Private Eastern Brisshal That time I went into starter town and accidentally adopted a little sister in a VRMMORPG death game.

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"What can I say except, you're welcome!" Brutus droned, flashing finger guns at her with a grin and a boisterous laugh. "And any act of kindness for another out of the goodness of your heart is Heroism. You helping me with my purchase? Heroism!" He grinned ear to ear as he took a bite out of his treat. Had he been with his friend Toko he might have let out a teasing "Kimochii!" but instead he simply grunted and savored the moment.

"You lost your sense of smell? How'd you manage to do that?" HE asked, furrowing his brow. Did Terrasphere really have so many disabilities? It was bizarre to him, but he wasn't going to judge. "And how does that refine your taste? I thought taste and smell were closely linked?" He couldn't fathom losing his senses, especially given how honed they were in this game. Cracking his neck, he would stuff the rest of his roll in his mouth and begin chewing it to keep him from making an ass out of himself.

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

"I'm... afraid I don't really know!" She offered with a nervous laugh. "But just as I can see magic, I can now smell magic as well, and the scents of magic so far have all been very easy to get along with. I feel like I'm drinking burning hot cinnamon-bun-flavored cider, and all the sharp flavors hidden behind the brown sugar, honey, and the bread's natural sweetness get to come out so vibrantly~!" She explained as best as she could before taking another bite and humming in delight once again. It was hard to believe someone could look happier than she did eating this cinnamon roll without being proposed to or winning the lottery.

As she took her sweet time savoring her second bite for multiple tens of seconds at the least, she of course went on a train of thought between whatever the boisterous man's vocalizations would be, which led her to ask something without truly thinking about it.

"So do you act like this in real life, too, Mister Dahlgren?"

@Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"Eh?" The question was a bit of a sucker punch, had he not just finished swallowing his roll, he was certain he would have choked on some of it. "Do I act like this IRL?" The words hung in the air for a moment, before he ran a hand through his messy hair and thought about it, long and hard.

"I'm not so...loud in real life." He admitted. "I'm mostly the same, same morals and principles and all that good touchy feely stuff. But like..." he pondered. "I think that being as big as I am in this game, and the power to smash Goblins with my canon makes me...bolder. I can be more honest with how I feel, and I'm never nervous that what I'm going to say is annoying or cringey. I can just...speak, and do, without any reason to fear or be worried." He shrugged. "What about you?"

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

Ah, so that was what IRL stood for.

"Having the power to express yourself is something I'm honestly pretty jealous of you for." She gently squished the sides of the treat a couple times. "Even now, I have a hard time being honest about my feelings without snaking about the truth for other people to figure out for themselves, and I've never had enough of a personal stake in anything to want to stand up for myself in the first place. At least, not until lately." She chuckled softly for effect. "The people in this world, I feel, are remarkably kind, but I would appreciate it if everyone stopped trying to sacrifice their own lives just so I can suffer a little less." While she was being truthful, just as she had warned prior, she avoided being too direct about what she was talking about.

"At the same time, because of this blindness, I've learned to feel things I'd long forgotten. Fear, sorrow, despair... gratitude, loyalty, integrity." She sniffed the air just a bit, though she was so unimposing about it that a normal person couldn't have even hoped to discern that she had done so.

"I guess, to summarize, I've come to enjoy this new life of mine, but I wish it could be just a little more different from the real world than it is, and I feel the issue is not the people I find dissatisfaction with."

@Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"That's also part of being a hero I suppose." Brutus drawled. "Being brave enough to speak your mind, to do what you think is right, all of that jazz." He cracked his neck. "If the issue is not the people of the land, or the game, then is the problem internal? Is it perhaps why you came to this game in the first place." He tapped a finger idly on a crossed forearm.

"I suppose everyone comes here for a reason though, right?" He raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps we all want to escape something, to change something about ourselves, and the game gives us a bit of agency in that regard. Allowing us to be the person we wish we could be."

He paused, letting that sentiment sit in the air long enough for the woman to finish her treat and then chuckled a bit. "All that is a might bit heavy for such a wonderful day though, why don't we mosey on over to the woods and I can show your the herbs the villagers tend to request."

