** Amelia **

** Roughly a month and a half after Rosa began playing. **

“Hey Skkyyy, whatcha doing girl?” Amado asked, poking his head through the stream window I was watching.

“Just watching a stream, why?” I giggled, smiling up at the funny darkling that was invading my personal space.

Amado was a guildie of mine, and a good friend besides. We’d known each other and been in the guild together for a few years now. He had his pesky moments, but he was a big softie at heart and I loved him almost like a brother. 

“Want to go fight some more of those Pagutum wankers?” he asked excitedly, bouncing off the couch to dance around the room like a kid with too much energy. His character in Cora was a lanky darkling with navy blue skin, and it was always funny to watch him dance around, using his tail like he’d been born with it.

“Can you give me like, an hour or two? I want to eat and I have to wash my hair,” I asked, waving my hair at him.

“You don’t even have real hair!” he laughed. “I like how it floats though. Looks like you’re underwater!”

He was right too. My hair was actually really long thin feathers, but not only that, I could control it like it was a limb, in much the same way that Amado controlled his tail. It was so much fun to mess with people using it. I’d even used it in a few fights when I screwed up and let an enemy get too close to me. My personal favourite part was the fact that it was an iridescent pink-purple colour. It looked so cute and flashy, I loved it.

It was, however, a pain in my sumptuous ass to wash, which was why I had complained pretty much non-stop until I finally convinced Sang, our guild leader, to install showers in the guild hall. Sang was also cool, in that grumpy gruff way that guild leaders are. We were all friends and stuff, so it was fine to tease and needle a little. Like a family, except without the asshole part. Well, actually, Bia was a bit of a bitch, but in that way that people are when they have a point, even if they swear a lot while they make it.

“You live in United Nations City right? How are you dealing with that robot uprising?” Amado laughed as I lifted myself off the couch.

“I’m not,” I chuckled, looking awkwardly away. The truth was that I was in long term storage. I hadn’t been out of virtual reality in close to a year now. I didn’t tell any of my friends about that though, they’d be worried. Instead I faked logging out once or twice every so often.

“You’re not?” he asked curiously.

I began my trip through the twisting passages of our guild hall towards my room. I was an officer, whatever that meant, so I got my own bathroom. I think I was meant to have responsibilities too, but I hadn’t quite figured out what they were meant to be.

Anyway, I was so grateful we’d picked Joret to start in. At least some of the nations in this world were interested in luxuries besides magic, slaves and grapes. Fucking racist Pagutum dickheads. Of course, it had to be the wild, neurotic fox people who were the only ones to think up the concept of proper plumbing.

I was dragged back out of my thoughts when the floor shuddered violently for a second, and the next moment I was sliding sideways and bouncing off the wall. My arms flailed as I wobbled and swore up a storm. Amado’s hands were there to save me quickly, wrapping around my wrists quickly and grabbing hold to steady me.

“You know as much fun as it is to jump around like I’m on the moon as this race, I really don’t enjoy living in a walking city when it does shit like that,” I complained with a pout.

“That felt like we took a hit actually,” Amado said, glancing around at the walls warily.

“Possibly, but I don’t hear any sirens, so we should be good, right?” I asked, looking around at the walls along with him.

“Yeah, I guess you go have your shower?” he chuckled. “Hope we don’t take any more hits while you’re in there.”

“Oh that’s happened before, and trust me, it’s not fun,” I said, then gave a wink and grinned, “Unless you take advantage of it.”

I watched him go red as he figured out what I meant, and I couldn’t help a little giggle as I rushed off away from him.

“See ya soon, tomato boy!” I laughed, poking out my tongue.

“Why do you always do that?” he whined, giving me a frown that was at odds with the smile in his eyes. “And how would you even take advantage of that? How does that even mechanically work?”

I just laughed, giving a wave as I trotted away, “See you soon!”

Making use of my innate racial ability to get up a little speed, I raced through the house. Who cared how fast you were running when you just pinged off walls like a bouncy ball? See, gravity and I had a sort of... arm’s length relationship. In raw numbers, one gravity to everyone else was one quarter gravity to me. This included carrying heavy things, like my enormous gun. It was all because I was playing as a Scil. It was a race that lived mainly in the northern mountains these days, but was originally from the Realm of Air, hence the whole ‘fuck you gravity’ thing.

As for my gun? Well, that thing was great. I’d been given it by some crazy Artifisuki inventor. Not that all of the small kitsune looking people weren’t inventors of some kind, but this guy had been especially bonkers. Cute, but in that way that you know he’ll break something really badly one day.

