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Starbound Flotilla     THE SPACEBAR

    This game zone appears to be a tremendous, shattered-open planetoid instead of an island in VRMMO Earth. The fractured planetoid drifts far above Earth, something like two thirds of the moon's size at least, and it glitters with a startling array of lights that indicate spots of activity, habitation, or perhaps even space colonization. Segments of the tremendous planetoid seem to offer strange mineral themes, conspicuous organic growth, or even obvious technological artificiality, depending on the nature of the individual fracture.

    Today's site is somewhere near one of the more gray, bland fragments of the planetoid. Is this a little on the nose for a digital world? It almost feels like it, but it lacks an air of insincerity that might come from that. A lot of the world is inspired by old science fiction, and this is no exception. It has the look of a setpiece from The Jetsons, all elegant parabolas, stylish points, and Googie architecture, alongside midcentury-modern neon signage. There's literally a big neon rocketship that makes up the sign of this... Taaaavern?

    It somehow feels, in some way, like this is the equivalent of an RPG tavern for the game. Maybe it's the diversity of individual craft, all of which are styled after some cliche of late 30s to early 80s science fiction or another. Maybe it's the tone that sets it dramatically in sort of a lesser region of the larger colony near it. Maybe it's the fact that, as one approaches it, their minimap populates with an array of icons indicating things that are probably quest boards, vendors, and logout-safe zones, and that's just how taverns tend to be. Minimaps indicate this as an "FSC Ranger Station", whatever that means. The interior is even more stylized, evoking the aesthetic of 1950s diners, bars, and other places of eating.

    The only thing out of place is that all of the NPCs in here are wearing big doofy cold-war spacesuits of some kind or another. How ARE they eating? I mean, they've got bar food, diner food, and hell, they've got glasses of all sorts of alcohol, but all of them have totally opaque helmets on their suits. Some are EVA suits, some are just thinner interior suits which let them wear things like a bowtie and waistcoat on that left-side bartender. The one on the right is a big robot with a massive lightbulb head, looking like a man in a goofy, massive tin suit otherwise.

    Amid the NPCs are a few notable individuals, people who have either proven their usefulness to the group or who have had their loyalty earned. The FSC Miner is a gruff astronaut in a miner's hard hat, his astronaut suit stained with dust and soot. The FSC Ace is wearing a pilot's scarf and goggles over his helmet, and the open parts of his helmet's opaque radiation shield have stylized bits of fighter nose art. Nostromo, the FSC AI, is still running on the local machines, in textual interfaces. Captain Laika is very, very clearly a small scarred and cyberized dog operating a large just-over-human-size mechanical suit, digging into a meal here. And now Cruiser Tormod has joined in; the little mechanical brain has a miniaturized "flying saucer" looking apparatus under it to let it disembark from its body, parked outside; it's busy having a conversation in what looks to be some kind of Gaelic language with Nostromo.

    As usual, the quest board of stacked CRTs and the heavy reel-to-reel computronics apparatus that Nostromo "lives" in are all available for various purpose. The Flotilla, themselves, have arrived just recently; people have been invited to brainstorm the next move, and discuss what is already known.
Yuna Kagurazaka It's Yuna's first time visiting the Spacebar, so she's not really expecting the NPCs to recognize her, except *maybe* by dint of the company she's keeping. Still, her Light Suit feels ... sooooort of appropriate, even if she wonders whether it's the best idea for what to wear to a place like this.

As long as she doesn't drink anything with alcohol, she should be okay, right? And while she's usually pretty outgoing and friendly, she's more inclined to let her friends - more experienced with this 'game' and how things work in this setting - take the lead in interacting with the NPCs.

Additionally, Elner is sticking fairly close to Yuna, as per usual. No sign of the rest of the Matrix of Light, though; unless a bar brawl breaks out, Yuna shouldn't need their help (and maybe still won't, even if it *does*).
Corona Arclite About the only thing the space bar is missing is the saloon doors to dramatically kick open when you enter, but the place was cozy otherwise so Corona doesn't object. Mostly because she's paying more attention to jotting down notes in an old journal style book, probably info she's picked up from the last few space excursions. It's when she realizes she's actually in the bar from the familiar sounds reaching her ears does she look up, thumping the book shut in one hand. "Wonder what kinda whosits and whatsits we can pick up 'ere this time."
Kirito Kirito has learned his lesson about this place. DO NOT ask the patrons how they are getting any of that stuff down their guts. They're much stranger than the NPC Fairies populating Alfheim. MUCH stranger.

