The "Best" RPG Ever-29

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---

Even though it had seemed like such a long time before, Lynn was barely through showering and actually picking out an outfit after holding one after another in front of herself in the mirror when the sun started to set outside. She had eventually settled on a pair of ruffled shorts the same weird blue color as her hair and a sleeveless white shirt with lacy trim at its collar and hem, and made quick work of the stairs down to the first floor before heading out the door.

Rast wasn't there just yet, and there was plenty of time to catch her breath from the dash downstairs. There were still a lot of stray thoughts in the tenor of why am I doing this? but she pushed them back with the argument that she had agreed to it after all, if not proposed the whole idea in the first place, and certainly wasn't the kind of person who'd stand someone up after asking them on a date.

She took a deep breath to calm down her own excited thoughts. Why was she so interested in him in the first place? It had to mostly be physical. Something about the way he'd looked when he'd first taken off his helmet..and ever since then, really. It would be nice to maybe talk a little, and actually find out who he was. Then, well, they could stop dating if it really was just physical. Right.

Lynn turned a certain direction at this point and saw Rast coming and her heart started racing again. She went to him. "Hey!"

"Oh, h-hello miss Lynn," he said, a little surprised at her running up. He looked her up and down briefly. "That's a—er, you look real pretty in that."
"Yeah? You look nice too." He was wearing some clean but plain clothes, but she still meant that. "So where are we going?"

---

Overall, the meditation session went reasonably well. Aria was jumped out of it several times by the demon, but it gave her a lot of practice with resuming the meditation. Meanwhile her new catgirl acquaintance seemed absolutely perfect at it. In fact, about halfway through she'd started floating a couple of inches off the ground as if to show off, but Tsaron informed her psions just tend to do that subconsciously while in an 'elevated state'.

Probably a couple of hours after they'd come in, Katherine stood up and stretched, which was enough to wake the shifter again, and Tsaron, who'd left the room at some point, returned. "Well, I think that's probably enough," said the psion.

"Yeah. Um.." Aria was about to say something along the lines of 'what do we owe you?', but their host seemed distracted.

Tsaron was staring at the wall. "Say, what sort of weapons do you use? Have any room for more?"
"Uh, well, I use knives. Just light enough to throw around with telekenesis," said Katherine. "But aren't we supposed to pay you at this point?"

The old elf shrugged again. "I hardly have much use for more money, and you two are doing good for the town, right?" He glanced around, and walked up to an display of four daggers each with a differently-colored jewel in the pommel fanned out around a central point, pulling them off and offering them to Katherine. "These have some minor elemental enchantments, you can tell which is which by the gem color."

"Oh..thanks," she said, picking them up with her mind and glancing over them.

"Do you want anything?" he asked Aria, who looked like she'd been thinking.

"Um, I think the demon sword wouldn't like sharing space with any other weapons..Oh! But I do know someone who could use something easy to use for self-defense."
"Hmm." The elf went and pulled off an ordinary-looking short sword, offering it to her hilt-first. "This is probably a good choice, then. It's lightweight to begin with and has some magic to make it even lighter to hold, but still swing just as hard."
"Thanks!" She took to the sword and felt its balance for a moment before dropping it into her nebulous inventory space. "You uh, sure this is alright?"

He shrugged. "Like I said, taking up space." With that, he lead the way back toward the front door.

"You two are welcome to join me for tea any time you're not too busy. It does get a little lonely here," said the old elf before shutting the door.

The two girls looked at each other for a second. "Well, uh, I'm supposed to eat supper with my party sometime soon," said the catgirl.

"Mhm, I should probably go see where mine went so they don't worry about me being unattended long enough to give in to the urge to kill someone for their blood," said Aria.

"Do you need help with directions?"
"No no, I know where to look," she said, shaking her head, and then started off. "See ya later!"

Katherine waved back, turned to leave, and then paused. It had suddenly occurred to her that she hadn't heard a single one of Tsaron's surface thoughts. Even after doing the work of filtering out her new friend's constant chanting of blood everyone else's thoughts still seemed easy to pick up on, so at least a few of his should have come through. Unless...she couldn't help but wonder, was he...?

---

The part of Lynn's mind that tried to pick apart fictional settings and make sense of them (or point out ways in which they made no sense) found something new about this world to ask about. Namely: The restaurants. She hadn't been anywhere to eat in this world besides the tavern at the inn they were staying at, which had perfectly fine food at a decent enough price, but as Rast lead her through a part of the city populated largely by eateries she couldn't help but pick out places that instantly registered as fast food, fancy expensive places that expected formal wear, and everything in between. There seemed to be a variety of price levels, food types, and stylings to the restaurants that rivalled if not outmatched that of Earth, and somehow or other that...bugged her. It seemed like a fantasy setting, specifically one aimed to look midieval the way this one seemed to be, should just have people eating their own food at home, maybe some kind of bars or taverns or things, and then rich people food—not really any "casual restaurant" scene.

