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Lilian Rook     In an isolated medical monitoring ward of Aegis Astray, half a dozen robust procedure chairs have been arranged under soft multi-spectrum lighting, broken up by glass partitions under direct observation from a screened off and slightly raised computer bank. Qualified medical techs with their Paladins green stripes, and a magic healer Chevalier, are on station already, looking rushed and hassled and nervous. Lilian is already present, insisting on plugging in power packs and installing firmware over a closed bluetooth network herself, fixated on an equal number of lightweight head-mounted 'display visors' that she alternately trances out with and marks with differing characters.

    "I've had hours to verify, and I can guarantee within accepable bounds of possibility that nobody here should get trapped from putting these on." says Lilian. "But I can't guarantee that nothing bad will happen to anyone if they let themselves get killed inside the death game. So, of course, don't be idiots and don't tempt fate." She starts directing specific people to specific chairs, weirdly enough. "I've been doing some research. The purpose of these devices is to stimulate brain's sleep paralysis response in order too--"

    Elsewhere, in a comfortably furnished and otherwise empty Watch safehouse, the dishes of the last occupants soaking in the sink, medical trash recently emptied, and rustic wooden table half-swept of its hand-loading tools, pair of Watch intel agents have comfy spare beds, refurbished hospital monitors, a half dozen of last generation's clunky helmet models plugged into wall sockets, a beefy blinking stack of routers, and several boxed copies of the game bought with cash from a mom and pop games store three worlds over.

    "--so basically it'll be just like lucid dreaming. Except obviously you can't just decide you can fly or whatever. The game decides what's real. Gotta say, surprised this got ten million day one subscribers, but it sounds kind of exciting. I'm jealous. A lot of these things are just traditional MMOs dressed up with VR. All grinding and numbers and stats. This one has a whole tagline about 'experiencing different ways of being through VR', 'discovering new lifestyles and aspects of yourself across a living adventure', 'exploring the limits of perception and cognition through a persistent world'. Kinda high-minded. Seems like kind of an open world deal. Not a themepark. Rare these days. I guess it works better when everyone's stuck there and nobody can cheat or look up info on a wiki, right?"
Ishirou Ishirou, hobbling from one side of the medical wing to the other sits in the bed set up for this. People are concerned if he should do this, but he reminds them that it's not physical activity AND he's the best active hacker in the Paladins...so it should be the idea that he goes in! Also, Ishirou is kind of excited to get into a mystery like this and solve it! He so rarely gets to mess with data while on the inside of things!

Laying down he pulls the headset over his head. "Yeah, don't die in the death game, and you all will be backing me up so it'll be good right?" POD hovers over Ishirou, obviously going to help with monitoring health signs. Also storing data while he's unconscious for Mr. Boyshorts.

"Oh yeah? That sounds neat...I wonder how it'll interact with my bionic parts..?"
Surge and Kit     S: "Hey nerd wanna play that new Blade whatever game with me?"
    K: "T-The one they're talking about on the news?"
    S: "YEAH!"
    K: "Isn't it... killing people?"
    S: "Pft. You chickening out?"
    K: "N-No... but maybe it's better if I stay here to make sure you're OK? In case... something goes wrong."
    S: "Aight whatever suit yourself. Oh, actually, think you can do me a favor if the game has a cash shop? Y'know, work that computer magic up a bit?"
    K: "U-Uh... I can try?"

    So anyway that's just about how that happened, and now there are two critters at the Watch safehouse. Only one of them intends to play though, since Kit would much rather make sure people stay safe than partake in something called a death game. Also Minecraft is definitely more his speed.
Forte Forte looks at everything critically. He insists on checking everything over himself, interrogating the Watch personnel as to what their procedures are going to be, and staring at one of the boxed copies.

Then, before he lets *anyone* do *anything* with the equipment, he goes to check the stack of routers - a process that involves literally going into each one, checking configurations and settings, applying security patches and setting up monitoring alerts, and generally giving the networking equipment the equivalent of a deep cavity search followed by an overkill amount of fortification - the sort of network security defense only someone who routinely plays offense could give.

"These are... acceptable, now," he declares, after making his exit from the final one in the stack.

When Kitsunami shows up, he glances away, and busies himself with checking out his assigned headset.
Friz Grit: You are holding death.
Dirt: Sorry chief, this is a visor.
Grit: It is as a gun or knife.
Savvy: It is a current-generation enthusiast-grade visor.
Moxie: I should clean it before I put it on.
Grit: It won't help.
Moxie: I'm doing it anyway.
Savvy: It's *important* that we do this. We've been off-station too often. This could be a work-from-work mystery-solving solution...

    "I get it... I don't see how it could kill anyone. But I see how it could make them be immersed in VR. Well... I'll stay safe. I can't deal with dying in virtual reality anyway." Friz picks up one of the visors, settling herself down on one of the procedure chairs. "Anything else before we start?"

Savvy: If there's nothing else, just rip the band-aid off, Moxie.
Moxie: Gotcha, boss. I'm logging in the minute I can.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Two men appear in the Watch safehouse, each constructed in blue wireframe, filled in with solid polygons which fade away to reveal their realspace forms--one, a short, svelte, gray-skinned 'space elf' for lack of a better word, the golden-eyed fixer known as Phreak. Dressed in grey sweats, trainers and an orange crop top reading 'HACK THE PLANET,' he scoffs. "Yeah, well. It's clever, sure. But it's the 'stuck there' part that's the problem. You good, Berc?" he asks, kicking his shoes off near the door.

    "Verily," says the other figure. A towering man, green all over, seven and a half feet tall. He stretches, rolls his neck with a pop. Clad in his own form of sleeping clothes, complete with a black tank top sporting a threat from a skeleton in the bowels of Hell. 'SO YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST COME INTO MY HOUSE,' interrogates the pistol-wielding hellion, 'OF COURSE YOU CAN--EVERYONE IS WELCOME.'

    "Heya, Surge," says the fixer, before making an unecessary pirouetting backflip into the nearest available bed. "Kid didn't feel like coming along?"

    Bercilak, meanwhile, clambers into his slowly, and with good reason, for the menacing creak it makes.
Rita Ma      Rita, of course, comes to the Watch safehouse bearing "snacks" (really more like a whole meal because she got carried away): seaweed crisps, warm hearty soup, and small portions of her signature soy-brined-raw-crab dish.

     After laying all of that out on the table, she patiently waits for Bercilak and Phreak to arrive before putting on a headset.

     In the meantime: "I've never played an M-M-O before," she says, glancing at Forte and Surge. Forte does a lot of internet stuff, right? And Surge just looks like a Gamer. "Is there anything I should know about that kind of game? The numbers, the things you're supposed to do?"

     In the end, once she's hassled Bercilak for his head-explosion insurance, she puts the visor on and Logs In.
Xion Ten MILLION subscribers, high-minded buzzword concepts, and it kills people?
What a dream!! It's like every part of a crazed VRMMO experience rolled into one!

Xion, bouncing while seated in a cleared-away space, contains her excitement by not being that naturally exciteable. That's...

Basically the only reason. Still glowingly interested, the noirette eagerly awaits engaging with potentally lethal levels... of numbers going up!

"I couldn't believe that I'd have an experience like this. Really, it's incredible. You'd think I was born after the real lifechanging death video game experience boom of the early 2000's, but actually I was born just in time for one that had such a day-one uptick you could say people were signing up just to experience this same experience!"

Xion giggles, realizing her words. "Experientially. It's a once in a lifetime experience, and maybe we'll come out of the other end with some really important memories!"

Or dead! Or dead.
KNK     Rose spends the lead-up to the actual event probing for 'how are we going to step into the trap without becoming trapped,' for which the most substantial development is an iffy reliance on Bercilak's ability to temporarily share nanomachine-based immortality. While Rose and Violet can each survive decapitation, that provides zero defense against the kind of brain-frying effect the old death games used. Worse, this one's using some unknown mechanism.

    The fact that no cyber security specialist to this point has found any code-related system causing the killing doesn't even factor into her reasoning as she sets about about partially dismantling the VR systems, hooking into them, scanning, checking for preexisting hardware modifications and, finding none, begins adding her own. Failsafes in software, hardware, voice and time activated, independent clocks, pure mechanical switches, and some more destructive methods provide half a dozen ways of ensuring that neither the devices themselves, nor their connections to the player minds, are going to stay active past the point that she wants them off.

    Violet helps Rose work, outwardly calm but focused, with hardly a word spoken between them. They've done this kind of thing before -- both the failsafe installations, and the need to modify hardware to properly work with their bodies.
Eryl Fairfax     Eryl Fairfax stands in the back of the medical bay, watching Lilian help in setting things up and directing the medics. It's her operation, and he's content to let her call the shots on this. In the meantime, he's reviewing news articles about the game within his head, using his implants to download and categorize them. Details about the game, about the developers, about the VR technology are coalesced, Original Face drawing lines between them.

    An MMO that offers 'different ways of being.' It's a heady promise for sure, but game developers are known to exaggerate greatly. Original Face immediately pulls up multiple videos of comparisons between stage show footage and final release footage, as well as showing things devs said would be in the game not being in the game to prove this.

    Lilian directs him to a chair and he complies, his weighty augments making him sink deep into the foam. "We shall succeed," he says firmly, cutting through Friz's anxiety and Ishirou's curiosity. "It's imperative that we do. Up to ten million lives are on the line." He pauses, his visor halfway to his face, and adds, "No pressure, of course. As long as we mutually rely on each other, we'll see it through."

    He settles back and slips the headset on.
Surge and Kit     "Nah he says MMOs ain't his thing," Surge answers Phreak, shrugging. "Woulda probably had to carry him anyway."
    Kit, who is definitely helping Forte inspect the material and wondering why tall dark and cloaked won't look at him, sighs nervously. "I-I just feel like if something happens, I should be out here and n-not in there."
    To Rita, though, Surge grins. "I ain't played a game as far as I can remember, which isn't saying much, but I've watched enough videos to pass time to know a few things. ONE, if you see someone fighting something, you GANK 'EM FOR THEIR LOOT. Two, if someone beats you, it's because they spent more money than you or they're cheating. Three, the only thing that matters is whatever makes your numbers bigger! Four, if you beat someone, you have to teabag them. It's in the rules."

    Multiple doubts are now cast about what kind of videos Surge watches, and the intentions of the people putting them out there.

    But it's about time to hop into the pool, isn't it?
Mack "The best wiki," opines the freaky mutant in the ratty clothes, "is the one we author ourselves.

A beat. "Pretty sure Erin Tarn said that. Definitely read it in a book once."

Mack is in a tee-shirt and jeans, both with more patches than regular material. The shirt is black, with an extremely pointy looking font proclaiming, 'I SURVIVED MURDERBALL 109 AND ALL I GOT WAS A COMPOUND FRACTURE'. It's a marked difference from his salvaged road warrior style. It's also much easier to access actual flesh, being that he isn't armored from grotesque head to sculpted toe, which is important for medical procedures. He's already given the on-site medical team the rundown on weird physiological things to watch out for, and clearly removed spots of plating that were previously fused with his alarmingly sickly skin. Not needing a MEGA DAMAGE(tm) scalpel to get to the patient is generally considered helpful in modern medicine.

"Ought to be a good time, anyway," he says, fiddling with the visor. "Can't spell 'death game' without 'game,' right?"

Optimism looks like a radioactive gremlin, here in Paladin Town.
Kirishima Kirishima had predicted something would go wrong with the launch of Blade Craft. Most MMOs have launch day pains, after all, and it's not unheard of for that to stretch into the entire week for a particularly big launch. Just her luck, then, that it turns out to be more disastrous than expected, and it becomes such a thing that the Paladins are being called in to deal with it. She arrives in more office-appropriate casual wear rather than her fighting-ninja-yelling outfit and leaving the mask behind.

"I'd say we won't have to worry too much about doing anything stupid, but... Our own abilities might not help us there, so our reflexes might actually be a hindrance if we're not careful." She comments, tucking some hair behind her ear and checking her pockets to make sure none of her stuff is going to fall out once she gets one of those rigs on.

"It got a lot of hype before release, so I'm still curious how immersive it can really be compared to standard VR.  It's a shame what happened, though... I bought the expensive collector's edition and everything." Kirishima admits with a sigh, taking a seat after a moment to get herself prepped. She pauses, turning to Ishirou with a slightly more anxious look. "That's... A good point, actually."

She gestures at herself, then slips her glasses off and packs them up as well. "It'd have to work on humans, but what about machines that turned into people? Or other objects that have done the same?" The anxiety's starting to seep in already, but Eryl brings up the gravity of the situation, and that gets her to take a moment to compose herself.

"... The Grandmaster is right. We can handle this. If there's anything truly dangerous in there, let me head in first. I owe you all that much at the very least."
Friz Savvy: The Grandmaster makes a good point. We have... a lot of lives hoping for us.
Grit: They are doomed as well. We're the only hope they have.
Moxie: Better get this done then.

    Fris just stares at Eryl, thoughtful and serious. She takes a deep breath. "Alright. Yeah." She says, in a more intentionally placid tone.
Ishirou Ishirou sobers up at Eryl's words, the wind out of his sails a bit. "Right...right sorry!" He says, earnestly. "Eyes on the prize first, the people trapped. Everything else is secondary.." People who know Ishirou will know this will be harder for him than in most situations.

Because he's a giant nerd.
Rita Ma      Rita absorbs Surge's advice with wide-eyed attentiveness. She is prepared to give her full and utter credulousness to anyone who speaks with that kind of enthusiasm.

     "Gank them for their loot... but, if people die in here, don't they die in real life too?" She makes a mildly troubled expression. Only mildly, though. "I'm not sure I could do that if they haven't done anything wrong."

     A pause. With complete innocence, she adds: "Ms. Surge, what's 'teabagging'?"
Forte Forte wheels around on Surge, looking at her over Rita's shoulder, with a 'Don't you dare' expression, clearly visible despite the poncho.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "'Tis whanne-so thou drop thy notes upon the countenance of a foe thou overpleied," Bercilak helpfully replies.
KNK     'What's "teabagging"?'

