“Haha! Look at that one! It totally looks like Cullen in the face!”

Maggie stared questioningly at the baboon that Joe was pointing to.

“I… suppose there is a loose resemblance.”

“Hold on, I need to get a picture of this. He’ll get a kick out of it later.”

The man waved over one of the hovering camera drones. He stood in front of the monkey’s cage, flashed a silly open-mouthed grin, and held both thumbs up to his face. The machine understood the intent, took the picture, and instantly e-mailed it to Joe. He was eager to see how it turned out, but not so much as to run to the nearest public access data terminal right at that instant. It was a potentially wise decision, as the humorous nature of the image was somewhat undermined by the seething hostility on Maggie’s face. Seeing that would have surely ruined his good mood.

“Nice. Hope it also caught your pout. You’re unexpectedly cute when you’re mad, you know?”

Or perhaps not.

“It is somewhat soothing that my ire entertains you,” she replied flatly.

“Was… was that sarcasm?”

“Sarcasm is a form of irony. Irony is a form of lying. For you to even suggest I would resort to such means is offensive.”

“Sarcasm isn’t lying, though. Well, I guess you kind of do say the opposite of what you mean, but you make that clear by also using the right face and tone. Know what I mean?”

Maggie blinked at Joe as she tried to process his poorly structured argument.

“So, by making the deception obvious, it is no longer considered deception?”

“Exactly!”

“This concept appears to be dangerously subjective.”

“Oh, yeah. Lots of people can’t read sarcasm. Especially if they have to read it. Er, in text, I mean. A lot of it has to do with body language and stuff.”

“Curious. Would these animals be considered a form of sarcasm, then?”

“Uh… I mean, I’ve never really thought about it, so… maybe?”

“Sarcasm is a more complex subject than I had initially assumed. I must research it in greater detail.”

Joe felt pretty good that he somehow managed to cheer Maggie up a bit, if her softer expression was any indication. Admittedly her ‘thinking face’ didn’t look all that happy, but it was a marked improvement from the dead-eyed scowl she had for the past twenty minutes. He understood her frustration, of course. The girl was quite excited to see some real life animals, but what she found instead was robotic replicas. Joe had no idea how she could tell, because he absolutely couldn’t. He had no idea until she pointed it out, in fact. Whoever made those beastly androids had really gone all out. They not only looked the part, but completely acted like the real deal, too. They even had wet tongues and hot breaths and all the other observable vital signs of a living creature. It was somewhat impressive in its own way.

Maggie, on the other hand, was far less appreciative. Yes, the lifelike machines were pieces of precision engineering that fulfilled their functions flawlessly, but they were also fallacious in nature. The biggest issue was that nothing in the zoo’s promotional material mentioned that their animals weren’t real. It made sense why they’d use substitutes, of course. Machines required zero supervision or care from staff, and whatever maintenance they required was likely cheaper than food, medicine, and other expenses their real counterparts would incur. The biggest one was that none of these creatures were native to Butterpond-4, which meant they had to be imported from off-world whereas the replicas could be manufactured locally.

That said, just because she understood it was logical hadn’t stopped the zoo’s inherently deceptive nature from angering her tremendously. Especially since she had gotten her high hopes dashed a second time in one day.

“Let’s go check out the terran snake exhibit. I’m pretty sure Azgod’Kalar will be stoked to see his relatives!”

And yet her bondmate’s relentlessly cheerful attitude was rubbing off on her. Maggie did not understand where his childlike mirth was coming from, which merely added to the compelling mystery that was Joe Mulligan. Just when she thought she was getting a grasp on this curious human’s thought process, he displayed an entirely new array of puzzling behavior.

Unbeknownst to her, what was giving Joe such immense joy was the thought that he was on an actual date. He hadn’t really thought about it until today, but even though he and Maggie were in some weird astral covenant that he chose to interpret as a romantic relationship, they hadn’t done much as a couple. Admittedly they played many games together, discussed a variety of topics, steadily got to know one another, and generally spent a lot of pleasant time in each other’s company, but those didn’t count. Those were all things Joe could do with the lads, but getting a pointless picture in front of an android monkey was the sort of silly thing reserved for couples.

“Blimey, those are some long sneckos,” he exclaimed upon seeing the ball pythons. “Thick, too. They’d probably snap me like a twig if they tried!”

