“Darius you thief! Stay where you are!”
A bright and beautifully sunny day graced a lone sleeping figure. If it wasn’t for the incredibly cold weather, it would have been perfect. Groggily, Darius began to rise and stretch, nearly falling out the small tree he was residing in.
By how high the sun is, Darius gathered that he managed two or maybe three hours of sleep. Sensing that a escalating problem was going to occur, Darius would just have to deal with it. Lucky for Darius, it looks like Johnsie, the big man himself, came out to greet him.
Darius hopped down from the tree carrying with him a small satchel, from which a faint clicking sound could be heard. As his feet touched the ground, four men on horseback approached him.
The man in front, large and imposing, carried an unending scowl. His thick eyebrows comically covered a large part of his peach-colored face. Proving that, at least right now, he was only largely upset.
Gauging his surroundings, Darius realized that he had let the guards move in far too close to his position. Without a horse, he’d just be caught moments after trying to run away. Hoping that an opportunity would later present itself, Darius figured he should get them talking to buy some time.
“Yo Johnsie, honey, I’m sorry if I made you angry. Can’t we talk this over a beer? If not, we can always catch up later, I’m a bit busy right now. You know, working.” The thief accentuated that fact by jiggling his satchel. Johannes’s peach colored face turned a shade redder, resembling an apple more than a peach.
“First of all, Darius, stop calling me that. Second, you’re not getting away this time. You should just take off your cloak and surrender to save us the trouble!”
His group of guards cried out in agreement, then one yelled out, “Yeah, you’ll pay for Friday, I mean who replaces all of the guard’s pants with kilts…KILTS, it’s freezing out here!”
“You stole my scabbard, why would you take just the scabbard and not the sword?”
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“Why are you hiding you coward, show us your face. Don’t worry, I promise to only beat it in seven times!”
“At least I keep good company,” Darius reminisced upon those events as a smile parted his lips, “Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to play.”
Darius continued to look around for more possible escape routes. He hadn’t expected to be found so soon. Darius had thought that he made a pretty clean getaway. At least cleaner than most. Possible options were the rooftops to the south, which led to the red-light district, the west which would lead to Lake Calm, and North which would lead to the guard towers, which is technically a choice.
“Johnsie, honey, light of my life, why don’t we come back to this in say… a week from now.” Johannes moved his large battle horse closer, slowly, getting close enough that Darius could pet the horse. Johannes was being extremely cautious. He had come into contact with Darius plenty of times in the past but has never managed to hold him for long.
“Three months, you’ve managed to avoid me for three whole months, but your crimes span a good bit longer than that, don’t they?” Johannes questioned. “I can tell you’re not a native, a refugee from Acumenos maybe. Doesn’t really matter though, I’m a man of equal rights, I’ll put you in a cell with all the other scum of Sheildon.”
Darius tiredly leaned against the tree realizing that he was not going to escape this situation scot free. Unfortunately, his grandfather will have to wait just a bit longer before he returned home.
Once again Johannes’s intuition was right on the money. Darius wasn’t from Sheildon, he and his grandfather had only made their way here after the war. Wasn’t easy, Sheildon has always been extremely strict about its borders. To be perfectly honest, Darius was little more than an illegal immigrant, and there wasn’t a lot of honest work for people like him. That was around a year ago, so he was forced to find other avenues of work.
That brought him into direct conflict with Captain “Johnsie” Johannes. A man who, when described in less than ten words, would be one mean, tough son of a gun. He had the top arrest record in Sheildon, if not in the entirety of Journey.
Even more surprising was that not one criminal he’s arrested has ever been acquitted, most were even found guilty for many crimes that would have otherwise never gone punished. The one blemish on his record was that annoying pest, Darius. A thorn in his side, since even before they ever, formally, met.
Johannes was good bit over six feet tall in his mid-20’s, light brown skin, and used to sport full head of hair and sported a neatly trimmed, full beard. You’d be hard pressed to call him anything other than statuesque. Their unpleasant meeting occurred after Darius had worked three months with one of the most unsavory characters in all of Journey.