Garreg Mach's marketplace - Sylvain (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

((For the purposes of this story, all characters who appear shall be 18 years of age. Any character in the original work who was under 18 in the original work who appears as a character in this work shall be 18 years of age, unless stated to be older within the story. It is required that, where such descriptions are included, characters be described with developed sexual characteristics accordingly. Authors are encouraged to use their judgment to avoid or explain altered canon that would result from the adjusted ages; however, the canon is not the focus of the story I intend to write. There is no guarantee against spoilers; story-related spoilers will be avoided as possible, but character-related spoilers may follow.))

On a sunny day in an academy still untouched by war, the marketplace of Garreg Mach was bustling with vendor storefronts and merchants peddling wares. For the students, this kind of market day was a chance to pick up rare goods that rarely made their way to the monastery. In a way, it was a payoff for their efforts clearing the neighboring territories of bandits on their regular missions, a public service often couched as a training exercise.

Every now and then, such a venture earned coin, and it was with extra coin that Sylvain Jose Gautier, the noble heir to the Gautier house and a member of the Academy’s Blue Lions, found himself browsing stalls. The young redhead had many positive qualities, including natural wit, handsome looks, and a friendly personality. What he did not have was discipline, and while his classmates were burying their heads in books or swinging swords on the training grounds, he was first to the market. While he’d have loved to be doing so in the company of one of the academy’s many lovely ladies, he was instead all by his lonesome…

One merchant observed the young man’s crossed arms and tight smile with shining eyes, smelling the opportunity to make a sale. Anna, a chipper woman in her mid-twenties with darker red hair in a ponytail over her shoulder, rubbed her hands furtively in front of her tunic-clad chest. Anna valued her repeat visits to Garreg Mach because she could leverage friendly relationships with her valued familiar clients to offer personalized deals. This was her fancy way of saying she had buddied up to enough coin-loaded and naïve fresh-faced recruits at this academy that she knew where to start when making a deal in her favor.

“Yoohoo, Sylvain!” she called out to the browsing student a couple of stalls over. “Why is my favorite customer shopping anywhere else when he knows the gift of his dreams for the girl of his dreams is right over here?”

The young man’s head turned and he gave a small chuckle. “Well, well. I’m happy to hear I’m still your favorite! I was a little worried after the pretty thing I was wooing a couple of weeks ago told me the perfume you pawned off on me as a rare marvel from Brigid was a concoction cooked up from roots grown hardly a stone's throw from these gates. I didn’t do something to upset you, did I?”

Anna only laughed it off. “What a shame! Kids these days can’t tell the difference between the fine and the common, huh? Makes you sorry you wasted the sentiment.” The merchant shook her head, then moved behind her counter, eagerly spreading her arms out to display the goods she had for sale. “Well, I’m going to make it up to you today, for sure. On this table before you is a haul blessed by the Saints themselves! Any trinket you pick out is going home with you for a thief’s bargain, ready to steal a lady’s heart just the same! Hey, whatever you buy, save it, wrap it back up, and gift it back to me next time I pass through. I'll be head over heels, you’ll see!”

Sylvain returned the banter with an easy wink, putting his hand to his chin as he leaned over the table to inspect what she had for sale. “Is that so? I’ll keep it in mind. Let’s not put the horse before the lance, though! You’ll forgive me if I got a little more cautious after the last sale, hehe. I took the liberty of passing through the other tables on my way over here… I’m afraid I won’t fall for common goods sold as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ this time.”

“Ahaha… Of course,” Anna agreed, wiping her head to discretely remove a bead of sweat forming there. “But if you were to see some incredible treasure one of my competitors happened to luck into at another stall, I can beat their price, guaranteed. Especially for my favorite customer~!” When Sylvain didn’t return a friendly jab, the merchant began to sweat again, doing the best to keep her saleswoman smile in place while pushing her fingers together cutely. “It can’t be you’re, um, actually upset about that little misunderstanding, can it?”

The student kept tight-lipped, leveraging his power as the money-loaded customer to make her squirm. He knew he’d be the fish taking bait, but he didn’t have to let her reel him in without a fight. Finally, he sighed and fixed his smile on her again. “The lady I have my eyes on this time is one-of-a-kind, Anna. If I’m going to buy something to turn her head, it’s going to have to be something just as unique as her. Got anything like that?”

Although her target seemed to believe he had the upper hand in negotiations, Anna had to struggle to keep the meanness out of her smile. Poor, naïve young Sylvain had just walked into the chance for her to use her favorite negotiation tactics to pawn off some perennial lemon of a niche item she could never sell otherwise. “I sure do, but let’s do a little Q&A to find out what’s right for you. Is this woman into… gardening?”

“Not this time!”

“Hm… Reading? I have an imported tome-“

“No thanks, I’m done with the bookish type. Till next month, anyway.”

“… Hmm… How about jewelry?”

“Oof, jewels are a bit rich for my blood this time.” Sylvain was, in actuality, just enjoying the friendly banter and playing the game with an attractive older woman as his captive audience. If he didn’t hear something that spoke to him, he’d circle back to the jewelry and that’d be good enough. As he traded words, however, something in the back of her tent did catch his eye. “Huh. Anna, there’s something... What do you make of that? Is that box over there real gold?”

