It was a beautiful day. The sky was a pure blue, the clouds were bright and fluffy and far between, there was a light, cool breeze that produced a symphony of rustles from the trees. An almost perfect day… and it was marred by the blood of battle.

Raven dueled an enemy on horseback. He was wielding a lance, and had the advantage of high ground, which made things a bit difficult, but Raven was no ordinary fighter. The cavalier jabbed at him; he sidestepped and slashed overhead followed by a quick sideswipe. Both attacks landed and the enemy fell from his horse, limp, as the horse trotted away.

Suddenly, he heard odd incantations being muttered from behind him. He whipped around and cursed as he made out an enemy mage in the middle of casting a spell. Mages always troubled him the most. While they were unarmored and as such generally easy to kill, they had a tendency to stay back and attack from a range. Their spells were difficult to dodge and did a lot of damage, so he often ended up taking a pretty hard hit before he managed to close in and finish them off. He prepared to dodge the attack, his speed was his best defense at the moment…

Then suddenly, an arrow whizzed by and caught the enemy by the cloak. He stumbled backwards, losing his concentration. This gave Raven time to close in for an easy kill. As he gravely began to clean the blood from his sword, he turned in the direction the arrow had come from and saw a young, green-haired girl with a bow. At the moment, she seemed to be fumbling with her bow, not paying attention to him. He thought it was odd for such a young girl to be on a battlefield. He approached her.

"Disassembling your weapon on the battlefield?" he observed. She quickly looked up at him. For a second she had a surprised expression on her face, but it was quickly replaced by a lively smile. She didn't look much older than 16.

"I suppose I'll take that as thanks for getting you out of that situation there?" she remarked playfully. "But yes, the bowstring was getting a bit lax, otherwise that arrow would've been more accurate. So I'm trying to replace it with a new one. I'm afraid stringing has never been one of my strong points, though…"

"Let me see that" said Raven gruffly. As a mercenary, he'd had some practice in the care of various weapons. He bent the bow against the ground, and thanks to his rather exceptional strength, managed to loop the string up over the tip. He handed it back to her. "See if that did the trick."

She tested the string by pulling back on it a couple times, and said "Thanks so much! It feels perfect. I'm afraid I didn't catch your name?"

"It's Raven."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Rebecca!" she said, giving him a brilliant smile. She seemed to like smiling a lot.

"…Why are you here? You're pretty young to be fighting in a war. And a soldier who can't take care of their own weapon is a danger to their allies" Raven remarked.

Rebecca lost her smile and pouted a little. Raven felt a little twinge at that. He wasn't sure why it bothered him, but it did. And not much bothered Raven.

"Hey! I can take care of myself. Besides… you were here to help me, right? I really appreciate that. And… I'm actually here looking for my brother. He disappeared awhile ago…"

Suddenly, Raven felt guilty and sympathetic at the same time. The scenario wasn't unlike what he had done to his own sister so many years ago… he now saw the sort of pain and sadness it caused. He found that he wanted to comfort her somehow…

She gave a hesitant smile. "Hey, don't have such a gloomy look. I'll be ok. After all, because I'm on this journey, I've met you! I'd like to repay you for helping me. Even if it was in return for me helping you!" She giggled at that. "Do you like to eat anything in particular?"

Raven shrugged. "Meat. Of no particular kind."

The big, radiant smile returned to her face. "Alright, sometime soon I'll hunt down and cook something for you! It's one of my skills." and with that, she left.

Raven pondered for a second. He'd never met anyone quite like that. She just seemed so… bright, and cheerful. It reminded him a little of how he felt for his sister, Priscilla. He cared about her, a lot. He instinctively wanted to protect her and make sure she was happy, as her brother. But this felt somewhat different. He wasn't quite sure how to define it…

Oh well, enough drifting off in his thoughts. There was a battle to get back to.

Alright, there's been an accusation in the review section claiming that i plagiarized another fanfiction on the site. I feel the need to respond to it here because said person doesn't seem to have an account here.

I looked up the other fanfiction in question and I can see how mine is similar to it. However, this is because both of our introductions are based on an in-game event (Raven and Rebecca's C support). I had no intention of plagiarizing another's work, and hadn't read the other fanfic when i wrote this.

That's all; sorry i had to do that. -Drumsticks