Disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem Awakening, all rights to the owners.
Minor: Dark Flier, Immortal, Boxer (Pugilist), Exploitive, Swordmaster, Angry Cinnamon Roll, Tripping, Perpetual Cheer, Chef, Blacksmith, Pegasus Knight, Teacher, Librarian, Masochist, Literal-Minded, Authoritative, Wyvern Rider, Phobia, Thicc, Tsundere, Damsel in Distress, Gangrel's Child, Wyvern Rider, Child, Communist, Bomber, Bear Cavalry, Flying, ADHD, Super Strength, Patriotic, Martial Artist, Scottish, Sassy, One Liner, Seamstress, Shephard, Speedy, Cool, Shy, Bookworm, Mercenary, Sweet, Kung Fu, Buff, Lazy, Wingless Flight, Blunt, Paranoid.
Standard: Elemental, Deaf, Foreign, Future sight, Nurse/Medic, Valmese Tactician, Medusa, Genderfluid, Gift from Validar + evil to good, Mimic, Emotionless, Crippling Overspecialization (Idiot Savant), Coward, ESP, POW, PTSD, Magician, Mute, Handicapped, Secret Helper, Crazy, Morpher, Dreamwalker, Twins, Regenerating, Animal Whisperer, Naga/Tiki Assistant, Deadly Touch, Mind Reader, Doppelganger, Arachne, D&D magic, Umbramancer, Horror Monster, Dominatrix, Songstress, Kinky, Matchmaker, Androphobic, Illusionist, Attraction Aura, Ring Maker, Therapist, Teleporting, Crippled, Puppet, Broken, Hallucination, Depressed, Slave, Love Curse, Detective, Geokinetic, Trauma.
Unlikely: Chrom's child, Minotaur, Paladin, Werewolf, Assassin, Future Soldier, Bounty Hunter, Weather control, Kleptomaniac, Druid, Steampunk, Shadow Familiar, Magic Augmentation, Lucky, Exile, Piper (Charmer), Gladiator, Witch Doctor, Centaur, Drunk, Demon, Punk, Harpy, Revenant, Luck Manipulation, Demon Summoner, Megalomaniac, Kitsune, King of Plegia, Mood Ring, Reverse Aging, Hammerspace, Prostitute, Demon Hunter, Cyborg, Maid/Servant/Butler, Deadlord, Rebellion, Einherjar, Trap, Yandere, Living Weapon, Size Shifter, Queen of Plegia, Gluttonous, Stretchy, Alchemist, Protoss, Spirit Manipulation, Invisible, Plegian Honor Guard, Mecha, Kryptonian, Creator, Orc, Memory Stealing Respawn, Racer, Khan, Misfortune, Vampire Hunter, Geokinetic, Imaginary Actualization, Death, Resurrection, Force, Merchant, Background Music, Variable, Civilian, Natural Disaster, Mental Noise Projection, Hidden OP, Summoner, Cyclops, Teleporter, Cryokinetic, Genie, Judge, Intangibility, Fortune Teller, Future Vision, Serial Killer, Pervert, Magic Fixit, Drakengard Restoration, Ying-Yang, Childhood Friend, Cyberpunk, Chrom's Mother, Obsessed, Berserker, Phase Shift, Gravity Manipulation, Hallucinating, Bladesoul, Zombie, Double Entendre, Shared Body/Two Souls, Cannibal, Singer, Violent, Insane, Waterbender, Casanova, Cupid, Undertaker, Master Thief, Guard, Faceless, Shadow, Age Control, Cradle Snatcher, Emo, Singer, Nun, Courier, Haunted Knight Armor, Egyptian, Sentient Object, Shit Lord, Court Wizard, Naga's sibling, Mad Queen, Artist, Predator, Cheshire Cat, Radio Host, Chimera, Wendigo, Witch, Symbiote, Hivemind, Hammerspace, Anna, Mother Nature, Psychopath, Stripper, Painting, Grima Parts, Knightmare, Super, Swimsuit, Bunny Outfit, One Punch, Idol, Chef, Rampage, Housewife, Determination, Vessel of Naga, Instant Expert, Time Travel, Hermit, Alternate Dimension 'Twin', Legendary, Resistance, Memory Regain, Umbra Witch, Naga, Aquatic, Hexblade Warlock, Dragon, Demon of Choice, Demon of Temptation, Affliction, Good Samaritan, Gallant, Rosannite Tactician, Leeroy, Dungeon, Apparition, Unwilling, Wildlife Commander, Consistent Kidnapee.
