I told you that I had LOM plot bunnies nibbling on my toes. So, here we go! Maybe I'll be the first person in this sector to actually finish the whole set of adventures, in full write out or in passing? n,.,n Who knows?

Disclaimer: I own nothing of Mana but the game and CD. Please don't sue me, I refuse to give up my manga collection.

There will be some discrepancies between fic and actual script, mostly because no one has bothered to write down more than a few parts of the game, and I have no system upon which to play. Hurray for Artist's Perogative?

This fic will have some mild swearing and some sure signs of a pairing, as well as RPG violence.

—————————

In a place that was empty of anything but the name of Fa'Diel, there came to be a tall tree on the top of a small hill. And against that trunk was built a cottage, crowned in golden thatch with the windows of a second-story room peeking from the sides of the sharply-slanted roof. The branches of the tree shaded the small home in the summer, and even though the branches were bare in winter, they still protected the cottage from the worst of the snow.

Directly behind the guardian tree was a second, even smaller hill, crowned by chimneys shaped like a large bottle and like a pot, linked to the instruments workshop and the forge hidden beneath that hill, respectively.

When one was standing on the path leading up to the front door and was facing the cottage, if one followed a circular path to the right they would find a small meadow cradling a single-story barn built along the same lines as the cottage, but left plain wood instead of neatly whitewashed. Continuing along the path brought a person past the workshops and right around to the front of the cottage again.

A third path branching off of the circle path to the left of the front door led into a strange orchard with a single gnarled tree standing sentinel, roots arching through the air to form bowers from which unusual fruits and vegetables hung, ripe for plucking. The orchard's tree wore a set of knots and a stub of a branch in the shape of a grandfather's gentle smile.

And in the cottage itself, in the single large room that made up the second story, a young woman slept in a bed tucked into an alcove in the wall, dreaming of a tree far more massive than either her own familiar guardian or her orchard tree, one that spoke in a woman's voice and begged to be remembered and needed again.

The dream-tree vanished in a blaze of light followed close by darkness and the dreamer awoke, slitting green eyes against the sunlight pouring across her polished wooden floor. "That's it," she mumbled drowsily to the small cactus sitting in a pot by the fireplace, "no more fruit smoothies right before bed, I don't care how hot it is during summer."

"Smoothies," agreed Lil' Cactus, blinking and smiling at his human and nodding his blossom-crowned head. The young woman chuckled, tossing back hair the same dusty gold as the thatch on her roof, and climbed out of bed to ready herself for a new day.

A shower was first on the list followed by clean clothes; the young woman, whose name was Rei, contemplated the contents of her closet and wondered for the hundredth time if she should get something besides the fighting clothes that seemed to be all she had.

It wasn't like her clothes weren't practical—the outfit as a whole was much like a leotard made from soft purple fabric, with maroon crisscrossing her chest to form the neck-strap, since there weren't any sleeves or shoulder fabric. It had something of a skirt in the form of four elongated points that hung to her knees. The outfit left everything free—even if it didn't leave much to the imagination.

To the imagination of who? Rei wondered, puzzled at the way that last thought jolted her. Then she nodded, remembering. To my friends, of course. That dream is really messing with my head this morning.

But what friends? Either the dream was blocking such memories, or something else was going on; because for some reason Rei couldn't remember anything of the world beyond her home. Growing concerned, Rei found herself studying her hands, the slender fingers callused from instruments and ridged scars striping her from the tips of her fingers to just past her wrists.

She played music for elementals and bore the marks of fighting; she had to know people just to purchase materials for those tools she needed. She had to know people to sell the things she made in her forge.

And of course she did, Rei remembered in relief. She knew everyone in the town less than half a day's travel down the road from her home! She would never, ever drink smoothies just before bed ever again. Not if it messed with her head like this.

Feeling her mood brighten now that things were behaving themselves in her mind, Rei slipped on a pair of arm-coverings that protected everything from knuckle to elbow from the worst of injuries in fights, adding a matched set of gold geometric cuffs to her upper arms.

Her fingers rested on the metal for an extra moment, Rei smiling fondly at them. She loved magic, especially in her forge. These bands would expand into her armor at the slightest hint of danger. Her only other clothing were durable shoes with fur-wraps to protect her lower legs, a fringed cloth hanging from the back of each wrap, and a belt to hold her knives.

