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Game Story with Dreixes

THE BEGINNING...

Shenzi rolled her neck and bounced on her toes as she loaded into the waiting room for the individual qualification trials, letting the additional height, weight, and strength of her gnoll avatar settle over her. While she did have a team to run with, she wanted to double up her chances. Besides, a team meant teammates that she had to pay attention to, tactics to listen to, and a minimum of allowed fuckery. She rather enjoyed fuckery, though she also appreciated that there was a time and place for it. A tournament with several hundred thousand dollars on the line was not that place. But individual qualifications weren't high on her list of necessities, so she could have a little fun so long as she didn't screw over her teammate(s) in the limited-group qualification run.

"Fuckin' shit gear," she complained after pulling up her character sheet. It was all epic tier, nothing artifact or god tier.

But they had to keep things equal somehow, leaving it down to player skill to make up for the lack of outright stat min-maxing. Then her partner loaded in. She quirked a brow, noting that she only had one instead of two. That said a surprising amount. Individual quals tended to be done as a trio, with only people who managed to rank in the top 100 going as duos. She herself was 78th on the worldwide scoreboard. Checking the profile, she saw that her companion had just barely squeaked in at 99. Which was better than 100, she supposed. Cleric/paladin mix, not the best class combo for the Kitsune race, but an interesting one nonetheless. She looked forward to seeing how things played out.

"Yo, make sure to snag some extra health potions for me," she said without bothering to introduce herself. "I'ma need 'em."

>"Right, right, of course."

Bradley knew about Shenzi's reputation - she was aggressive, very forward about everything, but damn if that wasn't good to have in her role. He already knew she'd qualified fairly early in the season, but this was what she always did - early qualification to reduce the effort over the rest of the season, making her rank deceptively lower than the field, then the rest of it could be teasing the lower ranks. Low ranks like him, he supposed. Last chancers. Because that was what this run was, a last chance. 99 was enough to get into the ring, but it was up to him to stay in there for the count. But there were far worse partners to have to support in his role.

His racials weren't exactly ideal for his playstyle - getting up close wasn't great when your connection was spotty at best, but at least some of the upgrades his side job (as he always referred to it) had provided meant that he'd be good for this session, provided they didn't get too close to time. But she was right on the gear. None of the set bonuses he was used to, and kind of built around the role he was supposed to be playing more of, proper frontline healer, spanker on the side. Not that he expected to have to use that too much - again, having a higher ranked gnoll who knew her stuff would take care of that.

"Let's do our best and kick this thing's ass?" He said, trying to inject some camaraderie where he knew there was little. He knew he needed this more than her.<

"Just keep your tails from getting tangled, eh?" she quipped, popping open the shop menu herself.

As many health potions as she could carry, throwing daggers, smoke bombs, arrows, carnivore pet treats, and rope. You never knew when you'd need rope, and you almost always did. Slotting her gear into the various pockets, loops, holsters, and sheaths of her armor, she rolled her shoulders and did a few toe-touches, getting used to the slightly ill-fitting make. Lower tier gear always had some restrictiveness to it; that was part of the reason it was lower tier, but she felt like she could move well enough. Straightening up, she put a pair of fingers into her mouth and let out a sharp whistle. A moment later, a long, slender dire weasel with a black-footed ferret skin materialized beside her, and she knelt down to rub noses with it while ruffling its cheeks. Then she sent a deadly glare towards the kitsune.

"You say a damn thing 'bout Mr. Wiggles, and I'll sit my ass at the dungeon entrance while you try clearing it alone, got me? You'll see why I didn't go for a tanker or better DPS once we get going."

>"Right, no worries, no worries."

He was hardly one to talk about builds, after all. His choices were rather more limited. No proficiencies in most ranged stuff - he could probably throw a rock or a potion if it were the right kind, but he wouldn't be pulling out a random bow or something. So that meant drinks and mana potions all day everyday, if she'd let him pace himself enough to use the former. Time trial or not, running out of MP would be killer for him. Rope was a good call though - no point blowing a precious cooldown for a slowfall just for one jump, even if he did have the cleric's feather fall to get them out of it. He eyed up the various crystals and buffs, but most of them were more ideal for trios or up. End of the day, duos were about player skill, damage mitigation, mechanical circumvention. That was what his build was for, skipping problematic encounters. Who cares if they were a few % points down on the clear as long as they cleared it, after all.

