Chapter 02

Daisy got up, opting to dress the realistic way. This time Annie did watch, either out of forgetting to turn away or not wanting to.

“Are you comfortable in your body?” She asked, revealing what was on her mind.

“Yeah, I am,” Daisy admitted, suspecting that Annie was thinking about the problems she had with her irl body.

“If you could change anything about it, would you? It could be anything, like something off the Virtual Market,” Annie attempted to make the topic a bit lighter.

“I’d change my breast size. I’m not one to complain, but I didn’t choose to have these unwieldy things. But as far as the Virtual Market, I might want glowing green eyes or tattoos,” Daisy entertained the idea of tattoos. She thought of the vast possibilities, she even could get an animated tattoo like the Jade Dragon.

“Ooo, what type of tattoo?” This piqued Annie’s interest. Daisy thought for a bit as she finished changing, coming up with, “I’d get something subtle about my asexuality, like an Ace of spades.”

Her asexuality was new to her, but she did like the vibe of an Ace of spades regardless. It would go well in her stripping routine, and it’s not like she couldn’t change it or take it off with a simple command to Ray. Annie’s eyebrows raised, “Oh I’d love to browse the Virtual Market with you, we could see if there is anything that takes your fancy!”

“Yeah, that sounds fun to do today! How does one go about accessing it?” Daisy no longer had to hide what she didn’t know with Annie. She was smart enough to figure out the hints that Daisy was new long ago.

“It’s a map! We can go to a PrivatePlayer version of it, if you don’t like crowds. But it would be an experience to be a part of the crowds of MultiPlayer,” Annie looked excited, opening her closet and starting to undress, wanting to get ready for the outing.

Daisy forgot to avert her eyes. Or she, too, had more things running through her mind. The hint of breasts and rosy nipples were no surprise. That was a very innocent image, undeveloped breasts weren’t sexual. However, Daisy accidentally glanced at Annie’s exposed cameltoe, her eyes following the removal of the fluffy shorty shorts. She hadn’t worn underwear under the shorty shorts, but that shouldn’t have been surprising; they must have been very fluffy and comfortable without it. Her eyes didn’t linger long, but long enough to notice Annie had started to grow a light patch of pubic hair. This scan must have happened right before puberty. Daisy said she wouldn’t speculate about Annie’s real life, but she couldn’t help wonder if puberty was a traumatic experience for Annie. Daisy took control over her eyes again, turning them to the mirror so she could put her hair up. Oh right, she had bangs. Twintails would look cute with this style. Annie must have not noticed her glance or didn’t care, because she made no mention of it.

Annie lingered before her closet, still naked, trying to decide an outfit. Daisy saw her skin-colored silhouette in the corner of her vision, not feeling the need to glance back until she finished dressing. Annie ended up choosing a very complex green dress. Daisy was wowed by it, “don’t tell me that, too, is Virtual Real?”

Annie blushed, caught in her addiction, “yeah, it is. I didn’t make this one myself, it was a birthday gift. I have cosplaying friends who want to treat me to just one more outfit and sweep on my birthday, if I’m already going to be scanning for a few hours.”

This caught Daisy off guard. Annie can scan for hours at a time. Maybe just on big events such as her birthday, but still. Importing so many outfits must be expensive. Daisy felt one of the many leaf-like extensions off the rim of the skirt, “you’re like a little fairy!”

The dress was strapless, hemmed with short white frills. Down the center of the bright green dress was dark green lines of runic design, passing over the underlayers of black fabric on her tummy. Her waist had an inner skirt topped with white, fading into a bright green by the edge of it. It ended in a leaf-like edge, the surface of the underskirt had big teal spots scattered across it. Where the inner skirt was tight to her body, like a pencil skirt, the rest of the skirt was as floofy and extravagant as you can get. The upper bodice extended into an outer skirt, flared out from all the material under it. Under it was the leaf-like petticoat, the fabric Daisy was feeling. It was teal near the top where it came out from under the overskirt, and transitioned into bright green by the tips of the large leaves. Her dress had 3 tails that ended in a peacock-style leaf, flared out and with bright blue designs in the center of it, forming an eye. They were so long they dragged on the ground like a train. Finally, the front of her dress, where the mint green bodice opened up to show off her inner skirt, was boarded by 2 long strips of fabric that almost touched the ground in front of her. They faded from green to blue at the tips, their arrow-like features complimented by intricate and symmetrical designs in the same dark green lines that were at the edges of the bodice and decorating the front of the chest and belly.

Annie had Inko put her hair back up in her signature curly twintails, high up on her head. She put a teal bow around her neck, that had a pin clip on the center of the tied ribbon. The pin had a rhombus shaped gem, boarded by gold with 3 leaves on each side, pointing outwards like wings. The ribbon even had gold tipped ends, with intricate designs etched into the surface of the caps. The teal ribbon held a collar of frills to her neck, making for a very extravagant… choker? Daisy didn’t know enough about fashion to know what it was called, but it looked adorable. Upon closer inspection, mostly because she was interested in it, she noticed that the collar had groups of four tear-drop teal decorations, in a plus sign arrangement. They repeated along the edge of the white frills, complimenting the teal ribbon that held it all together.

Annie slipped on some high heeled boots, they were silver around the foot, but had a dark green metal cover the silver past the ankle. It ended just below the knee, the metal edge shaped uniquely, gold running along the edges. The edge dipped down in the front, making an arrow pointing downwards, showing the skin above her shin. Lastly, Annie put some gloves on that also ended in leaf-like tapers at the elbow.

“You look absolutely adorable, Annie!” Daisy complimented her.

Annie blushed, hugging Daisy, “thank you.”

Daisy’s arm looped around her small shoulders, placing her hand on her bare skin. This girl was something else, but she really warmed up to her. Daisy was glad for it though, they had so much in common. She was a great friend. Wait a second, how long had she been connected?

“Hey, don’t worry if you need to get off and get something to eat. I can wait for you to take care of yourself before we head out,” Daisy realized this was an extremely long time for someone to be connected off of life support.

“Want to wait for me at your house in PrivatePlayer, and I’ll send a request when I’m finished up? Thank you for thinking of me, I’m kinda embarrassed to have neglected myself for so long,” Annie admitted, though she seemed happy.

Daisy told her she would see her then, and didn’t wait for the hug to release before she disappeared off to her PrivatePlayer instance of her room. She could play with Ruby while she waits!

Ray must have notified the NPC of Daisy’s plan, for it didn’t take long for the quiet tap on the door as Ruby knocks and opens it. Daisy spawned a Ruby-sized bed in the corner of the room before she forgot, and turned to the little girl, “Good morning Ruby! Do you want to play while we wait for my friend?”

She ruffled the little girl’s head as she hugged her around the waist. Time passed pretty quickly, the teleport request not taking long to speak to her from everywhere and nowhere. Annie materialized outside the room, entering to see Daisy playing with Ruby.

“Aww, lookit you two,” Annie thought it was great that Daisy could play with Ruby anytime, “It’s like you’re sisters!”

“Yeah, I even put her bed back so we can be roommates, huh Ruby?” Daisy smiled at the girl. She, being an obedient NPC, didn’t mind in the slightest, excitedly nodding. Annie didn’t mind joining them to play for a bit, before they headed out to the Virtual Market.

Daisy let Annie go first, so she could teleport to her instance. If they both tried joining at the same time, there were no guarantees they would spawn in the same instance, nor the same location. It was just easier to use the teleport feature.

Daisy didn’t know what to expect, but when she arrived, it was much bigger than she thought. From where she stood, she could see floating planets and worlds above her. Annie explained that these were actually part of the Virtual Market. The market was themed so if you wanted fantasy add-ons, you would actually be in a fantasy themed map, and likewise with anything genre you can think of. The worlds were massive, various stands with NPCs at the booths, or some shops having their own storefront with a real person working at it. Individual sellers, much like a convention, could set up their own stand and sell their wares. It was like the largest convention Daisy had ever been to, with entire worlds for the individual themes. Daisy mentioned this to Annie, and she basically confirmed it. Cosplay groups would attend this like it were a convention, and there were even performers scheduled throughout the day. A non-stop convention. What a dream. And tickets were free, because you’d likely spend all your money on merchandise, anyway.

This certainly confirmed why there were exclusives. That was a huge part of a convention. The sellers probably had to sign a contract of how much they could sell, the bigger sellers pushing the quantity over quality. They were like wholesale, though, not providing the highly sought after exclusives that happened in secret among the smaller sellers. Daisy doubted that she would find anything exclusive, but she was going for something simple, like a tattoo. She had a huge bonus still sitting in her account, if she did find anything special.

They made their way around, seeing the scenery change as they went from one section to another. The world they were in was around the genre of fantasy and older times. She didn’t think she would find many tattoos here, but they were in no rush. They entered a shop, it looked like a perfume store. Ooo, maybe Daisy could get a perfume! She looked at Annie, who was holding her nose at the millions of smells wafting around the store. Hahaha. Daisy peruses the shelves. Annie eventually started looking at the bottles, too. She turned to Daisy and held up a bottle, an eyebrow raised. On it was a daisy flower. Ohh, I hope it’s good. Daisy sprays the scent on her wrist, then takes a whiff. Oh, that’s a pleasant flowery smell. She would activate her Scent boost, but that seems a bit dangerous in a store with this many smells drifting around. She buys the bottle for her, and throws in a vanilla scent for Annie. Not that Annie smells bad, just to be nice. Daisy has Ray generate a coin purse, placing a few on the counter for the shop keep. She despawns the purse after that, not wanting her money to get swiped. Annie looks happy over her vanilla perfume, spraying it and adding it to her character effect once they got out. Daisy did the same with her perfume, now turning on the scent boost. It was automated, so it should only activate when she needs it or is purposely sniffing the air. Her Daisy scent hits her, the flowers blossoming like fireworks in her mind. Woh, that was on a whole new level of boost. She had never felt that before. She asks Annie if she can smell her new scent, and Annie obliges. Daisy smells the top of her head, the vanilla easily detectable with being boosted.

“Oh, that’s really good! I assume we can choose to let these smells linger whenever we want? Or will they fade away until we use the bottle again?” Daisy was hoping the former was true.

“Yeah, it’s a permanent effect, although you will begin to not notice your own smell after a while, everyone else will notice it upon meeting you,” Annie explained patiently.

They eventually teleported to a more modern world. The teleport for the Fantasy world was a rune circle, but they appeared in a sleek teleport pad, looking like they would have to say “Scotty, beam us up,” to use it. They weren’t in the Sci-Fi section, at least they didn’t think they were.

This world was a lot more established, most vendors having a storefront. There were skyscrapers, with selections of virtual clothes visible in the windows. This would be harder to get around, but there were little electric scooters littered around the city. They each picked one up, laughing at how ridiculous they looked. But most of the foot traffic was doing it too, so they just followed each other throughout the floating city. It was fun to watch the people here. Some dove into the high-tech theme, having cybernetic enhancements. Everyone she saw was in a Virtual Real avatar, it seemed to be the widespread choice to go with the Facebook Device.

They found a modern Tattoo Parlor, complete with the neon signs and dark artwork. They entered, not knowing what to expect. It looked completely normal, a few people were browsing through the book of designs available. An artist was behind the station, having the equipment necessary to do a freehand tattoo as well. It looked like there was a fee to do the instant, painless version. That seemed counter-intuitive, considering the artist had to work harder for the real version. Maybe it had to do with instant effects being taxed differently?

Most of the available tattoos could be bought with the money she had earned from the 2 quests and that Roxy gave her, pretty affordable. She asked the artist if they did simple custom requests, like an Ace of spades. They responded that would actually be their most affordable option if she got it free-handed, considering how simple that would be.

She decided on getting it on the back of her left calf, about the size of an apple. The artist drew it out in a blue pen so she could see it before they put it in ink. Of course, even this style of tattoo was able to be removed or repositioned by Ray, she heard from Ray answering her inner question. The artist was unsurprisingly tatted up. Daisy assumed they were gender neutral, at least from their presentation. Sometimes, gender neutral people like Box would dress up feminine or masculine, clothes just being a fun choice for that day. Other times, people would specifically dress up gender neutral, like the artist. She saw that their name was Cho, by a nametag. They must have been wearing a binder, because their chest was flat. They also had piercings, facial ones like a septum piercing, nose piercing, and lip piercing. They also had a silver ball that was cradled in their dimple, how cute. Daisy was gestured to sit back down in the chair, after having looked at the blue outline of her new tattoo in the mirror. She layed down, her calf exposed and facing up. Daisy was a bit nervous, her pain sense not stunted. It was a quick action to reduce it to 50%, so she wasn’t too worried. She wanted to see if she could do it, though.

Cho was good, and the pain wasn’t unbearable. It came out with a very clean line, the tattoo artist even putting on a salve on the new tattoo. That made a wonderful sensation, clearing up the pain almost instantly. She wondered if she needed to heal from the tattoo. She doubted it, the salve was likely only for the pain.

“Thank you so much!” She went to the cash register, wondering if she could pay in cash. She didn’t exactly have pockets, and she didn’t feel like summoning currency from thin air. Instead, she just scanned her wrist where her settings menu was, and clicked confirm when it asked her if the total was correct. She added a tip, enjoying her experience at the Tattoo Parlor. Cho looked very appreciative, they bowed with their head a few times and thanked her in their native language, subtitles appearing for Daisy.

They continued in the modern market for a bit, before going to the next world. This was a great day so far, and Annie complimented her tattoo as they walked. It was subtle and Ace and she loved it.

“Where did you get your purple glowing eyes? I wanted to see if I could get green. Not to copy you, but certainly because it looks so good on you, I wanted to try it too,” Daisy said, obviously trying to copy Annie.

“Yeah we can check it out. But I’ll warn you it’s rare and expensive,” She wagged a finger at her, but she didn’t mind her copying her idea. It would look really cool, and they could be matching.

They stepped up to the Star Trek transporter, Annie beaming them up to another planet. This one was a magic themed planet. It was similar to the fantasy one, but wasn’t restricted to a pre-technological revolution era. That means that there was a bit of everything, with magic mixed in. She took Daisy by the hand, her adorable small stature leading the much bigger woman through the crowd. She went behind a castle and touched a rune on one of the lookout towers. A door opened in the stone, “This is where the magic happens.”

Daisy laughed at the pun, shaking her head gently. She was led down a hallway, seeing suits of armor lining the corridor. Annie stood next to one, recited a spell, and it came to life, stepping out of the way to reveal yet another secret door. Of course the magic market had secret vendors hidden behind magical doors.

They entered the dark, damp room, buried and forgotten in the castle. Annie clapped her hands twice, torches lighting up. Ok that was just funny. It revealed a cloaked NPC, standing behind a counter, motionless. He had a shadow for a face, buried in the hood. Yeah, not spooky at all. There were wares on sale, and Annie and Daisy looked through them. Most of them seemed relatively common, until Daisy came across something peculiar and sparkly. It looked like glitter in a jar.

“What’s this?” She asked, mostly to Annie, but the NPC answered anyway.

“That, my dear wizardess, is a rare sparkle effect. It can be used on any part of your avatar,” the voice deep and ethereal. Annie’s jaw dropped at this statement., “Daisy I think you found something. That’s actually really sought after. I’m terrified to know the price, though.”

The NPC heard, and responded with a hefty number. Daisy obviously had that much, but it still would eat quite a bit into her bonus. Getting a wry smile, she barters with the NPC, trying to talk them down. Surprisingly, he went along with it, his counter-offers getting to be a bit more reasonable. Finally, he asks them if they could do him a favor, and in exchange, he will give it to them for Daisy’s first low-ball. Annie watched this all go down, completely taken aback. She had bartered with NPCs at Virtual Market, sure, but they had never given quests. He steps aside, the gray bricks to his side rearranging to form yet another secret door.

“I need to feed my pet, but she is asleep. Could you make sure she eats her food?” His voice echoing down the newly opened up hallway.

Daisy turns to Annie, trying to gauge her reaction. Annie looks up at her, a bit scared, “This seems really frightening. But it could be super special. I’ve never heard of a quest on a Virtual Market world.”

“Are you ok with it? We don’t have to do it. I can afford a higher price.” Daisy whispers in Annie’s ear, making sure the NPC doesn’t hear her admittance.

Annie shakes her head, “No, no, I wouldn’t want to miss out on this. Let’s do it.”

Daisy looks up, spits on her hand, and reaches out for a binding handshake, “Deal. If we take care of your pet, you will sell us the Sparkle effect for my lowest offer,” Daisy knew to speak in vague terms. NPCs remembered and liked rules, but they were very flexible if you wanted to bend the rules. The cloaked one spat a vile black shadow on his hand, their saliva mixing as they sealed the deal.

