The "Best" RPG Ever-100

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Katherine woke herself and Zack up at the same time—after jolting Aria awake, after everyone said their general goodbyes. That time was fairly deep into the morning; after all, they'd all had a rather long night. While she had already had the experience of..mutually petting someone before with Nora, it was a bit different to fall asleep that way and wake up still clinging to someone else. Not...bad, but different. She carefully peeled herself off of Zack and pulled up onto her knees on the bed, while he swung around so he was facing the same way she was, his legs hanging off the side.

"Morrr-ning~," the catgirl said, and received a groggy but not unfriendly grunt in repsonse. Her head tilted slightly as she caught sight of some thin metal links across the back of his neck. She reached forward and prodded them slightly. "You're still wearing the abstinence charm thing? I'm pretty sure that stuff's worn off by now."
"Yeah." The wolf-girl stood up and stretched. "I still don't like the idea of being attracted to guys, so..whatever of that the stupid curse gave me, this should cancel out, right?"
"I'm sure it's helping," she shrugged. "Well, I need to get back to my room before everyone else wakes up enough to be witnesses."
"Mmnh. See you 't breakfast."
"Yep!" Hopping off the bed, Katherine headed out the door and made quick work of the short distance back to her own bedroom. It was almost a shame they were going to let this secret out soon, as it gave her an opportunity to feel sneaky, slipping thorugh the upstairs hallway unnoticed by all.

"Mnnh?" Almost as soon as she was gone, Lupa woke up. "Nnh...yah!" She pulled at the covers over her and threw them violently away—actually, directly at him.

"..Morning, Lupa." Zack carefully picked it off of himself and set it in a pile on his own bed for now.
"Ack! Sorry, Master!" She sat up, cross-legged, on top of the bed. "This one didn't know what the weight was and threw it off quick in case it was an attack!"

"It's just covers. People usually sleep under blankets and stuff to keep them warm," he said. "...I hope Katherine taught you how to clean yourself in a shower."
"Um..?" Given the light headtilt, she didn't know the word.

"The thing in the bathroom that spits water at you from above."

"Oh! This one thought that was skywater," she said, and then nodded. "That makes more sense now."

"Your tail's almost as bad as mine, so it probably needs more attention than hers does," he said.

"Bad?"
"Gigantic. Fluffy," he clarified. "More fur is more to wash."
"Oh," she nodded cheerfully again.

"Same goes for hair."

"Um...people do this every day?" she said, pulling herself down onto her feet and standing up.

"Usually. Especially after a workout or a battle. No one I've met likes being covered in yesterday's sweat. Well—you don't have to wash all your hair and fur every day, but it gets kind of rough and tangled if it's not groomed often enough."

"Hmmn." Lupa held her own tail forward with a hand, considering this point. "This one will try it," she said.

"Alright. Nora's still asleep," (which his hearing informed him of) "so you can have first go in there. I guess..tell me if you have any questions," he shrugged.

"Okay! Thank you, Master!" she said excitedly, heading inside.

Lynn was awakened by a knock from her bathroom door. "Pssst! Lynn," Rayna's voice came through. "Are you up yet?"
"I guess..?" She sat up and took a look out the window—the sun was up, but it was still morning. "I'm surprised you are, after that late a night."

"I slept enough. More importantly, I have exciting news. Can I come in?"
"Sure."

The fox-girl was still in her bedclothes, which implied whatever news it was had come up immediately after she woke. "Okay okay. Check this out," she said excitedly. After holding up one hand and making a few tapping and sweeping motions with the other, her hair appeared to turn blue.
"Uh..I guess that's no normal illusion if you're so excited about it," the human said.
"Yeah! My hair is actually blue now. And I can do this." With a further motion of her hand, the color of her hair shifted around through various hues like someone was dragging their mouse around in a color picker for it.

"So..you got up to that 'reality bending' skill or whatever?" she said, pulling around to hang her legs off the side of the bed.

"Mm-hm!" The fox-girl left her hair at a bright neon pink.

"Can it do anything...useful?"
"Uhh...some?"