    "IT'S--"

    "A humiliation move. Makes you look like a boy who never got spanked enough."

    While seeming to look through her memories, Violet finally admits, "That's not... wrong."

    "Don't kill anyone unless you want them dead. If this is some numbers-go-up game I'm going to be... mildly surprised and disappointed."
Haseo      A game where millions of people have suddenly become trapped, and die when they're killed. It's a situation Haseo is still in himself, so he's well aware of how miserable it probably is for the people involved. So, naturally, the best thing to do would be to sit this one out and let professionals deal with the situation...

     Yeah right. Fat chance he's going to lay down and simply let that happen. Though it's a messed up way to think about such a tragedy, there's potential answers for his own problems to be found in this game, and Gods only know that if they're found by said professionals, they are definitely not telling him.

     So, a lengthy download on a junker laptop he uses to play fighting games and some acquisition of the cheapest convenience store food that money can buy, Haseo's set up to join. He thinks? Can you actually be in two games at once? It also can't be as simple as logging in, there's got to be more to it than that. Well, if his dubious self-started career into the world of computer software engineering has taught him anything, you start with the simple solutions first, then panic if that doesn't work.
Rita Ma      "Oh," Rita says to Bercilak. Notes. Nuts. She looks troubled for a moment, glancing over the table spread with food. "Can I drop seaweed crisps instead?"

     Violet catches her attention with the sudden exclamation, but after Rose corrects course, she settles down and nods seriously. "Humiliating someone after beating them is kind of an awful thing to do, isn't it? I mean, if losing to you is humiliating, then you must not be very good."

     "Don't kill anyone unless you want them dead" is a much simpler idea. "Like normal, then," she says with an emphatic nod. "Don't worry, Ms. Rose! I'll be good."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Bercilak opens his mouth, only for Phreak to throw some sort of virtual polygon made real at him. This starts a bit of roughhousing between them, which the opifex loses, following the impact of Bercilak's foot kicking Phreak off his own bed.

     "Bicche," Bercilak amusedly hurls at the sulking fixer, as the latter climbs back into his spot with a sour frown.

     "It's BM anyways," says Phreak, ignoring Bercilak's chuckle. "Something you should only do if you really wanna send a message. Or if you're playing with friends and trying to piss them off." A glance towards the grinning knight on the neighboring bed.
Lilian Rook     Background research shows plenty of publicity leading up to the game's release, but of a relatively modest sort, meant to avoid substantial spoilers. Apparently the primary selling feature is 'cutting edge research of the homuncular neural map' that allows for usual modifications to avatars without the typical disorientation and dysphoria usually entailed, and 'a vast game world teeming with secrets; no two experiences will be alike', purporting to de-emphasize grinding and instead promote collective community problem solving and information collection about character upgrades and modifications found in difficult places and through esoteric means in the game world.

    The genre is hard to pin down, but appears to be post-something fantasy, with a focus on flashy melee combat and a little bit of magic here and there. Certainly it is no carbon copy of the game some might be distantly familiar with; a great deal of work has gone into varied environments and designs, without derivative ripoffs and generic fantasy staples. It's an awful lot of money to spend, and a lot to do without a massive triple A studio.

    "An honour and a pleasure to see you grandmaster." says Lilian, wrapping up her explanation. She nods to Mack as well. "Sadly, there wasn't a public open beta, and all of the closed testers were present on launch, meaning we can't get anything from them. We'll just have to trust in our own talents and optimize along the way. I assume our collaborative abilities and combined resolve should easily outstrip the average video-gaming slob, especially one terrified by the threat of death." She shrugs a tiny bit at Friz. "Obviously, I don't either. But I've spent hours doing divinations, and it's true. You'll probably die if you die in-game, but you shouldn't be prevented from logging out. I don't know why."

    Lilian considers Kirishima's offhanded complaint oddly seriously. "There's a solid chance that the server with the largest number of Elites may have been targeted. It'd be helpful if we could link up with a few experienced operatives there. But one server of a million people doesn't make for high odds." A mild snort goes for Ishirou. "The point of being released for so many systems was to capture a more diverse audience. I've seen glimpses of the character customization. It's far from basic; they really want you to live an entire other life and meet strange people."

    Over in the Watchtower, the Agent on staff relates much the same in an affected casual tone. "Well, nobody playing it who's died was immortal, so who knows. It might really just be that simple." They don't sound like they really think that. The equipment isn't all that difficult to pull apart. True to form, is is consumer grade, marginally more complicated than an expensive work PC, and the Watch has already done due diligence and scoured it for physical bugs, defects, malicious code, and psychic fragments. The staff doesn't really care if people want to do more. "Your peace of mind." they say. "Don't break them though. I had to flip burgers for that money."

    Alas, the cash shop is technically up, but frozen by global investigations bureaus, and thus impossible to use. It's worrisome, given that there might be a slight possibility it's accessible from in-game, and victims in danger may be prevented from gaining every edge they can get. Though, it seems pretty unlikely someone cultivating a captive virtual world would port over classism wholesale, never mind allow people to buy revives in their death game. The Agent is munching Rita's snacks and sipping hot tea, lounging in a creaky desk while scrolling the feed on their tablet. "Someone should try teabagging though. I kinda wanna know if it's advanced enough to simulate getting punched in the nutsack for doing it." They think for a moment longer. "Well, it was only rated 16+, so there's probably no digital testicles."
Lilian Rook     Starting the consoles is done at synchronized count. Doing so is not at all like falling asleep. It has the abruptness of falling under anesthesia, but the experience is of leaving one's chair or bed behind in an instant, standing in a dubiously solid, dark void, and waiting for a few moments as a soft rush of white light overtakes it, as if exiting a tunnel. The invisible ground resolves into a field of soft and glossy tiles, a distant ceiling overhead, both vanishing into warm white mist in the distance. A chic semitranslucent log-in window pops up, the size of a standing chalkboard, allowing one to simply walk up to the hovering pane and enter information by physically typing on the keyboard angled beneath it, each key lighting up with a pleasant blue and soft chime. The signup process is very standard, though the verification email is greyed out, but . . .

    One person finds RITA MA is already entered into the username field, with the password box simply greyed out, only waiting for her to hit enter. Another person sees his credentials already filled as well, with 'Remember Me' checkboxes; they are exactly the same as his log-in data from The World.

    The floating window folds shut with a high-budget welcoming startup sound sequence. The white mist tints an atmospheric blue, and the height of the infinite 'room' seems to shrink somewhat. Long slashes of coloured paint spread over the white floor, drawing routes that diverge up ahead and guide one around the liminal space simply by following them. Individual tiles rise up out of the ground to create walls, pillars, fences, and large 'zone blocking' features in breath-takingly futuristic 'tutorial dimension' fashion. A pleasing androgynous voice filters out of nowhere to politely inform each Elite:

    "Welcome to Blade Craft: Connect! We have detected you are first time users of Full Immersion Virtualization Hardware! This tutorialization process should quickly get you acquainted with the basics of the game, so please be patient and don't skip any prompts! If at any point you feel nausea, dizziness, disorientation, or headache, log out immediately and seek medical consultation."

    "Before we begin, please create your character! Customization options will be available later, but are not freely accessible. Please create an avatar you feel comfortable and confident with!" A burst of loud static plays. "Default avatars have been generated from scans of self-imaging brain data. Scans of facial, behavioural, and voice pattern recognition data from PRIME USER 1 and PRIME USER 2 have been downloaded and applied suitable log-in access to relevant players."

    Each individual does, indeed, already have a physical avatar very much like themselves. Not perfect. A little too symmetrical. A little too much like what they remember themselves like, and not quite exactly like the mirror. All of them are dressed in various preferential stylizations of grey-white and single-coloured generic flowing clothes. And all of them are warm and fleshy.

    The outstanding issue is that everyone is in the same tutorial zone.

    Lilian is the first to finish her stunned staring and blurt out "Rita?"
Surge and Kit     Surge looks at Forte, then Rita, then Rose. "Y'all taking all the fun outta this already. It's a game, just don't die and you won't die. Easy as!" Yes, easy as.

    Onward then. Good thing making an account seems trivially easy, likely purposefully so. Surge has no trouble signing up, but likely struggles a few times with usernames the system blocks out for one reason or another. If she settles on Surge it's going to be entirely out of giving up getting something much worse.

    Appearing in the Tutorial Zone(tm), Surge clasps her hands shut and open a few times to get used to it, and then huhs as she inspects herself. "Lamest starting outfit ever. Aren't games supposed to like, empower you first, then take away your power, just to kind of bait and switch you? Give you a super cool outfit and take it away?"

    She tries a few punches just to ease into it, and then attempts to run as far as the zone will let her in every direction. Won't take more than a second to find all those invisible walls, if there's any. And then loudly complain about it.
Ishirou "Yeah..?" Ishirou is going over data as he's talking with people. "Huh, I can't believe I missed this. I guess I was really busy with...literally everything else going on. Geeze, I might need a real vacation after all of this." Ishirou says, a bit worried about himself now. That or not realizing how much other people had started to influence him.

"Should die if you die in the game, but what prevents the logout..now that's a mystery. POD should be able to deliver data directly as we go, as we're very tied together, but I dunno if it'll translate. It'll be hard to monitor it from here, but I might not be able to get the information out to the real world if I'm in there...hopefully POD can get things over."

He finally leans back to let the world slip away from him. It's not at all what he normally does, because he always keeps awareness of his body, as well as where his senses are. So this part is a little disorienting, but he deals with it. He listens to the prompts as user data seems to already be in.

"Okay, that's strange..." he frowns. "My data was already in???" he says, though not sure if he can speak to anyone. He wonders if data is being transmitted back to POD. Okay, calm, just keep mentally recording things and work through this. The first thing he does is try and log out. Assuming that doesn't work, he sighs and shrugs. "Yeah, great instructions game."

The next thing he does is tries to use his ability to scan the area. Can he figure out where they are..? Though he DOES notice the Avatar change. Blinking he looks down. Grey-white clothing, that seems to move like there is a wind. Weird! He looks a bit lighter dressed than he normally likes...though he does get to keep the shorts! Just no sweater!

Then he hears Lilian call out Rita's name. "What, Rita's here? Wait we didn't log on together, why are we in the same lobby?" a pause, "Oh great..."
Friz Savvy: Hear that? It's not doomed.
Grit: No. She divined the truth. This *will* kill.
Dirt: Chief, that's why we're doing this.
Moxie: Alright. I'm bringing us in. Get ready.
Savvy: Ready.
Dirt: Ready.
Grit: Hm. Ready.
Moxie: Let's go.

    Friz nods slowly. She takes a deep breath. She shuts both eyes tight... and she places the visor over her face. "Alright. Let's go." Muscles tense. Teeth clench. She's keeping calm, but ready on some assumption that there might be action the minute they get in there -- rather than any sort of friendly tutorial.

    No. Just a simple login. She looks to one side, then the other. "Hey, you here?"
    "Yeah. Looks like I still come along for the ride."
    "That's... weird. But alright. Keep an eye out then, I guess."
    "Nothing else to do."

    And then they're in. Friz shocks into the same tutorial space. "Ah! Oh-- we're all together!" She moves to adjust glasses that aren't there -- unless the machine is particularly adept. "Wait, the Watch too...? Are you going to be safe? We're warded, but..." She sounds concerned, and then looks off to one side as if concerned about being concerned. "Well, I definitely can't arrest you for the murder of Ramon Bauer *here*, so I guess it doesn't matter. Let's... go, I suppose." She looks ahead, to the diverging paths, moving forward.

Savvy: Dirt, lookout. We're looking for any role that can gather data.
Dirt: Don't have to tell me twice, boss.
Moxie: Motor movements are all fine, everything seems okay.
Grit: No threats. Not here. A small kindness.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      "Attempt thee not to be so morneful, Phreak," Bercilak says, chiming in teasingly after the agent.

     "Knock knock," answers Phreak.

     "Who goes thire?"

     "Fuck off," says the space elf, slipping his headset on. Bercilak slips his on not long after.

     Appearing in the tutorial zone together, the two men follow the colorful brushstrokes. "Bihowing," says Bercilak, examining his own hand.

     "Yeah," Phreak says. "But not perfect. You're a little greener than that, aren't you? And I feel like..." Like he's a little shorter than this. Phreak clears his throat and opts not to say so. "Yeah," says Phreak to surge. "I feel like we're in a fucking cult with this," he adds, waving his arms around and setting the white-grey sleeves to flapping.

     'Rita?'

     Both men whirl around. Bercilak grins and waves, monochrome Tutorial Garb flowing as he moves past to keep following the painted path.

     Phreak seems decidedly less pleased to see her. "Hi," he says coolly. "I'm just gonna do the tutorial. Wouldn't wanna flip the board over 'in a strop,' would I?" He's not exactly engaging in it with good faith; moreso trying to glean whatever he can in a technical sense by leaning on his knowledge of computers--and of exploiting their vulnerabilities.

     Every obstacle is prodded and poked, engaged with in the way that a tester would, rather than a genuine player. He stops, when Friz says the A word.

     "You can't arrest us for something you weren't there for," says the fixer with a dangerous gleam in his eye. He did mention that he'd cleared out any video evidence.

     "Of course," he adds, stepping closer to make eye contact, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial hush, "...if an eye witness decided to speak up about it, that'd put anybody who *was* there in a real fucking pickle, wouldn't it? I think they like to call that an accessory."
Friz Savvy: Hey, Moxie. Stop doing that and gimmie some temple-rubbing.
Moxie: Aren't we busy?
Savvy: Do it anyway, c'mon.
Dirt: Boss, it literally does nothing.
Grit: Eyes always close during it. Dangerous.
Savvy: Putting in the order anyway.

    Friz just kinda retreats from the topic, rubbing her head defeatedly.
Xion "I think that's a good idea. Let's make a pact, everyone! Even if we enter the game, let's not become 'gamers' about it." Xion nods firmly, slotting the VR helmet over her head and laying down. "That way, we'll make the world a better place! I hear gamers are pretty mean about things. Teamaking and all."

