A Cat, An @, and a Maid Walk Into A Bar...

    The rain means that finding someplace to talk actually requires finding someplace to talk rather than standing in a random spot outside. Mizuki's invited Att to come catch up at the bar, since it'd be nice to learn about who else of their online friends is here, and also just to talk to anyone that they knew in outside life. As she steps in out of the rain, she's dressed in some nautical-themed armor with a cloak and hat.

    "Soooooo. What've you been up to? Or should I start? Or would you rather talk about anything but being trapped in this game?"

    She blinks. "You know, it occurs to me that until now, I haven't met anyone I had contact with outside at all. I could've started thinking this was all a dream and noone else is real and I'm in a coma or something..." Her ears splay and ehr tail droops. "...Well, I guess that could still be true, but..."

Att Syne looks more like an adventurer from a dark fantasy world, but that's not particularly off-brand give the Ezzo connection. He follows Mizuki in, reflexively holding the door with one hand for her before he catches himself. He tries not to seem too awkward about the motion.

He drops into a seat at the first empty table he can find. The sound of rain on the windows is a nice, relaxing one. Att stops himself from trying to figure out when the sound effect loops, and looks away from the front of the building to inspect his offline (if distant) friend... in the body of a catgirl. "'More for funsies,' huh," he sighs.

"Uh... just... living. You know? I had this whole 'thing' figured out, and then I thought, I'm not gonna miss the launch of the expansion..."

    It IS kind of a nice sound, isn't it? Mizuki glances out at the windows, wondering if the texture of rain hitting them tiles... then stiffens a bit at that inflection. "It's not like that!" As the continues, there's a slight tension behind her words indicating that she knows full well how awkward it is. "You know I have trouble roleplaying, so I figured I'd do something easy! Almost a shitpost, even." She raises a hand like a beckoning cat. "Make cat jokes, put 'nya' in words, imitate anime speeches that protagonists only survive after because they have plot armor, something simple and straightforward to distract me from always obsessing over the best way to do something. You know how hard it is to turn off! I figured you just can't be unhappy while acting like this, it's like how you can't tilt as hard when playing the one character in that beat-em-up game that is literally a talking cat spewing voice clips like, when you first encounter enemies with guns, 'Oh, are you red dot's master?!'"

    She looks back at the window. "Yeah. It's kinda crazy how quickly you get used to living in a different world. Though we don't really have any choice to do otherwise. Time passes, we live here. I thought it was just a broken event for the first day... but when I heard you were here too, I figured I'd help the people trying to reach Ezzo, and that's kinda been... dominating my life till last weekend."

Outside is Jazz.

You see, it's the rain. The lovingly rendered rain clouds and the feel of it hitting her face has her attention. She stares up at the sky as the rain pours, not seeming to mind its drenching iompact very much.

But then... she *is* an undine, so perhaps the wet just doesn't bother her the way it might someone else? She raises hand to touch her face, wiping away the rain droplets running down it and holding them up to the light as it trails down her fingers.

"... actual effective rain physics," she muses.

Att sighs, slumping in his seat. "Yeah, yeah, I get you. Sorry; didn't mean anything by it. I've just been dealing with some pretty hardcore roleplayers lately, and they've gotten under my skin." He props one arm up on the table, elbow down, rotating his wrist. "It's not -- I mean -- you've got a decent plan. It isn't what I would've done, but it's a good way to keep yourself occupied. I can see why you went that way. Still, isn't it..." He trails off, then shakes his head. "Nevermind."

Deep breath. Slow exhalation. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm still kind of coming to grips that we're stuck here for at least... until someone outside figures out how to safely disconnect people, I guess. I assume just pulling headsets off is a bad plan or we'd be gone by now." He drapes his other arm over the back of his chair. "I appreciate the thought. Some of my guildies got a ship before the big flotilla went out, though. It was for the best, anyway; we were in an awkward position. The advance party had some issues on Ezzo."

    Isn't it... "Not what I woulda done if I knew I was gonna be stuck in a game for the forseeable future? Yeah. At least my class is still good and fully optimizeable..."