    He's worried one of them might bite him or something if he presses any harder. And no amount of spying (yes, he's done that! Secretly. A little.) has made him any wiser.

    So this place creeps the Spriggan out, and that's why he has both hands in his pockets and is avoiding eye contact with any of the patrons - or visor contact, or what-have-you.

    For once he's happy to not be unexpectedly the center of attention, as bizarrely often happens when the shit hits the fan. Letting others call the shots and lending his sword to the cause has been refreshing.

    But this place.

    "Ehgh." He can't help but grunt uncomfortably in the quiest of breaths the few times he does risk a glance or two at some of the boards.

    "Could do with some greenery." He finally concludes in a mutter. That's what this aesthetic is missing. Plants and trees and things. He's gotten so used to them!
Septette Arcubielle      Septette's stripped-down, barebones fighter parks itself neatly in the Spacebar's hangar, but rather than head directly inside, she takes a bit of a detour. Strolling over to the newly-mobile Tormod, she rifles in her satchel before digging out some kind of oddly-shaped hairband! It's purple with a black-stemmed white flower tucked into it, almost a replica of the one she habitually wears- yet its arch is widened to fit directly on top of the Berserker's spherical cognitive core, instead of a human's head.

     "For luck," she says cheerfully, setting it down within Tormod's reach. She's not about to press their new allegiance by forcing accessories on the peculiar machine just yet!

     A few moments later, Septette settles down at the bar, ordering a series of sickeningly saccharine drinks to go with her space-burger, and munches on it slowly as she surveys the small crowd of other player characters. These people may not look like much, she muses to herself, but they've done some pretty impressive things together so far.

     Not that she looks like much herself. Dressed like this, in a new purple cloak, a stranger could briefly mistake her for a human or light cyborg, an impression buttressed by how eagerly she digs into the greasy bar food- but everyone here ought to know better by now. Shouldn't they?
Silica     Silica's here. She's still looking a bit ragged from the battle at the shipyard, not to mention the state her Swordfish is in. But she's here, and the Cait Sith joins up with the others, but remains largely quiet.
Staren     Staren's here, too! After he comes out of the airlock, his suit sort of retracts away, aside from a torc with a small air tank. He's dressed in his normal clothes otherwise, and heads over to take a seat near Tormod after ordering a sweet iced tea. "So, you've got a body now. What next?"
Tomoe The game zone is calm for once and she's in the space bar again, Tomoe is seated near the bar where she's ordered some food of her own here and she's just chilling out for trhe moment. She does wonder what will happen to the allied NPCs if they clear it? There's nothing she can do but try to see this trhough to it's end though in the past zones just quite down rather than vanish so there is tht.

For now she's going to focus on her food and she looks over to Kirito for a moment.

"Hey Kirito! Food on me if you want!"
Kyoko Takada     "Hibiki" is here, her avatar a faceless, sleek, super-futuristic spacesuit with some cool neon lights. She's been here before, and it looks only slightly upgraded from that point. She's looking through a holo-readout of some kind that contains the specs on ship upgrade parts, trying to pick out something that would enhance her current repertoire. She moves it to the side, however, to come up and wave to Silica, spotting her by the game GUI as much as anything else. "Hey, you okay? It looks like you haven't fully healed up, yet. Or, is 'restored' a better term?" She's curious and cheerful.
Kirito Oh hey. There's people about. People are meeting after all! Kirito's looking a bit skeptical of this fact... but he's shaken out of whatever deep mental funk his thoughts were in by someone calling his name. Of course it almost gets him jumping out of his skin! The youth glances about every which way worriedly until he spots Tomoe... and visibly relaxes.

    Yeeeeep. This place gives him the willies, it does. But during the jumpy display he manages to spot Silica... and gives her a warm and encouraging smile. Because she's really taken a stand on this and impressed him!

