The "Best" RPG Ever-20

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---

Mika walked up to the two animal-girls, whose run had lasted very briefly before turning back into a walk. "Hey. Hello? You two need to stop a minute."
"No...we...need to keep going," said Zack.

"Really? What're you gonna do when you get there? I bet you can't even pick up your ridiculously huge sword right now. You just ran and fought that armor for like ten minutes straight! You too, Kath!"

"Well, I use my mind to fight...so, I'll be fine."

The witch glared up at her. "No you won't! You were barely holding onto your knives earlier. Stooop!"

The two finally stopped, both still panting from their recent efforts. Mika looked between the two of them. "Did we buy any, like, potions of stamina or something in town?"
"..No, we don't have any kind of potions," said the knight after a moment.

"Then you two need to sit down and chill for a minute. Unless I'm wrong and your legs don't feel like they're about to curl up and die."

Katherine and Zack looked at each other for a second, and then both of them carefully sat down on the ground. "Just so we catch our breath," said the Psion.

"That's good enough. Sheesh." Mika sat with them. "What were you two thinking?"

"I was thinking...we need to save Nora," said Zack. "I didn't just...get through protecting everyone just to lose someone."
"Yeah, we need to get to her before they do something."

"Well, she's still leaving us breadcrumbs and there's no blood, so they haven't hurt her yet, so they're not going to for a little longer. Riiight?" said Mika. "Besides, Nora's a big girl. I bet she gets away from them or even beats them all up before we even get there."

"I dunno, she just seems so quiet and submissive all the time," said Katherine.

Zack nodded. "I think both of us forgot the part where she can literally raise up walls of ground at will," he said. "I'm still worried, though."

"Well, do you want to make real bet of it?" said Mika.

"Oh yeah, and wager what?" asked Zack. "We basically share all the same money."
"Yeah, but best kind of bet is one where the loser has to do something."

"What do you have in mind?" asked the Psion, curious by this point.

---

There was something strange about the plants in this forest. Nora was having trouble pulling apart the dirt from between the roots in clumps big enough to make obvious holes, and after a short while gave up trying. It was as if the plants were much stronger than usual somehow. Oh well, the others would know she went into this forest and hopefully Zack's nose or something would carry them the rest of the way. Besides that, it was getting very dark, so her captors were likely about to make camp. That would be a good time to make her own move.

The weaver was seated with her back against a tree, toward the campsite the, well it turned out to be four, men were making. They were smart enough to tie her wrists and ankles with a rope, but since she'd stopped talking a while ago they didn't bother covering her mouth. That was good; she could still yell for help, or just plain yell at them, at some point if things got too dicey. She saw them placing several rocks on the ground in a circle, and soon recognized that they were making a fire. That meant she could burn off her restraints if she was careful enough about it.

Indeed, soon they had a little fire going. Nora gently pulled at some of it and got it to wave around this way and that...no good. She needed to pull a little piece of it out and over to herself, and her control over fire just wasn't that well-tuned. Fine, she had a few unused skill points. She closed her eyes and gave herself some more power over the fire element, but only a bit since Mika could use fire too. The rest went to other elements: earth, which had proven quite useful overall, and water, which seemed like a generally good idea.

She opened her eyes and tried again. The men were eating, except that one of them was just holding onto his weapon and watching her. They had tied her hands behind her, though, so he didn't see her making little motions with her fingers to pull the fire around. Even the rather small investment in fire-based skill seemed like a big help here, and she got a small bit of flame to float up off of the campfire. And then it went up, well above the guy that was watching her. He was looking down, after all; predators rarely look up at all. It flew carefully around to behind the tree she was behind, and finally around that to her back.

She held it up against the end of the rope, pushing hopefully just enough of the fire into it to break it without just setting her own hands on fire. Eventually it worked, and the ropes fell off. The harder part was going to be getting her legs free without doing anything too obvious. She tried compressing the fire into a spark: The same amount of the element but in a less-noticeable package. After trying that, crossing fingers on the hand she wasn't using to guide it, Nora moved the spark around to her side, low to the ground. She could see the tiny speck of light moving along the grass, but it looked like it could just be a lightning bug or something.

