There was something to be said about standing among the burning ruins of what had once been a peaceful, thriving village located in eastern Fiore; Ira decided. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your views, Ira hadn't been the monster to slaughter the village. This time at least. What had started as a guild job had ended up as an investigation into who had stolen their job from them.
These were the events that had led to Truth sending the guild's resident monster to investigate the still burning wrecks. The questions raised were simple: What had happened? Did anybody survive? Was Ira going to add to his kill count today? It made him truly wonder how he'd been too slow to execute the village himself.
You could be sure that he would take credit for it after finding the true culprit and disposing of him or her. He still had his shining credibility as an assassin to look after. He brought plenty of revenue to the guild himself after all, so his reputation only helped Truth out tremendously.
He walked towards the center of the village, gazing upon the wooden town hall as it was consumed by fire, the support beams slowly breaking under it's weight as it burned out. Through all of the smoke, he smelled something odd, out of place. Sugar. Something sweet. He couldn't tell exactly since he currently wasn't changed in any way, but it warranted investigation. And investigate he did.
Soon enough, he came across an old style bakery nestled away among the carnage. Normally he wouldn't have batted an eyelash at a bakery, but it struck him as odd.
"Whew." The sound came from just outside the now smoldering ruins. It hadn't been easy, but when someone had decided to light a whole village on fire, the young dragon had actually managed to save all of the people; it wasn't that big of a village after all. There wasn't a lot of hope for the buildings though; she was only one dragon, and a young one at that. She brushed her hands together as if wiping off dirt, adjusting her green ponytail a bit before letting her hands fall to the sides limply.
Tyr looked pretty proud of herself, all things considered. "And I even managed to save their food to boot!" she proclaimed as she wandered in towards the one spared building. The girl who was over three hundred, but looked about thirteen rounded a corner, her green eyes snapping to the man she'd sensed the presence of long before he could have ever seen her. "Oh, hi!" she grinned, waving at him cheerfully. "Don't worry about all the buildings stuff can be rebuilt. I took care of all the important stuff already~" She was announcing it more so that the man wouldn't worry than anything. Any sensible human would be in quite the state of shock, after all. Especially wandering into a village in this state.
Ira turned at the sound of a voice, not expecting there to be a human nearby, especially the person he saw. A young girl with bright green hair stared up at him, smiling and waving cheerfully. There was no way she had caused the destruction, not at her age at least. Something struck him as odd about the girl, she didn't look scared of the wreckage at all. Neither did she seem upset.
He plastered on a believable grin, looking warm and kind. He prided himself on looking how he was not. It was nigh impossible to tell when he was falsifying his feelings. He reached up and adjusted his bandage around his eye before shrugging his shoulders, warm grin still across his face.
"Am I to take it that you prevented the deaths of the villagers then? How did you manage that?" He asked, approaching her slightly before reprimanding himself. He was coming on too strong, too fast. He sighed, running a hand over his head in an imitation of his old nervous twitch, something he used to do when he was embarrassed.
"My thanks go to you, regardless. My name is Pinnacle, a wondering mage investigating the rumors of banditry occurring around these parts."
Tyr held up two fingers in a 'peace' sign, throwing in a giggle of joy with it. "Well, you know, I was in the area. I came back to try to save buildings too, buuut I guess I wasn't fast enough for that. Good thing no one knew I was gonna try anyway or they might be disappointed~" She actually didn't even bother addressing how she did so, nor did she actually fully acknowledge the thanks. "Pinnacle?" She worked her tongue around as if saying the word for the first time; Fiore's native language was not her own; she'd grown up in another country. She knew three languages, and Fiore's she was quite good with, but not entirely perfect. She was slowly getting better at reading, though. "That's an odd word. It means like, best or something right? Oh! Is that a human nickname?!" Tyr seemed to light up at the idea. "Like how a friend of mine likes to be called Eclipse when his real name is-" she caught herself, but recovered rather quickly. "Something else!"
Ira forced a chuckle at the girl, seemingly amused by her childlike personality. She sounded as if the language wasn't her first despite the fact that she spoke it very well. Was she a foreigner then? Valland perhaps? Either way, he'd have to keep up the nice guy act whilst she was around.
He smiled again, raising a fist in front of his fist and clenching it, a gesture often used by foolish young men trying to look cool. It did the trick for Ira, even if he did feel silly doing it. "It is a nickname, but it's precious to me. I don't know my true name, so a friend gave me the name Pinnacle. He hoped that it would lead me to success when he learned that I wanted to be a mage."
Mentally patting himself on the back for crafting a believable backstory, he moved back to his investigation. He hadn't failed to notice that the girl had evaded his questions and hadn't identified herself. "I'm glad you managed to save everybody. I'm not sure I could've done it. Does that mean you're a mage?"
He made sure to sound excited and slightly childish. She'd be more likely to talk to him if he sounded that way. Still... "Did you see who did this? I need to stop them from coming back to hurt more people." He declared, before forcing himself to blush in mock embarrassment.
