Dice rolls are 1d10 + Stat + Proficiency + any applicable bonuses, such as Boons.
You may spend 3 Tension to Overdrive for a retroactive +5 to your roll (a Determination Overdrive), or +3 to an ally's roll (a Teamwork Overdrive). I will also automatically overdrive to avoid exhaustion or unconsciousness.
It is possible to critically succeed (on +5 on skill checks and +10 on combat rolls) or critically fail (by the same margins), but rolling a 1 or a 10 does not automatically crit in either case. It is possible to crit retroactively by Overdriving.
Your stat bonuses have names:
Vigor grants a Strength bonus.
Agility grants a Dexterity bonus.
Spirit grants an Aura bonus.
Mind grants an Intuition bonus.
Resolve grants a Guts bonus.
Dice are rolled on a first come, first serve bonus. You only roll for Deedee.
Thorne's cadence and diction are pretty much identical to the version of Dr. Durante I'm familiar with, perhaps unsurprisingly. (Also they were both having a she day in their respective interludes so I was genuinely not 100% sure on whether this was Thorne.TCAI or Dr. Durante signing in to her kid's account to get dev eyes on the situation through a backdoor.)
Also they were both having a she day in their respective interludes so I was genuinely not 100% sure on whether this was Thorne.TCAI or Dr. Durante signing in to her kid's account to get dev eyes on the situation through a backdoor.
Fair enough XD I had just wondered, y'know? The OWTB & their kids do seem to take some joy in sly Easter Eggs that hint at implementation details, after all.
And this was what I needed to jog my memory on that vocab word. If Alpha Centauri was a major influence, I'll admit I'm very curious to see where that influence is going beyond "reusing terminology here and there".
And this was what I needed to jog my memory on that vocab word. If Alpha Centauri was a major influence, I'll admit I'm very curious to see where that influence is going beyond "reusing terminology here and there".
I played a lot of it and those quotes bounced a fair bit in the back of my brain, you know?
Bad'l Ron - Wakener - Morgan Polysoft said:
'Abort, Retry, Fail?' was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we'd remind them: if you see this message, always choose 'Retry.'
Thorne's cadence and diction are pretty much identical to the version of Dr. Durante I'm familiar with, perhaps unsurprisingly. (Also they were both having a she day in their respective interludes so I was genuinely not 100% sure on whether this was Thorne.TCAI or Dr. Durante signing in to her kid's account to get dev eyes on the situation through a backdoor.)
Alas, no, this is not how Durante decides to get dev eyes on the situation.
Thorne, like the other four elemental sibs, was a bit of vanity on the part of the founders, in that they directly modeled parts of them on themselves, then each raised/wakened their corresponding sibling in turn—her sounding like Dr Durante is 100% intentional both in and out of story. Please imagine that at the time of the Godcoders interlude, the elemental sibs were having a near-identical what the fuck do we do now meeting in the computer heavens.
(Dr Durante, who got her start with AI research, took the sib that would be filling Mundus with life. The other four, who had once been hackers of various hat shades, all grabbed sibs who governed the raw forces of Mundus. This too is intentional.)
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Canon: two potatoes and a fox walk into a girl's trauma, by FoxHana
Ace lies on her back as comfortably as she could manage on the cart. Her injuries haven't yet fully healed, despite Deedee's best efforts, and the cleric had been called elsewhere to help with camp, leaving Ace alone… or so she had thought. Instead, the last voice she expected to approach her pipes up, and Ace turns her head to face Shadi.
"... Yeah, that's right. Not music, though, but games."
Shadi inclines her head. "On that… 'internet'. But how do you busk with games of all things?"
Ace wonders idly if games weren't a sensitive topic, now. But after all the things she'd said, she doesn't have the right to deny Shadi's questions… All she can do was hope that honesty really was the best policy.
"There's a lot of ways." Ace sighs, thinking back to her home. "Some people just do it by being friendly and talking to people as they play, and some people do it by picking a few games and getting really, really good at those games." She pauses. "I was…. Somewhere in the middle, I guess. I had a few games I was really good at, though. Went to some small tournaments."
"..." Shadi wrinkles her nose. Something about this clearly wasn't sitting right with her, and Ace's heart falls as she wonders if she'd said something wrong. But soon, Shadi's words cut to the heart of the matter. "It sounds like…. The games you know and the games I know are different."
"Huh?" Ace asks eloquently.
"You played the Holy Game, right? And then…. The games you busked with. And then you said our whole world was a game." And Ace flinches at that, but Shadi doesn't…. No, she definitely notices. Well, that was fair, it wasn't like Ace didn't deserve to have her face rubbed in her words, even if that wasn't Shadi's intent. "It sounds like everything is games to you."
Ace starts to reply, "No, that's not-"
Shadi cut her off. "How do you win?"
"... Huh?" Ace replies articulately.
"Mundus. Our world. If it's a game, how do you win?" Shadi's words cut straight to the point, and Ace isn't sure how to react.
"I don't… I mean, it's not that kind of a game." Ace explains, but her words sound feeble even to her own ears.
"Tell me." Her voice sounds pleading. "When a game ends, it goes back in the box, to be played another time, starting over from the beginning. If that is the case, when will that happen to us?! And what will happen to us, inside the game's box?"
Ah. Now Ace sees the problem, and she breathes a sigh of relief, now that she can see what Shadi's real issue was.
