Alex stared at the tattoo on the back of his hand as he walked. Greg had driven him and Chandra back into the city, but rather than go their separate ways, the three of them opted to spend the rest of the afternoon together. They still had to acquire the necessary items that Zack needed to make stuff for their prize counter. Alex, however, was more concerned about his status tattoo.
The makeshift thing could barely show him his mana, and almost nothing else. The only reason he knew he was making any headway when it came to his level was because he had a new spell. He still didn’t fully believe what Zack said was true—that acquiring a spell lead to a level up, rather than the other way around. He would like to be able to confirm that better, but for that he would need a new tattoo, one able to show him his level properly.
As they wandered the mall in search of things they could buy for Zack, Alex passed a tattoo parlor that offered to apply status tattoos. He paused in the window and stared at the advertisement. They offered both the Yale variant and the Waterloo variant, with discounts available for licensed adventurers.
“Alex?” Chandra asked, putting a hand on his elbow.
Alex blinked and looked at her. She was back in her human form—she didn’t like being a werewolf out in public if it could be avoided. “Sorry, I was just… I was thinking about updating this thing,” Alex admitted, showing his clumsily drawn tattoo to her. “I know I shouldn’t shell out the cash for it right now, but business is good. Maybe it’s worth the price, you know?”
Chandra gave him an apologetic smile. “Come on. We’re not making enough money yet to justify that kind of cost.”
Alex nodded. It would certainly be worth the investment once they were able to have multiple customers running the dungeon at the same time, but for now they just weren’t making enough money.
Greg was waiting for Alex and Chandra just outside a toy store, tapping his foot impatiently. Alex paused in the doorway, staring up at the brightly coloured displays that stuck out. The store’s mascot, a cartoon zebra, waved to guests from a magically animated sign.
“Let’s start with plushies,” Greg said, lumbering through the doorway. Several of the workers stared up at him worriedly. A yellow-skinned goblin practically hid behind a display as she spotted him. “What are you looking at?” He roared, narrowing his eyes dangerously. “Can’t an orc shop without suspicion?”
Chandra rolled her eyes and stepped in before Greg could yell some more. “Sorry about him,” she said, quickly apologizing to the cowering goblin. “Just don’t stare, he doesn’t like it, okay?”
The goblin nodded quickly, then jogged briskly away. Alex watched her go and felt a knot twist in his gut. Of the various races, orcs regularly were treated with suspicion just for existing. They were big and overly muscled, and it was something of a stereotype for them to have anger management issues. Alex knew Greg was a calm and reserved person, but he couldn’t blame his friend for resenting the looks he got.
“Come on, let’s get this over with,” Greg grumbled, his eyes turning to the ground. He lumbered deeper into the store, with both Chandra and Alex picking up the pace to keep up.
Everywhere they went, Greg couldn’t avoid the stares. Women with children holding their hands. Workers cowering behind shelves. It got to the point that Chandra kicked off her shoes and shifted into her werewolf form, simply in the hopes it would draw the stares away from her friend.
“Greg,” Chandra said, stepping in front of him. “Do you want to go?”
Greg paused midstep. Alex noticed that his fists were tight, and veins bulged up his arms. “I’m fine,” he said.
“You’re not,” Chandra put a hand to his chest, practically forced him to look at her. “Greg, I know you. If you’re uncomfortable, we don’t have to be here.”
Greg said nothing. He gently pushed Chandra aside and stepped around her, moving between a pair of shelves lined with stuffed animals. With surprising care, he plucked a plush dragon off the shelf and studied it. It had bright purple felt stitched together by mechanical means, with plastic scales lining its back. Yellow horns and wings stuck out from the toy, giving the illusion of a real dragon’s proportions—shrunk down to the size a child could hug, of course.
Before Alex could ask if that would work, Greg put it back on the shelf. “I ain’t paying fifty damn dollars for a plushy,” he snorted, forcing a smile as he met Alex’s gaze.