The login screen - and prompting - all are passed with the simplicitly of blithely accepted tutorial text. Standing on a dark void? Exiting a tunnel of light? Should she look for a wand or shield to select and avoid?

A sensate feast, and then... Xion, deeply troubled. "Prison clothes?" She asks, of the basic threads, then holds her neck, feeling a pulse and throb she was deeply unused to. "Oh this is really, really weird. Does anyone else feel that? Is that supposed to happen? I feel really different."

'Rita?'
"Oh! Wow, this game really must have ten million subscribers if everyone's here." She brightens, forgetting her odd state for a moment.
Ishirou "I can record my memories for digital download," Ishirou sys to Phreak.
Forte Forte's eyes narrow at Rita being taught, even if not completely, Gamer Etiquette. Certain people go on The List.

He gives the headsets a once-over as well, and then... runs out of things to check.

"... I'm... not entirely satisfied, but..." But this is as good as we're going to get, is what's implied but not outright said.

Forte puts a headset on over his actual head, with some finnagling to deal with his headfins. Experimenting with trying to digitize directly into the game can come later, once they've done an initial foray and confirmed they can log in and out the 'normal' way.

LOG IN

"... Oh, this... feels odd," says Forte, reaching out to touch a forearm with a hand. Actual flesh, and not infomorphic/physicalized data.

When Lilian blurts out 'Rita' he looks up quickly, finally noticing that the group is considerably bigger.

He holds his tongue at first, but does shift posture a bit when Friz mentions arrests. "I don't think... arresting us will go well for you, right here and now," he suggests, blandly.

"..." And then he disregards the Paladins contingent, for the moment. The two groups are evenly matched. That might change in the future, but right now the fight would be just to a stalemate.

Instead, he focuses on the game. This is the tutorial zone? He's going to read each. And. Every. Prompt. He's going to pay attention to every bit of quest text, and if there's tutorials available he's going to read through those.

"There is a saying that gets used often: RTFM," he says to the Watch contingent. "It means..." He pauses, side-eyeing Rita. "... Read The Full Manual," he says, improvising quickly. "I suggest we follow it, for our investigation."
Kirishima 'There's a solid chance that the server with the largest number of Elites may have been targeted. It'd be helpful if we could link up with a few experienced operatives there. But one server of a million people doesn't make for high odds.'

"Meaning... Whoever set this up probably wanted to get eliminate as many knowledgeable Elites as they could before they could get word back to everyone else." Kirishima concludes, grimacing slightly at the thought. "We really are flying blind, then. Even more reason for us to be careful once we're heading in."

Soon, it's time to head in, and confusion hits Kirishima several times in a row. The first, when she's suddenly standing in the void rather than lying down. The next, when the tutorial zone fills itself in around her rather than just in front of her.

"Oh, that feels... Weird. It's-wait." She's hearing voices other than her own and the tutorial NPC. That's not right, is it? And her hands and her legs and everythign else... They look just a little off, too, but she can definitely feel them right there along with the fairly basic getup she has on. For once, it's not ninja-themed, but more like a scruffy/roguish office worker that's traded in the slacks for something looser and easier to move in.

Perhaps something of greater concern is that there's several people Kirishima doesn't recognize in that tutorial zone, too. "The Watch? Oh! This might make things easier, then." She greets them with a polite bow, perhaps forgetting that the last time she had seen any of them was probably as a ninja and not this. "Are you all feeling alright? No nausea or dizziness or other symptoms?"

After doing some routine checking on everyone despite having nothing to actually take care of them with, Kirishima turns her attention to the tutorial. Although she's going to follow it as best she can, she's also taking a cue from Surge's and Phreak's book to test its limits as well. Notably, she's going to try just walking up a sheer wall (invisible or otherwise) like she normally would on her own. It's the only way to know if she can do her usual stuff!
Rita Ma      "Easy as what, Ms. Surge?" is the last thing Rita says before logging in. She probably won't get her answer.

     "Ah!" She startles softly on entry, stumbling for a moment before getting her footing in the void. Not being able to see a floor throws her off for a moment, but the screen appearing as a reference point helps steady her.

     "So they do know who I am," she marvels softly. She henpecks the keyboard, trying to register a password, but fails. "Well, in that case there's no point using an alias, so..." Leaving her name alone, she simply hits enter, passing into the tutorial world wearing a simple white sundress-like garb.

     There she gets her second shock.

     "Ms. Rook! Mr. Ishirou!" she calls out, jogging over and waving to the Paladins more broadly. "We'll be safe, I think. Mr. Bercilak is helping. I didn't expect you'd be here, but maybe I should have guessed. There's a lot of people in danger, right? But are you going to be safe?"

     Belatedly, Rita seems to realize something. She stares down at her hand- really stares intently, as if she were willing something to happen- but nothing happens at all. She touches it gingerly. Then she pinches her clothes, for some odd reason.

     She is slowly coming to a silent, and very substantial, epiphany. "Oh. This body is..."

     Forte snaps her out of it, a little. "Right. We should be playing it 'as intended', right? If we're going to investigate as much as possible." She tries to put on a plucky attitude, as she often does, but the thing it's masking is different than usual.
Surge and Kit     "THAT'S DUMB," Surge rawrs in the general direction of Forte as she passes by on one of her test runs to see how much of her speed carried into the game.

    "READING IS DUMB, FIGURE IT OUT BY PLAYING! WHILE YOU'RE READING I'M GONNA BE MASTERING THE BLADE, AND WHEN YOU'RE STILL READING I'LL HAVE MASTERED THE BLADE, AND THEN BAM, I'LL BEAT THE FINAL BOSS WITHOUT YOU!"

    If she hit an invisible wall right then and there it would be the most unfortunate but karmically correct thing.
Eryl Fairfax     It's a nostalgic feeling, letting the headset drag his consciousness away. Eryl flashbacks to the multitude of surgeries he had as a younger man to become what he is now. Eventually, a login screen manifests, and he gets to work making an account. An official investigation demands the use of his official Paladin email address. Privately, he hopes this isn't secretly an attempt to data skim a bunch of Elites. He works hard to keep that account spam-free.

    Next is character creation, but that is cut off by static before he is told that an avatar will be generated based on a brain scan. Eryl files that away mentally. Is this hijacking due to some objection to the intent of the game? Someone who thinks that people should be 'what they are' and not try to explore their identity through the game? Stranger motives have happened.

    The tutorial zone resolves into being, and... the Watch is there. But they look as confused as the Paladins. Not an ambush then. "We are here to investigate," he begins, pausing for a moment to clear his throat. His in-game voice is off. It's more akin to what it sounds like to him than it actually sounds. It makes sense, but it's off-putting. "I presume you are as well. I propose a truce and collaboration. 10 million lives are at risk, this is no time for interfactional squabble."
KNK     At the account creation / login screen, Rose tries to enter her name as Friz, variations on LilianRook, and then Kirishima, in that order. The error messages may be informative, but her primary purpose is just to frame and/or fuck with any of the last several people she heard speak on the radio. If those don't work, she's going in as BlasterKid2370, falling back on something meaningful only if the system blocks every last piece of meaningless, nondescript nonsense she can think of.

    Violet punches in variants of KITTY until it accepts something.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Ishirou gets a cold expression and a shrug from Phreak. "'Can' and 'should' are two different things, guy. You can fuck me, and I can fuck you right back. But why don't you take a page out of your boss' book, and let's fix this together."

     "Yea, verily," says Bercilak to Kirishima. "Heleful and whole am I."

     "Yo, Berc," Phreak calls, without taking his eyes off Ishirou. "You mind spreading the love to the Paladins here?"

     The Green Knight, mid platforming jump, turns and cups his hands over his mouth. "I imind not at al," he says. "Who-sum-e'er shalt journei with us, shalt journei binethe mine wacche-guard!"

     Phreak matter-of-factly jerks a thumb over his shoulder, pointing towards Bercilak. "There. Doesn't do much to protect us against brain-whammy, but if this shit explodes your head or stops your heart, he's got you covered."
Haseo      Apparently, it is just that easy to log in. Well then.

     Unfortunately for Haseo though, character customization seems to be bugged. A small blessing in disguise though probably, given that he would have definitely spent at least several hours on it.

     Once inside, he was expecting to be dropped straight into one of the cities, but apparently game design is different here, as he's dropped in a smaller area with about another dozen people, some of which he recognizes.

     But that's not important right now, neither is the shitty armor he's currently wearing. This room, is this a tutorial? Are they putting tutorials in god damn MMOs now? This is dumb, anyone who buys these kinds of games should know what they're getting into, and teaching everyone what there is to know in the beginning kills half ot the socialization aspect. It's appalling. So appalling he can't help but blurt it out.

     "Who in the /hell/ puts a noobie island in their freaking video game!? What is this crap?"
Mack Mack goes under. It gives him weirdly intense deja vu, going back to getting put under for the first of many terribly invasive surgeries. He's not sure how to feel about it. Fortunately, he doesn't have very long to ponder it.

Login isn't a big deal. He just puts in his full name with an underscore in the middle, apparently not used to old-fangled gamertags and trolling and whatever a teabag is. Fun fact: only the Coalition is evil enough to use bagged tea in the post-apocalypse.

And then there's a monster in the tutorial zone.

Mack without any sort of armor is genuinely unsettling to behold. All the sharp angles provided by scrap and chrome added to his body are missing, instead leaving him emaciated, wasting and ill. Instead of the sculpted chrome limbs, they're thin and stick-like, ending in gnarled hands curled in tight fists. His neck is still too long for a human, and he's still very short, but he stands upright instead of being hunched.

The white and grey clothes are something vaguely martial. Lots of clean lines. It's totally at odds with the rest of him. "Huh! This is something, eh?" He looks down at his own body, craning his neck enough to sort of curve back downward to examine himself. It's *also* very weird. "I think I'm more symmetrical than usual."

There is no earthly way for anyone else to tell.
KNK     Lilian is there. Rose and Violet both look at her immediately, then glance at each other without turning their heads, but they don't say anything to her. Rather, Rose says to Rita, "Your... friend?"

    'Well, I definitely can't arrest you for the murder of Ramon Bauer *here*, so I guess it doesn't matter.'

    "Oh, it's you again. Don't you have some kinda 'jurisdiction' limits, anyway?" Rose's tone toward Friz is not particularly kind. More like 'surly.'

    'There is a saying that gets used often: RTFM,'

    "Sure, sounds good. Wouldn't be much of an investigation if we start out by ignoring things."

    'You can fuck me, and I can fuck you right back.'

    "Hey. Get a room. Plenty of space in virtual, yeah?"

    Violet pushing, poking, and grabbing every part of her suddenly fleshy body while making 'Huh!' and 'Woah!' noises is only very technically within age ratings. She has to run to catch up when Rose just walks off.
Xion "There's nothing wrong with starting on an island. -I- started on an island twice, and look how I turned out!" Xion complains to Haseo, hands on Newbie Island Placeholder No Balls Model Default Outfits (without Drip) draped hips.

"I think that starting on an island feels totally natural, unlike this... hey, don't you feel that? Isn't it weird?"

Xion just marches up to touch her fingers to Haseo's throat like she's checking his pulse. He can dodge! But it's pretty obvious what she's doing. "I think it's in you, too. That feeling, isn't it super loud?"
Ishirou Ishirou gives Phreak a side-eye. He holds it for a minute and just sighs, "Fine, but if you decide to murder someone again, I'm going t-" interupted Rose.

"Please, he's not my type. Not enough.." he motions towards the hip area.
Rita Ma      If Rita knows who Eryl is, she doesn't recognize him here, but she can discern the bearing of Someone Important, and gives him a little polite head-bow.

     "It's a pleasure to meet you! I'm Rita Ma," she says in a more formal tone of voice, before slipping back into her usual. "I think everyone agrees. The first thing we're looking for is the motive. That's why you're here too, isn't it? What's so special about this game that someone would want to lock people inside it."

     She still looks a little overwhelmed- by what?- but she's doing her best to keep it together, for now.

     "Yeah!" she says to Rose, enthusiastically. "Ms. Rook is really cool. She fights monsters and tries to save people." Utterly earnest, as usual. "We don't always agree, but... there's a lot at stake here, and you can trust her to try and do the right thing. I think working together will be good."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Phreak turns his back on Ishirou, then, cheeks flushed dark grey, golden eyes burning indignantly. "Goddamn you," he utters frustratedly at Rose. Storming off to resume his efforts, he continues attempting to approach the tutorial with the thorough, deliberate touch of a tester.
Lilian Rook     Running around in the tutorial lobby isn't hard. Running off well beyond the painted lines simply wraps the world back around and gently steers the miscreant back to the start. Most of a HUD is disabled, but a handful of icons are persistent in one's vision; they're easy to totally forget about, but when you really glance into the corner of your vision looking for them, you can see faint icons. Calling up a status window shows most of the sections gaussian censored to focus on customization for the time being. LOG OUT is currently active, but MAP, MAIL, FRIENDS, and so on are greyed out. It's a tutorial.

    Perhaps built with the presumption of a target audience, each avatar 'feels right' to some extent, but all are clearly simulating warm blood, a working pulse, muscle contractions, and similar things people don't really think about, but notice missing.

    "That's very much what I'd like to know." Lilian says to Ishirou. "Does this have something to do with 'Prime Player 2'?" She's immediately distracted by the sparks flying between Friz and Phreak. "That's true." she says. "But this is a death game. So don't get ahead of yourself and think there aren't any consequences, okay~?" Lilian continues. Even in a white tutorial plain, she can somehow exude social menace. It's disarmed a little when she has to explain to Kirishima, "Chevalier, that's a standard photosensitive seizure warning." She then only checks her gold stripe on white tutorial pleats and detached sleeves in displeasure.

    Tension flows out her, breath escaping and shoulders falling, at Rita's sunny enthusiasm. "Forgive me my surprise. I suppose it's not unusual that the Watch would be interested in this too. But the way I logged in was . . . Proprietary. How did you figure this out? And why are we sharing a tutorial area?"