"You taking traps or am I on that?"

Always important to see what kind of ranger you were with. He doubted she'd be the one to break a CC, but most of his relied on everyone being in sync. Which was always a bigger ask with a pickup group than a premade team.<

"FUCK!" she cursed. "Uh... shit, you mind snagging some for me? I can disable the ones we come across and pick up some along the way, but I always forget to grab some at the start... Kinda ran myself dry with..." She gestured towards her own gear. "So, you heavy on the cc or more buff centric?"

>Glad I asked the question. He took a few skeleton keys for the door skips - not like either of them would be looting chests on the way - and made sure his feats gave him an Incapacitation ability.

"Got some CCs, but I'm more buffs. Used to running larger groups than this. But I can keep you and the p... Mr Wiggles up well enough?"<

"Yeah, don't worry 'bout him." She stood and grinned at the smaller vulpine avatar, displaying every tooth in her bone-crunching jaws. "You just worry 'bout keepin' me up, and we'll be fine. Don't worry 'bout cc unless you see a runner or something decides to give you a love tap."

A chime sounded as the countdown hit fifteen seconds, and she began jogging in place to get her blood flowing while taking fast, huffing breaths to hyperventilate herself. Five... four... three... two... one... and the qualification dungeon loaded in. It had been custom designed for the tournament, as they always were, but it looked like they had decided to get the small fries out of the way as fast as possible in the solo quals. Shenzi nearly tripped (which would have been super embarrassing while running in place) when she saw the group spread out at the other end of the first room. Ten mobs: four heavy bruisers, two shamans, and four ranged pricks. Well, that was a bit more of a challenge than she had expected.

"Okay, foxy, I'm gonna shank one of the ranged guys, vanish, shank another, then ambush the big ones. Just keep me alive once the rumble starts, and we'll move it to take out the shamans and the other two ranged, k?"

She didn't wait for him to answer before dropping into stealth and creeping through the stone-block dungeon. With her warm-up, it was more of a fast scamper than a crawl, and she was up the ladder to the archery platform in less than half a minute. The first goblin pretty much erupted into bits of gore as she struck, immediately throwing a smoke bomb to pop her 30-minute cooldown insta-stealth. Even before the second archer on that side of the room had finished resetting to its starting position, she had eviscerated it as well. She broke stealth by throwing herself over the edge of the platform with a vicious cackle and landing on the hobgoblin below, burying both of her daggers in its shoulders in the process.

>"Right o-" And she's gone....

Seeing she was already up and dealing with the ranged, it was all about timing for the rest of them. She'd be the main recipient of his buffs, but then just by being there the party was a bit quicker and harder hitting. For him, it'd be all about starting to build up the count, but there was no point doing that before... Stealth break, time for the aggro to start counting.

So he dropped a sleep on one of the shamans right at the start - long as they were handled last that'd give them some time to kite the rest out of their radius, reduce the bullshit in the encounter. So he went for a little shock on one of the bruisers Shenzi was already engaged on - it was early so it was hardly like he needed it in reserve for healing yet - and started dropping the larger hammer on one of the unengaged bruisers. Not enough damage to pull aggro, but enough to start the mill. The green auras everywhere started to tell him the system was getting going. Even outside of VR, he could feel his left index poised where his combat CC would be on a keyboard - needed to be ready to break the cast if Shenzi was too busy going full dps combo on them.<

Shenzi was indeed going full DPS on them. Mr. Wiggles darted past the fox to begin weaving in between the four brutes, nipping at ankles and calves. It caused a very minimal bleed effect, one that was entirely negated by the area healing that the second shaman provided. Yet, the trickle of blood was all that was needed. The combination of rogue and ranger was not unheard of, but it was generally used to make a highly-skilled sniper hybrid that could output exceptional single-target DPS. Shenzi had gone another route. Taking the ranger's dual-wielding specialization added base damage to her attacks. The rogue gave her speed and extra damage with her daggers. Gnoll bloodrage gave her even more damage, with a stacking buff as she took damage herself. But the real trick was the bleed effects and the weasel pet buff that accompanied it. Her rogue levels let her deal additional damage to bleeding or poisoned target. Bloodlust stacked for bleeding enemies. Ranger favored enemy buffs gave her additional exploit damage against goblinoids. It all combined to make her a whirling dervish of slow death by a thousand cuts, cuts that should have by all rights been doing far less damage than they actually did. She held aggro by sheer force of damage output, each slash landing like a hit from a broadsword, but her focus on combat output had come at the cost of armor and damage soak. She burned brightly, but she couldn't last for long without competent support.

