Humans, Elves, and Training [Closed]

It was a surprisingly quiet morning in the forest.  A very unusual day, Arcadia usually bustling with sound in one way or another.  It wasn't really an uneasy stillness though.  A light breeze blew through the trees, releasing the gentle sound of rustling leaves through the air.  Occasionally there'd be the chirp of a bird, or the sound of a distant animal running, but other than that it seemed to be mostly quiet.  The creatures of the night were retiring for the day, the last cricket chirp ending 10 minutes prior.  The creatures of the day seemed to be remaining in their homes.  Perhaps they had not yet quite realized it was day.  There were thick clouds overhead.  Not so thick that it was raining, but thick enough to make it a distinct possibility.  As a result, the forest was blanketed in a dull grayish lighting.  Not exactly pretty, but to some it was a nice ambiance.  The moisture in the air was rather thick, further indicating the possibility of rain.  Still, there would definitely be some time before it rained.  Perhaps this is why there were a few creatures still bustling about, making sure their home was safe and stocked up.  The treetops further shaded the ground.  It was surprisingly not a very cold day, but the shade gave the forest a nice cool feeling.  It was almost as if the forest was in a strange form of partial hibernation.  Of course, not everything was hiding away in the safety of some permanent or makeshift home.  SOME people had better things to do.  And by people, I mean person.  And by person, I mean a 6'0 ape descendant whose house for all he knows could have been destroyed to make way for a bypass.  Well, probably not, Arcadia probably has little use of bypasses.  Still, the heterochromic man in his head had more important things to do than sit around and relax.  People like him don't get to relax, no matter how badly they want to.  As he walked through the forest, a light breeze blew his medium length blonde hair.  His clothes, too, moved a bit as a result of the breeze.

Upon coming to a small clearing, he stopped and sighed.  He never pictured his life coming to this.  He used to have everything he could ever want, and now he has nothing.  Nothing but his clothes, and the old sword made by his great grandfather.  Having that sword was better than nothing, seeing as he needed to protect himself.  Truthfully though, what he carried was a weapon of quality that was almost impossible to match, for an unenchanted sword anyway.  You could find equals if you were lucky, but not a better blade.  He had no idea what he really carried in his hand though, so to him, it was just a means of protection and the last connection to his family.  His life wasn't all bad luck though, he had met an elf whom seemed to be willing to help him.  Sure, after being abandoned and betrayed by nearly everyone he once knew, he was painfully distrustful, but that was mere self defense.  He knew he needed to be able to physically protect himself, and she seemed like his best bet.  Elwyn, as was the elf's name, was asleep when he last saw her.  Rather than wake her up, he decided he'd go out and practice a little himself.  Honestly, he was sort of expecting her to just get up and leave once she saw he wasn't there.  Though deep in his heart, a part of his hear he himself was not truly aware of, he was praying that wasn't the case.  That self defense mechanism of his probably caused him more grief than it was worth, he was not a loner in his heart.

From it's sheathe Snopy drew Yasumasa.  The katana was definitely strange, and he realized this whenever he drew it.  It somehow felt both heavy and light when he picked it up.  It did what it was supposed to surprisingly well though, so he never really questioned it.  He took up the basic stance his father had taught him.  Both hands on the hilt, the tip pointing upward to where an opponent's throat might be.  Snopy always thought that it'd be far easier to swing the blade as he unsheathed it, but he had so little training something like that would probably get him killed.  Keeping both hands on the blade he began swinging.  Not optimal training obviously, but being self taught isn't exactly easy.  Swinging the blade around though would at least help him with his strength and coordination, since both of those were needed to ACTUALLY swing the thing as he wanted.  Later he might switch to something else, maybe running in order to improve his speed and stamina.  Still, he was training alone, and he wasn't an expert on the concept.  At this rate it would take a long time to see real results.

