The "Best" RPG Ever-75

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---

Lynn knocked on Clera's bedroom door. "...Come in," her voice said from inside. She opened the door and entered to find the Empath sitting at her desk with a book on one side and a large piece of paper with several notes scribbled onto the other. She was turned toward Lynn for the moment, but still had a pencil in her hand. "Do you need something?"
"Just wanted to make sure you were okay, after—y'know—tiring yourself out using fire magic," Lynn said.

"I'm well enough," she nodded, "I merely needed to lie down for a moment—so long as I don't push it. Muscle soreness counts as an 'injury', so what little of that there was was gone before we even reached the house."

"Huh. You realize that means..you could theoretically exercise a lot more often than someone without those powers. Hey, with some endurance training, you could get ripped," the archer said with a joking grin.
"I suppose so. Not the most pleasant experience to imagine, however."

"So, what're you studying?" she asked, coming a little closer to try and see.
"Nora bought a book on anatomy. I thought it might help to examine the differences between humans and other races, for medical care." She glanced at the page she was on. "..Unsurprisingly, shifters are the most poorly understood since each one can essentially decide to have or lack any one of a wide number of traits. Evidently they're capable of having keratin horns on the head, hooves or digitigrade hindpaws for feet, furry wings instead of featherd ones, fur on their body in general if desired...most of the possible combinations have had very little study. One's 'default form' is believed to initially match their parents, so I presume Aria is 'from' a community that prefers to appear as human as possible most of the time."

"That almost seems like a waste of a cool power," Lynn said, crossing her arms. "What, you can look however you want, so you decide to look as boring as possible?"

"It's probably far more conducive to friendly interactions with other races. Many a traveler would probably pass up stopping by a village of people who look like winged goats."

"Hah, maybe."

"Oh yeah, I was also wondering if what happened last night made any..noticeable difference?" Lynn said. "Aside from changing how you look in dreams, I mean."

Clera nodded. "It's difficult to explain, but I do feel more comfortable than I did before." She smiled. "I couldn't imagine being 'cute' or wanting to wear dresses before this happened to me, so there was some confusion and distress when I starting having those, desires. But it feels normal now, which is how I would prefer it to feel." And frowned slightly. "I can hardly imagine what Zack is going through, looking back."

"Yeah..." Lynn realized she had gone through something similar. It was one thing to be physically changed into a girl, but another to really feel like one, and still a third to start getting comfortable with it. Rayna had seemed to bolt through the process within a day, but even now she felt a little awkward wearing more feminine clothes. It would be wrong to pressure him into it, but—if changing his body proved impossible, would it be better for him to accept it instead of always fighting?

"Anyway, I'm glad you're alright," she said after a moment, shaking herself out of that train of thought. "I think our finances are pretty good, and now Aria's sword has had a nice big meal, so we can probably take at least today off as far as running off after more monsters goes."

"I would like that," the winged girl said with a small nod. "I think that..." Clera looked toward one of the walls, but it wasn't clear what at. She shook her head after a second. "At any rate, I suspect the others will probably agree to a day off."

---

Katherine sent out a quick message: Alright everyone, lunch is on your own if you haven't already. I'm going out to get groceries.

Already? Rayna thought back.

Yeah, surprisingly enough eight people plus occasional guest or two tend to eat up a lot of food!

You need any help? Lynn asked.

Nope. Perfect memory and psionic carrying capacity, plus an inventory system to stow things in on the way back. So have fun!

Mira was at the kitchen table, eating along with Rose. The dragon-girl had fixated on a piece of raw meat as soon as the magic-equivalent-refrigerator was open and had to be carefully convinced that some leftovers from one of their bigger meals would taste better. Her table manners were no better than before, but the witch just thought it fit well with her wild nature, and even found it a little bit cute—especially when Rose noticed eyes on her and blushed mildly, looking away.

