Onyxfell was a city that rose early.
The gladiators woke the earliest. They had long days of training when they were not scheduled to fight, interrupted when they had the city's tasks to attend to, such as the glory of defending the city's gates from those who would seek something other than Victory within its walls.
The drivers woke shortly after. The tracks were used only for practice driving until the day's fourteenth hour at the earliest, and driving technique was still important to master even without the benefits that The System provided.
Next were those who owned and operated various shops throughout the city, mostly regardless of district. The exception to this was D-one, which tended to rise and remain awake later in the day than the rest of the city.
Following this, though not with too much time in between, were those who worked trades, such as transporters or metalworkers.
The remainder of the citizens of Onyxfell woke the latest: those without jobs of any sort, those too young or too old to work who were not actively attending any number of city-run teaching houses, and the extremely wealthy denizens of D-one.
This was the way of things in the mornings of Onyxfell, and it was how things had been for as long as anyone could remember, excepting the drivers, a group which had only come into existence within the past decade.
On this morning, however, there was a sixth type of person who was noticed by a number of Onyxfell's citizens.
The coffee-seeker rose with the gladiators, having been first spotted just south of Conquest Street in D-five. He walked quickly and he walked slowly, alternating at random between speeds with his eyes squinting as he mumbled the word "coffee" over and over like one whose mind had deteriorated.
He was noticed continuing in a southward direction for some distance. After a time, he accosted a small group of gladiators—Furia Vedrix, Arquillia Tullas, and Plautia Cornuta—who were commencing their usual morning cross-city run in the hopes that they would accrue some number of the randomly-granted stat points as they passed through one district or another. The mysterious coffee-seeker began to jog alongside them, speaking words that were unknown and holding aloft a smattering of metal scraps.
Whether due to irritation at the man's persistence after following them all the way to D-three or simply as a result of the natural way of things, the three gladiators paused their run, and Plautia Cornuta challenged him to an informal battle in the streets—not entirely common, but a traditional enough method of resolving disputes. The standard rules for such a bout included: no striking at the face or privates, no use of elbows or knees, and the first one whose back touched the ground was deemed to have failed to achieve Victory. Shit-talking was always encouraged.
It's unknown whether the coffee-seeker was aware of these rules when he acknowledged the challenge with a loud grunt. What is known and, indeed, what was witnessed, was the man bellowing "COFFEE!" immediately after this and charging off in a northward direction along D-three's Victory Avenue, which was the name of each main street which bisected the city's districts in the north-south axis. The gladiators chased after the man for some distance, haranguing him for his cowardice, but it seemed that he had suddenly gained significant haste in his step—or perhaps he was using a class skill—and they were forced to abandon their pursuit after witnessing his crazed, but impressive leap over a building. It was a feat they could have replicated, but they judged that this was not likely to yield any gains in stat points and returned to their run; Plautia Cornuta was the only one who achieved Victory in this regard later that day, managing to catch hold of a point in Printure in the course of their circuit around the city.
The coffee-seeker was next seen in a garden frequented by the children of D-three. He ran across a field for a short while before toppling over at a certain location where he remained for several minutes before abruptly getting to his feet, which were bare, and beginning to walk in the direction of D-two. Upon arriving at the entrance to the second-wealthiest district, he again encountered the trio of Furia Vedrix, Arquillia Tullas, and Plautia Cornuta, who were now on their way back around the other side of the city but had yet to acquire any of the stat points they sought.
Coincidentally or not, also present at the time of this fortuitous reunion was one Cossus Allectius Arrianus, a gladiator who fancied Arquillia Tullas, though he had yet to state his intentions. Discerning that she was being accosted by a giant, bearded, brute of a man, he gallantly stepped forward and challenged the coffee-seeker to an impromptu match with the intent of displaying his martial prowess, namely the sixteen points he'd acquired in the Ginera stat, which seemed to be a lot for his young age.
Alas, tragedy befell young Arrianus on this day. The coffee-seeker, perhaps enraged when the dashing young gladiator began talking shit—calling him a "shoeless cretin", which he'd imagined as being the sort of insult that would surely find favor with Arquillia Tullas, though in actuality she was already quite smitten with Furia Vedrix and felt the boy's grandstanding was overdone—or, just as likely, as a result of the shoeless cretin being disinterested in attempting to fight a gladiator at all, set as he seemed to be on locating coffee based on the manner in which he kept repeating the word at varying volumes, picked up the eighteen year-old and tossed him onto the roof of a nearby building after wordlessly shaking him upside down in the air for several seconds.
