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Aerith came to Seventh Heaven whenever she wasn’t doing the sorceress-errant thing, and mainly for the food: generous portions, reasonable prices, and a cute cook-and-proprietor to dish it all up.
Today, Aerith had settled down to a light meal of beef stew, a few roasted capons, a roasted joint, a cottage loaf, a salad of wild greens, and a few tankards of the house mead. She was feeling a bit under the weather, so her appetite was smaller than usual.
Seventh Heaven was your typical tavern: tables here and there, the bar, and some dark corners for the broody types to brood in. Today, the tables were full and the dark corners empty, but there was a broody type at the bar, nursing a glass of something like broody types tended to do. Tifa, the cute cook-and-proprietor, was tending the bar, and she didn’t seem to have a problem with the broody guy being so out of character, so Aerith decided to ignore it.
Aerith was finishing off another capon and contemplating dessert—that saying about letting food be medicine was turning out to be true—when some generic-looking old man in dark robes approached her table. “Pardon me,” the old man said, “Are you the sorceress Aerith Gainsborough?”
If Seventh Heaven had been any other place, at this point in the proceedings there’d be a a clatter of pewter as things fell to the ground, the scrape of chairs and stools as people contemplated starting shit, and Aerith would have to begin the tedious calculus of the odds of anyone with a bounty on their head being within range of her spells. However, Seventh Heaven was Seventh Heaven, and Aerith was a regular, so everyone kept eating.
She took a swallow of mead. “That’s me.”
Old Man #537 bobbed his head a few times. “I have an offer for one of your great talents. Our princess has been—”
“How much are you offering?” A girl did have to eat, after all.
Old Man #537 cleared his throat. “We’re not a wealthy nation, but—”
Aerith huffed. She knew what that meant: bargaining. She hated bargaining. Why didn’t people just accept her prices? It wasn’t like she just made up some big numbers! Careful thought and planning went into asking for those big numbers. “Is it going to be more than just a pat on the back?”
Old Man #537 held up his hand. “You’ll be adequately compensated, I assure you.”
People’s ideas of “adequately” were usually different—smaller—than hers, but that was what the bargaining was for. Besides, she didn’t have anything lined up. “Okay, what are the details, then?”
Old Man #537 took a seat at the table with his back to the door—ugh, did this guy have a death-wish or what?—and produced a tightly wrapped scroll. “As I was saying, our princess—”
Another voice from the door: “You!”
Aerith, Old Man #537, and most of the rest of the bar turned to the sound—Broody Guy at the bar didn't seem to care. The three thieves with the dopey black masks Aerith had hauled in for a rather pitiful bounty less than two weeks ago burst into the bar. Aerith was both glad and annoyed that her habit of keeping her back to the wall and her eyes towards the door turned out be the right choice yet again.
“You!” Thief One said again.
Aerith rolled her eyes. “What is it? Want another ass-kicking?”
“Not you!” Thief Two said. “You! Him!”
Thief Three threw a bottle of… something at their table. The old man moved faster than any old man had a right to move and dodged it. Aerith herself had only just managed to duck in time. The bottle hit Broody Guy at at the bar square in the back and clattered to the floor. You’d almost think that Thief Three wanted to do it on purpose. Broody Guy, of course, turned around to see who’d hit him.
Broody Guy looked rather young. Broody Guy looked pretty good. Cute, young blonds with big blue eyes usually couldn’t pull off a good murder face, but Broody Guy was really working his.
Aerith sat back up, took another sip of her mead—waste not, want not—and waited.
“Not him, either!” Thief Three said. “Him!” He pointed at Old Man #537. “Him!”
Thief One strode up to their table, just out of Aerith’s punching range. Thieves Two and Three were right behind. “You’re breaking bread with a burglar!”
“A criminal, doing crimes!” added Thief Two.
“He swiped our stuff!” chimed in Thief Three.
“We require restitution!” said Thief One.
