Maybe this guy? He looked the right combination of pissed off and full of himself. No he was walking with a much too determined step, probably had something important to do, he'd just snob her and move on. Maybe that woman then, she was buff as Chaos herself. If she managed to... On second thought no, if she misjudged and got hit for real by the tree trunks that were attached to that woman's torso she just might actually die. Ugh, why did this always have to be so hard!

Nina was annoyed, she sat on the same fountain she'd been sitting on on... that particular day, although much closer to the ground than she'd been then. She was... people watching. Following that stupid bitch Quilla's advice pissed her off to no end but in the end it had been good advice and it wouldn't make much sense to not follow it simply because she disliked the person who'd given it.

She'd done it on the evening of the day she'd encountered that decadent shithead and by also drawing on past experiences it had helped her come up with her new super awesome and amazing thieving technique. Namely finding someone who looked like they'd hit a kid over a mild annoyance, mildly annoying them, 'coincidentally' being thrown hard by the subsequent slap, punch or kick into the nearest food cart and 'accidentaly' having some of the food that inevitably fell on the ground slip into her dress while she dramatically rolled on the ground in the 'intense' pain she'd found herself in.

It had taken a few tries to get right but she'd gotten her dinner that night and every other night since then. The only issue was that the food tasted like sweaty armpits since the only way that nobody would notice that she had slipped something into her dress was to place it in the nook where her crutch supported her body. It was still delicious in the end, because it was seasoned with the best flavouring in the world in Nina's opinion: the taste of something you'd earned yourself through your own power and effort.

Though it also kind of sucked to wake up with a full set of new bruises every morning, some of those people did not hold back for shit even when hitting a child with a broken leg. She was used to the bruises though so it wasn't a massive issue. By this point in her life Nina could even be considered an expert on getting beaten. She could problably even make a career of it, become some sort of critique on punching technique for one of the fighting pits.

In fact she'd even started grading the hits she took since the day before after one particularly well executed punch had found her unable to even redirect the force. She'd found herself seeing stars on the pavement before she knew what was even happenning. With the pain dulled by her dizziness her only thought had been: "Damn, that was a really good punch." The next person who she'd gauded had such poor technique she hadn't even been able to fake being hurt and she'd thought "Well if that other one was a ten out of ten that one has to be like a two." After that, she was off to the races. She'd gotten pretty unlucky and had needed a bunch of tries to finally manage to get something to eat. So naturally she found herself grading every other punch, slap or kick she'd endured that afternoon to keep her mind off of her accumulating frustration and disapointment. Needless to say waking up in the morning had been particularly painful today.

Well, after all it was named 'the super awesome and amazing technique for stealing food' not 'the perfect and flawless technique for stealing food'. Besides, even though it was not optimal it still had a lot of things going for it. First since the actual theft only occured as the very last step of the thing she could pull out at any point if she felt there was even a trace of a sliver of the appearance of a risk of getting busted. Which she often did, better a bruise and nothing to show for it than another broken leg and new burns to replace the ones that were just done scarring.

The other good point was that nothing she did was suspicious or attracted attention in any way. Before she'd been a cocky street rat confidently striding through a market full of rich people and goods she clearly had nowhere near the money to even dream about buying. Not suspicious at all. She cringed at the memory of herself winking at a monk of Order. WINKING. Herself from three weeks ago was so fucking dumb she just couldn't even.

Anyways she'd learned her lesson since then even if the cost of it had been the worst day of her life bar none... okay except maybe THAT one...

What was important though is that now she looked like she was a broken begging kid, nothing abnormal anymore. Nothing to see there mister monks just another misguided dredge from the Districts desperately clinging to the table scraps of her betters. After all there wasn't anything unusual in an impoverished disabled kid begging the wealthy patrons of the market for money. Nothing to see when she insistently nagged at someone for a little coin. Nothing to be surprised about if she got hit by the people she inconvenienced with her clingy desperation. Not even when it happened multiple times a day. She was just one more dredge from the Districts, it was a given that a worthless like her wouldn't understand a lesson even after having it beaten into her over and over again. Worthless were a dim sort after all, they wouldn't be in their situation if they weren't.

She was pulled out of her meandering thoughts when she spotted a good target out of the corner of her eye. A short man wearing a colourful toga who was walking away from a enchanter's stall, the man looked so angry Nina felt like she could see smoke coming out of his ears if she squinted a little. He looked like someone who had frustration to expunge, preferably by hitting something. She hesitated for a second before making up her mind, thinking there was a possibilty he wouldn't be satisfied after a single hit, then decided it would just mean that she had more opportunities to maneuver herself just right to create a perfect situation.

She got up then and started hobbling in the man's direction, weaving through the dense afternoon crowd effortlessly. Surprisingly enough that had been one of her skills that had been the least affected by her injuries. She quickly caught up to the man who was clearly far less apt at navigating through the mass of people but kept a small distance between them. She would have to wait for him to pass by stalls that she could target. Not just any food stalls would do, ones that sold food that was directly edible and the she could reliably knock a bunch of things off of were highly preferable. She'd quickly figured out that butchers were a no go and that carts were considerably harder to make use of compared to the more common table-on-trestles. Finally her target neared a suitable place: an intersection where one of the corners was taken up by a very long street food stand that was manned by multiple people. She made her move.

Everything went perfectly: she approached the man from the side of the stand and insistently tugged on the side of his toga. He slapped her hand off and turned to her, a furious look in his eyes. Now that she had his attention she pretended to flinch under his angry eyes, surreptitiously getting closer to the alluring rows of varied treats next to her. She used her best 'obnoxious begging child' voice to plead for spare iron all while looking up at him with eyes reddened by tears. He gave her a weak slap and turned to walk away but she tugged his toga again, not intent on letting a near perfect opportunity to nab herself a warm dinner walk away so easily. He turned to face her again and didn't even waste a second before slapping her for real this time.

