The "Best" RPG Ever-25

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Zack made himself pause in front of the mirror before going out to the bath. After all, the others were going to see the girl there with nothing but a towel awkwardly hung around her, so he had to get used to the idea, too.

The towel was large enough to cover from the shoulders down to the knees, but he still felt very exposed. The girl's expression reflected this: A visible blush; a kind of shy, not quite fearful look..ears about halfway between being up and folded flat against her head. He hadn't even noticed before looking that his tail was mostly between his legs, curled partway up but not enough to push at the towel. He took a deep breath, watching the breasts underneath the bit of white cloth go up and down slightly, and then turned around and left for the bath.

This bathhouse was run a little strangely, at least to someone like Zack from Earth where bathhouses usually just had one huge pool for each sex, and the only other option were normal bathrooms that usually fit exactly one person. Instead there were a lot of smaller areas, each of which had a number of changing rooms attached to a single room with a small, heated pool. Maybe it was more like a spa or something.

Somehow, despite how long taking off his armor and clothes had felt, Mika was the only person already here. She had a neon pink towel on and waved at him from an underwater bench. "Hey! C'mon, the water's fine!"

"Yeah, sure." He shuffled over as quickly as he dared in an effort to be sitting down before anyone else could see him from the back in this, and eventually took a couple of careful steps down into the pool, sitting across from the witch.

The water was...actually very nice. It was warm enough to be comfortable without being too hot, and just getting up to his neck in it seemed to cause his body to relax. He rolled his shoulders slowly, having a hard time believing how physically tense he'd been a moment ago.

Mika nodded at him. "Yeah, see? Isn't this better?" He blinked a couple of times before realizing he'd actually let out a small sigh.

"I-I guess so." There was some heat in his cheeks and he looked off to one side, hoping the others would just come in already.

Nora showed up next, her hair out of the gigantic ponytail it was usually in and falling all the way to her knees. "Um..I h-had some trouble with my hair," she muttered, walking up to one of the empty seats and lowering herself into it. "I've n-never really had long hair before, s-so I didn't really know how to undo the uh..thing."

"Well, welcome to the club," said the witch. "I'll help you put it back up after if you want. How d'you like the water?"

"It's nice," said the elf girl, smiling a bit. "I d-don't feel like I've relaxed at all s-since...coming here."

"I know, right? Hey, do you know how much bank we've made from just a few quests? We could take a whole week off and prolly be fine." When she noticed the wolf-girl glaring at her she said, "I mean, not that I'm suggesting we do that, y'know."

Finally, the psion showed up. She was using her powers to hold up the towel rather than her hands, and seemed slightly nervous walking up to the bath. "What took you so long?" said Zack.
"W-well, uh, to be honest I feel like I won't actually like being in water," she said. "I mean, l-like, I'm a little nervous about it.."
"Well, are ya gonna lick yourself clean?" said Mika.

Katherine made a face. "Ew, no, that's disgusting."
"Then get in here already. Just remember you lost a bet."
"Okay, s-sure." The catgirl slowly put one foot into the water and then the other, shook slightly while sitting down, and then finally gave a slight sigh of relief once she was stable.

"Phew...Okay, this isn't bad at all. I don't know why I was so worried."

"Cat thing?" suggested Zack. "You have been eating a lot of fish lately."

"It's not a cat thing," she said, her ears down in annoyance, "It's just...I-I don't know, okay?"

He shrugged, and a moment of silence followed as the four of them just soaked in the warm waters.

"Welllll.." said Mika, "I got some shampoo and brushes!" She pulled out two of each from the floor behind her and offered them to the animal-girls first. "C'mon, your fur's not gonna clean itself!"

They looked at each other and shrugged before taking the offered implements. Mika then offered just some shampoo to Nora before turning attention to her own ridiculous locks.

They were quiet for a moment. The ones with fur had to decide where to actually start the process of cleaning. Zack chose his tail, since it seemed to have the most hair out of all of him even including the head-hair, and besides that required the effort of pulling and holding it in front of himself, which seemed best to get out of the way first. Katherine just started at the top as a person without fur would and included the ears in that. Her tail wouldn't be that big a deal anyway; its fur was relatively short albeit thick.

Before long, Mika started to find the silence boring and decided to provoke some more conversation. "Does being part cat bother you?"

Katherine paused, thinking. "Well, I just...don't like the idea of being seen as a cat person first. What people should see when they see me is a powerful esper who can explode their heads in if they mess with me. Metaphorically and physically." She paused another moment, running the brush over her ears. "Actually I think I like being—well, like this—a lot. I'm fast, flexible, I have a terrific sense of balance. I'm used to being physically awkward, like, I couldn't even keep myself from falling over if I had to stand up on a bus, so this is a pretty nice change to experience. I look great, too, y'know, even if it is as a girl."

