Queen's Gambit Chapter 07

Chapter Index

Love in plastic (Berdly)
1
https://pastebin.com/TKjKcqVe
2
https://pastebin.com/dDw2ti92
3
https://pastebin.com/2FRWC9jj
4
https://pastebin.com/vJ67iw7N
5
https://pastebin.com/88fCetw0
6
https://pastebin.com/Dj46NYUK
7
https://pastebin.com/DmandfKg
8
https://pastebin.com/2qAE3pbm
9
https://pastebin.com/YFvjUjeu
10
https://pastebin.com/s3Q8nruN
11
https://pastebin.com/MQeRHGWJ
12
https://pastebin.com/pgcGWuRZ

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Love in Plastic

Chapter 07

On the sunny side of the street

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It was a pity it had to end when it did. Susie was a bit bummed out when Noelle reminded her of how much time they had spent playing card games. It had really passed in a flash. When she got off her ass and made sure she had her stuff with her, especially her new set of playing cards, she couldn't help but chuckle thinking about it. She was having fun. Actually having fun. Every party was like another little thing to discover with Kris, Lancer and Ralsei.

She was so suckered in by this, she barely felt like leaving school at this point. The echo of her own steps in the hall was the only thing she could hear on her way out. It was strange that at this time in the evening, the building was even still open. Even afternoon classes ought to have been over for the most part, and in all the front parts of school, at least in the parts that weren't behind locked doors.

And yet the doors were still left open to look through. Nobody coming her way, or seeing her.

No-one would spot her. And so no-one would suspect that she was losing her edge or had done done something they would get mad about, when she left the building with a smile. Kris and Ralsei didn't suspect that Susie was up to no good when they were travelling together. Then again, most of the time, that was because they knew she was. They knew she was, and they kept trying to befriend her anyway. One of the many things that were weird about those two.

When she had taken a few steps outside, she took in the fresh breeze. The weather was cooling. But it took a little more than a little cold air to bother a tough dragon like herself. When she thought about it that way, it made sense that those two wimps humoured her. They were two sensitive little guys who needed someone tough to protect them.

She was only really aware of how much time had passed, when she noticed the sun being about to set. It was already casting shadows that covered the walkways on one side of each street. On other days, she would have stuck to those. On a day like today, she felt like avoiding the shadows. And the warm sunlight on her skin was something to enjoy. Sure, it was all a bit cold, but a lot warmer than wandering through the dark. She preferred to stay in this part of town for a while.

She took a turn that deviated strongly from her path home, up the road and to the little park, past the flower shop. As on many other days, the benches here were empty. It was quiet, for the most part. Still with her hands in her jacket pockets, she sat down. Even all the way here, she was still smiling. Nobody could hurt her after all, she felt invincible. The rustling of the leaves in the wind had a much higher pitch than that of the blocky leaves in the red forest.

Where she would make plans with Lancer to stop Kris and Ralsei from moving closer to the castle. She enjoyed every bit of that day. Whether she was only half-heartedly playing along with Kris and Ralsei's little 'hero' game, plotting against them and confronting them with each idea, even when she was fighting alongside them. Even the more serious parts and the fierce battles towards the end.

She wasn't sure whether she knew anyone whom she trusted to have her back other than those two after that day. In fact, she wasn't sure whether she could remember this feeling of having someone who had your back, and that you would repay in kind - at all. In all her life for that matter. It felt new to her.

The next gust of wind that rushed along between the trees just felt a little more cold and she pulled the front ends of her coat a little closer together. Perhaps it was a little late in the year to enjoy nature. And the shadows were growing a little taller. If she wanted to enjoy the last bits of sun, she couldn't spend ages lounging about here. She got up, but soon found herself slowing down when reaching the end of the trees and slipping between them instead of walking past them.

