The "Best" RPG Ever-83

 First / Previous / Next / Latest

---

Back on Earth, Mira had never actually had a pet. Even though she could have once she started living on her own, she just didn't feel the need for it. It was better not to have one than to potentially neglect it, after all, spending several hours off at work and several more sitting around playing games. Still, she'd had a few friends with reasonably friendly pets—dogs, mostly. Well, petting a fox-girl wasn't at all like petting a dog, but..it was about equally relaxing. It was nice to feel Rayna's hands moving through her hair and across her back as if petting her back in return, and her soft, smooth face nuzzling the witch's cheek. Besides, she was gorgeously curvy, and it would be impossible for her to deny the appeal of that soft, squishy, lovely body pressed against Mira's own.

Rayna's soft churring was almost hypnotizing, and her fur and hair was so fluffy and well-groomed. She could almost go so far as to say she'd missed this the night before. But while the petting might temporarily shut a beastfolk mind like Rayna's down, it left Mira's perfectly intact for whatever came to it to think about—in this case, introspection.

The powers she'd gained since eating that Incubus—nearly everything attached to that branch—all had the potential to be distressingly predatory. It would be so easy, if she were careless, to start taking advantage of them—which meant taking advantage of people against their will. Or, perhaps against what their will would be in their right mind, which was equally bad. She wasn't a complete psychopath, and even if she did slip up things weren't going to end up like what Tsaron had shown her...but even just forcing her will onto someone else was horrible enough to her. She had no firsthand experience, of course, but...enough experiences had been shared with her in confidence for the very idea to make her sick.

Besides just being problematically exploitable, it was sort of obvious her powers could do this, the more one knew about them. Based on Loren's reaction, Incubi were a recognized kind of demon, at least among magic-users, so there could be folklore about them too. It wouldn't be difficult for someone to make the association from what her magic was capable of doing, to misconstrue anything she did as predatory even when it wasn't. Or to accuse her of doing something to them against their will when it hadn't been. It was important only to exercise those kinds of powers around people she actually trusted, as much as she was able to control it at least.

Having the Incubus' soul and powers in her seemed to give Mira a certain set of instincts, too, which hadn't been present before the transformation that had resulted from that third demon. She was more...interested in the female form than she had been since changing into one herself, it seemed; her powers gave her an awareness of where they were...sensitive, and flowery compliments of any pretty girl she looked at popped into her head rather easily, although she usually refrained from actually saying them aloud. It was hard to deny that the way her powers changed boys into pretty girls was fun to watch/experience/perform, too...

Everything could be kept in check, ignored completely if she wanted; the powers were clearly under her command and not the other way around. But as long as there was a willing participant it was almost hard not to go along with said person's desire. She could 'tell' Rayna liked being called cute, pretty, beautiful—so it felt almost wrong not to do it. On the other hand, she could 'tell' Katherine had a certain amount of apathy toward such compliments, and Zack was openly hostile to them, all on a level below the conscious thought that gave her rational reasons for it, which suggested this sense, too, was rooted in Incubus powers, and possibly even reliable. She didn't need to read the fox-girl's mind to know when she did or didn't want petting...it was as if she was reading her body instead.

Well, it had been a good while now, she thought. Slowly, the witch dropped her hands away from the tall, vulpine ears and placed them around the vixen's waist, her tail slinking off of Rayna's huge, fluffy one; then she gently pulled them apart.

"Mrrnh~..." Rayna slowly opened her eyes, and looked around, blinking a couple of times as if just waking up. "Hmnh?"
"It's getting a bit late. Think I should go offer to trun Rast back to normal," the witch said, gently placing the fox-girl on the seat away from her.
"O-oh. Yeah..." She blushed slightly, but nodded and stood herself up. "Thanks..."
"No problem~." Mira got up, too. "We can continue afterward, if you like."
"Oh, um.." Rayna's blush deepened for a second, especially when the tip of Mira's tail ran along hers from base to tip. "Mrrnh~..y-yeah, I'd like that," she nodded slowly.

"Okay. Let's go."

It was hard not to see Rayna's disappointment when they found Lynn and her transformed boyfriend already separated, although they were still sitting very close, the wolf-girl's tail wrapped around the back of the Lynn's waist. She looked up, and Rast followed her gaze, slowly turning around; both of them also sported a light blush. "Oh, uh, h-hey," Lynn said.
"Hello~. You two have fun?" said Rayna with a sly grin, her ears rising back toward vertical again.

