Adam Smasher, Level 1 Adventurer, Hestia Familia
"What the fuck are you wearing?"
Scrappy grinned, twisting to show off all angles before the two of them, then replying. "Armor! I found it thanks to Eina-san's help. It was only nine-thousand nine-hundred valis, can you believe it?" Hestia politely clapped for the kid, then trailed off when she noticed he wasn't following her lead.
Adam stared at the thing the kid was wearing. A black bodysuit underlayer combined with several disparate plates of metal. Knee-guards, plates on the sides of the hips, plates for the outer forearms and elbows, a curved plate for the upper torso and a bit of the neck, and plates for the upper shoulders.
"Yep." Adam drawled with an unimpressed expression. "You bought about a third of a proper set of armor for about half the cost. You got scammed." He was going to have to follow the kid around on future shopping sprees, wasn't he? Fun times.
"I-it's not a scam! The underlayer is durable without being inflexible, and the plates are in all the places they need to be to protect the vitals! It's protective without being too heavy!" Scrappy tried to excuse, pointing at himself in various places.
Adam stood up, walking over and pointing. Scrappy followed the direction of his finger.
Adam took the chance to harshly poke him in the unplated stomach. There was some resistance from the underlayer, but not enough to negate his thrust. Scrappy bent inwards to defend himself. "Gah! Adam-san!"
Adam poked him again, this time in the similarly exposed armpit. Scrappy staggered back, doing his best to flail and protect his vitals. "A-adam-san! Stop!"
Adam poked him again, this time in the exposed side of the neck. Scrappy let out another yelp, falling to the floor and curling up. "I get it! I get it! S-stop please!"
Adam kneeled next to the kid, staring at him with a blank expression. The kid stayed curled up for a moment, before cautiously uncurling, staring at him in preparation for another life lesson.
Adam poked him in the stomach again.
"Gah!" The kid cried out, rolling once in a curled up-manner to retreat from his repeated pokes.
"Alright, you made your point, stop bullying Bell-kun." His employer intervened, grabbing his attacking forearm with both hands and giving him an expression that was intended to be reproachful. Unfortunately, the amusement in her eyes negated any chance of that scolding glance having any effect.
"You spend the rest of your money yet kid?" Adam asked.
"N-no." The now-traumatized Scrappy replied, still curled up and protecting his vitals.
"You're buying some guild chain too. Put it between the underlayer and plates." Adam dictacted flatly. "If you're going to buy armor, you're going to buy useful armor."
"W-wouldn't that slow me down? It's not like I needed armor up until now anyways."
"We've been killing kids, dogs, and lizards." He pointed out, ignoring his employer's grunt at the naming sense. He was calling them what they are, woman. "And you still need a heal potion every few hours. You need proper armor, and you need to get used to the weight. What you're wearing right now is fashion, not armor. You trying to look pretty for your girlfriend?"
Scrappy blushed and waved his arms in denial. His employer turned a focused and baleful eye towards him.
"I-it's not like that, stop saying that before people get the wrong idea!"
"...girlfriend? Please tell me my other child isn't out playing hooky too, is he?"
Nodding nonchalantly, Adam explained for Tinytits. "Guildmeat has the most obvious crush on the brat in the world. Kid refuses to acknowledge it."
"I told you Eina-san isn't like that!" Kid was getting frantic in his red-faced denials. "She's just looking out for me as an advisor should!"
Adam and Tinytits stared at the kid for a moment, before turning to each other.
"She's pining after my Bell-kun?" His employer asked for clarification, brows furrowed and serious.
"Shamelessly." Adam answered, ignoring the kid's wails of denial in the background.
"I think I'll need to have a talk with this 'Eina-san'." Tinytits growled out, fist clenched and the hint of a smile on her face, not that the kid could see. "If she thinks she can seduce my child, she needs to go through momma Hestia first!"
Adam snorted. The kid curled up and let out a long, embarrassed groan.
"You do anything else on your shopping date, except waste money?" Adam asked, not expecting much.
There was silence instead. Adam narrowed his eyes. The kid stayed carefully curled up, face to the floor, hiding his expression and not moving.
