The "Best" RPG Ever-24

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Somehow Rose had really expected it to be difficult to find clothes that would fit her. After all, she had wings, horns, and a tail, none of which anyone in the world Rob had lived in for so long would have even thought to make clothes to accommodate. But the very first store she went to had clothes made to do just that. There weren't really any matched sets intended for a person with wings and a tail as such, but folks with one of the two seemed pretty common, at least enough that there were entire sections dedicated to them.

So the real problem was not finding clothes; it was putting them on. Anything that had to go over Rose's head had to be very carefully maneuvered around the horns to not rip straight through them, and anything that was supposed to come up her legs had the same issue with her awful clawed feet. Well, they weren't awful, she rather liked them for things like running fast and climbing trees and stepping on thorns without getting hurt, but they definitely weren't designed for the task of, for instance, putting on pants.

Fortunately, there were undergarments intended to be tied around the body instead of pulled up, so the dragon-girl just went with a decent-sized set of those rather than spending money on what would surely turn into a bunch of ripped-up delicate cloth within a week. It was harder to find anything resembling pants that would do similarly, but skirts and dresses and such seemed nice. It was a little odd enjoying frilly clothes like that on herself, as opposed to on other people, but enjoy them she did, fidgeting with them and twirling around in them in the dressing rooms.

In tops, Rose had to negotiate the difficulty of fumbling with a bunch of buttons with her hands (which were clearly not suited to delicate tasks like that) against that of pulling things up and down across her horns, and eventually decided things with just shoulder straps instead of a collar, or things that have wide bottoms and only come together at the top after going past the head were probably the best solutions. Some part of her realized it was strange to have to think through this when so much of 'being a dragon girl' had somehow entered Rob's head on simply changing into one...but then, this must be more of that 'not good with society' business. Rose's memory seemed to suggest she hadn't been on a shopping trip like this in more than long enough to have forgotton how these things worked.

Eventually she left the store in a nice floral-printed summer dress barely down to the thighs, practically all of her money spent between the actual new clothes and a few "break it, bought it" fees on the early experiments. So equipped, Rose decided to just explore the town a little more before heading back toward home..maybe late afternoon or tonight. Some part of her was hoping she'd run into her original friends who'd brought her here, or at least someone as cute as one of them, before then.

---

Eventually the party of three came close to where the flying beast was supposed to be perched, thankfully without having encountered any other monsters between. Rayna put up an illusion of the ground beneath the three of them, and they fell silent as they approached a group of tall plateaus jutting out of the land in the distance, reportedly the location of their target's nest.

It was a while of walking yet before they got to where they could see it. Eventually Aria pointed emphatically at a tall silhouette near a cliff's edge, and the others stared at it for a moment. Even at this distance it was clear this thing was more than big enough to carry a grown man in each of its talons and block out the sun along the way.

"You think you can hit it at this distance?" whispered Rayna.

"Probably," said the archer. "I probably have a few tries before it notices anything. What do you think, fire?"

"We want to clip its wings, just hit it with a rock to break a few bones," suggested the shifter.

"I'm worried it's too big for a rock to make much of a dent."
"Bird bones are hollow," countered Aria. "Unless this thing defies everything I've ever heard about being physically able to fly, just hitting a part of a wing hard enough should bring it down, or at least give it a really hard time."

"Just do it quick," said Rayna breathlessly, "It's actually really hard to keep one illusion going for this long."

"Okay, okay." Lynn aimed carefully, a part of her mind that hadn't really been quite as sharp before entering this world calculating the right arc to hit something that high up, feeling for the wind, trying its best to make sure the arrow would hit its mark. Soon she loosed an arrow with a large rock on the end of it, and it flew almost straight up at first, slowly turning forward as it went down...and hit the giant bird directly in the head.

There was a brief moment of silence between the sound of the rock colliding with the giant bird's skull and an extremely loud, shrill screech from roughly the same location, the monster's beak. It leapt into the air and flew up and around, clearly trying to find the origin of the pain in its head.

"Well, that didn't work," said Aria.

"I'm lucky I even hit it at all at this distance!" hissed Lynn back. Then to Rayna, "Can you keep us hidden long enough for another shot?"
"Nngh..maybe? You'll have a really good view of its wings if it swoops down at us, though."

