Complete Lake Horatio A Pleasant Tsun Afternoon

[Lady N]

Lake Horatio

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A sunny afternoon at the beautiful Elven settlement of Horatio. A gentle breeze carried the sent of the local floral and a flock of birds flew by overhead. Why one of the birds were certainly strange looking... and quite low at that... wait...it was a bird of steel? Indeed, something in this gorgeous sight was very out of place.. A girl with steel hair like wings was several feet out over the lake!

Alright how long can you keep it up? Show me

16,17,18...

Holding still, energy stable but for how long?

Chelsea continued to watch the status of her gear. Her arms out to her sides as a small translucent screen hovered in front of her eyes. Legs close together to create balance. Her twin thrusters extended as waves of energy kept her aloft. If you saw what looked like a pink metal T hovering over the edge of Lake Horato.... That would be her.

21,.22,23...

The energy meter was dropping but she did not relent.

29,30,31...

About a quarter left now.

35,36....

And... descend.

Chelsea wobbled in the air now, a stark contrast to the elegant hovering from earlier. Her feet hit the water hard as she descended in a rush to reach solid ground again The raven hair fell to her knee on the shallow lake edge. Still, she managed to get up and walk the rest of the way to the grass. Chelsea went on to open a new screen with a gesture of her wrist. Typing, [COMMAND EJECT_INVASIVE_SUBSTANCES=LEGS] The N suit promptly began to discharge any water that had entered the leg and foot area.

With that dealt with she dismissed the suit with another command input and took out a small device from her storage. Sitting down by a tree she began to make writing motions with her finger on it.

 

[Tristaria]

Tristaria had been watching this one for a while. Flaunting that super advanced magitech suit... why it was practically magia appropriation! Worse: she was challenging Tristaria's dominance as Terrasphere's top Aerophile! And it was precisely this girl who'd driven her to go all in! To take the full plunge! She would become the living airplane she was always meant to be and show up this quaint poser!

Tristaria's journey led her to Lake Horatio. Standing on a hill overlooking it, she watched the girl cut through the air with incredible grace and precision showboating that didn't impress her at all. Soon enough, she'd landed. Already? Pfft. Time to show her what true aerodynamics could achieve.

As the girl took a seat by a lone tree, she was overshadowed by the silhouette of... an airplane? Tris spread the wings of her jacket, glancing back at her with a complete and total lack of emotion. But she didn't need emotion to exude pure smugness. Having paused simply to pose for her, the wing suit was spread out like a proud peacock displaying its dazzling feathers.

Once Tristaria was satisfied that this pitiful rival had properly basked in the beauty, the aerodynamic form, the elegance that she'd become... she leaned forward, ready for takeoff. Unlike the brutish touch-based controls, Tris merely had to signal the jets on her back with a command from her antennae: as effortless as a word from her mouth. There was just one, minor problem... she'd never done this before.

One might think, in a rational frame of mind, that a small test flight might be in order before showing off in front of a rival. This would've made perfect sense, of course, if she weren't so rushed to show up the test flights of the other girl. After all, this wasn't finished product vs. finished product, it was prototype vs. prototype. She was confident her prototype was built for a perfect, smooth flight.

...but Tristaria's prototype was on backwards.

As the jets spun up, Tris leaned forward further, prepared to be launched up gracefully into the air. However, she didn't even have a second to react as her jetpack violently yanked her backward, head first. In a moment, the elegant plane girl had turned into a marble, rolling backwards in a prolonged somersault as the jets repeatedly smacked her to the ground.

Tristaria stopped as she abruptly collided with a distant tree, having "flown" the exact opposite direction of the lake, and carved a deep path in the ground rather than the sky. A dull voice came from the scuffed up magia.

Oww.

It was at times like these, Tris appreciated the suppression of shame her race afforded to her.

...but it really wasn't enough...

@Lady N

 

[Lady N]

When the shadow of what looked like some kind of bird monster fell over her, Chelsea immediately looked up. In the past, she may have ignored it as she became lost in her work but the dangers of this game did not allow for that anymore. One never knew when some group of tinhead dudebros would come and drag her their AI leader. However, what she saw was not exactly... threatening.

*Stare*

It was that one robot from before. ....They were called magia or something stupid like that. Odd that a race suddenly came into existence. That meant the programmers had the gull to actually add things to their twisted creation. The Nexon simply watched her silently as the magia seemed to be trying to... show off?

A slight frown began to form on Chelsea's face.