"For one thing, this is technically an enchantment I'm applying to myself. With the skill level I have, it'll wear off or can get dispelled, but little cosmetic things like this are very high efficiency and can stick around for months with no maintenance, which is totally different from constantly maintining a visual illusion. New-grown hair will keep the new color unless I specifically set it not to. Forrr the moment the only, I guess, useful things I can do is some stat buffing, and that's way lower efficiency; without upkeep it won't last more than a few minutes. But! All of that can be leveled up. I can make everything more permanent by leveling the main skill, raise the efficiency of specific effects much more with skills that focus on them, and some of the higher-up skills really do allow for indefinite no-upkeep effects and true reality alteration—as opposed to the dispellable stuff—at the highest levels," she rattled off quickly.

"That's great and all, but I think you might have to repeat all that to everyone else," Lynn said. "Still, I'm happy for you."

"Yeah, I don't mind explaining something twice. I—when we were fighting the weird tentacle starfish thing, I felt sorta useless," she said, her ears drooping slightly. "But now I can finally do something other than illusions! If someone needs a little extra strength or intelligence, or..like, I can change a blade of grass into something that looks in every way like a person or animal for a brief moment to pull the attention of even something like that demon. Eventually I might be able to manipulate almost every attribute that I can 'see' with the HUD-vision stuff, since that's how what I can already do basically works and with the new skill I can see a lot of the options future skills will give me grayed out, waiting to be unlocked."

"Could you give yourself a temporary copy of someone else's abilities?" she suggested, standing up.
"Maybe! Probablyyy, at least a lesser proportion of them. The possibilities look endless!"

About halfway through making breakfast, Katherine picked up a pair of minds in the nearby sky—both of which she recognized, and one of which seemed somehow...less hazy than before. For now she went with the one she knew could easily be reached. Mira.

Yoo, Kath.

How..is she?

Pretty good. Way better than last night. We'll fill you in once we get there.

Not long after, they came into the kitchen. "Good morning," the catgirl said cheerfully, and received just a sheepish nod from the dragon-girl in response.

"Mornin'. You the only one awake?" the witch asked.

"No, but everyone else is still upstairs getting ready for the day."

"Mmnh..." Rose fidgeted, looking very much like she wanted to say something.
Katherine paused—at least physically; her telekinesis was still doing the work of cooking—to look at her. "You have something important to say?"

"Um, yeah, uh.."
"You should say it at breakfast. Especially if you want everyone to hear it."
"Oh. Uh..okay."

"Besides," she said, turning around to look at something. "People take shocking or awkward news a lot better in the middle of a meal."
"Really?"
"Sure! For one thing, there's something in people's instincts about eating. Anyone you're eating with is a member of yourrrr, tribe, or pack, or whatever. So they're automatically friends, even when they're not. But especially when they are. For another, if you don't like what you're hearing then your options are to listen anyway or miss out on the food."

"Heheh...I-I guess so," she said nervously.
"Maybe more importantly, everyone will be here, and you don't have to say it...what, seven different times, worst-case? Unless you didn't already tell her...whatever it is?"

"Um. Right. I-I mean I did," she said. After a gentle wave in the direction of one of the kitchen table chair from the catgirl, she nervously skittered over there, Mira gracefully floating over to sit next to her.

"I'd offer to help, but it seems like you've got a good rhythm going," the witch said.
"Indeed I do. You can pick it up some other time."

Someone—maybe the Captain of the guard, or maybe the people in charge of the house's construction—had ensured that the table had space enough, and chairs enough, for no less than four extra people beyond the expected eight (after accounting for the fact that the entire house was outfitted for twice as many people as it was originally going to be for in the first place). So once the telepathic call went up and everyone was seated, it still wasn't overly crowded—even with Rose and Lupa added to the lot. Nearly everyone took note of the dragon-girl's presence in particular, Zack and Aria both asking if she was okay and receiving a positive, if a bit nervous, response, and the rest either witnessing one of those two or choosing to reserve such questioning for later.

After they were all seated, but before touching any of her own food, Rose gave an uncharacteristically reserved throat-clearing to try and get everyone's attention, before realizing she basically already had it—except for Lupa, who seemed content enough with the dragon-girl's earlier assurance she was okay to start tearing at her food like nothing had ever been wrong.

"Um...so...a-about last night," she started. "I was uh..the..like, the demon-thing...it um..." She trailed off and shrugged, giving up on trying to explain this. "I-I'm just sorry if I worried everyone. I'm..okay, really, and I...sorta was throwing a tantrum at myself because...stuff...um." Rose turned slightly in Mira's direction, and giggled nervously when the witch gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

"W-well, I guess most of you might already know this, or a-at least had a guess..uh. I'mmmm, from Earth too," she said slowly. "Annnnd, I've known all of you are for..a while. A few days, at least. That's it, I guess."

