Lyra was spending this Tuesday afternoon the same way she tended to spend them all, lately:

Sitting in Orejin's office, muttering to herself, waiting for him to finish interrogating her latest victims and come out here to congratulate her on a job well done. She could care less about the whole affair, considering she didn't give two shits about the job in question, but unfortunately, she was stuck here until the Administrator deemed her work (or her wait, she wasn't sure which) sufficient and let her go about her business.

On the bright side, Nekkiko had mastered no less than six forms of solitaire in the last four months.

Actually, for the first couple of weeks, she'd started playing The World's TCG, but Naieira had unfortunately had a large obsession with the game, and Lyra'd been forced to abandon ship to avoid having her ear talked off. Orejin's assistant was a sweet girl, and the only person Lyra really felt she could trust or depend on out of the staff she'd met, but she seemed to have a need to outtalk the entirety of Delta and Theta servers at once – and that was on a quiet day. Friendly or not, there was only so much chatter the Heavy Blade could tolerate, so she defended against the Wavemistress the only way she knew: by being AFK.

Which was why Lyra was less sitting and more sprawled, taking up two of the three large plush chairs that inhabited the room, her sword leaning haphazardly against the third. It was a makeshift arrangement that always involved quite a bit of shoving and turning to get the chairs (and the adjacent coffee table where her feet inevitably wound up) into the proper positions for her to lounge, but it was worth it. Obviously, the comfort levels meant nothing to the fox; Lyra couldn't feel the furniture on which she was flopped, so she could have been equally content sitting normally or even curled up in the corner. No, she had a far more sinister reason behind her elaborate sleeping arrangements.

Orejin was the sort of man who couldn't put up with any of his stuff being out of place. She'd found out within her first two visits here that he became upset if she even turned one chair a couple degrees away from where he wanted it to be. Switching everything around drove the man absolutely bonkers. When she'd first figured this out, Naieira had asked her to please leave everything alone, so as not to anger her boss, and she'd obliged out of fear. But as the weeks passed, she grew increasingly bored with her weekly and at times daily periods trapped in that waiting room. Shifting things around was Lyra's way of exacting revenge on Orejin, both for making her a trap and for making her wait repeatedly.

Every once in a while, she'd leave everything perfectly in place, just to mess with him further.

Regardless of all the reasons behind it, there was one fox-girl sprawled across most the furniture in Orejin's office, asleep, labeled AFK, and mostly oblivious to her surroundings. In turn, Nekkiko's headset was off her head, sitting on her desk, where she could care less what was being displayed on it. Of course, the same scene was displayed on her desktop screen, just in case anything important happened, but she was doing her best not to care what might happen until Orejin came back in.

The faint sound of a door opening creaked up from her headset, and she glance over at the screen, trying to see who it was.

'...Oh for the love of god, no'

She groaned as Arpeggio waltzed into the room, slamming the door behind him. “Lyra! My dear friend, how're you feeling today?” He sat down on the arm of the chair her butt was situated in, leaning one arm onto the back of the seat.

Lyra didn't move.

“Oh, come now,” he insisted, his voice still rather muffled by the distance between Nekkiko's ears and her headset's speakers. “You and I both know you can hear me. I know Ore's got you waiting out here for such dreadful amounts of time, but the least you can do is say hi to Uncle Arpeggio, right?”

Nekkiko leaned onto one elbow, massaging her forehead with her palm. “How can one man fit so much sarcasm into a single sentence,” she wondered aloud, in as much frustration as jealousy.

Lyra still didn't move.

Arpeggio tried poking her in the nose, then shrugged, standing and wandering over to the desk Naieira was sitting at. “Tell me, how long has our dear little trap been unconscious? I was hoping to send her on another assignment tonight, but-”

The first six inches of Lyra's Dryad's Sword were buried into the desk within a hair's breadth of Arpeggio's arm, sending papers flying everywhere and causing poor little Naieira to nearly topple out of fright.

“What'd you call me,” she growled, not even bothering to make it a real question. She knew full well that Arpeggio had just used his favorite term for the fox, and she knew equally well that he'd only done it to anger her. It worked every time, but she didn't care. He could do it to get a rise out of her all he wanted; she'd never stop being insulted and enraged by the way he referred to her as the Administration's little toy. To most of them she was just a trap, just another way to enforce their rules – the fact that she was a real player, a real person with actual feelings, didn't seem to occur to most of them. Or, more likely, they knew and just didn't care.

She was fairly certain that was the case with Arpeggio. The way he delighted in tormenting Lyra let her know that he was fully aware of her emotions, given the way he twisted them for his own entertainment. She was miserably easy to read, though, and at times – though not this specific one – she could honestly see the comedy in the situation, and understood why he'd call her out. She had a lot of maturing to do, in that aspect.