It was in the next moment that Furia Vedrix took action, demanding that the coffee-seeker stop following her and her friends.
The coffee-seeker had frowned as he scratched his beard, and none of the three were able to determine whether he'd understood. What they were certain of, however, was that he'd set off towards D-four along the same street that they'd been running on, weaving back and forth like a drunkard. They attempted to run past him, but his movements beguiled the eye and the mind, and their every step was blocked.
What happened next stunned everyone who witnessed it.
Laberia Salonina, on her way to train in The Arena after spending more than an hour beyond the city's walls doing battle with rift monsters as they appeared in order to further hone her skills—Discutrix Gladiorum herself!—took notice of the coffee-seeker's footwork and began to mimic it, remarking upon its versatility and the obvious skill of the coffee-seeker, who seemed to not even be exerting himself while continuing to repeat the strange, difficult-to-perform method of movement. She chastised the younger trio of gladiators, who had been unable to see that this coffee-seeker was clearly a man deep into his training. All three recalled the speed and ignominy with which Cossus Allectius Arrianus had been dispatched, and it was then, as the four women spoke in the middle of the street, that they realized their collective mistake.
All four had thought the coffee-seeker would continue his steady, slow pace for some time. None had imagined that he would tip his head back and bellow "COFFEE!" once more before bounding up into the air and over a nearby building. They'd stared for a moment in surprise, but by the time they reached the other side of the building, it was too late, and the coffee-seeker had vanished as mysteriously as he'd appeared.
The coffee-seeker was not truly gone though, as other parts of the City of Wrath were all too aware. No, he had actually managed to wander a short ways into D-three's entrance to The Arena itself.
None had clearly seen the fighting prowess of the coffee-seeker until this time, and it seemed that would continue to remain the case for at least a while longer. The shabbily-dressed man turned around immediately and walked out of the stone corridor. It was a decision that made sense to all who saw it: this was a man who clearly sought Victory in coffee, and there was no coffee in The Arena at that time.
The coffee-seeker seemed to struggle then, perhaps forgetting who or where he was. "ANNIEEE!" he called so loudly that it woke everyone still sleeping on the small side street he'd stumbled down after exiting the arena. "ANNIEEE, WHERE'S THE COFFEE?"
There was no immediate response to the question, and the coffee-seeker's shoulders slumped. To those angry citizens awoken by the man's careless shout, it certainly seemed that the man had given up on any chance of Victory, and this was compounded by one man, Gaius Manlius Octobrianus, who had been awake especially late the night prior while attempting to impregnate his lover, Carvilia Ivmara. Octobrianus, an up-and-coming shit-talker, shouted back that the coffee-seeker needed to fuck off out of D-three at such an hour, and also that he'd drank all of the coffee, and the coffee-seeker could drink shit for all he cared.
It must be said at this time that Octobrianus was considered an up-and-coming shit-talker, but that didn't imply he possessed any particular skill with his words, only that he subscribed to the same theory as Scutum Impervium from so many years earlier, which was that quantity and speed overcame quality. This was in direct conflict to many, who felt that the quality-first methodology of Scorpio Fulminis was superior, which was an easy position to understand given that the term "shit-talking" had been first used by Scorpio Fulminis to describe the only possible means of conversing with Scutum Impervium.
Regardless, the coffee-seeker, it seemed, believed in a third methodology. He picked up one of the Char hero's street-repairing drones from nearby, which were known to be heavy enough that only the strongest gladiators could manage the feat, and hurled it with incredible accuracy into the window that Octobrianus was standing at in his third floor home.
Octobrianus was able to avoid the weighty projectile, but only just. The occasion left him gasping on the floor in a state of excitement at his near-death experience, with his lover similarly excited on the bed nearby, staring up at the hole in their ceiling where there was a considerable amount of rustling and screaming occurring. The man and his lover had, over the next one and a half minutes, frantically and noisily copulated once more, with Ivmara becoming pregnant as a direct result.
