Year 2100+, New Zealand, Tamaki City

“Doesn’t it seem like there should be more fanfare to this whole, graduating high school, thing to you?” Lynna asked as we stood around and watched the other students, parents and teachers mingling. “Like, we’re literally just standing around eating bargain sausage rolls and mini pies. Not even full sized ones! I want a full sized pie. I demand a full sized pie.”

“Yeah… I don’t know, we’re just North West High. It’s not like graduating from this place is a big deal, so why make a big deal you know?” I said quietly, ignoring my friend’s pouting about pies. If any of the teachers heard they’d try and tell us how great we were for graduating. Nobody liked lectures, especially not when you were two days away from being free of school, potentially forever.

“Yeah. I guess you’re right,” my best friend sighed, turning her dejected face on me. “Just totally sucks you know? That there’s nothing for us to actually… do after school. We’re eighteen and two days away from the end of high school and our future is… empty.”

I nodded wordless understanding, not really wanting to talk about that empty future. It yawned on the horizon like some ethereal storm of death and pain and beards. I’m not sure why that beard thing came up, but it was always there, just looming on the horizon.

“Yeah. Oh, my parents are giving me the whole, let’s go signal…” she grimaced, turning to me shyly. “So um, I guess we should hang out later? After school is all wrapped up and stuff.”

“Yeah! Definitely,” I smiled.

Lynna was great. We’d been together through all of high school! Well, except our high school was longer than most other places, starting during when middle school would have started in places like United Nations City. I was excited to see what she and I could get up to, even if the future seemed bleak.

6 Months Later

“I’m just going to miss you!” Mum bawled, her tears staining my shirt. “You need to be careful, okay? This… this robot uprising… I can’t believe I’m letting my baby out of the nest in times like this!”

I was… a little confused where this was coming from. It was her idea that I move out of the house into my own basic assisted apartment after all, so why was she acting like I was going to die? I was the youngest of three, so obviously the last one leaving the nest was a thing but… still, her idea!

“Mum, I’m like… twenty minutes by train and half an hour by ground car… you can visit any time… so long as you message first,” I said awkwardly, trying to comfort her.

“I know! But you won’t be there in the morning or… I won’t get to tuck you in at night… it’s… I’m just having a difficult time okay?” she cried while Dad and I made awkward eye contact over her shoulder.

It was her idea? I mouthed to Dad in confusion, getting a confused, your problem, not mine, in return. Thanks Dad.

I wish I had a Dad that wasn’t all like, “We’re gonna be mates!”

Did amazon deliver Dad upgrades? Surely they did, even down here to Tamaki?

It took Mum and Dad way too long to leave, which was kinda annoying since it was all their idea for me to move out in the first place. Mum’s pointed questions about what I planned to do with my future had been getting more and more unbearable, and so had the arguments that blew up whenever I had the balls to defend myself.

How on Earth was I meant to get a job in a world where only around thirty percent of the population had them? I wasn’t some crazy genius who could bust through Uni like a bull and then turn around and take life by the horns... Or whatever. I wasn’t smart enough to get a job, not in the current age anyway.

When I finally closed the door on them with a sigh, I stared around at the apartment with just a tiny bit of shock? Now what?

3 Months Later

I was so bored. I was so, so damn bored. I was so bored I was feeling depressed about being bored. I’d done nothing but play games and watch shows for three months since I moved out, and I was just so fucking bored.

I was a nineteen year old guy who was expected to live through around one hundred and thirty more years of this shit. It was just totally, super, damn… crap. Seriously, this was the world our oh so benevolent leaders had dreamt up for us? What were we expected to do? Just sit around and—

“Ding Dong. Hello! I am Amazon Delivery AI Number290578 with an order for this address,” a feminine electronic voice said from the door’s intercom. A delivery? I hadn’t ordered anything?

I got up off the couch and walked across the livingroom-kitchen-diningroom-entrancehall to the front door and opened it, coming face to face with a bloody massive fuckoff Amazon bot. Damn, pretty sure she lifted. Hah.

She was carrying a massive steel crate in all four hands and staring at me with those funny cameras expectantly.

“Um, hi? I didn’t order anything… ay,” I said with more than a little confusion.

“It is not my job to know if you have ordered something or not. If you want to send this state of the art VR pod back to the sender I can— “ the bot started to say sarcastically, before switching back to the normal disjointed robot voice. “I mean, this a delivery from someone else. The sender ID tag states it was sent from: Lynna.”

“Okay… um, I don’t actually have a pod room but there’s one of those funny plug things for it in the wall over there,” I told the bot, pointing out the plug even as I reeled with the news.

The news being that Lynna was still even thinking about me. We’d tried to stay friends since high school had ended, but she’d moved down to Wellingroan, and since then it had become harder and harder to find anything relevant to do in each other’s virtual company. We’d stopped messaging each other like four months ago… and now this? How did she even pay for the pod?

“Yeah I’ll just bang ‘er in here and— “ The bot started, then clammed up again and swapped once more to robot girl. “I will now install this unit for you, as it is very heavy, and you do not look like you can lift anything.”

“H-hey! Yo! That’s rude. Why so much sass? Look, this is… weirding me out okay. Why is an Amazon bot being so strange?” I asked, feeling my face flush in embarrassment as the AI called my strength into question. I thought it was just a stereotype that SAI were quirky?

“I am a perfectly normal Amazon AI,” the AI said, and then honest to god it did the jedi hand wave. “You heard and saw nothing.”

“Okay… I saw nothing,” I nodded slowly. I wasn’t going to look a gift bot in the sensor node… thing. What did you call it? Sensor cluster!

“The meatling learns…” she cackled softly, then got to work unpacking the pod and installing it.

When I saw the pod come out, I took a step back and actually, really, properly gasped. What in the hell? That was a Spencer Wraipod. That was so expensive that if I sold it, I’d be able to pay for this apartment for an entire year without universal basic income to help. I had some serious questions for Lynna now, which meant I needed my phone. Where the hell did I put my phone.

“Hey… Amazon AI lady, don’t let anyone through the door okay? Kill them if they so much as set foot inside,” I joked, pointing to my open door.

“I am not equipped for murder,” she replied absently, then looked up as though a thought had occured to her. “But I can improvise.”

“That was a joke!” I said quickly. “Don’t kill anyone!”

“Ha ha ha, I also made a joke,” the Amazon AI said blandly.

“Right… I’m going to go and get my phone then…” I said, slowly backing down the small hallway to my room.

I found my phone, and immediately sent a message off to Lynna.

/\ Lynna why is there a crazy Amazon bot delivering a Spencer Wraipod to me and saying it’s from you?

Lynna: Because I sent you a Spencer Wraipod!

/\ Why?

Lynna: So, I won a competition and got a sponsor… and they gave me two of them, and like… well, it’s a long story.

/\ Oh… thank you so much! Thank you, thank you! I think you just saved me from death by boredom!

Lynna: Okay, but you’re getting it on one condition.

/\ Oh…?

Lynna: You have to play Cora with me! I want to try streaming, but like, I figure I need someone to like, play off of you know? So I was like hey I wonder if you would be keen to play with me! We can play together and I’ll give you some of the profits and stuff. We could build like a streaming empire and become gods of Cora and… well that’s probably a little ambitious but you get the picture.

/\ Isn’t that game like… really violent?

Lynna: Oh yeah, it definitely is, but it’s also really fun from what I’ve heard, soooo…

/\ Okay… okay I’ll play the scary violent game, but only because it’s you asking, and you’re saving me from DBB.

Lynna: Awh shucks… wait, DBB?

/\ Death By Boredom.

Lynna: Oh, makes sense… and hey by the way… I missed you.

/\ I missed you too.

Lynna: I’ll see you in the game? Send me a friend request, and make sure to start in Trimarce. My name will be LynnaTrickShot!

/\ Same as always then? Haha. Will do~! I’ll jump in as soon as I let Mum know I’m going to be in a coffin for a while. Oh and once the bot leaves. It’s really strange.

Lynna: Yeeeee G. Good luck with your butt problems!

/\ Ha ha, very funny. Real fucking mature!

After our conversation was over, I moved back into the livingroom-kitchen-diningroom-entrancehall and watched as the Amazon AI finished hooking the pod up.

“Thanks for the help,” I said quietly, actually very grateful to the big hunk of metal for doing all the setup.

“Yeah nah ay no problem mate, I gotcha righto,” she replied. “Cheerio then mate I’ll catch ya later ay.”

I could only blink in stunned silence as the presumably sentient AI collected the remains of the box and wandered out the door. She stopped not two steps out of it like she’d hit a wall, spun, and then jedi hand-waved the door closed. The door was automatic. Well… that was just a little… eccentric. Had they started growing their SAI with even more wild personalities or something…? This was… alarming. Maybe that one was broken?

Either way, I was now safe from the erratic Amazon lady… kinda. I didn’t hold out much hope for the door in a cage match versus the thing out there, but still… it had to count for something right?

Since I was safe, it was time to flick a message off to Mum and then hop in the coffin… I mean pod.

/\ Hey Mum, just going to play in a coffin for a bit, good luck out in the real world! (PS that was a joke, I got a VR pod, please don’t call the fire department or whatever.)

With nothing else to do, I pulled off all my clothes except my undies, and threw them on the couch, then pressed the panel to open the pod. It made that cool hissing noise when it opened, indicating that the inside was a closed environment. I’d heard about these pods. They had power sources built in, as well as compressed biomatter storage and shit. Then they were pressurised so that even if you sank to the bottom of the ocean, you’d still be alive.

Once it was open, I carefully stepped inside and lay down, letting the pod automatically do the rest. This was my first time in VR, so I only vaguely knew what to expect, like the mind crown thing fitting itself to my head. I had no idea what all the bells, whistles and other what-have-yous were called though. Once everything seemed settled, the pod gave a gentle whirr, then everything went black.

Hello and welcome to Virtual Reality! Our system has detected that this is your first time entering virtual reality, so we have taken the liberty of automatically generating a body and VRhome for you based on your personality profile!

I phased into existence within a small room that was barely four meters by four meters. It had no windows or doors, just a big fluffy carpet and a soft yellow light coming from a frosted bulb. In the corner were a bunch of neatly stacked duvets and pillows. Wow, it was totally right about the room. This was cozy! I loved it already. Did I have to play the game? Couldn’t I just spend eternity all cuddled up and warm under the blankets?

Well, if it had gotten the room so right, what had it done with my body?

I looked down, and was immediately overwhelmed by a wave of confusion. Was I a girl? Surely not? I reached down between my legs and… found it there. Okay… so I was still a guy? Why were my hips so damn big then? And why did I have long hair? Wow, what kind of crap had I been browsing that had led to this strange body? I was short, that was for sure. Maybe a few inches above five feet, and I had cute fingers and tiny little feet and toes… damn this was strange.

I kept trying to call it bad in my head, but every time I found some part of me raising a quiet hum of dissent. Like I wasn’t entirely sure? But… no the algorithm was definitely wrong. I was keen on being big and strong and all that crap. I had yet to start working out, but I was planning to!

With this body, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to stay in the VRhome anymore… so I spoke up. “Um… can you please like, start Cora?”

Silence.

“Play Cora?” I asked.

“You do not have a Cora account, would you like to create one?” the pod AI asked.

“Um, yeah… that would be cool,” I nodded. My voice sounded a little high too. I was like, significantly weirded out now.

“Account created using your FTLN identification. Thank you for waiting, we will now launch the game,” the pod AI said.

Wow what? I didn’t even have to go to a website or anything myself? The pod just did it for me? That was wild! AI really were the future… I just hoped they remembered to leave a little corner of it for us humans when we got there.

My safe little room shifted, and some text came up telling me about how I was playing Cora now. I was honestly too distracted by the beautiful stars and stuff around me, until my fear of large open indoor spaces kicked in. There was too much, it was too big and open, vast in a way that even the sky didn’t encompass! I needed a wall, oh god please give me a wall or two fuck, fuck, fuck!

“Skip, skip, skip, skip,” I pleaded with whoever was listening, keeping my eyes glued shut.

When I finally had myself under control again, I took a peek around me out of one eye, and found myself in a small room. There was a note of text hanging in front of me that read.

“Sorry! I’ve edited the space a little to make it feel better for you! Hope it helps!”

I eased my muscles out of their tense state one by one and looked around the room with cautious curiosity. The room was maybe ten meters on either side, and in the middle stood a grey figure that looked like it was made of clay. Around it, a bunch of holoscreens hovered in the air. Oh my god is that… sliders?!

I rushed over to the sliders and grinned. Oh yes. Character creation! I wondered if I’d need food… I would be here a while. I knew right out of the bat that I was going to make a healer, but… what kind? I wanted something fun… a little different to normal.

I sat down on the floor where I was and made a gesture to bring the holo screens down with me, and then started to think. So… what type of healer? Alchemy and stuff? Nah, too unreliable, especially with my shoddy hand eye coordination. Normal throw a spell and heal things? Too boring… been there done that in every normal game ever. What about… plants?

Maybe.

Plants were also kinda unreliable, and the whole druid shtick wasn’t really my thing. Damn, I wish I knew what Lynna was playing as, then I could tailor my build to her. Damn. Alright so… what was left? Well, there was a lot of stuff, but I couldn’t think of it. Pain healing? Heal my allies with the pain of my enemies maybe? No, that was too gross for me.

Oh, I knew exactly what I wanted to do! It was a variation on the normal caster type deal, but I was going to be using a lot of geometry and shields. Yes, this would be great. I knew how I was going to do this. I was like, really damn good at pretty much any cue sport, like snooker or pool… so I was going to do that, but healing!

Which meant… now I needed to start making decisions. First I needed a race, and my word there were a lot of races. I ruled out anything in the human category, because that was too boring. Then I ruled out the angel like Aurellings, because that was a little too… churchy for me. Darklings were too edgy for me, which left the category of lizard people, faeries and fuzzy people.

Something about the fuzzy people drew me to them, maybe it was the promise of cute tails, I don’t know, but they sounded good. When I opened the category, I was inundated with options. So many! I wonder if there was a way to like, filter this list down a bit.

I did a generic search for “healing” and it narrowed down my options a little. Didn’t look like there was a proper affinity for healing or anything, but there were races with a predisposition for casting. I still had so many options in that regard, but the one that leapt out at me was called an Lopunnda. It looked like it was meant to be based on a mix between a bunny and a red panda.

I selected it, and watched as the clay form shifted to match. It was apparently defaulting to the weird appearance that I’d been given by the pod, but altering it to fit the race. The race looked great! Two long fluffy ears sticking out the side of the head, almost as long as my forearm currently was. Both were quickly overcome by the forces of gravity, flopping down until they almost touched the shoulders. They looked like lopped bunny ears, which I guess was expected since the race was meant to be part bunny.

The tail that went out the back was big and bushy too, but it looked almost manicured. The hair, ears and tail were all a deep, dark reddish orange colour with white stripes on the tail and white tufts down the edges of the ears.

The tail needed to change, I couldn’t have a well trimmed tail. It needed to be wild and all over the place! I shuffled my butt over to the sliders and got to work, making it bigger, floofing it out and making it look slightly dishevelled and fluffy. Next, I made the ears a little bigger, and the tufts on the end longer, causing them to gently brush the shoulders. If I was going to have big fluffy ears, I may as well have big fluffy ears, you know?

Next I moved to the human features… and that’s where things fell apart. No matter what I did, I just couldn’t seem to get the figure into a place that satisfied me. I’d immediately narrowed the hips and broadened the shoulders, making the face more masculine over the decidedly feminine face I wore now, but nothing was working.

I sat there for hours and hours tweaking and tweaking the appearance until I flopped backwards in defeat. What was I doing wrong? What could I possibly be doing wrong?

“Reset to the default appearance please,” I sighed in frustration, and watched as it reformed into that boy that looked like a girl.

The body I was wearing now.

What if… I mean, the pod had generated it based on my profile right? What it thought I might like to play as? I mean… I’d usually played as girls when I played regular games. Sadly, I couldn’t even claim the excuse of looking at butts to explain it away, since I was entirely confused by attraction in general. I just… played as girls sometimes. I mean, I also played as guys too… when it suited. But maybe here… maybe this healer I was going to play as needed, maybe she needed to be a girl?

I moved to turn the slider to female, but I pressed too hard and it exploded into this big gradient thing that was way too much for me, with femininity-masculinity on one axis, plus a whole lot more different things to choose from. Overwhelmed, I pulled my finger back, allowing it to go back to the normal male-female toggle. Okay… carefully, I switched it to female.

And there it was. The missing piece. Damn, I should have thought of that earlier! I was too focused on the fact that I was going to be playing with my best friend, who knew me as a guy. It was a game? Why not branch out a little?

I got to work again on my character, carefully selecting just the right shade of green for the eyes, something deep like the green of Pounamu, or the native New Zealand jade. Then I made the fur a little redder and less orange, as well as my hair. It ended up as this dark red with a tinge of brown to keep it away from being too scab red.

The face was easy, I just made her cute! Small nose, round cheeks, big eyes, I did the whole lot. She was so adorable. I kept most of the body configuration that the pod had done, but this time the whole junk situation was swapped. I decided to keep the breasts small, but noticeably there. I wasn’t used to having them, so best to keep them manageable.

There was a moment in character creation, when you knew that you’d done it… made the character as they were intended to always be… and I found it. I smiled and leaned back, stretching just for the feeling of it. Stretching was nice. Looks were done, the hard part was over! Now onwards to the stats!

I began to sift through the ability trees first of all, I could pick three, and they needed to count. It ended up being a hell of a lot easier than I’d thought though. I picked the Arcane, Ranged Cast Magic, and Vernal Healing ability trees.

The Arcane tree was all about manipulating magic in some fun and interesting ways, and I’d need it for general odds and ends, shields and that kind of thing. The Ranged Cast Magic tree was all about using projectiles, and I could find the bouncing component in there. Then there was the Vernal Healing tree. It was all about healing via the power of spring. It wasn’t a full on plant style tree, but more of a, “the power of spring,” type deal, if you get my meaning.

Which brought me to stat allocation. I threw all the crap I had into casting related stuff, focusing on spell complexity, raw power and the speed of my casting. Which fell under the Intricacy, Power and Urgency stats respectively.

Leaving me with just the final hard choice to make. My name…

Randomise!

Nope, that one was hideous.

Randomise!

That was just keyspam… what the hell?

Randomise!

Esmeralda… Sure. I’ll shorten it to Esmie… yeah! Yeah I liked Esmie. I definitely liked Esmie… I loved it actually! Esmie it was.

So now it was time? Should I assume my character first and see how it felt, or dive right in? Who was I kidding, I was going to dive right in!

Accept Character! Begin!

I woke up laying on something soft, and wriggled a little to get an idea of what it was before I gave up and opened my eyes to take a look. I was laying in a circle of grass within a small clearing. The forest beyond looked reasonably pleasant, with lush green leaves and tall trunks. The outer edge of the circle of grass was ringed in vibrant flowers and mushrooms. Was I in a fairy circle?

I moved to sit up, and felt… wow, so many things at once. First was that everything felt a little different, even from the body I had been in earlier. I felt movement on my chest when I sat up, my little boobs bouncing strangely, and it was all just. The best way I could describe the secondary changes was that I was squishy.

I poked at my thigh in confusion and wonder… so much squish! Then my hips, which also had a lot of squish. My hands moved to my boobs through the linen shirt, because I needed to squish those too. They were… surprisingly less squishy than my thighs. Their squish was firmer than my thigh squish… but it was also a good squish.

Wow this was so different! I was like… at least ninety percent squish now. Like, even though I looked thin and small or whatever… it was deceptive. It was all squish. Squish all the way down. It was addictive. I sat there just poking my thigh in wonder for a few moments, grinning as it wobbled. I was wearing very short shorts, and it meant that my pale hairless thighs were on complete display and available for squishing.

Then I grabbed my thigh with my whole hand and squished some more, and let out a disbelieving giggle. Wow that was great! Being squishy was pretty great. Why didn’t everyone want to be squishy like this? Wait a second… was that a giggle?

I wasn’t sure how I felt about giggling… but I guess it made sense, a higher voice like this one would sound like giggling instead of chucking or whatever? Maybe? Wait, what did my voice sound like?

“Hello! I am Esmie!” I told the empty clearing, trying out the new name I’d been given by the random name generator thingy.

Wow! My voice was cute as fuck! If voices could also be squishy, my voice was that.

“La la la la!” I exclaimed, throwing my hands in the air for effect.

I was going to continue with the verbal squishing, when I felt a strange sensation from behind me. Oh! My tail! I turned to try and see it, but my butt turned too, and it moved out of sight. Damn, how do you control tails? I wobbled to my feet, unsure of myself in this body, and tried to turn around to see it. Damn elusive tail!

I concentrated, trying to get the stupid fluffy thing around in front of me, but only succeeded in wagging it. Okay… think harder! I closed my eyes and focused on becoming as still of mind as I could possibly manage, but then I started laughing because it was very silly. I was trying to meditate so I could learn to master the arts… of tail.

I sighed in frustration and curled my tail around in front of me to play with while I considered how best to learn to control my tail.

"It can't be that hard can it?" I asked the fuzzy white tip of my tail as I twitched it around in thought.

Then I blinked, something funny was going on… oh. Fuck I'm dumb.

"Well, I guess you were right huh?" I grinned wryly at my tail. I'd just been trying too hard to move it, same as when you consciously tried to move any other limb.

Well, now that I had my tail problem all sorted out, what did I do next? My ears seemed to be able to perk up to a horizontal position and swivel around just fine, despite their floppiness…

Which meant that everything was functioning and green across the board! Did that mean I played the game now? What was my objective? Wait, I needed to find Lynna! I did a quick look around for the menus and stuff, spinning in circles trying to look in the corner of my eye and stuff. I could see little blinking lights! Damn it!

“Menus, I demand that you cooperate!” I growled at the empty clearing, only for my voice to come out… well, less than menacing.

The menus popped up, only it was the wrong menus! I had pod menus too? Fuck it, I’ll walk out of this forest and find someone who could help. That was a much better plan than spinning in circles—

“Excuse me miss… are you alright? Would you mind getting out of the spirit circle before you start dancing?” I heard a timid feminine voice ask me.

“Oh! Hello! A person!” I sighed in relief, spinning to look at who’d just found me. “Where am I?”

She looked to be a young human or elf of some kind, around my age, and she wore the long brown robes.

“Oh no… another one,” she muttered to herself, before beginning to speak very slowly, “I’m sorry miss, please can you follow me? We’ll get the toxins out of your system in no time, and I suggest you don’t eat any more of the mushrooms in these woods.”

“Oh, I didn’t eat any mushrooms though,” I said, looking around in confusion.

“Are you sure? The mushrooms in this grove are powerful things, grown for their mana replenishment properties. They do however have a powerful hallucinogen effect. We find confused wanderers in here very regularly,” she explained, squinting at me suspiciously.

“I’d just like to get out of here,” I winced.

“Well, I can show you the way out,” she said like it was just another chore in her day.

“Okay, thanks,” I mumbled.

I followed her through carefully maintained dirt paths until rather suddenly, we were standing at a small wrought iron gate while she unlocked it. The whole forest was ringed in a wall that was about eight feet tall and tipped with spikes. Okay, so the people who actually came here for the mushrooms were braver than me, that was for sure.

When we passed through the gate, I found myself staring around at a quaint little walled monastery looking place. It was so cool! I just realised that I was at like, the starting area of a normal video game, but in VR! Oh, would I get starter quests, or… wait no, find Lynna first.

“That way is the exit,” the girl said, motioning to an open arch on the other side.

“Oh, um… thanks,” I smiled, hoping I hadn’t annoyed her too much.

I wandered out of the place and looked around, seeing that the monastery place was on a low hill, with a dirt path leading down to a dirt road that then snaked over to the gates of a city. This was so cool! That must be the starting city or whatever right? Which means Lynna might be there!

The city was funny looking, it had these wooden walls around it that were huge, the tree trunks used in their construction were like, thirty feet tall! They had heat curved and then carved them, and their gleaming surfaces caught the sun in a really pretty way. The whole city was built using construction methods that seemed more at home in ship building, rather than actual architecture.

Starting down the path towards the dirt road, I looked around at the rest of the countryside. The land was rolling and broken, and it actually looked very much like the constant low hills of New Zealand, except that it was all on a slant, rising slowly towards some truly fucking enormous mountains off in the distance behind the city.

It was pretty clear where the civilisation ended too, because the meadows and pastures with their stone fences abruptly ended in a wild tangle of forest that completely dominated the rest of the countryside. Off in the distance, up the world-warping angle of the hills towards the mountains, you could see where more patches of forest had been cleared for farming, like islands in a sea of dark green. It was so, so pretty. There were also probably countless horrors waiting in those woods ready to tear the arms off little old me.

I was on the road and walking the kilometer or so towards the city when I got a notification saying that someone was messaging me using the FTLN internet instead of the ingame messaging system. A little text box popped up, and I saw that it was Lynna!

[Lynna]: “Yo! Are you in yet?”

[Redacted]: “Yes, I am outside a city and walking towards it, I spawned in a funny forest place and the girl who found me thought I was high.”

[Lynna]: “Oh, you must have gotten the Gyshtorum woods spawn! Add me as a friend ingame and we’ll party up and find each other!”

[Redacted]: “I can’t make the menus work.”

[Lynna]: “Are you serious right now? Omg, okay, I’ll meet you in the market square that’s in the center of town okay? I look mostly the same, except I’ve got dark grey-blue skin and big pointy ears.”

[Redacted]: “Yes.”

[Lynna]: “See ya soon!”

I laughed at my friend’s consternation over my inability to operate the game’s menus. She was going to be laughing to herself over this, and then laughing at me when she found me. Best to get my laughing in first, or she’d never let me have a turn.

I got into the city no problems, with only a few weird stares from the guys around. They kept looking at my legs, it was odd. Did I have something on them? Did I get mud on them somehow? I kept checking, but I found nothing.

The architecture inside the city was just as cool as the walls! It was all bare varnished wood that had been carved and curled into crazy looking buildings. Everything looked like some part of a ship or something, with roofing that was a dark slate material. I’d never seen anything like it in the non-VR games I’d played and seeing it all in like, almost reality was so incredible!

The space beyond the gate was basically just a small square with a fountain in the middle and streets leading off in all directions. After asking a very, overly helpful guard where the central square was, I followed the street he’d indicated until I found it.

The market square was… everything. It was just so… bustly. If I was all squish, then this place was all bustle, that was for sure. The bustle was like, totally going to keep me from finding my — Oh, there she was. Well that was easy!

Lynna was leaning against the wall of a building that also served as the edge of the market square. It looked like a magic shop of some kind, and I wanted to look in there like, right away. Maybe not right away actually, but like, soon. When I had money maybe. I wonder if they sold random trickety things. I wanted like, a cute little mage light ball or something. That would be so fun.

Lynna looked so cool in the game. She was kinda short, but not as short as me, and she wore form fitting leather armour with lots of little belts and clasps and a few knives in little sheaths. Her skin was indeed a dark grey-blue colour, and her ears were really long and pointed. They were so long, that their own weight made them droop a little, and they were wider than normal human ears too. Bigger than mine even, and mine were pretty big! She looked like a proper rogue! So cool!

Walking over to her, I smiled up at my now slightly taller friend and said, “Hello!”

“Um, hi?” she asked, her big dark purple eyes looking at me with suspicion.

“Hi!” I smiled again.

“Yeah um… what do you need? You’re not going to try and convert me to a religion or anything are you?” she asked, looking even more suspicious now.

“What? Lyn, you know I’m not into the whole churchy thing!” I grumbled, frowning up at her.

“Wha— oh my god!” she blurted, her eyes going real damn big. “That’s the character you chose to make? What?!”

“Oh, yeah! Cute huh? I’m so squishy! You should try squishing me, it’s so great,” I smiled, twisting to look down at myself with a bubbly grin.

“This is wild, hold on… seriously, D— “ she said, before I lunged at her and covered her mouth with my hands.

