As Fie and her friends walked through the neighborhood, they found similar groups of teens lurking on every street corner, all the merchant children having taken up the delinquency fad. Teenagers glared at them as they passed, as if Fie and her crew were interlopers on their turf. However, when the teens saw the squire uniforms and realized these were apprentices of the very same knights they were mindful to avoid, they slunk off to hide themselves or watch from a distance.
“It’s amazing they haven’t been robbed considering how much money and valuables they have on them,” Fie pointed out. From a security standpoint, these teens were walking targets.
“The poorer parts of town are too far away,” Gees pointed out. “I think that’s the reason the merchants chose to live here in the first place.”
While government assistance was gradually lifting the lower-class neighborhoods out of poverty, the fact remained that many people were still unable to shake off crime as a way to make a living. In those places, it was much more dangerous to walk around at night.
“There’s kids everywhere,” Slad commented. “If Bruce M’chouchouteman showed up on a night like this, pretty soon the whole city would know of him.”
“But we can’t let the adults know about this,” Fie said. “The squires are already divided enough over this as it is.” Among the squires, she was particularly distrustful of adults and how they handled sticky situations.
Suddenly, a grown man’s voice cut their conversation short. “What are you doing out here so late at night?”
Fie jolted. They were being careful to keep a close eye out for both Bruce M’chouchouteman and any roaming watchmen (in fact, they had just dodged a group of knights on patrol a few minutes ago), but they had somehow failed to notice someone creeping up behind them. Fie whirled around and saw a man standing there in the light armor of a soldier. Where the knights typically handled patrols and major cases such as rounding up gangs of criminals, many soldiers were likewise stationed about town to handle misdemeanors and other minor incidents.
“Oh crap, it’s Marth!” cried one of the nearby teenagers. “Run!” The teens scattered.
Marth heaved a sigh as he watched them flee, before turning to Fie and the others. He looked a very serious sort of man, with not a single black hair out of place and his perfectly straight eyebrows visible even in the dark. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I know those uniforms. Are you squires?”
“Yes, we are,” Fie said. “Uh, can I ask who you are?”
“I am Basseld Marth, captain of the Wienne Public Safety Corps.”
“What’s the Wienne Public Safety Corps?” Fie wanted to know.
“Recently, we’ve seen an increase in young people turning to delinquency and eventually winding up in gangs and organized crime. The king organized this corps to handle the matter and report directly to him.” He frowned at them in skepticism. “But how odd. I thought squires on night patrol were to be accompanied by a knight at all times. Where is your chaperone?”
Fie hadn’t wanted to be discovered in the first place, but now that they had been spotted, she had no choice but to roll with the punches. But it’s fine, she told herself. She’d use the same trick she tried on the gate guards. “We’re on a special mission for the knights,” she explained.
“What sort of mission?” he asked.
“We were told not to talk about it.”
“Interesting. And who gave you this mission?”
Sweating at the intense level of interrogation, Fie tried to answer as calmly as she could, “Sir Crow.”
That shocked Marth into momentary silence. “How odd,” he said. “I could have sworn I saw Sir Crow at a nearby tavern earlier this evening. Come with me. Let’s find out if this is true or not.”
Oh no. Marth was one of Sir Crow’s friends!
His face pale with anxiety, Slad whispered to Fie, “What should we do?”
“Run!” she yelled. If they wanted to find Bruce M’chouchouteman, they couldn’t be caught here! If they revealed the truth of the urban legend, then soon everyone in town would know their names. They’d probably even be picked up by the popular magazine Nu: Believe it or Not!, and then, Fie knew, they’d have made it big.
Fie and her friends booked it.
“Dammit!” Slad swore. “Why does it always come to this?”
Gormus grimaced. “What do we do now? He’s following us.”
“And he’s fast!” Although they had taken him by surprise, Marth matched pace. He was now only about five meters behind, and the difference was shrinking by the second.
“Hold it right there!” he yelled.
“What do we do, Heath?” Slad bawled. “At this rate, he’ll catch us!”
