While food, sleep, more food, and the knowledge that she wouldn’t have to get out of bed early in the morning to kill things all day while watching the ones she loved get beaten up had made Kazue feel better and eliminated her general grumpiness, she was still mad at Mordecai. But it was also a topic that required complete privacy to discuss; she didn't even want to talk about it over the link to their cores, because she didn't want other people to see Mordecai's or even Moriko's possible reactions.

So for now, she shelved it and focused on the day's events.

And Dersuta had certainly provided a distracting event with the rewards he had presented to them. Kazue was quick to grab a set of wands from the ranged weapons chest. Each wand was attuned to a specific attack, such as fire, lightning, corrosion, or poison, and could fire a bolt, stream, or cone of that element. For someone like Mordecai, they were practically useless, as each wand could only hold a small amount of mana on its own. But for someone like Kazue, whose direct attack magic tended to be relatively weak, they were very useful, as she could channel her own mana into the wand, which in turn would boost and diversify the power of her magical attack.

Her staff was much more flexible of a tool for amplifying and manipulating the magic that she was already good at. But with the upgrade that Dersuta was giving to everyone's bracers, Kazue now had room for more weapons! Which included a pair of small guns and a long gun.

Not that she really knew how to use them beyond the basics, but as Azeria was only able to produce them through nexus magic, she'd never felt much motivation to bother training with them. Of course, this brought home something she had not really considered in depth before.

If they could get these from Dersuta, then in the future, Dersuta could have an awakened avatar delve in Azeria. Which meant he could probably earn one of those liquid metal guns Mordecai had recently worked out. Once Dersuta went back home with that and any other interesting prizes, it would be easy for him to duplicate them, which would mean that in a future delve, people from Azeria could get liquid metal guns by delving here, possibly with upgrades or modifications that could, in turn, be learned by her and Mordecai.

That was quite the synergistic exchange. Some of Azeria's limitations in experimentation came from lacking either the raw power or the calculating power to perform the experiment — Dersuta clearly had an overabundance of both.

After she was satisfied with her weapon selection, she tried out the neat living leather armor with scales. While the scales were visible, they also laid so smoothly over each other that it could be easy to miss them if you weren't looking, much like Thalmirush's scales for her hands and face. The armor was also much lighter weight than normal leather, which Kazue had never felt comfortable in the couple of times she'd tried it on Mordecai's insistence. The ability to modify the armor's shape was a nice boon for its supportiveness as well. Plus, she had a few ideas about how it could be entertaining, and from Moriko's expression, her wife was having similar thoughts.

Though they'd need to be careful about where and when they wore any alterations; Kazue doubted that Fuyuko would appreciate the idea of her parents using the same sort of magic armor for more recreational purposes.

Hmm. If they were all getting this armor, did that mean Akahana and Ricardo were... nope. Kazue shoved the thought of her parents getting similar ideas about this sort of armor out of her head. She also ignored the mild hypocrisy in feeling mildly amused about Fuyuko's potential embarrassment while being unwilling to deal with that thought about her own parents.

After shaking off those thoughts, Kazue returned her attention to collecting her share of all the many magical goods they had received. Deciding where everything went was a bit of a chore; the bracers were the fastest way to summon things, but they were limited to attuning only weapons along a limited capacity as the price for that speed. Her backpack had a very large capacity, but required physically reaching into a pocket to retrieve anything. A storage ring sat between those two; faster than the backpack, slower than the bracers, and with a storage capacity in between. Well, all the potions wanted to go into the ring, and she'd already bound her weapons to her bracers, so for now Kazue put everything else into her backpack. She could sort them later.

Considering her options this way reminded Kazue about what Fuyuko said she had done, using her shadow to gather food and put it into her backpack directly. Now she was wondering if she could somehow use her liminal spirit to find a way to store or retrieve things from her backpack. That was something to test out later.

When everyone had collected all the rewards, with the more experienced expedition members helping the younger ones select and organize their gear, and the chests were empty, Mordecai carefully examined one of the chests and then smiled. "We need to bring these too." When Kazue studied one as well, she realized she wasn't sure what all of the metals and other materials making up the chest were. Oh, more samples. This was going to be interesting once they got the chests back to the nexus.

On the other side of the portal that Dersuta summoned, the rest of Kazue's family waited, and she rushed over to give her parents a hug. "Did you have fun? What did you have to deal with? Oh, I have to tell you about the teleporting dragon-moose we fought!" She grinned up at them, happy to see their smiles as they began answering her questions.

But, hmm, something was different. Kazue glanced from her mother's face to her ears, and then back down to Akahana's definitely not fox-like face. "Mom!" She said, interrupting her parents, "You can do a hybrid form now!"

"Well, of course, dear," Akahana replied with a teasing smile. "I couldn't keep being shown up by my own daughter, now could I?" As she spoke, she ever-so-casually fanned her tails out, four to a side.

"Eight tails!" Kazue practically squeaked in excitement. "You really did have a good time!"

Their conversation continued as the reunited group walked toward the now nearby border, but Kazue's core interrupted before Kazue crossed that border, and Kazue stopped to listen to her own voice coming from her earring for a bit. Then she turned around with a smile and said, "Dersuta! It seems we have a final small gift for you!"

