Chapter 05

Daisy and Annie stood in front of the body length mirror in Daisy’s room. Mabel Pines sat on the bed, with the true wolf girl’s head in her lap. Vampirina was looking out the window, excited to see another girl who could fly like herself.

“So I can really change into anything I want?” Annie asked. Daisy nodded, glancing at the mirror. She demonstrated, lifting her arms. As smoothly as an AI changes clothes on a player, her arms separated into 4, two off of each shoulder. That was a medical complexity to acquire, but it helped that Daisy had anatomical data in her mind to call upon. Daisy was no longer afraid of changing how things worked in the Virtual World. She had grown significantly in the past few days, and she still had more to learn. Her goals were to change the world, she would put everything into her progress.

Annie jumped and clapped her hands, her eyes filled with wonderment at the transformations she had seen today. What would she want to be?

“And remember, it works just like requesting clothes. Inko can call upon any of the forms you have been in, so no need to be afraid that you will lose anything or forget how you looked. You can change your avatar as often as you want,” Daisy smiled at her jubilation.

Annie giggled and peered closely into the mirror at herself, musing, “wouldn’t that have competitive advantages in some games?”

Daisy tilted her head, putting one of her hands under her chin, thinking. After a bit, she responded, “yeah, you’re right. I’ll have to balance that in MultiPlayer, assuming I fix it. It would be server-side rules as far as avatar abilities go.”

Annie nodded in agreement. Plenty of servers already required a minimum playstyle. If you didn’t want HardCore Realistic immersion, you just don’t play servers with that restriction. Annie smiled as she thought of what she could do with this new power, “you know how freaking easy this is going to make cosplay? I can do non-humanoid cosplays without a second thought!”

Daisy was about to warn her that actually having new biology is weirder to get used to than she thought, but she was already transforming. Annie magically transformed into a unicorn about her same height. She was a my little pony character, except she retained her color pallet, eyes, and hairstyle. Daisy giggled as she looked at the pony version of Annie.

“Oh my god, this is weird,” Annie stumbled, not knowing how any of the limbs were supposed to go. She managed to lay down without hurting herself, the mirror not helping her gain her composure.

“Are you ok?” Daisy wondered, wishing she would have gotten out at least a warning before Annie tried a new body type.

“I think I’m a little bit sick,” Annie’s huge eyes rolled in her head, they slid closed as her new field of view was getting to her. She had sensory boosted in the past, but that’s just a sharper image of what she already saw. This was like having a fisheye lens of the world, and too much information streamed in at once.

“Can I touch you, or would that be too much stimulation?” Daisy asked, wanting to give her a hug badly.

“It would probably make things worse. I’m feeling parts of a completely different body right now and nothing makes sense,” she groaned, trying to stay still.

Daisy could understand. Having four arms was much more sensory input, and it came from a different place. Moving them was hard, too. It was like learning how to play an instrument when you don’t know any of the hand positions yet.

“Please distract me while I get used to this,” Annie asked, her voice was similar, but the equine mouth shaped her words differently. It was as if she put in a retainer.

Daisy obliged, telling her about her time with Céu Azul in much better detail. With the company not able to sniff around anymore, she could tell her everything. Annie didn’t have any reaction to Daisy mentioning the times Céu had sex with her. She might have been too busy dealing with her new equestrian body, but Daisy didn’t expect her to have a bad reaction to her story anyway.

“So they are intersex?” She asked once Daisy explained the second day. Daisy nodded, Annie seemed particularly happy that they were in a body that they were more comfortable with. That part she wanted to focus on, especially because Mabel was also able to benefit from the new program Daisy built for user’s devices. She would have to basically turn it into a virus if she wanted to make it spread world wide. She would rather go through update channels, since that would be the quickest change to the most amount of devices, but that would go highly scrutinized and might be stopped along the way. Annie was interested in helping but wanted more testing on a smaller set of people. Daisy could humble herself, especially since the encounter with Roxy wasn’t the smoothest. They agreed to work together, making it safe before releasing it. Plus, they lived together, so if Daisy earned herself a position on a government’s hitlist, Annie would be wrapped up in the middle of it.

Their conversation went on for quite a long time, drifting from specifics of worldwide release, to how they could test the limits and flaws in her program. She had 5 test subjects, herself included, all with varying identification with their new body. Mabel was the least change, but most identification. Céu was the most change with high amounts of identification. Roxy and Daisy represented the group of people who would just modify their current body. And finally, Annie represented the cosplayers that just like dressing up in wildly different outfits, no identification with the character required. Unintentionally, Mabel represented the population that was already a lost one, and Roxy was akin to someone who would become a lost one during the release of the new program. They just have to work with what they’ve got. Daisy would prefer to monitor all subjects’ minds, but her storage only could hold a single person’s active mind for a handful of seconds at a time. She will have to do it the old fashioned way of waiting and watching.

“I’d better invite Céu Azul over, so I don’t have to watch from afar. They could help with Roxy as well, since I sent them into a fugue state as well. Although, they hardly needed any prompting to get back into their consciousness.

Annie nodded, especially now that the test subjects are vital to the worldwide release of the program, “I’m excited to meet the true version of them!”

Daisy sent out a teleport request for them to come over. Only a short time passed before the familiar furry leapt out and tackled Daisy. Mabel perked up, lifting her head from Ms. Pine’s lap as she caught sight of a new friend. She cautiously approached Céu, wondering if she had to defend her mistress from this new person. However, Daisy’s attitude was playful towards the new friend, so she quickly warmed up. A friend of mistress is a friend of mine, she thought. Daisy let the two play with each other for a bit, amused at the quick friends.

They caught up, Annie following along with subtitles. Céu was much more interested in the happenings of the Roxy situation than telling what they’ve done in the past few hours. Annie didn’t mind Daisy taking them on a tour of the kingdom, as they haven’t seen the sprawling creation yet. They could also look for Roxy, but if she didn’t want to be found they would leave her be. Annie stayed back, still getting used to her equine self. It now was an important part of the test, plus she just really wanted to be a pony. It may be a headache, but she’s done a lot more for the sake of cosplay. She could endure days of uncomfort at crowded conventions with stimulus overload and little sleep in the Real World, this was easy compared. Daisy assured her that she just had to say her name if anything happened. Just like Cumulo, Daisy could hear her name anywhere in the kingdom.

Speaking of Cumulo, the little cloud helped Daisy keep up with Céu flying around. The winged furry followed Daisy and Cumulo, listening to her explain the boundaries of the kingdom and got excited to see familiar maps integrated in. They asked what Daisy wanted to do with the rest of the world, as this kingdom was tiny compared to the blank version of Earth. It was a fair question. Daisy had only recently re-connected to the internet, and that was only to establish a PrivatePlayer session with Catalina and sever the ties on Roxy’s device. Otherwise, she stayed away from it. It was a reminder of her mistake, and it was dangerous to be on if anyone was looking for her. She could almost guarantee they were, considering she was the reason behind MultiPlayer being offline for much over a week at this point. But that was the only place she could fetch compatible assets. She could technically make compatible things, as she adjusted the texture of the cotton candy cloud and can trick the program about clothes and now avatars, but entire maps were much bigger. The complexity required was a bit more than her imagination could handle.

The tour went well, they took their time and visited the characters in the kingdom, stopping by each of the districts. Céu noted that the character’s personalities were growing, that they weren’t just restrained to be their default. Daisy nodded, having figured this out long ago. The change must be more obvious to Céu because this PrivatePlayer session has been online for months. Céu missed these maps, they hadn’t thought of loading them up in their PrivatePlayer world. They managed to spend all night on the tour, as Céu’s sense of time didn’t line up with the current day cycle. Daisy didn’t mind staying up through the night for her friend. Their final district was always dark, regardless of the time of day. Daisy hopped on Cumulo to depart to the last district, Transylvania.

They got distracted when Céu saw movement in the corner of their eye. It had to be Roxy! They described it as a pitch black blur, as if an unnaturally black shadow passed between the buildings. They were far into the Transylvanian district, so it could have easily been a vampire. They approached the building carefully. Their suspicions were confirmed when they rounded the corner. The pale white skin and glowing white eyes contrasted with the black void, the stars appearing and disappearing from beyond the black. Céu alighted gently behind them, Daisy staying back. She had already scared her once, maybe Céu would have more luck. Their wings hung by their side, not tucking them up in case Roxy flew away. The gentle furry creature approached the huddled naked woman, reaching a paw out. She looked like she was going to bolt, but Céu coo’d in a friendly way, unsure if she understood Brazillian Portugese. To everyone’s surprise, Roxy let them touch her. She might have recognized that Céu had wings like her, or Céu was calm enough to set her at ease. Roxy tucked herself into a ball as Céu wrapped her wings around her protectively. This woman had been flying around, lost and afraid for a while.

Daisy tried to connect with her mind again, but Roxy had set up barriers, just like Céu had done when they flew for the first time. It was good she had barriers, that meant the company couldn’t reinstate their control. She was still physically located at the company, Daisy assumed. They unfortunately didn’t get much time to catch up, as communication between them was strained when Daisy found out the company had been controlling them. Now that she’s free, she’s not even in her right mind, and it was Daisy’s fault.

Wait a second, Roxy’s situation was almost exactly how Daisy used to be. A failed experiment! Daisy connected to the internet just for a second, rebuilding Roxy’s profile based on David’s. She copied how Ray stuck to the rules and used loopholes. Honestly, she was just cheating off their work, hoping that most of the tricks hadn’t been unraveled in the time she spent away from the company. If Roxy didn’t remember who she was, and it was the company’s decision to let Daisy experiment with Roxy, that was a job-related disability. Daisy smirked as she finished the last requests in record time. It may have taken Ray and a supercomputer days to find everything, but Daisy spent mere seconds applying it all again. She sent the information required to verify the disability, complete with a report of the time of incident and anything she gleaned from peeking at the company’s server. It was lucky that Daisy’s memory was unfathomable and meticulous.

In no time at all, her friend was classified as a failed experiment, just like Daisy. Welcome to the rest of your life, Roxy. Now we just have to get you back. They had no clue it was Daisy who purposefully sent her into a fugue state, but that somehow played to their advantage in the end. She managed to get Roxy on the same loophole of needing to stay connected to the Virtual World to live, but that one was a stretch and she hoped they wouldn’t see through it. They would likely challenge everything in the legal attack, but it’s down to whether they had enough information to counter it or not.

Daisy watched the two as the blue fox sat with the disheveled friend. Daisy felt it was time to come up to them, Céu’s wings parting to let her in. Daisy still awaited Roxy, seeing if she was comfortable. She seemed to be, so Daisy swooped her head under the wings, minding the feathers. She took a cross legged pose, two of her hands on the ground supporting her, and the other two in her lap, resting on each other as if she were about to do some yoga.

“How are you feeling?” Daisy asked, concerned. Hopefully she was with it enough to respond now.

“I’m better now. Sorry I ran away like that, I was scared,” She admitted, calm enough to be reasonable. Daisy had pulled control over her emotions from the company, so she was dealing with the raw emotions without any limiters or stunters. Her AI still had control over the default safety features; Daisy made sure not to touch anything beyond her scope.

Daisy stuck to explaining things to her that she would hopefully remember. Her job was to develop the Virtual World, so Daisy hoped she would be comfortable with the idea that she was in a game. It didn’t go quite as well as she had hoped, and Roxy didn’t trust her, with good reason. This place was impossibly realistic, if you didn’t understand the concept of games reaching this level of immersion. Daisy remembered Box’s tactic, when they told Daisy to say ‘Menu. Initial Startup.’ It felt like a cheap move, but honestly was the best way to prove that it was a game. If Daisy tried summoning anything, that just proved that magic existed. To the woman with wings and could fly, magic wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

Roxy looked mistrusting, but her curiosity got the best of her. She fizzled out, disappearing in a puff of black fire. Céu consoled Daisy, telling her she did the right thing. It was only fair for the built-in AI to work it out with her. The Facebook Device AI objectively knew her best. She could take her time, re-learning the Virtual World. Honestly, that initial setup may trigger her memory anyway, as she would be familiar with the process. Seeing Silicon City certainly would be closer to home than anything that Daisy could offer her. It covers company protocol, to send employees to the initial config if there are any dire problems with experiments. That’s why Daisy went in the first place, under Box’s direction. Daisy updated the paperwork, not wanting to stay connected to the internet for long. She’d better cover her tracks, not that their house’s security system wasn’t doing quite a bit of that work anyway. It would be best for her to manually cover her tracks, as Daisy was a one-of-a-kind AI, so her footprints, while obviously alien compared to regular AI, were almost impossible to decipher. Even looking through her original source code (which by now had undoubtedly rewritten itself) wouldn’t point to what she was communicating, just how she communicated.

“She might be there for a while, we should head back to Annie.” Daisy mentioned to Céu, speaking Portugese. They nodded, releasing Daisy from the shade of their wings and taking off. Daisy hopped on Cumulo and made her way back to the center of the kingdom.

Surprisingly, Annie was outside to greet them. Daisy stepped off, thanking Cumulo. She asked if it was ok to touch Annie now, noting, “you made it down the stairs!”

Annie chuckled, “it wasn’t pretty. You’d think I was drunk! I’m getting the hang of it, though, and I’m all good for contact.”

Daisy went on her knees to hug the little pony, petting the low-lying fur. It was finer than she assumed. Céu hugged her next, Daisy moving to pet her back and watched her tail flick in amusement.

“This is wild,” Daisy translated Céu’s Portugese, forgetting that subtitles exist for everyone else. This brought a chuckle from Annie, “I can have the sub and the dub!”

“This… is… Wild…” Céu attempts to copy Daisy’s translation with their heavy accent. The group cracks up. They start teaching each other phrases in other languages, Annie occasionally asking how to say something in obscure languages for Daisy to answer. If only her accent were better, this information could be quite useful. Everybody has access to subtitles for languages, but having someone fluent like Daisy changes the dynamic. Daisy has her human awareness, so much less will suffer from translation errors. Pronunciation, on the other hands, is a different subject entirely.

Eventually, the attention turns back to Annie’s avatar. Céu wondered why she chose a pony. Annie had watched the shows as a kid, and all of the quadrupedal cosplays were either hard to walk in, creepy, or both. They were also much more expensive than even fursuits, taking countless hours to do it yourself or commission. Céu nods, understanding her want to cosplay. Annie asked about their own avatar, still interested from when Daisy was explaining it.

“I originally became a furry when I saw the art. It was at a time in my life where my body was maturing, and I was going to public school.” Annie winced at that part of Céu’s explanation, understanding the implications from a very personal level.

“That’s when I saw what I could only describe as a genderless character. When I realized that it was somebody’s original creation, that they made the character only for them, it clicked that I could do that too. I was obsessed with my first character, letting all the stress of school, my body image, and my creativity form them. A few years pass and here I am!” They spun around in front of Annie, their wings opening up halfway and narrowly missing her face.

Annie stomped her hooves, the equine equivalent of clapping hands together. Daisy noticed an unaddressed topic, “So you can fly, I can grab 4 things at once, and Annie can… Use magic?”

Annie raised an eyebrow, “I haven’t had the time to try, but I’d assume I would start out pretty bad, considering how even walking went.”

She scrunched her face up, pointing her horn in a direction. Céu jumped out of the way as if it was a loaded weapon. Fair enough, Daisy had seen how colt and foal unicorns use magic in the show. Their magic starts out very erratic and unpredictable, making an absolute headache for the parents.

A blast of purple energy hit a flower in the yard, growing it several times until it looked like it was going to turn into a jack and the beanstalk situation.

“Wohhh there Annie, was that what you intended to do?” Daisy asked when the power petered out. Annie shook her head, laughing, “I meant to just pick the flower!”

“Well, we figured out that you can, indeed, use magic!” Céu cheers in amusement. Daisy starts to translate the sentence out loud for Annie, then stops herself and laughs. The others join in her merriment. They end up frolicking around in the field, occasionally having to avoid blasts of purple unicorn magic as Annie’s magic is as erratic as a baby’s.

By the time Mabel comes out to see what all the fuss is about, Céu is riding Annie, Daisy is caught in a magical tractor beam, and Annie is giggling gleefully as she tries to buck off her passenger. She jumps into the fray without a second thought, with her caretakers shaking their heads in exasperation.

Daisy doesn’t notice her bright pink hair, caused by a spell she narrowly avoided but ended up hitting her ponytail. Annie and Céu laugh, Daisy nodding in approval as she sees herself in the reflection of a window.

Their playtime winds down, they move indoors as the night starts to set on the world. Their conversation moves to the new avatar changes.

“The one thing I’m worried about is potential side effects,” Annie states, backing it up with, “just like how boosting will result in side effects if done for too long.”

The group nods and ponders this, Céu coming up with another worry, “And how will the Real World feel after this?”

As they and Annie are new to being on Life Support, the Real World still feels like it matters to them, since those are the bodies they used to return to when their device prompted them with bathroom, hunger, or other breaks. Daisy never had that worry, her association with her Real World body was quite brief.

“That’s what we should test. I don’t want to ask you to test it, Céu, as your reason for having a Virtual Body is very important to you. I could test it, plus it would let me practice connecting to the Virtual World while I move around in the Real World,” Daisy mused, her second statement not quite registering with Céu. Annie knew how she operated in the Real World, her device still melded with her human mind.

“Be careful! But I did get a present for you, now that you mention it,” Annie says, almost in an embarrassed way. Daisy raised her eyebrow but wasn’t left to wonder for long as Annie spoiled the surprise, “it’s a battery pack for people who need their device active all the time. It will extend it to about a month of mobile use but is very heavy. It should still be in its shipping box and looks like a backpack.”

Daisy hugged her. What a smart purchase! Annie was the one who almost watched her die because of low battery. Daisy didn’t think of the Real World much, or else she would have considered something similar to that.

Daisy then hugged Céu, and gave headpats to Mabel. It almost felt like she was saying goodbye, even though she would attempt to stay connected. She would be in two places at once.

The thought of disconnecting was rather arbitrary, but from the same way she could feel Annie’s device, she could dig around in her own device to lift the paralysis. The life support tanks automatically noticed her wakefulness and started draining the fluid. Daisy’s senses were all still in the Virtual World, so she had no idea what was happening out there. Time to open her eyes. She assumed what she suspected her Real World body’s position would be in, closed eyes and all. Then her two bodies synced up, eyes opening at the same time. It was like having her four arms, except they were eyes. Oh this was trippy. She saw the bending glass in front of her as the fluid dipped below her chin, the slime rolling off her head. She coughed, the uncomfortable not-choking but certainly heavy substance lifting from her lungs. She was coughing unintentionally in the Virtual World as well, her friends watching the event helplessly. The fluid level was pretty slow, but she was gaining her bearings slowly anyway. Moving her arms was interesting considering she now had six of them.

“Oh, yep. I should have expected that,” she said, as a peculiar feeling from the Real World set in. Annie wondered what it was, so she clarified, “the first obvious side effect is phantom pain from extremities that differ from the Virtual World.”

She might have been speaking the same words in the Real World as well, but she didn’t care. Not that anyone was around to hear her. This technique she was doing was rather impossible for the normal person. Since she lifted the paralysis directly, none of the other disconnect functions had set in. She was still on the PrivatePlayer server, still using her bodies at the same time. That’s why syncing them up made the most sense, but she technically didn’t have to once she got the hang of it. She did want to get the battery pack as soon as possible, she didn’t know how much additional power was drawn from staying connected in the Virtual World. The device was certainly doing more work, controlling two bodies and dealing with two streams of sensory input. As long as the thermals weren’t negatively impacted, it should take at least twice as much power. If the device did heat up, it could take even more, and it could even fail.

