A male orc and a female something-with-pointy-ears, it looks like; the orc is carrying an axe, the woman a pair of knives. They stroll into the alley, breathing and moving like they haven't been chasing that energetically.

"Them," the child yelps, trying to hide more (or possibly just checking for a boot stash). "They said I hadn't - paid my dues -"

     "You haven't," the woman says, sounding utterly bored. "And you've been breaking plenty of other rules besides, haven't you? Guildfather wants you alive; says he's got a lesson to teach you, about how far being cute gets you. But I don't think he'll mind too badly if you try to resist."

Unfortunately for Tomi, Hob has nothing hidden in these boots because he got them brand new like two hours ago.

He is, however, now looking weirdly delighted, for an apparently unarmed man who's just been ambushed by a traditional law-vs-good moral dilemma in an alleyway. It has been so long since he got within spitting distance of organized crime. He's been being all respectable, you see. And here it is just walking around in the street, threatening children, because there is no such thing on this planet as CCTV. Hob has been given a gift. 

"We're violently collecting dues from the street urchins now?" he says, in a tone of mild affront. "Your guildfather hasn't got more fun things to do, like, I dunno, tax fraud?" 

     "He can do lots of stuff," the orc comments.

          The pointy woman balances her dagger on one fingertip, apparently for no better reason than that she can. "You sound like you're going to be exhausting about this. Should we skip to the part where we stab each other?"

The urchin whimpers.

He does still have that knife the quartermaster issued him, tucked into his belt under his jacket, so stabbing each other is indeed on the table. He retrieves it, shrugs, and taps the blade idly against the side of his leg. Sometimes if you are confidently relaxed enough, and also armed, this causes people to realize that actually they do not want this fight after all. 

"I was sort of hoping to do the drinking and the fighting tonight in the other order, but sure, if you want." 

By way of response, Pointy throws her knife at him.

The urchin makes himself scarce as the very sharp blade introduces itself to Hob's flesh, lodging for the moment in his thigh. The orc takes the opportunity to barrel towards him, axe raised high.

Aw, he liked these pants. But hey, bright side, free knife. He removes it from his thigh (*) and tosses it vaguely, hilt-first, in the kid's direction, just in case he has any idea how to use it and the knife lady goes for him while Hob is moderately distracted. 

Then he performs standard strategy #1 for applying knives to guys taller than him with weapons the size of his entire body who understandably believe that they can kill him faster than he can do anything about it: feint like he's about to try to get into stab range directly through the axe path, and then juke sideways and go for the armpit. If he's unlucky that is not an instant kill but if he's really lucky this is one of those guys who has never had to find out what happens if your first shot with the big heavy weapon misses, those tend to lean their whole body forward and down into the swing in a way that leaves their whole back and the back of their head exposed. 

(*) Context note that he's not consciously thinking through right now because this is just habit at this point: Normal people have to care about accelerating blood loss when they do this sort of thing, but adrenaline will usually keep him moving long enough to finish a fight, apply objectively inadequate first aid, lay down for a minute or two to be definitely just taking a breather which involves no being dead whatsoever, and then pretend it was just a minor nonlethal scrape the whole time. It takes Hob's immortal body a while to fix, like, complicated things that are wrong with it, but 'dont worry guys, I found more blood' is apparently not complicated. 

This is totally that kind of guy! His axe actually shatters one of the cobblestones as it comes down, and lodges in the mortar - not irretrievably, but it'll take him a moment to pry it loose. He roars at the pain of the stab, lets go of the axe and tries to swat Hob like a gnat.

The kid dodges the knife's hilt, clearly angling for an escape past Pointy Lady. She sees it coming, and readies for an opportune attack -

and then realizes, too late, that he is absolutely not trying to escape. He flicks out his own blades, curved and well-maintained with a deliberate-looking notch above the hilts. She tries to cut him open, and his knife catches hers in that notch and twists it out of her hand, and the other opens her inner thigh, and the blood doesn't even spray, it's just falling out of her like the contents of an upturned bucket.

A nicer person would probably attempt to stab to disable at this point and start in on the 'have you considered not working for the mob' lecture. Hob is not really a nice person; he ducks the unarmed strike and goes straight for the back-of-the-neck shot. 

Then his peripheral helpfully informs him that the kid is not only competent to use a knife but has his own and just did a fairly impressive murder with them. The child soldier situation on this planet is even more dire than he thought, jeez.

Does he need to take more combat actions? The kid's not going to try to stab him next, right? He's helping! 

Nah! Kid wipes off his khukuri on Pointy's shirt as she collapses and nods to Hob while he executes his foe.

"How'd you want to divvy up their coinpurses and sundries?" he asks. "Ah, and thanks. M'name's Tomi, Tomi Undergallows. There's some as call me Grin. Me bein' such a fun guy."

"Fascinating to meet you, Tomi. I'm Robert Gadling, Hob to my friends." Shoot, he forgot to tell Jojo that second part, kid's still calling him Robert because he introduced himself while still half inhabiting the persona of Professor Rob. Note to self. Anyway. "Glad to help. I was going to ask if you needed any more help getting out of the, uh, child soldier mafia situation but it seems like actually you have that well in hand. I am ostensibly employed by the government at this time and should not start in on the fencing stolen goods, how's about I'll take like thirty percent but all in coin and you can have the rest?" 