"I mean it. It's not that kind of a game." Her obvious relief doesn't seem to sit well with Shadi, so Ace managed to force herself to sit upright. Deedee would probably fuss at her for not laying back and resting, but this feels important. "See, in our world, there's… another kind of game. It's half a game, and half a story. It's like….How do I explain… A game where the story is written by the game, sort of… God, Deedee would be better at explaining this than me…"
"As far as I can tell," Siobhan comments, acerbically, after watching Ace struggle to find better words for it, "it's like a game of Play Pretend like you do when you're very little—the kind where it doesn't really have an ending and each time continues from the last, even if it doesn't make sense to—only they use their wizardry to do it here instead of in the garden."
Ace nearly jumps out of her skin. She hadn't known Siobhan was listening- Pixies have big ears, huh- and now here she is, bailing her out. Of course, Siobhan's words were meant to be scornful, and while Ace picked up on it, she didn't seem to mind it one bit. Rather, she was more concerned about why Siobhan's thumb was bleeding, as she rummaged for something in the cart. God, Siobhan's stealth was terrifying - It would give Ace a heart attack long before a monster did her in.
"Right, that's right! More or less that. The games don't end, they just go on as long as people continue writing them." Ace sighs in relief at Siobhan's help. "It's more like… I mean, you're used to soc- uh, futbol, here, right? And players don't go back in the box after each game-"
"But every new game is… new." Shadi counters immediately. "The score starts once more at zero to zero, and nothing carries over from previous games. If our world is a game…"
"I- It's like Sha- Sio- Sharon?" Ace tries to wrap her mouth around the pixie's name as best she could, but knew it wasn't great. Just another reason for their guide and, Ace had hoped, friend, to hate her now. "- Siobhan said. It picks up every time from where you left off. The game doesn't end. Even if everyone stopped playing at once, the world would still be there."
Until someone shut down the servers. But Ace doesn't want to say that part out loud.
"You are also describing theatre." Hikaru grunts as he sits, levering himself down with his stick, as Ace jumped out of her skin yet again. Were all pixies so good at stealth?! "And literature. I doubt you've read many novels, but surely you've seen plays, in Viacruz?"
What does it mean that he could choose to be anyone, and he chose to be someone who needs to walk with a cane? Knowing him, that he was min-maxing, honestly.
"You cannot win at stories," Shadi says, shaking her head.
"No? How many end with 'and they lived happily ever after?'" Hikaru asks.
After a moment Siobhan nods. "Histories often have clear winners. So why not stories?"
"When someone wins in a history," Shadi says, "it usually means a lot of people die."
Jesus. Was Ace this morbid when they were a kid? She hopes not.
"... She's not wrong." Ace sighs, slumping. "I remember the 20s as well as anyone else, you know? Makes me surprised Siobhan went for pretending to be one of us instead of just shooting us all on sight."
Siobhan shrugs. "Aren't you supposed to know your enemies? And then I grew to like some of you."
"It's true. It doesn't speak well of us that we made games about battle; but then, they play chess here, too." Hikaru chuckles. "And it's different, jumping an ivory knight into a walnut pawn, than calling for an actual cavalry charge. Or we hoped it was."
"Speak for yourself," Ace mutters. "I'm a tournament player of Tetris, none of this war game stuff."
"Isn't your Tetris an allegory for the rise and fall of a nation, as told by a common citizen?" Siobhan asks, wrinkling her nose.
".... It's mostly an allegory for falling blocks and the good feelings of fitting things in compact spaces?" Ace's confusion is palpable.
Hikaru stares at Sio for a long second. "One of these days, I'm going to have to ask who you heard that from. No, it's not, and explaining why Tetris is full of Russian cold war imagery would take time that I don't have to explain the cold war."
"... 'Russian', 'tetris'..." Shadi looks at Ace. "Is this how you felt, all the time, listening to us?"
"Yes."
"Busking," Siobhan says, with a shrug. "I was listening to Entertainers from your world busking. They sang a song about the man who arranges the blocks."
"Amazing what washes up on the Shores," Hikaru says, his face torn between smiling and grimacing. "I really should go over the parts of the lore that are directly relevant to you. Maybe at Vinyedo we can see a play about Scherzo."
Shadi brightens a little. "We're close to the first harvest, and when the Drovers Guild stops in. Maybe you should."
"Only if Thorne's conception is shown properly," Siobhan says, firmly.
"Wait, conception- Uh, what- Okay, wait, god stuff, that cannot mean what it sounds like it means. What." Ace nearly chokes on air.
"I mean that it's clear that Eranda is with them," Siobhan says, primly. "Any play where Scherzo comes to Aurora on his own is inaccurate Omphalan city dweller propaganda."
Hikaru has a hand over his mouth and is clearly trying not to laugh his ass off. Ace, on the other hand, had a scandalized look on her face.
"Is it- Should we be discussing- Shadi's right here-" She stammers.
"I know those stories already." Shadi stuck her tongue out. "I'm twelve, I'm not a child, I know what happened with the Trinity."
"Oh?" Siobhan said, giving Shadi a dubious look. "Then tell us what happened."
"Or how about you don't do tha-" Ace jerked upright, like she was about to try to full-body tackle Siobhan. Which, she was. Fortunately for everyone involved, her wounds still were not quite healed enough for that, and Ace sinks back down, clutching her side, with a muffled "Ow ow ow ow ow shit ow…. Please do not make the twelve-year-old recite anything like that, I don't even know what's going on but it definitely sounds like too much-"
After a long moment, Siobhan frowns. "Ace? Do you think we're talking about bawdy plays?"
