“Ozzy? Hey, Ozzy!” Wade raised his voice a little.

“Hm? What?” the druid stopped spacing out.

“Is something bothering you?”

“No? I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You’ve been making some angry faces at the window for a while now.”

“Oh. I, uh, keep overhearing this guy yelling and it’s wearing on my nerves a bit.”

“Really?”

Wade strained his ears, but couldn’t hear anything resembling shouting. Indeed, the train they were riding on seemed completely silent aside from the light scraping and the rhythmic ‘ka-chak ka-chak’ of the wheels against the old rails. It also didn’t make sense for someone to be mouthing off at this hour. It was early afternoon, the sun was out, and the scenery outside the cabin window was that of grasslands interspersed with farms. These were prime napping conditions, as illustrated by how soundly Angela was sleeping in the corner seat near the door. Wade couldn’t imagine what sort of uncivilized brute would be disturbing the other passengers at this moment.

“He’s a few cars down,” Ozzy stated, noticing the young man’s confusion.

“Oh, wow. You must have some sharp ears on you to hear it from that far.”

“Heh. I suppose I do.”

The cabin door slid open as Eva returned from stretching her legs. One would think a librarian would be accustomed to sitting still for hours on end, but that wasn’t the case. The Last Flag public library was enormous, and keeping it in order involved a whole lot of walking up and down its aisles. That and a figure like hers didn’t just happen by magic.

“Hey, Ms. Applebee,” Wade greeted her. “Did you hear any shouting while you were out and about?”

“No?” she looked quite confused. “What sort of barbarian would be shouting at this hour?”

“That’s what I was thinking, but apparently Ozzy here could hear it.”

Both of them looked towards the man in question, but he just shrugged.

“Hm. Maybe I was just imagining it after all. By the way, how much longer are we going to be on this train?” he tried to change the subject.

“Won’t be getting off until overmorrow morning,” Eva replied.

“Overmorrow?” Wade raised an eyebrow.

The librarian sighed. She considered it a crying shame that the word in question had fallen out of use with the general populace. It was also a bit of a mystery. Surely, she figured, ‘overmorrow’ was both functionally and aesthetically superior to the three-word phrase that had replaced it. Regardless, it was hardly worth arguing about it with the humble technician.

“Day after tomorrow,” she clarified.

“Ah.”

“Are you perhaps already itching to get off?” Eva teased him a bit. “You’ll never make it as an explorer if a mere two days of travel get you down.

“Nothing of the sort, ma’am,” Wade smiled. “I haven’t been on a train since I was a kid, so I’m rather enjoying this.”

“First time for me,” Ozzy jumped into the conversation. “Watching all this scenery zoom by in the window is pretty neat.”

“Cinque minuti,” Angela mumbled in her sleep.

Hearing that made the rest of the group reflexively clam up. A few moments later Eva silently took her seat next to Ozzy and opposite the napping cat-girl.

“So,” the druid spoke in a low voice, “I’ve been meaning to ask, but what exactly is Angela?”

Wade threw him an uneasy look but the librarian wasn’t phased at all. She was fully aware of Ozzy’s lack of common knowledge and knew full well he didn’t mean anything bad by saying that.

“Angela’s a feralian,” Eva explained. “Physically, her people are a lot like humans aside from a few features. Not just feline ones, either. There’s just as many canine, ursidae, and rodentia variants. Just don’t call them beast-men or anything of the sort. It’s something of a slur. From a cultural standpoint, they’re all about food, art, and sailing. Also, as you may have noticed, Angela here is rather, uhm, uninhibited by our standards.”

That was putting it mildly. Her revealing attire made her seem like a harlot compared to the prim and proper outfits the ladies around Last Flag wore. Ozzy didn’t dare say that out loud, of course, as Eva’s usual attire wasn’t far off from Angela’s. Given that they’d apparently known each other for a while, it wasn’t difficult to imagine that this feralian woman’s foreign sensibilities had rubbed off on the librarian. Or at least, he assumed she was foreign.

“I take it she’s not from New Ostor?” he asked to be sure.

“Absolutely not,” Eva confirmed. “Feralians are native to the Melorian Archipelago and are perfectly content to stay there, present company notwithstanding.”

That name rang a bell. The druid recalled seeing it in a bunch of maps and atlases, plastered over a relatively dense cluster of about thirty islands way off to the west. They had enough landmass between them that they were collectively considered one of this world’s four continents. It was also where one of the Quartet should have landed, by Ozzy’s estimate. The man just hoped it wasn’t J.J. The always-serious paladin would surely go bonkers in a land full of Angelas.

