Summary: Generally speaking, weird glowing things have a tendency to be rather unstable. Whether it's spore-launching mushrooms or a contact explosive pretending not to be, touching them is generally a bad idea. Kei may have forgotten that little maxim. A terrible habit, really.

AN: This is a crossover with Critical Role, a podcast/show where a bunch of voice actors play D&D together. You have been warned.

Isobu woke up in a ditch. This was a strange occurrence for several reasons, not the least that he was usually far too large to for the concept of a "ditch" to be one he understood except through Kei. The next problem he faced was the lost of conscious continuity, because Tailed Beasts almost never slept and were outstandingly resistant to being knocked unconscious. When residing inside Kei's chakra coils, Isobu rarely even stopped thinking. But, somehow, something had turned him off as neatly as flipping a light switch. It wasn't the first time this had happened, but it was an experience that didn't get better the more Isobu had to deal with it.

Worst of all, Isobu's silent call into the dark was met with no response. Even when he opened his jagged mouth and belted out a five-note tune Kei knew by heart, Isobu didn't hear the customary two-tone response. And for the first time in his life, he was too small to see over obstacles in his way.

Isobu huffed to himself, then climbed from the ditch to the base of what Kei's memories called a stone beam bridge, because there were individual flat stones involved and Kei was a pedant when it came to things like that. While Isobu's forelegs and tails were spiked and ridged even like this, he noticed his fingers were rounder than he remembered while he climbed. Likewise, his sharper extremities were softened somehow. Between those details and his drastically reduced size, Isobu briefly wondered if he'd been transferred to the body of one of his smallest clones. Being larger and unchallenged by any native life was a better situation than his usual one, but this? This was unmistakably bad news.

He hated being small. And apparently landlocked.

Isobu didn't stop climbing until he reached the top of a boulder, tails splayed out along the stone and head cresting the footpath on the bridge. Once securely in his sentry position, he hummed his five notes again. When there was no response to his third call, Isobu glared down at the sad little trickle of water that could make up a dry riverbed on a good day, then ordered it to stop. The water built up as though it met an invisible wall, quieter than before.

Isobu hummed again, then twice more. It took a total of six tries before, while straining his sense, he picked up a faint reply. In his head, the two-tone response was barely stronger than the sound of water flowing. Nonetheless, he bunched his tails under his belly and threw himself into the now-freed wave of mud and runoff. Them, with all tree tails pumping, Isobu hurried downstream.

The unfortunate waterway was choked with weeds and debris, though there didn't seem to be any human trash. No, instead there were just signs of the nearby forest reclaiming its own while the river ran dry. Isobu chewed his way through errant fallen branches like a small tree-eating mammal, pushing through chaff until he found a small waterfall and abruptly dropped at least as far as he was long. Isobu hit the pool face-first after only a brief pause for surprise.

Reorienting, Isobu surfaced with water grass clinging to his head. Eyeing the drop, the plants, and the nearby fish, he regretted not being able to frown. Being small was one thing—clones were small, on the whole. This was indignity upon indignity. He was the size of Kakashi's smallest dog!

A pity there was no time for that. Isobu turned around in the water, dislodging plants as he went, and belted out another five-note pattern as he continued swimming with the current. Weak splashing was coming from up ahead, and it wasn't the puddle of a river.

Shave and a haircut! (Whatever either of those things were.) No legs! That was the proper response, or so Kei said. Isobu understood that part better, because he certainly had no use for legs.

Iso…bu…? Kei's mental voice was weaker than it had sounded in ages.

A reddish, muddy figure splashed again as Isobu rounded a bend, just barely reaching one arm into the river. Most of the rest of the human-shaped thing was hidden by reeds, making Isobu silently curse his lack of height once more. Despite the color that didn't quite match Kei, Isobu paddled over to the bank without hesitation. His belly scraped gravel and mud along as he climbed up onto her nearest limb, tails bobbing.

…You look different. Isobu slid down Kei's other side, shuffling on his short forelegs to look his host over more carefully.