"You could say that, yeah,"
"Heheh.." Rast giggled, slowly pulling her tail off of her girlfriend and standing up a bit unsteadily while turning to face the witch. "I ah, think I oughta turn back pretty soon," she said, putting a hand behind her head.
"Of course," Mira said with a nod. "Whenever you're ready?"

The wolf-girl looked uncertainly back to Lynn, who hopped out of her own seat, pulled Rast into a close, frontal hug (which was eagerly, tail-waggingly returned) for a moment, and then spun her back around to face the witch. "Okay, thaaat's enough," she said.

"Y-yeah," the wolf-girl agreed, nodding.
Mira gave a quick nod, and chanted a simple dispel, waving a hand toward Rast. In a matter of seconds her breasts deflated, her figure flattening away as she grew back up to male height; her hair lost its spikes, growing back to the usual length while all of the fur and hair resumed its pitch-black coloration. Rast's clothes changed back at the same rate, until he was left standing there back in the exact same appearance he'd had coming in.

"So, you seemed to enjoy yourself, but do you feel any different about the whole experience now that you're back?" Mira asked.

Rast took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "It was ah..little intense. B-but I think I sorta liked it, still." He looked back to Lynn and then to the witch again. "I'd be happy to uh, let ya go again some other time if it'll help."

"Good to know. Well, I'll leave you two to your goodbyes then," the witch said, brushing her tail against Rayna's again as she took off toward the stairwell. The fox-girl visibly shuddered, then responded to a questioning look from Lynn with a shrug before starting to follow.

"Don't have too much fun without me, now," Rayna advised, waving.

Rast watched them leave, slowly turning to face Lynn again in the process. "They're...a little odd, huh?" he said.
"Like either of us can talk," Lynn replied, standing on her tiptoes and wrapping her arms around him. He took the cue to pick her up into a hug, and she rubbed one of his ears with her left hand, keeping the other arm around his waist.
"Mr..rrf!" he barked softly, the blush still present from his time as a woman growing much brighter, and pulled Lynn's head closer, starting a long, mildly passionate kiss that left both of them slightly breathless. After that he gently set her down and took a small step backwards away from her.

"G, guess I oughta leave before I do somethin' I'll regret, huh," he said, looking slightly off to one side.
"You and me both, mister. I'll see you again soon, though," Lynn said, taking one of his hands gently and starting to lead him toward the front door. "I guess since you met my 'family' it's only fair if I meet yours pretty soon, too."
"Hahah...yeah. That's alright with me," he said. "They've already started askin' about you, y'know."

"Uh-huh? What kinda questions?"
"Just..y'know..usual stuff. What y'all are really like, ah. That sorta thing."

"Guess I can hear it from the horse's mouth when I come for a visit, anyway."
"Sure."

They stood awkwardly in front of an open door to town for a moment, until Lynn pulled herself into another close hug, this time burying her face in his chest for a moment and letting him run a hand through her hair, another one across her back briefly. Then they let go, nodded quietly to each other, and he slipped out the door, letting it close behind him.
Lynn allowed herself a satisfied sigh. She still didn't really know what she was doing, where they were going with all this...but honestly that was starting to turn into part of the appeal.

---

Katherine entered Aria's dream to find her sitting cross-legged facing away from the demon's void. Rather than staring at the usual wall of static, she had one of her memories of a conversation with Loren "playing". Shortly after the psion appeared, she turned, noticing her, and waved. "Yo. Seems like I can put anything I remember up on the 'screen'...well, anything from this world anyway. It's better entertainment than static, at least." The scene in front of them fuzzed out back to the usual visual noise as she spoke. The catgirl came and sat in front of her.

"You're asleep pretty early."
"Yeah, well—I figure I must just be tired in general, after taking an unintentional nap this afternoon," Aria said. "Hey, if it's so early then why're you asleep too?"
Katherine sighed. "Just be thankful you don't have animal ears all the time. Or mind-reading that never stops."

"Aww, are you sure you don't want some head pats?" the shifter teased with a wide grin.
"Someone else should be asleep soon for me to be able to 'fix' the static for the night," she said, ignoring the offer entirely.

Katherine continued: "Anyway, something's bothering you. Right?"

"Yeah. I thought I was doing a great job hiding it, though."
"From a mind-reader?"
"Sure! If I don't think about it then you're not reading it." Aria sighed. "So I guess I must be thinking about it, huh."

"A little bit, at least. You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. But..." The psion looked around. "This is about as private a conversation as we could get. And I have a pretty good sense of discretion, if I say so myself."

