"Ezekiel," mumbled Rina, who then smiled at Ezekiel with the word "friend" echoing in her mind. Rina then nervously looked over at the others, who were enjoying themselves outside of the carriage. Rina was now being healed by Aqua, on the orders of Ezekiel. Ezekiel noticed that she was rather worried, so in order to cheer her up, he said, "The others will most likely forgive you as well. Bear is pretty forgiving, but if Tokuda can forgive you, then anyone can." Tokuda then looked at Ezekiel, saying, "Don't paint me as some demon now, Ezekiel! I'm not a heartless bastard!" Ezekiel laughed and said, "Of course not, you're obviously a human. Plus, if you really were a demon, she probably wouldn't be standing here," to which Ezekiel pointed at Rina. Tokuda then said, "That's because you stopped me from killing her." Tokuda then turned towards Rina and said, "Listen, elf. I don't trust people as easily as Ezekiel here. I don't trust you, and if you do anything even remotely suspicious, I won't hesitate to kill you where you stand. If Ezekiel wants to bring you on, that's fine, but you better show your loyalty and do your share of the work when it comes down to it. Earn my trust, and maybe I won't have the need to be wary of you anymore." Rina said nothing, but she silently nodded. Rina noticed that her wound was now healed fully by Aqua, and she moved her shoulder to see how it was. To her surprise, it no longer hurt, and Rina smiled at Aqua. Aqua smiled back, happy to see that she could be of service. Rina stood up and slowly approached Bear, who towered over Rina, intimidating her a slight bit. Rina nervously looked down, saying, "U-Um, I'm sorry about the arrow. Are you okay?" Bear looked at his shoulder, which was basically fully healed, chuckled, then said, "I'm doing just fine! Taking that arrow was like getting pinched. Plus, we've got a 5-star healer who did a damn good job." Aqua blushed at Bear's compliments, silently stammering, "I-I didn't do much! P-Please, i-it was nothing!"
Rina then turned towards everyone, saying, "I'm sorry for all the trouble that I've caused you all! I hope that by being here with you all, I, Rina Magmoria of the Wooden Elves tribe, can make it up to everyone at some point." Suko's nose began bleeding as he said, "Then I know just the way that you can make it up to me, Rina! Come here real quick!" His fingers began moving in a perverted manner as he began reaching for Rina, but Kairi stopped him before he could do anything by slapping him across the face, sending him flying a few feet. Kairi then looked at Rina, saying, "Never do anything that perverted asshole tells you to do." Rina stared at Kairi with admiration, then smiled, saying, "Okay!"
Bear then spoke up, asking, "To me, you don't seem like someone who would be an assassin. How are you so good at it, Rina?" Rina answered, "Elves are usually pretty light on their feet. My kind is quick, and we're naturally good with things such as bows and knives. We also know how to blend ourselves into nature rather well since we grow up in it." Rina thought to herself for a moment, then said, "I also use self-enhancement magic." Ezekiel asked, "Self-enhancement magic?" Rina explained, saying, "It's like buff magic, but enhancement magic focuses on improving a certain area of your body. I could enhance my eyes to have sharper vision, enhance my nose to be more sensitive to smells, things of that nature. It's a little hard to learn and control, but a good amount of elves such as myself can do it with ease since we've got time on our side." Enhancement magic, huh? Might not be a bad idea to learn it, thought Ezekiel. Ezekiel asked, "Was that why various parts of your body were glowing red?" Rina nodded, saying, "Yep! That's exactly why!" Bear then asked, "Even if that's the case, I couldn't smell you at all. It's almost impossible to hide your scent from someone with a nose as good as mine, so how'd you do it?" Rina answered, "If I smell like nature, nothing will seem out of the ordinary. I just rub leaves, dirt, and other things found in nature on myself to give off a smell that you would expect to find out here. It's a common tactic used when my kind goes hunting." Ezekiel nodded, knowing that there was truth to what she said. Bear laughed then said, "I take back what I said. You do seem like quite the formidable assassin!"
Once Rina got more comfortable with everyone, they soon hit the road again, heading back to Wolfwater. After riding in the carriage for a little while, Ezekiel, with his curiosity on Rina growing larger, asked, "Rina, do you think you'd be willing to tell us more about yourself and your past?" Rina replied, "Sure. What all do you wanna know?" Ezekiel said, "Anything you're willing to tell us." Rina cleared her throat and began speaking, saying, "I guess I should start with my days before I became a slave." The others were surprised, with Bear asking, "You were a slave?" Rina nodded, saying, "Ezekiel freed me from those bonds, however. Due to that, I'm no longer a slave as of today." Tokuda grumbled, "Maybe you'd be better off if you stayed a slave, elf." Ezekiel then said, "Come on, Tokuda! That's pretty harsh, man!" Tokuda grunted and said nothing else. Ezekiel then cleared his throat, saying, "Anyways. Rina, did you want to start your story now?" Rina realized that she had forgotten that she was going to tell her story, then said, "Oh! Yes! Where to begin..." Rina thought about it for a moment, then began her story.
