Chapter Twelve

She fingered the dagger at her side as she walked, becoming more wary of the ones that pressed against her in various places. Her eyes darted from side to side, looking up occasionally as well, searching for someone--anyone--that seemed interested by her presence. The pace she kept was intentionally nervous as she wove her way back to Jalen's.
In an alley almost there, a man stepped in front of her. "Looking for someone?"
"No." She turned around, hoping she'd find Seth right on her tail. Instead, it was another stranger.
"You sure? You seem to be looking for someone," the new man answered.
"Listen, I'm not looking for anyone. I'm just trying to get home."
"If you're on your way home, you seem to be going a rather strange way." Kyari spun around, backing up against the wall. "Here, let us walk you home, you'll be safer with us." The first man moved towards her, the second mirroring the first.
"No, I'm good."
"We insist."
She had no choice as they grabbed her arms, pulling her out of the alley.
The next few moments were a blur as she wrestled her way out of their grips, leaving both with lengthy dagger scars. The first one came too close, and fell to the ground, severely bleeding.  "Who do you work for?" she demanded of the second one.
"Why does it matter?" he replied, lifting his hand towards her cheek. "We were just trying to protect you."
"I don't think so. Who do you work for?" she demanded, pushing his hand away.
"I'm not telling you, sweetheart. Boss's orders."
And so she ran. Somewhere. It didn't matter as long as it was away from them. Her heart was beating quickly, and as she turned a corner, she finally slowed down. Where was Seth?
She began backtracking, working along the roads she had come down, trying to find any sight of him. When she did, it wasn't what she expected. He was locked in an embrace with someone--she couldn't see the face--and definitely wasn't following her like he was supposed to.
Standing there for a few minutes to regain her calm, she waited.
*    *    *
Seth, as it turned out, was having problems of his own, and all of them stemming from the person currently trying to haul him down an alleyway by his collar.
Flare’s was an acquaintance Seth had made quite by accident, and one he had, until this moment, not regretted in the least. He’d met the girl while delivering a custom tessen and had found in her a kindred spirit. Like him, she was foreign to the area and had come to the arena for the exact thing he’d come in search of: knowledge (though hers was of a different sort). The clincher, however, was when they’d had a small spar and ended up describing each other’s fighting styles in the exact same words - equal parts idiocy and genius with a dash of insanity.
Seth had found himself spending more and more time around his fellow foreigner, sometimes to spar and trade techniques and strategies, but more often than not just to relax and shoot the breeze. And really, it was that sense of ease that Seth cherished the most. It was a feeling that he could never find when he was around Kyari, because he’d originally sought her out for a reason, and some obligations could never be fully ignored, not when they were staring at him in the face.
For Seth, Flare was something of an escape.
“Listen, you don’t understand. I have-“ The young man started to choke out.
Escape, however, looked to be quite possibly the last thing that Flare’s coming foreshadowed. Shouts started funneling down the alley, angry, and with a worrying proclivity towards coupling the words ‘kneecaps’ and ‘break’.
“A vested interest in staying alive, right?” The blue-haired girl cut him off hurriedly. “Because if you don’t, you’re more than welcome to stay here and entertain ‘I crush kidneys’ Billy numbers one and two. A scapegoat’s as good as an ally to me right now and I’ll take what I can get, even if I’d prefer it if you decided to give me a hand.”
Well, when given a wonderful spread of options like that, choice suddenly became a very hypothetical concept. Seth gritted teeth and slammed his fist into the brick and mortar of the alley wall before turning tail and hoofing it down the side street, away from the growing voices.
The idea of pretending he had nothing to do with the situation never even crossed his mind, not because he felt an overwhelming obligation to help her, but because he had no doubt in his mind whatsoever that she could and would make him regret abandoning her.
“Why are you doing this?” Seth hissed at Flare, knowing full well she would understand what he was asking. “And speaking of doing things, what is it that you did?”
“You owe me a favour,” Flare shot back, easily keeping pace with the young man, “I’m collecting. And I may have circulated a couple of names and dates from Jakob Stern’s personal books.”
“Oh just butcher me now,” Seth groaned. “And light the remains on fire while you’re at it.”
Jakob Stern was a name one ran into if they stayed around the Coliseum for any respectable amount of time. One of the arena’s worst kept secrets, Stern ran some of the largest betting rings in the area. While his operations managed to fall just on the shy side of reputable, it was often jokingly said that every fourth fight, you weren’t betting on who would win, but on who wasn’t taking a fall.
