As we were walking from the park to the local convenience store, one of the men we passed on the sidewalk suddenly reached out to grab Lilac.

  I wasn't slow to react or anything. There just wasn't anything I could do.

  My mistake was passing a stranger in the first place.

  It wasn't that we were all that close to him either. He moved like a viper, and pulled her away from me, a handgun in his other hand at her head.

  I had my pocket knives with me, so if I wanted to kill him, I could, but...

  As far as I knew, Lilac didn't have any kind of Skill like Beginner. If she got hurt, it could be really bad.

  "Easy there. We're not going to hurt the girl, as long as you do as you're told."

  'We.'

  So there are multiple people behind this.

  Humans really are the biggest danger.

  "Okay."

  They'd waited for their opening. I wasn't going to get out of this without waiting for mine.

  Besides, unfortunately, imperial law didn't exactly approve of self defense. They weren't wholly unreasonable, but even if I could snap my fingers and kill everyone behind whatever this was, it'd be a huge hassle to do so.

  A peaceful escape would be better.

  Assuming it was even possible.

  ***

  Toni and Veli were a pair of small-time gangsters with big dreams.

  They were something in between thugs and real organized criminals. Young men trying to make a name for themselves.

  There were safe ways to do that, at least as safe as crime could get, but unless you were ruthlessly competent, safety didn't get you very far.

  They weren't ruthlessly competent.

  If you wanted to race to the top, it was all about risk and reward. That is, maximizing both wherever possible. That was the only way ordinary gangsters like them could ever get ahead.

  Notably, you'd never get bigger than the biggest fish you were working up toward, so rather than settle on the local bosses, they took a job for a foreign kingpin.

  Someone whose influence could topple everyone in Red Town.

  Worst case scenario, they might have to move abroad, or bail out of the game altogether, but they'd still be filthy rich if they succeeded.

  All they had to do was kidnap a little girl.

  The Empire was remarkably safe for children, but that was in part due to the culture. A couple bad eggs could easily take advantage of that perceived safety, just as long as they were quick and didn't get caught.

  Veli drove while Toni kept a gun on hand, mostly just to keep the girls in line.

  Though their target was awfully willful.

  She didn't seem even slightly scared by the situation. The other outsider girl was terrified, but the actual target herself just seemed annoyed.

  And she made demands, too.

  "She's sitting on the other side of me. You're scaring her."

  "Why should we listen to a brat like you, huh?"

  "If you don't, I'll make you shoot me."

  "You little..."

  Incidentally, it was the driver, Veli, getting upset. He was in an undeniably stressful position.

  The target was a ward of one of the strongest guilds in the country, a small one comprising mostly high ranking adventurers and the rare few juniors who showed enough potential to impress them.

  He had a Skill of his own, but Grit I wasn't going to win him any fights against seasoned pros.

  Toni's own Skill, Dead Eye I, almost seemed to help him stay oddly calm in stressful situations like these.

  "Relax. It's actually better for us if they focus on each other. Don't worry, kid, we won't shoot her as long as you cooperate... though, nobody asked us to bring both of you, so you'll have to work hard to prove she's more valuable to us alive than dead. Got it?"

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Even if it was a little girl, he figured a dungeon boss would be capable of understanding basic rationality like that.

  He liked when humans stayed rational. It made life easier to navigate.

  ***

  The golden rule when dealing with criminals is to never let them relocate you.

  Allowances could be made, for example, if it was just going from one known location to another, like across the street to withdraw money from a machine, or from a bank lobby into its inner offices.

  But getting in a vehicle and being drove off to an unknown location was the height of danger.

  You'd be giving up what little advantage you had, and giving them potentially absolute power over you.

  If you were going to bet your life struggling, it was usually better to do so before going with them.

  However, even if I died, Beginner would probably save me. Even if it failed to, my curse would eventually bring me back into a new world. If even that failed... I couldn't really say that'd be a bad thing.

  So it was Lilac's life I was worried about rather than my own.

  'This is so typical...'

  But their gunman kept his weapon trained on us both.

  In the car, and even when getting out of it after a forty minute drive out of town, he never once diverted his attention from us.

  His partner swore a bit when he had to open car doors and help drag us out, but the gunman himself didn't let it bother him.

  It was clear who the weak point of this operation was, but a way to take advantage of it never emerged.

  Since the true professional kept his attention on us, when we reached a small cabin out in the countryside, it was the driver who made what seemed like an important phone call for their operation.

