Far afield, on the outskirts of the small village of Mobliz, Seulgi was relaxing. She was nestled on a large, low branch of her favorite tree, shaded from the afternoon sun, as her modest flock of chocobos strutted about. One leg dangled and she let her bare foot brush against the tips of the tall grass as she chewed on the end of a stalk of it absently.

She hummed to herself, some ditty she heard a pretty girl sing at the new saloon, while she lazily planned out the rest of her chores for the day. With her brother abroad and her retired parents thinking they were now excused from all labor, it was up to Seulgi to take care of things. And there was a lot to take care of: her mom would need her to get the food up from the cellar to cook, her dad would want her to walk him to and from the library to get new books, she still had half a field of gysahl greens to finish threshing before the summer was over, and as always there were the birds and all of the miscellaneous duties involved in taking care of them.

So she tipped her soft, wide-brimmed hat a little bit lower over her eyes, and sank just a little bit deeper into that crook in the tree, and tried to enjoy this brief moment of respite.

It was just another quiet moment, on another quiet day, in her relatively quiet life.

Until it wasn’t.

“Kweh!” she heard a chocobo squawk from somewhere down the hill.

“Kweh,” Seulgi answered back around her stalk of grass, still spacing out.

But the squawking only increased, and now multiple birds were voicing their distress. Seulgi sat up from her reclined position just in time to see three figures climbing onto the backs of her chocobos and riding off with them-

“-HEY!” she shouted as she slid from the branch and took off after the thieves. “HEY, STOP!!!” she yelled uselessly, waving her hat at them as they rode off towards the Veldt.

The Veldt. That expanse of wild, untamed savanna, full of the foulest, most horrifying creatures imaginable - leftovers from the War of the Magi. Land was cheap out in this neighborhood and Seulgi’s parents hadn’t hesitated to snatch it up.

“Boko!” she called, putting her fingers in and giving a shrill whistle as she ran. A large, golden-yellow chocobo raced up beside her and she paused only long enough to scramble up onto its back. “Good boy, NOW GET THEM!” she cried, urging the bird into a sprint.

Boko wasn’t just another chocobo out of her family’s flock, he was Seulgi’s constant companion and friend while she went about her duties on the ranch. They were a team, and today they were going to catch some thieves.

The other riders had a bit of a head start, but her birds weren’t terribly friendly with strangers, and she saw the trio of chocobos swerve and flap about as the thieves tried to control them. Seulgi couldn’t help a smirk as she began to slowly catch up.

But then she suddenly saw one of the riders slip from their chocobo and fall into the tall grass. The other two thieves circled around and came back to help their comrade, and this gave Seulgi plenty of time to close the distance. She saw the riders dismount and kneel near their friend as she rode up.

She urged Boko to a stop, and hopped off his back as he ran up to their group. But before she could even open to speak, she suddenly found herself at the wrong end of a sabre’s long, silvery blade. Its owner was a dark-haired girl, a little shorter than Seulgi, with a scowl so intimidating that she retreated a step.

“H-hey, those chocobos belong to me!” Seulgi yelled, pointing to the three birds. The girl simply continued to keep her sword between Seulgi and herself as she risked a glance behind herself at her friends. Seulgi took that moment to bat the blade away with her forearm and rush the girl.

Or at least that was her intention.

Seulgi suddenly found herself on her back in the grass with the girl’s boot crushing her ribs as she slowly brought her blade around to point at Seulgi’s throat.

“How is she?” the girl asked, looking behind herself again, barely paying the pinned Seulgi any mind.

“I’m fine, I just lost my grip is all,” came another female voice.

“You’re not fine, you’re bleeding.” And another?

“Get up, we don’t have time to- countenanced carbuncle, they’re here…!” the first girl announced with a curse. She stepped away from the cowed Seulgi and dropped into a battle stance, but she seeing Seulgi still lying there on the ground, she cursed again. She reached down and yanked Seulgi to her feet - for someone so petite, she was strong. “Just stay behind me,” the girl ordered, pushing Seulgi behind herself, and Seulgi finally noticed what had her on edge.

