The "Best" RPG Ever-88

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Throughout lunch, Jacob mostly just sat quietly and watched everyone else talk, only interjecting briefly even when prompted. It seemed as if he was a bit more withdrawn in such a large group, especially with the more boisterous personalities present and—of course—still being nervous about the dragon. Between her and Mira, the wait staff was slightly nervous at first too—until Rayna and Lynn started cracking jokes and making them laugh so hard a tray was almost dropped at one point. At least he got to know the group a bit better this way, which had more or less been the goal all along. It hardly seemed like much time had passed at all before the plates were mostly empty and the bill came.

"Hmmph." Katherine picked up the piece of paper with their orders written on it, and turned toward Jacob, who she'd managed to get a seat next to. "We still haven't discussed payment. What about just covering the bill for yourself and the three of us that actually went with you?" she said, pointing to it. Of course the subject had been on his mind, and she had a good sense of what he was willing to pay: a bit more than what she was asking.
"Heey, if I knew someone else was covering I'd have got us a round of drinks," the fox-girl joked. "Or at least a dessert."

The catgirl waved her off. "Quiet, you."
"Eh..I think I should be able to cover that," Jacob said. "Are you certain this is enough?"

"Fine with me," Zack said with a slight nod. They had already been paid for the giant birds and the dire bear—apparently Randall had made it clear on his way into the guardhouse that whoever else wanted to could claim credit for those.

"While we're at it, do you want some help with analyzing the scan?" the psion asked. "Of course I'm not an expert on what you're doing, but a psion doesn't need to understand a mental task to help perform it."

"Err. How's that?" he said, half-distracted from getting out and counting enough cash to cover his part of the bill.

"My telepathy's pretty good. I can share concentration with nearby minds—and I have a lot of it to spare." She leaned in toward him just an inch or so. "I haven't pried, but—this is important, isn't it? More than just proving a theory at this point."
"I think it is," he said. "It's honestly hard to tell. But it is what I'm being paid for, anyway. I'll gladly accept your help."

While she leaned back into her own chair, Katherine became well aware of Rayna trying to catch her eye from across the table—as well as her attention on her mind. Do you...like him?

Don't be ridiculous. Katherine gave a mental 'hmph'. The Captain gave him those notes you found, with possibly 'dangerous' knowledge in them, so she thinks what she's having him do is important—which means it probably is.

I notice you didn't actually answer my question, even if it is a ridiculous one. I may not be able to read minds but I can see your tail move a little faster whenever he's paying attention to you. Ahem: 'Remind me to think rationally about my choices', she repeated back—irritatingly close to verbatim without quite reaching it.

I just explained my rationale to you, Katherine said with a touch of annoyance.

O-kay then. Have fun~!

As they made their way out of the restaurant, a member of the guard walked up; it looked as if he may have been waiting for them to finish. "Can we, help you?" Rayna asked him.

"I got a message for Miss Rose," he said, "from the Cap. Wants to meet with you a couple of corners over, that way," he explained, pointing. "Somethin' about a big tree?"

While the dragon-girl squeaked incoherently, Mira said, "Oh, is the lot finally ready?" The guardsman just shrugged. "Well, I guess we should go see, then, huh?" she said, turning toward Rose.
"Yes yes yes~!" After bouncing on her feet a couple of times, she took off eagerly in that direction, the witch shrugging to the rest of the group before following. After tipping his hat vaguely in the direction of the rest, the guardsman headed off in a different direction on some other mission.

"Well, I suppose we'll be off too," Katherine said, vaguely nodding toward Jacob.

"Thank you again for your assistance," he said, particularly toward the other two who'd come with him. After that, they too left.

"I guess the rest of us should just head home for now?" Rayna suggested, to a general murmur of agreement. Some relaxation after working through the morning seemed to be well in order.

