A ding sounded from Luna's left hand, signifying that she'd received a private message, though of course Luna was the only person that would be able to hear the tone as it rang out. The sound made her jump, though luckily she was finished with Angel's hair in time to not mess it up with her jumpy nature. She smiled, stepping back to look at the message, revealing a set of digits that could only be a phone number, quickly tapping in her own phone number and adding her email address just for good measure. At least that way, there was little chance of them both forgetting the other's number or contact details in some shape or form. She smiled, watching Angel admire herself in the mirror with a soft giggle. "N-n-no hair is unfixable, s-s-silly! Y-y-you just can't see your own head a-as well as I could see i-it. A-and I have more e-experience with longer h-hair..." She gestured to her own white hair, even though in the game she didn't wear it tied up, instead opting to let it fall over her shoulders and down her back naturally. It was nice to do things a little differently. "S-s-so um....j-j-just text me when y-you log out and say i-it's you. S-s-so I know..." She didn't often get texts, so it wasn't likely that she would mistake any incoming text for somebody else, but it never hurt to be certain.
"Of course~" Angel nodded. "Though I might forget and call myself Ava." She had a way of not carrying the two worlds between one another in her brain. The body she wore was the name she gave. Well, actually she did think of a lot of real world comparisons to the game, but she was far more used to the real world than this one too. "So if I say that, that's still me." Angel gave a little V sign with her fingers accompanied with a giggle before hugging the now clothed girl again, though this was a much quicker hug. More casual and likely a little more self-conscious than normal. "Was there anything else you wanted to do today?" she asked in a pleasant voice. It had been a long trip to hang out that had taken up a fair bit of free time for the day. Totally worth it though. She had a girl's phone number... even if it was as friends.
Her real name was Ava? Oh no, that would probably get really confusing pretty fast, considering her own name in real life was only a single letter detached from that name. She giggled, coughing into her fist to try and hide it slightly. She didn't want Angel to think she was laughing at her name or anything like that. "W-wow your real name is A-Ava?" She let another little giggle escape her lips, shaking her head with a rather bright smile. God, what were the odds of something like this. "M-my name is basically the s-same, only it's Eva..." She smiled. The sudden hug caught her off guard and, as per usual, her entire body stiffened up as she tried to let her mind catch up to what was happening, before she blushed and glanced away to the side. Hugs weren't all that bad, as long as she was aware that they were coming. She was still caught off guard by them pretty easily. It was something that she'd have to work on as time passed by. Surely she'd be getting a lot of practice if she was going to be friends with a girl like Angel. "U-um..." She wasn't too keen to part ways just yet, though she wasn't too sure what they could do. She wasn't sure if they had much to talk about after they'd been talking for a while, though maybe something new would pop into her head. "W-we could get dinner here....b-before we leave? M-m-my treat?"
"Hmmm... I suppose I can't say no to you asking me to dinner." Angel's stomach growled. It was so weird to wonder if that was yours or the character's until you checked the stats. Which she did. "Especially since my hunger meter is getting low." She pointed at the UI bit just above her hand despite Luna having no way of seeing it. "Oh, right." she placed her hands behind herself and went to stand next to Luna. "Practice dinner before real world dinner! It's the perfect plan!" she bobbled her head, plainly convinced that it was, in fact, the perfect plan. "Oh hey I learned a thing I didn't mention. That tall building there is probably an inn thingy or a tavern thingy and that's where they have food and beds." She waggled her arm at it. "I had to look for like an hour before I was told that by someone."
Well, it was certainly a relief that Angel hadn't rejected her offer of virtual dinner, especially since she wasn't all to interested in doing anything other than spending time with a friend. All she had left to do was make the journey to some other place or just wander around on her own. It'd really be nice if they could party up more permanently, but at the same time she didn't want to limit Angel's options for party members or adventuring groups. They could meet up at any time, after all. "S-so that's w-w-what the larger buildings are? I um, I thought they were something else..." At least she knew what inns typically looked like in this game now, she'd roughed it in the wilds a couple of times now, which wasn't nearly as bad as people made it sound like it'd be. The wilds were actually really nice and she assumed they'd only be nicer if she got a little stronger. "W-well after y-you Angel..." She offered, smiling as she mock curtsied, giggling under her breath.
