She had to say, Sláine appreciated how fast Red was.

Sure, it had its drawbacks. Given how effortlessly she glided through thick crowds of people, Sláine could only imagine how easily the other woman could slip away from her. Half of her wanted to tie a string around Red’s arm to keep her from getting too far ahead, but the other half didn’t care that much since losing track of her would comfortably secure the rest of the day to herself. Plausible deniability was a wonderful thing.

Still. She liked that her mentor was amenable to getting straight to the point and willing to facilitate no-strings-attached slaughter. After having brushed off her reflexive attack with a simple, ‘don’t worry, it happens to everyone!’ Red had informed her that she’d just grabbed a quest that had would have the pair of them delving into a dungeon around a town called Bedford to the southwest. Not that location mattered, she cheerfully informed Sláine as she strode through the halls, waving a thin, shiny, rectangular metal plate that she roughly measured to be the size of her palm. One of humanity’s greatest achievements was the Link system which allowed people to teleport from a central hub to numerous other destinations within the network. Due to certain limitations on how much could be transported through what was colloquially known ‘Net’, it was mainly used by adventuring parties to get to and from dungeons in a reasonable amount amount of time.

It did sound very convenient, particularly since, from what she’d heard about them, dungeons tended to be nebulous existences whose physical location - no, the very nature of their being - shifted via esoteric properties that one probably needed some fancy title understand.

Red gave her a quick bullet-point explanation of her quest. A few days ago, a routine survey team had found that a previously near-abandoned dungeon had suddenly exploded with a large monster population, and their mission was to perform a further examination of the site and cull the horde along the way. Upon inquiring what they’d be fighting, Red cheerfully informed Sláine that it would be bugs. Big ones. What had once been an archaic drainage system was now teeming with the Swarm's unholy spawn, and their pair would be delving into the depths of their fetid mound.

The thought of dealing with Contagion might make a lesser person shudder, but Sláine took the news in stride.

She wasn’t sure what Red’s motivations were, or if there even were any. For all Sláine knew, she’d just grabbed a random job from the listing and come to find her. It seemed like an odd change of tone given her earlier frustration, but perhaps she’d simply come to the conclusion that the quicker Red got her through her fifteen quests, the quicker she could tick something off her to-do list. Her pace had meant she hadn’t really the chance to ask.

It was probably pure luck that Sláine made it their destination with Red still in tow.

What she’d called the ‘Hub’ was an enormous town square that four major roadways and a number of smaller side-streets converged into. Unsurprisingly, a plethora of merchants selling everything from bundles of herbs to finely crafted swords had set up booths along the roads, hawking their wares to the adventurers traveling to the Network.

A series of black stone pillars dominated the center of the plaza. The material reminded her of the Protocol’s chamber, though instead of being sleek, smooth, unadorned stone, these were covered with mosaic patterns that glinted in the late afternoon sun. Each structure was arranged evenly around a circular plaza. As she crossed the bridge over the moat seperating it from the rest of the city, Sláine noted that fat, glimmering fish swam lazily through he water.

Each pillar had a doorway at its base, leading into rooms filled with glowing panels of light, and people were lined up before them as they waited to be seen by one of the uniformed attendants operating the Network. Ahead of them, one of the workers did… something to manipulate the multicolored shapes spread over the wall, and then the group standing in the center of the chamber unceremoniously vanished.

There were no sparks of light. No special effects. She’d expected something more dramatic, but no, one moment there were five people standing on a pedestal beneath the tower, and the next moment the following group in line was being beckoned forward.

Red made a beeline to one of the pillars on the far-side, and when she settled down to wait for their turn, Sláine finally had a chance to say something.

“I’m surprised no one has put a leash on you.”

It took a moment for the round, unrelenting oval of white turn in acknowledgment, but shortly after Red burst out laughing, the sound coming out a little strangely from behind her mask. “You gonna make into some weird dom/sub thing now?”

“I was referring more to those harnesses used on children who wander too far from their parents.”

