Author’s Note: This chapter is a bit shorter than last one. There’s one more prologue chapter that will come tomorrow. Enjoy.
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Prologue 2
Waking up in the game pod, I quickly pushed open the top and climbed out. As I stood up there was that usual feeling of disorientation, as I once again was back in my real body. My 186cm, very much male body was quite a bit different than the body I had just been operating after all. There was also the extra fatigue from the fact that I had just finished a 25 hour gaming session, which also meant I was starving.
After performing some stretches to get my body back into working order, I made my way to my apartment’s kitchen. It was 1am and I would need to go to bed pretty much right after eating if I wanted to be able to function at my job at 8am. This meant I defaulted to my normal lazy option of some turkey and assorted condiments on bread. A pretty simple sandwich despite my hunger but there wasn’t many available options, I had once again procrastinated on my grocery shopping and my pantry and fridge were next to empty. I didn’t even have any milk or juice to go with it and had to settle with a glass of water.
I took my time eating, tossed the plate in the full sink, and headed to my room yawning. I saw my phone blinking on the stand with a missed call but didn’t bother checking it. It shouldn’t be anything too important.
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“Hey idiot, wake up. It’s already 7am.” An angry voice intruded on my pleasant sleep. Mumbling incoherently, I tried to roll over to get away from the voice, but my hopes were dashed.
“I said wake the hell up already!” I felt a yanking sensation and I tried to hold on as my blankets were ripped off me, which only resulted in me joining them in going off the bed. I hit the hardwood floor and finally came out of my half-awake state.
“Ouch. What the hell did you do that for Carol, and why and how are you here anyway? I’m pretty sure I changed the locks after we broke up the last time.” I sat up rubbing my head.
She just gave me a look. “Your mother gave me a copy of the key a while ago.” Damn it Mom, you betrayed me to the enemy. “You didn’t check your messages last night did you. I said I’d be coming over this morning before you left for work to talk to you about something.” I guiltily toss a look toward my still blinking phone. She sighed “Oh well, go take a shower, I’m already making breakfast and it will be done soon.”
I brightened up considerably upon hearing that and finally took note of the apron she was wearing over her clothes. She must have brought it with her because I knew there was no apron in this apartment. Carol and I might have a bit of a rocky relationship but she is a seriously good cook. She turned on her heels and left my room. I took note that she was wearing a short blue summer dress and I quite liked the look on her.
Picking myself up off the floor, I grabbed my blanket and put it back on my bed before making my way to my bathroom. I shaved before hopping in the shower. I hated to admit it but the mental image of Carol in her apron kept coming to me and was distracting.
While drying my hair, Carol called saying breakfast was done. I hurriedly finished my business in the bathroom and returned to my bedroom to dress, though I stopped at a pair of pants which would be good enough to eat in. I walked out of my bedroom into the larger room that served as both the kitchen and living room of my apartment, and instantly noticed that the room was a lot cleaner than I remembered it being. Obviously Carol had something to do with it but when did she get here? I was pretty sure she logged out of the game around the same time as me.
“You couldn’t even put on a shirt?” She gave me a disgusted look.
“I can finish dressing later, I have time since you woke me up so much earlier than I normally would.” I stepped up to the table and took a seat. In front of me was a plate with pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage. There was even fresh coffee. Ahh, I wonder when the last time I had something other than toast or cereal for breakfast. Most likely it was back when we were still dating, now that I think about it. “Carol, become my house maid!”
“Hell no. I already make more than you with my nursing job.” She untied her apron and placed it on the counter, then sat down in front of me with her own plate of breakfast. Though, she had a cup of orange juice, never being one for coffee.
We started to eat in a companionable silence. Honestly, this really does put me in mind of the times back when we were dating two years ago. I decided to open up the conversation since I only had about thirty minutes before I had to leave to make it to work in time.
“So Carol, not that I don’t appreciate the breakfast and cleaning, but what did you come over to talk about. This isn’t something that happens very often, so if I had to guess you have a favor you want to ask of me.” I asked her pointedly.