Flare had essentially siphoned funds straight from Stern’s coffers. If his instincts were correct, broken kneecaps would only be the beginning if she was caught.
“What are you even expecting me to do? Punch out what I’m assuming is the toughest muscle Stern has on hand?” Seth asked angrily.
“Isn’t making something up on the fly what you’re best at?” Flare let out a laugh, tinged slightly hysterical with adrenaline. “You consider yourself an improvisationalist, don’t you? So, improvise.”
“All my debts. Paid. In full.” The young man demanded, just as a hissing and spitting knife zipped past his head, not a centimeter from his right ear, and imbedded itself in the T-junction wall at the alley’s end.
Then it exploded.
While money wasn’t capable of buying love or happiness, it was more than capable of buying some rare talent, some very deadly weapons and people more than willing to employ both.
“Some names and dates? Some names and dates!? That was someone’s house!” Seth yelped, throwing himself down the right hand lane and littering his trail with caltrops and a smoke bomb for good measure.
“Well excuuuuuuuuuuse me for forgetting to check whether or not Jakob Stern had signed the ‘I will not harm, deface or destroy innocent bystanders and/or their property’ clause of the ‘Degenerate Criminal Scumbag’ contract before screwing him over!” Flare retorted, darting down the opposite alley.
That cheerful note signified the end of negotiations and the beginning of a hectic twenty minute game of Extreme Cat and Mouse set to the tune of an internal monologue that went something along the lines of ‘I’mgonnadieI’mgonnadieI’mgonnadie.’
And oh was it a game of Cat and Mouse. The roles, however, tended to get a little blurred at times.
A facet of Seth known only to a very select few was that he happened to be a severe claustrophobe. He has a sneaking suspicion that it had its roots somewhere in the feeling of constraint, but that was neither here nor there. Regardless of its source, Seth hated his phobia with a passion and avoided it when at all possible. This meant he was barely, if at all capable of handling his own fear.
To say that, when hunted down in the narrow side alleys of the Coliseum, he panicked would be an understatement of the highest degree.
The first man who broke through his smoke cloud, hopping on feet punctured full of small steel tetrahedrons and swearing up a storm, was greeted by a cheerfully hissing bonsai in a small plant pot.
The scream of agony that chased Seth down the alley made him wince. He was a little too intimate with the knowledge of what exactly having an explosive go off by one’s legs felt like. On the other hand, there was absolutely no way that particular thug would be a further problem.
Particulars, however, are pernicious little things; the devil’s in the details they say and this detail came in the form of a well-defined arm placed perfectly at neck height as Seth came tearing around the corner. A solid bar of lead could not have clotheslined him better, of that Seth would attest to.
“I told them she had an accomplice,” a guttural voice rumbled from somewhere above him. Seth didn’t care. He was too busy trying to force his head to kill the fuzz in his vision and stop rendering everything in tie-dye.
Cobblestones groaned in protest as brunet’s face was slammed into them, and Seth’s case of cottonbrain ratcheted itself up to eleven.
“Wash worth’a try, wash worth’a try,” Seth mumbled drunkenly through the blood bubbling on his lips. “Shpilt milk, heehee, shpilt milk ehverywhere…”
Bran Trild grunted with distaste as he picked up the brown haired boy off the ground by his skull. He hated picking up the crazies.
He’d been working as one of Jakob Stern’s top enforcers for four years, which meant he’d retrieved all manner of targets for his boss. Pleading, he could deal with. Threats too, as well as bribery. Even the resulting interrogations or… renumerations he could watch without the slightest twitch.
Gibbering lunatics, however, gave him the heebie-jeebies. There is a line in peoples’ heads that they just don’t cross, not if they want to remain a functioning, sane individual. He’d seen many people who’d crossed that line in his lifetime. Some had just been punched in the face one too many times, others had flown past it on the fraud wings of narcotics, and even others had just tipped over it when they lost something, or more often than note, someone. The only thing they all had in common is that none of them ever came back, not one.
Insanity is a one way ticket and it scares the hell out of Trild, so much so that the only thing he hates more than handling lunatics is working with amateurs, and if Derrick hadn’t already looked like he was going to have his legs amputated Bran’d have ripped the uppity little berks’ arms off himself. That little exploding knife stunt of his had cost their team any bonus they’d have hoped to win from the mole’s capture, as well as what little credibility they’d had left.