Attention shifted to the old man. “I took what was ill-gotten,” he said.
Thief Three blinked. “Our stuff can’t get sick...”
Thief One cuffed Thief Three in the back of the head. “He’s saying we swiped our stuff.”
“Well, yeah,” Thief Two said, “but we swiped it. It was ours.”
“Would all of you mind taking this outside?” Tifa interrupted. She was wearing that sort of smile that anyone with two brain cells to rub together could tell was hiding a whole bunch of irritation. “I don’t want any trouble in here.”
Thief One glared at her. “You stay out of this, or you’ll be next!”
They had threatened the proprietor of Seventh Heaven. They threatened the source from which all good things—like roast capon and the house mead—flowed. The utter audacity!
Tifa walked out from behind the bar and straight to Thief Two. She was wearing a set of gloves that Aerith had never seen on her: dark leather, studded with metal, and that probably hurt if you got hit with them. Before anyone could get out any threats or warnings, Tifa punched Thief Two in the gut. Thief Two went down in a heap. It was actually quite dashing.
Thief Three was winding back for a punch of his own, but Broody Guy—who’d somehow teleported from his seat at the bar to right behind Tifa—had taken hold of Thief Three’s arm. Thief Three was currently begging for his life.
Thief One seemed to be thinking about the best course of action when Aerith clasped her hands together and began an incantation.
There was a blinding light, and Seventh Heaven was suddenly a lot more open-plan than it had been a minute ago.
Aerith hadn’t meant to do that. It looked like she was still feeling under the weather, after all.
Seventh Heaven wasn’t looking so hot. Rubble, busted walls, tables that were little better than kindling. The old man was gone, the three thieves sprawled on some of the only bits of rubble-free floor, and the regulars had managed to scramble to safe places as soon as they’d seen she was casting a spell. It was good to see that some people still had sense.
Tifa put her hands on her hips and frowned at Aerith. “You messed up my place again! And really messed it up this time!”
Aerith batted her eyes and made her voice go soft and girly. “Can it go on my tab?”
Tifa crossed her arms. “And about that tab…”
Aerith got out her money pouch and looked inside. It was… a lot lighter on cash than it had been when she came into Seventh Heaven, and heavy one familiar-looking scroll. “Uh, I’ve got enough to cover…” she took another look inside the pouch “…maybe half of what I had today?”
“How are you going to pay the rest?”
“I’ve got a job coming up! With a reward at the end!” Aerith got out the old man’s scroll. “A princess needs to be rescued, or something. Royal favors tend to be pretty lucrative.” She hoped. Maybe Tifa could punch the royals until enough favors fell out. “Just sit back and leave it to me!”
“I’m going with you,” Tifa said.
“You don’t trust me?” And it had been a while since Aerith had worked with anyone, but Tifa didn’t have to know that.
Tifa swept her arm to indicate what was left of Seventh Heaven. “It’s not like there’s much for me here, thanks to you.”
“I really didn’t mean to. Really.”
Broody Guy spoke up. “I’m going with you, too.”
Tifa suddenly started looking soft again when her attention went to Broody Guy. “Cloud, are you sure?” Cloud. Cloud?! Broody Guy’s name was Cloud? No wonder he had such a good murder face.
“I’m sure,” Cloud said.
Aerith clapped her hands. “Okay, so we’ve got a group together! Wonderful! Can we call it a day and get a fresh start tomorrow morning?”
Tifa walked back to what was was left of the bar and started gathering supplies: hard, salty food that would keep for a while, containers for water, a depressingly small amount of cash. “We’re leaving as soon as we get everything packed.” Cloud produced a gigantic sword from out of nowhere and shouldered it.
“But we won’t get to another town before nightfall,” Aerith said. She was not whining. She was merely stating facts in a somewhat high-pitched voice.
“So we rough it,” Cloud said.
Aerith drooped. She’d been looking forward to a least another week or two of having a soft bed.
Instead, the open road—and financial freedom—lay ahead.