002- Uber Eats? More Like UU Eats.

There was only one tutorial left that Nero had not yet done, and that was somewhat intentional. Deliver a package seemed like a fairly useless thing to learn how to do after all. Was that likely to come up often? And even if it was, did he really need a tutorial to tell him how to do it? But whatever, he'd done the other three now, it felt pointless not to just finish the lot. At least he'd probably be able to breeze through this one fairly quickly.

Or at least, that was what Nero had assumed before collecting the box from the woman who had previously given him his starter, only to realise that it was... perpetually vibrating in his grasp. And he could have sworn at one point he'd heard something inside of it yodel.

Whatever, the sooner he could ditch this thing with its recipient, the better. He'd expected to meet somebody else at the lab given that all the other tutorials had involved a second player as well, but perhaps he'd been lucky in this one at last and could complete this on his own. In fact, he'd gotten a decent way down the road with shaky box in hand before that idea was cut down by a pop up and a large arrow now hovering over a figure a little way ahead of him.

With a sigh, he traipsed over to the other player, searching for the tag with their username on as he got close enough to take them in more fully. If he just kept walking past her, would she get the gist and follow? Could they avoid having to talk to each other altogether? That was the dream, wasn't it? He'd make an attempt at it anyway, by walking up to her and just lifting the box in his hands vaguely in her direction as a gesture of acknowledgement, with the usual stoically grumpy expression on the face behind it. If she stopped him to talk then he'd probably have to yield, but if she took the hint then great, they could have this over and done with in no time.

Laguna <3

Well, his scowling, wordless introduction had been noticed at least, though it didn't earn the reaction that he was hoping for. Unsurprising really - being all sulky in the real world rarely got you anything more than criticism either. Unfortunately, just knowing that fact was not enough to flip Nero's attitude into something sunnier, and so the other player only earned a roll of his eyes in response to the gentle chastisement that he got for his attitude.

Of course, her next question was bound to spark something, though thankfully for this 'Laguna' based on her player tag, it was a rather muted reaction. It had clicked by now that just being in the tutorial area of the game was always going to have people assuming he was new, and getting frustrated at the assumption was just wasted effort. It wasn't worth trying to spin a story about just wanting free stuff, or snapping at people for asking him the same question that most people would ask someone they met in a tutorial, though that didn't mean he wasn't bothered by it at all anymore. It just meant that he only growled, "For fuck's sake..." under his breath to himself instead of aiming his irritation at Laguna.

It really wasn't fair to be so antisocial around someone trying so hard to actually help him, and so with an unnecessary sigh, he finally let his shoulders drop from their stiff position and looked up at her with a slightly more relaxed expression. "Sure. Whatever. Shortcut sounds good." There, actual words aimed at her at last. That was the closest to polite and amicable that she was going to get from him so hopefully that would be enough to make their journey together not entirely awkward from start to finish.

Laguna <3

As the packages that they were delivering were drawn attention to, Nero finally dropped his gaze to look at the one that Laguna was carrying. Hers seemed... worse was the best word to describe it really. If Nero had been handed that box, he'd have probably just dropped it immediately and walked out, never to complete the final tutorial... Or more likely to come back when the 'incomplete' notification annoyed him too much with the hope of being given a different parcel. His own continued to vibrate annoyingly in his grip, his hands almost feeling numb already from the constant movement. And there was that weird yodeling noise again...

Laguna veered off in a direction that Nero had not been expecting, and he found himself hesitating for a moment as the arrow on his map continued to point straight ahead while she disappeared to the side. She'd said something about a shortcut though, hadn't she? Of course that would involve veering off the map, and he liked ignoring the instructions and the usual path when he could. So after only a moment's pause, he was following after her down a side alley...

... Right up until they reached a wall. Had she gone the wrong way? No, no, she was going to vault over it apparently. Excellent.

