STLTH 100

Here's hoping for a bigger chapter before I leave this alone for a bit. In any case… is anyone still reading? Meh… guess I'll wait for the awkward silence to end.

7.

"Holy shit… Is that Rocam?" As soon as the old man saw Marco, he backpedaled away from him into a corner where he withdrew a rusted sword which he held in shaking arthritic hands. "Stay away from me, you devil!" Squinting a bit, he noticed that a familiar-looking girl was next to him and his shocked reaction increased. "Higgs, what the hell are you doing with him?"

The squire cursed under her breath at the man's response to seeing both her and Marco, knowing that the smuggler might blab something he shouldn't. "Calm down. Your eyes are going — this is someone else. He's a fellow squire in the castle."

"Fellow squire?" Marco parroted.

"I won't start if you don't," Higgs hissed back into his ear, only a few moments before she hurriedly put some space in between herself and him. "Anyway, old-timer, we need a portal to Quest Buy."

"Is this official knight business?" the smuggler asked.

"No," Higgs said back quickly. "Private shopping. Private shopping for privates." Marco bit on his lower lip at the girl's candidness, almost peeved that she was so forward. Already pulling out some cash, he asked the smuggler how much to open a portal but the man refused payment.

"To hell with that, you brats. The blasted collectors have been going around with a vengeance since this morning and I'm running outta space and use for my money. Just bring back food or something. And none of the cursed or enchanted stuff." Pulling out an aged pair of dimensional scissors and what looked remarkably like a pager, he handed the pager to Higgs (while still giving a scrutinizing distrustful look at Marco) and opened the portal. "Now get outta here." Without any preamble, Higgs already started to enter the portal and had to drag Marco along with her because of his sudden impersonation of a statue due to hesitancy and confusion. He couldn't figure out what the whole 'Rocam' business was about or why the smuggler apparently wanted nothing to do with him. More so to the point, the man was especially concerned when he saw both he (Marco) and Higgs enter together, clearly a sign of bad history and a probable reason why she resented him so much. He was still making a note to ask the old man about his reaction later when Higgs pulled on his arm more firmly.

"C'mon, nerd. Move your legs." He finally walked after her, and as soon as they entered the portal into Quest Buy, the old man closed the magical doorway behind them. Marco became suddenly concerned and asked Higgs how they were going to get back. "That's what the pager is for. I use it, he gets the memo and opens the portal right where we are, and we get in. Simple."

"Oh." He got the feeling that she'd done this often before with this so-called smuggler and decided to just follow her lead. Hell, even the food bit didn't even faze her-... it could even be a practice of his. "You know where the underwear section is?"

"Yeah, I know where it is." She started to point one way but her hand visibly shook, betraying the fact that she wasn't sure. "No. It's that way," she decided, pointing in another direction. Marco facepalmed himself at her antics.

"You don't have a clue, do you?"

"I know where it is! It's just that I'm not shopping for the blasted things every week!"

"And Quest Buy is confusing," Marco added quietly as he went over to where the directions board was. "You're lucky I came along." Higgs watched as the Diaz gave the board a once-over before pointing in an entirely different direction from what Higgs had chosen whilst picking up a shopping basket. "It's that way."

The ginger-head folded her arms in annoyance. "What makes you so sure? No one's ever managed to decipher even half of that thing for as long as it's been there." Marco only smirked in superiority, and told his companion 'thanks for the compliment'. Deciding to just follow him to see how he'd embarrass himself this time around, she did just that, only to end up in the underwear section after only a few minutes. It was undeniable — they stood in an aisle filled with the undergarments of various styles and sizes and color in any fashion one could imagine. "Damn, nerd. That was right impressive."

She felt off handing out compliments so simply (especially to a guy who looked exactly like Rocam) and she could tell that even Marco was almost uncomfortable because of it. Her personality hadn't done a 180' in the least, and despite him being the squire of the eccentric magic-wielding princess, getting a kudos from her had to have been the strangest thing to happen to him all month.