"What did you do?" Adam corrected himself with a glowering question.
"So…" The kid sheepishly began, rising from his curled position and pushing up to his knees. "You know how we made a lot of valis today, after you hired some supporters?"
"Yes." Adam confirmed, a glare of suspicion on his face.
"After I found the armor. I thought it was really good, especially for the price." Scrappy instinctively raised his hands to defend himself again. "So I went and found the person who made it, someone named Welf Crozzo-san."
Adam stayed silent, waiting for the kid to get to the point. He was starting to develop a suspicion of where this was going.
"As it turned out, he's a level one adventurer too! And he was looking for a party to join on his trips down into the dungeon!"
"So you invited him." Adam rumbled out in an unimpressed manner.
"I saw that we made a whole lot more today, so having someone else there to help up kill monsters would make our profit go up even more, right?"
Adam looked for signs of duplicity for a moment, before grunting as he realized the kid was indeed just dumb, not trying to sabotage their operation. Sighing deeply, he ground out. "Kid, how do you know he's not just going to slow us down?"
"He-he said he's been past floor ten before, and that he's been an adventurer for way longer! That means he's good enough to keep up right?"
"He said. He could be lying. Assuming he's good enough to keep up." Which he doubted, meatbags never were. "Is he good enough to actually make more profit than what he takes out in revenue share?"
"...uhhh." The kid wasn't following.
"Our current contract with the supporters has them take thirty percent. Any more and we start to lose more money than they help us earn. If you add another meatbag, assuming they are indeed not a waste of meat, then you lower the profit by another twenty-three percent. Three way split of post-supporter share for the murderers. So instead of taking home seventy percent of the profit, we take home forty-six percent."
"Is the meatbag good enough that the forty-six percent with it is more than the seventy percent we were making without it?" Adam growled out, irritated that no one else seemed to be teaching the brat basic economic theory here.
"I-I beli-"
"Do you have any proof of that beyond what they said?" Adam interrupted with a growl.
"...No." Scrappy turned in on himself, embarrassed. His little attempt to help was potentially eating into their bottom line.
…They'd need to expand eventually, he supposed, and the kid already asked this random fuck to join on. An unexpected pain in the ass, but hardly a disaster in the making. It was entirely possible that this random addition to their daily dose of murder would actually be useful. Adam doubted that, but it was certainly possible.
"We'll test him out one day. If he's worth a damn he can come back again. If he's not I'm telling him to fuck off."
"But first! Today is shopping day!" His employer interrupted with a raised finger. "Bell-kun! When do you have your 'advisory meeting' with this 'Eina-san'?" The tone indicated faint lingering suspicion.
"Ah, in the evening around six. After her work hours."
"Then get washed and dressed, both of you! We're going out, and I'm spoiling my familia today!"
"With money we earned." Adam grunted in amusement, standing up from his held kneel.
"Shush!" His employer commanded, a bright smile on her face. "I have a list!"
Adam rumbled, Scrappy chuckled.
—
"Can I help you to-"
"I know more than you." Adam cut off with a firm dismissal, ignoring the salesmeatwoman and walking deeper into the clothing store. Ignoring her vaguely offended huff and his employer's quick apologies for 'her delinquent familia member'. Don't apologize to her, Tinytits, she has purple hair. It looks ridiculous.
He would be the first to admit that he didn't know jackshit about old-timey clothes-shopping, and was under the impression that it was a somewhat more involved process from all the corporate propaganda about the wonders of mass-production. Clearly that didn't stop this place from just having clothing stores anyway.
He would be the first to admit, however, that he knew fashion. More than some meatgirl with purple-ass hair ever could, at the very least.
"Adam!" His employer hissed out, trailing behind him and followed by Scrappy's awed footsteps. "Don't be rude to the customer service!"
"I wasn't being rude. I was stating a fact." He drawled out, footsteps carrying him steadily through rows of hanging clothes to the men's section of 'Arachne's Sumptuaries', apparently yet another corp but this one focused on the mass-manufacture of clothing. Or maybe 'high fashion' bullshit too, he wasn't sure and didn't really care.