While her face was the same, insofar as the eyes and nose and so on were all accounted for, all of Kei's colors were wrong. She even had the same scar, but it sat across a face that was a dull red like Isobu's belly. The same went for the tattoos running down her left arm. Kei's hair wasn't black like it was supposed to be, either, instead the same green-gray-blue as Isobu's armor. And three short, pointed horns jutted out from Kei's head the same way Isobu's did, even if they were the wrong color for both of them. Possibly the wrong shape, too.

Isobu tilted his head slowly to one side, then pushed his way back up onto Kei's unmoving leg to take a second look at what he'd noticed before.

On one hand, Isobu approved of tails more than legs. On the other, he wasn't quite sure how to go about living with both. His siblings often had legs and tails, but this didn't quite seem like the same problem. For one thing, humans and human-shaped things tended to have very specific centers of balance that Isobu didn't have to care about. Kei would, though. And on a third hand Isobu did not have, her tail couldn't decide whether it wanted to belong to a land animal or a water one with the way it flattened out at the end. It did have plates and spikes almost identical to Isobu's, though, which was nice.

Are you going to get up? Isobu asked, sliding back down to the ground.

Kei cracked one eye open—gold, not black or white—and sent an ugly muddle of feelings that were more confusing to Isobu than anything. Kei liked to make jokes that he couldn't be sick to his stomach when he didn't eat, or didn't need to breathe because he didn't have lungs, and these things were true. Still, he did know what it meant to feel too hot, to be tired, and to feel like pressure built up strangely in one's limbs and head, like diving wrong. Kei's message was quite unpleasant as a result.

And then it was back to sleep, apparently.

Do you think I can carry you? Isobu prodded at Kei's leg, noticing how little she reacted. Her eyes hardly twitched. I do not think you realize how small I am now. You must use your own legs.

The end of her tail twitched feebly, and Isobu found all three of his mirroring it. How strange. And it was unfortunately clear as tropical seas that Kei didn't have the energy to move. Not so far. Perhaps he needed to escalate?

When he decided to try digging his foremost horn into her stomach, because it was the pointiest, Kei lurched unsteadily away from him. Still on her side, Isobu crawled to one side before she could throw up on his shell. Which she nearly did anyway, if not for his quick water manipulation.

That was unpleasant, Isobu said when she stopped coughing. When she dropped back to the sand, he flicked a tail and water reached up from the riverbed until it swept the mess away. Is it over?

" Uuuuuugh, " was Kei's response, both in her head and out loud.

Kei?

No response.

Isobu lowered his head onto his armored arms, leaning up against Kei's stomach as best he could. He didn't know what to do now.

His shell felt smoother, less dangerous than it needed to be. With his partner still normal-sized but unable to keep a coherent thought going from her sudden sickness, and Isobu unfortunately small, his tails prickled with the unfamiliar feeling of being prey. He knew what it was—Kei knew it all too well—but for Isobu it was new and unpleasant.

Kei stirred, still seeming out of sorts. Her eyes opened again, eventually focusing on him. Where…where are we?

We are sitting on the banks of a very small river. Isobu looked around, peering more closely at trees and reeds he ignored before. Though now that I think of it, none of the plant life here looks like it ought to. You spend enough time running through trees to see the differences, right? He picked up a leaf that had drifted into the river with a swirl of water, eyeing it carefully. This looks a little like an oak leaf, but it does not have enough points.

Kei sent him a wordless burst of frustration, though it washed over him quickly enough to know it was directed elsewhere. Probably at her inability to sit up without her head spinning.

And between the two of us, we have enough plant knowledge to know that bridge— Isobu sent her a low-perspective image of the flat stones sitting on top of rough-carved columns —is not of the type humans like to construct.

Kei thought irritably, Humans…are more diverse than that.

Isobu thought of some of the people they had met on their last adventure. After a second, he conceded the point. He nosed up against her arm, spiky chin digging into her again. Are you feeling any better?

Sort of. Kei closed her eyes tightly, lifting her hand to press over them. I can tell I have a fever, nausea, and muscle fatigue. And a headache I definitely didn't have yesterday. And my chest feels like it's going to explode. So, you know. It feels like the flu, but worse.

