The sliver of space between the bridge of his nose and the brim of his hat barely allowed him to peek out. Jin Mishin was in the midst of pretending to be asleep on a public bench. In truth, he was quite awake and alert, watching the crowd of people that slipped by in search for a particular individual. His good friend Vas, who, as luck would have it, knew of Rhy?Din even before Jin did, had helped get him information on a certain individual Jin suspected was behind a string of small time robberies.

______

?Why go after something so small, Jin?? Vas asks as he and the detective sit at a small circular table, enjoying their coffee. ?It doesn?t seem your style. You usually get called out to investigate large murders and cult happenings.?

Jin shrugs, blowing the surface of the dark brew as it lifts upward. He then takes a sip, pausing to savor the oddly soothing sensation of the still steaming drink moving down his throat, warming his chest. Then, he lowers the mug and cracks a smile.

?Vas, this thief is incredibly proficient in his chosen trade.? The detective explains as he picks up his pipe from the table. ?It is my belief that he is simply doing these smaller robberies to perfect his methods, training, if you will, before committing himself to a larger heist. He?s too skilled to target small jewelry shops forever.?

As Jin relights the pipe (since it had gone out earlier in their conversation) Vas slides his coffee to the side, his hands coming together as he leans onto the table slightly.

?Assuming you?re correct-?

?Oh, I?m right.? Jin interjected confidently.

?Right?? Vas said before continuing. ?How do you plan to stop him? Or her? How do you know it?s a him??

?I don?t, I like to assume.? Jin shrugged. ?The gender of our culprit is unknown at the moment, so I?ll refer to him as him for now. It?s simpler. And as for my plans to stop him, well, I need information. Hence why we are enjoying this coffee together.?

?I don?t know a lot about the thieves guilds in Rhy?Din. I have a friend who does, however. I can arrange a meeting between the two of you, when are you free??

?Whenever.?

______

Hearing a cough, Jin glanced toward the alley, which waited just a few feet ahead of where he lay on the bench in the market. He saw a figure, indistinct due to the way his cloak hid him and the shadows cast by the sun fell over the alley?s opening. But the wave was easy to spot.

The figure turned and walked back into the alley and after a few moments of waiting, Jin hopped up and followed after him. Once stepping past the first pile of garbage he was called to from a man who leaned against the wall in a branching avenue, the hood of his cloak now down.

?You Vas? friend? The detective??

?That all depends on if you?re Vas? friend as well, my tall, dark, and shadowy friend. Isn?t it getting to be a bit warm for cloaks??

?The man you?re looking for?s a new recruit in the Rook?s guild.? The man replied without pause. ?Pasha Rook, from Calimshan, is making him do all these small heists to test him.?

?What?s he testing him for?? Jin asked curiously, stepping closer to the man.

?Can?t say.?

?Well, what?s his name??

?Can?t say.?

?Can you write it??

?No.?

Jin frowned. ?Difficult to spell then??

The stare that was leveled on Jin was hardly difficult to read; the man wanted to hit him. ?I can?t say because I don?t know his name.?

?Oh.? The detective said simply, blinking. ?Well, why didn?t you say so?? Jin asked, seemingly bewildered. ?Does that mean you don?t know what he?s being tested for??

Where did it go wrong?

It was a question he repeated in his mind several times over during the first few hours he spent tied down to that chair in what he could only assume was a dank cellar. There was a metallic taste on his tongue, warmth trickling down from his temple and chin. He had difficulty keeping his eyes open, though it hardly mattered since the room he was trapped in had no lights anyways.

He tried moving his hands; they were tied together behind the back of the chair. Tied tightly, too. Then he tried his feet, which were also bound. Jin let out a low whistle, listening to the way it echoed through the room, or didn?t, rather. He could tell that it was small at the vey least

His neck was sore from the way it had been hanging the entire time he sat there. So he tilted his head back, eyes peeking open to stare up at the ceiling for a moment. Then they closed again and he focused more on listening than anything else. Voices echoed to him, the words faint and incoherent, but real. Because of this, he found out where the door was.

