My legs bounce underneath the sheets and I let them. A grin crosses my face and I let it. Visions of me exploring the outer city and finding people in trouble and rescuing them and getting celebrated cross my mind and I let them.
I spring up out of bed an instant later. Nothing could keep me in bed when there was a whole city outside to explore. Not El lecturing me. Not Markus being grumpy because I interrupted his sleep. Nothing.
But, if I wanted my dreams of exploration to come true, I'd have to be sneaky. Not sneaky like I was when I charged an unexpecting herd of cows, but sneaky like when I would lie in wait for a pod of juicy fish to come by—except the opposite of that because staying still wouldn't work at all. Otherwise, my teammates would catch me and be upset and lecture me.
Fortunately, I was really experienced at sneaking out of my room after bedtime. I did it all the time when I worked for the [Lord of Fallen Flame] and got hungry late at night. And since I knew all about this kind of thing, I knew exactly what I would need. A careful mixture of stealth and speed, just in case anyone wasn't as asleep as it sounded by their steady breathing. After all, either one of my teammates could be lying in wait to catch me sneaking out.
So, I carefully bounce over to my bedroom door, making sure to land only on the tips of my feet, and then slowly lean over to pick up my thick, leather boots. I wouldn't be able to wear them until I escaped the room—the stompyness of the heels would give me away—but I wasn't supposed to wander around outside barefoot, either.
Then, I slowly creak my bedroom door open. Fortunately, it doesn't actually creak, I guess because fancy places didn't have creaky things like rundown, mold-filled towers in the northern wastes did. Then I let my eyes shift from normal to blood-sight just to make sure there weren't any living beings hiding in the lounge.
A frown crosses my face when I see a small, bright red blotch curled up around itself on one of the couches we'd eaten dinner on. I let my blood-sight fade away, and the blob of red resolves into the much less red blob of my favorite teammate. I wasn't sure why Markus was a red-tailed squirrel since his fur was really more auburn than red but-
My genius mind pokes me and I nod. I'd either have to be super sneaky to get past him without waking him up or wake him up and have him come along. I consider the second option for a moment before letting it go. It wasn't nice to wake up sleeping people, Soph had taught me that. Usually by hitting me with her [Sleepy Beams] when I did, which wasn't fun at all. That just left the first option.
Unfortunately, with my [Calamity] skills all sealed away, I couldn't just put Markus in [Eternal Slumber] or [Unending Stasis] and walk by him—and I'd never use something mean like [Trapped in Nightmares] on my teammates. Even more unfortunately, I couldn't even just use a spell like [Float] or [Muffle] to help me sneak past. After all, I was a [Valiant Warrior], and [Valiant Warriors] didn't get spells. At all.
So that just left me to creep really slowly—and to rely on my superior body which was made from wyrd rather than squishy flesh—to get out without being caught. Fortunately, I knew his skills, just like my teammates knew mine. I'd even shared some of my abilities that came from having a special body. Not the secret-[Calamity] ones like [Gargant's Plate] or [Flower of the Far Planes], but the ones where I didn't need to sleep or how I was super strong and had really strong senses and-
My genius mind pokes me and my grin widens even further. Markus had a skill he called [Infrared Hearing]. It helped him distinguish between things like leaves kicked up by the wind and leaves kicked up by a team leader wanting to go out and explore at night. Which seemed like a totally unfair sort of skill to have. Rustling leaves should always sound the same. They shouldn't sound different when kicked up by a bored secret-[Calamity] who wanted to see—and maybe play with—whatever animal was howling off in the distance while her teammates were sound asleep.
Still, my genius mind was right. If Markus could tell the difference between what caused a sound, even when asleep, then I'd just have to fight unfair skills with unfair skills.
Slowly my body temperature begins to drop until it matches the room around me. Then I reach out to the side and knock really softly on the wall next to me. I hold my breath as Markus shifts softly in that gross scarf of his, but he just sprawls onto his side so his legs can kick up at the air. A roar forms in my chest that I quickly have to swallow, before I wake up my teammates and the inn and the rest of the city with the explosion of happiness threatening to escape me.
Despite not being able to roar out my joy, nothing can stop the grin from splitting my face nearly in half. I'd never be subject to the tyranny of lectures like, 'No, Ciel, night watch does not mean you can go run after every last thing that catches your attention, it means you stay in one place and keep watch,' again.
