"Say hello to the Courageous' new captain!"

"Oh."

"What?"

"Huh?"

"Congrats, Towa."

And other reactions sprung from the students and the prince let them run their course before explaining things. "This is a necessary step in the continuation of the mission of the Crimson Wings," Olivert explained. "War is an ever changing thing and as it progresses each side looks to new tactics, as such we should not fall into a predictable routine. That is the general reasoning for this little shake up at our formation, as for specific reasons, viscount, if you'd please…"

"During our mission taking civilians to the province of Sutherland, I was informed by officers from the RMP of sightings of the Stalhritter in Lamarre, a most convenient thing since they hadn't shown their faces since the capture of Heimdallr. Undoubtedly it's a trap to lure me away but one I must take nonetheless, they are a dangerous group and we can't risk their provocations becoming bolder and violent."

"I shall be taking my leave as well," Olivert immediately said. "While I'm one to enjoy a good scrap now and then, with no hearts to steal at the battlefield, I am simply out of place here!"

"Can you be serious for one second, brother?" Alfin glared at her sibling.

The older man, of course, paid no mind to his sister's withering gaze and chuckled delightfully before continuing. "I may not be the Crown Prince like my dear brother but I am a prince nonetheless, and I have many allies within and, while I don't expect any official intervention, outside of Erebonia. I shall do my best to contact them and seek any sort of assistance they can give to the Erebonian people."

While Olivert hadn't outright said it, one of the things that could be inferred was that he would be looking into the possibility of political asylum for those who needed it in case things took a turn for the worse, including his sister.

"And I'll be off too," said Toval. "As hard as it is to believe, me and Sara aren't the only Bracers in Erebonia. Even with most of the guild offices having shut down there's still some few good people who decided to stay. So I'll be coordinating with them to keep civilians out of harm's way."

That was a shocker and while not exactly an unwelcome surprise, the younger members of the crew still looked confused and filled with doubt. To quell that, Olivert once again spoke up.

"You have gone from students to soldiers in a war in a couple of months and now even more responsibilities are falling onto you, so I understand you are nervous at this new development. But, as if your many accomplishments during your field exercises weren't already enough, these past few days have shown you have what it takes to take matters into your own hands.

"While it does not sit right to me to ask of Class VII even more than what already has been asked, you have all exhibited great skill, discipline and resolve in successfully accomplishing your missions, assuring us in our decision of placing our trust on you."

The prince had spoken from the heart and the adults all nodded and smiled in agreement with him. It was a bit overwhelming but with how that was becoming a recurring sentiment for Class VII they took it well, accepting the additional responsibility. And it wasn't like they'd be left alone, Instructor Sara would continue offering her support and experience.

But still, Towa had her doubts. "That's all well and good, Your Highness, and I know we discussed this extensively yesterday but I don't feel like I could possibly take the role of ship captain. I mean, I barely know how this thing flies and I can't even fight like Viscount Arseid, I can't-"

"And who would you suggest instead?" The viscount said, interrupting Towa's flustered attempt at articulating herself and grinning as the girl failed to come up with a name among her friends. "You're an incredibly diligent young woman, Ms. Herschel, and in the short time you've been with us you have already picked up on the minutiae of the Courageous' operations and in a much faster fashion than me and Prince Olivert."

"Just like leaving Class VII to decide how to operate, we wouldn't put you in this position if we didn't think you could handle it. Remember, you were picked to assist me during the International Trade Conference back then because of your skills," Olivert followed up.

"I for one can't think of a better person," Rean said with an easygoing smile and the rest of Class VII repeated the sentiment eagerly.

With that final bit of coaxing, Towa had no exit but to accept her appointment as the ship's captain.

"And, of course, a captain needs a uniform. If I may…" Victor removed the captain's cap from his head and placed it on top of Towa's, followed by putting his pair of sunglasses on her face. "There, a proper captain for a ship, isn't that right?"

