It was Jar’s voice this morning on the city’s loudspeakers providing the morning announcements, and as Josef walked through the tight streets made tighter by mid-day traffic, he couldn’t help but listen. They gave an admittedly dry congratulations to the new Shadow Verdancies who were appointed yesterday morning, an update into the pushes into Red’s territory, which was impressive considering they were just making their first major advances into their territory yesterday, as well as news of further progress of Yellow’s march north into Viridia. Not much worry in that–Yellow never went any further north than Senka whenever they did march into Viridia–but every time Yellow did this, it never failed to make Josef nervous. Maybe this time…

“Hey, what about him?” Sina said in a very heavy northern dialect of Verdanka, “He seems like a sucker to the old innocent child trick.”

“Sina, we’re nineteen, now,” Josef replied in just as thick of a dialect, “Stop trying to get me to do that again ‘for old times’ sake, I’m not doing it.”

“You don’t have to do anything. I’m the one that does all the bullshitting.”

“But watching you act like a child when you’re nearly a full adult is just so cringe worthy it pains me more than getting punched by an enforcer.”

“Aw, it's cringe worthy to watch me do it,” Sina said in a very condescending tone, “try actually doing it yourself.”

“I had to when we were younger, and I hated it.”

“Yeah, and you sucked at it too,” Sina said with a giggle. Josef punched her arm.

“I will give you this: he does look old and dumb,” Josef said, “Let’s just do the standard distraction.”

“He also looks weirdly passionate about his bread,” Sina said offhandedly, “Like, seriously passionate in a weird way.”

“Go start talking to him, I’ll keep an eye.” Sina gave a nod then headed off towards the bread merchant’s stand. She immediately started up a conversation with the guy, this time in Modern Standard Verdanka, instead of the heavy dialect they just had their conversation in. They often spoke in their mother’s native dialect of Verdanka when planning on who to steal from. It allowed them to plan pretty much out in the middle of the street because barely anybody from that far north comes down to Verdigris anymore. Sina asked some question which Josef was now out of earshot to hear, and the old man, as tired and spent as he appeared, immediately latched onto the conversation with Sina. She had a way of getting the most tired and uninterested people into a conversation with her.

Josef wound around and through the crowd, out of sight of the old man running the stand. He figured that he didn’t have to stay too far away, considering that this man looked ancient and probably didn’t have the greatest of eyes these days. He found a hole in the vendor's stands, allowing him to get into the alleys behind the vendor street. This took him out of sight from Sina, but she knew the drill well enough to expect her brother to disappear for a few seconds as he wove his way behind the person they were stealing from.

Josef rounded a corner that revealed an alley opening that was almost directly behind the man’s vendor stand. His bread inventory spread from his stand all the way into the alley, with a few crates with open tops and wrapped bread in a position where Josef could take a bag full of bread without even being noticed. How did this old man get this much bread here by himself?

Josef slowly creeped up the alley as he saw Sina direct the man's attention to a specific group of breads that Josef couldn’t see, as they were in baskets that faced the main street. Even looking at the back of the man’s head Josef could assume that Sina just caused the man to launch into an extensive description of that bread, where it came from, and why she should buy it. Sina knew she couldn’t buy anything for this man. She probably had less money on her than this man did, but she pretended to listen like she had plenty. She was way too good at what she did.

The man raised his finger like he was remembering something, and then started to turn around towards the alley in which Josef was hiding, and he immediately slinked back against the wall which was coated in shadows. Josef could barely see Sina from around the corner of a crate. They made eye contact, and Sina gave him a subtle nod to indicate that he was okay still, that he wasn’t going any further back. The old man was just rummaging through some of his spare inventory that he had stacked up against the wall that was behind him, and thus was on the other side of the crate that Josef was hiding behind. He took a breath, and realized that his hand was resting on something rough and itchy. He grabbed it, and found that it was a discarded straw bag. Convenient.

