Bunny Girl Evolution (BOOK 2 COMPLETE) (STUBBED!)
117 – A Pleasant Reunion

Elise did not trust Oberon. More accurately, she didn’t trust his judgement. He had yet to lie to her, or do anything that actively worked against her, but his ideas of “fun” and “interesting” were a bit beyond what Elise was comfortable with. Especially now that she was aware of how little he actually planned these things out.

“What’s your idea?” she asked.

“Alright, so hear me out,” he started.

Oh no.

“So, the noble persona was a bit of a trial run. A way to ease you into it. Help you get a feel for getting in character. However, as you know from our lessons, what we were doing there was not what {Lesser Transformation} is supposed to be used for. Not entirely. You were running up against your time limit every time. This time, it’s going to be much quicker. There will be no longer-term relationships. Everything will be one-time. However, this will still be a reusable persona.”

He paused and smiled eagerly as if waiting for her to prompt him, so she obliged.

“What do you mean?”

“I thought it would be really fun to create kind of an urban legend. So you’ll create a persona and you’ll work all over the city, never appearing in the same place twice, but every time, you’ll make a small commotion and start some rumors. We’ll do this every few days for a month and see what happens. What do you think?”

“I’m not sure…” she replied. “What would this persona be?”

“I’ll leave that up to you!” he said. “All the details are up to you! I’ll give you a couple constraints, but you’re free to ignore them if you want, as always.”

“What constraints?”

“Nothing specific. Your persona needs to be memorable, but not stand out too much. Or you can make it stand out a lot, but this brings its own troubles. If you want, you can test it out though. Anyway, memorability is important. Second, it needs to be something that you can easily shift into without needing too much prep work. For example, your noble lady persona needed a lot of work because you don’t know about high society fashion trends, so a persona like that won’t work because if you don’t understand those, it won’t be believable. Third, obviously you’ll need some way to create that urban legend. You have many abilities, so you’ll need to pick one or a couple to form your mystery around.”

Elise looked down as she thought about his words. Compared to what she had been worried about, Oberon’s idea was actually fine. Especially since he was leaving so many of the details up to her. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to successfully complete the urban legend objective, but there was also no penalty for failure, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. It also sounded kind of fun.

“Alright,” she said after a few seconds.

“You can take some time to plan out your persona if you want. You can also scout around the city to gather information beforehand if you want. There’s no rush. Though I would like to get you evolved within three to four months so we can get started on your persona for the University. But we’re well on pace for that, so unless you laze around and do nothing, we should be fine. Plus, it’s not like this is the only way we can practice.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Elise. “I’ll see if I can think of something in the next few days.”

“Great!” he said. “Now, in other news, I’ve hidden the box.”

“I noticed,” said Elise. “Did you hide it at the bottom of the ocean?”

“It’s a secret,” he said. “But you’ll most likely never see it again.”

“Most likely?”

“Well, nothing is sure in life.”

Elise narrowed her eyes. “You put it somewhere that I could come across it, didn’t you?”

“Of course not!” he said, not making eye contact.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, you could really only come across it if you went out looking for it,” he said. “But you wouldn’t do that, right? We both know how dangerous it is.”

“We do,” Elise agreed. “Which is why it would be better for it to be at the bottom of the ocean, right?”

“Well, if I did put it there, you could always just turn into a sea creature and dive down to touch it again. It’s not any safer down there than it is wherever I may or may not have put it.”

“Oberon,” said Elise sternly. “This isn’t a joke.”

Elise didn’t feel entirely right about lecturing a centuries-old fey like this, but Oberon was just too childish.

“It’s not a joke, but it doesn’t need to be so serious,” he said with a shrug. “Just don’t go looking for it and you won’t find it. It’s that simple. I’m not that careless. It’s not anywhere you could find it by accident.”

Elise stared at him for a few seconds longer, then sighed. It was out of her hands. She still didn’t trust Oberon, but this was out of her hands. She just hoped he was as thorough as he believed he was.

“How’s Robert doing?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Fine,” said Oberon. “He’s down in the dungeon. Do you want to visit him?”

“No, I’m fine.”

I’d be fine if I never saw him again.

“I’ve contacted a few other national authorities, so someone will probably arrive to take him into custody within the next few days.”

“Sounds good.”

From there, they jumped into another lesson about acting and fey-ness before Elise was released to return to her room. She spent the rest of the night reading and idly thinking about her urban legend persona, but by the time she went to bed, she still hadn’t settled on anything. The only thing she was fairly sure of was that she would be using {Fey Bargaining} and {Fairy Dust} to create the urban legend, passing out blessings, and perhaps a few curses as needed. She thought of a few other ideas for her powers, like using her new {Nature Mana Manipulation} to do plant-related things, but she wasn’t confident enough in her skills with that, and those skills would be too common among humanoids to make a proper urban legend out of them.

