Eva had no idea what she was still doing in Oak anymore. Definitely, she had planned to stay not more than two days in that town and now it was day three and it was that evening that she had planned to get to Baska town and take the train to Crocus. Anyhow that would work out, it was her last day in Oak and she decided to make the best of it, not by idly sitting back at her hotel, but by going out and probably doing something that could make the day go by much faster. After all, Eva had a patience thinner than paper itself and that made it all the more compelling for her to drown herself with something worth doing. And, that was the exact line of thoughts that had taken her straight to the request board at the center of the castle town, Oak where a rather obnoxious Lord took care of everything. A rather shady place too with the amount of rumors that surrounded it. And as the morning sun fell on her, Eva’s hands were already threading through the bunch of paeprs pinned on the request board, coming to a halt at the one request that seemed like it would keep her attention, taking it off the board before walking off in the direction that the famous smithy was said to be in.

Eva had not expected the place to be so huge. In fact, she had not expected her client for the day to be that huge either. Giants were not an uncommon site in Fiore but coming across one of them was most definitely rare as they liked to stay to themselves rather than live amongst the rest of the society. In a way, they were much like elves in the case and Eva was very much surprised to see that the erson whom had requested help with them for that day was actually the friendly giant Rander that everyone who cared for the smithy in that town actually looked up too, both literally and figuratively in his case. The older giant had smiled at her when she walked in with his request in her hands, giving her a uick walkthrough of what she should be careful of and what she should do before letting her know that he had wanted someone to look after the shop because he had a drinking contest to take part in. Somehow, the whole idea of it seemed ridiculous to her. This man had wanted to attend some pointless contest and leave the shop in the hands of a stranger. What a weird thing these creatures were, Eva thought, both them and the humans. They would rather spend their day with meaningless alcohol, drowning in the temporary solace it had to offer rather than living in the world, fully aware of what it brought. Anyhow she looked at it, Eva was not a big fan of the act called drinking and had, in her whole life, rejected the idea entirely.

As he gave her the last bit of details and what nots, Eva gave him her own information about herself before he would leave to the local pub to take part in that drinking contest that he was clearly looking forward to. Either way, Eva, once he was gone, would go to the very end of the shop and sit down on the rather big chair, holding a newspaper up in front of her that she had found lying around on the table. The whole building was huge, made just for the large size of a giant and even the small bit of utensils and tools that decorated the place had the same extra large size. She guessed that Rander had to get them all custom built or maybe even built them all by himself because she was sure that no shop in that town actually catered to the needs of a giant, the type of customers that they would rarely get save for their favorite smith himself. In a way that felt sort of nice, to be one of those people that almost the whole town looked up to. She guessed that with all that popularity also came adequate problems that it brought along. Mostly, she guessed, Rander would be subjected to problems all thrown at him by either his business rivals or even just people who got jealous of his abilities. She wondered if that was the reason that he had gone through all this trouble to hire someone to take care of his shop while he was gone rather than just closing the shop. Now she sort of understood why the giant had asked as much information about her as he could before leaving. The Rune Knight mark she had shown him had calmed him down enough to leave her there by herself.

Eva must have been very much lost in thought because by the time she snapped out of it, there was the sound of something cracking and creaking coming from outside. She was up on her feet before she knew it, throwing the newspaper down on the table before walking out to check what was going on. The site she saw, however, almost made her heart stop. Almost because a part of Eva didn’t care for what happened to someone else’s shop as long as it was salvageable but a major part of her found this very much annoying especially since there was toilet paper all over the front of the smithy and it was everywhere, so much that it made Eva groan out loud. From a distance, she even noticed a bunch of hooligans laughing their ass off at Eva’s annoyed countenance, something that Eva made sure she would be paying them back for if they ever came back and Eva had a feeling that they would now that they know that instead of the great giant, the shop was looked after by some seemingly helpless looking little woman.