“Well, I was wondering if you’d go shopping with me next Thursday.”
“That’s the day after the update, can’t we do it sooner? I really don’t want to cut into my fun exploration time.”
“I’d have loved to do it sooner, I don’t want to cut into my own playtime either, but I’m working afternoon into the night for the rest of the week and I know you work mornings through afternoons. I even took on some extra shifts so I could have some time off next week. Thursday is the soonest possible day I have time to go shopping.”
“So you want to go on a date next week? I mean, I think we’ve proven from failing at the dating thing twice that we just aren’t good for each other in that way.”
I could see a faint blush creep up on her cheeks “NO!! It’s not a date! Absolutely, positively not a date! I just need to buy a new game pod since I’m giving my old one to my younger brother and with where you work I know you can get me a discount so...” I couldn’t hear the rest clearly as she started mumbling, but I think I caught something about maybe a movie or lunch. I mentally sighed and I knew that despite what she said she was asking me to take her out on a date. I also knew that despite my own reservations about it that I would absolutely take her out because of my own stupid attraction to her that had never faded. I briefly wondered wistfully if maybe third time’s the charm, as the saying goes.
“Fine I’ll go shopping with you next Thursday, alright?” I enjoyed seeing her face light up in a smile and she nodded happily. I decided to divert the conversation from that subject for now though, “I forgot that Steven would be turning fifteen around now. That means he can finally start playing all the more mature games. Is he going to try out M:SP, and if so are you going to get him to join our company?”
“He is very interested in the game, especially since you and I have been playing it for a decade. He actually started a character a few days ago. I’ll invite him to the company if he sticks with it. Actually that brings up another thing I wanted to ask you.” She looked a bit nervous and start fiddling with some of her blonde hair.
“Well? I can’t say yay or nay until you tell me what it is?”
She took a deep breath before speaking “Can I join up with you on the Lullaby for the update?”
I looked at her in astonishment for a second before responding. “No. Just no. There’s no way I’m allowing you to come aboard Lullaby again. The last time I did that, you started teaching my innocent Lynn lots of inappropriate things. Plus you already have a ship, admittedly not as good as mine but it’s definitely up there.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“I let my brother borrow my ship since he’s just starting out.”
My astonishment only deepened further. “You let him borrow the Crimson Raven? A new player with that kind of ship? Are you crazy?”
“No way. I left Izzie with precise orders about where she was allowed to take him, and that he wasn’t allowed to countermand those orders, and that he wasn’t allowed to pilot or use the guns of the ship himself. The ship is just there to help him out with traveling around to save him some early credits and let him use my onboard synthesizer. It’s also not like I’m asking to travel with you for too long. I ordered a new ship constructed that will be done a few weeks from now. I’ll be giving him the new ship and getting Raven back, so I only need to be with you until then.” <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))>
“Still no.”
“Please.”
I crossed my arms and glared at her. “The answer is staying no.”
She leaned across the table, giving me a great view of her cleavage and looking a bit upward at me with a pleading expression. My heart skipped a beat. “Please Aaron, you’re the only one I can trust.”
“I said the answer was no.” I shakily responded, my voice no longer as steady.
She leaned a little bit further, increasing the impact of the tantalizing view and then said, “I’ll make you breakfast every day for the next month so please!”
There was no way to win against this blasted woman! “Fine, I don’t care anymore. I’m not coming back to pick you up though, you’ll have to get your robotic butt to the Gamor system to come aboard on your own. I’m going to be heading out there to farm up some quasigen for my ship’s storage before the update hits.”
Upon hearing my words, she immediately straightened up and had a victorious smirk on her face. She picked up the empty plates and glasses and took them to the sink to wash them. I hung my head down and sighed before getting up to go get dressed for work.
After returning from the bedroom, she was standing at the door and waved to me with a bright smile. “Bye Aaron, I’m looking forward to shopping next week! Oh yeah, I brought a lunch for you so remember to take it.” She pointed at the fridge before waving again and leaving.
“Cursed feminine wiles,” I muttered before walking to the fridge and then following her in leaving my apartment and heading to work.
