Fishing Time

There, at the edge of the water, sits Jazz.

One might've specualted they could find her here, what, with the fact that she's been fishing for fishies to bring back to town as of late. The fishing rod wasn't hard to acquire, all things considered, and she's got it in her hands, along with a bucket of bait sitting nearby.

Seems she's enjoying the solitude, the quiet, the distance.

Perhaps a little too much.

    Jazz may be enjoying solitude, but fate had other plans!

    Specifically, Mizuki recently encountered An Uncomfortable Amount Of Spiders but isn't trekking all the way back to the Town of Beginnings to use the baths there.

    "Oh hey, Jazz! How's the fishing?" The catgirl approaches from the direction of town.

SHe looks at her bucket, still full of bait.

She looks at her other bucket, not full of fish.

"Not so great right now. But I'm trying. It's weird -- I don't even have to kill the fish. They just come out of the water, wiggle a few times, and them bam: dead fish. MMO logic, I guess." She seems wry about it, of course. "What are you up to?" she asks, "aside from being covered in cobwebs."

Spiders do that kind of thing after all.

    Mizuki is visibly disheartened when she hears Jazz isn't catching many fish. She was so looking forward to eating some later! "I mean, if you kept them out of the water long enough they'd die anyway. Is that what fishermen do in the real world? I don't actually know. God, that sounds like an awful way to die for the fish."

    She looks at where Jazz's line reaches the water. "...these aren't real fish anyway. Computer code can't feel pain."

    Mizuki brushes some spiders out of her hair. "Yeah, I tried that new quest that popped up the other day, and it's an abandoned mine with no real fights until the giant spider boss at the end. But one room was just, like, full of a hundred thousand spiders. Not the monster kind just, y'know, the regular kind. Crawling /everywhere/." She shudders. "I'm no arachnophobe but yikes. Not pleasant."

    She waves a hand at the lake. "So I'm looking to drive out all my hair's uninvited lodgers because every time I think I've got them all there's just MORE. Another downside to so much hair I guess."

"Of /course/ there's a spider-filled locale," says Jazz, wryness in her tone. "Go ahead," she gestures towards the water. "It's a bit chill, I think, but you'll be fine." She politely averts her gaze, just in case she wants to undressa little for getting in the water and washing out her hair.

    Mizuki nods, and notes Jazz politely looking away... and then spits a couple of fireballs into the water! When she wades out into it, though... "Ugh, that is still cold! I guess it was too much to hope that'd actually warm it." She keeps wading until she's almost shoulder-deep, then ducks under the water completely.

    After a reasonable amount of time for holding one's breath, she resurfaces and gasps. "Hopefully that gets 'em..." And then she shifts back to human form. It's a little shorter, with an oval face. And THEN she starts undressing, apparently having wanted to make sure spiders are washed out of her clothes too. She flings the wet garments back to shore; jacket, boots and socks Jazz didn't see her wearing, pants... she has some trouble getting the shirt off over all that wet hair but eventually flings it ashore too.

    "...I feel a little weirded out by this form, but wet fur sucks. ...It's... it's like, it's not AS strange but that just makes the parts of it that are, all the more unsettling. Like it's in the uncanny valley and the cat form's on the other side..."

"Why... didn't you take your clothes off BEFORE getting in the water?" says Jazz, as she sees the clothes getitng flung back. "Too many spiders in them?"

This is, of cour3se, after the fireballs make her squawk, nearly drop her fishing rod, and duck her head a bit with a hand clinging to keep her hat on her head.

"A little warning too next time!"

    "Oh, s-sorry... when you said it was cold, I..." Mizuki responds, initially.

    At the comment about clothes, she adds, "I gotta make sure they're spider-free too!"

    She runs her hands through her hair. "I feel kind of silly realizing I'm bothering to do this much and didn't bring any soap. Oh well. A cold bath'd suck anyway." Turning away from Jazz, she wades back out far enough that her menu will be out of water and activates the wash button. "That will have to do."

    "...Gwen said she's thinking of making swimsuits. I guess that'd actually be a good idea, since otherwise our only choice is to wear clothes or-- is THAT why you haven't gone swimming yet. Oh gosh. Of course. Now I feel kind of silly for urging you to try it."

