029

--TheirWorld--

Sitting for a rest after she fudged her tanking job a bit, Guin eyed Bahena’s portrait. It was a bit odd, she thought, that she felt so differently towards Bahena than she had Tea and Ibraxis. Tea and Ibraxis were all but strangers to her — and maybe that was what made the difference. It was easy for her to place them in a ‘game’ box and play with them like she would any role playing character. They might as well have been normal people, hiding their normal faces behind extraordinary graphics. But Bahena we real. She knew Bahena. She would see Bahena everyday — and that was somehow far more threatening than Ibraxis’s competence and Tea’s ignorance of personal boundaries. Or perhaps it was because she felt that a garule’s nature was hidden in the veil of the professional setting of everyday life on the Encalve, where in-game, it was casual; free; far easier to play to one’s real persona than put on the mask of civility.

But Ibraxis and Tea seemed… normal, she told herself. In fact, she had enjoyed their company, and would gladly play with them again. But Bahena…

“Watcha thinkin’ about that you got those wrinkles between your eyes?” Drakov asked, chewing on a loaf of bread. “That’s a very serious face you got there. You’re starting to look your age, Noona.”

“It’s nothing,” Guin said, bringing out her map. “The other should be here soon.” The character ndicators showed that the two were close. Bahena was still abit ways out, but approaching fast, zig-zagging over the terrain — but Stella was even closer, approaching at a slow but steady pace in a straight line till her indicator over the clearing.

“Well what do we have here?” purred a soothing voice from above her. Guin looked up to see the face of Stella grinning down at her as she sat on a floating broom a good five feet above their heads. Guin flushed a little for her as her tight, blue leather outfit hugged her small but curvy s-shaped body in places she wasn’t sure one should really want with people able to look up her skirt all the time. “I know that cute little naive face! You’re lack of fashion sense is as cute as always — though I never thought you’d be into fur. Is that real?”

“And I am not surprised to see you dressed like… that,” Guin asked as she watched the young woman gracefully land and tilt her pointed witch’s hat so that only covered the half of her head. The other half of her head was her short hair, styled in a sharp way that made it look like a bird’s wing.

“Goes well with my hair, don’t you think?”

“Lovely,” Guin said, raising an eyebrow. “Where’s Bahena?”

“She’s on her way,” Stella told her, waving her hand. “Would that I could carry her on my broom, but I am afraid that’s not how it works. And who is this?” Starshine flashed her gaze over to Drakov, who was standing to the side with a stupefied expression on his face. “You’re cute too. You can call me Lady Starshine.” Drakov’s dark, boyish eyes looked at Guin for help.

Laughing, she told him, “Elric, this is my friend Stella, Stella — Elric.”

“Oh!” Drakov went, his face suddenly brightening. “So, you’re Stella! ‘Course, I knew that; I was just testing Guin. I’ve heard quite a bit about you!”

“All good things, I hope,” Starshine purred. “Dassah hasn’t told me much about you. I think she’s afraid I’ll snatch you away.”

“‘Snatch’ being the appropriate word,” Guin mumbled under her breath.

“What was that?” Starshine asked, looking over.

“Nothing.”

“I thought so.”

Drakov gave a silly grin. “A witch, huh? Witches specialize in crowd control! Between the rest of us, we’ll be able to get you leveled up in no time, Guin!”

“I have no idea what ‘crowd control’ is, but let’s hope that’s true,” Starshine said pointing the butt end of her broomstick at him, while turning back to Guin and wagging a finger in her face. “I can’t believe you took a whole week to do the tutorial, and then you show up in rags…”

Guin shrugged. “It’s the class; My guess is that you’ll have to deal with it.”

Sighing, Starshine shook her head. “It could be worse, I suppose. At least the fur looks to be a good quality. Still, what kind of rubbish class is this that has you dressed as a beggar?”

“You have no idea,” Guin muttered, then turned to Drakov. “Shall we continue?”

“What are we doing, anyway?”

“You have no idea,” Guin muttered.

“What are we doing, anyway?” Lady Starshine asked.

