Esmie the Calamity Chapter 20 (Patreon)

** Yaaaaaaaaay!!! I finally have enough Ryn chapters written and scheduled that I can binky as i please. I've found myself able to read a lot recently for the first time in a long time, so it's fuelling my writing. Hope you enjoy more of Esmie's crazyness! Thanks a ton for being my patronnnnssss!@!!!! **

I arrived in the main room to find not just food and Lynlyn waiting for me, but another sofa as well. This one was a little better than our first one, although it was still threadbare. I bounced over to it and immediately plopped down beside my friend, who was watching a stream and idly picking at a platter of bread, cheese, and some sort of smoked meat.

“Yum!” I said, and snagged a little hunk of cheese off her plate.

Lynlyn growled and tried to take it back, but I popped it into my mouth with a triumphant grin.

Rolling her eyes, she nevertheless failed to hold back a laugh. “God, you’re such a little shithead. Your plate is over on the bench. There’s also olives and walnuts if you want them.”

“Thanks, Lynlyn,” I said, leaping back up off the sofa to retrieve the food.

Iria arrived as I was sitting back down, evidently having gone to the toilet. She watched with a smile as I settled back in beside my childhood friend. I quickly discovered that Lynlyn was nice and warm, which led to me snuggling in close against her side. She shifted her arm over my head to rest on my shoulder without a second thought, never taking her eyes off the floating virtual screen.

I was surprised to see that the stream she was watching was from our company. The girl on screen was playing that other game, giggling and laughing away as she talked to her viewers.

“Whatcha watching?” I asked, popping an olive into my mouth. I loved olives, and I was extremely glad that they were in plentiful supply around these parts. The kingdom we’d started in was bordered to the north east by a kingdom that may as well have been cut directly from medieval greece. It made olives very cheap around here.

“One of our… uh, I think we’re meant to call them senpais?” she asked, glancing over at Iria who’d stretched her long frame out over the other sofa. My eyes trailed the length of her body for a moment, taking in the majesty. She looked like a lion sunbathing on a rock, the way she was lounging.

“Yup,” the tall woman nodded. “Virtual personality streaming is based in anime culture so Japanese honorifics get used.”

“Seems like she’s having fun,” I murmured, watching with fascination as she regaled her viewers with some story about her parents when she was a child.

“I’m surprised we’re the first ones over here in CORA,” Lynna mused, turning from the screen to look down at me. “I mean, this game is extremely popular and it’s only going up. Surely someone would have moved the whole virtual idol thing over here?”

“CORA is a hard fit for this type of thing,” Iria replied, shaking her head. “It’s R rated, and it was only recently that the communications commission said people could broadcast from the game at a lower age rating. So long as the content isn’t R rated, of course.”

“Ah, that makes a hell of a lot of sense,” Lynna murmured, before going back to watching the stream.

I finished my food fairly quickly, this little body didn’t take long to fill up, and then I snuggled in closer to my friend’s side and closed my eyes. I was pretty tired, now that I’d calmed down after the adrenaline from making out with Iria.

Gosh, I’d really done that huh? My first proper kiss. It had been great too, wonderful beyond anything I had anticipated. Unfortunately, Iria had pumped the brakes and I was left wondering, what would it have been like to go further?

I’d never been much of a sexual person, not really. I loved sex humour as much as the next girl, but there was a difference between that and having a big honkin’ sex drive. Except now here I was, actually wanting it. Curiosity was a big part of it, but also just… the way it had felt to be kissed by Iria…

Opening my eyes, I stole a glance at her. She was watching something on her own now, draped over the couch like she was a queen, calm and confident. Her hand rose to brush through her long feathered mane, teasing out a snag, and I watched those long fingers of hers with an ache of curious need.

Of course, that was when she looked over and caught me staring. Her eyebrow twitched in amusement, but she said nothing. Why was she so hot to me? She definitely wasn’t what people considered to be pretty normally. Way too much muscle on her for that, even after the recent push to return to the type of body positivity that had been around at the turn of the twenty first century.

It could be that being down in New Zealand had insulated me from the war of culture that had gripped the developed world as the USA descended into hate and chaos. Still though… she was gorgeous and it was hard to take my eyes off her. I mean, look at those abs! Gosh, and those legs… I knew that watermelon crushing was sort of a meme, but she really could do it with those things.

