The "Best" RPG Ever-92

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There was only one closet and one dresser in Zack's room, so the first part of unpacking everything they'd bought was reorganizing things so each could be split more or less in half. After dealing with that, the bed was easy enough to set up with four people—one of them a psion, and one, arguably two, possessing super strength.

"Well, it's a good thing Rayna bought a couple of extra covers," Mira commented, laying out the comforter Lupa had picked out on top of the bed. "Even if it was just in case somebody didn't like something or tore one of them up. It just goest o show, you never know what can happen." She stepped back from her work, clapping her hands together a couple of times. "Is that everything?"
"We bought some axes, but Lupa's keeping those," Zack said.

"Great! Soo, I would get out of your hair now, but there is just one other thing," the witch said. "Before I even found out about our furry friend over here—" (she indicated Lupa) "—I was thinking we're probably more than strong enough to take on another of those demons. And now we've got someone super strong and itching for a fight too, right?"

Katherine crossed her arms. "Everyone has to agree. No matter how strong we are, every demon fight so far has been another member of a series of increasingly worse near-disasters."

"Well—poll 'em then!" she said, waving her arms. "You guys are okay with it, right?"

"Sure, whatever."
"This one can fight!"
"Like I said, I'm okay with it if everyone else feels ready," the catgirl said. "I guess I'll ask around..."

After a short pause encompassing several brief mental conversations throughout the house, she said, "Seems like everyone else here is ready, too. I doubt they'll say no, but Aria and Rose still aren't back yet."
"At least it's a majority either way?" Mira said. "Iiin that case, I'm gonna need a couple of chickens. I mean—the ritual needs any two of the same kind of bird, so that seems like an easy kind to pick up."
Katherine sighed. Rayna had volunteered her help buying any sacrificial animals necessary just a second ago. Nora was having thoughts of going to get a certain magic crystal turned into something she could more easily use before the fight, too. "We'll take care of it," she said. "Maybe after supper, though."

This conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door to town downstairs: A few loud hits on the door with long, irregular pauses between them. While Zack and Mira started toward the bedroom door, Katherine stood still, informing them: "Rayna's got it."

Downstairs, the fox-girl headed for the door from the library, Lynn behind her, and came to open it. A tall, dark-blue-haired Felis man was on the other end, standing somewhat unsteadily and smelling very strongly of alcohol. "Hey...?" she said, while seeing that this was the 'Randall' she'd been informed of earlier, and noticing that her HUD did in fact indicate how drunk a person was when applicable, and in this case it was 'very'.

"Oi there, miss. Lynn," he said, waving to the human. "'S everybody home?"

Now he pays attention to me, Lynn thought—although his focus was clearly much more on her friend even now. "Almost. Aria's still out," she said, leaving out the dragon-girl as this technically wasn't her home anyway.

"Ahh, good enough. Zz'zra suggested I ough' to take a look at your weapons," he said with a mild slur. "Armor too, if that applies much."

"And do..what with them," the fox-girl said, lowering one of her ears slightly.

"Fix 'em? See if they need fixing, at least," Randall hiccuped. "Err, allow me to introduce myself, miss. Name's Randall, I'm an earth mage," he said, extending a slightly shaky hand down toward her.
"..Rayna. Illusionist," she said, accepting the handshake after a second. "Are you in..any condition to do that right now?"

"Pfff. I c'n do this much in my sleep," he said. "Just le' me get a look at them, and I'll be out of your hair again."

"Well, all right." Katherine was already tapped into this conversation early on, and everyone except for Nora and Clera headed downstairs—neither of them having used a weapon so far (so Clera's sword was undoubtedly fine), and Lupa following Zack regardless, as usual.

As soon as he came into the living room, Randall flopped down onto the middle of a couch. He could stand, but he was clearly a bit unsteady on his feet at the moment and preferred not to. After that, he watched people coming out of the stairwell, and sat up noticably when the new wolf-girl appeared. "Oi, who's this, then?" he said.

"I suppose the Captain didn't tell you?" Rayna said. "Our wolf personified himself."
"Oh. Right lovely form to choose then, ey?" he said in her general direction. Lupa's ears folded back and she took a small step away.

"Big cat stinks," she complained.

Randall's response to this was a roar of laughter. "Hahaha! Tha' I do."

"You wanted to look at our weapons," Zack stated, already interested in making this encounter as brief as physically possible. "Here." He held out his swords to the Felis—currently being in Light form, so the smaller sword was present rather than a shield. Randall took them one to each hand, then set the smaller one down so he could place the main one across his arms.
"Hmm. Well-made, this one. Lesser blades would'ave bloomin' shattered under the abuse it's been through." He moved it so the hilt was in his left hand and the tip pointing at the ceiling, then moved his right hand around the blade, a slight silvery glow surrounding the weapon as some visible nicks and dents in the metal repaired themselves. "There, good as new," he said, offering it back.
"Thanks..." It did look much better, even to the knight's less-trained eyes. Zack put the weapon away again.

"Lessee the other one, then..." After bending over to pick up the smaller blade, it briefly looked as though Randall wasn't going to come back up. But he did after a moment, placing it across his arms like the first. "...This tied to your gem, misssss...ster?" he said, turning his head upward and only correcting himself at the last second.
"Right."
"Lemme get a look at tha' thing." He held out a hand, and after taking a second to understand which 'thing' he meant, Zack placed his gem of brightness on the outstretched palm. Randall drew it closer, leaning in to inspect it closely. "That's what I thought. It's cracked!" He held it forcefully back toward the knight, getting an almost angry expression. "Sophol's missing arm, what've you been hitting your bloomin' shield with?!"

"Uh..." Zack took it, taken slightly aback by his sudden outburst. Which continued:
"I can't fix this! You need to get that thing restored by someone who works with magic gems and the like. The damage's not too bad now, they should be able to get it good as new again—but if you leave it alone the whole bloomin' thing will shatter at some point and then you'll have to get a new one tuned. I've never tried using one of those things, but what I hear is the older you are when it's tuned the less effective it is. So be careful with it, would you?"

"Sure...thank you."

"'Course. Anytime. But take the big sword to a smith now and then, would ya? Right shame to see a beaut like that all busted up. You got armor too, right?"

"Oh, yeah.." The knight had neglected to bring that downstairs, and started to turn around.

"This one will get it!" Lupa eagerly volunteered—maybe just eager to get away from the smell for a moment.

Katherine brought her knives to him next, just floating the whole collection where he could reach them from a distance relatively safe from the stench of his breath. "Huh. These look awfully familiar," he commented, pulling at the two or three she'd used most frequently. "Not terrible wear, but could use a li'le...wait—did Ronald give you these?"
"I assume you mean Tsaron?" she said. "Yeah."

"Never though' I'd see that," he commented, shaking his head. "I suppose he's not using them much himself, though." Randall got to work repairing the slight damage he'd noticed, a much briefer version of what he'd done with Zack's main sword. "These used to be his favorites, you know. They won't rust, so just make sure to get 'em repaired now and then." After this, he offered them back.

Lupa returned with Zack's armor at this point; Randall appraised it briefly. "Hmph. 'Least it looks like you know how to dodge. Nothin' too bad here." He concentrated toward the armor briefly, fixing a few minor scratches.

Lynn held out her bow and arrow toward him next, but he shook his head. "Can't do much for wood, miss. And you have to replace all your arrows on the regular anyway, right?"
"True enough. You didn't specify metal weapons, though."

"Suppose I didn't."

"Does this count as metal?" Mira asked, presenting her own weapon. Randall looked at it, appeared to do a double-take, and then fixed it with a long stare, slowly changed his expression to a dark glare.
"I know that thing," he said finally. "Gave me this righ'ere." He indicated the scar under his eye. "Still hurts sometimes. Won't ask where you found it, but...that thing keeps itself together just fine as long as someone with demonic magic in 'em holds it. I do know it's supposed to be able to split into two smaller scythes, but no idea how."

"Oh! Well, at least I can try to figure that out now?" she said.
"You do that, lass. Just—keep the bloomin' thing away from me," he said, shaking his head slightly.

"I suppose that just leaves me," Rayna said, pulling out her fans and offering them toward him. "I don't really use these much, though, being much more effective with illusions than blunt force."
"There are things in this world no illusion can fool," he said, "Don't hurt to have a backup or three. You're right, these haven't seen much use. Old-looking nick or two to fix, and they're right as rain." After a quick repair, he gave them back. "If that's ev'ryone?"

Katherine nodded. "Pretty sure it is."

"Right." Randall physically pushed himself off of the couch. "Now, if you need me, I'll be in an inn somewhere sleepin' all this off. Or trying to, a' least." He nodded to everyone and quickly stumbled his way back out the door.

Lynn crossed her arms, watching the door close behind him. "...To repeat myself, that was a Thing That Happened."
"He sure seemed to take Lupa's personification in stride," Rayna said.

"I guess he's seen a couple of those before," said the witch. "Or he's just too drunk to care about anything right now."

"He sure cared enough to criticize me," Zack stated. "...Not that he was wrong." He stared at the gem, able to perceive the tiny cracks in it himself now that they'd been pointed out. "I'd better get this fixed before fighting any demons."

"Just join our trip after supper," Katherine suggested. "I think Nora has some business with a magic-gem shop too, anyway."

"All right."

While everyone started to disperse again, Rayna stayed back with the other beastfolk for a second, looking in Katherine's direction with her arms loosely crossed. Keep a close eye on me. I'm really impressed he can do what should be really delicate work like that while falling-over drunk, but also I think he'd be sort of cute if he was sober.

Seriously? The psion's response was heavy with irritation. Well—I don't think that condition is likely to be fulfilled anytime soon.

As long as we're looking out for each other. The fox-girl turned and followed Lynn back into the library again.