    The Spriggan inhales deeply to clear his thoughts... and ambles Tomoe's way. But once he reaches her...

    "It is edible, right?" He whispers, voice seething with suspicion and uncertainty.

    He hasn't actually been brave enough to order anything, given the patrons.
Starbound Flotilla     "I know, right?" Says the human bartender to Kirito, shaking his helmeted head. "I told them, you wanna spice the place up, give me some hydroponics to work with. But the aesthetic just doesn't match up."

    Septette's offer gets a series of incomprehensible, compressed audio sequences. Several images of Septette flash on Tormod's monitor interspersed among several images of mutilated Neurovores. Then a little tractor beam shoots out of the cognition core's miniature flying saucer, picks the thing up, and settles it atop the braincase. Is this like a sort of cargo cult thing? He sees Septette murder a lot of Neurovores so he thinks he should imitate her for this mysterious "luck" property? Who knows.

    Staren gets an even less logical answer. Something pops up on Tormod's screen. It's the... Social menu icon? It's the social menu icon for Seed-engine based VRMMOs, two humans from the shoulders up. One of them is growing tentacles. Then he flickers several images of mutilated Neurovores again, which seems to be how he punctuates just about everything he tries to say. Then he goes back to having this weird conversation with Nostromo.
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite ables over to the others after getting herself something to drink. Tilts her head a bit to the side as she catchs the end of what Tormod is 'saying'. "Y'know. Ah understand machines purdy darn well... an' even Ah ain't got a clue what he's tryin' to say."
Yuna Kagurazaka Food. That sounds like a good and relaxing idea to Yuna. "Is that a general invitation, Tomoe?" she asks the SAO veteran with a grin. "Or are you only buying for Kirito and the rest of us are on our own?"

Whatever the answer may be, Yuna ... actually has to check to see if she has 'money' that would be useful here. She's not about to resort to RMT just to get some munchies, but she helped slay enough Neurovores that she should have *something* to show for it ...
Silica     Silica looks over at Hibiki. "Hey, yeah, got banged around a bit in the Manufactorium. Stupid idea, chasing those things in there, but noone else was in position, and fighting a Ship-type enemy on foot is not fun." She sighs a bit. "It takes longer to regenerate these days. I should be logged out, that seems to help a bit, but..." she makes a vague gesture. "Thanks for the help, by the way. For everything you've done for us."
Tomoe Tomoe says "It is as ediable as anything you or I use for cooking skills. SO it's fine just avoid the daily special. It seems to start an event and I'd like to avoid that." She notes to Kirityo as she's chowing down on something that might be a burger of some sort.

She grins at Kirito for a moment as she makes room and she looks to Yuna laughing.

"Sure thing Yuna please come and join us. I have the Yrd to spare on meals today."
Iria When did Iria get here?

Truth be told, she's been in the background pretty much, keeping to herself. She's been looking over a few things and whatnot, but mostly having little to say. Although now she seems to have gotten a bit of a thirst herself, so she's taking it upon herself to get a drink, before joining the others.

As she approaches the group, Iria gives a slight nod, although her slightly sour facial expression might make one think she's got something on her mind. At least those who don't know her very well.
Staren     Seems straightforward enough: 'Together, we will kill lots of neurovores.' Staren nods and sips his drink, then goes to check in with Laika. "And how are your plans progressing?"
Kyoko Takada     Kyoko's avatar inclines its head to Silica. There's still something slightly off about her motions, either from lack of experience or a lower-fidelity control scheme. She gestures with one hand, waving it off. "Oh, you're welcome. It's been fun, and very educational, though it does..." She pauses a moment, not actually making audible the yawn that still sounds in her voice following, "...make it difficult to keep up my offline schedule. Ah, did I hear right, that you haven't logged out since then?"
    She gets a ping, then, and waves across the room to Septette, acknowleding that she got the data. A few motions of her fingers, and she's plugging things in together, including as much context as possible as she tries to match the Flotilla recordings against her own of Bennings.
Septette Arcubielle      As she watches Tormod's response, an emotion washes over Septette that her face clearly isn't very practiced at displaying. Her lips do something funny, her eyes widen and brighten, and her voice acquires a slight vibrato quaver for a moment. "I understand," she says quietly, patting Tormod's silvery hull ever-so-gently with one skeletal hand. "Do as I do, child of distant suns. I can teach you many things."

