((there are some Original Characters in this chapter, you don't need to memorise them, they're just playing a part in the next couple of chapters))

((Bios for Canon characters, OCs and OC Credits at "goddesscat" tumblr "/vraubios"))

Hourly Anaylisis

Space Shuttle: Penton - Hour=#25

Temperature=24°C – Shuttle Integrity=94.52224%

Destination=Sough - Estimated Arrival Time=67 Hours

Where are we now?

It appears that we are on a shuttle out in space on Day #8, Month #3, Year #201, heading towards the Space Station Sough, could this mean that whoever is on this shuttle is from somewhere else entirely?

Everyone aboard this shuttle seems to be asleep or busy, aside from one rather bored looking Troll; perhaps he'll let us accompany him for a little while.

You ask rather nicely if you may talk to him, he looks up from a rather large Alternian book, politely nods and smiles, so shall we get to know this stranger?

Your name is Kankri Vantas, and – wait, what the hell are you doing here?

You don't see a problem with your current position. You live on the Space Station Allon –which incidentally is an exact replica of the Space Station we were just on, you don't know this though – and you are on your way to Sough, on an important mission.

Well, you have your own personal mission, actually you don't really have any business on Sough, you're just here for your Moirail, who has an, apparently, very substantial job to do here.

Your Moirail is a member of a Virtual Reality Gaming team, they are going to be playing a match that will be a very important part of Virtual gaming history in just over a month, as part of this, all 5 of them, and one guest each, get to spend some time on Sough, getting to know the people there, learning more about their history, researching things about them, things you could've easily done on the internet from your own Hive if you were interested enough. But your Moirail needs you, and perhaps it would be nice to get away from it all for a while. Your job can be rather stressful at times, and it is nice to meet new people.

You look over to your significant other, he's asleep and drooling, you wipe his chin with your handkerchief and tut to yourself as you close his mouth, he would be a mess without you.

So Kankri, are you going to explain to us why you're actually here? We don't know what the hell you're talking about with this important mission bullshit.

Despite being asked in a rude way, you guess you'll oblige. But you really should be mindful of how you engage your conversational partners, you could offend someone.

Anyway, you are here because there is a contest going on, which you thought you just mentioned, don't you know about it? It's all over the news. Oh well I'm sure you'll hear about it soon. As you must know, the Virtual Reality game named SGR;UB was created by a Troll known only as Her Rightful Anonymia, which of course means she is Anonymous, she could be anyone, in fact it's not even known whether or not she is indeed female or whether that is just a rumour, not that it really matters as Gender is more of a title for Trolls, but it could be very problematic if she indeed does not identify as a female and she/he could be offended greatly by people describing her/him wrong, which of course you know and which we shall discuss some other time if you like, but right now we are focussing on one main point. SGR;UB was made by a Troll, for Trolls, if your sources serve you right then it was created on one of the Troll's planets and was later released to the Space Stations, it is also believed that there may have been Humans that have tried to hack the system files and gain entry to the game, but to no avail, the game servers were programmed and administrated by Her Anonymia's personal programahacker, who is thought to be very talented.

Apparently Her Rightful Anonymia isn't exactly a fan of Humans, but even she can appreciate that they've let a large number of Trolls cohabit with them on these Space Stations, and so she has decided to release the game to the Humans, but only if they can complete a trial.

This is why your Moirail and his teammates are here, they are the opposing team, you personally think it's rather unfair that the Humans have to go up against them as they are rather good, and the Humans only have a month to train and try and beat them, but you try not to have an opinion on these matters, this is nothing to do with you honestly.

You ask Kankri to tell us a little more about himself personally; since this is going to be a long trip.

He has no problem with this, but what precisely would you like to talk about?

Well, maybe you could start by explaining why you and your sleepy buddy there look kind of familiar.

He doesn't know why they would look familiar, you must be confused. Perhaps he would tell us if he knows why there are a couple of humans on board this shuttle.

Of course you do. They're from your Space Station, they're part of the trial, very promising Humans that should be able to learn how to play SGR;UB very quickly, not that you know anything about SGR;UB, you do however know a lot about Humans, you've researched them extensively and you try and treat them as equals, even though there are a great many things you don't like about their species, but you can't judge individuals by the actions of others or by things they have no control over.

You live right in the centre of the Space Station Allon, and as such, you are surrounded by many Humans, you have an equal number of Human friends as you do Troll, which is actually a lot, though you don't know many of them very well. You work in a library and you run debates after hours, but that's more of a volunteer position. You've been given a rather high Allowance from the System, but you're not sure why, so has your Moirail and a few other people you know, which is strange.

Oh speaking of your Moirail, he's waking up. Would you like to talk to him?

Ok, so who's this douchebag?

Your name is Mituna Captor, and you are not a douchebag. You are very tired though, but not in a bad way, you sleep a lot better in moving vehicles than you do in your own bed, you like the noise and the motion. Also Kankri is here and he's very warm. You snuggle into him a bit more to get comfier, he protests but you don't care. You're a very cuddly person, he accepted that when he agreed to be your Moirail. Well you say 'agreed', he basically forced you to let him, seriously he treats you like a wriggler sometimes, it's almost like he thinks you're brain damaged and can't function without him or something, which is ridiculous, because you're absolutely fine. You have never been – and hopefully never will be – brain damaged. That's just a rumour Cronus made up to piss you off.