After sticking his armor and weapons back in his inventory for now, Zack sat down on the couch, only for Lupa to squat awkwardly in front of him. "No, come on..." Making a face, the knight gestured to the other side of the couch.

"Sorry!" she popped up onto her feet. "This one isn't used to being allowed on that." She dove toward the indicated spot, landing belly-down before flipping over and scrambling up into a sitting position.

"You're gonna break something sooner or later if you keep diving onto every piece of furniture you see."

"I think it's hilarious," the witch offered.

The catgirl sighed, sitting on one of the chairs by now. "Good for you..."

The front door was unlocked again, from the outside. Katherine sat up, listening to that and feeling for minds beyond it. "Oh—Aria's here. I think she's had 'that talk' with Loren."

"Wait, which one?" the witch said.
"You know..the one she was really nervous about and asked everyone for permission about last night...?"
"Oh, yeah."

At the same time, the psion heard: Hey, just stopping by to let you know I'm gonna eat with Loren, if that's okay?

It's fine but...well, you might want to come in for a minute anyway. The sooner everyone was aware of Lupa, the better.

Okay.

Outside, she turned to Loren: "I guess something happened."
"Something bad?"
"Probably not." She opened the door properly and strode inside, him following a bit more hesitantly. Naturally, the shifters spotted the new girl right away, Aria coming up and bending forward slightly to look at her. "Ah, hello there!"
"Changer! This one changed too," the wolf-girl said cheerfully, her tail audibly whipping back and forth across the couch.

Zack cleared his throat. "Long story short, our wolf personified himself—some kind of magic buildup letting an animal transform into a person thing," he explained further, for Aria's benefit. "And became..her. Name's Lupa."
"Oh. Cool!" Did she get a class? A skill tree?

Yes, and...I don't know. We haven't checked yet, Katherine replied. It's kind of a difficult concept to even get her to understand.

Well, I can take a crack at it later if you can't figure it out.

"In some ways, this makes sense," Loren commented during this brief mental conversation, crossing his arms with a thoughtful expression directed toward Lupa. "In others even less than before. How and when did you actually stop being a monster in the first place?"

She headtilted. "This one was never 'monster'. Just big and strong. Now this one is less big, but even stronger! Could throw glasses man through the wall to demonstrate," she offered with a grin just toothy enough to partially bare her fangs.

"Um..that's...please don't do that," he said, dropping his arms and taking a small step backwards. Lupa laughed; obviously she'd been joking.

"Zaaack." Aria stood upright again, looking toward the knight. "Did you raise a troll?"
"There is no version of this reality where I 'raised' her," Zack stated. "No denying she is one at this point, though."

Both Loren and the wolf-girl were confused by the unfamiliar term; as a result, Aria and Zack simultaneously said, "I'll explain later." Their heads snapped to looking at each other for an awkward second or two of silence, until the shifter pointed and yelled "Jinx!" and he folded his ears back with annoyance in response.

Mira laughed at all of this too, but at this point she directed a mental message toward Aria, which the psion passed along: Hey.

What? The shifter turned toward the witch, which also drew Loren's attention that way.Wanna help kill a new demon tonight?

You know it. "Heeyy, Mira," she added aloud as an admittedly weak cover.

"You two planning to have some fun~?" the witch asked teasingly, a far better distraction.
"I really don't like the way you asked that," Loren replied. "Did anything else completely insane happen while were talking?"
"Not here, at least," she said with a shrug.
"Okay then. I think my headache is getting worse."

Loren turned toward the small wolf-girl again briefly. "I am glad to meet you, Lupa. My name is Loren, by the way?"
"Glasses man, Loren," she nodded. "This one is glad to meet, too. Have fun with Aria!" She waved. After nodding toward her once in response, he turned and hurried back out of the house. Aria shrugged and followed him outside, letting the door lock itself once they were there.

"I have no idea how someone can look so nice and innocent and yet be incredibly threatening at the same time," he said, shaking his head.
"I've been told I can do the same thing," Aria replied, giving a razor-toothed smile.
"Please," Loren crossed his arms. "I guess it's different when I'm pretty sure you won't actually hurt me."

"She really does seem nice, though. And the wolf was pretty consistently on our side already. Give it a little time, I'm sure you'll get used to her too," she said, starting to lead the way toward the restaurant they'd agreed on on the way there.

Rainy Oaks II - Jokesters

Trying to describe a caption with this many connections as a "continuation" of another one seems kind of futile. But if you don't recognize the descriptions of those responsible for what's happening at Rainy Oaks, I can at least give you a list of "see also": Mutual Mentor, Inheritance, Gloomy, and Hoot.

Rainy Oaks I - Contemplator

A caption series I've had in mind for a while, and finally managed to start writing. It's not a "halloween" caption series, some of it is just coming out now because waiting until next month would be silly. There will be a second one, and I have ideas for a third, but I'm not sure exactly how many total we'll end up with. Anyway, hope anyone who's been starved for captions lately enjoys this.

The "Best" RPG Ever-91

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"...I think that about covers the basics?" Loren was silent and still for several seconds. "I mean, I'm not really getting into what all our—uh, their technology is capable of. Like...just wait until I get to the Internet. Uh..sorry," Aria added after a second, realizing he was trying to absorb what she'd already said—and maybe had wanted to respond before she'd continued on.

"It's..all right. At least I agree, there's no way you or some spellcasters sealing a demon in a sword made all of that up." He shook his head. "I suppose 'trains' are among the vehicles you mentioned?"
"Sure. Kinda outdated though. Eeexcept for subways," she amended. "Underground trains used to get around the huge cities quicker."

"Sub, way," he mused half to himself. "That checks out, I suppose. Are you certain you don't have any magic there?"
"Well, I mean..if it exists there then it's doing a really good job of hiding itself. Modern Earth culture is really good at making verifiable documentation of anything that happens—like, most people in a well-enough developed country have uhh." She halted briefly, to translate the concept of 'camera' into more helpful terms without even getting into the issue of phones: "A handheld device that can, 'see' from its own eyes, and you can record what it 'sees' to show to other people. I'm sure there's magic like that here, but seemingly everyone has it there. Anyway, I never encountered any magic, even secondhand through that. And I know for a fact that everything I've described to you, and all the stuff I know about that world but haven't—it's just taking advantage of how physics and logic inherently work. As far as I can tell, those things are the same here unless magic's involved, so there's no reason any of it wouldn't work here, either."

Loren took a second to clear his throat. "We are getting a little sidetracked. I mean, I guess this does explain how you never seemed particularly...helpless at any point despite the loss of your memories. Since, from your perspective, you had memories. It raises a new question, of why..how..after developing all over again, in an entirely different society, you're still you," he said, holding his hands out toward her. "I mean—you didn't remember anything except bits and pieces of one conversation, yet I knew..it was you before we'd even said much to each other. And everything you've said, the way you've acted since then—still you. The only..uh..parts I can pick out as odd just seem to be because of the.."
"Sex change thing?" she supplied helpfully. "Yeah. And to me those seem like differences from my 'old self' from Earth too..when I even notice them. Hey, maybe...soul transference, or mind echoing or whatever happened just...works that way? Like, there's some identity or personality traits that got 'imprinted' the first time around so they'd show up the 'second' time, too?"

"Maybe. There is only one point of data, after all," Loren said, evidently referencing their earlier conversation on purpose.
"Rrrriiiight." Only after it came out of her mouth did she realize how unconvincing that sounded.

"Well, I'm only aware of one, anyway," he said neutrally, obviously curious after that reaction but politely refusing to press on the issue.

"So, how do you get something like a handheld artificial eye that can record things, without magic?" he asked instead.
"It's—well, there are multiple ways. Early ones used certain chemical reactions, but the newest stuff uses electricity."

"As in lightning?" Loren said, quirking an eyebrow.
"Right. Same stuff, but—very much less of it, tamed and controlled to a precision I think might be unimaginable for anyone from this world." Aria scooted forward in her seat a tiny bit. "I actually worked with computers—um, which I'll explain in a minute—so I'm way more familiar with that."

"If I'm following you correctly, a computer is something which...computes, using 'tamed lightning'?" Loren asked.

"Right!" she said excitedly—instantly distracted into explaining those devices instead. "So..it's all physics. To begin with, you need a material that's like, partway between being a metal and not a metal so that it kind of conducts electricity, depending on its conditions—a semiconductor. I uh, I'm not so good on how you physically put this stuff together because that's really low-level, and what I worked with was very high level, with those kinds of things abstracted out of view. But I do know that the idea is to use it to make these things called logic gates..."

---

"Hmm." After it was decided who would go to consult the Captain on the legal ramifications of the recent event, and they left, everyone else slowly dispersed back to where they had been before Zack shouted loudly enough to be heard on the moon. Rayna was sitting across a table in the library from Lynn, putting a hand to her chin in thought.
"Something bothering you?"
"Well—if animals have the capacity to turn into people, doesn't that kind of make them like babies? I mean—the way babies act is pretty much like animals, and they develop into actual people."
"I...really don't think that's the right way to look at it," Lynn said.
"You just don't wanna give up on being a carnivore."

"Well—partly that, yes, but also—that wolf was showing really obvious signs of having human-level intellect long before this happened. Basically from the moment they met him, right? So, that's probably just one of the indicators that an animal has the capacity to turn itself into a person this way. I guess there's a spell that personifies an animal, but that seems more like a case of a 'create-a-person' spell which uses an existing animal as a component."

"Yet there is still continuity of the mind between being an animal and being a person...as far as we can tell, at least," the fox-girl said. "The person remembers being the animal and sees no disconnect."