"Um… okay." He cleared his throat, trying to quell the air of the awkwardness. He just watched as the girl just turn away from him and started to peruse the expansive aisle of underwear from the female side of the row. She motioned to him to give her the metal basket he'd had the presence of mind to get, and without further ado, started to place choice knickers inside. His plans to discomfit her with ill-fitting panties were gone for the moment when she asked him what size the princess wore. "Oh… err…" He hadn't a clue. His eyes fell to her waist and his observant gaze made the squire uneasy; it dredged up how Rocam had stared at her like this before, only then with hungry eyes. "I'm guessing she's your size?"

"Well, we'd better get a bunch of them around the same size, a few sizes bigger and a few that are smaller. Just in case."

"Yeah. Some extra."

And just like that, his eyes squinted slyly as he remembered. Right. Time to buy up the small ones. At checkout, he'd just pack out the small ones into her package and send her on her way and take her most certainly well-picked ones to give to Star. He was about to start picking up the smaller ones when Higgs turned to face him, a good-natured grin on her face. "Don't worry about wasting your cash! You can wear the extras so they don't go to waste. You wanna wear 'em, don't you? Must be the reason why you stole every girl's frillies in the first place."

Her smile let him know that what she said was purely in jest; it was only a joke. Still a victim of circumstances, Marco found himself laughing. "It just happened!"

"Oh yeah? All you did was commit the most nonchalant act of massive panty larceny in history. Good luck becoming a knight with that hanging over your head." Marco could only find himself groaning at this realization and desperately sought to change the subject.

"Alright, alright. Back to business."

"Sure, sure." She picked up a pair of pink tangas and held it up to Marco. "That's my size. Since she's active in my opinion, she can get that. Go pick out more like this with designs that the girly princess likes." She was holding it by the ends spread out for him to have a reference, but his mind was still stuck on what she'd first said.

'That's my size…' Said panties, yes, did look like something that would fit Higgs and Star, but the strangest thing was that he distinctly felt like he knew what they wore already. He was still a teenager, after all, and no matter how nice people believed him to be, Marco was still subject to hormones like everyone else.

There was a small part to him that had a few wisps of awareness last night when he'd been thieving the women's underwear, and that side of him didn't want to forget the details.

Before long, Marco overcrowded out that perverse side and his mind caught up to everything else that she said. "Girly princess? I guess she's happy-go-lucky sometimes, but that doesn't mean that she's 'girly'."

"How should I know? You're her squire, so pick something she'd like." Plopping it into his hands, she walked down the aisle away from him and Marco couldn't determine if she was going to do her own shopping (it could be expensive, he thought in alarm at first, before remembering that she was going to owe him a favor), or to give him privacy. But that was dumb-… he needed guidance!

Well, Marco guessed that he'd find out when he heard her opinion when they got to the checkout.

That was all good, he guessed. He'd only lost a bit of his nerve to get payback on his (former?) bully but was still inclined to carry out his plan. Still with the underwear in his hands, the very same that Higgs herself had claimed was her size, it was now way too easy to buy up the smaller ones especially without her attention. When they got to the cashier, he'd just force her to take the small ones. She'd be picking out tight fabric out of her ass constantly for the next week.

"Let me just get Star's own, first," he mumbled to himself. As he did so, he sifted through his thoughts of everything that's happened so far; there was so much, and it'd been less than two days. Potentially losing his best friend, getting his room trashed, and now panty-shopping with Higgs… at this point, stealing every piece of knicker in the castle (and from Hekapoo herself) was of the least relevance right now, had it not been the start and cause for all this.

Had it been in him to run, he would have used his scissors. Problem was, he couldn't find them. He obviously used them to get to Hekapoo… wait, what if she had something to do with their disappearance? Or better yet, maybe she could help him get them back.

But he still wouldn't run. He, of all people, had lashed out against Star and called her a f*ck-about princess, and to leave him the hell alone. To make it worse, it was just after she'd saved him.

How was he supposed to run from that? How could he just run after hurting his friend like that?

He'd wasted enough time. Approaching the checkout counter, he silently gave thanks that there was no one else there — no waiting time. Unfortunately, that meant that he'd have to wait for Higgs.