While those of the group who'd been less privy to the earlier 'investigation' took a moment to process this, Aria—sitting next to her—reached over to put a hand on her shoulder. "Welcome to the party," she said. Several of the others echoed the general sentiment of this right after, with someone saying "This whole thing is crazy, right?" Rose just nervously giggled in response to all this, and most of the table quickly turned to general, casual chatter as though nothing too unusual had just been said.

Among this, Lupa paused in her eating, pulling some food the rest of the way into her mouth with her tongue, and turned to Zack with a questioning look—it read to him as 'asking permission to ask a question'.

"What?"
"Um..what's 'Earth'?"

"That's..going to be a lengthy explanation for you," he said. "Look, it's where we're from—everyone here in the house but you I guess—as opposed to, where we are now. I think that's the best I can do without help."

"Okay," she nodded, accepting this explanation completely. Zack just shook his head as she tore back into her food again, unsure how to take a complete lack of follow-up questions. At least it meant he could keep eating too.

"Hey, you have a skill tree too, right?" Aria said after waiting what she presumed to be long enough to distance the question from Rose's announcement somewhat.

"Hmn? Oh, yeah! It's a literal tree too, heehee!"

"What've you been buying? Actually, I'll just have you draw it for me like everyone else has."

"Uhh..okay? But like, a bunch of skills were just already there for me when I got here," she said, immediately concerned with the sudden interest in this topic.

"I guess that explains why you were so powerful already as soon as we met..."

"Hey, speaking of skills!" Rayna said. "Did anyone notice anything diffent about my haaaiir~?"
"You're making it look pink?" Zack said.

"Yes, but—it's not an illusion. I finally got that skill that lets me do other stuff, too," she said.
"How exactly do you know it's not an illusion?"

"Because I'm not spending any energy maintaining it," she replied. "I'm using that skill to actually change the color attribute of my hair. It's a long-lasting enchantment, technically."
"Okaay..so how do we know it's not just a long-lasting illusion you can make now?"

"My Sight tells me otherwise," she said, in a tone that indicated this settled the matter in her mind.

"No, no, I think he's onto something," Lynn said, drawing a very 'not you too' expression from the fox-girl. "How can you trust that your Sight thing isn't just telling you it's meaningfully distinct from an illusion? I mean, you can already fool almost every normal sense we have, so those can't very well be trusted to tell us whether it's real or not."
"It wouldn't make any sense for my power to try to fool me about how it works."
"Yeah, but you could be misinterpreting what it's telling you," Katherine joined in.

"Well—I can do stuff like buff other people's stats with it too," she said, changing tack. "You can't fake making someone stronger or smarter or...whatever. And that's the same skill and spell, so by extension..."

"You told me yourself this morning that you can only do small boosts, though," Lynn countered. "Isn't it pretty easy to boost someone's confidence by making them feel a tiny bit stronger, and then that confidence gives them what they perceive to be the same results as a real boost of strength?"

"W—maybe, but I can level those same skills up to increase the boosts past any kind of placebo effect," Rayna said.

"I don't remember anything in those skills' descriptions that suggest their exact method of achieving that effect won't change when you level them up," Aria said. "Maybe it really is just an illusion now, and it's a 'fake it till you make it' thing?"

"But that's not how anyone else's skills work, right?" Lynn asked—not so much changing sides as obeying her own 'devil's advocate' urges. "You don't start out, like, casting 'fireball' by throwing lit matches and then suddenly the exact same skill becomes the ability to magically create fire from thin air."

"Yeah," the fox-girl said.

"That doesn't settle the issue about the hair, though," she continued, swinging back the other way. "I mean, a skill with so many different effects at once could plausibly achieve them differently."

The illusionist put a hand up to her forehead, starting to get something resembling a headache. "Aria, you're the one who told me what this skill does. You told me it 'makes my illusions real' or something, right? I didn't even get that it did that. So, what, do you think you read it wrong the first time? Let me.." As her eyes were already closed in frustration by now, she consulted her skill tree and tried to read through the skill's description again for herself, and actually understand it this time.

"Wait, no..okay. Yeah." Everyone waited in anticipation of her results—except for Lupa, who was just being quiet because everyone else was. Rayna opened her eyes again, and they displayed the faint glow they had a few times before. "I get it. It's fake and it's real."

