As it turned out, finding clothes was going to be, difficult. Not at the store. That would probably be easy. Painful, but easy. No, it was getting me presentable enough to even take the store that was the issue.

Hypothetically, this wouldn't have been too big of an issue. I was about Chika's height, a bit taller, but that would normally not be a major issue.

If we were men.

Given how I was not in my original body, that meant other things had to be accounted for.

And given how even Chika's casual clothing ware didn't get easier going than dresses? Safe to say, there were some issues.

"These are going to pop out of the dress," I shifted uncomfortably. The dress felt tight around my chest, and it looked tight, too. I was probably one upward motion away from an escape attempt. "Are you sure you don't just have an oversized shirt of some kind?"

Or just a shirt.

"It wouldn't look good on you, though," Chika echoed the same excuse again. "Try this."

I looked at the article on clothing. It looked a bit more sensible.

"Chika, I'm not going to look good in dresses made for you," I bit back at what I wanted to say. I seriously was getting annoyed by this. Was she doing this on purpose? Because the sooner we left, the sooner we'd be able to get back.

Sure, she was trying her best, and I doubted Vert's clothes would serve any better. We'd be running into the exact opposite problem.

But one of them at least had to have had something, even if that thing was simply an oversized shirt.

I was getting pretty good at worming my way into these, though. Hopefully, they had a little thing called pants once we got to the store. It wouldn't be the end of the world, but.

Still wouldn't like it coming to that, though.

I shifted, finally adjusting the last bit of the dress.

It still felt tight, but not as tight as all the previous dresses had been. It covered most of my skin, leaving my arms exposed with two straps over the shoulders. The dress itself went to just below the knee. I took a look in the mirror, gazing at the green and black dress. A combination of lighter shades compliments the outer layer of dark green with a few black bands that ran in intricate patterns across the fabric. Then there was the fact it allowed me to see that the feeling of a breeze on my naval hadn't been my imagination after all. There was a cutout portion centered right on it, in the shape of a diamond, a band of black fabric outlining the feature.

Turning around, just to double check, I found that more of my back was revealed, exposing my shoulder blades, but nothing that would make me turn aside the clothing out of hand.

It wasn't perfect, but it didn't have any risk of malfunction or indecent exposure.

I turned back around, looking a bit more closely. Honestly, this seemed a bit fancier, but I'd take it at this point. Wait. Is that.

I gently felt my skin through the cloth.

Did? Did I have abs?

How?

Shaking my head, I opened the door. Chika stood nearby, two piles of dresses surrounding her.

"It looks good. How does it feel?" She said, looking me up and down.

"Still a bit tight around the chest," I watched her make a face. Whether it was jealousy or something else I couldn't tell. "But it doesn't feel like I'm going to have a prison break in this."

"Prison? Break?" Chika gave me an odd look, as I gestured towards the pile of dresses I already tried on.

"I don't have to worry about my chest jumping over the fence," she looked down at the pile of dresses I was pointing towards. Her eyes seemed to widen briefly.

"Sorry, I didn't notice," she rubbed her head awkwardly, seeming to apologize.

But was she?

Unlike Vert, Chika seemed a bit more distant. Cold? Cold was a better word for it. Like I was stepping on her toes somehow.

Were Vert and her in a relationship of some kind? She had called Vert darling, after all. Maybe I was reading a bit too into it. Chika did make it sound like they had different rooms as well, which sounded like a hard no, but maybe they liked having their own private rooms?

It would explain why Chika was so cold. I was taking away time Vert's attention was on her. And she was jealous because of that?

But I could just as easily be reading more into the situation than I should be. I could ask for clarification, but that might come across as rude, and if I was wrong, I might just make the situation worse.

Plus, it hadn't hurt anything, in the long run.

"It's fine," I shrugged, grabbing one of the piles of clothes on the floor. Chika gave me a bit of an odd look. "What? It's not like we can just leave them here, and me helping speeds things along."

"Alright, but don't go into my room without permission, alright?" I nodded at the request. It wasn't like I was going to violate her privacy for no reason.

"I haven't cleaned it up in a bit," I once again nodded at her explanation.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The elevator was a smooth ride. I hadn't even noticed we had been going down floors if I hadn't been keeping an eye on the light screen.

