One problem with our group composition became immediately apparent. We pretty much all travelled differently. I flew, of course, and flew rather zippily about, but Mikachu flew at a much more sedate pace. Ette rolled and Jazmyn walked pretty much as she normally would. Noa walked as well, but a centauress’s walking stride and pace was different from a human’s.

“I am not a horse,” Noa said, “And saddle or not, you’re not riding me.”

“Come on, it would be faster,” Jazmyn said. She wasn’t whining; it was more of a friendly teasing banter. “And you know if our positions were reversed, you’d be asking me.”

“If you got to be a centaur and I didn’t, I would have been really miffed,” Noa replied. “And I’m still not going to carry you on my back. You’d pull my hair out, trying to use it as reins.”

“I would not …! Oh, we’re at the gate.”

The city gate was an arched opening in the stone wall. There were heavy wooden doors at both ends of the little tunnel through the wall, but the doors were flung wide open. A pair of NPC guards were on the inner side of the wall, one on either side of the gate, but both looking more like guides than guards despite their military-like uniforms in the same blue, gold, and white of our high school’s colors.

Their lack of military bearing was evidenced by one of them sitting on a crate and leaning against the wall, half dozing with an open book in his lap. And the other had the contents of a picnic basket spread out across another crate, albeit a crate covered with a blue-and-white gingham tablecloth. He seemed more interested in deciding what condiments to add to his sandwich than in watching for whomever may be coming or going from the city.

We looked at the guards, back at each other, and shrugged. “Guess we just walk on out,” Mikachu said.

“Yeah, yeah, go on out like everyone else,” the sandwich-creating guard said, waving toward the gate with a hand holding a mustard bottle. “Find a few little monsters, kill them, get stronger, that sort of stuff.” He spoke without even looking at us.

“That sounds like a quest to me,” I said.

“Well, it isn’t. I’m not giving you any coins or my lunch to bribe you to do something you were going to do anyway. If you want a quest, get strong enough to do something meaningful. Or find a quest board and see if any shopkeeper or farmer’s daughter or fisherman wants you to kill ten rats or something. Now hurry along, little monsters are waiting for little heroes-to-be like you. Try not to die, now.”

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“A quest board?” Noa asked.

“A board. With Quests. Put there by people who want something done. Easier on everyone if little heroes-to-be like you go and grab something off the board rather than pester people at random. Maybe I’ll put up a quest tomorrow, something like ‘Go away and leave me alone so I can eat my lunch in peace.’” He huffed and added a few more sliced pickles to the sandwich he was constructing. “Or if that was too subtle for you, ‘Scram,’ ‘Skedaddle,’ ‘Move along now, nothing to see here.’”

Mikachu looked affronted and balled her fist. She made as if to step forward, but I flew over and hovered in front of her face. “Come on, now. Picking a fight with a guard is usually a bad thing to do. Even rude ones. They may not look it, but they’re probably zillions of times stronger than we are right now.”

She huffed and the feathers on her wings seemed to puff up a little before she relented. “Ah, you’re right. I’m just not used to being treated that way in-person. NPCs with attitudes were always on-screen before.”

“Or at a game table,” Ette said. “Remember the warlock in the last campaign?”

“Yeah, but that’s different. That’s you putting on an act. This was …. Oh, never mind.” Mikachu shrugged and tucked her wings back. “Let’s go, everyone. Perhaps these so-called ‘little monsters’ will have a better personality.”

The moment everyone was through the gateway and into the open space under the wall, time seemed to stop for a few seconds. My wings were frozen in mid-flap and I couldn’t even blink. It didn’t last long enough for me to be aware enough to start to panic, though when time unfroze, there was a brief but very intense flash of vertigo, enough to put my flight off course and I nearly bumped into Noa’s shoulder.

“What was that!” Jazmyn exclaimed.

“Zone transition. It paused while I was selecting which instance to enter,” Ette said. “We could have gone to five different instances of the grasslands outside the city wall or a private training instance. I chose the latter. Less experience, but since we don’t have to compete for spawns, it’s probably better.”

Of course, we then had to explain to my sister why it was that Ette got to unilaterally choose where we went. Since Ette had sent the group invites, she was the one who was the group leader. And, of course, the leader chose for the group when such a choice needed to be made.

“If Noa’s class works the way I’m guessing it will,” Ette said, “then sooner or later she’ll be the leader of the group. Besides, I’m a crafter, not a fighter, so I might not always be going out of town with you.”

“We have no melee vanguard,” Mikachu said, “I may be the shieldwall, but I’m a caster. You may need to be up front, Ette.”

“Ugh. That’s no fun. At least my Defenses stat is pretty high. But I’d rather be pounding metal than pounding monsters.”

“Sounds like you’re between a rock and a hard place, Ette,” I quipped.

She gave me a stoney glare. “Don’t even start with the puns, or so help me, every item I craft for you is going to have cuteness as its primary stat.”

“Is that even a thing?” Jazmyn asked.

“Probably not,” I said and lowered my voice to a stage whisper, “but I wouldn’t take it for granite.”

“I heard that!”