Disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem Awakening, all rights to the owners.

There's a lot of small things happening in this chapter. Morgan and Nathan still aren't showing their best side as characters. They start to shine in the next chapter.

"Uh…"

"Yeah..." Morgan whispers in equal disbelief. "What are the odds?

"Too high apparently."

"We can't just back out now that we know they're here, right?"

"I suppose." I mumble. My grip tenses on my axe, and I take a deep breath. "What do we do? They're slavers. Slavers. They probably know how to fight to some extent."

"I'm not saying we rush in, I'm just that we should do something." Morgan says. "Don't you agree?"

"Uhh..." I grimace reluctantly. Morgan looks slightly disappointed, and I in turn feel a bit offended. "Can you blame me? We're two against two dozen. We can't safely take them all."

"We don't have to." Morgan replies. "We just need to free the slaves."

"And leave the slavers to go about their business."

"Like you said, we can't safely do anything about that." Morgan admits. "But we should do what we can."

"Right, right. Okay, fine. You're the tactician, what do we do?" I ask. My eyes are glued on the ruins where the slavers are based. We're hiding in bushes, but I can't help but feel if anyone walked by we'd be noticed right now.

"First we have to just stay out of sight and observe." Morgan whispers. "Note guard patterns, avenues of attack, maybe wait for them to go out so we can set up a trap or free some captives."

"If you say so." I say tensely. "So, how are we going to hide exactly? Do we put leaves over ourselves or something?

"Of course not. We're going to climb a tree."

"Oh, of course, why didn't I think of that?" I laugh nervously.

"Because I'm the tactician here." Morgan quips in return. "Come on. They're all busy eating. This is the perfect time to find a place to hide out."

As it turns out, the plan isn't to find the tallest tree around. That would be too obvious. Morgan says we need a tall tree, but it's more important that the boughs are thick so it's hard to see though. Granted, it will be hard for us to see too, but it's more important that we remain unseen than that we can see everything. We're no use if we're dead.

It's not too hard. We find a good tree and clamber up to the middle branches. It's cramped and uncomfortable, but... it's a tree, what was I expecting? It fits our needs, and that'll have to be good enough.

Sitting in a tree for hours on end is mind-numbing. This is the first proper taste of anything close to military life I've gotten, and it sucks ass. I'm constantly worried because we're only several dozen meters away from the border of the enemy encampment, and also constantly bored because I'm sitting in a goddamn tree for hours on end, unable to do anything but watch, listen, and sometimes whisper to Morgan.

I really have no idea what I'm getting into. I regret this already. Freeing some slaves would be great, but I'm going to be hard-pressed to say I felt in any way satisfied with this.

Huh, that sounds really petty. I mean, it is really petty, but am I wrong to feel that way? Throwing my life into danger is never going to feel worthwhile even if, from a logical standpoint, I know it is. I'm doing the right thing, and I hate it, but I'm doing it anyways because of logic.

You know what, this is a bad time to get philosophical. It's hard not to let my thoughts wander though. I'm in a tree. I can't state that enough. I'm sitting in a tree, and I can't possibly be expected to focus for multiple hours on end. Or can I? I don't know. How do soldiers deal with this shit?

"Stop fidgeting Nathan."

"Sorry."

"Just calm down, it's only been an hour, you're going to emotionally exhaust yourself."

"Only an hour?"

"Yep."

"Oh God..."

###

I've never been one for meditation, but it ends up being the only thing I can really do to pass the time. Morgan is doing most of the monitoring. She actually knows what to look for, and has a far better memory than me. My observations over the last hour have been banal and rather useless. Morgan has been polite in her responses, but I got the feeling I wasn't helpful so I just stopped mentioning things.

What was I talking about? Right, meditation.

I don't really get meditation for the most part. I understand it conceptually, but it don't know how much of it you need to do for it to start having an effect. It's probably one of those things you need to do frequently to see results I imagine. However, at the moment, it's the only thing I can do, so I do.

Well, I try, and then I start getting distracted by story ideas. I'm a writer (fanfiction writer, not a proper writer… yet) so I'm always eager to find a new idea for a story. Story ideas occupied most of my thoughts whenever I wasn't doing anything in particular, and now ends up being no exception. Some of those ideas are old ideas, one's that will never see the light of day, but that I still hold dear. Some are newer, that I like a lot, but I've never managed to write in a way that satisfied me. Some ideas are new as of this day, and mostly centered around stealth narratives, or Morgan.

