Chapter Five

I haven’t really said it, but the sheer level of noise this city made was mind blowing. It’s not like I was unfamiliar with the concept of noisy, crowded environments. But?” My pupils went up and I thought of my ‘new ears’. Those weren’t making things better.

Then it hit me. I’d seen the kitsunes before, but I hadn’t really paid much attention to them, however they had devices in their ears that I thought were just decoration. But maybe not?

Call to adventure or no, one thing that had to be true was that a guild built around travel and danger would necessarily be well informed. And since there was an office specifically to deal with interworld immigration or magic kidnapping or whatever they called it here, I didn’t have to spin any stupid story.

So I followed my directions on another epic journey… down the damn street?

Yeesh. I looked at the big signs on the various shops and saw… a bit of cultural clash.

When you think of ‘adventurer’s guild’ what do you picture on a sign? A sword and shield? A picture of an armored knight, sturdy and ready for battle? Crossed blades? Maybe just the words ‘Adventurer’s Guild’ would do, right?

Am I right?

No. Well. Yes.

But not here, evidently.

The wooden sign that hung from outside showed a guy in armor alright, but he was walking and holding a bag on a stick over his shoulder. In short…

Hobo. Knight. Hoboknight.

That was their god damn symbol. A hoboknight. My shoulders slumped. I felt genuine disappointment and could only sigh. I cast my gaze up to the sky where a fabric covered glider soared off toward parts unknown. “Hey, gods of this world… Give me a break, would you?” I asked.

And then stowed my slate and headed for the entrance.

The building itself was designed to look a little bit ‘castle like’ though I think it looked more like a fort. A square wooden building but with four small towers on which a handful of stone statues sat… that were also hoboknights.

But with the sharpened stakes at the top of the wall it at least looked ‘adventury’ enough. I was kind of expecting some big tough guards out front or some big strong adventurers hanging around leaning against the wall and looking to fight newbies or something.

But?

Leave it to reality to subvert my expectations.

I opened the door, wondering how in the hell this world decided that doors going ‘up’ like that was better than just swinging in or out, and then walked through.

Let me tell you, I’ve seen my share of anime adventuring guilds. Mercenary orgs, taverns, bars, and so on. Back before I lost my job, I even worked as a salaryman and drank my peers under the table in karaoke rooms and various cheap bars. I’m very familiar with booze reeking places.

But nothing prepared me for the mix of alcohol and sweat.

The room was full of adventurers alright, tendrils of smoke wafted up from little tightly rolled orange leaves in their mouths, alcohol was everywhere, which at least seemed familiar, but the real stink was the sweat. Maybe it was my kitsune nose, but I wanted to vomit.

I pinched my nose shut with two fingers while I checked the scene out. It was actually brightly lit, which was nice. With windows letting in plenty of light and some long bulbs affixed to copper tubes on the ceiling. Racks of weapons, mostly big ones, lined the walls, and most of the tables were full. Notably, the tables had no more than four chairs each even though they could have easily held six.

Equally notably, those who occupied all four tables were also wildly differently dressed. Some were dressed… not too far off from me. Tinkers or something like it. Others wore light clothing, leather from the look of it, some kind of cheap armor that didn’t get in the way, and carried short weapons and tool kit belts. ‘Thieves and rogues?’ I was guessing. But given the hoods, and everything else, I was probably right. Maybe assassins too, but who could say?

Others were more bare chested, oversized behemoths with thick muscles and bald heads. Others were heavily armored with long swords and what appeared to be basic flintlock pistols. ‘Firearms?’ I was a little surprised by this, but then again, even if they hadn’t invented gunpowder, since magic existed here they could easily create something firearm ‘like’ and it would be weird if they hadn’t.

I was briefly frozen in place as the design for one such device began to form in my head. I didn’t have the tools for it, but I felt confident I could build one if I needed to.

