Mizuki says, "Oh /no/."

There is, of course, Jazz.

Jazz is presently seated on top of a barrel near the Hunter's Guild, eyes focused on the scroll she's holding right int front of her face. Should someone loom over her, they'd see its a map of a particular part of the coastline of Alne island. Seems hand-drawn, and fresh if the ink is anything to go by.

     Speaking of scrolls, as Pela Clarpuff returns to town from fighting giant skeletons (With HP still missing, having not fully regenned from the fight), she has a scroll of her own open. And she's only half paying attention, which results in her walking just a tiny bit too close to the front of the Hunter's Guild. And right into the barrel that Jazz is seated on top of. LUCKILY, Pela is smol and light, so bumping into the barrel mostly just makes a loud noise and sends the maid onto her rear end. "..." She looks up and around confused a moment, before realizing what happened. "O...oh... apology." She mumbles, her cheeks burning red. She doesn't ever quite look directly at Jazz, though does seem legitimately apologetic.

    It's Wisteria, she's always checking out the guild because where else will she get quests to lead her to new places to hunt. She's gone full gunter at this point, kicking the tires and looking under the floor mats of every dungeon and quest she can manage, and collecting an impressive array of loot in the process. She smiles when she spots Jazz and bounces over "Hey Jazzy-chan." she says brightly "Find anything interesting on this map outing?" she asks brightly.

    Mizuki returns from the same direction as Pela, looking very pleased with herself! She's still dressed in the outfit she bought on their trip to Dun Loireag, the ninja gi with the red scarf. She smiles and waves at Jazz and opens her mouth to say something... and then sees Wis and runs over and hugs her, jumping up and down, tail twitching excitedly. "I JUST HAD THE COOLEST BOSS FIGHT EVER! There was a giant mecha skeleton and this battering ram thing attacking people and it was absolutely nuts with spells and attacks flying around and I had to climb up the side of it leaping between handholds and dodging attacks and tanking AoEs with stoneskin and I made it all the way up to the head and then fireballed it in the eye and BAM! Final hit! IT WAS AWESOME!"

First, Jazz's barrel is bumped into by Pela. There's an 'awk' from her as she jerks in surprise. She sways a bit with the motion and then she finds herself staring down at Pela, eyes wide for a moment at the other Maid.

Her eyes go down oiver her uniform and she remarks, with wry smile.

"Oh, the Maid Squad got you too, huh?" While her own overcoat covers her similarly more traditional maid's uniform, it's obviously present and occasionally visible at times, like now, from when she was jostled. Then there's Mizuki! Their enthusiastic tale just kind ogets her to wind up staring at her for a long moment. "Uh. That's... really cool. Glad you got to do that. Sounds like you had fun. That's important." She jabs a finger at her. It's just seemingly hard for her to muster the energy to respond to that degree of enthusiasm.

Then to Wisteria, she turns and blinks her eyes at her. "Oh, hey." Her head-tentacles point in her direction. "Nothing really. Just a lot of unremarkable coastline and grass. And sand which, of course, gets everywhere and is coarse and rough and so on."

     The smolcat hops back up to her feet with a slight huff of exertion, patting off the back of her uniform to clean it off quickly. "Maid...squad? N...no...?" She replies to Jazz's question, carefully rolling up her scroll and putting it away. "...Normal uniform." She nods simply. "...It's cool and cute." She adds, not even trying to hide her like of it.

And Mizuki is there too. "A-ah. I was there too. ...Took care of add, mage that could have been dangerous." She seems somewhat proud, slightly less excited/excitable than Mizuki about it. "...Enjoyable fight." Pause. "Map outing? Cartographer?" She asks towards Jazuhanzu, glancing between Jazu and Wisteria.

    Wisteria laughs and squeeeeeeezes Miz "Mizuki-chi!" she says happily "I'm glad you had a good event fight, find anything good? Anything to help in the tower? Or with the hour glass thing?" She asks brightly. "Well not every mapping can have a cool dungeon on it right? It's still good to have more maps of more places."