    She listens to the rest. "...I've wondered about that. We had a DIVE dev in here earlier talking about it. He didn't know a lot, actually, but what he did know suggests the NerveGear might be able to do a whole lot more than we ever suspected."

    She taps the side of her head. "100% connection to your brain. It's been making us magically understand Japanese or English or whatever eachother are speaking, because it can access that part of the brain. And the way everything feels super-real now, apparently it could always theoretically do with enough computing power."

    The rests her chin on one hand with her elbow on the table. "Still doesn' explain HOW they have so much computer power all of a sudden, but I've been wondering... if they DID have some kinda huge breakthrough... what if they can run us in fast time too? You know how sometimes dreams feel longer than they are? What if outside it's only been a day since this started and they're still trying to find us all? What if it's been less?"

    She blinks. "Sorry, wait, what problems was the advance party having?"

A familiar voice reaches her ears and Jazz pauses. Her gaze turns towards the bar and she soon heads that way, perhaps mostly to get out of the rain but also to see if it's who she thinks it is.

Soaking wet, she steps inside, water pouring off her, her hat, and her coat. She takes a moment to make her way towards Mizuki.

"It's you," she says. "I thought it was you." Her voice is soft. Soft and straight out of a painfully cute anime.

"That's distressing. I'm pretty sure the EULA didn't include 'free read access to the entirety of the user's brain.' That's the kind of thing someone would've put up on Nero in a scathing expose months ago." One hopes. Att Syne isn't a Nero Idol; he's just a guy with a fanbase in a niche community. "You had a dev here, though? That's... huh. Okay, so the Bandit King, the Lander ostensibly in charge of the Ezzo Empire? He led us out of town when the landscape started to just... change." Att makes a folding motion with his hands. "Buildings flipping over and growing out of one another, crushing stuff, the whole works. It was like an action cinematographer's wet dream."

"The weird thing was, he broke character," Att continues. "Addressed us as players in the advance party. We had to go to this thing called an 'Install Port' to create that big impenetrable dome with some weird bit of 'lost technology' to hold back what he called an infection. Fought a big boss and everything. I think we only chipped it down to ninety-four percent." He sighs in disappointment, and then stops, looking up at the soaked girl addressing Mizuki.

"Um... friend of yours?" Att looks between the two.

    Mizuki gives a brief, dark chuckle at 'that shoulda been in the EULA.'

    She nods. "I heard a bit of this from Gwen, about the bandit king at least. And we could see Ezzo from here, kinda."

    She furrows her brow. "An... infection? In ALTIMIT? That's supposed to be impossible... Wait, there's a VIRUS loose in the game? It might not be CC Corp holding us here at all?!"

    To clarify earlier, she adds, "Not an ETO dev, someone who worked on angelic layer and with allowing disabled people to experience a working body again. He's this octopus were fang, pretty unique-looking... I get the impression he doesn't want to be bothered, but he cared enough to share what little he knew."

    She nods to Jazz. "Yes! We made a couple of dangerous journeys together and bonded over being stuck in here."

    Mizuki looks back at the rain and more quietly adds, "She knows I'm not really..." vague gesture.

"..."

"Wait, what?" says Jazz, apparently having arrived to talk to Mizuki, but then overhearing the rest of that conversation just like that and seeming a little bemused by it. It's not what she was expecting to hear on approach, least of all conversation about 'octopus werefangs' and more.

He places a hand to the brim of her witch's hat and then glances between the pair of them. "Yeah. Name's Jazz, for the moment. Hi," is offered to Mizuki's companion.

"Neither am I for that matter," she adds, after the vague gestures. "I think. If I get what Mizuki's referring to. Which I think I do."

"That black wave seemed like it might've been viral, yeah." Att shrugs. "They used to say that we couldn't make processors as powerful as what we've got now, too; that it was 'impossible.' Maybe we need to redefine what is and isn't possible."

Ah; a different kind of developer. That makes a little more sense. "Our running theory is that the Bandit King was possessed by a CC Corp dev or someone in a similar position. He didn't know where he was or who we were after he put up the barrier. Heck, he told us to make sure the Bandit King got out okay."

