The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 2 (12 page)

“No argument. He is busy doing that stuff, but I’m sure he also knows who to send to scout for the things we’ll need,” Darwin thought aloud, enjoying Daniel’s abilities as a sounding board.

“Or, if you don’t mind, Great Lord Darwin, I could scout for you?” Valerie offered before Daniel could give his response. “A White-Wing could scout faster than anyone on foot, thanks to the wings and all, and we could report back to someone on the boat as soon as we find a good location to set up camp.”

Darwin didn’t even get time to think of a better alternative to the idea when his heart suddenly started beating twice as hard, and everything in his vision was tainted red for a second.
Hunger
, he thought, remembering the surprise it had given him the first time he felt it.
That’s another tick on the life bar down.
The most unsettling part of Hunger wasn’t the loud heartbeat, the momentary adrenaline, or the loss of a percent of health bar. It was the urge that came with it. His eyes, even if for just a minute, switched from regarding people like Daniel and Valerie as friends to regarding them in the same way a cat’s eyes must see a mouse: as food.

“Boss?” Daniel asked. The change must have been visible. “You okay?”

Darwin was about to make up an excuse when he saw Valerie’s face staring at Daniel angrily.
Oh! That’s right! She still thinks I’m an NPC that has to be regarded with proper titles,
he laughed to himself. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He decided it was best not to lie, but he wasn't exactly going to tell the whole truth either. “And that sounds great, actually. Just get the details of what we’ll need from Alex before you head out.”

“Great! We’ll complete the job in no time at all, Great Lord Darwin,” Valerie said before darting off.

“Not going to go with her?”

“I will, but knowing her, the first thing she’s going to do is go looking for Mclean, and she’s in the opposite direction of the one Val just took off in,” Daniel said with a wry smile. “I’m just going to wait here until she figures it out.”

“You could have told her?”

“What would be the fun in that? This is a game, after all.”

“That’s true. It is just a game,” Darwin laughed, imagining poor Valerie scurrying around looking for someone on the wrong side of the boat while in a rush.

“You’re not going to tell her that you’re not an NPC either, are you? Let her keep calling you ‘Great Lord Darwin?’” Daniel asked, laughing with Darwin.

“No, no, actually I didn’t plan on it.”

“Well, in that case, I’d say birds of a feather and all . . .” Daniel paused to gesture to his wings, “but I feel like I’ve already used that cliche once. Anyways, it was nice talking with you, Boss, but I have a strange feeling the girl you left in the cabin will be rather grumpy if you leave her there by herself for too long.”

“Birds of a feather, indeed. See you, Daniel,” he chuckled as Daniel skipped off in Mclean’s direction.

I should probably get ready,
he thought as he went back into the cabin with Stephanie. No matter how much he wanted to stick to just staying in the cabin all day with her and joking around, he wanted to go out and explore the city even more.

“Why the face?” Stephanie asked as he walked in the door. “Was it bad news?”

“No, just the opposite. It was just a view of the city. It looks amazing.”

“Then why the face?”

“Well, just, I really want to explore it with you, but I don’t think that’s entirely possible given your condition.”

“Well, there is always the next city. Anyways, I couldn’t go with you if I wanted to. I need to go check some things out later, using my super-sneaky stealth arts. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Stealth,” Stephanie giggled as she jokingly hid under the blanket then moved around the room making swift, stealthy noises.

“You have things to check up on? How do you even get around? Do you wrap your whole head like a ninja?” he asked as she lowered the blanket.

“A lady must have a few secrets,” she giggled again and lifted the blanket up once more to say ‘whoosh
’
and fell onto the bed. “But, don’t worry about me. Go have some fun out on the town.”

“Sure, sure, will do,” he said, grabbing his swords and spoons as he left the cabin. Since everyone was likely doing a mission or busy, he figured he might as well get something he hadn’t had in the last few days--a bit of alone time. It’s not that he minded the company, but he was definitely more used to being alone. Thirty years of gaming in solitude had made it into a bit of a need; and, since the trek started, from one dungeon all the way to this town, he hadn’t gotten more than a few moments of peace and quiet.

