Rei Cooper: Legacy Of Thieves

Chapter 10: Musings From Happy Camper's Orphanage

Not even a day after the General Li take down, I began to pack and leave the village. It was not without notice that Jia began to pack as well. I decided it was in my best interest to find out what she was up to.

"Hey Jia." I said as I walked into the room. Jia was busy packing and mumbled to herself constantly.

"Hello Rei." Jia said, after looking at a jar and nodding as if she was talking to it. "Eye of newt..." She said as she began to sort through the nastier vials.

"Um, why are you packing?" I said.

"I owe you." At my look she continued, "You took the dart that probably was filled with poison, willingly, I owe you a life debt which can only be repaid with another act of equal importance. I am not your slave, but I will do as you ask, until such an opportunity arises to repay you for that act." She finished by examining a mysterious liquid which I was sure had eyes that were looking at me.

"Well, I'm not sure if you could call it saving her life. After all, I woke up fine only an hour later."

Needless to say, I left the room and tried to preserve what I could of my lunch. We would be packing until tomorrow morning, seeing how we could now drive away in some spiffy cars provided to us by the villagers for retrieving the Siren's chest. Which was the thing Jia was drooling over in the palace; no wonder they left it alone for all those years, especially with a name like that. I was going to leave early, taking only some items and the Thievius Raccoonus.

I couldn't stay, the words General Li said before I fought him were still ringing in my head, "I see you still trust the mouse who works for Clock-la..." There was fear in his eyes, faint, but it was there all the same.

If Clock-la is this scary thing that I don't even know what it looks like, then I feel like I need to stay away from Bryce, after all he did betray me. At least I think so, but tonight I would get the truth and leave.

Thump.

"Ow..." I said as I rubbed my face, I had run into a wall while thinking. I was getting clumsy.

"This is getting silly, I need to find somewhere to practice and get my head out of the clouds."

I entered the kitchen, I was supposed to cook tonight, to make up for the fact I had lost my cane to the heist's very own hitch. Ceyla. That chick was metallic and cold. When I find her... almost running into a counter gave me perspective; right now I need to make dinner, not plot revenge schemes. The question here was, what to make? I don't usually make anything other than mac and cheese. Thankfully, Jia had left out a cookbook containing simple dishes.

I went to go wash my hands, but left on the counter was the two items that had been shoved into my arm by Jia, it was ignorance on my part, considering that there was a sign over the door. What concerned me most was the fact that the blood looked like it had been scraped off. I didn't know what to make of this, but I was forced to focus on making dinner, or Murph would probably come in and rant at me until I made dinner. Murph could get like that if I didn't feed him quickly.

"Hard to think that I would even think about what I'm going to do about a week ago."

It was true, I wouldn't be far off to see that the old me would be offended by giving Bryce a truth serum made by the resident witch. Jia didn't know what I was going to do, but she warned me off about it. I touched it in my bag, I didn't want to take my bag off, not when I could be betrayed at any moment. I had also begun stitching a bag that could be slung across my back so that I could reach my daggers. I only had some scraps, but they were working well. I finished washing my hands and proceeded to chop up some leek. I followed the recipe for stir fry, and a few burns later, it was done.

"Soup -er- Stir fry's on!" I cried as I carried the heavy pot out of the kitchen.

There were many cries for the food, and once they had eaten some I asked them how it was.

Jia was first. "It needs much less salt." She said.

"I didn't add any." I replied. She gagged at this.

Bryce was next, but I saw him rush off to the bathroom, as planned. Murph just attempted to hide the food inside a fake plant, while humming mission impossible, I let him get away with it.

The Stork simply smiled. "This is better than my daughter when she doesn't use magic."

Well, I'm glad to say I didn't kill anyone when they ate it. Which is a plus, but I needed to corner Bryce soon.

"I'll go check on Bryce." I said, getting up. I don't know why, but I think I saw a jealous look from Jia. When I looked back I saw her fiercely eating her dinner.

I walked out to where I saw him go, silently, hoping that I could catch him before he reentered the living room once more. I heard the sink run, and I knew I would need to act soon. More tense than a piano string about to snap, I waited.

"Rei? What are you doing out here?" I heard him say before I struck from the back, pressing the syringe into his shoulder while holding his mouth shut.

"This is crazy! What if he isn't a traitor?"