Lynn supplied the quickly-spoken "What?"

"My class is like one of those Zen riddle things," she said, gesturing to try and explain it. "You remember how the description went: An illusionist is someone who has 'pierced the veil', which implies seeing the truth. The very first thing I started to be able to do after picking it was to see truth—the way things really, objectively are. But the name of the class is 'illusionist', someone who hides the truth. I can hide the truth from the senses of everyone else because I can see it. If I couldn't see it, I'd be no good at hiding it because I wouldn't know what to hide."

"Okaay," Lynn said, "but how does that..?"
"Hold up, I'm not done," she said, holding out a hand before dropping it again. "I get powers that affect reality because at some level, reality is an illusion. The 'reality' every person experiences is the sum total of all the senses they have—sight, sound, magic, instinct, whatever, and it's not exactly the same for different people—like, I can smell stuff you can't, and probably Zack or Lupa can smell things I can't. For example. If I can change the reality a person is experiencing by affecting every sense they have with a super convincing illusion, then I'm changing that one person's reality, even if I'm not technically doing anything but making an illusion that fools them. But my perception is slightly special because I really do see the truth somehow, at least a tiny little window into it. So if I want to change reality, all I really have to do is make an illusion good enough to fool that. Sight-with-a-capital-S. If I can change what I see when I'm looking at the 'truth', then somehow or other I must be changing that truth itself. Obviously making that level of illusion is really hard, which is why I have to know how to make all kinds of 'normal' illusions first."

"You got all that from the skill description?" Aria said after a pause long enough to process the rant.

"Not exactly. It's..I dunno, it feels like reading it was the straw that broke the camel's back. That skill," she said to inform everyone who wasn't Aria or a mind-reader, "is called 'Fool Truth'. Its description just says 'Illusions gain the power to affect truesight.' Truesight being..the name of the base skill that gives me all the HUD stuff, which I started out with a couple levels in....what?" Aria was giving her a bit of a look.
"That's, not the description you wrote down on the paper," she said. "It was way longer and more technical than that, and I think I'd have to re-read it to even..."
The fox-girl sighed. "Someone's messing with us, then? We can look over it again after we're done eating. At least I understand now, though."

"So..is your hair color an illusion or not?" Zack said—since he didn't exactly grasp the earlier explanation.
"Yes. I am an illusion, so naturally everything about my hair is," Rayna said. "But I'm obviously real, so..so is my hair color." She grinned at him long enough for him to give a thoroughly confused look for a couple of seconds and then just shake his head, resuming eating rather than trying to point out the logical problems with that pair of statements.

Rose looked a little dazed from this entire conversation, so Lynn made an effort to include her in the new topic. "Hey."
"Um..yeah?"
"Were you a guy too? I mean, before—on Earth."
"Y-yeah.." She was obviously wondering how Lynn had guessed this before picking up on a particular word: "Wait, 'too'?"

"Oh, yeah," Katherine said. "Every single one of us was male before. Just another weird aspect of the whole situation."
"Oh! Um, I-I didn't know that part," she said. "Thought it was just me and Mira..an' maybe Zack."

"Anyway," the catgirl continued, smoothly changing the subject. "There's an extra door in the front hallway. Since we know about each other now, maybe we could get someone to put a door in your forest and link it to that one—just like the one we've got that links us to town. Then it wouldn't be as much of a hassle to get back and forth."

"Ooh. That'd be great!" Rose said, nodding.

"Ah, right," Nora said. "A-as long as we're..saying stuff, th-there's something..." She trailed off almost as soon as she realized she had everyone's attention. "It's..."

Are you still okay talking about this now? Katherine asked her privately. We can put it off a little longer...

No, no. I'm just nervous saying something with this many people's eyes on me.

I'll say it, Zack thought—not having heard this bit of conversation but easily guessed its content.

"Look, we weren't exactly honest about how her 'spirit weave' power works," he said. "Because it's..embarrassing. To get the beastfolk form, she has to.." He was blushing a bit, and waved his hands as though this explainedi t.
"She has to pet that kind of beastfolk," Katherine finished for him. "So, yeah, the three of us have all done that thing with each other." She shrugged, mostly just feeling relieved to have it out in the open.

Everyone was quiet for a second or two: Rayna had her arms crossed and was nodding slightly; Lupa, whose plate had been clean since before the whole discussion of Rayna's new power started, just looked on with a blank stare of mild confusion; Rose was looking away from the three of them but obviously blushing and grinning slightly.

