A Journey Always Begins With The First Step

[adi]

It was a beautiful mid-morning. Songbirds were chirping, the sun was shining in golden rays through spaces in the emerald green branches. The air was fresh and the grass that lined the narrow dirt road glistened with the last remnants of dew. There are some things that a man ponders on such peaceful moments when their mind is left to wander, serious things and inconsequential things alike.

The stout redheaded man that tread along this path was nothing if not a well educated man and an excellent ponder-er. He pondered about how exactly a bird chooses its morning song. He pondered how the tiny little gnats knew exactly where his mouth was in relation to their flight pattern. Did they decide he was a great swarming target through his sweat, breath or body heat?

The most important thing that he was pondering at the moment was how he had never learned what made a good, sturdy shoe for walking. Was it support of the ankle, the heel or just having enough space for the toes? He did know for certain that whomever he had gotten this pair of shoes from did not have the first clue. These shoes were definitely not made for walking, he reassured himself as he took a small pause in his walk.

Hrothgar had decided this the second day into his wanderings, and it was still true nearly three weeks later. This wonderful, glorious blessing of a morning had come complete with fresh blisters. He never once perceived his feet to have that many places that chafed so brutally. Perhaps it was less of a problem of his shoes and his inexperienced feet himself, but occasionally he had half a mind to stop and turn around. Then again, to turn around would mean that he would have to walk all this distance again.

It would mean he would return to the great hallowed halls of education that brought nothing but nightmares and distress. His nights had become so much more peaceful since leaving that place, though he wasn’t sure how much of that restful sleep could be attributed to exhaustion. All he knew was that since he had left, slumber no longer abandoned him for terror and anxiety.

Hrothgar shook his head dismissing the thought, shouldering his large leather satchel that he had removed for a momentary reprieve. To think of such bad memories would only distract him, and he would walk right past the small turn-off that he was to enter. He was informed that at a brisk pace a man could reach it at noon. But he had found that his pampered gait, even while attempted to be quick, was quickly tired out to dejected and painful plodding. Most men who had lived their life on their feet, and he had spent a majority of his life doing the exact opposite.

He had learned to change any directions given to time and a half lest he feel too disappointed in himself. He disliked disappointing people, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach, his mind began to crawl back to memories of school. His mind swam with how he had lied and struggled and pretended everything was alright when they were not. He swatted a buzzing sound away from his ear and shook his head in attempts to foil the bug from finding his ear again and drive out such thoughts. It was too beautiful a morning to be thinking such things. It would only ruin his day to think of what he was walking away from.

His feet thought for him now, screaming to continue and push on. His heels were motivated by the thought of a cold soak in a bucket of water, his toes bent with determination that rest would soon be found, and is arches shouted rallying cries, muffled against the dirt. They would not give up, not until they closed that final distance to the congregation of houses that constituted the village of Ceildh.

[Nayt]

Some people call it Destiny, some people call it Fate: the notion that every man, woman, and child has a place in this universe. I, however, prefer to refer to this phenomenon of collective usefulness as God. God, simply put, a never-ending existence to guide the menial lives of others, all from the start of a journey and ever onward, to the very end of their individual quests--and the ends of their lives. God, an existence with many names and ideals, all so drastically different where ever its name is spoken in the world.

God--not the man with an ideal physique standing within the clouds, eying the planet and her people with both malicious and glorious intent. That's far from it.

God--a universal truth: that all things exist for a multitude of reasons, perhaps just to breed and further the chances of a species' survival, perhaps to assist a destined hero in his journey, to save lives into old age, or even to change the world as we all know it.

God, Fate, Destiny, the notion that all things move for a reason and that they do not cease to move until that purpose is fulfilled . . .

And that's just it: the woe of mortality. Once your usefulness in existence has reached its end, you begin to slither towards inertia. The fear of death dominates the hearts of most men, a fear which is, by extension, the fear of reaching their journey's end, for--you see--the end of the journey is the end of your destined usefulness. The end of the journey is the end of your life.

And thus the only proven method of besting your own mortality: to let the journey linger, and never stop walking . . .