Towards the 'Flower King'. She knew who it belonged to. She never really interacted with Kris' old man, but at what little occasions there were at school, she could tell from what he looked like and who he talked to, that this was him. She couldn't just straight up march home like that. That wasn't like her. She never went through a day without doing at least something cool.

Like spraying random black lines onto a wall, when possible doing this over whatever 'art piece' someone else had drawn, painted or sprayed onto it. That or she broke or stole something. It didn't have to be something big, but doing it at all was sorta obligatory at this point.

Once she was sure Mr. Dreemurr wasn't anywhere in her line of sight, she ducked, waited for a moment when she was sure to know there was no-one watching, whether here, or on the other side of the road, and then snuck closer to that truck. There had to be something she could steal in there. But there wasn't. In the front of the tray was a closed bag of manure, and in the back, a watering can way too big for her to just bag and be off with, and a big bunch of now-wilted roses.

She shoved the contents that she could get to without climbing onto the truck to the side. There was something next to the roses. A little bag, and inside it, the bloom of a single rose. The only one that wasn't brown and brittle. More and more concerned about possible onlookers showing up, she shrugged off the rest of the search and decided to call it on that. The bloom of a rose had to do for her daily spoils.

She pulled it out of there, stuffed it in her pocket and vanished between the trees again, to circle back to where the benches were and stroll along the road as if nothing had happened.

Now she really couldn't hang out here any more. The way home was a bit longer. It was a little further away from school than its immediate vicinity, she wasn't as lucky as people like Kris or Kid. Most students had a school-season ticket they could use to come here by bus. She didn't, she went here by foot.

And as soon as she was past the last buildings, where the police had blocked off entry for several hours just yesterday, she made sure today's trophy was safely stashed away in her jacket pocket before she began to run. She ran through the trampled grass on the side of the roadway over to her home, like she did twice a day. Halfway at least. Then she stopped. The sun was still setting. You could already see the moon, but there was still a bit of sunlight left.

She decided to walk the rest of the way home. Nothing at home was running away. On the other hand, it was getting pretty cold, so she settled with marching home. And once past the field of fading grass, off to the left-hand side, away from the single family homes right on the street and further towards the tall apartment buildings, all of which towered over the surrounding shorter houses in tones of grey.

Upstairs, she let herself into the barely lit apartment. In the main room, opposite from the table clearly too big for only the two of them, her mother, so wide in stature that it was her that engulfed the comfy chair she sat on and not the other way around, was watching some staged reality tv program about culinary wonders that both she and Susie knew she would never try to recreate.

Susie knew better than to even look at the screen. It would only make her mouth water and turn her away even more from the still warm but anything but freshly cooked and barely edible, slimy stew that stood on the table, made by throwing random ingredients together. The only one of which she could still discern, were the half-torn peas. Susie sat down on the table to try eating as much of this stuff as she was capable of. Not like there was anything to eat at school.

And she barely had enough money to spend on cans to spray walls and maybe something to eat twice a week. Any additional disposable money she had, she lifted from other students when the teachers weren't looking. Kris was no exception here. If she didn't eat this, she might have to lift some money from Kris later. She forced herself to eat it. It didn't taste very well, but she was her mother and she was trying.

Wordless grunts made for greetings and while Susie ate, her mother asked her about school and was happy - or at least appeased - when she heard that Susie went to school in time for class. For once. And she was also happy to hear that while she didn't spend time with her friend from school, she did spend the afternoon playing card games with someone else. Susie was usually silent and avoided talking about what she did after school to avoid predictable fights.

Once she was done, it was time to hop in the shower. She took off her clothes, and let the water run. She only had three sets of trousers, and all of them were torn around the knees. Sometimes, people would look at her funny, because they thought they were those really, really expensive ones that came purposefully torn to be fashionable.

At last she had a few minutes with walls in all directions, with the only entrance locked from the inside. No-one to look at her, no-one to see her. No-one she had to worry about smelling weakness.

