The catboy caught us off guard as he spoke up first, the android seeming to be along the lines of the ‘strong, silent type’. Both were wearing well tailored cool grey corporate uniforms, which likely branded them as being from the Delanno Group, a player company focused around mining and heavy industry. Delanno was also an important player in the game’s faction system, controlling the majority of resource production for the Cradle Union.
“Why yes, yes I am!” Soren proclaimed, puffing out his chest as he put a ‘heroic’ grin on his face and his hands on his hips. “You have heard of me then, the great explorer Captain Soren then?”
“Well…” The catboy trailed off, sharing a look with his robotic partner as he warily continued. “We’ve heard about the Alpha Centauri incident?”
“Ah! Yes!” Soren beamed wider. “That time I saved the President of the Union from being assassinated by those disgusting traitor wolf people!”
Lea smacked him on the back of the head, shooting him a glare as my tail curled up between my legs in worry. Disgusting wolf people…? Is that how he saw me? He turned back to glare at her, but noticed how I was reacting and quickly realised his mistake. The damage was done though, as I fought back tears.
“Do I need to remind you that one of our best friends is one of those wolf people you think are so disgusting?” She chastised him, ignoring the nervous looks she was getting from our onlookers.
“I ah… Not you, Kaela.” He said sheepishly, his ego visibly deflating. I felt so helpless here, shutting down when I was insulted. This always seems to happen, I just crumple like wet paper to the slightest barb.. Why am I even so upset? It’s not like I’d even chosen my appearance… Was it something to do with that dissonance I was feeling earlier, after I saw my new character? Fuck, emotions are so confusing.
“A… Ahem.” The catboy said, trying to pull the conversation back on track as he uncomfortably shifted side to side. Was he bothered by the comment because he was non-human too? “Well, regardless of that, we were asked to find you to offer you a job contract. Can we go somewhere to talk, privately?”
“Sure.” Soren said, turning his attention off me and back to them. “Sis, why don’t you take Kaela back to the ship first, and I’ll talk to our potential clients about this job… Amy has meeting rooms around here, if I recall right.”
Lea nodded, giving her brother a disappointed look as she wrapped an arm around me. She began to guide me out of the cafe, keeping her arm around me. “Hey, it’s okay Kaela. I’m sorry he said that. I promise, you are not disgusting.” She said gently, “He’s a knucklehead who gets lost in his own power fantasies.”
I just whimpered in reply, my head resting on her shoulder. I was trying to keep the crying down as she guided me towards the docking rings. It would be a not insignificant walk, and with just the two of us it would give me time to calm down… Hopefully.
“Are you okay?” Lea asked, as we stepped onto one of the many moving walkways that ran down the halls to the outer sections. Her arm was slowly rubbing up and down my back as I sniffled loudly.
I shook my head. “I don’t… I don’t know why that got to me. It cut deeper than it really should have. I mean… I’m not a wolfgirl in real life, right? I’m not a girl, and I definitely don’t have a wolf tail or ears or anything…” I rambled out into Lea’s shoulder. While I knew Soren longer, she’d always been there for me when I was getting emotional and right now I needed some of her kindness.
We stood in the quiet of my silent sobs. Lea kept rubbing my back gently, and she didn’t seem to mind when my tail curled around her leg without my realising.
“It’s okay to be upset by someone calling you disgusting.” Lea said finally, looking out the windows in the tunnel as she spoke to me softly, “You don’t need to hold those emotions in, okay Kae?”
Kae. She was already making nicknames for my female name, and that sent butterflies tumbling through my stomach. Why did that feel so good? I was still a guy, outside of this world. My body was laying in a super-advanced computer and this world was all virtual… So why did these emotions feel so incredibly real?
I began crying all over again, pressing my face into her shoulder again and wrapping my arms around her in a tight hug. She was caught off guard for a moment, but soon her arms were wrapped around me again. Gods, why was being held so comforting?
“It’s alright, Kae… Just let it out…” Lea said gently, one hand brushing hair out of my face as I continued to cry. “We’ll sort out everything later. Right now, you are safe and you don’t need to worry about anything. Do you want to log out?”
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I shook my head. I couldn’t tell her about the contract or the Behemoth coffin, my NDA made sure of that, but even then… Going back to my original body suddenly terrified me, and I really didn’t want to think about that right now.
“That’s okay,” Lea ran her hand through my hair gently, fingers starting to scratch just at the base of my ears. Ohhhhh that felt so good… Good enough that it was able to calm me down and start pulling me out of my pit of sadness.
By the time we made it close to the ring where Soren’s ship, the USS Vagabond, was docked. The ship itself was quite the looker, even if it showed off just how much of a nerd Soren himself was.
