Rat was confused. What happened? she thought to herself, looking down at the man on the ground in front of her. Everything had been fine just a minute ago when, out of nowhere, he'd begun celebrating before falling to the ground, unconscious. She thought back to previous events to try and figure it out.
Rat thought about how she'd met the man. Actually, scratch that. She hadn't met the man; she had been following the man since he'd left the Topai's Church of Dreams. So instead, she thought back to then. He'd stepped out, looked real excited, walked west for an hour, and passed out. She then walked over and looked down at him. Yep. That was all she knew. So she continued to look at the man. He was wearing weird clothes, that was for certain. He had a strangely soft-looking black shirt on, along with extremely thick-looking pants. Walking around him, they seemed to have a high number of pockets. She tried to figure out what he was based on just his clothes. He couldn't be nobility; that would make no sense; if he were nobility, he'd have an insignia of some sort and plenty of important-looking people following him around. Not to mention, the nobility had absolutely no reason to be anywhere near the abandoned city of Kurta. Hmm.
Rat's next guess would, of course, be a Freehand. The pants certainly looked like something they would wear. But that still didn't make much sense either. If he were a Freehand, he'd be traveling with all sorts of equipment and weapons. He'd also have likely noticed and potentially killed her already. And even still, this was ignoring the fact that he would've felt her before she had ever even noticed him. That is unless he'd only just manifested his Memorandum in that church, which made less sense than everything previously mentioned before this point combined. However, it would explain his passing out. She'd heard that manifesting one's Memorandum was an incredibly dangerous thing to do. Not only did it take an absurd amount of blood to bring forth, but it also left one's soul raw and free to be taken. No, there was no way that was what had happened.
He also looked too old to be a Freehand; usually, they would have retired by the time they reached an age like his. Either that or they'd become a Heldhand, working on things much above the grade of a Freehand. There was no possible way he was a Heldhand. Last she heard you couldn't find a single one until halfway to the capital.
Rat could think of two other things, but he definitely wasn't either of them. First was a Fallen, and second was a cultist. First, he wasn't a Fallen. She saw no grotesque wings or extra legs or backward joints, and she definitely didn't feel any ominous pressures inside her chest. Nor did she feel like her soul was going to be sucked out of her and turned into a minion in its nefarious plans. Of course, those were all stories of what she'd heard the Fallen could do, and she had never personally seen a Fallen, but still. Second, he wasn't a cultist. She'd seen those, and he looked nothing like them. He didn't act like them, either. Cultists were all brooding and dark, wearing robes that dragged on the ground. She supposed he could be an acolyte, but that was still unlikely.
That left only one obvious choice. This man, wherever he had come from, was a scavenger. Or homeless, like her. Either way, he looked a lot better off than she did. Something she would soon remedy. Slowly, Rat let herself down onto her knees, scratching a persistent itch behind her ear on the way down. Her stomach growled. She'd have to hurry if she was to make it back to someplace inhabited to beg for some food. With a keen eye, only the one, seeing as her other was lazy, she looked over the man to see if she could see anything obvious of value. Nope. She supposed she'd have to do what she didn't want to do.
Rat closed her eyes, reached within herself, and roughly grabbed ahold of her most precious possession. It was something nobody knew about, prized by anybody who could get one: a Trophy. She grabbed that shit with the fist of a got damned animal and forced it up to her eye. Only, before she had time to fix it, it went into the wrong eye. "Darn", she whispered to herself before smacking the side of her head, hard. She had to do it a few more times before her lazy eye was looking down at the man. Quickly, so as to slow its draw on her meager supply of energy, she turned her head to view every part of the man.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Her Trophy was something special even among Trophies. It was an ability called Lingering Life that would show her what she needed to do to stay alive. It would turn her whole world shades of red, except for a small trail of color. It wouldn't give her all the answers, only that small trail to follow and hopefully manage to get by. Before her mother disappeared, she had said it was her best quality. Rat guessed that was true.
Recently, the ability had been getting weaker. When Rat had mentioned this to her mother, the woman had mumbled something to herself about "value" and "finding new tools" before throwing a rock at her and telling her to get lost. This wasn't uncommon, but Rat figured she should've thought about it more before the woman left her. She might've been able to figure out what was going on before it happened. Now, she was all alone, which was awesome. Kinda. She'd found it was better than staying with her mother. This way, she got to keep the food she scrounged up.
Regardless, the weakening ability had left her in a tough spot. Over time, it had changed from giving her a semi-solid path to follow to faint markings that she had to figure out the meaning of. More than a couple of times recently, she'd found herself on the brink of death, barely making it out of situations with her life intact. Today, it was worse than ever. It had led her to the middle of nowhere, to this man. She hoped this was what she needed to turn her luck around.
As she focused on her sight, Rat saw something peculiar. She saw the brightest light she had ever seen from Lingering Life, and it was focused entirely on the man's pocket. Slowly, she reached toward the pocket and pulled it open to the most blinding light in her life. She practically couldn't see at all through it. The colors were so vivid that she could've sworn she had never seen real color before. Gently, so as not to wake the man up, she reached into the pocket and grabbed the light.
Searing hot pain branded her hand. She fell backward and cried out, screaming as the object felt like it was burrowing into her palm. She tried to throw the object, but her fingers disobeyed her, clamping shut around the object as hard as they could. Rat felt a weight press into her soul as she realized what this was. It was a manifested Memorandum. She had grabbed someone else's manifested Memorandum before having ever manifested her own. She felt as her soul began to rip apart. Screaming in agony, she began beating her hand into the stone and dirt road, crying, praying that her hand would let the damned thing go. She felt that same brand on her hand begin to solder her soul. "No!" she begged, "Please! I'm only twelve! Let me live my life!". She begged the stone, pleading with it as it mercilessly pierced her inner self. She would die. She knew she would die. This was what happened when a normal person touched anothers Memorandum.
Rat accepted her fate. This was it. It was what she deserved, trying to rob an innocent, sick man. She would simply accept it and try and be a better person in the next life. She curled into a ball and sobbed, waiting for all to turn to darkness.
Suddenly, before she could even comprehend what was going on, she felt a massive, callused hand wrap around her ankle, lifting her into the air. She couldn't help but see the perpetrator's face; her bad eye was still pointing down. It was the man whose Memorandum she was currently latched onto. Surprisingly, he looked scared. Scared and confused. He looked down at her. "What in the hell is going on!?" he shouted at her, more confusion than fear in his face now.
"M-My hand, sir." Rat whimpered. "I can't let go of it!" The man seemed to notice her smoking, cooking hand for the first time. In one swift movement, he swatted her hand as hard as he could with the hand that wasn't holding her up. The Memorandum launched out of her hand and across the road, skipping as it went. Gently, the man lowered her to the ground. And for the first time since grabbing the Memorandum, Rat realized she was seeing the world in full color.