"Hey, guys!"

Alpha looked up and waved. "Hey, Kirb! Over here!"

The blue-clad imp walked over to join his friends. Feeling only slight disappointment at checking his PM Inbox and finding it empty, he sat down on one of the purple rocks near Nylocke's and joined the group.

"No battle request?" Alpha said in a teasing manner, untwining his hand from Stephanie's and forming a Vulcan Fist.

"Well, everyone already knows I can beat you now," he teased back, glancing several times at his inbox.

"Is everything quite alright, squire?" Nylocke asked, leaning over to see what Kirb was looking at. "Though we are all aware of your capabilities in combat, you have yet to beat Sir Alpha in your imp-like body."

"Yea, yea," he said, glancing one last time before closing the tab, "I'll beat him in a minute flat."

Alpha, taking that as a challenge, loaded up a battle grid and immediately got ready for a lightning-based attack.

While Nylocke and Gamecrazed watched, Flamegirl was distracted by a player peeking out from one of the tall purple rocks nearby. She looked about Kirb's height, with a paintbrush necklace undoubtedly intended for battle and bright pink roller skates that probably increased her speed. Confident that she already knew how Kirb and Alpha's battle would end, she decided instead to spend the time studied the girl's stats. According to them, she'd only been playing TOME for a few days, although she had a fair win record, and she didn't give any info on her real name or location… Oh, she was looking this way.

"Hey, Steph!" Alpha said, looking over his shoulder at her with his foot planted in victory on Kirbopher's chest. "What are you looking at?"

"C'mere!" She replied, motioning for him to come join her. The girl suddenly shifted a little further behind the rock. Flamey waved to let her know it was okay.

"Hey, you! Ahh…" She looked at the girl's screenname. "Rollergal! Come on over!" Timidly, the character skated over, her paintbrush charm swinging side to side with her character model.

"Ah ha! Was thou on looking the battle between Sir Alpha and Squire Kir-bo-pher?" Nylocke asked her. Seemingly unsurprised by his old English tone, she nodded meekly.

"Th-they're really good," she squeaked out, clearing her throat.

"Eh, well, someday you'll have to see us battling when I'm not distracted," Kirbopher said, shrugging and sticking his tongue out at Alpha. Alpha punched him in the shoulder in response.

"Don't listen to him. Kirb never wins. Anyway, what's your name?" Alpha asked the girl, studying her overly-bright character model. It did have a theme to it, but it seemed like whoever was drawing it wasn't sure quite what direction to go in. Unusual, since most people on TOME had models based off of whatever they were into at the time of their creation.

"You can call me Rollergal," she said, pointing to her screen name, "i-if that's alright."

"'Tis more than alright if thou is not quite yet comfortable with sharing thou's personal information over this virtual land," Nylocke assured her. Flamegirl laughed.

"You'll have to excuse Nylocke, he's a role-player. Although he doesn't seem to bother you nearly as much as most newbies we run into," she laughed.

"Duly noted," she responded. Alpha looked at the girl curiously.

"For a newb, you've got a pretty good win record," he said, browsing through her stats for himself.

"Um… thank you," she said, glancing sideways at Kirbopher. "I'm pretty good at battling. Though I'm not a high enough level to unlock the expanded grids yet."

Alpha raised his eyes in surprise. "Where did you learn about the expanded grids? You don't even get a notice about those until you're, like, level ten."

"O-oh," she responded, "um- I have an older friend that plays TOME. Uh- she told me a bit about the game."

"Ah." The others in the group nodded in approval. "It would've been nice to have a tutor when I first joined TOME…" his voice drowned out as he looked at Kirb, undoubtedly thinking about the Forbidden Power. "Anyways, welcome to TOME!"

"Thank you," she said, bowing her head.

"Hey," Flamegirl suddenly piped up, "Why don't we take her on the Parkour Quest?"

"Wait, wait, there's a quest I don't know about?!" Kirb asked. "Why didn't you guys tell me about this?"

"We were going to," Alpha laughed, "until you felt the need to add another loss to your battle record."

"Ah. Well. I'm okay with this gal tagging along, as long as she knows her place. Got it?" he asked her, in a joking tone.

"R-right. Thanks," she said. Gamecrazed was the only one of the group to notice the fleeting blush on her face- and Gamecrazed didn't need to notice anything. She had her eyes locked on Rollergal's, contemplating her deeply. The girl stepped back in sudden surprise when she noticed the purple shadow's unwavering gaze on her- then shuddered and quickly looked away.

"Well," Flamegirl said, standing up, "the quest is in ;Sanctuary so others can't mess you up on your parkour by attacking you, and we're still on the far end of ;Lavendera. Should we get going?"

"Come on, Flamey!"

"We believe in your skill! Do not doubt your instincts!"