Other: Second Generation replacement, Dimensional Walker, Cycle, Fates.
Amazon Robin, suggested by Darklight of the 0 Arcana. Kinda? Sorta? Uh… you'll see. This is a weird chapter, not so much in terms of the quirk; just how I actually wrote it.
She wakes up to the feel of a wet cloth on her forehead. She feels hot, her skin is itchy and erupts in pain if she so much as moves. She doesn't dare open her eyes to see her condition, and instead prays that she returns to sleep soon.
The thought that she has no idea where she is occurs to her a moment later, which is followed by a slew of other thoughts. Who is she? What's her name? How did she get here? Why is a cloth on her head?
"I know you're awake, girl." A gruff, female voice says. "You're lucky. Most people don't take naps in the desert and survive."
"I took a nap in the desert?" The girl mumbles. Even speaking hurts. Her throat feels dry, like someone stuck sand down it to suck out all the moisture… it even feels like there's sand in it. "Bad place to nap. Why would I do that…?"
"Not much for jokes I see." The woman chuckles. "You had a heat stroke kid."
"...oh." That explains a lot.
"So, what are you doing so far out from civilization?" The woman asks. "I have a few guesses. There are two main reasons people tend to come out here, but I want to hear what you have to say."
"I don't know." She rasps.
"Pardon?"
"I don't know." She repeats. "I don't know why I'm here, I don't know where 'here' is, I don't know how I got here, I don't know who you are, and I don't know who I am."
"Ah." There's a pause. The cloth is removed from the girl's head, much to her distress, but it's put back on a moment later. The woman was just soaking it again. "Well, that complicates things… or maybe it simplifies things."
"How?"
"Well, if you have no memory, there's only two real options, right? You either try an' figure out your past, or you start a new life." The woman says.
Robin doesn't know what she's supposed to do. She isn't prepared for such a major decision to be dropped in her lap less than five minutes after waking up, and therefore less than five minutes of memory.
The woman seems to pick up on this. "You don't have to think about it now. Rest. You're probably in pain."
"I itch, badly."
"Yeah, that's the sunburn. It's what you get for napping in the desert."
"So I did-?"
"No." The woman sighs. "No you didn't."
"Oh."
There's quiet for a moment. The girl decides to try opening her eyes, ache be damned. It's itchy, her eyes feel dry, and her vision is blurry. The blurriness clears up in a minute though, letting the girl see her immediate surroundings and the person talking to her.
The woman is tall, has dark chocolate skin, is heavily muscled, and has a number of small scars, along with a larger one, a claw mark the girl thinks, visible on her neck. She's clearly a warrior just from that evidence alone, and the leather armor, steel axe, throwing axe, and iron sword resting nearby only make that even more obvious.
The girl also notices (what she presumes to be) her own clothes resting next to her. A heavy black cloak (that has to be impractical for travelling in the desert) with gold embroidery, heavy black boots, brown gloves, and a white undershirt and pants. The only weapons she seemed to have is a pair of daggers that rest on top of the clothes. They're basic, unremarkable.
The room is wood, and rather simple. There looks to be hunting trophies up on the walls: a lion, several things that look like different variants of canine (she recognizes a few, like the hyena and snap hound skulls).
"My name is Gladia." The woman offers when the girl returns her eyes to her host. "I suppose you don't remember yours?"
Robin shakes her head, and instantly regrets it. The itchiness and pain flares up, and she quickly goes still.
"Well then…" Gladia gazes around, as if looking for inspiration. She looks out the window, and her eyes alight on something the girl can't see. "Robin. How about that? Robin Tealeaf."
"Tealeaf?"
"A name we give to those without a family name, orphans usually." Gladia says. "You are, of course, free to choose your own last name. Most people tend to make their own when they find their calling… although most keep it as a middle name, just out of remembrance."
"I accept then." Robin says. "Robin Tealeaf… I sound like the main character of a fantasy story."