The Spriggan looks to Jazz, nodding once. "Att Syne. Nice to meet you. If you're a friend of Myc--" A quick glance at Mizuki. "--Mizuki, you're okay in my book. Well, initially. I reserve the right to adjust 'okay' rankings as I see fit." He smiles, gesturing at an empty chair.

Gwen had always been wary of Altimred OS and her father even more so. Given he had a copy he kept trying to break and failing to do so. She'd just come back from the hunt for new housing for Planet Welshname. She was going to get some water, some fruit and the like. At least it had /taste/ which was more than she could say about anything else.

Well she heard the word virus and the voice of people she knew. She towers over most of the gathering and just kinda goes.
"Hey... so did I just hear the word I think I did? Also Att so we meet in person for the first time. Jazz, Mizuki hey! Mind if I join the rest of you?"

    Mizuki's not THAT concerned about Jazz, at least, learning another name. "Yeah, I guess a lot of impossible things have been happening to us lately. My working theory was that the DIVE gear can do all this because CC Corp made some kind of breakthrough; developed the first quantum computer or optical computer or something. But if someone's made a virus that can infect ALTIMIT... Man, what if THAT's where all this extra computing power is coming from? Maybe it's infected computers across the world and now a botnet is rendering this lovely scenery for us. Would also explain why there's been no help, the outer world would be in chaos..." She looks down at the table. "Although they must have done something, or we'd have died of thirst by now, as someone so helpfully pointed out. Then again, maybe we're living in fast time."

    The catgirl shakes her head. "We still know too little."

    "Not at all! Pull up a chair!" She gestures at a nearby chair, possibly by another table as the group gets bigger and bigger. She smiles to Att Syne, "Gwen here saved me from getting chopped up by the Gnoll boss back when we thought if we died in the game we died for real."

"Speculating wildly is fun," remarks Jazz, "but we have not a whole lot of evidence for much of anything right now." She draws up a chair, sitting down. "Nice to meet you," she adds to Att, holding her hand out to shake his, of course. "Yeah, sure, nice to meet you too." THen there's a voice. Gwen. She stiffens. Oh no it's Gwen!

"Hi, Gwen," she offers. "This is Gwen," she tells Att, "if you haven't met her. So you were on Ezzo, huh? I saw some of the weird fractaling through my spyglass. It was bad enough where I was, can't imagine having been over there."

Att takes the offered hand with a firm shake, then goes back to sitting sideways, half-draped over the back of his chair. "We're internet-friends from pre-expansion; used to do a lot of trading," he explains to Jazz, before turning to Gwen.

"First time for everything." Att holds up a hand towards Gwen for a fistbump. "How's the Tailoring grind going? I think my guildies are desperate for less plain clothes."

"...Which is kind of a lame thing to focus on with things being what they are," he sighs, shrugging helplessly at Mizuki. "We could make a big list of possibilities, but until we've got anything at all to go on, we might as well be stuck in a parallel world, Sliders-style. Or, I dunno, ghosts in the machine. Nothing to do but look for opportunities and make ourselves at home until we find 'em."

Gwen says "They said not even God could sink the Titanic /too/. Nothing is perfect everything can break. Anyone who says otherwise has more hubris than D&D wizard."

She grins for a moment as she moves to sit down and fist bumps Att Syne back.

"Working on it I am /very/ motivated for a few things though food preparation might be taking over for a bit. I think we're all sick of it right? Proteus was pretty keen about it when she found out my profession was Maid."

Notes the now Sylph as she sits down pulling her wings flat against her back.

"Sliders? Good show and don't worry I'll get the glam factory rolling again soon enough though I might need some booth boys and girls once I do get going."

"Uther told me how crazy things were. Though the Landers /running/ that was something I never expected to hear happen. Even more so that noble on the rescue run..."

    "It's funny what we end up focusing on. Like any food with taste at all, or a bed that isn't all medieval and lumpy. The most advanced technology in the world is being used to send us on an extended camping trip."

    "...I guess we could think of it as being transported to another world, but the whole 'menu' thing kinda takes me out of it. I guess it's kind of reassuring to have some link to home, though. If it was just... another world, if it was just... real... I think I'd feel even more stuck here."