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

"You're quite the syllogistic man, aren't you? I can say that I was never one for video games or fantasy before Terrasphere. Maybe you can draw a more satisfying conclusion of your own accord." She was almost teasing him but it really just was the way she was practically programmed to be towards people. It was her comfortable default, and everything else was too embarrassing to commit to.

Well, almost everything, as she was reminded each time she sank her teeth into the legendary dessert in her hands. Azykia took a good while to eat the remainder of her cinnamon bun, as she allowed each bite to remain in her mouth for far longer than any human being probably should. She couldn't help that either, though, but that one was a new habit. Not having vision made her other senses more acute, and not having a sense of smell only compounded the sensitivity and keenness of her tongue furthermore.

Once she finished, she was satisfied to still have the aftertaste in her mouth settle with the scent of the magic not a meter away from her. "I would enjoy nothing more, Brutus-san." She hit him with the speak to see how he fared against it. After all, most every other interaction with a player involved honorifics, so it was really just a matter of seeing how narrow her perspective was when considering the statistical average here.

@Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"Videogames have always been an way for me to escape the reality that was me." The giant shrugged. "So perhaps it's simply because I've been doing it my whole lift that I find ease in seeking solace in the escapism." He would simply rise from his spot leaning on a fence and beckon for her to follow.

"Brutus San? What's up with the sudden honorifics?" He would squint as he turned around to face her, walking backwards. "Reminds me of my Kouhai Toko Chan, she's from japan and is always hitting me with the weeb speak, although I guess you can't really be a weaboo if you're from Japan. Lovely lass, good fighter, if you ever meet her she's an excellent teammate."

He would lead her to the edge of the woods, narrating various obstacles that would be in her way as he did so, and also went out of his way to bring up various landmarks she could use to orient herself even when he wasn't there. "And here's the edge of town, if you give this a tap here, you can feel the arch for the entrance for town."

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

So at least he knew what honorifics were. Then again, you'd certainly have to know if you spent any amount of time in this game. Azykia had all but seen that first hand. Literally, even. Speaking of hands, she washed them with a little hydromancy once the food was off her mind once and for all.

"Ah- You wouldn't happen to mean Toko-ane'-neesan, would you?" Just like she messed with Toko before, she had to style on Brutus a little bit now. It was just too enjoyable not to. "Kouhai Toko-ane'-neesan. So if she's your kouhai, that must make you pretty old, Jiji Brutus-san, da yo." She actually wasn't too brushed up on this particular language and had more fun poking at people with it. At least, she recently learned that about herself. What if it was her age getting to her, like her mentor had predicted would happen?

Immersion or not, she now had another person to terrorize with a foreign language she studied for the sake of marketing, and she was NOT about to let such a chance simply slip by.

"I very much appreciate how practical your directions are. I count everything in steps, but I may not even need to." She followed along with her ar-cane drawn to give his route a bit of testing along the way. "I didn't even know the townsfolk needed herbs so badly as to have brought someone like you to create a regular route like this."

@Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

Brutus wasn't going to touch that one with a thousand foot pole. Hell, there wasn't a pole long enough to even consider touching that whatsoever. "Yeah, Toko and I are adventure buddies. I earned the title of senpai from her in an honorable duel." He chuckled a bit. "As for my directions, I'd learned a few things about guiding the visually impaired through volunteer work growing up. I've found it helps to have landmarks you can use to orient yourself should you get spun around."

He would guide her along a trail, making sure to point out several large rocks in the way by dosing them in a mild spark of flame to coat it for her. "The forest out here can get incredibly dangerous, Hunters and Loggers often end up injured and you need medicine to heal them. Old woman Gertrude uses the herbs to make healing potions which help get them back on their feet." He would motion to a small cluster of herbs.

"Do those show up as magical to you at all?"

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

"That it does. After all, memorizing steps for the entire world wouldn't help you in the least if you had no idea from where you began." She sighed a bit, giving mostly only herself a jaded sort of half-smile. "It seems as though everyone in this game has some sort of background helping people. It makes me feel even more out of place."

