Prologue – Southtown

The two girls lay unconscious amongst the tall grasses of a small field. Sofia was the first to stir, opening her eyes then squinting them shut again against the harsh glare of the sun. She propped herself up and looked around, sighting her friend, still sleeping, a short way from her but nothing else. She released the breath she didn't know she'd been holding and made her way over to Emma, nudging her gently with her foot.

"Emma, wake up, we need to find out where we are." The girl on the ground groaned and curled into a ball.

"Don't wanna," She grumbled sluggishly.

"Emma, get up. We're in the middle of a field so I assume we made it into Fire Emblem, you need to give directions to wherever we're meant to be going." At that Emma leapt to her feet and pointed in a seemingly random direction.

"That-a-way. We're going to Southtown!" She started walking, dropping her finger after a few steps and turning back to see if her companion was following. She looked to be in a mild state of shock. "Come on! I wanna meet Lissa! And tease Frederick! And see what version of Robin we got!" Sofia snapped out of it and started to follow her. However, a few steps later they came across a roughly human shaped and sized dent in the grass. "Pretty sure that was Robin. Which means we need to hurry."

Emma grabbed Sofia's arm and set off running. The girl didn't protest much, figuring it was probably best to go along with it. It didn't take them long to reach them, they had stopped and were discussing something but Emma already knew what they were saying and Sofia was distracted by the purple colour Emma had gone since she stopped breathing.

Emma let the breath out in a rush and turned to Sofia, "I say we follow them sneakily to South town. From here I'm not sure I could find it."

"That's a good idea. But...where's that smoke coming from?" Sofia pointed at the billowing plume of black in the sky,

"South town..." Emma breathed as the Shepherds took off running. The two girls waited a couple of seconds before sprinting after them.

Luckily, they were decently in shape or they'd never have been able to keep up, nearly losing the group on more than one occasion and by the time they had nearly arrived, they were distantly following Robin's bright white hair. When they did step into the main market place – now full of bandits – Robin was just giving the tail end of his explanation of magic.

"Fuck, I need to get in shape," Emma nearly keeled over and tried to suck in breath as best she could. Sofia did the same beside her though chose to conserve her breath.

Lissa, who was still near the entrance of the town – having not yet needed to move - gave them a look that told them she thought they were weirdoes. For the time being they ignored her and darted forwards to join the fray. Sofia grabbed the first ammunition she could get her hands on and started flinging it at the sword wielding bandit that had engaged Chrom. The first apple startled the myrmidon and he turned only to have a foot connect with his face, sending him flying. Emma dropped nearly flawlessly to the ground in front of Chrom who was still staring in shock. He looked to where the apple had come from and Sofia waved sheepishly. He turned back to the girl in front of him. "Hiya."

And with that she was off targeting other bandits with powerful punches and kicks whilst Sofia distracted them with impeccably aimed apples. Once the leader had been finished off – with a combination of Chrom's sword work, Robin's magic and Frederick's badassery – and they had been healed by Lissa, they observed the battlefield for a moment, noting more bandits than they themselves had taken out lay on the floor, some with large bruises developing on their faces and limbs and others with bits of apple stuck to their heads.

"Who are you two?" Chrom asked.

Sofia started returning the apples to the stand she had picked them up from and was the first to reply, "My name's Sofia. That's Emma." She pointed to the girl searching through the bodies for a sword. She picked up a stick and brandished it menacingly before sighting something shiny and diving towards it.

"Is she always like that?" Robin asked, glancing between her and the seemingly sane girl.

"She's a bit of a…" She contemplated how to describe it, "weapons enthusiast."

Frederick raised one eyebrow at Sofia suspiciously. "From where is it that you hail?"

The sudden change of speech patterns left Sofia surprised for less than a second before she shot of a reply, "We come from a distant nation, known there as England. We travelled great distances to be here, though our exact destination was initially unclear, I am glad that it was here we came to be."

The Great Knight nodded once in acceptance. Chrom and Lissa seemed mildly surprised at her quick change of speech. Then Emma came over with something in her hand. "Look, Sofia, look! I found a shiny!" She thrust it in the girls face, a wide grin on her own.

"It's a lance…"

"It's a bronze lance. Inexpensive but easy to wield."

"The head's all cracked, are you sure it'll work?"

"The cracks aren't interfering too much with the swing, but it's only got a few good uses left. Unless any of you have a spare weapon, this is basically my only choice." She shrugged.

"I have a tome and a sword," Robin spoke up.

Sofia's eyes lit up as she remembered Emma's constant babbling of all the tomes in fire emblem. Robin noticed this and offered her the tome. "Can you do magic, Sofia?"

She took the tome gratefully. "I'm not sure, but I can try…" She flicked through the few blank pages near the beginning and came to a stop at the first written on page. It was written in an ancient script but somehow, someway, it made sense. So she began the chant. It was short. The runes dissolved into magic that swirled around the girl as a magic circle formed beneath her feet. Further, smaller magic circles continued to form around her and the magic settled into a ball of lighting in her hand. When the chant ended she picked a target and threw it, thoroughly destroying the remains of one of the bandits.

Robin blinked in surprise, Chrom and Lissa tried to subtly pick their jaws off the floor and Frederick kept his stony façade. "Is this the first time you've used magic?" Robin asked in slight disbelief.

"Yeah…" Sofia replied unsurely.

"Can you do anything else?" Robin seemed very excited at the potential powerhouse in front of him.

"I haven't got any training with blades. The magic was lucky. Blades take a lot more training. Besides, that was a lot more tiring than I let on," Was her reply.

"A bit of training should take the edge off the fatigue when using magic. For now though, you're a natural, see if you can maybe channel small amounts of magic through the tome or something without using the actual spells to get a bit of practise while we walk," Robin instructed before turning to the other girl swinging the slightly mangled lance around, "Emma, what kind of training have you got?"

"Uhh...zero magic training, like at all. And I doubt I'd even be able to do magic full stop. Apart from that, extensive blades training. Swords mostly, knives, kama, a bit of lance work, tessen, some staff stuff, my archery's a bit rusty...and hand to hand or hand to knife combat."

"What about axes?" Robin asked, trying to figure out what the hell a tessen was and which class she slotted into. Sofia was obviously some kind of mage.

"I can use them, I just dont like to."

The tactician nodded his head thoughtfully. "All right then." Then he paused for a moment. "We don't have any spare weapons..." The rapier Chrom held was the only weapon not in use and it was Lords only. As far as he could tell, Emma was not a Lord of any description. "You're just going to have to make do with the lance for now."

"I can do that."

And so they marched.