But what Rei loved best out of anything she owned were her hair ornaments. They almost resembled pipes, thin tubes of silver capped in pink-and-green enameling in triangular, geometric patterns. Three pipes went behind each ear, ranging from the length of her palm to half-again the length of her hand, resembling nothing so much as the crest of some exotic bird when they were in place. Four short, fat pipes held in the ends of her hair, two for what usually swung behind her and one each for the thick strands that tended to hang in front of her shoulders.

Grooming complete, Rei blew a kiss at her pet spine-ball and trotted down the stairs, calling behind her, "Be good and watch the house for me, okay, Lil' Cactus?"

It squeaked at her happily as she disappeared into the main room below. Without sparing a glance for her library door—she really did need to organize in there one of these days—Rei wove her way around the large table that served as a work surface and an eating surface in one to the window next to her tiny kitchen.

Tucked under that window was a mid-sized green chest that wasn't holding anything besides her stash of ready Lucre for rainy days or empty cupboards, which she promptly cleaned out and stuffed into the pouch on her belt next to her knives. After grabbing a bunch of bellgrapes from a bowl in the kitchen, Rei headed outside for town.

Only to stop in her tracks on the front step, startled by the child-like being ambling up and down her front walk. It was obviously plant-based, broad leaves making up its' body and the rather tall, hat-like growth on top of its' head. The sweet face lit up at the sight of the fighter blinking at it in bemusement, and it wandered over with a bright smile.

"I'm a Sproutling!" it declared proudly in a voice that was as childish as its face; young, high, and clear. Rei blinked again. It was utterly bizarre, at least as intelligent as her own Lil' Cactus, and yet familiar in the have-I-met-you-before? kind of familiarity. It just seemed right to have this…Sproutling meandering up and down her front walk. "The world is shaped by our imagination! Did you know that?"

When Rei shook her head, it produced a handful of colored blocks and pressed them into her free hand, at the same time lecturing her on how to use one's imagination to find places in a way that would be funny if it hadn't struck a chord of déjà vu in the fighter.

"What are these?" Rei asked when it looked to her like the Sproutling had wound down.

"That's the town of Domina!" the Sproutling beamed.

Rei lifted an eyebrow but said nothing else while her Sproutling resumed its amble up and down, choosing instead to examine her gift. A child's idea of Domina, maybe, Rei thought to herself dubiously, and then she smiled a bit, feeling a connection between the colorful blocks and the comfortable atmosphere that filled the town from sign to church.

Then the smile vanished on the heels of dismayed surprise. What in the name of the Mana Goddess did I put in that smoothie?

Chiding herself on mixing new fruits from the market with the cinnamon-vanilla ice-cream to be had at her favorite pub, Rei shook her head, pocketed the blocks, and whistled for her pet Rabite, Nip. When the caramel ball of fluff was bouncing at her heels, she trotted down the walk and vaulted her low front gate in a practiced motion, Nip clearing the obstacle as easily as she, the pair heading for the town of Domina.

———

Rei sighed happily as she and Nip cleared the last, low ridge and the town of Domina spread out before them. The sleepy town had always reminded her of a contented tortoiseshell housecat, puddled in the middle of a depression in a green patchwork blanket, for some reason—maybe it was the air of serene languor that hung in the air like the purr of the cat she imagined Domina to be.

But there wasn't the usual quiet in the main part of town today. No sooner had Rei crossed the footbridge over the stream that ran through the whole town, bypassing the sign that proudly declared she was entering Domina, than she ran smack into the middle of a heated argument.

Rei stopped, taken aback to see her usually so calm friend Duelle shouting at a stranger that had 'exotic' pasted all over him. She'd never seen that particular shade of green in a person's hair before—not naturally, anyway, and Mark's wife Jennifer refused to talk about that particular incident—nor had she ever seen the kind of armor the man was wearing.

It wasn't that he was wearing much of it; his armor appeared to consist mostly of a turquoise, purple-gem-studded glove that covered his right arm from fingertip to his shoulder. But if she were to judge by the color, glitter, and the seamless way that a thick spike of stone emerged to protect the right side of his head, she would bet that the whole thing was some kind of magically-forged crystal.