A few minutes all to her own, to think. Only a few minutes but it was something. Time to think about her day, or what of it mattered at least. She didn't find the dark world again. And Kris didn't seem that confident in finding it either. But he remembered Lancer, and Ralsei. Maybe it was just something that rarely happened. Before she could delve into it much further, she figured she was still on her own when in bed.

Once dried off, she left the bathroom without combing or even drying her hair and carried her clothes to her room. And inside, she closed the door. The not particularly bright lamp's yellow light gave her room overall an orange-ish tone. She had to be careful when navigating to the other side so she didn't step on one of the many random things that lay strewn across her room before she tossed most of her clothes in the closet, the doors to which were always open.

After that, she leaped onto her bed and pulled up the blanket to cover herself. She didn't feel sleepy, but she didn't regret going to bed earlier yesterday and wanted to repeat it. She just had to try.

Maybe if she lay in bed long enough, she would fall asleep.

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Tap, tap, tap, tap. In the silence of Ralsei's kingdom, all they could hear for quite a while, was a human impatiently tapping his foot. Janice was in contact with Berdly via phone and apparently, they were on their way here. And thanks to Berdly's claim of having a lead on Pilot, Ralsei was able to get Kris to begrudgingly agree to wait here for him, so they could help Berdly and Jandsome with pursuing this ominous 'lead' they had. The prince, for one, was looking forward to it.

Kris was an enigma to him. Even now, that he was finally here with him, he wasn't the most talkative person. He never really told him anything about himself. And there was so much Ralsei wanted to know. What was his favourite colour? What kinds of foods did he like? What did he spend his days doing?

There was so much to find out, he was worried if he ever started outright asking him, he would get carried away, come across as though he was interrogating him and scare him off. Even if Kris didn't call Berdly a friend, he was a classmate and from the impressions Ralsei got, they knew each other for a long time. Hopefully, he knew all kinds of things about him.

The only thing other than tapping away that Kris did, was to occasionally open his inventory to check whether they had everything. They had put down most of what he had brought along and replaced it all with cakes. His bag was full of Ralsei's cakes. Then, it was finally time. The only adult among them came out of the little house, wrapped in her coat as usual and nodded. Ralsei's signal that Berdly and the jester were standing in front of the door.

In motions that sent the ground trembling, the door opened and led outside, straight to a little street. The door was set up in a tall concrete wall. At least a wall that had a colour that made one expect it to be concrete. And there they were. When the two groups met, the doors closed behind them as soon as Janice and Pluma had followed them outside. Kris and Berdly respectively stepped forward to face each other. "Hey."

With Berdly being the only one talking, apparently. "Are you going to be normal now?" Once he was sure, the human wasn't going to answer, he went straight for Pluma. He knelt down and grabbed her by the jacket. "What ARE you doing here?"

The little bird girl wasn't the least bit worried about anything that happened around here. "We're looking for Scott."

"I get that, but why didn't you stay in there?"

He was snapped at from the side by the blonde woman that stood next to him. "I am not hiding away while you spend your time doing who knows what." She picked up Berdly's sister. "And I am not leaving her alone in there either."

"We're not leaving until we find Scott!"

Upon hearing the more confident girl and seeing her stretch her tongue out at him, Berdly tried to suppress his rage and yet shot Jandsome a glare that everyone could see anyway. "Right. We're just going to have to deal with that."

To loosen up the mood, the prince came closer to shake Berdly's hand. And everything about the black boss monster raised his eyebrows. "Hello! You must be Berdly. I'm Ralsei!" But his demeanour was a lot less peculiar than that of Kris, which was a relief. One of his worries up to that point, was the addition of this 'prince' meaning they would walk around with two Krisses in all but name.

"I'm looking forward to travelling together with you. So where does this lead take us? Where do you need us to go?"