But nothing, and I do mean, nothing, could have prepared me for what I saw when I came out of the elevator. People. Lots of people. This wasn't some type of apartment building, but rather one with drastically more importance. Numerous people ran around, with phones and briefcases in their hands, some others with large stacks of paper.

Then there were the guards. Several of them.

How did I know they were guards?

Well, it's hard to imagine what armed people in uniform would otherwise be. Soldiers also came to mind, but maybe? Given the monsters that lived not too far from the city, either could be just as valid of an answer as the other.

This, wasn't an apartment, was it? This was something, more. You didn't have this many people here, didn't post this many guards at a place, unless either everything went to pot, or my original assumptions about this place were way off.

Go figure.

I did my best to stick close to Chika, not wanting to get lost in the crowd of people. We didn't have any other ways to communicate with one another, and I refused to partake in the 'lost child routine' as a matter of principle. I may not have fully grown anymore, but that didn't matter.

"Oracle Chika?" I turned my head to the sound of those words. Oracle? What type of title was that?

Oh, I hoped that wasn't the same level of title as the Oracle of Delphi or anything similar.

Two figures were approaching. A woman in the same uniform as many of the other guards and a, maid?

I blinked, thinking that maybe my sleep hadn't been good, but no, there was an honest-to-goodness maid here. It was possible that she might not be, her outfit didn't exactly look the part, beyond the little bonnet perched atop her red hair. Of course, given the outfit Chika seemed to wear on the regular, I might just have to recalibrate what passed off as professional clothes.

I decided to keep my eyes elsewhere, for the time being. Her outfit, well, it didn't leave much in the way of guesswork, I suppose you could say. She was attractive, but then again, it wasn't like Chika wasn't, either.

Everyone I'd met so far had been conventionally attractive. I mean, maybe not the guard, but having at least half their face covered prevented that from being a fair comparison.

Wait a minute. I scanned the room again, something finally clicking into place. Most of the people here were women. Sure, there was the occasional bit of stubble off the chin of a guard or one of the many passers-by, and there were probably a few feminine guys as well, but even factoring in the latter group?

Looking at a five-to-one ratio. At least. Now that was hardly a bad thing, but statistically? Definitely abnormal by Earth standards, but I wasn't on Earth anymore, was I?

"Cave, I'm assuming you have news?" Chika asked, reaching a level of surreal when it wasn't the guard who answered, but rather the presumed maid.

"We intercepted another ASIC shipment earlier today," Cave's voice was completely flat, surprising me. I'd stop questioning the names of people already. By this point, I shouldn't be surprised. "Outside of the usual counterfeit, we found something interesting."

"How interesting?" Chika's voice was lower, likely to disguise it from unwanted eavesdropping. I took a few steps back, hoping not to hear anything more. This was military, police, foreign government stuff where my nose had no business being anywhere near.

I wasn't close enough to make out Cave's response, but Chika pinching her brow was not a good sign.

"Okay, I'll set you up, but it might take a while. Vert's busy trying to iron out her situation, which should just be more paperwork and review time for it than much else," Chika shook her head. I mean, Bureaucracy was a pain, but it often proved to be a necessary one.

"Understandable. Planeptune's Oracle is known for being meticulous even in the best of times," Cave simply nodded. "Given the strangeness of this case, I'd imagine she'd be especially thorough."

Chills went up and down my spine as Cave turned her gaze towards me. I didn't want to look away as if it would confirm some hidden suspicion. But her gaze made me feel as if I was being dipped into an ice bath and being put into a hot shower.

At the same time.

A few seconds went by, even if they felt as if it was a few minutes, before Cave turned away, heading towards the elevator.

My breath exited my throat in an uneasy rattle.

Chika let out a bit of a snicker.

"Sorry about Cave. She's, we've been under a lot of stress as of late," she managed, straightening her face back up.

Something to do with the ASIC I would imagine. It sounded like some type of smuggling organization. Criminal at least. Crime existing even in a nation that appeared this advanced shouldn't be a surprise.

But they had to be pretty large to cause this much of a fuss.

"I can tell," I muttered, still working out the chills from my spine.

"Well then, shall we be off?"

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"You aren't a fan of dresses, are you?" Chika gazed at me as I exited the changing room.

"My fashion sense has always been the first pair of pants and shirt that matches the weather," I said, not exaggerating one bit.

Clothing was hard. Looking fancy was hard. Shirt and jeans? Piece of cake.

