Witches Going Live 1.5

This and 6 were one chapter that got split due to length. 6 will be posted in a bit after I'm done editing it.

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Chapter 5 - Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Leo strolled through the late-evening grotto streets as he came down from his contact high from being near Liri. It didn’t go that great, and it ended on an especially sour note, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t addicted to the way she made him feel. Happy, safe, and comfortable. Like she saw him for who he was- not for the persona he presented for others and not for his somewhat maligned social status.

There was still a decent and steady flow of people out and about at this hour of the night. Grimme’s Grotto had a lot going on for its nightlife, whether that be dueling clubs, esoteric shops only open under the light of the moon, and more. Mages leaned towards being nocturnal, so something was always going on in the district of wonder at all hours of the day.

Leo wasn’t engaging in any of that. He was focused on a stray stone, kicking it along his path as he meandered onward. Getting home wasn’t anything to rush over, and his thoughts were clouded with Liri and how plainly she was coming onto him.

For most guys, such obvious signs would’ve been a good thing… but Leo didn’t have it in him to be confident.

Failure was something Leo could typically tolerate. He’d gone through more than enough of it in his day that he wasn’t shy about making a mistake or two, but the boy locked up at the thought of disappointing Liri. His heart rate jumped, and a cold sweat ran down his back from imagining his inability to live up to her standards.

Liri seemed to want, and in Leo’s opinion, deserved a lot from a romance. She could joke about being okay with settling and hint at how he was more than enough for her, but her desire to be part of a harem and have herself a handsome adventurer with an endless libido would always be at the back of his mind. Leo might’ve fulfilled the lustful requirements she was looking for because of the family 'curse', but beyond that, he wasn’t confident he could bring anything of worth to a relationship with Liri.

The only thing he had going for him was that he was relatively good-looking- another family trait- but other than that?

Leo’s mind spiraled.

He lacked the powerful physique and lightning reflexes required to fight, and all his attempts to learn combat arts ended in failure. Magic was a no-go. He was decidedly ordinary and needed expensive tools and mana crystals to crudely manipulate his smart-orb. While not dumb, he didn’t have the mental capacity to be a scholar, wasn’t creative enough to pursue an artistic path, nor was he analytical enough to become an alchemist.

He wasn’t even that tall.

All he could do was run, so that’s exactly what he did whenever he faced an obstacle, like taking a chance on taking his friendship with Liri further. In the end, Leo just wanted her to be happy and firmly believed himself ill-suited to fill that role for her- or anyone else, really. That left him stringing the poor girl along and lingering in limbo, even if that was far from his intent.

Leo kicked the pebble even harder down the road, letting its awkward, skittering path guide his steps.

If he allowed his mind to wander and his darker thoughts to fester, he doubted Liri was even interested in him, anyway. Not really. It was probably a passing crush if anything. If some stories about his ‘adventures’ running people deliveries were enough to hook her interest, what would happen when a bonafide hero came knocking on her door with actual adventures to brag about? All the fancy outfits in Imperalis couldn’t save him from that.

Liri was a goof. She liked hanging around with friends playing tabletop games and trading card games, but she was genuine and lovable on so many levels. A real gem. If he could see that about her, there’s no way everyone else couldn’t…

A pit formed in Leo’s stomach. Stupid as he was, which was very, he’d made himself upset at the thought of someone taking Liri from him. They had every right to if he wasn’t going to make a move, and yet… gods, why did he have to be like this?

Bit of a dumb question. Leo hadn’t always been this bad, and he knew why he was. It was so obvious that Dev noticed it early on in their friendship and took it upon himself to try and help cure Leo of his problems. He’d seen how nervous Leo was around girls, how self-defeating he could be, and when all his attempts to drag him out to Farrissa’s Delight ended up tits up and not in the good way, Dev sold Leo on the idea of buying a smart-orb.

A relatively new advancement in catalyst development, smart-orbs had only been made available for public consumption in the last five years, but their potential to become integral to everyday life couldn’t be understated. Your typical catalyst was a tool that mages used to pour their mana in to use as a battery to aid in casting intensive spells beyond their means. A smart-orb was different in that its innards were complex mana circuitry and runes, imbuing it with various pre-determined spells and connecting it to a greater network of smart-orbs known as the orbnet- a platform for others to talk to each other and many other things. As long as a user had the means to keep it powered and a specially-made glove for controlling the interface, even someone without any magical talent could access the orbnet.