Snopy was pretty engrossed in his training.  Coordination, some muscle build up, any result at all would have made him happy.  Unfortunately intense training usually lead to intense fatigue and pain, which was all well and good until he realized that he constantly needs to be able to move around and get things done regardless.  At least with Elwyn, he knew he could at least work a little harder, and yet even then he was a little reluctant to do so.  He honestly still wondered if this girl had some ulterior motive, something he should be worried about.  Snopy looked up for a moment and stopped swinging.  Hmm.  He turned around in a sudden jolt and brought his sword about, he thought he heard someone sneaking up on him.  But...the sound he heard was a squirrel...that he was now pointing his blade towards.  "Now I feel silly."  He lowered his sword, obviously he didn't intend on running a squirrel through, though honest he'd be lucky to even hit it if he tried.  

From there though, he heard something...it sounded like running water.  "Eh?"  He spoke, as he turned around just in time to see a stream of water, slamming into his stomach and sending him barreling down onto his ass.  "Ow."  He spoke as he rubbed his behind.  His other hand still had his sword firmly gripped, and for a moment he readied it, pointing towards the source of the water.  Of course, it ended up just being Elwyn.  "A hello would have sufficed."  He said as he got up, perhaps a tad annoyed at the scenario.  Part of him thought that maybe she was trying to keep him alert, but part of him wondered if she was just being a jerk.  Of course there was a third part of him that thought he should have been amused, but that part of him was never invited to these sorts of parties.  "Did I really need a bath that bad that you'd hose me down?"  He said jokingly.  It was quite obvious that the hosing annoyed him a bit at first, but he did soften up with a bit of a smile.  Snopy was dripping wet, water ended up soaking his hair and his clothes.  He did like water to an extent, so it was hard to stay annoyed.  Combined with the feeling of the cool air, it actually felt really nice once you got used to it.

"So, what is it that was so important you got my super nice clean clothes all wet and muddy."  He was OBVIOUSLY joking, considering that while he did his best to keep them somewhat clean, they were traveling.  They were bound to get dirty, and the clothes had obvious signs of wear.  They were also weren't considered fine clothes even when they were new, just average.  Plus, he just had a tone in the voice that said he was kidding.  "Ah, worried about me were you?"  He said with a chuckle before continuing.  "Well whatever the case, that training you were talked about before...I'd uh..."  Snopy could thank someone, but asking for help like this wasn't something he was used to.  After a little struggling to just say the damned words and admit he needed the help of someone he didn't know very well, he finally just sighed.  "Could you please help me train?  I don't think I'm going to get very far on my own, and...you're a much better fighter than I."  He felt a little like crawling into a hole.  The only reason he could honestly muster this was because he had been with Elwyn for at least a little while, but his lack of trust made him feel needlessly small and helpless when he did need help. Fact was though, he desperately needed training, so he had to suck it up.

Snopy's mind was on a lot of things, and unfortunately when his mind raced he had a bit of a bad habit of not putting pauses between statements.  Elwyn was very patient though, and waited until the end of his tangent to finally say hello.  She had a smile on her face.  Why did she just have a smile on her face that whole time?  Thinking about it, Snopy had just said a lot all at once, and he didn't realize it until he stopped to think.  Was she laughing at him?  Of course she was in a way, the real question was if it was malignant.  With the smile on her face, any normal person would not have even considered that a possibility, but Snopy was not any person.  Then again, she did sound like a smart-ass.  He just shook it from his mind and moved on.  She shot down his joke with simple fact, but a true one.  As far as he could tell, there wasn't much practical reason to keep it around, and if there WAS an ulterior motive he has no clue what it would be.

She confirmed she would try to train him, and he nodded back to her.  She then began to explain why what he was doing wasn't going to get him anywhere.  She was right, though it always surprised him that all the running he did didn't give him some huge stamina pool.  Though the running instances were scattered, so odds were he made slight progress, but it'd have been years before it actually meant made any difference whatsoever, which isn't really progress.  "You're right."  He knew she was, so all he could do was confirm it.  Elwyn pulled the water out of his clothes and suddenly he was dry again.  A rather efficient ability this girl had.  She actually dried me off.  He wasn't going to complain, though he'd likely be wet again soon.  Snopy took his sword and sheathed it, lying it on a tree.  

