Jump-touch was sullen and angry as they left the bathhouse.

She wasn't a child, she was an adult, she knew how to wash herself. There had been no need for any of what just went down.

Added onto that, her new clothes were itchy, all coarse wool and too many layers, rubbing in the wrong places, over her already hot and raw skin.

At least her hair had been dried by a nice woman with a Skill, perhaps the only friendly human she had met so far in this Mountain Cursed city, and it was dry and puffy around her face now, wild in a way she knew would tangle within hours.

She hadn't realised until An-jel came at her in the stupid bath with the stupid cloth and the stupid soap that nobody here had skin like hers, or hair like hers, or washed, apparently. They were all pale like they'd been crafted from snow, every single bloody one of them.

She slowly and silently worked through every swear she knew, and there were a lot of them. Every language had swear words, even the young one the Mud people spoke, and she was going to direct every one she knew towards An-jel, even the nonsensical ones.

You were formed from substandard clay, she thought silently, you are dry on the edges, you are veined with dirt and leaves, and you will explode when fired.

She thought back to the small man in the office, with his veins showing through his skin. He hadn't said anything about her skin, or about her taking the part off her sheet which was meant to say 'human'.

Maybe I look different because I came from a long way away? She knew that happened with kobolds, ones from other villages tended to differ in body shape.

My original people must really have been traders, to come to this stupid place, then, I wonder what happened to them?

It was something she had thought about occasionally over the years, lying half-asleep in the dark. It was a strange thought to have here in the bright light of day, abused and angry.

They would have understood me.

It was a stupid thought, and she knew it was even as she clung onto it. She didn't remember much about whoever they had been. Vague shapes, the impression of voices and colours, and not much else. Thinking about it too much made her chest hurt, so she did it only rarely.

She didn't even remember their language.

I have the Village and I have Feather-paw and I have Rat-tail, that's who I belong with, not whoever made me. Not whoever left me to die up there on the Peak. They understand me.

She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. Ahead of her An-jel was walking briskly.

She should stop thinking of the human with a kobold name, she was nothing like. They wouldn't have made her wash if she didn't want to, and they wouldn't have dragged her under the water and scrubbed her until her skin hurt and she had been dragged so far away from the shore that her feet no longer touched the bottom.

Why am I not leaving? I don't need to stay with her. I never asked her to pay for my class. I owe her nothing.

But I promised.

Jump-touch found herself slowing down, looking around through gritty eyes. They were in another new part of the city now, somewhere between the bathhouse and the Quarter House, but all her directional senses were screwed up here. The whole place was like living in a maze.

I promised.

She had. She had promised that she would pay back the cost of the class, and you couldn't back out of a promise. You couldn't give somebody your word and then go back on it the moment it suited you.

She closed her eyes, there in the middle of the street, and drew a deep breath in.

Ok, she told herself, the bath sucked, but it's over now. It's done with.

Nothing lasts forever. Let it go, it's time to move on. You don't need to carry that pain with you.

Maybe, she thought, you can find somebody where we're going who'll help with your hair, there must be humans with magic for that, right?

That was a comforting idea, and she clung to it like a log in a turbulent river as she scrubbed at her eyes, blinking in the light. Somebody who'd dedicated a whole skill to looking after hair would be really good at it. Like the woman who'd dried it in the baths. It had only taken her a moment and poof, everything was clean and dry. The human had even added some sort of magical scent, something floral she said would last for a few days.

It was already starting to get annoying, a constant presence in the back of her nose, but it had been a nice idea.

Ahead of her Angel glanced back, and Jump-touch hurried to catch up.

****

The Adventurers Guild, as Angel was calling it, was a squat building with a flat, overhanging roof and big windows, thrown open despite the rain. The front doors, also thrown open, looked like they were sized for the Big people, and were made of new, pale wood.

