The last thing he remembered was the blare of a truck’s horn, a blinding white light approaching him, and then—

He fell down onto his hands and knees, and opened his eyes.

This wasn’t his hometown. He was on an ornate, floating circular platform. All around him was an ethereal black void, with hints of swirling, shimmering mist here and there. Above him was a sort of pipe, that he must have fallen out of just now? And below him—he peered over the edge of the platform—was a bright, multicolored pool of light. It looked like a picture out of focus….

“Mortal man, reclaimed from death and chosen by the goddess… rise.”

He looked up, and then stood up. Before him, seated at a desk, was a beautiful young woman with long black hair that billowed subtly behind her. She was dressed in a black skirt-suit with silver trim, and wore thin-rimmed glasses, like she was a really fancy receptionist. Something about her felt not-quite-human, but he couldn’t figure out what.

“Reclaimed from death?” he managed.

“Yes. I’m so sorry, but you did die in your world.” She said it so apologetically that he found it difficult to feel bad about it. “But fear not, for your journey to the afterlife has been forestalled for a divine mission—to save the land of Revelia from the Dread Lord Gaius! I, the goddess Regula, will send you as their champion.”

Oh. Oh! He knew what this was—he’d watched anime!

He squinted down at the bright light below him, and saw that—behind all the blurring—it looked like a vast, pastoral landscape under a blue sky. That had to be the land of Revelia, the one he was going to rescue from this Dread Lord! He was going to go there, save the world, and live the fantasy life he’d always dreamed of—

“As soon as you pass the screening process,” the goddess Regula added.

He looked up and blinked. “The what?”

The goddess Regula reached out to the desk, and a thick leather-bound book appeared in her hands. She started flipping through it.

He tried to walk toward her, but there was an invisible barrier at the edge of his platform. “Hey, uh, what is that?”

“Don’t worry, it’s just standard procedure,” she replied, and her chipperness sounded a little rehearsed now, like a clerk at the DMV. She flipped through a few more pages, and her smile faded. “Oh, that’s not great. Four failed relationships… three DUI charges… and….”

She flipped to a new page with a title in big letters that he could read even upside-down: INTERNET HISTORY.

“Hey, uh, haha,” he said, laughing nervously, “that doesn’t count incognito mode, right?”

“I’m a goddess. Incognito mode doesn’t work on me.”  She looked up at him with a withering expression. “Please tell me you have a good explanation for these posts you made last week about, er… ‘lolis’?”

He winced, and tried to form words, but nothing came.

She sighed, and forced the smile back on. “Well, thank you for your time, but I think I’ll be looking for another candidate. Have a good afterlife!” She reached down under her desk and pulled up a sort of remote, with a big green button and a big red one.

“No, wait—”

She pushed the red button, and the tube above him activated, sucking him up and out of sight.

Regula sighed, pulled off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. “Every fucking time,” she muttered. A clipboard appeared in her hand, with a list of names on it. There were X’s next to the first six: she added an X next to the seventh, then tossed the clipboard to the side. It vanished before it hit the ground.

“The next one could be the one,” she told herself. “The next one could be the one…. All right.” She composed herself once again and put her glasses and smile back on. “What’s next?”

“Hello, you are praying to the goddess Regula,” Regula said into the phone handset nestled into the crook of her neck. “How may I offer guidance to you today?”

As she listened to the prayer, she made a ‘just one second’ hand gesture to the current candidate waiting on the platform. He looked at her, confused. She’d just gotten through his background check, and was about to start on the interview portion when the prayer had come in—never a dull moment.

“Your prayer for good weather for your crops is much appreciated,” she said, putting on her best worshipper-service voice, “but I’m afraid I’m a goddess of regulations and good practices, and not a weather goddess.” Yet, she thought. “However, I may be able to help your crops in another way. Have you ever heard of the three-field system?”

There was a pause. “Hello?” she said. After another pause, she frowned and hung up the phone (both the phone and its cradle disappeared from her desk). “Why does no one want to hear about the three-field system?” she grumbled.

“Uh, hello?”

She looked up and smiled. “Yes, sorry, thank you for your patience! Now, where were we….” She snapped her fingers as she regained her train of thought, so to speak. “Let’s try a thought experiment! Suppose there’s a runaway trolley, careening toward five people tied to the train tracks, and it will certainly kill them if it continues on its current route. You can switch it—”

“This world has trains?” he interrupted.

Regula pursed her lips for a moment. “No, it does not. I’m just using an example you’re familiar with. Anyway, you can switch the trolley to another track with only one person on it instead, killing them but sparing the other five.” She steepled her fingers. “What do you do, and why?”

He stared blankly at her.

“There’s no wrong answer as such,” she added. “The point is to be able to articulate your ethical reasoning, to prove you’re capable of making sound moral judgments as the hero of—”

“Oh, whichever one’s hotter, then.”

She blinked at him.

He continued: “Like, if the single person is a smokin’ hot nine out of ten, and the others are all ones and twos, then mathematically—”

“I was mistaken,” Regula said. “There is now a wrong answer.” She pushed the red button on the remote, sucking him back up the chute to the afterlife. “Next!”

“Okay,” Regula said, rubbing her eyes. “I believe in you, dude. I’m so sure that you’re good to be the next hero of Revelia that I’m going to ask you a really simple question for the interview. Slavery: good or bad?”

She waited for a few seconds. When no answer was forthcoming, she grimaced, and opened her eyes. “You’re hesitating.”

“Well….” The man in front of her tapped his fingers together. “What if the slave was okay with it… and also she was a cute raccoon girl?”

