A/N: The author is :3 today. I'm pumping out pages at a speed that's abnormal for me. I hope it continues.
Florina had broken down on a low stone fence halfway towards Badon. It wasn't overly late in the evening, and the sun was sinking down behind the town's inns, motels and whorehouses. Just that made her unsure. In Ilia, she'd never been into town, and even though she'd been wearing these clothes - or maybe not that many of them - on a couple of nights, that had been with people she knew. Her sisters, for example. She smiled at a - luckily - hazy memory of chatting up random guys from the village, stopping halfway through each attempt because she'd slur the words beyond recognition. Farina had been there, too, cheering her on from the side, and judging by the noise that was getting closer and closer from the camp's direction, she'd be here, too. Great. Normally, Florina couldn't help laughing at the noisy half-caravan that would depart from the camp daily at sunset to get wrecked in Badon, but the thought of them going where she needed to go wasn't very humorous. She tried to hide behind a bush, hoping that they wouldn't see her, but from the moment she got to her knees, she felt it wouldn't be easy. Various things began hiking up into various places - some that hurt, and some that it hurt to think about. She turned her thoughts away from that and focused on the group of already slightly inebriated partygoers on the road. Farina, as always, was in front, swinging a bottle of cheap wine and already beginning to warm up her repertoire of drinking songs. She had her armor on - a sure sign that she didn't want random drunk men hitting on her. Armor also had a "nice" side effect, as she'd said once - it attracted those who liked a "strong woman", she'd said. The main strong thing about Farina was her liver. Sain was tagging after her, also wearing armor. He'd brought up the same reason when asked - but with Sain's mind behind it, no plan could be that simple. Luckily, his mind was also pretty simple, so any woman he approached would know exactly what he was trying to do. After that was Lord Hector, a staple in the drinking group. He'd earned a massive reputation in Badon as the young noble who could out-drink and out-brawl any worker. Some bars closed their doors on him, because of the rumor that he once woke up a man in his bed just to fight him; others opened their doors wide for him, because of his not-so-rumored ability to consume two and a half gallons of ale before blacking out. Behind them were... Nino and Rebecca? Florina stifled a gasp, which would have revealed her. The two girls weren't dressed in the same way as the experienced brawlers in front of her - rather, more like Florina. Rebecca had let her hair fall from her braids and let it hang free; Nino had grabbed as much of her short hair as she could and crammed it into a pair of messy pigtails. A thought crossed Florina's mind - was it legal to buy alcohol at fourteen or fifteen? - then remembered that Badon was a working town, and as such you would get paid as an adult - and exploited like one - when you turned twelve. She acted on an impulse here, like she'd did before. She straightened up and quickly stepped out on the road in front of the group. "Heeeey, Sis, what you doin' in those clothes?" The expected response. "You goin' out with us tonight?" Of course. Farina couldn't worry more than five seconds at a time. Florina cleared her throat and stammered "Eh... yes." It came out better than she expected, but still slightly shaking. A worried expression passed across Farina's face, but a second afterwards it was replaced by her trademark smile. "Well, sure! Tag along. We always need one more, Sis, that's our motto." Florina was thinking about the glaringly obvious duality of the motto when she decided to stop thinking by herself and take the rest of the road with Nino and Rebecca.