I would have to be very sneaky if I wanted to get close enough to engulf hound-dwarf with my stealth box. More than just being sneaky though, I'd need to be patient. Otherwise, I'd sneak forward too quickly and the dwarves would get suspicious.
My stealth box was an almost perfect sneaking tool, but its stealth-ness could be overcome by really careful observation, or by special anti-sneaking techniques. After all, that's why I'd never tried this technique out on my teammates. El paid too much attention to things, and Markus had special anti-sneak detection skills.
Fortunately, I wasn't trying to sneak up on my teammates. I was trying to sneak up on hound-dwarf trying to subtly dwarf-nap burnt-custard. And both of them were far too busy paying attention to that. So, as long as I moved slowly they'd never see me coming. It would be just like how I would swim super deep and then slowly sneak up on boats and juicy fish and krakens before swimming really fast to catch them so I could rampage.
Rampaging in the water wasn't as fun as doing it on land—since ships were made of wood, they always broke way too fast—but I did like making huge waves when I leaped up out of the water with a juicy fish or a boat caught between my jaws. Plus, krakens had a whole bunch of arms they liked to wrap around me when I played with them and those hugs were almost as good as my sisters. So despite ship-rampage not being quite as fun and krakens being really hard to find now, I still had fun rampaging in the ocean. I also had a lair down at the bottom of the ocean where I kept all kinds of shiny things that I'd found in shipwrecks while playing explorer and…
My genius mind pokes me and I nod. I couldn't just stop here. If I did, burnt-custard would probably end up getting dwarf-napped and then I'd have to spend all night rescuing her.
I just needed to get a few feet closer.
*Sneaky sneak*
I wait, counting the thumpy-thump of my heartbeat as it drums out a repeating six-thump pattern. Ten repetitions go past and I move forward again.
*Sneaky sneak*
Now, I'm close enough to reach out and touch hound-dwarf. And if I'm close enough to do that, then I'm close enough to lunge forward and drag him into my stealth box, just like those snappy-turtles down near Vestral do when a boat gets too near their rock-island-disguises and they snap out and drag the ship inside to play with.
I slowly lift one corner of my stealth-box up until there's just enough space for me to stick my arm out. A grin forms on my face as I feel [Brave Soul] activate as I go from sneaking to rescuing. Then, with all the speed and grace of a turtle, my arm shoots out.
My hand collides against a leather boot and my fingers dig in.
Hound-dwarf shouts out a wordless kind of sound and I feel his foot kick forward, or rather try to kick forward. Unfortunately for him, my fingers are squeezing down on his ankle with all the force of a [Brave Soul] enhanced [Superior Strength] grip and his kick frees himself just as well as a gold dragon flailing about with their wings and claws once my jaws are wrapped around their neck.
My fingers weren't there to tear through flimsy scales and snap bones, though. Not only did Hound-dwarf not have any scales, but in my smaller form, my hand just wasn't big enough to squeeze that hard. That didn't mean I didn't have any other options, though.
I lean back onto my heels, making sure to get in just the right pose, and then, I pull. Leather scrapes against the stone street and hound-dwarf shouts another wordless shout as his foot is yanked back and up far faster than his balance can account for. A moment later, metal bangs against stone as well, as first his fancy breastplate, and then the forehead of his not-as-fancy helmet slam to the street. There's a soft, crunchy sound followed by a groan that echoes weirdly in the helmet, but I don't stop there. After all, who'd ever heard of a turtle that was happy with just the ambush and not the engulfing?
I leap forward, rising enough to make sure my stealth-box can land on top of the groaning hound-dwarf. Only, it seems I've made a mistake. My stealth-box, while large enough to conceal a secret-[Calamity], couldn't cover both a secret-[Calamity] and a hound-dwarf. In fact, it lands awkwardly on top of most of the hound-dwarf's chest but leaves his groaning head and most of his feet free. I keep the frown that forms in my chest off of my face, even as a strange sort of heat works its way from my chest up to my cheeks.
Trying my best to ignore the uncomfortable burning of my face, I decide to discard my stealth-box altogether. It had aided me in sneaking close enough. I could take care of the ambush from here. And so, with a flex of my [Brave Soul] enhanced [Superior Strength], my stealth box flies free, to clatter off to the ground in an unused corner, waiting for someone more cut out to be a stealth-[Hero] than I was.
I don't let my partially-failed ambush get me down for long. After all, I wanted to be a tank-[Hero] with a big shield and a flaming sword and shiny armor. None of that was stealth-[Hero] stuff anyways. Besides, I still had a groaning-hound-dwarf to beat up and a burnt-custard to rescue.
