Closed First day on the Job (Thundiirn)

[Twister]

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11th of Winter, 512 AV

The Streets of Sunberth (15th Bell)

Sunberth was a city built on connections. With the lack of a formal law and a populace entirely dependent on their twisted idea of freedom, you could only keep yourself safe by knowing the right people. Should your life be threatened, you needed to back yourself up with someone more scary than your assailant in hopes of saving your own skin--maybe they cared enough not to want to touch you if they knew who you were involved with. Then again, having a complete lack of connections was also a way to survive. If you were invisible, you could well go about your own business for a while without having to worry about someone picking you up on your scent for one reason or another. The less people who knew about you and your capabilities in Sunberth, the better. Tua didn't have the luxury of invisibility, though he'd knowingly sacrificed his anonymity for the sake of his ever flourishing business. It was built on the graves of those who died to run his errands and held together by his own blood, sweat and tears. It would continue operating in this way, and expand its already large web of contacts that spanned the width of the entire city. He needed his manpower to keep this web intact, however, and a few sacks of flesh to protect himself with when deals went bad. That's mostly what he had his runners for. To deliver bad news in his place and get away with it, as well as collect pieces of information or objects for him whenever it was too dangerous for him to go in person. This was one of those times.

A man stood alone out in the streets outside Thundiirn's residence. He looked inconspicuous enough if it weren't for the nervous tic he seemed to display, casting glances up and down the street and back over his shoulder into the alley between glancing at the door. He didn't move from his spot and he didn't seem to be carrying anything on him. He wasn't dressed in a way that stood out, either. Mostly just rags and what looked like a bowl atop his head. One could easily mistake it for a helmet, hadn't it been for the wooden texture giving it away for what it really was. The man occasionally glanced up at the sky as well, and he stood there for a good hour just repeating his cycling of paranoid stares in all directions before he actually moved out of his spot to approach Thundiirn's door. A few quick raps against the wooden surface, then the man stepped back again and bounced restlessly on his heels, waiting to hear an answer from the inside or feel the door slam open to knock him off his feet. Both options were equally likely and the latter was one not entirely foreign to him. ... He took a pair of steps back from the door. Better to be safe than sorry.

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[Thundiirn]

He sat there, in the silence and darkness, slowly flexing his fingers open and closed. They felt stiff still, the muscles slow to respond and seemingly half-frozen. He'd been diligently doing these exercises ever since the change, in hopes of loosening up the tendons and making them more efficient at responding ot his brain, and it definitely HAD helped.... but only barely. THUD THUD THUD Who in the world was that? Thundiirn wondered, startled. He hadn't met many people in the city since returning, and the large majority of those he had didn't know where he lived. A fleeting feeling of fear flowed through him, due to his current physical vulnerability, but it was quickly overpowered by curiosity. Getting up and moving towards the source, he slid away the table that sat upright in front of his door-less frame for the sake of privacy and insulation. A very strange sight met him as he did this. A man, probably in his mid-30s at oldest, pacing in circles nervously and wearing what looked like a wooden bowl that had been painted silver upon his head. Has news already spread of my change? Is this the sort of reaction I can expect from my fellow humans from this day forward? Already he found himself questioning his choice, but he quickly pushed such thoughts out of his head. It did no good to question what had come to pass, he just had to make the best of what he had right here, right now. "Can I help you, sir?" As soon as he opened his mouth, he wished he had let the other man speak first. Maybe he had been hasty to assume his secret was already discovered. Maybe this man was just weird. But he certainly knew his secret now, for his tongue was black as night.