"Hey! Make it notice something over there," said Aria, pointing a ways off parallel to the cliffs.
"Oh...yeah!" Rayna quickly made a large crowd of fake people in that spot, hoping the bird would go after those instead of the smaller group. When it turned around toward its nest again, it shrieked once more and began a dive-bomb in the illusion's direction. Lynn drew back her bow, readying another shot...

Just when the archer was about to fire, there was a woman's yell from above, followed by a person's body sailing right into the monster's right wing. This altered the bird's considerable momentum enough to send it into a twisting spiral followed by a hard crash, digging a long ditch into the ground as it went. The person, a flash of white to the party of three at this distance, bounced off of the bird's wing back into the air and started to fall before spreading a pair of wings of their own, eventually managing a somewhat lighter crash-landing on the opposite side of the bird from the trio.

Before either of the others could react, Aria shouted "IT'S DOWN!!!", drew her demonic blade, and immediately charged toward the monster in a blind rage. Rayna and Lynn looked at each other for just a second before sharing a shrug and coming after her.

---

Working a long night at the hospital was not a surprise for Dr. Kellen. He would hardly have been surprised had he been halfway home that night only to be called back in to work and have to waste the gas driving back. Annoyed, perhaps, but not surprised. He was moderately surprised to find a small cardboard box waiting on his doorstep, which on closer examination contained only the worst kind of blank CD envelope containing the advertised piece of outdated media with crude marker writings on it declaring "Best RPG Ever!"

Dr. Kellen scratched his head. Was this one of those computer games? Why had someone left it at his doorstep? It seemed like it might very well be a mistake, but in the middle of the night he could hardly bother his neighbors to check if this was supposed to be theirs. Besides, there was no receipt or packing slip or indeed any of the kinds of things that should accompany a box that's been shipped through the mail at all. The disk itself was the closest thing to a clue as to its proper owner.

His curiosity had the better of him, and rather than going to bed immediately as planned he tried opening the disk on his home computer. The file on it seemed equally unhelpful, but it didn't seem like running it was likely to do any harm. It was when Dr. Kellen woke up in a strange, featureless white room that he realized every action of his tired mind on what felt like had been perhaps the night before had probably been a mistake.

"Hello?" he called, getting a better look around the place. "Is somebody listening? Whoever put me here, you should know that I'm expected for the morning shift." He wasn't really sure how to comprehend this situation: He was well-off, sure, but if someone wanted to rob him of money he couldn't very well pay them off from this kind of cell. His mind jumped backwards to the fact that his being here seemed like the result of running a program on his computer, and decided that was probably higher on the list of things that did not make sense about this situation.

"Someone will come looking for me!" he declared angrily. His usual response to stress was a display of anger, and it was such a habit that even fear came out as rage.

He realized he'd been nearly hyperventilating, and slowed his breath, trying to calm down and think. Wait for someone to respond, or demand something...but there was no response. Not for what felt like an eternity of waiting. The only thing close to communication in the room was the text floating in midair (which jumped to the top of the aforementioned list now that he really looked at it), which demanded that he pick a class.

The thing he was interacting with below the text-box felt like some sort of futuristic hologram technology. Impressive, if he weren't trapped here with it and nothing else. None of the things it listed seemed to him like classes. They were more descriptions of...well, occupations perhaps? Not by and large real occupations, but mostly imaginary ones that might exist in a fictitious fantasy world.

If he was going to pick one of these, well, it seemed like it would make sense to pick something he knew something about. So, still struggling to logically grasp this situation at all in the first place, Dr. Kellen eventually settled on a representation of an outstretched hand tilted slightly palm-up, whose description read: "Empath: An unconventional healing class. Empaths are incapable of directly healing others, instead using a combination of the power to take on the wounds of another with an extraordinary ability to heal themselves. Empaths are not naturally fighters, but are capable of 'granting' others their own wounds through a perversion of their usual ability. Not a class for the fainthearted."

The instructions were to take the hand to confirm this choice of class. It might have disconcerted someone else to take a disembodied ghostly hand a little more than it did Dr. Kellen; to be honest he had seen far worse than a severed hand. But when he put his hand on it and pulled as if to take it, he was surprised to find an entire body coming out with it. It looked like a vague humanoid shape, ghostly as the hand it came from, with a pair of wings spread wide coming out of its back. As it emerged he stepped back, half from surprise and half from momentum, and looked down at the strange...being he seemed to have just summoned.