“No, I’m Esmie in here,” I said in sudden panic. I didn’t want this character to be sullied with my real world name. It felt… wrong.

Then I lost my balance and fell against her, still holding her mouth shut, but all my squish was pressed against her. Now she was staring at me in surprise. I was surprised too, it felt crazy having my squish squished against her. Kinda warm, maybe a little nice?

Her hands came up and gently pushed me back until I was standing, like how you’d set right a freestanding log that had fallen over. “Okay, Esmie it is,” she smiled, still looking very confused.

We stared at each other for long moments, her eyes going down and around me like all the guys in the line to get through the gate had done.

“What? Is there mud on me?” I asked, spinning around in circles again to try and see what she was looking at, only for my tail to whap her repeatedly on the legs. It was very large.

“Are you sure that’s you in there?” she asked instead, her eyes capturing mine in another funny stare.

“I am definitely me, yes,” I nodded happily, ears flopping back and forth like fuzzy metronomes. I was enjoyed the way she didn’t use my real name.

“You know what I mean,” she sighed in exasperation.

“Yes, yes, hold on…” I said, bringing up the pod menu thing that she’d used to message me through.

[Redacted]: “Hello, I am Esmie.”

She seemed to relax a little, then smiled apologetically, “Sorry, had to be sure you know? This game is… kinda cutthroat sometimes.”

“Oh is it? I haven’t seen any people dying or anything yet, but I might have been distracted by my squish so you never know,” I said with a nod.

“Your… squish?” she asked slowly.

“Yeah, look!” I grinned, and began to poke at the inside of my exposed thighs with a finger. Oh wow, Lyn just went very red! I had to ask, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah I’m good,” she nodded, her voice sounding like she needed to cough.

“Cool, that’s good... can you um, help me figure out how to get the ingame menus to work?” I asked, feeling very dumb.

That got Lyn’s grin back, and she worked me through troubleshooting it with that laughter I’d talked about. She had a nice laugh.

“I think I’m high,” I blurted as we walked down the street.

“Um, why?” Lyn asked in alarm.

“Because, I’m just really damn happy, and I can’t figure out why,” I told her even as I frowned in thought, trying to trace back and remember if I’d accidentally eaten any mushrooms.

“Maybe you’re just happy to be playing a game in VR with your best friend?” she asked playfully, giving my shoulder a little poke.

“Maybe… I don’t know about that though, because I got even happier seeing you. I think I’m probably just being silly, I’ll try to calm down,” I said, taking a few deep breaths.

Then I felt a finger flick my ear, and I gave a squeak, jumping into the air. Once I’d landed with a wobble, I turned and glared at her. “What was that for?”

“Nothing, just letting you know you’re being silly. No need to calm down if you’re happy, right?” she giggled softly. Her cheeks were red again, was she embarrassed? Probably embarrassed for me and my sudden promotion to complete ditz.

"Okay, okay… I won't try and sabotage my own happiness. But only because you say sooo," I smiled sideways at her.

"Yup, good," she nodded, then went quiet, her eyes glued to her feet.

We walked in silence down the street for a bit, and I meant to ask her what was wrong, but I became distracted by my squish jiggling around. Every time my foot came down, a bunch of me just… jiggled. It felt very funny.

“So um, where are we going?” I asked, finally breaking the silence.

“Oh, we’re going…” she said, suddenly looking up and spinning around. The spinning made her big ears flop around a little like mine, and I noticed that they were actually furred, it was just very fine, almost downy fur. Mine were much fluffier.

“Shit,” she swore softly. “We walked past it. We’re going to a quest board in one of the local inns.”

We turned around and wandered back the way we’d come, and I decided to ask a question. “So what have you been doing since high school?”

“Ugh, what have I not been doing?” she asked with a weary sigh.

“Um… Tap Dancing?” I jokingly guessed.

“It was considered, trust me,” she groaned. “Well, it started when I agreed to be an actress for a friend’s student short film. It was this competition thing. Not the one that got the pods though. Anyway, it turned out I was pretty good at it. Someone noticed and got in touch, some manager chick who likes to ‘find talent and nurture it’ as she put it.”

“No way! You got a job? As an actress?” I asked incredulously, then grabbed her arm. “That’s so cool! Wow! That’s exciting for you though.”

“T-thanks,” she stammered, staring at where I had my fingers wrapped around her bicep. “It’s… um, it’s not as great as it sounds. I mean… I get money and stuff, but I’ve only done commercials so far, I can’t seem to get through any auditions, it’s so stressful.”

“And I guess your manager lady is on your ass to land a role?” I asked with a wince.

“Mhm,” she nodded despondently.

“Aw, Lynlyn,” I said sympathetically, pulling her arm into a hug. Just the arm, because that’s what I was holding onto at the time.

My hug brought us both to a stop, and Lyn stared down at me, her face going redder and redder. I let go quickly, crap, had I done something embarrassing again? I could never tell. Social interaction was hard and I always messed up.

“Thanks,” she said after a moment, turning away and looking at her shoes again.

Oh I had totally messed up! We were standing in the middle of the street and awkwardly staring away from each other now, and it was making me feel really anxious. Why were things so weird between us now? We used to hug and poke each other teasingly and stuff all the time, and now it was all odd. I wish we’d kept in touch, gotten that apartment together like we’d planned… because now things were weird and I wanted my friend back.

“Uh, let’s go get a quest,” Lyn said after a moment, giving me a smile that let me know we were still good. Phew! She was like, my only friend left these days. All the rest had buggered off.

“Yeah, let’s do that!” I nodded, glad that we were moving on from my awkwardness.

As we walked, I asked her what her build was, and that got her started like nothing else. She’d decided to make a rogue, that much was obvious, but she wasn’t the typical sneaky stabby kind, no she’d gone for a duellist build. She was all about destroying a single opponent. It meant we were a little lacking on the crowd control front, but hopefully we could find a way around that.

"So yeah, I will totally duel anyone who tries to besmirch my little fluffy companion's honour!" she jokingly exclaimed and reached out absently with a hand to pat my head.

As she drew her hand away, she gave one of my fluffy ears an absent-minded scratch at the base. Oh fuck, oh dear sweet fuck. That felt so damn good, like… seriously good. I almost tripped over my own tiny feet, it felt so good.

"Y-yeah," I said, having completely forgotten what she said.

"Oh, here's the inn!” Lyn said, pointing it out and making a beeline for it.

I wandered along behind her, getting very excited by my first time going into a medieval fantasy inn. Was there going to be like, a shady guy in the back with his hood pulled up, and a big jolly barkeep? This was why VR was a thing, right here!

When we entered, it was less smokey and gross than I thought it would be, and I was a little disappointed by that fact. The ceiling was higher than I’d thought it would be too. Wait… no, I was just shorter than I was used to being now. Otherwise, it was all just as I had hoped, including the shady guy in the back. I waved to the shady guy. He nodded back like we’d just passed some signal. Oh gosh, am I in the thieves guild now?

You have gained a quest: Join the Thieves Guild of Loury.

You have been noticed by a member of the Thieves Guild in the Town of Loury in a positive manner, is this a chance to join the infamous vagabonds of the night? (They also operate during the day.)

Oh I didn’t actually expect… wow, okay! I guess that was an option if I wanted to take it?

Distracted as I was by my new in status with the local pickpockets, I bumped into Lyn as she stopped to look at the quest board.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, and moved to stand next to her.

The quest board was pretty simple, many boring kill and fetch quests, with the odd hunt down a dangerous named beastie quest. Standard fare if you were used to daily quests in any mmo ever.

“Let’s take a few,” Lyn said after a moment. “Maybe a boss quest and then a kill quest?”

“Um, are we going to do them at the same time because that seems like a bit much,” I said, looking worriedly up at her.

“Uh, no… I was thinking we do the kill quest on the way or something, then if we’re feeling confident, we try the boss quest,” she explained, giving my big fuzzy ear another flick.

Damn ear flicking. I reached up and flicked her ear right back, we both had big floppy ears here after all! However, her reaction was… a little different to mine… she squeaked, jumping about a foot in the air.

“Don’t do that!” she exclaimed, her face going red with embarrassment.

“No, you don’t do that!” I frowned back at her, then poked out my tongue for good measure.

She flicked my ear again, and poked her tongue out in response to mine. Oh, she was on. I reached up and flicked both her ears, and was rewarded with a gasp.

“You…” she growled menacingly, then she jumped at me.

Her leap turned into a trip when her foot caught on a plank that was a little too high, and suddenly she was on top of me, and we were both on the ground. Strangely enough, I wasn’t feeling all that hurt, it was like the squish had cushioned me or something. Having her on top of me actually felt really nice, like before when I fell on her instead. Having my squish pressed on her was nice. I was going to get back at her in a truly evil way, I decided, as she stared down at me in surprise.

I grabbed both of her ears and started playing with them, rubbing, twisting and pulling on the huge, soft and fuzzy things. She shuddered and gave a very different type of gasp, and I laughed with glee as I kept torturing her. She was at my mercy! She went limp and started making high pitched squeaking sounds after a few moments of this. Wait, was I hurting her? She wasn’t struggling or anything, but she was making noises that sounded like she was in pain.

“Are you okay? I’m sorry if that actually hurt!” I asked worriedly.

“N-no… um… it’s… let’s get up and pretend that never happened,” she coughed, wriggling off of me.

I stared up at her from the ground, noticing she was really red now, the reddest I’d ever seen her, like… ever. Wow, it looked… wait, she was pretty like that! I’d never thought someone was pretty before, I’d always thought that was just something for other people and not me… but wow… pretty! My heart was beating a little funny and everything, just like the descriptions!

“Are you going to get up?” she asked, looking away from me with a pout.

“Nah, you squished my squish into the floor. I live here now,” I giggled, then raised my hands and made grabby motions. “Pull me up, since you knocked me down.”

“Fine, but you’re not allowed to ever touch my ears... ever again,” she grumbled, still looking very embarrassed.

“Only if you…” I started to say, then remembered how nice it had felt when she scratched behind my ear. “Only if you give me scratches sometimes!”

“What?” she asked, her eyes going very wide.

“Earlier, you scratched behind my ear and it felt nice, so I want more,” I demanded. “Otherwise I’ll squiggle your ears again!”

“S-squiggle my ears? I… no! We’re not calling it that!” she yelled, throwing her hands up in the air.

“Two ear scratches and it’s a deal,” I grinned evilly. “Two ear scratches or I call it squiggling.”

“What? No? That’s… what are you?” she asked in consternation.

“Squiggle squiggle!” I taunted, giving her a mischievous grin.

“Stop!” she demanded petulantly.

“Squiiiiiggglllleeeee,” I smiled, drawing the word out extra long, like mozzarella that just refuses to break even when you’re like halfway across the room.

“Fine!” she blurted in defeat, reaching forward to scratch both my earsss attt onnnceeeohmygod.

Bliss, pure, happy, amazing… all of those words. This was so great, I needed more. From now on, I was going to haggle every single ear scratch I could out of her. She had no idea what she was in for. It was all training for joining the thieves guild, I was going to become the sweetest haggler they ever had, making sure all their stolen goods would fetch good prices!

“Now that… that’s over,” she said, her face still pretty damn red, she turned to the board and plucked two quests at random. “This one is for… Zraggs, whatever those are, and this one is to fight a boar named The Chomper.”

“Cool, sounds good to me!” I nodded, not really minding what fetch quest we did.

With our quests chosen, we turned to leave the Inn… and found everyone staring at us. Oh no… I think we made a scene. Time to run away and never come back! Hermit time.

“That was really embarrassing, let’s never do that again,” Lynlyn said with a groan as we hurried out of the city.

“Yeah it was embarrassing…” I nodded. “But it was also too much fun not to do ever again!”

“If you try, I will hold you down and tickle you,” she warned. “I’m almost definitely stronger than you in here.”

“Okay okay, fine,” I pouted, kicking a stone on the road dramatically.

Then an idea formed in my mind… a dastardly plot… If she was tickling me, she’d be touching my squish! I had a surefire way of getting her to put her hands all over my squish, and I was going to put this plan into action when she least expected it. Like… right now!

I leapt at her, wrapping my legs around her from behind, my greedy hands going straight for her long fluffy ears.

“Hey!” she exclaimed in protest, spinning around in an attempt to dislodge the small squishy girl that was I.

She overbalanced and we both dropped into the grass on the side of the road, where she began to wrestle me into submission. Now she had me right where I wanted me!

“You asked for it!” she growled, sending a shiver of anticipation through me.

Her lithe, strong hands went for it, grabbing my waist and working to tickle me. I squirmed and wriggled back automatically, my body trying to get away from the overstimulation that her fingers were giving me. She grumbled in frustration as I almost managed to get away, and then she was sitting on me, her butt pressing down into my hips to keep me there.

Then I was really at her mercy, and she went to town until I was crying, laughing and begging for the sweet release of… oh dear. Her ass had slipped, and was now grinding against a certain part of my new and unfamiliar anatomy in a very squishy manner. Suddenly the tickling took on an entirely new flavour in my mind, echoing and enhancing the sensations surging up from my center.

“L-lyn…lyn…” I gasped, batting feebly at her. I mean, I didn’t want her to stop, but she might not want to make me… uh, yeah.

Completely oblivious to the pleasure mounting within me, she grinned evilly down at me, “What? Do you give up?”

“Your ass!” I squeaked, the high pitched sound turning into a long moan. “If… you don’t stop…”

She flew off me so fast I swear she had wings or something, tottering to her feet and stammering, “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my fucking god! I’m so sorry!”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t having fun,” I laughed breathlessly, poking my tongue out at her.

“What?!” she choked, her eyes boggling.

“It’s so comfy down here,” I said, rather than answering, wriggling around for emphasis. “Don’t you want to come back down?”

“Esmie!” Lynlyn yelled at the sky in protest. “What the fuck is up with you!”

“Fine, fine,” I said with a cheeky little giggle. “I’m getting up. We have things to kill after all right?”

“Huh?” she asked, frowning down at me as I wobbled shakily to my feet.

“Quests?” I prompted, pointing towards the forest.

“Oh! Yes! Definitely quests,” she said, looking down at my simple linen clothed body. “Do you um, need to change?”

“Uh, let me just equip a new set of underwear real quick,” I blushed, opening the menu.

The menu proved to be a challenge, but I was up for anything! I’d find out how to fix this… just a second. I could find it. Was it this? No, that was something else. Oh, was this it? Nope…

“Uh, it’s the button with the silhouette of a person doing a T-pose,” she prompted helpfully.

“Right… I almost had it,” I lied, trying to squash a smile that was trying to ride its way onto my face.

I found the inventory and then promptly realised I had a decision to make. I could just unequip and then requip a new pair of underwear… or, I could flash her. No, bad Esmie, don’t break your friend, she’s a straight girl after all. She had that one boyfriend in year fourteen for a few weeks. I think they even held hands.

Sighing, I did the responsible thing and changed out my underwear, and just that, then nodded to her. “Okay I’m good, let’s get going!”

“You’re a lot of things Esmie, but I don’t think good is one of them,” she laughed, rolling her eyes.

“No, but you made me feel good,” I shot right back with a grin.

“No! No… No!” she growled menacingly. “We’re not talking about this again, just like the squiggle thing.”

“Fine,” I sighed theatrically. “You’re no fun.”

“I am plenty of fun!” she exclaimed in outrage. “But I’m appropriate fun.”

“I want you to appropriate me for some more fun,” I mumbled, too low for her to hear.

“What was that?” she squinted at me suspiciously.

“Nothing.”

We walked in silence for like three whole steps, before I opened my mouth to speak, only for her hand to swing out like a self closing door and bap me lightly on the mouth.

“No talking,” my friend said. “You lost your talking rights.”

“MmmmMMMmmMmmMmmm,” I mumbled through my closed lips.

“Oh my god you are…” she sighed. “Let’s just walk.”

“Yes mistress,” I said with mock sadness.

I actually did shut up after that, which I was honestly a little thankful for because my god the things that were coming out of my mouth were just unreal. I’d always had a thing for quick jokes, I liked making people laugh, no matter who they were. This was… a little different however. I was being a bad panda, in both the naughty sense of the word and the naughty sense of the word. Shit, why were all the synonyms for bad also innuendo?

As the forest approached us, I mean, we approached the forest… or something, I saw with interest that there were several obvious paths in. The road itself cut through the forest, sure, but branching off as soon as it reached the treeline were a series of trodden down dirt tracks. Obviously this was a popular route into the forest to do quests.

The trees themselves reminded me of the tree farms down near lake Taupo, mostly a tall species of pine, but there were all sorts of other trees lower to the ground that contested canopy real estate for sunlight. I saw one that reminded me of conifers, and another that looked like a birch tree with oaken leaves and bark. The underbrush was mostly your stereotypical bushes, nothing to see there.

“Where are the... um,” I asked, pausing to look at my quest logs for the name of the thingies we were meant to be tracking down. “Zraggs?”

“This way,” Lynlyn said, pointing into the forest. “You should be able to get a sense for it if you concentrate on wanting to find the quest objective.”

I did as she said, and nodded when I felt the gentle tugging. “Yeah I feel it!”

“Sweet, let’s go then!” she grinned, leading the way down one of the dirt paths.

The forest got dark very quickly as we entered it, like it was permanently twilight between the now much more sinister feeling trees. The ground was littered with pine needles and other forest debris, but unlike the tree farms I’d likened it to a few moments before, there was no ordered divisions between the trees. They were everywhere, haphazardly placed like whoever had planted the forest had been very drunk at the time.

There was also a lot more underbrush than those forests, and we frequently found ourselves pushing our way through to follow the rapidly fading path. I felt a little scared to be honest, the forest had seemed so inviting when we were outside, and I’d imagined something like the grove I’d spawned in.

“Lynlyn,” I whispered, as though I had to respect the silence of the woods. “This place creeps me out.”

My companion turned back and raised a teasing eyebrow at me, “Is little Esmie scared?”

“I’m not little,” I said automatically, then stopped and giggled when I realised that yeah, I was little… and I liked being little?

Girls were allowed to be little! They were allowed to be small and cute and all that stuff, and right now, I was Esmie, who was almost definitely a girl!

“Nevermind!” I smiled. “I’m little! I’m Esmie, the little red bun panda girl!”

Lynlyn blinked at me in surprise and confusion, her eyebrows raising as she inspected me. She seemed to be searching my face for something, and I tilted my head down to get away from the awkward eye contact. My ears didn’t appreciate it either, the floppy bundles of fluff on the sides of my head twitching, even as my tail bounced in agitation.

“Stop looking at me like that! It’s weird!” I grumbled, but the noise that came out was far from intimidating.

“Sorry, it’s just odd. The way you’ve taken to being Esmie like you were born to it,” she said thoughtfully.

“Well I wasn’t,” I sighed, looking back up at her. I felt whatever silly fog of happiness that had held sway since I spawned dissipate and my normal, boring old self returned with a vengeance. “Look, Lynna… I’m just enjoying it alright? I like this, it’s fun and silly and way different from real life, which sucks big time.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, moving closer, a look of concern in her eyes. “What’s been going on?”

She was close now, but I wasn’t feeling particularly mischievous anymore. It was fun to be Esmie when I could just forget everything… but when she was overanalysing me, it crumbled.

“My parents all but kicked me out a few months ago, and I’ve been living alone since then. No contact with anyone, just games and shows…” I said sadly.

“Awwhh... D… Esmie…” she murmured, her brows furrowing in sympathy as she stepped forward.

I didn’t want her to hug me right now. We used to be that close, her and I, but not anymore. Even nine months later we had drifted down different paths, become different from the people we’d been in high school. Then there was the part where she’d stopped returning my messages and calls...

“No Lynna! Even you stopped talking to me!” I cried, feeling sadness take hold, and I pushed away, stumbling backwards across the forest floor.

She stared at me in surprise, her big ears drooping sadly as she tried to get words out, but nothing was forthcoming.

I took a long shuddering, calming breath, pinched my arm until it hurt, then plastered a smile back on my face.

With false cheer I hoped would turn into real happiness, I told her, “So in here, I’m Esmie, and I’m not sad, and I’m just me, just Esmie the red panda bunny girl!”

Gulping, she nodded, a small smile struggling into place on her lips. “Right, Esmie the cute Panda Bunny girl.”

“Red Panda Bunny Girl,” I grinned, nudging her with an elbow as I walked past. “Get it right!”

“Right, Red Panda,” Lynlyn laughed, grabbing me despite my earlier protests. “Now let me hug Esmie the Red Panda Bunny Girl, I want to hug you.”

“Oh!” I blurted as she pulled me in from behind and held me there. My chest felt funny! Why did my chest feel funny! It felt all tight, light and bright, all at the same time!

The hug didn’t take long, but it was enough for my chest to graduate into feeling full on strange, not just funny. Then she released me, and I wobbled forward out of her reach and turned around to glare at her suspiciously.

“What?” she asked, a single smug eyebrow arching playfully. “You wanted me to roll around in the grass with you earlier, what’s wrong with a simple hug?”

I didn’t answer right away, just glaring at her instead. She wasn’t wrong, damn it. My past self was sabotaging me! Damn it past Esmie! I’ll get back at you!

“Fine,” I sighed, but any further words I might have said were cut off by a noise from further into the woods.

The most terrifying, bone curdling howl of animal rage I’d ever heard had just ripped through the forest ahead of us, and suddenly I wanted Lynlyn’s protective arms around me again. What on earth had just made that noise? Judging by the way another one tore through the quiet of the woods just a few moments later, I figured that we were about to find out.

“What was that?” Lynlyn asked, her big ears perking up as high as they could go. She looked like an aeroplane, and the look put a grin all over my face. Her ears were so big, like mine! Except hers were long and pointed and less floppy.

The blood curdling howl tore through the forest all over again and I was suddenly reminded again that we were meant to be worried about something. Lynlyn’s ears were really cute though.

“Is it the Zraggs?” I asked tentatively, staring into the foliage in the direction of the howl.

“Possibly,” Lynlyn said quietly, reaching forward to take hold of my arm. “You get behind me just in case.”

I was pushed behind her before I could go there myself, which gave me another one of those funny little chest feelings. Why did I feel so funny when she touched me?

We could hear the underbrush shifting about ahead of us now, the bushes and long grasses rustling as something or multiple somethings moved through it. Then came the snuffling noises, until something tumbled out in front of us.

The thing was mind bogglingly odd to look at. Generally speaking it was shaped like an egg on its side and covered in thick dark brown fur. Four small legs peeked out from underneath, each one with a hoof on the end. Its mouth was wide and sported two massive tusks, and above that were two tiny, beady black eyes.

It looked like a boar with aspirations of becoming a stereotypical piggy bank. My first reaction was to laugh, but then several of the things wobbled out of the bushes to surround us, and their mouths opened to show huge sharp carnivorous teeth. Suddenly things were just a little bit serious.

“Oh shi—“ I squeaked, before abruptly my vision went black.

You have Died. You will respawn after an indeterminate length of time has passed. Please enjoy your death dream in the meantime and thank you for playing Cauldron of Realms Ascended!

“What the squish?” I blurted, spinning around to look at wherever the hell I was. What was a death dream?

I was in a very small room, barely tall enough for me to stand in, and pillows were literally everywhere across the floor.

“Oh,” I exclaimed happily, diving into them with abandon. “Sweet!”

“Oh balls, another one that’s happy to be here,” a soft, feminine voice noted from behind me.

I whirled around onto my back in surprise and found myself staring up into the eyes of a girl a year or two younger than me. She had long dirty blonde hair that was so fluffy it was almost comical and I couldn’t help but stare at it. Her face sported a pair of big glasses that didn’t quite sit on her face correctly.

“Hi?” I asked awkwardly.

“Hey,” she said with a weary sigh, plopping down into the pillows opposite me. Well, as opposite as you could be in a room that was barely big enough to fit three people without having their legs get all tangled.

“So uh, who are you?” I asked, bringing my tail around in front of me to cuddle. Big fluffy tails were the best, so much fluffy fluffness.

“I am May,” she told me with a smile, offering me her hand to shake. “And you are Esmie.”

“I am Esmie,” I agreed, feeling my heart swell and dance at the name. It was such a good name. Way better than my real one, which was a total dud. I wished I was a girl so I could have the name Esmie instead.

Of course, I was so preoccupied with the whole name thing that I forgot to shake her hand for a second, so when I did remember, I was a little too enthusiastic about it. Which means, I managed to lunge at her and fall into the pillows next to her with a thump.

“Oh my,” she giggled, looking down at me as I rolled over. “I can see how you died to the first thing that hit you now.”

“Hey! It jumped me from behind or something! It wasn’t fair,” I pouted up, blowing some hair out of my face with a puff.

“Yes, it was a little mean of the…” she paused, looking off to the side like she was checking some notes that I couldn’t see. “The Scrag? No… Zraggs. Weird name that one, I should think of a better one and ask… no he’d just get grumpy at me. The lore people always get so grumpy when you step into their turf.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, blinking in confusion. “What… who are you?”

“I’m May!” she smiled, raising an eyebrow. “I thought we established that much.”

I just groaned and rolled back so I was face first in the pillows. Whoever this person was, she was very annoying.

“Okay, okay,” she laughed. “My job is to help you through the trauma of violently dying! Except, you kinda just died without even seeing or feeling anything, so I don’t really have much to do. It looks like the system has decided that you wouldn’t be able to take much of a psychological beating, so it cut you off really early into the attack that killed you.”

“Wait, it does that?” I asked, my voice muffled by the pillows.

“Yupperinos!” she said happily, and I felt her shift around beside me.

Rolling my head to glance sideways, I saw she’d decided to lay down on her side, head resting on her arm.

“That’s kinda smart, I guess,” I yielded reluctantly, mostly because like, the game was basically calling me a wimp. Whatever, at least I had my squish!

Looking down, I saw that I was in my game character’s body, but in some casual modern clothing. A pair of loose and very short shorts showed off my thighs in all their pasty white and squishy glory. Up top I had a comfortable sports bra on… no wait, it was one of those bras that worked like a sports bra but had lots of frills and stuff. I had no idea what they were called. A big baggy T-shirt went over the top, like a cherry goes on a cake or something.

“Did you dress me?” I asked, playing with the fabric of my shirt. It was so soft! Was this what girl clothing felt like?

“Yup!” she said proudly. “Made the room too, based on… well, what I thought you would like.”

“I like both of them,” I smiled, switching to lay on my back. “Could do with a nice warm blanket though.”

Back outside VR, one of my favourite possessions was a huge duvet that had a cover just one size too big. Now, you might ask why I had a cover that was too big, and the answer is this, the way the cover bundles up and wrinkles feels nice to my strange brain. It was hard to explain, but having the extra sensory input helped me sleep.

“Sure thing!” May exclaimed brightly, snapping her fingers.

The biggest blanket I had ever seen phased into existence in mid air and fell down on top of the both of us. It was such a big and fluffy blanket too!

“This is so cozy!” I exclaimed delightedly, snuggling in. “Can I stay here for a bit?”

May seemed to consider my request for a moment, then shrugged, “Yeah, why not. I don’t get to just chill out with people very often. Only my sisters and parents do really. Oh and… uh, Siyeapia. She’s this really cute Amazon SAI.”

“Are you…?” I asked hesitantly.

That seemed to bring her up short, earning me an incredulous stare. “Uh, duh?

I ducked my head, feeling embarrassment rise in my cheeks.

“Use. Your. Squishy. Meat. Brain,” she said, emphasising each word with a poke of her finger to my stomach under the covers.

“Hey!” I squeaked, writhing away a little. “That tickles!”

“You deserved it!” she grumbled. “Who doesn’t know that it’s us SAI running this game? It’s like the main selling point! What have you been doing for the past like eight or so months?”

“Watching netflix,” I shrugged, glaring suspiciously at her.

“Oh my goodness,” May laughed, although her expression went like, super thoughtful as it fell away. “I’ve never watched netflix before.”

