“Names?” asks the portly man, his hands running an ornate pen over a large ledger, which he carries with himself.

“Jubilee,” replies the obscured figure, standing there with their arms crossed.

“Fresh!” beams Fresh over towards him.

He raises his eyes, looking over the two of them, apparently not surprised. “Adventurers, eh?” His head turns, as he looks around the empty, but pristinely clean, space. “What will you be selling?” asks the man, the representative of the merchants’ guild, curiously.

Fresh looks down at Jubilee, they look back up towards her and nod. “Miscellaneous goods. I’m a craftsman, so I’ll be making some odds and ends from the dungeon items that we procure,” answers Fresh. "Trinkets, processed materials and some other things,” she explains, reciting the text that Jubilee had ‘encouraged’ her to learn earlier, word for word.

“Mm…” mumbles the man indifferently. He walks around, making notes in his book.

“Are you the owner of this structure? Are you up to date with your property dues?” he asks, with an odd glint in his eyes.

“I am,” replies Jubilee.

The man responds with another “Mm…” and keeps walking around the empty space. He looks up the staircase. “How many people are in your party?”

“Just us two,” replies Fresh. The man looks at her, but then makes another note and another noise. Fresh fidgets, feeling like she just felt something off in his gaze.

“It’s rather unusual to open a mercantile venture here, in this particular plaza… you are aware of the risks, yes?” asks the man. Fresh tenses up. Risks…? What risks? She wants to look down towards Jubilee to ask. But a small, sharp elbow strikes the girl in her lower side, before her gaze can wander.

Her attention shoots back to the man. “Ah, yes! We’re very aware!” lies Fresh. “Super aware!” Another elbow jabs her and she stops, laughing meekly.

“Mm…” says the man indifferently, checking off some box in his ledger. “Okay. Just remember that in-case of any 'events', the merchants’ guild will not participate in any liability payments. You understand, given the nature of the situation,” he says, as if reciting a well-rehearsed text.

“We do,” says Jubilee, waving the man off. Fresh looks around, somewhat confused.

“Mm,” he says again, sounding bored. The man looks around one last time, his fingers running through his thin beard. “Are your dues to the adventurers’ guild paid off?”

“Not yet,” says Jubilee. Fresh winces.

The man lets out another mumbling noise. “That’s a problem. How do you plan to pay your licensing fees to the merchants’ guild? We’ll need some form of security deposit, that’s separate from your sales-fees, of course.” The man thinks, pulling on his mustache. “Purely as a safety for ourselves. You understand.” Fresh’s heart drops. They don’t have anything. Or at least she doesn’t, apart from six Obols and some very rough potions back at the guild.

“We can use the structure as a security deposit,” replies Jubilee dryly. Shocked, Fresh looks down to them and gets ready to protest. Her cheek puffs out, as she angrily holds her breath in. She won’t accept Jubilee putting that kind of investment onto the table. Not again.

“Mm,” the man looks around the room. But he has that odd look again. Like he is satisfied about something, but Fresh has no idea what it could be.

Jubilee lifts a hand, idly, pointing with their thumb to Fresh, just as the girl is about to speak her mind. “- And you can have her,” they say, just as plainly and emotionlessly as when they offered the house.

“HUH?!” shouts Fresh, letting all of the air out of her lungs.

Jubilee jabs an elbow into her side again. “It’ll be fine! Don’t be a cry-baby! That’s only if we can’t pay them back.”

“Mm,” the man looks Fresh over, who crosses her arms in-front of herself. His gaze as if ascertaining her but then he looks away as she glares back at him. “I don’t know…” He opens his book up and flips through the pages, as if searching for something. “Honestly, it’s kind of a gamble, us getting involved in a project like this.” Something glints in the man’s eye as he says the sentence however. He looks back to the two of them curiously. “...Are either of you betting types?”

“What do you mean?” asks Jubilee, very warily.

The man closes his book and sighs. “Let me be honest, I don’t think this is a good fit for us.” Fresh feels a pang in her chest. “But…” says the man. She opens an eye. “It would be harsh of me to shut down two young, starry-eyed entrepreneurs, before they even have a chance.” The man smiles out a bright smile, but something about it feels wrong to Fresh and she shuffles back a step unknowingly. It's reptilian. Fake. “Let me offer you a simple wager?”

