Quest - F is For Friends

"You know what I bet?" Rayleigh sat on the bench, her legs outstretched, and crossed at the ankles. She marveled at the simple sensation, given she was so painfully short in the real-world. Rather than admiring her cute boots, as she was now, she would be reduced to swinging her legs back and forth, like a toddler on a swing. No, not here. Here, she was practically half-way to Amazonian goddess. Maybe I should have sprung for a few more inches, just for good measure.

She continued, "I bet your friends aren't even real."

When Vincent merely looked at her, she cast him an innocent smile. Had she batted her eyelashes, and propped her fist beneath her chin, she could not have appeared any less harmless in that moment. Unfortunately, Vince had learned all of her tricks by now. "I mean, how am I to know for sure?" Her shoulders rose and fell as she loosed a small, casual shrug. "You told me that they would come, and help us with this quest. And that's great. But since when did you go off and make friends like this?"

There was a small twinge of jealousy there, though it was buried very, very deep. Perhaps, if she were lucky, that would be the one thing that Vincent Cain did not know about her. "You just found two guys at a bar, and you decided to hang out again? Never knew you to be the type." And the quick quirk of her eyebrows hid the fact that she was not the type to easily make friends, and she knew it.

@Vincent Cain

 

"It's a bit of a story really." Vince nodded sagely.

It was not a story he would willingly tell her, not in a million billion trillion years, but it was in fact one hell of a story. He'd come home from a shitty day at work, got trashed on Ecohol, and then decided to work off his debt by going rat stomping with two random people he'd just met. There were some drunken illusions, bad Vincent Cain brand humor, and maybe even a morale to be learned somewhere there. Maybe.

Meanwhile Ray was over here marveling her own long legs, and Vince couldn't blame her. She'd done a damn good job in character creation. making an avatar that was...hard to look at directly. Ray had always been a close friend of his, someone he'd been comfortable around, someone he could be alone with without things getting awkward, but now...

Dammit Ray that's not fair, if I knew we were making ourselves hot I'd have sprung for the hercules bod.

But he'd be damned if he would let her know that. He'd spent years unsure on whether or not he had chance, waffled back and forth, done T charts and flow charts and all sorts of reasoning over if he had a chance, or if asking her out would be awkward, and finally he'd just decided to let things be...things.

Back to the topic at hand though, she ever so innocently took the offensive. He got the feeling she was still mad about him killing that rat without her getting a shot in, but also that she was upset for some other reason. He was good at reading her, but this was a new face that he hadn't spent years of his life interacting with, so he was a little slow on the pick-up.

Suddenly he realized he'd been silent for just slightly too long. "Nah, they're real though. I think one of them is a chick IRL too, but you never know with this sort of thing. Catfishing is easier than sin these days." He cracked his neck and decided to plop down next to her. Casually, just like he would with regular Ray, totally unphased that she suddenly had a rockin bod.

@John Cromwell

 

The blood in her veins ran frigid, iced over as if she had just been dropped in the freezing Lake Superior. She snapped her blue eyes shut to mask the sudden tsunami of emotions - surprise, hurt, anger - and hopefully, keep them from Vincent's keen gaze. When her lids rose again, the eyes were back to their cool, mountain-lake blue.

"You hadn't mentioned that one of them was a girl," she told him matter-of-factly, as if the information meant nothing to her. When, in reality, the opposite was true. This changed everything.

Why, though? Why did it change everything? It did not need to. It shouldn't, but for some odd reason, it did. It was not as if she had been his keeper in real-life. Throughout college, they had each had their fair share of flings, and acquaintances of the opposite sex. The anime club where Ray had met Vince had been a pretty eclectic mix of ladies, gentlemen, and those who had yet to make up their mind. Why, then, was Terrasphere different? Why did the mere notion of Vincent befriending anyone, let alone a female, turn her stomach? Besides, as Vincent had mentioned, it was very possible that this female was not who she claimed. That should be reassuring. It wasn't.

The surprise, the hurt, the anger, all ebbed into shame as she thumped her boot heels against the packed earth. "You were busier than I'd thought, then."

@Vincent Cain

 

The ping from Vincent was... a bit weird, to say the least.

An awful lot of awkward jokes, a couple typos, and high praise in her ability to kill some rats to pay off a bar tab. There was also an invitation to meet up and go questin' some more with one of his friends. Madison was quietly grateful that her first meaningful PM wasn't an invite to a bar accompanied by a picture with a dumpy guy wearing nothing but a trilby and a smile.

So, with nothing better to do that day, Maddy decided to travel to the agreed meet-up place.

It was a nifty little outdoor park, nothing she hadn't seen before along the shores of Lake Ontario. Trees, benches, walking paths, screeching children playing their dumb games... You know how it goes.