---

"Do you still do metalworking? Weapon and armor maintenance?" Ezra said. Randall was busy deconstructing a couple of abandoned buildings (which had just been checked one last time to ensure they were empty), but this task was more than routine enough to hold a conversation during.

"'Course I do. Good source of cash in old cities that don't want much for construction."

"I don't think any of them have so much as been to a blacksmith since getting here. Granted, most of what they use seems to be enchanted, but that's no excuse to neglect it under such heavy use."
Randall made a slightly sour face. "Cripes! Didn't you say one a' them was a knight?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if it hadn't crossed her mind. Members of knightly orders normally just take care of the basics themselves and set down their equipment when they come home to let somebody else do the real maintenance. Besides, it's not as if they had much experience handling weapons before."

"Well, I'm achin' to speak to them some more anyway. Ought to make a good excuse, ey?" Punctuating this, he set the last of the materials aside—salvagable bits neatly stacked on top of each other, with the waste in a separate, less-organized pile.

"There." The Felis clapped his hands together in a 'job-well-done' fashion. "One empty lot. What's it for, anyway?"
On cue, Rose ran up, nearly tripping over herself once in speaking range of the Captain. "Hee~eey!" Mira was a ways behind her, walking at a brisk pace but stopping here and there to apologize to a few people who'd felt compelled to shove themselves out of the dragon's path. "I'm here! Is this the place?" she continued, looking around excitedly.

"It is. I thought the tree would best be centered there," Ezra said, pointing in the direction of the fully cleared middle of the lot.

"Hiya Randall," the witch said, finally catching up, "I see you've still got your ears." This prompted Rose to also look in his direction, realizing that he'd been there the whole time.

"That I do. Good to see you again, lass. You too, Rosie."
"Um." She nodded, slightly confused by his nickname. "S-so uh!" She turned her attention back to Ezra. "I actually have a few saplings and stuff with me, if there's something specific you'd want."
"Show me," the Captain nodded.

While Rose was enthusiastically showing off plants, explaining what properties she knew of each, Mira moved a little closer to the Felis to speak with him. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but you're one of the very few people I've seen who aren't initially intimidated to be talking to a dragon."
"I've fought far worse than a dragon," Randall said with a touch of solemnity. "So, she's a nature dragon, ey?" he went on—instantly changing the subject. "Precious few of those around. Most seem to be fire, like, or water, ice—maybe thunder if you're lucky."

"You seem a little obsessed with rarity," the witch pointed out, drawing a mild headtilt from him.
"Perceptive li'tl lass, aren't you? You live as long as I 'ave, normal folk start to get right boring to be around," he said. "Eventually you hear and see everything there is of 'em—I don' know how Ezzy stands managing a whole bunch for so long. But, someone willing to learn the forbidden arts? Or, draw out a demon blade? That's somebody I got 'a meet."

"I guess the Captain told you about Aria," she said, crossing her arms. "You seem a lot more..sober than you were a couple of hours ago."
"Well, you know. Some food in me, a temporary sobrie'y spell even though I could do a job like this in my bloomin' sleep. Fix that up right quick," he said with a nod.

"This one should be best," Ezra was saying, pointing to one of the saplings. "This species is known to be unusually resistant to magic. Pests don't get to them much, either."
"Uh-huh! They tend to stay healthy for a long time."
"It would probably be best to allow the tree to gain a foothold before planting anything else for the park," the Captain said. "I don't want to presume, but you seemed to intend to accelerate its growth?"
"Yep!" Rose nodded. "I can only do so much at a time without straining it, though. Sooo, it'll probably be a week or so of regular growth spurts before it gets to its full size."
"That should be acceptable," she said with a nod. "Go ahead and plant it, then."
"Eeee! Thank you!" Rose skittered over excitedly to the spot, tearing a rut out with one of her clawed feet and then gingerly placing the sapling into the hole and patting dirt over it with all the care and caution of a mother tucking in a newborn child.

