Blink was not happy. Why was he not happy you ask? Well, that’s really simple; it was mostly because Blink could not seemingly catch a break. He had done some contracts with his crime buddy, the yungin’ lad Eldritch Delano, and gone to a bar as well. Of course, right now all that was, was simply work, you know? When he was starting out becoming a pirate he was hoping for something a bit more glamorous than simply “sneak around and kill a noble” or “run around to give your team mate an opening.” This was frustrating to him, and now he found himself on Crescent Island, which was a place inhabited by natives. The small angry dwarf decided that he might need a mini vacation, so he decided that he would take one here, among some relatively peaceful natives. Another good thing that there was, was that this place was luckily under low threat level risks from the marines, it wasn’t totally annulled or black listed of course, it was just the marines never really felt like paying close attention to this place. Mostly because this area had never really troubled them before, so why would it trouble them now? It was never known as a place that harbored pirates, or a place that criminals gathered, and never really bothered marines, so marines had no reason to oh, say, raid a bar while a perfectly almost honest dwarf was simply trying to steal some booze. Here though, he wouldn’t have to worry too much about that, because it was all okay right now, he was simply another man with nothing to hide. Well, at least, another man that went unnoticed by the rest of the population for today, because of his size of course, like, people are looking straight on, at eye level, not down to a 4 inch figure on the ground. It was quite the polar opposite for yours truly however, because of his unfortunate small size on the ground, the dwarf always found himself looking around at everything, examining even small details to see their relevance, sometimes glancing behind him. Luckily, since he was walking in some rather deep gutters that had luckily been washed our by rainwater the night before, none of the denizens had taken note of him so far, due to his relatively out of the way position, and his size, that was usually the case. Fortunately he didn’t have to find a small animal to ride, because people were unaccustomed to walking in the gutters, and much preferred walking on sidewalks and the middle of the street. So, he was free to walk in the gutters and not worry about his visual risk or racial hazard of getting stepped on. He wasn’t so cautious before, but now he was, for two main reasons.
One was that he had been doing some jobs that involved killing people, and while he made sure to do it as fast as possible, and was almost sure that nobody had seen his face (and no marine would be able to pick him out of a crowd besides the fact that he was a dwarf.) He was still aware of the fact that when you killed people, especially nobles, people wanted answers, people like marines, and law bringers. Luckily though no marine had anything on him that could definitively put him behinds any real bars, they could just treat him with suspicion, most likely because of his dwarfness, and the fact that he was an oppressed person because of his race and size. It totally disgusted him how oppressed he was, he was a proud dwarven man, yet if people looked at him all they would see was a tiny person, wrought with mystery and probably suspicion. Secondly, there was the fact that he had run into some trouble with marines before, in that psychotic bar with criminals, thinking that since it had large amounts of crime they would have good drinks to make up for it. This was an obvious mistake because of how the marines decided to bust the place up, and he ended up having to run away without getting in the least bit buzzed, well, maybe a TINY bit buzzed, but nothing to write home about really. With this he knew that marines were not afraid to target seemingly crime ridden areas, so if he wanted to avoid the law (like he did now because he was on vacation,) he would have to stay in the neighborly parts of town. It was one of the reasons that he chose this small settlement for his vacation after all, because of course he wanted to enjoy a nice bit of peace without having to worry about the law catching up to and hurting or jailing him. And this was just the place, as it was a great place to enjoy some peace and quiet (the peace and quiet being one of the reasons that the marines never really felt the need to put this place under any real heavy speculation, although they still kept it monitored, their finds had never really found anything noteworthy or suspicious.) Of course, all of this was really just an academic safety precaution, because after all, the marines really had no reason to suspect him or think that he was the criminal that committed some crimes. And even if he did, it wasn’t like he would have racked up a large bounty, something that only lesser marines would see fit to bother themselves with if they felt like bothering themselves at all.
