"Hey! Check it out! Somethin' excitin's happenin'!" Min looked to her human intimate with her face now beaming. "C'mon! Let's have a look!" She said, discarding the half-chewed crust before pulling the prince along by the wrist before he could verbalise a protest. The two reached the amassing throng before long, though the smallish human boy and the even stubbier goblin woman were having difficulties in seeing what exactly it was that had allured everybody else to this space past the shoulders of a tall minotaur man and the haunches of a lofty centaur girl respectively.
"Ah, jus' swell, I can see fuck all! Ya doin' any better over there, Gyl?" Min asked as she tried to peek around the sides and through the legs of the equine body before her. Meanwhile, Gyllen was standing on the tips of his toes with his head held high in an attempt to gain a clearer view, though he was not faring all that much better. The only things he was able to decipher were what appeared to be the tops of two spears flailing wildly in the air on the other side of the rabble, followed by the slight shuffling of bodies in a way that appeared something was bursting through the mob in a mad dash towards the opposite end as the two pike-bearers pursued this disturbance, though were lagging a decent few metres behind it. Before long, the disruption had successfully criss-crossed its way through the assemblage and a figure clad in dark vestments abruptly burst forth from the gap in ranks where it had reached, pushing the bovine man Gyllen was standing behind into the young prince. Still being on his tiptoes, Gyllen stumbled but barely managed to regain balance, unfortunately dropping the remainder of his pizza onto the floor in the process, before coming face-to-face with the one who had indirectly shoved him.
From neck to toe, the stranger was attired in tight trappings seamed from leather dyed umbral black, with various buckled straps running horizontally across their torso holding a variety of instruments either of obvious or unclear application. A hooded, doeskin mantle of similar shadowy hues fluttered from the individual's neck, the cowl currently let down, allowing the prince to fully see the gorgeous, shimmering hairs running from their head straight past their shoulders like silver spun threads, a colouration quite unusual given they looked to be close to Gyllen's own age when the prince caught a glimpse of their youthful face. In fact, that was not all the stranger's appearance had in common with the blond, as the prince could swear he was gazing into a living reflection of his own self! The unknown person's slim body and facial structure - from the contours of their round cheeks, to the shape of their soft lips, to the formation of their perky nose - was indistinguishable to that of Gyllen's! Even their locks, barring the obvious difference in colour, were similarly arranged in terms of overall length and style, right down to the way their bangs were cut. Gyllen's agape expression of astonishment was paralleled only by the look of equal incredulity from his silver-haired double in the brief moment their matching sapphire eyes met. Their mutual stupor was broken however when frantic, repetitive shouts of "Ladro! Ladro!" could be heard coming from the ever-approaching pair of spear wielders sifting their way through the dispersing pack of people.
The prince and his lookalike both turned their heads to the source of the yelling and then back again to one other, this time with Gyllen noticing the various rings, brooches and necklaces the silver-haired youth had clenched in their fists and dangling from their wrists before spontaneously resuming their flight and darting down a nearby alleyway like a dark streak of lightning, leaving Gyllen absolutely stunned at what he had just witnessed, not even sure if he trusted his own eyes. The platinum-haired boy (assuming they were a boy) could have honestly passed for the prince's identical twin! The blond was not left with much time to ponder on the idea however, as the two polearms and the men brandishing them - outfitted in Caligan-styled armour, denoting them as part of the city watch - had finally managed to break past the onlookers, each of them surveying the immediate vicinity all around them as if desperately searching for something on this side of the congregation...
One of the men soon noticed Gyllen standing motionless off to the side and gained his partner's awareness with a tap on the shoulder, the blond only innocuously returning a confused look as they both began to directly approach him with antagonistic grimaces. Without another word, the two men then seized Gyllen by his arms in their tight grips and began towing him away!