Though they didn't have much in the way of jeans, they did have a few things like jeans. Which was good enough for me.

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Most of the clothes were a combination of green, black, and white. Sometimes a simple solid coloring, or a mixture in several different ways. The letter X was the most common symbol of the lot.

Which was esthetically pleasing, the colors did tend to work well in tandem with one another. But the X tickled at the back of my mind. It seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite place the iconography.

I'd still like something with a bit of blue. It was my favorite color, a nice, cool, calming color.

But I was still pleased with what I'd collected.

"Fair, I suppose," Chika shrugged. "Though this is significantly less painful than the fitting."

"I thought we swore to never talk about that," I blushed at the memory.

"You swore to never talk about it again. I took no such oath," Chika had a smug expression on her face, as I scowled slightly. I just wanted to put that embarrassing moment behind me. It had been far from my finest moment.

It was necessary, and it felt much more comfortable than leaving things as they were, but I still hadn't mentally prepared myself for, well, that.

"Regardless, if you don't want to talk about it," Chika hummed, looking at the small collection of clothes. It would be enough to last me a week, which was good enough by my standards. "But are you sure that's all you want?"

"I can just wash them every week," I shrugged. "I'm your guest for the time being. I'm certainly not trying to break the bank or anything."

Chika gave me a look as if to imply my statement was beyond stupid. If my developing understanding of the situation was correct, she probably made more in a month than I did in a year. And that was likely on the lower end of things.

But the point remained. Just because she had money to burn, didn't mean it was an invitation. That would be rude. Not to mention, she probably had her hobbies to spend money on.

"Alright, if that's what you're happy with," Chika shook her head. "I should introduce you to IF if you're around for long enough. You'd probably get along with her pretty well."

If? There was a person who was named If? Or was it IF?

What difference would the second caps even make? Or how was I even able to tell that from just spoken word?

"That would be nice," I offered, having no idea what else to say.

"We should be able to stop by the Guild headquarters after this," Chika nodded as I made my way to the cart. "Get that nipped in the bud while we're out and about."

"The guild?" I heard it mentioned by Vert beforehand. But I still had no idea what exactly it was. It sounded like something out of an RPG game.

"Right, you probably don't have something like that in your world," Chika said which was essentially becoming the most common thing I'd probably hear for the next while now.

"It's effectively a job board of sorts, where people can post jobs, either killing monsters or finding and collecting items," Chika continued as we made our way through the store.

"So it's like a quest board from an RPG game," I nodded. It was nice for that to be a bit more straightforward.

"Some games were inspired by the system, yes," Chika hummed. Then she paused. "Of course, the same isn't true in your world."

"I can see conveince in-game mechanics being reflected when put in a real-life scenario," I shrugged. Centralization and order were fairly important, so having everything, or a lot of something in one place could be a good thing.

But I couldn't help the shutter going down my spine. Sure, I didn't want to freeload, far from it. But going out again? Where the monsters were?

"Don't worry about it. If you go out, you'll have Vert or me to help you if you go out to hunt monsters," Chika picked up on my fears. "This is more to get you at least some form of identification than anything else. Though you do get a free weapon if you don't already have one."

I was following her words right up until the last sentence. Like, she was still speaking the same language, but the words might as well be gibberish.

"What?" I barely managed to get out, almost coming to a stop. Did I process that correctly? Was there a process I was just getting speedrun through because it was the most convenient? Because that sounded like it'd start getting messy pretty quickly otherwise.

"I mean, unless that stuffed animal of yours is it, but I kind of doubt it," Chika continued.

"Fuzzy?" I still wasn't processing the situation completely. "I've had him since I could barely walk upright by myself."

"Really? He's in pretty good shape to have been in your possession for that long."

Chika, you had no idea.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Neither had I. I stared down at the card in my hand glumly. Most people would consider de-aging a near decade a blessing of the highest order.

I was not one of them. The fact the card spat out the age of sixteen rankled. Sure, I looked the part, but, still bitter. It's not every day you get knocked down from having adult-level freedom to having close to adult-level independence.

That's what annoyed me most of all. It was near an adult. If I had been knocked back in age to that of a child, I wouldn't be so bitter.

Okay, I probably would still be bitter, but for different reasons.