Still, I knew from my own experience of being sneaky that just because I did something once and there was no reaction, that didn't mean I'd succeeded in my sneakiness. Plus, Mal had taught me I should always try something three times to make sure it worked. She called doing that her [Scientific Method], which was her skill that forced her to keep lots of fun-to-break glass and metal things in her lair. Though, I'd learned after the first lecture that they were all strictly look-but-don't-break.
So, I decide to follow Mal's lessons and knock a second time, just as lightly. When Markus doesn't even stir from whatever furry-dream has his face twitching like that, I knock one last time, just like I was taught, and still he doesn't so much as move. My grin can't grow any wider across my face—at least in my smaller form—but it does flow out across my entire body until it feels like even my fingertips are grinning.
I pad softly across the lounge and out toward the front door, my feet barely brushing against the ground on my way. Then I creak open the door to our rooms just as quietly as I had creaked open my bedroom. I look out onto a richly furnished hallway filled with paintings and fluffy carpets and cool shapes carved into the ceiling and-
My genius mind pokes me. Oh, right. I couldn't get distracted now. Not when my escape was so close. Carefully, I slip on my boots, and then I turn toward still open door to our rooms. Fortunately, I knew exactly how to deal with this to make sure no one heard me escaping into the city.
The echo of a door slamming and the sound of things rattling as they bounce against the walls chase me down the hallway, but it's too slow. Everything is too slow. I'm free.
Thanks to my infallible memory, I quickly found the intersection with the food cart and the invention shop that doubtless had my secret relic sword waiting in a discount bucket. Unfortunately, the food cart was gone.
The invention shop had still been open, but all of the swords in the discount bin just looked like swords. Even my growing soon-to-be-[Hero] power couldn't tell which one was the secret relic. And, since El took care of all our team's money, I couldn't just buy them all to check. At least not without going back and asking her for some money, which would probably just end up with me getting lectured about leaving my teammates alone in a foreign place or something boring like that.
Still, I wasn't out of ideas for what to do just because my first choices were no good. After all, I still had my [Superior Hearing]. It should be easier than rampaging through a forest to find something fun going on.
"Get lost, kid." A not-sparkly dwarf in black leather armor with shiny silver studs on it growls at me. "You're too young to drink."
"But I drink all sorts of things every day." After all, there were all kinds of tasty things to drink. Water was cool and refreshy. Juice was pulpy and sour. And milk was important for growing [Calamities] everywhere. Soph had told me that. The only things I didn't like to drink were the weird bottles of rotten juice Ashe kept in her vaults and the nasty-drink that El had every morning.
"Scram, kid, you're holding up the line." The not-sparkly dwarf growls at me.
I turn to look behind me, only to see a group of more, not-sparkly dwarves scowling at me. For a moment, I consider growling and scowling at them in turn, but I don't even need my genius mind to tell me that would only work in my larger form.
That meant the only way inside would be to just disobey the not-sparkly dwarf and go inside anyway. And that wasn't the sort of thing a [Hero] would do. Unless the forbidden place was a secret [Overlord's] lair, of course. But it was way too early in this arc to find the big-bad-people, and besides, my team wasn't even there to join in so it was super unlikely that was the case. And so, with the frown in my chest flowing up to my face and making my shoulders slump down, I walk away.
I bet they weren't having that much fun singing songs and breaking things anyway.
"Sorry, miss, I can't let you in," a different not-sparkly dwarf in black leather armor, though she has bright gold studs rather than shiny metal ones, refuses to let me in. "Drinking age's sixteen for unaccompanied minors."
I open my mouth to ask whether the incorporeal eons I'd spent in the Far Planes drifting to the maddening sounds of Aza's Court would count, only to close it without speaking. I couldn't spread that sort of secret around. People might start to guess at my secret-[Calamityness], and that wouldn't be good at all. Plus, since time didn't flow in a linear fashion that far from reality, I wasn't entirely sure whether all those epochs would even count. Well, there was still something else I could try.
I hold up my adventurer arm and show off my silver bracelet, "can I go in now?"
The gold-stud-dwarf looks at my wrist for a moment and then up to my face and then back down to my wrist. "I'm sorry, miss, but you have to be sixteen to enter."
Once again, my frown flows up to my face and then to my shoulders as I turn away in defeat.
It's not like I wanted to listen to fancy music and people doing funny voices anyway.
