Anna was confused when she saw Marth walk out of the inn and throw a sword onto their wagon. She was not dumb, at least, that's what her momma told her, but even for her, this seemed so confusing. Before, Marth had been a prisoner, but after she had saved her sister, Anna was sure her momma would let her go.

Maybe she hadn't let her go? Maybe her momma decided to take her to the next town to try to pawn her off? But that couldn't be right, because why wasn't she tied up?

Or maybe Marth was stealing her momma's wagon? Anna knew that her momma kept a lot of valuable things on the wagon. That was why Gregor was here to protect them. But that wasn't right either, because Gregor was standing next to them, and he would never let anyone steal their wagon.

Maybe I should just ask, Anna thought, and she hopped off the bench she had been sitting on next to the inn.

Several feet thudded against the ground next to her. Anna looked over her shoulder, and found her three siblings standing with her. They had all thought of the same thing.

Anna looked at her sisters. They looked back at her. They all nodded at each other, understanding each other without a word. Her sisters looked at each other. Then they looked at her.

While everyone else got to sit back down, Anna walked over to the wagon. Marth had already pulled herself up onto it, so Anna had to look up to talk to her.

"Miss Marth?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"

Marth glanced down, and when she saw her, her eyebrow raised, like she had just seen her. "I'm coming with you," she replied, her voice flat.

Anna frowned. "Why?"

"I work for your mother."

"Oi." Now Gregor was pushing off the wall that he had been standing next to, frowning with Anna. "Gregor is already working for Ms. Anna. You cannot be working for her too."

Lucina winced, and she glanced back at the inn. "I may have changed her mind."

"Change her mind? What you mean by that?"

"I need to get to Ferox, and working with someone else is the safest way to get there." Lucina shrugged, though even then, Anna could still hear that she sounded a bit sorry for it. "I told her I would work for free if she took me there in your place. I'm sorry."

"Oh, you cannot be serious." Gregor threw up his hands with a scowl. An actual scowl. Anna didn't think she had ever seen Gregor scowl, but there he was, scowling as he stomped back inside. "I must convince Ms. Anna of her mistake. Marth must wait here."

He slammed the door behind him, and then he was gone, leaving Anna alone with Marth.

Sighing, Marth shook her head. "The things I do for him... I hope you can forgive me someday," she muttered in a voice so low she must have thought no one could hear.

Anna huffed and put her hands on her hips. Again, Marth threw a surprised glance her way.

"Did you need anything?"

"Why do you want to go to Ferox?"

Marth frowned. "I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"It's a secret."

Anna looked over her shoulder at her siblings. They all looked between themselves, then nodded back to her.

Looking back up at the blue-haired lady, Anna put her hands behind her back and leaned back on her heels. "If you tell me why, I'll give you a coin."

Marth gave her a funny look. "That's not a lot of money."

"Then I'll give you two coins."

"That's not much better."

Anna shot a glance at her sisters. They whispered to each other, digging around in their purses, before they looked back at her and held up two fingers each.

"Six coins?" Anna asked the woman.

Marth sighed, and she turned away. "It's not for sale."

"Everything is for sale, you just need the right price," Anna said, recounting what her momma had told her before.

"Of course you would say that," Marth muttered under her breath.

Anna had the impression that Marth didn't like her for some strange reason. "Why?"

"Like I said before. It's a secret."

Suddenly, the doors to the inn burst open, and out walked Gregor.

"Marth cannot go to Ferox with you!" he announced, stomping over to the wagon. Her mother followed him, not too far behind.

"Why not? Everything checks out?" her mother drawled.

"She cannot because Gregor works for Miss Anna already. There is little room on the wagon for more."

"That can be solved." Anna pointed at Gregor. "You're fired."

Gregor's jaw dropped. "What? Anna cannot do this!"

"Who's saying? There's no contract that's stopping me. You knew that when you asked to work for me, right?"

Gregor seemed to have no reply. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Off to the side, Anna saw Marth's eyes widen as well. Anna guessed she hadn't had a contract written either.

"Gregor needs job! He cannot continue his search without job."

"Not my problem."

Marth jumped off the wagon and stepped between them, putting her hand on Gregor's chest when he tried to step toward Anna. "Gregor, please," she said, her voice stern. "You can always find another job."

"Marth should be silent!" Gregor snapped.

Marth stepped back, an offended hand pressed to her chest. Before she could utter another word, Gregor rounded on Anna's mother again.

"What she wants Anna to pay her," he said, pointing at Marth, "Gregor will work for half."