"Well, sure. You're expanding on existing brain matter that remembers being an animal," Lynn argued, "so of course that information is still there. That kind of perception would obviously exist whether or not they'd been a person while they were an animal."

"...You're not seriously thinking of going vegetarian after this, are you?"
"Nah." Rayna shook her head after a moment. "The one funny thing is, our folklore suggests beastfolk came from either self-personification, or maybe some interference by the gods...but there's not a beastfolk race for every animal, or even most warm-blooded ones. There's just the four. So...maybe herbivores like sheep and cows that you'd even eat on a regular basis don't have the capacity to self-personify. Something about lesser intelligence or potential for it coming alongside being an herbivore?"

"Or the gods selected predators to elevate into being people on purpose for some reason," Lynn suggested. "Maybe they figured the result would have an easier time learning to eat plants too, than someone who remembers being an herbivore would have learning to hunt and eat meat. Or maybe being used to hunting and killing things was important for survival in a primordial version of this world with monsters everywhere."

"That's a pretty good point. If first-generation beastfolk are all super-strong and stuff, maybe they were even raised up to help protect humans and whatever of the other races already existed at the time from monsters," Rayna said.

"You know what bugs me?" Lynn asked, indicating a shift of subject.

"What?"
"It was one little detail among the first things Lupa said. Something like...about her 'first pack' and wanting to 'stay forever'? Which apparently means she was really happy with that first pack..."

"Beast monsters are basically mutated animals," Rayna stated. "Maybe...wolves are the same species as dogs, so maybe she was someone's pet dog a really long time ago and just got hit with chaos magic sometime after that?"

"I suppose that would explain why her first action after being told she was super-strong was not to challenge her 'alpha' for dominance over the pack," Lynn said, "plus the 'Master' thing, which is way more of a pet-type word than just calling him 'alpha'."

"I'm not totally sure where she learned language from, though, in the first place." Rayna shook her head. "Why does she talk common, but not seem to have words for some concepts, and refuse to use pronouns? Can magic just teach someone a language if they want to know it badly enough, but it's also a really bad teacher?"
"I mean—well, there is mind-affecting magic, so it's not inconceivable that an expert mage could come up with a 'teach concept' spell," Lynn said. "Orrr, in this case maybe personification has a well-recognized pattern of effect because..the gods made it behave that way? So it'd be easier for an animal that's effectively become a person to then integrate into the society of other people, instead of being unable to even communicate with them?"

"Can they just change the effects of magic at will, though? If so, why pick the way it works here over a 'whoever can do whatever' system?" Rayna wondered.

"I doubt they have total control over the rules of magic. Maybe they have a way to detect when it's happening, and just step in on a personal basis to make sure it goes the 'right' way?" Lynn said. "After all, it's rare enough that even a relatively small pantheon won't feel much burden from it. We travelled the world for years, after all, and didn't encounter a single personification, or even a report of one in recent memory."

"Maybe one of the reasons it's illegal pretty much everywhere is to do with the gods not wanting to shoulder all that extra work?" the fox-girl grinned.

---

The first priority for Lupa was to have her measured and buy enough undergarments. She seemed to favor mostly conservative pieces when it came to this, and mostly in varying tones of red. Her choices in other clothing was fairly eclectic, like a kid at an ice-cream shop who honestly just wants a bite of every flavor but knows that's against the rules—but again in similar coloration, from deep crimson to neon pink. At least most of it will match, Katherine thought. The overall expense for a considerable wardrobe for her was a drop in the bucket for the party's present wealth, which was hardly surprising.

There was a place that sold beds across the street from their last stop among the clothing stores (more or less by the psion's design), and they led Lupa (already wearing a newly-purchased outfit, a much tighter-fitting shirt than before along with a pair of dark red denim shorts) inside, wandering around until finding a display of beds small enough to fit about where the giant dog bed was in Zack's room. The small wolf-girl just looked around the place with an expression of innocent curiosity until finally addressed about the matter.

"Well...you think you could sleep on this?" Zack said, indicating one of the beds.

"Um..? This one can sleep on rocks," Lupa said. "Or the ground. As long as Zack is near."
"Still," the knight crossed his arms. "It's better if you sleep somewhere comfortable, so you're better rested in the morning."

"The thing this one had before is very comfortable," Lupa replied.
"You haven't tried it since your appearance changed," Katherine said patiently. "It's made to fit something...shaped a lot like how you were before? These beds are designed for people who look...more like you do now."
"Oh." Lupa blinked a couple of times, and then walked up to the one Zack hand indicated, reaching her hands out and pressing them into the mattress a couple of times, then just suddenly vaulted up into the air with her right hand, flipping herself around on top of it, belly-up. Zack recoiled slightly, wincing, but the mattress and frame both held against the sudden impact, springing violently for a moment before returning to normal. All the same, the action drew a number of onlookers.

Lupa moved her arms and legs in a manner similar to making a snow angel. "This one likes it!"

"Um...good. I guess we'll get one like that then," Zack said. "Could you...not...violently throw yourself off of it now, please?"
"Okay." Lupa did the wakeful, intentional equivalent of turning over and falling out of bed, landing on her hands and knees on the floor before popping back up onto her feet, totally unharmed by the landing.

I do know what she was thinking, the psion reported as they were on their way to actually buy the bed, but maybe you have some insight on why?

She really wants to show off how capable she is. I'm hoping this will die down the first time she helps us take down some big monster or something, Zack replied.

After they left that store, Zack paused out in the street for a moment. "Is something wrong?" Lupa said after a second.
"Well, the Captain said it'd be a good idea to get you some weapons. As long as we're out, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a look at some," he said.

"Okay!"

Of course, the knight had seen plenty of weapon stores around town, especially nearby the place he'd gotten the new suit of armor. One in particular seemed to his eyes like a good choice for quality weapons, and advertised the presence of a small training yard in the back for testing out one's potential purchases before buying—perfect for testing out what would be most comfortable for her to use. A thought to this effect floated Katherine's way not long after they started in that direction, and she responded in the affirmative—that this was a good idea.

A few blocks later, they came to the place. It sold not just weapons, but varying types of armor (not 'shape-changing' armor like Zack had; apparently that was a specialty item). While Zack started toward the weapons display with Lupa in tow, the psion mentally informed him she wanted to look at something else and went toward the light armor section.

The knight crossed his arms, looking around at the various types of weapons present. There were plenty of 'normal' weapons, but also some very outlandish, surely unusable sorts which his memory from Earth saw as typical of JRPGs that had way too many characters they wanted to stand out as using "different" fighting styles, but which simultaneously his memory of this world knew to be deadly in the right hands.

Such hands weren't Lupa's, however. While she had been more or less at home in the clothing store, eager to try every single thing, here she stared at the various bladed and bludgeoning implements blankly, seemingly not even certain that any of them were particularly useful. The Captain had suggested something she could use in melee and throw with her immense strength behind, which was an excellent idea, but maybe javelins weren't the best choice after all...they required a certain degree of precision to fight with accurately, right? Zack went over and picked out a couple of them anyway, just in case. But as far as throwing weapons went, it seemed to him that axes may be a better choice. Simply having a handle to swing around and a big blade to target the enemy with, instead of aiming to jab with a tiny point, seemed much easier to teach the personified wolf to use. While he was at it he picked up a couple of big, two-handed battle-axes on a whim to try out also, as well as a few sizes of swords. He offered about half of this load to Lupa, and noted she held the pile including some truly gigantic weapons like it was a lightweight sack of candy.

After that, it was off to the training yard. The pile was set down, and Zack pulled out one weapon at a time, asking Lupa to try swinging them around a bit to get a feel for them. As expected, she wasn't very good at any of them, but did appear to understand that the sharp or bladed bit needed to go forward. Her handling of the swords seemed particularly clumsy to him, but maybe that was just because he had so much training in that style himself. Eventually his instincts concluded for him that she had promise with most of the axes—and was totally hopeless with the javelins, simply swinging them around like everything else.

"Okay...let's try one more thing," Zack said once they had exhausted the entire pile of weapons (and he'd subtly sorted them into two piles along the way: 'maybe' and 'no'). "Take one of those axes and try to throw it at the training dummy over there," he said, pointing.
With an eager "Okay!" Lupa (in what should have been a predicatble move at this point) grabbed one of the battle-axes off the top of the pile and swung it hard horizontally before letting go, resulting in a helicopter spin that wound up smacking the middle of its handle into the training dummy hard enough to snap it apart at the stomach, giving it the look of someone hunched over in excruciating pain while the weapon clattered loudly on the ground in front of it.
The knight physically face-palmed, folding his ears back and nearly closing his eyes while shaking his head. There hadn't even been time to tell her not to, or to react in any way. "The small ones," he clarified, going over to get one himself. "Try..one of the targets over there. Like this." He demonstrated the correct way to throw an axe, but missed the target (having never been very good with them). Imitating this motion to some extent, Lupa sank a second throwing axe into an archery target dead-center, the blade going from the peak of the circle almost down to the bullseye and burying deep.

"That's...pretty good," he said. "Think you'd feel okay using those in a fight?"

"Yes!"

"Maybe the big axes too," Zack suggested. "But not throwing those."

"This one is a good thrower," Lupa responded brightly with more tail-wagging; it wasn't entirely clear whether she was arguing with him or just basking in the attention of a few impressed onlookers.

Some of the store's staff were already busy taking the broken training dummy away and replacing it with a new one; thankfully having their targets destroyed by overenthusiastic customers seemed to be a part of their business model. Zack had the smaller wolf-girl gather up the 'no' pile for him, and went to collect the thrown axes and the rest of the weaponry to take back inside. She was absolutely a beginner with using weapons, he concluded; it was a bad idea to give her too many different things to learn at once. Throwing axes were different from the giant battle-axes, but she seemed to grasp the basic principle of each (apart from which ones were meant to be thrown), so sticking to those for now seemed like a wise decision. There was a mild sense of eagerness welling up in Zack to have someone to train the use of weapons again, as a part of his memory remembered doing with a number of squires back in the order.