I blinked at her for a moment, genuinely at a loss for words. What did I say to someone who’d just admitted to being a sentient AI about the staples of like, human culture and stuff? Wait! Sentient AI! That weird Amazon robot had definitely been an SAI! The crazy thing had been a person! Whoa, that was wild, and also pretty cool. Maybe I should order something else when I got out and we could talk. Wait, was she the same Amazon AI as May was talking about?

Ohh, actually, back to the netflix thing Esmie! You have an account, why not watch some with her? Show May all the cool shows to watch!

“Well, they’re like the biggest network around, that isn’t disney, so I’m sure we could find something that you might like. Can I pull up a virtual machine in here?” I asked, trying anyway. It seemed to be successful, as the little window flickered to life in front of me. Hah! Take that Menus!

Pinching the edges, I pulled it wide so that she might be able to see properly, and raised an eyebrow in question. “Yeah? Wanna watch? How long do I have to stay in here?”

May was just staring at me, sort of owlishly, or like a small startled animal or something. Then she took her glasses off and began cleaning them with her own baggy shirt, frowning up a storm while she did it.

“Okay,” she nodded solemnly after a moment. “But I don’t think I could choose a show… choices are still kind of hard for me. Real ones I mean, silly ones are even harder, if I’m not following my old programming.”

“That’s cool,” I smiled, shifting the screen so she could see it better before I started idly browsing through. What kind of show would an SAI like her even like? Maybe I should find something about AI? No, most of those were… yeah. Not good.

Oh wait, what about a comedy sitcom! That would be perfect, everyone could get some enjoyment out of that semi-mindless shenaniganry. I navigated quickly through the menus until I found what I wanted.

The show was called Hayton House, and it was about four friends who lived in an apartment on basic together. Each episode was essentially just the four of them getting up to increasingly wacky hijinks as they tried to alleviate the boredom that came with having no purpose in life other than to exist. I could definitely relate.

I started the show and sat back, half watching it and half watching May’s reactions. At first she seemed on the fence, but then she began to get more and more invested, and when the first episode ended, she burst into a little confetti cloud of questions.

What followed was like half an hour of discussion on the pilot episode of a meaningless comedy soap opera. It was so funny and cute, the way she just fundamentally didn’t understand some of the tropes and jokes being made. She kept trying to apply realistic human psychology to the dumb and often poorly written lines, which was so stereotypically AI of her, in an adorable way. Maybe she’d get a kick out of all the shows that were in the GoT genre. The political intrigue ones where she could dissect and predict what was going to happen.

“I want to watch more, but your time is up,” she pouted, when she’d finally run out of questions. “Actually, I should have finished this a few minutes ago.”

“All good,” I grinned. “I’m sure I’ll die again soon enough, considering how much I suck at this game.”

“You are indeed not very good,” she nodded seriously, messing around with her glasses again. “Okay, I’ll send you back, but please come see me again soon!”

I frowned suspiciously at her. “Are you telling me to go and die again? Purposefully?”

“Oh!” she exclaimed in alarm. “No! Definitely not! I just… this was fun! I want to have fun again. Fun is… fun.”

“Fun is fun,” I agreed with a giggle, reaching over to pat her on the arm. “Don’t worry. See you again soon… new friends?”

“Yes! New friends! I like friends too, friends are fun,” she said happily.

Then I was gone, my vision fading to black without so much as a chance to say goodbye. What an odd person she was. Yes, I am aware of how that sounds coming from me.

I groaned, frowning even before I opened my eyes at the cold surface I had respawned on. Why couldn’t it be as nice and fluffy as where I’d just come from? I gave a harrumph and opened my eyes, pushing up to a sitting position so I could see where the hell I was. Some sort of temple, by the looks of things, with a big mist filled pool for people to respawn in. Fancy!

Still, the floor was cold, so I wobbled to my feet and gave it a big ol’ pout, just to make sure it knew who was boss. The whole place was made of the same dark grey stone, little to no embellishments anywhere except a large statue against the wall opposite the exit. The statue was cool though, a pretty woman wearing a big sheet. Or something. I don’t know what that item of clothing was called.

“Esmie!” I turned in the direction of the familiar voice calling my name, finding Lynna walking towards me with a sheepish smile on her face. “Wow, we got wrecked, huh?”

“Yeah,” I sighed theatrically, placing the back of my dainty little hand to my forehead. “You lead me to my death! How could you?”

Lynna rolled her eyes and reached out, grabbing me by that same hand. “Come on, sadly, we have actual work to do.”

“Wait, what?” I asked as I was dragged out of the big respawning room.

She let my hand go as I began to walk on my own, but she did give me an apologetic smile. “You know how I’ve got that manager and stuff…?”

“For your acting stuff, yeah?” I answered, trying to remember what she’d said. Lynna was under pressure from her manager to get a job, I think?

“Yeah… my acting stuff…” she smiled, absently brushing a hand over my hair. “My manager is in the game. She wants to meet to discuss something.”

I blinked up at her, not really computing for a second because of how nice it had felt to have her hand on my head. She chuckled when she saw me processing, the sound humming through me to make my chest feel light and fluffy. “I might have sent her the uh… footage of us hanging out. She wanted to see, for some reason.”

My mouth opened slightly as I realised what she was saying. My face began to heat up, slowly at first, but my mind was in the process of fixing that. It ran through everything that had happened since I met up with Lynna in glorious, embarrassing detail. Everything I had done while I was in that weird, odd state of euphoria. I’d been wild, and now an adult, a real, professional woman, had seen it all.

“Oh no,” I groaned, burying my face in my hands. “Lyyynnnlyyynnnnnn! That was all… it was… I was crazy! I was high! Now I look like a total idiot in front of your boss!”

“And whose fault was that?” she asked with the smirkiest smirk I’d ever seen. I forgot she could be like this, teasing and… stuff.

“Okay, it was mine,” I grumbled, kicking at a stray pebble as we got to the bottom of the steps outside the temple.

We were now in the big central city market, where hundreds were wandering around picking through all the wares that merchants had out. It was an exciting atmosphere, and there was enough going on that I felt my head beginning to spin. Goodness! There was a really nice smell, someone was cooking something that smelled delicious, especially to me, who’d only really eaten pre prepared meals recently.

“Can we stop and get some food?” I asked, trailing along behind my friend as she marched off in search of wherever we were meant to meet the boss lady.

“She says she’s going to pay for lunch,” she said absently, stopping to glance around as we neared the edge of the market, where two streets arrived to meet it. “Looking for an inn that’s apparently… aha, there it is!”

Free food? Say no more! I was a good little bun and hurried along after her, making sure I didn’t get run over by a big cart in the process. Far out, I was small as, now.

The inn in question was a fancy looking place that was just down the street from the market. It was nice and open too, big front doors that were currently open, allowing laughter to spill out and sunlight to spill in.

“Alright, she says that she’s at a table near the back…” Lynna murmured, flicking through her menus for a second. “Yup, alright. Let’s go in!”

I followed her with a silent nod as she pushed through the massive front doors into the large and spacious interior. Instantly I threw my gaze to the ground, closing my eyes slightly to narrow my field of view. Stupid rich people and their huge rooms. Why couldn’t they just make lots of small cozy rooms, rather than this dumb big one.

I almost screamed when a text message appeared in front of my face, anxious as I was. It took me a second to even focus around the brief surge of panic, but when I did, I found myself rather surprised.

Hiyaaa, looked into some things for you… looks like your pod has a limited medical suite on board! If you want, I can show you where in the settings to find some medication for your problem. It can only administer one medication at a time though unfortunately.

Carefully, I whispered, “Oh my god… you’re telling me there’s something for my Agoraphobia?”

Yupperinos! Didn’t you know that? Surely you’ve been like, helped with this before?

“No? I just kinda dealt with it…”

Fuck my life, you people… alright, here’s how to do it…

Reading carefully, I followed along with the instructions that were probably from that girl in the death dream. She got more than a little exasperated with me when I fucked it up a few times, but just as I was bumping into Lynna’s back, we’d gotten it. It would kick in soon, and supposedly I wouldn’t be so anxious about large enclosed spaces. Supposedly.

“Lynna, nice to see you again,” a smooth, confident voice said, and I jerked my eyes up off the floor and into two bright red ones.

Wow. Sitting at a small circular table was the most impressive woman I’d ever seen. Her skin was a dark blue colour, like how you might imagine the deep ocean might look right at the edge of eternal night. She wore a gorgeous red dress that was somehow businesslike and ballroom at the same time. She was beautiful too, in that untouchable way that a goddess was, and out of her forehead sprouted two huge ebony horns. A long barbed tail snaked out behind her, hypnotically swaying from side to side, like a snake getting ready to strike.

This was Lynna’s boss? Were we sure this wasn’t just a shark that had stumbled into a VR pod? Holy moly!

“Ruth…” my friend said nervously, visibly swallowing before she sat down in one of the chairs.

The scary demon woman gave her a smile and a nod, before turning to me with a strange expression, something between the way a cat looks at a mouse, and the way a child looks at a toy in a toystore. “And then there’s you… Esmie. Quite the show you put on earlier.”

I blushed, heavily and completely, staring down at the table to avoid those piercing red eyes. “Um, yeah…”

“Entertaining, even,” she said slowly, carefully… as though those two words were meant to mean a hell of a lot more than just the obvious.

“Yeah… sorry about her, she was just a little crazy, it’s her first time in VR,” Lynna apologised, placing a gentle hand on my arm for a moment.

“It is partially because of her that we are meeting, actually,” Ruth said, leaning back in her chair like a dragon draping itself over its hoard of gold.

“What?” Lynna and I both blurted in unison, staring at the shark in front of us in surprise. Had I done something really, really bad?

“I’ll put it plainly then, I am not made of time, after all,” she chuckled, her brow quirking in amusement for a second. “You two are highly entertaining together. So much so, in fact, that I think we might have ourselves a little opportunity. CORA vid shows are the hot new thing at the moment, grand battles and heroic deeds for all to see, without half of the production costs. This new fully immersive simulation they have in this game is ripe for any number of things… such as a little show featuring two adorable little scamps as they make their way through this world.”

“You want to make a vid show about us?” Lynna squeaked.

Ruth nodded, leaning forward with an open smile, “Yes, of a sort. I’d like to have you both become Vtubers. Virtual personalities, playing a character if you’d like, or not. It’s up to you. You’d do streams every now and then, as well as uploading highlight videos of your playtime together and separately. Your job would mainly revolve around being entertaining both as people and in what you do within the game.”

“I’m expecting mainly slice of life style content, not grand battles, unless you can find one. Really though, you two are just watchable all on your own. Provided, that is… you hold back a little on the sexual antics. You can do that in the times you’re not filming.”

“How does this even work?” I asked quietly, nervously, at the same time that Lynna started choking on something. What, I couldn’t tell.

“Like I said, you’ll film yourselves running around playing this game, being adorable and ridiculous. Then, you’ll send the footage to me, cutting out any parts that you’d like to keep private, of course,” she said amicably, pouring a glass of water and handing it to Lynna. “I would suggest you keep yourselves publicly single, too. I don’t personally require it in my talent unless they agree to it. You will, however, make significantly more money if you agree to adhere to all that idol bullshit.”

“I hate that stuff,” Lynna muttered, but she glanced up at me and continued, “In the interest of our futures, though, it might be a good idea to go with some sort of relaxed ruleset there. Staying quote-unquote available should be pretty easy for us. Keeping our identities under wraps is also a very good idea.”

“Why?” I asked, confused by everything that was being said. I didn’t have much of a clue what a vtuber was. “Why does it get us more money? I’m very confused.”

“I’ll put it simply,” the blue-skinned demon lady said, smiling patiently. “There’s a hundred different reasons for getting to know a virtual personality, becoming a fan. Some are lonely and are looking for likable human companionship. Others just enjoy the passive nature of watching someone cute or funny do something they enjoy. The simple part is that many of those fans will pay very well for various perks associated with that personality. What those perks are depends on what you are comfortable with. Make enough money and I can help with more interesting things, like merchandise, art, or even ingame cosmetic items.”

Everyone at the table was silent for several moments as my friend and I stared at each other wordlessly, mulling over the proposal.

“That actually sounds… really fun,” Lynna said quietly, still staring at me. “Will Esmie get paid too?”

“She will,” Ruth agreed without hesitation.

“And we just… wander around, playing the game?” she asked, turning back to look at her boss.

“Indeed.”

“But how do we make it interesting?” I mused, feeling my mind turn it around… wait! “What if we save up and buy a house? Make a shop?” I exclaimed, grinning over at my friend. “I mean, we’re clearly not very good at fighting things yet, but there must be other ways to make money, Then we can like, play house or whatever, like all those old slice of life shows.”

Lynna’s eyes lit up, and she grinned, “Oh, and we could do like, different scenes, almost. Pick something fun to do each day, like go out and try and do another quest in the forest, or go exploring for a few days. It will still be reality vid stuff, but we can do all sorts of dumb, fun things to entertain people!”

“Wait, and if we get really good at crafting, we could give out expensive crafted items to higher tier fans! Maybe even make unique ones! That would be so much fun,” I said, practically vibrating with energy.

For several minutes, we sat there at the table and got increasingly excited, throwing ideas back and forth until our faces were bright and flushed. Ruth had to cut in, laughing and shaking her head, reminding us that she was going to buy us lunch.

“I think I can arrange for a house to be purchased, to get the ball rolling,” Ruth told us as we scarfed the amazing, scrumptious meals down. “And a little ingame capital to get you started. Thank you, I’m very interested in seeing what you come up with.”

Ruth set us up with things in such a whirlwind of bureaucracy that it had me crying on the inside. She apparently just had a small house available in the city, because she and her agency were made of money and could apparently just buy this shit. I mean real money too, not ingame money. I was now like, fifty percent sure she was a dragon, like a real one. Apparently we were the first vtubers from her agency to play CORA, as the others were all invested in a different game right now. Rellithesh, I think the game was called.

Our new house was in a poorer neighbourhood, crammed between two other identical buildings that were nevertheless odd and unique in their own way. Ours was two stories tall and about as wide as your average two lane street, not counting the parking spaces. It had the same curved wooden beam construction as most of the rest of the city, massive trees cut into squares, bent and twisted in crazy ways and then fitted together neatly.

Except, obviously, none of the houses gleamed with the gloss of polished wood like the wall had. Pitted and worn with age, they resembled ships that had been run aground on a beach and left there for three years. However, it was our dilapidated shipwreck now!

“Just so we’re clear,” Lynna said as we stared at the front door of the place, waiting for Ruth to arrive with the keys. “We’re not having sex. I’m straight.”

It took me a second to understand what she was saying, it had been hours since our lunch with Ruth. “I… wasn’t expecting to have sex with you Lynlyn…” I smiled, rolling my eyes. “You are pretty, but we don’t have that type of friendship.”

“I just auto generated this character based on my gene profile,” she said, cheeks heating and eyes darting back and forth between my eyes.

“Well, then take that however you want,” I said, smothering a smile and patting her amicably on the back.

She was still staring at me with embarrassed suspicion when Ruth arrived, along with a bunch of buff guys carrying things.

“Hello you two,” she said with a calm assurance that I was beginning to realise was default for her. “It’s not the most glamorous digs in the world, but that’s the point! I have a few things here to get you started. Not much mind you, we want you to have something to work towards. This is a game after all, and games can be mighty dull when a high level player gives you all the best gear.”

That made sense, I was looking forward to building this shack into a mansion, especially considering I didn’t intend to leave VR unless it was absolutely necessary. “Yeah that’s cool. Means we can customise the place to suit us!” I smiled, bouncing in place with excitement. Finally, my life had some sort of meaning, goals to achieve!

“Can we see inside now?” Lynna asked excitedly, scanning all the stuff that the big buff guys were carrying. “Is that our starter kit?”

“It is indeed,” she said with a nod, and summoning two keys out of her inventory she said, “Here are your keys, don’t lose them, there aren’t spares. I have to get to a meeting soon, so let’s open the door so these kind men can put all the stuff in the front room. Remember to keep filming, we don’t want to miss any cute moments for your channels. You’ll be doing both streaming and ”

“Huh, that is what we’re going to be doing, isn’t it?” Lynna remarked, taking the initiative to go and unlock the door and allow the troupe of bulging men inside the house. “It’s like a let’s play except we’re not just playing as ourselves, we’re playing as whatever type of character we want to be. Been a long time since I watched one of those.”

“Yes, and no,” Ruth agreed. “The medium has fallen in and out of favour over the decades, specifically it has been out recently. To let you in on the process a little, if you’ll indulge me. Streaming is good for many, especially those on basic income who have the time to view long form content. However, there is another market. Those with jobs or who are studying, or are playing VR games, they don’t have the time to sit through an eight hour stream.”

“In the same vein, the both of you can’t be expected to stream every moment of every day,” she continued, gesturing between us. “So, you can schedule times to stream while doing something pre-planned, and at the same time send me footage of spontaneous moments that happen while you’re playing. That’s what our agency does, we hit both avenues.”

Lynna’s eyes lit up. “That sounds fun! I’m excited to do the streams, honestly.”

“Me too,” I nodded, ears flopping around. “I’ll probably upload lots of dumb stuff I end up doing so people can laugh at me. I like making people laugh.”

“It sounds like the two of you have this more than handled,” Ruth chuckled, eyes alight with mirth. “If you need any advice, you can message me or my team. We’ll be happy to help.”

“Awesome!” I exclaimed happily. I was already having fun. I was so glad Lynna had contacted me!

The buff men got all our stuff into the front room and then left with nods and smiles, Ruth paying them in coin almost as hard as their abs on their way out. Seriously, how did guys that big even move properly? Like, those biceps must limit your range of movement something chronic! They didn’t look very squishy either, which had my stomach churning a little. Squish was superior.

“Let’s go see what she gave us then,” Lynna said, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me through the still open front door. Her hand was so soft, but with a layer of muscle under the squish that had me squeezing her hand a little to get a sense for the sensation. I liked it, the feeling of squish overlaid on muscle, it added something to the squish that it lacked.

Everything was neatly stacked in the middle of the front room, and in my mind’s eye I could already see shelves and displays in here. It wasn’t a large room, no more than twelve meters wide, which was also the width of the house. Eight meters deep, it had no adornments whatsoever, with a door located centrally on the back wall that led further into the house.

“Okay… two bedrolls,” Lynna grimaced, kneeling down to get a better look at things. “We need to get proper beds as soon as possible, because sleeping on those is going to suck so hard.”

I had to agree. I still remembered the school camp where we’d trekked into the Kaimanawa forest park and slept in sleeping bags under the stars. I giggled, shaking my head at another memory from that trip. “Lynlyn, remember when we went on that camp and they had us all sleeping outside? I remember we got so cold, because like, who has a proper sleeping bag these days?”

“I remember you cuddling up to me and using your ice cold hands on my cheeks,” she said with a mock grumble, her mouth unable to hide the smile tugging at her lips.

“Yeah, and then you sat on me until I stopped,” I grinned, unrepentant still to this day.

She laughed, shaking her head for a moment and rolling her eyes. Then her expression turned wistful and melancholy. “I miss those days. When everything was simple and we just had fun, when our parents handled the scary adult world for us.”

“Same…” I sighed, picking up a candle from a little crate of them. On a whim, I dropped it back and shuffled over next to her, my arms going around her shoulders in a loose hug. “But we’re in CORA now. Ruth is handling all that stuff again, and all we have to do is send her footage of us having fun together. Well, and stream every now and then.”

Our faces were close as we stared into each other’s eyes, different eyes than we were used to, but still the same person underneath. Friends, no matter how long it had been since we last properly spoke.

“Yeah,” she finally smiled, hand coming down to rest on my wide hip. “Together again. Except… well, you’re called Esmie now.”

I felt my cheeks flush and a happy tingle wormed its way up my spine as she said my name. “Yeah, and I forgot your name in here…”

“Lynlyn works,” she grinned back, reaching up to scratch behind my ears, sending my eyes fluttering shut and a hum of bliss to gently weave through my mind. “I like the new nickname, I think.”

“And I like it when you do that,” I mumbled happily, slowly but steadily losing my balance until I flopped sideways onto the floor.

My eyes blinked open when I fell out of reach of her hand, looking up at her with pleading eyes. I wanted more.

She raised an amused eyebrow and turned back to the pile. She followed up with a hum of confusion and leaned forward. “What the hell is this thing?”

I wriggled grudgingly back to my feet and followed where she was pointing. “What the… why did she give us such a large bathtub? That is like… suspiciously large.”

It was true too, the thing was massive, like the biggest barrel I’d ever seen, but cut in half. It looked like it would only just fit through the door. How the hell were we going to move it?

“Yeah… wow,” Lynlyn murmured, poking at it with a finger like it might get up and bite us.

Getting up, I wobbled my way over to one of the crates and tried to open it, only to find that there was no way these pitifully weak arms were going to be cracking this thing. Did I have like, a knife or anything? Aha, yup… one rusty knife sitting in my inventory, nice!

Summoning the cheap blade into my hand, I got it wedged under the lid of the crate and with an embarrassing amount of effort, got it open. My arms were very unhappy with me by the end of it.

“Kitchen stuff!” I exclaimed, poking at all the metal things suspiciously. I saw pots, pans and all sorts in there.

“Nice, let’s crack open the others and see what we’ve got!” she smiled, hopping to her feet and pulling one of her nicer knives from a sheath at her hip.

Together we worked our way through the pile like it was medieval peasant’s christmas, except without the rampant disease and starvation. We found a small table, four chairs, a large robust workbench, basic tools, a ratty old sofa and a few other things. I was most intrigued by the large mirror, something that stood out as being obviously more expensive than the rest of the stuff. I’d have to properly look at myself with that later.

With our hoard of stuff explored, it was time to do the same for the house. It was much longer than it was wide, we discovered as we pushed through the rear door and into a hallway. The first two doors, one on either side, appeared to open into storage rooms, the left one smaller than the right one to accommodate a staircase behind it. Past the cramped staircase the hallway opened up into a sort of kitchen and living room hybrid. On the right side of the room was a huge fireplace, while on the other side was a rugged countertop and rickety stone oven.

“This is… actually kinda nice,” Lynna murmured, stepping slowly into the middle of the room and spinning to take it all in. “We could put the sofa in the middle, pointing towards the fireplace.”

“And get some big comfy chairs to put there too,” I agreed, walking over to duck down and peer up the chimney, just to make sure it wasn’t blocked.

“Big enough to curl up in and read,” she said, smiling happily before she nodded for us to move on.

Past the main room was another hallway with rooms on either side. One appeared to be a washroom, where we’d probably put the big tub. The other was small, just a toilet that dropped down into a bucket and appeared to be removable from outside. I wonder how that worked? Did someone come and collect it or something? Beside that toilet room was another narrow staircase leading down into a small cellar, cool enough that we could probably store perishables down here.

The back door opened out into a small courtyard where it looked like we shared a well with a bunch of other buildings. The upstairs was smaller than the downstairs, three rooms of equal size that were probably meant to be bedrooms.

Our explorations complete, we found ourselves grinning happily at each other. “Wanna set everything up?” Lynna asked me, eyes alight with excitement.

“Yes!” I said, hopping a little on the spot and clapping once for emphasis. This. Was. Awesome!

“So… hello everyone, I’m Lynna! I’m a Shadune, a race of dark elves with fluffy ears,” Lynna said with a wide, open smile. She’d linked me into her filming package, an aftermarket suite that had an AI camera that would do its best to capture good footage of us. Since I was linked into it, I could both see it and give it commands if we had a certain shot we wanted. Honestly, I doubted we’d be messing with it much.

“Uh, and… hi, I’m Esmie. I’m a… um, a Lopunda. Which is a mix between a red panda and a bunny,” I said with a much more tentative smile. I could tell Lynna was turning on her acting talent, because she’d been nervous as hell this morning as we planned out our introduction. All that was wiped off her face now, replaced by a dazzling and frankly kinda cute smile.

Lynna nodded and used that smile of hers, wrapping an arm around my shoulders when I finished speaking. Almost automatically, I leaned in against her, enjoying the friendly human contact. Some of my nervousness melted away. To the camera, she said, “We’re not going to be talking to the camera too often during videos, but figured for the first episode we’d introduce ourselves and what we’re up to! Obviously fan interaction will happen in streams and stuff.”

“Being cute on camera!” I agreed with a little giggle, turning to look at her as she stared up into the camera. We were out the back of our house in the old courtyard where the light was good in the morning, with the plan that we’d show them through the house.

“Yup!” my friend said, squeezing my slightly even as she gave me a quick look. “So out of character, Esmie and I have been friends for years, growing up together, going through high school and all that stuff. Which, by the way, for our Canadian and UNC viewers, high school includes middle school as well, because if you couldn’t tell from the accents, we’re from New Zealand!”

“They could tell cos I’m short, anyway,” I commented, with a grin that showed full well I knew my joke was terrible.

Lynna blinked, not getting it for a second, then rolled her eyes. “The fur is meant to be on your feet, not your ears, you silly hobbit!” she giggled, reaching up to fluff my long lopped ears. That, of course, felt amazing, and I let out a hitching gasp.

Her eyes widened at the noise, but she did her best to pretend I hadn’t made it, and so did I. We’d promised not to be too sexual after all, and that noise had been… well, erotic.

Cheeks heating on both sides, we turned back to the camera, Lynna clearing her throat. “So uh, yeah… house tour!”

We did a quick tour of the house, explaining what it was we were doing and all that stuff while bickering and joking constantly. I mentioned that I was keen to do some crafting so one of the upstairs rooms would be our crafting area. Lynna was going to be learning to cook, both inside the game and outside. Well, mostly inside, but cooking inside would lead to skills outside. Anyway, finally we mentioned we’d be starting a shop to sell our wares.

“I don’t know when you’re going to see this, but I hope by the time you do, we have some stuff that’s worth selling,” Lynna grinned, nudging me with an elbow as we stood in the empty front room. “Esmie here might have crafted something worth buying!”

“I don’t even know what profession I’m going to pick up,” I said with a roll of my eyes, nudging her right back.

“Oh that’s easy,” she said, nudging me back again. We were going to start a nudging war if she wasn’t careful. “You’re going to pick all of them. You were amazing with the augmented reality builder programs in school.”

I opened my mouth to deny it, but deflated with an embarrassed sigh. “Okay, fine. You have a point.”

“That’s my Esmie,” she giggled, wrapping me up in a spontaneous hug. A hug that had my brain melting down and fireworks exploding in my stomach. Oh my goodness, being hugged by her felt so nice. Feeling her hands wrapping around, gently holding tight to my soft girlish body. Wait, her Esmie? If anyone owned me, it was the goddess of squish.

“We should probably go and find a fetch quest, something simple to get some experience, since we’re both clearly going to need some levels before we go out into that forest to fight monsters,” Lynna said as she let me go, getting nothing but a blank look from me. I was still trying to process all the emotions that had just run through me.

“Yeah?” she prompted, tilting her head.

“Um, yes! Definitely!” I said quietly, voice a little rough. “I’m still like, level one.”

“Alright, back to the bounty board!” she exclaimed, pointing like her finger was a lance and she, a knight. Then she frowned and spun a little, trying to orient herself so she was actually pointing the right direction. “I give up, I can’t even remember where the bounty board was.”

“Maybe there will be one at the market?” I asked with a hidden smile. It was Lynna’s turn to be a cute dork.

“Oh, right,” she said, giving herself a light tap on the forehead. “That would make sense. Maybe there’s easier quests there.”

“Did we even start in a starter zone?” I asked, my tone close to a whine. I’d been killed instantly when we went to fight things.

“We did, in fact, start in a starter zone,” she told my with a wry, amused smile.

“Well, their starter zones are shit then,” I grumbled.

We wove our way through the back streets of the city, discovering that we were very much in a poorer area of the city. People seemed to be nice just the same though, waving greetings and generally not mugging us like stories told you would happen if you were in areas like this. We were totally part of the in crowd now.

Eventually the houses got nicer and the streets got wider, until we found our way to the main market place. I blinked for a moment as I took it in, something was different. It took me a moment to realise, but when my eyes drifted upwards into deep blue of the sky, I found a smile tugging at my lips. I could look up without totally freaking out! This was awesome!

