The light had faded considerably by the time Kotetsu and Barnaby ran across a small, unassuming inn nestled between some trees and bearing a sign: "The Snuggly Duckling." The name reassured Barnaby somewhat. Even after years spent exercising in his tower, he had never walked so far in his entire life. A comfortable place to sleep sounded like a great idea.

But when Kotetsu opened the door, all of Barnaby's hopes for a warm, homey environment dropped dead.

The interior of the Snuggly Duckling did not match its exterior. Rough-hewn logs held the ceiling aloft and matched crude wooden tables, chairs, and bar. The space was filled with men as rugged and rough as the building, armed to the teeth with knives, swords, cudgels, and body odor. Each face in the bar instantly turned and stared at the newcomers, wicked glints in their eyes. Barnaby mentally calculated the number of men against the speed and strength of his frying pan, but the result did not come back in his favor.

Kotetsu took a step forward, and Barnaby grabbed his wrist. "What are you doing?!" he hissed.

"We need a room." He tried to take another step, but Barnaby held him back.

"Are you stupid? We'll die if we stay here!" Barnaby insisted. "You said I'd know cannibals when I see them, and this place is full of cannibals!"

"Are you two coming in or not?" A squat man with an ax growled. "You're letting in a draft."

"We're coming in," Kotetsu decided. With a twist of his hand, he reversed Barnaby's hold and tugged him into the Snuggly Duckling. Barnaby's head spun as he tried to look in every direction at once, keep close tabs on all these potential assailants, check every flicker of firelight for more attackers. Uncle Maverick's voice spiraled around his head: You understand nothing about the world… the world will destroy you… You can't handle yourself…

Something tugged at the back of his head, and Barnaby whipped around to see one of the thugs holding his hair, his fingers combing through the strands as Barnaby walked forward. Panic clenched his heart—no one touched his hair but Uncle Maverick! Barnaby touched other people with it, but no one else touched it! Grabbing fistfuls of his hair and beginning to hyperventilate, Barnaby tried to tug it out of the man's fingers, but that only served to pull his hair through them faster.

"That's a lot of hair…" the man rumbled in awe.

Kotetsu shrugged. "Self-expression. Kids these days."

"So, what are you doing here?" Another thug, this one with a hook for a hand, approached Kotetsu and Barnaby.

"We just need—" Kotetsu began.

"To leave!" Barnaby cut him off. "Sorry to intrude, but we're just passing through, and we're leaving right now."

"But I thought you'd want to sleep in a bed…"

Barnaby fixed Kotetsu with a fierce glare. How could this man be so stupid!? "You assumed I'd rather sleep in an inn full of bloodthirsty cannibals than outside? Don't assume you know anything about me or what I want!"

Kotetsu's brown eyes shimmered with hurt. "But Bunny—"

"And stop calling me that already!" Barnaby turned on his heel, gathering up as much of his hair as he could and striding toward the door.

Before he could leave the establishment, a meaty hand blocked his path. "Wait a minute, lady," yet another thug, a hulking figure with a pustule-infested face, stood between Barnaby and the door.

"I'm not a lady!" Barnaby corrected, but the brute paid no heed. He just ripped a poster off the wall and brandished it at Barnaby.

"I think this is your friend," he growled.

Barnaby stared at the paper—a wanted poster, bearing a man with hazy eyes, a slack jaw, and an extraordinarily distinctive fanged beard. Kotetsu T. Kaburagi – Reward.

"Yeah, it's him," the pustule-faced man approached Kotetsu slowly, each footfall rattling the floor. "And there's an awful lot I could do with that reward…"

"Like I'd let a punk like you take me in," Kotetsu countered, cracking his neck side to side and taking a low stance.

He really plans to fight? Barnaby gaped at the unlikely match-up—facing an opponent a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than himself, Kotetsu showed no fear. Did he have a plan? A secret weapon? Magic powers? Anything? How oculd he stare down that behemoth so calmly?

But before either man could throw a single punch, another patron grabbed Kotetsu from behind and put him in a headlock. "That money's mind, you hear me?"

The second ruffian caught a fist in his face, and a third attacker grabbed Kotetsu out of his stunned arms. "What about me? I'm broke!"