“Can hardly blame them,” the librarian continued, “it’s beautiful over there. The towns are colorful, the beaches are spectacular, and the food is just… incredible. They have this thing called pizza that’s just-”

“Pizza?!”

The redhead in the corner suddenly sprang up, eyes wide open and mouth already watering. She saw Eva rolling her eyes, Wade trying to hold in a laugh, and Ozzy just looking straight up confused, but absolutely no trace of the dish in question. Angela calmed down, her expression turning sour.

“Merda. And I was having such a nice-a dream,” she grumbled.

“Well, now that you’re up, shall we go over the actual expedition?” the librarian offered.

The rest of the team gave a mixture of shrugs and nods that said they might as well.

“Alright. Wade, can you give us a table?”

“Sure thing, ma’am.”

The young man stood from his seat and reached up to the dangerously overstuffed luggage compartments overhead. He rummaged around for a bit before retrieving what appeared to be a plywood briefcase with metal bindings. He opened and then unfolded it into a small yet serviceable table. Eva then retrieved some maps she had borrowed from the League office and laid them out as best she could. The mountain they were headed to was called Forchill Hill, named after some ancient important person. Terrain-wise it was nothing remarkable, a vaguely cone-shaped lump of rock and dirt that probably used to be a volcano at some point. It was also a savage wilderness far removed from civilization, so caution was definitely advised. The prudent thing to do was to plan ahead and come up with a route that hit all thirteen survey sites with as little walking as possible.

Or at least that’s what Wade assumed was Eva’s intent. It quickly became apparent that was not the case. The librarian was far more concerned with scenic vistas and natural wonders than any actual objectives. It was as if she was going on a casual camping trip with some friends from work. Angela had the same lackadaisical attitude, though her focus was more on the wild mushrooms, herbs, and game she might turn into cuisine. Even Ozzy was getting into the tourist mood as he was eager to experience this world’s wilderness and see firsthand how it compared to Einhan’s. He didn’t say that out loud, of course, which made his excitement come off as somewhat naive and childlike.

The young Mr. Cunningham couldn’t believe his ears. He could understand Ozzy and Eva not taking this seriously since the former was a rookie like himself and the latter was a city girl, but Angela ‘The Red Menace’ de Fiorino? She was a veteran explorer, for crying out loud. He’d seen her name and photo crop up in Explorer’s Digest for years. She even had a nickname and everything. Wade was something of a fan and was quite star-struck when he met her face-to-face earlier that morning, but he was rapidly becoming disillusioned. This only got worse when the redhead got bored after half an hour of non-planning and pulled out a deck of playing cards. Despite his misgivings, the earnest technician got swept up in her pace and ended up joining the rest of the team for a few dozen friendly games.

Night enveloped the train before long. The seats and part of the cabin walls unfolded into a pair of bunk beds. A heavy curtain was hung from the ceiling to split the space in two, offering the girls some much needed privacy. Ozzy couldn’t help but be impressed - whoever designed this vehicle thought of everything. There was even a restaurant car offering fresh meals on the go. The food was good, but the servings were small and the prices were high. The druid was trying to be frugal with his limited funds, so he only allowed himself a few unfamiliar dishes that looked interesting. Thankfully he’d brought enough snacks to last him the whole ten days of the expedition, so at least he wasn’t hungry.

However, there was another, more pressing problem that was messing with Ozzy’s groove - he couldn’t fall asleep. The constant noise coming from the train made it quite difficult to relax and would wake him the instant he managed to doze off. He was hoping he could get used to it during the day and then ignore it at night, but that clearly hadn’t worked. The man briefly considered forgoing sleep entirely until he got off the train. He certainly had the constitution for it and it wouldn’t be the first time he’d gone days without a proper rest. He quickly abandoned that idea, though. This wasn’t some life-or-death emergency or a time-sensitive situation with many lives at risk. It was just a noisy machine.

So, at around midnight, the druid decided he’d had enough and would do something about the racket. Firstly, he used his sharp senses to confirm that everyone else in the cabin was sound asleep. He then took a moment to gather his focus and invoked the third form of his Feral Aspects - Panther With Thumbs. His wide proportions instantly slimmed up, especially around the arms and fingers, though the changes were nowhere near as drastic as his simian transformation. The most pronounced physical changes took place on his face. His canines grew out into fangs, his blond hair darkened to a deep black, and his eyes turned green and cat-like.