"Your life so far sounds like one too." Gladia laughs. "An amnesiac, clad in a dark cloak, who arrives under the burning Plegian sun to the border of amazonian territory, only to be saved by their leader."
Robin blinks slowly. "You're…?"
"People call me the Chief." Gladia grins. "Welcome to Polemis, home of the Amazons."
###
Robin quickly learns Polemis refers to both the region and the actual city she's in. This is because most people here just call it "the city" and "our territory".
Also, all the people she's seen so far are women. Almost all of them are very buff warrior-like women, but of varying ethnicities, and Robin sees that most of them have different weapons… well, all of them have a different melee weapon, but almost all of them carry a bow as well.
Robin doesn't see too much of the city in the first week. She's busy dealing with itch, the pain, and the exhaustion from her stroke and sunburn. She also apparently got sick, so she's also having trouble keeping food down, which is bad.
Gladia said it was "just great", which Robin thought was very rude. She also said that "sarcasm isn't your thing, is it?", which Robin disagrees with. She does understand sarcasm! It's just lying with a different name.
Gladia obviously has things to do, so Robin is left mostly to herself to rest with the occasional check-in from a doctor.
When she can actually walk without itching and pain (although she still aches, but that's manageable) she- well, she first finds a mirror. Robin didn't know she was a tall, slightly muscled woman herself. Gladia is just that much taller and more muscled by comparison, so Robin didn't really realize it until seeing herself. Also, she apparently has white hair, is pale like the moon, and has red eyes. She looks like she's already half-dead.
It's kinda cool in Robin's opinion (if she can be so egotistical as to say that about herself). She looks like a ghost! How many people can say they look like a ghost!?
Well, actually, she knows it's one in ten-thousand, but that's besides the point.
Anyways. After Robin can walk without feeling the need to itch herself, Gladia personally gives her a tour of the city, and proudly explains anything Robin asks about as if she built it herself.
The short version of the story of the Amazons are Polemis is that they are (as Robin suspected) a society of women who live in the north-west reaches of Plegia. To the north of this city is Plegia's relatively small forested areas and the Feroxi border, to the south is the desert, to the west is the ocean, and to the east is a small (again, relatively) savannah.
As Robin also suspected, most people here are warriors, or at the very least have combat training. Their city looking as small as it is, bandits tend to assume it's an easy target.
"And they're always wrong." Gladia brags. "Even the maids an' artists here can sling an arrow at your face or slide a knife in yer stomach."
Apparently the population isn't too large. Several hundred women, maybe a thousand at most. About half occupy this city, and the other half the surrounding areas in small farming towns (although, by Gladia's own admission, not like the farming towns one would find elsewhere. The farms are very communal rather than being family farms, and most of the "farmers" participate in hunts. It's also standard practice for people to rotate from life in the farming towns to life in the city, spending about half a year in each so everyone shares the responsibility and work, but also shares in the benefits and city life afforded by the support of the towns. It's a bit more nuanced than that, but such an explanation suffices for a basic understanding).
"It's a system that can only work because few of us were born here. Almost every single person you see here chose to be here, so they willingly partake in the system." Gladia says proudly. "What other society can boast that? Other societies would get revolts if they tried this sort of equality!"
Robin has to admit it's rather impressive. "So you…?"
"Yep, even me." Gladia grins. "Admittedly I'm a bit of a special case, I do have to run this society after all, so I need a certain amount of time a day for those matters, but I do farm."
The week Robin spent recovering also gave her plenty of time to think about her amnesia situation. She had a life presumably, but she was also randomly face-down in a desert. She was either alone, or abandoned. Her cloak also apparently has cult symbols on it, and she doesn't want to be part of a cult…
So, when the question is finally asked of what she wants to do, Robin chooses to stay.
###
Robin pulls back her bow. The black-tipped arrow, made from carefully sharpened rock, slightly reflects the sunlight, making the arrow gleam a bit in the midday sun. She takes a long, deep breath, aims carefully, and lets the arrow fly.
The bow snaps audibly, but the arrow flies silently. It arcs high into the air, becoming almost invisible against the glare of the sun for a moment, before dropping from the sky and sticking directly into Robin's target.
The unassuming mound of sand Robin shot twitches violently. The sand is dislodged as the creature thrashes, revealing a long snout, like a cross between a crocodile and dog, with a number of large teeth. That's all Robin sees before the creature stops moving, aside from the occasional muscle spasm.
