Shelby flopped against a dummy and wrapped her arms around its thick wooden shoulders, grumbling in AIDAN's general direction, "Unless you have good news for me, I think we should go find a giant pile of wood shavings, or a berm of grass clippings. Whatever it is they sleep on here."

"They sleep on beds, Shelby. Regrettably, I still haven't received any status updates. I will direct you to an inn for the moment," AIDAN was starting to sound downright dejected. Shelby was worried about the little guy.

Her map rotated and expanded to highlight a building a few twisting streets away. She wearily walked through the narrow city lanes towards it. There were more and more rodents of all shapes and sizes busying themselves or wandering around the further she got from the training area, and as she passed through the rounded wooden door into the marked inn, a half dozen mice and small rabbits in the small waiting area stole glances at her and murmured. She rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly as they lost interest and returned to their meals. Was it lunch time?

Shrugging off the sudden spotlight, she walked up to the counter and rapped her furry paw against a lacquered piece of dark wood that made for a handsome front desk. A mouse with short, yellow-flecked hair and light grey fur peaked around the corner and gave a faint smile, "Ah, the visitor. I was told you might come by here. Pico told me she would cover your stay. Do you want to check in now?"

Pico? That mystery could wait until the morning, or... my morning, at least. She nodded and returned the smile. The mouse laughed, "Must have been a long journey, you look plum tired. Come on over this way then."

The mouse ducked around a corner and waved lazily from the hallway beyond. The trip to Shelby's room was mercifully short. The mouse opened a round door at the first turn in the hallway and handed Shelby a small wooden key as she walked into the room, "I'm right at the front desk if you need me. Names Nisa-min-mika. Enjoy your stay, visitor."

Without any additional fanfare she closed the door and padded off. At least that was easy. Shelby caught a brief glimpse of a small, flannel accented room with a long window along the top of the rear wall before she took two steps forward and belly flopped onto a lumpy mattress packed with straw. It was terribly itchy. She was asleep within the next ten seconds.

----------------------------------------

Shelby awoke to a familiar voice, "Shells, wake up!"

She squeaked out a groggy response, "Tara?! Where are you?"

"I'm in your braaain," Tara said with a spooky warble.

"Oh noo, Tara, please don't look in the room labelled 'Childhood Shame'."

"It's too late Shells, I saw it all. There's some dark stuff in there."

Shelby belted out a mournful wail and sat up in the small bed, looking around for her friend, but she was still alone in the room, "Okay, seriously, where are you?"

"Camped out in our living room. I stayed up all night trying to figure out how to get into your egg,” Tara said as if that was the most normal thing in the world.

"I was told that 'hatching the egg' would more or less kill me, or at least microwave my brain."

"Yeah, I saw someone saying something like that on reddit while I was resting my arms last night. Good thing they made these things so sturdy, huh? You would need a way bigger screwdriver than the one we have to pry one of these beauties open,” Shelby heard a muffled knock as Tara chattered.

"Please don't poach my brain, Tara, I need it for my big final exam in, uh..." She concentrated on the system menu to check, but it was still unresponsive.

"40 minutes. Don't worry, I emailed your professor from your laptop. 'Hey, can't take the final today. Stuck in a video game.' It's totally taken care of."

"Ha ha. Wait, does that mean that I still can't leave the game?"

"Yeah. Everybody's stuck in the game. It's huge news! All over twitter and tik tok."

"Everyone's stuck?" Shelby dug her fingers into the stiff wool bedding, starting to feel more than frustrated, "What about you?"

"Oh right! Shells I was so mad at you last night, but I guess I should thank you!"

"What did I do?"

"You burned a frying pan sized hole in our stove. It was raging out of control when I got the smart home warning. Apparently, you got me out of there just in time, too," Tara said with a casual tone.

Shelby winced, the study cake...

She swung her short, furry legs over the edge of the low bedframe and stood up to look around. She had propped her bow and quiver up against the side table at some point during her nap and her cloak was in a crumpled heap on the floor. She picked it up and threw it back over her shoulders then gave a big involuntary stretch. Tara chimed in as she yawned, "Cute inn room, did you start in rabbit land? I think I recognize those high windows."

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"You can see the room?!" Shelby was shocked.

"Mmhmm, I figured out how to enable streamer mode on your egg and now I can sorta see what you see out here. I'm talking to you through your microphone slot, set to feedback on the monitor channel."

"Ahh, Tara's patented streamer magic. Good thing I have the number 47th most popular twitch streamer for a best friend. Very smart."

"It is smart. It really makes that whole screwdriver debacle feel silly in comparison," Tara gave a small laugh before her tone shifted, "How are you holding up?"

"Pretty scared," Shelby admitted.

"Me too,” Tara replied, sounding serious for once.

"What should I do, Tara? Did whoever runs this thing say when they were going to free us from the eggs?"

"Stormsys,” Tara’s silence extended out for a beat, “They... did put out a statement, but, well..."

"Well what?"

