The "Best" RPG Ever-78

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Nora confirms that she did not, Katherine replied to the fox-girl's question—although she had mostly been thinking it to herself. And Zack and Mira both had more...pressing things to talk about.

Well—can I borrow the gem to try and chase her down then? Rayna asked, setting the book on an end table and getting up to go into the kitchen.

Of course, Nora replied, patched through by the psion.

Once she had it in hand, the fox-girl headed for the door to town at as brisk a pace as she could comfortably manage, and threw the door open to find somebody already waiting on the other side. It wasn't Ezra, but a certain wolf-eared guard instead, with his hand raised to knock on the door. "Er.."
"You want me to shut it again so you can knock?" she offered, with a teasing grin.
"Naw, it's just a pretty odd happenstance ta.."
"Yeah. You wanna talk to Lynn?"

"Right," he nodded.
Maybe he shouldn't have; Rayna turned around and yelled "Lyyynn! Your boyfriend's here!"

"Err..." The Canis man's ears drooped in embarrassment, but he let her wave him inside.

"She's in the library, through the living room and to the left," the fox-girl said, pointing. "Now I need to go see if I can catch the Captain, or at least make an appointment at the guardhouse. Have fun," she winked.
"Uh, s-sure." His hand was behind his head, his expression one of total embarrassment by now. Rayna decided that was the perfect way to leave him, and headed outside, her tail semi-accidentally brushing against the tip of his on the way and making him jump before she gently pushed the door shut.

In the library, Lynn had been busy pointing out some of the flowers Rose had told her about in the book of flowers to the witch, the dragon-girl cheerfully adding her own commentary, when Rayna's yell came. "Gaah! I swear, does she really have to put it like that? Or, yell it to the world?!" she said. Mira, predictably, just laughed at her annoyed/embarrased reaction, while Rose seemed uncertain how to react and just looked back and forth between them for a moment.

"Well, it is true isn't it? You said you kissed him on your last date," the witch teased.
"Yeah, but like—we're not technically steady yet. And I don't, know where it's going. It's way too soon for that kinda label," she protested.
"But he's your friend, and a boy," Rose said innocently, "right?"

"I think you know full well what the word means," Lynn said, slightly mortified even the typically ultra nice dragon-girl was teasing her about it now.

"Uh, hello in there?" Rast poked his head into the door. "This the—oh, hey miss Lynn!" The rest of him came inside at this point, the girls turning to face him.
"Yeah, hi. Uuhhmm, what's up?" Lynn's speech instantly turned awkward, her stance all weird with her legs crossed over each other, and her cheeks got irritatingly warm as the first thing her brain jumped to was how they'd parted ways the last time she saw him. It was especially bad to get like this in front of the others, too.
"Well, aah, I got the rest of the afternoon off, and, I was wonderin' whether you were busy or not," he said, almost equally awkward. After a second or two, he registered that there were other people present. "Oh, hey! I, don't know that we've properly met before, uh..?"

"Mira," the witch nodded, "maybe you've seen me like this?" She shifted to her smaller, 'original' form, which only made him jump back slightly in surprise.

"Gaah! Uh. Y-you a, uh, shifter?" he said, visibly nervous.
"Witch, actually. Nice witch. And this is Rose~," she added, gesturing toward the dragon-girl.

"Oh, yeah. Think I saw you out the window for a second a coupla days ago. Pleased to formally meet ya, miss Rose; heard nothin' but good about you," he said, offering a hand toward her.

"Heehee." She took it gently, seemingly starting to get used to managing handshakes without clawing the other party's hand. "Your hair's really cute~," she said.
"Eh." Rast's voice audibly caught in his throat; he did not know how to respond to that for a second or two. "Uh. Thanks. 'S just, uh, a family tradition of sorts," he half-recovered, running a hand through said hair nervously.

"Anyway, you were saying?" Lynn interrupted, wanting the awkward introductions over with as soon as physically possible.
"Oh! Ah, I thought you might like to uh..go somewhere, or, somethin'," the wolf-boy said nervously. "I didn't 'zactly plan anything out, this was sorta last minute, but.."