The next morning, when Elise arrived at breakfast, she noticed that the mood at the table was a bit odd. It wasn’t odd in a bad way though. Both Nick and Bianca seemed to be in a good mood, while Sophie seemed a bit confused.

“Is something happening today?” asked Elise between bites of sausage.

“Penelope is coming,” explained Nick.

“Oh!” said Elise. “She is? When?”

“Around noon. She’s finished recovering and giving her report to our superiors, so she’s taking some vacation time to visit us here. She’ll also be bringing me some news about what I’ll be doing in the near future. I expect I’ll be required back in Jelor within the month. We’ll be visiting back home before then, of course.”

He left what they would be doing at home unsaid, but it still put a bit of a damper on the mood. There were a few seconds of silence before Sophie spoke up.

“Who’s Penelope?”

That got a snort of laughter out of Nick and Bianca, who then started explaining. While they talked, Elise glanced over at Maia, who was eating in glum silence. Elise felt a bit bad for her. She was only there because Elise had her twin, and needed to wait for the {Rune of Fate} cooldown to be over. Unlike Elise, she had no attachment to the Grays beyond their circumstances, and she was rarely able to join in their conversations.

Elise had discussed with Oberon the possibility of bringing Kaia out of Astrid’s Star with a professional healer around to help, but he advised against it. Apparently, most normal healing didn’t work on undead, and even if it did, whatever caused her internal injuries was related to Elise severing her connection with her creator using the divine aether. It was best to use the same divine aether to finish the process than to take a risk on something else. Besides, it wasn’t like they had a time limit.

That still meant that Maia was left anxious and uncertain for two full weeks before she could see her sister again. Elise could empathize with it, but she had no idea how to comfort her, so she said nothing. Hopefully, Penelope’s arrival would cheer her up a bit, since the two of them had gotten close over the time they spent preparing for the raid on the Blood Syndicate headquarters.

After breakfast, Elise and Sophie went to the library to relax and read for a couple hours, only coming out when Sandra popped in to say that Penelope would be arriving soon. Elise had been in her changeling form while reading, so she switched back to her human form and joined Sophie heading downstairs to greet the incoming guest.

Penelope arrived in shiny, new, full plate armor with five other knights, all guarding an important-looking man dressed in black and gold. This came as a surprise to everyone but Oberon who looked thoroughly amused at the looks on their faces. Apparently, Penelope was here on actual business, at least officially, and was a part of the escort for a duke who was coming to speak with Oberon. King Oberon escorted his guest inside while maid Oberon stifled laughter as Elise and the others felt uncomfortable and underdressed to greet such an important arrival.

Two of the knights followed the duke in while Penelope and the other three stayed behind. As soon as the royals were out of sight, they all relaxed, and Penelope finally removed her helmet and greeted her friends with a smile. She pulled Nick and Bianca into a bear hug then introduced herself to Sophie before pulling Elise and Maia into a hug as well. She exchanged a few words with the other knights, then she separated from them and joined everyone else for lunch.

“So, how are things in Jelor?” asked Nick.

“Busy,” said Penelope. “Very busy. And not in a great way. Ostra went public, and then the king of Jelor announced that he was entering negotiations with them, and the next day, there were protests in the streets. It didn’t devolve into riots, but that’s largely because all the Jelorian Knight Orders were deployed to keep the peace.”

“That bad?”

“I don’t think it will get any worse though,” said Penelope. “At the same time these protests are coming out, there are a lot of firsthand accounts from the Blood Syndicate’s victims making their rounds. I think that most people just didn’t realize how bad the Blood Syndicate actually was, since they worked in the shadows, and now that they do, public opinion is slowly turning.”

“That’s good,” said Nick, nodding. “How are you doing? Hole in your stomach closed up?”

“Yep! All better! They had some high ranking priests on standby to heal all the prisoners and the humanoids injured in the operation. I was fully healed pretty much as soon as I got back, and then I was stuck in meetings until now. What about you guys? Living the easy life?”

“Yep,” said Nick. “It’s been nice, finally being able to relax as a family.”

“I’m sure,” said Penelope. “Sir Manfred said you have the next 30 days off, by the way. Not sure if you had already heard that.”

“I heard something similar, but no exact dates. Thanks.”

“No problem. He also said that your request for an official mission to clear out the monster in Greenwood is being processed and will most likely go through. I also have a position in that mission when it does. And it will most likely happen in about two weeks. You’re free to stay here while we go, since you’re still on leave.”

“No, I’m coming,” said Nick. “We’re all coming.”

“You’ll need to get them registered as official Monster Hunters then.”

“Will do.”

“By the way, Bianca, your family is going to be coming by tomorrow.”

