We staggered into my apartment just before dawn. Both of us washed some of the surface grime from ourselves in turn in my tiny bathroom. I shuddered at the cool water, still remembered the wash of the violent cold that had seeped in from the healing. 

We sat at my small table then, Justin preferring a side adjacent to mine, rather than across. I had grabbed a towel from my not clean pile and my nail clippers, and we both had glasses of water.

“So.” He said, breaking the small gap that had kept us from talking previously. 

I agreed, “So.”

Justin sighed, “I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you, Scaleen. That wizard really had been outright lying to me.” 

“Truly, Justin, I’m sorry I was right. Are you okay? I know that… feeling trapped like that can be horrifying.”

“I’ve- I’ve had worse.” It did not take a [Discern] to know he was lying. “I don’t know what they would have done to me.” I picked up the nail clippers. He continued as if it naturally followed, “I didn’t know they indentured familiars. Still do, I mean.”

With my free hand I tentatively felt along where my crest had been. Many of the feathers had been burned off, leaving an inches of bare quill here and there. I still had a few full feathers on the far right and left, but I was too anxious to let them all fall out naturally, as bad as it was to pluck them early. The damage to the immolated quill tips was gone, but the tips were sensitive to the touch and it hurt to tap them with my nails.

“They have since the empire started. It has been poor form to indenture upright mammals for a century now. The University was among the most ardent against our citizenship.” 

“That’s horrible. Why didn’t you say?”

“I didn’t want to come off as just a Kobold Conspiracist. It’s a subclass I’ve not actually built towards, all evidence contrary.”

Justin stuck a tongue out at me, a far less lewd gesture among upright mammals.

I found a four inch quill and brought them up and snipped it down to where it met my scales. I winced a bit at the pain. It would fade, the nerves more or less receding as my body cycle made changes. 

“What are you doing?” 

“My feathers are falling out anyway because my body is cycling from neutral to egg-laying. I just figured I would just trim them before they’d fall out naturally. They probably look bad anyway.” I intentionally had not looked in the mirror. I was not particularly vain, usually, but I didn’t like to look a mess, which my half crown of feathers surely managed.

“Kobolds shift gender?”

“Sex, actually. That in mind, I would prefer you to use he/him/his for me now.” 

“But aren’t you shifting to…”

I clipped another quill, flinched at the pain, then sighed. It was personal, but he deserved to hear it though. I could stop being so closed off. He might trust me more. 

“I don’t like assumptions. I don’t like people looking at me and assuming who I am. A friend once called me ‘balance defiant’, though I’d argue it’s more about defying structural culture. I prefer my gender identifiers to be at ends with my sex, because it is something for me to control, and is a test to instantly understand who doesn’t respect me.”

“Oh. Okay. So he/him.” He looked down into his water cup and I waited, expecting him to add more. The only sound was the wind against the shingles outside and the soft clipping noise as I trimmed all my quills to the quick.

“Do you… are Humans allowed to change their pronouns here?”

“Yes, though some small number of people can be rude about mammalians changing their gender later in life. It’s colloquially called cross-gender in Sumaran. As in, someone has ‘crossed over’ into another gender.” 

Justin sighed, “Yeah, I figured. My… in my world it’s so hard. I… I didn’t get to pick my gender there, and when I woke up here, I was already a boy.” I could see his hand was trembling on the table top, and I considered it. “You.. when the game starts in my world, you get to pick. I always picked girl. I…. Was so upset I woke up like this, then had to go through puberty, again. It was… awful.”

I reached out and put my four fingered hand atop his, and he flinched and looked up at me from whatever distance he was peering. 

I ventured, “It's not painless here, but perfectly doable. The Daer Liege-King is cross-gendered. As is the Duke of Heron. I believe the Knight Florince we met earlier is cross-gender as well. My understanding is the potion is weekly, but the effects are quick.” 

Magic being race nuetral, the same magic would presumable work for me too, but I didn’t want to be one gender, I just always felt my gender and sex never match.  There might be Kobolds who either can’t shift, or use alchemy to prevent themselves from shifting genders, too.

“The knight? But she was gorgeous.” 

“I am told that the alchemy involved has pretty incredible results.”

“She probably started so young.”

“I’m fairly certain she didn’t. Clarince had a twin brother named Alarince as recently as 3 years ago. If you wanted to be a woman, you can just be one. If you want the physical changes too, we can make that happen.”

Justin suddenly started to tear up again but didn’t say anything for a bit. He-... she? I would ask soon. 

