Even with her fairly limited knowledge of other people and what was going on in their lives, Alex knew enough to know that Ell was on thinner ice monetarily than most– their musical family had been more than a little bit skeptical of their career choice after the Kaylie debacle, but they did have a fairly significant amount of money, limiting their scholarships.

Not that they’d told her about that, though. She just had fairly good hearing and regularly drifted while in class proper.

But knowing that information did prevent her from walking into the rather insensitive faux pas that would have been the sarcastic comment about being taken out to the school cafeteria.

Besides: so long as one avoided the cheese substitutes, the food there was perfectly serviceable.

Even freshmen usually only made that mistake once.

“It’s a bit of a cop-out, but it is lunch,” Ell said, jokingly, “At least you have your choice of whatever.”

Alex shrugged. “Free food is free food, no matter where it’s served. If you keep being nice to me, I might eventually feel obligated to return the favor.”

“Of being nice to me?” they grinned.

Alex rolled her eyes. “Of lunch. I think it’s obvious by now that the only thing I need to be nice to you is the lack of a reason not to be.”

That obviously had more of an effect on them than she’d meant it to, based on their dropping out of her peripheral vision. While it lasted less than a second– a combination of her turning to face them and them speeding back up again– both of them still noticed.

“Ahh… Sorry, again.”

“Don’t feel bad on my account. You got new information; you changed your opinion. Good enough.”

“Are you always this…”

“Usually,” Alex shrugged. “My friends get mad at me for it, sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I’m planning on stopping.”

Ell narrowed their eyes at her. “You know people are going to take advantage of you for that?”

“They are and they have. I don’t plan on letting that stop me, either.”

The two of them had reached the food, and conversation paused for a second as Alex picked up one of the salad bowls, examining it for a second.

Nothing in it looked to be bad from the outside, at least, so she picked it up while Ell dealt with their own food, before running it through the scanners.

When they sat down, discussion picked up again.

“I can’t decide if that’s impressive or just plain stubborn.”

“It can be two things.”

“Greeaat” Ell said, drawing out the word sarcastically. “I never considered that.”

Alex grinned. “Probably should have, huh?”

“Maybe, especially because apparently you were Novsha. How the heck was that, by the way?”

She had to consider that for a bit, especially after the way her experience had been different playing Deyana. While both of them were following a similar build, they were also created for different reasons.

Novsha was an escape, a way to direct herself while she was doing other things in the real world, often rushing into things while dragging along whoever was willing to follow. In the same way, she’d been someone different with Deyana; taking responsibility for, or at least confronting, her other actions.

Though that was probably less a matter of who the character was, and more one of how she’d changed in the meantime.

“Fun, at times. More at first than recently, really. She had a reputation for being someone that I wasn’t happy to be anymore.”

Ell narrowed their eyes at her. “She didn’t really have a bad reputation, and it’s not like you were forced to play to expectations, anyways.”

“Not expectations, exactly,” Alex responded. “It’s more complicated than that. Whatever they expect obviously affects how I’m going to be treated in that role, but the real issue is when we’re talking about how difficult habits are to break. Two years, playing the same person almost every night and rather a lot of days, too, and I built up a… persona, I guess. Someone who I wasn’t, but would play without thinking about.”

“Why give it up, though? Instead of just making another character, at least.”

Alex rubbed her eyes for a moment. “You’ve gotta promise not to tell anyone.”

“I don’t know why you’d trust me on that,” Ell said, “But sure. Nobody gets told without you okaying them.”

“Honestly? I don’t really trust you that much. That said, I do want to tell someone who’d understand a little bit, and it’s not a huge problem if it gets out.

“The big reason just comes down to, like… I was pissed. Angry at the guy who killed me for doing it, angry at myself for not seeing it coming, angry at the people around for not saying or doing anything…” Alex paused. That wasn’t quite true, was it? Geria had obviously done something, even at a major detriment to herself. It was making starting over with nothing not quite as bad, and she was fun to have around as well, so Alex couldn’t stop the slight smile from breaking her neutrality for just a second. “Well, not at the time, before I died. I can’t say nothing was done.”

“Huh. I didn’t think you were the type to get angry. Shows what I know, I guess.”

Alex raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t really have a reason to know, and it goes away pretty fast, too. Besides, you had a pretty complete image of me in your head, and it seems like there were big parts of it that were off because it didn’t seem reasonable to you.”

“I guess. I hate to think that we could have been talking like this before and my stupid fucking grudge was the only thing stopping it. You seem actually pretty okay compared to most of the jackasses in our class.”

Alex laughed. While it wasn’t her usual approach to things, just being honest was working a lot better in this conversation than she was used to, so she planned to stick to it. “Nah. I probably wouldn’t’ve been okay talking to you before the Novsha deletion thing. The act is gone, now, but originally? I would’ve pretended to be mad at you to save face in front of the others.”

