The "Best" RPG Ever-13

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---

The Captain lived up to exactly her reputation, except that Rayna hadn't expected her to be so short. After sending Pirr to a medic and shoving Rast out to the same place after he'd delivered a report, she turned to the two players. "Thank you. Out here, we need all the help we can get. I'll make sure you're rewarded for this, but I have to go through some red tape first since this wasn't an officially posted bill or anything..at the very least, I can put you up in an inn for the night. I'm sorry if this business sidetracked you much from wherever you were going before."

"Ah, actually we were headed to this town anyway," said Lynn.

"And neither of us is that good with directions, so if anything we got here faster," added the fox-girl.

"That's good to hear. I'm guessing you two are adventurers coming out to the frontier for work?"
"Pretty much," said Rayna.

"Well, you're better than you look." She turned toward a board on the wall covered in papers. "These are the guardhouse bills. They're tougher jobs than the ones out on the board in the main square, but give better rewards. Normally we require people to take on some of the easier ones first, but I can make an exception based on Rast's recommendation. Just..don't take these jobs lightly. Lot of people get killed trying to do too much, too early."

She shook her head, and then turned to one of the guards. "Heron."
"Yes!" he said, standing upright at attention.

"Show these two to the Broken Dragon. Tell 'em it's on me."

"Sir!" He nodded to them, and they followed him out.

The guardsman left once they had reached the inn in question, and they looked at each other briefly before walking in and finding a seat.

"'Better than we look.' Is that a compliment or an insult?" said Rayna.

"Well, to be fair, I look kinda frail and you look..." Lynn waved vaguely at the other girl, "...worse."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

"Your clothes don't exactly look combat-ready, for one thing."
"Well neither do yours, you're just wearing a dress..thing."

"It's all one piece, and I can move around in it without worrying about it falling off."
"I'll have you know I'm not worried at all about my clothes falling off," said the fox-girl with a slightly mischeivous grin.

"That worries me more. And you're kind of overweight, too."
"No, I'm busty and charismatic. There's a difference. If I was overweight this thing wouldn't fit me at all," said Rayna, pointing at the belt-thing around her waist.

"Well, you aren't exactly built for running."
"I'm a mage. Mages are never built for running."

"...Fair point.

"But they should be. If I was being raised as a mage I would take up every sport I possibly could at the same time. People would come and try to beat up on the squishy mage and they wouldn't even be able to land a hit."

"Ehh, you didn't exactly do that your first time around—being raised as a nerd, you know? Maybe real people just aren't built for min-maxing."

"Sure they are. Just isn't a lot of fun to live that way..."

"Hey, speaking of clothes," said Rayna, "I don't think either of us has a single thing besides what we're wearing right now. You think we could go and buy a few with whatever the guard captain pays us?"

"Eh, sure, I guess so. I mean, I need to buy a few more arrows—which isn't something I usually think about, so I assume I'm only thinking about it because of the same class-based mental whatever that lets me know exactly how to make an arrow light itself on fire—but that can't possibly be too expensive. I mean, most game shops sell you arrows for an in-game cent and won't buy them because they're just that worthless. Anyway, we could both use something more practical for fighting monsters."

"Psh, practical. I just wanna have more cute but culturally inaccurate furisodes."

"So you're not worried about being useless after your clothes fall off or get torn up in the middle of a battle, then?"
"Lynn, my class is entirely charisma based. I'd be just the opposite of useless if that happened...and anyway, I can make illusory clothes if I wanna."
"Well, speak for yourself. Archer class does a lot of jumping and running around, and this stupid short dress thing isn't gonnna cut it for me."

---

The first time he'd gone and bought clothes, Zack had taken as little time as possible between removing his armor and putting everything back on in the right order, avoiding the changing room mirror as much as possible. This time he had a lot of clothes to try on and needed to make sure they fit right since they weren't just acting as an extra layer of undergarments to the armor. Besides which, avoiding mirrors for however long he was in this game was ridiculous. He needed to get used to this..body..so it couldn't be used against him in combat. Someone could get hurt.

So this time, he removed his armor and put it on the opposite side of the room from the clothes he was going to try on, and forced himself to turn fully toward the mirror. A beautiful woman looked back, blinking a couple of times. She had a very generous figure and a pretty face, but also a kind of physical sturdiness, some visible muscle on her stomach and limbs. Her expression was (aside from a slight blush) serious, stern even; her ears were folded back slightly, but still twitching occasionally, picking up the noise from the shop outside. The lingerie she was wearing was black and lacy, a little too ornate, really.

