Here's a problem that open-world games can't really avoid: the act of traveling from one place to another is, more often than not, boring as all hell.

Most titles address this problem simply by giving players traversal methods that are faster, flashier, or otherwise more engaging than just holding a direction and watching a character's run cycle loop over and over for minutes on end while the scenery slowly changes. 'Cause when all you've got is two legs and a pair of shoes? You either pray that the trip won't take too long, or hope that something happens along the way, because you're about to experience tedium the likes of which can only be matched by the act of doing corporate paperwork.

Seriously, imagine playing a GTA game without vehicles. Or Breath of the Wild without horses or the paraglider. The Fast Travel mechanic was conceived for a damn good reason, people.

Sadly, no such mechanic existed here. Or, if there was, it wasn't being very forthcoming on how I could go about using it. Which meant there was only one thing I could do.

Eleven days. Eleven. Fucking. Days. Of absolutely nothing. On top of the seven days that had already passed before I'd stumbled across that pack of bandits. That I murdered.

Still no people. Still no wagons. Still no tracks or campsites or anything even remotely indicating recent signs of life. Nothing. All I got was a bridge over the lake I'd been following along, on the second day. Which I crossed over, because I was getting sick of being on the right side of the bloody thing all the time.

And there was a dirt path on the other side. Which almost made me belt out a yell of victory, because roads led to towns, which led to people that wouldn't immediately want to shove a knife down my throat and make off with my wallet if I made the mistake of drawing attention to myself. I hoped.

The novelty of the change of scenery from river surrounded by grass and the occasional plant or tree to dirt road surrounded by grass and the occasional plant or tree lasted for about half an hour before the numbness set in again, and my brain inevitably fell to the temptation of thinking about the bandit incident for the fifty-second time.

Oh–no, wait. This was actually when it finally started addressing all the weird little discrepancies that had been popping up ever since I first opened my eyes on this continent. Like the fact that I should've died from dehydration at least two times over already, and not only was I still walking, but my throat also wasn't feeling even remotely dry.

This was compounded by the subsequent realization that my stomach had yet to signal me that it needed something inside it that wasn't acid the entire time I'd been here. Which was then magnified by the discovery that my legs hadn't melted into a puddle of sore muscle-y slag yet despite the constant striding pace I'd been sticking to every single day.

Everything was slammed home by my sudden acceptance of the fact that I hadn't died to the axe hit that had smashed into my spine during the fight (damn it, false alarm, it ended up thinking about the fucking bandits again). Whether that be by blood loss or nerve-severance-induced leg paralysis, let alone how the pain from said hit had only lasted three seconds at best.

On the one hand, I was feeling incredibly vindicated, as there was no better proof than this that whatever that thrice-damned flash drive had done to me really wasn't a hallucination after all. On the other hand, these odd qualities also carried a lot of implications for what my cell structure and genetic makeup looked like now, and that was kinda-sorta making me freak out a little. I mean, I couldn't complain, because I wouldn't be alive to appreciate the changes if I didn't have them, but suddenly finding out that you're not exactly fully human anymore doesn't usually do very nice things to your psyche.

Now, I understand that I don't have a lot of real-world proof for that, but again, I've always been more of a fan of fiction than I was of nonfiction, and once you've seen enough Sephiroths, you start to get the idea that Human Consciousness plus Inhuman Physiology equals Poor Mental Health nine times out of ten. Or a case of Crippling Omnicidal Insanity. Either-or.

Fortunately for me, however, this was more of a relatively minor case. It wasn't like I couldn't eat, or drink, or feel pain, because I definitely could. I just didn't necessarily have to do that now. And honestly? That was kind of awesome. I would never have to go number one or number two ever again, which might as well be a godsend considering the restroom quality I could expect from a medieval setting like this. Not to mention how the pain-cutoff would, and already had made me an objectively better fighter.

Overall, in the end, it was nice to have at least a few isekai-typical perks in the face of all the crap I'd had to deal with thus far. Most stories in veins like these had the appeal of "visit another world! See new sights! Make new friends! Do cool shit! Wield awesome powers! Find a significant other!" So far, I'd managed to technically score one out of five, maybe two if you counted "ambushed and slaughtered a bandit camp" as something for "do cool shit." Which, when considering how long I'd been here (and discounting the filler of travel time), almost made me feel like I was ahead of the curve.

