Mia was mad.

Well, she wanted to be mad, but Mea wouldn’t let her. Every time she was pouting or being angry, sister would poke Mia’s cheeks and tell jokes and tickle her until Mia started laughing. Laughing made the mad feelings go away, and even though sister had gone into the other room with the big one, Mia just couldn’t stay mad. But she still wanted to be mad, because they broke a promise! It just wasn’t fair when Mia’s partner and the big one left her out of the conversation.

So instead of being mad at stewing there, Mia was just bored. Everyone had gone to the mountain, which left Mia in charge of asking questions. Important questions! But the man wouldn’t wake up, and now Mia was all alone and didn’t know what to do. She tried shaking him again, and was hopeful when he made a groan, but he still didn’t wake up.

With nothing better to do, Mia sat on the floor and waited, because she was a good girl, but couldn’t help kicking her legs while singing songs because there wasn’t anything else to do while waiting. No one to talk to, and Mia’s stuff had been taken, even the most important hero book was missing! There was food around, but she wasn’t hungry after taking a sip of the stuff in the mugs. It smelled bad and definitely wasn’t juice, so she had no idea why everyone else seemed to like it.

“Come on Mia, we’re ready to go!”

Mia looked up and they were back. With Mia’s pack, which Mia’s partner held out with a smile. Mia hopped up and took it, looking through all her special things to make sure none of them were missing. Aur’s diary, Mia’s favorite pretty stone, the daggers Brin had gifted her, and the family token that her new parents had given her when Mia had been adopted. Mia touched them all, then again to be sure nothing was missing, then closed her pack and put it on. Mia’s partner was watching and seemed like she was trying not to smile. But that was silly! Smiles were good, and hugs too, so Mia gave her one of each, and the big one too for good measure. Then she remembered the job she hadn’t been able to do.

“He wouldn’t wake up,” Mia said, pointing at the man. Mea responded by messing up Mia’s hair, then turned to the big one.

“If this guy goes along then there’ll be some physical proof of all this stuff. Might be a little bit of a hassle, but we can just pawn it off on Kos.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll let you know if we find out anything interesting.”

“All taken care of!” She said to Mia, then turned back to the big one. “Now, somewhere quiet, jeeves.” While Mia wondered what a jeeves was and trying to understand what had been taken care of, she blinked. When she opened her eyes they were somewhere else.

“Now where did that idiot even put us?” Mea said while looking around at the small space between the colorful funny buildings where they now stood.

“No! Mia didn’t ask the man any questions!” It was important to do her job, and now Mia couldn’t and that was upsetting.

“Mm? I told you that it was taken care of, though, so what’s the problem? I mean, it’s not like there was much he could’ve said that we didn’t already know right? We know who’s behind this already, so if we need more we’ll just ask him instead right?” Mia trusted her partner, even when she didn’t understand, so she thought about that while sister continued.

“Right, so. [Map]. Oh hah hah. Well, I guess it does count as ‘somewhere quiet.’ It’ll take a little walking to get to the west gate, but it’s still light out. Or it’s already tomorrow maybe? How long were we down there?” She mumbled while looking at the thin strip of sky visible above them in the alley. Mia opened her own map, but it was confusing. There were lots of blank parts and even in the bits that were filled in it was just a collection of shapes Mia didn’t know how to read, but she was still thinking about the man and the important questions.

“But Mia didn’t ask the questions.” She’d thought about it, and still didn’t understand what Mea meant by having taken care of it. It wasn’t taken care of, and Mia needed to say so, because sister sometimes just kept going without noticing things.

“Eh? Oh, that guy again? Why are you so — no, yeah alright, that’s a good point now that I think about it. That’s why I was going to have you ask the questions in the first place. Well, too late now. I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities, so let’s move on. We’ve got goblins waiting for us!” Sister said, taking Mia’s hand and pulling her forward.

“Mm,” Mia grumbled without moving. It bothered her an awful lot, and even if she wanted to go on an adventure, that wasn’t the most important thing anymore. “Mia still needs to ask the questions. Mia promised.” She stared at the ground, upset.

