Fiona flashed back into reality, only to get dunked in churning water again, feeling her armor weighing her down considerably, while the kitsune wailed about a second soaking, and Varith let out a whoop of delight.

As soon as she wasn't at risk of drowning and clung to a chunk of a floating cargo container, Fiona pointed to the dock where a ladder had somehow survived the damage. The boat itself was resting on its side and on the express trip to the bottom of the river.

At least the cargo wasn't exploding anymore. Stranger still, she didn't hear sounds of combat. Aside from the sound of a major workplace accident and an imminent screaming fit from Jake, even though this was not her fault in the slightest.

"Wow, Fi, bringing down the house, huh?" Varith laughed, who didn't seem bothered by the impromptu dunking, and used his dark violet energy tether to grab onto the ladder and heave himself up. "You blew up a boat? Nice! Whose was it?"

"It blew itself up!" she argued, hauling the growling kitsune with her toward the ladder, and reluctantly accepting Varith's exceedingly strong grip. "Look, hopefully, Jake and the others held tight!"

The climb up took a few seconds, and Varith hoisted both of them up, where Fiona panted. Swimming in armor and teleporting had taken a bit out of her.

"Hey, Fi, glad to see you survived. I wasn't worried." Fiona was greeted with a flying tackle by Doug, while Darla was currently slapping energy bindings on the mercenaries, all cowering in fear, with Jake having the duty of looking like the deadliest furball of the crowd, leering at the dozen mercenaries kneeling and all of them looking anxious.

An angry Jake should never be trifled with, based on the way his hackles rose.

"Doug's lying; he was about to start bawling his eyes out," Darla said with a devious grin. "I told him the only thing that could kill you is something harder-headed than you. That's a pretty small pool of candidates."

"I had something in my eyes! Copious amounts of smoke from the giant explosion!" Doug countered with a stomp."

"Flattered," Fiona grumbled. "So, the boat blew up. What'd I miss?"

"The quickest surrender of all time," Jake said nonchalantly. "I just told them if the elf wasn't dead from that explosion and they weren't in bindings by the time you got back? They'd wish they had died from a workplace accident."

Fiona blinked. "That worked? You're using me as a nuclear deterrent?"

"What's nuclear?" Jake asked before narrowing his eyes at Varith. "Also, what's he doing here?"

"Don't ask. There was a complication." Bonnie looked infuriated as she used her wand to wick some of the water away from her fur. "Which one is the leader?"

"Uh…why?" Jake asked, ears canted.

"Am I here for beatings or merely being an imposing force?" Varith said with a sly smile.

"Fates, Varith, you are the Joker to my Batgirl," Fiona snapped, edging up to his face. "Seriously, Jake, read the room. Which guy was heading the shipment?"

He pointed at the tallest wolven, who grunted audibly in response. "I'd like to see my legal counsel, please," the designated leader grumbled. "I have a permit--"

Fiona heard a frustrated scream from Bonnie and watched, terror-stricken, as the kitsune leaped onto the wolven. "Permit! My! Furry! Ass!"

Oh, this could be the most pissed I've ever seen her. Fiona was too busy staring at the level of aggression from the kitsune, currently grabbing the foreman by the collar and yanking him to his feet, teeth gnashing and voice at a full tilt cacophony of fiends' level. The foreman looked utterly terrified as Bonnie glared at him from about six inches away, and Fiona half expected her to chomp on his face, while she gave him a dressing down about handling alchemical products. Of which, they followed none of the safety procedures.

"Someone get this crazy fox off of me!" the man pleaded.

"Nah, buddy. You're on your own," Fiona responded. Meanwhile, the lecture about pyrophoric materials and natural decay of certain mana-based products, and a few unvixen-like words in between, continued.

"This is kinda hot," Varith commented. "Remember when we--"

Fiona turned ghost white and clapped a hand over Varith's mouth, giving him a tier two glare of doom. "Varith? Dearie? In the kindest words I can muster for this moment? I will end you if you bring up any of our past exploits in front of my friends," she said with a murderous smile.

"Hm, phmph." She interpreted that as him choosing life and responding with 'Okay, fine.' Bonnie finished her rant just about that point, waving to the destroyed dock.

"Listen, furball, you're shipping pyrogel, and it's not shelf stable! It's gonna kill someone if you don't properly neutralize it! Was the 'blowing up half the dock' not your first clue?!" One shack still smoldered, threatening to catch on fire again, as if to prove her point. "Throwing it in water caused the substance to decay and led to a thermal runaway! Did you fail basic alchemy in your primary school?!"

