DISCLAIMER: All credit for 1/2 Prince, it's original ending/storyline and cast of characters go to the very talented Yu Wo.
Technical Assistance
Feng Lan tapped her foot impatiently.
Come on, come on…
Her eyes darted around the darkened space, edged with paranoia. She felt like a kid with her hand in the cookie jar. Scratch that. She felt like someone who had decided to have their cake and eat it, too. Wait… Don't those two sayings mean the same thing? Why would someone come up with two pointlessly similar euphemisms for the same exact thing? They were -only slightly different. Maybe she was a dog chewing on an old bone? No, that didn't sound right.
But she was getting off-track.
Come on!
The girl growled in frustration, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring into the artificial blackness of the loading stage. The empty moderator's control panel hung rather pointlessly over her head with no body to occupy it.
"I don't have all night!" she barked.
She didn't know what she expected to happen because nothing did. The odd looking throne of plush cushions, wires, and various other cables remained stubbornly empty save for one glowing notification that floated above:
Welcome to Second Life! All our servers are busy at the moment. A moderator will be with you as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience!
Xiao Lan had been staring at the same gold luminescent sign for well over an hour now and no amount of insults, swearing, or creative death threats seemed to be convincing it to produce a GM for her. She'd briefly considered trying to launch herself up to the platform and try to hook herself into the odd avatar-making device, but she was currently without the in-game attributes that would have made such a feat possible.
The girl sighed, shoulders slumped. Maybe this was a sign that she really shouldn't be here after all…
Just as she had about convinced herself to abandon her latest warpath, a quick fizz of static light shimmered over the technical throne and a rather disheveled looking GM appeared, slouching in amongst the cables and wires that surrounded him.
"For the love of… Three hours… Just to determine the shape a nose… Left my position at The World for this..."
He pulled off the odd looking helmet that kept him hooked into the game-making controls (something Xiao Lan didn't even know they could even do at this point of the game without getting booted from the server). He ran a hand through some unruly red curls, continuing his disgruntled mutterings for a few more moments before finally noticing the player at his feet.
The GM froze for an instant, eyes locked with the rather perturbed looking girl, before cursing loudly and throwing back on his helmet. He sat up perfectly straight and plastered a gorgeously fake smile across his face with practiced ease.
"Welcome player! Apologies for the extended delay, our servers were temporarily backed up with an inflow of new gamers just like you. I am the moderator that will be assisting you today in creating your new character. I look forward to helping you shape this important first step in your new Second Life!"
Feng Lan narrowed her eyes at the man, raising a brow and inclining her head to the side in disbelief.
The man held his blankly happy expression another beat through the silence before he deflated, chuckling nervously. "Okay, please don't tell my supervisor about me breaking character," he pleaded, giving her an adorably boyish pout.
Feng Lan grinned. At least they'd finally taken her suggestion about male eye-candy seriously. It was nice to not be immediately affronted with the beautiful, chesty female mascots game companies tended to employ.
"Don't worry, your secret's safe with me." She winked and he cut her a dashing smile.
"Great," he laughed, "You wouldn't believe some of the crazy things you have to deal with helping people mold their characters all day long. And I do mean all day. Let me tell you, it's during the lighted hours that the real weirdos come out… you know, when most people are at their jobs or school. Plus they're almost always newbies which makes everything take longer because they have no idea what they're doing."
He stopped for a moment and blinked, then winced and looked back at his charge awkwardly. "And suddenly I'm really hoping you did not find that at all offensive."
"Seriously?" Xiao Lan made a show of looking thoroughly miffed before bursting out with laughter. Two minutes in and she was already being reminded that everyone in Second Life tended to be a bit more... colorful than real life allowed.
The moderator breathed a sigh of relief, the corners of his lips pulling up again.
"Okay, no more goofing off! Just a minute while I run the infrared and sound wave scans."