Nina scoffed internally at how badly telegraphed his movement was and she braced herself before leaning into the hit and throwing herself right onto the edge of food stall's table. She pretended to be trying to catch herself with both her arms on the table before falling to the ground along with a heap of food that she dragged down with her.

However, before she could congratulate herself on a job well done the man kicked her in the stomach, hard. She hadn't seen the hit coming and got her breath knocked out of her and blinked in pain, completely immobilized for a full second. She rolled on her side in genuine pain for once, groaning and mentally preparing herself for another hit but one of the pissed off vendors grabbed the furious man by the shoulders before he could kick her again and the two quickly forgot about her to focus on the argument that followed.

It took her a few seconds to clear her mind off the pain, contrarily to both of the slaps that preceded it that had been one calamitous kick. Once the young thief had finally gotten her wits about her again she noticed the argument between the two adults was getting heated and attracting the attention of the other vendors of the stall who were starting to move behind their colleague to back him up. This was the perfect moment for her to act! But right before she started exaggeratedly moaning and rolling on the ground in only mildly faked pain her eyes caught a vision that filled her with dread.

A boy was quickly making his way towards her position. He wore a greyish linen shirt and a pair of similarly colourless linen short, both ragged and torn, especially around his joints. She mentally screeched as he got closer and closer to her. She knew a fellow street rat when she saw one and she knew, she just KNEW that this moron was about to fuck everything up for her.

The second he got close enough he rushed towards the fallen food and grabbed as many as he could carry before taking off running. Someone started shouting thief and everything went to shit. Knowing she might get considered his accomplice if she didn't do anything she grabbed her crutch that had fallen nearby and tried to trip him before he was out of reach, unfortunately only managing to make him stumble. The sucker she'd used for her set up used the distraction to take off as well, probably not very confident in his ability to take on the four vendors that had rallied behind their colleague. People all around also frantically fled the scene as fast as the density of the crowd would allow before the commotion inevitably attracted Order monks. Nina counted herself lucky to be under a table, she might actually had gotten trampled otherwise.

Two of the vendors went after the other kid, pushing their way through the crowd as best they could but Nina knew he was gonna get away, for now. Because unlike them who weren't going to spend their day looking for someone for a handful of coppers worth of food, she would. And she wouldn't let him go, she was going to look for this idiot and she was going to find him. And then she would make him pay. Well, she'd do that once she'd gotten some food in her belly, some things were more important than revenge.

It took her quite some time to get out of that mess unscathed, one of the vendor had seen her try to trip the little shit so she was spared from getting throttled a second time as a suspected accomplice. It was a good thing too because a monk showed up before she'd had time to leave and recognized her as that kid who'd gotten fucked up some weeks ago. She almost shat herself when he instantly went to take her away before the vendor stepped in and vouched for her innocence. She could have kissed the man, almost did actually. An actual decent person in the Districts? What was next, owlbears in the streets? But her opinion of the man changed quickly when he roped her into helping out with the clean up of the stand and she only managed to sneak away after two hours of being berrated for being useless. No shit asshole I have a broken leg of course I can't carry crates filled to the brim with salted riversnakes!

And after all of that it still took her three more hours and just as many tries to finally walk away from the huge market with a mashed apple dish oozing down against the skin of her flank and a collection of new and improved bruises all over her body.

She was furious as she made her way towards her secret spot. She'd set up in a nook right under one of the many stone bridges that crossed the wide river. A place the young thief had found right after she'd started stealing again. She had gone down the stone stairs that lead to the river's shore and she'd followed the bank until she was under the bridge. She'd wanted to be out of sight while she cleaned herself from the sugary mess that discretely carrying out the day's only meal had left on her flank. While she'd been doing that patrolling monks bearing torches had passed in the streets above her and, raising her head in alert, she'd briefly glanced the little nook in the passing torchlight. Curious and intrigued by the mysterious hidden space, she'd endavoured to explore it.

It had been a little scary to lower herself down on the thin stone edge and tiptoe along and around the foundation of the bridge in order one to reach the secret alcove, especially when her leg situation had made it seem impossible at first glance.

Nina was determined though and she wasn't scared to get creative. She'd had to resolve herself to put use her still damaged leg normally and simply carrying her crutch in one hand while she helped herself along the edge with the other. It was not easy, the dull pain in her leg always made her cringe all the way and making a single mistake meant a five meter fall down into the water or the high grass of the shore down below. But despite all that she'd done it. And she'd been rewarded with her own secret place, a flat platform of stone that was half as wide as the bridge itself and extended for a couple of meters above the water.

It had allowed her to sleep protected from the rain, to have somewhere to put things she wanted to keep but couldn't justify carrying around, to have a hiding spot no one knew in case things got really bad. It was a safe place and most importantly it was her place. For the first time she had a space she could call her own. Her own secret base.

And now she was on her way there, her meal squashed between her arm and crutch, her mood stormy and her body aching. But it seemed it was not to be as as she was coming out of an alleyway she almost bumped into a red robe. She instantly jumped back as best she could before she ran right into the monk, almost losing her balance and falling down on her ass. Luckily for her, they and their fellow monks rushed by without noticing her, joining a crowd encircling a building on the roof of which stood a familiar sight.

"What in the Calamities is that chaotic little shit doing up there?" Nina couldn't help but speak her thoughts out loud in surprise as she spotted the boy who'd ruined her day anxiously looking down at a growing crowd of Order monks slowly encircling the isolated building he was currently standing on top of.