The Blonde Berserker. It had only been a day since she'd visited it, but it felt longer. She certainly wished it were longer; it felt like a lifetime ago, but her encounter with the minstrels remained fresh on her mind. Only this time, there'd be no Robin to protect her.

No Robin to boss me around either, Sumia grumbled.

Of course, the line of thought brought Robin to the front of her mind instead. The reminder stung. Just when she was beginning to think maybe he wasn't such a bad guy, he had to break her trust like that.

Maybe she was useless. As clumsy as she could be, Sumia would have to be a complete fool to miss how weak she was compared to everyone else. But hearing Robin say that? It hurt.

"Hey, are you okay stable girl?" Anna said, snapping her out of her thoughts. "If you're going to lose your lunch, turn away. Please."

"Oh!" Sumia leaned away, a bit flustered. As she tried to cover up whatever must have shown on her face, she said, "I'm fine. No need to worry about me. I can take care of myself."

Anna gave her a mischievous grin. "Thinking about your partner?"

"N-no. Why do you think I would care?" Sumia cursed herself for stuttering. She hoped Anna didn't notice, but judging from the way her grin grew ever wider, it hadn't slipped past her.

"Still in denial? I can't help you if you won't admit," Anna said, her teeth flashing in the afternoon sun.

"There's nothing to admit."

"Of course you'd say that." Anna chuckled. "But we're not here to talk about your love life, are we?"

"I don't have a love life. Who'd fall in love with me?"

Anna rolled her eyes and sighed. "Like I said, stable girl. Get your head in the game. We can't spend the rest of the day standing around like a flock of flamingos, can we?"

It was then that Sumia realized that they had, indeed, been standing idle in front of the door for the past few minutes.

"Oh, I'm sorry!"

"For what? Standing around like a jester with his pants down? If you want someone to apologize to, apologize to yourself for looking like an idiot."

Sumia blinked, confused. "I don't follow."

"Ah, don't sweat it!" Anna said, waving her concern away. "Now, are you going to let us in or what? Time is money, and I can feel it slipping out of my pockets right now."

Sumia winced. "Oh. Sorry." She pushed the door inside, allowing Anna past her before entering herself.

To her relief, the stage was empty. Sumia swept her gaze over the room to see if the minstrels from before might have been hiding in the corner, but they seemed to have vanished.

"Hey! Are you going to sit down or what?" Anna called from the bar, having already taken a seat.

Sumia blinked. Safe to say, she turned bright red once she'd realized she had made a fool of herself yet again, and she moved over to take a seat beside Anna without a word. As the chair scraped against the floor, Anna waved the bartender over.

"Get us something to drink, will you?" she said.

A minute later, Sumia found a wooden mug in both her and Anna's hands. She'd paid for them, of course; the Fell Dragon would fall from the sky before Anna would skip over a chance to save money.

Anna was also the only one taking advantage of the opportunity, guzzling down her drink by the liter. Sumia, on the other hand, just stared into her own reflection in the murky liquid.

As Anna set down her mug with a wooden clink, she glanced around the room, as if she were looking for something.

"It's awfully quiet in here, wouldn't you say?" she said after a moment.

"What do you mean?" Sumia said.

"I mean, don't these kinds of places usually have a minstrel somewhere to keep the atmosphere high?" Anna motioned to the stage, before she added, "Look, why keep a stage in the building if no one's going to use it?"

"Believe me, you wouldn't want to meet the last band that played up there," someone else spoke behind them.

Sumia glanced over her shoulder, and found Vaike sitting on her other side.

"For a bar this cheap, their beer isn't so bad," Anna said. "I'm sure their music can't be that much worse."

"It's not their music that's the problem. Mostly. It's the people that I was talking about. Ain't that right, Sumia?"

Sumia nodded, and, for the first time that day, took a sip from her drink. It was a tiny sip, so small an onlooker might have thought the liquid in her mug had scalded her. The bitter taste sharpened her focus, and she turned to Vaike.

"Where did you say they went?"

"I don't think I ever said anything about them leaving."

"Oh." Sumia frowned into her mug. "So they're still here?"

"Oh no, they're gone," Vaike replied, giving her a carefree smile.

"Did the owner finally kick them out?"

"Nah. As awesome as the guy is for recognizing Teach, he can be a bit of an idiot."

"That's coming from you," Anna said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Vaike leveled a glare at her, but Anna quickly hid her face in another long sip.

Sumia put herself between the two of them before they could get another word in. "She hasn't been around you long enough, so she doesn't know what she's talking about."

The answer seemed to satisfy Vaike if the smile spreading back across his face was any indication.

"Yeah, I guess so," he said, putting his hands back behind his head.

As Sumia sighed, glad at having calmed things, Anna scoffed behind her. Vaike didn't seem to notice, and silence settled over them once again.

Sumia went back to staring down into her mug. She was content to let the silence stew, but she did have a job to do. Usually, Robin would carry out the interrogation from there, but he wasn't there, and it was then that she came to the realization that she needed to carry this out on her own.

"If the owner didn't kick them out, what happened?" she said.

"Oh yeah," Vaike said, scratching the back of his head. "They just left."

"Left?"

"Yeah. If you ask me, I'd say it's an improvement. I'm all for being a man, but I really don't think the 'kill all women' is something you got to tack onto that, you know?"

It was then that something in Sumia's head clicked into place.

"Where did they go?" she said, snapping onto Vaike with a speed that surprised even her.

Vaike raised his hands before his face. "I don't know. They didn't leave a note, talk with the owner; nothing. They up and vanished." Then he paused. "Or, most of them did anyway."

"So you're saying that some of them stayed?"

"One of them."

Excitement rose in Sumia's chest. "Where is he now?"

"There."