    She smirks a bit, "Although if it turns out DIVE tech can actually send you to other dimensions, can you imagine what the world would be like when we return? Will we have magical elves and stuff coming to OUR world? Will there be, like, trade and tourism between Earth and..." She shakes her head, "Sorry, this is getting silly."

    She looks to Gwen and nods. "Yeah, the landers are... much more fleshed out. I don't know how they could possibly be PEOPLE... aside from the 'another world' hypothesis... but whether it's an advanced computer or a botnet, there's definitely something generating much more detail for their backstories and responses and stuff."

"I mean, Maslow's hierarchy, you know," remarks Jazz, casually, to Miszuki. "Those are the first, closest things to us. Food and shelter. A comfortable, warm place to be. Once we have that sorted, then we start speculating about all the rest." She leans forward, propper her head up on her hands, dripping onto the table, but it's like she barely notices it. Like she barely notices the little shiver of cold she gives, too.

"What?" she asks. "What's this about the Landers?" She asks, curiously, confused. She hadn't noticed anything different about them herself, yet, but then, she's new enough to not know what to expect and they still seem pretty 'NPCish' to her.

"I've got a crafting project or two I've been tooling around with on that front. Trying to figure out some stuff about the expansion's crafting systems, and if we have any expanded options with the increased depth of the dive." Att flexes his fingers, dragging his fingertips over the surface of the empty table. "Tell you if I come up with anything relevant you can use."

"The Landers were a pretty huge part of the Ezzo exodus," Att explains for Jazz's benefits. "I counted something like half a million people trying to get away from the fractaling, Landers and Adventurers both. That was *after* I fell off a roof that tilted sixty degrees and then only didn't get crushed because it phased mostly through the ground around the window I ended up under, by the way, so you get an idea of the sheer insanity of it all."

"I'm surprised they have that kind of survival instinct, to be honest." Att drums his fingers lightly. "At the time, I figured it was some kind of crazy ex-pack intro event, but maybe they're just more complex pieces of scripting now. I've seen some pretty sweet work in the modding community for Elder Tale Offline along those lines. I suppose it'll go on the list of things-for-Att-to-test-for-Proteus." Long-suffering sigh.

Gwen says "I rather cut ties with Earth myself. As for the Landers? Yeah a bunch of them fled to the coast with all the Adventurers."
    R Gwen now gets some of her food she thanks the wait staff and takes a bite.

"We'll find out one way or another but yes lets make things livable. Wait so it's a hostile Esher painting with a taste of Lovecraft? As for me I'm going to hit cooking hard as I said and I'll tell you if I find anything there. Also, I have another project and I'm going to need some people to help test what I put out."

She gets that look, Gwen is looking for models or will be...

    "Half a /million/?! At two boats an hour..." Mizuki shakes her head. "I'm not actually sure how many the boats can carry, but I guess it'll be going on for awhile. And just how well can the rest of the world absorb that many? No wonder I hear the Ninetails Dominion is rishing to grow extra food."

    "Speaking of food..." Mizuki holds up a finger, "Did you know that raw fruit still has taste? I had an apple the other day." She hesitates, then looks slightly nervous as she adds, "...Raw meat might work too, if we can find someone who was a sashimi chef IRL and can cut it out of the fish right."

    Then she looks curious. "How /would/ you go about testing whether the Landers are people or not, and what's going on with them?"

    She then turns to Gwen looking slightly put out, with ears splayed. "You really want to cut ties with Earth? ...I mean I guess I can kinda see it, who hasn't imagined being transported to a magical land or whatever, but..." She frowns in thought. Then says softly, "I was just starting to try to advance my career... and my parents are probably worried... My brother too, if America's not trapped like us. And my friends back home..."

    She trails off for a moment. "...I just... can't imagine spending the rest of my life here."

    She shakes off the sad expression. "Are you inventing swimsuits? Because attempting to swim in that lake out there has shown me that wet clothes or skinny-dipping seem like sub-optimal choices."

