I grumbled, standing in front of the open, shattered window as Lori disinfected and wrapped up my cuts. Lori had quickly washed up after things had settled down, before returning with a first-aid kit.

The shutters were completely ripped off, leaving the glass pane looking down at the ground. It was a stupid, unnecessary thing to have happened.

I had a strong feeling this was coming after what Lori pulled in the Royal Capital, but it was still pretty annoying. Even if we were in a medieval anime town, this place still had its share of fly-like creatures and other annoying pests that would fly through a broken window.

The household spellwork book had a lot of useful spells for day-to-day stuff, but that didn't include things like conjuring or synthesizing a window from scratch. So it looked like we had to go without one.

Dinah yawned, scratching behind one of her cat ears with one hand. She sat on top of the brick fireplace alone, watching me with a playful smirk, swishing her tail back and forth as I sighed heavily.

I looked down at the cotton bandages Lori was almost finished wrapping up, then suddenly, I had an idea.

"S-sis?" I called out, fumbling over the word for a second. It felt awkward to use for some reason.

Lori blinked at me in surprise, finishing up her bandaging as Dinah giggled, "What are you thinking, Alice-chan?"

"Do we have any old cotton clothes we don't need?" I asked aloud, trying not to look directly at Lori when she answered me with confusion.

"Um...I think I have some, actually," she said uncertainly before quickly turning away and walking into her bedroom. A few seconds later, she returned holding a bag filled mostly with underwear, socks, and a pair of shoes and tossed them over the windowsill towards me before stepping back inside again.

"Here," I heard her mutter softly, which made me blink for a moment, then I shrugged.

I pulled out my wand and began to cast the plant extraction spell I'd used to make the rope on some socks. Dinah perked in amazement as I began to weave a mosquito netting across and down our broken window. She leaned forward excitedly and watched intently while making 'ooh' noises.

As soon as I finished the first loop of netting around the window, I held out an arm and spun it upwards, tying it off right next to its sister strands already tied together. Once that was done, I repeated that process until there was a large enough window mesh between us and anything outside that we could be safe from flying insects. Then I added two more loops that ran parallel over each other from side to side so they didn't block the light too much during daytime or evening.

That should do until we work on some window repairs.

It only took about ten minutes to finish all that work, but Lori stood there staring at the whole thing for a full minute after I finished the last strand as she looked on in curiosity.

"Oh wow! That's amazing!" Lori breathed, bouncing on her toes.

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"Hold on, girls," Dinah spoke up with a serious tone for once as she hopped off the fireplace and walked over, "Alice, is this for what I think it is?"

I shrugged in amusement, "It's for keeping the bugs out of here. Why?"

She scratched her chin while putting on a thoughtful expression. Then, she started laughing again. "Say, could you, in theory, create a version of this that draped over a bedframe? Or maybe something like curtains??" Dinah asked brightly before giggling again.

"Um...?" I answered uncertainly as I blinked at the question.

"Just say yes." Dinah stated flatly.

The catgirl turned to look back at me as well, pursing her lips slightly and tilting her head. She seemed to be thinking about my window screen as she cocked one hip and gave me a half-smile before giving me an inquisitive stare.

"Um, yes! Sure, why not." I replied, somewhat embarrassed as I blushed slightly under her scrutiny.

"Tarrant's definitely going to want to talk to you about this! I'll damned if we let you get away after this... If I'm on the meow-ney here, you just partially solved the Ulomin Republic's swampbite epidemic!"

I blinked once before realization struck me.

One, it was really likely that I had just invented mosquito netting.

Two, Dinah had picked up on that immediately.

"Oh," I said aloud before nodding with excitement. I hadn't considered how important those things were, even in my own world where I lived in an urban area.

"Look, I know the two of you got off on the wrong foot, but... Tarrant's is a good cat and he can help get your family out of this hole and Lori back in the field. He's been fighting the good fight for a century now and always tried to do right by people. You should trust him, okay?" she told me earnestly.

"Tarrant?" I asked questioningly.

"The Chief," Lori answered, "You know..." She made a gesture shaping out a gigantic tophat.

I frowned. She was definitely right that I didn't like, nor did I trust that oversized Lucky Charms mascot who'd tried to recruit me.

"Yeah..." I responded, "To be honest, he rubbed me the wrong way completely."

"Okay, yeah." Lori giggled with a smile. "I'll admit, he was a bit tonedeaf about it that night."

That was an understatement. He made me feel safe for a second, but then he kept shoving his foot in his mouth in front of me over and over.

"But, um..."I responded, "How would he be able to help us?"

"Tarrant has always been a darned good inventor, but he only really started selling and releasing them himself publicly in recent years. He owns a workshop here in Halton out at the river, and is pretty well known around the world as one of the top ten inventors living today," Dinah answered, smiling as she walked over beside me, patting my shoulder with her lightly clawed hand. "He's been fighting the Demon Lord his entire life and he's had a crisis about 'planting trees he'll never see' or whatever that means. Thinks he'll go down fighting sooner than later at this rate. Tarrant doesn't have the means to bail your family out yet, but he'd do it in a heartbeat."

Lori added that last part with a sigh while looking up at the sky before nodding, "Yeah, Chief's a bit eccentric like that."

"Anyway," the catgirl went on, pursing her lips thoughtfully again before giving a firm nod to herself, "I'm gonna go ahead and guess we're not going to have to worry about those thugs coming back tonight, so I can go tell Tarrant what happened. And Alice?"

I turned to face her expectantly, wondering if there was anything else to discuss.

"Be a good girl, and stay out of trouble. I don't want you getting hurt anymore than you already were. You and Lori-nyan can be a real clawful."

She patted my head, and I squirmed around, blushing, "Erm, sorry, Dinah."

The catgirl smiled and nodded to me in return. "No worries, sport. Have a good night, you two."

Dinah blew a ♥ in the air and walked out the door. She looked over her shoulder at me and gave me a thumbs-up as she disappeared into the night outside.

"You really know how to make friends," Lori said in a teasing voice as she walked over and leaned against me from behind, putting an arm over me and giving me an affectionate hug.

"What? Oh, right," I replied awkwardly as I felt myself flushing red. "Sorry about leading them here earlier. That was..."

"That was completely on me. Okay? Just promise you'll continue to try and stay out of danger in the future, little sis?" Lori told me seriously as she ruffled the top of my head lightly.

I shrugged helplessly and sighed, "I'll do my best to try."