Taking inspiration from that impression, she made it wander and meander a bit so it wouldn't look too unnatural. It went around, beneath her knees and finally to the backs of her ankles. Before long the ropes on her ankles were broken too, but thankfully they didn't shift too much, so to the kidnapper on watch it didn't look like anything had changed. That done, Nora finally let the flame go, and it left the world.

She was breathing a bit more heavily. Fire was a volatile element, and it had actually taken a lot more effort than she'd realized to maintain a small piece of it without fuel for so long. She'd been so concentrated on what she needed it to do that she hadn't really noticed the work it took. That was fine, she could rest as long as she needed.

While taking the time to rest, Nora negotiated the best way to make either her escape or attack, whichever it turned out to be. Preferably both; the attack would be a great distraction. The earth around here was still difficult to shift; it felt like she could do it with some effort, but...why was it like that in the first place? Some kind magic was probably to blame, and that might mean they were actually nearby some sort of plant monster maybe, or that someone had enchanted the plants for a reason. Either way, tossing up a large section of earth felt riskier the longer she thought of it.

Well, the campfire was still going. It was much harder to control fire than to let it go. Nora got a small grin, but quickly shifted her expression to a neutral one to not tip off the guard. Not that it mattered; by his still-blank expression he hadn't noticed it.

---

Rose had reached the intruders a little too late. They had already started a fire. She glared at it from the top of a tree she had just casually used her new claws to climb for a good few minutes, trying to think of what to do about it. All of her powers were based on plants, which the fire could destroy. She could be burned very easily. These were things she was confident about despite having only really been a dragon-girl for a few minutes, tops. The idea of being burned gave her an apprehensive feeling, a deep-seated fear. It was hard to contemplate getting anywhere near that fire.

But they were kidnappers! Four guys had clearly kidnapped that elf girl and tied her up. As if she didn't already have enough reasons to attack these jerks what with their campfire and all, she might get to rescue a cute damsel in distress in the process! She had to do something about this. Didn't she have any way to deal with a fire like that?

She closed her eyes, thinking, and suddenly realized she was looking at a menu. She could see her name, Rose, her species, Draconian, a bunch of RPG stats, and a wide range of skills. Skills that would let her command plants to grow and move around at her will, skills that would give a plant further receptiveness to her own powers by enchanting its seed (which she had apparently been using on the plants in her forest for quite some time, giving her a true homefield advantage here), a bunch of other things...nothing to deal with fire.

Was there something in the forest that could deal with fire? She brought up a little mental map of the area in her head; this wasn't part of the menu, but something she just seemed to know. There were several groves, a lot of trees, some places specifically with fruit trees to find food, the big lake...Oh. Duh.

Rose skittered back down the tree trunk as silently as she had gone up and started quietly toward the lake, which was actually pretty close to here. Come to think of it, those guys had probably picked this campsite for its easy access to water. But little did they know that would be their downfall! Once she got there, it was a simple matter of fashioning some of the nearby plants into something to hold a bunch of water in...

BOOM

The dragon-girl leapt into the air at the sound of what seemed to be a bit of an explosion. She jumped her entire height up into the air and landed claws-first on the nearest tree, clinging into it for dear life for a second or two before regaining herself and climbing up and around the tree a bit to see what had happened.

Well, two things had happened: One, her damsel in distress was free; two, her intruders were largely on fire. Some of the plants nearby were also burning, but the campfire seemed to have gone out. What was going on? The elf girl, now standing up and looking rather angry, made a waving motion, and suddenly the fire came up off of the plants and toward her hands. She was..controlling the fire?

She was controlling the fire! That was great! Rose began moving before completing the chain of thoughts as to why that was great and why she was moving, hopping down off the tree into a spot to one side of the clearing. The men, now mostly not on fire, had readied their weapons and were beginning to negotiate how best to attack the girl holding a ball of fire in their general direction.

Well, they weren't about to get the opportunity. With some gentle waves of her own hands, Rose brought up some of the nearby grass into a collection of long, thick vines, some wrapping themselves around the men's legs so the couldn't escape, some grabbing their weapons and pulling them away while their grip was still loose with surprise, and then more wrapping around the rest of their bodies to really make them uncomfortable.

Nora stepped back nervously, still holding the fire between her hands, uncertain whether whatever had just attacked her former captors was about to come after her. "Excuse me~," said a voice from over to her right. She turned slowly that way to find...soem kind of woman with scales, wings, horns, and a tail. And clothing almost as horribly revealing as her own. The stranger smiled in a way that showed off some rather sharp teeth, but it seemed unintentional. "Would you mind, uh, putting out the fire?"

