Just Another Day

1 - The World's Dumbest Thief

"Hey! Stop that thief!" "He's getting away!" "Catch him!"

The thief swiftly weaves through the people, knocking over metal boxes and hurling anything he could get his hands on at his pursuers.

As the prisoners steered clear of the onslaught of the unruly prisoner, I suddenly heard frantic knocks on my door, with some shouts in between.

"It seems yet another eventful day in the Fortress..." I sighed, dreading the thought of skipping my afternoon tea just because some guy was making a little mess.

Some of the newer exiles knew nothing of the rules here and made a mess and it resulted in me graciously getting handed more work on top of the stack of papers.

What's keeping them from earning your pay just like everyone else? It keeps everyone, including me, happy...

I need to take a sip of my tea before it gets wasted due to this dipshit running around like a dog on the loose, which is a shame because I like dogs.

"Are you heading there to personally deal with the matter again, Your Grace?"

Sigewinne shot a look at me while holding one of those concoctions she calls milkshakes, which she makes for me now and then.

Seeing them made my blood run cold, so I quickly decided to excuse myself from the premises.

"It's getting quite stuffy in my office and I'm desperately in need of a stretch. Besides, the faster I get this over with, the sooner you and I can go to that famous new boulangerie up in the Court of Fontaine to get that milkshake you've been talking about. You deserve it after all the patients you've treated."

I make my way down the stairs and out the door, already seeing a box get slammed right into one of the guards.

"Ah shit, what the hell?! Hey, are you okay?"

Getting more annoyed by the second, I quickly ran over and told them to get to the infirmary and the other guards nearby to get the other injured too. Now just gotta catch that guy and be done.

"It's the Duke! There's no way he's gonna deal with the problem himself right?" "Ehh, who cares now, that idiot's gonna get caught in the blink of an eye, just watch."

The thief, prisoner 7649, wanted a shortcut to getting credit coupons so he grabbed the nearest guy and started throwing punches, according to one of the guards who was there when it happened.

Great idea man.

But anyway, tracking him down wasn't the hardest thing to do, just following a path that looked like a tornado had passed through led me straight to the guy. He made his way from the upper production zone to the Administrative zone, so I had to hand it to him for covering so much ground without getting caught, although, that makes even more work for me...

"What a show you put on there, throwing everything in every direction, chucking whole metal boxes. With that strength, you should've just settled in the Pankration Ring... Props to you for making one big mess over a measly 300 credit coupons."

"Shut yer trap you oversized chimp! You better not get in my way or else this guy's gonna get it!"

You could hear the crowds gasp as he said that. That's one I haven't heard in a long time, but it wasn't funny for long, so I was just even more annoyed by this guy.

He was holding the shop owner of the Rag and Bones shopkeeper hostage with a broken glass bottle ready to make this problem go from 0 to 100.

"Haha, the guards are so incompetent that they can't even catch me on their own? Pathetic. This corrupt fortress is nowhere where I should be, I did nothing wrong!"

He was practically screaming at me, but what does he think that's going to do, intimidate me? Really? If you wanted to do that, at least put more effort into it, I'm not some softie.

"Really? If you did nothing wrong, why're you here? And besides, you just committed theft, property damage, multiple counts of assault due to you stealing someone's hard-earned credit coupons, and on top of that, making me have a hard time."

"So did you really do nothing wrong?"

"Argh! Whatever! If you don't let me go scot-free, I'll take this innocent man's life! You wouldn't want to kill another person due to your stubbornness right?"

He pointed the cracked bottle's edge closer to Alvard's neck, drawing blood.

"Please- Your Grace, help..."

Alvard desperately called out before quickly blacking out in the thief's arms and falling to the ground, catching him off guard. The prick's still holding the glass at him, so I can't do anything just yet...

"Damn... you're not making this easy huh? Fine, have it your way, I'll let you out. Tomorrow, you'll find a guard waiting to escort you out of the Fortress."

"W- wait really? Was it that easy? You're not lying to me right?"

"Nope" What do you think? Of course I'm lying to you dimwit.

"Well then! It seems like I'm out of this place while the rest of you lot can slave away for this bimbo!"

He started looking around, lowering his guard down. Taking advantage of him blatantly forgetting that I was still there, I swiftly closed the distance between us and threw a hard right jab to his face.

Knocking people out always has this nice feeling to it, especially when I don't need to put on my gauntlets.

"Guards, can you clean up this mess for me? I also need a damage report and a report from Sigewinne on the number of injured persons, stat. Make sure to watch anyone that could've cooperated with this guy and whom he has contacted in the last 30 days."

Dealing with this little problem right here, and handling the cost of the materials ruined by this little dipshit right here who broke 3 Recon Log Meks (dog gardemeks) and the number of boxes that were destroyed in the process.

I'll make a lil guess here and say that I lost about 140,000 mora's worth of production materials and those expensive gardemeks...

One of the guards will have to be sent up to the Palais Mermonia to report and replace the damaged gardemeks to the Maison Gardiennage.

Wait...

I have an excuse to see him.

That beautiful man.

Neuvillette.