Rob X Punzel ~ Thirty-Nine!

Goldie felt her heart fluttering against her ribs like a trapped bird as she stepped off the stairs into a dimly lit room, this one something she would consider actually properly sized for the position in the haphazard tower. The stone chamber held nothing to distract from the five men standing in the center, their hands bound together with rope and tied to a ring driven into the floor. Each stood with a cloth bag over their faces, waiting silently in a line with their shoulders hunched, as if the world itself was weighing them down.

The sound of her shoes scuffing against the top step was enough to capture their attention, shown by how they tried to flinch away, only for their bonds to pull them back into position. Goldie inspected each of them carefully, but nothing about the men's ragged, sweat and dirt stained, mismatched clothing set any one of them apart from the other. Stepping past each of them in turn, the thief looked at any exposed skin for signs of combat—but of course in the Brute Kingdom, nearly everyone had been fighting from the moment they were able. 

Each of the captives had scars in their own unique patterns. Frankly, just by what she could see of their defined musculature and scarring, none of these were people she would casually associate with. Seeing no other way to handle the situation, she took a breath and began to address the group. “I'm going to ask each of you a few questions. Please be as honest as possible, so I can avoid accidentally injuring… most of you.”

“Start with me! I didn't do anything!” A man at the end of the line yelled, “They just showed up at my house and dragged me away, claiming I raised prices on food coming in from the farms! No one’s stupid enough to do that; they just ran out of people to-”

“Hold up, two minutes ago, one of you was bragging about shoving punch daggers into people walking around—just for the fun of it! Not for their stuff, not for skill increases, just to kill!” Another called out, angrily attempting to glare through his cloth covering. “Sounds like you, in fact!”

That sounded exactly like what Goldie was here to find, so she turned her attention toward that end of the line. Ignoring the first, who had already made his case, she went to the next and quietly inquired, “What's your name?”

A gentle poke made him flinch away, but soon he answered in a shaky voice, “The name is Rolf. I… I admit, I stole from a merchant cart. I didn't realize no one saw me, and they called me a thief! I was just taking it, because I knew they couldn't stop me! Wasn't trying to thief it away, I just thought they were too scared to do anything about it.”

Goldie rolled her eyes, annoyed with how much his story resonated with her. “Anything else to add?”

“No?”

Moving to the next man, the third in line, she studied his body language. He stood straighter than the rest, head tilted up as if daring her to cut his throat while he couldn't do anything about it. His fingers fiddled with each other, flexing against his restraints as if itching to break out of them. “Your name, big guy? What are you in for?”

“The boys call me Teddy, because I'm so huggable. I move supplies from one district to another.” The man snorted, though the sound was slightly muffled by the cloth. “I got sloppy, and a dozen guards got the drop on me. But I don't hurt anyone who doesn't have it coming. If you're looking for the murderer among us, it's not me.”

“You've never killed anyone?” She raised a skeptical eyebrow at the man who was a confessed smuggler.

Teddy shrugged as well as he was able, not bothering to hide the darker facts of his life. “Never anyone who didn't have it coming.”

The next in line was Adrian, who’d been captured when he tried to falsify legal documents and pass them off as the real thing. The last was Karl, accused of breaking into unoccupied homes and rearranging their furniture, but also stealing anything that could be hidden in a large sack. 

Goldie tried not to fidget, taking deep breaths as she ran out of questions for the assembled men. Each crime was serious enough to draw the attention of the city guards, but none of them showed the kind of casual malice she was looking for. “There's got to be a way to narrow this down… I can't handle having some innocent person's blood on my hands just so I can keep climbing this tower.”

Before she knew it, she had her battle shears out, nervously spinning them on her finger as she walked up and down the line. Just as she was turning to walk back down the line, one of the men sneezed, causing her blades to slip and land in the palm of her hand. They were stopped from carving into her only thanks to the timely intervention of her hair. Letting out a quick word of thanks, Goldie’s eyes lit up as an idea sparked within. 

“I guess we're going to have to do this the hard way. Choosing someone at random it is.”

“What?” The handful of voices shouted in near-unison. Goldie ignored them and their struggling, moving to the first of the men and lifting her shears.

“Are you in front of me? Don't hurt me! Hey, hey! You never got my name! You asked the others, but-”

“I don’t need it… because I knew you were the murderer all along!” Goldie stated coldly, lifting her shears and viciously swinging at his exposed throat. The blades of her weapon swished through the open air, coming to an abrupt halt a literal hair's breadth from his skin. “Um… just kidding? It's because I believed you right away.”

Moving to the next in line, she lifted her weapon once more, preparing to strike. “Sorry about this, Rolf. I just don't believe you were being honest with me!” 

She grunted with effort as she spoke, bringing the blades around in a sharp, sweeping arc. The man whimpered in fear, freezing in place as the gleaming weapon came at him. Goldie prepared to move to the next, but as she mimed the killing blow, the illusion of a cloth bag vanished from his head in a flash of light.

Her shocked gaze landed on the twisted grin on his face, his wild eyes glittering with glee as he lifted his unbound hands and deflected her weapon with the pair of knuckledusters protecting his hands. “Thought I had that story perfect… what detail did I miss?” 

Before Goldie could respond, he lashed out with a quick right hook, landing a blow on her forearm that nearly made her drop her combined battle shears as bone bent to the limit, nearly breaking under even the casual strike. “Ahh, who cares, really? I get a pardon after I put you in the ground.” 

