Stealing the Rain [Yaku]

Ah, Zou, one of Khaldun's favorite places to find potential 'benefactors' to his life's cause: making himself rich beyond his wildest dreams. "Now, let's see if I can't find the perfect person to donate to my ambitions." Khaldun walks amongst the crowd, careful not to draw attention to himself as stealth is one of the most valuable traits of a thief and he prides himself on being very adept at being stealthy. Our proud thief has a certain way that he selects people to add to his list of thefts. If they spend more than a little amount of money, dress fancy or even have jewelry that looks as if it might be worth a pretty amount, they have Khaldun's attention. He saw more than a few of those types around the crowd so he had to be very picky.

Then something caught his eye: a giant, blue-haired man in a lavish robe and a lizard-like beast following behind him. "If THAT man doesn't have anything of value then I'm losing my touch. Time to go test the waters." He started making his way to the man, slipping through the crowd fluidly as if he were a fish in the sea. He was now directly behind the blue-haired man, careful to keep a good amount of distance between the two of them. Khaldun tried to come up with the best way to find out if this man had anything of value. He could simply test his luck and blindly pickpocket him or he could befriend the man for long enough to find out if he has anything worth taking.

"Perhaps I should back away a little bit more. I need to make sure I get this just right. I should follow him for a little while for safe measures." Khaldun becomes the man's shadow, following him where he went in order to find out the best plan of action on his part.

Another day was passing and it seemed like it would be another day spent in Zou. Despite all his efforts to leave this country, Yakuroro kept finding himself stuck with more and more reasons to stick around a while longer. It seemed like each new conflict he budged his nose into, the closer his ventures took him to the capital and now he'd gone all the way from the edge of the Jade Dragon Mountains to finding himself here in the heart of Zou's largest city. The Imuchakk didn't particularly like staying in the capital as he often drew unwanted attention, especially when he went to parts of the city he'd not yet traveled through. People would often look and stare for various reasons ranging from his height, the color of his hair, his chimeric companion, to simply the extravagance of his wardrobe. Things weren't quite as bad on streets he'd been frequenting as of late since most of the townsfolk there had gotten used to his presence, so he was reduced to taking the "long way" to his destination today for fear of being stopped by a crowd of curious Zouen's again should he cut down a new street.

Yakuroro was bringing Akatetsu to the market street where they would be able to obtain exotic fruits unique to Zou and hard to obtain elsewhere. The reason for this was two-fold. Yaku of course was interested in the flavors himself, but he also had other business on the market street. The Brotherhood of Ash. They were an underground organization of crime and depravity whom until recently were demanding protection money from anyone in the capital who they thought would be too scared to seek help from the imperial army. Thanks to Yakuroro's recent efforts this group had been severely crippled, but a few remaining rats still lingered in the capital, thus the reason why the Blue Magician had yet to leave.

While it was clear at a glance that Yakuroro was fairly wealthy, there were no obvious pockets or places to store valuables on his robes so pick pocketing him would prove difficult. On the bright side for the thief whom was now stalking him, Yakuroro was completely oblivious to the young man's presence and simply carried on down the road without a care in the world humming a song from his homeland which Akatetsu was poorly trying to imitate through growls.

The young bandit kept with his tactic of following the traveler from a safe distance while sizing him up. The more he looked at him, the more Khaldun wondered exactly what he could take from the man. Maybe he could take the beast and sell it to a buyer. Another option he could consider is taking the man's size into factor and having him become a valuable ally. That thought is seeming like one of the best case scenarios for the bandit's 'profession'.

He inches closer and closer to the man, leaning towards talking to him and try to become allies, if only for a short time. Khaldun gets within arm reach of him and slowly starts to reach his hand out to the blue-haired man's shoulder. "How should I start off this alliance proposal? I need to find a way to make it beneficial for both of us." He firmly places his hands on the man's shoulder and says as calmly as he can, "Hello sir. I was wondering if I could have a word with you?"

The marketplace was close now and Yakuroro could smell the fresh goods on the wind as well as hear the cacophony of peddlers pushing their wares. Akatetsu sniffed the air and made a happy sound whilst nudging the Imuchakk as if to spur him towards the source even faster "Excited, Tetsu?" Yakuror asked as he stopped humming and turned his head to see the young Bonehead's reaction. Akatetsu replied with eager movement pointing towards the marketplace asking Yakuroro to hurry. The poor babe must have been pretty hungry so Yaku nodded and assured the beast, "I know, I know, we'll be there soon so bare with it." The magician smiled and pat the chimera on the head before picking it up and perching Akatetsu upon his shoulder. Yakuroro then continued on his path until he was suddenly addressed from behind.

"Hmm?" Yakuroro turned around to see the source of the touch to his shoulder and found a youth whom was clearly not native to Zou asking to speak with him. The large Imuchakk wasn't particularly against a discussion, but Akatetsu adamantly refused to let anything come between himself and the tantalizing scents upwind of them. Before Yakuroro could respond to the request Akatetsu jumped from his shoulder aiming to land on Khaldun's head. If successful the little guy would harmlessly bonk Khaldun on the head whilst growling, "Gyao! Gyao!" until Yakuroro could grab him by the back of the neck and pull the beast away. "Tetsu, I know you're hungry but that isn't an excuse to be rude...Sorry about that, he's still a baby and doesn't have the best manners in the world." Yakuroro said with a sigh before placing Akatetsu back on his shoulder and bonking him on the head an equal number of times the beast hit Khaldun.

With that social blunder passed, Yaku now turned his full attention towards the young man in front of him and decided that he could probably satisfy both the strange and Akatetsu if the proper lie were used. "I feel terrible that Akatetsu treated you like that. Would you mind joining me to the marketplace where we can share a meal and have that talk you wanted?" To be honest, Yakuroro didn't feel the least bit guilty or responsible over the actions of his "sons" outburst. But claiming he did was an easy enough way to satisfy everyone.

((You've got my permission to time skip us to a restaurant or something like that if you want.))