By that time, however, the coffee-seeker was already long gone. He'd started out at a light jog, chanting "coffee" with a strange cadence as though invoking some manner of spell. Magic was known in the city, though it was exceedingly rare; magic was not permitted for use in The Arena under penalty of death if it was detected, and so it was that only the venerable but reclusive Tempestates family of mages persisted in their studies and uses of magic in the city while all others focused instead on honing their bodies. No spell seemed to be wrought by the coffee-seeker's chant, however, though it still startled and caused uneasiness in many who heard it.
Canus Caerellius Crispian had been the next to encounter the coffee-seeker in his mad rampage. A small-time armor shop owner, he peddled unfitted armors for new gladiators in D-four, supplied by a number of armorsmiths from different districts, including one Decius Minucius Pertinax, who had not been at his smithy at the time that the coffee-seeker had emerged from somewhere nearby.
The coffee-seeker had drawn up to the armor shop owner, who had arrived especially early with the intent to reorganize his shop in order to more effectively hawk his latest goods, and he'd said only a single word as though it was a question. Crispian, a former gladiator and a man who had seen any number of odd things in his life, including the changes brought about both by the advent of The System fifteen years prior as well as those made by the Char hero, had utilized none of that experience to discern the man's unusual disposition.
No, Crispian drank coffee every morning when he woke up, and he was well-acquainted with the potential dangers of Coffee Withdrawal.
Unfortunately for a certain part of Onyxfell, Canus Caerellius Crispian was a bitter man, having bet and lost every mark he possessed on the day that Scutum Impervium and Scorpio Fulminis battled to the death six years ago. His feeling had been that Scutum Impervium was certain to block any and all attacks, and Victory was assured based on that simple fact. This had not been the result, however, and he'd resigned himself to the safe, relatively cheap venture of managing an armor shop which sold the work of others instead of having the money to follow his true dream, that of opening a shop in which he could sell his own works.
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This same, bitter man sent the coffee-seeker south through D-four in a direction which had absolutely no coffee, and the results were catastrophic, according to some.
The coffee-seeker charged forward at once along the directed path, which happened to lead through the end of a tailor's shop belonging to Clodia Tiberina, who had recently given up her attempts to become a driver at the lower track after she finally accepted that she was, perhaps, too old to effectively compete. He crashed into and then through the wall of her shop, emerging similarly Victorious from his battle with the building's walls on the reverse side a moment later.
The same dire fate befell one of the street-repairing drones which was working on a particularly bad hole in Triumph Avenue just behind the tailor's shop. A bare foot came down upon it, and it was squashed like a bug as the coffee-seeker continued onward. This same hole would result in three collisions within the next two days, as citizens swerved their cars and carriages at the last minute and drove over the center line that was supposed to indicate the separation of directions according to a decree from the Imperatrix, which had been one of the many changes brought about by the Char hero.
A pair of cars which were parked to one side of the street suffered similar misfortune soon after, each one found crushed along its middle and with clear footprints evident as though a person of incredible weight—or one taking unusually forceful steps—had walked over it.
Next to receive the brunt of the coffee-seeker's wrath was, tragically, D-four's shelter for lost animals that was almost universally loved by the people of the district. The coffee-seeker took one look at it and paused as a small kitten blocked his path. Breathing heavily, whether from the exertion of having destroyed half a tailoring shop, a drone, and a number of cars or from the growing emergency that the need for coffee was creating, the coffee-seeker turned around and started back the way he'd come.
The coffee-seeker didn't give the kitten even a single pat or belly rub no matter how it frolicked about. Truly this was no ordinary man, determined the onlookers who were, at that moment, feeling a deep sense of relief that the shelter, its owner, Lafrenia Civilis, and all its animals remained unharmed after what they'd just seen happen to a couple cars, a drone, and a building which had been in the path of the barefoot man's early morning rampage.
Canus Caerellius Crispian had no idea the retribution he'd unleashed upon his future self when he'd maliciously sent the coffee-seeker in a direction that had no coffee. He'd thought the man too far gone, that he was beyond any manner of rational thought, but this was no ordinary man afflicted by Coffee Withdrawal. This man, though he seemed to be acting purely on instinct, was clearly not a fool.
No, as the coffee-seeker stomped back to the shop of Crispian, leaving visible footprints in the street, he showed in his eyes the glint of an intelligent beast at that moment before he kicked down the door of the man's shop. Strange noises were heard from inside, and Crispian himself claims to have no memory of what ensued, but according to those who witnessed his emergence after the coffee-seeker had departed some time later, it's indisputable that the bitter armor shop owner shit himself during this period of time.