The winged magia went on to attempt some sort of maneuver. Chelsea's eyes immediately noticed something about the thrusters the robo girl had and her frown didn't change. Instead, her eyelids dropped as she kept silently staring.

And there it was.

Sigh...

....Always double-check equipment beforehand.... stupid.

Chelsea's eyes went downwards as she then went back to writing on her device. Leaving the silly magia in a heap.

@Tristaria

 

[Tristaria]

Ngh...

Tristaria slowly peeled herself off of a robot-shaped indent on the tree.

I checked plenty!!

Never had a more obvious lie been told, but the moment made Tris burn hot inside, and she'd snapped back in frustration. Quickly regained her composure, she snatched her thoroughly beat-up jetpack from the ground where it'd flung off to.

Bent rotor blades. That's... not ideal.

It was laughably cheap to replace such tiny parts, but sadly, she hadn't made any spare material in her rush. Absurd deadlines were the bane of productivity.

Dismissing the jetpack into her inventory, Tris turned her attention to the girl ignoring her. She'd seen her before once. Clearly, her temperament hadn't improved since then. All silly extremely serious competitions aside, she'd been one of the few people there with the sense to properly understand people were dying, not getting trapped in a game.

Tris had grown a little distracted by the flying around, but truthfully, there was a much more important conversation she'd meant to have...

You know, I've never seen a more... careful, piece of software than Terrasphere. Fully encrypted data transmission, a complex IP proxy system...

The real question: was that earlier outburst because of knowledge, or just emotions.

It's effectively impossible for someone to take it down... from the outside anyway...

@Lady N

 

[Lady N]

Finally the quiet girl looked up. Her eyes fixated on the magia's. Sadly it was impossible to tell what the machine was thinking. So Chelsea relented her stare and held her notepad close to her as she leaned against the tree. The gentle breeze continued to create a pleasant atmosphere in a game that was anything but.

The two, one, human and one machine held equally blank expressions until Chelsea spoke.

"...You aren't wrong. It's even more than that. Some things that should be a part of the design.... are not even present. It's a literal ghost server. If you delete the file containing the QR code. It can return or even prevent you from deleting it. The reports vary."

Chelsea's eyes shifted as she now watched a rabbit approach. It wiggles its nose at her before hopping away. What was the difference between it and a real life rabbit? On the inside everything, but on the outside...

"...Why would anyone that isn't stupid play this deathtrap?"

The magia had mentioned not shutting it down from the outside so...

"....From within the game then? In this state? ....That sounds like a terrible idea."

They would need to figure out how to bypass a firewall for certain. Also, their bodies were made of code that surely the game creators could just delete on demand. It was the most ridiculous idea ever to be honest. Unless she meant to... find the HQ of the creators and infiltrate? It's not like Chelsea had no real plan either...

@Tristaria

 

[Tristaria]

Tris listened, but she wasn't exactly buying everything she was told. A QR code "undeleting" itself? That didn't happen.

Are you sure those aren't just idiots who don't know how to delete a picture? There's a lot of ignorant panic surrounding this game...

She raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and continued listening. Maybe'd she'd investigate the file later. In Cadence's case, she'd thoroughly quarantined it, but the conversation was starting to make her a bit uneasy, even if in principle, the idea of self-restoring PNGs was downright absurd.

Well you're here.

Which begged a fairly obvious question: why was this girl here? She obviously loathed the game's ability to kill people, perhaps as much as Tris did. And yet, here she was, engaging with it by creating that... decently effective magitech suit.

Every system has a flaw, and every flaw opens the door to exploits. Shut the system down, find the ones responsible, or... at the very least, wreck the game and make it unplayable, so innocent people stay away. If you know anything that would help...

Tris glanced around, as if being watched. It was clear from very early on that players openly criticized the game without repercussions, but still one always had to watch out for the eyes of prying admins.

We both might say it would help to have a capable ally, if we're after the same thing...

@Lady N

 

[Lady N]

Chelsea's face went from pale and stoic to red and flushed as she closed her eyes and with a shifting of her lips she recomposed herself. Why was she here? Was this droid calling her an idiot? Well...

...Was she?

Chelsea thought about how ridiculous what she said was, but it was what it was. Partly why she could never get this game out of her head was how absolutely mad it all seemed. Her father too, he would never have difficulty figuring this out. Why did he leave her? Why did he let Nexus fall into the hands of...

Boo, there was no way a Nexon would be so emotional.

"..Tsk. It is obvious you don't understand well enough then. ..L-lets just say I have my reasons for knowing certain things. I have my reasons for being here as well."

