Cat burglar

Life wasn’t as easy when he couldn’t just go to Fairy Tail and grab jobs.

Mythal now needed to travel quite some distance to even find a job board that would offer him work. He couldn’t quite claim that he was guildless but he wasn’t exactly part of a guild either – many regarded him with a strange and curious look. Perhaps, in their eyes, he was considered a dark wizard? Despite the fact that every job he had taken had involved him trying to help people. It wasn’t like he was recognizable just by a glance or, at the very least, not by the local populace.

He sighed as he walked into the building, Gren eagerly keeping pace with his gait. The Star Wolf pup bounded to and fro, his eyes snapping around to take in all the new sights and sounds. Ever since their journey to Kingdom Darkness, the hound had been relatively normal, aside from the odd belch here and there that created a small plume of dark smoke. The God Slayer wasn’t sure if his magic had worn off the little guy or if he was just in hibernation at the moment, the God Slaying magic just lying in wait. Whatever the case, the pup was in good spirits as always and wuffed excitedly as they neared the job board. Mythal barely even noticed the person standing there with a job paper already picked and held. “Well Gren…” he said to the hound, glancing down at the wolf before looking back at the board. “What are we thinkin’ today? Somethin’ borin’ or excitin’?”

The hound wuffed gently, wagging his tail eagerly. He turned his head curiously over to the person standing nearby, his tongue lolling about his mouth. Mythal glanced over at the man and nodded. “How’s it goin’?” he greeted him idly, before turning his gaze back to the board.

The person that stood before him was, by all accounts, a woman. Her features were as defined as any female he had come across thus far and yet… she smelled… different. Mythal wasn’t sure what it was but there wasn’t a feminine scent to her. But that could have just been because she wasn’t one of those kinds of girls that wore perfume. Honestly, it didn’t much matter to him whatever the case was. He had merely greeted her because he happened to look at her; he didn’t really intent to open a line of conversation with her beyond that. It was perhaps the friendliest he had ever been in terms of greeting a complete stranger as it was.

Yet it seemed it had opened the door for her to speak up beyond just returning the greeting. As he had just begun to browse over the jobs, she decided to put forth an opportunity. The God Slayer glanced at the piece of parchment in her grip, explaining that she had a job already picked out, though she expressed that he probably wouldn’t be interested in it. An odd thing to say, considering she knew nothing about him, though perhaps it was possible it was something… more on the girly side. That hadn’t exactly stopped him from wearing that skirt that one time…

But enough about that. She went, saying she needed a partner for the job anyways and was essentially asking if he would go with her. Taking a moment to glance between her and the paper, he took it in his hand and read over the details quickly. It seemed that there had been a burst of robberies in Rose Garden lately, with the only details about the perpetrator being that their shadowy form was cat-like. So someone was going around robbing people in Rose Garden. He handed her the paper back and shrugged. “Sure. I’m all for arrestin’ burglars.” He held out his hand to her. “Name’s Mythal, by the way.” He gestured to the hound at his feet, still eagerly wagging his tail. “This is Gren.”

She actually looked surprised that he had agreed to go with her. That was… odd. Why bother asking if one didn’t earnestly think the askee would agree? Though from her tone before, she had seemed almost dismissive to his interest in the job in the first place. Dismissive wasn’t the right word – unconfident he would agree. That made a bit more sense; asking a stranger to partake in a wizard’s job was a bit odd, yet it was the main way people met and formed relationships after all. It was how he had met Serilda… hell, it was how he had met most of the people he knew now.

“Admittedly, the idea of a cat stealing things is a bit… farfetched,” he stated simply. But he shrugged only a moment afterward. “But then again, I’ve seen cats that talk like humans so who knows what they could get up to?” Nessa’s cat had seemed friendly enough but as with all sentient creatures, that didn’t mean the entire race was as pleasant as one example. Maybe there was one Exceed out there that was more interested in stealing than forming relationships with people.