The coffee-seeker moved with purpose now, as would be described by a certain spectator who was sitting in the small breakfast shop known as Ientaculum and saw his approach from some distance away. He walked straight towards the shop and then came to a stop at the counter where Titus Septimius Bibulus, the proprietor, was standing.
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Titus Septimius Bibulus was an ordinary citizen of The Empire. He'd had a life that was neither particularly good nor bad, simply average.
After an average career as a gladiator in The Arena as well as having the glory of finding Victory on the battlefield for The Empire, he'd had to make some average choices. He was in his early thirties at that time, and he'd needed to decide what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. His lover, Trebatia Sudrena, wanted to have at least three children, but was that what he wanted?
In the end, it had been. He was a practical man, and it seemed practical to have children, if only to have someone to care for him as he grew older. Titus Septimius Bibulus had been practical in the raising of his two sons and only daughter, and he'd grown to love them as most fathers do once they stopped screaming and learned to speak in complete sentences. They were now gladiators, as nearly all youths in the city attempted to be once they reached the required minimum age of fifteen, with the hope that they would find Victory, and ideally enough of it so they could afford to move out of his damn home already.
Yes, Titus Septimius Bibulus still had a very busy household in the third and fourth floors of the building he and his lover had bought decades earlier, now leasing the lower floors out to supplement their earnings. He had three kids who lived at home—the oldest twenty four already—and it didn't seem like they were planning on leaving any time soon.
"Stupid System," the fifty five year-old grumbled to himself as he ground out the roasted coffee beans that he bought in bulk from a small bean roasting business a couple streets over. Indeed, he had judged that The System was the reason his kids refused to give up their attempts to be successful gladiators despite being objectively worse at it than he'd been even without The System to help him out. Whenever he or Trebatia brought up the idea of learning a trade or perhaps simply helping out at one of their jobs, their children immediately replied that today would surely be the day they would attain some new stats or skills that made them a force to be reckoned with and elevated them to being one of the most popular fighters.
Meanwhile, they forewent a number of the more rigorous training exercises that even an average gladiator like Titus Septimius Bibulus had applied himself to, and none of them brought home a significant amount of marks from their battles. It was enough to drive a man halfway to madness. His own Victory-seeking days in The Arena as a gladiator might be far behind him, but he'd be damned if he couldn't still claim Victory over any of his three entitled brats when he gave them the option of an informal bout to change his mind about lending money to buy new armor with.
It was a worsening problem, and he knew he wasn't the only one affected, he mused while taking the giant kettle of boiling water off the fire. He liked to blame Scorpio Fulminis for it, but he was practical enough to accept that someone would have come along sooner or later with the same effect and fully captured the soft minds of the young. Unnatural abilities which weren't magic were the norm since The System descended, sure, but there was something different about how The Scorpion showed them off.
Or didn't show them off, as the case was, since the only unusual things besides an unnerving ability to dodge attacks from any angle were the glowing eyes and hair. Yes, those fights had all been interesting and exciting to watch, he'd reluctantly admit. There had been a certain flair for riling up the crowds that he'd never possessed, that much was certain.
Titus Septimius Bibulus added the roughly-ground beans to the kettle now that it had cooled a little and stirred briefly before moving it back over the fire. He sighed. Scorpio Fulminis was back now after all this time, if the talk was to be believed, and that meant his kids would be even more determined and insufferable. He felt that he couldn't claim Victory no matter how he attacked this problem, and his lover was too set on coddling them all to see that they weren't trying half as hard as they should have been if they were truly intent on achieving Victory for themselves. They barely gave him any respect, neither as a father nor as a gladiator who had seen many more Victories than all of them combined.
"Coffee?" a woman's voice called.
"First coffee out soon," he replied, looking back over the counter at his first customer of the day, whose voice he didn't recognize.
A woman with short, black hair, wearing a white pannus over her lower face in the style of young women open to companionship, stood waiting, tapping her fingers on the stone. Her attire, the light, short-sleeved shirt favored by day-laborers—visible over the edge of the countertop—marked her as being someone with a genuine profession and not another gladiator, and he let out a sigh of relief while taking the kettle off the fire once more and putting the lid on it. He wasn't sure he could tolerate one of the young layabouts at the moment given the current direction of his thoughts.
"Eggs," the woman said. "Extra bacon."