A hot beam whizzed past their group and struck the ground behind them, sending up a massive spray of dirt and grass, and Seulgi could taste the ionization in the air. “What in the world…” it was two soldiers riding… machines. They were large, intricate contraptions that walked on two piston-powered feet, and each had something that looked distressingly like a cannon in the center that was trained on their group.

She had never seen one before in person, but there was really only one thing they could be: Magitek Armor from the Gestahlian Imperial Army. Her brother had written to her before about these hulking weapons, and the soulless soldiers who piloted them. The Gestahlian Army wasn’t exactly known for its honor or morality in its crusade for world domination, especially not while under the leadership of its current general and the Court Wizard.

But what were these two units doing all the way out here on the edge of the Veldt, an ocean away from Gestahl’s capital?

She had no more time for reflection as they fired again, and Seulgi’s chocobos cried out, scattering in all directions.

“No… no…!” the girl who had fallen - a redhead - groaned, watching them flee. But Seulgi was glad they were escaping the current danger. She could always round them up again with Boko later.

“Sit tight, Joy,” the third girl, a blonde, said, patting the redhead. “Irene and I will handle this.”

"Careful, Yeri," Joy warned.

"No worries! There's one for each of us," the blonde replied. "Right, Irene?"

But Irene, the dark-haired girl, didn't quite have the blonde’s confidence. These machines were why they had had to run in the first place.

Seulgi wasn’t sure what compelled her, but as she saw the tell-tale glow of one of the unit’s cannons warming up to shoot again, she threw herself over Joy’s injured form to protect her from the incoming blast.

But it never came. That burnt taste in the air was still there, but there was no sound of the impact, no shower of debris. Seulgi turned to look behind herself in confusion, but all she saw was Irene standing there with her blade raised high above her head, it’s silvery length alight with crackling energy.

She was confused, but Joy pat Seulgi on the shoulder, drawing her attention. “Hey, I’m flattered, really, but do you think you could back up a bit? We haven’t even been properly introduced.” Was this injured woman - no, this thief, Seulgi had to remind herself - was she cracking jokes while they were being attacked by the Gestahlian army?

But Seulgi bashfully retreated and turned her attention back to the fight.

“My turn,” Irene said with a dark smirk. Seulgi watched in awe as Irene charged straight at one of the machines and in one, two, three steps she had scaled it right up to the cockpit where the soldier piloting it sat. Seulgi had almost missed it, how Irene had seemed to know exactly where to place her feet to get the best leverage on her way up, and the commanding way she stood on top of it, staring down at the soldier who was struggling to free himself from his harness - just how many of these things had she fought to know how to attack them so efficiently? So fearlessly?

But the other unit turned and began to charge at the commandeered Magitek Armor. He looked like he was going to ram it to knock her off. The attacking unit didn’t make it far, however, as Seulgi saw Yeri suddenly dart up with a pair of long daggers and cut at the tangle of tubes connecting the machine’s legs. There was a spray of hydraulic fluid as the blonde rushed past in her momentum, and the unit collapsed under its own weight, crushing its compromised legs in a groan of bruised metal.

Irene dispatched the first pilot remorselessly, and with a flick of her sabre, she shifted her attention to the second pilot.

“Biggs!” the second pilot cried out, seeing his comrade’s slumped form in the other cockpit. “You !” he roared as he unhitched his own harness and stood up to face her.

Irene gracefully leapt down from the Magitek Armor and wordlessly approached him as he scrambled out of his compromised unit. He drew a longsword and fell into a stance, but seeing the cool way she continued to walk over towards him, Seulgi could see this pilot’s knees were starting to shake.

Yeri wasn’t even watching the fight anymore. She was back by Joy’s side, assessing the bleeding and going through her things, looking for medical supplies. But Seulgi was transfixed.

It took two of Irene’s sword to conclude the battle. One to smack the soldier’s sword out of his grip… “As expected of a genera-” and two to cut straight across his throat before he could finish his sentence. It wasn’t nearly as clean as her work on the first pilot, but he had pissed her off. She wiped the tip of her blade on his fatigues, even as he fell to his knees, blood foaming from his throat and mouth.

Irene's attitude had been so cold, so unbelievably cold, that Seulgi couldn’t suppress a shiver as Irene turned her gaze back towards their group.

