Oh hey there. Hope y'all are doing fine :D

Here's another silly something I knocked up. I thought it was about time someone actually realised the Belstone caravanners are a bunch of morons. There's a reference in this to both the fic written by the lovely SasukeBlade (The Very First and Last Game Of Strip Poker) and also... one still hanging around on a computer I can't get to right now. But we'll get to that.

In the meantime, enjoy the read!

On Probation

"We're what?" Esther asked incredulously.

Belstone's Elder shuffled some papers about officiously, managing to look anywhere but at the trio of miscreants who somehow managed to show up with three drops of myrrh every year. Not for the first time, he wondered what he had been thinking that day when he sent them out on their maiden trip. There had probably been some strange liquid involved.

"Under probation," he said, matter-of-fact.

Kronan looked sulky. "What for? It's not like we've done anything wrong. Well," he amended after a pause for thought, "not really wrong, anyway."

The Elder rifled through his newly organised sheets and procured four separate documents, which he presented to the group. "First let me draw your attention to this. A complaint from the Royal Guild of Moogles which discusses in great detail your harassment of various mailmoogles up and down the continent." The next sheet they had seen before, signed in curly script by Amidatty. "This one is from the Shellan Counsel regarding your flagrant lawbreaking and… nudity."

Tag successfully wiped the convulsive smile off his face; Kronan sniggered unabashedly.

"This is a letter from the Fields of Fum which implicates you severely in fixing a cow-race – "

"You can't prove anything," Tag said quickly. Esther put her head in her hands.

"- and this last one is from the Marr's Pass caravan and says that you stole their entire supply of striped apples."

Esther looked up defensively. "We didn't do that!"

"Maybe not," the Elder conceded, "but the claim itself is a serious issue."

"Pff, Lilties. Stupid greedy midgets," Tag muttered. Kronan didn't appear to move, but in the next second the Clavat was hopping about clutching his foot. The Elder's expression didn't flicker one iota.

"This is exactly what I am talking about," he said sternly. "I don't know how you manage to look after this village when you can't even be in the same room without trying to massacre each other!"

Kronan looked hurt. "Massacre's a bit much. I only stabbed him in the foot."

"Not helpiiiing," Esther murmured out of the corner of her mouth.

The Elder stood up. "Look, this whole thing is out of my hands anyway. I have been ordered to assign to you a respectable member of the village who will monitor your activities and report back to all concerned parties on your hopefully positive progress towards being mediocre human beings."

"Who are we getting?" Esther asked cautiously.

"Mika Rhone," the Elder replied, and the name alone was enough to strike fear into the heart of any Belstone schoolchild.

"Oh no," Tag breathed. "Oh no."

Mika Rhone was stout even for a Lilty, with hard grey eyes and a strangely square jaw. Her bangs had been scraped into a severe bun and she wore tiny little steel spectacles. Not only was she ridiculously meticulous in her organisation of, well, everything, she was also ferociously military when it came to making sure everyone followed her orders to the letter. Had she not been born in the backwaters of Belstone, Mistress Rhone would probably have revolutionised (and terrified) the Alfitarian Guard.

As it was, she had taken up the mantle of schoolteacher. Every child in Belstone lived in fear of the words, "And where's your homework?"

She also had a clipboard and a worryingly sharp piece of graphite with which to take acidic notes. On the day the caravan was due to leave, she was stood with said clipboard in hands by the edge of the village boundary looking disapproving.

"You were supposed to set off seventeen minutes ago," she snapped.

"Sorry, Mistress Rhone," Esther apologised. "Kronan got lost."

The Lilty in question looked suitably abashed. "I always forget whether to turn right or left at the tailors."

"It's because we're hardly here most of the year," Tag said sagely. "Can't remember where everything is in my house sometimes."

"You got lost on your way out of the village," Mika Rhone repeated flatly.

Esther could already see the metaphorical tunnel stretching out before her. There was no light at the end of it. "Yes," she said dully.

"But it's okay," added Kronan hurriedly. "It only happens every other year. And sometimes we don't even need the map."

Oh, she was mistaken. There was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a Firaga. Mika Rhone refrained from answering, but the scribbling of her graphite pencil could be heard for the rest of the afternoon.

