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Chapter 6 - The Dragon Thief

It was rare Tea's jobs brought them away from the capital.

The pixie lay sprawled across the train cushions, shoveling down cookies. They still had yet to change out of their new taller form, but Tea at least had the decency to buy new clothes for it.

"So what happened with that rip-off guy, anyway?" Giu asked.

Tea swallowed her cookie. "Do you really wanna know the nitty gritty? It wasn't a pretty sight, Gi."

The canine thought a moment. "Yeah, probably better off not knowing."

"My point exactly. You'll sleep better that way."

Another cookie disappeared.

Perhaps Giu should have been more concerned about how flippant the pixie regarded the murder. Then again, this was the same person who encouraged him to eat a rabbit and avoid the paladins. Killing randoms was par for the course.

Leaning against the train window, Giu watched the procession of smaller villages drift by. They all seemed so close from above despite being miles apart. As if he could wander from one to another with ease. If only. Without Tea paying, he knew he'd hardly make it far in the Villa.

"All passengers," the train announcer called, "we will be arriving in Ridion Village shortly."

There were only a handful of passengers. The number of travelers had been steadily decreasing, which both he and Tea were more than happy for. Less people meant shorter lines. And it certainly helped to get your pick of whatever aile you wanted to sit in.

The front-row seats were always reserved for the same fancy-looking avians. But with them gone, the seats were free for whoever wanted to recline in comfort and watch the world drift by. Granted, the ushers gave them a few funny looks, but that was about it. After a while, Giu stopped noticing.

"Now arriving in Ridion Village," the announcer called.

The wings of the train brought them steadily down until they were floating onto a set of dirt tracks. A small river ran past them, feeding into a waterfall as tall as the train was long.

The cookies vanished, both Tea and Giu exiting to a line of a few people.

"Alright, time to focus up, Gi. We got a target to catch."

Tea pulled out their photo. According to them, the paladins were offering a substantial reward for whoever could nab the man in question. They didn't have any more than a picture and a description to go on. He was a thief, and he wore a mask.

"Any idea where we should start?" Giu asked. Ridion was a fair bit smaller than Tullula, most of the houses made of thatched roofing rather than the normal wood-brick combination. Still, combing the place blind seemed doomed to fail. "This place have a market or something?"

"Not in the traditional sense. Ridion runs on a barter system. Most of the people here trade goods all- Oh, there he is."

They both stopped.

Climbing out of a two-story window was a man with a silken brown scarf and white mask in the likeness of a dragon. A pack was slung around his back, the wolf above him shouting at the top of his lungs.

"Hey! Stop! That's my whole life savings!"

The thief ignored the man's cries. Giu and Tea exchanged knowing glances. With a shrug, the latter stepped forward, energy channeling into his fist. Guess it's gonna be an easy day. He sprung forward.

The masked man slid to a halt, but Giu quickly closed the distance. He only swung hard enough to knock the guy off his feet. Maybe break a nose if he was especially weak.

The man shattered into pieces.

"Huh?"

A force bounced off Giu's head, sending the canine sprawling forward. He caught himself, whirling around. The man was behind him. Completely intact. He looked back to the scattered pieces to see nothing but a dirt road.

"Gi!" Tea shouted. "What the heck are you doing? He's getting away!"

He snapped out of his trance. Crap. Rushing forward, he managed to close the distance again. His hand reached out.

"Gi!"

Giu blinked. His hand was up against the wall.

What in the...He heard a grunt from behind. When he turned, he found the thief waving back at him. A giant eye was hovering behind him. Giu rubbed his own. Am I losing it?

The thief burst into a spray of confetti, the paper scraps flying in all directions.

Giu fell backward. His legs. They'd turned into hooves! Holy- His hands became hooks. He felt ringing in his ears. His heart raced through his chest.

A smack brought him lurching forward.

"Gi! Gi, it's me! Calm down."

The canine stared around.

Tea was holding onto him, the pixie looking a bit winded. Giu raised his hands to his face. The hooks were gone, along with the hooves. In fact, the town itself was nowhere to be seen.

He was sitting by a running waterfall. Tea put a hand on his forehead.

"Take it easy, Gi," they said. "Your senses are readjusting."

"Huh?" As the pixie spoke, he noticed a slight delay between their words. Their lips moved, but words were slow to follow. He felt his mind ache. "Ugh. What's going on?"