Chandra let out a quiet breath of relief, then slipped between the shelves to help Greg look. “Alex, why don’t you go see if there are anything else Zack might like to use as potential souvenirs? We’ll handle the plushy dilemma.”
Alex nodded and quickly scanned the store. He spotted a few more cowering workers, but they quickly dove behind cover to avoid being spotted. There was a woman with bright purple hair, and Alex cringed as he realized she was most likely empowered. He hoped she wouldn’t cause any trouble for Greg and Chandra. Finally, he spotted something that looked promising, and slipped off to go investigate.
He wasn’t sure exactly what sort of things Zack would like for his prize counter, but puzzles seemed like a great place to start. There were the normal kind, with painted pieces that slotted together. They were decently cheap and came in counts ranging from fifty pieces up to five hundred. Alex grabbed a couple of the smaller puzzles, hoping they would satisfy Zack, and then spotted the magically enchanted puzzles.
He cringed at the listed price, but considered getting them all the same. The box explained that they were designed to help train a child’s magical aptitude. The pieces would only reveal their picture with an infusion of mana. Otherwise, each piece was completely blank. A fifty piece puzzle was over a hundred dollars, though. Magic or not, no puzzle was worth that price.
Not right now, at least. Once the company was bringing in more money, he could reconsider such an expense—along with his upgraded status tattoo.
The puzzles tucked under his arm, Alex returned to seek out his friends, only to find they weren’t where he left them. He looked around worriedly, and strained his ears to hear for them.
Then a child's scream echoed through the store.
Alex dropped the puzzles into a bin full of colourful slime in sealed bucks and ran as fast as he could. When he rounded a corner, he found a little boy on the ground, bawling his eyes out. Greg was crouched over him, trying to calm him down. Chandra, however, was on all fours. Her fur was standing on end, and she was snarling furiously.
That was when Alex spotted the army of animated stuffed animals. They were marching towards the kid, their eyes glowing red with fury.
“I d-d-didn’t mean t-t-to,” the kid stammered. They were small, they couldn’t be more than five or six years old.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Greg said, in the softest voice he could manage.
As Alex watched, a streak of bright red lanced through the boy’s hair. He was empowered, and likely hadn’t realized it.
“KILL!” One of the animated toys roared. It was a teddy bear, with bony spikes jutting like claws from its hands. The weight of its new talons was more than it could handle, and it had to shuffle clumsily along. The other toys had weapons of their own, including puffs of fire from a hovering stuffed dragon.
Alex sprung into action, his own flames springing from his hand. He blasted the dragon out of the air before it could soar over Chandra’s head. “I’ve got you covered. Greg, get the kid to safety,” he ordered.
Greg nodded. With the sort of care and tenderness most would never expect to see from a man his size, Greg scooped the boy up in his arms and carried him to safety, far away from the animated toys.
Alex spotted the goblin worker from before, watching them with wide, horrified eyes. He hoped she was paying close attention. Greg was a hero, he didn’t deserve the sort of resent she gave him.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Worry about her later,” Chandra growled, her voice a lupine bark. “We need to deal with these first.”
“I doubt the store will take kindly to us slaying their merchandise,” Alex grumbled. He wished he had his sword on him, but it was frowned upon for people without adventurer licenses to carry around weapons. He didn’t need a sword to fight stuffed animals, though.
As a teddy bear lunged for him, Alex blasted it with a lance of fire. The spell knocked the monster back, but didn’t seem to do much damage to the fur.
“They’re fireproof!” The goblin worker called from her hiding place.
“What!? Why are they fireproof!?” Alex demanded.
“They’re magically enchanted to take as much damage as a kid can dish out, so their special friends don’t get hurt,” the goblin explained.
“Oh, I really don’t like that,” Chandra said. “Do you think I’ll be able to chew through them?”
“How much you want to bet these things are dog tested?” Alex asked.
“I’m a wolf, not a dog.”
“Do you really think that distinction matters right now?”
“No. Probably not. We would never be so lucky.”