His response to the problem in front of him was so automatic that he didn't even realise the issue with it, the defeatism so ingrained in him by now that he didn't even question it. "I can't do that." He didn't even try, didn't even approach the wall to size it up, just stayed several feet away and crossed his arms as though it was a done deal. He couldn't climb, couldn't jump, couldn't do anything like that. His body wouldn't let him anymore. And trying was humiliating: he always failed, usually in front of other people, and they always gave him that horrible sympathetic look and asked him to try again like they had any idea how hard even the first attempt had been. He'd learned the hard way that it was better to just not try at all... and somehow the reality of the virtual world around him had not yet filtered its way into that immediate instinctive response.

Laguna <3

Her initial comments were most likely innocent, meant to inspire and motivate with their little hint of a tease rather than to mock or antagonise... but that didn't stop Nero from interpreting them that way. The question of 'why' felt like a burning insult somehow, and the fire that flooded through his veins made the cinders at his heels flare into life, growing taller for a moment as the legs of the avatar seemed to tense suddenly. It was all he could do to keep his response internal for now, clamping his jaw shut to stop himself from yelling out at this innocent other player. There was a small part of him that knew this was an irrational response, that had seen him explode at less before because anything even close to the topic of physical limitations could have him screaming and throwing things across the room these days. And it was that little part of him that was trying its hardest to hold him back right now, to at least hear out what this person had to stay... but its power was limited, and Nero's temper was only continuing to boil over.

"Would you just shut the fuck up?!"

There it was. The inevitable. The top flipping off the volcano when the pressure beneath it became too much to bear. The volume of his voice had shot up, the tone having shifted into something that initially sounded purely angry but had a clear layer of pain to it if you listened just a little closer. "I'm so sick of people telling me I just need to try harder like it's that simple! Like it's my fucking fault I can't do it! Like you're just so much better than me because if you were in my position you'd find it easy! Just shut the fuck up, you don't know anything!"

The problem was, in this situation, those familiar but frustrating statements were... sort of correct. It actually was his fault at the moment, and someone who could see through that would find it easy to do what he was currently saying he couldn't. He was screaming at entirely the wrong the person, like yelling at the grocery store cashier for their time management skills because one of your teammates at work showed that exact flaw. It was useless, pointless, would improve nothing for anyone, and would likely just alienate him from this player who had been nothing but helpful to him so far.

He seemed to realise that rather rapidly, as the fire in his veins was flushed out with an ice cold rush of shame. His gaze dropped to the base of the obstacle before him, a cringe to his expression as his own outburst seemed to echo back at him as it bounced off the walls of the alley.

Stupid boy...

A hesitant hand reached out, fingers stretching towards the one reaching towards him as his dipped head lifted just enough to look at the metaphorical olive branch still held out towards him... but before his elbow had even half-straightened, the hand recoiled like it had been stung, fingers curling back into a fist that pressed protectively against his chest. No. He couldn't do this. He knew he couldn't.

And mio dio that mental block just would not shift for him even now.

Laguna <3

The response to his outburst was a baffling one. With the way she seemed to collapse into a heap after dropping back down towards him, it was almost as though he'd physically attacked her rather than just verbally. Some Pokemon moves used sound as their weapon, didn't they? Maybe that was a feature in this game, trainers being able to replicate moves like 'Uproar' when they yelled at each other. If that was the case, he probably should apologise for not understanding the mechanic he was utilising, but... no. No, he was probably overthinking this now.

At least, she was... agreeing? Honestly, Nero didn't really know what to do with that. People usually got offended when he snapped at them like this, arguing that they were just trying to help and he was being unreasonable. He'd had doctors try to be sympathetic before, try to appease him by saying they may not be experiencing what he was going through but they did understand it and could still help, but that was the closest he'd gotten to this sort of actual agreement. The shield of this avatar and virtual world probably helped in this situation though. When someone could see his actual self, when they could observe the tiny muscle twitches that showed there was still life in his legs, they seemed to find it so much harder to believe him when he said he couldn't do something. They didn't seem to care about the pain or the pressure or the fear of failure and what that would mean. Laguna couldn't see any of that, so maybe that was why she was able to listen.