"Well, we were about to show off Rose's amazing plant knowledge to a herbalist," Mira chirped. "Or at least go looking for one anyway. If you'd like to join in?"
"You two don't need me for that," Lynn said, crossing her arms disapprovingly. Ever since the word 'witch' Rast had been eyeing her nervously, and it didn't seem like a good idea to push him into interacting with her for too long without a chance to first convince him in private that she was not going to boil him in a cauldron or something.

"True~. But if you're looking for something to do there are certainly worse ideas," she said. "Lemme see the book at least."
"Oh, yeah." It had been tighly gripped in her left hand since Rast arrived. "Here," she offered it to the shortened witch, who took it with a little nod and gave an exaggerated wave to Rose. The dragon-girl took the hint after a second or two, and followed, nodding and waving goodbye to Rast along the way.

He watched them go before eventually looking back at Lynn. "Well, Rose seems pretty nice," he said. "An' Mira, she's..ah..really a..?"
"A witch? Yeah," she nodded. "I can certainly understand if you've got a bad stereotype for that. She's really committed to being good though, or as she puts it 'nice'. If you've heard of Rose, you must've heard of Zack's party, right?"

"Oh, sure. Just..somehow I didn't believe she was really a witch," he said. "Thought she was just some kinda gimmicky mage or somethin'."

"I have personally seen her consume a demon's soul," Lynn reported. "Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about them in general?"

"Err, I hope this won't upset you or her too much, but the only thing I ever heard of witches or warlocks before were bedtime stories. Y'know, the kids ran away from home and wandered into a witch's house, or how a group a' heroes used the power a' friendship to take down a warlock terrorizin' the land. Guess I'm conditioned to think of 'em as villains, is all."

"True, fair-minded stories of them are few and far between," Lynn said. "I do know one, though. Take a seat?" she offered, waving to one of the library's chairs.
"Oh. Sure," he said, and she sat across from him, leaning forward to tell a...slightly embellished version of Mira's backstory for him.

Lyle had always been decent at dramatically reading text, and really just oration in general. Spinning a tale was something a bit different, but Lynn's experience was rich with it. It was just one of those things that traveling performers tended to do now and then, and while her memory informed her that Rayna was far better at it than she was, her own experience was nothing to sneeze at either. It was curious pulling from experiences which—realistically—she knew she'd never really experienced, but it felt just as natural as using knowledge or talent gained on Earth. It felt as if it was still hers, after all.

At any rate, Rast was enraptured by it. She managed to maintain her cool, but her heart beat a little faster to see him paying such rapt attention, and especially when she really noticed his tail wagging. Eventually she came to the end of the story (which was Mira running away, not Griselda's death), and then made it clear who she was talking about.

The wolf-boy leaned back slightly. "Is that really what she's been through?" he said after a moment to take it all in.

"Well, close enough anyway," Lynn replied, sitting up herself. "I'm sure I missed a detail or two." Like the part where she'd been born male; it seemed like an irrelevant detail to her present point. "But maybe you can understand—her idea of what a witch should be goes back to those early days when a nice lady would chase away the bullies and help out those who couldn't help themselves. Just because her teacher didn't completely live up to that ideal doesn't mean she can't aspire to it herself."

"Well, I suppose it explains a thing or two anyhow."

He looked around the room for a second or two. "You know, miss Lynn, you've got a real knack for tellin' stories," he said. "I sorta forgot where I was for a little while."
"Well, I do try," she said faux-humbly, with a confident grin. "You wanna hear another one with a bit of a happier ending?"
"Sure!" He leaned in again, his tail wagging cutely and making her want to dive over on top of him. It was going to be difficult to maintain her composure the whole time if he kept that up...

---

Nora looked around nervously while the catgirl walked out of the stairwell next to her. Who's up here right now?

Let's see..Aria and Zack. She's in her room, he's in..my bathroom. Mira's hot tub she wanted; don't blame him after that workout.

We probably shouldn't use your room, then, the elf thought.Agreed. He might...hear us either way, but I'm as mortified as you are at the idea of him accidentally walking out into my bedroom or something. Why didn't we specify we wanted a third door out of the bathrooms to the halls?

Didn't think of it at the time, Nora replied, starting toward her own room. We could probably request something like that, however. There's open space in that direction in ours at least.