And there's Hikaru's explosion of laughter.
Ace's face flushes red, almost dark enough to match the tips of her hair. "I- You- That's- You started this topic by talking about conception, how else am I supposed to take that?!"
"I imagine that any play about the three that Tayeb took Shadi to see was about their courtship, then after drawing the curtains the next scene shows their child, Thorne," Hikaru says.
"Aurora thought he was very good at sports," Shadi says.
Ace covers her face with her hands. "Okay, the Mundus pantheon isn't like Zeus, can we change the topic now, please!"
"Like who?" Shadi asks.
"I quite agree with you, Ace," Hikaru says very quickly.
"SO HOW ABOUT THAT FUTBOL." Ace follows up immediately after. "It's definitely- Huh?" And her eyebrows furrow, as she sees just bringing up that topic causes Shadi's face to fall again.
Damn it, she had thought she was doing better, so what made Shadi's mood worse again?
"...Our Holy Game isn't even ours, is it?" Shadi asked, a small note of accusation to her voice. "If Ace was practicing to play it back on your world… It's a game you made. Not us."
"One the Gods thought you should have," Hikaru murmurs. "That you took and made your own. It's like... hmn."
"It's like cooking." Ace follows up helpfully. "Just because someone else made the recipe, doesn't mean you can't add your own touches and make it yours, and make it better than it was before. I can tell you now, your futbol is already way more visually impressive than our soccer, just to watch, much less play."
"I'm surprised," Siobhan comments. "I was starting to think there wasn't anything in our world that you liked."
Ace shrinks down a bit. "I mean… I trained hard for normal soccer, but… Look, it's not like I hate this world just for what it is, okay? Even I can tell it has good parts. I can play soccer again here- No, even more basic, I can walk here on my own. I don't need my cane, and my leg doesn't feel like it's going to crack open again every time it starts to rain."
"You couldn't walk, before?" Shadi asks. "Even though you were a Futbol player?"
"Yeah, I broke my leg really bad." Ace admits, wincing. "It never… really recovered right. Medical technology has come a long way, but…"
"Didn't anyone heal you?" Shadi's confusion is palpable. "If you were that good, then wouldn't your team or league paid for a healer?"
Siobhan frowns, as if deep in thought. "Is healing by magic something your world lacks?" she asks, finally. "Is that why our world has it?"
"Our medicine is advanced, but not, I think, that advanced," Hikaru says. "The work Deedee did on that frantic ride from the battle would have been an expensive touch and go week at a hospital, at best, on Earth."
"... I'm glad for that sort of thing here." Ace admits, looking down. "I wish being able to heal with a touch was something we could do on Earth. I can't tell you what I wouldn't give for my leg to work again, to be able to put weight on that leg without it feeling like agony sometimes. But if I hate this world, it's because it took me here, and put me in a place where I have to fight, and I have no choice but to rely on that level of healing magic, all the time, just to stay alive."
Siobhan looks at Shadi. "You're thinking what I'm thinking, aren't you," she says, cryptically.
"I'm thinking that Ace is very strong, and very scary, and very definitely missing the obvious." Shadi replies with the confidence of a twelve-year-old who can see something almost no one else can.
"Care to fill me in, then?" Ace asks, clearly trying not to get frustrated.
"I'm curious as well," Hikaru says.
"Why don't you just retire to play futbol?" Shadi points out.
"Huh?" Ace responds loquaciously.
"You're already an adventurer," Siobhan says. "You could play the holy leagues without anyone investing in you first. You wouldn't be the first adventurer who retired to play—far from it. Mundanes do it all the time."
"And we've seen that you're good at it." Shadi adds. "You wouldn't even have to practice or train compared to the others, you'd be set from the start."
"She'd still have to practice," Siobhan chides Shadi. "To keep up her skills if nothing else. But she'd have less to learn, I guess."
"Oh, of course," Hikaru says, stroking the pencil mark he's growing in. "I was in so deep with the raiding and exploration Companies - and the crisis - that I forgot how many of us just play football, or go all in on crafting and open shops."
"That's- I mean- That's an option?!" Ace is boggling. "Isn't it just, you know, a minigame, not something you can really focus on?"
"It's enough for Players to enjoy it, and experience is experience," Hikaru says, shrugging. "You get it more slowly from challenges that aren't combat, but that is a feature, not a bug, for many of the people who join merchant Companies. And some of them do some fighting to get materials anyway. I wonder how much money you've made from selling pelts and forage, Sio?"
"I…. uh…." Ace couldn't figure out how to respond. Naturally, of course- She just had the rug pulled out from under her, metaphorically.
Siobhan's cheeks are definitely redder than they were a moment ago. "I didn't use to be the one that sold them," she admits. "Only recently."
Shadi pauses at this, as if focusing on Siobhan's words, and what that might have meant. She looks at the pixie, and then back at Hikaru, and his abbreviation of her name, and…
"Oh!" Shadi suddenly exclaims. "You two are courting!"
Hikaru blinks, eyes darting at Sio and back.
Siobhan's blush only grows darker and she darts a quick look at Hikaru before looking down at her lap. "I meant that I used a factor," she says. "I— you know that Adventurer Rites are not for the small of purse, right?"
"Of course I do." Shadi rolled her eyes. "But it's not talking about coin that colors your cheeks with Flamma's wine."
"It's not coin, no," Siobhan says.
