The night got chilly again, and forced us all to scoot closer to the campfire. I’d only gone camping the one time with my father the one time, either broken and recovering in the hospital, or incapable of walking long distances without triggering serious pain. Now I truly understood what I’d been missing.

  First, the camaraderie. Cinzy was wrapped in a bnket and holding a mug of steaming hot chocote, made up by An and ter Isabelle, once she was done with her portion of the firewood collecting. Just her face and blonde hair peered out of the bnket, along with her hands gripping the mug, leaving her looking just adorable.

  She caught me looking once, and a dimple appeared as she smiled just a fraction at me, then winked. I couldn’t help but feel conflicted. Regina had noticed whatever Cinzy was trying to do, and wonder of wonders approved, but the reciprocal was not necessarily true. Cinzy didn’t know I was, ahem, intimately involved with both Tara and Regina. I wasn’t sure how she would feel about me once she learned those facts.

  She wouldn’t have to know that I was routinely attempting to fill Tara to the brim. I couldn’t be entirely sure that Regina could handle that information either. Hell, I wasn’t sure it sat well with me either.

  The fmes were hypnotic. First, I dealt with the Pleasure Seeker situation. Tara and I also gained the close confidants retionship status. While I was being milked, the system granted me an upgrade to Eagle Eyed, bringing it from Common to Uncommon but keeping it at level II.

  Eagle Eyed II

  (Special Ability, Uncommon, passive)

  I- Your eyesight becomes better than human, including limited night sight. You are able to discern details at a distance, and analyze close objects much better than base humans.

  II- Your peripheral vision and reactions are increased beyond human maximums. You may not be caught off guard while your eyes are open. You may spend 1 Durability Token to sleep with your eyes open.

  Well that was some tomfoolery I hopefully wouldn’t ever need. It sounded amazing, but a bit scary. With luck, I wouldn’t ever have to use it. That said, if we ever had a night watch situation, I could take the whole night and give the whole team a rest.

  Both powers I’d gained from the girls, Eagle Eyed and Wild Lore, were definitely tied to their css, Ranger. I made a mental note to ask Regina what sort of ability she’d received from me, and snorted ughter. How would that conversation go? ‘Oh, hey, by the way, you know the special ability I got from boning you? It’s called Wild Lore. What did you get from having me terrorize that pussy?’

  “What’s so funny?” Cinzy asked.

  “Oh! Uh… I was thinking…”

  Ingenuity check: You do not have the associated skill for this check. This check is Moderate difficulty. Would you like to spend 2 Tokens for an automatic success?

  Total Tokens: 4 Ingenuity and 6 Free Tokens.

  I quickly spent the Tokens, not wanting to be caught in this particur lie. Several options quickly popped up in front of my face when I spent the Tokens. The first one was great.

  *I was thinking about when I got the job, and I thought Dick Johnson was pnning to sell my organs.

  I repeated the words and watched as Cinzy’s face went from shock to amazement to disbelief and very quickly onto hirity. She thought the whole idea of me meeting this real HR recruiter but thinking he was a fly-by-night organ salesman chartan was perfect.

  This time she cpped her hand on my knee and didn’t let up, eventually pressing her forehead to my knee and crying. Not far off, I spied Regina giving me an unreadable look.

  “I need to speak with you,” I told her, and stood. It was a good thing I did, since my legs were stiff and full of ache from sitting down too long. She joined me on a slow circuit of the area we’d picked for the camp.

  “I know it’s not ideal,” she said, “and we won’t have a chance to go on our dinner date any time soon.”

  “I’m told you knew about the pills getting destroyed?” I asked.

  “Oh, that.”

  “I’m concerned that An came to you, and neither of you consulted with me.”

  “Are you mad?” she asked, sounding for the moment like a child about to be punished. Like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  “Mad? No. I mean a little disappointed.” Using the word from my parents.

  “Ah,” she said, frowning. “I hadn’t thought it was that important. An told me the Wizards don’t have any data on what happens if we get magic saturated. And I figured you could probably heal it, like develop your own medicine for us.”

  “Well, I had to send one of our Rangers all the way back to the city on her Nakamamon. That will cut into our ability to deal with trouble if trouble arises, but I think the ten of us and our abilities and companions can handle it. And we lucked out with her getting that slitherwind.”

  She nodded. “I hope you’re not too upset.”

  “If you’d told me about your theory, and me making a version of the medicine, I probably could have tried before sending Tara back…”

  “It was a bad pse in judgement,” she said. “I take full responsibility.” She turned and puffed her chest out, defiant. “I probably influenced An on accident, when I told him we didn’t need to go advertising the pills had gotten crushed. I know that he’s pretty young and inexperienced with, you know, and I’m sorry. It’s definitely not his fault.”

