The forest seemed to have changed again, although Tage knew full well that there was no physical difference among the dark bark and green leaves.  Perhaps it was simply that the terrifying memories of this place had somewhat been overwritten by her new memories of Ripley. This was no longer just a place of terror, but was also a place of curiosity and discovery. A place that had become intimately linked with Ripley's smile.  A smile could only ever be so scary.

All the same, Tage felt the tension leave her shoulders when she finally cleared the mouth of the cave, and stepped back out into the thin forest that surrounded it. She paused for a moment, glancing back towards Ripley to make sure he hadn’t fallen behind.  He was right behind her, but stopped the instant she stopped as well, maintaining about a foot of space between them. She sighed slightly, before beckoning him up next to her. It was a pain to talk to someone behind her back when there was more than enough room on the path for them to stand shoulder to shoulder.

Once Ripley moved up next to her, Tage set off into the forest, retracing her steps back towards the village.  However, before she’d made it more than a couple steps, she glanced over at Ripely again, suddenly recalling that he’d asked her another question before the friend request had appeared in front of her.

"You asked what made us friends, right?”  Tage queried. “It's actually pretty simple. We've spent time talking, and have shared experiences together. Friendship is a desire to continue to experience things together. As long as that holds true, we are friends."

Ripley stared at her for a moment, a faint wrinkle in his brows giving a clear indication of exactly how much thought he was putting into her words.  "Then anyone I have an experience with will be my friend,” the AI stated after a couple of second of silence. “Since I will want to continue to experience things with them, right?"

However, only a moment after completing that thought, he frowned slightly.  "But I won't be able to be with all of them at once," Ripley continued, sounding somewhat bothered. "This suggests that there are degrees of friendship. The more you want to be with someone, the more friend they are, right?"

He turned his gaze to Tage then, eyes almost puppy-like with expectation.

"Very good!" Tage agreed with a little bit of a laugh, unable to help but praise him like she might a child. She had to carefully quell the instinct to reach out and rub his head like she might do with her little brother. As adorable as she might find him, she didn’t want him thinking that was normal or acceptable behavior.  Even Halp didn’t get to touch her hair.

"Yes, there are undoubtedly different levels of friendship. But there's one thing I forgot to add. Not everyone you meet will be your friend, because, for it to be real friendship, the feeling has to be mutual. If another person doesn't want to spend time with you they aren't your friend.” Tage paused slightly, and when she resumed speaking her voice had softened with something like remorse. “Not really. Even if they act like it."

Her eyes dropped to the ground, her mind unconsciously spinning back to memories she didn’t want to think about.  However, she shook herself out of it a moment later.

"Sorry," she said to Ripley, forcing herself to firmly re-ground in the moment. "I… uh… think I should probably contact Halp and... Ah! That reminds me. " Tage came to a halt, spinning slightly to face Ripley. "What is the normal procedure if a player reports a bug in their account? Because I told Halp that I had one, which was why I haven't logged in for several days, and I'm sure he's going to want to know what happened as soon as we start talking."

At least she was starting to get used to the couple second delay it always seemed to take for Ripley to respond to anything she said.  She tapped her finger slowly against her leg, unconsciously counting to herself, before Ripley started speaking again.

"I am slightly confused. You have done nothing that requires apologies, and your sudden turn seems to signal something that I do not quite understand." He shook his head softly, but didn’t seem to want to wait for an answer, or expect one.

"As for the bug protocol, you generally are contacted by an NPC who asks you to describe your problem. Should you be unable to log in, which seems to be the case you're interested in, an email is sent to the account you provided. If such an account cannot be found or accessed, the owner of the account can be verified by the payment method used to pay TITAN access. Once the owner has been contacted and authorization has been provided the diagnostics system attempts to access their account and solves any issues that appear while doing so. If none happen, it requests access to their hardware again in order to perform diagnostics again. Should problems show up in neither of these, but access still be blocked, a new account is created free of charge for them, cloning the configuration of the old one and replacing it. Does this answer your question?"

"Yup," Tage replied, smiling to cover up her slight feeling of overwhelm at the sudden barrage of information.  That was the most words Ripley had ever said in one go, and she hadn’t really been expecting such a thorough answer.  Then again, this was probably something the AI was very familiar with.

"Assuming I remember all that when I'm actually taking to Halp, that should satisfy all his questions." Tage turned forward again, took half a step, and then paused. "Oh. Also. Generally a good idea to not mention the fact that you don't understand human behavior?”  She bit her lip slightly. The sentence made sense when she’d first thought of it, but suddenly she was less certain. Giving a mental shrug, she plowed ahead with her train of thought.

“It’s not something people generally bring up, I think, unless they’re trying to make a point, yeah? Just... make your best guess and go with it, I guess? People will tell you if you messed up.  Usually. Or, at least, I will."

Tage winced to herself at her rambling and uncertain statements, but was luckily spared the need to clarify herself, or answer more questions, by the appearance of the little houses at the edge of Rosewick Village.  Tage came to a halt at the edge of town, stopping next to the village’s fast travel signpost. As Ripley came to a stop next to her, Tage let out a sigh, lifting her head slightly to stare upwards, rubbing one hand briefly across her brow in resignation.  It was a beautiful, cloudless blue sky, and Tage briefly took comfort in it as she prepared herself for the inevitable flood that would come the moment she took Halp of his temporary ignore.

Halperion:​

Tage you dcd me! Call back.​
Tage im waiting.
Tage​
Tage​
TAGE
OMG did you put me on IGNORE?​
I'm going to make you regret this! >:-D​

Thus followed a good minute of Halp's notifications. Tage dropped the chat from her view, and flicked on notification mute. Honestly, how much time had he spent on that? And in the end it would have no effect other than delaying when she would finally be able to call him back. She let out another sigh, before going back to looking at the sky. Occasionally she would check the chat, only to see streams of Halp-gibberish quickly updating across their chat-channel.

She had to admit, if it wasn't for the ability to mute notification sounds, Halp might have actually accomplished his objective of being annoying as fuck. Tage wondered if he had forgotten about that setting.  And then, when it finally came to an end, Tage initiated the call.

"TAGE!"

"Did you forget I could simply mute the sound of a new notification?" Tage asked, without preamble.

There was a moment of silence, followed by Halp’s miserable scream. ".... NOOOOOOO!! All my work, gone to waste. You could at least have had the decency to listen, Tage." He actually sounded irritated about it.

"I looked at it." Tage replied, blandly. "It was rather impressive."

"Rather impressive?! I've been working on that since you left!"

Tage couldn't help the sigh. "Ah, Halp..." There was an implicit message in her tone of ‘what am I going to do with you’.

"Don't take that tone with me! Anyways, how'd it go?"

"Pretty good. They did a final scan to make sure that whatever was keeping me from logging in was really gone and figured out what reset me to the village. Looks all good."

"Great! That means we can go questing now, right?"

"Sure. Mind if I bring along a new friend?"

There was a gasp from the other end of the line.  "Taaagee~ Did you make a new fwiend?"

"That isn't that big of a surprise, is it?" Tage replied with a laugh. "Anyways, where are you?"

"In a village called Gabedon. It's a few towns north of Port City. I picked up a request to clear a nearby cave of some weevil demons."

"Weevils? Halp, those are level 1 monsters."

"But the girl who gave the quest was reaaaaally cuuuuute."

"Honestly. Anyways, we'll be there soon. Wait for us."

"Of course."

The call disconnected, and Tage glanced towards her quiet companion. "Ready to go, Ripley?

"I am!” he agreed with a broad smile.  "I'll wait for you in Gabedon."

And then, abruptly, Ripley vanished from in front of her.