Due to Rusty’s lack of confidence in his ability to wake up before eight and make his way to the upper district, he instead decided that it would be best to sleep at garrison A. Close to midnight, Rusty made his way to garrison A, arriving at the garrison he noticed two guards at the gate and not wanting to cause a commotion he sat down at the side of the road and promptly fell asleep.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey! Get up!” said a high pitched male voice which was the first thing Rusty heard as he was woken up, “You really gotta stop sleeping at the gate hoping one of us will get you up, you look like a beggar.”

After stretching, Rusty was surprised to realize that the words weren't directed at him but was instead directed at someone across the street next to the gate. Getting up Rusty saw Webs across the street sleeping next to the gate with a serious-looking guy who looked to be around his fifties kicking his leg in frustration.

“Shush Taste," Webs waved at the man with his eyes closed from the ground, "I’m up, now leave me alone."

As Rusty started to walk over to the two of them, the man that Webs referred to as "Taste" took notice of Rusty, “See what you’ve done Webs? Now a beggar is coming over to check us out” Taste exclaimed in annoyance, pointing at Rusty.

Webs looked up at the Rusty, “That’s not a beggar, that’s Rusty, are newest recruit, he’s literally wearing our squad's armor you idiot.”

Taste leaned forward a bit to get a better look at Rusty who was now right in front of the two of them, indeed wearing the armor that Webs had given him the day before, “Huh, so he is, well I’m heading in now” said taste as he turned towards the unopened gate and walked through it.

Rusty had read about him in the report that Webs had given him, his ability makes him copy the ability and appearance of the last person who’s blood he's ingested, according to the report though it didn't last longer than an hour.

"Howdy there kiddo," Webs waved from the ground.

“I have a question, why were you sleeping on the side of the road?”

"Why were you sleeping on the side of the road?" Replied Webs, but before Rusty could think of a good response Webs continued talking, "Anyways, I sleep in the streets most nights when I gotta be here early, speaking of which the guards should be opening the door any minu-”

Just then there was a loud click at the garrison door, and then it slowly began to open and an old man walked out, “Huh, that’s useful,” said the old man in Taste’s high pitched voice.

Webs began to walk towards the now open gate and ushered for Rusty to come along, scolding Taste for opening the door without permission. Rusty, figuring that it was okay, walked after them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

After entering the meeting room Rusty took a seat in one of the several chairs in the room and with a yawn was surprised to find that despite being told to be there early nothing had started and without a way to tell the time Rusty had no way of knowing what time it was. While Webs fell asleep in the corner of the room more and more members of the team came into the room and either took a seat like Rusty or did their own thing like Webs who was sleeping in the far corner of the room. When the captain came in she walked up to the front of the room with papers in hand and told everyone to sit down and be quiet, to which the members of the group complied.

“Before I brief you all on the mission...” she trailed off as she noticed that everyone was seated except for Webs, who was still sleeping in the corner. The captain quietly walked up to Webs and crouched down and pulled a knife out of her boot, “Webs?” she said politely to which Webs replied only in gibberish mumbling, clearly asleep, “I’m gonna stab this knife into your leg okay?” she asked to which he once again replied in mumbles. Once Webs was done mumbling, the captain with a smile raised the knife, and then promptly brought it down, stabbing Webs in the leg.

Webs let out a high pitched scream for a second before he realized what had happened, “Webs?” the captain asked with a smile, “Go take your seat.”

Webs then promptly took the knife out of his leg, got up, saluted the captain and hopped over to the chair next to Rusty, leg bleeding all the while.

“Alright then!” said the captain enthusiastically, clearing her voice afterward, “Before I brief you all on our next mission, we have an important decision to make, a decision that I have worked tirelessly to make possible!” said the captain, sounding more excited than Rusty felt she should've, “It's time to vote on our new recruits code name,” after her announcement she began walking around the room handing everyone one of the paper’s she had in her hand. After Rusty was given a paper he looked to see a varied assortment of names in front of him, if you could call them that. The names themselves played off of the little knowledge that the captain had on Rusty, some of which oddly referenced his appearance. other than that Rusty saw one simply labeled fluffykins, which made no sense at all to him and Rusty didn't know what a bloodist was, but he didn’t want to.

Webs poked Rusty in the shoulder and whispered, “Even if they all suck, just pick one, if you don’t then you’ll hurt the captain's feelings. This is also why I had to give you the introduction yesterday, because she spent all day and night coming up with these...well, except for fluffykins, she’s put it on every vote I've been present for and she’s the only one who ever votes for it.”

"There's no way she spent all night doing this," Rusty whispered back.

"You wanna bet? Because unlike you I've had the utmost pleasure of helping her come up with names before while sharing drinks, aaaaah good times."

"I know you said these sucked but...well, some of them just seem too bad."

"Trust me when I say you could have worse names than these," Webs chuckled, "Last time I had to help with names I almost ended up getting Lawrence named Baldy!" When Rusty didn't respond Webs continued, "Have you seen him? He has so much hair, like an obscene amount! Heh, Chi's so dumb when she's drunk...and I would have gotten it too if Pause had accepted my bribe..."

After hearing Webs words of wisdom Rusty voted for the one he thought was the coolest and left it at that. After another thirty seconds or so of waiting the captain called for everyone’s attention, “Alright everyone, now it’s time to vote on...uh,” the captain stopped and looked through her papers, “Rustatsu’s codename!”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

After a short vote involving the raising of hands, out of the eight people there, three chose forge, Webs and the captain chose fluffykins and Rusty and to others picked completely different names.

“Alrighty then, Rus...uh...whatever his name is will now be known as forge!” Said the captain with a little bit of disappointment in her voice, “Now onto today’s mission briefing," she said, suddenly getting serious, slamming her hands on a table next to her to silence everyone, "We’ve been assigned to check on Northguard, it's a town by the northern border of the kingdom that we lost contact with thirteen years ago during the great alteration, but recently remade contact with around two years ago. Two weeks ago we stopped hearing from them so the kingdom is sending our team to investigate. We leave in half an hour, our carriages should already be prepared and ready, so meet at the West gate when ready.”

Rusty nudged Webs, “Hey, do we even have anything we need to prepare?” he asked but instead of an answer, he found that Webs’s skin had become noticeably lighter and that he had passed out from blood loss due to the stab wound in his leg from earlier.

Rusty began to panic, but then Cloud clanked his way over and poured what appeared to be some blood in Webs’s mouth and after a few seconds the color returned to Webs’s skin and his wound magically healed by itself.

“Wha-!? Ha!? I...I have so many questions right now!” Rusty yelled.

Webs, now fully recovered, put his hand on Rusty’s shoulder, “Come on Forge, let’s head out to the carriages before all the good seats are taken.”

“Yeah, sure,” replied Rusty, still questioning what had just happened and unsure about how he felt of his codename.

With that, Web’s and Rusty got up and headed out the door towards the West gate.