Unorthodox Thieves (Chap. 13): Ending it with a Bang

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Like I really have these awesome plot ideas but idk how to get to them so everything in between is sorta filler lololol

I entered a Young Author’s contest but I probs won’t win lol since I have no idea how to write something interesting, short, and appropriate for K1-G6.

poor reasons hur hur hur

Really though I’m super disappointed with how I made the last chapter turn out. It was just so…… generic and lame. *sighs* Let’s just see if I can make it better.

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The first thing Lucius did was to scuttle behind Claud, using the older man as a personal meat shield. Upon doing so, Lucius remembered something and gave Claud a wary look. “Okay, um, I can’t fight and no offense, but- woah!”

Claud stepped backwards, pushing Lucius along with him. “Don’t let them know that,” Claud muttered, keeping his eyes on the newly identified enemies. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he raised his head to the sky. “Here!” The sound resounded through the forest, sure to be heard for quite a distance around.

Lucius’s hands flew to his ears instinctively and winced. Nevertheless, though, he was grateful. Reyna and Wila should have heard that and would come to their location soon enough.

Their attackers must’ve realized the same thing, because as brief and vague Claud’s call was, there could only really be one purpose for it. A young lady, looking at most to be in her early twenties, rolled up her right sleeve and repositioned the fragile-looking branch in her hands. Another man’s eyes flickered to the trees behind them.

Then, from somewhere in to the left, an axe came flying out of the bush and nailed the tree right next to Chris. The man, who had gotten away with only a scare, wrenched it free of its rather shallow gash, giving it a distasteful look. “Can’t even consider this stolen,” he said. Since he wasn’t dead, he technically had all gloating rights. “Your aim is terrible.”

The leaves crackled and scattered, but no person appeared from behind any tree. Alright, so they weren’t as dumb as Lucius hoped. “How many of them are there, anyways?” Lucius asked to no one in particular. With their luck, they were probably surrounded.

No war cries. They were pointless, and at best informed the enemy of what you were doing. The supposed leader of theirs swung his axe in a wide arc again, this time aiming for Claud. Lucius let go of Claud so that he wouldn’t be pulled along as the taller man sidestepped, and realized that he was now exposed.

With skill surprising of how weak Claud had evidenced himself to be, Claud caught the nameless leader’s wrist and wasted no time kicking him in the shin. The brief distraction that provided him allowed Claud to wrench the axe free and, as the now unarmed man instinctively reached for it in panic, step back as well. An incomprehensible whisper, and the axe transformed into a long yet thin steel pole with a grooved rectangle at the end. It hardly took more than a millisecond, and if Lucius hadn’t consciously replayed the event in his mind, he never would’ve known that something changed. It was strange effect – it happened not only visually, but something seemed to tug on Lucius’s brain and try to overlap the memory of the axe with whatever the object Claud was holding. The new club itself, Lucius didn’t recognize, but it looked hard and good for hitting people, which is really what they needed at the moment.

In the split-second flurry of thoughts that swept into Lucius’s brain, the first thing he registered was that such a fantastical transformation should be impossible. The second answered his first in that it could only be the exchange system he heard about; a weapon for a weapon, in this case. The third was that everything was turning out to be extremely lame and devoid of intense the golden encompassing glows that one might expect.

Any fourth thought that he might have processed was destroyed before birth by a leafy branch smacking him straight in the face. Immediately shoving it upwards, Lucius saw the pale face of the woman who had rolled her sleeve up and kicked out, completely missing. His action did get her to retreat, giving Lucius the opportunity to scuttle back a foot or so.

His attacker seemed just as nervous about the whole fight as he was, the only difference being that she had a weapons of sorts. Eyes honing in on it, Lucius remembered Claud’s previous actions and forced a grin off his face. All he had to do was steal that branch.

Lunging forward like the tactless fighter he was, Lucius grabbed onto the edge of the branch and pulled. Unfortunately, his reward amounted to a fistful of leaves and the girl stumbled back. “Darn it,” he said, releasing the useless foliage.

“M-matt?” The girl called out the name of one of her friends, frantically looking around. A man, probably ‘Matt’, instantly showed up behind her. Where had he come from? A look of relief descended upon her, and almost at the same time, irritation and anxiety appeared on Lucius’s face.

“Great, two versus one,” he whispered, once again stepping backwards. Looking to the side, he saw Claud trying and sometimes succeeding in hitting the narrow-eyed man. Then, before he could locate Chris or Mikhail, Matt and the girl advanced, clearly spurred on by their advantage.

Just as Lucius was getting ready to curse obligation to hell and flee, there was a blur of white and the man was knocked over, letting out a cuss of his own. Standing on the fallen person’s back was Mikhail, who was looking a bit pained from the impact himself. Lucius noticed that the albino has leapt from a nearby tree onto Matt, but couldn’t spare the injured man any sympathy.

The girl, noticing what had happened, shrieked and swung wildly at Mikhail. He was hit and stumbled away, but the branch only gave him a couple minor scratches on the chin. While the girl fell to her knees beside her companion and worriedly shook him, Lucius took the role of the opportunity-seizing jerk and kicked her, hard, in the right shoulder. He then snatched up her branch, and just as he was about to have it transform into something cooler, realized that he had no idea what to do. “Mikhail, how the hell do I do that exchange thing and turn this into a knife or something?”

Mikhail shot their temporarily downed opponents a brief glance and, seeing that they were already recollecting themselves, chose to first take care of them. He took a deep breath and whispered an apology. Then, he swung back his leg and kicked Matt right above the ear.

Lucius's hand flew up to his own head. He did, however, see the reasoning and prepared to copy Mikhail’s action, cruel as it seemed. He felt like one of those mob characters you’d see in a book beating on a little kid or something, except for that the kid was replaced by a grown man that probably would’ve done the same thing in Lucius’s situation.

There was a sudden rustle from the bush behind him. He had just turned around to see the other woman, club raised above her head. He had just the time to flinch and bring his arm up to block against the inevitable impact.

There was a loud bang.

The woman fell forwards, her mouth open in a cry of anticipation and anger that had transformed into one of pain. Her front had no signs of injury, but as she lay on the ground, Lucius saw a tiny hole in the back of her head, closer to the base of her head than the top, releasing tendrils of dark blood. Not yet dead, the woman twitched, that being the only thing she could do.

Raising his eyes, Lucius first saw the gun –it was so small, that explained why he didn’t see it hidden away wherever before-, then the hand that held it, and finally the face that stared over the smoking barrel. It was a little on the pale side, and had only a thin line for the mouth, but rather apathetic. “She’s still alive?”

Lucius stared at the soon-to-be murderer, and then back at the rapidly stilling woman. Her pain would end soon. He felt no rage, for he barely knew this person, but waves of dread and some other hollowing feeling poured into his heart, which felt like plastic. “… Chris, where did you get the gun from?”