Did it make sense? Well, this world seemed unusually advanced in general for one without proper electricity, and it was all because of magic. This was a city after all, and it seemed to have a lot more in common with modern-day, post-industrial cities than with anything that could have been called a city in the 1400's. There was a vast variety of jobs people did instead of just being serf farmers or rich landlords, and a lot of conveniences and maybe even something resembling automation in places, the workings behind such things seemed more often than not to be magic. Magic—maybe that was the key. Maybe a fantasy setting where nearly anyone can do magic really should look like this, or at least a lot more like this than like some stereotypical low-to-no-tech wasteland of tiny villages. Maybe sufficiently advanced magic just takes the place of technology.

She shook her head for a second, realizing Rast had been talking for the past few seconds, and the pause they were in the middle of seemed suspiciously like the sort that should come after a question. "U-uh..." Since he was in front of her, she couldn't actually see his face to tell if he could tell she hadn't entirely been listening. Her perception caught up to her mind and informed her it had been something about some kind of food. It was...a question like..."Are you okay with Chinese food" but replace 'Chinese' with an unrecognized set of syllables. "Um, sure, I guess. I don't think I've tried it before."

"Ah, well, you're in for a treat then, I reckon," said her date. "The cooks here're are all natural born Zivans, or 't least their parents are, I think." They stopped in front of one of the restaurants. "None a' the watered-down stuff other countries call Zivan."

Zivan. Sure.

He led the way inside and asked a wolf-woman at the counter for a place for two. She nodded and picked up a pair of menus before leading them over to a booth up against one of the walls of a mid-sized room with large tables for bigger parties in the middle. There were plenty of people here, and it smelled good...actually, looking around, the food already present on some of the tables looked suspiciously like Mexican food.

They sat down and the human opened up her menu to take a look. The names of some of the menu items were unfamiliar, but their descriptions sounded exactly like what she expected. Rice, beans, cheese, salsa...so on, so forth. There was even a basket of chips on the table! It was slightly unsettling to find a supposedly different world have a culinary subset that matched so perfectly with one from Earth. Still...she hadn't exactly questioned the existence of steak or burgers, either, right? And this was a game...it was supposed to be a game, right? Of course something similar to the "players'" experiences would show up.

"Um..I think I actually have had this before. Maybe they called it something else," she said a bit weakly, hoping to prevent what she'd said before from seeming too much like a lie when she knew pretty much exactly what she wanted to order.
"Oh, that's good," he said, sounding relieved. "I been tryin' to think of what I'd recommend, but I got no idea what your tastes in food are..." So he bought it, great.

Before long they had ordered their food and had drinks brought to the table. After several seconds of both of them awkwardly looking half away from each other in silence Rast decided to attempt to start a conversation. "So, miss Lynn..uh..t-tell me about yourself," he said. "How'd you decide to come out to the frontier?"

"Uh.." Lynn's mind caught for a few seconds as she tried to construct something as honest as possible without going into the whole "teleported into this world by a video game" part of the truth. Then something just seemed to click together and she began talking, her mind catching up to her speech rather than the opposite: "Well, it was mostly Rayna's idea. We've been working together for a long time, friends forever you know? So we used to wander around town and put on performances, you know, illusions and hitting an apple on someone's head, that kind of thing?" Why was she phrasing her statements like questions and punctuating with 'you know'? Stop that and slow down, she told herself. "Um..s-so, at some point it felt like we'd been all over just about everywhere else and she suggested we go out to the frontier to see what it's like, maybe make better money fighting monsters than we were getting for the performances, which really wasn't much I can tell you. The first thing we had to do was figure out how to use what we knew in a real serious fight, and then we sorta just made our way out here. I'd just learned a little magic recently, enough to enchant my arrows, which is a big help with that." Weird...that was a much better-constructed lie than she'd thought herself capable of. "Um, how about you?" Wait, if she was supposed to be a traveling performer shouldn't she be familiar with all kinds of places, especially Zivan or whatever the country's name was? How many other names could their food possibly go by?

While she panicked inwardly about that Rast started talking: "Well, I was actually born out here. I been back to the mainland a few times, but it just don't feel much like home to me. T'be honest my parents were both guardsfolk, and I just up and took up the job when they retired after goin' through a few dead-end jobs. The captain decided to take care of me, more like, not that I ain't gotten more competent since then." He paused for a second, as if realizing something. "You know she's been the captain of the guard for as long 's I can remember? I asked my pa and some of the older guards once, an' they said they didn't remember a time she wasn't captain either. We guards even have a sayin' about it: Governors and nobles come and go, but the captain'll always be the captain."

"Hm..." Lynn thought about when she'd seen the captain last; she hadn't really looked all that old to her. "Isn't she, human, though?" She hoped the assumption of Earth-like lifespans for humans wasn't too far off base.

"No obvious signs to the contrary. Must be some kinda' magic. Nobody's really ever had the guts to ask her 'bout it. I tried a few times, but just chicken out right away. She's got a way of lookin' at ya."