This "girl" may have been annoying.. but she did know a thing or two... maybe. As the magia continued speaking, it became more and more obvious she was drilling the Nexon to find out things Chelsea was not interested in revealing to someone she couldn't trust. Surely she could never trust this robot with anything. Just... look at how she flew earlier! Although making the game unplayable... was such a stupid idea, but it almost made the quiet girl smile a little. If only it would be that easy. That would not answer her questions though.

This magia wasn't worth any more time today though. Chelsea had better things planned today... no doubt.

"...You? A capable ally? You can't even handle your own equipment. Hmph!"

Chelsea then opened her investigation mode and looked up the girl's name, Tristaria. Why? Because she wanted to know the name of the stupid she would now ignore.

That's why.

@Tristaria

 

[Tristaria]

Tristaria's face went from emotionless, to emotionless, to emotionless, in that order. This girl seemed to react to something she'd said, but what it was... Tris had no idea. She didn't care much to anyway. The best way to get past an insult was to push the conversation forward fast enough it was forgotten. That was her strategy, anyway.

I assume that's because you have the good sense not to give me random personal information. I'm sure not going to tell you, or anyone else, anything more about me than you absolutely need to know.

Tris was seriously annoyed by the insult Tris wasn't the slightest bit phased by the insult, offering a slight smile. She'd prepared for the conversation ahead of time...

Try summoning your magitech, activating it, and dismissing it, all at once.

She didn't wait, performing the act herself. To the raven-haired girl, all she'd see was the jetpack materializing for a brief moment before vanishing again. Tris, on the other hand, watched as the item's info box repeatedly performed its intro animation in an endless loop, appearing and reappearing and reappearing...

The assumption (admittedly not a guaranteed one, given her magitech was vastly superior different), was that she'd see a similar glitch trying it herself. Tris could only hope.

Not operating things correctly is my specialty, and it's only a matter of time before I mishandle something important~

Nice save! She didn't expect it to go like that completely planned that from the beginning, wandering off slowly with the faintest of smug looks and seriously hoping that glitch applied universally so she didn't just look like an idiot.

@Lady N

 

[Lady N]

Wasn't this supposed to end now?
Boo... how annoying.

Chelsea would not look back up until Tristaria made some sort of silly suggestion about repeatedly summoning and desummoning her gear. What on earth was this girl talking about? Was she trying to cover for her mistakes with excuses?

BOO!

Chelsea put her writing device away and finally stood up. The two were now eye to eye when the Nexon spoke again adjusting her sleeve to reveal a bracelet on her wrist.

"....Fine."

Putting two fingers on the bracelet's touch-sensitive activation button. Bright lines of light drew themselves over her body, forming the shape of her suit in a wireframe, then filling in various details, until a smooth metallic surface filled in the "drawing" to complete the donning of the gear.

It may have sort of taken longer than the magia but it was obviously far superior in every way. She surely never found it in some weird dungeon during her first ventures into the stupid game anyway. She had put many of her own touches on it herself after all.

"Stare."

She opened the hovering screen and once again put her gear away. It vanished the same way it came but in reverse. She did it one more time before stopping with a sigh and rubbing the bracelet. It remained stuck to her skin and didn't show any movement as she rubbed the area around it.

"...I'm done here. I have to continue to check the progress of thi... of my suit. It's the only remotely enjoyable thing in this deathtrap. More than talking to you anyway."

As she prepared to log out she added.

"If you aren't the biggest stupid wanting to die in here, I'd advise you to at least let me go over your equipment if you can't do it yourself. Sigh... which it looks like you can't. I'm Lady N...and now I'm leaving."

And with that, she exited the game.

@Tristaria

 

[Tristaria]

Tris had serious trouble reading this girl. She did as requested, so at least there was that, and it seemed that something had happened, so at least Tris didn’t look like a complete jester. Even so, imagining the girl to be amazed with her might’ve been a bit much to ask, admittedly.

I see.

Tris crossed her arms (which looked pretty bizarre actually, given her winged jacket) and let the girl continue. She ended it with an offer that Tris assuredly would never take, and what might’ve been the briefest, most dismissively tacked-on introduction she’d never heard in her life.

I’m Tristaria. Bye.

Normally, Tristaria might’ve taken the effort to add a little more info than just a name, but this "Lady N" left her no time to say anything more. She actually kinda appreciated that direct approach. Either way, she was gone, and Tris was alone.

Well, that was strange.

Tris moved on, intent on fixing her jetpack to make up for some of the shame of today’s incident.

@Lady N