“What promise?” Mea said, still holding Mia’s hand.

“Mia promised to find who did the bad things and punish them!” She couldn’t believe sister had forgotten. It was important!

“Ah. Of course. Well, hm. Okay, let’s try this. I know who’s behind it, or at least I’m pretty sure I do, so what would you do if I told you? Or how about if I brought that man back right this moment and he told you all the things you think you need to know. What would you do next?”

“Mia would—” she stopped, suddenly unsure.

“It’s tough, isn’t it? Let’s walk while you think about that.” She took Mia’s hand and led them through long corridors with lots of turns with walls that sometimes came so close they had to turn sideways. Mia was finally able to relax because it felt a little more like home than the rest of the town. The tunnels from before were stinky and wet and the wrong shape, so Mia didn’t like them, but the places between buildings were nice.

Mia thought about what she ought to do while they walked. If she knew who did it, she would have to find them first before anything else. She had promised punishment, but she didn’t think it would be right to just go and hurt someone. The hero book said that bad people were supposed to be given to the guards, and that there were rules for how to punish bad people. But that was a problem.

“Mea,” she said, feeling troubled. “How can Mia punish the bad people if they’re guards?”

“Now that’s a good question. People build systems and rules and laws to make things fair, but what happens when those systems stop working, or the people who enforce the laws are themselves bad? Unfortunately, there’s no one answer to your question. Even bad people can do good, so just getting rid of all the guards and nobles isn’t necessarily the right thing. I think we’ll need to ask a lot of questions to a lot of people and find out what our options really are. That’s why we should go on our goblin hunt.”

“But, Mia can’t! The promise is more important.”

“Yes, but you’ve made two promises here.”

“Huh?” Mia didn’t remember making other promises.

“Maybe you should check your journal. That’s why you have it, right?” Mia immediately opened her pack and pulled it out, reviewing all the things she’d written in it. All the smart things sister said, and how good the juice was, and the goblins, but she didn’t see a promise and said so.

“But the goblins, and the mushrooms, are contracts we took and contracts are a type of promise. We promise to do certain work, and they promise to pay us for it. While finding out more about the corruption in this town is more important, it’s also not necessarily time sensitive. Think about it, we already rescued everyone, didn’t we?” Mia nodded. All her new friends would be safe with the big one and Sunny and mom and dad back in her Dungeon home.

“Well then, they won’t be hurt anymore, will they? The guards are gone too, so they won’t be kidnapping anyone else either. It’s possible that the people who told the guards to do those bad things will run away if we move too slowly, but if we move before we really understand the situation, we’re more likely to miss things or get the wrong people. So, you’ve made two promises and one of them has an explicit time limit, and the other doesn’t. Even if one of them is more important, which one do you think we should do first?”

“Mia needs to think about it.”

“Good! I might be wrong, so please do form your own opinion. Also, you might want to think about separating out the parts of your journal for different things. A section for promises and things you need to do, one for comments and stories. I’d need one for names if I were keeping a journal, so you might consider writing down stuff about everyone you meet.” Mia hadn’t thought about organizing things that way before, but immediately realized it was smarter than what she’d been doing and started fixing it.

They talked for a little while longer about promises and journals and other important details, and then set off again. Mia kept her map open and watched their progress, slowly coming to understand how the map worked and what all the shapes meant as they went. It was a nice quiet journey without anyone else in sight, and Mia enjoyed holding hands because it had a lot of the same feeling as a hug, but walking while hugging was impossible. Eventually there came more sounds from ahead and the passage opened out into a busy street with people walking by.

“Ah,” the hand holding Mia’s pulled her to a stop. “Before we head out there, let’s make sure we haven’t forgotten anything important.” Mia’s partner started fussing about, checking clothes and shoes and hair. She even gave Mia a sniff, which was really embarrassing!

“You should strap your daggers back into place,” Mea said. “Other than that, I think we’re in top shape!” Mia hung her weapons on her belt, just like Brin taught her, and with that they turned the corner and set off towards the city gate.