-- Matthew McCarthy, Greoulian philosopher.

______

Miles from Ceildh, the traveling scholar might hear a noise. It was subtle, that far away, but amongst such vast rolling hills and nigh endless plains, it was easy enough to locate, subtlety may as well have delivered whispers like that of shouts and screams.

Which wasn't far from the truth, as the point that the traveling scholar reached the crest of the highest of the hills, a tall mound which overlooked the dense collection of residences and businesses alike, the whispers would be, without a doubt, those of shouts and screams: there was a figure, near the point in which town met outgoing (in incoming, on this side of it), racing--a silhouette moving as quick as a silhouette could, followed in short by more of such shadows, at least five each, four of which were quick to catch up to the foremost shadow. They weren't far, and were likely to reach the forefront of town simultaneous to the traveling scholar, were he to maintain his pace . . .

[adi]

The scholar puffed as he began the ascent to the crest of the hill, mumbling a quiet list of things he would be sure to do the moment he got settled. His normally ruddy complexion was deepened with exertion and sunburn and covered in a small sheen of sweat. The beginnings of a small pool of sweat soaked through his shirt front on his chest, and he was sure that his back and underarms bound to be twice as unpleasant. When he adjusted his pack momentarily mid-pace the breeze relieved him.

He did not stop to set the satchel down again as he had previously. He had learned in the past few days that the more breaks he took during the day to rest his hips and back the more his aches seemed to intensify. The redhead could even dare to argue that he was becoming a bit adjusted to this whole walking long distances aspect of traveling. In any case he suspected he was slowly becoming more physically fit, at least.

Instead he turned his thoughts away from the present and towards his upcoming future plans. He was sure whatever lodging he could procure in the small town would probably be a cramped side room in a family’s house, or even a converted loft of sorts. Even though the idea of stuffy rooms or sun-baked haylofts irritating his nose would have seemed like torture to him three weeks ago, now Hrothgar found them appealing. It made him smile softly at the top of the hill, stretching his arms in a quiet victory.

He took some small joy in the idea that walking down from the top of a hill is much faster and exhilarating then walking up one. He just kept putting one foot in front of the other and eventually his body and laws of physics did the rest. The scholar just had to be mindful that he did not trip and to catch himself if he did.

Mid-stretch he thought of the notion to look over his shoulder to see the distance he had covered, as if to have a small gloat to himself over his accomplishments. Instead when he raised his eyes, they were caught by movement in the distance. There were figures running towards Ceildh from the opposite direction, and if he strained his ears he could hear the faint noises of commotion.

He had little to no interest, assuming that they were the village’s children playing some innocent chasing game. It was probably a race to be the first to lunch or a game of heroes and villains, or something similar to it. He had no reason to get involved, anyway. Hrothgar had disliked those games even as a child, he wasn’t going to try and see if he would grow found of it in adulthood. Instead he just started down the hill, towards his destination, and towards rest that he so longed for.

[Zach Kaiser]

While the traveling scholar was a fair bit ahead of the group, they were also moving much faster, and as he arrived at the entrance to Ceildh the lead figure broke ahead from the rest of the group.

It was a shame that he had so quickly disregarded the group, as it meant he would not notice the lead figure--who was looking over his shoulder and paying an equal amount of attention to Hrothgar as he was being paid attention to by him--until he ran right into him.

The figure would crash to the ground ahead of Hrothgar, and while he could still be called a child in some respects, he was not the kind of child that had come to his mind. He had the awkward, somewhat ungainly look of a boy freshly graduated from adolescence, his auburn hair tousled and his clothing--a wrinkled, dark blue blazer, dirty white shirt, incorrectly knotted red tie and a pair of dark blue slacks with some fresh tears in them--was in disarray.

He quickly clamored for the pair of objects he'd dropped in his fall: a pair of ovular glasses, which he quickly placed back on his face, and a nondescript black suitcase.

The boy still paid no attention to Hrothgar, instead staring past him, his eyes fixated on the figures who were quickly catching up.