There were other mixes as well, but the point here of course was that it was quickly apparent that each table was made up of a full party. ‘So if that’s the case?’ I thought, ‘That means that the tables that have fewer people are short of a party.’ I needed to confirm my thinking of course, and my scan of the wide open room soon found the reception desk.

A buxom gnome woman sat behind a window calmly reading a book and ignoring the grousing and chatter, she was short, with a kind of yellowish tan skin, wearing a close fit linen shirt that was done tightly against her bosom and just barely covering her nipples. She had short brown hair cut off just at the middle of her neck and a faint scar on her cheek. A chain ran up the length of her shirt to a pocket on the side of her breast in which I could see the faint outline of a little round watch.

I approached her, “Hi.” I said when seconds passed and she said nothing.

“I’m trying to read!” She snapped and without looking at me, she jabbed her hand toward a corkboard full of papers. “You want a quest, take it off the board and bring it here. I don’t know anythin that idn’t written on the damn paper.”

“Excuse me, but-” I tried again.

She cut me off by snapping her book shut with an audible clap that silenced the entire room, every eye turned towards us and I got the distinct feeling I’d just fucked up.

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“Hey! Didn’t nobody anywhere ever tell you not to interrupt a lady while she’s readin?!” She snapped.

“No.” I answered. I suppose I should acknowledge that I’ve never been the very best about picking up conversational cues, and though I was fairly sure I’d made a mistake, I wasn’t sure exactly how. I mean, I needed her help, that’s what she’s there for, what am I supposed to do?

She was a far cry from all the girly, sweet and professional receptionists I knew from pretty much every story ever. In those, she was always secretly in love with the main character, or at least cared about him. Or she was friendly and kind and had a soft feminine voice that was just delightful.

“Well, you don’t, bucko!” She jabbed her finger at me. “What are you, new to this damn world that you don’t know that if you come up to somebody reading, you have to wait until they finish the chapter they’re on and then let them talk first?! Your mother shoulda raised you better!”

I took a step back, I was shocked at her statement, her aggression, her rudeness. And perhaps that is why I stumbled and fell onto the table.

“Look out!” Her warning seemed as genuine as it was ill timed. And I crashed down hard onto the surface, the legs splayed out and the wood cracked. I knew what was happening before it happened.

With a thunderous noise I was down on my back looking up at the beams of the ceiling and the next thing I know, the receptionist shouted, “You idjit!” and then a book flies straight into my nose. It bounced off of my face and rolled end over end away to strike another table, only for a beer too close to the edge to respond by toppling over and drowning the cover and the pages in amber refreshment.

“My beer!” A woman shouted.

“My book!” The gnome woman exclaimed.

“My head.” I groaned and started to sit up and winced again. “My face. My tails.” I gave my head a rapid shake. “Ouch!” I shouted, I was mad, “What was that for?!” I exclaimed and rubbed my nose where she’d struck it. I was lucky I didn’t have a fox’s face as well otherwise that might have really hurt.

“You never. Interrupt. A story!” She shouted. She was standing on her seat and jabbed her finger at me, “That’s like walkin in on somebody on the shitter and offerin to shake their hand! You just don’t do it!”

“Well, I’m so-rry!” I shouted as I pushed myself up to my feet, “I’m not from this world, I just got summoned today and I didn’t know any better. I’m not trying to be rude! I’m just ignorant!”

“Well, now my book is ruined, my table is ruined, her beer is ruined-” She snapped her eyes toward the woman who looked horror struck into her empty mug, “no refunds or replacements” she asserted before jerking her eyes back toward me, “and my day is ruined. Now what are you going to do about it?”

I don’t know why, but as I looked down at the broken table and the beer stained book, I felt something akin to what I felt in the government office with their machine thing. I reached into my toolkit and pulled out my multifixer tool. I could ‘see’ what I needed to do and I fell to work without thinking of it.