Now imbued with a measure of feline grace, the druid got out of his bottom bunk and exited the cabin without making a sound. He prowled through the train car’s empty hallway while hunched over to the point where he might as well have been on all fours. He moved up to the next car and kept creeping closer and closer towards the front of the train. Thankfully there were no passengers around to make this midnight excursion difficult, but he still made an effort to keep out of sight. After all, he wasn’t entirely certain if what he was about to do was legal, which most likely meant that it wasn’t, if past experiences were any indication.

His suspicions were confirmed when he saw the armed guard on duty. The man in question was draped in a blue uniform that Ozzy had learned to recognize. He was a policeman, sometimes referred to as a copper due to the metal badge adorning his bell-like helmet. Fortunately for the druid, the officer was practicing dereliction of duty by taking a nap in his chair. Less fortunately, the door leading to the coal car and the steam engine beyond was right next to the guy and was likely locked. The Panther With Thumbs was the sneakiest Feral Aspect Ozzy could call upon, but even it couldn’t get past this obstacle without waking the policeman. The druid considered sneaking up on and incapacitating the man with a choke hold, but figured that would cause more trouble than it was worth.

Looking around, Ozzy realized there was an alternative path he could take that would avoid the copper altogether. He backtracked a bit, opened a window, turned into the Monkey With No Tail, and swung onto the roof of the train car. A few quick hops and bounds saw him standing atop the engineers’ cabin. The people inside were very much awake and running the train, but they were too busy shoveling coal and monitoring gauges to notice the monkey-man on their roof. After confirming he wasn’t spotted, Ozzy knelt and placed a hand on the mass of steel beneath him.

“Hey, dumbass,” he called out mentally. “Shut the fuck up. I’m trying to sleep.”

“Uh… S-sorry?” the train’s machine spirit replied. “I, erm, didn’t think any of you fleshbags could, y’know, hear me.”

“Well, I can. And if you don’t mind your manners while I’m here I’m going to shove your whistle down your chimney, hear me?!”

“Yes, sir.”

With that settled, Ozzy started making his way back to his bed. In retrospect, he should’ve done this before he even climbed aboard. He just figured that the thing constantly shouting ‘come on’ and ‘let’s go’ at its engineers was because it was running late and would calm down once it was in motion. This did not happen. The machine spirit kept berating its crew constantly and without end, to the point where Ozzy could ‘hear’ it whether he wanted to or not. This loudness proved that the train’s spirit was more developed than the entities that dwelled in automobiles, which made sense. Trains were bigger and in most cases older machines, meaning there was more room and time for them to ‘grow,’ as it were. Yet the druid had avoided contact so far. The spirit in question didn’t seem all that friendly given the unceasing stream of complaints it hurled at people who couldn’t hear it. As it turned out, that was just the steam engine’s hobby. It was so freaked out and embarrassed by Ozzy calling it out that it fell dead silent for the first time all day, allowing the man to finally get some rest.

This peace and quiet continued the morning after, though it did bring with it a certain drawback - boredom. Without some mouthy machine spirit to distract him, the druid found himself at a loss as to how to pass the time. He was no stranger to travelling, but he wasn’t used to being cooped up in a room on wheels. The train’s hallways were too small for a proper walk, there were no bar fights to get into, and he could only play so many games of cards before he got sick of them. The rest of the expedition team felt the same, if their attitude was any indication. It was now noon on the second day of their journey and all of them sat silently and awkwardly in the car. Time ticked by so slowly that Ozzy wondered if his pocket watch was broken.

With nothing else to do, the man’s mind drifted back to his homeland and previous adventures. He smirked as he failed to remember a single instance when the Quartet was silent like this. Between Happy’s compulsive lying, J.J.’s zero tolerance of said lies, and Cassie’s constant mediating, Ozzy never found himself lacking for conversation. He himself never hesitated to share stories of his mountainside upbringing and the scraps of wisdom he derived from them. Admittedly his wild insights didn’t always agree with the rest of the group’s urban sensibilities, but they never once refused to listen.