She slammed the red button so hard she thought she heard the remote crack. “NEXT!”

“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed, standing up from her seat and tossing the background check book aside. “This is incredible!”

“It… is?” said the somewhat dazed man in front of her. He didn’t seem to have gotten past the ‘you’re dead’ part of her explanation, but she didn’t care right now.

“This is the best resume I’ve ever seen!” She beamed. “You’re a national level athlete, you’re active in community outreach programs and donate regularly to charity, and you just died saving children from a burning orphanage?” She grabbed the remote with a flourish. “I’ve seen enough! You, sir, are hired—”

All of a sudden, a bright spark of electricity erupted from his chest. He convulsed, his entire body flashing with light, and then—vanished.

She blinked several times, her thumb already touching the green button an instant too late. “Oh, you have to be kidding me!” she erupted. “They defibrillated him?” She paused. “I mean, woo, he survived, yayyyyyy….”

This time, she didn’t even bother calling the next candidate: she collapsed back into her chair with a miserable little groan, arms slumped on her desk and head down between her arms. Then she bonked her head against the hard wood of the desk, several times. It didn’t help.

After a few seconds, she looked up from her desk and manifested her clipboard once more. X’s after every row, except the last one: she penned in an N/A on that one. All her candidates from this batch were failures.

And then, as if things needed to get worse, she heard angelic chimes in the air around her, and a phone appeared on her desk. Her boss was calling.

Regula grabbed for the phone, fumbled it, and had to juggle it for a few seconds before she finally pressed it up against her ear and mouth. “Lady Iris!” she blurted breathlessly, glasses askew.

“Heyyyyyy, Regula, bestieeeee,” said the drawling voice from the other end. “This a good time? How’re you doing? Talk to me!” There was a brief pause, and then Regula heard Lady Iris’s voice a little more distantly, as if she were speaking to someone else. “No, I don’t mean you should talk. Keep licking, I’m on the phone.”

Regula squirmed in her seat a bit. Of course. Iris was a goddess of love and lust, and she owned it. She was a beautiful woman with impossibly long lavender hair, and Regula had never seen her wearing any clothes at all, and had rarely seen her not engaging in coitus.

She swallowed her discomfort and pressed on. “Why, er, of course we can talk, Lady Iris! I am doing quite well!” She took a deep breath, adjusted her glasses, and tried to get herself in the right mindset to self-promote. “I have answered my prayers with a median wait time of seven seconds, and an absolute maximum of thirty one; I have processed approximately a dozen prayers each Revelian day; and I have screened several hundred candidates for the role of Hero of Revelia!”

She put on a big bright smile: even if Iris couldn’t see it, it helped her get in the mood to ask this next bit. “And given my above average performance recently, I was wondering if the pantheon might consider expanding my godly purview? For instance, oh, I don’t know… to the domain of weather?”

She held her breath. Everyone needed weather deities. A goddess of rules and regulations didn’t get a lot of requests for divine intercession, but mortals were all at the mercy of the weather, and they prayed ardently for sunshine, rain, or even snow at appropriate times throughout the year. She’d gain influence, followers, and prestige, and then no more sitting in this dark broom closet for her! She could be someone special—

“Yeah, so, uh, you’re being demoted?”

Regula’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Yeah, so like, that whole ‘screening’ thing you said… you haven’t actually, like, sent anyone down there, have you?” Iris’s tone was a little more negative now. “So, like, we’re cutting about half your temples.”

“Half my temples—” Regula sucked in a breath and tried to compose herself. “My lady Iris, no one passed the screening process! I can hardly send an unqualified candidate to be the champion when they don’t fit the specifications—”

“Screening process, specifications—that’s your problem, bestie! So by the book!” It was easy to imagine the goddess Iris flapping her hand dismissively there. “Just send whoever, it’ll work itself out.”

Regula bit back the urge to point out that she was the goddess of doing things by the book. “My lady Iris, if it was all going to work itself out, we wouldn’t need to send anyone to be the hero!”

“Not loving the backtalk there, bestie,” Iris drawled out, silencing Regula. There was a hint of… not menace in her tone, exactly. Just utter dismissiveness. “Look, I’ll be nice. If you can find someone to send in the next… uh… ten Revelian minutes, we won’t cut your temples probably.” She let out a little moan over the phone. “Oh, that’s a good spot, stay there.”

“Lady Iris, time flows differently between the realms! Ten minutes there could be any amount of—”

“Then you’d better hop to!”

“Right, yes!” Regula was already summoning her clipboard, and as many background check books as she could, with the phone crammed in the crook of her neck. She flipped through them as quickly as possible, looking for anything that boded well, but it was all utterly disastrous. Selfish narcissists, abusive boyfriends, lazy amoral slobs… not a single person on any of her lists was fit for the role.

For the love of all that was holy, she would make a better hero of Revelia than any of these—

Regula froze, halfway through opening another background check book.

Now that was an idea.

“All righty, I gotta go,” Iris yawned. “I got a date to get nasty with four buff dryads. Lemme know if you ever get that stick out of your ass and finally choose—”

“Wait!”

There was a pause. “Wait why?” Iris said, sounding a little more interested for the first time.

“I, um….” Regula took several quick breaths. This was insane, right? She couldn’t actually do this…. But she couldn’t not do it, either. She began again. “I’ve just found a suitable candidate.”

“Huh, cool. Didn’t think you had it in you.” Iris let out another short yawn. “What’s his name?”

“Uh… Augrel.” Regula was the kind of goddess to whom anagrams came more easily than fake names.

