The group starts to grow little by little, but their IQ quotient gets punched several times as a result.
I encourage all Journeymen to read on, enjoy, and review.
Chapter 2: The Poorly Protected
King Hayden apologizes for being unable to spare soldiers due to the obscene influx of Innes fangirls. However, he does provide Eirika with Boulder the Moulder and some other guys that sound pretty obscure. Eirika is grateful for Moulder's aid. Chasing rumors of her brother, she sets out for Grado, where she is expected to die by us if she doesn't get a hold of a competent band of freedom fighters. The group's first stop is the remote village of Ide, which was, until very recently, a part of Renais's long list of forgotten little villages. Here, Eirika sees the devastation of Renais with her own eyes…or at least arrives right when it starts.
Eirika was addressing her band of intrepid freedom fighters. "Alright, you lazy ass bags! Not you, Moulder," she said. "Seth mapped out a path south of Renais, passing through Serafew and into Grado territory."
"There's a fatal flaw," Moulder added. Everyone gave their time to him by default after gasping. Seth felt his plan had been usurped rather fast. "Grado soldiers are probably destroying houses, kidnapping women, and stealing valuable possessions. Vanessa! Make yourself useful and scout ahead."
Vanessa was kind of ticked off that Moulder got such respect, even though the depths of her brain begged her to become a healer. It is not too late yet, Vanessa! Her mind would shout. "Princess?" she asked.
"Right-o," Eirika said. "Keep out from bowmen, though. Those things CAN push people off their winged horses, which will cause almost irreversible damage to your kind."
The green-haired Pegasus knight (not her better-in-every-way sister, mind you) nodded and flew away into the east. "Should we start making up her will to claim her possessions? Dibs on Titania if she's alive!" Gilliam said. Franz and Moulder groaned loudly, missing their chance.
While Vanessa planned out ways to make her a fan favorite and take Moulder out of the picture, she flew under the clouds to see how a rather large band of bandits were about to pillage four villages. Apparently, Ide was a village divided in four, divided by the mountain range. They were approaching the one on the northeast.
"Hey, Bone! Go pick something else than your name in that village," the bandit leader, Bazba, said. "I'm heading back. Having two bosses in a chapter is way too much." His lackey assumed leadership and rushed head on into said village, declaring mass genocide.
The village they were about to pillage to the ground had a father and a son who looked at them ahead of time. The son named Ross gasped. "Holy hell, bandits are approaching!" he said. The villagers got into a panic and scrambled around. "Dad, we must take our stuff besides our axes!"
"I never liked living on this side of the mountain, anyway!" his father, Garcia, said. He grabbed his son and rushed out.
What happened next was pretty idiotic and oddly morbid in Vanessa's eyes. As the two rushed out, the bandit named Bone assaulted the village. It literally took one step for the bandit to kill everyone and the buildings. What once had many happy but distraught villagers was reduced to dust along with their homes. Strangely, the bandit didn't even get anything out of this. "Boss, it happened again!" Bone said. "This village died before my very eyes without detailed explanation! Crap!"
The Pegasus knight winced. "This is definitely not going to let me sleep tonight," Vanessa noted.
Outside the ravaged village, Ross and Garcia stumbled a bit. Ross particularly let out a small grunt, his left arm bleeding like crazy as it had lagged behind over the ground when the bandit had stepped into their destroyed home. "It's nothing! It's just a scratch! You're a warrior, Dad, and I am your son. I won't be beaten so easily," he said, despite the fact he suffered from some massive gameplay mechanics that left him weaker than a Fighter unit.
"This is really not the time to feel touched, Ross!" Garcia said, suddenly crying. "You've been cursed with the Journeyman curse ever since birth! Please! Someone help my son!" he called out to the sky. Ross felt pissed.
Although there was obviously a blatant helper patrolling the skies that could have easily taken the weaksauce axe wielder away from the battlefield, since Pegasus knights were quite fast over terrain, Vanessa instead rode back to her entourage. "I have bad news. The village to the east is under attack by bandits," she said.
"Uh-oh, bandits. They're among the worst kind of rapists," Eirika said. They nodded.
"We must move quickly and attract as little attention as possible," Moulder advised. This statement made him look like an asshole, but nobody complained. It was definitely not their business.
But then Eirika's heroic genes acted up. "But I cannot stand by and watch innocents be harmed. They could have a Rapier or two!" Eirika said. "Oh yeah, there are villagers. Silly me! Vanessa, how fare the villagers?
