"Mana, seriously, why did you follow us? We weren't even gone a full day."
"So what? I wanted to be with you and Big Sis."
I pinched my bridge of my nose and rolled my jaw. Even after several minutes of questioning, her answer simply wasn't changing. And despite her Big Sis's assurance that she was telling the truth, I continued to push the issue.
We'd fled the humans' campground for the empty grassy plains between the cities. Putting some extra distance between us to make sure we weren't found, I'd dropped onto the grass breathing as heavily as though I'd been fighting in the dungeon for hours, when all I did was carry a petite girl through a couple portals.
Said petite girl had sat herself on my thigh without a word, but this time with the added bonus of her cutely tilting her head in confusion at my continued questioning. Trying not to be moved by the sight of her tiny and very bare breasts or how their sakura-pink tips had started to stand now that the winds on the grassy plains embraced her, I looked to Yua for salvation and found none.
Upon her own request, she'd knelt down in the grass to face the forest. Her ears on high alert after nearly getting caught, she kept watch for us just in case the humans managed to track us as Mana had. If she was paying any attention to us, she wasn't showing it.
Letting out a long sigh I made sure Mana heard, I asked, "Can you at least tell me if any of the humans saw you looking for us?"
"Nope. Nobody saw me. I'm good at sneaking up on animals, so sneaking up on humans is easy."
Seeing both her and her pink tips staring back up at me, I grit my teeth and wrapped my arm around Mana's back to cover her breasts with my forearm. I wasn't groping her, I just couldn't focus with her so flagrantly showing off.
With as eager as she was to grab at my junk as she was, she didn't so much as bat an eye when I did this. However, as I'd hoped, it did have an effect similar to their way of holding their mates down for a serious conversation. Mana's eyes widened and her perky ears faltered, sensing she might be in trouble.
"Do you have any idea how dangerous what you did was?"
"Erm… No?"
"Mana, one of those men was about as strong as Tama."
"Really?"
"Nope, Daddy is stronger," Yua added with an indignant flick of her tail. Clearly, she wouldn't have me comparing the two.
"… The man was very strong," I continued. "And he might have killed us if he caught us."
"Mm?"
Mana took a moment to ponder this. She crossed her arms over the one I held her with, and was quiet for a minute or two. Then her ears finally perked up as though a brilliant idea had enlightened her.
"You said they wanted gold, right? Why not just give them that gold coin you showed me yesterday? Then they can leave."
Left utterly speechless at her skewed line of logic, I let go of her chest and brought her into a strong hug. I patted her head as though she were a small child, but she seemed to take it as a compliment, as she happily hugged me back.
Yua shot back to her feet, clenched her fists and stomped over to us. Completely unawares of the glaring woman heading her way, Mana's tail continued to swish about.
Yua grabbed hold of Mana's abdomen and unceremoniously ripped her from my arms.
"Wha… Hey!"
Spinning the girl in the air to face her directly, Yua held Mana's petite frame at eye-level and glared into her eyes. Finally sensing the danger, Mana's tail wilted on the spot and the legs she'd been kicking through the empty air went still.
"Mana," Yua started. "Not only did you break your daddy's rules, you could have gotten yourself and our mate killed."
"O-Our mate?"
"Mana!"
"Eep!"
Mana's entire being flinched. Her knees curled up to her chest to brace for a hit that never came. Seeing her pitiful state, Yua huffed and dropped her onto the grass. The conflicted twitch to her brow said she didn't want to yell at the friend she'd only just reunited with, but she had to.
"How did you not sense the danger?" Yua asked, crossing her arms. "One of the men there hit a tree so hard that it shattered. Twice. How did you not hear that? My ears are still ringing because of it."
Mana looked back to me, to my lap for safety, but flinched back at Yua when she tapped a menacing finger on her bicep. She abandoned any ideas of seeking to hide herself in my arms and knelt in apology.
"I, um… I was focusing on my nose. I was searching for your scents."
Yua drew in a long breath, looking like she was about to call her a liar, but she let the breath out in a long sigh.