“Constrictor snakes do not kill through crushing force,” Maggie corrected him. “They seek to either suffocate their prey or to cut off blood circulation to the brain. It is a hunting technique that relies more on accuracy and anatomical knowledge than brute strength.”

“That’s pretty cool, too, in its own way. Think your little friend will learn to do that someday?”

“It is somewhat regrettable, but judging from what I’ve read online, Azgod’Kalar’s subspecies has had most of its ferocity surgically removed.”

The tiny serpent was an orb python - a genetic offshoot of its bigger cousins. Its kind were specifically bred and genetically modified to make them suitable companions for the latest, space-faring iteration of humanity. They were, among other things, smaller and more docile than ball pythons, though they did retain an endearing amount of feistiness. It was also worth noting that they were far from the only type of animal to receive such treatment. Over the last few centuries humanity had forcefully adapted over a hundred species in similar ways as part of Project BFF. The endeavor was actually part of a serious effort to stop people from taking in and adopting uniquely dangerous extraterrestrial lifeforms just because ‘they looked kind of cute.’

Humans were weird like that.

“Nah. He’ll definitely grow up big and strong,” Joe proclaimed with unfounded confidence. “How could he not with such an incredible owner looking after him?”

“This is my hope as well.”

Maggie smiled for the first time since entering this den of deception called a zoo. It was also the first time the word ‘hope’ had left her lips so naturally. She was looking forward to Azgod’Kalar’s physical and mental development as the infant reptile matured, and not just because she wanted to study the process. Maybe it was a side-effect of that ill-advised fear experiment, but she had grown significantly more attached to the little guy. She was well aware that this increased emotional investment would lead to a lot of unpleasantness when the mortal creature inevitably expired, but that was an issue for her future self. At present, her only concern was fully enjoying the company of the diminutive serpent, which at that point in time was poking its front half out of the girl’s left sleeve and lightly coiling around her thumb.

The same, of course, went for Joe, including the digit-gripping part. Usually he was more reserved when it came to skin contact, but today he seemed significantly less hesitant about grabbing her hand and pulling her along to the various exhibits. He was so excited about this whole ‘girlfriend experience’ that he ended up dropping by the same exhibits multiple times on several occasions without realizing it. He probably could’ve spent the rest of the day like that, but he and Maggie had a tube-train to catch. All in all, the zoo visit only lasted about an hour in total before the couple had to depart.

The return trip wasn’t all that different from the first one. The only significant divergence was that Joe napped soundly during the two-hour train ride while Maggie actively researched the game she would be participating in. By the time he made it back to his apartment, the guy felt sufficiently recharged to hop right back into virtual space combat practice. There was, however, an unexpected issue waiting for him. Well, unexpected for a scatterbrain like Joe. Any regular person would have foreseen this particular development and would have taken steps to address it.

When the couple made it back to his apartment, they found the door adorned with an official-looking notice that had been stuck there for all to see.

“Ah, bollocks,” he cursed. “Guess the superintendent found out about your, er, pod mods.”

It had only been a matter of time before the woman responsible for managing the hyper-scraper noticed the tampering. According to the document, what tipped her off were some anomalous power readings coming from the domicile. Mrs. Janice Beckett, as she was called, was exceedingly strict. Her and Joe had never met in person, but her reputation was well-known. She was no doubt furious to discover one of the residents had gone behind her back without filling out the proper paperwork.

Thankfully the actual authority she had was quite limited, so she was incapable of doling out something as drastic as eviction. The most severe punishment she could hand out was to reduce Joe’s allowance for the next six months from fifty to thirty poundingtons. She also informed him that he had voided the lifetime warranty on his Full Immersion Pod 3,000™, but he wasn’t all that worried about it. He had Maggie’s techno-wizardry to rely on for all his mechanical needs.

In any event, the strange couple were inside and logged into V-Life within minutes. Joe fired up his copy of Underwater Yoga Blaster. Since she technically shared his pod, Maggie was able to join him in the game as a guest, without having to purchase the title separately. The two of them appeared in Joe’s virtual hanger. It was a staging area where players could prepare their ships and loadouts before engaging other teams. The rest of Joe’s squad was engrossed in various trivial distractions, so it took them a short while to answer his summons for a meeting.