A voice cut into their conversation. A voice that they remembered, but not very fondly. "You guys ain't goin' nowhere." One by one, from around various corners, shady characters began to come around. Coats and trilbies messily wrapped over bodies that weren't meant to wear them. Each one with some firearm. One of them, the one that spoke up to give them all the cue, was the frilled dragon that Kris had paid off. "We ain't missin' out on this payout."

At once, the six that had just met huddled together, covering the human woman and the little bird she held. Berdly pointed right at him. "You guys already were paid off. What? You switching careers to begging?"

The lizard, the only one of them not with his weapon out, wasn't impressed. "Ain't that easy. That bit was peanuts even then. And you ain't on our turf no more. One guy said he spotted a second bounty." He nodded towards one of his colleagues. It was the raptor that attacked Kris and the others when they entered the door to Ralsei's kingdom for the first time. "Blue guy and the boy in green are gonna make us a lotta money. Enough to share. All we needed was a tip on where they'd be."

He nodded in the other direction. Towards the fat triceratops that served as an unseemly barkeeper where Berdly made his phone call.

Berdly faced him with a grin. "What's this, lardy? Snitching on your customers?" The dinosaur just shrugged it right off. He didn't appear the least bit remorseful.

"It ain't snitching unless you're talking to the cops." They were six, and they were coming closer. Their enemies stayed at a safe distance. They had to come up with something. "So how we gonna do this? You finna be nice and hand 'em over or what?"

The prince tried to step in. "There must be a less violent way to settle this."

He was only met with questioning looks. "Like what? A dance-off in the moonlight?" Everyone laughed at that. "Just to make that clear: We are NOT doing a dance-off."

"Jandsome..." Berdly began mumbling in the jester's direction, and as quiet as he could without being unintelligible.

"Yes?"

"You said you can do basically anything, right?"

"I suppose?"

"A smokescreen, possibly? And maybe bananas?"

"The former, yes, but I don't think I can do the banana swap if I can't see them."

"What about a flare? Shoot in the air and they're all distracted."

"Too many, they'd just shoot us down."

"Same goes for the smokescreen, they'd just fire blind shots and hit us anyway."

"You know." The prince chimed in on their little conversation. "Getting hit once or twice is not a problem. I can heal you back up."

Berdly raised an eyebrow. "You can heal us, just like that?"

"Yes."

His eyes narrowed and he faced Kris. "Dedicated healers, jesters, you're wearing armor, we're fighting bad guys, what's next, you use your shield and start tanking for us...Is this some kind of role playing game?"

"Not any more." The prince continued to talk on Kris' behalf. Not like his difficult classmate was talking to begin with. "For all that matters, we could all die here."

To his surprise, this was the thing that had Kris step closer and begin to point at everyone one by one to give orders. "All right, here's what we do. Berdly, you say something annoying." What was with his sudden change in attitude?

"Since when do you call the shots here?" The bird pouted as much as his sister did and folded up his arms.

"Please." Ralsei pushed himself between them and pleaded: "Not now. I don't know what it is that's bugging both of you, but please don't do this now."

This more reasonable friend of Kris' got Berdly to quickly realize why his classmate changed from not talking to giving orders. They were surrounded. They had to put their differences aside, at least for now. He sighed. "Okay. Go ahead."

And so he did. "Berdly. You say something annoying to one of them. Also, can you shoot one or two of them without seeing them? Best is that one over there." He pointed at the fat triceratops who had one of the corners the brawlers had come out of all to himself. He grabbed into his bag and pulled out a little mushed together piece of cake. "Jandsome, you do the smokescreen thing and stay with those two." He pointed at Janice and Pluma and then back at the triceratops.

"You three make a little circle along the wall so Berdly has a clear shot and run right that way and then around the corner. If he's still standing when you're there, you can still do the banana swap. Ralsei, you come with me. And Berdly." Still unhappy with seeing the same guy he blamed on being stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere take charge, he listened. "Run straight at him, shoot him as often as you have to and then follow the others. Don't worry about us."