Distracted as I was by looking up into the sky without my stomach turning to sludge, I missed it when Lynlyn wandered off in search of the bounty board. Rushing to catch up, I was almost back to her when my path was blocked by a looming shadow.

Blood drained from my face as I looked up into a hood that obscured all but the chin of the man before me. Wait a second, it was broad daylight! Hoods didn’t work like that, how was it doing that? Cheating! He was cheating!

“Well done back at the inn yesterday,” he said, gruff voice full of approval. “Nuthin’ gets the simple minds of men fixated faster than two lovely young women like yourselves gettin’ frisky. Damned fine work, lass, damned fine work.”

“O-oh… no problem!” I smiled, more than a little confused.

“Here’s your take,” he said in his rumbling voice, his hand appearing from within his billowing cloak to offer a small bag of coin.

I stared at it for a second, then grinned and took the coin purse from his rough outstretched palm. “Thanks dude. I had fun.”

“Aha, that was the right thing to say, little lass,” he exclaimed quietly, nodding approval. “A good thief always enjoys their work.”

You have advanced a quest: Join the Thieves Guild of Loury.

The thief from yesterday used your completely intentional distraction as a way to rob the patrons of the inn blind. You have now received your cut, all the while impressing the man further. Keep it up, whatever the hell it is you’re doing, because it’s working!

160 Experience gained!

You have gained a level! You are now level 2!

“Good day,” the man said while I was distracted by the notification, and before I could ask what I had to do next, he had disappeared into the crowd.

It took me a second of spinning in circles to realise he really had just vanished, and then to realise that I’d lost Lynna. Ah crap. Where the hell was she? Should I stand still and wait for her to come back, or go searching? She’d left in that direction, so maybe if I—

“Jeez, Esmie. You’re like a kid sometimes,” she huffed, appearing next to me, along with a frown. “What are you doing just standing there?”

“I uh… leveled up,” I laughed, still slightly bewildered by the whole encounter.

That had her frown deepening. “What did you do?”

“Remember how I uh… did the thing… that starts with S. To your ears?” I asked, fighting a grin with all my heart… and squish.

“Yes?” she asked, looking more than suspicious now.

“Well… before that, I kinda nodded to this shady looking dude in the corner of the inn,” I began, my tail swishing happily behind me, betraying my feelings on the matter. “I got a quest saying I could try and join the thieves guild, and it looks like when we were uh… wrestling on the ground, he thought I was distracting everyone so he could steal from them.”

She blinked, her mouth opening and closing for several moments as she processed what I’d said.

“Just now, he turned up and gave me my share of the earnings,” I said, showing her the bag of coin. “And some experience. Apparently I’ve progressed to the next step of thieving!”

“Oh god damn it,” Lynna grumbled, palm to face. “Trust you to accidentally join the thieves guild.”

“Hey don’t talk to a member of the thieves guild like that, we protect our own you know,” I told her with a shit-eating grin. “It’s dangerous to mess with us. Next thing you know, I’ll have to like, steal your shirt or something. To defend my honour as a thief.”

“You’re not a thief!” she exclaimed, exasperation exploding out of her like feathers from a bird when it’s hit by a fast thing. Like, a train or something. Actually, probably more than just feathers would explode if a train hit it. Maybe just if it flew into a window or something. A few feathers of exasperation, not like a whole bird, with guts and blood and… you know what, nevermind, let’s not get too gross.

After a brief pause where I contemplated that silly analogy, I rushed to put my hand over her mouth again. “Quiet Lynlyn, the guards will hear you! I’m a wanted criminal now. We have to be careful!” I might be having a little too much fun with this.

She narrowed her eyes at me, then looked down at the hand… and licked it. I squealed, backpedalling and wiping my hand on my shirt. “Gross!” I exclaimed, pouting over at her.

“You asked for it!” she said, now sporting a silly grin. “Come on, I found the bounty board while you were uh… engaging in totally legitimate business.”

“Ohhh yeah, we were doing stuff!” I laughed, hopping over next to her. “Lead the way!”

We picked up a simple courier quest from the bounty board in the market square, to deliver a few small tools that a farmer in an outlying hamlet had ordered. We also did some research about the area, and came to a bit of a realisation.

Sure, we might be hot garbage at the game, but we’d also chosen a spawn location that was in a higher level zone. Like many MMOs, CORA had different zones with different difficulty levels that required more gear, skill and levels to complete content there. However, because the world was so damned vast, they had added a compromise.

While some entire regions were dedicated to catering to new players and others were geared towards more experienced players, every area that had a selectable starter zone would have options for low level players. For example, our area was based around players at the level thirty range, all the way up to level ninety or so in the outer reaches of the nation, and the wilds beyond that went up even further.

This meant that essentially, there was one small valley for new players nearby, with a few quests and monsters that we could actually deal with. Then another valley for players at level ten to twenty, and then they were basically on their own from that point. I wish we’d known that before we decided to spawn in Trimacre.

Our courier quest had us wandering into the woods again, although thankfully we’d be following a trail this time. We had really not been prepared for a stroll through the wild forests of this area. Hopefully this trip would be slightly better in that regard. You know, not immediately dying to the first attack. The bare minimum.

“How are you going to spend your first level up?” Lynna asked as we left the front gates of the city. It was now mid morning and the huge redwoods of the forest were casting long shadows across the fields surrounding the city. It was quite pretty really, along with the sparkling dew that still covered the grass.

“Oh… crap, I don’t know,” I frowned, my cheeks probably going a little red. I didn’t know, because I couldn’t see. Just like I didn’t know anything about this game. “What do you think I should do?” I asked turning my eyes up to meet hers.

“Probably just raw spell power, maybe casting speed? Power and urgency,” she told me thoughtfully, then shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, sorry. Until we know how you fight, that is.”

“Oh, true.” That made sense. I had no idea how I actually moved in combat, so it was hard to point to any one thing as an area that would help me. Guess I’d just stick them there. Wait… but I’d died really easily. What if I used them for survivability? Sure, and that might help me with testing alchemy stuff.

Placing all five of my new stats into toughness, I paused for a moment to see if I like, felt tougher or something. Nope, didn’t feel tougher… maybe my squish had firmed up a little? I tested, poking at my exposed thighs. Still nothing. I guess there wouldn’t be any physical changes, or at least not with only five points.

I had also gained five ability points that I could spend to by little modifiers for my spells, but I opted to leave them alone until I had time to really dive in and try to understand the mechanics of the ability builder. It was a whole thing, and from what I knew after a night of tossing and turning while I researched the game, something that not a lot of people engaged with properly. It seemed that there were people putting up ability builds online, which people would follow along with, swapping out parts every so often.

“This place is really pretty,” Lynna murmured, snapping me out of my thoughts.

I glanced around, taking in the scenery again. She was right, it was gorgeous. This whole region was basically one massive magical redwood forest, where a kingdom had managed to carve out little islands of civilisation within the wild and often dangerous woods. The city of Loury was located in a low valley, with no real flat area, but rather low rolling hills, like an ocean frozen in motion.

Outside the city, I was actually reminded of how the Shire had been depicted in the many different movies it had appeared in. Winding paths and roads that were in no hurry to lead you to your destination, leading you over stone bridges that spanned gently burbling streams.

The biggest difference were the houses, which took after the city in design, bare, varnished wood done in that curved boat-like way that was everywhere. There were almost norse inflections everywhere too, giving the whole area a cool and unique feel that was hard to properly describe.

I smiled, with such a gorgeous view as this, I couldn’t help it. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind living in a place like this for the rest of my life. Loury is only a city by this world’s standards… it’s more of a sleepy country town by the real world’s standards.”

“Yeah, Tamaki can get a bit hectic, can’t it?” she agreed with a laugh that was half groan.

“I’d hate to see what UN city is like,” I shuddered, imagining the towers that literally scraped the sky, towering over me with menacing auras.

“It’s pretty crazy,” she replied, and I turned to her in surprise. Her response to my expression was a pure laugh that had me squirming with confusing emotion. “I had to go to UN city to meet Ruth for the first time. It’s actually not as crazy as you think though, more of a small country than a large city. It’s just built weird, on stilts in the water instead of dry land. Really spread out, apart from the big domes and some of the building clusters.”

“Are you in UNC now?” I asked, feeling anxious about the answer for some reason.

She shook her head. “Nah, I’m living in Los Angeles.”

“Is it fun there? I heard they are still rebuilding after the war and they got independence,” I asked, really really interested in how her life had been going, and a little sad that she was so far away now.

Another shake of her head and a sheepish glance away. “It’s too hot, and there’s so many fake people… it’s exhausting. I haven’t seen any evidence of the war, but I hear there’s a lot of wreckage out in the hills and up north at Santa Maria.”

“Santa Maria is where the Oceanic League forces landed!” I said, excited all of a sudden. That was us! That was where Australia and New Zealand landed! “How come you haven’t been up to see it? That would be so cool! I hear there’s a destroyed Jackson Class Mech there that they turned into a museum!”

“I’ve been busy working, little bun,” she laughed, patting the top of my head affectionately. “How about we use some of the money we make from this to fly you over? We can go up and visit it together.”

My heart did a weird fluttery beat as I looked up at her. I really liked being called little bun. I really, really liked it. So much so, that I was just a teensy tiny bit stunned by how good it made me feel. “I would really like that,” I murmured in a small voice, the only level of voice that I could achieve in that moment.

Her eyes were all shiny and soft as she grinned at me, and I felt my heart do a different happy little dance. Goodness, I was full of confusing emotions today.

The rest of the walk through the fields of Loury was quiet and friendly, and I felt myself reacclimatizing to her presence at my side. We’d been inseparable while we were in school together, prompting people to tease us, say we were married and all that stuff.

Of course, that particular line of teasing had ended in much confusion when we’d turned up to our year eleven dance with her in a suit and me in a dress. I’d gotten teased about that instead, but I was so unashamed about the dress that it stopped even at the dance itself. We’d both been pretty silly that night, getting right into the married couple joke and making it our own. I still remembered that night really fondly. Lynlyn hadn’t liked her suit all that much though, sadly. She’d looked good in it.

Wait.

Had I thought she was pretty back then too? I think I might have… why was I only realising this now? I glanced surreptitiously up at her, trying to inspect her without being caught. I liked her wide, almond shaped eyes that tapered off into long eyelashes. Her jawline was pretty great too, the same one she had outside, sharp and defined, like milled steel. What really jumped out at me were her lips, dark purple and shaped like… well, really nice lips. I have no idea how to describe lips. I just liked them, and I especially liked them when they were smiling at me, like right now.

“What are you thinking about, little bun?” she asked, and I jerked my gaze up to find a teasing light dancing in her eyes.

I opened my mouth in an attempt to say something, but no words came to me and I was left staring at her as nothing but a squeak came out.

She laughed, her eyes crinkling in a way that had my heart bubbling and fizzing very strangely. “You’re a little different, you know? In here, I mean…” she told me, eyes roaming my face with a familiar sort of fondness. “Or maybe you’ve just changed over these months?”

“I-I don’t know,” I stammered, my breathing suddenly deciding to give me difficulty.

“I mean, you were always an adorable dork, but now it feels… different somehow,” she mused, gently pinching the tip of one of my ears and lifting it up. She let the ear go, watching as it flopped back to brush my shoulder before springing back into place. “Dunno, maybe it’s just the different gender you have in here.”

“Yeah… well, there was this weird thing,” I mumbled, memory of my default VR body overriding my sudden shyness for a second.

“Oh?” she prompted with a tilt of her head, her own ears twitching forward and to attention. I liked that we both had big floppy ears.

“Yeah, since I didn’t have a body scan, the computer generated one for me and… well it looked like this one, except with uh… my usual stuff downstairs, and no tail or ears, obviously,” I told her, feeling a slight squirm at the idea of logging back out to those genitals. Maybe I could change them from inside the game so I didn’t have to deal with it.

“Huh…” she blinked, glancing ahead for a moment as we crossed another small stone bridge and stepped across the threshold of the forest. “Did it say what it used to generate that body? That’s a bit strange.”

“It was pretty vague about it,” I shrugged.

She hummed and shrugged, “Computers are weird. Maybe it was a SAI messing with you.”

“Maybe,” I mumbled, suddenly wondering if May had the answers. I’d have to ask her the next time I saw her.

“Well, I hope you don’t mind if I say that I like you like this,” she told me, her eyes widening as she realised that it might be more offensive than she realised. “I mean, you were cool before too, out there... but…”

“Nah,” I said, giving her a grin. “I like myself like this too. I have so much squish and floof. It’s amazing.”

“You can say that again,” she said, relief taking over her face. Then she reached out and tried to grab my tail, but it was faster. I was master at the art of tail twitching already, and it buzzed out of her reach.

I got a pout from her.

“You can play with it if we get home in one piece,” I told her with a giggling eye wiggle.

“Oh, you totally have a deal,” she grinned evilly, opening up into a giggling cackle.

Oh no, what had I promised? I was doomed!

Our trip to the farm went well, and we turned the quest in for a nice little bump in experience. I didn’t quite reach level three, but it was a near thing. The next little errand would certainly do it.

I wasn’t keen to rush off and do that right then though, because Lynlyn had mentioned something on our way back. Crafting was very very in-depth in this game, along with being very intuitive, and fun. That sounded perfect to me, considering combat wasn’t my thing. Then, she’d told me that you could buy starter skill books in the market. Except, they weren’t just eat-em and forget like other games, they actually explained how to get started! Exciting!

So yeah, Lynlyn went to do her thing after we turned the quest in, while I hopped off to the market. It was later in the day by the time I got there, with some stalls already packing up for the day.

Skill books were apparently something you could get as drops from some humanoid enemies, so I figured I might try to find a player who was trying to sell them. They would probably sell them at a cheaper price than the NPCs.

Of course, I actually had no idea how to go about buying something, because I was just a washed out high school grad bumming around on basic. Did I just like, find someone selling books and hope they had what I wanted?

The market stalls all used those odd bent planks of wood that everything was made of, along with canvas for roofing and walls where needed. It was like the whole city had been built out of timber yoinked from a ship's hull.

As I was wandering the makeshift streets of the market, I realised that I was never going to be able to find what I wanted on my own. Like, this place was a maze, and half the stalls didn’t even have freakin’ signs. How the hell anyone was meant to navigate this place, I don’t know. Maybe it was like how supermarkets are laid out to make you wander around aimlessly and in confusion so you buy more stuff. That was probably it.

“Hey, you look lost,” a gentle masculine voice said, giving me a wee little startle.

Turning to see who had spoken, I found myself looking up into the smiling face of another player. At least, I assumed he was another player. He was tall and a little lanky, with messy brown hair and moderately sized elf ears. He wore a set of silver-edged black wizard’s robes over the top of some more serviceable breeches, shirt, and vest.

“I am,” I grinned, trying really hard not to blush. “I’m trying to find crafting skill books for beginners but this place is a bloody mess.”

“It can be, yeah,” he laughed, glancing around at the afternoon hustle and bustle of the market. “You want the scribe’s section. It’s in the northwest corner.”

I blinked up at him for several long seconds before I asked, “Uh… which way is north?”[ omg esmie xD]

Giving me a wry smile, he suggested, “Why don’t I just show you, eh? I have time.”

“Oh! Yes!” I said, hopping up and down on the spot[ omgggggg]. “That would be amazing!”

His face went slack as his eyes tracked my bouncing, which was understandable. There was a lot of squish to look at after all.[ omffffggggggggggg] He averted his eyes after a few seconds though, glancing around in about seven different directions, and it took me a moment to realise that he was embarrassed. Wait, had he been looking at squish going all boing boing like… like that?

“Thank you!” I smiled, doing my best to pretend I hadn’t seen where his eyes had been. I couldn’t blame him, there was a lot of squish to look at.

Clearing his throat, he nodded and motioned that I should follow him. “I assume that you’re new to the game? Because you’re looking for skill books, I mean. Not because you seem… you know, like a noob.”

“I'm definitely a noob,” I giggled, my short legs struggling to keep up with his long stride. “I just joined the game yesterday. At least, I think it was yesterday.”

“Oh?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “What prompted you to begin playing now? The game has been out for a while, after all.”

“My friend,” I said with a shrug. “I’m not really the kind of person who normally plays these games, but she wanted someone to play with her so, yeah… here I am!”

“Ah, that makes sense,” he said, nodding. “You don’t seem like the type of girl to get into CORA.”

“The type of… girl?” I mumble[ hehehe]d, staring sideways up at him. I’d blanked on my current appearance for a moment and was just now realising that this was the first extended interaction I’d had with a stranger who didn’t know. Apart from Ruth, but that didn’t count.

His eyes blew wide. “I mean, shit… sorry, I guess I was stereotyping there. CORA is just a pretty intense game and… well it’s not for everyone. Especially… you know… fuck, I’m going to shut up now.”

“Nah, it’s okay,” I said shyly, still unsure of how to navigate this conversation. “First time I died the game yanked me into the death dream before the blow even landed. That’s why I want crafting skill books.”

“That makes sense,” he nodded, gazing carefully ahead of us. His cheeks were all red from embarrassment and mine probably were too. That had been a very awkward conversation.

As we had been talking, we’d walked into an area that looked to be what I had been looking for. The stalls here all had crafting related stuff, from raw materials to tools and everything else that you’d expect to be involved in the process of creating stuff.

“My friend and I are going to open a shop and sell the stuff we make,” I told the helpful stranger. “Well, I am. I think she plans to run the business side of things while I make all the stuff.”

“Oh, life skillers,” he said amicably. When he saw my questioning look, he smiled apologetically and explained, “Life skillers are people who do stuff that isn’t directly combat related. So crafting or running stores or whatever. Some folks look down on life skillers, but I’m not one of them.”

“Well, if you point any of those snobs out to me, I’ll remember not to sell them any of my super duper amazing stuff that’s the best you can get anywhere,” I said, flicking my hair to the side while throwing my nose in the air. Then, because I love laughing at my own jokes, I dissolved into a fit of giggles.

He joined me in my laughter, although he was a guy so he was all like ha ha ha, as opposed to he he he.[ omg she's sooo fucking bubbly] Wait… no, we were both guys, but I was just… no that didn’t make sense either[ no, that doesn't make sense at all, does it :p]. I definitely didn’t have guy parts right then and he was looking at me in a very specific way.

Weirdly enough… I didn’t hate the fact that he was checking me out from the corner of his eye. It made me feel all bubbly and fizzy inside and I was having a hard time understanding why. It wasn’t attraction on my part, he was just a guy to my eyes. Yet for some reason I found myself smiling and bouncing along beside him like I was a schoolgirl on her first date with her crush. Maybe it was just the idea that I was making a friend[ mhm, totally why]. It had been a very long time since I met new people my own age.

My new friend slowed to a stop beside the strangest looking wagon I’d ever seen. It took me a moment to realise that it wasn’t really a wagon at all, but some sort of steampunk mech thing. It looked like it got around on a set of six stubby metal legs, while the wagon on top would stay upright at all times. The back of the wagon was set up to fold out into a stall.[ omg is this like...a mini...mini artifisuki walking village?]

I didn’t see the owner of the stall at first, because he was just as short as I was, except like twice as wide. The stocky dwarf caught sight of my friend and gave him a broad grin, “Fletcher! Mate, how’re you doing?”

I stared at the dwarf for like a full five seconds before I burst out laughing. “Oh my god, is that an Aussie accent? On a dwarf?”

“Oh bollocks, a Kiwi,” the dwarf muttered, narrowing his eyes at me. “Fletcher, mate. What are you doing associating with the likes of that wretch?”

“How’s that Tasman Trophy going for you?” I asked, giving him my most unapologetic shit eating grin.

“Fuck off!” he growled, pointing a hairy, stubby finger at me. “Don’t make me jump this desk, young lady. I’ll fuckin’ smack you.”

“Bring it, fuzzface,” I said, puffing up my chest. The action wasn’t as intimidating as I’d hoped, because of the fact that I had boobs.[ you're also tiny and squishy esmie, that matters too]

Beside me, Fletcher was looking more anxious and confused by the second, until both the Australian dwarf and I burst into laughter.

“I’m so confused,” my new friend said, glancing between us with brows furrowed.

“Don’t worry, my boy,” the dwarf chuckled. “It’s only natural to be confused when you witness the sacred ritual of an Australian and a New Zealander meeting for the first time. Nothing to be ashamed of. Now are you going to introduce me to the fine young lady or just stand there catching flies with ya gob open?”

“O-oh, yeah…” Fletcher nodded, cheeks reddening. “Uh… except I don’t know her name.”

I laughed and on a whim, threw him a friend invite while I said out loud, “I’m Esmie! I’m half bunny, half red panda, all squish.”[ omfg]

Fletcher appeared pretty happy to accept the request, then gave me a big smile. “And I’m Fletcher. Which, yeah, you know that already. This dwarf is Kevin. He usually roams all over this region but he’s settled down here for now. He always has fair prices and usually has a good stock too.”

“You can call me Kev’O, though,” the dwarf said with a wink in my direction. “What are you looking for?”

“Books!” I exclaimed brightly. I was having fun, making new friends and bantering and all that stuff! Now I just needed to make sure the filthy aussie didn’t fleece me like the Kiwi sheep I was.

George's POV

The woman sitting across from me was the sort who managed to look physically intimidating without adhering to the former descriptor whatsoever. Around us, the hustle and bustle of the trendy United Nations City Cafe continued as though there wasn't a dragon within their midst. Not literally, of course, but my god did this Ruth woman give off those vibes.[ I love that she's just casually feeling intimidated af by ruth :3]

"You do seem to have the skills I need," she said conversationally, placing her phone back down onto the table. "If you're telling the truth, that is."

"The law enforcement training is on the record," I said, smiling away the tension that was bundling up in my shoulder muscles.

"As is the dishonourable discharge from the SWAT division," she noted, not bothering to double check the files on her phone. It was a small thing, but I noticed it. People often double checked their notes, or their guns, to calm themselves in a situation like this. It spoke of calm confidence and disciplined power.

"Yeah," I sighed, leaning back in my chair. "Turns out that all the idealistic crap they fed us in training wasn't shit. Which, in hindsight, is rather obvious."

"Our hearts like to paint a pretty picture of reality that can be hard to move past," she nodded. "You disobeyed orders, correct?"

A laugh slipped out of me and I dipped my head in acknowledgement. "Yup. My superior officer and I disagreed on the trajectory that a few bullets were going to take."

Ruth raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

"Our targets, some terrorist group, they happened to be using some coral scrapers as human shields," I said, dropping the euphemisms. "We were ordered to fire anyway. The rest of my squad did. I didn't."

"Jesus " she muttered, her perfect poker face slipping for a moment. A[ this is great] long breath later and it was back in place. "You then joined those… unfortunates, or at least their kin?"

"Yup, that's kind of why I'm here," I agreed with a wry chuckle. "I was getting sick of scraping that coral, so to speak. They took my eligibility for basic away so I was forced to live down in the slums. Answered your advertisement because… well, I either find a job or I join the mob."

"Well, you seem to be a good fit, on paper," she said, tapping her phone for emphasis. "Barring my pending evaluation of your character during this meeting, there are two things between you and the job."

"Two things, huh?" I joked, making a show of looking worried. "I wasn't counting on the second thing. One thing, I can handle that, but two… yikes."

Her lips twitched into a smile and she gave me an… interesting look. "You don't know how right you are, George. [ haha yessss]The first thing, is can you act, can you be entertaining in front of an audience?"

For the first time during this interview, I felt a real knot of worry form in the pit of my stomach. I'd just been joking about that second thing, but apparently I'd walked into a trap.

"I've always liked joking around, pulling harmless pranks, that kind of thing," I shrugged, clamping down on my inner turmoil. "I've never done it for an audience, but I'm not the kind of person to get stage fright."

"Are you the sort of person who can do that while wearing a woman's skin?" She asked, leaning forward and skewering me with a look.[ awoooooooooo]

My mouth opened before my mind could give approval. "I'm pretty sure I just mentioned I'm not keen on killing."[ omg. this girl.]

I could see her take a moment to understand my little quip, and when she did, she gave me a smile full of canines. "Very funny. No, I mean, would you be willing to play as a woman? Your gender out in reality isn't a concern, but within CORA I'll need you to be a woman."

My brain ground to a stuttering halt and I tried to play her words back in a way that made sense. Why… why did I need to be a woman for this job?

As if she could read my questions off the grey matter inside my skull, she continued into an explanation, "You see, this isn't just any streaming job. You will be a virtual personality, an idol. Your first priority will be to protect the other girls from any potentially rabid fans, as I said in the advertisement, but you will also work alongside them. That is why you need combat training, a likable and fun personality, and a willingness to take on the mantle of womanhood within the game."

I stared at her for several drawn out moments, processing what she was telling me. Me? George Bratcher? As an Idol? The very concept was absurd.

A laugh bubbled up out of me. It was my natural reaction to literally anything strange, confusing, annoying… I just laughed at a lot of shit, okay? [ yesss xD]This though, it deserved the amusement.

“I’m serious,” Ruth said, almost gently. “I wasn’t planning to interview you at all, considering that you’re a man, but you are a great fit for the job otherwise.”

“Only that small problem, huh?” I grinned. God, was anyone around us listening to the conversation? What would they think? This was so weird! Even more weird… I hadn’t left the cafe yet. Was I seriously considering this?[ hehehe]

“It’s tough, playing in the body of another gender,” she said, ignoring my joking smile. “I’ve done it a few times, and every time I had to stop. I know what I’m asking, but if you think you’re up to it, then the job is yours.”

Closing my eyes, I tried to think about the offer. The job itself sounded fine, and if the vid shows were anything to go by, I might have some fun playing CORA. I’d be babysitting two girls who apparently weren’t all that competent[ xD], but that wasn’t anything too terrible. I’d done a few jobs like that since I was kicked out of the SWAT team.

Was I okay with being a woman while I did all that? Could I afford to turn the offer down, even if it was going to be tough? The answer was relatively simple, if I put it like that. No, I couldn’t afford to let this opportunity slip past me. Shit, I’d done things that made me far more uncomfortable than this probably would.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I said slowly, meeting her eyes once more. “I’ll need a place to stay though, and a pod too.”

“Easily arranged,” she said, giving me a huge, genuine smile. “Thank you, and I hope that the change isn’t too jarring for you. When you get into the game, that is.”

“I’ll adapt,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. “I always have.”

By the end of the day, I was stepping into a cramped apartment near the top of a residential tower. It was amazing how fast Ruth had moved.

The apartment was one room, the door opening into a hallway-turned-kitchen, which in turn led to an office area, and then a bedroom beyond that. Two doors stood on either side of the entryway, one leading to a bathroom, the other to a pod room.

I was set to meet my new boss in virtual reality the next day, and until then I planned to get some rest. Real rest too, not the kind where you slept with one eye open because the ancient old-city hole you were living in didn’t have a door that locked.[ jeez]

It made you wonder what the city would look like in another hundred years. Would the glistening domes of the elite be as dilapidated as the original old-city buildings were now? Would the building I had lived in until now be nothing but rust on the seafloor? It certainly seemed that way. Good riddance. It was clear that the original UNC district had been built in a hurry as the United States devolved into screaming lunacy.[ this is a fair reason to rush, tbh xD]

The next morning, I got up and showered, then cooked myself a small breakfast. Nothing that would give the pod any problems later down the line.

When I stepped through the door and into the pod room, I pulled to a sudden halt. What the… it was a long term storage pod! How did that work? These things needed tending every once in a while to make sure it was functioning properly.

Movement in the corner of my vision caused me to spin and drop to the floor in a sweeping kick before I could figure out what was there[ omg, hair trigger on this girl]. For a moment, I was back in my old place, fending off some poor fool who thought I was an easy mark. Then I realised what I’d just put on the ground.