As she drew closer, Madison could make out the spiky blond hair of her fellow Ratslayer. Sitting on a bench next to him was another familiar figure--the woman known as Rayleigh, who she had met in the woods some time ago at some hot springs that had run afoul of some hex mage.

The witch offered a small wave and a curt smile. "'Sup."

 

John felt good today. Any day where he could walk around all by himself, without a nurse around, was good. Not that he needed a nurse, mind. He could get around just fine by himself, but all nurses nagged, and none more than his. But, today there was no nurse, no shakes, and certainly no aches in his joints. He could have clicked his heels, if he might have been alone, and prone to fits of girlish immaturity.

The wee marker on his little map interface in addition to the one overlaid on his hud, indicated a bench in the center of the park. It was a classical thing, the park. It had open spaces for tossing a ball, as well as paved walkways under trees that was quite nice. He smiled again, clapping his hands. After a couple months of working with his hands in a forge, he was excited to meet people who didn't think that he was an NPC. Three were at the bench, and the marker made a little dingnoise as he reached it. The first two were Madison and Vincent. He had a good time (even if he didn't have too much memory of it) destroying vermin on behalf of a tavern owner. The other he did not recognize, though she was, gifted, as he used to say when he was younger.

"Friends!" he exclaimed, taking a seat next to the girl he didn't know. The wood of the bench sagged just a tad as his bulk settled. "What are we after today?"

 

Vincent could tell that Ray was upset. A subtle change in her cadence, a slight change in the tone of her voice. It wasn't the sort of upset that resulted in a slug to the arm, no sir, in fact as menacing as her punches were, this was a whole different breed of upset. This was "I'm upset but I'm not gonna tell you why I'm upset, and then when you ask me why I'm upset I'll get mad that you don't know what you did upset. He opened his mouth to start to uselessly stammer something in his own defense, and then the other two showed up.
"
Maddison has snuck up on him, he'd been too busy trying to decode Ray while at the same time not staring at her. Her introduction was simpler, easy, and distracting. Meanwhile, John took the spotlight, the giant appearing and plopping down on the other side of Ray with clear ease. The two had made for one hell of a party, and even though it was just stomping rats, he felt like there was solid party material with them. John was big and burly, clearly speced into being a frontliner, Maddison was some sort of caster, Vince was the rouge, and Ray had all the utility they needed.

"I haven't peeped the quest at all. Ray's the one with all the deets"

 

"Oh," was all that Ray could manage. The fiery anger left her, sizzling like a red-hot poker plunged into cool water. Jealousy, suspicion, and all for this? Mechanically, she lifted a hand to greet Maddison Freebird. The pair had met before, when Rayleigh had wandered off the path to the hot springs. And this was Vincent's bar-buddy?

Small world, the white-haired woman found herself thinking, before turning her attention to the other player. He was huge. No, that was not the right term. Ray had gone for height when creating her character, and she had thought that she was huge. This man was colossal. The bench groaned in protest beneath his bulk, and Rayleigh swore she felt herself slide toward him. Instinct had her standing before she could potentially tumble against him. Now that would be an introduction.

Fortunately, Vince set her up for introductions, providing her with an excuse to get to her feet. "Well, uh, thanks for coming." It was a weak greeting, but Rayleigh had never been one for social situations. She was not introverted, per se, but she was much more comfortable among people she knew. Or, people she knew about. That would help her figure out what to do, and what to say. She knew very little about Maddy, despite adventuring with her, and the giant was a complete mystery.

So, she figured she would just get to it. "The quest is called Brisshal Completionist. It's supposed to be a good place to start for newcomers, so I don't think we have anything to really be worried about. We have to explore Stokbon, then Dunnstads, then Brisshal, and then end with some cave. I think the cave is a mini dungeon kind of thing. If I remember the details correctly, that's plains, then coast, then forest, and then, yeah, cave."

Her lips pursed, as she tried to remember any other pertinent details. "We have to defeat a mob in each place, and collect whatever items we come across. I think." She paused, then called up her HUD. "I'll just share it with you, so you know what I'm talking about."

 

This must've been one of those hidden, unmarked quests that developers always stuffed into RPGs.

Brisshal Completionist seemed like a fun way to kill a week. Visit every major area in the region, then sample the local flavor by melting the face off a buncha' monsters with hate-fueled magic? And all that sweet, sweet experience and cash she could earn the entire time?

"Sure," Madison said with a nonchalant shrug. "Count me in."

The witch pulled up her palm menu and opened up Rayleigh's PM. She spent a few minutes browsing the details, noting that she had already had a jaunt through the Beginner's Cave the day she plugged in and created her avatar.

