The "Best" RPG Ever-27

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I hope I'm not annoying everyone with repeatedly posting parts of this story. There don't seem to have been a lot of comments lately so I can't tell if people are generally happy with seeing updates or unhappy with this story being what's coming up so often or just plain don't care? I'd almost rather see a bunch of complaints like "I'm sick of this story" than nothing at all, although that would be a bit disheartening.

Either way, I at least made a little progress on a different story lately so maybe there'll be one of those up soon.

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Zack went looking for the store with the armor he'd seen before, a proper full-body suit with a breastplate, greaves, gauntlets—no helmet, oddly enough—which looked designed to fit a female body like his own. The wolf either followed or stuck next to him. After a moment he looked at it and said, "So...did your hunt go well?" The wolf made a sort of satisfied grunt that sounded like a yes.
"Well, that's good. We found what we were looking for, too. I don't think you would've liked it." It was a little odd to him to talk to an animal like a person, but it had become increasingly clear this wolf was much more intelligent than your average dog. Did it have to do with whatever magic cleaned its fur for it?
The wolf made a quizzical sound. "Well, we ran into some kind of ghost thing and then a living suit of armor. I don't think you'd enjoy trying to bite into solid metal."

Speaking of armor, there was the shop, and the suit he'd seen before was still in the window. The knight went inside and looked around; there were various styles of armor on sale here, including strangely revealing pieces like those he'd started with, and likewise armor seemingly intended for men that had the look of casual clothes. He eventually came to the woman at the counter, an elf wearing a patch over her left eye. "Howdy. Can I help ya, miss?" She seemed to be chewing...gum or something, and punctuated her speech with a smacking sound.

Zack bit back a complaint about being called 'miss'; it really wasn't worth it in situations like this. "Yeah, is the, uh, full armor in the window for sale? Or something like it?"

"You mean the traditional style?" He nodded. "Yeah, we got some in stock. You a knight, miss?"

"Uh..yeah." Even though he wasn't entirely sure what the question meant in an 'in-setting' sort of way.

"A'right." The elf ducked under the counter to dig for something. "If you wanna buy one I c'n just tune it to your gem and we don't have to worry about fitting an' all that."

It took Zack a few seconds to realize she was referring to the gem of brightness. "Uh, kind of a dumb question, but how much does that...change an armor's look?" He remembered now that shifting forms actually changed his 'default' armor quite a lot, and panicked a bit at the idea that it might turn this new armor, and any future armor, into something equally terrible.

"Well," (smack), "it usually just makes it fit your size an' all, maybe a little shift in the color. Probably fix the tail situation too if it isn't...oh, there it is." She came back up with something resembling a large pearl, but gray and glowing slightly. "You want to try one on for looks first, miss?"

"Uh, sure."

The elf lead him through the store to a section of mostly 'normal'-looking armors, and just grabbed one of those without even looking it, dragging it piece-by-piece to a nearby table. "C'n I see the gem for a second, miss?"
He offered it to her, but instead of actually taking it she just held the glowing pearl over it for a few seconds and then put it up against the middle of the armor's chest. The metal shifted itself around slightly, the chest area pushing out slightly and the whole ensemble shrinking slightly to fit a smaller body; the gray metal took on a slightly lighter tone. Once the metal stopped moving she picked the pearl back up and pointed to a nearby door. "Changing rooms that way, miss."

So altered, the armor fit Zack's body perfectly. It was heavy, but not any more than the armor he'd first started out in, and somehow putting it on felt natural. It didn't expose any skin past his neck, but he had to frown a bit on realizing that it was form-fitting enough to still basically show off the girl in the mirror's figure. Well, it was still better than a skirt.

Out of curiosity, Zack tried shifting to dark form. The armor's more rounded edges became slightly pointier and its metal changed to a shiny dark shade, nearly pitch-black. It was just as non-revealing as before, which was good. The headband from the skirt-armor still appeared on his head, which probably meant it was actually a separate piece of equipment or something.