I took a breath before starting the questions. Bryce, however, still struggled. I needed to find somewhere quiet and out of the way. Bryce's room would work, I just needed to lock it shut by using a conveniently placed dresser. I dragged him, almost losing most of my toes, to his room and tied him up using a rope I had placed inside my bag beforehand.

"Yes or no questions only, that's what Jia said. Works for only a few minutes and they won't remember anything after the injection or was it something about passing out?"

"All right, are you working for someone who I don't know?"

"Yes." The reply was out of his mouth before he could even bite his lip to stop it.

"Did you have continuous contact with this person?" I took a minute to come up with this question, I didn't think it would work.

"Yes." He replied, even when he bit his lip, his lip would work itself free.

"Were you ever aware of this Clock-la before it was mentioned in the Thievius Raccoonus?" I asked.

"Yes." He thrashed around in his ropes, he was glancing around, searching for a way out.

"How long have you been aware of Clock-la?" I asked at last, feeling stupid for not asking a yes or no question.

Luckily, the sedative in the serum, I really have to ask Jia how she does it, had kicked in and he fell over. I untied him and went back out into the living room.

"Bryce needs to rest for some time. I will go to sleep early too, I want to leave quickly." I said, exiting the room for the last time in a long time. I went to my/Jia's room, and snatched up my bag, a plan of mine finally going great until...

"Rei, where are you going?" Jia was there in the doorway, a disapproving scowl on her face.

"Midnight stroll. I enjoy the cool night air." I replied, knowing that it would fail epically, especially considering that I was hanging out a window.

"With your bag?" She crossed her arms.

"Umm, just in case someone attacks me-"

"I mean your luggage."

She got me and she knew it, but much rather than yell for everyone, she grabbed the bag full of vials, clothes, and whatever else she fit in there. She even stood behind me, nearly pushing me off the windowsill.

"Well, are you going or not?" She hissed.

I pushed myself the rest of the way out, sliding down the slanted roof as I went, and landed where I was supposed to be. Jia landed with a clearly audible thump behind me. I face-palmed at this.

"Why is Jia following me? It's not like she owes me or- oh yeah, that life debt thing. Well, this ruins my plans."

Jia then promptly hot-wired that car, and told me to get in. I held up the keys that the villagers gave me this morning.

"When I get home, I'm gonna fake drown so she can leave me alone."

This plan was gonna be ruined if Jia drove like crazy, and almost sensing this, she let me take the wheel. Now, I don't know if you know this, but I can't drive stick. Guess what the car was. Yes, it was the only thing I can't drive, other than a plane. I almost threw my face against the steering wheel in agony.

"It can't be that hard right? Right?"

Fearfully, I placed my hand upon the small stick with the line and letters upon it. I really was going to die this time. I put it into first, hoping that it would start, and gingerly pressed the gas pedal. It revved softly. Engine would be too loud.

"Dammit. How could I have forgotten? Okay, I'll just find a way to leave really fast, what gear is that again?"

I hadn't noticed, but Jia had been rummaging in her bag, and found what she was looking for. It was a hay doll roughly the size of my fist, and Jia was thrilled to have found it.

"Move, if you can not drive, then I have something that will." Jia said, still grinning.

I obliged, I've learned to not get in her way, it usually gets a chopstick in your arm. Jia placed the little doll on the seat, before I could even wonder how it could drive when it didn't have thumbs, it grew in size. It was big enough to make me wonder how we would get away with having a giant hay doll for a driver and not get pulled over. Jia rubbed her palms after I saw her pull out a mysterious herb, and chanted, it was a language I couldn't understand, in other words, not in english.

"Silencio nito motoris..."Jia muttered, when she got like this, I couldn't help but be uneasy.

The doll pulled expertly on the thing I vaguely remembered as a shift boot, or maybe that was the rubber coating... well, it pulled on it expertly and we pulled away from the house. It was all quiet, there wasn't a noise coming from the engine, not even a sputter. I didn't dare ask Jia, I even cowered beneath the backseat, afraid of receiving another chopstick in my arm. A long time after we got out of the driveway, the engine came back into sounding like a tiger, at least, that's what it sounded like to me. After all that quiet, you would have jumped too.

"Wǒ tóuténg... Wǒ bù yìng gāi yǒngyuǎn zuò yībiàn..." Jia muttered to herself.

"What?" I asked.

"Not so loud please..." She asked.

"How did you know that I was trying to be quiet? I didn't exactly say it." I asked.