    She puts Eryl's words through the cogs in her head for a second, then cautiously agrees with Rita. "Someone wants at least some of us here. But doing our level best to destroy their demented project from the very start is liable to end up poorly. I have no doubt they can suspend our access if we prove to be too much of a problem, or simply refuse to integrate into their 'vision'. Playing the game is certainly something we'll simply have to put up with. Especially if we need to secure the power and resources to compete on superior footing."

    Haseo is acknowledged as existing only once he starts yelling. "Excuse me? How did you." Then she interrupts herself. "No, I suppose that makes sense." She falls last on Violet and Rose talking to Rita. Lilian is biting her fingernail. Deep in thought. Important, tactical thought. Her eyes are very focused. Analyzing them for tactical abilities.

    Rita says her name, and Lilian responds with a mommy-isn't-paying-attention-but-that's-nice "Nine and a half."

    Loud static blasts again. "Please begin character customization. Excess idling will result in a termination of your connection."
Lilian Rook     The tutorial zones, for those savvy in video games, seem to comprise a movement-based obstacle course, a combat orientation with training dummies and sleek out-of-theme weapons and vivid potions, a playground of physics objects, and something that looks like it might have to do with building, but attempts to enter it prematurely brings up invisible barriers plastered with holographic 'finish customization step' alerts.

    The character customization menu is . . . robust. To say the least. Foggy glass partitions, almost like changing rooms, aligned in a neat geometric row, allow those who care a certain degree of privacy. Each avatar is actually legitimately made up of permutations of dizzying arrays of advanced sliders and simple sculpt morphs that can be manipulated simply by touch, all the way down to colour wheels and pickers, with (un-flipped) virtual hovering body mirrors giving each player ample self-view. And true to actual form, they are modifiable, and work.

    Not only is any individual Elite technically given the capability to redefine anything about their physicality, from height to weight to even separate displayed and physical age partitions and separate gender and sex menus. An array of seven stats have already been allocated to each Elite, some with points remaining, some with a negative point balance, to account for something that feels more or less like what they're used to, but even those can be shifted. There is no 'race' tab, but something called 'Template', with a scroll of eight options that appear to be based on musical terms. And there's a tab called 'Path', which has been pre-selected for each individual Elite, and cannot be changed. Attempting to do so pops up 'You do not meet the requirements to change this attribute'.

    There are inconsistencies though. Some menus are totally unadulterated. Others show abnormalities.

XION:
    Path: Astral Choir. Persistent errors regarding the cosmetics window, 'This appearance cannot be selected. Please customize your character's appearance.' It refuses to back out until she has substantially altered her default. Her template is locked Mezzo.

ISHIROU:
    Path: Divine Tuning. Unskippable prompt over stat allocation. 'You do not meet the minimum stat requirements for your Equipment'. His inventory only shows POD - LOCKED. His STR, DEX, and CON are all highlighted in red. He has generous unallocated points.

FRIZ:
    Path: Divine Tuning. Despite her eyesight, she's spawned without glasses and cannot pick anything from the free accessory section. She has a similar message about 'Your PERception is too low' and a prompt to increase it. She has a lot of unallocated points. Her template is locked 'Alto'. Oddly, Rogers appears under her Traits list, rather than entering as another player.

ERYL:
    Path: Prime Conductor. His PER and COG appear to have some kind of permanent buff, but his CON is hardcapped somehow, in a way that feels ominous. His template is locked 'Barito'.

KIRISHIMA:
    Path: Astral Choir. Her height slider is greyed out in its upper third. Her name is locked to her real name. 'This feature has been disabled' is all the game will say.

BERCILAK and PHREAK:
    Path: Astral Choir and Divine Tuning respectively. The system shows Bercilak with a massive permanent COG debuff and constantly warns him to increase his base stat. Phreak has, for reasons unknown, a patently disgusted number of unallocated stat points, which the system warns him of wasting.

HASEO:
    Path: Astral Choir. His screen is suspiciously normal, but everything is already allocated for him along the lines of his old profile.

FORTE:
    Path: Divine Tuning. His screen is also suspiciously normal, though his stats are quite high.
Lilian Rook MACK:
    Path: Prime Conductor. Mack's character window is totally normal. The other thing is that he also looks human too. Apparently there are no Mamomo avatars, but . . . Well, his Template is locked to Soprano. Absolutely nothing stops him from full customization. The window nags him, but does not hard-lock him like Xion's.

SURGE:
    Path: Divine Tuning. Surge still more or less looks like surge, which is wild. For some reason she already has giant permanent buffs to COG, PER, and LCK, with her faction entry locked and greyed out, simply saying Kitsunami.

VIOLET and ROSE:
    Path: Both Divine Tuning. Violet's stats are all set to baseline tens and she has a completely normal number of points; she is the only one who does. Rose is Template locked to Contra and Faction locked to something called Steelsong Clade.

RITA:
    Path: Divine Tuning. All of her physical stats are under massive debuffs. WLL is somehow massively buffed, as well as a bar called CLR. Her entire Traits window, currently locked at this step for everyone, is listed out in full. Each individual item is greyed out, LOCKED, running down Heavy is the Crown, Pauper's Clothes, Body of Ruin, Body of Despair, but one at the bottom simply called Love is pre-selected. This occupies most of something called 'trait cap'. Her Template is glitched, reading ANOMALOUS, as is her Faction.

LILIAN:
    Path: ANOMALOUS. As is her top trait. Her faction is already set. Her template is locked. Actually, most of her sheet is complete like Rita. Poking at her options, she makes a little face when both her Name and Gender are locked with the help text 'This attribute has already been set'
Lilian Rook     System tooltips are available to explain all allocations and what they mean. Infinite reprises and alterations are permitted. Changing 'template' seems to have no immediate effect, but each one comes with a notice of different Affinities.

STR: Increases exerted force. Makes the world feel lighter. Affects attack damage and carry weight.
DEX: Increases physical reactivity. Makes the body feel lighter. Affects movement speed and warning times.
CON: Increases physical durability. Makes the body feel better. Affects HP and Stamina.
PER: Increases sensory fidelity. Makes the world feel clearer. Affects sensory resolution and displays prompts and information about the world and characters.
COG: Increases cognitive fidelity. Makes the mind feel clearer. Affects skill gain and displays prompts and information about puzzles and players.
WIL: Increases mental durability. Makes the mind feel better. Affects CL and reduces pain and fatigue stimuli.
LCK: Increases favourable odds. Makes the world feel friendlier. Influences the outcome of random events, the attitudes of NPCs, the likelihood of discovering events and traits and rare equipment, and influences critical hit and critical dodge rate.

Bass: Increased affinity for all Expressive and Inherent Traits. Decreased affinity for all Esoteric traits. Increased Combat and Journey skill gain.
Barito: Increases Bloodsong compatibility with Morphological and Inherent Traits and Journey skills. Decreases reserve Trait storage.
Tenor: Increases all Bloodsong trait compatibility and decreases all Soulsong trait compatibility. Increases Emergent skill gain.
Counter: Decreases Expressive Trait affinity and Combat skill affinity. Increases all other skills. Increases reserve Trait storage.
Contra: Increased affinity for all Morphological Traits and Bloodsong Expressive Traits. Increased rate of Combat skill gain. Decreased World skill and all Soulsong Traits.
Alto: Increased World and Journey skills. Increased Soulsong Trait chance. No drawback.
Mezzo: Increases affinity with all Esoteric Traits and rate of Combat and Emergent skill gain. Decreases affinity with all Morphological Traits.
Soprano: Increased Soulsong Esoteric and Express Trait affinity. Decreased Bloodsong Morphological Trait affinity. Increased Emergent skill gain.
Mack Mack gives the various unfamiliar faces a curious glance as he proceeds towards the tutorialization area. He does it at a jog, head bobbing, apparently eager to interact with the sleek, high-tech scenery. This is the enthusiasm of someone who has never played a video game remotely like this. It would be endearing if the players nearby weren't probably more inclined to feel cringe instead.

Actually traversing the obstacle course and playing around with the calibration-related training dummies is pretty entertaining. Mack compares it to his usual baselines -- something he has to pull from meat memory rather than electronic memory, but something he establishes with stern regularity -- and finds minor inconsistencies. Nothing is completely crazy, but he moves the way he's used to, rather than how he'd be biologically limited. It's fascinating to experience. Is this why people play these games?

Mack steps into a customization booth. He sees himself in a mirror and is unsurprised. He sees the various traits, and comes to a simple conclusion: the game doesn't like the Metal Morph body plan, and would you kindly be a normal human please. He looks thoughtful in the mirror, then breaks out a grin. "Well, if they insist..."

When he's finally done, he's startlingly normal. He looks more like the body that the statuesque artificial limbs belong on: sculpted, athletic, and probably better viewed sitting on a pedestal in a pose of ponderance. He's adopted the coppery samurai bun hairstyle, except with actual hair, and a beard to match. Honestly, he's managed to make an avatar that looks attractive without the perils of the uncanny valley, probably by virtue of a really powerful alternate appearance suggestion algorythm.

He's still four-foot-ten. Messing with your height during a VR game seems like an absolutely awful idea.

"Prime Conductor... Soprano. Well, alright then." Mack flexes a little. He grins toothily. It's white and gleaming. "So far, so good! How's everybody looking?"
Eryl Fairfax     Well, at least one of the Watch is willing to hear him out. The rest seem to either be interested in trying out the tutorial zone or bickering with Lilian. He's not about to interject on her behalf but some of the things said and unsaid make him side-eye the conversation a little.

    But in the end, he turns his attention to Rita and smiles faintly. "Eryl Fairfax, Grandmaster of the Paladins. Glad to meet you Miss Ma." He pauses, as she asks for their reasoning for being here. "Well actually, our first priority is figuring out a means of letting people log out. That mystery might lead us there, but I'm happy to leave it unsolved if that's what it takes to preserve the players."

    But finally, character creation options are presented. Maybe his earlier assumption was wrong. But when he sees that certain things are barred from him, he decides not to dismiss it entirely. "Path is locked for me," he says aloud, in the interest of sharing information. "Prime Conductor. My Template is also locked to Barito. I note that both of these are references to music. The conductor of an orchestra, and 'Barito' seems akin to 'baritone,' the middle-range voice type for male singers. I-"

    He stops when he examines his stats. Perception and Cognition, he presumes, have a permanent buff. Accounting for the presence of Original Face, no doubt. But his Constitution is capped. For whatever reason, the system wants to prevent him from playing a tank role. If he can't improve that, he's not going to be able to soak damage for everyone else.

    "I cannot raise my Constitution past a certain point. Does anyone else have issues like this?" While waiting for an answer, he examines the tooltips relevant to him. His assumptions about the stats are right, but the breakdown of what the Template does is... Bloodsong? Morphological and Inherent Traits? He can guess based on the meanings of the words, but who on earth knows?

    Instead of puzzling on that, he touches up his character model a little, making it feel a bit more like how he is in reality. A bit less symmetrical, a bit more objective. Original Face has all his biometrics on record, so it doesn't take long for him to get it right. In the end, he's exactly like the pictures of him. As for stat allocation, he dumps any free points he gets into DEX. If he can't raise his CON, he'll improve his dodge rate to compensate.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Phreak's indignance quickly burns over into something decidedly less endearing. Turning from his testing, eyes narrowed, he stands up straight. "Oh, I'll be careful," he says to Lilian, chest puffed out, shoulders squared. It's clear that the use of social menace seems to have been taken as provocation. "Just for you--" Rita's interjection couldn't have come at a better time.

     Entering into the character customization menus, Bercilak finds himself scratching his head. A COG debuff? A brief bit of back and forth, between his booth and Phreak's.

     "It's saying you're a moron," Phreak concludes. "Sorry, but it's terminal."

     Bercilak, in the privacy of his own booth, frowns and increases it, such that he's able to with that massive debuff. He selects BASS.

     Phreak, meanwhile, distributes his in the way he imagines is most ideal for evade cancer, with the bulk of his stats going into DEX, a decent amount into PER and COG, with the remainder placed into LCK. He selects TENOR.

     Bercilak looks much the same. Phreak, however, now has black hair now long enough to count as 'medium-length,' falling in wavy tresses on either side of his face.

     "Looking good," says the fixer to the mutant.
Ishirou Ishirou, once free from the mess that was a mean mugging, smiles at Rita...though he's not too happy about what happened there either. He sighs, deal with that later, right now they should work together. "Hey, Rita.." also it's hard to stay mad at Rita, not because of the cute little sister vibe she does, but because of the 'literally just nearly died with her to save a friend.' It's hard to be mad at blood.

Ishirou's customizing of his body isn't very hard...he's perfectly happy in the form he has, as he had the rare chance to customize his appearance in real life because of Phony, so he's good there. Though he does do a LITTLE idealizing of his body. He adds a cool scar to the right eye. Yeah. Very awesome looking.

Next, comes to his stats, and he has a generous pile of stats, but...his STR, DEX, and CON are...red? He can't use his equipment??? He realizes POD is considered equipment. He sighs, great...great.

"EVEN THIS GAME IS TELLING ME I NEED TO GO TO THE GYM! HOLY CRAP! WHAT IS THIS UNIVERSE!!!!!" Ishirou shouts into the void...or what he thinks is the void.

Begrudgingly he starts upping the stat value until they stop being red. Then divides the points between COG and PER. If any are left after that then WIL. Then he goes over the various music-related Template. After some reading, he decides to select Counter, curious about how it would play out.

"How is the POD equipment..?" he wonders out loud.
Friz Dirt: Movement obstacles. Can we deal with that?
Grit: Dying here wouldn't suit the purpose.
Moxie: Don't want to fall anyway.
Savvy: Familiar interactions. Maybe it's just calibration?
Moxie: It's for people not used to physical activity.
Dirt: The space is harmless. So that people can learn to...
Grit: Strike lethally.
Savvy: We can't get in there yet anyway.