A stuffed monkey leapt over the encroaching toys, screeching as it bat at Chandra’s face with soft fists. Growling, Chandra deftly flipped the attacking toy into her mouth and shook it. She smashed its head into the floor in an attempt to knock it out, before whipping it back into the approaching horde.
There wasn’t even a scratch in its light brown fur.
“Yeah, definitely wolf-proof,” Chandra lamented, rising back to her full height. “Alex, any ideas?”
“There has to be something they’re weak to!” Alex said, punting a stuffed chicken when it tried to peck at his feet. “We have to figure out what it is!”
“We shouldn’t be figuring out anything, we’re not adventurers,” Chandra reminded him. “It’s not legal for us to be fighting monsters.”
“I’m not sure these count as monsters. It’s a kid’s power gone haywire, not a monster manifestation,” Alex pointed out.
“As if the authorities will care.”
Alex winced but didn’t argue. Just as he was about to suggest they turn and try to run away, a large green shape came barreling down aisle. Greg dropped to his knees and slid through the fluffy phalanx, bowling them aside with his momentum. He had a sword in hand, which he tossed up to Alex as he came to a stop.
Alex didn’t waste a second. He tugged the blade from the scabbard just as another plushy jumped off a shelf. The blade bit into the toy’s torso, practically slicing it clean in two. Polyfill exploded out of its insides as it fell to the ground, unmoving. For a second, Alex considered double-tapping, just to ensure it was down for the count. Then he watched the mana fade from its eyes.
Greg reached out with his magical tethers and yanked as many toys into the air as he could handle, tossing them up for Alex to slash at. Chandra grabbed them and shredded them with her magically enhanced claws. Within minutes, the toy army was at last beginning to thin.
That was when Alex noticed a dinosaur in the crowd. It was larger than the other toys, with a stuffed crown perched atop its head. Taking a gamble, he dove into the group and slashed. The dinosaur’s head exploded off its body with a shrip of tearing fabric. As the king fell, so too did his troops.
The few undamaged toys collapsed into a heap, the magic animating their felt finally dying down. Alex let out a gasp as he sheathed his sword, quickly checking his mana to make sure he wasn’t running on fumes. He scowled as his mana bar was half empty, but didn’t give him any quantities beyond that.
The goblin worker peeked out from behind her hiding spot and looked around at the mangled merchandise. She let out a sigh of relief, clutching at her chest. “Thank you, adventurers,” she said quickly.
Alex wanted to correct her, that they weren’t adventurers. Greg lifted a hand, and he fell silent.
“It’s our off day,” Greg said, slowly rising off the ground. “We weren’t ready to fight anything. I’m sorry that we couldn’t have offered better support.”
“I’m sorry that we were so rude to you, sir,” the goblin said, fidgeting with her shirt nervously. “If we knew we were dealing with adventurers, we would have been a lot more polite.”
Alex had to hold back a sneer. If they knew that Greg would be saving their lives, they wouldn’t have treated him the way they had. Whether or not this bothered the orc, though, he didn’t say.
Greg bent down and scooped a few of the more undamaged toys off the ground. A teddy bear with monstrously long claws. A stuffed dragon with its stomach ripped open. The toy dinosaur that Alex had decaptitated.
“Think we can get a discount on these?” He asked, holding the dinosaur out for the goblin to see.
“Y-you can take them, for free,” the goblin assured him. “We, uh, we can’t sell them like that.”
Greg nodded, and handed each of the toys over to Chandra. “I appreciate that. Thank you.”
The goblin nodded to Greg, even as the orc turned and lumbered away. Chandra didn’t stick around, following after him. Alex took one last look at his status tattoo, and realized that doing so earlier must have been why the goblin thought they were adventurers. She probably couldn’t get a good look at it. Alex quickly resheathed his sword, not bothering to slip it into his belt, and ran to keep up with his friends.
As they left the toy store, they spotted the kid and his parents huddled together in the corner. They thanked Greg for getting their son to safety, but all he did was nod and move on. It was clear he didn’t want to linger at the toy store. Alex really couldn’t blame him, either. Sooner or later, the actual adventurers would show up to investigate matters. They needed to be long gone before that happened.
