Seulgi leaned out over the railing as she saw the port of Albrook come into view. It was far larger than the small landing dock at Mobliz, and she could see a forest of masts gently waving back and forth in the relatively still waters.

Irene was watching too, there beside her, but with a slightly more critical eye than the country girl. She was carefully scanning each ship for markings or flags that could indicate if they were military transport ships, or simply military cargo ships. After all, Albrook was a vassal of the Empire, and she herself had deployed from this very harbor only months before.

Joy nudged Yeri who was standing beside her up at the helm. “They seem to be getting along well, hmm?” the redhead murmured conspiratorially.

Yeri raised an eyebrow, though she had a cheeky grin on her face. “Attachments are kind of dangerous in our line of work, though, don’t you think~?”

Joy narrowed her eyes at the blonde. “You can’t let me be happy for two seconds, can you?”

But Yeri actually laughed, because she was kind of happy. Who could say what Albrook and the Southern Continent had in store for them - and the goddesses knew their luck had been pretty terrible so far - but she still felt this bizarre sense of righteousness in what they were trying to accomplish. Yeri knew Joy had a duty to her people, and a legacy that she toiled under, but as for herself? Yeri could do anything she wanted with her life. She was completely unfettered, but she had still somehow ended up right here, by Joy’s side, on a mission that could only have one of two possible outcomes: death or saving the world from the Empire. It made her feel like she had some purpose; that after all the trouble she had caused in her young life, maybe she could finally do something she could be proud of.

So yeah, she actually was kind of happy.

“What’s with that stupid look on your face?” Joy grumbled.

“Wow, now who won’t let whom be happy?” Yeri teased.

Joy couldn’t help being a little abrasive; there was just something about Yeri’s demeanor that brought it out of her. The blonde’s words seemed to be in conflict with her expressions, considering what Joy knew about her past - after all, if anyone knew about the dangers of getting attached, it was Yeri.

Joy looked back down at the two girls on the deck, who still stood side by side, but seemed to be in completely different worlds. Maybe she was looking into it too much.

“There are so many ships,” Selugi couldn't help remarking, though the statement wasn’t necessarily directed at Irene.

“Ocean fishing boats mostly,” Irene returned anyway, and Selugi’s wide-eyed wonder was reigned in by the note of suspicion in her voice.

“Mostly?” Selugi prompted with growing apprehension. She was suddenly reminded that she wasn't here as a tourist.

Irene's heavy gaze continued to sweep the port. “I see a couple of unmarked boats, too.” This was good, because their ship also flew no flags. But while she had been searching for frigates, she had spied something far more sinister that lay low in the water. “And the one over there on the long pier at the end. The large one with the green and red flags?”

An ironclad military cruiser.

Seulgi wasn't sure how she had missed it before, though perhaps its dull metal sides helped it blend into the rolling hills beyond the port.

“That looks like trouble.”

“It is,” Irene agreed darkly. She knew how many soldiers it was designed to hold, and she knew Gestahl had had more than one commissioned. She glanced down in thought, trying to recall the timeline of this campaign to see if she could guess what this ship was doing here by itself, and she noticed Seulgi’s white-knuckled grip on the railing.

“Relax,” she said tonelessly, unable to help it from sounding more like a command than a word of comfort. She reached over and pried Seulgi’s near hand off the railing. “Don’t tense up like that,” she said as forced Seulgi to shake out her wrist.

Despite how anxious she was beginning to feel, she couldn’t help smiling at how silly it looked and felt to have Irene of all people playing with her hand like that, but when the shorter girl glared up at her she quickly composed her expression.

“You need to stay loose and ready,” she explained, watching Seulgi’s smile fade.

Ah, of course.

“Do you always think about fighting?”

Irene dropped her wrist.

Seulgi knew it had been a stupid thing to say as soon as the words had left , but it was too late to take it back now.

“I-”

“Are you mocking me?” Irene asked darkly. What else should she be thinking about while they were on the Empire’s doorstep? This idiot was going to get herself killed the moment they dropped anchor at this rate.

“N-no I just-” With that look Irene was giving her, Seulgi wanted to pitch herself over the railing and right into the harbor.