“This whole charade’s already gone on way too long,” the burly man frowned as he slung Seth over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “With any luck-“
“Let. Him. Go.”
Bran blinked and stared at the small, blue haired girl who’d materialized in front of him. While Flare was by no means short, Bran Trild was pushing six foot eight and was bulky with it. A chihuahua would stand a better chance at staring down a pit bull.
“Well lookie here. Ask and you shall receive,” the giant of a thug grinned ferally, balancing Seth on his shoulder so he was free to crack his knuckles. “Maybe this won’t end up being a complete sh-HURK!”
Metal wired tightened, dragged, slid into flesh like it was a soft cheese.
“Mom always told me I needed to know how to tie a tie,” Seth giggled feverishly, sliding down Bran’s back as the wire he’d looped out of his glove and around the man’s neck worked its way deeper and deeper.
He wasn’t hanging off the man for long. Arteries don’t take kindly to being severed and Bran fell forward like some macabre tree, slamming into the ground with a hefty thud. Seth had to withhold the urge to yell ‘Timber’.
“Debt. Paid. Full.” Seth mumbled drunkenly, stumbling towards Flare.
A fleck of water and the stench of ozone was the only warning he had before a strand of water shot past him and wrapped around the wrist of a young woman sneaking up behind him, delivering with it its electric payload. A moment later and Flare was behind Seth, tessen outstretched and the last member of the three man cell tasked with hunting her down splayed out at her feet.
Seth turned around slowly, still not sure he fully trusted his feet to hold him up. Flare simply stood there, breathing hard, tessen still extended in front of her. Suddenly, she convulsed, and Seth was about to reach out to her when a violent giggle burst out of her mouth.
“We… we got them!” She exclaimed. “HaHA! We got them!”
“Seth,” she spun around, eyes sparkling, “do you know what we just did!? We just got one over on Jakob Stern!”
Seth was about to correct her and tell her that she’d got one over on Jakob Stern when Flare collided with him, locking him in a tight embrace and an even fiercer kiss.
Seth’s mind blanked.
It could have been any number of things. Later on, he would blame shock. Whatever the reason, the next coherent memory Seth had was of Flare pulling back, fever light in her eyes and saying in a voice still pumped full of adrenaline, “We need to do that again.”
Whether she meant steal money from a crime lord, take out a team of trained hit men, or another kiss (or all of the above), Seth didn’t know, now did he know which one scared him the most.
As Flare walked away, Seth realized that maybe he was a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and maybe, just maybe he liked Flare a bit more than he’d been willing to admit to himself before…
The brunet blinked owlishly and then paled as he held his shaking, blood soaked hands in front of his face. Maybe he was getting in a little over his head, maybe he really wasn’t cut out for this, maybe-
From between the gaps in his fingers he noticed Kyari leaning against a wall not eight feet from him. She was bloody and looked completely fatigued in both mind and body. She looked, in a word, ragged.
Maybe he had more than a little explaining to do.
"Found yourself a girlfriend, eh?"
“I… I don’t know,” Seth muttered disjointedly, sliding to the ground. “I really, really don’t know.” He looked up at the two bodies lying on the floor, one a corpse and one simply insensate and realized it might not be Kyari’s question he was replying to.
In the distance he could still hear the faint sobbing of the first man who’d come after Flare. At least he thought he did. He couldn’t tell. There was a high pitched whine building in the back of his head and he noticed, absently, that he was still shaking.
“We need to get out of here,” he mumbled colourlessly, getting awkwardly to his feet. “Those people used some kind of explosive, blew somebody’s wall in. People’re gonna be coming. They’re gonna want answers.” He looked down at the body of the man who was once Bran Trild. “People always want answers.”
"And now I want an answer," she nearly shouted back at him. "I'm tired of you dancing around everything I ask you about your personal life.
Is this what it was the whole time?" Seth stared at her, dumbfounded. There he was, hands covered in blood, a corpse at his feet and a lot of curious, angry people would probably be converging on their exact location, and Kyari wanted to pry into his personal life now?
“What?” He asked numbly. “No. Honestly. What do you want of me? The last time I checked, one’s personal affairs were exactly that; personal. Do you honestly feel entitled to a constant update of every last detail of my comings and goings?”
"I think I have the right to be concerned, after you stopped following me and I got attacked! I trusted you to be there for backup!" she shouted at him. "Against everything that told me not to trust you, I did anyway. I think your girlfriend should know that you aren't someone to be trusted."