***
Salazar stared at the mangled mess of monstrous toys with furrowed brows. The elf was no stranger to peculiar monster manifestations, and had seen many similar things in his short time with the guild. That was why he was called in to check on this particular alert. It was in his jurisdiction, and sounded simple enough. And yet, when he arrived, he found that the monsters were already dealt with.
“Are you sure nobody else was called in to deal with these things?” Salazar asked, his silver-blond eyebrows furrowed in frustration. He had a finger pressed to his ear-piece.
“Positive. You were the closest available adventurer,” the dispatch officer on the other end confirmed.
“Well, somebody else definitely got to them before I did. Lacerations, mostly. There is some evidence of fire damage, too,” Salazar explained.
There was the sound of typing from the other end of the line, and when the dispatch officer next spoke there was a sense of urgency in their voice. “There are no registered adventurers capable of using fire magic in the area.”
“So, somebody was using pyromancy to illegally fight monsters,” Salazar noted. He licked his lips, and rested a hand on the dagger sheathed at his hip. The tattoo on his hand caught the light, flashing the number twenty-seven for anyone around to see.
“It seems that way,” dispatch confirmed.
“Permission to investigate?”
“Granted. Gather what information you can and then return to headquarters.”
Salazar removed his finger from his earpiece, hanging up the call. He plucked the singed bear off the floor and dusted some of the soot off its fur. The claws jutting from its hands were more frightening than the burns, but he could definitely sense the magic sizzling within the creature. It was dormant, not dead. If given enough energy, it would reawaken.
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Salazar chuckled.
He reached for the mana buried within his chest and targeted the remaining plushies. With a snap of his fingers, threads of sickly green aether scattered through the air. Everything it touched started to decay and rot. Fabric melted away, polyfill turned into bubbling oil, and even the shelves withered to dust.
When Salazar turned, he found himself staring down at a wide-eyed goblin in the store’s uniform. “I-I’m sorry, sir, but did you just, um, melt the merchandise?” she asked.
Salazar rolled his eyes contemptuously, but reached into his shirt all the same. Hanging around his neck was a plastic card, his adventuring license. “I’m from the local adventurer guild, here responding to a monster alert. Imagine my surprise to find the monsters already dealt with.”
The goblin blinked in surprise. “Alert? But, adventurers were here earlier. They dealt with the monsters for us.”
Salazar frowned in confusion. “Nobody was dispatched to this area. Can you please elaborate?”
The goblin nodded, her long ears bouncing with the motion. “There was an orc, a human, and a werewolf. They were here, said it was their day off, and they dealt with the monsters for us.”
Salazar’s frown deepened. “An orc, a human, and a werewolf? Interesting. You didn’t happen to catch their names, did you?”
The goblin nodded. “I think the orc was named Greg? I overheard the werewolf call him that.”
Salazar licked his lips. They were dry and in need of moisturizing. He could practically taste the lingering flavour of coffee on his tongue. “Thank you, my dear, you’ve been very helpful. I shall see that this… Greg… I shall see he is amply rewarded for his bravery. Him and his friends.”
That seemed to ease any concerns the goblin might have had. Salazar nodded in farewell, before stepping out of the toy store and into the mall at large. As he walked, people gave him a wide berth. They likely didn’t even understand why, only that Salazar radiated the kind of energy that needed to be avoided.
He stuck a finger to his ear piece again and spoke. “Dispatch, can you confirm if there is an orc adventurer in any local guilds that goes by the name Greg?”
There was silence from the other end for a moment, before the answer came. “There are no adventurers in a fifty kilometer radius from your position that goes by that name.”
“So it’s not impossible for there to be one, but we have none on record at any of our sister branches?”
“Correct.”
Salazar chewed his lower lip. “Then I am afraid I must report illegal adventurer activity. This Greg and his associates have illegally fought monsters. From their description, we are dealing with powered citizens, possibly serial offenders.”
“I’ll put out an APB on them. Can you give me their descriptions?”