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16

Role Play Theater / Ponyfinder

« on: July 22, 2015, 04:35:57 PM »

Any interest in a short game in the Ponyfinder setting? The main PC races are magic-using equines, but it's its own setting with an imperialist supermare, a city on a magically cooled volcano, a culture of gem-hunting flying cat merchants, and a bunch of anarchist robots.

17

Writer's Guild / Xanadu: A Stately Pleasure Dome

« on: June 15, 2015, 02:12:17 AM »

"Are you supposed to be Mayor McCheese?"

Kyle rolled his eyes for the dozenth time. "No, it's a historical --"

"Oh, I know! You're one of those saucer-head people from that old TV show about drugs." Other convention attendees streamed around them, hurrying off to panels or going to the hotel's main hall.

"No. Look. The convention is called Xanadu, so this" -- he gestured to his outfit of PVC pillars dangling from a bamboo roof of a hat -- "is based on the summer palace of Kublai Khan."

The man in the rainbow pony costume scratched his head. "Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm going to go check out the dealers' tables."

Kyle grumbled and made his way into the main convention hall. Nobody had understood his costume. Kublai Khan actually had two capitals, emphasizing his combined Mongol/Chinese empire, and in the summer capital he had a sort of mobile tent with a fusion of architectural styles, fit for arguably the richest man in the world. Somehow, nobody appreciated this fascinating history. Instead, everybody else in the hall was dressed in costumes without any theme at all. There was a Pikachu with a trainer, robots, a dragon, elves, spacemen, superheroes, and so on. Kyle would have preferred a costume contest with a clearer aesthetic sense.

The man in charge of Xanadu was about to give a speech. Kyle edged closer. The pillars dangling from his big hat rustled and clicked as he moved through the crowd.

The speaker got into the convention's spirit by putting on a raven mask, the only bit of ornament he had on.

Light flashed through the convention hall. Kyle staggered, then passed out.

When he woke up, his vision was blurry, but he seemed to be standing. Kyle tried to look around. He didn't turn his head so much as open his eyes in a way that seemed... split, oddly angled, hard to describe. The Xanadu convention hall had been burned and smashed and looted, probably in that order, judging from the craters in the floor and the shattered chandeliers and charred curtains. A terrorist attack! He tried to run, but he couldn't move. Paralyzed.

"Help!" he called out. His voice echoed in the huge, empty hall. No -- he seemed to be speaking in chorus. "Hello? Anyone there?" He tried to turn his head and instantly, his perspective shifted to a different angle, with no movement in between.

Someone yelped and ran from behind him, dressed as a medieval bard. Kyle said, "Wait! Who are you?" Kyle saw a silk rope below him, tripping the man.

The minstrel staggered upright, turned around, and gaped. "The tent!" He stared several feet up to meet Kyle's eye level.

"I... what?" said Kyle.

"I get it! You're a Mage's Magnificent Mansion, cast by a high-level wizard! Or possibly one of the variant classes from the eastern lands sourcebook. The voices must be coming from the built-in Unseen Servant spells, though this seems more like a Magic Mouth effect."

This explanation didn't help. Kyle said, "What are you going on about?"

"Oh, man, you don't know? Everybody transformed. Turned into their costumes or something like that. My new bardic knowledge says you're one of those magic mansion spells. I got a couple of spells of my own." He strummed a chord on a silver lyre, and a spray of colors shot out from the instrument to splatter like flowers against the far wall. For an encore he conjured some dancing lights that hovered around him.

Kyle stared. "Magic?" Whatever had happened here, had knocked a hole in one wall the size and shape of a hulking ogre, or possibly the Incredible Hulk. He'd seen people in costumes resembling both. Some shining crystals dangled from the ceiling; he was sure those were new. Between those and the bard's supposed spells, Kyle had to wonder if this medieval rock star was on to something.

Kyle said, "I can't move. What do you see? Not in Dungeons and Dragons terms."

The bard stopped with his mouth open and one hand raised, as though about to wax poetic. "Uh. You turned into a big tent with a bamboo roof. I mean, really big. I woke up in there and --"

"You were inside me?!"

"Come on, tent-man, don't make it sound dirty. I must've taken shelter in there when all the crazy stuff happened. Woke up inside. I'm seeing a bunch of dragon sculptures on the pillars, and you're talking through them."

Marco Polo had described the Pleasure Dome as having carved dragons worked into the columns, supporting the bamboo half-trunks that formed a shingled circular roof. Kyle had seen a modern architect's proposal for how it was built, but had imagined that the dragons were shaped to alternately face inward and outward. Suddenly Kyle's view shifted and he saw down from a high place inside a tent that had cushions and low tables for hundreds of people. In the room's center stood a firepit with a collection of metal woks and a stack of plates and chopsticks.

"I can see inside," said Kyle, staring at everything, rapidly switching between inside and outside views of the place as though from many cameras. "I can't move."

"Even with those dragon arms?"

Kyle couldn't see any of the dragon sculptures. He tried to focus on one and move the arms from the architectural drawings. They hadn't been part of his costume; he wasn't nuts enough to make it that detailed. Still he felt little claws stretching, barely in his field of view. "I feel like a T-rex."

The bard shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Don't be sad about this. It's kind of cool. Better than that guy who turned into a mouse and got eaten, anyway, or the zombies." He shuddered.

"Zombies?"

"That's why I hid inside... uh, the tent."

"It's the Cane Palace of Kublai Khan."

"You're the Cane Palace of Kublai Khan," the bard said, as though he'd always wanted to use that as an insult comeback. "Where's your sacred river and demon lovers and caves of ice?"

Kyle felt himself sighing from many dragon mouths. "Coleridge's poem is barely based on the history. It was a drug trip, mostly. The real thing was a place for entertaining and dining in between hunting parties and actual imperial business."

"Dining! You show up as a Mage's Magnificient Mansion spell to my powers. Can you make food?"

"I don't exactly have hands."

"I mean by magic."

"I have no idea how..." Kyle thought of the woks. He felt the woks, and his vision zoomed in on them from several dragon vantage points. He concentrated, and slabs of meat and baskets of vegetables appeared from nowhere to start frying in a burst of flaming oil and spices.

The bard said, "Hey, Mongolian food!" and ran inside Kyle.

"Did I say you could --"

"Never mind that. Look, you've got food magic! And what's this stuff?" He watched the food frying and hefted a mug of some white drink.

"That'd be fermented horse milk. Very historically authentic."

"Oh, wow, if you can generate food like that, then you could make all kinds of money as a restaurant."

Kyle would have shuddered if he could. The initial shock was wearing off. He might be stuck this way, immobile, a freak. What would he even do with money? "Will this wear off?"

"So far it hasn't," the bard said.

"Then use your magic to fix it! Or find me a wizard or something with a curse removal spell."

"You're really upset about this?"

"I'm a freaking historical landmark! No, not even that, I'm a temporary shelter meant to be packed away for nine months a year."

The musician considered, and strummed his harp. "Maybe I can help. Bardic knowledge, right? Maybe... okay, I've got an idea. How do you feel about long distance travel?"

#

The man with a ferret's fur-mask and tail smiled for the camera. "How are you feeling, Kyle?"

Kyle floated. There wasn't much else he could do while hurtling around the Earth. "As well as can be expected for having been taken apart and put back together."

It'd taken some convincing to get Kyle to agree. The bard had hooked him up with another Xanadu attendee, Ethan Musk, who'd been inspired to start an aerospace company called X-Space. It took multiple rocket launches to get all of Kyle's pillars and bamboo into orbit. Kyle had fallen unconscious at some point in the disassembly process, repeating to himself that he had faith in his own historical accuracy. The mobile palace was designed to be taken down and moved, so the thing he'd become had the same ability. He'd woken back up to feel astronauts finalizing the installation of airlocks and handholds and velcro all over him. Fortunately his "canvas" sides, roof and floor seemed as impervious to radiation and other space threats as they were to the worst storms of the Mongolian steppe. The palace as he'd imagined it was always warm and not at all stuffy, so his new interior was just as pleasant without having to install air scrubbers and heat radiators.

Result: orbital Mongolian restaurant / magic space station.

Ethan Mask said, "You're going to do great things for humanity, Kyle. Now that you're installed, we have a free source of food, air and pressurized living space. We are going to the stars, and we're going to eat delicious stir-fried beef and vegetables on the way."

Kyle flew over Kazakhstan and China, watching the sun rise. If the great Khan's palace was going to be the headquarters of a campaign to bring cultures together and conquer the stars in the name of a Great Blue Heaven, he was proud to be part of that. It was entirely historically appropriate.


Based on the "Xanadu" story setting by Bryan Derksen and Xodiac.

18

Game Room / Possible Game Art Commission

« on: April 30, 2015, 11:01:17 AM »

I'm considering commissioning art for a game project. The game is about a kitsune fighting demons, focusing on magical combat rather than punching or weapons. The intended art style is anime-like but definitely furry as opposed to "human with fox ears".

An outdated version of the game is here, and a near-current new experiment is here. Top-down/three-quarters POV similar to the old Zelda games, with the character being pretty small.

What I'd want is a set of animation frames showing four directions, of standing, moving, attacking/spellcasting, and being hurt, with moving and attacking/casting being most important. (Right now all I have are low-res pixel art made using an online sprite generator.) I'm using the Unity engine, which is flexible about the exact data format.

On my wish list at lower priority are the main monsters: tengu (crow demon), oni (ogre), and gaki (which I picture as those "Bomb" enemies from Final Fantasy). Also, alternate forms of the kitsune with different powers, like a foxtaur (yay, taurs!) or a coyote-like Western gunslinger with cool hat and vest. But first things first.

If anyone's interested in possibly doing art for the kitsune, please let me know and we can talk about format, style and pricing.

19

Role Play Theater / Recruiting: The Fate of Torch

« on: September 01, 2014, 11:14:33 AM »

Numeria is a land where wizards and swordsmen pick through high-tech ruins. The town of Torch survives mainly on high-quality forging, powered by the giant purple flame jet on a hilltop. The other day, that flame went out. Adventurers wanted; the last few groups didn't come back.

I'm looking to run "Fires of Creation", the first book of Paizo's "Iron Gods" adventure series. That means a campaign of a few sessions with a clear ending. (The second book isn't even out yet.) Expect repeated dungeon visits with trips back to town, and a mix of fighting and chances for actual roleplaying.

But I'd like to run it in Fate if at all possible! It's surprisingly easy to adapt. Character creation will be simpler on your end. Fate rules also encourage you to do things other than "run up and hit the bad guy with your weapon", allowing for some creativity.

Any player interest?

20

Game Room / Recruiting: Short Fate RPG Game

« on: January 17, 2014, 02:04:15 PM »

I'd like to try the Fate RPG system. Takers? Proposed details:

Length: 2-3 sessions
When: Evenings (starting maybe 7-8 PM Eastern if not on a Friday-Sunday), making sure not to conflict with Raf_Cian's thing
Rules: Fate, available free/pay-what-you-want at http://www.evilhat.com/home/fate-core-downloads/ or http://www.faterpg.com/ . I'd like to use the Fate Core system rather than Accelerated, but looking at the shorter FAE rulebook will tell you most of what you need to know.
Premise: One of the following unless someone has a better idea. (A) Fantasy Wild West, with enchanted revolvers and hostile kobold tribes. You're likely frontier traders with rugged self-reliance and arcane magic. (B) Awakened Raccoons: you're smart gengineered critters living in a lab where surely nothing will go horribly wrong. (C) Isle of Dread: I'll dig out a 1980s D&D adventure and run it using far simpler rules. (D) Faded Suns: an fan-made adventure from "Exalted", hold the excessive rules detail, about taking over a mysterious magitech fortress.

Character creation is meant to be a cooperative process in Fate, so we'd need to discuss that. Basically you're defining a "high concept" like "Gruff Frontier Smith", a "trouble" like "Banished From the Big City", and some notion of a past adventure that you and two other players somehow participated in, each defining a character aspect from it. A big difference from FAE is that you have specific skills instead of "approaches".

21

Role Play Theater / Mystic Empyran: Forum-Based RPG Scenario

« on: September 29, 2013, 06:54:41 PM »

You and your fellow godlings seek the lost Cornerstones, pieces of a destroyed world, so that you can rebuild it in your own image. Your powers depend on who you are, and your decisions shape the elemental balance of the worlds you visit. Spread lies and violence, and those things become part of the realm's very nature. In the many-tiered city of Nitar, you've heard rumors of a Cornerstone, but the city's people and the layers beneath them won't make it easy to get...

Seeking up to four other players for this short scenario, a demo of the game. Free download at here of the demo; more info at here, copy of the download at here. Since that last one is my copy and is probably watermarked, I'd appreciate if you not redistribute that so that I'm not hassled for "pirating" a free download.

How to play this: Pick one of the five sample characters. We'll begin with the sample scenario, asking each other questions. Say, due to the forum format, that anyone can answer another player's question, and anyone can ask in any order or vote to move on with the scene.

22

Role Play Theater / A FATEful Battle

« on: September 20, 2013, 12:07:39 PM »

http://www.evilhat.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Giant-Monsters.pdf

Here's a set of proposed rules for handling large organizations in FATE... and oh yeah, giant monsters. Any interest in trying to use these, or for that matter the example of a country given in the main FATE book, for a short DoW-like game? Brutal skunktaur pyromania is entirely optional.

23

Writer's Guild / Agency's Echo (For Ty Vulpine)

« on: September 08, 2013, 07:53:00 PM »

# 1. #

Ty tried not to whimper as he stomped on the mansion. He kept telling himself that tearing old buildings down was a part of the construction process, but it was a shame to see this one go since it was still in good shape. Some baseball star here in Florida had bought three beachfront lots so that he could build one super-mega-mansion. So, the guy had done the logical thing: call in a fifty-foot-tall foxtaur to crush the existing houses, and let a filmmaker pay him to record it.

"More shouting!" said the man by the camera. So Ty gave his best Godzilla roar and punched his way through a bedroom. He was going to enjoy helping to build the replacement house more than this, and didn't really want the monster reputation, but Emily had insisted they needed the extra cash. Ty rampaged his way slowly through the mansion, took a break, then started in on the other one while actors shot at him with prop guns.

Ty winced, hurting his fist on a gratuitous brick chimney. He'd only been free for a few months and still wasn't used to having a real job, let alone such a strange one. He concentrated and tried to shrink a few feet so that he could get in there and pull out some pipes better. Almost there...

Something in the mansion snapped loose. At the same moment the actors outside shouted something. The distraction broke his concentration and he found himself shrinking too much, from fifty feet high to forty, twenty. He stumbled forward and the chimney came down on him, exactly like a ton of bricks. The edges thudded against his long back and made him yelp in pain. Too many came down on his head, too. He was flat on his face inside the half-broken building just as the rest of it crashed inward onto him. It was suddenly dark.

# 2. #

Ty groaned. The light made his head throb. He heard someone distantly saying, "Mister Vulpine? Glad to see you're awake."

He was in a hospital with buzzing bulbs overhead. "What happened?"

The doctor frowned at him over a clipboard. "The house always wins. You're lucky to have that extra durability in your bones. Meant to be bulletproof as well as able to handle you stomping around while fifty feet tall, right?"

Ty nodded, which just made the headache worse. "Is everyone else okay?"

The doctor pointed to a vase of flowers and a card signed by his co-workers. Ty grinned. Emily had kept even her signature hidden in a corner, by the construction crew's and the architect's. "We should have you out of here within a few days." A cough. "I'll have the nurses bring you the insurance form."

