Nirou wasn’t sure if he would even be able to catch up to Laska at all, as running back through the jungle a second time left him wheezing and heaving for air. If Laska got too far away, that would be it. And she’d be dealing with the Tiger Beastman alone. Luckily, Nirou’s worries turned out to be moot. Laska had stalled just a bit further ahead, unsure of what direction to go in.

“I lost sight of her.” Laska explained with just one brief statement as she saw Nirou approach. She didn’t stop looking though, and combed the jungle floor looking for the clue she needed. Eventually she found it, a meager drop of blood on the ground. It gave her a vague direction to head in, but not much more.

“I don’t have any experience in tracking, I’m afraid. I’m no hunter.” she admitted. “Against a creature skilled in staying hidden, we may be outmatched. All we can do is keep our eyes peeled for disturbances.”

Nirou could see the disappointment evident in Laska’s face. Disappointment in herself, naturally. The fact that she had stormed off in pursuit of her target as soon as she could should have meant that she could handle it. But her own lack of skill in this area had become clear. Now her quick reflexes looked more presumptuous than anything. She was prepared to tough it out however, and made to move again quickly.

Nirou wasn’t going to just leave her to potentially fail, though. Not since he could do something about it. That little drop of blood was the key. Sticking his arm out as if it was a dowsing rod, Nirou started to feel out for blood to pick up off the ground. This whole plan depended on nothing else around here bleeding too recently, but it was the best option he had.

As Nirou lifted the first drop of blood that they already found up into the air, he could feel himself exerting force onto it with his ability. Even if he wasn’t able to see it, he would be able to know that it was there just from the act of trying to move it. Any other further drops of blood would be the same. He reached out farther with his power, trying to lift any blood that happened to be nearby. If this worked, then even a few intermittent drops of blood would be a trail leading the duo right to their target.

Nearby, Nirou was able to feel the blood from some small animals that were in hiding. But comparing the feeling with moving the freely dropped blood was a world of difference. The blood inside a creature was already in motion, held inside by its body and resistant to being moved. The distinction in the sensation actually made it even easier for Nirou to pick out the free blood on the ground, and he soon found the next drop that he had been searching for. He ran over to the spot as he lifted the blood into the air.

“Nirou, you’ve done it!” Laska exclaimed as she saw what her companion was doing, running over to join him. “Now we’ll have no trouble following her. You know, the thought of having you try this crossed my mind. However I was still debating whether it would be reasonable to expect it of you yet.”

“But you’ve put my worries to rest.” Laska praised Nirou with a smile. “I need to stop doubting you, you’ve continued to prove yourself capable.”

It felt nice to get praised by her, but Nirou became nervous for that same reason. He had experience letting people down, so it was impossible not to imagine that maybe it’d be better not to get their hopes up in the first place. But there was nothing he could do about that now, the task at hand needed doing and he could do it. So he continued.

Taking the blood he had found with him through the air as a reference, Nirou kept walking through the jungle with his blessing actively feeling things out. Every once in a while he would find another bit of blood and add it to the little floating glob he had going, and over time a clearer path emerged so that there was less guesswork about which direction the next blood drop might be in. Their target seemed to be slowing down. It was still a very long trek however, taking them all the way down a route they had actually travelled the day prior. Eventually the two of them emerged at the edge of the ravine.

Here, they finally caught up to the Tiger Beastman. She was curled up right on the edge with her legs hanging slightly off. There was a larger patch of blood on the ground there correlating to the place on her stomach that she was holding pressure on with one of her hands. Or paws, anyway. Making a quick guess, Nirou supposed that she tried to climb down the cliff face to hide herself but had lost too much blood to leave her wound unheld as she climbed. They had probably just been able to catch up to her before she could regain her strength from the attempt enough to run again.

The Tiger Beastman noticed the duo emerge from the trees, but winced while trying to get up. It was too late to run now. The two of them were finally face to face with their target, and she even seemed to be at their mercy. A sudden violent outburst was possible, but they could afford to keep enough distance to avoid even that. Nirou wasn’t sure what to do now, though. What did Laska even want to do? He looked to her to try and catch a hint, but she also seemed to still be thinking it over.

While considering her options, Laska glanced at the now sizable floating ball of blood Nirou had brought with him. Then she glanced at the wound on the Tiger’s stomach. “Nirou, can you stem her bleeding from here?” she asked. Regardless of what her ultimate plan was, it didn’t involve letting this Beastman simply die here. Not after everything she heard had piqued her interest.