Sumia followed his finger pointing over her shoulder to the other side of the room. A rowdy bunch had gathered in the corner, all of them laughing and waving their mugs in the air, splashing liquor around them. And at the center, Sumia recognized one of the minstrels from before, exchanging words with the rest of them like he had known these people all his life.

"Thanks, Vaike. You're a big help," Sumia said. As she got out of her chair and started to make her way across the room, she heard Anna say, "You couldn't have been a better help than I was."

She brushed it aside. She had a lead, and that was probably more than Robin had right now. It wasn't as if she could tell, but she liked to think it was like that.

Who's the useless one now, she thought.

Heads turned to her as she approached. The men huddled in the group glared at her as she drew closer; perhaps they were like-minded to the Grimleal people, or maybe they were Grimleal as well. Then again, they might just have suspected her of coming to ruin her fun, but she thought this was a bit more important than that.

Her target hadn't noticed her yet, still flinging his cup around as if to ward off an alcoholic wyvern. The silence around him hadn't seemed to key him into the situation yet, although judging by the glazed look in his eyes, his drink must have already taken hold of his mind.

"Like, take these scars," he said, pointing to the gashes running down his arms, his sleeves already rolled back. "I just got 'em today. And you know what? I'm already back on my feet!"

"Ahem." Sumia tried to clear her throat to catch his attention, but to her disappointment, it came out a lot quieter than she would have liked.

"But how'd you get these scars anyway, I hear you ask? Well, just this morning, me and my buddies got attacked by this crazy mage and–"

"Ahem." She tried raising her voice. The man just kept going, however; only when one of his companions jabbed him in the gut did he finally notice the woman standing over him, much to her embarrassment.

"Oh. I didn't see you there sugar," the man said. He flexed his arms before he added, "See anything you like?"

"I hope you'll forgive me for not being impressed," Sumia said, "but I've seen many people who look more impressive than you."

The man's gaze hardened. "Figures," he said. "Then could you kindly bug off? I was in the middle of a story."

"Actually, your story was the reason why I came over." Sumia pointed to the scars running down his arms. "Do you think you could tell me how you got those scars?"

"These?" The man chuckled, as if recalling something comedic. "Well, as I was saying, me and my friends, we were attacked by this crazy mage. He just started cooking people up left and right, a complete monster. I tried to save the rest of my friends, but he threw me aside with his wind magic. These battle scars? They're from when I got tossed over the floor. Of course, I got right back up after that and–"

"This mage, was his hair white, by any chance?"

"White like ice. Not a surprise, considering how ice-cold the guy was. So, as I was saying–"

"Was there anyone with him?"

The man's face scrunched up at this. He looked away for a moment, before he turned back to her. "Well, I do remember there was someone else with him. Some girl in a suit of armor. Anyway, all hope seemed lost, when one of my friends chucked a fireball back at the guy. He wasn't expecting that, so it sets his shirt on fire, and that's when I drew my sword and–"

"That didn't happen."

"What?" The man frowned. "Well, you weren't there. Your fragile soul wouldn't be able to take how dangerous it got in there until I–"

"But I was there."

The man blinked once. Then he blinked again. On the third blink, his eyes lit up in recognition.

"Oh yeah. I remember you. You were the girl who sat back while your friend did all the work."

Useless, Robin's voice echoed in her mind.

"I'm not useless," Sumia growled.

"Well, it seems to me–"

"You're going to tell me what you know, or... or I'm going to call the guards to arrest you."

"For what, sugar? Hurting your feelings?"

"For the kidnapping of four women. Or helping with it."

The man's smile didn't waver for a second. His forehead, however, glistened with sweat. "What are you talking about?"

"There's a group of Grimleal in Ylisstol kidnapping women off the street to sacrifice to the Fell Dragon. And you were one of them."

The atmosphere froze around them. Chairs scraped against the floor, and when Sumia looked up, she found that all of the man's 'friends' had left him to his fate. As it turns out, people didn't want to be associated with cultists.

"Those guys? I left them. I joined the Grimleal because I didn't want to work, not to take orders from some sexist beast."

"Then you should have no problem telling me what they are up to at this moment."

This time, the man scoffed. "I may not like them, but I'm not about to rat them out."

"Why can't you? You don't work for them anymore, and if you help me, Ylisstol will remember you fondly."

"Because I can. Deal with it, lady."

He's not going to budge, you know, she could hear Robin say, his voice mocking. What are you going to do, pay him to talk?

Sumia clenched her hand into a fist. Almost as soon as she had done it, she unclenched it.

She wasn't supposed to get angry. Whenever she got angry, the animals would run away from her in fright, so she'd trained herself to remain calm. She liked to think that staying calm was the one thing she wasn't useless at. So why was she getting so worked up about this?

You can't even keep yourself calm. A pity, Robin's taunting voice echoed in her head. What's wrong? Can't you handle a little resistance? You used to be so sweet. That's why I fell in love with you.

She was going crazy. That was the only explanation. Crazy or not, though, she could still feel the heat creeping up her face. It was probably an embarrassing sight, seeing her turn bright red in front of a drunk Grimleal.

She settled for punching him in the face instead.

Guess who's back? That's right, it's daddy Sakurai, bringing us... another Fire Emblem character.

And me too.

So I realized that I wasn't leaning into the romance side of this, so I started doing that a little more. It might be a little too late for that, but it's my first time writing this kind of thing. I'll do better next time, and there will be a next time, I can promise you that much.

I have also decided that Saturday will be the day I update this fic. I know this chapter wasn't uploaded on a Saturday, but that's only because tomorrow I don't have school, so I get a free pass for Sunday. Or Monday morning, if you want to nit-pick. But I'll try to update on Saturday. No garuntees, since Over the River gets updated a day before, but I'll do my best.

Next update will be January 25th. Fingers crossed.