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?