"Surprise, I think." Hikaru coughs into his fist. "We were so busy, ah, surviving that any thought of courtship hadn't occurred to us. At least I don't believe it had."
"I remember what you said about your employment on your world," Siobhan says. "That's all."
"Ah. Yes. None of us are independently wealthy," Hikaru says, looking away, grateful for the segue, even as Shadi looks disappointed by the change of subject.
"... I should have been," Siobhan mutters.
That's what finally snaps Ace out of her thoughts. "You… should have been?"
Siobhan blinks. "Oh," she says. "You don't know anything about this world. Of course you don't know… but it's the oldest story in the book."
"Nobles who won't inherit a fortune, so must - horrors - earn one?" Hikaru says. "Though you make it sound like you were cheated out of yours."
Siobhan stares out into the distance, frowning. "My father," she says, finally. "But I'd rather not talk about him."
"Got it." Ace immediately swoops in, immediately ending the conversation on that note. "So, instead, you're an adventurer now, too." After a pause, though, she has to ask. "... Do you ever regret it?"
"... depends on what you're asking if I regret," Siobhan says. "But I hope that I'm doing better things now, at least."
"Just that, you know…" Ace sighs, hanging her head, as she slowly slumps back to something more like lying down. "Adventuring. Going out and fighting. All of this." All of the stuff I can't seem to handle, she doesn't say.
"... I'd rode to hunt in my life before all this," Siobhan says. "But admittedly, fighting other Namers was new."
Ace shudders. "... I hope we never have to do it again." As if they would ever get so lucky.
Hikaru nods. "There are at least five we'll need to face. But after that, no, I hope not."
Siobhan says nothing, but she nods grimly.
Shadi can't help but look worried, herself.
Written in collaboration with bii and Talia, and proofread by NekoIncardine! I hope you guys enjoy this little side story.
"I mean it. It's not that kind of a game." Her obvious relief doesn't seem to sit well with Shadi, so Ace managed to force herself to sit upright. Deedee would probably fuss at her for not laying back and resting, but this feels important. "See, in our world, there's… another kind of game. It's half a game, and half a story. It's like….How do I explain… A game where the story is written by the game, sort of… God, Deedee would be better at explaining this than me…"
"As far as I can tell," Siobhan comments, acerbically, after watching Ace struggle to find better words for it, "it's like a game of Play Pretend like you do when you're very little—the kind where it doesn't really have an ending and each time continues from the last, even if it doesn't make sense to—only they use their wizardry to do it here instead of in the garden."
That's neat to say, but it applies solely to players, not NPC's.
The computer does not run instances that have no players in them, why would it waste the processing power? So, as soon as the NPC is out of earshot, as soon as they're irrelevant, there's nothing that stops the system from de-instantiating them and putting them elsewhere. We know that Mundus uses some of these tricks, like having it's maps made of non-continuous parts that are sewn together, so why would it not use other tricks.
Put otherwise:
If Siobhan walks into the forest and there is no one there to see her, does she have a face?
"...Our Holy Game isn't even ours, is it?" Shadi asked, a small note of accusation to her voice. "If Ace was practicing to play it back on your world… It's a game you made. Not us."
At least it's something important like soccer, instead of a meme or inside joke. Imagine having to explain to someone that the monstrous carp that have been terrorizing their village were not only put there deliberatly, they were put there because someone once made man-eating carp by accident, and people thought it was funny so they did it again.
--------------------
Anyway, fun idea.
This is a computer system. It likely ought to be taking back-ups. If that is the case, there's not one Deedee, but possible dozens or hundreds snapshots of her frozen in time, and one walking around.
This is a computer system. It likely ought to be taking back-ups. If that is the case, there's not one Deedee, but possible dozens or hundreds snapshots of her frozen in time, and one walking around.
I wasn't referring to in game resurrection, more to a derivative of the Star Trek teleporter problem.
If a back-up of Deedee exists, then that means you know have 2 different copies of Deedee. One that moves around, and the other saved at the moment of the back-up. Is that seperate Deedee an individual who deserves to live her own life, or merely a transitory state that can be discarded , just as the teleporter in Star Trek discards original person when beaming someone up, and creates a copy at the destination.
I wasn't referring to in game resurrection, more to a derivative of the Star Trek teleporter problem.
If a back-up of Deedee exists, then that means you know have 2 different copies of Deedee. One that moves around, and the other saved at the moment of the back-up. Is that seperate Deedee an individual who deserves to live her own life, or merely a transitory state that can be discarded , just as the teleporter in Star Trek discards original person when beaming someone up, and creates a copy at the destination.
Hikaru, slowly, raises his hand to his heart. "We do not have nearly enough data, and something we find may still prevent it." Hikaru says. "But if Earthside realizes what happened - if our bodies on Earth are alive - I don't now see why we couldn't return home."
The existence of Siobhan demonstrates that a player scale intelligence without a human brain is possible. Deedee and co are worried that their bodies might be dead, as they have been cut off from their intelligence with the severance of Mundus from the network, but they have not considered the other possibility. That their bodies are alive, and well, and awake.
After all, the human brain encodes it's knowledge in the very structure of the brain tissue. Having it's train of thought derailed by a sudden disconnect is not great, but worse stuff has happened to brains, and they have recovered.
As far as Deedee and others know, their bodies could be alive and living their own lives.
They have not considered the other possibility. That their bodies are alive, and well, and awake... As far as Deedee and others know, their bodies could be alive and living their own lives.
