Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY or any recognizable characters from other series.
Leaving the room, I make my way into the lobby. It looks like a different receptionist is at the front desk than earlier. A teenage looking girl who didn't even look up from her scroll as I walked past her and out the door.
Once outside I take in the sight of the village. Unlike during the day with most of the nearby shops and places closed along with there being almost no people outside at this time of night leaving the walkways empty there is an eerie feeling to the village.
I leave behind thoughts of the nighttime creepiness of Higanbana and head to a nearby alleyway.
After I made sure I was alone, I pulled some clothes from my inventory and changed into them from my current set. Wearing a pair of oversized black trousers held up by a belt with the legs rolled up to my ankles and kept in place with some hair ties. Removing my coat and shirt and replacing them with a burgundy tailcoat that I had taken from Kuroyuri using my sword to cut off the tail end that was reaching down to the floor. I tucked my hair into a beanie like hat and switched out my scarf for a wooden mask that was scratched up but besides that it was fine.
If I'm going to be breaking into and robbing a place, I don't want to be wearing the clothes I wear during the day.
My hand rests on the pommel of my sword as I gaze down at it and my back at the shield on my back.
I'm going to have to change out my weapons too.
Sending the sword and shield to my inventory, I took out the only other usable weapon in my inventory that had a sheath. The longsword was thin with a broken tip that made its length about a fifth of what it was meant to be, along with a jagged point. It's strange not having a shield after all this time, but I'll just have to deal with it.
It didn't take me as long as I thought it would to reach the meeting spot, as the few people who were out and about at this time of night were leaving open taverns and were not exactly vigilant of anyone around them.
Walking toward the clothing store from earlier, I noticed Ains leaning against the building. Noticing my arrival, he pushed himself off and headed my way only to stop in his tracks.
He asked, "You're that guy from before, right?" I nodded.
While looking over me and trying to contain his laughter, he continued, "What are you wearing?"
"I didn't want to do this in my regular clothes, but I don't have anything else normal that would fit me."
Note to self: Get an alternate set of clothes that won't look ridiculous if I need to do more illegal things in the future.
"Dude, you been in Higanbana for what? A few days at most" Ains asked.
"Not even a full day" I replied.
"I highly doubt anyone would recognize you if anything this" he said pointing at me "whatever this is, would make you stand out more you would be better off wearing a cloak or something."
It's not like I had much experience with crime in my old life. I didn't make a lot of money but I was able to afford the few things I wanted. Hell, my biggest regular expense was the gacha games I played, and I never considered robbing a place just so I could spend it on png anime girls.
Taking his advice, I removed a dark sheet from my inventory. I wear it over my shoulders in a similar way I would a cloak, pulling the top end up into a hood and using clothespins near the neck area to keep it in place.
"Better" I state in a flat tone.
"Being naked would have been better than whatever you were trying to do before," he says chuckling. "We have a few other people we need to meet up with before we start anything."
Keeping my hand on the hilt of the sword on my back, I followed behind Ains through some back alleys towards the barbeque place.
"You can call my Ains and know you can relax with that sword a bit, I'm not a hunter just a thief, I doubt if I could fight you even if I wanted to"
At his statement, I still didn't lower my hand.
"No offense, but i prefer to stay on guard in most situations."
Given the level gap between us, I'm not really worried about him. It's whoever we'll be meeting that has me on edge. Now putting more thought into what I'm doing I made a really big assumption that whoever else we were going to be working with would be of similar strength to ains.
Index, since you gave me this quest, it means it can't be a trap, right?
All quests you will receive will always have a nonzero chance of completion.
That's not really the answer I wanted.
As we approached two other people that looked to be waiting for us, I stopped my internal conversation with Index.
Looking at who moved towards him he was wearing a black hoodie and blue jeans, he had dark brown hair and eyes, and overall his looks were average.
By average, I mean actually average. I've been in this world for about five weeks now and even though I haven't met a lot of people in that time with most of it spent in a small under construction village or on the road. Nearly all of the people I've encountered have been varying degrees of attractive. Although I had expected this when dealing with the main cast of this world, even a lot of no name random background characters had an unnecessary level of beauty to them.
Having seen this person who could easily be described as the most background of background characters and using my [observe] skill, I noticed he had only level two, making him even weaker than Ains.