"As I've stated before, I am part of the Wooden Elves tribe. The Wooden Elves tribe is a large group of elves that believe in following the path that Mother Nature has set forth for us. In a way, it's similar to human religion, with the elves believing in a higher entity and worshipping it. I grew up around that religion in my village since my village decided to become Wooden Elves instead of something else in terms of religion. My mother and father were important to me, but nothing noteworthy like being a monarch of the Wooden Elves or being a village chief. They were simply just hard-working parents doing the best they could to provide for me and the village," said Rina, who looked reminiscent of her past. "Despite my looks, I am actually around 700 years old. To put that into human years, that's about 20 years of age." While no one else looked surprised whatsoever, Ezekiel exclaimed, "Bullshit! There's no way you're over 700 years old!" Tokuda then said, "She's an elf, so it must be true. Elves have prolonged life spans as I said earlier." Ezekiel did some quick mental math, and if that was the case, 1 elf year of aging equaled out to about 35 human years of aging. Rina then said, "We might have longer life spans than other races, but for elves, we tend to perish rather early. In human age, we tend to perish around the age of 50, and for elves, that would be..." Rina attempted to do some math, but Ezekiel beat her to the punch, saying, "1,750 years for elves." Rina was a little shocked to see how quick Ezekiel could figure it out, but she continued her story. "The Wooden Elves have always lived peaceful lives, mostly keeping to themselves and living the lives that they want to live. I've been in this world for many years, yet I haven't experienced many things that it offers, since I was afraid to leave the comforts of my village. The Wooden Elves often didn't have much contact with the outside world, and they stayed out of wars not involving them, so having an army of elves wasn't necessary, as conflict wasn't really present among elves. Even during the Humanity War between humans and demi-humans, elves did not involve themselves," said Rina. She then continued her story, saying, "However, it was the aftermath of the Humanity War that caused elves to start becoming more involved. As I said earlier, elves had no need for an army since we're a rather peaceful race, but the humans took advantage of that, and instead of just having their way with the demi-humans, they began to try to force us elves out of our land so humans could take it over. Of course, this was met with retaliation, but the humans overwhelmed many tribes simply with numbers. Once hearing of this, the elves began getting prepared for war, although they knew that they wouldn't win against the human army's numbers. The humans, however, began negotiating with the elves, with humans demanding various things from the elves, and if the elves met these demands, they wouldn't be attacked." Rina thought to herself a bit, then said, "One of these demands was that they send females to the human kingdoms in order to be their slaves. Of course, no one wanted to be a slave voluntarily, but if no one did, the village would be attacked. So, the village rounded up females such as myself and sent us to the kingdom where the humans were. Once we got there, they then divided us up, and I was sent to be a slave to some rich noble human. He was a cruel owner, treating all of his slaves as nothing more than objects that made him money." Rina went silent for a little bit, remembering her time there, although she wished that she could forget about it. Ezekiel noticed this and said, "You don't have to talk about that part if you don't want to, Rina." Rina then nodded, saying, "Long story short, my former master is the reason why I was sent here to assassinate Tokuda Tetsuo, as he wanted to get the bounty for himself. That leads us to today, where I met all of you." Ezekiel said, "Yep, the part where you join the nation of science and its endeavors going forward." Rina smiled, slowly warming up to everyone around her currently.