He'd asked the wolf to stay outside, and found it sitting next to the changing room door when he left, back in his lighter street clothes. Back in the store proper, the elf said, "Find it to your liking, miss?"
"Yeah," he nodded, "I'll take it."

---

Lynn arrived back at her party's room at the inn before realizing she wasn't actually sure what to do with all the time there was between now and the date. She felt giddy and excited at the idea of it, but she didn't actually know what girls did to prepare for dates? Not that this one was supposed to be a big deal or anything, but it would be good to at least look a little nice...

She went to the bathroom and had a look at herself in the mirror. Her clothes were a little scuffed, and there were some bits of grass and dust in her hair. Rayna hadn't seemed too bothered by taking a bath, had she? Maybe it wouldn't be too bad to just clean up a bit, and maybe wear one of the outfits she hadn't just been out fighting a giant bird monster in afterward. It just meant...well, taking off her clothes.

She tilted her head slightly at the girl in the mirror. Even though she'd basically accepted being a woman by now, it was somehow an intimidating thought to face it so head-on now. But, well, it wasn't as if she could put it off forever, and doing it now would also let her get cleaned up. She kind of...wanted to look nice and pretty.

The archer nodded to herself in the mirror and started removing her clothes, halfway distracting herself with thoughts of what to put on after the bath. There were some slightly girlier, less strictly utilitarian outfits she'd bought at the store while Rayna wasn't looking; one of those would do nicely...

---

Rose was more intelligent than she'd seemed at first. On the way to the inn, she noticed a flower shop and pointed out one she particularly liked in the window, and launched excitedly into a description of it. Although it was framed like a description of another person, the dragon-girl put the important properties of the plant in terms a child could understand, and packed into those an explanation that would have put a botanist to shame.

"You, sure know a lot about plants," said Rayna afterward, still a little dazed from the flood of information.

"Well, I've been around them my whole life, you know? And I'm a nature dragon, so I'm supposed to know about stuff like that. Did I mention that?"

"One might have guessed from your lair being a forest," said Clera. "I suppose that means you don't breathe fire?"

"Nope! My breath is minty and healy. It can be set on fire, but I really don't want people to do that."

"How long..have you lived out in that forest, anyway?" asked the illusionist.

"Um..." Rose reached up a hand and ran it along one of her horns, scrunching up her face in thought. "I don't..know. I can't really remember living anywhere else!" It occurred to her that her memories of being a dragon girl didn't include any keeping track of days, months, seasons, years...well, she always knew what season it was, and what order they came in, and that was enough.

"And you didn't know there was a town here..did you ever have visitors?"
"Hmm...sometimes? I think there wasn't a town the last time I did though."

Clera made a small mental note to try and find out when this city had been founded. How long had this poor girl been alone with her plants? It was obvious she liked the company of other people, even if she wasn't used to it; being totally alone for such a long time should have driven anyone insane. At least, it sounded like a miserable experience.

"So what's it like being an ad-ven-turing party, huh?" said Rose, pronouncing the word like a child learning it for the first time.

"It's..not too bad," said Rayna. "I mean, it's pretty hard work, but it's worthwhile. Pay's really good and we're actually helping the folks around here survive. Today we took out a big bird that was snatching people up."

"Just picking people up and taking them away? That's so mean," said Rose. "If I knew a nasty bird was doing that I'd pull it down with some vines and tear its dumb throat out!"

Both of her companions had to pause briefly at hearing something so violent coming from her in the exact same chirpy tone as calling a flower pretty. "W-well, that's uh...don't worry, we got it," said Rayna, recovering first. No wonder monsters gave her forest a wide berth. "Actually we met Clera during that fight."

"It was trying to attack me, but I have more maneuverability than something that large," said Dr. Kellen with a nod.

"Ooh, you can fly?" said Rose eagerly. "That must be so cool! I can only sorta glide and hover 'cause I'm too heavy."

"It..is nice," admitted the winged girl. "There is a tradeoff of durability, however."