Again, he felt the need to do something that he had started to do last time he found himself with a fountain of free time on his hands, go drinking again. He was beginning to feel the thirst coming onto him, and really just wanted to have a good time and relax, he didn’t come here to be overly paranoid. The marines didn’t even really care about him, anyways, if some marines DID try to take him in, then he wasn’t afraid of knocking a few heads together and letting himself loose, of course he was getting ahead of himself again, he just wanted to drink really, nothing special really.
He didn’t want to get involved with the Marine’s again (hard as that was here,) and he could not say that he relished the idea of walking into a bar of psychos again, so he decided that he would go for a small and quaint establishment, simply getting to a nice little area and having a nice little drink. This time he would go to one of the friendliest places there were in this town, a restaurant that served nice and regular customers, in a nice and regular place, in a nice and regular part of the small area, it was all nice and regular really. So, he continued his way through the gutters, making sure to not go too fast as to arouse suspicion or unwanted eyes, but still fast enough to get to his wanted for area in a reasonable amount of time.
In the distance, he saw the restaurant; it was more of a hut really. To describe it you would have say that it was a nice establishment; it looked very welcoming, very welcoming indeed. One of the things that added to its welcoming aura, was the fact that it didn’t have any real walls, just four sturdy wooden poles on the corner, that help up a thick brown canvas that guarded from sun and the occasional rainfall. In the center, there was a final pole, thicker than the one’s on the corner, that had some shelves carved into it. There was also a circular shelf around it, for bartenders and servers to stand behind, and make drinks and do the general serving things that bartenders were supposed to do. Of course, this was only the drink making area, the part where they cooked was actually out in the open sun, about ten meters to the left of the little hut for a restaurant. Out in the open, where they cooked and fried meats, vegetables, fruits, and prepared all manner of things. They decided that it was not a good area to subject people to fire hazards, especially not if they wanted to base their fine establishment under a fucking canvas that was liable to catch fire. One of YET ANOTHER things that added to the friendliness of the place, best part was it wasn’t even friendly in a suspicious way, it was just a non-threatening environment where people could sit down and just be relaxed.
Honestly though, in this area to the left of the restaurant they cooked all KINDS of meat here, they cooked dogs, cats, iguana’s, any types of foods they could get their hands on in here really, it was a pretty nice place, but newcomers beware, if you ordered a plate with some sort of meat on it, chances are you were eating Suzie’s missing cat. Nothing illegal about it, after all the laws about food were pretty lax around here, there were even some rumors about eating people, not killing them for it of course, but simply wandering across a dead body and finding hey, it’s a desert island right? Nothing wrong with providing yourself a bit of sustenance, especially if they aren’t going to need it anymore, at least that’s how a few people saw it. But the marines had not made any official motion on whether or not they were going to condone that sort of thing or not, they didn’t know what they wanted to do right now. On one hand, they wanted to keep locals appeased, and when really pressed to it, they didn’t find any major damning errors in the concept of not wasting supplies. But still, these people are really just kind of sick in a way right? And the marines really didn’t want to start a precedent of cannibalism, and especially did not want to find themselves under speculation for people who condone cannibalism; it really put the organization as a whole under estranged looks.
As for the rest of the restaurant hut place, around the center pole, and bartending area, to the right of the meat cooking area out in the open, the place was littered with wooden tables, filled with perfectly content people. It wasn’t one of the boisterous bars, where people loudly talked and laughed, but more the type of place that people had their nice little quiet conversations, that if you were at about the center, you would be free to look at, and probably listen to any conversation if you tuned in and listened well. To the right of the nice little hut area, was a small thicket of palm trees, nothing that you couldn’t see through, just added a nice little atmosphere to the place, giving the real “island” feel. Behind the small area was a nice and deep lake, which you could barely see the bottom of, and was a pretty nice area to be sure, again, tis large fountain of water that hugged past the thicket of palm trees, and the cooking area, almost exactly bordering the restaurant, maybe about 100 meters wide from the center (the center conveniently bordering the restaurant why it was probably made there in the first place, for the general aesthetic purposes that made it feel so homely), and 200 meters far from away from the bar. Someone could even fancy a nice little dip there if they felt like it, swimming and all that. Then of course there was the front entrance, which wasn’t really an entrance at all, but was really just two stone totem poles with small bowls carved into the tops of their heads, with flames in them, giving you the real full islander experience, and the whole native urban experience, it was the place considered the exit and entry point if only for the novelty, even if you could really enter at any point whatsoever and there was really nothing anyone else could do about it if only some disapproving a little for going against the flow. All in all, the designers of this restaurant had created to feel like a home, and an extension of ones self, so when entering the area, anybody could simply feel good about themselves, appearing friendly simply because of the nice area and sunny days, making more people want to come in because even from the outside (obviously) you can see “woah, look at all those friendly faces, maybe I should go in there and talk with the friendly people.”
