On the western coast of Desuna, on a beach that was mostly deserted, a few feet away from a boat that wanted to be a ship when it grew up, there was a small argument. It was shared between a tall brown woman with a mane of dark green hair and a nose she probably could have moored the boat to in a pinch, with a glass eye that sparkled purple and gold and didn't even try to look like a real one, and a vibrant yellow leawolf with stubby horns and an unusually muscular tail, who wore a sword longer than her body strapped to her side. The woman, Moss, was dressed like a pirate captain out of a movie, except that her sleeves stopped at the elbow; the leawolf, Arabella, wore a vest covered in pouches and a concerned expression. As it happened, the argument was not about any of these things.
"It's not that I don't trust your judgment," Arabella said—more or less true, in that she didn't know Moss well enough to distrust or trust either way, "but I would've liked to have more practice with the sword first before I had to fight something this much bigger than me."
"I get it, really," Moss said. "I was new once too, and it might have been a long time ago but I'll have you know my memory is excellent. The thing is that this is more of a pursuit mission—we're going to spend most of it traveling, tracking, trying to narrow down where the Leviathan might be. Or whatever it really is. Point being, we'll have plenty of time to work on your skills and see how we can best cover each other's weaknesses and so on."
"You think the captain was lying?"
"Eeeehh...I'd say more exaggerating for effect, to herself as much as us. If you want to feel big and tough then the thing that beats you had better be the biggest, toughest thing around." Moss's smile curved higher on one side than the other, courtesy of the scar that necessitated the glass eye. "It's not the only way to maintain a sense of self-worth, but it's a fast and easy one."
"Hmm." Arabella was familiar with the type, though in less fraught circumstances. When she'd been running the demon-hunting business, before she'd gotten fed up with all the ethical tangles and what-counts-as-a-demon-anyway and made a call to one of her mother's old friends, not a few of the people who hired her had done so with quite a lot of bluster about the fearsomeness of the creature currently occupying their basement/attic/garage/et cetera. Arabella was usually kind enough not to bring this up in the 60% of cases that turned out to be raccoons.
She'd feel better once the paranormal investigators got here. Moss's overwhelming competence and self-confidence should have been reassuring, but they intimidated her more than a little, especially in conjunction with the kind of work Moss did. Having at least one other person closer to her level around would make things easier, hopefully. Well, emotionally easier. The fighting part might be...less so.