I wake up, jumping up to sitting, breathing hard.

I'm still in my tent on the Shores of Awakening; waking up didn't log me out of this nightmare.

I still have tits.

I'm still the dumbfuck that named my avatar after them.

I groan and stretch - marvelling at the lack of joint-popping noises or aches - then dress. There'll be time to bathe when I find a settlement. Hopefully - with any luck - hot water as well.

It's only just past dawn, and the sun seems a little too bright as I exit my tent with my bag - it strikes me, an anachronistic bag. But then, the Mundane Phantasy Historia that the subtitle of AWOo promised did always pull a few strings to get things in the hands of markets and players early.

I'm not the first one up. I'm not the last, either, thankfully; I see Alesha cinching up something on Ace's armor, talking to her with what seems like fond exasperation.

I note with a little amusement and a lot of sympathy that I'm not the only one who cannot fucking weave when Alesha has our attention; Ace is trying to hide her face, but she's a lot more subtle about it than I am. I suppose Leesh just has that effect on people. 

That, and her openly talking about her ex-wife encourages girls, I suppose.

Wait, Ace wasn't around when she talked about her ex, her children. Where did that thought come from?

I put it to the back of my mind and wave. "What's shakin'?" I ask, and Ace whirls around quick enough for her tail to nearly clock Alesha, who barely raises a hand to deflect it. She laughs it off before Ace can turn, mortified, to apologize.

"Turns out that Ace wasn't wearing her arming jacket with her armor," she says, "and I was helping her fit it properly."

"Look, I don't LARP because I don't want some pasty self-proclaimed Duke of Neckbeard hitting on me," Ace groaned. "How the hell am I supposed to know how armor works? I didn't study real demolitions before doing a one-off Bomberman livecast."

"No one is blaming you for not knowing this," Alesha tried to assure her. "I'm just a nerd."

"It's true," I add. "Most of us who ended up playing for the long haul are. Some more than others. Speaking of," I say, pointing towards the rustling flaps I hear from the small tent.

Hikaru rubs his eyes as he leaves, mumbling something under his breath. He looks a little out of it, really; he seems the type who got going with coffee IRL. 

Alesha glances over, frowning, before glancing back at me - then nods, waving to Hikaru. He mutters something that could be either a greeting or a curse; I'm not sure which, and his gesture is equally ambiguous.

"And now all we need is breakfast, and a plan," I say.

"I got both," Sekhmet says from right behind me.

I jump, turning to them at the firepit. They hold up and waggle a pair of plucked ducks, the feathers strewn in the pit. 

I have no idea how they snuck up on me.

"Yo Ace, you mind cooking these?" they ask. "We all had thirds of the last thing you ate -"

And she's already looking through the rest of the supplies, thinking out loud of how to do this over a campfire, bright eyed and smiling and wagging her tail. 

I can't help but think it's adorable, or be gladdened by the first unguarded smile I've seen on Ace's face.

Hikaru, meanwhile, looks up at Sekhmet with a hand over his chin and a finger stroking his, tragically absent, mustache. "Those looked like domestic ducks," he says.

"Sure are," they reply, reaching into a pouch. "Feral ones. How much you wanna bet there are rice paddies on the island to go with the sugarcane farms?"

They produce a piece of parchment - a map. This has my, and Alesha's, immediate attention. 

They say, "I am pretty sure I know how to get to the Costa Dulce fort from here, and actually progress through the goddamn tutorial."

The jungle is a dense riot of bright colors on green, but there's a clear footpath - narrow as it is, forcing us into single file.  We arrange ourselves in a marching order, Sekhmet scouting ahead and showing us the way, with Alesha in the vanguard, Ace close behind, and myself in the rear, keeping Hikaru protected in the middle.  

Another sign that something has gone wrong are the smells. Normally, the haptics of a Wonders of Mundus player's neurohelms don't provide olfactory information, although they can.  They're not bad odors, they're even pleasant - tropical flowers, wet moss, coconut and drying earth - but even so, they're a reminder that we're stuck in the gameworld with no way out.

The sounds, too, are a riot.  Birds of all kinds singing battle anthems and love songs, the snorting and grunting of other animals - 

My ears twitch and I hold up my hand for everyone to stop.

I heard something out of place, and my brain won't let it go.

"What's the hold up?" Ace grumbles.

"I think," I say in a low voice, "I heard... I could have sworn it was a gunshot."

"In a dragons 'n castles game?" Ace sounds skeptical, but her flattening ears betray her.

Hikaru sighs. "It could have been conjured lightning... or a flintlock. Or a distant cannon. Wonders of Mundus just entered the age of sail -we are, as of last week, on the piracy expansion."

I start walking again, deflecting slightly away from the old path. I think I hear something again, no closer thankfully -

"I think maybe we should avoid the obvious path," I say. 

"- I heard it too," Sekh hisses. "I think maybe we should."

"Can you keep us hidden?" Alesha asks, her voice suitably lowered.

"I think I oughtta try," Sekh replies, squinting at their map.