Frank stared at the probable skinwalker in front of him. Maria’s response implied that it wasn’t actually the doctor, but people panicked and did stupid things. He could have forgotten, and then not thought things through clearly and tried to guess. Unlikely, but possible enough that in the current situation, Frank would spare a minute to confirm.

“Maria, ask him another question.” He told her.

Maria, for her part, was on the edge of panicking herself. Frank watched her eyes dart from Ghulam, to her dad, to himself, and then back. She took quite a while to gather up the courage to speak.

“What’s my mom’s middle name?” Maria asked, her voice stammering.

Ghulam, for his part, looked utterly terrified and confused. “What do you mean Maria? Do you not remember? You didn’t want your dad to know because he might think you were having sex, but they were for hormone control.” He justified himself rapidly, voice breaking.

Rina and Bill reacted to the fear in his voice by looking at Frank uncertainly. Maria teared up, looking away. Frank’s face remained impassive, but his heart started beating more quickly, and he felt his palms slightly sweaty. Still, he kept his voice level.

“Answer the other question, Ghulam.” he told him.

Ghulam sobbed for the first time. He choked out a response. “She doesn’t have a middle name.”

Frank looked at Maria. She didn’t speak, just shook her head and put her hands on her face. Frank turned back to the skinwalker. He raised his sword, and took a few steps to close the gap. The skinwalker began to beg, wailing that he was making a mistake, crawling away. The swing came down, cleanly decapitating it. Frank looked at it, blood slowly leaking out its neck, as if there wasn’t much in it in the first place. Upon its death, it slowly lost its form, resembling Ghulam less and less, becoming indistinct.

Skinwalker(Level 11) defeated. Frank awarded 8000 experience. Rina awarded 2535 experience. Maria awarded 1000 experience.

Frank had leveled up and was almost halfway to another one. Rina would have as well, most likely.

Seeing something that look liked an acquaintance so casually decapitated had shocked both Rina and Bill. Bill swore loudly, looking both frightened and physically ill. Rina didn’t just look ill, she turned away and vomited. That there was no chain reaction provoked upon Bill was a testament to his intestinal fortitude.

Maria had looked away the moment it’d become clear. Frank thought it for the best. Watching someone you know well die never got easy, even if it wasn’t actually them. If she’d watched he’d have suspected a defect of character, or that she’d put everything into stability.

Frank updated his stats, putting his points into knowledge, vitality, agility, and constitution. He’d wanted to put everything into physical stats, since he was about to travel, but the current situation obviously changed priorities. He glanced at his status.

Frank HP 166/166 Level 12 Human (7545/23040EXP) MP 0 Saviour(4/5) SP 74/132 Strength 11 Knowledge 11 Agility 13(12) Intelligence 10 Constitution 13(9) Stability 10 Vitality 11(10) Wisdom 7(6)

Unfortunately, the extra point hadn’t revealed anything about Hugo. It would be too fortunate for one point of knowledge to solve the second half of the situation. He still didn’t know enough about skinwalkers to make firm judgements. Frank glanced at Hugo, his face scrunching into a frown.

If the body in front of him was a skinwalker, then it’s best bet would be to feign unconsciousness. He could solve this with his health potion, but that would only allow him to question Hugo, it wouldn’t actually solve whether he was human or not. The thought of wasting a health potion on a skinwalker didn’t sit well at all. The question of whether a skinwalker could be rendered unconscious also popped into his head.

He looked to the other three. Rina was busy recovering from puking. Maria was softly crying. Bill was looking at him, conflicted. He’d seen the way Frank stared at Hugo. Frank pondered. He decided to first closely examine Hugo’s wounds. An inspection revealed none were life threatening, which simplified his decisions. He wasn’t choosing between risking wasting the health potion or risking Hugo dying, which made things easier.