"Here's the inn," said Rayna, pointing up at the Broken Dragon's sign. "It's..." She paused, something about the place's name occurring to her.
"Aww, why'd they break the dragon?" said Rose, noticing the same.

"It's just the name of the inn," said Clera, exasperated. "They probably intend to refer to a hostile dragon being broken."

"Yeah," said Rayna, "I'm sure whoever named this place wouldn't have a problem with someone as cute and nice as you."

"Aww," Rose blushed slightly from the compliment. She wanted to give the foxgirl a hug but restrained herself from going that far.

"Anyway, this place is pretty nice. Our room's kinda full at this point but I'm sure they have a single they can rent you."
"Okay!" said Rose. "Umm, where are you gonna go next?"

"Well..hm." The foxgirl turned to Clera. "How many sets of clothes do you have?" She knew the answer was probably 'just the one', but it would be very hard to explain to the dragon-girl why.

"..Only these," said Clera, tugging at one side of her dress. "Flying somewhere requires one to pack exceptionally light."

"Then we should buy you some new ones! I mean, you know, to welcome you to the party and town and stuff."

"Ohh, I already bought a bunch of clothes," said Rose, "so I kinda know that part of town already. And I probably shouldn't tempt myself to spend the last of my money on window shopping..maybe I can get a room rented and meet up after you're done?"

"Sure," said Rayna, nodding. "We'll just meet here, maybe you'd like to join us for supper?"
"That'd be great!" she said with a big grin and bounded off into the inn.

Rayna waved at her and turned to go before pausing at seeing that Clera's arms were crossed and she was glaring up at her again. "Uh..what?"
"I do not like the idea of befriending that poor girl only to use her as some kind of heavy weaponry," she said, her eyes sharp and fierce. "She has had no human contact for possibly decades and it disgusts me to think of taking advantage of that kind of loneliness."

"Wh..I wouldn't do that! I just..." Rayna paused, her ears drooping slightly. "I didn't mean it like that, okay? I'm really not that kind of person. But, this world is really dangerous, and, and making powerful allies is good, okay?" She felt like she'd been caught stealing something and was trying to explain it to her own mother. "We—what we do is important, it saves people's lives. That big bird had a request to take it down because it killed people!"
"That's all well and good, but if we want her help we will ask for it. No talking around her and making her think it was her idea."
"No, of course not," said Rayna, shaking her head. "Fighting a monster around here is risking your own life. I'd never try to make someone do that if they didn't want to."

"..Good." Dr. Kellen's arms lowered and her expressioned softened a bit.

"I don't..do you really think I'm that kind of person?" said the foxgirl, still agitated.

"...No, I do not." Clera's expression turned kind and a touch sorrowful. "I'm sorry, I tend to be very abrasive when I think someone is doing something wrong. It comes from a lot of seeing doctors who care more about their own finances than their patients' lives."

"That's..it's okay, that's a pretty understandable reason," said Rayna. Suddenly the smaller girl came closer and wrapped her arms around her. "W-whoa!"

"Is something wrong?" asked the winged girl, whose head was halfway buried in taller one's shoulder.

"No, I just uh, didn't peg you for the hugging type," said the foxgirl, returning the hug briefly before both of them disengaged.

"Hm.." Clera tilted her head slightly. "I suppose I usually am not. But it felt like the right thing to do in this situation somehow."

"Well, just more of this change stuff I guess," said Rayna. "Let's go get you some new duds."

---

In the same manner as the board of quests, there were some boards around town where ads were posted for various shops and other businesses; one of them wasn't too far from the front of the library. Aria's reaction to seeing one was, "Oh wow..I didn't even know they had these."
"They're only..huge boards covered in a bunch of gaudy pictures."

"I can miss the obvious sometimes, okay?" This reminded her of the disastrous search for another member of her own race earlier. Actually, she'd never been this..what? Absent-minded? Unobservant? before. It was frightening to think about losing her grip that badly, but she didn't show that fear around a relative stranger.