The woman shook his hand and introduced herself as Veleno, apparently deriving her name from some place called… Italian. “…Okay,” he said, unsure how to answer that. He’d never heard of this ‘Italian’ but that also didn’t mean it didn’t exist in Earthland. He never claimed to know all the countries of the world. The woman also didn’t show much interest in Gren, much to the short dismay of the hound. He whined for a moment, displeased he wasn’t getting attention, and then turned and walked around Mythal’s leg, his attention already elsewhere. Advantages of having a puppy who was far more interested in the world. Mythal understood not everyone was a dog person so felt no offense at the spur, though she could have at least expressed as much. “Well, where are we startin’?” he asked.

Mythal watched as Veleno walked past him, moving several feet ahead so that she could ponder. Clearly she was trying to think of the answer to his question, wondering where the first place was to leap from. Tracking a thief wasn’t exactly the easiest job in the world – the entire point of being a thief was to avoid detection. A moment later and the woman pointed towards the largest gathering of people, several of them in a rather heated conversation. The Darkness King glanced over at the grouping of heads and bodies briefly before the woman explained that the best first step was to extract information. Interesting word that; extract. He raised a single eyebrow as the woman gave a small smile before walking forward. He glanced down at Gren, who simply stared back up with a lop-sided grin.

With that out of the way, he followed after the woman. It didn’t take them more than a few seconds to wind up just within range to hear the words being passed around by the group. “That damn thief took all of my mother’s jewelry the other night! I’m getting sick of this!” One of the men proclaimed furiously, stamping his foot onto the ground.

“Yo,” Mythal spoke up, walking towards the group. “Speakin’ of this thief, anyone got any solid leads on him? Size, shape, species, location?”

“And why do you want to know?” The man asked as he turned, sneering at the two wizards. “Trying to figure out what’s been said? You with him or something?”

Mythal scoffed and shook his head. “I got better things to do with my life than steal shit,” the God Slayer said, glancing among the faces in the group. “We took a on a job to hunt him down and arrest him. So how ‘bout you stop talkin’ shit and offer some actual advice?” Mythal, despite his new awareness that his disgust of humanity was completely fabricated by his genes, still didn’t much care for people who felt the need to get snippy. It was annoying at best.

The man seemed to take the God Slayer’s tone to heart and winced, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he grumbled quickly. “It’s just this bastard has us all wound up. He keeps taking things and getting away without so much as a trace.” The man took a moment to look around and then nodded towards a small alleyway nearby. “Come on; not sure who could be listening. Better to get out of the crowd.”

Mythal had finally broken through with the guy, after practically chastising him for his comments. Now with something of a lead, the God Slayer turned to Veleno to make sure they were close by… only to find that she was gone. During his brief interluding conversation with the villager, the woman had wandered away. She was commenting on how easy it would be to find someone to give them viable information. She also seemed to hint that, in lieu of the villagers tearing the villain to pieces, they, as the wizards in charge of finding the villain, should be responsible. That by killing the person, they could be their ‘saviors’. It felt very… hostile and strange. “Or,” Mythal threw in quickly at the departing Veleno. “We could just arrest the guy and get ‘im locked up.” This woman was getting stranger by the minute.

The villager who had offered information looked at the Darkness King, unsure on what he was supposed to do. He had offered something but now it seemed Mythal’s partner had thrown away his opinion over his arrogance and annoyance. The God Slayer sighed and waved him off. “Don’t worry about it, pal. We’ll make sure the guy is taken in.”

“O…kay,” he said with a shrug and walked back to the group of men and women. Mythal, now a bit annoyed, walked over to Veleno to ask why she had felt the need to ignore the guy. But before he could even get a word in, he turned into the conversation going on between herself and another citizen. He claimed to know where the burglar was, which was actually a lot more reliable information than what he may have gotten. Odd that the guy seemed more than casual about revealing this much detail out in a public area but who was he to question it? The cat person seemed to hang around things that were expensive and lavish, eyeing future prizes and goals. He explained that Gren could make the biggest difference, as he pulled out a piece of fabric that looked to be from a suit.