"Well..." Tara stretched out the -ell for as long as she could, "They say that they're working on it with all the resources they have."

"Phew! Great! Got any plans for dinner tonight? I'm guessing we're going to have to get take-out with the oven reduced to charcoal. I haven't eaten in 20 hours so I'm thinking maybe we get the extra extra large pizza tonight," An undercurrent of venom had made its way into Shelby's voice, which was currently about an octave higher than normal due to her state of inhabiting a walking, talking rabbit.

"Shells... it's just that there are some rumors going around. People think that this was a hack, and that Stormsys has lost control of the game."

"Is that what you think happened?" Shelby asked bluntly.

"I don't know! It's only been like 8 hours since this all spiraled out of control. People are saying all kinds of crazy things. I just think Stormsys is being a little, I dunno, vague. It feels like they're putting statements out there to buy themselves time. It's really weird."

"Did they say something like 'we are committed to finding a solution that works for everyone?'"

"Yeah, exactly that."

"They're going to let me die in here, aren't they?"

Tara's mic clipped as her voice hit the volume ceiling, "NO! And more importantly, I'm not gonna let you die! I'm getting you out, definitely, for sure. Plus, you can't die in the eggs."

"What do you mean?" Shelby asked.

"Stormsys shipped over a ton of pod food and extended session stuff overnight. There’s seriously like 200 days’ worth stacked up in here right now. They even sent over one of those satellite internet routers just in case our connection goes down."

"What do you mean, what is pod food?" Shelby was picturing some kind of awful pink liquid slowly rising up from the floor of the egg.

"It's… I dunno Shells, a liquid meal that the egg feeds you? It comes in a big bottle that slots right in. I don't know the details and I kinda don't want to know, but the fact is that you are gonna be okay. You could stay in there for practically ever."

"I don't want to stay in here forever. I want to eat pizza."

"I know, I know! You will. Just don't freak out, okay? You're safe! You're not gonna starve to death or anything like that."

"What about like..."

"It's covered!" Tara interrupted pointedly, "They sent us the stuff. Don't worry about it! Just trust me."

Shelby wanted to point out that those were the last words Tara had said to her before she got trapped in freaking Watership Down, but it really was probably better not to think about the logistics of it all. If she was safe, then that was one less impending disaster to worry about.

Shelby huffed out a long sigh, "Fine. I trust you. What's next?"

"Thanks Shells... next, next… well, have you heard from anyone else inside?"

"Not since last night, why?"

"I don't think anyone else has contacted them either. I'm just wondering if they might know what happened. Last I knew, everyone in the game was grouped up in the same area. This was right before I logged out. Maybe something happened there that caused all of this?"

"Yeah, maybe, how do I see who is online?" Shelby asked.

"Check the 'social' menu, there should be a big list of players on there."

Shelby thought 'social' and a menu popped up. She focused on a tab labelled "Player Search". There were some filters that could be adjusted, but Tara directed her before she could read through it, "Don't put anything in those, it'll give you the first 100 characters alphabetically if you search with the defaults.”

She did, and the player menu paused for a moment before it eventually read:

Error. No results found. Player Search cannot be used while in the tutorial zone.

Shelby could hear Tara's muffled scream and a flurry of footsteps before she chimed back in with a deliberately calm tone, "Oh, okay, no big deal. You're still in the tutorial area somehow, no sweat. Just don't accept the tutorial and we can get you out of there."

"I already accepted the tutorial." Shelby reported.

"SHELBY! WHAT WERE YOU DOING ALL NIGHT? HOW ARE YOU STILL IN THE TUTORIAL?" Tara raged, thankfully holding her microphone at arm’s length. Shelby clapped her hands over her ears, flattening them against her head, but it did nothing to block out Tara's screams.

After a beat, Tara was back to her zen streamer voice, "No sweat. Totally fine. We just gotta get you through the tutorial and then you can message someone and see what the hell happened. Easy."

Shelby let herself relax a little, despite all the screaming, it was nice having Tara to talk to. It felt familiar. She laughed, "I hope so, it would be weird if they tutorial was brutally hard."

"It's not. I cleared it in like 50 minutes, tops."

"Okay, so I shouldn't need more than a day or two."

"You can do it Shells, you've got me and you should have your little orb friend to help you out too."

"Oh yeah, AIDAN," Shelby noticed him resting on the corner of the bed, next to her pillow. Did he stay there all night?

"Yeah, very helpful. Do the tutorial. I have to actually go explain all of this to the school and I guess get some hazmat cleanup stuff for our former kitchen.”

“Sorry Tara, and also you’re welcome.”

"My savior. I'm going to go do the stuff now. I will be back. Love you, Shells. Do your game chores."

"Love you, Tara."

Background noise that she hadn't even realized wasn't coming from the room around her cut off as Tara ended their personal stream. Shelby bounced her legs off the bed frame for a minute, overwhelmed.

“I guess I’m going to be a rabbit for a little while. That could be worse.” She said aloud, trying to convince the quarter scale furniture lining the room that everything would be okay.