The GM's eyes fell shut as her body was enveloped in a pure white light. A few seconds passed in harmless silence while Feng Lan marveled at the warm feeling on her skin, humming softly to herself so the moderator wouldn't be forced to make awkward small talk to get the baseline on her vocal measures.
His brow furrowed and the warm feeling on her skin grew tingly. "That's odd… It seems like we already have portions of your data on file. Oh wait, there's a note here. Let me just –"
The light died out around her and the GM's eyes shot open, giddy excitement rolling off him in waves as he practically bounced in his seat.
"Oh my gosh, you're-!"
The redheaded bishie suddenly disappeared in a quick flash of static and Feng Lan was once again left alone in the underlit silence of the loading stage.
The girl giggled uneasily, glancing around the shadowed game tiles. "That was a little… ominous. Umm, hello?"
The GM control center remained predictably silent.
"I'd really like to make my character now, if that's not too much trouble."
Feng Lan groaned. This was quickly becoming rather tiring and she was once again left questioning if she should really be doing this.
Caught up in her musings as she was, she honestly didn't notice when the GM throne produced a new occupant. The delighted squeal reached her ears only half a second before she was tackled into submission by what she could only describe as a rather voluptuous chest with a person attached.
"PRINCE!"
"Shui… Han… can't… breathe…!" Feng Lan gasped, desperately trying to dislodge her face from the pillowy death her near-sister was apparently trying to inflict upon her.
"Whoops, sorry!" The hidden GM released the girl, backing up only a step as she nearly danced in place. "What do you expect when you show up without any kind of warning? I've missed you!"
Feng Lan shook her head, pressing a palm to her forehead to fight down the oncoming headache. "You just saw me for dinner two nights ago."
"Noo," the thief waved her finger under the girl's nose, "I just saw Xiao Lan for dinner two nights ago. Prince hasn't set foot back in Second Life in over a year. Despite a fierce outcry from the public at his absence and a very generous offer from Long Industries to recreate his avatar to full caliber, I might add."
"Lolidragon," she warned, her expression grave.
The rambunctious GM pinched a face at her friend. "Fine. For legitimate personal reasons, but whatever. The pointis you're back!"
"Yes," Feng Lan nodded, uncharacteristically calm, "I'm back. Prince is not. He's dead."
"Oh, this is going to be great. I've been planning your big comeback pretty much since you went off the radar. This is going to be massive. I mean, people will literally be running wild in the streets. We'll probably have to hire a few heavies just too keep the castle from getting stormed… But to do that we'll have to draw from the defense budget…"
Lolidragon trailed off, muttering to herself the merits of asking Yu Lian directly for the funds or just going on her own private pillaging spree to cover the expenses.
"You're not listening..."
"Oooh, do you think your grand entrance should be during the Adventurers' Tournament or should we announce a concert with the remaining members of the Infinite Band?"
"Shui Han..."
"I want it to be something with flare, you know. Something that will keep the people talking about it for years."
"I don't think–"
"So many things to plan on such short notice~!"
"LOLIDRAGON!"
The thief paused in her scheming, slanting her companion with a rather peeved look. "What?"
"Prince is not coming back. I am here –temporarily–to create a new character and settle a score. That's all."
The GM crossed her arms over her chest and groaned, throwing her head back in exasperation. "Oh, come on. Don't you think you've –"
"No."
"But it's not –"
"No."
Lolidragon glowered at the girl, stomping her foot and generally just looking very close to throwing an all-out tantrum before she finally threw her hands up in surrender. "Fine! Be a stubborn idiot. See what I care."
Feng Lan grinned, letting her know with absolutely no shred of doubt that she would do exactly that. She lifted her chin triumphantly as the thief turned from her to grumble over her annoyance of having all the 'fun' ruined. She wondered briefly if her friend was going to 'accidentally' drop her from the server in retribution, but decided she was probably pretty safe. After all…
"You said something about a 'score to settle,'" the older girl turned back to her, a familiar, mischievous glint sparking behind curious amber eyes, "What exactly did you mean?"
