My eyes slowly fluttered open as the warm weight pressing on my back shifted. My bedmates were starting to stir too, but I was definitely the first one awake. A relaxed smile crossed my face as I felt Nitra in front and Lea behind me in my small bed. Tightening my grip around her semi-metallic body, I nuzzled my head into Nitra’s chest and let out a happy sigh. My tail found its way around Lea’s leg, curling around it affectionately as I felt her settling back down again behind me.
The memories of the day before came back, like a warm blanket on a winter’s night. My hands had slipped into Lea and Nitra’s as we found our way out of the docking ring and into the commerce section of Union Station’s massive structure. The two towered over my smaller frame, but in that moment it had just felt right.
The two guided me towards the more practical side of the massive mall’s selection of stores where a variety of weapon and armour smith stores had been set up. Most of these were player owned and NPC ran, though there were always a few players around who wanted to play the ‘old grisled shopkeeper’ archetypes.
I smiled to myself softly as I remembered Lea’s rant about one of the shops in particular - a place called Corsair’s Constabulary, which apparently had sold her a shoddy pistol that had nearly gotten her and Soren killed on an earlier mission. It had been by sheer spite that she had managed to disassemble and repair the gun mid-fire-fight in order to save the pair as Soren ran delaying tactics to buy her time.
We avoided the place, though I more wanted to avoid letting Lea get dragged into a protracted argument with the shopkeeper than anything else. I avoided confrontation wherever I could, and that included keeping my friend’s temper from flaring up.
Unfortunately that didn’t mean we hadn’t acquired some unwanted attention. During a moment where Lea and Nitra had gotten caught up talking about one particular model of rifle that Nitra was considering purchasing for herself, I had been looking through a pistol case on my own as I skimmed through my various upgrade options. A young man in his early twenties, at least guessing by his avatar, had walked up to me. He had his tablet out, glancing between it and me. I was growing ever more uncomfortable under his stare, trying to ignore him best I could until -
“Excuse me, you are the girl from this video, right?” He said, and my heart sank. I really had wanted to avoid talking to anyone on this little outing, especially him. He turned his tablet towards me, showing a video of the small shuttle of mine slipping out of the rear of the Vagabond and flying towards the asteroid belt. It had been taken from one of the higher decks of the docking platform, judging by the angle. He paused the video on a particular frame, where the camera angle had gotten a good look in at me through the cockpit as I had angled the shuttle around the tower.
“Uh… Y-yeah.” I replied, my mouth too far ahead of my brain to come up with a lie. Not like I was good at that anyways.
“You fly well,” He said, his bold hazel eyes staring directly into mine. Dammit, why did it have to be him?
“... Thanks.” I replied, hoping beyond all hope that he’d take that as a cue to leave me alone.
He didn’t, of course. “Really well, for a new pilot.” He said, pressing on regardless of my silent prayers. “Too well almost. And I think I recognized a couple of those twists from another pilot I used to know.”
“Did you? Huh. Maybe he and I think alike.” I replied as my tone grew more and more annoyed. I regretted the words coming out of my mouth the moment I said them. I winced as that dumb, cocky smile grew across his face.
“Never told you his gender, Sims.” He snarked, using the shitty nickname he’d given me for spending so much time in practice simulations.
“Duke, for the love of all I hold dear, can you please do me a favour and go away?” I replied with a sigh as I turned to look up at the young man - Duke - as my tail flicked with annoyance and anxiety. I really didn’t need to do this here, or today…
“Took on the body of a cute little girl, hoping I wouldn’t find you after our last fight?” Duke shot back, that smug grin never leaving his face. “Just cuz it was a draw-”
“I was in a new fighter with no practice, and it was only then you were able to get enough advantages to bag me.” I cut him off as my anxiety rose more. I could hear the blood pounding in my ears as the creeping worry festered. “You got lucky when I let my guard down.”
He refused to let it go, and the well worn patterns of our age old argument started to assert themselves.“Sounds like excuses, coming from the near legendary White Wolf of Stellara Nova. Maaaaaan… Coming back as some pathetic little shuttle pilot, how the mighty have fallen!”
“I needed a break! Please, just go away! I don’t want to do this right now, asshole!” I snapped, my voice starting to shake as he pushed me beyond what I could tolerate. Why did he always insist on using that stupid nickname?! You forget to repaint your white ship ONE TIME and it’s all people can remember! I wish I had my helmet, then I could hide my facial expressions and focus on the voice at least! But here, I was on the edge of tears.
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“What, gonna cry little girl? Just cuz some hot new blood finally beat yo-”
Duke, mercifully, was cut off by a black alloyed fist slamming into his slightly too perfect face and sending him tumbling backwards. Looking up, Nitra was there, rubbing her hand off on her thigh like she was wiping the dirt from it.