[Nayt]

And it wasn't long after the forefront of the group crashed into the scholar that the other silhouettes followed in suit--but not to run headlong into the scholar. They closed up on them quickly, however, and within a few seconds, they'd clearly look like children no more . . .

No, these were grown adults--grown adults that happened to be chasing a child. Earlier there had been a total of five silhouettes, and while the leading one had been the boy that inevitably crashed right into the traveling scholar, only a total of three wound up catching up with him. The fifth and final silhouette seen by Hrothgar earlier was elsewhere; in fact, a fifth figure was nowhere to be seen at that point. That detail would matter very little in just a moment, however, as three bodies made haste in surrounding the boy--and Hrothgar by extension.

The group consisted of three persons: two men, one woman. Nearest Hrothgar (and the boy, by extension) was the woman. She was amazonian at worst, a tall, muscular woman with a heavy tan and dirt-blond hair trimmed military short. It appeared as if her right eye was missing, as a cloth eye patch wrapped about her skull and concealed the contents of her socket--but could not, however, conceal the deep lined embedded within her face, streaming down her brow to her cheek. She wore a constant scoff and her brow was never not furrowed. Some might consider her attractive, perhaps, but it was unlikely a concern of hers; she was perhaps a gifted person, but by the way her muscular physique shown in outlines within her sleeveless shirt and shorts, it might be fairly clear to the judgmental eye that she had concerns beyond attractiveness.

Another of the group was a man in spectacles; he wasn't a tall man, nor even a muscular fellow. Compared to the woman, he wasn't remotely intimidating. However, he carried himself with modesty, the sort of intellectual's method of existing. He had a younger, thinner sort of face, perhaps about the same age as the traveling scholar himself, and a consistently relaxed expression. His hair, almost dark as night, was long, about chin length, and permitted to hang in front of his face with little rhyme or reason. Unlike his fellows, he wore a thick, dark cloak--perhaps making him the slowest of them all.

The farthest from them seemed to separate himself from their persons by a reasonable twenty feet. He was taller than the woman, establishing a height dominance of nearly seven feet, and like the woman, maintained a considerably muscular build. Despite probably being the oldest of them, in his early thirties maybe, he was the most decorated of them all, with a series of tattoos running up his exposed stomach and chest, and wrapping ornately about his back, neck, and face--tattoos of tribal pattern, encircling his person in a very specific pattern, deviating in sharp rises and declines, much like a snake and its continuously jerking spine as it constricted its prey to death. He was bald and even appeared to have shaven his eyebrows. This particular man wore only a pair of shorts and traveler's boots, and his tattoo even appeared to cycle down both legs individually.

None of them were armed.

All of them were dangerous.

"Just stop, kid," the bespectacled man ordered with a sigh, "You've got nowhere else to run."

[adi]

It was a hard jostle that the boy had given Hrothgar when he ran into him, though more of an annoyance then something to actually knock him off balance. Immediately words of apology shot out of the freckled man’s mouth, as if he were to blame for the boy’s crash. In a way he was, having spent the majority of his time locked in his own head instead of actively observing the situation. He watched as the boy scrambled to retrieve his black case and his glasses, vaguely reminded of occasions in his own adolescence spent teased by peers.

“Are you hurt?” he asked the lad, extending his hand to hook around his elbow and help him to his feet. “I really didn’t mean to get in your way, I’m sorry. I really wasn’t paying any attention to where--” He made to gingerly brush off the dust on the boy’s front, but his arm and sentence hovered in the air as he looked around to see the other individuals. His grip tightened on the boy’s arm as he noted the intimidating presence that they seemed to bring with them. Surely two out of the three could cause him great physical pain, and he would not put it past the dark-haired man to be capable of powerful magics.

Hrothgar had been horribly mistaken when he wrote off the calamity he heard earlier as a simple children’s game, and a look of worry settled on his features. He was worried about the boy and what he had done to rouse the ire of this fierce looking group of course, but he would be lying to say that he wasn’t just a margin more worried about his own well-being. That and he were almost a bit cross that his rest would be postponed even slightly by this interruption. The redhead’s grip didn’t loosen in sympathy for the chased boy, but his face was easily read as apprehensive.