There were two things wrong with this. When Higgs had left him, it was in the direction of the checkout counter. He had to have seen her between his location and the cashier-… anything else meant that she was wandering. What made this disconcerting was that her goods (obviously a bunch of panties that was waiting for a sloth to put back on the shelves), were still on the counter. The second factor was that she was his ride home, being the one with the pager.

"Um, dude?"

The sloth behind the cash register looked up slowly and mechanically as if every single action was taxing and had to be deliberated in the mind before execution. It didn't even give a response to acknowledge Marco as if it'd take too much effort.

"Have you seen my friend? A little shorter than me, and she's got like, orange hair. Dressed in a blue tunic?" No response. Marco took that as a sign to be more specific. "Green eyes, has freckles. Seen her? No? Yes?"

The sloth looked as if he were going to shrug but just settled for a nod — apparently nodding was easier. "Your friend went to the bathroom. Behind me. Ran like it was urgent."

Marco was about to walk off but stopped. "Friend?" He hadn't even realized that was what he had said. Higgs, a friend? Well, he didn't expect that. At all. Figuring that he'd just pay for the goods that were on the counter so that he could leave faster. He told the sloth to just check the goods, and in doing so, Marco noticed something strange as the creature was ringing it up; he started by punching a price for an item that wasn't even there.

"Hey, what's that extra price for?"

"She took a few pads with her to the bathroom," the sloth said lamely. When Marco asked what the heck he meant by 'pads', the sloth sighed deeply. "You know, the things that females use when they're less pleasant."

"Less pleasant? What do you mean by… oh cripes."

…

"Higgs? Higgs?" He didn't get an answer, but he kept calling as he paced through the bathroom, hoping that the girl hadn't ACTUALLY left him behind. "Higgs!"

"A'right, shut up. God, the echoes in here are gonna deaf me if you keep that up!" the girl's voice said from one of the stalls.

"Sorry. Hey, Higgs," he said softly, almost whispering, "are you in here? The cashier said you went to the bathroom."

"Hah-hah," she said dryly, "check out the wits on this guy. Looking past whatever piss-poor reason you've got for coming inside the girls' bathroom, how'd you even know I was in here? There are five massive bathrooms on this side of Quest Buy for different genders and species. Had you pegged for a queer, but even a bumble-boy like you would've taken a lot longer finding me in here."

From where he was, Marco guessed that the whole situation would be strange to anyone who would be looking on — that was a fact. There was a girl in a bathroom stall, and he was standing fairly close to it, close enough for her to see his sneakered feet below the bottom of the stall door.

They were conversing or bantering, depending on who you asked.

"I've got some experience with female bathrooms," he admitted without any shame in his voice. "And I know that mewman female bathrooms smell the best, and have the least flooding."

Despite herself, Higgs laughed — once — before sighing. "Uh-huh. So why are you here?"

"Came to find you."

"Obviously! Why couldn't you friggin' wait outside then, hmm? Afraid I'd teleport out of the friggin' water closets?!" she shouted from behind the stall door.

"The thought occurred to me at first," Marco said. He wasn't afraid to say it, and if he'd seen her face-to-face, he'd say it again. "But I figured that you wouldn't."

"Oh?" Higgs's voice grew considerably acidic. "Wouldn't I? You don't even have to dare me. I could leave right now. Just ain't done yet."

"See, I'm actually Princess Turdina-"

"Yeah, no shit," she interrupted.

Marco grinned. She took that revelation well. He didn't expect to tell her, but her knowing already made sense. It made things easier too. "And it's because of that, I know you wouldn't, especially since I figured out what happened. I spent a lot of time at St. Olga's after the revolution. I happen to know a lot about girls, and they can't stand the embarrassment, even with people they know. Even if that old guy was related to you, you wouldn't have teleported back to him with the way you are now."

Higgs, for once, was silent. It was all she could do as she sat on the closed lid of the toilet, wondering if he was going to act like a typical guy and make fun of her.

"Your tunic would hide most of it, but you had on white pants and no underwear. No amount of toilet paper is gonna wipe that away. If the tunic could hide it, then you would have been fine. But it was heavy, wasn't it?"

"Whoop-de-doo. Give the crossdresser a medal," Higgs said glumly, holding her face down in her hands in shame. "Just had to come to laugh in my face, huh?"

