Toto was a massive man. Muscles bursting out of his white, blood-stained t-shirt, he was constantly spinning around on a tiny circular stool, fetching miniscule instruments from a large black case. He loomed over an operation table, staring at a skinny, beaten adventurer. The smaller man was completely wrapped in bandages.

“Good as new,” Toto said, slapping the man on the knee. It was the least bruised part of the guy, but he still yowled. “Ah, that’s the sound I like to hear from my clients. Beautiful, shrill screams of life. Means you’re still kicking!”

He laughed heartily to himself, then cranked the table upward so the man could waddle off of it.

The client groaned as he disembarked and headed for the door, passing by Akemi and Bamo, who had been watching this whole ordeal from the front of the shop. This place was no bigger than the restaurant, so there was absolutely no privacy between the waiting room and the doctor’s office. It was one huge patient confidentiality violation.

But this wasn’t Earth. So it was just amusing.

Toto rose from his stool and stretched, his massive muscles rippling.

Toto | Level 21 Street Medic

“What can I do for you, young lady?”

Before she could say anything, his eyes fell to her arm. He took it into his meaty palms and twirled it around, eyeing it from every angle. She scowled.

“It’s an arm, not a piece of meat,” she said.

He stopped his analysis momentarily, his eyes dragging slowly upward.

“That’s exactly what an arm is.” He let go of her limb, finally, and walked back to his examination table, dropping aggressively back onto his stool. “Come, sit. I’ll get you fixed up in no time.”

Reluctantly, Akemi lifted herself onto the examination table, arm splayed outward.

“How much will this cost?” she said.

WIth a loud, obnoxious rattling, he fetched an assortment of bandages and a round disc of salve out of his case. He screwed the lid off the salve, and when he placed the lid down on the table, she noticed a rune etched into the metal. It was a rather intricate one: several straight lines with small triangles dispersed between them.

“Thirty silver,” he responded, and pressed two fingers to the lid. A warm heat emanated from it, casting a fiery red onto his fingertips. She noticed, as he lifted the digits toward her, that they had the identical rune tattooed into the skin.

“What kind of rune is that?” she asked quietly as he began dragging his fingers across the ragged skin of her arm. She felt a dull heat radiate over the affected area, as if a blue flame was dancing along her skin.

Without looking up, he chuckled. “If you’re trying to get the name of my rune artist, you’re going to have to try harder than that. My lips are sealed.”

“I’m not,” she scoffed, wincing as the heat increased. “I’m just curious. I don’t know shit about runes, and a book on the subject hasn’t exactly fallen in my lap.”

He laughed again, harder. “Comfortable admitting your ignorance. I like you.”

His rusty stool made a terrible, nails-on-chalkboard-like sound as he scooted away, his work finished. Akemi looked down at her arm to find it the color of a burnt tomato; but when she touched the skin, it was soft, spongy, almost rubber-like. At first that was mildly alarming, but she found that she could flex it easily, and it no longer hurt at all. It was completely numb.

“It’s nothin’ special,” he answered proudly as he began to wrap the arm in bandages. “It’s just a heat rune, like an oven at the tip of my fingers. The special healing salve I use only activates at a specific temperature, and it has to be kept at that specific temperature in order to work. If it even drops by a degree, it’d become as useful as plastering a wound with vodka and olive oil.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Uh huh…”

“Alright, ma’am. You’re set to go,” he said, grinning ear to ear as he ripped the end of the bandage off with just his teeth. Akemi was horrified. “Do you have any other questions, or are you ready to hand over those precious little coins?”

In fact, there was. If this guy was the goto servicer for all the pit fighters, there was a high chance he worked on the target for Akemi’s quest. Even if she didn’t plan to necessarily follow through with that quest, it was never a bad idea to do some reconnaissance.

“I do have one,” she said, fishing the thirty silver from her inventory and placing them on his desk. He did a stupid little bow as he pocketed them. “Do you know anything about Ruie Vokasha? I… I have a running bet against him losing tonight’s match, and I wanted to know if there are any specific weaknesses he has—you know, ones that I could look out for.”