Still, it was strange, looking at my new face. I was considered E-rank, and a level one, to boot. Not like that was a surprise, but when I tapped it, I got a full-on stat sheet.

A stat sheet! What type of RPG ass was this?

That alone compelled me to want to look at it in depth. I mean, how could I not? As weird as it was, I had to be curious about the whole thing.

"This is the training area!" Chika threw the doors wide open. Numerous targets filled the room. Not the standard training dummies made of straw, or the targets. They had teched this place out!

It looked like they had holograms!

"Feel free to try your hand with whatever you want," Chika gestured towards the numerous weapons lining the walls.

It was a whole armory's worth of equipment. But strangely, most of it didn't look modern. The number of firearms was quite small.

Why? If they had put most of their civilization points into things like social programs over weapons technology? But if that was the case, why did the firearms look more advanced?

Well, looks may have been the answer, as I swung the first weapon I had gotten my hands on, a simple wooden sword. It looked like it was metal, but that wasn't the case.

Though I doubted these were simply painted muskets.

I gave it a few overhand swings, roughly remembering the practice I used to have back when I did martial arts. The movements were familiar to me, but they just didn't feel, right.

I put the weapon back on the rack, before pulling up the stat sheet again. Strength was self-explanatory, as was intelligence. But what was agility? Was it like in D&D or Dark Souls, just that it's being used as a replacement for dexterity? Or did it mean something else?

It had to be some type of range damage scaling stat, right?

Well, given how agility was one of my lowest stats, ranged combat wasn't in my future, one way or another.

So what was left? Well, just about everything else. Strength may have been my strongest stat, but intelligence, which had to be the magic stat, was hypothetically respectable. Keyword hypothetically. I really had no idea what constituted a good stat or not. I merely had my stats to go off of.

Plus, the feeling I got from the staff was like I was stepping on someone's toes. I may have had the capacity for magic, and as cool as that was, I had not a single clue on how that worked.

Wait? Magic? This place had sci-fi tech and magic?

That's just not fair.

Axe's felt fine, and so did hammers, but they didn't give me a sense of, well, being right. Honestly, I had no idea what I was looking for at this point. I could have just grabbed any weapon laying around, and called it a day.

But I hadn't.

The spear felt simple, it was a decent weapon after all. But it felt too light in my hands, and it wasn't like I could simply find a bigger one. Halberds were more or less the same, even if the bulky feeling was about as close to right as I had gotten thus far. So, where big chunky weapons on the ticket?

As it turned out no. Greatswords were a bust, as was just about everything else. Chika started to get worried as I continued to try weapons, only to put them back in place after a few swings. Nothing was feeling right.

Why? Why was nothing feeling right?

Then I spotted something in the corner. It looked like a bow, which should have been something that scaled with one of my worst stats.

But I'd tried just about damn near everything else, so I had to do something!

Gripping the top, I pulled it out of the pile of what had to be discarded or simply other people being sloppy, yanking it free.

It was only then I realized how badly I misjudged the size of it. This wasn't a bow, this was a great bow, one straight out of the Dark Souls line of games. Well, and Elden Ring, but still a Fromsoft title. Some genetic code is all up in there, but I don't know if Siekro or Demon Souls' had such weapons. The latter, maybe, but it would feel out of place in the former.

"That's, unique," Chika offered, as I managed to grab a small supply of test arrows.

"It's a great bow. Like those silver knight archers in Anor Londo, from Dark Souls," I offered, not caring how that statement explained literally nothing.

Alright, if I remember these right, I let one end stay on the ground, as I load an arrow. Keep my hand steady, as I pulled back on the bowstring. My arm strained at the force necessary to pull the bowstring all the way back, but the arrow slide into position.

Release.

The bowstring cracked like thunder, sending the wooden arrow through the air, hurtling towards the target. The thunk the arrow made as it found it's mark, not dead center, but still, a respectable shot was music to my ears.

"I like this one," I said, as Chika nodded, pulling out a phone-like device. Taking the moment to further mess around before Chika finalized things, I pulled back on the bowstring once again, assuming a firing position.

But before I decided to fire again, I paused, looking down.

That was going to be a problem. I waited until she got off the phone.

"I think we might have to stop by the store again," I said, turning around, but holding the pose. Chika opened her mouth as if to ask why, before noting how I was standing. Her eyes flickered from the bowstring to my chest, back to my bowstring.

"That can be arranged."