“Augrel? Do you spell that with an O, or… wait, don’t tell me, I don’t care. Is he cute? Can I meet him?” Her tone changed to something gossipy, even flirty.

Regula shuddered at the thought. “Yes, Lady Iris, he’s very cute! I’m going to be sending him down to Revelia imminently, so, um, bye!”

She slammed down the phone, ending the call.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” she whispered to herself. And then, louder: “I can’t believe I’m about to do this!”

If Regula had a heart, it would have been hammering.

This was almost entirely forbidden—almost. Gods and goddesses were not allowed to go down to the mortal world and directly influence events. It was against the rules, and Regula was the goddess of rules. She knew them all.

But the thing about knowing all the rules was that she knew all the loopholes, too.

Regula took a deep breath, and opened the ‘miscellaneous’ drawer of her filing cabinet. This drawer wasn’t quite as well organized as most of her others, but it still only took her a few seconds to pull out what she was looking for: a small bauble that looked a bit like a Faberge egg, but which glowed with shifting lavender light.

There was one exception to the rule. A deity could go down to the mortal realm provided they went in disguise, usually as an ordinary human. As long as they did not reveal their godhood, they were allowed to do whatever they wanted (or whoever they wanted, in the case of Lady Iris’s many visits).

Now, if she were a higher-level goddess, she’d be able to just shapeshift and be done with it. Lady Iris had apparently once turned herself into a golden shower for one wild night (ew). But Regula was not a higher level goddess: her powers were limited, her worshippers were few, and her godly realm was effectively a repurposed divine storage closet that she’d tried to make the most of. She couldn’t even shapeshift enough to correct her stupid nearsightedness, hence the glasses.

But she’d been given this device by Lady Iris ages ago, as a hand-me-down that the more powerful goddess no longer needed, in case she ever wanted to ‘partay’. What the hand-me-down did was make skinsuits: realistic, lifelike, full-body costumes that would allow a god to transform flawlessly into whatever form they desired. When activated, it would either spit out a random skinsuit, or—if she applied her godly powers to it—a body in a shape, species, and style of her choosing.

Well, that was what she’d been told, at least. Regula had never used it, since she wasn’t the partay-ing type. But hey—first time for everything, right?

She gulped, staring at the bauble in her hand. Oh wow. She was really doing this.

All right, time to focus. Regula tried to imagine the right kind of mortal that could be the hero Revelia needed, and moreover that her job needed. A young human man, probably—short black hair, average height, somewhat above average athletic ability. Someone who could perform heroic feats, but not stand out too much in a crowd and risk getting her discovered.

Once she had the image in her head, she sent a surge of power into the device, and the shifting lavender light glowed brighter, illuminating the darkness around her. It was time to bring her imagination to life!

It kept glowing brighter for several seconds, but nothing appeared before her. “So, does it just materialize from thin air?” she muttered. “Or—”

One side of the bauble opened up, sliding out of sight like a garage door. The skinsuit burst out through the newly created hole, smacking her in the face.

She yelped, and lost her grip on the device—which had been propelled away from her as an equal and opposite reaction to expelling the skinsuit. And since it was so light, and the skinsuit so comparatively heavy, it got propelled pretty far. Regula fumbled with the skinsuit for a moment, then pulled it off her face just in time to watch the device roll toward the open portal to Revelia. Her eyes widened, and she tossed the suit aside and ran. “No no no no no—”

Before she could take more than two steps in its direction, the device fell over the edge and into the portal. Little ripples emanated outward from where it had fallen in.

Regula stared for several seconds, frozen mid-step. “That’s… probably fine,” she said. After all, no one without godly power could use it, right? She was pretty sure that was how it worked.

She shook herself, and turned away from the portal. It was too late to worry now, and she had more important things to worry about than a bauble that would just get lost in the grass somewhere anyway. She had to get suited up!

She picked up the floppy skinsuit from the ground and laid it on her desk to examine it. It had come out almost exactly as she’d expected—almost! The hair, the face, the musculature were all looking correct, just like she’d imagined. But she hadn’t actually been thinking about the, er, genitalia….

She blushed, and then groaned at herself for being so immature. Most men had penises, after all, and even if she wanted to make a new skinsuit without one, she couldn’t without the device. She was going to have to get used to it.

Regula snapped her fingers, and her clothes disappeared, leaving her entirely naked except for her glasses, which she removed manually and laid on her desk. She had a decent figure, she supposed, with reasonably sized breasts and hips, but it was hard to be too sure about that when her main point of comparison was a literal sex goddess. Mostly she didn’t think about it: her body did the jobs she needed it to do, nothing more.

Right now, though, as she started pulling on the skinsuit, she was happy those breasts and hips were small enough to squeeze into a male frame.

First came the legs, and that wasn’t too difficult: it seemed as though the suit was supernaturally slick on the inside to make the process easier. She was able to get the toes aligned, and pulled the suit up to her knees without any noticeable wrinkles.

And then she paused. The crotch area had a couple of protrusions on the inside, designed to enter her lower holes.

She grimaced. Right, this had been Iris’s hand-me-down.

Regula gritted her teeth and tried not to let herself react as she pushed the first shaft inside herself, the one that connected with the penis on the outside and her vagina on the inside. To her minor embarrassment, she let out a little moan as it got seated, and felt herself blushing. It seemed to work, though: she found herself able to flex her new member slightly with Kegel exercises. The rear insert went in with a little more difficulty, but at least it didn’t make her moan.