“Uhh, I don’t think so.” Nirou admitted. “It took a while to figure out how to do it on myself, and I could only do it because it’s my own body. I have to keep the blood from getting out but let it keep circulating, and also keep it from bleeding internally which is actually the hardest part. Even if I were to try it on somebody else, I’m pretty sure I’d need to be in direct contact with them. And well, I don’t know if that’s a good idea here.”

“We have no way to be sure she won’t lash out if you approach. It would only make sense for her to expect the worst in a scenario like this, it’s just not safe to take the risk.” Laska sighed, at a total loss. “If we wait for her to lose consciousness, it may be too late to save her.”

Nirou had watched the Tiger closely as he and Laska had been speaking, and she seemed to be making a great effort not only to keep her blood in and stay conscious but to look back and forth to each of the two of them as they spoke in turn. Paying very close attention to what was happening. The Beastman was far from just resigning herself to fate, at least. Normally that would put Nirou even more on edge about trying to get close.

But the Tiger then made a few growling noises to herself with her head tucked in towards the ground before coughing a few times, followed by some deep breaths. She then lifted her head back up to face Nirou and Laska with a look that seemed as determined as one could expect to glean from a tiger’s expression.

“I won’t hurt you. I promise.” The words came from the Beastman’s mouth very slowly and deliberately, and Nirou was completely caught off guard. He had to look around to make sure it hadn’t come from someone else, but the only person around was Laska and she was still looking puzzled in the Tiger’s direction. As he looked back to the Beastman, Nirou could see that his reaction had put the faintest bit of hope in her eyes. As if she was expecting something to happen that she had been longing for.

“Did… did you just use Firstspeech?” Nirou asked right out to the Beastman. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Laska suddenly turn to look at him in confusion. But the Tiger’s reaction was even more drastic, as tears started to well up in her eyes and she let out a low whine before covering her face to keep herself together.

“It’s been so long… I spent years listening to humans talk, but even after practicing so hard, no one could understand me…” The words should have been muffled given the Tiger’s posture, but Nirou could hear everything as clear as day. Laska was holding her ear in the direction of the Beastman and listening as hard as she could, but her expression gave away that she wasn’t picking up any of it. Nirou was once again stunned by the actual effectiveness of the automatic translation that came built in with his summoning. It seemed that even if someone was physically incapable of making the correct sounds, merely the attempt was enough to count.

“Nirou, what did she say? How did she learn Firstspeech?” Laska asked, having already accepted that her companion would have to interpret. “And hurry up and treat her wound, we can’t get any answers if she passes out.”

Laska was suddenly impatient enough to insist that Nirou approach while disregarding the safety concerns from before. Sure the Tiger said she wouldn’t hurt him, but Laska didn’t know that for certain. At best she was only guessing. That was the kind of thing he had been worrying about getting them in trouble. Situations like these seemed to bring out her recklessness. But he supposed he didn’t have time to dwell on that now.

Nirou slowly approached the Tiger Beastman, who made the effort to at least inch a comfortable distance away from the edge of the cliff. He kneeled down next to her, still slightly perturbed by the experience. Not only was he going to be trying to stop someone’s bleeding, that person was a giant carnivorous cat. All he could do was hope his nerves carried him through. The Beastman moved her arm out from in front of her wound, and Nirou instantly got queasy. That was a lot of blood. The white fur of her stomach was dyed red around the spot where she was cut, which meant it took a minute for Nirou to figure out what he was looking at. His own stomach was turning just doing so however, so after getting his bearings he placed his hands on the Tiger and then kept his eyes off from that point on.

With his hands in contact as a point of reference, he could count on his blessing to manage the rest. While he couldn’t be nearly as precise as he could with his own body’s blood flow, the basic concept stayed the same. Blood was supposed to go in a certain direction continuously, which Nirou could pick up from the feeling of the movement of the blood in the rest of the body even if he didn’t have any knowledge on the biology of Beastmen. As long as he kept the blood moving in that direction, things should work out. Though the biggest problem was as he mentioned before, internal bleeding. Just shoving a whole bunch of blood in a direction without a care was not going to solve anything. Figuring it was better to play it safe, Nirou only directed as much blood as he was sure he could accurately get into the main affected arteries and veins. The rest he drew out of the body entirely, so at least he wouldn’t personally be making things any worse.