When she felt the nexus's attention turn her way, she continued. "So, our cores didn't want to distract us during our delve, but they figured out a game that you might want to know about. First, you need to create something to project an illusion that both you and your subsidiary cores can interact with." Which wasn't a concern for her and Mordecai, as they could both interact with everything.

"After that, it's simple. Start with any game like go or chess that you know, and make the board go vertical as well as horizontal. My core says it's pretty straightforward to translate the rules, though it gets more complicated if you take it to the next stage and make it a four-dimensional cube." Kazue frowned after passing that last part on. "Um, I don't think I know what that last bit meant, but I guess I'll know when I get back to my territory. Anyway, thank you for hosting us, bye!"

It took a few hours after that to get everything stowed properly and get the wagon hitched to Zara and Tiros, and it was several more hours of travel before everyone started turning in for the evening. Now Kazue had the privacy she wanted, with no expectations that they would need to be seen again before morning.

Kazue had her back turned to Mordecai and Moriko when she started letting the emotions she had tucked away bubble back up to the surface, but she could feel them reacting to her change in mood immediately. She shook her head and turned around, one hand held up to stop them from saying anything. Carnelian and Sparks glanced at each other then launched themselves onto high points of furniture to watch and stay out of the way, sensing that something was up

Then she took a deep breath and pointed at Mordecai. "You. Were. Careless. You don't get to be careless. Calculated risk is one thing, even if that's hard for me to deal with at times, but that explosion wasn't a calculated risk; it was from you being reckless because you wanted to try out something new. This time, there were no innocents. We all were participating in something dangerous because we chose to. But if you were careless like that and an innocent got hurt, I..." She started shaking as tears welled up, and she couldn't find the words anymore. There was too much she wanted to say, needed to say, that she couldn't find how to say any of it.

But she didn't need to. Mordecai's stricken expression showed his understanding of what she'd already said, and a moment later, he had her wrapped in a hug. Kazue stiffened, her anger and pain and fear making her want to reject the comfort, but when he drew her to the bed to pull her into his lap, she didn't resist, and a moment later she was holding onto him tightly as she cried into his shoulder.

The bed shifted when Moriko sat next to them, and she leaned in to add her embrace to Mordecai's, the two of them offering their understanding and comfort. When Kazue's tears were spent, Mordecai whispered softly. "I'm sorry, Kazue, you are right. I was careless. That's something I need to guard against."

"Mmph," she said, her face still buried into his shirt. It was what she wanted to hear, needed to hear, and she knew he meant it, but her emotions still weren't settled yet.

"I'm sorry as well," Moriko said, and that caused Kazue to look up at her in confusion. Moriko smiled. "I knew you were upset at him, but I didn't think through what made you so upset. So, I assumed that it was something that would pass once you were feeling better. I shouldn't have dismissed it so easily."

Kazue shrugged. "Mm. You were right the time before; I was angry because I was scared and didn't understand what was going on."

"Yes," Moriko said, "but I also understood why you were upset. But for this, I didn't take the time to understand why you were angry."

Mordecai stroked his fingers gently through Kazue's hair. "This expedition has been rough on everyone, but I think it's been hardest on you. And my carelessness did not make things any easier for you. I am very sorry, my love." He leaned down to lightly kiss her, and Kazue accepted the kiss, letting the warmth of his touch help ease the ache in her heart.

When the kiss broke, she snuggled into him, feeling better now that she knew he understood. A few more moments passed in silence with the three of them together, then Kazue sniffed with deliberate drama to the action. "Hmph. Don't think you are off the hook so easily." She glanced up to see him smile slightly. Good, he'd caught on.

"Oh?" he asked, "What is it that I need to do to win your forgiveness, demanding one?"

Kazue grinned briefly, then bit her lower lip before forcing her face into a thoughtful expression. "Let's see, oh, I know. I think you owe Moriko and me a proper demonstration of the abilities of this new armor of ours."

Moriko straightened up at that, her eyes growing wide as a grin spread across her face. "I like the sound of this. What do you have in mind?"

Kazue slid off of Mordecai's lap and stepped away before turning back to face Mordecai. "To begin with, I want to see just how snug and fitted you can make the scaled leather."

That elicited a happy nod from Moriko. "And he should demonstrate how well it stretches by posing and flexing."

"That's an excellent idea," Kazue said, "but we don't want to forget more active movement either. He should do some push-ups for us as well."

"He's rather strong," Moriko said with feigned dubiousness, "I am not sure that's going to make his muscles work hard enough to test the leather. Maybe we should make him work harder by sitting on his back while he does push-ups."

Mordecai humored their ever-more-outrageous demands, while the familiars 'helped' by running and jumping on him and generally trying to make it hard for him to keep his balance, until Kazue and Moriko couldn't keep straight faces anymore and collapsed with laughter. Which got them both scooped up and tossed onto the bed, followed by a light spanking, which made Kazue just giggle more at Mordecai's fake outrage. Then Thunder, Lightning, and Carnelian Flame all leapt to defend their mistresses. The young dragons knew it was all in play, but they also knew that Mordecai was one of the few people they were allowed to play with this roughly.

The night ended with all of them just snuggled into bed together. On almost any other night, Kazue would have much preferred sex, but for tonight, she needed just the play and comfort, nothing more, and they didn't have to shoo their familiars out this way either.

But she expected to be in a much better mood tomorrow night, and there were some ideas she wanted to play with.