to mind their own feckin' business bubbled up in the pit of her stomach.

"That boy is a thief," Scruffy McIhavenoeye shouted a little too loudly as he continued to jab fingers every which way. "He slid that out of your pockets! I saw it with my own eyes!"

Rank amateur, Madison sneered to herself. She recognized the kind of tool the bastard tried to hide. Several of her past associates in other games employed similar beginner's tools to help scrape up money for a hot and a cot for the evening when work was slow.

The cursemage decided that if people around here were going to keep staring, she'd give them a bit of a show.

She looked at the boy with the obscene amount of tattoos and gave him a warm smile. "Thank you very much, friend," she cooed. "I don't know what I would've done if it weren't for you."

Madison turned her attention towards the asshole trying to cover his own tracks. "I wouldn't go around making such silly accusations like that, if I were you. I mean, look at him!"

She waved a gloved hand back at the caenis. "Fluffy ears, innocent look in his eyes, covered head to toe in mysterious ink. The epitome of Neutral Good right here, I'd say."

Fixing her previous error, the plagueslinger dropped the wallet into her inventory. By now, everyone realized that they weren't going to get any entertainment out of this little incident, and returned to their tasks. Drawing closer to the guy with the hook, she dropped her voice. "And don't think for a fucking second I didn't see you try and stuff that thing into your pockets just now, you shitty little footpad."

A growl built in the thief's throat as his face twisted in anger. He drew up a fist to try and strike her. Madison was quicker, drawing a card out of her sleeve, which she held in front of his face. The card ignited in dark flames that danced in the reflection of his blue eyes. The thief froze, his balled-up hand hovering in mid-punch as he waited for oblivion to come.

"Walk away," Madison venomously hissed behind a psychotic smile.

 

"A thief? A thief! A very, very bad thief!" Alpha chimed in, eyes comically wide as she watched the ongoing scene. A handsome bandaged man in red with fluffy dog ears, a dark woman who exuded 'creepy, mysterious, and cool', and a pretty hot man with an eyepatch and a cigarette. She couldn't help but sing a bit, the atmosphere tense from the confrontation. "A very bad thief is here! On the prowl! On the hunt!" she was completely off-key, hanging upside down from the shingles of a rooftop. Her ankles were barely keeping her from falling face-first onto the ground, gravity turning her face red from the rush of blood pooling at her head.

The few minutes prior to her baring witness to this unfortunate sequence of events had been spent in the Sweets Emporium and, indeed, there was a bag of recently borrowed sweets hanging limp by her waist, tied tightly as to not let the precious sweets inside fall onto the trodden floor. Slowly, she reached up to loosen the knot, slip a pink-tinted lollipop out from the sack, and tie it back up.

Removing the plaster that kept it uncontaminated by the nasty Stokbon air, she slipped it to her mouth with a contented hum and continued to watch the proceedings eagerly, as one might pay (with apt attention) to a particularly good movie. "Oooh, you're busted!" she grinned, sounding like a particularly vindictive child who just tattled-tailed on an unsuspecting rulebreaker. Of course, she did nothing of the sort, instead preferring to enjoy the sugary goodness of her strawberry-flavored lollipop. The entertainment she received from the show, however, did nothing to damper her good mood.

As the tall woman, shrouded with a hissing anger, told the man off, Alpha couldn't help but feel a pressing need to join in on the fun. Watching was fine and dandy but Alpha preferred to be in the thick of things and, with tension positively boiling, she felt her knees bend and her arms brace themselves for impact as she did a small flip, landing with a practiced somersault to be by her side.

"Heya!" Alpha extended her hand, ignoring the woman's bad mood and her focus on the lying thief before her. Her face didn't betray any horrible intentions she might've carried and, with her relaxed muscles and no weapon in hand, she hoped that she wasn't particularly threatening. The woman-whose-name-she-did-not-know seemed to be quite imposing and she knew she'd rather not be on her bad side.

She flicked her eyes over to the accused Caenis and, finally, to the tried and true thief. "Name's Alphabet Chocolate, nice to meet ya guys! Saw everything going on and I was like, this looked fun! Obviously, something's gonna happen, right? My instincts told me so! Or maybe it was fate or whatever!" her words flew out of her mouth like motor oil through a leaking tank. "You guys look cool and fun, y'know? And my gut's never wrong! So...what's gonna happen? An epic duel? A hidden quest? I can feel it in my bones! Tell me, tell me, tell me!" she looked at each of them expectantly.

She pushed at the thief. "And you! Kinda cute, kinda boring, kinda smart...I like you. Stay! I mean she told you to walk away and you were kinda being a jerk to that guy over there," she jabbed her thumb in Vas' direction. "But you're a ticket to a theme park! The gate to an adventure!" she waggled her eyebrows, "You've definitely got something fun up your sleeve, right? Are you gonna pick a fight or do you know someone who needs rescuing? Any rumors? I'm pretty bored so anything'll do!"

Finally, without any regard to the feelings of those around her, she pointed her finger towards the sky with triumph. "From today on, we're the Musketeers! I can sense it; you guys're cool enough to adventure with, y'know/? So let's do it! Onwards! To danger! To victory! To whatever it is I have no idea what! The start of something beautiful!"

@Madison Freebird @Vas Schneider