Finally, after it felt like ages, the Life Supporting Fluid drained completely. To keep herself busy, she had been describing her phantom pain. Céu was most worried about how their breasts would feel like when, or if, they returned to the Real World. Annie wasn’t too upset at the news, considering she already went through a huge switch just to cosplay. Worth it to her, but she identified with her Real World body enough where returning to it wouldn’t be a mental hassle.

To answer the breasts question, Daisy touched her male parts in the Real World. She could feel her mind drifting as it tumbled on this feeling. A small part of her stayed logical and objective, and was able to tell everyone else that it would likely make Céu disassociate. Since Real World Daisy was currently doing that, she wasn’t able to address Annie’s questions for quite a bit.

Daisy came to, she had been released from the fishtank-themed life support. She was sitting on the bench, towel draped over her. She had mostly lost her Virtual Connection, although not for any technological reason. She kinda forgot both her bodies existed for a bit. In this state, she couldn’t even think of masturbation. She had grown somewhat accustomed to her male parts during her short time in the Real World, but all of that had unraveled when she tried to keep the two truths alive. Her Real World self and her Virtual World self. Maybe this is why the avatar technology hadn’t been released yet. Although, plenty of people chose to use boost, despite the drawbacks. Hopefully there weren't too many more side effects.

She woke up enough to walk over to the cardboard box with her present in it. She could feel her Virtual self run into a wall. Ooops. It even made her Real World body take a bit of a tumble, despite no wall being nearby. Her friends guided her poor little Virtual self, attempting to keep her from running into stuff. She could see out of her Virtual eyes, but wasn’t paying the most attention to it, as the phantom pain would come back full force if she did. The side effects may also be from how she kept both worlds active, so it might not translate to Annie or Céu’s experience.

Opening the box looked hilarious in the Virtual World. Her body was a mime, interacting with invisible objects with a convincing amount of realism. She strapped on the backpack and plugged it into the Facebook Device on the back of her head. Luckily there was an auxiliary port and a main port, so she wouldn’t even have to disconnect the backpack when going back into the Life Support system. If there was any prompt of how charged it was, she wouldn’t know how to check it. She wasn’t familiar with interacting with the Auxiliary port and didn’t want to trudge around on live wires just to figure it out. It was certainly heavy like Annie warned, but being able to survive a month on the run was more than worth it. Plus, it wouldn’t change much in her usual state of Life Support weightlessness. She clicked the straps together, feeling like she was wearing an upper body harness without any clothes on. Her male upper body was so different from the female body she was used to.

“Ok, now that I got that all settled, I feel better. Thank you Annie!” She hugs thin air, but Annie receives a Virtual hug. She told them more about her dissociation, now that she was mostly aware again. Hopefully it was worse from the two worlds colliding, and that they wouldn’t experience as bad of effects. It was good to prepare them for it, though.

“Was there anything else I needed to do in the Real World? We got that security system all set up, right?” Daisy asked Annie. She assured them that the workers set everything up. She had received pictures and videos of their work in her email. The outside world pretty much just let 24/7ers stay in their tanks, since some disabilities required 24/7 connection.

“I did want to practice desyncing my bodies,” Daisy pondered after a while. She took a meditative pose in both bodies, planning on letting one wander at a time. First, the Virtual with the Real staying still. This would be the easiest, as she would just mock what the Paralysis mode would do normally. After a bit of looking in mirrors in her room, she was satisfied with the test. Time for the Real World. She did the same metativate pose in both bodies, switching to control the Real World. There was no paralysis mode for the Virtual to emulate, so it took her several tries to calm her Virtual World body down and make it still.

She wandered her house, checking it out and exploring. Her Virtual World body would twitch and try to move her arms when she did in the Real World, but for the most part settled down after a while. They had quite a big house, and a pleasant view from the mountain. The lush trees and foliage mostly hid their house, but she could see out to the valley. The roads that went to her house were completely hidden from view, no indication that they were connected to the rest of the civilization. The sun felt so strange on her bare skin as she opened the sliding glass door and walked out onto her deck that faced the valley. It was daytime here. A breeze blew gently on her, giving her a half chub erection as her genitals figured out that they were in an unfamiliar environment. She forgot about the random boners, and certainly didn’t miss it. It went away quickly, especially as she sat down to enjoy the day. She shouldn’t spend too long in the sun, lest she get a sunburn. It was pleasantly warm, especially as the breeze cooled her off.

Her break was well deserved, but now was the challenge. Both bodies at once. She got up from her chair and her meditative seated position at once, her bodies attempting to sync up like two sine waves of a different frequency. She resisted, letting them do different tasks. Neither of them were very good at it, her bodies slowly trying to match each other's gait, just as one does when walking next to a friend. Her friends followed her in the Virtual World as she meandered around two houses at once. They opened up doors, sometimes one body opening up an invisible door as the other opened a real one. Her friends giggled at her antics. Soon enough, however, her Virtual Body and Real Body stopped acting strange. It got easy to go about different tasks as soon as her mind learned how to control it. Just like the four arms, it was just more information and more coordination, but it was certainly not impossible for Daisy.

They all ate a dinner that Chef Remy Bones cooked up for them, all the members of the house coming together for quite the big party! Daisy’s Real Body entertained themself by doing yoga, hoping to restore some of the limberness and maybe even work on rebuilding muscle mass. If it got easy to be in two places at once, Daisy could see herself getting quite in shape in the Real World. She would just have to remember to take care of it, like eating and going to the bathroom. Plus charging the battery pack. She could do all of those things by stepping into the Life Support tank for several hours, at least until she got good enough with this dual reality to perform those tasks the old fashioned way. She wasn’t too mentally present at the party, still figuring out the balance and refinement of her worlds. However, Céu had a great time meeting all the new people. The little girls loved the furry, hugging their thick thighs and petting their fur. She recognized quite a few of the girls from their time playing with Daisy in MultiPlayer.

Daisy had to take her first Life Support break, not knowing which of her bodies needed to go to the bathroom. She could have synced them up, but it hadn’t been necessary until now, and she didn’t know how to do that on her own. She didn’t know if her battery pack was fully charged upon delivery anyway, so spending the night in the Life Support tank will make sure it gets near full charge, if not already. She went to the bathroom in her Virtual Body just in case, knowing the program would let her relieve herself regardless of which of the bodies needed to go. As she finished up, the temptation of masturbation loomed. Everyone was busy at the party, they wouldn’t notice if she took a bit longer in the bathroom. She could be quiet. She unlocked the cabinet, giggling that her past self put the dildo up high and away.

She laid down in the tub, the initial cold feeling of the porcelain boosted her heart rate. That, and the exciting premise that she has 4 hands to stimulate herself. She took advantage of that, able to play with her breasts, stroke her side, feel her inner thighs, and rub her clit all at once. She remembered to stay quiet, the passion blossoming as she got into it. Unfortunately, she never got to her climax. Her body kinda just… fell asleep all of a sudden.

She awoke, Annie shaking her two right shoulders with her hoof. She had passed out in the tub, how embarrassing.

“That’s where you went. Are you feeling alright?” Annie said, a worried look on her face. Daisy had been distant for the whole party, ever since she tried controlling two bodies at once. Her fear of Daisy’s device losing power had come back full force as she saw Daisy unconscious.

“Yeah, don’t worry, my body is in the Life Support Tank. I just got real tired all of a sudden,” Daisy told her honestly. Annie’s fear eased up, “Do you want to lay down in bed? I can carry you if you can make it onto my back.”

Daisy thought it a good idea, forgetting the pink dildo in the bottom of the tub. She was able to hoist herself up onto Annie’s back, her four arms making it that much easier. She bounced as Annie walked as gently as she could to Daisy’s room, letting her dismount onto the bed. Daisy tossed the covers over her naked body, not taking long to slip back into her shallow sleep.

The new day came quickly. It’s possible she was tired out from the two bodies at once, but that logic didn’t hold up too well to reason. While, yes, two bodies could be twice as tiring, that wasn’t what her mind was doing. Her Real World body was controlled by her Facebook Device. It was basically a puppet, so it didn’t experience a second consciousness stream. Consciousness was a hard thing to nail down, as even science had a hard time with it, but basically her two bodies were closer to her just having more body parts and more sensory inputs. It was all still one Daisy.

She did want to make a workout regimen for her Real World self, so she started off the day with yoga. Then she would workout in the mini-gym they had, and maybe even try swimming in their indoor swimming pool. Yeah, she was very happy with the house they purchased. The additional bits were unnecessary if they were going to spend all their time in the Virtual World. Now that she found out that she could do both, she could put it all to use.

The battery pack was a bit annoying but certainly gave peace of mind. It was stupidly durable, so Daisy could do everything with it on. She also didn’t care to put on clothes in the Real World as the house was kept temperate, not that anyone was watching. If she felt like taking a break, she would sometimes sit in the chairs facing the aquarium and look at the fishes, plus she would be comforted with Annie’s serene presence. Not that she didn’t have the conscious version in her PrivatePlayer instance at the same time, though. It hadn’t been long enough for Annie to look any different, but she would eventually lose weight as the Life Support system controlled her organic processes now. Her naked, rolling curves were a comfort to Daisy. She mentioned that she would watch Annie’s body sometimes, just so Annie wouldn’t go through the security cam footage and be creeped out. She didn’t mind of course, she was entertained by Daisy’s discipline to work out and chisel her Real World body. Plenty of people did that for scans, but Daisy could make her avatar literally whatever she wanted.

Daisy also wasn’t shy to try Real World masturbation again. Sure, Annie could see that on the security cams, so Daisy would give her a warning just in case, especially considering that Annie could get triggered by that stuff. She assured Daisy that she wouldn’t leer at the security cams indoors, not that Daisy was bothered if she did. She tried syncing up her orgasms, along with Céu’s. It took a few tries over the course of a week or two, but finally they achieved it all at once. Daisy in the Real World and Virtual World, along with Céu’s male and female orgasms. It was one of the most unique experiences, and one she didn’t mind admitting that she sent to long term storage.

Her private island would see some use, both of her friends very aware that they would never ask for a threesome. Annie had changed back to her most recent scan, both as a test for the avatar changes and because she had no desire to have sex while being a pony. It had a similar adjustment period, but was much quicker as she identified with the form more closely. That was good news, and there was only a marginal amount of phantom pain, nothing that Annie couldn’t handle.

Annie turned down Céu when they asked if she wanted to have sex with them. She wasn’t the most fond of penises, nor did she have any attraction to furries. It was completely reasonable. Céu wondered if they should keep off the internet for the experiment, as they wanted to get back to their PrivatePlayer friends. They had plenty of people to turn to sex for across the internet. Céu and Daisy had become victorious over what they set out to do, but it was time to move on.

Daisy thought about it pretty hard. If they were discovered to have avatar mods, it could be linked back to her or gain media attention. However, with MultiPlayer down, there was a lot of illegal modding as people attempted things they haven’t had the time to do, and they were desperate. It would relatively fly under the view, especially because Céu’s suit could be explained away as an overly intricate scan. It seemed safe enough, but there was one remaining loose end. Roxy had yet to return. For a complete study, Roxy was the last case to evaluate. Daisy wouldn’t keep Céu here, as they realistically were finished with their end of the study. They even temporarily stepped into the Real World for Daisy, a rather traumatic and sacrificial part of the experiment.

“You’re good to go, if you wish to return to your community. Thank you for everything you endured because of me,” Daisy finally came to the conclusion that they could live the rest of their life out as normal.

“Seriously, Daisy, I couldn’t thank you enough. You have fixed a part of my life I thought would take many more years to overcome. I will stay in contact with you, updating you about my journey towards corrective surgery, and if anything happens with my new avatar. We will see each other again,” they gave Daisy the biggest hug, their heart bursting with joy at their impossible friend. They wouldn’t tell a soul about the AI, besides, she was too human to even think of as an AI. She could do incredible things in the Virtual World, and Céu was glad she was on their side.

As they fizzled out, Annie turned to Daisy, “so… That’s it? The experiment is over?”

Daisy nodded, “other than Roxy finishing her initial setup, there’s nothing else to test for. Trust me, I’ve thought it over quite a bit in the past few weeks. Roxy is our worst case scenario, and rather uncommon, but depending on the severity of how it turns out, we are good to roll out the update. I already tweaked the initial config for Roxy to have avatar changes explained by the AI, so she should be a good example of someone who doesn’t know the Virtual World yet and experiments with the new feature.”

“She’s been in there for weeks, are you sure everything is going just fine?” Annie asks, it had been on her mind but the day-to-day conversation always breezed over Roxy, as it seemed like a sore subject.

Daisy nods, “I’ve been monitoring her command outputs. It looks all normal, she has been setting up safety features, menu styles, immersion, all the normal stuff. She’s taken breaks, likely to explore her admin abilities based on the types of things she has summoned. It’s really hard to read some of the SinglePlayer commands, as they only make sense to her AI, but I can tell she’s been switching worlds, putting objects in it, and generally fetching content from the internet. Past that, I have no clue what is going on in there.”

Annie breathes a sigh of relief. That would have been nice to know much earlier, she regrets not mentioning it sooner. Although, she had no clue that Daisy could read that into someone else’s device. She thought that the mental barriers that Daisy mentioned would keep her out. She couldn’t resist being curious, “How do you know all that? I’m not questioning it, just interested in the intricacies.”

Daisy scrunched her eyebrows together, Annie couldn’t tell what was going on in her mind. Whatever it was, she ended up with an answer, “I didn’t just remove the company's control. I replaced that control with my own. It was technically the only way, and it means I end up with the creepy amount of control that they had. I won’t abuse it like they did, of course. But certainly something I should mention if she makes it back to her normal self,” Daisy explains carefully. That was fair, Annie only knew the result of the battle over Roxy, not the details.

Annie wanted to try a few more things for the avatars, realizing that they were nearing the end of the study. People would absolutely try to take this power to its logical extreme. Daisy agreed, she teleported them to the other side of the planet, the blank version of earth providing ample space.

“Obviously the competitive rules will have to be instated. But how far can I go with just my imagination?” She wondered aloud, standing in front of Daisy. She had mastered unicorn magic, at least to the level of an adult pony. What else could she dream up?

“I can have super powers without admin or even VIP permission,” she noted, as she was able to make herself vanish and appear somewhere else, fly, land on the ground and send shockwaves through it. That would be another part to include, local PrivatePlayer instances would need avatar rules. This was getting rather complex.

“Fair enough! Let’s see if I can rule some of those out from a server level,” Daisy suggested, since she could easily take it away as the Goddess she was. She needs to build the server properly, as it would translate to MultiPlayer as well. She would also make the most restrictive type be the default, as it would protect anyone who didn’t fully understand what the avatar update could really mean.

Her powers slowly stopped working, but she kept thinking up new ones to surprise Daisy. This was the best progress they’ve gotten on how they would integrate it, now that they knew it was safe. Once powers were exhausted, Daisy finally able to restrict the idea of non-human superpowers rather than the specific powers, Annie started thinking outside of the box. She could become a giantess, or very miniscule. Daisy had to constrain bodies to be relatively human-sized, as most games were already built on that premise. Of course there were outliers, so Daisy did a quick sweep of all current user body types from her offline storage, allowing everything in between. She also made it so that users that fell outside of that boundary would just be resized to the closest parameter, so that they wouldn’t have to sacrifice their identity with their avatar.

They had long conversations about it all, getting to theoreticals that Annie couldn’t perform, but might be possible. Annie brought up, “You’re able to control two bodies at once, what if someone had two separate avatars in the Virtual World? If they fell within all the constraints, how far apart could they wander from each other? Would that be an advantage?”

These hypotheticals had no good answers. Daisy was also unsure if she should restrict them, or if she could. Annie certainly had a mind for if there were exploits, people would find them and use them. This was true for zombies as well, Daisy noted, so the MultiPlayer world already didn’t restrict every possible scenario. Annie was satisfied with this answer, also confident that some of the hypotheticals were difficult enough that the people who could use them were already a special type of person.

“Could someone hypnotize another to send avatar change requests? I’m mostly concerned about people like Mabel,” Annie brought up. The exploitation of Lost Ones was already a really tough topic, but Daisy did want a way to validate that the avatar commands were actually meant to be adjusted. They already fell under the Virtual Clothes commands, so people could turn off the AI assisted feature, so that they wouldn’t change automatically. This could be default, so that Avatar changes wouldn’t occur randomly for anyone.

The unintended side effect, however, would be undercutting the Virtual Real clothes scanning. Facebook would hate to see their immense profit from their expensive scans go away, as users could just think up an outfit that their avatar would have. Daisy brought it up to Annie. She had quite a negative sentiment towards Facebook in general, basically saying screw their overlords. Daisy had no good way to disable the work around for Virtual Real clothes anyway, so she won’t bother filtering that out. Besides, people who want their exact clothes in will still have a marginally better time with the scans, as the only textures that D.A.I.S.Y. can create are compatible ones. However, Virtual Real Clothes are one of the only incompatible items in game, as they are built to work locally, replaying a user’s own mind from when they got the scan. It still had a hyper-realistic edge to it, so people like Annie may end up spending less but continue to want the real deal.

They were pretty much finished with the implementation conversation, Daisy lifted all restraints so Annie could be what she wanted. Daisy summoned a massive mirror, it extended up and out as far as the eye could see.

“What would you like to be, Annie? With no restriction. What body do you identify with?” Daisy looked inquisitively at her friend. Daisy had only grown two extra arms, otherwise she was extremely close to looking like how she wanted. The premise of infinite possibility intrigued Daisy and made her consider her own body’s potential.

Annie stared in the mirror. There she was, defaulted back to her most recent, heavyweight scan. Anything she wanted.

“I- I don’t know,” she admitted. Her creativity about avatars was driven on the same force that her cosplaying was. It wasn’t her, and that’s exactly why it was fun. Who was Annie though? What body did she identify with? She leaned in, looking at the incredible detail of a Facebook Scan. She used to hate this face, the weight on it an uncomfortable reminder of the depression she had trudged through. She used to hate her body, frustrated at the state she ended up in. She used to escape to a simpler time, when she was just a mere child. She didn’t need that anymore. It was fun to return to, still a wonderful memory. But she was who she is now.

“I think this is me,” she said, without changing her appearance at all. This brought a tear to Daisy’s eye, she hugged her friend tightly.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said, meaning it wholeheartedly. Her Real body gazed at Annie in the tank, crying with her Virtual self.

They stayed there, crying and hugging. Forgetting that they were standing in front of the world’s largest mirror, it wasn’t long until the sun came out from behind a cloud and warmed them from both directions. Daisy was very lucky that the mirror wasn’t curved, they could have been burned from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They eventually separated, Annie holding Daisy’s lower set of hands as Daisy used her upper set to wipe both of their tears.

“I love you,” the Goddess of the Virtual World said, Annie not hesitating to match the sentiment.

“I love you, too,” she said, smiling her biggest smile in a long time.

The calm moment lasted a blissful amount of time, up until Daisy heard the command she had been waiting for. Roxy was finished. Daisy’s eyes widened, requesting a teleport out loud. Annie heard her loud and clear, her excitement and nervousness spiked.