As he did so, Elwyn asked him a question.  He stopped for a moment, staring off into space.  He had already told Elwyn a lot about his sister, which in hindsight he feels wasn't the greatest idea.  Fact of that matter was, though, he was looking for his family, most notably his sister.  If he could fight he could travel without getting killed, and he could look for her.  "I felt like I needed to get away from Aria, and I need to be able to fight to be able to travel without being protected whenever something goes wrong."  He turned around and stated fairly convincingly, although with some minor body language and tone inflection that might tell the more observant he wasn't telling the whole truth.  He isn't really sure what he'd say if she asked him more.  "Alright, so you're the trainer.  What do you want me to do first?"

When Snopy explained his simple excuse for why he wanted training, Elwyn didn't press him on it.  He was thankful for that, he wasn't a professional liar.  He'd only be able to keep it up for so long. As he asked where they should start, it didn't take much glancing for Elwyn to decide stamina.  No, he couldn't even blame her.  He wasn't Mr. muscle, he was lean.  Though while he couldn't blame her, it did slightly bother him.  Even if he didn't want to be some muscle head, being called weak didn't exactly appeal to him, even if he KNEW that wasn't what she was saying.  It was dumb, but it was how he felt.  She explained he'd need to run first, as it was the simplest way to start.  Oh no, like he wanted to do MORE running.  Still, it would be nice to run a longer distance before being winded.  "To the breaking point...something tells me I'm going to hate this."  He stated simply, although he did not flinch.  He was going to do it.  Unless he met some unfortunate end during the training, he was going to become stronger.  He’d stop being dead weight.  The work of the mind never got him anywhere in this world, mostly because so many people undervalued it.  However, he’d combine his brains with some physical prowess, and he’d find a way to get things done.  He would find out what happened to his sister, and if she was still out there somewhere.

Elwyn began to explain what running through the woods would be like, and while he wasn't the most physically adept, he DID have plenty of experience running through the forest.  He wasn't perfect, but the odds of him tripping were much smaller than some random person pulled from the city.  Though her being there did make him feel a little less like Taerick fodder.  She looked to him with a confident smile, a smile that was somehow a little comforting.  It would all be a test to see how hard she should push him initially.  She explained what to do to optimize the session.  "Right."  He responded.  He took her advice and decided to stretch a bit.  He stretched down to his toes, stretched his arms a bit, and most importantly, stretched his legs.  He knew how to stretch mostly from how much better his muscles felt in the past after certain stretches.  He looked forward, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.  He opened them and began to jog as she had instructed.

From here Snopy would be jogging through the forest, along with Elwyn.  He made it a point to be aware of her position, but not to look at her.  Seeing her effortlessly do what would eventually have him gasping for breath would not be good for his flow.  Though in truth, thinking about it didn't help much either.  Snopy had to keep going though.  Ducking under a branch that almost smashed him in the head, and quickly needing to hop over a rock, he almost ended up stumbling, but by some sheer luck he didn't fall flat on his face.  Unfortunately less than 5 minutes later, he ended up stepping in a branch for a classic cartoon rake to face moment.  Stepping on one end, the other end smashed into his face, causing him to slow to a walk for a moment, before he pressed back into a run.  He might have been bleeding a little, but he ignored it.  He could tell he didn't get some giant gash, so he would walk it off.  He broke into a true run about 7 minutes from starting.  He had some running experience, so he didn't start gasping within the first few minutes, but after 10 minutes of running his breathing became heavy.  Still, he kept going.  He managed to keep going another 10 minutes before he ended up stopping, his legs feeling like jello.  7 minutes of jogging and 20 minutes of running.  In normal circumstances he'd have stopped running after 10 minutes, but when pushing himself to keep going he made it to 20.  While it wasn't full sprint, and actually his max speed wasn't that impressive, it was better than he thought he could do.  Still, there were people and animals that could run for hours on end, all day even.  He'd need a lot of improvement in both speed and general stamina in order to stand a chance at surviving attacks.  Gripping onto a nearby tree to stay standing, he turned to Elwyn.  "So, how sad is my stamina?"

