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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."

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