OOC: Continued from “Trial By Fire.” Also, Hijinx, you can join in with whoever whenever you want :). Sorry, I just really wanted to not have a hole in my character's plot and you weren't online tonight to discuss :<.

The plant-like animal's appendages stopped flailing with the crunch of its neck. Dispirited peeled the limp lips off of her wand slowly, then became impatient and broke the creature's jaw. She stood up from the bloody mess – most of it her flower's, but some green ooze threatened to turn it brown. Her eyes stared at the head of the Mad Grass as she stood.

"Katie! My magic is too low for another spell. Come on over and finish this Moth off..." The monster-girl's head snapped over at her companion and looked at his situation coldly. He was having trouble keeping down a limping moth it seemed. The boy had his back against a wall with a frightened look. The leather of his gloves gripped a rock next to him just for something to grip. Katie raised her hand and displayed no emotion as she let loose all that was needed to send the insect hurling backwards and into a wall of its own.

"Juk Rom." Threat neutralized.

The wavemaster turned his fear from the creature, to Dispirited with even more amplification. Katie loved how her sudden turn had brought emotion out of this player. She knew she was playing the part well. Right then, it told her to turn and leave her former partner and dive deeper into the dungeon.

Katie considered herself one of the very few that role-played inside a role-playing game. The notion was strange at first listen, but not if you really thought about it. They were all ready forced to play under another alias: Vorthal, Hogar, Snagglebrain. Why not play the character they were given?

In Katie's mind, once the affinity for a character was found, all there was to do was ride out the situation and observe. The character played itself. Everything was merely a situation Katie was watching her character complete, and lying as little as possible. Which was never, so far. Her character was untainted by levels, stats, where is a better place to train? It ran on her imagination and she enjoyed every minute of it.

Her companion did not follow her. Not surprising. What he had witnessed was strange at best and sadistic at average. Katie's show was not for the other players, though. It was for her. The absence of anyone else did not snap Dispirited out of her dark trance for a second. Her rose continued to drip thick onto the ground and on the hem of her dress during stride. Each step echoed a “clopping” sound around the dark cave, and a vibration up her leg. Her shoes were stiff and hard.

Katie eyed her MP bar and nodded approvingly. She liked being a mage. Melee characters were too bulky and boring. With a magic-wielder, it was more exciting to have a limiting factor to the different kinds of torture you were dishing out. It made things more complicated, and more desperate at the same time.

The long tunnel was pitch black save for flickering coming from a perpendicular passageway. Like someone had left the light on. Dispirted stepped down the tunnel, fearless of her unseen surroundings surely to be gruesome indeed. Katie wondered if players with those fairies that brightened up the whole dungeon would have turned back by now. She imagined cliché messages written in blood. “Turn back now” or “Abandon Hope all Ye Who Enter.” Katie was careful to turn off the face sensor before giggling. Sometimes she found herself too funny. She set her face again into the blank, weighted stare and switched the setting back on.

Dispirited might be reckless, but she was smart enough to be cautious as she reached the four-way intersection. Her right turn flickered in the darkness showing a few signs of the other two possible directions. Katie estimated it wasn't nearly enough light to turn Dispirited back to her wonderful self. Besides, Dispy in these caves was not a sight she wanted to see. She was glad her character agreed with her preference.

The wavemistress leaned on the wall to the right and peered her head around the corner like a scarecrow on a loose pole. Her expression just as sinister.

"Nicky," Riley whined at her roommate, "When are we going to play that game again? Exams are over, we have had enough time to get all of our shit together, and you made me install it because you wanted to play it with me. We haven't touched the thing since the day we installed it."

It was noon, and Riley had just woke up. Her head was a rat's nest of white-blonde hair, and her tired, grumpy head-scratching was just making it worse. She was dressed in her pajamas, still-- a pair of sweatpants and a loose tank top, with a blanket thrown about her shoulders. Nicholas, almost her mirror image (though they were not related) had been awake for a few hours now, at least. He was sitting on their couch, doing a Sudoku puzzle. In contrast to Riley's messy appearance, he was already showered, his blonde hair neatly combed and his clothes tidy. A grin spread across his face at the sight of his roommate.

"Sleeping Beauty rises! Mornin' Mag!" Nick teased Riley as he always did, but did not mention the game. After a few minutes of their usual playful banter, Riley disappeared into the dumpster that was her room and settled onto her bed, making a nest of the blankets to keep her legs warm. She pulled her laptop out from under her bed and began tugging on various wires that were plugged into it, dragging a shiny white visor/headset and game controller out by their cords. The icon for The World was still on her desktop, amazingly, so she let the game load while disentangling the cables for the headset and controller. Her login info was saved, so as soon as she slipped the goggles over her head, flattening the poofy bedhead she had acquired, Riley found herself in the exotic, almost desert-like city of Mac Anu. It had been almost two months since she had played, and her last "play" consisted of about 30 minutes of walking around and getting her character set up, but Riley remembered the rich colors and vibrant characters that inhabited the city. She walked around for about five minutes, lost, before feeling her mattress shift. Riley told Magpie, her not-so-alter ego to sit on the railing of a bridge in the center of town, knowing that Nick had joined her. She was right--a minute later, Nicholas' familar voice was right beside her (in the speakers of her headset, and literally, right next to her).

"So determined to have your way, eh Mag?" he chided. Riley pouted at him, in turn making her game character pout.