As he was gasping for breath, he listened to Elwyn's reaction.  Huh, that was strange, while he did better than he expected, he didn't expect what he had to be much of anything.  He just guessed the times he's had to run around like a chicken with his head cut off did it.  Of course, the part that frightened him was when she pointed back.  Before she opened her mouth Snopy's brain went "uh oh".  "Go back."  Snopy's body froze up, and he just looked up at her.  She meant now, that much was certain.  For a moment he had a look on his face like "You've got to be kidding", but he knew he had to comply to get anywhere.  After that brief moment he sighed, he counted in his head to 3, taking in three deep breaths to make sure he had plenty of air, and from there he just silently began to run backwards.  No not BACKWARDS as in backwards, backwards as in back the way he came.  Though the short maybe 30 second rest and the three deep breaths did help, it only took a mere 30 seconds for him to be back at the heavy breathing and the pain.  His muscles were screaming to stop, and he wanted to comply so badly.  However, he forced himself on.  He was much less coordinated than the first stretch.  Or rather, his exhaustion simply slowed some of his reactions, as well as his speed.  He went as fast as he could muster, but it was a tad slower than before.  He did his best not to stumble, and the slightly reduced speed did make him more easily aware of possible threats before his foot caught onto them.

Ten minutes passed (or rather 15, as his speed had slowed), and with a few stumbles and at one point a trip over a tree branch, Elwyn told him to stop.  He was happy to comply as he leaned (or rather fell) into a tree to support himself.  Without forward momentum to hold him up, his body no longer wanted to stay upright, at least until he got a bit of rest.  "Aren't we only halfway there?"  He'd ask as he gasped.  However, after he rested for a good few minutes, Elwyn would just let him walk the rest of the way.  Elwyn was silent and Snopy didn't feel he had much to say either.  Part of that might have just been that every bit of precious air he took into his body he wanted to hold on to.  So as they trekked, it was fairly silent.  Snopy felt the air becoming heavier, and looking up he knew it was going to rain very soon.  The rain would be nice though, it would wash off the stickiness of the sweat.  He was a tad drenched in it.  "So, what's next?  We aren't done for now are we?"

The walk was fairly silent, or at least it was until Snopy asked if they were done.  He was exhausted and his mind was, as usual, a little elsewhere, so he didn't quite notice her surprise had she shown any sign of it.  She began to explain what would happen once it began to rain.  The rain turns dirt into mud, and mud into SALTY super mud.  Yeah, she was right.  He'd pushed himself a lot already, and it'd be a lot harder to get anywhere at this point.  His shoes, he didn't think, would slip on the mud any more than his own feet would.  Still, the question would have to remain if HE'D slip and fall in the mud.  He nodded in response, to say that he understood what she was saying.  He didn't want a broken ankle, that was for sure.  They returned to the hut, with Nilani by the door.  A small creature immediately scurried past the elf's foot.  "Hey Ahri."  The felli, rather excited it seemed, began running circles around Snopy before jumping into his arms.  His legs wobbled a bit, despite how light Ahri was, the exercise had left him a little weak in the legs.  He hugged Ahri, even in his weariness of mind, and now body, he was happy to see her.  He didn't smile though, his mind was elsewhere.  At least it was until Nilani brought him back to reality by speaking up.  When she asked how it was, he was expecting the question to be more of a formality type "welcome back" statement.

Snopy looked towards Nilani, blinking a few times at her look of surprise.  Next thing he knew, he was being congratulated by her.  Congratulations?  Why would he need to be congratulated?  He didn't think he did that much.  Wait, he impressed Elwyn?    She was impressed?  She didn't seem very impressed.  She was being sorta quiet.  Snopy seemed to stare into space.  The DIRECTION of his eyes was towards Nilani, but he wasn't exactly looking at her.  Rather his mind was racing.  He felt...strange.  He looked to Nilani, seeing the smile form on her face, and even the slight tint of her cheeks.  What was this feeling welling up inside of him?  It seemed familiar, but he couldn't place his finger on it.  "I...impressed her?"  He asked, not really directed at anyone.  He was in a state of shock.  For once, red flags weren't shooting up.  Rather, there was something off within him, but this time it wasn't a distrust for others bugging him.  He looked towards Elwyn, should she make eye contact, for once he would not break away immediately.  Normally this is something Snopy would never do, subconsciously he knew someone might be able to look within and see he was in pain deep down.  Ahri made a little "eeh" sound as his grip on her tightened, but not so much that it'd hurt her.  Snopy looked back to Nilani, and seeing her smile he couldn't stop one of his own from forming on his face.  He seemed to be a little less tense.