This hasn't happened. We've seen that this hasn't happened; recall all those people at the hospital from the Mariah interlude. Whatever the other consequences of this are, "Jake" and Jules are not running around Earthside while Deedee and Sekhmet are on Mundus.
This hasn't happened. We've seen that this hasn't happened; recall all those people at the hospital from the Mariah interlude. Whatever the other consequences of this are, "Jake" and Jules are not running around Earthside while Deedee and Sekhmet are on Mundus.
They might not know for certain, but I can understand why they'd assume not to consider such a possibility. Neurohelms are, after all, plastered with warnings about safe disconnection, and what to do if a player goes unresponsive. The implication is that dirty disconnects do happen occasionally, and that the usual result is permanent damage, not forking - that for some reason a neurohelm (in its current form and design) can't safely dismount a brain without contact from the primary copy of the mind it's synced to. Maybe some kind of side effect of how it keeps the two copies in sync & in sensory communication to begin with.
AC/DC might not know all the technical details, but as folks who use neurohelms regularly, I would assume they'd at least have read those warning messages, and thus have... matching assumptions about what the possibilities currently are for their meat bodies.
On the other hand... there are folks among the stranded playerbase who do have the expert knowledge, and have even dealt with this situation before. Yet another reason to catch up with Frankie Bacon sooner than later, I guess.
...dangit, now that we're talking about "stupid/awesome braintaping tricks", I'm thinking again about that whole "imprinting" bit, or whatever Frankie called it, where certain stuff is necessarily made to match up between a person's meat systems and Mundus systems (hence mental illness and so forth carrying over), and wanting to ask them what portion of that precisely is necessary if you're willing to get a bit messy. Because, like... if certain people decide to stay in Mundus permanently, but there turn out to also be Mundanes who want to take the metaphorical space elevator up to Earth... what would the barriers be for those Mundanes to arrange passage via climbing into those immigrant players' old bodies?
On the other hand... there are folks among the stranded playerbase who do have the expert knowledge, and have even dealt with this situation before. Yet another reason to catch up with Frankie Bacon sooner than later, I guess.
I should probably talk to Talia and make sure we're both up to date on how things are going with Frankie's own personal quest to find their parents—and what they've been able to figure out is going on. But yeah, if you want to vote to talk to them when the group is in Viacruz again, I'm all for it.
(Though with Frankie it's less expert professional knowledge and more that they personally took the opportunity to learn everything they could about neurohelms and how they work, for Reasons.)
Isekai/Online Volume One, Reborn on the Shores of Awakening, is of course available here. That's the link to both purchase the ebook (if you'd like to support us and also legal defense teams for trans kids facing bullshit laws) and has a link to the free book on Scribblehub. It consists of a novelization of this thread's main updates up to Outside Context Problems, and also The Godcoders.
I will add several appendices that also include the munduswiki articles on the Gods and information on using Mundus as a Valor or 5e campaign setting as a free update once it hits 100 sales.
Isekai/Online Volume Two, Out Of Bounds Interactions, is available here on Scribblehub, and I will be publishing it on itch.io as I did with Volume One once it's complete on Scribblehub. It will novelize the entire rest of this thread, and I'll update this with chapter links.
There will also be another main update this weekend (for the benefit of future readers, this was posted on March 16th, 2022 ), possibly two. I want to finish this up by my birthday, March 22nd.
Ace is still injured, and still needs you, as the sky darkens and your brain burns with everything you've learned. You put out the fire with the dregs of your tea just in case Flamma might approve.
How long did it take for this to become second nature to you?
You retire to tents - you and Ace sharing the medical tent, just in case, because you'll need to treat her more. You set up the lamp, adjust for its flicker, and sit before the bedroll as Ace hobbles to a seat before you.
"Should I undress?" Ace asks, and you hear her voice wavering in a way you never have before.
You want to say only if you're comfortable. You think if you did she'd go along with it even if she wasn't.
"Just the shirt," you say. "Nothing else will be in the way."
"Kay," she sighs, flipping her blouse off over her head.
And idly tossing it at you.
It flops into your arms, over your shoulder, somehow cool to the touch. You run your fingers over the linen fabric as you fold it and put it aside.
You sit, on your own ankles, behind Ace, looking over her back. Still bruised, and faintly scarred, and with a knot in her back not related to battle besides - there are no open wounds, between potions and earlier magic, but she's still going to be tender.
"I'm going to put my hands on your shoulders," you say. "This, uh, this is probably going to suck."
She takes a deep breath, and holds it, before explosively exhaling and nodding. "What else is new," she mutters.
"There is, uh." You press into her shoulders and hear her grunt, first touching with the heels of your hands before you let your fingers curl and fall onto warm skin. "There is admittedly a lot of suck to go round."
She drops her head. "Between that absolute ballet in the Neverglades and telling Shadi to her face that her world began last Tuesday? Yeah. Lot of suck."
"Ah." You really should have expected this, and try to reassuringly squeeze Ace's shoulder before trailing down to either side of her spine. "Tayeb didn't seem too rattled by it."
"Does that matter?" she says, the characteristic growl returning to her voice. "Yes, good for me that I only gave one person I kind of liked being friends with existential nightmares."
"This entire situation is an existential nightmare," you say, looking up at the roof of the tent as you press your thumb into a trigger point below Ace's shoulderblade. "If not you, someone would have let it slip eventually."
Ace groans under the pressure you're applying. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asks, and there's a waver there you've not heard before. "'It doesn't matter that you fucked up because someone was gonna?' That's the bright spot here?"
