Our first destination for the squirrel quest brought us to the far off lands of right outside New Bay. I might have thought that Zeb could have already been there, but it didn’t seem she had successfully befriended a squirrel.

  “I don’t actually know why the two of us are here with you,” I admitted to Zeb. “You have to have been able to get here before, right?”

  “It is more difficult than you think. Few people want me riding in their car alone.” Instead of her usual enthusiasm, Zeb had a determined look. “I have come here previously with Ceira, but she rarely has free time. Even with her guidance, I have never been successful befriending a squirrel.”

  I nodded slowly. “That makes it far less likely that we actually have any point being here.”

  “I will be successful today! I know it!” Zeb said with grit. “I might need help from your magic, though.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think we have any magic that will help. We’ve got like, combat magic. And teleportation magic.”

  “And divination magic,” Midnight said helpfully.

  “Right. But I’m pretty sure Zeb can find a squirrel.”

  “I have already done so,” Zeb said, pointing with her nose and one paw aligned- both like and unlike how actual dogs were trained. “I merely need aid from your illusions. And your enhancements. With an enhanced mind, I should be able to finally be able to figure out their tricks!”

  Well… that did make sense at least. “I only have one illusion. You mean Disguise?”

  “Yes. Turn me into a squirrel. They will never know.”

  “Midnight, you cast Disguise. I’ll do Enhance Mind.”

  Neither spell was particularly expensive. A few moments later, Zeb was completely transformed in look.

  “Perfect. I will certainly be successful this time.”

  Then Zeb sprinted towards the nearest squirrel, barking.

  Midnight sighed. “She’s still dog sized.”

  “The barking doesn’t help. Why is she barking? Is she trying to speak squirrel?” I was pretty sure that wasn’t how she managed to snag either of her current companions. Actually, she’d pretty much defeated them in combat- or nearly the opposite, with Fluffy.

  The squirrel obviously dashed up a tree. And Zeb couldn’t follow after her, because she was in fact still a canine. Her eager barking soon grew tired. It wasn’t long before she stopped, then trod back towards us, defeated.

  “I thought for certain…” Zeb mumbled as she got close. “This was supposed to be the time.”

  “I’m not a squirrel,” I said. “But I feel like maybe you aren’t going about this right. Like the whole barking thing.”

  “I was telling him I wanted to be friends! But magic like.”

  “No you weren’t,” I said flatly. “You didn’t use any mana there. And even if you did, it probably wasn’t going to work. So here’s what we’re going to do. Midnight, cast Fly. I’ll cast Size Shift so you’re less intimidating. Then you’re going to carefully approach and use your actual skills. Okay?”

  “Uh, right,” Zeb nodded.

  I finished Size Shift before Midnight finished Fly. Then I gathered more mana. “You can go now,” I said. When Zeb turned around, I cast Slow.

  Midnight turned towards me, mouth partially open in a grin as Zeb ran off on the air… slowly. “Good plan.”

  “Zeb appears completely unable to constrain her enthusiasm. So I figured it would help.”

  It was quite funny seeing a slow motion squirrel sort of flying. The other squirrel wasn’t nearly as threatened by it. Until Zeb got close, of course. She did actually use some sort of magic, but the ability to speak with and potentially befriend animals wasn’t any sort of guarantee.

  The squirrel eventually ended up zipping around the tree when Zeb got too close, and she slowly chased for a bit until she realized it was time to give up and come back down.

  Slow ended about the time Zeb got back to us. “It thinks I’m a dog even though I look like this!”

  “Well, it did see you before,” I pointed out. “And it heard you barking. And you probably smell the same.” I looked to Midnight for that one. I was fairly certain Disguise didn’t have any effect on smell.

  “What he’s saying is that we should find a different one,” Midnight explained.

  “But that’s my favorite one!”

  “Is it because we saw it first?” I asked. “Because it looks just like a squirrel. Unless you’ve met that one before.”

  “Well… no. But its tail is so fluffy!”

  “That’s just how squirrels work,” I reminded Zeb. “The next squirrel will be like that too. Also, I have concerns about your plan.”

  “What do you mean? I promise I’ll take good care of him!”

  “I believe you,” I said. “But your ultimate goal is to create a Companion Bond, correct?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Friendships don’t really work in just one direction. I doubt it would work well if you tricked a squirrel into befriending you.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “But they’re afraid of dogs! And dog shaped things.”

  “That means it’s your job to make them not afraid.” I did notice that previously Zeb’s two companions were larger than her. Perhaps her style worked better that way. “And most squirrels aren’t going to be interested in a job as a super mercenary, even if they might like other parts of your plan.”

  “So you’re saying…” Zeb collapsed to the ground, “That I have to give up forever?” She whined pitifully.

  “Did I say that?” I looked at Midnight. “Did it sound like I was saying that?”

  Midnight shook his head. “What Turlough meant was that there are probably a million squirrels in this forest. You just have to find one of the ones that would want to leave and go fight bad guys with you.”

  “... Will there be a lot of those?”

  “There’s no way to find out unless you meet a bunch of squirrels,” Midnight said encouragingly.

  That’s why it was his fault that we were out in the forest until sundown. He was too encouraging.

