The sun was close to that Golden Hour point of the day where the light took on this sepia yellow just before it began to sink behind the edge of the sky. They had been walking for some time, but thanks to Plum's father they had something to snack on as they moved. The city slums were less of a packed district like the part of town where Peter had first come to.
The streets here were dirt with the buildings laid our less and rows and more in little pods around central squares where there was a well or other small rundown fixture. People milled about, but as Peter and Satella got closer to them many would cross the street or outright turn the other way and power walk back where they had come from.
Peter didn't get it, were his clothes some kind of symbol of something wrong or was it something else.
Was it even him? He hadn't considered it till now, but he thought back on his time with her throughout the day and he wondered, who really was she. Too late to ask now, Peter thought.
A young couple in ragged clothes stepped out of a side street, saw them and hurried to get across the road. Peter didn't let them this time, he jogged them down. "Wait up, hey wait, I just need to ask you something."
They froze mid step and turned back to look at him, their eyes slowly drifted to Satella.
"Look, I'm Peter and I am just trying to find something that was taken. It's very dear to my friend here," Peter said pointing over at Satella.
"Stolen," the woman in front of Peter said. Her hair was pink, but in the dying light and with how flat it was it seemed to almost have gone brown. "If you're looking for something that was taken you can almost bet it will end up at the Loot House."
"Loot House?" Satella asked.
"It's k-kind of a large building toward the edge of the district, looks two floors tall, big double doors. It'll be hard to miss," the man said.
"Thank you," Satella said with a bow.
"You've been a huge help," Peter said. He forked over the last four of the fruits they had gotten from the stand. "It's not much, but it's all we have."
"Th-thank you, thank you so much," the woman held her dress out to catch the fruits in it as the man bowed to Peter. Even after that they seemed to be in a hurry to leave.
They walked for a few more moments in silence as Peter didn't trust himself to speak without asking Satella what exactly was going on, what had she done. His only real guess was that elves were rare and scary to people here. He couldn't tell if he had seen another one as they could have been covering their ears with hair. He also didn't spend a lot of time looking at people's ears. After he had spent the day walking around in streets crowded with men with tiger heads and giant iguanas someone with long ears would barely stand out.
There was something different about her face, though he couldn't be sure without seeing another elf or half elf. Like her eyes were bigger than a human's and there was a softness to her that he'd never seen in another person. Her purple eyes were unusual, though they weren't simply purple as there was a bit of blue in the center. Then there was just the way she moved, Satella had a kind of fluid grace to her movements that looked natural to her, but certainly made her stand out.
Was she the only one in the whole city or was she just rare?
"This looks like it," Satella said.
"I was beginning to worry that we might not make it in time," Puck said, stretching his paws out as he yawned. The cute little display seemed to signal that there would be much more time with him there. They best move while they could.
"We should be ready for anything," Peter said. His tingle wasn't flaring up yet, but he had a feeling it might soon. "I'll go in first and, Satella, if I call for you it's safe to come in."
At the sound of her own name she jumped and then looked to Puck who gave her a stern glance. "I'm sorry," she said.
"For what?" Asked Peter.
"It's nothing, we need to hurry," she said.
Peter put his hand against the door of the Loot House and pushed at it, he could force it open with ease. It was just wood, but better not to escalate things before he needed to. So instead he knocked. From inside he could hear the sound of a chair scraping across the floor and muffled voices. A few seconds later someone approached the door and he could hear it opening.
Peter edged back from it as tiny head with blonde hair poked out. "You're running a little—wait you're that guy from before I think. In the alley?"
"Peter—and you're Felt I'm guessing? We need to talk."
"Now's not the time," Felt said.
"I think it's the perfect time," Peter pointed back over his shoulder to where Satella stood peering over toward them.
"Dammit, you brought her here!"
"We just want her stolen property back, if we get that'll be on our way," Peter said.
Felt opened the door. "You can come in and try to negotiate for it, I guess since you both look pathetic and all, but if the original buyer is willing to pay more then I'm giving it to her."
"What's the price?" Asked Peter like he understood anything about this world's currency.
"Ten blessed coins."
"I don't understand why I have to buy my own property back. You stole it." Satella said.
Felt turned her back on them as she strolled back into the Loot House. The inside of the place was half thrift store and half tavern, there was a bar running down three quarters of one side of the room and shelves running along some of the walls and even behind the bar. Various items lined the shelf and from the fact that there wasn't two things that were exactly alike, Peter could guess that these things were the 'loot' that put that very word in the title. There was an expensive looking sword coupled with an old shield, some gloves, a pair of shoes, a bejeweled bracelet—and too many other things for Peter to really catalog.