Katherine followed, and once they were inside she telekinetically shut and locked the door, and also the one in the bathroom leading to Zack's bedroom. After that, they...stood there looking at each other for a minute or so, each just as apprehensive as the other. Eventually, to break the silence the psion half-whispered aloud, "Um..s-so, how do you..how do we do this exactly?"
"Um..i-it just sort of..." Nora reached a hand over, hovered it above the catgirl's head for a couple of seconds, and then dropped it again. "M-maybe we should be sitting down first!" she said quickly.
"Yeah. Yeah, okay," Katherine agreed, backing up and sitting on Nora's bed. Her face was red from even coming that close to contact, or maybe from reading the elf's thought of touching her ears. But she knew she wanted this, and wasn't going to let her awkward body stop her from at least giving it a try.

Nora sat next to her, and then slowly moved her hand toward the catgirl's head again, from the back this time. Eventually she couldn't take it anymore and said "Would you hurry up already!" in a sharp whisper.

"Eep. Um. O-okay," Nora said, finally lowering her hand and rubbing the kitty ears a little bit. "H-how's that?" she asked, noticing the recipient's silence. In reply, Katherine just slumped slowly over into Nora's side and rubbed her head against her chest for a second or two before realizing what she was doing (the elf being too stunned to even move) and snapping back upright again, her tail standing straight up and her face one giant blush.

"That was, sorry! I didn't mean to do that!" she said aloud while thinking height difference repeatedly into Nora's head.
"I-it's okay. Um..here," she leaned around and gently picked the psion up, pulling her around into a hug high enough for their chests to squish together and—more importantly—their faces to be at about the same level. Then she resumed scratching Katherine's ears without being asked, finding it a little easier now that she'd done it once.

"Mrrrh~" the catgirl purred softly. You're really good at this, she communicated mentally while leaning in, starting to nuzzle the elf's cheek. I thought cats were supposed to be picky about how you pet them, but I just don't care at all...

"Heheh.." Nora giggled softly, leaning slowly back onto the bed and taking Katherine with her. Maybe I just know the secret, she thought. Or you're telling me in my head without me knowing it.

"Mrow~." As they lay down, the psion pulled her arms around Nora, mewing softly. This is the most I've sounded or felt like a cat since ever, she thought to the elf. It was difficult somehow not to send her thoughts toward Nora, even when she was mostly just thinking them to herself...

It's cute, she replied, starting to nuzzle back. You should do it more often.

Not a chance. "Mow. Mrr~rrn." You're super pretty too, you know.

The elf's cheeks grew warmer from the compliment, and she let out an audible sigh, a high, breathy "Haahh~" as she began to really enjoy the catgirl's body against her own. She slowly turned them over onto their sides, and ran one of her hands down through Katherine's long, dark hair before smoothly sliding it the rest of the way down to the base of her tail.

"Ah~!" She made a much more human noise all of a sudden and jumped slightly, feeling the hand move right across where skin met fur. "Mnnh, mrrrRRrrh~...!" That was, oh wow I am way too sensitive right there, she thought while her nuzzling grew slightly more enthusaistic.

I would say you're just sensitive enough, Nora replied with a slight mischievous tone. Your tail feels really nice, too. It was an exerpience entirely different from Zack's giant, fluffy wolf tail: A slim line of soft, short fur with the palpable warmth of her body just behind it.

"Mrow." Cats are better, after all, Katherine thought back, picking up the full extent of the elf's enjoyment of her tail.

"Mnnh.." She moved her hand back up to the ears, rubbing and petting them gently and enjoying Katherine's soft purrs.

Soon, the catgirl picked up something unusual in Nora's sensory information. Is that it? she asked, accompanying another soft, high mew.

"Mnnhmm," Nora murmured softly. That's..you, she replied, running a hand back down to the psion's tail for a second time. We're almost there, I feel.

"Mrr—mroow~!" Katherine squirmed slightly in the elf's arms at the feeling of her tail being touched again. And, with Nora's hand running across it, she purred a little more loudly, feeling her affection for the elf briefly overflowing into something utterly ineffable, yet so easy to communicate from mind to mind—and from soul to soul. In that moment, Nora quietly took hold of the connection formed between them and did something Katherine couldn't fully understand, much less express, and then—before any physical change occurred at all—she became aware, somehow, of a fellow feline being in her arms.