Anna nodded to the side with a lopsided grin. "Going to be a little hard to do that. She's working for free. Meals included, of course."

"Free?!" Gregor shot Marth a look. Marth folded her arms and fixed her eyes to the ground.

"Then Gregor work for half his price."

"That's not much better."

"But Gregor is much better. He is strong and skilled. Anna cannot say same for Marth!"

Anna hummed. "I don't know. Miss Marth fought three bandits to save my daughter. You didn't. Seems to me like you're the one who's lacking when it comes to skills."

"Then Gregor show Anna he is better!" Gregor jabbed a finger at Marth. "Marth! You fight Gregor."

Marth raised her hands. "Why would you want to fight me? You've been a sellsword for longer than I have. What's stopping you from finding another job?"

"Of course Marth cannot understand. Marth cannot understand, because she is spoilsword, raised in noble home. She knows nothing about being sellsword."

"Okay? I don't understand how that has much to do with anything."

"Does Marth not want to fight Gregor because she knows she will lose? Perhaps Marth is baby, afraid of poor Gregor because he will defeat her."

"I–" Marth paused, and she narrowed her eyes. "Oh. You're goading me."

"Gregor is not goading Marth. He wants fight is all!"

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Marth turned and walked away. "I'm not going to fight you, Gregor. You'd be much better off finding work elsewhere. I'm sorry, but I need this more than you do."

"Well, I think it's a swell idea," Anna's mother said.

Marth stopped in her tracks. She spun to face Anna's mom with a stunned look that Anna would have found funny if she wasn't just as confused. "What? You can't be serious!"

"Me? Oh, no, of course I'm not. I'm never serious, hon." Marth relaxed at Anna's casual laugh, only to tense at her next words. "Although he does bring up a pretty good point about you two fighting for me. It'll be a good way of making sure I'm getting my money's worth, that's for sure."

Marth threw up her hands with an annoyed groan. "You're not paying me anything. I don't understand how you can get a deal better than that."

"Oh, that's cute. See, if you're in the business of making money–like I am–price isn't the only thing you need to keep in mind when buying." Anna's mother pulled Marth's sword off the wagon and swung it around. "If you get a sword for cheap, and it breaks when you try to cut apples, then you might as well have thrown your gold down a well, right?"

Anna nodded as she listened to her mother. She'd heard this before, and she thought it was common sense, but when she saw Marth scowling, she guessed Marth hadn't ever heard of it before.

"Fine. I'll fight. Give me my sword," Marth said.

"Don't be like that. If you want this job, you have to win, and if you want to win, you have to act like you're going to win. You want to win? Convince me that you're going to win! Come on, show me that you want to fight."

"I don't want to fight, not because I fear losing, but because this is a waste of my time. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can be on our way." Marth held out a hand. "Give me my sword."

Anna's mother's lips turned down, but in the end, she shrugged and mother tossed it to Marth.

Anna watched as the sword flung through the air. To Anna's surprise, however, Marth seemed to recoil from her weapon, letting her sword fall past her hands instead of catching it. She waited until the sword clattered to the ground, getting dirt all over it, before she knelt down to pick it up.

When Marth turned to face Gregor, her furrowed brow made it clear that she hated this. What it was that she was so angry about, Anna wasn't quite sure. Was she mad at her mom for lecturing her? Anna got lectured all the time. Was she mad about having to fight? She was pretty strong though. What was there to be mad about fighting? It wasn't like she was worried or anything.

"You wanted a fight," Marth said, holding out her sword in front of her. "I'm give you a fight."

Gregor, like Marth, took out his own sword. "Gregor does not want fight. He want job, and for that, Gregor must fight. Don't keep Gregor–"

Marth's sword rushed down toward Gregor's head. His sword raised to meet it with a clash of steel.

"Oi! Gregor was not finished talking!" Gregor said.

Marth didn't reply, busy gritting her teeth as she jumped away and lunged. Gregor batted her sword away. Marth followed the swing, spun around, and attacked again. Gregor kept his sword up, deflecting her strikes every time, but Marth just kept swinging and swinging.

Slowly, Gregor was forced back, one strike at a time. He didn't seem to have a problem blocking them, even with how strong they were. Sparks fluttered to the ground with every strike, and not a single one of them reached Gregor, but even Anna, with what little she knew of sword fighting, could see that he was struggling to hold his ground.

He took one step back. Then another. Every swing of her sword, every ear-splitting crash of steel on steel, Marth hacked away at Gregor's defense, slowly pushing him closer toward a nearby house on the other side of the street. Anna thought she would win for sure.