He was putting it in an awkward way, but Berdly got what he meant. "I can try." The fat dinosaur gave him a lot of room for error. Maybe if he was lucky enough, he could continue with the raptor next to him, too. And he already had an idea what to say. He started speaking loud enough for the brawlers around them to hear him. "Hey flappyears!"

The lizard who, whether or not purposefully, had long been presenting his frills, began to wrinkle up. "Yes, you! What's your problem the citizens anyway?"

"'They don't belong here."

"Really? What's with those clothes you're wearing then?"

The lizard snuck a quick glance at everyone else's clothes and his own. They fit into the era this whole city was emulating, but something was always off. The spiky shoulderpads or belts, the ammunition belts practically protruding out of their jackets, it all looked like they were people dressed as bikers who flimsily tossed vintage attire on top of it and called it a day. "What about 'em?"

"Look at them. All those bumps and tears. It all somehow doesn't fit, does it? The clothes look kind of out of place on you." The lizard began to bear his teeth. "Or maybe it's not the clothes. The clothes fit in here perfectly. The clothes look like they belong here. The only thing that has no business being here, is you!"

He was more than just bearing his teeth now. The lizard reached for his holster and drew his weapon. The moment he did this, Kris summoned his shield, stepped in the way of where he expected him to shoot and shouted at the jester: "Now!" Two loud bangs followed, one being a gunshot, one the smoke bomb that immediately covered everything. He felt the pain from blocking that bullet and slammed the cake piece right into his face.

The smoke burned in all of their eyes and only spurred them on to hurry with going forward all the more. Kris summoned his sword and charged right into the smoke, towards where that reptile stood with Ralsei right behind him. More gunshots were to be heard all around. He surged straight to his target with his sword raised and when he arrived, swung down with no mercy, cutting right through the jacket and burying it in the lizard.

He cut half of one of his frills right off his head and the now slightly less frilled dragon screamed with pain while bleeding from every part the human struck. Before the reptile had too much time to react, Kris raised a leg, kicked him and used the force of his leg to help pull his sword back out and then strike him right again. This time he dug so deep, he was half-way to cutting the guy's arm off.

Within the same motion started with his second strike, he dispelled his sword and ran straight past him and to the next target. The prince knew what he was asked to come along for, shot and pacified the severely injured brawler and ran right after Kris again.

Berdly ran towards his target as fast as he could without compromising his main task. stretched his hands out, aimed his two strange firearms right towards his target and began to fire as consistently as he could.

He had to put all his strength into fighting against the recoil, he wasn't sure whether you were supposed to fire so many times in quick succession, but he had to stop when a stinging pain hit his side and dug its way across his chest. "I'm hit!" From his side, Jandsome shouted something similar.

Kris was just done injuring a second brawler enough for Ralsei to pacify him, and swiftly grabbed a cake out of his bag and handed it to the prince, who knew to run back to where they had sent the others. They pacified the collapsed barkeeper on the way and followed the others around the corner where they had a few moments of cover. Once they had caught up with the others, the prince cast a spell to heal Berdly and smashed the cake in the jester's face.

The human ran after the prince and stopped when he was done healing the others. He fumbled out another piece of cake to eat, tapped Ralsei twice with his wrist and then grabbed the prince's with his hand. "Stay with me!" He pulled him closer and behind the wall and had the others follow him. He tipped Berdly on the shoulder. "Can you shoot them to distract them?"

"You mean cover them in suppression fire." The human nodded. Apparently, Berdly got what he was trying to say. Their little maneuver forced the still coughing brawlers to come out of the smoke. He peeked out to know when they did. The moment they did, he raised his shield and charged right back at the remaining three with Ralsei in tow. The moment Berdly realized what Kris had been planning, he was all the more shocked and confused.

"You crazy weirdo, come back here!" Nonetheless he drew both his weapons again and did as he was told, he covered the one on the right who was aiming at the bounties in fire and hit him multiple times. As soon as they took a few more hits, Kris ate his next piece of cake and fed Ralsei one, too. Right before putting away his shield and cutting down the next brawler.

