Salem strode across the leathery flesh of her giant whale grimm, her black dress dragging softly behind her. The woman kept her hands cupped together in front of herself as she walked swiftly and silently toward her throne of bone and sinew. That day, however, there was no time for idling about in her usual seat. Instead, she continued on past the throne and over to her racerback pro gamer chair, where her needed equipment for the day was deposited in a heap atop the seat.
"Ohoho, yes, it's finally happening!" Tyrian said with glee as he clapped his hands together and rubbed his palms against each other. "Watch this! Watch this, Neo! Our goddess hasn't had the chance to play since the Nuckelavee!"
Neopolitan said nothing as she simply watched on in confusion.
"Silence, Tyrian," Salem snapped as she lifted a virtual reality headset from the cushion of the chair and turned it over in her hands. S.D.C. Vibe was embossed upon the side, alongside a snowflake emblem. "Make sure the projector is set up correctly, and that the new 3080 video card is properly installed. I didn't run bots on twelve websites all week to get one for nothing."
"Right away!" Tyrian acknowledged before scurrying off to the side, where a PC tower was set up upon a table of bone and black goo.
"Good luck, ma'am," Hazel said as he folded his arms across his chest. "What game are you playing today?"
"Capture Oscar-kun," Salem said as she slipped on the visor and kept it over her forehead. "It's about time I established a high score."
Salem picked up the controllers from her chair and slipped the wrist straps on. After all, safety was her number one priority.
"Alright, we should be good to go," Tyrian reassured as he stood near Salem's incredibly expensive gaming tower. "I've tested the VRAM with the usual setup. Photorealistic ENB running in Cloudedge, in the usual place."
"…7,000 cabbages inside of Windhouse with dynamic collisions enabled?" Salem asked as she lowered the helmet over her eyes.
"Lydia never stood a chance," Tyrian confirmed as a projection of Salem's desktop appeared in the sky for all to see.
A background of a much younger Salem with her arm around Ozma was barely visible through a clutter of desktop icons, the majority of which were labeled "Not Porn."
Mercury and Emerald exchanged nervous looks, as Hazel slowly backed away and jumped into the whale's blowhole for safety.
"…Tyrian, are they seeing my wallpaper right now…" Salem seethed as the scorpion faunus frantically clicked upon one of the icons.
"N-no, goddess! Of course not!"
"Good," Salem said icily as she adjusted her VR helmet. "Tyrian, my Grimm Fuel."
Tyrian hurried over to the gaming chair and grabbed a small plastic tumbler from the cupholder within one of the arm rests. As Salem transferred one of her controllers to the other hand and reached outward, Tyrian deposited the drink into her palm.
"Black Pool flavor," Tyrian reminded.
"I assume you acquired this at 20% off, using the code from a content creator?" Salem pressed before taking a drink through the attached crazy straw. "Our budget is running low even since I attached rocket boosters to the back of this whale."
"Of course," Tyrian answered as he took the cup back into his hands. "I also signed you up for Siege: Darkness Anthologies using the same link. You have 50,000 silver waiting for you, when you next log in."
"Excellent," Salem praised as she rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. "Now… let us play…"
Quite suddenly, a bright title screen of flashing colors manifested in the sky and within Salem's VR helmet.
"Capture Oscar-kun!" an announcer's voice blared. Oscar's panicked face appeared on either side of the words as they popped up above the main menu, happily bouncing back and forth to the beat of the title theme.
"I hope she remembered to buy the DLC through Vapor…" Emerald said nervous as she watched Salem flail her arms to direct the cursor down to 'NEW GAME'.
"If she didn't, I'm running for the blowhole," Mercury warned. "Let's hope this goes better than last time…"
"Please select your grimm!" the announcer's voice announced happily as tropical music began to play. 3D models of various types of grimm popped up on screen and began to rotate, with profiles popping up as Salem moved her cursor to scroll through them.