Not that I really expected to check off all five. My opinions on a significant other were… well, suffice to say that they weren't something I was confident about discussing with anyone. I didn't think they were a bad thing, far from it, but in relation to myself, it wasn't a subject that I wanted to sort out my feelings on just yet. Mostly because romance was not an activity I was completely comfortable with partaking in, for reasons I'd rather not say. Because they were silly, stupid reasons.

That's irrelevant at the moment, though. Much as I'd love to skip ahead a little to a point when this stuff is actually important, this isn't a noir film or whatever the hell Pulp Fiction was, and I'm no Tarantino. So you'll just have to deal with some good old-fashioned chronological storytelling. I will, however, reserve the right to foreshadow stuff. Gotta have a little fun somehow, right?

Anyway. It'd been eleven days since I first got my hands dirty, and a cumulative total of eighteen days since I got here. I hadn't left the road since I found it, only taking breaks to sleep on the side when I could barely see my hand in front of my face even with the help of the moon. At the moment, the sun was still hauling itself slowly skyward from behind the edge of the landscape, painting what little clouds I could see up above with the usual morning palette. I was dragging myself along, trying with negligible success to deal with how I hadn't yet gotten accustomed to waking up fully rested from the word go, as opposed to being tired and sluggish for about half an hour before my neurons peeled away all the cobwebs that had gotten stuck between their pathways since the previous night.

Reaching the crest of a hill, I took a moment to stretch, squeezing my eyes shut while I twisted my joints around and attempted to cavitate myself without accidentally dislocating anything. Relaxing after a particularly satisfying twist of my spine, my lids cracked open again, and then snapped back into their sockets in shocked realization because fucking finally.

A town. An honest-to-god town.

Or maybe a village? I dunno. Point was, buildings. Quite a few of 'em. Walled on all sides by a sturdy-looking wooden palisade about as tall as most of the structures it was safeguarding, which wasn't actually that tall. Three gates acted as points to form a triangle over the whole thing; one right in front of me, one on the far left side, and one on the far right. Not exactly large, but a fair bit bigger than those 'towns' you'd see in old westerns, that were composed of an overly wide Main Street leading to a town hall and nothing else.

Even better, I could see people. For the most part they were simply milling about, engaging in typical villager activities. Or I thought they were, since they were all little more than tiny dots of brown and pink and what-have-you from where I was standing.

In retrospect, this just makes it even more unbelievable how I never met anyone else while I was making my way here. The odds stated that I should have passed at least one person going the opposite direction, but nope. Not a single sorry sack of meat and bones to be seen at any point.

Deliberation on that could come later, though. At last, it was time to get my bearings and figure out just where the hell I was.

Jogging down the hill, I managed to reach the outskirts by the time the sun had risen about halfway to its peak. When I was right about to enter, however, I was stopped by what looked a lot like a local guardsman. He had no helmet to speak of, but the breastplate, pauldrons and greaves he was wearing, and the spear in his hand made it obvious that he was here on watch duty.

"Hail, traveler." Now that was a certified classic line right there. "I hate to pry, but I don't think I'd feel secure about letting you in if I didn't know what happened to you." He pointedly glanced at the sorry state of my clothes, paying particular attention to the cuts in my shirt and the bloodstains that had escaped being soaked out when I'd dunked myself into the river for a bath a while ago.

Luckily, this was a time when honesty wouldn't actually screw me over. 'Don't get caught up in it. State the facts, quick and clean. Don't linger.'

"Bandits," I told him. "Ran across a small pack of 'em next to a river back thataway. Don't know how I did it, but I nicked this sword off of one and lived to tell the tale."

He hummed in understanding. "Yeah, that'd explain it. Good on you, then. Scum already take too many kids these days." But he wasn't satisfied just yet. "Now, can I trust you not to use that to stir up any trouble?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," I answered with my hands up. "Even if I did, I don't think I'd get very far with you around. Not against that pike."

An approving chuckle left his lips. "Smart boy. Okay, one last question. What's your name?"

"Andrew, sir. But feel free to call me Andy."

He stepped back, flicking his head towards the town. "Alright, Andy. Welcome to Gerash, the only town in all Crimea without so much as a single brick, stone or otherwise. Go on ahead."