They were nearly done by this point, so Mira nodded. "Well, I've got some boring witch business to attend to in town. You're welcome to stay here if you want, or you could go pester the Captain about the tree thing again."
"Mnmf." Rose gulped her entire mouthful down. "Ah, no no no! She said she'd let me know and I don't wanna annoy her again!"
"Heheh, just teasing. Anyway~, I'll be off once we're done here."
"Mmkmm," the dragon-girl nod-nodded, another chunk of food already in her mouth.

Clera had another visitor by this point. "It is a sensible thing to look for, I suppose, given the existence of..other measures in this world," she said. "But healing magic is fundamentally different from medicine, in that some effects are impossible to produce rather than merely difficult. I...would suggest that that sort of thing falls more under 'curses'? People at a mage college get very interested in what you're up to if you study anything about curses beyond 'breaking them', so I never had much exposure. But historically curses like to be incredibly stubborn, and at best have some specific circumstance to break them by design, which is usually a 'thematic' match to the curse's effects. It's difficult for me to imagine a curse of the latter kind not being inconveneintly easy to break under precisely the circumstances one would want it to hold for that."
"I see..." Nora nodded. "Sorry for d-disturbing you."
"Please." The winged girl gave her a mildly scolding look for the apology. "Any time." She nodded curtly and turned back to her present set of notes, and the elf left.

Downstairs, she met Mira on her way toward the door to town. "Hey Nora," the witch said, taking a couple of steps before stopping, reading her expression. "What's up?"
"U-um..." Nora had her arms down, wrists crossed over near the hips. She fidgeted her hands nervously for a second.

"Well, I'm goin' out to take care of something, if you wanna walk and talk," she offered, raising a hand as if for the elf to hold and be guided by.
"Uh. S-sure," she nodded, but didn't take the hand; after a second Mira seemed to realize what gesture she was making and dropped the arm, starting out to the door with the elf in tow.

A short way past the front door, they encountered the Captain coming the other way. She stopped, looking up at them for a second. "Is Zack in?"

"Yep," the witch nodded.
"Um, h-he's not exactly feeling..." Nora muttered nervously, trailing off.
"All the better, then," Ezra said, brushing past them with no further explanation. The elf turned to watch her go, but couldn't muster the boldness to try to stop her or object.

Once she was out of sight, Nora felt a hand on her shoulder. "Yaah!" It was just Mira, who drew it back cautiously when the elf jumped.
"You okay there?"
"Um..I-I'm. A little worried," she said, wringing her hands.
"Hey, it's the Captain!" Mira said, spreading her arms out. "We can probably trust her. Besides, tough love. Not everything that's good for a person is a lot of fun."
"...I, s-suppose not."

"So Zack isn't feeling well?" she added casually.

"Eep." Despite being the taller one, Nora felt pretty small just now. "Uh, um," she flustered ineffectually, eyes darting around to look anywhere other than the witch's face.

"Well, what did you want to talk about, then?" Mira said, giving her an opportunity to change the subject.

"Well..I-I wanted to know if you knew anything about a c-certain kind of curse," she started. Not a significant change, but enough.

---

"Seriously? Why didn't I think of that?" Aria tried giving herself some big, curly goat horns; it took a bit more effort and time than the usual switching out of ears and tail had, but before long there they were weighing her head down. "Okay, no, this is just uncomfortable. I dunno how Rose puts up with this." She began removing them again.
"Well, hers are a bit smaller for one thing," Lynn pointed out.
"What's smaller?" Rose popped into the library where they were talking, and Aria was glad she'd just finished with the annotated skill tree and stuffed it back into her inventory where it belonged.

"Uh. Horns," the human said after taking a second to recover from her sudden appearance. She tapped the corner of her own head as if to demonstrate. "Not as big as she was making hers a second ago."
"Oh. You can have horns?" she said excitedly, looking at Aria with a starry-eyed expression.

"Sure. Apparently." She reached up and poked at one of the receding ones, letting them grow back out slightly to a pointed shape more similar to Rose's, and still about half the length of hers. It wasn't as bad but it wasn't likely to become a new standard, either. "Remember I lost my memory, so this is news to me too."
"Can you do scales? Or claws? Oh, what about wings?" the dragon-girl bounced around excitedly.