She wiped her hand off on her skirt, leaving a black stain. Oh well. She was in MultiPlayer; she can’t have Ray clean it. Annie held her hand, a bit trembling as they headed down the hallway. Red torches barely illuminated their pathway. They cast a hazy light, making the grey stone seem like it was bleeding. The NPC didn’t have them pick up food, so the food must already be in the chamber, they must just have to wake the pet up.

The dark corridor opens up, revealing an empty chamber. Well, almost empty. In the center slept a naked girl. She had a metal collar on, and a black chain was hooked onto a metal bar sticking out of the ground. Was this the pet? This seemed easy enough, they just needed to look for the food. They checked around, not seeing anything else. The chamber had multiple large doorways into other similarly vast chambers. They decided not to venture too deep, out of fear. It got really dark, even just in this first room. Daisy shrugged and decided to wake the girl up, to see if she could tell her where her food was. She hoped she would talk. Daisy bent down, light tapping on her shoulder, “Excuse me, wolf girl?”

The girl had wolf ears and a tail, Daisy had noticed once she got closer. She woke up groggily, using the back of her hand to wipe an eye. She sat up, her hands in the air like she was begging. Daisy smiled, and patted the wolf girl on the head.

“You’re a good girl. Where’s your food, honey?” Daisy’s coos made her wag her tail, but she didn’t respond. Annie and Daisy were a bit stumped, but it all started to make sense. When Daisy looked up at Annie, her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. In the chamber right next to this one was a huge animal, waking up from their voices and turning to look at them. Daisy had been talking to the food.

“Annie, get behind me,” Daisy said, trying not to let the fear work her way into her voice. Annie obliged without question, instantly afraid. She screamed when she saw the beast. Daisy’s thoughts sharpened, her overclocking kicking in. That girl was too real. She wasn’t just the beast’s food. She was in a Virtual Real avatar. Daisy couldn’t let her get fed to the beast, even if that’s what they were sent in here to do. Daisy started fumbling with the chains, seeing a keyhole on the metal collar. There has to be a key.

“Annie, look for a key. We have to get her out of here,” Daisy commanded. Annie had sobered up, either her own overclocking kicking in, or she got back into a gamer mindset. She knew magic worked here, so she summoned a spell. A glow of light emanated from between her hands, she scanned the walls desperately. There it was, hanging on a rusty, black chain. She ran to it, the beast entering the room. She picked it up and threw it at Daisy. Daisy was surprised at the accuracy and speed she was able to get it to her and caught it. It was much easier to function in a brighter room, especially with her Focused Gamer in full swing now. She unhooked the lock and started ushering the wolf girl out with them. They just had to make it to the smaller hallway, the beast was too big to follow them through it. Daisy and the Wolf Girl made it to the hallway, but Annie was still trapped, the beast following the pair to the hallway and pacing outside of it. Annie stayed very still, but it was only so long until it noticed she was still in there.

Daisy had promised to take care of this animal, apparently. But she decided she better take care of it another way. She had Ray find a killing spell powerful enough for this beast. This was going to take a lot of energy. She only had a little bit of time before the beast got bored of them in the hallway and would go back from where it came, where Annie was. She recited carefully, making sure her pronunciations were correct. A red ball of energy grew in her hands, the beast unafraid, or at least unaware of the deadly magic. The wolf girl stayed behind her, sitting obediently.

Unleashing the deadly force, the ball floated menacingly towards the beast. It was far too angry at them to move out of the way. Her spell wasn’t made the best, so it was slow and obvious, but she put all her effort into ensuring that the deadly payload would be enough to kill the beast. The ball passed into its chest, and the beast slumped over, presumably dead. Daisy supposed her settings would filter any explicit violence, so she could have technically blown it to shreds and she wouldn’t have known the difference. She called out to Annie, peeking around the corner. The poor afraid girl tiptoed past the beast. She must also see it lying there, unmoving, so Daisy might have not liquified it after all.

Daisy’s shoulders slumped as she hugged Annie, now safe in the hallway. She was so tired. Annie tried her best to let her lean on her to go back from where they came. Daisy told the wolf girl to heel, and she followed close behind the pair, happy to oblige.

They exited the doorway, Daisy’s energy slowly returning. Daisy turned and faced the NPC, hoping that they would take her different definition of what she promised to do.

“We took care of your pet, are you still holding up your end of the bargain?” Daisy started off strongly. The NPC looked confused, but seemed to go along with the jump in logic. They were pretty easy to convince, though, especially since this quest didn’t seem to be made by a mapmaker, but might have been made by whoever owned this vendor. They hadn’t accounted for strict rules like a competitive MMO would have, and the NPC seemed fine with their results.

“Of course, I will give you the item in exchange for your lowest offer,” He recited back to her. Daisy had worked in a second word play, her grin spreading as she realized the NPC was quite easily manipulated.

“Alright, I’ll offer you one dollar. Since that’s my lowest offer, it must be settled then, yes?” She held out a dollar that Ray summoned into her hand, Annie’s eyes growing wide as the NPC took it, placing the bottle in her palm.

“What the…” Annie couldn’t even believe it.

Daisy smirked, satisfied with herself, “So what do you think about me with sparkly eyes, Annie?”

Daisy added the effect to her eyes, they now sparkled. She added it to her nail polish for her hands and feet, as well. It not only shined in the light, but the individual flecks of sparkle would fade in and out, disappearing and reappearing entrancingly.

They decided to high tail it out of there before the shop owner saw a transaction for a very rare item with only a single dollar. Daisy did buy a leash and collar from the store owner, just for whatever they asked. She didn’t want to waste time haggling, in case the real owner appeared at any time, fuming. The shop keeper would also see the leash transaction, and know that their prisoner got away, finding their slain beast. Good Riddance. Putting the collar around the wolf girl’s neck, attaching the leash so they wouldn't get separated, they ran out of the shop. She seemed plenty happy to be on a leash and running with them. After they got out of the castle, they made it to a nice park where they could discuss what happened freely, walking their new wolf girl.

“That shop owner was really messed up, I don’t even feel bad for scamming them out of the rare item. A quest for watching a puppy die? They are horrible,” Daisy ranted to Annie. Annie thought about it for a bit.

“I’m not defending them, but what if it was a test? To see if we would do the right thing, like we did?” Annie did make a good counter argument, and Daisy could see something similar to that occurring in a choices game.

“Yeah, besides the fact that they found a puppy from a BDSM map, lured them into the Virtual Market, likely promising dog toys, and then chained them up underneath a castle,” Daisy was still mad at that whole scenario. She has no idea how long this user could have been trapped for.

“Oh my god yeah never mind. Fuck them,” Daisy hadn’t heard Annie curse, but that was a well deserved comment.

“Although, I’m not too familiar with puppies in this game, why didn’t she know she can log out, or teleport away?” Daisy asked, kinda just wondering aloud.

Annie happened to know the answer, though, “She’s a lost one. That’s the term for 24/7s that have forgotten that the Virtual World is a game. They can do basic tasks if they remember or are told how, but they are usually too immersed to remember that they can log out. I never thought I’d see one in person.”

Daisy was stunned. That was an epic sounding name for such a horrible thing. Well, being immersed in the game isn’t horrible, it’s just what people can do to you if you forget how to use the safety features of the game. Daisy gets it though, that’s why she couldn’t leave jail when she first entered the Virtual World. She was a lost one for just a short while, but it could have gone on forever. She was lucky and had an external person save her.

“So let me get this right, the AI is able to translate her thoughts as commands. So if someone tells her to follow them and they teleport away, the AI can have her follow them, without her verbally saying so. That’s how she got stuck in the Virtual Market. And to keep her there, the shop owner just had to deny any further teleport requests,” Daisy was starting to get it. Annie confirmed this with a nod. Daisy could tell that the wolf girl was a nonverbal puppy, which was fine. She didn’t mind taking care of her, she was actually really happy that the puppy seemed to want her to be her mistress.

“We gotta find you a name, girl!” She played with the wolf girl, running around in the park. She sat down, looking for a handshake. Daisy didn’t have any treats, but she shook her hand anyway. The tree she sat under was a maple tree. Hmmm. Maple… Mabel! That’s a cute name.

“I’ll call you Mabel, how’s that?” She looked excited at this, either the tone of Daisy’s voice, or that she understood she was being named. It was likely the latter, at the explosively happy response Daisy got. She shook her head, tilting right and then left quickly, her ears flopping.

“Yes, you like your new name, yes you do!” Further puppy talk brought further excitement from the bundle of joy. How could anyone be so mean to something so innocent?

“Do you think we got everything we wanted in the Virtual Market? I kinda wanna get out of here in case the store owner recognizes their victim,” this seems like solid logic to Annie, and she agreed. Daisy wanted to make sure that the wolf girl would teleport with her to a PrivatePlayer session, so she had Annie stay back with her to watch over her if her AI didn’t immediately interpret a teleport request to be sent to Daisy. Daisy teleported to a map that had a dog park, perfect for Mabel. Sure enough, an AI read out a teleport request to her. It sounded like Ray, which made sense because all Facebook Devices have the same AI, but it was surprisingly different enough for her to tell. Each AI forms to the mind of the user, so they will develop different styles of talking, eventually. So that’s what the default request sounds like, if you don’t add a custom message to it. Interesting. She will have to get used to hearing it when she goes places with Mabel. If she doesn’t hear it, she would get pretty concerned that her puppy isn’t following her. She wonders if Mabel’s AI would accept a teleport request, say, if Daisy wanted to go to her. The sound of her mistress’s voice will get her excited, so she assumes the AI would translate that as a resounding ‘yes.’

Daisy accepted the request, the cute wolf girl appearing before her. Annie’s request followed shortly after, having seen Mabel disappear.

Finally, Daisy was able to summon a treat for Mabel. She had her sit and give a hand shake before rewarding her. She was so darn cute, Daisy pet her head as she ate the treat.

“So, I take it you’re her mistress now, huh?” Annie said, the events of today are still running through her mind.

“Yeah, it looks like she likes me!” Daisy hugs the puppy once she finishes the treat, really happy. She’s got short brown hair, brown ears with a tan fluffy inside, and beautiful golden eyes. Her breasts were medium sized, Daisy didn’t mind that she was nude. She was a puppy, she could be in her natural state all the time. Individual Facebook Devices would filter that if the user preferred. Daisy had wanted to play with the puppies in this game, but she never thought she would end up being a mistress of one! Daisy has Ray summon a maroon name tag in the shape of a bone, with MABEL written in black, strong lettering. Mabel seemed to love this, she ended up rolling on her back, exposing her tummy. Daisy tickled her tummy, loving to see Mabel happy. Annie looked a little less encouraged to pet Mabel.

“Are you ok hanging out with us at the park? I don’t want to keep you if you’re uncomfortable,” Daisy had completely forgotten to ask how Annie was doing. Everything just happened so fast, it was still sinking in.

“No, no, you’re good. I’m just really glad she is in safe hands now. I don’t think I’ll be getting over that quest anytime soon, though,” Annie might not play psychological choices games much. To be fair, this quest did include a real person instead of an NPC.

“She’ll be ok with me, I promise. I don’t know if you want to play with her, but feel free to throw a ball for her, it might make you feel better. She’s safe to play and be herself now,” Daisy offered. Annie took the offer, throwing a ball, starting to be more comfortable around Mabel. Mabel raced after it, fetching it and bringing it back excitedly. Mabel was so joyful; it was easy to forget that she had just been a prisoner of a twisted shopkeeper.

They play in the park for a couple hours, Annie finally comfortable enough to pet and hug Mabel. Mabel really listened to Daisy, though; she was really dedicated to her. They went to a PrivatePlayer instance of Daisy’s room, organizing it so that Mabel had her own kennel in the front of the room, across from the big bed. Mabel could sleep up on the big bed if it was just her and Daisy, of course. Ruby also loved to have a puppy, petting Mabel and filling a water dish for her in her kennel. NPCs were quite flexible, working with whatever they were presented with. Daisy felt comfortable leaving Mabel home with Ruby if she wanted to go out with friends or somewhere she didn’t want to bring her puppy along for. She also wanted to summon True. She asked Annie if True could come over, and of course Annie said yes. True knocked gently on the door, waiting for someone to open it. Daisy opened it and hugged the hero of Rainbow Kingdom. All NPCs were responsible enough to take care of a puppy, but she did feel better to have True with them, if she were to leave Mabel alone. True was programmed to be really smart, like she was in the show. If True can keep a whole kingdom together, watching over a wolf girl with Rainbow Ruby would be easy. Daisy opened her door, and led True to her new room. Daisy opened a door to a bedroom. It was a pretty basic bedroom, but she revamped it while Ruby and Annie played with Mabel. Ray was able to fetch almost everything from True’s room in her original map, including Bartleby, who was sleeping on her bed. True woke him up with a hug. He was startled, releasing a quick meow before purring and hugging True. Daisy had to reorganize some of True’s things to fit better in the room, but True didn’t mind giving her opinions on where she wanted things. Daisy was in awe at her AI. That’s pretty awesome. It was a good decision to have her watch over her PrivatePlayer session when Mabel is here.

PrivatePlayer sessions actually do persist, if connected users still in it are without an admin. The admin is free to come and go, that bandwidth open as long as it’s populated with users. However, a VIP user will still have to request for commands, so most people opt to transfer their session once they leave, so someone else can gain admin abilities.

Daisy also generates a ton of dog toys outside on the lawn, Mabel can be free to go outside and play. The yard is fenced in, anyway. She opens the door to her room, calling Mabel. Ruby and Annie follow, interested in what she has in store. She shows off what she did with True’s room, Annie clapping happily at the sight.

For Bartleby’s bed, a big knitted Bartleby face was in the corner, encasing the round bed that had pink sheets with large white polka dots. The open maw of the yarn version of Bee let him hop in and out of bed. On the bed, a small bluebird plushie lay. Next, a big white drawer with a yellow top stood, the nightstand having a mushroom shaped lamp, also pink with white polka dots on the lampshade. Above his bed were yellow glow in the dark stars, hanging from strings on a mobile that spun gently. The walls were painted blue and white vertical stripes, already dry, thanks to Ray. The carpet was an ultra-fluffy pink shag carpet, and a mushroom stool sat in the corner. For True’s bed, which Bartleby would sleep on more often, the headboard was a pink creature, with a calm, stylized expression. It was velvety, with two ears, either like a bear or big cat’s round ears. The insides of its ears and a round circle of its face were lighter pink. Her pillow was between two pink armrests that came off the headboard, and a rainbow colored sheet of lengthwise purple, light blue, green, and yellow stripes lay tucked in. True was sitting on the bed, petting a purring Bartleby.

Finally, she leads them down the stairs and outside to the front lawn. Well, the lawn went all the way around the house. They had a lot of room to play. Mabel gets excited at seeing the toys, and the kids run to play with her.

“She will never get tired of playing with those kids, will she?” Annie commented, staying back with Daisy, watching them frolick.

“No, I don’t think she will,” Daisy was so happy. Her place was really turning out nice.

“You did a really good thing today, Daisy. Not many people are as understanding as you,” Annie couldn’t believe her friend. She was something special. She saved that girl, adopting her so willingly. She didn’t follow instructions just because that’s what the game told her to do. She thought for herself. Annie doesn’t want to even consider what she would have done if it would have only been in there. Well, that answer was easy, actually. She wouldn’t have even entered the corridor, that alone was terrifying enough. That whole experience was creepy, she tries to get herself out of that mental rut by picking up a rope and going over to play tug of war with Mabel. Ruby and True join Annie’s side, attempting to pull against Mabel. She was strong, pulling the three little girls along for a ride. Daisy laughed to herself. The Virtual World was a unique place.

Daisy made sure time moved in this map, so that her puppy wouldn’t go crazy. She wanted to see how she would do without her, so she told Ray to monitor the instance. Normally, this would take too much computation power away from her Facebook Device, but she does have additional processing power she can access at the render farm. It’s still churning away legal stuff, but it doesn’t look like it’s been fruitful in a while. That’s fine, it can manage to squeeze in monitoring a PrivatePlay session. Daisy isn’t worried about anyone seeing her traffic between her device and the render farm. It’s all encrypted now, besides, she had implemented legal protections on that aspect of her job too. Her render farm would sniff it out if they did anything out of line like them prying where they shouldn’t, unless they hide it behind an access control list. She can only spy on the company as much as her employee account is granted, which was quite a bit. David had pretty high clearance. That’s probably why she was able to do such legal damage, because she had a very high vantage point of the company’s sketchy misdoings.

“Annie,” she called her aside, once she looked like she had her fill of playing, “would you like to meet Roxy? I want to know how Mabel does here without me, and I think Roxy might be available soon, if she isn’t already. She’s my best real world friend,” she almost forgot to mention who Roxy was.

Annie nodded, “Yeah, I’d love to meet them! I still have the rest of the day left. I gotta get off for a bit to take care of myself, so I can meet up with you two if they’re free by the time I’m back on.”