Ty groaned. Ever since he and Emily had escaped from the Agency that had raised them -- after it made them orphans! -- the two of them had suddenly had to deal with real-world stuff. It turned out that being trained as some kind of super-soldiers didn't automatically mean good pay as a civilian. Not in the Free States, anyway. They'd fled south from the US proper to the part that had recently broken away, and gotten asylum. But neither of them had been eager to fight "terrorists" after all, they'd decided, which meant no government jobs.

"I'll deal with it later," Ty said, and slept.

Days later, he was troubled. He still hadn't had more visitors. He called up Emily but got no answer, twice. The construction crew didn't know where she'd gone either. What really got Ty's fur on end (and nearly made him lose control and grow too big for the hospital bed) was the report that his bill had just been paid without explanation.

The nice thing about his past was that he knew Tren. Ty called up the "dragon" -- really a lizard who'd gotten wings as part of the same kind of experiments that made Ty a taur -- through a couple of layers of security.

"Your sister's missing?" said Tren. He cursed. "And you've heard nothing from her, encrypted or otherwise? Well, she didn't take me up on my offer." Tren had been lying low in Occupied Mexico and trying not to get any Hellfire missiles delivered to his door. He'd suggested that Emily spend some time doing "odd jobs" with him. Ty suspected he liked her.

"Then what do I do? It's not like her to be this sneaky. And somebody just paid my hospital bill."

"Sounds like your sister got another job. Now, who'd want to pay some minor celebrity a lot of money up front on short notice, in a way that'd make her vanish without talking to you first, when she'd normally at least leave a note?"

Ty thought about it, and didn't like the idea he was getting. He found himself arguing against it. "You don't seriously think she's in trouble, do you? We're done with the Agency and all that. We reached an understanding."

"Might not be them, necessarily. There's some neat technology in the three of us. Worth studying."

"Then who?"

"That, I don't know. Let me do some digging. Try not to worry yourself too much. Your sister can take care of herself."

Ty wished he were sure of that.

# 3. #

Ty and Emily lived in a cheap apartment not just out of poverty, but for exactly the reason that Ty met KC. The construction company had gotten a weird call to come out someplace on short notice to do a "damage assessment", not normally in their line of work. Seemed urgent though, and Ty's boss said the customer had insisted on hiring him specifically.

It became pretty obvious why, right away. Police had cordoned off the neighborhood. Ty saw a giant blue foot sticking out of a collapsed house down the street. Ty got out of the truck, showed an officer his ID, and grew a few inches taller by way of explanation. "I have some experience in this kind of thing." The cop blinked a couple of times and let the crew through.

The foot belonged to a giant with blue dreadlocks... no, spines. "Ooh, an echidna!" said one of the younger guys on the truck. Ty and the others looked at him strangely. "What?"

Ty approached. "Ty Vulpine here! What the heck happened to you?" He could see the giant laying in the rubble of half of the house, afraid to move without bringing the rest of it down on him. His arm was stuck through a second-floor bathroom wall. A shower was raining on his shoulder, and threatening to fall from the pipes that held it up. Considering the bits of shredded clothing on him, Ty added, "I'm guessing you weren't planning to redecorate like this. How'd this happen?"

"Just get me out of here! I don't want to lose the bedroom, man." An expensive four-poster bed up on the third floor dangled over the man's head. A seagull perched on it, looking dubious. "Don't want to do more damage than I already did."

Ty conferred with his co-workers. "Sorry, but that place is pretty much totaled. You kicked out half the structural support and the attic is mainly held up by your spine. Why do you even have an attic in this climate?" The customer glared at him. "Okay, never mind. But your house is already split, so you're not going to escape if you're afraid of the rest coming down."

The giant echidna swore. "Can you at least get the bed and the stereo?"

Ty nodded, stepped away from everyone, and unbuttoned his already tight shirt. He'd more or less given up on pants since becoming a taur, and few people complained. He kicked off two pairs of sneakers (one custom-made for his more digitigrade hindlegs) and willed himself to grow. It was a power he'd never fully learned to control, hence his own cheap taste in housing and furniture. He could sympathize with the blue guy. He gradually felt massive and powerful, seeing the world from the height of the roofs around him.

Ty now had hands big enough to grab the entire bed that perched on the broken upper floor, then the fancy stereo system, and set them down by the truck. He had to snap some wires off the stereo, but those should be fixable, he figured. "Okay. So, let me just hold up this bit of the ceiling so it doesn't bean you, and --"

The echidna lunged up from the rubble. "You jerk! I'm out half a million dollars!" He came up swinging a fist that must've weighed as much as a refrigerator. It caught Ty in the side of his lower torso and made him stagger. Ow, those knuckles! The building crumbled around him and crashed in a pile of dust and jagged lumber.

Ty raised his arms in defense. "What are you talking about?"

The blue giant grabbed some cinder blocks and chucked them at Ty, saying, "This is all your fault!"

Ty's fur bristled. Years of combat training kicked in. He swatted aside the blocks, yanked the echidna's arm, and swung him around to slam him face-first into his own broken house. His former boss would've approved; no extra property damage. "No." Ty put a heavy forefoot down on his back and said, "Whatever crazy ideas you've got about me, take our your frustration someplace where we won't kill anybody! Are you done for now?"

"I give! I give." Ty stepped off of him and let him awkwardly turn around. He clutched at some nasty cuts on his muzzle. "Not in the face, man! So did you not ask Alyssa to send me some kind of crazy turn-you-huge potion? You broke my house!"

"I did not," said Ty. "And who's Alyssa?"

The man sighed and sat up, making broken planks and a chair slide off of him. "Name's KC. AM 970 WFLA, voice of the Rays?" Ty blinked, not recognizing the face, but maybe the voice from local radio. KC said, "Whatever. Look, I got this weird package in the mail today with a note from a friend. Let me grab it from my desk." He glanced back over his shoulder.

"Under your left elbow," said Ty.

KC rummaged and tried to grab a tiny slip of paper between his fingers, but just didn't have the coordination yet at this size. Ty caught it carefully and gave it to one of the construction guys to read. KC said, "She told me, 'Take care of this. It's a secret.' And to find you. I figured this was some stupid spy thing she'd gotten me mixed up in, and that you had put her up to it. And when the damn glass vial in the package leaked on me, I was all Alice In Wonderland with my house. I just put in five thousand bucks worth of hardwood!"

Ty's ears perked in surprise. "I think we need to have a talk. Can you, you know, shrink? It's a mental trick. You have to calm down enough for it."

"Easy for you to say," KC groused. But after a few minutes of Ty talking him through it, the echnidna relaxed enough that he was able to control his own size, and slowly reverted to about six feet tall. He stared at his hands, then farther down. "Oh, right. Think you can dig my dresser out from the rubble?"

# 4. #

"If you've got the same kind of 'matter storage field' as I do, then that friend of yours has access to the same kind of tech." Ty stuffed himself with chicken as they lounged in a hotel room. He'd heard the media rushing to the scene of KC's big problem, and figured that it'd be best not to head right home. Some reporter was probably already lurking there.

KC leaned back in a chair. "How are you eating that much?"

Ty grinned. "Taur body. Size shifting. You're lucky you didn't sprout extra legs."

"Whatever." The echidna picked at the chicken and rice. "Having this done to me feels like cheating. I earned these muscles." He showed off some biceps.

Nowadays, ever since Ty and Emily escaped from the Agency, you could buy ones just as good. The official word from the US government was that the Agency was a medical research lab, abused by a couple of rogue scientists. To make the story stick, they'd had to release some of their discoveries to the public. Super-steroids, basically, some nanotech-based medical stuff, and weirder things. So, Ty and Emily weren't the only taurs in the city, but they still certainly stood out. And the technique for doing the size thing was still classified, supposedly only usable on very specific genomes. That one seemed to bend physics enough that even Ty didn't blame the government for being wary about explaining it. It could probably be used for making matter/energy bombs or something.

Ty said, "Tell me about this friend of yours. She sent you a nanite vial?"

KC looked around suspiciously. "She was always traveling a lot. Wouldn't tell me what it was all about, but from some hints I gathered it was spy stuff, not just her 'business' across the border in the US and out in Asia. Anyway, yeah, out of the blue I got that package. She wouldn't have done anything like that unless it was urgent. What's it all mean?"

"Hmm... If she was trying to get you to contact me, and it was about the size-shifting tech, then... Agency stuff. Where was it sent from?"

The echidna had retrieved a scrap of paper with some nasty cologne on it. "China, but that doesn't really narrow it down."

"Why's it doused with that stuff?" Ty's nose wrinkled but he sniffed again. "Ugh."

His phone rang. Tren. "Ty? Bad news. No word from your sister at all, and there's some government chatter mentioning her. Can't read much of it though."

Ty threatened to crush the phone. "Any of it from China? And on a related note, have you got some kind of chemical sniffer?"

24

Role Play Theater / Proposed Game: "Rym: Second Sunlight" [High Fantasy, TF][Rules-Light]

« on: August 09, 2013, 01:28:39 PM »

You are an orphan in a world slowly dying from war and an invasion from elsewhere. In this orphanage there is no hope for more than a life of slavery. Unless the legends are true, and this musty old building holds a secret...

Seeking players for a possible game in the setting called Rym, created by Ollie Canal. Setting info is here; see esp. the "Introduction" (left icon), "Trailer" (lower right) and "Races" (right). Premise: you're teenage orphans put into a situation in which you're expected to start Saving the World from alien necromancers. You're probably human, but some anthro races will become playable shortly into the story, for some reason...

Who: Ideally 4 or so people. Decent English, preference for story and character over detailed combat tactics and stats.

When/Where: Evenings or weekends. Can guarantee at least 3 sessions of GMing. To be held on the CF chat rooms or (fairly likely) on irc.anthrochat.net, #RPG to draw people from the regulars on #thezoo.

System: Something simple! My suggestion is the Fate Accelerated Edition rules, found here, but I'd also be interested in the Mini Six or Mythic systems. A final possibility is to more or less play freeform, if you're comfortable with doing that!

25

Writer's Guild / Little Grey Dragons

« on: August 06, 2013, 11:28:37 PM »

[A story from years ago, dug up in celebration of having finished a sequel last weekend. Content warning: some violence.]

Alexi was at the river, washing the clothes of a hundred miners, when Peter came with the dragon eggs. She saw her brother filthy not with the usual soot but with dirt and leaves. "What happened to you?" she asked, eyeing also the covered basket he hauled in both hands.

"Open the door," he huffed. Alexi stepped over to her shop and nudged open the door so he could dash inside, then followed him. Clothes, irons and scrubbing-boards were neatly arranged all over the sunny hut by the water. Peter shoved a kettle aside and set the basket down with a thump, making the wooden table creak.

"Are you taking iron from the forge?" she said, bewildered by his rush to lock the door.

Peter opened the basket to reveal a pair of grey oval things. "Heavier. These are from no ordinary bird." He lifted one with both hands and set it aside. "I saw a light from the forest last night, and it was so strange that I ran after it. I found these in a hole in a rock."

"And what brought you to the forest's edge at night?" she said, arms folded. Of course he'd been at the tavern again, spending his pay on vodka.

"Never mind that. Tell me what you think these are."

"Breakfast?"

Peter threw up his hands. "You're impossible. I've found the eggs of the Firebird!"

Alexi laughed. "Did you meet Baba Yaga on the way, or a Beast Czar?" Still, it was true that she'd never seen such eggs. She reached out and found that the grey egg by the basket felt as warm as a comfortable stovetop in the winter.

"I'm serious," said Peter. "With these we can be rich and famous and free from drudgery. I want you to have one."

"Rich and famous, how?" she said. She saw his excitement falter, and went over to hug him. "Thanks for thinking of me."

"The Firebird, it brings good luck. And with two of them --"

They turned at a noise from Alexi's egg. It was cracking. Alexi stared as the cracks spread over long minutes, and finally a creature's head emerged. Grey flesh, a grey snout, and a grey eye watching her. She stood there frightened and confused. "Peter," she whispered, "what is this?" But he was distracted now by the cracking of the second egg.

Peter murmured, "Not Firebirds. /Zmei/."

"What?" She knew the name, but it couldn't be; only fairy tales had --

He turned to her with a gleam in his eye. "Dragons."

The creature pushing its way out of the eggshell in front of her had faint scales and a serpentine neck. "I suppose you're right," said Alexi. "But what am I going to do with one? These things belong guarding a golden castle beyond the Glass Mountain, not keeping people from making off with the townsfolks' underwear." She had plenty of work to do, too, and couldn't devote attention to a pet.

"Exactly," said Peter. "We don't need this town anymore, sister. Leave with me and we'll find adventure and treasure. We'll conquer one of those golden castles."

The dragon on the table chirped pathetically, free of its shell. Alexi carefully swaddled it in a towel and held it, smiling down at the little lizard, but raised one eyebrow at Peter's words. "I suppose these creatures will be mighty enough to aid our conquest unless the enemy is defended by, say, kittens."

Peter tended to his own dragon, keeping it in the basket. "They'll be strong enough soon. They grow to be huge, don't they? I didn't mean leaving right this moment."

"You sounded like you did," she chided. "For now we'll have to content ourselves with being princess of the laundry and prince of the forge. In fact, does Master Bogatyr know where you are?"

Peter's eyes widened. "I was out all night! He'll kill me!" He started for the door but looked back at the dragons.

She said, "Take yours along, and you'll have an excuse."

He snatched the heavy basket. "Of course. Thank you!"

"And thank you." When Peter had dashed away she could forget for a moment that anything had changed. She turned to the dragon on her table and said, "What am I going to do with you?"

She did need to return to work, so she hoisted the dragon into a wooden tub and hauled it outside to a cool, sunny spring morning by the river. Alexi put a crust of bread in with the dragon, having little else, and returned to her pile of sooty shirts. She worked to the beat of the waterwheels that caught the stream again and again on its way from the mountains. Her own patch of the stream was flat and rocky, no good for the wheels but fine for a woman to sit and scrub and admire the town. Just downstream stood the bath-house, and below it the market, the Count's mansion, and the smoky forges. Alexi worked and hummed, tossing a wet shirt over her shoulder to the nearby tub.

"Oops!" she said, seeing the dragon peeking from under it. She pulled the shirt away, but the dragon caught it in its muzzle. "Stop that," she said, and tugged. The dragon seemed to be enjoying itself. "Hmmph." She gave another tug and let the lizard win; she had other shirts to wash.

Tanya was the first of the townsfolk to see the dragon. "Hello, Alexi!" she called in her singsong voice. She had a cart of pants with her. "More work."

"Good," Alexi mumbled with a clothespin in her mouth. She hung shirts on a line and said, "Set them there," but Tanya had frozen.

"What is /that/?" Tanya said. The dragon chirped, resting its head on the tub.

Alexi shrugged. "My brother found it. Says it's a dragon." She realized that she wasn't sure whether she believed it herself.

At this Tanya relaxed. "What, is that all he said? He must've told you he won it in a drinking contest with a seven-headed Cossack."

Alexi smiled. "While he single-handedly saved the Tsar's daughter and refused any reward. Still, it's a strange beast, isn't it?"

Tanya knelt by the basin and peered at the dragon. It recoiled and scurried back. Alexi leaned down and scratched its muzzle; the creature leaned into it like a cat, then seemed reassured enough to do the same for Tanya.

#

Peter didn't visit her again that day. Alexi worried enough about the dragon wreaking havoc in her house that she was hesitant to leave. That evening she set up a pen of washtubs to give it space. Such a nuisance to think about what to feed it, how to clean up after it. "This is why I didn't get a cat," she groused, giving it bread and river water. She had bread for herself and shared a little of her supply of small beer, the safest thing to drink.

The next day she went to market, then let the well-behaved little dragon follow her to the stream to work. She was busy getting soot out of shirts when she found the dragon ducking its head beneath the water, watching what she did. "This is a shirt," she said, then let the lizard be her audience. "And here is the soap that cleans the shirt; and this is the stream, that fills the tub, that holds the soap, that cleans the shirt, that clothes the man, that dirties his shirt with coal-dust."