“Maria. Rina. Bill. If you have any ideas here, please share. This is either Hugo, unconscious, a skinwalker, unconscious, or a skinwalker feigning being unconscious. We need to figure out which it is.” He said to them. “Also, keep an eye on each other, please.” He reiterated his earlier caution. “I’m going to try waking him up first.”

Frank pulled out one of his water skins, and walked over to the bound form of Hugo. He carefully poured water over his captive’s face. None of the noise and commotion of dealing with the first skinwalker had roused him, but cold water did. Hugo woke with a start, looking around wildly. He attempted to move, but his hands were bound, which made him start to panic. The unfamiliar face of Frank, who’d never seen him awake, didn’t appear to help either.

“Get away from me!” Hugo yelled towards Frank, struggling. Unlike Maria, he had a clear accent. His movement caused him to wince in pain from his wounds.

Frank stood there, and called out to Maria. “Can you do the same thing you did with Ghulam?”

Maria had turned towards the commotion at some point, and looked at Frank and Hugo with a tear-stained face. She took a deep breath, but before she could bring herself to speak, Hugo had turned towards her.

His eyes flashed with recognition and he calmed a bit upon seeing her. “Mimi! You are okay!”

The use of what must’ve been her nickname caused her to lose her composure again. Hugo looked towards Frank and then around to Bill and Rina. “They didn’t do anything to you, did they?” he asked Maria, concerned.

Maria managed to force out an answer through her renewed crying. “No, dad. They didn’t.”

“What’s wrong?” Hugo replied.

Maria wasn’t able to respond. Frank chose to take control of the situation. Better to get it over with, whatever the outcome.

“Look over there.” he said, directing Hugo towards the corpse of the skinwalker he’d just finished off. Hugo’s eyes passed over it, widening.

“What in God’s name is that?” He said, staring at the now indistinct features of the head.

Frank replied. “It looked like Ghulam, before I killed it. It’s a skinwalker. It acted like him too.”

Hugo looked back to Maria after a moment. “Is that what’s got you feeling so sad? I saw Ghulam escape, before I passed out.”

Frank interrupted again. “It’s rather because we can’t tell if you are actually Hugo. We managed to figure out that one was a fake, but I’m not sure how to confirm you are who you are.”

“What do you mean? Of course I’m me.” Hugo said. Maria sobbed in response.

“That thing insisted it was Ghulam as well.” Frank said. “We caught it because it didn’t know details Ghulam would know about the past. That doesn’t mean that you knowing details of Hugo’s past makes you Hugo, though. I don’t know enough about these skinwalkers. Confirming you are not a skinwalker is easy enough, you just have to fail at doing something Hugo would be able to. Confirming you are Hugo though, I don’t know how to do. I don’t know what skinwalkers can’t do.”

Hugo’s brow furrowed as he appeared to consider what Frank said.

“You think I’m something I’m not, and that something might be able to copy me.” He looked towards Maria, his face showing understanding.

“I’m sorry Mimi.” he said, sadly. He then turned back to Frank. “What are you going to do, then?”

“Maria will ask you a couple questions. If you don’t know the answers, then, I’ll deal with you. If you do, I’ll leave a knife nearby.”

“If that’s the case how could I ever prove I’m me?” Hugo asked, looking towards Maria once more, uneasily.

Frank considered for a moment “If we both participate in defeating an enemy, the system message will list us both receiving experience.” he said. “So assuming I leave you the knife, if you find us later, bring something you’ve defeated but not killed. I can finish it off to confirm you are actually Hugo.”

Rina interrupted after hearing this. Her face looked pained, and was still green. “Why don’t you just do that now? Go find something?” she asked.

“It would take too long. Even if I did and came back, how would you know it was still me? The moment we split up with these things around, you can no longer be confident I am who I say I am. Maybe you believe that I can probably handle myself, but what’s stopping you three from being targeted? I couldn’t be confident you were you either.” Frank replied.

Rina looked down at the ground, falling silent.

Frank looked at Bill, who averted his gaze. Then he turned back to Maria. “Ask him questions, please.”

