Crimson Rain

"Today's the day we meet our party," Alicia said unnecessarily as she fussed with her hair. She normally kept it in pigtails, but today she’d decided to do something uncharacteristically fancy. Her fingers worked deftly first to braid her hair and then wrap the braid around the back of her head to form a bun that looked like a flower. Many pins had been sacrificed to the endeavor, and I wondered whether this world might not have weapons that could do the same thing. The image of a cute girl pulling a multitude of small throwing knives or something out of her hair was, to me, very cool.

"What'd'ya think they'll be like?" Nero dutifully asked the question I was sure Alicia had wanted him to ask. Unlike Alicia, Nero put almost no care into his appearance. I gave him a pass for it. He was, after all, a thirteen-year-old boy. I distinctly remembered the thirteen-year-old boys when I was still in school doing ridiculous things like wearing their pants down around their knees with boxers in full view. Compared to that, Nero's lack of attention to his looks seemed tame. I was more concerned with the way Alicia didn't seem to clock him as a boy. She continued to change in the room with him, and she didn't even look away when he changed. (And while she did threaten him at first, she eventually stopped bothering with even that much of a nod toward propriety.)

Alicia shook her head. "No idea. I hope they're at least close to our age..."

By now, we’d heard a multitude of horror stories. Older adventurers who treated their younger party members as slaves, parties where new members endured all manner of harassment, parties that left the least experienced members to perform the most dangerous tasks as a sort of ‘trial by fire…’ I thought it was more likely that these stories were simply common because they were horrible. No one told stories about a party being perfectly normal, after all. Statistically, the worst we’d endure should be nothing more than the social awkwardness of being a couple of young teenagers joining an already well-established group of adults.

Not that that wasn’t already bad enough. If I’d been them, I’d have run away and formed my own party rather than force myself to struggle through that situation. Making friends wasn’t something I’d figured out in my first life, and being a cat nicely insulated me from the need in this one. Honestly, even if being unable to speak was inconvenient in a lot of ways, it was more comfortable for me overall.

"It’ll be fine,” Nero said. Though it sounded like a response to Alicia, the way he picked me up and convulsively hugged me against himself made me think he was trying to reassure himself more than anything. In honor of that, I refrained from squirming despite the uncomfortable position.

My own nerves took the form of examining my Status. On it, there was a new section.

Conditions for Evolution Unmet.
Materials required: Darksteel Ore x 10
Hellhound teeth x 5
Skeleton King’s bone x 1

When at last Alicia was ready and had approved Nero’s appearance, I hopped onto Nero's shoulder and accompanied them to the front of the church.

The moment we stepped through the church's doors, we stopped. Four people stood there with their summoned creatures. One of them, a woman with long, pink hair in a ponytail, smiled and waved. "Hi! I'm Lainie! These are Fay, Michael, and Richie. We're your new party." Her smile was bright and cheerful, and her voice was upbeat as she continued, "Our summons are Wing, Storm, Dragon, and Justice." She rolled her eyes with a laugh as she said the last two names.

Fay was a young woman with long, straight, dark green hair and a gloomy expression. Michael was a solidly built man with short, wild brown hair at odds with his serious expression. Richie, in contrast, looked like your stereotypical hothead - wiry strength with red, spikey hair and scars all over. The indicated summons were a bird of prey of some sort, a Wind Elemental, something that looked like a cross between a lizard and a woman, and a Fire Elemental.

The only one of the companions to respond was Dragon, who waved slightly before returning to staring at the ground.

"Um, I'm Alicia, and this is my summon, Heather. Then that's Nero and his summon, Luna," Alicia said. She sounded quietly hopeful about this party. They appeared to be in their late teens, and Lainie seemed nice at least.

"Alicia and Nero, got it!" Lainie chirped. She turned back to her party. "Alright, let's go to the Guild and register!" As the others started walking, she hung back to walk alongside Alicia and Nero. "So, we're already registered as Crimson Rain, so I hope that's okay. We were a seven-man, but... well, there was an accident." Her expression dimmed for a moment before she shook herself and continued. "Fay, Richie, and I are D-ranked, and Michael's C-ranked. Don't worry, though. We'll get you to D before too long, you'll see!"

I'd learned enough by now to know that was quite a feat, if it was true. Every rank had a minimum level and a set of other requirements associated with it. Just going up from G-rank to F-rank was said to be difficult. Since we'd been power-leveled, the level requirement was already filled up through D-rank, but we were nowhere near the quest completion requirements.

Alicia frowned. "We might have the levels, but I'm afraid we haven't completed any quests."