You know what, I should probably get rid of the ideas involving Morgan. It would be rude to imagine random things about someone who actually exists… assuming this isn't a coma. I'm still not discounting that idea.

My thoughts are just a mess now. Ugh. It's hard to not think of something. I'm still bored too, despite my imagination trying to supply a distraction. I really should learn to meditate. It's supposedly good for you, and you can supposedly do it anywhere.

I hear Morgan scribble something in her notes, so I glance up at her. The girl's eyes are fixed on something in the slavers' camp, so I try to figure out what she's looking at. I've barely been paying-

"Noire." I whisper suddenly. The slaves have been brought out into somewhere we can see for something. I think it's dinner time for them. Why on Earth is Noire here though? Her paralogue is on the other side of the country. "It's Noire. Wow. Okay…"

"Noire? Who's that?"

"Uh… she's like you. Dimension hopper. Without amnesia though."

"Oh." Morgan blinks. "Uh, cool. I meant which one though."

"Oops, uh..." I mumble, and squint. "Black hair, pale skin, tattered green clothes, young adult, female, busty."

"Ah, got it. I see her." Morgan nods. "I take it we should free her first?"

"Probably. She can use a bow, and is at least a somewhat experienced fighter." I whisper. "Of course, that's assuming my knowledge from the game is somewhat accurate to this reality."

"We don't have a bow."

"Yeah." I grimace. "Hopefully we can find one then. Unless you know how to make a bow?"

"Nope. Not like I could at the moment anyways."

"Right, so… find one. Or maybe Noire can make one herself if we can free her. Heck, we could probably just give her a sword and she'll still be more useful than any other given slave because she has actual combat experience."

I don't actually know that, but Noire is the only one there that I can almost guarantee knows how to fight. The others, mostly young girls, I don't imagine have combat experience.

Wow, that's sexist of me. I just realized that. This world is based on medieval times, so I imagine it's true (and I am going to keep going on those assumptions for now), but I should probably check the norms of this world when I get the chance. Maybe this world is totally equal.

I doubt that, pegasus knights and fighters were gender-locked in the game, so by that measure the sexes shouldn't be equal here, but a person can hope.

"I can see why the slavers would take her. She's a looker." Morgan notes. "Hmm… uh… hey…"

"What?"

"So, you have a bunch of knowledge about the world and stuff, right?"

"Right…?"

"So, you have some sort of scrying ability or ability to tell the past, right?"

"Erm… not exactly. It's complicated."

"It doesn't matter what exactly it is." Morgan says. She sounds a bit rushed, worried. "What do you know about Noire's enslavement? Or just the enslavement of these girls in general?"

"Not much. I just knew Noire would be found around slavers."

"Okay… okay…" Morgan murmurs, taking a deep breath.

"What's wrong?" I ask quietly.

"Nothing."

"Clearly something is. Spill."

"I just- How fast do we need to be?" Morgan asks in a rush. "Think about it, right? Attractive young women, slaves, surrounded by a bunch of amoral men?"

"Oh." I blink. "Oh. Okay. I get the picture."

This is a lot darker than the game. Wow, okay, yeah, that would be a worry. That is a huge worry. Holy shit.

"We can't be hasty." I say nervously. "But… God, I wish we had an army right now."

"I know, right?" Morgan mutters. Her hand tightens on her notebook. "But we can't do anything until some of them leave."

"So this is what it's like to feel powerless." I think, grimacing. "Not something I ever wanted to feel, but here I am."

It's hard to keep my eyes off Noire after that. I hate the twisting in my gut I feel when the slaves are taken back inside the ruins, where we can't see that they're alright.

I hope we get an opening soon. I want Noire, and the rest of the slaves, out.

###

The logical part of my brain says that a large division of the slavers leaving probably means they're going on another raid, which is certainly a bad thing, but the emotional part of my brain is overjoyed at the thought we might be able to actually do something to help the captives here right now… which is still a good thing I suppose.

However, five against two is still not great odds, so we have to be careful about this. It's just reaching sundown, so any plan to just grab slaves and run is moot. There's no way we'll navigate safely in the dark with people on our trail. We need to take out the five guards, free the slaves, and then go. We should have a few hours, which is plenty of time, because I doubt that raid is going to be super fast, and they have to travel to whatever village they're heading for in the first place, and they have to travel back here…

So yeah, we should have time. Probably. Hopefully.

"Plan?" I ask in a whisper.

"Kill things." Morgan replies. "Pick off the patrolling guards one by one, and then we can take on the two guarding the ruins proper."