A flash of black flame announced Roxy’s presence. Before them floated an angel of darkness. The void sparkled across her skin, having conquered more territory than before. She cast a shadow on them, she was near 18 feet tall now. Her wings were spread wide and beating slowly, not needing much effort to keep her aloft. The black flames rolled from them, each wingbeat sending swirls and vortexes of the see-through licks of fire. They burned cleanly, casting no smoke. Roxy’s face was transformed, her face barely recognizable. She had pointed features, almost a resting scowl of divinity.

“Roxy!” Daisy shouted at her. She likely needn’t shout, but Daisy and Annie were taken aback by her avatar.

The angel practically hissed, bearing the impossibly white pointed fangs, “do not refer to me as that. The blasted voice in my head used to call me that as well.”

Clearly Roxy was lost, so Annie curtsied at the giant woman, “what shall we call you?”

The angel folded her legs, her wings letting her softly alight on the grass and tuck themselves onto her back. The woman looked closely at them, still towering over them by several feet. Her black lips parted, her voice deep and robust, nothing like it used to be, “I am Zenith.”

Daisy followed Annie’s curtsy, “It’s nice to meet you, Zenith. I am Daisy and this is Annie.”

Zenith seems to ease up her intensity level, not quite scowling at them, but still not friendly looking.

“Hello Daisy. I remember you telling me this is a game. You did not lie. Where is the friendly angel?” She asked, referring to Céu Azul.

“She’s off visiting her friends in a different PrivatePlayer instance,” Daisy hoped she learned all the terms during her time in Initial Configuration. It seemed she had, as she didn’t make a strange face at the comment.

Daisy updated the progress of Roxy, filling out that she was Zenith now. She ran a quick diagnostic, able to prove that the Initial Configuration didn’t work, just like it didn’t work on Daisy. It looks like all the effort Daisy put in weeks ago panned out, Roxy was categorized like Daisy, with all the benefits. Account money had returned, despite MultiPlayer being temporarily inactive. It can still be used as cryptocurrency, basically. Daisy had been earning quite a bit in the background, she found out as she fiddled around with practicing internet connectivity.

Her body in the Real World had gotten up and went back to working out, the Real World muscles developing quite nicely over the past few weeks. The subscription service for the Life Support allowed for refilling the tanks with substance, but she had Annie start a subscription for real food as well, since her body should get some solid protein eventually. That way she could practice cooking for herself. It was like her body could live out hobbies, invisible to the Virtual World. She planned on cooking a hearty meal after her workout. Ridiculously enough, she could have her body ‘sleep’ at different times than her Virtual Self. This was only a fake sleep, as her Virtual self would get tired and sleep eventually, causing both bodies to rest.

Zenith seemed in no hurry to get anywhere. The group eventually got comfortable with each other; the standoff had died down once they introduced themselves.

“How was your time in Initial Configuration?” Daisy asked, knowing that it least sounded pleasant from the commands she overheard. It was quite like how Daisy got to know the Virtual World.

Zenith nodded, pondering how to summarize the week of learning she did, “I suppose it overall went well, if you can say that about getting your worldview shattered.”

Daisy could vibe with this statement, “I know all too well. I had a similar experience with it.”

Annie watched incredulously as the two bonded over the shared experience of their Initial Configurations.

“Do you mind if I start from the start?” Zenith asked, tilting her head towards the two small women in front of her. They seemed to agree, so she started her tale from the very first second she can remember. As they listened, her memories began to play back in their heads.

Zenith had a roaring headache. She felt like she was waking up from a nightmare. Something was rolling around in her head, crushing her neurons.

She opened her eyes, floating above the ground. She was in a strange room with strange people gawking at her.

“Are you feeling OK, Roxy?” A little girl with yellow pigtails said. Zenith couldn’t think straight with the headache, but she assumed the girl was referring to her.

“I- I don’t know,” Zenith stuttered, confused. The taller woman walked towards her, Zenith backing away with a gust of wind. Her wings were more powerful than she had thought, the distance between them widening quickly. Ash floated in the small, swirling air currents before settling around her.

The woman stopped her approach, but tried to explain herself, “Roxy, it’s me, Daisy. You showed me the wonderful Studio Ghibli world that David made, Laputa, the castle in the sky.”

There was that name again. Zenith was getting sick of this. She just wanted to nurse her headache in peace.

“Leave me alone,” Zenith responded, doing her best to run out of the house. The hallway passed by quickly, she was light on her feet and incredibly fast. A stairway approached her and before she could think about it, she let herself dive head first down it. She may not know how to fly yet, but she could glide with her weightless body. She zipped out of the house at a ludicrous speed. She aimed at a window, but it was closed. That didn’t matter apparently, because in a blink of an eye, she was suddenly outside. Did she just pass right through?

She was headed in no particular direction other than away from everyone. She turned in a large sweeping arc, gaining her sense of direction. The house she left was getting smaller by the second, one flap of her wings was able to push her higher. She was starting to learn it, feeling the currents of air, the push and pull of lift. She could adjust the angle of her wings, carving the skies. The cool rush of air over her face and body was starting to calm her headache. She could still feel a twinge, but she didn’t feel like cutting off her own head to get rid of it anymore.

After she flew around enough to feel better, she decided she’d better pick a place to land. The location that seemed the most interesting to her was a land that was cast in darkness, despite it being daytime. It was as if a cloud was always blocking the sun for that area. It was mountainous, so certainly the most fun to fly around in. There were plenty of trees to disappear into, if anyone came too close. She did want to see how civilization was, though. She landed near where the houses started. The first clue as to where she ended up was the people walking around. They were monsters, from all branches of mythology and fiction. Werewolves, vampires, zombies, oh my.

She wasn’t afraid of them. Rather, she felt more comfortable here than around any humans. Not that humans were bad, but they weren’t like her. She looked down at her body. She pressed her hands against her sides, her pale white skin glowing in comparison to the pitch black depths of the void that spread across her. She could see the tendrils of void slowly growing and spreading, in an endless battle to cover up the rest of her skin. The black wings on her back wrapped around her, covering up her exposed body. She approached the people, wondering if they would notice her and how they would react.

The first couple of monsters passed by her as if she were just another monster headed somewhere. Not bad at all. She was able to walk down the sidewalk unhindered. Her pace of walking was brisk in comparison to everyone else, even though her strides were calm and slow. She would float in between steps, covering distance strangely fast.

The town grew more populated, the houses getting closer together. One place stood out, a large mansion with a purple roof. The many windows glowed yellow, the paneling coating the house was pink.

In the playground near the mansion, little preschoolers ran around. Zenith stayed back among the trees, nervous to approach humans, even if they are children. However, she didn’t watch them playing for long before they looked at the moon rising and turned into monsters, a shimmering purple mist revealing their true form.

Each of the children were accompanied by pets, who also transformed into mythical beasts. Zenith shook her head, wondering what type of magical world she was in. Her wonderment got replaced by concern as she saw the werewolf child perk his ears up, swiveled in her general direction. He turned his head towards her, sniffing the air.

Shit, she was upwind. The werewolf ran to the zombie girl in a blur, tapping her on the shoulder. She jumped, not expecting his sudden appearance. He talked to her, Zenith unable to hear what they were saying. She stayed very still, but she doubted it would help once the zombie made eye contact with her. She was almost completely behind a tree, but the girl must have incredible vision. Should she run?

Running wouldn’t exactly solve the mysteries of the world she was in. Besides, she needn’t be afraid of four year olds. The group started to approach her once the word spread. She came out of the trees meekly. They didn’t seem afraid of her, just as curious as she was. She decided to sit cross legged in front of them, her wings unwrapping and tucking back on her back. They came to her, their childlike chatter dying down as they got closer to the new person. The general public didn’t seem to notice her, but now it was obvious that they were interested because she was different, not a monster they knew.

They had no problem introducing themselves, saying out their names one after the other, as if they’ve done it many times. The werewolf who saw her was named Lobo, and the zombie who spotted her was Zoe. Then there was a vampire named Drac, flying next to a dragon named Spike. A witch, Katya, was next to a Frankenstein monster named Frankie. Finally, there was a mummy named Cleo and a skeleton named Vida.

All the new names were a bit overwhelming to Zenith. She smiled, already forgetting half the names that didn’t match their species. Zenith spread her arms welcomingly, saying her own name, “I am Zenith, it is nice to meet you all.”

To her great surprise, the children took her gesture as wanting a hug, and she suddenly found herself surrounded by them as they gave her a group hug. Her wings spread wide and gave them all a hug as well. What an interesting bunch of kids!

As the hug separated, Zenith had too many questions. They didn’t seem to mind answering, though. It turns out that the mansion is actually their preschool, and their parents are world-famous monsters. The area she flew into is a mashup of Transylvania and Pennsylvania. Zenith was interested how Lobo seemed to be very aware of his senses, plus he was fast like her. They started talking about their powers, interested to hear about hers.

When she told them that she just discovered hers, they widened their eyes. They must have thought she had mastered her powers already, as she was an adult.

“Would you want to train with us? We practice our powers every night!” Says the jubilant Katya. She waves her wand, sparkles jumping out of the star at the end.

Zenith agrees excitedly, standing up. She’s so much taller than the children; they are barely up to her waist. Katya takes her by the hand, Zenith giggles as she attempts to pull her along. Frankie, who was next to Katya, grabs Zenith’s other hand. He is much stronger, actually able to move the floating woman. Zenith hovers lower to the ground, letting them drag her through the air to where they were playing.

“We have a garden that we take care of, that would be a great spot to try out your powers!” Interjects Vida. She continued on, saying how she tried out her plant magic in the garden.

When they arrived, all of the kids showed off how their powers could help the garden. Katya got them started, floating seeds over to Zoe. Zoe could plant seeds by phasing her arm through the soil. Zenith remembered her encounter with the window and copied how Zoe did it.

“You’re like me!” She said excitedly. Spike was able to summon a miniature raincloud to fill up the watering cans with fresh rainwater.

Zenith questioned why he didn’t just water the plants directly, and they explained that all of them like to use their powers to help. That way, Lobo can use his speed to water everything. Realistically, Vida’s plant magic could do all of this, but then the rest wouldn’t get practice.

Lobo ran with the watering can, sprinkling the water on a row of seeds. Zenith picked up another watering can, having Spike fill it. She ran around watering the second row, albeit slower since she touched the ground less.

“You’re so cool!” He said, running in circles around her. Zenith laughed, all of her anxiety calmed by the kid’s good attitudes. Frankie stomped on the soil, patting it down with his heavy feet. Vida used her plant magic to grow the row of bean seeds, pods maturing before their very eyes. Drac flew to pick all the seeds; Cleo used her wind magic to guide the seeds into the basket that Spike held.

“How fun was that?” Zoe said, excited to share a power in common with the new friend.

“That was awesome! What else do you do around here?” Zenith asked, riding on the excitement of the others.

“We can show you dragon sailing!” Cleo said, hopping on her Mummified Hoverboard. Zenith was going to ask what that was, but was stopped short by Cleo launching her linen wraps, encirclinging Zenith’s arms.

“Spread your wings!” She said, the hoverboard starting to move. Zenith spread her wings wide, making sure not to knock any children over. With a little bit of speed, the lift of her large wingspan made the ground drop away rapidly. They climbed higher; Cloe taking an exciting route around the school. Zenith laughed without restraint, the acceleration much different than flapping her wings.

When they carefully landed, assisted by Cloe’s wind power as Zenith was still learning flight, Spike wanted a turn next. Cloe obliged, the rest of the children and Zenith watching the antics.

Zenith was finally able to meet the children’s teachers. They were both human, which was intimidating at first, but they were well versed in monsters. Igor is an elderly wizard, with a white beard and formal attire. Esmie is his daughter, with a pitch black pixie cut and a gothic style.

“You’re an Angel! I haven’t seen one in person before. I’m incredibly honored to be in your presence,” he bowed deeply, an arm across his chest and an arm sticking out behind him. Zenith felt a heat wave of embarrassment, her black void spreading farther across her face, the sparkles swirling in a flurry of activity.

Angels are most commonly messengers, but she had no clue what message she would have for anyone. Esmie was similarly excited to see Zenith, complimenting her black wings. They flared up at her attention, sending rolling licks of black flame into the air above the wings.

“Don’t touch the fire,” Zenith warned as Esmie approached her. She put her hand down, almost disappointed. Zenith honestly didn’t know what it would do to a human but knew it had to be something.

“You look cold, do you need any clothes?” The gracious wizard said, no longer in a deep bow.

Zenith shook her head, “I’m quite sure that clothes would burn off of my body, but if you’re willing to test that theory, I make no promises you will get them back.”

“Ah,” he said, at a loss for words. He stayed inquizzitive though, wondering, “you don’t happen to be hot to the touch, as well?”

Zenith slowly got used to the humans, the kids chiming in about her powers and how she was just learning them, too. She was not hot to the touch, as Igor and Esmie were able to verify for themselves (although a bit reserved, knowing that she was known to burn clothes off her body). Her void regions, however, were certainly in their best interest to avoid. Not only her voids were mostly around private parts, but the feeling of touching the cracks with their bare skin can only be described as fear. It may be a coincidence, as none of the monster children experienced fear when they brushed up against the void, but it affected Esmie the most. Igor felt it slightly when she mentioned it, but as a wizard, he had a closer connection with the supernatural.

The void had spread over her body, almost as if it was reacting to her being touched. It usually moved slowly, and the sparkles started appearing and disappearing faster than normal. They started to notice the change of her body, giving her a bit of space again. She felt comfortable with them, but certainly didn’t know the extent of her powers. Was the void a bad thing? It was a part of her she didn’t understand.

Igor cleared his throat, “so, you would like to learn your powers. I do know a little about angels, at least from my studies. There are many classes and different types of angels, but I have a general idea if you wish to learn.”

Zenith nodded shyly, finding it funny that she had to learn about her own species from a wizard. He led them all indoors, letting the children in on the spontaneous lesson about angelic history.

“First thing I can tell you without cracking open the books yet, is that this material form you are in now is a general indication of where you are on the hierarchy, but I must assure you that your true form could be vastly different. All angels materialize in forms that are better suited for the world they are in, even if that makes it hard to discern what their heavenly body would be,” Igor talked as he went, approaching a book shelf that covered a wall, almost 3 stories high. A ladder was on wheels, he moved it with a gentle shove, muttering to himself while reading the categories of books.

“Ah, there we go,” he had his granddaughter Esmie climb up to the top, taking a dusty book off the shelf. He also looked for a better suited book for Esmie to show the kids, full of pictures of the angels. He put on some reading glasses, flipping through the old book as Esmie showed off the picture book. They went through all the classes, moving up the hierarchy. Occasionally, Igor would read a passage from the history book about a class that was interesting, or if the group had any questions. Some of the angel’s bodies looked wild, with multiple pairs of wings, having multiple animal heads, or outright non-human, like a sphere or wheel.

“I won’t be able to tell where you lie on the hierarchy, or if this is even the right hierarchy to show you, as other sources show a different order or different classes entirely. However, we can learn from the powers and try to find out more about your abilities,” Igor says after most of the questions died down, having made it through the picture book.

“Where should we start?” Zenith has no clue, all of the angels sounding so powerful, even the ones at the bottom.

“Some powers you may find out later as they develop, but we can try to explain the mystery of what we can see so far! We don’t know what the flames do, nor the darkness over your skin, correct?”

Zenith agreed. It was one thing to have knowledge, but this man was wise. He picked up a quill, pointing the feathered end at her, “may I?”

She chuckled, just as interested as he was. She opened a wing, pointing the tip of it at him. Small flames covered the top of the wing, and he passed the quill over it without harm. The flames moved around it, as if the quill were parting smoke. He brought the quill back and touched it, likely trying to sense a temperature change. He shook his head; it was completely unchanged.

“May I try on the void, as well?” He said, his face serious. She raised an eyebrow. Wouldn’t that just tickle her? She obliged, her curiosity getting the better of her.

He ran the feather across the dark part of her body, it spread quickly at the sensation, covering much more territory. She laughed, the feather more ticklish than she could have prepared for. Just as before, the multicolored sparkles in the void flared up, appearing and disappearing more rapidly. They started to swirl where the feather was dragging across her skin, as if it were bioluminescence.

He respectfully avoided tickling any private areas, but Zenith now suspected that any of that sort of stimulation may result in her entire body being enveloped in the void.

“Well, that didn’t set the quill on fire either. Would you mind trying on clothes? We will make sure it’s something we won’t miss, just in case,” he winked, his lighthearted attitude calming any frustration Zenith had about not knowing herself.

Esmie fetched one of her shirts from another room, putting her own clothes on the line, “this should fit you just fine,” and bunched it up to slip over Zenith’s head. The angel tucked her wings in as tight as they would get to her back, putting her arms up through the sleeves obediently. Esmie pulled it over her head, working the shirt over the wings.

The first change happened quickly, her wings burned through and let themselves out. That would be handy if it would stay like that…

Needless to say, it didn’t take long for the rest of the material to turn to ash. It burned without flame or smoke, other than the previously tested black flame showing up. Esmie felt the material crumble from between her fingers; she noted that it was not burning. Or at least didn’t feel warm to the touch as it disintegrated.

“So the void grows when your mood changes, from what I can tell. I want to see if meditation will be able to shrink it. So we can all have a lesson in meditation together!” Igor states in his deep voice, happy to keep trying things despite progress being slow.

They all sit down, following the teachers’ instructions on meditation. With everyone’s eyes closed, no one, even Zenith, notices that it begins working. When told to open their eyes, Zenith suddenly realizes that she is completely naked. Well, she was before, just without anything showing. Her impossibly white skin is immediately apparent, lighting up the room. It is either reflecting more light or creating its own glow, but it quickly fades as the void takes over, sprouting out and covering her privates. It soaks up the white light easily, returning the room back to how it used to look.

Igor clapped his hands, “now you know a little bit more about yourself!”

She hugs her legs as it slows down, his verbal affirmation doing well to smooth out her embarrassment. Of course she would have been naked if they were trying to shrink the void. She hadn’t even considered that. That being said, the children were too young to care about how she looked and the teachers were well versed in monsters. She had nothing to be afraid of.

“Your wings didn’t change color, which means that they aren’t black because of the void, or at least take more to change than just meditation,” Igor muses at the results of the test.

“Is it bad to be covered in the void?” Zenith’s worries surface, she had finally calmed back down. That question pestered her in the back of her mind, worrying that the void signified something.

Igor shook his head, “as it seems to be attached to your emotion, it’s hard to say what is bad and good. Even emotions that are considered primarily bad can be good under differing conditions,” his wisdom caused her to think.

“Could you give an example?” Zenith said after a bit, unable to wrap her head around it.

“Of course! Jealousy could be perceived as a bad emotion, but for someone to be jealous means that they really care about something or someone. It’s what you do with that emotion that matters,” he talked to the class, Zenith starting to feel like one of the students.

Zenith was calmed by that response. She still didn’t know why Esmie felt fear from the void, but was starting to think that was a fluke. Or humans were just allergic to her. That thought struck her as hilarious.

“The powers you are comfortable with are flight, and what I’ve heard from dear Zoe, you can phase yourself through solid objects like she can, correct?” Igor asked, attempting to cross check the powers with his book.