All of this information wouldn?t do him much good tied down, however, and so he began thinking up ways to escape. His captors were bound to come for him eventually; it would be the only way for him to slip free. Jin wasn?t exceptionally strong, but he was fast, he?d have to use that to his advantage.

Then he heard the light echoes of footfalls, followed by the heavy click of a locking opening. Light spilled into the room as a man walked in behind him and flicked the switch on. Jin was thankful that his eyes weren?t open; it might have blinded him.

?Is it time for tea?? He asked, canting his head to try and peek out of the corner of an eye as it slitted open.

Two bodies lay in the room behind him. Both men were out cold; Jin held a lead pipe in his hand. Its bent up midsection glistened with just a few drops of blood. He stumbled down the dimly lit hall; most of the fluorescent lights overhead had stopped working, probably several days ago.

He could hear the faint echo of voices; the door at the end of the hall was ajar. The only light coming from within was from a television, playing reruns of a local show. As he crept up toward the door, Jin slowed, dropping low and poking his head through the opening of the door to look around the room. It was empty, luckily. So he slipped in and gave a more thorough look around.

It was a large room, but only had two doors. One, he had just come from and the other was on the far right wall, opposite where the television continued to play. Turning, Jin made for that far door and just as he reached it, another set of voices reached his ears. He paused, pressing his ear to the door and listening through.

Footsteps.

Frantically, Jin looked around again for a place to hide; he wasn?t left with many options. There was behind the couch, the door, or a few old boxes filled with junk. He opted to just wait by the door.

The hall was another dimly lit corridor, though lined with considerably more doors. Most of them were barred and blocked off, some with boxes and random scraps of junk and other with wooden boards nailed to the frames. The smell of rotting wood permeated the area and the air was thick and hot; a touch too humid for such a building as well.

Jin cringed at his footsteps, which echoed loudly down the narrow corridor. Glancing down at his feet, he slowed and willed himself to take softer steps, to fall back into the old days of vigilantism and trickery. Somewhere deep down, Jin was still the sneaky rogue who slipped into the homes and hideouts of dangerous criminals and took their lives in a river of blood. He could feel all the old thoughts, patterns and senses coming back to him as he dropped low and pressed more against the wall.

His movement from then on out was a whisper of sound that could be associated with the quiet scuttle of rats in the walls; easily dismissed by any who may have happened to pick up on it. The pipe was still gripped in his right hand as he crept down the long hallway, listening intently to the sounds that echoed down to meet his waiting ears.

Again, he heard voices, though these were less fuzzy and distorted, so he gathered that they were actual people rather than the playback of a television. Some of the doors he passed had small cracks of light beneath them, though he ignored these and went straight for the tall set of double-doors that waited at the end, with a large and long since burnt out EXIT sign overhead.

As he passed one of those portals with the light trailing from beneath, Jin paused, putting his ear against it after hearing what unmistakably was the word, or name, ?Rook.? The thick wood between them muffled the voices on the other side, but Jin could make out the words.

?Pasha Rook wants to know if the detective knows anything?? Jin heard one of the voices say from beyond that door. It was a deep and gruff sounding man, likely more of a soldier or enforcer rather than one of the actual thieves of the guild.

?Well, they ain?t come back an? told us anythin? yet, so tell ?im we don? know.? The second voice said; sounding far less large and imposing and more like the kind of weasely fellow Jin expected to be associated with such a guild.

Then the gruff man spoke again, repeating what the other one had said (likely into a phone). Silence followed, which Jin assumed meant that the Pasha Rook was on the other end of that phone and busy speaking to his soldier.

?Of course. We?ll take care of it and call you once it?s done.? The gruff man said before Jin heard the audible click of the phone being put down on the receiver. He listened even more intently then.

?What?d ?e say?? Asked the weasely sounding man.

?Said it doesn?t matter what the detective knows, just kill him.?

And that was Jin?s cue to get away from there as quickly as possible, but something prompted him to sit and wait.

?Kill ?im?? The no doubt smaller man repeated. ?Huh. We should go an? rob his place after that, bet he?s got a bunch o? fancy stuff with a name an? title like that.?

