Author's Notes:
It's about time we had another Shining the Holy Ark fic. It's been well over two years since the last one.
The milieu and characters of this fanfic are property of Sega. This story is set a day or two before Shining the Holy Ark begins.
Making a Good First Impression
plot and script - Martin III
"I think getting a third is a mistake," Forte muttered as the two of them walked through the town of Enrich, towards the inn. The residents regarded them with curiosity; if the capital had seen its share of mercenaries, it at least rarely saw the combination of a sorcerer and a shaman.
Melody sighed. She shared the sentiment behind what Forte said, even if she disagreed with the assertion itself.
"Look, Forte, we need him."
"The king's orders said we could enlist additional mercenaries if we wanted to. Not that we'd need them."
"Yeah," she said, blowing a stray hair out of her face. "You know why? 'Cause they're counting on their own soldiers to help us out. You know what happens if we let Enrich soldiers do any of the work, don't you? We still get our pay, but they take all the credit. When anyone hears that there were Enrich soldiers involved in the actual capture, they'll assume the mercs just showed up to lend a hand, and how do they know Rodi wouldn't have been captured without our help?"
"And how -" Forte began.
"This is our lucky break, you realize that? We pulled off a couple big jobs, and it looks like all the exaggerated tales of our success that our friends have been spreading around managed to convince the throne itself that we're some hotshot mercenaries. We're talking the king of Enrich here, Forte. We do this right, and our reps are made. You really want to blow that opportunity, and all the work we've put into it, by letting their soldiers help us?"
"Don't you ever stop for air?" he managed to get in.
Melody rolled her eyes. "I'm done. What is it?"
"Another mercenary is just as likely to steal most of the credit. And the reward for Rodi's capture is the same regardless of how many people it takes to do the job. That means we're cutting our take by several thousand gold coins. So less gold, less boost to our reputation. All for an extra hand on a job we can do ourselves."
"That's bogus, and you know it. We've been doing well so far, but this Rodi must be plenty dangerous if he's got the Enrich crown calling for mercenaries. And we've got no protection in a fight; heavy armor would just make it impossible for us to work our magic. A swordsman's just what we need." She grinned at Forte. "Besides, I haven't told you about this guy yet."
"You told me he was a swordsman a while ago. What else is there to know?"
"Un uh uh! I don't want to spoil the surprise!"
She skipped ahead a couple steps, but Forte reached out to grab her arm. He forced her to look him in the face and said, "This is serious."
"I know that!" she snapped, jerking her arm free. Ignoring the past few moments as though they were a brief distraction, the grin returned to her face. "You'll love this. I've been asking around about the mercenaries available here in Enrich, and a peddler told me this guy - his name's Arthur - has been taking jobs for almost a year, but he's only just starting to make a name for himself."
"So we're talking about a five-time loser," Forte said, with a weary shake of his head. "What good -"
"I know; that's what you'd think, right?" she agreed, her voice increasingly sparked with excitement. "Nope. In fact, he's supposedly finished every job to his employers' complete satisfaction. The thing is, apparently he goes from village to village, even country to country, never takes a second job in the same place. So no one hears the name Arthur the swordsman twice, except traveling merchants, like the guy I talked to. From what he's heard, they're mostly low paying jobs for groups of commoners, too. Nothing prestigious."
"Hmmph. What kind of idiot would try to build his rep as a mercenary that way?"
"Maybe he's too stupid to build up a rep. Which means -"
"I'm not a fool," Forte interrupted. "I know what you're getting at. But if this Arthur is as good as you say..."
"Yeah?"
"...don't you think he might be able to recognize, after seeing us in action, that we're not as good as they say? The last thing we need is a first-rate traveling mercenary spreading the word that the two of us are actually amateurs."
Melody froze in her tracks. "Hey, we're good!" she protested. "Yeah, we're not all that experienced, but neither is this Arthur. All we gotta do is keep acting like seasoned vets, and he won't be able to tell the difference." She skipped a couple steps to the front door of the inn. "Here we are. Look, just let me do the talking, okay?"