Daisy nodded, happy that Annie wasn’t neglecting herself, “I’ll see you then, sweetheart.”

Annie says bye to Mabel, hugging the excitable wolf girl. She waves to Daisy, disappearing. Daisy sends a video message to Roxy, “Hey, I wanted to know if you wanted to meet Annie. I’ve been with her all day, she’s just stepping off for a bit for irl maintenance, or whatever people do in the Real World. I know you said you wanted to check out my house, but it would be a bit boisterous, I’ve got company over. You’ll be introduced to everybody soon enough; I really wanted you to meet Annie first,” She didn’t have the whole gang at her house on camera, just the house was visible. Like she said, she’d get to that point. It would just be a lot all at once. She liked meeting smaller groups of people rather than large ones, personally. It felt a lot more manageable. The familiar ‘message sent’ notification popped up when she hit the red square.

True was a good caretaker of Mabel. However, if anything went wrong, she would want her wishes to solve it. Daisy had Ray spawn in the wishing tree on a nearby green rolling hill, and Cumulo so that True was the only one to be able to go over there. The fence around the perimeter was locked so Mabel couldn’t get lost. This world was actually massive, but Daisy didn’t know what the mapmaker coded beyond it. She hopes to eventually make this place a combination of all her favorite things, but that will happen slowly over time.

She played with Mabel and pet her, waiting for a response from Roxy. She almost was too distracted to see the notification. She pressed it, opening the mirror. This video was of much different quality, and even a bit shaky. Roxy looked a bit different, too. Was this the Real World? Camera quality shouldn’t change in game; she could be filming on a real world device, handheld by the looks of it. Also, this must be Roxy’s more recent look, considering that the scan for Virtual Real avatars is only a snapshot in time of how someone looks. She didn’t have her typical hair dye, and her hair was longer.

“Hey Daisy. I’ve got some work to do still, but I’ll be on later, yeah? I hope your friend is still on by then. I’m glad to hear you’re doing well!” Her message seemed brief, she must have been in the middle of something. Daisy didn’t know you could check and send video calls from devices other than the Facebook Device in the Virtual World, but it made sense.

Daisy went indoors, spawning a laptop on the counter. Mabel was being monitored by Ray anyway, and she had the kids watching over her. She was plenty happy being preoccupied by them. Daisy wanted to research more about the Lost Ones. She had Ray pull up Reddit, with that search term. It was just so much quicker to have Ray do it. She did know how to scroll and navigate well, though, so she browsed the posts. There was a horrible subreddit dedicated to the exploitation of Lost Ones. Reddit locked the community as NSFW, she would have to make an account to view it. Yeah, not even going to bother. That’s disgusting. It’s the internet though, the mosh pit of humanity. You get to see the best of it, the worst of it, and everything in between. After a while of reading educational pieces on it, she found another intriguing term. The Lost Zeros. Looks like they are a myth, but they seem to be quite the opposite. They are the theoretical NPCs that realize they are in a game. Some sources cite that they gain User access to the game and pretend to be just users with an older style Virtual Body. There are plenty of jokes to call users with older or non-Facebook hardware a Lost Zero. However, there is plenty of talk about the singularity, and AI becoming self aware. These were all in game NPCs doing this, so Daisy guessed she wouldn’t fit this term. She would technically be a Lost Zero, if you skipped past the part that she was born in an R&D company and lived in a human mind. No, she isn’t one of those, but it’s a fun thought experiment. She wouldn’t want to scare anyone by claiming she is a Lost Zero, that would hit the headlines so quickly if they found out she was in a fake Virtual Real body.

Daisy got fed up with the internet pretty quickly, so she switched back to a friendlier place. She scrolled the list of cartoon worlds again. She would probably find more for her and Annie in here, it was a growing list, already very long. Sure enough, she saw something, not too far down. Abby Hatcher! Daisy knew that Annie watched this one, both because Annie drew some characters from the show, and she recognized Daisy’s Otis drawing.

“HEY DAISY, I’M BACK,” Annie’s voice rang in her head. Hey, look at that. It had been a while, Daisy supposes. Time is so weird. She accepted the teleport request. Annie showed up, hugging her.

“Roxy said she will be on later, if you’re still on by then,” Annie nodded at this, not minding. Plenty of people weren’t 24/7s, and even if they were, they still had places to be sometimes.

“What do you wanna do til then?” Annie asked, releasing the hug.

“I was looking at the list of cartoon worlds, have you done any Abby Hatcher quests?” Annie nodded at this question, “yeah, but I’d love to do one with you! They are really fun. There’s plenty of Fuzzlies that need help.”

Daisy went outside, Annie and she said bye to Mabel, telling her that they would be back tonight. Hopefully daytime works similar to her sleep schedule, here. Although Daisy’s sleep schedule is completely broken at this point. Did it ever exist? Probably not.

They materialized in the lobby of the familiar hotel, Annie teleporting to Daisy to make sure they got the same instance. Surprisingly, Ray informed her there was a third user in the instance. Daisy didn’t mind meeting a new user, she just hoped that they would be friendly to do a quest with them. It looks like the user is called ‘Catalina.’

Annie and Daisy both have a Fuzzly Spotter on their wrist. It’s the device that can open secret doors to navigate around the hotel faster. It also is able to detect when a Fuzzly is in trouble, and where in the hotel she needs to go to help them. It looks like this game makes the whole team stand in for the main character. Or, Abby will be in their growing team of Fuzzly Catchers! Their watches go off in sync.

“Spotted! Harriet needs help in the salon! Fuzzy trouble, can’t delay,” Annie says, Daisy catching on and finishing the call, “to the rescue, save the day!”

They run up the stairs to get their Fuzzly Catching equipment. Sure enough, there were four tricycles instead of just one. Abby is all suited up in her head-hugging helmet, with her goo-gripper gloves on the handlebars, her bomber blimp jacket in its inactive state, and has her pogo-spring shoes on the petals. Bozzly is in her basket, ready to go with his yellow helmet with 2 purple sparkly racing stripes on it, a star in the center, and on both sides. His light blue and white striped ears stick through the helmet, so he can use his helicopter ears to fly. He’s a light blue fuzzly, almost teal in color, with a white tummy and muzzle. He has black eyes with yellow irises.

Catalina is also on a tricycle, waiting for them. She has a similar outfit as Abby, likely so she can use the same powers to help the Fuzzlies. She’s a bit taller than Annie, she’s light skinned and much heavier, her face rounded out. Her helmet allows for her two bright blue, short twintails to stick out, as well as two tall fox ears of the same color. Her eyes are heterochromia, the right one purple and the left one the same blue as her hair. She saw them, smiling and saying, ‘olá eu sou Catalina,’ and the subtitles changed it to say ‘hello, I am Catalina.’ It didn’t sound the same as Spanish, Ray confirmed it as Portugese.

Daisy and Annie introduced themselves. Well, actually, Annie got shy and Daisy introduced them both. They fitted up with their own Abby Hatcher outfit, in case they needed the abilities. They all put on her pink glasses, of course no prescription. They were for her zoomer-view specs, so they can target hard-to-see fuzzlies. Sitting behind the wheel of their own trikes, they blasted off, all making fake revving engine noises and laughing. Her closet opened up, a secret door forming. This door led to the kitchen, where Chef Jeff was making a salad. He was so short that he had to be on a miniature scissor lift to reach the counter, his white chef hat as tall as him. He saw them coming, his eyes growing wide. He attempted to get out of the way, reversing back with the salad bowl in his hands. The four zoomed by as the stairs turned to a ramp, where the shelf had slid out of the way to let them out. Chef Jeff was narrowly missed by the Fuzzly Catchers, but still managed to send his salad flying in his surprise. The salad bowl landed on his head, upside down, and he laughed good-naturedly as the girls said, “Sorry Chef Jeff!”

They all parked their Trikes outside the Salon. They ran inside to see so many people waiting in line. Where was Mrs. Melvin? She was the owner and primary hairdresser. Harriet was in the middle of the salon, attempting to cut everyone’s hair at once. She was a tiny pink fuzzly with big hair. Her hair had a pink underside with yellow along the top. Each of her ponytails were able to be grown and used to pick things up. She would usually help Mrs. Melvin this way, but not do everything by herself! She had a small teal skirt that went around her cylindrical body, with tiny arms and legs flailing as she stood with her hair, attempting to do everything at once. Her big green eyes saw them, and she called out to them.

They all ran up to help her. Abby got a Brain Spark, and told the Fuzzly Catching crew to each go behind a chair and take care of the customers. Harriet was finally able to go back to helping, bringing all the new hairdressers equipment. All the Fuzzly Catchers had a great time, styling hair and working through the patient customers.

“Thank you Fuzzly Catchers! I couldn’t have done this without you,” Harriet hugged everyone with her big hair, now that all the customers have been served. The fuzzly grew her hair, jumping on everyone’s head and giving them a wig of her hair to thank them. Daisy laughed, using the back of her hand to flick the hair sassily. Annie laughed and Catalina copied her.

They hung out in the hotel for a bit more; Catalina wasn’t the most chatty but she seemed friendly. Both her and Annie were shy, but Daisy and Abby talked the most. Bozzly would chime in, too, excited to meet everyone. Daisy was able to give Abby a big hug before they left. She was totally going to invite her over in PrivatePlay. She gave a quick thought, and Ray confirmed that everything was going smoothly in PrivatePlay. Catalina, Annie, and Daisy explored the hotel. They visited all the fuzzlies in their various cubbies scattered throughout the building. After they finished rallying everyone up, they went to the basement for a dance party. The disco ball was still there, Otis being the DJ, pressing buttons to mix the music. The Squeaky Peepers sang to the music as well. They were eight round bunny fuzzlies, with 2 legs and 2 big ears. They slept in an egg carton, but were very bouncy and excitable when everyone got together and danced. Each of the Peepers were good at a different note of “do re mi fa so la ti do,” going up a whole octave together. They were all a different color of the rainbow, with the highest pitched ‘Little Do’ being a pink, baby squeaky peeper with a light blue pacifier. The yellow one, Fa, also wore yellow, round glasses. They stood on top of the tall speakers in the disco hall, singing their hearts out to Otis’ mix.

It turns out Catalina was from Brazil. The language sounded very pretty to Daisy, she had commented on it. She told them they can both call her “Cat,” she had started to warm up to them later on in the day. A cat with fox ears, very funny. Well, considering ‘cat’ was the english way to say it, it likely wasn’t purposeful. Daisy explained that ‘cat’ was like ‘gata,’ and then pointed to the ears. This got Cat to laugh. She had a beautiful laugh, to go along with her pretty sounding language. She asked if she knew Portugese, Daisy responding, “No, I know Spanish, and it sounds familiar, but different.”

Daisy got confused at her own comment. How did she know Spanish? She did use it in previous games to talk to Spanish speakers, but she doesn’t remember ever learning it. Well, to be fair, she doesn’t remember learning English, either. Both of those things must have stayed when David passed the baton off to her. She wonders what else is in her mind that came from him.

Catalina nodded at this comment. They were similar languages, but a bit too different to have a conversation in. They shared similar vocabulary, but were pronounced differently, and with different grammar. Annie turned to her, “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish! That’s really cool.”

“Oh yeah, I live right nearby Mexico. Our culture has pretty much collided with Mexican culture: the food, language, music, it all has come over the border,” Daisy explained to the girls, the dance music had grown quieter, the AI realizing the shift in focus of the connected users.

Catalina speaks about how her culture has shifted. She was learning in secondary school how the Indigenous people, Europeans, and Africans all blended cultures during the colonial period.

Annie said she didn’t think she had any culture blending in the midwest United States, but Daisy corrected her and said, “Maybe not recent culture blending, but a lot of the culture you have now was the result of many European countries immigrating.”

It was fun meeting users from different backgrounds. Catalina, although younger than either of them, brought a different perspective to the table. Even over simple topics, she could provide a different viewpoint.

This reminded Daisy of Vampirina. She was a vampire in a human world, and she had to get familiar with human culture, without losing her own vampire culture. Daisy asked if that was a map, and in deed, it was. She brought it up to the group, explaining the premise of the show. Annie had already watched the show, so she helped explain it to Cat. None of them have been to the map, so they didn’t know what to expect when they traveled there. Daisy had to hug Abby Hatcher goodbye, although she will likely be in her PrivatePlayer world soon enough. She teleported to the Vampirina world, not knowing what to expect. As Annie and their new friend Cat teleported to her, she realized this was a much different map than what they had been to. She was sitting in a theater, looking at a lit stage with purple curtains drawn. Annie appeared next to her, and Cat on the other side of Annie. Popcorn and soda was in the armrests, patiently waiting for them. Daisy picked up a soda, hoping it was root beer. It was, and she wondered if Ray had anything to do with that. God, it tasted deep and profound with a Flavor boost. They all looked forward, interested to see what the map holds.

Demi, the light blue, semi-transparent ghost with a pink tie passed through the curtains. He was able to float through them without moving them out of the way, as he was intangible.

“Good Evening, ghosts and ghouls. This is the story of Vampirina Hauntly. Don’t be afraid to request an act if you’ve already seen one, our actors know the whole thing by heart! Grab your popcorn, we are starting from Act 1: Going Batty,” Demi grabs some popcorn from a seat in the front row, chugging it as if it were water, “We hope you enjoy the show!” Demi announced, his mouth still full, flying back through the curtains. A brief pause, and then the theme song started to play, the curtains moving out of the way. The actors were NPCs, and the set was moved around quickly. They reenacted and sung the theme song pretty accurately from the show, obviously constrained by the physical proportions of the stage. When the theme song ended, the three girls cheered in the otherwise empty theater. This made the NPCs smile. As Daisy assumed, they were soft scripted. They do perform the show as normal if the audience does what they are expected, but there’s a hint of realism to use NPCs controlled by the AI, rather than a predetermined set of instructions. If you wanted to disrupt the show to see how the actors would react, you could. However, the girls seemed happy to just sit back and watch. Daisy didn’t particularly like popcorn, and it was actually exchanged with a Transylvanian alternative, scareberries! There was also a spider caramel popcorn for the girls who did like popcorn but wanted a transylvanian style snack.

They watched quite a few episodes. Or should I say, Acts. The whole show was remade in this theater format! Daisy wasn’t surprised, it was Disney after all. They had great actors, NPC or not, and the songs were really awesome. Annie and Daisy ended up singing along to them, to the amusement of Catalina, who was seeing this for the first time. They were also singing it in a different language, she was hearing the Brazillian Portugese version of the show. After a bit though, she had to leave. Annie needed to step off too, to take care of herself in real life. Daisy checked her notifications, and it looked like Roxy was still busy. No worries, she can go home and check on Mabel. She can also introduce Abby Hatcher and Vampirina to their house!

Daisy gave Catalina a hug, before waving her goodbye. Annie was still too shy to hug her, so they just watched as Cat disappeared. Annie hugged Daisy, though, and disappeared from within her arms. Daisy thought it was funny that she picked that up from her. Daisy connected to her PrivatePlayer instance. She opened the door to her room and saw Ruby sleeping on the big bed, cuddling with Mabel. Aw, how precious. She won’t disturb them. She keeps the door cracked, and knocks gently on True’s room. The girl opens the door, in her white nightgown with pink polka dots. She rubs her eye with the back of her hand, “Good evening, Daisy.”

She spoke softly because Bartleby was sleeping. She might not move in the new house members yet if everyone was sleeping. Daisy whispered back, “sorry for disturbing you. I just wanted to ask if everything went well with watching over Mabel.”

True nodded, “she was really great. We had lots of fun. She and Ruby went to bed a bit ago.”

“Thank you so much for watching over her. You do know you have Cumulo and Wish help, if anything comes up. Is there anything else you would need or want?” Daisy wondered if True would use her Wishes to fix any problems. Well, she was programmed to in her online map, so those skills should transfer over to this world, too.

“I’d love some little helpers. They could be useful around the house, and keep the Kingdom going,” True thought of, smiling. Of course, Daisy should have thought of the little helpers. They were little white cotton balls with simple faces, two big blue eyes, thick eyebrows, and a little mouth. Their body had two pairs of thin, nubby arms and two little legs. Their hair stuck straight up, making them look teardrop shaped. Daisy summoned them in her nightstand. They sleep in the drawers when it’s nighttime and the Kingdom is asleep.

“The Cotton Candy Kingdom, that’s what I’ll call it,” Daisy said to herself, but True heard and smiled, “I love that. Thank you for the little helpers. They are going to help do the tasks in this Cotton Candy Kingdom.”

