Chapter 299

Zesshi watched as Brain made for the window, 'Oh, how cute, he thinks he can run away.' She suppressed her laugh and chased after him. 'He must not recognize me, it was very nice of him to come rescue the slaves of this house I suppose, but he missed a whole bunch of them in the basement…' She dropped down into the sprinter's posture with one leg to the chest and one back, her fingertips barely touching the floor, she smirked. 'I'll give you a ten second head start.' She thought, and counted them down.

She watched as he cracked through the glass, scattering it inside and outside and disappeared from view.

'Ha, this isn't the open countryside with you having a long headstart… you haven't got a prayer!' This part… this part felt good, a good feeling she needed after watching her brother run away, and learning what she had only hours before. 'You're just distracting yourself…'

A part of her mind whispered to her, but she crushed it down and finished the count…

"Three.."

"Two…"

"One…"

"Go!" She whispered and followed him through the glass, she went at a dead sprint without using her martial arts, and the ground raced beneath her feet, she jumped from the ground up to the tallest building she could and searched him out. 'Oh come on Brain, I have to be the world's worst tracker, I nearly got lost on the way back to a city I could see… and yet I can still find you like this.' She rolled her eyes, he was running down the street faster than normal eyes would be able to follow, and in a way, it was almost impressive. 'You'd think he really… wait he's not, is he?' She wondered, and raced ahead of him.

'He must not realize it was me.' She thought as she dropped down around the corner he would pass by, her ears twitched as she picked up the pace and position of his footfalls. The stone cracked a little with the force of them as he ate up the ground.

Zesshi smirked and… stuck out her foot.

She felt him impact her foot with force enough that anything less than himself would have snapped a bone, yet he only tumbled forward, arms flailing only for an instant before he caught himself and the faint noise of metal on stone tinking and tanging as he hit the rock around him. He pushed off the stone with one hand and flipped forward to land on his feet, then his shoulders slumped and without turning around he said, "You caught me, Zesshi. But what were you even doing there?"

Zesshi put a hand on his shoulder, "That's a funny way to say it." She chuckled, "I didn't expect to see that your 'looking for work' was actually you going out to rescue slaves. There's more to you than I thought."

Brain stiffened, 'Is she… serious?' He asked himself.

"Uhh… what?" He tried to think of what to say, but the mind blowing absurdity of her assumption caught him unawares, and he slowly turned around to look at her.

"Don't give me that, I came back after getting my brother out and Layali said you went out to find work, I'm not a tracker, but you have an odor of oil and sweat on you that… well, it makes you stand out for a while." She smirked up at him as if proud of herself, and Brain responded glumly…

"So I stink."

"Ah, no. I guess that wasn't quite the way I should have put that, it's the oil you use to take care of your sword, very distinctive stuff. If you had a magic sword I doubt I could have found you since then you'd smell like everybody else." Zesshi said and calmly put her palm over her face. "Gods, I'm bad at this."

Even given the gravity of the moment, Brain couldn't help but laugh at the awkward young half elf.

"Just so we're clear, you don't believe I'm running around sniffing people, do you? I'm not a pervert." Zesshi insisted, putting her fists on her hips and straightening up, staring daggers at him as he laughed.

"No, no, not at all." Brain said.

She kept staring.

"No, really, I promise, Zesshi." He said, clutching at his gut as his laughter came to a halting stop at last.

"Good." She crossed her arms in front of her chest, "I just, I found you there, and saw how you went down to the lower floor, the slaves were another level down, I came to you a few minutes later when it was obvious you got lost, then you mistook me for a guard and… here we are."

Brain kept his mouth shut for a moment. "I see. Ah… don't make a mention of this to Layali. Let's go back. Oh, and… don't try going out to do that yourself."

"Why not?" Zesshi asked. "I'm a lot stronger than you are, a lot faster too."

"Because…" Brain's mind raced until he could think of something to say, and when he did he put on a serious face and after putting hand on her bicep he said, "Because if I die, somebody will have to take care of Layali. Somebody will have to put her somewhere safe at least, yes you're strong, but anything can go wrong, and when things go wrong in the field, they go wrong fast and they go wrong hard. There's no need for both of us to risk ourselves when we're only a few days from the border. Let's just go back, take off in the morning, and forget this night ever happened."

Zesshi thought that over, 'If there were something around here that could hurt me…' But what he said echoed the sentiment of the only humans she ever listened to, Cardinal Raymond and Cenna Tachoni… so… she inclined her head to him.

"Fine, we'll do it your way." Zesshi promised, and Brain sighed with relief.

She took a step to leave and when he didn't follow, she looked back, "Are you coming?"

"Just… give me a minute." He said and winced, "Your leg did a number on mine. You run along."

"Okay, but… if you take off your boot to check the wound, be careful, it looks like some idiot spilled a bunch of forks and knives around here, you're lucky you only scattered them and didn't land on them." She added.

"Heh, yeah… uh, go ahead, I'll join you shortly." Brain replied again and began snatching up the handful of scattered treasures and stowing them away again as soon as he saw she was well away from him.

'At least she didn't actually 'do' anything.' Brain thought as he put the last dinner fork into his pouch and headed back to the inn. 'That could get ugly, fast.' He shivered, recalling the easy bloody mess she made at the slave auction, he was still seeing it in his mind when he closed his eyes to sleep at last.