"Okay." I mumble. I take a long, deep breath. "Okay. Just point me in the right direction."

"We still need to wait a moment, we need to see how the guards are going to patrol."

"Right, right, right."

The wait is agonizing. We watch the three guards slowly patrol around the edge of their camp. An obvious problem presents itself in that the camp isn't particularly large, so it's rare that they're out of each other's view.

"We need somewhere we can get an unnoticed kill, at least for a few moments." I whisper. "Maybe just as someone comes around the side of one of the ruins?"

"Maybe." Morgan mutters. "We'd have to get in position without being noticed though."

"Well…" I say slowly. "Maybe not."

"How so?"

"Only one of them has a bow. If we can take him out, then your range advantage might be enough to deal with the rest of them. We might not need to isolate them if we can take out the archer."

"Might." Morgan emphasises. "Though that is a good point. There isn't necessarily going to be a clean way to deal with this."

"Hmm…" I frown. My mind flicks between a few other locations and a few crappy plans before settling on… "Hey, I have another idea."

"What?"

"I look like a brigand, right?"

"Yeah…?"

"So, what if I were to just walk up to them, and say I'm new. Maybe I went off to take a piss or something and came back to everyone being gone." I offer. "I might be able to distract one or two of them so you can shoot 'em in the back."

"That's risky…"

"Yes, but what plan do we have that isn't risky?"

"True." Morgan grimaces. She's not exactly happy about that fact, but it's a fact nonetheless. "I don't want you walking into danger like that though."

"Choose the logically best plan, ignore your emotions." I murmur. "What do we do?"

"Aaugh…" Morgan groans. "Okay, fine. Go be a distraction. I'll blast them from behind. Don't die."

"That's the plan… or at least I hope it is." I mutter as I cautiously climb down the tree. Morgan clambers after me, and is notably more nimble than myself.

I wait a moment so Morgan can put some distance between herself and me, take a deep breath, and saunter towards the camp.

"Hey!" I bark to one of the guards, trying to sound as gruff as I can. "Where the fuck did everyone go!?"

"Who the fuck are you!?" The guard shouts back.

"I'm Garnef!" I say, using the first name that comes to mind… which just happens to be an old fire emblem villain. Well, too late to change that now. "The new guy? Remember?" I frown. "Goddamnit, why can't you guys ever remember me?"

Honestly, considering I haven't been stabbed yet, I think this is going fairly well. Refuge in audacity for the win?

"How the hell did you miss the raid!?" The guard shouts.

"No one told me about it!"

"And you missed everyone leavin' too?!"

"I was taking a piss!"

"For ten mintues!?"

"I have problems alright!?"

At this point the other guards have come over to see what the commotion is about. One of them looks suspicious, but the other is smirking in amusement. Better yet, they're standing right next to each other and one of those two has a bow.

"Any second now Morgan…" I think while crossing my arms. "Light 'em up. Kill the archer."

The girl doesn't disappoint. A fireball comes roaring out of the trees and engulfs the two spectating guards. It takes a few seconds to fully kill them, and they scream in pain and fall to the floor in the meantime. I didn't realize elfire worked as a small area-of-effect attack. Both guards are down. Nice.

I make the split second-decision to whirl around in Morgan's direction and pull out my axe. I'm not going to attack her, obviously, but I don't want the bandit near me taking a chunk out of me. I've never fought a proper battle in my life, so I'm going for deception rather than combat.

It pays off too. The person I was talking to runs right past me in a bid to get to Morgan, and I bury my axe in his back as he runs by.

Morgan calmly walks in and finishes off the three guards with swift flicks of her sword. "Three down. Well acted by the way."

"Thanks." I don't agree with that statement at all, I did terribly, but this isn't the time to debate. There's still two more to go. Hopefully we can take them out just as smoothly, but they certainly know we're coming. "So… how are we going to deal with the ruins? They know we're coming."

"Good point." She frowns while looking at the ruined building. "Hmm… okay, I have a plan this time."

"Shoot."

"Shoot?"

"Uh, go ahead." I suppose since guns don't exist the term "shoot" either doesn't exist or isn't used a lot, and therefore the slang for "shoot" doesn't exist either.

"Just boost me up onto the roof. I'll shoot them from there. They'll probably be expecting us to come in the front." Morgan suggests.

That's… really smart. She's taking advantage of the ruin's collapsed ceiling for an unexpected angle of attack. "Okay, but we need to be quiet."

