Rob X Punzel ~ Seven!

It took a single week for her hair to get her fired. 

“Herr Sorin, I swear I didn’t-”

Becca bit her tongue as she stumbled out of the doorway of the curio shop, her hand flying up to her mouth and coming away with a spot of red blood. 

“It's not just the missing items, it's also what people have been telling me about your sudden surge in affluence.” Sorin’s chin dipped as he slowly moved his head in refusal. “Can you truly tell me that the coin for all of the food, clothing, purchased apprenticeships, and everything else you've done for those poor kids at the orphanage was earned honestly? Legally? Without stealing it? It just so happened to start the day I began teaching you how to account for all the coins my shop earned?”

“I didn't steal that money!” Becca indignantly claimed, her hair shining a bright yellow as she spoke.

“Then tell me how you got it, if it wasn't out of my coffers,” Sorin demanded gently. He watched her for a long moment, as her jaw worked, and her hand came up to rub at her chest while she winced.

“I can't exactly explain-”

“I know you can't.” The shop owner took a step back, half-closing the door between them. “Look… I don't know why you would throw away your job here like this. You've done good work over the last couple of years. I never thought you'd end up as a thief, certainly not stealing from me. The only reason I'm only firing you, and not calling a guard in to have your hand removed, is because of the friendship I thought we had. That, and because you didn't take the money and run. If someone had to steal from me, at least they were doing it to help out orphans.”

“Sorin… please,” Becca begged, tears rolling down her cheeks at the thought of losing everything she’d worked to build. For a long moment, he hesitated in the doorway, seeming to vacillate between closing the door the rest of the way or trying to pull the rest of the story from her bit by bit.

Her hair took the moment of interruption to allow a silver coin to slip out of its tangles. The disc of metal chimed brilliantly as it bounced off the cobblestone, but as both of them followed it with their eyes, they heard the happy *clink* of the coin as a symbol for what it truly was—a death knell to their relationship, business and personal. 

Sorin knelt down and scooped up the coin, pocketing it without mentioning it further. The door closed firmly, the welcoming alarm of the bell muffled due to the barrier now between them. 

Immediately, Becca felt a tickle on her arm as her hair rapidly grew out, the four hundred percent growth increase from ‘Golden Locks’ due to a stressful situation modifier coming into play. In a fury, she grabbed at her hair and yanked, letting out a snarl of rage. “You! You cost me everything I’ve been working for! I've been here for years, and a week after you’re able to move on your own, you rip it away from me!”

Between her neck muscles being strengthened by Ponytail Pixie, as well as the hair itself being shock absorbent, even when she yanked on her hair with all her strength, Becca barely felt the effort she was putting in. Still, completely lost in her anger, she continued to yank on her hair, attempting to pull it out by the roots. Realizing she was having no luck with fistfuls of hair, she tried to pull it out strand by strand, only for her hair to shift from soft and wavy to coarse and dense in an instant.

“Now you’re hiding.” Breathing hard, completely spent, she dropped to the ground, not caring how dirty the ground was at the moment. As she brought her hands up to cover her face, she realized there was a soft golden glow on her arm. “No… you better not have…”

Skill increase! Ponytail Pixie [Level 1 (Minimal) → Level 2 (Limited)]!

Requirement to advance to level 3: Absorb enough slashing damage to gain a Limited slashing immunity.

“I gained a skill level from yanking on my own hair.” Becca let out a startled laugh, beyond angry with herself. Now her hair was growing even faster, six hundred percent its normal rate. Thanks to her seated position, the golden tangle was pooling in her lap, and it was all she could see as her vision tunneled. “I need to do something about you.”

Getting to her feet, she started walking back toward the orphanage in a daze, often throwing glances over her shoulder until Sorin's Curio Shop was out of sight. The distance passed in a blur. Only luck allowed her to reach the gates without being mugged, as she’d barely given any thought to her surroundings.

“-Becca!” A hand landed on her shoulder, and only then did Becca realize someone had been calling out to her several times already. Ever so slowly, her eyes drifted to the left until she was looking at Emma's concerned face. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“No…” The young lady teared up, a thick lump forming in her throat. “I got fired because Sorin thought I was stealing from him.”

“Doesn't he have the all-seeing eye?” An unfamiliar voice broke into their conversation, jarring Becca out of her fugue state. A quick glance revealed an older version of Johnny: Chay, the thief.

As soon as she recognized him, Becca closed her mouth and pulled in on herself. She had worked hard to keep herself away from gangs, especially the illegal versions such as thief gangs. A quarter of their members had already lost hands, and dozens more had been executed in the short span of time since she’d known about their existence.