"I'm sorry, I never got your name. Do you mind telling me? It would be rude to refer to you as just "girl" or something."
The Pinnacle guy asked Tyr if she was a mage - mage was another human term for wizard, she was pretty sure. Her teenage head tilted, placing a finger on her chin as she thought of her answer for a small moment. "Of a sort," she shrugged. Her status as a dragon wasn't a secret, no. Tyr was a sky dragon, and sky dragons were prone to following their whims, and right now she just didn't feel like giving out specific information unless it became more relevant.
"I'm pretty good with wind magic, and a couple other tricks!" she told him proudly as she looked around as if searching for who had done 'this' to the town. "Um, Whachu call em? Bandits I think. They were dressed in masks and shouting about how the town should have paid protection money. Whatever protection money is." The dragon didn't have any real idea; she barely grasped money beyond the fact that it was shiny and that made it appealing to her as a dragon. She kept the fact that she wanted to stay mobile in mind though, and didn't really want to start collecting anything yet. "They live in a cave over there about three miles away. They aren't very good at hiding it though. There's literally a sign out front."
Ira smiled softly as he listened to the girl, who he still didn't know the name of yet. He did know that she knew magic. Wind magic. Powerful too if she had thought she could put out the fires without fanning the flames. "Wind magic. I hear good things about it. Versatile and good at cutting, is that accurate?" He asked, sliding his left hand in his pocket.
He wasn't happy about hearing that the town had been giving bandits "protection money". It meant they were either paranoid or had learned somehow that a wealthy snob somewhere wanted them dead. Pathetic. There was a chance the guild had a traitor within their midst.
"Sounds about right, there are a few unsavory characters around these parts. I'm not surprised they decided to bunch together. Arrogant as well if they aren't even hiding very well." Arrogant or stupid, it didn't matter. He was now bound to kill the bandits by code or call the mission a failure.
"Sure, I guess," Tyr shrugged, looking quite like the uses that Pinnacle came up with for her magic wasn't the uses she used it for - which was entirely true. The young dragon was, in fact, a pacifist - especially weird among dragons.
She didn't have a violent bone in her body, beyond the required part where she had to hunt for food. She didn't make money and thus didn't have a penny to her name, requiring her to do so. Yeah, that part was weird for dragons too. Shiny things were fun to collect. Oh, she intended to. She had a few shiny things in her bag she carried with her. She just knew better than to make her own collection if she wasn't planning to stay in one place to take care of it.
"They could just be dumb," Tyr shrugged. "Humans are dumb sometimes. They can't always help it I don't really blame them for that. But They could at least not be dumb in violent ways..." she shrugged, dropping her pretenses of being a human as her whims shifted her focus once more.
The girl was odd. No doubt about that. She lumped humanity in a class separate from herself, despite being human herself. Did she just not like humanity in general? No, that wasn't the answer, she'd saved the villagers after all. Still, he found he could relate to her in a way. He himself didn't think of himself as human. He didn't HAVE to be human.
No, this girl in front of him warranted investigation. He'd have to tell Truth about this "Tyr" girl. For now however, his focus needed to be the bandit scum that had crossed the line. Nobody stole his prey. Not somebody that lived. He smiled lightly at Tyr, plastering a kind expression across his face.
"I owe you for saving the villagers, but I'm afraid I must ask another favor of you. Could you please lead me to the bandit camp and make sure none escape whilst I take them down?" He asked, carefully choosing his words so as not to upset the girl. Anything he could learn about her was useful, even if it turned out she was just an ordinary girl. There was no reason to kill them immediately either. He'd just infest them and finish them off later.
"I can lead you to the bandits~" Tyr answered without hesitation. "They don't seem to bathe very often so I could find them even without their silly signs," she giggled. She rocked back on her heels as she looked around. She'd actually planned to go run them off, herself. "Take them down as in like... what is it humans do again? Attest them? No... oh! Arrest yeah. You can arrest them if you want. I don't actually think you have that badge thing that I see all the arresty humans do that with though."
Tyr started walking in the direction of the cave, her pace neither hurried nor slow. It wasn't like the bandits knew they were coming to visit anyway; they assumed they were far too intimidating. They were probably busy celebrating their 'victory' over the poor wooden buildings anyway. "I hope you don't mean to do something like kill them though," Tyr didn't look back at Ira when she said it. Tyr shrugged to herself as she thought, grinning less but still looking no less amused.She did stop in her tracks at that point. "Cause I won't take you to them if you're going to go killing people. We can't to being as bad as the bad guys you know."
"Thank you very much, Tyr." Ira spoke as he took off after the girl, looking on with false amusement as she wobbled about on her heels for fun. Oh god! He'd have to put up with this for the entire journey. Dammit! Maybe he should've just killed the brat when he saw her and saved himself the trouble. Chances are he could find the bandits alone...
No. he was committed now. The girl lived, if only because she was leading him to his prey. Sure, she didn't know he would kill the bandits, right? The fact that she asked if he would very nearly startled him, but he chose to react hurt by it. Play to her caring side.