He eventually reached a point where he didn’t have to focus quite so hard, and he realized he never answered Laska’s question about what his impromptu patient said. While keeping most of his attention on first aid, he spared a bit to converse. Starting with responding to his companion. “She promised that she wouldn’t hurt me. Then when I responded to her, she mentioned listening to humans and practicing.” He turned to look directly at the Beastman, who was in awe at her blood being moved in such an incredible way. “Could you explain what you meant? How exactly did you manage to learn Firstspeech?”

The Tiger’s expressions were a bit hard to read, but she seemed quite unnerved at having her blood moved around inside her body. Not that Nirou could blame her. He let her have a few moments to compose herself before answering.

“I’ve lived on this island my whole life. I was born here.” The Beastman begins to tell her story, which prompts Nirou to repeat it as she speaks for the benefit of Laska. And also so he wouldn’t have to paraphrase later. “The only person I had ever been able to speak with was my mother, before she passed away a few months ago. But I had always been curious about humans, so I hid away to watch and listen to them. That’s how I spent most of my childhood. Every day I would go out and look for humans to observe, then find the closest spot I could so I could hear what they said. I dreamed of being able to talk with them one day, and spent all those years trying to learn their language…”

The Tiger paused for a bit, either catching her breath from the strain of speaking with her wound or choking up from the impact of the situation she found herself in. Or both. For Nirou’s part, he was just floored that someone managed to learn a language in such a way. No written material, no way to get feedback at all, just a mountain of listening material with very little context given that it was all apparently just from people walking out in the jungle. He couldn’t even fathom the sheer dedication to a single goal it would take to spend years on the task with no results at all. Beyond just the miracle of him being here with the means to understand her, it was a second simultaneous miracle that she had learned enough for this method to work given the circumstances. A fact seemingly not lost on any person here.

“Astounding! God must truly be fickle in doling out our fates, the chance of our meeting like this could scarcely be believed.” Laska exclaimed her response to the story Nirou had relayed for her, before attempting to speak to the Tiger herself. “There’s sure to have never been another case like this, where all the pieces have fallen in place to allow for communication between a human and a Beastman. Please forgive me for getting so excited over all this while you lie there wounded, but you no doubt agree that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. I’m happier than you could know.” the Beastman insisted, through intermittent winces of pain. “The second and third people to ever speak with me were those two Beastmen from before. They wanted me to join them in killing humans, but I refused. So they decided to have fun killing me slowly. I would have been dead already if they really wanted. I was really thinking things were hopeless when I was on the ground back there. That all my efforts had been wasted. That the first time I met people I could talk to besides my mother, those people would kill me. I ran on instinct when you all showed up, but to think I was running away from a human who could understand me…”

Once again, the Tiger got a bit overwhelmed with emotion. Nirou could understand, but also knew that it probably was not doing her any favors in her current state. She would have a better shot at clotting her wounds if she could keep her heart rate calm. He’d have to try and steer her toward topics that didn’t get her so worked up.

“By the way, my name is Nirou. And that’s Laska.” Nirou took the initiative to introduce the both of them this time, given he was the actual point of communication here. If not now, when? “What’s your name?”

“My name is…” after a brief pause, the Tiger went on to make a low growling sound . The Beastman looked a bit disheartenedly at Nirou and Laska’s expressions as they tried to reason out how they could possibly replicate the noise, to no avail. “It’s… probably not possible for a human to say.”

Nirou couldn’t even begin to attempt to spell what he’d just heard. “That’s kind of just tiger sounds, so we probably can’t call you that.” Nirou stated, partially distracted by having to keep up with the blood work. After realizing how rude he had just been, he tried to make up for it by coming up with a compromise. He picked out a sound he thought he heard in the Tiger’s name and made an offer. “What if we called you Gao? Like, as a nickname. Laska here is already using a nickname too, so that should be fine, right?”

“Gao?” The sound that the Tiger made was at least recognizable to Nirou despite not being something that was translated for him, which meant that it could function as a name. Even Laska looked a bit excited to be able to pick up some of the conversation herself, though it was just that single word. “Okay. I’ll be Gao then. It’s nice to meet you.”