Nose wrinkling at talk of swimsuits, Jazz makes a face afterwards. It is cute. Unfortunately.

"Well, sure. I'm not comfortable, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna ignore the need to take a bath. I'm not swimming mostly bcasue water is cold and I don't know well these gills actually work. I'm told that, yeah, they work but..." She puts a hand to her neck.

"I haven't exactly wanted to find out."

    Mizuki blinks. She wades back in far enough so that she can face Jazz without... awkwardness. "Well... I can say that embracing the whole were fang thing seems to have worked comfortably enough. Is there some reason you can't just like... hold your breath under water for a bit and then see if you suddenly don't feel like you need to breathe anymore? It seems safe enough; If it doesn't work, just stand up and breathe. Is there something I'm missing?"

    "...Or is there more to it than that? Are you worried because if you do something inhuman, like eating raw meat or not needing to breathe, you'll... be even more alienated? At least being a girl is something 50% of all humans do, but 0% can breathe underwater. Is it something like that?"

    She looks sullenly down at the water. "...Sorry if I'm being too forward. I just feel bad... You confided in me, and I want to help, and... like I said, I /do/ really enjoy that I can do all this crazy parkour shit now that I'm a /cat ninja/. I hope that maybe being able to swim more freely than ever before might... give you a silver lining to being stuck like this, you know?"

"I mean, you can't confide something you're not really hiding," points out Jazz to Mizuki. "I"m not embarassed about it. There's plenty of other people in the same boat. They're all gonna need ot lean on each other." She leans her head back from her. "Uhhhhhh..."

She squints.

"Mmmmmaybe a little? I don't feel a hundred percent comfortable having gilsl and not really knowing how they work. It might be automated by the game, but it still *feels* weird, and I dunno if you've noticed but there aren't a whole lot of Undine around. Seems I got one of the lesser-played races, but that's probably because under-water-stuff-sucks."

    Mizuki smiles. "We'll all lean on eachother? That would be kind of nice, having a sort of, supportive community."

    Then she smiles a bit wider. "Underwater stuff sucks... for everyone but you. Yeah, okay, Aquaman is the lamest member of the Justice League, but when underwater stuff needs to be done? The problem is one, most games deliberately make you clumsy in the water and don't give you the chance to be a good swimmer, and two, the whole constant risk of running out of air thing. You've got half that covered already, and... do undines get any boost to swim skill?"

    "Even if not, you can practice and train it up. Imagine, for a bit, being underwater and not having to return to the surface every few seconds. Use a gear loadout that neutralizes your buoyancy, and you can basically fly!"

"I mean, it probably sucks for me too?" says Jazz, snorting.

"And Aquaman gets a bad rap, but that's comics for you and I don't have telepathy with fish, anyway." JAzz puts her hands on the ground. There won't be catching much fish until Mizukio's out of the water.

"I rather like it on the surface. It's where I keep all my stuff. And yes, community. Why make it a secret? Some folks out there are probably eggs and don't know it yet, and others? Well, they 're gonna struggle with *massive* dysphoria over the long haul. It's an ugly thing."

    I don't have telepathy with fish, anyway. "Are you sure? Have you tried?" Mizuki gives Jazz a double-fingergun gesture and grins. She's probably joking.

    "...Huh. I kinda figured maybe you'd like underwater as a place you can be alone where meddlers like me won't come and bother you on account of the whole 'cannot breathe water' thing."

    She tilts her head. "Eggs?"

Jazz puts her fingers to her temple and stares into the water. Nothing happens.

"Yeah, see? Not happening. Sea-witch or not, I'm apparently no good for fishlepathy at the moment."

She gives Mizuki the stink-eye about it the second sentences before putting a hand to her face. "Of /course/. Benji knows me too well."

Then: "Yeah. Eggs. Trans people who don't quite realize they're trans, but always have a variety of girlsonas in games, and wouldn't really MIND being trans except oh that's not REALLY them and so on. Eggs are eggs."

    Mizuki chuckles when Jazz plays along and obligingly attempts fish telepathy.