And for all of two seconds I thought maybe this whole thing might just be a simple and easy side quest until I looked over at our fourth and final member.
The last person looked to be the oldest among us, maybe in his late teens. He wore a yellow almost golden mask that was nearly ineffective since it only covered the area around his eyes and left the rest of his face completely exposed. His light brown hair was pulled back into a long ponytail by a ribbon the same color as his mask. What I initially thought was loose side hair were actually floppy dog ears with the hair on them styled in a similar way to his bangs. The rest of his outfit can best be described as fancy. Green two-tailed coat with golden embroidery, waistcoat that matched his mask over a puffy long sleeved white shirt with frills around the wrists. White gloves and breaches tucked into knee high brown boots with buckles near the ankles completed his outfit, which made him look like he had just walked out of the eighteenth century.
The outfit alone isn't really that significant compared to most hunters I have seen since coming here, however, the odd pose he's striking has me wondering what's going on. He had his chest dramatically puff out with one hand on his hip and the other raised excessively with the tips of his fingers clutching a flower close to his nose.
For a moment I just stared at him then looked back at Ains. I had briefly forgotten I was wearing a mask and that he couldn't see my raised eyebrow but he still picked up on my unasked question.
"Yeah, that's just Cidd," answered Ains, looking exasperated with Cidd.
"No, I do not know who Cidd is that you speak of. I am the Masked Gentleman!" declared the masked Cidd as he assumed a new pose.
After Cidd's declaration, I looked back to Ains who, without having to see my flat expression behind my mask, began to explain.
"You see Ci– I mean Masked Gentleman here is really good at picking locks and stuff like that" Ains explained while correcting himself, "He's gotten us into a couple of places before this."
"How many times have you guys done this?" I ask.
"This is our fourth place, we could have done more, but the Masked Gentleman will only get us into places he considers worthy of justice" Ains responds while putting air quotes around the word justice.
After Ains statement Cidd/Masked Gentleman rejoined the conversation tossing aside the flower he was holding and pointing directly at me.
"You are a fellow faunus are you not, then you should understand the justice to which I disperse, no?" Before I could answer, he turned on his heel facing away from me and knelt on his knee. "Do not consider me as a simple criminal, a neerdowell who would take from those who work earnestly and honestly, no for I only set my sights on the ones who view themselves above their fellow man simply due to their birth." Standing and facing me again, he spread his arms wide. "For what I do is justice truly to those who deserve it."
"What?" I asked in total confusion.
"What he is trying to say is that he will only help us break into places that are anti-faunus" says Ains.
"Oh '' I replied, looking back at the previously exuberant faunus in front of me that was now drooping at the realization that his previous statement had completely gone over my head.
Cidd (The Masked Gentleman)
Race: Faunus (Dog)
Level 5
HP – 120
VIT – 12
STR – 12
DEX – 20
INT – 17
WIS – 17
CHA – 15
LUK – 20
Well, I guess it's good to be working with another faunus, even though this one is kind of… unique. He's a higher level than Ains, but still weaker than myself. That's good if they try to pull something over on me.
"Well I look forward to working with you I guess?"
After arriving at the barbecue place, Cidd got us in through the back door with surprising ease. I do not know if his lock picking skills were really all that good or not given that I had never picked a lock before. My surprise mainly came from the simplicity of the lock, it being just a couple of normal locks on the door. I asked about the security system and was told that there wasn't one. A lot of the village is powered by dust, so an alarm system would get expensive very quickly. It was cheaper to pay the hunters guarding the village to make rounds through the village to just keep an eye on the stores and stuff. Giving us a timeframe before the next patrol makes its way to the area we are in.
I was handed a flashlight as we entered.
"Ok, we have about thirty minutes before the patrol arrives. I want us out and gone in ten minutes" said Ains pointing his flashlight at his watch.
"Well, I can carry a lot, so why don't we take everything we can?" I suggest.
"Why? The food we are going to eat, but what are we going to do with a bunch of utensils and pots and junk? It's not like we can resell it without getting caught," says Ains.
"Well I can hold onto it and-"
"And once you move on, send us some lien in the mail we don't really benefit from taking us, besides the food there won't be much and most places don't leave money overnight unguarded."