"I'm hesitating to leave you here alone," Angel sighed, "it feels like leaving a chicken in a fox house, but I have other things I need to do today." She gestured towards the open doors, "go in there, tell them you want to sign up and find a party, and that you need a room. They'll sort you out. I'll come back here this evening to see how you're doing. Tell them about your Skill, that should smooth everything over. I need to go talk to my bank."

Jump-touch nodded, unsure what a bank was, but she could do this, she was an adult now. She didn't need babysitting.

She made her way inside, as Angel turned and left.

The first thing she noticed about the interior of the building were the embers clinging to the ceiling, embedded in the wood. It gave the impression that the whole ceiling was a piece of wood pulled recently out of the fire, and it made her start for a moment upon entering, but after a stunned pause, she noticed that nobody else in there was panicking.

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Human magic was pretty neat. It looked like the building was on fire, but if it was, then it was a fire that'd been burning for so long that everyone here had grown way too casual about it.

She stepped out of the doorway as somebody pushed in behind her, still unused to these giant human spaces.

Compartmentalise.

The place was quiet at least, with a background hum of conversation and the street noise coming in from outside the window, but there was no shouting right now or banging of lamps, and she appreciated that.

The Adventurers Guild, on the inside, consisted of a large room with a wooden floor. There were wooden tables and chairs scattered throughout the room, arranged apparently at random, and there were a few cushions and padded sofas here and there. Along half of one wall was a long counter with stools in front, where if her nose told her right, food would be served, and extending perpendicular from that, along the back wall, was another counter, behind which a few humans were either chatting or shuffling bits of paper around.

There were only a few people in the room, a small group examining the wall on the opposite side to the serving-counter, and one or two lounging on the sofas, or maintaining their stuff.

Around the windows, on the wall behind her, there were built-in shelves, stretching from floor to ceiling and half-filled with battered-looking books, odd ornaments or hunting trophies, and a general assortment of junk. Humans were hoarders, she was learning. They were even more affected by greed than kobolds.

She looked at the long counter. There wasn't as much paper stacked on it as in the small man's office, but still quite a lot. That must be where she was to register.

Well, go register, then. You can do this Jump-touch, it's only more talking. You like talking to people!

The thought of 'more talking' made her head ache, but that wouldn't have stopped Ale-wharf, so it wasn't going to stop her. Be strong. Be assertive!

She put on her best straight back, adjusted her new clothing to smooth out the wrinkles, and marched towards the desk like she was meant to be here.

One of the humans, a man? caught her eye as she approached, and she felt her back curve back into its more natural shape. No, be strong and tall, don't shy away. They're only humans, you're human, this is fine.

"I'm supposed to register here," she said firmly in her best Resper, as she reached the desk. It hadn't looked so big from across the room, why was everything in this city built for Big people?! The surface of it was almost level with her shoulders.

The man blinked and then looked at her a second time, leaning over the desk to get a better look.

"Do your parents know you're here?"

What were parents?

'The people who birthed or raised you', supplied her skill. Oh, well in that case:

"Yes, they said I was old enough to get a job, and then they sent me here."

He looked at her for a long moment, then stood back up, looking around the room.

"Alright. Well, do you have a class yet?"

"I got one yesterday, and we registered it this morning. The man in the uh, Quarter House? He said it was a good one."

"Chapter House," he said, still looking around the room, trying to find somebody to help maybe?

Registering might be a complicated process for all she knew, requiring two people.

With a sigh he shrugged, giving up on finding whoever he was looking for and leaning back down on the desk, putting his weight on his elbows and one of his hands under his chin. "I don't know if you're old enough to read yet, but sure. Show me your book and I'll get all the forms filled out."

"Erik!" somebody admonished from somewhere behind him, a higher-pitched voice she was starting to think of as feminine.

"There you are, come help me with this!" he shouted back without looking, using his free hand to pull a pen out of its holder, tapping it gently on the edge of the desk to release the ink. He shouted at the hidden person again as he did so, "this kid says they're old enough to have a class, who am I to argue."