"Well, there was a father asking for aid to rescue his injured son in the middle of the assault," she informed with a flat look.
The group stared at her for about seven seconds, blinking in complete bewilderment. Seth felt disgusted by her sight.
"…" Vanessa then got the message and facepalmed. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" she cursed her being. Her Pegasus rolled her eyes at her owner's ineptitude.
"Bring me the boy so I give him back his worthless life," Moulder said. Franz laughed at the last two words the healer had said.
"I-I shall bring the boy here this time, I swear!" Vanessa declared, taking off over the mountain range. She felt many squinted eyes behind her back were judging her.
Once the battle officially began, Eirika saw how she was so close to the northwest village. "And to the woman goes the spoils!" she happily strode into the village, only to find somebody standing close to the gate inside.
"If we can't find some way to protect ourselves, the village is doomed," the woman said.
Eirika noted how the woman looked very elegant. Her very presence made the princess look cute instead of beautiful. "(Focus! The prettier they look, the better is the reward!) I heard that using the village's gates is the ultimate defense against bandits. It's foolproof!"
The woman just then noticed Eirika. "Oh, that's right… Heeeeeeeey… You're not from here. There's a blatant royal air around you," she said.
"Nah, my name is Elincia. I'm a mercenary," Eirika said smiling.
"You insulted me before, yet you use my name? Shame on you!" Elincia shouted.
"Okay, you got me. My real name is Caeda."
"Shall I take your heart out for you?" Caeda asked.
"Marcia's my name!"
"Oh, pop tarts, no!" Marcia disagreed.
The woman, named Selena, yawned. "This is getting old fast, you know. I'll just pretend your name is Erina or something," she said. "Oopsie, I haven't told you who I am yet, have I? I am Selena, a general in Grado's army."
Eirika turned pale. She spotted a Bolting tome hiding behind the woman's back. That thing can kill people from afar, she thought. My resistance is crappy right now, she thought.
"Is something wrong?"
"I, um, no! I'm getting vertigo here. I'll be fine," Eirika lied through her white teeth.
"Anyway, these villages have bandit problems, and I've been called off. I could REALLY stay behind and help, but my Bolting tome needs its time someday more important. You wouldn't like to see the king's look if he heard I used it even once! This is a very precious tome, you know? So yeah, you're a mercenary, and that means you'll help the villages that share the same name?"
"(You lazy ass. You're like all of 'em.)"
"Is there a problem?"
"Bandit problems."
"Oh yeah," Selena said. "Also, if you were wondering, I'm pretty honorable. I'm not crazy. These people are innocent. They give us money all the time! No people? No money. Anyway, have this reward and close the gates," she said, giving Eirika a Red Gem as the general walked away without even being noticed by the bandits that clearly passed her.
"Would hate to run into her when I'm targeted, but who cares? I'm richer!" Eirika said.
Next to the village she had visited and warned about the bandits by declaring loudly their own weakness when pillaging villages (the suspicious, rusty gates that all villages in general didn't seem to use when they were conveniently waiting to be used), Vanessa spotted another village just to the right. She decided to drop by where a young woman met her for random chance. "The most wonderful man rescued me. He was dressed like a mercenary, but he had an air of elegance about him... He gave me this elixir. I'm sure it will help you on the battlefield," she said, giving Vanessa an Elixir.
"How would you rate that mercenary, in hotness scale?" Vanessa asked.
"Oh, one look at him would make you give him your virginity! Tee hee!"
"Mmm-hm! I'm jealous, but such a young girl like you shouldn't be saying such things," she said, riding away to rescue the men she had neglected to rescue when she had the chance.
"I'm older than you!" the woman said as the villagers closed the gate.
As turns passed, the freedom fighters finally got Vanessa, carrying a person. Eirika approached her. "Good! You got Ross!" she said.
Wrong.
Vanessa had forgotten that there was a child with a grave injury, but in her scramble, she had seen the man in a much worse condition (probably because the team had wasted a few turns trying to come up with a badass tactic from the combined minds of Seth and Moulder, and thus gave the bandits a lot of time to do anything). And so, she brought Garcia.
Eirika was about to speak when Garcia ignored where he had been taken (along with blood practically streaming down many innumerable cuts), running off screaming bloody murder. Moulder was standing there, his Heal stretched out to heal the headstrong man. Too bad he was more than a square far away. "Damn you, Vanessa! You had to bring Garcia and not Ross!" she complained. "Only I can make him join us directly and not his father for some reason!"