“Oh, look who's awake!” He smiled and ruffled her hair and ears. “I thought you'd be down here, so I came by to say hi. Maybe to wish you luck, hmm?” The Fist Fighter reached over and took hold of her blade, freeing it from the wood before it dematerialized and reappeared on her back; one of many Stupid Admin Tricks he liked to show off to her.

“Yeah, thanks,” she grunted, turning to lean her hips against the desk, grabbing a random paper from the mess to read over.

“Come now, if you act that way, I won't give you the healing items I promised you.” Lyra looked up and raised a skeptical eyebrow, pushing the paper into her armor's inner pockets. Arpeggio, keeping a promise? This one she wanted to see. “Now that's better. I've got them right here for you. I'm just sorry I couldn't get them to you before the first half the tournament.”

He placed a trio of items into her hand, which she started at intently in disbelief.

Two Healing Potions and a Mage's Soul. Like that was supposed to impress her.

She snorted and shook her head, stashing the items anyway. “Gee, thanks. I don't know what I'd do without you.” Lyra rolled her eyes, keeping her voice entirely flat as she wished she'd just stayed AFK.

“It's the least I could do for such a good little trap like you.”

She growled at him, crossing her arms. “Really now. Then what's the most?”

He smiled. “I could let you get out of here right now, and tell Orejin you just had to sign off.”

“But that would cost me, wouldn't it?”

He shrugged, skimming over a couple of papers and smirking before looking at the Heavy Blade from the corner of his eye. “You'll just have to do a couple of assignments for me next weekend... that's all.”

She took the sheets from him and read them over, sighing heavily. There were no names she recognized on those papers, and she had no plans after the tournament ended.

“Fine.”

She shoved the sheets into her pocket and stormed out of the room, leaving Arpeggio to chuckle and wave behind her. “Have a nice evening in the sheep suit!”

Naieira probably got the door back on its hinges about the same time Lyra arrived in Dun Loireag.

--------------------------------------------------------

She wouldn't say it this time. She wouldn't. Not after the problems it had caused last time.

But she was still allowed to think about how much she hated Dun Loireag. It wasn't the look of the city, or the sky or anything – that was all pretty. It was the MONSTEROUS DROP OFF that drove her nuts.

She knew the game was likely programmed not to let her fall, or at least, fall very far. She didn't really want to find out if it was true or not, though. Instead, she just wanted to get to the shop in peace, maybe rally up a couple party members, and go about her life. Hopefully, she'd have a fairly normal afternoon. If things didn't seem to have that sort of potential, then instead she'd go ahead and pull out one of the missions she'd been set on by her damned probation officers.

'Speaking of which...' It was worth examining the files more thoroughly. She found a corner to tuck herself into and started to look them over, curious as to exactly what kind of mission she'd been sent on. Each file showed as a piece of parchment in her hand, with a brief code name of the mission (usually something entirely asinine, when it was from Arpeggio), as well as the PC names of those involved, visible on it. But when she actually accessed the information, it showed on the same sort of interface as her Flashmail window, with an in depth description of the problem, and in most cases, a picture of the player(s) the report was about.

The first file was the same sort of reconnaissance mission she tended to be sent on; some player had been reported to the administration, but they weren't certain yet if they were a problem or not. Lyra – and presumably, a few dozen interns working their way through various computing degrees – got to act as a spy in those cases, to figure out if the claim was baseless or not before anyone important had to get their hands dirty.

The last mission like this she'd been sent on had been a Whipmaster with absurd physical defense. At first, it had appeared that they'd hacked their stats, but after a short discussion with Lyra, she'd deemed the boy too young and stupid to realize there was anything wrong with his situation. In the end, she'd figured out that there'd been a minor glitch in the system, and that the boy had done nothing wrong. Rather, he'd been one of the first people to change classes, and when he'd transferred from Blademaster to Whipmaster, his heavy-class armor hadn't automatically been removed.

When Orejin had heard that Arpeggio had sent her to talk to such a case, he'd sounded disgusted. “It doesn't matter if the glitch was in our software. He was still deliberately manipulating the system, taking advantage of that error. Players like that should be dealt with far more severely.” Lyra didn't bother bringing up the fact that the boy was only 9, and thus probably not old enough to notice the problem, or that he was only allowed to play for three hours every Friday night, and so hadn't even gained enough levels to use better armor yet. Orejin didn't tend to listen to that sort of sensible talk, which was why as obnoxious as Arpeggio was, she preferred taking her problems to him.

This mission was something to do with a Long Arm using Heavy Axe skills. Interesting, but the player in question was nearly ten levels higher than her – she'd have to either gain a few levels or find an accomplice for that one.