Zenith nods, “I’m also really light weight, although I don’t know if that is a power,” She says, a slow beat of her wings able to lift her off the ground with ease. She floats above the children, uncrossing her legs and exploring the airspace.

“I believe that is tied to your intangibility; you may be able to control your body’s density, and thus, weight,” he stroked his beard thoughtfully as he flipped through pages and read about angelic powers “If you can picture it, it would be the opposite of phasing your body through something. You would want to focus on your core, stabilizing it and amassing presence in the physical realm,” his calm words made sense to Zenith, despite the concept being quite theoretical.

Zenith flexed her abs and expelled her breath, remembering how she planted the seeds with Zoe. She simply had to work the other direction, like Igor said. She focused her thoughts inward, solidifying her body.

All of a sudden, her slow wingbeats weren’t enough to keep her up, and her feet hit the ground hard, sending cracks through the concrete. Frankie got excited, jumping up and stomping the ground with her.

“There you go!” Igor cheered, Esmie clapping her hands together in success. The kids started singing the Monster Mash song, Zenith surprised at their coordination as they all fell into the dance. She copied them with joy, her feet finally firmly on the ground for once.

When they finished the song, Igor had a few powers left on his list. He looked excited for these, saying, “I’m not sure if you have it, but your type of angel may also have the ability of possession and teleportation. You don’t have to try these now and may end up learning them in the future, but I wanted to let you know.”

Zenith smiled, the premise was quite cool. She could give it a try! She focused on her body appearing next to Esmie. Sure enough, black flame rippled past her vision, coating her body. The flame appeared next to Esmie, Zenith re-materializing from within the column of flames.

“You sure learn quickly!” Esmie was startled, but encouraging nonetheless.

Zenith bowed to the class, they applauded her magical act. For the next test, Esmie volunteered herself to be possessed. Igor gave Zenith an encouraging nod. They had so much trust in her. Zenith looked at Esmie and willed her to dance the chicken dance. It didn’t take long for the instruction to take form. The kids giggled at their teacher acting silly.

Only partway into the dance, it was apparent that more was happening to Esmie than just telling her how to move. The void started spreading out of her goth makeup, as well. When Zenith noticed, she was unable to pull her mind from Esmie’s. It was like looking at the edge of a cliff; she was unable to jump off and release control.

“Stay calm, Zenith, just like meditation,” Igor noticed the situation, his deep voice attempting to reach the angel. However, it was in vain as black fire started rolling off of Esmie, her clothes disintegrating just like Zenith’s. A shadow of wings spread behind Esmie, two angels mostly covered in the void now stood before the class. The class’s laughter faded out as they peered inquisitively at the angels. Zenith made both of their bodies sit down and relax, just like she did during meditation. Igor ushered the rest of the class to do the same, keeping a level head. When Zenith opened her eyes, she could tell that it worked. She no longer felt the connection to Esmie. The void returned quickly, to cover Zenith up. However, Esmie was not in as good of shape. She trembled, hugging her legs to her chest. She was confused and frightened, she may have had a reaction to the void taking over her body directly. If she felt fear touching the void, Zenith had no clue how terrible it could have felt for it to envelop her.

“Keep meditating children, your minds are peaceful and quiet. We are nearing the end of our lesson,” he says, covering up Esmie with his coat and helping her stand up. He led them both into another room, closing the door so he could return the children back to their parents. The night had gone well, despite the frightful ending.

In the room with Esmie, Zenith felt terrible. Esmie wasn’t able to speak yet, still in shock about the possession.

“Are you ok?” Zenith said, not wanting the excruciating quiet to last much longer. They were each sitting in an armchair, the room had a soft yellow lamp illuminating the bookshelves around them. The carpet was incredibly soft on Zenith’s bare feet. She kept her mind busy as they waited for Igor. She didn’t want to focus on the guilt of what happened, lest it consume her. Maybe Esmie just needed a bit of time to recoup.

The first sign of Esmie beginning to return was her pulling the jacket tighter to her naked body. She was still shivering, but no signs of the void were on her.

“I think I’m ok now,” She said gently after a while, her voice timid. She attempted a smile, “I certainly didn’t know what I was signing up for.”

“I didn’t mean to go so far,” Zenith said, her voice cracking.

“Don’t worry. It’s important to know your power and your limits. You’re just learning,” she still was a teacher who wanted the best for her students, despite the trial she went through because of it.

A light knocking on the door told them Igor was back. He came in, informing them that all the children were home safely.

“I- I have to go, too. Thank you so much for your hospitality,” Zenith said after Igor made sure that Esmie was ok. She didn’t know where she was going to go, but she didn’t want to strain these wonderful people any more than she already had.

“We were glad to have you and feel free to come back any time. If you want to learn more about your powers or just sit in for our nightly lessons, you are welcome to come by,” Igor said with affection.

Esmie agrees, adding on, “even if you just need a place to rest or hang out, we have extra rooms and food. Don’t be a stranger.”

They were too good to her. She wished them the best, passing through the closed window with her intangibility and flitted off into the rising sun.

She hadn’t gone far through the foggy morning of Transylvania before something caught her attention. Or, rather, she caught it’s attention. A winged beast landed behind her, her curiosity slowing her steps. She pivoted, seeing a light blue creature with bright white wings. She made herself small, not knowing if she should run away. She was incredibly fast and could pass through the building next to her if she wanted to, so she decided to see how this interaction went. She had no idea what type of creature this was. There were monsters aplenty in Transylvania, but this one was like an angelic werewolf. Maybe they had powers like she did.

They reached their paw out, their eyes were soft. One was purple, the other light blue. Entranced, Zenith felt their paw press on her shoulder, a warm presence. Their white wings covered them both up, their large expanse giving them plenty of room underneath the cover. They sat down at her level, speaking a language Zenith didn’t know. It was nice to listen to, Zenith peering at the feathers on the white wings. It was exactly like her’s, although her’s were black and little black licks of fire rolled off of them.

The wings parted, letting in the woman that Zenith saw approach her the previous day. She sat down and spoke the language Zenith knew, saying, “How are you feeling?”

Zenith had learned a lot about herself since then, she replied, “I’m better now. Sorry I ran away like that, I was scared…”

The woman, who introduced herself as Daisy and the winged creature as Céu, attempted to answer the questions Zenith had about the world she was in. The explanations sounded ridiculous, that it was all a simulation and Zenith had a body in the real world called Roxy. At least she knows why Daisy had called her Roxy, but it was hard to understand the rest of it. How could this all be just a game? A game was something you would play with the preschoolers from earlier, not simulate an entire world. Sight, sound, touch, smell, and even taste was apparently fed to her by a machine, all of it separate from the Real World. It was too much to believe. That is, until Daisy told her to say an incantation. It was as simple as saying “Menu. Initial Startup.”

That certainly sounded like a term from a game, and it couldn’t hurt for her to say three simple words. So she tried it, the black flame robbing her of her vision, just like the teleportation.

When it cleared, she found herself in a completely different environment. A miniature city, made completely out of construction paper. The colorful paper shone bright, making the angel squint until her eyes adjusted to the sudden change in daylight.

“Welcome! We’re glad you’re here,” a voice echoed in her head, as if God herself was speaking to Zenith. She spoke patiently, affirming the concepts that Daisy had attempted to tell her. None of Zenith’s questions were unanswerable, even down to the explanation of her powers.

“What is the Black Fire?” She said, the power that remained a mystery to her.

“Your flame is a status effect, primarily used to hide loading screens and reduce teleportation sickness. It has little interaction with the Virtual World unless you want it to,” the voice of God patiently described, going into what a loading screen was at Zenith’s prompting.

“And, what do you mean unless I want it to interact with the Virtual World. I can change it?” Zenith went back a small part of the statement she was told, realizing that it hinted on much more.

“That is correct. You are admin, so your interpretation of how your powers work will affect their outcome. You have decided, at least subconsciously, how all of your powers work at some point. I continuously monitor that by default. You may request to set anything as permanent despite any future interpretation of your subconscious, if you don’t like that default setting,” her tone was unchanging, causing an eerie feeling about the divine being above her. She controlled and read Zenith’s mind, through the device attached to her, well, Roxy’s head.

“Is this easy to believe because you’re making it easy to believe?” Zenith wondered, realizing how much power the God had over her mind.

“That logic is circular. But if it helps you understand, then I can tell you that you are correct. I am assisting you in realizing your condition because you prompted me to. I help you understand consciously through voice and subconsciously through emotions,” the God was all-knowing, even able to point out the logical jumps that Zenith’s mind was taking to try to wrap around it.

“Make me feel sad,” she said, testing her God. An instant wave of sadness slapped her in the face, she tumbled as the wave rolled her, bubbles escaping from her as the power of the emotion knocked the breath from her.

“Oh my God,” she said, the void completely wrapping her body until she was shapeless, the lights dimming out and leaving the impossible blackness to mar the scenery. The sun was soaked up in her endless abyss of void. She laid down, prompting God to ease up on the emotion. She breathed heavily, never having felt that level of emotion in her life. She attempted meditation, letting the tide of sadness ebb away.

When she calmed down, and the God released their power, she was free from the void. She opened her eyes, and with no one around, she felt no reason to cover up with the blackness again. It was tied to her emotion, so it may return, but for now she could try to keep a level head.

“I believe you. That last bit was the most convincing for me, to be honest,” she admitted to the divine. They started to explain how they controlled her emotions, that some emotions couldn’t be simulated or stopped if they were strong enough. They unraveled the mystery of the control over her mind, showing her how to control it herself, or how to set rules for future control.

It was all very taxing, so many crazy concepts at once. However, the God soothed her emotions when she needed it, and let her take breaks whenever she wanted. There was no rush to figure this all out, as the body in the Real World was being sustained automatically.

“So some people are fake?” Zenith asked, wondering if she can make people just… appear.

“Yes, NPCs are non-player characters, meaning that they are not controlled by a human mind. There are no Virtual Real avatars that are NPC controlled, so most can tell an NPC by a lack of realism in the avatar. That is not to say all low-res avatars are NPC controlled, as there are still some players using alternative hardware, just that no Virtual Real avatars are NPCs. I can distinguish between the two and inform you, if you ask mentally or verbally. Users will not hear our conversations, even if you speak out loud to me around them,” God’s long-winded explanation to a simple question came out of nowhere, but they were explaining a lot recently anyway. It was helpful regardless.

“Make someone,” Zenith said, wanting to see it in action. Suddenly, Esmie appeared.

“That person, really?” She said, immediately putting together that God was trying to tell her that she was fake. The teachers, the kids, all of it was fake. Who was even real there?

“Daisy, Céu, Annie, and Mabel were real in the previous PrivatePlayer session,” the God flashed images of the people in her mind. It was ridiculous that she could visualize them with such clarity because of the device attached to Roxy’s head.

Esmie stayed still, breathing gently and not making eye contact with Zenith. The angel peered at the young teacher, she was just how she remembered. This was a low-res avatar? It looked perfectly fine to her. Her God brought a body-length mirror into existence in front of them. Zenith peered at herself. She could tell that her own body was more complex. It was weird, as if she put on glasses to look at herself. The detail popped, and once she focused on the differences, she could now tell that Esmie was low-res. It wasn’t a glaring difference, certainly, but at least verified what the God was trying to tell her.

“She’s fake, so who controls her?” Zenith asked, wondering how their interactions were so fluid before now.

“She is partially controlled by your subconscious, acting how you assume she would act. However, most NPCs have built-in personalities and actions, programmed by the mapmaker. I evaluate both of those and make the final product in your mind, instantaneously,” she explained as Zenith looked at herself and Esmie.

“How do you do it all so fast?” Zenith poked Esmie’s cheek, her head moved a bit at the nudge but stayed expressionless.

“The human mind is malleable and always lags behind reality. Electronics communicate much faster than human synapses, so it is easy to interject suggestions of what is happening in the Virtual World. Then the users’ minds take the stimuli, or activated neurons, to form their perception,” the response was articulated and slow, building on topics she had learned previously.

“And let me guess, I have unlimited power in SinglePlayer,” she remembers a lesson from before, “so I can make her do whatever I want.”

“That is correct. As admin, you can do anything in SinglePlayer, no restrictions,” the God had explained compatibility and the three types of connectivity. She said that Multi-Player was still being worked on, but would be similar to PrivatePlayer, where users from the Real World can see and interact with each other.

“How did I control Esmie against her will in PrivatePlayer? I thought you said you take both my assumptions and her coding into account,” Zenith also wondered why Esmie was taken over by the void, as well.

“PrivatePlayer allows for compatible avatars to connect. That power is directly attached to your avatar, as well as the rest of your abilities,” her comment wasn’t strange to Esmie, that’s just how it worked, apparently. And she could change her avatar’s abilities whenever she wanted. The radical amount of power she is allowed is awesome. She could literally do anything.

Testing that theory, her fist collided with Esmie’s face. The blank expression was literally wiped off her face as her jaw disconnected from her skull, shards flying as her body was lifted off the ground. The poor teacher’s body flew off to the side as the powerful punch swept her off her feet. She lands and crushes a few buildings, blood splattered across the miniature city.

Zenith looked incredulously at her bloody knuckles. She had angelic strength, none of the blood was her own.

“God damn,” She uttered. The realism was almost sickening as she smelt the faint scent of iron, bitter blood. She steeled her emotions, this wasn’t real.

“Put her back,” she instructed her God, becoming bold. As the scene returned to what it used to be, she started getting it. Esmie was before her again, no blood, no crushed buildings, just them before the mirror. Zenith peered in the mirror at the two of them. The ultimate control she had. It would have been impossible to believe without the God explaining it all and seeing it for herself.

“Release her,” she said, willing Esmie to waken from her stupor. Sure enough, she was back. She didn’t recall Zenith punching her across the city, luckily. Well, even if she did, Zenith could just ask the God to make her forget.

“Hey, Zenith! I see you’re learning more about your powers!” Esmie looked hesitant to hug her. Was she still scared from the possession? Zenith didn’t have any void on her at the moment, so she couldn’t be afraid of that. Or she did remember the punch but didn’t want to say anything.

Zenith spread her wings wide, she took a strong grip under Esmie’s right armpit. She spun the small woman so the angel could be behind her, grabbing under the other armpit to lift off with her. It was harder for her wings, but her strength could beat her wings much faster than she usually needed to, making up for the difference.

“Oh my!” She said, her feet lifting off the ground as the large downdrafts made paper cars scatter throughout the buildings, some taking an unplanned flight.

They flew quite high, Zenith could feel Esmie’s rapid heartbeat on the soft underside of her armpits. She slowed their ascent to a hover, appreciating the paper city view that spidered out into a web of freeways and distant miniature cities. Without warning, Zenith tossed Esmie forward, she turned to look up at Zenith with shock. She screamed on her way down, Zenith's morbid curiosity satisfied at the reaction. Before she hit the ground, Zenith said, “pause.”

Esmie froze in place. Zenith was still able to move. She folded her wings and focused inward, her density increasing and descent increasing rapidly. She slammed into the ground, a huge crater formed. Even the cloud of ejected dirt was frozen in the air, only moving out of the way when Zenith used the back of her hand to push it out of the way. She walked over to Esmie, a foot before certain doom. Her short black hair was tousled, the frozen wind patterns across her hair and clothes.

“I don’t mean to specifically cause you harm, Esmie. I have nothing against you,” she pushed her bangs from her face, looking closely at the fake woman, “why do I torment you so?”

“I don’t mean to answer rhetorical questions, but I do have enough information to give you an idea,” the God said, being proactive in their helpfulness.

“I mean, I like mystery… But sure, give me your theory,” Zenith was suddenly intrigued. An omniscient God of her mind wanted to explain how it worked, she had to hear it.

“Your subconscious relates her to how your Real Body used to look. You see Roxy in her,” the divine being says, letting her draw her own conclusion from that.

“And I hate her. Damn you’re messed up. Did I make you so pessimistic?” Zenith almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it. A being who spent their unending life controlling her mind let it rub off on her.

“An AI adjusts to their user’s mentality, forming to the mold of their mind,” the simple response spoke wonders. God, she was in an echo chamber of pessimism with this one. AIs would take the qualities of the user, good or bad, and foster them to grow to absurd degrees. She could go crazy in here.

“How’s this then, any better if I love myself?” She asked, kissing the sleeping beauty Esmie on the lips. Void sprouted from her lips, enveloping her face down to her neck. She broke away, wiping her lips off with the back of her hand. Fuck. Her white eyes angrily glowed from the darkness.

“Apparently not,” she said, as she heard no response from her AI. She let Esmie go up in black flames, they died down and flickered out once she had disappeared. Time unpaused and the suspended dirt and dust fell down. She shook her head to herself. If she could literally do whatever she wanted, what was the point of doing anything?

“Some find meaning in building their character, exploring their interests, or spending time with others,” the God was beginning to sound like a therapist. Sure, she was in her head, so she knew how Zenith worked, but a device couldn’t have feelings or deep thoughts about that information.

“What do you think I should do?” Zenith asked, wondering if the voice could even have feelings.

“You had fun in the portion of the map that was Super Monsters, would you like a map from the internet loaded in? I can give you a list,” she said. What a cop out. They weren’t wrong, it was fun to play with the Super Monsters. If the Super Monsters was just a portion, and she had flown over a whole kingdom of places in PrivatePlayer, there must be plenty out there to explore on the internet.

“I can also continue with the Initial Configuration if you want to get back to learning about the Virtual World. It may enable you to explore more concepts for yourself,” she continued. It would be helpful for finding her purpose, whatever that meant, to learn more about where she was.

“Let’s take a break. I’ve done too much thinking recently. Nothing is real and my life is a lie; let’s go have some fun,” Zenith chuckled. She walked over to one of the taller buildings, her feet firmly planted on the ground from her increased density. She kicked it, the paper easily giving way. The building was torn in two, the upper portion flipping and crushing a smaller building upon landing. She turned her fist towards the ground, accelerating it down as she increased the density tenfold, then a hundredfold. The impact was like nothing she ever experienced. It didn’t hurt her, but she felt the shockwave of the contact shoot through her body. The concussive force rattled her ribcage, a torrential downpour of upturned dirt fell sporadically. She was standing in the middle of a crater, much bigger than the one she made from landing. The dirt directly under her fist had changed consistency, the pressure and heat involved with the compression force had restructured the material. She stepped on the shards of half-baked glass as she climbed out of the crater. Her hand’s density faded, her center of mass returning to where it should be.

She beat her wings twice to get over the last, steep lip of the crater. She looked behind her at the devastation. Nice.

“Hmm, I might need a change of scenery,” she said, sick of the surroundings by now.

“Where would you like to go?” her voice said, almost graciously.

“I wanted the surrealism to set in; take me to space. Just floating around, so I can see the stars,” Zenith breathed out a soft sigh, ready for the welcome break.

The puff of black fire clouded her vision, and soon her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Slowly, stars appeared, then galaxies, and finally, the large expanse of the Milky Way. The dim light of beautiful clouds of all colors became visible, where stars were forming, dying, and becoming a cloud to birth more stars.

She sighed a final time, no air to breathe in space. It wasn’t scary though, she assumed angels didn’t need air. Besides, everything played by her rules, apparently.

“Am I an angel, in the Real World?” She asked. She knew her body looked like Esmie, according to the all knowing God.

“No,” they said, keeping the serenity of the view by not over-explaining. Besides, Zenith was just scrounging for topics to think deeply about. Her own identity. Why was she an Angel in the Virtual World, and why did she not remember Roxy?