It was definitely a sight.  Snopy standing there, holding Ahri with a genuine smile on his face.  He didn't know what to say.  There was really only one thing he could say.  "Thank you."  He looked back out out to the woods.  The rain would begin falling soon.  "I...want to take a break...then keep going."  Ahri's ears perked up, and not in a good way.  The look on her face was uneasy.  Quite frankly it was not a good idea for Snopy to keep going today, and his pet seemed to know this better than he did at this moment.  Maybe the genuine praise he had seemed to have gotten had him not thinking clearly.  Either way, if no one else stopped him, he would be running the risk of seriously hurting himself.  "Let's go sit in the hut for a bit."  As he carried Ahri, he was definitely not 100% stable.  He seemed to be heavily fatigued.  He walked into the hut, likely past Elwyn and Nilani unless they had decided to go in when he offered to go inside and sit, and found a chair and sat down in it.  "Thank you for...helping me."  Snopy was definitely not used to speaking like this, it seemed a tad awkward, but he was trying his hardest.  "I really...appreciate it.  I'll work hard...so I don't let you down."  He paused every so often due to his lack of experience with the subject, and it'd be surprising if those two didn't see just how hard it seemed to be to say what he wanted to say.

Snopy's daze was semi-canceled out by Nilani knocking on his head and puffing out her cheeks a bit.  He might have thought it cuter, but he was still partially dazed.  When he repeated what she said, she only confirmed it.  When Snopy smiled back at her though, for some reason she broke eye contact and looked away.  He blinked a bit, not quite sure why.  Normally he wouldn't think much of it, yet his mental guard was lowered temporarily.  He was thinking about these things more...than he usually would.  Of course, when he suggested they keep going, Nilani told him to rest as if he was a lunatic.  She put her hands on his shoulders and told him to take advantage of the breaks he was given.  They all went inside, Nilani going last, the conversation continued.  Of course Elwyn doesn't pull her punches, and flat out stated to Snopy she wouldn't be let down if he failed somehow.  Snopy let out a sigh.  "No, I suppose it wouldn't."  It was to be expected, they didn't know him much so they wouldn't care much.  He looked off to the side, listening to the rain for a moment.

Nilani, however, quickly jumped in.  She began telling him about how they wouldn't give up on him.  It was a very nice speech that lightened Snopy's mood a bit, though something that she said struck him as a little funny.  He looked at her with a small grin on his face.  "Pretty hard to let down a Felli though."  He laughed a little at that, even though it was true.  The only thing he really had was Ahri.  Ahri was still alert, mostly out of worry for him, so despite his rather light attitude about the whole thing, her ears drooped and just made a sad little sound.  "Eh?  Don't worry girl, I'm fine."  Snopy was putting on as strong a face as he could about the whole situation.  "Back on subject, I suppose you are right.  No point in learning to protect myself if it gets me killed.  Kinda counter-intuitive."  Snopy began to look off again, as if contemplating.  It'd be rather unfortunate to injure himself training.  However, misfortune tends to favor him, so it'd be better not to take that chance.

"Guess tonight will be a peaceful night."  Outside a clap of thunder could be heard, incredibly close and sounding like a bomb had just gone off in their ears.  The rain was actually beginning to come down pretty hard, causing the metaphorical anime sweat drop to fall down his face.  "Well, as peaceful as such a violent storm can be anyway."  That's when he heard what sounded like a woman's voice outside.  He had been sitting a few minutes now, and his balance had been mostly restored.  "Hmm."  He stood up and walked towards the door, but just as he had the door flew open.  Standing there was a grown woman, approximately 5'4, with short brown hair.  She was dressed like a typical housewife might look.  "P-please!  You have to help me!"  The woman was hysterical.  "He went missing and if I don't find him, if something happens, if he doesn't..."  The woman was going on and on.  Somehow he needed to get her to calm down and explain the situation.  "Slow down, who's missing?"  He spoke loudly enough to get the woman's attention, but he spoke calmly.  "Wh...huh?  Oh, my son!  My little boy went out to play and I can't find him anywhere!  And the storm...if he's out in this storm..."  The woman began another tangent.  "Calm the hell down!"  He shouted to get the woman's attention.  "Panicking will solve absolutely nothing.  I understand it's your son, but standing here freaking out changes nothing.  We need to keep calm and search."

