"Cheers!!" The group's wooden mugs clank together as they cheer in celebration. "Another completed mission everyone!" The leader announces.
"It's thanks to your amazing leadership and planning boss!" One of the women in the group compliments.
"What are you saying? It was thanks to your amazing combat prowess that made sure none of us got too injured!" A tall man says as he wraps his arm around the girl's shoulder.
"Hey, if anyone saved us it was are spellcaster over here!" A droopy haired man said while gesturing to their petite spellcaster. Her cheeks reddened.
"Come on guys, this is embarrassing! Besides, I wouldn't have been able to cast any of my spells if you weren't protecting me." The girl met eyes with the droopy haired man sheepishly. Both of their faces reddened even more as they sat together.
"Alright alright, Enough arguing everyone." The leader calls out. The group all turns to face him. He puts down his drink and looks at his crew with loving eyes. "This wasn't the work of any single one of us. It was us all. If any of us weren't there during the mission then we would have failed. That's why..." The leader takes a moment as his tries to hold back tears.
"...I have to thank you all! It's only because you all that my dreams can come true like this!" The leader could no longer hold back as tears poured out of his eyes. His crew ran to his side and embraced him in a group hug.
"It's not just your dream any more leader! It's all of our dreams!"
"Yeah, together we're going to be the best!"
"We love you leader, just as we know that you love us!" The group embrace tightly. They were radiating with light and love and hope for better days.
What a great connection that group has...
"The hell are they so giddy for!" A sour goblin spits out from a much darker corner of the bar. "They just killed an aristocrat's entire family! What a bunch of psychopaths!" Unlike the loving and happy group celebrating in the middle of the bar, our beloved Djinns are sitting in the bar drinking their worries away as they had been for the past month.
Their last mission had been such a fantastical failure that they'd gained infamy, but not the kind that they wanted to gain! They became known as Monkey's Paw instead of the Djinns because any wish you give to them may start great but the ending will be anything but good!
They completed the first part of the job fine, amazingly even! They did such a good job that they got an offer for a long term contract...and then everything fell apart. They failed to protect the payload, lost to a random group of brats, and even managed to let their client get captured! A sin for the Den of Infamy as the entire point of hiring someone else to do the job is to avoid getting caught!
It didn't help that they ran away instead of trying to protect her!
Needless to say, the Djinns were a joke to the criminal underworld! And now they also had been barred from accepting any bodyguard missions and anything related to the Grand Alchemists which wasn't wholly their fault.
"I mean..." Leroy paused to chug his drink. He slammed it on the table as he continued. "How the hell were we supposed to know that she was related to a massive drug trafficking ring! We're criminals, our clients tell us the most basic information that we need to know for the job! That's not our fault!"
"SING IT LEROY!" Narie yelled, clearly wasted out of her mind. "ANd anOther tHing!! Why ThE HelL DId shE HavE To gO AFteR AliX!!" Narie was barely understandable to any normal person, luckily every one of her friends were also currently wasted.
"I'll tell you why!" Edmund slammed his mug onto the table and stood up. "It's because our idiot captain didn't let Leroy and Joana kill the girl when they had the PERFECT CHANCE TO DO IT!!" Leroy and Jonana roared in agreement.
"What do you say about that, boss?" Joana and Leroy spoke simultaneously while glaring at Karic. Karic's head had been down on the table this entire time. He suddenly slammed his hands on the table and jumped up when he heard the group yell at him. He stood with a grim expression on his face. He was barely able to keep stand, needing to use their small table for stability.
"Guys!" Karic shouted.
"YEAH!?" His group shouted back at him waiting for him to answer the question. Karic takes a deep breath in while sweat pours down his wasted face even splattering onto the table. Wait...that not sweat, those are tears!
Karic looks up to the group bawling. "I"M SO SORRRYYYY!!!" He breaks down in tears and falls back into his seat slamming his head into the table. "I. Just. Wanted. To. Do. A. Good. Joooobuhuhuhu!!" Karic cries between every word of his sentence. Leroy seeing his boss's distress does what any good right hand would do in this situation.