    Mizuki calms down a little as more subjects are brought up. "I haven't been able to identify its drops yet so I don't know... But..." She looks to Jazz. "It was a quest no Lander knew about and that wasn't on a map. So there's... stuff going on out there that we can find."

"Oh, it's /you/. I recognize you!" Vesper inspected Pela, of course, and knows her from across the chimlinks. This is her first time actually *meeting* her, though. "I'm Jazz," she offers for Pela's education. They've spoken before, after all, but merely 'across the universe' as opposed to sharing the same space.

Then Wisteir and Mizuki are talking and she nods at both of them, adjusting her pointed witch's hat.

"Most won't, aside from getting chased by monsters from time to time," she remarks. "Forutnatley, even my short-arse-legs can run fairly fast for a good while." Dry tones, there, before she adds, "Yeah, I did wonder what might be out there. Seems like there's a likely bunch of enabled content that we can'ty get properly directed to, just waiting for us to find. Makes me wonder how buggy some of them might get, too."

     "...Pela. You already know." Pela gives a simple nod, smiling a bit. She shifts a bit in place, looking back at her scroll. Hm. She looks back towards Jazuhanzu. "...Interested in talking more later. Need to rest, tend to lost HP. ...Nice to meet in person." She shifts a bit to slip around the barrel and begin to head off in the direction of the inn.

    Wisteria smiles "Yah, I think it's cool there's more stuff to find that just means more oportunity to find things." She sighs "I hope the hourglass thing is like this, with all new stuff to learn... like the tower fight was."

    Mizuki smiles, more calmed down now. "Spoken like a true warrior, huh? Looking forward to the next challenge, something new... In real life if we had to get into a fight we'd want to play it safe, have it all worked out in advance... But in here?"

    "...Honestly after the fight I just had I kinda feel the same way. For a little while I could just forget all these troubles and focus on taking down a giant skeleton mecha... Imagine if the hourglass caused a cool event like that..."

" ... giant ... skeleton ... mecha?" says Jazz, staring at Mizuki for a long moment. "I mean, it's Yamato, so I'm not SUPER surprised given Japan but ... "

Wisteria laughs warmly and squeezes Miz again. "Well it sounds like it was a good fight, and it's an interesting bit of knowledge." she says "Cause it means there's stuff we don't know about, not just stuff th t's changed but stuff that's totally new so it means that I'm not the only one who's learning." she nods.

    Mizuki notes, "You do know that in some events in FM World we got to pilot steampunk mecha, right?" She smiles, then clarifies: "So it was more like hundreds of skeletons Voltronned together into a giant humanoid shape, using scraps of stone, wood, and metal for armor, and up in the head was this shaman-looking goblin piloting it. So not, like, a high-tech mobile suit or anything, but a giant necromantic construct."

"...ah, that makes more sense," agrees Jazz, casually, blinking her lambent eyes at Mizuki. She looks between Mizuki and Wisteria, a sly smile briefly appearing oin her face before she gently rolls her map up and places it back in her satchel's scroll case without another word for a moment.

"Cute," she remarks to both of them.

    Wistera has no clue of inteded undertones to that word. "I know right, she found it when we went to Ninetails. It's all super ninja." she snickers and just leans on Miz with her arms draped over the other girls shoulders. Hey someone strong enough to stay up when she lounges like this... even most of the boys in kendo would tip over.

    Mizuki slightly tilts her head when Jazz says something about cute and looks confused until Wisteria decides she's talking about the outfit. "She was /there/. We all went shopping." She turns to Jazz and poses dramatically, grinning with arms crossed as Wisteria leans on her, though.

There's a pause. Jazz just sort of nods along with it, letting it go.

"Ah. Shopping, then. I suppose you've heard that the Shield Boss herself is trying to open a clothing shop?" she asks. "I suspect you're all due to be dragged in by her soon enough."