“How is she?” the dark-haired girl called over as she returned.

“Not great,” Yeri admitted. “The bleeding is just a small cut, but I think she fell pretty badly on her ankle.” The blonde batted Joy’s hands away as the redhead tried to assess the damage herself. “Knock it off, you and I both know you can’t walk on this.”

“We need to keep moving. There will be more of them soon,” Irene said with a glance back at the two abandoned machines.

Seulgi was slowly starting to realize that these women weren’t just your typical bird thieves.

“How far are you heading?” she heard herself ask.

The three girls turned to look at her, almost as if they had forgotten she was still there.

They then looked back at each other and Seulgi was sure she saw Yeri subtly shrug at Irene.

“We have to keep heading south, across the Veldt,” Irene finally stated. She still sounded just as emotionless after the battle as before when she had knocked Seulgi flat on her back. It was as if she were a machine too.

“But… there’s nothing south of the Veldt,” Seulgi said, a little confused. All that awaited them was just miles of untamed coastline.

“We have a boat coming,” Joy grunted painfully as Yeri finally helped her to her feet. The redhead almost immediately collapsed again as she tested her weight on her injured ankle, and she leaned on Yeri heavily.

“Hopefully,” Yeri added, straining under the weight.

Seulgi gave a look back at the two dead soldiers and then at Boko, who was skittishly approaching their group now that the danger had passed. She gave a brief whistle and Boko picked up the pace until he was by Seulgi’s side, snapping gently at her hair.

“Ow hey- hey! Alright I get it, I’m fine!” she said, hitting him playfully with her soft hat. Seulgi walked Boko over to Joy and Yeri.

“Help me get her on,” she said with a nod towards her chocobo.

The three girls squinted at Seulgi suspiciously.

Seulgi looked back and forth between them all. “What? She can’t walk, right? And you’re being chased by the Empire? Help me get her on, and then we’ll head south.” She encouraged Boko to kneel in the grass and reached out for Joy to give her a hand.

We?

“Why?” Irene asked. Everyone present was very aware that there was no stopping Irene from just taking the chocobo from Seulgi if she wanted, but in a twist, this rancher was… offering to help them? Once again, Irene was surprised by the magnanimity of people. It just didn’t make any sense; it wasn’t something she was sure she could ever get used to.

Seulgi didn’t look at her as she helped Joy get settled on Boko’s back. “I thought you were just some thieves at first,” she admitted. “But I can see you’re just in trouble, and I can help. Why not?”

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend, huh?" Yeri asked cheekily.

“The Veldt’s no place for a ranch hand,” Joy said, clinging to Boko’s neck as the bird stood up from his crouched position.

Seulgi hesitated, but eventually walked over to the grisly sight of the second soldier Irene had killed. She stooped and carefully retrieved his longsword and hefted it in her hand, testing the balance. She noticed an engraving on the hilt that read “Sgt. Wedge”.

“I know a thing or two about the Veldt,” she said as she walked back over to the group. “I mean… I’ve lived next to it my whole life.” Her swordsmanship was nothing compared to what she had seen from Irene, but her brother had taught her some of the basics before he left - enough to defend their parents’ home at least.

Irene pursed her lips, but an encouraging look from Yeri made her finally speak up. “Fine, but I can’t guarantee your safety,” she said begrudgingly.

Seulgi gave her a faint smile. This was possibly one of the stupidest things she had ever decided to do in her young adult life, but what other option did she have? Was she supposed to just leave these three girls stranded in the Veldt, injured?

They began walking, Boko with Joy perched atop following Seulgi obediently, and the other two girls at alert on the flanks, and Seulgi was sure she heard Joy mutter from up behind her, “The minute we get to a town, we’re buying some potions.”

+++

There was mutual agreement that they shouldn’t try to continue their crossing once night fell. Beyond the reach of their campfire, the savanna was alive with the vague snarls and grunts of nocturnal creatures skulking about. It was a reminder of the minor scuffles they had entered into over the past few hours, and how badly they were all in need of a rest.

Seulgi made sure Boko was able to calm down, despite the strange surroundings, and then sat heavily near the fire with a loud sigh. Her parents were probably worried sick, and who knew what had become of the rest of her chocobo flock after she just left them to wander about on that hill. Her parents weren’t incapable of managing things without her, but she had just left so suddenly and without any word...