After putting away everything else and picking up several more throwing axes and a couple of spare battle-axes (fully anticipating some broken or bent handles), Zack proceeded toward the front of the store to purchase them. Katherine was waiting nearby, a light leather armor floating in the air next to her, neatly folded up. You have fun?

For some values of fun. I guess you're buying that, he thought back, holding out an arm to add it to the small pile of weaponry he was already carrying.
This is literally zero effort to carry myself, she responded to the gesture—although it had been about half-reflex in the first place. Zack dropped his arm and continued on to the cashier.

They stopped outside the store to take stock of things. "Well...anything else?" the catgirl said aloud.

"No..unless the Captain has those papers drawn up," Zack said. "She did say not to leave town."
"I'm pretty sure she meant to include our house. Come on, we have a lot of junk to put away," Katherine said, starting to lead the way. Lupa bounced along eagerly behind Zack as they headed back toward the house.

After unlocking the door to the house, they could hear Rayna's voice through it. "So they went out to ask the Captain about that. I actually thought it was them when you came in..." Katherine didn't hesitate to open the door during this, and led the way inside.

"We went and bought her some clothes after that," she said, entering the living room. Rayna and Lynn were there with Mira; evidently the dragon was elsewhere and the others still upstairs. If Aria was back, she wasn't down here.

"Oh, hello!" the witch waved. "Welcome back..aah, is this her?" she said, spotting Lupa and immediately running closer.

"We explained what happened," Lynn interjected.
"Yes! Hello big-hat," Lupa said.
"Aww, aren't you just the cutest~," she said, immediately ruffling the small wolf-girl's hair. If anything, she seemed entirely pleased with the gesture, leaning into it and grinning brightly from the appraisal of her appearance.

"Cute!" she chirped. "Big-hat is cute too."

"You wouldn't like being called 'cute' this morning," Zack pointed out, crossing his arms.
"This one wasn't cute then, so an insult," Lupa said, half-turning toward him. "Like 'weak'."

"I guess that makes sense." About as much as any of this.

"I'm glad you're feeling so friendly," the witch said. "Maybe you'll let me finally see what your fur feels like sometime?"

"Any time Mira wants," she replied cheerfully (finally using the name Katherine taught her earlier). "This one wants to be close to the rest of pack."

You named her 'thiswan'? the witch inquired mentally.

She chose the name Lupa, Zack replied. She's saying 'this one'.

Oohh, okay. Also: Cute.

"Anyway, we've got a lot of stuff to put away," Zack said, turning toward the stairwell. "If anyone wants to help."

"I'll help," Katherine said; Lupa also turned to follow her 'Master' as a matter of course. Mira shrugged to the other two in the living room and went after her, clearly wanting to speak to the former-wolf a little longer.

---

Aria went through several of the steps of making logic gates and connecting them together, going so far as to request some paper and a pen to scribble down a few diagrams. Loren seemed interested and followed along, interjecting a couple of questions or early guesses along the way which indicated he understood what was going on. About the time that she got through explaining how to use them to do basic binary addition, he had a somewhat more skeptical question.

"So...you make devices that force electricity to flow this way...in order to do some basic calculations that anyone could do on paper by hand," he said.
"This is the basic of basics," Aria said. "The point is, if you can make circuits that add small numbers, then you get enough of them together and they can add much bigger numbers. Or, by extension, any other operation you want and can define cleverly enough. Simple calculations are the building blocks for unimaginably gigantic calculations that would take a person years or decades to do, but a good enough computer can do it in seconds."
"It seems like a lot of trouble to go through, just to be able to manipulate some numbers," he said, shaking his head slightly. "Maybe something a cryptomancer would be interested in, although I think the better ones already make enchanted items that can do certain calculations for them."
"Maybe oracle machines?" she said eagerly, leaning in a bit. "That'd really be something. But—anyway," she continued, ignoring his confusion at yet another new term, "that's the thing about being clever. With the right kind of thinking, lots of things can be turned into numbers. If you make a device that translates numbers into visible colors in a predictable way, you can have a computer show whatever visuals you want on that device. Like—imagine if you had a tool that'd draw glyphs for you."

"That hardly seems possible," Loren said.
"It is, though. Glyphs have, like, predictable rules for how they way they look affects their function, right?" When he didn't seem to disagree: "You could program a computer to 'know' those rules and spit out a detailed image of what the glyph that'll have a certain effect looks like, or even build something that it drives to actually draw out the glyphs automatically—though that'd take a lot more work, I guess."

"Every bit of this sounds like a lot of work," he replied. "Still—I suppose your other world pulled it off without magic, and at least your enthusiasm suggests those things can be very useful. I don't think it would be very difficult for someone to imprint a crystal so that an energetic element could flow like some of these," he said, pointing to the logic diagrams.

"Cool."

"Um..." After a brief hesitation, Aria returned to the original purpose for this entire conversation. "So...do you still feel like you're taking advantage of me or something?"
"I guess not. It's hard to argue with this kind of evidence that you are your own person—as though I needed any more," Loren said. "It's still a lot to take in."

"Sure. Yeah. Sorry if I overwhelmed you with...stuff," she said, waving to her excited scribbles. "I haven't had anyone to talk to about this sort of thing in a while, and I guess I missed it. And it seemed like you actually do understand what I'm talking about."
"Sort of," he admitted. "At least, it's something new to think about..." Loren paused, his eye having caught sight of a window. "Seems like we've been here a long time," he commented. "Sun seems to be setting."
"Hey, yeah." Aria stood up. "I guess time flies when you're explaining alien worlds, huh."

"I'm not saying you have to leave or anything," Loren said. "Your friends just might be wondering what's taking so long."
"Mm-hm. And I'm a little hungry. Are you hungry?"
"...Now that you mention it, yes."
"We should just go out somewhere then! I can stop by the house and tell them not to wait up on me," she declared.

"If you'd like," Loren nodded, also standing up. "Maybe we can talk about something that won't give me a headache, though."
"Sure."

The "Best" RPG Ever-90

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---

After saying their goodbyes to the Captain and Randall, Rose and Mira headed a short ways down the street vaguely in the direction of the house. "So, what now?" the witch asked. "Just head back home?"
"Um.." Rose stopped to rock back and forth on her feet for a second or two.
"..You wanna go see if Vae's already available, don't you?"
"..Mm-hm," she nodded with a mild blush.
"Well, all right. It is a ways into the afternoon already. Since we got up pretty late, then wound up having lunch pretty late and taking a while too. So—I think we're an hour or two out still, but the worst that can happen is she's not there or says 'come back in a couple of hours' anyway, right?"
"Yeah!"

Mira changed course, heading toward Vae's house-slash-workplace again. It didn't take them long to get there, and the dragon-girl bounced back and forth on her feet a few steps from the door until the witch gave an encouraging wave toward it, at which she finally took those steps and gingerly knocked a few times—being certain those giant fox ears could hear it from anywhere inside anyway. After a pause almost long enough to make Rose nervous, the door slowly opened.

"...You are early," Vae stated in a neutral tone.
"Yeah. Um..."
"Please, come in." The fox-girl moved aside, holding the door open. "I have concluded my expected business ahead of schedule; however, there is still something I must keep watch over."
"Okay!" After a brief wave backwards to Mira (whose eyes Vae also very briefly met to give a curt nod), she entered and the door was carefully shut behind her.

Well, that went better than expected, the witch thought. Now what do I do...? She crossed her arms. Of course she could just go home, but it seemed like a bit of a waste when she was already in the middle of town. Really, between Clera suddenly having fire powers and everyone's general sense of advancement...wasn't it almost time to summon another demon? Sure, it had only been a day or two since the last one, but there were plenty of preparations she could make now that wouldn't go to waste if it was decided they should wait a little longer.

Nodding to herself, the witch headed for the nearest row of shops, quickly throwing together a shopping list in her head. It also helped that they'd just been paid, so even though the materials were getting more expensive, this trip wasn't going to eat into their profits too much...

---

It took little time to locate one of Zack's shirts and a knee-length skirt of Katherine's which seemed likely to fit Lupa on a temporary basis, so she went into Zack's room to change, the psion closing the door for her. Out in the hallway, she leaned against a wall across from the knight's position, crossing her arms.

It's worth mentioning this complicates things.

Obviously. We only really have nine bedrooms, and if Rose is gonna keep staying here...

Sure, there's that. She can sleep in the dog bed Rayna got her, but it wouldn't feel right to me either, no. Not what I was talking about, though.
What, then?

Well, there's a certain secret of ours she's definitely aware of, for example? Katherine said, holding out a hand palm-up toward Zack.

Oh...that. He looked slightly away, blushing. Yeah. I didn't think about the wolf being there and...he never really, reacted to it or anything. Just went to sleep like nothing was happening.

Of course, she seems far too friendly and loyal to you especially to hold it over you or anything, but...

Rayna sent me a visual of her stats. Charisma's on the low side, like Aria, which seemingly tends to include poor impulse control against blurting things out. Besides which there's a decent chance she won't understand how it even qualifies as a secret. Trying to explain it to her or ask her not to say anything about it puts it on her mind and makes the risk even higher. Also: Do you think she's going to want you to stop petting her just because she looks different?

Probably not. Zack sighed. I wonder if I should just come clean about it myself. I mean...it's embarrassing, but what isn't anymore? Everyone knows I'm cursed anyway, and knows...things about beastfolk in general. But...

It's not just yours to admit to. Well, I'm sure you'll get an opportunity to discuss it with her soon enough.

