Out in the wilds, you could rest well, but not easily. Dinos and Legions were a constant threat. In the camp, there was at least the illusion of safety. To make it a little more real for Angel, I parked my giant black booty in the doorway to ensure she and Lulu weren’t disturbed, resting my chin on top of my foreclaws.

Sleep came quickly, and with it came dreams: fractured, hyper-fast flickers of memory and sensation from the life I’d left behind. It was like trying to watch a movie that had been hacked to pieces like a censored document, flashes of imagery spaced out by walls of thick darkness. I could picture my sister’s bouncy, curly chestnut hair, but not her face. Her hands, brown and slim, with well-bitten nails. The smell of coffee and the city as her hands flashed. Seattle? Or Tacoma?

There were moments with other women, too. Strippers and mob molls. The dream blurred into the rank darkness of a strip club. I knew I wasn’t in America anymore, but the name of the city was a crossed-out blur. An Asian girl in a gold bikini ground against my lap. She was packing so much cyberware that she looked like a Barbie doll. I let her do her thing, slamming back a shot of watered-down vodka while a man across the table talked gibberish. His face was a shifting black void, but I listened with rapt attention: because I was wearing a wire that transmitted his every word.

Keep it up, Van. Keep him talking.

It was my name that jolted me awake. My name and the memory of the wire. I had the intense sensation that I wasn’t supposed to have remembered that.

Still half-asleep, I peered up at the sky. It was just before dawn. There was no wind to speak of, and the smoke from the early cooking fires rose in straight pillars toward the clouds. A deep violet haze hung over the jungle, tinged orange toward the east. If we hadn’t been trapped here against our wills, it’d have been pretty. A paradise where a man could start his life over again.

Paradise. Jungle. The memory of the strip club blurred back into my mind’s eye. Thailand. The strip joint was in Thailand.

The surreal ‘I’m not supposed to remember that’ feeling grew stronger. Grunting, I got to my feet and shook myself out. The flimsy wooden platform under the tent wobbled.

Behind me, Angel shot upright in bed, looking around wildly. She came up with the rifle she’d been snuggling like a body pillow all night.

“Huh?” I turned back. “What’s the matter?”

“I felt something,” she signed. Her pale blue eyes were wide. “Like an earthquake.”

“Sorry. That was definitely me.” I grunted, and sniffed around for anything or anyone that might be spying on us. Couldn’t smell Falks or her Legions.

Angel yawned and stretched, then drew her legs up to sit crosslegged in the bed. She opened her HUD and began to scroll through it.

“Hey, how about you get breakfast and some coffee before you start doing inventory?” I put my paws down against the dirt and stretched until my ribs touched the ground. It felt better than it should have.

“Not yet. I hit Level 10 after the duel. I can pick my class now,” Angel signed back. “I wanted to do it last night, but decided to sleep on it so I could look at it fresh first thing.”

“Excited?” I turned back around and sat down. My stomach was rumbling, but the expression on Angel’s face was infectious.

“Definitely,” she signed. Her eyes were scanning the interface, alight with interest and energy.

“What classes are on the menu?”

“I’ve got five options to pick from. The game kind of matches a range of classes to your stats and skills,” Angel replied. “But I already know which one I’m going to take. It’s got a dumb name, though.”

“Are you about to become a Ghetto Fighterman? Mouseburgler? Or… OOH. What about ‘Paladin of Slaughter’?”

“It’s almost that bad,” Angel signed wryly. “The class is called ‘Gun Saint’.”

“Sounds…” I nearly said ‘suspiciously sexy’, but held my tongue. Barely. “Uhh… interesting. Don’t suppose it comes with a latex nun outfit?”

Angel slowly looked up at me, her eyebrows inching up a little higher every passing second.

“Guess not.” I brought my hind leg up to scratch my neck. “But, you know, it’d be cool if it did. Just saying.”

“It comes with dual-wield firearms,” Angel signed wryly. “Here, let me read this out. The main ability is called ‘Guns Akimbo’, and it’s pretty good.”

“Go ahead.”

“Guns Akimbo: One gun not enough for you? Try two! Draw a second gun or crossbow. You instantly gain 50% speed, gain 10% damage reduction against enemy gladiator attacks, and regenerate health AND ammo. Does not apply to bows. Lasts for 20 seconds, 45 second cooldown.”

I rumbled. “That is… actually pretty fucking bad-ass. And wait: you can use this with any gun?”

“Apparently.”

“Like, you could dual wield those rifles you’ve got?”

“I’m planning to test it on the range, but that’s what it says. Only thing it specifies I CAN’T do it with is bows.”

I had the brief mental image of Angel dual-wielding a pair of rocket launchers. “I can’t wait to see this. You’re going to buff this ability into infinity, right?”

“Absolutely. But there’s abilities further on the trees that I’ll be spending points on, like this one. ‘Pumped up Kicks’.” She paused to tuck a lock of white hair behind her ear. “‘Taking damage gives +6% movement speed and +5% reload speed for 10 seconds’.”

“Nice.” I had a look at my own HUD. I was Level 19: not quite enough to see my next tier of abilities. “How often do these new steps open up for you?”

“Every five levels. But humans have a max level cap of fifty instead of a hundred and fifty, like you guys.”

“Don’t suppose you’ve got any insight as to why I’m a Legion with player status?” I asked. “Because the system recognizes me as a Gladiator, but I don’t have a class.”

Angel grimaced. “Beats me.”

“Well, I better not end up with the human level cap.” I flicked my tentacles into a neat line down my back. “Guess we won’t know until the next realm.”

