A/N: A shout-out to Sinclair Lore, Richard Pilbeam (JSF), and Michela from the Snack Covenant podcast for this one. You're right, Michela, this should be a fanfic. And thanks to my wife's commentary for echoing that it did indeed need to be done.

~X X X~

The life of a former hunter was not all it was, perhaps, cracked up to be.

Yes, Balyn's life no longer involved wading through an orgy of blood and death, hacking away with a massive saw at ravenous, distorted beasts, or stabbing a shotgun strapped to a spear at eldritch, cosmic horrors. He had triumphed over the night of the hunt, put paid to the School of Mensis's horrific ritual, freed the consciousnesses of assorted baby Great Ones from their nightmarish imprisonment, and awakened to a new dawn in daylight Yharnam.

Only to find himself presented with a substantial bill for services rendered by Iosefka's Clinic.

He couldn't even in good conscience argue the point. After all, he'd come to Yharnam suffering from a rare blood disease, and thanks to the transfusion he'd received he'd been cured in the space of one night. His signature was on a medical-services contract. And he was sure that if he read the fine print closely enough he'd find a line reading "side effects may include temporary or permanent servitude to an eldritch cosmic entity residing within a dream dimension."

Unfortunately, unlike the messengers in the bath, waking world merchants did not take the echoing will of the blood claimed from slain beasts as currency. And as for coin of the realm, most of Balyn's pocket change was currently scattered around the woods where he'd dropped it to keep himself from getting lost. Cavalierly living in the now instead of planning for the future always came back to bite him.

Given what bill collectors were like generally, Balyn really didn't want to find out what kind of horrors they'd be like in Yharnam. He had a feeling that there was a reason all those robed kidnappers in Yahar'gul had been able to collect so many corpses for the School's experiments. Cutting and running simply wasn't a viable option.

There was nothing to it, then, but to find himself a way to make some extra money fast. And when the Scourge of the Beast running rampant under the Blood Moon had caused a lot of the local economy to collapse, that wasn't as easy as it sounded. He'd considered putting his experience with a saw cleaver to use as a guard limiting purchases of toilet paper to two packages per customer, but had eventually decided that he really needed something that offered more fresh air and travel.

Which was why he was standing on top of a castle roof, facing down a withered mummy of a man who was insisting that he was not going to pass. The giant scythe the would-be doorman carried was making some rather pointed arguments in that direction.

"Go back, you fool!" the ancient Executioner wheezed. "The undead Queen shall not be freed to unleash her vile ways upon the world again!"

"Yeah, okay, I appreciate that you've got this whole thing going on where you make yourself a martyr to seal away the corrupted Vilebloods and stuff, and really, arguing whether that's actually a good thing or you church types are just a bunch of murdering bigots is way above my pay grade. But seriously, Logarius, dude…" He ducked a sweep of the scythe which clipped half of the feather off his tricorn. "I've got a solemn duty here, and if you keep on getting in my way, things are going to get messy."

He unhooked his saw cleaver from his belt and with a snap of his wrist flicked it out into extended mode. He figured he'd need the reach.

"Fool! The forbidden blood must not be unleashed upon the world ever again!"

"I get that, I really do. Believe me, I've seen stuff, even if I'm a little foggy on the details on account of that whole dreaming thing. But if I don't get this pizza delivered, my boss is going to take it out of my hide. That guy's got one hell of a temper, you know? This morning one of the cooks gave one of his friends double pepperoni for free and the boss ripped one of his own arms off just to beat the hell out of the dude! So it's going to take a lot more than some exploding magic skulls to get me to go home without twenty-two shining coins and not a twinkly-sparkly less."

Martyr Logarius looked at him, the burning eyes of a fanatic staring deep into Balyn's very soul.

"…Will you take a check?"

"Cash only. You're not on the list."

"Fine," Logarius grumbled, and dug one long, emaciated hand into a pocket of his rotting robe. "Here. Give me the pizza."

He handed over the cash and Balyn extracted a large cardboard box from his insulated carrying case. One thing being a hunter had made him good at was juggling inventory; he hadn't even let the box slip off-level during the climb upstairs (because after witnessing what Kos had done to the old hunters for the abomination at the Fishing Hamlet, he really did not want to see what would happen to a pizza delivery guy who tipped the box sideways and let the cheese slide off half the pie).

"Here you go! Thanks for calling Amygdala's; the competition hasn't got a patch on us!"

As he walked away, coins jingling in his pocket, he could hear Logarius gloating over his prize.

"As you deserve, you filthy monstrosity! You think I'll allow your kind to receive this treasure? To slake your hungers? No matter your immortality, I shall be the one to savor your—"

Cardboard scraped against cardboard as the box was opened.

"—Ham and pineapple! Damn you, you rotten siren, you've tricked me! You knew I would never allow the deliveryman to pass and baited me into paying for this foulness. Now I only have enough money left for cup ramen! Do your fiendish wiles know no end?"

Balyn snorted. It served the guy right. What sort of self-righteous jerk only tipped the pizza delivery guy one coin after forgetting to lock up the pet ticks in the courtyard?