“Mea,” Mia said, once she had gotten over feeling sad about not holding hands anymore.

“Mm?” Mia’s partner responded without looking.

“Thank you. Mia wouldn’t know what to do without you. Mia thinks you’re smart and amazing and the best.” She tried to fit all her thoughts into those few words, but didn’t think it really came out right. Sister didn’t need to come along on Mia’s adventure, she didn’t need to help Mia at all. She existed as a special favor from the big one, just for Mia’s sake. “Mia is glad you’re here.”

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“Of course!” She said, sticking her nose in the air. A gleam of gold through her long silver lashes was the only evidence that her eyes weren’t shut as she strutted forward. Mia giggled and then Mea did too. The two of them carefully threaded through the sparse crowd on the road as they talked. Mea had told her that they were both very very heavy, and even a small collision could really hurt people. Mia didn’t feel heavy, but everyone was smaller than her now and she was a hero. Heroes weren’t supposed to bump into people! Maybe. Mia thought so anyway.

“That was like a real adventure!” Mia’s hero had described rescuing people from a cave, but it was way more fun to read about than to do, she decided. Aur hadn’t said it would smell so bad, either, but now that they were out and away from it, heading to their next adventure, she could think about it in the same terms as the stories she’d heard and read before. It just wasn’t done yet, and so wasn’t quite the same.

“It definitely was a real adventure, just not the one I thought we’d be having. They come in lots of shapes and sizes, you know, and not all of them are exciting. Some of them aren’t fun at all. Those people we helped, I don’t think any part of what they went through was fun, though it could be called an adventure.” They walked along in silence for a bit while Mia thought about that. About the meaning of adventure and how complex it really was.

“That’s why I think we should keep their story to ourselves for now.” Mia’s partner continued, breaking into her thoughts. “The goblins, though, now that will be fun!” Mia thought so, too, and was looking forward to it. They soon arrived at the gate and had as little trouble leaving as they had when they first arrived. Sister seemed disappointed about that for some reason, but Mia was too lost in her own thoughts to ask.

“Alright Mia, I think we’re far enough out that they won’t see us, and I don’t want it to take all day just to get there, so let’s run!” That was fine by Mia, since she didn’t get tired anymore and she wanted to get there faster anyway. With the only noise being their feet and the wind, Mia soon realized her partner was singing softly.

“Mea, Mea! What are you singing?” Mia had never heard anything like it before.

“Hm? Oh. It’s nothing. Just something that was stuck in my head.”

“Tell me, tell me!”

“I don’t like singing in front of people.”

“Please!” Mia really wanted to hear it.

“Fine, fine. You asked for it.” Sister started singing low and soft, but eventually picked up energy until she was almost bouncing along to her own tune. Mia didn’t understand a word of it, but it was very catchy and Mea’s singing voice was surprisingly pretty. Mia couldn’t figure out why her partner was embarrassed about it at all! It was repetitive enough that even without understanding it Mia soon started singing along.

Between the running and the song, the trip had passed in a flash. So much that Mia shot straight past the big tree with the rope tied around it that marked the turn towards the goblin camp. Mia had gotten so lost in having fun singing that she hadn’t realized they had arrived until Mia noticed her partner had stopped. She bounded back to the tree and gave it a look, but there wasn’t anything special about it other than the rope itself. Mia was glad her partner had spotted it, otherwise Mia would have ended up lost. Mia pulled out her journal and wrote about paying attention in the section that she’d reserved for such lessons.

“Okay, from here on we’ll be quiet. You go practice being a [Scout] and check for those goblin patrols. I’ll go looking for those mushrooms we’re supposed to collect.” Mea said while kneeling on the ground and rooting around in her pack, but as Mia put away her journal and tried to leave, sister caught her wrist. “You do remember the bird whistles Brin taught you, right?”