The rest was easier. She pulled it up to her shoulders and started getting her arms seated, which went even more smoothly than the legs had: this also applied compression to her hips and chest, compressing her modest-but-still-noticeable breasts down to a flat male chest. She’d been expecting some kind of magic to squeeze her body into shape, but nope, just plain compression.

And then, the head. There was a mouthpiece and two tubes for the nose, which thankfully were not too long. She bit down on the mouthpiece and finagled the tubes into her nostrils.

Finally, there was a zipper on the back (really? How low-tech was this thing?) that she had to contort herself a bit to grab. She sucked in a breath and started pulling up. As the teeth enmeshed one after the other, the feeling of compression on her hips increased, and then on her breasts, until finally she reached the zipper’s apex hidden at the suit’s scalp. She was sealed in.

She let out that held breath, and took a few seconds to get acclimated to this… enclosed feeling, this material covering her on all sides. Then she snapped her fingers, conjuring up a full-length mirror.

There he was, just as she had envisioned him. Thin, with some muscle but not too much; young, either in his late teens or early twenties; short black hair, green eyes as opposed to her black ones, and a masculine silhouette that betrayed nothing of the goddess beneath.

“Whoa,” she said, and paused: it had come out in a lower register than her own voice. Well, that was good: she wouldn’t have to put on a fake male voice the whole time.

She turned around to look at her back, and noticed the zipper was still visible, but there was a flap of ‘skin’ next to it—again with the low tech! She stretched back there and pushed the flap over the zipper, rendering it invisible.

She turned back around and hugged her shoulders—his shoulders?—in a pose that put her elbows somewhere they wouldn’t normally have been able to go. She looked good, honestly, but what was really strange was how the way she looked was nothing like the way she felt. She looked naked, but in fact felt the skinsuit pressing on every part of her body, squeezing her chest and hips, and pushed up into her nether regions.

Insofar as she’d had any expectations about it at all, she’d expected this feeling to be… annoying. Something she’d just have to endure for the sake of her mission. But, despite all odds… was she actually starting to enjoy this constriction?

Well, he was. She felt an indescribable sensation at her crotch, and looked down to find the suit’s penis was halfway engorged and growing. “Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said, blushing and trying to force it back down with her hands. For some reason, this seemed to have the opposite effect she was going for, and soon it was fully engorged. “This is completely… oh….”

It felt good to touch it. Stroking it, especially. She hadn’t thought about that. Maybe she ought to spend some more time, purely for the purposes of self-instruction, to get acquainted with this new body a little more? After all, it would be important to get used to this, so that….

She touched it again and moaned a little more.

… so that it wouldn’t distract her in the field, when she went down to….

With a herculean effort, Regula sucked in a huge breath and snapped her fingers again. New clothes appeared to cover her body. It was similar in style to her skirt-suit, with a black jacket with silver trim over a gray shirt and pants. Her new penis was visibly pitching a tent in those pants, but she took several more deep breaths to try to clear her mind, and it started to die down as she did so.

Then she reached over to her desk and grabbed the remote control for the portal platform. She rushed over to the platform in just a few quick strides, and jumped onto it. With a little flourish, she pressed the green button for the first time that she could remember, then tossed the remote away.

This was going to work. She—he—was going to save the world, and prove that doing things the right way mattered! And then, she’d be a weather goddess before she could say—

The platform trembled, and then split in half to open like a trapdoor. With a little undignified yelp, Regula fell through the portal and disappeared.

“Welcome to the Adventurers’ Guild for the town of Arbor,” said the bored-sounding receptionist near the front door. “Would you like a seat at the tavern, or are you here for a quest?”

“Quest,” the young man replied. “I wanted to ask: are there any rules, procedures, or regulations about how to form an adventuring party?”

“Uh… not particularly, no.”

“Excellent, thank you.”

Regula turned toward the tavern section of the Guild hall, and smiled. So far, so good! From the moment she’d spawned out in the fields surrounding the starter town of Arbor, to her arrival here on foot, no one had looked at her twice. And why should they? She certainly wasn’t a goddess, just the ordinary adventurer named Augrel.

In any case, this was definitely the place to be. The Adventurers’ Guild was a large building, with a high ceiling supported by trees that were still growing. On one side of its interior was a board of quests and other adventure-related organizational items, which was where the receptionist sat behind her desk. The other side was filled by a tavern, which in turn was filled with people dressed for adventure: men and women sporting weapons, armor, and battle scars. Excellent!

She strode to the table and, rather than seating himself, stood on it. “Citizens of Arbor!” she declared in her male voice, confident in the knowledge that this would go well.

Some of the general chatter died down as some eyes turned to him.

“You do not know me, but my name is Augrel! And I have been tasked with the goddess with a divine mission—to strike down the Dread Lord!” She smiled widely, and her hand closed into a fist. “I seek volunteers to join me in my righteous crusade! The way will be perilous, and only the most valiant heroes may succeed, but it is a cause worth risking it all for! Who’s with me?”

She looked around hopefully. Everyone was staring at her. Someone coughed. Someone else let out a nervous laugh.

Augrel found herself deflating a bit. Especially when a waitress sidled over and whispered, “Sir, you’re making a scene. If you won’t sit down and order something, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Augrel felt like dying inside, which was to say that Regula felt like dying.

She got off the table, sat down, and mumbled, “Uh, water, please,” because it occurred to her that she hadn’t brought any money. “I specifically asked if there were any rules,” she grumbled. And now no one wanted to make eye contact.

Water arrived, eventually, with a menu. Regula pretended to consider it (goddesses didn’t need to eat). Because she had her nose buried in the menu, trying to ignore the awkwardness she’d created, she didn’t immediately notice the minor commotion approaching her.