Snopy turned back to Elwyn and Nilani.  They might have been a little shocked.  His demeanor completely changed from anything they would have seen.  Normally he was a bit of a goof, but also a bit introverted, seemingly afraid of interacting with people.  Yet he was now completely calm, cool, collected, and quite rational.  In fact, even his tone shifted and he sounded like a leader.  "I'll require your help too, I'm exhausted from training.  I won't be able to cover much ground by myself, so we'll cover much more ground if we split up into groups and search.  It's too dangerous to go alone anyway with all this rain.  One of you comes with me, the other should go with her, I'll let you pick.  We meet back here, so once someone finds him they can bring him back here until the other group comes back."  Snopy turned back to the woman.  "Of course you don't have to.  I'll help her by myself if that's the case."  The woman looked to Snopy, a little startled, but with gratitude in her eyes none-the-less.  He nodded to her.  "Everything will be fine, we'll find him before anything happens."  His tone was very convincing, even calming.  From there, he waited.  Once they accepted and picked who they'd go with, or declined, they'd go off into the forest to see if they could find this missing child.

Snopy was being bombarded by questions by Nilani when the door had a knock.  "Red or purple I gu..."  That's when the door flew open.  Snopy raised an eyebrow at Elwyn's response.  She seemed suspicious that something was up. Well, the splitting up plan fell through.  With Elwyn trying to do her own thing, there was no safe way to split up.  He shrugged.  "Then we stick together I suppose, no use splitting up now.  One of us would be left alone and that'd be dangerous in this downpour."  Snopy wondered why Elwyn sounded like she was warning them.  This didn't seem like a trap, Snopy had enough sense to know when a woman was desperate in regards to her child, or at least he used to be.  He wondered briefly if his empathy had deteriorated over recent months.  He was 99% sure this woman was being honest, but in the storm having your guard up never hurt.  Nilani asked which way to go, and the woman pointed.  The three then went off into the storm.  Snopy stayed as close to the others as he could.  He was a little uncomfortable when Nilani grabbed his hands, but they were so focused on where they were going no one would likely notice Snopy's anxiousness.  "What are you doing way out here anyway."  The woman responded, telling them how they were moving to a new city, and the caravan they were with stopped for a bit.  "I told him to stay where I could see him, but he ran off."

Snopy pondered on it, he worked briefly on a caravan after all.  He didn't think there was any major route too close to here, but sometimes Caravans going from smaller towns did have to take strange routes before they reached a major route, as they were off the beaten path.  Snopy realized he had left his sword back where he initially started training with Elwyn, he hoped he wouldn't need it.  He could grab it later anyway.  Nilani pointed towards a clearing and suggested they go there.  Snopy followed closely behind, it was a pretty large flat area.  Not much cover, which could be bad.  Nilani thought it'd be a good idea to ask when the last time the woman saw her son was.  "He was playing by where we had set up camp, he ran off in this direction...somewhere in this direction."  She didn't seem to be sure EXACTLY what direction he might have gone in, but they were apparently looking in the right place, if the boy hadn't gone too far.  "I've got a weird feeling about this."  Snopy kept an eye on both Nilani and the woman.  He kept an eye mostly to make sure nothing happened to them, but half of it was his observing the woman.  There was no denying it, his empathy has deteriorated.  There shouldn't be a question, when someone is talking about something as serious as losing their child he should be able to tell.  Now if she was looking for her child he'd feel like an ass for doubting her, and if she was lying he'd feel like an idiot for not knowing for sure.  "Lets be careful, it's raining pretty hard.  With vision this bad...we don't know who or what could be around."  He moved towards Nilani and stayed near her, just in case.