Jubilee and Fresh look at each other. The girl shakes her head no, not sure why exactly, but Jubilee turns back to the man. “Go on.”

The man digs into his pocket, pulling out a single Obol. Fresh narrows her eyes. It’s not like the other Obols that she’s seen before though. It’s gold and somewhat larger and flatter. A skull is imprinted on one side of the coin. “You adventurers like your verbal contracts, yes?” Jubilee nods. The man smiles brighter still, as if everything was coming together for him. “The simplest game there is. We flip a coin. If you win, I’ll accept your application for a merchant’s license.”

Jubilee adjusts their mask. “And if we lose?”

The man raises his hand to his beard again, as if he were thinking. But even she can see that he's just pretending. The expression beneath the hand seems too certain already. “Well, without a merchant’s license, I suppose you won’t need your security-deposit?” he says, his voice also too certain for this to be a spontaneous decision. She clenches her fists, narrowing her eyes. The man raises a hand lazily, sensing her shift in body language. “- Just the structure, of course.”

Jubilee shrugs, rubbing the back of their head. “I gu-“ Quickly, Fresh grabs them by the shoulders, interrupting them and pulling them a step back. Angrily, they swipe her hands off of themselves.

Kneeling down before them, Fresh glares at Jubilee and hisses out a quiet - “No! That's crazy!”

Jubilee tilts their head to the side and shrugs indifferently. “Yeah? So?”

“No!” whispers Fresh venomously, not expanding anymore on her thoughts. She isn’t going to allow this.

“Yes,” replies Jubilee, poking a finger into her chest indignantly and turning back to the man.

Fresh grinds her teeth, a low grumble in her throat as she tries to keep her frustration down. She can’t let Jubilee do something this brash. Even she knows that this is a stupid idea. It isn’t worth it. This is Jubilee’s home, isn’t it? How can they just risk it like this? On a fifty-fifty wager? If it even is one. Why is Jubilee like this? In her frustration, Fresh realizes only a second later that Jubilee probably thinks that about her a lot too. But they could figure out something else. There has to be another way to make this work. There has to be so-

“We’re in,” says Jubilee to the man.

He claps his hands together gleefully. “Very good! Very good! I like that in some young people. Gumption,” he beams. “Some conviction can go a long way, you know?” he says, laughing loudly. But Fresh hates the look on his face, as she glares up towards him from her still kneeling position in the back. He reminds her of a toad, or some frog. He’s going to eat them. She feels it. This is a set-up. Something in her gut tells her that this is wrong, even though she can't nail down what it is exactly. She has to do something. Anything. But what?

- But what?

Fresh looks around the room nervously. The man sets his book down to the side, to make space for their wager. “I’m a fair man, here.” He holds his hand out, giving the large coin to Jubilee. “Big choices in life should be made with trust. You may flip the coin yourself, if you like.” He grins. “So that there are no doubts… you understand.”

Jubilee takes the coin from him and looks at it. Fresh’s fists clench together tighter still as she rises back up to her feet, her heart thrashing fast, sweat pearling on her clammy skin. She has to do something. She has to…

Her eyes narrow as she stares at the representative of the merchants’ guild. They’re trying to shut them down. Do they know? Do they know about them? Or did they just not want any disturbances in the market? Straining herself as hard as she can, she forces a single finger to rise upward. The digit releases from her own vice-like grip and subtly points towards the man, her hands still held tightly down by her waist.

(Fresh) uses: [Jinx]

The window that appears when she uses her luck-stealing spell is different than what she is used to. It’s oddly pale and translucent and it vanishes only a second later. Neither of the other two seem to pay it any mind, as if they didn't notice it. A strange, tiny string of purple smoke crawls down the back of her leg, as she stands there. She feels it running down her body, like a tiny serpent crawling over her bare skin. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches as it vanishes into a crack, down into the floorboards beneath herself. Fresh gulps, wondering if she maybe did something brash?

Jubilee seems satisfied with the coin. “So you’ll sign if we win?”

“On my honor,” promises the man, holding his arms out wide. His smile is even wider. No. Fresh narrows her eyes. This was the right thing to do, this time. A purple string rises up out of the floorboards just behind him, pushing out like a worm coming from the earth on a rainy day. It flops around, feeling for anything, until it strikes his boot and begins to slowly rise up his leg.