We move as quietly as possible around the back of the building, which is eerily silent. I expected the two remaining guards to be shouting threats or something. Maybe they're hiding behind the door, ready for an ambush.

Well the joke is on them.

Morgan is quite light (or maybe it's just because I'm stronger than I was in my old body), so it's easy to boost her up to where she needs to be. Immediately after I can hear some screams, some female, two male, and the crackle of fire.

I hope Morgan has good accuracy.

I run over the entrance, axe out, and cautiously step inside. I sigh in relief when I see the two remaining guards burning to a crisp on the floor.

Wow, that sounds really terrible of me. I'm on a roll today.

Morgan, again, finishes off the slavers with quick licks of her sword after she jumps from the roof down to the floor.

"Nice shooting." I praise. My nose wrinkles. "Bad smell though."

"Oh, sorry, just let me get out my scentless fire tome." Morgan huffs as I help her down off the roof.

I turn my eyes to the surprisingly large number of young women and girls, crammed into these ruins. That group we saw brought out before must not have been all of them. There's… uh…

"Four dozen. Geeze. They probably outnumber the slavers." Morgan mutters.

We each search one of the two guards. I find the key ring (and some silver, score) and hold it up. "Here we go."

At this point I also notice how quiet the room is. You think with four dozen people in the ruins there would be some noise aside from me fiddling with the keys, but all the women and girls are totally silent. Some of them stare at us while some are looking at the floor or huddling as far away as they can manage.

I move to Noire first, and try the various keys in the lock on her shackles. To break the weird silence, I start talking. "You alright?"

"U-Umm…" She blinks, apparently surprised I'm talking to her. "Not great?"

"Well, that's fair enough." I cringe. That was a bad question. "How long have you been with these people?"

"About a week." She responds.

"Well, today's the end of that." I say firmly. I finally find the right key, and her shackles pop open. "There we go."

Noire shakily stands up. I try not to stare. It's weird to see her up close. Mostly I'm still surprised how well the in-game art translates to real life. I mean, her face is marred by dirt and her black hair is knotted and awful, but she's still totally identifiable despite that.

"Hey Morg." I call.

"Yeah?"

"One of those guys outside had a bow, right?"

"Yeah."

"Grab it for Noire. Arrows too."

"Ah, good idea." She turns in place and runs out of the ruins. Noire blinks in shock.

"You… know my name?" She whispers.

"Yep. Hi. I'm Nathan." I extend my hand for a shake. She eyes me warily for a moment, then accepts the gesture. "So, uh, we have no idea when the other slavers will be back, so if we need some extra defence you might need to shoot some fools, okay?"

"S-Sure." She says. I hope that means she actually knows how to shoot and she isn't just saying that to placate me.

"You probably won't have to, but better safe than sorry." I say. I then turn my attention to the rest of the slaves, and start opening their shackles one by one.

###

It takes three times as long to get back to the village as it did to get to the slaver camp. Part of that is the slowness of the freed slaves, and part of it is the fact it's pitch dark out and getting quite cold. A few people have torches, some at the front and at the back, but we have to frequently pause to help up someone who stumbled and is having trouble getting up.

We do make it back to the village though. We stumble in at… I don't know the time. I don't have a watch. It doesn't matter. We go knocking on some doors, irritating the residents, but when they see what we've brought with us they immediately jump into action. Soon the whole village is abuzz preparing food and finding extra blankets.

Mogan is useful at directing the chaos, but I don't have much to offer. So, instead, I sit at the side with Noire, talking.

"So, basically, me and Morgan are heading for Ylisse." I explain in a hushed voice. "She's a dimension hopper like you. Different but similar circumstances. We want to find the Shepherds. I presume you do too?"

"Th-That would be nice." Noire agrees. "I can come with you?"

"Of course. The more the merrier… and it will be safer anyhow. You know how to fight after all. More protection is always good." I shrug. I eye her for a moment, noting her tattered clothes. "Though we'll have to get you a new outfit first."

"I-It's fine, really. I can manage with this."

"Yeah, no. There's no way you're surviving without any warm clothes." I huff. "Besides, do you really want to be walking around in something skimpy like that?"

Noire suddenly seems to realize her tattered clothing is showing perhaps a bit too much skin, and covers herself with her hands as best she can while giving an embarrassed squeak. I snort in amusement. It's probably inappropriate to be amused by this, but this whole day has been surreal enough that I'm having a hard time telling how I'm supposed to react.