The smaller wolf-girl burst through the bedroom door (thankfully without hurting it), fully dressed. The shirt, oversized as it already was for Zack's figure, was so long on her that just the hem of the skirt was visible past it in the front; however her tail made the skirt entirely necessary for keeping her covered in the back. "Do~ne!" She held her arms out and twisted in place slightly, looking at each of them in turn. "How does this one look?"

She took a minute to admire it in the mirror, the psion informed Zack.

I didn't need to know that, he shot back. "It looks fine."
"Great on you," Katherine said, half-over his last word. "Let's go see if we can find Ezra now."
"Okay!"

"So, who all is going on this venture?" the catgirl asked as they were on the way to the stairwell.

"I thought just the three of us, at most," Zack said. "I mean, she might not even be there."

"Fair enough."

Once they were downstairs, the knight stopped again, turning to fully face Lupa. "Look," he said, "When we're out in public you can't keep calling me 'Master'."

"But—" she started to protest again.
"I know; I get it. But other people won't. They'll get the wrong idea. Please, just call me 'Zack' if anything. At least out there," he said, pointing toward the door.

Lupa considered for a second, and then nodded. "Okay," she said, appearing to understand—and then added "Master-Zack!" cheerfully.

She's teasing me, Zack thought toward Katherine, folding his ears back slightly.

It's a good sign if she's already capable of independent thought, right? she shot back.

---

After the girls left and he was released from the captain of the guard's "custody", Randall decided it was high time to check in on the quality of this unusually prosperous frontier town's alcohol. After all, if there was any way to gauge a city's true prosperity, it was how good the ale, wine, beer, and so on that it served was. He asked a few friendly-seeming locals for their best picks and soon wandered into a nearby tavern, taking a seat at the bar and knocking back a half dozen mugs of different alcohol on offer, pulling out and slamming down the price of each along with a generous tip in advance as he ordered. His demeanor throughout was extremely cheerful, yet aggressive enough to keep the seats next to him empty—well, that, and the fact that he was drinking in the mid-afternoon at latest.

Eventually, someone did appear in the seat next to him—not in the usual way by walking into the tavern and taking a seat there but by simply, literally, appearing. A tall, young-looking elf man with bright red hair leaned his head into a hand with the attached elbow against the bar, turned entirely toward Randall to watch him chug the entirety of his latest mug of drink before finally turning to acknowledge him. "Though' I might see you sooner or later. Be'er later than sooner, really," he said.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you survived. If my guess is right, the gods gave you an iron liver," he said. "Perhaps a diamond one, at this point."

"Well, wha're you here for? Ask why I'm here?" The Felis hiccupped loudly. "I tol' Ezzy already, Ronald, so I'll give you the short version. Gods want me here bad enough to send me bloomin' nightmares anytime I go some other way. Or—hic—somewhere else, an' this is a required stop. Gut tells me it's here, though."

"Fair enough. So, she already told you about the new group, as well?"

"Sure. I got to meet most of 'em, at that!" Randall let out a loud, clearly drunken laugh. "Right beauties, the whole lot, ey?"
The elf raised an eyebrow. "...You know they're..."
"Why shoul' I care about that?" he said, flailing an arm. "Magic an' all."

"You cared an awful lot more when you first got here," he pointed out, crossing his arms. "Though it doesn't seem like you care about much at all these days. You do know I'm not actually inside this stinking tavern right now, right?"

"'Course. Why d'you think I had a nice long swig once I noticed yah?" Randall said, followed by another burst of laughter. "And I'm still acting drunk to annoy you so you'll leave me alone."

"Well played? I am impressed you're able to mentally project the stench of your breath at will," the elf admitted, shaking his head. "We're all a little mad these days, aren't we?"

"You were a hatter before," the Felis said, "almost seem proper mellow compared to wha' I'd expect after our last parting."
"I'll take that as a compliment. And..I'll take my leave for now. Enjoy your drink, but remember the gods won't have brought you here for nothing," Tsaron advised, before promptly vanishing—leaving Randall back in the tavern just a few seconds after the moment he'd seemingly appeared. The Felis picked up his mug again and took another long swig—not quite the whole thing this time—noting that the flavor was identical to what he'd experienced an illusion of a subjective moment ago. Well played, indeed.

---

Once they reached the guardhouse, all three animal-eared girls could hear the Captain's voice yelling from a bit beyond and to the side of it—where a training yard was. She was going through some drills with some of the guard, it seemed. Zack nodded to the others before leading the way around to the yard, and then they stood patiently for a moment until she was finished with her present instruction and appeared to notice them, barking an order to continue the drills before walking over.

Ezra examined their new member with a long gaze, which didn't appear to make Lupa nervous in the slightest. Her ears lowered slightly in a submissive gesture, but she maintained a cheerful expression and her tail wagged a bit faster if anything. Finally the Captain flatly said, "What happened now," already resigned to the idea of some new disaster or complication.

"This one changed!" she responded helpfully, before either of the others could stop her.

During their brief explanation, including Lupa's own account of how it started, the Captain crossed her arms, watching each of them speak in turn. The wolf-girl referred to Ezra as 'Big-alpha' throughout, likely in reference to a few earlier discussions Zack had had with the wolf about her.

After the explanation, she said, "It is illegal, of course, to personify an animal. But I register my decision here and now, based on what you've told me of the incident, that this must have been a self-personification. The only member of your group capable of such magic is Mira, but: I have no reason to believe she knows any spell of that type; she was nowhere near the wolf at the time; and there is no such thing as a delayed-action personification spell. To her absence I can consider you and the others witnesses, as well as anyone who saw Mira out in town at this time—assuming she was. However..."

She turned her eyes entirely toward the new person, addressing her specifically. "As protection against certain abuses easy to inflict on someone used to the habits of an animal and not entirely familiar with society, a newly personified animal is granted a legal status similar to that of a minor." Lupa did not appear to know what a 'minor' was. "...In other words, someone must act as your guardian, responsible for your protection and for your actions, until you are considered fully prepared to act entirely independently. In cases where someone was responsible for the personification, that person would take the role of guardian and be carefully watched as part of their punishment—at least for a first offense. But that doesn't apply here, so someone else suitable must be chosen. I would nominate Zack, since you appear to trust him and I consider him capable for the role. If you both find this acceptable?" she said, turning halfway toward the knight at this point. He nodded without hesitation.

Lupa said, "This one is okay with that," also nodding.
"Right. I'll need to have some papers drawn up to make that official, but we'll consider that matter closed for now. There is one other aspect to it, however."

She looked at Lupa again. "..Ordinarily, of course, you should be under your guardian's full protection, kept away from all dangerous situations, until declared independent."
Lupa's ears drooped. "This one..can't hunt?" she said slowly, about at the rate that she understood what was being said.

"I said 'ordinarily'...this is an exceptional case, possibly. To begin with, there is nowhere in the Frontier one could go to entirely avoid dangerous situations. But for another—what you were before was more capable in a fight than most of the guard present here," she said, gesturing toward them. Although she raised her voice enough for them to hear it, not one of them protested this point. "The effects of personification are known to transfer the skills and advantages one already had as an animal into some equivalent or greater ones in the new form. I expect, as a result, that you remain capable in a fight?"

Her ears popping back up, the wolf-girl nod-nodded eagerly. "Yes! This one feels much stronger than before, too!"

"Rayna told us her physical abilities were unexpectedly good," Katherine added.

"Hm."

After a pause only long enough to accommodate the space between two sentences, Ezra made a probing attack. In a movement too swift for most eyes to follow, she stepped forward, drawing her sword in an upward arc swung directly toward Lupa's left shoulder. The wolf-girl sidestepped the attack, and then a similarly swift down-swing, standing just far enough from each for it to miss her entirely.

"Big-alpha is holding back," she stated, now maintaining a loose sort of fighting stance. Katherine and Zack exchanged the telepathic equivalent of a brief glance before taking a few steps back out of the way of this apparent test; an increasing number of the guard present paused what they were doing to watch. It probably wasn't every day they saw someone successfully dodge their Captain's strikes.

"Of course," Ezra stated. "I don't want to hurt you." She followed this up with a pair of horizontal slashes, the first of which Lupa backed precisely out of, and the second she leapt over, vaulting entirely over the Captain to land behind her. Ezra whirled, taking the momentum into a diagonal slash; this one the wolf-girl backed just out of range of, and then clapped her hands against both sides of the flat of the blade, about a third of the way up from the tip. With a confident grin, she yanked at the weapon, forcing Ezra to relinquish it rather than be pulled in with it, then turned to throw it behind herself, ending up facing the Captain again in a tense, prepared stance before it clattered across the ground halfway across the training yard.

Ezra slowly relaxed her posture. "That's enough."
"This one passed?" Lupa asked eagerly, instantly returning to an unassuming stance herself and giving the same bright-eyed, innocently cheerful expression toward 'Big-alpha' as before.

Ezra nodded. "There should be no problem with your participating in any quests they take on. You should learn to use a weapon, however; strength like that would be well-complemented by a better reach than your hands alone. I suggest javelins, or something else big that can be thrown precisely or used as a melee weapon."

"Okay," Lupa said, although Katherine noticed she didn't actually know what a 'javelin' was.

"Well, I need to get back to this lot," Ezra said, waving back toward the guard. "I'll let you know when I have some papers drawn up. Don't go out of town before then if you can help it." Turning around, she started barking at those who hadn't gone back to their drills after watching the test, leaving the three guests to themselves again.

"What now?" Lupa said eagerly.
"I think...we should go on and get you some of your own clothes," Katherine suggested. Maybe buy a smaller bed that'll fit in your room while we're at it, she added to Zack.

"Seems like a good idea," he agreed (to both).