Ever since Stellara Nova launched, there had been a large community of people who wanted to imagine themselves being from large IPs like Star Trek and Star Wars. When the devs had introduced the custom ship construction system, several of these groups had jumped on them to recreate their favourite ships and look-alikes in their design styles. One of them, Starfleet Shipyards, was massive in the Trekkie circles which Soren frequented.
As a result, the sleek curves of the ovular saucer section of the Vagabond was perfectly reminiscent of the TNG era of trek, or so Soren said. It swept back into a lower ‘engineering’ section, with two large nacelles on short pylons sweeping out from its sides. All in all the Vagabond was maybe four decks top to bottom, and was maybe two hundred feet in length. It was beautifully made though, so even as Lea ushered me on board, we slowed for a moment to let me look over the ship that would become my home for the next while.
She got me through the docking port where we were met by a tall, burly guy wearing the game’s equivalent to standard body armour. He was sitting in a chair just inside the airlock, eating a sandwich with a rifle slung over his lap. He jumped up as he saw me, but relaxed as he realised that Lea was with me. I guessed that this was the Troy they had told me about earlier.
“Who’s this?” He asked briskly, looking me up and down with a frown. I probably looked like a mess with my puffy red eyes, hanging onto Lea’s arm like I was.
“This is Kaela. She was that friend Cap and I went to meet.” Lea said, shooting him a look that I didn’t see but could definitely feel in the atmosphere as he tensed up and nodded. “I’m going to get her to a cabin, but mark her down in the crew roster. We can go over her role details later. Let Alex know she’s allowed to be here.”
She didn’t wait for a reply as she dragged me towards the elevator that ran up the middle of the ship. I clung on tighter, like she was the lifeline for my very fragile emotional state. It wasn’t long until she had me sitting on the bed of an unused cabin. After checking to make sure I was okay, she let me be alone to sort out my thoughts.
----------------------------------------
“Alright team, so here’s the mission.” Soren said, leaning forwards on the conference table. Several hours had passed since our last conversation. The entire crew was here, including the two Delanno employees.
Apparently the catboy’s name was Koal, and the android woman was Autumn. I’d already met Troy, who was still eyeing me warily. He had short black-grey hair that matched his apparent in-game age. Alex was a lot different, a younger guy with a very androgynous look to him. He was slim but toned, like a marathon swimmer. His blonde hair was longer, pulled back into a loose ponytail.
Soren looked serious, deliberately trying to avoid eye contact with me as he spoke, “Delanno Group’s subsidiary in the Yau Paula system, Elite Hardworks, has been having an issue with their mining equipment in their asteroid mining department. Mining ships and suits will occasionally just detonate into a powerful explosion that has killed several employees now.”
Lea let out a soft whistle, nodding. “Yikes, that can’t be good for morale.”
“Do we know why?” Alex asked, perking up a little bit from where he sat awkwardly in his chair.
“That’s why we’re being called in. There has been growing tension between the workers and the company, and there have been threats of a strike until the safety concerns are addressed. We are being hired to act as third-party investigators to figure out what is going wrong.” Soren explained, with Koal nodded slightly next to him. “We work directly for Delanno Group in this, not Elite Hardworks, and we are going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Yau Paula doesn’t have a Jumpgate,” I piped up, looking at the system information on my personal tablet. “I’m assuming we are going to need to Novaspace jump this one. When do we leave?”
“We’ll be heading out in a few days. Lea and I are both at the limits of our coffins, and we both have work during that time. Can everyone work with that?” He said, still avoiding my gaze even as I stared at him.
We all vocalised our agreement, with Troy mentioning that he’d rejoin us a couple days later than that. He had some kind of training exercise to do in real life that he couldn’t miss. We wished him well, and soon the meeting ended.
I was one of the first people out, while Soren stayed to talk details with Koal. As much as Soren was avoiding me, I was not ready to talk to him about what he had said. The thought he did actually hate what I looked like turned over repeatedly in my head, and made me feel a little bit sick. Putting it off was all I could handle at the moment.
It’d be okay, I figured. I had a few days to spend in the Novaspace training sims, and then learning how to handle larger ships in the piloting sims. It was going to be busy, but I had the time. And, from the sounds of it, I would be mercifully alone during that time.
If Soren was going to be upset over my appearance, then I wasn’t going to give him any wiggle room with my piloting. I may have spent most of my time in small fighter craft, but I damn well wasn’t going to slack off with this ship. I’d show him. I’d show him I wasn’t just a small girl, I was the best damn pilot in this game.
A low growl left my throat as I turned the corner in the hallway, but it quickly turned into a squeak of surprise as I walked right into the plated armour body of Autumn. We both stopped and stared at each other with wide eyes for a moment before she spoke.
“Did… You just growl at me?”