Title: Mercenary Tales

Author: shadowcat15

Pairings/Characters: Sothe, Sanaki, Volke

Warnings: None.

Notes: This one is too long to be titled a drabble, but oh well.

03. Voyage

The Greil Mercenaries were no strangers to spending extended periods of time together. It was a downfall of having a job such as theirs. A new member quickly learned which of the rest they got along with -- and which they didn't. That knowledge was a necessary skill for survival in their line of work, where tension and frustration got to even the best of them. (Oscar still blushed in embarrassment when anyone, but especially Mist, mentioned the time he was so deep in thought about the upcoming battle he accidentally wandered into the girls bath.)

So when their course was revealed to involve a sea voyage several months in duration, none among them thought it wasn't within their capabilities to handle each other for a couple months, and if they did, no one voiced their concerns.

They might have made it to Begnion without incident too, if it weren't for some of the extra passengers they accumulated. If Ike was asked, everything had gone fine, but that was because Ike was the commander, and as far as anyone had told him, things had gone fine.

Ike was true to his word, and put Sothe to work around the ship with menial tasks designed to keep him out of trouble. This worked in theory. Sothe was perfectly well-behaved when Ike, Soren, or Titania were around, but the moment they left the area the others began noticing small belongings going missing. At night, most people had added the task of checking their belongings to their nightly rituals, and if anything was found missing (which it always was) Sothe found a bunch of angry mercenaries standing at the foot of his bedroll. Sothe never put up a fuss about returning the things he'd taken, explaining that he was just doing it for the practice.

While reactions to his practice technique were varied, the majority of the ships passengers didn't really care, as long as he would return what they stole. Tormod decided to turn it into a game, trying to stay vigilant throughout the day as to not get robbed. Sothe wasn't looking to make friends as Tormod was, but he couldn't help being amused by Tormod's face when he showed up with the group of people who wanted their possessions back every night.

Due to her noble upbringing, Astrid was quiet and spent most of her time helping around the ship. When she became the newest member of the group, Sothe didn't stealing anything from her for risk of angering her. Any chores she did were chores Ike couldn't force him to do.

Then Sanaki arrived.

Ike was still unaware of Sothe's favored past-time, so when Sanaki threatened to go to him after Sothe stole a few gold coins from her satchel, Sothe was convinced that the next time they made port he was going to be booted out of the ship with more bruises than there were passengers.

When none of this happened, and a man wearing a mask whom he'd never seen before showed up and took him aside he was very, very confused. The man lectured him quietly about the difference between jobs a thief did for fun, and jobs a thief did because he was being paid large sums of gold.

Stealing from the Apostle of Begnion was apparently one of the latter.