?What?s his name??

?Uh?hold on, got his wallet in ?ere somewhere.? The man said before the sounds of someone rummaging through a small box met Jin?s ears. ?Jin Mishin. He?s that detective who had them posters up an? about e?erywhere a few months back.?

Jin nearly groaned. They had his identification, they knew who he was. He started to pat himself down, realizing they had his badge and weapons as well, so he bit back an exasperated sigh and crept away from the door, insinuating himself between a large stack of junk filled boxes and a few old office chairs that were piled onto one another; affording him a decent view of the door and an even better place to hide.

He listened, the voices now only incoherent mumbles with the distance between him and the door. But he could hear their footsteps well enough, the hard and heavy clacks of good leather against the tiled flooring of the building. A few moments later and he was able to see their shadows pass over the line of light that shone from beneath the door, and then there was the click of the door opening as one of them gripped the knob and twisted it.

The man who stepped out was a hulking fellow who looked every bit the part of hired muscle. He had a heavy brow and a wild beard with equally unruly hair that looked like it hadn?t been washed in weeks at the very least. He was easily over six and a half feet, his arms were huge tree trunks and he looked able to crush Jin?s head like a bug betwixt his fingers. Jin gulped quietly and peered past him, eyeing the opening for the other man.

And the other man did in fact fit the voice. He was a short one, with wispy hair and a body too thin to be anything but malnourished. He had long and spindly fingers that were likely quite adept at picking locks and getting into things that they should stay out of.

Both of the men were dressed rather plainly, with jeans and a t-shirt, both of which were dark in hue. The exact color was difficult to make out in the lack of light. The larger of the two also wore a heavy leather coat, the front pocket of which seemed to be bulging with something--likely a gun.

Light spilled into the dark and dank hallway when the double doors were thrown open. Jin blinked several times, stumbling backward as a hand lifted to shield his eyes from the blinding flare of the sun. His pause was fleeting, for the grunts and shouts of the men and woman behind him reminded the detective of the pressing matters at hand.

He ran onward; tearing through what he gathered was an alleyway in one of the more urbanized areas of the city with tall buildings on either side of him. The different alleys splitting the buildings apart formed an expansive maze of grime and trash, giving him plenty of twists and turns to take in order to evade his pursuers. He could hear their feet slapping against the paved ground as they made the chase, the huff of the larger man?s breath and the grunt of the smaller one when he lost his balance during a sharp turn and tumbled into a pile of garbage.

Under normal circumstances Jin might have let loose a quietly amused chuckle at the sounds of the failed pursuit, but the sudden and loud bang that split the air made his heart jump into his throat, killing any humor in the situation then and there. The large man had fired his gun, the bullet cutting through the air and biting into the wall of a nearby building mercilessly.

Instinctively, Jin stooped lower and put on a burst of speed. He ran at a full sprint, as fast as his legs could carry him and his longs would bear. Another turn, another twist, the winding lanes and avenues of the city?s back alleys blending together in a dizzying array of paved and garbage lined paths. He couldn?t remember what direction he had been going in when he left the building. It was difficult to tell if he was even moving away from or toward it at that point.

Safety came to the detective when he finally found a turn that led him into one of the wide streets of the city. Pedestrians filled the sidewalks and crosswalks, going about their daily business in blissful ignorance. The gunshot didn?t seem to alert them.

He slowed only for a moment, turning his head this way and that to get his bearings. Jin was still unable to deduce what section of the city he was in, but that in itself was the least of his problems. His biggest problem was the pair of armed men chasing after him. During his quick survey Jin noticed a large public bus crawling toward the bus stop ten or so feet ahead of it on the other side of the street.

He quickly ran out into the lane, ignoring the few vehicles that honked as they slowed and waited for the rushing man to past. He hopped the curb and onto the sidewalk, turning and taking off at another sprint toward the bus. As an afterthought, he discarded the lead pipe. A glance tossed over his shoulder allowed Jin to see that the men who had been chasing him up until that point were busy standing in the mouth of the alleyway, looking around frantically for their target.