“Well if it wasn’t obvious,” Seth hissed frustratedly, “I got conscripted by Miss ‘I-piss-off-big-crime-bosses-in-my-spare-time’ over there. I didn’t really have any say in the matter!”
Flare’s ears perked up as she hit the mouth of the alley and she spun around, grinning predatorily, “Well you could have left me in the lurch…” she suggested innocently. “And what’s this about me being your girlfriend? You should have told me!” The young woman paused for a moment and tapped a finger against her lips. “Who is she anyways?”
“Don’t. Start.” Seth scowled. “I am not going near any of those sentences. Any of them. You want to know who she is, ask her, since apparently nothing I say is to be trusted.” The young man took a deep breath, looked up at Kyari, then at Flare, and then sighed. “I don’t know about either of you, but I don’t feel like being caught by an angry mob.” He turned around and started walking away. “I’m going to make myself scarce and then screw my head back on straight before I start to make decisions I’ll regret. Or regret more.”
“Oh come on, stick around,” Flare called playfully, crossing her arms and glancing to her right where questing voices had started to crawl down the alleyway. “I’m sure it’ll be fun. And we can discuss what you mean by ‘Regret more’ while you’re here.”
Seth twitched visibly, but kept walking away.
Kyari watched him walk away, but with one last glare at the girl behind her, she quickly followed after him. "Was there really no chance of getting away after she 'drafted' you? Couldn't you just tell her 'Not right now, I'm kind of busy' or something like that? I was counting on you for back-up!"
Flare quirked an eyebrow at Kyari's retreating back before snickering quietly. She needed to drop in on Seth unannounced more often, she really did. The fallout of this little excursion was paying dividends already. “Yeah,” Flare called after Seth, “why don’t you ‘stop dodging the question’ and give us a straight answer!?”
“Because,” Seth sighed sufferingly, “I’m not particularly keen on becoming more acquainted with Jakob Stern’s personal interrogation cells.” The young man stopped and looked over his shoulder at Flare, “That is what would have happened, right?”
“My, my,” Flare chuckled, rubbing a finger against her forehead ruefully, “I’ve become predictable, haven’t I? This is a terrible state of affairs; I’ll need to be more creative next time. Can’t have things getting dull, now can we?
“Now it’s been a pleasure meeting your, ahhhh, friend,” Flare smiled slyly, “ but I think that for once in your life you may have a point. I don’t really feel in the mood to play host to an angry mob whose neighbourhood we’ve just ransacked, so if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s about high time I vamoosed. Toodles~” And with that cheerful goodbye, Flare sidled out to the mouth of the alley and shot off into the nest of back roads.
Seth rolled his eyes and snorted exasperatedly before turning around and continuing to make his way out of the alley. “As far as I’m concerned, abandoning Flare to fend for herself would have been very similar to an exercise in delayed suicide,” Seth elaborated tiredly. “That aside, I lost sight of you the moment she dragged me into the alley back there. By the time I’d have gotten away from her, finding you again in the crowds would have kind of been a moot point.”
"I'd say this is a project gone bad. I didn't get much--if any--information. All I was able to figure out was that the guys who attacked me were working for someone--which can be pretty much anyone. If we attempt this little excursion again, you'd better be sticking closer behind. And make sure that girl isn't around."
“You were attacked!?” Seth blurted out, startled, before mentally smacking himself upside the head. Of course she got attacked, why else would she have been so upset with him. After all, the entire plan was for her to get attacked in the first place. “… Sorry,” he mumbled dejectedly.
“In that case, we’re going to come up with a new plan,” Seth admitted, quickening his pace with a nervous look behind him. How far away were those people? “I can guarantee you that Flare wouldn’t pop up unannounced about as much as I could guarantee you an accurate prediction of the weather for the entire year.”
"Were you not listening? Yes, I got attacked. But it kind of defeats the purpose if I can't get any information out of them," she sighed, trying hard to not get upset with him. "Let's hope that whatever we come up with that she doesn't interfere." And that you don't let her.
The young man shot Kyari a quick glance before deciding to let the crack at his attention pass. He had flaked out on her when she was counting on him, regardless of the circumstances.
“To be honest, now that she’s met you, there’s actually a distinct possibility she’ll be skulking around the both of us for the next while,” Seth frowned. “From what I’ve learned of her, she seems to deal in information. Case in point: that whole debacle with Jakob Stern’s men she just pulled me into. Chances are gathering info on you has jumped up her list of things to do quite considerably.”