"A perfect shot!" Gladia congratulates, slapping Robin's back. "Took ya long enough to learn!"
"I never used a bow before six months ago!" Robin huffs in return. "You try becoming a pro at something in that amount of time with no prior experience!"
"I have." She says cheekily. "Throwing hand axes, learned in months."
Robin just huffs and starts walking over to her kill. She reaches into the sand, grabbing the creature by the scruff of its neck, and hauling the dead snap hound out from the sand.
She remembers when she first saw a snap hound. It had burst out from the sand, striking like a crocodile and slamming it's long mouth down around the unfortunate small bird that had hopped too close. It was a lightning-fast kill. The way it's long ears fold over its eyes to block sand while burrowing had fascinated her, as did it's long and thin bunchings of fur that give it a measure of tremorsense while under the sand. It's a fascinating creature… and also a nice trophy. The teeth can make for some nice jewelry, and the meat is… well it's meat. It's edible. Food is always good.
"Well, you can properly call yerself an Amazon now that you can actually shoot a bow." Gladia chuckles. "Good job in spotting the snap hound too. That's not easily done."
Robin smiles, feeling a measure of pride in herself. She went from a no-one to a pretty decent hunter in half a year. There's still the whole 'farming' thing she's going to have to learn too, but she at least has some established skills. She learned bows and axes from Gladia, learned she has some latent skill for tactics from playing strategy games (possibly a holdover from her old life), and also (on her own time) learned to throw and fight with her daggers.
"Maybe you'd like to join one of our big hunts next time they come around?" Gladia asks, wearing a big grin of her own. "Now that you're all prepared?"
"How can I say no?" Robin agrees eagerly. "I can't wait…"
"That's the spirit!"
###
Robin wasn't sure what to expect when it became her turn to rotate to farm life. She knows nothing about it, and has no latent knowledge to help out this time.
It starts out as she expects. One of the older women shows her the basics of taking care of animals and fields. Robin finds her combat training under Gladia has actually ill prepared her for farm life. She finds herself still exhausted from heat and from the use of muscles not really related to swinging an axe. For example, she has to bend over a lot to lift and carry things, which does a number on her back.
That's all well and good, but Robin also notices something that seems… off. There's things that don't add up, both about the farming and about some other aspects of Amazon economy.
For one, the place Robin is working farms rice. That's not too unusual in itself. They have a river of fresh water flowing through the village which they reroute to fill and drain the rice fields in a very specific series of timings, bla bla bla, that's all fine.
What Robin finds curious is that no one really tells her about how rice is harvested. From what she knows, almost everyone but a few "overseers" leaves the village during the week leading up to, and the week after, harvesting time.
The other thing that's weird about Amazon economy is the metal and stone. Robin has heard no mention of mines. Yes, everyone takes shifts in the farms, but from what she knows there's no such rotation for mining.
So, there's some necessary activities that take place, but (from what Robin is aware) the Amazons don't take part in them. That begs the question though: if they don't trade for stone and metal, and there's no way another society is going to farm the rice for them, then how's it getting done?
Normally she wouldn't worry, but it doesn't escape her how no one is willing to explain these things. That's gnawing at the back of Robin's head, whispering that there's a secret afoot. Secrets are dangerous; societies guard their greatest strengths to keep others from using or discovering it, but they also hide their weaknesses. Things that the society may not agree with, but are very useful, are kept under wraps.
So, that begs the question, is this a strength or is this a weakness being hidden?
Robin also knows, as a relatively new citizen, she isn't going to be allowed to know these sorts of secrets, but it's exactly these sorts of things that are going to shape her opinion of Polemis.
Robin makes sure to arrange so that she has a full day off (not too hard, she just agrees to do more work the next day), and as soon as that morning hits she borrows a horse (also not too hard. A few silver pieces smooth it along) and rides back the way they all came.
At first when she approaches Robin thinks it's mist, or maybe ash that's been blown up into the air. As she gets closer to the village, however, she realizes it's neither of those.
Mosquitoes. A swarm so dense, you can see it from a few kilometers away. It blankets the entire town. Robin is glad she wore her cloak despite the heavy sun, because otherwise she'd be riddled with bites.