    Wisteria has been working her way to the table, the white fluff drawing some attention, the long ears perhaps some chuckles. Who doesn't think a werebun isn't just a cute joke of an Adventurer? "MIZUKI-CHI!" she announces loudly behind the other werefang. Then invites herself to a chair and settles down at the table. "Sooo yah, food is bleh unless you just nom on raw stuff. I still say the Landers are people, look how many of them ran me over.. I mean sure there were plenty of Adventurers in the mix but... that's a lot of scared people." she says reaching over to rub at Mizuki's tiger ear and wave to Gwen "Hi again." she says with more chipper pep than she had previously, especially after that last trip to pick up refugees.

"Not enough," Att says grimly. "I crunched the numbers a few days ago -- it's going to be a while. It's one of the big reasons I'm glad we had another way out. I'm thinking maybe I could do some urban planning, help house the refugees and take the strain off whatever passes for a government around..." He makes a broad, twirling gesture. "...everywhere, I guess."

Att calls up his menu and sifts through his inventory. He pulls a carrot out of nowhere and takes a big bite out of it, crunching away. "Swimsuits? Well, it'll make money, that's for sure. Not gonna prepare to settle down for the long haul without the ability to make a dang sandwich, though." He's being a little mock-determined about the subject. "I'm sure there's a way to make it work, it's just..."

He trails off just in time to stare puzzledly at the... bunny samurai? ...approaching their table. "They're NPCs. I'll admit I'm pretty stoked to see they've got such refined self-preservation scripting and pathfinding, but I won't be able to play around with any of it until we get out of here, so..." Broad shrug.

"I mean, I know I saw a bunch of them on the evac boats I worked with after the initial rush but... /that/ many?"

Jazz just sort of seems stunned. "There's no way there were that many in game before. I was *here*." She puts a hand to her hat again, looking beleaguered and in thought. "... none of this makes any sense," she adds with a heaved sigh. "And I'm not about to think it's gonna start making any sense any time soon." She screws up her face (cutely) and then proceeds to slump wetly back in her chair. She was in the rain a while, after all, and she's not even close to having dried off. Mizuki's question about swimsuits gets a roll of her eyes afterwards and she studiously avoids comment on GWen's need for models. NOPE NOPE NOPE. And then there's a Wisteria, whom she turns her gaze up towards and just kind of stares momentarily.

Gwen looks at Mizuki as she eats an apple right in front of her.

"Nope had no idea."

She looks and looks at Mizuki harder for a moment.

"Your idea, you get to do it."

She takes another bite of the apple at this point.

"Yup I have nothing left there at this point. Back to being a cog in the machine? A world that's pretty much tapped out for exploring. There's a chance to be something here as for my project you will see. I'm thinking of small clothes you know undergarments? Swimsuits would be a pretty easy followup."

    Mizuki's ear flicks reflexively. "'Chi'...?" She looks at Wisteria, then across to Gwen, "Do what?" then down at herself. "...You're gonna have to get some quality fabrics." Back to Gwen. "Do you know anyone who knows how modern industrial looms get the thread count so high? Or how to make synthetic fabrics? Althooough," She stares into space, thoughtful. "Maybe we can find a way to harvest silk in vast quantities from monstrous spiders..."

    She looks from Gwen to Jazz, and Wisteria, and back to Att, and smiles, holding up her hands in a sort of shrugging gesture. "You know what? At least this whole situation is great for meeting people! Here I thought meeting new friends in a new country, years after school, was gonna be hard, but a little getting trapped in a simulation and fear for your life fighting monsters together does wonders for expanding your social circle!"

    The were bunbun smiles, and it's obvious that there was no mistake, no strange power that made a beast werefang instead of a monsterous one. Her mouth is filled with ragged razor sharklike teeth. "Yup Mizuki-chi." she nods "Someone told me, that even if I'm fighting my hardest to get out of here and get back to my friends and family. That I need to take some time for myself and make friends. So you've been elected, and I've decided your nickname is Mizuki-chi." she nods sagely "Found like any Landers who can cook good food? Or anything good that isn't like raw? Like rare drops or anything? I'm gona loose it if I only get to eat fruits and crackers for ever till I break my way out of this place." she offers

    She waves to Jaz "Hello again." she turns to Att "And uhm, hello there haven't met you, I'm Wisteria." she says offering a little seated bow.