Fie grimaced. “I guess it’s come to this.” Then she turned to look at Queen running next to her. “Queen!”
“Huh? Wh-What, Heath?” he asked, slightly thrilled that she had turned to him for help.
She held her palm up towards him. “Sit. Stay.”
Automatically, Queen slowed to a halt as the rest of his friends, still running, pulled away from him. “Huh?” he said. Why did she make him stop? Then it suddenly hit him. He was bait! His jaw dropped as Marth gained on him.
“All right, let’s get some answers out of you,” Marth said.
Then Fie yelled back to him, “If anyone can run from him now, you can! Good luck, Queen!”
“What?!” he yelled back, but Fie had already vanished from sight.
Back with the others, Fie explained rationally, “I’m the slowest in the group, so Queen’s speed is wasted if he tries to stick with me. The smartest move was to abandon him and run.”
Gormus broke out into a cold sweat and muttered, “You didn’t even stop to consider sacrificing yourself first? You’re a fiend.”
They’d escaped Marth but unfortunately also lost Queen in the process. Furthermore, in this game of tag, they had circled back around to the entrance of the neighborhood. They decided to resume attempting to collect info on Bruce M’chouchouteman when they heard a boy scream.
“What’s that?” Fie cried.
“Let’s go check it out!”
They dashed off to the source of the noise, but when they arrived and saw what was perched on the roof of a house, the group let out a collective gasp. There, looming in the moonlight, was a man dressed in a top hat, black cape, and blue masquerade mask. He carried a pump and sprayer device in both hands.
“I-It’s Bruce M’chouchouteman!” the gang cried.
He was the spitting image of the man in the urban legends. When he saw Fie and her friends, he scampered away with a flutter of his cloak.
“No way...” Slad breathed.
“I can’t believe he’s actually real...” said Fie.
Dumbstruck, the group could do little more than watch Bruce M’chouchouteman flee. Then they heard another wail and suddenly remembered what had brought them here. Fie turned to the crying boy and found him on the ground, holding his face in his hands like there was something in his eye.
Remie dashed up to him in concern. “Are you all right?” he asked.
As Fie stepped closer, she smelled something citrusy. She dabbed a bit of the liquid off of his cheeks and sniffed it again. “I think this is lemon juice,” she said.
“Did Bruce M’chouchouteman spray him with lemon juice?!” Slad cried.
“Never mind about that. He needs to wash out his eyes. This might be scary, but just keep them open, okay?” Remie opened his canteen and poured the water out over the boy’s face.
Now that Fie got a better look at him, she realized he was the boy who had tried to pick a fight with them when they first entered the neighborhood. He opened his eyes again and began to thank them for their help, but then he gasped and scrabbled for something around his neck. “No!” he cried. “It’s gone!”
Fie had noticed it too. The necklace the boy had been wearing was gone.
“Can you tell us what happened?” she asked.
“We were hanging out, and then this weird guy in a top hat came out of nowhere. He sprayed me down with some kind of liquid, and then while everyone was panicking, he kind of knocked me over... Wh-What am I to do? I’m going to be in for it when my dad finds out I lost the necklace he told me not to take outside.” The boy began to sob as Fie and her friends exchanged worried glances.
“Do you think Bruce M’chouchouteman is a thief?” said Fie.
“He can’t be!” Slad argued. “He would never do anything like this. He’s a good guy, a hero that goes around scaring couples for the sake of such loveless flops as me!” (And that was supposed to make him a hero?)
“Anyway,” Remie said, putting in his two cents, “we should help this boy feel better.”
The squires were divided on their next course of action, but just then, they heard Marth yelling again, “There you are! Hold it, all of you! The boy got away, so I’m going to question the rest of you!”
“Oh shoot, here he comes. Run!”
Fortunately, it appeared that Queen had gotten away, but Fie needed to make tracks if she wanted to do the same. Somehow, she and the others managed to rendezvous with Queen, but by that point it was too late for any more investigation, and the squires had no choice but to go back to the castle.