I could feel the eyes of the place still on me, but I was in my own little world now, there was only me and a project. I grabbed the table and flipped it on its side, holding it with my left, I inspected the damage. “Shoddy, cheap work.” I mumbled when I saw the legs were secured only by some piss poor excuse for screws on a triangle bit of cheap and half rotted wood. I pried off the broken remnants and then grabbed the nearest wooden leg. “Lazy work.” I mumbled another criticism and then dropped it, I had the measurements of the table and the leg in my head already, and I took the file of my multifixer and began to scrape at the wood on the table’s underside.

The tiny receptionist wasn’t shouting now, she was actually watching with interest as I shaved down a three inch depth in the shape of the top of the table leg, only a little bit ‘less’ in its dimensions.

I rolled the round table from spot to spot, creating new holes, then leaning the table against a wooden beam nearby, I worked on the legs, cutting away the break points and then narrowing the top just enough to make it snug.

I then affixed each leg into place with one quick thrust, and the repair job was complete. I stopped only when I noticed the little ‘pouch’ on the underside.

And the ace sticking out. I glanced at the cleric. Her face became blank and stone still, her lips pursed thin like she knew she’d been caught.

I ‘confiscated’ the ace covertly, using the table itself as a shield to hide what I’d done from the rest of the room, and my back to hide it from the receptionist, then stood the table upright.

I then put away my multifixer and went to the book. From there, it was a repeat of the cloth trick with the green stuff when I first got here, and boom, job done.

I picked up the book, tossed it back to the open mouthed receptionist so that it landed with an audible slap down on the counter top. “Don’t buy cheap stuff and it’ll break less often.” I said with the brash confidence that, when it came to fixing things, I knew it was my right to have.

A rumbling of conversation went up as I remembered I had an audience, the whole thing had taken only about five minutes. “What about my beer?” The woman at the table asked, I took a longer look at her. She wore blue and white robes, looking very priestly, she was a human with short black hair and grayish, clever looking narrow eyes. “Take it up with her, Ace.” I jerked my thumb toward the receptionist. “She spilled it, not me.”

The cleric snapped her jaw shut when I applied the nickname to her that showed I knew what she’d done. She started mumbling something, like she was arguing, but it didn’t feel like she was talking to me or even to herself.

I ignored that and the receptionist put her hand on her book’s now intact cover. “I guess if you’re new, you can’t be expected to know things, but I didn’t hear about some hero summoning… they crow about those for weeks before they do it.” She said defensively and crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“So what’s your deal?” She asked and finally began to look me over.

I explained it all as best I could, which admittedly was with some degree of crudity, trying to cover all that was still too strange to properly express.

She seemed to get it though, and finally her brow furrowed and she rubbed the scar on her cheek. “Alright, bucko, you can register here if you like, one hundred cred fee and-” she stopped. “Didn’t you have a bundled newspaper thing with you?” She asked.

I did. I looked around on the floor, and didn’t see it.

Not until I looked up and found the smug looking cleric munching on my sweets.

As if to taunt me, she held up the last one, tossed it into the air, and then caught it in her mouth with one quick bite. “I didn’t steal your sweet roll, I found a few lying around. If you don’t protect your things, or if you abandon them, it’s your own fault if they go missing.” She said, then added, “My beer would have been cheaper.”

‘Sonofa…’ I thought. I was hesitant to do anything outrageous since I needed to know more about the laws in this land, but nobody seemed to mind what the priest had done. Clearly I needed to know more about how the priesthood worked here.

“Hey! Hey!” The receptionist snapped her fingers to get my attention. “Ignore Loysa. Focus over here, bucko. Give me your slate.” She said and repeatedly held her hand out. “I want to finish that chapter already and you’re gett’n in my way.”

I held out my slate to her while still keeping my eye on ‘Loysa’ to make sure she didn’t just take off.

“There. You’re done. Registered as a certified adventurer and…” She whistled, “Really now… you’ve got an interesting talent here.”

That had my attention so thoroughly that I all but forgot the thieving priest and her placid, smug expression.