I flashed the guy a thumbs-up before going on my merry way, thankful that the little interrogation hadn't been too in-depth. Revisiting those memories wasn't something I'd like to have on my to-do list for today. Or tomorrow. Or ever.

'Stuff it down,' my brain advised. 'Can't handle it now, brood about it when you're in a better mental state.'

For the most part, hardly anyone seemed to notice my arrival, though I did get a few odd looks here and there thanks to my garb's aforementioned poor state.

Unfortunately, without any gold, I couldn't really do anything about that. I could try pawning off the vulnerary in the satchel I'd grabbed, but that would leave me without a way to heal, and giving up something that could save my life for comfort felt wrong on so many levels. Rule number twenty-seven of proper RPG conduct: you only sold your potions for cosmetic items after you had more of them than you knew what to do with.

Of course, that also meant I likely wouldn't be sleeping on a bed tonight, but at this point, I'd gotten used to snoozing on the grass. The cold, wet, prickly grass, only a tiny bit better than the hard, rough, unforgiving dirt road.

...I was only a little broken up about that.

That didn't mean I had to accept that, though. I'd seen what was obviously a market space from my vantage point earlier, and that meant there was money to be made in this place. All I had to do was look in the right spots.

"Okay…" I muttered to myself as I wandered the streets. "So. I'm in Crimea, that's good. Or bad, if Daein's coming. Could go either way." The only timeline reference I had at the moment was that Daein hadn't occupied this place, which wasn't much, but it was a start. For now, however, I would have to put figuring out the 'when' of the matter on the backburner. "First order of business, get some spending cash for some actual gear. Gonna want some armor like that guard's. How do I go about doing that…?"

Outdoor activities were never my thing back on Earth, but that didn't mean I had no experience with them. "I'm an old hand at manual labor, and there's always a bit of heavy lifting to be done in places like these." Hundreds of service projects had gotten me well acquainted with the likes of shoveling gravel and hauling wood. "'Course, if I was lucky and this world worked like a game, there'd be a bulletin board in the center of town with all the available jobs posted. Won't hold my breath on that one, though."

I had to pause for a moment to dodge out of the way of a laughing little girl who was being hounded by a boy, probably playing tag or something. "Ah, crap, that's right. I doubt my outfit'll do me any favors. Can't imagine many people who'd want an employee looking like a guy fresh out of a crime scene." Presenting yourself professionally was critical to nailing job interviews, and with my sword, shredded wear, not to mention my unshaven facial hair, I probably looked like some kind of self-styled wannabe mercenary. A horrible one, at that.

"Bleh. Think I'll have to bank on pity offers." Amazing how many options became available once you threw pride out the window.

The passing of twenty or so more minutes saw my walk-and-think session lead me to the marketplace I mentioned earlier. Like the town itself, it wasn't overly large, but it was big enough for a good few stalls to sell everything a typical villager would need to survive. Apples, household tools, firewood, all that stuff.

I couldn't resist staring at everything I couldn't have yet, regardless of whether or not I needed it or even knew how to use it. No cool-looking trinkets, no belt pouches, no actual belts. No nothing.

'...oh, damn it, that's a bakery,' my brain pointed out. 'With pies, and… fuck, it's right next door to a butcher shop? Why must you hurt me in this way?!'

Whining at the heavenly treats on display ate up a solid twenty seconds before I resolved to suck it up and keep going. I took a step to the left—

"Ough-!"

—and immediately collided with something fleshy, sending me scrambling off to the side while I tried to keep my feet under me. And failed. Pretty hard. Like the dirt I fell on. That stuff wasn't cushy at all.

"Oww…"

"Ahh, crap! Sorry! Sorry, really sorry!"

Thankfully, like before, the pain didn't stick around. Rubbing my eyes to clear away the disorientation, I opened them to find an outstretched hand, leading to a figure wrapped in a rather large hooded cloak.

"You're not hurt too bad, are you?" Make that a woman wrapped in a rather large hooded cloak. "Sorry about that, again. I should've been paying more attention." The hand motioned for me to take it. "C'mon, lemme help you up."

I blinked a few times before I remembered to react. "Right, right, yeah. Just…" My own hand quickly found hers, and I started to go about using her as a support structure to pull myself up.

This was rendered a moot effort just as quickly, however, when she suddenly hauled me back onto my legs completely on her own, with a heave that spoke to a surprising amount of strength. In fact, it nearly led to me overcorrecting and falling in the other direction, which I thankfully managed to stop on my own. "Whoa. Uh. Okay."