His sneer perfectly complemented his scarred and pockmarked face, the deadly intent in his eyes sending a chill down Goldie’s spine as she tried to shake off the pain from where the instant bruise had formed. She barely managed to twist out of the way as his fist came crashing down, the blow displacing the air as he missed her ear by inches. Her own momentum sent her sprawling, but her rejuvenated body allowed her to turn the motion into a roll and spring up and away, far from his casual reach.

Or so she thought.

Rolf wasted no time, lunging across the room with a vicious uppercut that connected with her side, just below where the spear wound had been healed all too recently. Pain flared through her ribs, and she bit back a scream as she felt something crunch under the strike. He attempted to use her distracted state to end the fight, but his next attack lost all of its power as her hair moved between his fist and her face.

The momentary break in combat was all Goldie needed to reset her stance, even if all she wanted to do was clutch at the pain in her side. Rolf frowned at the lack of reaction his previous strike had elicited and threw out another punch to see if it would happen again. The oversized blades parried his attack instead, even if Goldie had to grit her teeth to bear the shock of the impact. 

She swiped at the man with a quick retaliation, only for him to casually twist aside and let the shears skim past his shoulder—all while pretending to yawn.

“No combat skills, huh?” He shifted back and forth, lifting his fists up and zeroing in on the next place he would throw a punch. “Whatever, I guess this’ll be more like working the bag than an actual fight. I don't mind. Anything to stay in practice.”

Goldie slashed at him, and he ducked under the attack, not bothering to fight back. She lunged, her blades hissing through the air to dig into him, but he simply wove out of the way. He followed that up with a one-two punch that sent her staggering, her left arm practically unusable from the aftershocks echoing through it.

Frustrated with her inability to weather the attacks, Goldie's mind raced as she tried to think of a solution—only for her eyes to go wide as she remembered what her hair had taught her on the previous floor. Letting go of her shears with her right hand, she let them dangle in her numb hand, swiping her index finger cleanly forward. A quick glance at her left arm showed golden script appearing, and she knew she was on the right track.

One swipe, two, and she was looking at her Ponytail Pixie skill. A poke, then another, and a third brought her to the skill which boosted the strength of her neck-supporting muscles by five hundred percent, as the skill was Perfected. Just before she chose to flood her body with the enhanced version Akashic Interface would grant her, she hesitated… poking one more time. Splaying out her hand, she clenched it and breathed a sigh of relief as she felt the magical energy of the system flow through her in response to her somatic activation of a magical artifact.

Trusting in her skills, she grabbed her shears once more and stepped into the next strike, trading a heavy punch to the gut for stabbing her blades into his shoulder and releasing a gout of blood as she tore a deep laceration.

Rolf spun with the attack, ducking out and away before she could drive her weapon deeper, at the same time shouting at her in disbelief, “Abyss, what was that? You should be vomiting blood, not standing there staring right at me like a seagull who stole a sandwich!” 

Goldie didn't answer him, instead rushing forward to press the attack. As they traded strike after strike, her calmly accepting the hit and him accumulating bright red wounds, she was carefully counting down in her head. As soon as she reached nine seconds, the thief disengaged and stepped back, just before she felt the skills’ effect fade. “Ten seconds of Perfect cushioning of any impact. Just gotta hold out for another minute so I can do that again.”

“All out of juice, are you?” Rolf chuckled as she involuntarily flinched at his words. “That's what I thought. No one can keep taking hits like that forever. I've crumpled plate mail with my bare fists before, and with these?”

He held up the knuckledusters, thick bands of metal with short studs tipping them. “With these, every hit resonates, dealing damage even after I'm done hitting you.”

Goldie barely dodged away from his next strikes, breath coming in short gasps as she tried to balance getting enough air with not moving her broken ribs when possible. She felt her hair writhing around her, practically begging to be unleashed against him, but she forced herself to resist the temptation. When she could, the young lady spoke in short bursts, feeling a bit strange as she explained herself to her hair. 

“I've got to be able to face hard things on my own sometimes. If I always only rely on you, how will you ever believe you can rely on me?” Goldie shoved herself backward, a quick jab brushing against her nose leaving behind a vibration that cracked the cartilage even after she dodged away from the full power of the strike. “Gah! I mean, if I'm about to die, still jump in!”

The fight dragged on for her, each second feeling like a painful eternity. The bored and aggrieved expression on Rolf's face shifted to annoyance, then anger as he continually failed to take her down. “That's it, playtime is over! Places to go, pardons to be granted, people to kill. You know how it goes.”

He stepped away from her, his right hand slowly dropping to his side as his knuckleduster began to vibrate fast enough that it started to glow. Rolf took a deep breath, mouth curling into a grimace as he concentrated his power, then let out a shout of excitement as he unleashed his attack, driving his fist forward with all of his strength. He blurred forward, clenched hand closing in on her sternum, only to be blocked by a veritable wall of hair. 

Then it was gone, and he nearly overbalanced as he stumbled to a stop, starting to turn around to try and find his latest victim—only to stiffen in pain as an oversized set of battle shears were driven through his back.

Goldie held on tight to her weapon as the man slowly crumpled to the ground, the only sound in the room soon being her pained, short gasps. Ignoring the tingling notification from the system, no doubt letting her know she’d reached level eight with Bad Hair Yester-Morrow, she stared down at the new corpse, swallowing hard as she tried to keep her recent meal inside her stomach. 

“I… what am I becoming? If I murder a murderer, the number of murderers in the world stays the same. How can I live with myself after-?”

“So kill two murderers!” came a muffled shout from behind her as Teddy chimed in on the situation. “Net positive at that point. Hey, if you won, get over here and cut us free already!”