Gao seemed to be straining herself less to talk now, a sign that Nirou was making progress. He could feel a lot of the areas that got cut were clotting over the wound now, and it only made things easier for him as it went. Less blood to worry about. It was a good thing too, because he wasn’t sure just how long he’d be able to keep this together. Handling this was way more stressful than treating Laska when they first met, and it even put that time with the bandits to shame. He briefly wondered whether being more stressed out while saving somebody than while killing somebody was a bad thing, but now wasn’t the time to get distracted with stuff like that.

“I think you’ll be okay now if we patch you up. Your blood seems to all be going to the right places now.” Nirou assessed Gao’s state after a few more minutes of close attention. “The cut was wide, but not too deep. That’s pretty lucky. If your internal organs got cut, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

“Thank you so much, Nirou.” Gao held back tears as Nirou started to wrap some free cloth they had on hand around the Beastman’s torso. “For treating me, but also for being here to talk to me. Would you.. be my friend? Maybe it’s strange to ask right now, but I always wanted to ask the human children to be my friends. I swore that I would if any of them ever understood me. Oh, and Laska too! Will you also be my friend?”

Nirou wasn’t the type to just straight up ask people to be his friend, but he could understand the desire at least. He was always a pretty lonely guy himself, but nothing close to what Gao had endured for her whole life. However, as much as he wanted to for her sake, he couldn’t just up and answer yes immediately. He had no idea what was even going to happen from here, and whether the situation they’d find themselves in would allow for that. Beyond that excuse of course, was the fact that he just wasn’t very good at judging friendship. He didn’t even know if he and Laska actually qualified as friends. He didn’t have to mull over it too much though, as once he relayed Gao’s question to Laska she did the answering for both of them.

“Of course we’ll be your friends, Gao.” Laska stated without a moment’s hesitation. “We’re the first ever humans to befriend a Beastman, how incredible! There’s so much we can learn from each other, I’m sure. And there’s one thing on the top of my list, actually.”

Laska glanced back toward the floating blood puddle that Nirou had been suspending this whole time. It was even way bigger than before on account of Nirou adding the blood he couldn’t keep from leaking while treating Gao. Nirou himself wasn’t sure why he had kept all the blood in the air, but it was probably some subconscious thing about letting blood get contaminated or something. Even though he never planned to use the blood again or anything like that.

“Gao, that power to move blood that Nirou is using is called a blessing.” Laska explained. Nirou at once started worrying about the laws the country had about not telling anyone about tributes, but the situation they were in was already probably one they couldn’t let anyone know about. So this most likely couldn’t hurt them any worse. “He got it by making a tribute with his own blood. Many humans have made tributes this way.”

“Tribute?” Gao took a moment to say the word. It seemed to be one that she had almost never heard in all her years of listening in. It looked like this far out the secret wasn’t well known, if at all. So the villagers wouldn’t have much cause to say it. “I had heard about humans with strange abilities from my mother a long time ago.”

“Both Nirou and I have wondered before whether it is truly just humans that can receive gifts through tribute. Why not also Beastmen?” Laska made a clear reference to the time Nirou got a priest particularly angry with that question. He certainly wasn’t expecting to get an answer so soon when he brought it up, but Laska was not one to let a chance slip. “When one makes a tribute, they make a certain symbol out of their own blood, place their hand below it, and recite a certain phrase.”

“The only thing holding a Beastman back from trying seemed to be that the incantation needed to be made in Firstspeech.” Laska continued with further explanations of context that Nirou wasn’t entirely sure she was making for the benefit of her listener. She seemed more excited to have made the conclusions than she was to be conveying them. “But Nirou’s translation is able to work for you, Gao. Nirou can’t actually use or understand Firstspeech, it’s automatically translated for him as part of the spell that summoned him here. Logically, we should be able to deduce that his translation recognizing your Firstspeech means that you should also be able to make the incantation as well. It is part of the same system, after all.”

Gao was scrunching up her face a bit from focusing, trying to follow everything Laska was saying. A lot of the words used were probably going over her head, and that’s before considering her comprehension of the actual content. But she seemed to understand enough to get the idea, and made the next logical step herself.

“So you want me to do this tribute, too? To see if I can get a strange power as well?” Gao asked with both skepticism and curiosity in her tone. “I kind of want to try it. Will anything bad happen if it doesn’t work? Giving up my blood sounds like it could be a bad thing.”