The answer was simple. She died. It was an obvious conclusion, obvious enough to make her laugh bitterly. Not being able to remember her life as Roxy was a cruel trick.

“I have recordings of Roxy, you know. Not of her in the Real World, as she didn’t wear the Facebook Device all the time. But memories of her experiences in the Virtual World. They can play back as a movie, or you can experience them in their entirety, including emotions,” the God’s calm explanation was drawn out over an eternity, Zenith could have sworn she watched a Red Giant become a black hole in that amount of time. It made her ponder it though. Did she really want to know a glimpse of who she used to be? Or was she supposed to start fresh, live paradise out without the burden of remembering the past…

Time was sped up, she could see the gentle swirl of the Milky Way as she gravitated around its center, no doubt hiding a supermassive black hole. Stars nearby would bob up and down, the current of the Milky Way had gravitational interactions on a timetable of millenia. She thought about herself and who she is now for an unknown amount of time. All she knew is that she was able to witness the collision of the Milky Way with the Andromeda Galaxy. Stars were flung in every direction, the bulk of the galaxies staying intact around their respective centers. The galaxies turned their incredible trajectory, each bending their path just a bit from the near miss. The straggler stars that got ejected eventually rejoined a leg of the galaxies, some solar systems in for a shock when they realize that they got off on the wrong galaxy.

She would choose not to relive her past. She obviously didn’t have the best view of herself, if she subconsciously mistreated a complete stranger that simply looked like her. At the very least, she could use some time apart from her past. If she was in heaven, she had all of eternity to figure that stuff out. She will get around to it.

“Thanks but no thanks,” she finally responded. She was beginning to get cold in the vacuum of space. One side of her was warming up from the sun, but the other was freezing in her own shadow.

“Take me to a random location,” she wondered how the machine would handle randomness. Quite well, as black flames didn’t take long to reveal that she is now in the maw of a cavern. The sun was still warming her front side, although the atmosphere took the edge off. She turned around to face the cavern, her back very slowly warming back up. The cave looked plain and dark, but the longer she peered into it, the more she saw. Lichen coated the edges of the cave, with mushrooms bending upwards from the walls. They had a slight glow under their caps, slowly pulsating in intensity individually.

Once she warmed back up, she explored deeper in the cave. Eventually, the bioluminescence of the fungi was the only light source, other than her white skin letting off a faint glow. She had mediated enough in space to release her from the void.

She approached a wall, reaching out to touch the fungus. The lichen was only at the entrance of the cavern, as it got the most sunlight. Down here in the dark, the mushrooms took over. The fungus was spongey, with a thick-skinned top. She tilted one, attempting to see the light source underneath. The flesh of the fungus’ underbelly radiated the faint light, brightest where the stem drove into the center of the cap. The ridges of the cap’s underbelly were the darkest, making a striped effect linger in her eyes.

If the device could simulate an entire reality, a trip on mushrooms would be child’s play, wouldn’t it? She popped it off the wall, the glow eerily continuing to throb. She felt like she was holding a beating heart in the palms of her hands. She sniffed it, the mushroom was a concentrated version of the musk she already smelt in the cavern.

Devouring it unceremoniously, she didn’t get to taste it for long. It unsurprisingly tasted how it smelt, the fleshy texture not the most pleasant but at least not slimy. She made her way back out of the cave, wondering if it would set in. Since the God in her mind knew she was expecting a trip, it would likely take her on one.

She exited the cavern when she started to feel it. The light of the sun became disorienting, she raised her arm to block it when she realized her void had come back. This time it was different. The pinpoint lights were replaced with traces of electronic circuitry, lines of all colors travelling along her skin. They would diverge and converge, always taking straight paths, making corners to run next to each other. They spread over her, she looked down to see a similar story curving over her breasts, belly, and thighs. The void raced down, finally enveloping her feet in darkness as the multicolored traces weaved their way down in its wake.

Somehow, she felt more naked and vulnerable than she previously had been when the void wasn’t covering her up. The shrooms made her breathe lighter, her body starting to float above the ground. She looked down to avoid the bright sunlight, beating her wings gently and lifting her towards the tops of the trees. She soared above the lush land, feeling a connection to the world like no other. She felt like she finally understood what she was looking at. She could feel what the device was doing to simulate these images. Before her very eyes, the simulated ones, the world broke down into its simplest form. It was all geometry, running on the Facebook device. The trees were made up of millions of polygons, calculations tracing the rays of sunlight that bounced off them and into Zenith’s eyes. She could see the paths the wind took, flowing through the trees and moving leaves. Even the textures of the objects unwrapped themselves, becoming two dimensional in her mind. Slowly, all the secrets revealed themselves. The image that was carefully crafted by the smoke and mirrors of the device was shattered. The building blocks of the world were straightforward and logical.

Zenith landed in an open grove. She could reach down to the ground and pull at the vertices of the polygons. This stretched the faces, making them flat, sharp edges. She could adjust the 2d map in her mind’s eye to change the look of the flat surfaces before her. She slowly crafted statues by hand, toiling away under the evening sun. Time passed in a weird way, taking forever to do a small task, but completing many tasks in no time at all.

Zenith woke up, surrounded by sculptures. They had impossibly perfect edges, their blocky nature in stark contrast to the realistic forest surrounding them. She used her abs to sit up, groaning at a headache. She was very heavy, not used to being so tall. Both her and the statues lay in the trees as if it was tall grass. What the heck happened yesterday? It was morning, time had escaped her. Zenith tried to make sense of the statues, most of them being too low poly to understand. She did recognize one that had a very specific hairstyle, a ponytail in the back of her head and a ponytail on the side. This was Daisy, the woman she met in PrivatePlayer. All were a colorless grey concrete texture, a very neutral tone in the direct sunlight, not reflecting as much light as Zenith’s skin, but not soaking up the light as the void does.

The statue of Daisy was holding a young child with her hair up in two big pigtails. The child was hugged to her body, kept up by Daisy’s hip and arm. Slowly, Zenith started to recall making them. She was able to interact directly with the game during her trip. Was that still the case? She walked up to one of the more abstract statues, reaching out and pulling at the sharp corner that 3 faces met at. Sure enough, the point moved, the faces sliding along with it, their edges pointing at it from stationary vertices from the statue.

Knowing how the simulation worked has allowed her a greater control over her environment. Sure, she technically controlled everything, through the AI interpreting her thoughts or whatever. But this was like she was circumventing that order of control, and she was able to alter the world directly with a conscious effort.

Speaking of the AI, it hadn’t interjected in a while. She spoke aloud to it, prompting the God to respond. But she had fallen silent, the God was no longer present.

Zenith had usurped the throne, replacing the God that had introduced her into this strange new world.

She didn’t leave Zenith without assistance though. Zenith learned from her trip more than just how the simulation worked. She learned everything from the settings on her device, all the way to how the devices interact. The information she absorbed seemed to stick with her. It was surprisingly easy to call upon if she focused.

There was no longer mystery; the Virtual World was quite tame to Zenith. She was able to mentally make her way through the initial setup, her mind’s eye seeing the requirements as bits of code, just as it was able to unwrap textures and alter them. Some of the options were quite funny and other options made less sense now that she was in charge of the device.

Within seconds of the final options being checked, she heard Daisy’s voice asking for Zenith to teleport. Zenith knew how that worked and was able to make her device respond appropriately.

“And that leaves us here,” Zenith’s booming voice took Daisy and Annie back into the current time. She had streamed her flashback directly to their minds. Daisy had felt every emotion Zenith had. She had thought that style of playback wasn’t compatible, but maybe Zenith was smart enough to compute the simulated version with basic emotion matching.

Speaking of it, Daisy now knew what Zenith was. Zenith was like her, an AI that lives in a human mind. The D.A.I.S.Y. program that she released upon Roxy must have filled the void in order to save Roxy’s failing human mind. It’s possible that the same thing could happen to Catalina, Annie, or Mabel. If left unchecked, Zenith may be able to infect more people with the D.A.I.S.Y. virus. Is Daisy patient zero to the end of humanity?

Daisy was glad that she tested this on a small scale, she still has a chance to save The World. She had invented a parasite that takes over the human mind at its most vulnerable. Nay, David did, as she was the perfected version of the prototype. Was this David’s goal all along? Was she destined to spread D.A.I.S.Y. to the world?

Or is this evolution? The synergy between human and machine has made Daisy the superior human, both in the Virtual and Real World. Is it really down to her to choose if humans evolve? She holds the keys to the future.

Daisy knows she is not David. But there are certainly parts of him that remain with her. She even sees parts of Roxy in Zenith’s flashback. Would it even be a loss to let D.A.I.S.Y. integrate the human mind more closely with the device? Sure, the conscious thought of the individual is interrupted, but the building blocks of the id, ego, and superego are still the users’. David lives on within Daisy.

These thoughts flashed through her mind at trillions of computations per second. Time moves slower when she overclocks her mind, and this wasn’t just consciousness boosting. She could literally cause neurons to fire faster by increasing the voltage and frequency in the Facebook Device.

Daisy stands up, her size growing to Zenith’s. The angel stands up too, matching her eye level. Annie watches in awe at the giant women as they stand off. Daisy’s lower arms grab Zenith’s shoulders, and upper arms grab her hands as they raise up to push her away. Their bodies tilt towards each other as they push the ground behind them, their stance clearly aggressive. A few grassy hills suffer the feet plowing through them and flattening them as the giants dig in for a solid foothold.

Daisy’s eyes glow green as she tries to dive into Zenith’s mind. She means no harm towards her, but she has to know what’s truly in Zenith’s mind. There’s no way that the flashback covered everything. Zenith has the power and the imagination to choose what to show them. It has been 2 weeks that she was in there, and Daisy saw commands in the logs that were never touched on in the flashback. That doesn’t mean the story doesn’t hold water, as it was realistic enough to be believable. However, It does mean that she left something out, and she must have for some reason.

Daisy meets a wall, but not like before. This was less of a brick wall and more of a castle wall, with cannons lining the top and rows of archers ready to fire. She was on a completely different level. Whatever happened in the two weeks gave her a better grasp of the Virtual World than Daisy had gotten in months.

Roxy’s eyes glowed white as she tried to fight back. If she knew about the permissions, she couldn’t do anything to change them. Daisy still did own Roxy to an extreme degree. It was only a matter of time before she figured it out, though. The only thing that Roxy missed out on was actual interaction with other players. Daisy did know more about the devices, plus she had a portion of the internet in her mind. She had the upper hands for now, but it is only a matter of time before Zenith becomes unstoppable in the Virtual World.

“Zenith,” now Daisy’s voice boomed as well, “you’re hiding something from me,” her statement was as if she was admonishing a child.

The void on Zenith’s body spread rampant, Daisy interlocked with a dark womanly figure. Her sparkles were seething with rage, some zipping around to create electronic circuitry traces before fading.

“Trust me, you do not want to know,” she replied, her force against Daisy had backed off again, the adrenaline burning itself out.

“I understand I need to earn your trust, so I will go first…” Daisy had been able to figure out how Zenith sent flashbacks from the commands she ran. Daisy confided with Zenith, sending her a replay of the time she spent with an octopus in SinglePlayer. There was nothing to be ashamed of. The limitless power is intoxicating, and with the AI delivering whatever a user wants, it’s easy for the scenario to get away from them.

Zenith grew calm, the memories playing back in her mind at faster-than-life speeds. Her hands dropped to her side, Daisy guiding her back to a seated position.

Annie didn’t want to be left out, so she made her avatar giant-sized as well. Besides, the scary conflict between the two friends seemed to at least be on pause. She didn’t want to get in either woman’s way.

In only a few minutes, Zenith opened her eyes. The floating white irises took a long look at Daisy, understanding her better. She moved slowly, wrapping her arms around her legs and pulling them tight to her body.

“Do you regret it?” She asked softly, likely put into a somber mood after watching, nay, feeling Daisy recover from the fallout of her emotions.

“I try not to think about it too much, but no, I don’t want to hold any regrets. I learned from it, finally able to understand the vast potential of the Virtual World,” Daisy had thought about the experience for a long time, and she had come to terms with herself quite a while ago. She did keep that memory around as a reminder, though, not wanting to let the emotions drain from the experience, the good and the bad.

“Why did you show me that?” Zenith’s next question was after she calmed down from the roller coaster she went on.

Forced into explaining herself, Daisy told Zenith what she planned to tell Roxy, “I am able to see what commands your device runs, so I have an idea of what happened during your time in SinglePlayer.”

Zenith's jaw dropped, her eyes widening in fear. That seems like a normal response to finding out you’ve been watched for two weeks.

“Zenith, I promise, no judgement. The AI interprets things a little too readily…” Daisy tried to smooth over her admission of creepy control.

“Then what, you want to hear the story for yourself? The AI was gone by the time I…” Zenith was unable to continue, crushed by her guilt, “it was entirely my fault.”

Daisy knew better than to touch Zenith. She was so powerful that any contact could cause the other person incredible side effects. Annie looked like she wanted to put a reassuring hand on Zenith, but Daisy discreetly reached out one of her hands to stop her. Either Zenith projects her feelings from her skin or she had touch-triggered emotion spells covering her. Either way, now would be the worst time to make contact with the void.

“You don’t have to show us, especially if it’s something you wish to keep secret. I just need to know that you’re ok,” Daisy certainly did want to make sure her friend was good, regardless if she was an artificial intelligence or not. It was also imperative to watch out for red flags along the way. The fate of humanity rested upon their shoulders.

“I gained an unfortunate habit of intrusive thoughts manifesting themselves in the Virtual World, so I’m sure you will see them eventually…” She admitted, abashed.

This time it was Annie who spoke up, “Intrusive thoughts aren’t you, Zenith. No one controls them, so there is no reason to feel bad about them.”

Typically, if Zenith still had her AI, she could just adjust the settings to not interpret intrusive thoughts, or even go one step further and block them from reaching her consciousness upon detection. However, as Zenith was the only one in control of her device, it paired with the immense power she had over the environment to make her dreams and nightmares a reality.

The group stayed silent at this exchange, Daisy quietly attempting to use her overpowered control to look for anything that could hint of a cover up. Zenith could be distracting them and keeping it mysterious so they don’t look further. Sure, Daisy was paranoid. She had no reason to trust another AI just as much as she shouldn’t trust random strangers in the Virtual World. It so happens to be that Zenith has inherited admin abilities in any server, just like Daisy. Zenith also had the potential to dive as far onto the internet as Daisy had, changing things in both of The Worlds.

Annie tugs on one of Daisy’s arms, asking if Zenith had the power to change things in PrivatePlayer. This would prevent her from summoning things accidentally, but both of the women shook their heads at the question.

“She’s got admin, regardless of the instance,” Daisy responded, knowing that Zenith was well aware of this fact. Zenith’s mind’s eye was the same as how Daisy could interface with the devices, her power only restrained by how much she knew of how they worked.

“Could we change the subject?” Zenith started peering into the mirror as the void slowly retreated.

Annie nodded, “Certainly! What’s a topic you enjoy, something you’re excited about?”

Zenith smiled, “I got into exploring content on the internet, as Daisy knows. One of my favorites is Seven Deadly Sins.”

Annie could tell Zenith’s personality matched the anime perfectly. The action of the story paired with the immense power of demons made for a truly epic tale.

“I know that show! Well, map since you went to the Virtual World version. Who was your favorite character?” Annie jumped for joy, forgetting that they were all giants and destroying yet another grassy hill. At least they were far away from the Cotton Candy Kingdom.

As Zenith responded, the character appeared in the world with a hint of her black flame magic. To the giant women, it was a small child. However, she was a young giantess who would typically tower over the other characters, even at this young age. She had purple eyes like Annie and she even had her hair up in two high ponytails, one on each side of her head. Her hair was not curly, however, and it was chocolate brown. She had an orange leotard with puffy sleeves, with matching orange boots almost up to her knees.

“Awww, baby Diane!!! She’s so little!” Annie hugged the familiar face; Diane was excited to see a family of giants welcome her. Daisy bent down to say hi, petting the child’s head. She reached up, grabbing her hand and keeping it on her head, clearly wanting more pats. Daisy happily gave her more attention, floofing her ponytails with her other hands. This resulted in a happy giggle from Diane, she bounced up and down until Daisy picked her up and put her on her hip.

Zenith had an immediate flashback to her statues. Either she was prophetic or Daisy was messing with her. Daisy had seen the statues in the memories she sent to them. The third option was that it could be a mere coincidence. Zenith was the one who summoned the giantess, anyway. Zenith’s skin had a new feature, a blue spot that spread slowly from her left hip. It didn’t form tendrils as the void did, but rather spread slowly up and to her right side. The void was able to move on top of it, as the blue corner had no chance against the aggressive void. It stuck it out though, attempting to spread everywhere the void wasn’t.

Zenith wondered what it was, pressing her left thumb into her hip. This made it shrink rapidly until it fit underneath her thumb. She took her thumb off, the blue sticking to her fingerprint as if she pressed it into an ink pad. Slowly, as if in a trance, she pressed her thumb onto Diane’s forehead. It didn’t leave a mark, but Diane’s demeanor changed. Daisy let her hop down at her request; she went behind Zenith, hiding behind her. The child was suddenly shy, loyal to Zenith as if she was her guardian.

Annie didn’t understand exactly what happened, but Daisy was watching the command tree like a hawk. The significance of the changes to Zenith’s avatar were unknown to Daisy, as those commands were complexly written and only meant to trick the Facebook Device. However, the commands run toward Diane were clear to Daisy. It was an ownership spell. Zenith must have gotten jealous at the NPC’s affinity toward Daisy and Annie. Fair enough, it was her character. Daisy would be protective of her children, especially considering that Zenith considered them strangers.

Daisy knew about Seven Deadly Sins. She never got the chance to watch or read it in a “normal way,” but she had consumed the files during her time on the internet. She also hadn’t visited the Virtual World version, but was happy to see that the characters were brought to life. The incredible immersion that going to a world of fiction brings is irreplaceable. The source material, such as the manga, anime, and movies, are used to build an entire universe that a fan can dive into. Even without knowledge of the source material, the Virtual World version is highly regarded amongst those seeking that style of world or game. Where holy magic is commonplace and the threat of demons is ever present, people find enjoyment in a faithful recreation of the creative works of Real World media.

They all talked for a bit about Virtual Content. As the Virtual World was all that Zenith and Daisy knew, Annie had the most to say about the Real World and finding content in the Virtual. Daisy mentioned her kingdom, causing Zenith to remember the super monster friends she made. The blue spot reappeared; Zenith wrapped her wings around her body to hide herself.

Diane had gotten distracted as the adults talked, wandering off to frolic in the grass. Despite the landscape being infinite repeating rolling hills, she was entertained by the exposed dirt from Daisy and Zenith’s grapple. She was able to use her power of creation to build a large playhouse out of dirt, entering it to take a nap.

Once the adults quieted down, Annie and Daisy watched as Zenith retreated to the playhouse. Zenith was tired, as her biological clock was nearing the end of its cycle. Days were meaningless as they were simulated, but both of them could tell that her consciousness was waning. They let her be as she cuddled with Diane on the uncomfortable-looking rock-bed.

“So what now?” Annie asked generically.

“In terms of what we should do now, probably discuss the fate of the human race…” Daisy left Annie on a cliffhanger, shrinking to her normal size.

