Here we are at the third chapter! You may be receiving this one earlier than you anticipated, but that's because it had already been written a long time ago. For those of you who disapproved of the violence in the previous chapters, you should know that there's even MORE in this one! Just kidding! What this chapter does have is some humor!
We'll pick this chapter up a bit after where we left off in the story in the last chapter. Enjoy!
I do not own Fire Emblem or it's respective characters.
ONWARD!
Fiora woke up in the medical tent for what seemed like the first time in years. Pricilla's head was hovering over her as she said in her happy, song-like voice, "Good morning sleepy head! Actually, I should probably be saying 'good night' as it's rather late right now; the sun went down about two hours ago. We were getting a bit worried about you when you didn't wake while we brought you down here."
"Sorry about over-sleeping." Fiora said with a yawn as she slowly sat herself up on the bed and rubbed her shoulder. "How are Mark and Kent and the others?" She asked.
"I'm over here!" came a voice to Fiora's left. There Mark sat, with his right arm in a sling hung around his neck. "SHE," He yelled in an aggravated voice, pointing his free hand at Pricilla, who was currently stationed at a small desk reading an Elfire tome as she ignored Mark's words, "says that while I may be very 'sound of mind', I'm not very 'sound of body'. She tells me that even though she applied her stave to my burnt arm, it must still be immobilized for a good couple of hours before it's 'fully healed'! She also claims that you 'sound of body' folk receive the effects of a healing stave more thoroughly than 'mute of body' folk like I do!"
"Though in my opinion; I think you're just being a whiner." came Serra's high pitched voice from a nearby corner where she sat in a chair filing her nails, "But to answer the more important part of your question: Pricilla and I applied our staves to Hector, though I think it was a waste of time. The big oaf must hold the continental record for 'thickest skull'!"
"Linus may very well have killed me," Mark whispered to Fiora, "as being stuck in here with that thing," he nodded in Serra's general direction, "has so far been like living in Hell!"
"I heard that!" The pink-haired cleric practically screamed, before resuming her story, "As for Guy, Pricilla must have used all twenty bursts on her mend stave before he finally convinced her that he was just fine. I mean, the man was in rather good condition-"
"HE WAS ABOUT TO DIE!" Pricilla yelled in a furious, almost brutal voice, the flames of the magic from the book she had been studying burning in her eyes. She had never been known to raise her voice, or display magic uncontrollably as anger was considered to be an emotion she was incapable of expressing. As everyone stared at her, her eyes quickly faded back to their usual mossy green before she began to blush with a redness that was as radiant as her hair. She then headed for the exit of the tent at a noticeably hurried pace.
"...Anyway," Serra continued with her devilish I-have-no-choice-but-to-make-assumptions look distinctive on her mouth and in her eyes that stayed fixed on the flaps of the tent, "I personally think that all Guy needed was a good wake-up call. And Eliwood and Nils are still more than unconscious; we don't know when they'll wake up."
"What happened to Eliwood and Nils?" Fiora asked Mark.
Mark told her about how Athos, as well as Nergal, had warped in. How Ninian had put herself in Nergal's custody to save the rest of the party. And how Nergal had left with a huge blast of his energy. "He'll be a tough opponent," Mark finished, "but I think that we may be able to take him. Oh, and Kent is just fine. The man should be in your tent by my reckonings."
"Good," Fiora said as she got off the small bed and headed for the entrance, "I need to thank him, and we need to know who has the higher kill count."
"I'll see you in the morning Fiora!" Serra cried in her naturally shrill voice.
As Fiora walked out into the cool night air, she heard Mark say in a not-so-low voice, "Now I know what Erk must have felt like while he was escorting this witch." This comment was followed by a low whacking noise as Mark cried, "Ouch! That thing is for healing, not harming!"
"Don't talk that way about me or my Erky-poo!" Sarra yelled in a very offended voice as another distinct whacking noise was heard.
As Fiora walked the path towards her tent, she took a moment to gaze up at the star-dotted sky. She found it odd how there was an occasional blur across the brilliant light of the full moon. She made a mental note of the curious phenomenon, and decided to ask Kent about it later.
As she walked, she noticed Rebecca a distance off to her left, under a tree, talking with Wil. Fiora was a bit surprised when she saw Wil suddenly clasp Rebecca's hands in his own and she stopped in her tracks to see what was going on. "Rebecca..." Fiora heard him say in a slow, serious voice, "I never got the chance... to say this... And I know it seems sudden, but Rebecca... I... I've always..." he let out a short, distinct breath as he closed his eyes, dropped her hands and turned away. As he walked off, with his eyes closed as tight as his fists in what seemed like frustration, he appeared to silently mouth out the word 'coward'. Rebecca was left looking half confused, and half sad and disappointed. Fiora walked on. A blind man could have seen what had gone on.