... if Tomi can even lift that axe. Maybe he has some sort of shenanigan for that in the same place he was keeping the fancy knives, Hob is not at this point going to assume. 

"Mm... lemme work out what they got on 'em."

Tomi sifts through the possessions of his erstwhile assailants with practiced efficiency. "That's nice... that's fine... Thumbs'll take that..."

Hob may, just barely, see something sparkle as it slips into Tomi's pocket. "That sounds good, then. I'm looking at fifty gil off the fenceables if I get lucky, they've got... twenty-five, mostly copper, in cash... gah, I hate fractions."

Ah, tiny thieves. They are so predictably a way. "You counting that thing you just palmed, there, friend?" Polite eyebrow-raise. 

"Good eye," Tomi grumbles, retrieving it. It's an emerald, well-cut and relatively clear, maybe a carat or two. "I'll need this bugger evaluated, s'gonna be days before I even know what I'll get for it."

Faint whistle. (Looks to be worth at least a thousand pounds, maybe several, but-)

"Be worth a lot where I'm from but I don't know the local currency and also it recently came to my attention that sometimes shiny rocks are magic. Tell you what, cash now, rest of the loot's yours, and I'm going to trust you to come find me in a couple days with my share of the value of that minus cost of appraisal. Probably can't be bothered to go looking for you if you just run off with it, I won't judge you that much if you do," who among us has not ever promised somebody a lot of money and then skipped town with it, amirite, "but you seem like a smart kid who'd like to have friends, hm?" 

Tomi breaks down into gasping laughter.

"Fuck, shit, I'm sorry - what am I apologizing to you for, I almost got away with - ah, Sheela's tits, you're like if Mask did paladins! You're a smart kid! Alright, scam's over, I'd just feel bad. Come to the Trade with me, I'll buy you a shot of Potted Priest for your leg and we can talk about the stone like grown-ups."

Blink blink blink. 

" .... ah. Why does this place have so many tiny aliens, fuck, I totally did notice you were not human and just assumed your species is generally human-sized, met plenty've pickpocket kids who know their way around a knife. 'Preciate the clarification, I'd've probably immediately gone and offended the next one I met of whatever you are. Sure, I was going there anyway." 

It's going to take him a minute to realize that obviously those other guys knew Tomi isn't a child and were possibly, given this, somewhat more justified in their behavior toward him than this assumption made them look. Honestly only a little, though. Far be it from him to judge any individual happening to step outside the law for reasons, but he's really not a fan of organizations playing the 'you did one (1) crime so now you are permanently stuck on Team Crimes, sucks to be you forever' game. Governments do enough of that on their own. 

"Also, who or what is 'Mask' as a proper noun?" 

"God of Thieves. Couple'a sidelines in murder and spycraft, you know how it goes, but he was a thief first. I'm none too faithful, but that's different from not burning him an offering once in a while, yeah?"

Tomi leads the way out of the alley and through the streets. Those little legs move fast.

Follow follow. "Ah, 'course. Been known to light a candle or two to Saint Jude myself. ...That's my homeland's, ah, god of otherwise lost causes, very popular among folks who are up to things most of 'em frown upon, you know." 

He follows Tomi for several blocks before he realizes that he is not, in fact, pretending to not be in very much pain from his leg injury as he would normally expect to be doing right now. He's actually just not really in a lot of pain, as though it were really a fairly minor cut. That's weird, it felt like a pretty solid stab, normally the sort of thing that potentially kills normal non-immortal humans. This is atypical behavior for his physiology and therefore probably not actually something he is doing. 

"....stupid question, does your, uh, crime organization hand out magic knives of nonlethality or something?" 

"What, mercy daggers? I've seen 'em around, but that pin of hers was pig iron, you can tell by how she threw it at you."

Con...cern...ing...

"Huh.  Well, good, I woulda felt a little bad if she was actively trying to not kill me."

"And I woulda felt bad not picking it up. A mercy dagger'll net you something like six thou, and I've got expenses. Plus it'd mean she was riskier business than she really was, if she had that kind of kit."

Right. It's been a minute since he lived in a world where personal puissance quite so reliably tracked wealth. "Sensible. So I hear the Trade is where to go for a bar fight, you about that sort of thing or just like their drinks?" 

"Well, no, but the fights are 'cause it's where the adventurers hang out. If you're handy with a blade or an axe or a spell, you can sit and wait for somebody to come in who needs the help of someone of that kidney. And you'd expect there to be less of that with the plague leaving corpsepyres on every corner, but actually business is booming. Which means lots of flush heroes lookin' for a place to spend their jink... or, y'know, misplace it." Tomi hop-skips over a puddle with at best mildly restrained glee.

"Ah. Well, I am not myself in the market for a sidekick," seeing as Jojo seems to have enthusiastically assigned himself that job, "and if the bar fight clientele are mostly heroes it's possible I should instead not try to provoke any -- bugger, nevermind, the ship has really quite sailed on passing as a harmless rich academic around here, hasn't it. Guess we'll see if anybody thinks my face looks punchable enough to neglect to keep an eye on you." 

Tomi cackles. "Harmless rich academics, aye, they've all gone mad over breastplates and stabbin' axemen this year... I ain't lookin' for an employer, anyway, I've got a temporary contract drawn up with a couple'a charming ladies and their axeman, we start in on it in the morning."