Hybridization

Chapter 140 – Roll for Friends

Chapter 140 – Roll for Friends

“No offense but changelings really weird me out when I think about the details. Like, am I talking to a cute girl at the anime convention or is it really a 40 year old guy with a beer gut… I think, I think I just answered my own question.” – D&D enthusiast visiting Zach's Games and Comics

“So, like, hours, right?” Kristi asked in a hushed tone as she sat down next to Val at the gaming table and pulling out her D&D stuff.

The kitsune nodded and opened her book. “Well, more like an hour and a half if you count both times and the foreplay without the snuggle. If you count the snuggles and after care between sessions and after, which I certainly do, then it was a few hours.” Kurt had decided that he was better off going get some snacks and drinks while they got it out of their systems.

Anna had just entered the room, looking back and forth between the two of them from the entrance where she had stopped. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Kurt’s dick.” Val replied while leafing through her notes. She ignored the horrified look from Kristi that she could see from the corner of her eye. Apparently, the dragoness hadn’t noticed Anna coming.

“Oh.” Anna flushed a little. “I g-guess that’s nice…” she trailed off lamely and fumbled her way into her seat.

“It really is.” Val piled on without any hesitation. “It’s not one of those girthy bitch-breaker types either but the length really does it. Full strokes feel-OWWWIE!” she cried out in pain and grabbed her breast.

In her teasing, she didn’t see Kristi’s hand making its way over. She also didn’t see the shape the finger and thumb were making. What she did was feel the impact as her girlfriend flicked her right on the nipple, using a considerable amount of her rather prodigious strength.

“Val, you know better.” Kristi chided while attempting to look imperious despite her blush.

Just then, Kurt rounded the corner carrying a tray full of snacks. “What did she do this time?” He asked in a droll tone after seeing the situation.

“She was teasing Anna again.”

“I was not!” Val instantly refuted the claim. “Kristi and I were having girl talk while Anna came in and when she asked what we were talking about, I told her.”

Kurt looked to Anna. “I am assuming that she used a lot of detail?”

“Too much.” The little fey replied with a squeaky voice while trying to sink below the table. “And I think I learned a new term that I’m not sure I am comfortable with.” He did note her eyes flicked down toward his belt line.

He sighed and sat heavily in his chair next to Kristi. “Well, Val, sounds like you had it coming.”

The rapid patter of feet sounded across the wood floor and a moment later Mel strolled in. “Who had what coming.”

“Kurt had me coming…” Val muttered under her breath and flinched out of the way of another tit-flick only to run into an invisible barrier. Unable to escape, the other nipple received its punishment right after and Val whined as she wrapped her arms around her chest.

Scrubbing his face with his palm, Kurt groaned. “Val is talking about impolite things in public.” Anna filled Mel in as the dwarf hung her coat on the rack near the door.

“She do that a lot?” Mel asked after taking her place near Anna.

“Not really, only with people she knows are friends.”

Mel frowned a moment before leaning in closer to Anna. “I know those three have a thing going but are you… well, you know, involved?”

“What? No!” Anna said waving her hands in the universal anime gesture for ‘stop, I’m embarrassed’. “We just work for the same company. I kinda owe them too since they rescued me and housed me for a little while until I got back on my feet after what the guild had done. They are super nice and I like them a lot but not like that kind of a lot. We did Christmas…”

The look on Mel’s face was a mix of confusion, curiosity and perhaps more than a little embarrassment. Then it changed to just curious. “What do you mean rescued you? And ‘after what the guild had done’?” she interrupted the sudden torrent of backstory.

“Ummmm…” Anna looked across the table to Kurt for help and he nearly face palmed again.

“Mel, is there any situation where you drop it and not ask questions?” He was hoping that she would respect their…

“Not a chance.” Mel said firmly and put her hand on Anna’s shoulder in a very protective way.

Heaving a sigh of exasperation, Kurt  looked to Kristi and Val who just shrugged. He turned back to the dwarf and summoned a pamphlet form his ring, causing her to flinch. “We work for the Order Stabilitas. We rescued Anna and others from the enchanters guild while conducting an operation in Order territory. Please read this before we tell you more.” He handed her the pamphlet.