"Seems easy enough," she said as she flicked shut the menu. Weak monsters, a bit of city exploration in Stokbon, get to see how well the devs crafted the shoreline in Dunnstads and maybe pick a couple tavern fights with pirates, and then back to the cave to see if there are any other big, nasty bastards that need their beady little eyes rotted out of their hairy noggins.

"And it looks like we have a decent gang together to tackle it." Pulling her tarot deck out of her inventory, she waved it around in the air. "I have most of our magic needs handled. Buffs, curses, a bit of portent or prediction or whatever you want to call it."

She jabbed a thumb at the lanky Vincent and gigantic pile of meat and scowl that was John. "They can punch and stab things just fine. And you, Ray..." Madison cocked her head to the side. "Uh, what is it you do, again?"

It had been a hot minute since they escaped the cursed hot springs. The witch had met so many new people since landing in Terrasphere, she'd already forgotten half of them.

 

"Ha!" John exclaimed, leaning back to spread his arms over the back of the bench, his new body's tremendous wingspan crossing nearly the entire bench to Rayleigh, and off the end of the side to his right.

"I'm sure she'll be useful. After all, Vincent proved himself in the face of incredible bias," he said, offering a smirk to Madison. Not his bias, of course. He was himself determined to put a smile on her face. Joseph had always liked challenges. A small flock of birds leapt from a tree on the far end of the park. Truth be told, Joseph had no idea how people managed to create a world like this. Incredible realism was everywhere, excepting of course where there was fantastical magic and incredible feats of might. He himself had opted for the 'physical' package, whatever that meant. Well, he knew what it meant. It meant ha could crush a stone with one hand, among other things. But he knew little of this 'optimization' foolishness, and even less about what people called 'end game content'. Bleeker's grandson had told him all about it at one point or another, but it still confused him at times. After all, if this was all a game, what was the point of making it work? He carefully ignored the fact that he had chosen a trade and practiced it these past few months, opting for the more difficult 'full control' option. Bleeker wanted to do things with his hands, and do them all himself.

He only had so much time to do them, after all.

"Well," he said, scooting forwards. Everything in Bleeker's 'IRL' life was a ritual. Getting up, getting out of bed, and feeding himself were all things which took time in his affected life. He placed his hands on his knees, following a ritual he no longer needed, and balanced his weight as he pushed up, leaning forward and then straightening his back. Despite feeling as limber as he ever was, he grunted.

"Is this all of us? I don't know how to track a party."

 

"Sounds balanced enough to me." Vince nodded as he fiddled with some menus. That Magdalyn woman had worked a small miracle in teaching him the ins and outs of making everything work. "If we're gonna be covering long distances we should probably stock up on supplies right? Those hunger and thirst meters seem like they'd be annoying to manage, especially since real hunger and thirst will be enough of a problem already"

He seemed distracted, distant almost, but that was a simple misunderstanding. Vince tended to overthink things, attempting to squash bugs and hiccups before they started. At this moment his mind was whirring, imagining fighting layouts, footwork, flexing his magic...

He was worried, but not for his usual reasons. He was used to being the one Ray depended on in this game, these two gave him the nagging fear that they'd show him up, changing that fact. Maddison seemed like a total badass with her magic, making Vince's own look like cheap parlour tricks. John was a monster, and made Vince silently wish he'd sprung for a more imposing avatar.

"I think there was some sort of shop down the road?"

 

Uh, what is it you do, again?

Rayleigh flushed a deep crimson. Against her pale, milky skin and snow-white hair, the change of hue was almost comical. Of course, there was nothing funny about the answer to Maddy's question, or how completely it had thrown her off balance. Her blue eyes flicked, for a split second, to Vincent. He knew how unpredictable her magic was, and how difficult it had been for her to understand it. Even now, after a few days in the game, Ray had been unable to recreate the phenomenon from their first dive. The voice remained though, scratching at the back of her mind. It was a sensation she hated, but she had grown better at protecting herself from them. Her mental walls were thick, and stood firm against whatever those were.

She did not want to tell Maddy about the voices, the glowing hands, or her own failure as a magic-user. So she didn't. She lied.

"I'm a tinker, mostly," Rayleigh explained, feigning a nonchalance that she hoped was at least passible. "Learning how to use the crossbow, too, but I may ditch that for something else at some point." Because I'm utter shit at it. But maybe admitting that to her new friends was not the best idea, especially since she had somehow emerged as a sort of leader for this particular quest.

Rolling her shoulders might have been interpreted as a "lets go" gesture, but it was really an attempt to work out the tension growing at the base of her neck. Why was a game causing her such anxiety? "Shop sounds good," she confirmed, beginning to walk. "And I think I saw something about a party while I was looking through my menu earlier." She searched as she walked, her hand fluttering through the air as she scrolled through various pages. Then, after she gave a small hum of satisfaction, party invites appeared before the other three players. At least she could do that right.

