Beware of Cops

Wow, that's a lot of people, Alex thought when he left t the apartment. People crowded the apartment streets in the early hours of the morning. Everyone walked towards the city's center, but no one entered the apartments. People were going to work to come back later in the night. Everyone stepping close to his apartment was a white elf. Still, sometimes Alex spotted an orc in the middle of the crowd, wearing similar clothes but maintaining distance from the lean figures.

She asked for a couple more hours of sleep when he left the apartment. She told him she would go to buy the food and the wood, and they would meet again in the afternoon at the adventurer's guild after she had purchased her weapons at the blacksmith.

With that agreement, Alex took a shower and left the apartment. On the floor, he could see marks of blood from the two thugs. Alex smirked at the sight and kept walking. Some neighbors looked at him with impressed expressions, but no one said anything. Alex supposed they were surprised that he was alive and the blood on the ground wasn't his. Good, keep looking down at me, he thought while leaving the building and colliding with the massive amount of people on the streets.

Okay, walk until the end of the apartment blocks to the south and then straight to the 13th street of the commerce district on the white elf side of the city. It was a simple instruction. Two straight lines, and he would eventually find the right store.

After ten minutes of walking, Alex contemplated the beginning of the commercial district and watched the people on the landscape change. He could now see orcs of all sizes and genders. White and black elves walked the streets with a similar elegance, but the latter wore better clothes. Some had suits, and others just slim, beautiful shirts. The females wore gorgeous-looking dresses or pants and blouses. Everyone seemed elegant while minding their own business.

However, Alex could sense the social tension in the air. Black elves talked with black elves, orcs with orcs, and white elves with white elves. The only people who distinguished themselves were some dwarves Alex caught sight of. They were in mixed groups, not indicating separations from one or other social agglutination.

Alex even saw what seemed to be a human in the distance. His skin color was brownish, and his stature was lower than the elves. Alex thought about walking towards the man and talking, but talk about what? Hey, I'm human too… I just look like an elf, you know? Alex laughed at his own thoughts and kept trudging down the streets.

Soon, the expensive stores started to be replaced by restaurants and tents selling street food. One of the scents caught Alex's attention. It smelled just like good fried chicken, so he walked towards it.

After a couple of dozen steps, Alex saw a little tent with the sign: "Fried Drake - 1 coin". He looked closely at the board to see if he hadn't misread it, but it was correct. "Fried Drake," so he approached it and saw what seemed to be little chickens on a stick. Each one measured around twenty centimeters and was breaded entirely.

Alex's mouth watered all over. He approached the shop, and a completely bald dwarf with a big smile was on the other side of the balcony,

"Hello, my friend! Are you hungry? I can serve you the best drake in all of Tevia, I guarantee," said the dwarf. Alex's stomach growled with the question, and he just nodded, removing one coin from his pocket and giving it to the man. "I'll give you a fresh one," the dwarf said, taking one breaded drake from a container beneath the board and throwing it into hot oil, bubbling in a metal pan above the small bonfire. The waiting seemed to last an eternity, but after three minutes, the dwarf handed him the dish on the stick. "Thank you, good sir."

Alex stuffed the drake in his mouth, not caring much about the hotness. It was simply delicious. The crunchiness of the drake skin with the fried bread outside made the succulent inside send waves through Alex's senses. He could get accustomed to the food of this place. It was better than most food he ate in his late shifts as a cop.

After walking two more blocks, Alex saw, on the other side of the street, the same butcher shop he had passed the previous day. The one which had some kind of dog creature with three heads displayed in the vitrine. He wanted to get closer and analyze it better, but another movement caught his attention. On the same side as he was, in an alley close, people talked in a circle, with somewhat hushed voices that got increasingly louder with time.

Alex stepped slowly in their direction, taking care to blend into the crowd. He kept chewing his drake, thinking about how delicious the dish was, when he realized this was the same alley he had been reincarnated into. The people were around Grarp's body.

The young man leaned against a wall in the corner of the alley, away from the group but close enough to hear their conversation.

Three black elves talked with two orcs in beautiful blue and white uniforms. The one doing most of the talking was a female dark elf with a lean build and a ponytail; she also had a sword on her belt, thin and menacingly sharp. The other two were men and wore similar attire but remained two steps away from the woman, who seemed to be their leader.

