[ti]scenario[/ti]Hold B (Scenario)

This would be the second time Lily- err, Vanta- attempted to complete the 'Running Shoes' tutorial.

The first time he visited resulted in a scathing admonishment about how Mom 'didn't raise her son to dress like that'. The tattoos and general lack of clothing did seem, in turns, both delinquent and slutty, but social anxiety (predictably) won through and he ended up fleeing the residence as fast as possible.

Now he was back, with Bulba Fett acting as both moral support and insurance that the NPC wouldn't, like, beat him with a spatula or whatever. No shoes, no shirt, no problem.

This time, though, something was off. Getting used to Vanta's body had its hoops and hurdles, but the air itself seemed thicker. Anticipatory. The request to retrieve Mom's slippers nearly made her break whatever character she convinced herself she had.

This was clearly a horror movie. Her mind spiraled downwards with practiced ease. Oh god. Saw traps? More people? The corpses of people who whited out and could never escape the game again- oh god she's gonna die with her nips out and-

WHAP!

Bulba Fett's vine whip impacted her calf with the force of a rubber band. It stung, but not overly so.

_{"What the shit."}

It was just a game, but like...

The thought was interrupted once more with concussive force. She screeched inelegantly and rubbed the back of her head. Did- did Mom just slap her?

"Watch your language, young man!"

She wasn't sure if she was Vanta or Lily in that moment. The player grabbed the wrapped bandana and slowly pulled it over their eyes, pressing inwards with the heels of their palms. If it wasn't for Bulba's droning, chittering croaks, they could've pretended they were blessedly alone.

The day had been eventful, to say the least.  Trading a couple of mon he'd caught mostly out of pity, Orion had managed to cop himself a whimpod a while ago.  One who ever saw the man in action would have any cause to believe it though, as the bug was long since absent from the field of any major heroics.  Nay, this little champion only came out for the big guns.  Things like opening a stubborn jar of pickles, or perhaps an especially tenacious bag of chips.  He didn't like punching down, no sir, so he wouldn't dream of taking on some chump like the briarbeast.  His job was patrolling for his ultimate nemesis, an errant patrat who liked to ruin MOM's petunias.  Surely if he failed, the very fate of Briarbane could be in jeopardy, truly this one patrat and these petunias were the one thing keeping the town from being overrun by corruption.

Alright, enough beating around the rosebush.

Gilgamesh the Whimpod was the most supreme of babies.  On a sunny day his own shadow could send him skittering up Orion's shoulders in fear.  He didn't care much for all the fighting, that was absolutely horrifying.  His skills lay in the aftermath, his backrubs were the stuff of legends, and it didn't matter how much weights you'd been lifting, one session with his little gribblers over your tender tendons and he'd have you feeling terrific.  The fighting thing was a WIP, and that'd be fine for now.  Instead, Orion focused on immersion therapy, which meant putting the brave bug in the utmost of perilous positions to pound out that pussycat predisposition.  Today's event was the most morbid yet, dragging our champion to the manor interior of the menacing matron known as MOM.  Her loving lips would leave him lilly livered, alarmed and wanting to leave. 

So as Orion crossed the threshold, champion in arms, a warcry in the air of "NONONONONONONONONONONONO" echoing through throughout the neighborhood.  "RELEASE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"  Orion would simply chuckle, giving the bug a light squeeze that was as reassuring as it was restraining.  "Comeon bud, we gotta be brave."  "IM ONLY BRAVE ON DAYS THAT DON'T END IN Y."

This exchange would have gone in circles Ad Infinitum, and endless back and forth of wits clashing to the end of time, or at least till the brave champion would take a pause for apple sauce and a nap.  Instead, he would be silenced by the aggressive cooing of mother as she flocked to the screeching bug, whomst she had no way of comprehending.  