Yeah, I'm the only one who actually gets something out of taking everything else. After all, I can't force them to help me. Wait a minute, I am not the one doing all the heavy lifting. well not actual lifting cause my inventory is weightless. But they won't be able to carry much of anything out with me.
"Remember you need me for this whole take all the food plan anyway I could just leave right now and no one gets anything"
"Seriously that's kinda petty, man" said Ains anger seeping into his tone and moves up closer to me.
"Well I'm a petty person" I say back to him reaching back to the sword on my back causing him to remember that I have a weapon and is stronger than him.
Cidd then steps between us. "Fellow dispensers of justice, calm yourselves. Our time is limited and we should not waste it bickering among ourselves. I agree that the establishment should pay a hefty price for its pointless discrimanation. So my masked friend, why not collect what you can of the assortment of wares you deem necessary for your compensations. While my colleagues and I bring forth our desired substance for you to transport."
At my silence Ains lets out a sigh and translates. "He's telling you to just get whatever random shit you want to take while we bring you out the food."
"Ah, yeah, that works for me" I agree.
"Ok fine, you get your forks or whatever while we get what we actually came here for" says Ains, obviously still annoyed at me.
Looks like I pissed Ains off. It's not like he can really do anything about it. Like he told me before, if he told anyone he would be incriminating himself and I would have all the evidence in my inventory so he couldn't prove anything even if he tried.
After a short while I had grabbed what I could from the restaurant plates, utensils, pots and pans. All the while, the other three brought me various meats both cooked and uncooked. Sadly, I wasn't able to add the barbecue grills to my inventory because they were too large. By this point, I had just gone to the area where the food was kept and added what I could.
"We should leave, we got more than enough," said Ains looking at his watch.
I shine my light across the room. I don't have everything but I definitely got most of it.
"Yeah, let's go" I state with reluctance that I couldn't get everything.
After getting out of the building, we headed to another part of the village.
Once we got far enough away, I got their attention.
"So how are we going about this? I'm pretty sure you don't want me to just drop your share on the ground here."
"I'll handle that hold on." Cidd walked over to a nearby shed-like building and pushed out a car sized cart with padding on the inside. "Just put our half in here."
Shrugging I started to pull the meat from my inventory placing it in the cart. I wasn't sure how much of it would count as half until I got the answer in the form of the game notification.
Quest Completed
[Quest: Revenge is a dish best served barbequed]
Objective - Steal and get away with more than half of the food from the barbeque buffet.
Reward - 1500 EXP
+1500 EXP (+375)
Level up!
HP, AP and MP restored.
Skill Gained
[Aura of Retribution] (Toggleable Passive)
When this aura is active, anyone who attacks the caster will suffer light-based damage. All allies within [Consecration] gain the same effect. Only one aura can be active at a time.
50MP to toggle on.
Primary and secondary professions available.
I got my first aura and it makes my consecration slightly more usable, so I guess that ability mediocrity was because it's going to be buffed up with some of my future skills.
But even more importantly, I have professions now, and I assume those are for crafting and stuff. I'll check it out once I get back to the inn.
"So we're done here?" I ask.
Ains looks over the cart of meats then up toward me. "To be honest, I was expecting you to just walk off with everything."
I'd have been able to but I didn't get the quest completion until I gave them their half, and I need the EXP more than I need the actual food, but they don't need to know that.
"No, we had an agreement that you get me in and we split the food, win win."
He gave a nod and a smile at my statement. He seems to have forgotten his anger towards me for getting what he wanted out of the deal.
As the three push their cart back into the building, I leave. I duck into a nearby secluded area to change my clothes and head back to the inn.
Author's Notes: Yeah, I know I've been gone for a few weeks, but there is a reason, I found a lot of really good fics. For those who are not aware I crosspost this fic on fanfic/net and questionable questing. I assumed most others did the same with FF being the main place fics were posted, but after looking through QQ there are so many great fics I've been missing out on (especially Danmachi SI fics). So I've spent more time reading lately than writing. But don't worry, this is still being updated though there may not be a chapter every week.
I'm also on Shiro's Gaming Omniverse Discord server under The channel name dreadrot-light-rain in the Pleb Author Studios category if you have questions or just want to talk about the fic.
Discord Link: discord. gg/wd3tUYWVCd