"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, let's see..." Katherine poked around at the board, pulling papers partway up to reveal older papers. There were all kinds of events being advertised that seemed to be from months or years ago; it reminded her of an average college bulletin board in that respect. Evidently nobody ever cleaned these things up.

"Oh, here we go." The catgirl pointed at a small scrap of paper in the bottom left corner which had been completely buried in the several layers of other papers now draped over her head. "Tsaron...Ieado's...mental training house. Meditation and a bunch of other lessons offered." After making a firm mental note of the address, she pulled herself out from under all the paper. "It looked kind of old, hope it's even still there."

"So this is more where my sense of direction would come into play," said Aria, "if I'd even gotten this far."
"It's fine, nobody's good at everything," Katherine shrugged.

On the way, she said, "So, how do you..uh, deal with the blood hunger thing?" It was little hard not to be thinking of the topic with the demon's chanting in the back of her extra senses, albeit muted now that she knew where it was coming from. Her senses were busy picking up on other people's navigational sense of the town anyway, so she knew which direction to go in to reach the unfamiliar address.

"I met up with an adventuring party when I appeared here," said the shifter, "we go out and kill monsters and the sword eats that blood. Today we took down a giant bird thing. It was delicious and had a lot of blood, so I'm good for now!"

"Well, that's a relief," the psion sighed. "I mean, not that you don't seem to have the self-control to not kill people, but..."

"I know I know, I'd be a little scared of me too."

"You said you appeared?"
"Yeah, part of the amnesia stuff. The first like, events I can actually remember are pulling out the sword and cutting through..space or reality or something...and then hopping out and, appearing."

"Hm. If I could get around the demon to your actual mind I could, theoretically at least, do something about that."

"Err, no offense but I'd rather you didn't. Just to be careful. I think the demon itself is technically asleep right now and I don't want to risk waking it up."Also, you would find out I was just lying and probably not understand the truth, she thought to herself.

"What's the rest of your party like?"

"Umm, well there's Rayna and Lynn, who seem like they've been friends forever. Lynn's like a magic archer, she can shoot arrows with fire on them and stuff. Rayna makes illusions and stuff. And...we had another person join us recently, but I was unconscious most of the time she was introducing herself so I don't know that much about her yet. We're just getting to know each other, but they're all pretty nice. Why, are you looking for a party join or something?" Aria wasn't sure why she implied an offer, knowing there was no way they would want someone who wasn't another 'player' in the party.

"Nah, just making conversation. I'm already working with some folks myself."

"Maybe I should ask you who you work with, then?"
The catgirl shrugged. "If you wanna know. We're a pretty strange bunch, honestly. First there's Zack, who think she's a guy...or, I dunno, used to be a guy? Something about a form-changing curse." She needed to keep her own character's knowledge of his backstory vague in case he ever decided to elaborate on it; pretending not to have listened seemed like the best option. "And, uh, well, we have a witch on our party too, Mika." She had no idea whether or not this girl would have a problem with witches, having a connection with a demon herself. "She's really nice, maybe a little hyper."

"Uh-huh..." Aria gave a neutral answer, thinking. She'd only heard one other person talk about witches. But it seemed like too much of a coincidence for her to be that witch, right? "Anyone else?"

"Yeah, Nora. Nora's a spirit weaver, she can kind of...pull at nature or something?" Again, in-character; psions are supposed to shun magic, right? "I don't really get it, but it lets her throw rocks or fire around and heal people. Oh, and we have a wolf."

"Like a pet wolf?"
"I..wouldn't call him a pet exactly, no. We went to stop some wolves blocking the road and their alpha challenged Zack to a fight. When she won, it declared itself a member of her pack...so I guess, more like a companion?"
"That's really cool, though," said Aria. "What's his name?"
"Oh, we...haven't really given him a name. I guess that's technically Zack's prerogative," she said, scratching her head. "But I'm not really even sure he'd respond to it if we did. Oh, there it is!"

The so-called mental training house had a very plain sign hanging up above what appeared to be the entrance to a random home. Aria looked from it back to her guide and then shrugged, walking up and knocking on the door.