But... it seemed like more than that. The way she was rubbing her legs was... weird - a crass word for this situation but the only one he could think of when he couldn't place why that action was standing out to him. He couldn't keep his concentration on that question for long though, as she suddenly mentioned that she 'still would have tried' and another flare of frustration far bigger than it deserved to be shot through his chest. Again, his legs tensed so harshly that the flames at his heels grew again, the game reacting as though he was stamping his feet like a toddler throwing a tantrum - which, to be fair to it, was the exact action that he was trying to avoid doing. Was this all just an elaborate act? Was she trying to play victim because he'd yelled at her when actually she just wanted to say what everyone else did? That if she was in his shoes she would still try, because he was the loser, he was the failure, he was the idiot who wasn't doing what anybody else would do with no issue if the roles were reversed? His teeth gritted together, hands balling into fists, that boiling rage reaching towards his throat again for another unnecessary bark of anger - but she kept talking. And her words didn't go in the direction he'd expected.

"That. Standing. I can't do that. I can't stand. I can't even feel them."

She'd gotten to her feet, and Nero had found himself frowning at her sudden lack of balance, again confused into silence by what was playing out in front of him. His attention had shifted to her face as she spoke, and then back down to the proffered hand as she drew to a close. The flames at his feet had died down again, the anger just petering out this time like there was a leak in the system that had made the pressure slowly drop.

If the WorldScreen hadn't been such an all-encompassing system, one might think that Nero was simply AFK with how still and silent he had suddenly become. In actuality, he simply found himself stalled in a way that Laguna had not been with the possible ways with which he could handle this. While she had seemingly known what she wanted to say relatively quickly, Nero found that he couldn't easily make a decision on what he wanted to do. This game was supposed to be an escape, a place where real life limitations couldn't affect them, so why would he want to speak them into existence here? Perhaps because said limitations were already affecting his gameplay anyway? But so what - as she said, he could just walk around the wall anyway. He didn't need to admit anything, nor did he need to overcome anything either. And so what for making friends and working together? He thought of himself as a lone wolf anyway - at least in-game when it was cool to be one and didn't actually mean you were just really lonely because you had no friends all the way out here that would come and visit you when all you wanted was some company...

The avatar seemed to sag slightly as the weight of that pushed down on his shoulders, his expression softening into something more vulnerable than he would have wanted the world to see. He tried to pull himself back together, but he was drawing on strength that was no longer there, and instead he just remained slightly curled in on himself, a far smaller presence than he had been even just a moment ago.

"'Snotthatsimple..." His voice was quiet now, a mumbled mass of words all shoved together as though the effort of enunciating was too much now. "'T's not... you don't..." There were no arguments left. Frankly, there hadn't been much of any to start with. His face was heating up as the anger that had had no option but to shift into something new tried to push itself out through his tear ducts instead while Nero fought with all his might to stop it from doing so. Because at the end of the day, after everything that had been said, the wall was still there. It was still a large, physical barrier in front of him, blocking his progress. It hadn't gotten smaller or more manageable. He'd simply lost all of his excuses against it as Laguna had shone a magnifying glass against them all at once. And with nothing else to fall back on, he couldn't pretend to be oblivious to what the problem actually was this time... or rather who...

As he spoke again, the almost violent crack to his voice seemed to reverberate through his system, a chasm of anguish and fear thrown wide open for anyone to view just through that one single entirely broken word that was far bigger of an obstacle than any wall could ever be.

"I... can't."

Laguna <3

Like so many things that he'd come across in this game so far, Nero found himself struggling to fully process what was going on in that moment. This was a player, right? This wasn't some weird trick of the game, some cleverly disguised NPC that was built in to the tutorial to help him get to grips with the game? This was a real person? Yeah, it must be - she was far too human to just be computer code. But then... why was she being so nice? Was this even nice? Was it some weird manipulation he just couldn't see through yet? Was she secretly a hacker trying to distract him while she got into his account? Or was she really just a person, the first person, who could actually understand his struggles?