“W-Well really he could run anywhere his feet could take him, it is just rather a matter of if you manage to catch up with… er. May I ask why he’d be running i-in the first place?” Hrothgar managed to ask the closest woman, though his voice was hardly confident or conversational. Rather it was an embarrassing murmur, followed by a short ‘hrm’ of the scholar clearing his throat. “I-If it’s not too much to pry, that is.”

[Zach Kaiser]

The boy was surprised as he was suddenly hoisted to his feet courtesy of the man he ran into. While he appreciated the politeness, he was rather more put off by the invasion of his personal space and grasp on his arm, which prevented him from continuing his escape. He struggled briefly, but he would have been hard pressed to break the grip on the best of days, let alone when he was severely winded from running.

It was actually kind of dumb to run in the first place, really; he clearly wouldn't be beating any of the ones chasing him in a race, but while he'd been harassed before it was never by anyone quite this intimidating. Not to mention it'd always been in the city, and that made a world of difference for him...

His struggling stopped when his pursuers surrounded him (and Hrothgar by extension), and instead he froze, clutching his suitcase for dear life. Two of them could have easily snapped him in twain, and the third...well, he had to be capable of something, if he were with the other two, he was certain.

The smart ringleader and his hired muscle? He seems to be the one in charge at the very least. It was cliche, but many cliches had grounds in reality.

He ignored the bespectacled man, as well as Hrothgar's question to him; surely he could see why he'd be running from people like this? (Though he was admittedly at a loss as to why they were after him, but he didn't really want to stay and chat.) "Let go," he said in a low whisper to the man he ran into; it was his only response to any of them.

[Nayt]

The boy's further struggling, to put his glasses back on and clutch his case, was all but ignored by the group. He was cornered, as far as they were concerned. Any direction he might run, they had covered. He could be caught, grabbed, and thrown down--or simply outright captured from there, were he to decide on the wrong route to take. Capture would have been imminent in the first move, in that case. Which route to take was the wrong route to take, well, there was no clear definition of that . . .

They weren't focused on the boy, though. As far as they were concerned, they had him covered. The prime focus for them, if only for a moment, was the unexpected scholar. They'd chased the boy down and surrounded him, and likely figured that, now, they had him as good as captured.

But they had, if only briefly, overlooked the scholar, who had only been an obstacle to get in the boy's way, and therefore overlooked as nothing more than such--that is, until he lifted the youth up by the arm and addressed them directly. The bespectacled man looked to the tattooed man, who looked to the woman, who looked to the bespectacled man. If only for a moment, they were confused about this. Generally, when a cadre of dangerous looking folk cornered someone, and there was only a few people to help out, those people disappeared in a big hurry . . .

"Who's this guy?" the tattooed man asked outright.

"No clue," replied the woman; although the scholar had addressed her directly, she didn't overtly reply to him, almost as if she were disregarding him as any sort of imperative player.

The man in glasses looked between his fellows and sighed. They weren't addressing the scholar directly, when, unfortunately, that often had to happen in situations like these.

"It's none of your business," replied the man in glasses, "So let the boy go and move on your merry way."

"If you know what's good for you," the tattooed one added.

Which only prompted a glare from the bespectacled one, the type of glare that wordlessly explained how he always had to do that--add the "if you know what's good for you" thing. It was completely unnecessary, and clearly irritated him to no end. But alas . . .

[adi]

By the looks of the situation the boy was not very keen on running any longer, they were outnumbered, and very obviously no match for any of the visible trio that surrounded them. The redhead knew, in the primal and instinctual part of his body that caused his body to be on edge that it was increasingly dangerous and stupid of him to be sticking around. But even as adrenaline pumped, he couldn’t help but be insatiably curious about what it was the boy had, and why he was pursued so intently. It was almost the thing that stories were made out of.

“M’sorry.” Hrothgar murmured in response to the low whisper. He released the boy’s arm, raising and displaying his palms in wordless manner that he meant him no harm. Still, his hand returned to a bent position, ready to grab the adolescent shoulder if the need arose. The ruddy-faced scholar had only been attempting to be polite, and despite the hostile circumstances was a tiny bit offended that the boy didn’t return the same courtesy.

