"...and I still can't believe he didn't catch a cold after sleeping eight hours in the rain," I finished, then offered a cracker to my companion. "Cracker?"

The man declined with a shake of his head, so I popped it into my mouth inside. Man, these crackers were good! They were apparently super popular in Plantar-- "Plant-ed in sea salt!", they'd said-- and they did not disappoint. Yum!

We were currently heading back to Minstia the same way we had gone to Plantar-- the horribly cramped cart. The huge muscly bald dude who had lent me his elbow was there as well, and as thanks for letting me borrow his elbow, I'd given the crab skewers that Cook had bought us to him, and now we were chatting away like old friends.

The mustached, giant guy was Gerald, and he apparently used to be a front-line soldier before an injury caused him to leave the battlefield and work as an army cook for the protective services. His story had remined me of one of Mother Lily's old friends, a retired soldier (who resembled, in fact, a shark) who'd battled the weirdest situations. But that was a story for later.

"So how much longer are you staying in Minstia?" I asked, popping another cracker into my mouth.

"Two months," he rumbled. "Then we're off to Ribdus."

"Ribdus! That's not too far off."

"Yes. The platoon is..."

Mr. Gerald began describing some other places they had been situated before here, but my attention momentarily drifted to Rosa, who was chomping on her fish skewers with vigor. Too much vigor, which meant she was probably... angry?

I looked at her until she looked up at me, and I raised my eyebrows to ask her if she was alright.

She rolled her eyes and waved me away, basically telling me not to worry.

I frowned, but Mr. Gerald was finishing his description, so I tuned back in. 

"You've been to the capital? Oh, my mom told me about the capital before, she said they have these weird circular doors everywhere. Is that true?"

"Sort of. It's more triangular than circular, but..."

---

We reached Minstia in no time, thanks to Mr. Gerald and his interesting war stories. Rosa spent the later half of the ride completely dozing off, but for some reason I was fine, not sleepy at all. Maybe it was because I kept munching on these crackers?

Anyways, I waved Mr. Gerald goodbye and left Cook sighing over his losses with his fellow gamblers (or so I guessed, they looked pretty grumpy), and walked back to the restaurant with Rosa.

"Well, that was a long day," I told Rosa, then offered her a cracker. "Cracker?"

Taking it from my hand, Rosa yawned. "What time is it?"

"Uh...." I squinted at the sky. "Not sure. Three?"

"Do you have work today?"

I shuddered. "No, but Cook does. He even worked yesterday!"

Rosa shuddered with me. "Imagine, another whole day of working after that! He sure is a monster."

Heh. Right. He really was the Cookie Monster.

However, I was not a monster (just a wee bit turkey sandwich), so I was planning on sleeping the moment I got back. I wasn't feeling sleepy, but I was pretty sure if I lay on my bed, I'd be out in mere seconds.

"Anyhow, I'm glad that's over," I declared, marching on forth. "The bed and a good afternoon's sleep is all that's waiting for me now!"

Rosa gasped. "Agent Fi! Is this how I raised you?!"

"You haven't raised me, Rosa," I informed her, but she ignored me.

"How could you think of ending this mission without a recap?!"

"A recap?" I frowned. "What's that?"

"You know, the thing where the agents regroup and discuss what happened, and what will happen from now on? Also known as a debriefing? Why, it's the basics of  basics!"

"Well, can it wait?"

"No!" Rosa huffed. She brandished her empty skewer sticks at me. "We will not let time rush away our most clear memories of the event. We must analyze every single thing that happened and-- oh, hi Claire," she said, straightening up.

I turned around, my face lighting up. "Claire! And Dan! What are you two doing out here?"

"Hi Filian, hello Rosa," Claire said with a smile, her voice lilting in that beautiful accent of hers. She lifted the paper bag in her arms. "Danny and I are just coming back from getting some ingredients. How are you two doing?"

"Oh, we're doing fine, of course," I said warmly, giving her a smile of my own. "Oh, and-- have the two of you met yet?" I asked, turning to Dan and Rosa.

"No," they answered simultaneously, blinking at each other.

"Well, this is Dan, Claire's cousin from I forgot where."

"Hey!"

"And this is Rosa, my best friend and the weirdest person in the world."

"Nice to meet you," Rosa said immediately, sticking out a hand, her face perfectly indifferent. "I'm Filly's best friend, and if I'm weird then so is she."