"Unhand me at once!" Gyllen naturally screamed out in Snjórlandic from being apprehended against his will, amongst similar exclamations and some curses, kicking and thrashing as the native Caligan guards did not, or rather could not, pay any heed to his ramblings which probably sounded like utter gibberish to their own ears at best. Caligan was a language Gyllen only had a casual grasp of, and he was only able to pick up a handful of the phrases his captors barked to him as they drudged him down the street in spite of his continuous outcries, chief amongst them which the prince could interpret being "be quiet!" Another irate piece of speech which stood out to the blond were a couple of sentences that roughly sounded like something along the lines of "thought a change in clothes could fool us, eh? How stupid do you think we are!?"
"Oi! What do you two think yer playin' at!?" Min yelled out upon seeing the manhandling of her blond associate and immediately set herself upon the nearest guard by battering the undersides of her fists into his outer thigh. Her bluster did not quite stack up to her brawn though, as her blows proved to be about as hindering as a gnat's bite against his armoured leg. That same guard then effortlessly shoved the goblin onto her rump before the two of them dragged Gyllen off down the street to gods knew where with not another soul even attempting to intervene even as the blond was resisting. Min soon scampered back to her feet and gave chase, hounding them through twist after turn through the backstreets as fast as her short legs could keep up, Gyllen's bawls leading her back to the main road just in time to see the prince being stuffed inside the back of a squat, boxed wagon painted black just before its doors were closed and locked, each one possessing a tiny, barred window to provide light. The two guards made their way to the driver's perch in front, where the crack of a whip could then be heard along with the affirmative snort of a horse as it began to pull away with the cart in tow. Without thinking, Min made a mad dash towards the departing carriage and leapt onto a small sill protruding just from the bottom of the doors, holding herself steady and pressed up against the cart as it began to make its journey down the boulevard.
"Min!?" Gyllen exclaimed as he looked out of the bars to where the goblin was crouched and clung after feeling her land on the ledge. "What the Hel is going on!?
"Sssh! D'ya want th' driver t' hear?" She half-whispered in return as she reached around to her shorts' back pockets to produce her set of lockpicks. "I got a pretty solid idea on what's happened. Doesn' take a genius t' recognise a shoplifter after ya see it done a couple times, no matter where ya are in the world..."
"Sh-shoplifter!?" Gyllen parroted the redhead. "I would never dream of doing anything of th-"
"I told ya to pipe down! Lemme concentrate..." The goblin interrupted the boy's sentence as she got to work carefully probing the padlock's keyhole which kept the door latched shut, though she appeared to be having some difficulty in springing it loose. "Ah, cripes! It's no good! I can't get a decent angle on this wobbly ol' gig!"
Just then, the two heard some more shouting coming from the tail-end of the wagon. Min shot a glance over her shoulder as Gyllen looked in the same direction to see yet another soldier who had spotted the small, green-skinned woman's attempt in liberating the prince and was now chasing after the cart, brandishing their weapon and calling out in angry Caligan presumably for Min to cease her actions or/and the driver to stop so he could apprehend the interfering goblinoid.
"Bugger me!" The red-head exclaimed upon seeing this involvement. "Sorry, Gyl, but we're
both
gonna end up in th' clink if I don' give this guy the slip! Sit pretty. I'll be back for ya later." Before Gyllen could get another word in, Min hopped off the speeding cart and literally hit the ground running as she gave some parting hollers of encouragement to the detained prince as the distance between them quickly widened: "Don' worry! I'll think o' somethin'!" And with that, the goblin disappeared down the nearest close with the guardsman hot on her trail. Whether her words were entirely comforting for Gyllen to hear in the present situation was subject to debate.