Near the center of the bar another person waited. He was large and muscular and though he looked old, Peter was betting that there was more than a little fight left in him. "You should have taken better care of it, oh and don't go getting any ideas about trying to jump me, Old Man Rom here will make minced meat out of your asses."
Peter could probably take the guy, but he wouldn't have felt right doing it. Then there was the obvious question of why take this little thing from Satella. There were countless things in the city that looked valuable. Why was this thing chosen—because of this other buyer?
"Wait, there's another buyer?" Asked Satella giving vocalization to Peter's thoughts. "Is it you?" She asked Old Man Rom.
Old Man Rom shook his head. "Nope, I'm just the proprietor of this here place. I was trying to enjoy my booze until Felt dragged in every stray cat from the alley with her." Though the man was massive, bigger than any of the humans he had seen here thus far, there was something subtle and gentle about him, especially in the way that he regarded Felt. He must not have thought there was much to worry about from either of them.
Satella's hands were balled up at her sides tight now. "Then I want to know who it was that orchestrated all this," she demanded.
"Stick around and you'll meet her," said Felt with a little sly smile plastered on her pale face.
"Do you even know what it is you took?" Satella asked.
"When a contract sends you after a specific item on a specific person like that it's best not to ask too many questions," Rom said. "Now, while we're waiting would anyone like some milk?"
"I for sure would, but don't water it down this time!" Felt said.
"What kind of shit are you talking. I don't water it down!" Rom went behind the bar and hefted a large spiked club out of the way, the thing was nearly as long as Peter was tall, but the old man moved it with ease. He went into a cabinet behind the bar and got some glasses and filled them with milk. Then he turned and distributed them between them.
Satella looked at hers as if she was disgusted by the mere prospect of drinking it, but after Peter and Felt tried there's and made approving noises she rethought things and drank some herself.
Despite all that was going on her thirst and need to be polite got the best of her. "This is very good milk, Mister Rom," she said.
Rom drank his brownish yellow liquor and nodded to himself. Every so often his eyes would wander over Satella like he was remembering something.
Things were already tense, best not to let them spill over. If things went bad Peter could probably steal the item back from them himself if it came to that, it was Satella's after all. He took another drink of the milk. "Mmm, this is pretty amazing milk. Didn't have this back in Queens," he said and, as if to catch himself and not have to answer a question about where that was he added. "But how do you keep the milk cold?"
Rom glared at Peter. "Keep it cold? How else would we keep it cold except for put ice down there. The milk is only good for the day which is for the best because Felt is going to drink as much of it as she can anyway," he said with a chuckle.
"I don't drink nearly that much, Old Man," Felt said. "Stop telling people that, will ya!"
Rom took a swig of his liquor, whatever it was, and the pungent odor of it flowed out through the area around the table. "Can I keep telling people how you're a pain in my ass?" He said flicking his hand in her direction absently.
Satella couldn't help but laugh a little bit, but she tired to hide it behind the side of her hand. Either that or she was trying to keep from snorting her milk out.
Peter examined his glass, rolling it over in his hands. "You two must be pretty close, huh?"
Rom nodded. There was a knock at the door, light and quick. Felt downed the rest of her milk. "Right, I didn't tell her about the password—it's probably for me." She bounded for the door.
"Felt was too young to even walk well when I found her. 'Round here everyone has to work with someone else to make sure they don't starve or end up dead. Felt may act tough, but she's not cut out for the more dangerous stuff. If you didn't look so sweet, she probably wouldn't have robbed ya," Rom said pointing to Satella.
"Me? Sweet?" Satella glanced around confused be hiding her face behind her hands, even from the side Peter could tell that she was helplessly red.
When Felt had been outside for a few moments, Rom turned his attention toward the door and wandered over closer to that side of the room and stood by the wall where the bar ended. He half seemed to be trying to look busy just so Felt wouldn't notice him checking in on her.
Satella leaned close to Peter and Puck poked his way out of her hair. "What do we do? I don't have any money," Satella said.
After thinking for a moment Peter replied. "We could find something else to offer them of value or something we can go get?"
Satella considered this for a second.
Then he whispered one more tip just as Felt reappeared. "Don't let on how bad you want this thing back."
Peter was watching Felt until he saw the woman who had just entered the room behind her. Average height with black hair, which now that he thought about it, he hadn't really seen out and about in the city today. It was curled and styled so that one side of it cascaded off of the featured boa in her cloak and fell down her back. Another part was in a near braid running down her front to her hips.
Her eyes were purple, though a darker shade than Satella's and her skin was pale white. She would have been beautiful if not for the fact that there was something off about her. She spoke some inane greeting as she glided across the room. Her cloak was opened in the front enough to show what she wore underneath: a skin tight black dress with purple trim that covered only enough of her breasts to not be overly provocative and exposed the skin all the way down to just below her navel.