Then Gregor blocked her next swing. He twisted his wrist, and her sword drove into the ground. Before Marth could jump away, Gregor stepped on her sword and kicked her in the chest.

Marth stumbled back. Her sword clattered to the ground, wretched out of her hands. Marth snarled, and she stepped forward, only to be met with the tip of Gregor's sword.

"See? Gregor has defeated Marth," Gregor said, and he turned to Anna. "Gregor is more skilled."

Anna glanced between Marth and Gregor, and now that they were no longer moving, she could see that Marth was a lot more tired than Gregor. She was also a lot more mad. Really mad, actually.

"The results speak for themselves, I guess." Anna's mother shrugged. "Sorry, Marth. Better luck next time–"

"Ragh!" Suddenly, Marth threw herself at Gregor. Gregor barely had time to step back before Marth's fist sailed past his face. His eyes widened, panicked at the sudden attack.

Gregor swung his sword around to defend himself. Anna thought that made sense. When her momma was cooking, she always said to be careful around knives, and Marth had to avoid it if she didn't want to get cut.

That was why it was such a surprise when instead, Marth reached out and caught it in her hand. Anna heard the blade sink into her skin and winced. Blood dribbled down the side of the blade. Marth didn't even flinch.

Shoving it into the ground, Marth reached out with her other hand, grabbed Gregor by the neck, and drove him back the final few feet into the house.

"Wait!" Gregor cried.

Marth ignored him. She snarled, reached back, and smashed his head through the window.

Someone screamed inside.

Anna didn't see who, but Gregor and Marth did, both briefly stunned by it. Anna's mother jumped in front of them before they could move, grabbing both of them by the sleeves and dragging them away.

"And that's our cue to leave," she said in a sing-song voice. She shoved them both toward the wagon, then turned to Anna and her sisters.

"Let's go, girls, before the guards get here and make us pay for the property damage." Then she paused, reached into the wagon, and pulled out a heal staff. "Also, while you're at it, make sure to heal those two. Those cuts on Mister Gregor's face make it a bit obvious whose head was shoved through a window, yeah?"

Her mother had probably meant to toss it to her older sister. She knew how to heal, after all. Anna didn't. So when the staff landed at Anna's feet, she shot her mother a confused look.

"Momma! I don't know how to use this thing!"

"Well, one of you does. Come now, we don't have any time to waste. Come on, girls, on the wagon, up up!"

Anna made to complain, realized now was probably not the time, and she pulled herself up on the wagon. Just in time, too, as the moment her feet left the ground, her mother snapped the reins, and the horse started moving forward.

Anna's hand slipped. She yelped. The ground behind her rushed up to meet her, and she would have hit her head if Marth's hand hadn't snapped out to grab her. Wordlessly, Marth dragged her back on.

As Anna looked over her shoulder, she saw the inn they had been in quickly grow smaller in the distance. She'd have thought someone else would have noticed them leave, but no one did.

They slipped through the gates undetected in the middle of the day, and just like that, they were off to the next town, just like they always were.

"Alright, everyone," Anna's mother said as soon as the last town was far behind them. "Regna Ferox, here we come!"

Here we are, fashionably late as always. Most people can excuse lateness by saying they suffered from burnout, but I can't really say that. I'm so tired of writing that I literally can't think of anything to put down on the page. Once I start writing, ideas come to me fairly easily, and I can usually plow through an entire chapter's worth of writing in a day. That feels less like burnout, and more like procrastination which, hey, we here at the AnPresonPeepul foundation are very big on procrastinating everything.

It feels weird to talk about myself like I'm an organization. I don't think I'm ever going to do that again.

On an unrelated note, I'm considering trying to take up a weekly schedule. Update more often so I can cover more ground, because this story is already more than twice the length of the first arc, and the second arc technically hasn't even started yet.

I'm thinking of starting a discord server, too, so yall can yell at me if I start to lag behind on updates. Probably not going to call it the AnPresonPeepul foundation, though. Just typing it down makes me want to punt something small and defenseless out the window, but HR won't like that. Something about not being able to afford all the windows I keep breaking. Again, not an organization.

If I were a braver man, I'd tell you that the next update will come sometime Tuesday, because writing a chapter for 2 different fics within three days is completely doable. If I were a more honest man, I'd say that it'll probably come out Saturday, but that's a compromise I really don't want to come to. Once I push the date to Saturday, then I'll start pushing it back more, and then I'll only have posted five chapters by 2023. A slippery slope, that can be.

Until then, remember to take care of yourselves out there, and stay safe!