Ch 57 – Misdirection

"What happened?!" Ace asked, hurriedly.

"Mary?" Necro followed suit, both worried something had happened.

At the entrance of the tent, still frozen, Mary stared in shock at Bid's eyes, quickly closing the curtain as she covered her breasts with her hands.

"They are here..." Mary stuttered.

"Eh? But it should be early... right?" Ace wondered.

"Well... If they are already here, there's not much we can do but dress up right?" Necro stood up, and tip-toed her way to take the muffler off the lamp and light it up with a small flame. "Hey..." She knelt behind the teary eyed Mary, who was still sitting on the floor, and hugged her from behind. "Don't worry about it. Your breasts are pretty. Even if he saw them, I would only be good luck of his, right?"

"Y-Yeah-aah~" Mary relaxed and started agreeing, only to have a moan stolen out of her by a kiss to her nape, which made her blush.

"Now... Let's hurry and get dressed."

"Ey, Bid, the heck happened? It looks like you saw a gho- Holy shit! Where did this come from!?" Just as the curtain closed again, Hal made his way into the clearing.

"I-. The-. She-." Bid couldn't avoid stuttering a lot as he recalled what he'd just see. It's not like he'd never seen a naked woman but... It wasn't any woman, it was Her.

"Speak up."

*thud*

Hal slapped him in the back trying to make him blurt out whatever it was.

"I saw Mary's naked breasts when she opened the curtains of this rich-ass tent!" He blurted what happened out in a torrent of words, to which Hal's response was just tilting his head to the side, confused.

"Heh?" His brain took a second to process. "Hold on, step by step." He took a deep breath. "You saying you saw Mary."

"Yes."

"Naked."

"Yes."

"That Mary."

"Yes."

"You saw her breasts, naked."

"Yes." Bid just said yes after nodding to each sentence Hal spoke, still trying to absorb the image burned onto his memory.

"Coming out of this luxurious tent that came out of nowhere, while the shed over there is empty."

"Yes."

"I'm getting in there!"

"Wait! No!" Bid grabbed Hal's arm as he began striding towards the tent just a few meters ahead.

"But this doesn't sound like her at all! She must be being forced by someone Noble from that country's army or something!" Hal retorted, trying to convince Bid to let go of him.

"Didn't look like that. Rather, she looked brighter than usual."

"Heh!? Brighter? Like Ace?"

"Yep..."

The two stared at each other in silence and disbelief... Could it be that the little girl had managed to somehow crack through Mary's thick shell? Their musing only lasted a second, before three people walked out of the tent behind Bid.

The first to come out were Ace, who looked just normal, and Mary, her face dyed red and avoiding eye contact with both of the boys. Lastly, came Necro, immediately putting her hands around both of the girl's waists, her face distorted onto a shit-eating grin.

'She did it!' The immediate thought came through both of the boy's minds as they watched in awe Mary hold onto Necro's hand on her waist with her own, while still trying to avoid looking straight at them.

Hal and bid looked straight at each other and, without a word, came to a consensus. 'This girl is our adversary.'

Completely alien to their one-sided dispute, Necro started talking to them.

"So... How was the trip back? Where are the carts?" She asked, prompting their answer. She didn't wait for their answer, before addressing the embarrassed Mary in a honey-ish voice. "You should go and get your armor set."

"Yes!" Mary responded like she would a general, quickly making her way to the shed, almost running.

"Ahem!" Ace cleared her throat, prompting the boys, who were staring blankly at Mary's back, to answer Necro's question.

'Eh... Since when did she become the leader of our party...' Bid thought to himself as he realized the major shift in the power structure of their group. "Yeah, we couldn't manage to make them pass through the forest. It'd take too long, so we decided to just come and carry them towards the road ourselves. We left the drivers there waiting and taking care of them so it should be fine."

'Fuck!' Necro thought to herself as she realized she wouldn't have any free time to address the undead. "I'm guessing you didn't manage to get the smaller ones we talked about, right?" She asked him about the carts. Completely unnecessary, but useful for buying time to think on how to lead this conversation forward.

"Yeah... Those were hard since it's wheat planting season. Even the large ones with horses we only managed getting two of them because we also brought drivers with us, else the guarantee was stupidly expensive." Bid explained the reasons but Necro couldn't care less, she was more worried about how to buy enough time.

"See... Since I pulled this tent out I think I'll be able to take the barrels inside the ring and dump them on the carts."

"Eh?" Bid didn't quite get what she was saying. "You mean this huge ass tent is yours?!" Bid asked just to make sure, while turning around towards Hal, whose mouth had fallen enough to fit a full rabbit inside.

"Yeah... I didn't know the one I had in the ring was this big." While Necro said this, shrugging, she could barely hear Bid's comment addressed to Hal.

"Guess now you know who that Noble you talked about is." Is what he said, making Necro leak a wry laughter.

"Why are you laughing like this?" Ace whispered into her ear, not understanding what was happening.

"Nothing, I just heard something funny." She whispered back in Ace's, waiting for Bid to turn back towards her.

"So... I guess it's gonna be much quicker then, right?" Mary asked, coming towards the group clad in full armor and holding her shield proudly. It was almost as if putting her helmet on turned the shy girl into someone else entirely.

The whole group just looked at her in silence as she approached them, none had realized she was close enough to hear their conversation. Heck, they hadn't even seen her come out of the shed... Come to think of it, 'how the fuck did she manage to put all that armor on this fast!?' is the thought that crossed Necro's mind as she realized the girl had worn full plate armor in less than a handful of minutes.

"Yep." Ace confirmed, before anyone else came out of the trance.