 

"Tinker, right," Madison muttered as she wagged a finger at Rayleigh. Wasn't that she didn't believe her; in her time playing Terrasphere, she'd seen a lot of people do some pretty creative things with their masteries. Indecisive as she was, she kept rotation through a bunch herself, distributing points equally and really getting nowhere fast.

(If only she realized how worthless Health and Energy were when she could've dumped points into Armor instead...)

The cursemage heard a ping go off in her ears, and flicked open her palm menu. Right there, in a nice little glowing green icon, floated the words NEW PARTY INVITE. Clicking on it revealed Rayleigh's name in nice, neat font.

"Yep, works for me," Madison said as she clicked the silver-haired woman's name. It was a process she was getting used to bit by bit--making friends in the game, that is. Normally she preferred to work alone, sticking to the shadows and taking solo contracts. But in the few missions she picked up since her first dive, teammates have been awfully useful. Especially while she was still relatively weak, having barely survived an encounter with the Ant Queen under the halls of the Bandit King.

Vince suggested that the four of them head over to a shop, and so they did, following Rayleigh's lead. When they arrived at the general store, Madison noted that it was quite like everything she already expected from one in an RPG. The walls and shelves were decorated with low-end gear and healing items, stuff suited for the relatively new players that tended to lurk in the area.

Madison went off to a corner of the store on her own, where some of the more useless things were kept. She eyeballed a deck of cards, immediately drawn to them by the black tuck case.

She picked it up, giving it a once-over. Maddy tried to thumb open the top for a casual look at what was inside, hoping that it was a standard deck of playing cards and not a tarot deck. It was annoying having to find and remove the Major Arcana and the Pages of each suit when she wanted to play poker or rummy or anything else. But much to her annoyance, her dreams were shattered by a small piece of foil-backed tape keeping the case shut.

No worries, I'll just buy the damn thing. Can't be that much, right?

Glancing at the price tag only disintegrated her dreams even further and scattered them to the for winds.

A nasty curse lingered venomously on the tip of her tongue as she threw the deck back on the shelf and decided to see what the others were up to.

 

A ding sounded in John's ears as he began to walk towards the shop, trailing after everyone else. He ducked his head under the doorway and stepped inside, grateful again that most establishments around here had eight foot ceilings. He was quite tall when he was younger, but he hadn't realized how much more difficult it would be to function at this level, so to speak. Sure, clothing that was bought was auto-sized to fit your character, but still he had to wonder if it wasn't TOO bad that he didn't have giant status back home.

He ambled mostly, hiking up his own pack which held most of what he needed. Quick rations, firemaking supplies, rope, and some fishing line were part and parcel of roughing it, videogame or not. Still, he couldn't resist casting his eyes about for interesting or high quality wares. He plucked a dagger from a bin and gave it a flip in his hand. It satisfyingly turned in the air and he caught it, smiling. Just being able to do that still amazed him. He hadn't opted for the automatic actions or whatever they called it, so it was all him.

Meat pies?

John's nose led him back out the front, and he turned to the side and caught a whiff again. There was a man out front, hawking the glorious dough pockets, and John made a beeline for the stand.

"Two please," he said, holding up his index and middle finger. In a flash, the nondescript man held out a piece of paper towel with two large steaming meat pies. John pulled two coins from his belt-pouch and placed them on the stall's top. He blew on the meat pies as he began to walk back. Honestly, he had used the streamlined money transfer setting earlier in the game, but quit after a while. It carried a little risk, but hey.

It's a roleplaying game, so let's motherfucking role play, he thought, blowing and trying not to curse out loud as he bit into the hot pie.

 

Vince simply stalked about the store looking at things at his leisure. Plenty of gear to be found, but at a price, and unfortunately Vince was only moderately wealthy outside of Terrasphere, not inside. A life of stomping rats had not left him terribly well off, but he wouldn't be caught dead admitting that. He eyed a few pieces of armor, a shiny sword or two, before watching the others go about what they were doing.

The giant had taken an interest into some meat buns, which honestly smelled divine and left Vincent's mouth salivating at the thought. I hope I'm not drooling IRL... he mused to himself as he turned his attention to the witch. He knew a little less about her, other than some incredible amounts of sass and a proclivity to kick ass. He'd since surmised her to be twenty pounds of anger and sass in a five pound bag, which often left her wit scathing, leaving him to avoid long drawn out conversations where he might put his foot in his mouth.

That left Ray, whom he'd lost track of, and honestly was a little nervous to approach too. She had been, and still currently was, his best friend, but lately he'd been feeling more and more awkward around her, and he had a feeling he knew why. It wasn't a thought he liked to entertain, after all the two of them had spent years fighting off rumors about it back in college. After gritting his teeth a bit he simply cracked his neck and put down some money for a new sword. Gotta get some better rat stomping gear.