It was a costly little thing, but it was an easy sell to someone like Leo, who was raking it in with nothing of substance to spend it on. Especially when Dev taught him about Ponder and all the sexy mages who perform live acts of lewdity on it for an anonymous audience in exchange for tips. Better still, he could message these girls directly and chat them up without fear of his usual issues getting in the way.

In the year and a half since he’d gotten it, it helped Leo immensely by giving him the relief his bestial libido craved, but it wasn’t as helpful as Dev had hoped. While Leo was more relaxed talking with the girls he’d gotten close to on Ponder, the relationships felt too transactional to become truly intimate. The best he had was the mock relationships he’d cultivated with ChrissiCrystal, InnocentHaze, and DireFuture, but he’d never visited them in person, and at the rate Leo was going, he never would.

His heart hurt enough as it was. Could he ever recover if he let himself get romantically attached and arranged a meet-up, only for it to fail and be reverted back into a faceless customer?

No, he couldn’t. He barely recovered from the last time his heart was broken, and the very thought of going out in such a large limb made him cringe internally, his guts performing the emotional equivalent of what it must’ve felt like to be kicked in the stomach.

Leo stopped, watching his last kick send the pebble into a gutter. A little ‘tink’ noise echoed as the rock disappeared down a storm drain. Standing there by the side of the road, Leo stared at the grate that the pebble fell down without actually seeing it at all. The rumbling of his stomach disrupted his pensive mood. Suddenly appreciating how hungry he was after a full day of zipping and zooming, Leo set out again with more purpose than his previous listless wandering.

If he was going to be running from his problems, at least he knew just the place he could go. His feet, abandoningnow lacking the guidance of the lonely pebble, Leo moved with a practiced pace guided by years of memory. The irony that his comfort place led him to Barton Heights wasn’t lost on him.

He crossed broad sections of the city to cross the bridge into the posh district, only to immediately take a turn onto a side street. This close to the district’s edge, the buildings were old and storied, lacking much of the garish gilding that the wastefully wealthy Heights residents often indulged in. This little corner of the district essentially still belonged to the middle class one before it, Osmarre’s Repose, and quality homes and businesses showed the character of extended use and careful maintenance.

His destination came into view as he went through the old brick buildings that made up so much of the local flavor- a restaurant known as the Tavern Big and Small. It was a tacky name for a tacky couple and was Leo’s former home.

The tavern was also brick, but the masonry was cleaner than many of its neighbors, highlighting the care its owners put into keeping everything in order. The front entrance had a small outdoor dining space surrounded by a waist-high wrought-iron fence, keeping random pedestrians from stumbling in and random drunkards from stumbling out. Polished hardwood benches sat beneath a canopy held up by pillars covered in traditional Vippa Blonrappan decorative mushrooms, the vibrant colors of the foreign fungi illuminated by strategically placed torches.

As Leo approached, he could look right in through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows flanking either side of the steel-framed double glass door that served as the front entrance. Even at this late hour, the building was still moderately busy, containing roughly a dozen patrons enjoying the top-tier cooking and chatting in their cups. Come to think of it, people were looking a little more enthusiastic than usual. In Leo’s experience, that could only mean one thing.

Bar fight.

Sure enough, two men were duking it out in the middle of the room. A common occurrence with an equally common cause. A closer look at the men revealed they’d likely come from the day’s colosseum matches, their clothes denoting support for different rookies.

One of the men was decked out in a green and gold hat proclaiming support for the Oakland Ace, an elven archer who’d recently become popular after participating in several qualifiers for the next rookie open. A dazzling display of archery and acrobatics carried her through victories over man and monster alike. His opponent was covered in Franky the Giant merch, an orc of considerable standing renowned for his patience and his use of an absurdly titanic shield in combat. The two competitors were natural enemies ever since their first match ended in a grueling stalemate, their rivalry becoming a hot topic for colosseum enthusiasts as of late.

The drunken would-be warriors had only taken a few passes at each other before their ineptitude brought them together in a tight grapple. Both tumbled to the floor, their slugfest transitioning into a wrestling match. It looked like it could go either way, and Leo arrived just in time to see how it turned out.