He would have asked a girl like that out on a date any time...even though the wolf ears and tail were a little strange. Zack started to open his mouth to say something to himself, but paused, noticing that some of the girl's teeth actually looked sharper than usual. Curious, he stuck out his tongue and saw that it was actually longer than a normal human tongue, or at least it was able to move farther out of his mouth than seemed quite right. This didn't make any sense; teeth like those and a longer tongue should make it harder to speak normally, or at least to speak human languages. Then again, his hair (which he noted was still ridiculously long) should have been chopped up in fights at least six or seven times by now. The "game" made accommodations like that that clearly weren't magic at all, but were still in violation of basic physics, so why should he be surprised?

Zack crossed his arms, trying to find a comfortable way to do it with the big chest in the way, and thought about finding some new underwear, too. After all, anything else he wore was apparently subject to damage from fights, and it would suck to have none at all. It would mean actually changing underwear, which in turn meant not wearing anything for a few seconds...but oh well, this was his body right now and he'd just have to put up with it. Someone could get hurt.

He tried briefly to imagine what the girl in the mirror would look like as a guy: Taller, very muscular, short hair thanks, but the image of a muscular guy gave him an odd feeling between his legs and a slight heat in his cheeks that he immediately did not like. He shook his head to dispel the image, his hair swishing around, and wondered briefly how it stayed so straight, like it had just been brushed, after lying in bed multiple times. Did this world have "no-bed-hair" magic, too? Whatever.

Dismissing the thought, Zack turned toward the pile of clothes with a small sigh, picking up the first few to try on.

---

Katherine came out of the changing room wearing a t-shirt, some jean shorts and dark stockings. "What d'you think?" she asked, giving a small spin.

"It looks cute!" said Mika, Nora nodding in agreement. "Kinda like a Pokemon trainer, though."

"With a bust this size?" she said, prodding her chest with an finger. "Please. They're like, twelve. You'd look like a trainer in this..but only with a ridiculous hairstyle."

"Haha, yeah."
Nora said, "Wait..h-how does that fit with your tail..?"

"It comes out above the hips, see?" She turned to one side and pulled the back of the shirt up a bit to demonstrate. "Why do you think my skirt never got flipped up at the back?"

"I j-just thought you were being careful.."
"In the middle of a fight with a giant goblin?"

"W-well, I wasn't there to see that..."

"The fire thing chasing Mika around?"
"Oh..y-yes."

"Sooo, is this the last one?" said Mika.

"Yeah, I'm starting to get hungry for lunch, actually. Maybe they'll let me wear this one out after we pay."

Once they were out and on the way back to the inn, the catgirl said, "You know, it's never really occurred to me before now how weird it is that girl shorts are so..short. It's like, if you're a guy and you wanna wear shorts, they'd better go down to the knees, but for girls...way up on the thighs is the norm?"

"I think there are some, uh, cultural..historical reasons or something," said Nora. "N-not that that explains why it's like that in this world, though."

"It's the same thing, though. If this world really is inside of some kind of super-advanced video game, then that game was made by someone from our world," said the witch.

"B-but there should still be s-some kind of internal reason, for the setting to make any sense..right?"

"You know, the same kind of lore would be needed to explain why girls wear skirts at all in this world when they apparently fight just as much as guys do here, since pants are way better suited for fighting," said Katherine.

"Um...I guess so. But it hasn't stopped you or Zack from fighting in them..."

---

The archer and the illusionist received their pay for saving a couple of the town guards the morning after they arrived in town. After eating breakfast, they went out to look for clothes.

On the way, Rayna stopped dead, turning toward a window. "Hey, look at that!"

Lynn nearly ran into the fox-girl, and wound up a with a facefull of fur. "Pfft! Hey, you have a tail now, y'know!"
"Yeah yeah whatever, look."

"What?" She turned to look. "Ray, that's a weapon store. We have—well, I have a weapon already."
"Yeah, but look. The sign says that quiver is self-refilling. Didn't I hear you complaining about having to go pick up or make your own arrows all the time?"

"I wasn't...well okay, I said I didn't like it but it makes sense because it's realistic."
"Who cares about realistic when you have magic like that? Let's go get one."

She ran inside, the human girl following her.

"Okay...that is definitely too expensive," said Lynn. "We'll just have to come back for it later."
"But they only have one. What if someone else buys it first? Anyway, we do have enough to buy it..."

