Chapter 3
Upon her exhausting stroll she noticed strange people staring at her suspiciously. Perhaps a 14-year-old girl carrying a heavy garbage bag was unordinary, especially in this part of the district. After spotting one of the men in the sprawls sharpening a knife for a split second, she increased her speed and started to the more dignified areas of the district, where girls carrying wads of cash are slightly more commonplace.
She avoided major conflict moving to the upper portion of the district, but up here she found the prices much higher. She noticed nearby Outer Tribunal Judges, surprisingly more prominent than lower-district, turning their gaze away from each other and towards her. Judges pledged their allegiance to the law ordained by the Magistrate, and were authorized to punish potential wrong-doers however they decide after years of vigorous training in innumerous ways of combat. One look from them and your life was in their hands. The look alone terrified her even more so than the knife sharpener from before. Her clothes were red flags of a lucky guttersnipe - a sleeveless matte silver top with scraggly worn jeans and glossy rain boots - so she fled eagerly to a nearby soft-end clothing market, where countless citizens crowded together in a venue to find the best price from freelance merchants, eager to sell for profit alone. The amount of people easily drowned her out from acquisition, especially at her height - barely passing four feet five inches - overwhelming the poor girl, barely giving room to see anything at all. She needed an article that could provide more storage, so she can hide the credits and any other goods; maybe she could even hide weapons to defend herself.
An eerie merchant distinguished from everyone else in the shop, taking a corner all to himself, clearly blind to modern business tactics as he was, but he had great taste judging by his witch doctor-like mask, with a long green tunic reaching down his legs, tied around his calf, revealing his choice to go barefoot on the frigid concrete.
"Gather and come, my ssssemingly ssstarved shhhhhopers…" The mysterious marketer moved smoothly and trace-like, slithering around his post where his available garments displayed on the floor on top of a rug instead of the traditional table, the choice for all the other merchants. "Sssspiritsss await your conviction, your… dedication to their… welcoming eyessss..." The prices were outrageously high, some topping to that of a small house. She cringed at the horridly drab grey and dark purples that had no buttons, form, or any shape, being strictly functional. Before moving on from her clearly secluded viewing point; however, she was noticed by the strange merchant.
"A wandering ssserpent, a little lost sssoul…" He pointed at her without looking; the crowd paid little attention to the two outcasts. "Wear my clothes, and they will fulfill your deepest, darkessst goalssss…" He swapped the large price tag on a very unfitting large jet black coat that would certainly fit the engineer to a lower, more manageable price - ten thousand credits - and eagerly beckoned the girl over with one finger, and she complied, walking over wide-eyed with naive intrigue and wonder. She forked over all of the bag's contents and left it on the rug, but instead of gathering the bounty, the man stepped back.
"Wekono grace you." He stood before the child and revealed from his right arm an unyielding viper that slithered onto the bag, wrapping around it before swiping away the credits from the rug and behind a cloth sheet behind his master, and the merchant chuckled. "My snake seems to like you."
