The boy's desperate flight from the seedy establishment took him on a whirlwind tour of the city's back allies – dank corners and locked doors, the occasional bewildered bum, the whole dismal tableau halfway blurred through his damaged vision. He pressed a hand to his face, to find that the flow of fluid wasn't stopping as quickly as he had hoped. Desperate, he slumped against the cold stone wall, rummaging in his pocket for some relief from the throbbing pain. His hand bumped the deck, and he drew it out quickly, adding the ace which he had dropped and shuffling quickly.

"C'mon, c'mon…!" he muttered, and, when things felt right, he drew. A soft exhalation of breath escaped him. Hearts, and a nine, no less. He tossed the card upwards, and pressed a hand to his injured eye. The trickle of blood slowed, then stopped. Probing around his eye, the cardsharp winced as he felt the traces of a bruise, which would probably linger for some time, but at least his eye was now intact and functional.

"Always a good thing," he thought. Bending to pick up the card he had dropped, he stopped suddenly. And stayed stopped, staring straight ahead.

What under the Goddesses was a HOOKER doing in Hyrule?

Certainly nothing she'd get away with, he reflected somewhat ruefully. She was wearing the most outlandish attire – tall, knee-high boots with more buckles than could possibly be practical, black fishnet stockings, and black bangles strung with dark ribbons and attached to some sort of demonic-looking leather bustier. Yet her expression wasn't one of shame, and seemed to have nothing to do with the BDSM look that so set her apart from the crowd bustling about Hyrule City's marketplace.

Most of all, what differentiated her from the crowd was the upright, regal posture of this odd streetwalker, the look of utter pride and scorn upon her face. Far from one who took pride in sensuality, she seemed to have risen utterly above it. It seemed to him that there was no way she could possibly earn a livelihood – he couldn't imagine a man who would dare to insult her all-too-apparent dignity by expressing the desire to possess what goods she peddled.

And, now that the initial shock of her appearance had worn off, yet another unique trait of this all-too-strange woman had made itself known to his repaired eyesight: her skin was dark. Not tan, certainly, but not the typical Hylian pallor he, himself, shared with the teeming population in the city streets - her skin was the color of caramels, suddenly bringing back memories of long ago…

He shook his head, picked up the card, and, replacing it, tucked the deck safely back into his pocket. It was a shame, but he allowed himself to go no further with the thought. Like her, he was a criminal to society, and so to pause and allow himself to reflect on the despoilment of her Goddess-given gifts was not a luxury he could afford. He stepped reluctantly out of the back alley and started across the square; mind still elsewhere, his eyes sojourned to her again, and again he stopped.

A man was following her, a strange expression contorting his face.

'A Ubiquitous,' was his first thought, but then he amended it – perhaps it was one of the woman's customers? But that was strange – customers usually didn't pursue the same whore time after time, in his limited experience, and something in the man's manner was much more alarming than mere lust. The hooker was still striding calmly along, the back of her head arrogant and utterly oblivious to the man fighting through crowds to reach her. Something had to be done.

He squinted at the man, then shuffled the cards within his pocket and drew, peeking downwards. Staring back at him was the king of spades.

"Dammit…!" His worst suspicions confirmed, the cardsharp stuffed this card into his pocket, then took off running. If the cards had not lied – and he had never known them to lie – what this man was contemplating was nothing short of murder.

As ever, the marketplace of Hyrule City had a bustling atmosphere. Gone, however, were the quaint stalls surrounding the village fountain, which had been so commonplace in days of old. After Ganon destroyed the Castle Town, after Link destroyed Ganon, but, more than ever, after both Link and Queen Zelda had mysteriously disappeared four years ago, the city had quickly established itself upon the wreckage of the world which had come before.

Carpenters and laborers, nobles and rich men seeking to become the new heads of state, and all the various races looking to monopolize in the wake of disaster formed a new and intricate hierarchy, one which all of Hyrule was quite unfamiliar with. The sprawl of suburbs had reached nearly to Lon Lon Ranch, and was still spilling over into new developments. Competing firms and companies built buildings and towers ever higher, seeking desperately to find some way to outdo one another. Even the castle had undergone renovations several times, each time by several different designers, so that it had a new and rather lopsided grandiosity which had previously been missing.