The horse has no such shielding, so Robin ties it off to a tree a few kilometers away from the village in a patch of grass so it can graze. She walks the rest of the way on foot.
Her main regret is that she doesn't have a scarf. The mosquitos quickly become maddening as Robin gets closer, and she spends just as much time swatting them off her face as she does actually deciding where to go.
She makes her way over to the rice fields while being sure to stay in the treeline. Stealth isn't her best attribute, but honestly she doubts anyone is going to notice her. They'll be too focused on the damn mosquitoes…
From a distance, Robin can see people working in the fields. That's not surprising. Someone has to harvest this stuff. Maybe there's a special group of people who have volunteered for this task? Maybe these are prisoners, people who've broken the law?
"No…" Robin mutters to herself as she squints at the workers. There's something off about them. Something different. They're… "men?"
It's unmistakable. As Robin sneaks ever closer, it's clear that the people working the field are all male. Most of them are dressed in torn clothes, really just rags. The mosquitoes swarm all over them as they harvest the rice, and the sun burns down on their exposed forms. There are a few women, amazons, who stalk down the sides of the rice fields. They don't seem affected by the mosquitoes, and Robin notes a small locket with a red gem around each of their necks.
One of the men nearby staggers, and then falls to the ground. Immediately one of the women, an overseer Robin assumes, stomps over and yells at him. There's a pause, no response, and then she turns on two other works and shouts something at them. The two bend down, pick up the fallen man, carry him over to the edge of the field, and dump him in the forest unceremoniously.
Robin waits for a minute, then slowly walks over to the fallen man. He's still breathing, but it's raspy and rattling. His body is a mess of mosquito bites, horrible sunburns, and what look like scars on his back.
She doesn't waste time. Robin pulls the concoction from her belt and forces him to drink. She then throws him over her shoulder and carries him away from the field. Once they're far enough away that the mosquitoes aren't a problem, she sets him down. He's a skeletal, orange-haired man. Any real distinguishing figures are marred by the bites all over his body.
Robin needs information, and this man (assuming he survives), can give it to him. All she has to do is wait for the concoction to take effect.
There's a few things she can infer on her own though. Polemis's secret is apparently slave labour. Robin doesn't know where those men came from, or how long they've lived in captivity. Are they criminals? The prize of raids? Or just any man unfortunate enough to wander into amazon territory?
This man could have her answers. She just needs to wait…
###
"Uhh…"
Well, that's not the most reassuring first thing to hear out of the rescued man. "Hello."
"Hi?" The man rasps. "Sorry, fell…"
"I'm not an overseer."
"No…?" The man mumbles. He seems delirious. "Water…?"
Robin pulls out her waterskin and passes it to him. He greedily guzzles it all down, and some spills down his chin from the way his hands shake.
"What's your name?" Robin asks softly.
"I'm…" The man coughs, choking on a mouthful of water for a moment. "The name's Gaius. You?"
"Robin." She replies simply. "I have questions."
"Sure. Do… do you also have food?"
Robin takes out her lunch from her pack, and hands it to him.
"Just like that huh?" Gaius smiles weakly, but genuinely. "Never thought… I'd find someone who'd just give me something."
"Pardon?"
"I'm… I was… a thief." Gaius croaks. "Stole for a living, because no one… wanted to hire a scrawny street rat."
"And you ended up here, how?"
"Bad luck." The man admits. "Bad choice. Though… this small, weird society on the fringe of Plegia… would be an easy target. It wasn't."
"An all the other men? Are they similar to you?"
"Some." Gaius says though a mouthful of food. "Others, their only crime was- ah- walkin' a bit too far out into the desert and crossing an invisible line, or being in a village at the wrong time. You amazons and Plegia are at war, yeah? Some of the guys with me are prisoners of war…"
"I see." Robin says. Her face is carefully neutral. She can't take his words at face value, but at the same time there's clearly something terrible going on here. She doesn't care what the reason is: forcing people to kill themselves working in fields is not something she'll condone. It's not like they couldn't just replace these rice fields with something else after all. Fertile farmland isn't limited to one type of crop, or the word 'vegetables' would be limited to a single plant.
"So, what's your deal?" Gaius asks. "Why are you takin' pity on old Gaius?"
