SheepGirl Quest (VA-11 HALL-A)

Getting onto the train, you hum to yourself with a smile. You've been planning this splurge for a while now, saving up enough to go spend on non-essentials.

The hum of the train as it moves is quite soothing after that walk. When you sit down, you can feel it vibrating pleasantly. It's nice.

You bask in the moment for a little, looking more and more like a sheep by the minute. You nearly nod off, but with a clang from your horns, you jolt awake, and the eyes of everyone in the car follow.

You look left and right, and begin to sweat. Everyone's looking at you.

Slowly, their eyes turn away, everybody going back to what they were doing.

"Now approaching: Uptown: Commercial District West: Mulberry Street."

The car begins to empty itself, before beginning to fill in.

You look up from your phone, and then stand up. This is your stop, you think. A blink, and you know the answer.

You rush out of the car and step onto the platform. Your spot at your stop safely secured, you begin to walk, more relaxed this time. You get into line and drop your bag onto the conveyor belt, your shoes and jacket along with it, twiddling your fingers while waiting for your turn.

One of the White Knights managing the checkpoint steps forward, and with a crackle, their speakers come to life. "Please hold your arms out at your sides in a T-shape."

You comply, and wait for them to finish. They wave the scanner over your arms. The scanner remains silent. They wave it over your legs. Still silence.

With that, the guard waves you through, and you retrieve your bag from the conveyor belt.

Walking up the stairway, you look left, then right, and start walking. The streets are so clean up here! You can't even see any stains, and there's barely any litter! The White Knights must be doing a good job!

Humming to yourself, you make your way through the streets. The buildings here are always so tall, if you lean a little, you can see each one behind one another, like a neon lit deck of cards. But the cards are bigger than you and everyone else on this street combined.

Another few streets, another few turns, and you find yourself standing in front of your destination. The sliding doors detect your approach and whoosh open, blasting a wave of not too warm, but also not too cold air into your face.

Closing your eyes to deal with the rush of air, you step over the threshold, and enter The Mall.

Almost immediately, you can hear the latest pop tunes being blasted over the speakers in the ceiling. It's just a bit too loud, but it's not too bad, so you manage. Your eyes swivel over to the bright neon advertisements lining each wall, each hawking its own wares. You turn back to the center, and see 4 white pillars stretching up into the sky. Farther than you can see actually. You ponder the practicality of constructing giant columns in the middle of the building when they're not even holding up anything, but you wave yourself off out of your thinking and instead start looking for whatever you came here to buy.

You turn around and make for one of the metallic looking doors. Pressing a button, you wait until the ding, and step into the elevator.

Floor 1: Entrance
Floor 2: Food Court
Floor 3: Snacks
Floor 4: Books
Floor 5: Clothing
Floor 6: Cosmetics
Floor 7: Phones
Floor 8: TV
Floor 9: Cybernetics
Floor 10: Games
Floor 11: Personal Defence Weapons
Floor 12: Furniture
Floor 13: Department Store
Floor 14: Medicine
Floor 15-946: Inaccessible to Public

You ho and hum, before deciding to choose floor 3 first. You are kinda hungry, and you haven't had any sweets in a long while.

The elevator hums, and begins to play a little ditty. Before you can even begin to recognise it, the doors open with a little ding. Immediately, the smell of freshly made sweets begins to assault your senses, and immediately, you greedily inhale all the scents that you can.

You step into the store, grabbing a little handbasket before walking through the empty rows of shelves. There's just aisles upon aisles upon aisles of shelves stocked with candy, as far as you can see!

All kinds of confections are put into your basket as you wander the aisles, old advice your mother gave to you years ago still ringing in your head today.

Your mother's face begins to take shape before you, her harshly tanned skin and worn old fingers coming into focus. She still doesn't have too many wrinkles, although it's been a while since you've seen her, so she's probably picked up a few since you've left. Your eyes are the ones staring back at you, and so is your mouth. Her red hair flows down the river of her neck, and curls up into a bun. You looked almost exactly like her before. Now though, you've got fluffy wool and hard horns on your head, and in the family, all to yourself. At least till you have children.

Her lips begin to move, forming words from old memory. "Now Lyra, remember. When you have to pick only a few apples from a bunch of apples, and there's a lot of people trying to get those apples, it's better to put all the good looking ones and sort them out later, than to spend too much time picking the right one, because by the time you've finished picking the one you want, all the other apples will be gone."

You nod at her wisdom. Although, now that you think about it, it's not really applicable here, cause there's no shortage of candy. You barely even saw anyone while grabbing what you wanted.

Shrugging, you look down and follow one of the lines that says 'to checkout' and begin to sort through your basket. You don't want to spend too much on candies, you do still want to save money after all, so you begin to narrow down your choices.

Your Budget: $1200

[] Smarties: Value Pack ($30)
[] KitKat: Matcha Flavor ($60)
[] Oreos ($100)
[X] Chips Ahoy! ($100)
[X] Ben and Jerries': Mint Flavor ($120)

You hum and nod, putting whatever you didn't like back onto the shelves as you passed. Finally getting to checkout, you get in line, and wait till it's your turn.

The checkout register beeps.