"You've got it lucky," she stuck her tongue out at her friend while standing up, picking up the spear she had leaned against the railing beside her. "You don't have to adjust yourself to call me something else... I'm Magpie here and to you in our apartment... but what do I call you? I can't call you Nicky here..." she squinted at Nicholas' character--it looked almost just like him, just as Magpie looked almost just like herself--but he wasn't Nick... he was Apollo. "Appo?" she suggested weakly, shrugging. "Now that you're here, let's get going."

The pair began moving towards an area of town that appeared to be more crowded. They had learned about this area in their newbie tutorial--the Chaos Gate, a magical portal that transport them away from the town, into a field. Magpie began approaching the floating, spinning disc, but turned on her heel to face Apollo when she heard him say her name. "Yeah?" she asked impatiently, tired of waiting for her friend.

"Shouldn't we make a party? So we don't get seperated," Nicholas suggested. Though she would have taken it as an honest suggestion from anyone else, she knew that from Nicholas there was a little twinge of gotcha--catching her with something she was skipping because of her eager excitement. Magpie shrugged--he knew she was never one to read the manual for anything.

"Sounds good, Nicky--err, Apollo. You do it. She stuck her tongue out at him before a small alert popped up on her screen. Riley accepted his party request before stepping closer to the gate, which alerted the magical thing to her presence. The blue, semi-opaque filling inside the gold circle lit up and changed to a lighter shade of blue while the runic grooves carved into the gold disc burst with a shining light. Riley manipulated a few buttons on her controller, flicking through a few options on some menus until she found the option to filter the sound she was hearing. She switched the filter from "all" to "party", negating the buzz of other's conversations in her ears.

"Nicky. Let's go to a random field," she told her friend after looking at some of the Gate's options. "I don't know where to go."

Her heavyblade friend shrugged and agreed--how could he do anything else? He didn't know how to do anything in the game better than she did.

"Take us somewhere appropriate for our levels," Magpie asked the Gate politely, ignoring Nick's laughing in the background. She started to hear him say it doesn't understand that kind of command, but the end of his sentence was drowned out by a whooshing wind sound in her ears. Gradually, her vision faded to black before the darkness dissipated into the green plain of a lush meadow. Beaming at Apollo beside her, she asked, "What was that you were saying?"

------

The pair had worked out how to fight things, learning to use their skills and how to monitor their health and MP and such as they made their way toward the dungeon. They rested briefly outside, making sure that their health bars were full before venturing inside.

The journey in the dungeon was harder than the journey through the field--but that was to be expected. Apollo and Magpie battled alongside each other, taking down the enemies together. The team enjoyed it, too, as was obvious by Magpie's laughter.

As they ventured further into the dungeon, it seemed like the long stretches of hallway got darker and darker. There seemed to be no light sources in the dungeon--until the duo came upon a lone torch mounted on the wall. Riley convinced Nick to pry it off the wall and carry it with them, allowing for at least a little more light in the dungeon. The two stopped briefly after acquiring the torch, leaning against the walls. "So what do you think, Nicky?"

Katie was wrong. Her eyes squinted in agitation from the blazing fire held nearly three feet from her head. The cold, bleeding Dispirited washed away during Katie's temporary blindness. Her bloody sleeves dripped previously stained blood onto the floor along with her flower, which returned to it's silver-white sheen. Dispy recoiled back from the burst of light and shielded her eyes until two friends sporting surprised stares froze and looked at the little wavemistress standing in the middle of the intersection. She looked to the left and right at the long, dark halls and jumped forward in fright.

"Eeeeep! Where am I?!" She attached to the larger, male character wrapping every appendage she could around his left leg. She shivered in the torchlight that seemed to reflect even brighter off her office-paper skin. The blush in her cheeks accented a bit as she let go and gripped her wrists around her back, putting on her best pouting face.

"I'm sorry, Mister." Her bottom lip curled. She swayed from side to side, avoiding eye contact, but trying to see his eyes anyway. "I'm lost and this place is scary and I'm lost." Her hands curled around his glove holding the torch and brought the light down to her level where her ruby eyes danced with each twinkle of the flame. "Will you help me get back outside?" She forced herself between the inside of his arm and flank, where she placed her small, white hands.

Across from them stood Magpie who either seemed a little dazed, or too angry to speak. Katie eyed her across the way and brought a sad smile to her character's lips that said sorry before she could. She seemed to loosen up from the touch of a protective male (whether he was forced into that position or not!) "Hello, my name is 'Dispirited,' but my friends call me Katie. You can call me Katie." The edges of her mouth turned up like a bow. She kept a hand on Apollo's hip and leaned out towards the middle of the byway with an outstretched hand, ready for shaking. "What's your name, missus lady?"

OOC: normally I wouldn't stop so soon, but there's PLEEENTY I want to see Magpie react to XD. Looking forward to your next post haha.

The brief conversation was suddenly interrupted.

A strange interruption, Magpie thought later, recalling the small girl dripping blood latching onto Apollo's leg, spreading the dark liquid dripping from her sleeves and the hem of her dress. The stain spread on contact with Apollo's khaki pants, creating circular dark spots like some kind of strange mold. That's what this girl is acting like... A fungus.

Because the two of them had briefly familiarized themselves with the chat-filtering process earlier, it was a simple matter to flick the controls to "whisper" so that only the two of them could hear each other speak. Apollo sent the first whisper while looking down at the young girl attached to his leg, his entire body shifted almost comically away from Dispirited, an mixed expression of surprise and something almost like fright on his face. "How old do you think this kid is?"