My footing moves like a ship tossed by a [Calamity]-wave and I jump from the shiny breastplate part as hound-dwarf squirms over onto his back. A pained gurgling wheeze erupts from the hound-dwarf as my feet land in a not-shiny-armored place just below his breastplate and just above the chainmail wrapped around his legs. He spasms once with a sound like he was choking and unable to breathe in and I let my feet slip from on top of him to the street so I can get a better angle. It sounded like he was choking! Fortunately, I know exactly how to handle someone choking.
My fist bangs into his breastplate with the sound of a bell, if the clangy thing on a bell had a dwarf wrapped around it to keep it from echoing like a bell should at all. Hound-dwarf continues choking. A frown forms in my chest and works its way onto my face. That should have done it, unless…
My genius mind pokes me and I agree. If hitting something really hard didn't solve your problem, then you should just hit it harder. That was a lesson I'd learned all on my own. And so, I wrap my hands together and lift them behind my head so that I can swing as hard as I can and…
"Much as I find Kazrik a pain in the ass, I'd rather you didn't kill him." Burnt-custard's smokey voice stops me mid-swing.
"But he's choking," I look up at the soon-to-be-rescued-dwarf and explain, "You're supposed to hit people on the chest when they're choking. It gets the stuff out so they can breathe."
Burnt-custard looks down at choking-dwarf. She smiles in the same way El does when she's grabbed the last dessert and wants to eat it in front of me. "I think he's more worried about the family jewels at the moment."
That didn't make any sense. We weren't anywhere near any jewels. And besides, I was a soon-to-be-[Hero]. [Heroes] didn't steal from families. At all. I open my mouth to tell her that, only for her to speak first.
"I don't suppose my rescuer has a name," her eyes shift back to me and her head tilts slightly to one side.
"Oh, right!" I step back from wheezing-dwarf, "I'm Ciel and this is…"
I trail off for a moment and look over to my shoulder where my first companion would be if he weren't busy sleeping in the inn. A weird swirly feeling circles inside my stomach for a moment before I shake it away. I was here to do sneaky fun things, not feel weird because my teammates weren't here. "I'm Ciel."
"Well, Ciel," she smiles that dessert-stealing smile again, "you can call me Briga."
"Ok."
I nod at her as her name vanishes into my infallible memory and then turn to look around me. Rescuing burnt-custard was important, and pretending to be a snappy-turtle while ambushing my prey had been fun. But neither of them were really why I had snuck out after curfew.
And if I didn't get back to my original task soon, I'd have to go back to the inn in defeat. On the other hand, I couldn't just leave rescued-dwarf on her own… what if she were to get dwarf-napped again?
Before my genius mind can give me a plan for how to get her home quick enough so I could still find something fun, rescued-dwarf speaks again.
"So, what's an," her eyes flicker down to my wrist and then back up, "adventurer doing wandering around the warehouse district in the middle of the night?"
I grin and my chest puffs out as a fiery sort of warmth runs through it. I always had to show off my adventurer arm and bracelet to make sure people knew I was an adventurer, but rescued-dwarf somehow knew that I was even though I'd forgotten to do it during my introduction. "I was looking for something fun to do. I tried a loud-bad-singing place and a better-singing-with-instruments place and a you-activated-my-trap-card place but none of the not-shiny-guard-dwarfs would let me in."
"Even when you told them you were an adventurer?"
"Even when I did this," I raise my adventurer arm in the way I always did so that she could clearly see my silver bracelet. "They just said things like 'get lost' and 'the drinking age's sixteen' and wouldn't let me in…"
"It's a shame that Clan Steamforge would treat such a brave adventurer so poorly," she smiles her dessert-stealing smile, "but I can think of one exciting sort of place that wouldn't dare refuse you entrance… if I was there with you."
"Really?" My head perks up. I could make sure rescued-dwarf stays un-dwarf-napped while also finding something fun to do. That would be like crunching two cows with one bite! "Let's go!"
"So then I went whoosh-whoosh while El went pew-pew!" I bounce along beside my new rescued-dwarf as I show her the awesome moves me and El did to wipe out those weird not-food monsters and rescue a bunch of civilians. "Even furry-Markus went sneaky-sneak and chewed through their chains."
"That doesn't seem like a task for silver-ranks," she smiles, not the dessert-stealing smile, but the same way my sisters do when I tell them about all the fun stories I've had.
My head bobs up and down quickly, "El wouldn't let us go to the adventurers guild so we couldn't tell them about our awesome rescue. They would have promoted us to gold fur sure."
"You're pretty strong, then?" Now that was a Riri smile, the same kind she wore when planning something really smart.