Maria was still struggling not to break down. She forced herself to look at Hugo again. “Why is my nickname Mi…” Her voice broke as she attempted to say Mimi.

Hugo responded immediately. “Your younger brother called you that before he could pronounce your name. Same reason I’m ‘Huo’.”

Maria was crying, but she continued. “What did you get me from the school fair in fifth grade?”

“A giant sheet cake. You ate it for breakfast and lunch for three days and made yourself sick.” Hugo responded, smiling wanly.

Maria rushed towards him suddenly. Throwing herself down and embracing him in a hug. She cried for only a few seconds more while holding him, before getting back up. “I’m sorry dad.” She said.

Frank looked at her as she stood back up. She looked back at him.

“It’s him. It’s my dad.” Maria said. She didn’t argue with Frank about what to do. She just made a single request. “Please. Leave him the potion. He’s injured.”

Frank would have been hesitant to do so fifteen minutes ago, but the situation had changed. Rather, his estimation of Maria had changed. Hugo’s wounds weren’t life threatening, and he would still be mobile. They’d only hinder him under heavy exertion. It wasn’t like where Bill could barely walk or Rina’s wound was festering. But the fact she’d kept it together and avoided doing anything rash was undeniably an impressive show of mental fortitude.

Frank nodded to her. He walked thirty feet away, placed down the buck knife and health potion, and then looked at Hugo. “Good luck.”

Hugo just nodded without saying anything. Perhaps he didn’t have words at the moment, or perhaps he felt that it would upset Maria to say anything else. Frank didn’t know.

“Maria, Rina, Bill, lets move now. I want to get to town as soon as possible.” Frank said.

They all moved. Rina and Bill rushed over quickly, as if they wanted to escape from the current situation, while Maria kept her gaze lingering on her father until they lost sight of him through the trees.

***

Greg sat in the room he’d made his office, pissed. He’d just made it clear that Ghulam was too valuable to risk himself, and the man ran off. With Hugo, as far as he could tell. No one had noticed until morning. There was the only doctor, gone, maybe never to return given the bullshit that was going on.

That would mean he would be stuck dealing with all those things, since no one else here had his own competency in first aid. He wondered if he should have done what Frank did. Gather a couple people and leave. He knew the guy was telling the truth, but he’d already been setting up to throw him out. To admit that he was wrong after convincing people to get rid of him would undermine the authority he’d established.

Fuck. The fact Frank had chosen to leave meant he felt that personal strength was more important than safety in numbers, Greg felt. He’d broached the idea to Sasha. If he and Brook had agreed, Greg would have left with them, preferably a girl in tow. Traveling with two gay dudes meant more ladies for him. But Sasha had pointed out that neither of them knew what was out there. Frank probably did.

So he stayed put. At least he got to be the boss here. He could already tell at least three of the women were eyeing him. Still, what to do about Ghulam and Hugo going missing. He could write off Hugo. The man had been comatose as far as Greg was aware. Losing the town’s best hunter would suck, but he’d thought they already had. Ghulam though, that hurt. He had no idea where to even look for them.

His pondering was interrupted, by of all people, Brook, knocking on his door. By himself. He’d never seen the man do anything of his own initiative. He just deferred to Sasha, as far as Greg could tell. That was already odd. Sasha had been acting odd too, for that matter, but Greg chalked it up to the change in situations.

“What’s up, Brook?” Greg asked, putting on a practiced, friendly tone. How to Win Friends and Influence People had been a useful read. Made him feel like a sociopath at first, but once you got used to applying it’s suggestions, interpersonal interactions got much easier. Didn’t work as well in the military, but in civilian life?

Brook stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. “It’s about Sasha. He’s been acting really odd recently. I’m worried he’s not well, uh, mentally.”

Greg groaned internally. This sounded like a relationship problem. He didn’t want to have to listen to a relationship problem. Especially not a gay one. But Sasha’s support was valuable, so he faked concern.

“What’s going on?” he questioned.