The robotic maintenance frame wobbled on its back, four legs wiggling madly until it was able to right itself.[ awww xD]

I opened my mouth to apologise, thinking that maybe there was an SAI controlling it, only to watch as it doggedly continued along the path it had been following prior to my intervention. Two thin mechanical arms unfurled from the center of the crablike machine, which then carefully opened the lid of the pod for me.

Skittering to the side, task done, it partially folded itself up and waited, like an adorable little robotic pet. Except it wasn’t a pet, it was an AI, an old one that didn’t have a chance of becoming sentient. Society was having to figure all of that shit out again, now that the newer technique for making mindless digital slaves was turning out to make real thinking, feeling ones instead.[ now *that* is interesting though. Like simple non-sentient AIs are obviously highly useful and important, and in theory ethically sound as long as they're not making them by like...lobotomizing actual SAIs...]

Still, that answered the question of maintenance. Not that I intended to make full use of the long term storage option, but it was nice to have.

“Well, little buddy,” I said to the small robot. “Sorry for kicking you over. Guess I should give you something to watch over, huh?”

The little metal frame just sat there, bobbing up and down every so often as it did a scan of its surroundings.

I snorted and gave it a wave as I stepped up and into the massive pod. “See you later. Take good care of me while I’m in there.”

Esmie’s POV

I got home with beginner books on jewelry, enchanting, alchemy, and sewing. Well, I also got home with a very chivalrous Fletcher by my side, sort of. He escorted me as far as my neighbourhood, saying that any further and he’d feel like he was stalking me. I was a little confused by that, but whatever. I was new to the whole guy-girl interaction thing from this side of the fence. Maybe there was some rule I didn’t know about.[ maybe just a *couple* rules xD]

Lynna wasn’t home yet when I stepped through the front door, so I got busy reading the books I’d bought. I’d always had issues in school, but in a very odd way. Sometimes I was really terrible at subjects like math, except when I suddenly wasn’t and found it incredibly interesting instead. Next thing I’d know, I’d have demolished a textbook in a haze.

So yeah, I wasn’t expecting to have much of an issue reading these skill books, no matter how dry they were. I knew that my brain would treat them like some sort of puzzle, taunting me with their unsolvedness.

I wanted to start off with enchanting, since that was the one that interested me the most, but I also figured that I should start on alchemy soon. Enchanting seemed like it took a long while to get good before you could make real money, whereas with consumables like potions, you could get a trickle of income pretty easily.

At least, that’s what the searches I’d done had told me. Well, apart from that one guy on twitter who was telling everyone that potions were a waste of time. Reading through that month-long argument was pretty funny. Some people chose the craziest hills to die on.[ hahaha ahhh love me some internet arguments]

My exploration of enchanting quickly stalled out because the components needed to get started were rather expensive. Jewelry seemed to have a similar issue, so I was forced to focus on alchemy and sewing for now.

That focus turned into a whole week of study for both myself and Lynlyn. She had a ton of material for me to learn in relation to VR, streaming stuff… and like, everything else under the sun. It was wild.

Sadly, I was severely underskilled for the job I had accidentally fallen into, so now I had to get the basics ready before we debuted. The debut being when we officially launched our channels and started posting content. Basically, when we went public.

Living with Lynlyn was fun though, we had always gotten along so well and that appeared to translate into the game without any real hiccups. Actually, if anything, she seemed to be even more comfortable being around me now that I was Esmie instead of… well, the other guy.

This new turn in my life was hard work, but it was also really fun, and I was happy to have a proper purpose in my life now. If only the ingredients I was eating to gain knowledge didn’t taste so awful.[ omg. Eating things to learn about them, but in full dive VR yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss]

Which is why Lynlyn found me spitting out masticated leaves into a bin beside the crate I was using as a desk.[ omg xD]

“Ew, what…” she exclaimed, standing in the doorway of my workshop room. “Esmie?”

Holding a hand up to stall her, I finished getting all the gunk out of my mouth and then lunged for the purification agent on the crate. I could only afford to take a few drops of the stuff, but it was enough to take the edge off the poison I’d just eaten. It was a herb that when dried would supposedly have healing and stimulant properties. Unfortunately for me, it also had a nasty poisonous nausea effect that made eating it raw a futile exercise.[ omfg]

“Yeah?” I rasped, smiling up at my friend while theatrically slipping my hand into my shorts. “Sorry, I’ve developed a vomiting fetish after all this alchemy stuff, I was just masturbating.”[ omg ESMIE]

To my disappointment, she just rolled her eyes. “Sure, sure. Get your hand out of your pants. After a week of your shenanigans I’ve gotten desensitized. You’ll need to come up with something new.”

“What if I squiggle your ears again?” [ better idea, I'll support this idea]I asked, standing up and taking a menacing step towards her. Of course, any menacing anything I did was undercut by my adorable squishy appearance.

Lynlyn just laughed and put a hand to my chest, stopping me in my tracks. “Enough, silly. We have a meeting outside of the game with Ruth.”

All the blood drained from my face, taking the fun along with it. “What?”[ omg, poor esmie. Terrified at the thought, and doesn't even know why]

“In VR, still,” she added hastily, taking my hand in hers. “You can still be Esmie. Just port your appearance out to your main FTLN profile, I’ll show you how.”

I clutched at that hand like I was Frodo and she was Sam, complete with homoerotic undertones.[ oh my goooooood] What was with those two anyway? Had Tolkien actually just been a super repressed gay dude? Wait, that would actually explain so much, considering that the only major female character I could remember was the elf chick. Her whole character screamed of a gay male author googling, What do men want in a potential wife? Did he have google back then? Surely he did… google was eternal after all. It was their motto.[ omg]

“Open your game’s settings menu,” she told me, squeezing my hand to bring my attention back to her. “There should be an account option.”

With my free hand, I did as she told me. I was quietly proud of my ability to use the thought commands in VR now too.

“I see it,” I replied, tapping on the option with a finger.

“Okay, now scroll to the very bottom. There’s a character appearance transfer option down there,” she said gently.

“Oh, I see it,” I said, and clicked on it. A dialogue box opened, asking me if I wanted to export only my human appearance, or if I wanted to bring any non-human traits too. It took me a hot second to choose, but in the end I decided to go with a normal human appearance. It would help me distance myself from my future status as some sort of strange internet celebrity[ xD. Also true though]. I could always change my mind later, anyway.

“Ready?” Lynna asked, ducking her head a bit to look me in the eyes. “Because Ruth is waiting for us.”

“Sure,” I nodded, smiling gratefully at my friend. “Thank you.”

She threw me a wink and blinked out of existence.

****

I arrived in the virtual offices of my new parent company, Idolive, with a body full to bursting with anxiety. I knew that it was all virtual, but the place was still massive.

The sprawling complex was set into the side of a fictional japanese mountain, one of many in the range that spread out into eternity in all directions. The buildings were all modern and clean, but also semi-comfy too. That last part was important because it served as a private place for all the idols to get away from their jobs, fans, and the public eye. It was just as much a resort as it was an office space.[ oooh, very clever, I like it]

Which made me wonder how Ruth was hopping between VR and regular old reality so much. Was she just guzzling anti-VR-sickness drugs? That couldn’t be healthy.

Lynna was waiting for me in front of the main entrance, and she put an arm around my shoulders when I stepped up beside her.

Going inside, we were greeted by a smiling AI receptionist, who quickly and efficiently pointed us in the right direction. We could tell she was an AI because she was labelled as such. The kind that might one day add an S to the front of her designation, so the helpful little floating holographic label told us to be nice.

It said a lot of good things about Idolive that they had that label there. It meant they actually gave a shit about their employees, no matter how far up the ladder to sentience they had crawled.

Lynna seemed to know where she was going, so I just followed her as best I could while my head swivelled like my neck was made of rubber. This place was incredible, like a mix between a japanese resort and the type of campus a tech-bro CEO came up with during a really saucy dream.

The hallways were long and sweeping, with intersections leading off in all directions, and archways that opened out into picturesque gardens and plazas. There were quite a few other people around too, bustling around looking all busy, sitting in meeting rooms looking busy, and even hunched over computers in offices, also looking busy. There was a lot of busy going on, and frankly, it was intimidating.[ omg, this description is soooo good. That's such a thing, people all 'looking busy' xD]

“Do you know what the meeting is about?” I asked, reaching for her hand. I wanted to hold it because… well, I don’t really know, general comfort I guess? I knew that I wasn’t interested in her, at least not romantically, I didn’t think? She was hot though, and I’d have a hard time saying no if she asked to sleep with me. Not that I knew what I was doing in that department, but yeah. Girls hot.[ sage nod]

On a friendship level though, there was no one I trusted more. Lynna was incredible, and if this whole virtual idol thing worked out, I’d be forever in her debt. I just hoped I could keep repaying it by making her happy in any way I could.

“She said something about meeting a new member of our CORA Idolive branch?” she said, letting me take her hand. “I think Ruth wants to try and get the jump on virtual personalities in this game.”

“What’s the difference between virtual personalities and normal streamers in VR anyway?” I asked idly. “We’re all running around in VR.”

“Honestly, the line is pretty blurry,” she laughed, glancing down at me. “It’s the level of production quality, I guess. We have a full agency behind us to provide support. Plus, if we get big enough, I think they have us start to do big professional stuff like music or whatever. They also hold us to certain standards that a lot of normal streamers don’t have to follow.”

“So it’s like… instead of just being streamers, we’re streamers and…” I mused, emphasising the last word in a way that implied a whole breadth of different stuff that we might end up doing. Singing sounded like a lot of fun, personally. I’d always had a good ear for sound, I’d just never really cultivated it. Maybe I should let Ruth know about that?[ omg ruth is gonna be *all* over that :3]

My thoughts of song and dance were interrupted when Lynlyn slowed and approached a door to a meeting room that looked identical to all the others we’d seen. Ruth was visible through the glass, tapping away on a tablet while a man I didn’t recognise lounged with his back to us. Wait, a man? Huh?[ xD]

Esmie’s POV

“Welcome, girls!” Ruth said brightly as we entered. “How has your week been?”

“My dreams can’t decide whether they should show me nonsensical sewing patterns, the taste of dried delidrion, or how to set up a medium shot of my face,” I replied, pouting theatrically.

“Working hard, then?” our manager asked with a full-throated laugh.

Lynna joined her with a chuckle of her own and pulled a seat out for me to sit in before she took her own. “Esmie has never understood the concept of moderation. She’s an all or nothing kind of girl.”

“About that,” Ruth murmured, her tone shifting dramatically into one of caution. “Esmie, just so you are aware, you signed up with your UN-ID number. I am aware of all your publicly available information.”

I could see Lynlyn tense up in my peripheral vision, but I just smiled and shrugged. “That’s fine. My identity would have been secret either way, right? It’s just a little more important now.”

Ruth seemed surprised by my answer, but she nodded. “You and George here will be able to help each other in that regard, I think. What are your pod arrangements?”

“I’m just in the pod that Lynlyn bought me, inside my apartment,” I said while I glanced at the guy who was apparently called George.

He was a medium sized bloke with an easy smile and honest eyes, although they also had an element of calm, confident danger to them. The sort of guy who didn’t like using violence, but was exceptionally good at it nevertheless.

“We might have to change that,” Ruth said, more to herself than me at first. “Would you consent to being moved to a long term storage apartment like George? Assuming you want to stay in VR.”

That surprised me. She was offering to move me to LTS without interrupting my VR connection? Without asking? Why?

“Um… yeah, that would be good actually.” I nodded, my eyes having trouble choosing between meeting the guy’s gaze, or Ruth’s. Something about him…

Our manager made a quick note on her tablet. “I’ll have it arranged.”

“Thank you,” Lynna said for me, squeezing my shoulder. “Why did you offer that, if I might ask?”

The older woman gave us both a pointed look. “You sent me the footage of you both interacting. It was fairly clear that Esmie preferred being within the virtual universe, as it were.”

Lynlyn and I winced in unison. “Oh.”

George watched the whole interaction with curious interest, but he still hadn’t spoken. He seemed content to let us get through our business without interrupting.

“Happy talent means good content,” Ruth said seriously, using a tone that gracefully ended the conversation. “Now, I’d like you both to meet George. He will be joining you as a member of our CORA branch. George, this is Lynna and Esmie.”

“Nice to meet you both,” he nodded politely across the table.

I was still very confused as to why there was a guy sitting across from us, so I forgot to reply for several long seconds after Lynlyn had said hello. “O-oh, hi,” I finally blurted.

“Now, I can tell you both have questions, so here’s what’s happening,” Ruth began, giving the table at large a knowing look. “George has real world combat experience and training, which he will be using to provide protection to the two of you, along with making content centered around high level gameplay.”

“Okay,” Lynlyn said slowly, hands fidgeting on the table. “I thought that we were uh… having an all girl’s branch at first?”

“That plan hasn’t changed,” Ruth said, smiling in amusement. “Hence why I said that George and Esmie will have a lot in common.”[ hehehe]

Oh. Oh! Oh wow, okay… that was… interesting. Another member of the group was going to be, uh… like me? Gosh.

George’s face split into a big grin and he let out a soft, soothing laugh. “Yeah, I know. Not the kind of gig you’d expect a guy like me to find himself in. Don’t worry, I’ll do my best not to be too weird about it.”

“You can’t be weirder than Esmie was, trust me,” Lynna muttered, throwing me a look. “Glad to have you on the team though. I was worried about the level of access that people would have to us in CORA. It’s not like Rellithesh where you can create isolated instances and stuff.”

“Correct. I will be adding three more members to your team, although they will be housed in a nearby house, rather than the same one as the three of you,” Ruth explained. “The idea is to have the six of you party up for dungeons every now and then, while also doing your own things as smaller groups of three. That, and your personal content too.”

“Sounds fun,” I said, trying to curl my tail around into my lap, only to remember I didn’t have one here. Dang, maybe I should have brought it along after all.

George had a big smile on his- uh… their face as they nodded in agreement with me. It felt weird to slap a he onto them when they’d be joining us as a girl ingame, where the majority of our interactions would happen.

“What kind of character do you think you’ll make?” I asked them, surprising myself with my interest. They just had the kind of face that made me want to befriend them.

Smiling, George tapped their chin in thought. “That’s part of the reason for this meeting, I think. You’re a healer, aren’t you Esmie? Lynna is a DPS, so that would mean that I should be a tank, to round us out. Unfortunately, that doesn’t sound like my jam. I’ve spent most of my life training to avoid getting hit, after all.”

“Ah… yeah,” I nodded, then shrugged and grinned mischievously over the table at them. “I guess that’s a problem for the other three then, ay?”

They let out a soft, amused laugh. “Yeah, maybe. Or… I could be a dodge tank. I was thinking, a tank just needs to keep the big ugly boss from killing all his friends, right? Where in the manual does it say he needs to get hit in the process?”

“It’s a lot easier to just take the hits,” Lynna said dubiously.

“Easy is for people who aren’t me,” George said, throwing her a cheeky, smug little wink.

“Wow, cocky much?” I giggled.

They shrugged their shoulders and turned their smile on me. “Just getting into character, you know?”

“So it’s a character then?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You aren’t actually this self assured?”

They opened their mouth to fire back, then let out another laugh and dipped their head in surrender. “You got me there.”

Ruth had been watching the exchange with a growing smile, but she cut in during the natural pause in conversation. "Now, on to the boring stuff. I have paperwork for you all to sign and reading material to hand out. All three of you are missing key skills that I'd like you to learn before we go public."

"Do we get to learn to sing?" I asked, perking up. That seemed like a key skill for us so-called idols.

Ruth's eyes zeroed in on me like a hawk sighting prey. "Would you like to learn to sing?"[ ya be]

"Um… yeah, I think so " I said timidly, shrinking under her piercing gaze.

“That is very good to hear,” she replied, looking pleased. “I’ll speak to you about it later.”

The meeting moved from there into more boring pastures, with document signing and planning. The house wasn’t really big enough for three people, but we decided that getting one big enough for all three of us would be part of our initial content. It would probably make for interesting interactions too, the three of us all crammed into one tiny place.

George was an interesting person too. They seemed to be this incredibly strange mix of tough guy and mellow teddy bear. I had a hard time getting a read on their personality and it was driving me nuts! I wanted to just stop around the table, take their face in my hands and shake them until an explanation fell out. I’d probably just end up as a pile of bruised squish on the ground though.

Speaking of the squish, being in this body had my head lowkey spinning in the back of my brain at all times. It was one thing to be in the game, but here I was in a non-game version of that body. Like, this was a body that the pod had created for me based on data, and the only thing that was really all that different were the vag and boobs.

Why had it made me a body that was entirely feminine with its secondary and tertiary sexual traits, but the primary sexual ones had been masculine? It made no sense! It had access to my genetics from my UN-ID, it knew I was a guy! Actually… was I XY? I’d never checked. Wait, dumb question… wait no, was it?

Oh god, those thoughts had just made things even more scary than before! Let me just… gently put that can of worms back on the shelf. Maybe shuffle it behind some boxes and cover it with a healthy coating of confusion. There we go, nice and safe and out of the way.

“Uh, Esmie, you there?” George asked, jolting me back to reality.

I gave a squeak of surprise and slammed my knee against the underside of the table. With pain lancing through me, I gasped out a moan and pulled my leg up in an attempt to soothe it. “Jesus fuck,” I grimaced, eyes watering. Right in the knee funny bone! It felt like there was a herd of knives tap dancing on my nerves.

“Well, that was an interesting noise,” George muttered under their breath.

“You’ll get used to it,” Lynlyn said offhandedly. “She’s just like that.”

“Like what?” I asked, turning to her in mock outrage. “Lynlyn, how could you? I am the most pure of all idols, and no amount of insinuation from you will change that!”

“Oh yeah, then what happens if I do this?” she asked mischievously, reaching out to… oh, tweak my ear.

I raised an eyebrow. “Uh… no big fluffy ears out here, Lynlyn.”

“Damn…” she muttered, and turned back to George. “You’ll see when we get ingame.”

“Uh…” George blinked. “I look forward to it? Question mark, exclamation mark?”

The way they said it made me smile. It was just sort of funny and like, very bemused. I couldn’t wait to have a new target for my hijinks. This was going to be fun.

George’s PoV

My new friends were very odd. Fun, cute, and definitely likeable, but odd. Most importantly, I felt like I could become real friends with them. If they let me, it was weird that I was a guy who was a few years older than them. I’d understand if they kept me at arm’s length.

Honestly, the hardest thing for me was adjusting to a relatively safe and normal life. It had been three years since I left the academy, only to be kicked from the force two months after graduation. Then, I spent another three years fighting for every scrap of freedom, security, and sustenance among the most desperate citizens of UNC.

Until, in the blink of an eye, Ruth had plucked me out of that mess and into her idol agency. The shift was jarring, almost nauseatingly so. It didn’t feel real.

And yet here I was, standing in my VR quarters within the Idolive HQ, preparing to load up CORA for the first time. Had it really only been two days since my meeting with Ruth? God that woman worked fast.

I was a little hesitant to hit the button though, the apprehension of what was about to happen outweighing my usual gung-ho attitude.

Exhaling slowly, I went through the meditation steps I had been taught at the academy. Originally designed to help steady the aim of a rifle, I was now using it to calm myself down before I… what, turned into a woman? God, my life was all over the place.

My apprehension didn’t come from a reticence to become a woman because there was anything bad about being one. No, my unease came from the stories I’d heard. People were very clear, playing as the opposite gender could lead to some serious mental health problems. Did I think I was above the laws of nature and the universe or whatever? Maybe not, but I’d do my best, because I needed this escape.

Which again led me to flipping my anxiety on its head. I couldn’t afford to not press the button to launch CORA. That was my go-to fix for any indecision I ran into. Ask myself the opposite question, and the way usually became clear.

“Pod, launch CORA, please,” I said into the empty room.

I was subjected to a bunch of lore bullshit immediately, and I mostly ignored it and waited for it to be over. I had never been all that interested in the ultra back-end story of a game. I wanted to know about the day to day stuff, the nitty gritty reality, the struggles and triumphs of the everyday denizen of the world. It was much more relatable to me as someone who had never known his parents. My life had been full of hardship, but also full of excitement and fun. It was a mixed bag, I guess.

Eventually though, I was placed into a fancy looking wooden room. Huge beams of dark timber held up the roof, each one carved with little scenes that were probably from the lore. Around me, various pieces of serviceable wooden furniture stood ready for use. It reminded me of a medieval tavern, but without a bar and the rowdy patrons that came with it.

Standing in the center of the room was a genderless human figure made out of a smooth grey substance. From the reading material that Ruth had given me, I knew the mannequin was the character creation dummy. Time to get to work, I guess?

Unlike with Esmie and Lynna, who had created their characters before Ruth had the idea to go full idol colonialism on CORA, I was going in with a rough idea of what I should be making. Plus, I was going to get a chance to use a skill I hadn’t touched in a very long time.

Approaching the mannequin caused a plethora of holographic menus to appear, and I had to take a moment to get my head around it all. Uh… okay, first I needed to choose my race. This part wasn’t something Ruth and I had planned, other than that it needed to be some sort of demi-human. Virtual Idols couldn’t be a boring old human, after all.

God, me… a virtual idol. Again, my life is fucking weird.

I needed something fast and strong, while also being pretty to look at. Maybe unique too, if I could manage it? Ah, but unique came from the randomizer. Did I dare to let it decide for me? They said it let you make gender and cosmetic changes after you used it, so should I just do that?

Fuck it, why not. I bopped the randomize button.

The model shifted immediately, morphing and changing before my eyes. Eyes that widened in… awe? I don’t know what the emotion I was feeling was, but the woman who now stared blankly at me was… impressive.

Hard blue eyes gazed out of a face that was framed by a huge mane of navy blue, green, and purple hair. No, wait… those were feathers. Wow!

Her face was angular and almost hawkish in shape, far more than I was comfortable with. At least the lashes were long and pretty. Then there were the scales, scattered high up on the cheekbones, right near the elfin ears. They looked like big freckles, and when I tentatively reached up to touch them, I was surprised to find that they were both soft and hard. They felt like warm frosted glass.

Feeling self conscious, I pulled back and fought my embarrassment back down into the dark pits of my mind. This was my body, I could touch my own damned body, even if I wasn’t inhabiting it yet.

Of course, that just gave me a good look at her naked body, and I had to avert my eyes. Jesus christ. She embodied sexual strength. Wide, curved hips and thighs were covered in lean muscle, while scattered scales protected areas that might suffer abrasion. There was also the matter of the thick, muscular tail that extended out behind her, scales giving way to an impressive fan of colourful feathers at the end.

What surprised me was that she was taller and stronger even than my normal body. Sure, the shoulders were slimmer and sported a gentle slope to them. Yes, the hips were wide and the waist was thin. True, the breasts were large and perky… but this chick could also kill. She was a hunter, a killer, and it was… it wasn’t good.

Too much sex, too much violence. Not enough cute. Nobody would believe this chick was an idol.

That was fine though, because the rest of her was absolutely perfect. I just needed to take the sculpting tools and have a little fun! I was actually sort of happy to be able to put my incredibly strange and niche skills to use. See, when I was a kid in the orphanage, I’d gotten obsessed with modeling clay. I’d play with the stuff constantly, and by the time I was knocking on the door of teenagehood, I was damned good. My brothers and sisters had also helped by frequently trashing my sculptures, forcing me to remake them better and more beautiful each time.

I began with the face, smoothing out the sharp edge of her jaw until it was a lovely, gentle curve from ear to point. Then, I rounded out her cheeks, doing away with the somewhat gaunt appearance and replacing it with a more youthful one. The type that would dimple when she… when I laughed or smiled.

The nose turned out to be a lot of work to get right. It had almost resembled a beak, and I had to shave it down considerably. In the end though, I stepped back to admire a small, cute little nose that brought a smile to my face. Perfect.

As I worked on turning the cutthroat into a gorgeous idol, I glanced over at the stats I had been given. Okay, the race was based on a raptor, but not the bird kind, the dinosaur kind. She had the sharp teeth to prove it too. The feathers were all bird of paradise though. They shimmered with hidden hues depending on the angle you viewed them, creating a spectacular and somewhat gaudy appearance. Perfect for drawing the attention of dumb beasts away from my teammates.

The skill trees that had been chosen were… oh, interesting. Swordplay, Wit, and Grace. The whole build appeared to be that of a duellist, designed to dodge deadly blows by a hair, then riposte with vicious accuracy. It was extremely exciting. God, that sounded like fun, and I knew I could pull it off. It would also look fucking incredible on camera. Very anime.

I left the body mostly intact, adding just a small amount of body fat to soften up the whole image, while still keeping a more dangerous vibe about the whole thing. I was tempted to make the breasts smaller, but decided against it in the end. As much as they would get in the way during combat… they would help me in other areas.

When I stepped back, I found myself nodding and smiling at my work. Yes, I still had it. Of course, then I realised that I was staring at the body of a naked woman and turned away. God, she… uh, me… I was very attractive. I was definitely being a prude, but the way she was just standing there completely naked… goodness.

The next part was the most intimidating by far. My hand hovered over the button to take control of my new body for a few moments, before I scrunched my eyes shut and jabbed at it like I was launching a barrage of missiles.

My perspective blinked, one moment I was staring at a gorgeous, cute, dangerous looking woman, and the next… the next, I was her. I shivered slightly as my naked skin reported a chill in the air. Glancing down, I stared at my arm, fascinated by the soft skin coming up in goosebumps. The hair was so fine, just the slightest hint of colourless fuzz. Lifting a strong but fine boned and elegant hand, I brushed it up my forearm.

My breath caught. Holy shit, was… was my skin meant to be that sensitive? It was like I was experiencing a sense of touch for the first time ever.

Exhaling slowly, as though I needed to be careful not to shatter myself by breathing too heavily, I turned to a nearby mirror and… immediately pulled my eyes away again. I had met my own gaze… the storm of emotion it raised within me was intense and unexpected. God damn, this was a lot to process.

Alright, come on Geo— oh shit. I needed a name. I needed a name.

What had the generator given me? It should have made me with a name attached so, if that was good I could just—

Iria Arono.

My whole world focused in on that name. Iria. Iria. Iria Arono. My hand had reached out unbidden, fingertips brushing lightly against the holographic panel that displayed it. Iria.

Dropping my hand, I turned my attention back at the mirror and stared. Was I an Iria? I tilted my head, watching as my long mane of feathers shifted, tickling my shoulders and back.

“Iria, is that you?” I asked, then stopped cold as I heard my own voice. Sweet and melodic, with just a hint of bass riding below the surface. Another long, calming breath, and I found the answer. “Yes. I’m Iria. Iria Arono. Fuck with my girls and I’ll shove four and a half feet of steel through your gut.”

A grin broke through my scattered thoughts, and I let out a delighted laugh. Oh, yes. Oh very much yes. That was it.

My little shit talking speech had allowed me to take command of myself and this new body, at least a little, and I pulled my shoulders back, standing proud. The smirk that followed was everything I’d hoped for when I was carefully sculpting this face. Hell to the yes, this was me, for sure. God, what a sight. What a glorious sight.

Iria’s PoV

Before I was finished with character creation, I asked Ruth for her thoughts on the character. She was extremely happy with my work, saying that I would be a good counterpoint to Esmie’s cuteness and Lynna’s pretty face. I guess that meant I was still rather far into the hot end of the spectrum.

With that done, I made sure to pick the closest spawn to where the other two were. Of course, there was a degree of luck with the spawns, so I’d have to let them know where I was. They were planning to come and find me, which was nice.[ there is a zero percent change that this will go smoothly xD]

Materialising within the game, I immediately began to take stock of my situation. There was a bastard sword in my hand, old and rusty, but functional. A weight at my hip told me I also had a weapon there, and a glance told me— hips. It told me hips. [ omfg omfg yessss]Dear god. I bit my lip and glanced skyward, battling against an internal foe that felt… strange. Best put the sword away before I hurt myself.

I was wearing skin tight leather breeches that were so soft they may as well have been tights, and they hid absolutely nothing. The shape of my hips, thighs, shins… it was all on display, and it was incredible. God, that was me down there. Me! I was a hot, strong woman! It was unreal.[ so gooooooooooooood]

The weight I had felt was far more familiar at least. A parry dagger on one side and my scabbard on the other.

