Due to his leather armor having been reinforced with steel plating made from the bandits' weapons Amerika smelted, and the black wolf pelt fashioned into a fur collar behind his collar, Ren couldn't help but find his protective outfit particularly uncomfortable in the midday sun— the black long sleeve shirt and gloves he had to wear to prevent his skin color from being identifiable only made him sweat that much worse.
However, unlike the rest of his armor from the neck down, his custom-made steel helmet had tech inside of it— which came equipped with something Amerika told him was called "self-contained air-conditioning". And though his body ran hot as the humid heat caused his skin to perspire underneath his armored plating, his head remained cool with filtered ventilation that doubled as an air filtration system— advanced tech powered by the "mana battery" that his technical expert of a companion had installed.
With an -dyed tassel attached to the top of his advanced helmet floating in the air behind him, Ren walked beside the three-foot tall goblin, who had her light green-skinned concealed beneath white bandages, and a crimson hooded-cowl that helped with hiding her ears.
Due to her nocturnal eyes being extremely sensitive to sunlight, Amerika had salvaged her bunker's resources to create goggles equipped with black-oblique lenses that would transition from tinted to transparent, but only from her perspective— making her yellow scleras unseeable to the outside world, similar to how she had built a bullet-proof shield with the same one-way tinting underneath the vertical slits, along Ren's armored faceplate.
On top of the advanced helmet and eye-protective she had made for them within the three days they had to prep for their journey, Amerika brought with her several pieces of experimental technology that her clan had been working on: a collapsible workbench, an "Allmätchtiges Werkzeug" multi-tool— that ran off the same mana-batteries Ren's helmet used, that she knew how to craft from scratch— and a military grace palmtop device with a small backlit-monitor, that came equipped with a solar-powered charger along the back of its bulky chassis.
Armed with loaded lever-action rifles and double-action revolvers— with sharpened combat knives sheathed alongside their left hips— both Amerika and Ren were fully prepared for full-scale combat.
With how frequently their dangerous encounters had been during their last journey together, Ren left the Heim Family Farm with the assumption that the road leading out from the vicinity of the Maggiore Village would be filled with highwaymen.
The excitement he had of being able to use his new equipment against those who he saw as villainous slowly dissipated into boredom, about an hour into their trip.
Exhausting their options of small talk— including Amerika having brought up several times the topic of Ren's first kiss with Bethany— eventually, the goblin got tired of the droning sound of their footsteps, and it was then that reached into her unzipped duffle bag to retrieve her PDA.
Pressing her fingertip down on the side of the rectangular device, Amerika ejected two small pieces of plastic out from their charging port. "Oi, fancy one, mate?" She asked, while tucking the PDA underneath her armpit, so as to free her gloved hands.
Still walking by her side, Ren turned his armored head over his leather shoulder pad to stare down at her bandage-wrapped face— watching her momentarily pulling her hood down to pop one of them into her left ear, before pulling the cowl back over her head full of brown hair.
"… What is it?" He asked in a calm, yet curious voice— taking the white wireless device from her small hand, before eyeing it from behind his black-tinted face-shield.
"It's called an "ear-bud", Ren; and as the name implies, yew gently stuff the soft part of it inside yewr ear," Amerika replied, and watched as Ren cautiously used his right hand to twist the ivory-white stumps along the sides of his helmet— unsealing his helmet, and allowing him to comfortably roll it off of his head.
Catching his steel helmet with his right hand and tucking it against his side, Ren attempted to push the ear-bud into his left ear, but was quickly informed, "The lil' fockin' "R" on the backside of the ear-bud stands for "Retchs"— as in, yew're supposed to put it in your RIGHT ear, bruv!"
'What "lil fockin' "R""? What the hell is she— oh wait, I see it,' Ren thought to himself; after having brought the ear-bud to his eye level to inspect its back, where he indeed saw the letter "R" printed on it in gray ink.
"Thanks," Ren replied back with a half-sarcastic tone in his voice, which earned him an amused chuckle from Amerika.
"Heh— smartarse~…!" He heard her say playfully, while sliding the earbud into his right ear canal. Once it was inside, the earbud began emitting a dull white noise from its speaker— causing him to recoil slightly.
"It's… It's making it difficult to hear out of my ear… Is it supposed to do that?" He asked worryingly, while holding onto the earbud with his gloved fingertips.
