Esmie the Calamity Chapter 7 (Patreon)

** Wohoo! Finished a new chapter already :3. I'm excited for this one tbh, I've been wanting to write a Only Sense Online style thing for a while now, and apparently that's where these two goofballs have decided to go. Hope you enjoy! **

I groaned, frowning even before I opened my eyes at the cold surface I had respawned on. Why couldn’t it be as nice and fluffy as where I’d just come from? I gave a harrumph and opened my eyes, pushing up to a sitting position so I could see where the hell I was. Some sort of temple, by the looks of things, with a big mist filled pool for people to respawn in. Fancy!

Still, the floor was cold, so I wobbled to my feet and gave it a big ol’ pout, just to make sure it knew who was boss. The whole place was made of the same dark grey stone, little to no embellishments anywhere except a large statue against the wall opposite the exit. The statue was cool though, a pretty woman wearing a big sheet. Or something. I don’t know what that item of clothing was called.

“Esmie!” I turned in the direction of the familiar voice calling my name, finding Lynna walking towards me with a sheepish smile on her face. “Wow, we got wrecked, huh?”

“Yeah,” I sighed theatrically, placing the back of my dainty little hand to my forehead. “You lead me to my death! How could you?”

Lynna rolled her eyes and reached out, grabbing me by that same hand. “Come on, sadly, we have actual work to do.”

“Wait, what?” I asked as I was dragged out of the big respawning room.

She let my hand go as I began to walk on my own, but she did give me an apologetic smile. “You know how I’ve got that manager and stuff…?”

“For your acting stuff, yeah?” I answered, trying to remember what she’d said. Lynna was under pressure from her manager to get a job, I think?

“Yeah… my acting stuff…” she smiled, absently brushing a hand over my hair. “My manager is in the game. She wants to meet to discuss something.”

I blinked up at her, not really computing for a second because of how nice it had felt to have her hand on my head. She chuckled when she saw me processing, the sound humming through me to make my chest feel light and fluffy. “I might have send her the uh… footage of us hanging out. She wanted to see, for some reason.”

My mouth opened slightly as I realised what she was saying. My face began to heat up, slowly at first, but my mind was in the process of fixing that. It ran through everything that had happened since I met up with Lynna in glorious, embarrassing detail. Everything I had done while I was in that weird, odd state of euphoria. I’d been wild, and now an adult, a real, professional woman, had seen it all.

“Oh no,” I groaned, burying my face in my hands. “Lyyynnnlyyynnnnnn! That was all… it was… I was crazy! I was high! Now I look like a total idiot in front of your boss!”

“And whose fault was that?” she asked with the smirkiest smirk I’d ever seen. I forgot she could be like this, teasing and… stuff.

“Okay, it was mine,” I grumbled, kicking at a stray pebble as we got to the bottom of the steps outside the temple.

We were now in the big central city market, where hundreds were wandering around picking through all the wares that merchants had out. It was an exciting atmosphere, and there was enough going on that I felt my head beginning to spin. Goodness! There was a really nice smell, someone was cooking something that smelled delicious, especially to me, who’d only really eaten pre prepared meals recently.

“Can we stop and get some food?” I asked, trailing along behind my friend as she marched off in search of wherever we were meant to meet the boss lady.

“She says she’s going to pay for lunch,” she said absently, stopping to glance around as we neared the edge of the market, where two streets arrived to meet it. “Looking for an inn that’s apparently… aha, there it is!”

Free food? Say no more! I was a good little bun and hurried along after her, making sure I didn’t get run over by a big cart in the process. Far out, I was small as, now.

The inn in question was a fancy looking place that was just down the street from the market. It was nice and open too, big front doors that were currently open, allowing laughter to spill out and sunlight to spill in.

“Alright, she says that she’s at a table near the back…” Lynna murmured, flicking through her menus for a second. “Yup, alright. Let’s go in!”

I followed her with a silent nod as she pushed through the massive front doors into the large and spacious interior. Instantly I threw my gaze to the ground, closing my eyes slightly to narrow my field of view. Stupid rich people and their huge rooms. Why couldn’t they just make lots of small cozy rooms, rather than this dumb big one.

I almost screamed when a text message appeared in front of my face, anxious as I was. It took me a second to even focus around the brief surge of panic, but when I did, I found myself rather surprised.

Hiyaaa, looked into some things for you… looks like your pod has a limited medical suite on board! If you want, I can show you where in the settings to find some medication for your problem. It can only administer one medication at a time though unfortunately.

Carefully, I whispered, “Oh my god… you’re telling me there’s something for my Agoraphobia?”

Yupperinos! Didn’t you know that? Surely you’ve been like, helped with this before?