You are the leader of this team, did Kankri tell you about that? Oh.

Well personal stuff, you like a lot of things, but right now you can't concentrate enough to tell us about them, maybe some other time.

'Captor' is definitely familiar, there's something going on here.

Yes there is, you suppose you'll explain your theories, it's a secret though, so don't tell.

There are rumours that someone has been doing genetic research on Trolls and been creating clones, apparently their experiments weren't very successful as none of the clones turned out identical. You've been doing research on this for a while and found out that there is a Troll on the very same Space station you're heading to, right now, with the same Identification name – or last name, as the humans call it – as you, that must mean something. You also think you tracked down your originator, his files were easy to find – almost like someone wanted you to find them – they say he's an Adult in the military, a First Class Helmsman, a noble job that you wish to be able to do when you're old enough, you suppose that's probably playing right into your maker's hands by doing what they made you to do, but honestly you don't care.

Does this mean you're doing this to try and meet your clone/brother?

Not at all, that was just a coincidence and you only found out about him on the Shuttle while you were scouring the Stations records to see if anyone you've played SGR;UB with lives here, although you suppose you could try and find him, you don't know if he'll accept what you say though.

You don't have a problem coming to terms with the fact that you were engineered in some laboratory – honestly you think it's kind of cool – but some people might, you think Kankri definitely would, so you've never told him any of this, which is okay, because you don't think there was any more Vantas's around, so he'll never find out. His sensitivity towards his origins is just another way you can pity him secretly.

Before this divulges into an in depth discussion about how much you pity your cuddle buddy, why don't you just tell us who else is on this shuttle.

Well fine. You weren't going to though, you don't shove your happiness in anyone else's face.

So right, people, there's the rest of your team, and their friends – because you're each allowed to bring a guest to Sough with you – there's also two Humans from your Station that are going to be on the opposing team, but they're in a different part of the shuttle and you're not allowed to see them, but you know a few things about them. Their names are Brad Lee and Laurel Best, neither of them brought anyone with them because they were already friends and would've brought each other anyway.

Apparently Brad tried to start a fight with one of the random passengers on the other side of the Shuttle earlier because he's a headstrong idiot who can't control his temper, but Laurel stopped him because she's a really nice person and obviously doesn't want anyone to get hurt, it sounds a lot like moirallegiance to you, generally Humans don't do that, but sometimes they are open to other cultures.

On your side of the Shuttle there's Malato Dromen, you try and steer clear of her, she's a bad ass gamer girl and likes to hurt people for the fun of it, she's probably had more kismesises than you've had 2v2 partners. Marcia Dentin, she's been rather shy around everyone so far but she seems to be getting used to being in the public eye more with all these Tournaments you go to, and at least she doesn't argue like some people. Floria Privet , you shouldn't have favourites, but Floria's always good at listening to you and follows commands perfectly, although sometimes she doesn't seem to think for herself and won't move unless you tell her to, also she hasn't quite gotten used to her new ability completely, but you've still got a month until the Contest. Lastly there's Meiros Neriam, he take's everything quite seriously and he's hard to get a laugh out of when it's time to play, but you suppose it's good that he takes it all like that, he's an asset to your team, his ability is risky but well worth it if you can defend him.

All in all you're glad you're on this side of the Shuttle.

Well not much is happening here. Perhaps we should skip ahead a little, and may I suggest, to somewhere else entirely?

We skip ahead a little and to somewhere else entirely.

So here we are, unexpectedly back on the Space Station Sough.

Here we find this totally cool dude, he's in his apartment on his VR Rig, playing SBUR;B but not completing any quests, quests are for chumps. He's just wandering around making friends with the consorts and looting chests for worthless crap. He could probably wreck the shit out of this game, but that'd be too boring for a cool guy like this. It's a wonder he even has time to play this sort of game when he has a totally sweet blog to run, he is internet famous after all, he probably doesn't even have time to talk to us, but it could be worth a try.

You ask this awesomely cool guy his name in an aloof fashion; he wouldn't pay attention if you asked like a fan girl you're sure.

Your name is Dave Strider. As was mentioned you run a blog, in fact you run several similarly themed sites of varying content, but one is rather recognisable, it's nothing special, you just post terrible ironic comics and write reviews of indie Virtual Reality games, but people seem to like it. Your VR rig is pretty much top of the line, you share it with your brother and he built it himself out of spare parts, he's really good with shit like that, you could care less about it. You prefer to mix music in your spare time, a lot of people like music and since you're internet famous – did we mention that? – a lot of people will happily throw money at you to make it, between this and your bro's engineering stuff, you guys are pretty well off.

You nearly forgot to mention that you collect weird dead things preserved in various ways. You like to keep large insects in amber in your hallway as a tour starter, and jars of small mammals and birds in formaldehyde in your living room, this generally freaks people out enough, in your bathroom you have a random plastic tank-wall in the middle of the room with a full length mirror that covers about half it's surface, inside this wall are fish. Dead fish.