The line wasn’t particularly long, though it also didn’t move particularly quickly, it took at least two minutes for one group to get processed. Leaning around the people ahead, Sláine could see that whoever was leading the group presented a metal card - much like the one Red had shown her before - which was taken by the workers before the group shuffled onto the central pedestal. From there, the attendant - perhaps one of those Technicians she’d heard mention of - began to fiddle around with the lights and graphs, tracing lines and pressing on symbols that morphed in color and shape. She thought she saw writing there, along with… maps, maybe? From this distance, it was too hard to tell.

Red laughed again, and she turned away. “You’ve got those where you’re from, too? Always thought they were a bit weird myself. Putting cute little animal backpacks at the end of the rope doesn’t really change that you’ve got the brats tied up.”

“Children are the same everywhere, and my land is a dangerous one. It’s best to keep a close eye on them.”

“Lemme guess. Lots of kids, can’t keep track?”

Sláine stared at the back of her head sharply as she could, but Red didn’t seem to feel her irritation. “The opposite. Floribunda have children very infrequently, and when we do, they take a long time to grow.”

“…Floribunda? Seriously? Is that what you people call yourselves? Literal fuckin’ flower bunnies, and you call yourselves Floribunda. That’s absurd.”

Red let out a sharp sound of disbelieving delight, and Sláine sighed through her nose.

“The Tree rather likes its… jokes. Regardless. Yes, that’s what we’re called. I suppose there aren’t enough of us this far south for it to be common knowledge.”

“Eh. I’d just figured you were just some sort of generic furry.”

“A… what?” she repeated, half in dread with the knowledge that she might not actually want to know. Red had said it before, but…

“Yeah. Animal people. There are tons around. Cats, dogs, foxes, snakes, fish - even seen some rabbits, but none all flowery like you. I gotta know, are they uncomfortable? Do you gotta pluck ‘em like you’re shaving or something?”

She somehow managed to not roll her eyes. “Occasionally, but my people also take pride in their presence.” She looked around, and sure enough, she could spot a few other humanoids with various animal features milling around. One of them, who looked more like a bipedal coyote than anything else, glanced briefly at the pair from across the way. Sláine wondered if they’d heard Red’s unabashedly loud voice.

It made her slightly ashamed of the current company she was keeping. Not ashamed enough to back out though, and she rolled her shoulder with a bit of a shrug. Red had gone quiet before laughing a third time, the chuckle coming out oddly… dark.

“Pride, huh? That’s kind of funny. Must be nice.”

Sláine was’t sure what she meant, though as she looked at her it occurred to her that she didn’t have an inch of skin exposed. Didn’t it get hot wearing that all the time? Squinting, she gestured at her. “That’s quite a lot of layers.”

“Says the bunny-girl with her tits out.”

That felt like redirection more than anything else, so she didn’t bother with a reply. Waiting in silence, Sláine looked around, surveying the crowd as the line processed forward, group by group.

Humans dominated the plaza, predictably enough. Despite the increased popularity of Registration over the past few decades, demographics in Arpege were still heavily skewed towards its original founders, and those from other Systems - unilaterally called the Apocrypha, by the governing body of the human nation - still attracted notice. Part of the reason Sláine had picked Aria of the Fallen to throw her lot with was their accepting attitude towards those from the Apocrypha, having no bias against anyone who wasn’t a pure-blooded human like the Church seemed to value. She was given to understand that it was because Madame Valiant was inhuman herself, though nothing about her appearance gave Sláine any indication of what she was. It had seemed impolite to ask, so she hadn’t.

It hadn’t really seemed important, either.

Her flower-speckled ears and swaths of coneflower scarring seemed to be attracting some notice, and she detected one trio in another line nudging each other and pointing at her before a glance in their direction seemed to inspire some shame. It was a… odd feeling, but luckily she didn’t have to dwell on it, because with a buzz of excited chatter and the shuffle of footsteps, the group before them were called up, leaving Sláine and Red next in line.

