After sitting on the back of the wagon for hours, switching between napping, practicing his ability and occasionally giving Boomer or himself some bread or water from the wagon, the sun finally began to set in the horizon and the animals pulling the wagons started to slow their pace out of exhaustion.

“Boomer!” said Lawrence who was leaning on the back railing to the right of the foldable stairs on the wagon in front of them, “We’re going to find a spot off of the main road to camp for the night, and you gotta show Rusty the ropes of feeding the animals.”

“Yes sir!!” Boomer shouted in a serious tone to Lawrence giving him a salute. As Lawrence started walking away towards the front of the other wagon Rusty swore he heard him call Boomer an imbecile.

After another ten minutes or so of sitting in the back of the wagon doing nothing, the front wagon pulled off to the right of the road to which Boomer used the reins to instruct the donkey pulling their wagon to follow the other wagon. Almost immediately after pulling off to the side the wagons stopped and Boomer stood up and hopped off of the wagon and headed off to the right where Rusty couldn’t see well cloud unfolded the stair of the larger wagon and began stepping down to the ground while everyone else in the back except for Pause jumped over one of the side railings.

While sitting still down in the wagon, Rusty heard some movement from behind him and turned to see what it was, and although there was a pile of supplies either by themselves or in labeled boxes, Rusty was able to see to the back and found Boomer opening a small gate with a lock on it at the back entrance of the wagon. Rusty had completely forgotten that these types of wagons had a hole at the back as well as at the front.

Boomer grabbing a cube-shaped bale of hay that was about the size of boomers chest, “C’mon Rusty! Get back here and help me with this,” Boomer said as he tried and failed to stack another bale onto the one he was currently holding, causing the other bale to fall to the ground.

As Rusty climbed out of the wagon he found that the grass of where they had decided to stop was rather thin, but there was still grass nonetheless, which would explain the need for hay on this trip. Looking around Rusty didn’t see any trees nearby, although he did see some way in the distance on the other side of the road.

Rusty walked to the back of the wagon where he passed Boomer who told him to grab two bales at the back and bring them to the horses that were pulling the other wagon. Reaching the back of the wagon, Rusty found a small wall of cube-shaped bales of hay with a mini-open gate between Rusty and the wall. Not wanting to carry the bales, Rusty reached down to the left of his belt for the bottle that Boomer had given him and first manipulated all of the blood into forming a glove around his left hand, and then lowered the density of the blood to give it more volume and formed a solid basket of blood and a solid hand and used the hand to grab the bales he needed and placed them into the basket and then re-assimilated the blood hand into his glove that it and the basket were attached to and began walking to the front of the larger wagon, barely feeling any weight thanks to his ability.

On his way to the front of the large wagon, Rusty saw some of his teammates lifting the seats of the benches like lids in the back of the large wagon and pulling out supplies such as tent materials and firewood.

When Rusty reached the back of the wagon he found Boomer patting one of the horses on the head while the other horse stared into the distance.

Noticing Rusty, Boomer looking annoyed asked Rusty, “Where’s the hay and what’s with the basket?” Rusty, annoyed by Boomer’s stupidity, moved the basket directly above Boomer, who was now staring at the basket with a stupid expression on his face, and assimilated the solid blood that made up the basket back into Rusty’s blood glove and the hay bales within the basket fell onto Boomer, hitting him on the head and causing him to fall back on his butt. After assimilating the basket back into the glove Rusty stopped using his ability on the glove figuring he’d just let it remain as a glove, but due to no longer being manipulated, the weight of the glove became apparent to Rusty as the glove that was now heavier than what it had been in the bottle forced Rusty to fall to the ground as well due to the sudden addition of weight.

“So that’s what the basket was for!” said Boomer as he got up from the ground rubbing his head but still seemingly unharmed, Rusty brushed this off as he got up himself, now used to the weight of his glove Rusty believed that Boomer’s simple mind had already forgotten the whole dropping hay bales on him ordeal.

After Boomer was done giving a respective bale of hay to each horse he turned to Rusty, “Before you came along, Taste had to do this, but now you’re here, isn’t that neat?”

“Get to the point please,” asked Rusty as politely as he could muster.

“Here’s the key to the back of the wagon,” Boomer said as he threw the key at Rusty’s chest, which he caught with a blood hand created from his glove, “You’re in charge of doing this every time we stop from now on, got that? Also, make sure to see if the animals leave any significant amount of hay before we leave from each resting spot and if there is any make sure you gather it up and put it in the wagon for later use!” Boomer finished with a stupid looking smile on his face that told Rusty that the man before him truly was an idiot.

Once Rusty decided the best place to put it would be in his now empty blood bottle, he headed back to the smaller wagon to close the still open gate to which he found no complications. After closing the gate Rusty went to join the rest of the group which was mostly sitting around a lit campfire, where Lawrence was reading poetry in front of their fire from what looked like a small dark blue leather-bound book, although only the captain seemed to be actually listening.

As Rusty approached the fire he saw that everyone other then Lawrence who was standing seemed to be either sitting on a blanket or sleeping with one on over of them. Most everyone else was already trying to sleep, the only exceptions were Lawrence who was still reading poetry, the captain who was listening on the opposite side of the fire in awe of his words and the woman that Rusty had noticed was reading a book earlier, still reading it while sitting dangerously close to the fire for light so that she could see the words on the pages. It was only now that Rusty realized that he still wasn't sure who Port and Pause were out of Lawrence and the woman, as the drawn pictures in the files Webs had given him had been rather bad so Rusty didn't quite know but figured he would ask Webs later. Rusty found a place on the ground not to close to the fire, turned the blood glove he was still wearing into a solid blood blanket for warmth and fell asleep.

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Rusty woke up to the sound of the captain yelling what sounded like a battle cry. Rusty would have jumped to his feet due to the sudden loud noise, but as he tried to quickly get up as a response to the captains shout, the “blanket” he had made prevented him from getting up when he tried due to its weight. As everyone else started to get up and ready for the road, Rusty had turned his blanket back into a glove on his left hand. After getting on his feet, Rusty saw everyone else either packing up or already on the larger wagon, Rusty proceeded to do as Boomer had said earlier and collected any leftover hay from the animals and after locking the gate and seeing Boomer getting up at the smaller wagons reins, Rusty was very fast to climb into the bigger wagon where Webs was waiting in the middle of the wagon with a deck of cards in hand.

When the wagons started to move, Webs and Rusty began to play cards while occasionally making idle conversations, such as Rusty cursing at Webs for getting him stuck with Boomer for a whole day without escape or Webs asking Rusty if he was old enough to drink, with the drinking age in        West-Rixon being eighteen years old, Rusty answered no, which made Webs momentarily disappointed. As the ride to Northguard went on for, occasionally others would join in the card game, even Cloud played at one point, but as he had motion sickness, it wasn’t for long. After a few hours of traveling on their second day, their surroundings became that of snow and frost which caused the members of the group to bring out blankets from the benches, which left Boomer who was steering the smaller wagon now by himself rather cold for the rest of the second day. Over the period of seven or so hours on their third day the group had made it to Northguard with nothing exciting happening on their journey, although according to Webs at one point when Rusty was taking a nap on the third day of their trip bandits attacked their wagon, but the captain dealt with them so quickly that their journey wasn’t even delayed in the slightest.

As their wagons approached the town Rusty observed to see that the town seemed to be a rather large settlement with at least thirty buildings and what looked to be a large temple-like building at its center, and although Rusty didn’t see any people, Rusty assumed that they were all in buildings due to the cold and only came outside when they needed to.