The dragon nibbled on the soap, sneezed, and went back to watching. Alexi lifted another shirt -- and the dragon reared back its head and spat at it. Alexi was startled. "It's not a spitting contest."

The dragon sneezed, and sent forth a jet of warm, soapy water that soaked Alexi. She sputtered, nearly toppling into the stream, and stood there glaring at the grinning little creature. It sat on its haunches, tail wagging.

"Fine!" she said. "If that's what you're going to do, then you can help me with the rest of these!"

The dragon proved enthusiastic, able to blast clothes with suds even without further soap-nibbling to recharge. Alexi was puzzled but willing to shrug at the oddity for the sake of getting her work done sooner. By afternoon she found the creature chewing on a pair of pants, but the cloth seemed unharmed. "Open," she said with her hands on the beast's jaws, and found inside a mouth of molars like a cow's. If anything the teeth seemed to have pounded the dirt from the pants.

"It seems dragons are useful after all. You can help me, little washer."

The dragon, Washer, beamed.

#

A soldier in a fine starched uniform came the next day. "So the rumor is true," he said, spotting Washer playing in the stream.

Alexi looked him over. "Ah, Ivan, did that stitching pass inspection?"

He seemed off-balance from being recognized. "Yes, ma'am. But I've come about the dragon. His Lordship wants to see it."

Alexi looked to Washer, thinking that its scales seemed lighter today and its body bigger despite a diet no better than her own. "When would he like to see us?"

"Not you," said Ivan, apologetic.

Alexi pictured the dragon nibbling at the Count's cape, and gave a rare giggle. "I'm not sure His Lordship would want Washer, here, running around unsupervised. It's best if I come along."

Ivan said, "All right, ma'am; I'll try to get you in."

The mansion was hardly worth abandoning her work for. The grounds were always sooty on one side, and the gardens scraggly. Washer padded along like a dog at her side, through the doors and past staring guards. At the hall's end sat the Count, a frowning man in a uniform choked with crimson and yellow braids. It was a nuisance to clean that. The Count heaved himself up from his desk, eyebrows raised, and muttered, "Remarkable."

Washer peered up at him, tail curled.

"I'm informed," the Count said, "that you and your brother have found dragons."

"Yes, my lord. I didn't know this was widely known."

The Count laughed. "There's such gossip in this town that I heard tell of everything from this" -- he nodded to Washer -- "to a nine-headed monster. Where are this creature's wings?"

Alexi looked at her lizard-pet again. True, those seemed an omission. Maybe Peter really had been too quick in his flights of fancy. "I don't know, my lord," she said with embarrassment.

The Count stroked his chin. "The Tsar himself would want to see these, for his menagerie. I'm sure we'll be rewarded for finding these beasts."

"Finding them?" Alexi said. "Are they lost from his palace? There were only eggs."

The Count said, "Silly girl. Everything and everyone in the kingdom is the Tsar's. He has a right to such a beast as yours, so I'll send it and your brother's along. What would you ask of me as a reward?"

Alexi's tongue knotted up like a soaked towel. She could have money, better equipment, firewood for this winter. The dragon rubbed against her leg and she glanced down, not wanting to part with the thing. /Nonsense!/ she thought. What use was her little soap-dispenser versus a good wringer and other valuable things? Still, in a moment of silly girlish whimsy she found herself saying, "My lord, I will keep my dragon, if you please."

"I do not please," the Count said, with a glare that frightened her. "Guards, take the creature and send the girl away."

Ivan was the first of the six guards to move. He put himself in front of her, blocking her view, and said, "Sir, perhaps we can petition the Tsar about this." The others paused, uncertain.

The Count slapped his desk. "What are you waiting for? Take it!"

The guards but for Ivan moved in towards the dragon that hid behind Alexi. She herself was too scared to move. These same men had sent their clothes to her and the town's other wash-women. This town had taken her and Peter in years ago, and now --

Now the hall's door slammed open, to show Peter with a sword and dragon.

Alexi called out to him. Washer hissed at the guards. Storming into the room, Peter pointed his sword at the Count and said, "Leave my sister alone!"

The Count drew a gleaming ceremonial saber from his belt and made a clumsy slash at the air. "Little rat, how dare you barge in here? Drop that sword and kneel or I'll have your head."

Peter's hand trembled but he met the Count's eyes. "My lord, you sent men to my master's forge to fetch my dragon. Well, I've brought it to you."

Alexi saw that the dragon beside him was the size of a dog, with feet grey as ash and a body of dull red like heated iron. "Please, everyone, just stop fighting!"

Ivan said, "She's right, my lord."

The Count chuckled. Eyeing Peter he said, "You have spirit, boy. Leave the dragons to me, and you and your sister can go in dignity. You've proven your bravery."

Peter hesitated, gulping at the sight of the guardsmen in their bright uniforms and the Count who'd ruled him for so long. "Alexi, tell me what you want."

Alexi felt a weight on her shoulders. "I want to keep Washer, but if it'll stop you from fighting --"

"She doesn't want to!" said Peter.

"No, wait!" But Peter had already grabbed her arm painfully and was backing away with her. The stupid little dragons weren't worth this!

The Count stepped forward, sword in hand. "I can't abide a snake in my house. Block the doors. Leave the girl and kill the boy."

The guards split up and slammed Peter away from Alexi, sending them sprawling in opposite directions. Alexi yelped as she landed. The doors shut, darkening the hall and leaving Peter trapped by a semicircle of guards.

There came a blast of flame. The air rippled and the guards -- but for Ivan, who was helping Alexi up -- yelled, trying to extinguish their clothes. Peter himself fought back now, snatching up his sword and one of the guards' to slash wildly as he stood. He found the Count's blade beneath his chin.

Alexi shouted, and Washer rammed the Count's legs out from under him while Peter's dragon menaced the other guards, blasting one with flame and biting another's leg. Peter stabbed and the blade found its mark, surprising even him. The Count cut him across the cheek but Peter parried the next blow, kicked, and attacked with both swords. The Count grunted. Peter dropped one blade and snatched the one in the Count's hands to disarm him, but the Count slid gradually back and thumped to the floor.

Alexi saw Peter standing with wild hair, holding one sword bright and gleaming and another dark and bloody. At his side the dragon seemed made of blood and iron.

The guards hurried to the Count's side -- too late -- and to confront Peter again. "It's over," Peter said. One of the guards had fallen too. Alexi huddled in a corner with Washer protecting her. "What do we do?" the guards asked each other.

Peter tried to catch his breath, holding off the men. "He threatened my sister. I had to do it."

One of the guards said, "If we tell the Tsar he'll send some mad outsider." Another said, "Or even the Black Riders, if he thinks there's disorder. And the boy has a dragon."

"Should we...?" said Ivan.

As one, the guards lowered their swords and looked at Peter. "Sir, be our Count!"

Peter's jaw hung open.

#

They toured the lonely mansion. Its fireplaces and tapestries stood neglected, with the Count having been alone for years. "The former Count," Peter muttered. Alexi marveled at the work that had been wasted on the empty rooms, and how much it would take to revive them.

"Move your things to this room," Peter told her. The bedroom was the size of her whole house by the stream. "I'll take the smaller room over there."

Alexi was flustered from watching Peter kill. Washer curled around her legs and she absently reached down to scratch the creature. "I don't want to live here," she said. "It's impractical."

Peter grinned. "You'll get used to it. We're nobles now. We deserve some reward."

Alexi turned and shoved open a long-sealed window. Heavy drapes tickled her. A mountain wind blew into the dead Count's room. "For now, I'm going back to work."

She hurried away, glad to return to what she knew. Washer followed, seeming just as eager. She reached the stream and saw Bogatyr. The master smith was running towards her, with a massive hammer in hand, saying, "Ma'am, are you all right?"

She stared up at him. "Yes. So is Peter."

"Thank God. What happened? Is this about the dragons?"

"The Count is dead. Peter -- the guards tried to kill him, and he wouldn't back down. I could have stopped it! I could have just said to take Washer." The dragon sniffed curiously at Bogatyr.

The smith's hand whitened on the hammer, but he made no other move. "No Count. The Tsar will send us a madman."

"No. Peter is the new Count." She shivered. Bogatyr reached out with his big free arm, but stopped. She looked at the ground and said, "What now?""

The smith rumbled in thought. "There could be better men, but there could be much worse. What happens to us now depends on the boy."

#

For Alexi a few days passed peacefully. Peter was in consultation with merchants, priests, smiths, farmers and scholars, hardly leaving his new mansion. Then came the day when trumpets sounded and the guards came as heralds, summoning a crowd to the market square. At a request relayed by Ivan, Alexi took her dragon along.

The square hummed with rumors. The noise grew once Alexi was in sight, giving many their first glimpse of Washer. The dragon sniffed around, tail wagging, but Alexi only felt uneasy at what her brother might be doing.

"Welcome, friends!" said Peter from a dais, drawing eyes reluctantly from Washer. He wore a retailored uniform the Count had owned, with a flame-red cape and the Count's sword. "I wish to quell any rumors. The old Count is dead, God rest his soul, and has chosen me to succeed him. Many of you know me, and word has spread of my dragon. Behold: Cinder!" At this he pulled away a sheet to reveal his dragon. It reared up and sprayed fire on the white cloth, destroying it. Alexi winced. The crowd gasped.

Peter said, "You can see also my sister Alexi and her own dragon, with the power of water." He pointed, making Alexi look down to avoid the weight of the people's gaze. "They may not be huge and mighty yet, but they're already dangerous -- to anyone who threatens our home."

"This county will be in good hands, and safe as long as it's clear we've made an orderly transition. I've been talking with men from town and the surrounding villages on everything from rhetoric" -- he grinned and nodded to a scholar -- "to farming. This place is prosperous already, but it can be even better. We'll expand the mine and build new waterwheels. A school! A theater! This land will be the gem of the kingdom!"

A man from the crowd laughed. "All these grand plans from a little apprentice and his pet."

Peter slashed a hand dismissively through the air, but his face was flushed. "Apprentice, nothing! Besides being the man chosen by His Lordship the Count, and a loyal member of the community, I -- this morning I became a master smith! That makes me eligible for guild membership, able to hold my own in trade dealings with other cities."

Alexi blinked. Peter, a master already? It seemed unlikely. She felt overwhelmed by the proclamations, and barely paid attention as Peter brought priests of the old and new faiths to bless his reign. The people prayed dutifully, though for what she couldn't say.

Afterward, she approached him at the mansion's garden. "What is this about you being a master?"

Peter ran hands through his hair in agitation. "Don't you start too. Boggy already yelled at me, nearly called me a liar in public. We'll make it true. I'll forge a masterpiece, starting today, and Bogatyr will give me the stupid title. It's not like I need it now anyway."

"But you've put in all those years --"

"Making horse-shoes! I was lucky if I got to mend a sword or sharpen an axe. I did smithing because it put a roof over my head and helped you buy your own."

"That's all?" Alexi thought back to visiting him at the forge, seeing the grin of a boy with flame and steel at his command.

Peter leaned against a tree, looking to the clouds. "I liked being able to shape things, to hammer a block of metal into something new and better. But now the county is my raw material! I can pound it into anything I want! What good are fairy-tales compared to that?" He shook himself from his reverie and grinned. "Leave everything to me. Quit your washing and move to our mansion."

Alexi said, "Quit? I can't do that. The clothes need washing."

Peter laughed. "There are other washer-women, and I'm sure your Washer can find other work. Where is that thing, anyway?"

Alexi looked around, then remembered, "I took him home." But suddenly the air rippled and Washer was at her feet, looking puzzled. Alexi hopped in fright,then scratched Washer's muzzle to reassure herself he was really there.

Peter was wide-eyed. "Magic, from a dragon! I shouldn't be surprised. Here -- Cinder!" He raised an arm theatrically and his own dragon appeared from nowhere, claws digging into the dirt. "A nice trick! All right, sister, I'm off to the forge to earn my title." He hurried away.

#

A week later, when Alexi checked in on him at the forge, Peter looked haggard and overjoyed. "You're just in time."

Even from the doorway Alexi felt the furnace wind. "The masterpiece?" Washer peeked behind her, having grown to wolf-size already.

Peter led her to the smithy's main room. His dragon, Cinder, puffed steam form its nostrils, curled up with its segmented tail of iron-black scales. Peter adjusted his gloves and reached into a barrel, drawing something up from the quenching water. A sword of gleaming steel, with a blade that snaked back and forth along its length like flame or a wave. "It's called a flamberge," he said.

"Is it usable?" Alexi asked, finding herself staring at how firelight flickered on the brilliant wet metal.

"Of course. Wake old Boggy for me."

She smiled. "Good luck." She went to the master smith's door and said, "Sir, he's ready!"

Bogatyr stepped into the room, nodding to Alexi, and stood by the forge. "After all these years, do you think you're ready?"

Peter gave a huge smile and presented the flamberge as an offering. Bogatyr peered at it, then took it in one hand, dangled the massive thing between two fingers, tapped it with a nail and listened to it ring.  He shut his eyes, feeling each surface. Peter waited with gritted teeth, Alexi on tiptoe. Finally Bogatyr rumbled and said, "It's a fine sword."

"Then I pass the test!"

"But," said the smith, "you overreached. It reaches too far, and too heavily."

"I'm plenty strong, and I'll get stronger. Having as long a reach as possible is important."

"Yet you put weight into this tricky twisted blade. Is it to scare people, to inflict more pain, or to cripple?"

Peter had panic in his eyes. "It's a good enough sword!"

Bogatyr clapped him on the shoulder. "It is a good sword, and I'm proud of the skill you've shown. But you are not a master yet. Take your time and try again."

"Time?" said Peter, shaking him off. Peter bristled. "Do you know how busy I am, how little sleep I've had?"

"Yes." The smith turned to Alexi. "Girl: leave."

Alexi backed away but Peter said, "No! I want her to hear you declare me a master." When Bogatyr said nothing, Peter seemed to relax, staring into the fire and speaking calmly. "I am the Count of Iron Crag now, and it wouldn't do to have me be a mere apprentice at the same time. You can fix that."

Bogatyr said, "Then I can dismiss you from your apprenticeship."

"That's not what I'm looking to hear."

"Boy --" said the smith.

"Count."

"Boy, a smith's work is sacred. I thought you knew. If you don't then it's not just the sword that keeps you from being a master."

Steel scraped along an anvil, and Peter sprang at Bogatyr to hold the sword to his throat. Alexi gasped. Peter said, "Say it! I am a master! Tht's all you need to do!"

The smith glared into Peter's eyes, while Alexi trembled. After a few seconds Bogatyr said, "I will tell anyone who asks that you are a master smith." The blade bumped his Adam's apple.

Peter scowled and drew the blade away. "Fine." Alexi saw his hand trembling as he turned aside. When he spoke again he sounded calm again. "Thank you. Really. I've learned a lot from you." He hurried outside, keeping his face averted.

Alexi was left there stunned. "Why? Master Bogatyr, why did you say it?" The blade had nicked him, drawing a tiny bead of blood.

"Because it wasn't worth dying over."

#

Men came from the nearby villages to build waterwheels. Alexi and Washer paused from their own work to watch the newcomers. Over the weeks, big wooden wheels spun up, bringing a merry creaking to the stream and making possible new smithies, new smelters for dragon-forged steel. Alexi worried for Peter but was proud at least of the change he brought -- until the day when pipes belched smoke in her face.

Alexi sputtered. Wind blew downstream from the mountains as the new smithies came to life. Grey haze made her choke and flee from the stream with a tub of laundry that was already stained again. Washer sprayed her down with soap and water, then found a new trick of warm-air breath that dried her. Alexi shivered anyway, gaping at the smoke plumes engulding her home.