"Awww, does the lil man miss Grandma?"  She would ask in the babiest of baby voices, truly putting the lowercase b in baby.  "I bet he does!"  Orion would simply nod along, passing the shrieking bug to his digital mother.  "He sure does, you just have such a way with him mother." 

"TRAITOR, SCOUNDREL!  YOU ARE WORSE THAN JUDAS, AND SHALL TAKE HIS PLACE IN HELL UPON YOUR PASSING!  A POX ON YOU AND YOUR KIN, MAY YOU ALWAYS HAVE SLIGHTLY SOGGY SOCKS AND FORGET WHERE YOUR PHONE IS WHEN ITS RIGHT IN YOUR HAND!"

Chuckling, Orion would kiss his mother on the cheek and step over to the kitchen to grab a drink when he noticed Vanta standing in front of the basement.  He'd heard rumors about it, some sort of infinite closet of shoes of all shapes and sizes.  Some people claimed you could find mew down there, others claimed that it was where mom hid Dad's body.  All myths and legends, the things you messaged people to mess with their mindset.  Tall tales to tell to timid first timers to watch them tear up with terror, trembling at the thought.  Curious, the fighter joined the tan man standing before the steps and peering down into it, eyes narrowing.  

"That's weird, did they patch this in or something?"  He would ask aloud, to noone in particular before turning to the seemingly flustered man.

"Ay, sick Bandanna bro, though you're wearing it a little low.  Gotta be hard to see like that, no?"  An alert on his UI would pop up before him, alerting him to a quest to fetch his mother's sneakers.  Before he knew it, the two were partied up and he took a step down the stairs.  Turning back to the man he'd flash him a grin, "My name's Orion by the way, and it looks like I'll be your tank for this dungeon.  Just a heads up, I do big pulls so be ready with either big damage or big heals, aight?"  A screech would alert the fighter to a disturbance past the man with the red bandanna.  A blur of silvery chitin would jolt into his arms, catching the man with enough force to bruise a banana but just enough off balance to send him tumbling unceremoniously down the stairs.   

Jinx still felt like a bit of a newbie in the game, and she spent more time than was probably wise just hanging around the Briarbane settlement, watching what was going around there and waiting for something to happen. She tried to swap out her Pokemon from time to time, and right now she had the Horde out, the Falinks ready to defend her from... whatever might be out there.

Mom's house held no particular interest to Jinx, honestly, but when she saw a few players who clearly weren't as new to the game as she was heading in there, she figured something must be going on, and she wanted to join in whatever it was!

The newly-opened entrance to the basement caught her eye soon upon entering the house, and while the other players chatted, she inched towards the space and tried to get a good view of what was in there... though unfortunately, all she could see from the ground floor was a dark abyss. Promising for an adventure, certainly, but not exactly informative.

Jinx cut to the chase as she turned back towards the other players, the Horde circling her feet with their shields up, ready for battle. "What's going on? Why's the basement open?"

This place smelled like... shoes. New shoes, specifically, not the body odor scent from worn ones. Probably a better smell, and one some people might actually like, but to Jinx it just reminded her of working a long summer at a shoe store and having to tell customers again and again that no, they really didn't have that size in the back, "the back" wasn't even that big, it's not like it was some sort of shoe warehouse or...

...or whatever this place was, Jinx supposed. Yeah, this place had "the back" beat to rights right there.

"Okay okay okay, everyone, let's think this through logically, alright?" Not that anybody had suggested doing otherwise, of course. Or suggested anything at all yet, for that matter. But hey, Jinx was excited, she couldn't help it if she came off a little... overeager.

"So, that door." Jinx pointed to the door on the right-hand wall. "That is... a super boring door. That looks like it'll just lead to more of... this. Whatever this even is. But this is just leading up to something, we don't want more of this, right? I mean, more wandering among endless shoes? Yawn. Snoozapalooza right there.

Jinx nodded a little to herself, satisfied with her own speech, before pointing next to the sealed vault directly in front of them.