"No invite, no entrance, little lady." This time the guard-dwarf isn't dressed in leather armor at all. Instead, he has some kind of fluffy-looking cloth covering his chest. It's still black, though.
"I'm an adventurer," I announce loudly and raise my adventurer arm. It had been defeated by the guard-dwarf at the previous place, but surely it couldn't fail twice in a row.
"Doesn't matter. No invite, no entrance."
I don't even try to argue with this guard-dwarf. I just turn around and walk away, defeated for a third time in one night.
Besides, what even was a trap card and why would I care if someone activated it anyway?
"My lady, please. Such events are unbecoming for one of your stature."
I pause my idle wandering between a bunch of wide, low buildings that seem completely empty of people as my [Superior Hearing] picks up the sounds of a deep, murmured voice somewhere off to my left.
"Let go, Kazrik."
The second voice is a bit higher pitched. More like that one female guard-dwarf who had at least been kind of nice about not letting me into her secret place. It also sounds a lot smoother than all the other dwarf voices I'd heard today. Like a piece of jerky that had been lightly smoked as opposed to one that had been left in the smoker too long and was now all wrinkled up. I preferred the wrinkly ones, though, they were much chewier.
On the other hand, the really chewy ones did end up getting stuck between my teeth and then I'd have to pick it out with my fingers and El would get annoyed and lecture me about manners and-
"I do not care. I will not give up my life just because the elders see an opportunity."
The smooth-jerky-voice sounds like it wanted to roar, but was refusing for some reason. Were they just embarrassed by the squeaky, high-pitched roars they made in their smaller form? Ooh! Did that mean they had a larger form that they were secretly hiding from people too so they could wander around and eat food and play games without everyone running away and-
"If you do not let me go, Kazrik, I will scream. And then you will have to explain to Captain Lothor both why your charge was picked up by the [Guards] and why you decided to dwarfhandle her."
My genius mind pokes me and my head nods in approval. The threat of a roar was sometimes just as cool as the roar itself. Besides, as much fun as roaring and watching buildings fall down was. Or watching bands of knights turn around and run away, that was fun too. It also meant that was the end of a rampage. After all, a rampage ended when everything was broken or gone. That was a lesson I'd had to learn the not-as-fun-as-it-could-be way.
"Lothor has given me permission to gently return you to your rooms and the [Guards] know better than to interfere with clan business."
Wait. Didn't that sound like…
A different kind of frown crosses my face. After Markus and I had rescued that one lady from the not-actually-an-adventurers-guild-waiting-room she'd called me a hero—and Markus too, I guess, but that didn't count. A sidekick couldn't be a [Hero], after all—then, once we'd defeated the [Villain] group that had put her in the not-waiting-room, she'd taught us about how bad men would sometimes take girls places they didn't want to go and do bad things to them.
And since she was lecturing us about [Hero] stuff, I'd paid attention to every word. It was a good thing I had, too. My [Hero] books always made the [Villains] in these situations really easy to identify, and she'd taught us that wasn't always the case. Which was really coming in handy right now as I was trying to figure out what was going on between the two jerky-voices.
My immaculate memory unrolls the checklist Rescued-lady had given us and I read the first point on the list. Sometimes the [Viillain] would imply they would hurt the girl if they didn't come along willingly.
My genius mind checks that point off for me.
Then I go to the very next one and read it too. Sometimes the [Villain] would say there would be no help from the [Guards] or other civil authorities.
I check that one off before my genius mind can and grin smugly as it wanders off to sulk.
I keep going down the list, seeing things like: check for potions in a drink or an exchange of money between a girl's parent and the [Villain], and even one that talked about a sham marriage, but I don't think any of those applied right now.
Besides, rescued-lady had told me that I only needed one thing on her list of things to be true before I should step in and rescue them like I rescued her. And since she was the expert on girls who needed rescuing and I was a soon-to-be-[Hero]. That made this situation perfectly clear.
For some reason, my genius mind refuses to help me put together a plan to rescue smooth-jerky-voice, but that was alright. After all, since I was a soon-to-be-[Hero], I already knew exactly what I had to do.
[] I would run in there and beat him up, like a brave [Hero].
[] I would find some way to distract him, like a sneaky [Hero].
[] I would convince him this is a bad idea, like a smart [Hero].
[AN]
In true Shonen fashion, Ciel wanders around a strange new town and runs across someone that needs rescuing. Also, turns out I lied. We'll get to battlebots next chapter.
