An Unlikely Development

I blinked my eyes, not expecting the teleportation to be so prompt and bland.

It took less than a moment to send me from the arena to wherever I was, and it was entirely silent and instantaneous.

'I expected it to be more flashy...'

I was about to begin a mental conversation with myself when it was cut short by an angry yet muffled yell I interpreted as 'hey'.

{You should probably look around before losing your focus again.}

I was pleasantly surprised to hear the voice of the Gods in my head once more.

'You're back. Great. Knew I was getting too lucky today.'

{Hey, We wouldn't have left you if we had the option to stay.}

I decided to ignore their excuses for the moment to look to the source of the angry grunt.

I turned to where the noise had come from to see an unexpected sight:

There was a goblin in a labcoat tied up and gagged on the ground.

He was looking at me with annoyance, seemingly expecting something, which took me a moment to realize.

I immediately took the gag out of the goblin's mouth, and they began muttering to themselves immediately.

"Those damn bastards, tying me up and leaving me in the middle of fucking nowhere. I should've known that I was going to get ditched! They just had to throw out the weakest link since I can only make items and not fight! The nerve! I should've never-"

I could tell by the anger in his voice that he was going to keep this up for a good while, so I decided to stop him at a good point.

"Okay, shut up. I do not want to feel like I'm at a therapy session for a goblin, and I do not want to listen to you complain for the next hour, so I'm going to ask you straight up."

I looked him straight in the eye.

"What the hell happened?"

Tnhe goblin flinched away at my 'piercing gaze'.

'I was just looking at him... Why does he seem so scared?'

I then remembered where I just was.

'The arena... Wait.'

I pulled out a shiny object and began to look at what my face looked like.

'Oh. Well that explains the fear.'

My face was covered in very purple blood, making it seem a 'bit' more menacing to look at.

I immediately wiped most of the blood off of my face, apologizing for the slightly problematic first impression.

"Sorry about that, I forgot about what I would look like after I fought an army."

I realized what I said after the words came out of my mouth and cringed at what I had said.

'This sounds like some sort of humble brag...'

My words didn't seem to help the scared goblin and instead scared him more.

I decided to give up on trying to convince the goblin I was harmless and just refocused on my question.

"Well? How did you end up tied up and stuck here?"

My words seemed to have broken the goblin out of his scared silence in favor of his anger towards whoever tied him up.

While he was coming up with an adequate explanation of what happened, I was thinking about what the reason might be.

As a joke to myself, I mumbled a very dumb thought.

"Imagine the whole reason he got tied up was that he was part of a goblin army trying to kill the hero and he didn't want to fight..."

I heard a small gasp from the goblin, who was staring at me with surprise.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me."

The goblin spoke up soon after I expressed my exasperation.

"How did you know?!"

"I made a very halfhearted guess based on some really stupid cliches."

I decided to refocus on the topic at hand.

"Can you elaborate on what happened?"

The goblin seemed eager to express their stress at the whole situation.

"Gladly! I was very against the whole 'kill the hero' thing all the goblins were into, as I was more interested In my creations. War is not my thing."

The goblin grew more and more annoyed as they progressed through their explanation, slowly getting more aggressive in their speech.

"The idiots were stupid enough to think I had lost my use to the army, since I couldn't fight to save my life. I'm a scientist for pete's sake, I don't fucking fight!"

The goblin reached the end of their explanation with a good amount of swearing.

"So those fucking assholes decided to be the absolute idiots they are and tie me up and leave me in the middle of fucking nowhere! Fuck!"

I looked at the goblin in surprise, not expecting the number of curses to come out of their mouth.

"You feel better now?"

The goblin looked at me in surprise, before nodding silently.

I decided now was the best time to break the news to him.

"Well, I guess I better introduce myself now. The name's Talon, an unwilling hero and even more unwilling friend to the Gods.

{Hey, how dare you say that in front of your friend!}

The goblin looked at me with shock written across their face, before they began to speak.

"Oh, uh... I guess this is kinda awkward... I'm one of the people who tried to kill you, after all..."

I stopped the goblin before they could get any more confused.

"One of the LAST people who tried to kill me."

The goblin looked at me with confusion, before realization dawned upon their face, along with a wide grin.

"I think that I like you."

I was startled by the words, trying my best to respond quickly.

"W-woah! Stop right there! I do NOT swing that way!"

As soon as I said those words, the goblin immediately became embarrassed.

"N-no not that way! I meant as a friend, not a lover! I don't swing that way either!"

In the end, we both calmed down and laughed the whole scenario off.

And that was when the goblin introduced themselves.

"The names Arback, but I prefer to go by Tinker."

"Good to know. So how about you move into my 'town', since your current home doesn't seem to be so accommodating."

The goblin looked at me and smiled.

"I would greatly appreciate a home to stay in."