They began walking in the direction of some stores. In the meantime, the catgirl said, "Look—Lupa."
"Mm-hm?"
"It's uh..cute and all, the names you came up with for us, but they're all gonna be slightly confusing out where there's a lot of people. Like—there are loads of, cat-people around, so calling me 'Cat' isn't very helpful. People come in gigantic groups, usually, so we need names to identify each other more easily. It'd really help if you could at least learn the names of the rest of the, ah...pack."
"Okay! Zack," she said, pointing toward her own alpha.

"Right. And...I'm Katherine," she said, putting a hand to her own chest. "Or 'Kath' for short."

"Kat?" Lupa said innocently; obviously the difference in letters couldn't be heard, but Katherine understood it from her mind.

"Kathhh," she repeated, emphasizing the difference in end-consonant sounds.
"Kat!"

She's messing with you, Zack said.

I know that. The catgirl's ears folded back just slightly in annoyance.

Independent thought, right? he echoed to her.

Yeah, sure. "Anyway, uh...the other people who were there when you changed..."

---

The small fox-girl slowly led Rose through the room they'd spoken in before, then another room equally crowded with plants. "My home is ill-equipped for guests," she stated. "The room ahead is the closest to being hospitable." Perhaps others would have found this daunting, or at least a bit bizarre, but Rose felt perfectly at home among so many plants. She could even detect a clear organizational divide between those in one room and the next.

Eventually Vae led her to a room with a few chairs placed around a large cauldron. There were still a few plants hanging from the walls and on a few of the surfaces, but this room was mostly populated by work-tables along a few of the walls with stools set in front of them, no doubt for mixing and preparing ingredients for whatever concoctions the herbalist intended to mix together.in that cauldron. The chairs were wooden, uncushioned, but were of a practical design and made to fit someone with a large tail, which was enough for Rose to be able to take an offered seat across the cauldron from her host. She leaned forward and observed that there was something "cooking" in there, possibly whatever it was she still wanted to keep an eye on. The dragon-girl's attention was turned upward again when the fox-girl began to speak.

"I did briefly introduce myself before, but allow me to extend the courtesy of a proper introduction. My name is Vaedin Fysel," she stated.

"Oh! Um. I'm, just Rose," the dragon-girl said sheepishly. If she had a last name in this world, she wasn't aware of it. Dragons basically named themselves, as far as she could remember, so it was usually the mean, pretentious ones who had five or six extra names. "It's, nice to meet you!" she added after a second or two's hesitation, uncertain whether saying so was a necessary part of a formal introduction.

"Likewise. I do hope to pick your brain on a few topics, as well as share what knowledge I can in return. However, I feel it best to begin with some explanation. For as much as I felt it necessary to test your understanding before, I could hardly fault anyone questioning my own experience, given my present appearance."
"It..didn't really bother me," Rose said. "I am curious, but I thought that's just how you looked?"
Vae's left ear twitched upward ever so slightly for a second. "Well...that is so. However, my kind is known not to normally maintain such a youthful appearance for very long. In truth, I am eighty-nine years of age."
"Ooh. That is kinda unusual, I guess," she nod-nodded.

Pressing on, Vaedin said, "There was an..incident four years ago. Some reagents I was experimenting with reacted unexpectedly...explosively, in fact. I suffered significant injury from the explosion, and though nobody else was harmed, a number of rare, difficult-to-obtain materials either went into the experiment or were destroyed in the explosion. Initially the healers were dubious of my chances of survival, but...the experimental mixture, or something of which that is a component, entered my bloodstream through my injuries from that explosion. It seemed as if that had a regenerative effect on my body, as well as an unexpected transformative one."

"Sooo...it made you younger?" Rose said, headtilting slightly; that didn't seem to be all of what she was saying.
"It appears so, by all accounts. However, I did not look this way when I was young, nor at any other point in my life prior to the explosion," Vae stated patiently. "I was much taller, you see, and I was of the opposite sex."
"Oooh. Okay," she said, nodding simply that she understood.

The fox-girl's ears both twitched just slightly. "You appear...less surprised than I had expected," she said after a significant pause.

"Well, um, I've met someone under a curse like that pretty recently," she said. "I thought it was a normal thing that big enough magic can just...do sometimes?"
"I see...that is, surely so. However, it remains a relatively rare occurrence," the herbalist said. "At any rate, even after my injuries fully healed I found it difficult to find employment. The mages' college I had been working for initially offered to keep me on, so long as I agreed to no more experiments. This was completely unacceptable; the results of that experiment, whatever the side-effects, suggested that I was on the verge of a vitally important discovery. Other colleges, noble sponsors, and all else, were equally unwilling to allow me the freedom to continue my research. That explosion marked it as 'dangerous', and...I am an honest person: I will neither hide the fact that I wish to continue that line of inquiry, nor agree not to do something which I know I will be trying to do."

"Soo...that's why you're here, then, huh?" Rose said after a moment. It increasingly seemed the case that the Frontier was the place for people who felt they belonged nowhere else—such as herself, really.

"Correct," she nodded. "About a year after the explosion, Ezra approached me personally with an offer. So long as I help to provide healing supplies for this city, I am allowed a generous stipend and latitude to conduct whatever experiments I please—provided reasonable safety precautions, the likes of which I have always taken. I was offered a separate laboratory at first, but I greatly prefer to live with my work."

"I totally get that," Rose said. "So um..did you figure anything out since then?"

"...You refer to the research I was involved in it the time of the explosion," Vae stated after momentary hesitation.

"Mm-hm...?"
"It has progressed very little since then, despite my continued efforts. Some of the reagents I was using are immensely difficult to procure, and...more importantly..." The fox-girl's ears twitched a couple of times. "The more I considered it, the more unlikely it seemed that any of the combinations I was using should be capable of an explosion of that magnitude. For the past few years, I have had regular check-ups with healers, and each time found my body unusually healthy and, furthermore, unchanged from the day that transformation ended. Such effects are beyond what I was trying to create at the time. I am increasingly led to suspsect some other element at work, such as a capricious and powerful entity deciding to bless me and curse my work simultaneously."

"Aww...and you were trying to find a way to make people young again, right?" Rose said. Vaedin nodded, and she thought she saw the slightest hint of satisfaction that the dragon-girl had understood her goal so readily.
"It is no great loss. Other avenues have borne much fruit since I came here. With far greater freedom, and more financial resources, than a mages' college would have ever provided me, I have made strides in producing medicine to cure a number of ailments more effectively or efficiently than ever before. Some of my work has even been recognized by those who declined me employment, which is as much satisfaction as I could ask for."

---

Our first taste of Lupa's capabilities. Also, Vae is sort of the "fantasy world, good alignment" equivalent of a mad scientist.

The "Best" RPG Ever-89

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Once inside, everyone went their separate ways for the most part. Rayna and Lynn headed to the library to talk some more; Nora and Clera both went upstairs to their rooms to read. Zack went up long enough to change out of his armor and into some jeans and a t-shirt, then went back down to the living room, sitting on the couch and leaning back with his eyes closed, just taking a moment to rest. The wolf followed him throughout the entire trip, and sat up on the floor in front of him, waiting there until the knight finally sat up and looked at him.

The animal was staring him down, but it didn't seem to be an unfriendly stare. "What?" In fact, the wolf's tail was wagging slowly across the rug behind it.

It gave a soft whine in response to Zack's question.

"Oh. Fine." He leaned forward a little more and started running a hand down its back, keeping the other one on top of the animal's head to pet its ears. The wolf gave a quiet, contented bark in response, confirming this had been what it was patiently waiting for. After a short while, it even leaned in closer, nearly getting its head into his lap.

Zack had never had a dog back on Earth, but petting one was supposed to be a calming experience. That seemed to be true; if anything, it made him slightly contemplative now. The giant beast had grown steadily friendlier and even showed signs of disappointment with his own inability to "contribute" meaningfully to the "pack's" hunts from time to time. His fur had definitely not been this soft at first, Zack thought to himself, and nobody—as far as he was aware—had made any particular effort to bathe the giant monster-wolf, but its fur was also a shiny, clean white nearly all the time. On top of that, hadn't he been covered in scars at first? It was only natural for a big, tough monster to accumulate something like that from weapons, maybe the claws and teeth of other beast monsters. But now Zack couldn't see or feel any of those scars, either. He didn't like being thought of as a pet, but here he was, begging to be petted and clearly enjoying it.

His knowledge of this world—which he had lacked back when they met—informed him that this was largely impossible. Even a knight's relatively basic education taught that monsters were born of chaos magic; beast monsters were existing animals mutated by the stuff. Everything touched by such magic was irrevocably hostile to all normal forms of life, be it regular animals or people—although the latter seemed to be a greater focus. A monster would let a beast escape, but would pursue a person for miles before ever giving up. In short: No matter how friendly a given type of animal usually was, once it was changed by chaotic magic into a monster there was no redeeming it. The way chaotic magic painfully twisted all normal life made killing the resulting monster an act of mercy if anything. Monsters evidently had some sort of mind, in order for Katherine's powers to be able to affect them, and beast monsters seemed to retain some semblance of the original animal's instincts, but what they had encountered here was unheard of.

Anywhere except for the frontier, a dire wolf coming close to a town would be slain without a second thought, no matter who it seemed to be walking alongside or why. That person would then be highly suspect, also: Mind-affecting magic might be able to temporarily charm or puppeteer a monster, but not for long, so trying to smuggle one into town that way would perhaps be seen as an act of attempted sabotage at best—possibly even murder. Of course, the frontier was home to so many strange things that it was difficult to worry about just one monster seemingly tamed by an adventurer, and the people here trusted the guard quite a bit—and they in turn their Captain—to properly identify anything strange as dangerous or not.