Of course, the one that Blink was interested in was the right side of this area, because as he wanted to lay low, he felt like it would be a bit weird going to a perfectly normal establishment as a tiny dwarf, and suddenly being served as a regular person, expecting not to ruffle any feathers at all. That and to mention Blink did not especially like the idea of paying for drinks today, he had paid society enough, now it was time for him to take a little back. He was tired of entering a nice place and the place being busted apart, and he just wanted a nice drink. So yes, you could say that he planned on stealing so drinks and dashing, drinking and dashing so to speak.
So he decided to take the “road less travelled” as it were, and go through the side entrance, the right one to be specific, and see if he couldn’t find himself a nice little area where he could sit and relax a bit. So he took a nice curve around the restaurant, where he was out of eyesight of anyone in there, and could make his way through the makeshift palm tree forest, that was happily undisposed right now, as in it had nobody inside of it for Blink to be wary of. So he weaved himself from behind tree-to-tree, being relatively cautious, reassessing his situation with each tree and dash, getting closer and closer to his destination, the restaurant that these people seemed to like currently. As he got closer, he made sure that he was moving quickly, but still stealthily for his plan was to sneak in and get a drink, and sneak out, which wouldn’t be too hard considering his predisposed size, and natural speed. Finally, he was at the edge of the forest, thankfully there would be a very low chance of anyone seeing him throughout this journey, mostly because of the fact that these people were all wrapped up in the conversations, and really had no reason nor need of looking out to the palm trees, and even if they did, they would be far more attracted to the high leaves of the palm trees and the coconuts that really made for the scenery, and identified them as truly, “palm trees.” Not the boring old same old same old dirt. Of course, if against all odds someone DID look at him, and saw him for a tiny dwarf and made eye contact, he would probably go behind a tree again, and hope that they summed it up to a trick of a hallucination, and get back to more important things, like looks at the broad leaves, or talking with someone, or eating the shady slab of meat that was simply labeled “mystery meat,” on the menu, and would wait until the person had shifted their attention back to their mystery meat, and then resume with his process. He was of course doing all of this cloak and dagger business because of the fact that he was of course, not planning on entering the bar to be a perfect model citizen, but was instead planning on saving (and earning as the saying goes,) a bit of beli. If of course, they were so inclined to leave the warm atmosphere of their conversation and the food place to go find a possible hallucination behind a tree (I mean, who really sees a tiny bald dude and thinks “oh wow, this seems like a totally logical thing I just saw, I better go check that out,” like seriously?) And of course, seeing a small blitzing figure, one usually would not look out for a dwarf because of that, because dwarves were in no way a commonplace person to see, it was rare for someone to see one of them in entire lifetimes. Little was known about them of course, they were just your average everyday small person to the average person, their unknown battle prowess in no way common knowledge, mostly because the ones that got captured were the weakest dwarves, and nothing really to base a race off of. It would take someone like a historian to realize the true fighting potential of a dwarf, and even then it would be strange for him or her to leap to conclusions when seeing a blitzing figure, because they would know more than anyone the rarity of a dwarf running around.
