#and I gotta go buy the horns asap

[nelkey]

Progress pic of the wings for tomorrow's cosplay!

[cyberneticlagomorph]

You sit in a tavern in a much less populated server, nursing a little wooden ale mug full of warm milk.

Apparently sugar gets toys drunk in Ursumbra, so all the bars here are like this.

You'd prefer to have a clear head to think about your situation with, but the drink was free so you acquiesced. 

A kid, who had to be no more than 14, blew all his Marbles buying everybody drinks to celebrate the fact that "Hey, at least I don't have to go to school tomorrow!"

It makes you nauseous to think about but nobody likes a downer so you just blow bubbles into your milk and kick your little feet as Eddie and Nick talk like proper adults around you. 

It's not something you really have to pay attention to yet, just a recap of what they understand to be going on. 

Something is wrong with Ursumbra Online, a MMORPG based on a cult classic RPGmaker horror game that came out a number of years ago.

Players are getting sick and disappearing. 

So are kids with no noticeable ties to the game at all. 

But now, everybody who went missing is stuck in the game somehow and can't leave.

It's like there's nowhere to leave TO exactly. 

However there are still plenty of other players who can log out just fine, so the game's admin team put out a mass warning telling anybody who can leave to do so asap and to stay out until further notice. 

Of course Eddie and Nick didn't listen to them, or you really, and logged in to check on you and keep you company. 

It should bring you comfort, but for some reason it doesn't. 

They don't know you. 

Why are they wasting their time with you?

Trying to make sure you're OK.

It doesn't add up.

Eddie says something to you that you don't catch.

"Huh?" Your ears flick forward to show that you're actually paying attention this time. 

"I asked if the milk was good." Her smile is soft, worried, sympathetic maybe. 

"Yeah it's fine." You take another sip, it's lukewarm now but that's OK.

Eating in VR is always really tricky, flavors and scents are hard to replicate with just code so some people use stock brain scans instead and no two scans are exactly the same so you gotta get lucky and hope whoever made the scan really enjoys milk or doesn't have the cilantro soap gene or whatever.

The milk tastes like milk and that's the only good thing that's happened today so you're gonna cling to that tiny victory like a lifeline.

You feel like a child who's lost his mom in the grocery store. 

That specific flavor of panic and abandonment and all these other nameless emotions welling up inside you until it presses against the backs of your eyes and makes you want to cry.

You want to go home and curl up somewhere small and wait until this is all over but you can't. 

You need to get a message to the outside somehow.

The tavern's front double doors slam open, making everybody jump in their seats as a player clings breathlessly to the frame. 

"Guys! Holy SHIT!" He yells in between gasps. There's a moment of anticipation as he slides to the ground, wheezing and fanning himself as he points back the way he came and tries to explain what's going on between wheezes. 

Apparently a pack of half-feral modders has finally figured out how to contact the outside without having to rely on friends tabbing in and out to relay messages.

"That was fast…" mutters the bartender/server owner, a grumpy black and rainbow striped zebra unicorn by the name of TigerHorse. 

Someone buys the messenger a drink for his trouble and everybody else rushes out of the server. 

You and your friends stay behind for a bit.

This all feels too convenient.

TigerHorse lights a chocolate cigar with his horn and blows a stream of sweet smelling bubbles in your direction, expression enigmatic. 

"I'm gonna log out here in a bit, so you best be heading out soon." He drawls, taking another drag of his cigar.

Player run shops like this have really been picking up the slack these last few hellish days. 

Streamers, and forum runners, guide writers, private server mods.

The entire community was coming together and trying to find order in the chaos. 

You down the last gulp of your milk and return the mug to TigerHorse as Eddie and Nick pack up behind you.

The second you,  your friends and the messenger are back in the weird server select room, the door to TigerHorse's tavern slams shut and a huge lock appears making it clear that the establishment is now closed. 

It doesn't take you long to find where the modders are.

They've commandeered (read: hacked) an old dev server for their purposes and are doing their best to get everybody seen and taken care of.

The moment you walk in, a goody bag appears in your inventory containing a smartphone, a laptop, and a user manual. 

It's all ugly and barebones but it's functional and that's all you really need. 

Ursumbra has always had built-in Twitter and Facebook functionality with optional Twitch overlays and a bunch of other social media shit you don't really care about so it wasn't exactly hard to condense all of that into a basic cell phone. 

It even has snake as a mini game and your in-game friends list instead of contacts.

You hear some girl next to you say something about how her next cozmod is gonna be making these phones less ugly. 

You feel like she's got her priorities a bit skewed but it really does look like the phones were just pasted into the game.

Bad to see. 

The modders kick you from the server once they've gotten you all set up, and are sure you know what you're doing.

Lots of people to see, lots of devices to calibrate.

They can't have people just hanging around, taking up necessary space someone else could be using. 

You understand. 

For a while, it feels too good to be true and you spend what feels like hours staring at the tumblr app on the little screen in your paw.

It's like you're waiting for the phone to bite you or dissolve or turn out to be a trick but no matter how hard you stare at it… it's just a phone. 

You take a deep breath and log in and make a single post.