The God Slayer took it in hand and eyed for a moment, his gaze lifting briefly to the man before them. That seemed awfully… convenient. This guy just happened to have a clue to the whereabouts of the cat burglar and had a torn piece of his suit on him? Still farfetched to believe a normal pedestrian would just have this on hand, without a care or worry in the world as he brought it up in a crowded area. What the God Slayer wouldn’t give to be able to read people and sense if they were lying. Whatever the case, he brought the fabric down to Gren’s level and held it to him. “Gren. Hir,” he said, speaking the command word. It was an ancient language he had once read up on and after receiving the Star Wolf, he had gone ahead and gotten a book to help him better understand the language and to make command words for Gren.

The pup lifted his nose and eagerly smelled the torn piece, pressing his nostrils right against it. He pulled back and shook his head, blowing air out of his snout, before he looked up with a far more pointed look. He wuffed softly and then began moving eastward, having picked up trace amounts of the scent.

Where in the hell did this girl get the idea that he was a cop? Mythal didn’t bear any colors, didn’t have any guild mark representing that he was part of any group – and that was because he wasn’t. He’d had the Fairy Tail one removed once he had solidified the idea that he wasn’t going to rejoin his former guild and that had been it. He had been relying on doing jobs himself to keep the jewel flow coming in and that had been all he had been doing. He hadn’t even considered joining the Rune Knights at all; though he was sure Branwen would get a good laugh out of that. But the worst part was that wasn’t the most prevailing and worrisome portion of Veleno’s speech. The very idea of arresting the perp was… almost sickening to her. Like it was an outrageous thought to even consider slapping some cuffs on the guy or gal and throwing them to the Knights.

She even went ahead and said that they needed someone to execute them on the spot. Mythal could only stare at her for a solid moment or so, his thoughts rifling around in his head. On the one hand, she had a small but pertinent point; capture and incarceration wasn’t always a guaranteed thing. People could escape, people could be broken out and if or when that happened, they went right back to committing crime again. Putting them down permanently was only the sure-fire way of making sure they stopped their deeds. But at what cost? He glanced at the man that had given them the fabric, still standing practically between them. “Beat it,” he said, nodding his head away from them. The sharp tone of the God Slayer was enough to get the man moving as Mythal turned his gaze back to Veleno.

“First off; I ain’t a cop. Just a wizard tryin’ to make some jewel to survive while also helpin’ people out,” he started out easily, crossing his hands over his chest. “Second; there ain’t gonna be any killin’ of this guy if he doesn’t push his luck. Their judgement is based on trial and evidence and then their punishment is given. You are not judge, jury and executioner. You’re… I don’t even know what you are beyond a murderer adjacent. This cat guy gives us no other options, then we’ll see what we have to do. But we ain’t pullin’ the trigger before that. Maybe you forgot that killin’ is against the law?” He looked her over once more, this time with a far more scrupulous glare than before. Who was this person?

Whoever they were, Mythal now had every intention of keeping a sterner gaze upon them. “It’s a mixture of several different languages that I use to issue orders to Gren.” Serilda – and the book he had been given – explained that issuing orders without contradiction or confusion was very important. The Voidwalker had offered insight, saying that using made up words or a foreign language would help with creating an order list that couldn’t be ‘stolen’ by enemies. So Mythal had gone and looked up ancient languages and then combined a bunch of them together to make words – or at least nonsensical sounds that could only be interpreted by the Star Wolf.

“Looks like he’s got the scent,” Mythal grumbled. He nodded to the hound, who had been looking up for confirmation to pursue the smell. With the nod, Gren wuffed and headed easterly, moving at a brisk but comfortable speed.