Chapter 56: 59. Authority is Cruel Part 1

“Ahhh, I’m so sorry! I was just walking a-and I didn’t see where I was going…” Angelidis laughs with an embarrassed expression on her face.

The beastkin man and woman pause their hurried pace, in surprise at the sudden interference. However, they soon notice a human woman walking towards them. When the woman gets close enough, she whispers.

“Leave now.” Her eyes are clear and unfazed. With that, the two of them walk away faster. The three men see them walking, while Angelidis and Shaula remain in their way.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” The lead marcher snarls with anger in his voice. He doesn’t like being interrupted. He especially doesn’t like that an unknown human woman has interfered. There are no women accompanying the statue marchers, though there might be some on their side among this crowd.

This woman doesn’t seem like one of those. She’s standing behind the draconid woman silently, but she’s not paying much attention to the lead marcher.

Shaula is watching not the three human men in front of her, but the city guard behind them. He seems to be alert right now. His task still seems to be to protect these three and make sure they get away with ruining the festival. His eyes are moving back and forth between Shaula and Angelidis.

Shaula keeps an eye on him while waiting for the two beastkin people behind her to get far enough away.

Angelidis tries to stammer out an answer to the lead marcher’s question. Why would she get involved? Why would she walk over here and then pretend not to know anything? She isn’t too fazed by his anger and continues to act oblivious.

“I-I’m sorry! I was just a bit–” 

“Shut the fuck up, you lizard.” The lead marcher speaks with a cold expression. He isn’t at all interested in her excuses.

“And you, why are you getting in my way?” The marcher asks Shaula. She remains silent, waiting for something.

The marcher doesn’t like being ignored. The vein in his forehead becomes defined. He raises his hand to strike her–

“Ah, shit…”

He pauses. Behind him, he hears the guard clumsily removing his right gauntlet. Under his right gauntlet is a cloth glove. The guard starts rubbing his right eye. The three men turn to look at him. He rubs his eyes for a few seconds before they turn back around.

The two women aren’t there any more.

Angelidis and Shaula are walking back into the crowds where the anti-marcher protesters remain.

“Phew, that was lucky.” Angelidis says with a smile on her face. Shaula doesn’t say a word.

It’s a simple trick. Ajax interfered. All he had to do was pick a piece of lint from his clothing. He has the power to transport objects between two points in space, but the object would reach its destination disintegrated.

So, Shaula had thought to herself: he could use that power to discreetly distract someone, couldn’t he? 

Ajax had stared at the piece of lint between his fingers. He had then stared directly at the guard’s right eye, out of sight from the guard himself. The guard was trying to be as imposing as possible and had been perfectly still as a result. All Ajax had to do was activate his spatial power to move the lint from his hand and onto the guard’s right eye.

Most of it would be dissolved anyways and the guard would just think that it was the wind blowing something into his face. Even Angelidis didn’t realize what had happened. Of course, his power wasn’t perfect. He had to use multiple pieces of lint in order to obtain a successful “hit”. On his fourth try, he had gotten the dissolved lint to land right on the guard’s iris. Moving objects at a distance is much more tricky for him and Shaula to pull off.

Shaula and Angelidis meet back up with Ajax who is standing besides Dzan and Sigvor. Angelidis smiles at the two of them. She’s happy that their interference with that altercation didn’t result in her or Shaula getting hurt.

“So, are you doing any pickpocketing today?” Angelidis asks, an oddly bright smile on her face.

“With all the cops around? It’s not crowded enough to escape all their eyes, and I’m not gonna lift wallets off the beastkin here…” Dzan says with a scoff.

“It’ll have to be later, Jelli.” Sigvor adds, her face somewhat annoyed by the marchers and their loud chanting.

Normally, the best time to pickpocket would be at the culmination of the march. When the marchers surround their statue to protect it, the protesters would inevitably get closer. The cops always back away from the marchers and let the protesters meet them face to face.

 They like having excuses to arrest the people who get provoked by the marchers. Of course, whether something like that will happen today remains to be seen. The guards have been acting much more uninhibited. As if they’ve been let off their leash to treat anyone against the statue march like shit all they want.

Angelidis takes a deep breath. Now that she has the two of them here, she can get some assistance from them too.

“Alright, I think the best thing we can do today is help anyone that’s being approached by these fucking scumbags. Shaula and I will be one team, you three will be the other one.”

“Teams?” Dzan asks, confused.

“We can help more people if we move separately across a wider area.” Angelidis asserts.