"You haven't brought the myrrh timetable with you, did you just expect to remember the dates? As I remember, Tag, you were particularly terrible at history. No, no, you simply cannot cook that, Esther, it must be at least four months out of date. Did your mother teach you nothing about food hygiene? When did you last clean this caravan? Is this pot safety regulated for children? I'm sure I can see a hole in the bottom. Are you aware that all caravanners are required by law to polish their weapons at least twice a week, Kronan? Why don't you spend more time researching your monstrous enemies so that you can fight them more effectively? In fact, I think I might make research homework compulsory- "

"Oh gods," Tag groaned at the end of the first week. The group had made camp at the turn-off to the River Belle and now sat huddled mutinously around the campfire, conversing in whispers. Tag flinched as Mika stalked behind him, still taking notes and ruminating aloud. "I can't take much more of this. When we get to the River Belle I might run myself straight into that giant crab and let it eat me."

"What, and leave me and Kronan to face her wrath alone?" Esther said dully. "You're so selfish."

Kronan gave a little snort from where he was unwillingly polishing his weapon for the second time that week. "Why don't we just push her into the giant crab?"

While at any other time this might have been considered a joke, the trio fell thoughtfully quiet. The image was quite appealing.

As it turned out, their journey through the River Belle was incredibly uneventful. The first goblin that attacked them got smacked in the face by Mika Rhone's clipboard and then smacked in the pride by the following comment: "Are you aware that according to Thorpe's Rules of Warfare you should give at least one day's notice of your intention to attack? If you were one of my students you would have failed the military etiquette course!"

There was a hedgehog pie around the corner. It was accompanied by a ragtag band of three goblins wielding weapons of various sizes and ugliness.

"Do we have to give them one day's notice?" Esther asked sarcastically.

"Don't be ridiculous, girl," Mika replied, brisk as usual. "Their forces have already attacked illegitimately. We are within our rights to retaliate, as long as we have filed the proper paperwork."

"To them?" Tag asked, half-serious.

Mika looked at him as if he was an idiot. "Tag, they are monsters. They cannot read."

No one mentioned that she had been the first one to quote Thorpe at them. Instead, forming an offensive arrowhead, Esther, Kronan and Tag charged forwards and engaged their foes. In the ensuing scrap, the hedgehog pie set the temporarily unguarded Mika ablaze with a stray Fire spell.

Her screams about fire safety regulations scared away every other monster within a mile radius.

The walk to the myrrh tree became a completely boring stroll during which a slightly-singed Mika took the opportunity to inform them that the River Belle would eventually form an ox-bow lake, judging by the mineral composite structure of the surrounding terrain. At this point, Kronan nearly bit through his lance shaft.

The giant crab was nowhere to be seen, putting an end to the joint murder fantasy that had slowly spun out over the journey.

"Probably hiding behind the waterfall from Rhone," Tag muttered darkly.

"Wuss," Kronan spat at the innocent sheet of water as they passed.

Nonetheless, the Belstone caravan were both relieved and ecstatic to have collected their first myrrh drop already and were halfway through selecting their new artefacts when Mika's voice barked, "POP QUIZ!"

"What?" Esther asked disbelievingly. Mika ignored her.

"Question one: how long has the River Belle Path been used a myrrh staple by Belstone?"

Kronan said, "Er."

"Incorrect. The correct answer is fifty-three years. Question two: from which village did we take over this particular myrrh route?"

"Tida," Tag answered promptly, adding, "Mistress Rhone, I think that's a rather insensitive pop quiz question."

"Question three: which attribute does the artefact Kris improve?"

Esther's head whipped round immediately. "There's a Kris? I've always wanted one of those!"

The Kris was then confiscated by Mika on the grounds that Esther had spoken out of turn in class. When Tag protested this injustice, she took his Save Queen. Kronan managed to hold onto his new Main Gauche until the bridge on the return journey, but when Mika asked him what "main gauche" meant and he said wildly, "favourite goulash?", she confiscated his artefact on the pretext that he was a simpleton and could not be trusted with it.

It was a sullen caravan that finally rolled into Marr's Pass two weeks later. While Mika headed to the inn to inspect the accommodation ("Poor man," Esther said sympathetically of the innkeeper), the three probationers closeted themselves hastily in the caravan.

"Right," Esther said determinedly. "We're getting rid of her."

"How?" Kronan asked dolefully. "If she even knew we were talking about it, she'd fail us." After further thought he added sadly, "She'd probably take another one of my artefacts as punishment. I'm running out..."

Tag gritted his teeth. "I hate to say it, but he's right. How could we possibly get rid of her? Much as I'd like to push her down the well, that might raise a few eyebrows."

"Oh, we don't have to hurt her," Esther said airily. "We just leave."

