Forgotten Girl Quest

Natsuko woke up feeling very peculiar. Something was off. She felt… rested. Was this how most people woke up? No pounding head? No acidic stomach? Nothing? Just… normal? It felt wrong.

“Sooouuup! Sooouuup!” Sofiane crowed like a rooster, waking Shuixing up beside Natsuko. She had dark, baggy circles under her eyes and looked disappointed at existence itself. It was like she and Natsuko had traded places.

“Wow,” Natsuko said.

Shuixing’s chapped, sticky lips unsealed themselves. “What?”

“You look like a crusty mess.”

“The exterior matches the interior,” Shuixing said, reaching for her glasses and pushing them onto her face.

“Time to get up and seize the day! Isn’t that what you like to tell me?” Natsuko said with the shit-eating grin of someone who got to turn the tables.

Shuixing yanked the blanket away from Natsuko and swaddled herself in it. “I’ll never say it again as long as I live.”

“Agh! Cold! Cold!”

Natsuko shot out of their tent and started doing jumping jacks to warm herself up.

“You accidentally use a fire ability under your own ass?” Sofiane said, swathed in a white fur coat that made him look like a polar bear-rug walking vertically.

“No, but I can light one under your gaudy ass coat if you want,” she replied.

He chuckled haughtily. “Don’t hate me cuz I’m beautiful, Natsu. Maybe if you got rid of that old 1st gen-lookin’ ass outfit you’d get your Use-Numbers back.”

Daisy was sitting on a tree stump that hadn’t been there the night before, snacking on a salmon croquette and sipping piping hot tea. The porcelain teapot at her feet was an almost translucent white and gilded with gold. Compared to the drab forest floor around it, the pot looked almost magical.

“Mind if I get some?” Natsuko asked.

Daisy glanced at her over the cup and saucer held gently in her two hands and nodded. “Oh, sure.”

The abrupt lack of spunk from Daisy was disconcerting. What was with everyone suddenly jumbling their personalities? Natsuko almost felt like going back to being a sour, depressed alcoholic for the sake of consistency.

“I don’t have to have any if you don’t want me to,” Natsuko said.

“What? Oh, no, do have some tea! Really, I’m just slow to get moving in the morning, that’s all,” Daisy replied, setting down her cup and saucer to pass the pot to Natsuko. The scalding pot radiated warmth in Natsuko’s hands.

“Do be careful now, Natsu,” Daisy said. “It’s mighty hot still.”

Sloshing some into another of Daisy’s dainty tea cups, Natsuko looked up and said, “I’m a Fire Elemental. The heat’s nothin’ to me.”

Natsuko took a hearty swig of the tea and promptly spat it all over the ground. “Aghck! Hot! Ow! Shit!”

Daisy giggled while Natsuko packed some of the dirty ground frost onto her tongue.

“I did warn you,” she said.

By then, Pechorin was emerging from Sofiane’s tent and trying to look brooding and angsty despite his thoroughly reinvigorating night’s sleep and desperate urge to yawn (only the sane and un-tormented yawn).

“Would you like some tea too, Pech?” Daisy asked, holding out the pot.

He shook his head. “Nay, the warmth of tea cannot thaw the cold revenge I seek.”

“Oh, okay. It has caffeine too. How about you, Sofi?”

Sofiane shook his head and stared wistfully to the West in the direction of the Lanbaoshi Roadhouse. “I fear I may ruin my liquid appetite if I imbibe.”

“Liquid appetite?” Natsuko said with a raised eyebrow.

“For future soup,” he explained.

After a reluctant Shuixing joined them, they were back out on the road. A couple more hours of travel and the Duftenderwald Forest came to a sudden end at a grassy slope down towards a sandbar. Stretching for miles and miles ahead of them was a long, narrow isthmus, less than a few hundred yards across at its widest, which connected the regions of Vermögenburgh with Tianzhou. The space was so open they could see clear to the boxy wooden structure built over the sand a few miles away that they knew was Lanbaoshi Roadhouse.

This was the land-bridge that connected Tianzhou and Vermögenburgh. If they hooked Northeast instead of West they would enter the chilly taiga of Cascadia.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Shuixing said, her voice soft and quiet.

“Since we were last in Tianzhou? Shit, yeah, gotta be what, three years ago now?” Natsuko said.

“Y’all have been in Vermögenburgh for three years!?” Daisy said.

“Something like that,” Shuixing said.

“Gosh golly, I knew y’all’ve been sorta stuck but I didn’t realize you hadn’t gone anywhere at all. No wonder you were so depressed until yesterday, Natsu!”

“Less talk,” Sofiane said, leading the charge down the hill towards the long stretch of sand, “more soup!”

“What’s your favorite kinda soup?” Daisy asked, jogging to catch up.

“Crab bisque,” Sofiane said with no hesitation.

This devolved into a long, drawn out conversation about soup dominated by Sofiane giving strong opinions which defied the polluting influences of “subjective taste” or “differing opinions.” One’s soup opinions said much about their character, and the absolute bottom of the barrel was Pechorin whose answer was, “I eat only to sustain my body, that I may continue the search for my clan’s killers.” Even Natsuko’s, “eh, I’m whatever about soup,” clocked in as a more correct opinion according to Sofiane. Though crab bisque was, of course, the most correct.

After about an hour of walking along the sand and scrub they came into sight of the Roadhouse. It was a single wooden structure built up along both sides of the road and stretching across it like some teetering goliath of wooden boxes that looked like the work of a child playing with blocks. It was an entire town built vertically with a tunnel going through the middle.