Randall turned his attention toward the dragon-girl at this point, as she stood up and took a couple of steps back, closing her eyes and visibly concentrating, her hands at her side but her wings growing to their larger size and spreading out to either side. A healthy green glow surrounded her body, and a small stream of the same light flowed forward into the plant. It grew from a tiny sapling into a still young, but far less fragile, tree over the span of a full minute or so.

"See now, that's the sort a' thing you just can't see every day," the earth mage said quietly with a small wave.
"I guess not," Mira agreed.

---

Loren was waiting near the house's door to town when they got there. "Oh, hey Loren," Aria said, moving closer to him while the rest hung back or continued on to or through the door.
"I did say I was planning to visit this morning, didn't I?" he said with a slight touch of annoyance. "I suppose you forgot."
"Yeah...I guess I did." Did he say that? she wondered to herself. "But, like, I can't be sitting around waiting for you all the time. I've got a job to do, you know. Hungry sword to feed."

"Fair enough." He shook his head. "When I heard you'd already left, I thought I would return after lunch, so—I'm not really that inconvenienced."

"I'm not busy now and the demon's...not, happy, but about normal. So we can hang out if you want," she said with a small nod. "My place, yours, somewhere else..?"
Loren cleared his throat, a nearly undetectable amount of red to his cheeks. "Perhaps somewhere else. Not my apartment, at least."

"Alright. If you don't have anywhere in mind, we could just walk around," Aria suggested. "See if there's anywhere good to sit and talk? I, still don't know the town that well myself."

"That should be fine." Loren made a vague gesture to lead the way, so she did so, him following.

"Soo, hey! Not long after you left yesterday, I actually remembered something. More something." She fidgeted with her hands a bit. "It was like, a lot of related events. You and me talking in my office about a bunch of stuff. A lot more at once than the first time I remembered something, which is maybe a good sign?"
"Can you say what conversations specifically?" Loren asked.

"Well, let's see..." She went through the contents of a few of them, ending with: "...and also the time I convinced you to take a job from a dragon, I think. And get help from some other mages to put that together."
"Well, it sounds genuine. I'm sure I haven't told you all of that." In response to a questioning look, he explained: "I had some worry that, maybe the wards could give you false memories instead of letting you have the real ones. It isn't that I don't trust you."

"That's a relief," she said. "Anyway, it's good to have confirmation that I can get them back without another application of blunt force trauma, right?"

"That's..also true," he said with a bit of nervous hesitation.

His expression was still tinged with obvious concern, or possibly doubt. Aria made a questioning gesture. "I'm..well, I'm worried that the only things you've managed to remember so far have to do with me," he said. "Nothing about your family, or other friends, or your job..."
"I do remember what my office looks like now," she corrected. "But no, not who I worked for or with, I guess."
"I think it's a terrible misrepresentation of your life if all you remember is me," Loren said. "Perhaps it's because I'm the only part of your past you've personally met? In which case, I hope that crystal gets delivered here soon. Maybe actually seeing our town would jog something else loose."

"There's only two points of data to go by," she pointed out, "which isn't much." She made a brief mental note that Loren didn't appear to understand her use of the word 'data' until he picked it up from context clues a second or so later. "It could just as well be that the ward releases memories at random at this point, or that it's about connections to whatever I already remember. So: Since the first thing I remembered was a conversation with you, I remember other conversations, and then after that it can spread out to other topics like my job or whatever."
"Maybe. It's easy for me to look at it very pessimistically. It's just that—" He shook his head, and waved his hands out in a somewhat frustrated expression.
"What?" Aria pulled closer to a nearby wall so they could stop without getting in the way of traffic. "Come on, I can take it."

"It's really stupid," he said.
"Well, you know me—I've always believed something 'stupid' is better than nothing."

"Okay." Loren sighed. "I'm concerned about taking advantage of you. I mean, if I'm the first thing you remember, or the only one for a while in other words, I can easily imagine that you would trust me, or—feel as if you like me, more than you really ever did. I've, tried to be as honest and direct as possible with describing what I think you should remember, but that'll always be colored by my own opinion of things." He gave a small growl of frustration. "I'm in a position of being your only source of information, and I don't like it. I don't know whether I can trust myself with that."

