...huh. (Soreness from sleeping on the floor all night, just now noticed: bye bye, thank you Axiom.)

This is actually an unnerving level of not-being-assholes. They didn't jump on this ready-made excuse to beat her and rape her at all. Is someone looking out for her? Warning them off? Or are they actually this not-corrupt? Ame doesn't know how to feel about that.

Ame gets up and puts her clothes back on.

When the hall guard - someone else, a woman now - sees her awake she nods.

"You're awake." She clears her throat. "Ahem. The Civil Guard of Traver Crossing has determined that your actions in the incident last night were taken in self-defense. While there is technically a penalty for public indecency and - I think it was unlicensed healing? - the Chief has decided it's in nobody's interest to try to enforce it. We'd rather you just left with the caravan you're already signed for before you cause any further trouble." She drops out of 'speech mode'. "And personally, good for you, putting those bastards in their place. They're the kind of adventurers that give the profession a bad name, and we're throwing the book at them."

"...thanks?"

This is the first she's hearing about unlicensed healing or public indecency laws. Seriously? She spends all day volunteer healing mostly delicate medical matters and no one says a word, but patching up mortal wounds after a fight requires a license?

Ame honestly can't tell if these people are screwing with her. Whatever.

"Anyone seen my boots?"

She unlocks the cell door and swings it wide.

"Come to think of it, the healing license thing shouldn't even apply to you, technically. You didn't charge anyone money for healing. It's a bullshit* tax thing City Hall put in. I'll ask about the boots, but c'mon, don't linger."

*"Monster with no drops"

"I wasn't gonna say anything, but..."

Ame follows the guard woman away from the cells.

"My boots are probably long gone, unless they're still glued to that vine-trap thing."

Shrugging, Ame casts Pelt of Caeris, and suddenly being barefoot is downright comfortable. Too bad she can't keep the spell up on a permanent basis.

The guardswoman flinches and puts a hand on her sword as Ame casts, but tries to relax when it proves to be nothing threatening.

"Maybe warn a girl before casting suddenly near people who might actually feel it? Tanglevine bags are a pain in the ass to clean up. Even if we have 'em you probably don't want 'em anymore."

Hallway, hallway, checkpoint (where she shows a little crystal she's carrying and officially reports that she's escorting Ameron out), front entryway/waiting room. She goes up to the guard on secretary duty. "Roland, did they put a pair of boots covered in tanglevine into storage yesterday?"

"Yes indeed."

"Great. You want 'em back or nah?"

With an apologetic shrug, Ame follows her out front.

"If they're still attached to the tanglevine... nah. I'll manage."

Free and clear! Sort of. Anyway.

Now that her legally obligated time-out is over, Ame finally heads back to the inn for her equipment and also Elizabeth.

Elizabeth has all their bags packed in the front room of the inn. Elizabeth walks up and hugs her briefly!

"You're okay! I argued in your favor at them. I know you said the guards in your homeland are horrible..."

Ame grabs her travel-pack with a sigh of relief, pulling out the Quest Journal.

"Yeah, they were weirdly reasonable about the whole thing."

Ame closes her eyes for a moment, and then briefly notes down the jist of what she remembers about the conversation she spied on Alectai having.

"How much of what happened did you hear? And what did I miss after you finished negotiating with, uh, Debra?"

"I made excuses for you, then came back to the inn. And a couple of hours later the guards stomped in wanting to talk to me! So I did. Vigorously. Then I went back to sleep. And here we are. As to what I heard, you were being you with a bunch of guys - sounded kind of hot - then slavers tried to jump you on your way back to the inn. You beat them sideways without breaking a sweat and then healed the mortally wounded ones. Some of the rumors are painting you in a much less kind light. I think there's a counter-Waltmann movement or something and the Waltmanns and counter-Waltmanns are both using you as a propaganda point. Not that it matters, we're leaving in like an hour."

"Eugh. Yeah, that is one sandwich I don't want to be the meat in."

Ame puts the Quest Journal away and puts her travel pack back on the table.

"I need a bath, and a new pair of boots," Ame says, wiggling her Pelt-protected toes against the floor. "But yeah, I felt like doing something... dramatic. For reasons I'll tell you about later. So I talked six guys into a gang-bang," her tone: relishing, "and that was really great, yes. I summoned a Lube Slime for us to fuck on."

"Anyway, I was... irked, to have such a good afterglow spoiled, but I didn't actually win that fight all that easily. Two of them got away clean, and I meant to only fight bare handed, when I decided to face them instead of running away. So yeah."

"Lube- Of course you can do that, huh? Just like that." She squints. "Jail's no fun. There's probably time for a bath if you don't linger too much, want me to scare one up for you real quick?"

"Please."