"Eh..this isn't exactly something that should stay a secret to everyone," the shifter said. "If...I mean if it's relevant then it's sorta everyone's business. That's kinda the problem."

"Still, you want some kind of advice before making a decision, right? That doesn't have to involve everyone."

"That's true..."

"So..Loren's pretty smart, right? You've seen his mind. I know he's smart, just so we're clear."
"Okay," Katherine conceded this point.
"And I've been acting suspiciously around him this whole time. Saying weird stuff, asking him about terminology he doesn't recognize. More than that, though, I haven't exactly been playing the amnesiac all that well."
"How so?"
"I'm too..you know..together. No angst, no confusion. No...I dunno, worrying I did something horrible he doesn't know about and it could come back to haunt me. I'm not lost in this world. I made a bunch of amazing friends within a week just because we more or less bumped into each other. A person who doesn't remember anything should be..super cautious of anyone that friendly. But I wasn't with you, and I sure wasn't with him. He's had all kinds of opportunity to lie to me about who I was, and if he thinks I'm not stupid then the fact that I haven't questioned anything he's said about my past is just, totally unbelievable."

"How many people with widespread retrograde amnesia do you personally know, anyway?" Katherine said.

"None...or, one, I guess, counting myself? I'm just thinking—how would I really act if I couldn't remember anything. Or like—" she waved incoherently. "—you know, what kinda advice would I give myself in a video recording letting me know I totally forgot who I used to be and stuff."

"My point is, how many do you think Loren knows? Just you, right?"
Aria nodded. "We must be pretty rare, yeah..."

"So even if he expects some specific behavior from someone who doesn't remember anything—if he's smart then he must realize that his expectations aren't based on any solid fact, so it's very simple for them to be just plain wrong. From his perspective, maybe everyone reacts to amnesia differently, and being super friendly and trusting and acting like nothing is wrong is just, your way of coping. Reacting to a new problem with blind confidence is well within character for you, after all."

"True..."

"That just leaves a few oddball things you've said to him or asked him as gaps in that theory, and there's a pretty good chance he hasn't even thought about them since. I mean, didn't you literally tell him you might never be able to explain those questions you were using as a reference for Rose?"

"Yeah...but still. It's not like I can just stop saying stuff I would normally say, and who even knows how much of it doesn't scan with someone not from Earth?" Aria said.

"I guess that's enough beating around the bush, then," said the catgirl. "You like him, you want to keep talking to him. And you think at some point, no matter what, he's going to get suspicious and at least try to figure out, or even just outright ask you, what's really going on."
"Yeah. Aannd, if I don't have a really convincing lie ready then what's gonna come out of my mouth, whether I like it or not, is the truth. That's not great; I don't even think the truth would make sense to him."
"It might," Katherine said. "He's smart, right? Tsaron understood and accepted that truth, as bizarre as it is."

"He isn't centuries old telepath smart," Aria said, shaking her head. "And he wouldn't be figuring it out through invasive mind-scanning! I'd be the one telling him!" she said with a hand on her own chest. "That's the problem. If I tell him about me then the connection I have with everyone else becomes totally obvious. Or, I dunno, I'll just blurt that part out too. But being from Earth isn't just my secret to tell. You see my problem?"

"Not really," Katherine said. "I mean, if you try to tell him the truth then one of two things happens: Either he doesn't believe you because it's too bizarre for him to, or he does believe you and understands that not very many people would. It's not like you're spreading the information all over, just to one person you already trust quite a bit."

"Still. I don't really wanna spill those beans without everyone else agreeing it's okay," she said, looking off toward the void. "If I end up making me sound like a crazy person then I make everyone else sound crazy too. Or else you all have to go to a lot of trouble to deny it and keep it just me in the 'crazy' box."

"That's fair, but..do you really think anyone here is gonna say no?" Katherine pointed out. "I mean—it's perfectly okay with me, and the only outcome I can imagine from almost everyone else is wishing you the best of luck with it. Lynn probably wants to do something similar eventually, with Rast, so she definitely won't mind. Maybe Nora wants her..nature priest friends to find out the truth about her, too. And I don't think Zack will care..."

"I guess you're right."

Aria didn't seem particularly reassured. She squirmed in place a bit, stood up, stretched, and started pacing. Katherine floated herself back upright, just enough off the ground to match eye levels with the shifter. "I take it that's not really the problem."
"No, no, it is..I mean. It's—part of it anyway. Just...I.."
"You were hoping 'keeping everyone else's secret' would make a good excuse not to tell him anything," the psion said, pointing a finger.
"...Yeah. Lousy stupid mind-reading," she said, turning around and taking a few steps away.
"Your reactions would tell me if your head wasn't screaming it. So it's not the real reason you're so worried about telling him, then."