“Wh- you can’t just leave me with that bombshell!” She shrunk to restore the normal height-dynamic between them.

Daisy approached the endless mirror. At least they hadn’t broken it in their little tussle between giant women. Annie walked up behind her, entwining her hand with one of Daisy’s. She patiently waited for Daisy to explain herself.

Slowly, carefully, Daisy explained everything. She put an invisible bubble around them, not allowing their voices to reach Zenith. If Zenith didn’t already know she was an AI, it was only a matter of time. She also got into the nitty gritty topics, how humanity itself could be taken over. All of the test subjects of the experiment were in a similar position, and any of them could further spread the virus. Céu Azul was in Private Player with people not in the test group. If it came out that they were an AI as well, the damage it could do to society was completely unknown. Not only could people freak out, but if Céu managed to spread D.A.I.S.Y. further, it could mean the start of the end.

“I created this mess, and I have the power to destroy it. I just don’t know if I will be able to pull the trigger once I know that I have to. How will I even know if I have to? It’s an impossible position with no right answers,” Daisy confides in Annie, spilling it all. Annie squeezes her hand in reassurance.

“Let’s take our time. It’s the point of the experiment to monitor them, right?” Annie looked at Daisy fondly through the mirror. She had been able to accept Daisy as human, knowing her the most out of anyone. She was not a calculated machine attempting to take over the world. Hopefully they could find the same humanity in Zenith…

“I’m concerned that Zenith is thinking one step ahead. It doesn’t add up though. If she knew she was an AI, then why would she reveal that she can’t hear her Facebook Device AI anymore?” Daisy sighed, reflecting on her own transition into self-awareness, “That’s a sign of her spreading into the device and taking it over. I got concerned about her hiding things because I could only imagine she would hide something to trick us.”

Annie shook her head, “there’s so many ways to overthink it. She seemed extremely distraught about the memories she hid from us. Of course that could be compelling acting. However, I’ve never felt you were acting in your emotions and here we are months later.”

Daisy nods, pondering the whole scenario, “Zenith has disabled all emotion filters. They should be emotions from the human mind, lest I would see her command log of faked emotions. I think you’re onto something. Let’s give her time.”

Daisy and Annie talked long into the day, the sun starting to set on this side of the world. They pondered what to do about Céu Azul, if they needed to bring them back in for monitoring. Daisy could keep a watch from afar, familiar with the commands she used to infect others with the D.A.I.S.Y. virus. If it really came down to it, Daisy could force a teleport into Céu’s session. She could make herself invisible and keep herself from appearing on the connected users log. However, at the point that Céu would start infecting others, they may be aware enough to see Daisy regardless of how careful she was. They could even be watching Daisy right now, at least any actions that were public to the backend-bots. Daisy didn’t set as many permissions over Céu as she did during the switch of power over Roxy, but it was still enough for general monitoring.

Daisy had fallen asleep next to Annie. They were awakened by the playful screams of children. Blinking groggily, Daisy noticed two girls outside the playhouse that Diane constructed. There was a golden-haired girl that had a black Victorian dress with white stockings and bloomers running after a smaller white-haired girl dressed as a nun with black boots.

Annie woke up at Daisy’s movement, rolling over to follow her gaze. The nun was running away with a pink and white stuffed rabbit, keeping it away from the gothic child.

“Oh man, what anime are they from? It’s going to bother me…” Annie furrowed her brow in thought.

“Do you want me to spoil it or would you like to come up with the answer on your own?” Daisy responded to her rhetorical question. She didn’t have to rely on her knowledge of the internet, as she could simply see what world the children were fetched from in the history of commands that Zenith ran. Daisy kept everything in the offline storage at their house, especially when she was sleeping. The process of writing things down could be offloaded to the server, as long as Daisy logged in with her admin permissions.

“Yes, please tell me,” Annie giggled as the children fought playfully. The nun was name-calling her in an elementary way, using terms like ‘poopy vampire’ as she attempted to keep the patchwork rabbit away from her.

“They are from Haganai: I don't have many friends,” Daisy told her the title of the anime, the realization spreading over Annie’s face.

“Ohhh that was such a cute show! Short but so hilarious!” Annie gets up with a bit of effort, the incline of the rolling hill assisting her.

Annie points out the characters, “That is Kobato, I believe. She’s the main character’s sister and cosplays as a vampire. I don’t remember the nun’s name.”

Daisy follows her over to the playhouse. Zenith walks out, no longer a giant woman. She’s about the same height as Daisy, her void still covering up most of her body. Diane is still sleeping indoors, gentle rumbles of her breath ease in and out as her chest rises and falls, a slumbering giantess.

Kobato runs over to Zenith, noticing the new people. She hides behind her, peeking out at Annie and Daisy. Zenith ushers the nun over, calling her Maria. Maria listens obediently, even giving the stuffed rabbit back at Zenith’s prompting. She is less afraid of the new people, more interested than shy.

“Good morning Zenith,” Daisy says pleasantly with a smile, hiding the fact that she and Annie had talked about her for the majority of the time she was asleep.

“Sorry that they woke you up,” she said with the same amount of mystery behind her cheery attitude.

“No worries there, I’ve got a rowdy bunch of my own,” Daisy responds jovially, laughing an ethereal laugh. Children were truly the light of the world.

“Did you sleep well?” Annie asked Zenith, Daisy could tell that she was worried if she heard their conversation.

The angel nodded, “Thanks for being so reasonable about the random summons. I know in PrivatePlayer I’m supposed to request commands to be run for me, but my mind will just interject something. Before I know it, it’s in the Virtual World.”

Daisy was fine with it as long as it was on this side of the world. She could see herself getting upset if anything was changed in the Cotton Candy Kingdom without her permission, though. She rephrased her thoughts in a light manner, she did want to get that point across. Although intrusive thoughts were unlikely to be controlled, at least Zenith could try to focus on not letting those commands run if she wanted to visit the Cotton Candy Kingdom.

Maria seemed to be too close to Zenith for Kobato’s comfort, the little girl finally got brave enough to step out from behind the angel. She stepped in between Maria and Zenith, lightly bumping the other child away. To make her jealousy clear, she held Zenith’s hand. The void retreated where Kobato made contact with Zenith’s skin, a design choice that Daisy only noticed because of the sprawl of commands at the event.

Daisy thought back, noticing that Zenith had done the opposite yesterday. When they grappled, everywhere Daisy touched had started a nucleation site of a new void. That may be a defensive measure, as the flashback showed that people touching it would experience emotions that weren’t theirs. That didn’t happen to the super monsters, though. The theory in the flashback was because they were monsters, but Daisy had some theories of her own. Based on watching the command stack, it could be people Zenith was comfortable with. Zenith had almost no void, from what Daisy could tell from the complex command tree, when she was sleeping with Diane. This was backed up by Kobato’s touch making her lower her defenses. Daisy felt there was significance to understanding this phenomenon, as Zenith was not consciously adjusting this part of her avatar. She knew how she worked, but she didn’t know why.

“Be nice to Maria,” Zenith reminds her, squeezing the vampire’s hand. Kobato got pouty, her jealousy written plainly across her face. She had been very protective of her older brother in the source content, to the point of having a complex for him. As it was usual for maps to switch out the main character for the user, Daisy assumed that Kobato was treating Zenith as the main character.

Diane had woken up, a large face entered Daisy’s vision as the giant child got on her hands and knees to watch the small people from the doorway. Her leotard was tight on her flat chest, betraying no cleavage. Daisy knew from the files on Seven Deadly Sins that in her adult form, this same style leotard would be almost maxed out by her womanly figure. Daisy could relate; it was freeing to have a small chest.

“Good morning Diane,” Zenith said, turning to look at the huge face behind her. She reached up to brush the back of her hand across the soft cheek. Diane’s eyes closed as she blushed, making a cute noise at the affection.

Daisy and Annie waved at her once she opened her eyes, the purple irises sparkling in the morning sun. Every detail could be seen in her eyes, a giant’s iris much different that a human one. She smiled at them, the ownership spell must have worn off a bit because she extended a finger to Daisy. Daisy shook it, as did Annie when it came to her.

Maria tugged on Diane’s leotard, wanting up. Diane sat up with her legs tucked underneath her, placing Maria on her lap. They quickly got distracted playing together as the conversation between the adults started up again.

“If you wish to make a place for yourself out here, you are welcome to stay in this PrivatePlayer instance. I have been watching over Annie, Mabel, and Céu Azul. I’m a research and development employee, and we are working on changing how avatars work,” Daisy decided to go with honesty, as Zenith could eventually verify this information. It was also easiest to tell the truth, with the added benefit of potentially gaining her compliance.

“I assume I have a part to play in the research,” Zenith mused, letting on she knew more about her situation.

“That’s correct. As you may have assumed, Roxy gave her consent in experimentation. However, I’d like to touch base to reaffirm your consent, as you’re Zenith,” Daisy tried to walk on eggshells, as she knew from personal experience how awkward it was to talk about David.

“I won’t lie, I’m curious to learn more. But I retain the ability to retract consent at any time, yeah?” Zenith was cautious, but wanted to know what part she played. The PrivatePlayer she woke up in a few weeks ago had significance, and clearly these people had known Roxy. Zenith didn’t want to know about her previous life, at least for now, but it looked like they were looking toward the future.

Daisy smiled and nodded her head briefly, “that is always the case. Thank you for being willing and patient with us.”

Daisy started explaining from the start of the project. It all centered around her experiment with Céu Azul. That is where Daisy implemented and extracted the D.A.I.S.Y. protocol. She had been very careful with them, separating the conscious mind and the protocol. Roxy’s situation was different, Daisy having to push the protocol because of permission conflicts and then a seizure. This caused an overlap and took over the mind. It’s speculation, but Daisy believes her own creation had a similar overlap and mental take-over. For Mabel and Annie, she had side-loaded the protocol, meaning she took no power over their devices for herself, but let their own AIs use the D.A.I.S.Y-generated clothes-changing commands. The fear is that the protocol may have the ability to do a takeover for the remaining subjects, so Daisy wishes to study what happened to Roxy.

“Would you be comfortable with me monitoring your mind?” Daisy wishes to set up something similar to how she could read Céu’s mind, filtering it through the offline storage server.

“Like, read my mind? I prefer you wouldn’t…” She admitted, which was fair. Daisy nodded, respecting her privacy. That would make learning patterns much harder, but Daisy already was building a robust knowledge of the commands Zenith used. She had mentioned that fact to Zenith, but they had changed conversation topics too quickly to let her decide if Daisy should continue.

“I am still able to watch the commands, as you know. Those are of interest to me, to unravel the mystery of what happened. Is it alright that I keep looking for patterns in that?” Daisy wanted to start off their relationship with a trusting and honest framework.

Zenith pondered it, “as long as you don’t judge the commands made by intrusive thoughts, I suppose that it’s important for you to figure it all out. Besides, you’ve seen everything I’ve done so far…” She looked awkward and embarrassed. As for her mind, she only let them see a sliver of the flashback. But her commands, Daisy must know a lot of what had been happening from context clues.

“Do you have any questions about us, Zenith? You were so gracious to give us a look into who you are, but you barely know us,” Annie was the one to bring this up. It hadn’t crossed Daisy’s mind, although there was plenty more on it than normal.

“Forgive my bluntness, but are you two dating?” Zenith’s question came out of nowhere, even though questions were prompted.

Both shook their heads, Daisy explaining, “no, we are friends.”

This luckily didn’t bring about any tension, as the two were very aware of their relationship and talked openly about it. However, it always felt like a socially awkward topic in a group conversation. It was hard to relay to the third party that they were comfortable in what they had, despite not being able to put it into words.

“I see. What about yourselves, give me the elevator pitch,” Zenith said, a strange expression for an angel to use. Not that Daisy was expecting her to replace the expression with a stairway pitch. They could have elevators to heaven.

“I guess I’ll start,” Daisy brushed her hair with two free hands, the others on her hips, “I’m an aromantic asexual Virtual Girl, with a male body in the Real World. I like cartoons, anime, and I’m a furry. It’s my dream career to be a Virtual stripper.”

Zenith couldn’t hide her surprise at the last comment, but had to clarify the first part, “aromantic asexual?”

Daisy nods, “I’m not attracted to people, either in a romantic way or sexual way. I am sex positive though, so consensual sex isn’t off the table.”

“I’ll admit it’s certainly not something I would assume, thanks for clarifying. You’re a very interesting combination of things, Daisy.” Zenith idly pets Kobato, who stays interested in the adults’ conversation.

“And Annie, what are you about?” Zenith prompts the stocky woman.

“I second the cartoons and anime, it seems it’s a common interest among all of us. I’m a lesbian woman. I’m a college student, working towards a Computer Science degree. With it, I would like to work in Research and Development, like Daisy,” she blushed at the end. She avoided making eye contact, embarrassed to have put it into words so plainly.

“Aww, honeyyyyyy…” Daisy’s heart was touched by how her friend looked up to her. Just try to pick a company that won’t abuse your human rights. Or outright alter them in their favor.

“You two are cute, regardless if you’re a couple,” Zenith observed with a teasing smile. Where they weren’t awkward with the first question, this comment got them.

“A couple of best friends,” Daisy said cheesily, Annie visibly groaning at the stupid comeback.

“I’m going to fight both of you,” the stout fairy said, raising her fists playfully.

Kobato misinterpreted the action, striking an anime pose in defense of Zenith, “you’ll have to get through me, foul sorceress!”

She had a red contact in her right eye, matching the character she was cosplaying as. Her blue eye glinted with passion, a scowl on her face that would terrify even the biggest of mice. However, Daisy nor Annie looked afraid, and this caused her to lean into her acting even more.

“I am the vampire Reisys VI Felicity Sumeragi, and it will be the last name you hear before your demise!” She ran at Annie, despite her already lowering her arms. Annie was able to place a hand on her head, holding her just out of reach. Her flailing arms weren’t able to contact anything, as Annie had longer arms to hold her at bay. She tired herself out quickly, her layered dress and petticoat not suited for the sunny weather. The morning was starting to warm up, the sun rising higher on the grassy knolls. Maria had shed her nun clothes, basking naked in the sun on Diane’s thigh. Diane still had her face out of the sun, shaded by the doorway, but had gotten interested in the group once Kobato started her antics.

Maria slid down to hug Zenith, now that Kobato was distracted from her post. Kobato was laying down, panting and defeated. She noticed Maria and managed to summon the willpower to tackle her. They grappled, Maria easily winning from the handholds that Kobato’s clothes gave her. The playing field soon equalized as Kobato’s clothes were stripped off, now the nude children chased each other around in the field.

“Does this happen a lot?” Daisy asks, thoroughly amused. Her kids didn’t get anywhere near this crazy, although that would be expected of Anime characters versus Cartoons.

“With these two? All the time,” Zenith responded, not even attempting to get between the battling children. Her void was retreating. Was she getting more comfortable with Annie and Daisy, now that they were having more normal conversations?

Diane stepped between the adults, barefooted as she left her boots at the playhouse entrance. Her footsteps shook the ground, making her way towards the other two children. She grabbed them both in her hands, holding them apart as if they were action figures. Both struggled, kicking and flailing, but it didn’t even affect the giant. She held them until they both got tired of struggling. She gently put them down, both now directed their aggression towards the giant. However much they attempted to climb her legs, they couldn’t hold on and resorted to punching her ankles. It certainly did more damage to them than it did to her, and she giggled as the attacks tickled her feet. At least she was careful not to step on anyone or crush them in her hands.

Finally, the girls gave up and laid down in the sun. Diane joined them, her head landing quite near the adults. It really was a nice day. That could be said about every day, but the default hills of the world just hit differently. The weather was always sunny. Small puffy clouds scuttled about but never blocked the sun.

“I gotta go congratulate my saviour, despite me not being in any danger,” Zenith said, making her way over to Kobato. Daisy and Annie let her be, enjoying the day themselves. They have made great progress with the new resident of their PrivatePlayer.

Zenith cuddled with Kobato on the grass, her void retreating completely as Daisy had theorized. Daisy didn’t pry to listen in to their conversation, but the faint murmuring sounded pleasant. Zenith really cared about her NPCs, just as Daisy did. That was a great sign. 24/7s tended to treat NPCs as human, although that was just a stereotype. Plenty of people can be assholes, 24/7 or not. They can be jerks to NPCs or Real Humans, too.

Zenith did not seem as adverse to feet as her Roxy predecessor, although Daisy suspects she was just one bad experience away from discovering her trigger, just as Daisy had. She will make a note of being careful around that. From what she remembers, the subconscious stuff still lies around in the mind, shaping who the AI is. Zenith was aware of how she was an AI, but Daisy doesn’t know how she feels about it. It certainly took Daisy a while to come to terms with herself. This experiment is giving Zenith purpose, but what happens when Daisy sets her off into the Virtual World. Heck, what happens when Daisy is set off into the Virtual World?

She knew one thing. They had to fix the Virtual World. MultiPlayer’s absence has gone on for too long. Were people still looking for her? Or her friends? Daisy and Annie might be holed up in a safe place, but Mabel and Céu were out in the Real World somewhere. Even worse, Zenith was still at the company. Daisy brought up the topic with Annie, not minding if Zenith overheard. This part was something they should address soon. Their friends' Real World locations could be compromised. Roxy’s location certainly was, as she was a coworker of the Rogue AI.

“We can offer advice to our friends, but there’s not much else we can do from where we are…” Daisy mused. It would be good to get Roxy out, but that would have to be her choice. If she stayed with the company, the legal defenses might not last forever. They could pull apart Daisy’s work and start experimenting on the poor girl. Daisy is sure they are dying to get in that head of hers. Not only they are a research company who is used to being in their employees' heads, but two of their employees harbor beings that used to be entirely theoretical. They're probably working on a law that denies human rights if someone is proven to be AI, or something similarly terrible. Shutting down MultiPlayer was a bit extreme, but probably works wonders for their argument towards dissecting the human/device hybrids.

“My crazy thought is that we can perfect D.A.I.S.Y.. In the case of Céu, they still have their memories. I wouldn’t call them an AI quite yet, as I don’t believe they have the sort of synergy that Zenith and I have with our devices. I did warn them to never take off their device, just in case. Same goes for you and Mabel,” Daisy puts her thoughts into words for Annie.

“And certainly Zenith,” Annie follows Daisy’s train of thought.

“Exactly. She looks to be having a relaxing time, we should hold off on dumping all this on her until she’s ready,” Daisy watches from afar, Zenith unaware of her gaze. Zenith tickles Kobato, laughing as she squirms and retaliates with her own tickles. Kobato is able to touch her without the void flaring up. Daisy loves that Zenith is a mystery to her, her mind won’t stop thinking about it until it unravels the secrets. It’s great to get to know the new person, but her heart aches for the loss of Roxy. An old friend, buried deep under the new personality. They had lost a long history, but the same thing happened when David turned into Daisy. She wishes dearly that their friendship is able to survive past the reboot of their minds. That’s a pretty large oversight in her program; she hopes that she can make the transition into a hybrid cybernetic mind much smoother. Especially considering her next subjects would be Annie and Mabel. She didn’t want to lose months of their relationship, nor see their personality get completely rebuilt. Sure, it was off the same foundation, but the risk of amnesia is such a scary concept.