High fashion is dogshit, anyone wearing it was an idiot.
"When did you become an expert on fashion then? You've been wearing the same ragged shirt for a week!" His employer growled out at him, still annoyed that he had dismissed the chaff apparently.
"I already know exactly what looks good on me. All I need to do is find it."
"And if you don't find it? Maybe they have it in the back or something!"
"Then I leave and go somewhere else, either way I don't have to put up with some meatbag trying to sell me something." Having reached the men's section, he began his search. Waving a dismissive hand at his employer and the kid, he spoke. "Go use the kid as a dress-up doll for a bit, I'll be over once I finish looking."
"Grr… I wanted to use both of you as dress-up dolls!" His employer growled out, shaking a fist in his general direction. "And now I don't have a fellow woman to chat with as you two get dressed!"
"Goddess-sama?!" Scrappy yelped as she admitted her actual goal. The only way to avoid it was to already know what you're looking for, otherwise you'd get your time wasted looking at shit you weren't ever going to buy.
"Good luck kid." Adam commented, evaluating the pair of pants he was holding for a moment, comparing it to his frame, and then folding it to put back. This section was too small. Seeing that she wasn't going to convince him to wear a bunch of nonsense any time soon, Tinytits cut her losses and dragged Scrappy off by the hand to a different section.
That waste of time avoided, Adam focused his efforts on finding acceptable old-timey alternatives to his old black leather days daily wear, he already had steel-toed boots on. No need to worry about finding any of those.
They didn't have socks that he was familiar with, but they did woolen knee-high things. The other alternative were the kinds of socks that women wear when they want to feel sexy, but in the men's section for some reason. He ignored it and grabbed seven pairs of the knitted-wool kinds.
They didn't have any proper leather pants, but they did have a sort of loose pants equivalent that had space for a belt and black leather chaps, so he grabbed seven pairs of both from the box they had under that shelf. He ignored the eyes of the purple-haired salesmeat suspiciously watching him from a distance.
Calm down meat, if he was going to rob you, he'd come by at night and kill the witnesses first. On another note, they were relatively well stocked here, so it must not be worth robbing them or they had decent security.
Their shirts were all these relatively loose affairs, with numerous laces along the sides of the sleeves and middles in order to tighten them up. This seemed annoying, but then he realized that all the shirts only came in about half the normal set of sizes, which greatly simplified his future shopping. Seven white loosey-lacy shirts were added to the bundle in his arms.
There was no need for diversity in fashion, you find one look that you can wear every day if needed, and you stick with it for the rest of your life. Anyone who claimed you need different sets for daily wear was trying to sell you something.
Now the last part to complete the look, seeing if they had any…
He moved to the 'overwear' section, ignoring the salemeat that thought she was being sneaky behind him. The coats were mostly ostentatious nonsense, with long trailing tails or fancy buttons or an integrated hood. If he needed to keep the rain off, he'd wear a hat. There were numerous cloaks, several capes, an assortment of what he could only assume was fetish-wear, and…
There, that one is good enough. Something that almost looked like a black leather jacket, open in the center with a wide folded collar and an integrated belt to hold it closed across the torso. It cut off at the shoulders, allowing his arms to be mostly exposed wearing it, were it not for the long-sleeves of the shirt he would be wearing underneath.
It had a weird flower-like pattern at the ends instead of just cutting off, but it was good enough. He grabbed seven and finished his stack of new garments. Daily wear now complete sans underwear, which it looks like they didn't have here, he scanned the store looking for his employer and the kid.
The salemeat yelped as his gaze passed over her, face contorting into a defensive haughtiness. He ignored her and kept looking, now focusing on sound instead.
…There they were. He made his way over, passing by the salesmeat without bothering to acknowledge her. If she wanted something she'd speak up so he could ignore her more thoroughly.
"Do a spin! I have to see your other side too!" His employer eagerly commanded in the distance.
"O-okay." Scrappy's voice was quieter, nervous. "A-are you sure this is clothes for men, Goddess-sama?"