Benny had shown up in a rather generic looking fighter pilot avatar while Cullen was rocking what he called a ‘retro/space pirate fusion.’ Maggie was mildly impressed with his creativity, but questioned whether the eye-patch, peg-leg, and hook-hand would impede his gameplay. The final member of their wing had chosen to show up as a military commando, complete with body armor, camouflaged uniform, and fully automatic assault rifle. He bore a striking resemblance to the soldiers that had attempted and failed to stop Magh'rathlak the Observer from entering their reality.

“Mags, right?” the stranger called out. “Good to meet you. I’m Huey.”

“Hubert Peterson. A hopeless nerd that’s so obsessed with military tech he’d sell his own mother just to ride an army gunship.”

The girl replied with the exact words Joe had used to describe Huey just minutes ago, leaving everyone momentarily stunned.

“Ah,” she realized her blunder. “I apologize. Force of habit.”

“Ha! Hahaha!” Cullen roared with laughter. “Nice one, Mags! Ahahahaha!”

“Oh-hoh. Man,” Benny barely held his in. “The way she said it, too. It’s like Huey being a gun-nut is a scientifically proven fact.”

“Sorry, mate,” Joe apologized. “That one’s on me.”

“You cheeky git. I’m gonna slap you for that next time I see you.”

It was difficult to tell what sort of face the guy was wearing under that armored helmet, but at least his tone implied he was in good spirits.

“I wouldn’t if I were you. My girlfriend’s gonna get mad if you do that, and she can be pretty scary when she’s mad. Here, see?”

Joe then shared that baboon photo he had taken earlier by projecting it in the air in front of him. It was the same photo that prominently featured Maggie’s severely ticked-off pout.

“I dunno, man,” Huey was conflicted. “I can’t tell if she’s about to storm off and sulk in a corner or getting ready to rip someone’s guts out with her bare hands.”

“More importantly, I recognize that ugly mug,” Benny pointed at the monkey in the shot, then at Cullen.

“Oh, yeah!” the confusing pirate remarked. “Isn’t that the one in the Dave-157 zoo? The one Ryan’s uncle works at?”

“Yeah. Me and Maggie went there to try and fix up his pod. And, uh, yeah. Long story short, turns out he was just burned out by our nonstop training and wanted out, so he made that Noot-Goop clogging story up.”

The guys fell silent as they processed this abruptly delivered news. They looked at each other to feel out what the rest thought. It was an awkward situation, but at least none of them seemed especially angry about it - just disappointed and maybe a little guilty. They then engaged in a brief debate regarding their friend’s breach of trust, but Joe’s utterly relaxed vibes ensured that Ryan’s actions weren’t blown out of proportion by some pointless drama. Ultimately they agreed that everyone was at least a little at fault, which then led them to discuss the problem of who would take his place on such short notice.

“That’s why I brought Maggie with me. She’s going to fill in for him,” Joe proudly declared.

His three friends looked at each other yet again, and silently confirmed they were of one mind.

“I dunno, man,” Benny spoke up. “I’m sure Mags means well, but has she actually played this before?”

“I have not,” she admitted.

“Yeah, that’s a huge issue. Un-Yo-Bee isn’t newbie friendly. Like, at all.”

Indeed, between the various ship choices, loadout options, and the complicated controls, it took a lot of time and effort to learn the game. It being a team-based experience also meant that, in some ways, it was better to play with a man short than with a dead weight.

“I have studied forty two different tutorials and guides detailing the game’s features, content, and mechanics,” the girl proclaimed. “I will have no difficulty putting that knowledge into practice.”

The group looked to Joe for confirmation. He would know best whether she could back up that boast, and they trusted him not to try to shoehorn his girlfriend into their small social circle just to spend time with her. All three of them knew Joe was the kind of shameless guy that would rather make an ass of himself than inconvenience someone else. That and he readily admitted to his mistakes, which was something he had to do with alarming regularity.

“Mmm, now that I think about it, this might be tricky,” he crossed his arms and looked at her. “Don’t get me wrong, Maggie, you’re a fast learner and you’ve got some serious skills when it comes to reflexes and accuracy. Issue is you suck at strategy, and aren’t too great at teamwork.”