"Yeah, that's by design: it's usin' "noise-cancellation" to make the audio more crisp," Amerika explained reassuringly, before muttering aloud, "Granted, I should probably carry on with actually play somethin' for yew, for it to start makin' real sense," while tilting her head down to stare at her palmtop device's bright screen.
Placing his helmet back over his head, Ren used the ivory-knob on the right side of his headgear to reactivate the seal around his neck— air-conditioned air blew against his pale skin, as he watched the goblin girl rapidly tap away at the PDA's screen with her thumbs.
"Play something…? Like…? Like a song…?!" Ren asked with a puzzled tone. "Does that mean that device is some sort of musical instrument then?"
Cocking her lips to the side thoughtfully behind her bandages, Amerika shrugged her shoulders at Ren while still navigating through the PDA's library of stored music. "Meh, I guess yew could say that— ya," she remarked with a pensive voice— seemingly not having made such a correlation herself.
"I'd ask wot sort of music yew'd want me to put on, but… Seein' how odes and hymns are sort of what everyone only knows nowadays, howzabout I give yew a little taste of… W-Whatever the fock Mili downloaded onto this bloody thing— wot the hell, Mili…?!" Amerika uttered with a befuddled voice, while silently reading the titles of the songs she was scrolling through.
"… "Rightfully," "Past the Stargazing Season," "Witch's Invitation," "Bathtub Mermaid," "Ga1ahad and Scientific Witchery"?!" Amerika asked aloud with revolt in her voice— scoffing at the selection of her deceased cousin's most recently played songs.
Having zero clue as to whether or not the songs that the disapproving goblin was saying aloud were, Ren took the opportunity to survey the open field around them on both sides; asking "Are any of those any good," while keeping his hand hovered over his holstered revolver.
Too preoccupied with what she was doing to pay much mind to the way she saw Ren spinning a circle while still managing to move along at the path beside her, Amerika simply shook her head in response.
"Not even close… But oi, this one ain't too shabby!" Amerika announced with a rejuvenated tone of excitement in her voice— all three-feet of her petite body perking up, as she pressed her thumb down on her chosen pick. "It's called "Stay With Me"; the genre's called "City-Pop"— and if there's ever a song that'll get yew into music, it's gonna bloody be this one!"
And so, with a tap of her finger, Amerika began transmitting audio signals from the PDA into both their earbuds; watching with an amused look behind her goggles and bandages, as Ren physically recoiled the moment he heard the crisp sound of percussions tapping, and the angelic voice of a woman singing.
Immediately whipping his head over his shoulder to see if a band had magically appeared on his right side— it was only after seeing nothing but grass and a few trees spread out along the field did he suddenly make the connection.
"Oh! That's what you meant by "putting on music"," Ren concluded with an astonished tone, as he turned his head back down to meet Amerika's concealed gaze. "You pick a song from that contraption, and then it plays it through the "earbuds"…! That's…! That's amazing…!"
"I know, right?!" The enthusiastic goblin replied back agreeingly, before sliding the PDA back into her duffel bag and zipping it up. "Let me know wot yew think of it when it's done— I'll gauge wot the next song will, dependin' on wot yewr feedback is."
Six hours away from where Amerika and Ren were blissfully listening to the plethora of different genres the goblin girl's cousin had stored within her PDA's solid state drive, there resided the trading hub of Pathway's southern countryside.
The city of "Floré" was an expensive settlement that resided an hour away from the kingdom's busiest harbor: Port Trinity— making it a popular destination for merchants and sailors alike to spend their coin at. And unlike the nearby villages, the infrastructure of Floré came equipped with sewer systems, canals leading to and from the "Plitvice Lakes", gray-brick roads in the middle of paved sidewalks, banned lampposts and large skyscrapers that reached upwards of nearly one-hundred meters tall.
All-in-all, the city of Floré was easily one of the largest and most innovative areas within the borders of Pathway— surpassed by only the capital, "Patheon", and the holy city of "Vanticas". And though it was large and complex, it by no means meant that Floré was a moral city.
With just the high number of travelers that Floré saw per day— many of which were men away from home, who saw their business trips as opportunities to let loose— one of the most in-demand services of the traveling hub were brothels. From human womens, lesser races, and even prostitutes who were considered subhuman— such as goblins, orcs, and beastfolk— if it had a hole, it could be bought in Floré.