Ell stared at her, and she didn’t break eye contact, letting them size her up for a few seconds. “Huh.”

“Not that I have anything against you, of course. Probably would have apologized to you afterwards, ‘forgiven’ you then.”

They snorted at that, breaking into a grin. “Okay, sure. You mentioned some stuff with a new Rune character? You planning to go the other route, then?”

“Not exactly,” Alex said. “I am crafting, but it’s a bit of a combination thing, and I’m levelling, too. I’ve got enough experience to pull it off, too; even with the split focus I hit twenty-five last night.”

Their eyebrows went up at that. “You know, for most people that would mean that they were basically levelling the whole time.”

“Less than half of it. But I have the help of a higher-level… friend, and experience.”

“So you’re not opposed to getting help?” they asked.

Alex shook hear head. “I’m not a huge fan of asking for it or anything, but as long as it makes sense? That, and I usually prefer it to be someone that I can pay back.”

“You have that legendary rune in your inventory.”

Alex felt her heart stop for a moment before crushing that feeling down. She knew from experience that that wouldn’t have shown on her face at all, but it still took a second longer than she’d have liked to come up with the response.

Putting her elbows on the table, she interlaced her fingers, planting her chin on them and raising an eyebrow.

“What makes you say that, exactly?”

Ell laughed in her face, though it sounded good-natured enough that she didn’t think it was malicious. “You don’t lie much.”

It was true, but not exactly helpful, either. That could mean any number of things, from an accusation trying to bait her into saying it to her screwing up the phrasing really badly.

“And? I’m pretty sure I said I don’t know where it is.”

“You said you don’t know where it is. And you don’t– the logout AI will have carried it somewhere else.”

Alex cringed internally. They’d remembered that, then. If they remembered things like that, they were almost certainly not someone she could keep talking to about the in-game stuff. Her ability to talk around things usually depended on people forgetting her phrasing before running it through alternate meanings.

“I could say that I don’t have it.”

“But you won’t.”

Alex took a deep breath in, letting it rattle in her throat for effect, before blowing it out in a sigh. “But I won’t.”

That would move her plans around, especially because knowing her physical location would let them take a fairly accurate guess at where she was in-game, and though it was only very generally, it would still be enough to–

“They’re going to find a lot of clues pointing to Vegas, then.”

Alex blinked twice before Ell continued.

“Obviously you don’t want them to know where you are, and I’m no fan of the big guilds, I’ve got some free time, and a motivation.”

Alex bit the inside of her cheek. “I don’t really know if that’s really a doable thing, and I couldn’t begin to ask…” They’d been gunning to do this, for some reason. She didn’t trust them, at all, but she also could tell that she couldn’t really stop them, either. The only question now was to put a little bit of trust in them and make their plan easier to pull off, opening herself up to more risk, or keep silent, potentially limiting the effectiveness of any fake clues.

“I’m not asking, really. Besides–” they smirked at her. “I’ve always been a sucker for throwing a bunch of chaos at a situation.”

Standing up, Alex tossed the trash into the nearby receptacle before saying anything more to Ell. Finally, right before walking away, she came to her decision.

“It’s called ‘Merge,’ and it’s in straight-vertical-line brackets. D-S won’t know that, but The Alliance will. The source’s name isn’t, but you can effectively bait them by, calling them Ger– like chair, but with a G.”

“Great. I’ve always wanted to try screwing with Vegas. See you later!”

She wasn’t sure if it was Ell being fast or the feeling of the world shifting around her that made it seem like they were out of view in seconds.

When that shifting stopped, Alex started off towards home. She wasn’t required to be on for her character to be safe, but making progress would need her to be there.

She just hoped that it wouldn’t all go wrong somewhere along the way.

Don’s return messages to her almost made her laugh out loud.

‘Christ’

‘What the fuck’

‘I was joking’

‘You’ll have some crafting time at least’

‘At least if you’re going to wait for me’

Checking her friends list, he was showing up as level 23 already, so it likely wouldn’t be that long, at least. Geria was on, but also currently showing as busy, while LJay’s name had the little death timer on it.

He’d been killed multiple times, then. Worrying, because that would mean that they were on the hunt for Geria again, but at least they’d have to start from first principles. Given her fairly effective ability to disguise herself and the change in weapon, it was likely not going to be an issue, but they were looking.

Good. She hadn’t had a chance this good to mess with the guilds in a while, and the pieces seemed to be falling into place.

Or at least, she’d knocked down those dominoes that she could control, and now she had to hope a little bit.

‘I’ll wait, no problem. Do you want utility, arrows, a new bow, or something else?’

‘20-40 minutes, so probly arrows unless you think you can work utility or armor in that time’

A challenge, then. Ideas were already rushing through her head before she stepped out of the building she’d logged in in.