You click your tongue, dipping one hand into healing oil; you'll need to anoint her bruises to effectively use your magical healing talents on them. "I mean, the bright spot here is that she's around to worry about starting life as an NPC. Because you saved her life. And ours."
"I went nuts and risked all of our lives because I thought 'oh, Berzerker's worth a whole five CP and the forums say it'll help me mulch whatever the free trial can throw at me, what's the downside,'" she says, slumping, balling up her hands. "Saving her from the danger I put us in doesn't count."
"Ace..."
"What the hell was I thinking?" she says, babbling. "Besides 'haha I can play fucking soccer again.'"
"Ace," you say, pressing your hand against her wound, making her name your ki-ai, the Breath you pour into healing her.
She grunts and falls silent.
"What you were thinking about the game you were going to stream couldn't have changed anything, and I won't let you blame yourself for it," you say.
Her voice is strangled, near tears. "But I -"
"There was no way for any of us to expect or anticipate..." you gesture to the tent, the air, the night, the Windswept Plains of South Yberia. "...this!"
"I almost put a maul through your belly!" Ace protested. "Because I went fucking berserk!"
You sigh and put your arms around her, and you swear her response is a squeak.
"Unless you're claiming responsibility for someone fucking hacking Io, you can't possibly be held responsible for points on a level-up screen mattering," you murmur into her ear. "I never blamed you. Worried about you, yes. Blamed you, no."
"But…" Ace's voice seems to be getting weaker. Like she's on the edge of something breaking. "But it's still… I still almost hurt you, and…"
You don't think she can accept that it's not her fault right now. You don't know what you can say to stop her from panic spiraling. Words won't help.
So you shift to face her and kiss her instead.
The lantern flickers. Something in the oil is sweet; a drop of something to make it less acrid.
Ace's muffled surprise very quickly gives way to her slumping into you, and kissing back. Leaning on you, draping arms loosely around you while you hug her tight with one arm, cradle her face and brush her ear with your thumb with the other.
She rests herself against you, uncharacteristically meek, taps your teeth once with her tongue before passing that initiative onto you. You take what she offers, darting your tongue into her mouth, tasting the honey and herb of the healing potion in her spit, feeling the heat rolling out of her body, from her breathing, from the hammering of her forge-hot heart.
You break off and breathe hard and let Ace nestle her cheek against your bosom, and kiss it, and nuzzle you. Sneak your hand up under her hair, turn your rubbing her ear into scratching gently behind it.
She makes an undignified little yip before she gasps, and sobs into your chest.
You'd be more worried about her crying after a kiss if you didn't suspect she badly needed to cry anyway. If the kiss wasn't permission to cry in front of you.
Along with everything else it was.
"Is that standard therapy?" Ace asks, muffled into your shoulder.
"I mean, did it work?" you murmur, kissing the spot where her ear meets her jawline.
"Get new material," she purrs, rolling her head along your shoulderblade, slumping against you.
"This is new material. It's been years since I've..."
There's no graceful way to end that sentence, so you settle on clearing your throat.
"Look," Ace sighs. "I don't know why... why even after everything, you still, uh..."
"Love you?" you ask.
She shivers in your arms and looks up at you both frightened and grateful.
Part of you is screaming that it's absolutely too early to use that word. The rest of you unanimously vetoed that clown. You'd still be miserable and trapped in the proverbial eggshell if it wasn't for Ace. You'd probably be dead if she hadn't thrown herself hammer-first at the Scyllan Horror.
And besides, she needed to hear that from someone. Enough support had been kicked out from under her that she needs someone to prop her up, and hell, Vigor primary, right? Ace had been so busy blaming herself for everything, trying to hold herself up by projecting bravado and sarcasm and bottling up her fear. You've already seen it explode once.
You won't let her bear it alone again.
Ace slowly lowers her head, and presses it into the crook of your neck, silently. For all the jokes about how large some parts of her were, or how much muscle she had for the hammer, it just now strikes home for you how small she really is. The ears, the enchanted cloth, the giant weapons and armor, everything she wears and does seems like it's an attempt to seem bigger than she is.
You, and only you, are allowed to see her as small as she really is as you hold her tucked under your chin, and let your embrace speak for you.
"I could," and her voice wavers, and she takes a deep breath to steady herself. Heart still pounding like it's on an anvil. She speaks again, voice somewhere near the old levels of sass and brass. "I could just go 'fuck it' and join the Holy Leagues in Vinyedo. See what that's like if our presence doesn't make everything immediately explode."
"I hardly think any of us would blame you," you say, running your fingertips behind her ears, watching them flick and her blush deepen. "You've put up with enough bullshit to plow under every acre there and grow roses besides."
She presses her forehead against your lips and you kiss it.
"I'd probably hate it," she admits.
"Would you?" you ask. "Having peace and quiet again? You never signed up for dragonslaying - not even the game version for your $25 a month, $20 if you only play as Ace."
"Is that a sales pitch?" She laughs, though without as much humor as normal.
"Would you buy in after all this if it was?" you growl, suspecting you know the answer.
"Not if I had any other way to see you." she says into your ear.
You sigh. "I'm not half as cute IR... on Earth," you say.
"Give it two years and about seven-hundred and fifty little blue pills," Ace says, looking you right in the eye. "I would, if it meant..."
She goes silent while you think about it, wincing. The thought hadn't occurred to you. You hadn't let it occur to you until now. Ace made it sound so easy.
