The Mysterious GIrl

Daniels had awoken a while ago and had set to keeping himself occupied. Repacking the magazine, and then taking apart and reassembling his gun. A lot. He found it to be incredibly soothing to take it down and look at every little part that made the wonderful thing function. He was just about to look through the gun catalog when the girl stirred in her bed.

Not wanting to look like a creep who'd been watching her sleep, he set to taking apart the gun again. He finished reassembling it and took a glance at her, to find she'd been watching him the whole time.

"Uh... hi," he said awkwardly.

"What is that thing you used against the wolf things?" she asked pointing to the gun in his hand.

He looked into her oddly calm eyes and replied, "It's a pistol. Uh, how can I put this... It uses an explosion to launch a projectile."

He wondered why he hadn't thought of such a simple explanation the 2 times before.

They sat there staring at each other awkwardly for a moment before he cleared his throat.

"If you don't mind, could you tell me how you got into that situation?" he asked her.

She gave a slight nod, "When I moved here I intended to sell magic tools I produce, but nobody bought any. Let alone affording more materials I couldn't afford a place to stay or meals. I was incredibly down on my luck when a wealthy merchant's son approached me and offered me a loan. Having no other option I took the loan. I was able to get by a little longer but still, no one bought my tools. I couldn't pay it off, and in fact, needed even more money to continue living. I couldn't leave and go back home either, no he made sure of that with registering my debt with the merchant's guild. I was more and more in the hole. I was incredibly grateful when you gave me that coin yesterday, I was able to pay off a bit of the interest. Unfortunately, I still had far too much debt. He threatened to sell me into slavery unless I did beginner guild tasks so he could progress through the ranks.

He asked that I fetch ginns' roots from the forest a few kilos outside of town in the forest. He paid me a few copper told me he would let me take the reward and hired a carriage to take me there. Well, I took a ride on the carriage until the driver let me off near there promising to return soon. I was looking about when those wolf things showed up. If you hadn't called out to me and helped me then I think I would've fared a lot worse than and torn foot, thank you."

She gave a slight bow but he told her to raise her head.

"It was just lucky I was there, I just did what anybody would have."

"Not many people would be willing to risk themselves for a stranger, values like those are usually those of knights," she said looking up at him with admiration.

He tried to shrug off the compliment, "I do have a quick question though, what is a Kilo?"

She looked at him strangely for a moment.

"It's universally used as a unit to measure long distances, paired with milos that measure about the distance of a stride."

[Similar enough to kilometers and meters I guess]

"Oh. Thank you, I apologize but I'm from a very far away land so I am lacking some in common sense here."

He thought for a moment, "But what about that bastard? Surely he won't let you go now that you failed. What are you going to do?"

She looked down, "There's nothing I can do. He has me."

He thought for a second, "I'll go with you to see what I can work out," he told her.

She blushed a little bit, "Really?"

"Of course, I didn't save you just so you could have the rest of your life stripped away by something as filthy and animalistic as slavery. But before that, you were out for a while, I'm sure you must be hungry, how about we get some food next door? I don't mind paying for yours."

She smiled, "Thank you, that would be nice."

"Come on then, let's head on over."

He helped her up and they left the room. Once they made their way to the reception area, the young woman at the desk looked at him a tad suspiciously, which he supposed was fair enough given the circumstances. He tried not to pay it any mind and they walked over to the tavern.

It was late in the day nearing night so as they entered they noticed the bar was loaded and the tavern was crowded with people eating drinking and being merry. Daniels spotted a free booth in the back and gestured for her to follow him.

The two sat down across from each other. He got a good clear look at her, she had gorgeous black hair that went down to about half her back, pale white skin that paired beautifully with deep blue eyes, looking deep into them long enough and you'd swear you were looking into Mariana's trench. She noticed him looking and blushed a bit, he averted his eyes awkwardly.

Luckily he was saved from the awkward mood when a waitress arrived. "Good evening customers, tonight we are serving roast boar and the usual alcohols. Would you like to order?

"Could we get a couple plates of meat and a couple glasses of water please?"

She scratched down on a pad of paper quickly, "Certainly it'll be here shortly."

The waitress walked off and Daniels was left with the girl whose name he realized he didn't know.

"I'm sorry but I still haven't gotten your name."

She blushed again, "Ah, I'm sorry where are my manners? My name is Lilly. May I ask yours?"

"Daniels," he replied warmly.

She looked down a bit then spoke up, "I was wondering, where did you get that 'pistol' exactly? I've seen contraptions from all over but I have yet to see anything like that."

To that he smiled, "Made in my home country, a land of the free called the United States. Apart from that, it has quite the heritage too ya know? It's derived from another pistol made a little over 100 years ago."

She went wide-eyed, "So you're saying this type of magic tool is more than 100 years old??"

He smiled wider, "No, just this pistol and its original variants. The type, as you put it, self-loading pistols date back to a good 230ish years ago. This one, in particular, is an upgrade of the product by the father of modern firearms John Moses Browning himself."