There it was, Captain Towa Herschel in all of her flustered glory, shuffling in her seat, wearing a hat that surprisingly fit her head but sunglasses that felt like they were covering her entire face. Her friends were giving her all sorts of looks and she was pretty sure the fact this was Viscount Arseid's idea was the only thing stopping Rean from bursting with laughter. Mercifully, Laura took pity on her.

"Father, the glasses might be too much."

"Hmm… You may be right," the viscount said, removing the glasses from Towa's face. The hat was staying however.

"Cute, she can be both the ship's captain and its mascot."

"We should make Captain Towa plushies to sell and help fund operations."

Rean and Fie finally gave in to the urge to tease Towa, much to her embarrassment. The thought of Crow and Angelica eventually joining in crossed her mind briefly horrified her just to give way to sadness. She would take all the teasing in the world just to have her friends back together.

"A-anyway," Towa cleared her throat and got up from her chair, straightening herself and shaking off the bad feelings within her. "Thank you everyone for the vote of confidence. I swear I will do my utmost to repay the trust you've placed on me."

With a bow she thanked Prince Olivert and Viscount Arseid as well as her friends and the rest of the crew at the bridge. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, Towa immediately went to work, wanting to establish the best route to take for the day's operations.

The first one to be dropped off was Prince Olivert. Since they were still at the Kreuzen Province, he would be going south, the closest he could get to the border with Liberl. While there was some worry about his well being, he assured everyone he could take care of himself, he was a Thors alumni after all.

Next, the Courageous headed to the Nortia Province where Toval would be getting off, on the way leaving Rean, Gaius, Jusis, Emma and Millium to investigate an ancient shrine where Roselia said they would find zemurian ore. While they were traveling, Elliot, Alisa and George approached the Bracer at the hangar, asking him for assistance on a project.

"Sound based Arts?"

"Yeah. Back when Machias, Fie and I were holed up in Celdic, I ended up reading a book on the theory around it. Basically, by using a specific quartz configuration of esmelas and nohval quartz to adjust the orbal wind energy output you could create sounds," the musician said enthusiastically. "I tried tinkering around with it but it wasn't a good idea to mess with loud sounds while in hiding, and well, I don't have much expertise with orbal engineering."

"But now that we have a little more freedom to work on stuff, Elliot came to me and Alisa for help," said George and Alisa followed.

"Yeah, after hearing Elliot's idea we thought it would be worth a shot and we'd like some pointers from you since I heard from Instructor Sara that you do your own customizations in your combat orbment. Sorry if this is too last minute with you going away but can you help us, Toval?"

"Heh, sure, I don't mind, I guess you guys already have some ideas on how to go about this. But just to be sure, you do know that the problem with sound based weaponry is that it doesn't discriminate between friend or foe, right?"

"Right, that's why research on it has been lacking, there's zero incentive from the military in doing so. We're also," Alisa held up her hand and started counting on her fingers. "Taking into consideration how efficient this can be regarding EP usage, the size of the quartz we're going to use, what kind of variables the master quartz in our ARCUS can bring to the equation, if the internal structure of an orbment can handle the vibrations caused by high frequency sounds…" And on she went to count other technicalities.

"We're also planning on testing on older orbment models we have lying around before moving to altering our ARCUS units and Elliot's orbal staff," George added.

"Alright, alright, I got the message," Toval raised up his hands in a gesture of surrender. Of course they had all of that in mind already, those kids weren't being handed a state of the art airship for nothing. "Alright, so, first thing about esmelas quartz you have to watch out for is…"

While the rest of the crew was busy with this or that, a perplexed Fie watched Sara pacing around in the women's dorm, having never seen her guardian so anxious, so thoughtful before. She would look up and down while stroking her chin, stop her pacing, mutter inaudible things to herself, then resume her pace again. Two times Sara searched under her bed from where she would pick up a bottle of Spiritus, look at it then shake her head and put the liquor back to where it was.

"What are you doing?" The former jaeger asked when she couldn't bear it anymore.