Daisy let the blue haired hero get back to sleep. Daisy went to the bathroom, the bright lights a stark difference from the dark house. She isn’t on HardCore Realistic when in her PrivatePlayer world, but it was still relieving to go. Maybe someday she will live in a MultiPlayer game where tasks like these will be necessary, because she will like it enough to switch to HardCore Realistic. If she can go without feeling the need to, is there a limit to it? Like, obviously on SinglePlayer and PrivatePlayer there are no limits to anything, regardless of what you’re doing. But on a MultiPlayer map… Will you, uh, run out? She thinks so, if she even has a hunger bar in some games, there would be other, finite bars that she would have. What a weird thought. She finished up, a shower sounds really nice right now. She hadn’t had one for quite a bit, she just had been so busy with everything. Turning on the shower, the familiar steam rolls out into the bathroom. Oh this shower was really nice. Nicer than any of the others, she thinks. Well, besides the love hotel, they put a lot of work into a nice bathroom. This one was just… More cozy.

She dries off, this time using two towels to cover up as she goes to her room. There’s a dim nightlight on, casting star-shaped streaks of light across the room. Daisy gives herself nightvision. Oh, she didn’t know she could do that in PrivatePlayer. Since that is a compatible command, that means she can power herself up before going to any PrivatePlayer session. Some powers might not be compatible, and if too many users are in an instance, it might disable some for synchronization issues. Still good to know, for sure.

She couldn’t run a blow dryer, it would be too loud and wake up Ruby and Mabel. No, she would just have Ray dry her hair. She dressed, her day wasn’t over yet if Annie and Roxy were getting on at the same time and still down to meet. She turned around and saw her wolf girl and little sister cuddling. Aww how cute, she wished she could capture this. Well, she does have time, why not draw it to add to the wall? She quietly brought over a small plastic chair from the purple tea table. She had Ray spawn her pencil and paper again, and worked away. She didn’t do realism, so it was stylized into a cartoon form, but still really fun. She even colored it, her night vision helping. She hung it up, a thematically accurate frame generating around it.

It didn’t take long after that to get a notification. Roxy was on. Daisy will pop over there to say hi and wait for Annie. There was so much to tell Roxy anyway. She went to the front door, making sure it was locked. True and Ruby were good girls, the house was all locked up. Out of earshot from the sleeping housemates, she requested a teleport to Roxy. Well, commands shouldn’t be heard anyway, but she didn’t know about voice messages.

Daisy jumped forward, now familiar with approximately where Roxy would show up in front of her, as the scene shifted to a highrise apartment. Sure enough, Daisy was hugging Roxy before she had even fully connected to the session. This took Roxy by surprise, she laughed her loud, infectious laugh. It had only been a day or two, but Daisy had missed her laugh. She was losing track of the days, especially the zombie sleeping with Annie messed up her perception of time.

“Annie isn’t on yet, so feel free to speak about your day! Or days, I really don’t know how long it’s been,” Daisy admitted, still laughing a bit from the successful surprise hug. Roxy noticed her new bangs, from when she cosplayed as Rainbow Ruby.

Roxy and Daisy caught up, Roxy’s days weren’t so eventful, being mostly centered around work and the like. Daisy told her everything, not caring to hold anything back unless she just forgot to mention it entirely. Roxy knew about zombie sleeping, plenty of people did it. There were safe maps for Zombie cuddles in MultiPlayer. Daisy did recall cuddling/sleep maps from other games, so she wasn’t surprised to hear it. Roxy got surprised at the quest in the Virtual Market, like Annie, she also hadn’t heard of that occurring before. She was similarly upset about the exploitation of a Lost One, happy to hear that she’s in a good place now. Daisy described her Cotton Candy Kingdom, and even hinted at her plans for it in the future. Roxy was happy for her that she found a place to call home.

“You sure play an interesting set of games. Does anything in particular draw you to them?” Roxy was curious about her affinity for cartoons, especially the childlike ones.

“That’s hard to explain. There’s a mix of nostalgia from when I watched them, but that nostalgia doesn’t have to go way back. Some of these I’ve watched recently, picking them up because they were cute…” Daisy thought about it some more, especially considering that she wanted to surround herself with these characters in her PrivatePlay home, “and maybe I get, like, motherly vibes. Like, I’ve always wanted a daughter.”

Roxy nodded, that certainly made sense if she were forming her own little NPC family at her PrivatePlayer house, “and, if you don’t mind me asking, a puppy? You seemed pretty excited over Mabel, what drew you to that?”

Daisy didn’t have to think too hard about that one, “oh, I’ve always thought puppies were cute. I’m not into violent BDSM play, but I always saw an innocence from some of the puppies, and wanted to play with one. I didn’t know that I’d become a mistress, but I was certainly not against that idea!”

Roxy nodded, happy to hear the puppy was in good hands. A real Lost One. Roxy knew of their existence, some of their coworkers researched that topic in depth. Daisy had a strong moral compass, to know that something was off. Some people play or make mental games to challenge their psyche or satisfy some dark parts of them. Toying with real people though, instead of NPCs, that was a whole other game. Not as uncommon as Roxy would hope.

“I also really like your sparkles. That’s a crazy story, but wow there was a sparkly lining to it all,” Roxy moved her face close to Daisy’s, peering in her eyes, “you smell wonderful, by the way.”

“I forgot to mention, I also picked up perfume at Virtual Market! That slipped my mind, between the tattoo and the sparkles,” Daisy responded, knowing her friend wouldn’t try to kiss her, regardless of how close she got.

“Oh yeah, let me see that! That’s super exciting, I love Virtual tattoos,” Roxy cheered.

Daisy turned around, her tattoo visible just over the top of her boot. Roxy loved it, “very simple, but very clean. You said it was hand drawn, huh?”

Daisy said yes, and Roxy further explained, “that’s actually better to get hand made. An artist’s eye can account for the curve, especially on such a rounded area like a calf. The instant ones are 2 dimensionally warped, so they can turn out looking stretched in curved areas.”

Daisy had to know, “it looked more expensive to get the instant ones, why do you think that is?”

Roxy raised an eyebrow, but had a guess, “artist’s preference, likely to discourage people from getting the instant tattoos. They must hate that the program warps their artwork.”

Daisy nodded, that was not at all what she had thought, but that was pretty neat. Only a prideful owner would do that. An instant tattoo would sell more quantity if they put it lower priced than the real version. They couldn’t bear to see their artwork mangled, even if the customer couldn’t tell.

“So I shouldn’t have Ray relocate the tattoo, huh?” Daisy connected the dots.

“Yeah, no. It just wouldn’t look as good. He can always put it back to its original location, though,” Roxy responded.

“Oh, Ray is a they,” Daisy corrected, “my AI.”

“My bad darling. And Annie is she/her?” Roxy wanted to know before she met Daisy’s friend.

Daisy made a thinking face, “yeah, I never asked, to be honest. I usually assume after people tell me their name, which might not be the best.”

Roxy laughed amicably, “I mean it’s better than purposely using the wrong one to someone who is obviously giving off neutral or trans vibes. I’ll ask when introducing myself to Annie.”

It came to Daisy after a bit, “Oh yeah, she said she was cisgender female when I met her,” and Roxy nodded, responding that it was still likely she would ask anyway.

They chatted idly until Annie got back on, now that they were all caught up with each other. Annie appeared in front of them, Daisy scooping her up before she was fully connected, as well. Annie let a little scream out, before she realized what was going on. Daisy swung Annie’s legs back and forth as she gave her a bear hug.

“You almost gave me a heart attack! Girl, wait for me to load in before you attack me,” Annie huffed good naturedly, still hugging her back tenderly. Daisy eventually set her down, almost reluctantly. She introduced Roxy, who held out a hand, bending down.

“Hi Annie, I’m Roxy, my pronouns are she/her. What are yours?” She introduced herself like she said she would.

Annie took the hand, gently holding it, “Also she/her, nice to meet you,” she seemed to be getting shy, and ended up hiding behind Daisy, holding onto the rim of her green skirt and peeking out. Well, that was quick. Roxy didn’t get a ‘hello beautiful lady,’ like Daisy had upon meeting Annie.

Daisy put a protective hand on the top of Annie’s head, “She’s a loud one once she gets to know you, don’t let her shyness trick you,” Daisy couldn’t see, but Annie’s face gained a pout in response to this comment.

“Well, I heard plenty about all the fun quests you two had!” Roxy was still bent over, speaking to her as if she were a child. She did know Annie was 19, so her attitude took Daisy by surprise. This only made Annie more shy. Annie wasn’t as shy if you treated her like the adult she is, Daisy thought to herself, but wouldn’t say to Roxy right now.

Daisy rolled her eyes, picking up the girl and putting her on her hip like she did to Ruby. Annie wasn’t as casual about it like Ruby was, but still wrapped her arms around Daisy. Her chin pressed up against Daisy’s shoulder, as she’s taller than Ruby, too. Annie had on a men’s suit with a tie tucked under, both grey-white, and a black undershirt peeking through. She had on a pair of Culotte skirts, short ones that had a red plaid design. They could almost pass for a miniskirt, except she has much more movement in them, as each leg gets its own skirt coming off of the shorts. She has long nylon socks on; they are semi-transparent with a cuffed top above her knee, a short strip of skin visible between her Culotte skirts and the socks. Her shoes are a pair of tiny, plain brown loafers, her legs moving gently as she was suspended in the air by Daisy’s hip.

“Wow, look at this apartment. I was caught up in talking to you, I didn’t even realize our surroundings,” Daisy walked around, still carrying Annie. She would start to fuss if she wanted down. Daisy was lucky to be in PrivatePlayer, or Annie would have grown too heavy very fast. Daisy’s stats in MultiPlayer were nothing near Roxy’s.

She peered out the floor to ceiling window, Annie forgetting her embarrassment to look out at the pretty view. They were in Dubai, a sea of skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. They were standing on wooden floors, the furniture intensely modern and sparse. It wasn’t exactly her idea of cozy, but it was certainly beautiful.

“Yeah, I can’t say I’m fond of skyscrapers, since I go to work in one, but Dubai is still gorgeous,” Roxy says, coming up to stand beside them. She stands on the side opposite Annie, just in case she is still too shy. They meander around, seeing small, indoor cacti in white or grey pots. Daisy sends a couple commands to Roxy, splashes of color popping up as she recolors the cold modern style. Roxy accepts them as they come in, laughing as Daisy’s fondness for bright colors floods the apartment before them. Pure white marble turns to marbled paint, streaks of color running and melting in exciting new ways. The monotone pots get wrapped with bright stripes of color. Annie starts to loosen up in her arms, not so tense as she watches the pretty effects loading in on the environment.

“You really know how to spruce a place up,” Roxy chuckles. She didn’t mind the cold minimalism, but she was up for something different. It was still minimalist, as Daisy didn’t technically add anything. It was just in a new light, with color combinations that would never be considered by a designer. They walked around, Daisy conquering territory. Daisy didn’t touch the waterfall outside though. They all stared at it. Yep, that was a granite waterfall, on a balcony. It was attached to the house, looking like it was afraid of heights, staying away from the balustrade. An even flow of water ran across its surface, shimmering slightly, almost like glass.

“It’s pretty, but like… Why is it here?” Daisy finally said. This cracked up Roxy, and everyone started laughing. Daisy set down Annie, although the little girl reached up to hold her hand. It was a start, so Daisy took it. They went back inside, Daisy not too fond of heights herself. Obviously she could send a command to Roxy to let her fly, but still.

“What would you girls like to do now?” Roxy asked, not having thought this far ahead. She had hoped that Annie was a little more talkative. Daisy looked at Annie, still amused by her personality change. Did she get more childish if you treated her like one? That would make sense if she was getting into a roleplay mindset, Daisy was beginning to figure it out. She could get very lost in a character, so maybe Roxy was influencing that character by seeing her as a child. Daisy might have seen her as a child at first, too, but they were too focused on the True quest to really notice. Daisy asked Ray if they could telepathically speak to Roxy. Upon confirmation, she had them say to not treat Annie as a child, lest she continue to act like a child. Roxy didn’t make any visible cue that she received the message, but she responded, or at least her AI did for her, saying that she would from now on.

“We could draw and chat, how’s that sound?” Daisy responded, not showing that a secret conversation went on. Annie nodded her head, still holding Annie’s hand. Roxy’s AI generates them all art supplies, the minimalistic tables overflowing with various mediums. Annie released Daisy’s hand to collect some art supplies, Daisy happy to see her grow a bit more bold. Roxy picked up a sketchbook and set of pencils of varying hardness/blackness. She started to make a light sketch of the female form.

Annie wanted to try out painting something. Daisy decided to pick up some crayons, but they looked a lot different than normal ones. Annie looks over, saying, “oh those are nice. They are oil pastels, much easier to work with than crayons.”

Annie was right, they certainly were easier to blend together. Daisy saw Roxy starting to draw herself, so she decided to as well.

“Self portrait time, eh?” Daisy laughed, as Annie started painting herself as well.

“Roxy started it!” Annie defended herself, “it’s a good idea.”

Roxy smiled, starting to darken her lines as she finalized the form. She wanted to design a new goth outfit. When she got her concept down, Annie had looked up from her own self portrait and commented on it, “oh I love that outfit!”

Daisy was secretly overjoyed at this development, she knew the girls would have something to connect over. Annie proceeds to add a goth outfit to her painting, asking Roxy’s advice for some new ideas. She ended up painting herself with a black long sleeve tee shirt, a black pleated skirt with silver crosses on the pleats, and fishnets. She had to paint the fishnets rather big, but they looked really good that way, too. For the shoes, she couldn’t go too complex, but she managed to fit many leather straps on the black boots. Finally, her own touch, she added black fingerless gloves. Roxy also walked her through the makeup, Annie layering it on her portrait as if she were actually applying makeup.

They all finish their self portraits, Daisy complimenting the girls’. Daisy is getting quite tired, and that seems to be the general consensus. Annie states her availability tomorrow after 20:00 UTC. Roxy agrees with this, it seems like that’s when they all plan on meeting. They say their goodbyes, Daisy exiting to her PrivatePlayer instance with Mabel. She forgets that she disconnects when sleeping, but hopefully Mable understands that when she disappears upon falling asleep.

Daisy goes straight to bed; Mabel is now awake, and she notices her and follows. She greets Mabel, cooing over her and watches her get excited. What a good girl. Daisy undresses, leaving the clothes at the foot of the bed on the ground. She hops in bed, naked, and Mabel doesn’t mind joining her. They cuddle until Daisy disappears from consciousness disconnect to SinglePlayer.

Crow. They are sitting in a familiar room, it is raining outside. They operate an invisible computer, hearing Daisy enter. They turn around, greeting her with open arms. He isn’t in his clone armor, but just a fluffy fur jacket with a graphic tee under. He has purple eyes with a glowing pink ring along the edge, and a glowing pupil in the shape of a cross. He has 2 black bands for earrings on each ear, matching their black eyebrows. His hair is dark brown, lighter at the tips, and shaven on the sides. He is tatted up his neck, but his smile gives no bad vibes. Daisy hugs them, happy to see them. This is one of the residents in the game, never really leaving, even if they are just using their real computer ingame. They catch up, Crow showing off the latest avatar they got. They switch into Ikoras, all her clone armor on besides the helmet. She has similar eyes to her brother, but her hair is purple and down to her shoulders. Her bangs drift into her face, and she, too, has a lovely smile. Daisy compliments the new look, showing off the new avatar she had been crafting as well. Daisy looked down, an out of body experience as her dream self turns into an older version of herself. This one is highly stylized, with cell shading and a thick outline. Her hands are smaller, her boobs jiggle more. Ikoras compliments the avatar, knowing how much work goes into making one. She says check this out, and summons a crow to sit on her shoulder. Aww, that’s adorable, Daisy fawns over the advanced technique. She wishes she could add something cool like that to her avatar. Maybe someday.

Daisy wakes up from SinglePlayer, Ray spawning her back into her PrivatePlayer instance. Mabel had been waiting in her kennel, and jumped back up onto the bed when she realized her mistress had returned. Daisy pet the excitable wolf girl, but felt a terrible knot in her stomach. Was that… No, it couldn’t be, she swears she just had one when taking a scan. Maybe that was just the scan figuring out how she felt period cramps, but this must be the real thing. She got up and headed to the bathroom. Sure enough, she was on her period. Apparently period blood wasn’t filtered. That makes sense though; it wasn’t related to violence or injuries, which she did have filtered. She took care of herself with a summoned tampon from Ray, well aware of the pain stunter if things got to be too much. She was going to see how bad it was before doing that. A pain stunter was basically like taking an over the counter medication, anyway. Instead of activating chemically in her mind, the pain stunter just told her mind to stop feeling as much pain. If she really thinks about it, and she doesn’t like thinking about this much, she’s actually a virtualized girl. So that pain is coming from the Facebook Device, not her biological body. That means the pain stunter would work even better, just doling out less severe menstrual cramps. She has a hard time struggling with this. She needs a feeling of ownership on this virtual body, so she switches her default playstyle to HardCore Realisitic, even in PrivatePlayer and SinglePlayer. If this is her real life, she’d better start treating it as such. Sure, she can make whatever she wants of it, but she can just ask Ray for specific things when she wants them. But her default should be as close to real life as possible, because this is real life for her. Having her period was a wakeup call, not to take advantage of the fact that she’s in a borrowed body that is wasting away in a glass tube on her behalf. She exits the bathroom, not minding that she was walking around naked. NPCs didn’t care and Mabel wouldn’t either. She was terribly hungry from turning on HardCore Realistic. And now she didn’t want to eat from the cramps. Great combination. Maybe she can just eat chocolate and ice cream or something. She enters the kitchen, Ruby and True are sitting at the table as Bartleby is making pancakes. The Kittynati flips the pancake high in the air, somersaulting and placing the pan right where it needs to be to catch the pancake, just in time. The girls clap, entertained by his antics. Mabel follows Daisy into the room, smiling. Daisy spawns a maroon bowl with Mabel’s name on it in black letters, Mabel notices the bowl and wags her tail. Daisy has Ray summon her favorite food. Ray gives that request to her AI, and it responds with what she wants right now. Daisy pours it in the bowl, and she goes crazy for it. Daisy pets her as she heads for the bowl, letting her eat peacefully. Daisy’s on a quest for some chocolate or ice cream. She opens the freezer to find both. Thanks Ray. She serves herself up a great big helping and joins the girls at the table. Like she thought, none of the NPCs minded how she looked, not even commenting on it.