She looked a little pale, "I can't claim to know everything about magic tools but I have done a lot of research while I was growing up and before I set out, and I have never ever seen even a trace of something like that, nor of any prolific figure by the name of Browning."

"Well, for starters it's not a magic tool. Secondly, it makes sense no one here's heard of him. When I said far away I meant reaaally far away."

"How could something that powerful not be a magic tool???" she asked bewildered.

"Well, as I talked about a little already, it's mechanical. It's very complicated but the basics are that when activated a small metal piece will hit and activate a small explosion propelling forth the projectile, and the gasses from the explosion function to load another cartridge."

"May I see it?" she asked eyes aglow.

"No, I'm sorry," he replied

She looked very downcast at this but he soon elaborated, "I'll let you shoot it, just not here. I can't even let you play with it because it's very dangerous. I don't mean to insult your intelligence but if handled incorrectly you could blow your head off, and I don't think my healing vials cover self-inflicted head canoeing. But I really don't mind teaching you about it or letting you shoot it, it's just that I need to be able to safely supervise you, and it has to be rather far from here. As you saw with the wolves it makes quite the ruckus and I don't want any attention."

[Correction, any 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 attention]

"I look forward to it," she replied.

The waitress then came by with two plates of roast pork and a couple of waters.

They enjoyed their meal in peace. Daniels had to say, even though the tech level was medieval level and such, even this meal for middle-class commoners/adventurers had an appropriate amount of spice, even more amazing, the water tasted clean and pure. Magic must have heavily influenced their quality of living. Hell, there was a flush toilet in the inn!

When they were finished Daniels presented the card from the inn, had it punched, and paid the remainder with 1 silver coin getting 6 copper back.

[so it looks like the tavern has quite the deal, or maybe this is just a more expensive than usual dinner. Either way, I ended up pretty good.]

He returned to the booth, "Let's go settle somethings huh?"

She nodded still nervous.

They didn't have long to walk though, a few steps out of the tavern, they were confronted by a snobby looking man.

"You wench! Here I went and gave you a chance and what do you do?! You go out on a date with some man!!" He punched her hard in the face. She fell to the ground and spit blood.

The man wasn't able to make another move before Daniels was jamming the barrel of the .45 into his temple, "Alright you prick," Daniels said in a cold incredibly icy yet calm tone, "You know, my father always told me, never hit a woman son is what he said."

CRACK!

The loud sound resounded as Daniels pistol whipped the fucker to the floor. The man spit out a molar and his eyes flamed in anger, "WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE YOU TWIT!! DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM? I AM THE SON OF THE GREATES MAGIC TOOLSMAN IN THIS KINGDOM," he managed to calm himself down a bit, "I had a feeling she might try to pull something instead of go quietly, that's why I brought help." He snapped his fingers and four tall built men with longsword stepped from the shaddows.

One man had drawn his sword an inch out of the scabbard when three bangs filled the air. The man hit the floor like a sack of bricks.

"Clearly, you haven't heard who 𝘐 am you halfwit. If you had you would have known better. Now I don't know about you but I haven't seen any guards around here have you? No I haven't seen any for some time." He raised the pistol to another one of the men. The men ditched their swords and ran.

"Stupid mercenary twits!!!" screeched the young man.

"Shhhhhh, you're making a tad too much noise fuckwit."

Another crack filled the air as Daniels was certain the man's jaw was broken this time. Daniels wrung out his hand feigning pain. "You have a thick skull don't you?"

Daniels slowly and methodically pressed the barrel of the gun to the man's forehead.

"Hey Fuckfacey?"

the man glared up at him.

"Now tell me, judging as your father is a great tool maker and merchant wouldn'tthat make you a little familiar with the merchant's guild?" he paused, "Say, wouldn't they happen to have strict guidelines about interest rates and propper registration?"

He grinned evilly at the man.

"Now, I saw something verrrrry interesting when I was in the merchants guild. I happened to read a poster of theirs about debts between merchants, don't ask me why, but it stuck with me. Now I happen to remember from that poster that the merchants guild is strict about debts between merchants, and they do not allow such predatory loans. So no, something tells me that he did not register with the merchant's guild, or else he and his father would have been in deep shit."

He looked at the man, "I also remember that the merchant's guild will press charges for such offenses. Now tell me, do you think you would get away with trying to use legal action to threaten a victim of illegal circumstances? No. You can't use the merchant's guild against us, and as proxy, you can't use the guards either. So here's a happy resolution for us, I pay her debt..." he calculated a bit, "2 gold coins oughta cover loans taken out for living expenses right?" He reached into his pocket withdrawing the coins and put them in the man's shirt pocket.

"Now, if you don't want to be connected to this, you oughta do away with that corpse, and fuck right on oughta here before I decide this isn't worth it?"

The man scampered back in fear looking up at Daniels. He held his jaw and dragged the corpse hurriedly away.

Once the man was gone Daniels turned to her, "Alrighty then, that might/might not work, but the guards are still mysteriously absent. Tell ya what, he paid em off. Something tells me this little charade is a personal matter, not just over a loan as he said."