Lan gave her a positively diabolic smile. "This is the part you're gonna like."
"Well, I think that about does it!" Lolidragon fell back in the plush, floating throne with a sigh of relief.
You'd think since they'd been through this process once before it would have been a cake walk, but for some reason it had taken even longer than the first time. Feng Lan looked back to her new avatar and nodded in approval, her mouth turning up in a sly grin. "Yes, I think this will do nicely."
What looked back at her was almost a mirror image of herself. As much as it pained her, she'd decided to forgo the 30% beautification process. After going back and forth for nearly 4 hours, she decided her intentions for this particular character would be better served if it looked as much like her as possible. The only difference between herself and the avatar standing before her was the short, messy hair, delicate elfin ears, and deep, crimson eyes.
Shockingly, she still looked a great deal like Prince even without his signature silver locks, just distinctly more feminine in appearance. In fact, if she didn't know any better, she would have suspected Lolidragon might have just thrown her old body to An Rui, let him chew on it for a few minutes, and spit it back out in cursed form.
"Are you really sure about this?" the hidden GM asked, unusually sober for someone always in the midst of one prank or another. "If you go through with this you can't change your mind later. The company was willing to bend the rules as a token of gratitude to those of us that participated in the coup at Flower City, but if you do this now, there will be no getting your old body back. Prince really will be gone forever."
Feng Lan stared into the blood red gaze of her avatar, the old ache in her chest pattering on painfully. But her mind had been made up long ago. She nodded her head.
"Prince died with the Dictator of Life."
Lolidragon allowed a brief, saddened smile to ghost across her lips before reverting back to her usual flippancy. "So, did you have a name in mind?" she quipped, leaning her chin into the palm of her hand.
"Eh?" Feng Lan scratched her head, not having thought that far in advance. "I'm sure there's nothing good left at this point. I only mean to play for a little while anyway. I guess DragonYouthLover999–"
"Absolutely not!" the thief cracked her over the head with a hard wooden pole.
"OW! Where did you even get that?!"
"Quiet you, that's not important!" Lolidragon smacked the stick against her palm menacingly, leaning over the girl like some kind of motherly tyrant of a disciplinarian. "Whether or not you're Prince, you are Prince, Missy. Parading around with a name like that is an insult to your legacy and I will not have it. As the GM that created Prince's body, I take personal offense!"
"But what does it matter? No one's gonna know." Feng Lan rubbed at the sore spot on top of her head. Knowing Second Life's commitment to realism, she was sure to have a rather impressive goose egg.
"It matters!" the GM huffed, crossing her arms over her chest with finality. She took a moment to think, annoyance still buzzing in the air around her. "How about 'Legend'?"
"'Legend?'"
Lolidragon rolled her eyes in that wonderfully expressive 'you really are a complete moron' way.
"'Legend' as in your legend. The Legend of the Blood Elf, remember?"
Feng Lan made a face like she'd just licked the wrong end of a slime (not that they had any right end, but that was beside the point). "Isn't that a bit extravagant? Besides, how is a name like that even available?"
The thief was looking very close to losing her patience with the girl. "Whether or not you choose to acknowledge it, that's the way people think of you, Feng Lan. Prince's influence still affects things that happen in Second Life today. Your following is still just as huge, if not even bigger than it was the day you disappeared. I really don't think it's an exaggeration to call you a legend."
She smiled wickedly. "And as far as the actual name goes, there are some benefits to being a GM, you know. Most of us don't want to go walking around with dorky names like 'DragonYouthLover999–'"
"Hey!"
"– So we keep a reserve of screen names for the new recruits to choose from if they want. I don't think anyone's going to mind if I let you use one."
"You know, I'm starting to feel some déjà vu here." Feng Lan hung her head in defeat. Getting in a battle of wills with Lolidragon always seemed to leave her on the losing end of finish line. She rarely came out on top. "Do I get to decide anything here?"