The girl had nothing to say since this was Joe’s honest assessment of her abilities as a gamer after watching her go through his library of interactive media.

“Here’s an idea, we can have her take over Cullen’s position as the roamer,” Huey suggested.

“Ugh, that means I have to be support, though!” the man whined. “I hate playin’ fooken support.”

“It’s fine, I can do it if you take over as tank,” Benny weighed in.

“Yeah, alright.”

“Sound good, Maggie?” Joe asked. “You think you can manage the roamer position?”

Even though the game was a hyper-realistic space combat simulator, it was very rare for competitive matches to take place in open space. The virtual battlefield was either filled with obstacles and hazards, such as asteroids or proximity mines, or took place inside vast cavernous planetoids riddled with tunnels and passages. This made navigation and flanking vitally important skills, and it was the roamer’s job to keep the enemy from sneaking up on the rest of the team. It was a perfect fit for the ‘lone wolf’ types, which was what Maggie seemed to be, based on Joe’s description of her playstyle.

“Very well,” she agreed. “I shall accept the solitary vigil.”

With the role reshuffling concluded, the team immediately got into it. To start with, they played against some AI-controlled opponents to get Maggie accustomed to the game. She was ridiculously incompetent her first few matches, but rapidly improved as she got used to piloting her starfighter. Calling her a ‘fast learner’ was a woeful understatement of her processing capacity. Within hours she was pulling off evasive maneuvers that made her nigh-untouchable in one-on-one dogfights. She was even able to hold her own when fighting two opponents at once, albeit with understandable difficulty. Her accuracy was likewise impressive, despite the varying speeds and strange angles her craft flew at.

Since her mechanics were on-point, the team focused on trying to patch up her dismal strategic flaws. Maggie sometimes lost track of the big picture, which led to her team failing an objective even though she won her fights. Also, much like with a certain fighting game, she fell for all the tricks and feints that Joe’s team threw at her. For instance, one would open up with a suppressive volley that forced her to evade right into the path of another’s line of fire. Maggie wasn’t too mad about those underhanded techniques, as she recognized that misinformation was a powerful weapon in both war and combat. Though she disliked the deceptive tactics and refused to use them, she would not bemoan the others for resorting to such means.

All in all, Maggie was able to get nearly two weeks’ worth of practice within the time-accelerated virtual reality before the big day arrived. Though the others called it a ‘big tourney,’ the event in question was actually that year’s annual installment of Blastopia - a massive galaxy-spanning contest that took several months to run its course. Teams competed to be declared champions of their respective mega-city, then had to fight for the planetary title, then the star cluster title. If they made it that far they moved onto the national level before culminating in a grand show-off for the honor and glory of being named Galactic Champions.

Joe’s group had no such aspirations. There was no way a bunch of nobodies from an ass-end ‘people farm’ like Butterpond-4 would win against the military flight squadrons and space pirates that often competed in Blastopia. Their goal was to make it to the top eight of mega-city Dave-156, which was already going to be tough. With over a hundred teams in their bracket, they had to win four consecutive best-of-five elimination matches to make it that far. Thankfully it was unlikely they would run into any big-shots in these local preliminaries, so they felt they had a decent chance at succeeding.

Joe, Cullen, Benny, Huey, and Maggie arrived at the virtual meeting area for the Dave-156 bracket of the tournament. It was a huge chamber with an orbital station theme. There was ample seating for thousands of people, and the ridiculously tall walls were lined with plenty of monitors for spectators to watch the matches live. It was also where participants would wait until it was time for them to compete, at which point they would be called in by tournament officials. As the one in charge of registration and the team’s official captain, Huey had chosen Triple Misfire as their group’s name. Looking at the line-up it would appear their first opponent was Dangerino Dongerino.

Much like the name suggested, this lot turned out to be a joke team that wanted to make asses of themselves for a few cheap laughs. Their sense of humor proved to be incredibly crude, as well. They showed up with five phallic spacecraft dyed hot-pink that were equipped for maximum self-destruction. Needless to say, Triple Misfire won three-to-nil with absolutely no difficulty. Though it was a free win, the nature of it left a foul taste in all of their mouths. Except Maggie, of course. She perfectly understood the vulgarity of the situation, but instead chose to tackle the incredibly puzzling question of why anyone would show up to a contest with the intention to lose.