“Excuse me… oh, no, I’m so sorry…. I didn’t mean to knock that over, I’ll pay for it, sorry!”

The commotion couldn’t be ignored forever, though, and Regula finally looked up.

There was an elven woman trying to make her way through the tavern, toward Regula’s table. This was not easy for her, for two reasons: first of all, she was quite tall, but where most elves of her stature might be described as ‘willowy’, she was more gangly. She had the apparent grace of a newborn deer—or, judging by the length of her limbs, perhaps ‘newborn giraffe’ would be more appropriate. Even her ears were awkwardly long by elf standards, their tips almost level with the top of her head.

And second of all, on her back was the largest bow Regula had ever seen, and it kept knocking things over as she tried to squeeze between tables. And then she would turn around to apologize, sending the bow smashing into someone else’s lunch, and so on. Food stains were splashing up on her clothes, a simple red tunic topped with a pale green cowl.

Well, elves were usually known for being graceful, so kudos to whoever this was for defying stereotypes.

The woman pulled plenty of gold coins from her pouch to compensate all the diners whose meals she was wearing, and almost made it to Regula’s table—but then she managed to trip over two tables at once, flailed her limbs in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid falling, and somehow ended up tangled in her own bow when she hit the floor. She let out a grunt of pain, and then a rueful laugh. “Every time.”

Then she looked hopefully up at Regula. “Little help?” One of her two long locks of silvery hair flopped over her face. She tried to blow it off with her mouth, unsuccessfully.

Regula winced, but got up from her seat, and used a combination of gentle tugs and forceful shoves to help her unthread her limbs from inside the bow. In a way, it wasn’t that different from answering a prayer… well, Regula wasn’t usually so hands-on for prayers. Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d made physical contact with a mortal, if ever.

“Thanks,” said the elf, which was another difference between this and most prayers Regula answered. “Mind if I sit here?” Regula shrugged, and the elf sat down, taking a few seconds to maneuver her legs between the table and the bench. She took a moment to comb her hair with her fingers, then grabbed some napkins from the table and started wiping the stains off her clothes. “So,” she said, “you’re looking for an adventuring party to defeat the Dread Lord?”

Regula’s eyes widened. So on the one hand, her method had worked… technically. On the other hand….  “Yes!” she said carefully. “And… you’re interested in defeating him too?”

“Well, uh, defeating the entire Dread Lord is kind of a tall order… which I guess means that I’m your girl!… Because I’m, uh… tall….”

Regula didn’t react to the ‘joke’. The elf winced, but pulled herself back together admirably quickly, putting on a big smile. “The name’s Usagi! Adventurer and archer extraordinaire! Except I haven’t been on any adventures yet, and the archery thing is kind of a learning recurve, haha….” She motioned with her head at the bow across her back, her smile becoming more of a grimace. “Bow joke….”

“That’s a longbow, not a recurve,” Regula said automatically. “And you’re not supposed to keep it strung if you’re not using it.”

Usagi’s blue eyes widened. “Oh! I didn’t know that, thanks!” She shimmied the massive bow off her back, and with obvious difficulty managed to compress it enough to get the string off. For a moment she looked proud of herself, but then she frowned. “Where do I put this?” She shrugged and tucked the string in her money pouch.

Regula stared flatly at her. This was around the time she’d usually be squinting hard at a background check book—not that she could do that right now.

“Anyway,” Usagi said, looking back up at her with another big smile, “wanna party up together as adventurers? I mean, uh, no one else is lining up to join you—no offense—and no one wants to let me in their party either for some reason….”

Regula glanced past Usagi for a moment, at the trail of mayhem she’d left just from walking across a tavern.

“So maybe we can help each other out!” Usagi finished. “Whaddya say?”

Regula sighed. “Thank you for your enthusiasm, but… I think I might be looking for another candidate.” She made to stand up.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Usagi waved her arms around, and Regula paused. “I may be a beginner, but that’s just something we have in common!” The elf blushed hotly. “I’ve got good qualities, too! I ‘m stronger than I look, I can reach tall shelves, I bring a sense of light-hearted whimsy to the party…. And I want you to know, I’m committed,” she added, looking serious. “No one is more interested than me in making sure the Dread Lord stops doing… uh, stuff.”

“Assembling his dark army to subjugate the free peoples of Revelia? Leaving a trail of destruction everywhere he goes?”

“Yeah, that!”

Regula sighed, and resumed standing up.

Usagi shot to her feet first, knocking over the bench she’d been sitting on. “Look, Augrel, I know I’m a lousy archer, okay? But I’m trying.” She put her hands on the table and leaned forward, looking right into Regula’s eyes. “Haven’t you ever wanted to try being something that you’re not supposed to?”

Regula stared at her.

If this had been one of her interviews, she’d have already rejected Usagi halfway through the conversation. But she didn’t have her red button, she didn’t have her background check books, and she wasn’t sure how to ask about the trolley problem in a world without trolleys. So she just tried to use her best judgment.

And based on that judgment? Usagi looked fully sincere about being committed to the cause. Which, to be honest, was more than Regula could say for almost any of the candidates she could remember…. And she was right that no one else was showing up, so Regula couldn’t be too picky. Still, her uncoordination might be a problem, not to mention her lack of skill with archery….

“Oh!” Usagi added. “I can pay for lunch too! Does that help?”

“I don’t need you to pay for—”

Regula’s stomach grumbled. Or rather, Augrel’s stomach grumbled? She looked down in surprise, and found herself feeling a sensation that must have been hunger. She didn’t like it.