Magpie's expression almost matched Apollo's, but the mask she wore was more like a face of disgust: it was the look someone would wear while they were watching someone else vomit. "She's not as young as she looks," Instead of filtering her chat to whisper, Riley simply covered the microphone on her headset--after all, Apollo's player was sitting on the bed right next to her.

Riley heard Nicholas pushing the buttons on his controller--no doubt to change the filter and talk to this girl. After all, she had said something directly to them, and there was nobody else there to respond for them. Nicholas had barely responded, "It's okay, it's easy to get lost in here," when the strange child forced herself under his arm, still clinging -- a resistant disease.

A fire was blazing in Riley's mind-- Who is this girl? The player can't be as young as this character looks. They wouldn't let a kid that young play this game. Riley remembered the registration and character creation process. CC Corp had given players many options in regards of a character's appearance, and it wouldn't have been hard for this girl to make a smaller-sized character. The fact that she was "lying" about her age made Riley wonder what else she was "lying" about--was this character even female? Riley quickly mentioned this to Nicholas, muting her microphone. "This 'Katie' might actually be a Michael or whatever using a voice modifier," she stated dryly. "Looking for an excuse to get close to other guys."

To add to all the lovely loveliness they had encountered so far, Dispirited was addressing Magpie now. Riley unmuted her mic and gruffly shot out, "Magpie." with a rough handshake, offering nothing more. Her face remained blissfully neutral, blank like a clean slate, offering no real insight to Dispirited's player that the two characters had just had a conversation without her.

Katie's mind squinted at the quick and tight handshake given by the leaning female across from them. “Magpic,” eh? I guess you don't like it when I hang on your man heheh. She looked up and to the left at her cuddler who had by now completely detached himself like a host ridding itself of a parasite. They don't like me, she thought with a sad frown. Her character frowned in unison and eyed the murky water below her feet.

The three traveled along the blonde couple's previous path, all ready paved free of monsters. Apollo and Magpie walked next to each other exchanging glances and expressions. Dispirited covered the rear, behind the two characters. Due to the narrow tunnel and the taller party's unwillingness to part for her, she walked basically alone. Like a bike with one training wheel. The third one.

Katie couldn't help thinking that there was an invisible conversation going on between the two. It was pretty obvious. Sometimes, if she strained her ears, she could hear far off mumblings when Magpie turned her head, but it could just be her imagination. Katie actually started to feel sad herself – the first time since she had started playing the game. Her character suddenly was not so hard to emulate.

And then he dropped it.

The torch splashed into the dirty sewage water and went out with a fizz. Dispirited's rose began to bleed and Katie knew what that meant. An evil smile cut across her lips like a surgeon in a hurry. Her features distorted, slanting diagonally down and inwards causing her menacing expression a new level of threat. Katie was having fun again.

None of this could be seen of course. The hall was pitch back. Hands rubbed against walls and names were called. Eventually her party members found each other (or stopped trying to) as the long hallway became silent. Drops of varying pitches hit the stony floor.

"Heh heh hehhhh..." Wind seemed to come from nowhere, rousing the little girl's dress and blowing her hair behind. The blood from her rose continued to flow, adding to the din of the water from the leaky ceiling. Katie briefly wondered if they were under a lake. She would not put it past the creators to add a lake to the paradise above.

Katie was surprised with herself. Undoubtedly, the next move for Dispirited would be to try to PK both of them. She did not want to...Whether the wavemistress could win or not, Dispirited definitely would have attempted. The drips from the ceiling began to splash with more frequency, perhaps from the unexpected wind.

Katie reached up with her hand holding the rose to find the object too thick and too heavy. It had all ready changed! Who's controlling this character anyway? Isn't it me? Katie got the chilling feeling it was not. How could she explain the bleeding rose – the blood? The thick layer of ecstasy licking that suffering Mad Grass had given her. The wind... Katie began to be afraid. Her menacing smile persisted.

The frequency of drops accelerated until the tension between them stuck. A rock fell somewhere behind Dispirited. Katie wanted to turn around. Just to see what it was. I just wanna – she began bargaining with her own neck.

The sounds from the tunnel behind her reminded the girl of the beach...a beach at night with no starlight...and no sand. Waves.

Scuffling feet and shifted rocks echoed from in front of her. The sounds became more and more far away – inverse to the ones behind. Her party obviously had kept their mic's muted this whole time. Katie imagined them running and tripping over each other – cursing and clawing. But to her, it was silence – save for the shuffling.

Katie began to panic. Run! RunRun you -

"No." She froze. Her hands lay motionless on the controls while her mouth hung slightly, unbelieving. What kind of game is this. The player stared into her dark headset. She had not even said it out loud. She thought it.

Her real hands reached over her head – the world she still controlled – and riped the device off. The plastic helmet rolled to the corner of the room, the blank inside of the visor facing her circular eyes, frozen in fright.

Dispirited raised her arms like a cross and hung her head forward as the ocean from behind plunged her body forward and up, crushing her small frame.

The three characters were travelling in reverse geese pattern--it was still a V shape, but instead of having the point of the V travelling forward, it was travelling backward. Magpie kept glancing over her shoulder, checking on Dispirited... not so much that she was worried about the girl, but to keep on eye on her. Maybe it was because Dispirited was the first player in the game Magpie had met other than Apollo, who was sitting right next to her in real life anyway--so he didn't really count. Is everybody in the game that... friendly? In fact, Magpie even began to feel a little bad for treating the girl so.... harsh wasn't the right word, but that was how the indifferent neutrality she had conveyed to the girl probably came across.