Normally, that kind of thing would have Rei itching to pounce him and start asking questions—mostly along the lines of who created it and could she talk to the armorer who had created such a magnificent piece of functional art—but something else caught her attention and roused her not-inconsiderable curiosity.

It was a gem. About the size of her palm and the same bright blue as the stranger's wary eyes. Round, smooth as a river-stone. And obviously very firmly attached to the bare skin just below the stranger's collarbone.

Something about that stone nagged at her…

"At least tell me your name!" Duelle demanded in a near-shout when the stranger turned and began to walk—walk? No, make that a stalk—towards Rei's favorite pub.

Rei leaned against the white picket fence that enclosed the yard belonging to Mark, his family, and his weapons shop, watching as the stranger turned, a flash of uncertainty briefly replacing the wary aloofness the young man wore as easily as his grass-green cloak. She watched as he visibly struggled with the decision of revealing his name, and watched his head go proudly up as he said only, "Elazul," and disappeared into the pub.

The diminutive, onion-helmeted warrior shook his head and glared at the closed door. "Geez," Duelle complained. "He makes me sick."

"He certainly does seem to have pushed a few of your buttons," Rei agreed, making her friend jump a little in surprise.

"Rei! Stop sneaking up on people! It's rude to give your friends heart attacks!"

"When I give you one, I'll make sure to apologize," Rei parried and riposted, easy with the familiar complaint. Duelle and the others she knew in Domina (everyone) were always complaining that she was shadow-silent, nevermind that she kept telling people that the shadows she fought sometimes weren't really quiet at all. They loudly squished.

Duelle snorted, as familiar as she with the game, and shrugged narrow shoulders. "Anyway, my friend Teapo's in the shopkeeper's house. Come talk to us if you get a chance, all right? You're hardly ever in town lately."

Rei nodded, watching him disappear into Mark's house. It didn't even seem strange to her that he hadn't bothered to knock; everyone knew everyone else in Domina, one didn't knock unless one was from somewhere else or on poor terms with the owner of the door one knocked on.

After Duelle went inside, Rei twitched her fingers and clucked at Nip, letting him know that he should stop trying to catch the light shards dancing across the surface of the little stream and follow her. Nip happily complied, shaking water off his nose and bouncing after his human with enthusiasm.

Rei glanced down at her pet, smiling faintly as she recalled that his favorite activity was floofing himself on her feet when she was in the rocking chair by her downstairs fireplace and that they hadn't done that for a while. She needed to give her pets (she also had a Rattler Boa she'd named Tsuta currently grazing in the small pasture next to the barn) a lot more attention than she had been. Nip was positively starved for affection.

Putting that aside, Rei reached for the knob to the pub door only to back away quickly as the bulk of her least-favorite person popped it open and filled the doorway. "Out of the way, please," said Niccolo the rabbit merchant with as much pompous attitude as ever, "it's important to share."

Rei was forced to move or be flatted by the rabbit who was taller than she was by at least a head—and as round as she was tall. Nip pressed himself against her shin, growling to show that he was Not Pleased with the way Niccolo was treating his person.

Niccolo ignored him, instead striding past and up the road towards the market. His retreat gave Rei an excellent view of the rabbit merchant's tail, something that had always seemed odd to the fighter. Niccolo's tail was banded in white and brown, long, and curled as tight as the noisemakers children got at birthday parties. Rei had occasionally joked that the merchant's tail was the outward sign of his true nature—which, despite his generally sunny smile and cheerful demeanor, was about as honest as snake-oil.

Peddler of smiles, indeed, Rei thought sourly to herself. The only smiles he looks to create are his own. She looked down at Nip and lifted an eyebrow. "How about it, furball?" she asked quivering ears. "Should we go and tell Niccolo exactly what we think about greedy, hypocritical bunnies?"

Nip chittered, hopping in place a few times and making a dangerous smile tug at his human's mouth.

"All right then." Going into her own hunter's stalk, Rei led the way up the road to the northern part of town and the market, hands resting easily on the hilts of the knives strapped to her belt. On the way she bumped into two different Sproutlings: one by Miss Yuka's inn that said it liked counting stars, and one at the beginning of the market that said something that made Rei pause for thought.