Everybody in line steps forward.

The checkout register beeps.

Everybody in line steps forward.

The checkout register beeps.

Everybody in line steps forward.

This is taking a while. You pull out your phone and begin to browse. You pull up apps from all over, swiping up and down, left and right, trying to find something to fill the void of time. You scroll down the familiar orange backdrop of danger/u/, and tap a little thread in /v/. It seemed interesting enough, what with the whole thing about finding great secrets in a bunch of old video games.

The checkout register beeps.

Everybody in line steps forward.

Y'know, yeah that does make sense. Why would they make it so that all the lines intersect at the broken ring if they didn't use it for anything? Maybe they're onto something.

The checkout register beeps.

Everybody in line steps forward.

Ohhhh, so that's what the broken sword is for! You thought it was just a joke weapon.

The checkout register beeps.

Someone takes your spot in line.

You look up for a second, but you pretend not to notice it, you don't really want to start any trouble.

Another beep. Another step.

Another beep. Another step.

Another beep. Another step.

Another beep. Another step.

You step forward, and finally put your groceries onto the checkout. Scanning each one, you tap your phone and finally leave the store with the spoils of conquest. Jeez, that line was long.

Walking into the elevator, you ponder where you'll go next. Hm. You think you'll head to Gaming, and then you'll just go home. Yeah, that sounds good.

Pressing the button, you listen to the little ditty for as long as you can before the doors open.

This time, there's no smell like there was down on the snack floor. No, here it's just a cold inoffensive nothing. You'd honestly prefer it to be offensive. Although, the combined scent of all the people in here who didn't shower would be pretty offensive, so maybe you should just count your blessings and go.

Again, you venture out into the endless columns of games, the combined worlds of media from every place named and unnamed enveloping you. You look around and begin to wander, looking for the game you came here to buy. It was …

[] ($580) Bloodied Hands. An old classic, or so you've heard, pioneering new innovations in the genre its progenitors invented. It's really good. It's also not on PC.
[X] ($360) Fist of Asura. Digging up the bones of an old studio, this game takes everything its inspirations did, and better. Good story, art direction, Combat, it's got everything!
[] ($360) Chasing the Dragon. The music of this game is amazing! You've been listening to it for years now, honestly, why didn't you buy it sooner? The combat is a pretty good foil too, you think it's funny how you can wave around your sword like a wand and still be effective.

Yeah, that was it. Humming to yourself, you stroll down to the section where you can get your game. Picking it out from the shelf, you begin the long, long journey back to the checkout, where you will then stand, and wait for people to finish checking out, and then check out yourself.

You begin to mentally check out from this situation. Y'know, why are you even coming here? You can get the same games online for the exact same price, and you wouldn't have to keep track of all the game disks. Seriously. The only thing that would even warrant it is if you were a game preservationist trying to hunt down a copy of a game that hasn't been preserved yet and you're not one of those-

The elevator dings, and the door obeys the command. You blink, surprised that you just skipped the entire checkout process by monologuing. You should remember that trick.

Walking out of the mall, you make your way back into the subway. You put your goods up for inspection, and get on the train.

The clickity clack of the track is quite nice after that walk. Very soothing. You really do enjoy it. It's very relaxing, and that makes you sleepy. Still, your stop is quite close by, so you do your best to stay up. You fail.

"Now Approaching: Uptown: Residential District: East Calvenich Street."

You jolt up. That's your stop!

And so, you do this whole song and dance a third time, walking onto the platform, getting your items checked, and heading on your way.

You emerge from the underground, bags in hand. The air is a little drier here, and the streets have a lot more litter. The buildings are much less tall now, and not too much neon can be seen, aside from flecks here and there.

You keep strolling down the street, walking and walking down the grid of houses till you find the street you're looking for. And just as the thought crosses your mind, there it appears. Your street. Williams Street.

Walking a little more, you eventually make it to the apartment complex you live at. It's kinda short, at least in comparison with all the other buildings, and made of brick. The style is one of those old timey styles that you don't immediately recognise but can still inexplicably tell it's old timey, so it's probably older than your grandma at least.

Stepping through the door, you proceed up the stairs. Man, stairs are such a rare sight these days. Sure, you have them in case of an emergency, but other than that everyone just uses elevators now. The only reason that anybody even has stairs in this day and age is either you're too poor to remodel, it's inside your house, or it's some kind of statement. That's kinda a shame really, it's a good workout.

With a last step, and a little huff, you get to your floor. A few steps to your left, and here you are. B4, you've been living in this one for about a year now actually!

You put down your bags, and pull out your keys. You insert the key into the lock, and twist.

The door swings open, and so you grab your bags and head inside. Whew, you're tired from all that walking. Walking over to a chair, you relax a bit and plan what you're going to do for the evening.

[X] Call Someone? Who?
-[] Mima
-[] Dylecha
-[X] Iyel'rrie
-[] Taursha
-[] Your Manager
-[] That guy you took care of this morning
[] Browse danger/u/
[] Play a game
[] Watch anime

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Hey all, I cracked out half of this chapter three days ago (thanks Xon), so if this keeps up, we'll be about halfway through the week by our 1 year anniversary!