Instead of waiting for Seulgi to try to blunder through an apology, Irene simply turned and headed towards the trapdoor to the stairs.

“Wait-! Ugh,” Seulgi sighed as she watched her disappear below deck.

+++

Yeri had noticed the strange way the two girls on the deck had ended whatever conversation they had been having, and she waited a moment before inconspicuously following Irene below deck. She spied the ex-general sitting on a barrel Boko’s neck pensively as the chocobo roosted on the ground.

“Hey,” Yeri called out with a rare note of timidity in her voice.

Irene didn’t answer, though she didn’t seemed to mind Yeri joining her in petting Boko.

“We’re uh, going to need to come up with some sort of plan for getting supplies and our next move,” Yeri said, stating the obvious. She had lost the courage to ask Irene what she was feeling, now that she was faced with that intense gaze. What kind of answer could she even expect from the icy ex-general, though?

“I saw a warship,” Irene finally said. “There may be more soldiers in Albrook than we had hoped.” After subjugating Maranda, attacking South Figaro, and the genocide of Doma, Irene had thought most of Gestahl’s forces had been deployed, but the ironclad ship in the harbor gave her doubts.

She ran the numbers again, but supposed there were still several battalions that were unaccounted for. And every time the Empire claimed a new vassal, they only increased the size of their military through conscription.

“We could send Seulgi,” Yeri tried to gently suggest, still pondering her unasked questions. “She’s not a fugitive… yet, and she probably won’t be recognized by any soldiers. We can send her to-”

“No.”

“But-”

Irene scoffed. “Send Seulgi alone into Albrook? Even if she isn’t stopped by soldiers, she’d probably just end up getting lost. That idiot is lucky she hasn’t fallen on her own sword yet. I can’t believe you asked her to be a Returner. I-” but she paused when Yeri put a hand on her arm. The thief was giving her a stunned look, and with good reason. She hadn’t heard Irene string more than two sentences together since they had met, yet here she was on some bitter tirade about a country bumpkin they had just picked up.

“Is… everything alright between you two?” Yeri ventured, though as soon as she asked, she knew she had made a mistake. “You know what? Don’t answer that. I’m too young to die. Why don’t we go up and talk to Joy about what we should do?” Yeri rapidly suggested.

+++

After they had moored at the port, the four Returners finally came to the same conclusion that Yeri had already reached down in the hold. “So we’re in agreement, then,” Yeri said as she watched the soldiers criss-crossing the docks through the captain’s cabin window. “Seulgi will go by herself to buy the supplies, and then when it gets dark we’ll all sneak ashore.” Maybe it was the setting - the ship, the conspiratorial attitude, the wanted status - but Yeri was getting a little case of deja vu. “Don’t worry, guys, just follow my lead~”

“You mean Seulgi’s,” Joy remarked.

“After Seulgi gets back. I meant tonight,” the thief said with a little eyebrow waggle.

Joy struggled to respond after Yeri’s clarification, though the thief was oblivious to her plight.

Seulgi was trying to read over the list of supplies Joy had given her, but she could feel Irene’s hard gaze on her. She did her best to ignore it, but then suddenly Irene grabbed her by the belt and yanked her closer.

“Wha-”

And Irene relieved her of her longsword. “Yeri, give Seulgi one of your daggers. She can’t go into town with this,” she ordered, passing over the Imperial blade to the blonde.

Seulgi glanced between Irene’s fingers hooked around her belt, and the deft way the two shorter girls exchanged blades with a single-handed toss.  

Irene turned back to Seulgi and stuffed the dagger in the longsword’s place. “They’re standard issue,” Irene stated, referring to the longer blade. “You’d be stopped in an instant if an officer saw it.” And not for the first time did Seulgi wonder what kind of background Irene had to be so knowledgeable about the inner workings of the Gestahlian Imperial Army.

Perhaps she was a spy?

Satisfied, Irene finally released Seulgi and crossed her arms.

“Thanks,” Seulgi muttered, hoping that this somehow meant Irene wasn’t mad at her anymore for her slip earlier.