It 'stared' up at him, though it lacked the features necessary to do anything of the sort, for a few seconds. Dr. Kellen felt as if it was looking through him somehow, and had brief fleeting thoughts of angels before quickly dismissing them. This was...some kind of illusion or trickery, right? Either way, the head soon 'nodded' and then the entire body dissipated into a kind of bluish mist before flying straight into him.

Dr. Kellen panicked very briefly at the notion of something so alien having just seemingly passed into his body before getting an odd sense of calm. He felt...warm, somehow, and automatically took a deep breath. Then he started to shrink.

"What..?" he tried to ask, calmly but still very confused; he was interrupted by a very firm sense that he shouldn't worry; that this was going to be okay. His vision sank downward, and his hair spilled out along the sides of his face, tickling his cheeks slightly. The tickling gave way to a slight tingling across his face that then spread downward. He looked down, then, and saw through hair that was paler than before his white scrubs starting to shuffle and rearrange themselves.

He held up his arms and saw them becoming slimmer and paler, the hairs on them slowly retreating into his skin. It was a surreal experience unlike anything he'd imagined before, seeing his own body change so rapidly. His shoulders narrowed down and his stomach slimmed while his hips and the tops of his legs began to spread apart. His shirt sank down off of his shoulders besides a pair of thin straps, the sleeves detaching and falling down nearly to the elbows. The pants did even more, spreading apart into frills and shortening, showing off slender legs and small, bare feet.

"I...I..?" he spoke, confused, in a high-pitched voice, looking around as the room finally quit growing upward. His hair was now pure, snowy white and swished across his bare shoulders, which now flexed themselves strangely. He could feel appendages pushing themselves out from the blades; looking back he saw a pair of black-feathered wings growing out, becoming steadily wider and taller. Beneath the short dress his clothes had turned into, his underwear felt oddly soft and tight, and there was a small, gentle tugging sensation down there, too.

"Am I..changing...sex?" he said slowly, in a voice more curious than worried. It certainly felt like it, as the tugging culminated in an odd sensation of flatness down there, along with an upward push deep in the pit of the stomach. Following this, the winged girl's chest began to push forward, stretching and filling the cloth near the top of the dress and a bra beneath it. Somehow the feeling of her chest growing and her wings, now fully grown to a grand span nearly twice her own height, stretching themselves out felt natural and right, as if something wrong had been corrected.

She breathed slowly as the changes slowed to a halt, looking down at her body's new small, feminine shape with a slight blush and smile. None of this made any sense, but at the same time, for once it didn't feel as if it had to.

 

 (A/N: Just imagine the wings are as big as advertised. I could find no pictures whatsoever with the correct wingspan.)

Dr. Kellen looked back up at the box, which said to take a leap of faith to begin her journey. Below it, where the class selection had been, there was a fair-sized circular hole with something pitch black directly through it. She considered the hole for a good several seconds before shrugging. "I suppose..it's better than being trapped here."

The sense of calm made her less inclined to panic, but frankly this entire situation was still rather unpleasant to her. She gave a displeased sigh at the world in general, folded up her wings to fit, and leapt down into the hole.

---

Immediately the winged woman was somewhere in the middle of a blue sky, with a lot of momentum in a direction that sort of felt like down. Her wings spread out instinctively, but she was still too disoriented to make sense of her location or direction and flailed clumsily through the air, yelling, for a few seconds before crashing directly into something large and feathery.

Okay, that way was down, she realized as she saw the ground below, and that was enough to make some intuitive sense of her own position and motion. She managed to flap a couple of times and glide just enough to land safely in a tumbling roll. Dr. Kellen bounced back to her feet with an agility somewhat alien to her, and turned in the direction of a woman screaming "IT'S DOWN" to find the owner of the feathers she'd just bounced off of.

It was a gigantic bird, much larger than conventional physics or biology suggested should be possible. It was standing itself up and looking in her direction, and it really didn't look very pleased with her. It gave a very loud screech before lifting itself several yards off the ground with one powerful flap and diving toward her. The flap caused a strong gust of wind, which was evidently enough to force Dr. Kellen's wings open and lift her small body entirely into the air; she took a sharp turn to the side opposite a nearby cliff face to get just barely away from the great bird's talons, landing a little more gracefully this time while the bird skidded back to the ground.