"Oh," she said in a dignified tone. "There are some other guests here with us."
"Yeah, those are you competitors," Felt said.
Rom poured a glass of milk and handed it over the bar to Felt who placed it down next to the newcomer's seat just as she dropped into it. The woman stared down at the milk, seemingly giddy and wiggled slightly in her seat. "Ooo, well now this is exciting—there are to be refreshments served too?"
Felt sighed. "Look, lady, I don't want these two to waste your time, but I just want to know how much your rate for this is," she held the item up to show it off: a small triangular badge that had a slightly glow to the jewel.
The dark haired woman took a long drink of her milk. "Well, I was prepared to pay ten blessed coins as I told you, but you and I both know that you don't enter this kind of negotiations without a preparing for the unexpected." She fished a small velvety coin purse out and emptied its contents onto the table.
Felt flicked through them, counting them quickly. "Twenty blessed coins?"
The buyer licked the milk from her lips with an audible slurping sound and her eyes flicked in Satella's direction.
"Unless you've got some kind of offer that can top that, I don't think there's going to be anything we have left to deliberate on here," Rom said.
"I do," Satella said getting to her feet. She probably didn't realize that her upper lip was still with wet and Peter didn't have the heart to tell her. "You can rush and be happy with the blessed coins here or for the price of fifteen more blessed coins I can come back in two days time and purchase this off of you," she said.
The dark haired woman looked at what was left of her milk, tilting the glass and holding it up by her face. She put it to her lips, threw her head back to finish it off and then placed the glass on the table. "You should take their deal," she said rising from her seat and shrugging. She reached down and scooped up her coins.
"You're giving up just like that?" Asked Felt.
"While I was fully prepared to pay the full amount that my benefactor provided, I have no other money to front for their efforts. If I make the decision to match the girl's price here and now there's no guarantee that it won't come out of my pay," she explained.
So there was someone else, someone had hired this woman to hire someone else to steal Satella's property? It really didn't make sense and the more that Peter mulled over it the more worrying the conclusion had become. Maybe in a world where there was paper trails and cameras you would hire an intermediary to do something like this to keep your hands clean, but there was something about this woman that screamed she had some role in this chain of command.
There had to be something she excelled at.
The woman sauntered toward the door and Peter couldn't help but take a peek at her butt, he felt not only a little dirty for doing it, but like he was putting his own life in danger somehow.
Felt slapped the table. "Two days and over thirty blessed coins, I call that a deal. Looks like you lovebirds won!" She teased.
Peter glanced to Satella. "Oh we're not—it's not like that."
"By the way, what's made you want buy this trinket out from under me so badly?" The woman asked, she was at the door now and had opened it. Orange evening sunlight spilled in around her darkening her to a silhouette, but Peter could still see the glow of her eyes.
Satella straightened her back and stood up as if to meet the woman's gaze from across the room. "Because it was my badge and it is my responsibility and mine alone to care for it," she declared.
The dark haired woman turned, the closed lip smile on her face barely visible. "How fortunate—"
Peter's tingle erupted, shaking him to his very core. He almost couldn't move, but he knew he had to.
"—I shall take my time examining your entrails. I wonder how an elf's differ from that of a human!?"
Peter outstretched his arm, pressed his middle two fingers into the palm of his hand to trigger the web shooter and used it to give himself that extra momentum. He leapt into Satella, grabbing her and tackling her down to the ground just as jagged, hooked blade sailed through the air right where she had been.
Then something sharp pierced his back, just above the waistline. How was this woman so fast? How had she even tracked the movement.
Peter and Satella rolled into a lump, the knife jutting out of him sending shockwaves of pain through his person as he brushed against the floor. Satella looked slightly hurt from the fall, but when she sat up and saw the knife she screamed out.
"Peter!"
There was a heat pooling around him. This was a lot of blood, was it all his. He looked at Satella and hoped she was okay. Everything was moving so fast. How had this woman targeted him like that.
Then he saw Old Man Rom move to intercept her, his big club raised as he moved with impossible speed and agility. And when the old man and the man clashed the whole room seemed to vibrate from the impact.
Then Peter understood. Of course she wasn't some intermediary—someone had hired an assassin. And if it was Satella they wanted they had found to perfect way to bring her right where they needed her.
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry," Satella kept muttering the words over and over.
"Lia, we don't have long," Puck said, but she wasn't listening.