Seth frowned again, though for a decidedly different reason this time. The teen paused, cocking an ear to the side and, hearing nothing, turned to Kyari. “Huh , no noise… I got a feeling those would-be kidnappers are enjoying a fun game of Twenty Questions with the locals right about now.” The brunet chuckled darkly. “Serves ‘em right. Maybe next time that one idiot with think before he goes slinging explosives around. If he makes it out of there alive that is.
“Now, if you want a 100% guarantee Flare isn’t going to involve herself in our plans, I can see two options. One, we can lie low until she loses interest, which would be really hard to gauge by the way, or two…” he shrugged, “we get out of town. Well, you get out of town,” Seth amended, “but I really have little reason else to stay here.”
She stopped entirely. "You're leaving?"
“What? No!” Seth exclaimed before quickly shutting his mouth and looking cautiously down the alley. When an angry mob out for his blood failed to materialize, he sighed and looked back at Kyari.
“Well, yes,” he corrected himself, “eventually, but I wasn’t planning on leaving for a few months yet.” The young man huffed and crossed his arms. “All I was saying is that if we try putting any more plans into action, there’s a distinct possibility Flare will pop up on her own accord. The only ways to avoid her completely, that I can see, is either lay low or get out of town.”
"Then I'm voting we lay low," she concluded, filing the other information for future reference.
“Best idea I’ve heard all day,” Seth smiled tiredly, “I’m about ready to collapse…” Maybe now he could get some proper rest.
She nodded, the events of the morning/early afternoon suddenly crashing down on her. "I should go take a--" she yawned. "Go ahead, take a couple days off. We both probably need it."
“All right, take care of yourself, Kyari, and…” he paused, “I hate to add this to everything else that’s already happened today, but when I said Flare would try to learn more about you I meant it. If you don’t care about what she learns, then…” Seth shrugged. “But broadcasting personal information has never really seemed to be very far up on you To-do list, so keep an eye out, ok?”
She nodded, smiling slightly at his concern.
If Flare could have sauntered out of the alley and into the crush of people at its mouth, she would have. As it was, a small, excited skip was all she was able to manage without getting trampled underfoot.
Geez, people in these big cities were always so impatient, running here, bustling there. Not that that was a gigantic problem. After all, busy people were incautious people, and people who had other, more pressing issues on their minds were liable the say the most fascinating things.
Fascinating, and potentially profitable.
But the skip in Flare’s step didn’t come from a particularly choice bit of information she’d been able to dig up, but, of all places, from a friend she’d come across quite by chance. Or rather, the friend of a friend, if friend was the right word.
Flare shrugged to herself. She wasn’t a linguist. Debating whether or not Seth counted as a ‘friend’ didn’t strike her as particularly appealing, especially not now that she had a new target to learn about.
Information was Flare’s raison d’être. She lived it, breathed it, and to her there was nothing so rewarding as discovering something new. Of course, not all knowledge was equal; she would be the first to admit that learning how to coo like a pigeon, while amusing, paled in comparison to the rush one gets while discovering someone’s closet full of skeletons.
Skeleton stuffed closets, however, were currently in short supply. This was, of course, entirely Seth’s fault. It wasn’t that the boy was boring so much as he was… unmotivated. Unless given some stimuli, he would happily go about his daily routine with absolutely zero desire for variety, and there’re only so many hours you can spend observing the life and times of a delivery boy before getting terminally bored.
Emphasis on the terminal. While the whole debacle with Stern had been exhilarating, it had also been more than a little suicidal and dying a horrible death wasn’t quite at the top of Flare’s ‘To-do List’. She needed a distraction before the rush wore off, and Seth was too much of a long term investment. Flare needed some immediate returns on her time investments, and who should wander along but a young girl who seemed to be just loaded with personal issues just waiting to be dug up. What’s more, she knew Seth. With any luck, Flare might find out a little more about her strange new companion.
“It’s like a two-for-one deal,” the young woman giggled, hastily circling around the city block to what was her best approximation of where Seth and Kyari would exit the maze of alleys. Not that it would be a tragedy if she missed them. All she had to do was find her target once; once she found out where the enigmatic girl lived, the rest would be gravy.

Author's Note

It's still a first draft...I apologize, but *shrugs* just wanted to put it out there.