"You say that as though I could possibly prevent you from doing all the talking."
"Trust me," she winked, her hand on the door handle. "I'll have this guy convinced he's not worthy to go back to Enrich castle with us for a share of the glory. He'll be begging us to let him have even half a share of the reward."
Her hand was still paused on the door handle, waiting for her to finish her pitch. At that moment, one of the inn's patrons took his leave, pulling the door open. Caught off-guard, Melody still clung to the handle as she was jerked forward and fell inside the inn. The one who'd ignited her misfortune gave a bewildered glance at the woman now sprawled on the floor, then shrugged and brushed past Forte.
Blushing furiously, Melody allowed Forte to help her to her feet. "Hopefully Arthur didn't see that," he remarked.
"Thanks for the fond wishes," she snapped. In point of fact, everyone inside the inn's main room was looking at her. Few if any of them could be said to be staring, but they had certainly taken notice. Raising her voice loud enough that at least a couple of them could hear, she said, "So I fell. Big deal." Whether or not her words carried any impact, the inn clientele momentarily lost interest in the newcomers.
The message she'd left for Arthur said to wait for her and Forte at the table farthest to the right. At that table was a lone young man with a large sword strapped to his back. Melody grimaced at how scrawny he was. She silently pointed him out to Forte.
"That's him?" he said, sounding concerned.
"Looks can be deceiving." She stepped towards him, but Forte caught her by the arm.
"Maybe I'd better handle this," he said, sounding even more serious than usual.
"Huh?"
"You're a lot more nervous about this than you're letting on. I can tell by that spill you just took - you're just not that clumsy, Melody. If you were to choke when negotiating with this mercenary..."
"Okay, so I'm a bit nervous," she sighed. "But I got this. Trust me, I won't choke."
She walked up to Arthur's table, sat down. Forte followed her lead. Arthur, who had been chiefly paying attention to the meal in front of him, looked up with a start.
"Hi," she said. "As you've probably guessed, I'm Melody, and this is Forte. We've heard enough about you to think you might be competent for the job, so we won't waste time asking you to prove yourself. We just want to know two things: First, can you follow orders? This is a very dangerous mission, so if you ignore what we tell you to do, you could end up dead."
The mercenary looked at her blankly. "...Job? What are you trying to hire me to do?"
Melody stared at him a brief instant, then slapped her palms down on the table and demanded, "What are you, stu-"
"Excuse me," a voice interrupted. "I thought I heard... You're the mercenaries going to Desire village, aren't you?"
Melody froze at that voice. A voice coming from her right. Turning her gaze in that direction, she saw there was a little nook between the far wall of the inn's main room and the end of the bar. And in that nook was another table. The bar had been blocking her view of it.
"I'm the guy you asked to meet you here," the young man seated at the nook-table said. "You said you needed a third warrior for an important job, right?"
Turning back to the man she'd first spoken to, she stammered, "But... you've got a sword!"
He shrugged. "I'm on a journey. Figured I should arm myself."
She felt momentarily paralyzed by embarrassment, but Forte took her by the arm and pulled her towards Arthur's table. In the few seconds it took to get there, she recovered enough of her dignity and presence of mind to pull free of Forte's grip and seat herself.
"Right," she said, taking in Arthur's appearance. Thankfully, he was a bit more robust than the man at the other table. In fact, he wasn't bad looking, though like most mercenaries, it was obvious that he didn't have a female partner to make sure his hair was neat. He had a pair of fingerless gloves, but they were set to the side(so that he wouldn't dirty them while he ate, she assumed), and she liked his uncovered hands. They were large, calloused, honest. It made her ashamed enough of her prim, delicate hands that she kept them under the table. But the most important thing she noted was that he had his sword still strapped to his back. That meant he was strong enough that he didn't need to bother with taking it off.