"Everyone with a soul always disappears," the little being said in the high, clear voice that Rei was coming to recognize as a standard characteristic of Sproutlings. "We don't have souls, so we always stay. The poet Pokiehl says so."

Rei had never heard of a Sproutling dying…then she shook her head, pipes chiming against each other. Of course she'd never heard of the things dying! She'd only found out about them today!

Which was strange, because everyone else was treating the Sproutlings as if they were as common as houseplants, and she knew she didn't remember seeing those Sproutlings here in town before. Strange and stranger…

Telling herself firmly that what she needed was a good fight to clear her head and to always check the expiration date of whatever she ate or drank before bed, Rei nodded to the philosophical Sproutling and proceeded into the marketplace.

Niccolo paced back and forth in the space between the tent-roofed stall that Jennifer frequented and the fruit-themed fortune teller MeiMei, ears twitching as he complained loudly about bandits on Luon Highway and how was he supposed to make an honest living when poor merchants like himself were the favorite targets of such low-brow thieves?

"You wouldn't know the first thing about making an 'honest living', Niccolo," Rei snorted as she strolled up, flicking dusty-blonde hair over her shoulder with another faint chime.

Niccolo turned to her mournfully. "You don't think the highway is too dangerous?"

Too set on giving the rabbit a piece of her mind—no charge—Rei walked right into the trap he'd laid. "No," she shot at him. "Why would I be afraid of a rag-tag bunch of sharpsters?"

The merchant's large, floppy ears managed to nearly stand up straight as he beamed at her. "Wonderful! Then you can be my bodyguard! We'll go wipe out those bandits and make the highway safe for people who want to make an honest living and I'll make you rich!"

"Hey!" Rei yelped at the furry hand-paw clamping onto her wrist with unexpected strength. "Wait a—wait! Hang on! Stop pulling me you stupid rabbit!"

"We can go right after I pay a visit to Teapo," Niccolo declared, once again his cheerfully pompous self. "I've got something I think she'll like."

Rei groaned in irritation. Teapo the Dove was nice enough, but to say she was thicker than two planks together was a kindness. She was always getting swindled by traveling peddlers and the like claiming to have rare items that they charged ridiculous amounts of money for. Sometimes Rei wondered what was in the water the teapot-like, magical creature carried around, because no other Dove that she had met was ever as dense as Teapo.

And Niccolo was taking advantage of that fact. Rei vowed silently to leave the crooked dealer in the middle of the highway the first chance she got. The jerk.

About the time Rei was swearing vengeance on Niccolo the two (plus one irritated Rabite) made it to Mark's house and went in. Duelle was still there, talking with Teapo as she tended to the hearth and a couple of other small chores. The onion-warrior took one look at Niccolo and scowled, but brightened a bit when Rei mimed stabbing him in the rump with one of her knives.

She really wanted to do it, too. But manners drummed into her long ago forbade it. So she simply shared a grimace with her scimitar-wielding friend as he edged past her out of the house. She wished she could leave, too.

"Oi, 's Niccolo!" Teapo greeted upon spotting them. Rei leaned against the counter and crossed her arms, hoping that for once, the Dove wouldn't be so gullible. "What 'ave you got for me today?"

Rei decided she didn't like being always right in her guesses about Niccolo as he pulled out an old, worn wagon wheel from the peddler's sack he carried. "Ta-da! I found this during my travels, and since you're such a loyal customer I thought I'd give you a discount."

Hope unfurled a few petals in Rei at the doubtful look Teapo cast at the thing and the equally-dubious comment of, "I dunno, Niccolo. It looks like an' ol' regular wheel t' me."

Niccolo let his ears droop in hurt disappointment, mournfully said, "You're right. It's just an old wheel. I'm going," and turned to leave. Rei let herself hope for a second that Teapo wasn't going to fall for the same old trick again, but that hope quickly died when the Dove leaped forward.

"'Old on, Niccolo! Even I can tell that aren't no regular wheel! How much?"

Ears lifted happily, the rabbit answered, "50,000 Lucre."