"You haven't changed a bit. You use to the do the same thing whenever we played too late. Always ignoring everything I said once you smelled dinner cooking. It's like your ears would fall off every day at sun set."
"H-hey," Mana pouted, protectively covering her ears. "I'm not deaf, you know. I was just hungry. And this time, I wanted to catch up to you before I lost you again!"
"Lost me?"
After a short moment of quiet contemplation, Yua's mouth fell open in shock. Whatever conclusion she came to stole away with her anger completely as she dropped to her knees to hug Mana. Giving a small jolt of surprise, Mana let go of her ears and tentatively hugged her back.
"Mana, you're not going to lose me again. Like Alex said, we were going to come back for you."
"… Y-Yea," she sniffled. "But you said the same thing when you left for the dungeon. And you were gone for so, so long."
"I'm sorry. A lot happened."
"I know..."
Watching Yua console the crying girl filled me with a cocktail mixed with equal parts regret and shame. I knew I didn't let Yua stay with her people for nearly as long as she wanted, but even then, I was only considering how much she would have wanted to stay. Not how Mana felt on the subject.
Yua also didn't seem to consider this. Her brow furrowed with the same regret; she hugged the girl tightly to her chest.
If this girl is to become my mate, become my second wife, I need to do better and make sure to take her feelings into account, too. As surreal as all this is, it won't do any of us any good if I start playing favorites.
Regardless, what she did was incredibly dangerous and we need to address what happened.
I knelt beside them and put a hand on each of their shoulders. Yua looked to me and nodded, as if giving me permission to break up their reconciliation.
"Yua, did you hear any of them chasing us?"
She shook her head, holding fast to Mana.
"No. We teleported too far for me to hear them. And I don't think their scout knew exactly where we were to begin with."
"That's good, but it's probably too soon to head back and watch their movements. After everything that happened, they're probably on high alert."
Even if Arthur didn't see us, he might have heard her excited yelling. I don't want to bet on him being too scared of Tillmann to report that they'd been found again.
"Sorry…"
"It's okay," I said. "You both are safe. Right now, that's all that matters. Besides, we at least learned a few things from this."
"Really?" Yua said, her ears flicking curiously. "What's that?"
She raised a brow at me, likely replaying out the conversation she dubbed for me in search of the answer. Only, that's not where I learned what I did.
"Their scout, the man named Arthur, left to search the forest, but he started inside the barrier, right? And not too long after Mana showed up, you heard him approaching. His level wasn't too high and he didn't seem very fast, so that makes me think that there may be an entrance to the barrier near where we stopped to watch them."
He was only human and he was drunk. His Speed stat was probably somewhere around mine at best. The gap between Mana showing up and Yua hearing him was too short. And if the barrier blocked even my teleportation magic, then it may be safe to assume he couldn't just pass through it.
This is still just a guess, but there might be some sort of doorway he slipped through. Not that I could imagine that big dome of light having such a thing. That or there was a way to disable a section of the barrier to allow passage. That could be a way in. What we'd do with that knowledge is up for grabs, but it's relatively good news.
"Besides that," I continued. "We watched Tillmann almost kill Arthur. We might not be able to reason with the dwarf, but we might be able to talk some sense into Arthur and get him to help us."
The man may be an idiot dumb enough to drink and sleep on the job, knowing that his boss could end him with ease, but now that he knew Tillmann didn't need him and now that his life was in danger, why not seek a way out?
"And the best part is that, if he knows the boat captain, he's probably going to be on the cart headed to the city. We won't even have to sneak into the barrier to talk."
We even had the added bonus of him not seeing any of our faces. So, if the need arose, we could feign ignorance of the whole thing and offer him an out as an uninvolved third party.
Hearing all this, Yua nodded and fell into thought while Mana wiped her tears.
"S-so then you can talk to them?"
"One of them, maybe. But I'm not really sure what to ask him."
"Just ask him for a way into the barrier," Yua said.
"Then what? We can't fight them."
"No, but Daddy can. Remember what he and Mochi said? If we can at least take out the barrier, they can handle the rest."