Also coming into sight was the large crowd of people standing out front of the ground-level shops.

“Oh no, that’s not good,” Sofiane said.

“What do you mean?” Natsuko said, having the same feeling.

“Non-Heroes don’t randomly congregate unless it’s a Special Event, and as far as I’m aware, there’s no Special Event going on,” Sofiane replied.

The tone of the crowd was anxious. Hushed whispers and apprehensive speculation emanated from it like heat from a bonfire. As their group got closer, they could hear some of those whispers and speculations.

“...the third time this week!”

“Nothing left behind…”

“Why are they doing this?”

“...don’t want to be next…”

Sofiane tapped on the shoulder of one of the gathered Non-Heroes. “Pardon me, sir, could you tell us what is going on?”

The man jumped at the touch, then wiped his brow when he realized that it was an adorable girl asking him the question and not a cold-blooded serial killer.

“Erm, certainly. Are you a Hero, little girl?”

Sofiane smiled. “No, but you’ll be dead if you refer to me as a little girl again.”

What should have been the kind of exaggerated, archetype-building back-and-forth dialogue that Non-Heroes expected from Heroes prompted the man to recoil in horror.

“W-Wait! P-Please don’t kill me! I’m sorry!” the man said.

The crowd of Non-Heroes turned around and seemed as frightened as the man. Rather than supporting him, the herd backed up, leaving him to be devoured by predators.

“Uhh… I wasn’t serious…” Sofiane said.

Daisy gave Natsuko and Shuixing a confused look, as though she expected them to know what was happening due to living in Vermögenburgh for the past several years. Natsuko and Shuixing were as lost as her. Pechorin seemed the only one unfazed.

“Is there an NH killer around?” Pechorin asked.

Natsuko squinted. “A what? Pech what are you on—”

“Yes!” said a portly NH woman Natsuko recognized as Minhua, the wife of the owner of Lanbaoshi Roadhouse. “They kill us at night so we don’t know who it is other than…” Minhua turned away in embarrassment. “A Hero” was the unspoken end of that sentence. Natsuko wondered why she was beating around the bush.

“A Hero killing Non-Heroes? Uh… why?” Natsuko asked.

“If we knew we could get them to stop!” one of the shopkeepers shouted.

Minhua shuddered. “They take their victim out of the town, but close enough we can hear their screams. It’s… it’s…”

“Killing for pleasure,” Pechorin said.

She choked back a sob. “Please… y-you’re Heroes too, so if you could find them and tell them to stop this we could… we have Ying! We’ll give you all of it! But we can’t keep living like this, being murdered and coming back the next day to be murdered again. We’re going insane!”

“Hey, money is all you had to say. I’m in!” Natsuko said, rubbing her palms together. “Let’s go find ‘em, beat the shit out of them until they agree to stop, and we’re in-and-out in a few hours. We’ve got Daisy here so it’s no big deal. I mean, compared to Yuna blowing us up, this guy’s gotta be a chump, right?”

Sofiane and Daisy looked at each other.

“Oh shit, you’re gonna say no, aren’t you?” Natsuko said.

The crestfallen inhabitants of the Lanbaoshi Roadhouse arrived at the same conclusion.

Sofiane exhaled and rubbed his temples. “Natsu, we don’t have the time to get distracted. We need those papers back. Asap. Every second we dilly-dally with little side-quests for chump change is another second Yuna is copying Shuixing’s work down. Do you get why that’s the bigger issue here?”

Natsuko folded her arms. “Chump change for you, but I’ve still got to eat and Tianzhounese living expenses are double what they are in Vermögenburgh.”

“I can cover everything, Natsu. Heck, I can give you some spending money if you need,” Daisy said. She had the same anxious haste in her eyes as Sofiane. The worst part was that Natsuko felt like they were probably right. But that didn’t mean she was wrong.

“I don’t take donations,” Natsuko said, “so don’t patronize me. Every bit of gold I own, I earn properly.”

“What about your friendship loans from me?” Shuixing asked.

“That’s personal finance.”

“And to me,” Sofiane said.

“You said gift and you know it! Doesn’t matter. I’m helping these nice people catch their killer and that’s that. Simple as,” Natsuko said, starting to march towards the sandy tidal pools to the north of the roadhouse before realizing she didn’t actually know where to start looking.

As she turned back, Sofiane threw his arms up. “Fine! You screw around here with these useless Non-Heroes, and we’ll go deal with the enormous, apocalyptic problem you both helped create.”

With that he stomped off westward, passing into the sunlight on the other side of the Roadhouse, not even stopping for soup on the way. Daisy gave a small gesture of apology and then followed after Sofiane.

“Ugh, whatever. There are still three of us and one NH killer and I haven’t daydrank in at least 36 hours so I’m in prime fighting condition. Let’s go get ‘em,” Natsuko said.

Shuixing’s face was the portrait of guilt. “Natsu, I’m sorry…”

“Et tu, Shuixing?” Natsuko said, physically wincing.

“This was all my fault and I have a moral obligation to clean up my mess to the best of my ability. A-And honestly they’re— I don’t think Sofiane is wrong. We really don’t have time to waste…”

Natsuko just stared blankly as Shuixing jogged to catch up to her departing teammates. Shuixing had single-handedly doused the bonfire of excitement that’d been burning away in Natsuko’s stomach since their fight with Yuna.

“On the honor of the name of my decimated clan, I offer you my aid—”

She punched Pechorin in the arm.