The knife-fighter winced and muttered "Robbery."

Teapo winced, too. "Niccolo, yore a wee bit too proud of yoreself. Nothin' costs that much. 'S truth!"

"Bring me 50,000 Lucre," Niccolo restated firmly, then his eyes fell on Rei leaning on the counter nearby and gleamed. "Until then…I'll let Rei here use it."

"And just what, pray tell, am I going to do with a wheel that has no wagon attached to it?" Rei inquired acidly as the wheel was dumped in her hands. "I've no use for it, not when it looks like a small breeze will snap it to kindling."

Teapo apparently didn't hear her, too busy assuring Niccolo that she'd get him the money as long as he saved her that wheel. Rei sighed, counted backwards from twenty, and waited until Niccolo had left the house ahead of her before telling Teapo that she'd bring it back tomorrow after breakfast.

"But wot about Niccolo?" the Dove asked her, anxiety easing.

"Hang that rabbit. He wants to argue about it, tell him I said it was a gift for being 'such a loyal customer'."

Nip snickered by her feet, there was no other word to describe the sound he made. Rei patted the Dove on the porcelain-like shoulder and strode out, wondering if Niccolo would just go and get himself skinned if she let him charge off by himself. Gah.

She got five feet past the signpost where Niccolo was waiting for her when there was a bouncing sound and the weight of the wheel she'd slung on her back was abruptly gone. Rei yelped, pulled a knife and whirled, staring behind her at…nothing. Her back tingled from a strange kind of magic that she'd never felt before, but that magic hadn't felt like thief-magic to her. No, it had felt like…release.

"What's the matter?" Niccolo asked, waddling up. Rei shifted her weight from foot to foot, flexing the hand that had held the wheel until about two seconds ago. She couldn't help but notice that the mid-morning haze that had obscured the entrance to the highway had burned off about the same time that the wheel had vanished.

"That wheel just disappeared," she told him uneasily. "I had it in my hand, and then 'poof'. No more wheel. And look." She gestured with her knife at the dirt of the road at her feet. It had only four sets of footprints: hers, Niccolo's, the round shapes of Nip's bounces, and the one-way footprints that Rei would bet belonged to Elazul. "No sign of a pickpocket and I know the feel of thief-magic. There wasn't any." Her hand brushed her pouch as she put her knife away, and she yanked it open in disbelief. "Hey! Those toy blocks my Sproutling gave me disappeared, too! What gives?"

Niccolo crossed his arms over his chest—no mean feat—and did his best to glare at Rei. "If you lost my wheel, then you owe me 50,000 Lucre," he told her sternly, then squeaked when a knife glittered just under his nose.

"You were saying, rabbit?" Rei asked him calmly, spinning her other knife over the knuckles of her right hand.

Niccolo twitched, gulped, and stammered, "I-I said that we-we should get going."

"Smart bunny." Rei sheathed both her blades in an easy motion, rubbing the hilts a moment with a smile. While jewelry-quality gold was soft, the Vizel gold used in weapons like hers was hard enough to cut through stone and wood easily—Especially, Rei thinks to herself happily, when you temper them with magical items like Elemental Coins. "So what are you waiting for, Niccolo? Nip and I aren't carrying you."

Niccolo gazed resentfully at the back of his 'hired bodyguard' and contemplated leaving her in the middle of the highway the first chance he got. And that sorry excuse for a powderpuff that she called a Rabite, too.

———

Rei was very close to just leaving Niccolo on the highway and finding herself a stream to dunk one very overheated body in, so long as it was cooler than boiling. She had discovered a very important fact that she'd forgotten since her last trip along the highway: there was, literally, no shade on the road. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

And the temperature was somewhere close to the hundreds. Rei was nearing a meltdown as she plunked down against a scraggly tree ten feet from the road, compacting herself as best she could in the meager shade. Nip and Niccolo seemed to be just fine and Rei found herself envying the thick fur they wore that seemed to block most of the heat.

"Those bandits are insane," Rei panted to Niccolo, vainly trying to wipe away the sweat running into her eyes. "It's frigging hot, and they're still robbing and poaching?"

"Greed is a powerful motivator," Niccolo replied absently, using one of his long ears to shade his eyes as he looked down the road. "How much farther, do you think?"