Jazuhanzu mouths 'Mizuki-chi' and is promptly looking like she wants to snicker. It's someone else's problem and that means its funny. "...yeahq, definitely... meeting... people," says Jazz, in the enthusiastic tone of someone who does not at all like to meet people that much.

Gwen looks at Mizuki. "Mizuki? I used to be a level capped before we got nerfed. There are all sorts of magical materials that could fit the bill. Also if we want silk? There's a mine full of /giant spiders/. I'll go back in there and farm for as long as it takes for me to make it work." She looks at Jazz concerned for a moment. "You rather go off on your own wouldn't you...?"

She looks to Wisteria for a moment.

"Gwen, and nope found some stuff likely made by a lander but it was soggy crackers down."

"Cotton gin," mutters Att, looking at the ceiling. He looks thoughtful. You can almost see the gears of diabolical progress turning in his head.

He tilts his head back to a normal height, rolling his eyes and suppressing a smile in a good-natured kind of way at the whole 'social circle' thing. "Att Syne. Pleased to meet you." He bows at the neck, inclining his head reasonably politely. "No food yet, besides, well --" He waves a half-eaten carrot. "-- you know, ingredient objects. I haven't gone out and looked for a Lander cook or anything yet; just stuff in stalls, which is..." Att makes a face.

    Mizuki blinks at Wisteria, a bit wide-eyed.

    Sam imagined Mizuki as sort of like one of those genki anime protagonists who's always positive. And then she ended up trapped in a videogame and in close proximity to Kite and Balmung, who, against all reason and probability, have ENCOUNTERED this problem before, and gotten wrapped up in, or at least adjacent to, whatever the heck Kite's quest in Ezzo is. And now she has a friend who gives her nicknames with weird suffixes.

    ( Oh my god I'm an anime character. )

    But not the anime character he'd have picked! He'd be the cool, logical sort who always has the answer and has thought two steps ahead of everyone else with his awesome brain. The guy who makes hard choices because it has to be done, but even if it looks cold-hearted he's really doing the right thing. Also, he's always got a snappy one-liner for every dramatic situation.

    ...Damn, though, that guy sounds like he has no friends and drives those he DOES have away. Would... would being that guy just be kinda miserable?

    At least Mizuki-chi has people who apparently want to associate with her, and not just because she's the only one who can possibly solve their impossible problem; heck, she explicitly CAN'T and they still will.

    Mizuki realizes she's just kind of staring into the space over Wisteria's shoulder. "Um... Sorry, what? Yeah, Lander food tastes bad too, we tried it."

    She turns back to Att. "Do they even have cotton here?"

    Wisteria nods her head "Crackers.. it's all crackers." sigh sighs and fishes out and apple "You have any idea how hard it is to eat fruit like this?" she sighs and then there is a young albino woman with shocking red eyes sitting at the table and taking a big bite of apple because it isn't crackers. "I look forward to trying to milk all you old high level folks for differences when it comes to dungeons and stuff... find out what happens when we go off script. I think it'll be the best way out." she says "Doing what we're not suppose to, going where we shouldn't, or wouldn't." she says licking her lips and taking another big bite of apple. She smiles all normal teeth on display and ruffles Mizu's ears again. "Yah all the food I've tasted has all been crackers." she sticks her tongue out. "But, the system doesn't stop me from doing my kendo excersizes. I did my thousand cuts and it wasn't like the system suddenly cut in and made me use attacks or anything." she takes another bite of apple on that thought.

Gwen demenor change she looks right at Att Syne for a moment.

"I have an idea of where you are going and that is a bad idea trust me on that."

Gwen is looking unsettled at this. Maybe she's off or maybe she's not but what she associates with that invention leaves Gwen's mind in a bad place.

"Nor my training with a sword and shield. I have cooking work to get too."

She'll get up pay for her meal and head on out.

Att makes a vaguely dismissive, vaguely reassuring hand gesture towards Gwen. "Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking." He shrugs vaguely in Mizuki's direction. "Probably. I'll do some research. It didn't seem like something I needed to know back when I was, y'know, raiding."