Therefore: The wolf in front of him, leaning its head nearly into his lap, was impossible. A monster didn't order other monsters to stop attacking people; it didn't try to negotiate with those people either. It certainly didn't agree to be subordinate to a person or group of people and try to kill other monsters for them. This animal was basically a person, with a (possibly rudimentary) understanding of common tongue and the concepts therein, and a proper mind and desires of its own. Something very unusual was going on, for certain; what Zack had in front of him was in many ways no longer a monster at all. It simply had—and took advantage of having—the body of one.

As bizarre and impossible as all of this was, the fact that it was right in front of him made it a reality. Zack had never, in either world, been the sort of person who had to have the answers to things. Some mysteries were simply better left uninvestigated, while others were beyond his personal reach. Accepting something that couldn't be explained and moving on was often the healthiest option he had, and it seemed likely to be the necessary one here, too. Eventually he stopped worrying about it and just zoned out, petting the gigantic monster-dog calmly for an unmeasured stretch of time.

This peaceful period was finally interrupted by a brief, confused whine—essentially a spoken question mark. Zack lifted his hand from the wolf to try and see what was bothering him, and in response the wolf sat up on his haunches, giving a second confused whine. He was slowly looking around as if expecting to find the source of some sensation, and while Zack focused on this, equally confused and worried himself, he observed that the animal was actually glowing.

It was too faint to be certain of at first, especially since both the glow and the animal's fur were a bright, pure white, but it grew brighter quickly—not quite blinding at any point, but far too visible to deny before long. As it came to this brightness, the glow seemed to press inward toward the wolf's body, seemingly affecting him the way a sculptor's hands do clay. He changed shape slowly at first, his overall frame shrinking somewhat while his hind legs grew longer and his underside became proportionally larger. As the changes accelerated, he shuffled his feet unsteadily before slowly raising himself up onto his hind legs; the look in his eyes suggested this motion wasn't entirely forced, but came as an extremely confusing new reflex.

His two-legged stance was hunched over at first, before steadily straightening, and as it did he took on an increasingly humanoid shape with a defined chest and limbs the right proportions to be considered arms and legs. Even after what shrinking there had been, his werewolfesque form towered over Zack, maybe seven feet tall or more. The glow around his body seemed to flow around, its intensity reducing at the torso and increasing near its extremities and muzzle. Paws reshaped quickly (but seemingly not painfully) into something much more closely resembling hands and feet, resulting in the loss of a half foot or so of height from the altered foot structure alone. Its muzzle began to shorten, much more slowly than the change to the paws, and since this motion naturally drew Zack's eyes toward the transforming creature's face, their eyes actually met for just a second. He was confused, and slightly upset. He barked once in some distress and then whined a bit, and then seemingly in response to this the glow resumed its original brightness all across his body.

The transformation suddenly took on a new trajectory, his body starting to rapidly shrink downward and inward even as his muzzle continued to shorten. His sharp, angular frame softened, shoulders narrowing and arms and legs slimming down. On top of this, the fur quickly thinned away from his hands and feet first, which then spread up his limbs toward his torso, leaving behind soft, smooth-looking skin as it went. With a small, slightly confused yip, the fur atop the former-wolf's head spread upward and outward before falling down around its head, now a head of messy white hair long enough to be just shy of the shoulders in the back and run halfway down the either side of his face.

He barked a few more times, the first one in his usual deep voice, but each one afterward at a higher, more youthful-sounding pitch, as the fur about his torso puffed outward off of his body, changing by some not entirely comprehensible process into clothing: A long, open robe-like piece and two wide strips of cloth wrapped around his chest and groin. The new clothes gained a reddish tint as they reshaped into more distinct pieces of clothing, the robe gaining sleeves and more the look of a sweater while the other bits took on the appearance of decidedly female undergarments. The wolf now stood a bit shorter than he had been while sitting up on his haunches with four legs; his muzzle faded completely from view, softening into a round, cute face while he continued to bark and yip periodically in a high-pitched voice.

The clothing forming around his hips pulled more than tight enough to show an impending change of sex, which resolved with a few slightly more excited barks and a blush running across the former-wolf's face at some deeply unfamiliar sensations coming from between her legs. By now the fur was completely gone from her skin, the only traces left of her prior form a pair of wolfish ears poking through her wild hair, a long, thick, fluffy tail behind her back, and her mouth still sporting some sharp fangs and a longer tongue than a human might be expected to have.

"Aah..rrf! M-ma..hrf." The new girl, now short enough for her standing eye level to be just slightly above Zack's while sitting, was looking into the knight's eyes and clearly trying with some difficulty to express something. Her chest was now the only part of her still glowing, and predictably, it burst forward into the waiting top while the outer garment formed fully into a mostly-unzipped sweater, drawing a few more excited yips from her before she gave saying something another go: "M-mrf. Mas...yip." She gave a slight whine, and then an excited, clearly happy bark as the glow finally subsided, leaving her with an enormous pair of breasts about the same size as Zack's. Finally, in an adorably high-pitched girly voice, the former-animal spoke her first word: "Master!"

By about the halfway point of the transformation, the pair in the library had already peeked in and begun watching the unusual happening quietly, silently agreeing with each other to wait until it was over to question and figure this out. Zack was in a state of more or less shock, mouth agape, from the point where the wolf was clearly taking on a humanoid appearance until the transformation concluded. The other two in the house had their first clue that something important had happened only after all of this.

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?"

The wolf-girl winced, putting her hands up to her ears at the sudden loud noise. "Um..?" she uttered in a mixture of confusion and concern, her ears drooping a bit. "M-master...okay?" she managed next.
"What happened to you?!" Zack shouted—not quite as loud as before, but with a voice crack in the middle of it that communicated just as much distress. He also stood up and spread out his arms in exasperation, causing the smaller girl to back up a couple of steps. "Why? How?!"

"Um..T-this one..doesn't know?" she said slowly at first, and then got a more thoughtful expression. "This one was j-just, thinking how happy this one was with the new pack, and thought..wanted to stay with forever, like this one's first pack! And this one w-wanted to be more useful to the pack, and look more like..and then, this one felt weird and, body started changing." she rattled off excitedly in one rapid-fire stream. This continued after only a brief pause: "B-but then this one thought, wasn't really going to look like, r-rest of pack when change was over, and panicked, and then this one started changing more?" About in the middle of this explanation, the door to the stairwell opened and Nora and Clera entered the room.

As her 'master' gave a protracted silence in response to this, her ears drooped into a worried expresion. "Uh..M-master doesn't like this?" she said.

"It's—I'm not, I don't," Zack stammered unhelpfully, gesticulating.

"I think 'Master' is a little overwhelmed right now, is all," Rayna said, which made the new girl jump in surprise and turn toward her. She was surely capable of hearing everyone else enter the room, but up until now her focus had been so tightly fixed on her own body changing, and then on Zack, to notice them.

"O-oh! Um. Hello fox," she said with a small wave. "And..other-alpha?"
"I told I'm not an alpha," Lynn said, "she is," and pointed to Rayna.

"Is this one...change bad?" she said, the distress at Zack's reaction possibly making her grammar and sentence logic worse than usual.

"I don't think so," Rayna said.

"She self-personified," Nora realized aloud. "M-magic's been b-building up since we met the wolf, so n-now..."

The wolf-girl whirled around. "Tall one!" she greeted first. Then she repeated the unfamiliar word as a question: "Per-son-ified?"

"Transformed from an animal into a person," Clera said. "Never thought I'd see that in my...well, technically I didn't," she added in a mumble mostly to herself.

By now, Zack had enough time to calm down. He took a deep breath and let it out again. "Rayna's right. I'm...you're, it's...fine. I just wasn't expecting, this. Or anything like it really. And you calling me 'Master' over and over is really weirding me out."
"B-but this one's alpha is this one's master," the girl protested, turning fully toward the knight again. He gave this an exasperated sigh, trying to conjure up an explanation for how wrong it was that she could possibly understand.

"I think this means we need to give her a name," Lynn stated, changing the subject.

"..Is okay," the wolf-girl said after a brief hesitation. "This one is okay with being a pet too. As long as this one can stay in the pack!"

"You're nobody's pet," Zack said in a serious, slightly stern tone, taking a small step forward and putting his hands on her shoulders. "People need names, though."

"Oh!" She nod-nodded cheerfully, at least appearing to understand, while Zack let go and pulled back again.

"Well, since you can understand speech and talk back and all," Lynn said, "it's only right you get to pick one you like. We can throw out a few suggestions, though."
"Okay!" her tail wagged excitedly; she seemed entirely on-board with the idea now that she understood its purpose.

"Let's see..ah..Karis?" Rayna said, just throwing out the first name that came to mind.

"Jessica?" Lynn suggested in reply.
Nora said, "Um..L-lue?"

"Uhmm..." In response to all of these, the wolf-girl fidgeted uncertainly. She either didn't like any of them, or at least liked all of them equally.

Zack finally put in his own suggestion. "...Lupa." Her response to this was immediate, her ears popping up and her expression brightening immensely.
"This one likes that one!" she exclaimed happily. "Lupa."

He crossed his arms. "You're not just saying that because I suggested it, are you?"

"Nooo. This one really likes that one!" she insisted.

"I think it's too late anyway," Rayna said. "Already showing up in seer-vision as her..waaiit a sec."

Lynn turned toward her friend. "What?" The illusionist's eyes glowed faintly while she examined their former team pet's statistics a little more carefully.

"Her class is listed as 'Original'...dunno what that is...but her stats are...wow."

"Um," Nora mumbled quietly, offering to interject. When nobody stopped her, she recited what she'd read once, long ago, from a class selection text dialogue: "'Original: First-generation B-beastfolk. Endowed with i-incredible physical prowess and the instincts of the wild, b-but incapable of c-casting spells and severely lacking in social skills.'"