The gun was more of a cannon, it was a big bronze thing, looking like a meter and a half long steampunk railgun. The best part was that instead of shooting bullets, it fired spells. I could fire any old spell I cast through it, accelerating and magnifying them a little, but it could also fire these special canister spells too. Basically, someone could prepare a spell that might have taken like, a boring amount of time to cast. Then I’d whack that prepared spell into a special type of ammunition, and fire it out of Jazz here.

Jazz was the name of my cannon, because she sounded a little like a saxophone when she fired. Smooth and deep, with a hint of crackle for personality, it was great. The guy who made the thing also taught me the artificer trade, and how to maintain, repair and even improve my big fuckoff cannon. I was always on the looking for new spell structures and materials I could mess around with to make this thing even more ridiculous than it already was.

I’d never have been able to lift it if it wasn’t for that gravity passive, so I was kinda unique in my playstyle. I was actually part healer and part damage dealer, able to fire healing spells at my friends and then switch ammo to fire some crazy beam of death at our enemies. It was great fun, and I loved the challenge of having to fill both roles at once. Kept me on my toes, that’s for sure!

The shower took forever. My hair was quite long, I couldn’t cut it because it hurt, and I didn’t want to besides. The rest of me was fairly standard. Your average hot elf looking chick, with two notable exceptions. My ears were long and feathered with small, incredibly soft downy feathers, and my eyes were huge and canted oddly. Not so odd it looked gross, but odd enough that I didn’t look human either. I liked the look in total, inhuman and pretty.

Once I was done with my shower, I got dressed into my armour and put on my harness. My armour was this form fitting leather ensemble from my hips to my neck and down my arms, and then I had heavier plate on the legs. The plate wasn’t just plate though, because the hips were widened to hold a bunch of really deadly spell canisters in them. Nice and safe where they couldn’t break and go off in my pocket. That had happened once, and my team had not been happy when their healer spontaneously went up in a ball of fire.

Picking Jazz up from where she was leaning against the bed, I put her in the holster on my back, then left my room.

Immediately I yelled, “Amado! Where you at?”

“Shut up Sky!” someone yelled back from somewhere else in the house. “I’m trying to sleep!”

“No you!” I yelled back, grinning and making a break down the hall before some disgruntled guild member came after me.

I found Amado in the atrium, at the door out of the guild house and I jogged over to meet him.

“Yo,” he smiled, giving a wave. “Just waiting for Sang and Bia too. They said they wanted to come.”

“Sweet, you got it,” I nodded, sitting down on one of the random chairs we had in the atrium. The ones that were usually just decoration.

The other two arrived quickly, and I stood up again to greet them. Sang was this huge lizard dude, looked like a dragon person without the wings and weird posture. He was also, as was the custom with guild leaders, a tank. Bia on the other hand, was a shorter elf girl with impeccable femme fashion sense and a penchant for blowing shit up with magic. Really pretty explosions too, she liked to spice them up with a bit of flair. I was always at her door begging her to fill some of my spell canisters. Sometimes that was a euphemism, but when it was, she always declined.

“Time to go then,” Sang said gruffly in his deep dragonyboi voice. If he got loud, sometimes he made my eardrums tickle, it was bloody odd.

“You’re not going to blow up this time are you?” Bia asked in that sarcastic teasing way of hers.

“Only way I’m blowing up is if you use that tongue of yours to make me,” I said, giving her a flirty wink.

“Same as ever then, I see,” she said, rolling her eyes and turning her head away to hide her blush.

We left the building and headed out along the road towards one of the exits of the city. The Taeru was almost a kilometer long and half that in width, and the whole thing was hollow, the outer fortifications and steel plating protecting the bustling city within. The place was built in terraces until they got halfway up the walls, and then the buildings clung to the inner walls like barnacles. It was a really cool place to live, and the huge engines beneath the floor made sure that the cold outside never got to those of us who lived inside. The wild japanese inspired steampunk architecture was pretty great too.

The biggest problem with living here, was that when you wanted to go off adventuring for the day, you had to remember the route the city was going to take, because the whole thing was on giant tank treads. More than once I’d miscalculated where the city would be, or there had been a change of plans, and I found myself stranded out in the cold until I caught up.

These days the city hadn’t moved from the front though, which was unfortunately a lot further back than when it had all started. About a month and a half ago, those Pagutum Empire dickrags had crossed the channel known as the divide in force, and had been pushing the Joret Empire back ever since. There was simply too many of the Pags and not enough of us. Their engines of war were all standardised, while Joret relied on the great warcities of the Artifisuki. Each one was unique, the art of keeping each individual one running passed down through the generations of those little fox people that lived within them.

“You three ready? Today’s going to be rough I heard,” Song asked seriously.

“You bet, boss! Let’s go rough em up right back!” I grinned excitedly.