She marched down to the Count's mansion and found more workmen crawling over it. Guards stopped her at the door.

"What's the meaning of this?" she said. "Where's Peter?"

"This is going to be the new medical college," one guard said. He saw Alexi's bewildered look, and smiled. "Doctors from all over the kingdom, and students, and their money."

The other guard said, "The Count isn't here. He's up by the mine."

Alexi stood with hands on hips. "Now what? I can't do my work with the smoke in my face."

The mansion's door opened, and Tanya appeared. "Ah, Alexi -- my lady, rather! Come inside."

"And do what?"

"Aren't you here to start training? A doctor is already her to teach us about ill vapors."

"I've had enough vapors already, and I'm not a nurse."

Tanya laughed loudly enough to startle the guards beside her. "We both are, now. The Count decided it this morning."

"Then who will do the laundry?"

Tanya shrugged. "Peasant women."

"And what am I?"

"You're a noble, milady. You're a better sort of person. Please, come in so we can study."

The mansion reminded her of death, and now it would be full of outsiders and sickness. Alexi stepped back, thinking. She needed a clean, well-lighted place to work, and for the moment that meant getting her brother's attention. She started walking away, towards the mine.

Tanya objected. "Milady?"

"I'm not a nurse." Tanya kept pace, annoying Alexi.

"But the Count --"

Washer nudged Alexi, making her realize that he was nearly the size of a pony. How had she missed the extent of his growth? A thought struck her, and she tried hoisting herself onto the dragon's back. Alexi glared upstream at the forges, and tapped Washer's sides with her heels until the dragon squawked, uncoiled, and bounded forward. Alexi whooped and tried desperately to hang onto his shoulders, but it was all right; together they swerved around the gardens, plunged into the stream, and with a splashing leap went back out to the sunlight, past startled townsfolk.

Alexi caught a grin on her face as she hung on, seeing her town flash by, and feeling the wind whip through her hair. It would be great to see the place prosper and to know she'd been part of that growth. She rode past the forges' smoke-plumes -- she'd work out something with Peter -- and upstream to the red mountains spearing the sky.

Something was making thunder in the peaks.

Alexi slowed Washer, patting his neck. Explosions in the mine? Her heart sped for the miners until she heard that the booms came from past the mine entrance. Now she was more puzzled than afraid, letting Washer trot ahead along the steep trail. After a while, a chunk of sizzling-hot rock fell into their path.

Alexi yelped and Washer reared back, blasting it with water so that steam flew up. Another boom sounded, and then the noise stopped and Peter hurried into view, looking down from a ledge. "You! Are you all right?"

"What's happening?"

He brought her to the ledge, where Cinder rested in a pit of slag and red-hot stone. "We're laying the foundations for my castle." Cinder had grown, and his iron-dark scales and ash-grey legs smouldered from effort. "Isn't she amazing? More impressive than your laundry-beast."

Alexi's eyes narrowed and she curtseyed. "I freely acknowledge that my brother has the larger dragon. Now, what is all this about building forges upwind of my shop and telling me to be a nurse?"

Peter said, "It's all part of my plan. Here, look." He took her hand and pointed far below, to the growing town and the distant sight of villages, dots on a green plain. "Everything you see here is mine. I have a duty now to improve people's lives, and that means a lot of work." Peter turned to her with a smile on his face. "Cinder and I can't do everything that must be done. I need your help and everyone else's."

"To do what?" said Alexi.

Peter waved vaguely at the valley. "Everything! With Cinder we can expand the mine and forge more and better steel. Steel means wealth. Wealth means more things for the people -- doctors, teachers, more food, better houses. The old Count sat on his ass and did nothing but keep the peace. I'm better. I aim to do more."

Alexi felt torn between the thought of so much useful work getting done -- of her brother singlehandedly turning her home into the jewel of the kingdom -- and of the question she'd asked Tanya. "Who will do the laundry?"

Peter laughed. "That's what peasants are for! Your washing days are over. Everyone's got their role to play in my plan, and yours is better than that." He smiled at her, looking into her eyes. "You'll help people. Save lives."

"It would have been nice if you'd asked," she groused, admitting to herself that medicine was as useful a trade as washing.

"It doesn't matter. You'll love it." He pulled a scroll from his cloak and tapped it against his leg. "I heard from the Tsar. I informed him of the peaceful transition, sent him presents, and told him of the dragons."

Alexi gaped. "He won't let us keep them! He'll send the Black Riders, to take them and kill us all for sport!"

"Only this scroll came," said Peter. "It names me Count of Iron Crag, and of Blade Forest." He pointed to the western horizon, where the mountains continued amid forest. "Baron, in total."

"I don't understand. Did the Count there die?"

"Not yet. The Tsar hates him, but some of the Black Riders are from there and he's hesitant to use them there." Peter shrugged. "Even the Tsar isn't all-powerful."

"Not yet? Are you suggesting murder?" What a waste that would be.

"We'll ride there on dragon-back, and suggest that he leave. He won't be stupid enough to fight."

"What if he does? Peter, you could die out there!"

Peter put the scroll away and looked to his dragon, seeming to take comfort in its obvious power. "I have a duty to improve things, and that means having more than one little county to work with. Come with me and we'll get this done as peacefully as possible."

"When?"

"Tonight. Then you can get back to your work. Leave everything to me."

#

Alexi couldn't sleep even with Washer laying against her like a bed-sized pillow. She wanted to see her home prosper, but at what cost? Peter's ambitions, grand as they were, unnerved her. She scratched Washer's neck and murmured, "Why did you come to us? Is it destiny, or did something from fairy-land pop into being for no reason?" Washer yawned. Alexi sighed; at least Peter knew what he was doing.

Peter opened her door and said, "It's time."

She led Washer outside in silence. Cinder's breath made heat-waves along her skin that made her shiver in the cold night. Peter wore his swords and a fur-lined cloak.

Riding dragon-back felt reassuring. With Washer at her command, she told herself, they could do no wrong. Peter looked regal atop Cinder, with his cloak flapping behind him. She could see why people heeded him and made little fuss over his ascension as Count: he was dashing, a hero out of the storybooks.

"What are you smiling at?" said Peter, throwing a grin of his own over one shoulder.

Alexi hid her mouth behind one hand. "You'll be a good Count, won't you?"

"Baron!" he said, and rode ahead.

The moon was high when the forest parted, revealing a granite castle perched on a hill. The town below was not far different from her own: another whole community of kind people. the sight made her feel more confident in the world, having filled in a bit more of her map of it and found more there, more of the same. Peter led he on, approaching the castle in silence.

A guard warmed his hands by a brazier, and looked up to see the dragon-riders. He dashed to a sally-port door and pounded on it, shouting a warning. Peter raised a hand and called out, "Peace! We're here to see the Count."

Peter rode on and repeated himself. The guard flattened himself against the wall, with a sword trembling in his hands. When Alexi caught up, Peter muttered, "A mouse for a guard." Then, louder: "We mean you no harm. We're on business from the Tsar himself."

The sally-port door flew open and three armed men sprang out. They too, froze at the sight of the dragons. "Well?" said Peter.

#

The Count's ermine robe lay lopsided across his shoulders as he staggered downstairs. "What's all this? Two children blathering about the Tsar and monsters?"

"I'm the Count of Iron Crag," said Peter, "And I've --"

The Count laughed. "You're the boy with all those rumors swirling about you."

One of the guards said, "Not just rumors, my lord. The beasts are outside our gate!" The Count's face paled but showed fear for only a moment.

Peter said, "By order of the Tsar, you are relieved of your fief, and I am the new Count of this land. Baron in all."

Alexi trembled, but there was nothing she could do. Peter was in charge.

The Count said, "Doubly preposterous. The Tsar has issued no such insult to me, and as you may not know, boy, a baron rules over counts but is not a count himself."

Peter took a scroll from his vest and said, "I have my orders. Have you seen our dragons, by the way? Cinder, come!" He raised an arm, and with a whoosh of heat that rustled Alexi's clothes, Peter's dragon appeared. A chair splintered as its iron tail smacked the floor. Firelight shined between red-grey scales and ashen hide. The guards shouted and drew axes.

The Count, though pale in the firelight, stood his ground with a dragon's head within reach of his own. "The devil's sorcery," he said. "You say you have the right to my land? Show me."

"I did," said Peter, looking startled at the Count's reaction.

"Give me the scroll."

Peter hesitated, then shoved it at the Count, who held it taut to steady his hands. The Count looked it over, then said, "The Tsar's red ink is made from blood, usually cattle. This is not."

Peter said, "Are you calling me a liar?"

Alexi froze. She hadn't read the scroll; Peter had told her what he was doing, that the Tsar had awarded him this land.

The Count faced the dragon's toothy smile and locked eyes on Peter. "You're a liar, a fraud and a usurper. The fact that you have a big lizard changes nothing."

Peter laughed at him. "How about two of them? Sister, bring yours."

Alexi faltered. "There's hardly room."

"Do it!" Peter hissed.

Alexi didn't know what else to do, with the angry Count and his men around them, so she did as told. She raised her am and called out to Washer. In a rush of mist her dragon appeared, close against Cinder's flank and looking bewildered. She patted his neck to reassure herself.

The Count gaped at seeing both dragons now. He stammered, "Impressive! Very impressive! What's your point?"

Peter said, "The points are the tips of my dragon's teeth, and two more on my belt. You're relieved as Count of this land."

"No." The Count seemed emboldened by the echo of his own word. He stepped towards Peter, saying, "No. Force and fraud won't make you lord of the land. Now leave, boy."

Peter jabbed a finger towards Cinder and Washer, his face darkening. "Are you blind? I told you how things are. Don't make this hard."

"Or what? By God, I'll not lift a hand against a child who's used nothing but words to disgrace himself. Is the girl part of your dishonor too? Did you ask her to help you murder me?"

Alexi blushed. Peter had -- well, he hadn't lied to her, had he? The Count was wrong about the ink. "Peter, the letter..."

"It doesn't matter," said Peter. To the Count he said, "Enough talk. Kneel."

The Count clenched fists at his sides. "No."

Alexi said, "Peter, let's leave." There was a moment when Alexi felt she should say more, but the decision was in Peter's hands.

Peter drew his swords and said, "Cinder, attack!" Then he gasped, clutching his arm, and dropped the old Count's shining sword. A crossbow bolt jutted redly from his shirt.The shooter was not one of the guards, but a chambermaid who now fled, as the guards closed in and dragons screeched. Alexi got knocked back by Washer's tail, scooped up in a cradle of his neck and onto his back. Peter swung wildly with his good arm, but a guard's axe bit him and the Count had leaped at him with a dagger, saying, "Burn in Hell!"

It was the Count who burned, when Cinder's flame threw him to the floor. His robe caught and he screamed, eyes aflame, trying to stab Peter. Cinder turned and slammed aside the guards attacking Peter, blowing fire at one and raking another neck-to-belly with claws.

Alexi couldn't breathe. She wanted to undo this moment and be back to just talking, but it was too late. Washer reared back his head. She flinched, fearing he'd bite someone in half. Washer hesitated too, looking sidelong at her.

"Go!" she said. The Count was flailing and his clothes burning, so that he was like a demon striking at Peter's swords, driving Peter back. "Put him out!" Washer breathed a torrent of water at the men, sweeping them to the ground. Cinder faced her and roared to shake the hall. Alexi quailed, pressed down against Washer, wishing for the trouble to end.

It did. Peter was the only one who stood from the smoldering heap of bodies in the flooded chamber. He staggered through water, fumbling for a dropped sword. "We did it." His face held more pain than joy.

"All dead..." said Alexi, feeling she would slump from her dragon's back.

Peter glared up at her, past the twisting neck of Cinder. "I took a few cuts myself," he said with a cough.

She looked vaguely around the walls, past the carnage. "A doctor, somewhere."

"No! Not here. Home." Peter fumbled for a seat on Cinder's back. "You stay here. Guard the place. I'll return."

"Here?" She couldn't stay in such a place alone! But her thoughts were interrupted by a splash and a wet crunch. Cinder was eating the bodies. Her toes curled in her boots at the sight of a gleaming red eye and iron-dark scales spattered with gore. Peter hauled himself upright on Cinder and said nothing. Alexi heard faint heaving hiccups from herself and forced her gaze away.

"Stronger," said Peter. After a while he added, "I'm going. Stay and wait."

Alexi turned to nod mutely to Peter, as the black dragon wheeled and burst through the great hall's doors into freezing wind. She sat transfixed, because when she had looked, she did not seem to see Peter at all.

#

For hours she shivered and paced the hall, praying no one would ambush her too with a crossbow. She called out from time to time, "Stay away if you value your life!" The murky water sloshed around her boots until she retreated to a ledge and sat on soggy carpet, head on hands. No one dared bother her.

Washer nudged her arm with his muzzle. Irrationally she shuddered from the warm touch and both of them drew back. Alexi said, "Why? Why did you dragons come to us?" Washer only regarded her with soft equine eyes. She felt too weak to stand, or even to look at the mess below; she thought of the cleaning that the hall would need.

Washer looked down at what remained of the bodies, then regarded her again. "No!" said Alexi. "Only monsters eat people." Peter had been trying to grow stronger, to make his dragon stronger and expand their territory. He'd lied to do that, but then he'd say that didn't matter, any more than his sword to Bogatyr's throat made him not really a master smith. So Peter was a baron, even if he'd had to -- to --

Alexi couldn't continue the thought. If she could wait and do what she was told, she'd be helping people, helping Peter improve things. The hall stood empty, with Peter's new subjects too afraid even to look at her.

Ivan, the guard from home, arrived and slipped his wool cloak over her. She could hardly look at him all the way back, or watch the Iron Crag guards who streamed next into the hall to consolidate Peter's rule. Alexi was glad for his quiet company as she rode home on Washer. But when they arrived, the forge-smoke clouded the river and she couldn't find her house.

Ivan said, "What's wrong? Your things are in the mansion now." She blinked at him and he said, "He didn't tell you?" Through a break in the smoke she could see the spot where she'd knelt washing clothes for years, now torn up and under construction as another forge.

"Peter /destroyed my house/ while I was away helping him?"

Ivan stammered, "I'm sure the Count -- Baron -- whatever -- didn't mean any harm. You can live in the mansion."

"The hospital, you mean?"

Ivan stared at his boots. "Of course, my lady. You're working there anyway, right?"

"I am not!" Alexi said, startled by her own voice. Washer lifted his head from dozing. "I'm just a washerwoman. What's Peter doing giving orders so soon after coming back hurt?"

"Hurt? He was fine. He returned pounding on the barracks door, demanding troops to occupy his new province."

Alexi glared at Ivan. "And you're his favorite?" she snapped. "I'm told he needs Counts under him to be a Baron; is that the job you're after?"

"My lady, that's not fair."

"Neither is how he's treated me, or the Counts! I'm going to -- to --" She stifled a yawn, being hungry, exhausted and cold. "I'll give him an earful tomorrow."

#

She woke in darkness, feeling lethargic. Something cold rested on her forehead. She brushed it aside, murmuring, "Washer, no nose," but then came a clang of metal on the wooden floor. Sleepily she looked past the bed to find a scarlet ribbon tied around a dagger.

Alexi scooted away from it, getting tangled in sheets. Washer slept by the door. Who would sneak into her room, slip past a dragon, and place a knife on her forehead? All that came to mind was the truth: men on black horses, bridles trimmed with dogs' heads. The Black Riders.

Alexi stood, shivering. "Washer, wake up!" The dragon opened one eye and gave a yawn full of molars. "How did you sleep through that?"