He walks over to Karic, places a hand on his shoulder, grips his shirt tightly, and yanks him out of his seat. "YOU"RE DAMN RIGHT IT'S YOUR FAULT!!" Leroy starts violently shaking Karic.
"WE HAD ONE JOB AND YOU LET YOUR DAMN PRIDE GET IN THE WAY! YOU RUINED THIS FOR US!!"
"HEY!" Joana stood up and pushed Leroy off of Karic letting their leader fall back onto his chair. "He's not the only screw up here!" Oh, I thought that...never mind I'll just let her continue. Joana pointed over to Edmund.
"This fool couldn't even stop a group of children from taking back that damn pig!"
"THE HELL YOU SAY ABOUT ME!?" Mund pulled out one of his knives and pointed it at Joana. Joana scoffed.
"Heh, what's that gonna do? You lost to a pair of kids that could barely fight in that tavern! How could you ever hope to beat someone like me?" She mocked Edmund.
"Didn't you get beaten unconscious? We literally had to carry you out of there because of how bad your condition was!" Narie countered the goblin's jeers.
"Hey, you weren't any better! Did you even do anything worthwhile during the entire mission?!" Leroy shot back at Narie. Yup, unlike the group expressing all of those emotions of joy and comradery over their successful mission, our dear Djinns are arguing about who screwed the mission up the most!
That is the duality within the Infamy Bar at this current moment. Then, the doors of the bar burst open! A male dryad looked around the bar until he laid eyes on the Djinns.
"Hey! My useless money takers!" The man stomped over to the table. Each of the Djinns avoided making eye contact with him. Their failure affected him as well, almost as much as it affected the group!
He was the one that recommended them for the job, so all of the flak that they were getting for messing up so badly that he got in trouble for it! So he more than anyone, other than the client herself, had a perfectly valid reason to be pissed at these idiots!
Noticing their refusal to look at him the informant slammed his hand onto the table in a rage.
"HEY! LOOK AT ME!" They all obeyed his aggressive order, turning to face him frantically. "I get that you failed that mission but you all need to remember that you still work for this guild! As much as you call Karic the boss of this little gaggle of dumbasses, I'm your real boss! Understand!?" They nodded like children being chastised by their parents.
"Good! Now clean yourselves up and get ready! I have a job for to take first thing in the morning tomorrow! I thought that the last job was fail proof but seeing how that turned out this one is even simpler! Here's the job slip, don't lose it!" The dryad threw a piece of paper out in front of Karic.
"Come to the request desk in the morning so that I can sign you out." With that, the Djinn's informant turned on his heels and marched out of the bar without a second glance.
Edmund, technically the most sober of the group currently, picked up the request and started to read through it. "Looks like we're heading north this time?"
"What type of request is it?" Karic asks with interest.
"Retrieval. They want us to steal an artifact from someone."
"Does it say who?" Joana asks. Edmund shakes his head. "Not even an alias. We're going in blind."
"Probably for the best. They must not want us to get another client imprisoned." Leroy relented. The rest of the group nodded. Karic sighed and stood up from his seat.
"Well guys! After an entire month, we finally have another job! Let's do our best to not screw this one up so that we don't get kicked out of the guild and end up back on the streets!" The Djinns weakly cheered to their captain's half-hearted speech that only served to further reveal how bad their situation was. Karic then held a hand to his chest and began to recite their creed.
"We Johns will grant out climbers blackest wishes under the condition that they pay us in booze!!" He misquoted their creed but the rest of the group was too drunk to care and just let out a cheer.
"TO BOOZE!!" They all had one final drink before they were kicked out by the establishment because Joana attacked the leader of the group that was celebrating and the rest of the Djinns joined in. They then fell asleep in the alley to prepare for their journey that starts tomorrow.
'Hopefully, we won't run into Alix this time.' Karic thought to himself as he faded into unconsciousness.