"Right now?" the boys chorused.

"Right now," agreed Esther. "And just in case she does try to follow us, we'll go to Tida instead of the Mine of Cathuriges. That'll throw her off course, since she's obsessed with timetables."

No further words were spoken. Galvanised into silent action, the group threw out all of Mika's gear into the middle of the square and coaxed their papoapamus into movement. The whole escape took less than ten minutes.

"Well, that was easier than I expected," Tag said eventually, once they were well on their way to the next miasma stream. "We are a bit low on food though."

"No problem," replied Esther cheerfully. "We'll just stop off at Alfitaria."

Kronan sniggered. "Wish I could see her face."

There was a Clavat waiting at the gates into Alfitaria for them. He had a clipboard.

"Esther," Tag said slowly, "are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"I'm seeing it," she replied, voice grim.

Kronan, on spotting the clipboard, had curled up on the bed and was whimpering something about artefacts. He ceased his gabbling only when the caravan stopped at the gates and the Clavat approached.

"The caravan of Belstone?" he inquired curtly. His voice was oddly slow and flat. Esther nodded, and he smiled thinly. "I presumed so. Your previous probation officer is not with you, I see."

Esther swallowed. "No. She, er, got sick."

"Actually," the Clavat said, unclipping something from his board, "she did not."

"Oh," managed Tag. Somehow, there didn't seem much else to say to that. The man gave him an officious-looking letter in a manner that suggested he was handing over Alfitaria's crown jewels.

"She's still awaiting a lift back to Belstone after you, ah, carelessly left her behind at Marr's Pass. However, intelligent woman that she is, she wrote ahead to the Guild of Moogles to warn them that you might turn up and they in turn hired me as her replacement." He smiled again.

"What." Tag was so thunderstruck he forgot to add the question mark.

"My name is Lore," the Clavat informed them. He climbed aboard without asking permission and sat on the bed next to Kronan. The Lilty seized all of his nearby possessions defensively, as if expecting them to be taken from him at any moment.

"You are Kronan?" Lore inquired mildly.

"Mine," hissed Kronan. Lore wrote something on his clipboard, murmuring just loud enough for all three to hear, "Appears – incapable – of – answering – basic – questions – "

Looking alarmed, Esther whispered to the Lilty, "Stop acting like a loony!"

"MINE!"

Tida was a grim and desolate place. It was full of slime and fungi, odd shadows that flickered in the corner of the eye and undead villagers of varying degrees of angst and zombification.

And, as if Tida wasn't depressing enough, Lore the Bore was accompanying them. Not only had he driven Kronan to hysterical distraction, meaning the Lilty jumped at every tiny sound, but he insisted on asking the most trivial of questions for his survey of their suitability for the role of caravanners. When the answers they offered were not satisfactory, he paraphrased their responses beyond recognition in a low dull monotone, allowing all three caravanners to hear his slurs.

"Does – not – know – difference – between – left – and – right – "

"Believes – in – giant – chickens – "

"Appears – to – be – frightened – of – asymmetry – "

Esther's conscience won the struggle to save him from the skeleton mage with only a second to spare. With a stroke like a cricket batsman, Esther smashed the flat of her sword into the mage's chin and sent its skull soaring off like some macabre ball into the remnants of a distant glass window. When Lore did not say thank you, instead writing "remarkably – lackadaisical – attitude – to – near – death – situations", Kronan pushed him off the edge of the low plateau on her behalf. On descending, they found him stuck in the mouldy thatch roof of the house below.

"Should we get him down?" asked Esther doubtfully as she watched the Clavat man struggle, up to his waist in rotting straw.

"No," Tag replied bluntly. "He said my hairstyle was stupid."

"Yeah, come on." Kronan pointed up to the north gate, where several bombs and a giant worm awaited their attention. "We'll just get him on the way back."

"But he'll die!" Esther exclaimed, horrified. Tag snorted, as if the idea only remotely fazed him. "Nah, he's got a compact crystal. I saw it. They must have given him one after they heard what we did to Mika, just in case we left him somewhere slightly less hospitable."

"Like here." Kronan was practically radiating helpfulness.

"Oh." Esther studied Lore with sudden disinterest. "Alright then. We'll get him out on the way back."

Coincidentally enough, they managed to take a different route on the return journey.

There was a Yuke bearing a compact crystal and a clipboard just beyond the junction to Moschet Manor. They let him aboard, but only so they could push him in the stream further along the road.