"Mmnh, aah..!" Nora began to change then, her body rapidly shrinking in height. Her ears tingled as fur spread across them, and they grew into triangles a bit smaller than the ones she sported in wolf form. "Mnh, mrrn, mrroo~oow..." She squirmed slowly, feeling her muscles loosen up, growing more flexible and agile; a slim, feline tail sprouted from her back and rapidly grew to its full length as her transformation completed, leaving her a full foot shorter than usual—still quite tall for a girl, and much taller than Katherine, but a fairly drastic change all the same.

"Mow." Now you get it, the psion said, nuzzling her again and pulling up a hand to rub her newly fuzzy ears. You make a pretty cute kitty, too...

"Mrrh..mew~," Nora let out in a higher voice than usual. Not as cute as you. Her tail curled forward and met Katherine's above them, twirling together as they both gave in to the animal instinct, pulling closer and continuing to gently pet and nuzzle each other.

---

Once the hot tub was full, Zack removed the rest of his clothes, picked out a bath salt that was supposed to be "soothing" and dumped a little of it in, and then sat down inside with a slow sigh. His body's tension melted off, apart from the relatively mild pain of the bruises, which he got to work using healing magic on after a little bit. The worst welts were all around his stomach; Ezra knew exactly where to hit to make it hurt.

He wasn't bothered at all to be nude here, not in total privacy with both of the doors locked and the wolf lying in front of the one to Mira's room supposedly 'standing guard'. He was used to what his body was now, even to seeing it unclothed, and mostly he just didn't want anyone else gawking at it. Looking down, he found it to be as curvy, pretty and muscular as always; now that it was officially a curse keeping his body like this there was some concern that it might somehow weaken him or something to emphasize femininity more, but it seemed there was no such component to the spell. According to his memories from this world, he looked the same as—if not stronger than—the day after it had happened.

After a moment, Zack brought a finger up and prodded at his chest a couple of times with it, frowning and feeling his ears fold back a bit. From outside the appeal of these things, at this size, seemed obvious enough...but from inside they were just irritating, especially when they were so big. They demanded support or else threatened a serious backache; they were always getting in the way; and more than anything they seemed like a constant, unconcealable reminder to both himself and everyone else of just how female his body was.

He slid the finger down a bit from the spot, and observed that they were also annoyingly sensitive. That was something Mira—so also Katherine—probably knew about; but even if he couldn't trust them not to tease him occasionally at least they knew to keep quiet about this. On the other hand, his fuzzy ears and tail were apparently 'obvious' targets, and the size of the latter made it nearly impossible to keep someone away from it if they really wanted to annoy him that way.

He brought the gigantic fluffy tail in front of him, hugging it close, running a hand through its thick, wet fur and brushing his cheek across it for a second or two. It was hard not to appreciate how soft and warm it was, like a big furry pillow.

"Mrrnh.."

He caught himself making a soft, animal churring noise and quickly let go of the tail, swinging it back behind him where it belonged. Even though nobody else had seen or heard any of that he was blushing a little bit in embarrassment. Having some sort of animal instincts was less new to him than it had been the first few days here, but even his "extra" memories thought he had turned a little bit...wilder somehow since the changes to his body. Given the focus of every other physical change, it was probably supposed to be "cute" or something. And the worst thing about that was that it probably was cute to everyone else, and there really wasn't much he could do about it. It had been...easier than usual to keep them under wraps the day before, as if letting Nora pet him and then holding onto her all night afterward had "tamed the beast" or something, while cutting it off halfway last night for—obvious reasons—hadn't been quite as effective.

Thinking about Nora for a moment...she was really cute. Well—that wasn't much of a surprise overall, really; every person who lived in this house was some mixture of pretty, cute, and gorgeous that he would've gone out with in a heartbeat if male. It was a special kind of torment, maybe, to be aware of it yet not have the body to feel it—but he wasn't the sort of person to be particularly upset by that, either. If anything (and he hated to admit this, but) it was probably better this way: Being the only actual guy in a house with seven others who'd become girls sounded like the plot of a stupid harem anime or something, and he was disgusted by the very idea of it. He wouldn't have moved in with them at all; he'd rather live alone than in that kind of awkward situation. And that was terrible to imagine, since they were also the only ones who would understand what he was going through as far as being pulled into this world from Earth by, of all things, a supposed video game.