At least you are not sneezing, Isobu suggested, in a tone that could only be optimistic through his ignorance. He knew what sneezes were, but he hadn't seen Kei sick much in the years they'd known each other. Most of her time spent in the hospital was caused by injury, not illness. Despite her poor condition, Kei wasn't injured this time, and Isobu didn't know how to find a hospital from an unfamiliar riverbank.

Yay, Kei told him sarcastically. She wedged herself up on her elbows, still swaying slightly, then flopped back into the reeds with a groan. This seemed the limit of her power at the moment.

…You cannot move, Isobu said his tails curling anxiously. You need help.

The flu won't kill me, Isobu.

The flu has killed people before. Isobu turned his attention to the river again. You need help.

…And you're admitting that first? Kei glared down at him, though without much heat. I thought I'd have to argue to even get you to say that much.

I do not need help, Isobu insisted. You do.

Kei wheezed, which sounded nothing at all like the laugh in her head. But instead of arguing, she curled into a ball on her side and tucked her head toward her chest. Her new horns scraped in the mud, but she didn't seem to notice. Nor did the feeble twitch of her new tail draw comments, or even generalized confusion. Isobu didn't know if she could even feel it.

I am going to find someone. Isobu slid down the bank, reaching the river as he summoned a wave to sweep him along. He turned back, looking around at the reed hiding place, then added, I will just try that strange dog impression. The one with the child in the well.

If anyone… Kei paused, thinking with difficulty. If anyone calls you ugly, bite them.

I can do that. He could make it hurt, too.

With that, Isobu headed downstream in a rush that mimicked a flash flood. The river widened more downstream, allowing him to gather more water to his cause and surge ever faster. It took maybe five or ten minutes to run into a bend in the river that slowed the flow enough to create deep pools—or what would pass for them—and send him crashing to a halt in water less than than two meters deep.

Isobu didn't come to the surface immediately. He could hear voices over the babble of water now that his little joyride had come to an abrupt end, so he swam underneath the somewhat clear surface until he could get a better view of this group of strangers. It was rather like being a crocodile in some ways, save that Isobu was the wrong color for pretending to be a log and had to stay entirely underwater.

Perhaps he needed to look into how to transform into a crocodile.

Isobu listened for a while longer, putting that thought aside. While the tempo of the voices wasn't what Isobu was used to, he at least recognized the beats. His siblings weren't fond of trying to figure out new languages when they had no reference to work from, but he had Kei's memories to reference if he needed to. It didn't take long for him to parse out English from Japanese, even if the sounds weren't exactly what Kei had used in the past. It was useful information, but not useful enough.

Isobu surfaced almost solely so he could pick out individual words. He was careful, though, hiding behind a fallen tree to avoid being seen.

"Now we just need to wait for everything to dry. And then we're off to…Er. Some town." The voice had an accent Isobu couldn't quite place, more so because it seemed to wobble back and forth between what Kei was most familiar with and something that just...didn't sound quite right.

"Trostenwald, Molly. We made decent coin the last time we stopped by, though it's been a while." Oh, so that's what that accent was supposed to sound like. Strange.

And "Trostenwald" sounded funny. Isobu didn't recognize it.

"Right, that." Some splashing ensued. Perhaps they were doing laundry? "I'm looking forward to it."

"You look forward to everything." Female, grumpy? Maybe.

Teetering Accent Person said, "It's a lot more fun than not doing that."

"Hopefully we earn more than just a handful of coppers this time. Just like I told Gustav—"

"We're not having that argument again, Ornna!" Hrm. Consistent Accent Person and Grumpy Person didn't seem to get along? But no one had come to blows from the sounds of things. That was a step up from the usual infighting Isobu expected from bandits.

Still, it wasn't the most riveting conversation Isobu had ever heard. He counted nearly all of Kei's mundane day-to-day interactions in that tally.

Still, Isobu was looking for people with at least a modicum of goodwill toward…life. If he couldn't help Kei do anything besides not die, he needed some extra opposable thumbs to get her back on her feet. In whatever form that took.

He poked his head under the edge of the log until he surfaced just enough to see, still covered in river detritus from head to tail-tips, and paused as he observed the group at the new section of riverbank.