"You can do better than THAT, little miss sunshine!"

Rollergal watched with intrigue as Flamegirl attempted the sky part of the parkour, in which characters had to time their jumping to land on the platforms before they disappeared and get across the sky. VR technology had certainly come a long way since even the beginning of TOME, and the Netkings were utilizing every part of it.

"You made it this far, Steph! Don't let us down, now!" Alpha cried up to his girlfriend. Although neither of them had used the specific terms, the relationship was at this point very obvious to everybody.

"Ahh!" She cried, as she jumped into thin air. Her model was taken control of by the invisible force that brought it safely down to the beginning of the parkour, where the others were waiting.

"Aww," Alpha said, "I really thought you'd make it. You got farther than any of us."

"I concur," Nylocke nodded, and then mumbled quietly to himself, "Jumped too soon…"

"Hey," Flamegirl suddenly spoke up, "why don't you give it a try, Rollergal?"

The "newbie" stepped back a little. "Me?"

"Yea, you," Stephanie laughed. "You're allowed to participate. Since it doesn't involve combat, there aren't limitations on how long you've had to play to try this quest."

"Oh," she replied somewhat quietly. She contemplated the idea for a moment, then smiled. "Yea, sure. Guess it can't hurt to try."

"Alright, alright. Maybe beginner's luck will be with her. If she gets us to the next level, though, I get to be the first one to try it out!"

"Yea, 'cuz you've been GREAT at the parkour so far," Alpha laughed. But he nodded to show that he was alright with Kirb being the first to try the next level, if they ever got to it.

"Well, what is thou waiting for? Head off on your quest of many obstacles, er…" Nylocke stuttered.

"Her name's Rollergal, Sherlock," Kirb said.

"Nye's probably just trying to come up with an old English title for you," Flamey laughed. "Go ahead on the quest. We'll see if he comes up with one by the time you get back."

Rollergal nodded and skated over to the beginning of the level. Instantly, she felt her model being absorbed by the force field that was keeping out attacks from players outside the parkour. She took a deep breath and looked at the first obstacle set- a simple "avoid the lava" jump sequence that stayed all at one elevation. She could see that after she completed that, she would climb a rock wall which had moving handholds, and then if she got to the top of that she had a brief dodge-the-bullets session… Wow. The set was big, but not really all that impressive.

She quickly got through the first jump sequence and began climbing the rock wall, which seemed hard at first but was easy once you figured out the pattern of the shifting handholds. They were even color-coordinated to make it easier. Red went up one unit, right one unit, and down one unit in a twenty-five second time frame, then reversed itself. Yellow went right two units, left one unit, then switched between up and down one unit every other cycle. Green stayed put until within five units of a shifting purple, in which case it moved however many units it needed to be out of the range… ect, ect. This was a piece of cake.

As she neared the top of the wall, Rollergal heard the faint voices of the others below, cheering her on and gasping at how easily it seemed to come to her. It felt… good. Really good.

She returned her focus to the parkour. Dodging the CPU bullets was even simpler than the rock wall (which none of the others save Flamegirl had managed to scale), but the real challenge would be the sky session. Rollergal decided to study it while dodging the bullets so she could at least figure out the first section and wouldn't fall immediately after getting on the first platform.

Down on the ground, Alpha, Flamegirl, Nylocke, and Kirbopher were all looking at the girl in amazement.

"Jeez, she's GOOD!" Alpha said, putting a hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun.

"Like I said- beginner's luck," Kirb scoffed. But he, too, was secretly awed (and somewhat annoyed) by how well the girl was doing with so little experience.

"Looketh above!" Nylocke cried, and everyone turned their gaze to Rollergal, who by this point had reached the spot Flamegirl failed at previously.

"She's gonna make it!" Flamey yelled, clenching her fists in excitement.

Rollergal looked down below. What was the shouting about? Ah, well, she couldn't afford to get distracted- she was looking forward to watching Kirb fail at the next level. She made sure her rollers were retracted back into her shoes, and took the next leap as another contestant behind her fell off his platform.

She was hardly surprised when she reached the end. As she and her teammates were warped to the next enclosed area of ;Sanctuary, Alpha and Flamegirl congratulated her on her victory, while Kirbopher pretended to be unimpressed and Nylocke tried to come up with a title for the newcomer. Gamecrazed, of course, watched her thoughts as one would watch TV or an episode of a webshow.

"So," Flamegirl asked casually, "what's your secret?"

"What?" Rollergal asked, alarmed.

"You know," she said, "how you did the parkour so well. The rock wall thing? That was awesome! It seemed like you KNEW where the handholds would shift next."

Rollergal looked up in surprise. "Wait, you scaled the wall. I thought you figured it out?"