"Well, you're certainly not the only source I have for information in general," Aria said. "I made a lot of friends before you showed up who could tell me if you were trying to sell me lies about society in general, or magic, or whatever. And as for what I should remember—you're just being a helpful crutch, right? The more my memories actually come back to me, the less I have to rely on your version of events."

"I suppose so," he said, still uncertain. "It still perplexes me how you have any idea of what or who to trust in the first place. While I...do think those you're living with are good people, from everything I've heard or seen of them...I can't imagine how you worked that out with no memories to refer to. Some, unconscious instinct? Or, were you just lucky?"

"Hmm."

Aria pulled slightly away from the wall and took a deep breath herself. Loren's concern grew as he visibly realized she was thinking of talking seriously about something for once, and that she was even a little nervous about it. "About that—there is something I want to tell you. But it has to be in private. Are you sure your place won't work just to talk?"

"Well..." He shook his head slightly—thinking of the fact he'd already been alone there with a witch of all things. "It should be all right. But I'm already wondering how much I should dread this."
"Not nearly as much as me," she said. "Please, lead the way." She swept her arm out toward the road.
"Right..." Loren moved back into the crowd, Aria following.

---

They sat at the library for nearly an hour. Jacob was clearly uncertain about Katherine's presence at first, but she sat quietly—undistractingly—and went into a sort of half-meditative state, and soon he found it easier to think through things than usual. For a while they sat there in silence, apart from the frequent scribbling of pen on paper as he first recorded the results of his scan, and then began attempting to apply them to the task he'd been given. Since it was being routed through her mind, Katherine passively gained a partial understanding of the workings of the magic he was looking at. He was triple-checking each calculation out of fear of the immense danger that a mistake involving chaos magic in particular could cause.

About an hour and a half after they got there, the psion's ears perked up, and she jolted ever so slightly. In response to a questioning look from the elf, she explained herself mentally: Just felt something. Unsure what...

Danger? he shot back with an intense weight of worry. A giant monster or something?
No no, she physically shook her head a bit. Sorry for being so vague. It's—you know, a person's thoughts can come at various 'volumes'. Things you don't want anyone to know you're thinking tend to be really quiet, while things you're thinking with your entire mind at once can be 'loud' sometimes.

Makes...a kind of sense, I suppose.

Well, I think I just sensed something distant. It's so far away that it came in too faint to really make sense of, and because of that distance I know it must've been really loud. But I don't think it indicates danger, she said, shaking her head slightly again. I'd expect emotions like fear or anger from that. I'm more getting a lot of confusion, tinted with a hint of annoyance. I'm not even really sure whose mind it is, although it does seem awfully familiar...

Do you think you should check on it anyway? Jacob thought. Just in case. I think the most difficult part is done for now anyway...I'll need a break soon or my brain will overheat, even with the help.

Ordinarily this kind of offer would be suspected of simply wanting her to leave him alone or to go check on it, but she could of course tell he was being completely honest about the rest of the reasons as well. All right then, I'll go have a look. Since it's distant and familiar, I guess it could be something back at the house, she thought, slowly getting up.

Once she was fully vertical, the catgirl offered a hand toward Jacob, and he took it in a small shake. "Pleasure working with you," she said quietly.
"Likewise," Jacob admitted. He lacked the equipment to pick up on a slight jump in Katherine's heartbeat from the physical contact, and while she walked away he turned his head downward to double-check what he'd done so far one last time—so he didn't see her tail still twitching around excitedly.

Maybe Rayna was right, and she was already in a little too deep. Tsaron certainly seemed likely to think so, based on his comments about her 'preferences' before. Well—that was a thought for another time. For now, it was time to investigate that very loud thought.