Esmie the Calamity Chapter 14 (Patreon)

Esmie’s POV

“Welcome, girls!” Ruth said brightly as we entered. “How has your week been?”

“My dreams can’t decide whether they should show me nonsensical sewing patterns, the taste of dried delidrion, or how to set up a medium shot of my face,” I replied, pouting theatrically.

“Working hard, then?” our manager asked with a full-throated laugh.

Lynna joined her with a chuckle of her own and pulled a seat out for me to sit in before she took her own. “Esmie has never understood the concept of moderation. She’s an all or nothing kind of girl.”

“About that,” Ruth murmured, her tone shifting dramatically into one of caution. “Esmie, just so you are aware, you signed up with your UN-ID number. I am aware of all your publicly available information.”

I could see Lynlyn tense up in my peripheral vision, but I just smiled and shrugged. “That’s fine. My identity would have been secret either way, right? It’s just a little more important now.”

Ruth seemed surprised by my answer, but she nodded. “You and George here will be able to help each other in that regard, I think. What are your pod arrangements?”

“I’m just in the pod that Lynlyn bought me, inside my apartment,” I said while I glanced at the guy who was apparently called George.

He was a medium sized bloke with an easy smile and honest eyes, although they also had an element of calm, confident danger to them. The sort of guy who didn’t like using violence, but was exceptionally good at it nevertheless.

“We might have to change that,” Ruth said, more to herself than me at first. “Would you consent to being moved to a long term storage apartment like George? Assuming you want to stay in VR.”

That surprised me. She was offering to move me to LTS without interrupting my VR connection? Without asking? Why?

“Um… yeah, that would be good actually.” I nodded, my eyes having trouble choosing between meeting the guy’s gaze, or Ruth’s. Something about him…

Our manager made a quick note on her tablet. “I’ll have it arranged.”

“Thank you,” Lynna said for me, squeezing my shoulder. “Why did you offer that, if I might ask?”

The older woman gave us both a pointed look. “You sent me the footage of you both interacting. It was fairly clear that Esmie preferred being within the virtual universe, as it were.”

Lynlyn and I winced in unison. “Oh.”

George watched the whole interaction with curious interest, but he still hadn’t spoken. He seemed content to let us get through our business without interrupting.

“Happy talent means good content,” Ruth said seriously, using a tone that gracefully ended the conversation. “Now, I’d like you both to meet George. He will be joining you as a member of our CORA branch. George, this is Lynna and Esmie.”

“Nice to meet you both,” he nodded politely across the table.

I was still very confused as to why there was a guy sitting across from us, so I forgot to reply for several long seconds after Lynlyn had said hello. “O-oh, hi,” I finally blurted.

“Now, I can tell you both have questions, so here’s what’s happening,” Ruth began, giving the table at large a knowing look. “George has real world combat experience and training, which he will be using to provide protection to the two of you, along with making content centered around high level gameplay.”

“Okay,” Lynlyn said slowly, hands fidgeting on the table. “I thought that we were uh… having an all girl’s branch at first?”

“That plan hasn’t changed,” Ruth said, smiling in amusement. “Hence why I said that George and Esmie will have a lot in common.”

Oh. Oh! Oh wow, okay… that was… interesting. Another member of the group was going to be, uh… like me? Gosh.

George’s face split into a big grin and he let out a soft, soothing laugh. “Yeah, I know. Not the kind of gig you’d expect a guy like me to find himself in. Don’t worry, I’ll do my best not to be too weird about it.”

“You can’t be weirder than Esmie was, trust me,” Lynna muttered, throwing me a look. “Glad to have you on the team though. I was worried about the level of access that people would have to us in CORA. It’s not like Rellithesh where you can create isolated instances and stuff.”

“Correct. I will be adding three more members to your team, although they will be housed in a nearby house, rather than the same one as the three of you,” Ruth explained. “The idea is to have the six of you party up for dungeons every now and then, while also doing your own things as smaller groups of three. That, and your personal content too.”

“Sounds fun,” I said, trying to curl my tail around into my lap, only to remember I didn’t have one here. Dang, maybe I should have brought it along after all.

George had a big smile on his- uh… their face as they nodded in agreement with me. It felt weird to slap a he onto them when they’d be joining us as a girl ingame, where the majority of our interactions would happen.