Fiora was just a few feet away from her destination when a bit of moonlight shone into her eye. She looked over to see Hector peering around the corner of his own tent in a direction off to Fiora's right. The moonlight had reflected off his armor that he insisted on wearing at all times (it was even rumored that he slept in it). He suddenly looked up right at her, his eyes slightly bulged as if in surprise before he turned around and quickly walked away. Considering this to be a bit suspicious, Fiora looked down the main aisle of tents in the direction Hector had been looking. She saw nothing. Only her sister Florina in her tent talking with... Lyn... who was wearing a two pice pajama outfit that left little to the imagination. Fiora decided to mentally draw the line here, and walked into hers and Kent's tent before her curiosity caused her to 'spy' on any other peoples affairs.
"Fiora!" Kent greeted her happily as she walked through the flaps of their tent. He was laying back on his bed when she came in but stood up to greet her once he noticed her. He was dressed in his usual combat attire only without any of the armor (which was uniformly stacked in a corner) and was able to go without shoes as their tent was located right on top of some healthy, soft grass. It was his casual dress that reminded Fiora that she was still clothed in her entire combat uniform. "I was hopping you'd show up sooner or later." he said as she spun her finger in a circle to signal that he needed to turn around. "How's your shoulder?" Kent asked with his back to her.
"Well, after being treated to a few charges of a mend stave in the expert hands of someone like Pricilla; my shoulder feels fine. It still sting's a tiny bit, but it's nothing serious. I should be over it by tomorrow morning. Oh, and my leg's completely healed." Fiora explained as she removed her gloves. "By the way, thanks for saving my life... again." she added.
"Oh, it was nothing special." Kent replied as she began to work on the buckles of her belt and boots behind him.
"Oh but it was!" Fiora countered, "I mean; I still can't understand how when Linus was dueling with Guy, Guy couldn't come close to him with his blade; like he was being repelled by some unseen force. And yet you pierced him so easily. How was that possible?" She had momentarily stopped changing as she sat down on her bed side and stared at the back of his head; waiting for a response.
"Well," he said with a shrug, "I don't understand it very well, but Mark said it had something to do with an 'Iron Rune': a magic emblem that protects the user from moves like the ones Guy specializes in. He said that this 'Iron Rune' had been attached to Linus' shield, and when Linus threw his shield at him, the 'Iron Rune' could no longer protect Linus. Now I don't know much about magic, but I think I was just lucky to attack when I did. Besides, given the tallied up number of times we've 'saved each others lives' I'd say we're even now."
"I still think you best me in that respect." Fiora commented while undoing the straps of her upper-body armor, "After all, it's one thing for you to slay an archer that might have targeted me if they got the chance; but it's an entirely different thing for you to kill the leader of the Black Fang while I am at the very edge of his blade. And without your help; at his nonexistent mercy as well."
"Well, all the same." Kent replied with his back still loyally facing her as she changed out of her combat suit and into her soft pants and shirt, which were little more than a light pajamas, "By the way, speaking of tallies; this battle I delivered the finishing blow to 8 enemy soldiers, leaving my final count at 156."
"I bested you this battle; I am sitting on 13 kills." she said as she began folding and stacking her discarded armor and clothing, "However, this also leaves my total score at 156 as well."
"I wouldn't prefer it any other way." Kent spoke with a smile as Fiora tapped him on his shoulder: the signal that she had finished changing.
Fiora then sat on her bedside, removed the string that bound her hair, and began to brush her millions of aquamarine strands with a small wooden comb as she mentioned, "By the way, have you seen the moon lately? There seemed to be some odd blurs going across its face."
"Oh, that." Kent said with a chuckle as he sat on his bedside so that they were now facing each other from across their small tent, "Such a beautiful night sky, and to think that it's actually raining!"
"What do you mean?" she inquired as she stopped brushing her hair.
"Well, that is indeed the moon," Kent began, "but the blurs that go past its face are probably glimmers of Athos' magic. The Archsage decided to stay with us for a while, and he set up some sort of magical barrier around the entire encampment. One of the benefits is that the barrier allows us to view the night sky even when it's cloudy, and it protects us from bad wheather. But the main reason he put it up was because it won't let anything through it, so we didn't have to post a night watch. It's emitted from some magical orb that Athos keeps with him at all times. I have absolutely no idea how the thing works, and when I asked Pent about it, he said that its workings were so complex that I would have to know how to receive his 'telepathic' signals in order for him to explain it to me. I still don't know what he means by 'telepathic', but the bottom line is; as long as Athos is with us, everybody gets a full night sleep!"
