2. One Size Too Large
So maybe they were wrong about him.
Sure he couldn't shut up, and he talked the talk more than he walked, but for someone with such a huge mouth, he had this strange gift of knowing which words were the right ones to say. He was a pretty decent actor, an enviable charmer with the ladies. And of course, he wasn't completely useless with the sword - just a little haphazard. Over-eager. Reckless. Which wasn't so much of a bad thing.
Cutjack had intended to step in and finish up the guards, but stopped under a caution of patience from his brother. Nobody seems to have noticed the shouts and grunts coming from the little skirmish, and besides, now was a good time to observe how well Flynn could handle himself in a battle. And while Cutjack had always figured the most orphans could do with their 'weapons' for was to wave them about in their hands and look dangerous, this was not the case with Flynn.
He was toying with his opponents. They watched him enthusiastically fence away at the three guards for nearly fifteen full minutes, lunging and thrusting like a whirling dervish, a cocky grin plastered on his face. He danced around them in a nimble choreography of sidesteps and feints, unabashedly spewing ripostes at every turn to further goad his opponent. And it was working. As for the pirouetting though . . . now he was just plain showing off.
Weaponology experience told Cutjack that Flynn might be more suited for weapons that spoke pure blunt trauma and raw momentum, like a club or a maul. Or a sturdy piece of kitchenware.
"Alright, show's over." Cutjack said, his patience wearing thin when he saw neither side was relenting. He grabbed the guard's wrist as he was in mid-swing, sucker-punching him right between the eyes and sending him straight into a brick wall.
As for the other two royal-striped guards, they found out the hard way why they were known as the Stabbington brothers - as both Cutjack and Cyclops bore down with their daggers like a pair of automatic weapons, a flurry that left thirty-two holes in each guard's armour and transmuted the well-forged steel into Swiss cheese. They stared down at it with a mix of frozen terror and mortified disbelief, and Cutjack, taking advantage of their paralysis, followed up with a swift uppercut to his jaw, feeling the bone grind under his knuckles, and then instantly knocking the other one cold by smashing his forehead onto his helmet, which unfortunately could not absorb enough of the damage.
With a dull thud the final guard toppled to the ground, groaning. And they were the only ones left standing in the room.
A harrumph came from Flynn, "Child's play!" He did a little twirl and clicked his heels in some strange fandango act. He sheathed his sword, missed, and accidentally poked himself in the shin.
"Come on, hide the bodies before someone else comes in."
It took them only several minutes to strip their victims dry of their belongings and stuff them in the closet. Cutjack had ordered them to take the important things, though everyone seemed to have a different idea of what he meant. Cutjack took the clothes, while Cyclops was busy snatching up all the weapons, and Flynn was still perusing their pockets for any more loose change. Cutjack muttered frustrated nothings under his breath.
"Change."
"Sorry, finders keepers," said Flynn.
"No," Cutjack fumed, tossing a guard's uniform at him, "Change. Your plan, remember?"
"But I wanted the one with the purple stripes," cried Flinn in mock disappointment, but quickly undid his leather vest upon seeing Cutjack's leer. ("Eh, what does it matter. I make everything look good.") He neatly folded his vest with immaculate precision - not like someone afraid to ruin their expensive designer clothing - but with the dignity and appreciation of someone who had lived with hand-me-downs and shared shirts all his life, something he and Cyclops admittedly took for granted. Of course, they didn't actually cared much about it. "I can't do it if you're staring, you know."
Grumbling, Cutjack turned around. His brother Cyclops gave him a knowing, pacifying look. He was right: hate him and his guts as much as he did, but thanks to that man, the Stabbington brothers were now the closest they have ever come to being in the palace. Smooth-talking the guards into believing they were window-washers, rigging up the clever fiasco in the armory to distract the other guards - it was only a matter of time before they had the crown in their hands, then they could stuff the man in the closet too, where no one would have to suffer hearing him talk.
As a matter of fact, now that they were in the castle, he was pretty much expendable. They didn't need him anymore, the hard part was over, his job was done. He could just take him out now and leave the guards to handle him if he wanted, the thought of which made him slightly happier.
Cutjack held up the royal guard's uniform in front of him, attempting to fit his hand through the sleeve. Then a frown appeared on his face.
"Rider. We've got a problem."
He held it out for Flynn to see. "The uniform. It won't fit."
O.O
"Okay, here they come. Follow my lead."
"Good day, gentlemen," Flynn said to the royal-striped guards on the castle battlements as they walked past. They straightened up and actually saluted him back, then their gaze wandered to the pair of burly, menacing, tree-sized men walking behind him.
One of them swallowed nervously, casting an uneasy glance at the squeegees they were holding, shaped peculiarly like a throwing knife. "Escorting someone, lieutenant?"
"Ah. An intelligent and significant question."
"Thank you, sir."
Flynn gestured nonchalantly at Cutjack and Cyclops, "These good men are professional window-washers from just across the street, here to glaze our windows and give them that extra shine that would make us the envy of the entire countryside for sure." Just as they had practised, the brothers lifted up their buckets of brushes and squeegees, forcing a smile that looked more like baring teeth.
"Oh," they breathed a sigh of relief, "Window-washers."
"Yes. Window-washers. Now if you would excuse me, I will be escorting them to the skylight that is directly closest to the chamber holding the crown of the Lost Princess. Anything suspicious about that?"
"No, sir. "
"Dismissed." Another salute, and just as they went out of earshot, all three of them exhaled at the same time.
"Alright, we can't keep this up with every guard we bump into," Cutjack said, "Rider, what's the plan?"
He shrugged, "Same as before. We go in, get the crown, we get out."
"Which way's the crown?"
". . . Right." Flynn scanned the panorama of the palace grounds, eyes sweeping through the endless cityscape of towers, campaniles, domes and minarets, before realizing that even if they knew where the general direction was, the palace was simply too big. It would take days before they could stumble onto the right one. The long silence was all Cutjack needed to know that Flynn didn't have an answer.
"Alright, plan B." He cracked his knuckles, and brandished what seemed to be a squeegee-shaped throwing knife hidden inside the bucket. "We take down the next guard we see and get some answers from him-"
"Wait!" Flynn said with sudden vehemence, "I have an idea."
The brothers exchanged looks before asking a non-commital, "What."
He huddled them together close, speaking in a low whisper. "Alright, here's how we're gonna do it . . ."