Ozzy then had an epiphany. The reason why his current companions were so reserved was because they were essentially strangers. Even Eva was an almost complete unknown. At least the girls were getting along among themselves, but that wasn’t enough. Adventuring parties were built on trust, and there wasn’t going to be any of that between a bunch of people that only met yesterday. The druid knew that for a fact because he had his reservations regarding the other three. Wade might turn out to be a coward, Eva could become a liability, and Angela was just… weird. The wrong kind of weird. In her case, it wasn’t her skills, but her motivations that Ozzy was suspicious of. She reminded him of Happy in some ways, and that guy had some really bad habits he just couldn’t shake. So, in the interest of improving team cohesion, and maybe alleviating his boredom in the process, the man decided to break the ice. He didn’t worry too much and turned to the young mechanic sitting next to him.

“Hey, Wade? Been wondering about something.”

The guy had been poking at the mechanical insides of some glove-mounted gizmo for the past hour when he heard his name called.

“Yes, sir?” he looked up.

“You’re a mechanic, right? Working on cars and such?”

“Yes, sir,” he nodded.

“So why’d you sign up with the League?”

That question caught the attention of the girls sitting across the two of them. Eva looked up from her book and Angela turned her eyes away from the window next to her, though neither moved their heads.

“Well, it ain’t no big thing, sir. I just need money and this is the best I could come up with.”

“Come on. It can’t be just that. Surely there’s plenty of shops that’ll employ a skilled tinkerer.”

“I know, sir. I actually own one of them. Cunningham & Sons Auto-Repair, just by the overpass on the east side of Last Flag.”

“You have sons?” Ozzy raised an eyebrow.

“No. I’m one of the sons,” he stated calmly.

“But wait, if- Oh.”

The druid clammed up as realization dawned on him. Wade was barely out of his teens, so if he inherited the family business, then it probably wasn’t because the previous owner retired.

“Issue is, I’m not my pop,” the mechanic carried on. “I’m… not very good with people. Or business. Don’t get many customers, and the few I do never come back. It’s also just me running it, so when I do get work, I get complaints that it’s slow. Anyway, the shop is failing, and I need capital to keep it open.”

“So the thing you told me about working on your people skills? That’s part of it too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see, I see. Two birds with one stone, as they say,” the druid nodded sagely.

It was at that point that Wade noticed the gentle smile from Eva and the mischievous smirk from Angela.

“W-what? Did I say something weird?” he got defensive.

“Not at all,” the librarian reassured him. “I think it’s rather commendable, actually. Most of the men in the League are glory seekers and little else. So is Angela, by the way.”

“Hey! That’s not-a true!” the redhead protested.

“Uh-huh,” Eva replied flatly. “So all those interviews and photos, what are those about?”

“I just like to look good. This figure, I work-a hard for it. I deserve the right to show it off. Don’t you agree, Wade-boy?”

She turned to him while not-so-subtly gesturing to her toned stomach and firm cleavage, causing the mechanic to reflexively look away.

“Er, erm,” he stammered. “You c-certainly look g-g-good, ma’am.”

As per usual, he became a flustered wreck whenever Angela flaunted her goods. Which she did a lot, precisely because of the reactions she got from him. Ozzy didn’t seem to care or mind, but Eva looked quite peeved at this brazen attitude.

“Stop teasing him, will you?” she rolled her eyes. “He’s actually trying to make something of himself. Unlike you, who’s only in it for the kicks.”

“You sure talk big, Libby,” the cat-girl snapped back. “You treat-a expeditions like vacations.”

“Because they are,” she calmly confirmed. “I don’t get a lot of days off per year, and this sort of thing is nice once in a while. I’d never make a lifestyle out of it, though.”

“Why not?” Ozzy interjected. “Surely as a seeker of knowledge, delving into the unknown has to have some allure to it.”

“Oh, it absolutely does. However, it’s also quite dangerous, and I have the combat ability of a rotten tomato.”

“But… you passed that physical exam, didn’t you?”

Though the druid didn’t struggle with it, he couldn’t imagine that anyone who went through that was useless in a scrap.

“They have different tests for women, Ozzy,” she bluntly stated.

“That’s not it,” Angela rolled her eyes. “Libby’s pretty quick when she has to be. She just faints at the sight of blood.”

“Ah,” the druid nodded. “I see.”

“And here’s the best part,” the redhead smirked. “She didn’t find out until-”

“Angela!” the woman raised her voice.

“Until her third year of medical school!”

The feralian demonstrated her superb reflexes as she ducked out of the way of Eva’s book. Though she was a librarian, the brunette clearly wasn’t above weaponizing literature to swat an annoying fly. Yet despite her best efforts, the redhead kept dodging all of the sloppy swings coming at her from the neighboring cabin seat while cackling madly. Ozzy couldn’t help but chuckle at the rare sight of Eva losing her cool. After a few more half-hearted attempts to strike the catty gunslinger with her copy of Streetside Picnic, the brunette gave up and excused herself from the cabin. Angela continued giggling for a few seconds later before her expression changed to one of concern.

