Chapter 157: 157 – Sleazebag’s Gambit

The bottle slipped from his grip and came spinning through the air, to which Makhus responded by catching it with his free hand. He pulled the cork with his teeth and took a swig, maintaining eye contact with the intruders’ sleazy leader all along.

The mass of muscle thrashed and struggled, even as Sig grabbed his arms and pulled them back so forcefully one could see the shoulder joints stretching, threatening to dislocate. Sigmund even kicked the knife away, well out of reach. Makhus recognized that choke, that arm hold, both things taught to physically able soldiers in “CQC Basics 101”. But that headscissor takedown, that was something else.

It was the sleazy one and the unassuming one that were the real threats here, with the big man out of commission. The figure behind the counter wasn’t even moving, just curled up into a ball in the corner, having given up on trying to get the register open. 

Makhus revelled in watching the sleazy one’s eyes frantically flick between Sigmund, him, and the unassuming man. The realization that he wasn’t fucking with crippled, mangled veterans was sinking in. Sigmund rose to his feet when he was sure the big guy wasn’t getting up anytime soon, staring down the two remaining intruders with utter calm, even as his bandages went up in flames.

A hysterical laugh echoed from the sleazebag. A scared one, a panicked one. The laugh of a man who knew he might very well die in the next minute. He took a breath, then attacked… The unassuming man to his left.

He slipped behind him and choked him out with practiced precision before the man could react. A small sparklock pistol fell from his pocket as he slid to the floor, unconscious but alive. The sleazebag quickly straightened his jacket and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, surprising both Sig and Makhus.

“Fuck me, I didn’t expect a Victory Demon in the flesh. Don’t go burning yourself out, I’m not a threat,” he remarked at the smoldering historian setting his eyes to Makhus.

Though the last of his Rubedo intoxication was finally starting to fade, the alchemist was absolutely still far from calm. 

He stepped forward ready to kill, growling at the man, “Explain. Now.”

With an innocent smile that only a career charlatan could pull off, the sleazebag spilled his lot, “I am an independent investigator under the employ of a broker, who is under the employ a mole in Willowdale’s senate, who is under the direct employ of Pateiria’s Ministry of State Security. My broker said you lot were just some random foot soldiers that slipped by. I was to check on you, make sure you weren’t stockpiling guns or somesuch, so I hired some help after our little talk. Figured we’d case the joint, make sure you didn’t have anything more that that tarnished steel you say you’d kill or die for.”

“...Yer a fuckin’ Pateirian spy, and you’re just spillin’ the beans like that?” Sigmund cut in, his voice reverberating with a fervent mixture of disbelief and hatred. “Bullshit.”

The sleazebag looked over, and conceded the point with a nod. “Other agents would sooner die than admit anything besides their allegiance to the Emperor, yes. I, however, hold no such loyalty. This whole affair is as irritating to me as it is to you. They’ve got me by the short and curlies, so I gotta play along at least a little bit.”

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“What about the accent?” Makhus questioned, prompting the sleazebag to turn his head again.

He replied dryly, with an absolutely perfect Grekurian accent, “It’s called playing a role. I couldn’t just up and split, so I played up the shady agent act to let folks like you know to be careful around me.”

Before either of the two soldiers could question him further the man continued speaking, holding that Grekurian accent with no apparent effort. 

“Frankly? I don’t give a shit. Keep the war-knife, and the surplus sparklocks you probably have upstairs,” he said. “But they get suspicious unless I send something back, and if they don’t hear from me at all they’ll keep sending agents less willing to cooperate with “the enemy” than I am. Surely you have something surplus I could use to placate them.”

Sigmund and Makhus exchanged looks, a wordless debate as to whether they would rather risk letting the home invaders live or deal with the fallout of killing. The law was on their side in this case, thanks to Willowdale’s deeply entrenched castle doctrine. That being said, Makhus wasn’t exactly eager to kill without reason, and the sleazebag clearly wasn’t trying to fight. Not to mention, blood in the storefront would drive away customers and be a huge pain to clean.

 He sighed and lowered his blade. 

“Fine,” he said, “I’ll get you an old bayonet. Sig, choke him out if he so much as moves a muscle.” 

Sigmund gave a slow nod, grumbling an affirmative, “Mhrrm.”

---

“This is fuckin’ bullshit…” the alchemist murmured to himself, rifling through the kitchen drawers. It didn’t take him long to find the bayonet he’d put there when they first arrived, looking it over. The old thing was still decently sharp, with only a few chinks to its edge, since he’d used it mostly to cut food back in the E.Z.

Makhus wasn’t even sure if the thing had ever drawn the blood of a human. It didn’t matter, now. Shutting the drawer and going back down the stairs, he noticed that the lanky figure that had been behind the counter was now standing next to the unassuming man’s unconscious body, still trying to blend in. It was either a very small-framed adult, or an adolescent, and going by those big ol’ eyes he wagered the latter.

“Here’s your surplus,” he said to the sleazebag, tossing the knife over handle-first, preparing himself to fight if the man tried to use it. No such thing happened, though. It clattered to the ground near his feet, and the man slowly bent down to pick it up, stowing it away under his belt.

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