Using a hand to fan herself, Rei squinted the way Niccolo was looking and ignored the irony of Niccolo's statement. "Well," she told him, "we're almost to the fork. Since nobody short of another Wisdom will mess with Gaeus down the southern fork, I'm betting we'll find those bandits down the north fork. That's another couple of miles, at least, and I'll bet at least a half-dozen more monster ambushes. Don't they know when to give up?"

"Probably not. Are you ready to continue?"

Rei levered herself back up with a groan, dusting off her clothes and nodding in reluctance. She really needed to cool off, soon, or she was going to get sick. However, if she went home now then the bandits would probably attack someone else before she got back here. Her honor wouldn't stand for it.

So instead she thought cool thoughts, resettled her knives, and followed after Niccolo at a fraction of her usual pace. It was only about five minutes until they reached the fork and through the heat-shimmer Rei spotted someone she hadn't met before pacing by the southern path.

It was a cat-woman, a year or two younger than Rei, all over soft gray-brown fur with a dusty-cream muzzle. Dark gold-brown hair cropped short, her large ears were hung with bell earrings to match the one around her neck. She wore fingerless gloves laced up the back and shorts that hugged her legs to just below the knee, laced up the front of her thighs with the same color and kind of cord as her glove laces. Her top was strapless and cropped short across her ribs.

Rei wasn't surprised. Most of the furred folk that she'd met, while bowing to modesty, tended to wear loose clothing or things that could easily be laced and therefore wouldn't rub fur wrong. Niccolo was a perfect example with his green, poncho-like shirt.

The cat-girl's outfit was a uniform shade of lavender-purple trimmed or reinforced by fabric the same shade as her hair—even the fabric of her open-toed sandals was purple and gold, support wraps at bicep and tail-tip the same dusty, gold-brown color. And she wore a pair of nunchaku strapped at her hips in the same places as Rei's.

Rei liked her immediately. She ignored the vestigial wings on the cat-girl's back—it was rude to point out things that can't be used amongst the non-humans—approaching with a small, easy smile. "Hey, hot day, isn't it?"

The cat-girl startled, whipping around to show wide green eyes. "Oh! Hello. My name's Daena and I'm from Gato Grottoes."

Niccolo suddenly realized that Rei wasn't behind him and turned to find his 'bodyguard' chatting to someone he'd never seen before. He hurried over, stars in his eyes. "WOW! What cute ears!" he exclaimed dreamily. "We belong together!"

Daena gave him an icy, sideways glare, lifting her head high. "Excuse me," she huffed, "I wasn't talking to you."

Rei had never seen Niccolo wilt for real so quickly. She found herself liking Daena even more. Anyone who could put the rabbit in his place so thoroughly was someone worth befriending.

"Well said, Daena. May I ask why you're on Luon?"

Daena's ears slid sideways, making the bells dangling from them chime. "I came to see the Wisdom," she confessed, "but now that I'm here I'm too scared to see him. How about you?"

"Pest control," replied the knife-fighter, jerking her thumb towards the northern fork. "Tell you what; meet me in Domina in a couple of days and I'll go with you to see Gaeus. He's really a big softie, even when he's telling hard truth, you know. Okay?"

Daena nodded, looking happier as Rei caught hold of one of Niccolo's long ears and dragged him up the north fork while telling him to reel in the hormones. She kept dragging him despite his larger size between the predicted monster ambushes all the way to the end of the road. Nip kept faithfully to her heels, taking pleasure in showing his wild, white-furred cousins who was boss.

At the end of the road waited a couple of Chobin Hoods, rat-like two-leggers whose most dangerous characteristic was their aim with the bows they always carried. One of the Chobins swaggered forward, clawed hand held out in demand.

"Give us da cash! Cash cash-cashcashcash!"

Niccolo glared. "These guys are crazy for money. I can't stand them."

Rei sighed, digging into her belt pouch. "I'd wait until I had the moral high ground to throw stones, rabbit. Besides, they're bandits, remember? 'Course they're money-hungry." She came up with what she wanted and flicked a single Lucre coin into the dust at the Chobin's feet. "Here."