She waited. She watched. And after the humans disappeared, the attendant beckoned the pair forward with a single raised hand.

It only took a second of looking into her eyes to tell Sláine that she was a really, really weird person.

It was the… mistiness to them. Everything else about her looked normal, from her auburn hair tied loosely into braids to the neat cut of her black vest. But the color - the distant murkiness of her lavender eyes - had an absent look that she associated with a true disconnect from all worldly cares. When she opened her mouth, Sláine expected her to spout gibberish, but instead she stated two simple words in a toneless voice.

“[ Passkey ], please.”

With a flick of her hand, Red tossed the metal card over to the woman. She fumbled as she caught it, but her face completely lacked expression and relief filled Sláine as she turned away. Following Red into the shadow beneath the tower, she stepped up onto a perfectly circular, black stone platform at the room’s center. It really was the same stone as the Protocol’s chamber - deep black and threaded with glimmering white crystal.

Red didn’t say anything, and neither did Sláine.

Now that she was closer, she could see what the woman was doing, though that didn’t clarify anything about the process. Some kind of spell was likely woven into the stone itself, using a series of crystals set into the inner wall as a catalyst. They were rounded, pretty spheres arranged in an octagonal shape, and the only deviation among them was the white semicircle in the center which had a diagonal line cut through it. That’s where the woman took the card, swiping it through and causing the colored lights to burst to life.

The attendant studied the graphs, charts, and lines of an unrecognizable script hovering over the wall. There seemed to be a map among them, and she reached out, touching a location on it which pulsated with light and… zoomed in with a pinch of her fingertips. Her nails were painted the same pale purple as her eyes, and Red noticed as Sláine curiously watched the woman work.

“Is that your type, or do you just like shiny lights?”

She wasn’t even going to bother. “What exactly is going to be happening to us?”

“You do not want to know what exactly is going to be happening to us friendo, but roughly speaking she’s figuring out where to send us. Each of these,” Red gestured at the towers, “Is like a… man, what word would you even know? You said you’re from the north. How far into nowheresville are we talking, here?”

“You know roughly where the Sylvan Republic is?”

“Land of milk and really pretentious knife-ears? Sure do.”

“North of that.”

Red whistled, shaking her head. “So the who-gives-a-crap-conglomeration then. How are you not totally flipping your shit right now? I once met an elf who couldn’t get over the idea of artificial light, much less the concept of network-based teleportation. Far as I knew, all you lot had up there was woods and ice.”

“I came here to fight, not ask questions.”

“Eh, fair enough. Anyway - “

“State your [ Quest ], please,” the attendant said, interrupting the pair’s chatter, and Red smoothly replied without pausing.

“[ BRSS-MA053 ].”

This nonsensical string of… she couldn’t even call them letters or numbers because they were kind of like that, but they were kind of also this buzzing hum that reminded Sláine a lot of having her stats checked. Actually, the feeling persisted even after a few seconds, and she raised a hand to her head, trying to resist the growing headache building behind her eyes. The pedestal beneath her was glowing now in response to something that was being input on the screen.

“…Just a bit more, cottontail. Technician’s almost done.”

The pressure built, and she closed she eyes. “What’s happening?” Sláine murmured, not really expecting a reply - and she certainly didn’t expect Red’s voice to soften slightly as she explained.

“The System is registering where we’re going and puttin’ a tracker on us. Just in case we get in trouble; makes it easier to find us.”

This was a weirdly positive tone for Red, but Sláine didn’t have long to think about it because, after a moment, a sensation she’d felt once before overwhelmed every part of her consciousness. Half vibration, half voice, half an illusion painted before her closed eyes - it all coalesced into a single question and simple set of replies.

[ Teleport To: Bedlam Rock Sanitation Station ]

[ Accept? ]

[ Yes] [ No ]

Sláine accepted, obviously. Part of her wondered why anyone would choose differently, but she supposed an interest in acquiring consent was a nice trait for a god plugged directly into her brain to have.

>> Teleport