The girls have their pancakes, Daisy turning down Bartleby’s kind offer to make her some. True is in a good mood, as always. Ruby is less of a morning person, however. Bartleby joins them, having made a Bartleby-shaped pancake for himself. He throws his plate onto the table, jumping with a Kittynati flip onto the chair. His body is too short, so Daisy has Ray add a few books under him. Bartleby thanks Ray, to Daisy’s surprise. Of course they would know her AI, they were made by them.

By the end of breakfast, Daisy realizes something she should have done earlier. She should wash Mabel. Poor girl. Technically, anything from when she was in Multiplayer would not have persisted into PrivatePlayer, but she’d better do it today anyway. She had plenty of time before noon. She looked outside, the day cycle was synced to her Pacific Timezone, Ray informed her. It was still morning, but it was getting closer to noon, or 20:00 UTC. She must not have slept for long, but it was still refreshing. She also had that really good dream. She’s had plenty of good dream objects, she was glad to remember all her old friends. It made her a bit melancholy, or that was because she was dealing with her period as well. The fact that her Facebook Device can simulate the mental effects of a menstrual cycle only just shows how much the device knows more about humans than humans do. That or the Facebook Device was purposely creating hormonal triggers in the mind connected to it, and these were the actual effects. No matter how it played out, Daisy was impressed.

Daisy wanted to have a bit more help washing Mabel, she should summon Abby and Vampirina. All of them could wash her outside, it would be really fun. Daisy went to her room once they were finished with breakfast, dressing up in her usual outfit. Ray had cleaned and put it back in the wardrobe she shared with Ruby. She didn’t have to get dressed, but she would have a good first impression when meeting Abby and Vampirina. Technically she already met Abby, and since it was PrivatePlayer, she would remember meeting her if Daisy wanted her to. That would rely on Daisy’s memories, since the MultiPlayer Abby’s memories were unreachable from PrivatePlayer. The MultiPlayer Abby would also remember Daisy if she went back to the same instance, but not any of the new memories that the PrivatePlayer Abby formed. Ah well, she supposes she can seed her PrivatePlayer Abby with any questing memories Daisy makes in MultiPlayer. She can at least have a one-way consistency.

Now fully dressed, minus the bra of course, Daisy has all the girls come outside again. She wants to welcome the new residents officially. A car drives up, letting out Abby and Vampirina. Everyone waves as they get their things from out of the trunk. Daisy walks over and lifts a bag, Ruby and True following suit. They move the girls into their own rooms. Daisy was running out of rooms, luckily this was a big house. She had one more room available. It was a master bedroom though, she could have someone share it if she wanted more space.

Both of their rooms were pretty much imported from their game worlds. The size was different, so they had to reorganize the furniture or leave some out, but Daisy had the girls each go over exactly how they wanted it.

Abby’s room was the most different. In her hotel, she had a huge room, complete with a ladder up to a deck that looked inward over her room. That couldn’t be imported, but Daisy had Ray get the yellow walls with a huge cresting rainbow wave pouring over half of it. The rest of the wallpaper has blue and pink hearts scattered in bunches, and an even spread of blue and pink stars on the ceiling. It’s not as high nor as sloped as the ceiling Abby has at home, but she seems to love it anyway. They also imported the round, pink bed with light pink hearts scattered over the bedspread and tall, sheer, pink curtains encircling it. It has an orange bedskirt that extends down to the blue and pink swirled carpet. Luckily they chose a room with a window, so Daisy could have the window be reformed into the circular window that Bozzly has his yellow bed on the window sill. He has yellow covers with magenta stars, Abby’s bed next to his. Abby’s purple wardrobe is also in there, Daisy has granted it portal abilities to let Abby move magically around the house to other rooms, like she is familiar with in her hotel. This way, if Abby needs to help anyone (or any fuzzly) she won’t delay, to the rescue, save the day! The wardrobe is fuzzly-shaped, with two big eyes with blue eyelashes, a row of big white teeth that rise up to let the two big doors swing open to reveal the Fuzzly-Catching equipment and portal. The doors have two arms hugging a heart in the center, over a light pink round belly.

Abby loved it, hugging Daisy in excitement. Daisy was happy to have her around. Daisy wasn’t finished yet, she summoned in not only Bozzly, but the rest of the fuzzlies, too. Abby hugged her best friend, Bozzly, so happy. The Squeaky Peepers sang a happy song before bouncing away to wherever fuzzlies hide. Abby followed them to Vampirina’s new room, bringing Bozzly.

Vampirina’s room fit much better. She, too, was used to vaulted ceilings, but her purple coffin bed fit just fine in the far right corner. A purple nightstand with a silver lamp and purple lamp shade generated, casting moonlight into the room. Daisy adjusted the windows to be a bit more similar to her high arched windows, with purple frames. They had spider-web-like arched frames holding up the individual glass panes. Each half of the window was able to be opened if Vampirina needed to fly out a window in her bat form. The items Ray was pulling were actually set items from the theater show in MultiPlayer, but they were just as comfortable as real furniture. Her purple cobweb rug appeared in the center of the room, the floors being exposed to their barewood surrounding it. A red dragon plushie popped up in the other corner, and transylvanian posters littered the walls. She had posters of the castles in transylvania and of bands like the Scream Girls. She also had smaller doodles of monsters that were her own work, pasted on the walls sporadically. The walls had a purple brick wallpaper over them, textured to look 3d. Her blue dresser appeared next to the door, facing the room, it too had drawings stuck to it. Finally, the corner of the room across from the bed and dresser, on the other side of the door, was her purple beanbag. It was next to the shelf that grew up her wall like a tree, with transylvanian books stacked on it, a picture of a moon behind it on the wallpaper. She also had a picture of a hot vampire boy, signed, and more doodles of the Scream Girls. A plushie spider hung from a string above the beanbag with spider web stitching. The last corner of the room had a nightstand connected to a coffin-shaped corkboard, with plenty of doodles thumbtacked on. Purple painted wood had skeleton arms framing the corkboard, and a full-size plushie medusa head sat smack dab on the top of the nightstand. Finally, the room was bordered with a white base molding, and the windows decorated with a white window sill and white arch caps with curly ends. Roxy would love the theme of this room.

Vampirina hugged her thanks as well. She looked about as old as True, but in reality she was over 200 years old, as vampires age differently. She had on a black dress that had purple lines of a spider web. The edge of the skirt followed the arches of the spider web. The black dress had two thin straps, but was on top of a pink shirt with semi-puffy sleeves, not quite as round as True’s puffy sleeves. She had on a black necklace with a skull. Her hair was up in pigtails, but they were shaped like two batwings. She had blue skin and purple eyes, with a pointy, batlike nose. Her ears were also pointed, and she had thin black eyebrows. She had blue fingerless gloves on. Her black shoes had pink laces, matching her pink socks, shirt, and hair ties. She smiled, revealing her vampire fangs.

“Thank you Daisy, I feel right at home,” she told her. Daisy found this really comforting. Vampirina always felt like Transylvania was her home, but as the show progressed, she began to feel like the house in Pennsylvania was more and more her home. This room was an accurate recreation of that purple house in Pennsylvania, and Daisy loved to make her feel at home.

“It sure is fang-tastic, huh?” Daisy laughed, giving her head pats. The little girl laughed gently, closing her eyes and smiling at the pats. Daisy had one more thing up her sleeve, “Come on in!”

Demi, Gregoria, and Chef Remy Bones entered the room. Vampirina rushed to hug Demi, the ghost. Gregoria waved to Daisy and the entourage of girls. She was a stout gargoyle, half the height of even the shortest girl in the room. She had a big, scaled belly, with clawed hands and feet and a short tail. Her bottom fangs poked out over her upper lip, her thick eyebrows in front of her two horns, her left horn missing its upper half. Her big, pointy ears were thin and had a crack in them. Her eyes were black, on theme with the rest of her grey-scaled tone.

Chef Remy Bones was a skeleton with a handlebar mustache and thin goatee, his smooth skull topped with a chef hat, off center. He was an excellent cook, most proficient in the scary, and sometimes magical, Transylvanian recipes. He could also make excellent human food, but sometimes thought it lacked taste and had to be reminded to not add anything Transylvanian. Bartleby made adorable Bartleby-shaped flapjacks, but Chef Remy Bones could whip up delicacies that even Vampirina has never heard of. He extended a welcome hand to Daisy, Daisy shaking it with excitement upon meeting him. He was an expressive skeleton, and literally lived in a closet. She generated the closet near the kitchen, so he could have time to himself when he wasn’t cooking for or visiting with everyone. His hand fell off at the handshake and joked, “do you need a hand?”

Daisy laughed and (no pun intended) handed it back. She turned back to Vampirina, “And don’t worry, Vee, we can invite Bridget and Poppy over whenever you want. Same goes for Grizelda and Zee,” she looks at True, then to Abby, “or Sophie and Little Melvin,” and finally turns to Ruby, “and we can always go to Rainbow Village.”

Daisy did more than just say they could invite them over. The NPCs now have summoning abilities, and can have Ray fetch those characters for them, even if Daisy isn’t connected to the instance. They would probably arrive by the same driverless car that Vee and Abby arrive in.

“If your rooms are just how you want it, we can move on to the next activity! We have a bit more time before I have to head out to meet my friends, so I wanted to have us all give Mabel a bath,” Daisy told the group. Mabel got excited at this, running circles in Vee’s room around the group. It’s a good thing Vee’s room was one of the larger ones. Now should Daisy get changed into a swimsuit or just chance washing her like this? This should be fine, she doesn’t mind getting her Cami or skirt wet. Her boots are almost like rainboots, anyway. Everyone follows Daisy outside, she sets out a kiddie pool and starts to fill it with warm water from the spout. Mabel jumps in, already splashing everyone. The girls scream, Chef Remy Bones and Gregoria watching from a safe distance. Daisy laughs and grabs the suds and pail of hand towels. Now instead of Mabel getting everyone coated in water, she can get everyone coated in soap suds as they attempt to wash her. Mabel is having a blast, and Daisy laughs along with the girls.

When it comes time to rinse her off, Daisy isn’t afraid of collateral damage. Girls scream and scatter, laughing. Vampirina has vampire speed, and is able to snatch it from Daisy to get her back. Daisy screams as the vampire manages to redirect the water back at her. The spectators laugh at this change in events, and it becomes a water fight over the hose. Mabel had long had the suds cleaned off, it’s now just warfare in the front lawn.

Everyone is soaked, the dry spectators have to go inside to bring out towels for everyone. Daisy probably should have thought of towels earlier, at the very least for Mabel. They all take off their wet clothes, Daisy drying them off and wrapping them with towels, sending them inside one by one. Finally she steps out of her clothes and wraps herself up with a towel, taking a final towel to wrap all the wet clothes together. She can stick them all in the laundry. Usually she would just have Ray do that part, but really was feeling the vibe. This whole part of her day more than made up for how her day started. She had kinda forgotten about it all. She sure felt her cramps at times, but it was so nice to invite the new residents of the Cotton Candy Kingdom and spend the day with them.

She went to the bathroom to shed her used tampon between cycles of laundry. She was happy about her decision to go HardCore Realistic. It would earn her more money in MultiPlayer, sure, but honestly it was nice to feel like she was a real girl. If anything was too inconvenient or unpleasant, she could just lower the immersion temporarily. That is, assuming she doesn’t end up being a Lost One again. She wonders if Mabel is stuck in HardCore Realistic. She assumes so, considering Mabel seems to get hungry and thirsty. She better keep that in mind, although she knows the whole family of NPCs she has summoned will easily take care of her for the rest of her life. She’s got plenty of love and attention in this household.

She took it out, flushing it down the toilet. She was going to put in another, but decided to be explorative. You can still masturbate on your period, right? It might even make the cramps feel better for a while. She started the tub, not wanting to clean or have Ray need to clean much up. She could just fool around in the tub for a bit. Her automatic touch boost had been reactivated after her zombie sleeping with Annie the day prior, and it became apparent when she started to stimulate herself. Indeed, the cramps did fade away. That may be because they were drowned out by the touch boost, but she couldn’t tell. She had Ray summon a dildo for her, once she got into the full swing of it. This she would have to, uh, put up high somewhere in the cupboards. She had locked the door to the bathroom, and NPCs really didn’t care about stuff like this anyway, so she wasn’t worried about anyone overhearing. She still tried to keep it somewhat quiet, not to bother Mabel, if she even minded. She assumes not, but there was no real way to verify that. She was obviously highly intelligent, so she would understand things like this, but Daisy had no way of knowing if she was uncomfortable with it. Her playful and easy-going nature didn’t mean she was limited in her understanding, just that she loved the fun, happy things in life.

Daisy was also not unfamiliar with mutes. Plenty of her previous games had their flavor of a mute, even large communities of them. These were people who were physically mute, didn’t have mics, or wouldn’t enable their mic for various reasons. Interacting with them was rather easy through body language and a form of in-game sign language. Yes or no questions were the go-to, of course, but Daisy got familiar enough with them to understand them through body language alone. Some would write out what they wanted to say, either using a magic marker to write in the air or had a keyboard to type. Some would even have a text to voice software say what they wished to convey.

She was smart to have the tub filling. She turned it off once it was at a reasonable level, and continued her exploration. It was certainly a different sensation. She wouldn’t say she liked it more, it was different though. She drained the tub once she had enough, and she put in a fresh tampon. That was interesting. She doesn’t know how long her period will last, but may end up trying this again later. She hid her cleaned dildo in the medicine cabinet of all things. Hey, it had a lock, so children couldn’t get to the medication. Or accidentally find the sex toys. Seemed like a logical place to her. She wrapped her hair in a towel and around her body, so she wouldn’t drip across the house. She unloaded the laundry, folding it and placing it in the hamper. The girls could pick it up from there or have Ray put it in their wardrobes. Daisy needed to get dressed to be ready for Roxy and Annie. It was almost 21:00 UTC, or an hour past their approximate meeting time. She took her clothes from the pile, not bothering to fold them.

Ruby was in their room, as was Mabel. Daisy knew neither of them cared if she changed in front of them. She dried her hair off and got into her typical Virtual Real outfit. It was still warm from the dryer, very comfy. She checked her wrist, it looks like both girls were waiting for her to form a session. She didn’t expect either of them to join each other without her, but was still amused they didn’t.

She requested to teleport to Annie. She would show Roxy her personal world some time later. Annie’s PrivatePlayer was a bit quieter, from what Daisy could tell. It took a bit for her to accept, she must have needed to finish something up or boot into the PrivatePlayer instance. Daisy wonders what’s the maximum length one can put off accepting a teleport request. Ray answers her inward question that they can tell when they are actively waiting for the request to be accepted, but closes the request if Daisy seems to think they won’t accept. It isn’t a set time limit, then, but just an AI controlled event.

The familiar pastel kawaii room generates around her. She was going to leap forward and hug Annie, but she was sitting on a pillow at her tea table. Daisy kneels beside her, giving her small shoulders a quick side hug. Annie smiles and greets her.

“Roxy is on if you want me to invite her!” Daisy smiles back, not scooting away after the hug. Annie nods, “I can have Inko put on a kettle.”

“Did you want to talk about anything before I invite Roxy?” Daisy wanted to get the gang together, but she liked to make sure her friends are doing well on an individual level, first.

She shook her head, “no, I’m alright. I’ll text you if anything comes up,” Daisy raised an eyebrow, familiar with the idea but not in a Virtual World sense. Ray informed her it would just come up in her settings menu like the video messages.