They just sort of scrunched up a little and I got up and gave them a hug. We could work out the details later. He needed rest before we stopped a war, anyway. 

Later, I was picking at the ruined, rented robes while Justice stepped out from behind the curtain that seperated my bathroom from the rest of my house. {Mending} wasn’t working except to smooth the frayed edges of the damage, like I feared. 

After she’d gotten calmed down, she admitted she was tired, and we were getting ready for bed. 

“Are you sure it’s not a weird name?”

I looked up and she was standing in the simple prison robe they’d left her. It was perfectly suitable sleeping clothing, and far more comfortable than her other outfit, the studded tunic we used to go hunting in the sewers.

“Justice is a fine name. Even if I didn’t like it, the universe is the final judge.” Her pale face, cropped in her long black hair, showed confused. “Check your guidance screens.” I might not believe justice was a real thing, but there was no reason anyone had to be as cynical as me.

Her purple translucent screens popped up and she looked started. “Oh.” 

“Nothing more affirming than Deities.” Guidance screens reflected the names people wanted to use. A sufficiently high enough Deceive skill would allow someone to muddle their name to match their current disguise, but [Inspect] was already a hostile action. If someone was inspecting you, they already suspected you, or were beyond caring about your identity. 

Unless you were a person so sub-equal that being Inspected was considered an expectation.

Most documents of any legal weight were spelled to keep up with any name changes, and often people of importance are just addressed by their title, regardless of the name they picked for themselves. Even the Naming ceremony for the princess regent was about giving a title and symbolic name, rather than an actual name.

“Justice Kaedri Stormhallow,” she whispered, unbelieving, more to herself than anyone else. 

We finished getting ready for bed and Justice faltered a moment. “Um, Scaleen. You don’t need to sleep on that, uh, cushion. Your bed has plenty of room.”

I slowed my arranging of my small pile of blankets and a pillow that I kept at my desk. It was also true I did prefer a rather lavish amount of fabrics for my sleeping nest. “I do not wish to crowd you.” 

“Sanctum didn’t have a whole lot of space for living. We all, the kids, basically slept shoulder to shoulder. It’s a little weird still that there is so much space.”

“Alright. As long as you don’t mind.”

Justice brightened, and began arranging just half the bed for her own comfort. I negotiated a few pillows and managed to find a comfortable spot laying sideways. 

“D- do you mind if I sleep without the robe on?”

I clacked my teeth in amusement, “I’m nude almost all the time here, Justice. You aren’t going to offend me.”

I didn’t need to look to hear the blush in her voice, “Oh, yeah right.”

“You mind if I look at my Guidance for a bit?”

“No go ahead.” 

“Feel free to turn off the light if you want then.”

After a moment, she turned the lamp off near her. The soft glow of my guidance screen - I’d turned the luminosity and opacity way down - was more a faint suggestion rather than fact.

I reviewed my stat page and the automated logs. 

-    -

For your aerial assault, you have gained a rank in Gymnastics.

Fighting tooth and nail has earned you one rank in hand-to-hand. 

 

You have gained a level!

Congratulations for making it to level 25 as a Scout.

Health, Mana, and Stamina increase. 

You have earned a Class advancement. You may learn a new Scout ability, or advance any ability by one rank.

Because of your social navigations, you gain +1 Poise.

 

-    -

I considered my abilities as Justice settled into our pile of bedding, having split the collection of fabrics in unspoken halves. 

I was relatively careful in how I advanced my skills, still retaining the advancement point I’d acquired at level twenty one. 

“Justice?” I was fairly certain she hadn’t fallen asleep yet, based on her breathing.

Muzzily, she asked, “Yeah?” 

“Do you have a recommendation for how Scouts should spend their advancements?”

“Oh, umm,” she started, as if sleep and her interest in the system were warring actively in her head, “so, aside from critical hits and status effects being simply essential, there are like three big builds. Unarm build is so absolutely broken, you can steal great weapons early, but you have to, like, start on that level 1. Leaping strike is fun, you can bounce around the battlefield, and it has some interesting branches. Also there is the rejoinder build, which has a lot of counter attacks; lots of damage. Most other paths cap out at mid game. Uh, I mean, they tend not to improve well enough to keep up with late game damage.”

“Thanks, Justice. You sleep well okay?”

“Okay. Thanks for using my name so much, Scaleen. It means a lot.”

“No problem.”

I pondered for a few more minutes while Justice’s breathing deepened, made a couple choices, and mused over what opportunities I might have had with Justice’s knowledge from birth.