"Could you..." she looks away. "You know Ace is just a stage name, right? This character, my Castr persona?"
"What's your real name?" you ask her, letting your hand slip down to her hip.
"Morgan," she tells you. "Morgan Zhu. And if, uhm, there's something you'd prefer I'd call you -"
You shake your head and frown. "Haven't thought that far ahead, and please don't call me Jake."
Ace - Morgan - giggles. "Fair," she says. "We are going to have to find you," and she boops your nose, "something that doesn't start with a J."
"It'll make rooming with Jules less confusing," you say - and wince. Even if you return, will Jules?
"Hey," Morgan says. "Are you alright?"
You sigh, and turn your head back to her, and stroke her cheek. Leaning in for another kiss.
Morgan Zhu gladly gives it to you, letting you lean into her. Over her.
"We'll make it work," she murmurs in your ear. "I want to make it work. I just feel like there's more I could have done..."
"More you can do, maybe," you say, shifting your weight, looking down and marveling at her and her black bra and the pudge over muscles you know can lift monsters twice your size. "But mom always told me that it's too much to expect you to fix everything."
She looks up at you, into your eyes, and you see them travel down your body and your heart jumps with a start as you realize she has the same reaction to you as you do to her.
"If it were the beginning," she says, and sighs, touching your face, "if we hadn't been through the Shores and Viacruz and the bandits and the fucking forest sargasso, I would just fuck off to play futbol."
You nod. "You cannot abandon the work," you recite, the full form of your mother's words, "though you are not obligated to complete it in your lifetime."
"Yeah," she says, looking away.
Then back up, into your eyes.
"Deedee?" she asks, and you hear a crack in her voice.
You nod and grunt.
She hesitates, takes a deep breath, and locks eyes with you again.
"Morgan?" you ask.
She exhales. "Am I... have I been a good girl?"
Your breath catches as you look down at what it is she's asking and offering you.
You hold Morgan's - Ace's - head to your bosom with one hand as you hold yourself over her with the other, rubbing and stroking each of those fluffy ears in turn as she squeaks into your boob.
"Such a good girl," you murmur in her ear. "So brave and so strong when you shouldn't have had to be either."
You nearly grimace at how trite that sounds to your own ears, but the noise that escapes Ace's throat is a downright musical moan. She nuzzles deeper into your cleavage, your beads touching her forehead as she kisses you.
"Nnn. Hang on," you say, leaning back. Pivoting from your core, and pulling her up with you, so you can free the hand holding you up and remove your prayer beads.
Then you lower down to her - it's still surprising how much shorter she is - and kiss her proper.
"Keep doing that and I'm gonna be..." Ace says, before pressing her lips to your neck and breathing in.
"Going to be?" you ask, still stroking her cheek.
Ace looks down and away. "I'm extremely a sub, okay?" she says, a little defensively.
You nod. "That's, uh, not something I'm used to?" you say. "I'd be a lot less confident about taking the lead if it weren't for -"
"- my spontaneously combusting every time you give me scritchies?" Ace says, voice flat. "Damn game making me a fuckin' furry."
"That's AWOo for you," you say, holding her against you, skin to skin. She runs very hot.
She sighs heavily. "Another thing I'll bring up when I ask for a refund."
"So you like it when I do this, then?" you ask, casually, as you run your thumb along the edge of her ear.
She shudders and chirps her response.
"Words, please," you say, letting your voice slip down into a register you hoped was husky.
"Feels good," she grunts. "Like being... taken care of."
Oh. You recognize this from when it happens to you. She's dropping.
"Thatta girl," you croon. "Listen to me and I'll take very good care of you, okay?"
She nods, nuzzling your hand. "Listen to you... be good."
"Good girl," you agree, kissing her forehead. "Pretty little thing."
"Nn," she says, with a nod.
You kiss her on the lips, pressing your hand between her breasts, to feel the steady pounding of her heart.
When you break off, it takes her a while to open her eyes, and when she does, they droop.
"Should I undressss." Ace says, slurring at the end, and there's a dreamlike quality to her voice you've never heard before.
Your heart twinges. So does something else.
"Yes, please," you breathe, as you take off your belt and overskirt. "Strip for your healer. That's a good girl," you croon, slipping off the belt, the breeches.
Ace chirps, crouching in the flickering light, sliding her skirt down her hips and past her ankles. You see dark underwear and some kind of sleek stockings over an expanse of thigh.
"That's it... here," you say, as you step out of your own hose and sandals, and gently press Ace back down onto the bedroll. You hook a thumb under a stocking and peel down, letting your fingertips make a long smooth stroke down, as you keep your other hand buried in her hair.
She grunts and squirms under your touch but reaches out to reciprocate, shooting her arms straight up to grab.
You wince a little as she squeezes what she inevitably grabs, then groan loud and embarrassing as she eases up into a gentle tug, gentle stroking. Gods you have so many nerves on your tits and right now all of them are drinking in Ace's touch.
"Didn't hurt you?" Ace mumbles, eyes showing real concern.
You place your own palm over her heart, start kneading her big fluffy boob, and shush her in response. "Feels good," you tell her. "Feels really good. Just like that, like I'm doing for you, doesn't that feel good?"
She rolls her eyes and neck and squeaks, then nods. "Don' stop," she asks.
"Course not. My brave girl deserves this," you tell her, when you can get the breath and concentration together - it's incredible how sensitive your tits are, and how gentle she is, and when her fingertips reach down into your bra and rub the nipple you go weak in the knees and nearly fall on top of her.