"Was that...how do you remember that?" Lynn said, astonished.
"Um..I r-read all of the options b-before I picked one," she said. "D-didn't you?"

"What's the description for the Bard, then?" she asked, immediately curious.

"Th-that...wasn't one of our options."

"........Sooo, anyway, yeah," Rayna said, brushing off the embarrassing fact that a non-gamer had followed Rule Number One of playing a class-based game while she hadn't. "No kidding about 'physical prowess'. Her strength is higher than Rose's. You know, the literal dragon?"

"Does...that mean this one is, useful?" Lupa asked with a starry-eyed expression, apparently not at all bothered by being spoken of as if she weren't there.

At this point, the door to town was thrown open, and everyone turned to see Katherine walking in, making the door close itself behind her. "Heey, just checking on something unusual I—" she started, before actually entering the living room and encountering the seemingly-new person there.
"Cat!" Lupa said excitedly. "This one is very grateful for Cat helping the pack understand this one before now."
The catgirl crossed her arms, staring at the diminutive girl with the same mind a giant monster-wolf had had just a couple of hours ago. "...While I could just read minds to find out what happened, I'd appreciate an actual explanation," she stated.

---

The door to Loren's apartment was shut, and he and his guest were sitting across from each other in the small area that functioned as a living room. She was briefly distracted with complimenting the furnishing—which had already been there when he first entered—before making a concerted effort to focus on a difficult topic.

"...Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how to begin to explain this," she said. "I'm especially worried you'll think this is 'false memories' or something, now that you've brought that possibility up..."

"Just, tell me whatever it is," he said earnestly. "I'll...at least try to believe it as much as you do. At least at first."

"Okay. Well, you remember when I was asking you about a couple of weird terms before, right? Or—just a few minutes ago I said something about 'data' and it didn't look like you knew what I meant at first."
"Right...I've tried not to wonder where you came up with those things, since you said you might never be able to explain it," he said.
"Yyeeah. So this is my effort at that.

"You...really don't have a concept of 'other worlds', do you? I mean, not you personally but peopllle, in general."

"There is the demon realm, and it is widely believed that the gods live on another plane from the physical one somehow, which is also where Demaeus takes the souls of the dying," Loren said. "I suppose that's exactly not what you mean, though."

"Right. Like..just to begin with, can you imagine a different version of this world?" she said. "Say—think of some major historical event. A big, important battle or a really important legal or diplomatic decision, that could've gone either way at the time. What if it went the other way? The world would be, pretty different maybe?"
"Sure. I've read a few hypothetical histories," he said. "It's somewhat of a strange genre of fiction, but the best authors give a very logical explanation for the differing consequences."

"That's...at least a start. But it's still all basically this world. We have like, humans and elves and beastfolk and shifters. And...dragons. There's magic that works a certain way, and psions," she said. "The gods are the same. None of that changes. It was like that before and after in any version of events."
"Well, of course," Loren said.

"Okay. When I talk about 'other worlds', I'm not talking about any of that," Aria tried to explain. "I'm talking about something where the initial conditions are different. Like, a world where there are only humans. Orr, not any of the kinds of people we have here; just insect-people, or rock people or something, for example. Worlds with gods that have different personalities and names and natures, or no gods known for sure to exist at all. Worlds where magic works completely differently from how it does here, or just doesn't work at all. Does any of that make sense?"

"Well—" he was trying to process all of it at once, and it took him a moment. "I can't say it wouldn't make, logical sense. As a hypothetical, if the way of things in such an 'other' world can be logically connected and explained somehow. I can't imagine that it's very pleasant to live in some of those, or even possible..."

"But the idea makes sense, right?" she said, putting her arms forward.
"..I'll grant that much." Loren's expression was thoughtful. "It's a very original concept. Or—it would be, if we were talking about some fiction you read or, wanted to write. But we're not, are we?"
"No," she exhaled a half-sigh. "I just want to make sure what I'm saying won't sound like total nonsense to you before I even start saying it."

"All right."

"As far as we can tell—you know I live with a psion, so Kath's aware of this too," she interrupted herself. "—I didn't really go to the demon world when I went into that portal after drawing the sword, and I didn't come from it when I came back out. The portal wasn't straight from then and there to here and now, either. But it's not like...I mean I can't describe what happened in terms of me just going somewhere, either," Aria said. "I experienced an entire life as a person, on another world—I believe the same person, with no real disconnect, except that I had no memory of this world or anything in it until a while after I 'came back' here. I'm talking thirty-two years from a well-recorded birth to the moment I was brought back this way. Some kind of, weird, reincarnation thing?"

Since Loren was completely silent, she continued: "See, this is where I'm worried about you thinking this is false memories. But wait 'till you hear about this world before passing judgement. Given how hard it was for you to even imagine another world the way I meant it at all, I don't see how a ward cast on that blade could've come up with a consistent fiction of the place I remember living in. I don't know how my own mind could've fabricated it, either. I mean, it's equally impossible that the ward-casters knew how to send me to another world, which is why the working theory is that the gods were somehow involved with that part."

"Well..okay." His tone of voice was contemplative, a bit quiet; he was far more overwhelmed by the concept than particularly doubtful just yet. "Tell me about this other world, then."

---

"I see," Katherine said. She strode a bit closer to the small wolf-girl, extending a hand. "Well, congratulations on the 'promotion', I guess." After staring at the hand for a second or so, Lupa seemed to realize which gesture this was and gave an awkward first-time handshake.

"Thanks!" she said.

After letting go, the psion continued. "So, first things first: It seems like you were magically gifted all the knowledge needed to move around in that form and talk..well, mostly; your grammar's sort of weird. But...there are some—thhhhings—that it'd be very helpful for you to know about living in that shape and especially being female now, that I don't think were included. It'd be immensely embarrassing and awkward for everyone involved to teach you those things, um, verbally and practically. But I believe I should be able to impart some of that knowledge to you with my powers, with your permission and cooperation. The process shouldn't be harmful or painful in any way, and would save both you and...probably Zack if we're being honest, a lot of trouble."

The wolf-girl appeared to think carefully about this for a moment, before nodding her head. "Okay! This one trusts Cat."

"..If you say so," Katherine said, managing to be caught slightly off-guard by the abrupt, earnest declaration of confidence in her. "All right. Just close your eyes for a minute and try to focus on what you feel entering your head as it does so." Lupa nodded, and did so. Katherine picked up her own personal knowledge of how and in what situation to do certain necessary activities, and simply copied it over into the waiting mind, allowing time for each in turn to be thought about and processed into becoming Lupa's own knowledge. The psion had the sense that it was far easier to do this safely with understanding that had immediate physical application than it would be with more conceptual knowledge.

Within thirty seconds it was over, and Lupa opened her eyes slowly, wobbling back and forth on her feet briefly and giving a soft whine. "...This one's dizzy."

"Sorry about that. I think I pushed it in slightly too fast," the catgirl said. After shaking her head back and forth, Lupa made an immediate full recovery.

"Is okay. This one understands now!" she said brightly, wagging her tail again.
"Just remember, what I just 'taught' you was all of the 'how' and 'when' sort. If you want to understand 'why', you'll need to actually ask one of us to explain that," Katherine said.
"Okay!"

During this time, Rayna had slowly made her way around the group in the middle of the living room (Zack standing a short ways away from the catgirl and the former wolf) to get to Nora, producing a big white magic crystal from her inventory and holding it out toward the elf. "I've been meaning to give you this thing for a while," she said. "The Captain suggested it should be split up into one piece for each element it has, maybe slotted into some jewelry or something, so you can use it as a source for your weaving."

"I s-see." Nora carefully took the gemstone. "Th-thank you."
"No, really, thank you. Thinking about this thing still has bad associations for me, so the sooner it's out of my hands and split up the better."

"Well, this is a Thing That Happened," Katherine declared, turning partway toward Zack. "I suppose we need to tell the Captain about this. Something like an animal turning into a person probably has some kind of legal ramifications, since it's sort of like a new person being born..."

"Of course it does," Clera said. "I was about to suggest the same myself. However, her state of dress..."
"Something to be desired, yes," the psion agreed with a small nod. Looking her up and down for a second, she said, "I think something of mine might..almost fit you. Or anything Zack has, probably...if a bit loose. If that's alright with you?"
"Yes!" Lupa declared excitedly. Among the knowledge passed to her were a couple of particular motions necessary to put on mildly trickier female clothing, such as hooking a bra together or making a skirt go on the correct side of a tail, so at least she would probably be able to dress herself once clothes were provided. If anything, Katherine thought she seemed rather eager for the new experience of putting on or changing clothes and having a different appearance (sort of) as a result. So she eagerly followed her 'Master' and the psion upstairs, leaving everyone else still in the living room.

"So, how are we gonna break this news to Aria and Mira?" Lynn said.
"Well, I think Aria will just be happy we have a new party member to plan strategies around," Rayna answered.
"Yeah, but they'll both be super disappointed a big transformation happened while they were off doing something else. Maybe Rose too, come to think of it."

"Aah, they can deal," the fox-girl said with a slight 'whatever' wave.

---

So the party finally gets its 10th party member (or 13th, depending on how you count it). I've been building up to and planning this particular scene for a very long time. Much of has already been "written" in my head for quite a while; I just needed the circumstances in-story to be right for it to happen. In fact, the first time I think I foreshadowed it was in part 28, which is over 60 parts ago; I'm pretty sure I decided this was going to eventually happen even a bit before that, though I didn't know it right when the wolf was first introduced. If it ever seems like I'm not thinking ahead for the events of a story—well, it could very well be true. But this at least proves I'm capable of it, right?