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The Only Game In Town [Adventure]
Chapter 2 - Three Men, A Bag of Gold, and A Really Nice Pair of Shoes

Chapter 2 - Three Men, A Bag of Gold, and A Really Nice Pair of Shoes

Joy was ecstatic about taking that poor kid’s money. The kid may have been lucky, but no one could beat the master gambler at a game of chance. He did make sure to hightail it out of The Gambling Lamb though; Joy did not want to deal with the cretins trying to steal his fortune.

Joy was a nice-looking guy, which really helped when he was cheating people at games of cards. People would rather get lost in his deep, dark, brown eyes than really pay attention to his cards, or at least that’s what he told himself. He had a bit too high of an opinion of himself.

His hair was unfortunately kept short, for a stint at sixteen he had long luxurious hair that everyone loved to ogle at, again his personal opinion. However, he had the misfortune of meeting someone blessed by Hair who had then almost killed him by shoving the hair down his throat.

If the fool had been any smarter, they would have shoved the hair through Joy’s ears, so Joy’s hair stayed short out of fear that the Hair blessed would find him again.

The streets of Vena Cava were quiet except for the clips and clops of Joy’s shoes hitting the pavement. Joy really loved his shoes. He was quite tall but a little disproportionate, so he had to search far and wide to find a cobbler who could make shoes that fit him well. His feet were short and fat, compared to his comparatively spindly frame.

A few years ago, he found a cobbler named Cody who had been willing to custom make his shoes. The shoes gave incredible arch support and somehow were able to make his feet look much more proportionate.

Instead of looking like two small bricks strapped to his feet, they looked regal and dignified. The leather making up much of the shoe was kept shiny and in good condition by Joy’s constant cleaning. There was not a crease nor tear in them, even though they were getting a bit old, because of the love and attention Joy gave to those shoes.

When his shoes suddenly opened and bit his feet, Joy cried. It was not a cry of pain, but the wail of anguish that comes from a man who has just lost his favorite pair of shoes. Though the bite did hurt, and Joy fell to the ground, his tears staining the cobblestone around him.

A figure emerged from the dark. Oddly enough, Joy couldn’t hear any footsteps from them. As he took a closer look through his tear-stained eyes, he saw the figure was two people, one riding piggy-back on the other, and they were somehow floating an inch or so off the ground.

Must be why I didn’t hear them sneak up on me, he thought.

The man who was riding the other was a bit scrawny and had a many times broken nose. The nose was all scrunched up though in a look of intense concentration. The look relaxed as the two were lowered to the ground.

The other was a large man, his nose was flat, but more in a bad genetics way than a got in a lot of fights way. Unlucky man, not everyone can be born handsome, thought Joy.

“Hey there sir, it seems like you’ve tripped let us hold your bag for you.” The scrawny one jeered as the big one sidled up next to Joy’s prone form.

Joy tried to move, hoping to get to his bag of coins, his wealth. The shoes started biting down harder on his feet the more he tried to move though, which was starting to annoy him.

“You know my shoes are really hanging on by the skin of their teeth here.” Joy said to the complete silence from the other two. “Because leather shoes are made of skin, and it’s biting me, so teeth. No? Nothing? Tough crowd.” Nobody was ever expecting the shitty pun, and the pun bought Joy enough time to get back onto his feet. Unfortunately, that was when the bigger of the two men threw him across the street.

Joy skipped and skidded off the cobblestone until he came to a crashing stop against a wall. Well, that was certainly painful, but that had been far too strong for a normal man, so the big man had a strength-based gift while the scrawny one must have a leather gift or maybe a shoe gift, Joy thought.

“Now you just stay there and nothing else will happen to you lad.” The big one finally spoke with a deep gravelly voice.

Joy was not one to take this lying down though, he cracked his neck and in a dramatic moment ripped the remains of his shoes off. A single regretful tear fell down his face as he did so. But this was for justice, the shoes would be avenged.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“Looks like he’s a fighter, Clyde.” The larger one said as he sighed and started running towards Joy.

Joy took a pose; he was one for the theatrics. Arms splayed out to the side and asked the two men, “want to play a game?”

Neither of the two men responded as Joy clapped his hands but all three heard the voice in their head announce, “coin toss. Do any of you need the rules explained to you?” The two attackers ignored the hallucination assuming Joy had some sort of illusion gift and was just trying to confuse them. Joy just smiled at this.