  I could only hear his side of things, but...

  "We got the girl. How soon can you grab her?"

  ...

  "Fuck, three hours?"

  ...

  "I know that's fast, but do you really think that's fast enough? Look, I'm not worried about her, but she's hot merchandise. Three hours is..."

  ...

  "Damn. Fine, we'll hold out for two hours. If you don't show by then... well, don't bother."

  ...

  "Fuck!"

  Although, I don't think that last expletive was meant for the person on the other line.

  But it seemed like we'd be waiting an hour or two.

  I glanced over at the gunman, but he seemed awfully unbothered by everything. The two didn't talk about their plan either, so it seemed that phone call was all the strategy meeting they needed.

  ***

  To my surprise, they did offer us food.

  The driver actually did.

  It was a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, one for each of us.

  I ate mine first.

  "(Don't,)" is all I said to Lilac.

  It tasted funny, like it'd been drugged... or maybe it just tasted funny.

  I had a pretty strong resistance to drugs thanks to being a biological alien, but I wasn't sure about Lilac.

  Actually, normally, drugs were pretty dangerous to aliens. For example, useful or at least harmless effects could cause unknown health problems to different species, sort of like feeding chocolate to dogs.

  I didn't have any reason to suspect that Lilac had the same level of resistance that I did.

  My body was, as far as I could tell, unusually adaptable to different environments. As such, poisons and drugs had minimal effect on me unless designed for me specifically.

  While not a guarantee, it was more reliable than most defenses.

  "Why isn't she eating it?"

  "She's too scared to eat."

  "I guess you're not, huh? Whatever... damn it, why are you still awake?"

  "Should I not be?"

  "Damn it!"

  The professional chimed in before his buddy could get too heated. "She is a dungeon boss. We expected this. Besides, she won't be our problem for much longer."

  'So it was drugged...'

  I was a bit annoyed.

  After all, how could they be certain whatever strange drugs they'd planned on feeding us wouldn't just kill us?

  But that confirmed it.

  They weren't total amateurs, but they also weren't total professionals either.

  ***

  I convinced them to let us draw.

  "If you're trying to leave a message, don't bother."

  Of course, they'd taken our phones from us back when they first grabbed us, so... why would I bother trying to do that?

  Were imperial authorities so feared by criminals that they expected detectives to snoop around the place within hours of us being picked up by... whoever planned on grabbing us next?

  Well, my actual goals were to make their gunman feel at ease and to do the same for Lilac.

  At least my plan partly worked.

  Lilac, perhaps used to being suddenly transported to strange locations from her time as a slave, just had a fearful, despondent expression not too unlike the one she wore when I'd first met her.

  She wasn't unusually terrified from the start, although our kidnappers probably didn't realize that.

  But she did seem to brighten up a little when we started drawing pictures together.

  It was a bit tough pretending to be a playful child while also watching those two low lives like a hawk, but since I was bad at pretending to be a child in the first place, I just hoped they'd chalk that up to me being myself.

  After all, I didn't hold out much hope that they had no information whatsoever on me.

  They probably even knew I was decent with a sword, thanks to my failure to lose that one tournament a month or so back.

  Whether because of that or some other reason, the gunman never let down his guard.

  I had to commend his tenacity, at least.

  Pretty soon, I'd be violating the golden rule for dealing with criminals a second time, assuming the people who wanted us kidnapped actually came by.

  But if it had to happen, at least it might give me a chance to see who it was.

  'No... that's stupid. I'd rather never meet them in the first place.'

  ***

  "Kid and Lilac's phones are both dead."

  Those words filled the air with a sudden tension, as Suon reported the situation to Van, including sharing their last known location.

  "A parking lot."

  Although the guild had many frightful members, as their professional scout, Van was already the best choice for tracking her down.

  Still, the rest began to assemble while he rushed ahead to find out what happened.

  If it was just a false alarm and they all wasted their time cancelling plans to chase the troublesome little dungeon boss... well, they might get a bit annoyed, but that was by far the best outcome.

  If, however, some fool thought they could mess with an honorary Azure Dragon and get away with it, whoever it was needed to be taught a lesson.

  Smaller guilds would leave it to the proper authorities. Heck, so would most larger guilds.

  The Azure Dragons were closer to a band of monster-slaying, dungeon-clearing paramilitary elites.

  Even if they got in trouble with the law, they were simply confident that they could handle that too.

  That's just what it meant to be one of the big five.