“Yes!” Mia really liked to whistle, it sounded so pretty, and it made her happy that bird whistles was how a scout communicated. Mia demonstrated one after which Mea let her go with a smile. She left her partner behind to hunt those mushrooms and threaded carefully through the underbrush, trying to do like Brin had taught.

Mia’s feet sank into the soft forest floor with every step, but she avoided the branches, grasping roots, and creeping ivies and made no sound. It didn’t take long to start finding trails left by animals. Brin had told Mia that monsters were more careful about leaving tracks, so she decided to keep looking. As she stalked along, looking for traces of the goblins, she eventually noticed small pairs of scratches near the bottoms of trees.

Mia made the found something whistle and followed the path the marks seemed to indicate. Brin had said that goblins were good targets for beginners. They weren’t very strong, or fast, or smart. They didn’t get more ferocious when they were hurt, and if a new adventurer needed to run, they wouldn’t chase very far either. One on one, even a clumsy person could win. But they were social, like people, and could often be found together.

In groups they were dangerous, so Brin had told Mia that she should hunt always with her partner, and they should try to find one that was alone until they got used to things and leveled up a few times. The receptionist lady had said something similar, too! Mia’s job as a scout was to find the best target, and that meant she should find a goblin who was alone for their first hunt. But Mia was confident that, with her partner’s help, they could fight two on two. She was doing her best to be an adventurer, so a little bit of danger was inevitable.

Aur had said in her diary that not doing everything she could do would be more dangerous in the long run. That made a lot of sense to Mia, because how could she judge how hard a fight would be if she didn’t know how hard she could fight?

A gust of wind suddenly brought something sour and sharp across her nose, and it was so shockingly gross she froze in place. It was like the smell from the tunnels again, but even worse. Moments later she heard footsteps from further along the trail she’d been shadowing, so Mia carefully hid herself deep in the brush. The awful smell got stronger as the footsteps approached, which made Mia realize that there was more to being sneaky than just being quiet and unseen. Mia didn’t know how to hide her smell, but Mea would! Her partner was always super smart like that. She waited until the sound of footsteps had passed and began following them. Mia heard a bird call from somewhere in the woods, and responded with her own.

Mia couldn’t tell how many there were, the footsteps were muffled and a little strange because they sounded really fast, but she wasn’t having to try very hard to follow them, so they were actually moving pretty slow. As she kept pace with them, she regularly signaled, but waited to do anything more until Mea caught up. Eventually the other whistle was close enough that Mia risked a peek, and almost overlooked them. Goblins! Three of them.

She immediately understood why their footsteps seemed so fast: they were jogging! But they were so small it didn’t actually make them go very fast at all. They weren’t even half Mia’s size, and colored a mottled brown and green like the forest itself. They also wore shiny bits of things in their hair and on their ugly tattered clothes that made them easy to pick out from the background when she knew what to look for. Two of them had wooden and bone spears in hand, and the other had a bow, but they didn’t seem to be looking for anything in particular, just wandering around along the paths, having circled the area once already just in the time Mia had been following them. Mia remembered that the receptionist lady had called them patrols, so maybe that was what she meant.

Right when Mia was wondering what to do next, she heard Mea’s whistle from a little further up the path. It was the attack! whistle, so she gripped the handles of her long daggers and pulled them from their sheaths slowly so they wouldn’t make any noise, just like Brin had taught her. Mia felt nervous and anxious, but excited too, because she was about to have her first fight. With goblins! It was a big step towards being an adventurer and a hero! Then a series of coughing hisses and high-pitched noises erased the turmoil of feelings, just like it drowned out the sound of the footsteps Mia had been following.

“Mia, go! [Imbue].” There was a sound like a piece of ice snapping and Mia used her [Muffle] Art to stay quiet as she dashed out of the brush. Mia saw her partner up ahead on the path with the goblins approaching, her long sword glittering blue in the hazy forest light. Aim for the lower back, Brin had told her, so she did, targeting the archer who was behind the others and in the midst of lining up a shot against Mea.