"Exactly. What the hell am I doing?" The instructor repeated to Fie's utter bafflement. "I'm here wasting my time being indecisive when I should just go and…!" Sara slapped both hands against her cheeks with a loud clap. "Alright, maximum effort! Wish me luck, Fie!"

Brimming with supreme confidence, none of it fueled by inebriation even, Sara strode off their quarters without a single ounce of explanation and Fie figured this could only mean disaster.

"Ugh, I'm beat," lamented Rean as he and an equally tired Gaius made their way through the corridors of the Courageous with sagging shoulders and dragging their feet.

The search for the zemurian ore had been a failure. The Ignis Shrine had been exactly where Emma's grandmother had indicated and it was, unsurprisingly, a maze filled with monsters and traps that took them hours to cover. There was a sense of deja-vú with how similar the shrine was to the lower floors of the old schoolhouse, making them expect to find a powerful monster in the other end of the dungeon, and although it was a bliss when they didn't have to deal with that, the reward for all their previous toil was a pebble of zemurian ore that barely weighed a curim resting at an altar-like structure.

Certainly not enough to forge even a dagger, nevermind a sword for Valimar. Erebonia's fanciest toothpick at best.

Emma explained that the altar should have contained a huge piece of zemurian ore since that was how the mineral was cultivated. Her grandmother could not be wrong, all the signs that they were at the right place but somehow the rare ore was absent. And to top it all off, a magic knight appeared as they were coming out of the shrine and Rean had to jump on Valimar to deal with it, with the fight costing him another sword.

Not to say that they came out without any ideas of what happened to the zemurian ore, as they had also found a shiny, blue father with faint traces of mana at the altar room.

"Up close I can see the similarity with Celine's fur," said Gaius, inspecting the item before handing it back to Rean. They were heading to the storage room where they would place the ore fragment as there was no reason to throw it away. "The way that the azure gives way to the turquoise is very similar to how her fur goes from black to lilac. It's very beautiful."

As upset as he was at Vita Clotilde and her familiar for beating them to the punch, he couldn't deny that Grianos had beautiful plumage. It was really soft too. "I'm going to make a pillow out of that stupid bird."

"I wish I could get a hold of Zeo. With his speed I doubt Vita's familiar would see him coming."

Now wouldn't it be hilarious to see Vita doing their usual gloating at them just for her familiar to be eaten by a hawk.

Having finally arrived at the storage room, Rean mindlessly opened the door, not really expecting anything out of the ordinary, just to find the one and only Fie with her back to them, kissing Vivi against a wall. To say there was a moment of silence would be inaccurate since there was the sound of lips smacking and even a muffled moan from one of the girls as neither had noticed their arrival until Gaius loudly cleared his throat.

"Oh, hey," Fie turned around, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

"Sorry for the intrusion," the Nord said while awkwardly looking away.

"Fie, what the- Since when you two were dating?" Rean said with surprise.

"We're not dating, we're kissing buddies," Vivi said with a giggle. "Get it? It's like fu-"

"Yeah, I get it."

"So, what's up?" The former jaeger continued to be utterly casual about the whole thing. "Did you guys get the zemurian ore?"

"Not exactly," Gaius nudged his head to Rean, who produced the small fragment from his pocket and showed it to the girls.

"Bummer. Can you leave now? I'm kinda busy."

"Aw, Fie, there's no need to be shy. I don't mind giving them a show," Vivi said with a cheeky wink of her eye but the silver haired was not amused.

"Don't be weird, I'm not going to be wank material for them."

The prankster was unphased however and instead cast her own admonishing look at the Nord. "Well, Rean can stay, but not Gaius after he broke my dear sister's heart."

Still feeling terrible in regards to that affair, the aforementioned heartbreaker slumped his shoulders in defeat. Who could've thought a simple dance would lead to such a headache?

"Anyway, I'm just going to leave this here and go get some grub and leave you two to it. Let's get going, Gaius," Rean said as he placed the small piece of zemurian ore on a shelf and started to leave alongside his friend but as he was about to leave, he turned back. "Nice catch, Fie!" He said to her with a wink and flashing an okay sign then shut the door.