"Explain to me again what you saw, please," she asked with a cold, icy voice, and the orc in front of her sighed profoundly.

"I already told you, ma'am. I was minding my own business, reading the latest serial in the newspaper… the one about Ran'Dallar, the adventurer who went on the quest to retrieve the ring of—"

"As I said, I don't need these details, sir. I don't care about your reading habits. Please skip the unnecessary parts," she waved a hand at the orc, who was followed by what seemed to be his wife. Little differentiated them besides the bust of the female. They wore similar clothes to the ones of Alex and spoke in a growling tone of voice, the one you would imagine coming from a monster.

"Okay, ma'am. I'm sorry… Sometimes I can lose my train of thought,"

"That's okay, sir. Go on."

"Yes, I was reading my book about… Oh, sorry… I was reading when I heard a noise coming from the alley. Our bedroom has a window that lets us see outside; normally, nothing is interesting to see there, honestly. Just cats running, and sometimes I can spot—"

"Sir!" She had already lost all her patience, and her tone was enough to make the man flinch. He reacted as if she had just unsheathed her sword, but the elf remained in the same position. She hadn't even moved her neck.

"I'm sorry, Captain La'har! I'm sorry!"

"Continue, please," she replied slower, this time as if talking to a child.

"I saw an orc, this one on the ground, fighting a purple eye. Calling it fighting is an exaggeration, ma'am… He was spanking the kid. I'm not a fan of white elves, you know… but it was… brutal. He smashed the kid's face, and all I could hear was a cry… I'm not sure if it was the kid being beaten, but it was howling."

"That part I can believe, but please continue."

"The strange part is that the elf woke up as if nothing had happened to him and beat the poor orc with a strength I had never seen."

"And how did he kill the orc?"

"He beat him with this metal rod over there, ma'am."

"Can you see how this is hard for me to believe, sir? A single white elf, whom you describe as a young man, killed this big orc here? That's hard for me to believe, honestly. Why are you lying?" She pressed and took a step in the orc's direction.

The orc stumbled backward and fell with his butt to the ground. "No, ma'am. I'm not lying. Why would I? I reported the crime," he said desperately while his wife helped him get up.

"That's what I'll discover. This elf who beat the orc, how was he looking after the crime?"

"Ma'am, I didn't watch it all… it was terrible to see, but he looked pretty bad. His face was all swollen with wounds. His face was unrecognizable," That's actually perfect, Alex thought with relief. It would be difficult to link him to the crime since he had been healed by the Devil's Hand, and the witness hadn't seen it.

"How convenient," she replied with distaste. "And this other person with him? Are you sure there was one?"

"No, ma'am, I'm not sure. But if I had to bet on it, I would say yes, someone else was hidden." She looked at the orc from head to toe, turning her back and stashing a notepad in her pocket. She walked her partners to a far position, dangerously close to Alex, and said in a lower tone,

"Let's not deny any possibilities. If the orc's telling the truth, this elf could have been enhanced with rune magic, for all I can tell. Difficult, but possible. Spread the news to all officers to report sightings of a white elf with great strength or the use of enhancing rune magic, with or without face wounds."

"Yes, ma'am!" The two officers saluted her quickly and walked in the other direction while Captain La'Har remained in the same spot.

"Do I need to tell you not to leave the city?"

"No, ma'am."

"Good. Thank you for your collaboration, good sir. I wish you and your wife the best of days," she said, but her tone and face expressed something entirely different. She despised the orcs, and it was pretty clear in her demeanor.

Alex turned his back and started walking, trying to avoid her gaze, and for all he could tell, he did just that. A small part of Alex assumed this would just be filed as a street fight, nothing to be investigated, but the crime had fallen into the wrong hands.

This is a good police officer. 'Look for someone with or without a wounded face'... That's a pro move, assuming people can be the epitome of smartness or dumbness. I'll need to ensure she won't catch me.

Alex resumed walking towards the clothes store, blending into the crowd again.

Alex had no idea that the whole time he was walking, chewing his new favorite food, a pair of narrow black eyes followed him with immense attention.