Iria was still giving me a knowing look, and it caused a blush to flare out over my cheeks. I ducked my head and closed my eyes again. Maybe I just needed to go out and like… get laid, or something?

God, what an alien concept that was. I mean, I knew that people did that kind of thing, but me? I was just a… huh. I mean my outside VR self wouldn’t do it, but in here? As Esmie, it might actually be fun to just go out and have a night at a club or whatever. Plus, the only bad thing that could happen to me was being killed. No spiked drinks in VR, it was part of the laws around VR. They had to design their games to stop that kind of thing.

I guess I’d go exploring the city tomorrow, see what trouble I could get myself into. For now though, I was going to sleep on top of Lynlyn. She didn’t seem to mind.

****

The next day, I decided that I’d also mix a bunch of those potions I’d made and try to sell them. After all, I’d need money if I planned to go to like, a bar or whatever you called them here in CORA. That was the biggest draw into this game for a lot of people. Yes, it might have magic, quests, and whatever else, but in the year or more since the game had been out of beta, it had become so much more. Players had very quickly tired of the grungy, dank, dark inns of the world, so they’d made their own. Now there was a thriving nightlife in pretty much every major city in the game.

I was on my way to the market, about to leave the poor district that we lived in, when a cloaked figure materialised beside me. I let out a little squeak of fright, but settled down when I saw who it was.

“Hello, mister sneaky man,” I said, smiling up at him. It was my thieves’ guild friend!

He chuckled, low and rasping. “Good day, my friend. How do you feel about taking a job?”

“Sure,” I agreed instantly, then gave him a sly, sidelong look. Damn, his hood was still all shadowy and stuff. Ah well. “I have some stuff you might want, though. Maybe.”

“Oh?” he asked, tilting his head slightly in question.

I summoned one of my little potions and handed it to him. “It’s not much, I’m still learning alchemy, but that’s a—“

“Low level regeneration potion,” he mused, interrupting me with a nod. He held the vial up to the light of the noonday sun and grunted with just a teeny tiny amount of surprise. “Very long lasting, though. That’s intriguing. You made this?”

Don’t know why he was holding it up to the light. The vial was made of clay. Whatever, maybe he was like, magic or some shit.

“I did,” I said, bouncing happily. “How did you figure all of that out?”

“One of the many tools of a thief,” he said, handing the potion back to me. “One must learn to appraise items if they wish to steal objects of value, after all. It wouldn’t do to find yourself leaving a dangerous job with fool’s gold in your pocket, now would it?”

“Oh, that makes sense.” I wondered if I could learn to appraise things? Was it like, a crafting skill or something?

“I’m sure we could find a use for your potions,” he said thoughtfully. “Assuming you have more? Funding your alchemy training would be a great boon to our guild, too. Our last alchemist died after he mistook a poison for the antidote he needed to counteract another poison. Very nasty scene.”

“Well, that’s not a problem for me,” I laughed, trying really hard to keep myself from breaking into a little dance. I don’t know why I wanted to dance, I was just feeling good. “I’m Blessed, so yeah. I can poison myself all day!”

“Excellent,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll take the lot. With the money from this job, and the potions, I’m sure you can make some progress towards invisibility potions, eh?”

“I’ll give it a shot,” I grinned, throwing him two thumbs up. His cheery attitude dissipated into alarm and surprise when I began to dump over forty clay vials of potion on him. Thankfully, he had a sack handy, and with a little bit of careful teamwork, we got all the potions in without breaking them. I sorta felt sorry for him, not having an inventory. Must be hard to function like that in an MMO world.

He gave me a whole five silvers for the potions too, which was a lot for what they were worth. I think. Either way, it meant I didn’t have to haggle with some random person in the market anymore.

“So what was the job?” I asked, unable to keep my energy contained and breaking into a little skip of excitement. “Am I gonna be climbing into windows? Oh, or pickpocketing!”

He snorted and shook his head. “I am afraid that it takes a great deal of skill to do either of those. You, however, have a lot of skill in a certain area that I lack. You are a master of distraction and performance. Here’s what we’re going to do…“