"...And then no new clothes. I'm not doing it."
"Hmm. Well, I have an idea, and I'm gonna try it."
"That sentence has heralded so many disasters, Ray.."
"Raynaaaa," said the fox-girl, "and just watch me."

She picked up the quiver and walked up to the store's counter, looking the skinny guy behind it square in the eyes. "Hey," she said, leaning forward on the counter and putting the quiver down next to her. "My friend and I are adventurers, and we just moved into town, but we already helped the town guard out once. Lynn here is an archer, and a quiver like this would be really useful, but we can only afford to pay half of its price right now. We're gonna take another job soon that should pay for the rest of it, and even if it doesn't we're planning on sticking around for a while, so we could always return it if things don't work out. Do you think we could just put off paying the other half for a few days?"
"Uh, um," said the guy, blushing a little bit and conspicuously not trying to look at her chest. "Well, I mean, we didn't pay all that much for it...if you can pay half what it was marked for, you can have it, miss..."

"Rayna's the name," said the illusionist, standing back up with a big grin and taking his hand before shaking it, "you've got a deal, sir. Thanks so much!" She handed him the money, and then walked out of the store with the quiver, the archer following.

"Well, was that great or what," said Rayna, handing her friend the prize.

"I'm not even sure what that was," said Lynn in retort. "I thought you were just gonna buy it anyway and make me wait to buy more practical clothes."
"Aww, what kind of friend would that make me?"
"The kind you always are," said Lynn, starting along the road again. "But seriously, what did you do?"

"I just figured, I have all this ridiculous charisma, I may as well use it..and it worked!"

"But you, you were totally flirting with that guy."
"Yeah. That's how you use charisma on the opposite sex, silly."

"Did you like him, though? Do you like guys?"
"Sure. Don't you?"

"I..." Lynn paused to think. "Huh. I guess I do. That's weird and uncomfortable."

"Really? I think it's exciting. Like seeing the whole idea of romance from a completely different angle."

"Are you gonna get you a bizarre fantasy world boyfriend, Raynanana?"

"Mmmmaybe. I mean, if I find someone I actually really like. First things first, though."

---

The three girls found Zach sitting with his legs crossed at one of the tables in the inn, reading a newspaper and wearing a loose-fitting shirt and jeans. The wolf was asleep next to him.

Still near the doorway, Katherine whispered, "I really wish she'd quit this 'I'm still a guy' business because I swear she looks gorgeous in everything. It's ridiculous."
"I know, right?" whispered Mika back.

Once at the table, the catgirl said, "A newspaper? Where did you even find a newspaper?"

Putting the paper down, the knight said, "I just asked the waitress if they had any. Thought it might be useful to get some clue about the overall setting here."

"Well, were there any interesting articles?"

He shrugged. "A few. Apparently a prince of the country that actually owns this town wants to visit soon, but they keep saying the trip is too dangerous. They actually have statistics on the number of people that die trying to get out to the frontier."
"What kind of statistics?" asked Mika.

"Oregon trail statistics. Even though this is a huge city, anyone who makes it here is lucky."

"Then how do they know the prince wants to visit if they can't reliably get messages back and forth from the castle or whatever?"
Zach shrugged. "Magic, probably. From what I can tell, these people use magic the way we use computers."

"To screw around and play games all day?" said the witch.

"For everything," said Zach. "You have a disease, go find someone with healing magic. You're rich and want a ridiculously tall thing built to honor yourself? Find some people who'll do earth magic for cash." He pointed at another article with a picture of a giant statue of a man on horseback, with an actual person standing by the statue who looked tiny in comparison. "I really wouldn't be surprised if there's a magic telegram system or something where you can pay to have messages sent back and forth between cities. Maybe rich people have magic two-way radios made out of carved wooden ears or something."

"You didn't eat ahead of us again, did you?" said Mika.
"No..you're not that late this time."

"Great, get a waiter, I'm starving!"

"Hmm.." said Katherine a little later, looking at Zach.
"What?"

"I dunno. You seem more relaxed than usual."
"Well, I'm finally wearing something halfway normal for once, I guess. And you're not being annoying right now."

"You'll have to wear the skirty dress-armor again if we go out to fight any more monsters, though," said Mika.

"Yeah..but at least I'm not wearing it all the time. Anyway, there's no reason I can't afford better armor once we do a few more jobs. I actually saw some sensibly-designed armor that would fit me on the way back here, so I know it exists."

"Wow, if I knew all it took to cheer you up was a change of clothes I would've suggested it ages ago," said Katherine.

"It's not all, but I'll take it for now."