>Which, if there was one thing that Bradley's choice of talents were about, it was about competent support. Sure he could nova a single target, but that came at the cost of dropping all support for his allies, and even then he'd probably die at the end of it. But the start of the first encounter was always the roughest part, before his racial ability properly stacked up, before he had a chance to start layering triggers on one another. He looked at them - 4th count on the tail, hammer continuing to fall, sleep nowhere near wearing off. Nothing too massive that needed disrupting which was nice.

So he went in with his mace to finish the five count, and felt the glow of his fifth tail by the nape of his neck. First of the night, slower than I need but good enough. That was the first faerie fire of the night to consume, no point saving a recurring buff. So that was for Shenzi, since she was already doing a good job cutting these guys down. And with that, the warmth he felt sank seemingly from everywhere, each tail's light moving through them, the feel of four artificial VR tails adding to the power he felt IRL in his physical one, through the spine and into his right hand, leaving as bluish light, turning green when it hit her. Sure he'd need to follow up with some proper healing, already starting the timer on a big heal as soon as he saw the GCD end, but they were doing good so far. Low output fight despite the initial challenge thus far<

When the faerie fire hit her, Shenzi let out her cackling warcry for a second time and immediately dropped to the floor, tucking into a ball that got her paws set and gave her extra leverage. She burst out of the cluster of vigorously bleeding hobgoblins at a full sprint with Mr. Wiggles right on her heels. It made her a clear target for the two remaining goblin archers, but that only helped buff her damage further. The shaman's stare of wide-eyed shock was gratifying as she launched herself at it, burying her daggers in its face to blind it. Rather than finish it off, she rammed it into the wall and rebounded back towards the hobgoblins.

Without the area healing, and with their movement impaired by all the bleeds, she had some time. She did a quick round of them to refresh her debuffs and deal a little bit of extra damage, then dashed back towards the far side of the room, beneath the first archer platform. Mr. Wiggles wove amongst them to keep its own bleeds going while Shenzi unslung her bow and began launching arrows back towards the archers on the second platform. Her focus was on close combat rather than ranged, but with no support of their own, they were frail enough to take out before the bruisers caught up to her. They were down to half health and dropping without their healing support, which would have to get back into range even after the shaman healed itself. And foxy wasn't doing a bad job, either.

>And with one sleeping and the other somewhat indisposed, this turned the encounter into a kiting fest. Shenzi would be able to stay ahead of the bruisers as long as the bleeds kept up, negating their threat, and as long as the sleep didn't drop they'd go down soon enough. So that made it time to deal with the ranged. Quick hotkey to target Shenzi's target, then the censures started. Not as big as the DoT he'd put on the bruiser to start, but it was a slow for their actions, and a little extra damage. As long as Shenzi was kiting, he could afford to spend the time to channel some additional damage - even better that it still added a little healing for the gnoll. And that'd uncomplicate the encounter when...

Last one down. That left just the bruisers which weren't too tough to deal with. Just about not spiking too far, and not getting too zealous with the damage. That was what she was here for, after all.<

The hyena felt like her grin was going to break her helmet it was so wide. The holy magic lacing her arrows was just what she needed to really punch the last two archers in the dick. Just in time for the hobgoblins to reach her again as the movement-impairing debuffs ran out. She gave them all another round, counting off ten seconds before dashing across the room a second time. The blinded goblin shaman was just regaining its eyesight. She decided that they must have players behind the controls for the mobs, because the expression when it blinked its eyes open to see her right in front of it was extremely gratifying. She slammed into it again, driving her daggers into its chest and unleashed the full force of her bloodrage on the shaman alone. A thousand cuts, and all just for him.

With the second shaman still sleeping, she got all of her sneak attack bonuses when she pounced it as well. It more or less evaporated into a red mist, and she cackled once more reveling in the gory result. No support, no healing, no distractions, no hope. The hobgoblins were down less than a minute later, and she stood panting in the center of the room with Mr. Wiggles happily rubbing against her legs. Eight minutes total for the first room was pretty damn good, if she said so herself, though she would have been dead ten times over without the kitsune. Maybe he belonged in the top hundred after all. And she mentally smacked herself for having criticized his unusual mix of class, race, and build, even if it had only been in her own thoughts. She wasn't exactly built to normal specs herself.