“Protect yourself, Seulgi. Even if they don’t stop you because they know you’re a Returner, they may still stop you because they’re soldiers, and you’re… well,” she paused.

“... a girl,” Joy supplied, pressing a coin purse into Seulgi’s hand. Irene nodded.

Seulgi rubbed her thumb along the pommel of Yeri's dagger as she listened to their final instructions. If her life and their safety didn’t hang in the balance, she might have said that they reminded her a bit of her mother.

“Okay, I guess I’m off,” she said with a wave as she left, but she stuck her head back in the door suddenly. “Oh, and uh… if something, you know, happens to me, you’ll uh… you’ll take care of Boko, right?” she asked awkwardly, glancing briefly at Irene in particular. And she thought for a moment she saw Irene’s cold, impassive stare take on a troubled mien.

“‘Course,” Yeri agreed, waving her on. The thief belatedly realized that all of their warnings and speculation had probably needlessly worried Seulgi to the point where she wasn’t sure she would be coming back alive. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, but Yeri felt that they had perhaps hyped up the drama a bit too much.

+++

Seulgi hadn’t realized how much she missed dry land until her knees buckled under her unexpectedly at the lack of rocking and undulation as she left the dock and stepped onto the cobblestoned streets of Albrook. It would have been a perfect day had she not been in an Imperial city: the sun rose high and the salt-sprayed air gave everything a brilliant shimmer that was putting her deceptively at ease. Irene’s secret fear of Seulgi getting lost wasn’t entirely unfounded, since she had never stepped foot in another village before, let alone a bustling port city.

And there were lots of soldiers. Seulgi didn’t want to seem too conspicuous as she avoided them as they strolled by in twos and threes, but she found herself instinctively shying away from them as they stomped passed. She glanced at her list again and started looking for a shop. Any shop. In Mobliz there was only the one general store that carried a little bit of everything, but as Seulgi strolled down the pier - Cait Sith help her, she wasn’t even on the main street yet - she saw many specialty shops. A florist, an apothecary, an armory next to a blacksmith, an antiques shop, a tailor, there didn’t seem to be any theme or order to the stores, which was going to make finding each particular item on this list more of a task than she had first anticipated.

She rounded the corner of a tavern and headed into a shadow-drenched side street on her way towards the main part of the city, when she was suddenly stopped.

“Hey you!”

Seulgi’s breath froze in her lungs.

“It’s not ‘hey you’; you’ll never get a girl like that. Try something like-” And Seulgi was suddenly grabbed by the elbow and spun around to face two soldiers who had come up behind her. “Hey gorgeous. Like that.”

“Oh, yeah I guess that sounds better,” the first soldier said with a slur. Now that Seulgi was facing them, she could smell the alcohol on their breath. She began to reach for the dagger on her belt, but the second soldier suddenly reached out and grabbed her wrist.

“Hey now, don’t be like that. We just want to talk,” he said with a lascivious grin. He took her captured hand and put it in his own and shook it mockingly. “Christophe. Private Christophe,” he clarified, as if the outdated notion of a man in uniform was supposed to impress her. Her brother had been a private in Doma’s army and he was twice the man this sleaze was.

Her free hand balled up into a fist as she felt a curious rage building within her. It scared her a little. This new fear quickly overtook the more basal one of being cornered by two uncouth men, and she saw the pulpy face of the soldier she had mutilated back in that oceanic cave in her mind’s eye.

“Whoa, she looks angry!” the first soldier drawled.

“Why don’t you say something, cutie?” the second coaxed, undaunted.

But he suddenly collapsed under the weight of someone who had dropped straight on top of him.

“Why don’t you,” the figure said as they stood and caught the first soldier around the throat with a garrote, “mind your own business!” Seulgi saw that this newcomer was dressed all in dark shades of black and blue, and even their face was shrouded in a mask.

The first soldier gagged as he desperately scrapped at the thin wire with his fingers.

The second soldier, who had called himself Christophe, began to get up in a daze and Seulgi brought the hilt of Yeri’s dagger down on the back of his head in a fit of rage, knocking him unconscious.

