In an instant, the confusion that furrowed his brow broke to aggression. Arkash's posture poised him forward, and his idle claws were primed to cleave flesh from bone.
"Ten!" The old man called. "Nine!"
It took just about that long for Izzy to regain her senses. "Y-you did!" She called in a panic.
"Liar!" he wheezed.
Arkash jumped the bar, but the owner had turned the rifle on him in a split second. "Not a step closer or you're getting melted!" he warned.
"Bosby! For crying out loud!" Izzy called.
The old man turned the rifle to aim at her instead. "Not one more word out of you, young lady, or so help me I'll-!"
Arkash was on him before he could finish that sentence, rifle aimed skyward. The man pulled the trigger and fired a blast of compressed etheric energy at the ceiling, and superheated the steel to glow red hot in the blast. The flash of light had almost blinded the Rath, but his Dranoch eyes recovered in milliseconds, and he pulled hard on the weapon while he turned to swipe his tail under the older man's legs while simultaneously guiding his bodyweight into an unstable position. With a startled cry, Bosby fell to the ground, coughed, and sputtered. The rifle was then turned on him, and it whirred as it charged in a similar fashion. "You'll what?!" Arkash roared, eyes ablaze with the heat of adrenaline.
"Arkash! Easy!" Izzy called from across the bar.
"Do it you little shit! Blast me! I'll see you in Bel!"
"Don't encourage him Bosby, he'll do it."
"Good!" The man coughed on the floor. "I'll sooner die than let you steal that kit!"
"SO BE IT!!" Arkash roared as the charge of the gun neared its apex.
"NO!" Izzy yelled at the top of her voice. Arkash took his finger off the trigger and the device began to slow. "We're not stealing anything! We're looking to PURCHASE!" She clarified at last.
"...Right," Arkash blinked, then hesitantly stepped out of his aggressive stance, and lowered the weapon. "Yeah, we're not stealin' anyfink."
"Oh?" The white haired man asked, then began to chuckle. "Ohohoho! Well that's a relief!" Arkash put the rifle on the bar, then bent down to help him off the floor. The old man clutched his arm and grumbled on his way off the floor. Arkash widened his legs and used his back to lift the human. "That's a damn good kick you've got," he said as he looked the Rath up and down.
"That was my tail," Arkash corrected, then climbed over the bar, heavy tail dragging behind him before it fell to the floor with a hefty drop.
"I see..." The man stroked his beard in thought.
"...So can we buy the kit?" Izzy asked after a moment of silence.
"Oh!" The man exclaimed, as though he'd just figured something out. "Well see, I'd love to but I already have a customer for it. They paid in advance and everything."
"We'll pay more," Arkash said with his arms crossed.
Izzy and Bosby looked at him in unison, and the older human began to laugh. "Ohoho! Well I like the moxie, but I don't think you can afford-" Arkash slapped the table with a stack of bundled farthing bills. The old man stopped and stared in surprise and thought, then widened his eyes when Arkash threw a second bundle atop it. "-Alright! Well... This is... Very good!" he cleared his throat. "I'll just have to check that these notes are legit," he said as he collected both bundles.
Behind him, Arkash spied the curious gaze of a young Druskai in the door. They must have been half his height, big black eyes shining in the lowlight of the shop's interior. The grease on his teal skin complemented the mess of his short black hair. Arkash furrowed his brow at the sight, and the child widened his eyes and withdrew into the shop. While he was looking for it, the scamper of tiny feet was abundantly clear; the child was running.
"Six..." the old man said with a rise of his brow, then moved the stack of bills aside. He continued counting, and drew Arkash's attention. "Eight, nine ten... Eight thousand Dunari Farthings." The old man scratched his head, and his eyes wandered the Rath's form. The voluminous green shroud he wore made it difficult to identify what he carried. "Well, this is enough to buy out my last customer, but what about my cut? Hmm?" Arkash rolled his eyes, reached into his pocket and threw another bundle of notes on the table. The man's jaw dropped. "Twelve..." he began with wide eyes, blinked, cleared his throat and nodded. "Yeah, that just about covers it." The old man exhaled, then stretched his back. "Alright, we have a deal. Twelve-thousand for the Sundering kit?"
