After the meeting with their five temporary companions ended, Kalin, Yami, and Artemis left the 12th branch of the Adventurer's Guild. They needed to go buy a couple items for their quest. While they would be provided the basic essentials of survival by the guild, they would have to bring their own tent and some minor supplies.

After traveling back to the part of the city they were more familiar with, Kalin brought the twins to a certain general store that had a sign with a familiar heart. Upon opening the door, they were greeted by a jolly, rotund woman. "Welcome!"

Upon seeing the familiar face on one of her customers, Mrs. Hart waddled over to the door at a speed unbecoming of a large woman. Grabbing Kalin in a tight bear hug, she laughed out loud, "I missed you! Can I get you any tea? Or maybe some sweets? You should have let me know you were coming; I would have ordered a cake from the bakery!"

After escaping from her grasp, Kalin gave her a smile and said, "I missed you too, Mrs. Hart. I'm just here to say hi and buy some things with my friends."

Heating Kalin refer to them as 'friends' instead of 'companions' or 'party members' made Artemis and even Yami smile. Seeing the smiling cute, smiling girls, Mrs. Hart had a happy expression on her face and said, "Well, aren't you both just the sweetest things?"

Artemis blushed a little bit and shyly rubbed the back of her hair, while Yami just nodded to her question, as if to confirm her rhetorical question. Seeing the nod of conformation, Mrs. Hart let out an extremely uninhibited and boisterous laugh. She rubbed the top of Yami's hair roughly and grinned. "Do you need any help finding anything." Mrs. Hart asked, "If you can't remember, just let me know and I'll help you."

"Nope, I remember." Said Kalin with his crooked grin. He took the two companions by the hands and headed further into the store. Near the back of the store was a variety of different goods geared toward traveling, such as fire starters (as not every party or caravan has a fire mage), preserved foods, backpacks, and various others.

As the leader of their party of three, Artemis having assigned the role to him a week prior, Kalin asked the twins, "We need to get real sleeping equipment. While I do have a couple blankets, they are lightweight and for emergencies. They aren't super comfortable or private. Right now, we need a tent. We have to decide, do we want one bigger tent, or a couple smaller ones?"

Looking at the unexpectantly high prices of tents, Artemis gulped to herself, while Yami tiredly rested her chin on Artemis' shoulder. Although, as a general store, they didn't carry any of top of the line tents, they did have several options to choose from, ranging anywhere from an open a frame tent that barely protected one from the weather, to a magically reinforced tent with internal heating. Either of these options were not optimal for their purposes, as the real question would be if they should get a couple smaller tents, or a single larger one. "Let's just get one tent," she said after confirming the prices, "buying separate tents would be a waste of 300 pints." In her mind she added, 'Also, the more things we have shared ownership over, the harder it is for our party to split up.'

Nodding his head, Kalin grabbed a tent large enough for 3-4 people and their luggage to fit comfortably, or up to 6 without luggage. They also picked up some sleeping pads and lightweight bedding. Sleeping bags, while good for normal travel, weren't optimal for areas with a large number of monsters or thieves. They restricted response time in the event of a 'night raid' so they were generally frowned upon in dangerous areas. It is also pretty customary, unless you didn't like your head attached to your neck, to sleep with your weapon on standby, if not while holding it. You could never be too careful when sleeping in the Dark Iron Forest.

After buying a simple alarm system to put around the periphery of their tent they also grabbed various small items that would make their lives easier, such as ropes and some emergency food. Although Kalin had emergency equipment inside his bag already, they decided to grab a couple extra sets. Artemis and Yami also opted to buy a couple small waist satchels to keep some supplies if they happened to get separated from Kalin who was carrying the majority of the supplies.

Carrying all the objects to the counter Mrs. Hart lifted an eyebrow at the items they were buying. "Are you leaving the city?" she asked with a concerned look on her face.

"Just for a few days." Kalin responded, "We're just going on a quest, but we'll be back this week."

With a sigh of relief, Mrs. Hart pinched Kalin's squishy cheek from across the counter, "For a second there, I thought you were planning to leave without telling me!"