"Explosives that explode when you put water on them? Jeez. Flashbacks to my explosive weapons training, and not the good kind," Fiona sighed, rubbing her brow, only to yelp when a silvery fish flopped out of her hair, and then by some miracle, landed back in the river.

Meanwhile, Bonnie continued to look like a dripping wet terror, practically shaking the poor man. "So you're gonna tell me where they went with those explosives, before they kill themselves, or collapse half a city!"

"We don't know anything!" the foreman exclaimed with a panicked look crossing his face. "We were told it was for a client of a client thing, don't look in the crates, and don't shake them! That's all I know, I swear! I mean, it could have been something expensive and fragile for clients who believe tax avoidance is only a crime if you get caught, ya know?"

"You seemed to be pretty keen on running when it started spontaneously combusting," Fiona pointed out. "I call bullshit, Furball."

"My name is not Furball!" he protested. "Also, it was smoldering. You see something smolder, you put it in water."

"Listen, Foreman Furball, you're gonna be my future love nest throw rug if you keep it up," Fiona snapped. She heard what sounded like an unsettling, pleasureful groan from Varith. "You're next, former villainess!"

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"Oh, don't stop on account of me," Varith said, wearing a smug look. "Go ahead, threaten him, see if he'll soil himself."

Bonnie wrinkled her muzzle. "I'm pretty sure that already happened. Now, where's that other tunnel going?"

"It connects to a maze of caverns in Underlune! I have no idea where they pop up, and I wasn't keen on sticking around after the handoff! We were dropping them off at…eh, off the books trade town where people lay low, don't ask questions. Also, definitely don't eat the local tavern stew if you don't want your gut to rot from the inside out." The man glanced at his subordinates, who all nodded. "Our contact gave us one warning: don't open the crates. Which I followed, to a tee."

Fiona glanced at Bonnie, who looked like she was deciding between violence and extreme violence. "Uh…are my old explosive ordnance disposal training lessons about to be useful?"

"Girl? Who would be crazy enough to trust you with explosives?" Bonnie asked, her ears flattened.

"The US military. You know how I was able to kill hundreds of demons by myself? I wasn't knifing them all to death. The light anti-armor rockets, grenade launcher, about a few thousand rounds of high-speed lead, and an unhealthy amount of conventional explosives did the trick."

Everyone turned to stare at her in terror. Even Bonnie. "Fi? The more I hear about you, the more I question your world's decisions to put you in a position to handle anything that incinerates, detonates, lacerates, or causes blunt force hammer damage."

"Okay, you're still pissed and dripping wet, I get it," Fiona sighed in resignation. "Foreman Furball, how many crates have come through here from that match that description?" she continued, cutting off the discussion.

"If I tell you, do I get possible charges dropped?" He sounded almost convinced; it was time to give him the final push of an incentive.

Fiona ground her teeth. "Your choices are either tell me, or be mauled to death by the pissed off enchantress. And this is kind of urgent. Because, you know, exploding boats, and caving in half of Underlune in the process."

"Just tell her, and I'll waive the worst offenses," Jake interjected. "Best deal you're gonna get."

The man considered his life choices quickly, before giving an affirmative nod. "Okay. Same deal for the rest of the guys, too."

"I can live with that," Fiona grunted. "Jake, take a tally of brownie points. Now, how many crates, and how often?"

"About a dozen of those crates a week, for the past few months. Coin payments only, no questions asked. I never met these guys face to face; they just left a package by the docks for payments."

With the way Bonnie tugged at her ears and mouthed a prayer to at least one goddess, that probably wasn't good news at all. Fiona took a step back from everyone. "Okay, I need to go make a call. Urgently. Be back in a bit, get these guys tied up."

Poof.

As soon as Fiona disappeared, the foreman stared at the spot where the elf used to be. "Did she say 'poof' and then vanish?"

"Yep." Bonnie's teeth ground down tightly while she wondered what went on in Fiona's head sometimes. She pulled out her wand and continued drying herself off. Much to her frustration, her tail wouldn't dry completely, no matter how much heat she applied. Carrying that extra weight on her lower spine was an actual pain.

The foreman nodded weakly a few seconds later. "Oh, wow. I thought I was the only person to do that when I used my mark-fuelled smokescreen to vanish. Poof! It was so fun."

"Ah, fiddlesticks, the Fionitis is spreading," one worker wailed. "The madness is here! We're doomed!"

Bonnie tried hard to suppress a smirk. "I wonder where that term originated." She heard Doug snicker beside her, gaining her attention. "Doug, real talk? I swear, if I find that idiot brother of yours, I'm gonna break him down his corpse for alchemical products."

"Get in line."