She would have a lot of explaining to do once she returned from this bizarre mission.

Seulgi looked over at her equally exhausted companions, and what curious figures they were: The one called Yeri seemed younger than the others, and in markedly better spirits, as she unwrapped the makeshift brace around Joy’s ankle and carefully twisted the taller girl’s foot this way and that. She was dressed in practical, layered clothes, a cropped jacket over a loose shirt, a simple pair of tight trousers tucked into leather boots. The only article that might draw attention to the girl was the bandanna she had tied in her hair, a splash of purple that emphasized her blonde tresses against her outfit's otherwise muted palette.

Joy hissed as Yeri checked her ankle for a break. Aside from her infirmed condition, there was something about the redhead that screamed wealth. Maybe it was her embossed plate, covered in elegant filigree, despite the dents and scratches. The large crossbow at her side was of a sort Seulgi had never seen before. It had a crank and a box attached to it, and inside Seulgi could see the points of large bolts reflecting the firelight. Everything else associated with the woman was silk and velvet, lace and braided gold rope. Seulgi was sure her outfit alone could buy her family’s entire plot of land.

Different still was Irene. She had a command and poise that went beyond her understated clothes: simple trousers and a sleeveless top, the only ornamentation being the sheathed sabre that hung from her hip. The way she sat, with her legs folded beneath her, her hands resting calmly on her thighs, her dark eyes fixed on the flickering flames - everything about her seemed so calculated. She was relaxed but ready, calm but aware.

And she raised those dark eyes to Seulgi suddenly, noticing the rancher watching her.

Seulgi nearly startled at getting caught; Irene’s expression had barely changed from that flat, emotionless mein from when they had first met, and Seulgi couldn’t even begin to guess what was going through her head. And maybe it was the way the fire danced in those hard, dark eyes of hers, but Seulgi was finally able to hold her gaze for the first time today.    

“I suppose introductions are in order,” Yeri said as she sat heavily between Seulgi and Joy, bringing the ranch hand’s attention away from Irene. The cheeky blonde stuck out her hand. “Kim Yerim, world-famous Treasure Hunter, at your service! But my friends call me Yeri~”

Over the top of Yeri’s head, Seulgi could see Joy mouthing the word ‘thief’ to her. Regardless, she didn't recognize either of those epithets.

Yeri looked back at Joy and scowled, though Joy did her best to play innocent.

"Uh, I guess I'm Seulgi. No fancy titles here. I'm a chocobo rancher?" That had to count for something.

“And I’m Joy, Queen of Figaro,” the redhead said nonchalantly.

“Wait, Queen of Figaro?” Seulgi interrupted incredulously. The Kingdom of Figaro was all the way on the other side of the world, thousands of miles from Mobliz.

Yeri elbowed Joy. “Queen Sooyoung, The Joy of Figaro.” The blonde began laughing hysterically after announcing Joy’s full title.

“Just call me Joy, alright?” the queen grumbled, trying not to turn the threatening gaze she had fixed on Yeri on poor Seulgi.

Seulgi did her best to keep a straight face and nodded.

But after another moment, Joy looked less embarrassed and more pensive. “Mobliz isn’t in the Kingdom of Doma, is it?” It seemed too remote to be part of that kingdom, out here on the edge of the Veldt, but as far as she could guess, it was the nearest principality.  

“Doma?” Seulgi asked, suddenly perking up. “No, but my brother went there to join the army last year. Why?”

The three other girls fell silent. Seulgi looked between them in confusion.

Irene stood brusquely and walked away. She stared out at the dark plains as she leaned up against the lone tree they had decided to camp near, just outside of the reach of the firelight.

“Wh… what’s wrong?” It was the most emotion Seulgi had seen Irene display since they had met.

Joy inhaled. “That’s where we were running from when we found your chocobos. Doma was attacked, Seulgi. The Empire poisoned the river.”

Seulgi’s brows began to furrow and she opened , though she couldn’t quite put a voice to her next question.

Yeri answered it for her anyway. “I’m sorry, Seulgi.”

“There were no survivors.”