  “He’s young and inexperienced with what?”

  “You know,” she said, and smiled a coy smile.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied. I wanted to make her squirm a little bit.

  “Well I may have made him, ah, a little uncomfortable, with my, ah, feminine wiles.”

  I leveled a ft gre on her. “You seduced him.”

  “You make it sound like I had sex with the poor boy!” she blurted, a little too loudly. I chuckled as her eyes bulged with the realization of what she’d done. If An was a little young and inexperienced, well, weren’t we all? The higher ups had hired a bunch of people in their twenties, after all. “That’s not what happened. I didn’t. I mean I didn’t have sex with him.”

  “You guys all right out there?” Ivy and Isabelle called.

  “All good!” I yelled. Then, back at Cinzy, I said, “But you did seduce him.”

  “I didn’t just spread my legs for him,” she hissed, then appeared embarrassed yet again. “I didn’t have to. I just smiled at him.”

  “Just smiled.” My parents did this a lot, just repeating the same words somebody said back to you, but sounding like half a question and half an accusation.

  “I may have unbuttoned one of my shirt buttons, and showed a little cleavage.”

  “A little cleavage.”

  “Okay, okay… I hiked up my skirt a little.”

  “Hiked up… your skirt.”

  “Hey!” she said. “I was just… it’s like… it looks like this, okay.” She flipped the waistband of her skirt over, which gave me an extra two inches of visible thigh. Then she unbuttoned the top button of her shirt and csped her hands together, which pressed her big boobs together. The line of her cleavage deepened. Then she batted her eyeshes at me and fshed a coy smile. She was gorgeous, especially since she’d put on knee high socks. I didn’t know why that did it for me, but it really really did.

  Likability check: You do not have the associated skill for this check. This check is High difficulty. Would you like to spend 4 Tokens for an automatic success?

  Total Tokens: 4 Likability and 6 Free Tokens.

  “Are you going to make me pass this check?” I asked in my best disappointed voice.

  She darted a gnce toward the fire and kept the same mischievous smirk pstered on her very attractive face. A small timer rapidly wound down, and I stubbornly crossed my hands over my chest. I then refused to spend the Tokens. “You could just tell me if you’ve got a girlfr—”

  It looked a lot like Cinzy was going to become Cinzia and our retionship might take a turn towards the very cool when Fairy Poppins appeared and interrupted her companion human. Glowing fiercely in the dead of night, the dragonfly-sized fairy buzzed up into Cinzy’s face. A stream of words came out of the minute Nakamamon, and she bashed Cinzy directly in the tip of the nose. As much as a bug could bash something a billion times its size anyway.

  Cinzy suddenly pouted, and stopped assuming the sexy pose she was using on me. The timer vanished, and with it the Likability check. She chuckled suddenly.

  “None of that happened,” she told me. “I was just putting on a bit of a show for you.”

  I blinked several times. “I’m sorry? None of that happened? What happened?”

  “I just told him it probably wasn’t important, and, you know, he didn’t push the matter. Because when I smile at people they kind of, I don’t know, want to go along with me. Want to help me. Want to be my friend.” She smiled again. “I’m not doing anything active. I didn’t do the shirt thing or the skirt thing. Just for you.”

  “Cut it out.”

  The smile vanished. “Sorry—”

  Suddenly, a tiny and glowing Nakamamon was flying up between my eyes, hovering a few inches from me.

  “Why thank you, young dy,” I told the fairy. She seemed delighted at the praise, and zipped around my head several times before having a few more angry words with Cinzy, and disappearing back into her traveling bag.

  “Way to ruin a perfectly good joke,” Cinzy grumbled.

  All three of us knew it hadn’t been a joke. Cinzy was going after information. I didn’t push it.

  “You could have simply asked,” I told her. “And the answer is no. I don’t have a girlfriend.” It was so odd to say these words, for a multitude of reasons. One, I was talking to an absolute stunner, with a gorgeous face, a bright personality. Two, she was someone who didn’t see the way I limped around as freakish. Three, she wanted not just to talk to me, but maybe date me. And right now, that told me she wanted to go on dates, have fun, talk and ugh together, and figure out whether or not we might end up having sex.

  I was about to tell her exactly what the situation really was when Regina and Isabelle appeared out of the darkness.

  “There you are!” Regina said. I got the impression she knew exactly where I was the whole time. Isabelle blinked at the two of us several times.

  “I’ve been discussing how we pn to approach the natives when we run into them,” I lied. That discussion had been had previously.

  “Makes sense,” Isabelle said. “You probably don’t want Chrysta or Larelle negotiating or trying to impress the natives without Cinzia being there. Neither of them have any skill in social.”

  “We had discussed this very thing,” Cinzy said smoothly.

