<div class="floatright">(http://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn.roosterteeth.com/uploads/images/54063e01-6933-4e38-b195-d0fc28595a06/md/2181220-1448930942333-Warrior_Karsten_Face.jpg)</div>Right, she hadn’t asked him anything ’yet’. Yet being the operative word there and the reason he crossed his powerful arms over his chest as his stare extracted itself from the dangerous depths of her cleavage, somewhat aided by her own shielding arms, and regrouped gazing down at the girl as she obviously scrambled for some words that would make sense.<br/><br/>"I... I only dropped my shoe. How do you know we even wanted anything from you?"<br/><br/>No words passed the frown on his lips but the raised eyebrow that was his sole response to the preposterous assertion would more than anything else give away just how much stock he put in that claim. He would sooner have believed a hobgoblin’s assurance of living a peaceful life with plentiful of showers. Only the wide eyed look of hurt disbelief spearing up at him kept him from just turning about and leaving. There was something fragile there that made a chink in his ‘I don’t care, just leave me alone +5’ armor.<br/><br/>Things certainly didn’t improve as an additional threated spawned out of nowhere as the redheaded one of the pair of miscreants pushed her way into the front, glaring at him with large eyes brimming with gleaming tears, that somehow ripped right through his male pride like a pair of armor piercing bolts that ignored the formerly mentioned armor entirely, to lodge a very unfamiliar knot of guilt down in the pit of his stomach. If it wasn’t for him having been faced that viciously effective tactic before he might have succumbed at the spot for it was very well executed indeed. Almost to the point he might believe it could be genuine.<br/><br/>“Why would we want anything from a rude brute like you??”<br/><br/>His inner self both cringed and gritted its teeth at the same time as he didn’t quite manage to subdue the instinctive shame of treating a pair of young ladies like that, until he remembered just who had actually instigated the whole thing. Yet he knew exactly where things where headed now. They’d storm out and then the whole Tavern would turn on him, casting their reproachful gazes his way, wondering what a monster of man he truly was. Cheating to the most extreme degree as it was, he had to admit it was damn well effective.<br/><br/>‘You also do feel a bit bad for them.’<br/><br/>The tiniest little annoying sliver deep within his mind whispered.<br/><br/>‘You wonder how they ended up here.’<br/><br/>No I bloody well don’t, he ensured himself, suffocating it under a decade of bad experiences with just the kind of tragic backstories and tear jerking material he smelled here.<br/><br/>“There are bigger swords out there, Soph. C’mon …”<br/><br/>That almost had him move, take a step towards them, and against his wishes his lips actually parted as if to respond before he had time to stifle the need to react to the goading. They really were trying to empty out every trick out of their bag of holding on this one. But he wouldn’t bend, wouldn’t break. His fists clenched a bit tighter, making his arms bulge a bit more as he locked them crossed over his chest and his jaw set like it was a castle door preparing for a siege. They would not make him budge.<br/>