In either case, Apollo and she had agreed to guide the girl back to the entrance of the dungeon, and off they had gone. Because he held the torch, the Heavy Blade travelled slightly ahead of the Long Arm, who stuck tightly by his side. Everything was silent in the long, dank hallway, save for the occasional drips of water, falling into the stagnant puddles the group was treading through. Riley and Nick weren't even talking to each other with their mics off anymore, until Riley again covered the microphone with her hand again and whispered to Nick, "I kind of feel bad for her..."

Then he did it. Nick went to cover his own mic with his hand, but in the process, he must have pressed or let go of a button on his controller by mistake. The torch, and their only source of light, fell into the pool of water at his feet, sizzling to a single glowing ember before being extinguished completely by the water.

"Nick?" Magpie immediately asked, forgetting to call him by his game name in the sudden panic that arose within her, set off by the darkness. Riley moved her character up against one of the hallway walls, sliding against them in the direction the group had been headed. He didn't respond, but Riley could hear shuffling on the bed next to her--he had probably knocked his headset off by mistake. It might have been all in Riley's mind, but the sounds of water dripping into the dirty puddles at their feet seemed to quicken. She heard Nick say her name before a quiet, low laugh broke Magpie's panic, and suddenly intensified it. She could feel her heart beating, and suddenly told herself to get over it. It's just a game.

It might have just been coincidence that she became jumpy as soon as the lights went out, but at the sound of water beginning to run, the Long Arm threw herself across the hallway, groping the air for Apollo's body. When it couldn't be found after a few seconds, she gave up and made a dash in the direction they had originally been heading in, pushing the joysticks that controlled character direction and speed to their limit, urging Magpie's body to run faster. She began to hear the whooshing, sucking noise of a wind tunnel, the kind that appears in the air just before a huge wave crashes down.

Suddenly, Riley remembered: in the "Starter Kit" given to all newbies, there was an item that could transport one's character to the door of a dungeon. Keeping Magpie moving with one hand and flicking through menus to access her inventory with the other, Riley moved as quickly as she could, knowing the wave was right behind her... her fingers found the right button and pushed it. A flute sounded in her ears before the whooshing suddenly intensified, and she found herself standing outside of the damp doorframe leading into the dungeon she had just left. Apollo was nowhere to be seen, but at this point she wasn't worrying about him.

After another pattern of button-pressing, Magpie was on her way back to Mac Anu. Her body materialized from a mist created within three golden rings that fell into the ground, disappearing on contact with the cobblestone. Apollo was waiting for her next to the Chaos Gate with a sheepish grin on his face. "The water killed me."

Magpie, on the other hand, wasn't taking the matter as jokingly as Apollo was. "Do you think it's funny?" The face sensors in the game's VR helmet were doing a good job picking up Riley's emotions--Magpie had an intense glare on her face, aimed straight at Apollo. She knew that she was so angry at his nonchalance because of how badly the sudden darkness had frightened her, but right now, she was in an emotional state... and rational reason has never translated to emotional feeling very well. "Do you think she did that to us?" The Long Arm's cheeks were flushed with what could only be frustration. "We were helping her!"

Apollo had a look on his face that Magpie knew well--because she'd gotten it from Nick so many times. It was the face of somebody who had something to say, but they were trying their best to bite their tongue. Riley tried to calm down, taking a deep breath before going on. "What?"

"Not trying to blame you, Mag, but you weren't exactly nice to the poor girl," he looked away from her as he said it, knowing it would make her angry.

"So you like having Michael or whoever that was hanging on you, then?" Riley almost couldn't believe she was saying this, but it had gotten to this point and wasn't getting any better. "I'm going. See you around." And with that, she logged out.

Unfortunately, it wasn't that easy. Riley spent most of her afternoon and evening avoiding Nick before apologizing to him. However, it wasn't a complete, genuine appology--she was sorry for blowing up on him, but she still suspected that the Dispirited character wasn't everything she seemed. Riley spent some time on The World BBS, seeing if other characters had experienced anything with this girl in the past. Nothing mentioned her specifically, but it did seem as though hackers were not rare in the game. From what she read, however, many hackers didn't do a good job altering whatever they wanted to change, and it could trigger a glitch in the field. It sounded like a reasonable explanation to Riley, and suddenly her curiosity kicked in. Part of her never wanted to see Dispirited again, but part of her wanted to see what Dispirited was really about.

Katie stood upright, panting in her chair and still staring at the headset on the ground. Loud noises erupted from the speakers of the helmet causing the girl to start. The sound of rapids seized.

What the heck happened? Her character must have gotten crushed unless it somehow warped out of the way. What was that called? A sprite ocarina? Katie searched her mind. She supposed it didn't matter either way. She'd be in Mac Anu again when she logged back in. If she logged back in. Her own character's defiance had really given her the creeps. Her. Katie remembered the cold shudder the word "No" had sent down her spine. She suddenly suspected Amos, the pawn shop keeper across the street, was up to something. It certainly wouldn't be past him to sell (or in her case, give) faulty equipment to a customer. Hmmm.

A sudden wave of tiredness overcame the girl as her head dipped towards her chest. Her eyes felt heavy and her brain grew denser. She sunk out of her chair and onto the floor, clawing at her bed. The covers shifted towards her as she inched her way up, more out of laziness than actual fatigue. She had enough energy, but that familiar numbing feeling overcame her again, eating away at her motivation and urging her to sleep. Sleep where nothing can hurt and a place for this numb feeling to go away.