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He saw the vendor turn, and started filling the bag with loaves of bread, more than they would ever need. He was taking long enough to where the man was getting impatient with Sina and her constant questions, so he decided to stop with about three quarters of the bag full, grabbed the top of the bag closed, and just waltzed out of the alley as casually as he could manage.

“Ok well,” Sina said with a pause, “I’ll think on it and come back when I have some money.” The man gave her a very disgruntled look, almost offended that he spent so much time talking so passionately about his bread to somebody that wouldn’t buy. He let his gaze fall in disappointment, and then Sina walked away. He knew she wouldn’t be coming back.

She made her way briskly through the crowd until she caught up with Josef, who was hard to miss now that he was carrying a large sack filled with bread. She stopped him with a tap on the shoulder.

“Where did you find the sack?” She asked, exasperated. Josef just gave a shrug.

“It was just conveniently in the alleyway,” Josef said, “Found it when I had to duck away from your wonderful attempt at keeping him distracted.”

“And how, in the name of the nine, was I supposed to know how he was going to react to a question about a bread that looked like it was growing fur?”

“I don’t know, maybe ask about a bread that isn’t as obscure and foreign looking?”

“I didn’t know it was foreign though! Apparently it comes all the way from Blue! I didn’t even know those people ate bread. I thought they survived purely off of fish and coral.”

“You can’t just eat the fish straight up. You have to have something to eat it on,” Josef said as he took a glance towards where they had just walked from. Down the street, through a break in the traffic of the crowd, he saw the old man that they had just stolen from, waving over an enforcer that neither of them had seen, just out of sight of their little heist. He started to talk to the person clad in armor meant to stop both a bullet and one of those strange energy blasts created by people of other nations, and pointed in the general direction the two of them started to walk. Sina just barely caught a glance of what was happening, but even so she had the exact same thing as Josef in that moment.

They took off down the street, forcing their way through the crowd that was moving against them. People yelled at them as the twins shoved businessmen, women, and the occasional child out of the way, and they didn’t bother to look back at their pursuer. They just relied on their familiarity with the densely woven streets of this side of town, hoping that they knew this side of town better than the enforcer that was chasing them.

They wound down the main market road, still dodging and weaving through the crowd of people just trying to do their morning shopping. Josef had to shoulder a particularly muscular man out of the way in order to keep up with Sina, who was always better at navigating crowds like this. Josef cursed under his breath at how much the hit hurt his shoulder. The man cursed at him, only much louder than Josef’s. But he kept running. He could see Sina over the crowd–she was ahead of him now. He picked up speed with the minimal amount of energy he had left to try and catch up with her just as she took a sharp turn down an alleyway located on the other side of the street from where Josef was. He turned to start crossing the street to get to the same alley, and took a glance to his left, down the street they had just come. Over the heads of the shuffling crowd, Josef could still see the helmet of the enforcer slowly making its way up the street, at a slower yet steadier pace than Josef and Sina’s sprint up the crowd. People gladly made way for the person clad in slate gray armor, but nobody ever gave room for the normal person running up the street.

A gap opened up in the crowd for Josef to cross, and he shot the gap as fast as he could. His legs were burning now, and he didn’t know how much longer he could run. He willed his legs to take bounding step after bounding step, the soles of his feet screaming with every heavy impact against the cobbled street. He ducked into the alleyway at top speed, and scanned for Sina. She was down the alley, just about to take a turn, and he could tell, in the quick glance he got of her, that she was just as exhausted as he was. They probably had another minute of running in them, and in that time they had to make sure that they had lost the enforcer, which had inevitably turned into enforcers, plural, at this point.

Sina took the turn at full speed, and Josef wasn’t much further behind. They took turn after turn, emerging onto main street, crossing it, and then ducked into another alley. Sina soon after skidded to a stop, looking up at a fire escape.

“We’re climbing,” she said, barely able to get the two words out through her heavy breathing.

“Dammit,” Josef said, breathing just as hard. He took a second, glanced down the alley, seeing nothing but the light of the street, and then gripped the cold iron of the fire escape.