Titus Septimius Bibulus grunted in acknowledgment of the order. He didn't prepare very many items for his breakfast menu, but his method of preparing eggs and bacon—dicing and cooking the eggs in the grease from the bacon along with a certain blend of spices—was good enough that it was a clear notch above average. He cooked the dish for his lover on the mornings when he wasn't running his shop next door to their home, and she always smiled as she ate it, which felt like a Victory to him.
He swept the marks the woman had set on the counter into the tin he kept behind it with the brush he used for that purpose while he was cooking. Sanitation was important, and customers appreciated seeing that he was ensuring they didn't catch any manner of diseases that The System didn't seem to be able to cure. The man took a closer look at his customer for a moment, as he did whenever anyone paid him with the correct amount for a meal and saved him the hassle of needing to wash his hands again after touching money in the course of giving a few marks back. He didn't recognize what parts he could see of her face, but that was hardly uncommon. He saw a lot of people every morning he worked, and he couldn't be expected to remember everyone, nor did he try.
The coffee would be ready soon. Titus Septimius Bibulus grabbed his frying pan up off the rack and set it on the back countertop in the kitchen. Bacon was kept in his ice chest, something that was only possible since his was a place which served food until mid-morning—after which time heat made it impossible to preserve his ingredients—or he ran out of supplies for the day. He pulled out a hunk of the meat and tossed it on his cutting board, then took the lid off the kettle to let the ground beans settle a bit before pouring. He had a few customers who requested that he scoop the bitter detritus into their coffee, citing the belief that the adversity would grant stats or skills with enough repetition, but most people were sensible enough to know that sometimes coffee grounds were nothing more than coffee grounds and would serve no other purpose.
Several chunks of bacon were sliced into the frying pan using a sharp knife that he'd received as a gift from his lover many years earlier upon opening up his business. It was a sturdy knife, having survived along with his shop for such a long time, and it felt almost like an extension of his body at this point as he routinely cut the bacon in just the right size to let the flavor flow through with each bite. After he finished, he grabbed one of his mugs and poured it full of coffee to a level just below the top edge of the fired clay in a motion he'd performed so many times he could probably do it with his eyes closed. Not that he would, as it wouldn't be very practical if he spilled boiling hot coffee all over himself.
Titus Septimius Bibulus carried the steaming drink over to his first customer, who had already seated herself with a sense of familiarity at one of the two small tables he kept in his shop for the rare occurrences of morning rain. "Food out in a few," he said after he'd set the cup down on the table.
He wasn't a man to waste words when the situation didn't warrant it. No, for the average customer it was enough to do business and let them be on their way; everyone had their own Victory to seek, and his role was simply to be the one who had the glory of starting his customers on their paths to Victory each day. On occasion he spoke more, as practicality necessitated, but it was only seldom he felt the need.
The owner of Ientaculum turned back to his task, reaching for his frying pan to s—
"Coffeeeee," came a loud, insistent call from the front of his shop.
He turned his head slowly, something about the man's tone triggering an instinctual fighting response that he'd honed through years of fighting and training to fight.
A giant, bearded man stood at the counter, his palm outstretched and holding a collection of small metal chunks. His clothes, which perhaps at one time may have been elegant and refined, were disheveled, with rips in various places.
Titus Septimius Bibulus frowned. "Can't pay with that," he said, stating the obvious.
"Coffeeeee," the middle-aged man said again, showing a certain desperation in his eyes.
The man seemed to pose no immediate threat, Titus Septimius Bibulus judged, but it still wasn't an everyday occurrence that someone would try to pay with… "That's junk metal," he said, clarifying his earlier statement.
"Coffeeeee," the man said again with an earnest expression on his face.
"Need money to buy coffee," Titus Septimius Bibulus said, feeling that perhaps something was fundamentally wrong with the coffee-seeker. The shop owner might be a practical man, but he wasn't a cruel one. There was a small Victory to be found in helping people with deficiencies.
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Volcatia looked on as the weird, barefoot man walked with purpose out of D-four towards the shop. He repeatedly attempted to pay with scraps of metal for a coffee, then casually drank a full cup of the near-boiling, steaming liquid that had come straight out of the kettle without so much as a twitch.
She pulled at the pannus she wore over her face with one hand and raised her mug to her lips with the other to take a swig.
It was decent coffee.
Average, maybe.
Just like it usually was.