Further up, I wore a cut-off leather jacket that hung open at the front to reveal my… uh, chest, which was held in check by the world’s bravest medieval sports bra.[ xD] Telling myself that yes, I was definitely testing my range of movement, I bounced up and down while I stared at them. [ *nods*. range of movement is *definitely* why I bounce my boobs on a regular basis.]There actually wasn’t as much bounce as I had been expecting. I guess I’d played too many anime-style mmos in my youth.

That didn’t stop the whole arrangement from moving at all, and I once again found myself with cheeks reddening over this body I now inhabited. Weirdly, I also had a smile on my face. This wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone had said it would be. [ shockedpika.jpg]In fact, it was actually kind of fun? Sort of? It was hard to tell under all the embarrassment, to be honest.

I mean, my stomach, waist, and abs were on full display right now. It was a lot to take in, and I wasn’t even getting the full effect, considering I was looking from the inside out.[ ooooh but I know who *is* gonna get the full effect xD] I wondered what your bog-standard straight guy would think if he saw me? Cue that strange tube sound that always means someone got a stiffy. It was like, beeaaaeooooo, or something.[ omg xD]

The silly sound had me chuckling, and for some reason the sound of my own amusement in this new voice turned it into a full laugh. I sounded… fun? My laugh was great, rich and melodic, and not at all grating on the ears. The randomiser had done well with it. I was happy[ shockedpika.jpg].

Okay, so I had established that I didn’t mind being in this body. Next step, see if I could actually move with any degree of grace.

I had spawned into the ubiquitous redwood forest of the region, the trees towering over me in every direction. Even down, I imagined. I wasn’t an expert on trees, but these things had to have some pretty fuck-off big roots.

My first few steps were tentative, and right away I noticed the difference. Holy shit, the way my hips rolled with each stride, it was a lot to take in. Step, roll, step, roll, step, roll. My heart was hammering away in my chest at a mile a minute as I just experienced my new body.[ hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiips]

After what must have been five minutes, I dared to try a jog. Surprisingly, it felt pretty good to jog around like this too. Every movement was more fluid than my male body, but for some reason the difference wasn’t throwing me off. The body felt and moved naturally under my direction. Weird[ sooooooo weird you damn egg omg].

I kicked it up to a run, then drew my sword and spun in a low circle, decapitating a poor unsuspecting bush. It flopped to the ground limp, and again I found myself giggling. God, this was all soooo very strange. I was having fun though, which was an unexpected bonus. This job was going to be a lot more tolerable than I had thought.

Speaking of my job, I opened my menus and sent off twin friend requests to the other two. In moments, I was in their party and they were typing away with an excitement I could feel even through text.

We agreed to follow the party sense towards each other, because unfortunately I didn’t have any landmarks to judge my position. So that was it, just follow the strange tugging sensation whenever I thought of them.

Since I’d connected better with Esmie, I followed her signal as I made my way through the trees. She was such an interesting character. Cute and playful, but with a mischievous streak a mile high. Ruth had mentioned that she and I shared the same problem, which I assumed to mean we were both male outside of VR. That was a bit odd, considering that during the meeting, she had been by far the most feminine person in the room. Her mannerisms just screamed cute girl. Made me wonder what her story was.[ well you see, when an egg is very very dense...]

Any thoughts of my new coworkers was axed by the hair on the back of my neck standing up. My long, pointed elf ears had picked up something… from the left!

Bending like a tree that had been struck by a sudden gale, I dodged a crossbow bolt by a hair’s breadth. Gaze hardening, I sought out my attackers. They appeared to be some sort of humanoid rat species, and they moved deftly through the trees in a way that made it hard to determine how many there were.

Still, my first priority was to deal with the ones that had crossbows. I didn’t need to know how many there were, other than that they outnumbered me.

With a mental command, I activated my first ability and lunged forward through the air. It was a simple dash, but I was surprised to see a multitude of flower petals spinning in the rush of air caused by my movement.[ ooooOOOOohhhhhhh I liiiiiike]

My sword embedded itself in the neck of the first crossbow rat, and I gave it a vicious twist as I pulled it free. I probably should have realised what the SWAT team would be like when they'd been teaching me how to do as much damage with a strike as possible.

Another ratman rushed me from beyond my peripheral vision, this one swinging an axe as it screamed incomprehensible rage. A swift, flowing movement to the side pulled me from the path of its stone weapon, while simultaneously burying the point of my dagger into its chest.

It was then that I really noticed my reaction times. They were inhuman, and that was a literal description. Out in reality, my reactions had been above average, but nothing to sing about. It had been my quick thinking that was my strong suit. Being able to quickly determine what to do in any given situation was my real strength. Now though? It appeared that this body synergized incredibly well with my brain[ HMMMM I wonder why], on top of it just being faster than my male one.

I didn't have time to stop and ponder why any of that was the case, though, because more smelly, screaming ratmen were converging on me.

The next one went down in a spray of dark blood as I caught its throat with a lunging slash, before I twirled out of the way of another crossbow bolt. The bolt, humming with a desperate need for death, found its home in the flesh of a ratman, who fell screaming to the ground. I drove the bolt further home with a vicious stomp of my boot, nailing it to the forest floor.

My carpenter’s antics k[ this is great]ept me from being able to dodge the next incoming blow, a large mace swung by a larger ratman. Praying that my second ability did what it said on the tin, I raised my sword and activated it at exactly the right moment.

For less than a second, a shield made of wispy white energy and fluttering pink flower petals manifested along my blade. [ omg I loooooooove it]The wild incoming blow struck it, forcing me backward. At the end of its brief life, the shield transferred its energy into my blade, which struck out of its own accord. Razor sharp petals of energy whipped forward, slashing the larger ratman in a dozen different places and sending blood spraying out in a fan of gore.

The effect of the ability was the first thing to really surprise me in this fight. Holy moly. That was going to be a staple, for sure. Although, I wondered what might have happened if the shield had instead shattered under the strain. Would the attack have backfired on me? I’d have to test that later.

For now, I needed to end the rest of these gross rats. If they’d been cute rats like the ones you can get as pets, I might have tried to reason with them, but nah, these were pretty rank looking rats. Was that shallow? Yes, but also…

Another two fell to my blade without much effort, and then I was down to the last sneaky little shit with a crossbow. It tried to come at me with a dagger, but I swept its feet out from under it and then impaled it in one abrupt movement.

Phew, what a fight! I hadn’t been expecting to run into a whole band of angry little bastards so early. It was nice to know I could still hold my own like that, even if I wasn’t well versed in swordplay yet. I’d have to remedy that, because not every enemy would leave their guard wide open like these fools had.

“Wow…” I spun on the spot, sword arm twitching but not lashing out. I’d recognised Esmie’s voice a microsecond after my instincts kicked in. Thank fuck, otherwise I’d probably have rushed her.

“Oh, you two are here,” I said, smiling at the both of them as they stood staring at me.

Lynna developed a wry smile, and she glanced around at all the bodies. “Damn, Ruth wasn’t kidding. You know your shit.”

“Ha, yeah,” I chuckled, wiping my blade off on a leaf. “I’m a little rusty, so I’m going to need to do some training, but this lot weren’t exactly difficult.”

Lynna nodded, then gestured around at the rats. “Should we loot them and head back to town?”

“Sure thing,” I agreed, my eyes straying to look at the still silent Esmie.

She was still staring at me, her cheeks faintly red, eyes wide with… what, fright? What on earth was that expression?

“You okay?” I asked, giving her my best calming smile.[ yessss xD. that smile aint gonna un-break her xD]

Esmie’s PoV

“You okay?” Iria asked, giving me an open, friendly smile.

Oh god, oh god, oh god. She was so fucking hot, what the hell? The pretty mane of feathers, the little patches of multi-hued scales, the easy smile? She even had a big feathered tail. I’d never considered that a thicc tail might look good, and yet there it was, swaying gently behind her.

Shit, and her legs were so long, like oh my goodness. They just went up and up and up like a fuckin’... I don’t know. Like the trees around us, except they were firm with muscle and squishy with squish[ omg esmie]. I could tell that because her pants were skin-freaking-tight, and oh… my eyes reached her abs, and my breath caught in my throat. Holy shit. Holy shit. Aaaaaaaaaa! Help! Help! I was being assaulted![ Esmieeeeeeeeeeee]

The insides of my thighs quivered slightly, and I had to look down at the ground before I keeled over. God, what had… what was… that… Iria was so much. She was like some sort of… thingy. A big, juicy, yummy… woman. Except she was that other guy outside. Not that I gave a shit, to be honest, but… fuuuuuck.[ ooooooooomg the absolute gay disaster panic shutdown here is just *exquisite*]

To all the deities of the world, past, present, and future, no matter how small or large your following, I implore you, save me. Save me from the sight of hot, confident, skilled, warrior women. Specifically, that one, that one right there.

Jeez, and that jacket? She’d tried to do up the buttons, but her goddamn tits were too big. I feared for the life of any mortal who was in the way of that button when it finally failed. The army would classify it as an anti-armour projectile or something. I have no idea what the army called things. They had guns and went pew pew, that’s all I knew. Well, that, and they would want access to Iria’s boob projectile tech.[ *facepalm*]

“Esmie?” Lynlyn asked, leaving the bodies alone to approach me. “You okay?”

My eyes flicked up to meet hers, and I very slowly typed out a message using the mind-to-text function. She’s so fucking hot, how are you not affected?

Embarrassingly for me, she burst out laughing and leaned in close, pretending to hug me. “Straight, remember?” she whispered in my ear.[ ok. so. this is supporting evidence, but still. press x to doubt.]

“Didn’t seem so straight all the times you’ve been groping me recently[ exactly!!],” I grumbled under my breath, but her words had snapped me out of my daze. A bit. I just needed to not look at Iria’s abs.[ gooooooood luck girly]

Lynna turned to Iria and gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, Esmie’s a little new to the whole gore and violence thing.”

“Ah, sorry,” the tall, feathered woman said quickly, glancing around at the carnage. “Uh, Lynna and I can handle the looting if you’d like to look away. I forget that not everyone has… a stomach like mine, I guess you’d say.”

“No!” I blurted, trying desperately not to bite my lip or blush. “No… no, I can help. I uh… yeah. I think I can use their tongues, actually. If that’s okay.”

Iria blinked. “Their tongues?”

“You know, for alchemy?”[ omg plz tell me she doesn't have to eat one] I said. I almost made a comment about how I could use her tongue too, but for some reason I held back. That was so not like me. What the fuck?

“Ah, in that case, I’ll grab them for you,” she said, drawing her big knife again with a casual flick of the wrist. Oh dear sweet mercy.[ omg esmie xD]

Looting was quick, they didn’t have all that much in the way of stuff to take. A few coppers here and there, a sword that wasn’t totally ruined, plus a fairly serviceable crossbow. Iria was scarily efficient with her knife, sticking it into the mouths of dead rats and slicing neatly to free the tongue. Thank fuck we had inventories to carry them in.

“How are you feeling about the new body?” Lynna asked as we began the trek home.

“It’s surprisingly good,” Iria said, glancing down at herself. “Doesn’t feel too weird, and my god can it move. I’d never have been able to do that with my real body, but this one has so much power. I can see that my speed, strength, and endurance are all very high. Seems like my casting stat is speed, not any of the magic ones either.”

Lynna seemed puzzled by that. “Oh?”

“Yeah, uh… all my abilities with, ah, there it is,” the taller woman said, scrolling through menus. “It looks like the grace skill tree can convert normal spells into physical abilities that have magical properties.”

Everything they were saying was going right over my head, so I tuned out. Instead, I just pretended to be listening, when really I was staring at Iria.[ yeah that sounds about right :p] Her face was really pretty, all softness on the outside, but her bone structure underneath looked sharper, harder. Her eyes were big… but slightly deceptively so, because her eyelashes were ridiculous. Like how Warcraft universe elf ears were to the normal variety, except with long, luscious… her eyes were really pretty.[ omg, more gay disaster. esmie is a messsss]

Her feathers too, oh my god. She looked like some sort of lion or something, if it were a bird of paradise. Her scales too, in the small patches I could see, they shone with iridescent light. It was soft though, no hard reflections. You had to really look to see all the different colours in them.

“No dysphoria then?” Lynna asked, the question piquing my interest enough to tune back in.

Iria shook her head. “Nope, not so far. I imagine it will probably kick in later once the novelty of running around in a badass body like this has worn off.”

To the outside observer, Lynlyn would have looked mildly interested as she nodded and glanced casually around the thinning forest. I knew better. That was the look of a Lynlyn who didn’t believe what our new friend had said. Did she think Iria was lying?[ hehehehehe]

“I haven’t had any either,” I said, coming to her rescue even if she didn’t know it.[ mhm yes, that's definitely what is happening here esmie xD]

Lynlyn rolled her eyes. “I’m aware.”[ omg]

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I frowned.

“You’ll figure it out soon enough,” she said with a little secretive laugh.[ I'm rooting for team lynlyn rn xD]

Silence descended for a few minutes, everyone collectively getting lost in their own thoughts for a bit.

Then, Iria broke the silence by asking me, “So you’re… you know, different out there, but you’ve been in the game for a little while. Is there anything I should watch out for? Anything I should know?”

This time, I couldn’t hold back a big ol lip bite as I gave her a once over. “I think you might have a few different experiences to me. I’m small and cute, but you’re tall and… uh, strong, and… stuff.[ mhm yes, and stuff] I made friends with a guy who was all chivalrous when he was helping me. I think if he met you, he might not know what to do. Some guys might even get all stupid and annoying about you being stronger than them.”

“Ah… yeah, I think I know what will happen with a lot of guys who see me,” she laughed, eyes twinkling with amusement. “I meant on the more personal or physical side of things.”

God, her laugh was infectious. It had me smiling just for hearing it. Looking up at her beside me was an effort, but I did so. “Buy a brush, and a comb, and like… nice soap. It’ll be super weird at first, but you need to take more care with your hygiene than you might have before. Not insinuating anything, but guys can be gross. Your hair feathers are going to take half a day to dry, so you’ll need to learn to tie it out of the way while you bathe. Unless you’re washing it, in which case, make sure to chalk out that half a day where it’s going to be wet.”

“Hair doesn’t take that long to dry,” Lynlyn said, [ hah.]giving me a funny look.

“Normal hair, no,” I grinned, swishing my tail around for emphasis. “But her hair feathers and my tail are probably going to be similar.”

“True…” she muttered, watching the tail. “How did you learn all this anyway? You’ve barely asked for any help about feminine stuff.”

“Research,” I said, shrugging. “Plus, it just makes sense.”

“What kind of research?” she asked, giving me a suspicious side-eye.

Iria burst into another adorable bout of laughter beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. [ esmie has evolved into puddle]“Lynna, trust me, the kind of research you’re thinking of would not teach anything close to feminine hygiene.”

“Ah…” Lynlyn mumbled. “Nevermind.”

Iria’s touch caused a cascading failure throughout my entire body, starting with my leg and moving up, until I was a boneless bundle of squish. I fell sideways against Iria, eyes fluttering closed as my head bounced off her soft, strong waist.

“Oh, shit!” Iria blurted, catching me before I hit the ground. “What happened, are you okay?”

“I am so okay,” I sighed, smiling happily. Her arms were so strong, and she smelled like flowers and a little bit of girl sweat and… her stomach was supporting one of my cheeks. It was pure bliss, and if she wanted me to stand up she was going to have a difficult time of it. I doubted my limbs would behave even if I asked them to.

"Oh?" Iria sounded intrigued, rather than flustered like I'd expected.

Opening my eyes, I looked up at her and was again robbed of all breath in my lungs. She was watching me with a calm and knowing amusement. "I see. In that case, let's test how strong this body is, yeah?"

"Huh—" I asked, before I cut myself off with a squeak of surprise as she shifted her arms to get a better grip on me, then lifted me like I weighed nothing. My heart was beating pretty fast beforehand, but now it was like someone had slipped cocaine into the marching band's water supply.

I was being carried by the hot dinosaur lady! Help! Help! Actually no, don't help, don't help!

Lynna was laughing beside us as Iria just casually carried me, the journey continuing like this was all perfectly normal. The crazy thing was that she seemed perfectly chill with this. No embarrassment, no shy blushing. In fact, when she glanced down at me, I was suddenly very aware of the fact that I was a prey animal and she was a raptor. Oh dear sweet mother of god.

It was clear she was having issues with carrying me though. Not because of my weight, but because the human body was just awkward to carry.

So, tentatively, I threaded my arms up and around her neck. The moment my hands shifted, she was looking down at me, and we maintained the electrified eye contact until my fingers were threaded through the feathers on the back of her neck. She didn't say anything, but her lips twitched into the shadow of a smirk.

She shifted her hold on me to account for the redistribution of weight, then let out a gentle breath of relief. "Much better."

Fucking hell, this was so intense! We barely knew each other! How was this happening? Why was she so casually fine with this? Had she carried a lot of girls? When was she going to stop carrying me? Had we accidentally discovered the truth of heaven together, and that it was the feeling of strong fingers gently kneading my squish? God, I was so turned on. If she had asked to take me here on the forest floor, I'd have unequipped my clothes in a flash.

Oh, and then there was the fact that I wanted to be taken in the first place! Like, I was thirsting after the idea of a girl's fingers reaching deep inside me. What the hell was VR doing to me? Other than giving me opportunities to feel fucking incredible, obviously.

What did Lynlyn think of this? A quick peek in her direction found her full of barely contained mirth at my expense, but that was fine. I'd been thinking she might get jealous or protective or something, but apparently not.

I guess I was fine to just… enjoy myself then?

Esmie’s PoV

Showing Iria around the house was a quick affair, because apparently she’d already watched our recordings. That was sort of embarrassing, but it saved time, I guess.

As we were showing her around the house, however, we came to a realisation. We had a problem. There used to be three bedrooms in the house, but one had been converted into a crafting room instead. Even more of a problem, we had nothing for her to sleep on even if we cleared out the crafting room.

“I’ll just take one of the storage rooms, for now,” Iria said, giving both Lynna and I a super chill smile. She was such a chill person in general, so her smiles were like rank 2 chill. Her smiles were also really cute and hot, so there was a lot of multi-classing going on.

Lynlyn, who was sitting on the kitchen countertop, frowned and glanced sideways towards the storage room in question. “Okay, but I think we should work on swapping them soon. Plus, getting you a bed, obviously.”

“There’s no rush,” Iria said, shrugging. “I’m used to worse, to be honest. At least it’s safe here. That’s a first.”

“It’s okay, I’ll protect you,” I grinned impishly, reaching over to pat her big, strong, squishy thigh. “Plus, we are sitting on a couch that you can sleep on.”

She laughed and looked down at my hand, which had utterly failed to leave once its job was done. “Thanks, I was worried. If you’re here to protect me, I’ll definitely feel safe.”

Her eyes rose to meet mine, and the spark of electricity that snapped between us was enough to finally move my hand from her leg. It was just so damned juicy looking. I wanted to touch it more, maybe nibble it a little. Gosh.

I had to swallow a lump in my throat before I could speak, and when I did, my voice was small and breathless. “O-obviously you’re actually like super competent and I’m a fumbling noob, so yeah. Uh… I was joking, or something.”

"Yes, I'm aware," she said with one of her little giggles.

God they were cute. How could that guy I met in the meeting with Ruth be the same person as Iria? I mean, I guess… actually nah, it made sense. Iria's giggle was just his laugh filtered through this new voice, I could see it now.

It was so fascinating, seeing how their mannerisms translated over. I was so confused too, because Iria was all kinds of attractive.

Over on the kitchen bench, Lynlyn coughed. "Well. Now that we have you here, I uh… I might go and do a few easy fetch quests or something, get some experience."

Iria bolted up off the couch in a rush, surprising both me and my childhood friend. "Can I come? I'd like to put in a little work catching up to the both of you in levels. If that's okay, of course. No hard feelings if you want to spend some time alone."

Oh. I guess I was being abandoned. That was fine. I'd go and uh… eat some gross rat person tongues, I guess. Woo.

The other two quickly got their shit together and wandered out the door, leaving me alone on the ratty old couch to think about my life. I was sort of glad that Iria was gone though, because for the first time since I’d seen her, I felt like I could take a full breath.

She was… god, a lot. With Lynlyn, I found her attractive but it didn’t overpower me like with Iria. This new girl was like fire in my veins, and the gap between her thighs was the spark that ignited it. Other sparks of potential ignition included the curve of her hips as they moved into the soft swell of her thighs, or the way her smile held nothing more than the amusement and happiness it was meant to convey.

I’d never ever felt like this before, and it was… exciting. I wonder if she felt the same? What was I even feeling anyway? Was it just lust? Had my feelings for Lynlyn always been just a platonic admiration of her looks, and this was true attraction? Or was this more? Had I somehow developed proper romantic feelings for someone in the space of a few hours?

I made my way up the rickety wooden staircase, still deep in thought on the subject, then into the crafting room. I had a feeling these tongues were actually going to be fairly useful, so I pulled one out once I’d sat down.

The room was already a mess, after only a week of getting into alchemy. Crude clay jars were scattered haphazardly around the room, each holding some sort of ingredient. They were the cheapest container I could find, but without labels, it was difficult to figure out which was which. I’d be upgrading to glass jars as soon as possible, plus labels. Soon. I hoped.

The tongue was all gross and slimy, so the first thing I did was to place it onto a little clay dish and cast a dehumidifying spell on it. Lynna was going to be quite upset if she realised that I’d spent precious skill points on a silly little spell like that, but it made my job so much easier. Sun drying was for mundane people, not magical bunnies.

Since I was the magicalest of all bunnies, it was within my right to make magic spells that dried out gross slimy tongues so I could eat them. Yup. Of course, there was one slimy tongue I didn’t at all think of as gross…

Ahem. Anyway.

Once it was fully sapped of all moisture, I placed it into my mortar and began to carefully grind it up with the pestle. It was a soothing task, I had discovered, and it allowed my mind to wander freely, processing any random thoughts and ideas that were bouncing around in my head at the time.

Of course, this time my thoughts were drawn like iron filings to a certain new friend and her magnetic smile.

Once I was done, I got my jug of water ready and dipped my finger into the sketchy looking powder. Here goes nothing! I popped it into my mouth and cringed, waiting for whatever awful taste the game was going to spring on me this time. Nothing, just a slight saltiness and some vague savoury notes. Huh. Okay.

New Alchemical Discovery!
Dried Ratman Tongue:
Having consumed the dried and powdered tongue of a ratman, you discover that it has weak poison purification and duration extension properties.

Huh. Sweet! I could totally use that with the delidrion to create a cute little regeneration potion! Assuming it was at all useful after the ratman tongue was done doing its thing. Apparently weaker poison purification ingredients tended to also kill some of the effectiveness of the buffs you actually wanted.

Taking one of my little clay vials, I carefully poured a little water, then some alcoholic base into it. I decided to try first with three parts delidrion to one part rat tongue and see how it went.

After mixing it up, I downed the vial and waited, staring at my buffs and debuffs screen to see if it popped up. Then, after a few seconds, it did! Even better, I didn’t vomit everywhere!

*

Bouncing up off my seat, I did a silly little dance and pumped my fists in the air. I had done it, I’d made a cute little potion that actually did something useful! I was an alchemy bunny! An.. ah… an alchebunny! Yes! Perfect. Now, let’s see what my potion actually did…

Huh, so it was pretty shitty with its healing effect, but it lasted… wow! Two whole days?! That’s nuts! How?

Time to make up another vial and cast a potion appraisal spell on it. That one I hadn’t used any skill points on. It came with leveling up alchemy, which was nice. The fact that appraise ingredient was so high up the skill tree had me questioning if the designers were sadists, though.

Ohhh that was interesting! The ratman tongue had consumed some of the potency of the delidrion to create the extended duration, and since there was more healing than poison, just a weak healing effect had remained. What I needed to do now was find the exact amount of tongue to negate the poison, while leaving the healing effect as intact as possible.

The rest of my afternoon was spent this way, carefully dialing the ratios in until at last, I had figured it out. Eight parts delidrion to one part tongue did the trick, leaving me with a potion that gave a minor but useful healing effect over twenty two hours.

It wasn't anything amazing, unfortunately, but it was functional, and that's what mattered! My first potion!

With the little vial in hand, I did a little dance around the crafting room, giggling like a loon. I had finally done something right in this dang game! Next, I'd be making a—

Clonk.

The door opened abruptly, catching my foot and throwing me towards the ground. Iria, who had opened the door, lunged like a pouncing tiger, catching me before I hit the ground.

"Wow," I breathed, grinning up at her, heart racing. "Caught by the hot new girl twice in one day. I feel Blessed."

"Very funny," she replied, eyes twinkling with amusement.

Carefully, she pulled me back onto my feet. Her hands were so gentle as they held me, like I might shatter if she used too much of her strength.

"My savior," I giggled breathlessly, putting on a show. My mischievous side was flaring up, but I couldn't help it. She made the sensible part of my brain explode and shut down. "If there's anything I can do to thank you, let me know…"

"Oh, really now?" She whispered, ducking her head down close to mine. "You're a cheeky little thing, aren't you?"

My lungs seized up, refusing to function as she drew closer. All I could do was bite my lip and smile up at her, heartbeat pounding in my ears.

"Too bad, though," she laughed quietly. "I have a feeling that you're all talk. Plus, I'm not sure a girl like you is interested in a guy like me."

"You're not a guy," I murmured, my heart beating even harder as the mischief drained from my tone. "Not in here. Neither of us are…"

That seemed to give her pause, mouth opening just a hair, before she closed it again and quirked a thoughtful eyebrow at me. God, I could feel the warmth of her. We were standing so close, one of her arms still wrapped around my waist, forgotten amidst the increasingly serious flirting we'd been doing.

My thoughts crystalized into a decision, and I gently placed a hand flat against her stomach, relishing the feel of hard muscle beneath soft skin. "I was joking just before…" I whispered, my pulse smashing wildly through my veins like the running of the bulls. "... But I'm not now. Anything, Iria… anything."

Her eyes widened, staring into mine with an intensity that bordered on wonder. Then they flicked down to my lips for a heartbeat, before returning to their inspection of my soul. "Really?"

"You're so fucking hot," I smiled, unable to hold her gaze as a blush danced onto my cheeks. "And cute, and funny, and nice… so yeah, really."

I quivered as she gave me a slow, gentle, hungry smile in response. "Well, okay then…"

She was fast, using her formidable dexterity and strength to pin me against the rough wooden wall. My trust in her wasn't misplaced, though, because the whole movement had been fluid and remarkably gentle.

I moaned as her body followed mine, the larger girl surrounding me, enveloping me in a cocoon of warmth and lust.

"Yes," I murmured, low and breathless, only for the sound to be cut short as she leaned down and molded her lips to mine. Heat blazed through my body in a fever, sending a shudder down every nerve. O-oh gosh. Here we go...

Esmie’s PoV

Iria was kissing me.

My whole world was on fire with the taste of her lips, and each gentle movement sent shocks of warmth down between my legs. I could feel my unfamiliar anatomy pulsing with the staccato rhythm of my heartbeat like it was beating a marching cadence.

Tentatively, I snaked my arms up around her neck, deepening the kiss in the process. For all my talk though, I didn’t know anything about kissing. Instead, I followed pure instinct, pressing against her and drinking in the moment.

Desperately, I pulled her bottom lip into my mouth and lapped at it with my tongue. Just like that, I'd opened the floodgates, and in came her tongue, foreign, warm, and wet. I gasped, rolling my body against hers, needy beyond sanity now, my thoughts nothing but warm squishy goo. Hearing that noise coming from me caused a little spark of confused happiness to flutter about inside my stomach, and mentally, I lunged for it.

My hands dropped from Iria's neck to play with her stomach, then her waist, soft and supple. She looked so hard, so badass, but her skin was like the finest cotton sheets. I couldn't get enough of it, my hands kneading and pulling at her. Fingertips pressed into squish, a direct counterpoint to the lavishing I was receiving from her scorching hot lips.