“Well. Fuck me. Okay. Here we go,” says Jubilee, seemingly without a care in the world. They take a step back and so does the man. Jubilee looks back to Fresh once, but then returns their gaze forward a second later. “Tails,” calls out her party-member, as a single chime rings out in the air, as their thumb flicks against the heavy coin and sends it spinning upwards.

“Please…” whispers Fresh with a breathless utterance, as her eyes are fixated on both the shimmering coin that seems to be suspended mid flight, as if trapped in that time-frozen second and the little purple thread, which is arching backwards like a viper, ready to strike. The coin shimmers with odd intensity, not usual for metal, as the glowing beams of sunlight catch it in some odd way.

- The coin falls.

The snake lunges, sinking its fangs into the man’s leg. Fresh’s jaw hurts from the pressure she is pushing her teeth together with, she hates that look on his wide face. That smug expression. He already knows that he’s won. He did something. He has something. Some trick, scheme, spell, something. She feels it. She's sure.

The coin strikes the floor and jangles loudly, as it comes to a stop and all three of them stare down towards it.

A rock drops in her gut. “IAAAAH!” Fresh screams and lunges towards Jubilee, who ducks out of the way. The girl flops down to the ground, falling down onto her stomach. Her gaze rises up to look at the coin, which is laying tails-up between the three of them. “We won!” shouts Fresh. A small boot plants itself on top of her lower back.

“I won, goo-brain. You didn’t do shit, as always.” Jubilee bends over forward, picking up the coin.

Fresh laughs meekly and looks up and towards the man, who hasn’t said anything yet. Something is twisted in his expression. The smug smile from before is gone, leaving only a deeply sour look in his eyes, which don’t blink. This was something that he hadn’t expected. He was confident that he would win. How? In a game like this? Fresh narrows her gaze, but is unsure. Suddenly, something shifts and a new expression grows over his old one, burying it where nobody on the outside could ever see it again. But Fresh still does, she sees it in his eyes. The fury.

“Well! It looks like luck is on your side today!” he laughs jovially, bending over to take the coin from Jubilee. Holding it up to his face, he looks at it himself now, oddly close, before tucking it away again. He claps his hands together, still smiling brightly with that fake smile of his. “Okay! Let’s get everything ready.”

He grabs his ledger, opening it up and taking out several documents. “Please sign here. Here. Here.” He goes through another few sheets. “Here. Here aaand- here.” Jubilee grabs the pile of documents and the wide fountain pen that the man holds out. “You will be expected to pay five percent of every sale to the merchants’ guild, before taxes, you understand? In addition to your dues, which I believe you were informed about when you made this appointment,” says the man to Jubilee.

Jubilee nods indifferently, the pen running along the sheets of thick paper, filling the room with a scratching sound as they write.

“Mm… What will your venture be called?” asks the merchants’ guild representative, filling out some pages himself in his ledger. Jubilee stops writing, looking down to Fresh, who is still laying on the ground questioningly. Fresh wonders why, but then she realizes that they want her to decide.

“Ah…” Panicked, she looks around the empty room for a clue. But there is nothing to see, except for the light shining in from outside, from the bright evening sun which pushes just past the massive gate of the dungeon. Her eyes light up. “’The Dungeon Item Shop’!” says Fresh proudly, looking up towards the man, clenching her fists tightly together in determination and pressing them down against the floorboards.

Jubilee presses their boot down into her back. “The what? What kind of stupid, simplistic name is that?! You goo-brain! That’s the du-“

The man from the merchants’ guild slaps his book loudly shut, his face smiling again as he interrupts. “Very good! The ’Dungeon Item Shop’ it is!”

“Huh?!” says Jubilee, looking back to him. The man snatches the papers and pen back from them and looks over them once.

Bending down, he hands them to Fresh, smiling his wrong smile. “Please sign here.” She looks at the document and, trusting that Jubilee had read everything, she grabs the pen from the man’s hand, trying her best not to touch him and signs next to her friend’s name, noticing only for a second that the black ink seems to shimmer with just the faintest glint of purple as the pen touches the paper.

[Mercantile: 1]{Sign here}

*~+- New Venture Founded -+~*

~ THE DUNGEON ITEM SHOP ~

(+FRESH+)

(JUBILEE)