"Take it easy, I said. Effects should pass in a few seconds."

Giu felt the world sway around him, visions swimming and blending into a singular entity. His ears twitched. Tea took their hand away, letting out a relieved breath.

"Alright," the pixie said. "So, probably not the best approach we could have taken."

Giu snapped his fingers, the sounds echoing through his eardrums. "What was that? Some kind of magic?"

"Mystic branch, if we're being specific. Which is a problem considering you're a Physical type."

"What?"

"Oh. Right. Keep forgetting you're...Hang on a sec'."

Tea flew backward, a rectangular object appearing in their hands. As did a marker. They went to work, frantically doodling across the object before turning it over. Giu raised a brow.

It was a whiteboard. Crudely drawn images stared back at him.

"So y'know how you do your form change, and it alters your skin?" Tea asked. "Well, that's Physical magic. Y'know, punching and shapeshifting and such. You follow?"

The pixie pointed to the series of circles and squiggly lines Giu assumed must have been drawings. Is that supposed to be me? He squinted at the stick figure with pointed ears.

Tea moved the marker to another set of images.

"Well, what you experienced is what we call Mystic type magic. It's very weird and crazy. Deals with illusions and sensory junk. Nasty stuff. Personally, I tend to stick with Nature magic, which would be the third branch. It's served me well so far."

Accompanying the pixie's explanation was a movement of the marker from crudely drawn squares to misshapen circles. What looked to be a hat with legs shot triangles from its body. At the far side of the whiteboard, Tea had drawn an angry face surrounded by a series of squiggly lines.

Giu scratched his head at it all.

"So...mask guy uses weird illusion magic, then?"

"Essentially, yeah. Fortunately, the three branches tend to balance out. Phys beats Nature, Nature beats Mystic, and Mystic beats Phys. Lucky for both of us, I am an expert in Nature magic."

"You're gonna beat this guy?"

Tea smiled. "More or less." The whiteboard vanished.

The pixie floated over the waterfall, hands on their hips as they stared out into the distance. With the haze of his mind attack cleared, Giu could see they hadn't gone that far from Ridion. And there was plenty of time in the day. Perhaps it wasn't too late to salvage the operation.

"I'm assuming you got a plan?" Giu asked.

Tea nodded. "Naturally, Gi. Always do."

***

For better or worse, finding the thief a second time wasn't a huge issue. Following the screaming, Giu spotted the masked man gunning down the streets with an angry lion on his tail. Or at least he was until the feline turned a corner and slammed face-first into a wall. Giu winced. Tea, I swear if this plan doesn't work...

Taking a breath, Giu halted in the thief's direction, arms out and armored, ready to intercept the target. The masked man charged forward and-

Giu blinked in the sight of dozens of masked men springing from the ground.

Like spirits, they all materialized, each identical to the one next to it. They broke into different directions, diverting and racing around each other. Giu's migraine came back with a vengeance trying to keep track of the original.

"Tsuchluyavan!"

The masked men all disappeared. The smell of burning alcohol filled Giu's nostrils. He followed the scent to find the masked thief a few feet behind him, his clothes inflamed while a grinning pixie descended from the sky.

Tea winked.

"Bullseye."

Giu quickly remembered his part of the plan, moving in for the kill.

The masked man was tricky, but the burning flames made him an easy target. He was so focused on the fire he never saw the blow coming. Giu smiled, fist driving through flames to reach the mask. To feel that familiar sensation of a face caving in.

His fist stopped dead.

Giu's eyes grew to saucers, an icy chill running up his arm. His hand dangled inches from the mask. No. It was held there. The thief looked directly at Giu, his gaze landing on him through the holes in his mask. Fingers tightened.

"Crap."

The flames vanished, replaced instead by lines of frozen alcohol that ran across the thief's frame. He released Giu's fist, the canine stumbling backward, rubbing his hand. Ice magic? He could still feel the cold touch. See the icicles clinging to his fur.

"Tea?" Giu asked. "Tea, what should we-"

He cut off as an orange frame collided with his body.

"RETREAT! RETREAT NOW!"

The pixie dragged him into the air, the canine a bit surprised by the fact that they even could. Even with the tall form, T seemed a lightweight. But such thoughts went out the window when Giu felt something nip his shoulder. A spear of ice flew past.