"There ya go!" If nothing else, this girl was certainly chipper. For a moment, it looked like she was about to try and brush my shirt off before she caught herself, seeming to finally take notice of my state of dress. Being as close to her as I was, I couldn't help doing the same thing myself, and managed to pick out a few details hiding behind the cloak.

'Huh. Those are some awfully green eyes.' Nobody I'd ever met before had eyes that were quite as obviously green as the shade I was looking at right now, strong enough to make itself known even through the shadow of the hood. Like, I'd seen green eyes before, but there was green, and then there was green.

The eyes were framed by a pair of bangs that ran down past her cheeks, but not quite to her shoulders, leading up to a white headband. A few bits of hair were poking out from the edges of the hood, which revealed that it was colored a quite eye-catching shade of purple. From what I could make out of the back of her head, it didn't seem too long, probably upper back length if I had to guess.

Looking down the middle into the spots the cloak didn't cover also revealed that she was wearing some very orange garb beneath it, with no armor to speak of, outside of the pauldrons clearly outlined on her shoulders. The cloak itself only went down to around her knees, leaving the pair of boots and leggings she was wearing bare to the world.

It also exposed the bottom half of the scabbard strapped to her waist.

This all tied together to create a weird feeling of familiarity. Like I'd seen someone with these very same traits before, but I couldn't remember where from, or who they actually were.

It took a little too long to realize that she was talking again. "Hey, uh, I don't really mean to be rude or anything, but… do you need any help?"

"Eh?"

"I mean," she started while pointedly looking away from my torn clothing, "between the shirt and the stains and the belt, you don't look like you've been having such a good time, and…" Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she found a workable sentence. "What I'm saying is, I'm getting the idea that you could use a pick-me-up."

I held a finger up, then stalled. "I… well, I can't say I'm in a position to say no, but are you sure? I wouldn't wanna take up more of your time than I already have, and it's not like you owe me anything."

Her own finger came up in response. "Actually, I do owe you one thing." The finger pointed to my bronze piece. "You've got a sword." The hand attached to the finger reached down to pull part of the cloak back, revealing the rest of the scabbard. "I've got a sword." A shark's grin appeared on her face. "You know what that means?"

"Uh…" Some part of me knew where this was going, but wasn't willing to share. "No?"

She threw her hands out. "It means we've gotta have ourselves a duel! Duh! No better way to get the blood pumping than some good old-fashioned sparring!"

The moment I heard "duel," everything clicked into place. 'Oh. Wait a second. I know exactly who this girl is.'

Said girl took my dumbfounded silence of sudden recognition as a resounding 'sure, I'd love to get my ass kicked' and snatched up my wrist to begin hauling me along. "C'mon! There's a really neat training yard over by the west edge. I'm sure the town guard won't mind if we borrow the ring for a bit!"

Before I could even think about trying to get a word in edgewise, she glanced back at me and grimaced. "Ahh, but I'd feel bad dueling somebody looking like that. Umm…" Changing directions on a dime, she started pulling me back towards the marketplace. "Alright, change of plans: we're getting you an outfit that doesn't look like it was used as spare material for sewing practice, and then we're sparring."

"Hey–hey! Miss, I don't even have any-!" The sheer amount of domineering energy emanating from her was wreaking havoc with my ability to speak, but it didn't stop me from trying. Whether or not those attempts were successful is a different story, however.

It did do something though, as I discovered when she suddenly snapped her fingers and turned back to me. "Oh, that's right! I haven't told you my name yet, huh?" Her expression somehow managed to combine sheepish and excited in a way that just radiated an aura of endearment. "Heh, sorry about that. I kinda get really pumped up whenever I see a chance to cross blades with someone. Maybe a little too much. Anyway!"

She flashed a smile that was blinding even from behind the shroud of the hood and hooked a thumb to her head. "I'm Mia! Your friendly neighborhood mercenary! How 'bout you?"

"Andrew," I replied with a tired sigh. "But Andy works, too."

"Roger that, Andy! Now, let's get you some sweet duds!"

Some hours later, I found my mind wandering to the topic of just how quickly established plans could be utterly derailed by something as innocuous as a chance meeting.