    "Ah. We're gonna have a more serious discussion about this, huh?" She crosses her arms under the water. "That's probably gonna be some people, yeah. I hope 'hatching' isn't too painful for them. I think some of us are just cis. Not really caring strongly one way or the other and just going along with what shape we are. Which... wasn't weird until stuff like this happens. If I'd suddenly turned into a girl in real life I don't think I'd necessarily feel a strong need to be seen as a man, as long as people weren't weird about it."

    "...But society IS all weird about stuff, which is why I've not been talking about it with anyone else."

    She takes a breath and looks down at the water again. "...Those old psychology case studies people did on Amber MUD way back when said that crossplayers always exhibited a strong desire to be seen as one of the girls. I don't think that's me... I just don't want to call attention to myself. People are gonna think it's weird."

    She points a finger at Jazz. "And I am weird! But people should think I'm weird for embracing the cat stuff, not for... this."

"Mmmn," is Jazz's noncommital response. She doesn't say anything for a moment, and instead, simply points out, "Some of those people who just 'wanted to be seen as one of the girls' were probably just eggs, anyway." She shrugs her shoulders loosely. "I'm a man. I'm not really hiding that I'm a man. If people think it's weird, that's on them, not me, though my voice is hardly going to make me feel manly any time soon."

Lady High Twee of the Anime, that's our Jazz.

    The case studies were eggs? "...Yeah, probably. Or maybe it's like, an experimental phase thing. You never felt you fit in with the guys, so you hope you'd fit in with the girls. But the truth is, you're someone so geeky you're playing on a MUD based on an obscure fantasy setting; where you're gonna fit in with, is the other geeks!" She holds up her arms. "I guess anyone with /that/ issue is set here, at least. We are among our people."

"If they wanted to be seen as 'one of the girls', yeah, I'd say probably that's the case. The internet let a lot of people figure it out. Probably gonna be a big backlash eventually." She plucks a blade of grass from the ground and places it on her knee, going down a line with more, absently thinking.

"I think you're presuming too much. A lot of non-geeks game. We're not amongst our people. We're a huge, dis-collective of people all playing a game for their own reasons. To be honest, I hadn't gamed seriously in years before I put on the dive gear on Apocaday."

    "Yeah, but there's gonna be a lot. ...Yikes, though. That you come back to games and this happens. No wonder you're bummed, along with all the other reasons."

    "I had some cousins like that. They brought a Nintendo with them when we all got together at grandma's and that was the first time I ever saw a videogame. Super Mario Brothers... They got a Super Nintendo too, later, but then years later they just lost interest I guess. Still thought the old games were cool but never got into the new ones."

    She takes a breath and sighs. "ETO is gonna be like a big psychology experiment or one of those Fallout vaults. Man, once we get out of here, psychologists will be writing about us in case studies for decades."

    "Maybe the people who locked us in here are psychologists who just couldn't pass up the opportunity to try this and see what happens?"

"I'm sure it won't end up like the Stanford Prison Experiment at /all/," remarks Jazz, dryly, making no comment on her being bummed.

An idle shrug of her shoulders before she brushes the grass off, picks up her fishing rod, and throws her line safely away from Mizuki. The motion is kind of automatic and absent.

    "The what?" Mizuki asks, cluelessly. She's never heard of such a thing.

"An experiment where they locked a bunch of people in a fake prison -- with consent -- and place dsome people as 'Prisoners' and some people as 'guards'. It didn't go very well. In fact, it went horrible real fast."

Jazz shrugs her shoulders again, placing the rod between her knees and laying back on the grass to stare up at the starry sky.

"Hmm," she muses. "I wonder if the stars changed."

    "Oh..." Mizuki frowns. Then looks up. "Well, if they didn't, some constellations should be recognizeable. Like Orion, but I dunno if it's visable this time of year. The big dipper points to the north star, right?"

    Beat.

    "...What lattitude are we at? Is this planet even /round/? Geeze..."

    She flops into the water with a splash, then resurfaces a moment later and starts trudging out of the water. "I feel like that should be pretty easy to check, at least. We can see if boats disappear over the horizon, and chimlink with people far away while measuring the angle of the sun's shadow."

"If someone knows the math, yeah, but it could simply be a collection of maps linked by zone-endings. I don't know. It really depends on a lot we don't have info on right now. Everything feels too real at the moment but..." She holds her hands out again to inspect them. "Ah well. We'll know more when we can."