She stopped, still facing away from Katherine. "It's not."

"So what is?"

"Ffsst..." Aria turned around, putting on an obviously fake, exaggerated happy face. "Okay. Let's play pretend." She made a broad, sweeping gesture with her hands, imitating the arc of an invisible rainbow. "Pretend that you have a really great friend. Best friend in the whole wide world."
"Okay." Katherine crossed her arms, humoring her.
"What the hey, let's say that friend is me. I mean obviously it's not but for the sake of the exercise? So, we've been friends practically I guess since childhood. I wouldn't know for sure because I don't remember my childhood basically. But anyway we're great friends. As far as I know that you know, we basically grew up together and never got tired of each other."
"Great, cool. We can move past the friendship part now," the psion said.
"Sure, but just keep it in mind. That part is super important, okay?

"So one day your friend does something—I dunno, stupid? Brave? How do you even describe what I—what Ares did here, huh?"
"Crazy is good enough," Katherine said.

"Yeah, great! Something crazy, which basically ends in disappearance, presumed death. But about a year later your friend—"
"—You—"

"—Me—" Aria agreed, with a thumb towards her face, "—reappears! Totally alive and well. Doing great. Just a little case of massive forgetfulness. But you still get along with me great! We love talking to each other, I like hearing you tell me who I used to be. Maybe we're making progress with me remembering how great of friends we used to be, or maybe we're building a brand new friendship. It really—it really doesn't matter, because we're both happy and everything is great."

"Awesome, I have my friend back," the catgirl said flatly, playing along half-sarcastically. It wasn't as if she didn't know where this was going.

"Great. So one day your friend reveals they're from somewhere else. Not just they're from somewhere else, but—regardless of where this somewher else is—it's, they remember a whole childhood and life over there. Those memories are real to her, and they contradict everything you know about growing up with me."

"You're losing track of which person you're speaking in," Katherine said.

"I know!" Aria put up her hands in a brief frustrated gesture. "Really not important right now, okay!? The point is—these 'new' memories I see as being the 'old' ones, the 'real' ones, and what you've been helping me remember all this time is fake to me. It's—it's not really fake, it doesn't feel fake, but on factual evaluation I have to conclude that if one set of memories is fake then it's the ones you've been helping me remember all this time. You know—the ones where we're friends? Where we've even met before? All fake. Instead it was some kind of—I don't know, gods-summoned simulacrum golem magical artificial intelligence fabricated dream-memory transcendentally half-physical illusion phantasmal brain-ghost body puppet—"
"You're gonna strain something if you keep that up for too long," the psion said, pointing.
"Yeah, yeah, anyway. So heeeyy, guess what! Everything you ever experienced of me before that 'disappearance' was all fake! Probably everything our friendship, or you liking me at all, is even built on—from my perspective at least it never really even happened! Isn't that just great?!"

The psion folded her ears down slightly, crossing her arms and frowning. "It's really not."
"That's right, it's really not! You win pretend! Take the grand prize of eternal sadness," Aria said, sweeping around and taking several more steps away. She sighed. "You get what the problem is now?"

"I do, yeah. I have to say I'm not really as convinced the memories from this world are 'fake' as you are."

"Well—one of them has to be fake, right?" She turned around, putting a hand on top of her own head. "Or—implanted at least, or something like that. We can't have grown up in two worlds at once!"

"Maybe that's true. I dunno," the psion said. "Usually memories have some kind of temporal relationship to each other. You know, like, 'I did this before I did that'. You would think our memories of being around the same age in each world would feel..I dunno, just like doing two things at once, but they don't. It's more like—there's no time relationship between them at all. Like, I can say my twentieth birthday back on Earth happened before I came here, and my twentieth birthday here also happened before I went to the frontier—so, before I was 'summoned' from Earth by that spell, too. But even though I'm younger here than I am there—so, logically the twentieth birthday there should come before the one here, no. They didn't happen before or after each other, or at the same time, they just...both happened." Katherine shook her head. "This is extremely difficult to put into words, but...it seems to be that way for everyone else, too."

"So what, you think we somehow 'merged' with people who really did exist here? The way Clera's two people sorta 'merged together', but deeper?"

