There were, unfortunately, more than two thieves in the warehouse, and so me breaking Sandpaper's legs wasn't enough to put an end to the fight. If I'd been fighting alone, that might actually be a problem for me. As it stood...

"Hano, now," Faith whispered, before a suit of full Paladin plate shimmered into existence over her body, made of translucent golden light, while a sword and shield of far more opaque golden light formed in her hands.

It wasn't a surprise to me that Paladins could wield divine magic; they were one of the Grand Hikaano Guilds, sponsored by Hano, the God of Paladins, and that meant at least some of them had some holy magic at their disposal. Hell, considering what the Paladins were like, I wouldn't even be surprised that all fully-fledged Paladins were clerical spellcasters of some sort.

But that Faith, who had joined the Paladin's Guild a month ago, was already a cleric of Hano?

Yeah, that was just the tiniest bit surprising, to me.

"Talia?" I asked.

The roar of a brown bear was all that I received in return, as Talia had apparently decided that the best use of her magical abilities wasn't to, say, conjure vines to restrain her foes, or conjure flowers with an enchanted smell that would charm them to sleep, but to turn into a fucking bear and maul them.

Which, in fairness, probably was her most effective option. We weren't really in an environment that was conducive to primal magic, considering we were inside a stone-and-steel building in the middle of a city. If we were in a forest, though, these guys would've been fucked.

I sighed, and kept my head on a swivel for any thieves who decided to use ranged attacks, like- aha, that one in the catwalks with the crossbow. I cast a simple cutting spell, snapping the bowstring right where it looped over the end of the bow, prompting it to whip back into the thief's face for the briefest moment as it released all that tension in the worst possible way.

I looked around for another crossbow-wielder, and only managed to duck out of the way just in time to avoid catching one of Sandpaper's throwing knives to the face.

"Yyyooouuu... motherfucker!" Sandpaper ground out, pulling another throwing knife.

"I don't care," I said dryly, before slamming her with another force bolt, which seemed to finally break her enough that she gave up the fight. Still breathing, but... well. I doubted she'd be in any shape to throw another knife at me.

I turned and watched, as Faith ducked under one thief's swing with a club and ended up between two thieves. And yet, rather than getting flanked and taken down by people who knew how to fight dirty, what instead happened is she took both thieves down with a simple yet well-executed strike from both her sword and her shield- neither of which seemed to actually cut into live tissue or even break skin, but did leave glowing, smoking marks on their victims.

Talia, meanwhile, was absolutely tearing through these people, claws and teeth gleaming in the dim light as she spilled blood every which way. The thieves learned quickly that they did not in fact want to fight a bear to the death, and ended up running away- some of them towards me, where they got put down with force bolts to the face, some of them towards Faith, where they got put down with a holy sword to the face, and one of them, most sensibly, through an open window.

"You son of a bitch," John Courser growled as he landed on the warehouse floor, far enough away from Faith and Talia that I couldn't count on them taking him down for me. "Everywhere I go, you show up to ruin it for me."

"I don't care," I said. "Shut up and fight me, pissweasel."

He snorted like a bull, and charged at me, fist cocked back... and received a swift kick across the ankles for his trouble, as I decided that, actually, I was gonna fight this motherfucker barehanded. I knew how to fight, and while I might not be as strong as he was... well. Elves have had ways of working around that for a very long time.

I grabbed his shoulder as he fell, and threw him into the ground, before following that up with an elbow drop to the stomach, driving the wind out of his stomach, and ended it with a knife held against his throat.

"So, John," I said calmly, well aware it'd just take a flick of the wrist to open his jugular and start bleeding him dry. "You know anything about the burglary of Magister Brown's office?"

"Fuck you," John spat, eyes narrowing into a squinting glare.

"Because I've got good reason to believe you paid one Robert Thorn to break in and steal the statue," I said, one of my knees now pressing pretty firmly against his sternum. "You handed him a bag of coins, he handed you a bag of statue... Where'd that statue go, John?"

"I ain't tellin' you shit, knife-ear," John said.

"Knife ear?" I asked. "Well, if you insist." I lifted my knife, before I plunged it downwards, carving through the cartilage and flesh of John's left ear, until the useless chunk of flesh came away in my hands. "Now, I know your other ear works just fine," I continued. "So I know you can hear me say I need an answer." I paused. "Y'know. When you're done screaming."

"This isn't exactly standard operating procedure for Paladins," Faith pointed out.

"Yeah, well, we're not Paladins," Talia said with a shrug, having turned back into an elf after she ran out of thieves to maul. "Also, we know John. He's an asshole who's been pushing us around for years, and doesn't quite seem to understand that he got away with it because we let him, because it wasn't worth putting him in his place. But now we're not in school anymore. And our patience has finally worn out."

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"You ready to talk, John?" I asked.