"You were climbing out a window, that sounds like you wanted to leave without interruption. I don't know why you would leave poor Fēi mó and Yìshù hémǎ behind, are they not your gang?"

"You mean Bryce and Murph? I left Bryce because I can't trust him," Jia looked out the window at that moment. "I left Murph because..."

I didn't have an answer for that, I just couldn't be sure that he was a traitor, but I felt that I had to, if I had asked if he wanted to leave Bryce he would refuse and stay. A bump in the road made up for a lack of an answer.

"Does this guy have any superpowers? Will he shoot down my enemies?" I asked, seemingly out of the blue. I knew better, I was avoiding the subject.

"No... he can drive almost anything, but the one casting the spell must have some knowledge of how the machine works. It is very hard spell to cast, I hope you are thankful, now I must rest. Wake me when we get there." Jia nodded off at that point, handing me a small fang before she was completely out.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with this?"

The drive felt like it went on forever. At last we arrived at the airport, I woke Jia by dropping the little straw man on her face. It had shrunk when we arrived at the location I had told it earlier. We stole some tickets, I managed to steal some wigs from my bag, I am a thief after all, and clothes from some of the lockers. I looked like a punk rocker, I even scored the headphones for it. Jia, well... she looked like an old cat lady. I even found in lost and found a stuffed cat, add a purse, we looked like grandma and granddaughter. The only issue remaining was to find a passport which we could use.

Bzzt. I had forgotten that I had packed the comm along with my gear on autopilot. I could see where this was going. Fearful for my life, I lifted the small piece of plastic and wires to my ear.

"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!" I had to move the comm away from my ear, the yelling was so loud. "MURPH IS CURRENTLY CRYING IN THE CORNER, THINKING THAT YOU ARE KIDNAPPED! WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?" He went on to rant for what seemed to be about a minute, but he never lost his volume.

When he finally stopped ranting, people were giving me strange looks. I replied calmly, "Chill out. It's only fair. After all, you did betray me." With that I crunched the comm between my fingers, leaving it on the floor.

"No more of that."

I walked to the terminal, snatching a pair of passports, leaving some money in the pockets of whom I took them from.

"Why were you over there with the piece of plastic yelling at you?" Jia asked under her breath while we were in line.

"It was nothing. You don't really need to know, just enjoy the flight... grandma." Jia shot me a dirty look at 'grandma'.

"Where are we going?" Jia asked, we were nearing the end of the line.

"We are going to Washington D.C. in Maryland." I replied.

Jia nodded, I didn't tell her that she would probably have to hunt for food and we wouldn't be doing much. I didn't say anything the whole trip there, I was going for downtime and, thinking about how we first met on the plane, a small smile came unbidden to my face.

It had been ten years ago, about a day after Mrs. Waizutatoru welcomed me into the orphanage. It was still raining, pouring even. I felt like I was missing someone, but I couldn't remember who, as a child I ignored the feeling, but I wouldn't be lonely for long.

"Hey what's this?" Bryce was small for kids his age, he was often picked on, and he had hoped that a newcomer would be easy to pick on. Me.

"Let go. It's my Dad's!" I screamed at him.

"It's mine now. Bleeh!" He said as he ran out of the room with my cane dragging behind him.

I ran after him, which I remember as a long chase, but could have been a short distance, considering that the chase ended with him trying to drag the heavy cane away. I lifted it with more strength than the normal ten year old would normally muster.

"I-I'm sorry. They just keep picking on me... I though that if I could be tough then they would stop." He said after I took the cane from him.

He was crying, to my ten year old eyes, it seemed impossible. Boys didn't cry, they made you eat worms and picked on you lots.

"Where are they?" I asked. I just wanted him to stop crying on me, and I thought that I if I could beat them up they would leave him alone, which would make him stop crying on me.

He refused to tell me, so I went hunting, in other words I challenged all of the older boys, asking them if they picked on him. Most refused, but the last I asked was about my age, I remember him with black clothes and tattoos, even though Mrs. Salutatorian had rules against it and he was underage. He smiled and said yes, and as proof, he took my cane.

"You know that stealing is wrong right?" I asked him. I would smile at that sentence coming out of my mouth, even as a ten year old

"And, what are you going to do about it squirt?" He replied.

"I'm gonna beat you up, punk." I was so cute when I was little.

