Everyone is together that morning as Ace ladles out rice porridge with dried salted meat, wild spring onion, and soft-boiled eggs; you pass out tea and are thankful for short sugar rations.
Because you're all together, it's a terrible time to talk.
You're going to have to make a hell of a lot of one-on-one conversations and it's gonna suck. You're trying to figure out how to bring things up when Siobhan puts away a clean third bowl of congee, clears her throat, and calls for everyone's attention.
"Our path is skirting the edge of the Neverneverglades," Siobhan says. Warns. "It's not a choice I made lightly, and I made it in talking with the warmaster and our good friends, the Kosmas clan."
"Mayoi no mori," Hikaru mutters.
A name you've seen applied to several similar places in a few games, come to that.
"If you say so," Siobhan says, shrugging. "Enchanted woods, infested with fae. To make it out safely, first off: Don't leave the path. Second, follow me. Third, don't leave the path. Fourth, stay close together and don't let the wagon out of sight."
"And finally, don't leave the path?" Sekhmet says.
"I'm glad you were paying attention," Sio says, frowning. "I know I was meming there, but I wanted to make sure everyone remembered and took it seriously."
After a moment, you unclench your fists. Never even noticed them tightening. "What happens if we fuck up?" you ask.
"A running battle out of the Neverneverglades, if we're lucky," Alesha says. "If we're very lucky, monsters we could handle individually if there weren't a practically neverending river of them. If we're unlucky, the monsters will also outclass us."
Shadi shrinks into the arms of her father. Sio tilts her head at her; tries to smile.
"It's survivable, but it won't be fun." Sio says. "The best thing to do if you sound the alarm is get back on the path, get back behind me, and start buffing until you can see your face in your armor."
You wince despite yourself. Another misapplied metaphor. It's clever, but you don't know who else will know she's not using the term...
Well, not using it the way someone from Earth would.
"Deeds. I hope you like healing and cursebreaking, because we're going to need to do a lot of it if one of us screws up," she says to you, snapping you back to here and now.
"We should talk after breakfast," you say. "Let me know the kind of curses and debuffs I'll need to handle."
"Sure," Sio says without skipping a beat. "We'll probably reach the edge of the woods tonight. If there's enough light we'll press onto the other side. If not, we camp on the outskirts, head in the next day. Any questions?"
There were a few. Monster types, vulnerabilities. Too much for you or Ace to keep track of; you'd have to trust Hikaru could.
When the questions are over, Sio takes a deep breath. "We're badass Enthused adventurers," she said. "There'd be no point in getting the god juice if we couldn't win that fight. But let's not pick it, kay? We don't want to waste the time, potions, or blood. We have bigger pelts to skin."
The mood is somber when you pack back up, and get going.
You walk up alongside Sio, out in the front. She has her hand over her eyes, peering out ahead, as best she can.
"Interesting pep talk," you say, voice low. "Scared Shadi half out of her skin."
"Good," Sio sighs. "I don't like freaking people out, but she needs to know what we're up against. And that we can survive it anyway."
"I particularly liked the bit about buffing until our armor shone, is that how you put it?" you say.
"Yeah. To a mirror sheen," she mutters.
"That's not what 'buff' means," you say, soft as you can.
Her ear twitches. "I'm sorry, what?"
"That's not what buff means. It's not from polishing things," you say. You curl your arm, make a fist, a Rosie the Riveter pose. "It's from getting buff. Muscular. Swole, if you will."
She turned, looking at you, eyes narrowed.
You went on, trying to keep your face neutral.
"I have a poetic license, and I'm not afraid to use it," she says, through gritted teeth. "We done?"
You hold out your palm, an implied peace offering. "I just wanted to help you fit in," you say.
"Fit in with who?" she says. You see her eyes dart between you and the cart and the fields ahead, poor girl.
"Call it the playerbase," you say. "The Adventurers who aren't from around here. Folks like me, and the rest of DC/AC."
A group that she, technically, wasn't a part of.
"What, I'm chopped liver? What's it gonna take to count as part of your FC?" she hisses.
You shrug. "I mean, you're doing a good job. If it weren't for my Boons basically being the result of Flamma and Sylphan doing a high-five in mid-air over where I slept, I probably wouldn't even have caught that you were trying too hard."
"Set a thief to catch one, huh?" she says, fuming.
But it's not at you.
"Look, for what it's worth, I have some idea what it's like to want to start over somewhere else. Sekhmet might have a better idea, but I lived with her, back..."
"...back where most of you come from," Siobahn says, "Crazy adventurers. 'The playerbase,' huh?"
"If it makes you feel better, most of us rapidly got disabused of the notion that this is a harmless game with no consequences," you say.
Siobhan clenches her fists. "Not enough of you," she says.
"You're not wrong," you say. "And we're gonna need all the help we can get from people who do understand Mundus to stop the ones who refuse to understand."
She nods, flexing her fingers, one by one.
You put your hands inside your coat, for warmth; the wind is picking up, cool you weren't expecting. "I'm not going to ask why you're keeping this under your hat. I'm sure you have your reasons, and you aren't the only one keeping secrets. It's just..."
"Just?" she says, her voice - finally - starting to soften.
You laugh. "Say that I know what a relief it is to have someone you don't need to keep up a secret with."
She takes a deep breath. "Ah. I suppose it is, at that."
You nod.
Thanks to Echo for prereading.
Deedee is correct about the eymology of "buffing;" the symbol for an easily obtained attack booster in Anarchy Online was a flexing arm, hence "i'm gonna buff you."