Daisy sent Roxy a teleport request, the request being approved by Annie, and it wasn’t long before Roxy appeared before them. She was in a short sleeve, crop top v-neck. It was black, of course, but the sleeves ended in purple fabric. She had on a bright purple skirt, much more vibrant than she normally wears. She had black wristbands on with a big, black bow in her hair. Her shoes were black leather shoes with dark and light purple striped socks. Her hair was different, too. She made it all purple instead of just purple highlights in the front.

“Oh, you look so good, Roxy!” Daisy compliments her, standing up from the tea table to give her a hug. Their hug is nice and warm, Roxy seems to be in a bright mood.

“Yeah, just changing things up a bit. I do like your new hairstyle, as well,” Roxy had seen her new hair style before, but Daisy (and Annie) still appreciated the compliment.

“Yeah, you gotta have a bit of fun with it!” Daisy had kept her hair down after her bath. Inko made them tea, showing up in 2d form to greet Roxy. The big woman used her prestidigitation to make tea, her superpower, or quirk, was to move small items from a distance.

After a bit into the tea, idle chit chat moving like a bubbling creek, Daisy and Annie got a notification. It looks like Catalina was on. They mentioned it to Roxy, and she didn’t seem to mind if they got the crew together. Daisy scrolled on a laptop that Annie let her summon, and she came across another cartoon that had missions. Catalina was getting ready to teleport; Daisy had found StarBeam and mentioned it to Annie. Annie loves that show, having drawn the characters in the really pleasing style of 3d characters with 2d faces.

Daisy stood back up as Catalina appeared. Daisy opened her arms for a hug, knowing she was fine with hugs but still not at the level where she would pounce on her as soon as she appeared. She walked up and accepted the hug, before turning around and appreciating the room. Annie blushed at her compliments of the drawings.

“This is my Real Life friend Roxy,” Daisy introduced the goth girl after Catalina had had her fill of the room. Roxy extended a hand but Catalina ignored it and hugged her instead. This made Roxy laugh as she returned the hug. To Daisy’s surprise, and likely Catalina’s, Annie got up and hugged her too. It was very brief, and admittedly a little awkward, but she had overcome her shyness. She was probably comfortable in her own house, surrounded by familiar faces, so it was easier for her to open up.

“Tea?” She asked, breezing past the awkwardness with offering her a seat at the table. This little table had become full! Annie poured a new cup for everyone, and then proceeded to add too much sugar to her own cup. Catalina giggled at this and copied her. They are going to have some crazy kids on their hands after this, Roxy and Daisy glanced at each other and laughed. Well, if you can’t stop them, might as well join them. They added sugar to their cups, Inko having to summon another stack of sugar cubes, as the previous one disappeared quickly.

A sugar crash on HardCore Realistic mode was completely different. If Daisy had gotten tired enough to lay down on Realistic, she had no clue what was coming next. The giddy girls laughed, some of them still a bit sugar high. Daisy heard their voices get louder, but not because they were yelling. No, if anything, they were talking quieter. It just hit her mind louder than before. She announced her impending sugar crash before putting her head on Annie’s lap. Before she knew it, she was out of it. Not enough to send her to SinglePlayer, but enough to feel the tips of her hands and feet becoming fuzzy. Annie braided her hair, Catalina joining. That activated her touch boost, the fuzzy hands and feet becoming less troublesome as she felt the nice massage on her scalp. Daisy opened her eyes, not realizing what she was looking at until her vision cleared. Her head was at a level under the table, across from her was Roxy’s pink underwear. Ok, this was highly irregular. Not the fact that she saw Roxy’s underwear, that’s nothing new. It’s that Roxy was wearing bright underwear. Daisy didn’t even know that she owned any color of underwear other than black. Roxy’s skirt, which was resting on her thighs, was already brighter than Daisy was used to. Was Roxy behaving differently? Daisy thought back. Her hugs were typically always warm, nothing strange there. She was less reserved than normal when it came to downing the sugar with the rest of the girls, but that wasn’t too strange, per say. She’ll have to be conscious of Roxy, maybe even pull her aside to give her a chance to say anything in person.

Daisy’s eyes didn’t have anything to look at underneath the table other than Roxy’s cameltoe. Roxy wouldn’t mind, besides, it didn’t do anything for Daisy sexually. Sure, it was a cute, intimate body part to look at, and made especially alluring with pink panties over it, but it wasn’t anything that would turn Daisy on. Things that turned Daisy on were usually sex paraphernalia, like toys or machines. She associated those objects with masturbation, but it felt so crude to think that people felt the same way about other people. They weren’t just an object of sex; they were a human soul, with emotions and dreams. She knew that some would think of her like that if she was a stripper, but it didn’t bother her enough to stop pursuing that job. She was comfortable in her body, so if others appreciated it, she just took the compliment. And the money.

Roxy lifted up on to her knees to get a scone for her tea, and when she sat back down, her skirt fell between her legs. Ah, well. It’s not like she wouldn’t see Roxy in cute clothes some other time. She just doesn’t know if it will be quite as colorful, and Daisy loves colors. Maybe Roxy was trying to branch out, for Daisy’s sake. It was sure working, if that was the case.

The girls had made random braids in Daisy’s hair, and seemed to be satisfied with their work. Annie had switched to petting her, as if she was a cat in her lap. Catalina saw Roxy starting to eat savories and joined her, picking out small pastries and trying them one by one. She spoke to Roxy in Portugese, surprised to hear her answer back in Portugese. Roxy was always surprising Daisy, although it seemed to be on theme for the employees of the company to be bilingual or more. They must come from everywhere to Silicon City. Daisy read the subtitles, having Ray turn Roxy’s purple and Catalina’s bright blue. They showed up so that Daisy could read them comfortably without moving her head from Annie’s lap, her calm strokes sending soothing vibes to ease Daisy’s sugar headache. Annie would occasionally brush past her ear, and it would send a spark all the way down Daisy’s spine.

Daisy played with the edge of Annie’s skirt as she listened to the conversation, reading the translation. Annie was wearing a Madoka Magica cosplay, if Daisy got her anime correct. That was one she saw heaps of art for, but never watched it. The skirt had pink star points coming down from the waist, an overskirt above a really puffy white petticoat. That’s what made putting her head on Annie’s lap so darn comfortable, the stupid amount of layers under the skirt to poof it out made for a tremendous pillow. Plus, Virtual Real fabric just hit different. It was interesting that it felt better to others, too, considering that it only played back your own sensory input to yourself, from when you scanned it in. It couldn’t play that same input to anyone else, because of compatibility issues between different mental maps. It’s just higher quality in general because it’s Facebook, she supposes. Apparently David was able to recreate that level of quality, but was probably against Facebook’s terms of service. She really doesn’t know how they get away with anti-competitive practices like that. It’s against their TOS to fake Virtual Real clothes for “users safety” but that just meant that they wanted the whole Virtual Real market for themselves. A walled garden. Daisy really does need to start writing down a huge list of stuff she wants to generate for herself. Maybe Annie would help her decide. That would be a bit hard to explain though. She wouldn’t want to insult Annie earning all her clothes the hard, expensive way. No, it’s better it was just something she would do alone. She could tell Roxy of course, especially for her to make sure she did it safely. Daisy was still too scared to go back, anyway. But she could start a list now and just work on it until she had plenty of ideas and was ready to take the risk.

The girls finished up Tea Time; Daisy managed to snag some scones after her headache went away. It didn’t help that she was cramping, and she mentioned to the group that she was on her time of the month. She got a mixed reaction, Roxy was a bit confused, since she knew Daisy was a Virtual Girl. The other girls comforted her, telling her that she can let them know if she wants anything, even during the mission. She was still stoked to go on the mission though, but had to visit the restroom first to take care of herself. Annie showed her the way, Daisy seeing a glimpse of the rest of the pink-walled house before entering the marble bathroom. This was very nice, a long bathroom with a huge standing shower at the end. The big mirror spanned across the whole counter, countless beauty supplies filling up almost all the available space. The sink looked tiny between the hordes of product. Daisy sat on the toilet, for the first time since enabling HardCore Realistic, actually needing to go. It was incredibly relieving, even though the cramps stayed around. They would come in waves, with little rhyme or reason to them. She got herself a new tampon, her flow wasn’t heavy enough to need her to change it quite yet, but it was smart to do anyway, before she headed out. She cleaned up, looking at all the supplies. She decided to test out texting, asking Annie if she could use some product. Annie responded quite quickly, obviously no need to physically type things. She was welcome to anything, Inko would automatically refill and clean anything when she exited the bathroom. Daisy smiled, starting to apply makeup. She was going to be a fashionable superhero. Superheroine? It seemed gender neutral enough to stick with superhero.

She applied the primer and foundation, Annie luckily having her skin tone. She picked up a bronzer. She doesn’t really know how to use this stuff too well, and could probably use some help. She can remove it if she ends up not liking it and call Annie in for backup. It would be impressive to do all on her own, though. She goes slow with it, trying to use it as if she were painting light on a character. It actually was rather like painting, especially when it came to blending and contour lines. She was now in familiar territory, and added the blush expertly. She breezes past the highlighter, but this is where her expertise dies out. She doesn’t apply eyeshadow much, but it should be pretty easy. She goes conservative with the color choice, matching her eyes. She even adds her rare sparkle effect to it. This was really cool. To top it all off, she adds some eyeliner wings. Now she can put on some bright red lipstick. She almost forgot the setting spray, but managed to last-minute turn around and set her makeup. She took one last look at herself. Very nice.

She exited the bathroom, taking her time to look around a bit. The rest of the house was similar to the girl’s room, with pink walls and plenty of art. Daisy knew people were waiting on her, but couldn’t help to look at all the different art pieces. They were of different medium, not all in the same style as the ones in the room. These were much more explicit, all of female forms. There were abstract nude artworks, anime style nudity with convenient censoring, and plenty more to look at. Daisy didn’t want to poke around too much, or keep people waiting, but the art was nice to look at on the way back. She entered the room, the girls instantly complimenting her makeup. She felt warmth in her ears, appreciating the attention. The younger girls wanted to follow her example and everyone ended up in the bathroom. Sure enough, Inko had refilled and cleaned everything. Annie had a blast doing Catalina’s makeup. When she was done, Roxy applied Annie’s makeup in her typical goth style. Annie loved it, her bright features now starkly contrasted in a moody black. She made it work, though! Roxy had makeup on, but let Catalina redo it. Now Roxy really looked different, as Catalina chose the absolute brightest pallet for her. Catalina wasn’t the most experienced with makeup, but she certainly knew enough to transform Roxy.

Once they were finished, they all followed Daisy to the StarBeam map via teleport. Unfortunately her makeup would not persist into MultiPlayer, but it will still be on when she returns to PrivatePlayer. Roxy arrived first, and Daisy took the opportunity to ask her.

“Hey Roxy. I wanted to let you know that you can text me if anything is up,” She took her by the hand, peering into her eyes, “you’re good though, right?”

Roxy smiled, if Daisy had any concern it would have been satiated, “yeah, darling, I’m actually much better than I’ve ever been. I really owe it to you,” and the two share an extremely nice hug. When they separate, Daisy accepts the rest of the teleport requests, the other girls popping in.

Daisy takes Roxy and Annie by the hand, Catalina figuring it out and hold’s Annie’s other hand, “ready to get your superpowers, girls?” Daisy skips along the path. They are headed to the lighthouse, or Beam Control, where Zoey lives. She’s the 8-year-old daughter of WonderBeam, she inherited her superhero powers and is called StarBeam. The kids at her school don’t know her secret identity, though. She lives with her grandpa, Gramps, and her Seagull, Kipper. Henry is her sidekick, otherwise known as Boost. He makes helpful inventions, sometimes working flawlessly to help save the day. Other times, they can cause a bit of trouble, too, but he means the best. He is the son of Mayor Blumenshine, the woman in charge of Somerset.

Daisy enters the lighthouse, “Zoey! Gramps!” she gets an echo, “Kipper?” She grasps at strings, “maybe they are in Beam Control,” and heads over to an innocuous old scuba helmet, pressing the front of it. It glows, and in the middle of the spiral staircase, a tube generates. This sparkly tube sends them down to underneath the ground, where the main Control station is. They each slide down a separate tube, colors flashing and theme songs playing. When they exit, they find StarBeam, Gramps, Boost, and Kipper all staring at a large screen.

“We’re so glad you’re here,” Gramps says, turning around, “We’ve got a big warning. Looks like it’s a full scale invasion, planet Goop is sending everything they got. Too bad they chose the day we got our out-of-town backup! Daisy, with your StarBeam powers, Catalina with your Boost ability, Roxy with your WonderBeam powers, and Annie with your ShapeShifting ability, they’ve got a heck of a time!” He recited it a bit like he was pulling at strings. They probably don’t have many 4 people quests in this map, and the game just started giving them copies of powers that already exist. Well, there were limits to all maps, unless you played it in PrivatePlayer or SinglePlayer. Annie was the only one to get a Villain power, hers was the same as Goop’s. That will actually come quite in handy.

The Goop are an alien race of shapeshifters. Their original form is a green, three-eyed squid with 8 arms and two large tentacles, relative to their small body. Their 3 eyes are the only part that they are unable to conceal in a different form, unless they close their eyes. They can float and fly around or even shapeshift into a spacecraft that has propulsion. This makes them exceptional at breaking into Beam Control, since they can always find their way to the lighthouse, as long as they shapeshift to hide from everyone along the way. Grandpa explains the situation, the great and powerful Todd has summoned backup, coordinating the alien invasion to break him free. He is a villain with the power to become a giant version of himself. His goal is to rule the world, and that all starts with defeating Somerset and its super heroes.

Daisy and Annie remember the way to cause the Goop to reveal their true form, from watching the show. They mention it, and StarBeam is reminded of that, “that’s right! We just need to all have flashlights with beam crystals, that will let us see Goop!”

Boost zips around, with Gramps help, crafting a flashlight for everyone. Now they all can reveal the location of the shapeshifters. Some could already be in the building! The group does a sweep of Beam Control, but it looks like they haven’t made it down to this layer of security yet.

“Now StarBeam, Daisy, and Roxy, you are tasked with capturing these invaders. Your BubbleBeam power can be paired with the BeamCrystal’s rays to trap Goop in a bubble, preventing them from shapeshifting to get out of it,” Gramps explained once the area was secure, “we will be able to send them back to space from Beam Control.”

They look at the massive monitor, seeing the icons of spaceships coming towards the planet. They listen to the game plan, all aware of what they had to do. This seemed like quite a tough mission, Daisy was glad they had all of them though. They worked their way back up the lighthouse, everyone checking every nook and cranny with their flashlights. Once they got outside, they were able to test out their super powers. Annie shapeshifted, similar to the Goop, her glowing purple eyes were the only thing that were recognizable in her new form, unless she closed them. She had turned into Daisy, with glowing purple eyes. Daisy laughed, hugging her Annie version of herself. Daisy said, “it’s time to shine!” And her clothes were replaced with StarBeam’s outfit. Roxy as WonderBeam powered up as well, and Catalina materialized Boost’s outfit, with plenty of gadgetry to help the team. StarBeam and Boost instructed the team how to use each of their powers. Everyone kept an eye on their watches, seeing the spaceships on the radar, coming closer. Once the tutorial was finished, the ships started disappearing off the radar. The Goop were going undercover, disguising themselves as they got closer to the planet. This is where the mission starts. The team fanned out, communicating with their watches to cover the most area. The Goop could come to the lighthouse from any direction, even above. StarBeam, Daisy, and Roxy covered the skies. Annie was inside of the house, disguising herself as the submarine helmet, so she could catch any Goop trying to enter. Her purple eyes glowed under the mask, but hopefully it was still enough to trick any intruders. Boost and Catalina were able to run around the house, using their super-speedy shoes to cover the ground. The first sighting was by Roxy, spotting spaceships headed their way quickly, doging to avoid the superheroes. It wasn’t enough though, and one pass of the flashlight was enough to take away their propulsion. Without their added speed, it wasn’t long before they got bubbled. Next, Catalina and Boost discovered the Goop, disguised as garden gnomes. Daisy flew after one, using a Beam powered BubbleBlast to trap them without their shape shifting powers. Finally, Annie caught the last one, who made it all the way into the house and was attempting to open the passageway to Beam Control. Starbeam flew in, bubbling them. They took the bubbled intruders into Beam Control, and set them into space. Gramps was waiting for them at the control panel, watching the screen. The key was still in its secure lockbox, and the squad breathed a sigh of relief. They did it! Gramps walked over to the security tube, reaching in and taking out the key. The group looked quizzically at him, wondering what he was going to say next. Instead, he turned and looked at them with three eyes.

“Wait, that’s not Gramps!” Daisy realized too late, as the Goop turned into their original form and launched themselves into space, with the rest of their invaders and the key. Their laugh echoed throughout Beam Control as they rocketed up through the lighthouse and out the top, sailing into the sky to free their leader.