By then, there was only one left. And he shot Kris twice right in the chest, before getting hit twice himself. After that, it just took a few more shots from Ralsei and Berdly until that last one couldn't stand any more either. The pain was too much for Kris to keep running and he collapsed onto the pavement. Ralsei was stressed, but not as panicked as Berdly expected someone in the light world to be.

He just held his hand down at his friend, it glowed faintly in various colours, and just like that, two bullets fell out and he had the strength to get back up again. The bird was still out of breath from all the excitement and looked back to see the other three slowly come back out of hiding. "Geez. What's gotten into you?" Kris got back up and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Which Berdly didn't think was his primacy concern, as he and Ralsei's faces both were covered in bits of cake.

"They outnumbered us four to six and now..." He looked around to see all of them lie on the ground. "Just how?"

The prince smiled at him. "We burned through half the cakes we brought. We're going to have to get new ones."

"What the hell are you doing?" The very next thing Kris had proceeded to do, was to kneel next to one of their downed adversaries and search through his pockets, until he found his wallet. He opened it and just took all the money he found and put it in his bag. "Don't these guys need medical attention?"

"Don't worry." The younger prince calmed him down. "People recover from wounds like that in the dark realm. If you just give them enough time. I would worry more about what they do after they wake up."

"What do you propose?" The jester had arrived and Janice felt it was safe enough to place Pluma back on the ground.

Kris, who was still for the most part busy looting all the brawlers got up from the third one. "Ralsei. The bounties."

"Oh right. The police offered to lock any brawlers up that we bring them. And we still have a debt to pay off."

"Well in this case." When they looked back at the jester, suddenly, there was a four-wheeled cart next to him, with a horizontal bar at the front, perfect to pull it along. "Let us bring them as many as we can." With little trouble, he just up and picked up two of them and put them on the cart. Then he picked up three more and just carried them on his shoulders. "Let's go."

It wasn't big enough to add the overweight dinosaur, but the cart was hard enough to pull for Kris and Berdly as is. While Berdly checked his phone to know where to go, his classmate couldn't help but ask: "Ralsei aren't these people all going to wake up by the time we're at the station?"

The prince only chuckled. "I wouldn't worry about that." He was flustered and needed a moment to come up with his answer. "The pacify spell I used on them lasts a little longer than the one in the card kingdom."

"You just have a stronger one?"

"Yes. I thought I would need this one here, the people in the card kingdom were nice for the most part. These people are much more intent in killing us."

Now with all their worries in tow, they made their way to the nearest precinct, loaded off all the unconscious darkners. The cops were vague on how much of his debt was settled with those five arrests, but Kris figured that was so they could be flexible with when it was paid off. Whether or not that was a good thing remained to be seen. But they did get quite the payout, most of which Kris kept for himself. Berdly insisted that he got his share.

Once Kris agreed to pay up, he leveraged this to find out a little more about this lead that Berdly promised. "So where does your 'trail' lead us?"

"Oh, uh." He tried to laugh off the sudden awkwardness. "Right. We have to get to the inner city. The bottom level to be precise." Not because of what lay right ahead of them, but because he wasn't sure where to take this after they met this 'Jevil' person. What would he say? He couldn't just cross this bridge when he got to it. He had to be prepared, but couldn't figure out how.

The prince assured him that they could find a way there. If they were lucky, they could use his door to get closer. They went back, past the unconscious brawler they left behind and passed through the door. Berdly was a bit shaken up by the impact of it closing, but soon enough, while Kris and Ralsei rushed ahead to get more cakes, the bird slowly stumbled across the bricks that made up the pavement of this dark kingdom.