A tall woman with a gigantic sword, the owner of the screaming voice earlier if her current manic laughter was anything to go by, ran toward the bird from its back, followed by another girl with a bow and still another who seemed to have...a tail? Well okay, sure, Dr. Kellan had wings now, so why not. Anyway, the beast managed to turn around much faster than it seemed right for something that big to do and met a swing of the sword with its own talons; they clashed with a metallic clang rather than said talon being torn in two. An arrow, on fire, sailed straight into the bird's wing at the same time.

The monster screeched and flapped its wings again, producing a gust of wind that sent the swordswoman flying straight into the air and nearly knocked the archer back. Without really thinking about it, Dr. Kellen caught the gust when it came toward her and directed her flight to intersect the one with the sword. She managed to catch her and protect her from a rougher landing with her own body and wings, which was rewarded by some spastic flailing and incoherent yelling from her passenger. She let her go and she just started running toward the bird again. "That isn't going to work!" yelled Dr. Kellen over another screech as the bird hopped back into the air and started a dive toward both of them.

The swordswoman met the giant bird's talons with her blade, resulting in just another clash as it swooped back up into the air. The winged woman watched her hop up and down, spouting a stream of curses and flailing the weapon around as if still expecting to hit something with it, for a second before being interrupted by another person's voice. "If you've got a better idea I'd love to hear it."

She jumped briefly at the closeness of the voice and looked to find the..the one with the tail standing right there next to her with a fist on one of her hips. "She's not really sane right now. We were trying to disable its wings but that didn't go so well."

"Well you should keep trying," said Dr. Kellen angrily, her usual personality surfacing over the calm. "Or stab it in the heart or something." She was not happy about this thing nearly clawing her in half with its apparently metallic talons.

"You're the one with the wings," retorted the fox-girl.

"I don't—I'm not really," Dr. Kellen fumbled briefly. "Do you see a weapon on me?"

"That hardly proves anything," the tailed one shrugged.

The conversation paused with another screech as the bird apparently dove at...well, actually nothing it looked like to the winged woman, just a patch of empty field way over in the distance. The swordswoman ran excitedly toward that spot while the huge bird just flew back up out of her reach, an arrow sparking with electricity sailing just past it to one side.

"Maybe you can just crash into its wing again," suggested the fox-girl. "All we really need is for Aria to hit it anywhere but the talons."

"That was an accident it didn't see coming. It'll pluck me out of the sky sooner than I can get behind it."
"Well, I can make sure it still doesn't see you coming." Because Dr. Kellen gave her a look that demanded an explanation, she added, "I'm an illusionist, I'm not really next to you, see?" As a follow-up the fox-girl disappeared from view, reappeared a ways off and waved at her.

The winged woman gave a sigh that ended in something halfway between a girl groaning and a growl. "Ask your friend with the bow not to hit me instead," she said loudly, and then took off at a run to get back into the air.

Thankfully, it seemed like whatever the 'illusionist' did was working, as Dr. Kellen was able to make her ascent directly in front of the big bird's eyes without it seeming to notice her at all. Before long it dove at nothing again, and she was able to position herself above and behind it.

The goal here was to make the beast crash, not necessarily to crash into it. Realizing this, she thought up a better way to accomplish the desired result, one possibly a little less likely to end with another awkward landing that could result in broken bones. Dr. Kellen lined herself up with the middle of the bird's back and dove straight at it, hitting it dead-center with her feet and immediately crouching onto it and grabbing a bunch of its feathers. As expected, it screeched again and twisted itself sideways in an immediate effort to get her off. When she held on, kicking it a couple of times with her feet, it continued on its way to being completely upside-down, and then immediately started an unintentional dive to the ground again. This thing was clearly not built for maneuvers that complex, and it lost all control as the winged girl let go and glided her way aside of where it was landing.

The woman with the sword chased after the beast again, and this time managed to reach it just as it hit the ground. She leapt into the air and landed sword-first in its right wing, drawing another loud screech which made Dr. Kellen wonder if everyone here was going to suffer hearing loss before the end of this affair. She started chopping madly at it after that while the bird stood itself up, up until it finally shook itself and tossed her away to one side, followed by a parting flap from its left wing sending her several feet more into the air.