"Of course! What continent would you like to be born on? Central I'm assuming, since –"
"The Northern Continent."
"What?! Why?"
The girl grinned, half just to spite her bossy friend. "If I'm going to do this, I want to do it right. I don't want any of you guys butting in or trying to help beyond what we've already decided. Besides," a troubled look passed over her face, "If I'm going to be back in-game anyway, there's some things I wanted to look into while I'm here and most of them revolve around the Northern Continent."
Lolidragon faltered, eyes narrowed and lips pressed into a hard line, before shrugging indifferently. "Okay, Northern Continent is is, then."
Feng Lan wasn't fooled. "Seriously, Shui Han, no meddling." She placed her hands on her hips and did her best to channel Yu Lian's most frightening 'shadow smile.'
"Say it with me, Lolidragon. No one from Odd Squad, Dark Phantom… anyone from the Infinite City will be showing up to either keep tabs on me or help me along the way."
The thief sighed dramatically, rolling her head back like a petulant teenager as she reiterated the oath in the most condescending voice possible. "No one from Odd Squad, Dark Phantom, or anyone else from Infinite City will be sent to either keep tabs on and/or help Xiao Lan along her journey to seriously rend one poor bard's soon-to-be seriously sorry ass."
The girl raised an eyebrow.
"Or Legend!" the GM ground out, looking very close to kicking some of the finer mechanisms of her floating throne.
Feng Lan finally smiled, her shoulders relaxing considerably. Already she could feel the excitement beginning to hum through her veins. The questionably justifiable excuse of beating Professor Min Gui Wen's alter-ego to a bloody, unidentifiable puddle of freshly refined bard-juice notwithstanding… She was finally going back. Her second home, a new life, her old friends. The anxious part of her ringed with the reminder that it was just temporary, but a louder section of her mind was just dizzy with anticipation.
"Okay," she nodded.
"Okay?" her friend watched her with lighted eyes.
"Yeah."
Lolidragon grinned as the girl and her avatar were thrown together violently, their forms molding into a single character as the body began to simultaneously fade from the loading center. "Good to have you back, Prince!" she called teasingly just before the player was pulled from the server.
She turned back to the GM control panel. For the first time in a long while, everything felt exactly as it should be, or at least as though it were headed in that direction.
"No one from Infinite City, huh?" the thief mused lazily. "I think I can work with that."
Back in-game...
"Lolidragon! Lolidragon!"
Guileastos was in a panic. Sheer. Blind. Unadulterated panic.
He was there. He had been there. In real life. She had been there… and he'd messed it all up. Everything. Every little thing. Everything he had been planning and fantasizing about for the past year had been absolutely shredded, torn, and thrown to the winds because he had decided to be a perfect imbecile.
The person he still loved with every ounce of his soul, the one he knew he could never mistake for anyone else. The person he had pined for, for one long, hard year had come to him to reconcile. To make amends, to apologize… and what did he do? Oh, only call her a liar. Only announce his superiority, his divine purity of heart, and then threaten her for daring assume her own name.
He had screwed up in the worst possible way. He had alienated the one person that mattered most to him in the world.
So, Gui did what he always did when spiraling into his worst Prince-related despair.
He went crying to Lolidragon.
Certainly, it had been a long, long time since the halls of the Infinite Palace rang with the bard's tortured, lovesick wails. Despite a few rough weeks after the Rebellion, the city's architect had done unexpectedly well pulling himself together and continuing on with life. He would occasionally mope or disappear to wander the streets of his beloved overlord's capitol city, but by and large, he managed to keep himself from letting his grief consume him.
He had the support of all his friends to thank for that.
It didn't come as a surprise to him as he turned the corner into fortress's largest meeting hall to be met with several concerned stares from said aforementioned friends. But none of them were the one he was looking for.
"Loligdragon!" he howled, bordering on the edge of hysterics. His knees quivered with the effort it took to keep from crumpling into blubbering ball remorse.