Another Yuke awaited them at Shella when they arrived to re-supply who would not let them into the citadel. She did not have a clipboard in her hands, but refused to submit to a body search for said clipboard and asked highly probing questions about their mental stability. They tied her to a tree and left her there before heading off to collect their third drop of myrrh at the Veo Lu sluice.

Esther was half expecting the sluice golem to have a clipboard. It didn't. As it turned out, all they had to do was tell Kronan it was after his artefacts. It didn't last ten minutes, although Kronan did keep referring to it as "Mika Rhone" afterwards.

The Clavat and his Lilty guard who just happened to be posted "you know, just for reconnaissance purposes, checking monster activity, we're being nice and inconspicuous" outside the Veo Lu sluice and who were foolish enough to ask if they were the Belstone caravan had to dive out of the way of a charging papoapamus.

They drove straight past the Selkie waiting at the crossroads between Alfitaria and the miasma stream. He stopped running after them when Tag knocked him out with a well-aimed gourd potato.

There was no one waiting for them as they hastened through Marr's Pass. Perhaps they'd gotten the idea by then.

On their return to Belstone, the Elder had been filled on initial events by a vehement Mika Rhone and then on every attempted murder afterwards by a series of furious letters. In a strange case of déjà vu, the trio were summoned once again to his office once the myrrh had been restored to the crystal.

"- and I don't know why you felt the need to tie Shella's Chief Treasurer to a tree, but apparently she's still recovering in their hospital wing after a traumatising wasp-related incident!" He paused for breath, the first second of quiet since he had begun yelling some half hour earlier.

"Yes, but don't you agree that none of this trouble would have happened if you hadn't put us on probation?" Esther pointed out mutinously, taking advantage of the fleeting silence.

This threw the Elder off balance, and he gaped like a flan.

"Yeah," Tag agreed irritably. "In fact, we were practically harassed at the end! It was self-defence!"

"And Mika Rhone stole from me!" wailed Kronan plaintively. "I'm suing!"

The Elder raised his hands in the face of their retaliation, looking alarmed. "Whoah now, there's no need to be so rash. In fact, er, after all the trouble that's been caused, people are quite happy to leave the whole mess alone and never talk about it again." This was in fact a lie, but a lawsuit was not what he needed right now. "It was embarrassing all round, you see, so your punishment has been readjusted."

"What now?" Tag demanded.

The Elder invented hastily. "All parties concerned believe that... you should take on another, more laid-back and... level-headed caravan member to balance out your volatile natures... and help keep you away from each others' throats- "

"How is that different to being on probation?"

"Well... you'll get to pick the fourth caravanner yourselves," the Elder ventured hopefully, "from... some volunteers?"

Even as he said it, he could see the flaws. Who else but another crazy person would want to join this caravan? He sighed internally. More paperwork. Still, it was said now, and at least Esther appeared to be digesting the possible advantages of this course of action.

"Okay then," she said firmly. "We'll do that."

"You didn't even ask if we agreed!" protested Kronan, pointing to himself and Tag. Esther shrugged in a way that indicated that Kronan's opinion would not have mattered very much anyhow. The Lilty subsided grumpily, muttering, "Well, so long as their food portion comes out of yours and Tag's and not mine."

"Fine," Tag said wearily.

"Deal, then."

The Elder shook all three hands, wondering how he would possibly be able to corral a group of suitable volunteers before midday tomorrow.

Worryingly enough, seven people were lined up in front of Belstone's crystal as the town's bell chimed twelve the next day. The Elder inspected them surreptitiously; all the prospective recruits seemed to be fairly normal, with the exception of the Clavat girl halfway down the line with what appeared to be a nervous twitch. Somehow, this apparent normalcy did not calm his nerves. Was his town a hotbed of defective genes and secret insanity? Was he insane?

"Of course I'm not," he said aloud, and the Clavat with the twitch edged away from him apprehensively.

Esther, Tag and Kronan wandered up ten minutes late, all looking slightly suspiciously at the line.

"These are our choices?" Tag inquired, giving the recruits the same once-over the Elder had. "What do you guys think?"

"Pffft," Kronan muttered under his breath, "bunch of pansies. Wouldn't even be here if I had my way."

Esther smoothly overrode his chunterings. "They look okay. Mind if we give them all a quick interview?"

"No, no," the Elder said, waving haphazardly. "Go right ahead."

The first was a female Lilty. Esther eyed her appraisingly, but Kronan said in a flat voice, "She's a girl."