She dreamed of flying. She often did, but rarely did she ever stay afloat. The dreams would always end reaching madly for air as the ground accelerated towards her flailing body. And then she would awake with a jolt like she really had been flying and the crushing reality of life and her soft bed broke her fall. But not tonight. Tonight she was soaring over the clouds and through them, a cape of white vapor following her wherever she flew. It felt wondrous and refreshing like jumping into an unheated pool on an especially hot autumn day. Her face twinkled in the moon light as she slowed and laid down on a cloud, spreading her body like an angel and smiling up at the moon.

She awoke peacefully to pressure on her lap and chest. Alex, her toddler-sized brother, was perched on top of her sheets like a kid on a horsie ride straddling her stomach. “You were smiling.” He pointed to her taut cheeks with a squishy finger and a smile of his own. His contagious smile. Katie brightened even more in spite of herself and gave Alex a hug, bringing him down to her chest and smothering him in the puffy sheets. “Hey stopit stopit!” he cackled, trying to break the hug.

Katie was in rare spirits. She squirmed out from under him and scooped him up in the unmade blankets creating an Alex-cocoon. She carried the muffled ball of laughter into the living room/kitchen where her mother was all ready making breakfast. It smells divine, she thought.

She deposited the butterfly onto the couch. The boy squealed for a half second before turning himself right-side-up and crossing his arms with a goofy frown on his face. Their mother looked up in surprise at Katie's returning laugh – a very rare occurrence. She almost dropped her spatula. Katie didn't seem to notice. It was just a laugh – what was her problem? Her mother continued to cook the eggs with a look of conviction on her face that told of thoughts behind the scenes.

Katie made over to the kitchen half of the room and looked over her Mother's shoulder, resting her chin. Her mother twitched from the unexpected sensation of her emotionally depressed daughter. “Whatcha cookin' Mom?”

Her mother looked to the right at her leaning daughter. She turned, and put her hands on her hips, slipping Katie's chin off her shoulder. “I don't know, Katie. What are you cooking?”

Any other morning, Katie would have seen through the question immediately and stomped off mumbling, but not today. Today she just looked confused. “Um, do you want me to cook my own?”

Her mother's chin dropped. Katie's brow furrowed and decided to lay down with Alex who was still on the couch. Seven a.m. is still early no matter how well you slept. She wasn't hungry anyway and didn't feel like making her own.

Alex had spread apart the couch and the nearest dinner chair to make a tent with Katie's dark black blanket. She peered under the sheets with a quick swing of her upper body. "Boo!"

Alex cackled in delight and pulled her arm underneath with him where they sat cross-legged, smiling at each other. “You're different,” he proclaimed pointing at her nose and touching it from lack of coordination.

Katie stared ahead. There IS something different... she thought. What had happened yesterday? She was playing the game and having fun. Her character had...her character had...

Katie stopped and looked at her brother with revelation. "I'll be right back, Alex – I have to check...something." She left the tent and made off the ten feet to her room, her door ajar.

Her head wrenched to the right, behind the door. It was still there. White noise flickered around the inside of the helmet. Katie's vision began to narrow. The outsides of her view began to cloud like a dark storm threatening a sunny day.

The helmet went dark. Katie's shoulders drooped down and her hair fell in front of her leaning head. A single tear dropped from her cheek and onto the carpet as the girl turned and shut the door without emotion.

She always walked to school. Five blocks wasn't enough to take a bus and wasn't enough to pay a taxi just to get away from the dredges of New York. Plus, it was the city that never slept, right? There were enough legits on the sidewalks to scare away anyone that could harm her. She always kept to herself with her eyes on the sidewalks, just as she was then. The cracks separating each slab of concrete passed with each second, ticking away her life, until school, where the deafening analog clock would determine that.

She passed many shops, like she always did. The same convenience store, the same restaurants all in a row. The same church – only today, something was different. Katie stepped onto the sudden cobblestone sidewalk (the only change in scenery she could notice, save for the black, metal fence aligning the right side of her peripheral vision). Her shadow grew taller and in the wrong direction: to the left. It got sunny in New York, but unless it was around noon, you didn't see your shadow much. And not even much of a shadow then, as any self-respecting cowboy could tell you. What grew off of Katie's feet was the kind of shadow you see in a desert when the sun is retreating into the horizon.

Her neck turned to the road, now full of her shadow – its head nearly touching the sidewalk adjacent. She guided her eyes from the heel of her black leather boots to the shadow of her plaid skirt just reaching her bare knees. She followed the shadow all the way up to her head. ...what? Something was wrong here, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Then the neck turned to mirror her movements required to gaze upon her own shadow. The thing has still been facing forward.

It reached its arms up and over its face as if shielding itself from some bright light or horrible truth. Katie, however, looked on in fear, stepping one foot in front of the other – the only part of her shadow that still obeyed.

The cobblestone stopped. And so did her shadow. The familiar shadowless twilight achieved in New York at this hour resumed. Katie continued walking with groggy, suppressed thoughts until her fright was forced down with her head. Sad again.

Like so many days of a lifetime, school passed with nothing worth remembering. Maybe for a test or an assignment for homework, but after that, short term memory dumped it like a temporary file on a bloated machine.