Dipping lower with my explorations, I slipped two fingers under her waistband and gently stroked her hips there. Then, it was her turn to moan, and it was the hottest noise I'd ever heard. It started low and deep in her chest, but by the time it had reached her throat, it was high and musical.

The sound robbed me of coherent thought, and all I could think of was getting more of this, more of her. Hunger built and built, our mouths working against one another in a wet, hot, desperate mess. I think my thigh had slipped between hers… yup, definitely had, and it was making its way up the inside of those beautiful long legs of hers.

That got a full on growl out of her, and suddenly I was pressed even harder against the wall while her hands dove under my shirt. Just as the tip of one finger brushed the underside of one of my breasts, she stopped and pulled in a ragged, hoarse breath.

We stood there like that, frozen except for a sedate lapping of lip and tongue, until even that came to a gentle stop. Like a boulder finally losing its momentum after a crazed avalanche, we stood there, lips still touching, her fingers still on my breast. Slowly, agonisingly, she pulled her hand out from under my shirt and broke off the kiss, quivering with the effort it took to deny our combined desire.

She kept me pinned to the wall for a few long moments, her wide yellow eyes searching my face with open wonder. Then she let out the cutest little laugh. "Holy s-shit."

No kidding, Iria, no kidding. Both of us were panting, our warm breath mingling between us. God, what a kiss. That was… no wonder people wrote songs about kissing! My mind had just been launched straight up into space with that, gawd daaaaym.

"I'm going to need you to hold me up," I giggled, threading my fingers back around her neck. "I think you liquified my bones."

She laughed again and wrapped her arms around me, shifting my weight off the wall and onto her. "I can do that," she murmured, nuzzling the top of my head. "Have you been drinking, by the way? I tasted alcohol."

Closing my eyes, I snuggled in close and just enjoyed her soft boobs in my face. "No, that's just the alcoholic base I was using in the potions I was testing."

“Ah,” she said, still catching her breath. “I wonder if… yup, I have the buff right there. Regeneration, eh?”

“Oh my god, you got some of that?” I laughed, resting my chin on her collarbone to look up at her. We were being so casually intimate right then, but it felt so natural, so chill.

Another little chuckle, but I felt this one through her chest as well as heard it. “Seems so.”

Being held by her was so wonderful, with her strong arms and warm body. It was different to being held by Lynlyn too, there was a spark of excitement that danced from my heart to my stomach and back again. With my childhood friend, embracing her was a warm, safe, calm thing. She was like holding an old and treasured soft toy. Iria, though… she was… well, I’m not sure, except it was new and thrilling and addictive.

“Well…” Iria said slowly, loosening her hold on me and stepping back. “I think we just called each other’s bluffs there.” Gah, of course she’d break off the hug right then. Damn it!

Wrapping my arms around myself to try and counteract her sudden absence, I nodded and smiled up at her. “Yup. That was totally great though. I’ve never really kissed anyone before, at least not as an adult. There were one or two kisses during my early teens but I don’t really count them.”

“Huh, so I was your first toe-curler?” she asked, tilting her head at me curiously. “Well, I guess it was a first for both of us, regardless. Our first as girls.”

“Yeah… and it was so good,” I agreed, biting my lip. I could still feel an afterimage of her lips, pressed so hard against mine.

She was right though, we’d just kissed as two girls. How did I feel about that? About the fact that we were both guys outside the game, but girls inside it? I guess it didn’t really matter, I was attracted to girls, and she looked, smelled, and tasted like one. She was one, for all intents and purposes, so yeah, it very much did not matter.

Plus, on my first day in the game, I had made sure to hammer the point home with Lynlyn that I was Esmie, a cute bunny girl. It’d be incredibly hypocritical of me to turn around and take issue with the fact that I’d been kissing Iria.

The raptor girl’s lazy smile took a sharp turn into the realm of smirkdom as she watched me space out. Could she blame me, though? God, I could feel how wet that kiss had made me.

“Good, eh? It really was…” she said languidly, before her expression turned apologetic. “But, I didn’t come up here to make out with you. Lynna and I picked up some groceries to make dinner with, if you want to come down. I started the fire so we can warm up. A player we passed on our way back thinks it’s going to be getting cold soon, winter is on the way.”

“Okey dokey,” I said, bouncing on the balls of my feet. “We’ll just mosey downstairs like nothing happened, huh?”

“Well, I’m not sure what else we’d do,” she laughed, reaching out to ruffle my hair.

I glanced at the open door. “I have a bed, and a bedroom.”

The idea of just going into my room and doing all sorts of fun stuff was… electric. I wanted it so badly, my whole body needy as a starved bunny. I could still feel the echo of her tongue dancing in my mouth, her breasts pressed to mine, the soft skin of her waist on my fingertips… and I wanted more.

With lidded eyes, she gave me a once over that left no doubt that she felt it too. Then she gave a sigh and closed her eyes like it was physically painful not to throw me down on my bed and fuck me til she had friction burns on her tongue.

“Sorry, Esmie,” she said quietly, patiently. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, as much as I’d like to. We’ve going to be coworkers, after all. Idols, no less, who are valued for their purity and chastity, for some fucking stupid reason.”

“Well, I’m not proposing we fuck on camera,” I grumbled, nodding in agreement nevertheless. Damn it, I had signed a contract after all. This was totally lame.

Iria giggled and reached up again to cup my cheek, her thumb brushing briefly over my lips. “Esmie, you’re gorgeous and fun, but the answer is no. Not… right now, at least.”

Fighting a pout, I nodded. “I hate that you’re right. It would have been so much fun…”

“Don’t you trail off with that tone, young lady,” she grinned, squeezing my face before she dropped her hand. “You’re making me regret my decision.”

Oh, she had just made a grave mistake. A truly monumental mistake. She’d admitted that her resolve wasn’t concrete.

In a voice breathless with a lust I didn’t have to fake, I stepped up against her and whispered, “Sorry, Iria. I promise to… behave. See you downstairs.”

Then, before she could reply, I was walking out the door with a big, happy grin on my face. For some reason, I hadn’t actually explored my new feminine sexuality, other than teasing Lynlyn, but now…? I think I might see the potential there. I’d always admired women, found them hot and cute, all that stuff. I’d masturbated too, what guy hadn’t? This, though… it was like I’d spent my whole life with earmuffs on and I was only now taking them off and realising what the world sounded like. And now… now I wanted to hear music.

“Little brat,” was iria’s muttered reply from behind me, more to herself than to me. She was going to be so much fun.

I arrived in the main room to find not just food and Lynlyn waiting for me, but another sofa as well. This one was a little better than our first one, although it was still threadbare. I bounced over to it and immediately plopped down beside my friend, who was watching a stream and idly picking at a platter of bread, cheese, and some sort of smoked meat.

“Yum!” I said, and snagged a little hunk of cheese off her plate.

Lynlyn growled and tried to take it back, but I popped it into my mouth with a triumphant grin.

Rolling her eyes, she nevertheless failed to hold back a laugh. “God, you’re such a little shithead. Your plate is over on the bench. There’s also olives and walnuts if you want them.”

“Thanks, Lynlyn,” I said, leaping back up off the sofa to retrieve the food.

Iria arrived as I was sitting back down, evidently having gone to the toilet. She watched with a smile as I settled back in beside my childhood friend. I quickly discovered that Lynlyn was nice and warm, which led to me snuggling in close against her side. She shifted her arm over my head to rest on my shoulder without a second thought, never taking her eyes off the floating virtual screen.

I was surprised to see that the stream she was watching was from our company. The girl on screen was playing that other game, giggling and laughing away as she talked to her viewers.

“Whatcha watching?” I asked, popping an olive into my mouth. I loved olives, and I was extremely glad that they were in plentiful supply around these parts. The kingdom we’d started in was bordered to the north east by a kingdom that may as well have been cut directly from medieval greece. It made olives very cheap around here.

“One of our… uh, I think we’re meant to call them senpais?” she asked, glancing over at Iria who’d stretched her long frame out over the other sofa. My eyes trailed the length of her body for a moment, taking in the majesty. She looked like a lion sunbathing on a rock, the way she was lounging.

“Yup,” the tall woman nodded. “Virtual personality streaming is based in anime culture so Japanese honorifics get used.”

“Seems like she’s having fun,” I murmured, watching with fascination as she regaled her viewers with some story about her parents when she was a child.

“I’m surprised we’re the first ones over here in CORA,” Lynna mused, turning from the screen to look down at me. “I mean, this game is extremely popular and it’s only going up. Surely someone would have moved the whole virtual idol thing over here?”

“CORA is a hard fit for this type of thing,” Iria replied, shaking her head. “It’s R rated, and it was only recently that the communications commission said people could broadcast from the game at a lower age rating. So long as the content isn’t R rated, of course.”

“Ah, that makes a hell of a lot of sense,” Lynna murmured, before going back to watching the stream.

I finished my food fairly quickly, this little body didn’t take long to fill up, and then I snuggled in closer to my friend’s side and closed my eyes. I was pretty tired, now that I’d calmed down after the adrenaline from making out with Iria.

Gosh, I’d really done that huh? My first proper kiss. It had been great too, wonderful beyond anything I had anticipated. Unfortunately, Iria had pumped the brakes and I was left wondering, what would it have been like to go further?

I’d never been much of a sexual person, not really. I loved sex humour as much as the next girl, but there was a difference between that and having a big honkin’ sex drive. Except now here I was, actually wanting it. Curiosity was a big part of it, but also just… the way it had felt to be kissed by Iria…

Opening my eyes, I stole a glance at her. She was watching something on her own now, draped over the couch like she was a queen, calm and confident. Her hand rose to brush through her long feathered mane, teasing out a snag, and I watched those long fingers of hers with an ache of curious need.

Of course, that was when she looked over and caught me staring. Her eyebrow twitched in amusement, but she said nothing. Why was she so hot to me? She definitely wasn’t what people considered to be pretty normally. Way too much muscle on her for that, even after the recent push to return to the type of body positivity that had been around at the turn of the twenty first century.

It could be that being down in New Zealand had insulated me from the war of culture that had gripped the developed world as the USA descended into hate and chaos. Still though… she was gorgeous and it was hard to take my eyes off her. I mean, look at those abs! Gosh, and those legs… I knew that watermelon crushing was sort of a meme, but she really could do it with those things.

Iria was still giving me a knowing look, and it caused a blush to flare out over my cheeks. I ducked my head and closed my eyes again. Maybe I just needed to go out and like… get laid, or something?

God, what an alien concept that was. I mean, I knew that people did that kind of thing, but me? I was just a… huh. I mean my outside VR self wouldn’t do it, but in here? As Esmie, it might actually be fun to just go out and have a night at a club or whatever. Plus, the only bad thing that could happen to me was being killed. No spiked drinks in VR, it was part of the laws around VR. They had to design their games to stop that kind of thing.

I guess I’d go exploring the city tomorrow, see what trouble I could get myself into. For now though, I was going to sleep on top of Lynlyn. She didn’t seem to mind.

****

The next day, I decided that I’d also mix a bunch of those potions I’d made and try to sell them. After all, I’d need money if I planned to go to like, a bar or whatever you called them here in CORA. That was the biggest draw into this game for a lot of people. Yes, it might have magic, quests, and whatever else, but in the year or more since the game had been out of beta, it had become so much more. Players had very quickly tired of the grungy, dank, dark inns of the world, so they’d made their own. Now there was a thriving nightlife in pretty much every major city in the game.

I was on my way to the market, about to leave the poor district that we lived in, when a cloaked figure materialised beside me. I let out a little squeak of fright, but settled down when I saw who it was.

“Hello, mister sneaky man,” I said, smiling up at him. It was my thieves’ guild friend!

He chuckled, low and rasping. “Good day, my friend. How do you feel about taking a job?”

“Sure,” I agreed instantly, then gave him a sly, sidelong look. Damn, his hood was still all shadowy and stuff. Ah well. “I have some stuff you might want, though. Maybe.”

“Oh?” he asked, tilting his head slightly in question.

I summoned one of my little potions and handed it to him. “It’s not much, I’m still learning alchemy, but that’s a—“

“Low level regeneration potion,” he mused, interrupting me with a nod. He held the vial up to the light of the noonday sun and grunted with just a teeny tiny amount of surprise. “Very long lasting, though. That’s intriguing. You made this?”

Don’t know why he was holding it up to the light. The vial was made of clay. Whatever, maybe he was like, magic or some shit.

“I did,” I said, bouncing happily. “How did you figure all of that out?”

“One of the many tools of a thief,” he said, handing the potion back to me. “One must learn to appraise items if they wish to steal objects of value, after all. It wouldn’t do to find yourself leaving a dangerous job with fool’s gold in your pocket, now would it?”

“Oh, that makes sense.” I wondered if I could learn to appraise things? Was it like, a crafting skill or something?

“I’m sure we could find a use for your potions,” he said thoughtfully. “Assuming you have more? Funding your alchemy training would be a great boon to our guild, too. Our last alchemist died after he mistook a poison for the antidote he needed to counteract another poison. Very nasty scene.”

“Well, that’s not a problem for me,” I laughed, trying really hard to keep myself from breaking into a little dance. I don’t know why I wanted to dance, I was just feeling good. “I’m Blessed, so yeah. I can poison myself all day!”

“Excellent,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll take the lot. With the money from this job, and the potions, I’m sure you can make some progress towards invisibility potions, eh?”

“I’ll give it a shot,” I grinned, throwing him two thumbs up. His cheery attitude dissipated into alarm and surprise when I began to dump over forty clay vials of potion on him. Thankfully, he had a sack handy, and with a little bit of careful teamwork, we got all the potions in without breaking them. I sorta felt sorry for him, not having an inventory. Must be hard to function like that in an MMO world.

He gave me a whole five silvers for the potions too, which was a lot for what they were worth. I think. Either way, it meant I didn’t have to haggle with some random person in the market anymore.

“So what was the job?” I asked, unable to keep my energy contained and breaking into a little skip of excitement. “Am I gonna be climbing into windows? Oh, or pickpocketing!”

He snorted and shook his head. “I am afraid that it takes a great deal of skill to do either of those. You, however, have a lot of skill in a certain area that I lack. You are a master of distraction and performance. Here’s what we’re going to do…“

I tripped and fell, squealing all the way down until I hit the dirty cobbles of the market square. The procession of minor nobles, out on a stroll to sample rich people things at the market, all turned to watch. They were mildly amused, but not terribly concerned. I was just a silly adventurer, after all.

They should have run when they had the chance. My oh so clumsy foot caught the lock of a cage that housed a rather unpleasant animal. The owner of the exotic pets stall hadn't gone for anything fancy, just a simple enchantment on a finger latch. It's not like the animal could wield a lockpick with any skill, and the owner was there to ward off thieves.

The cage door swung open, creaking like a prophecy of calamity. The creature inside shuffled forward, it's stubby nose sniffing cautiously.

I wasn't sure what it was called, but it appeared to be a ball of black fur, with four stubby legs sticking out like the wobbly legs of an old stool. The sniffing was the calm before the storm.

You see, the little animal was technically illegal in this area of the world, and with good reason. The little critter launched itself at the very colourful set of humans nearby and immediately began to devour their clothes like a piranha lobbed into a tank full of juicy fishies.

It’s first target was a rather haughty looking gentleman with a big feathered hat and a cane. The creature flattened out into a pancake on the man’s leg, rapidly devouring his silk pants. In just a moment, he was flapping in the breeze, and a second strange hungry fluffball detached from the original lump of hungry fur. Wait, oh no. They could multiply? The thief didn’t tell me that.

I lay still on the ground, staring as things rather quickly spiralled out of control. The gentleman was completely naked now, and covering his loins with his hands like that was going to keep the frankly enormous sausage he was packing covered. One of the ladies was the second victim, and she fainted the moment she saw the massive flaccid todger. Soon, she was topless and another clothicide creature was ravaging her friend’s skirt.

People rushed to help the beleaguered nobles, only to find themselves the victims of the fuzzy virus. Well, I had originally planned to film this for my channel, but this content was probably a little too risque for innocent vtuber content.

Before I could become a victim of my own out of control prank, I picked myself up off the ground and rushed away from the scene of the crime. Or at least, I began to… until I noticed that some of the stall owners had abandoned their wares.

A quick glance around told me that nobody was watching me, so I quickly ducked behind a nearby jeweler’s stall and scooped up his coinage. I left the jewelry on the table, as much as I wanted to take it, because I wasn’t confident I could swipe it without getting caught. I was actually quite proud of my restraint. It wasn’t like me to pass up that kind of opportunity.

Still, I ran towards the place that the thief had told me to wait once I’d found and set off a distraction. I just hoped he could capitalise on the mayhem I had caused.

****

An hour later, inside a small courtyard several blocks from the market, three thieves tumbled through the archway I was waiting beside. The thief I knew was one of them, but the other two were new to me. One was a guy, the other was a girl, and both were pretty.

The two I didn’t know grinned at me from beneath their hoods, and the boy reached out to give me an ecstatic pat on the shoulder.

“My god, what a distraction,” he laughed, his blue eyes sparkling with mirth. “That was fuckin’ mental, like oh my god. We got such a good haul from that!”

“Aye, we did,” the thief rumbled, sounding amused, but not to the hyperactivity levels of the other two. “I suspect a great many adventurers will be making a lot of money in the clean up efforts.”

“I got some stuff too,” I said, feeling shy in front of the two other thieves. Something about them told me they were players, not NPCs.

“Oh?” the thief leader asked, tilting his head in interest.

I nodded and pulled the coin box I’d swiped, presenting it to him. “Uh, I figure I should give it to you? To split with the rest of the stuff?”

Both the other thieves were smiling with even more enthusiasm now, and they turned to the shadowy thief expectantly.

“Well,” he said, a smile in his tone. “It seems you have passed the test.”

“The… test?” I asked, glancing between the three of them nervously.

“It’s how you become a proper, full member,” the girl told me, pushing her hood back to reveal elfin ears and pretty blonde hair. She looked like a stereotypical excruciatingly pretty half elf girl, but with a little twirling tattoo curling around her green right eye. It was a rose’s stem, I think, thorns and everything.

She was about as tall as me too, as was the boy, who also pushed his hood back. He looked similar to her, although unlike her he had more of a dirty blonde quality to his hair.

“Are you brother and sister?” I asked, glancing between them curiously.

The boy shook his head and chuckled. “Nah, it’s just what our race looks like. We’re Durvian Elves. Our homeland is meant to be deep in the ice wastes to the south of Pagutum, but obviously they don’t really want to let us live there so, you know.”

“Back to the matter at hand,” the thief man said, still with his hood up and his shadows hiding his face. “The test is to see if you are willing to give up any spoils you might gain during a job. We need to know you’ll treat the guild with honesty.”

You have completed a quest: Join the Thieves Guild of Loury.

You passed the hidden test to join the Thieves Guild of Loury! You are now a fully fledged junior member, which comes with a wide variety of perks!

400 Experience gained!

You have gained a level! You are now level 12!

“Oh,” I mumbled, swiping the notification away. “So uh, what are the perks then?”

“We’ll talk about it when we get to the Spinning Coin,” he murmured, turning on his heel. “Follow.”

“What’s the Spinning Coin?” I asked, turning to the guy player. “Oh um… and my name is Esmie.”

“Hey Esmie,” he said, offering a hand to shake. “I’m Sandy, and my bestie here is Shiori. As for the Spinning Coin, it’s the tavern that’s the front for the thieves guild around here. The current one, anyway. We have to move every now and then. We have proper safe houses too, obviously, but everyone likes to hang at the Coin instead.”

“Because of the music and the booze,” Shiori giggled, throwing me a wink. “It’s one of the taverns that us players have influenced.”

“Oh, cool!” I exclaimed, bouncing excitedly now. A den of thieves and a club? That was like a million new experiences to dive into!

The Coin turned out to be only a few blocks from home, which meant that I might be able to drink a bunch. It was an outwardly run down place that belied its wild interior. It still had a lot of the dark, cramped atmosphere of a typical medieval tavern, but it also had a lot of modern features too.

I could see a dance floor dug into the ground to the right, which I suspected went underneath the building next door. Magic lamps kept the place reasonably brightly lit at this time of day, although they’d probably end up dimming later in the night. They had proper toilets too, at least if the gendered and non-gendered signage above a hallway at the back was to be believed.

The bar ran along the left hand side of the wide room. It had the usual stools and taps for the various alcohols they served, as well as a kitchen that could be seen through an open doorway. The rear of the room was dedicated to a warren of booths and tables, all separated by dark cloth curtains and thin wooden screens. That was obviously where all the dastardly thievery happened.

The thief led us across the open area and into the booth area, settling us down in one near the back. “The screens have been enchanted to absorb sound and obfuscate spoken word. None will be able to overhear discussions within the Den, so we may speak candidly.”

“Oh, cool,” I said, sliding in beside Sandy as the curtain fell back into place, cocooning the four of us in a place of relative sanctuary.

“So, Esmie,” the thief said, leaning forward. “You’re going to join us, so you must know the rules.”

Oh damn, right to business. Okay.

He nodded at the expression I must have pulled, but continued unabated. “The first and most important rule is thus: all members of the guild involved in a job will receive equal pay. The organiser of the job, if there is one, receives two portions. That would be me, this time.”

“The second rule is to never steal from the guild, the poor, or those protected by the guild,” Shiori said from her seat opposite me. “We run a protection racket with the shops around here, although we don’t control the criminal underworld over the whole city.”

“Indeed,” the shadowy thief nodded, his voice rumbling. “The third rule is that we never steal from the guard.”

“Oh, can I do the fourth?” Sandy asked, bouncing in his seat. “The fourth rule is that disputes within the guild are settled with talk, never a blade. No stabbery between members.”

“Those are good rules,” I said, smiling at all of them in turn. “I uh… accept?”

“Good, good,” the thief murmured, still not removing his shadowy hood. He did reach into his cloak, though, and began to deposit various valuables on the table. “Now it’s time to count the spoils.”

“This is the good part,” Sandy said in a stage whisper while nudging me with an elbow conspiratorially. His blue eyes were crinkled up into a grin that had me smiling back. I hoped I could make friends with these two thieves. They were nice. Nice and also cute.

My share ended up being almost two hundred silver alves, which I took in the silver coinage rather than the one and a half gold rosles that the thief originally offered. It was easier to spend that way, and something about being given half a gold coin was… it felt wrong. I mean, cutting coinage up was apparently pretty normal, but it seemed like a defilement of the pretty yellow metal coins.

I took the money back to the house immediately and dumped most of it on Lynlyn’s bed. She could deal with it when she got back from the quest that her and Iria were doing today. It involved combat or something and that just wasn’t my forte apparently. Maybe I could dip my toes back into it when my friends were more skilled and higher level. Then they could carry me while I blundered around like a dumbass.

I spent a bit of time mixing some more potions for the thief, since he’d given my other ones to the wider group and they wanted more. Turns out that all they had was really fast acting and good quality potions, the type you’d use on a big wound. Mine were good for the opposite, dealing with bruises, scrapes, and any number of other small ailments that didn’t warrant the use of a proper healing potion.

As the afternoon skipped its merry way towards evening, I remembered that I hadn’t even accomplished the goal I’d set out to achieve that morning. Drat. I guess I’d just have to go and buy the stuff I needed tomorrow.

Until then… maybe I’d go back to the thieves’ tavern. Assuming my new friends were still there. We’d all added each other as contacts in the game, and I could see they were still online, but… well I hoped, but I was ready to find them gone.

Thankfully, Sandy was still there, drinking at one of the front tables in the corner and watching something on a VR window.

"Sandy!" I said, bouncing up to him. "Can I join you?"

He smiled up at me in surprise. "Esmie! Yeah, sit down. Things are going to get busy in here soon, and I'm on conflict resolution duty."

"What does that mean?" I asked, watching the easy way he leaned on the table.

His blonde hair was long, for a boy at least, almost covering his ears. His face was more pretty than handsome, and that trend continued through the rest of his body. It was a little confusing to me, the subtle overlay of femininity onto an otherwise thin, compact, but nevertheless masculine form.

"I'm on bouncer duty, basically," he shrugged, giving me a twinkling, sly smile. "It means I get to yeet annoying dudes out the door who think that because I'm small they can take me. Us elves pack a lot of strength into these small bodies."

"Oh, that sounds entertaining," I grinned, matching the mischief dancing in his blue eyes. Something occurred to me then, and I hastily blurted, "Wait… you are a guy, right? I'm sort of confused, sorry…"

He laughed, throwing back his head and trilling like a songbird. "Yeah, I'm a dude. I get that a lot, though, don't worry. I went for a bit of a femboy aesthetic, and it's been fun. A lot of guys in CORA who make my character choice extra worth it, if you know what I mean…"

My mouth fell open, and I stared in embarrassed delight. The idea of this tiny dude getting railed by a big manly man was kinda hot… oh wait, what if it was reversed? How did that work? Gosh, I had so many questions!

"A few girls, too," he continued, fluttering his long eyelashes at me in mock seduction. "Not nearly as many, though, sadly."

"I'm sure if I have a few drinks, we can fix that," I giggled, fluttering my eyes right back at him.

Watching his mouth form into an ‘O’ of surprise was only marginally more funny than the fact my own expression of surprise matched it. Where in the hell had that come from?

My face went red, but my grin returned, all squishy with the previous mischief. "Dang, yeah nah, that was like, not what I expected to come out of my mouth when I spoke, ay?"

He blinked, tilting his head in amused confusion. "Sorry, um… your accent, it just got really thick and I was already having trouble with it…"

"My bad," I laughed, and carefully schooled my speech. "I was saying that I didn't expect that to come out of my mouth. I don't have any experience with guys… or really any experience at all, to be honest."

"Huh, I wasn't expecting that," he said, considering me thoughtfully now. "I'll keep it in mind…"

I smiled and began to think of a reply, but a loud thump over near the door caught my attention. Three adventurers stumbled into the tavern, and Sandy's eyes lit up with a wild, almost predatory glint in his eye. "Want to make some money?"

What followed was an almost artful dance of acting, sleight of hand, and manipulation. Sandy produced a set of playing cards and quickly set up the appearance of an in-progress game of poker. He placed a few coins on the table and began pretending to teach me.

I was familiar with the game, but I played along, wondering what his play was here. It soon became evident when the three men, all players, noticed us playing and wandered over.

Over the next few hours, as the tavern filled up and Sandy bought me drinks, I was the bait in his trap. We fleeced the poor buggers while they thought they were grazing peacefully in a lush paddock. It was honestly inspiring, watching Sandy work his confidence game. I needed to ask him for lessons or something, holy moly.

Not that I caught much this time around. Between his silent direct messaged instructions and his distractingly nimble fingers, I couldn't have hoped to pick anything up.

“Wow, what a take,” he grinned, back in one of the booths in the den. “That was fun! You’re very good at your job, you know?”

“I am?” I asked, then puffed out my chest and nodded proudly. “I mean, I am!”

“Oh god, you’re so cute!” he exclaimed, flopping sideways to lean against the wall as he stared at me. His smile went all lopsided, and he quietly asked, “You had enough to drink yet?”

Heat rose to my cheeks, and I pushed my almost empty tankard around on the table. “I’ve got to be honest with you… I’m curious, so it’s a uh… a yes. I just, I’ve never kissed a guy before, and I’ve only kissed a girl once. I uh, I’m also a dude… like, outside the game.”

His eyebrows shot up, but his smile didn’t falter. “That’s not a problem for me, but it’s thoughtful of you to clue me in. I know some other guys would be awful about it.”

“Not going to ask me about the dysphoria?” I giggled, watching him get up to join me on my side of the booth.

“Nah,” he said, smiling ruefully. “Contrary to what a lot of people say, some people just don’t feel it. It depends how rigid your gender identity is.”

“Oh,” I murmured, feeling strangely shy now that he was close. My heart was hammering wildly against my ribcage, and my leg was bouncing like crazy.

