On the streets of Seaguard (Cordelia, Kol, Red, Apotheosis)

Ivy slumped onto her bed and let out a long breath of air.  The summer had passed in a whirlwind.  She had gotten the job to try and start saving up money to go to college, she didn't expect a full time summer job to completely eat up her time.  Between her job and trying to keep in touch with the few friends she did have, she hadn't thought of Savior in months.  She tilted her head and gazed at the FISH suit draped over the rack she had put beside her computer desk to hold the thing when she wasn't using it.  Another fine product of SC.CO, the branding stickers poking out between pieces of the suit advertising other products she definitely should buy.

A tired grunt preceded Ivy leveraging herself off the bed and walking over to the rack holding the suit.  She ignored all the advertisements and started donning the suit.  She sat down once it was nearly fully on and plugged the IO cable into the special receiver installed on her computer.  After making sure it was seated properly, she pulled on the helmet.

[FISH suit online.  Profile selected "gamer".  Loading user preferences.  Welcome back to Savior Cordelia.]

The world barely visible around her through the helmet's viewport dissolved as the login to Savior began to take shape.  She shivered as the electronic tunnel around her resolved into the game world, a surge of forgotten adrenalin accompanying the transition.  Suddenly everything looked, sounded, smelled, tasted, and felt almost better than reality.

Cordelia looked down at her arm, remembering her avatar and the times she had spent in the game.  She swam in a sphere for a moment, looping around and around where she had logged in, luxuriating in the feel of the ocean against her skin and hair.  She pulled the trident from the frog on her back and swung it around a few times, reacquainting herself with it's weight and heft, and then sheathed it back onto the frog.  Looking at where she was, she recognized the busy coastal city above the waves as the same one her experience with Savior began at several years prior.  She flicked her tail, building speed as she approached the surface of the waves, propelling herself into the air to land lightly on the end of a passenger dock.

Unlike some of the players who chose a mermaid avatar, her fins did not disappear into legs when she came out of the water, instead her curved tail hovered just barely above the ground and she moved forward almost as if propelled by magic.  She wandered into the city, reveling in the movement of all the players around her and silently wondering what today's adventure might bring.

Wandering the streets for the first time was strange... It was his first time joining the game. He'd heard about it through a friend, and decided to try it since he had plenty of extra time on his hands. With this in mind he looked around, trying to admire the detail. In the end, he muttered bitterly to himself; squinting his gem-like eyes."By gods it's bright out, it's completely unnecessary... Much like the real one. Bravo on the detail."

The man attempted to brush his dark long hair out from his view, and failing that, his expression grew displeased. He's been looking around for anything interesting enough for his attention, but nothing had yet grasped it. The tall man made his way to the nearest stall and started to ask for details about the wages; thinking about finding a way to make some cash for working. Whatever form the work took didn't typically matter, he was a quick learner.

Once upon hearing the wage, the man wished the worker well, and goodbye. It wasn't what he was worth; besides it wasn't something that really needed workers. At a loss for anything better to do he found a mildly clean curb, sat down, and brought out his flask for a quick swig; ignoring those passing by.

It's rare for Apotheosis to not log on at least once a day. One of the few and proud Savior diehards, the elvish woman is a typical specter in almost anywhere that sees people taking a break, even momentarily, from the grind of gameplay. Today, she's chosen a particular city and a particular quest board to stroll in and look at. It's been a while since she'd actually played the content. Maybe it'd be fun to take a stroll down memory lane.

The man in the suit catches Apotheosis's attention first. She recognizes the green eyes and the odd gait. It's a particular style of walking that she's never seen before on anyone before or since. But what they did together was so long ago that she can't really recall the details; they slip away from her like a bow-tie loosed on the wind. Was it a dungeon that they did together? She doesn't touch PVP content if she can help it; it's simply not fun for her to engage in. But...

Apotheosis would greet him as an old friend, she reminds herself. So she offers the suited man a little smile and a wave. "Hello. It's been some time, hasn't it?" She does not yet notice the mermaid avatar hovering gently above the ground, a sight interesting to behold on its own.

Cordelia glided through the city streets, memories of the first time she had been here sending a quick tremor down her spine.  Her gaze dropped to the cobblestone streets and the spot where she immagined she could see the hacker and his minion battling her and the other players.  No.  Not the other players.  It was her.  He had targeted her specifically.  A detail that, had she told her parents about, would have been the end of her Savior playing at all.

She averted her eyes, wanting desperately to fill these streets with a better memory than the words of the hacker. '"They can not protect you. They do not care about you. Behold."'  The words rang in her head as she felt the grasp of FATE that had almost killed her in her first few moments inside the game.

Cordelia forced herself out of her waking nightmare again, moving to the edge of the street and a vendor selling small hot fruit pies.  She quickly paid for one and took the tart shaped pastry in her hands.  She shuffled it back and forth, the heat she felt on her hands a marvel to her considering she was supposed to be in a video game.  She took a bite, and the explosion of taste made her completely forget the nightmare of where she was, at least for the time being.  "I forgot how wonderfull things taste here."

A smile back on her face, she headed back to the street and turned to glide toward the center of the town where the quest board was.  As she passed back onto the cobbles of the street, her tail fin barely brushed a tall man sitting on the curb drinking out of a flask he had pulled from some random pocket.  As she moved up to the quest board, there were a couple of people standing there, one addressing the other. "Hello. It's been some time, hasn't it?"

Cordelia came to a halt, some few feet behind and to the side of the other two, trying to get an angle at looking at the quest board herself.  As she came to a halt, it became eerily obvious that her hair swelled around her as if she were still under the water and it was billowing gently in the currents around her.  "Anything worthwhile today?"  She asked, trying to strike up friendly conversation while shuffling the hot pie from one hand to the other.

