Forgotten Girl Quest

“Shui, you’re not gonna need—”

“But what if I do need my slide rule? Just because we’re out adventuring doesn’t mean my research ought to grind to a halt,” Shuixing said.

“Okay, but—” Natsuko pointed at her friend’s bag, bulging and threatening to explode and send scientific equipment all over the floor should any further pressure be added. “The other two slide rules you included should be enough.”

Shuixing huffed and tugged at her robe’s sleeves. “Those are Mannheim and circular slide rules, this is a duplex.”

“You’re gonna have to make room somewhere,” Natsuko said.

“Doesn’t your pack have room?”

“Nope!” Natsuko said. She went into her closet-apartment and came back with an equally bulging bag. As though presenting a marvelous treasure, she untied the drawn strings and revealed 99 baked potatoes.

“Potatoes?” Shuixing asked.

“Yeah!”

“For healing?”

Natsuko nodded.

“Why potatoes? They heal for almost nothing. And surely my medico-magic should be enough for us in a pinch,” Shuixing said.

“Ah, because, my dear Shuixing, per unit of healing, potatoes are the most cost-efficient healing food. Sure, you could get some exotic Cascadian or Sibe-Land dish that heals for your entire health pool, but those cost a fortune. But baked potatoes?” Natsuko slapped the sack of potatoes. “These babies are the choice food for a Hero on a budget!”

Shuixing’s eyes narrowed. “What else is in there?”

“Ahaha, what’d’ya mean?”

“Natsuko…”

“It’s potatoes all the way down babe, trust me.”

Not trusting her, Shuixing stuck her hand down the pile of potatoes and quickly found something glassy and bottle-shaped. She pulled out of the sack, sending potatoes flying, and held up a bottle of Pine Schnapps.

“Hehe, must have been in there from my last trip during my pre-sobriety days,” Natsuko said.

“Uh-huh,” Shuixing said, fully aware that Natsuko knew at all times the physical location of every alcoholic beverage within 100 feet of her person.

“I'll put it up,” Natsuko said, grabbing the bottle and sticking it back in her closet-room.

The packing didn’t go much quicker after that as Shuixing had to keep an eye out for Natsuko sneaking booze back into her pack and Natsuko had to veto sacrificing baked potatoes for more scientific equipment.

Eventually they were packed up and ready to make their first trip outside the region of Vermögenburgh in years. It was supposed to be a short one, but Natsuko still felt compelled to go around and say good-bye to all of her Non-Hero drinking buddies as if she wasn’t going to be back in less than a week anyway. Once she was done saying good-bye to Klaus, she and Shuixing headed for the town gate.

~~~

“You don’t need three lacy pillows, one is fine.”

“Excuse you! One is for my head, the other two go between my arms and legs. I can’t get to sleep without my grasping pillows.”

“And the fur coat?”

“Alternate costume. Need it for Ero-Art appeal.”

“And the shoes?”

Sofiane gave Daisy a look like she was ridiculous for even asking about the shoes. Of course he was bringing the hanfu shoes. How else was he going to pull off his Tianzhou-inspired Lunar New Year Alternate Costume?

Daisy herself had packed nothing but the bare essentials, which included a spare pocket watch which had better stats in crit rate and attack speed in case she needed to take over DPS duties instead of her usual utility-focused cooldown reduction and summon duration pocket watch.

Next to that she had some top-tier healing items encased in a wooden box to keep them from getting smooshed. The maple-salmon croquettes from the Cascadia region didn’t heal quite as much as horse mince pie from the Sibe-lands, but she liked the taste a bit better. To pair with it were some attack-boosting bottles of Airag, defense-pumping barbecue Khorkhog, and move speed-buffing Boortsog. Her tongue liked the taste more than the pronunciation.

Daisy could afford to pack light since she also had a couple million Ying on hand for incidentals like mid-journey equipment and skill upgrades, or for a nice cup of tea. And she got another million or so every monday as part of her weekly compensation for Celestials using her emanation.

“Now wait a gosh darn second,” Daisy said, “what’s the use in bringin’ an alternate costume if there’s no events to show it off at? The celestials aren’t gonna see it anyhow.”

Sofiane flashed a grin before tucking his gently-folded purple qipao dress into his pack. “You never know. That’s why it’s important to always be worth seeing.”

Despite Daisy being worried they would be late, it turned out that with Natsuko and Shuixing’s own delays, the two pairs arrived at the town gate around the same time. The only one missing was Pechorin.

~~~

Dark, phantasmagoric hellscapes painted the inside of Pechorin’s eyelids. Writhing in his tormented sleep, he dreamed of showing up to a dungeon without his clothes on. Despite the characters in his dream—Natsuko, Shuixing, and Hemiola—not remarking on his nakedness, it continued to torture him. And just as he thought his tortured past would finally allow him the sweet release of rest, he began to lose his teeth in such a realistic fashion that he started pounding the floor below him in his sleep.

No, it wasn’t him pounding.

“Pech? You in there?”

“It doesn’t sound like anyone’s in there. You sure, Natsu? He’s gotta have more respect than that.”

More banging like drums heralding the end times reached Pechorin’s ears. His eyes flickered open, thrusting him into a nightmare even worse than his slumbering mind could concoct: Consciousness. His eyes were stabbed by beams of harsh radiance like divine law itself.

“Why are you sleeping in a dumpster?” Sofiane asked as Natsuko burst into laughter.