His expression creased into a frown as though he was being plagued by a sudden headache, the stress of trying to fathom his way through what should really have just been a simple social interaction finally weighing on him. Thankfully, Laguna didn't seem to need him to make any more decisions for now, instead taking matters into her own hands by releasing a Pokemon that Nero didn't recognise. Apparently they could sit on it without hurting it though, and so after a little interaction between trainer and Pokemon that he only caught one side of, they suddenly had another way forward. She'd mentioned this, hadn't she? That they could still do this without him having to climb or jump or whatever other movements that felt unachievable right now. And he didn't want to give up, not on a tutorial mission. They may have been voluntary but it was still embarrassing if he couldn't complete them. So this was good.

Still silent as the tension in his throat made it hard for him to speak even if he'd had words to say, he nodded and stepped forwards, reaching out to take her hand but pausing just before making contact. Pushing past that last hesitation, he gripped it for just long enough to get himself seated as needed before quickly pulling it away again, hiding it away under his coat in an odd flicker of embarrassment. He kept his gaze low, waiting for her to join him and to presumably order the Pokemon to move as he hunched tightly into himself.

After a few more moments though, he found words bubbling to his tongue. "I'm not... I'm not stupid." That felt important to clarify. "I know this is a game. I know you can do stuff in games. I'm not an idiot, I know it's possible..." ... There felt like there should be a 'but' following that, an explanation as to why he'd acted stupid if he wasn't apparently stupid himself... But nothing else came. He didn't have an explanation. He just didn't want her to think too poorly of him despite that.

Laguna <3

What sort of Pokemon was this that it had seat belts and everything? Had it been designed to be a travel vessel, or was this just clever use of an already unusual design? Nero let his thoughts focus in on the Pokemon beneath him as a convenient excuse to not have to think about anything else. Not the girl now sat beside him, not the obstacle they were no ascending past, not the quest or the reason that he was currently failing it... Just this strange snowflake creature and the way it was being utilised in this game.

Clever. UNOVR had a lot going for it in terms of imagination it seemed.

Of course, it was impossible to ignore everything but his current ride forever, especially when Laguna spoke up. Nero's gaze remained down on the ice rope at first, an instinct to argue bubbling up in his chest despite no words accompanying the desire. And why would he argue anyway? She was being nice. This all seemed to be difficult for her too, like she was struggling hard against something just to be able to speak. Part of Nero assumed it was just because he'd made everything so awkward, and she was simply struggling to respond to such a dumb player ruining her experience for her, but it was almost certainly more than that. She'd already told him that she couldn't stand in the real world, and as she slowly unveiled more of her story to him, her hesitance to voice any of it became more and more understandable.

Now it was Nero's turn to feel awkward. He'd barely come to terms with his current injuries and the possibly permanent repercussions of them in the real world, and while the game added a layer of protection from all that, it added a sense of confusion too. He didn't know how to talk about it here. In first person, or as some abstract other being that he wasn't currently connected to? A problem in his past but not his present? It was weird, so distant despite the fact his hands could reach down and touch his unmoving legs if he wanted them to, breaking the illusion completely for a moment...

Laguna was getting up, and while Nero was no expert in the emotions of others, he was pretty sure she was crying as she did so. Either that or she was about to be anyway. Her voice had that wobbly quality that came before tears, and honestly, he had no idea how to soothe something like that. "No, yeah, sorry," he said, not helpfully at all. "I didn't... I mean, it's fine, I get it. The escape, I mean." There was barely a coherent thought in any of that, so he shook his head as he got back to his feet too and stepped onto the roof behind her. "I didn't mean to like... bring you down about stuff. I just... Fucking noob, right? Just... doesn't know how the game works yet." Self-deprecating humour, that was an effective strategy, right?

He glanced back at the snowflake Pokemon again as Laguna mentioned him, and then down at his own feet. Huh... he'd gotten up without even really thinking about it, the distraction of trying to calm the clearly distressed girl enough to stop him from overthinking the action. Because that was the real barrier here, wasn't it? His own mind was the thing telling him what he could and couldn't do, and it had no control over things when it was distracted by something else. Maybe if he could keep his mind on other things, he'd be able to complete this tutorial after all.

"Yeah, let's go," he said, nodding towards the marker before he could psyche himself out again. "Just... yeah... come on..."

... What was that about not sounding like an idiot?

Laguna <3