"Oops?" Vanessa said. "Well, no big deal. General Seth can keep being a meat wall to lure all the bandits in while I go back for Ross."
The familiar "felled" sound echoed from the east. They all faced that same direction where Ross had an axe buried into the middle of his face. Even though it was a wonder he was still breathing from that, Ross smiled and said, "I…am a warrior to the very end!" before disappearing.
Garcia screamed even louder and went to his son, only to be killed by three bandits rounding him. He was a weaker unit than meat wall Seth, after all. Said general facepalmed, staring at the spot where Garcia once stood.
"DAMMIT!" Eirika cursed. "Those two were the only natural users of the whole game! And I know Ross is piss weak, but he does get pretty useful when trained!"
"Should we restart?" Franz asked. "I think we can all do this better if Vanessa doesn't lose time doing anything else."
"Rub salt on my wound, why don't you?" Vanessa asked, clearly offended. Eirika sighed and restarted the battle. Yet again, though, Vanessa's negligence came to bite and spit her out. "Oh, come on!"
"So this is what they call Gameplay and Story Segregation," Moulder wisely pointed out. He was foreshadowing their bad luck, especially Vanessa's.
After getting another heart attack talking to Selena (Eirika then found out she could've sent Gilliam to her instead) and a few more turns out of the way, Vanessa finally brought Ross close to Eirika. "I know who you are, and yes, we'll go save your dad," she said.
Ross smiled. "Oh yeah, now we're talking!" he said.
"But stay close to Moulder so you don't die, silly boy."
Ross pouted and stood close to Moulder. They all then heard the familiar felled sound coming from the east. "Uh-oh, that sound came first before our side could attack back, and they're in their turn," Franz said. "…Wait, we have Ross over here!"
Garcia was killed by an archer scoring a Critical Hit on his head. Granted, the archer only had 1% to score said hit. "I have no regrets. This was always my fate," Garcia said before vanishing, not even leaving the two axes and vulnerary he had with him.
Oddly, Ross wasn't all that sad. "I…I will live on in your memory so I can surpass your greatness!" he called out skyward, raising his ultra-rare Hatchet.
"Screw you and his dead memory! We're restarting!" Eirika said.
Their third try started out good, but Eirika sent Gilliam to Selena. He was zapped by her Bolting and subsequently died without even voicing out his death quote. The attack was too overkill. "Why?" Eirika asked, standing on the very spot Gilliam used to occupy. "You're not supposed to EVEN attack my party but Ephraim's on Chapter 13…B!"
"Hey, knights are starting to join rapists' ranks," Selena said before handing a Red Gem to her. "Take this to give you my humble apologies."
Their fourth restart signified Eirika's pure pissed self. Luckily, they all had the luck to group Ross and Garcia. Eirika made Ross change from green to blue, and then he went to his father where they shared a very touching moment that was labeled under clichés. Franz did sniff, though.
Vanessa tasked herself to reach out for the southern village before the mountain bandits could reach the gate, instead of, you know, jumping over. "HEAR ME OUT! GATES ARE THEIR WEAKNESS! CLOSE THEM!" she declared loudly and got a Pure Water. "This crap doesn't even become useful in the next chapters!" she complained to the already closed gates.
The company was now surrounding their boss. "Wait a minute! Wh-who are you?" Bone asked.
"Erina, the Mercenary!" Eirika said, impaling him on the head with two Critical Hits, killing him. "You're not even worth telling my true name."
"Ouch, that is harsher than the actual killing part," Gilliam commented.
Garcia cleared his throat. "You saved my son. I owe you my thanks. Sorry if he beat up on your Pegasus knight after she just came outta nowhere and whisked him away from me," he said. Vanessa had a reason she sported a black eye, and she glared at Ross with it. "That sounded so wrong from a perspective!"
Seth gasped, which made everyone else gasp. "Holy hell, you're the Great Garcia!" he pointed out. Garcia preened a little.
"My role model has a role model?" Franz asked interested.
"Axes suck in my perspective, but the great Garcia knows best. With him at MY side, along with Moulder, we can win this war that screwed our friendship with Grado!"
Garcia simply said, "Sorry, retired here."
"NOOOOOOOOO!"