With her Art working Mia sprinted in silence, but when she tried to drop low to hit her small target she tripped, blades going completely wide. She felt something under one shoulder as she hit the ground, tumbling across it in strange silence, leafy green sky and dark brown earth changing places over and over again. Mia scrambled immediately to her feet and pulled back, just like Brin had taught her, but the goblin was mashed into the ground and bent terribly. Mia looked for the other two just in time to see a flash of blue sweep sideways, knocking the spear from the hands of one of the goblins and sending the small creature stumbling back.

The other one lunged forward, but Mea had already darted behind a tree and began playing a game of tag with her opponent, the two dancing around and around. The goblin that had been pushed back looked around for its archer companion, only to see Mia standing there, so it picked up its weapon and began coming at Mia instead. It made more hissing sounds and began poking at her.

Brin had told Mia several times that scouts were supposed to look for enemies and sometimes strike from a hidden place, but they weren’t really supposed to fight in the open. She had lost her chance to hide again by standing there watching Mea fight, which was a big mistake. Mia wasn’t very good at using her daggers yet, and hadn’t been taught how to fight against a goblin with a long spear either, so she just tried to avoid it. It jabbed at Mia over and over until it scraped her arm and Mia got scared. Mia started backing up, not wanting to fight anymore, until she felt something poke her from behind. Mia was so surprised she reflexively brought the darkness up and curled up to hide inside it. A moment later there was another long hiss and then a thump.

“Mia? You okay?” Mea’s voice was close, and it brought Mia out of her huddle. She stood up out of the shadow and saw that the goblin that had been attacking Mia was laid out in the dust right between their feet.

“Mia wants to do better,” she said, feeling frustrated at her failures. She was not okay, but didn’t know how to tell her partner that.

“Well yeah, that’s why we’re here! This is all about practice. I could tell you all kinds of tricks and secrets and things, but without trying what you’ve learned already you won’t really improve. We’ll keep doing this until you’ve got it, alright?”

“Okay,” Mia said. She took a deep breath, resolving to learn from her mistakes. When she nodded, she noticed that there was frost surrounding a hole in the goblin’s back. She didn’t know sister could do something like that!

“Wow!” Mia said, once again impressed with her amazing partner. Mea took out a cloth and wiped her sword off before putting it away, which reminded Mia to pick her weapons up where she’d dropped them.

“Yeah. That was incredibly easy. Hm.” Mea took a look around, spotting the one Mia had taken down. “Yeah! Mia, great job!” Mia was swept up in a spinning hug before being set back on the ground again. “Our first successful quest, right?” Mia cheered out loud before realizing it was a bad idea. Scouts should be quiet and sneaky, especially when still on a mission!

“By the way, I’d never seen your dark Spell before. That was pretty good! I’ll have to ask you to teach me later.” Mea’s hand suddenly shot out and grabbed Mia by the wrist, looking at the small injury on Mia’s arm. “Oh hey, you got hurt. It should go away soon, but in the future you should definitely use that Spell when you’re attacking. It’ll help keep you safe. In fact, I bet you could take out three goblins all by yourself if you did! Though let’s not try to do that right from the start, we’ll build up to that.”

“Yes!” Mia cheered, though quietly this time.

“Anyway, Mia you head on and find us another patrol. Slaying goblins is good work, so we should keep going, right?” Mia nodded vigorously, feeling her hair tumble about. “Great! I’ll get the horns and stuff from these guys and then follow you. I’ve already found a few of those Red Cap things,” she said, showing off a cloth bag with some bright red mushrooms in it. Mia took note of what they looked like, in case she ran across some as she was scouting. “Now we can just focus on the goblins, okay?”

“Okay!” Mia burned with excitement. She was out adventuring, and it was everything she’d ever wanted, even with the frustrations and failures. The air was clean, and no one was going to scold her for running around as much as she wanted. There’d be no more scrounging for food, or sleeping on cold stone floors, or hiding from mean people. Well, she still might have to do those things, but it was different now, because it was Mia’s choice! Nobody could make Mia do those things if she didn’t want to. Because Mia had her partner, and because Mia had the big one, and because Mia was a hero!