“Just tell her!” KC cried, scrubbing his hands down his face in frustration.

“I don’t think she should trust this crazy bitch,” Daisy said. KC had flipped the stream audio over to his private chat with his friends, but rigged the game audio to come out of a different channel of speakers so he could still listen to Rose while brainstorming.

“It’s not about trusting her or not,” he snapped. “It’s that she doesn’t owe these people anything. They’re all after this heir, and her mission is to hand him over, it’s not going to make a difference if she says anything.”

“I think her mission is gonna be to save the heir, just sayin,” Daisy replied. She’d headed off to snooze while Rose was sleeping, annoyed about the stream going dark for so long. They’d lost a lot of viewers around that time, though even more new ones were trickling in as social media circulated what was going on.

Or at least, what they thought was going on. Nobody was saying that RosieRainbow was stuck inside of a video game. Nobody was trying to rally the troops to get her out. Bri and Pogo were playing along, but nobody was coming out and saying that they thought this was real. KC didn’t know if he should bother trying to convince them. He’d already been accused of being a cuck and a chump by idiots in the chat for doing this much, so he didn’t have high hopes that anyone cared whether this was a publicity stunt or reality.

“It doesn’t matter if it is or not,” he said, taking another swig of cold brew. While Rose had been sleeping, he’d raided her kitchen and found a fresh pitcher of the stuff in the fridge. After pumping it full of pumpkin spice syrup and cream, it was the pick-me-up he needed. “What matters right now is her not getting the shit kicked out of her again.”

“I don’t think that’s what Daddy Drak is gonna do to her,” Daisy said in a singsong voice. “He gave it to Rhizi good—”

KC practically tore off the headphones. He knew she was trying to get a rise out of him. He knew that she didn’t think any of this was real. He knew she didn’t actually believe that Rose was getting hurt in there.

How didn’t they, though? He gritted his teeth. How long did this have to go on before they started wondering how the fuck Rose had paid for this many special effects and acting and production costs? When would they see that it was totally insane to assume that Rose was faking all of this?

Part of him couldn’t help but sneer at how shitty some of their friends would feel after all the comments they’d made. Guilt washed over him in a tidal wave at the notion. He would honestly rather it be fake, rather it be all one big joke, than have had Rose go through what she’d gone through over the past twelve hours.

“Your buddy Zal asked me to find the heir,” Rose croaked, and KC’s eyes snapped to the screen.

He scrutinized Rhizaid’s expression, studying each line of her angular features. “This bitch has such a poker face,” he muttered, reaching up for his mic before remembering he’d tossed the headset. He slid it back onto his head, thankful that there was no chatter—everyone was likely paying close attention to the stream now.

“You recognized my pet, the one that belonged to him,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” Rose replied, and the screen tilted down towards her hands before she seemingly remembered she was supposed to be recording her surroundings, and looked back up at her captor.

“Where did you come from?” Rhizaid asked. “Why would he task a tiny creature like you with hunting a demon?”

“I don’t know,” Rose moaned, her voice sounding thick and tired. “He’s a sadistic fuck. I think he’s either just messing with me for fun, or using me as bait.”

“Smart girl,” Daisy whispered, as if not wanting to intrude on the moment.

KC agreed with her, for once. Rhizaid had been treating Rose like a prized pet this whole time, so hamming that up that Zalrimith had seen her the same way and had essentially put a harmless worm on a hook was probably her best bet of staying non-threatening and as under the radar as she could.

“You don’t know where you come from?” the demon asked, and KC winced. The deflection in the answer hadn’t worked, hadn’t distracted her from her original question.

“I...I wasn’t lying about that,” Rose stammered. “I come from far away. But I don’t know how I got here. And he took advantage of that confusion.”

Rhizaid stared at her, gaze level, emotionless. “And he told you specifically to find the heir?”

“I wonder if she thinks Rosie’s mission is to get to her,” Dragon’s voice was soft in the headphones. “She knows that Zal would be pissed if he knew that she had one of his monsters, so maybe she’s thinking that Rosie was planted as bait for her.”

KC chewed over that. It was possible. The demon seemed calculating, so maybe she was weighing that as an option, especially if others knew she was a collector of rare species, Rose would definitely be the perfect bait for someone like her.

“Yeah,” Rose said slowly. “He said that the royal family is a bunch of bleeding hearts and the heir would want to protect me, so I could use that to draw him out in the open.”

“Should she be telling her this?” Daisy squeaked.

“If it gets her out of being tortured by King Asshole, then yeah,” Pogo shot back, and KC mentally high-fived him.

Out of all of their friends, Pogo seemed to be the most receptive to staying on task, even though he still didn’t seem like he believed it. It was nice for KC to feel like he had a bit of support in his corner, though.

“It would still be nice to have some clue what kind of game this was,” Dragon murmured. “If we knew for sure that Zal had given her an actual quest, or if we knew what NPCs were quest givers, it would be easier for her to know who to interact and converse with.”

“I don’t know if that matters,” KC mused. “There’s no way she’s on game storylines at this point. The second that Zal noticed she could respawn after dying, I think her being physically in there changed everything up.”

“Unless this is supposed to be a really meta video game,” Daisy said. “Would have been more believable if she hadn’t made it a nineties game.”

“Hey, don’t shit on nineties games,” Pogo argued, and KC turned down the volume on the headset so he could pay attention to the screen.

Rhizaid still hadn’t responded, and eventually didn’t, standing up. She stared down at Rose with an inexplicable expression on her face, and then turned on one of her hooves and stalked away down the hall. KC wasn’t sure what time of day it was there, since the hallway had no windows, but he assumed after hours of demon sex that Rose’s captor was heading off to sleep.

“Close your eyes,” KC whispered, picking up his phone and unlocking it. You did great, he typed out, hovering his thumb over the donation button, waiting for the screen to go black.

A knock on the door startled him, sending him jerking in the office chair, banging his knee off of the low desk and sending his tall glass of coffee careening to the floor.

“Fuck!” he cried, and managed to catch the glass before it shattered everywhere, but not so for what was left of his cold brew. The liquid splashed across the carpet and his leg, seeping through his jeans uncomfortably.

Knock-knock-knock.

His heart rate tripled. Who could be at the door?

“You’re still recording, right?” he asked.

“Yup, just switched over to my new external,” Pogo confirmed.

KC pulled the headset off, inching into the hallway with his empty glass in hand. Out of the corner of his eye, the screen went dark as she closed her eyes, and he cursed under his breath.

Knock-knock-knock.

Could it be Rose? Had he been sucked in, hook line and sinker, this whole time, and this was going to be the payoff, her scaring the shit out of him and then going GOTCHA as soon as he opened her door?

“That was intense,” the Rose on the screen said, and he chewed his lip, considering going back for his phone to send the message to her.

Knock-knock. “Just let me in, man, I’m here to help,” a familiar male voice came through the door.

KC blinked. It couldn’t be. He flicked the deadbolt and opened the door, laying eyes on a kid that didn’t look like he was much older than sixteen. “What the hell?” He shook his head. “Bri? How are you...?”

“The internet, dude, it’s gonna sound super creepy so can we just...I just want to help,” the kid said sheepishly, and raised both of his hands, tightly-packed duffel bags in each one. “I’ve got supplies.”