"What!? I wouldn't kill them. God no! Did you really think I would?" He cried, looking betrayed that Tyr would even think of such a thing. Inwardly though, he was impressed. It was like she had sensed dark intentions or something. Another one of her skills, perhaps? "I was only planning on beating them up and letting the authorities come to arrest them properly."
But her idea of being as bad as the bad guys was intriguing. Such a strong sense of justice in one so young. Idly, he wondered how long it would take her to break...
"Well, if that's the case I guess I could come and make sure they didn't get the jump on you or something," Tyr didn't have a lot of things better to do after her rescue of the villagers. She wasn't one to attack the bandits, but she was one to defend if needed. Fighting was complicated with her; no wonder she didn't focus on the combat aspect of her magic.
She didn't actually know he was lying, but precautions were important. She'd learned already that there were humans as good or bad as any dragon; in some cases worse, if only because having less pride could actually lead to worse things than too much at times. Such as that enslavement of dragons she'd never met.
She chattered idly the whole way, often making inaccurate conjectures about humans and the way they seemed to the small dragon. She talked about "spoorts" and how weird those were, and how money was a strange thing. She was really just passing the time, and didn't really pause for Ira to get a word in very often.
She stopped a minute or two before they arrived; it hadn't been more than a mile away. The bandits were just that cocky, apparently, being all the way out this far from a 'real' town. They even had a sign on it just like she'd said. "Soooo is it ladies first like you humans say or do you want to go in and say hi?"
Thank! God! It was over. Tyr just would not shut up for the entire trip to see the bandits. Honestly Ira wasn't sure if he would kill them anymore. All he wanted to do was go home and die. So! Many! Words! He didn't know if he could keep the act up for much longer when they'd finally arrived at the cave they'd hidden themselves away in.
He quickly plastered on a friendly, if annoyed, face and turned to address Tyr. "Now Tyr. We both know that we're the guests here and a good guest always knocks politely on the front door before entering.." He trailed off, excited to finally be hurting something. He shifted his right arm until it became a grotesque looking fist three sizes bigger than it had been, plated with layers of dense bone with muscle-mass easily visible around it. The muscles in his arm were now far denser than muscles were normally and there was more muscle available to use. Grinning, he swung his fist at the doorway, smirking in satisfaction as he watched the door fly off of it's hastily fitted bolts and off into the cave.
"Now that the door is open I believe that the ladies first rule applies. After you madame.."
Tyr watched Ira's hand shift curiously, unconcerned with any amount of grotesqueness. She wasn't easily startled or frightened, and in fact considered herself nearly immortal; she made even some veteran wizards look weak without even trying, being a dragon like she was. Especially a dragon with magical power to make up for her more runt-like size. Ira knocked, throwing the door off of its hinges. "Whoops," she chuckled as she imagined a "wop wop" noise playing in the background.
He told her ladies first, so of course Tyr was going to oblige. She clasped her hands behind her back and stepped over to the door. "Hellooooo? Bandits? We've come to beat you uuuup!" she called as she moved down the cave's natural hallway. She was just impressed they bothered to put a door on it, truth be told.
She came out to an already prepared room of people a couple of which obviously either had fire magic, or had spontaneously combusted in surprise. "Weeell not me exactly." Tyr stepped aside for Ira to step in front of her. "He seems to want to repay you for the whole village thing though."
Ira stepped into the room confidently, gazing around at the gathered fools carelessly igniting the air around them. He let a small dark smirk appear on his face before smoothing out his suit with his human arm. Oh boy, was he going to enjoy this.
"Good evening gentlemen! Sorry for the intrusion at such an hour but I'm afraid you've done some very naughty things recently..." He trailed off, sighing slightly at the sight in front of him. In all honesty, fire was pretty much the only element he was uncomfortable with facing. Burnt flesh was the hardest thing to regenerate after all. He twitched his right arm and it exploded, the bone armor dropping off of it in a display of gore, splattering the floor with blood to reveal...
A perfectly normal, unharmed human arm. The sleeve of his shirt was completely unharmed, though the bandages around his forearm had vanished. His right hand HAD changed however. A bone was present on each knuckle, extending roughly 7 inches outwards. His hand itself was covered in pure bone, forming an armored glove. He shrugged off his vest and focused his magic into his back between his shoulder blades, before the skin there started to bubble beneath his shirt.
Then, abruptly, it burst open, throwing his shirt and jacket off of his body to reveal two masses of flesh that flexed outwards to reveal their true form. They were webbed hands that could double as wings, easily large enough to surround his entire body. He stood tall, sufficiently pleased at the revolted looks the men were sporting. They were scared. Perfect. One of them panicked and gathered a purple fireball above his head before throwing it at Ira and Tyr, prompting the rest to mimic his actions, resulting in a wall of flames streaking towards the pair. Ira just smirked and flapped his wings with great force, creating a powerful air current that smothered the flames.
Ira clenched his bone-gloved hand before turning his head towards Tyr, a serious look present in his now cold eyes.
"Think you produce an air current for me to glide on? There isn't enough space for me to fly properly."