Aria broke the tension by fistpumping and yelling "Woohoo Nora!" Clera glared at her, quickly rolling up a napkin and hit her forearm with it. "Ow—heyy, what's that for?"

"I was pretty sure that was it," the fox-girl said, ignoring the silent argument the winged girl was still having with the shifter. "I mean—not only can I hear things, but y'know, my Sight tells me a lot about how any effect I'm looking at works, and I've certainly looked at it. At least now that it's out in the open you can complete the collection, riiight?" She said with a toothy smile in Nora's direction.
"Uh. Um.." The elf just blushed and slid down in her chair in a vain attempt to appear smaller.

"Why is everyone acting funny, Master?" Lupa asked quietly—not that the table couldn't hear her anyway. "Petting, weird?"

"Well—no, I guess not. For beastfolk, at least, it's normal. But we're all originally human, so it is weird for us," he tried to explain.

"Human?"
"You know, like Lynn?"

Lupa fixed her with a long stare, as though attempting to identify what difference this made. "No ears or tail," she concluded. "But then, humans used to pet this one all the time," she said, and Zack sighed in despair of ever explaining this in a way she'd understand.

"You were a dog then, right?" Lynn said, "Since you said something about having a previous master." Lupa nodded. "Well, see, it's normal for a person to pet a dog. And it's normal for beastfolk to pet each other. But humans kind of see it as weird for people to pet each other. Beastfolk are more like animals, so it's more normal to them to show affection that way."

"But, tall one pets people too," she said, pointing to Nora and prompting a deep blush from her.

"Just because people find something weird at first doesn't mean they can't get over that and do it anyway," Mira said. "I know I did," she added with a grin in Rayna's direction which went over the small wolf-girl's head. "If you already like the idea, then once you understand that beastfolk like it, and see it as a sign of affection, you can give yourself permission to enjoy it. But that doesn't mean it's for everyone. So you shouldn't expect everyone to be comfortable with petting you, either, any more than you would've been comfortable with someone petting you when you were a big, strong wolf."

"Ohh. Okay," Lupa nodded again, thoughtfully. This at least got through to her a little bit.

When everyone was about finished, Katherine said, "Look, we've had a stressful few days lately. There's plenty of literal money in the metaphorical bank. I'd suggest we take a day off today, unless someone objects orr, like, the Captain or someone comes bursting through our door with some new distaster to deal with."

"Yeah, I agree," Lynn said. "I didn't see Rast at all yesterday, kinda like to know what happened with him..." While Rayna teased her about this, everyone else started chiming in their own agreement to this plan.

"All right, I think it's settled then," the psion said, starting to pick up plates to move them toward the kitchen. Mira winked at Rose before sprouting some shadow-tendrils from her back and using them to pick up some of the dishes not already floating in the air.
"New demon powers," she said by way of explanation.
"Uh-huh..are you sure those things are able to keep dishes balanced on them?" the catgirl said with a look of concern. "They don't exactly have all the features that hands do to keep something fragile held up."

"I have very fine control over them, even all at once," the witch said, standing up and starting toward the sink with it all in tow. "And they're stronger than they look. Or are you just annoyed someone else can pick up a lot at the same time too?"

"Not particularly," Katherine said, refusing to take the bait.

"Anyway, you cooked, so I'll take care of the cleaning," she said, using her actual hands to transfer her load of dishes from the tentacles to the sink.

"Okay. Just remember you volunteered," she shrugged, setting her own load carefully down before leaving the kitchen.

As soon as the table was clear, Aria rolled out a big piece of paper and got out some pens, offering one to Rose—who took it cautiously, clearly afraid she was just going to snap it in two. "All right, so just make a copy on paper of what your skill tree looks like in your head. Then I can look through it and help you come up with an effective build for future leveling."
"Okay," she nodded, at least trusting in the shifter's obvious confidence in her own ability to do this sort of thing.

"Yeah okay, someone is definitely messing with us," Rayna said, having unrolled the record of her own skill tree. "Look." Aria came around to do so, and headtilted hard at what she saw.

The lower half of the tree, and the upper half, were both present, but there was a blank space where the name and description of the skill that bridged the two should have been—the description which Aria had read before and taken as reason to advise the illusionist to rush and get one of everything below in order to quickly afford it.