“A warrior sleeps where he finds his head resting,” Pechorin answered as he nudged a garbage bag away from his foot.

“Uh… Okay. I would’ve let you stay in my room at the inn if you’d asked,” Sofiane said, his nose wrinkling from the smell.

Pechorin shrugged his arms into his black trench coat and began the process of sticking his inventory back into its pockets. “I’m a gunslinger. We get by.”

This would have been a more dramatic declaration if there wasn’t a moist napkin clinging to his shoulder.

“You need some time to get packed up?” Daisy asked, eyeing him up and down.

“No, I carry with me only what fits on my person. Anything more would tie me down to one place, and I don’t like to be tied down,” he said, jamming the opto-box picture into a side-pocket.

After extracting Pechorin from his ruggedly functional dumpster, they left Vermögenburgh with a hint of ceremony as some of the Non-Heroes and even a couple of Heroes in town completing backtrack quests came out to watch Daisy leave. There was no secrecy for Heroes at the top of the Use-Number rankings. Every place they went, every little thing they did, was scrutinized by other Heroes trying to get a leg up.

To Sofiane’s immediate and profound chagrin, Koyon, his ostensible replacement, was among the crowd.

“Lucky little shit,” Sofiane muttered. Daisy put a hand on his shoulder but said nothing.

Soon enough their brief spotlight was over and they were walking along the cobble bridge that spanned a deep ravine in the forest floor. On the other side lay miles and miles of coniferous forest, spires of pine and fir trees stabbing at the sky with little bursts of fire from maples near Hammertal Canyon.

Farther still lay mountains: Bare and rocky in Vermögenburgh, but pearly and moss-covered across the border in Tianzhou. To Natsuko and Shuixing this was almost their entire world, but to Sofiane and Daisy it was quaint. There was a sense that the real world, the world of things happening, existed beyond the jail bars of Vermögenburgh’s pine trees.

“It feels strange,” Daisy said as they walked along the banks of a creek running through Duftenderwald Forest. “Coming back here I mean. Tell the truth, I think I came back for nostalgia, and the pie contest was just an excuse.”

Sofiane grunted vaguely.

“I feel weird cuz I’m leaving it to do something else for once,” Natsuko said.

“I drift. It’s all a blur to me, one place or the next. Makes no difference,” Pechorin said.

“Yeah, bullshit. I know you’ve been hanging around Vermögenburgh when you’re not getting your ass-handed to you by monsters in al-Nuwba.”

“Al-Nuwba? Why there?” Daisy asked.

“Shikjima was the last region the Yishang de-misted before most 1st-gen heroes stopped having the stats to tackle the new quests and dungeons,” Shuixing explained.

Daisy whistled. “Gosh, that’s earlier than I thought! You really can’t fight anything there?”

“We can,” Natsuko said, “it’s just a giant pain in the ass. And what, I’m gonna work my ass off round the clock just so I can be three regions behind the big names instead of four? Won’t make any difference to the Celestials who’ve forgotten about me. Plus, I’d be paying inflated al-Nuwba prices for food and rent. Why do that when I can get drunk for cheap in Vermögenburgh and sleep all day instead? Easy choice, lemme tell ya. Honestly, the Yishang oughta de-Mist somewhere affordable.”

“Hmm, never thought about it like that. Does that mean you’re trying to do al-Nuwban quests, Pech?” Daisy asked.

He shrugged. “My overarching aim of finding my clan’s murderers becomes too daunting sometimes, and I must reset my mind for a while with meaningless number-building.”

“I think that’s pretty impressive!” Daisy replied.

Natsuko snorted. “Impressively stupid.”

“Couldn’t you try them, Natsu, what with your kill-everything bottle?” Daisy asked.

“Nope. Tried that already. A lot of dungeons and quests can’t be completed unless you kill some monster. But if you throw them through the floor…”

“You’re not killing them,” Sofiane finished with just a hint of saltiness.

“Right. Works great if you’re trying to stay alive, not if you’re trying to power-level, know what I mean? And I can’t do it the normal way cuz I already died a bunch trying, so my stats are lower, which makes it even harder.”

Daisy nodded. “Quite the conundrum, huh?”

Daisy had built up enough good will that Natsuko had the decency to stifle her instinctual response of “no shit.” Daisy was the first of the current slate of Top Ten Heroes that Natsuko had met, but others that had been on top offered advice for how to compensate for the severe stat differences between newer and older generation Heroes.

Why they all thought she was so stupid that she hadn’t tried everything already, Natsuko wasn’t quite sure.

“If there are no distractions, we ought to be at the Lanbaoshi Roadhouse by this evening and Tianzhou City the evening after that,” Sofiane said, bored with the sad-sack, woe is me conversation. “I’d like to get some soup in me. I’m big about soup. Huge about it. Hot bowls of soup are kind of my thing, and Lanbaoshi Roadhouse has some of the best soup in Po-Lin, so let’s not get distracted by anything or take any detours, alright?”

He said this looking directly at Pechorin. The insinuation was no more side-tracks to explore an entry in the Tome of the Unnatural and Cursed. Pechorin just nodded.

Not long after saying this, however, their path was blocked by three figures emerging from the forest. Harald, Faisal, and the raccoon girl stood with their weapons brandished. Harald pointed at Sofiane. “You!”

Sofiane pointed to himself. “Moi?”