We have ways of socially obligating you to talk.

Mibbet woke up in a bed with a groan and a moan, and the cause was well known. The whole world was a big ball of pain, rolled up into an agony sandwich with an extra spicy ouch sauce. During that fight, she had been bounced off every wall in the arena, and it was still less uncomfortable than a full-strength Gidea bear hug. Meaning that entire battle that monster had been holding back. Mibbet thought of what would happen if Gidea didn’t hold back with a horrified shudder.

“Did anybody get the license plates on that convoy of carriages?” She groaned as Rosalind slipped back into the realm of the conscious. Around them, an entire squad of white mages were well and truly earning their (candy) stripes with a constant healing field. Every once in a while, one would drop out only to be replaced by another. According to the clock in the corner, they had been at it for five hours.

Noticing she was awake, one of the nurses turned to her with a look of admiration. “Can I have your autograph?” they asked.

“Why would you want my autograph?” Mibbet asked, “I only lasted three minutes.”

“Half a minute longer than the previous record-holder Steel Skull Samson.”

“Interesting name.”

“Not so much a name as a description, though he apparently replaced the plates with Mythril coated Orichalum before the match (He would have tried Unobtanium, but he just couldn’t get his hands on it and didn’t have the contacts in the Mcguffin clan for the alternatives.) Not that it helped much, never had to perform a surgical panel-beating before.”

“Seriously, Mum managed to crush Orichalum?”

“Better description would be decimated; we pretty much had to replace the lot.”

“isn’t that stuff expensive?”

“Yeah, so was the skull underneath, still had to fix the damn thing.” The nurse snickered, “still got a piece of the panelling; it’s like the world grossest game ball.”

“Please tell me none of my bits went missing or got replaced by metal during this.”

“Nah, I wanted to give you an upgrade on the house, but your mother gave me a few reasons not to, and most of them were her.”

“Definitely owe her one for that, now where is she?”

“Right here, sweetie, sorry I got a bit carried away after the match, brought some fried crickets as a way to say sorry, apparently they’re all the rage in a few of the villages because of you.”

“Yeah, crickets good, thanks,” Mibbet replied, tucking in eagerly while inside Rosalind squirmed; she still had a few human hangups about eating bugs, though compared to the spider incident, this was nothing; she tolerated it saving up for next time Mibbet ran into a giant scorpion or something. She had very little doubt if there was a bug more disturbing than a gargantuan tarantula to eat in all the big wide world; Mibbet would find it and probably attempt to eat it. She was only glad Mibbet didn’t have a taste for slug; it seemed that one was one thing they definitely had in common.

“Is my daughter healed enough for a one on one conversation yet?” Gidea asked, making it plain to the nurses with her expression that if the answer was no, she would want to know why immediately.

“Just about, just need a quick boost, and we’ll be out of your hair.” The tall healer from earlier answered (healers often grew up tall and gangly, a side effect of all that healing magic, building visible muscle requires a person to rip their muscles a little, and let them heal. But healing magic kind of undid the rip too efficiently, while at the same time being far too tempting to use for every little ache and pain and flushing out anything building up in the body that might slow their growth. Though the same is the reason you will never see a healer with pimples and why no healers facility ever needed dental plans. So it’s all a balance, I guess. The healer Mibbet had been talking to earlier had been a particularly gawky looking specimen even amongst healers with a mop of unruly blonde hair, with, of course, zero split ends.)

After a few minutes, they all cleared out, and Gidea grabbed a seat.

“Now frog, it seems we have a lot to talk about; since you stood up for my daughter earlier and clearly made a decent team, I’ll hear you out properly, so mind telling me what in all the hells you two have been getting up to that my daughter seems to fight like a warrior now?”

The next few hours were largely occupied by a detailed recap (though when she found out her daughter almost got roasted alive by an Automata uprising convincing her to sit still rather than rampaging and hunting down every stray entity of a mechanical persuasion in the entire kingdom took some fast talking.

“I can’t believe you two did all that while I was back here, I left the palace and joined the arena because I was bored as hell, and now you’re telling me there’s all these fights out there ripe for the picking? Seriously? I wasn’t even gone that long.

“Three years is a long time mum, a lot has changed, I’ve changed, and I think I’m doing a lot better now. But I was a mess, and so was the kingdom. Dad’s holding it all together, but it’s a lot, and they could use the help.”

“Then maybe he should have considered asking three years ago; if there was so much to do, I could have helped, but I don’t wanna feel like a decorative feature.”

“That is the last phrase in the world that could ever describe you. But we’re asking now, there’s something stinks back at the castle beside Sir Humphrey’s socks, at least half the stuff that’s happened lately has been assassination attempts of one kind or another, we need you mum. Please come home.”