Time To Play Hero [+Training]

Reo struggled to his feet right when the other students began to complain. Which, of course they did. Why wouldn’t they…wait. Was Reo in the wrong here? He did just plow through the crowd and into them. Surely that meant he was in the wrong. He was in the wrong and he couldn’t let special circumstances get in the way of doing the right thing.

“What were you doing?”

“Yeah, watch where you’re going.”

“Slow down next time”

The three talked at once, not giving Reo a chance to respond. Sweat dripped down his brow as he thought about the criminal getting further away. He couldn’t waste anymore time; he needed to catch up to Fuu.

So, he did the first thing that came to his mind. He bowed to the three individuals. The shocked looks on their faces told Reo that he had done the right thing. Once he was in the full bow, he began to speak in a polite and apologetic manner.

“I deeply apologize. I am in a rush to catch a thief. I must get going but my name is Reo Gojisou and I will make it up to you.” Reo pulled out of the bow and raised his right hand to wipe the sweat off his forehead. The desert was always hot, but Reo enjoyed it.

He took off at a sprint, bypassing the trio and beginning to run in the direction Fuu had indicated.

[Post 4: 241 Words]

It wasn't really a chase anymore, not with how Fuu had managed to scare the kid enough that he wasn't going to be able to run properly and Fuu was going to play it up as much as she could. She dragged the back end of her scythe on the sand so that it made the dragging noise. "Where are you going~. Don't you want to find out what kind of game we're playing?~" She dashed after him and bounced off of the walls to get in front of him landing down so that she would be face to face with him causing him to take a turn to try and go around her. "We're playing cat and mouse, but Fuu is still waiting on another cat. Don't get caught before he's here little mouse." She thought about what the kid had looked like. He didn't look particularly familiar, then again she didn't know anyone that wasn't going to the academy so he was probably either in a different class or not at the academy at all. She dropped her scythe again to mark the sand so that Ryo would know which way they had gone.

She licked her lips. "Okay, I'm moving again. Fuu isn't going to keep giving you pointers if you don't learn" She laughed as she strolled down the ally towards the thief once more.

(229)

Reo ran through the alleyway and took a turn..and then groaned. He didn’t see anyone, but that wasn’t why he groaned. No, he recognized this part of town.

It wasn’t a good part of town. It’s where all the gangs liked to hang out. Though, it made sense why the kid would be going to this part of town. It was fairly vacant during the day and the kid was probably either in some gang or being initiated into one.

Reo just didn’t like being in this part of town. It always spelled trouble. After a minute, Reo found unusual scrapes on the ground. The monk paused and looked at them, scratching his bald head. Fuu carried a scythe…did she leave these marks?

Well, better follow them!

Reo took off down that route. It shouldn’t be long until he caught up with her.

[Post 5: 143 Words]

Fuu was going slower now, the Thief was making mistakes now, it was too easy to follow he was jingling all over the place, making noise and disturbing cats and things like that. She hefted the scythe with one hand over her shoulder and tapped a wall with the back of it. "That isn't going to do at all, you can't run like that it's no challenge keeping track of you. I can hear when you run, and especially.~" She stopped and waited for the jingling to stop, several meters ahead of her just around a corner. Too easy, She jumped forward to the opening with the big smile on her face. "And when you stop.~" She brought the scythe around and clipped the bag of coins off of his belt, just close enough to slice his clothes along with it, very careful to not make a deep cut but a small splash of red still welted across his skin.

That did it, he screamed in terror he really thought the small girl his age was going to cut him down. "t-take the money! just let me go!" he stuttered out and backed up away from the bag of coins. Fuu for her part examined the small line of blood on the end of her weapon, it had barley scratched him but it had managed to pick up just the smallest bit of the red liquid. She watched the single drop fall off and hit the sand and looked back at the Thief, he was probably a street urchin or something to be stealing like he was. "Well~ it's not really about the money is it. It's more of the principle of the thing. Plus I'm pretty sure you took something more than the money.~ Now I believe we were in the middle of a game.~" She planted her scythe in the ground threateningly and he took off running once more this time without a jingly handycap to help her track him.

(332)

Reo continued to run. He could see a figure in the distance walking slowly with something dangled over her shoulder. He could only assume that was her scythe. Such an unwieldy weapon that Reo had to wonder why she used it. Even when he trained with a weapon for strength training, Reo always used a staff. They just felt better in one’s hands – though fists were much easier than anything else to use.

Reo slowed as he approached the duo. He heard a terrified scream. Every instinct in his body told him to run to the two and get there immediately. The problem was that he was just so drained. He couldn’t move any faster if he tried to at the moment. Not in a pure sprint, at least. He would need at least a second to catch his breath and that was a second he didn’t have at the moment.

As he approached, Reo saw the kid running away. He hadn’t been able to hear if they had said anything, but it looked like Fuu had gotten the money back since she had a pouch of some sort in her hand.