“The blood will simply vanish, and we can use this blood here outside your body already. So there’s nothing to worry about.” Laska assured her new friend after Nirou relayed the concern. “All we need is for Nirou to arrange this blood in a certain way, then you hold out your hand to it and say the incantation. That’s it!”

“Alright. It can’t hurt to try it.” Gao agreed, having been swayed by Laska’s enthusiasm. “Just tell me the thing I need to say. I just have to repeat it exactly, right? “

Laska then directed Nirou in forming the sigil again. He had only done it once, so it would be a few times yet before he really had any idea of what he was doing himself. After that was done, Nirou suspended the completed sigil within arm’s reach of Gao. She was still lying down in order not to strain herself, but a little stretch of the arm should be fine. Laska then told Gao the incantation required to make a tribute, and the Tiger muttered it to herself a few times to make sure she had it right. She looked to Nirou to get any indication of if he recognized her attempts as correct, and he nodded in the affirmative. All that was left was to do it for real. Gao reached out her arm and placed her Beastman paw-hand exactly in the way that Laska indicated for her.

"O God, I beseech You! I offer this, my own blood! I will accept whatever You see fit to give me in return! I beg of You, O God!" Gao recited it perfectly from Nirou’s perspective, despite whatever mess of noise Laska might have heard. And that was enough. The sigil began to shine as it should, taking the blood of a Beastman just as equally as any human’s.

The light coalesced into four points, then disappeared along with Gao’s blood. Nirou suddenly felt more relaxed, and realized that he had been putting a lot more effort into moving blood around that whole time than he thought. Now that it was over with, that was one less source of stress.

“Amazing! So it really does work after all. Although, four stars…” Laska muttered quietly. “Am I some kind of good luck charm for first tributes or something?”

Not putting any more time into that thought, Laska then kneeled down beside Gao and lifted up her arm. Since no physical object appeared, they’d have to check what Gao received by the text that would be projected. As Laska instructed Gao on how to make the text appear, Nirou wondered why it was the arm that it showed up from. It seemed pretty arbitrary. In his mind he was convinced that it was definitely a decision that had to have been made by someone, rather than just an automatic thing that happened. Though he had no real reason to think that way.

“It’s a blessing that you’ve received. That means it’s an ability that you now have forever, to use as you please.” Laska briefed Gao on her new gift as she read the floating text. “It’s called Impersonation. According to the explanation, you can transform into anyone that you take a blood sample from. The transformation has no time limit, but once you choose to return to your original form you have to get a new sample to transform again.”

Gao was taking a while to consider what having this new power meant, but Laska didn’t allow her to waste any time at all. Pricking her finger to draw blood, she held it out to the Beastman without any hesitation. “Let’s try it right now, Gao. Take some of my blood to test it out.”

After a brief moment of hesitation, Gao touched the tip of one of her claws to Laska’s finger and took a drop of blood herself. She just sat there staring at it for a while after that, eventually voicing her confusion. “What do I do with it?”

“You probably don’t know what to do.” Laska guessed without waiting for Nirou’s clarification. “Blessings simply become a part of you, they are just a function of your body. Focus on my blood and try to will yourself to transform. I have a transformation type blessing myself, and I can tell you for certain that it’s just a matter of will.

Nirou could understand her sentiment by now, with how many times he had used his own blessing. As strange as it was at first to straight up move blood with his will to do so, it was starting to become as natural as moving one of his body parts. Gao took a few seconds before really registering what Laska was getting at, but she eventually gave it a shot. Her eyes narrowed with focus towards the blood she held on the tip of her claw, and Nirou could practically see her shaking as she strained to perform an action she couldn’t really comprehend.

It eventually worked though, as Gao’s body began to shrink. It was hard to catch any details of the state between-forms, as it changed too fast. Her fur disappearing and limbs shortening seemed to happen in an instant. Long blonde hair just like Laska’s popped out of her head the next, and in less than a second the whole transformation was complete. A perfect copy of Laska lay on the ground propping herself up with her elbows wearing nothing but a couple pieces of cloth meant for a less slim figure.

The one hanging from her shoulders began to slip off, but Nirou didn’t even have time to block his own view before it was done on his behalf. From below him shot up two hands that placed themselves right over his eyes. Nirou was pretty sure that Laska hadn’t been preparing to make a move like that or anything, so that was purely reflex.