“Yeah, they contacted me and said that,” Bianca replied. “How long are you going to be here for, by the way?”

“This escort mission is only three days long, but after that, I’ll be taking a week of leave. I was actually supposed to be on leave already, but I took this mission for free travel.”

That got a small chuckle from everyone else. With the serious topics finished, the conversation turned to lighter topics, and everyone had a good time. Elise spent most of the time silent, but she was smiling the whole time. Now that everyone had been rescued, she was seeing a new side of Penelope. It was probably how she usually was, and what Elise had seen was the stressed, anxious, over-serious version of Penelope. It made Elise feel a little distant to see Penelope so cheerful and outgoing, but she was still glad that it had happened.

After the meal, Penelope and Nick did a few rounds of spars out in the castle training grounds. Nick won handily every time, and while Penelope took it good-naturedly, she also made sure to mention that she was actually at her weakest at that moment because her class got stronger when protecting people, and she wasn’t protecting anyone during the spar.

After the sparring, they found a sitting room to relax in while they talked some more, but by this time, Elise was starting to get a bit tired. The conversation was mostly carried by Penelope, Nick, and Bianca, leaving Elise and Sophie on the sidelines. Maia was more of a participant than they were. After about half an hour, Elise excused herself to go practice some of her skills.

Once out of the room, she went back to the training grounds to practice some of her spells, which she hadn’t done in a while. She more or less did the same training she had done with the dwarves, firing {Magic Missile} at training dummies until she was out of mana, then meditating to replenish it. While she might otherwise have found such training boring, since she had so many other things to do, at the moment, it was the perfect mindless thing to work on while thinking about her urban legend persona.

The thing that had her struggling the most was creating one that was memorable without standing out. It felt like an oxymoron. If she didn’t catch anyone’s attention, how would they remember her? The only way to do that would be to just wear a hooded cloak to be more inconspicuous, then drop it to hit them with 1665 Charisma to the face. That didn’t quite feel like a proper persona though, and she wasn’t entirely sure how she’d translate it to creating an urban legend. Unless…

“Snowberry!”

Elise looked up to see Sophie jogging toward her.

“What’s up?” asked Elise.

“They started drinking, so I came to look for you” said Sophie, making a face as if she found the thought of alcohol disgusting.

“Ah, I see,” said Elise, switching back to her human form and standing up. “To the library?”

“Actually, I kinda wanted to go out,” said Sophie. “When we were out shopping, on the way back, I saw this really cool garden place. Nick and Bianca said they wanted to see it too, but I’m bored and I want to go now. Plus, I’m pretty sure they want some time alone, so they can go on their own.”

“A garden?”

“Yeah, it’s got all kinds of cool plants and they even have some plant monsters!”

“Sure,” said Elise with a shrug. “Sounds interesting.”

“Cool! Let’s go!”

As they made their way out of the castle, Elise changed her clothes around to match Sophie’s, and then after a moment, recalled that she could switch her species too, and changed to a half-elf as well. They didn’t look very much alike, but with Elise’s hair dyed black and her eyes green from the illusion ring Oberon had given her, they could pass as sisters. Probably.

While Sophie was a bit over-talkative, Elise found that she actually enjoyed the girl’s company. Perhaps it was influenced by nostalgia, and how it had been Sophie’s voice that allowed her to learn the language of the world, but even as Sophie chattered away about what was more or less meaningless nonsense, Elise never once found herself annoyed.

The garden reminded Elise a lot of the one she had visited with Penelope and Maia in Vina, though this one felt much more natural. It was similar to the spa, where aside from the paths running through it, everything was set up to look more or less natural, and even when the biomes shifted to new types of plants, it was gradual and difficult to notice until she looked around and noticed how different the plants were. Also, Sophie’s judgement had been spot on. Based on the number of couples they saw, this was an excellent place for a date.

The garden was a little bit small though, and by the time they had explored the whole thing, it wasn’t even sunset yet, so the two of them decided to go exploring the city a little bit. Given that it was one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, the entire city was set up to be aesthetically pleasing at a casual glance, so it was a pleasant walk, made more pleasant by the various types of street food that they sampled.

However, at some point in their wandering, they came to a quieter part of town, and after walking a bit further, it got too quiet, and it was nowhere near as pleasant as the rest was.

“I think we should turn back,” said Elise.

“I’m pretty sure if we just keep going this way, we’ll circle back around,” said Sophie. “I was looking at the map earlier and I know there’s a way to get back from here.”

Elise had a healthy amount of doubt, but the street was curving in the general direction they wanted to go, so she didn’t protest and kept following Sophie. Unfortunately, the other girl’s sense of direction was not quite as good as she thought it was, and they soon found themselves staring into an alleyway where a man was curled up on the ground as three more were kicking him.