She threw her weight into the front door of their apartment to hear what should have been a satisfying click, but instead frustration because she shouldn't have to do that. Her eyes glazed over as she made across the short slab of tile to the kitchen and then through the living room, took a right, and unlocked her door.

Wind rushed through the room creating shivers down the girl's spine. Sensation. The helmet in the corner flickered white nose. Katie's eyes blared wide and shut the door behind her, dropping her things on the couch and ran out the door with her house key still in hand.

Bursting through the door to the apartment building, her New York instincts screamed as she jumped in front of two stopped taxi's and ran through a man's newspaper, held up in front of his eyes. The front page was ripped from his hands and deposited on the ground with the outline of a boot plastering it to a swab of gum. He sighed and bent down. “I'm too patient for this city,” he thought as he strained his back coming back up.

DONG! Amos's automatic doorbell signaling a customer cut through Katie's frantic mind. That one, long, sustained note calmed her enough to call out for her only friend, an old pawn shopkeeper. "Amos?..." She looked around the room, even around the ceiling perimeter like a damsel looking for a ghost in an old horror movie. "Amos, there's something I need to TALK," the word came out too loud, "to you about...Amos?"

A balding head swung into view between the back room's frame. “KAY-tee! Hwhat are ooh doing 'ere?” He jumped off the ladder or whatever he had been standing on and landed in the doorway with his arms open for his usual hug. Katie advanced, but no hug was given. Something was wrong and it wasn't the usual something. “'Are ooh DO-ing ohKAY today KAY-tee?” His words reflected worry, but his voice never could. She smiled across her beautiful face in spite of her fright and suddenly found the whole reason why she had dashed across the street and nearly get hit by a car, childish and silly. She gave him his hug and he could feel her cheek tightening near his chest signaling that she was happy again. “D'ere. That's all you nee', rie?”

Katie loosened and ended the hug, shaking her head slightly. If anyone would take her seriously, it would be Amos Grundy.

"I think..." She shuddered. "I think I'm possessed."

~~

Katie's mother raised her voice from the kitchen. “Katie!” she half-sung, half yelled. “We have to eat dinner early tonight! Alex has a play we have to go to at PS 119, and you have to come! No if's and's or but's young lady, you – ” There had been no answer. Where is that girl? She rested the soup spoon on a stray plate and stomped around the counter and into the hallway. The door was ajar. Her mother had assumed her daughter just had her headphones on too loud, but the only sound she could hear was frustrated static inside a strange helmet laying in the front corner of her room, behind the door. She picked up the crackling thing and turned it over in her hands. The energy saver inside her crawled underneath Katie's desk and fished for the end of the USB plug, conveniently placed on the back of the desktop, bending against the wall. The computer looked off, but she assumed otherwise, nudging the box out from the wall and yanking the USB free. She bumped her head against the desk, letting out a respectable woman's curse and backed out of the furniture slowly.

The helmet hadn't seized. It lay right where she had put it down, still blasting away the white noise. She fished for a button. “Must be batteries,” she thought as she turned the pile of techno-crap over and over in her hands. She gave up. “Servers that girl right for leaving things on.” She put it on Katie's chair and left the room, wondering where her daughter went and began to regret being too cheap to pay a cell phone bill.

~
Owning a pawn shop had its luxuries as ironic as that may sound. Amos emerged from the back closet wearing the most ridiculous assortment of witch doctor apparel Katie could imagine. She burst out laughing in spite of her self-conscious inquiry earlier, expecting him to say that he'd called the local loony bin and they were on their way. Instead, a bone necklace, a staff with a skull on it, and a hula-hula grass skirt swinging around his jeaned legs erupted into view. Katie shifted in her holey chair (soon to be “holy”) from the landslide of giggles.

“Oogie boogie boogie!” His accent kept everything he said prisoner. The sound of rain trickled into the room as the skull staff shook around. Katie laughed again and brought her hand to her mouth, looking shy. She was glad no one else was browsing the lot. “I call upon dee speerits of dee Oogie-boogie – ” *shick shick shick* went the staff – and was that tribal drums in the background? “to drive ay-way dee demons from Katie!” He stopped howling at the cracked-panel ceiling and eyed Katie, keeping the shacking going and the mood seriously funny. “Katie,” he let the drums play a few bars for effect, “Do you accept the protection of the Oogie-boogie?”

Katie realized it was her turn to play along. She pipped up and let out a cute,"I do!"

“Then!” thump thump thump went the drums as he raised the staff triumphantly in the air,“by the power invested in me by the high Oogie-boogie-ramadan, I grant you protection! From any and all demons of Oogie-boogia!”

Amos relaxed from his King Triton stance and let out an old man's laugh. “Feel better, KAY-tee?” His original accent was back.

"Yes I do Amos!" she croaked out through leftover laughter, giving him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. She looked at her thin, black watch with worried eyes and looked back up at her witch doctor. "Oh no, Mom's gonna be mad. I'd better get home. Thanks again, Amos!" She waved as the familiar DONG sounded through the now empty pawn shop, save for one aborigine and mountains of knick-knacks.

Since when does she care what 'er mother thinks?...

~~

A hasty note scribbled on the back of an old receipt caught Katie's eye. “Heat up soup in micro be back around 10 Alex's play.” His play! Katie had missed it! A wave of guilt and sorrow hit her, sitting her down in the kitchen chair and rubbing her forehead. She had so wanted to go to that play. Alex had been rehearsing all week. “And then Captain Audrit – Audr – Audry died!” he had been exclaiming around the house for the last two weeks. Katie would miss her brother's one line, but most of all, she would miss sitting next to her mom while he scanned the little audience made up of relatives for that blacker than black hair his sister wore, coming up with nothing. Katie sighed a long sigh and put down the note.