He had thought that if he had been the only one to show him kindness and concern he might be more willing to work with him. Hrothgar could understand if the boy wasn’t going to treat him as his only potential ally; it was rather a self-centered and self-preservation based logic that he was familiar with. The boy’s coldness made him feel an odd mixed sense of pity and discouragement about how low his own willingness to trust others was.

Seeing that his question had been redirected towards the bespectacled man through a series of unspoken nuances, Hrothgar turned his attention towards him. He opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by the tattooed man’s interruptions. He hesitated in speaking after that, considering how exactly it was likely that the boy was in possession of anything that would directly influence his life. Preferably in a positive influence that did not cause him any harm. The chances he surmised were extremely low, and he could probably follow the raven-haired man’s advice with minimal repercussions, if any.

“I-It’s become a part of my business!” he exclaimed. “He ran into me and now you’re, uh, paying me attention. A-And you know what they say—They being proverbs and sayings, about a drop of water in a river? No, wait. A drop of water making ripples. Or, uhm, a butterfly. That makes wind.”

Hrothgar’s mouth was moving much faster then his mind was willing to work, causing him to ramble. Possible tracks of metaphors and similes flashed and faded in seconds, making it hard to maintain a train of conversation or make much sense. “Uhm, aah who was it. Damn.” He raised his rub at his reddening ears, cursing and mumbling at how ridiculous he must look.

“Risbur!” Hrothgar involuntarily snapped his fingers as he reeled in the surfacing thought, and winced and how unprofessional it was of a scholar to do so. Never the less he continued, repeating memorized facts. “Sayas Risbur. She was a writer that talked about butterflies and tornadoes. She compared the fluttering of a butterfly wing to small changes in the initial condition of a system, which holds the potential to create a chain of events that would drastically alter the end result. Like making catastrophic winds, rather then the typical, uh. Fluttering.”

“You all have become part of my business because you are butterflies.” The redhead’s hand fell from where it had been rubbing at his earlobe lamely. Wow, what majestic debating and speaking skills I have, he thought. Perhaps for his next performance he would crawl under a rock and imitate dying. Really, comparing this threatening trio and a boy to butterflies was probably not going to help anything along.

“Okay, that was horrible, I’ll admit that. But you understand my point, right?”

[Zach Kaiser]

The boy shot a look at the large, tattooed man that mirrored the look the bespectacled man gave him. The group was already rather cliche, and that line was so overused (in memories, if not in practice) that it would be a cardinal sin for it to appear in any work that wasn't satire. It was ingrained in the minds of the world as a line spoken by dumb, throwaway thugs everywhere, which resulted in no one really using it because who honestly considered themselves a dumb, throwaway thug?

Apparently this one, he concluded. If the circumstances were different, the glare the bespectacled man gave him would have endeared him to the boy.

The conversation that followed was kind of...surreal. "A butterfly flapping its wings in Cizok can cause a hurricane in Meridian," the boy muttered informatively when Hrothgar was unable to recall the exact phrase.

It wasn't that he was distrustful of Hrothgar or even didn't like him, it was that he had more pressing concerns at the moment than politeness and the one action that had gotten his attention had been the firm grip on his arm, which had prevented him from continuing his escape. He was a bit more at ease with the man now that he let go, but he was nervous, fidgety, not entirely sure what to do or how to do it.

He really, really wanted to run, but he could see no means of escape, so he just let the red haired man keep talking for now--he didn't have anything to say for himself, in any case.

[Nayt]

The scholar's rant and the boy's addition to it did everything to confound at least two of the three that surrounded them. The woman furrowed her brow and looked to her tattooed comrade, who looked back to her with an expression of equal confusion. They clearly didn't get it.

". . . what?" the woman asked at last.

The prompted the tattooed man to shrug his shoulders. "Something about butterflies starting tornadoes."

"How could a butterfly start a tornado?" she replied. It was obvious in her voice that being confused kind of irritated her. She didn't understand it, and she didn't like that.