“Nope.” Angel shrugged, unbraiding her hair. The FRAME was realistic enough that her plaits got frizzy after a while, but not so realistic that her hair stayed crimped and wavy after she let it loose. As soon as she brushed it out, it resumed its straight, long fall, like a pour of milk shielding her face. It flowed over her slim shoulders to her waist.

“Welp. Breakfast time.” I turned away, nearly my face banging into the opening of the tent. “And then we head to… what was that place again?”

“Camp Goldrush,” Angel voiced from behind me. “There’s a supply road not far from there. It’s a long trip, but not a slow one unless the weather turns.”

I looked up at the sky. The morning haze was lifting, and it looked like another beautiful sunny day in hell. “Are there weather events here?”

“Yeah. And the volcano is rumored to erupt any time someone fights a Daeva and loses. That might just be a superstition, though.”

“Well, get sleepyblob over there up and ready for adventure, and I’ll catch up in about thirty minutes.” Restless, I got to my feet and hopped off the tent platform to the lane between tents. Other women were stirring, getting ready for another day of soldiering. Our neighbor across the street, so to speak, emerged in nothing but a long shirt that just barely covered her ass.

As Targent had noted, pretty much every woman in SotF was ‘gifted’ - the videogame stereotype of female toons being unrealistically gorgeous bore out here. This lady had wavy chestnut hair, and as she stretched and yawned - oblivious to my presence - I felt my blood pressure spike. M.T Noodles the Fourth may be a Reaper and the baddest Legion on the block, but underneath this immaculately muscular form I was still a red-blooded man… A red-blooded man with a muzzle, tentacles, and who walked on four legs and was hung like a goddamn cruise missile. I had to get out of the women’s section before I got chased out.

“Good morning, sis!” The woman next door burst out of her tent, waving to the red-head. She was Polynesian, tall and atheletic… and shirtless. I put my head down and ran towards the edge of the block, and didn’t stop until I was past the women’s camp gates and back in the lady-free zone.

Man… this is gonna be a problem. I can’t even jerk it. I sighed as I trotted to the perimeter wall of the fort and flopped down on a struggling patch of grass. My Inventory was still full of Rex meat. I pulled out what was clearly one the Rex’s forearms, lay down with it, and began to gnaw. It was oddly relaxing, and after a few minutes of flexing my jaws against bone, I forgot all about my libido. Instead, I opened my HUD and got ready to do some housekeeping.

I had over two thousand subscribers, but still only a handful of patrons. Of all the patrons, only Cold_Fox had actually put any money down. Curiously, the number of subs seemed to have plateaued: when I looked over the analytics, the growth had almost flattened out since our adventure into the lava tubes.

That was odd. Our battle with the Sponsored Pigs’ Elite should have increased our ratings, not flattened them out. Same with our battle against Targent. I doubted it was because I was boring. Maybe it was because I wasn’t paying attention to the audience, but that wasn’t likely. The unfucked parts of my memory recalled plenty of wildly popular streamers who ate food, gamed, popped zits, did survival stuff out in the wilderness, or even just slept in their bedrooms without saying a word to their subs. The human urge to gawk at people living their lives was powerful, and as long as you were consistent and good at what you did, the people would come.

My tail began to lash as I considered the possibilities. While I was sure the Delta Society crooks made a profit off of patron subscriptions and loot boxes, it stood to reason that they made the lion’s share of their money from gambling. These crooks weren’t just exploiting us: they were milking our viewers for money under the guise of SotF being a real esports and role-playing platform. Which made me wonder: was someone, or something, manipulating my subscriber count? There was no reason to believe the system was fair. Casino games always favored the house.

But wait… that doesn’t make sense. Our odds have been bad. We’re raking in cash for them every time we win.

I was still thinking about that when I returned to pick up Angel and Lulu. Angel’s outfit was wild: she had her nice new Vigiles-grade pleated leather skirt and sandals on, but she was wearing the camoflaged brigandine vest we’d looted from the Elite, along with her ghillie raptor skull helmet. She had both her rifles slung over her back. My face must’ve been more expressive than I thought it was, because she looked at me through the open tent door and scowled.

“I know. It’s ridiculous, but it’s the best combo of gear for stats.” She sighed. “I really wish the Centurions wore pants.”

“It’s fine,” I replied. “I don’t wear pants. Lulu doesn’t wear pants. We can be Team No-Pants.”

“No,” Angel signed back. “We really can’t.”

We didn’t have an actual saddle, so it was just Angel’s bare thighs against my back. I tried to remain undistracted by this as I padded for the gate. No such luck. They were they were warm and smooth and strong, and they were pressed against my skin, and she was a woman and I was… well… male.

Our journey took us down a road along what was known as the Iron Front, the heavily guarded supply line behind Centurion lines that fed, housed and delivered weapons to the gladiators fighting against the Hell Pigs. The road made for fast travel, and I discovered I could crank some serious speed: in barely ten seconds, I could accelerate from a walk to thirty, forty, maybe even fifty miles per hour at a flat sprint. Lulu meeped, and Angel let out a yelp the first time I launched forward, clamping down her legs and grabbing the base of the tentacles she used for reins.

“Uh-oh,” I thought back at her. “Too fast?”

Angel laughed, and replied by digging her heels into my ribs: the universal sign for ‘giddy-up’.

“Okay, well, you asked for it. Hold onto your panties, girls.” I tossed my head and bolted forward. My back flattened, my joints shifted back in their sockets, and my tentacles naturally split to funnel wind and balance me out as I churned up mud and dust. Angel and Lulu both squealed, and Angel began to laugh. Wildly, loudly, joyously, whooping as she bent over my back and clung on with the expertise of a trained rider.

It was a good sound. She sounded… free. Happy. Alive. And for the first time since I’d arrived here, I felt the same way.