"Uhh—I don't know, probably, definitely but no flight for me," the shifter replied. "Soo, let's check that first one." She lifted her right hand and tried to make it scaled, like Rose's, but just down to the wrist. This proved even more difficult than the horns had, but after a moment's concentration, staring right at the hand, she sported some large, gleaming white scales which seemed to exist as an extra layer on top of her regular skin. "...Neat."
"Eeeee~!" Rose actually squeed, giving both of the others a start. "That's such a pretty color!" she added, leaning in.
"Uh, i-it's just my usual hair color is all..." Aria said, running her unchanged hand across the unusual texture. Maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising that the dragon would have opinions about the aesthetics of scales.

All three of them jumped at a loud knock on the door to town. Lynn exchanged a look with the shifter, silently volunteering to get it, and then left.
"Um, I think I know that knock," Rose said, turning to watch her go.
"Yeah?"
"Uh-huh, it sounds a lot like the one that woke me up yesterday."
"Oh, great. Hope it's not some new disaster," Aria said, crossing her arms.

Lynn opened the door. "Hey, is...something up?" she said.
"Take me to Zack," the Captain replied—an order rather than a question or explanation.
"Uh—sure." She turned around and started toward the stairwell. "Last I remember he was in his room...?"

"Got it." Ezra moved ahead of her, opening the door and starting inside. "This conversation should be private," she added, before turning and darting up the stairs.
"Oh...kay then," Lynn replied after she was already gone.

She headed back to the library to find Aria holding up both her arms, which were now covered in scales up to the sleeves of her t-shirt. Rose was fawning over them with her tail whipping back and forth like an eager dog's.

"I think this has gotten wildly out of hand," the shifter said, letting her take one arm and run her own scaly hands over it. "So what'd the Captain want?"
"Talk to Zack. Apparently it's private though," Lynn said.

"That just makes me want to listen in more," said Aria.

"Maybe don't though," the archer advised, giving a disapproving glare.
"I won't! I have some restraint, you know. Maybe Rayna can hear it anyway, though."
"She's out in the front yard. Something about 'practicing her sight'."

"She could probably eavesdrop on a conversation from there. Not that she should or anything!" Aria quickly added.

"Okay this is officially getting a little weird," she said after another few seconds, pulling her arms away from Rose and taking a big step back.
"Aah! Um...sorry," she took a small step back herself, scraping a hindclaw across the floor bashfully. "I dunno what it was, something just got into me. I-I guess I still have like some really strong instincts about other dragons, or anything that looks like one, or s-something like that."

"It's fine. I..guess you haven't seen another dragon in forever," Aria said, returning her arms to normal. It felt as easy as letting go of a stretched rubber band.
"Yeah. But...other dragons, lots of 'em can be really mean," she said. "I can sorta kinda remember wanting to get away from them 'cause of it."

"Your order had women in it," the Captain said. Zack was standing in the open doorway to his bedroom, his hair a bit messy from lying in bed for the past hour or so staring at the ceiling.
"Some, yeah."
"They bore with this every month; did you ever see them complain?"

He didn't answer, but of course he hadn't.

"I understand that your curse proves unlikely to break soon." Zack just nodded slowly. "Then you should learn what they already knew. Unless you want to be useless for thirty-six or more days out of every year." Without waiting for a further response, she said, "Get your armor on, or at least something you can move around in, and your sword. I'll be in the yard." And then turned and left back down the stairs.

---

Mira came to a particular building owned by the city government. It wasn't out of the question to consider it a kind of apartment complex, with stairs going up four stories and a long, railed balcony lined with the front doors of smallish residences at regular intervals. She scanned the markers on the nearest few doors, identifying which part was the floor number and how the rest of it was arranged, and then made her way up the first two flights and over to a particular door number, knocking on it gently a few times and waiting patiently.