I rolled my eyes. "So?" I said, as they shook hands. "Heading back to the bakery now?"

"Yup," Dan answered, though I'd asked Claire. He shifted his own three paper bags in his arms, and picked up the sack he had put on the ground to shake Rosa's hand. "And this seems like the perfect time to tell you! Remember when I said I was making new bread last time?"

"Uh, of course," I said, though I totally did not remember. Had he said that?

"Yeah, I did it! So now we have new bread."

"New bread?"

"Yeah! Blueberry jam muffins. They're good."

Ohh, he must have told me that day when I'd gone to the corn field with Lindent with his Pot of Secrecy! Hadn't we been visiting his auntie for some blueberry jam then? "Hey, I'm glad that worked out well for you! That sounds delicious!"

"They are," Danny said enthusiastically. "You need to try them out!"

Rosa had been standing still until now, but her head suddenly shot up. "Ooh, I just had the perfect idea!" 

"Gah!" I stepped back, a hand on my heart. That surprised me. I eyed her warily. "Which is..?"

"Let's go over to Claire's bakery and try those blueberry muffins as we recap our mission!"

"Of course that's the perfect idea," I muttered, but Claire was clapping her hands and asking "Are you coming to our bakery, Rosa? That sounds wonderful!" and Nobody Went Against Claire (that was the Rule), so I slumped and trudged along.

Meanwhile, Dan asked, "What mission?" but nobody answered.

Once we got to the bakery, we sat down and bit into those blueberry jam muffins (free of cost, as samples! Dan tried to charge us, but sweet sweet Claire kindly bonked him on the head and let us have them for free). Claire and Danny had gone back to the kitchen to organize their ingredients. Rosa, of course, wolfed down her muffin like she hadn't made Cook extra sad by ordering ten skewers and a cup of soup back in Plantar, then stood up and paced impatiently.

"Okay, it's time for the debriefing."

I swallowed a bite leisurely. "I thought it was a recap?"

"Same thing, Filly. Now, where did we go wrong? We lost our aim. Somewhere along in the--" She stopped, and a strange expression came over a friend. "Somewhere along in the bitterness and I...?"

"Rosa? You alright?"

"...yeah. I, I think so?" She frowned. "For some reason, I feel like I need to lament over how I don't know how to save a life."

And this might sound really, really impossible, but I could've sworn that the moment she said the words 'how to save a life,' some strange melody played through my mind. A very catchy, five-syllable melody, which echoed in my mind as I lifted my head from my muffin, staring into the distance.

"...anyhow!" Rosa pronounced, and I shook off the strange music and focused. "Anyhow, we need to consider. How and where did everything go wrong? And how can we be better?"

I set down the muffin and considered the question. "Maybe it was our lack of information? We only had your, uh, sixth senses and a bunch of lies to pull us through. If we had more information, then more options could've-- gah!" I yelped, holding my muffin away. "Rosa! You'll break the table if you slam your hand down on it like that!"

Rosa, after slamming her hands down onto the table, looked up at me with grief in her eyes. "This is the reason! You're completely correct!" she cried, and I stared at her with furrowed eyebrows. "I can't be the credible source of information if I don't have information!"

After a beat, I said, "Yes," then bit into my muffin.

Unfazed by my obviously miffed expression (she almost crushed my muffin! That wasn't okay), Rosa returned back to pacing, demanding, "Do you know what this means?"

"No," I mumbled through my mouthful. 

"All those hours, all those hours I spent preparing. Blackmailing Cook--"

Oh, so she wasn't going to even deny it anymore.

"--growing my spidey senses for suspicious individuals, polishing up my womanly wiles, and skipping all my etiquette classes for this!"

"Okay, I'm pretty sure that last part didn't really have to do anything with this, but continue."

"It's all gone to waste, Filly, and do you know what that means? Do you?!?!?"

I shook my head, my eyes following her as she grabbed at her hair and slowly descended to her knees.

As I took my last bite of this heavenly blueberry jam muffin, feeling the sweetness burst on my tongue, and Danny poked his head out from the kitchen (probably curious of all this noise), Rosa craned her head up towards the ceiling and wailed. "I'm going to have to replan!"

---

A/N: This chapter had no business being this hard to write. Sorry for (unintentionally) taking a week off!