It's no wonder Snopy couldn't get a proper read on the woman.  She was both lying and telling the truth at the same time.  A chain began to wrap itself around Nilani, and Snopy who had kept himself semi close to her could see this quickly.  "Nilani!"  Six men appeared on the scene, and when Nilani asked who they were a very unsettling look appeared in their eyes.  Snopy wasn't naive, and when the look in his eye combined with the fact that a young woman was wrapped in the chain, he knew at least vaguely what they wanted.  He had no way to no specifics though, because he wasn't sick in the head.  As Nilani was quickly dragged, Snopy shot a glare back to the woman.  He knew the truth.  "You knew this was going to happen."  The woman begged for her son back, and the thugs gave a small boy back to her.  She wasn't lying about her son, and part of him couldn't blame her for her choice of priorities.  Rationally speaking, a mother will always put their child first.  Part of him though knew that had she explained to them the situation that this disaster could have been both avoided and the child saved.  Snopy clenched his fist tightly as one of the men picked up Nilani.  "Hey!  Let go off her!"  Snopy shouted, getting unusually angry.  The bandits just looked at him and laughed before going on to talk about her like a piece of meat.

Snopy was getting annoyed, but he had to calm himself.  He had no hope of saving her with some sort of combat prowess, so he only had his wit to back him up.  Hearing them realize she was an elf and show such obvious disgust, he actually got even more pissed, making his job even harder.  Nilani's in danger, Snopy had to choose his words carefully.  "WAIT, think about the ramifications to you...er, business, if you take an elf."  Snopy began to speak.  "The hell are you blabbing about."  The leader retorted.  "Well...she's an elf.  You say people some people like shit like that...but what about the rest of your client base?"  He turned and moved his hands as he paced, using them to express himself as he spoke.  "Human's are...irrationally afraid of elves, if word somehow got out that you were trafficking them, would they not want nothing to do with you?  After all, you came in contact with them, as far as they're concerned...it's contagious, is it not?"  Snopy stopped pacing and turned to the man in that moment.  The man just began to laugh.  "You think MY clients care?  All they care about is having something to fuck, if they stop doing business with us...they don't get that."  Snopy was now unbelievably angry.  That was it, his mind raced for more arguments but these were the lowest of the low.  Reasonable arguments couldn't REACH them.  Of course he had one last idea.  "I'll...pay you for her."  He began to reach into his pocket to find as much money as he could, but it was only a few silver, counted out there were 12 of them and another 5 copper.

This caused the men to merely laugh.  "Going rate's higher.  Besides, why shouldn't we just kill you and take that money for ourselves?"  Welp, that didn't work.  "Just let her go!"  This time the calmness he had forced into his demeanor was gone, and he shouted in anger.  They began to laugh.  "Please, just let her go!"  The lead bandit began to laugh even louder, beginning to mix his own sick sense of humor into the conversation.  "I bet there are some freaky couples out there.  Maybe we should take you too, and sell you as a set!  The elf and her lover, some freaks might pay good money for that. Hahaha!"  Snopy was so pissed off and worried his brain didn't even process the latter part of what he just said.  All he knew was they were both royally screwed, in more ways than one.  One of the men moved towards Snopy with intent no one could be sure of.  He didn't know if the leader really was joking or not.  Nilani being in danger had already set off his adrenaline, and his fight or flight response had been triggered.  He was so angry his clenched fist began to drip blood.  His refusal to just abandon Nilani, despite it being the "smarter" thing to do prevented the flight response, so all he could do was.  Crack.  Snopy wasn't strong, but adrenaline can do some crazy things.  It wasn't a very well thrown punch form-wise, but the adrenaline backing it up actually caused it to send the guy to the ground.  "Drop the girl, now!"  Snopy shouted.  For a moment something about Snopy seemed different, like there was more than adrenaline surging through his body.  Still, this is where it'd fall apart.  It was still 5 against one, and after a minute or two the one he dropped would likely get back up.  Without form, he probably wouldn't be landing many adrenaline augmented punches.  As another went to come at him, he threw another punch into the man's gut, before the man essentially back handed him, and the other thugs circled around and grabbed him from behind.  He struggled a bit, but it was no use. It was a miracle that he even successfully threw a punch with how tired he was, even the adrenaline couldn't change the fact his body had already been pushed to it's limit. His struggle was particularly pathetic, the exhaustion making him barely even able to squirm as they gripped him.  They were ACTUALLY strong.  "Someone like you, maybe we should sell you to some freak couple.  I think I know of a taker or two."  Snopy glared, but then looked over to Nilani and his demeanor changed.  It softened into sadness.  The anger was still visible, but when he looked directly at her all he could think about was how he could do nothing for her...like every other time.