“Nah, that’s Sauron’s Ring Shop,” Emma shot back, trying to shoo her brother away as soon as she saw how uncomfortable Becca was with him. “He's got that skill what lets him put a mark on all his wares. Sorin owns the curio shop.”

At the reminder, tears once more welled up in Becca’s eyes, and she hung her head, allowing her hair to cover her face. Not getting the hint, Chay stepped closer and looked at the golden tresses with interest. “Neat, look at that! Her hair is growing fast enough to be visible to the naked eye! I’ve never seen hair turn blue like that. Wait… do you guys smell citron?”

“Yeah, she smells like cleaning supplies when she's sad.” Emma elbowed her brother in the side, “Go away! She just-”

“I heard she got fired for stealing,” Chay casually cut his sister off. “Hey, want a real job? A career? Don't look at me like that! You think anyone isn't going to know you got fired for stealing? There's no more reputable jobs in the slums for you. Unless you've put away enough coin to live for the rest of your life, you're going to need to figure something else out. We could use someone like you in the guild.” 

“Are you being serious right now?” Emma gasped at her brother's audacious offer. “You know how she feels about all that. Everyone knows not to mess with Becca, she…”

“There it is.” 

The smirk in Chay’s voice caused Becca to look up and glare at the young man, who was maybe sixteen years old. “You were going to say what we all thought, weren't you? That she had a real chance of getting out of the slums. We were all rooting for you, Becca. But you know as well as I do—that’s gone. Even if you didn't do what he said you did, everyone else will believe it. So, when you decide to stop playing around and get serious about your life, when you get hungry enough, let Johnny know. Something tells me Emma won't pass on the information. She’s bad about remembering to do the things she said she would.”

Then the thief walked away, jauntily waving over his shoulder without looking back. Emma stepped close and pulled Becca into a hug. “Ignore him. He's always been a jerk.”

“What other option do I have?” Becca could barely force out the whispered voice. “He's not wrong. I don't have combat abilities, and no one’s going to hire me again. I can walk through a crowd and…”

She bit her lip, the oath she’d made to the headmistress tugging at her heart in warning. Extricating herself from the stunned young girl's grip, she walked to her bunk in the orphanage, quietly repeating herself over and over. “He’s not wrong.”

As soon as she was in the dormitory, she pulled open her foot locker and yanked out a pair of scissors. Though the ringlets of her hair tried to dodge out of the way, she gripped them firmly and brutally cut her hair as short as she could without hurting herself; setting aside any coins, bangles, or glass marbles that tumbled out. Then, holding the fistful of thick hair, she dragged it to the hearth and tossed it onto the fire. The flame roared up, rapidly consuming the shriveling hair before dying down once more.

Twelve minutes later, there was an inch of fresh growth on her head. By the time half an hour had passed, it was tickling her shoulders, so she cut off as much hair as a normal person would grow in six months. Once again, the fire roared up as she tossed in the curls. “I'm going to sit here and burn you until I figure out what I'm going to do with my life from now on.”

Becca ended up passing the entire night in front of the fire, drifting off every once in a while, only to awaken with a vengeance and savagely slash at her regrown hair. She garnered more than a few looks of pity as the night wore on, and the rumors of her being fired for theft spread through the orphanage like dust blown by the wind. 

Only as the sun was nearly rising did she fully fall asleep. When she awoke, her hair was terribly uneven—the longest part reaching to her upper back, while the shortest was at her shoulders. With her anger finally fully spent, she took a moment to give her hair a rough trim, then started walking toward the doors… only to realize her hair had lifted as though she were coated in static, with all of the healing split ends looped and pointed at her own face.

Letting out a groan, Becca cupped her face in her hands. “It points at whoever damaged it most recently for up to half an hour. Even if I'm the one trimming it? What did I do to get cursed like this?”

Resigning herself to a massive change in her life, Becca began walking through the orphanage, doing her best to ignore the stares and whispers of the other children. Finally, she found who she was looking for. Trying to keep her steps measured, she walked over to a couple of boys tossing a ball back and forth.

Chay had been correct about one thing: Becca wasn't willing to wait until she was in dire straits before trying to take control of her life again. Now that she’d made a decision, she was going to follow through on it.

“Johnny. I need you to let your brother know I'm ready to have a conversation.”

“Uhh…” The youngster looked at the wild-eyed girl with her hair standing on end and slowly backed away. “Yeah. I'll let him know.”