I was … quite a bit more apprehensive about logging in to DVI on the second night than I had been on the first. Granted, I didn’t exactly have a choice, but now the issue wasn’t just hoping I got a good healer class for my friends group to rely on. Now I had to deal with my Mom, Dad, and little sister meeting me as a fairy priestess. My older sister, Jenna, and none of my friends had a problem with it, but little sisters and parents are different matters entirely.

But, it was something they were going to find out eventually anyway, especially since we had invited Jocelyn to be part of our adventuring group. I still didn’t have anything planned to say other than a shrug and “it was entirely at random” which … did, at least, have the benefit of being the truth.

So, it was with a bit of mild trepidation that I closed the VR pod around me and settled in for a night of gaming in my sleep.

There were a few minutes of grey fuzziness while the systems queued me up for logging in precisely at the regulated time. It was little things like that that really brought home how powerful and advanced the game was. Not the fully simulated, deep immersion virtual reality with a functional world (or section thereof). Nor also the way that us players could control vastly different bodies like my fairy or Naomi’s centaur with no difficulties from the get go. Nor even the fact that DVI effectively added six hours to the day by being played while we slept.

Not the grey fuzziness, but rather that the server could handle all twenty-five thousand of us logging in at once. Everything else seemed too far-fetched that it was basically magic, outside the realm of science as I understood it (well, at least as far as a high school student understands science). But login queues and lag trying to get into a game when a bunch of other people are (such as after a patch or a server crash) … that was my priors, what my gaming experience had led me to expect.

But DVI, apparently, could get everyone in the game all at once. That was almost more unbelievable than anything else about VR.

* * *

My parents had given us the directions to a small, boarded-up shop in the northeast of town. Not an inn or a park where we would be likely to have several different groups of people around, but a little building in a quiet -- and somewhat poor -- residential neighborhood of the city. It was not a place where a lot of players were likely to end up as it was a fair bit out of the way from the gates and main plazas where vendors had their stalls and shops.

That meant the two people, a man and a woman, I saw waiting on a bench outside the building were likely my Mom and Dad. I had the advantage of flying across town, above the buildings, rather than navigating the streets and alleys, so I was there quite ahead of either of my sisters. But given things, I also wasn’t going to be the first of us three to arrive, not if Jenna and Jocelyn were going to take a while to get here. It would be better to arrive at the same time or shortly after one of them, probably Jenna -- Jazmyn here -- since I already knew what her character looked like. Then again, there can’t be too many players that “look like a unicorn elf,” so maybe Jocelyn’s character would be recognizable, too.

In the meantime, I messaged Mikachu.

> I think I see my parents, but neither sister is anywhere nearby. Any luck with finding easy quests?

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Since Jazmyn and I were out, at least for a little bit for the family meeting, Ette had decided to look into mining and starting to gather resources to develop her crafting, so Mikachu and Noa were seeing if there were any non-combat quests they could work on in town. Fetch quest, mail delivery, that sort of thing. After all, a shieldwall and a buffer couldn’t accomplish too much combat on their own.

>> Nothing really. Just mostly looking around town at the moment, sightseeing almost. The only so-called quest we found was to deliver lunch to those so-called guards inside the wall. We skipped it.

> Good call. Oh, someone’s getting close. Doesn’t look like Jazmyn, so I guess it must be Jocelyn’s character. Or a random other explorer ….

>> Well, enjoy. I’ll tell you where to find us when your meeting is over.

* * *

When I got closer, rather than hovering high enough to be unobtrusive, I was able to see the three people with more clarity but also with more confusion.

The two who were waiting were likely my parents -- why else would anyone be waiting in an out-of-the-way area like this? One was dressed as you might expect a low-level chef of some sort to be dressed, with basic clothing, a pristine apron, and a little white hat. The other was, well, presumably dressed like an alchemist, but looked more like someone with a low-quality doctor cosplay -- an overly long white trenchcoat over pants and a button-down shirt.

The confusion was because … the apparent chef was a short, vivacious woman and the apparent alchemist was a tall, lanky man.

The other person was tall and thin, attenuated even, with a spiraling silver horn growing from their forehead. The rest of their figure was hidden beneath billowing robes and could have been a slender man or woman without prominent curves. They spoke before I could, their voice musical but in that androgynous range that was neither high enough for a woman nor deep enough for a man. “Mom? Dad?” Vocal quality aside, their voice conveyed the same confusion I was feeling.

“Hello, hello!” the woman called out, her voice betraying a hint of a French accent. “With the big, beautiful horn, you must be Jocelyn’s character.” The woman’s gestures were expansive and perhaps more than a touch over-exaggerated.

“And since Jenna told us she looks like herself, that little fairy approaching must be James’s character,” the man said in a soft tenor. He adjusted his monocle and pointed in my direction.

I appreciated the distinction between “Jocelyn and James” and “Jocelyn’s character and James’s character.”

“Yes,” I said. “Call me Rie in the game.”

“Rie’s a priestess,” Jazmyn called out as she exited a nearby alley. “And, geez, the streets around this area are halfway a labyrinth.”

“High Priestess,” I corrected.

My (probable?) parents looked at each other, then at me. “It would appear that there are many stories to be told today,” the woman said, spreading her arms wide and spinning about. “You can call me Blanchefleur.”

“And I shall be known as Sage,” the man said quietly.

Jazmyn looked confused and stopped midstride. “Wait a minute, I thought you two said you were …?”

“Names first, stories second,” Blanchefleur said.

“It was your father’s idea,” Sage simultaneously replied. Then he glanced at Blanchefleur and shrugged. “She has a point, let’s everybody get each others’ names.”

“Well, was I the only one who kept a ‘J’?” Jazmyn asked. “It’s Jazmyn Morgana Starbreeze.”

“Ace,” the horned person said by means of introduction. “Ace Arrow, actually.” And then they bowed. “My little golems and I are at your service.” Five wooden figures -- Jocelyn had been right, they did look like those little poseable manikins we had in art class to use for pose references -- suddenly appeared and copied Ace’s bow.

Standing straight again, Ace looked at Jazmyn, “There’s nothing wrong with the letter ‘J.’ But, do you use ‘Jazmyn’ or ‘Morgana’?”