    Friz steps into her customization chamber. And, yes, one of the first things she does is glance around, trying to make sure nobody can see her stat setup. Her hearing is fine-tuned, her sense of smell is powerful, but her eyesight... it's a silent sore point that she doesn't have that. She tries to look for accessories, eyewear. Nothing... She has to pace around a bit, wandering in and out of her little room.

Dirt: Boss, this is critical.
Grit: People could die.
Moxie: We might get kicked if we linger too long, even if I'm moving...
Savvy: Look, just-- guh. Just quiet! They might realize...
Dirt: Boss, it is what it is. I have a job. Let me do it.
Savvy: Can I get some more pacing, Moxie?
Moxie: Honestly, no. We have to act. Stop being hung up.
Grit: You're better than this.
Savvy: Fine. Fine!!

    At one point she finally walks back in, sort of covers things up with her hand, and dumps a significant chunk of points into her visual perception, biting her lip as she struggles to not look like she's overcompensating while also adhering to her need to gather information...

    "Stop beating yourself up, kid. The game will do it for you. More in constitution." A soft sound of a few footsteps as a ghost paces behind her.
    "But, we need to--"
    "Constitution, dexterity. Keep the precision focus, match it with cognition. Stay under the radar, and get the info. Look like some kind of scout that knows what you're doing."
    "'Scout'? Don't you mean ranger, or rogue? How... old are you?"
    "What?"
    "That's a wargame thing."
    "Kid, just put in the damn stats and trust me."

    She dials it in. And she thinks about her appearance. What can she do about that? What can she, truly, properly, do? ...Remove blemishes. Remove the eyebags. Remove the little scars. Only just enough to be difficult to notice the difference, but enough to purge away a few of the little signs of her failures over the years.

Dirt: Don't we want to look... more ideal?
Savvy: Oh, now you wanna wait around?
Grit: You're grumpy about the perception.
Savvy: Leave me alone.
Dirt: Why not just take what we want?
Savvy: Tough. Alright, that's enough, Moxie.
Moxie: We might not get to do this again...
Savvy: Then sucks to suck. I'm not showing everyone a full-suite expose of all the insecurities. Taking advantage of this for that will just show everyone what we think about ourselves, now that they've seen what we're like.

    She looks for a faction that might have the strongest intelligence and soft-data in tooltips, or picks at random. But then she's done. And it's off to the basics, ideally quickly.
Mack "I dig the hair," Mack replies, with a pair of Buddy Jesus fingerguns.

His entire prior interaction with the fixer is barbecue-related, and thus, entirely positive.
Forte OH BOY AN OBSTACLE COURSE TUTORIAL FOR SOMEONE WHO'S FLOATED EVERYWHERE FOR THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS

Ahem. Forte manages.

And then Forte has a long quiet moment of staring at the Template page. (Certain Watch members who were on a recent mission to his home world might realize why.)

After a bit of poking at things, he sets his template to Alto and messes with his stat allocation a bit, though leaves it largely the same.

He's about to hit 'confirm'... and then he pauses.

Quietly, he tries to see if he can do anything... that's *not* allowed. Granting himself new abilities, equipment, increasing his stats above what's allowed. Seeing if there's any ways to just... cheat the system a bit, right here at the starting line. He tries to exercise the same 'muscles' he'd use in his original body to break into a system, seeing if that translates at all into hacking his character sheet.
Surge and Kit     Surge eventually stops running when she realizes it just keeps wrapping her around. First long enough to get through that obstacle course like the showoff she is, and then long enough to check out this character customization nonsense.

    "I have no idea what half of these stats do but they seem pretty good. Except luck. When the hell did I become lucky? Wonder what that affects."

    Faction: Kitsunami?

    "Double weird. Well, whatever! I'm perfect the way I am, I don't need to change any of this. Except this template thing I guess?"

    If the system lets her, she flicks between Contra and Mezzo a few times, and ends up settling on Mezzo for that sweet combat trait exp buff.

    "So, that's done. When do we actually start playing?"

    She edges towards Forte, curious if she can see his screens or not. Can people see hers? How's this game UI thing work, is it in their eyes, or floating directly in front of them?
Kirishima Kirishima looks and sounds pleased when it becomes clearer that nobody seems to be getting hit with that all too common motion sickness VR tends to inflict upon people. Bercilak gets a brief salute and a curious look at the way he speaks, then an long acknowledging 'aaaah' once Phreak explains all that.

"Oh, I skip that screen all the time." She replies to Lilian with a laugh, raising a hand to her neck as she tugs on it out of habit to try and get a crick out. "Our different approaches being what they might be, having the Watch and Paladins and..." She pauses to look over at Haseo. She's not actually sure where he's from. "... Other? It looks like we've got a diversified spread here, so we should be able to figure this out as long as we're working together." She half-suggests with a somewhat uneasy smile, tugging on her neck one more time afterwards.

Is there even a crick there? She does it again to really pay attention to how much of herself is replicated here, and then again when she has to start going through character creation.

There's way more sliders than she's used to. She keeps most of her features the same at first, mostly just tweaking the sizes here and there, but she stops when she notices the height slider having that grayed out spot. At first, she leaves that as high as it'll go, but then she notices that there's already a name locked in, too.

It's not Kirishima that's locked in there. It's Nanahara. Why is her alias in there? Sure, she went into the machine dressed more like she was going to the office as 'Haruna' rather than official Paladins business, but could this system really know that? And why is her height locked to the bottom two thirds?

Too many questions, not enough answers yet. The situation being what it is, though... Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to try something a little different.

Mack asks how people are doing, and Eryl mentions caps on certain stats. "I'm doing.. Fine, I think. Some of my options are locked, yeah... How strange." She explains without saying which ones, glancing towards the voices briefly to make sure nobody can see her before she starts going back to do a double check of all those sliders. "We'll just have to work with what we have."

By the time 'Nanahara' comes out of character creation, she still hasn't messed with them too much, although she does look vastly different from her usual self. Rather than being a statuesque 6'1" with purple hair, she's now a whole foot shorter than she was before entering character creation with the bright red hair instead.

She also puts a lot of points into LCK. CON also gets quite a few point into it, but the rest are left as is. It takes her a while longer to read the things that look more like skills, and she's not quite sure what any of it means, so...

Into Contra it goes! And then she's finally out of character customization, hesitating a moment as though she might already be reconsidering her choice to be a lot shorter than usual.

At least she's got a cover for it. "Having height locked was... Weird, but it sounds like some of you might have more things to worry about than that."
Rita Ma      "But the way I logged in was . . . Proprietary."
"Ms. Rook," Rita says gently, "did you get a special invitation, too?" The idea visibly worries her. Nobody else did, so it can't merely be the fact that they're Elites. Why would the two of them be invited?

     She can't think of anything good.

     Eryl's answer flusters her. "Oh! I mean, we want that first! I just thought solving the mystery of their motive would be a good first step, you know? But if I had to pick, I'd choose saving the people, too."

     Given the chance to enter a fogged-glass booth and customize her character, Rita starts by making herself a couple inches taller. Not that much, but a little bit. It's nice. This is good. No other appearance changes are necessary, except one or two things nobody will ever notice.

     It goes downhill from there. The huge debuffs to physical stats make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Complex feelings swim inside her skull, struggling to resolve into something positive.

Human again.
(Helpless again.)

     Her breath hitches in her throat when she sees the traits screen. So much grayed out. She doesn't know what those names mean, but she can guess. 'Body of Ruin' she can scarcely look at. 'Heavy is the Crown', indeed. She almost reaches out to touch 'Pauper's Clothes', but thinks better of it, as if testing the game will make it reconsider the option being locked.

     She does not want it unlocked.

     "No," she calls over to Eryl. "I can improve anything, but... I'm really deep in the red for a lot of things. 'Ess-tee-are', 'Dee-ee-ex', and 'See-oh-en', mostly." (She does not know the abbreviations.) "Does anyone else have traits that are gray?" After realizing she can't possibly dig herself out of that physical hole with her leftover points, she puts them into WIL and LCK, sharpening her strengths.

     She tries toggling the 'Love' trait off and on too. Its presence is indicated by a tiny spark of white light inside her chest, visible through her body and clothes from any angle, like an overlay. Assuming it lets her toggle it off at all, though, she leaves it on in the end.

     When Rita leaves the booth, she looks a little giddy, a little like she might throw up, and a lot overwhelmed. A shaky smile rests on her face; her arms are crossed over her abdomen.

     She goes to try the obstacle course. She wipes out completely on the very first jump. At least small people land lightly. A funny, weird little laugh leaves her as she rests on the floor.
Haseo      "I was born on an island too, but I'm not talking about real life, I'm talking about friggin VIDEO GA-"

     Haseo cuts himself off as Xion reaches out to check his neck pulse, fighting the urge to slap her hand away. He doesn't though. No point in starting a fight with someone in this situation. Yeah, that's right, just have to take it easy and maybe he can get along with her. Maybe. She says some odd shit that makes him silently worry he's going to have to put up with another crazy person again though.

     "Feel what now? Only thing I'm feeling now is like this game client stole my personal data somehow, and that you're a bit w.... Funny?"

     Haseo bites his tongue near the end of his sentence as he awkwardly changes the word he was about to say. Again, not the time to blow it.

     Looks like he won't be getting an immediate answer either, given that the game screams at him to continue character customization.

     Honestly, customizing when you've already made a character seems a bit pointless, might as well hit the player with everything they need to do all at once. If this is supposed to help the player ease into the game or something, all it's accomplished is add extra tedium to an already solved process.

     Well, either the game is reading his mind and speeding things along, or it's digging into his personal information again, because most of his stuff is already set to be as close to what his The World avatar is. Which is to say, CON and DEX which are pretty good, STR which is clearly his most beloved and precious stat, and then lastly the rest of his stats, which are all so disgustingly boringly average and don't stand out in anyway whatsoever because his game class was a cruel joke from the devs.

     He's fine with that way honestly, as is he with his look. The only real amount of conscious input he puts in is that he selects Mezzo as a template once he sees the word "Combat" in it.
Kirishima Kirishima compares her height to Ishirou's when he brings that topic up and realizes... Damn. He really is taller than her now. She doest' look too displeased about that despite asserting that the sliders were locked, though.

Unless the system compensates for people shifting their height, meanwhile, Mack's assessment might just prove to be very correct in Kirishima's case. If there isn't anything in place to help her with that, she is going to beef the fuck out of that obstacle course.
KNK     Rose and Violet have separate rooms, but they confer closely, just between the two of them, on what they're selecting. Because Rose is locked to Contra, Violet picks the nearest to its opposite, Soprano. They don't know what Bloodsong is versus Soulsong, but if they don't cover everything, then they might not be able to cover each other.

    Both increase their DEX, with some points in WIL. Rose messes with PER and COG, checking them for any immediate effects on clarity by trying to see outside her ~~changing~~ chargen booth, but eventually settles on increasing COG, when Violet says she wants to cover PER. Violet doesn't mention that she put a bigger investment into LCK, while Rose uses her larger share of points to give herself more STR.

    With the bodies they went in with being close enough to the bodies they have outside, it's predictable that there isn't much visible difference when they step out again. Those were already customized.
Xion The obstacle course is taken at a pastoral jog for Xion, who does not need a tutorial in runjumpdashjumpdashdash-half-a-press-highjumpjumpdashcrouchjumpjump.

Actually she's done it a few times, so it zips past... Until the physics tester.

Picking up and throwing a large physics ball into objects for longer than a forgiveably amused minute, Xion feels out the buoyancy of the world. There's something about carrying on that she doesn't quite want to do, some forboding. . .

But she won't be the last into the 'dressing rooms', even if the start of 'character customization' is entirely unexpected. Blithely, she tries to just skip through it with the presets, and cannot. "I..." She mutters, and stares at herself in the mirror. She changes her eyebrows a little. Not good enough. She makes her nose a little smaller. Not good enough. A minute adjustment to her eyes, her chin, a gentle transgression to her cheeks, still mostly herself, just a little different...

Not good enough.

Xion stares at the mirror and sweats in her human body. The body that felt so loud, so different, so strange already, a body with a heart in it, a whole self that worked - or tricked her will into thinking it worked, even if she wanted it enough to manifest it. There wasn't enough little changes to satisfy the screen.

And so someone who looked pretty much like Xion began to whine softly. Something was strange, something was wrong, and she couldn't get out. No, the voice had said she'd be -- removed? Ejected? Well, it was a death game. Would she be eliminated by the system if she didn't proceed? Now, was her life already on the line? She just had to change... A little? No. Enough. She had to be someone else. And the brown-haired girl she was also -- quick enough to change a bit of hair in an editor, wasn't accepted either. Too close.

And so, after a while, ''Xion'' emerges from character customization. Taller, with a crown braid and long bangs of blond, a stronger jaw and sharper chin, green eyes, a fainter nose, and with a more showingly-built build (rather than her Youthful Action Teenager proportions), every little detail had seen a little bit of change. Some had seen quite a bit, guided by a memory Xion had a while ago of a very strong desire.

"I don't understand and I'm very lost right now." She expresses quietly, even her vocal tone changed, a bit breathier and lower in the register. It might just be her intense state of emotional distress, though, and not switching from Voice 13 to Voice 14 or changes to the neck.
Lilian Rook     Lilian is busy in a stall for a little while. The only thing she's done is flick a single option back and forth over and over again for a solid five minutes. She calls over the glass "Yes. By the fact that you asked me, I can only assume you have too. That's . . ." She goes quiet for a while. "I don't like that. There are only two patterns that suggests, and both of them are . . ." She exits looking no different.

    When she lays eyes on Rita, a weak smile demands the use of her lips, even as her eyes swim. "I know that look." she says, cryptically. "Congratulations."

    A continued oddity of the character customization screen is that Faction isn't a choice. Ostensibly, it's something meant to be discovered in-game. Forte can't figure out a way to actually cheat those at this stage. That means something was done deliberately. Those done with their customization are able to enter the areas. They're given helpful notices that impact damage has been disabled for this course, but please be careful in-game but are otherwise permitted to vault and slide, clamber and jump, lift and throw and smash blocks to their heart's content until they feel good about their stats.