"Not enuff, not enuff!" snarled the second Chobin, waving his bow.

"Well, that's all I'm paying as my toll. You really should just set up a booth or something," suggested Rei, easing into a position that she could lunge from. "It'd make you look much more respectable."

That set the two (proudly tattered) ruffians off and they started squeaking angrily, jumping around and waving their bows. "Oh yeah? Oh yeah?" the first one howled, Rei's Lucre clenched in his fist. "Master, come get rid of these punks!!"

Master? These pipsqueaks have a ma—oh, damn. Rei stared up at the very large Mantis Ant that had blown its minions away in a thunderous landing and fought the sensation of her skin crawling. That's a freaking huge bug.

She nearly swatted Niccolo when he plunged an over-sized paw/hand into his bag and produced a brightly-colored treasure box, setting it at the feet of the giant bug. Then she recognized the tingle of magic against her skin and quickly took several large strides backwards while Niccolo said, "My apologies, sir. Please take this gift as a token of my remorse."

Then he skipped back and grinned as the box exploded in the monster's face. Didn't faze it too much, but it gave Rei a chance to leap in with knives glittering in sweeping arcs. Those knives found the chinks in the Mantis' armor and stabbed at soft flesh, while Niccolo jumped in himself and ripped whole chunks of the monster's shell away. Nip kept the monster distracted by doing what he did best: biting whatever limb was within his reach. Mostly ankles and feet.

Before too long—although it felt like an eternity to the overheating Rei—the Mantis shrieked, exploded, and vanished in a clatter of shell. Rei dropped to the ground, collecting a few large crystals that had dropped when the Mantis died, as well as a handful of large-denomination Lucre coins. Niccolo swept up the rest before turning happily to her.

"Well, as I promised," he chirped, "here's your payment for helping me. An Iron Pot, a greenball bun, a tako bug, and these." Rei blinked at the cheerfully-burning lamp and an old, tarnished medallion slung on what was obviously a silver chain as tarnished as the fierce face hanging from it. "All for the low price of 300 Lucre!"

Her hands were too full of items to stop Niccolo from plunging a paw-hand into her pouch and withdrawing three of the large coins she'd picked up, but her foot only missed his gut by a sucked-in breath as he stepped back.

"Plundering, twisted rabbit! Snake-oil seller! Scheming, robbing, honorless mound of blubber!" Rei swore as she stuffed everything but the lamp and medallion into her haversack, which she set on the ground or hung 'round her neck, respectively. "Come back here so I can turn you into a rug!"

"Smile!" chided Niccolo, hastily pocketing her hard-earned money and backing away. "I'm a merchant and half of what I do is make people happy, so smile and let the world know you're happy."

"I'll show you 'happy' you swindler! You promised to pay me, not make me pay for a bunch of worthless junk!" Rei picked up the lamp and prepared to throw it.

Niccolo got out one last, "Smile!" and bolted. Rei ran a few steps after him, but stopped, panting, the chain of the lamp wound in her fingers. It was unusual enough that she supposed it might be worth something, if only providing something to study on winter nights. Suspended from the chain was a stone crescent, one slender strand for each end of the crescent and its middle. The fire burned in the empty air embraced by the stone. It was a wonder it wasn't burning her fingers off.

"You owe me a cold drink that isn't free, rabbit!" she yelled at the retreating dustcloud. "Next time we meet I get it, or I'm taking your tail in exchange! Stupid rabbit," she muttered to an outraged Nip, who was deeply offended that his teeth hadn't quite connected with the evil merchant's calf. "Let's go home and take a break. I'm too tired to go shopping now."

———

Rei collapsed across her bed that evening, feeling better now that she'd had a cool bath and a concoction of fruits and a few kinds of salts to replace the electrolytes she'd burned off today. She quietly swore to herself when she remembered that she'd promised to bring the vanished wheel to Teapo tomorrow after breakfast. Groaning, she pulled her sore legs up and sighed, figuring that she'd just have to tell the Dove what had happened and apologize.

"Hey, Lil' Cactus," she called to her pet houseplant across the room, "you wouldn't believe the day I had…"

———

So, what do you think? Good, bad? There's a review option at the bottom of the screen for a reason, you know. n,.,n