"Mm-hm." Mika nodded. "I play a lot of MMO's, and I always go with a girl character first, or main a female-only class, that kinda thing? I'll admit I just like being able to look at the cute girl character models a lot of the time, but it's also kinda interesting seeing people treat me differently just 'cause they think I'm a girl, which I don't tell 'em any different. I guess, uh, actually being one is more than a few steps past that. But I don't really care that much how I look, so it doesn't really bother me either?"

"Is that why you picked the witch class?" said the psion.

"Well, that and it promised ultimate power if I work for it a bit, so that's pretty cool."

The witch glanced over at the weaver. "Hey Nora, what about you?"

"Uh, w-what about me?"

She shrugged. "You don't talk much. Do you like, uuh, what's happened to you here?"

Nora stared into space for several seconds, giving the question some serious thought. "Honestly...I-I think I do."

Zack looked up to frown at her. "Why? You can't even wear normal clothes."

"W-well, yes..but..." She cocked her head slightly to the side. "I mean, th-that bothered me at first, but I hardly even th-think about it now. Besides..."

She paused and sighed slightly. "I..I've always had a c-c-condition, that made my bones more b-brittle and eas-easier to break than most people. I a-actually had a broken leg when I first appeared in th-the weird white room place. It seems like whatever it is that ch-changed us, healed that and even f-fixed the larger problem. Even if I'm n-not that resilient, I'm st-still nowhere near as fragile as I was."

Zack still looked bothered by something, but not specifically the elf. "What?" said Mika, "You don't have anything you like about your body now?"
"Well, I do, I mean I like being strong and having magic powers and sword skills, but it's not worth the price. But that's not what...
"Don't any of you find it weird just how, comfortable, you are looking like that? I mean—even if you say you don't care that much about whether you're male or female, you spent most of your life getting used to a different body. Even if there are things you like about it, it shouldn't feel this...natural...walking around in skin that's not your own. Sometimes..." He took a deep breath, and pointed emphatically to what he was still busy cleaning. "Sometimes I feel like I was born with a tail coming out of my back. It shouldn't..how much of us was actually changed?"

"Hmm," Katherine said. "Well, it's probably not the answer you're looking for, but a grown man isn't born a grown man either. You grow up from being a small child and eventually you feel like you've been grown up your whole life, even though you haven't. Growing up is at least as drastic as the changes that've happened to us, even if it is less sudden."

While he was still processing that, the elf chimed in. "Y-you remember...how you r-responded when I asked you whether your m-mind had been rewritten to match your class?"
"Yeah."

"I th-think, it's something like that. A-at least for me, I don't..well, a-actually I know of one th-thing that has changed, what might be m-mentally? I've, a-actually never had a sp-speech, stutter before picking a cl-class.

"...But I know, I f-feel like that's the only thing that got really changed. I-I mean, I d-don't feel like the way I act or th-think now is in-inconsistent with who I r-remember being before. S-so, you mentioned you're good with a s-sword now and weren't before. Y-you know that that's a difference. S-sword skills are at least pa-partially in the mind, so you know that your mind w-was changed in that way. So you'd kn-know if it was changed in any other way, t-too, unless..."

Zack shook his head. "I can't consider that a possibility. So I guess you're right."

There was another pause with just the sounds of moving water and brushing. Mika again was the one to break it, this time with a "Hey, if we're done with that, do you wanna talk about the house?"

"I guess we'd better," said Zack. "What do you all think?"

"I think it means we'd have to make our own meals, which isn't too bad. I know how to cook," said Katherine.
"A-and, there was that part about defending it," added Nora. "B-but if I recall correctly, we actually s-set up the demon summoning site to the e-east, which is the direction R-Rose's forest is in. S-so we're not that likely to even b-be attacked."
"Well, are you against it?" the witch asked the knight.
He sighed. "I...I really want to be. Staying in an inn feels like we're just here temporarily, until the game is over or whatever, and we can all go home. Owning a house is like giving up, saying we're okay with being stuck here forever. But...to be honest, I like the idea of having my own bedroom again. And that's all just, psychological baggage anyway, I need to get past it. Where we sleep won't affect whether or not we're stuck here."

"So in that case I guess we have a unanimous yes?" Mika looked around the bath. "So the other thing is, if they're actually building it for us I wonder if we can ask for some specific stuff to be there! Like, where the bathrooms are or for them to put in a comfy chair somewhere. Did guard lady even say if it was gonna be furnished or not?"

"She didn't mention that," said Zack. "I don't think we should ask for too much since this whole thing is kind of a favor anyway."