And, in the crowded marketplace, the newfound ideals of the teeming metropolis established themselves better, perhaps, than in any other place. Here, bigger and better fruit stands, clothes racks, and crowds reigned supreme, an impressive testament to the booming economy of Hyrule. And an annoying hindrance to the cardsharp's progress on catching up to the prostitute and her malicious pursuer.

He stopped, leaned up against a stand, panting. "Okay… I'm definitely not 'born to run' or anything…" he wheezed. The young man wracked his brains on what to do, trying to ignore the hysterics of the man whose stand he was leaning upon. At last, his eyes lit up, and he raced after the two with new enthusiasm, yelling.

"Thief! Stop him, stop him - THIEF!" he bellowed as loud as he could. This caught the crowd's attention. He was still too far away… well, it only made his ploy more plausible. "That one, in the blue… thief!"

At last, 'that one, in the blue,' caught wind of what the cardsharp was shouting. He turned indignantly. The young man smirked as he saw the whore, turning to behold her good fortune, racing toward a back alley unobserved. But he had the crowd's attention - he had better act fast.

And, once again, his face lit, this time in amazement. This would be easier than he thought.

"You owe me money, you stupid prick!" he said with sincere astonishment and irritation. "Yes, I mean you, don't look at me like that! I beat you fair and square two nights ago, and I counted my money afterwards… you stole half the pot without my noticing!"

The man's face, which had been mottled with annoyance, now was mysteriously drained of color. Unfortunately, he pulled himself together faster than the cardsharp had expected.

"Gambling, then, were you?" he asked, with a smile that could not possibly be good. "By Nayru… and the admission of it from your own mouth, too. Don't you think before you speak? Perhaps it was my first time there, perhaps I was there for quite a different reason than engaging in your base trade… and perhaps you only got what was coming to you, for flying in the face of the Goddesses' commands…"

The young man blanched. Like silent white wings, a fair crowd was drawing closer around the two, and with them, no doubt, the Ubiquitous. He was a horrible liar, too, he thought vaguely amidst a haze of alibis. He looked around hopefully for some member of the crowd to break up the fight, but evidently they were quite eager to see what would happen. Cursing his bad luck and the whore that he'd defended, he shut his eyes and thought hard of what he was going to say.

"You should know… theft is forbidden by the Goddesses, too, you crook, and just because you gambled to punish what you saw as wrongdoing doesn't take the sin away from your soul, either!" The cardsharp took an aggressive step towards the man, and, at last, heard the telltale shouts of the Hyrulian Guard behind him. He smiled, then reached into his own pocket and threw out his winnings from the latest set of games. Before the crowd could react, he plunged into it and ran, hoping for luck.

As usual, his prayers were answered. The Guard, drawn by the shouting and by the crowd's scuffle over grabbing the money he had dropped, completely ignored him, and nobody in the crowd seemed to care much either. Dusting himself off and breathing a long sigh of relief, he congratulated himself mentally, then set about looking for the prostitute. He had no idea where the man had gone to, and somehow, he wasn't sure he wouldn't try to follow her again. He sought the alley he had seen her turn into, and entered it.

To his surprise, it was utterly empty. An enormous dumpster lay at the far end of the alley, as well as piles upon piles of trash cans in disarray. There were no doors, no fire escapes, no windows. As he headed cautiously down it, an old crow sitting on the dumpster eyed him beadily, but it was clearly the only living thing around.

"Funny… I didn't see her leave…" he muttered to himself, confused. He cast an amused glance at the crow. "It was you, wasn't it? You ate her, eh?"

He shrugged, then turned to leave. A loud flapping noise distracted him as the crow, perhaps disturbed by his sudden movement, lifted off behind him. Idly, he looked up at it. It circled a few times, building up altitude, he supposed, and then flew straight ahead of him. It soared to the end of the alleyway, then turned to follow the street.

The cardsharp blinked. Somehow, he hadn't thought crows followed the roads like that…

He shrugged, shaking his head uneasily, and headed down the alley himself. Chancing to look up, he saw a sight which nearly gave him a heart attack.

The sinister man was back. He, too, had been tracking the crow as it flew over the rooftops. As he watched it soar down the main thoroughfare, he looked back at the dumpster, and the young man standing numbly in the entrance to the alleyway, and smiled - but that was all he needed to do to give the cardsharp the absolute unholy creeps. No human being, he thought over the pounding of his heart in his ears, should be equipped with a smile like that.

And, as the tide of people flowed around him, the man quite simply disappeared.