Mel took it but hesitated slightly like it was a trap, and eyeing his left hand where the pamphlet had appeared. She quickly read through the trifold brochure then set it on the table. “Aight, what’s that got ter do wit you an the Order?” She asked in a suddenly very heavy accent and Kurt noted that she still hadn’t let go of Anna.

Kurt gestured to himself and the girls, Anna included. “We are all half breeds or hybrids as we like to say. That was why the three of us were recruited. It’s also partly the reason why she was being held by the enchanters guild.”

Narrowing her eyes, Mel glanced around the table and stopped on Anna, who nodded. “Fine. But why the enchanters guild?”

“Personal disagreement on business practices.” Kurt said then summoned one of his identify rings and passed it to her. “Here, this is a gift.” He placed the ring on her palm and held out his hand in the handshake gesture.

The dwarf eyed it skeptically but put it on after seeing them all pointing to a matching ring on their right hands. Mel slipped it on and then took his hand. She frowned for a moment before her eyes went wide. “I cannot take this.” She said and began to pull the ring off. “I’d never be able ter afford…”

Anna placed her hand on Mel’s, stopping her from taking the ring off. “Its fine, he gives them out to everyone he is friends with.”

“Friends, eh?” She turned a very suspicious gaze on Kurt.

Kristi snorted then shook Mel’s hand. “Would you rather the alternative?”

Mel’s eyes went wide after finding out what Kristi was. “Nooo. No I don think at would be ealthy fer me.”

Kurt let her shake hands with Val and Anna before speaking again. “Great, now that the cat is out of the bag and settled happily on the windowsill, can we just keep it on the down low?”

Nodding once, Mel looked like she was about to say something but stopped when they heard voices and footsteps. They waited as the voices grew closer, making out one of them as Steve, another as Adam and two more they didn’t know.

“Hey guys.” Steve smiled and waved as he entered. “Oh, I thought you weren’t going to be able to make it, Mel.”

Her expression softening, Mel tracked Steve as he walked around the table. “I moved some things around. I’ll always make time for youuuu’re game. Yeah, I love you…DMing! I love how you DM.” One stumble after another came out of the increasingly flustered dwarf and Kurt decided to throw her a bone.

“Hey Steve, hi Adam. New players?” He said in a really loud voice, pulling the attention of the two newcomers to him and away from the dwarf who was doing a reasonable impression of a strawberry.

“Oh, yeah. This is Jessica.” Adam pointed to a shorter Hispanic looking woman, in her late twenties by Kurt’s guess. She wore her long hair down around her shoulder blades and was dressed in a sweater and jeans. Her glasses and large hoop earrings gave her a sort of hippie vibe as she waved around the room.

“And this is Travis.” Adam clapped a rather large and burly man on the shoulder. He stood a little taller than Adam, which put him a couple inches over Kurt and was built like one of those corn fed farm boys that he knew in the army. He was dressed in the finest 90’s Carhart jacket over a long sleeve t-shirt and a pair of black pants that looked like they had seen better days.  

“Hi.” Said Travis in a surprisingly clear and high voice that belied his stature. “Nice to meet everyone.” He began shaking hands, easily reaching across the table. Kurt’s ring told him that the man was 100% Grade A human and his grip was firm but not at all crushing like he expected.

“Call me Jess.” Said the woman as she followed suit. Her voice had a slight rasp to it, like someone who talked a lot for a living. When Kurt touched her hand, he immediately got a familiar sensation. Changeling. He compared it to the only other two he had met, Sam and Penny, only to conclude hers was not diluted or mixed with something.

Steve had set up his DM screen while everyone made introductions and the newcomers got settled in at the table with drinks and snacks. He did a quick recap, mostly for the benefit of the new players since Val took copious notes and reminded everyone of everything.

He set up the session as the party came into a port city where they would be attempting to uncover a smuggling operation. He introduced Jess’s elf wizard and Travis’s orc bard as locals who they had been told to meet to get the lay of the land.