After a moment of silence, Tokuda then said, "So it wasn't just the demi-humans affected by the Humanity War? In the last 10 years, how did we overlook that?" Rina responded, "These demands were also kept secret from the public. The humans believed that if word got out of this, other races may try to retaliate." Tokuda grinned in a sly manner, saying, "Well, we just happened to stumble upon valuable information straight from the horse's mouth of one of the races being oppressed by the humans. That'll be useful for the Freedom Legion." Ezekiel threw his hands up, saying, "I told you! You wanted to kill her, but now that we kept her alive, you get some pretty useful information!" Tokuda said, "Shut up, Ezekiel!" Rina then asked, "Freedom Legion?" Tokuda responded, "It's a legion that fights for the freedom of all races, and I just happen to be one of the commanders for it. Surely you must've known at least that much if you were sent after me." Rina shook her head, saying, "My former master never told me the details. He simply gave me your wanted poster and told me to assassinate you. Also, being isolated from the outside world doesn't help much, either. I've only heard rumors of you depicted as a war hero for the humans, but nothing more than that." Tokuda sighed, saying, "Well, I suppose it can't be helped." Tokuda then shifted his weight around a little bit to get himself in a more comfortable sitting position, then said, "Oh yeah, before we got attacked, you never did answer my question." Everyone looked at him with blank faces until Tokuda asked, "Did you all still want to join the Freedom Legion?" Everyone looked at one another, but everyone ended up looking at Ezekiel. As my world's history showed, we could say that the Freedom Legion is like the axis powers and the human army is the allied powers, except for the fact that the bad guy role seems to be flipped in this sense. The Freedom Legion lost, they're being oppressed and had unfair stuff put onto them, and now they're gathering strength to fight against the human army. Sounds like World War 1, but I know what'll happen in World War 2 if the Freedom Legion tries to fight against the human army again, thought Ezekiel. He struggled with this idea, with part of him wanting to lean on his knowledge of history to avoid more pointless bloodshed, but at the same time, this was a completely different world that he knew little about, and who knows what could happen if he used his knowledge to help the Freedom Legion. After pondering this silently to himself, as well as factoring in things like how he wanted to help those being unfairly oppressed, he decided to take the risk where the odds would seem to mostly be in his favor, rolling the dice for the future of this world by saying, "The nation of science will handle things how it wants to, but you can consider us your ally if we get a hand in your planning and war efforts." Bear chuckled then said, "I like the sound of that. I support their cause, but as a big bro, I gotta stay by my little bro. I'll follow his decision." Rina then said, "As I've been freed and brought onto the nation of science by Ezekiel, I feel as though I have a debt to pay to him, so I'll follow him." Suko simply said, "This is a fun group, so wherever you all go, I go." Kairi then said, "Well, looks like I'll have to go to keep this pervert Suko in check, so I'll come with as well." Aqua then said in a quiet voice, "E-Everyday is fun with you all, a-and I don't want that to change. A-And, E-Ezekiel helped give me a l-little bit of courage and s-self-confidence in m-myself, s-so I'll f-follow him!" Ezekiel then looked at Tokuda, saying, "And there you have it. This might work out better for you, as you're both a commander for the Freedom Legion and member of the nation of science." Tokuda silently contemplated that for a moment, then said, "You've got a point, Ezekiel. I'll agree with that, then. The nation of science is now an ally to the Freedom Legion."
Tokuda then stood up, saying, "Well, if you're gonna be our allies, I should probably let you know the current state of things with the Freedom Legion. In short, we're preparing for small-scale battles as we speak. Commanders such as myself have been recruiting people where we can, while others are trying to train troops, get supplies, and prepare as much as we can for this upcoming war." Tokuda looked out the carriage for a bit, then said, "We expect that we're going to war soon, although the top commander hasn't told me exactly when that will be. I've seen all of you fight, and I believe all of you will make a great impact on the battlefield." Ezekiel, however, wanted to confirm something. Ezekiel asked, "How are wars fought here?" Tokuda responded, "At least in the Humanity War, both sides fought in an honorable way. They fight each other head-on, believing that anything besides that isn't proper war." Ezekiel then held up his hand, saying, "And that's where our knowledge of war diverges." Tokuda looked at him in confusion, asking, "What do you mean by that?" Ezekiel then said, "Fighting them head-on is dumb as hell. They're just gonna crush you with numbers if you do that. There's a much better way to win with what we have." Tokuda, suddenly interested in Ezekiel's proposition, said, "Oh? Please explain." Ezekiel flashed a grin, then said, "Guerilla warfare. That's how we're gonna beat them." Bear, for some reason, imagined using gorillas to fight the human army. Tokuda then asked, "What's this 'guerilla warfare' you speak of?" Ezekiel explained, saying, "Instead of fighting them head-on at the battlefield, we could simply sabotage their supplies, launch surprise attacks at enemy camps, utilize hit-and-run tactics, and more. It's irregular warfare, but this method is what caused a wealthy powerhouse like the United States of America to withdraw and accept defeat from a small, poorer country like Vietnam." Ezekiel grinned, saying, "It's the ultimate strategy against a huge army like the human army, who have no knowledge that this method of warfare even exists." Tokuda thought about that, then said, "It is indeed irregular warfare. However, it's crazy enough that it might just work in our case. You ever thought about being a general of an army?" Ezekiel shook his head, saying, "I'm just repeating history and what I've learned from it. There's no way in hell I could ever become a damn general. Besides, I'm a scientist." Tokuda then said, "Well, I think you could do it. Once we get back to Wolfwater, I could take you to meet the other commanders of the Freedom Legion so we can discuss what to do from there." Ezekiel thought about it, then decided that would probably be the best course of action, as well as give him a chance to speak his mind about certain things that would help in the war efforts. "Sure," said Ezekiel.
