Many would remark that, at his core, Nathan Hollis was a coward. He fought dirty, he ran from anything bigger than him (which was a good majority of the rest of the world), and if he came within 5 feet of you your pockets were guaranteed to be a little lighter when he left the vicinity.
In his off time however, Nubby ran a rather lucrative (if illegal) business out of a rather underutilized storage shed which he kept stocked full of contraband items. He wasn't entirely without scruples though. He never dealt with children, he never sold hard drugs, and he never dealt in people.
Today, however, he found himself saddled with a bit of a burden. Earlier, in class, Judger had given each of them a training mission to help make them "look good to the community".
Gyre was assigned to helping fix up a home for the elderly, Otto was helping take care of animals at a livery stable, Slasher (no one could be bothered to remember the man's real name, not even the man himself) was helping out with the harvest of some grain for a village just outside the cities walls, and Nubby…
Nubby was told to go to the local orphanage and entertain the kids for a while, which somehow explained how he currently had a dozen pubescents watching in awe as he haggled over what was supposed to be a lost Named Blade.
Yeah, Nubby knew there was no way in any of the nine hells that this hunk of shit was a Named Blade, but the schmuck buying it didn't know that. After another half-hour of dickering, Nubby was up 30 large and down one piece of 'battlefield salvage'.
Really, it was like idiots just fell into his lap.
The punks kids followed him around as he wandered through the market picking pockets and nicking knick-knacks, and he thought they might not even be that much of a headache.
That was, until one of them saw him snag an apple off a nearby cart and yelled for a city watchman.
That was an awkward 5 minutes of explaining that he had just forgotten to pay and was entirely willing to pay extra for the trouble of making a scene, all to a massive man decked in chain mail and packing a wicked looking truncheon.
Nubby noted which kid had ratted on him.
He carried on like that the rest of the day, doing his shopping (legitimately this time. One run in with city watch was enough.), and dropping the kids back off at the orphanage with a little something to remember of it.
It was halfway back to his 'lodging' (a hammock in the back of his shack) that he realized he still had a tail. Now, Nubby was what you would call a "career criminal", so he was pretty good at finding someone following him.
This kid made Nubby look like an amateur.
Everywhere Nubby looked, he just couldn't find the little sneak. He decided the little creep had a good reason to be following him, so he just kept his course back to the shed.
When he shut the door to the shed, he finally found the kid. He had just shut the door and turned around to find him sitting on the ground in front of his stash, knees pulled up and a look like pure misery on his face.
He was scrawny, scrawnier than the other orphans, and his clothes were more patches than original material, but the big tickets on him were the leather cap with earflaps on the sides and the big dark-colored goggles over his eyes. His skin was gray-ish, which was normal for Gilead, but his was like it had been dusted in coal as opposed to the undead-like tone Gilead's peoples were known for.
"Well pal, why didja follow me? Ol' Nubby dunt sell to anyone under the age o' twenny so it must be advice ya come for." Nubby said as he squatted down in front of the kid and pulled a lopsided grin.
"Wanna stay here." The kid said, voice barely above a whisper. He was young, so young, and for him to sound so scared hurt Nubby right to the core of the greedy little thing he called a heart.
"Eh? Why's that squirt? And give ol' Nubbs your name while yer at it, finding' words that mean kid is gettin' tiring." Nubby said as he fell back into a sitting position like the boys.
"Name's Trip. The other kids bully me all the time, and miss caretaker calls me a monster. I don't wanna be a monster, ain't mean enough to be a monster." The kid began to bawl and buried his face into his knees, leaving Nubby stunned for a moment before he closed the distance and wrapped Trip in a hug.
"Shush now Trip, shush now, you're no monster. You want to know something? My teacher's a real monster, but he's a nice guy too. Sometimes." Nubby said as he rubbed the young boy's back consolingly.
The boy hiccuped again, and raised his head, cap tumbling off to reveal snow-white hair that looked to have been cut with a dull knife, badly at that, and his goggles sliding off to reveal eyes white from the edge to the center.
Nubby finally got it. Finally. The daft little bastard.
"You're half Drow." He breathed, eyes going wide and jaw hanging in surprise.
At this, Trip got angry.
"That's what you notice first!? Not that I'm a freak!? Not that I'm a girl who acts like a boy!? Not that I can turn invisible!?" He yelled, shoving Nubby off of him as he stood up.
"Ow...Laughing Rogue kid, you sure can knock a fella around!" Nubby said as he pulled himself up from the dirt floor of the shed.
"And what does tha' other stuff matter? Ya aren't tryin' to murder nobody, and you ain't about to go on no thievin' sprees all invisible, so what's the harm of it?" Nubby said as he dusted himself off. It really was an exercise in futility because this was Nubby, who had a coat that could best be summarised as 'trash with more trash inside it'.
"You...shut up, stupid bastard…" Trip said as fresh tears began to fall and he wrapped his arms around the (only marginally) taller man.
"Thank you." He said as he cried into Nubby's shirt, his actions saying sadness but the wave of emotion radiating from him dancing with happiness. Acceptance. Love.
"S'nothing kid. Big brother Nubby, to the rescue." Nubby said as he pulled his newly adopted little brother into a tight hug.
"Now, let's go have a talk with someone about you moving in."
The argument Nubby got into with the caretaker would later be described as the most violent, vulgar, angry, and intense thing to ever occur short of a massacre.
Nubby decided an upgrade was in order and sprung for a small house near the Inquisitorial Academy.
Trip got his first real home.
Slasher ribbed Nubby endlessly for it, but Nubby couldn't care less.
He had his little brother, what else did he need?