The mystic thief was waving his hands from below, torrents of icicles shooting out like trained arrows. Giu disregarded his concerns, holding on while Tea dragged them both through the air, diverting and spinning to avoid the projectiles. One managed to graze the pixie's leg, but they flew on.

For such a small creature, Giu counted it lucky Tea knew the skies well.

***

The waterfall made for a decent spot to regroup.

"What the heck was that?" Giu shouted. "I thought you said that guy used illusions!"

"He did!" Tea snapped.

"Then how do you explain this, huh? Or that?" Giu pointed to his shoulder and Tea's leg. The bleeding from the former was minimal, but Tea had a slight limp from the latter. "What the heck kind of illusion does that?"

"Obviously that wasn't illusion magic, dummy." Tea pulled out a potion and a roll of bandages. "How was I supposed to know he knew Nature magic?"

"It's your job to know, T! You pick the targets!"

Tea drank half the potion, tossing the rest to Giu along with the bandages. Though the bottle was enough to close the wounds, it did little for the stinging. Or Giu's partially frozen right hand.

Tea started up a fire. That didn't absolve them of the intel drop, but it was a start.

"Okay," the pixie said. "I admit that I might have overlooked that the guy could be cross-trained."

"Y'think? How are we supposed to fight a guy that's got illusions and ice? I thought you said there was a balance to this crap?"

Tea groaned. "There is. This guy just covered his bases." The pixie folded their arms. "Maybe we should bail."

"Like heck we are!"

Tea looked up at him. He squeezed his frozen hand, the sensation returning along with fire burning in his stomach. He glared at the village, the image of the masked man making his jaw tighten.

"That dragon guy's already made me look stupid twice," Giu said. "No way am I letting that slide. Not until I punch that weird, arrogant, stupid clown right in the face."

He shook his fist in the air, each word only adding fuel to the flames. Tea wasn't as moved.

"Gi, I just said he's cross-trained."

"So?"

"So...Did you forget he makes illusions? Ice magic? Froze my fire? Pretty sure we're dealing with a guy who's gonna counter whatever we try next."

"Well then, we counter his countering," Giu declared. "You said it yourself, right? It's a balance thing. Well if he uses ice again, I counter with punching. If he uses illusions, you counter with fire."

"That's- That's not how it works, Gi. Plus, he blocked your punch, dummy."

"Then, I kick 'em in the face!"

Tea groaned.

Despite his words, Giu knew his plan was doomed to failure. He realized it when he looked into the man's eyes. The thief was calm. The man was on fire and outnumbered, but he wasn't concerned in the slightest. As if this was simply another Wednesday for him.

Someone like that wouldn't go down because Giu tried a kick instead of a punch. But then, Giu wanted to kick the man in the face anyway.

"Look, T," he said. "Think of this as a...very important business venture. Those villagers saw us stand up to the thief. They saw us attempt to fight him. Now imagine what would happen should we manage to beat him? We'd be heroes. Our reputations would skyrocket. We might even get statues."

"That's a big if, Gi. Besides, I don't need my reputation further dragged by having to run thrice from the same target."

"Which is why we gotta get it right the third time. Look, you said it yourself, T. I'm the investment. Your investment. I help you beat up the guys you can't beat up alone. Among other things."

Tea rolled their eyes at that.

"What you're describing is a partner. I like to consider you more of a hired sword."

"Which is fine," Giu said. "But that means you're the brains of this whole operation. And if you can't see with all your brains a way for us to knock this guy's teeth in and boost our rep, then...Who's the real dummy here, huh?"

Tea didn't respond, only staring at him for a few moments. He smiled back, hands on his hips in his best imitation of a gotcha pose. Even if he knew it wasn't a real gotcha, it earned a smirk from the pixie.

They turned away.

"Still you, Gi," Tea said. "You're always the dummy. But you might have a point."

Giu smiled. The pixie pointed a paw in his direction.

"But make no mistake. If we're taking this gamble, we can't afford to play with puppy gloves. We'll need supplies, somewhere we can set a trap, more intel on the target, and yourself, of course."

"Alright." Giu straightened up. "I'm ready. But maybe we should start with the easy stuff first."

"In that case, we're gonna need to find someone with more intel. Someone who knows a lot about the world of thieves and Mystic magic. Oh. I think I know just the guy."

Tea nodded to themself, teeth flashing in a toothy grin.

"Time to pay Ling-Li a visit."