“Guin has a quest to increase her crafting abilities, but she’s as weak as a baby bird,” Drakov told her. “So, we need to kill all the animals for her to skin.”

“Sounds easy enough,” Starshine nodded as a large, bronze-scaled garule burst the the foliage and shook herself off. The garule woman’s expression looked rather disgruntled as Starshine pointed at her with a sly look on her face. “You owe me twenty credits.”

Laughing, Bahena stood. “All right, all right. You win. Just wait till I get my speed up to snuff though — then we can have a real race. I seem to be slightly handicapped by these stats of mine,” she said thoughtfully. “That or I’m out of shape. But let’s not tell anyone that. My brothers’ catch wind of in and I’ll never live it down.”

“Guess we’ll just have to start whipping you back into shape, yes?” Stella — Lady Starshine — snapped her fingers and flicked her wrist violently. A loud crack! Rang through the air as a long, thick whip appeared in her hand. Guin snorted.

Drakov leaned in to Guin and whispered, “N-Noona… Your friend is scary…”

“I am both alarmed and not at all shocked at this development,” she murmured back. Bahena — BronzePaw — shifted her attention to the two. Fighting the urge to shrink back, Guin bowed slightly, saying, “Thanks for coming out to give me a hand.”

The garuli woman smiled and waved her hand. “No problem at all! Thanks for having me,” she said softening her look a bit. “Don’t force yourself too much on my behalf. Who’s your friend?”

“I’m Drakov!” the happy young ranger said, stepping forward and offering a hand. Bahena took it warmly. “I’m Dassah’s friend. What class are you?”

“A mage,” she said. Guin blinked as she saw Drakov’s jaw physically drop. “I-Is something the matter?”

“I-It’s just unexpected!” Drakov stuttered, voicing Guin’s internal thoughts. “Garule females are just so good at physical combat! Most I’ve seen are playing fighter-based classes! Mages are generally ranged! Though I guess this is TheirWorld...”

It was a little more than surprising, though Guin felt a little bad trying to pigeon-hole all female garule into a single category. She had fully expected the garule woman to play the role of a tank or a scrapper as suited her general skill set and her kind’s traditions — but a mage class?

Real life experience was just as valuable as gaming experience in TheirWorld. Starshine, Guin knew, had neither. Drakov and Guin herself had game experience. But BronzePaw was different from them — she was a true fighter. One who had taken part in Enclave Tournament matches. Sure, she could play a mage tank or fighter if she took the appropriate skill set, but there was a very good chance she would forever be crippled by the glass-cannon model the Mage class was based on.

“A-Ahhhh!” BronzePaw laughed nervously, scratching the back of her head. “I guess it does make me a bit of a sutak to be a bit more of a sideliner… honestly I don’t even know if I’ll like it but… I just… Once I… I wanted to…” Bahena suddenly made herself very small as she bashfully started to look down and scratch her arms. She looked up quickly and twitched her nose, seemingly annoyed with herself as she snorted and relaxed with a shrug. “I just wasn’t to try it, as all.”

Drakov seemed particularly taken aback as he just went, “Oh.”

“I don’t get why it’s such a big deal,” Stella shrugged. “There have been a couple of other people who’ve made noise about it in parties we’ve been in. It’s pretty annoying.”

“Why does it make you a sutak?” Guin asked — perhaps out of turn, but it was as good a time as any to have the question finally answered. “Because it makes you different?”

BronzePaw looked a little surprised as she said, “Well, yes. At least to my kind’s standards.”

“And what standards are those, exactly?”

“The usual garuli ones,” BronzePaw shrugged. “Females are the hunters, Males are the caregivers, that sort of thing. There are many kinds of sutak. Many ways to be different. It’s complicated.”

Guin furrowed her brow, trying to remember exactly what the purple and white garule had said to her, but before she could respond, Lady Starshine popped up in Guin’s face, poking her nose. “Who cares? I thought we were killing things to level you up?”

“A-Ahhh,” Guin sighed, and brushed the finger out of her face. “Alright, alright. Off to the mountains, then? Let’s go.”