Anna followed his pointing finger with her eyes, then suppressed a wince when she saw what he was pointing out. “Gotta get rid of this thing some time,” she muttered under her breath, setting aside a tea-set that had been on top of the golden rectangle which laid on its side. She picked it up by a handle and brought it to her counter, setting it down with its decorated face turned towards Sylvain. “Take a gander! Like it says on the tin, this baby’s a Slutronica Music Box.”

The young man raised an eyebrow. He saw the same word she'd said on a small label on the front of the object, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of how the thing worked. “Ho! Pretty big for a music box! I don’t see a winding key of any sort, either. What, are you going to tell me a fairy inside plays the music for you?”

“I don’t know,” Anna told him honestly, but with a haunted tone to help sell the mystique. “Really, the traveler who sold this to me only told me a few things: that it was from a faraway land beyond my imagination, forged by incredible next-age alchemy; that I must never open or disassemble it, for fear the magic would escape; and, finally, most importantly…” She made her eyes dinner-plate huge, like she was trying to scare a child rather than scam a young man, “… The music in this box contains a song of power, like that of a mythical siren. Any woman who hears it will fall under its spell, filled with the spirit of dance and merriment!”

She’d hoped for a reaction of childlike wonder. This was because her story, while mostly a load of hogwash, had a kernel of truth in it. Whatever the hell this box she was selling was, it was magic. She hadn’t gotten it from a traveler, she’d found it on the side of the road, and she had no idea where it came from. She had stopped trying to take it apart and figure it out when it became clear to her there was no way she’d be able to put it back together. And, as far as being filled with the spirit of dance and merriment… “Where do I start with that one?” she thought to herself, recalling her past experiences.

In spite of Anna's expectations, Sylvain’s reaction was to laugh like he’d been told a joke. He didn’t say anything at first, planting his hands on the counter and waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, he gestured at the box with a sweep of his hands. “Well, let’s hear it, then!”

“Uh-uh,” Anna told him, wagging a finger while putting her smile back on. “I just told you any woman who hears it falls under a spell! That even includes a seasoned romantic like myself. No, if I sell this thing to you for the pittance I plan to, I want you to be a field away when you start the music. Not that I don’t want to party with you, Sylvain, but I have more customers to make happy today.”

Sylvain looked to either side at the stall, empty except for the two of them. Now, he wore a look of disbelief. “So you’re telling me you’re going to sell me a magic box from Goddess-knows-where, and you’re not even going to let it play for me before I pony up my precious coin?”

Anna knew a walker when she heard one, and bit her lip. “Fair point… Okay. Let’s do it this way. I’ll make it play for you, juuust enough so you know it plays music and has the power I’m talking about. I’m literally putting my life in the hands of magical forces doing this for you, Sylvain! I don’t want to hear you telling anyone you’re not my favorite student here.”

“Your favorite student with your favorite color of money, sure,” Sylvain scoffed, still clearly believing he was being taken for a ride. “The floor’s yours.”

The merchant sighed. She’d only experienced this once, and she’d hoped to never experience it again… A sale was a sale, though. As if preparing for a ritual, she solemnly lifted the box by its handle and transported it from her stall to a relatively clear patch in the middle of the square, like she was preparing for a street performance (which, in a way, she guessed she was). She set it on the cobblestone and fixed Sylvain with a suddenly serious glare. “See the lever with the green triangle? I’m going to press it. In just a wink, after you’re satisfied it works as I’ve told you, I want you to push in the one that looks like two pillars. It’ll stop the music.”

“Loud and clear. Anna, I’m sure I’m being fleeced, but I do have to admire your commitment to the hustle. Here goes!” The young man hit the first button she referred to.

“I said I was going to!!” Anna complained, having been counting on those extra seconds to steel herself mentally. Instead, she was as unprepared as Sylvain and everyone else in the square when the box began thrumming with an unnaturally loud voice and synthetic instruments not of their world, playing a genre of music that hadn’t been invented from the two large, circular indentations on its surface.

Sylvain could understand less than half of the words the singer mumbled, and the half he could understand made even a rogue like him flinch, fearing the Knights of Seiros were going to depart from the church with the express intent of censoring the song, probably with an axe.

Soon, however, whatever parade of knights he was imagining became less important than what was happening before his very eyes. Anna had shut her eyes and taken a deep breath. Briefly, it seemed she might be about to meditate, before it became clear her gesture was more like entering a trance. In time with the beats of the strange music blasting through the plaza, she began rocking on her legs, rolling both her hips and one hand to quickly synch with the timing. She repeated the motion four times. She did her best to give him a wink, although her open eye was looking down at her own body. “I-it’s happening, see? Dancing, like I said! Cut it off, Sylvain!”

“By the Goddess, this is music that’s going to capture a woman’s heart?!” Sylvain shouted to be heard. “I’ll be lucky if Seteth doesn’t fly his wyvern here and toss me in the dungeon!”