In one particular brothel that went under the name of "Heaven's Daybreak", there resided an eight year-old blond girl with pearly-white skin, light-blue eyes as pure as the sky, and who feared the workers more than she did the men that came in-and-out of the front entrance of the establishment.
"Stupid little BITCH!" The fifty year-old brothel keeper shouted frustratingly at the blond child, as she reeled her arm over her shoulder before delivering a backhanded slap against the eight year-old's tear-soaked face.
Whimpering pitifully as she stumbled back in a daze, the petite girl blindly reached for something to catch herself. Grabbing a hold of her mop handle, the blond child let out a yelp as she fell backwards— knocking over the bucket of hot water that the head of the mop had been submerged in.
Seeing the look of unbridal outrage forming across the powdered face of the brothel keeper made the horrified girl immediately forget about having been backhanded in the first place; whatever color was left in her bruised face vanished, as she felt the soapy water soaking into the ragged fabric of her brown skirt.
"I-I'm sorry, Ma-"
"-First the fucking bedcovers… And now the FUCKING FLOOR TOO?!" The mature woman with voluptuous black hair with gray streaks screamed angrily— her ivory face now completely flushed with red, as she reached down to grab the panicked child up by her forearm.
Unable to form coherent words, the sobbing child tried desperately to cry out for mercy, but was immediately met with the woman's knee to her scrawny stomach— knocking the wind of her lungs, and leaving her unable to scream as the brothel keeper beat her fist against her head.
Too disoriented and in anguish to understand most of the insults that were being hurled her way, all the blond girl could do was try to shield herself with her small arms. Taking the woman's knuckles against her already scraped up and bruised forearms, the blond girl's pathetic attempts at defending herself ended when the brothel keeper suddenly kicked her in the chest with her high-heel shoe.
Too dazed to even make an attempt to catch herself, the blond girl fell hard against the wooden floor— cracking her head against the fallen bucket, and hyperventilating as she writhed on the floor in pain.
Having failed to reach the brother keeper's high standard of proper room-presentation, and having just spilled soapy water all over the floor she had already mopped, the child curled into a ball while laying on her side— paying no attention to the warm liquid trickling down her inner thigh, as she braced herself to be kicked.
Fortunately enough for her, the five-foot tall woman standing over her seemed to have gotten all of her frustration out after beating her to the ground. Unable to be bothered to further reprimand her servant, the brothel keeper chose to spit on the trembling child's head— passing by her, and muttering, "You're lucky I haven't rented your cunt out to the dirty bastards who've asked," before exiting the bedroom and slamming the door behind her shut.
Although extremely under duress, the sobbing girl knew better than to lie down and risk getting seen as lazy by either the brothel owner, or one of the many prostitutes who saw her as someone they could take their own pain out on.
Wincing and murmuring incoherently under her shaky breath, the blond girl used what little strength she had to pick herself up off of the soaked floor. "E-Earth Mother…! E-Earh Mother— p-please— I-I need you…!" She begged quietly, while bowing her sore neck down as she interlaced her fingers together in front of her chest.
"I… I'm scared, Earth Mother…! I-I don't want to be t-touched…!" The girl confessed to her goddess— finding comfort in speaking to her, in a place as hopeless and degenerative as the place she was forced to call her home. "P-Please…! Please save me…! I-I d-don't w-want to be here, Earth Mother— t-take me away…! Take m-me away from h-here, a-a-and n-never bring me back here again…! P-Please…! P… Please…"
Helpless and unable to do anything for herself, the blond child continued to beg Earth Mother for salvation— something she had grown accustomed to doing. Picking up the handle of the mop with one hand, she picked up the mop bucket with the other before wringing its head out over it— her prayers slowly transforming into fantasies of escapes.
Still whimpering and leaking tears from her blood-soaked eyes, the blond girl began using the mop to soak up the water from the wooden floor— cleaning it up like she had already done before, while imagining herself being saved by a dashing knight in shining armor. And though she doubted that she would ever leave the brothel alive, she held onto the thought of one day being saved— so that one day she could fully serve her goddess by becoming her priestess.
Author's Note: Best Girl will finally be introduced properly soon.