“Should we maybe go somewhere else to talk?” Sarah asked when nobody addressed her future beach vacation. “We can give this nice lady her shop back. Maybe get some ice cream.”
“I’d actually prefer you stay here,” Nora admitted, kicking her legs onto a small box. “It’s nice to have a break, and I’m enjoying my book. The rabbits have overeaten carrots and are dancing like fools—very amusing. I’m also rather curious about the story, to be honest.”
“Sweet. I can definitely get behind that. Those rabbits—” Sarah cut herself off and shook her head, ridding herself of the questions regarding Nora’s book. “Well, anyway. I suppose you’ll want to know the story. You’re an NPC, so that makes... perfect sense. Frosty the Bear is pretty interesting. Hey Nora, do you have any extra chairs?”
Sarah, obviously, did not think an NPC being interested in unrelated stories made sense. Nora didn’t address her; instead, she went to find extra chairs in her back storeroom.
“We should probably go, right?” Taylor Lynn asked after Nora was gone. “You and Jay are going to want to catch up. We still need to go hit level twenty, too.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re Jay’s friends,” Sarah said, waving the idea away. “Besides, you have to hear this story. It will be a good one, and I’m an excellent storyteller.”
Shuffling over toward Jenny, Sarah ruffled the material of the other young woman’s orange dress. “Traffic cone orange is definitely a bold choice. I think I’m going to like you. Luckily, you’re so pretty it’s working for you.”
Sarah’s voice was genuine. Jenny was momentarily taken aback, but her face quickly formed a big smile. Sarah started chatting to Jenny about things too rapidly for Jay to overhear. Ken, mainly through practice with his sister, was somehow managing to keep up. Actually, it was the happiest that Jay had ever seen him.
Watching Jenny and Sarah made one thing clear to Jay: two kindred, optimistic souls had found each other. He only needed to pray that Sarah wouldn’t have too much influence on Jenny.
While they were talking, Jay went over to whisper in Taylor Lynn’s ear. “I think you and I should catch up after I talk to Sarah. Before you finish leveling. Can we?”
Taylor Lynn, a little surprised, whispered back, “Sure, I’d love to.”
Sarah caught wind of the whispering and turned to face the pair of them. Jay tensed, expecting some kind of weird lovebird attack. Some sort of sarcastic remark about sitting in trees. It was worse.
“Secrets, secrets, are no fun, secrets, secrets—” Sarah teased, moving her whole body to punctuate every word. As luck would have it, she was cut off again. Not by herself this time, but by Nora returning.
“—pretty small chairs, but there’s several of them. They should be just fine.” Nora was carrying a mountain of small wooden chairs. They were colored in pastels, looking like they belonged at a tea party instead of the current gathering. She had not stacked them efficiently, so the tower was leaning like it could fall at any moment.
Everyone rushed forward to help Nora with the tea set chairs, which prevented them from toppling to the floor and shattering into little pieces. Once the chairs were set, Nora grabbed a matching table, which the group set out. Excusing herself from the tea-that-wasn’t-tea, Nora returned to her chair and book.
“Alright,” Sarah said, gesturing wildly for everyone else to quiet down. “We all know why we gathered here today. Obviously, it is because of me, which is only fair, because I am awesome. I have an exceptional story prepared for us today. It involves bears, old ladies, paladins, and a homeless man named Jericho.”
Jay rolled his eyes but also felt himself being slowly pulled into the story. Admittedly, Sarah did a fantastic job placing the lead to build interest. He was still most interested in the anthropomorphic bear, but everyone else seemed wholly invested in the story. Even Ken was paying attention.
Continuing her story, Sarah said, “So, first things first, I show up in my little car to this weird future hospital place, right? Crazy, but everyone there is pretty nice to me. I get checked in, and I meet my doctor; his name is Dr. Stranger, which I explain definitely seems like some serial killer stuff. Make some jokes with him or whatever. Anyway, he shows me his birth certificate—turns out—actually just an unfortunate last name.”
Everyone around the room chuckled slightly as Sarah continued her story, even Nora.
“So, he explains everything to me. They have me try this experimental therapy or whatever to log into Tumultua Online. Since it’s a full dive game, apparently, some studies show it can isolate specific symptoms. Even alleviate them through long-term exposure. Playing video games for science seems like bull, but I hear him out.
Jay opened his mouth since Sarah made him consider her schoolwork and how she might be getting it done. She was leaving that part out, which made him a suspicious older brother. He held his tongue as Sarah continued.
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“So anyway, I’m down to try anything at this point. I read the papers. There haven’t been any significant indicators of a downside, even though the equipment is pretty weird. The waste management system alone—”
“Can we please not?” Taylor Lynn asked. “I mean, please.”
Sarah’s eyebrows twitched, clearly unhappy at her story being interrupted. Ken and Jenny both laughed. They didn’t know how Sarah could get. Still, Sarah the storyteller relented from her previous course as she began again.
“The eye laser contraption is also pretty weird. So anyway, they hook me up to all this equipment. I’ve been in this equipment for like three days already. Anyway, back to the story, the first thing I do is create my character. It maps me to make an avatar, I play around with tweaks for a few minutes, but it’s all boring. Mind you, I’m not really a gamer—and now I have to entertain myself for seven days.”