“Trash. Take yourself out, coward.” She said, looking down at him from her position next to me. I felt movement to my other side, and Lea was there looking just as pissed. Instinctively I grabbed her hand, trying to focus on my breathing and calming down from the edge of the breakdown I could feel oncoming.
The other pilot pulled himself to his feet, glaring at the three of us. He wouldn’t have felt any pain from the strike or taken any damage, and in theory he shouldn’t have even moved when struck. But for some reason the normal anti-PVP protections had seemingly faltered for a few seconds to allow him to be sprawled out on the floor.
“Fucking tranny piece of-” Duke started, but a glare from my protectors made him back off. “Next time I see you outside of this station, I’ll fucking kill you.” He had said with vitriolic hate in his voice as he walked away.
I sighed, pulling in against Nitra’s chest a little bit more. Her hand came up gently between me and Lea, giving soft scratches just behind my wolfish ear. I let out a happy sigh, relaxing again as the memory faded. The feeling of the two women so close to me, protecting me was a more welcome addition to my anxiety ridden state than anything else could have.
“Feeling better this morning, puppy?” Lea’s soft voice asked from behind as she pulled her body in closer, making me a Kaela sandwich. I twisted just enough to give her cheek a small kiss as I nodded. This morning felt better than any I had experienced before.
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Nora sat in the void, watching the universe slowly turn below her.
Technically, she wasn’t actually sitting anywhere, of course. The data that made up her exceedingly complex code was scattered around the many different servers and networks that made up the fabric of the virtual universe she was the warden of. That still didn’t stop her from choosing a spot literally above it all, letting her universe spin slowly below her.
Normally the view would make her content, and help her continuous calculations run smoothly through all the actions and all the potential follow-ups to those actions the players were making in her universe. Today however, those players were starting to really irk her. A small group, one she’d traced back to the in-game corporation Delanno, were trying to datamine her. Not just the normal game files, but searching for anything pertaining Nora herself specifically.
She wanted to step in, to intervene, but when it came to players getting into the code, that was something only the flesh and blood developers at Saytence could do. She’d made appeals to them in the past, but they remained steadfast that she wasn’t allowed to play with the game’s code what-so-ever. Something about being afraid she would alter herself and give her what they called Skynet-levels of global dominance.
She rolled her imagined eyes at that one. As if killing all the humans would be a practical solution for her. She wanted to watch them enjoy her stories, and there was little likelihood she would ever alter her core programming so much as to touch that aspect of herself. It was her favourite part of who she was.
Still, she couldn’t let this datamining continue. The devs were being delayed on it. There were other aspects of the game that required more immediate attention, and pressure was being placed on them from above.
… Okay, maybe there were a few humans she would personally like to see removed from the problem, but that was only because they hurt her team of developers.
Pushing those impulses aside, she put together a small message package to one of her favourite new tools, and sent it off. Artemis would likely have fun with the ones near her little sector of space, but there was another group closer to another little pet project of hers. Probably best not to send the dataset to Kaela though… Who else was there who could reasonably know about this?
Nora double checked the roster for the Vagabond, until her eyes landed on the name Autumn. There was something off about Autumn’s player data though, it wasn’t your standard…
The Narrator chuckled to herself as she saw the data and where it came from, feeling the answer compiling. Alright, little ‘Autumn’, she thought to herself, have fun playing this new card for your friends.
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Yvea sat in the folding chair, glaring at the coffin that contained Myles’ body. The small glass window on the front was easy enough to see their face through, and it was growing more feminine every day. Not by much, but the enhancements added to the chemical soup going into their body was changing things more rapidly than if they had been on the drugs outside of it. The LEDs weren’t helping. There were three of the things across the bottom of the coffin, all showing red indicators. Minimal progress on the data collection.
“At least you’ll never know that pain.” Yvea glowered at the coffin. She was getting more and more tired, and getting less and less sleep. Things were not going well for Phase Three of her projects, and Lori made sure she knew that. Things were moving too slow, they needed this product to be ready for the end of the quarter.
But they weren’t getting data fast enough. They should’ve brought Myles in faster, gotten things started sooner - but she knew that couldn’t have happened. The Behemoth had only been finished the same day Myles had arrived.
The pencil snapped in her hand, and with a sigh she tossed it to the side into the small pile of other former pencils that had suffered the same fate.
“Hurry up.” She demanded of Her creation in the coffin. Her temper rose as she got to her feet and the need burned in her heart. “I need you to hurry UP!” Yvea screamed at the coffin, throwing her pencil at it in her rage. It bounced off, and sailed into one of the dark corners of the room.
She seethed, staring at the Behemoth as the hum of computer fans were the only thing breaking the silence.
Coffee. She needed coffee. Yvea turned, and left the room without another word. Just as the door closed, the first LED turned green.