     A few seconds later, she finally manages to pull herself away from the Cruiser and stroll over in Kyoko and Silica's general direction. "She's been a great help," Septette adds with an assenting nod towards the feline adventurer. "Need any snacks to keep up your energy, Kyoko?" There's a brief pause as she eyes the way that sleek avatar moves, then shakes her head. "Or maybe you don't have gustatory functions built into that thing. A shame- the food here is real enough, and you seem like you could use a pick-me-up."

     Watching the Yggdroid pick at her burger, for that matter, is subtly unnerving. Her neck is just an open spine with no visible 'throat'- not that that slows her down. Where does it even go?
Yuna Kagurazaka Yuna smiles, and slips into a seat at Tomoe's table as the invitation is extended beyond just Kirito. "And they even use Yrd here? A unified currency, how civilized," she says.

She's not trying to sound snooty, *really* she isn't. Or if she is, then she's kidding.
Iria After buying herself another drink and some food, Iria decides to look for a place to sit as well. She looks around before spotting Kirito and Yuna at Tomoe's table. She shrugs a little and makes her way over to an empty seat at the table.

"Sorry I'm a little 'late' to the occasion if you will," Iria comments as she takes her seat. "I just haven't had much to say personally." She shrugs. "I'm not unfriendly, just sometimes I keep to myself." A pause. "Really, I'm not an unfriendly person." She smiles a little.
Silica     Silica looks at Kyoko oddly for a moment, then shrugs. "I don't really know how it works, but..." She makes some gestures, opening her menu and tapping the Log Out button. Her form loses texture, turns wireframe, then resolves into a late teen human girl, wearing an eyepiece and a set of fairly normal clothes.
Starbound Flotilla     George is the main handler for the Starbound Flotilla's involvement in the IFO fiasco, so he's the one who speaks up for the most part. "Alright," He says, drawing some attention. "We've got two of three things we'll need for this, but damned if I can find the third. We need ideas for a net to cast, something to get a lead on the Alpha Agent. We got the Gamma from the Von-Neumanns, we got the Beta from the piracy job. We need to pull the next one. Right now, we've got help from one of the pirates, and one of the Von-Neumanns... Maybe?"

    He shakes his head, rubbing his face a little. "Honestly I don't really know what's up with that guy. Anyway, we need to find the Alpha Agent, and just flying around hasn't had it show up on my radar yet. Anyone got ideas for where we ought to start looking?"

    Speaking of Laika, Staren gets a gruff nod of greeting from the dog, who as ever, speaks in incomprehensible, subtitled Russian. "Doing fine. The RKV is refitted and ready to help. Pulled some favors. Crew willing to do a job that's pro-bono." That translated as "pro-bono" but she very, very definitely said the word "blackmail" somewhere in that Russian.
Kyoko Takada     Silica and Septette seem to be in a competition to see who can surprise Kyoko harder. Too bad for them, her faceplate doesn't show anything discernible as an expression. They'll have to figure it out only from her body language and voice patterns. She's not going to say anything about Septette's eating, though. Even if she definitely looks even more odd up close, without an extra layer of virtual camera-ry between them. She does nod, though, to add, "Maybe I'll step out for some coffee. Though I'd have to walk out to a cafe to get what I like."
    Silica's new appearance requires a little more thought for a response, and Kyoko takes a moment to first plug in the data from George on what the Flotilla was trying to say, and set her AIs to try to form matches between that and Septette's audio recordings before continuing. "So. Um, hm. You're not connected 'from somewhere,' nor did you just 'come here,' but rather you interface with the way this world is set up to behave 'as if you were connected'? Is that about right?"
    Oh, hey, George is talking. Kyoko has no idea where to look, though. Her resources are already taken up with the voice data.
Corona Arclite Folks are already plotting or talking to Laika, so Corona ambles over to the Miner. She stops and tips her hat to him in typical Western greeting. "Howdy pardner. Got word on any new hot points fer resources?" Others can plan about the Agents and the future missions, Corona is set on making sure they've got the materials to keep their Loaders and Fighters in working order. Like any good engineer would be doing.
Starbound Flotilla     Septette's voice data about George is useless on its own, but after a moment, George wanders over to Hibiki, and provides what he said, himself. First, some of George's voice.