Att Syne grins, standing up. He finishes off his carrot, vanishing the bit left at the end, snaps, and points at Wisteria. "You've definitely got the right idea. Test the limits; pass 'em when we gotta." He looks up and away, like he was listening to something distantly. "Yeah; I've got guild stuff to get back to. It was nice meeting everybody, either for the first time or technically not so much."

Jazz, for her part, appears to no longer be paying attention to the conversation. She's spaced oiut. Perhaps she's tired, or maybe there's somethieng that's gotten her deep in her thoughts, her feelings.

When Gwen actually addresses her, she blinks her eyes, "What? Me? What? Huh?"

And then she's paying for her meal and heading out and Jazz is left sitting there, looking flustered. She missed something there.

"What's a bad idea?" she asks.

    She blinks at Jazz. "The cotton gin made it easy to seperate the seeds out of cotton, but didn't make cotton easy to pick. In short, it made slave-picked cotton actually profitable." She taps her chin. "I wonder how they pick cotton now? There must be machines or something, right?"

    Mizuki waves to Gwen and Att. "Good seeing you! Keep in touch! I mean, in general, but also to coordinate our efforts breaking the game."

    And then she stands. "I should probably get going too... if I want a tent over my head tonight I need to reach the Scale Emblem camp under Aincrad."

"But... why are we talking about the cotton gin?" says Jazz, confused.

She missed a lot, apparently.

:nods her head at Mizuki "I'll go with you Mizuki-chi." she says brightly and finishes her apple before while still smiling she shifts. All those jagged razor teeth jutting out to replace her normal human smile, a disturbing display that probably hasn't helped her make friends of Landers. Or the squeemish Adventurers.

    Mizuki blinks. "I think Att is suggesting we introduce inventions from our world into this one, both for profit and to regain some of the comforts we're accustomed to, like high thread-count sheets. Which is a pretty good idea! Unfortunately..." She rubs the back of her head, ^n.n^ "I studied computers. So, y'know, call me when somebody invents vaccuum tubes or electromagnetic relays or something. Then I can show off how I've totally forgotten how to build a computer out of circuits since college."

    Wisteria stands and stretches. "Uhm... I can clean, prep, relace, rewrap, rebind, wear, and use armor and swords?" she lets her ears droop a bit "Not much use for getting stuff in here to be like out there." but probably pretty good for getting OUT in general.

"...I mean, could the game even model any of that?" asks Jazz. "Does trade even effectively exist, or do things just restock over night? I mean, that's how it USED to happen." She shrugs her shoulders. "Spontaneous restocking every so often to simulate the replenishment of supplies rather than actual caravan, supply and demand stuff. All of that sounds a bit of putting the cart before the horse." She pinches the bridge of her nose, then just sort of stares at Wisteria.

    Mizuki pats Wisteria's back. "Hey, we need skilled swordsfolk to keep monsters from tearing down civilization!" She hmms at Jazz. "Y'know, I don't actually know? We should investigate that too. But why would the Dominion need to 'grow more food' if it was just going to restock anyway...?"

    Wist looks back at Jazz "What? I'm a Kendoka..." she says looking a bit uncomforetable. "I've had to do all that stuff since I was little." she licks her lips past those razor fangs. "I wouldn't be taking a year off between senior schooling and University to work on my rankings otherwise." Then she might have moved to Kyoto with her best friend, and wouldn't have been talked into this game, and would be here where she doesn't know if she'll see her ever again, and is always trying to not think about how long they've been in here and wondering how long it's REALLY been and... and... and... the bunny sort of glazes over.

    Mizuki ahhhs. "I figured you were a high school student from all your talk about clubs. Anyway, the goal's not to obsolete you, I think. But if this goes on long enough, maybe you wear, like, titanium armor and... I don't know enough about swords to know what modern improvements would apply to them but I'm sure there are some that can help us clear the tower faster!" She smiles.

    Wist blinsk at Mizuki "Huh?" she obviously missed something "Yes, clear the tower." she nods emphatically and sets her hand on her swordhilt.