For a moment it had looked like the creature wasn't bleeding from any of the places the sword had hit, but now it was clearly showing a lot of bright red in various small lines along the back of its wing. It was turning itself more toward Aria, who was skipping repeatedly across the ground like a stone on a calm lake. Dr. Kellen ran toward her even though she was clearly going to be too late to do much of anything, only to see another flash of motion as a...mid-sized rock went and hit the bird on the head.

Forgetting briefly about the swordswoman, it turned in the direction the arrow had come from and deflected a volley of three more arrows with a flap of its good wing, forcing the archer to dive aside of her own attacks.

The empath made it to Aria just when she was making her final skid along the ground and stopping face-down in the dirt, and made an effort to turn her over and see whether she was still breathing. The swordswoman groaned, her entire body covered in scrapes and bruises; what blood was coming out seemed to be trailing its way through the air to her sword as if it were a black hole that somehow applied exclusively to blood.

She sat halfway up, and Dr. Kellan pushed her back to the ground. "Don't move," she snapped.
"Gonna stab tha' bird." She gave a cursory check of the limbs, and was surprised to find nothing seemed actually broken. "Eat its blood."

Aria squirmed again. "Just hold still for a blasted second!"

Feeling as if she had done this sort of thing her entire life, Dr. Kellen put her hand over one of the worse wounds, a large bruise on the left knee, and sort of mentally...pulled at it. A slight bluish glow formed under he hand and she felt an intense pain in the same spot on her own body as it started to disappear from the patient's. She winced but kept at it for what felt like a full minute, only realizing afterward it had taken a matter of seconds. And then moved on to the next-worse wound, and the next, pushing off the pain as best she could.

Before long Aria had only minor wounds and the winged woman was in near-blinding pain, the combination of which made it impossible to keep the swordswoman from shoving her out of the way and running back into the fight. Dr. Kellen fell directly onto her back, heaving for breath, and did something else that felt familiar despite not having done it before: She began to heal herself. She closed her eyes, calmed her mind, and focused, pushing back against the pain while slowly sitting up. The pain receded, and after only a few seconds she opened her eyes again to find the wounds themselves had lessened in severity to just a collection of minor ones.

While the Empath had been busy healing Aria, the bird had been directed away from the archer by a series of vague person-shaped illusions holding bows, allowing Lynn to catch her breath. It rapidly pecked and clawed at the air and generally made the archer glad her friend's powers were so effective against it. She looked over at the real Rayna, now right next to her and breathing heavily. "Thanks. You gonna be okay?"

"Just...hh..just kill the stupid thing."

"Sure, buddy." Lynn patted Rayna on the shoulder once and then ran at the bird, seeing the girl with the giant sword coming at it from the side. The bird saw her too, and swiped at her with a talon just in time to clash with her sword again. They began a series of clashes, the giant bird apparently too enraged at this point to bother flapping its wings again.

Once she was in range, Lynn drew another arrow and took careful aim at its eyes. They were moving targets, sure, especially when it tried to peck Aria, but there was a kind of pattern to its insane craning, jerking and swivelling, and after just a couple of cycles she felt confident enough to fire and give it an element, producing an arrow with a bunch of frail, cracked ice attached to it.

The arrowhead buried itself directly in the monster's eye, drawing another loud screech and a spreading of its wings. The ice shattered into twenty or so sharp little pieces which mostly landed all over its head. But, as painful as it surely was, that was merely a distraction. Through the pain in its eye, the bird was unable to focus on blocking Aria's next attack, a lunging stab straight at its center, and the demonic sword buried itself all the way to the hilt right where the most blood would be—the location of its heart.

The monster gave a weak, pained cry and flailed its wings briefly before going down, dying partially of the wound to its heart and partially of a sudden, rapid loss of blood. Aria held onto the sword with both hands and managed to avoid getting thrown off. She twisted it around as the monster stopped moving, beginning to pant heavily from the efforts of the fight. Everyone else slowly converged on her location, each of them looking just as exhausted as she felt.

Once the last of the blood was gone, the demon blade was satisfied and Aria pulled it out again so it could form its sheath and disappear back into its usual inventory slot. She looked around at her two party members and the stranger with a grin. "Woo! Giant monster, dead," she said, pumping a fist weakly. "Yeah. I'm j'st gonna, I'monna take a nap now okay?" And then the shapeshifter fainted.