Dzan wants to push back against getting involved at all. However, he just groans in resignation. He knows that demihumans here are going to be harassed, attacked, groped, sexually assaulted… The less of that happening where he can see it the better. He’d feel too guilty thinking that he could have helped people, but was too lazy.

“Angelidis, between the two of us, I’ll be the one to get between people, alright? Ajax, you’ll do the same for Dzan and Sigvor, just ask them to make sure the demihumans get away clean.” Shaula says with authority.

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“Why should you two get in the hairy stuff?” Angelidis questions. “We can alternate, you know?”

“Ajax and I can take punches well. We’re strong, and the situation would be less likely to escalate if either of us were to deal with the cops.” Shaula says, matter-of-factly.

She and Ajax have advanced healing factors; plus, as humans they’d be more authoritative around the marchers. Shaula had seen that the marcher back there had gotten angry seeing Angelidis get involved. He was still belligerent around Shaula, likely because she was a woman.

But, for Ajax, he could more easily navigate those kinds of situations. Shaula would be more likely to make marchers think twice about being aggressive, depending on the ones she confronts.

“Shaula… Are you sure you want to split up?” Ajax says, some concern in his voice.

[It might be easier to distract the cops using the power and it’d be more difficult if we were in front of them while using it…] Ajax whispers. Back then, Shaula had confronted that man with Angelidis, and Ajax had hidden in the background. He had needed to concentrate properly in order to put some dirt in the guard’s eye.

It would be more difficult doing things like that separately. Imagine if Ajax were to try and move a piece of dust, hair or lint towards a guard while standing directly in front of him. The guard might not connect any dirt or debris in his eye with anything Ajax was doing. But, it would still be more suspicious.

However, Shaula doesn’t flinch.

“It would be nice if we could work together, but the festival is wide. It’d be easier watching things play out if we were split up. Don’t worry though, if the marchers try to start shit, we at least can take it.”

If it came to blows, then Shaula and Ajax could be hit a few times and feign damage, placating the marchers and the guards. It may be embarrassing, but there would be less chance of the guards getting roused. The last thing they want is to be harassed by the guards or arrested.

The two groups split up. Ajax has Sigvor and Dzan with him, and he goes around to the left side of the road to break up any fights. Sigvor and Dzan are surprisingly good at pulling tricks and distractions. Ajax believes it has something to do with their day job.

They continue walking up the road and towards Maz square as Shaula and Angelidis do the same on the right side of the road.

The day drags on, and most of the marchers move into the square. There are less food and exhibition stalls in the square’s courtyard. Most people who had set up there heard the commotion along the road while the marchers were walking up.

They had already packed up everything they could and left through one of the three other roads connected to the square.

Ajax and Shaula connect once again to discuss how things went for their two “teams”.

“These marcher are real fucking pricks, Ajax. Like, with some of them you have to wonder why someone hasn’t just wiped out their bloodlines…”

“Did you or Angelidis get hurt or anything?” Ajax asks.

“Once or twice we got close to something, but… well, I’m a tall woman, I can be very imposing.”

“The guards watching them didn’t do anything?”

“Two of them gave me glares, one of them walked up to me and tried to question me.” Shaula sighs.

“What did you do to get away?”

“I had some dirt in my palm. I learned something interesting. Even if you don’t look at what you want to move, if you imagine its position and where you want it to go, it’ll move for you.”

Shaula had imagined the dirt in the clenched fist of her right hand. She had imagined where that position would be in relation to the eye of the guard. The prick was staring at her and asking her questions in a menacing tone. He looked up and down at her, as if he was trying to undress her with his eyes.

She didn’t expect her trick to work but pretty soon, the dirt in her palm (dissolved into an even finer powder by her spatial power) had landed right on the guard’s left iris.

“You know, it would be kind of funny if you could move something poisonous directly into their open mouths…” Shaula pictures how that would play out. Maybe something like Ricin to kill, or it could just be something that might cause some intestinal distress.

“You were lucky, you should be more careful…” Ajax groans. She still isn’t averse to taking risks.

“Well, how did you handle it?” Shaula asks.

“The few times I got involved, the marchers just glared at me and walked away. One time though… Well, the guard didn’t want to walk away. It was close to coming to blows…”

“What did you do?”

“What do you think I did? I started crying.” Shaula stares over at him with a deadpan expression as he starts laughing.

“Even in this world, people don’t know how to react to the tears of a grown man.”

“When did you get like this…” Shaula says, exasperated.

Ajax tells Shaula that he, Dzan and Sigvor are going to head to the festival grounds to go see what’s happening there. The cops are still pushing the counter protesters back while the marchers proceed.

Shaula agrees to remain on the road and watch the remaining marchers.

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