  “I wouldn’t doubt both their Likability is down at one or two.” Isabelle chuckled, before going wide-eyed. “Oh em gee. I can’t believe I just said that. Don’t tell them, okay?”

  I nodded, giving her a chuckle. “Sure, no problem.”

  Regina didn’t say anything, but instead simply looked at me. I wondered what internal discussion was going on there. Was she sizing up Cinzy as her next sexual meal? The idea of the supermodel gorgeous Cinzy naked in my bed was enough to make my cock come to life. The idea of Cinzy naked in my bed and fooling around with Regina caused me to adjust my pants.

  “Let’s get back to camp,” I said.

  Cinzy didn’t seem to love this idea, but there was nothing she could do or say to oppose it. Her skirt was still hiked up a little, and I know this because when she skipped ahead with her ponytail bobbing behind her, I caught a lot of thigh when her skirt bounced up and down.

  This new world was definitely the weirdest and most wonderful thing to ever happen to my life.

  I had a slight twinge of regret, thinking about my parents and my sister, along with my nephew. They were probably better off without me there, and with the money this job supplied. This knowledge didn’t make me feel a lot better though. I still wanted to be with them, near them, or at least in contact. My nephew was a toddler, and the cutest he would likely ever be.

  Once settled back around the fire, we traded fun stories about our first encounter with a Nakamamon or a god that wasn’t Tweedle Dee.

  Isabelle, as it turned out, had a simir run in with a god, but hadn’t been dumb enough to stick her finger in it.

  “It was just a little flower god,” she said. “Doctor Rainer was just about to heal it, so I got to watch him use an eye dropper to drip something on it.”

  “I n-never s-s-s-saw any gods,” An stuttered.

  Isabelle unched into a description of the tiny flower god: which looked like just a flower, but rger, and with two rge eyes.

  “Bleeding,” she said. “They were bleeding rainbow goop… looked like this tiny little guy with smudged mascara. I wanted to hold it and give it a big tight hug. I’m really lucky Ivy told me not to touch it. I probably would have.”

  Regina then told my story, which had everyone staring. Drat, alone amongst the group, ughed at me. He threw back his head and guffawed at the sky.

  Honestly, I didn’t mind it. If you couldn’t ugh at yourself, who could you ugh at?

  Amazingly, it was Isabelle who came to my defense. “Drat, that’s not funny.” I caught Cinzy leaning forward with a look of righteous fury on her beautiful face, but it was the half-Mexican half-Korean who stepped up first.

  “Oh yeah, that’s rich,” he said. “I should definitely feel sympathy for the guy who touched a corrupted guy. This is the same guy I have to take orders from.”

  “You should take this order,” Cinzy said, her tone icy. “Head to your tent and don’t make a peep, got it?”

  Drat fshed her a nasty look before standing and turning his back on the fire. “Hundreds of miles out of the way, no clue where we are, and I’m with a bunch of girls swooning over this yutz. G’night, yutz. Enjoy your… harem.”

  He vanished into the darkness, and we all stared into the crackling fmes. The only sound was a zipper catching badly, followed by a quiet curse from Drat, and then a longer, slower zipper.

  “The Rogue’s words might be harsh,” Chrysta said, “but that does not make them untrue. Touching the corrupted gods was an action with deadly consequences.”

  “I know,” I said. “How do you think I got this near death experience achievement?”

  That did it. Everybody wanted to know about the achievement, and then the other ones I’d gotten. That set off several different conversations at once, about who’d gotten what achievements and why. Regina, Ivy and Isabelle all knew veterans who had passed out of the first batch of easy levels and into the next tier. That gave a pretty nice achievement.

  I received one for assisting in the creation of a cure, Larelle put in. That was news to all of us. Tara hadn’t shared her achievement if she’d gotten one for helping me craft the cure for the God of Footfalls.

  “Fletcher got one for healing up a god, didn’t you?” Cinzy asked, fshing that signature magical smile at me. She soon had Fairy Poppins buzzing around her head again. “What is the matter with you? Ugh, quit it!”

  We’d all gotten the Nakamamon achievements, but Regina could boast that she’d just gotten the one for encountering 50 different individual types.

  “It’s got to be really easy to get, right? They’re everywhere, and there are millions of different ones it seems,” Isabelle said.

  The discussion went on, round and round, until people started drifting away into the darkness to get some shuteye. Cinzy got chased over to her tent and cursed several times before going, “Fine! I’ll go to sleep! Happy?” Eventually it was myself, Regina, Isabelle, and Chrysta. Ivy was on first watch.

  “I’m headed to bed,” I told them. It had been a long day.

  “Night,” Isabelle and Regina said simultaneously. They shared a look, burst out ughing, and both rose to head to their respective tents.

  This is Christopher about to have a very rude awakening.