Generally speaking, he expected people with two arms, two legs, and a fascination with simple tools to be human. And while a few of the people near the water did look human—if of the entirely wrong "ethnic group," as Kei called them sometimes—several more only made sense as humans if there was a clan gene that changed things around. Besides the one definitely-a-human Isobu spotted with some strange biwa, there was an entire mess of strange people: three people far too small to be human, a too-pale person with two-toned hair, someone who was greener than Isobu and bigger than Han, a giant frog with the wrong limb arrangement for a summoned animal, and a few others Isobu was less sure about.

Sure, the purple one with the fancy coat looked a little more like Kei did currently, but so did Curse Seal users. Some of them got a whole head of horns and enhanced strength, even if tails didn't come up much. And they were aggressive and hostile enough to be useless to Isobu's current concerns at best and actively detrimental at worst.

Isobu peered past the small crowd, looking instead for anything behind them of interest. There were several wagons tied to trees and each other, but none of the wagons looked like the merchant transportation Kei was most familiar with. They were painted bright colors with shining accents of cheap gilt paint, loaded high with either supplies or artistic things Isobu had little use for. Their wheels had thin, near-ornamental spokes and, if he concentrated, Isobu could see the beginning of delicate lettering angled just out of view from his perspective. Even the horses didn't look entirely like anything he'd observed through Kei's eyes, though Isobu had admittedly never paid much attention to such things. The life he generally encountered, in his experience, was either human or fish. Mammals with more limbs than whales didn't tend to enter his consideration much.

Altogether, it felt like a miniature version of the encounter with the giant's footprint Kei had found so long ago, Isobu thought. The rules had changed when Isobu was not looking, and he liked it considerably less than he'd enjoyed the first trip into a new world. Or the New World, perhaps.

Nevertheless. He could still feel Kei's achey thoughts pulsing at the back of his mind, so there wasn't too much time to find other possible help. And this group did have someone even more oddly colorful than she was now…

Hmph.

For a few seconds, Isobu considered his options for introducing himself. When at his full size, he rarely had to demand attention when humans were around. Even if he didn't mean to scare them, his immense power did the work for him. He hadn't pushed himself in this form yet, but somehow he doubted that roaring and charging into their midst would get the result he wanted. His voice wasn't as scary as it needed to be for that.

Isobu narrowed his eye, took aim, and then spat a blast of water at the riverbank.

Everyone nearest the water ended up entirely soaked.

Oops. Perhaps he should have just used a single shot instead.

Isobu shook his shell free of debris, splashing without any subtlety whatsoever. Almost immediately, all of their eyes were focused on him.

"What is that supposed to be?" asked the purple one, pulling out a funny-looking blade and pointing it at Isobu. Then there was a garbled sentence or two of a language Isobu didn't understand, which sounded like an insult.

So Isobu spat at that one in particular.

"Would one of you stop that thing before it ruins all our costumes?" demanded the grumpy-voice one in red.

"I'm trying, but I don't think it understands wordplay." The purple one wiped his face dry on a sleeve, or at least tried to.

Isobu hosed that one down again.

"Are you sure?" asked the pale woman.

"Less than I was!" This time, all of the fake jewelry on those double-curled horns jangled. "Does everything understand Common nowadays?"

Isobu would have probably sprayed the group a third time, but two seemed to be enough for the purple one and the pale one to charge after him. This did mean he had two opponents with more mass and more reach than Isobu could lay claim to, given his current state. It also meant they had the advantage on land, as long as he was dragging his tails.

He bared his inner teeth, though no one could see them. Good.

Quick as a flash, he curled his tails underneath his belly and launched into a forward roll. His spikes hit the water like the business end of a paddle steamer, propelling him along the water and up onto the shoreline, kicking up gravel and dirt on the way. He heard plenty of voices shrieking in surprise, along with a low rumble that could only have come from the frog, but he didn't uncurl at all until he felt grass underneath him.

And as soon as he let his tails flare out behind him, Isobu took aim at his now-confused pursuers and sprayed them a third time with more water, just for good measure.

"Keep it away from the carts!" yelled the green man.

And Purple called back, sputtering, "You're helping us with this, Bo!"