The new figure finished the job on the first soldier and let him drop to the ground, lifeless.

“Thanks-” But suddenly Seulgi found herself being dragged further down the sidestreet by the masked figure. She wasn’t released until they had rounded the far side of the tavern and the figure threw her up against the brick wall.

“Uh…”

“Who are you?” the figure asked with a dangerous squint.

“I’m… uh, I’m Seulgi?” Seulgi stuttered, but the figure wasn’t satisfied. They quickly snatched the dagger from Seulgi’s belt and held it up in between them.

“Where did you get this?”

And now it was Seulgi’s turn to squint. “It’s mine,” she tried to lie.

“It’s not yours,” the figure said threateningly.

“It’s my friend’s,” Seulgi tried again.

“Where is she?”

Seulgi blinked. She? Did this person know Yeri? “Why should I tell you?” At first she thought this mysterious figure had helped her out of the kindness of their heart, but she felt betrayed by her own naivety, as this stranger clearly had another motive.

“You got that dagger one of two ways: she either gave it to you, or you took it from her, and if it’s the latter...” the figure growled as they began reaching behind their back for something tucked into the sash around their waist.

“W-wait! Yeri gave it to me, okay? But who are you?”

The figure stood up straight, finally satisfied with Seulgi’s answer. “Who am I?” they repeated with a laugh. They tugged down their mask to reveal a pixie haircut and a cheeky grin that looked disturbingly familiar. A girl? “I’m Shadow, and I taught Yeri everything she knows!”

+++

“Countenanced Carbuncle, Seulgi! What took you so long?!” Joy cried as Seulgi opened the door to the captain’s cabin. Night had fallen before Seulgi had finally returned to the ship, and the small cabin was alight with half-melted candles in latticed iron lanterns. Irene watched Seulgi with concern, eyeing the rancher up and down for injuries, and Yeri held out her hand for her dagger.

“Oh, well I uh… it happened just like you said: I was cornered by a couple of soldiers, but then suddenly this girl, Shadow…” and Seulgi turned to look behind her, but the mysterious masked figure was gone.

Yeri narrowed her eyes. “A girl named Shadow?” she prompted with a dark expression.

“Y-yeah…”

Seulgi looked back out across the deck in the failing light in confusion. “That’s weird. I thought she was right behind me-”

And then three things happened all at once: the girl known as Shadow popped up in the middle of the cabin, she grabbed Yeri in a headlock, and the tip of a sabre was tucked underneath her chin forcing her head up at an uncomfortable angle.

“Wait!” Seulgi shouted at Irene, just as Yeri squawked in indignation.

“LET GO OF ME!” And Shadow very slowly let go of the struggling Yeri and put her hands up as Irene adjusted the angle of her sabre to keep her under threat.

Yeri twisted her neck this way and that after the assault. “Don’t tell me you’re still going by Shadow?” she asked in annoyance. She wasn’t in a hurry to tell Irene to stand down after getting manhandled. “That's so juvenile.”

“You know her?” Irene asked dubiously, though she finally withdrew her blade. Seulgi waited on her answer as well.

Yeri crossed her arms and gave a satisfied smirk. “An old friend. So, I see you’ve met Seulgi?” And from the story Seulgi had begun to tell, it sounded like it was a good thing they ran into each other.   

“I was following her because I saw she had one of your daggers,” Shadow explained as she delicately felt beneath her chin for blood. “Speaking of juvenile, when are you going to get rid of those old things?” she continued, gesturing at Yeri’s blades.

“They're part of my trademark look as the world-famous Treasure Hunter, Kim Yerim! I can't just get rid of them; it's for branding purposes.”

“Branding-?!”

But before Shadow could finish her strangled cry, Joy cut in. “Well, now that we know she's not a soldier, how about some proper introductions, hmm?” she asked Yeri pointedly.

That seemed to bring Yeri back into the moment and she looked around at them all with a curious expression. “Oh yeah,” she agreed in an airy tone. “This is Joy, the Queen of Figaro,” and she paused waiting for Shadow's inevitable sputtering of surprise to subside, “and Seulgi from Mobliz, and-”

“And I'm Irene,” the ex-general interrupted.