Angel led the way to the tavern-inn-thing, glancing around at the few obvious 'adventurers' and the NPC's around town. It wasn't the most exciting town in the world... probably... but it did have those hot springs which were still in the back of the girl's mind. She'd quickly dismissed him for the both of them when she'd gotten out but it didn't really make it less distracting. The relatively small girl paused in front of the little eating place once they were there; it wasn't exactly a long trip. She'd chattered about the town the whole way, but nothing was so substantial it required a response. "Okay! Let's hope this place has something tasty. Fantasy food's kinda weird..." The place was noisier than outside with patrons sitting around drinking in the early afternoon. Some were rowdy. One or two even made a comment about the pair as they sat down, which just made Angel blush a bit as she sat down. She could be insulted but considering they'd custom made the characters it wasn't like the man was wrong about their looks, right? "Okay! What do you want, Luna?" she'd sat next to Luna both because she wanted to and because staring at Luna even accidentally might make her nervous or something.
Luna was perfectly fine with letting Angel lead the way to the tavern, feeling much more at home as a follower than she would be if she were leading the way, though it'd be much different when they met IRL since she'd be showing the girl would be traveling to her area of NYC. That would hopefully be a lot of fun, but they could get a feel for how they acted on a sort of kind of date today, which was partly why she'd suggested they grab dinner as well, alongside her obvious hunger. And of course, she was sort of worried about her own reaction to the food in the tavern, considering her past meals had been incredibly hit and miss whilst she was in the game. At the very least, if nothing else caught her fancy, she could always just go for soup and bread, since damn near everywhere sold those two food items. It was sort of like a universal indicator, it was damn near impossible to mess up soup. She smiled when they sat down next to each other, blushing heavily at some of the remarks that she managed to catch, letting out a shuddering sigh. It was okay. She'd purposefully made her character in a way that she found attractive. Of course other people would find her attractive too. She glanced at the menu, flicking through it for a moment before singling out a single item on the menu. "U-u-um...I-'ll uh, have the beef stew with boiled carrots please..." That had actually sounded really good, from what she could imagine. She smiled, looking around for a moment before turning back to Angel. "U-u-um....d-do you mind ordering please? I'm...um...I'm n-not sure I could muster up the nerve..."
"Of course!" Angel nodded happily when Luna asked her to order. She ordered the exact same thing for herself and Luna. It had become a sort of instant tradition for her to just order what the other person next to her ordered when she started playing the game. That way they could share the experience of a meal and it would give her something else to talk about. She scooted slightly closer to Luna as the tavern lady person came and asked what they'd like to eat. "Soup and bread and uh, water please?" She was happy to order for Luna, and just as happy to be sitting here about to eat. The girl was pretty sure she was doubly hungry, both in this world and the other. She wondered why this was a feature, anyway... Part of her wanted to talk about the hot springs experience more. She was in a weird mood because of it all. Not a bad one at all, just one her brain didn't normally go to, and she found it distracting. Kind of fun, but distracting. "I bet it'll be strange to see a whole new Luna on Monday~" she sounded pleased at the thought though. "D'you think it'll be kind of like a more pleasant version of one of those shows where people have randomly switched bodies? That's a wierd way to think about it isn't it? Sorry, I'm just excited~" she wiggled somewhat with the word 'excited' to accentuate it, brushing gently against Luna once in the process. She didn't really seem to notice, or at least think enough of it to say anything.