He tapped the pen a final time, before grabbing a piece of paper from a nearby stack. "Ok, show me your first page, please."

Jump-touch spent a moment tearing it out, as he scratched words onto the paper. She didn't feel the need to hide here, as she had with the shiny bald man in the office, that had all been Angel's idea, and Angel was stupid anyway. Plus, if she was reading the hierarchy of this strange place right, the city ran like the military, and that meant the man in the office gave orders to the one in the guild, so as long as she was registered with him, they couldn't kick her out.

This book belongs to:

[Jump-touch] || <>

[Level: 1]

[Cultural Background: Kobold]

[Class: Cultural Scholar] [Unique Variant]

2. Stats

She left her stats in, but they were still all zero.

3. Skills

[Pocket Zone]

4. Achievements [1]

[Leave Home]

"Huh," he looked it over, "you're an odd one, aren't you. Your age is missing?"

"I don't know my age," she shrugged. "The guy in the, uh-" she struggled to remember the name, "the Chapter House you said? He was okay with it."

He hummed again. "Alright, if you really did register then we should get a record of it some time this week. What did the man look like, do you know his name?"

"He was really small, with no hair? He had an office full of stuff.

Erik let out a high-pitched whistle through his teeth, and Jump-touch took a step back, impressed, he was the first human she had met so far who could actually hit a note.

"I thought he'd retired. I guess they couldn't dig him out. Okay," he tapped the pen again, frowned at it and then started rummaging around on the desk for another one, "if he's vetted you I'll call it good. We cross-reference with the Chapter House anyway, when our record keeper comes through."

He found another pen and spent a moment making sure it worked, "for future reference, you don't have to leave the first line on, or your, uh, [Background]?"

He sounded confused as he said it, but not confused in his actions, carefully tearing that line off the paper, turning it into glittering ash, leaving the rest intact. Huh, she hadn't known others could remove bits too.

"Your skill is good though, and I think I know of a team who'll appreciate you."

"Erik!" the same voice as before called out, and a moment later a woman with bright red hair, almost as fluffy and curly as her own, walked into view from somewhere behind him. "Are you signing up the literal child over here?"

"She has a class, Harmony" Eric retorted, standing up from his lean, "plus an achievement. The Stone doesn't give those out if somebody's incapable. Plus," he winked down at her for some reason, "the football signed her papers personally."

Harmony blinked, and then looked down at Jump-touch, "I thought he'd retired?"

"Apparently not," Erik scratched something else onto the paper with a flourish, "besides, she has an interesting Scholar class and a [Pocket Zone] skill, so we can sign her up as non-combat. Extra penalties if she comes back injured, we've done it before."

Harmony flattened her lips, before breaking her eye contact with Erik and looking down at Jump-touch.

"What's your name, kid?" she asked.

Was this… Was this the first time any human had asked her name? It must be, as she suddenly realised she didn't know how to say it in Resper.

"Jumptouch" she said after a moments thought, trying to smush it all together like humans did. It was less objectionable to her senses if she tried to take all meaning out of the individual words. Make it into sounds.

"Jumpuch?" said the woman frowning, squinting at whatever Erik had written. "Okay, well that's a fake name if ever I've heard one. What's the old man up to. We'll mark you down as Jump, and you can give us your real name when you feel comfortable."

Erik blinked, "I saw it on her sheet, you can't lie on your sheet, can you?"

Harmony shook her head, "the Stone's malleable about names, especially if you get it on the first registration," she reached over, took the pen and adjusted something on the paper. Beside it, Jump-touch's paper finally crumbled into glittering ash. "Most people just don't care enough to find out."

Erik took up the paper by the top and shook it to dry the ink, as Harmony beckoned to her to come around the end of the desk.

"You look like a little lost dog, peering up over the counter like that. What're we gonna do with you, eh."

She ducked under the end of the counter and advanced into the room with purpose, "come on, Team Nine has been looking for a fifth for a while now."