    And they do make a difference. Quite a lot, actually. Not just numbers; the way they feel. At the touch of a button, one can make their body feel light as a feather and face balancing on three inch wide columns as easy as a two foot wide path, or they can experience the weight and trudging clumsiness of the exact opposite. Physics objects feel like they're glued to the floor with a low stat, or like basketballs with a high one. Sights and sounds are crisp and vivid or flat and bland. Listening to conversation has the words themselves resolve sluggishly an unobviously, or have all their various meanings and implications jump to mind, by dramatically shifting one bar. Tripping and falling face first hurts exactly as much as it does in real life, or not at all. Re-customizing stats, in a very real sense, almost feels like living as a different person.

    Some people have very much run with it. "Damn. Looking good Mack." Lilian utters in stunned, mildly pleased disbelief. "That image is going to stick in my head for a while." She also makes absolutely certain to pat Kirishima's head condescendingly. "Ishirou. Have you corrected those stat minimums? What does it feel like?" Xion actually gets her to come over, lay her hands on her shoulders, look her in the eye, and say "Xion. You look gorgeous. Don't worry." But it's Bercilak who is privately assailed with a different choice; a one-sided window pops open before him, with a confirmation prompt, indicating 'COGnition malus equalized. Restore linguistics package?'
Lilian Rook     The mandatory tutorialization process isn't incredibly long. Individual elements of the HUD, bars representing HP, CL, Stam, XP, cooldowns for abilities, encumbrance and pack space, party indicators, minimaps, and so on, are simple enough to get through. The difference between a PC and NPC is explained in comprehensible terms. Lilian begrudgingly suggests that everyone assembled immediately send each other friend invites so that they'll be easy to communicate with, after the messaging and mail system is demo'd to her.

    What stands out are two individual aspects. The CL bar is introduced as CLARITY, and explained as a very critical stat. In the game lore, it has something to do with 'The resonance of one's personal truth, and the strength by which they walk their Path', as a form of 'Tangible psychospiritual force, found in all sentient beings, but especially intelligent entities such as humans'. The game mechanic is quite clear however: the fuller the bar is, the more resilient the target is to damage and status effects, and experiences negative stimuli, whether simple pain or emotional distress from a social interaction, less severely. Effects resisted by Clarity damage the bar, which recharges over time.

    Functionally part of it is something called Tuning. Following the spiritualist-musical overtone, it's described as 'The resonance of the songs within two individuals'. Mechanically, it is a function that amplifies a character's ability to affect another character's Clarity and protect their own. The pattern can be toggled between Melody, Harmony, and Dissonance, which prioritizes piercing, balance, or damaging, Clarity protection, but the universal mechanic is quite odd. If a target is less able to 'hear' you, their Clarity will dramatically override yours, and vice versa. This is summed up as their 'awareness of your presence, your intent, and your agency' in lore, which translates to mechanical factors such as distance, stealth, and numbers, diminishing or competing for attention.

    The meta implication seems to be that the game mechanically rewards dramatic face to face duels, and disincentivizes sniping, ambush, ganking, or practically everything that always defines PvP meta. Which would be great for simply making an MMO 'more fun', but massively diminishes the success rate of playing safely and lamely in death game. The tutorial recommends a ranged option, but requires a choice of close combat weapon, as its title would suggest, and testing out the combat area, it seems that the damage model rapidly becomes very lethal as the CL bar depletes, opening up sudden player death or spirals of lame and unfair CC once genuinely overwhelmed.
Ishirou Ishirou looks over at Lilian, "Uh...I guess I can try.." he says, looking at the course. Alright, let's see. He sucks in a breath and dashes. Making remarkable timing on the obstacle course. Ishirou favors a fast and dexterous approach, over a tough and strong one. However, with his increased STR and CON, his DEX prowess really comes out.

He's jumping over things easily, slide dashing under others. He's able to double jump somehow and then manages to wall climb without skipping a beat. Hitting the end of the course without stopping, he doesn't even sound out of breath.

"Oh wow...that's different," he admits. Takes a few moments to stretch out and feel how his body has changed. He's definitely /leaner/. More cut, less soft...but still rather on the small side of things.

As the tutorial progresses, Ishirou reads over things. These are...rather interesting concepts in an MMO, but he pauses. "You know this feels rather...familiar somehow," Ishirou muses, "I can't select a faction or anything...so it must be hidden or not selectable now."

As far as close combat weapons...Ishirou goes for a one-handed sword, specifically something that looks like a curved blade. Though he'll have POD for ranged attacks, so that's covered.
Lilian Rook     The remaining aspect is Traits. The game quite helpfully explains that 'Almost all equipment must either be crafted by players or discovered somewhere in the game world.' and that while level, stats, and permanent skills exist, Traits are by far more impactful, and must be discovered at certain locations, by defeating certain enemies, completing certain quests, meeting certain achievements, possessing certain items, joining certain factions, and so on.

    Traits have a cap that can be active at once, a reserve storage bank that can be swapped in a time-consuming procedure unsafe in combat, and can be further grown and customized with individual perk trees, but almost all have a visual and experiential effect on the player character. The game warns, with the hopeless tone of knowing it'll be ignored by some weirdos, that refusing to utilize Traits will make the game exceedingly difficult.

    Lorewise, the game breaks up the idea of Cartesian Duality, as physical and mental traits, into Bloodsong and Soulsong-typed Traits, which can, expensively, be deliberately induced or manually customized rather than organically grown. Different Paths have different interactions here.

    The Astral Choir path has an increased aptitude for discovering, gaining, meeting requirements, and organically growing Traits, and can equip more at once, but reduced manual customization and permanent universal skill growth, with normal Trait verticality and storage. Simply playing the game will award players with enormous Trait growth, but give them little control.

    The Divine Tuning path has an increased aptitude for improving, tweaking, and customizing Traits, as an exact opposite, and can alter them cheaply with a high growth rate and cap, but has massively decreased storage and huge penalties for unequipping a Trait, with normal acquisition and equip count. It allows for very fine tuned builds, but demands a player commit to one state they feel happy with.

    The Prime Conductor path has massive trait storage space, no swapping penalty, and convenient rotation and customization, with greater permanent skill growth and with normal customization, but a small number equippable at once and heavily reduced ability to actually gain and develop traits into an individually desired for. It allows for a utilitarian, customized, and convenient build for each situation and broad basic competence, but makes it difficult to create powerful synergies and the player less receptive to new abilities.

    Once the tutorialization is complete, each Elite is given UNLOCK TRAITS as a prompt. Doing so de-censors their Trait bar-- and reveals that they already have several. Within instants, their carefully chosen appearances are changed.

    They're given one last chance to customize, and then Begin Pilgrimage ~ Holy City of Clef is made available to them.
Lilian Rook     Lilian, when asked about greyed out options, simply shrugs, brings up her status window, and shows it off.

|==============================================================================|
|  Name: Lilian Rook  Gender: F  Level: 1  Template: Mezzo    Path: ANOMALOUS  |
|==============================================================================|
|  HP: [||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||]   CL: [||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||] |
|       1644/1644    Condition: Normal         2412/2412      Tuning: Harmony  |
|  Exp: ==============================    Stm: ==============================  |
|                000/900   0%                  160/160        Vitals: Perfect  |
|==============================================================================|
|  STR: ||||||||||||||||||||            |                TRAIT: 16/24          |
|  DEX: ||||||||||||||||||||||          |======================================|
|  CON: ||||||||||||||||                |                Verse:                |
|  PER: ||||||||||||||                  |  ~ Eigenknight ??  ?? Amls  »Expand  |
|  COG: ||||||||||||||||||||||||        |  ~ Black Lily  B+  A- Estr  »Expand  |
|  WIL: ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |                Chord:                |
|  LCK: ||||||                          |  ~ Crisismind  A+  A+ Expr  »Expand  |
|=======================================|  ~ Faeblood    C+  B  Mrph  »Expand  |
|                SKILLS:                |                Notes:                |
|=======================================|  ~ Paragon     B+  C- Inht  »Expand  |
|  Combat: Greatsword  Heavy Armour     |  ~ Celestial   D+  A- Estr  »Expand  |
|  Tactics  Evasion  Hurlant   »Expand  |======================================|
|  World: Trade  Negotiate  Intimidate  |              EQUIPMENT: 0/120        |
|  Alchemy  Command  Harvest   »Expand  |======================================|
|  Journey: Stealth  Endure  Strategy   |  Night Mist - LOCKED / Eigenknight++ |
|  Scout  Acrobatics           »Expand  |  Lady in Black - LOCKED / Crisismind+|
|  Emergent: Flight  Contact   »Expand  |  Starting - Knight Errant    »Redeem |
|==============================================================================|
|  Guild: None                Faction: Memoria Luna            Funds: Þ5000    |
|==============================================================================|
|   »Map«   »Mail«   »Friends«   »Journal«   »Options«   »Party«   »Log Out«   |
|==============================================================================|

    "Someone couldn't wait for you and I to play their sick experiment, Rita." says Lilian.
KNK     "Well, some of us look different. I guess that's what you'd expect. Might as well play a game if it's there, right?" Rose says that, despite having not actually changed much of anything. She'd messed with the controls to see what they could do, but any movement away felt wrong. If there's one thing different about her, it's that she isn't wearing a half-mask, leaving her whole face visible. She's rather expressive with her lips.

    Up and down through the tutorial stages, with Rose getting more frustrated than Violet is at the latter having to deal with that lower point total, eventually helping her through a lot of it. As long as they have enough DEX, the rest should be fine, but Violet doesn't want to lower her LCK, either. Rose, at least, breezes through the paces when on her own. That bothers her, somehow.

    After Lilian suggests setting friends lists, both members of KNK agree, though Violet insists on adding every other person here while grabbing one of their hands and shaking it in both of hers, as if meeting someone for the first time (which, in some cases, is true), warm and smiling. No one is spared from this. Not Eryl, Kirishima, Mack, Lilian (with whom Violet leans in), Friz, nor Ishirou. Not Phreak, Bercilak, Rita, Forte, Surge, nor Xion. Not even Haseo. Rose, herself, gets added to Violet's list during a high-ten. Every added 'friend' gives her a tiny burst of giddiness.
Surge and Kit     Although Surge insists READING IS LAME and FOR LOSERS, she makes a minimal effort to diagonally browse the popups for the sake of not being totally outdone by Mr. By The Books over there and his headfins.

    So Clarity is an all-defense stat, and Tuning either hits other people's Clarity or protects yours. Good enough, she thinks. She largely ignores the prompts about Paths, starts poking at menus to see what her Traits are, accepts the prompt to redeem her Traits, and ponders weapon selection.

    If the game lets her, she prefers to go for her fists. If the game insists on a weapon being necessary or optimal, she ends up going for a VERY LARGE AXE, remembering having seen one of Eggman's bots with one and it looking kind of cool.

    With Traits unlocked, Surge's eyes light up with electricity, her exaggeratedly sharp teeth are just that much more obvious, and a... glowing blue pet fennec materializes and plops down by her side.

    It's the generic MMORPG extremely cute summonable critter. It's Carbuncle but it looks like Kit. Surge is fine with this.

    "Well this game didn't skip out on reading our minds, huh?"
Forte Forte messes with stats some more here and there, and makes another attempt to 'cheat', but then settles down for the most part and follows along in the background as the rest go through the tutorial. He's making some mental notes - intending to compile all of the information presented into a digestable form later.

And then the unlock traits comes up. Forte absolutely reads the prompt warning him about the experiental effects of the traits - and then disregards it, since it probably isn't going to be a strong effect.

He's immediately wrong.

Some things are familiar or simple - his right hand starts glowing red, his entire body lights up with a pattern of gray/white veins. Some are a little less expected, the cyborg bits that pop up, including some very sci-fi ear replacements.

And one is... unsettling, not least because it's harder to describe with words. Forte looks visually wrong. Just... something off. Something implaceable. The way the game's lighting casts shadows on him, maybe? Small, nearly imperceptable shifts in color gradients? FOV being slightly off but only for him? It's hard to tell. It's impossible to pin down why, but Forte just looks wrong, like he doesn't belong here.

Looking down at himself, he's realizing this too, and doesn't look at all happy about it.

... Well, at least he can float in place again. Not that constantly hovering a few inches above the ground is helping him with the whole 'looking out of place' thing.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants <J-IC-Scene> Haseo says, "That's like a BBS, right?"
<J-IC-Scene> Kirishima says, "Do those still exist?"
<J-IC-Scene> Haseo says, "Yeah? Where else do you share game tips other than in the game itself?"
<J-IC-Scene> Phreak says, to Haseo, "Berc shares 'game' tips all the time. Even when nobody asked."
<J-IC-Scene> Haseo says, "If the crap he says sounds like it came out of a corrupted driver, I don't think they count as tips."

Restore linguistics package?

     Dozens of conversations play back in the Green Knight's mind. Countless times where he'd had to repeat himself, search through his mind for another word that Morgana's meddling couldn't dilute. The passive weight of seeing one of his friends in distress, and being unable to comfort, console or counsel intelligibly.

     "Fuck hit."

     Bercilak mashes Y. His rumbling bass sounds somehow different, when the words it forms are contemporary. "It asked me to--" He stops immediately, hand over his mouth in disbelief. "Sorry. I need a minute."

     "Holy mother of God. You can actually talk now!" Phreak sheathes his close combat weapon, a hidden dagger. Did anyone expect anything less underhanded? He's selected Harmony, for the moment, having previously been in the midst of his usual acrobatics, landing on one outstretched palm to peer curiously at Bercilak.

     "Yeah, bro, I know." His tone indicates he didn't expect ever to have that chance. "It's a lot," he says with a frown. So much so that he doesn't bother testing his abilities.

     With his traits equipped, Bercilak of the Astral Choir looks slightly more monstrous--his red irises are now wholly red eyes, aglow with enough brightness to shine through even his usual helmet (here unequipped). His hands end in sharp, bestial claws, and he casts no reflection in the glossy sheen of the tutorial's polished surfaces. A green wool cloak rests on his shoulders, with a golden clasp featuring a boar on its face. As he meanders, trails of flowers spring up briefly in his wake. Toggling into Melody, for the moment, he accepts the prompt--after smiling weakly and shaking Violet's hand gently.