As she was directed to the cluster of herbs, she seemed to squint intently at them for a few seconds. "It's very faint. I can only very barely see them. Actually, it's so faint that I'm not even sure I'm actually seeing them or imagining it." The young one gave a soft chuckle. "So let's see... As long as I follow your directions and can get to and from those rocks from just before, I should be able to memorize this whole route without much of a hassle, which means our trade agreement has been fulfilled."

She grinned, almost mischievously, up at the man that towered over her. "Thank you very much, Brutus-nii-san." She had to do it. She could just feel how perturbed it had made him before, and she was practically addicted to anything that felt nice anymore.

@Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"I mean," he shrugged. "Helping people tends to come naturally based on a lot of things. I grew up in the rural south, community is pretty big there. You would talk to your neighbors and help out when things went sideways. Not everyone has to be perfect, y'know?" He would watch as the blind girl would stoop and look towards where he'd motioned the plants to be. He wasn't sure if their healing properties were magical or not, so he'd hoped this didn't come across as some sort of offensive prank.

As she looked back up to him and made her whole spiel, he simply chuckled. "There's a couple more that pop out over yonder if you want to check them out." Her grin caused him to grin back, and he would carefully reach out and ruffle her hair. "Careful, keeping calling me Nii san and I'll start calling you Azykia-chan and adopt you as my little sister."

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

"That's the problem. My life was perfect." She commented simply. "But I still agree with your sentiment."

As her hair was ruffled and his threat was made, she could only retaliate, as keeping a conversation flowing was only second nature to her. Admittedly, she was also a little bit lonely in a specific way, so she was even more talkative this day than most any other.

Honeyhome had plenty of people in it, but it seemed like everyone she actually became acquainted with beyond becoming their regular customer or simply knowing they exist somewhere in town was too far progressed to want to pay this area much of any mind. That was fine, because there was a whole world out there to see, and just because someone wasn't here now didn't mean they were never coming back.

"An empty threat, as I've already had that happen to me multiple times before now." She continued to grin as she followed him along to the next patch of barely magical herbs. "Which, to me, is strange. Do people often see a young girl and immediately think of becoming her sibling?" She clicked her tongue a couple times. "You must know, Brutus-nii-san. What did you think when you saw me for the first time?"

@Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"I mean, I'd boil it down to instinct really." He would reply, taking long lumbering steps. "A cute little blind girl, you look like a doll my little sister would play with. Plus given how dangerous this game can become? How you're impaired? Any human being with a heart would want to make sure you're ok. Thousands of years of social conditioning have left us with this basic instinct to want to form famillial bonds and band together. How'd that movie qoute go...many apes together strong?"

He would chuckle. "Besides, who wouldn't want someone as graceful and polite as you for a little sister? Mine was a brat and made my life hell, and don't get me wrong, I love her, but she was a biiiiatch." Chuckling, the giant would motion to another set of plants.

"But still, you're the one who started calling me big bro, so the ball is in your court there."

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

"Hmm. So I did. I was more so poking fun at people who aren't here that your behavior seems to remind me of. Not everyone sees a 'little blind girl' and wants to stop what they're doing to walk her all across town." She would step up and try once again to stare at the plants. There was clearly something there, but it was again too faint for her to notice without knowing it was supposed to be somewhere around here. She even felt like it might be easier to see than the other one by some indescribably miniscule amount.

"Speaking of which, if you ever call me a 'little blind girl' again, I'll see to it your next jacket costs double at the least." She giggled a bit, half at her joking about and half at how she even enjoyed such a silly thing in the first place. This game was like therapy, she swore, despite the horrific warnings she had received about it. "Azykia-chan will do just fine."

"Toko-ane' calls me Azykia-chan, while Celesis calls me Azzy, and Kaede-san calls me Kia-chan, so as you can see I'm not particularly fussy."

@Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"Kaede?" He asked raising an eyebrow. "I don't know Celesis, but I know two of three of your big sisters. Toko is a wonderful woman, and Kaede..." he furrowed his brow. "We met on some weird circumstances, so I can only state that she's...trying to do her best, and that's the best any of us can do." He smiled.

"As for a pet name...I'm thinking I'll take Azzy, sounds like it has...pizazz." He chuckled and pointed to another plant for her to glare at. "But to backpedal, you have to understand, not everyone has the hero grindset. Most people are here for all sorts of things, escapism, adventure, maybe they're trying to get their rocks off. Regardless, I'm not gonna judge em cause it aint my place."

