“That should do it, I wish you luck on your adventures” Alice said. They had just finished creating Shin’s character and assigned his starting class. He was still clearly unhappy, to the extent to which he could actually feel. Even after finding out that he wouldn’t be transported back to where he came from, his mood hadn’t changed. “Are you sure that it’s still there?” he asked, clearly suspect of Alice and her involvement in Jakob’s plan. “Yes, if you buy a horse as soon as you arrive and ride through the night you will arrive shortly after dawn. I really am sorry, I am sure he had his reasons and will fix it when he comes back” Alice responded. Her responses had changed from being friendly in tone to being apologetic, often containing some sort of apology or justification for Jakob’s actions.

“Ok, just send me then.” Shin ordered petulantly. Alice didn’t respond, she knew that the reason his foul mood had continued all through the character creation process was because of her and Jakob’s actions. Especially her attempts to rationalise what had happened to him. At least she was able to make him still look like himself, if not slightly more attractive.

She had thought that getting rid of his slight acne, scars and calloused fingers would cheer him up, her assumption backfiring when he demanded to leave his scars and fingers as they were. He was much more interested in sharpening the bridge of his nose and strengthening his jaw. He now looked more attractive and somewhat like a combination of his father, mother and the uncle who raised him. The shift was subtle and would likely be seen as the effect of puberty, given his age. He wanted to maintain his short brown hair and green eyes, they reminded him of his parents too much and changing them would just be a dead give-away.

Alice, without a word, willed Shin on his way. Vanishing without a trace, he left her with only her thoughts in the white void. She had definitely made the right choice by not telling him about the rest of the data on his data shell of a necklace. He had already outright refused a tutorial from her and likely wouldn’t believe a word she said. “I hope Jakob is safe '' she thought to herself as she started to watch over Shin. All live streams came through her directly, to moderate content, and she had intentionally selected to enable the feature on Shin so that she could watch him, insanity from isolation being her only other option.

Shin found himself in a back alley, sandwiched between two grimy stone walls. A bag containing the started items he'd chosen sitting on his back. He made his best effort to escape the pungent smell of the back ally as soon as he could, entering onto what was clearly a main street. He recognised the place - it was the eastern quarter of the Autumn kingdom's capital. He didn’t have time to sightsee and already knew his destination, if he was too late Tilla would likely see and run away with the platinum coin that he had left on the bed in her inn. It was still late evening/early night and if he made pace he could arrive before dawn, granted that he found a horse for sale. He doubted anyone would turn down the five gold he received in his starters pack regardless of how late it was, five gold was more than enough to calm them. He changed from a brisk walk in the direction of a stables into a break-neck sprint.

Due to his increased stats his body felt vastly lighter than it had before and he ran fast enough to draw more than a few stares. Luckily, he arrived at his destination before he created a scene. Handling his body was so different from what he expected that it almost caused him to stumble and bowl into people more than once. When he was finally standing outside of a stable, no lights were on in the accompanying building. Impatient, he banged on the door. A fair few moments passed and he was about to bang again when he heard someone behind him. “ Don’t bother, I'm right here. What do you want? We are closed till dawn.” came a feminine voice from behind Shin. He turned around to see a female elf, looking to be in her late twenties, dressed in riding gear.

“I need a horse with riding gear and am willing to pay five gold.” Shin snapped at the elf, impatience evident in his tone. His foul mood clearly got the better of him. “Why didn’t you say so?” the elf said, rapidly changing her demeanor to one of a humble shop owner, her eyes gleaming with the prospect of easy money. “Please choose anyone you like, I will grab the riding gear.” She managed through an awkward and sickly-sweet sales smile. Losing no time Shin ignored her and walked over to the stalls that held the horses. He didn’t bother looking in their eyes as he just wanted to get out of here and fast. He ended up deciding on one that looked the fastest, weight wasn’t an issue, so he didn’t need a labour horse. The elf came out of the building and offered him a saddle and reins, in exchange he handed over the money and left. He could have never done something so brash prior to his new mind-altering skill.

Shin wasn’t a great rider by any stretch but his control over the horse through his animal handling got him to Tillas’ inn with a couple of hours to spare before dawn. He took his horse round to the stable at the back, fortunately Jass and Wren were safe allowing him to breathe calmly for the first time in hours. He tied up his new horse and entered the inn, trying to be as quiet as possible. His efforts were clearly dhown to be pointless as he could hear Tilla singing to herself in the kitchen behind the bar counter, not his conceived behaviour of a platinum thief. “Thank the gods” Shin thought to himself, dropping his sneaky act and climbing the stairs to his room.

He was finally back. Shin wanted to cry and scream as that’s what he knew that was the right sort of thing to do in this situation, however only found that his foul mood was already fading. The Gamers mind skill clearly in action. Unlike the relief and excitement he was expecting at seeing such a large sum of money, all shin was feeling as he looked at the platinum coin was boredom, it’s luster now lacking in his eyes. Deciding that his day had been more than long enough he slumped onto his bed, pocketing the platnum coin and tossing the box Jakob had sent aside. He fell into sleep, Quickly drifting off into his dreams.

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.

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Angelo couldn’t believe Jakob would go this far for a game. He tried to comprehend what must have gone through the old man’s head as he looked over the footage of his capture. The video, from a security uniform camera, showed the security team bashing down the door of Jakob’s office only to have him rotate his chair and make a reference to an outdated villain with a self-satisfied grin. Jakob gave no resistance, unsettleing Angelo. He replay the footage on a loop, getting angrier every time he saw Jakob’s smug smile. He thought that it was apt for Jakob to quote a super villain, being one himself. The analysts and technicians had yet to decipher what his last package to the game did, all they knew so far was that he had blocked them as well as himself out of altering anything.

A knock on Angelo’s office door took him out of his obsessive reviewing of the footage. “Hello, come in” he called at the door, still intentionally lathering his voice with a thick Cuban accent. The door shifted open and the head of security, Mr. Hobbs, entered. “Sorry to bother you sir, as you’re the interim leader of the directors, I wanted to inform you that Jakob has been contained and we have removed his external mods. As you know most of his mods are internal so we can’t remove or deactivate them without killing him, as such we have him held in a transport pod that will stop any signals he tries to send.” Mr. Hobbs, the security team leader, reported. He was obviously dissatisfied with the outcome.

Angelo left him stewing as he tried to think of how Jakob planned to escape justice this time. Eventually satisfied that there was no obvious loophole Jakob could worm his way through, Angelo gave a nod in consent. With permission being granted, the security team leader rapidly retreated, as if being in Angelo’s presence was poisonous. Angelo was used to that reaction as he had a skill for manipulation that most people were weary of.

Angelo stood in his empty office and looked out the window. The police drones had already arrived, surrounding the building, drawing their usual gaggle of reporters, press drones and onlookers. The arrest of the world-famous Dr. Mulder would certainly make it’s way around the world as soon as the press got a look at who was in the pod. This wasn’t what Angelo had planned but as with all things his brain was already hard at work thinking of how to change it to a selling point for Eraven. “A world free of laws or A world of freedom” He thought, comparing and contrasting the taglines’ marketability. Despite the loss of income through microtransactions, due to Jakob destroying their ability to create in-game money, He knew that this news would probably just make even more people excited to enter Eraven. “Like lambs to the slaughter” Angelo whispered, his accent no longer Cuban.