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I was still muttering it as I got into work ten minutes later. The shop I worked at didn’t open for a another hour, so the next hour would just be spent getting everything up and running. At a VR Gaming store there was a lot to do. I’d have to power on each of the sixty game pods in the back room since we had a gaming area in there for people to try games or just play games together. We even occasionally hosted some VR Tournaments over the shop’s network.
Putting the lunch bag in the break room fridge and afterwards I clocked in. It was at that moment that my boss Chuck came in and heard my muttering and gave me a grin. “Carol overpowered you again, Aaron? What’s she got you doing for her this time?”
“She’s making me take her along with me for the new update.” I responded with a tired look.
He looked at me confused for a moment before clarity came “Ahh right, you don’t like sharing your ship with anyone. Oh well buck up, it can’t be too bad. Plus, you know you can’t really complain about feminine wiles considering your game character.”
I wanted to respond to that, but realized that I didn’t have much of a defense so I didn’t bother. “I’m going to go start up all the game pods and then do a quick inventory.”
He waved me off, “I’ll take care of the inventory, you just take care of the game pods. In particular we had a customer complaining about #22 last night, so run a diagnosis on the systems in that one and then you might as well do the rest of them too. Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours. And it is a weekday so we shouldn’t see too many coming in to use the game room until later in the morning anyway. Well, other than the usuals, make sure to finish the pods they use first.”
I nodded “Sounds fine to me.” I made my way out of the break room and over to the game room to get started.
A few hours later, I had finally finished that task, so I went to tell Chuck I was taking a quick break. He told me to go ahead, but he’d need me at the register afterwards.
Upon arriving at the break room, I grabbed a seat and took out my phone. One of the features the game developers had eventually added allowed you to login your Mercenaries: Star Pioneers account to check your character’s current in game position. It helped for when you could potentially be looking at multiple real life days of travel to get to some systems. Not every player wanted to sit around and do nothing for days at a time, though there were a number of activities for players to do while on space flights, training or crafting being the most obvious.
Of course, that’s not to say there weren’t other things that could happen during long voyages. Pirate attacks and ship drive failures were common enough for anyone to be at least marginally worried about them occurring. Of course, Lullaby’s firepower was strong and the ship was stealthy enough that no pirate gang would dare attack her with less than three frigate class ships of their own, even if they did spot her. Drive failures were a bigger threat, but after so many times going through crash landing events, they had become pretty routine too. Actually, all this was a large part of why I had named the ship Lullaby in the first place. Since Seri was rarely needed for piloting the ship, I usually left her in dreamland while traveling.
According to my account, Seri, and thus Lullaby by extension, were currently about six hours away from Felicity Colony, which meant about one and a half real world hours to go. With that knowledge in hand, I could probably log in during lunch break in two hours and take care of the necessary shopping. That sounded like a good plan, so in order to maximize my time in game I’ll use the rest of my break to eat the lunch Carol prepared for me.
Pulling the bag out of the fridge, I opened it to see what was in there. It looks like it must be some of her dinner leftovers. There’s some roast beef, some potatoes, some carrots and various steamed green vegetables. Oh and there’s a note on top of the plastic wrap covering it that says “Enjoy!” I heat up the plate of food in the microwave before sitting down and enjoying it until my break was over.
The next two hours dragged on and on. Some days there’d at least be some weird or interesting customers, but today it seems like that was not to be. One of my coworkers finally came in to start their shift, which signalled the time for me to start my lunch break once he took over register duty. I went to talk to Chuck in his office and get the ok to use a pod for my lunch break. He merely waved me and gave me the ok with a hand signal, since it was clear he was on an important phone call. I was briefly curious what the call was about ,but well if it was work related, I’d find out later so pushed it out my mind.
I headed over to the game pod in the back corner of the room and got in it. The startup sequence brought me the game select screen. I selected Mercenaries: Star Pioneers and it moved to the login screen. Thankfully, since I had my account card in my wallet the game pod automatically filled in my info and moved to logging in. I felt the usual sensation of my consciousness fading as my mind entered the game.