"Hm…" Salem considered as she temporarily selected a new species of grimm. The beast had a massive pair of wings and an almost pterodactyl-like appearance, though it was quadrupedal in nature. "Perhaps an anthem…?"
"…why is that one called an anthem?" Emerald asked as she raised a brow.
"Because its gimmick is flight, and the first time we launched it, it died in ten seconds and nobody cared," Mercury explained.
"Ah."
"No, no, too simple," Salem muttered as she flailed her way over to a new DLC beast. "There. The iGrimm. The Smart Grimm, capable of evolving."
"A perfect choice," Tyrian acknowledged with a grin. "We have one perched upon a bridge in Mantle right now."
"Assuming direct control," Salem replied as she selected the grimm.
Suddenly, her vision and the display on the monitor swapped to a first-person view of the iGrimm as it watched over the streets of Mantle. As if on cue, Ren, Yang, Jaune, and Oscar sped under the bridge on hoverbikes, and Salem smirked wickedly.
"Perfect," she cooed as she began to flail her arms, commanding her grimm to leap to a nearby rooftop and give chase.
Colored rings appeared in the sky as Salem directed her iGrimm to jump through them, pressing buttons to perform midair tricks. Various score values and phrases such as "Great!" and "Perfect!" flashed as she made it through each ring, until the grimm got into position over the city streets.
"Alright, here we go…" Salem said to herself as she watched Oscar and his friends fighting an anthem far below. "The level is about to begin."
An open, scrolling lane came into sight before Salem and on the projector as electronic music began to play. The words "BeatOscar" appeared in the sky, and in the distance, a series of floating cubes with Oscar's face upon them began speeding toward Salem.
"Watch this, Neo," Tyrian instructed as he moved to stand beside the girl. "Salem's incredible at this."
As the first red cube arrived just before her with Oscar's terrified face upon it, Salem swung her left arm hard to the rhythm and slashed the block in half. In time with her swipe, the iGrimm leapt from the building and grabbed Oscar, leading to the words "1x COMBO!" appearing in the sky.
"Here we go!" Tyrian sang excitedly. "Goddess, command throw him!"
Oscar tried to block, but the motion was stuffed as Salem swung her right arm through a blue cube in time to the music. The iGrimm grabbed Oscar and began to fling him around, smashing him into the ground with each swipe of Salem's VR wands. The woman leaned and ducked around speeding red energy fields to avoid triggering Ren, Yang, and Jaune's attention as she continued to combo the poor boy into oblivion.
"Aura broken!" Mercury called as he pointed toward the projection. "She's gonna get a five-star rating!"
Salem continued to swing her arms wildly, the music pulsing and causing the entire whale to shake as iGrimm kept up its combo. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Salem missed a cube and let out a long string of curses. Tyrian immediately reached down to cover Neopolitan's ears, looking horrified.
"Goddess! Not even Rooster Teeth knows how old she is! She could be like 12!"
"I don't care!" Salem said angrily as she focused on picking up her BeatOscar combo again.
With the dropped combo, Yang, Ren, and Jaune rushed forward. As Salem continued to play, the iGrimm picked up Oscar and began using him as a human shield. While Yang hesitated, Salem swiped her arms all about to build her score back up, and the iGrimm flung Yang off to the side without a care in the world. Just as Ren leaped in to attack, Salem's vision was assaulted with a screen of pale blue with white text in the center and a circle of dots swirling beneath.
Installing Windows Update. 30%.
Salem merely stared, her hands shaking as her fury began to build. Mercury and Emerald turned and immediately made a mad dash for the whale's blowhole. Tyrian scooped up Neopolitan and was soon to follow, just as Salem's rig shut down and began to restart. Suddenly, she quite literally exploded in anger, causing a chain reaction that blew up the entire whale and sent it hurtling down into the ice fields, where everyone died in a fiery blast.
And that's how Volume 8 ended in two episodes and Atlas was saved.
The end.
Author's Note:
Guess who got no sleep again.
-RD