Zack had closed his eyes at some point during this thought, and out of idle curiosity he brought up his skill menu. There were several new skill points of each kind as a result of the brief training session with the Captain. He had suspected some might appear, as some kind of 'role playing' or 'active training' bonus, but it was two or three times what seemed like a resonable amount, enough to make some significant progress. Since he wasn't really doing anything else anyway, now seemed like a good enough time to decide what exactly to buy.

---

"Aren't you gonna change back?" Rose wondered, on their way out the door.

"Nah. I like to be in the 'compact' form every now and then," the witch said. "Somehow or other, being short doesn't bother me at all. Anyway, I guess we need to figure out where an herbalist might live...oh! The healers use that kinda stuff sometimes, for sure, so maybe their receptionist would have an idea," she said.

"Hey, you know that bird girl? Uh um," Rose tried to remember a name she wasn't sure she hadn't heard but once, if that.

"I'm not sure, but 'bird girl' may be offensive to Avians y'know. Kayriel?" Mira prompted.

"Mhm! I wonder if she'd be interested in a race. I bet you could beat her on your broom, but my flying still feels super rusty."

"I can almost guarantee she'd love a race. She might accuse me of cheating, though. Maybe it can wait until my wings go full-flight-size."
"Are they gonna do that?" the dragon-girl asked, headtilting.
"Probably? Nora's guess was that these are embryonic," she said, reaching back with an arm and forward with a wing so she could poke it, "and they did get a little bigger when I swallowed the third demon. Soo, if I eat enough of 'em to change form again then it may happen then."

"Cool~," she said. "We could really race then. Oh! Or if you don't actually know how flying works I could teach you. Maybe Clera could help!"
"I'm sure she'd be a great teacher, yep." They were coming to the front door of the healers' place, interrupting the conversation for a moment.

After getting a description of what they were looking for, the receptionist gave them the address of a herbalism researcher, rather than their supplier—who he suggested probably wouldn't be much help. Mira got out a bit of paper to scribble the address down on, and then they were on their way out again.

"Um...hey. A-about uh, what we talked about earlier," Rose said quietly.
"Which thing? We've talked quite a bit today." The witch was pretty sure she knew exactly what she meant, but it was important to get her to refer to it by name.
"Uh, Earth," she said, half-whispering. "I-is um. Like. I was wondering, if the others—I mean like Zack, Rayna, Lynn..all of them. Are theeeyyyy, like you are?" she asked awkwardly.
"Whatever gives you that impression?" Mira said smoothly.

"W-well it's just. I-I remember one morning I was on my way down the stairs, at the inn place, and I thought I heard like um, someone talking about something weird. So, I put my ear to the wall and I heard you—um, Zack, Nora, Katherine and you—talking about how things were on 'earth'. A-at the time I just thought, 'heeyy, that sounds weird,' and didn't wanna talk about it, but um.."

"I did guess you'd figure it out eventually," Mira said. "Yep. In that house lives the collection of every person I know who's from Earth. It's a big part of why we chose to move in together in the first place. It's such an unusual experience that there's almost no way to talk to about it to anyone who hasn't been there. The idea was we could be alone there, and talk freely about things that'd make us sound crazy around anyone else."

"I see..."

"I hope you'll be understanding if we talk about some stuff that doesn't make sense to you, when it's just us and you there," the witch continued. "We're getting used to holding our tongues about Earth around guests, but for as often as I'd love you to be around, it might get frustrating otherwise. This way I could tell the others that you know about us, and not to worry about what we say if it's just you."
"Oh-okay," the dragon-girl said. "That's fine with me. I-I don't understand a lot of stuff anyway, ahahah," she fake-giggled nervously. Mira could tell this was getting dangerously close to making her uncomfortable about her own situation, but fortunately an interruption of the topic presented itself in the form of them arriving at the given address.

"Ah, here we are!" she said, getting out the paper to double check and then pointing at the door. "Now, I wonder which of us would terrify the researcher the least by knocking on the door."
"Uhhm, I-I think you should do it. I dunno like how strong the door actually is and I don't wanna break it by accident," Rose said.

"Heehee. Okay, I'll knock as long as you stand in clear view so they'll see you first," she said, moving to the door and giving it a few gentle raps.