That thought was quickly stuffed into a cannon and explosively defenestrated from a 12th-story window when I hit the ground once again and ate dirt for the umpteenth time since we'd arrived at the yard.

"Awesome!" Mia was having way too much fun with this. "Much better! You're really starting to catch on, y'know?"

Weapon rank (Sword) increased to D.

I groaned more out of exasperation than anything else while I peeled myself off the floor. "Right, and it only took me, what, fifteen tries to get the stupid stance down?"

"Hey, I'll have you know it took me twenty," she threw back. "Now dust yourself off. I think you've got the basics down as well as any rookie can at this point, so it's time to put ya to the test."

"Yaaaaay."

"See, that's the spirit!"

My eyes rolled in their sockets while I went about brushing off my new clothes. Battle maniac that she may have been, Mia was surprisingly knowledgeable about quality fabrics, at least from what I could tell. She'd hooked me up with a black short-sleeved shirt, beige pants, and a pair of boots that all had no business being as comfortable as they were. She'd also gone as far as to get me a quality belt, complete with a scabbard for my own sword.

Then, when I revealed to her that I had no real training whatsoever, she offered to show me the ropes. At no extra charge. All she asked for in return was a duel. No money, or service, or any other more conventional methods of payment. Just a single spar.

Sure, I'd be cursing my weakness the entire time I'd be getting the crap beaten out of me, but considering everything I'd be walking away with from it all? It might as well have been highway robbery.

But that didn't mean I wasn't going to complain at all. Even if I only felt it for a fleeting few moments at a time, getting smacked by a wooden stick whittled into the vague shape of a sword still hurt like a bitch. So did hitting the ground.

I was learning, though. Mia's enthusiasm translated… not perfectly, but well enough into teaching that I'd managed to make some pretty good progress in the relatively short time that had passed. She'd drilled me on the fundamentals of proper form, footwork, basic attacks, blocking, and dodging, with that last one involving copious amounts of… well.

I couldn't quite suppress an involuntary shudder as my mind drifted back to that hellish prompt she'd yell right before introducing me to the business end of her training weapon. I soon came to understand that she was liable to spring it on me at any moment; before a drill, after a drill, in the middle of a drill, even during the tiny breaks we took. The obvious lesson in this method, however, was sensible, in that letting my guard down at any point on the battlefield, and I do mean any point, was a recipe for disaster. As such, I had begun to take care to remain aware, just in case she-

"DODGE!"

"HOLYSHI-"

I dropped into a crouch as soon as my brain registered what I'd heard, just barely fast enough to limit the damage done by the wooden stick that passed over my head to just a few clumps of hair. Once the danger had passed, my eyes snapped to the repeat offender in a glare. "Fucking hell, I get it—keep my eyes open! Message received! Could you not?!"

"Heh, sorry." Mia didn't even try to hide her grin. "Couldn't resist."

I glared harder.

The grin fell away. "Right, yeah. Match time." Then it came right back in the form of a light, excited smile. "Prepare yourself!"

A sigh left my lips. While I was already finding out that she could be very tiring to deal with, it was also close to impossible to actually hate Mia. She was a pure, unrestrained go-getter, earnest in just about everything she did, and even if that did make her grate on the nerves a little, all it took was a look in the eyes to tell that it was never out of malice. If she was helping you, you were getting no less than 100% from her, all the time, with no exceptions. Because that was just who she was.

Trying my best to let go of any lingering frustration, I made my way back over to my spot inside the ring, swinging and rolling my limbs around to limber up before settling into a combat stance. Low to the ground, feet a good width apart, dominant sword arm facing towards my opponent, weapon held at the ready. Just like she'd taught me.

Nodding in approval, Mia raised her weapon at the other side of the ring. "Alright, Andy. You know what to do. Now you just gotta do it, yeah?"

"Yeah."

There was that shark grin again. "That's what I like to hear. On my mark."

'Okay, here we go.' Deep breaths.

"Three…"

Sweating was something my body rarely ever did, but I could already feel the telltale pricks of liquid emerging on my scalp and back.

"Two…"

Even if she was probably- scratch that, definitely kneecapping herself for this one to make things fairer, Mia was still several orders of magnitude faster than I was, and it felt like I was trying to hold back a charging bull every time our weapons clashed during her lesson on guarding.

"One…"

And now she was properly hyped for the closest thing to a legitimate duel that she'd be getting from me.