Flamegirl tilted her head, confused. "That was just luck. Figured out what?"

As Rollergal explained the patterns of the various colors of handholds and their respective moving patterns, Nylocke turned to Gamecrazed.

"I know thou isn't very well acquainted with the art of playing roles, but would thou possibly be willing to help me out?"

Gamecrazed turned. "What do you need help with?" she asked. Not because she couldn't have figured it out for herself, but she'd learned it was better to keep her mind-reading powers turned off unless she needed them- it freaked people out less.

"I can't for the life of me come up with a proper title for the young Rollergal," he frowned.

GC paused a moment, looked at the subject in question, then said, "How about princess?"

Nylocke tilted his head. "Not to be rude, but how does the girl's appearance portray a princess in the least?"

Gamecrazed shrugged innocently at Nylocke as if calling her "princess" was some inside joke.

"Hmm… Well, it doesn't seem quite proper to name her after something that she's not… Then again, you most likely know more about the girl than the rest of us."

The shadow nodded slightly. "You could say that."

"Hey, guys!" Kirb cried out, louder than necessary. "We're here!"

As the force released them into the next section, Kirb ran into the enclosed level and the others found a nearby bench to watch him with.

"So," Alpha asked the girl while sitting down, "what made you decide to get a TOME account? Your friend?"

"Um… Yea…" she responded awkwardly. It wasn't too far from the truth.

"Well, tell her thanks! She got us to the next parkour level," Flamegirl laughed. Rollergal laughed along, hoping desperately that it didn't sound fake.

"Ah… disappointment yet again," came Nylocke's voice as a blue form walked back to them in defeat.

"What kind of parkour IS this, anyway?" Kirb asked, sitting down next to Rollergal on the bench. "Parkour is supposed to be jumping and stuff! The quest giver didn't say there would be any puzzles!"

"Maybe Rollergal should try," Alpha suggested. "She figured out the rock wall."

"Puzzles?" The girl asked. She looked toward the course. This level was, indeed, comprised of different kinds of puzzles. The first- which Kirb had gotten stuck on- was a simple but difficult slide puzzle. It wasn't hard to figure out the final picture (the five Netkings standing side-by-side), but actually getting there was a whole other story.

"Well, I'll give it a try, if you want…" she responded.

"Nah," Flamey laughed, "Lemme try first. If I can't get it, she can go."

Rollergal shrugged and went over to sit on the bench, but was blocked by Kirb.

"Uh-uh," he said, "you aren't sitting down until I get a battle to even out the loss on my record from earlier."

She cracked a slight smile. "Fine. Have it your way."

Kirb quickly loaded up a battle grid, enclosing the two a small distance away from where Flamegirl was attempting to solve the puzzle.

"Now the key to a strong attack," he said, "is the 'oomph' you put into it."

She laughed. "I thought you wanted me to lose. Why should I take tips from you?"

He scoffed in response. "Fine. Be that way. Dust tornado!"

She dodged the swirling wind easily. Choosing her words carefully, she teased, "You shouldn't say the name of your attack before you do it. I know what to avoid."

He rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath, "You sound like Kizuna." Thankfully, he was just annoyed, and not actually thinking about whether Rollergal sounded like Kizuna- in what she said or the voice in which she said it. Of course, she had taken the necessary precautions of adding a few simple voice filters just in case.

"Yah!"

She turned around and snapped out of her thoughts just in time to jump back from his oncoming sword.

"Come on, you've got attacks too, you know. Don't just dodge me!" He taunted.

"Alright, but you asked for it!" She teased back, starting to loosen up. Maybe she could actually pull this off and enjoy herself!

Picking up the paintbrush charm from her chest, she painted a blob of black color into the air, but gave it no particular shape.

Confused, Kirb asked, "A blob? What kind of minion is THAT?"

Rollergal cracked a smile. "That's what you're supposed to think. Minion-style attacks NEVER go as planned." And with that, she pointed the brush at Kirbopher and the blob of paint flew at him and over his eyes.

"Ahh! I can't see!" he yelped, stating the obvious. He swung his sword side-to-side to defend himself from her. Unfortunately, he forgot to swing UP- and within a moment, she'd knocked him to the ground with a blow to the forehead. Desperately, he grabbed what had just hit him- one of her multiple-purpose roller skates- and pulled her down with her. But the damage was already done- literally. As a "lose!" sign wavered above his head and the grid disappeared, Rollergal extended her hand to him and helped him up. Blushing in embarrassment, Kirb muttered, "Beginner's luck."

"Guys!" Flamey yelled. "I finished!"

Kirb turned his head in surprise. "Already?"

His question was confirmed by the invisible force that once again lifted them up as a group and carried them onto the beginning of the final three levels.

Rollergal smiled. This was shaping up to be a very good day.