"Well, maybe I'll ask her," she leaned forward a bit. "My job's not on the line if it makes her mad."

"Err, I dunno 'bout that. The requests all go through the guardhouse, you know."

Lynn put up her arms. "What's she gonna do, not let us kill monsters? Not let people show their gratitude by paying for it? I bet not. The monster problem seems like a pretty big deal around here—I mean, a giant bird kidnapping people right out of town at night? That ogre that smashed me in with a club? The giant cats? No way they can afford to kick people out over something petty like asking the captain's age."

He shrugged. "You got a good point there, I guess.

"Now that ya mention it, though, It's a pretty dangerous job, goin' from just performin' for folks."
"Aww, it's not like we didn't know how to at least defend ourselves before deciding to come out here," said Lynn. "There might not be a lot of monsters but there are always outlaws and lowlifes. Couple of girls like us look like easy targets, so we had to make sure we weren't and everyone knew it." It felt like her story was vascillating now. Hadn't she said something about learning to fight just before coming here?

"Well, we'll have none of that 'round here," said Rast. How was he not noticing the holes? "The guard gets more leeway to deal with criminals our own way since everyone's already just tryin' to survive out here, and a bunch of chaos is an open invitation for monsters to come in and destroy the town." Maybe something strange was going on... "Not that we don't try to be fair about it." Or he just wasn't paying so much attention to the details. Occam's razor, she reminded herself. "We just try to make sure folks understand that everyone works together out here as much as possible."

Lynn's mind caught up to what Rast was saying at this point and she briefly wondered if this was the sort of conversation one would get out of a policeman. Well, he was basically a policeman after all. "Um..what do you like to do for fun? Outside work, like?" she said, trying to shift the subject off of crime and punishment a bit.

"Hmm? Well, I might not sound like the type, but I picked up chess a few years back, an' I ain't too bad at it."

"Oh, really?" She unconsciously leaned forward onto the table a bit. There had been a portion of her life—well, the former life as Lyle at least—dedicated to the goal of becoming a grandmaster. He'd quit after realizing how unhealthy of an obsession it was, but still enjoyed an occasional game. The point is that this was something she understood well enough to talk about.

"Yeah, someone suggested I try it to get a sense of patience an' maybe think harder about tactics an' such. I dunno if my tactics got any better, but runnin' out games in my head's a good way to pass the time out on a long patrol, at least."

---

Before finding her way to the inn, Aria ran into the other two members of her party who weren't out on a date. "Heeyy!" She waved at them and ran over, catching up with their pace. "What've you guys been up to?"

"We met a dragon, and bought some clothes," said Rayna. "Have you been wandering around all afternoon?"

"No no, I met a new friend who helped me find someone to teach me to meditate."
"How'd that go, then?"
"It's really haaarrd," she whined slightly. "I guess I've got the gist of it, thoughhhwait, did you just say you met a dragon?"
"Well, Draconian in the lore. Apparently sime kind of dragon-human hybrid or something?"

Clera finally spoke up. "Her name is Rose. She is waiting back at the tavern if you'd like to meet her."

"Oh, cool." Aria tried to hide her disappointment that part dragon hadn't wound up being her own character's race. Or...her own race? Whatever. "Anyway, I also got a gift for you."

The winged woman stared at the sword that the shifter produced and frowned. "I do not need a weapon."

"You don't? Are you just gonna stay in town from now on?" Aria slowly waved the sword back and forth.

"No, but as I understand it I am acting as a healer in this party."

"That doesn't mean you shouldn't have some way to defend yourself. If anything, it means you need this even more. The laws of fiction dictate that if you're the healer linchpin to the whole party you are definitely gonna wind up getting kidnapped or stuck behind enemy lines or something. If I were you I'd already be learning how to get out of ropes and handcuffs and metal cages."

The illusionist interjected, "Why is it you don't want to have a weapon?"
Clear sighed. "..I swore an oath to do no harm. I won't lift my hand against another person."

"Well, monsters are definitely not people, and our job is fighting monsters," said Rayna. "You sure helped us harm that giant bird, right?"
"..I suppose so."

"Well, then think of it as insurance. The three of us are probably gonna wind up doing all the fighting anyway, but if you had a chance to save one of our lives by whacking a monster with a sword I bet you'd take it."
Clera paused a good several seconds before nodding. "Your reasoning is sound. But I have no experience using a sword."

"Ah, I've gotcha covered there," said Aria, offering Clera the hilt. "I specifically asked for something that should be easy for a beginner to figure out. Just try holding it for a sec." She did as asked and held onto it for a moment. "Anyway, there's really not that much to using a sword in the first place. You move it fast and aim the cutty part at the bad guys. Or..ropes, for example."

"Hm." After giving the weapon a slow experimental swing before letting it go into her own inventory. "Thank you for being concerned about me."
"Oh—well uh, y'know...we're pretty much in this together, anyway," Aria half-muttered, not having expected a response quite that earnest.