"Yeah! We even chased off m-" I pause before I can tell her all about how my sister came to visit and promised to play [Heroes] and [Villains] with me. "An evil-blood-lady from destroying Reitzland."
"I had heard a foo- brave adventurer had charged at her… that was you?" My grin widens until it would have split my face in half if I weren't still in my smaller form. Even the dwarves had heard how awesome my team and I were!
"Yeah! She beat me up so much I didn't get to see the parade, but El has been taking care of our reward money. And now we're off to stop all her other evil plots!"
We walk along in silence as rescued-dwarf realizes just how awesome the adventurer that rescued her really was. But when we pass by a few warehouses without her saying anything, I decide to speak up again, "So, where are we going, dwarf-lady?"
"Briga…, Briga…,"
She says someone's name, but since I had no idea who she meant, I just let it pass right through me and into my impeccable memory. It would remind me if the name ever became important. Still, maybe I could ask now and save my infallible memory the trouble. "Who's that?"
Rescued-dwarf stops mid-step and turns to me. She stares at me like she can't believe how awesome I am—that's a stare I knew really well!—and then smiles that dessert-stealing smile, "You're kind of a brat, aren't you?"
"Yep!" My head nods up and down quickly. My sisters called me that all the time. Even El did every now and then. It was how I knew I was their favorite person.
"Heh," she makes a sound like a laugh, but doesn't actually laugh and says, "Well, brat, we're heading down to the last row of warehouse buildings before the outer walls."
My eyes widen a bit and then my grin stretches all the way from my chest to the tip-top of my head. I was rescued-dwarf's favorite person too! We'd just met!
The last warehouse before the outer walls was loud. Loud enough that I can't believe my [Superior Hearing] hadn't found it. Then again, maybe I had heard it and my genius mind had just ignored it. After all, it was the loud of a bunch of people talking and rummaging around, not the loud of singing and dancing and-
"And here we are, adventurer Ciel."
Rescued-dwarf smiles, a happy smile and I grin in response. It was good to see that she had a normal smile to go with all her other ones. Only [Villains] didn't have happy smiles. I still had one when I was a [Villain], but that was probably just a [Calamity] power since my sisters could do it too.
"So what fun thing is inside?" I try and pick out individual conversations going on inside, but all I hear are weird things like 'With the new alloy we've improved the automata's cleaving force by seven percent,' and 'Where's the banking guild rep? I don't want to have to underwrite these bets myself,' and 'Is it true the princess will be competing?'
"It's the qualifying round for an unlicensed combat competition," Rescued-dwarf says even as she flips a thick hood up and over her hair and face.
My eyes widen and my mouth falls open as I realize exactly what she'd just said. It's time for a tournament arc! Normally those happened after the [Hero] got her flaming sword and needed to show off! But if it were happening already…
That must mean I was so awesome I didn't need a flaming sword to amaze everyone!
My grin widens further than it ever has before. Wide enough that it's pinching my eyes closed as the skin on my face stretches. I don't care about any of that though. It was a tournament arc! I'd be able to compete in an underground fight ring and fight my way to the top and then I'd meet all sorts of cool people and win all sorts of awesome prizes and…
No! I couldn't get distracted now! I needed to know, "Do I need to sign up or can I just jump in during a match and beat up the contestants and take their place?"
"Oh, just arrived today and you already want to compete?" her smile shifts, until it looks like a fox about to gobble up some chickens, "then you can join my team, adventurer Ciel."
"Yeah!" My fist pumps up in the air.
The inside of the warehouse looks exactly like I expected. There's a pit in the middle covered in sand and rows of benches circling it on the sides—except for narrow slices for the contestants to come in from, of course. There are food stands set up along the tops of the benches selling meat and fried dough on sticks that smell even better than the food stand El hadn't let us stop at. There's even a bunch of weird things that look a lot like El's cart, except smaller. And with swords and hammers and saws poking out from every side.
My grin can't widen any bigger, but I still try. I knew we could strap a bunch of weapons onto the cart! I'd have to tell El all about this when I got back! First, I have to get just a bit-
Rescued-dwarf grabs onto my shirt before I can sprint over and see the weapon-carts close up. Fortunately for her, I wasn't using my [Superior Strength] or she'd have been dragged along behind me like a fluttery cape.
Before I can turn around to see what she wants, I hear her smokey voice, "Looks like there's a bit of time before things get started."
[] "My team and I still have a few finishing touches to make, but I can introduce you to the group if you want to stay put for a bit."
[] "These competitions can last all night, and they never stock enough food. If you want something, you should go early."
[] "Contestants aren't supposed to inspect competitors prior to the competition, but since you're an unofficial addition, it should be fine."
