Second Shot

Chapter 14:

A Path of His Own

Screens suffuse the interior of the Serpent of Lore. Yata stands busily pouring through old recordings of replicating data fragments. At one side and just down the steps works a bright aqua-haired PC in rosewood-red pontifical vestments minus headware. A shout sounds and static breaks out across his screen.

A warlock throws a light spell at the fractured beast temple treasure chest, now fountaining with what at first appears to be sparks but soon start taking on a more coherent shape like mosquitos without wings.

…

Padded feet scuff almost silently over the stone, and black boots stride behind with the pok . . . pok of somebody trying to sneak in heavy armor. The sleipnir startles and takes off running, and the twin-tailed fox drops his hands and looks up into the sky with an exaggerated sigh. Karl chuckles and shrugs, "Sorry, I only have heavy armor proficiency. There's just too many other things to spend quest points on than equipment expansions."

Reynart rolls his eyes. "And I've only got light proficiency, but I'm just leaving mine in inventory so it doesn't scare anything away."

Karl crosses his arms nonchalantly. "You sure take risks for a new—"

"Do not call me a noob or I will find ways to hurt you," Reynart bares his teeth as he warns the black-trimmed-gold-clad partisan. He turns around, his twin tails twitching like a predator on the hunt, and pads quietly to the post marking the end of a bridge to the main island. The sleipnir is meandering across the middle. "It's taunting me."

"Really?" Karl queries casually, lifting one arm as if holding up an idea. "I'll taunt you. Then it won't seem so unfair that an inanimate program is getting the best of you."

Reynart growls, the fur on his twin tails standing on end in threat. It only makes Karl chuckle more. Saburou shakes her head in an amused manner and her eyes take on that unfocused look of somebody looking through a menu. "I'll be back in just a minute, I need to drop off some items."

The kitsune waves her away, and a squeak draws the beastman's attention just in time for him to look down and see sleipnir scurry around him and off onto the small hilly island he just came from. He starts to growl and looks up at what disrupted his hunt. A skinny girl in a black dress, with a wide black hat. She looks very familiar from videos he saw while looking up Haseo. "Shino? What are you doing here?"

The girl pauses, a flicker of surprise passing over her before she returns to a mask of cool calm. She clasps her hands behind her back and leans, looking over him. She looks like she's carefully formulating what to say when Saburou jogs back from the teleport she was just using to offload her inventory. The girl in green looks at the girl in black and crosses her arms, her gaze suspicious at the least. "What are you doing here?"

Shino smiles, though the expression seems either mocking or morose and her eyes remain still as ice. "As leader of the Twilight Brigade, it remains my responsibility to spearhead the search for the Key of the Twilight," the girl in black finishes sedately, as if a teacher explaining something to a class a second time.

Reynart recalls Tabby mentioning the Twilight Brigade quite a bit. It was all in the past tense, and with the number of times she avoided eye contact when mentioning it, something must have happened. The kitsune feels the fur on his tails start to stand on end in response to his sympathetic anger.

Static buzzes through the screen and a pulse like a heartbeat but as powerful as a factory machine rumbles.

Reynart looks Shino dead in the eye. "The Twilight Brigade was disbanded."

Now the relatively unflappable Shino takes a step back, her eyes widening minutely at the strong statement. Her mental focus disrupted, she looks down for a moment to collect herself and finally asks, "How do you know?"

Saburou pulls her hard gaze off Shino and glances to Reynart before turning her unimpressed look back on the black-clad girl. "Haseo said all that needs to be said."

"Don't call me that, I don't use that account anymore," Reynart snaps.

The change over Shino is nearly instantaneous. Her posture becomes more demure, and her expression softens. She even reaches one hand hesitantly out towards Reynart. "Haseo? Isn't finding Ovan important to you too? If I can find the key that makes wishes—"

"Nothing that grants wishes is real," Reynart snaps. Hundreds of wishes didn't bring his mother home from the hospital, and wishes didn't see his father in the crowd as he walked through the final ceremony at high school when everybody else's father got to proudly clap at their sons' graduation. Hearing his controller strain, Kenji grits his teeth and sets it down to give himself a few seconds to calm.

Not noticing Reynart's teeth are bared, Kenji snaps at his teammates, "Forget that stupid hunt, let's grab the temple treasure and leave."

…

Teleport rings fade away from a beastman and two humans warping in to Dol Donna. Kenji wastes no time uninviting his teammates from his party before stomping off to the town. He isn't pleased to see Saburou interpose herself between him and the gate into the market square. He growls, doing a good job of looking threatening but failing to cause the experienced player to leave.

"Rey, I'm sorry about that. I know I didn't even know you until just before you dropped Haseo as a character, but it just slipped out."

"Why?!" Reynart snaps, pushing Saburou into the great wooden gates. He looks down at the shorter character, the twin tails of his PC shaking with his anger. "Am I that much like Haseo?"

A beat passes before Saburou draws herself up and turns a harder gaze to the looming kitsune. "No, Haseo was a lot more than angry – he had the fear of failure, determination to keep his friends safe, and he worked hard to deal with his rough edges. You're angry at everything even if you try to hide it, and I'm starting to think that you're fine with being as prickly as an urchin. You can't even get your cool when somebody wants to apologize. It's no wonder why Kaede and Gaspard—"

Reynart punches the lumber beside Saburou's head and lets out a bellowing roar. Saburou was half expecting the reflexive action, but wasn't ready for the red flash when his hand impacts and cracks the lumber or the momentary flicker of red in his eyes. A few seconds pass before he draws in a deep breath and withdraws his hand. Still not looking Saburou in the eye, he lets out, "I have reason to be what I am."

"Haseo had reason to be what he was," she points out, voice reasonably steady but her hands shaking slightly. "He still worked on it." She swallows, and a moment later rings descend around her character as she logs out.

Reynart slides down to his knees, hand still pressed against the cracked gate into Dol Donna's market square.

…

Earthen brown and sedate green swishes as Michelle strides down the cobblestone road from the fortified town of Fomoraig. The Lei Tribe player ignores the two players who spot her and dash towards town, reaching for the Chaos Gate and flicking into a random area to begin the hunt for a player worth the time to meet. A fairy orb does the job of scouting the area, and Michelle sets into a run to intercept any players on the way up the cloister dungeon. The monsters barely provide a speed bump, and it's not until the open room just before the boss monster that she finally spots another player.

She's a tall, dark-skinned human with just slightly too toned a build to call 'skinny'. Unlike most players who stick with an aesthetically pleasing symmetry, this one seems to have gone for a more irregular look. At first glance Michelle thinks that she's got a couple burn treatment strips, but on closer inspection it's more like bone is growing on a more ordinary clothing/armor appearance otherwise dominated in dark metal and violet. On one shoulder is either a skeletal hand or a white spider, Michelle isn't sure.

"Well, well, what have we here? Out looking for a brush with death?"

Michelle's eyes narrow. This brash sort of pride – or bluster – isn't all that surprising given the players that frequent the Zeta Server. The other player reaches to her waist and draws a long sword like shards of bone and rotting meat fused together. Michelle reaches to her shoulder and draws out her own weapon, a great spear like those carved from whale bone. The music changes and she allows himself a moment of pride as her nickname, Garden Michelle, springs up on the screen.

Bordeaux merely starts cackling and launches herself recklessly at the Chaotic PKer.