“Shut up and turn it off!” Anna told him more seriously, her face a strange mix of playfulness and panic. “Oh shoot, I’m gonna…” she trailed off, her last words before she suddenly bit her lip and bent her knees, dropping her body into a squat and beginning to sensually shake her hips to the rhythm. With her hands on the knees of her tight leather breeches, which seemed to be straining with the sudden duress of their unusual task, Anna kept her upper body frozen as her lower body bucked, possessed. Occasionally, the tail of her black-and white tunic would flip, offering a tantalizing look at the panty lines revealed by the garment stretched in restraint across her bouncing ass.

Seeing this, Sylvain was fully convinced. Anna might have learned a new trick for her scam, but to his eyes it truly looked like she was possessed by a demon, dancing in a way he’d never laid eyes on and wasn’t sure he could take his eyes off of.

The merchant’s face reddened as the eyes of a crowd of interested young men turned to her captivating performance. She let out a whimper, then began loudly grunting a series of words like a mantra as she continued twerking for her clientele. “Coin… Gil… Gold… Money!” She repeated it as surely as she repeated the steps of her dance.

The crowd wasn’t sure what to think about this at first, but they quickly came to a conclusion. Before Sylvain’s eyes, his peers began drawing coins from their purses and flipping them in Anna’s direction, assuming her grunts were requests for tips and hoping to get an even better show.

In response, Anna gave them a funny wink, her teeth clenched in an almost manic grin that Sylvain recognized as an expression of a struggle. The merchant shifted to place her bare fingertips on the cobbles below her, lowered her torso to the ground, and began shaking her ass in the air for the crowd, continuing to repeat that strange mantra. “Coin… Gil… Gold… Money…!” She didn’t stop even as seams on her breeches began to give audible pops, the stitching apparently losing the struggle with the mad rocking of her adult body.

By this point, Sylvain was beginning to wonder how long the guards would let this go on before they intervened. As he scanned for them, he began to notice something else strange… While his male classmates formed a wall of interest around the twerking merchant, the female classmates he recognized peering over in curiosity mostly had faces matching some aspect of Anna’s. Some had looks of delighted curiosity, while others had looks of growing panic. More importantly, for the ones near him that weren’t fully shielded by a male body, he could see their lower bodies keeping time, shifting like they were trying to practice Anna’s skillful performance.

There was no exception. Every girl he could see, the classic beauties and the bookish nerds, the commoners and the nobles… All of them seemed equally entranced by the booming of the box. “Forget a gift or a prank,” Sylvain muttered to himself. “This magical… whatever-it-is… it has to be a weapon!” That realization finally snapped him back to his promise, and he hurried to hit the button Anna had pointed out to him on the box.

As soon as he did, the music cut out. Anna didn’t manage a graceful wink and thank you for her audience to sell her performance as part of a pitch. Instead, she collapsed to the floor panting, as though a spirit had left her. Covered in new sweat from exertion, she still managed to growl up at Sylvain. “You pinhead, I told you to hit the pause lever right away!”

The young noble moved to help Anna to her feet. The crowd of men had begun to disperse now that the show was at an end, and the crowd of women was dispersing even faster as every woman seemed to collectively agree to say nothing about what they’d seen the others doing. “You can hardly blame me, can you?” he told Anna, wearing a half-cocked smile. “That was quite a skillful show you put on!”

“I know, right…?” Anna finally regained her ability to speak at a normal volume and in an appropriate customer-service tone. “If I hadn’t come up with my own brilliant way of warding off the magic, I would have probably lost myself to it.”

“Ward?” Sylvain repeated after her, not understanding.

“Yeah, I uh… If I remember what’s really important to me, it helps ward off the desire for the music… mostly,” Anna admitted, staring at the box curiously. She shook her head, sending her ponytail flying wildly, then began scrambling to gather the coins that had been thrown all around. “Look, I’m closing up early. I think your classmates have more than paid for that thing in tips. You can keep it as an apology for the last time I pulled one over on you. Sound good? Good. Just… keep it away from me, I don’t want to hear it! See ya next time, Sylvain. Don’t play it till I’m gone, I mean it! I'll revoke your VIP customer status!” In a hurry, the woman rushed back over to her stall, smoothing down the back edges of her tunic as though afraid her butt was going to betray her again.

Sylvain gave her an unnoticed wave goodbye out of habit of manners, then lifted the box she’d left behind to inspect it. It was sharp-edged and the color of gold like something that ought to be powerful and important, but had the light weight and scuffed appearance of something inconsequential. Looking at it now, it was hard to think of it as something that’d had such a fearful effect moments ago. “What is this thing called, again? A… Slatronic? Something? Gah, whatever it is, it’s a mouthful. It’s a box that booms with noise… Let’s call it a Boom Box. Now, I just have to decide what the heck to do with it...”

The knight-in-training regarded his new purchase pensively. Needless to say, he had no intention of gifting it to his latest fling, who was currently the furthest thing from his mind. Common sense said he needed to report magic like this to the guards, to a teacher, or maybe to the Church directly. Another voice told him even that was a mistake, and he needed to thrust it back in Anna’s hands and let it ride off with her. A final, even less responsible voice told him to just leave the thing and let someone else find it, make it someone else’s problem.

Or, maybe, there was something else?