His eyes seemed to glint and leaned forward.

“Now that’s an odd question. If you’re not the one fighting him, what do you care about his weaknesses? Leave it to Naba to figure out which knee he’s weak on.”

Akemi looked away. That was stupid. Why did I phrase it like that?

Then again.

“Which knee?”

He bit his lip, and laughed.

“Smart girl. Observant. Damn.”

The wheels of his stool rolled, and he leaned his back on the wall behind him.

“You caught me,” she said, throwing her hands up. “Naba’s a friend of mine. She’s the one who gave me the recommendation for this place.”

From the corner of her eye, Akemi saw Bamo giving her a quizzical look. She knew what he was thinking: friend was a stretch. Hostile acquaintance was a better descriptor.

He slammed his fist down on his table jovially. Akemi saw Bamo jump.

“Oh ho ho. Gods, I love that girl. Always sending me fresh business. In that case, I’m not sure why you’re asking me all shy like that. I’ve given Naba all the info I could muster,” he said. “Bad left knee. Half-broken right toe. Terrified of snakes. And he relies too much on his raw strength. If you can knock him off his game, he’s a lot less scary.”

Terrified of snakes? If only I could have stored that viper whole in my inventory.

“That’s a whole lot of weaknesses,” Akemi commented. “Doesn’t sound like much of a fight.”

Toto laughed. “What a brave and stupid thing to say. Those are the weaknesses, little girl, not his strengths. But—”

A man, bleeding profusely from a wound in his arm, slammed his fist to Toto’s table several times until the medic noticed him.

“Enough schmoozing!” the man yelled. “There’s a line back here, Toto!”

“Yeah yeah,” Toto said, waving him off. He regarded Akemi again. “Man’s got a point. I promised you one question, now you’ve gone and run off with fifteen more minutes of my time—you’re just like Naba, you know. A thief of my free periods.”

After a hasty goodbye, Bamo and Akemi were once again thrust back into the dim light of Kerbos. A storm had taken the city, and rain was pitter-pattering over the cold sidewalks.

“What’s wrong with you?” Bamo said as they dodged away from the rain, walking under cover of a giant mausoleum. “Are you seriously thinking of fighting the guy?”

“What would give you that idea?”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, probably the fact that you only care about yourself. There’s no way you were trying to find information about Ruie’s weaknesses out of the good of your heart.”

“And why not? Maybe I just want to help our good new friend Naba out.”

“Right. Please name one other person you consider a friend besides Naba, then.”

“You,” she said cheekily, smiling broadly.

Persuasion Check (Extremely Difficult)

Failed!

“Uh huh. Right,” Bamo said, then dragged her to the right. “Hostel’s this way. Try not to get lost.”

They got a two person room on the top floor of one of the most run-down buildings Akemi had ever seen. The hallways were crawling with shady characters—poorly concealed knives glinting under the light of flickering oil lamps. The room itself had a bathroom, but no running water, and the beds were just two slabs of stone with a bit of white fluff padded on top of them.

“The fight’s in three hours,” Bamo said, tidying up his section of the room. The previous tenant had left glass shards all over the floor. Akemi had just chosen to step over them. “So I’m going to take a nap. I’ve been awake all day, and it’s exhausting. So please don’t wake me up.”

“You’re nocturnal, right,” she sighed, laying her head down on the rock. “I’ll try not to scream.”

“Thanks for your courtesy.”

As Bamo lay upside down on his bed, Akemi was surprised to receive a sudden notification in her peripheral vision. Odder yet, it was a quest notification. But not for her quest.

Congratulations! Your accomplice, Gabriel, has completed their quest, [Butcher the Farmer and His Bloodline] with your assistance!

You have received a portion of the experience for this quest due to your role.

[+1000 XP]

You have leveled up! [Lv. 6 -> Lv. 7]

[+1 SP] [+1 STR, +1 DEX, +1 INT, +1 CHA]

Akemi grinned wolfishly.

Great timing.