“No.” Joy responded to the voice in their heads and a single coin appeared out of thin air in front of Joy. “Who doesn’t love a little dramatic irony? I get to win my fortune twice with the same game.” He paused to take a breath as if he needed to put some thought into some decision. “I call heads.” Then the coin flipped into the air, spinning, and spinning.

During Joy’s monologue the big man had nearly closed the distance between the two, once the coin was launched into the air, he already had his arm cocked back for a nasty haymaker. As he threw the wild punch Joy simply stepped closer to him, closing the distance.

Joy loved fighting big oafs with strength-based gifts. They all got far too used to their opponents trying to overcome their strength. Why do that though? It is just plain stupid.

Instead close the distance and never let them gain the momentum they need to utilize their strength.

The oaf kept trying to punch Joy, and Joy just kept staying close to him, never letting the punches build up any real power. Then a pair of shoes hit him on the back of his head. They didn’t hurt, they were just really annoyed and kept him from being totally focused on the oaf.

So, Joy was in a deadly dance, dodging a giant while batting away the random assortment of shoes flying at him. There was even a sharpened stiletto heel in the mix that Joy had to watch out for in particular.

At least the assortment of shoes meant the scrawny one has a shoe gift instead of a leather gift, maybe my shoes can be saved, thought Joy.

The coin had hit the ground but was still bouncing up and down as if the pavement didn’t want the coin to stop moving, which was a real inconvenience to Joy.

The problem with staying close to oafs while fighting is that sometimes the oafs figure out that they don’t need to punch Joy. They can just grab his scrawny little frame and throw him around. Which is exactly what this one did.

After an annoying pair of heavy boots knocked Joy on the head, the big man caught him in a bear hug and started squeezing.

It hurt a lot. The oaf did not have the strongest strength-based gift Joy had ever felt but it certainly made him a lot stronger than Joy. As Joy saw the boots and stiletto coming for his head the coin graciously stopped moving with the heads side up.

A few things happened at once.

The scrawny man suddenly felt his ability weaken. His control over the shoes diminished a significant amount. Joy reared his head back and made the oaf’s nose even flatter than it had been before.

Simultaneously with the headbutt, Joy reached up and snatched the stiletto out of the air. Then he started bringing the heel down towards the oaf’s eye. The scrawny man shrieked and used his gift to yank on the oaf’s shoes pulling him out of the way of the strike. For some reason he couldn’t affect the stiletto.

The three men stood there breathing heavily. The oaf out of his mouth since his nose was bleeding. The scrawny man finally got a hold of the stiletto with his power again and yanked it out of Joy’s hand. And Joy pulled another coin out of thin air.

“I call heads.” But this time he did a small coin toss and caught it out of the air slapping the coin on his opposing hand. “Would you look at that.” The coin proudly showed heads in the moonlight.

Joy started running at the two men. The shoes started flying, and the oaf went for his running haymaker again. But Joy flawlessly dodged every shoe and closed the distance on the oaf. Then after dodging the sloppy haymaker, he uppercut the big man.

The scrawny man watched his friend collapse as soon as Joy hit him. Joy’s fist seemed to glow a bit in the moonlight.

After that it was a piece of cake for Joy. The man with the shoe gift was annoying while working with the other man, but certainly not a threat on his own. Which meant Joy hit him silly. But made sure not to knock him out, he needed the man’s services after all.

“Clyde, Clyde, Clyde. How about you fix my shoes, and we’ll just forget this night ever happened?” Joy made sure to slap him a few times with the remains of the shoes, just enough to get the point across.

Clyde feared the eccentric man so he fixed the shoes and hoped that the man would forget his name and face and just about everything to do with him. But some wishes cannot be fulfilled, since Joy was still mad about his favorite pair of shoes being ruined even if they had been fixed. So, Joy knocked Clyde out and kicked him a few times out of frustration.

He did have to admit the shoes had never felt this good though.

Just as Joy was starting to walk away with his bag of money a man appeared and shouted, “Stop whatever you’re doing, you’re coming with us.” Joy thought, well this is some shitty luck running into the knights right after getting into a fight.

Then Joy felt both of hands start to freeze over. This was going to be a long night, but running from the knights was always a fun story the next day.

His hands were encased in ice, and he had dropped the bag with the gold in it for the second time tonight.

“Well, do you want to play a game?” As Joy adopted his pose and waited for the proclamation of what game he would be playing with this knight. Hm, knight? But he definitely said “us”, thought Joy.

“No.” A feminine voice said.

Then a fist appeared out of nowhere and knocked Joy out.