"Curiosity." Robin says bluntly. "And you do not look old. You look quite young by my estimation."
There's a long pause, and Gaius blinks at Robin in surprise. "You… sarcasm isn't your thing, is it?"
"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" The girl grumbles.
###
Robin and Giaus aren't fools. A few dozen half-dead men with sharp sticks against a few hundred trained warrior women isn't odds they can take. They won't be freeing everyone by fighting, it's going to be by stealth.
Thank Naga Gaius actually knows how to sneak, because Robin isn't so great at it without a giant mosquito cloud to distract everyone. Robin's purpose is just to organize transportation for everyone to get out. That involves obtaining a cart, horses, food, water, and blankets, and doing it all within the week without anyone becoming suspicious.
So, Robin does something sneaky. She steals the food and water (not as hard as it sounds. She walks with the stuff out in the open, and as long as she behaves like she supposed to be doing this no one bats an eyelash) and stores it in the woods outside her village. The cart she obtains by brute-forcing the problem. In other words, she just buys one off someone. It costs most of her money, but that's fine.
The last problem is the horses. There's no way she can afford those, so she'll have to steal them. However, with her current duties there's no reason she should come in contact with horses, so people will certainly notice if she steals them.
The best way for that to work is to steal them the night of the escape. She'll have to get the horses out of their stables, move them to the place in the woods, hook them up to the cart, and get them over to the meeting point before sunrise.
It's not going to be easy to travel in the dark, the horses are going to be tired, and she has to hope Gaius successfully managed to free his fellow slaves with just the daggers she gave him.
Robin is also aware she might be condemning some of the overseers to death. Gaius might have to kill some of them to get everyone out. The thought sits ill with her, but there isn't enough time to prepare another way out. The longer they wait the more men will die from exhaustion, heat, or mosquitoes. The overseers are complicit in the ongoing slavery of these men though…
"Don't think about it anymore. You'll just torture yourself. There's no perfect solution." Robin scolds herself. She is currently in the process of sneaking four farm horses out of the village. It's… not nearly as hard as she thought it would be. The horses are fairly quiet, and everyone is fast asleep. "Please let Gaius have everyone there when I arrive. We need to make good time, because there's no way people aren't going to come after us."
###
The bow feels heavy in Robin's hands as she lowers it. Her mouth is dry, seeing her victim fall off their horse and onto the desert sand.
Her bow was meant for hunting. She's killed snap hounds with it, and various birds, and even some foxes that bothered the chickens. She's never had to turn it against a person… much less a fellow amazon.
Well, not 'fellow' anymore. Robin refuses to call identify herself as such a thing. A people who rely on slavery… she can't condone that. Most of the amazons aren't bad people. She doubts most of them know about the slavery at all, but now that Robin does know she can never dissociate the word amazon from the idea of slavery again.
"Stop looking." Gaius murmurs. He's standing next to her at the back of the cart, holding a dagger. It probably wouldn't do them any good, the amazons have bows after all, but Robin appreciates his willingness to join her in a fight if needed. "It only makes it worse."
"You've…?" Robin can't finish the sentence.
Gaius nods, and doesn't elaborate. "Big choices always require sacrifices. Just a fact of life, yeah? You plan as much as you can, but there's always a dice roll involved. That lady stumbling across us… just a bad roll. For her, and for us."
Robin nods. It doesn't make her feel much better though. She forces herself to turn away, and instead look at all the men crammed into this cart, and the tired horses dragging them all across the sands. Most of them are looking at her, having watched her shoot down their pursuer.
"These people need my help." She reminds herself. She keeps a calm look on her face so as to not panic those she's protecting, though it's not at all a reflection of what she's feeling. "This was never going to be a clean escape. We didn't have enough time. The ends don't justify the means… but inaction would be worse."
"There was no good option." Gaius mutters, as if reading her thoughts. His hand squeezes her shoulder in reassurance. "Either you killed her, or we ended up back in the rice fields to slowly be eaten alive. If it's any consolation… you saved us by doing that."
It's small consolation, but Robin will take it.
###
"Ho! Pretty woman looking bit lost in big desert! Maybe Gregor help?" An older man with brown-orange hair greets as he wanders up to their cart. He has small girl with skimpy clothing on his shoulders who waves at Robin.