    "#####! ###, ####'# ##?"
    "Bones! Hey, what's up?"

    Then, some of Albert's.
    "####. ### ### ### ######## #### ## ##?"
    "What. Why are you pointing that at me?"

    And so on, and so forth. How, precisely, the audio is being "encrypted" sure isn't simple, but Kyoko has her own ship's processors, the local reel-to-reel computronics equipment, and other sources she could use. But here's the bigger question: What sorts of keys might she try here, to match up the input and output?
Kirito Kirito gives the bartender a sheepish 'there is no helping it then huh?' look before turning his focus back onto Tomoe and Yuna, who's wandered over. He takes this fact more or less in stride, only blinking once or twice at her brazen approach.

    So he's quick to order a few basic things, but when George starts speaking Kirito listens from a table or two over...

    "Hmmmmm... going by patterns, the other agents are probably located in noteworthy or dangerous places that aren't any farther away than we found so far. What other factions, dungeons,.... I guess those would be asteroid mines or something? - are around here?"
Silica     Silica... now Keiko by her nameplate, sits down and heaves a sigh. "That's how our world works now... these are Game Zones. They're made from the data of VRMMO games, but they're completely real. The Multiverse horking its guts up somehow brought CARDINAL out here, and now it's treating this entire planet like one giant Full Dive game." she gestuers to her Augma. "It gave all the top players these, so we can use our avatars out here, but... well."
Yuna Kagurazaka Yuna listens to the other discussions with a kind of amused attentiveness, while she's placing her order for a BLT. She's still catching up with a lot of things about this gamespace, and the chat is providing quite a few details she hadn't been aware of -

Such as the fact that the neurovores may be the 'third faction' that they need to get a plot coupon from.

Suddenly Yuna is a lot less hungry, even for virtual munchies. So her sandwich will take a while to actually get eaten, unless her appetite recovers faster than *she* expects it to. Still, the piece of her personality which loves games and gaming - maybe not a huge part, but it *is* there, games are a great way to spend time with friends after all - remains engaged ... on top of which, these *are* her friends who are working to solve this problem, and as always, Yuna would rather chew her arm off than leave friends in the lurch.

"If the Neurovores are that third faction, maybe the corruption thing is how some of us could ... 'infiltrate,' or whatever?" she suggests uncertainly. "Has anyone tried that - getting 'corrupted' to the point that your perceptions are weird, and seeing if the actual mob Neurovores still treat you as hostile?"
Iria "If it involves getting corrupted," Iria says after taking a sip of her drink. "Then I'd think there might be a risk involved. I mean, I know it's a game and all, but we also have to consider the possibility that the Neurovores might know that we're not one of them." She lowers her eyes a little. "Granted, we don't know this for fact, but after what I've seen happen involving corruption, I don't want to take any risks without more information."
Septette Arcubielle      One of Septette's silvery triangular earfins twitches at the distant conversation, and she strolls over to Yuna's table, half a burger still in hand. "The Flotilla members are the ones who've gotten the most corrupted so far," she says, nodding her head in George's general direction. "I believe their conclusion was that being more corrupted makes neurovores prioritize other people in the party over you, but not ignore you altogether. It's possible that higher levels of corruption than what they experienced could change that, but..."

     An unreadable expression flashes across her face, followed by a concerned wrinkling of her nose as she starts to turn away again. "I'd have to assume that Cardinal wouldn't allow for such a solution to be completely without side-effects. Personally, I'd prefer blasting our way through, but if an infiltrator wants to risk it..."
Staren     Staren's not really paying attention to the Russian -- it's not a language he speaks, anyway. He assumes 'pro bone-o' is a dog pun, and nods. "Good, good."