"Beats me," the tattooed man shrugged, "Hey, Braxa, you're into this kind of--"

But the bespectacled man, Braxa, cut him off in mid sentence. "Just . . . stop . . . talking."

He wasn't amused. For the entire time the two were talking back and forth, he had tightly shut his eyes and grit his teeth together. Clearly, this wasn't the first time the two of them had driven him to borderline homicidal thoughts--and not even homicidal thoughts in a progressive way, either. Considering the act of killing the scholar and dragging the boy away would have been a progressive homicidal thought, but no--no, it was far from that in his mind. Braxa, the bespectacled man, might have been a happier human being were his two compatriots to bite their own tongues off.

Nonetheless, he focused his attention upon the boy and the scholar--or perhaps they were both scholars? The boy knew exactly what the young man was talking about. That made three of them.

"And the unfortunately named critic Lauren Davies later gave Risbur's psychobabble a name: a butterfly effect," Braxa declared; maybe the young man and adolescent knew of Davies. If either did, they'd know that Davies was unfortunately named because, although Lauren was a woman's name, Lauren Davies was a man. "But, assuming we're setting chaos in motion right here and now, you're leaving something out. Chaos in motion requires momentum, so any sort of metaphorical tornado won't hit for at least a few weeks to years."

Braxa's compatriot's looked between each other, and then finally to Braxa again, with equal looks of confusion. Braxa sighed. For a moment, he rubbed his brow with his hand. Neither of his compatriots understood, and sadly, it didn't really matter in the end if the scholar or the boy understood.

"You know what, you two?" he muttered under his breath to the woman and the tattooed man, "Just beat the pants off of them."

Which was exactly what the woman and the tattooed man were waiting to hear . . .

[Zach Kaiser]

It was amusing, the banter between the bespectacled man and his two muscular companions. Cliche though they were, there was something amusing about them, the boy thought. They would make good reoccurring, minor antagonists. Though he hoped if he got out of this, he'd never see them again personally; he wasn't exactly main character material anyway...

"The Butterfly Effect," he murmured softly...though he didn't really think of it as scientific. He personally related it to narrative cause and effect; in a story, causes are usually clear even if they're unlikely, and the readers sees them even if the characters don't.

He wondered if somewhere, someone saw the cause of this situation here and now.

His thoughts were suddenly drawn back to reality at the threat of imminent violence. "W-Wait!" he exclaimed suddenly, the first time his voice rose above a murmur.

"T-This suitcase...it's full of valuables...it's all yours, if you leave me--us--alone." He dropped the suitcase, and slid it with his foot towards the large, tattooed man--whom he'd pegged as the least intellectually active of the group. "Go ahead and take a look."

He could only hope he'd open it before the bespectacled man stopped him; he seemed sharp, sharp enough not to let his greed get in the way of common sense.

[adi]

Hrothgar nervously watched the tattooed man and the woman talk between themselves, head turning as each talked as if he was watching the conversation from person to person. His attention was turned back towards the evident leader, Braxa. He could easily read the annoyance on his features and decided not to voice his opinion about Lauren Davies calling every other scholar’s views as psychobabble. The redhead was of the school of thought that Lauren Davies had probably just been bitter he was named with a woman’s name and sought to make everyone else look stupid in compensation.

He also was about to contest the dark-haired man’s point about the momentum of chaos. If the other scholar was traveling with two fighters that seemed to quip such cliché lines, surely it wasn’t the first time setting mayhem in motion. It was not a time to mention that, for all he knew this Braxa man was more inclined to Lauren’s point of view and reveled in being an agent of chaos. The last thing needed was a scholar to hold a grudge against another for disagreeing, which was an ignorant and surprisingly common occurrence among those who were supposedly of higher education.

Hrothgar hadn’t clearly heard the man’s orders to his companions, and startled at the boy’s sudden speaking. He had been so quiet up to this point he wondered if he could speak above a murmur at all. He watched the boy slide the suitcase towards the tattooed man and attempt bartering, almost about to chide the boy for just letting them have his bargain chip so quickly. He had seen the boy hug the suitcase closely and how protective of it he had been, and he had assumed that was why the trio had been chasing the boy in the first place. The least the boy could have done was see if there was any answer before he pushed it out there.

