Chapter Forty-Four - GWNN

“What do you mean?” the Girl-With-No-Name asked.

Meetings at the adventurer’s guild were very very serious business. That’s what her friends told her, at least. Jean had gone through several lectures about how their team had to look presentable and professional when meeting at the guild so that others would take them seriously.

The Girl-With-No-Name even took a bath before the meeting, and put on her freshly patched pretty dress and all of her armour bits on too.

She looked presentable and professional as she stood in front of the guild’s main counter on her tippy-toes and pouted professionally at the lady behind the counter.

“I’m sorry, but your team has been marked as, ah, under certain regulations that prevent us from allowing you to take on any more missions for the moment,” the lady said.

“That’s outrageous!” The Girl-With-No-Name said. That was a word she learned recently, and one that sounded very professional too. “I demand to see your manager.” The Girl-With-No-Name did her best impersonation of Feli that one time she found a fly in her soup.

“I... yes, I can accommodate that much,” the lady said.

Things moved quickly after that. The Girl-With-No-Name called over her team, who were all a little miffed about the sanctions, and then they moved over to an office where the current leader of the guild was waiting for them.

“Well, you see,” he said. “It’s not so much that the team isn’t allowed to take on missions, it’s that, ah, it’s the guild’s opinion that certain members of your team aren’t old enough to apply for membership within the guild.”

“What?” the Girl-With-No-Name asked. “Who’s not old enough?” she squinted at Jean, but Jean had a couple of wrinkles and a bit of white hair at the temples that he trimmed to hide sometimes.

“That would be you,” the guild officer said with a gesture towards the Girl-With-No-Name.

She crossed her arms. “That’s wrong.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m older than time. I can’t be too young because there was no young when I was made,” she said.

That earned her a lot of confused looks and not much else. She insisted that she be allowed to take on more missions. She was only just starting to get really famous, and she’d need every bit of that to be able to return to Abigail all proud and happy.

The guild officer guy refused.

“But I’m old enough!” the Girl-With-No-Name insisted.

“You look like you’re barely thirteen,” he replied, and that was that.

The Girl-With-No-Name considered forcing the issue, she considered forcing the officer’s head through a wall, and she considered forcing her tentacles all over until everything was broken, but in the end she decided to be the bigger person. “Fine then. How old do I need to be to join?”

“At least an adult,” the officer said.

The Girl-With-No-Name had no idea how long that was! Everything was unfair, and mortals sucked. She crossed her arms and stormed out of the room, her teammates following after her.

“Hey, it’s not all bad,” Lorean said.

“It’s fine,” the Girl-With-No-Name muttered. She rubbed at her eyes which had gotten a bit wet because of how frustrated she was. “I guess I should just go back to Abigail then. I just... I wanted to go see her like a big hero.”

“Come on,” Jean said. “You’ve saved dozens of small towns, taken out bandits, wrecked wyverns. You are a hero, even if the guild refuses to see that.”

“Yeah, but you’re not a hero unless people know about it,” the Girl-With-No-Name said. “And Abigail won’t hear about my exploits if I can’t continue exploiting things.”

Feli patted the Girl-With-No-Name on the head. “Hey, hey, don’t worry. Look, where does this Abigail live? You’ve been talking about her for ages, but you never said before.”

“She lives in that city with the five hills.”

“Alright, that’s a little ways to the south, but we’ve travelled further before,” Feli said. “How about we all go with you? The four of us. Maybe we can have a few adventures on the way? There’s plenty of small towns on the way south, and nothing says we can’t help the locals without being part of the guild.”

Lorean raised a finger. She did that whenever she was about to tell someone that they were wrong. Telling people they were wrong was Lorean’s hobby. “Point of fact,, the guild charter says exactly that.”

“Then screw the guild charter,” Feli said. “They’re not letting us do any more quests? Too bad, we’ll do the quests anyway, and they won’t see a penny of it.”

“Ah, I’ll have to look, but we might be able to take on non-paying missions and quests, actually,” Lorean said. “We’ll need to cover things on our own though.”

“We can afford it,” Jean said.

“Yeah! And helping people without accepting payment is like... half again as heroic as doing it for coin,” Feli said. She patted the Girl-With-No-Name some more. “See? It’ll all work out.”

The Girl-With-No-Name looked up to her fellows, then wiped her eyes again. “Thank you,” she said. She had a great feeling about this plan. Her tentacles practically twitching with eagerness to get going.

So they got going. Jean found a cart and bought some donkeys, the girls dragged the Girl-With-No-Name around as they gathered supplies, and by nightfall the Girl-With-No-Name and her friends were on the way south, to be big damn heroes and to go meet Abigail at long last!

***