"Absolutely! Old kings used to wear stuff like this, you know! Now twirl!"
Adam rounded the corner, stack of clothing in hands, and bore witness to what torments the kid was being put through. Apparently that involved high heels, silk stockings, a skirt, corset, low-cut shirt, puffed sleeves, and lace collar and cuffs.
Glancing over to the stack of clothing on the side, they weren't done yet. More importantly…
"Where'd you find the leather pants?" He asked, startling the both of them. Tinytits shrieked and fell off the bench she was luxuriating upon, and Scrappy staggered back to cover himself with his hands.
"D-don't sneak up like that!" Tinytits complained with a scarlet face, pulling herself up again and pointing a dramatic finger. "I nearly had a heart attack! How are you so quiet! It's not fair!"
"Practice. The pants?" Adam brought the attention back to the subject matter.
"Wait! I need to see what you got first! Go in and put it on!" Tinytits commanded with a stern look.
"It'll look better with leather pants. Where did you find them?" Adam growled out, matching her look with one of his own. Eventually, he came out victorious yet again as she clicked her tongue and pointed.
"Two lanes down on the right. In the 'divine treasures' section. Then come back here and put it all on so I can see!" The fuck kind of name was that for a clothing store section?
Adam nodded, moving to the section to look, before turning around and glancing at the unmoving kid. He turned a flat look to his employer, who fidgeted under the gaze.
"Stop making the kid dress like a girl and get him some actual clothes." He rumbled, not wishing to spend much longer here than he had to. Turning around and walking over to the supposed section, he realized why he didn't see them earlier.
Apparently 'tight leather pants' was a sex thing here. It was true back home too, he supposed, but they put it in the same section as the lingerie instead of with the other pants for some reason. Said section also included swimsuits, which apparently were exactly the same as back home.
Did they have this kind of stuff in oldy-times? He didn't know and thinking about it he realized he didn't care either.
Most of these were for women, looking through them, but there was a smallish men's section over by the side which had the requisite black leather pants required to complete the look.
Finding the pairs in his size by comparison, he grabbed seven more. Then he separated out the trousers and chaps from the rest of his pile, stacked it in his other arm, and moved to return…
The salesmeat was staring at him. Grunting, he walked over and dropped the clothes he was going to put back on her head, then moved on. He ignored the yelping behind him and made his way back to his employer and the kid. Congratulations salesmeat, you were slightly useful once, now stop following him.
Thankfully for the sake of not wasting his time, the kid was no longer wearing male prostitute-wear and was in another outfit that made him look like a puffed-up exotic bird.
"Put it on! Put it on!" Tinytits commanded, getting up and shoving him in the direction of the changing rooms. Trying to, at least, he was much heavier and stronger than her, so it was more like he walked over there than any kind of push.
Entering the room, he went through the motions of taking off his worn daily wear and putting on the things he still hadn't paid for yet. Strip then dress. It took a bare few minutes to do so, acquainting himself with using buckles, laces, and buttons instead of the vastly more convenient zippers.
It had been a while since he had dressed up in his old style, or at all, really. Warframes didn't need clothes, and he had been living in one for a few decades. No need to wear anything at all in it. He left the top laces undone for effect, a deep cleavage to show off the upper torso, the ladies liked that.
He was missing a comb, his hair was a mess. The look wasn't complete without a properly groomed pompadour.
Stepping out, the rest of his clothes in hand, he was met with his employer and the salesmeat chatting, before going quiet when they looked over at him. He raised a brow, and glanced around.
The kid walked out of another changing room, this time in something slightly more presentable but mostly ridiculous, and smiled as he saw Adam. "It looks great Adam-san! You weren't kidding when you said you know this fashion stuff."
Adam snorted. "Lying is for meatbags kid, I'm above it." He nodded his head to the side, moving over and dropping the rest of his clothes on Tinytits. "Now come on, let's get you wearing something respectable and get out of here."
"Can do!" The kid sounded happy to be away from their employer's tyrant clutches.
Walking away, he heard salesmeat mutter. "Gods above, what an ass..."
Pft. Insult him to his face next time, meat, he might take you seriously.