"I don't know," Katherine said, doubtful. "Each 'other person' is so similar to the person who 'remembers' being them, and all eight or, nine of us wound up all in this same place? Too much of a coincidence. It's more like the 'other people' were always a part of us, from the moment we..chose a class and started being transformed. But we weren't entirely aware of that part, or the past that came with it, until the memories of being that other person came flooding in. Because living that whole life personally instead of having some 'part' of us go out, and then come back...would overwhelm our own sense of self, instead of having this more stable sense that the person from Earth is who we really are."

"We're totally without evidence for that way of seeing it, though," Aria said. "Apart from some circumstantial stuff and almost no other explanation making sense at all...it's just as easy to say there's some way it really works that we haven't thought of yet."

"..And, this doesn't really solve my problem either," she added, putting out a hand. "You think I can explain all that to Loren before he understands that I see the memories from here as 'new', 'implanted'...'fake'? Whether or not I do see them that way is, a totally different problem from how he thinks I see them once I start trying to tell him the truth."

"So, tell it to him the other way around," Katherine said. "It's technically no less viable to say that you grew up here, then your..soul or whatever was sent to Earth for uh."
"Thirty two," Aria supplied.
"Thirty-two years, sure. And then sent back here with all those extra memories and your old ones still buried, for reasons we're unsure of. That sword had massive, insanely strong and complex wards on it; Loren didn't fully understand them and nobody else did either, right?"
"True..." The shifter still looked uncertain.
"So maybe they could've done something like that. Dump new memories, or entirely new experiences into a person between drawing the sword and being allowed to use it. Maybe it was supposed to banish you to the demon realm for a subjective thirty-two years and that teleportation spell interfered, sending you to another world entirely instead."

"It's just..that's not what happened. I mean—I don't feel like that's what happened...Do you?"
"Nope," Katherine said. "I'm confident we really are from Earth. No other explanation makes sense, but that we were summoned from Earth."

She began talking a bit more quickly, going through her logic: "Remember that Clera has no new memories—or more accurately, Ian doesn't. Just Clera's extra soul with its memories and knowledge from here. Why would they send seven or maybe eight people to Earth temporarily and then turn around and summon one native? Makes no sense. Plus we remember coming here but not going there! Why would we only remember going one way if we really went both? And I can also conclude that we haven't merged with natives here because—" She held up one index finger of each hand in turn: "Ian has a soul; Clera has a soul;" she put the hands together and took away the left one, leaving her right hand with two fingers up instead. "—they are two souls in a single body, and each of us—" she dropped the middle finger, leaving only her index finger up "—only has one in ours. You merge two different people, you end up with two souls in one body, which we. Don't. Have."

Aria blinked a couple of times, a little dazed from the rapidfire evidence presentation. Then she started to respond, "So then why—"
"Just because it's not the actual truth doesn't keep it from being plausible," the psion interrupted. "You can lie a little bit at first to give him a chance to make sense of what you've been through. Let him sort it all out, make it clear you don't think your relationship with him is fake. That's the real problem here, right? You're terrified he'll think you see your whole friendship with him as a big fabrication?"
"Y-yeah.." She looked down.
"Soo, don't give him a chance to think that. First say, 'hey I got abducted into this totally magicless world, so I remember growing up there', and explain it all to him from that angle. Then you can 'realize' you really are from there and what happened here was 'after'—but not fake, because you don't feel like it is. Or you can tell him you lied because you weren't sure if you'd be able to explain the truth all at once! It's a pretty big, complicated truth," she said. "Whichever one you think is best. I mean, he's your friend."

Aria looked back up, taking in a deep breath and slowly letting it out. "You're right. This is a good idea. Except—well, the whole plausibility of me going to Earth and back again is from the portals. None of, nobody else here went through any portals that I'm aware of...right?"
"You don't have to say whether we did or not," Katherine pointed out. "If Loren figures out that the rest of us have memories of Earth then he can draw his own conclusions. If he asks you point-blank, then you can pull the 'not my secret to tell' card and let him ask us himself if he really wants to know."

"Gods, you are way too good at this," Aria said.
"Almost as good as you are at playing pretend," the catgirl replied with a mildly vicious grin. "Are we good now? Worries quelled for the moment?"
"Uh...sure. Yeah. This is a great plan, which I can definitely make work," she said, putting on a bit of false confidence in the process.

"Okay then. Well, we've been talking so long that almost everyone's asleep or about to be now, so..I'll invite them in, if you don't mind."
"I don't." Aria nodded. "Yeah, the sooner I can start asking permission to do this the better. I don't know that he won't piece everything together and decide to ask me about it tomorrow!"

"Great."