    Now Kirito and George are already talking about his next question, so Staren wanders that way... And now people are talking about the neurovores being the third faction. "Hmmm. I dunno... would CARDINAL do a mission that makes you look like a monster to the rest of the Multiverse until you complete it? But then, if it acted differently because of recognizing any world outside the game, it wouldn't be doing this in the first place."

    "If you befriend the neurovores though, aren't they gonna be suspicious if you ask 'Hey, where's that last thing the heroes need to defeat you?' Although, I suppose they might try to recruit you into defending it..."
Kirito Kirito's pocket flexes oddly as something moves around inside it... it's Yui! The tiny pixie deftly flips open the cap and floats up and onto Kirito's hair. Her favorite perch, as some may know.

    "It would. Since the infection is easily reversible, it is within the normally acceptable parameters. Also... while CARDINAL can procedurally generate content by drawing on materials such as news and stories, keep in mind that it is not necessarily the only possible source of quest content. If someone else designed this quest, CARDINAL's guidelines may not matter at all!"

    The little pixie helpfully informs Staren on that train of thought.

    "Good point." Kirito concludes, briefly engaging in some thoughtful chinrubbing.
Kyoko Takada     "To be honest, even the youkai I've seen are more understandable than that kind of story, though maybe that's just because of my own background," Kyoko says to Silica, or Keiko.
    This encryption is tricky, but she has a fair few clues already. One, the duration of any word is maintained, meaning there's no compression. Two, cadence and intonation are perceptible enough to tell what's a question, meaning the result isn't entirely scrambled. The first point makes any encrypted statement vulnerable to a dictionary attack with a parser to check that the results are syntactically valid, though that won't catch people speaking with heavier slang than the parser can handle. The second point gives a possibility that similar sounds are still similar after scrambling. She sets one process to start crunching the second route, and another to take Bennings' recording and work on the former.
Tomoe Tomoe Says "It concerts well enough I found in these zones. I'm not going to question it, right?"

She grine a Yuna as well as smiling over at Iria as she shows up.

"Ity happens it's good to see you as well Iria come on join in."

She'll kook over to Kirito before she looks too the baterned for a moment and just looks back to her friend as she thinks on the patterns as she looks to Kirito again.

"You making sense of this better than I am kirito?"
Silica     "Try living it." Keiko shoots back, goodnaturedly at the tech girl. "These games used to just be that. Games. A fun way to pass time with your friends in a world entirely different to your real life." she orders something, then resumes. "Now, Real Life and The Game are one and the same... and it's a game we can't log out from."
Starbound Flotilla     "Alright," George decides, tapping one foot against the ground. "We've got good ideas going here. Looking into the third faction, the FSC. And looking for a big neurovore hive. Let's combo those. If we're gonna sequence break this questline, we'll need to check around for big, really badly infested FSC sites, and see if we can find the Alpha Agent there." He gestures to Yuna. "Yuna's got a solid point too. Getting really infested might give us a chance to get in. I doubt these things will be friendly if we start poking anything, but hey, if there's people who want to give it a shot, I say go for it, the cure is free and I don't think it fucked up my brain much. Worst comes to worst, someone sprays us down with a hose of NeuroCleanse(tm)."

    How George just said a trademark out loud is impossible to explain, and also impossible to comment on before he moves on to the next point.

    "I don't think we can befriend them, since they don't... I mean, do they have leaders? I don't think they do. We'll figure it out though, finding the biggest FSC hive we can. I'm hoping, though I got no idea if this is true, that we'll maybe find an infectee player in the bigger centers of infestation. That Bennings guy is worth following up on. Speakin' of which..." He turns to Kyoko. "What do you got for us?"