“No? I just kinda dealt with it…”

Fuck my life, you people… alright, here’s how to do it…

Reading carefully, I followed along with the instructions that were probably from that girl in the death dream. She got more than a little exasperated with me when I fucked it up a few times, but just as I was bumping into Lynna’s back, we’d gotten it. It would kick in soon, and supposedly I wouldn’t be so anxious about large enclosed spaces. Supposedly.

“Lynna, nice to see you again,” a smooth, confident voice said, and I jerked my eyes up off the floor and into two bright red ones.

Wow. Sitting at a small circular table was the most impressive woman I’d ever seen. Her skin was a dark blue colour, like how you might imagine the deep ocean might look right at the edge of eternal night. She wore a gorgeous red dress that was somehow businesslike and ballroom at the same time. She was beautiful too, in that untouchable way that a goddess was, and out of her forehead sprouted two huge ebony horns. A long barbed tail snaked out behind her, hypnotically swaying from side to side, like a snake getting ready to strike.

This was Lynna’s boss? Were we sure this wasn’t just a shark that had stumbled into a VR pod? Holy moly!

“Ruth…” my friend said nervously, visibly swallowing before she sat down in one of the chairs.

The scary demon woman gave her a smile and a nod, before turning to me with a strange expression, something between the way a cat looks at a mouse, and the way a child looks at a toy in a toystore. “And then there’s you… Esmie. Quite the show you put on earlier.”

I blushed, heavily and completely, staring down at the table to avoid those piercing red eyes. “Um, yeah…”

“Entertaining, even,” she said slowly, carefully… as though those two words were meant to mean a hell of a lot more than just the obvious.

“Yeah… sorry about her, she was just a little crazy, it’s her first time in VR,” Lynna apologised, placing a gentle hand on my arm for a moment.

“It is partially because of her that we are meeting, actually,” Ruth said, leaning back in her chair like a dragon draping itself over its hoard of gold.

“What?” Lynna and I both blurted in unison, staring at the shark in front of us in surprise. Had I done something really, really bad?

“I’ll put it plainly then, I am not made of time, after all,” she chuckled, her brow quirking in amusement for a second. “You two are highly entertaining together. So much so, in fact, that I think we might have ourselves a little opportunity. CORA vid shows are the hot new thing at the moment, grand battles and heroic deeds for all to see, without half of the production costs. This new fully immersive simulation they have in this game is ripe for any number of things… such as a little show featuring two adorable little scamps as they make their way through this world.”

“You want to make a vid show about us?” Lynna squeaked.

Ruth nodded, leaning forward with an open smile, “It will be a little slice of life thing. A vid show, not a stream, to be clear. Not everyone has time to sit and watch people walk for eight hours. No grand battles either, unless you can find one, but really… you two are just watchable all on your own. Provided, that is… you hold back a little on the sexual antics. You can do that in the times you’re not filming.”

“How does this even work?” I asked quietly, nervously, at the same time that Lynna started choking on something. What, I couldn’t tell.

“Simple, really. You’ll film yourselves running around playing this game, being adorable and ridiculous, and then you’ll send the footage to me, cutting out any parts that you’d like to keep private, of course,” she said amicably, pouring a glass of water and handing it to Lynna. “No requirements really, I’m more than confident your personalities will generate the content we need.”

Everyone at the table was silent for several moments as my friend and I stared at each other wordlessly, mulling over the proposal.

“That actually sounds… nice,” Lynna said quietly, still staring at me. “Will Esmie get paid too?”

“She will,” Ruth agreed without hesitation.

“And we just… wander around, playing the game?” she asked, turning back to look at her boss.

“Indeed.”

“But how do we make it interesting?” I mused, feeling my mind turn it around… wait! “What if we save up and buy a house? Make a shop?” I exclaimed, grinning over at my friend. “I mean, we’re clearly not very good at fighting things yet, but there must be other ways to make money, Then we can like, play house or whatever, like all those old slice of life shows.”

Lynna’s eyes lit up, and she grinned, “Oh, and we could do like, different scenes, almost. Pick something fun to do each day, like go out and try and do another quest in the forest, or go exploring for a few days. It will still be reality vid stuff, but we can do all sorts of dumb, fun things to entertain people!”

For several minutes, we sat there at the table and got increasingly excited, throwing ideas back and forth until our faces were bright and flushed. Ruth had to cut in, laughing and shaking her head, reminding us that she was going to buy us lunch.

“I think I can arrange for a house to be purchased, to get the ball rolling,” Ruth told us as we scarfed the amazing, scrumptious meals down. “And a little ingame capital to get you started. Thank you, I’m very interested in seeing what you come up with.”