Oh, well, Usagi could learn archery on the job. “On second thought,” Regula said, looking back up and sitting all the way down. “Welcome aboard.”

Usagi’s face lit up. “Oh, thank you! I know we’re going to get along so well!” She tried to sit down without realizing her bench had been knocked over, and yelped as she landed flat on her back. “I’m okay!”

“So,” Regula said to the receptionist, “now that the two of us comprise an adventuring party, what quests do you have for us? Freeing cities conquered by the Dread Lord’s generals, or perhaps searching for ancient artifacts that could help us fight against the Lord himself?”

The receptionist rolled her eyes. A nameplate that Regula hadn’t noticed before gave her name as Mira. “A direwolf has been threatening some sheep nearby. Wanted dead or alive. How about you start with that, hotshot.”

Regula blinked. “That’s it? You’re not going to send us to do anything—”

“That’s perfect!” Usagi covered Regula’s mouth with one hand. “We will do that, yes, thank you!”

“Also, you’re not an adventuring party yet.” Mira the receptionist passed out two cards, then held out her hand. “Fill out the ID cards, and the guild entry fee is 20 gold coins.”

Regula glanced guiltily at Usagi, who sighed and fished into her money pouch again.

The cards didn’t take long to fill, but came with its own little annoyances. Regula was not pleased when she got to writing down Augrel’s chosen religion, only to see that she wasn’t an option except as a write in. And when she completed all of Augrel’s details, his stats appeared… and they were pretty unimpressive, all low to medium other than above-average physical stats. Usagi blushed when hers appeared, and stashed the card in her pouch before Regula could look, so hers must have been even lower somehow.

They got some rudimentary gear: a sword for Regula, and arrows for Usagi. (Usagi paid again—Regula was really going to have to reimburse her soon, this was getting silly.) And soon after, they were walking out through the town’s main gate and into the fields beyond.

She slowed to a stop just outside the gates.

Regula had always known what Revelia looked like, obviously: she could see it through the portal. But the portal had spawned her in right next to the city, and she hadn’t done any sightseeing before marching inside. Which meant this was the first time she’d ever seen it from ground level.

Endless blue skies overhead, with only a few clouds here and there; farmland growing on either side of the road that stretched to the horizon; and mountains in the distance, a few of them capped with snow. It was even clearly visible: apparently Augrel had 20-20 vision, to boot! She’d really been missing out.

“You coming?” Usagi called from a little ways ahead.

“R-right!” Augrel said, hurrying forward.

They made a quick pace along the path for the next twenty minutes or so, quicker than Regula would likely have been able to do as herself. Well, maybe—she’d never done enough physical exertion to know if her godly body could get tired… regardless, Augrel’s stamina was coming in handy.

There were other things about the body she wasn’t loving so much, though.

“Whew!” Usagi said, wiping her forehead about half an hour into the walk. “Wish there was more of a breeze.”

She reached back and tried to pull her cowl off over her head. Perhaps predictably, this was not a simple endeavor: it seemed to be getting stuck on her ears. “Hold on,” she said, muffled by the fabric, “I got this—” She did not got this, and in her attempts managed to get her arms stuck inside the upturned cowl, and she stumbled around a few steps. “Totally got this!”

With the cowl upturned, the top of her tunic was visible, including the deep v-neck that exposed a bit of her breasts—and thanks to her fumbling movements, threatened to expose quite a lot more. And the breasts looked to be prodigious.

Regula was finding it very difficult not to stare, all of a sudden.

“Okay, I don’t got this.” Usagi sighed. “Little help?”

“Uh….” Regula walked closer. Thanks to the height difference, Usagi’s chest was at her own eye level, and straining against the tunic as she continued to struggle and twist. “You, uh, might need to bend over a bit,” she mumbled.

“Right, you’re short!” Usagi bent over. In the fight against the cowl, though, she’d managed to turn 180 degrees, and by bending over she was putting her ass right in Regula’s face. Regula tried not to stare at it, but the best she could do was look down—and there were Usagi’s legs, bared all the way down to her boots, and longer than she’d ever imagined legs could be.

Regula’s face felt like it had caught fire. What was with her right now? She’d spent hours in Lady Iris’s entirely naked, pussy-out presence and never batted an eye—and now one clumsy mortal was affecting her like this? Why would she—

She looked down and saw a bulge in her—in Augrel’s pants.

Oh, hell. The skinsuit’s genitals were getting engorged again. She was experiencing male hormones for the first time ever in her existence, and they were knocking her—knocking him?—for a loop. Yet again she was reminded of the skinsuit around her, squeezing her, penetrating her….

“What are you waiting for over there?” Usagi asked, shaking back and forth with her rear still pointed up. “Just give it a good tug!”

Nope, not even going to think about that. Regula hurried around Usagi and grabbed the cowl. She pulled as hard as she could until it finally released Usagi, which almost sent Regula sprawling. For Usagi, on the other hand, there was no almost—she stumbled back several steps and fell on her shapely, glorious, perfect….

Regula imagined taking a cold shower. Usagi fell on her butt. That was it.

“Whew!” Usagi laughed as she pushed herself up. She reached out and took the cowl from Regula, then stuffed it into a bag on her back, next to her bow. “Sorry about all that. I was just so hot!”

“Yeah, you sure looked… like it,” Regula mumbled, feeling her blush—his blush returning. Her-damned hormones!

She glanced down, saw the tent that was still pitched, and reached into her pack for her map so she could carefully study it and also hold it over her crotch. It showed that they were nearing the turn into the hills where the direwolf had been seen last.