"Still, it'd be helpful to have something to answer back with if she does ask us what we'd like to have in the house," said the catgirl, who by now had started on her tail. "I'd love to have a little library room with some bookshelves and a couple of reading chairs. Maybe a practice dummy so I can keep working on my aim with the knives..."

---

"—and correct me if I am wrong—you're saying all three of you had essentially the same experience as I did."

Rayna shrugged. "More or less."

The winged woman thought for a moment. "But there were some specific differences. You could say that I appear to have been changed by the...ghost, let us call it, while you were changed by...some kind of smoke?"

"Right."

"...And the one we're carrying by drawing that sword form the ground."

"Fun fact," cut in the archer, "this is the third time in a row our little group has collectively had to carry someone into town. The second time it was me, because an ogre cracked my ribs."

The Doctor thought about Lynn running around and shooting a bow a couple of minutes ago. "...How long ago was that?"

"Just yesterday. The healer set it and gave me a potion and I think it's pretty much gone."

"Nnrrgh...that is not how healing works, accelerated or not. Damaging the ribcage should—you ought at least to still be too sore to move unless you are so high on painkillers that your head is scraping the moon!"

"Look, I don't know what to tell you other than 'magic'. Didn't you just fly ten minutes ago?"

Dr. Kellen's wings semi-unconsciously stretched themselves, unfurling slightly and folding back up, while she considered the physical plausibility of a humanoid, even a relatively short one like herself, actually flying through the air. "...Fair point.

"...I think I lost the subject for a moment. What do you think the different specific modes of change mean? It could very well be some clue to why or how we're here in the first place."

"Well, they definitely have to do with our classes, I think," said the foxgirl. "I mean, definitely Aria, her class is all about the demonic sword. And my class is all about perception; the smoke went directly into my eyes. I'm not sure about Lynn or you, though. You said the ghost thing had wings?"

"Correct."
"Well, you also wound up with wings, but that's more...race, than class, I think."

"What do you mean, 'race'? My complexion changed somewhat, but I didn't.."
"Like, fantasy race?" said Lynn. "You know, orc, elf, hobbit?" Seeing a lack of recognition, she explained: "In a typical fantasy setting—like the one we're currently walking through—'races' of people are defined not by the color of their skin but by significant physiological differences, stuff like having pointy ears and immortality, or fuzzy parts, or wings."

"Oh."

"If you're interested," added Rayna, "illusionist-sight tells me your race right now is 'half-Avian'."

"Why half?" said Lynn, "What's the other half?"
"I don't know." After a pause, she said, "Hey, actually, I've seen some people with like harpy wing-arms in town, so maybe those are full avians?"
"Why would the offspring of two different kinds of people, each of which has only four appendages, have six?" asked the doctor.

"You know, and correct me if I'm wrong," said Lynn, "but I'm pretty sure just the genetics stuff of mixing someone who has feathers with someone who doesn't probably needs magic to work in the first place, so it just goes ahead and tacks on something else that doesn't make sense."

"Well, not medical sense at least," said her friend. "It makes a kind of sideways logical sense, though. You put together someone with wings and someone with arms and you get someone with wings and arms."

"It's quite disturbing to think of a force actively making things work the way a naive person thinks they should," said Dr. Kellen.

"Oh, uh...we should probably come up with some reason why you're with us," said Lynn. "Because we don't really want everyone in town to think you're crazy, and that's what'll happen if you talk about waking up in a white room and having your body changed by a menu box and a ghost."

Dr. Kellen shrugged. "Simple enough. I was flying toward the town when I was interrupted by the bird. You distracted it so that it did not hurt me, and out of a mixture of gratitude and self-defense I helped you destroy it."

"Yeah, but this whole 'frontier' land we're in is apparently really well-known to be dangerous and full of monsters," said Rayna. "Why would you just be going alone?"
"Obviously I thought I would be safer in the skies than on the ground, enough to not require a companion."

Lynn and Rayna exchanged a look while shifting Aria off of Dr. Kellen's shoulders and onto theirs. "Do you, uh, want to stick with us once we get there?" said the archer. "I mean, we kind of assumed you'd want to join our party but there's no reason you really have to."

"I would rather remain with someone sharing the same plight," said the Empath. "Besides, at least for the moment I cannot imagine trying to comprehend this world on my own."

"It's surprising how fast it makes sense, though," said Rayna. "But...I guess you don't play a lot of video games?"
"None at all."
"Aah, that might make it more of an uphill battle. Can't speak for sleeping beauty here, but Lynn and I have been playin' games together for years, and a lot of stuff here is just kind of borrowed from those one way or another. I should probably start with explaining the skill tree and status menu stuff, then..."