MERC XIX: Toss a Coin to your Goblin

[Shadowcaller]

[But the Cat Came Back]

"Ah-ha!" Reina holds up a picture of her on the couch, surrounded by four kids, about three. They must have all worn themselves out because they've all fallen asleep in different positions, two of them stealing her lap, one of them leaning on her arm, and the other propped up on the foot of the couch, sitting on the floor. Reina doesn't seem immune to this either, head hanging forward, clearly asleep herself. "Not my most flattering, but at least Tobias can take a good picture." Especially since it was a 'Before' pic. Reina doesn't show off Toby's 'After' pic.

She blinks for a moment when Dena mentions losing limbs. "That... happens?" What a curse!

"Ok, so... everybody kinda knows about the first one. After that it gets complicated." Complicated enough that Reina skips the second one entirely. Mostly because she doesn't want to talk about that one. "Skip ahead many years. I get turned into a catgirl, but at this point, I've established my clones and... subtle, honestly imperceptible homoerotic tones with Tobias. He gets jealous that I turned into a girl and turns himself into a girl, Tovia. I'm a little fuzzy on his reasoning, but after he turned back, he's all romantic and stuff towards me. But the dynamic's been changed right? Cause now Reinholdt and Tobias aren't a thing anymore, It's Toby and Reina. So he uses forbidden druid magic and gives himself a stroke for some reason making Tovia an actual clone instead of a passing previous incident." Reina just shakes her head at questions. The less known about Toby logic, the safer for Dena's sanity.

"So Reinholdt and Tovia take up living together in Riverside while I stay at GLoG with Tobias. Toby and Tovia push for kids, and we're ready cause we both want to retire from adventuring altogether. Most people don't even know about the Rein in Riverside I think, that's how far off the map we disappeared for awhile. Anyways, they have triplets while we have quadruplets. All born around the same time. But since it all happened after the split and I've chosen not to share memories with the collective, I personally don't have those experiences of fatherhood." Only what she's heard from word of mouth.

[But the Cat Came Back]

"Oh yeah, a lot of people lose their legs since they get a snake-butt." She briefly glances down at her own legs. "Which probably would also take all the fun parts with it too and the less I need to know about a snakes 'fun parts', the better. Besides, I've invested heavily in these legs." She raises one of them though Reina can likely not see it as it's obscured by the desk.
"But in rare cases you can get people who just get to keep their head, everything else gets snake-y." Dena wiggles her fingers. "So I'm lucky I'm just in the 'slithering hair' category."

Then she listens to Reina's explanation regarding Tobias which causes her to raise her eyebrow more than once. "And... uh-huh." She pauses before she gets the idea to question the sanity of the person Reina apparently had kids with.

But there is something that gets her attention though. "Hold on, so there's still a bunch of Rein-clones then? I thought this whole 'Rein-collective thing' was something of the past. Had no idea there was still a bunch of him wandering around. Wasn't there- something with Magtok?" Frankly, the more she heard about that the less sense it seemed to make. Magtok's rivalry with Rein was the only thing that really made sense to her and for once it sounded like Magtok had been on the right side.