...No response. Either he wasn't home, or they had some equivalent to those fisheye things to let you see who your guest was and he didn't particularly want to see her at the moment. Either way, that was fine; this was done more or less on a whim. She turned around to start to leave, but stopped, noticing exactly who she'd been looking for down below. He hadn't seen her just yet, so she stepped away from the front door to face where he'd end up after going up the stairs.

Loren didn't look happy when he did finally notice her standing there with a pleasant, friendly grin. But his expression wasn't hateful, just annoyed; she took this as a good sign. "Can I help you," he said, half-sarcastically once they were close enough for conversation.
"Only if you really want to~," the witch said teasingly. "Really, there is something I wanted to go over with you in private. Especially away from the others."

"Is it—"
"Not about Aria," she said, easily reading the tiny tint of worry in his expression. "It's more of a favor for me that might help someone else. I was going to bring it up yesterday, assuming I'd convinced you I wasn't evil, but thought better of it."

Loren stared at her for a long moment, as if trying to see something in her face or posture. Eventually he sighed and said, "I suppose we can at least talk about it." He got out his key, unlocked the door, and went inside, holding it open. "Come on in, I suppose."
"Thank you~," Mira said cheerfully, accepting the invitation.

---

Armored up, Zack met Rayna coming the other way. She nodded mysteriously to him and held the door open, and he went outside, the wolf on his heels from the moment he'd come out of the stairwell. Ezra was waiting on an open space of the yard between the training dummies and Mira's magic circle, her own sword already drawn, held seemingly loosely in her right hand with her arms down at the sides. Zack went across from her, about six paces between them, which some part of his new memory said was a standard starting position for sparring. The wolf sat up to his left; the Captain looked at the animal for a second. "Wait over there," she said to it, pointing a ways off to the right. The wolf looked up at Zack for approval.
"Like she said," he nodded slightly, and the wolf immediately took off, stopping where she'd pointed but still sitting up at attention, watching them both intently.

"Draw. I'll give you a few pointers with the sword and shield first," Ezra said, using her free hand to point toward the knight's still-sheathed weapon. He drew it as asked, and she raised her own weapon. Zack watched her carefully, waiting for a movement. Even just standing at the ready, he felt a terrifying presence from her; his instincts and experience practically screamed that this was a far better fighter than he was prepared to even survive against in a serious fight.

She tensed slightly, as if she was about to move toward him, and Zack's body moved automatically in response, to parry it. But instead there was then a sudden, unprecedented change in her manner; her stance and grip relaxed seemingly entirely, and her expression changed to a bright, winning smile. "You have a very cute face~," she said suddenly, in the gentlest, most friendly tone imaginable.

"Wha—"

Ezra moved faster than Zack was able to visually track, and he was on his back with her blade at his throat in an instant. It took him a second to recognize the pain from a recent impact to his stomach and realize she'd hit him with the back of her hilt to knock him over. Her expression was back to its normal, stern self. "You can't afford to let people's reactions to that body distract you," she scolded him while pulling the weapon back, sheathing it, and stepping back to give him room to stand up. Zack slowly pushed himself up, still listening. "If your party has to fight some perverted bandits, do you want to be unable to defend yourself—much less them—just because of what they will say?"

"No." Zack exhaled slowly, shaking his head and trying not to wince from exactly where he'd been hit. "But that was—I was mostly surprised by your..." It was difficult to find the words to describe the magnitude of the shift in demeanor he'd just witnessed.

"Hmn." She nodded. "I thought I was toning it down already, but apparently not enough. Well, now that you won't be surprised let's try that again. Let your guard down and I will knock you on your back again; don't, and I'll teach you a useful technique." Already back at 'sparring distance', she raised her sword to point to him. "Fair enough?"
Zack nodded, gritting his teeth. This was probably going to hurt, maybe a lot, but it was better than letting someone get killed.