Greed shining in their eyes, the whole bar joined in, reaching for any piece of Kotetsu they could grab, shouting their claim to the thief's wanted poster reward. Above it all, Barnaby heard Kotetsu's indignant voice: "Oi! Let go of me! Let go! No one's turning me in—over my dead body!"

"Sounds fair!" the first man responded, grabbing a massive club and hefting it into the air.

For Barnaby, time slowed down. They couldn't kill Kotetsu. Barnaby needed him! he had to be strong, he had to fight, he couldn't run, he had to stop them! For Kotetsu!

I can't let them kill him!

Looping his hair into a lasso, Barnby whipped it around the end of the cudgel, and just as the man started his swing, he tugged, bringing the thick end down right on top of the thug's own head. It collided with a loud thunk, and the man fell, unconscious.

"Listen!" Barnaby shouted, lashing a whip of hair against the ground with an audible crack. "I will not let you harm that man! He has to take me to Sternbild, so I can see the flying lanterns! That's been my dream for twenty years, and I won't let you take it from me!"

The ruffians glanced suspiciously at each other, as if sizing the blonde up, and Barnaby suddenly doubted if he had done the right thing. He might have just saved Kotetsu's life at the expense of his own. But, he swallowed back the fear and held fast to the locks of his hair in each hand, prepared to strike the next man to move.

Except the next man to move was a tall, muscular one in the back, dark-skinned with blazing eyes and a flame tattooed onto his left arm. The mob gave the man a large berth, parting and letting him through as he walked, heel-toe, heel-toe, toward Barnaby. The blonde's heart drummed in his ears and his stomach churned.

The man stepped over the fallen thug. Then walked directly up to Barnaby and looked him in the eyes. Barnaby could count the hairs in his very thin eyebrows. Did he pluck his eyebrows? Then, the man spoke.

"You cutie~!" he cooed effeminately, clasping his hand together beside his cheek. "It's your dream to see the lantern ceremony?"

Taken aback, and still flooded with fear, Barnaby merely nodded.

"Oh, wonderful, wonderful!" the man took one of Barnaby's hands between his. "Such a pure-hearted dream! It just makes a maiden swoon!"

Barnaby glanced around the establishment. There weren't any women in the bar. Why was this man going on about maidens?"

"If you need a room, you'll find an excellent one here! Oh, and you simply must have something to eat!" The man pulled Barnaby toward one of the tables in the back. Leaning a little closer, he whispered secretly, "I'm Nathan, but you can call me big sister, okay~?"

"Th-Thank you," Barnaby stammered.

"Oi, Nathan!" one of the thugs said. "We can't just let Kaburagi go! Do you know how much he's worth if we hand him over?"

Nathan barely glanced over his shoulder. "You will do no such thing," he ordered, his voice dropping at least two octaves and booming through the bar. But, barely a second later, the feminine falsetto returned. "He's with Handsome here, so he's a guest~! Come on, I'll introduce everyone!"

With the situation derailed by Nathan's fabulous attitude—and the new direction enforced by his hidden wells of intimidating power—the men left Kotetsu alone and drifted toward the back, where they dragged together a giant table for a meet-and greet-with the miraculously long-haired man.

Kotetsu found himself alone.

"What… just happened?" Kotetsu asked no one in particular.

But to his surprise, he got a response: "Nathan couldn't stand being upstaged."

Kotetsu jumped at the source of the voice. A young man, a little younger than Barnaby, with light blonde hair and violet eyes, stood behind the bar. As a skinny guy with a pronounced slouch, and with so many more terrifying people in the bar, Kotetsu hadn't even noticed his presence.

"Have you always been there?" Kotetsu pointed between the man and the bar.

"I just stay in the background," he said. "I'm Ivan. If you're going to stay a while, can I get you a drink?"

"A beer?" Kotetsu asked, and Ivan nodded. With a sigh, he sat down on one of the bar stools and massaged his shoulder. Dammit, Kotetsu hated being a human tug-of-war rope. Like, a lot.

Ivan swiftly returned with a frothy tankard.

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Ivan said, but he glanced behind Kotetsu at the girly little party that managed to spring up in the back, despite the lack of actual females in the bar. "So, you're taking that guy to Sternbild?"

"Yeah."

"Why, if you don't mind me asking? You two are a very unlikely pair."

Kotetsu drank and scratched his beard. "Blackmail."

"Rough."