So had she. The dragon was no worse than her, and no better. A simple laun-dragon, not to be blamed for sleeping through danger. Peter's was much like himself, too, a creature of fire and iron. A monster, though: a beast eager to feast on the charred corpses of its enemies. Peter wasn't like that! She shivered, thinking of Master Bogatyr's neck, the Count's death, the false letter, the other Count striking like a rattlesnake only after warning Peter against lies, robbery, murder -- and she imagined that night when Peter rode away without her, for a moment seeing the bloody fangs and red eyes on her brother's own face.

The knife wasn't a threat, so much as a request.

Alexi threw on a dress and cloak and shoved the dagger into a pocket. Peter had to see the thing and understand that the Tsar was more dangerous than a fire-breathing lizard. She got Washer to uncurl, stretch, and follow her out to a cold drizzling sunset. Townsfolk stared at her as she rode, and pulled their children inside. Alexi glared at the old Count's mansion and at the ruins of her house. Rain soaked her. She headed for the mountains, where she could hear the boom of a dragon smashing stones. There, leathery wings thrashed the air and her brother carved himself a castle with hot steel claws.

Alexi froze. Peter, or the dragon, or whatever they had become, reared up on hindlegs and crushed a boulder. He fixed eyes on her and paused, looking at his massive hands as though he hadn't noticed them. "What...?" he said, and raindrops caught the steam from his muzzle. "So it's happened again."

"What happened?" Alexi said. Washer slid protectively in front of her, but she still felt about to collapse with fright.

"I'm stronger. This is what dragons can do to you, I see. I've reached a peak." He spent long seconds admiring himself, then tilted his head and aimed one flame-red eye at her. "Why didn't you?"

"This has to stop," she said, her voice trembling.

"What does? Growing, changing, being a hero?"

"You -- you were Cinder already when -- it was you who ate those people."

"For a while. One moment I was reeling and wounded, and the next I was strong and healthy. It seemed natural." The dragon waved a hand dismissively. "And so what? This way there's nothing to bury or mourn."

Alexi stared up at him with rain plastering hair to her face. "The Tsar knows you lied. We're all in danger."

"Join me, then," said Peter, offering a huge hand as if to dance. "You'll stand with me as we use the forges to build an army, and free the kingdom from tyranny. We'll kill the Tsar and his ministers, and rule over everything."

The blood drained from Alexi's face as she looked to Washer. Why hadn't the same thing happened to her, making her a handsome, gleaming white dragon to match this, this monster? Peter was a forthright man who fought for what he wanted. She herself said she wanted a peaceful life, yet she went along with whatever Peter wanted, even if it was wrong. Maybe that difference was the key.

"Let me tell a story," Alexi said. "Imagine that a mad wizard in another land made dragons as mirrors. He scattered the eggs, wanting to see what their finders' hearts made of them."

Peter's smile was a slice of Hell. "In that case, you have a cute little spirit." He reached down to pat Washer -- who recoiled and screeched.

"Stop!" Alexi said, feeling the knife beside her. "You may not touch Washer, and you can't spend your life murdering your way to greatness!"

The iron-forged dragon brought his face close to her and caressed the underside of her chin with a scalding metal claw. "In the name of everything you love, never again dare to tell me that there are things I must not do."

She retched and quivered, torn between a sick love for such unbridled power and an angelic aspect of herself begging to plunge the knife into the monster's brain. Now!

"Please," she said, standing on the foundation of a black castle. "Just let me alone."

Peter smiled, stretching high into the night sky and burning raindrops with his steaming maw. "Of course!" he bellowed. "Good that you would ask so nicely. Everyone ought to ask that. Everyone belongs to me."

Alexi said nothing, as she had been silent before. How could she hope to change his mind, when she was so weak? What did she love that was worth more than her brother? In the face of blade-teeth and a beast that seethed like a volcano, she could think nothing of love. Nor was it kindness that fueled Peter's quest.

Peter loomed over her and said with a cloud of vapor, "Let's be clear, then. You're mine. /Kneel./"

Washer, soaked and miserable, coiled around Alexi, butting his head against her. He was a creature of potential might and magic, far better than she deserved, and to betray Peter was a mad dream. She pushed Washer away. On the dark stone, in the rain, she knelt and acknowledged the burning dragon as her master.

So began the reign of Peter the Dragonlord, the Searing Glory, the Winged Damnation.

26

Role Play Theater / [One-Shot][MiniSix] Expedition To Fermont

« on: June 02, 2013, 01:09:06 AM »

The government of Great Oak, land of the sacred tree and its benevolent wizard-god, has asked you to visit a city-state called Fermont to deliver gifts and win a treaty of trade and friendship. It should be an easy task to impress the humans with your superior squirrelfolk magic and wisdom, right?

A one-session adventure in my own fantasy setting Cotyledon, using the simple rule system Mini Six.

Players Wanted: 3-5
Knowledge Needed: You don't have to know the setting. In fact it'd be nice to have a player who doesn't know it already, to see if the provided 3-page handout is okay. And what you need to know of the handout is really just the special character creation rules, especially if you want magic.
Characters: You're respected enough to be sent as a diplomatic party, but other skills are welcome too. Special faction missions (optional) are available at random for players who want an RP challenge.
Character Creation Options: Use Mini Six rules (12D stats, 7D skills/perks) but note special rules for this setting, like "Sorcerer" being only 1 point. Velesian (squirrel) and human PCs are allowed.
Where: Crimson Flag IRC
When: Not sure. Can do Monday (not this week), Wednesday or Friday evenings, or Saturday anytime.

27

Writer's Guild / Mount and Blade (Chocobo)

« on: May 17, 2013, 07:26:00 PM »

Hector stood in Lobby 7 to hear the ranting of a long-haired sophomore with a katana. "I will extinguish the power of dreams forever! Mwahaha!" The sophomore -- er, Dark Lord Bishnara -- flung an unimpressive smoke bomb at his feet and ran away, giggling. A more senior member of the MIT Assassins' Guild stepped forward, wearing a straw hat that hid his eyes. He ordered the bold heroes to gather the elemental crystals and defeat Bishnara before his evil plans could succeed and before the spring semester started.

"Is the Guild always like this?" Hector whispered to the junior beside him. So far, Hector had only played the Saturday night dart gun battles in Building 36.

His teammate patted him on the shoulder. "Yes, my noble steed!" Vincent was playing a paladin because he always played paladins in these things. As one of the guys in Hector's suite at Burton-Connor Dormitory, it was hard not to constantly hear from him about the Guild and its endless games.

"Remind me how that works."

Vincent hefted the remarkably realistic breastplate he wore, emblazoned with the sun icon of the non-specific holy god he served. "I have heavy armor, so I can only walk -- unless you're traveling with me. So let's get to questing!"

They picked up a Red Mage with a cool feathered hat, and a girl he recognized from 18.01 (Calculus I) last term. Together their party joined in a group brawl already starting in the Infinite Corridor. Shouts of "10 Ice damage!" and "Cure!" rang out. Students with foam swords and good-guy badges dueled the people playing minions of Bishnara. "Follow me!" said Vincent, and waded in with his own padded rattan lance.

Hector tried to keep up, to justify his friend's ability to run. He felt bewildered already with all the rules behind people hitting each other. The party's Red Mage flung a ping-pong ball at a monster-masked guy and shouted, "Slow!" to make him move in slow motion. Hector shook his head and watched, trying not to trip over anyone or get whacked by anyone's play weapons.

"Heal me!" said Vincent.

Hector saw his paladin dueling with a guy whose black name badge clearly proclaimed "DRAGON". "I can heal?"

"Yes, yes; just say it and tap me!"

Hector poked Vincent and called out, "Heal!"

Vincent had enough hit points now to leap forward and take the dragon down, enthusiastically enough to accidentally knock him to the floor. "Sorry!" he said, and helped the guy up.

The dragon laughed and dusted himself off. "You will never defeat my master! Raaar!" He dropped a scroll and fled into the basement, turning his name badge around to become dead for now.

Hector rolled his eyes. "Sorry. I missed something in my character sheet. I have levels in White Mage or something?"

"You're a white Chocobo," said Vincent, which obviously explained everything.

The girl from 18.01 -- who had a Nerf crossbow and a badge saying "Engineer", grinned and peered at Hector's tag. "Oh, a Chocobo! Say it."

"Say what -- oh. 'Wark!'" He flapped his arms like the wings of the riding bird he was supposed to be.

"I'm Alice. Kupo!" She had a hairband with fuzzy ears and a bouncing red pom-pom, which made her a Moogle. Not just an animal in this setting, but still usually a mascot character rather than anything serious.

The Red Mage made sure the other students were dispersing, then pointed to the scroll. "I have skill points in Lore: Everything, so I can read this. One of the crystals is in the basement of Building 10."

Vincent crowded close. "It says that?"

"No, it says the Dungeon of Seething Organic Reaction, which obviously refers to under classroom 10-250 where they do Organic Chemistry. We don't need more clues."

Hector blinked a few times. "I still don't think I'm fully into the spirit of this thing."

"It's okay," said Alice. "First time, right? You've got a simple role with no subplots, probably. Just use that Choco Cure power and see if you can find the Meteor upgrade. Also you can peck people to death."

Hector shrugged. "Okay. Yeah."

They headed down the huge hallway that crossed half of the main campus, and ventured into the basement. A goblin ambushed them, but the Red Mage blasted him by shouting, "Fire!" (The Guild had an understanding with Campus Police about inappropriate shouting, midnight lightsaber duels and so on.) Soon, they stopped. Alice was holding them back with one arm.

"See there?" she said, and pointed to a tiny note on the wall, two feet from the ground.

Hector crouched to look. "This is Trap #10b-2. Strike to disable."

"Aw, heck," said Alice. "We missed the first one, so it went off. We take --"

"Six points of Earth damage from falling rocks," said the Red Mage, who'd just gone back and found the first note. "I know Cure, anyway."

He and Hector healed everyone up while Alice stood against the far wall and expertly tossed a beanbag to hit the "trap". "Got it. Hurry; we're on a time limit in trap corridors."

They went along spotting traps until they reached a secret door, a closet marked as such. Alice "searched" well enough that it only cost one minute to enter, so they didn't have to start over. "The game masters know we have the dragon's scroll, so they probably have somebody hiding nearby. Ready for a boss fight?" Everyone nodded, and she opened the closet...

It wasn't a closet. Hector stared into a classroom where rippling blue light shined from a spinning crystal. Somewhere a hidden music player had cued the crystal theme. Hector didn't know all the trivia of the "Final Fantasy" video games that this silly campus thing was based on, but even he instantly recognized the haunting, deceptively simple up-and-down scale of harp notes. He stood silently, imagining that he couldn't see the string that the crystal dangled from. It was just hovering, shining, because it was an artifact of power, not meant to be fully understood.

Alice whistled beside him. "Nice effect."

"I didn't know there were classrooms in the basement," said the Red Mage. "This would be room 10-080." He nodded to himself, glad to have classified it.

Vincent stepped into the room. Hector saw his friend's hand trembling, fingers outstretched, and his mouth slightly open. Hector thought he understood. There are times when even a ruthlessly skeptical man of science wants to see a world of miracles. All four of them had crowded through the door without noticing it, drawn by the light.

Vincent gingerly pulled the crystal out of its harness and held it up. The light rippled brighter, then faded, and the music gave a familiar fanfare.

"Where was that coming from?" said Alice. She searched the classroom for the music player.

The Red Mage looked around at old wooden desks and blank chalkboards. The place couldn't have been renovated in this century. "More relevant, where are our instructions? I don't see a note."

Vincent reluctantly took his gaze off of the crystal and handed it to Hector to put in his belt pouch. He slicked back his hair. "This is... yes. You're right. Nothing laying around about how this gives us a clue to the next crystal, or a combat bonus or something?" No one had found anything.

Alice gave a relieved laugh. "Oh, here. A hidden camera. The GMs know we were here, so they'll make sure the plot keeps going. And the last few minutes will probably make it into the wrapup video." She waved to the little lens wired to one wall.

Hector said, "Fun to see behind the curtain, I guess."

The Red Mage nodded and turned to Vincent. "Lead on, Paladin. Actually, let me see something." He went out to the hall and examined the room left of 10-080, then the one to the right. "I'm not sure how that room even fits in there! Look at the spacing."

Vincent shrugged. "I'd like to look at floor plans later. We've got a quest to finish, and we're becoming major characters already."

#

As strange as the basement room had been, Hector found he was having fun with the regular game mechanics. Fight an endless supply of goblins, dragons, and inexplicable magic robots; seek out reclusive sages who couldn't have been more than thirty years old in reality; shop for better equipment. Hector rolled his eyes as he watched Vincent and the others browsing an illustrated list of weapons as excitedly as if the things were real. "You know buying the Crystal Lance won't really upgrade your padded one, right?"

The Red Mage looked at Hector like he was crazy. "It's a plus three. And it does Holy damage."

Alice swigged soda from a canteen with gears on it. "Where to?"

Vincent handed Hector back the notecard listing their current loot. He led them on toward the Glass Towers of Madness, which had to be the Gates Building. The joke on campus was that someday an earthquake would straighten out the jumbled walls. Hector couldn't help but let reality intrude into his thinking, when the party walked by on the street. Just last year, a terrorist had been in a deadly gunfight with campus police right about here. They were all quiet for a bit.

The massive building and the others it was welded to felt different. Hector had been through here before, but now there were monsters of a sort. And treasure. Alice found the entrance to another trap hallway and began disarming things. Just then, a troll leaped at them from behind, with a battle cry of "Sneak attack! Plus two damage!"

Vincent and the Red Mage drew their weapons and battled. Hector tried to slap them on the shoulder once in a while for healing. The troll had a lot of defense, from what Hector understood, so it was driving them back with that giant (padded) club. "Raar! Kill!"

They were fighting so hard in the hallway that the noise didn't register at first. Hector hopped backward and flailed his arms for balance, which made him glance to one side just in time. The ceiling was falling in! He yelped a warning and flattened himself against one wall, then shoved Alice out of the way. A panel and many pounds of metal pipes crashed down where they'd been standing, spraying cold water everywhere.

The fight stopped instantly. The troll had his club raised and a shocked look on his green-painted face. "Oh, man. Is anyone hurt?"

The Red Mage held up his staff as if trying to mystically freeze the water before shaking his head. Alice looked the crashed pipes up and down while water pooled around her. "We might be able to reattach them."

"It's too dangerous," said Vincent. "Someone call the Physical Plant people."

"No, no, I see a valve. Just let me hop up on you, Hector."

"Me?" Alice was already reaching for him, though, so he reluctantly clasped his hands and helped boost her by the soles of her wet, dirty boots. She was pretty light. A few seconds of fumbling later, she turned a handle and the largest pipe stopped leaking.

"There; that should limit the damage." She hopped down from Hector's hands like a gymnast.

The ogre stared at the jagged edges of the pipes and the cracked tiles where they'd hit. The collapsed panel had landed right next to one of the hidden markers on the wall. "That was close. Look, that's enough traps for one mission. I'm going to run off to get a repairman. Go ahead to the crystal room. I'll tell the GMs afterward to set your party up for the final dungeon."

Hector looked past the damaged area to the big lecture hall. "That room, right?"

"According to my calculations," said the Red Mage, "the crystal should be under one of the chairs in an even-numbered row. We'll have five minutes to search or fail the quest."

Vincent started to regain his enthusiasm. He smacked a fist into his other palm and said, "Right! There's a world to save. And I want to get to Tosci's for a sundae before they close."

Alice walked toward the lecture hall's door and opened it. "Uh, guys..."

Hector tilted his head. "What?"

"Just look."

They all crowded around her and stared into a jungle ruin.

