[center][h2]Counter Play[/h2][/center]

...Rainbow almost couldn't believe he'd agreed to this.

"...You're [i]sure[/i] this is...it?", he asked in the nicest possible way one could behind gritted teeth. Oh how the mighty had fallen, when a masterful thief's secret hideout was secluded to...a tree. No floating castles, no mysterious caves...just haphazard branches and what looked to be termite-infested claw-marks from a passing wildebeast. The abusive cripple released a despicable chuckle out from between his stubbled cheeks. "Eehehe - for a two-eyed kid you're looking pretty blind lad! Behold the Master." Rainbow felt the palm of his hand sinking into his forehead as the blind fool staggered up to the overgrown weed, tapping the bark with a ridiculous series of scattered, uncoordinated knocks. 

"CLICK. . .RRRRRRR--K-THUNK!", like magic a series of circles suddenly slid back in from the surface, creating a set of handholds that wove their way almost ornamentally up the side of their trunk. They were small but neat, unnaturally so, and the relative ease with which his new partner in counter-theft had produced them made the alien adventurer...wary, to say the least.

A sudden caned rap of his arm jolted the green little man out of his inspired curiosity. "So certain you know it all now, ey laddie? Eee-hee-hee - well come on now, what good're those eyes if you can't make use of 'ehm! Get a move on up there, or do you just naturally prefer to gift your keepsakes to strangers?"

Rainbow restrained a low growl and rubbed his arm to soothe the pain. Pearl...first; Justified murder...soon.

Oh so very soon: He took a handhold and began to make his way, cautiously, up the side of this more-than-met-the-eye hideaway.

The old gnome just chuckled gleefully to himself. What an absolute fool.