That wasn't the solution Isobu wanted. If they were only planning on chasing him away, they wouldn't follow him to where Kei was lying on the riverbank.

So he bunched his tails underneath himself and leapt, snagging the end of the drying line in his teeth. Using his tails as leverage, he bounced on the string until it snapped under his weight.

"HEY!" bellowed the pale woman, but Isobu had already gotten a scarf of some kind in his mouth by the time he and the clothes hit the ground.

Ow! Isobu didn't freeze, but the spike of pain from Kei made Isobu move just a little faster. Was her illness getting worse? Or was something else happening?

This time, as Isobu wheeled away with his prize caught in his spikes, there were definitely two sets of footsteps chasing after him. While he had to stop repeatedly to make sure the purple one and the pale one didn't lose sight of him, Isobu steadily led the pair back toward Kei just like some heroic animal. While Isobu didn't think of himself as particularly heroic, or an animal, sometimes communication between species had some gaps.

Isobu…?

Almost there, Isobu told her, neatly avoiding an attempt to grab him. Pale Lady wasn't quite as quick as the people Isobu was used to, and neither was Purple.

There's…two people here…? Hey, o-ow!

Isobu swerved wildly, circling a bush once while unrolled to give Purple and Pale Lady a chance to catch up with him. Kei, are you all right?

Kei's entire reply boiled down to a burst of confused, dizzy agony.

She wasn't far. Instead of just repeating his usual spray-run-pause routine, Isobu turned to his pursuers and gripped the stolen scarf in his hands.

"What is it planning to—"

And then sprayed Purple a fourth time, because speaking first meant volunteering.

"For the love of—"

To add insult to injury to insult, Isobu reached up with his free hand with fingers raised in a "come at me" gesture Kei knew Gai used.

Purple paused. "What the fuck."

Then Isobu rolled up and away, speeding in Kei's direction. Not quite so fast, this time. Just in case he reached Kei alone.

In truth, he needn't have bothered. When Isobu actually returned to Kei's side again, all thoughts of the constant baiting trick flew out of his head. Likewise, his pursuers redirected their attention from the Tailed Beast taunting them and turned their attention to the problem.

" Another devilblood?"

There were three humans, each wearing rough clothes and leather armor. All of them were fairly big, from Isobu's low perspective, with two heads of dark hair, one bald dome, and plenty of scars between the lot of them. Isobu could see three axes, a crossbow, and a club either in their hands or on the slung across their backs, which under ordinary circumstances would hardly give him pause. Isobu would have handily crushed them all, or Kei would have done it for him.

Except Kei couldn't move while suffering from whatever sickness was keeping her down. Instead, she was being held up by the back of her shirt, dragged by farthest human, eyes shut and thoughts spinning without traction. Isobu could still hear her unfocused complaints, but they were fainter than before.

Isobu dropped the scarf and hissed.

Stepping up alongside him, Purple held one hand out even as a sword sat at the ready. "I suggest you let go of her and back away slowly." That voice started out friendly before dropping into a threat.

Good. Isobu took aim.

Pale Lady didn't let go of her big sword, instead moving it into a ready position.

The bald human laughed long and loud as Isobu made his last adjustments. "And what are you going to do ab—?"

Isobu hit him squarely in the face with a chakra-boosted water sphere, knocking him flat on his back. While Purple and Pale Lady flinched away from him for just a second, the bandit holding Kei didn't drop her. Instead, the other of the bookend pair raised his crossbow and aimed it at Isobu.

Purple snarled something, second curved blade already out and drawing across an exposed, scarred wrist. Isobu saw the crossbow man flinch as ice crackled, and then it was on.

Isobu threw himself into the fight, rolling directly at the human holding Kei hostage. A crossbow bolt bounced off his shell to no effect, and Isobu reached his target almost instantly. Besides, the Pale Lady reached the human with the crossbow and was already cutting him down by the time Isobu closed in.

The human tried to drop Kei and attack, even if he had to step on her. That was probably the second major mistake this human had made today, and it would be his last.

Isobu molded his chakra more carefully this time, though hand seals were useless. Water Dragon Bullet.