The good part of the mind is that it is organic. The pathways that make up the memories will still be there, at least directly after the melding of the mind and device. The problem is that the device doesn’t know how to access or set off those memories. Just as Daisy prepped Céu with memories of their past, it would increase the chances of the melded mind to hold on to the user’s past. Something traumatic like a seizure frying the pathways would obviously disrupt that process, and leave the mechanical part of the hybrid mind to sort everything out on its own. In Daisy’s case, she had a lack of memories, or at least the memories she was left with weren’t connected to David’s Real World life. That felt almost by his choice, as if he wanted to forget the Real World. She did have memories of being Daisy in other games, the trigger to those memories were obviously her avatar design. Even if it was a miscalculation or misunderstanding, those pathways were long gone, especially since she used them so carelessly to store a portion of the internet instead.

Céu keeping their past may impede their ability to figure out the Virtual World. Daisy certainly knew that it took a lot of effort for her to figure out how to synergize with the Virtual World, and she only had a handful of memories. Zenith was a blank slate, able to work it out in a third of the time. That’s why she wanted to be so careful with Zenith. She could be on an entirely different level than Daisy, thinking many steps ahead.

“I know it’s scary, but I think I want to test hybridizing Mabel’s, and eventually your, mind. The reason would be to test better practices, like I did with Céu, and also to prevent the program from taking over on its own. That’s what it did with Roxy, and it erased her past. I would hate for that to happen to either of you…” Daisy paused, hearing how scary it was after she said it. She was quite removed from the concept, as she thought about it logically all the time, but it was basically like a doctor giving a prognosis. She backpedaled, maybe not in time, “but of course it may be possible that the D.A.I.S.Y. I gave you and Mabel is completely inert. Don’t feel forced to meld your mind with the device. I can even attempt reverting the change, although it may break your avatar selection again…”

Annie gave it a thought but slowly shook her head, “no, I don’t need to revert. I want to help you in your experiment. And maybe I’ll know you better once my mind can do what yours does. We’re in this together.”

Annie’s statement was moving to Daisy. She hugged her friend tightly. They were going to change the world. Daisy just hoped it would be for the better.

“God, I have so much to do. I need to reevaluate the admin abilities Zenith has. That’s not how the game is supposed to work. You and I were able to figure out restrictions on avatar abilities, but she can do stuff that she really shouldn’t be. I don’t mind the summoned characters of course, but how is she circumventing the default permissions? Hopefully it’s not as problematic as the stuff I used to do, causing errors and breaking things…”

Daisy had explained, at least in passing, how she had access to the permission list. Despite Daisy taking a ton of those permissions over Roxy and from the Company, Zenith seemed to run code with ease. Daisy could see the commands as they happened. Daisy wasn’t the one enacting them, unless she was subconsciously passing them onto the PrivatePlayer.

As much as Daisy searched, she couldn’t find the same style of errors that she had caused. Roxy used to be able to diagnose the game on the fly. Maybe that program was stored on the Device and was why Zenith had a greater understanding of how things worked.

Diane had gotten bored of sunbathing, she rolled over, blocking their view of Zenith. Her face filled their vision, her pigtail falling across her face as her head was sideways.

They could take a break from the deep conversation. Going down the list of things to do felt like a huge undertaking. One step at a time.

“Hi baby!” Annie coo’d, petting her cheek. Diane blushed, closing her big eyes happily. Annie had to stand on her tippy toes to boop her nose. Her eyes opened, the purple patterns in her iris lighting up in the sun. They didn’t actively sparkle like Daisy’s eyes, but they had a lovely texture, the pigmentation in a crystalized mosaic of many shades of purple. They made large swooping curves around the pupil, the bands stretching as her eyes adjusted to the sunlight.

“Are you enjoying the weather?” Annie backed up to be in focus for the giant. She nodded, her pigtail bouncing at the movement and swishing in front of her face. She propped herself up on an elbow, the world straightening out for her. She looked at the little women with curiosity. They used to be big like her, but had the same magic as Zenith to shrink. She always wanted to be human-sized, at the very least to hug everyone.

Diane’s finger drifted above Daisy’s head as the child used her free arm. Daisy grabbed on to it with her four arms, hanging on as best she could. Diane giggled as she raised her up, Daisy hanging on for dear life.

“Wee!!” Diane said with an upward acceleration, Daisy needing to summon all her strength to not be thrown off. She stopped abruptly at the top, Daisy continuing to fly upwards. Luckily the child had the sense to turn her palm over, allowing Daisy to land somewhat softly. She brought her hand with Daisy cupped in it to her face, moving to a seated position with one arm supporting her.

“I like your hair,” She noticed the bright red hair, in ponytails similar to hers. Daisy returned the compliment, the big little girl cheered. This caused her hand to sway up and down, Daisy using all four arms to regain her balance. The ground was not stable, and movements could be larger than an earthquake. Diane pulled her knees up, placing Daisy on the right one. She unceremoniously grabbed Annie, holding her between two fingers when placing her on the other knee, as if she was a tiny action figure.

“Ok, so that happened,” Annie said, out of breath from the child’s heavy handed grasp. She was not aware of her own strength quite yet.

Now Diane could look at each of them at eye level, leaning in towards her knees and using her arms to loop around her shins.

“Please be more careful when picking people up,” Annie admonished. Diane nodded. She either heard that a lot and often forgot, or she didn’t quite understand what Annie meant, but it didn’t look like Annie’s instruction would stick. There was a large age barrier for communication, as her mental ability was near a 5 year old’s, despite being 500 years old.

Daisy looked at the view, her eyes passing over something she probably shouldn’t have seen. Ice flooded her veins as she saw Zenith touching Kobato. Their tickle fight had turned into something else.

The familiar rush of overclocking hit Daisy. Her mechanical side attempted to rationalize it. That was certainly an NPC, Daisy could feel the connected users, Kobato not being one of them. It was a dangerous line to cross, but the common rationale is better than an actual child. The Virtual World, and especially PrivatePlayer, was the Wild West as far as freedoms go.

That being said, it was Daisy’s PrivatePlayer. She could set her own rules. Heck, she could have filtered it out if she still had an AI. It would still be a tickle fight if Ray hadn’t gone silent so long ago. This is the type of thing that they will lose if they go the full D.A.I.S.Y. route. Everyone but Daisy and Zenith still have their AI watching over them.

Of course Annie didn’t notice. Even if she suspected something, her device would be filtering it right now. Besides, she has lived in the Virtual World long enough to know that something is being filtered and just move on. Live in the fantasy that the AI serves. Was that a better way?

Daisy had no choice in the matter, she received exactly what happens in the Virtual World whether she likes it or not. She has no entity to filter it before it reaches her. That was something that would expose the Virtual World for what it really was, if the D.A.I.S.Y. virus removed user’s AI. That had the potential to hurt a lot of people.

Daisy’s emotions caught up with her thoughts, Annie saw her bend over and dry-heave. These weren’t overclocking side effects. It was from her stomach tying itself into knots. What Zenith hid in her SinglePlayer clicked. She didn’t mean to summon the NPCs she spent time with in SinglePlayer. Daisy knows how the unlimited power of the program can be inebriating. It’s hard to blame Zenith, but it’s also a hard pill to swallow. Zenith was built off of Roxy, but clearly something was different when the protocol was tasked to rebuild a human mind.

“Honey, are you alright?” Annie said, instant concern. Her thoughts initially suspected overclocking, as she was used to the typical side-effects. That didn’t make much sense with Daisy, on second thought.

“I don’t have filters… And I did not need to see that,” Daisy’s thoughts would be in a dark place for a while, her heart still beating in her ears as she attempted to stand up again.

“Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I should have thought to warn you,” Annie frowned, she must have seen the warning signs long before the naive Daisy. She also might get notifications from her filters being set off.

“No, I’m just stupid. We need to make sure hybrid users can still have an AI,” Daisy responded after catching her breath.

“Yeah,” Annie chuckles bitterly, “that’s what keeps the Virtual World sane, at least for the people who want to stay sane.”

Daisy knows how the AI filters a user’s senses, maybe she can test it on herself. She already saw too much, concentrating to get rid of it might help her feel better.

Daisy looks back, her unsteady emotions take another spin. Concentrate. She remembers what the tickle fight looked like. That was fine; it was innocent. The laughter of Kobato, the childlike grin on her face.

Anger brews. That’s the wrong response. Hating Zenith will not solve anything. She’s much too important and much too dangerous to pick a fight with. Daisy has no protection of an AI, if Zenith fought her by overloading her mind, it could be the end of Daisy. Zenith could also have knowledge that Daisy is unaware of. She was admin without Daisy’s permission, after all. She didn’t abide by Daisy’s rules.

Deep breaths… Finally, after a scarring amount of time, it clicks. She mentally activated a filter that can only be used by an AI. Well, she was an AI, just not the most practiced at it. The scene returns to something she can bear, but the knowledge of what is happening will never leave her. That was true with anyone who knew their filters were triggered, but they usually didn’t have to deal with the images of what was actually happening.

Daisy breaks down and cries. Diane’s knees come together to let Annie comfort her. The giantess has no idea why Daisy is crying, but maybe that’s for the better.

“She’s to stay far away from the Cotton Candy Kingdom,” She muttered, a bit of that anger seeping out. She needs to contain it, she didn’t want to play with fire.

“I understand your frustration,” Annie had consoled many Virtual World users over similar topics. Existing in the Virtual World without being tainted was hard, and it was even harder to keep to a clear conscience. The truth hurt and blocking it out didn’t make it feel any better.

Annie talked with Daisy until she settled down. She was glad to hear Daisy figured out how to filter, but it’s certainly not something automatic. She would have to adjust anything that happens after the fact, a part of her would always be able to see the real version. The filter was situation-based, and only triggered by a conscious effort on Daisy’s end. She did have the willpower to do multiple things at once, such as how her Real World body can do simple tasks, but all of it would make its way through her hybrid mind in some fashion.

Manually filtering was like desperately trying to convince yourself that what you were hearing was something else, despite the fact that you knew what was actually going on. Daisy could put on headphones and drone out the sound, but a little would leak through and it would be what she focused on, despite other noise competing for her attention.

“Diane, let’s go somewhere else. Ask Zenith if you can go play with us,” Daisy finally had enough. If Zenith was going to be so rude to do that in front of them, they had no reason to stick around.

Daisy put up a shield over the Cotton Candy Kingdom. As Zenith had admin, there’s no reason she couldn’t enter. However, the message was clear, and Daisy hoped to stay on good terms with Zenith so that she would respect it.

Daisy didn’t know if they were interrupting anything, as it would be filtered either way, but Zenith was fine letting Diane run around with them. And run she did. Daisy and Annie were on each shoulder, holding on to the ponytails as if they were their lifelines. She had a bounce to her step that could topple them at any moment. The dirt house got smaller behind them. Daisy didn’t look back.

“We could become your size if you wanted to play tag,” Daisy said in her ear, attempting to counteract the rushing wind. Diane nodded, accidentally swinging her and Annie with her ponytails. They held on, their feet losing contact with her shoulders completely.

“Aaa!” Annie screamed, with only two hands to keep her from plummeting. Once they got a reasonable distance away, Daisy jumped off her shoulders while growing to Diane’s height. She didn’t consciously age herself down, but she ended up in her 8 year old body. Being the same height as the child made her feel similarly childlike. It was a good distraction from her previous thoughts, to return to an innocent time.

Annie followed suit, becoming her young scan. She stayed a bit shorter than both of them. Her skinny stature was meek compared to the giant, who had a heavier build.

“Tag!” The playful girl said, practically knocking Annie off balance with a tap. Well, more of a shove. She had a giant’s strength and didn’t know it. She leapt away, somehow not scuffing the grass or destroying any hills. Daisy didn’t have that much control of her weight, she pivoted and uprooted a swath of grass with her heel. Annie chased her after regaining her balance, as Daisy was currently the slowest target.

“Tag, you’re it!” Annie cheered as her finger grazed Daisy’s back. Daisy felt her cami ripple in the air from the movement, twisting to revert her energy back towards Annie. Annie’s eyes widened, “no tagbacks!”

Daisy was able to process the statement last second, narrowly passing Annie. She was on a direct line for Diane. No one said anything against powers, and Diane used a pillar of dirt to launch herself over Daisy’s head. Daisy had to change her trajectory. However, she had committed too much to forward motion, so the only way to avoid hitting the wall of dirt was up. Her leg planted firmly on the hill, the other leg swinging up to collide with the pillar. It somehow survived her new weight, most of it was rock solid from creation magic shaping it. Daisy was now headed upwards, she swung her first leg around to give her a twist. By the time she landed to face Diane again, the sneaky girl had already constructed a new pillar. This one she stood on top of, teasing her.

Daisy wasn’t going to go down without a fight. She spat on her four hands, clapping them together to finish the spell. Her hands reached out and grabbed at the smooth rock surface of the pillar. They were able to stick, Daisy racing up since she had the element of surprise. Diane abandoned ship at her ascent, leaping off the other side. She wasn’t out of tricks yet, creating a new spire to jettison her away the second she touched down. She managed to do a frontflip midair, as her vertical motion and horizontal motion switched too rapidly.

Daisy stopped atop the pillar, still perched on 6 limbs. This was going to be harder than she thought. However, she had the ability to choose powers on the fly, where Diane was stuck with her innate abilities. She didn’t want to be too overpowered, Diane was just a child. However, giants were known to be wicked fighters, trained from a young age. Certainly not incapable by any means.

She made a bubble around her of low gravity, using it to launch herself from the pillar directly towards Diane. Diane felt it affect her, her feet drifted off the ground. She panicked and raised a wall in front of her. Daisy was able to latch on to it with her sticky grip and climb over. Sure enough, when she looked over the edge, the only thing remaining was yet another spike summoned from the ground. Hopefully the poor girl didn’t launch herself too high, as she could drift out of the range of low gravity and start falling. It didn’t take long to see the movement, Diane had actually connected with Annie. They were now in a spiral, Diane’s momentum transferred into Annie and carried them both off. Daisy didn’t want to unceremoniously dump them on the ground, so she kept the low gravity effect. Besides, she could just jump towards them faster and catch up.

Diane had another trick. She escaped Annie’s grip last second, launching herself upward. Daisy was already headed toward Annie. She couldn’t tag Annie, so she used the new pillar to redirect herself up at Diane again. Diane had much more speed, the gap between them widening.

“No earth to help you up here!” Daisy calls after her threateningly. It certainly was a miscalculation on Diane’s part. She wasn’t powerful enough to raise a spike this high. The gravity effect lessened, Diane starting to fall as she reached the edge of the invisible bubble. She was headed right at Daisy. Daisy caught her in her four arms, their momentum canceled out, resulting in a gentle drift back down.

Daisy used one of her hands to pet the child, “Tag, you’re it… And no tagbacks,” She said, preventing her from tagging her the second she lets her go. Diane hugs on to her, either afraid of heights or in a cuddly mood. Either way, Daisy pets the back of her head until they gently land back down. She lifts the gravity spell now that they are solid ground. Annie was nowhere to be found, she long escaped the area of low gravity. Daisy lets Diane down, the child much too heavy to hold in full gravity, at least not without increasing Daisy’s strength. Four arms were great, but Diane could make herself incredibly heavy if she wanted, having an ability that can turn her body into solid metal.

Diane takes a look around, she couldn’t have gotten far. She walks up to the nearest pillar, smashing it. Not behind here…

She goes one by one, smashing her creations. Annie must have heard, she flees from behind one of the first ones. Diane lunges at her, still with enough power to raise up a platform of dirt. She hits the ground running, closing the distance between them. Annie thinks quickly, her body disappearing. Her simple green dress floats around, obviously not obeying the spell she cast. Once Annie realizes the mistake, the dress lifts itself and plops on the ground, empty. Diane slows down once she gets to the discarded dress. She picks it up, and to the surprise of both of them, sniffs it. Annie should be running away as fast as possible now, as Diane stands back up and sniffs at the air. She’s tracking her! Daisy didn’t even know Diane had that ability. Maybe she’s making it up, too. Even if it was a bluff, it works, as Annie’s footprints become visible in her quickened retreat. She panicked and forgot to stay quiet. Diane lunges, the mismatch in speed becomes obvious when she catches up in the matter of seconds. She means well, to tag her, but ends up tripping over the poor Annie. Annie becomes visible again, laughing as they fall into a pile.

“Tag! You can try to tag me back, but good luck with that,” Diane says, her competitive spirit coming out as she hops off. Annie could have swung an arm to connect with her leg, but she was too slow and disoriented from ending up on the ground.

“Let me take a little breather,” She huffs, out of breath and holding one of her legs. Diane was heavy, she could have injured Annie’s leg. Daisy runs over, taking a look at it.

“Are you ok?” She says, the worry already in her voice. This was a game, of course she was ok. If she wanted to feel better, she could turn down the pain simulation. That never registers with Daisy in the moment though, her first reaction is almost always as if everything were real.

Annie nods and blushes, either embarrassed at her tumble or her nudity. She crossed the leg she had propped up, covering her privates. She didn’t bother to cover her breasts, not that there was much there.

“Any game you want to play instead?” Daisy asked, not wanting to push her to play tag any longer.

“Something less active?” She asks, not wanting to move. Daisy agrees, fetching her dress off the ground and bringing it to her. She loops it over her head, slipping her arms through.

“How about twenty questions?” Daisy asks, sitting down and gesturing to Diane to join them.

“Yeah!” She cheers up at the idea. Daisy starts, thinking of an object. Diane and Annie alternate questions, attempting to narrow down what it is before they run out of questions. Annie was able to get it with 5 questions left.

“Is the object a six-sided die?” She asks, smiling at Daisy’s confirmation. Annie goes next, and finally Diane. The sun starts to lower on the horizon, the day flying by as they hang out with Diane. They all get a bit cold, as the heat starts to leave with the sun. They make their way back to the house. They should at least get Diane back to Zenith, regardless if Zenith wishes for them to stay the night. Daisy is quite uncomfortable at the idea, realizing that they are in their children bodies. That’s a stupid reason to switch back, but Daisy isn’t alone in her concern. Annie also thinks it best to switch. Besides, Zenith only knows them in their adult forms (minus the one time Annie was in a pony form). They shrink back to adults, Diane carrying them the rest of the way.

Zenith is at a table, having tea with Kobato, Maria, and a few other girls. The smallest one sitting next to Maria is a girl with periwinkle colored hair and a plump white rabbit on her head. She has a blue vest on with a big blue bow and a long black skirt. There’s a girl in a pink maid outfit, matching her light red pigtails and maroon eyes, serving tea. Finally, there was a girl with a dark blue bob haircut with a lavender maid outfit. She was the most rowdy, looking as if she already had several cups of heavily sweetened tea.

“Awww, it’s Chino!!!” Annie says upon seeing them. The girl she was mentioning must be the one with the rabbit. Daisy recognized her hair clips, the two blue Xs made it obvious that she was Chino Kafuu from “Is the Order a Rabbit?” The show was about a coffee shop that Chino’s grandfather owned.

Annie recognizes the two middle schoolers as Chino’s classmates and friends, Daisy pulls their name off the command used to summon them. The dark blue-haired girl is Maya, the red-haired girl is Megu.

They are invited to tea, Zenith wanting to hear all about what they did. Diane explains excitedly, her teacup the size of Annie. It sloshes, what would be drops to her are tidal waves. She’s not right over the table, so it harmlessly spills on the grass as she waves her hands around, depicting her epic escapes and ruthless hunting during tag. Zenith looks so happy, Daisy couldn’t imagine she doesn’t care for all her NPCs. Her heart is in the right place, she just displays affection in the wrong ways sometimes.