“Gramps, come in! Goop got the key and went to space!” Annie said, fully invested into character. Gramps popped up on their wrist, he was still up at the top of the lighthouse.

“I saw, kids,” he said, looking out at the fleeing Goop, “this isn’t over yet.”

They had to prepare for the worst. The great and powerful Todd was going to come to the city, stomping around in his full form. StarBeam instructed them all, “when things seem to be too much, just remember, take a moment take a breath, make a plan and try your best.”

All the girls followed her lead, even Boost took a breath. When they exhaled, they were able to be calm and figure out a plan.

“Catalina, Boost, do you think you can combine your Megasizers to make me bigger?” Daisy wondered, knowing it could only make people about a quarter of the size of Todd. They all ran outside. Sure enough, Todd was already making his way over. He had been locked up in his island castle, just off the coast of Somerset. He waded through the shallows as if they were a little puddle. He was a purple king, with a tall golden crown upon his massive skull, His large yellow eyes glared at Somerset, the passion to crush the town clear in his gaze. His royal clothes had a stand up collar behind his head, his arms long compared to his relatively short legs. He smirked, his two buck teeth shining in the sun. As he walked up the beach confidently, a giant girl grew before him. She had a superhero outfit on, her hair was bright red, and her eyes sparkled green.

“Oh, you pesky superheroes can’t stop the great and powerful Todd! Somerset will be mine, and next, the world!” He bellowed, the girl only half his height. He tried pushing her aside, but she was much stronger than she looked. He was stopped in his tracks, the girl had the audacity to stand in his way. As she distracted him, little did he know that tiny humans were setting up a trap for him. Boost and Catalina were crafting equipment as Roxy flew around, putting it all together. Gramps instructed them on what to do, and Annie shapeshifted into a giant present. Todd may want the world, but he was easily distracted. Daisy told him about the present, he turned and saw it, immediately happier.

“For the great and powerful Todd? You all know how to win over your new ruler, don’t you? Smart choice!” He giddily ran towards the present, unbeknownst to him that it was a trap. Everyone heard Annie on the watch comms, “this better work, I do not want to be Todd’s present.”

Luckily, the team had crafted a foolproof trap. Yellow beams of energy surrounded the great and powerful Todd as soon as he set foot in the square he neglected to see. His superpower faded, shrinking him. He was still high up in the air, as he shrinks to the center of his mass, which happens to be closer to his huge cranium. He plummeted, landing on the mattress that Gramps had the foresight to have Roxy set out. The beams closed in, forming bars around him. Gramps smiled and locked him in with a BeamKey.

“You can’t have Somerset, much less the world, while we are here,” he said as the great and powerful Todd began to throw a fit. He was carted off to his castle again, defeated.

“Thanks everyone for your help. We couldn’t have done it without you,” Gramps congratulated the group, money and experience being added to everyone’s account. Daisy let the girls jump in her hand, still a giantess. She held them up to her face, smiling at them, “that was awesome! You all were so cool.”

Catalina asked if she wanted to stay as a giant. Daisy nodded, “I think it’s great fun. Do you all want to hang out in this world for a bit? I could walk us around...”

Daisy showed them around the world, with the girls in her hands, Annie pointing out things. Villagers cheered, congratulating the heroes from saving them from Todd again. Once they had their fill of the coastal town of Somerset, Daisy set the group down and had Catalina shrink her back to normal size. The megasizer could only shrink her down to 10 feet tall, since they didn’t have the additional help from Boost. Daisy certainly didn’t mind it, it was rather fun to be a giant. They all changed out of their superhero clothes. Catalina was in a denim jacket, with a plain, gray, low cut undershirt. She had on a red plaid skirt that had a sheer, black, ruffled edge. She was wearing fishnet leggings with tall, black socks on under her blue suede sneakers.

“So, Catalina,” Daisy said, sitting down cross legged on the grass to be at their height, careful to not flash them with her panties, “not to put you on the spot, but I wanted to know, why the ears? Fox, right?”

Catalina blushed, now that everyone was looking at her. Her ears turned down, flat against her head, “um, yeah, fox ears…”

Daisy could tell she was getting shy, so she reached out and pet her head with her giantess hand. Luckily she wasn’t outrageously bigger than normal, but it was still a hilarious difference in size. Daisy smiled at her, “do you mind me asking if you are a furry, or was it just a fun cosmetic addition?”

Catalina looked put on the spot, but seemed reassured by the headpats, “yeah, I’m a furry.”

Daisy knew Annie would know what that is, as cosplayers and fursuiters had overlap, at least in the idea of dressing up as something you love. She looked at Roxy, “do you know what that is, or should I explain it?”

Roxy raised an eyebrow, knowing the concept. She thought it was a kink or fetish, so she found it really strange for Daisy to ask the young girl that question, “yeah, I’d love some explanation, thanks Daisy.”

Daisy picked up Catalina and put her on one of her giantess thighs, still petting and playing with her. This seemed to reassure Catalina, and she was less tense. Daisy thought for a bit about what to say about it, “Catalina can correct me with what it means to her, but generally a furry is a fan of anthropomorphic animals. At its most basic, the interest of these human-like animals is something the whole fandom can agree on.”

Catalina seemed satisfied with this answer, so Daisy continued, “some fans will create their own character, either one they relate to or one they wish to be like. This is commonly known as a fursona or OC, for original character. They can select any species, even ones that don’t have fur, like scalies, meaning reptiles. To be completely honest, it can be anthropomorphic anything, as creativity is the only limitation. The furries can dress up like their character, either in a fursuit like a mascot, or a partial, like Cat’s ears and tail,” Catalina’s tail flicked at this, her ears perking back up. She leaned over to rest her head against Daisy’s side. Daisy put a warm hand around her, cradling her.

“Plenty of them are content with just drawing them. However, even people with social anxiety feel more comfortable when dressing up and can be more playful. People who wouldn’t be caught dead dancing in public gain the ability to go on stage, in front of thousands, to dance as their fursona,” Catalina nodded at this, responding, “I have crippling social anxiety, regardless if I’m in the Virtual World or not. Dressing up has made it much better, especially if I’m in my fullsuit.”

Daisy and Annie looked at each other, she’s got a fullsuit! Daisy used her thumb to pet her back, “I would love to see that if you want to show us sometime!”

Catalina slid off Daisy’s thigh, landing between her legs. She poked around in her menus for a bit, before a fluffy carpet of fur spread over her body. Her hefty body now looked like a plush teddy bear, light blue fur like her hair. Her face transformed, gaining canine features like a muzzle and black nose. Her thighs were massive, the fur rounding and reshaping her legs. Her legs looked like she was a four legged creature standing upon their hind legs, with backward knees. Her breasts, which were large for her age, were now buried under the fur, and her chest looked more gender neutral.

Daisy fawned over the plushie furry. Catalina certainly acted more playful, tilting her head as she looked at everyone. Daisy put her hands under her armpits and easily lifted her up and over her crossed legs. She put her down in front of Annie, and they hugged, Annie almost sinking into the thick fur. Catalina went up to Roxy, pausing and tilting her head again. She was unsure if Roxy wanted a hug, but it didn’t take Roxy long to cave and hug her.

“What’s your fursona’s name?” Daisy asked. Some furries didn’t like to talk when they were in the fursuit, staying in character. Catalina didn’t seem to mind, and a muffled response came from the suit.

“Céu Azul,” She said, the subtitles translating it to Blue Sky. Daisy flipped over to lay on her stomach, so she could see Céu better. Her Cami, now a very large swath of fabric, hung and rippled in the wind.

“I love their design!” Daisy’s large face came close, her eyes sparkling. Céu hugged her face, the soft fur incredible. This was a Virtual Real fursuit, and it showed.

“Do you get hot in it?” Daisy asked, unfamiliar with extreme Virtual Real outfits. The furry shook their head no, their ears flopping. They went between Daisy’s arms, curling up between them and in front of Daisy’s hanging breasts. Daisy felt the incredibly soft fur on her bare skin.

“I don’t want to sound rude, I just don’t know much about it,” Roxy said, a little uneasy with how to approach this. She was fine with talking about sexual stuff, but just not in front of younger people. She took a breath before asking what was on her mind, “isn’t furry a sexual thing, as well?”

A silence ensued, the awkward subject being the cause. Daisy eventually agreed, but explained further, “there are multiple groups in the fandom. That is a part of it, but not mandatory to call oneself a furry.”

Surprisingly, it was Catalina who spoke up next, albeit slightly muffled, “if you mean to ask if I participate in that scene, I don’t mind saying I do.”

The group was met with more awkward silence, but Roxy felt like she could ask more questions, based on the freeness of response she got from Catalina, “if you don’t mind more questions, would you like to tell me how old you are? I don’t mean to pry, but I would like to get to know you better.”

“I’m fifteen. If you are worried about me, the age of consent in Brazil is fourteen,” She explained, looking out from the safety of Daisy’s arms. The connectivity of the Virtual World causes everyone to have to look through a societal lense. Meeting people from everywhere forces one to adjust their perception to the unique backgrounds of individuals. This statement was rather uncomfortable for the American group, but they tried very hard not to judge her.

Daisy wanted to lighten the conversation a bit. She didn’t know that Roxy would have gotten into those questions so soon. She looked down at the light blue furry between her arms, “tell us a little bit about Céu!”

She turned over to lay on her back, looking up at Daisy, with her head propped up on one of Daisy’s arms, “Céu Azul is a gender neutral fox and goes by she/they,” her canine mouth even moved when she talked, likely the bottom of her chin hitting the jaw in the fursuit head to move it. She rests her paws over her chest, the 3 plump toes on each interlocked. She had little black claws poking out, likely also made out of a soft material.

“They have a pair of wings, although not on this suit,” it was very typical for the furry community to make hybrids, mixing species for their character.

“They love flying, puffy white clouds, summer time, and spiders. They dislike storms, water, bullies, and knives,” they idly chatted about Céu or furries in general, Roxy had settled down to the idea after a bit. Daisy rolled over, putting the furry on her stomach. It didn’t take long for them to find a comfy spot, resting between her breasts. Annie opted to be by Daisy’s shoulder, playing with the red hair that was even longer now. Roxy wandered around the park, not straying out of earshot, but not asking too many questions, either. She looked around, the nice sun and light breeze was a tranquil moment.

Daisy pet Céu, asking if she was ok with it. She wholeheartedly agreed. The furry moving around would make Daisy very ticklish, especially where their fur would contact bare skin, like her exposed tummy or cleavage. Her laugh boomed across the open park, Daisy forgetting how much louder she was as a giantess.

Annie had made an extremely long braid, it lay across the grass as she finished up the end. Daisy sat up, holding her arms so that Céu would harmlessly slip through her cleavage into her awaiting cradle. The big boned furry would have been too much, if Daisy hadn’t been both a giantess and a supergirl. The fox was half Daisy’s height, but still was able to nestle comfortably in her unnaturally strong arms. Daisy stood up, her towering stature casting a shadow over Annie. The braid lay across her back, the end not kept by a hair tie but still holding together. She gently rocked the fox, following Roxy’s gaze off into the distance. It was a pretty world.

“What would you girls like to do now?” Daisy said, well aware that the furry was gender neutral. They understood what she meant. No one spoke up quickly, so it seemed like everyone was still considering it.

“I don’t know about you all, but I’m on HardCore Realistic, and I am famished,” Daisy admitted.

“I’ve got a world for you, then,” Catalina says, turning to look up at the giantess from her arms, “PrivatePlayer, so we don’t have to spend account money at the restaurants.”

All seem to be down for this idea, and they follow Catalina after she disappears from Daisy’s arms.

Daisy appears first, on a black asphalt road. Restaurants line the street, all ethnic and fancy. Each one had a clear theme, cuisine from around the world. Catalina approaches her, not having accepted the rest yet. She takes her hand, looking at her eyes, “hey, do you like me?”

Daisy was not quick to assume what she meant, “yeah, of course I like you!” and Catalina shook her head, realizing that information was being lost in translation.

“Would you have sex with me in the future?” She stated much more explicitly, hoping it wouldn’t get misinterpreted by the subtitles.

Daisy’s heart skipped a beat. She flashed back to the age of consent talk, and how she had breezed by it, still playing with her. She didn’t think she was leading her on, but letting her play on her tummy was quite vulnerable and intimate, now that she thought about it. Like usual, she stuck with the truth.

“I’m asexual, so I’m not attracted to you or anyone. I am sex-positive though, and don’t mind the act with anyone I trust. I’m not looking for a romantic partner,” Daisy now wondered if that would be butchered by translation. Catalina looked satisfied with that answer, but wanted to clarify just in case, “we can talk about it later, but you believe you would be fine with it, correct?”

Daisy said they can go into more detail one on one. She wasn’t absolutely sure she was comfortable about the whole age of consent situation, and Catalina understood that when she brought it up. Daisy thought to herself that she was also unfamiliar about having sex with someone she recently met. Roxy had felt like someone she knew and could trust from the moment she met her. Catalina was different, both from a cultural background and a language barrier.

In any case, Catalina announced she would let in everyone else. She changed out of her fursuit, back into her normal outfit of a denim jacket and plaid red skirt. She used automatic wardrobe swaps; Daisy wondered if she was on life support or not. She thought not, assuming she was like Annie who had to occasionally get off for Real Life reasons. Daisy realized the appeal for them to have it be gamelike was more alluring, as all the Real World tasks were enough for them, and they could use the convenience of the Virtual World being a game to get away from it all.

Once everyone connected, Daisy asked where the nearest bathroom was. Catalina said there was one in every restaurant, so they all waited for her in the street as she ran to the closest one.

When she came back, they had decided on Brazilian food, at Catalina’s persuasion. Daisy was along for it, they visited the colorful Brazilian shop. All the food was already cooked, it couldn’t spoil, Cat reassured them. It also wouldn’t run out, she winked at the girls, and then stated that they can try to stop her from testing that theory.

Daisy soon found out the incredible difference of HardCore Realistic as the other girl went around tasting everything. She had attempted to keep up, but had become incredibly full. There was so much good food, barbeque like she had never tasted meat before. Her taste boost had activated to capture the nuances of the seasoning, incredible new ways that spices interacted and flavored the meat became obvious to her. Catalina suggested dishes, saying what they were called and sometimes fun facts, like how her avó, or grandmother, would make that dish for her.

Daisy was now unable to eat any more. She hung out with the girls though, still chatting away and having a blast. Annie seemed to back off eating too much food as well. Daisy considered turning off the feeling of getting too full and letting her bottomless stomach return but then decided against it. Being this full though did have consequences. Her cramps came back with a vengeance. She excused herself to the bathroom again. She became nauseous, but it wasn’t from OverClocking. Unfortunately, she lost the contents of her stomach, after only a few minutes in the bathroom. Roxy came in, sensing something was up. She comforted Daisy as best she could, a real friend. Daisy knew she could turn off or at least mitigate most of these things. But this was real life to her. She explained that to Roxy, telling her how she wanted to feel like a real girl, how she wanted to stay dedicated to HardCore Realistic. Roxy understood, encouraging her and saying that it was a valid feeling. The encouragement, the feelings, it all flooded Daisy’s mind. She sat in the bathroom with Roxy and cried, her friend holding her hand. She didn’t know if she was happy or sad when crying, but it didn’t matter. Crying still felt good. It felt good to have things be real, even the bad stuff.

She cleaned herself up, thanking Roxy and washing off her streaked makeup. She had done a good job all by herself this morning. She was proud of that makeup, and made a mental note to save a still image of looking in the mirror after she had first applied it. Ray heard the mental note and moved the requested image over to Long Term storage. She should save more screenshots of her and her friends. She tasks Ray with automatically filling up a folder of any moment they assume to be nostalgic. She hopes they can render some in Third Person. That takes compute time, to refetch the world and rely on memories to rebuild a new scene out of it, but they accept the task. She allows a sliver of the render farm to also be used for that, and it will happen in the background. Ray asks her to review the first batch for them to watch how the pictures make her feel, so that they can figure out what she likes and doesn’t like about the photographs. This surprises her, a request from Ray. She of course agrees, wanting to see the pictures, especially if that means that pictures in the future will be orchestrated better or are more pleasing to her. She thought about it for a bit. Darn Facebook always wanting to tailor specifically to the user. Cool things could come out of it though, especially if that meant she could look at all her fun memories.

They exited the bathroom after Daisy finished looking at pictures, taking a seat next to the girls. They were getting along just dandy, Annie was much more open with Catalina now. It just took some time; that was normal.

After a bit, Annie had to hop off, hugging everyone. She hugged Daisy the longest, happy to have spent the day with her. Daisy squeezed her little shoulders tight, always glad to see her.

Catalina was short to follow, and after a tender (and admittedly sexually tense) hug, it was now just Roxy and Daisy.