"True…"
I scratched my head, unsure. Relying on Tama to clean up this mess for me was not something I wanted to do. This was my quest. My future mate's hand was on the line. I should be the one to solve this issue.
The only problem was that I was drawing a blank on how to do that.
"Since it'd be too dangerous to head back into the forest for now, let's head into the city to wait for them."
"Wait for them?" Yua echoed. "Are we just going to wait by the city gate?"
"Assuming Guerraway even has a gate, maybe, but we may not need to. We know they're heading to unload the crystals on a boat. So, we just need to keep near the docks."
Yua could always track them down after they enter the city, but we already knew their destination. At least, we sort of knew. The map showed that almost the entirety of Guerraway's eastern side was nestled against the ocean. That means there's plenty of room for boats. While we'd need some time to figure out which boat they were after specifically, how they got to it didn't really matter.
Also, thanks to dear old Arthur's face being memorized by yours truly, we'd know which cart belong to them even if they cover their cargo. And if they decide to hide their faces for whatever reason, checking the info boxes of the driver of every cart entering the city will be a nice backup plan.
"But what about the guild quest?" Yua asked. "Even if we talk to this Arthur and find the boat, it could still take us days to get them to leave the forest."
"Right… Shit."
We had plenty of time for the quest, but with this literal barrier blocking us from being able to complete it, that supposed simple quest wasn't going to be so easy anymore.
"If we can't finish this tonight," Yua started, her tone filled with hope. "Why don't we just stay the night in the in the village again? I'm sure Daddy won't mind us staying for as long as we..."
"No!" Mana barked, pushing herself away from Yua. "We can't go back! If we do, Daddy will force me to stay. He might even get mad at Big Bro."
Speeding through the few steps between us, Mana grabbed two fist-fulls of my shirt and pleaded.
"Please! Can't we just stay in the city? Together?!"
Knowing that the years she spent without her Big Sis must have made her feel a similar loneliness that caused me to break my own moral code just to fill the void, I met the dangerous pout in her eyes head on as she trembled. I took her hands in mine and squeezed them.
"Mana, your father's probably really worried about you right now. I think you should at least…"
"No! I won't tell him. I know him better than you. He's gonna be mad. He'll definitely hold me down if I take even one step back in the village!"
For every second that passed gazing upon her pleading eyes, the urge to let the magnetic force trying to pull my arms around her for a reassuring hug grew stronger. But I couldn't.
Even if I admitted that Chibi's actions in the village suggested she'd be fine with Mana staying with us, Mana was understandably resistant to seeing her father again. The problem was that Yua clearly wanted to go back and see hers again.
Geez. Mana's technically not even my mate yet and I already have to pick between the two of them?
As if sensing my inner turmoil, Yua smiled sympathetically at the both of us.
"It's okay, Alex. Like I said, I'm fine with just the occasional visit. We can stay in the city."
"Really?!" Mana cried.
"As long as there's an inn," Yua nodded. "Alex won't let us sleep on the floor."
Ah. I did say that. I guess we'd been sleeping on our sort-of bed for so long that I misplaced the memory of that order a bit. That or my time in the village actually did lose me a few brain cells. I suppose the hay we used as a mattress last night didn't count as floor, since she didn't feel the need to question me on it.
Excited by Yua's quick approval, Mana started towards the city by walking away from it in the complete opposite direction. Even though the city was so close, never leaving the village must have really limited her knowledge of the outside world.
"Hold it," Yua said, one hand on her hip and the other pointing at Mana.
"What? You said we can go, so let's go."
Yua shook her head.
"Nope. Alex ordered me not to show my naked body to any other men. If you are going to be his slave and mate, then you can't either."
Again with this slave thing? She did have a point though. I'd reluctantly gotten so used to the cat-kin's nudity that I'd been neglecting the fact that Mana was standing there as naked as the day she was born. And with her living the entirety of her life like this, I didn't have to ask to know she wouldn't mind waltzing right on into Guerraway as is.
"Eh? But all the males in the village saw you already."
"We have special permission to be naked in the village, so that doesn't count. But in the human world, we'll have to wear clothes every day."
"Eh?! Every day! No way! Big Bro, is that true?"