“I was sort of just planning to have some fun and make out with a pretty girl, but this seems like it’s actually important to you, so I’ll let you explore and set the pace, okay?” he said, giving me a sweet, wholesome look.

“God, you’re really chill,” I blushed, happy to have made such a good friend. Yes, apparently I liked to kiss my friends.

“Mhm?” he chuckled, slipping an arm around my waist. Oh god, I was so nervous, and he was so pretty. Was it even kissing a boy when he looked like that? I guess it still was, he called himself a boy, after all. Plus, his jawline was… sharp, nice, I don’t know. It was really hard to—

He leaned in and kissed me, slowly, softly, gently. A quiver ran through my body, and instinctively I placed a hand on his chest. It was a lot like Iria’s muscles, actually, but without the boob. A little disappointing, really. I liked boobs, they were nice and squishy.

Deepening the kiss a little, I explored the flavour and texture of his lips with my own, marvelling at how soft they were. He let out a quiet, high moan, and I laughed against his lips. My tongue peeked out and brushed his lips, then his teeth, tentative and curious. The tongue thing made him shudder, and to my surprise, I felt warmth blossom in my stomach. Oh. Okay. Okay.

Before I could process what that meant, I was pressing him back against the seat so I could straddle his lap. My hands drifted downwards, finding his hips, which were actually fairly wide, and more importantly, squishy. I could definitely work with that.

His hands got more exploratory, stroking up and down my spine, worshipping its feminine curve. Oh god, oh god, that felt good. That felt really good.

They moved to my thighs next, kneading them like dough. A growl bubbled up out of my throat, surprising us both, but before I could increase the heat, the curtain shifted.

We broke apart and turned to see Shiori standing there, staring in surprise at the two of us.

"Uhm… I… they said you were in here… sorry…" she squeaked, blushing a furious red. "I can uh… leave, if you want. I didn't realize… wow. Hot. Sorry, that's really weird of me to say, it's just…I i mean, tho hot, pretty people making out, it's a lot, and they're both my friends? At least, Sandy is, and I know what he tastes like, which means my tummy is all warm, and then Esmie's thighs are like, literally heaven on earth—"

Sandy and I shared a quick glance, a conspiratorial one, then lunged for her at the same time. Her embarrassment melted into a startled laugh. "Oh! Yes, okay! This is good."

God damn, she was so fucking cute. All rambly and blushy...

My lips were on hers before she could even get sat down properly. She gasped, hands darting up to tangle in my hair, and all of a sudden I was on my back.

Oh gosh, pretty girl on top of me! A pretty girl with… wait, huh?

I pulled back in surprise and watched her shining green eyes cloud over with worry. "I… yes… it's…"

Sandy, who I was still half laying on top of, pushed an affectionate hand up under her shirt. I could see him dancing his fingertips over her spine in exactly the same way he'd just done to me. I liked that.

"What she means," the calm, feminine boy said, pulling the shirt up so he could kiss the small of her back. "Is that she has a dick."

Suddenly, anticipation and arousal exploded like a little firecracker in my stomach. "She does?" I asked, and glanced a question at the girl. "You do?"

She nodded, trying to read my expression. "Uh, yeah…"

"I mean, I was making out with him, so uh… yeah. That sounds… fun," I said, a grin spreading over cheeks that were beginning to match hers in colour.

"Don't mind?" She asked, smile returning to her face.

"Oh, um, I'm not going to assume anything will happen but…" I mumbled, embarrassed now. "You know, it's… yes? It's yes."

"Good," she said softly in relief, and dove back down for my lips. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her hand slip into Sandy's pants. Oh gosh. Oh dear. Yes.

The next morning, I lay in bed and grinned up at the ceiling, basking in the glow of last night’s activities. The kissing had progressed a little further, tops had come off, hands had wandered, and in Sandy’s case, a little more. Neither Shiori nor I had let things get below the belt, but we’d made sure that the femboy was happy.

After that, we’d sort of calmed down and talked, me getting to know them, them getting to know me. It was nice to make some friends outside of Lynlyn’s sphere. Especially ones as overtly um… queer? I think that was the word. It was definitely the word they had used to describe themselves, and I enjoyed it. I wasn’t in a rush for labels or whatever. I was just enjoying life inside CORA.

I also got the notification that my body had been moved to a secure apartment some time in the middle of the night. That was cool. Oh, and apparently my little potions could take the edge off a hangover?

God, what a fucking night. I did have to message them, though, so I pulled up the messaging app. Then, I fumbled around for like five minutes trying to find the way to create a group chat.

Esmie: Wow! That was a night. Did my potions help?

Sandy: Hell yeah they did! Thanks for the night girls… I had fun ;)

Shiori: Hahaha! I bet you did. Also yes, oh my god Esmie, your pooootions. I feel functional this morning! I’m even up!? Fucking witchcraft.

Esmie: Yay! I’m glad haha gosh that was like so much wow. My head is still spinning. You two have like, totally given me a lot to think about haha.

It was true, too. Was I bisexual? If my sample size was just Iria, Sandy, and Shiori, then yes. But also like… I don’t think I’d be interested in more manly men, and the idea of kissing someone with a beard was… not ideal. Gah, anyway, I had something I needed to ask them.

Esmie: But um, I have a favour to ask you both.

Sandy: Yeah?

Shiori: What is it?

Esmie: Don’t tell anyone about last night, okay? At least, don’t go spreading it around. I’m sort of not allowed to go having sexcapades around town. My boss will get super mad at me if it gets out.

Shiori: Wait, what kind of job means you can’t have fun in your off time??

Sandy: Now I’m really curious…

Wait, what was the date today? Panic flared up from deep in my stomach like frozen flame, and I launched myself out of bed. Throwing on some pants, a bra, and a blouse, I threw my door open and took the stairs two at a time. I tumbled into the living room like an off balance spinning top, only to find my two flatmates staring at me in confusion.

Iria was in her usual pose on the couch, spread out over it like a sunbathing lioness, while Lynna was happily cooking up a breakfast of eggs and bacon.

“Uh, you okay there, tiny?” the raptor girl asked, raising one of her way-too-sexy eyebrows.

“Are we debuting today?” I asked in a rush, although judging by their relaxed posture, I figured I wasn’t too late.

“Yeah,” Lynlyn nodded, flicking a clock into existence with a gesture. “Uh, in like four hours. Plenty of time still to go.”

“Technically it's in three hours, but the first hour is a vidshow episode cut from our adventures so far,” Iria said, glancing at Lynlyn with a smile.

“I don’t suppose any of you have, uh, makeup?” I asked, feeling my cheeks beginning to heat.

“Nope, why?” Iria asked, at the same time that Lynlyn made a choking sound.

Her eyes were almost popping out of her head as she stared at my neck, which was… well, covered in hickies. “Esmie. What did you do?”

“I uh… made some friends?” I mumbled, shuffling my feet nervously.

“Friends?” she asked, her voice rising in pitch. “As in, multiple people?”

I nodded, fighting a smile as flashes of last night came back to me. Sandy’s teeth on my neck, Shiori’s tongue flickering over my breasts, teasing my nipples…

“Nice!” Iria chortled, clapping her hands in delight. “How many?”

I blushed some more and held up two fingers. “I’m uh, an official member of the thieves guild now. We pulled a really big job off yesterday and uh… celebrated afterwards.”

Lynna’s mouth hung open like she’d broken it. “I… don’t know what to say,” she finally muttered, running a hand through her hair. “I mean, congrats, I guess? Sounds like you had fun. These new friends of yours had better keep their mouths shut though.”

“They will,” I nodded, and quickly tabbed back into the conversation with Sandy and Shiori.

They’d sent me several messages asking what was going on, so I hurried to type out an explanation.

Esmie: Tune in to this stream link in three hours and you’ll see ;). Please though, it would really fuck things up for me if it got out so… yeah, don’t tell anyone, okay?

Shiori: Babe, I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s that Sandy dude you gotta watch out for. He’s shifty af.

Sandy: What?! No! My lips are sealed!

Esmie: Pretty sure I pried them open with my tongue last night, so that doesn’t seem accurate.

Shiori: It’s true. I saw it happen.

Sandy: … touche.

“Okay, they won’t tell anyone,” I said, and stretched up to ease my aching muscles. Who knew making out and stuff would be such hard work?

Lynlyn gave a sigh, and shook her head with a bewildered smile. “You think you know people…”

“I, for one, want to hear details,” Iria said from her place on the couch. “What are these friends like?”

Nervousness fading with my childhood friend’s smile, I bounced over to Iria and picked her arm up. Her eyebrows rose, intrigued, then she chuckled when I plopped myself down between her legs and laid back into her.

“Well, they’re both elves, snow elves I think, but like, not all pale like vampires or whatever. They basically just look like swedes but with pointy ears,” I told her, enjoying the way she casually looped an arm around me. “Shiori is so freaking pretty, and she’s really fast too. She’s a rogue, but she relies a lot on magic as well as her acrobatic skills apparently. Then there’s Sandy. He’s a self-described femboy, and he uses a short spear and throwing daggers. He’s more on the physical side.”

“Wait,” Lynlyn blurted, spinning around from the breakfast bench. “He? As in, a boy?”

“A very pretty, feminine boy, but yes,” I agreed, basking in the incredulous expression on her face.

Iria was laughing as Lynlyn goggled at me like I’d just told her I was actually an alien, which set me off laughing too. Gosh, the way the tall raptor woman’s body shook with her mirth made me very aware of how warm and strong she was. I ached to turn in her arms and explore with fingers and tongue, but she’d drawn a line in the sand a few days ago, so I refrained.

Finally, Lynna just threw me a wry smile and shook her head. “Nice. Glad to see you having fun with this, honestly.”

“Thanks,” I said, fiddling with a lock of my hair. Her approval meant a lot to me, to be honest.

Then, Iria’s fingers dusted over the skin of my neck, and I suppressed a gasp of surprise and… something else. Not arousal, I think, it was different. Electric.

“Aren’t hickies just bruises?” she asked, her voice quiet and soft in my ear. I shivered and nestled instinctively closer into her.

Gah, my voice sounded so breathless when I asked, “Um, yeah?”

“So, wouldn’t one of your potions work on it?” she asked, nose brushing through my hair as she spoke.

“I a-already tried that,” I murmured, a funny, fuzzy, almost minty emotion buzzing around in my stomach. “It worked for the hangover but not the hickies, I guess.”

“Odd,” she said, and brushed at them with the tips of her fingers. A tingle spread out from touch, and I sucked in a long breath. Goodness gracious, what was she doing to me?

“There, my healing spell worked on it,” she whispered, kissing the back of my head. “Let me get the rest and you’ll be as good as new.”

I giggled, basking in her attention. “I’m better than new, especially after last night and uh… a few days ago.”

She laughed, and on a whim, I shifted in her arms so I was face down on top of her. I was still pretty tired, and a nap like this sounded pretty great.

I dozed like that until Lynlyn had finished with breakfast, and we all sat up to eat.

"Fixed your neck while you were snoozing," Iria mentioned, motioning to me with a fork.

"Thank you," I said, sincere. She was very quickly turning out to be one of my favorite people.

Her smile was contemplative as she continued to watch me eat, bright feathered mane rising and falling with each long breath she took.

"Have you always been this free and cuddly?" She asked.

Lynlyn shook her head and swallowed the food in her mouth. "Not really. She and I were always sort of free with touching each other. It never seemed like a huge deal, but she's gotten way more cuddly since she got in here."

"I'm only cuddly with you two," I mumbled, poking at a piece of bacon with my fork. "Lynlyn 'cos she's always been my friend… and you, Iria, because you're big and strong and really nice. I don't know, I just trust you both."

“I can understand with me, because we’ve known each other so long,” Lynlyn said, smiling at me with friendly affection. “Iria, though. You’ve known her like, what, a few weeks at most?” Her gaze drifted to our mutual feathered friend with a shrewd little smile. “Looks like she’s taken a liking to you, Iria.”

“I guess she has,” Iria replied, bumping her shoulder into mine. Dang it, she was so cool! Cool, and nice, and thoughtful… and she didn’t want to kiss me again! It was honestly a travesty.

“Oh, Ruth is calling.” Lynna said, shoving the last of her eggs into her mouth. “Time to get to work, girls.”

I was sweating like crazy. Our introduction reel had run and we now had almost two hundred thousand viewers. Ruth had even used some of the footage from yesterday’s market chaos, artfully edited to keep the nudity off screen. I’d sent it to her sometime last night in my drunken craziness.

We were debuting as a group first, and then over the next three days we’d cycle through individual streams so our audience could get to know us. It was so fucking scary, I was about to melt into a crying puddle.

I had my tail firmly hugged to my chest as I watched the camera bob gently up and down in front of us. We were sitting on the sofa together, Lynna in the middle, Iria and me on either side of her.

Ruth’s people had bustled into the house and spruced it up a whole bunch. Gone was our old ratty couch and all the other furniture, replaced with a nice but understated medieval style set. It included two new, soft beige couches with armrests that curled outwards, along with polished wooden cabinets and drawers. There were even some flowers in a vase on top of one set, and a simple tapestry hanging from a wall.

It was all in an effort to spruce the place up a bit, since we hadn’t made a fortune in the time since we’d logged in. The reason that the original plan had gone out the window? Hype. Our debut had been announced two weeks ago, and the FTLN had caught fire from the news. A vtuber group set in CORA? It had been a powder keg with a magnitude that even Ruth had been surprised by, and she was the one who’d discovered it.

Lynna must have noticed my nervousness, because she leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “Just be your normal, cute, chaotic self, Esmie. It will be fine.”

“I’m not so sure,” I mumbled, shy beyond measure. Wasn’t I just a creature of contradictions now?

“Almost time,” Iria said, leaning forward to give me a smile around Lynlyn. “If you get too anxious, just come sit in my lap. The fans will love it and I’ll protect you.”

Relief settled into my body like she’d rubbed a cooling ointment into every inch of my skin. That, of course, led my imagination to run away with that whole idea, and causing a blush and a grin to vie for dominance on my face. Another feeling had coiled itself in my chest, suffusing the air that I exhaled, but I couldn’t place what it was.

“Thanks, Iria. I think I’m ready,” I said, clubbing my confidence over the head so I could drag it back and strap it into its rightful place. Little bastard kept escaping.

We could see chat on a screen to the right of the camera, which was currently whizzing by too fast for us to really catch anything. It was mostly just a mass of hype emojis anyway, but it made me wonder why on earth so many people were interested in seeing me act like a dofus on camera.

Ruth’s voice drifted into our comms channel, pulling my eyes back to the camera. “Switching to ingame camera in three, two, one…”

"Heyo, folks!" Lynna smiled, waving to the camera. She’d chosen to use the shortened version of her actual name, rather than a new one. She figured it would be easier on everyone, including her. "I'm Lyn, and I'm a dark elf rogue who… well, you saw the highlight reel. We'll just call me in training, yeah?" She said the last with a grin and a wink, before turning to Iria.

"I'm Iria, a raptor duelist," she said, with a smile that was teetering off the edge towards a smirk. "I do all the actual fighting."

"Hey, I killed some of the stuff yesterday," Lynlyn huffed theatrically, crossing her arms.

Iria laughed and met my friend's grumpy gaze. "I guess."

Then she turned to me, and raised an eyebrow. Oh crud, now it was my turn.

"U-uhm… hi!" I squeaked, blushing as I turned back to the camera. "I am Esmie. I'm a disaster when you put me in a combat situation so… I like to craft and, you know, make a fool of myself."

"You're very good at both of those things," Iria nodded with mock solemnity.

"Hey!" I pouted. "You're not supposed to… to say that."

"I'm sure you'll live, little cutie," she shot back with dark, lidded eyes.

I gaped at her, then at the camera, then went bright red. Oh fudgehole, she was flirting with me on camera! Live! I could see people posting blush emojis by the hundreds in the chat!

“Only if you keep looking at me like that,” I mumbled, staring at the wooden floor.

Iria chuckled like it had all been a joke, then shifted to watch the camera again. “Well, I guess I’ll go first with further introductions.”

“Sure,” Lyn laughed, giving me a sidelong look.

“So,” the tall raptor woman smiled, her feathers rippling in tandem with her expression. “I have a bit of a background in combat, out of the game, that is. I’ve chosen to use a build that is tanky, but allows me to do reasonable damage by reflecting enemy attacks. As for my interests… uh… well, I enjoy skiing, basketball, and thriller shows. Oh, and mystery shows and horror movies!”

As Iria continued to speak about her interests and the like, I found myself listening intently. She sounded like a really active person, but she also had a thing for movies in general. The cutest part was when her eyes lit up as she explained her interest in retro games and game consoles. It was nice to see her nerding out over something.

We went on like that for about an hour, talking about ourselves and our interests while the other two would cut in and ask questions. It was pretty fun, actually, and by the time it was my turn, my nerves had faded.

I blabbered on about my non-VR games and the shows I watched, then about my ingame stuff that I was doing, like alchemy and the thieves guild. Iria and Lyn gently teased me about the last one, calling me a brat-savant. I kind of liked the name, honestly, so I did everything I could to have them keep using it.

After that, we let them know our respective streaming schedules for the next week and closed the stream. We’d done it! We’d done our first stream!

A giggle burst out of me and I threw myself at Lynlyn, snuggling close and laying a big kiss on her cheek. She laughed in turn and wrapped me up in a big hug. I was let go pretty quickly, though, and the reason became clear in a moment.

Ruth popped up in a video call window, answered by Lynlyn. “Hey girls, that went well!”

“Yeah!” my long time childhood friend smiled, glancing at me. “Esmie was so nervous, but she was fine in the end.”

“You should each take a look at your subscriber counts,” Ruth laughed, showing her huge canines in the process. “Oh, and I have some very good news. I was able to secure celebrity protection for all three of you, along with any further girls who join the CORA branch.”

“What’s that?” I asked, getting up so I could find some water.

“It’s a complex functionality that allows the game to keep stream snipers off you,” the dragon woman explained. “It’s essentially a restraining order that is enforced by reality itself. Virtual reality, sorry. It has a great many aspects to it, like causing you to be invisible and invulnerable to anyone who has your stream open, or who is in contact with someone who has your stream open. Honestly, it’s far too technical for me to do it justice, but suffice to say that you will be able to stream and not worry about some stalker fan hunting you down.”

“Wait, what am I here for then?” Iria asked, her words muffled by a grunt as I plopped down in her lap with my glass of water.

“It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination,” Ruth said wearily. “We had an… incident, in another game branch. Since then, we have always ensured that each generation of girls we take on will have one protector.”

“Good to know,” Iria murmured, resting her chin on the top of my head. “I think I’ll make some friends around here, just in case. Ask them to be first responders if anything goes wrong and I need backup.”

“That is an excellent idea,” our manager said, her smile looking happy and relieved. I guess Ruth was a bit softer than she looked, if she’d been worried about our safety.

“Are we allowed to exempt people from it?” I asked tentatively, because I knew that my new friends might have watched my stream. I didn’t want to be suddenly invisible to them.

“I believe if they are on your ingame friends list then they will be ignored by the algorithm,” she replied, smiling indulgently. “Remember that you’ll need to clear people with me before you can play with them on stream, though.”

“Uh… okay,” I said, trying not to blush as I remembered just what had happened with the friends I was thinking of. I could only imagine the trouble I’d get in if I streamed that kind of thing. Goodness.

I really wanted to go and see them again, they were fun people. Maybe I’d do that after we were done here. Ah, except I needed to go and buy some better alchemy equipment with the money that Sandy and I had made while playing cards. I wonder if they would keep me company while I did it? Just to like, hang out, or whatever.

“Ah, now…” Ruth said, breaking through my internal dialogue. “There are some other things we needed to discuss, let me find my list…”

My ears drooped, and I had to fight a pout. Dang it, my plans would have to wait. Freakin’ meetings. Blech.

The sun was dipping low on the horizon by the time Ruth released us from her dragony clutches. No sooner had the call ended than I had bolted for the door, leaving my roommates calling after me with futile attempts to rein me in. At least, I think they were trying to rein me in. Either that, or they were just asking what I felt like for dinner.

In no time at all, I was bouncing through the door of the Coin, looking out for Sandy and Shiori. It very quickly became evident that they weren’t on the main floor of the tavern, which put a big ol’ pin in my excitement. Damn it.

Were they even online? Pulling up my friends list told me that Sandy was not, in fact, online. He’d logged out some time this morning, judging by the timestamp. Shiori though, she was apparently still in the game. I sent her a message, asking if she was free and telling her where I was.

Wandering over to the bar, I got myself some sugary cider cocktail thing and sat down to wait. The drink had some sort of gingery flavour to it, and they’d shoved a small stick of cinnamon in there too. I stared into the fruity mixture and stirred it with the stick, wondering what I was going to do about my first solo stream. I had a few days to plan, but most of the stuff I did on my own was just eating gross ingredients and then puking, so… that probably wasn’t something people would want to watch.

Nearby, there was the thump of a door opening and a series of light footsteps approaching. I turned to see Shiori, wobbling to a stop in front of me. Her pretty elfin face was pink in the cheeks and all bunched up in a grin as she pulled a stool up and hopped onto it leapfrog style.

“Hey,” she beamed, breathing heavily. “Phew, no matter how much running I do, taking the stairs three at a time always leaves me winded.” The giggle that followed made my heart bounce funny in my chest. God, she was so gorgeous like this.

“You were upstairs?” I asked shyly. I felt almost intimidated by how conventionally attractive she was. Her big, impossibly green eyes were huge and inviting, while the smattering of freckles over her nose made her look all girl-next-door-y. It was an effect that ran throughout her whole character, too. It was like she’d copy-pasted the blonde love interest from a college football movie or something. If she busted out some pompoms I wouldn’t even question it.

“Yeah, in my room,” she said, still smiling at me. “I fell asleep after your stream, actually. It was so cute, by the way. I can’t believe I made out with an idol!”

Giggling, I tapped my feet against the bar in a rapid little dance and inspected my drink again. “Yeah. Crazy, huh? I was so nervous.”

“I had your nipples in my mouth,” she mumbled, biting her bottom lip and looking away. Now we were both shy, oh gosh.

Okay, it was definitely time to hide behind my tail. This was a lot to deal with. I mean, we barely knew each other and we’d already… I don’t know, this was like, a base right? People called this like… uh… god I don’t know.

“So um… what did you want to do?” she asked, clearly just as thrown by the whole situation as I was. I think we sort of needed Sandy here as a catalyst, to be honest. I didn’t know how to talk to her on my own, especially after last night.

I blinked a few times and stared at her lips, trying to remember what I’d come here for. In a moment, it came to me, and I blurted, “Oh! I wanted help finding an alchemy shop so I could buy some proper apprentice alchemy equipment.”

She appeared to think over my request for a moment, then suddenly she snapped her fingers. “I know just the place! It’s uh… not really above the board, though.”

I hummed in consideration, then shrugged. “Sure, I don’t mind that.”

"I mean, yeah, obviously not… why did I even ask that? You literally helped us steal a bunch of shit yesterday," she laughed nervously, bopping herself gently on the forehead with the palm of her hand. "I'm such a ditz sometimes."

"Same," I grinned, touching her bare arm as I did so. Dang she looked good in her outfit.

She wore a black cloth vest over a dark grey shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up past her elbows. Her pants were the same colour as the shirt and very tight, to the point where I was wondering how the hell she was avoiding a public display of bulge.

She must have caught me staring, because once we were outside and heading for the shady store she'd mentioned, she turned to me.

"Um, so… I know you said you were fine with it last night, but it really is cool with you that I have, you know…?" she asked hesitantly, gesturing down at her groin.

I stared at her in confusion for a moment. "Yeah? I mean, I was grinding against you last night."

"Ah… yeah," she blushed, smiling down at her feet.

"How are you keeping it so flat down there, though?" I blurted before I could stop myself.

Her startled laugh was high, pretty, and musical. It sounded like a chandelier would if it was converted into pure sound. "It's basically just a big clit until I'm horny. I spent a lot of time with the gender options getting it how I wanted it."

"Oh, I saw those," I nodded, trying really really hard not to stare at her crotch. Don't stare, don't stare, don't stare… oh god I looked.

"You're so fucking cute," she chuckled, reaching over to squeeze my hand for a moment.

My cheeks heated even further. "No you."

She threw me another dazzling smile and ducked her head. "Thanks for being chill about it though. It's always a minefield to deal with when I meet people who… you know. I just hated the idea of not being true to myself when I was making my character."

Despite the somewhat serious topic, I couldn't help a little snort of amusement.

"What?" She asked, her guard coming up just the tiniest bit.

"It's just funny because I did the opposite," I said, throwing her a soft smile. "I'm… like Sandy, out in reality."

She blinked, slowing to a halt in the street for a moment before someone almost walked into her from behind. An exchange of insults with the guy later, and she glanced back at me. "You're a boy out there?"

"I guess so," I shrugged. "At least… I thought I was."

"Well, I mean… I get that," she chuckled darkly. "I'm transgender, so yeah, I definitely get that."

"I… that's the thing where you turn into a girl or a boy right? Like, the opposite of the one before?" I asked, cringing at my complete lack of eloquence. God, I was walking with the social equivalent of two left feet right now.

"Yeah," she nodded, amusement dancing in her deep green eyes. "But also no. It's a whole thing. I can't be bothered explaining the complexities right now, though. It’s exhausting sometimes."

"No problem," I told her, reaching out to squeeze her hand. "I meant more… literally though. When I first got into VR, I didn't have a body scan. The computer had just my genetic signature and my search history to go off, and… well, I sort of looked like neither boy nor girl. So yeah, dunno?"

“Oh!” she said, eyebrows rising in surprise. “Maybe you’re intersex then?”

I shrugged and slipped my arm around hers. “Don’t know. I’m not in any rush to find out anyway, since I’m in long term storage now.”

She was silent for several long seconds, her face unreadable, then she suddenly smiled and turned to face ahead again. “Makes sense. We’re almost there, by the way.”

We arrived at what appeared to be a rundown old warehouse with a bored looking pair of workers outside. Inside, though, we found a thriving, bustling flea market, except it was full of probably stolen goods. Shiori deftly maneuvered us through the place, until we came to a stall that was selling various alchemical instruments.

With the funds I had at that point in time, I was able to afford a cute little apprentice’s alchemy set, and a box full of proper glass potion bottles. The owner even said he’d hold another box for me when I said I’d probably need more later.

Everything was shoved into my inventory for safekeeping, and then we were out of there. Shiori said that things could sometimes get out of hand in the lawless market, so it was best to get in and out quickly.

“Thank you so much,” I said once we were out. “I’d never have found this place, and now I think I have an idea for something to do in my first solo stream.”

Dodging a horse and rider who appeared to be in a hurry, she gave me a shy, happy look and replied, “I’m just happy to help a nice, pretty girl.”

“This face is based on that body I was talking about, by the way,” I said, threading my arm through hers again to keep us together as the streets bustled with people going home. “I barely changed anything other than uh… defining the gender.”

“Well, then I guess I can say with certainty that you, Esmie, are a very pretty girl,” she said, reaching over with her other hand to boop me on the nose. “A pretty girl who is going to be very famous soon, I just know it.”

“Maybe,” I blushed, uncertain how to take the compliment. It made me feel all fuzzy inside.

“Definitely,” she said, booping me again.

Oh gosh, she was being very friendly. Now I wanted to kiss her again. I wonder if she’d… wait, I knew how to find out. I had to use words.

“So… uh, want to go back to the tavern?” I asked, giving her a look that told her exactly what I was thinking.

She glanced down at her feet bashfully. “I… um…”

Oh crud, she didn’t want to. I’d stepped too far. “Sorry, it’s okay if you don’t want to… I mean we can just—“

“No, no! I’m a bit too tired to deal with all the craziness of the tavern, so I was thinking maybe we could go up to my room?” she asked quickly, interrupting my spiral into embarrassment.

My stomach dropped low with a sudden burst of arousal. “Yes…” I whispered, looking into her hopeful, lidded green eyes. “Yes please.”