"Are you really laughing at a girl about the fact that she has terrible clothes from being a slave?" Morgan asks as she wanders over to us.

"Maybe." I say. I guess I technically am. Now that she says it out loud it sounds awful. I am doing terribly today.

Morgan shakes her head, but she's smiling. "You're lucky you can get away with that."

"I've gotten away with a lot more than I ever expected to in the last few days." I shrug. It's true, I would have never imagined I would share a bed with Morgan (innocently, but still), or really just any of the physical closeness I've gotten away with over the last few days.

"It has to be your natural charm."

"You're mocking me, aren't you?"

"Eh, half and half." Morgan shrugs. "I mean, your social awareness is… not great. But it's that exact thing that lets you get away with this, cuz I'm pretty sure Noire here picked up on that right away." She glances at Noire. "Didn't you?"

"Yeah, s-sorta." The girl mumbles.

I feel slightly disappointed, and embarrassed, upon hearing that.

"I wonder what the villagers are going to think though. You've picked up yet another young girl…" Morgan teases.

"You do realize I'm only nominally in charge of this group, right?" I respond dryly. "Besides, Noire is probably fairly close in age to me."

"I-I'm twenty…"

"See? One year. Barely anything." I huff. Morgan rolls her eyes. "And I hardly 'picked her up'. It was basically a given she would come with us. After all, you're a future kid too."

"You're no fun." The tactician sighs.

###

"I-I don't have to join you do I?" Noire mumbles.

Morgan frowns. "No, why would you- oh. Nathan!"

"Yeah?"

"Two rooms!"

"Oh, right." I blink. Me and Morgan actually never bothered to get separate rooms after the first night. It was partially to save money, because while Morgan has a lot of gold she doesn't have an infinite amount, but it was mostly because we just couldn't be bothered to change it.

Yes, just because we were lazy we never got separate rooms.

"We'll get two rooms." I emphasize.

The tavern keeper rolls his eyes. He got to hear the whole conversation, and has been smirking the whole time. "Take the room next to yours."

Morgan pays for the other room and we all go upstairs. Noire immediately gets changed out of her tattered clothes into the new ones we bought for her, and then we have an extremely late dinner (for free because we just saved a bunch of people). As it turns out, simple potato chips exist in this world (thin potato slices covered in vegetable oil then cooked in an oven), so I've been ordering those every single night. Morgan has been stealing some every single night, so whenever she does I take forkfulls of her main meal (usual chicken) as retribution.

For some reason this is stare-worthy for Noire. I don't get what's so unusual.

"So, erm, I meant to ask." I say after fending off another theft attempt by Morgan. "Noire, who's your father?"

"My father?"

"Yeah."

"Why just him?" Morgan asks curiously. "Why not ask about both of her parents?"

"I already know her mother."

"You do?"

"Yep. Tharja."

"It's pronounced thar-ya." Noire corrects in a mumble. "Bu-But yes, she's my mother. How did you know?"

"I have outside knowledge." I shrug.

Noire doesn't exactly seem satisfied with that explanation, but she doesn't push further. "Wh-Why do you want to know why my father is?"

"It will help me determine certain facts about this world that might be pertinent information." Mostly skills, if those even exist. Also, it helps me figure out if hair color is passed down, which will help me figure out who Morgan's mother is because unlike all the other kids Morgan can get hair color from her mother. "I'm sorry if that sounds vague, but it is useful information. I'm not just asking for curiosity's sake, though if you are truly uncomfortable I can get the information from someone else eventually."

Noire considers this for a moment, then reluctantly mutters. "Gaius."

Gaius huh? The hair color didn't pass down. Noire has black hair and Gaius has orange. I guess that's just a game mechanic.

"S-So what does that help you with?" Noire asks after a few seconds of quiet.

"Well, it tells me that figuring out Morgan's mother is going to way more difficult." I mutter. "There's a lot of information I had that's totally down the drain now. I'd have to ask some more questions to determine if some of my other information is still relevant too."

"Like…?"

"If I say "Lethality" or "Lucky Seven" does that mean anything to you?"

"No…?"

"Right, okay." So there's a chance that skills in the game-like sense don't exist. Maybe Gaius taught her how to pick locks or use a dagger, but in the realistic way and not through some gimmick. I think I can safely assume by this point that most game mechanics are non-factors. "Well shit."

"Sorry?"