Boy, was she sure glad that Angel was more than happy to order in her stead, since she was absolutely certain that she'd have frozen over when the tavern lady came along to collect their orders. She wasn't anything great to look at, but with the company of another girl that liked girls, Luna was thinking much more about how pretty some women were, present company included. It was just somewhere that her traitorous brain was going without any sort of warrant from her will. She couldn't really control her thoughts in that sense. As for seeing each other on monday, she was more than a little nervous about that if she was honest. She'd even have to send a picture of herself to Angel so she knew who she was supposed to be looking for when they were meeting up! That part had her more nervous than anything else, she had to make sure she took the perfect picture of herself when she logged off of the game! There could be no way she'd send a bad picture of herself to Angel, she'd probably die of embarrassment! She let out a small, nervous giggle when Angel mentioned it, shaking her head with her eyes closed. "A-a-ah well, d-d-don't be too shocked a-a-about how different I look..." She'd basically made Luna look like her polar opposite, so it was almost bound to be quite a shocking revelation when they actually met up in real life. Right down to the colors they wore, Luna was nearly her complete opposite. Luna, unlike Angel, did notice the two of them brushing together, freezing slightly before relaxing again. She still wasn't used to such sudden contact. "O-o-one of those shows?" Just what was her new friend talking about? She was pretty good at coming up with strange comparisons, so it seemed. "U-u-uh, I can um, only hope it won't be too awkward..."
Luna would certainly still be cute. If anything, Luna was not entirely Ava's type based on what Ava understood. But that didn't mean she didn't like her anyway. They'd connected and the fact that she was so pretty in this world hadn't hurt at all. She opened her mouth to answer but suddenly there was a drink in front of her and simmering in the hot spring had made her rather thirsty, so she was instead busy drinking. She let out a satisfied sigh and wiped off her mouth. "Like an anime or something, where people are in the wrong bodies," she explained. "I mean, technically that's what this world is and not the real one. So it'd be like a really weird episode where people didn't know each other first and then solved the problem and met the real them." She waved off Luna's concern. "Even if it's awkward we're friends and I like hanging out with you." She sounded so matter-of-fact that it was hard to miss how confident she was that they would get along in the real world. "i'll get to see you with purply hair! And actually being my age." she poked at her own head. "I might look a little older," she barely looked qualified to be eighteen but it was her character's official age. "But my brain is still Ava and my favorite people are around my age. You're just proof of that since it turns out we're the same in the real world."
Luna was impressed with how fast the service in this tavern seemed to be, especially since they were far from being the only people in there at the time, even if it'd only been some water that was delivered to them. Luna smiled, reaching for her own drink to take a smaller sip from it than Angel, who seemed to be far more thirsty than herself. Maybe Angel had gotten hot faster in the hot springs? She wasn't too sure about the specifics, but she tried to make it look like she wasn't watching her drink. That was considered weird, wasn't it? Watching somebody as they ate or drank. Now that Angel elaborated a little, she could actually see the connection between that type of anime or cartoon episode and how they'd be meeting in real life for the first time despite knowing each other in different forms. "Y-yeah...I can s-see what you mean by that now. It'll d-definitely take a little bit of getting used to..." The hardest transition would be using Angel's real name, if they decided to do that. They had super similar names, so there was every chance they'd just stick to Luna and Angel. She was excited to see how different Angel would look in the real world, though part of her was worried that she'd prefer one look over the other. She didn't want to run the risk of offending somebody like that. Telling somebody they looked better online was probably a huge insult. "Y-y-yeah....I-I'm looking forward to, um, s-seeing what you look like in reality too. J-j-just um, I might s-s-struggle to talk a-at first. M-m-my anxiety is worse IRL..." It was only fair to warn the girl beforehand.
"So is mine," Angel admitted as she stared at her drink for a long moment. She felt like she was being watched by Luna but didn't glance at her to see. Was she really this self-conscious about Luna right now? "I mean, I'm good at not acting nervous or shy when I don't wanna but I still feel human feelings like everyone else," she pointed out. "Usually if I barrel through I'm not nervous anymore, but it's been a little harder since I moved and literally don't know anyone I get to see normally." Her did didn't count. He was always busy. They cared about one another, but that didn't mean he was around right now. "So no worries right?" she finally glanced at Luna, a big grin on her face. "We'll both be nervous even if I don't look like it, and you can remember that and maybe it'll help, right?" She thought it sounded like a simple plan. Knowing you weren't alone in something was one of the simplest ways to get comfort. Unless it was like, really really bad or something. Knowing someone else had something really sad happen some point didn't help, but things like nervousness? yeah! It helped Angel, at least. The soup was placed in front of them, and Angel quickly started sipping at the soup on her spoon. "Ow! hot hot!" she started blowing on it after that, though she might have to use a spell to heal her burned tongue soon.