Dropping his pan onto the cooking fire to vault the bar counter, the chef joined the fray. The man was tall but didn’t look it from a distance because, for all his height, he had the physique of a pallet of bricks covered in scars. A big barrel chest roared out an outrageous laugh while thickly muscled arms pulled the two ruffians from each other- one in each hand. They struggled feebly before the chef grinned and slammed their skulls together loud enough for everyone to hear it, even Leo as he opened the door and stepped inside, finally letting him catch the conversation.

“-now let this be a lesson to the both of ya, got it? Ace and Franky ain’t nothing but small-time shits. They’re hot and flashy right now, sure, but ya really think either of ‘em got what it takes to rise up and stand at the top with the best of ‘em? Fat fuckin’ chance! Only one rookie this year is going places, and that’s Sydney Vail!”

Several boozed-up bystanders, colosseum enthusiasts one and all, cheered at the chef’s assertion. They raised their mugs, saluting a framed and autographed poster of a young, bronze-skinned woman with short blonde hair and a sharp gaze. Now Leo remembered where he’d seen the girl on the cover of Liri’s magazine... interesting. This Sydney chick must be something special if she’d made a fan out of him, of all people.

“Are we clear, gents?” The chef growled.

“Yeah… for sure…” One of the men coughed up.

“S-Sydney could totally kick Franky’s ass, definitely…” The other admitted.

“Damn straight. Just ya watch- the Calamity Queen’s gonna shake the colosseum to its core one of these days!”

The big man set the two skull-rattled skirmishers onto a pair of the giant toadstools that the bar eschewed typical chairs in favor of. When gnomes first started emigrating to Karnalle, they brought their strange furnishings with them, and as odd as they might be for a first-timer, they were as comfortable as sin. Also, being rooted to the ground, they had the added benefit of preventing any ordinary drunk from picking up their seat and using it to smash in someone’s head during an argument gone wrong.

“Now, why don’t the two of ya cool off, and I’ll get ya some water for when ya need it, huh?” The chef asked, but the men had gone cold and were now slumped over the bar, preventing them from answering.

Satisfied with himself, the big man brushed some imagined dirt from his shoulder and grinned. The whole affair couldn’t have lasted more than a minute, but the momentary distraction had cost a price most dear. Leo could smell something burning in the kitchen, and it was only a time till-

“HUSBAND-” A woman’s voice boomed from somewhere behind the counter.

“Wife?” The man innocently turned toward the bar.

“Don’t you ‘wife’ me, you oafish hunk-of-a-lug! Gods know I love you, but damn it all, if you don’t make that a chore more often than I’d like! Gunther, how many times do I have to tell you not to go brawling with the drunks when there’s shit on the stove? Fuck’s sake, can’t even take a piss without incident, I swear!”

Most men would likely take issue with their wife publicly grilling them in front of their customers, but Gunther was better than that. Responding with a hearty laugh and a bicep flex, he told the unseen woman, “Not my fault, Silla! Everyone knows they get a taste of these babies if they come into my bar talking about shit they know nothing about. Am I right, fellas?”

Out of solidarity, the bar’s regulars gave Gunther a cursory round of cheers. Leo noted it was significantly less than they’d given for Sydney.

“Our bar, you dolt. And the rest of you can shove it! Meatheads- the lot of you! Every last one… idiots… fucking- vilra dillibid shallala-doofa…” Gnomish mumbling came from behind the bar, and like always, the strange tongue sounded to Leo more like a toddler making up syllables as they went along rather than an actual language. Still, he knew better than anyone that, despite as silly as it sounded, she was most likely calling her husband names so harsh that the common tongue had no equivalent.

Leo didn’t have a good angle to see behind the bar and into the kitchen from the entrance, but he did hear tiny footsteps running toward the fire, and then he witnessed an equally tiny hand reach up from below his view, yanking the fiery cookware by the handle and moving it to an unlit space on the stovetop.

Leo closed the door behind him, the bells on the handle finally ringing in full and drawing Gunther’s attention. Pleased as ever to see the boy and thankful for his fortuitous timing, Gunther smugly stroked his sharp, salt-and-peppery mustache and goatee combo. Just as he was about to greet Leo, Gunther was cut off by the dramatic entrance of his beloved.

A swinging door underneath the bar counter was kicked in through a forceful slam, and out stepped a gnomish woman, some three feet tall, with fierce blue eyes, a grumpy face, and red, braided hair as fiery as her temper. Silla put her fists on her disproportionately wide hips as she strode towards Gunther, continuing to give him no quarter as she did.