"No worries," Richie called back, voice carefree. "We'll grab a whole stack and plow through them in no time!"

Michael laughed softly. His voice was deep and just as solid as his body. "Maybe you'll catch up to me by the time they've hit D."

"Hey, I'm not that far off, jerk-face!"

They seemed friendly. Even so, I didn’t like them. I’d only just gotten used to Green Wonder. Why did we have to join Crimson Rain? I pawed nervously at Nero's cheek, pressing the pads of my paws against his skin and kneading it until he raised a hand and held my paws still. "Don't worry, Luna," he murmured.

As we walked, I Assessed our new party members. For the most part, they seemed normal. All but Michael were level thirty. They wouldn't be able to level further until their companions evolved, which was why only Michael was C-rank. One of the requirements for C-rank was having an evolved summon. Apparently, the lizard person with him, Dragon, was a Dragonnewt, an evolution of an SR Earth Lizard. Wing, the bird of prey, was an SR Water Falcon. Everyone's skills were reasonable, considering the ridiculous lack of control humans seemed to have over their skills.

There were only two abnormalities. One lay within their titles. Every one of them had the title Hated by God. I understood from my own situation that didn't automatically make them evil (or at least, I wasn't evil yet), but it seemed suspicious.

The second abnormality was Dragon's name. It read 'Dragon (former: Marie).’ Did that mean she was a reincarnated person like me? I wished I could ask her, but I'd have to wait until I evolved for that.

Registering at the guild was easy enough. We provided our information, the guild receptionist filed it, and we received necklaces proclaiming Nero and Alicia G-ranked adventurers. With that out of the way, we did exactly as Richie had said and accepted the maximum number of quests allowed: ten F-ranks, five E-ranks, and one D-rank. The F- and E-rank quests were all collection quests. We just needed to obtain a certain number of items or monster parts, and the monster parts were the type you could find lying around, like Gryphon feathers or Fairy Floss (which was, based on the quest information, the name for elemental horse's tail hairs). The D-rank quest was the only one that required us to kill anything; it called for us to locate and retrieve the magic cores of ten Skeletons from a not-too-distant battleground that had recently started acting up more than usual.

We left town immediately, heading toward a forest where most of the gathering quests could be completed. Once we'd reached a clearing as evening was falling, Michael declared that we'd make it our base until we'd completed the nearby quests. Then, they'd send Lainie off back to town to report those quests' completion while the rest of us headed to the next spot.

Alicia and Nero were friendly as everyone ate dinner. Lainie gave Nero and me a surprised look when he said that I could hunt my own food, but she didn't protest. "Alrighty then," she said with a shrug. "Heather still needs something, right?"

"If you don't mind," Alicia agreed.

I left them to it and went to scout out the area. I caught myself an owl while I was at it. It was my first owl, and I decided immediately that owl blood just wasn't delicious. (Not that mice were, but the owl's feathers introduced a dusty texture I approved of as neither a human nor a cat.) As I hunted, I found the herbs we were meant to be gathering and noted them on my map. I also found some fairy floss, so I collected that as well, since it was easy enough to grab, even without hands. I could store it in my inventory once I'd grabbed it by tangling my tail in it.

As I returned, I saw that everyone except Fay and Michael had gone into their tents to sleep. The pair on watch were talking in hushed voices. I crept closer, wondering what they might be saying.

"- about the cat, but the horse is good. Useful."

"I think the cat's pretty cute," Fay said softly. Her face was lowered, and she didn’t look Michael in the eyes when he spoke, but she was that way with everyone.

Michael's lip curled. "Really? It creeps me out. It acts like it understands us."

"It’s a Rare summon," Fay said. "It should be smarter than your average cat."

"Whatever. I don't like it, but if you do, then go ahead. Just keep it away from me."

Fay gave a weak laugh. "Thank you for the permission."

There was a whisper of wind, and then Fay turned to look straight at me with a small smile. "Speak of the devil." She held out her hand. "Here, kitty."

I crept closer, playing the role of a normal, not-too-intelligent cat. "Mreow," I said as I reached her hand. She roughly rubbed her hand over my head, hurting my ears, and I ran away. I'd had plenty of cats, so I was reasonably certain I was playing the role correctly.

Michael laughed, and to me the sound teetered on the border between friendly ribbing and cruel, but maybe that was just because I didn’t know him. "Looks like the cat doesn't like you."

Fay frowned at him, hunched her shoulders in on herself, and turned back to the fire. "It doesn’t matter."

I returned to Nero and Alicia's tent, wondering what, exactly, made me so uneasy about their conversation.