Yanking his V-RIG helm off, Kyle sat it down and slowly got up and stretched. Winter’s Tale only allows a user to play for about four hours at a time before it makes them automatically log out to “sleep” for two hours, so it still wasn’t that late in the evening. Walking around his house, Kyle was disappointed to find that neither Sera nor his mom had showed up yet, so he settled for sticking a frozen pizza in the oven while taking a quick shower downstairs – though this time he made certain to first get a pair of shorts to change into once he was finished, so he didn’t have to worry about Sera catching him in a state of undress by accident once again!
After drying off and getting dressed after his quick shower, Kyle rushed into the kitchen to get his pizza before it burnt in the oven. It was just as he was starting to slice it that Sera came in and flopped down in a chair at the table. “Pour me a drink while you’re at it,” she demanded while grabbing a slice for herself. “I’m glad I’ve got such good timing this evening; I’m beat!”
Sighing, but not complaining, Kyle went over and grabbed a couple of sodas from the fridge and passed one to Sera as he opened the other for himself. “Hard time after school? Or at the restaurant?”
“Both!” Sera replied moodily. “Detention sucks. Whoever decided that sitting and writing ‘I will not skip school’ for an hour an evening for three days was a good idea, was a complete and utter idiot! If they think they’re teaching me something, I have news for them – they are! Teaching me that detention was invented by a total moron! I’ve never been so bored in my whole life.”
“Well, try it for a whole day in I.S.S.,” Kyle responded, unsympathetically.
“And then Franklin’s is a complete a total mess!” Sera continued her rant, completely ignoring Kyle’s interjection. “The books look like they were kept by a two-year-old on steroids! I don’t have a clue how much of anything was bought, who it was purchased from, who the store might owe money to, or who might owe it money.
“There’s half a dozen, “I.O.U. one” notes in there, with no signature or indication at all of who owed who what! I don’t have a clue if the place made money, lost money, or was used to laundry money for the mafia. If father ever mentions he wants to start another business in the future, I’m going to neuter him. It’s crazy!”
“Sounds rough,” Kyle admitted honestly. “Sounds like you’re going to be stuck sorting all that mess out for ages,” he added, disappointed.
“Not anymore!” Sera exclaimed. “I called father and told him that all that mess was his to clean up, and that I expected him to deal with it. He laughed at me and wanted to know if it was too much for me to handle, so I hung up on him. I just spent the last hour at home letting him have a piece of my mind over the whole issue!
“But,” taking a deep breath, Sera tried to calm down. “Hopefully everything will work out now. I made father promise to hire an actual accounting company and let them sort out the books and all that mess. Tomorrow I’m going to put up a help wanted sign and see if I can get some people to come and put in some applications next week. If that works out, I’ll see if I can get them trained in the basics and open the doors back up for business the week after that.
“Two weeks to get Franklin’s swapped over and running under new management and new employees. That’s my goal at least,” Sera finished, hopefully.
“No one should get that far ahead of you in game in just a few weeks,” Kyle said, comfortingly. “At the rate I’ve been going, I might manage to craft a leather skirt or something by then! I might even get all the way to level five! Or six! The sky’s the limit when it comes to two whole weeks!”
“You get too far ahead of me, and you’ll regret it,” Sera warned. “If I have to, I’ll travel to wherever William is and make him power level me. From what I understand, he’s rapidly approaching level twenty already.”
“Level twenty?!” Kyle almost spewed his pizza he was so shocked. “How the hell can he level up like that? I spend all evening in game and I’m lucky to get a level every other day! He’s got to be the king of adventure or something!”
“He’ll probably slow down for a while,” Sera said with a slight laugh. “At lunch today, Heather and I sat with the guys to see how they were progressing in game. William apparently got caught by an evil wizard and is now chained in a laboratory somewhere being experimented on.”
“Poor wizard!” Kyle said, half shivering. “I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind would ever trap William in a laboratory! I feel sorry for that fellow. He’s doomed.”
“How’s that?” Sera asked, confused. “From the way William was talking, he’s in a hopeless situation until someone comes and rescues him. He’s trapped in a room with no windows, no door, and no light. It’s dark and he’s all alone in there.”
“Sure he is,” Kyle said with a snort. “Let me ask you something -- Who in their right mind would play a game where they were trapped in such a place for days or weeks at a time while waiting to be rescued?”
“I dunno,” Sera admitted. “I have to admit; it doesn’t sound like it’d be very fun at all. Mom would probably have a blast being trapped like that though! That alchemist would probably have to force her to leave when he wanted her out of there. She’d complain more about being rescued than being trapped!”
“Well, besides your mother – who’s so weird she never counts for anything – nobody would want to pay to play a game like that. That means the darkness has to have some way to escape from it. And, if there’s a way, there’s a William! For that much, if there’s not a way, William would be the one person in the whole world who manages to find the perfect combination of moves, sounds, twitches, and commands to bug out the system and do what can’t be done.
“I’d be just as likely to believe your father is a good accountant, as I would be to believe that someone managed to trap William. If he’s trapped in that lab, it’s because he wants to be trapped there – and you know what that means…”
“Poor, poor old pitiful, alchemist,” they both said in unison while shaking their heads.
Laughing lightly, Sera slowly got up and stretched. “I’m going to go up, take me a bath, and go to bed. My mind's just worn out from dealing with everything today. If you get a chance, you’d best log back in to Winter’s Tale and fix your ignore options. Everyone seems a little miffed that you haven’t been chatting with them in game. If you don’t correct that, by the time you get out of I.S.S. you might not have any friends left to play with.”
“I’ll get it in a bit,” Kyle promised as he started to clean up the kitchen. “Honestly, I forgot I even had ignore set for everyone. I’ll log in for a few minutes before bed and deal with it. Thanks for letting me know.”