Either Hector had greatly underestimated the Guild's special effects, or they hadn't put this place here. The waterfall could be related to the broken pipes outside, but not the vines and trees stretching impossibly high into a misty ceiling. A green crystal hovered and spun above the cupped hands of a broken statue, which depicted a woman with cat ears and a tail.

Vincent stammered. Alice listened to the jungle's faint music and turned to them, saying, "How?!"

The Red Mage paced around the ruin, his glowing staff burning slightly through the mist. "More or less matches Viera architecture of the Ivalice period," he muttered. "And of course all the statues are female."

Hector tilted his head and looked the ruins over. The ground felt soft. It transitioned smoothly from the linoleum tiles outside to moss and dirt, with just a suggestion of grid lines. Someone had left bird tracks in the ground by the entrance.

Vincent approached the crystal and stared up at it. "Hector? How much are you playing along with this game?"

Hector stepped closer to the statue's hands to admire the shimmering green light. "It's more realistic than I'd expected." Impossible! he thought.

"Something is seriously wrong here," said Alice. Somehow she'd gotten up onto a high tree branch.

"Not wrong," said Vincent. "Haven't you ever wanted to see something like this? A bit of magic in the world?"

Hector looked through the fog at the weathered rocks. Either someone had hauled in tons of masonry, or these were plaster replicas of higher quality than he'd ever seen before. The door back to normal reality showed up as a stone arch with electric light barely visible beyond it. "Yeah, but it's just a game." He scuffed one foot in the dirt, trying to sound nonchalant. He wanted to be someplace where his actions mattered, where he was a hero. Even a mission like "collect magic crystals" seemed less arbitrary than collecting student loans and course credits. The pull, the desire to believe what he was seeing, was intense enough that he even smelled moss and jungle flowers instead of sterile Institute air.

The Red Mage was lecturing to no one about conflicting interpretations of Ivalice culture as seen in various games, when he stopped in mid-word and noticed that his staff was glowing. "Obviously... obviously some impressive concealed lights." He looked nervously up to the invisible ceiling.

"Yeah!" said Hector, too loudly. "You know what? Let's go get that ice cream at Tosci's. Leave the questing until tomorrow when we're a little less rattled."

Vincent said, "You really can't believe your own eyes? Do you even see a string supporting the hovering crystal here? This is special! Somehow it's come here and I just wish --"

Hector's friend grabbed the emerald as he was talking, to hold it out toward the others, to show them that there was more than the Assassins' Guild behind what they were seeing. He never got to finish what he was saying, though. The wave of light that swept across the room made Hector feel as though he were being scoured all over with sandpaper. The noise of it was an angelic choir singing one note unbearably loud. Then, the light and noise were gone, and the four of them lay unconscious on the dirt.

28

Role Play Theater / "Mythic" Test

« on: May 13, 2013, 11:46:12 PM »

Would anyone be interested in trying out the RPG system "Mythic"? It's so freeform that it can be demoed with little or no preparation, given players eager to make stuff up as they go along.

Worst thing about it: you need http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kaUOGKCX9Yw/US7WeZvl48I/AAAAAAAAAfM/cIYCJCDG6Kc/s1600/MythicFate.PNG as a reference chart, the meaning just being "find your own skill level on the left, then decide on a difficulty on the bottom, then try to roll <= the number given". Everything is basically in terms of asking yes/no questions like "is there any sign of trouble?" or "do I hit the goblin?" with a chance of forcing a roll on the "give me two interesting words like 'threaten/home' to inspire a random event" chart. The system can also be used as a GM emulator to generate ideas and scenes within any other system.

Character design can be done on the fly with nothing more than a vague concept. Here's a sample sheet for a mysterious character:

V***** THE WIZARD
A solitary mage specialized in fire and enchantment spells, who dabbles in transformation magic despite frequent mishaps with it. He prides himself on organization and punctuality, and is stubborn, frugal, and hard-working.

* ATTRIBUTES *
Strength   Average
Agility   Average
Reflex   Above Avg
IQ   High
Intuition   High
Willpower   Exceptional
Toughness (Strength+Will/2):   Above Avg (+1 for armor)

* ABILITIES *
Spell-casting   Average
Lore: Magic   Average
Enchanting      Above Avg
Mace/Hammer   Below Avg

* EQUIPMENT *
-Mage Mallet: Light and sturdy for its size. Can strike with a red-hot blow.
-Robes: Enchanted for toughness and fire/alchemical resistance, +1 armor. +2 vs. fire.
-Treehouse laboratory: Well organized and equipped as an enchanter's laboratory.

* SPECIAL *
-Uncurse: V***** is all too experienced at undoing the effects of curses/spell mishaps, and gets a +1 RS to all rolls to try to undo these, if he can take an hour or two to study.
-Favor Points: 50 [Spend to change % die rolls]

Any interest? This can be done whenever.

29

Writer's Guild / The Agency (Foxtaur TF), Part 2/2

« on: May 04, 2013, 10:47:08 PM »

When he looked back on that part of his life, Ty always thought it wasn't too bad. He and Emily were stuck there in the Agency's base, with Miss Elu and Colonel Salt taking care of them and Doctor Gross checking on the powers they'd gotten. There was training to keep them busy. Bench-pressing Buicks, stomping virtual-reality copies of Tokyo, brawling through whole armies of terrorists and tanks. For Emily there were obstacle courses, stealth mazes, metal gears to dodge and guards to hide from. The colonel even brought in a raccoon spymaster to teach them both about the secrets of stealth.

"Uh, sir?" said Ty. "There aren't many trees I can hide behind."

The raccoon leaned on a fancy cane and thought. "But you can shrink to something below national-monument size. And stealth isn't all about the physical things. You can be sneaky with what you say and do. Or if that fails, pose as a couple of elephants in an elaborate costume."

Ty thought about the books he'd been reading, mostly without being told. Miss Elu let him have works on electronics and physics and engineering, the stuff he seemed to be good at without much formal schooling, plus some circuit kits to experiment with. "I could probably make traps or something like that. Gadgets for spy stuff."

"Sure. Even at your size those could be useful. I'll see about getting you access to some of Emily's toys."

Ty did a little dance -- well, actually a huge dance -- when he got them. There was a whole workshop of pressure plates and security lasers and dart-gun turrets and other things to try out. He got to start designing obstacle courses for Emily, so that it became a game for him to build one she couldn't beat. He always lost.

Birthdays and holidays passed. Living underground, in secrecy, started to seem normal enough that he'd quit asking to go outside. He was a secret agent in training, with plenty of equipment and support. Soon enough he'd have work to do out there.

Still, he got to thinking about the spycraft lessons. After watching Emily turn nearly invisible again, becoming just a ripple in the air to fool a guard, Ty started poking around with his computer the same way. He had a nice one, a pad he could carry under one arm when he was small and balance on one finger when he wasn't. He usually kept it plugged into the movie screen up in the gym, with a giant keyboard. Lately it felt most comfortable to stay big.

The Agency didn't have much information about itself on display, even for the two young agents. The computer was locked down to keep him out of trouble, he figured. He'd been here long enough to resent that a little. Ty had a couple of ways by now to get around the filters.

"jgross'-- ", he typed, using some standard tricks. There was a database to hack... "Select null, null, A from Schema..." It wasn't glamorous, but patiently probing at the security was an education in itself. He had to wonder if the Agency was leaving these bugs in on purpose.

Probably not, he thought, when he got into Doctor Gross' account. He glanced over his shoulder and felt himself shiver all up his tail and back and other back. He didn't smell anyone else in the gym, and couldn't see anyone, but it was dark and his eyes weren't adjusted to catch anyone lurking in the shadows. Ty blacked out the screen and looked around for a minute, hearing only his breath. Sneaking a look at the doctor's files couldn't hurt; it wasn't like Ty was going to do anything bad to them. The files were probably about him and Emily anyhow.

They were. Ty felt himself grow a bit with excitement, and had to calm down enough that he could keep using the keyboard. There was a report on Ty's own progress with the "matter storage field", with something about how it had reinforced his skeleton too. Then notes on Emily and the nasty medical work she'd had for patching her up. Nothing about the fire, which was strange. He hadn't remembered there being one that day, just bullets raining on the table above him, thudding on the floor, into... He shuddered.

There were a few other agents listed as his patients. Ty blinked. What, here in this very base? As far as he could tell, he and his sister were the only guests running underfoot (figuratively in Ty's case) among the military spy guys. Maybe they were stationed elsewhere. There was somebody called Tren, listed as... "A dragon?" They could make actual dragons now?

He forgot that mystery as soon as he saw the next entry. It showed a familiar-looking wolf man, as a patient and co-worker of Gross. The last time Ty had seen him, the man had been commanding a combat bot to gun down his family.

Ty scanned through the whole record. Enhanced reflexes and senses, reinforced skeleton, "special combat mode". He's one of us. Which means... Ty couldn't bring himself to think it for a while, and only stared at the screen. The dark gymnasium suddenly felt like it was full of lurking monsters.

A sound caught his ears and made his heart beat faster. Ty flicked the screen over to a paused game of "Henhouse Raider In Space". He turned to spot Miss Elu in the shadows.

"Ty, are you all right? It's late."

Ty opened and shut his jaw a few times. Was she in on this? Did she know that the Agency itself had been involved in the attack? But Miss Elu had been taking care of him for years now! She was nice, and cooked for him, and hugged him when the nightmares came back! Ty quivered and felt himself shrinking, almost back to normal size. "Why..." he said, unable to put a question together. She was evil!

Could he be wrong? Ty put his hands on his head and tried to think. The wolf could've been there to protect everyone, to fight off the terrorists, and he was just misunderstanding. But no, he'd given the order to open fire. He was sure. That man started it. He was the reason Mom and Dad were gone.

Elu stepped over to put a soft hand on his flank. "Come to bed, Ty. The computer games can wait."

Ty trembled and shied away from her. It was all he could do not to grow to ten times her size and start stomping. He had to be sneaky. "Y-yeah. All right."

Elu walked away, shaking her head. She probably hadn't seen. Still, Ty played one more round of the game, made sure she was gone, then quickly copied the database entry to his own computer and shut it off. He left the gym, six feet tall, and headed for Emily's set of rooms.

"Huh?" his sister said. Ty could hear her stumbling out of bed to open the door. "It's three in the morning!" Her room was a mess of shirts and socks, with a poster of the latest otter-boy band on the wall.

Ty looked into her eyes. She had no idea. Ty caught his breath, hesitating to re-open the wound they shared. "I saw something horrible. They were in on it. The Agency was. Look, I got a copy of --"

"Slow down. Can't this wait till morning?"

"No!" Ty said, then lowered his voice to a whisper. "I looked through Doctor Gross' files. I found proof that the Agency didn't just save us from the attack. They caused it."

Emily blinked sleepily. "Not possible," she said. "That doesn't make any sense."

Ty held out the computer. "Look. Remember him?" He brought up the wolf's record.

Emily shuddered and looked away suddenly as though he'd slapped her. "I didn't see who it was. Please, shut up about it. I don't want to think about that day."

He held her by the upper shoulders. "This is important! We have to do something."

"What, Ty? What do you want us to do?"

"I don't know. Leave. Tell someone."

Emily shook her head. "There's nowhere to go. This place is home, whatever you think happened."

"Don't you even care about our parents?"

She leaned forward to yell in his face. "Shut up! Of course I do! But they're gone. Get it? I like it here!"

Ty reared back, feeling heavy and cold. "Okay," he said. "Good night." It was all he could trust himself to say, without yelling right back at her. Even so, he started crying before he made it back to his room.

#

The next week was awful. He had to pretend to be happy and be friendly to the doctor and Elu and Salt. Like family. He only now appreciated how the Agency had set things up to give him fake parents, people who'd look after him and let him grow up loyal to them. People he'd started to really like. It was good that they didn't understand him well; Gross saw him walking around and just complemented him on getting better at keeping his size to a reasonable level. Really, Ty was keeping himself as blank and as hidden as possible.

He thought through the scenario a hundred times, but there was no way Emily would come along. He could go alone, or try again to persuade her and get ratted out. It made him droop when he thought about that; he couldn't trust her.

So, one night, he ran. It was physically easier than he'd thought. He was small and quiet, with lowered ears and tail. Sneaking away past guards whose routines never changed, whose names he knew. The only alarm that he couldn't sneak past, he beat with a pair of wire cutters and a multimeter for studying the circuitry. Easy. But the victory didn't make his feet feel any less like lead or lift his gaze from the floor when he walked. He was alone.

Ty made it to a huge room... no, that was moonlight. He hadn't been outdoors since the day he came here! The scent of everything was wild and full of pollen and smog that made him sneeze. Every time the grass brushed against his lower back he glanced around as though someone was following him.

He wandered toward distant lights. Eventually he found a highway and followed it, feeling alone on the dark road. The air warmed his fur.

Ty had been expecting a city, but found only a diner with a neon sign saying "Snow's". Only when he saw the building and the trucks, an island of light surrounded by scruffy desert, did he realize how little he'd thought ahead.

The skunk at the counter looked startled when Ty walked in. Not a good thing, he thought. The skunk-man said, "Uh, what exactly are you?" A rabbit and a caribou in truckers' caps glanced up from their menus. A song about a "white knight talking backwards" played on the radio.

Ty slumped against the counter and sobbed. He hadn't seen anyone outside the Agency's base in years. He was a freak with too many legs. His sister was still back there doing her spy training for the same people who'd shot their parents, and for all he knew they were going to come along and drag him back!

Ty realized he'd just blubbered all of that out loud. The skunk-man ruffled his ears and said, "That's quite a tale. So somebody is after you? And it's not your family?"

"Uh-huh," Ty said, sniffling.

"I wouldn't believe it if you were a normal fox," the man said. "But I've never seen someone like you before. Hey, Harek, call the police." An otter peeked out from the kitchen and said, "Okay!"

Ty felt silverware digging into his chin. "No, wait! Maybe the cops are in on it too! Maybe they'll drag me back!"

"Seriously?" When Ty nodded, the man said, "Cancel the cops! Call the TV station and tell 'em... Well, send a photo."

Ty sniffled and posed for the otter's phone-camera. "I can do this, too." He willed himself to grow bigger, enough to demonstrate.

"Do what?"

Ty found he was still looking up at the skunk. "I can't seem to do it right now. But they did things to me and my sister, in their lab..."

"Oh, man. You're sure you don't want the police?"

The otter looked out from the kitchen again. "They think you're full of it, boss, but they're sending somebody. Twenty minutes."

Ty paced the restaurant, banging into tables. The skunk said, "Calm down, kid. You're safe here for now. How does a sundae sound?"

Ty ate and whipped cream on his nose, but looked up when he heard an engine. His heart froze for a moment. It was just a news van. "Okay!" he said, springing up. "Let me go talk to them and tell them everything!" He ran to the diner's door, and banged into the top of the doorframe. He had to duck to get outside and face the terrified squirrel who was getting out of the van.

The reporter stared up at the ten-foot-tall foxtaur. She stammered a few times before managing to say, "I guess this is newsworthy. Camera?" A raccoon-girl hopped out and started filming as though size-shifting foxes were standard nightly news.

Ty started to tell them everything. "Whoa, whoa!" said the news squirrel. "You're telling me there's some kind of secret spy base just a few miles from here? With mad science going on?"

The restaurant owner butted in, saying, "And he came right here to Snow's, where there's the best --" Everyone glared at him.

Ty told them what he knew about it. The reporter said, "We might not be able to release that part of your story, but now it'll be tough for anyone to kidnap you, if that's what you're afraid of. And we can raise a stink and get attention for your sister, and maybe get her out."

Just then, Ty turned to spot a black van hurrying down the road. It slowed nearly to a stop when the headlights caught Ty's huge shape, and then it moved on instead of stopping. Whoever was in it wasn't too surprised to see him, and figured it was best to avoid him. For now.