How do you not know?
Yua said it was tradition for parents to give their kids clothes when they leave for their dungeon training. Did she not get the memo? Was she expecting to run around our home naked all the time? Cute as she was, once we finally cross that line, I'd never be able to keep my hands off of her if she didn't cover up.
"Yes… It's true."
"No way," she repeated, looking as though her entire world had just shattered. "I don't want to! Clothes look way too uncomfortable."
Mana stomped her foot, looking so much like an indignant child that I nearly felt the need to check her age again.
But, seriously? Is wearing clothes going to be the reason she second guesses being my mate? No, I guess she's not exactly running away from the idea, just refusing it.
"Come on, Mana. If you try to enter the city like this, you'll get arrested."
"No, I won't. You'll protect me, right? As my mate?"
Mana grabbed hold of my sleeve again and once more turned those big, exceedingly dangerous orbs of sky-blue cuteness on me. Being that they were the foremost extravagant feature of her face, when she paired them perfectly with the tiniest pout to her sakura-pink lips, I felt as though Tama punched me in the gut again. Adding in the unintentional flick to her cat ears for the finishing blow, I felt my heart skip the same way it had when I first met her.
All at once, I felt as though my will power was being sapped away from me. That my position as her soon-to-be mate was being questioned, put on trial to see if it held any of the validity I myself questioned. And in this moment, if I would fulfil my promise to her father and do right by her and defend her from any and all of her foes, regardless of if they were city knights out on patrol for criminal streakers.
I clenched my fists, not from anger, but because I wasn't expecting her to use our relationship against me to win an argument. It's easy to say that she was cute, but I could say that, without a doubt, were she turning this puppy-dog pout on me for any other purpose, I'd have easily handed all the riches in the world to her just to see her smile again.
But not this time. They may be born of jealousy in this case, but I had my standards and I could not allow this.
Fighting off the power of her pout, I drew in a deep breath and prepared myself for battle.
"Yua… Hold her still."
"Okay!"
Like a flash of lightning, and without need for explanation, Yua appeared behind the much smaller and much weaker Mana almost instantaneously. With her still trying to bend my will with her big blue eyes, she wasn't at all prepared for the sudden assault. She jumped, her ears stood on end and she let out a brief shriek just like the victim of a cheap B-rated horror movie might when cornered by the killer. But it was far too late to call for help.
"No, no, no, no!"
Yua grabbed her by the hips and lifted her up off the ground with so much ease that she might as well have been weightless. Mana flailed her legs through the air, but for all her effort, she could not break free of her Big Sis's hold.
"Alex, can you give me a pair of my panties?"
I froze, letting Mana's feet slip out of my grasp. In another case of getting too used to their ways, I forgot that Mana literally had no clothes to her name. And while Yua letting the girl borrow hers was the easy solution on paper, it was impossible.
"Can't," I said. "All your clothes are back at the cabin."
"Oh yea…"
"S-See? If you don't have any, I don't have to wear them! Let's just go to the city and…"
Ignoring her bargaining without a second option, I dug through my item box for the set of spare clothes I kept there for myself.
Silently apologizing for the force, I focused on the spare pair of boxers-like underwear in my inventory and, guessing at her size visually, used Material Creation to reform the fabric into a pair of plain white panties.
Instead of being amazed at the spectacle of them taking shape in my hand, Mana started thrashing about even more.
"What's that thing?! That looks like the thing Big Sis covered her special place with earlier!"
"It is," Yua replied cooly. "They're called panties. They're clothes that go under your clothes."
"What?! I have to wear two clothes?!"
Feeling as though this scene could only be taken as us assaulting her if someone were to have caught us, I grabbed Mana's flailing ankle and forced her foot through the leg hole of the panties.
"Noooo!"
Unwilling to give up without a fight, Mana continued to squirm even as I brought the small triangle of fabric up to her knees. She widened her legs as far as she could to prevent the fabric from rising any further, but as she flailed about between us, it looked more like she was trying to flash the world one last time before her natural freedom was stolen.