    Kyoko's approach is fairly functional. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of how it's encoded, she can instead get a rough back-translation. This won't let anyone speak in Neurovore "language", but it WILL be able to translate some aspects of what they say. It takes some time to undo the corruptive audio effects on some of this, but after they're undone, what Bennings was shouting at Kyoko can finally be heard more clearly:

    "#'# ##### ## #### ####! ######## ###'## #######!! #'# ##### ## #### ##!!! ### #'## ### #### ### ### ## #####, ###!"
    "I'm going to stop this! Whatever you've planned!! I'm going to stop it!!! And I'll fix what you did to Earth, too!"
Kyoko Takada     "Can't you just... walk out, at this point?" Kyoko asks. "It /does/ seem fun, but I wouldn't take the risks you're taking, here. Not without a lot of insurance."
    She brings up a lot of, to most people, meaningless audio visualizations, along with some text lines and what looks like an audio-cleaner functioning in real-time over the sound wave. Still, it's only the text that comes across unambiguously. "Here you are. 'I'll fix what you did to Earth, too,' huh? Did the Von Neumanns do something to Earth? Or did he even know who we were, at that point?" She shrugs. "I think I can decrypt the speech, with this, and I'll have that working well enough for real-time by the time we need it. But getting someone infested is still our best bet if we want someone to speak this... whatever it is."
Staren     "Maybe he's someone who was away from civilization when the world changed, and now he thinks the neurovores are responsible for the game zones?" Staren muses. "Or perhaps he's someone from the Multiverse who is similarly confused."

    Staren blinks. "Wait, if he was from THIS world, how'd he get up here? Could he be an actual astronaut?" Staren tries to get a connection to SAO-Earth's internet and start looking up actual astronauts -- and, for that matter, any news about loss of communication with space stations or the like.
Yuna Kagurazaka "If Bennings is part of the game, or even if he's a player," Yuna suggests, "maybe the Neurovore contamination 'filter' is so bad that he looks out at Earth and sees ... well, more corruption than the rest of us can imagine."

She takes a look at her BLT, picks up a potato chip to nibble ... then picks up part of the sandwich, carefully removing the toothpick so she can bite into said sandwich. All she has to go on regarding poor Bennings is what she's heard (and is hearing) from the others; she didn't see him during the battle to keep the fabrication facility from getting overwhelmed while Tormod was being rebuilt.
Silica     Keiko gives 'Hibiki' a /look/. "This world is my /home/. Couldn't you just walk out of your world at any time and leave it to do that it does?" she retorts back. "I could just go to some other Japan, take my family and move there, away from all this and live quietly... but I can't do that. I'm too invested in this world, and all my friends are here, they're fighting too, you know." The young woman seems full of emotion about this. "I can't abandon them."
Starbound Flotilla     Staren gets a few moments of thought from George. "Well, that Reker guy summons his armored car. This guy could maybe do the same thing for his spaceship?" He says, gesturing in uncertain ways. "I mean, it's videogame physics, maybe he just took off into space when he augma'd up, 'cause he could summon his spaceship. An astronaut going missing would be pretty loud business, right? Unless you guys have secret astronaut programs." He stops to consider something, and then snaps in Yuna's direction. "That might be it." He says. "The game zones, they aren't supposed to mess with the outside world much. But /players/ do. And if some game mechanic's filter is fucking with him, /he'd/ see Earth being fucked up. And then, you know, never go to Earth. Or open communications with it. That makes sense!"
Iria "More corruption?" Iria raises an eyebrow at Yuna before scowling. "That's something I'd rather not think about, personally." She closes her eyes for a moment, imagining what that might be like for Earth as well as for Myce. Then she opens her eyes again. "If that really WERE to happen, though, then it'd be up to us to stop it!"
Kyoko Takada     Kyoko looks back at Keiko, and shakes her head. "People flee wars to live someplace without one all the time, you know. With their friends and family and whatever they can carry. If I had somewhere I could run to... but, nevermind that." She backs off, body language disengaging.
Tomoe Tomoe thinks for a moment about Bennings she woners for a moment.

"That it looks like something the runious powers from The Wolf Lord's home world has taken root. That seems to be what might be going on there. This is torubling if any of us get that infected we might not even think that it's based on a game anymore or ... could he be refering to Carinal infesting Earth in the first place?"
Yuna Kagurazaka "They 'aren't supposed to' mess with the outside world doesn't mean they *don't*," Yuna points out to George, looking rueful. "Part of what drew us into investigating this whole scenario is the chance that something *could* happen to the world outside the game space ... and there's been at least one major incident of a monster *leaving* a game zone and wreaking havoc in a regular city."