His status window names him as Bercilak de Hautdesert, Bass on the Path of the Astral Choir. Verse is listed as 'Endless,' Chord as 'Warden' and 'Cavalry,' Notes as 'Woodsman.'

     Phreak, meanwhile, is listed as 'Elineve Smith,' a Tenor on the path of Divine Tuning. Handshake given (more firmly and confidently than Bercilak's), he peers back at his status window. "Oh, shit," he says, looking at his left arm. It's been replaced with a sleek, black clockwork prosthetic, which unfolds into his hidden dagger, then a spread of breaking and entering tools, then an alarmingly large jankcore kinda-gun, then some sort of magitech plug, at his command. "That's... gonna take some getting used to, but it's kinda sick." The air around him distorts like a heat mirage, and there's a silver badge on his chest bearing the mark of an envelope. His Verse is 'Wraith,' Chord displays as 'Scoundrel,' and Notes as 'Courier.'

     On the other side of the tutorial, in the beginning area, Bercilak claps Surge heartily on the shoulder. "Nice choice, sib."
Kirishima When the opportunity to test different stats is given, Kirishima takes it as well. She actually changes what she has by the time she's done, shifting her focus entirely to LCK, CON, and WIL. If she's going to be small enough to pat condescendingly, then she might as well try and lean into that a little more.

She can just drop points in PER and DEX to make up for it.

Despite the condescending nature of the patting, meanwhile, Lilian gets a very distinct look from Kirishima. She's trying not to look like she's pleased about it, but she's not very convincing about looking displeased.

She's going to be so jealous of other people once she has to leave this place.

Once the tutorializing is done, it's time to... Add everyone to her friend list! Kirishima is pretty thorough about doing that much, at least, even helping to walk anyone through the process if they're having trouble figuring it out. Violet's eagerness in shaking everyone's hand, meanwhile, gets Kirishima to smile warmly in return. Although it's still kind of surreal to be shorter than nearly everyone for once (sorry Mack), being able to behave almost normally even in such an odd circumstance seems to be getting her spirits up already!

It might still be confusing when her name shows up as 'Nanahara' instead of Kirishima, though.

The CLARITY and TUNING mechanics take far longer for her to try and comprehend. It's not until she actually gets her hands on it through testing different weapon types and realizing what it means in the fight (loudly) sense that it starts to click in Kirishima's mind. She settles for Melody for the time being, but she'll figure out if she needs to ever actually change it later.

"If the system won't let me be my nor... Usual size, I might as well stick to at least one or two comfortably normal things, right?" And so, Kirishima opts for one weird thing (crossbows) and one familiar thing (punching weapons). It might not combine well with her utterly average physical/swinging stats, but at least she might be able to compensate with what she actually knows.

Eventually, it's time to UNLOCK TRAITS, and Kirishima has to take a minute to get used to what shows up for her: a ninja mask is promptly equipped right over her face, but she's still otherwise dressed like an office lady rather than a full ninja. An office ninja, perhaps? The mask itself looks a little cluttered, though, between having multiple designs on it including ship guns and logos from several companies that 'Nanahara' had worked with in the past.

Coincidentally, anyone that might dig into those companies and that name would actually be able to figure out what editing work she's ever done for these companies. It's not free doxxing, but it's definitely an easy jump to make.

In the starting area, Kirishima still needs a moment to pace around and get used to her new gait. "Is it reading our minds? I feel like it'd be more..."

She starts to answer Surge, then grunts noncommittally. It's not an approving grunt. "I hope not, but these things /are/ affecting our brain... Wavelengths or whatever. It wouldn't be surprising."
Rita Ma      "Yeah. I can't think of a way that 'both of us being invited' could mean something good, either," Rita admits reluctantly. That weak smile makes her perk up, un-crossing her arms from their shaken-guarded pose. "What do you mean, you know this look? It's-"

     "Oh." She gets it. Then she blushes a little, and looks away. "Well, thank you for the congratulations, Ms. Rook. I'm still kind of shocked, but it's... nice."

     She is, possibly, the one who returns Violet's double handshake with the most enthusiasm, despite already knowing her. "Thanks for the friend request, Ms. Violet!" she says, with way too much sincere gratitude to be familiar with how mundane a friend request is.

     For her melee weapon, Rita picks out a spear, about as long as she can conveniently carry (which is not very). The reach, she reasons, should help make up for her low physical stats. For her ranged weapon, she picks up something vaguely resembling a machine pistol with a collapsible stock, making it a cute little PDW. Not too heavy, not too skill-demanding, not too uncontrollable.

     That she should be familiar with weapons in the abstract, yet totally unskilled in their actual use, is a little odd. But that's just Rita.

     Rita's sole Note, Love, is present as that little pinprick of light inside her torso. And yet her Verses and Chords are completely empty. In addition to her abysmal physical stats, she has nothing there at all, not even the visual changes that should herald them. A moment's thought would show that she is going to have a hard time.

     Nevertheless, she seems eager. "Is everyone ready to move on to 'Clef City'?"
Friz Dirt: Alright, will you at least note all of this down?
Savvy: Yeah, yeah. I'm getting it.
Moxie: This is going to be a lot more complicated.
Grit: No. It is much more simple.
Moxie: What do you mean?
Grit: It's reflecting realities that are more intuitive. More real.
Savvy: This isn't how the real world works.
Grit: Yes it is. You just can't tell.

Dirt: Hey, guys? You're gonna wanna get some of this.
Grit: Holy shit.

    The thing that leaves Friz gobsmacked most of all is Bercilak's speaking. She stops and just stares for a while, blinking slowly. Then: "Wow. Congratulations!"

Dirt: Handshake incoming.
Moxie: Got it!

    Shakeshakeshake. KNK's Violet gets that shake, and Friz tries to firmly shake back in a pseudopanic. "Ah! Okay." She manages to stumble out while she mashes the confirmation. She'll have to repeat it for the others. The confirmation, not the handshake. She gives out her own. Sometimes, they go unanswered. Forte... for a moment she looks him over, then looks to one side. Seeing some kind of disapproval in the nothingness next to her, she moves on. She gives her friend request to Rita Ma most sheepishly, before she unlocks her traits.

    Friz's appearance shifts. A badge. A holster. A slight shadowing around the eyes. An afterimage when she moves. A trail of threads one can barely see, emerging from the skull. Softly gleaming footprints. It's subtle. Nothing flashy. She doesn't show off her verse, chord, or notes. But they're there.

    Weapon selection? Easy. Focus on what she knows. A hurlant, probably named something like a "blast sling" or "overture artillery", just whatever's closest to a pistol, even if it has to be a single-shot option. And a baton -- that's the core, that's her tradition, a simple bludgeon meant to subdue, without the fancy frills of elaborate riot control that make it incapacitate. And good, proper Medium Armor. What even is Medium Armor! It's mostly an armored jacket of sorts, and some real tough boots.

    Gotta move on soon, though. It's time to head to Clef City.
Eryl Fairfax     Eryl takes the training course carefully, not exactly looking to set any speedrun records here. The physics are a bit off, no doubt designed to be suited for people not used to doing this kind of thing in real life. Afterwards, he wanders over to the weapons table before he comes under attack by Violet and her handhsakes. Eryl takes in stride, giving her a firm shake back and a winning smile before considering what is on offer. First, he picks up an armblade and straps it to his arms, but the prompt recommends a ranged weapon too...

    Eschewing the more traditional ones, Eryl eventually settles on a sling. Taking up some stones, he fires a couple off down the target range, each one impacting with a satisfying crunch. He also test-fires some alternate ammo, adding mounds of gravel before shooting it for a makeshift scattershot.

    Finally, he reads the tutorial on Traits. So, one can obtain gameplay benefits from doing certain things. And his Path allows him to easily swap these packages, but he can only have so many equipped at once. He will have to build wide, rather than tall then. And so, he taps the prompt to unlock them.

    The change is immediate. His limbs, seemingly flesh, become dense coils of woven carbon fibre. Under those new-player robes, his torso becomes transparent, making a world of internal components visible. His power core creates a glow that is visible through the clothes around the belly.

    His face remains human, but it is framed by a crown of light, a classical halo emanating from his head, akin to classical depictions of saints and other holy figures. His grey robes suddenly become much finer, gaining fur trim as a crown manifests on his head.

    "... what on earth is this?" he asks. For the first time, he sounds deeply uncomfortable.
Mack Mack fiddles while he absorbs his surroundings and tutorial pop-ups. He inclines his head in a gallant semi-bow towards Lilian while he does this, and absolutely and enthusiastically shakes hands with Violet, apparently totally fine with it. "Archimedes MacCloud," he says, by way of introduction. "Friends call me Mack."

Friends get added, with generally less fanfare and hand-grabbing. Mack gets his Traits in short order. Almost immediately, his hair and clothes starts floating as if weightless, a sort of semi-solid haze gathering up around his head and shoulders. He makes a gesture with one hand, and there's a flicker of distorted light as a much larger hand made of molten glass briefly appears in a mirror of his own a short distance ahead of him. Mack looks immediately, though only slightly, relieved.

Then he gets shinier. Parts of his extremities gain the gleam of precious metals, spreading patterns like intricate, whorling tattoos unfurling down his arms and up his neck. He blinks a couple times, extends his other hand, and flexes his fingers -- and the outstretched hand and arm immediately warp, turning into something bestial, with copper and iron cords for musculature and wicked, gleaming claws. He relaxes, and it gradually turns back. "Ah. So that's how it handled that," he mumbles. It throws him a little. Another glance and a mild chuckle. "'Devil Killer Arts'? Ha!"

Mack drops into a low stance and throws a punch with a short shout. There's a flicker, a rush of reddish color and a distinct sensation of killing intent that rolls off of him for a span of seconds. He shakes his hand vigorously as if he'd touched a hot surface, banishing the sensation and the shader very quickly.

He finally gets around to messing with equipment after that. It looks like he's got a backpack covered in bits, bobs, and something weapon-shaped and tightly wrapped in cloth. That's probably another thing of his.
Lilian Rook <J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "Hey Lilian, first here's my friend invite...second doesn't the Clarity mechanic seem...familar?"
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Howso?"
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "The resonance of one's personal truth and the strength they walk their path. Tangible psychospiritual force."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, ". . . Yes."
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "I mean, I don't think they'd do this, at least intentially buuuuut."
<J-IC-Scene> Mack says, "Huh?"
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "It feeds into a pattern, doesn't it?"
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "Yeah."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "That Rita and I would be invited, and a core mechanic would be patterned after Sapient Heuristics."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Someone has a . . . fixation."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "They've made choices for several of us."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Doesn't it feel like . . . ?"



<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I don't think this has anything to do with her. But I think whoever did this, has an interest in her."
<J-IC-Scene> Mack says, "Should learn to box."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "They seem to have an interest in quite a few people."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "We should probably assume Rita and I weren't the only Elites invited explicitly."
<J-IC-Scene> Surge and Kit | Surge says, "What's that make all the victims then, bait for us, or losers whose true selves were achieved by dying?"
<J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "Bait."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I don't know. Controls? Props? Set dressing? Tools?"
<J-IC-Scene> Friz says, "...A good reason to make sure this stops. That's all we know so far."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "You need people if you want any of this to matter."
<J-IC-Scene> Kirishima says, "Someone that knows about us a lot did, though... Probably. But who would know about all of this to /this/ degree?"
<J-IC-Scene> Kirishima says, "There's no... Connection I can think of. I'm meeting several people here for the first time."
<J-IC-Scene> Friz says, "We have to assume there's a motive to target certain people, since certain people *were* targeted. That motive... it might not include 'connection'."
<J-IC-Scene> KNK. Rose says, "The thing I hate most -- one of the things I hate most about dealing with cults, is that the motive only has to make sense to them."
<J-IC-Scene> Friz says, "That's right. We can't guarantee the motive matches our way of thinking."
<J-IC-Scene> Friz says, "I'm going to need to run a lot of interviews with 'untargeted' players. I'll need to find a population center..."
<J-IC-Scene> Forte says, "Wait, you can talk now?"
<J-IC-Scene> Bercilak says, "It asked me to 'restore my linguistics package.' Even if it's just here... I had to take it up."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "This game is . . ."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "A lot."
Lilian Rook     There are indeed fist weapons, and a 'martial arts' skill. The knuckle protectors mostly seem to be for the benefit of being able to give fistfighting characters loot with stats later. Most of the ranged weaponry is classical fantasy, and all the starting weaponry overall looks sort of oddly cobbled together and rough, as if made by an expert without all the right materials, but nowhere is it more obvious than a bulky, oversized, janky, and piston-operated pistol and rifle of some flintlock-grade design that seems to 'merely' take twenty fully seconds to reload after every few shots, at best. Cylinders? Gas powered? It's hard to tell. They have high attack power, but the ammo doesn't stack well at all in the inventory. There's no way you could 'main gun' and clear a whole dungeon. Strangely enough, the singular sling is realistically 'fucking lethal'; something they never are in games.

    The game is also quite serious about selecting armour. While the stats are quite vague, it's clear from the sheer amount of damage unarmoured targets take without ample Clarity that fucking around in a death game is begging to find out. Even layered cloth seems to be the difference between being nearly oneshot by an opportune arrow and staying above yellow health. Heavier gear is accordingly impactful on movement, but provides the ostensibly valuable utility of significantly reducing even the chip damage taken at high Clarity, or heavy hits that have high Tuning to pierce through it.

    Lilian sends her friend requests, accepts the ones she gets, and when Violet leans in, a smirk drains off her face at an odd realization. "I can smell you." she says. "That's . . . your brain doesn't know how you yourself smell."

    She selects the Knight Errant starting gear, and ends up hefting an MMORPG-sized greatsword, as envisioned by game devs. She initially looks pleased with the (battered and asymmetrical) platemail she ends up with, and then the smile slides off her face. She turns around in the mirror.