The guy laughed, but gave me back the cane, telling me to never lose that ferocity. I snorted, but left. I made Bryce tell me who was picking on him by telling him I beat up a seventeen year old that day. At night I made my plans, which mostly involved beating the little jerk up. To my ten year old mind, it was an evil, no, diabolical plan. The next morning we lined up for breakfast of toast and waffles, but I was going to pinpoint my target, I was too focused to do silly things like eat. Bryce whimpered some, but stayed behind me.

"Yo we got a new runt to pick on, what your name, never mind that. I'll call you Scruffy!" The large mandarin monkey laughed at his own dimwittedness.

"What's Bryce's nickname?" I asked, curious.

"Band-aid! He bleeds easy!" He laughed.

"My name is Rei, but I like Scruffy. I think 'Scrapper' is better though." I said, totally oblivious to Bryce's shaking.

"Why would that be Scruffy?"

"I'm a scrappy little guy." I was never contested to be a girl after this fight, like me, most boys assumed that girls wore skirts and liked flowers.

I put up my fists, but Monkey simply laughed. You know... I never learned his name, I've always called him Monkey. Anyway, I threw the first punch to his stomach. I never made the punch connect, but when he grabbed my hand I swung around my legs to knock down his knees. I simply giggled, someone taught me this move, but for the life of me, I can't remember who.

"That's why I like Scrapper better." It was my nickname through all of the Orphanage.

Bryce came up to me and shook my hands, he thought that his thanks couldn't expressed in a single handshake, he even said that I was toughest guy he had ever met. He showed me some of his inventions, which were a miniature car that was made out of pipe cleaners which rolled by itself, a min-helicopter which could fly from used paper, and a megaphone made from toilet paper tubes and spare plastic.

"You like it? I was thinking we could execute it later, if you want..." Bryce muttered.

It was almost a year after I met Bryce that I met Murph. By then we had gotten along fabulously, he taught me about machines and the like, I taught him how to hit things really hard. You may think that it wasn't a fair exchange, but it was harder on each of us than you would think. I didn't understand the principle of forward momentum or even how an engine worked without help, while Bryce would throw a punch then cower in fear.

That changed when Murph arrived though. When he arrived, the lion was larger than Monkey, sparing him the humiliating nicknames, however he was fearsome and would often be left alone. I was walking past his room when I herd he unmistakable sound of crying. I peeked in to find that his paints had been taken from him. I had almost forgotten that he was a great painter.

"It's okay..." I patted him on the back not knowing exactly what to do.

"Mom gave me that paint... what am I going to do now?" He whimpered.

He had never talked much about his dad, only his mother, who gave him the paints. That was all he had ever said on the topic, other than they both died in the car accident, about nine years later. I could speculate on the subject, but I don't think I could get it right in Murph's eyes. Even at nearly eleven years old I understood why he would want to have his paint back. I had even taken to hiding my cane under my bed.

"Was it that bully, that monkey?" I asked. Murph gave a half nod.

I went off to go beat up Monkey again, but once I had gotten there it was too late, some unsuspecting family was going to take him. I wasn't going to back down, and decided to find the address to go hunt down the missing paint. Mrs. Waizutatoru didn't realize it was gone. I had managed to find a way to leave the orphanage without rising attention, bring along the guy who had told me to hold onto my ferocity. I later learned his name, Ken. Ken apparently was able to guard me better than I could, or something either way, I told him my plan, and he was trying to suppress a grin the whole time. When I had finished, he smiled and told me that it would work.

My plan consisted of one thing, and it was a key; he gave me my first lock picking kit to fix the problem. In my year at the Orphanage, I had learned that sometimes it was okay to steal only if it was to take back something stolen. This plan was part of the rule. The plan went off well, I managed to get inside with my cute little face, my cookies, and managed to find and take back the paint It didn't take long to get back to the orphanage from there. Muph was overjoyed at the fact he had his paint back, and I had gotten a taste for thievery. It was a win-win all around. Although I never saw Ken around the Orphanage again, Murph gave me a painting of myself a week later, we became steadfast friends, at least that's what I thought when I was ten.

What could have changed to have made us all enemies, fighting on different fronts? Jia was drooling on my shoulder, but I didn't mind. I suppose, it was time to go it alone. The ground below us in the plane was familiar, as I was ready to head back home, even if it was only for a little while.

*`*`*Blue auras*`*`*

Karyra: Okay, as much as I really didn't want one, here's a flashback chapter, don't hurt me!