"Esther's a girl, Kro," Tag pointed out, somewhat unnecessarily. Kronan looked blankly sideways at Esther as if he did not understand this.

"I can fight," the Lilty girl interjected, and hefted her lance. "Real good."

"Girls can't fight," said Kronan, amused. Esther passed a hand over her eyes and said weakly, "Sorry. Next, please."

The second would-be caravanner was a male Clavat who Tag dismissed on account of the fact he was too tall and would therefore bang his head on the inside of the caravan, although Esther suspected that it was more the case that he was jealous of the recruit's spectacular quiff.

The third was an old man who appeared to have got lost on the way to the bakers. Esther gently pushed him in the right direction, while Kronan laughed uncontrollably.

Fourth along the line was a Yuke, who stepped up to the trio and raised a paw in greeting.

"NO," Kronan said loudly.

Fifth came a Clavat girl who Tag vaguely recognised from next door. He remembered playing games with her right up until his eighth birthday, and then she was suddenly and conspicuously absent from any happy memories after that date.

"Hello," she said brightly. Her hands were shaking. "My name's Sarah Dawn Riverford and I'd like to be a caravanner."

"We know that," Tag said, as kindly as possible in the face of her manic cheerfulness and his own nagging sense of terror. "Could you tell us why you think you're suitable?"

She took a deep breath. "Well, my mother tells me I talk enough to make a goblin's ears bleed. Also, I once stabbed a boy who made me cross with a needle." Tag's expression suddenly glazed over. She continued, "I know a bunch of recipes for papoapamus meat just in case we get stranded with no food," at which Kronan looked simultaneously mortified and furious. "And I'm super neat and I organise all my books first by alphabetical order, then colour and then size-"

Esther turned hopefully to the boys at this last point but before she could say anything, both had yelled forcefully, "NO!"

The sixth, when asked to demonstrate the fighting prowess he seemed so intent on bragging about, managed to drop his axe on his foot and had to be run off to the healer's house by Sarah Dawn Riverford, who told him quite excitedly on the way that she'd once stubbed her toe and bandaged it with four different kinds of cloth.

"This is ridiculous," groaned Tag. "Do we have to pick someone from the line-up?"

"I vote we pick that Lilty girl," Esther said firmly. "She looked like she could handle herself."

"No!" Kronan retorted. "No girls or Yukes!"

Esther glowered at him. "Well, if not her, then who do we pick? We have to have someone, and there's only crazies, pensioners and incompetent people left!"

"La la la," responded Kronan, hands over his ears.

"Hey. Hey." Tag irritably pulled Kronan's hands away and looked at Esther. "There's a seventh person, look. There on the end."

As one, the group swivelled to survey this potential lifeline. He was a Selkie with a shock of badly-combed, minty-coloured hair and some impressive abs; Esther fell uncharacteristically silent on noting the latter. He was also juggling with three striped apples, an absent smile on his face. There was a certain relaxed air to his posture, as if there was nothing in the world – not Kronan's blatant sexism, not Esther's obsessive compulsions, not Tag's hair envy – that could possibly peturb him.

On seeing them staring at him, awestruck, he caught his apples and nodded to them genially.

"S'up."

"Him," Kronan said instantly, ardent hero-worship glowing in his eyes. "We'll take him."

So it came to be that the Selkie Sam Teh set out that year with the Belstone caravan. It was only when they were halfway to Selepation Cave that he said, "So, where exactly are we going?"

"We're going to collect some myrrh from Selepation Cave," Esther explained.

Sam Teh frowned. "The Elder said I'd won a holiday."

This comment was met with contemplative silence.

"What?" Tag managed, after a few seconds.

"Isn't that what we were queuing for? The holiday competition?" he asked. "I didn't know, I just queued because it looked interesting."

Before anyone could answer, they were assaulted by a group of goblins hiding at the roadside. Sam Teh dealt with the attack so well that his three companions secretly decided not to disabuse him of the holiday notion and see how long it took him to realise that he was not, in fact, on a leisure trip.

If he ever noticed, he very politely never said anything.

Fin.

So the Belstone caravan are based not so loosely on myself and the people who I play Crystal Chronicles with, and we've had a fourth addition to our myrrh collecting sessions for a while now. I figured it was only fair that he made his first appearance in this piece.

However, the existing half-written fic on another computer doesn't actually feature Sam Teh, since it was supposed to occur before this. Whoops time paradox. When it gets published you'll all just have to pretend they came out in the right order :D

Anyway, let me know if you enjoyed this!