1001/2000

For the reminder of the afternoon, Eva spend a lot of time painfully getting all those paper off the smithy’s front. By the time she was done, not only was her stomach growling for food, the sun was shining painfully bright and she had one big lump of toilet paper all stacked to a corner of the smithy, something that she guessed she would have to tell the giant about and get it burned later. But she took one look around the streets once more to see if any of the previous hooligans were coming back and went back, taking out a lacrima powered cell phone out of her pockets while she was at it. After all that work and sitting around, Eva had gotten pretty hungry and she wanted nothing more than some food to eat at that moment. She tried to recall all the delicious looking shops she had passed by while she was in Oak, stopping at one particular yakisoba place that was just down the road and not too far from the smithy that she was in at that moment. Surely, if she would call now, the food would arrive in less than twenty minutes.

Once she was done making the calls and necessary things, Eva sat down again, this time going through her phone to see if there was something going on related to her work as a model, groaning when she found all the jobs queued one after another for the next two months. “I’m gonna have to get back to this after Crocus, won’t I?” Eva wondered out loud, sighing as she closed it off and lazed around for the next fifteen minutes, at which point, she heard a bell ringing outside, indicating that her order had arrived. She went out with a happy smile on her face, taking the yakisoba from the delivery guy while dropping a few jewels on his extended palms, giving him a uick thank you before going back in, now completely excited for the tasty food she had in her hands. It was actually one of those days that she could eat whatever she wanted. On other days, Eva had to eat more healthy food, forced to keep her body shape down. Besides, her diet was actually custom made so that Eva would look fit for a model but not too muscly or manly as how she would turn out if she was left to her own devices with the kind of work she did with Rune Knights as well as modelling. In the end, she was being pulled in two directions, both very much important to her and equally loved although she wanted to quit modeling soon and get to dancing like she truly wanted to do. From what she knew, she just needed a bit more time and fund for her debut stage. Of course, she would probably still do some modelling in the side, but Eva had decided to take dancing as her main job, of course, after Rune Knights because that was a lot more important in a way.

Just as she finished her lunch and put it away, Eva noticed that something was going on at the front of the shop again. And this time, rather than quietly walking away, it seemed that they were throwing rocks at the door as if they were trying to get her attention deliberately which didn’t prove to be some difficult job since Eva was already up and going there to check them out. She was pretty sure it was the same guys that had paid her a visit earlier, confirming it when she opened the door to see the same bunch of hooligans. The weirdest part was that they all looked the same, which was very much strange since there were at least five of them. They all seemed to be up for picking a fight, however, when Eva closed the door behind her and stepped out to face them. In a way, she was glad that the fight had automatically took her outside. If it was inside the smithy, Eva was more than hundred percent sure that she would have destroyed it with her magic. Outside, she had enough space to blast these identical band of stupidity out cold in no time. She also knew where the Rune Knights station in Oak was so it would be easy to turn them in too.

For a while, Eva noticed them saying something to her, something she didn’t bother to hear or process in her mind as she used her superior speed to deal with each of them with her light saber out, piercing each of them at their necks with just the amount of strength and pressure to knock them out, not kill them. As much as she wanted to do so, Eva knew that she had some public morale too keep up as a Rune Knight and soon to lieutenant if her dreams were ever realized. Hah, rather than dreams, she should say effort since she was putting in a lot of work into what she was doing now, both training and work as a Rune Knight.

Anyhow, by the time she was done with the scared and scattering hooligans, Eva noticed that the giant had come back, surprisingly still somber, which actually made Eva wonder about the alcohol threshold the man had, Eva gave him a complete report on what had happened that day along with sending a message to the authorities, something that was easily done with her rights as a seated knight. Rune Knights had arrived only moments later to get all the knocked out thugs to the prison and Rander was left very much impressed with the way Eva had handled everything. He pulled off a pouch of jewels from somewhere behind him before handing it over to her, at which point, Eva made her courteous goodbyes and decided to move along. That was enough of Oak for a very long time, Eva decided.

2004/2000