He could only wonder what this woman was like outside the game. She seemed like she was dealing with some shit, and perhaps this was her way of coping. He wouldn't judge, he was coping with some shit too.

Everyone was.

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

"Celesis is..." She searched for the words to describe such an enigma of a person, in fact wracking her entire silver tongue archive of adjectives, but decided that a different approach would be best. After examining the herbs pointed out to her again, she looked up at the towering hero with a slightly over-the-top goofy grin as she extended her arms in a slight curve out to her sides. It wasn't like she knew what she looked like anyway, so what's a little bit of a silly face anyways?

"Celestine does a talking like this," she actually used the youthful higher pitch of her vocal range instead of her reserved and calm voice that she usually did in order to imitate this person for Brutus, "and does very much the magic of doing a making of her hair shiny!" She ran a hand back with her fingers along the side of her head just above the ear, letting her long blonde hair fall in a slow cascade. "Which does the Azzy a follow of Celesis easier since she can do the see of magic!"

It was strange, but this imitation might have actually made Azykia look adorable to the right people. It certainly made her seem more her age.

@Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"To quote a mutual friend," Brutus started with a grin. "Ka~wai~ii" He did his best Toko impression with a chuckle. "She sounds like quite the character. We ought to organize a family gathering and all go on some sort of adventure together." His chuckle erupted into an all out laugh as his mind played the idea out. It would be nice to meet those who had decided to form a similar bond.

"Now, as long as we keep to this side of the village, we should be able to skirt around the edge of the treeline pretty safely. The west part of town tends to be prone to Goblin attacks from Western Brishhal, the East is being patrolled pretty heavily by some friends of mine, I'll make sure to let them know to keep an eye out for you on the off chance you get lost out here."

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

Seeing Brutus return an impression caught her so off-guard that she couldn't help but to laugh. When was the last time she felt this carefree about being so silly? All of those years of practiced dignity were for what, at this point? They only held her back a little bit at the moment, but the leeway that it gave for the time being was pure bliss.

As her fit of laughter came to a slow, giggly stop, she replied with a grin to his proposition. "A gathering of the family?" She imitated her honorary sister one more time before finally speaking a fair bit more coolly. "I wonder about that. It'd be nice if I could meet with any one of them again, but I've been stuck in Honeyhome while they go and... well, do whatever it is people do in this world, I suppose."

"As much as I would loathe to take you up on an offer like that, I have little choice in the matter. I hope you'll at least do me the favor of off-handedly mentioning to them how I kept refusing the offer. You will, won't you, nii-san?"

@Brutus Dahlgren

 

[Brutus Dahlgren]

"I'll let them know you fought tooth and nail to decline my offer, don't worry. They'll think I'm forcing the whole thing on you." Brutus would shake his head, grining like an idiot at her peals of laughter. "I don't know about Celistine and getting a hold of her, but I can hunt down a willy rabbit woman and an elf with ease. I know where Kaede lives more or less, and Toko is basically my partner in crime."

He would ruffle her hair and continue on down the road. "One thing that occasionally shows up as something people occasionally ask for is gonna be up here. There's a mushroom that they occasionally need for a cure to certain poisons and you'll find it riiiight..." he would motion to a large toadstool.

"Here." He would motion to a large luminescent blue mushroom. "I can't tell if it's magical or not, but it is glowing so...I assume so?"

@Azykia

 

[Azykia]

"... Ehh?" She didn't know that one of them was a rabbit woman. She didn't know that one of them was an elf. "I... would appreciate that! Whatever that means, even!" She confirmed her wishes to have him try and send them her way at the very least.

She followed along with little to dampen her spirits at the moment. "I'm spending so much effort trying to memorize how we're moving about that I'm certain I'll be having trouble remembering which herb is for which purpose at first. Not that I mind, truly." The mushroom did certainly glow, but its magical aura was just as weak as the others. Who knew bioluminescence wasn't magical after all? "My greatest fear is that I won't be able to pull them out of the ground or actually get the correct herbs back to the right person. I've never done any sort of work with plants before. We had gardeners for that."

@Brutus Dahlgren