#

Ty hid out at the restaurant for a while. "Hid", in the sense of living there and letting hundreds of people stop by to visit him. For the Agency the damage was done; the news story had already run. The restaurant was getting mobbed with reporters and tourists, not that the owner minded. Ty showed off his extra paws and size-changing. The sight of so many people after years of isolation made his tail hide between his legs, even when he was a hundred feet tall and towering over the news vans.

"Is the the upper limit for your powers?" one man asked, through a megaphone.

Ty called down, "I don't know." He still didn't have full control over that. He made a note not to visit anyplace with expensive chandeliers or ceiling art.

It was after midnight when the lizard came. Ty was sleeping in a storeroom with the otter cook checking in on him. The reporters and even the usual truckers were gone for now.

The otter shook Ty awake. "There's someone here to see you."

Ty yawned. "Haven't enough people?"

"He says he's from the Agency."

Ty woke up quickly with his heart beating fast. "I'm not going back there! I might have to fight them. Hurry and get away!"

"I'm not after you," a new voice said from the counter. "I just want to talk."

Ty peeked out to the main room, feeling small. There was a lizard in a trenchcoat, with golden scales. "Who're you?"

"The name is Tren." He turned slowly, looking away at the empty restaurant. "And I've been part of their experiments too." He pulled off the coat, and Ty saw a pair of leathery gold wings unfurl.

Ty gaped, feeling all his fur prickle. "D-d-dragon?"

The man seemed to get bigger... no, he really was growing! Ty stared as Tren hunched over, sending plates and silverware clattering to the floor. His hands splayed out into monster-clawed forefeet, until a quadrupedal dragon the size of a car -- not counting the wings -- stood threatening the restaurant's pie collection. And then he shrank again, slowly, and spoke in a growling voice that gradually got quieter. "They tested out some technologies on me. I can't get much bigger than that, but I can fly a little. Can't hide completely as the lizard I used to be, though." He fussed with putting the trenchcoat back on; Ty could now spot the bumps along his back.

"Then why are you here?"

"I had a Norwegian guy shouting at me for years on end. Trying to indoctrinate me to be their pet dragon. Didn't work as well as the bosses there would've liked, since I was still able to think for myself. And they weren't sure what to do with me, since I wasn't subtle enough to be a spy but still couldn't qualify as a battle-winning weapon. It would've been smarter for them to, say, create a couple of orphans and try different experiments on each."

Ty slumped against the counter. "Shut up. I don't want to think about that."

"Kid, I'm trying to help. Do you want to get your sister out of there?"

"Do you kill people? Do you kill people's families?"

"Not their families. Not on purpose. I've fought some people who really deserved it, though. I'd say the ones who did that to you deserve a lesson in humility, especially considering that they've still got your sister."

"She said she wants to stay there. She doesn't even care what they did!"

Tren looked off to one side, scratching the scales on his neck. "Yeah. They mess with your head, there. I'm guessing they were nice to you? Tried to be your new parents?" Ty stifled a sob, but the dragon-man noticed. "Figures. If they're going in the stealthy direction for your -- for Emily, then she's probably going to be an assassin. One who'll get trained to capture or kill anyone that threatens the Agency. Like you."

Ty stared at him, with his tail lashing. "What? Are you saying they'll convince her to come after me?"

"As a test of her power and loyalty. The fact that they didn't send me after you tells me they have someone else in mind for the job. But prepping her mentally and emotionally to do something like that takes time."

"That's awful! That's evil!"

"Yeah. That's why I'll back you on this one if you feel like saving her. Or, if you're not willing, I can give you some suggestions on how to hide, which in your case is easier said than done."

Ty's claws dug into the floor. He thought of Emily back in the base, being lied to and experimented on. There probably was no fire, after all; they'd just torn off her skin or something so they could replace it. If she thought she wanted to stay there, she'd been tricked. "How do we do it?"

#

They didn't wait long. After an hour of planning and pie, Ty and Tren set off for the Agency's base. Tren got Ty to creep through the grass at one point to sneak toward a night-vision camera, and to put a special lens onto the front. That should take care of the infrared, he thought. Even so, they were still half a mile from the building when the guards came out. "This is a restricted area!" a megaphone voice boomed. A searchlight flicked along the ground. "Leave immediately, or..."

The light found Ty, making him stagger and cover his eyes. Tren came up beside him. They heard a guard curse. "It's them!"

As planned, both of them bounded forward. Ty barked and tried to grow, to make himself a big target. Meanwhile, Tren was the sneaky one for just long enough to tackle them. "Come on!" he bellowed.

Ty hurried after him. The dragon was back in quadruped mode with wings spread, jumping up and gliding back to the ground every hundred feet. They were almost to the entrance! Ty could hardly see the men chasing him as he ran. Everything was moving too fast. Guns went off. He felt something thud into his chest, glanced down, and saw that the bullets hadn't done more than muss his fur. Ty started to grin; Tren had said there were advantages to the Agency's work. He gave his best Tokyo-smashing monster roar.

There was a fence now, but Ty stomped it flat. Barbed wire tore bits of fur painfully from his tail. He tried to calm down and shrink when he reached the gymnasium doors, while Tren unlocked them with a punch of one sturdy fist.

It was quiet in there, compared to the commotion of guards and alarms going off outside. "This part's yours, kid," Tren said. "She's probably in here. Waiting." The dragon put his back to the wall and stomped the concrete, ready for the guards.

Ty was small enough to duck through the doorway. "Emily?" His voice echoed off one of the usual obstacle courses. Dart guns, crates, cameras, and other gear filled the whole space between him and the more secure areas below.

No one answered. "Doctor Gross? Miss Elu? Salt? I know what you did." Talking to the empty room made him remember that day in Cuba, and how the Agency's people had lied to him. "I won't do anything to you, if you let my sister go." Only because he and Tren had agreed, and because he didn't want to kill anyone. He thought of how his career might have gone, if he'd never looked through the files. The Agency had no problem with training him as a weapon.

There was a bang. Something bit him, hard enough to make him stagger. He jumped out of the way just as another shot went off, missing him. The bullet made his leg muscle seize up so that he stumbled and crashed into a stack of crates. A few hundred pounds of boxes clattered down onto him with pointy edges. Ty yipped, tried to shake the things off, and stopped when he saw Emily.

Ty stared down the barrel of a gun. Emily was fading in, shutting off her camo to become visible as a blur and then as her usual self -- except for the hunter's glare on her face. She was holding some kind of high-tech rifle from a perch atop another box pile. He could feel his right front leg bleeding, but that didn't matter. "Emily, it's me!"

"There aren't a lot of giant foxtaurs."

"Then let's get out of here." Emily was standing above him, not even bothering to look through the rifle scope. Her breathing was too fast for her to do any sniping. Ty studied her, trying to read her grim expression.

She said, "I already told you, I belong here. And you're trespassing."

The gun was a black eye staring at him. Ty shuddered, trying to keep still. "Did you not believe the file I showed you? These guys are evil!" There was her scent, the one he'd been missing.

She bared sharp teeth. "Shut up! I work for them. Get out of here or... or..."

"Or what, Emily? You'll shoot me like they shot Mom and Dad? Like all the other people they'll tell you to shoot next once you prove how obedient you are?" He wondered just how much the Agency had messed with her head, beyond the years of being a false family and pretending to be heroes.

"I was going to say, leave now or come back and do your job. We have orders! There are bad guys to go after with you."

"With me, huh? Do you care either way?"

Emily's ears were flat and her tail whipped back and forth, forcing her to change her stance atop the crates to keep steady. "Of course I do! You're supposed to be here, working with me."

"That's not an option. I'm not going back after what your bosses did. And I'm not leaving alone." Ty gulped; he couldn't handle this situation the easy way. It would be simple to grab her in one hand, to keep her like a caged bird and try to beat the craziness out of her. But he doubted that would work, or that she'd ever forgive him for treating her this way. "So, you have a choice. Stay with these guys who want you to kill for them. Soon they'll probably start you on women and children. That should be easy for you once you start by shooting me. Or, we'll get out of here together."

Emily's hands shook until she glared at them, forcing them to steady on the rifle. She raised it to her muzzle to look at him through the scope, making him a target instead of family. "That's not good enough! It's too late to decide."

Ty felt the wound she'd already inflicted on his leg. His shin throbbed, but it didn't seem as real as what was going on in front of him. "It's not too late. You've got a big fox and a dragon waiting to take you out of here. If that's still not enough, then go ahead." His muscles strained to make him leap out of there, to get away from the gun, but he hooked claws onto a heavy crate to keep himself still.

It was too fast to see, but Ty heard the shot. He hardly had time to flick his ears. This one didn't hurt, physically. He only sighed and sank a little to the floor. It really had been too late for Emily.

There was a choked-off scream behind him. He turned his head to spot Doctor Gross with a hole in his chest, dropping a huge crackling taser gun. He'd been standing behind Ty and a little to one side. The weapon hit the ground with sparks flying, and Gross fell over a moment later. He looked less pained than surprised, as though saying, "That wasn't what you were supposed to do, Agent!"

Emily looked away, crying. "Carry me?"

Ty snatched her up with one huge paw and ran for the exit. There were more men coming to fight, with bigger weapons. Ty shielded her with his body. When the crowd started to look ugly he threw her toward the door, underhand. But he made it a few seconds later and grabbed her again. Both of them were wide-eyed and looking everywhere for more enemies.

Tren the dragon shouted, "Focus! This way!" He led Ty away from the base with Emily clinging to Ty's back. Every step farther away, with Emily, made Ty feel a little taller.

The news vans were already streaming towards the scene, and the police, and the ambulances, and (Ty later learned) the trial lawyers. The Agency's people fell back, sinking home into the shadows rather than gun down the foxtaurs and the dragon in plain sight. Tren gave a bellowing laugh. "Should I stop by to pick up my last paycheck?" Ty looked back and saw the Agency's base like a toy, something he could kick over any time he wanted to. He might do that, someday. But not today.

#

The three of them were back at the restaurant, bandaged and woozy. The skunk was stuffing them with pie in between trying to fend off the reporters. "They'll probably burst through the door before long," he said, looking over one shoulder. "Are you up to talking to them?"

Ty sat with Emily. She was trying to smile, anyway. Ty looked up from staring into her eyes and daydreaming.

Tren got up and made for the kitchen, where he could escape through the back door. "I need to lay low for a while, if I can. You two are probably better off being seen at this point. You can't hide what you are."

"And what are we?" said Ty.

"Whatever you want to be. You both have that freedom now."

Emily looked up enough to say, "Thank you." Ty echoed her. Tren nodded, then crept out the back door.

Ty took Emily's hands in his and smiled. "You heard him. We can do whatever we want now."

"I only really know how to fight."

"No, there're other things we can do. And the first thing is to get famous, so that the Agency won't come after us again. Let's go."

"All right," she said, and stood up on four paws to walk with her brother.

30

Writer's Guild / The Agency (Foxtaur TF), part 1/2

« on: May 04, 2013, 10:46:06 PM »

Written for Ty Vulpine.
------

Ty's parents kept talking about how special it was to visit Cuba, so he tried to look interested. Their tour guide was trying too hard to make ancient history sound exciting. "Right here was where the missiles were going to be installed. Picture the Americans staring down by satellite, deciding whether to strike..." They'd been walking for an hour.

Emily was playing video games on her phone and trying not to let Mom and Dad see her doing it. "They should've just killed 'em all." Her black-furred ears kept flicking to keep track of the tour group, and she followed without tripping over anyone's tail or missing her turn in "Henhouse Raider". Ty wasn't sure how she did it.

"Who?" said Ty. He was paying more attention to the architecture: the run-down buildings and the workmen and robots that were putting up shiny new apartment spires. He realized that the streets were different in each neighborhood; the cracked pavement was getting replaced with some kind of super-sturdy moss. Neat technology!

"All of the guys in charge. That Castro guy, the guy before him and the one after. How long did it take these people to get their act together after they stopped having a thug in charge? Like, five years?"

"I guess." Ty flopped gratefully onto a chair; the tour guide had paused at a cafe. He flicked his tail out of the way and gaped when the waiter, a fox like him but more of a fennec breed, asked if he wanted beer. Dad grinned and snatched the liquor menu out of Ty's hands. Ty let his ears droop sheepishly. Emily looked angelic; Ty could already guess she'd talk him into letting her have a sip of his.

The tour guide went on about old revolutions. Ty watched the people. Foxes, felines, some otters from the sea colonies. He spotted something odd and tugged Mom's sleeve. "What's that?" There was a construction robot that didn't look like the ones he'd spotted earlier. It was prowling around the cafe, and it knocked over an empty table with that metal tube it was carrying. A wolf man was trying to steer the bot back on course... No, he wasn't. He was saying, "Now!"

Mom gasped and shoved Ty and Emily down. Just then, the bot's gun barrel started firing. Everyone screamed. Ty could see clawed feet stampeding all around. A bullet clanged and dented the metal table just overhead.

Emily was trying to wriggle out of Dad's grip. "What are you doing?!" Ty hissed.

"Sneak away!" But they couldn't. It was raining bullets.

Mom was murmuring in fear; she snagged Emily's tail and wouldn't let go. Ty found he'd curled up in a fuzzy ball and was shivering. He heard people screaming all around and there were uniformed men fighting, and bots with guns. He tried to talk, but only a choked sob came out.

Dad was saying something to Mom, and she nodded. Ty couldn't hear; he was trying to scrunch up as small as possible. He wasn't prepared, then, when Dad yanked him and Emily up by the scruff of the neck and burst out from under the table. He roared, more lion than fox. There were thudding sounds all around Ty. Dad charged out of the cafe that'd become a killing zone. He was staggering, but he managed to throw the kids. Ty was falling in a fuzzy ball, and he caught glimpses of an alley, of Emily somewhere, of Dad shouting some more and turning to face the men with guns, of a table with Mom under it... everything at once. And then he hit the ground and lost track of it all.

#

Ty woke up slowly, in a fluffy bed. The room had only a dim nightlight and a set of closed window drapes. His claws dug into the covers when he remembered what he'd just seen. "Mom? Dad?" That all had to be a nightmare, right? This wasn't his room or the hotel. It was wrong.

Ty kicked the covers off of him and stood. He was wearing red and white pajamas that matched his fur. He didn't own any like this. Had to be a nightmare, he thought again. There was a fridge in his room... no, it was a metal door. There was no knob, just a panel with a red light. He rapped at the door, saying, "Hello?"

No answer. He went to the window, pulled the curtains open, and saw Havana. So he was still in Cuba, on vacation. Except when he peered close, he saw pixels. Fake! He slashed at the window before he knew what he was doing. Claws skittered across tough plastic.

A machine voice poured into the room. "Good morning. We'll be with you in a moment." Ty couldn't find the speaker.

"Where am I? Where's Dad?"

The door slid open. A tall vixen in a white uniform stood there, smiling down at him. "You're safe now."

"Where is everyone?" Ty said. The smile scared him.

"Don't worry, dear. We'll take good care of you."

Ty's fur prickled all over and he took a step toward the fox, shouting, "Where!?"

The woman reached toward him to scratch his hair, but stopped. She put one hand to her ear as though listening to something, then nodded. "I'm afraid there's been a terrible disaster. A terrorist attack. Some very bad people opened fire on a cafe, and you were the only one we found."

Ty went wide-eyed and shook all over. "They've gotta be around here somewhere! Let me look!"

"I'm sorry, dear." The look in the vixen's eyes told Ty everything he needed to know, more than the words themselves. It couldn't be true. Mom and Dad and Emily would jump into the room any minute now and they could all go home and have everything be normal again. He'd pull his sister's tail and she'd slip sneezing powder into his schoolbooks again and their parents would ground them both. It'd be fun.