"You liked that," Ace says, smiling, before burying her face into your cleavage again to leave a glistening kiss on your bosom.
"Yes," you grunt. "Don't stop."
"Mmhmm," she assents, squeezing one of your breasts while kissing down the other.
You move one hand from the back of her head and behind her ear down her cheek, then her neck, then down her breast to rest on the furnace she has for a belly.
"Lower?" you breathe.
She nods.
You kiss her ear. "Tell me what you want, Morgan," you tell her.
"Nnn please," she groans.
A detached part of you idly wonders where the hell you learned to tease someone like this. Sadly the answer is probably some yuri manga or the other you torrented.
"Please what?" you ask.
Ace grits her teeth before she gasps, "Please stroke my pussy."
"There we go," you hum, amused, walking your fingers down her belly.
"Want your fingers in my cunt, please," she whimpers.
"Of course I'll fuck you if my obedient little vixen asks me so nicely," you babble, kissing her ear. And then her cheek. And then you're making out, darting your tongue between her lips as you slip your fingers over fabric and her clit and between her other lips, and you lap up her moans and feel her shudder and squirm under your care.
You don't know how long you spend lip-locked with her but your head bobs away and over her tit, your hair tracing the curve of her breastbone as your lips and tongue find her nipple and your ear is right where it needs to be to hear Ace's melodious appreciation of all that you're doing for your wonderful brave little pet.
Fuck. Are you wet? Is that what the feeling is? You've never been wet before.
Ace rolls her hips into you, grinding against your hand, getting ever more frantic. Out of the corner of your eye you see her tongue lolling from her mouth, a little vulpine blep, and you're struck with a need you're too horny to be ashamed of. But she's been very good and she comes first.
Your thumb finds her clit and your middle finger finds a spot right below it and you press, and again, and again, and each time her groan is a little louder and her muscles a little tighter, until you do it one last time -
And she immediately drops, juddering, panting and voiceless, flooding your hand and damn near down to the wrist in all the proof you'll ever need that you've given her exactly what she needed. Ace needs to catch her breath before she can properly moan your name.
"Deedeeeeee..."
"Morgan, you did so good," you say, stroking strands of hair out of her eyes. You bring the soaked hand to your lips and lick - sweet and astringent - before you even realize that's what you're doing. Then, almost as unconsciously, you put your palm against her mouth and let her taste herself.
"I came so haaaardd n sweet..."
"You did it was wonderful and now I want you to do something for me, okay?" You shudder and shift to straddling her, peeling sticky underwear off your hips.
"Imma good girl, tell me what you wannnt," she babbles.
You kneel, knees on either side of her ears, thumbs along them, fingers on her jaw.
"Make me come," you order. "There's a good girl."
She nods and kisses with an unbelievably hot and nimble tongue. You throw your head back and the stray thought boy, this escalated quickly! passes through your estrogen-soaked skull, and you laugh once before you start to moan.
You tilt Ace's head, guide her, grin and roll your hips into her waiting mouth as she closes her eyes and lovingly laps up everything you're giving her. You have to arch your back and put your hand behind you for support because when this is done you know you're going to collapse in a tangled heap otherwise.
It feels like that searing tongue is getting deeper and deeper in you each time even if you know that's unlikely, but your rocking does mean it hits a wetly sensitive place inside you and you full-body shudder and oh gods you have one of those now you need her tongue on it more. You start grunting in time as you and Morgan find the rhythm she needs to
obey your orders
like your good girl like your precious pet like your crafty lil vixen
obediently finding the place right there like you knew she would
You stifle the sound as you come, instead channeling the vibration into your limbs, shaking for a moment with a tiny little grunt before you topple over, slamming your hands on the ground, breathing hard.
And she's still going! If you don't stop her now you won't want to...
"That's... that's enough, you did so good, did my pet like the taste, nnnf I just -"
Ace stretches out, shimmying under you and up, to kiss your boob.
You laugh and let yourself drop and hug her, and roll you both to your sides, and kiss her, and come down from the high.
You pull the blanket over you and Morgan both - it's getting a lot colder now, after... that happened. She cuddles against you, letting you put an arm around her and act as big spoon, if only as a practical concession.
"Have fun?" you ask.
"Mmhmm," she says, still getting words back. "You too?"
"If I was mean you'd know how I'd answer that," you say, kissing right behind her ear. It twitches.
She exhales a ragged breath - and you realize it was a laugh under her breath. "'Not confident about taking charge,' says the healer."
"Shut up," you say, blushing. "It was my first time."
She turns to look at you. "Your first time in charge or...?"
"I'm not sure how I managed to get laid before all this happened," you say, voice flat, "but my eggy ass somehow managed."
"Riiight," Morgan says with a smile, nestling against you again.
You sigh. "Everyone else will probably figure out we're... I mean, Hikaru did."
"Like I mind them knowing," she says softly.
"Just checking," you say, kissing her head. "Glad you're feeling better."
"For now," she allows. "Good night, Deedee."
"Sweet dreams, Morgan."
You're worried for a moment that you're too wired to sleep, but soon enough you drift off to her breathing and heartbeat.
Somewhere, Sekhmet sits bolt-upright, wiggles one ear, then goes back to sleep muttering "fuckin finally."
You nod. "You cannot abandon the work," you recite, the full form of your mother's words, "though you are not obligated to complete it in your lifetime."