"Hi there, my name's chopped liver." Gaius greets sarcastically. The older man's face splits into a wide grin.
"Gregor mean not to hurt feelings of boy! Just distracted by dazzling young lady! Understandable, no?"
"Hold on, I thought your name was Gaius." Robin says while frowning at Gaius. "What sort of name is Chopped Liver?"
Gaius lets out a sigh, and Gregor bursts out laughing. "Just… don't worry about it Robin."
"So, what pretty lady doing out in desert with little boy?" Gregor asks, ignoring the glare Gaius shoots him.
"Delivering these men back to their homes." Robin says honestly, and gestures into the cart.
Gregor look in, and blinks in surprise at seeing a few dozen pairs of eyes staring back at him. "Oh… oh… you come from Polemis, yes?"
"Yes."
"I hate those guys." The little girl huffs. "They suck. Do you know how long it takes to get arrows out of my scales?"
"These men were…?"
"Slaves." Robin says simply.
"Ah. You be needing directions perhaps?"
"Yes please." Gaius grunts. "We've just been going in one direction hoping to hit something before we starve to death."
"Gregor and Nowi will show way!" The man announces cheerfully. "Also, Gregor has ale, perhaps raise spirits a bit yes?"
The chorus of voices suddenly agreeing from inside the cart, not waiting for Gaius and Robin to reply, effectively makes that decision for them.
"Alright you drunks…" Gaius sighs, and looks to Gregor. "You had to say ale."
The man wiggles his eyebrows. "Gregor understand people very well, yes?"
"Too well."
###
Gregor and Nowi gave Robin a whole new life (which makes two new lives in one year). She and Gaius joined the two in mercenary work which Robin found her skills very well suited to. Gaius was less so suited, but in the niech cases where they needed a lockpick or stealth, he was invaluable.
Robin can see another life change on her horizon however, and she means that literally. There's a group of Ylissian soldiers charging across the Plegian sands at a group of Grimleal. A group of Grimleal that, mind you, are currently in the process of chasing down Robin's group (specifically Nowi).
Somehow, in her gut, Robin just knows this is going to change everything about her life once more…
This was an incredibly weird chapter. The things that happen in it aren't too weird, it's just that it's wildly different from what I usually do, and the 'quirk' is really just a backstory idea.
You have no idea how many times I wrote this chapter before settling on this. Amazon Robin was something I wanted to do for a while but nothing worked. Even if it didn't turn out as I expected it to, I'm glad I got this done.
Firehedgehog: That would be an interesting talk. Though getting Grima to a state where he wouldn't be able to instantly kill everyone around him might be a challenge.
Darkness is complete: I mean… you can always go back and read whatever you missed. Machine Robin is exactly what ROBIN is. Dungeon Robin is a very specific idea, but a valid one. I'll put it down.
TheF00L0: So Teleporting Robin. Noted.
Fantasy Paradise: Throwing that into ideas for Varied Awakenings. It's an idea that basically makes Robin not Robin. They're effectively an OC at that point, an Isekai protagonist, because they have no grounding in the world the story takes place in.
Basically, it's so drastic an idea and incongruous with the other ideas I've done I can't put it into The Robin Variable. Not a bad idea by any means, just not something I can put in this collection.
LoveGlutton: I'm aware how jarring it is. The idea came out of nowhere, so I wrote it, and decided to keep it because it was interesting.
dnomy: Pardon my bluntness but… no. I'm not sure I can work with that idea, sorry.
Guardian54: Actually, that was never my intent. Looking back on it though, I can totally see why you think that.
Guest: Already done. Chapter 23.
Vanderspiegel: Sure. I'll put them all down.
Someth1ng: That's a curious idea. Difficult, but interesting.
chroms6pack: See Grimleal Robin (chapter 19). That's more or less just Robin without memory loss. I've implimented it a few other times (Arranged Marriage Robin and Sadistic Robin for example) where it was very much a minor detail that had to be inferred, but Robin having his memory is very much a minor quirk.
Hope that helps!
bauers374: It was actually a mechanic in Echoes too. Mila's Turnwheel.
JtBlack-Hawk3198: Hmm… that's a very specific idea that requires a lot of rationalizing to work. I'll put it down, but that's very unlikely due to the need to explain away several contrivances involved with making that idea work.