The first thing he noticed, towards the northern end, were the signs. He was told all the houses were empty. At least in so far that nobody was here, but judging by the signs that had been put up at four of them, the prince had already designated one of them to be for some weapons- or armor salesperson, one for an innkeeper, one for a different kind of merchant, and one sign just had a questionmark on it. It implied that he intended to fill this place with someone.

But if Canyon City was the two toy boxes in his room, then where exactly was this kingdom?

Once he had made certain he wasn't imagining this, he walked back and found the open door to the house Janice had mentioned in their time texting and talking on the phone. He shrugged and went in there to sit down on the couch. It was pretty comfortable. Those two were taking their time with those cakes, either that, or that castle was pretty big. But now, he wasn't in such a rush. It was so quiet here. His worries were unfounded, Pluma really was safe here.

It was what came next, them leaving and venturing out there again, that he had to worry about. He really wished Janice and his sister just agreed to sit tight in here and wait while Berdly and Pilot would come up with a way to get him to pull himself together.

Speak of the devil, in big steps, the big jester sat down next to him. "So. What has you so deep in thoughts?" He was talking with that squeak. He was completely in-character again.

Berdly took a leaf out of Kris' book and just stared at him. If Pilot wasn't so terrified and so ashamed of having been so terrified, they wouldn't have been in this mess to begin with. Eventually, he did speak up. "You really should tell her..."

"Shhh!" He was immediately shushed. "Why don't we talk about something else? Your friend is far from hearing range, as is the little girl you're so protective of. And I can see right from here..." He pointed towards the window, through which they could see the road to the castle.

"...if they are coming. So. This grudge you have with your human friend is becoming a stumbling block. Tell me more about this common friend of yours that you mentioned when I asked about your grudge. I believe in the heat of your anger over our predicament, you mentioned a name. Noël?" He pronounced it in a strange way.

"Noelle." With a swing of his hand, the jester summoned a rose out of nowhere and handed it to the off-put bird. He stared at the rose, and then it dawned him. "Oh god. My clock!"

"What?"

"If the entire area is my room, and the cliffs were my closet...oh god. Kris saw the roses. He is never going to let this go!" He leaned onto his legs, ran his hands down his face and mumbled into his palms. "By the angel, he's never going to stop asking what's in my closet, is he?"

In a mockery of any kind of seriousness, the jester sat leaning his head on one of his arms and an exaggerated pout on his face. "If he will not let go of it either way, you might be best off coming clean."

"That's rich coming from you."

The jester's eyebrows rose. "Doesn't make it less true. Now this friend of yours, this 'Noelle'." With another swing of his hand, the rose was out of Berdly's and back in his own. "An interesting name. Don't you think? 'Noelle'. I believe it means 'Christmas' in another language. What are the chances?"

Luckily, they didn't have much more time to talk as Kris and Ralsei already came marching past the house. It was time to set out. While Berdly and Jandsome were still on the way, the prince made the doors open and asked Janice to check where they were.

"Still not quite there."

"I'm sorry." The prince walked outside and turned around waiting for the others to follow. "It appears this is as close to the inner city as I can get us." A look on the map revealed that they were on the very edge of the outer city. Quite a bit along the edge, there was a tunnel that led to the other canyon. "There might be a range of reasons why. We were lucky there were so many possible places for my door as it is. There usually aren't that many."

Now, they knew to be a lot more careful than they were when they first wandered through these streets. They kept to the wall on the inside and peeked around the corner at every crossing. And this time, they were six. They had their eyes open in all directions. For good reason apparently.

One time, when they peeked around the corner to the inside of the canyon, they saw two raptors patrol along a distant crossing. Luckily for them, they weren't intent to turn their way and went in the opposite direction instead.

Finally, eventually, they came by the dreaded tunnel. It was well-lit. Bright yellow light shone on the walls. And their worries proved well-founded, as the broad tunnel, wide enough for six tracks for vehicles to run on, had a makeshift barricade made of two trucks positioned sideways on both ends, leaving open a not so wide area in the middle, which was guarded by three brawlers.