Conclusion?

This was gonna suuuuuck.

"Go!"

Mia exploded from her position, zipping towards me with a telegraphed downward slash. The obvious tell was enough to let me jerk away and attempt a counter, which was in turn dodged and countered. With no time to do anything else, I moved my stick into the path of her own, and a sharp crack reverberated through my bones. Shoving her weapon away, I aimed a warding poke at her midsection and succeeded in getting her to back up a bit, following up with an advancing horizontal cut. She caught my stick on hers easily and redirected it up and away, stepping in and nearly scratching my shirt with another slash while I retreated.

I barely had time to breathe before she was on me again, an upward strike approaching my right side. This one was similarly sent flying away, and put me in a good position for a heavy overhead slash. She elected not to strain her arms and smoothly slid out of range.

"Good reflexes," she offhandedly commented. "Seems like you really took that dodge training to heart, heh!"

"Oh yeah, that reminds me, I haven't thanked you for the lifetime of nightmare fuel that gave me," I shot back, blowing out a stressed breath. "So… thanks. For that."

Mia huffed. "Maybe I should try teaching you how to take a compliment next."

I opened my mouth for another qui—'SHIT!'

Her stick passed an inch from my skin, and my brain began funneling all its resources into the task at hand.

'Guard that, dodge, create space, capitalize– she blocked, deflect the counter, go for the-!' My weapon passed through empty air. 'Swing and a miss. Keep pressuri—THRUST, LEAN BACK! Whoof, okay, push in again, and slash!'

At least my opponent was having fun. Mia's grin never left her face as she kept up her untouchable streak, never letting my training blade even come close to her body. Her own weapon was just as fast, blurring as it came closer and closer to bypassing my defenses with every strike.

I staggered away from another horizontal cut, left on the back foot from a sudden relentless assault that I'd barely managed to escape. Mia charged forward, stick prepped for another slash.

I moved my weapon into the projected path hers would take to reach me almost instantly.

Then I noticed that she wasn't angling her swordbranch out.

'Wait. Didn't she also use that position to thrust earlier?'

My mind began to realize what was happening as she jabbed her practice blade forward in slow-motion.

She had covered this situation before, I remembered far too late. Feints were a nasty topic; rather similar to the 'mix-ups' that were so common in the fighting games I could recall. Dealing with them essentially required you to correctly guess what angle your enemy would take to attack you, using nothing but your intuition and whatever little tells they gave you. Needless to say, this made them incredibly nerve-wracking and dangerous to be on the receiving end of.

Evidently, I had called heads on this coin flip, and ended up with tails. My own stick, left out of position by my premature block, only managed to make it halfway towards the thrust before the inevitable outcome came to pass.

The hunk of wood stabbed into my chest, pushing me off balance and sending me toppling to the ground. Moments later, it was pointing at my throat.

I stared at it, taking a moment to let the crushing feeling of defeat sink in. All I could do next was sigh. 'Welp. Game over.'

"I yield."

The weapon was lowered, and a hand was extended. Just like before, Mia effortlessly hauled me off the floor, though by this point I had learned not to pull hard enough to send myself stumbling forwards.

"Nice job!" Oh, yay, undue praise. "Quick movement, purposeful strikes, good instincts for dodging, and solid blocks." She leaned in, emerald eyes narrowing. "Are you reeeally sure you haven't done this before?"

My fingers found themselves pinching the bridge of my nose in no time. "Mia, for the fifth time, yes. I am completely sure that I never touched a real sword in my life, much less fought anyone with one, until about a week ago."

"Hrmmmmmmm…" Her face stuck itself right next to mine, scrunched up in a comically scrutinizing manner. After a few moments of staring into my dead gaze, she stepped back. "Well, if you say so. But I'm watching you, mister."

I couldn't resist an eyeroll.

"Anywho." She idly began twirling the stick around. "Like I said, you've got as good of a foundation as any rookie with your level of experience will ever have. Honestly, I think your only real problem is that you sometimes don't seem to take a moment to ask yourself if what you're doing is a good idea before you do it."

Now that was more like it. "Yeah?"

"Yep," she nodded. "I'll admit you've got some good judgement behind your first-instinct snap decisions, but I'm pretty sure we both know that you're not gonna get it right every time. I caught you at the end there 'cause you started preparing for me to do one thing as soon as you saw me winding up, which ended up biting you when I did something completely different. And I get that, I really do. Thinking's already hard enough outside the battlefield, y'know?"