That said, even while the boat floated into its spot on the dock, he couldn’t help but look around for Kass.
Doesn’t she always show up whenever I’m about to go somewhere? I wonder what she could be doing for so long that stops her from gaming?
His biggest worry was that she had somehow, even as an adult, managed to get grounded from video games. He had already experienced that type of shock before when, just before facing an incredibly tough raid on Emerald Gardens, his star tank was grounded and prevented from playing video games for a week. He didn’t know the whole story of why the guy was punished, but it apparently involved superglue, syran wrap, and a lot of string.

Walking down the wooden plank to the dock below, he found his eyes wandering from person to person with confusion. Previously, everything had felt very much like a fantasy adventure from the European dark ages. With Minotaurs, Vampires, Satyrs and so forth, it stayed incredibly close to the Western mythos. In this place, however, only the odd, hairy, part-man/part-wolf could be mistaken for a creation of Western culture. As for the rest of the races, they all looked and felt as if they were out of an Eastern mythology book or an Asian cartoon. On every side, there were people with varying degrees of animal characteristics. Some barely had anything but a tuft of fur instead of hair while others were the full-on humanoid version of their animal counterparts. Every animal he could think of was represented. There was even bulgy-eyed Frog-Men and crocodile-looking Reptilians walking around.

By the time he got to the main street he had absolutely lost sense of where he was. The feel of merchants and vendors crowding the streets of the bazaar and shouting over each other at every passerby proved to be both noisy and interesting enough to make him forget which way he had even come from.

“You’re a swordsman, aren’t you?” a cat-like woman approached him from his side. Everything about the girl was very much human, except she had spotted ears and golden eyes that were undeniably those of a cat.

“I suppose? Though lately it’s been just me and these spoons,” he joked to himself, aware that she wouldn’t understand the context.

“I knew it!” the strange, red-kimono-wearing, five-foot-tall Feline shouted while throwing both hands in the air.

“You knew it?” Darwin looked at her puzzled.

“Of course I knew it! How could I not know it? I mean, the kimono--” the girl started off.

“The bathrobe . . .” Darwin tried to interrupt with a correction, but the woman kept talking.

“The two swords, the look in your eyes, and the bump!” She waved her hands around excitedly with each description as if she were talking more with her fingers than she was with her mouth.

“The bump?” Darwin said with a scrunched-up forehead. He felt even more lost now than he did before trying to find his way around the bazaar.

“You haven’t even noticed? That’s astounding man, astounding!”

“I haven’t noticed what?”

“I’ve tried to bump into you at least ten times. At first it was an accident. You were looking one way, and I was looking another, but, by the time I noticed you, it was almost BAM! But you shifted your step so quickly without even looking at me. Like I wasn’t there to you, but you dodged? It raised my interest, so I tried again, of course, but no go twice!”

“You tried to bump into me because you failed the first time?”

“Why not? You’re big. I’m small. No harm, right? But fail again did I! You’ve been staring at this shiny object and that shiny object and dodging me left and right. I’ve tried ten times, and you didn’t even notice me, but dodged each time? Madness! No one without training would have those instincts! I knew you must be a swordsman!” The Feline got more and more excited.

“Because you didn’t bump into me?”

“Well, I was right, wasn’t I? Anyways, this is great! Great news! Wait until I tell Kitchens!”

“Tell who? Wait, why is this go--” Darwin couldn’t get more than a few words out before he was interrupted again.

“Tell Kitchens! We’ve been searching for a swordsman all day. You are good, right? You have to be good! Dodged me you did, so excellent you must be!”

“Yoda, what are you talking about?” Darwin was beginning to lose his cool with the ADD rambling cat girl.