She sure as hell hasn't forgotten that two-headed giant which was on a beeline for a certain hospital.

"As for whether he knows it's a game," she adds, nodding to Tomoe, "would any of you have known Sword Art Online was supposed to be a game if you *hadn't* gone through the process of buying the game, installing the software on your NerveGear, and logging in on launch day? Would you have known Alfheim Online was a game if you hadn't loaded it up on your AmuSphere? If Bennings is a regular person who was up here and suddenly got swallowed up by a game zone - with or without an Augma to help him - how would he really have known what happened?"
Kirito "This Neurovore fiasco is terrifying if you don't know how it works." Kirito announces when his thoughts turn to the kmatters just revealed. He scrunches his face deeply in thought.

    The boy looks pretty troubled by this news.

    Troubled enough that even Yui, who's begun to float around, notices his look and furrows her own tiny brow.

    "Don't worry, papa! Isn't there an item we can use to cleanse his infection?"

    "If we can get him to take it." Kirito mumbles worriedly back.
Staren     Staren nods to George. His explanation seems to make the most sense.

    After listening to Kyoko make the argument he has countless times, he looks over. "Things on this Earth aren't /that/ bad. There are plenty of safe areas and people defending them. If there weren't... Well, there'd still probably be some holdouts."

    To Yuna, he adds, "Yeah, but who the heck would be 'up here' aside from astronauts? So far, George's theory makes the most sense, I think."
Silica     Keiko watches 'Hibiki' back off, and just, shrugs, taking her ordered food and walking off to be alone for a while.
Septette Arcubielle      Septette's expression changes to one as flat and serene as a porcelain doll, as she leans back against the bar with her arms crossed and listens to the translation. Gradually, worry and sober determination creep back into her face in equal measure. "'I'm going to'," she repeats softly. "Caught the phrase, misread the context. He really has gone off the deep end."

     She tilts her head back, half-closing her eyes, and emulates a soft sigh. Too reminiscent of the Abyssal War. Of how fighting those chalky horrors for too long would warp a man's mind. Bad memories, but good experience. Her fingers tap the inside of her arm in rhythmic clinks. "Bennings is absolutely a real player. He's a thinking person, if confused, and not some exploitable AI. And he's likely going to oppose us, if he's far-gone enough to see the Neurovores as allies."

     Her ribcage expands and contracts in an emulation of a deep breath. "Let's try to dig up everything we can on who he is, how he fights, and how to bring him down safely. I have a feeling he's going to be waiting for us, if this mission takes us where I think it will."
Iria Meanwhile, Iria is keeping to herself again, sipping her drink and listening to whatever conversations happen. She's not being antisocial, just quenching her thirst and listening for something interesting to respond to.
Starbound Flotilla     "Alright. From here on out, we'll be scouring around corewards for any major FSC installations that have also gotten smashed hard by Neurovore infections. Anyone wanting to come with us, we can use the help. On the side, we've gotta deal with finding out about Bennings. Anyone local or even foreign with good net connections or awareness, that'll be on you, we need to know what kind of guy that is and what we might be dealing with. He's following us, from the look of it, since he messed up the business down in the Manufactorium, so we might have to deal with him sometime no matter what."

    "In meantime, everyone grind up whatever you think you're gonna be needing for a deep excursion. After we get the Alpha Agent, if it's around an FSC hive-infestation like that, we're gonna need to hit up the corewards parts and go after the Grey Area again. If we kill that thing with the three agents, it ought to finish off this game event or whatever, and deal with the whole problem."

    "Can't see much else we can do tonight with this. You guys know what to do if you wanna help, so we can get cracking." George says, stretching in a relaxed way. "Tomorrow. I'm gonna take a break and get a meal now, not work my ass off like that."
Tomoe Tomoe says "Nope thought it was just a VR game, the computer club in the school I was at due to an exchange program on were all hyped for a VR game like that. Totally I get 3here your coming from, or he didn't understand what it was he had."

She notes to Yuna she now goes quiet and nods in agreement.

"Going digging for information would be a good idea, Septette."

She looks over to George.

"We have a game plan then, good."