“No worries,” Sera said with a weary smile as she left and started up the steps.
Finishing wiping down the counters and tossing away the box the pizza came in, Kyle finally turned off all the lights downstairs except for the one in the kitchen for his mother, and then went up to his room. The sound of water running coming from the bathroom tempted him to go peek, but the memory of a bar of soap blackening his eye made him resist the urge. Stoically, he swallowed down his curiosity and went to his room instead.
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Flopping on his V-RIG helm, he logged Kylie back into the game, even though he couldn’t see anything more than pure darkness. Sleep mode sounded an awful lot like the prison that William was trapped in, to him. No doors, no windows, no light; just darkness all around. Maybe, if the alchemist had found a way to put William to sleep, he might be trapped; but even if he was, there wasn’t anything in the world Kylie could do about it. They were simply too far apart to be of any sort of assistance to each other, especially with the travel stones broken beyond repair.
“Ignore everyone, off,” Kylie demanded of the system and watched with satisfaction as the mute icon disappeared off everyone’s images on her friend bar.
With no reason to stay in game and stare at the back of her sleeping eyelids, Kylie then gave the command to, “Log out, Winter’s Tale.”
Back at the black background and blue OS screen, Kyle sat and played around with his V-RIG settings for the first time. For a background, he changed the blackness to a nice view of the solar system instead, with stars and comets leaving a trail of stardust all around. With a little practice, he managed to create a virtual desk and computer which he could use to type on and send and e-mails and such on, just like he could on his PC at home.
Wanting to test things out, he sat down and typed a quick message and then hit the send button on the virtual computer.
Dear Gramps,
I’m testing sending email through my V-RIG. Let me know if you get this one.
Kyle
All he had to do now was wait to get a reply back later, and then he’d know if it worked or not.
Not knowing if he’d hear back from his grandfather that evening or not, Kyle didn’t bother to wait for a reply. Instead, he had fun surfing the V-web of movies, TV shows, and endless articles from across the internet. Before he knew it, several hours had passed and it was now passed his usual bedtime.
“Log in, Winter’s Tale,” he commanded with a slight yawn. Tomorrow was simply going to be another endless day of complete boredom in I.S.S again, so he didn’t feel any pressing need to go to bed. If he fell asleep in I.S.S. tomorrow, it’d simply make his day a little less of a pain!
Stretching and looking around, Kylie made certain that there weren’t any squirrels or vines in the immediate area around her. Vines she could kill, squirrels probably not, as she still had no ranged method of firing back at them. Once she was satisfied that the area was clear, she sat down and unwrapped the bundle of goods her and Heather had accumulated so far. Lots of red leaves, a few green leaves still, several rolls of grey leather, a few rolls of red leather, and tons of various claws were what she had to work with.
Picking through the claws, Kylie finally settled on a ‘Fine Claw’ to use as a makeshift tool, and began shoving it through the edges of some of the grey leather to poke holes in it. Once a fine set of holes was poked all the way down the sides, she sat that piece of leather down and picked up a second one and repeated the process.
Since neither piece of leather was a failure, Kylie decided to press her luck and use a ‘Sharp Claw’ to cut inch-wide strips out of another piece of grey leather and used them to string between the two pieces where she’d already poked holes in. Expecting the experiment to fail and destroy her materials once again, Kylie was pleasantly surprised when nothing happened. Two pieces of leather, twined together successfully so far!
Feeling exhilarated with her initial success, Kylie picked up another roll of the grey leather and began to poke holes in it – once again, with no issues or failure. Cautiously, and while holding her breath the whole time, Kylie slowly strung the third piece of leather to one of the other two. Once finished, she let out a gasp of relief as it too succeeded without any problem.
“One last time,” Kylie muttered to herself as she took several deep breaths to calm her nerves before the finally brought the third piece of leather around to meet the first and sew up the holes between them. For several moments after she finished, Kylie held her breath, before two windows popped up in front of her.
Congratulations! You have created a Ragged Leather Micro-skirt!
You gain 10 experience.
You gain 0 fame in Tailoring.
Item
Position
Durability
Notes
Ragged Leather Micro-skirtWaist10 / 10A very crude skirt made of poor leather.
Offers minimal protection (PD: 1) and the barest essentials of modesty.
This appears to have been created by a complete novice, with the roughest of tools.
“Oh… Ohhh Ohhh!!” Kylie was so excited that tears began to slowly leak down her cheeks. Her first success! Clothing! Ragged, tattered clothing, but clothing nonetheless! After ages of running around naked in the wilderness, she finally had something – anything – to wear.
Standing up, Kylie slid the skirt up her legs and then loosened and tightened the leather strips several times until it fit snugly around her waist. The length left something to be desired; the whole skirt was only about eight to ten inches in length and barely seemed to cover her butt – but it was infinitely better than nothing at all!
Moving, bending, and hopping up and down a few times, Kylie was quite happy with her work. It wasn’t a designer brand or anything, and the durability wasn’t all that much better than the nighty that she’d first started with, but it was the first thing she’d ever made. One thing about it; it certainly didn’t limit mobility in any way!
Laughing and giddy with success, Kylie sat and continued to craft with mixed results until the warning message for sleep appeared once again for her character. Three more ragged micro-skirts, two rough leather sacks, and a tattered leather shawl were the end result of all her work. She’d had several failures, but when working with the gray leather she calculated about a fifty percent chance at success.
The leaves she saved by shoving them down in one sack with what was left of her dwindling bread. The red leather and claws she put in the other sack, along with the other items she had crafted.
“Log out, Winter’s Tale. System Off.” Kyle ordered as he yawned and pulled his helm off. Satisfied and happy, he drifted off and was asleep in no time at all.