I couldn't resist a little snort there.

Mia let a smile slip on for a second, before dropping it as she continued. "But if that were a real fight, you'd be bleeding out right now. Soooo—and I know this is gonna sound weird, trust me, but just hear me out for a second—you've gotta learn to hesitate. If you don't want to get caught out like that again, you need to slow down a little and think twice to make sure the option you're picking is the best one."

My brain saw an opportunity, and seized it with gusto. "...so what you're saying is that I need to stop jumping to conclusions and let people explain what they're about to do before I hit them with the 'no, you?'"

"Uh…" She blinked. "I guess? Just- whenever it looks like someone's trying to fake you out, try not to lock yourself into a guard until after they give away what they're doing, okay? You'll live longer, and that's a fact."

Yeah, that made sense. "Roger that."

Impulse control. Something I didn't have as much experience with as I thought I would at this point in my life. But, well, looking back, it was kind of to be expected. When school was pretty much the only thing that got me out of the house in my last couple years on Earth, with nothing else able to convince me to step past my front door, not to mention my enduring status as a broke teenager, it shouldn't have been surprising to realize that I'd hardly had any chances to practice keeping my urges leashed.

'No time like the present to start learning, I guess.'

I could only wonder at how long this problem would've flown under my radar if not for Mia. Probably a month, at the least. For all that I liked to rag on myself, I could be shockingly blind when it came to sniffing out personal issues that weren't skin-deep.

'Come to think of it, that might also have something to do with my tendency to take stupid things at face value if they seem halfway plausible.' Although, that had a much smaller chance of biting me than the other problem. For now. Either way…

"Hey."

Mia's sword stopped spinning. "Yeah?"

"Thanks." As awkward as it was to say, it would've killed me if I hadn't said it. "For… all this. I really do appreciate it, even if I sound like I don't. I mean, if it weren't for you, I'd still be wandering around like an idiot, wearing scraps and carrying a weapon I barely knew how to use. So, uh…" My cheeks picked that moment to reroute my brain's steam towards themselves while my eyes dropped down. "Yeah."

I couldn't stop myself from fidgeting mildly until I felt her hand clap down on my shoulder. "Don't mention it, really! I know I may be a merc, but it's not like I had to rip my heart out and torch it to start selling my muscles. Unlike some people…" She looked away for a moment, losing herself in a memory, before snapping back to reality. "And if you're still worried about underpaying, well, say we put it like this." That shark grin of hers popped out once again. "Once you hit a point where you can give me a run for my money when I'm going all-out, come find me again and we'll have another duel. A real one, y'know, with real steel, real stakes. Sound good?"

My head made it through about three-fourths of a nod before it froze. "Uh. Real steel? As in, live steel? Not wooden training swords?"

"I mean…" The look Mia gave me wasn't quite at the 'have you grown a second head?' level, but it was close. More of a 'have you grown an extra half-head?' look, if I had to put a descriptor to it. "Duh? Not much of a real duel if you're not fighting with real weapons, is it?"

I turned the look back on her, to rather muddy results. "So what I'm hearing here, is that you don't believe that the thing you're holding in your hand right there is already a weapon of mass destruction. You do know you can still break bones and crack skulls with that if you're not careful, yeah?"

"If, I'm not careful," she countered, jumping the tracks of the argument and flying off into a different country entirely. "I didn't crack any of those ribs, did I? I'd say that's pretty careful of me."

"That's not what I-" My words stalled, as I took her advice and spared a moment to consider if pushing this was worth it.

It only took two seconds for my brain to tell me that if I valued my sanity, not to mention my health, it would be best to drop it. With a shake of my head, the topic was sentenced to Brick Joke purgatory. "…y'know what, forget it. Not like I could say no even if I wanted to anyway." I met her emerging smile with an expression of slightly-fond resignation that I'd gotten increasingly familiar with over the past few hours. "I'll take that deal. When I think I can make you work for it, you'll get your challenge."

"Hell to the yes!" Oh, terrific, I'd gone and gotten her pumped. "Ohh, you're gonna be great, I can just tell! You're gonna go out and get strong, and famous, and learn to ride, and start wearing white…" Good lord in heaven, I'd really done myself in if she was falling into the Build-Your-Own-Rival fantasies. "And then you're gonna come back and we're gonna fight and it'll be amazing and aaahhh!"