    Wisteria laughs warmly "Well it's cool if there's gonna be more stuff, but really I'm just hoping to find something to either wiggle out or to help us climb faster. I mean we got the first bosses down with an underleveled raid." see she can learn game terminology.

    Mizuki looks at Jazz. "You've been wearing the same outfit for the past month. Wouldn't you at least like a spare set of clothes?" She scratches her head. "I figure, if we volunteer to model for her we get free clothes, and can maybe ask for stuff that's more to our taste. You buy stuff out in the world, you never know when you're gonna get 'leather pants'."

    She rezzes the armor item in-hand -- since it was last worn by her, it still looks like a leather bikini. Then she dismisses it back to her inventory.

    "If we're ever going to get something we can wear in the water, which would you rather have? Swimsuits designed to draw horny guys into the game for summer events, or... something cut like, say, boy shorts and a sports bra? Or maybe more like a wetsuit or old-timey swimsuit, I dunno."

    Mizuki's ears lower a bit and she looks slightly worried when Wis brings up defeating the first boss while underleveled. "...Eventually, if we're not careful, we might become TOO underleveled. Although... I guess since we can respawn, it's not like it'd be the end if it happens."

Jazuhanzu purses her lips at Mizuki. She does not like the thought of any of those, it would appear. "I mean, I'm not thrilled with my clothes but I haven't given a lot of thought to them, either." She looks down at it. "It hardly feels real to be wearing them, though I was hoping they'd help Benji recognize me if he made into the game." She lets out a breath.

    Wisteria shrugs "I think there's lots of good clothes, but if your friend is here somewhere, do they know what you look like? I mean like even if you scanned yourself you're all jellyfishy now... Like I mean my friend could find me anywhere because I haven't see anyone else who's all albino. I scanned myself but it'll really be the fluffy bunny thing people would be able to point out for her."

    Mizuki looks somber when Jazz reminds her that she's still looking for Benji out there, somewhere. To Wisteria she explains, "Hi-er, her friend picked the avatar for her."

    She blinks at Wisteria. "Your human form is what you really look like?? Huh. I guess it's not... weird, really, but my old guild had a lot of veterans from the pre-dark-ages MMO days, who felt weird about scanning themselves in and picked other avatars instead."

A slender, thin-lipped smile. "I didn't use the game-scan function. I didn't even make the character. This isn't even my account."

Jazz places her hands together in front of her, then releases them and presses them to her knees. "I'm sure it's based on her human form but, there are surely differences, unless you, you know," she waves a hand in her direction. "Comrpomises."

    Wisteria shrugs a little "I was just using Elder Tale to talk with her while she was in Kyoto. So I wanted to look like me and she looked like her." she says "And well.. bunnies are adorable." she says giggling a little. "Aww... I didn't know you weren't even logged in as you... I didn't even know you could log into anyone else's account." she didn't honestly know much about games at all until the black wave... she just followed her friend into random events and stuff to keep in touch.

    Mizuki gives Jazz a blank stare. She really doesn't know what's being insinuated.

    She nods to Wisteria though. "Bunnies ARE cute!"

"Won't catch me disagreeing about bunnuies," says Jazz, all solemnly nodding her agreemnt with Wisteria with pursed lips. Then she puts her hands out to either side of her, wiggles her fingers and gives a shrug. "I'd never logged in before either, like I've said."

    Wisteria nods her head "Yah right? I'd been logged in bunches but we never did much of the like adventure stuff.. we just went to the cities and walked around and did the like social events and stuff." she says with a sigh. "It's not the same now." she shrugs a little "But I've got you and Mizuki-chi." she says.

    Mizuki looks in the direction of town, and then Aincrad. "...I guess I just got so used to steampunk cities built into giant trains that I never thought about what the spectacle would be like to a non-gamer. I suddenly realize that businesses might have meetings here not just for the convenience of teleconferencing... NO earthly meeting room can look this cool."

    She gives Wis a one-armed hug. "That's right, you've got us! And we'll see our RL friends again one day."