"I'm feeling emotional with all you bunch of misfits staring at me with such fervent intent. When I was a soldier, I lived my life fighting for my country's honor, obviously to prove I was a badass. I left no time for my family, but my axe was so important I practically wanted to marry it. I spent my life fighting for faceless, uncaring nobles, not unlike those in Begnion. When my wife fell ill and died, I met the child she had left behind. That's when I said to myself 'Garcia, drinking is bad and leads to this!' At that moment, I finally realized what my duty had cost me. "
"Him?" Eirika pointed at Ross, who said, "Hey!"
"No, I promised my wife's grave that I would raise Ross to become a man and not some thief. Hate those with a passion!"
"What grave?" Vanessa asked. "I saw no grave near your already decimated home."
"Hard to find, that sneaky thing! It's not really findable from top view. But I shall tell you where it is before me and Ross go back to our lives. We turned into nomads just today!" Garcia said smiling warmly. "Her grave i-"
"Screw you, dad!" Ross interrupted. "I'm joining these guys! They're WAY more fun than you!"
"Screw you! I'm tagging along so that General Seth doesn't think you're inferior! I mean, look at you! What kind of stupid class is Journeyman? That sounds like you're running a newspaper!"
The thankful villagers reopened the gates to their villages. Eirika did not want to say how suicidal it was to leave them open. An old man that represented the four, I mean, three villages thanked their help. Until he saw her bracelet, anyway. "Eww, bracelets are so Thracia 776. Everybody's into ear piercings. Even men."
"Like, I, like, now, like, right?" Eirika asked in typical teenager fashion.
"But keep it around to fetch a high price. Since Renais was invaded, things have become so dangerous around here. Bandits NOW are starting to act. Geez, that's convenient of them to do! The other day, Bazba's bandits destroyed homes, kidnapped women, and stole possessions!" Eirika shed a tear. "Oh, Renais is finished, mark my words."
"You don't have that much faith in Renais, do you?"
"King Fado didn't even live past the first third of the Prologue. What do you expect? Oh, but his son, Prince Ephraim, is a tough cookie. That cookie is being eaten away if the suspicious rumors are to be believed."
That night, Eirika felt so angsty that she had a sepia flashback when Ephraim taught her swordplay. Her reason for that was… "If we women keep relying on men like you, it'd look subtly sexist."
"Aye aye," Ephraim said. "Since I love you so much…" a Renais guard looked at them, eyebrow arched, "…a-as a brother…who loves you as in normal friendship!" the guard looked away, "I-I shall teach you swordplay."
Eirika had noticed his rather embarrassing display. "You know, in two and a half years, this little misconception is so going to bite us in the back and infect us with the rabies if we keep saying sibling love," she said.
"Please! If Marth and his sister loved each other so much as we do, I bet Magvel won't make us never live it down!"
Eirika snapped back into reality and angrily tossed her bracelet behind. She heard a man yelping with pain for a foreign object bumping his head and turned around to face him. "You creep! Don't try to do surprise buttsecks on me! Take the bracelet and go!"
Colm looked confused but then shrugged and took the bracelet, walking away with it and mumbling something about not being a rapist. It was then that Seth came from the other direction. "Princess, I saw you with an angsty look so I got worried. What happened?"
"Got into a sepia flashback about me and my brother," Eirika bluntly said. "Oh, and I gave my bracelet to a rapist thief." Seth then turned pale, breathless. "Alright, this is getting so stupid! Gilliam!" Gilliam walked into the scene. "I gave my bracelet away!"
"So? Everybody's into ear piercings," Gilliam said, not turning pale. "Heck, I want one."
"Your overall lack of paleness for being from Frelia makes only one thing clear…" She pointed at Pale Seth. "My family, and you for some reason, know something about this bracelet you like so much!"
Seth unpaled. I made that word up. "We need to look for it immediately!" he said, running off with his unnamed horse.
"You totally did that on purpose! Company, move!" she ordered the sleeping company. She just noticed Gilliam was not wearing his armor. "Ugh, we'll rest for the night. I wouldn't want to bother Moulder and the great Garcia, though the latter is kinda getting on my nerves with his loud snores."
"We all are!" the rest yelled out, clearly wide awake.
"You will never understand how manly his snores sound!" Ross proclaimed.
"Shut up, newbie!" Moulder shouted back.
"Yeah!" they all agreed by default.
Will the party retrieve the popular-less bracelet?
Please review, or else Garcia will stop his manly snores.