Peter pushed himself away from her and fought to get to his feet. Rom and the dark haired assassin were trading blows around the room, smashing their way through the furniture and some of the Loot House's merchandise. Old Man Rom was fast, for sure, but Peter could, by his estimate, easily keep up with him, which meant that this woman wasn't even expending much effort here.
"What an exhilarating evening—I've never sliced into a giant before!" The woman was laughing, blushing with pride.
Peter reached back and yanked the knife out of his body before webbing the wound up vigorously. This assassin was really into all this and Peter didn't want the first time that he actually made a woman you know be because she'd split him open and dug out his stomach.
"Pete, what are you doing? Where are you getting all those ropes?" Puck asked.
"I'll explain everything when this is over," Peter said before patting his hand over the webbed up spot. "Karen, are you there?" Peter called to seemingly no one at all.
And he was rewarded by the nano machine Spider-Man mach 3.0 costume encasing his form. There was a recognizable blip sound as the AI of his suit and heads up display came online.
"Always, Peter," the familiar voice of the female virtual assistant said.
"You've got a transformation!?" Puck exclaimed.
Satella stared up at him. "Peter—is that you?"
"Look Satella, I'm sorry for hiding this from you guys. It's just—ugh you know force of habit," as he spoke there was clear pain in his voice. The wound was worse than he had thought. "I'll make this up to you. I promise."
Peter mustered up all he had and jumped to the ceiling, sticking himself there just in time to see the woman moving to cut through Rom's arm. With no time to aim his hit better Peter pulled Rom with a well placed web, but the old man tripped and the assassin jumped up, stretching her long leg out and delivered a kick to the back of Rom's head that knocked him out clean.
"It would seem someone changed into their formal wear for this little outing," said the dark haired woman running her tongue along the sharp edge of her blade.
Peter sent a barrage of web blasts at her, but she cut them out of the air with ease. From a distance he would be too slow to overpower her by himself, so he had to come up with something else. Peter jumped from the ceiling and fired a web past the assassin and zipped toward her.
When she moved to avoid the head on attack he kicked up, adjusted in the air with a small jerk from a secondary web and delivered a rolling kick to the top of her head. He expected that to be it, it would have dropped any other human. Instead she pulled back and glared up at him, blood running from the side of her head.
"How delicious," she said.
"You'll pay for what you did to Rom, you bitch!" Felt screamed. The young woman squatted down into a running stance, pulling the knife from her back pouch and with blinding speed she raced around the room, springing off of walls and criss-crossing right past the assassin.
The dark haired woman ran her fingers through the loose tendrils of her hair. "How I envy you, to be so loved by this world that you are blessed with the power of the very winds."
Felt went in for the attack and the assassin readied a vertical strike through the air. Peter webbed her arm and pulled the attack away and forced her to parry Felt's blow with the other hand. Still the force of even that blocked attack sent Felt flying into the wall near Satella.
Peter circled around, trying to put himself between Satella, Felt, and the assassin. "Go you two, you have to get out of here. I'll hold her off," Peter said. "Go!" He hadn't looked back in a while, but when he did he noticed Puck floating above Satella's head.
"I would go, Pete, but then I'd leave you all alone with this pretty lady here—I'd say that we're both about to have full dance cards," all around Puck and Satella the air coalesced into spikes of ice. "Thank you, Peter and Felt for buying me time to ready all these."
"Felt run! Get the badge away from her!" Satella managed.
Felt crawled to her feet. "I still expect my pay," she said, though her eyes were starting to tear up. With that she zoomed out of the Loot House, dodging past an absent strike from the assassin.
Before she could move too far Satella walked forward, her pale hand raised in front of her with the palm forward. "I won't allow you to hurt Peter or anyone else anymore!" Came the shrill voice of the silver haired half-elf stepping up at Peter's side. "You're hurt," she whispered to him.
The dark haired woman smiled so that her teeth showed, then licked at her lips. "That's quite the declaration, should we make our little duel official?" The woman tossed her knife up catching it on her other hand and twirling it expertly.
A nod from the half elf was the only answer, Peter was confused by what was going on.
The dark haired assassin touched a knife to her breast in a salute. "Elsa Granhiert, but you may call me The Bowel Hunter," she grabbed the fabric of her clothes at the hips and dipped into a little curtsey, crossing her legs over one another.
She looked to Peter as she spoke, her eyes mournful and when she stated her name, he knew why.
"Emilia, Witch of Glaciation." She gave a truncated bow, but didn't take her eyes off of Elsa.
Elsa danced side to side, readying herself for a dash. "Then let us begin," she said.
The temperature in the room plummeted. Peter could see Emilia's breath in the air as she took several deep breaths. Then with a flourish of her hand, she brought the ice spikes crashing down on Elsa's side of the room.