Nevertheless, the scholar was out of ideas and his attempt at disruption and civil discussion leading to compromise had failed. The only thing he could think to do was hope that whatever valuables the boy had in that bag would be enough to satiate them. He really wished this confrontation would end and he would be free to find that rest for his aching feet, preferably without any injuries.

[Nayt]

"Eh?" the tattooed man was initially confused; it seemed the boy was talking to him.

Without a thought, he took a few steps forward. The woman sighed, while Braxa narrowed his eyes in thought. He scanned the suitcase thoroughly, looking for something that might be amiss. He couldn't see anything, so far. It looked completely normal, in fact. But . . .

"You shouldn't do that," Braxa declared, stopping his tattooed compatriot instantly.

"Why?" the woman inquired in the man's stead.

"What kind of kid carries a bomb around?" asked the tattooed man as if Braxa were out of his mind.

"This one, perhaps," Braxa replied, his tone dreadfully serious. He wasn't about to stop his compatriot from taking it if he really wanted to risk it, but still . . .

"Psh. We would've been told to bring guns if he was the type," the man sneered as he stepped forward several paces, only to stop before the youth, "Give me that."

The tattooed man shrugged this all off, and without wasting anymore time, grabbed the suitcase from the ground. His companions may have been weary about this, but he wasn't. Whatever it was the boy had on his person, he had full intentions of taking away, anyways. In fact, it was awfully tempting to rob the scholar, too. He wasn't up to be captured and dragged away, but he surely had something valuable on him worth taking away.

And so, holding it up so he could see, the tattooed man went against his compatriots' best wishes and opened the suitcase.

[Zach Kaiser]

The one flaw in offering the bribe had been the realization on any of the thugs part that, should they decide to simply beat him into the ground and--actually he was fuzzy on what, precisely, they wanted from him, but in any case he was worried they'd realize there was nothing, in theory, stopping them from just taking the suitcase. He'd relied on their greed--more specifically that of the tattooed man--dictating that they take a look at the loot now rather than later.

When he opened the suitcase--which had, engraved near the handle the message Property of Aiden Raine--he would see what lay inside, and while they were unbelievably valuable to their owner they were most likely less valuable and even worthless to him. They were books and papers, lots of them, covering fiction and non, poetry and literature, ranging widely in subject and genre.

He would not have much time to consider this, however, as mere seconds after he opened it the paper would lift itself, tearing from the harder covers of books and fly into him with remarkable acceleration. While paper didn't weigh all that much, neither did, say, water, and the sudden burst of paper was akin to a geyser suddenly bursting from the ground and hitting a person square in the chest.

The defiance of physics did not stop there. Rather than flutter harmlessly to the ground, the paper suddenly swirled into a miniature whirlwind, concentrating on the trio and leaving the boy and the scholar relatively safe within the "eye" of the tornado. While no injury greater than a paper cut (though likely lots of them) would likely be inflicted by the storm, its primary purpose wasn't to hurt but to blind and disorient.

After a moment's pause to regain his bearings, the boy grabbed the scholar's arm with one hand, the open suitcase floating to the other one. "Come on," he urged, pulling him into the storm where seemingly miraculously there was a sudden break.

And then he was running, tugging the scholar along with if he'd go but not stopping to wait for him if he refused. He wasn't normally the kind of person who went out of his way to help others, but in his (admittedly clumsy) attempts to negotiate with the thugs the scholar had shown him a measure of kindness and trust, and in writing betrayals of trust were always, without fail, punished severely, regardless of the status and importance of the characters involved.

Once they had a respectable lead, the storm would cease as the paper flew with purpose towards the open suitcase, arranging themselves in the exact order and location they were in before being unleashed, followed by the suitcase closing and latching shut once all were present and accounted for.

All the while, he looked about the town for a place they could duck into and hide and lose the trio before they recovered...