That’s right, she told himself, focus on the map. Focus on the quest. Don’t get distracted by cute elven archer girls who are a foot taller than he is, don’t get distracted by the skinsuit squeezing and penetrating every part of her anatomy, don’t get distracted—

“Are you okay, Augrel?” Usagi asked.

Regula fumbled the map. “W-what?”

“You’re all red in the face. Are you overheating?” She looked positively worried. “You aren’t wearing too many layers, are you?”

“No, uh, definitely not.”

“You sure? You could take your shirt off if you wanted.” Usagi looked at her with an apparently innocent expression. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“No, definitely not necessary! Thanks!”

“Hmm.” Usagi leaned near her and put the back of her hand on Regula’s forehead. Regula held the map down tighter over her crotch. “You’re not too overheated,” Usagi said, pulling her hand back, “but you should probably have something to drink. I’m sure you must be very thirsty.”

“Thirsty, yeah,” Regula rasped. She reached behind her for the canteen on her pack, and took a mouthful.

“So,” Usagi said, “which goddess was it?”

Regula sputtered, spewing out half her water and choking on the rest. She coughed for several seconds to clear her windpipe. “Which what?” she managed a second later.

“You said a goddess told you to take down the Dread Lord,” Usagi explained, casually as if she hadn’t just made Regula’s metaphorical heart stop—maybe even Augrel’s literal heart? Did he have one now? Something had to have pumped that blood. “Which one was it?”

“Oh, um… Iris.” Regula sucked in a breath to steady herself. “It was Lady Iris.”

“Huh, okay. She seems like kind of a bitch.”

Even though she wasn’t drinking any water that time, Regula still broke out in a coughing fit. “You can’t say that about a goddess!” she blurted.

“Come on, think about it! Sending you to take out the bad guy, all by yourself? No special powers or magic weapons or anything? Isn’t that a little much to ask?” Usagi shrugged. “I mean, like, sorry if you worship her, but that’s a dick move to put on someone.”

“Well, sure, I guess, but….” Another couple of deep breaths. “Fine, you’re not wrong,” she said. “She is just a little bit of a….” She looked around, as if there were anyone else eavesdropping, and then whispered, “Bitch.”

Usagi giggled.

“And I don’t actually worship her, no.” Regula smiled to herself. “I actually prefer the goddess Regula. She’s pretty underground, you probably haven’t heard of her.”

“I think I do know her, actually!” Usagi smiled for a moment. “But if you don’t worship Iris, then why are you doing what she says?”

“Well, you can’t say no to a goddess, right? It’s my duty.” Regula nodded. “And I’ll be rewarded.” Weather goddess, she thought. Power, influence, finally getting to be someone. No way can Iris refuse my promotion if I save Revelia!

“Mm, okay,” Usagi said, sounding skeptical. “If you say so.”

Regula really didn’t like that tone of voice. “Well, what about you?” she shot back, as they turned off the main road and headed up toward the hills. “What are you doing all this for?”

“Oh, you know, meeting new faces, seeing new scenery….”

Usagi trailed off. It didn’t sound convincing. “If you say so,” Regula shot back.

Usagi sighed. “Look, everyone back where I’m from had all these big ideas about what my life was supposed to be like, all right? And none of them ever thought to ask if I wanted any of it. I wanted to have fun! I wanted to be an adventurer! And I couldn’t tell them because that’s not what I was supposed to do. It was driving me crazy!” She shook her head, as if rousing herself from a daydream. “So yeah, uh… one day, I saw my opening, and I escaped.”

Regula frowned as they started climbing one of the hills. “So you’re, like, a runaway princess?”

“Huh.” She took a moment to consider that, pouting with thought. “I guess I kind of am.” She grinned. “I like that! It makes all this so much more fun.”

What elven governments in this world even had princesses, anyway? None immediately came to mind. “This isn’t supposed to be fun,” Regula retorted. “We’re on a very serious mission.”

“It’s a beginner mission.”

“I mean the overall mission! Saving the world from the Dread Lord!”

“Come on, what’s the point of going on adventures in a fantastical world if you can’t have fun with it?” Usagi leaned toward him, smiling widely. “Go to cool places! Fight awesome monsters! Meet cute guys! Well, meet cute girls for you. Maybe. I dunno what you’re into.”

Regula hadn’t known she was into anything until about five minutes prior. “The point is to save the world,” she said.

“Psssh.” Usagi flapped her hand. “The world’s doing fine. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Dread Lord.” Regula could have sworn her eyelid twitched. “Please take this seriously!”

“Hmm… nah!” Usagi blew a raspberry.

All of a sudden she was sounding like about a hundred candidates that Regula had rejected. “Maybe this team-up was a bad idea after all,” she muttered.

“Oh, don’t be like that!” Usagi punched her in the arm. “Isn’t there anything you wanna do just for you, Augrel?”

Regula opened her mouth to say no, but Augrel’s lips wouldn’t form the word. She tried for a few seconds, and clamped her mouth shut. “Look,” she began, “whether I want to do something for myself or not—”

Whatever she was going to say next was drowned out by a deafening roar.

The two adventurers went quiet. Usagi’s eyes widened. “Was that a direwolf?” she whispered.

“Um….” Augrel looked up at the hill ahead of them. There was a sound approaching that she wanted to believe was claws scrabbling in the grass, but she couldn’t delude herself that much. It sounded a lot more like the rushing of wind… like wing beats.

A bright red dragon burst over the hill, soaring directly overhead. It turned around in a wide arc, beating the air with its wings like a drum, and then roared directly at the two of them. Something glowed in its throat.