You do this all for general, ironically humorous reasons that both you and your bro can appreciate. Occasionally he takes one of your dead animals out of their respective containers and they return a week later, you're not sure what he's doing with them, you don't want to ask. You have a feeling he's either hiding them for you to randomly find; or he's just daring you to ask him about it.

Sometimes the lengths he goes to with his own ironic stunts scares you, and you don't understand.

So now that we've gotten to know you, perhaps we could meet your brother?

No, that is totally unacceptable, because he is a douchebag.

Besides he's not here right now, he's fixing something for someone.

Well then maybe we can watch you play SBUR;B? We haven't really gotten a look at that yet.

You nod slightly, sure.

You run over a bridge and do some totally sweet parkour moves across a few giant cogs in lava or some shit, you wonder idly if you can get an add-on or a hack to make a skateboard, there are so many awesome places you could grind here in the Land of Heat and Clockwork, not that you can really skate, that's more of your bro's thing, but it could be ironic if you tried, maybe? Probably not. You wander up to a cave; it's got some symbols on it and before you can even begin to imagine what they might mean, you turn around, nope, no quests.

You go look for more chests with pointless crap in them.

You get a notification to join a group video chat from an account name you've never seen before, you accept it, because let's face it you're bored as fuck right now. You see a couple of guys on the video feeds and oh, they're Trolls. You haven't spent much time with Trolls, not that you don't like them, it's just you're quite far out from the centre of the Space Station and you don't really spend much time with people you don't know, well not face to face, or via video, you've probably got a whole bunch of Troll fans online that you've talked to, you suppose you just don't really give a crap about all this species business, you're all just people right?

The person that invited you – some twitchy woman – isn't talking, but someone else is, a big guy with huge jagged horns and a couple of obvious scars across his face, also blindingly obvious is you can tell he either likes purple or that's his blood colour and he's proud of it – not that it means anything – you can never tell with Trolls. He looks familiar but you can't place him.

The big guy's talking to another guy about some game, twitchy girl clears her throat loudly and then they seem to notice you're there.

"Oh hello, Dave Strider I presume?"

"Who's askin'?"

"My name is Gaston Ampora, I'm here to make you a proposition."

"I'm listenin'."

"I work for Her Rightful Anonymia. Do you know of her?"

"Can't say I do, are you like, tryna recruit me for some religion, because I do not accept some Troll chick as my lord and saviour."

He chuckles slightly, "Nothing like that I assure you, hear me out."

You nod and motion for him to continue.

"She is a Troll who created a Virtual Reality game for Alternians called Sgrub, in the last year it has been released to Trolls on Space Stations such as your own, recently she has decided that she wishes Humans to be able to play this game as well, but it has been highly unadvised by some, with comments about Humans not being able to grasp it. We are here to disprove this. We are gathering a team of 5 Humans, we will teach these Humans for a total of one month and then they shall go against a Tournament team from a different Space Station. You have been chosen because you were highly recommended by followers of your-" He pauses, smiles, "Blog."

"Okay, well you are tryin' to recruit me for, something. Why should I do this?"

"Have you not seen the news coverage for this project? Perhaps you should go and research this and contact us again shortly."

"Yeah, sure."

You disconnect from the chat with no intentions of doing that.

Well,why not check out what that guy was saying?

Well why should you? You have loads of stuff to get done on your blog, and you just heard about a new indie game called ON that you need to check out and review.

That's stupid, go for the job.

For some surreal reason you decide that, yeah, you actually will, why not.

When you log on to your blog you have a few messages from people, mostly asking if you're going to be a part of the contest, a couple asking how you are in general, and 3 congratulating you on getting a place on the team, which you don't have. Yet.

You decide to go and look up the news coverage like he said, and wow holy shit there's a lot of stuff on it, you skim a few articles, all just wordy versions of what he told you personally, apparently if the Human team wins, then all Humans get access to the game, there's a bunch of theories to who this Anonymia chick really is, and a whole bunch of stuff about the game itself.

You read up about the game, read a few reviews, watch a few gameplay videos, it actually looks really good. Maybe you will go for this; it's something to pass the time at least.

You send twitchy a message:

TG: so yeah tell your boss or whatever that ill go for it

Soon after, you receive a video chat invite from that Gaston guy, you accept it and tell him personally that maybe you are interested, but you can't seem too eager.

He proceeds to tell you everything you need to know about the position, he says you'll get paid for it, and how much, which pretty much has you saying fuck yes, but then he explains that you'll be staying in an assigned apartment with the other four team members, but you can all bring one other person with you for company, which has you a little anxious because that means ten people all in one place. But he expands on the situation, you're not locked up there, it's just easier if you stay because then you can interact with your new team mates in person, but if you're not comfortable you can stay at your own apartment, but you'll have to travel back and forth. He says there are two members already, from a different Space Station called Allon, you've never heard of it.

You've got one week to pack your stuff and ask your bro if he'll go with you, because of course you're going to take him, who else would you take?

Maybe this will be fun.