They role played for a while, barely rolling any checks as they explored the city and restocked after their travels. They were also trying to bait Steve into giving them a map of the city but every time the asked for one from a shop keeper, they got the run around. Kurt was beginning to get suspicious and had the feeling that something was up when Steve called for a break at the halfway point.

The DM had a rule that he liked to set a long break every couple hours so people would be more inclined wait for that time to get refreshments and use the bathroom rather than in the middle of something important. Kurt just guessed it allowed him to check his own notes and get things ready for the second half of the session.

Kurt had just come back from the bathroom and was getting another coke when he felt someone poke him in the side. He figured it was Val since she liked to do that to get his attention. So, he was very surprised when he turned and saw Jess.

“What are you supposed to be?” She said in a flat tone that gave no hints as to her meaning.

“Scuse me?” Kurt had no idea what she was asking.

“I mean what are you. I can feel that there is something wrong with you.” She said, still wearing a neutral expression that looked a lot like RBF.

Kurt bristled at the implication. “There is nothing wrong with me. Besides, even if there was, it’s not like I could ‘change’ it right now anyway.”  He put a little stress into ‘change’, hinting that he knew exactly what she was.

That got absolutely no reaction out of her. At least no visual reaction because Kurt could suddenly smell fear. That acrid smell that people got when they stressed about something. He decided to not push further and see if she wanted to say anything else.

They stood there alone in the kitchenette, in complete silence for a few heartbeats before she responded. “It seems I have upset you. Understand that I do not mean offense.”

“Then be blunt.” Kurt retorted.

She tilted her head then, expression flickering to amusement for the briefest of moments. “I think you will do nicely. Thank you, Kurt. This has been a most enlightening experience.” She turned and walked away then, returning to the table and the rest of the group.

Kurt stood there, silently wondering exactly what the hell she had meant when Kristi slid up right next to him. “What’s up?” she whispered.

“The changeling.” He replied via the implant.

Sensing the tone of his voice and likely his emotions, she also switched, pushing her internal voice to him and Val. “What about the changeling?”

“She came up and asked what was wrong with me. I took offense and let her know that I knew what she is. Then I told her to be blunt and she said that ‘I would do nicely’ and that she had an ‘enlightening’ conversation.” Kurt was still baffled and had no idea what she meant as he and Kristi walked back to the table.

“If it helps, she has been staring at me too.” Val said. “She came back and sat down. Since then, she has been pretending to take notes while glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.”

Kurt frowned slightly but wiped it off his face before he sat back down. “Let’s be cautious around her then. And we need to let Penny and Jay know.”

The girls agreed and they returned to the game where Jess acted completely normal. She laughed and played along like nothing was amiss despite them taking turns keeping an eye on her. Kurt had to admit, she was good at keeping her cool. Maybe that would change if she knew what they were.

Steve led them through some more exploration of the port city, and they got into some trouble with the local guards after a failed attempt to bribe them. That scuffle actually turned into a good thing since they were contacted by the smuggling ring after seeing that they were on the bad side of the local law enforcement.

After agreeing to meet the smuggling rep, they had a quick strategy session before he returned to lead them to the secret entrance. A secret entrance that was actually an inn with a false wall at the end of the hall with a side exit.

Upon entering the hidden passage, Steve called the session a little early. He said that there was enough to do that he wanted to give them enough time to explore. Almost everyone agreed but Val and Adam gave him a hard time while everyone else tried to get them to stop. It was never a good idea to antagonize the DM after all.

When they had all cleaned up and headed to the car, Kurt voiced his thoughts. “I think it goes without saying that we do not trust anyone new and even some of the people we know well after that.”

“Seems a bit racist.” Val muttered.

Kristi laughed once. “It’s not racist when she was not only suspicious but also has the ability to cause a lot of trouble.”

Val conceded the point. “Fair enough. I wonder what she was on about though.”

Kurt couldn’t help but agree and they finished the trip home while talking about more pleasant things. None of them wanted to dwell on the confrontation and they tried to put it behind them as best they could.