"It's fine." I mumble. It's not fine. This sucks. That's a lot of potentially important information on skills and parentage that's totally worthless now. I suddenly know a lot less about this world than I could have. My only worth right now is that I have knowledge about the world, the people in it, and future events. Any reduction to my knowledge is a reduction of my worth, and a reduction of my worth might be fatal if the Shepherds decide I'm not worth keeping around because there's no way I'm going to survive on my own in this world.

###

I wake up with Morgan's face mashed against my cheek and her body on top of mine. The girl rolls in her sleep, a lot. I'm surprised it didn't wake me up. I wait for a few moments, squinting against the sun sneaking through the ratty curtain, to see if she'll wake up. When it's clear she won't wake up on her own I poke her in the cheek, repeatedly, until she does.

"Wuuuut?" She mumbles. Her eyes crack open to gaze blearily at me.

"Muhahaha, you're mine now girl!" I say flatly, not bothering with the appropriate inflection. "Take off your coat… or something like that."

Morgan pauses for a second, then snorts in amusement at the callback and pushes herself up. "Nice."

"Did I meet your expectations this time?" I asks cheekily.

"With that monotone voice? No way." She replies as she rubs sleep from her eyes. "We were gonna leave today right?"

"I think so."

"You think so?"

"You're the one who usually keeps track of this stuff. Sue me." I shrug, and sit up myself.

"What would you do without me?" Morgan teases.

"Die in a ditch probably. Freeze, starve, one of the two."

"Wow, the confidence on you in unbelievable." She drawls sarcastically. "Don't give yourself too much credit there. I might accuse you of having a positive self-image."

"I'll take realistic over positive."

"But that was neither."

"I disagree."

"And you're wrong." She steps out of bed, stretches, and grabs her coat. "Ugh… okay, let's wake Noire, grab breakfast, see if our stuff is ready, and get gone."

"Sounds like a plan." I yawn. I watch her find her boots (which she tossed aside last night), frown upon seeing her hair, and reach a hand out to correct the mess on her head. "You need a comb."

"Says you."

"Says me." I agree. "And probably Noire if we asked her."

"Oh really?"

"Really."

"Well thanks fashion guru." She snorts. "I'll keep that in mind."

"No you won't. You'll 'forget' immediately." I retort. "Won't you?"

"Guilty as charged." She responds unabashedly. She huffs when I run my fingers through her dark brown hair, trying to straighten it. "Come on, it's not that bad!"

"You look like you let a family of crows use your hair for a nest."

"That's… a very specific look."

"Your look. Because you don't have a comb."

"Well excuse my past probably dimension-hopping self from a horrible future for not considering a comb top priority." She pouts.

"Forgiven. I'm correcting that mistake now anyhow."

"Sure you are."

"You think I'm joking, but I'm not."

"Prove it." Morgan challenges.

"Fine." I put on my overclothes, snatch my coin purse, and leave.

###

"Umm…" Noire says tentatively, glancing between us. "Am I missing something…?"

"A comb." I respond smugly.

"Proper priorities for our money." Morgan huffs with her arms crossed. "Ow…"

"You have tangles because you didn't clean your hair enough. Your fault." I scold as I work through another knot in her hair with the newly-purchased wooden comb in my hand. "Now sit still."

"I'm eating!" She complains.

"And I'm combing." I respond flatly. "Deal with it."

"It's a waste of our money." Morgan jabs.

"My money. It's my choice."

"So what? My money is group funds, but you can spend yours however you want?"

"No. But you're too nice to let us fend for ourselves." I say with a triumphant smirk.

Morgan glares, but she knows I'm right.

"Besides, it was only a couple copper. Basically nothing."

"Some people would kill for a couple copper."

"Some people would kill you for breathing, but you don't seem worried about me wasting air." I respond cheekily. "You've lost Morgan. Accept it."

"I'm a master tactician, I never lose."

"A good tactician can't lie to themselves, otherwise they're accepting obviously false information." I reply evenly.

Morgan's eyes promise murder, Noire looks utterly confused, and I'm still smiling smugly. This is a good start to the day.

How Nathan deals with combat is something I had to have a good long think about when planning to make this a full story. I actually intend for him to be a noncombatant, which is fairly unusual for isekai/self-insert main characters from what I'm aware. I have to consider what he'll end up doing if he's not fighting though, as fighting is the most obvious way for a protagonist to interact with the plot.

I've learned from the next few chapters that Noire is very much a background character. She really doesn't mesh all that well with Nathan and Morgan at the moment. Remember, they're both strangers to her, and she's not nearly as quick to trust as Morgan is.