“Now I’ve gotta comp a meal and make sure you didn’t give the peanut gallery brain damage on top of everything else we’ve got going on tonight! You just had to make our closing shift even more of a hassle, didn’t you? …Gunther? Are you even listening to me? By all means, waste even more time fucking around and staring off into the… oh, Leo!” The rapid strings of retorts abruptly stopped the second Silla noticed their latest customer standing at the door and watching their antics with a smile.

Gunther, equally pleased to be off the hook and to see Leo, was quick to use the situation to his advantage. “Well, would ya look at that, honey? Kid’s here to pick himself up a shift.”

All the regulars who recognized Leo laughed and focused back on their meals, content to let this play out and not interfere as the young adventurer closed the distance between him and the burly barkeep. Leo embraced Gunther in a quick hug, bracing himself for the sharp bout of back-slapping coming his way. Once that was taken care of, he answered the teasing in kind.

“Sorry, ‘fraid I’m just looking to pick up some dinner. Was busy all day today, I made a whole loop through the woods and the foothills, and aside from breakfast, all I’ve had is some popsicles. Think you can fix that?”

“Can we fix that? Hah! Does a dragon shit in its hoard?” Silla huffed, stomping her way forward as if someone had insulted her honor.

“Probably not, but who knows? Never met one.” Leo laughed.

“Yeah, yeah. Bring it in, smartass!” She thrust out her arms like a child expecting a hug, which Leo quickly knelt down and gave. He knew this to be a trap and willingly submitted himself to it regardless, allowing Silla to poke and prod and assess how much meat he had on his bones.

“Sheesh, yeah, you’ve been eating garbage again, haven’t you, string bean? Wait. Hold on a sec… that smell- blueberries? Zilbillis, give me the strength… do we need to have the ‘muffins aren’t breakfast’ talk again? Because I feel like we need to have the ‘muffins aren’t breakfast’ talk again…” Silla scurried up Leo’s body, situating herself behind his head and pulling his cheeks in frustration.

“Damn it,” Leo smirked guiltily. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice...”

“Fat chance of that, kid,” Gunther guffawed. “Shouldn’t ya know better’n that by now?”

“I should, but it somehow keeps happening,” Leo reached over his shoulder and picked up the gnome, who, unlike her husband, hadn’t shown any signs of aging and still looked to be in her early thirties rather than the decade past that she actually was. He smiled directly at her, vowing, “Sorry, Silla. I promise I’ll try and eat a little better, but I'll leave that up to you guys for tonight. Sound good?”

Silla squinted her eyes and crossed her arms. Though she should be happy with his promise, something seemed slightly off. Her motherly instincts perked up, as did her big gnomish ears. It was his eyes. Smile wasn’t reaching them, same as ever.

This boy…

“I’ll hold you to it,” Silla hopped out of his grasp, straightening her tiny white apron and readjusting for a moment before looking back up at him. “But is a good meal really all you came here for, Leo? Or is there something on your mind?”

“Huh? No, I’m good. Real good. I-” His denial came a little quick, making it far less convincing than it already was. Silla wasn’t buying it, and Gunther was making a face that wordlessly implied Leo should save himself the hassle and just come clean before his wife grilled it out of him. “Okay, fine… I’m just in a bad mood tonight. That’s all- honest. Nothing dinner won’t fix.”

Silla nodded, slowly mulling over the statement's truth before nodding again with additional vigor. She still wasn’t picking up what he was putting down, but there was no need to rush. “Alright, you got it. Lemme just whip my man back into the kitchen where he belongs, and he’ll finagle you a hearty-ass dinner- your favorites. You hear me, Gunther? The boy is hungry! HUNGRY, damn it! Stop hanging around like an admittedly well-chiseled statue and do your job!”

“So cold, honey. So very, very cold!” Gunther pantomimed having the shivers, rubbing his hands up and down on his massive upper arms to provide unneeded warmth. He turned back to the kitchen, slumping his posture in mock despair. “Always so quick to care for the kid, but what about me?”

“Yeah, what about you?” Silla scoffed, following Gunther as he headed back to his station. “Don’t even act like you ain’t gonna get yours, big man.” Emphasizing her point, the woman hopped up and gave her husband a sharp slap on the ass that inspired some whistling and laughter from the customers.

As for Leo, he couldn’t help but crack a smile and blush out of embarrassment. He was already starting to feel a little better, so he followed Silla to the bar and sat at the center toadstool. It was good to be back.