Ame can wash up herself and her clothes quite quickly when she has to. Does her Healing Slime clean up bloodstains as well as fresh blood? She will test that. Pelt of Caeris did its job quite well. Despite the stabbing, the strands of the fishnet weave of her shirt stretched around the blade without cutting. No visible damage at all. Nice.

After a short wait she rejoins Elizabeth, slightly damp, and straps her travel pack onto her back.

The healing slime has very little effect against bloodstains.

Elizabeth recommends her a new pair of boots from a place that markets specifically to adventurers. Black leather, similar height, but different design - almost wild-west. Two silver for a version with basic Toughness. They have optional slightly-more-toughness, warming/cooling, self-cleaning, cushioning, and auto-lacing enchantments that all together take the price up to eleven silvers. Elizabeth doesn't seem alarmed by that price.

"Good gear is an investment. My robes and hat cost way more than this with all the reagents I've put into them. It'd be worth getting these de-tanglevined."

Ame counts up all of her money. Eleven silver is nearly half of everything she has.

"I'm leery of anything expensive enough that I might get myself killed from hesitating to abandon it."

"It's your silver. Going for a low-gear high-Skill build can work."

"That's kind of what I'm already doing, and maybe I should change that at some point, but..."

Ame puts the expensive boots back and asks for something cheap (meaning 'easily replaceable') and suited for a DEX-focus that'll still stand up to a lot of travel.

They have more open and flexible footwear! They also have footwear designed for running and acrobatics and all-terrain! But really if you want something that lasts, you want toughness enchantments. And if you're going to be wearing it every day, don't you want something especially comfortable?

Axiom makes comfort much less of an issue, it occurs to Ame. Anything that's comfortable for five minutes is effectively indefinitely comfortable. She isn't sure how to make this claim to the shopkeeper though.

Ame is willing to go up to three silver total. All-terrain running and acrobatics sounds perfect. She will start there and add whatever enchantments (starting with toughness and cleaning) can be had at that price-point.

That will get her grippy shoes with only a couple inches of rise, like a cross between very short boots and running shoes, with the basic Toughness enchantment.

Elizabeth buys a few glass bottles and vials. Apparently they sell those here too. After that, they're off to the caravan, which is organizing itself in the large yard just in front of the caravansary.

The hyper-professional organizer Debra is in the midst of it all. It's chaotic, but eventually she shouts, "All guards and escorts, come to me!"

These are similar enough to her old boots that she doesn't need to adjust much, which is as she hoped. They might even be better.

Geared up and ready to go, Ame presents herself next to Elizabeth at Debra's call, and glances curiously over the other guards.

The other guards are perhaps surprising, in a way. In addition to five fairly ordinary humans (three warriors with a sword, hammer, and halberd, and two archers) - There's a wolf-girl with a massive greatbow who stands apart from everyone and looks kind of angry, and who sniffs at the air every few seconds. There's a green-skinned and tusked man, the classic fantasy orc - tall and broad and bare-chested, wielding a huge battleaxe. Except clean and well-groomed. There's a slim woman with grey skin with lots of elaborate tattoos and patches of bioluminescence and an old-looking pistol and a big backpack. The others edge away from her nervously.

"Welcome to the caravan, everyone. We've all negotiated payment individually, so now I'm going to go over the route, ground rules, and assign teams in the case of an attack. There are only ten of you, but this is a relatively safe area and many of our own workers have decent combat Skills. The ground rules are common sense. Make camp with the group, don't pull reckless shit or cause trouble. In the event of combat, your objectives are first to stay alive, second to protect the caravan's people, third to protect the carvan's property. Your objective is not to kill the enemy. Don't go running off to chase a kill if it means leaving the caravan less guarded. Is that clear?"

Some of them grumble at this, but everyone accepts it.

Debra starts goes over the five-day route, then identifies and calls over some caravan regulars who will arrange for food and sleeping spots and who are the ones to coordinate with if there's a fight, then picks out two of the human archers as scouts and tells the remaining eight to make two teams of four. People start mingling. Except for the grey-skinned woman, who just stands there silently and fiddles with her pistol.

Those patches of bioluminescence are cool and kind of sexy.

So, Ame and Elizabeth need to pick two of these people to team up with? Hm.

Ame assesses each of them. Which of them seem interested in Ame? In either sense.

The orc, the glowy tattooed girl, and all three of the male humans seem to think she's hot. Wolf girl spends more time looking at the chiseled orc but sniffs, winks, and flashes a thumbs up in her direction.

Halberd guy tries to take over the group and high-handedly assign teams for 'combat balance', but at least two people start arguing against him immediately.

"Stop pretending like you have a clue how the rest of us fight already," Ame snarks at halberd guy, when he tries to imply that Ame is a squishy caster.

Wolf girl gets an acknowledging smirk, but the glowy tattoo girl and the orc are closer. "Hi. I'm Ameron. I'm a DEX-focus nigh-unkillable brawler with a rare healing Skill. What about you two?"