Trevor frowned.

"An outsider swaggered around, causing trouble at the city gates and at the bank as well?"

"Yah. I heard that he beat up a couple of gaurds, charged through the gates, and now he's holding up the bank and threatening to kill everyone in it if they don't give him all their coin. He said that he name was Bert Smith, and that he was gonna take over de city!"

The man spat and hissed as he yelled at the top of his lungs.

"This, I gotta see."

* * *

Trevor headed to the bank on his trusty camel, Shmick. Shmick loved his name; He grew excited and stamped his hoof every time he heard it. Anyone else would've thought that he hated it, but Trevor knew better. Fortunately, Shmick was very reliable as well. He stopped less than 50 times and stole from only half of the food stalls on the way to the bank. When they finally got there, Trevor let Shmick pull to a stop and left him to steal from the other half of the food stalls. As you can probably already see, everyone in this city was very, very, very reliable.

Trevor frowned as he tried to look over the other people. He knew that no one in the city was taller than he was, being somewhere north of 7 feet. He could easily overlook everyone else, but for some reason he couldn't see anything happening beyond the sea of heads. Instead, everyone seemed to be gathered around a tiny gap in the crowd, watching something happening there.

Bob, however, was unaware of the 8 foot tall giant who couldn't see him and who he couldn't see, courtesy of his measly height of 5 foot 4. Just imagine an 8 foot tall giant trying to see a 5 foot 4 guy in the middle of a mob of people by looking over their heads. Instead, Bob was exasperated, still trying to explain that his name was actually Bob Something.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Look, I know that Something is a strange last name, but it just happens to be mine and-"

"Yeah, sure, and I know that dragons are really just harmless lizards with wings."

Someone snickered.

The crowd erupted into laugher once again.

The crowd had somehow moved Bob and Alec to the middle of the street, where everyone could watch and laugh. The owner of the movie theater across the street was smiling from ear to ear while examining the mountains of coins that he was making from selling popcorn.

Bob looked around.

He groaned.

How did word spread so fast?

He had literally just arrived at the bank a few minutes ago, and now a popcorn-eating crowd was already gathered around.

"Look, I already said it a few hundred times, but now I'll say it again, my name really IS Bob Something, and Something is an actual last na-"

"And everyone here knows that 'Something' isn't an actual last name."

"Oh, come on, Luck, couldn't you be helpful just this once?!"

The sky rumbled, as if laughing at him.

It started raining.

Everyone was struck dumb.

After all, this was a city in the middle of the desert.

Suddenly, the tiny umbrella store nearby that was almost bankrupt suddenly came back to life.

> [ You have just earned 1438932 luck from having an extremely uncommon event of bad luck happen to you. Luck points can be expended to have possible events of your choosing happen. The slimmer the chance of the event actually happening, the more luck points will be expended. ]

Huh. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all.