If he reached the edge of the gathering of the palm trees undisturbed, near the very edge of the piece of wooden planked ground that paralleled the final edge of the brown canvas that overlooked the entire restaurant, shielding it with its warm embrace of protection from the sun and elements that descended exclusively from the sky down completely, no room for diagonal lines. Finally, he could proceed with the next phase of his plan of waltzing right on into the area. Now, you may be thinking that this isn’t the stealthiest action to perform, and how it was not a good plan at all actually, but in fact it was a perfectly sound plan when you took all of the facts into account. For example, there was the fact that these people were not looking at the ground for tiny dwarven men, but were in fact looking at each other, or their food, or the waiters to bring them food, and the staff definitely had their hands full. Not to mention that the bar was plenty crowded, with people all over the place, so a even a lazy eye wanders ocular nerves would find themselves looking at the pretty ladies, or the pretty men as their preference may be. So he was allowed to walk into the area undisturbed, and he started hugging the centerpiece, and he was walking to the right, so he was on the side that had a nice like for a nice view, and had a nice area to find him in. He made sure for his eyes to quickly dart from person to person, so if any of their eyes were looking down, he would see them, and from there he would not run away as a symbol of being a guilty man, but rather walk up and introduce himself, finding himself as a kinder man to them. Not running away like the guiltiest person you could be, but rather simply walking up as another friend. After all, while it may have been considered an oddity, it was hardly a crime to be a dwarf, in fact in might make him seem harmless, as most people didn’t know they dwarves had the same amount of the strength as humans, but when concentrated in their little bodies, they could apply it more effectively, not mention how very fucking fast they were, it was almost unreal. But all people really knew and saw was that these people had funny little bodies and tails, so probably were not a threat to them or anyone else. Still being cloak and dagger because if people knew he was here, that would put a damper on his whole “stealing some booze” effect.
To further cover up his disguise, he would see a well-placed wooden tavern mug on the ground right in his path, out of everyone’s way but his, not a tripping or spillage risked area, which nobody would really have any reason to notice or look at, standing at about 6 inches high, and 4 inches in diameter. He was able to knock it over his head; it was pretty simple, just knocking it over his head, sliding in one basically fluent motion. Even if someone happened to be looking his way (which was hard to consider when remembering the aforementioned other visual stimuli.) They would really only catch a glimpse of a mug flipping over all of a sudden, which was pretty fast, anyways while he put his new outfit on, he made sure to be keeping tabs on everyone, even if they were talking with someone, and their attentions were completely shifted to one person in a conversation, just because this motion was a bit more risqué, if the risk was still relatively small. Quite literally almost becoming a piece of furniture, now, he would have to do something about sight, so he would press his finger against the mug, and put a few well placed scratches for him to easily see out of, so he could comfortably see the rest of the bar in piece, monitoring the situation, while the cup would just a little scratched up, and due to the lighting inside of the mug, it would look dark inside, so nobody could see him inside, for enough light to get inside, he would have to make a hole with about 1 inches in radius, and the person would have to be looking down and have good eyesight to boot. Luckily, judging from the ground of the floor, he would not have to worry about his mug being cleaned up, because the ground was covered in pieces of cutlery, mugs, and plates, it really added to the homey laid back feeling, another reason a mug on the ground wasn’t really an oddity. The pieces of eating utensils and eating tools were probably only cleaned up at the very end of the day, when the crowd had cleared out, which it was definitely nowhere near doing. It was here that he could relax and be himself, just so that he could formulate a plan for getting behind a bar. Sure, there was a small gateway that led to the area behind the counter, but that usually had a steady supply of waiters walking in and out and in and out, and that could prove to be rather unpleasant to deal with the time of that whole situation, so he wanted to do something simple, something relaxing, something he could just have fun with on his mini vacation. Of course, if there was a stipulation in his area, and someone saw him, he would of course most likely take the cup off, and crack a joke or something, if everything was regular of course, if something else was going on, then he would have to choose a different course of actions.