With only a brief pause to observe all that, she continued, "It's a simple kill job, but the guy we're after is an insurrectionist, so we figured we should bring a third person to even the odds. We can't be sure how many guys are left in his band."
Arthur was looking at her as though listening, but he suddenly remarked, "Your message didn't mention that one of you is a woman."
Melody tilted her chin up in a show of disdain. "So you think you need chest hair to be a good mercenary?"
She was rewarded with a blush that spread across Arthur's face. "That's not what I meant."
Before that line of discussion could go any further, Forte put in, "I can believe that you've never heard of Melody the shaman, though that is a bit absurd. But how did you not recognize 'Melody' as a woman's name?"
"Never heard the name." Arthur looked away from them both. "The innkeeper called you 'two mercenaries'. That's all I knew about you two."
Melody blinked. "So you didn't know who the message was from, or what the job is all about, but you still came? You must be having a hard time finding work, huh?"
"It's that the mission is in Desire village that caught my attention. I always take any job I'm offered in Desire."
"Always?" He nodded, and Forte gave her a look. Guess the merchant was wrong about him never doing a job in the same place. Still... Desire's probably a pretty nowhere place. I'd never heard of it before. "So... you don't even want to know what the job's about?"
He finally stopped averting his gaze from her, and she noticed how striking his eyes were: piercing, but less hostile than any mercenary she'd seen. Including her own reflection. "In this case, I'd better hear what it is. I might have to turn this one down."
"Is that supposed to impress us?" He didn't answer. "We can get any mercenary in Enrich we want. You're just lucky that you wound up first on our list." Still nothing, but Melody was satisfied that he was being quiet for fear of losing the deal, not out of arrogance. "Anyway, the guy we're after is named Rodi. He's a ninja, skilled in both fighting and magic. Apparently he was involved in some plot to take control of the Enrich court, so we're being hired by the king himself to... to take him out."
She had been watching Arthur's eyes for his reaction to the information that they were under the king's orders. Instead, she picked up on the disconcerting fact that he was checking her out, looking over her hair, her face, and her chest with an unmistakable air of appraisal. His looks disgusted her. She wore baggy clothing because it was more comfortable, but if it wasn't, she would have worn it just for the sake of obscuring her figure from male eyes.
Can't show any reaction; Forte would call it unprofessional if I break this deal just for that. But honestly, what kind of pig oogles someone dressed the way I am?
"Sounds like an exciting job," Arthur said with a nod of his head, though his voice wasn't excited. Melody doubted that he'd listened to a word she'd just said.
"And the pay is plenty for all of us," she added. "Besides, me and Forte get more than enough high-paying jobs, so we can afford to give you a cut. Long as you do things our way, understand?"
"What do you mean by that?"
She gave a toss of her head, hoping to give the impression that the question was one she'd had to answer many times before. "I mean this is our contract. The king chose us - me and Forte - to do this job. If we let you in on the deal, you have to go when we say go, and stop when we say stop. You're a hired hand. Not a partner. Got it?"
"...Sure." He sounded uncertain whether he agreed with what she was saying or not. He looked down at his left hand, rubbing the fingers together oddly. "So long as you don't tell me how to use my equipment." He gave the two of them a brief, but piercing glance. Melody didn't like it; it felt as if he was defying them to give him orders. "Other than that, should be fine. I'm not a rebel."
"You better not be. We can make things plenty unpleasant for you if you are." She reached down for her pouch and poured out several hundred gold. "Okay. Here's your advance..."
"You don't need to do that."
She furrowed her brow at him. "Excuse me?"
"I'll take your word for it that I'll get my share."
That made her suspicious. She and Forte glanced at each other, and she read the same suspicion in his eyes. "What about your half of the deal? I know there's no way you can get paid if you betray us, but it doesn't pay to take unnecessary risks."
He placed his right hand on the table and gave them both a solemn look. "I will help you. You have my word as a mercenary."
"My word as a mercenary"? Is he serious? But she could see he was. And that intrigued her.