    "I'm sure we can re-derive the math; the ancient Greeks figured it out without anyone telling /them/." As she starts to rise out of the water, "WOAH, that is BRISK! Cold cold cold cold cold cold cold!" She runs out of the water, feet splashing, and starts using wind and fire spells to try and dry her clothes and herself. "This was a mistake!"

The splashing draws Jazz's attention and then she gets an eyefull. "Ahh!" Her eyes get covered promptly.

    Mizuki keeps up the frantic spellcasting and then re-dresses with dry, if cold, clothing which she has to try and keep wet hair from re-soaking. She wrings it out with her hands. "Oh, like I have anything you don't! And now I'm gonna freeze to death, fuck fuck fuck!"

"That doesn't mean I wanted to SEE it!" Jazz complains, gesturing vaguely in the air with hands. JAZZ. HANDS.

    Mizuki's dealing with more pressing matters. Like remembering she's a fire tiger. She transforms, and then starts breathing fire; Instead of the usual huge fireballs, a smaller, controlled jet. Warming her hands and body with it.

    Eventually, she seems satisfied that she's warm enough. "Sorry. I forgot how COLD it really is what with having fur all the time; water drying off bare skin in this cold is not pleasant."

Not liking the fire just casually being thrown around, Jazz scoots back a step and seems uncomfortable. She mutters a half-hearted joke under her breath and then proceeds to give up on her fishing for the moment. Nothing is biting, anyway, bait or no bait.

    Mizuki looks concerned at Jazz's apparent concern. "What?" EXTRA WORDS TO SATISFY SCENE LOGGER

"Nothing. I just ... I'm not used to people just casually BREATHING FIRE at themselves, is all," she remarks.

    Mizuki smiles. "See? THAT's a thing for people to find weird."

    She explains, "Remember, only cait sith are made from beasts; were fangs all get their traits from monsters. Actually I guess maybe you didn't know that since you probably didn't have time to get into the lore."

    She looks down at herself. "Most of us may /look/ like anthropomorphic animals because, let's be real, most of us are furries and most of those who aren't would still prefer a charismatic alt-form to something really monstrous-looking. But just as you might find a wolf monster that breathes ice or something... You never know what a were fang might have and wow I guess that's why the Landers find them freaky in lore."

    "Edgar the Thief is a boss monster that appears in some mountainous regions. He mostly summons bears, but also has innate fire skills and the ability to ignore hitstun. I guess I get the fire... not sure about the other stuff."

    She looks thoughtful, scratching at her cheek and staring off into the distance. "Does that mean this body has a backstory with some Lander scientist and a lab in the Dominion, and the Hunter's Guild heroically obtaining a sample from a boss so that they could make a fire tiger ninja?"

"... I think the back strories are just something we get to make up, I don't think we're suddenly gonna start sprouting lives and back stories in this world unless we try to make them real somehow, and while some people might do that, that seems... unhealthy, to say the least, given present circumstances."

Jazz wrinkles her nose again.

    "Right, right. I guess technically according to lore we do, but that doesn't mean it's programmed. Well, you already know my deal. It's for the best. If there were actual Lander scientists who worked so hard to get someone who talks in the third person nyand has speech quirks... they would be so disappointed."

Jazuhanzu rolls her eyes. "You had to go and throw in a nya, didn't you. You couldn't resist."

    "Look, I told you, doing the cutesy saccharine catgirl bit helps me feel warm and fuzzy to counteract the whole trapped in a videogame with no control over my life thing. But it's /hard/ to do the inspiring speeches and be happy all the time, so when in doubt, fake it with cat puns and nyas and it still helps a little."

"/Still/," says Jazz, pointing a finger at her. "Overplay it and I *will* douse you in water. that much, I *can* do." She points at her eyes, then points at Mizuki.

    Mizuki sighs, although she doesn't sound all that miffed. "Fair enough. I'm sure you're not the only player who'll hate it."

    "...Well, it was good talking to you again. I'm gonna go find someplace warm to sleep. I'm serious about the raw fish though, please bring me some, and let me know what I can do in return. If that's what I have to do to get food with taste it's worth any cat jokes people make."