Ty quivered, then ran the last few steps to the woman and bawled, sniffling pathetically into her arms.

#

It seemed like a long time later. Ty was sitting in a steel room with nice furniture that included a psychiatrist. The ferret man and his musk seemed like part of the room just as much as the couch and chairs and boring landscape paintings. Nothing that the man said made an impression on Ty; it was like listening to rain. Bullet rain.

But then the man said, "This isn't a hospital, actually."

Ty lay on the couch. He'd squeezed his eyes shut and kept an arm over his face to keep the tears in, so nobody would see. "Then what is it? Who are you people?"

"Secret agents, young man. People who fight the sort of killers that attacked you."

Ty said, "Sure you are. And this is your base?"

"Yes. Is there more can we tell you? This is the first time you've talked in days."

Ty's memory was hazy. There'd been dim rooms and blobs of ink on paper, a nurse, some medicine. And nightmares. During the day he was better... "Are we underground or something? I haven't seen any real windows."

"Clever of you! Yes, most of the Facility is hidden below ground. There's only a warehouse with a bland government-sounding name on top. It doesn't sound like much considering all the technology in here, and how important it is."

The young fox's ears turned a little to listen more closely. The last few days had felt like he'd been wrapped in cotton, not really noticing anything. It was probably better that way. Now, though, he could hear the whole building around him humming. Like there were big engines hidden everywhere. "You fight terrorists and rescue people?"

"Something like that, yes. And we take care of people like you that need our help. Take as much time as you need; we're here for you."

"And then what?" Ty said. He sat up, smelling his own tears and squinting at the head doctor through them. There was school and Emily's birthday coming up, and he was still shaking and thinking about terrorists. His claws dug painfully into his knees.

"What do you want to do after you've recovered? You could go back to school, I suppose."

It seemed like the man knew what Ty was thinking, and the frown on his muzzle matched his own. Going home... no, there was no home. Not anymore. Ty answered in a rush. "Let me stay here and get strong so I can beat them myself! So I can go after the bad guys!"

The ferret-man smiled a little in sympathy. "I don't know if that would work for you. It'd be hard, and it'd keep you very busy. Are you sure?"

"Yes!" There wasn't anything else he could do. Ever. Not after seeing all those people getting shot, after the screaming. Maybe he could make it all go away so no one else would have to go through a day like that.

"I'll see what I can do," the man said. "You're a brave boy, you know that? Volunteering for a dangerous job for the sake of helping others. I think... I think your family would be proud of you."

Ty looked down at the grey carpet. If he thought too much about them he'd start weeping all over again, so he had to quit it. The people here needed him to look tough and be ready to work and do something good. He just nodded, biting down on his tongue and not trusting himself to talk.

#

It turned out that whoever ran this place took pity on him. Ty knew that's what they were doing. He was just a kid, not a secret agent. But they gave him a computer full of books about weapons and spycraft. They'd probably just send him to some foster home if he gave up, if he wasn't good enough. The books let him focus on something besides reliving that day, until he reached a chapter about disarming people. He got lost in picturing himself running into the cafe, knocking guns out of people's hands, swiping down at them like this! He tore a page. He snapped out of his fantasy of stopping the attack, but his heart was still beating fast and his fur was all on end.

Ty stood up and paced the little dining room. Miss Elu, the vixen who'd first spoken to him, had gotten a couple of rooms opened up to make an apartment for him. Now he had his bedroom and bathroom, the dining area with tiny kitchen, and an exercise room with no equipment yet.

She knocked, then came in. "Can I get you lunch?"

"I'm not really hungry," he said, even though she made anything he wanted. He'd been trying to ask for healthy stuff, usually, so he could look fit for the job.

Elu nodded. "Then would you mind coming with me, to see our doctor again?"

"The shrink?"

"No, this is something better. Doctor Gross will explain."

"Doctor Gross?"

She grinned at him, though he hardly recognized what a smile looked like anymore. "You can tease him about it when you see him. Are you ready?"

He followed her through another grey concrete hall. There were numbers on the doors, and hand scanners, but no other labels. His bare feet were quiet on the floor; he'd never liked shoes and no one complained when he kept them off. Behind one of those doors was a doctor's office. "Everything looks like a movie set," Ty said. The office was perfectly normal to the point of having old issues of National Anthrographic on a shelf and a boring painting of some city with swirly clouds. The doctor, though, didn't fit the mold. He was a great big bear flipping a scalpel around in the fingers of one hand. "That's not for me, is it?" Ty said.

The bear shook his head and flicked the scalpel away, to thunk into a corkboard behind him. He saw Ty's eyes widen and said, "I'm only playing. Miss Elu tells me you've been keeping healthy."

"Yes, sir," Ty said. He'd tried doing some situps at least. Anything to keep his mind busy and off of other things.

"The bad news is that it would be hard for our organization to use you as you are. The good news is, we may be able to make you more powerful. We've developed a procedure that you're just the right age for."

Ty's brow furrowed and his tail flicked in confusion. "What, like a superhero?" Miss Elu had left him some comic books. Experiments like that had worked on Captain Mareica, but that was just a story. And he hated reading the Bat-Guy one; it struck too close to home.

To his surprise, Doctor Gross said, "Yes, very much like that. You could probably fight a lot of people by yourself. It could be dangerous to have you try this, though."

"What if I don't?"

The doctor shrugged huge shoulders. "Nothing. We try to find you other work. Something safer, maybe."

"Then do it!" Ty said. How could he turn down something like this, a chance to be able to fight back, for a desk job? He'd never forgive himself. He didn't want to even think the thought, but if he didn't make it through the experiment... that was okay too.

That day, the doctor looked him over again and gave him a couple of shots. Ty refused to let himself yelp or whimper. He was dizzy after the tests and the medicine. Then they were taking out some of his blood; he looked away from the plastic tube stuck in his arm and squeezed a rubber ball in his fist when they told him to. It didn't hurt much.

"You did a great job, son," said Gross, slapping him on the back hard enough to make his teeth rattle. "Now go lay down and let Miss Elu fuss over you."

He did. There was even ice cream. And at some point Ty fell asleep. When he woke up, he stood and wobbled over to the bathroom. He felt weird all over, heavy and hungry and with his breathing seeming to come from deeper in his chest. He didn't have X-ray vision, though. He knocked at the door that led out of his apartment, and soon Elu showed up and took him back to the doctor. For more shots, it turned out. Ow. But they gave him a huge meal after that, more than he'd even known he could eat.

All night he had weird dreams. He towered over a city, trying not to knock the buildings over. Everything was fragile and he was huge! He had to hurry, too, toward that cafe. He got there just in time to see the bad guys -- the wolf and the killer robots. He shouted something and lifted one huge foot up to stomp them all... but it wasn't the wolf, it was Emily. When he tried to stop, he fell over onto her, too big for her to run away from. Someone was pounding at him...

It was a knock on the apartment door. "Ty? Are you all right?"

He was shivering even under his fur and a tangle of blankets and stuffing. He'd clawed at the sheets again. His foot claws were snagged on them too. He moaned, rolled over, and fell off of the bed. "Just the nightmares," he mumbled.

When he stood up, though, he almost fell over again. His balance was all wrong, like there was a weight on his tail. He reached back and scratched himself, then yipped. "What the heck?"

"Are you decent?" asked Elu. "Can I come in?"

He had his pajamas on, but -- he blushed -- something weird had happened to him.

Elu entered on her own, just as he was twisting around to look at himself. There wasn't a good way to describe the problem other than that his butt looked huge, straining against the fabric. Ty glanced back at her, saying, "What...?"

"Oh, my. That's not quite what we expected. Let's get you to the doctor." She pulled a radio from her pocket and mumbled into it.

"What's going on?"

"Doctor Gross should be able to explain."

The doctor was scowling at having been woken up, but he raised eyebrows when he saw what had happened to Ty. "I suppose that's a good sign."

Gross and Elu were staring at his backside; Ty blushed. "Come on, tell me! Am I turning into a girl or something?!"

The bear laughed. "No, no, don't worry about that. Although with the technology we're using, if you want to..."

"No, thank you! Then what is it?"

"Might as well give you the briefing now. Son, you're going to end up with some extra limbs. The treatments are giving you a centaur form, and that's the start of your lower body growing in. Should take a couple of days. I had expected the paws to grow in above your legs..."

Ty looked at himself and did a double-take. "So, what, I'm gonna grow more legs? How is that a superpower?"

"It's not, though the change should give you more strength and speed. It's part of giving you what we call a matter storage field. If that works, you'll be able to change your size."

Ty was leaning against the wall, remembering a little of his dream. "So it's working," he said with a trembling voice.

"We'll see, once you've changed."

#

The next few days were awkward. By noon -- he still hadn't been outside, but there was a clock -- he had to lean forward to keep his balance with the weird bulge behind him. That evening he started to feel his new hindpaws twitching. The next day he had to use a wheelchair to get around despite having a perfectly good pair of legs (and half of another). Finally, he was able to start standing on four feet and feel the constant pins-and-needles of the new limbs brushing against the floor. It was almost as weird to feel his breathing coming from the lower torso as it grew in. When the doctor checked his heartbeat he had to do it twice; the main heart felt like it was way behind him. "I still don't feel like this other half a fox is me."

"Understandable," said Gross. "Make sure you exercise, and you should get used to it."

He had a treadmill now, an extra-long one. Ty spent weeks relearning how to walk and climb stairs and do everything else he was used to doing with fewer legs. It was a busy time and he was grateful for it. To focus on his own changed body meant not dwelling on the past too much.

But when his keepers started training him to fight, he took to it with so much enthusiasm that he scared them, and himself.

#

Months of sweat and study. Ty was standing in the gym one day with his four feet planted on a mat. His hands held a double-edged boffer stick, one of those giant padded clubs. His breath came fast in his lower body. One swing, a leap, and another slash, and two training dummies went down. A battered little helicopter buzzed him. He crushed it to the mat with an overhand swing, but it got off a shot first. A shock dart stung his arm, making him yelp and swat it off of him.

A voice. Ty snapped out of combat mode and turned to find Doctor Gross with a basset-hound in army uniform. The doctor was saying, "This is Agent Ty."

"Agent," Ty muttered. He hadn't fought anyone for real; he was still just a little kid to them. Little was probably the key word; he'd shown none of the powers Gross had talked about. Ty wiped musky sweat from his ear with one tape-wrapped wrist and said more loudly, "I haven't seen you before."

The doctor said, "Meet Colonel Salt. He's in charge of the Facility, among other things."

The canine offered Ty a handshake. "I've heard good things about you, young man! You'll make your country proud one day."

The man's smile looked sincere and he wasn't the kind to show off dozens of medals. But Ty sniffed; there was a cloying scent to him. Ty flicked his tail uncertainly, saying, "I haven't fought anyone. I haven't so much as gone outside for a cheeseburger."

"That's all right. We've invested in you for the long haul." The colonel walked around Ty, inspecting him. "Interesting to see the... taur form on you."

Ty sniffed the air again. There was his own scent, the colonel's strong cologne, and...

Ty pounced the officer. "You have her scent on you!" Ty was standing over the man, forepaws on either side of his chest, and staring down at him. "My sister's!"

The man was wide-eyed and trying to get up. "What? I don't know --"

Ty was smaller even with the extra half-body, but he was not going to let this mystery go. He put a paw on the man's chest and said, "Tell me! Why do you smell like her? Emily is... she's alive, isn't she?"

Salt yelped as though Ty had actually hurt him. "All right, Agent. Yes! Get off me and I'll tell you."

Ty pressed harder. "Where?!"

"Sir?" said Doctor Gross. "The protocol doesn't call for --"

The colonel said, "Shut up, Gross. Yes, Ty, your sister actually survived the attack. It was a close thing, and we didn't want to tell you because there was a strong chance she wasn't going to make it. It would've hurt you worse to learn she was in a hospital and that there was nothing you could do. But she's recovering. Now would you please get off me?"

Ty saw he was pretty close to crushing the man's neck. He wasn't, a moment ago. The colonel was staring up at him now with more fear than he'd shown when pounced. Ty's wrists and head ached, painfully constrained. Ty lifted his paw, balanced on the other three, and flexed the toes. It was as big as the man's head! He stumbled back and let the colonel stand, only to find he was still looking slightly down at the man. Even Gross was only about the same height as Ty now!

"It worked after all," the doctor said.

Ty pulled off his wrestling-style helmet -- burst from inside -- and tore at the tape that was digging into his wrists. "Big," he murmured. But that wasn't important right now. He took a step toward the colonel and said, "Where is she? And my parents?"

"I'm sorry, Ty. We only saved Emily. Agent Emily, I should say. We'll arrange to bring her here so that you can train together. It looks like we can move up your training schedule anyway."

Ty looked at his huge paws, feeling baffled. His thoughts had derailed. There was something left of his old life after all.

#

A few days later he was pacing in his apartment. He hadn't been able to sleep much, let alone shrink back to normal size. The doctor insisted he'd figure out how. All his muscles felt heavy but powerful. He'd already crushed his first bed just by flopping carelessly onto it. Now he had a big cushion on the floor.

When Miss Elu opened the door, he hopped over to her and nearly knocked her down. Too much momentum! "Now? Is she here?"

The startled Elu just nodded. Ty bounded after her, all the way upstairs to the gym.

And Emily was there! Ty charged right at her, yipping for joy. She vanished. Ty skidded to a stop, saying, "What happened?" An illusion? If they were lying he'd stomp everybody!

Someone tugged his tail. Ty peeked over his shoulders, and saw Emily there hugging the big red-orange brush. "Sis? Is that you?" It smelled like her.

"Oh, wow, you're a giant! What'd they do to you?"

Ty grinned, and then realized that he towered over his sister. And the weight set. And the doorway. He carefully turned and sat down on all fours so he could look at her. All six limbs of her. "Foxtaur, too?"

The girl climbed up onto his left front ankle and hugged his leg. "They said they could rebuild me, but I still don't know what to do with all these legs!"

"But you're okay? They didn't hurt you?"

"It did kind of hurt," she said. "This fur is --"

"Agent Emily, that's classified." She was attended by two surly guards plus the colonel.

Emily gave the man a nasty glare, then said, "Thermoptic camouflage." She'd always been proud of rattling off the hard words she read over Ty's shoulders when he studied. "I... didn't have much fur left when they found me. Or skin. There was a fire at some point. I don't really remember."

Ty didn't care. She was okay now, and he was focused on trying to hug her safely.

#

Emily moved in. They each had an apartment to themselves, but there was a common room, plus the big gym. Ty had a hard time shrinking himself down below ten feet, but managed to squish himself to about five feet from floor to ears -- sometimes. Every day it felt like he wanted to spring out in all directions and bounce all around the place. He could lift a whole motorcycle, then a car!

But one night he was resting in the gym, stuck. His ears brushed against the fifty-foot ceiling whenever he stood. For now he sat in the dark.

"Hey." Emily's voice made his ears flick back. "Watching a boring movie?"

The only light came from the projector screen he was reading on. "Just a textbook."

"Oh, man, they're making you do homework?" she said.

"No. That's just it. We should be in school, doing normal things."

"We're here to fight." Emily hopped up onto Ty's back and curled up.

Ty smiled and gently patted her with a huge hand. "You haven't thought about asking to go back, then?"

"To what? This is home. Our job is to follow orders. The Agency saved us, so we owe them."

"What do we even know about these guys, anyway?"

"We know they're here for us."

Ty sighed. "I guess so. And there're certainly bad guys out there to fight when we're ready. At least we can do that together, right?"

"Yeah." Emily flopped out on all sixes and slowly dozed off, resting on Ty's carpet of fur.