Then he saw it, or rather him, the samurai that he observed before in the bar, well, he had sort of thought that he had recognized him a bit before because that tale of the bar was still sadly fresh in his mind, but he had not really gone through the thought processes required to totally connect him, unless he had done something to really gain his attention, he would just regard him as much as he would another person. The samurai, on top of everything else, was also just another guy, if Blink was on the counter behind him, he could probably just barely hear their conversation when tuning completely in from the distance that he was in, but since he was inside of a mug right now, it would be a bit more difficult, at least he was basically out of their way, no different than any other piece of scrap on the ground. The fateful bar that was sadly outclassed by some marines who seemed to think that simply BEING a murderer and wanting a few drinks was a crime. Like, everyone knew that it was the murder that was a crime, there was nothing really wrong with being a murderer, and besides, one doesn’t just invade a bar, crime center or no, like, come on, that had to break a bro code of some sort. Right? Well, apparently not, because the marine seemed to take no problems with simply breaking up an otherwise lovely drinking party. Marines just had no sense of common decency, even the ones that were not corrupt, and those were hard to find.
AND CAN WE JUST GET BACK ON THIS? Like, come on man, there are more corrupt marines than there are actual bad pirates. You don’t see that many pirates going around simply murdering children, but you see so many corrupt marines doing so much corrupt shit, yet you see pirates making friends with the locals and the wildlife, and make the marines look like they should be the pirates, and the pirates should be the official good guys. I mean, come fucking on, am I the only one who sees a problem with this? The pirates do the same stuff they would do as marines, except for the fact that they’re pretending to be bad guys while doing it, while the marines are pretending to be good guys and suddenly doing bad shit. Why does nobody just decide to be bad so they can do bad shit, like, you can kind of understand it for the marines, they get special privileges, but the pirates do all of these good deeds, and get bounties for it for no real reason? Why has the mass public not called out and gone “Hey, we want the pirates ruling us now, not the corrupt marines.” I know there must be propaganda involved, but god damn it is propaganda really that strong? Strong enough to cover up even blatant corruption that I’m pretty sure the marines don’t try to hide, and the good deeds that pirates do on a daily basis? BUT WHATEVER, BACK TO THE TOPIC I GUESS.
Anyways, he saw the sword wielder; the one he had seen in a bar before, what was memorable about this man was that he FUCKING STABBED another man. To death as well, in front of his crying gang mates, and then scared them away as they cried for the loss of their friend. It seemed that the sword wielder was drinking a glass of water. Quickly, Blink scanned the floors, in case he had missed someone getting stabbed, hard as that may be. Because last time he saw the sword wielder (which was admittedly one time, but still killing someone is kind of a big deal, and drinking water afterwards is kind of stone cold, and seems sort of like a habit honestly,) he killed a man and drank a cup of water like nothing out of the ordinary had just transpired. He decided that he should definitely stay in his little mug for now, lying low, he could also listen into the conversation; maybe see what the situation was with this sword wielder. Unfortunately, due to his impromptu style right now, it was but hard to hear their conversation. So he could only really make out a few keywords that the two men were talking about, through a combo of lip reading and making out vague sounds. One thing that he heard was the word “doctor” coming out a lot, were they both in need of a doctors aid? Or were they both two of your everyday psycho killers talking about how many men wished there was a doctor nearby, since they were going to bleed out otherwise. Luckily, the sword wielder had most likely not noticed him yet, because neither of the two of them would most likely look his way, because of the fact that they were both enraptured in their conversation, and were relaxed, not suspiciously looking at a mug on the floor. Of course, if certain events transpired, which made them feel the need to put up their guards all of a sudden, and target mugs, or their eyesight collectively or individually went to him, he would remove his mug and play it off carefully, choosing his words and actions carefully, not caring to make himself seem suspicious (although he admitted that would be pretty fucking hard when it came to acting unsuspicious when he had just spent his time in a wooden mug.) He wouldn’t only focus on them of course, making sure that he kept slight tabs on other people in the bar, but for the most part his audio sensors were tuned to the, even if they proved to be slightly ineffective in the current state he was in.