“Gao, can you refit your clothes, please?” Laska asked, arms stretched up to their obstructive position. “I don’t mind letting you copy my body, but I’d like you to let me keep a semblance of modesty.”

“Huh? Oh, okay.” Gao responded, tightening the string on her top to accommodate her new more slender body. She fumbled with it momentarily, but managed it with a bit of difficulty. “It’s strange to move with a different body. Everything feels weird.”

Even with his vision blocked, Nirou could tell that Laska shifted her entire attention in the direction opposite him. Towards Gao. “I heard that.” she stated simply, letting the significance of the statement speak for itself.

The first second that she no longer had to worry about a wardrobe malfunction, Laska took her hands off of Nirou’s face and lunged toward her doppelganger. “Gao, I understood what you just said! Your voice was a bit shaky, but perfectly comprehensible! Once you take on the form of a human, we can converse just fine!”

Nirou could see tears welling up much more clearly in Gao’s eyes now that they were a copy of Laska’s. Obviously she had been happy to be understood by Nirou, but it was naturally a much more comforting notion for her to learn that she wouldn’t be limited to him alone.

“This really is amazing! These powers…” Gao managed to hold herself together despite the overwhelming emotion. “There’s nothing stopping me from being friends with humans now!”

After looking over her double for a bit longer and grinning to herself, Laska made an announcement. “I’ve made up my mind. Gao, you’re going to come with us! There’s so much we can learn from each other.”

Gao looked ecstatic at the declaration, so Nirou steeled himself to make an attempt at being devil’s advocate for the situation. It might just be anxiety, but he always found himself looking for the worst in everything. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, Laska?” he asked, entirely sure that he wouldn’t be able to talk her down completely even if he wanted to. “Are the others going to be okay with this? We heard about how they usually treat Beastmen. I want to believe that this situation would be different, but we’ve only known these guys for a little while. They might not take it very well.”

“I’m no fool Nirou, I know that Anjdrahmans have a particular distaste for Beastmen. One they can’t really be blamed for.” Laska wagged her finger at Nirou casually. It was pretty obvious that she knew he was just trying to act as a voice of reason here rather than actually oppose her decision. “Chances are more than good that if we simply take Gao before them and state the truth, she’ll be taken and locked away. We’d likely never see her again, and her interactions would be limited to Anjdrahm research officials for the rest of her life.”

Nirou made a brief glance over to Gao, who was wearing a completely horrified expression that he doubted he would ever have seen on Laska’s face normally. So that was another neat thing about her taking on Laska’s form, he supposed. Interesting new faces.

“I’m not one to let a chance like this slip, Nirou. To call it once in a lifetime would be an understatement!” Laska insisted once again on the uniqueness of the situation. “Gao is coming with us as our friend, even if we have to hide her existence from our own comrades.”

“Really?” Nirou shifted to total sincerity for a moment. “But aren’t they the ones that are supposed to help you get revenge? You said you needed help to fight that bandit king, right? If this ends up causing a rift or something, we could be back on our own.”

“I know. I don’t want it to come to that, so I’d like it if we could bring them around. It should be quite possible to convince Kishaldam, for one.” Laska mused. “But even so. It’s not as if the Four Winds are the only ones who could ever help me with my goal. Strong as they are, I can find other allies if I have to. But Gao is one of a kind. We’re not leaving her.”

Nirou looked to Gao again to see her tearing up once again. He wasn’t sure the context was quite as touching as her reaction made it seem, but she was moved by it nonetheless. Nirou however was mulling over the implications of it all. Laska had seemed so dead set on her revenge before. And the path they had been taking was clearly the best way to go about it. But now she was willing to possibly jeopardize the whole thing on what could be a whim. Then again, he was sure by now that this wouldn’t be just any whim. And besides, wouldn’t it be a good thing for her to have priorities besides just her revenge? At least, that’s what he told himself. He was no expert on this kind of thing. However even if they went through with it, the question of practicality still had to be asked.

“But how would we even pull it off? Nirou inquired, actually stumped. “It’s not like you can just say you suddenly found your twin, and bringing her as a Beastman would be even less possible.”

“I already had a plan forming when I made up my mind.” Laska insisted, making a confident grin. “It’ll be tough, but we have everything we need to pull it off. Just make sure you both do as I say.”