Kol skims the usual quests from NPC’s with disinterest, noting the few from other players and eying them for anything unusual or worth his time. If he found nothing better he might pick up a simpler assassination, but he would prefer something with a little more-

"Hello. It's been some time, hasn't it?"

The dark-haired man blinks and turns toward the woman addressing him. She’s a lovely woman, simple enough really without much in the way of extraordinary features, but pretty. His eyes trace across her face without an ounce of recognition. Then he meets her eyes and… They’re the most unusual shade of purple. Like someone had taken a flower and placed its petals in her eyes. He’s struck with that image.

He breathes that thought.

“Do we know one another?” He inquires gently. He’s not good with remembering people. They always seem to fade from his memory once he loses interest in them. It’s not something that bothers him overly much, but it does mean that he tends to have trouble with placing people in his past unless he makes a significant effort. He feels like he’d remember those eyes though.

"Anything worthwhile today?"

Kol’s eyes flicker toward the woman who poses the question and he finds himself blinking at the sight of a mermaid floating over the land. He is still unused to seeing the less ‘human’ looking races of the game moving about, but they can be entertaining in their own way. He wonders if she can feel through the scales. His smile widens a little bit, and his eyes slide back to the first woman. “Perhaps.”

Finally something interesting. He took notice of the bright scaled tail passing by and walk? Float. Float her way to the board that he hadn't noticed until now, though the view of it was well blocked by some other players. He looked down to his flask and with a concerned glare at it he put it back away. He headed over to the board dusting off his gloved hands. He muttered a question to himself not really for others to answer, but he could still be heard.

"Anything for someone new?....Christ. Not much is interesting.."

The man looked through the listed quests with a displeased expression. In all honesty he was still thinking about the merfolk lady, he hadn't heard of anything like that for a player, he certainly didn't think fish could float, but hey it's a game. He figured he didn't need to blame his  flask for seeing the woman, she was as real as-well as code and a player. It's bewildering.

He fidgeted with the light scruff at his chin, almost ready to give up and just head to the nearest pub. It sounded awfully tempting. Maybe he should just find a good place to just try to sit and relax, an inn of some kind? It'd be a lot less uncomfortable, being alone rather than being so close to strangers around a board.

Apotheosis wonders for a moment if maybe she's the one who's mistaken when the man in the suit looks at her and places the inquiry. But the fact is that there's not really many people that look like him around. She looks visibly confused herself. "Maybe I'm mistaken," she admits. "Some years ago, I thought I did a dungeon or something else with you. I recognize the suit, at least. Sorry to bother you, I was only trying to be friendly."

When the mermaid hovers forward, Apotheosis gives her a polite smile, something to save face from the awkwardness of her interaction with the suited man. "Not really anything worthwhile for me--I've done a lot of this stuff before or don't need the rewards--but if anyone's in need of a halfway-decent Shaman to come along, I'm happy to help."

The expression of readiness to help is cemented when Apotheosis looks at the other tall man, although it's not very hard to be taller than her. She smiles pleasantly at him. "I'd love to help out someone new to Savior, too," Apotheosis says warmly. "We all have to start somewhere, don't we?"

Cordelia turned toward the tall man who had followed her up to the quest board.  Her mouth was agape, and her eyes wide as saucers as she regarded the man, looking him up and down.  The hot pastry in one hand forgotten for the moment as she just stared.  The other two people at the quest board were as forgotten as the food in her hand, and the rest of the city.  The shocked stance didn't last long though.  The hot fruit pie in her right hand burned it, waking her back up to its presence.  She shifted it back to her left, trying to balance it on the tips of her fingers as she blew on her right hand to cool it down.

"Let me get this straight." She stated before taking another bite out of the pie, chewing it and swallowing.  She then continued to speak while still juggling the pie.  Although the pie was beginning to cool down enough to hold without juggling.  "You spent around one thousand dollars, or whatever equivalent in your part of the world, to purchase a game that you weren't even interested in?"

Her gaze swept to the side, looking at the other two people standing at the quest board, trying to judge their levels of incredulity at what she was hearing.  "Am I missing something?  Are they handing the FISH suits out somewhere that I missed?  Is there another way to log into the game?"  She was speaking mainly at the tall man who had followed her, but her sweeping gaze left room for anyone else to answer.

Kol hardly noticed the arrival of yet another person coming up to the board. This one was a man, scars touching his face and neck, which was curious enough, but not enough to distract Kol significantly from his current preoccupation. For the moment he ignored this third stranger, trying to decide which of the other two was the most interesting. The woman with the lovely violet eyes, or the woman with her uniquely scaled posterior. He pressed his finger to his smiling lips and decided that it wasn’t really necessary to pick one over the other.

“We may have met, but mon ami… My memory is not so good for names and faces.” His smile widens a little and then he shrugs his shoulders. “Or perhaps it is only the suit you have seen before and not the me?”

Kol offers the woman his hand, his smile warm and gracious. He listens to the conversation advance a bit, and it seems that they are considering a joint venture. Likely one of those dungeon things. Which admittedly he had not done too many of himself. It might be pleasurable in such fine company.

“Mon ami!” He offers in a pacifying voice to the woman who was growing quite upset at the gentleman he’d been largely paying only half a mind to. If that. “Your passion does you justice, but what does it matter why he is here? We can always teach him the many pleasures of the game together can we not?”

He smiles wider still and quickly sends out little requests for the others to join a group with him. “In such good company as you make, we are sure to find something enjoyable to do oui?” Whatever they started out doing, he was sure that there would be plenty of chance to ply his skills.