    "Isn't this a little too . . . flashy to really count as heavy armour? Who would believe this is realistic? What happens if I get hit here? There's no protection at all. Have video game geeks never seen proper armour?" Tugging at the edges isn't really going to help.

    She pops the seal on her Traits. Strangely, a familiar dusty gold tinges her facial scar, lightly flecking her eyes; an exact recreation of a real thing that had happened. The remainder are more abstract though. Her absent lily hairpin appears to have been replaced with an actual live flower with gold leaves growing off (from?) her head, just under one of two petite black antler-like protrusions. Her ears are very lightly pointed The edges of her pupils gain a visibly redshifted glow, and a light-ring of gold appears floating around her second to last finger on her left hand, and a black one around her right wrist. This, she fusses over in a more neutral way, in the mirror. "Well, I still look like me." she says, then stopping to examine her teeth when she notices four of them are pointier as well. "Tolerable."
KNK     In choosing weapons, Rose ends up with a brace of pistols -- necessary, for these non-gunpowder, non-magazine-fed, single-shot weapons to be at all useful. They're more like magical stake-launchers with 18th-century pistol grips. She just hopes the instant damage makes up for it. Given how Clarity works, if she's reading that right, probably not very well. The idea of saving burst damage until after an opponent has had a chance to beat on you is destructive to her very soul, but she's working on some way to plan around it.

    Both of them choose long, slender, single-edged blades, to what should be no surprise, with Violet using her second pick for throwing knives. No reason to go with things they're not used to. They talk between themselves about Soulsong and Bloodsong but conclude that, without knowing what stats are needed for what skills, or even what skills there are, there's not much point in changing stats preemptively to try and synergize with affinities they barely know anything about. This bothers each of them for different reasons.

    All goes well, until--

                UNLOCK TRAITS

    Perfect skin becomes lined, not with age or stress, but with solid seams. Violet flicks the knife, and her arm opens up along the seams, blossoming in half a dozen directions with multi-articulated joints. The knife is swallowed inside, and it all folds together in the next moment. A twitch of her fingers, and the entire process reverts, bronze gears and shafts exposed for that brief moment that perfectly launches the knife's flat to her palm. She makes a fist, and relaxes it, listening intently to the whirring. She takes a few steps, backwards, her face blank, and she hears the ticking.

    Tick-tock.
        Tick-tock.
            Tick-tock.
                Tick-tock.
                    Tick-tock.

    It shouldn't be possible for a moving body to contain a pendulum clock, but that doesn't matter, here. Not any more than any of the rest does. It's just a game, after all.

    When Rose focuses on her, red cross-hairs glide over the surface of her eyes, focusing where her pupils are only after a moment. "What was--" Her voice comes out scratched, as if it hadn't come from her throat, as a moment ago. As if it were a recording, and just slightly off. "Fuck, why is it doing this now?" Spliced together, faked, on equipment as ancient as those pistols would have to be to sound combat-ready.

    "I don't know," Violet says, falling to hands and knees just outside the tutorial zone, "but I think I hate it."
Ishirou Ishirou is getting used to everything. Giving his new physical characteristics a working out. He also checks out his own starting gear, which appears to be heavy woven cloth. It's closer to a robe, but free cut to let him run. It'd be closer to a cloak, just that it's full body. More than that, he's got a sword. Curved-bladed, which is similar to what he's used to.

POD is deployed, and strangely...not very different from normal POD. Though it's less chatty, and he tries using it...which is very similar to how he uses POD normally. Are they connected..? He doesn't know so he'll have to figure it out later.

With POD equipped...well his eyes glow. It's unsettling like even if you don't look at him directly, you know Ishirou is somehow looking at you. Looking. Right. At. You.

You know he sees more than he should. Looking right at him causes a vision of an eye to be visible. It is always looking, unblinking, and always staring right at you.
Xion 'Xion. You look gorgeous. Don't worry.'
Hands on her shoulders, Xion smiles up at Lilian, still not as tall as the Dame Commander. It's a smaller smile than before, one that's more implied on her face than experienced by her mouth.

She was 'cute' before, and doesn't know what 'gorgeous' feels like.

The blush reaches Xion's cheeks first, spreading across her nose. Then, legs buckling, Xion sits down on the spot and has a moment of blank-faced confusion that might look distantly considerant...

... if she didn't look like she got kabedon'ed by her crush by the lockers and confessed to...

"Aueh." Xion sputters from the ground, looking down at herself while she kneels on the ground and contemplates Feeling with a real, beating heart.

"I really don't feel good, aren't you all feeling..." She asks, wiping a sudden onset hit of sweat off her brow, shaking hands from Damsel Dazedsitting and wobbling her shoulder up and down.

"Huh... Oh, yeah, friends. Let's be friends." She agrees simply, dully authenticating friend requests until Bercilak's Actual Speaking Voice comes out.

"S-see? This place is weird! They're not just..." She seems to be on the verge of tears now, but instead of blubbering she tries to breathe quietly and not make a fuss.

'Well, I still look like me.' Lilian decides.

Xion buries her face in her hands and needs a moment before Unlocking Traits. She sincerely does not wish to press any more buttons for a little bit. The only one she wants to press, right now, is actually greyed out.
Lilian Rook     Slapping the ready button puts Elites into a ready status, instead of sending them one by one. Cobbled together packs increase their encumbrance limits and allow arbitrary 'stick your hand into it' access to anything not-holstered and tetris'd into the sub-inventory. Unfortunately somewhat heavy amounts of free starter wraps and skins indicates a dreaded hunger and thirst system (albeit, it might be mentally difficult to go without those things trapped within the game). A handful of marker-sized vials filled with healing potions and a couple of antidotes are given away, alongside a string of what look like embossed coins of bone(?) with holes through the middle, totally to '5000 Cune' in funds.

    Torches (with timers showing 2 hours), rope, the odd collapsible shovel, hand axe or pick, mechanical sparker, telescope, magnifying glass, charcoal and paper, and 'gear repair kit' shows what kind of travel-heavy game this is going to be, though certain conveniences are afforded, such as holding a compass simply paints it on the HUD. A selection of free starting outfits, a little threadbare but unexpectedly colourful and stylish in a mostly culturally ambiguous way, is presented, but more odd is something like a compass tab containing a dull, glassy jewel, filled with bits of interlinked metal, faintly throbbing like a heart when carefully examined.

    A starting cutscene begins to play in a surround window for each player-- and is interrupted by another burst of harsh static noise. The androgynous tutorial voice pipes up again. "All waiting players already exceed required Cultural Threshold. Introduction of Constructed Consensus unnecessary; switching to Collaborative-Argumentative mode. Assigning selective Log-Out privileges. Generating user interface information visibility to control players. Disabling all tutorial and guidance functions."

    Lilian reaches down to hold out her hand to Violet. "Come on. If it's the Traits, then you can fix them later. The game did say they could be customized and swapped, didn't it?"
Haseo      KNK throws Haseo a friend request, and he accepts without a second thought before throwing everyone else one of his own. Might as well, given the situation, and also because it feels a bit weird to have an empty friend list in a game yet again.

     TRAITS UNLOCKED

     Immediately, Haseo's look changes from a generic anime protagonist to as if he was a player who spent way too much money in the game's cash item shop. Black, light fitting armor, enough belts and holsters to make a certain comic artist jealous, and floating red markings that surround him in a pattern that makes him look like he's wearing some sort of messed up Devil cosplay. Probably the most stand out thing though is a demonic right arm that he's now sporting, which probably contains the concentration of his Dark God powers or something like that.

     Now the game is just trying to mock him or something. That's fine though, this sort of shit to him is cool, and he's not going to pretend otherwise.

     As for his weapon, he's quick to grab hold of a scythe, followed by a pair of slings. As for armor however, he just grabs the heaviest thing he can find, a pair of iron gauntlets and boots, and whatever he can fit over his already existing armor. It's very slapdash, but looks kind of cool in that overdesigned JRPG kind of way.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants      Bercilak stays with the tried and true great bearded axe. No ranged weapons for him. Hearing Lilian's lamentations about heavy armor, Bercilak, in standard 'big beefy manly man plate armor' with ridiculous (if muted, for noob gear reasons) shoulderpads, asks, "How do you think I feel?" Flicking one of his overlarge pauldrons, "What's this gonna do, except slide someone's shit right into my face?" At least it looks nice, with that green cloak, although his bucket helm (with the glowing red eyes peering out like lanterns) and clawed gauntlets give him a distinctly anime-villain appearance.

     Phreak huffs, looking at his poor, poor inventory space with all that badly stacked ammo inside it. "I miss my Zad-- my Zdra--... my Russian Good Days." His armor is on the lighter side of medium, a form-fitting leather affair with a few lamellar inserts over the vitals. He is assuredly the 'gun main' type, and so if these 'hurlants' are inventory inefficient, he'll just have to go a little lower tech--namely, a repeating crossbow. The ROF should be close(r) to what he's used to, anyway.

     Bercilak's large, armored and clawed hand rests on Xion's shoulder, the giant of a man having to kneel to do so. She seems overwhelmed, and so he doesn't further add to it by speaking more. He remains there with his friend, until she's ready to proceed.

     Phreak is ready right away--and either way, once everyone is through, the first thing he does is Compare Arms with Haseo (since Violent doesn't seem the biggest fan of hers). "How come games these days always load your inventory up with crap out of the gate?" he complains to his fellow gamer.
Kirishima As Kirishima starts walking around, she notices something a little stranger even with how she's moving. When did she get the briefcase? Aren't MMOs supposed to have some kind of hidden inventory system?

Also, it might actually just be a really big purse. It's kind of unclear, but it has enough logos and patches on it to lean either way. Yes, apparently, but this thing feels important enough for her to keep holding onto it even though there's no zipper on it. It doesn't look like it closes at all, so it's one more source of stress to keep in mind once she has to actually fight anything.

Maybe stress, at least, if she really does need to keep anything in there. She kind of hopes she doesn't.

The less obvious stretchy fabric on the back of her outfit will have to come even later, but at least it's partially covered up by her hair being as big and red as it is. She's still busy fussing over her mask that's giving out way too much info and also this important-feeling bag doing the same thing. "If I knew we'd be getting these after going through all that creation stuff, I think I would've just done it sooner." She half-complains with a laugh.

When she sees Xion shoving her face into her hands, though, Kirishima drops the laugh and approaches her. She squats in place near hot-Xion, offering her a light pat on the head alongside Bercilak's shoulder contact to try and offer some extra comfort there. "You okay? Do you need a..." She starts digging around in her pockets, realizing she mostly just has lots of supplies and not much in the way of actual napkins or tissues. She gives up looking for those after a bit, then comes up with A PLAN and tears some paper off her wrap.

It's shitty paper, but it's the best she has to offer right about now.
KNK     Lilian reaches down to hold out her hand to Violet.

    After a moment, Violet reaches, far, far more hesitatntly than she had just a minute ago, for Lilian's hand. Her own body should be as light as her DEX makes it, to her. And as light as Lilian's STR makes it. Nothing odd happens with her arm, this time. It looks like she's struggling to get up, even if she shouldn't be.

    "It's not-- I'm not-- we're not supposed to be like this." She mumbles in that recorded voice. "Not after everything we went through."

    Eventually, she does stand.

<J-IC-Scene> KNK. Rose says, "They're just fucking with us. Just... fuck."
<J-IC-Scene> KNK. Rose says, "I knew this was a trap. Just never thought it'd be like this. Okay. Okay. Channeling all the sad things in the world into rage. Just gimme a minute."
<J-IC-Scene> KNK. Rose says, "I'll be fine."
Rita Ma      "Ms. Xion," Rita says tentatively, somewhere around the time she's buried her face in her hands- she sounds a little uncertain fitting that name to the woman in front of her, but tries to hide it- "is there anything I can help you with? You don't like the way you look now, do you? We could try to find a mask or something, together. Would that help?"

     One hand reaches out, about to touch Xion's shoulder, before she thinks better of it and pulls back. Her other is balled up in an anxious fist near her own chest. "You could try to change it back with Traits, or..." But she's aware of how feeble her reassurances sound.

     "I'm sorry, Ms. Xion. This is really awful, isn't it?"

     Rita glances over at Rose and Violet with transparent horror, too. She doesn't need to ask them what's wrong. The awfulness of living in a body like that has already been made clear to her.

     They got to 'feel human' for just a minute, and then it got taken away. Rita is filled with dread. The message isn't lost on her.

     "I'm sorry," she says, very quietly. "Traits can be changed, so we can fix this, right? But it's awful that they did it to you at all. It's not fair. If you want to stop here, then... that's okay. I promise."
Lilian Rook     "I don't feel fantastic either." Lilian says to Xion, forcing her voice to remain level and collected. "This game knows and simulated all of my biometric data, I can't pick what to wear, the totality of my being has apparently been reduced to game stats, and more importantly, this is the first time since I was a child I've ever been without Night Mist. Even though I know it's right around my neck in the real world . . ."

    "We're all just doing our best to deal with it, Xion." Lilian sighs. "Complaining about antlers won't make them go away. A million people are worth the effort of keeping it together. If it's weird, strange, different . . . I believe that's probably meant to be the point. There's no way around it. So if nothing else, can't we deal with it being strange and uncomfortable together?"

    She helps up Violet. Privately, between the two of them, she lets her eyes fall. "Yeah. I know. You don't have to say anything. We'll find you someone who can help. Some quest or NPC or item. I . . ."

    "I meant what I said on the radio. Being able to live with your own skin is a line that nobody else should cross."

    Letting go of Violet's hands, she walks a distance and brings up the ready menu. She looks at Bercilak, then conjures up her equipment grid with another hand. She points to where she's already tapped the 'eye' icon over her helmet. "Quit whining you big baby. You get a working vocabulary and the first thing you do is moan about having too much coverage? Be glad they were thinking of protecting your brain after all the points you sank into fixing it." Yeah. That's more like Lilian. "Verisimilitude. Don't eat any raw meat items." she says to Phreak.

    Lilian hits Ready.