Locking her feet under my armpits and feeling like actual human garbage for using my superior strength against the girl I was supposed to be protecting, I quickly won the fight to press her knees together again.
She kicked. She squirmed. She pleaded and begged, but there was nothing she could say or do that would make me okay with her running around the city like this. Yua's iron grip was also unflinching.
When I got it midway up her thighs, Mana pushed her feet firmly against my cheek to try and shove me away. Yua used this distraction to slip a hand under her. Before Mana could even notice that her Big Sis had relinquished the hold she had on one of her arms, Yua yanked the panties up the rest of the way, snugging it up tight enough to almost bite into her.
Once her crotch was properly covered, her legs fell limp. She'd lost the fight. Vitality drained out of her as her complaints ceased and her ears drooped. Realizing her strength just couldn't compare, she gave up resisting when I next pulled out a shirt of mine that I'd reformed into a short dress for her.
In all my wildest sexual fantasies, I never once thought I would have to actually hold a girl down to put her clothes on.
Despondent, Mana let her head hang as Yua held her in place and I draped the dress over her head and pulled it down to finally hide the tiny breasts that threatened my will power. Even if her earlier pouting had only been a ruse, it was most definitely real now.
"No..…."
Mana stared down at the dress that now kept her properly covered and scowled at it. This actually hurt a little, as while I acted in haste, I thought I did a fairly good job designing it with the soon-to-be wearer in mind.
The skirt was nice and flowy, perfect for someone that didn't want anything covering their legs. The arms were sleeveless for the sake of mobility and I even gave the chest a fair bit more breathable space than needed as her miniscule cleavage was left in sight. And to top it off, the fabric itself was fairly light-weight.
While the original fabric was clearly meant to be worn by a man and was free of any eye-catching patterns, I thought it looked ridiculously cute on her. Hell, if she brushed her hair properly, she might even look like she could pass for the sort of adorable doll a nobleman's daughter would proudly refuse to ever let go of.
Not that I had any experience to speak of, but I would have thought something like this would have been perfect for the reformed nudist and yet…
"This… isn't going to work."
Standing there languidly, her ears fallen flat against her messy hair, Mana pursed her lips in a resigned pout. This wouldn't have been all that troubling had a generous gust of wind not shown me the errors of my ways.
My weak tailoring skills meant that the cups of the dress were much too loose on her. Sitting still, they looked fine, but the moment the breeze hit, it started to flap to repeatedly showing off the pink tips we were trying to hide. Yua was quick to fix it for her, but it happened again a few seconds later.
Unfortunately, creating clothes for her through Material Creation didn't net me the Tailor class, so I didn't know how to fix it other than by making it a little smaller. This didn't work either, as the moment I through the reformed dress back over her head, she yanked the front down to let her tits breathe.
Mana fumed further when Yua fixed her once more and when I added my cloak to her ensemble, tying it up tight to make sure she wasn't flashing everyone we passed.
She moped and crossed her arms, but with the sleeves of the cloak running well past the tips of her fingers, she looked too cute for it to come off as anything close to resembling real anger.
"Sorry your first-time wearing clothes couldn't be more comfortable. We'll get you something cuter soon. Promise."
"Hmph… This stuff's too heavy."
"You'll get used to it soon," Yua said, standing back up after tying the laces of the spare boots she let Mana borrow. "I had to, too."
As Yua had been the one to help dress her, her reassurance did nothing but get us another loud huff.
To make better use of my infinite storage space, I was not only going to have to get Mana an entire ensemble of clothes for herself, but I'll have to get Yua some backups to keep in my item box as well. I was still carrying Yua's battle leathers, but I wasn't too keen on either of the girls actually wearing something that revealing if it wasn't for an actual fight. So, for now, this was just going to have to do.
Silently lamenting the need to add a visit to Guerraway's clothing store to our already long to-do-list, I took Mana's hand and, surprisingly, she didn't resist. She did headbutt my chest and leave it there to mope into my shirt, but I suppose we both deserved it. The discomfort she felt now would be a fitting punishment for the trouble she caused.
Not wanting to waste any more of the daylight, and after briefly consulting the map, we started back towards the city proper.