"W-w-w-wait....y-you get nervous t-t-too?" That was definitely news to Luna, who had just assumed that Angel was born brave and outgoing and exciting and pretty. It was strange to hear that somebody so admirable and so close to her also suffered from the same thing as her to a lesser extent, though the knowledge that both of them would be nervous was actually quite helpful for her attempts to keep her mind peaceful and not riddled with fear and anxiety. She smiled nervously, nodding along to Angel's explanation of the fact that she also got nervous around people that she didn't know. From what she knew, the girl had moved a lot recently, so her friends weren't exactly accessible, which must be way harder than she knew. "Y-y-yeah...no worries..." She didn't sound too confident, though to be fair that wasn't saying a whole lot when she never sounded confident in her life. She was glad that both of them would be nervous, though she was sure she'd be even more nervous if one of them ended up referring to it as a date or something. She felt like she kind've had to impress Angel in some way, even if it was just to make her life her more as a friend. She'd never impressed people before, or even gone out for a meal with friends. She giggled as Angel burnt her tongue on the soup, hiding her mouth behind her hand and using her other hand to wipe a few tears of mirth from her eyes. She was just so silly sometimes, in the best possible way. It was like things were never boring around Angel in some way, usually in less dangerous ways. "B-b-be careful w-w-with that. D-d-don't want to burn your tongue, y-y-you might need it l-later..." It took a moment, before Luna flushed crimson at the possible double meaning of her previous sentence. Gosh! Hopefully Angel didn't pick up on it!
"Of course!" Angel nodded, blushing slightly at the admission. "I mean, I'm human, I'm an awkward teenager too, and like, I'm almost always positive and able to move past being nervous pretty quickly. Buuuut I don't think the people at school care much." she shrugged. She still had her tongue sticking partially out of her mouth when Luna said she might need it later. She quickly sucked it back into her mouth properly and tried not to choke on her soup. "Need it for what?" she managed, not automatically assuming anything in particular. She had a couple of ideas in her head, at least one of them rather... flirty sounding... She stuck her tongue out slightly at Luna before she actually had a chance to answer and giggled. "Don't worry, Dad says I talk so much my tongue must be so tough nothing can hurt it for long~" She gave Luna a playful wink. "I'm sure it'll be fine!"
That was true, she should have considered that Angel was a teenager and a human just like she was, though it was hard to not put somebody she admired on some sort of mental pedestal above her. It was just so difficult to imagine Angel ever looking anxious or scared about something, especially considering how often she'd seen the other girl looking happy or excited about something. "R-r-right, i-it's nice that you a-always try to be p-positive. T-that makes y-you really likeable..." She admitted, shuffling nervously in her seat as she reached for her own spoon, taking in a mouthful of soup after blowing on it to cool it down. She wasn't going to repeat Angel's mistake. Ah good, it seemed like Angel had missed her accidental little flirtatious slip, or at least for a moment it did, until Angel seemingly returned fire with a flirtatious wink alongside a comment about her tongue being way too tough to ever be hurt for too long by anything. Luna blushed even more, blinking at the sudden flirtatious side of Angel emerging. Was she....being flirted with? Did Angel think she'd been intentionally flirting with her? Did she send that sort of message by inviting her to hot springs? She gulped, looking around for a minute and taking another sip of her soup to try to occupy her mind somewhat. No good. "H-h-huh, a-a-a-a tough tongue. S-s-sounds l-l-like it must b-be useful..." She wasn't exactly sure how to respond, so she'd just blurted the first thing that came to her mind, though it wasn't exactly any more innocent sounding than she'd wanted it to be. Dangit! Just say something innocent! "O-o-on monday...s-should I g-get changed after school? O-or should w-we just meet in our uniforms?"