"Now that. That looks super cool, not gonna lie. But we're too early for that. Maybe later on we'll get some big fancy key, or, or a super-strong Machamp or something, and we'll be able to open it no problem." Like those puzzle games her daughter always played. What were they called? Link of Zelda? Where the main character was named Link, not Zelda, she'd been corrected on that one before... "But we're not there yet. Gotta take things as they come. Which leaves..."

Jinx pointed last to the hole on the left, a smile sneaking onto her face. "The spooky creepy hole over there! It just screams mystery, doesn't it? And that's what we're here for, right? Or, uh, at least I am, I dunno what brought y'all here really..." Jinx laughed a bit and scratched the side of her head nervously.

"But there's got to be something worth checking out in there! And if we're going, we've got to go together. None of this horror movie BS where like, the group says 'hey let's split up', and then one person gets got and someone else hears them screaming and checks it out and then they get got and soon enough it's just one guy wondering what happened to everybody else..." Jinx didn't even like those movies. Her husband did, so she'd seen enough of them to know the formula, but somehow there had always been a disconnect that stopped her from getting all the way into it. She always remembered in the back of her mind that it was just a movie, that whatever happened to the characters was just part of some Hollywood screenwriter's script, that she was safe no matter what.

Which was kind of true here, too... right? Though she'd heard whisperings about the VR failsafes acting up or something in that big world event everybody kept talking about...

"So. Let's all go check out the weird hole in the wall together. Surefire way to find something neat here. What do you guys say, yes or yes?"

"More like a Snoozapa-shoe-za!"   

Orion and Bee hit the same note, their shared Bandanna power allowing them to access the morphogenetic field to be on the same beat.  Other would call it sharing one singular braincell, but those people were pedantic fucks who didn't like the musical stylings of the Baha men.  A hand was raised, a high five delivered with enough force for the resounding clap to echo throughout the endless aisles of shoes.

The whole thing kinda reminded Orion of that one wand shop from Harry Potter, what was it called?  Olivanders?  Something like that.  The Fighter could see MOM idly trotting down these halls muttering to herself about the specifics of each shoe.  Whether or not she would bring out some Dunks, or Air Force's, a nice pair of Jordans perhaps?  Or was this child more of a yeezy type of person?  Perhaps some of their siblings were more along the lines of Vans wearers, I mean hell you could practically design your own on their website.  Did the shoe pick the child?  Or was it the other way around?  Mysteries like this would eventually wind their way into his notes to the professor among the many myths of the land.

Wait, what were we doing again?  Right, slippers.

Orion would listen to his...sister.  Had he met this one?  With the sheer amount of people he'd bump into during raids or large events he could never keep them straight.  Sometimes they would reconnect on these sorts of smaller things, like Mannismo or the Yggster, or Bee, though he was a homie who he went out of his way to hang out with.  Maybe he would make plans with the rest of his "Siblings" and be a better homie to the crew.

"I mean..." He would shift Gilgamesh who at this point was scared stiff that he was sure the little bug was well, buggin.  "I bet I could smash through that vault if you gave me enough time and buffs.  You know, I could hit it with a couple fire punches and melt it, fire being super effective against steel and such."  Unlike jet fuel, Orion was certain his fists or his bars could melt steel beams.  "But that makes some kind of sense, I think the door is like, the intended route where we find a key.  The spooky hole is where we find a secret raid boss called the Lost Sole and he drops some super sick all gold J's or something, or like those Lil Nas X satan shoes that got canceled.  I'm down to raid if you are."

"Raid?  Im not raid ready!" the R word had shocked the bravebug from his catatonic state, probably some ancestral beetlian instinct awakening within his blue blood.  "I don't even have my best in slots for gear!  I don't know the mechanics!"

"We'll learn by doing lil man."

"What!  Nooooooooooooo!"

"Any other opinions?  My vote is the weird misty hole, last time I went down one of those I got a fucking Articuno egg, fortune favors the bold."