There was nothing on TV. Well, there might have been, but not on any of the five channels the apartment got. Katie slurped her piping hot bowl with affection for its temperature. It wasn't a particularly cold time of year, but there must have been a draft. The soup warmed her soul, fending off shivers.

After the bowl was emptied, she laid down on her side and cupped the remaining warmness of the bowl against her arm and chest, staring lazily at the screen bringing in bad reception from some outdated sitcom apparently famous enough for reruns. Katie picked her teeth absentmindedly.

After the cold soup no longer comforted her, she got up and ran some water over the surface before placing it in the nearly full dishwasher. Out of habit, she rounded the counter's corner and made off towards her room. It was so cold in there.

Her door opened with a jingle from the dismantled locks – her mom had been about again, no doubt – and stopped, lightly tapping the wall. Katie's arm remained suspended in mind-air from pushing the door open as the mask starred directly at her, now perched on her chair and facing its victim. ....It's only - whishhhh.

Katie's neck lurched down with a crack, her hair shielding her face and eyes no longer visible. She moved to the visor mechanically, like a doll on strings. Unfeeling. Unaware. Controlled.

Welcome to the World.

~~

The light was blinding. The ten year old shielded her eyes, but the damage had been done. It was dark in New York, certainly, but either the servers for this game were in California or Japan. It was bright as ever in the canal city of Mac Anu.

The section of Katie that was soft and fluffly bubbled to the surface as she spread her arms out as if hugging the world. "Hellooooo Mac Anuuuuu!" she proclaimed, giving them all a big hug and swinging from side to side.

No! Katie wasn't supposed to be happy! She was supposed to be frightened! She was supposed to be - ....

Those thoughts shrunk into the subconscious darkness like a lion on a shock collar retreating back into its den after showing too much enthusiasm at a zoo. "It's a new dayyyy, the sun is shining, and I'm happehhhh!" Her head swung around curiously, eying each staring player and some of the more occupied ones.

"Oooh bunny!" A wide smile threatened to beat her spread arms for length. The bunny character retreated into the crowd like a fugitive, but the girl followed nonetheless, pushing between bulging butts and crowded players.

She ended up lost on a bridge that amplified the clop-clop of her Mary-Jane's and found herself alone and without a bunny. "Phooey." She crossed her arms with a frown and got up on her tip toes to rest them on the edge of the bridge, overlooking the water and spying on the fishies. "Fishies!" She untangled her propped arms and gripped the rails aligning the bridge's edges with her little hands. One of her paper-skin hands reached out about a foot of the ten-foot distance to the surface of the water as her face made an 'o' shape, spying on the little aquatic creatures.

Her legs dangled over the side, between three bars, and kicked gently back and forth as she hummed a made up tune, bobbing her head side to side with the beat.

Dispy's rippling shadow danced in the water – the outline of a girl standing up impatiently, armless. Perhaps due to crossed arms. It grew taller and taller with each beat of the bobbing girl's head and each tick of the Clocktower.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.





((OOC: Phew, that was fun :3. Probably the best post I've written to date. Note to the grader: I'm not trying to get any extra length with these interjections and funky styling x3;. I just think it looks better and forces the reader to read at the speed I want them too, taking pauses at the right times, mostly. Anyway, hope you enjoy and apologies to Magpie for taking so long!))

edit: messed up a few word usages and he/she's >_>

The next day passed uneventfully.

Riley spent the first half of her day at the diner where she worked, serving breakfast and lunch. Waking up early was most definitely not her thing: it took all the willpower she could scrape up to roll out of bed, tame her mass of curls, and pull on the navy pants and black polo shirt she was required to wear. She was working seven til two that day, however, leaving her time to go home and nap before Nicholas came home from work at seven.

He walked in the door to find Riley shoveling cereal into her mouth in front of the television, and he shook his head as he walked past her, teasingly saying ”Typical,” as he walked past, just loud enough so that Riley could hear him. She stuck her tongue out and tossed her spoon at him in response, leaving a wet milk-spot on his calf.

Though she felt like a small monster doing so, she tipped her bowl back in her mouth and slurped the milk and leftover cereal from the bowl (after all, her spoon was laying on the floor across the room). After Nick emerged from his room, changed from his office clothes into more comfortable jeans and a T-shirt, Riley watched him out of the corner of her eye as he opened the door to her room. ”Get out of there!“ she shouted, jokingly, completely expecting the response she got: he ignored her. The sounds of things being pushed around in her room disturbed her television-viewing, but didn't really bother her—there were so many things in there, literally piled knee-high, Riley doubted he would be able to find whatever it was he was looking for.

She was wrong. A few minutes later, he emerged with her laptop, dragging the VR helmet and game controller still plugged into the computer on the floor behind him. Riley lept up immediately, rushing towards him with her arms outstretched. ”Hey, hey! Stop that!“ Collector of miscellaneous junk that she was, she was still a collector, and liked to keep her (many) precious items in good condition. Riley snatched up the helmet and controller from the floor, walking behind Nick and feeling like his goddamn bridesmaid. He set the laptop down on the couch and Riley followed suit, laying the headset and controller beside the computer. Nick laid his hand on Riley's shoulder for a second, indicating for her to stay there, while he disappeared into his room, bringing out his own computer and game paraphernalia in a similar fashion. Riley repeated her previous protective action as well—after all, Nick might be the one using that game and those game pieces, but Riley was the one who'd bought them and in her mind, they still belonged to her.