…well, if I ever needed to reduce Mia to happy squealing in the future for some reason or another, I now knew how to do it.

I let her simmer in her daydreams when a thought from deep left field suddenly struck me.

I didn't just make a friend, did I?

Considering that for a bit led me to another thought.

Nah. If anything, Mia's the one who made a friend today.

I wouldn't exactly be willing to die for her or anything, but if she asked me for help, I'd be okay with giving it. The 'payment' wasn't even so much as a payment as it would be an inevitability if I managed to live long enough, considering that I knew exactly where she'd be hanging around very soon.

Briefly, the idea to ask about sticking around her came up, and was quickly shot down. As I was now, I'd be more of a load than an asset. Besides, in the end she was still a merc, which meant she had a reputation to uphold and an obligation to pay herself first. Yes, she wouldn't actually have to pay anything to keep me alive outside of a fight, but that might result in discomfort at me not being fully human and I'd rather not force her to deal with that.

…huh. Now that I think about it, considering how much more dangerous the medieval fantasy road was when you didn't have someone to watch your back, that sounded a bit more self-destructive than it usually would've. Hm.

Either way, the point was, if she felt she needed the expertise of an amateur enough to outright ask me for it, she'd get it. But until then, I'd stay out of her grill, we'd handle our own issues, and it'd work out.

Hopefully.

Given how my little montage was over now, there really wasn't any other topic for us to discuss, so I figured it was time to bite the bullet. Mia seemed to be coming down from her little moment, too. "Hey, so, uh…"

"ATTENTION, CITIZENS OF GERASH!"

The color drained from both our faces in record time.

"WE HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE THAT YOU ARE CURRENTLY HARBORING REMNANTS OF THE CRIMEAN ARMY WITHIN YOUR WALLS!"

Our heads snapped in the direction of the bellowed demands. People were already beginning to rush both towards and from the commotion.

"IF YOU DO NOT SURRENDER THESE FUGITIVES TO US IMMEDIATELY, WE WILL BE FORCED TO TAKE DRASTIC ACTION!"

We glanced back at each other, then catapulted ourselves towards where we'd left our real weapons. The training sticks were left forgotten in the dirt.

"WE HAVE ALREADY BLOCKED EVERY EXIT! ANY ATTEMPTS TO RESIST OR ESCAPE WILL BE MET WITH SWIFT AND SEVERE RETALIATION!"

'Well,' my brain unhelpfully remarked. 'At least we know where we are in the timeline now.'

"GLORY TO DAEIN!"

A/N: Welcome back to GGSS. After 18 months in development, hopefully it will have been worth the wait. Thanks, and have fun.

…alright, that's enough GabeN-ing.

It took fucking forever, but now it's done, and posted here for your enjoyment. Although, I feel I should apologize for breaking this off on a cliffie. Originally this chapter was going to cover the entirety of our protagonist's time in Gerash, but then the word count kinda ran away from me and when I saw that the wordcount for these scenes alone was already a hulking 7K, I figured it would be best to split it in half. So you've got character establishment and interactions in this one, and a whole load of fightin' in the next.

Speaking of which, Mia! Fun fact, when I was drafting her and Andy's first meeting, she originally came off as a bit too generic-nice-personish. Upon going over it, my beta-in-all-but-name said, and I quote: "she needed to be dumber." And then this Mia happened.

True story.

Trust me when I say you'll be seeing this gal a lot—and when I say I've got the ideas to accommodate that.

On a related note, our protagonist finally has a name! The old version of this story has him as Andrew, but since that name has also been taken by the protag of All the World's A Sale (read that if you like Tiki, 'cause it's got the best damn Tiki you ever did see), I made the decision to make him primarily go by his shorthand. Y'know, so people won't get as confused in the rare event these two stories are discussed alongside each other.

Which can happen on the Fanfiction Treehouse server - just plonk the code 9XG3U7a in and you too can take part in the insanity, diabolical laughter, and groaning about poorly handled characters of fanfic writers from all over the world of pop culture!

But that's enough yakking, I've inflated this chapter's wordcount enough as is. Hopefully y'all won't have to wait quite as long for the next one to come out. Hopefully.

'Till then.