Of course, he was not sure what to make of the white haired scar-faced dude, who looked like some sort of bondevil villain just because of his white hair and scar, but he hadn’t seen him do anything shady yet, he might just be a regular person. Then again, he WAS talking to this psycho, so what was up with him? The two men continued talking about doctors, and seemingly mothers. Slowly he got more accustomed to reading their lips, it seemed that possibly… They may have been talking about being doctors? That was certainly more of an enigma, what was the samurai’s play? That was certainly a strange thought, as if he was a sort of person who saved people, certainly going against the person that he was. Or least, the type of person that the dwarf had thought he was. It did not make sense, why would a doctor kill someone with little care for human life? It did not make sense, unless he was an especially shit doctor, or the doctor was just a cover up for murder, or way to discover the vital areas of the human body. The other man on the other hand, could simply be an innocent in the line of duty. If duty was drinking at a homey feeling bar, however, Blink wasn’t willing to simply amiss this man in every way shape or form simply because he MIGHT be nice, when in fact his face looked like something straight out of a children’s story book (and he wasn’t the one playing the kind hero.) For all he knew, it might be an actual rule that you could only get scars on your face like that if you had a pension for making world dominating plans involving den den mushi overloads, and robbing every bank.
Finally, the doctor killer or whatever started taking a bit of displeasure in his area, seemingly scanning the area, and deciding to leave, Blink was not sure why though, why would the doctor wish to leave a place with so many friendly people? And that felt like such a homey place? Did it bring up memories of the homes that he has probably wrecked with his reckless abandon of murder? Maybe Blink could give him a break though, he wasn’t exactly a saint, he had killed before, from simple anger that he felt no need to cover up and control, or for jobs, but killing someone for no reason at all as a first course of action? Stone cold. As it so happened, our little dwarf was a bit angry at his anger and current confusion, so he decided to clear it up in a relatively free manner. He was reasonably confident in his ability to be able to catch the man off guard, seeing as the rest of the population usually thought that they (the dwarves) were a harmless people, unless they had spent some sort of time studying them like a historian. And he was in a SLIGHTLY generous mood, so he might as well also give the man a warning. Slowly, after giving the samurai plenty of time for a timely exit, taking much care he would lift the mug off of his head, and saddle to the now dining alone man with a scar on his face, the one that was known to many but the dwarf as Idaru, if the man looked his way he would make eye contact, and possibly change his recourse depending on whether or not the man had done anything else than simply make a blank faced eye contact. But still, this was a tad unlikely still, because he was still a tiny dwarf. When he got to the man, position how he was for the previous duration since he had gotten into this humble establishment, he would hoist himself onto the chair, and then onto the table, most likely gaining his attention by this point.
“Laddie? Do ye ‘ave anee’ idea on whetha’ er naught ye ‘ave just been a possible victim ta? What ‘as just transpired? Did me own ayes deceive meh? Or did sam real gobshite just go down’? I need ta’ know, fer me own safteh as well as yers.” He would ask, his accent thickly masked with the consequences of a lifetime of living among dwarves. If the man reacted with overly large amounts of surprise or other negative emotions (or even overly positive ones) during his speech, or interrupted him, Blink would take these factors into account in the choosing of his actions. He knew that his size could be off putting for many. Even when walking up to the man, and climbing up his chair, he would make sure to keep focused on the man, because he couldn’t just expect a human to simply think “Woah, you must be a completely regular person, and you’re a dwarf, so I will totally be calm about this and have a logical thought presence knowing of you as a dwarf.” But he would still think of himself, and right now his anger towards his own lack of information. Now standing next to the man’s now half full mug, he would meet his eyes, with a questioning but still firm gaze. He hoped that the man was not actually a psycho, and was in fact just your everyday other man, because if he made a grab for him, that would have to be met with a well timed sidestep and strong swat, but he really hoped this was just your everyday doctor.
Of course, this hope would not create a false sense of hope for him, as he was still waiting for the man to speak, if the man “’ad anee’ idea on whetha’ er naught e ‘ad just bin a possible victim ta,” well, then a very new recourse of action might need to be taken. Whether it was his much loved stress reliever, or simply a quick exit due to his wish for a relaxation couple of days. However, he was here to gather a bit of info, and he wouldn’t give up on that so easy that he could be mistaken for a bendy strong with the way he changed his direction so quickly.