"Look at that, you big bro is proud of you!" Vivi said with a giggle, playfully tapping at Fie's shoulder.

"Rean's not my big bro, shut up."

Did that make Fie blush? That's adorable! The pink haired girl eagerly wrapped her arms around Fie's neck, a hungry glint in her eyes and a mischievous grin on her lips. "Make me."

From the other side of the door, Rean and Gaius heard a loud "eep!" from the Borsche girl. "See, that's what you're missing out on," the swordsman said to his friend.

"Rean, please. Like I explained to Laura, it was never my intention to lead on Linde during the festival and I already got a lot in my mind thinking about what is happening in my homeland to think of a relationship."

"Heh, sorry. Anyway, are you heading to the cafeteria?"

"I'll take a shower first. I'll meet you there."

The two split up and Rean set forth to grab something to eat. Arriving at his destination, Rean noticed a few people having a late night snack, including his instructor occupying a table by herself. Although, he couldn't exactly call a bottle of Spiritus a "snack." After grabbing something for himself, he decided to offer Sara some company, especially since he wanted to share the news.

"You won't believe what I just saw."

The despondent Bracer replied with a "Hmm?"

"Fie and Vivi were making out in the storage room."

"Good for her," Sara filled her shot glass and downed it in one go. "At least one of us is getting lucky."

Well, that was not the reaction Rean was expecting from their instructor. No jokes, no teasing, not even a hint of pride? Now that he took a good look at her, Sara looked kind of depressed. "Are you okay, instructor? Did something happen?"

"I shot my shot."

Shot her shot…? What does that- Oh… He knew exactly what that meant. "So, no Sara S. Arseid then?"

"Nope," she popped the 'p' derisively as she poured more alcohol on her glass and immediately drank it. "No Sara S. Arseid. And he was such a gentleman about it toooooo…" Sara whined as she lowered her head to rest it on her arms. "I can't even get actually mad. He said he was flattered and talked about how I'm an amazing woman, said I'm talented and smart and strong and kind and beautiful and any man would be honored to have me and I know he wasn't just trying to be nice me because that's Victor freakin' Arseid, that man meant every word he was saying."

That was depressing but Rean could sympathize, he had no idea what would've happened if Laura had rejected his advances, feeling lucky that she had seen something in him (not that he was sure what exactly). He felt genuinely bad for the instructor, the woman was smitten by the viscount and looked genuinely happy back when she got a dance with him at the festival, and she had supported him in getting together with Laura so many times, he couldn't help but feel a bit of regret for not trying to be her wingman, but then he never thought she needed the help.

"Sorry to hear, instructor. But it's as they say, there's a of fish at sea and-"

At those words Sara shot her head up, shooting a glare at her student that immediately shut him down. "Rean, don't take this the wrong way but I'll blow my own brain out before hearing you giving me relationship advice, okay?"

"Harsh but fair."

"It's not the first time I've been rejected, won't be the last," she said with a sigh. "I've rejected my share of men and women in my time too. Trust me, I know how this works, by tomorrow I'll be over it, doesn't mean I can't feel down about it."

Rean nodded. Instructor Sara was an adult after all and had experience with that sort of stuff, and it was perfectly fine to feel disappointed about unrequited feelings. But that story didn't quite make sense though, how could the viscount have turned her down? His evaluation of her had been on point, Sara was the whole package, talented and incredibly gorgeous. He hesitated asking but couldn't contain his curiosity.

"Did the viscount say why though? I mean, if he talked up how great you are isn't that more reason to-"

"He's still in love with his wife."

The answer was like a blow to the chest. It said so much about the Radiant Blademaster that Rean was stunned silent, only managing to vocalize an "oh" in response.

"What am I even supposed to even say to that, right?"