"Is something wrong with Gui-gege?" A tiny, pigtailed necromancer of a celestial was the first at his side, tugging at his sleeve and generally looking rather upset for him.
The man tried his very best to collect himself for the sake of his friends. "I… I –" he choked before bursting into a fresh wave of tears and pulled a confused Doll into a watery hug her NPC bodyguard would not approve of.
He PM'd the missing thief desperately. 'Lolidragon, please! I need to talk to you noooow!'
"Gui," a large, furry hand settled on his shoulder like the anchor of reason, "Lolidragon is not here. She logged off suddenly a few hours ago and hasn't been online since."
The beast man leveled the bard with a look that was equal parts sympathetic and chastising. He worried for his friend, but certainly the demon had created quite a scene for anyone who had been unfortunate enough to have business at the palace. Had he been any less distraught, he was sure his wife or Swan Beauty or worse –both– would be closing in on him for his disruptive conduct.
With the realization that his confidant in all things Prince was nowhere to be found, the bard unceremoniously deflated, collapsing to the ground in an emotional heap as his wailing subsided into noiseless hics.
His friends circled in around him, their faces all mirrored in various degrees of concern.
"What's going on?" Ugly Wolf inquired once he determined the man wasn't at risk of bursting into another uncontrollable fit despair.
Guileastos managed to lift his head, misery nearly rolling off him like water, soaking into every fiber of his being. He didn't know what to do. He was so lost. He just wanted someone to talk to, someone that would be able to tell him what to do and how to fix what he'd broken.
"Prince… he –"
Everybody in the room straightened at their liege lord's name, the air suddenly heavy and bated.
But the bard was interrupted as a certain female member of the group logged back on and strolled into the middle of the gathering, whistling a happy little tune, looking quite pleased with herself and much like she had just swallowed a whole plate of roasted meat-filling.
"Hey, sorry I took off like that. Had something come up that I had to take care of."
The hidden GM took a moment to absorb the scene in front of her. Gui huddled up on the floor, looking for all his worth like someone just told him puppies didn't exist as every other member of Odd Squad hovered over him with varying expressions of worry… and then she did the oddest thing.
She started to giggle.
First quietly, her shoulders shaking as she fought to conceal her amusement, but she quickly gave up and devolved into a good, rib cracking bough of laughter.
The others stared at her in numb silence, some of the less docile members having the sense to look affronted by the girl's apparent delight at their ally's distress.
Lolidragon wiped her eyes as she finally got over whatever it was she found just so damn funny and moved to join her friends, pushing into the center of the circle to kneel next to the confused bard.
She patted the man on the head and sighed. "Oh Gui, you've really done it this time."
"I… don't understand," the demon blanched.
The girl hummed, unconvinced, then smiled. "Prince sends his regards. He wanted me to let you know he'll be seeing you again very soon."
Despite any combination of begging, bribing and/or blackmailing, not a single member of Infinite City's standing officials could get even one more word from the thief that night.
AN: First off, I want to take the time to thank all my wonderful reviewers from the previous chapter! As a writer and someone that struggles with inspiration, it is monumentally encouraging to know you guys are interested in my work :-) This probably would have been delayed another week if I didn't know you guys were patiently waiting for the next installment.
Thank you as well to anyone that took the time to point out my mistakes in chapter one. I usually institute a two-day editing period before publishing anything, but I was so excited about getting this rolling I kinda skipped over that (something I did for this chapter as well) -embarrassed-. I've since gone back and corrected any errors I could find/reworded a few awkward phrasings. Nothing major, but it reads a bit more smoothly now.
Anyway, not much to say on the chapter itself. Except I came very close to naming Feng Lan's new character 'Fable' instead of 'Legend.' I decided I felt the latter fit in with the title more and Lan is better off with a less feminine alias.
Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed! If you have the time available, please consider leaving a review, it really helps me pump these things out faster and tells me what I need to improve on :-)