---

Mira took an offered chair on one side of a small 'kitchen' table not far from Loren's front door, and he sat across from her. "I think it's fair to say you know a little bit of Zack's situation," she said.
"I..presume to know something, at any rate," he said.
"Good enough. Suffice it to say that he's under a nasty curse, and I'm actively looking for a way to break it," said the witch. "Some of the power I've gained leans in a direction which may be capable of helping eventually, but to even make an effort I first need practice that's rather difficult to come by."

Loren, predictably, gave her a suspicious look. "What..kind of practice?" he asked.

"Well...are you curious what Aria's going through?" she said after taking a brief hesitation to decide how to broach the subject. "I mean, specifically the drastic physical changes going on there? Or have you ever been curious, just a tiny bit?"

"...As harmless as you make admitting that sound—yes. I suppose after I saw what happened to him, I did occasionally wonder how Ares was coping with...that," he said. "Only to find out she's taken to it like it's how she was born. But I really shouldn't be surprised."
"So..?"
"The other question? Not...really. I mean—look, I'm really not the adventurous type. My job takes me all over but I generally like things safe, and drastic physical alteration is really not what I usually consider safe."

"So you'd be willing to try it out if was safe?" Mira said innocently.

"That's not—egh. I suppose what I mean is, that I expect I would find it very strange and at least somewhat unpleasant, personally. It's 'not safe' in the sense that I think I would hate it. Like a 'perfectly safe' guided tour through some caves where an ancient curse makes light magic and firelight not work. I would assume that the experts in charge would ensure paying customers really are in no actual danger, but I still don't think I would much enjoy being in the pitch dark for several hours."

"I get that," Mira said. "Still, maybe you'd try it out if you could abort at any time? Say the word and you get teleported straight back to the entrance. Maybe then it'd be worth spelunking the cave in case there's something really cool in there that you might miss out on anyway, hmn?"
"I'm not sure I like this metaphor anymore," Loren said, blanching slightly.

"Hey, it's your simile~," she said with a teasing tone. And then, leaning forward slightly. "In all seriousness, I'm not interested in pressuring you. This really is the kind of thing a person shouldn't do just because they feel backed into a corner, and I've given some real assurance that my 'victims' would be fully willing. I just wanted to ask whether you'd volunteer."

"Hmm." Loren leaned against the back of his chair, crossing his arms.

"..You can guarantee that I would be able to change back immediately," he said. "Or if I find the...effects deeply uncomfortable before you're even finished."
"Sure," she said. "What I want to try first is something that any general-purpose dispel would catch and undo no problem, even if I don't. And it's no good to me if it's painful or something, but I do need to know that sort of info."

Loren took a long breath inward, and then exhaled. "All right. I suppose it would..help me empathize with her a bit better, if nothing else. And if it's ultimately to help someone, then. Sure."
"Okay, great!" Mira produced a small stack of papers, tapped them against the table a couple of times to straighten them, and then pulled one out, offering it to him before slipping the rest back into her inventory. "I need you to sign this, then."

"What." He took a moment to turn the paper around where he could actually read it.
"It's a permission form!" she explained eagerly. "Not—actually legally binding that I know of, but I've been asked to give assurance that I really have permission to try this magic on whoever I do try it on. Nobody, me least of all, wants me to be seen as a capricious witch who goes around messing with other people's bodies on a whim. There's no magic on that as far as I know, but I'm sure you know some kinda scanning spell or something if you're suspicious."
"...Even if there were, it couldn't enforce anything not written and acknowledged by me on signing," he said, looking up from the paper again. "I've dealt with contract magic before. There's a dragon whose hoard location I know but literally can't reveal because he wanted his teleport crystal to actually work, but only for him."

"Cool, glad you know about that stuff," Mira nodded. "Pen?" she asked, offering one toward him.

"You're awfully prepared for being uncertain how I would respond," he said, slowly taking it.

"Well, you know, I drew all these up and started carrying them with me in case someone ran up to ask me for it. But no such luck just yet," she said. "If there were I probably wouldn't have seriously considered bothering you with it at all."

"Sure you wouldn't..." Satisfied he understood its (very clearly-put) terms, Loren signed the permission form.