“Uh,” she turned to the boys, “please forget-a what I said about the medical school. It was too much.”

“Touchy subject?” Ozzy hazarded a guess.

“Si,” she nodded. “Libby, she wanted to be a surgeon and save lives all her life-a, then had that dream crushed.”

“I see. Also, why do you keep calling her Libby?”

“Is just her nickname,” she shrugged. “When she join-a the League few years ago, she was very shy and awkward. People only called her ‘the librarian girl’ and that shortened to Libby.”

“Ah. I take it you helped her come out of her shell?”

“I guess,” Angela shrugged again.

“Well, Wade,” Ozzy slapped the mechanic on the back. “If you want to get some confidence training, there’s your teacher.”

“Oh, I can teach-a Wade-boy maaany things.”

The guy had barely recovered from his earlier embarrassment when he noticed that wink from the exotic beauty, making him grow bashful once more.

“What about-a you, big man?” she turned back to Ozzy. “What’s your deal?”

The druid had a mild moment of panic. He should’ve realized that asking others about their past would inevitably lead to them questioning him about his. He then remembered that he probably didn’t need to lie, so long as he didn’t mention anything about magic, or Einhan, or world-ending liches. With that in mind, he thought back to when he first met Cassie, and what made him join her wandering troupe of weirdos.

“I just want to see the world,” he answered.

“Really? That’s it?” she raised an eyebrow.

“Well, yeah. There’s so much of it out there, you know? So much beauty and wonder waiting for someone to find and admire it. Not just the sights, either. You meet the most fascinating people, and taste all kinds of food and drink that you’d never encounter if you stayed home.”

Angela nodded sagely in agreement. She didn’t quite share his level of wanderlust, but she definitely understood where he was coming from. After all, she was in it for the excitement of braving the unknown. That was why she couldn’t put her heart into this routine survey job. The League did these every few months in places all over the country. There was nothing new to discover, and as such Angela’s heart just wasn’t into it. She wouldn’t have come at all if she didn’t feel the need to protect her friend.

“Speaking of, where do you come from-a?” she shifted the topic.

“Oh, I grew up in this remote mountain village you’ve never heard of.”

“Really? I get around. Maybe I’ve passed through it.”

“No, you definitely haven’t,” he shot her down. “What about you?”

Angela smiled wryly.

“I grew up in this remote fishing village you’ve never heard of.”

The explorer and the adventurer glared at each other, silently confirming that neither should press the subject if they wished to remain on good terms. The wordless conversation went completely over Wade’s head as he was far too preoccupied trying not to ogle the scantily dressed redhead to notice the spike in tension. Angela and Ozzy relaxed moments later and moved onto lighter and more pleasant topics, mostly revolving around food. The druid also noticed that the redhead seemed incapable of speaking without flapping her hands about. Ozzy didn’t mind since it made the talk more lively somehow, though he did wonder whether there was some actual meaning to those peculiar gestures.

Eva returned several minutes later. She still seemed upset and simply resumed reading without saying another word, which did little to stem the flow of words spilling out of Angela. The exotic explorer kept talking with her mouth and hands in equal parts as she regaled the rest of the team with clearly exaggerated stories of her exploits. Wade once again was completely drawn into her pace and hung off of every word, but Ozzy remained skeptical about some of her claims. Though he didn’t want to underestimate Angela, some of the things she said were ridiculous even by his standards. A quick glance at Eva revealed that the librarian felt the same, given how she actively ignored those wild stories.

Eventually the topic shifted to Marcello, Angela’s pet falcon. Ozzy hadn’t had the chance to get a good look at him since he followed the group in the air until they boarded the train, at which point he had to be put in a cage in the cargo car. Regulations and whatnot. So, with the redhead’s permission, the druid went to have a chat with the final member of their team. Passengers weren’t normally allowed into that train carriage, but exceptions were made for owners of live animals that needed to be taken care of. Angela let Ozzy borrow her pet owner’s pass so he can have a closer look at her boy, under the condition that the man didn’t mess with the cage. He readily agreed and went off to have a private chat with the falcon. When he returned to the cabin five minutes later, he couldn’t help but feel impressed.

For a bird incapable of language, Marcello sure had an extensive array of insults at his disposal.