“That wasn’t a direwolf!” Usagi screamed. “Run for it!”

They did. A few seconds later, the dragon let out a blast of fire, incinerating the grass they’d been standing on. When the stream of fire stopped, it left the ground glowing.

Usagi pulled her bow off her back, and took a few precious seconds to restring it. “All right,” she said, breathing slowly as she nocked an arrow and pulled the string back. “Come on, beginner’s luck….”

When she let go, the bow went flying, leaving her holding an arrow.

She blinked at it. “Shit,” she said. Then she sprinted forward and grabbed the bow from the ground, seconds before another gout of fire could incinerate it.

To her credit, Usagi was pretty quick to nock the second arrow, only taking a few seconds and not dropping it once. However, when she fired, it missed the dragon by so much that the dragon didn’t even notice. And the third arrow didn’t get any closer.

“Augh!” Usagi yelled, teeth gritted. “Why can’t I just do this correctly for once?”

Regula blinked. “Hang on!” she called out in Augrel’s voice. “I’ve got an idea!”

“What idea?”

“Prayer!”

“Prayer—what?” Usagi almost dropped her bow as she looked in Augrel’s direction. “Gods don’t answer prayers, you know!”

“This one does! Just aim until I say so!”

Regula dropped to one knee as Usagi held up her bow and nocked a fourth arrow. The dragon was wheeling around in a wide arc, and in maybe ten seconds it would be blasting them again.

“Dearest Regula,” Regula said, loudly so that Usagi could hear, “please guide this arrow to fly true, from your faithful servant, Augrel, and, uh, thanks in advance!”

She didn’t actually need to pray to herself for this to work. But she did need to pray to herself so that this next part wouldn’t look too suspicious.

Without getting up from her kneeling position, she looked up at Usagi, whose attention was entirely on the dragon—and on the bow in her shaking hands. It was all in the wrong position, of course: it was like she’d never even opened a book on archery.

Regula knew all the books. And Regula knew how to do everything by the book.

She pointed her index finger at the elf, and suddenly Usagi’s limbs moved on their own, making her yelp. It wasn’t a lot of big movements: just steadying her stance, raising her arms properly, steadying her hands, and gripping the arrow just so. In a matter of seconds, Usagi’s archery form had gone from completely amateurish to textbook-perfect.

“Now!” Augrel yelled, as the dragon opened its mouth to blast more fire.

Usagi fired first. The arrow flew straight and true, propelled by a bow large enough to be used as siege weaponry. It pierced the top of the dragon’s mouth just as it was about to breathe out. It was a one-in-a-million shot—a genuine miracle, in fact.

How many of those had Regula ever gotten to do?

All at once, the dragon’s eyes rolled back, and it went limp in the sky. Which meant that rather than gliding, it was crashing. Usagi yelped, and ran away to the side, grabbing Regula’s shoulder and pulling her along before Regula had started reacting.

The dragon crashed where they had been, and skidded two dozen yards across the grass before it finally came to a stop. From the ground, it looked a lot smaller and less formidable than it had from the air.

Regula panted. She didn’t usually exercise her godly powers much, and that had taken a lot out of her. Usagi, meanwhile, stared dumbly at the body sprawled out before her. “I just did that?” she whispered.

“We just did that,” Regula replied.

“We just did that!”

Usagi burst into action, grabbing Augrel in a big hug and spinning him around several times. “That was amazing! I’ve never done anything that cool in my life! I could kiss you, you little so-and-so….” She beamed. “Oh, what the hell!”

And before Augrel knew what was happening, Usagi had lifted him to her face and smooched him, right on the lips. “Mmmmwah!”

She let go, and Augrel took a few steps back, feeling dazed. He’d never gotten kissed before, so there was another first. The blush wasn’t new, though—although it might have been brighter than any of the previous ones.

Usagi blushed too, a few seconds later. “Oh, uh, sorry! I got carried away, haha….”

“No,” Augrel said, “it was cool….”

“It was cool! I’ve never shot that straight ever! I didn’t know I could do that!” Usagi gasped, as if a sudden thought had to occur to her. “Oh my gosh, you know what else? I’ve got someone else to thank!”

“Who would that be?” Augrel asked, still a little dazed. His first kiss….

“The goddess Regula, who made my arrow fly true! If she were here, I could just kiss her too…. But I know what I’ll do instead!” Usagi took a power stance, hands on hips, looking to the skies. “I’m gonna go become a devout Regular!”

Regula blinked, feeling herself get un-dazed all of a sudden. A new worshipper? A new devout worshipper? Oh, the things she could do with that! She hadn’t gotten one of those since—

Hang on, had she been thinking of herself as Augrel before? She blinked again. What the hell had that been about? This roleplay thing was starting to get weird, if she could just disappear into the role like that… not that it wasn’t a lot of fun, of course, but fun wasn’t the point, also of course, and—

This time, the sound that derailed her train of thought wasn’t a roar. It was the quiet, insistent sound of a zipper.

Regula froze. She and Usagi looked over at the source of the sound… which was the dragon, whose belly was facing them. On that belly, a zipper had appeared, opening a bloodless wound in the dragon’s skin, longer and longer, wider and wider.

Finally, when it was at least as long as Regula was tall—a person fell out. Androgynous, with messy brown hair that obscured much of their face, and naked as the day they were born, save for a pouch around their neck. They panted, gleaming with what Regula assumed was sweat, and looked up. “What did you have to do that for?” they asked in an annoyed voice. “That was my favorite suit!”

Regula and Usagi stared. “What….” Regula started.

“The fuck?” Usagi finished.