The weaver looked at the guys bound up in a bunch of vines and back at the other woman, who she realized was actually holding up her right hand in a very 'magically controlling something' sort of way, and then released the fire from her grip, allowing it to dissipate into the wind. She still felt a little wary of the stranger, though, for the amount of power she'd just displayed as well as actually a resemblance to a dragon. Dragons tended to attack towns and kidnap people in fantasy stories, right?

Rose gave her best winning smile, walking a little closer to the elf girl. "Oh, thank you so much! I hate it when meanies bring fire into my forest. Are you okay?"

"..Y-yes. I'm unharmed."

"I really love your outfit, how it leaves so little to the imagination..." she said dreamily.

"Err.." Nora tilted her head a bit to the left.

"Oh gosh, did I say that aloud?!" The dragon-girl stepped back again, her face shocked and a bit red. "Uh, sorry. I'm Rose. I'm not..used to people." Something about that felt...true. Even though Rob had been pretty used to people.

"Oh, uh, okay. M-my name's Nora." She looked back at the men, who had started struggling to get out of the vines. "Do you, mind i-if I borrow a rock? I, uh, m-might uproot some grass doing it."

"Aww, a few blades won't hurt," said Rose.

Nora pulled up a mid-sized rock, carefully moving it up and over through the air, and then semi-gently tapped the head of each man in turn, hopefully enough to knock them out without too much permanent injury. A little permanent injury would be okay, she thought.

"Ohh, that's smart! Now I don't have to keep holding onto them all the time." The Draconian grew the ends of the vines wrapped around the four men together so they'd stay shut, and then set the men down.

"D-did you, uh, enchant these plants somehow?" said Nora.

"Mmhm!" she nodded cheerfully. "This is my forest, I protect them and they protect me--" Rose cut herself off to suddenly turn to one side. "Oh..more visitors? This is the busiest night I've had in a long time." She started to move away.

"W-wait! Those might be, m-my friends," said the elf girl. "Th-they're probably looking for me."

"Well then, I'll take you to them," said Rose. "Follow me." She started her way into the thicker woods, slipping between the trees easily. After a short while she looked back and realized Nora wasn't there. But the plants told her she was close, so she just stopped a moment to let her catch up. "Um..sorry," she said when the elf girl reappeared.

"I-it's fine. I just don't kn-know my way around here as well as you do."

"Yes. Right. I'll go more slowly."

---

Lynn walked back into the inn, hungry for supper and curious what her best friend and their new party member had gotten up to while she was away. Once she'd entered the door, she found Rayna waving at her from a booth over near the stairwell, and walked over, taking a seat across the table.

"Hey, you look good as new," said the fox-girl. "You feel okay?"
Lynn nodded. "Magic healing is really something. Or, I guess if this is a video game I should've expected to get healed fast."

"Well, not all video games. But I getcha."
"So, I.." The human paused, noticing something. Rayna's hair seemed a little damp, as did her...well, fur. "..did it, rain while I was getting healed?"
"Hmm?" The illusionist took a moment to figure out what Lynn was referring to. "Oh! That. No, not that I know of. I was starting to feel kind of gross, so I, uh, took a bath."

"I guess you're really used to being in a woman's body now, huh?"

"W-well, I mean, not really any more than I was before," said Rayna. "I've felt exactly as comfortable about it ever since it happened as I do now. But, uh, I guess I did see my 'new' self naked for the first time, yes. What were you gonna say?" she asked, eager to push past this somewhat awkward topic.

"Oh. Well. Rast showed up to let the healer know the guard was gonna pay my bill. Which is good, I don't get the impression that healing some bruised ribs is all that cheap in any universe." Lynn could feel her cheeks heating up a bit, her pulse accelerating a bit from nerves. "But uh, I also kinda..chased him down, and, asked him out?"

"Oh, wow! Good for you!" said Rayna, leaning her chin into her hands and giving a bright grin. "When's the date?"
"Y-you didn't even ask if he said yes," said Lynn.

"Your heart wouldn't be racing if he didn't," said the fox-girl with a wink.