“The tournament, old man! The tournament! Did you just step off the boat?”

“Yes?”

“Oh. Well, in that case, come on. We have to go get Kitchens. I’ll explain on the way,” the short Feline girl said, grabbing his wrist and pulling him quickly through the crowd. Darwin didn’t even have time to think about why or how he should be protesting as she expertly pulled him between one group of people after another, moving at a speed that almost felt like a run.

Is she treating this as an obstacle course?
he thought as he had to duck his head for the fifth time to avoid someone’s arms while sneaking between people. “You said you would explain, Miss Kitty,” he managed to yell at her from behind.

“Oh, yeah! There is a tournament, but you need three people to enter today’s. Sword’s the game; cash is the name . . . or is that backwards? Anyways, we need a third swordsman, but you don’t have to be good,” she yelled back without even turning her head as she yanked to the left to dodge a giant panda man chewing bamboo in the middle of the street. “Kitchens is a pro. He’ll cover your slack. Good good he is!”

“And who are you? Are you good good?”

“Great great. I’m Minx the Lynx, but I’m a dagger deep damsel and he’s the sword-wielding superhero, but even boards can enter the competition. It’s just swordsmen are the best, yes?” she said, letting go of his wrist to jump over a group of three people who had managed to form a wall on the sidewalk in front of him. Darwin, with little notice, attempted the same, but the breeze he felt as he landed on the other side clearly told him his bonus Flap Protection +10 was simply not sufficient in all scenarios to save onlookers. The second he landed, his wrist was grabbed, and he found himself being pulled once more by the rapidly dashing lynx in front of him.

“There there! He’s at the registration! I knew it!” she let go of his hand and threw both her fists in the air the same way she had when she found out he was a swordsman. “Right right, we made it! KITCHENS!” she yelled over everyone. “KITCHENS! I got one! I got one!”

As she yelled, a man with lynx ears like hers standing at a booth thirty feet in front of them turned around. While she was dressed in a solid, dark-red kimono that only made it to just above her knees, clearly trying to represent the Asian culture that matched the motif of the entire town, he was dressed on the entire opposite side of the spectrum, wearing a pair of full-length khakis and a tank top.

As he looked at them approaching, he noted that she was holding his wrist and dragging him and sighed. “Minxy, that’s the fourth one. Did you get him to actually agree before you brought him?”

“He said he was a swordsman! This one is! I know. I can’t hit him! He’s um . . . he’s water! Like you said, right? Water water, be shapeless. Water water, move with the flow and don’t struggle against it. That’s how he moves. Watch!” she let go of his hand, pulled out a dagger with her right hand and swung it at Darwin’s head while simultaneously spinning her left leg to follow it up like a roundhouse kick if the dagger missed. Darwin didn’t have time to stop himself, seeing the blade coming at him and the foot following it, he gave up the idea of dodging and moved in instantly, striking her as hard as he could in the stomach and knocking her several feet backwards and onto the ground.

“Sorry,” he apologized. She had started it, but apologizing still felt like the right thing to do as he saw the poor child-like girl on the ground coughing from having the wind knocked out of her.

“See, he’s a fighter. This one’s a fighter,” she said as she spit up a little blood and climbed back onto her feet.

“That’s . . . fire, not water.” Kitchens tilted his head and then turned to the girl on the ground. “But I didn’t ask if he could fight; I asked if he agreed.”

“Um . . . He will! You will, right, mister? Right right, mister?”

Kitchens turned back to face Darwin. “Look, you don’t have to agree, but we only have around twenty minutes left to register. They only accept a team of three, and you’d be doing us both a huge favor if you signed up.”

“Please, mister,” Minx said with obviously-fake puppy dog eyes while covering her mouth with two fists in a clear ploy to try and look cute.

“Is she always like that?” Darwin asked, looking over at Kitchens.

“Minxy? Yeah. Something like that,” he laughed.

“Well . . .”