"Yeah," Kotetsu drank again. "But you must have it worse, right? Dealing with this crowd?"

Ivan shrugged. "Not really. If I stay behind the counter and serve quickly, they don't pay attention to me." Ivan busied himself with cleaning a few glasses.

Kotetsu frowned a little bit. Something about the young man's attitude gave him the impression that he didn't quite like that arrangement. He glanced over at Nathan's impromptu meet-and-greet party. "Y'know, there's something odd about Blondie back there," he gestured, and Ivan looked up. "He says he wants to see the lanterns, but he wouldn't stop asking me questions the whole way here."

"What do you mean?"

Kotetsu tapped a finger against his forehead. "If all he cared about was the festival, why would he be so curious about the world?"

Ivan shrugged again. "What makes you think I know?"

"It's okay. I've got a theory of my own." Kotetsu said. "I think he's trying to find his place. Which makes me wonder, Ivan, is your place here?"

Ivan stared at Kotetsu for a minute, then looked down again. "That's an oddly compassionate thing to say about someone blackmailing you to travel with him."

Kotetsu blinked and laughed a little. "I guess it is."

But, that's how important the thing he's blackmailing me with really is. Kotetsu had stolen the crown, half because Jake and Kriem had threatened him to, and half because the payoff from that crime spelled his ticket out. On top of that, Kotetsu still held onto the hope that he could somehow ensure the crown made it back to the King and Queen. Helping out Barnaby might make those wishes come true, so he had to care, at least a little.

"And just so you know," Ivan added. "I'm currently in an arrangement with Nathan. It's in my best interest to stay in this place, for as long as he needs me."

"Is he blackmailing you, too?"

"No. He's helping." Ivan said. "Really, it's my fault to begin with—"

Before Ivan could say anything else, the door opened, and Kotetsu turned to look at the new arrival. Another man stood in the doorway, much cleaner and better groomed than the other patrons of the bar. He had a strong, noble face, sunny blonde hair, and a breastplate bearing the eight-pointed Star of Sternbild. A royal guard!

"Keith~!" Nathan exclaimed, catching the man's attention. Taking advantage of the guard's distraction, Kotetsu all but dove over the bar to hide.

"What are you doing?" Ivan stared at him in puzzlement.

"If he notices me, I'm a goner!" Kotetsu hissed, covering his head with his hands.

"You'll be fine. It's just Keith."

"'Just Keith?' He's a Sternbild guard!"

Ivan ducked below the counter to join Kotetsu. "Look, Keith is stationed at an outpost nearby. He's great at stopping crime, but terrible at recognizing criminals. He's a regular here."

"And he's never arrested anyone?"

"He spent a week trying to work up the nerve to ask out a girl who used to come here. She was wanted for arson, but he didn't recognize her because she tied her hair back with a red ribbon."

"What happened to her?"

"She got caught, went to jail. Keith thinks she goes to a new bar."

Kotetsu's jaw dropped. He couldn't imagine an ill-fated love much sadder. "What does that story have to do with the situation now?"

"Keith believes in the best in people. If you smile at him a lot, he won't think you're a criminal."

"Ivan?" A cheerful voice called. "Are you there?"

The bartender stood up. "Here, Keith. How are you?"

"Good, very good! The usual, please!"

As Ivan busied himself with the man's drink, Kotetsu worked up the nerve to peek his head over the lip of the bar. Keith was sitting a few seats down from Kotetsu's abandoned tankard, smiling lightly to himself. Kotetsu's nose just peeked above the bar when Keith noticed him.

"Oh, hello there!" he chirped. "Are you Ivan's new assistant?"

"Um… I'm trying out for the part," Kotetsu said. Placing one hand on his chin to cover his beard, Kotetsu stood upright. Keith laughed, oblivious to anything odd.

"You'll have to work hard! Ivan is very good at his job. Did you know he serves the best cider in the whole kingdom?"

"You don't say?"

Keith nodded. "You should try it!" Ivan returned with Keith's drink, a steaming mug of the aforementioned cider. "Thank you, and again, thank you!"

"Don't mention it, and again, don't mention it." Ivan mimicked. The two smiled at some little joke, but then quickly moved on to normal small talk. Kotetsu grabbed his beer and sank back under the bar to drink in peace.

How's Bunny doing?