Purple rushed past, going for the human Isobu had knocked down, and was nearly bowled over by the gout of water as it emerged from the nearby river. The water formed a twister first, and then coiled up and out of the riverbed to make a snarling maw topped with glowing yellow eyes. It circled around to reach its target, snatching up the bandit that had dared lay a hand on Kei and shaking its head like a dog with a rat. The crunch was inaudible over the rest of the noise, but Isobu felt it through the construct and let both the dragon and the human drop to the ground.

The dragon exploded into water droplets. The human didn't get up.

Meanwhile, Purple and Pale Lady had charged for the bald human, who had hardly any time to get to his feet before they cut him apart between them. Purple got the last hit in, driving the ice sword into an exposed throat. There was less blood than made sense.

Still, then it was weapon-cleaning and complaining time, and Isobu didn't care for that.

With that would-be question settled, Isobu dragged himself to Kei and nudged her over until she was lying on her side facing him. Safer that way.

Checking quickly, Isobu examined Kei and tallied up a split lip…and that was it. Maybe a bruised tail? The mess of sense memory said one of the bandits had yanked really hard on Kei's new middle horn, but really the illness was still causing the most trouble. Though perhaps it wasn't warranted yet, Isobu let out a quiet sigh of relief. Kei was an awful trouble magnet.

Then everything was quiet.

"This your friend?" asked Pale Lady. Isobu couldn't see her well from his angle, and thus turned until he could. And she was only a meter or so away, with blood all down her sword, splitting her attention between Isobu, Kei, and Purple.

Kei cracked one eye open, just in time. She blinked slowly up at Pale Lady, and then at Purple when everyone gathered again. Her gaze slid to Isobu again before she shut her eyes again, without saying anything aloud.

What the hell…?

Give me a little time. Isobu straightened his forelegs, one tail wrapped around Kei's wrist, and nodded firmly to Pale Lady.

"Yasha," said Purple. That tone sounded like a warning but, more importantly, Isobu recognized the sounds. Sure, the word was archaic and had fallen out of use around the time the Tailed Beasts were young, but that was familiar. "Be careful. You need your fingers more than it does."

Isobu eyed Purple and blew a bubble in that direction, just to be contrary.

Purple popped it with the point of the ice sword, smirking.

"Molly, Yasha!" called a different voice, and the pointy-eared maybe-human jogged slowly into view. As he came to a stumbling stop, probably unable to see Isobu clearly, he asked, "Did you get Toya's scarf back?"

"More than that, I think." Purple was thus renamed Molly, which was a kind of name Kei would recognize when Isobu didn't. Shaking out the eyesore coat, which still dripped quite a lot, "Ornna's about to have another chance to yell at you, Gustav."

"Wha—oh. Oh, what happened here?" Gustav, who apparently had a little button in his head marked "charity" that could be easily pressed, shooed Yasha and Molly away. That left him face-to-spikes with Isobu, whose two free tails curled into wary S-shapes. "Is this why you raised such a ruckus? Your tiefling friend is hurt?"

"Called it," said Molly in a perfectly audible voice, but Gustav ignored that.

Isobu nodded firmly to Gustav. He was already checking Kei's pulse and temperature, and all those other human things that Isobu rarely needed to think about unless Kei got hurt while his chakra flowed through them both. This was strange new territory.

"Yasha, could you give me a hand?" Gustav asked. "She's pretty bad off right now."

Rather than replying, Yasha bent down and neatly scooped Kei up and over her shoulder as soon as Isobu let go, like Kei didn't weigh anything. No one offered the same to Isobu, but that was fine. He'd already proven he was plenty fast enough to put these bipedal people through their paces. Molly and Gustav talked as they cleared the bandit bodies away into underbrush, with Isobu not lifting a single tail to assist. He didn't see the point.

While they headed back to the watering hole, Isobu managed to catch the name of the strange caravan that he had missed before. He'd been a little too busy rolling circles around everyone at the time to check.

The Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiosities, Isobu read, more to himself than even to Kei. She was hardly in a state to notice. Interesting start.

Kei, perhaps fortunately, was too unconscious to notice when the fan-lady started yelling.