"Well, I said maybe for supper tomorrow night. Maybe we can pick a mission for tomorrow that won't take all day or get me seriously injured again."
"Yeah," Rayna nodded, "especially since you're still on the mend, right? You still have some kind of wounded status effect lowering a couple of your stats."

Lynn was confused for a moment, but finally got a look of recognition. "Right. I forgot you could see that stuff. Actually, I kinda forgot I had stats." She looked around. "Where'd Aria go, anyway?"

"Well, once I showed her the tavern and said this was where we've been staying she said something about finding out what she was capable of and wandered off. I guess if she goes out killing NPCs and gets herself killed it's not really our fault."

"It would be nice if that didn't happen, though," said Lynn. "Even with the whole 'psycho' thing going on I like the idea of having an actual melee fighter in our party."

"Oh, well, good news then!" Rayna waved at the door, and Lynn turned around to see Aria on her way inside. Aria attempted to wave back, and immediately tripped over seemingly nothing, stumbling five or six steps before steadying herself, brushing off her skirt, and walking the rest of the way to them.

"Hi again!" She stopped in front of the table, looking between the other two party members. Rayna patted the seat next to her, and Aria shrugged and took that one.

"So, what have you been up to?" said Lynn.

"Oh, I found another member of my race after like an hour of searching. He told me some stuff about how my shapeshifty powers work."

"Why didn't you just look up your race in the library?" said Lynn.

"Why didn't you just take me with you?" said Rayna, at the same time. They stared each other down for several seconds before bursting into laughter, Aria blinking at them in some confusion.

"Sorry, did you hear either of those?" said Rayna after they had calmed down.

"Ssssort of. I didn't know how my race's name is actually spelled, and I don't know where the library is, and, uh...I didn't think of doing that. Why would you be helpful?"
"I can see people's stats by looking at them, remember? Weird illusionist piercing-the-veil stuff?"

"..Oh. Dang it, I wasted the whole afternoon!"

"Well, you found out what you were looking for anyway, didn't you?" said Lynn.
Aria sighed. "Yeah, but I could've spent that extra time exercising or something to manually improve my sucky base stat pool."

"Can you even do that?" asked Rayna.
"I mean, of all the things I'd think are possible in a game you literally live inside of, that's one of them," said Aria. "It wouldn't make any sense if I lifted a bunch of weights or ran all day and didn't improve myself somehow, and this game uses stats as a way of measuring a person's actual abilities. Oh well, at least I did get a comprehensive look at my skill tree at one point. It basically splits into things that make me better at using the sword, things that make me better all the time, even when I'm not using the sword, and things that make using the sword around people I don't want to hurt less risky. Sometime I need to buy some paper and pens and plot out my build so I can start using the points I got from that ogre thing."

"Why don't you just buy whatever skills look good?" said Lynn, with a bit of a headtilt.

Aria raised an eyebrow, and stared for a few seconds. "Oh, wow, you're serious. Look, I need to min-max, just in general, I'm the kind of person who can't go on knowing there's a way I could've been more powerful or efficient or skilled at something. But that's especially true since here I might actually die and/or go insane because of bloodthirsty sword if I don't pick the right skills. Have I mentioned it's started getting louder again? Are we gonna kill something tomorrow?"

"I, uh, guess we'd better," said Rayna. "We were thinking of looking for an easier quest since Lynn's still a bit hurt, but I'm sure there are easy 'kill-something' quests around. Right?"

"Hm?" Lynn looked like she'd been thinking about something else. "Oh, right." She turned more toward the shapeshifter. "Also. Whenever you do get some paper together and start making plans, we should probably look at all our skills together instead of you just looking at your own."
"I thought you didn't care all that much," said Aria.

"Well, usually I don't, but you're right. Our survival kinda depends on how well we play here. Besides that, it sounded like you were gonna pick the skills best for you as an individual, which is bad if you're supposed to be working with the two of us in a party."
"Oh yeah...I hadn't thought of that. I guess you're right. Rrgh, now I have to go back and re-think the whole general direction I was thinking of going in!"

"Why, were you only gonna take the skills that made you stronger instead of ones that made you saner with the sword out?" said Rayna.

"Uh..no. Of course not."

---

Commentary:

I hit a minor writer's block on Rose meeting the rest of party 1 which will hopefully resolve soon. But I also felt like party 2 was being neglected, so putting in that scene seemed like a good fit.