“Everything went well with retrieving the money, then? Why did you let him get away?”
[Post 6: 207 Words]

Fuu gave Ryo a look like his question made him grow an extra head and she was trying to figure out how such a thing could have occured. "I'm not done chasing him is why. He didn't do terribly well even with a head start, I figured he could use the practice before I actually go in for the.. Capture. I also might have scared him a little." She laughed and winked at him tossing the bag of coins. "you gonna stick around for the end? I'm gonna see if I can't have a little more fun before I have to go back in. I haven't spent too much time on the chase and I think that I can extend it to last the better part of the hour. Oh and I think he might still have some goods so there is that." She pulled her weapon from the ground and put it onto her back and started down the ally. now it was just a foot print line to find him, he wasn't making near as much noise without the coins. She didn't bother looking behind her to see if Ryo was following.

(194)

Reo listened to Fuu’s answer and was…shocked. He didn’t know Fuu overly well – just from classes where Reo spent the majority of his time being quiet. Still, was she really this violent? It didn’t fit the image he had in his head of her. Reo glanced at her massive scythe. It was difficult to discern but there was a tiny pinprick of blood on it. That…that probably wasn’t fuu’s blood.

No, he didn’t want to continue this. They had the goods back and Reo had no desire to hunt the criminal down. No one had been harmed, after-all. But, he wasn’t about to let Fuu go off and kill the poor lad.

“I’m coming with you, of course.” Reo said as he caught up and began to walk side by side with Fuu. Wherever she went, he would go.

[Post 7:139 Words]

Of course she know that Ryo would follow her, it was practically a given after all the shop keeper didn't know that Ryo was helping her so it wouldn't make sense for him to just trot back up holding the money. Unfortunately she hadn't even cut the thief deeply enough to have him bleed on the ground, only footprints lay in the path towards him and then even those were getting harder to see as he started not hitting the ground quite as hard and dispersed all together at an intersection. Fuu squinted at the ground where the last prints were to try and come up with some sort of direction, they seemed to be strait forwards but all that was there were a few boxes... oh. "On the rooftops now huh?" She grumbled more to herself than anything else before hopping on those same boxes and leaping up to the roof. Sure enough there he was jumping to another roof and back down into the ally.

Fuu thought for a moment of all the possible routs that he might take and decided what direction that he was probably going so that she could cut him off. She started her run in that direction, it wasn't going to be too awful hard to over take him.

(216)

Reo followed Fuu. He liked her as a person but definitely was growing distrustful of her violent streak. She seemed to have a good moral compass until something happened – then she went crazy and did whatever she wanted. What was the harm in letting the thief go? He was a simple pickpocket level thief. He wouldn’t be able to do much harm. Besides, she had the chance to catch him but let him run so that she could torment him for longer.

That didn’t seem okay to Reo. Lost in thought, Reo barely noticed as Fuu jumped onto the boxes with the intent climbing onto the roof. Reo ran towards the wall, intending to get to the same spot as Fuu at the same time. He jumped up and kicked off the wall – propelling himself higher. Once he was at the peak of his ascension, he grabbed ahold of the building and caught himself. With a grunt, Reo pulled himself over the ledge just as Fuu landed and began to run after the thief.

A chase was it? Okay. Talking to Fuu and the short walk they had taken had allowed him to get his breath back. So, Reo ran. Fuu was fast, but Reo was able to keep up.

“What’s the plan?” he asked his comrade.

[Post 8: 217 Words]

Fuu looked back at Ryo the Thief wouldn't get too far ahead, and she could run and talk. "Well, I thought about beating him up and dragging him back, but honestly I don't think that would really teach him anything. The proper authorities are probably hanging around the shop, so I figure if I just loop him back around and catch him right in front of them it would eat up all my time and be good enough practice at something to be worth it. Plus we can probably convince them to get him some real help, citizens of Suna shouldn't be harming the local economy." Fuu sighed loudly as if it was exasperating to have to do it. "I don't want that kid to get into a repet of this situation, what if it were someone that actually wanted him hurt. I might be taking advantage of the situation a bit, or doing things in a weird way, ahh, I'm getting too philosophical. Fuu doesn't really think that hard though~ Let's make sure he goes in the right direction or we'll need to beat him up a little.~"

Fuu stuck her tounge out at Ryo looking back before dropping into another ally.

(203)

Reo listened to his friend’s answer and…she was a good person. That…that was a surprise. He smiled at her and laughed a little bit as they ran. Then, before he had a chance to reply, she dropped into an ally. Reo jumped down to land right next to her. “Hey, wanted to say that you’re clearly a good person. Sorry, I was wrong about you. In the meantime, I’ll try to cut him off by going towards the right. We need to lead him down that alleyway, if you can do that then I’ll be there to get him to run back towards the shop.”

With that, Reo jumped off buildings and back to the rooftops.

[Post 9: 116 Words]