  At least it wasn’t a waste of our time. Zeb should have been getting better at her skills… probably. Midnight and I didn’t throw so many spells at her, but we agreed that keeping her small was less intimidating. Sometimes she needed to fly to get within proper conversation distance, and she even learned to not try to get within sniffing range no matter how much she wanted to.

  I felt like Ceira should have been able to explain all that, but they might not have actually been out here for all that long. Or maybe Zeb forgot. Or Ceira was too busy watching her chase stuff around, because it was quite entertaining.

  “I thought that just one more and I would finally find the right squirrel,” Zeb commented. “Now it is very dark.”

  “We have light,” I said. “It’s fine.” Only one and a half of us really needed it anyway. “It might be a bit difficult to get a car out here, though.”

  “We’ll have to wait longer,” Midnight agreed.

  “Can’t you just teleport back?” Zeb said. “Or would that leave me here alone? I don’t want to be alone with the squirrels, they don’t even like me.”

  Spending the night out in the woods might actually be a good way to get the squirrels used to her presence, but Zeb was not a wild canine. She was a city based Bunvorixian. She might do alright in the wilderness with her companions, mostly because few things would be willing to take on a rust mole and a dire bat. But we could Teleport her with us.

  “Dimension Door isn’t far enough,” I explained. “And Teleport is imprecise. If we end up in the middle of the street or inside a building, it will be awkward.”

  “Oh. Doesn’t Extra have Teleport nodes? Couldn’t you end up there?”

  Now that she mentioned it… their facilities weren’t just for interdimensional travel. They were set up to be generally usable. It should be easier to end up there, but there was no guarantee. Gate was already quite precise in most circumstances, so that wasn’t a useful metric.

  “I guess we can try,” I said. “I haven’t done it from outside the city. But just in case we end up in the middle of the street, we should have Haste. And if we end up inside someone’s house… we’ll just Dimension Door out a window.”

  “I don’t think that’s the officially approved response,” Midnight said.

  Too bad. I didn’t want to explain it to people. And we needed to keep training our abilities.

  Plus I was tired and didn’t want to wait for a car to come all the way out here.

  Not that there was anything to worry about anyway. We made out preparations, cast Teleport- making sure to include all of us, obviously- and then we were inside Extra. They had plenty of stalls for unscheduled arrivals, so it was simple to walk out. It was good to know that even with some inaccuracy in the spell, it worked just fine. They did a good job making a place that worked for all sorts of teleportation methods. Maybe there was some sort of fundamental connection?

  I could probably benefit from learning about Celmothian teleportation, but I didn’t have the spare decades at the moment. So I had to go with surface level knowledge.

  “Well, here we are. I suppose we’ll be meeting up in the morning again?”

  “I’ll be staying with Ceira!” Zeb said excitedly. “Because transporting Fluffy and Miss Flutter is difficult.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” I nodded. Though we could easily take them here. It only cost 15 mana.

  -----

  “I’m surprised you didn’t get a bigger apartment,” I commented, seeing various figures packed into the limited space.

  “When would I have the time?” she said. “And usually I don’t have a giant bat in here. She’s lucky that I have a big window.”

  “Do your neighbors ever get annoyed? You have both a cat and a dog, after all.”

  “Bun and Cel are great,” Ceira said. “... I also leave the window open so they can jump in and out. They’re responsible enough. I’d leave the door open, but that invites other trouble.”

  “I feel like a villain wouldn’t care whether it was a door or window,” I said.

  “Not villains,” Ceira said. “Neighbors. Ms. Abel won’t stop talking, even when I tell her I have to get to someone who had their arm cut off.”

  “Well…” Midnight prompted. “Maybe she doesn’t believe you? You don’t dress like a doctor.”

  “I don’t even know if she hears me,” Ceira said. “Anyway, someone got their arm cut off so…”

  “How do you take care of these guys when you have to go heal people?”

  “Obviously they come with me,” Ceira shrugged. “The van is big enough for all of us. Though Miss Flutter… hopefully they got that bar installed today.”

  “They just let you bring animals with you?” Midnight asked.

  “Nobody lets me do anything. I do what I want. I’m important, you know. Also, they’re qualified guards which make it easier for the other guys.”

  I looked around. “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen any.”

  “Good. That means it’s working.”

  “Should I know what or how…?”

  Ceira tilted her head. “Not if you don’t have a need.”

  “Then ignorant I shall remain.” I paused for a moment. “You really are important, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You don’t mind that I might make you less important.”

  She grabbed the front of my jacket. “Please do. I have no free time.”

  “If you talk to Extra, I can do it really fast,” I pointed out. “But mostly it’s a search for people who randomly ended up as druids instead of more modern classes.”

  Ceira nodded slowly. “You have a very good point there.”

  “It won’t be nobody,” I said. “But it’s difficult for people to confirm what class they are, without the full system. Some people might not even know they have portal powers, since they’d have to randomly try to do something magic and learn it naturally. Though that seems more common immediately after the incidents in question.”

  Maybe we could get Doctor Doomsday to cause another portal incident. Would that be good? Probably not. But if very few people died and we got some druids, they could be trained to the point they could cast Regenerate and then fix everything.

  Except we couldn’t even necessarily know what level they were without bringing them back to my old world. And the travel restrictions were getting annoying. Portal powers should probably always work, though, since that was just ‘normal’.

  “Healing people is good,” Zeb said. “So you go do that while I befriend squirrels.”

  How optimistic of her, to make that plural.