The two chatted, switching worlds. They were back in the colorful high rise apartment in Dubai. Roxy had to ask, “so how do you feel about that young girl?”

Daisy pondered this, “well, I wouldn’t say that it was too surprising. I’m sure we all explored sexuality at that age. I don’t mind furries, either. What about you, this seemed all new to you?”

Roxy nodded, expressing that it was an understatement, “I’m not unfamiliar with exploring sexuality, but that didn’t sit right with me,” Daisy taking this statement and mulling it over. She might not be so open minded about Mabel, either. She certainly heard about Mabel, as Daisy told Roxy about her. Daisy might want to let her take a breather from this stuff for now, not to have her meet Mabel just yet. They talked about furries, Daisy finding out that Roxy had only heard about furries as a fetish. She shook her head, it was unfortunate. Plenty of it was just creative, passionate people. The focus shouldn’t be on the sexual nature of it. It was easy for Daisy to say, as sexual attraction meant very little to her.

“Hey, I wanted you to meet a friend of mine. They are an online friend, do you mind if I invite them?” Roxy asked, Daisy shook her head, “I don’t mind; you may invite them.”

It took a bit after asking, but the friend appeared before them both. A big-breasted person appeared, dressed in a seductive attire. Daisy was open-minded, not particularly bothered by what they showed up in.

They extended a hand, “So this is the Daisy I’ve heard much about. I’m Lauren. You’ve certainly got a type, eh Roxanne?” She glanced over at Roxy, seeing her blush. Daisy didn’t understand this comment, her mind not boosted to pick up subtle cues.

The buxom lady had on a black swimsuit, if you could call it that. It had plenty of thin black cords branching off of the main form of it, creating thin slices where you could see her underlying skin. As far as how much skin it covered, it wasn’t much. It still left enough to the imagination to be appealing, but looked fragile and stretched to capacity.

Daisy took her hand, shaking it gently. She wasn’t a heavyset lady, but was one of the few who could contest Daisy for large breasts.

Roxy cleared her throat, over her initial embarrassment, “I’ll be clear, I met Lauren in a mixer, and we’ve had a few encounters since. Daisy is my longtime friend, who I trust, as I’ve told Lauren. I wanted to see if you two were ok with trying a threesome,” Roxy finished her sentence, Daisy’s mind taking a bit to catch up. Her mind sequentially went through the statement. On the very last word, it broke. Her heart skipped a beat. Or it stopped beating entirely, at least that’s what it felt like. The blood stopped in her veins, growing cold and freezing up. Daisy’s mind just about stopped, her eyesight growing dim and her touch becoming fuzzy. Her safety features started triggering, her senses becoming muted. Through the onslaught, her decision-making boosted and she managed to say the spell of destruction.

“Valuse.”

The scene faded away, her eyes adjusting to the new light. She could barely tell, but she was in the Laputian garden. Her locked down senses started easing up, but her mind still wasn’t done. She curled up into a ball and rocked back and forth, the grass under her bending to her shifting weight. It didn’t take long, as Roxy was informed immediately, but it felt like forever before Daisy felt a hand on her shoulder and heard her voice.

“Daisy, are you alright?” Roxy had responded to the emergency PrivatePlayer instance. Daisy heard the question, although it sounded very far away. She was still pretty locked down, her wrist flashing that safety mode was enabled. Roxy stayed with her until she got her breathing back under control.

“I should have asked when it was just us, I’m so sorry,” Roxy felt terrible, seeing her friend in such a state. Daisy still couldn’t respond, although her hearing had fully returned. Where the heck did that come from?

Roxy couldn’t do much other than sit and wait with her, as Daisy slowly regained herself. This wasn’t just from being on her period. Something really bad caused this, but Daisy had no idea what.

Daisy wiped her face off, her trembling hands now able to feel again. She took deep breaths, upon instruction of Roxy. The fuzzy feeling from hyperventilation started to fade, and Daisy gained control of her voice.

“I’m sorry, Roxy,” she apologized, not knowing what she was apologizing for. Usually she would only apologize if she meant it, Daisy was rather thick-headed about that stuff.

“There’s nothing you have to apologize for. I need to make it up to you, I messed up. Are you ok if I touch you?” Roxy asked, not knowing where Daisy was at. Daisy nodded, her hair a mess from her hands clutching her head.

Roxy sat next to her and hugged Daisy. Roxy’s friend had been online and messaging her; she hadn’t even thought to make their intentions clear to Daisy before inviting Lauren over. That was a huge mistake. Roxy held Daisy’s trembling hand, quietly responding to Lauren’s messages. Her whispers were filtered out so that Daisy didn’t hear them. Neither Roxy nor Lauren expected that response from Daisy.

“I’ll never put you in that situation again, I promise,” Roxy looked at her friend, her heart aching.

“It’s safe to say don’t mention that type of… thing around me. I might have to add that to my filters,” Daisy could not have expected such a powerful response. She benefited from the decision making, and worked out what the problem was. Not where it came from, but it was certainly because of what Roxy suggested they do.

“It was what I asked that we do, not me telling you how I met Lauren, right?” Roxy was picking up the pieces and putting them together, she was rather smart. Daisy nodded, Ray confirming that threesomes were now filtered, in every capacity.

“I’m proud of you for using the SafeWord. You can use that any time to summon me, even if I’m not here,” Roxy sayed sincerely, watching her friend closely. Daisy ran her fingers through her hair, catching on the knots and unable to pull apart the braid. Roxy sent the request to Daisy’s AI to summon a brush, helping her unravel the braid. Daisy accepted the request, Roxy now able to brush the rest of her hair. They didn’t say much between the two of them, but started to relax more.

Daisy summons some vanilla ice cream for both of them, eating it and beginning to appreciate her surroundings again. It was soft serve, in the cone, and Roxy enjoyed the one Daisy handed to her. Daisy didn’t feel like talking about that subject any further, it might even just be filtered if she tried.

“I really liked being a giantess today,” she told Roxy, finally feeling good again.

“Yeah, that was super cool! Thank you for taking me along for the adventure. You play some really fun games,” Roxy was glad her friend was talking again, that gave her quite a scare.

Daisy nods, they start talking about their favorite parts of the game. Eventually they feel comfortable enough to approach the other pressing subject.

“Catalina said she likes me. I told her about asexuality and all of that. I don’t really understand the whole deal with age of consent though, if you could explain that to me. In a Virtual World context, of course,” Daisy felt like she knew what that meant otherwise.

“The Virtual World is really its own governance. Technically countries’ laws apply to the individuals in that country, but only if they are connected to MultiPlayer. PrivatePlayer, and of course SinglePlayer, are completely ungoverned,” Roxy explained.

“I assume FaceBook mitigates all liability, yeah?” Daisy figures where this is going. Roxy nods, “MultiPlayer is run by them, so they just turn over anything incriminating to the respective government of the user. The silly part about that is that anyone can just encrypt their connection to MultiPlayer, and now nothing useful can be turned over to the government.”

Daisy recalls encrypting her connection, end-to-end. She did it while in the middle of the legal battle, but that means her government doesn’t even know what she is up to online. Laws don’t really matter in this Virtual World. Filters and Safety Features are all that protect the users.

“Do you think she brought up the consent law cuz she gets asked that question a lot? Or that she realized we were from a different country…” Daisy had to re-evaluate this girl, no one really knows what her actual age is, just that she looks to have scanned her body at around the age of 15.

“If I’m honest, probably the first one. People in the Virtual World are able to have all their fun in SinglePlayer and PrivatePlayer, and sometimes they come to MultiPlayer and have to defend whatever strange or dangerous habits they picked up from where the possibilities are limitless,” Roxy said, her tone turning serious.

“I’m familiar with the idea of public lobbies being cesspools, would you say that is more or less true with the Virtual World?” Daisy had remembered how strange people came to the public worlds in previous games.

Roxy raised an eyebrow, “it’s not quite so obvious. There are MultiPlayer instances of all varieties. You can find a game where everyone is into it, devoted to the story or realism or whatever. You can also find maps or instances where it’s non-stop strange all the time. You kinda know what neighborhood you have entered when you get there.”

Daisy nodded, this placating her fear of MultiPlayer. She was still wary of it, rightfully so, but was not pessimistic. They talked a bit more about that, Daisy realizing the scope of the Virtual World. It was like an entirely new planet, a lawless frontier. Their conversation migrated to fursuits, and Daisy finally admitted, “yeah, I would say that I’m a furry. I’ve never done anything about it, but I look at drawings or fursonas and I really like them.”

Roxy wasn’t surprised, and they talked a bit more about the subject until Daisy brought up something she had been thinking about for a while, “I’d like to get more Virtual Real clothes in for myself. I know the ones I am wearing have been faked, and that I can just make up any more.”

Roxy was surprised to hear this, but knew about David’s fake Virtual Real clothes programs, “yeah, that would be pretty awesome. Were you thinking of a fursuit, or just new clothes in general?”

Daisy responded, taking off her boots and socks, “new clothes in general, although that is certainly something I want now after seeing Cat’s. I’m really afraid of it though, and I’ll need you to watch over me to make sure nothing bad happens.”

Roxy nodded, “I can certainly do that. I studied his Virtual Real clothes programs, so I know how they work. The only problem is, I don’t know how he… for lack of a better phrase… made you. It’s beyond my security clearance.”

Daisy was afraid of that part, but assumed it would be something like that, “yeah, I give you permission to watch over my vitals, if it helps. You could make sure I don’t get stuck in there or if something bad happens.”

Roxy nodded, understanding her fear of the unknown, “was this something you wanted to do now?”

Daisy paused, feeling the grass between her toes, “oh, uh,” she had not thought that far.

“No pressure my dear, if you don’t know a timeframe for it. We shouldn’t rush it if you’re not ready,” Roxy told her, seeing her pause.

“I at least would like to make a list of the things I want,” Daisy summons a notepad and pencil, “a fursuit would be at the top, but I’ll need a fursona. Would you like to help me design it?”

Roxy smiled; she was not a furry, but she loved to see her friend passionate about something. She got out her phone, looking up lists of animals, “do you have an idea of what animal you would like to be? Or anything we can rule out?”

Daisy scrunched her nose, “no snails, I hate snails. I love cats though,” She jotted down some ideas as they came to her on the piece of paper. She will have to get a new piece of paper when she starts working on the other outfits as well. She ended up sticking with a cat, and now they worked on a color pallet.

“Your favorite colors?” Roxy asked, pulling up a color wheel on her phone.

“Cotton Candy Pink and Blue, and then Bright Green like my eyes. But I don’t know if I want to work that into a pallet, or make something new,” just like before, they deliberated color pallets, but stuck with her initial answer.

“I also want her to be obviously a cat version of me, so red hair and sparkly green eyes,” Daisy said, as furries typically have a human head of hair to go along with their fur coat. Daisy started to sketch a female body. She kept it pretty close to her own profile, she was thinking of getting a thin layer of fur over her body, basically the opposite of Cat’s. Catalina’s suit hid her curves and formed entirely new ones; Daisy wanted to keep her same physique. Daisy really liked the idea of having fluffy breasts, to be completely honest. She had Ray generate oil pastels, she was familiar with how to blend them now, and it was a quick way to get her ideas down. She gave her unnamed fursona light blue along the tops of her shoulders, ears, and head. She made the inner part of the ear, lower part of the face, and breasts/tummy pink. She also put pink on her forearms and paws. The light blue wrapped around her body from the back, her thighs mostly pink but showing patches of blue on each side. She gave herself pink toes, except for the middle toe on the left foot, which she made blue. She thought it over and started making white markings over her body, subtle stripes, things that would follow the curvature of her body. Finally, before moving on to the eyes, she made her right hand/paw have a white index toe. The eyes were her typically sparkly green, with white eyebrows and dark black eyeliner. She gave a cat eyeliner to the cat. Finally, she drew long, red hair falling over her shoulders with gentle curls.

“Oh my, that’s adorable. It’s so you!” Roxy commented, watching Daisy’s sketch progress before her eyes.

“Yeah, now to make up a dozen more outfits,” Daisy chuckled. They had spent quite a bit of time on this one. She was really excited for it, you have no idea how soft Virtual Real fabric is. Daisy assumed from what Catalina said, that her fursuit was actually a murrsuit. It was a strange term, but it basically meant that the fursuit was modified to have well-placed flaps or zippers. The purpose of this was quite obvious, Daisy would probably make this one have the ability for fabric to part in the crotch region, as well. She doesn’t know how the process for faking the Virtual Real clothing goes, but she assumes it’s as easy as just imagining what she wants. It worked in PrivatePlayer with her swimsuit, and the scanning process would probably allow for SinglePlayer admin rights, so even more control.

Roxy and Daisy spent quite a bit of time discussing fashion and outfits. Daisy wanted Virtual Real clothes for every occasion. Sleepwear was high on the list, she went the babydoll route with that. She also wanted pastel fluffy sleepwear. They went down the list, making plenty of outfit ideas. Once either of them couldn’t think of more, they spawned the pink laptop and checked around the internet for more. Daisy said Annie would have loved to do all this, but she told Roxy her concern about how unexplainable it would be to show up with all the outfits they had discussed. Coming back with a Virtual Real fursuit would already need some explaining. Roxy agreed, but was still excited for her to have all the outfits she ever wanted.

Time didn’t pass in the Castle in the Sky; Daisy had no way of knowing how long it had been, besides asking Ray. She had a watch, but she did not check it often at all. Roxy was staying with her the whole time, she seemed to be free for a while, and not tired. Their conversations wandered, speaking about normal things or sometimes just listening to music through the laptop speakers.

“I think I’m ready,” Daisy said. She had thought about this for a while, weighing the danger and the rewards. She was rather obsessed with getting the fursuit, at this point. It hadn’t left her mind; she even made another drawing of her cat self. She drew the fursona in her Cami and green skirt as well, as sometimes furries will wear human clothes. Honestly, the skintight fluffy fur could be her Virtual Real underlying outfit if she ever does want to put on Virtual clothes. She would make it invisible, of course, but it would still feel so fluffy and nice. Her suit did not have the same legs as Cat’s suit, either. Cat’s suit had those animal-like backwards knees, called digitigrade. Daisy’s suit would just be the same shape as her human legs, called plantigrade.

Roxy was surprised, but down for it, “you can do it, girl. I’ll be making sure you are safe the whole way.”

Daisy calmed her breathing. She was just going in to get a couple of outfits, she would be fine. That fursuit sounded so amazing. She remembered hearing how expensive they were in real life. Since they were custom made, they could be thousands of dollars, and take months of labor. She should be very thankful to have the ability to bring in fake Virtual Real clothes.

Roxy gave her a reassuring smile, and Daisy hugged her, disappearing off to the scanner. Ray knew where she wanted to go, and the uncanny white walls of the van were cast up around her as Roxy disappeared. She shivered, memories of this place weren’t attached to the most pleasant part of her life. She thought back upon all the fun times she had since then. She was going to be fine. She took off the rest of her clothes, placing them in the cubby. She had a relative plan to make the most of each scan, with different hairstyles and even wigs, like Annie had suggested. She had plenty of scans, so she could take the luxury of not cramming everything perfectly in, but still valued her time. She stepped in front of the mirror with her arms in the famous T-Pose. Just like she had hoped, Ray could summon the clothes directly on her. She imagined her fursuit, this outfit was the most clear in her mind. When she opened her eyes, she saw a furry staring back at her. The machine made a sweep, Daisy feeling the intense sensory boost activate. She had forgotten about that. She didn’t want to run out of it, so she had better make this quick. Each scan only took about 15 seconds to sweep past her whole body, since there were two arms turning with each other on either side. She remembered the list with AI-Assisted clarity, Ray even helping out by providing the images she had looked at for inspiration. This way, she could fit many outfits within the limits of her sensitivity boost.

She wasn’t fast enough, though. She was close to the last outfits in the list when she felt her boost turn off. She looked in the mirror, reverted to her naked self. She remembered the side effects to be existentialism and dysphoria. She was quite comfortable with her body, so it usually ended up being a case of minor existentialism. This time was much different. She felt her body changing as she watched the mirror. She was actually losing who she was. This was not good. In the mirror, she saw her features soften. Her face rounded out, her lips lost their puffiness. She felt shorter, but most shocking of all, her familiar boobs were gone. In their place were a set of small, perky breasts, barely developed. Her shoulders were smaller, her arms scrawny. Her patch of pubic hair was missing. She was a child version of herself. The scanner made a pass, adding this version into her account. Daisy walked up to the mirror, staring at herself like she was someone else. This wasn’t an out of body experience, it was a bending of time. She does somehow remember this version of herself, but she was never in a playable game before now. David must have made her as a concept, showing Daisy’s younger self. Daisy looked down at her small hands and feet, astounded. She had never expected this. She had to get out of here before anything worse happened. Ray heard her thought and pulled the virtual plug, sending her unceremoniously careening back into the Studio Ghibli world.