“Sorry, Sarah,” Jay said, stepping into a place where the story was briefly paused. “I was wondering, though. Did you—”
“I swear, Jay. If you’re about to mother me with some crap about doing my homework during this week-long dive session while I’m in the hospital. I’ll… I’ll…”
Sarah trailed off as she searched for an applicable threat. Her typical strategies were thwarted by being stuck in the game. Usually, she would threaten to flick Jay’s ear. Or she’d threaten to mess with his gaming systems. Sometimes, she’d even threaten to text embarrassing pictures of him to Taylor Lynn. She’d done that little sister move several times over the years.
Before she could find a probable threat, Jay cut back in, “But actually. How are you getting your homework done?”
Sarah rolled her eyes. The whole party stared at her while she opened her menus. It made little sense since there wouldn’t be anything about her homework in her menus. At least, Jay thought it was pretty unlikely they created a component in Tumultua Online to track her work.
Finally, Sarah’s menus closed as a veritable mountain of dense books spilled onto the table in a shower of silver sparks. As the pile of books toppled, Jay recognized one or two titles mentioned in his previous conversations with Sarah. It was now obvious how she was keeping up with her homework.
She was still doing the homework, but from inside Tumultua Online. Now deeply curious, Jay immediately thought of how she handled completed assignments. Moreover, he was surprised they had uploaded so many books into the game. The licensing for that would have been complicated.
“I’m assuming all those are unique items bound to you?” Jay asked.
“Yes,” Sarah confirmed, narrowing her eyes at him. “If you’re about to ask me some dorky question about how they did it, I don’t know, okay? I just know there’s a way for me to attach completed assignments to a special part of my inventory. Can I get back to my story?”
Sarah waited approximately half a second for Jay to answer her question before returning to her story.
“So, where was I? Oh yeah, character creation sucks. So that was lame, which led me to log into the game as basically me. I mean, who wouldn’t want to look like this, right? I logged into this village, which didn’t have a lot of options for quests. There was a quest to kill some big rats, which seemed pretty gross but less gross than the knitting quest. I mean, ew. That was the old ladies, by the way. Don’t worry. They come up again later.”
Sarah was starting to get all over the place, but she also seemed to recognize that. Jay didn’t bring it up, knowing she would accuse him of ruining the story for interrupting her. She merrily continued her story.
“While I was killing rats, which is much less gross with a sword. Or grosser. It depends on who you ask, really. That’s when I met the bear. His name was Frosty. I mean, really, guys. Frosty the Bear. He told me about this special quest chain for Paladins that should allow me to find my brother. So, obviously, I told him to beat it. No way did I want Jay ruining my first immersive gaming experience.”
Sarah grinned. In her own small way, she had filled in her “I swear I will blank” with her last comment. The whole table started laughing, except for Jay, since he got plenty of heckling from Taylor Lynn. Admittedly, he did smirk a little.
“Just kidding. Obviously, I told the bear that I was interested, so we made this whole deal. Frosty the bear led me into the city, where I found this quest chain with an order of Paladins. They sent me to deliver letters back to the village I came from. Who did I deliver them to, you ask? Of course, to the lovely old ladies who wanted me to knit. They’re secret agent old ladies. And wouldn’t you know it, they made me knit to continue the quest. I hated it. The knitting took me hours.”
In Romeo and Juliet style, Sarah stabbed a fake knife into her heart. She pretended to topple onto the table, sending her hair spilling everywhere. Turning her head, she lulled her tongue out of her mouth to really sell the drama.
Straightening up quickly, she continued, “So anyway. Apparently, the knitting was a secret message for the Paladins. I brought it back to them, and I needed to pass messages back and forth. They sent TWENTY messages back and forth for HOURS. Luckily, after the first message, they only used letters. Gods only know why. Actually, they were probably messing with me. Bertha and Maggie…”
Sarah gazed into the distance like she was searching for her nemeses somewhere out there in the void. She shook her fist toward them and launched back in.
“So, I still have no idea what they were talking about in all those letters. In the end, they commended me for all my help. I carried twenty letters for them, so that was only proper. They asked me to help with a particular mission, a dungeon to destroy a demon invasion site. I needed to complete several side quests in the city to level up enough. After that, since I make friends way easier than Jay, so I just asked a bunch of people to help me. I even met Carla. Carla was dope.”
Everyone stared at her, waiting for the end of the story. Nobody moved until the silence became awkward.
“That’s it?” Jenny asked, genuinely concerned.
“All the important parts,” Sarah confirmed. “I mean, after that, I got all this cool armor. The knights inducted me into the order for my help. They explained that an allied group in Elvish territory was experiencing similar demon problems and asked if I wanted to help. I confirmed that I did, and they escorted me through the Elvish borders. I met their friends there—the allied group. The friends led me to Ilra. I found Casey hanging around by the gates playing with a cute little wolf—super bizarre, by the way. She told me where to find you, and now it’s now.”
A room full of people stared at Sarah in stunned silence. Finally, Jay broke through it when he realized something was missing from the story.
“What happened to Jericho?”
“We don’t talk about Jericho,” Sarah said darkly, shaking her head as if Jay had missed the entire point of the story. “But if you must know—he was eaten by a horde of demons.”