    She stares off into the distance again. "...I used to email Att. He's the only person in here I knew at all from outside. But now it seems like there's something awkward between us sometimes. It's not like he's weird around girls or anything, he seems to interact with the girls in his guild just fine..."

When Mizuki finishes speaking, Jazz just starts to laugh. It may be the first time anyone has actually heard it and, given how delightfully cute it sounds coming from her, there can be little doubt she won't do it again anytime soon. Her hand claps over her. mouth and her expression is mortified. "Oh god," she says, groaning.

    Wisteria blinks her red eyes not sure what has Jaz laughing so much "What?" she asks

    Mizuki's ears rotate towards Jazz as she stares. It IS the first time she's heard Jazz laugh, or any expression of mirth. It IS a really cute laugh, but she doesn't say that. "What? What am I missing?"

"He probably thinks you're cute and it weirds him out," answers Jazz, by way of explanation. "Because he knows who you really are. How do you expect him to reconcile that? It's going to be weird for some people." She lets out a breath. "... ah. Ah well."

    Wisteria hugs Miz from behind "Mizuki-chi is suuuuuper cute." she says giggling "You are too." she says with a little shrug "I'm a bunny so that I guess puts me in the cute list."

    Mizuki's eyes widen and she claps her hands over her muzzle. "Oh /no/."

    Then she looks at Wisteria. "I don't think that's the kind of cute she means."

"It's going to get weirder the longer we're stuck here, I'm afraid to say," She gives Mizuki a wry look.

    Wisteria blinks again still a bit lost, but then not only is she a girl in a girl's avatar she doesn't actually SEE people that way.

    Mizuki blinks. "But I'm always in..." she holds her hands up to the sides of her face, and turns to look at her reflection in the hunter's guild window. "...Okay fair, this is the internet." But trying to see the girl in the mirror... that way seems like a good way to pick up some more mental issues, so she turns back to the others.

"Always what, Mizuki? You look like you look like and most people aren't going to work hard enough to dig beyond that. Especially friends who think they already know you and find their expectations jarred by new appearance. We are in a situation unlike any that has existed in the world. We have no hands to guide us forward, so we'll fall on our faces and crawl instead." She gets to her feet.

"Gonna go for a walk. See you," and then Eeyore -- that is to say Jazz, is on her way out.

    Wist waves "See you around Jaz." she says. She's started taking moody as the default position for Jaz and seems to just accept it.

    "...I was going to say always in were fang form but I realized the instant I thought it it obviously doesn't matter."

    She watches Jazz start to walk off. "You don't have to be so pessimistic. We're immortal and have superpowers. This cloud has some pretty nice silver linings! We'll figure stuff out! The... the other guilds do have a point, that while we're here, we can be better than society is outside! And like, we don't have to deal with sickness, or disease, or anything like that! We'll be okay... we won't just muddle through! We'll climb this new challenge like a giant mecha-skeleton, blow up its head, and ride it back to the ground until it bursts into sweet loot and EXP!"

    That metaphor may have gotten away from her there.

    Wisteria hmms. "Uhm... well there are disease debuffs..." he says "And we'll get out of here, no need to build a whole new society... just don't be jerks to each other." she says with a sigh.

    "I guess that's good, because last time someone tried 'just don't be jerks to eachother' as the basis for a society they got nailed to a cross." Mizuki mutters.

    She looks to Wis. "Thanks. I'm glad you're here." She blinks. "I mean... not that I don't want you to be back with your family and friends! I mean... I just mean thanks for being so nice."

    She looks in the direction Jazz went and sighs. "She's kinda right, this is gonna be hard on people. Loneliness would be real rough on top of... everything else."

Jazuhanzu waves off after Mizuki continues, not contesting it. She's gone after that. OFf she goes!

    Wisteria nods and squeezes Miz from behind smooshing her cheek against the fuzzy friend's cheek. "Hey you're just Mizuki-chi and you and Jazzy-chan keep me from getting too lonely." she says "I miss my family and my friend." she says and sighs "But I've got you guys so I can keep fighting on."