”Wanna play a game?” Nick asked, already sitting down in the armchair beside the couch and booting up his computer. Riley turned hers on as well, glad that Nick had gotten over whatever had come over him yesterday while they were playing. ”We never finished in that field,” he added sheepishly.

”Hmm, wonder why?“ She glared at him as she pulled the visor over her eyes. Tinkling music sounded in her ears as the splash screen for The World loaded, the graphics dancing in shades of blue and gold before her eyes, rippling like water. Clicking a few buttons on the controller logged her in as Magpie, and Riley sat back against the back of the couch, closing her eyes when the screen faded to black to load the root town. When she opened her eyes again, it was like an assault to the eyes: Mac Anu in the middle of the afternoon, apparently. The city was rich with colors, the smooth, tan stones making up the path through the city creating an odd anchor point that made the red clay of the buildings and twinkling blue river seem all the brighter. Nick was standing next to her, as Apollo, and Riley had to squint her eyes, in turn making Magpie squint hers, to block out the bright sunlight that was streaming through the city.

”Before we go to the field,“ she said matter-of-factly to Apollo, ”I need to buy some things.“ The threads about glitched or hacked characters and fields weren't the only threads she had read in the BBS the other day: a few of the topics she'd skimmed had been things like Newbie's Guide to Getting Started, which suggested buying supplies from the Pawn Shop rather than The Magickery, though Magpie honestly had no idea why—the prices were the same in both stores. She took the advice of the guide's author, however, for two reasons: the first being, she assumed the gold from the Pawn Shop went into a pool of some sort that they used to buy items back from the players with, and the more money the Pawn Shop had, the more players could be paid by the shop; and the second being, she was used to Pawn Shops—it was where she went in real life to get most of her junk.

She knew in theory where the Pawn Shop was, although she hadn't actually been there. It was marked on the map, and although it took a few minutes of wrong turns and wandering to get there, she eventually made it. The store was inhabited by a penguin and a bubbly, blue-haired woman at the moment, though it was the cute, fuzzy penguin that helped her with her purchase, making his way through the transaction by writing on sticky-notes to communicate. Magpie left the store, tucking the three corked vials of green-goo potion and ancient-looking scroll tied with red string into her pockets, which appeared to be boundless—making infinite space between her legs and shorts, something Riley's collector instinct wished she had in real life.

”Okay!” Magpie turned to Apollo, beaming. ”We can go out to the field now.” Riley's usual sunny personality was back, and she bubbled along the cobbled street toward the bridge happily.

Until she saw her.

There was the annoying little girl from yesterday, bobbing her head about and kicking her legs at some fish in the river. Her dress was no longer splattered with blood, and although Dispirited hadn't spotted them, Magpie was suddenly extremely slinky, like a spy trying to avoid being seen. She crept along the opposite side of the bridge, walking as close to the railing as possible, eyes locked on the smaller character the entire time.

”What are you doing?” Apollo asked openly (read: loudly), not using nearly the same amount of caution that Magpie was. She suddenly whipped around and glared at him, bringing her finger to her lips.

”Hush!”




((ooc: Sorry Max, kinda cut it short because I am tired and I don't know how much time I will have tomorrow... and you got it to end the way you wanted anyway, so it doesn't really matter. ;p))

A drop of blood hit the watery canal, spreading out in a rose of red before being swept away with the current. The deep purple of Dispy's dress glistened in the wanning sun. The white rose rested on her knee, above the dripping and shining dress. Her legs stopped wagging and the hum in her voice subsided. A wicked smile broke across her face as she brought the suffering flower to her lips. A dark purple strip of flesh parted her lips, searching around the pedals of the flower like a blind snake feeling its way through a pile of mud with its head. The girl retracted her tongue, leaving a bloody smear on her lips resembling a bad attempt at lipstick if it wasn't so thick and unsettling.

Katie viewed this exchange through trapped eyes. Her fingers swam across the keyboard like a puppet master manipulating its dolls. Controlled. She mentally shook the walls of her prison. What is going on? Oh my God. She wanted to cry. She wanted to break her horrible grin into a frown and bawl into her arms from fright. If only.

Dispirited extended her tongue for another lick at her bloody lollipop. Her entire right hand was covered. Even her sleeve could barely hold the volume of vital liquid pouring from the bloom. A question posed behind her halted the deep purple tongue from indulging itself yet again. What are you doing?

Dispirited turned her head to the left until her features pointed at the character. All the way around. "Do I know you?" Her freakishly held head turned with her body as she got up. The back of her hair brushed against her chest.

She walked over to the questioning character and turned her skull back around with a snap to reveal a blood-stained mouth and a smile that could chill a polar bear. Her eyebrows slanted downwards in a hard stare. "Because I would like to." She brought her left hand, still pale white and bloodless, up to his chest, with a limp wrist as if to be kissed like a princess greeting a duke. "My name is Dispirited. What's yours?" She smiled a wicked toddler's smile. Blood seeped between her teeth.

Dispirited: 1 Level, Health Drink, Mage's Soul
Magpie: Lightning Bolt x2, Lightbane

Come talk to me on AIM when you can. I have compliments I wish to shower upon you both. =P