Fiona didn't even bother reprimanding Greg as she teleported back to the shop for an emergency relay call with Rikkard. He picked up on the second ring, and the relay projection showed him sitting next to Queen Celes with her slightly greying blonde hair and a round, but otherwise youthful face. Rikkard took one look at the relay and instantly froze.

She and Bonnie had been getting that look a lot lately. She filed away a mental note to make sure Rikkard gave her a new title in a formal capacity: Fiona, the terror of Minions.

The king had been staring up and down at her magical projection for about five seconds, unable to find words for a greeting. "Why are you soaking wet, Miss Swiftheart?" he asked finally. "And calling me on my personal relay?"

"First off, you gave me your relay contact after I threatened to use your son for fish bait in the lake after what he did. I am on the 'pick up by the third ring, or else' list. Second off, I decided to take a swim."

"That's a made-up list," Rikkard countered, rubbing at his beard while furrowing his brow. "And why were you swimming?"

"Uh…Karlins' men are shipping exceedingly dangerous amounts of explosives in Underlune along an underground river network. I was trying to apprehend them on a side-trek job. And they just learned the hard way that their ordnance training lessons were woefully lacking."

He spent three seconds processing this with his cheek twitching. "Can you go five minutes without bringing down the kingdom?"

"Once again, not my fault," she snapped. "I am not the only source of divine-level disasters in this kingdom, thanks!"

"Hi Fiona, it's been a while!" Celes waved with a cheery face. It lasted for three seconds before she turned to glower at her husband, who inched away from her on the oversized couch. There was no couch on the planet big enough to give him a minimum safe distance from her, at this moment. "I see that my good-for-nothing husband has put you into a precarious situation again."

"But, dear–"

"If you 'but, dear' me one more time, Rikkard Melvin Greybeard, I'm locking you in the same suite that our darling son is occupying till the heat death of the universe!"

Fiona went wide-eyed and whisper-quiet as the royalty-level blowup played out for her in a front-row seat. Rikkard offered the predictable 'I can explain' and then the 'I'm doing the best I can' lines to his wife. She responded by threatening to rip his beard right off his face and inflict other levels of devastating bodily harm.

Celes and Greg's mom need to join a book club together. Because both their husbands suck. Fiona waited patiently as the discourse unfolded. Then, Celes turned toward Fiona and smiled again. "I'm so sorry, dear, it's been a while since I saw you. How are things?"

"They're good. Kinda," she said with an edged smile. They are so not good right now. "How are Mira and Dave?"

"Oh, in the other room, playing some game on their relays together," she grumbled. "At least those two get along. Anyway, you'll be at this big gala in a couple of weeks, right? Do you need anything from the palace, dear, to make your shop shine?"

"Celes, please don't give her a blank check–"

Rikkard had already lost control of the conversation before he even started, with Celes shooting him an irked look. "Ignore my husband. You name it, we'll get it."

"Okay. Cool. Yeah, I'm in a hurry, Celes. I have smugglers to stop before they put a sunroof through Underlune and an extra basement in Cepalune. Can we catch up later?"

"Oh, dear, please! Call me anytime," she said with a polite smile. "And if Rikkard gives you any trouble, you call me, and only me."

"Cool!"

Fiona clicked the relay off, wearing about the most anxious smile she'd ever managed. "Greg? Is it too late to abandon this kingdom to its doom and float the shop over to Arkantine, Faredala, Bar'dathi, or basically anywhere but here?"

He gave her a skeptical look. "You and I both know you'd die before you gave up Granny's apartment."

"Greg? You're still in the fox house for this debacle with Varith! I will bite you!" she promised him. "I'll be back in ten minutes to pick up extra guys from the Guild, then I'm going sniffing for explosives."

She leered at Minion, who was currently holding a mop and bucket and cleaning up the mess as possibly the most motivated custodial staff in Fiefdala. "You, Minion, are my janitor. Better be cleaning when I get back. You have been warned."

Poof.

Five seconds later, Greg shook his head. "I miss the days when dealing with my narcissistic father was my biggest challenge. Who knew those would be the easy times, Minion?"

"I have a name, it's Clancy." The threat of doom from the elf had been more than sufficient to keep the man from having idle hands while the Adventurer's guild members showed up.

"Sounds like a janitor's name," Greg said in an amused tone.

"Dear gods, that woman's insanity is infectious!" the man protested. "It's like…Fionitis or something. Incurable and fatal."

Greg raised a brow at that. "Where'd you hear that ridiculous term?"

The wolven, still cleaning, put one hand up to the heavens. "Word gets around." He went back to his cleaning, and then, one ear tilted upward. "Seriously, the king's middle name is Melvin?"

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