"Fffffuck... yyyyou..." John rasped out.

I sighed, preparing to stand up and kick him around some more.

"You fucking... rich bastard," John continued. Fuck, was he about to start monologuing? "Never had to struggle a day in your life. Don't know what it's like to be nothing but a poor, worthless human in a world of magical elves and strong dwarves and cunning orcs. Just another disposable cog in the machine. The Guild... The Thieves' Guild, it's my way out. Make something more of myself. Get me a good woman, so my kid doesn't have to struggle like I do. But you kept standing in my way... Getting between me and Talia... Made her hate me."

"John," Talia said softly, as she approached him. This time, I did stand up, knowing instantly where she was going with this. "John, I... I'm sorry, I... No, John. Joseph didn't make me hate you."

"...Talia?" John asked, a flicker of hope igniting in his eyes.

With a meaty thud, her heel landed right where John's legs joined together.

"No," Talia continued. "You did that all on your own, you piece of shit. Whenever you weren't chasing after me like I was just a trophy, you were drooling over me like I was just a piece of meat. I was never a real person to you. Never someone you wanted to talk to, get to know, be friends with, but just... That one elf chick with the huge knockers who you wanna take as your wife so she can have your awful fucking babies. And then you joined the Thieves' Guild, so you could, what, steal me away from Joseph? Newsflash, asshole! I am not some fucking thing that you can steal! I am my own fucking person, with a brain and a heart, and from the bottom of that heart, I want nothing more than to say: I hate you. I hate you so, so fucking much. You are everything wrong with how humans treat elves all wrapped up into one shitty little self-absorbed asshole."

And with that, Talia turned and walked away.

"Huh," I said, nodding slowly. "Would you look at that? Turns out I'm not the person who hates you the most of all in the entire world."

"You know, Mr. Courser," a voice said from within John's pocket. The hell? Did he have some sort of speaking stone?

I reached into John's pocket, and pulled out a fist-sized box made of... some strange material I couldn't identify. It was lightweight, fairly rigid- a bit stiffer than wood, but without any obvious grain direction. On it were two circles, each partially covered by a horizontal grille of thick bars of the same matte black material. The larger circle seemed to be where the speech was coming from; presumably, the smaller circle was where you spoke into it.

"When I asked if you knew Mr. Ironheart, and you said yes, you neglected to mention your relationship was adversarial."

"Y- your highness, I," John gasped out.

"Shut the fuck up, you worthless shitbag," the voice said flatly, the polite veneer stripped away. "It was a simple plan: Joseph Ironheart wanted the statue from Magister Brown, so we would steal the statue and offer it to him as part of a deal. All you had to do, after your man handed over the statue, was pass along an invitation to talk to Joseph Ironheart, and do you know what happened instead? You made him come to you as part of a fucking Paladin's Guild Investigation, and got a dozen of my operatives pointlessly wounded in the process! You are the most worthless, unreliable scumbag I've ever had to work with, and considering I am The King Of Thieves, that is fucking saying something!" A bit of heavy breathing came through the speaking stone. "Well. At any rate. Mr. Ironheart, are you still there?"

"You're the King of Thieves?" I asked.

"The one and only," he said.

"The fuck are you doing in Redwater?" I asked. "Hikaan is like two thousand miles east of here."

"To conduct my business with you, as a matter of fact," the King of Thieves said. "Now, I would like to offer my apologies for hiring quite literally the worst person in the world to contact you; my ignorance has no excuse. Would you be willing to speak with me in the red warehouse at 5th and Tira sometime soon?"

I grunted. That was pretty nearby... "What're you aiming for, here?"

"I need a man of your precise talents and nature for a very simple and brief job," the King of Thieves said. "I'm willing to pay handsomely- not just in the form of your grandmother's effigy, but also in the form of two million dollars in cash."

I blinked.

One dollar was enough to buy four monthly comic books, a day's worth of hot meals from street vendors, or a week's worth of dry rice from a greengrocer.

Ten dollars was enough to pay rent on a decent apartment, buy a new bicycle, or even buy a horse- although you'd need more than that to feed it.

A thousand dollars was the kind of money that'd buy you a house. Even a nice house, fit for an upper class family, was only about ten thousand dollars.

With two million dollars? I'd have the kind of money that only aristocrats and the Merchant's Guild see. It wouldn't quite be "I am now the peer of Duke Redwater," but it would be enough that I could demand to speak with him and it'd be inconvenient to tell me no.

Well. There was only one thing I could say to that.

"I don't believe you when you say all this hostility is John's fault," I said. "Make it ten million, paid in advance, and then we'll talk."

"...You drive a hard bargain. Fine. Remember: the red warehouse at 5th and Tira. This Saturday, when the clock strikes noon. Don't be tardy, Mr. Ironheart."