After she released him from her grasp, Kalin rubbed the now red mark on his face. He puffed out his cheeks in frustration, "That hurt. You didn't have to do that!"

Mrs. Hart proceeded to tease the young boy a little more because of his cute reactions. Thankfully it was still early enough that there weren't many people in the store yet, because Kalin and she were making more than just a little bit of a scene. However, it wasn't a hostile one. Looking upon Mrs. Hart obviously teasing Kalin brought a smile to Artemis' face. She eventually decided to bring the teasing to an end by saying, "You don't have to worry about her leaving anytime soon, his sister just bought a house in the city, and Kalin's living there."

Mrs. Hart was going to respond to Artemis, until she saw somebody approaching the counter, "What are you doing here?"

Mrs. Hart sighed at her husband's usual lack of social skills. "I know you're happy to see Kalin again, but when you say it like that, it makes it sound like you're annoyed."

Ignoring his wife, Mr. Hart looked at all the items on the counter with an unflinching face and fell deep into thought. Mrs. Hart started tallying up the totals for their equipment, and said, "The total comes out to 683, but for you, we'll sell it for 600."

"We really shouldn't." Kalin said, not wanting to take advantage of the couple, "We'll pay the full amount." Gathering exact change in his hand, Kalin placed the money on the counter.

Mrs. Hart used a small device to remove special tags from the merchandise. These tags have a simple curse on the that prevents people from putting them in magic storage items and alert the store if an item is removed. Handing the now exchanged goods back to Kalin, she handed him back 83 pints and said, "Thirty-three's your change. Thank you for you purchase!" with a giant grin on her face.

"Oh no," retorted Kalin, pushing the money back across the counter, "you must have miscounted, I gave you exact change." A smile filled his face and had an obstinate glint in his eyes.

"No, no. I insist." She responded with an equally stubborn smile.

After the two of them went back and forth with their smiling battle a couple times, Mr. Hart whispered something to his wife. As if she was struck by inspiration, she hit him on the shoulder and whispered, "It looks like you DO have good ideas occasionally."

Although he didn't seem to appreciate the backhanded compliment, nor the hit to the shoulder, Mr. Hart just frowned slightly before a smile formed on the corner of his lips. His wife was very stubborn, so the times when she admits she's wrong or admits he's right are very few and far between. This last statement would become part of his ammunition in the next disagreement that they get into.

"Fine," Mrs. Hart said to Kalin, "You win, I'll keep it, but can we give you a small gift?" Kalin cautiously nodded, not wanting to be 'gifted' money. Reaching under the counter, she grabbed a small lockbox from underneath the counter and started to explain, "You may not know this, but my family is a relatively large merchant family in the Kingdom of Veii. My husband, Dale, married into the Hart family, gaining my surname and dropping his own, Redd." She turned the key and the box popped open revealing a few medallions with a symbol of a heart, identical to the one outside the shop. Picking up one of the pendants, she explained, "This is the symbol of my family. There are branches set up throughout several countries. If you ever come enter any shop of the Hart family, show them this pendant and they'll give you 10% off you purchase. Also, if you ever make it out to Veii, you can use it to set up a meeting with whoever you like.

"I don't know if it will help you out in your travels, but I'd like to give this to you." She handed him the pendant. It was made of stone and had a faint amount of magic emanating from it, though not enough to count as an enchantment. The purpose of the magic here was to act as a barcode of sorts, while also preventing the creation of counterfeiting. In Kalin's hand he could feel a cool sensation coming from it. The workmanship was amazing, somehow making the stone heart look like it was beating. Before he could refuse or thank her for the gift, Mrs. Hart interrupted and said, "Now, what would you three like for lunch? Kalin had promised that he'd come over for tea some time, and I'd be more than happy if the two of you," gesturing to Yami and Artemis, "joined us." Not waiting for a response, she turned to her husband, "Go get one of the stockers to man the counter." Dragging the trio away to the attached house, Mrs. Hart steeled her resolve in her heart to add some meat onto the tiny frames of these poor children that visited her shop.