*****

Since the house chores had already been done while they had been under a standdown order, Kurt’s Sunday was left rather open. Given the rather odd experience at the gaming session hanging over him, He decided that he wanted to get some work done on another enchantment that had been bugging him.

“Fifth time is the charm?” Kristi offered as Kurt scowled and clipped the small band of gold in half, destroying the enchantment and allowing him to melt it down.

He was trying to create an enchanted item to deal with shifting. The problem arose when he had to individually store everything in his ring or risk ruining it as his body expanded. It was proving to be a little bit of a headache, and he was on his fifth iteration.

Val swatted him on the butt as she walked by and placed a couple bottles of water on the side table for him. “I don’t know, I liked the results from attempt one and two.” Those were the ones where he had issues with the clothing disappearing at the right time and coming back when it was supposed to.

“Three was funny though.” He could hear the smirk in Kristi’s voice. That attempt was when the enchant had activated and relocated his clothes nine feet to his left, leaving him naked until his fur grew in.

“What was wrong that time?” Val asked while she sat down on one of the shop stools.

“It pulled in some stuff that wasn’t part of me. It then relocated that to my pockets.” He showed the result by turning out his front jeans pocket over a trash can so a load of cotton stuffing could fall into it.

“That poor pillow.” Kristi said with an overly dramatic sigh. She had been the one to see the test. Val had left after the first two attempts were successful. It was the third test, where he had been sitting on the edge of the couch when he shifted that it went awry.

Still, it was very close, and he had a few more of the ‘disposable’ gold bands to test on. “I think I got it this time. I am adding in a ‘clothing’ rune the ‘property’ part, right before ‘arms”, so it will hopefully go in that order.”

“Will that work?” Val asked while she nodded along.

“Got a couple more try’s to figure it out.” he answered.

Slowly, he began carving the symbols into the test ring, taking his time despite his frustration. His eventual goal was to add this to all the rings that he and the werewolves wore. It would allow them some flexibility and hopefully reduce their hesitation to shift between forms like it had in the latest rift. He had even bought a laser engraver that would allow him to carve the enchant on the edge of the band and not need a second ring.

After activating the enchantment, he slipped the ring on his finger so it touched the storage ring. Then stepping back from the bench, he shifted and focused on the enchantment. It functioned just as expected, all the clothing that he was wearing, including his shoes were transported to the ring.

It worked like a macro function and was based on one of the fundamental laws of the universe, no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. The ring would activate where things became ‘tight’ as his body expanded, sensing when the magic that fueled a shift was active. That would start the ‘record’ function of the enchantment where it remembered where things belonged and began waiting for the next ‘event’.

The event it was waiting for was the next shift that allowed the items to be returned to where they were. It would then create a detection field over the skin that sensed when things would fit again. If that didn’t happen, it would go into standby mode, once again waiting for the shifting magic to start the process.

Kurt shifted back, his clothes reappearing exactly where they had been. He then performed the test in a variety of positions and by sitting or lying on things he didn’t value too much. Everything worked without fail and he even tested it with his armor, after running a few tests on his unenchanted gear first.

“Yes!” Kristi cried after Kurt declared it working.

“Booo!” Val cried. “I wanted to see more naked Kurt.” she laughed.

Kurt snorted and took the experimental ring off, storing it in his spatial ring for the time being. “I think you get to see plenty of that every night.”

“And every morning. And every time we shower together and sometimes when I don’t knock before opening the bathroom door.” Kristi began listing things. “Oh, and that one time in the kitchen after we stayed up late watching Band of Brothers.

“Can you blame me for wanting to see more?” Val asked with a little smile as she hugged Kurt from behind. “I just can’t get enough of him.”

“If you don’t watch where your hands are going, you might be getting some more of him sooner than expected.” Kristi laughed.

Val yelped as Kurt spun her around and started fondling her in return. She then wiggled out of his grasp and bolted up the stairs, laughing the entire was as both Kurt and Kristi chased after her. Enchanting could wait until they had finished their nightly game of grab-ass.