"Well," Fiora said with a confused look, "that's a lot to take in, but I'm not complaining!" she piped with a happy smile. This is going to be very good for the rest of the party! she thought. After all it had taken a long time for everyone's sleeping patterns to get back to normal after the party had been attacked in the night at Baddon, and after they had rescued Prince Zephiel from his assassination-attempt.
"Oh, and this is something rather minor;" Kent started out, "but remember that whole thing I was telling you about earlier today? About how 'the thoughts of the men and women in this army are altogether too intimate'?"
"Yes." she replied with a nod.
"Well... you can forget about all that." he said with a shrug, "I don't know why I brought that up; maybe it was because Sain had been a bit more himself than usual this morning..."
"Ah, no, no, no." Fiora protested waving her hand a bit, "No, I think you were quite right. That is... well... maybe I should just tell you..." She then began to depict the various things she had bore witness to during the evening. Everything from Pricilla's outburst, to Hector's 'peeping' incident. She didn't tell him about Serra's fondness for Erk however. Too many people including themselves were already aware of this small reason for why so few people wanted to be Erk (including Erk himself!). "...and that's about the time that I decided to get in here before my curiosity could take ahold of me again." She wrapped up. "Oh, and now that I've told you all of this, it might be best to make it a rule to keep these things that I've learned a secret."
"Great," Kent groaned with a playful smile, "more things we have to ignore!"
"Yes exactly!" Fiora said with a hearty laugh, "But I think that we should do something about this. Shall we set up the stationary and such?"
"Yes, let's." He agreed. They set up the fold-up table and two chairs side-by-side (inventions of Marks'). Once they sat their lantern up on the table for optimized visibility, their pegasus quills (which were shed by Fiora's steed and not bought from a store) raced across various sheets of paper as they wrote out all of the names of the party members, then divided those names into lists of their respective genders. They spent the next couple of hours ("So much for everybody getting a full nights sleep!" Fiora noted as they both laughed.) comparing the number of tents as in comparison with the number of people and all of the ways they could be divide into groups, considering all possible combinations. Then they looked at all forms of separation of the sexes from tent rearrangement, to meal rearrangement, to battlefield deployment rearrangement.
At what must have been roughly midnight, Fiora stopped writing and looked up from the final draft of the proposal they had planned to present to Mark, that her and Kent had worked for so long on. Noticing that she had stopped, Kent asked, "What's wrong?" Once he uttered these words, she propped her elbows up on the table and her head fell into her hands as she burst into a subdued laughter. "What's so funny?" he asked in confusion.
"Kent," she started, shrugging off her giggles, "we've spent many hours on it, and we've finally found a way to separate everyone properly, but we have overlooked a thing or two."
"And those would be?" Kent asked curiously.
"Well for one thing," She began to explain, "If Nergal just recently paid us a visit, and all we have to do is retrieve some powerful weapons for Eliwood and the other Lords before we make our march on Valor, then this entire battle may be over sooner than we expect. Perhaps the idea of this entire policy is rather... silly at this point."
"Well, now that I think about it, I suppose you are right." Kent admitted, now seeing things from a different perspective. "But what's the other reason?"
"Simply put: love." She responded.
With a puzzled look on his face, Kent stated, "I'm... not sure I understand what you mean."
"O.K., many of these 'relationships' are very one-sided," Fiora explained, "situations like Serra's fondness of Erk, and Erk's hatred of Serra, and I don't even need to explain Sain. But there are some, like Rebecca and Wil, who are actually in love with each other. We simply can't separate people like that. It's not that we can't separate them because that would be the wrong thing to do; we can't separate them because they will find a way to be with one another. It is inevitable! For an example, ummmm... have you ever been in love with someone else, Kent?"
Kent answered without thinking, "Yes, you."
FIN!
BEHOLD THE AWESOME POWER OF THE CLIFFHANGER! BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Ain't I evil?
That's all for chapter three! The next chapter will consist of very little. And during it, the plot of the story will advance very little, but it is important!
Due to the shortness of chapter 4, I will be posting it along with chapter 5 almost at the same time. I hope that this will also make up for the large amount of frustration you are enduring from the cliffhanger at the end of this chapter.
Chapter 4 up in 2 weeks or less, and chapter 5 will be posted exactly 1 day after it!
R&R, or give me a flame,
for I shall read them all the same.
P.S. Uber apologies to any who's feelings I've hurt by bashing on the character of Serra; I just don't like her very much. (Spots pink-haired cleric with a spiky healing stave in hand and an angry look on her face, and runs for a hiding place)