"Okay, then. You're in. Get your things in order, and we'll meet you at the west end of town in about an hour."
He just nodded - short, simple, mundane, like a common laborer agreeing to his wages for a day's work in the fields - and got to his feet, headed out of the inn. That bothered Melody. Nothing about it was worrisome, but she wondered how he could regard the job that could make his career with such a simple attitude. It wasn't that he was casual or cavalier about it; he just didn't seem interested in playing it to his own best advantage. Yet somehow, that odd quality made her feel excited about working with him.
Forte cleared his throat. "I don't like it. There's something not right about him. In fact, make that several things."
"Yeah, he's pretty strange. But you know what?" She began rolling the end of one of her ponytails around her index finger. It was a nervous habit; she wasn't confident that Forte would agree with or even respect her theory. "I trust him. Let's just call him our honorable eccentric."
"I'll agree that he seems to have fallen into your plan to make us look as good as we possibly can from this mission," Forte noted. "But he's likely to turn on us in a more irrational way. He doesn't act like a typical mercenary, and he agreed to our terms too easily." He put strong pauses between the last three words, creating an odd emphasis.
Melody had now twirled her finger all the way up to the band which maintained her ponytail. "Yeah, 'cause he's a chump. He acts cool, but I think he's figured that he needs this job, and he'd just say yes to whatever we told him. Maybe he even thinks that if he's nice and obedient, we'll put in a good word for him with our employers."
"How can you be sure of all that?"
"Look, I just know, okay?" she sighed. "I can sense it. He... he's not a bad guy."
"Hmm."
Her heart sank at his tone. He's not going to go for it. Damn it, I hate it when he slaps down my ideas.
But as Forte turned to look her in the face, his tone abruptly changed. "You may be too cheerful for your own good, but you're an excellent judge of character, Melody. Much better than I am, at least."
"So you're okay with bringing Arthur along?"
"I'm okay with it."
"You're a pal, Forte," she smiled. "Thanks."
Arthur picked at the remains of his meal, his face thoughtful as he stared at the slim onion twisted around the prongs of his fork.
This would be his first time working with a woman. He'd resolved to avoid doing that; too much risk of getting romantically involved. It was hard to think of anything that could be worse for his continued survival than falling in love with a fellow mercenary. Even worse when said mercenary was already spoken for; it wasn't improbable that Melody and Forte were a couple.
But it seemed a shame to turn down the job offer, especially after they'd gone through the trouble of tracking him down, and it occurred to him that all the women he fell for were invariably ones he found physically attractive. Which, he concluded after looking her over, Melody was definitely not. He didn't care for blondes at all, and her height wasn't an asset. She wasn't petite, but she was certainly shorter than he liked. Not much of a bosom on her, either. He put a small mouthful of meat and onion in his mouth and chewed. I guess I must be pretty shallow... but, there's no sense in pretending looks don't matter to me. Otherwise, I'd have to turn the offer down. Melody and Forte seem pretty unlikable now, but I haven't gotten to know them yet. For all I know, they're really wonderful people, and if I weren't turned off by Melody's looks...
That thought forced a sudden shift in his reflection, made him look at the prospect of working with Forte and Melody beyond worries about the problems his romantic inclinations might present. Unfavorable as his first impression of the two of them had been, he remained curious about what they were like, both as mercenaries and as people. He was still new enough at the business that there was a lot he could learn from them. And he was interested to see how they approached the job, how they talked to each other when they weren't at work, how they built a fire, how they did everything.
Arthur sighed, letting his fork drop on his empty plate. He didn't understand how he could be so interested in people, when he couldn't stand being around any one group of them for too long. He was used to being alone, and couldn't force himself to be any other way.
Even so... he liked company.
He stood up, handed the innkeeper a few extra coins for the meal, and headed up to his room.
Realistically, it probably wasn't going to be much fun working alongside those two. Even so, he was looking forward to it.
END