The rest of the trip went by in a blur, and they soon found themselves back at Wolfwater, where it was close to dinnertime. Of course, their first stop was The Crimson Tankard Inn, and they were greeted by Whiskey, Zoey, Luna, Layla, and the front desk girl. Everyone sat down and ordered Lad Steaks and the newly added Lad Pancakes, which were just the pancakes that Ezekiel made. Rina, who never had Ezekiel's steaks before, was eating it in a delighted manner, which made Ezekiel happy that another race like the elves enjoyed his cooking. Whiskey then came up to the table and said to Ezekiel, "Business has been booming ever since we added those Lad Pancakes onto the menu." Ezekiel was happy that the people of Wolfwater were enjoying the pancakes, and Whiskey then noticed Rina, who he hadn't seen before. Whiskey then said, "Dang lad, you have an elf traveling with you now?" Ezekiel said, "I do." Whiskey laughed, then said, "I knew you were an interesting lad, but to think you'd have an elf traveling with you now? You'd better take good care of her." Bear then said, "Oh trust me, he does." Bear gave Ezekiel a "helpful" wink, to which Ezekiel exclaimed, "It's not like that! Dammit, Bear! Stop giving Whiskey the wrong idea!" Bear laughed and said, "I'm just fucking with you, little bro!" The rest of the night went by like that, joking around and having fun after a short trip.
Rina, having nowhere to stay currently, rented out one of the rooms that The Crimson Tankard Inn had, and she went upstairs, leaving everyone else at the tables. Tokuda decided to bring this up now while she was gone, saying, "I still don't trust her. Ezekiel, bringing her in was a bad idea." Ezekiel responded to that saying, "All I did was give her a second chance, and it seems like her second chance is being used rather well if I say so myself." Bear then said, "As a race that was also enslaved by the humans, I can understand where Rina is coming from. She doesn't like humans, but she also has to realize that not all humans are bad, like I've come to realize." Tokuda then said, "She's not you, Bear. You're like Ezekiel, oddly humble and rather trusting of everyone." Bear then asked, "Is that such a bad thing, to rely on others that you can trust? Surely you had friends at one point that you could say the same about." Tokuda looked somewhat saddened by that remark, saying, "I did. Once." Bear then said, "Then give Rina a chance as well! Forgive and forget, Tokuda!" Kairi then said, "I'm also not sure if we can trust her fully as well. She did get sent out to kill Tokuda and almost followed through with it as well, even without the slave collar on her." Suko laughed, as he was now drunk, and said, "I think we can trust the elf. Who wouldn't trust her, with how cute she is?" Kairi smacked Suko, saying, "You don't get to take part in this discussion, Suko!" Aqua timidly said, "I-I don't think she's a bad person! I-I agree with Bear, that m-maybe she needs to see t-that not all humans are b-bad!" Ezekiel then said, "We just need to give her time. If you don't trust her, just keep an eye on her until you can trust her." Tokuda then said, "Believe me, I will. Like I've been saying, if she does anything remotely suspicious, I'll be the first one to strike her down."
Once the Rina matter was settled, everyone left after agreeing to stay in Wolfwater for a week and meeting back up at The Crimson Tankard Inn in the morning at the end of the week. Tokuda was about to leave when Ezekiel pulled him aside. Ezekiel asked, "Can I see that sword of yours?" Tokuda then used his levitation magic to put the sword down on the table, unsheathed as well. Ezekiel took one look at it, then said, "If I were to tell you that I could invent a better sword for you, would you take it?" Tokuda looked at Ezekiel, saying, "Depends on the sword itself." Ezekiel then produced a few sketches of a long, slightly curved sword, with one edge used to cut and the other edge to block. Tokuda inspected the design, then said, "And you know how to make it?" Ezekiel nodded in response. Tokuda, after looking over the designs some more, said, "I'll take it. What's this sword called, by the way?" Ezekiel grinned, saying, "That, my friend, is a katana."124Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡartz1OKSd5