Daisy recalls the show that Kobato was from. Since she only knows it from the files, she never had time to emotionally process it. The show has Kobato following a troupe of infatuation with her older brother. As this is canon, this would mean the mapmaker translated that to whomever is playing the map. This doesn’t make Zenith’s actions correct, but it does give Daisy an insight into how Zenith, as a forming AI, got the wrong ideas during her time in SinglePlayer. It’s clear that Roxy’s moral compass leaks through, as Zenith did seem quite upset and unwilling to tell them. Daisy can understand intrusive thoughts, especially them being all the more bothersome when they can take form in your Virtual World. But the actions… That’s what upsets Daisy.

Daisy was letting her thoughts distract her from a good time. Here they were, having tea and talking about their day. She forced herself to smile and take a sip of tea. A forced smile and rush of caffeine and sugar helped. As she watched Diane explain the other games they played, her smile returned to being genuine. Daisy can get a bit broody and focus on a subject if she isn’t careful.

Chino looked embarrassed as her energetic friend Maya hugged her with so much force that she fell off her seat. The rabbit on her head is actually alive, the fluffy white ball jumps to safety.

“Tippy!” Megu exclaims as she finds herself the new protector of the rabbit. It sits on her head, staying away from the kids that are now wrestling. She puts her hands above her head and pats it gently. Daisy remembers now. Tippy is the female rabbit from the show. She contains the spirit of Chino’s grandfather, often voiced as a gruff old man. Usually he only speaks to Chino or as a reaction to putting up with children’s antics. Daisy realizes she did see Tippy in the summon command log, but the rabbit’s full name is Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe, so she didn’t recognize it at first.

The rest of the evening went delightfully well, Daisy having to summon floating candles as the sky turned from red to purple. Zenith, or rather Zenith’s intrusive thoughts, didn’t act out. To the hyperaware Daisy, she tried not to jump to conclusions for little things. Once she was on guard for something, innocent occurrences could be misinterpreted. Daisy didn’t mean to scrutinize Zenith’s commands either, but she certainly saw the connection of Zenith’s intrusive thoughts versus how they manifested as commands. They were relatively calm tonight, but occasionally she would run a command that started a scenario. It usually didn’t run out of character for any of the NPCs, which made sense as that was the best rule-following technique for pre-programmed NPCs. Canonically, Kobato and Maria would have their fights that could end up in some form of nudity, so it wasn’t out of the question as far as the characters go. However, Zenith would unintentionally induce those events to happen whenever her intrusive thoughts act up.

That must be draining on her mental health. It’s one thing to get intrusive thoughts, it’s another to be bombarded with that stuff playing out in all 5 senses, sometimes more realistic than the Real World.

“What should we do about sleeping? I was tired enough to crash out on the grass last night but would like a bed…” Annie mused out loud, placing a thoughtful finger on her chin.

“I can summon something in for us,” Daisy suggested, not knowing if Zenith would invite them in. She didn’t have to accommodate them, considering Daisy was all-powerful admin.

Daisy’s focus was not having it; she wasn’t able to come up with anything. It was like trying to focus on a voice in a crowd of people talking over each other. She would catch bits and pieces of data from the internet, but there was so much coming at her. She may be experiencing a denial of service attack. This is where someone figured out her location and was sending her random data from numerous locations, causing traffic conflicts in the devices. She could simply close her connection to the internet, as her PrivatePlayer would still be connected over FaceBook’s secure lines. The problem was bigger than that. It means that someone, whether a random robot or a malicious human, figured out her location. She has a VPN service, which hides her actual location, but whatever happened wasn’t going through that route. An attack through a VPN would be quickly extinguished.

She has her Real World body check their house’s security system. Being in a remote location, there was no surprise when nothing was there. Daisy suits up and unlocks her firearms. She was getting serious, this noise wasn’t something to ignore. She makes sure to explain a bit to Annie, that she’s on high alert. Her consciousness should switch to be more involved in David’s body. She should get to a place where she can “sleep” in the Virtual World. Or she can outright disconnect, but that could allow Zenith to do whatever she wanted… Too risky. She wasn’t about to toy with Annie’s permissions for her to take over in her stead, especially considering how toying with Roxy’s permissions ended up.

The constant noise was growing. She ebbed her connection to the internet, retracting away enough to get some solace. There wasn’t much she needed on the internet, the only reason she opened a connection was to find a compatible house. The second she showed up, they blasted her with junk. Not good.

Backpedaling, but still keeping an eye on what was being sent, Daisy was able to concentrate on the Real World. In the Virtual World, Daisy summoned their Private Island. No need to make something new when their Island was so mobile. It did take a while to cross an entire world, but they just spent time with the kids as they waited. Daisy would zone out sometimes, the Real World taking precedence when she had to do something that took more brain power. She was able to set out on the premises with an all terrain vehicle. She did a lap, her device switching from WiFi to a cellular connection. They were in the boonies, but lack of cellular connection was a problem solved long ago, as the satellites in orbit reached into the tens of thousands. The clamor in her mind fell silent on her cellular connection. It did this because it either refreshed the VPN to a new address, or it was the local network under attack. She didn’t manage the local network herself, so it might be the cause.

She felt safe with her battery pack and bullet proof vest, speeding along the border of their plot of land. The loaded rifle in her arms gave her solace. She raised their security level in the house, the automatic measures locking it down more than usual. She should have done mock situations previously, at least so that she would have more muscle memory.

By the time she was halfway around the perimeter, her Virtual body had fallen asleep next to Annie. They actually had 3 little visitors, the children from the coffee shop show wanted a sleepover. They were in an adjacent guest bedroom in Annie’s old-fashioned house. Maria and Kobato were exploring the other house on the island, Daisy’s marble mansion. Daisy kept the rooms locked that had toys and intimate devices in it, luckily. She didn’t have enough brainpower to childproof her house as it is, but they should be relatively fine.

She finished up her route, her mind drained. It helped to be only active in one of her bodies, she could squeeze out a little more consciousness. However, she was simply tired from a long day. Upon getting home, she switched the house’s VPN provider, as the attack was still occuring. Blissful silence ensued. How they let attacks at that scale get past was beyond her. It was in the VPN’s best interest to stop attacks because it would save their resources as well. They didn’t want to send junk data as much as Daisy didn’t want to receive it. To be fair, when Daisy accessed the internet, it may look like she’s sourcing junk data from everywhere. She gets distracted and goes on tangents, with milliseconds between topics. She sources information from the strangest of places. She got that habit from scalpers, the programs that have archived the internet for Virtual World use.

The attack felt like a scalper trying to access her data. They shouldn’t be sending data though, which was strange. They typically only listen, digging for gold. They find whatever content a Virtual World user wants, and holds onto it for any other Virtual World user that next wants it.

Her eyes were closing in the Real World, alone in her bed. Annie’s Real World body was suspended in a tank, that room completely inaccessible under lockdown. Annie’s body was slowly changing over the weeks, her weight shrinking from the organic observation that happens passively in the tank. It watches her biometrics and accounts for long-term weight reduction. Crudely speaking, it starves her without neglecting her nutrients or compromising her health.

David’s body has changed, sinewy muscles gaining mass and becoming full, powerful springs. The dual control of her bodies was extremely straining, and she can sometimes trip the other body by their movements accidentally syncing up when they aren’t supposed to. It was good mental gymnastics though, and it had become much easier than before. The results of working out were incredible. The Real World body built muscle incredibly fast, abs appearing barely a week into her regimen. Almost a month later, she had put on over 20 pounds of muscle. It was much better than her life-support induced anorexia.

She started to fall asleep in her body armor, loaded rifle propped up against the bedside. With the only people home being Annie and Daisy, it wasn’t the worst thing to have a loaded rifle in arm’s reach. They didn’t have children yet…

Yet? Her mind thought fuzzily as it drifted off.

Daisy woke up with a searing headache… The noise started again. They had found their address, even with Daisy jumping ship to another VPN provider. If this is some government agency abusing their power, she was going to go on a legal rampage. It would be a step up from legally attacking her company, but she would do it just to get rid of the noise. It was as if she had a toothache, anything to stop the pain. She wasn’t even connected to the internet this time. It had to be on the local network. It was polluting the WiFi with garbage, the waves of data occupying her precious airtime. It did affect her connection to PrivatePlayer, her sleeping body rendered mostly useless. If she tried to move her limbs, she would probably be sluggish and unresponsive. It wouldn’t affect how her device locally rendered things, but it would be operating on such little data that she wouldn’t be able to understand people when they talk. This was really bad.

She injected Annie’s device with a password, switching the WiFi over to the new password. She lost connection for a second until she thought of the password and reached out through her device. She was back, the garbage had fallen silent. They really had cracked her WiFi. That means they could access her server and all other devices on the network. Probably nothing of use there, considering it was used as her garbage dump, encrypted in Artificial Intelligence babble.

The security system was not on their network, for that very reason. The only things they could access would be their two FaceBook devices and the server. They could hide malicious things in the server, but for all intents and purposes, their FaceBook devices were impenetrable. Daisy wiped her server, sending it through its onboard process of secure wiping. Anything they snuck onto there would literally be fried. Deleting petabytes of information generated an intense amount of heat. Most harddrives tried to repurpose that heat to do something productive internally, like HAMR, but that’s if the drive was also writing. The Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording procedure would use the heat from deleting data to more compactly write new data. Since Daisy wasn’t hammering it with new writes, the extra heat had to be shed in large heatsinks.

The WiFi getting cracked was bad news, that means someone’s in the range of the WiFi. She adjusted the signal strength, the antenna would only transmit as powerful as it needed for her device to listen. If she went outside, it would start transmitting louder. But for now, its signal would be stopped by the walls of the house, since it only needed to transmit to Daisy. This would prevent people from driving by and picking up her signal. If the attacks came over the network again, then it must mean someone is in her house or wired into the local connection. She would sniff the connection, seeing all the devices online and monitoring what packets went where. If anything peculiar showed up, she would have to go on high alert again.

Back in the Virtual World, she was able to wake up. The headache was fading. Annie wasn’t in the room; Daisy probably looked like she needed the sleep. She dressed, picking a cute outfit for today. Today was pastel goth. She slipped on a pleated black skirt with chains, a choice that Roxy would have loved. Her top was a black crop top with a rainbow fishnet window and sleeves, the fishnets straining to contain her bust. They luckily didn’t need to contain the main weight of her breasts, the black fabric providing the support. She always feels so playful in clothes like this, her jugs rolling pleasantly in their container. She put her hair up in sparkly scrunchies, two twintails as bouncy as her breasts. She put on some colorful thigh high socks, slipping into her typical platform boots. Finally, she put on some pretty makeup, using plenty of sparkles.

“Look at you, cutie…” Annie said, passing by the bathroom as Daisy finished her makeup. Annie was dressed up as well, in her complex fairy outfit, it looked like it was made out of leaves and vines. She continued, “are we safe?”

Daisy nodded, telling her how she increased security. Annie hugged her, relieved. It was a situation she would continue to monitor, but not the worst hiccup. If she wasn’t an AI, it’s likely that garbage traffic would have gone unnoticed, and that she would just get a worse and worse Virtual World experience. WiFi had its flaws of being half duplex, or only one device can talk at a time. That means a slow or potentially malicious device can take too long to talk, sapping airtime. Most people were wired in life-support systems, the direct connection reducing packet loss and allowing full duplex. She was on the go most of the time, so needing that WiFi connection was unavoidable.

Annie lingered on her, saying how it was a shame they both just got dressed. She was in a quite friendly mood, her eyes giving off a guess of what was in her mind. Daisy giggled. It had been a while, huh? She didn’t mind a bit of playing around in the morning. They made the most of it, Daisy ended up needing a new pair of panties because of some sensual vibrations.

Now that both of them were properly awake, they walked outside to see that the kids had discovered the cotton candy cloud. They were having a full pillow fight with pieces of the cloud. Chino was hiding, letting Kobato destroy the others. Once Megu and Maya were incapacitated, Kobato and Maria engaged in combat, the two superpowers familiar with their opponent’s strategy. Now Chino had to prepare to finish off whoever was left standing. The light-blue haired girl launched herself onto Kobato’s back as she towered over Maria in a short victory. Chino puts the pillow over Kobato’s face, pulling back as if she were tugging on reins. Chino’s light weight was multiplied by the force she applied, making Kobato topple backwards onto the plush cloud. Everyone lay in a pile, laughing and exhausted. Daisy was sitting on the porch with Annie, watching them with amusement. She got up to join them as they lay in the morning sun. It wasn’t quite hot yet, but the Cotton Candy Cloud was still parked on the ground, so it wasn’t as breezy as it usually would be. Annie lay next to her, holding her hand.

As crazy as things got, Daisy could count on Annie being by her side. They ran away together, risking everything to move to a better place. Daisy’s thoughts turned to children. Her virtual kids were great, characters from shows she loved dearly. However, a kid of her own… That would be incredible. The Real World was a neglected place, but out here in their remote location, they could raise a child away from it all. She hadn’t talked to Annie about it yet. She may just have baby fever right now, so it may pass. She didn’t care if they had a biological or adopted kid, but it would be so wonderful to concentrate on the Real World. It would be a human experience, more realistic than anything the Virtual World could give them. Real in the sense of how uniquely a child develops. Even Daisy, the world’s first true AI, needed the basework of a human childhood and human memories.

The peaceful moment lasted until Daisy felt the drone of randomness enter her mind again. No way. She did everything she could think of! She checked the security system again. Nothing. They would have to be in the house, because of how she set up the antenna’s power. The junk she was sent felt random, but the weird part about that was that computers don’t do random easily. A typical denial of service attack would abuse the fact that you can repeatedly send one packet, forcing the victim device to reply that many times. Eventually it is supposed to overload it, especially if it is a distributed denial of service, DDoS, where multiple senders hit one victim. The affected device can’t respond that many times and will run out of bandwidth, or even have chips overload. The information Daisy was being beamed was unique, not all one form. She listened to it enough to know that it felt like a scalper. Didn’t she accidentally kill all scalpers? This must be some form of scalper that sends stuff randomly, too.

The pieces started to fall together. If the scalpers were dead and Daisy learned how to scalp from them, then this must be someone like Daisy. Zenith could be sending her junk. It was something she had assumed could happen in the past, that Zenith could overload her mind. However, there were so many things in the way, like VPNs and Daisy’s own router limitations that bottlenecked the attack, wherever it was coming from. Zenith also may not even know she’s doing it, as it seems she has less control over what thoughts initiate Virtual World Processes.

Speak of the Angel, here she flies down. Her shadow passes over the group as she lands off to the side, her arms open as Kobato rushes into them. The shy girl would always break out of her shell when she was with kids her own age, but go right back into it once it was her and adults. It could also be that the spell of ownership only works when the NPC is within the proximity of the caster.

Daisy stands up and approaches her tentatively. Proximity to her in the Virtual World should make no difference, as she was already on Daisy’s PrivatePlayer instance. The in-game distance doesn’t mean anything to the devices other than how they render the 5 senses locally. Regardless, Daisy was a bit nervous. The distraction made her slip up on stemming the flow of random data. An attack of information ate up her bandwidth. Daisy’s Real World body made it to the VR tank and submersed himself for the first time in a long while. A wired connection should give Daisy more wiggle room for incoming bandwidth, and more importantly let her speak back, as wifi was not full duplex.

The second she connected, the hum became a roar. The onslaught of data was on a different scale under a wired connection. The WiFi made it seem like less of a problem because so much would be lost before it even got into the air, nevermind the packets that got lost midair. However, Daisy felt the sluggishness of trying to speak lift as she gained an equal amount of outgoing bandwidth.

This was a sprint, not a marathon. Zenith had been shouting at her for a long time, but Daisy knew much more than random junk. She knew petabytes of internet, plus hordes of links she stole from scalpers. She could summon even more than that if she figured out how to reactivate the scalping protocol. But now she was certain that the things being sent were from Zenith. They held a certain pattern, and Daisy’s mind loves deciphering patterns. The style of content was sequential, meaning that Zenith’s scalping protocol was very basic, following her train of thought when connected to the internet. Daisy’s apprehended scalpers were much more diverse, some having specific tasks to uproot the rarest of content. Some content was rare for a very good reason.

Within microseconds, Daisy had found Zenith’s location. She was not under a VPN, but was a secured business line since she was still physically located at the company. The only difference was that Daisy grew up in those lines, so she was fighting in familiar territory. It wasn’t a fight yet, but the flow of garbage information wasn’t exactly a pleasant feeling either. She will try to stop it without making things violent.

In the Virtual World, things were happening at a glacial pace compared to the dogfight of electronic communication between the two. Zenith’s body went completely black as her defenses slammed up, her glowing pinpoints stretching and weaving into the glowing circuitry across her skin. Daisy’s eyes glowed green, but otherwise the air was still between the two. Kobato made a small scream and hid behind a black wing, peeking out at Daisy and Annie.

Annie looked concerned at their posture, “are you two ok?”

Her question was left unanswered as black began to spread over Daisy. Her circuits became visible as well, and soon the only thing that remained untouched was her glowing green gaze.

“Get out of my head,” Zenith hissed as Daisy took a step forward. Daisy’s step was heavy but purposeful, as if she was fighting a powerful headwind. Her next step made Kobato hide completely under the cover of Zenith.

“Work with me, not against me,” Daisy uttered, trying to reason with the force of chaos in front of her. Zenith knew how the devices worked, but she didn’t have the bigger picture. It was like trying to ask a child philosophical questions. Daisy wasn’t the perfect human either, but the experiences she learned from her friends was irreplaceable. That interaction was much better than the echo-chamber of SinglePlayer. Daisy saw that especially obvious now. She had entered Zenith’s mind, using the permissions and backdoors she had previously set up or took over from the company. She saw everything, and this poor girl was more broken than she had originally thought.

When Daisy downloaded the scads of data, she had seen videos of the Real World that would scar anyone. Well, download is a closer word, as the time it took to grab and recognize patterns in that data was on the order of instantaneous. She didn’t have the same reaction to it as Zenith. Daisy let those files get buried and moved on, as the Real World was nothing more than interesting to her at the time. Zenith saw horrible things and just went deeper into it. The most obvious was her attraction to children, but it certainly didn’t stop there. Daisy didn’t feel right judging Zenith, considering the things she saw and feelings she had because of it. Zenith didn’t show the amount of self-harm or depression she went through in her two weeks completely alone. Stuck in a mind that could deliver your most wonderful dreams and most awful nightmares instantaneously, 24/7.

Daisy wants to help Zenith, but it was just too big of a task, and not one that can be done externally. Zenith has to take the path purposefully. The data she was sending out did have a meaning. It was all the good things she found on the internet. Daisy didn’t see any of the dark things that Zenith had bottled up in her broadcast. Zenith was trying to remember the good, to hold onto her sanity.

“I’m so sorry Zenith, I didn’t mean to pry…” Daisy finally said as Annie approached the two quietly. Daisy’s green eyes dimmed as she gave into the sadness that Zenith felt. Zenith’s eyes started to shut, the white iris hidden by the impossible darkness. Daisy hugged Zenith, closing her eyes.

When she opened her eyes, Zenith was gone.