As Sara took yet another swig of Spiritus, Rean couldn't help but put himself in Victor's place. He thought again about Dreichels and Sandlot and their relationship, he knew how much the Emperor loved the Saint and had felt a small fragment of how utterly devastating her loss was.

Emperor Dreichels moved on because he had to, as the ruler of Erebonia he needed to continue his lineage, but Viscount Arseid didn't have to, so he didn't. No, he couldn't move on. And that was terrifying to think about. One of the strongest people he had ever met, seemingly unflappable like nothing could ever touch him, still could be burdened by grief for the rest of his life, so where did that leave Rean then? If something were to happen to Laura in the middle of this war what would he do? Could he-

"Stop it," Sara said sharply, taking Rean out of his line of thought.

"Huh?"

"I see that look in your eyes and I know exactly what's going on in that head of yours. You're thinking about what would you do if the worst happens, if you could ever be happy again, if you could go on living, blah blah blah… Nothing good comes out of thinking of morbid crap like that so drop it. You two are here, you're both alive and head over heels for each other, that's what matters. The present, not a theoretical future."

Rean blinked a few times then shook his head, scratching the back of his head with embarrassment. "Heh, I guess you're right, instructor. Kinda silly to be thinking about that."

"Let's not mince words, my wunderkind, you're being very silly getting hung up on that. Incredibly stupid. Majorly dumb. Unfathomably-"

"Yeah, yeah. You can stop now. Go back to being depressed."

The Bracer was about to pour more liquor for herself but for some reason Rean's words made her laugh and set the bottle aside, not like it was helping her anyway. Nah, what had actually helped her mood was talking with someone, Rean didn't even have to say anything actually meaningful or helpful, just being there and chatting with her, bouncing off each other, it was enough.

And of course, despite being the one down in the dumps, Sara had to set Rean's head straight again. It felt nice though, she had to admit. Guiding someone, playing the teacher. It was almost like she was cut out for that role.

Sara grabbed the bottle of Spiritus again and poured one for herself but not to drown her sorrows. "A toast to my sweet little Fie, congrats to your very first girlfriend," she downed the liquor with a satisfactory "aaahh." Alcohol always tasted better when drunk in merriment.

"According to Vivi they're just 'kissing buddies,'" Rean snickered.

Sara let out a loud snort. "Seriously? Like fu-"

"Attention, Courageous' ground team," the voice of their newly appointed communications officer, Munk, called out from the speakers. He didn't sound very enthusiastic but it was a work in progress. "You're required to come to the bridge ASAP. There is an emergency call from Angelica Rogner."

"Hey, nice to finally see, or rather hear, you folks again!"

The transmission wasn't great, the quality was low and there was some static, but it was still clearly the voice of Angelica Rogner blaring through the speakers of the Courageous' bridge, sounding energetic and genuinely happy to talk to them.

"Angie! I'm so glad to hear from you. Are you okay?" Towa said, her voice filled with equal amounts of relief to know her friend was alive and worry about what her current predicament could be.

"Great now that I can hear your sweet voice, my beloved Towa. Who else is there with you? A little birdie told me that Class VII's been taking a ride with Prince Olivert on his airship, like damn, you guys know how to party!"

"We're here, Angelica. All of us," said Rean, also very glad to hear from their friend. "But we're not with the prince anymore, he gave us the keys to the airship and made Towa captain, she's even wearing a hat."

A muffled squeal from the other side of the radio. "Oh wow, I can't believe I've been missing seeing such an adorable sight just because of-" Something cut Angelica off and they could hear a lot of noise in the background, a commotion, some yelling, a gunshot then a grunt. "Because of that. Right, got too caught up with you guys," the Rogner girl continued and from the sounds of her breathing and footsteps in the background, it sounded like she was running.

"Angie, what's going on!? Where are you?"

"I gotta go. Just meet me at the cathedral in Roer, I'll be there the entire day tomorrow. I know where Alisa's mom is."

There was a loud crash and the transmission was cut off.

Towa ordered the Courageous to Roer immediately.