Marco shook his head, although she couldn't see it. "Nah," he stated as he tossed a package over the top of the stall door. To the girl's surprise, something fell into her lap and realized that it was a pair of pants and the same tanga that she'd given Marco in the beginning, packaged in wrapping plastic. "I figured that 'hey, we're in a mall that sells everything from a cursed pin to enchanted anchors'. Getting some pants was no problem, and I had the panty as a size reference. Good thing you gave it to me."

Still in the privacy of the stall, Higgs wasted no time changing. Mentally, not that she would ever admit it to anyone, but she was thankful for not having sabotaged Marco's purchases; it'd crossed her mind while browsing to give him a pair of cursed panties for size reference, certain that he'd still give it to the princess, but chose not to in her efforts to better her relations with the boy outside.

She guessed… everything had worked out. She was never more relieved and happy than at that moment.

Finally, she came out, and her old pair of pants were rolled up in the same packaging plastic the new one came in. "Well, that just happened," she muttered in disbelief. Marco nodded and smiled encouragingly. "That never happened. Capische?" He easily understood that she meant that he wasn't to disclose what had just transpired to anyone, and assured her that he wouldn't. "Alright. So… are you sure you didn't just help me out because you were nervous about getting left behind?"

"Make no mistake, I would've eventually gotten back. Lots of people come here using scissors. I helped you because you were on your period."

"So?"

"Girls act mean sometimes around that time of the month, suffering from cramps and headaches and hormones and that just makes them behave as if they want to jump down your throat. Frankly, you've acted as if you were on your period constantly ever since I met you."

"Very funny, asshole."

"It's true!" Marco insisted as they began to make their way out. "But now, it was really happening, and you weren't as crabby. It means that you were actively making an effort not to be mean."

Higgs rolled her eyes. "Yeah, cause it takes a whole lot of effort not to put you in your place." However, from Marco's sudden lapse into silence, she could tell that he was serious. "What, really? You're overthinking things. I did what anyone would do in my position." Suddenly, her mouth was out of her control and now saying things it shouldn't. "Truth be told, I was in a rough spot, and had to act nice to get something from a guy I didn't like."

"You thought. If that were the case, knowing you, I'm guessing you would've just robbed me this morning."

"Occurred to me, nerd."

"But you didn't. I'm not sure about everything that's happened to make you stop picking on me, but I know that it has to do with your arm, Rocam, him being someone who hurt you and the fact that we look alike. You came to terms that I'm not him, or at least damn well realized that bullying me isn't affecting the guy, wherever he is."

"So?" Higgs narrowed her eyes. "What? Do you want a cookie? A standing ovation? Check out the brains on this guy, everyone. A real detective."

He ignored her bark, knowing that it was the only intimidation she had left since she had no more reason to bite. "I was thinking that we could be friends."

Higgs stopped, completely baffled. "… the hell?" Needless to say, she hadn't seen this coming. "Friends? Are you out of your mind?"

"Why not?" He held out his hand for her to shake.

Well, why shouldn't she? A guy close to the princess, loaded with cash and desperate to please; all qualities of a guy she would like to have in her corner. Cons: He looked exactly like Rocam, save for an intentional scar on one of his cheeks. That bastard had used her, and she had reminders of that every time she went to bed and had nightmares, and every morning when she put on her arm-warmers to hide the scars he'd given her.

The worst part was that she'd been infatuated with him too. He hurt her.

Despite how much of a nice guy Marco was, she could barely look Marco in the face sometimes. When she worked up the nerve and told him this, he realized that she was damaged and it'd be difficult for her to change. Her cracks would always be there and knowing this much, it'd affect how he interacted with her too.

He had to show that he'd meet her halfway.

"I won't trip you up in the halls if you won't," he said with a friendly grin.

Yeah. That was a good enough start for her. Her somber face was split with one of her good-natured shy smiles — Marco didn't quite catch himself thinking how pretty it made the squire look. "I won't trip you up either, Marco."

Progress was progress, the Diaz thought, and they had to start somewhere. As they walked out of the bathroom, he tossed the too-small panties in the trash.

"What was that?"

"Nothing," was all he said.