“What kind of character do you think you’ll make?” I asked them, surprising myself with my interest. They just had the kind of face that made me want to befriend them.

Smiling, George tapped their chin in thought. “That’s part of the reason for this meeting, I think. You’re a healer, aren’t you Esmie? Lynna is a DPS, so that would mean that I should be a tank, to round us out. Unfortunately, that doesn’t sound like my jam. I’ve spent most of my life training to avoid getting hit, after all.”

“Ah… yeah,” I nodded, then shrugged and grinned mischievously over the table at them. “I guess that’s a problem for the other three then, ay?”

They let out a soft, amused laugh. “Yeah, maybe. Or… I could be a dodge tank. I was thinking, a tank just needs to keep the big ugly boss from killing all his friends, right? Where in the manual does it say he needs to get hit in the process?”

“It’s a lot easier to just take the hits,” Lynna said dubiously.

“Easy is for people who aren’t me,” George said, throwing her a cheeky, smug little wink.

“Wow, cocky much?” I giggled.

They shrugged their shoulders and turned their smile on me. “Just getting into character, you know?”

“So it’s a character then?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “You aren’t actually this self assured?”

They opened their mouth to fire back, then let out another laugh and dipped their head in surrender. “You got me there.”

Ruth had been watching the exchange with a growing smile, but she cut in during the natural pause in conversation. "Now, on to the boring stuff. I have paperwork for you all to sign and reading material to hand out. All three of you are missing key skills that I'd like you to learn before we go public."

"Do we get to learn to sing?" I asked, perking up. That seemed like a key skill for us so-called idols.

Ruth's eyes zeroed in on me like a hawk sighting prey. "Would you like to learn to sing?"

"Um… yeah, I think so " I said timidly, shrinking under her piercing gaze.

“That is very good to hear,” she replied, looking pleased. “I’ll speak to you about it later.”

The meeting moved from there into more boring pastures, with document signing and planning. The house wasn’t really big enough for three people, but we decided that getting one big enough for all three of us would be part of our initial content. It would probably make for interesting interactions too, the three of us all crammed into one tiny place.

George was an interesting person too. They seemed to be this incredibly strange mix of tough guy and mellow teddy bear. I had a hard time getting a read on their personality and it was driving me nuts! I wanted to just stop around the table, take their face in my hands and shake them until an explanation fell out. I’d probably just end up as a pile of bruised squish on the ground though.

Speaking of the squish, being in this body had my head lowkey spinning in the back of my brain at all times. It was one thing to be in the game, but here I was in a non-game version of that body. Like, this was a body that the pod had created for me based on data, and the only thing that was really all that different were the vag and boobs.

Why had it made me a body that was entirely feminine with its secondary and tertiary sexual traits, but the primary sexual ones had been masculine? It made no sense! It had access to my genetics from my UN-ID, it knew I was a guy! Actually… was I XY? I’d never checked. Wait, dumb question… wait no, was it?

Oh god, those thoughts had just made things even more scary than before! Let me just… gently put that can of worms back on the shelf. Maybe shuffle it behind some boxes and cover it with a healthy coating of confusion. There we go, nice and safe and out of the way.

“Uh, Esmie, you there?” George asked, jolting me back to reality.

I gave a squeak of surprise and slammed my knee against the underside of the table. With pain lancing through me, I gasped out a moan and pulled my leg up in an attempt to soothe it. “Jesus fuck,” I grimaced, eyes watering. Right in the knee funny bone! It felt like there was a herd of knives tap dancing on my nerves.

“Well, that was an interesting noise,” George muttered under their breath.

“You’ll get used to it,” Lynlyn said offhandedly. “She’s just like that.”

“Like what?” I asked, turning to her in mock outrage. “Lynlyn, how could you? I am the most pure of all idols, and no amount of insinuation from you will change that!”

“Oh yeah, then what happens if I do this?” she asked mischievously, reaching out to… oh, tweak my ear.

I raised an eyebrow. “Uh… no big fluffy ears out here, Lynlyn.”

“Damn…” she muttered, and turned back to George. “You’ll see when we get ingame.”

“Uh…” George blinked. “I look forward to it? Question mark, exclamation mark?”

The way they said it made me smile. It was just sort of funny and like, very bemused. I couldn’t wait to have a new target for my hijinks. This was going to be fun.