Thankfully the second match was a proper one. Peter & Friends tried their best, but hadn’t practiced anywhere nearly as much as Triple Misfire, and it showed. They managed to scrape by with a win when one of them clipped Joe’s engine with a lucky shot and made his craft spin out of control and collide with Benny’s support vessel. Without the latter’s energy and ammo refills, it was just a matter of grinding the others down through attrition. They lost soundly the other three rounds, which was a far more satisfying victory than that farce of a first match.

Spirits were high as they went into their third match, only to find that their opponents - team Galactic Murder Power - were employing a so-called ‘off-meta’ strategy. The generally accepted line up in competitive Un-Yo-Bee was a fairly balanced one. There was one agile roamer managing the flank, which was Maggie’s job. Cullen was his team’s tank, which involved piloting a heavy gunship that served as mobile cover and weapons platform. Huey and Joe were the offense-oriented interceptors that put pressure on the enemy. Last but not least, Benny was in charge of the support vessel and responsible for keeping everyone else in the fight while also hindering the opposing team with cyberwarfare attacks.

However, Galactic Murder Power had taken the unorthodox approach of deploying with five gunships. It was an intimidating amount of firepower protected by thick armor and high-capacity force fields. Their major drawback was mobility, but that didn’t seem to matter when they turned any enemy target they met into scrap metal in a matter of seconds. It was some scary stuff when considering it usually took anywhere from one to five minutes of combat for a ship to be destroyed.

Having failed to investigate their opponents beforehand, Triple Misfire were caught off guard and lost spectacularly in the first bout. The team had a frantic strategy meeting in the two-minute pause between rounds, trying to figure out how to counter that absurdity. The obvious solution was to employ hit-and-run tactics and slowly wear down the enemy gunships. The issue with that was that it would take so long that the thirty minute time limit would run out, resulting in a draw. And since the enemy had a win on their side already, a draw might as well have been a loss.

Surprisingly enough, it was Maggie that gave them the answer. When a team lost a round, they were allowed to change up their loadout between rounds in an effort to come back against an opponent that they were initially ill-equipped to handle. The girl took advantage of that rule to swap her agile fighter-class vessel for an arbalest-class. This type of ship was best described as a massive ion cannon with a few engines bolted onto the side. It was sometimes employed in ten-on-ten or twenty-on-twenty matches, but never in the competitive five-on-five format. Not because it was banned by the rules, but because its limited mobility and lack of armor made it easy for roamers and interceptors to pick it off. The rest of Triple Misfire had almost forgotten such ships even existed, and therefore failed to consider them until Maggie pointed out they were the logical counter to the enemy’s stratagem.

Team Galactic Murder Power had also neglected the existence of the arbalest-class and had their gunships completely shredded by Maggie’s arbalest-class long before they got into effective range. That giant gun was so stupidly destructive it even blasted through any asteroids they tried to use as cover as well. Round three saw them abandon their off-meta composition completely and they fell back on the standard arrangement. The winning team could not swap out their loadouts, so they figured targeting the fragile cannon would net them an easy win.

That did not happen. Galactic Murder Power underestimated the arbalest pilot’s proficiency and had their support vessel annihilated in the opening seconds of the engagement. They did manage to blow up Maggie’s ship, but the rest of Triple Misfire were able to clean them up without issue. Those back-to-back defeats were so humiliating that Galactic Murder Power - who, incidentally, were talking mad shit over the open comm channels during the first round - forfeited the match immediately.

Since they had finished up unexpectedly early, Triple Misfire returned to the main lounge to wait for their next match.

“That was awesome!”

“Bloody brilliant!”

“Gee gee, ee zee!”

Upon entering the common spectators’ area, they were suddenly met with a small round of cheers and applause. It wasn’t often one got to see an arbalest-class employed in a five-on-five match, let alone to such spectacular effect. Their performance had therefore earned them a few fans. There was even a highlight reel playing on one of the monitors that showcased Maggie’s deciding strike at the start of the third round. The girl herself got plenty of attention, not only because of her unique display of skill, but also because of her virtual appearance. The half-woman half-horror look was thoroughly unique, after all.

The gang naturally felt pretty good about all this, but Maggie was especially happy to have experienced something new yet again.

Namely, the thrill of victory.

And it felt good.