Shadow raised an eyebrow at Irene. “Oh, I know who you are,” she intoned with more than a little bluntness. “I only had to hang out in the saloon for half an hour to hear all about the way y-”

“And everyone, this is ‘Shadow’, also known as Hyelin from my old gang,” Yeri interrupted, finishing the introductions. She couldn’t keep her voice from sounding slightly alarmed, what with the deathly glare Irene was giving Shadow.

“Oh, so your daggers are branding, but you won’t let me keep the name Shadow?” Hyelin snapped petulantly. “I have a professional image to maintain too, you know!” And Seulgi could start to see what Hyelin had meant when she said she had taught Yeri everything she knows.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Yeri followed up quickly. She wasn’t exactly prepared to take a trip down memory lane with Hyelin, but her words had given her the disorienting reminder that time still moved in Zozo, even if she wasn’t there to see it.

“Just the usual, until my ship got confiscated for contraband,” Hyelin replied with an easy shrug. “Which reminds me: they're searching all the ships that come into port, so you really shouldn't stick around.”

“Searching them for what?” Joy asked. She was also curious about what Hyelin had meant by ‘the usual’, but she supposed that would be another question for another day.

Hyelin indicated Irene with a nod.

The rest of the girls fell silent, and Seulgi waited for someone to fill her in.

No one did.

“We’re not going to be in Albrook long,” Joy said, shifting the subject. “We’re going to abandon the ship and make our way inland.”

Hyelin looked at Joy in shock, her expression clearly conveying that she thought the Queen of Figaro was insane. “Please tell me your army’s coming in another ship,” she prompted sarcastically.

The redhead crossed her arms in annoyance. “Do I look like an idiot to you?”

And Yeri had to put her hand on Hyelin’s arm before the girl could impertinently answer that rhetorical question.

“We know what we’re getting into, but with a small group, we might stand a chance sneaking into Vector and taking them down from the inside,” Joy explained with more than a little irritation in her voice.

“I don’t think you have any idea what you’re in for,” Hyelin countered, and Irene watched her shrewdly. “They have checkpoints along every road and regular patrols - and I don’t just mean infantry. They’ve got Magitek Armors. Lots of them.”

Joy had spent too many years perfecting her unimpressed expression to falter now, but inwardly she was beginning to doubt their ability to follow through on their plan. She had been so worried about devising a way to get to the Emperor once they reached Vector, that she hadn’t considered the possibility that they might not be able to actually get to the capital.

“What is it you do, again?” Seulgi asked in the heavy silence. She wasn’t sure if she could take Hyelin’s assessment of the situation at face value, and was hoping the girl was being hyperbolic.

Hyelin pulled up her hood and fixed her mask. “I’m a ninja!” she said in a playful manner that was entirely at odds with the serious atmosphere in the cabin.

“She’s a smuggler,” Yeri corrected, not sharing in Hyelin’s mirth.

“That’s my day job, anyway,” Hyelin admitted as she deflated a bit.

Seulgi wasn’t encouraged by Yeri’s pensive attitude.

“Well,” Hyelin began, “Since you won’t be able to get anywhere near Vector with the way it’s locked up these days, how about helping a girl out and taking me back to Zozo?”

Joy looked at her incredulously. “Us, help you?” she scoffed. She wasn’t feeling terribly magnanimous after all of the insults and insinuations.

Hyelin pouted beneath her mask. “Aw, come on! They took my ship! I’m basically stranded here, and if you’re not quick, you will be, too. Or worse,” she added with a quick glance at Irene.

Irene looked away and crossed her arms.

“I don’t care if you think we can do it or not. We’re going to stop Gestahl. This has to end,” Joy growled.

Yeri looked between the two girls, conflicted. “I don’t think we’ll be able to take you back,” she said apologetically.

"And I'm saying you're not going to be able to get in." But then Hyelin interrupted herself, folding her hands and tapping her lips with her fingers through her mask. “Unless…”

Joy raised an eyebrow.

“I mean if you can’t get there by land, and you obviously can’t get there by sea... why not try by air~?” she asked with a mischievous glint.