The cart ride continued for a few more excruciatingly long minutes. Gyllen was able to do little else but gaze out the limited space provided by the barricaded, square peephole and watch the scenery of the city pass him by. Never before had the blond ever felt such shame (in a non-sexual sense, at least) as the few citizens who bothered to look his way stared with dirty looks, with even one instance of a mother shielding the eyes of her children from the sight of the young, detained man being hauled away. Gyllen could scarcely believe the fact himself that he, the prince of a northern nation, was now reduced to the status of a common crook over a misdeed he avowed never took place. Shortly thereafter, the wagon came to a stop and its door was unlocked. The two guards brought Gyllen out and bound his wrists tight with chafing rope before they each took him by the elbows and ushered him inside a nearby building - rather ornate in its design but drab all the same, with a green banner depicting a golden set of balancing scales draped above the entryway.
From the lobby, the prince was directed into a bland room filled with people sat on several rows of benches, all symmetrically arranged and facing towards a lofty seat behind a stand where an old bespectacled gent was held, outfitted in a black robe and white, curled wig which reached to and rested on his shoulders with a small mallet held in his hand. Every last pair of eyes in the chamber turned to stare at Gyllen as he was further guided between the sets of benches to stand in a small podium half-encircled with wooden posts located on the right-hand side of the chamber, where he was then instructed on something by one of the guards, though the only word he was able to pick out from their Caligan sentence was "stay" but decided to do precisely just that to avoid further problems, trying not to let his anxiety and fear show on his face when the judge banged his gavel and the hearing officially went underway.
To make a tedious tale slightly less tedious, the trial was a total shambles, with miscommunication abound thanks to Gyllen's limited grasp on the Caligan language. Many times the prince offered to instead speak Gaulish, Hispanic or even Yanchun,
anything
so he could properly make his case, but the curmudgeonly judge would have none of it, only warning the teenager of further repercussions should he continue to feign his lack of an understanding of the language, ignorant to it being the truth. From what Gyllen could garner from the opening statements, he - or rather the person they had believed him to be - was charged with multiple counts of theft dating as far back as late last year, the incident caused in the marketplace today just being the most recent example. A witness was even brought in to erroneously verify Gyllen's identity, apparently being the woman who ran the jewellery stall which had been robbed so brazenly in the midday. She confirmed Gyllen's face was identical to that of the thief's, although admitted his hair and clothing were very much different than what she saw. It was then that the pieces at last slotted together in the prince's mind, as it would seem his silver-haired doppelgänger whom he had coincidentally crossed paths with was the true culprit at play here, and Gyllen himself had been wrongly accused of the crime in their place.
In the end, it was ruled that the blond and the burglar were indeed one and the same, and he had merely disposed the stolen goods and shed his outer garb for less conspicuous clothing in the time it took for the guards to catch up with him to better blend in with the crowd, and that the colour of his hair had been altered through the use of a basic glamour. A lack of evidence on Gyllen's part to disprove any of these outlandish claims combined with his confession of being at the scene of the crime and a shoddy alibi involving someone who just so happened to look just like him being in the same place at the same time meant he was declared guilty on the spot. With that, the case was closed as abruptly as it had begun, though not without many wasted hours of inane bickering between the defence and the prosecution filling the span before the final sentence was reached, as evident by the stars in the darkened sky Gyllen saw as he was directed back outside.
Before he could even fully process the gravitas of the events that had just transpired, Gyllen found himself shoved back into the cart and riding through the streets of Juno once more. From his restricted view, he could tell he was being taken a fair distance from the heart of the city and into the outer limits. To where exactly, he had not the slightest notion, but he was certainly not expecting it to be down in the meadows for a picnic. They seemed to have driven on for another hour or two before they stopped again and Gyllen was once more pulled out from the back, allowing to take in the view of the building the cart had parked parallel to. The massive, rectangular, stone structure was about three stories high, yet still longer than it was tall, and purposefully lacklustre in its design. The building was also surrounded by a brick perimeter that towered about twice the height of an average man and broken in its monotony only by a pair of heavy, iron doors set the very front-centre of the barrier. The greater surrounding area was not much to behold either, mostly consisting of endless grasslands with few distant hovels here and there out in the fields, with the tall towers and warm lights of Juno twinkling even further off in the distance.
