Six, almost seven months have passed since that day, in that time, somehow Darius had managed to avoid becoming a member of the Don’s family. Out of spite, the Don started to request less jobs from Darius and the pay became far less lucrative. Darius was forced to steal just to survive day to day, which led to much more frequent meetings with Johannes.
After getting out of jail, Johannes worked day and night to find out who publicly humiliated him. Unfortunately, all he had to go off on where drunken memories and a name. Even with this miniscule amount to go off of, Johannes’s eerie intuition led him to Darius.
One day, while patrolling the red-light district, he saw many of the Don’s men hurriedly searching for something. Johannes’s intuition told him he should look around too, and he came upon Darius while he was dumping and expensive looking chair into Lake Calm. This was the start of their game of cat and mouse along with their beautiful friendship that has lasted even to this day.
“Darius there’s nowhere to go, your paths are blocked. Come quietly, it’ll be better for the both of us.” Johannes continued to approach cautiously, this wasn’t the first time he had Darius cornered, but he was going to make damn sure it was the last.
Their time together wore on Johannes, to say, he really let himself go. His once tidy appearance has become rugged and disheveled. His hair no longer kept the sheen and shape it once had, bits of dust, dirt, and even bugs could be seen inside, his beard was overgrown and in dire need of a proper trim, and he developed a bad habit of slouching due to long restless nights.
“I know you pretty well Darius, I know for a fact that you wouldn’t lead us here unless you had a plan, that’s your M.O,” Johannes continued.
“Best to not let him find out that he caught me with my pants down,” Darius realized. “You’ve been doing your homework, I see. Then you should be shaking in your boots worrying about what I’ll do next, for I have only the most treacherous of traps planned out for you.” Darius said behind his cloak, face sweating from telling a lie so blatant.
“Oh yeah, what will it be this time? Lake Calm? Maybe you have a boat waiting for you, but I already have patrols ready to take you down, and even I don’t think you’re stupid enough to head to the northern guard towers.”
Darius quickly thought to himself, “Well, that’s just fantastic! I hadn’t planned on carrying this bag across the rooftops… Wait, I get the towers, but why did he tell me about Lake Calm, there’d be no reason to unless…”
Out of the three guards alongside Johannes, two of them were women. He didn’t really think about it at the time, maybe because all of their voices jumbled together when they were yelling, but one of those two women sounded somewhat familiar.
“Alright Johnsie, I see how you want to play, so I hope you don’t mind if I take the first move.” Darius moved his hand into his gadget pack and took out what looked like a small line of dynamite.
“Hope you guys like firecrackers!” He chucked it towards the line of horses where they promptly went off. The horses immediately started to panic, whipping the guards around and sending at least two of them flying. Darius didn’t waste his chance to run to the nearest building and hop on top.
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“It’s only 10 feet… only 10 feet, I’m okay. Alright, I’d give myself maybe-”
“Okay, that wasn’t too bad. Bonus points for knocking Sheldon and Jane off their horses.” Serena ran close behind Darius, and she was gaining fast.
“Three seconds, I give myself three seconds,” Darius lamented. “Serena, could we come to some sort of impasse? Let me go today and I promise, you won’t have to deal with me for some time, plus I’ll throw in some spending change for you.”
“No can-do big guy, I’m on Johnsie’s time right now and you know him. If he found out it’d be my job. Either way, I still have to make up for that first time we met. To this day, I still can’t believe you got away with what you did.”
“Worth a try.”
Serena held a special space in Darius’s heart, as the guard he typically had the least trouble dealing with. Like her sister, Serena had her own broken code of justice that allowed her to take bribes to look the other way. Problems only arose when Darius stopped having the coin to pay her.
As they continued to run, Darius stumbled over a faulty brick, falling over on the roof. It was at that time a knife whizzed right over the place his skull was recently located. “Ah, so close!” Serena yelled.
“What? Shouldn’t you at least try taking me in alive?” Darius yelled as he scrambled away on the floor.
“I saw an opportunity and I took it. There was a chance you’d survive that, however small,” she joked while stepping over to Darius. “Sorry don’t have any cuffs on me, I’ll just have to hogtie you.”
Instead of standing up, Darius inched his way to over the edge of the building. Looking down he was able to see exactly what he wanted to. Unfortunately, what he wanted to see was more than 20 feet below him. “Man, I hate heights. Serena, you wouldn’t hate me if I messed up your hair, right?”
Serena could sense that Darius was up to no good, so she tried jumping away. Darius was quicker, with his hand in his gadget pack already, he took out a small, ball like object. One of his specialty made paint bombs, version red with a 10-foot radius. It exploded covering them both with red paint.
“I’m going to murder you!” She said while leaping at Darius.
In response he dropped off the building, landing improperly on his side, knocking the wind out of himself.
“Idiot!” Serena shouted, following him down but landing with the grace of an eagle. “Nowhere to run now. Think I’ll take that arm as payment for the hours it’s going to take getting this paint out of my hair. Not like you’ll need it in prison.”
Faced with an enraged Serena and trapped with nowhere to go, Darius did what he did best, “Help! Guards I’m being attacked by a mad woman, who is trying to kill me!”
Serena quickly looked back as many guards ran to restrain her. All coming out from the Northern guard tower. “Weren’t you going south? Why would you go towards the guard towers? I thought-” She cut herself off as she took a good long look at Darius who was red all over and holding his body as if he were stabbed. She then took at look at herself and her weapon both covered in the same shade of red.
“You son of a-” Was all she managed to get that out before she was tackled by the guards, barely resisting them as Darius slipped away.
On the way back home, Darius decided to leave a little message for Johannes. On the side of the guard tower, in bright pink was written, Better Luck Next Time Johnsie.
Though Darius couldn’t be there to see his face, from a far distance he sure he could hear somebody loudly yell, “DARIUS!”