One walked to the side bearing his weapon, but luckily, none of them spotted the jester when he peeked around the entrance. Only three, and they were close together and far away from the corner they were hiding behind. Without any doubt, they were going to pull something bad, there was no other reason for these guys to block off the tunnel like that. But going through the entire situation again, the a grin began to creep up the bird's beak.

They weren't looking for him and Jandsome, that was why the two of them had such an easy time walking through the city. They were only ever a lead to get to Kris and Ralsei. So he had some room to interact with the brawlers without getting attacked on sight.

He asked Jandsome to give him a little headstart and then follow. And then, in complete relaxation, he came around the corner and strolled towards the barricade, while making sure to clearly move to the right, so that Jandsome had a clear line of sight. As expected, one of the three shady figures, immediately approached him with an hopen hand. "Not so fast, sunnyboy."

That wide smile never left Berdly's face. "Why? Are you going to arrest me?"

The guy who stopped him, a hammerhead who had long lost his hat if he ever had one, shook his head. "Not exactly. Nobody gets past here without paying a toll."

"Really? A toll? It's not a different country over there. It's not even a different town. You can't seriously make demands like that." Berdly snuck a glance to the side and saw that Jandsome had followed him, but was staying at a distance.

The corners of the shark's mouth, already naturally turned backwards, were only stretching themselves further down. "Looks like we got someone who doesn't know who's running the show here."

Now all three were walking Berdly's way, and the bird, calm and collected, moved further to the right and backed off by a bit. In fact, he wasn't just calm, he was laughing at them. "Running the show? Really? You guys? You're basic grunts, you're not running anyone's show."

"Okay, that's it." As planned, he had angered them and they all began reaching for their holsters. Only that, as planned as part of their routine, they were all fixated on the bird that was angering them, and didn't notice that all their pistols were bananas. Dangling their real firearms by the trigger guards that spanned around the triggers in front of them with a wide smile, the jester backed off as well and made way for the rest of their group to follow.

Berdly pulled out one of his weapons and began aiming at them. "Drop your bananas, now!" Two of them followed suit. A third one reached into the open door of one of the trucks and pulled out a rifle. But with four loud shots that sent shivers through the bird, the brawler was gunned down immediately and with four more shots, both his friends were hit twice, one of which reached for his friend's rifle.

By then, Berdly had himself collected enough to shoot each one once more, while Ralsei rushed right towards them to pacify one after the other. Berdly wasn't the only one that was shocked, and everyone slowly followed the robed goat boy that had drawn his weapon and emptied an entire magazine to finish this.

They came close enough that after a short sprint, the prince could check on the body. "Not quite dead." With one more glow of his hand, he pacified the last one. This little escalation left the bird worried that this one patrol might have heard the shooting, but as it would turn out as time went on, his constant checking whether they did, wasn't warranted, this time at least.

Ralsei on the other hand, was happy to get an upgrade. He stuffed the weapon away that the commissioner had given him and while Kris was busy emptying their wallets, he got busy searching for ammunition. He got an upgrade now. A semi-automatic rifle.

Kris still couldn't help but address the elephant in the room. "Ralsei, what was that."

The prince was a bit ashamed guessing from how he retreated a bit under the cover of his robe and hat. "That was...me learning from yesterday. With King. We can't be hesitant any more, not when we're dealing with people that are serious."

"With King?" This Ralsei was about their age, but he seemed so timid most of the time. Berdly got curious as to what experience made him just gun someone down in cold blood like this, for all they knew, that guy could have been dead. And on their way through the tunnel, with a jester who carried three unconscious brawlers in a cart in tow, Kris and Ralsei recounted their battle with the king of spades.

The only comment the bird had in the end, was to nod and say: "Really? Healing the guy that's trying to kill you? That really wasn't the smartest thing to do." As usual, his wide grin wasn't met with a lot of approval, as would his responses as they told him more about their previous journey.