"...Can we see it first?" Asked Izzy.
The old man stammered. "W-why of course!" he smiled and looked between the lizard and the girl. "Right this way, just uhh... Excuse the mess." He lifted part of the bar and motioned the pair through. Izzy went first, and Arkash followed after.
He closed the desk, then set a sign on the bar that Arkash didn't have time to decipher. Both he and Izzy followed Bosby into the back of his workshop, where various artificed creations hung from the walls, their own dedicated racks, from chains on the ceiling and laid scattered in piles in various sections of the space. A lot of them, Arkash imagined, were weapons of some kind given the advancement of his rifle. His eyes trailed the piles of brass and copper in search of the Druskai, and sure enough, found a beating heart hidden behind some pile of contraptions. He smiled a little, but remained weary of the situation.
Around a corner and down some steps, Bosby's shop led to the open desert. There was some sort of docking station with a raised, folded metallic door that bared the sprawling dunes ahead of them. Before that was a large, quadrupedal lizard of some kind, harnessed and tied to a wagon with a variety of tools and contraptions aboard. Izzy's eye was alight at the sight, and Arkash looked at her as if to ask for some indication on whether or not the kit was up to par. "I was just getting ready to send Bants off when you started ringing that there bell," Bosby said with a motion of his thumb to the stairwell they'd come from. "Take a look, I'll go and find that damn kid."
Quick as a flash, Izzy's hand wrapped Arkash's arm, and she was pulling him along to the lizard and its wagon. Arkash followed willingly, then looked over his shoulder as the older man steadily climbed the stairs to the workshop. "Who's Bants?" Arkash asked.
"No idea," Izzy said as they marched across the sand, blazing sun bearing down on them. The lizard didn't react to their presence as it basked, legs splayed at its sides in the sand.
Arkash slowed to step with caution around the beast, and Izzy let him go to climb up on the wagon. "...What is that?" he asked with uncertainty.
"Huh?" Izzy asked with a peek over the edge of the cart. "Oh, the Ozy?"
"Ozy?"
Izzy laughed a little, and drew a look of confusion from the rath for the brief second he could pull away from the beast. "It's just a lizard, Ark. They're not common, but some people use them to get around the desert and haul stuff."
"Oh..." He spoke in understanding, but still failed to look away from the beast.
"...Coming?" The badlander asked.
"Huh?" Arkash looked up at her. "Oh, right. Yeah, let's do it." With that, he stepped back from the beast a safe distance, then turned around to climb up the wagon with a helping hand from the Sunderer. Upon the Wagon, Arkash beheld a number of devices and constructs he'd never seen before. Vaguely, they resembled instruments of torture. "...Is this a good kit?"
"Good?" Izzy asked with a twinkle in her eye. "It's brand-spanking new. Look at the condition of this tonal maiden! I don't think it's been used even once!" she gestured to a sarcophagus of dark iron with the engravement of a large, bearded man on the front. Inside were a number of brass prongs that Arkash couldn't count, with numerous dials to control them. "And these strickening chains? Not so much as spec of rust," she motioned her hand to a pile of dark iron chains.
Arkash furrowed his brow, then knelt before a medium-sized bag of white leather. A pop of the brass pins opened the container to reveal some sort of mask with a beak for the face. Arkash reached inside and collected the mask. "What's this?" He asked with a glance at the human, who was inspecting some sort of pyramid-shaped construct.
"Oh, that's the mercy suit," she said with a glance. "The whole thing is pretty heavy, so get used to how it feels," she advised. "We're gonna be strickening a whole lot of stuff with these guys," she flexed a pair of dark iron tongs with spiked teeth.
Arkash smiled a little, then set the mask down before his gaze drifted to the dock door they'd come from. There was Bosby, and in his company, a stout Druskai. Arkash furrowed his brow as he looked upon the nautical humanoid. They were young, but smelled and appeared more mature than Arkash had initially believed.
Another glance to his left set his eyes on Izzy, who was going about the kit with wild excitement in her erratic gaze. It was decided then, they would be buying that kit.
Image source.