The second mission was similar, but was labeled with greater urgency. This player had already been confirmed as a threat, and Lyra was required to deliver a tracking mechanism to them.

The administrator's tracking mechanisms came in three varieties of various permanencies. The most temporary involved using a special Knight's Blood on the player, which appeared to act as normal, but in fact served only to put a beacon on the player for the next ten minutes. The next one was far less temporary; Lyra had been given a small army of specially made Gold and Silver Grunties, each of which had a similar beacon in their programming. The particular items had been chosen because they were easy to convince any class to take, valuable enough for people to be willing to trade for, and likely to be kept instead of sold. It was the preferred tracking method, with the Knight's Blood being used only in an emergency, like when someone refused to trade or when the situation became too dangerous for Lyra to stay on the field with the player in question.

The final tracking method was Lyra's least favorite of the bunch, if only because it was the one placed upon her: a permanent marker, embedded in her very data, where nothing and no one could touch it except the administrators. In her case, the beacon was programmed not only to keep track of her whereabouts, but also set a constant data feed to Naieira's desk: who she was talking to, trading with, or partied with. Anything suspicious set up a flag in the system, and from there she was required to follow them to further investigate.

It was the curse that kept her from playing with her children or friends.

She'd gotten pretty used to it by now, and this time she didn't even sniffle at the thought. It'd be over eventually, after all; her sentence was far enough along in its course for her to feel like she could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

At any rate, that particular mission sounded like too much danger and not enough excitement. She'd deal with that some day when she could get an easier start.

Then there was the paper she'd snatched from Naieira's desk. Lyra had snatched it because the name had glowed with a “recent complaint” notice beside it; someone had reported about the problem within the last hour, which made the odds very good that she could track down these characters easily tonight.

The case was also an interesting one: the two characters, named SpirtZer and SeltZer, had been reported at least half a dozen times for being invincible. There were no specifics, but Lyra knew what types of hacks usually caused the appearance of invincibility: instant regeneration, 100% no damage, -1 defense or evasion (which the game read as infinite, a glitch she'd repeatedly asked to have reported to programming), and targeting invisibility were the most common ones.

Occasionally, though, it was just a level 99 player messing with newbies in the PVP practice arenas.

Given the eccentric style of their names, she guessed that was the case here.

Now that she knew what she was going to do for the evening, she needed supplies. The vixen stood again and traipsed around the corner, arriving briskly at the server's Magickery. As she hopped into line, she was surprised to see a somewhat familiar face in line in front of her.

“Kae!” She tapped the boy's shoulder to get is attention, in case her surprise hadn't already. “Haven't seen you in a while. When'd you get to be level 15?”

Kae tapped his foot and glanced at his wrist. There was no watch there, only a bronze bracer that supported his sword arm when he was fighting, but the gesture was so ingrained that the lack of an actual time-telling device didn’t matter. Besides, he knew what time it was to the minute. One of the beauties of a game like this was the ability to customize your view, and he constantly had the real-world time hovering in the lower right corner in ghostly blue letters.

Noon. It was noon already. Actually, more like 12:06, but close enough. They were supposed to be here at 11 a.m. They were supposed to have been here more than an hour ago. They were supposed to be here!

It was hard to contain his irritation. It was Sunday, his fian…. Girlfriend was just lounging around her apartment and had invited him over to watch movies, but he’d said no. And why? Because he’d gotten that Flashmail last time he’d logged in, the one saying that Dain needed to talk to him with a couple of the others, the one that was flagged red and said “Important” in caps in the body.

Dain didn’t seem like the sort to use caps or extraneous punctuation unless he really meant it, so Andrew had begged off the movies, promising to make dinner another night to make up for it, and had logged in. But now, he’d been waiting and waiting and-

Sighing, he meandered toward the magic shop. The one good thing about all this? At least they’[d scheduled the meeting for theta server, which was far less crowded, meaning the lines were a good deal shorter. He’d been meaning to look over their stock and get an idea what sort of spells he could pick up to supplement his lamentable Blademaster magic abilities. Maybe he could unleash a few on that good-for-nothing Twin Blade, and-

A tap on the shoulder startled him. Dain… He turned sharply, realy to snap off something uncharacteristically blunt about what he thought of the hour-long wait he’d been doing, how he’d initially been worried, more the fool him, and-

It wasn’t Dain, and was in fact neither male nor Twin Blade, but was fellow Swordbreaker Lyra. His comments caught in his throat before he could start yelling at her inadvertently. He swallowed his ire and smiled sheepishly. “Oh. Hi Lyra. I’m not, I’m… I WAS waiting for someone. I thought you were him and almost laid into you. Sorry about that.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, then asked, “How about you? Heading out to level? Treasure hunting?”