"Hey, good job," she told him. "Just gimme a minute to catch my breath, and we'll take the second room."

>"Sounds good. Minute's enough time for a MB anyway."

He looked at his stuff, and topped himself off to keep the tail chain going. That was what was beautiful about his race/class combination - sure the next few encounters would get more complicated, but the both of them were about management, just keeping going. So as long as they weren't out of action for too long, he could just keep both the kitsune and holy combos going. And with Shenzi taking as much damage as she did, that gave him an excuse to keep casting small, low impact spells to do both.

"Seems they haven't upped the difficulty by too much yet, have they? Not a beginner run, but can't be much higher than a +25 yet, right?"<

"Ey, don't fucking jinx us, puto," the gnoll warned, though she chuckled to take any sting out of it.

In the meanwhile, she began jogging in place and huffing in air once more, getting herself ready for a second round. She sent Mr. Wiggles to loot the corpses using its thief ability, which garnered a few minute health potions that might come in handy for the next fight. Inching towards the room's exit, she took stock of what they were up against. She paused in her exercise when she caught sight of them.

"Dios mio, they ain't fuckin' around!" She gestured frantically for the fox to join her. "Four mages, two clerics, and I bet they got an assassin or two in there that we don't see. That's a lot of crowd control, miho." Pausing, she cracked her knuckles and considered the situation.

"Okay, I'm open for suggestions, but this is what I'm thinking. Still got twenty minutes on my Vanish cd, but if I sap one of the mages, it'll be out of the fight for two minutes. If you sleep the other, that should give me time to hit the clerics. We're gonna need to eliminate the healing first, I think. If there's assassins, then I'll deal with that next. Oh! Can you see any? If you faerie fire as soon as I sap, then I should be able to cut 'em up good."

>He took a second to look into the room and sure enough, she was right. Never underestimate the power of extra stealth detection.

"Yeah, looks like that's the addition here. Two of them, roaming, helix pathing. Second's out by the east mage at the moment. Think if we pull in ten we can get the regulars out without pulling them along too. I've got dispels and interrupts for the mages, though. Can't go down a party member or two."<

"Aight, how's this?" The gnoll pulled out her bow and moved several paces back into the room. "I'ma aim straight down the middle. You tell me when to loose, and we'll hope for the best, eh? If I don't tag one, we'll go for the sap/sleep, and if it does work, we just made our job easier. Sound like a plan?"

>"Sounds like a plan."

He braced as she notched the arrow, waiting to see the path the assassin was going on. Slight delay in the cycle between the two of them, that was good - meant there was no window to pull both at once... ... But didn't do anything about his own problems.

"Now!"

What he saw was the assassins both being out of frame, but of course that was clientside. Server side, he was two seconds out, and while that let the assassin he was focused on go behind them all to continue his patrol, it meant that the other had enough time to enter the radius of the rest of the pack, getting pulled alongside them.

"Shit! Shit! Backup strat, sleeping the assassin!"<

"Fuuuuuuuuuck," Shenzi hissed. Darting forward, she snatched the two bear traps from the fox's belt and set them almost at the same time as tossing them out to slide through the doorway. Hopefully they'd get at least one of the assassins, but anything that kept down the numbers would be useful. She bounced off of the frame and moved to the right, taking a few paces down the wall so as to cut line of sight. They knew she was there, but any trapped allies would be unable to assist them. Hopefully. She heard the sharp snaps as the traps did their work and tucked her main daggers into her mouth as she drew out a handful of throwing knives. As soon as the first ugly, green head came through the arch, she was throwing. There weren't any hobgoblins in this group, so she aimed for waist height on a human, trying to hit eyes but happy enough to get a little blood flowing whether her aim was dead on or not. The robed figures spread out, making a fan to give each other room as they began to cast, and she was momentarily confused.

Had she managed to catch both assassins in the traps? But, no, they should have at least one escape each, which meant... One of her throwing knives hit something invisible, which blurred into a cursing goblin in hooded leathers, clutching at its cheek. With a wild cackle, Shenzi took hold of her daggers and dived at the assassin, sending Mr. Wiggles to fuck with the mages. The ferret only had one interrupt, but the bleeds and nips would increase the cast time on their spells. Hopefully the fox would help keep them from locking her in place.

>Oh hell.

He'd seen one of them getting pulled with the lag-spiked arrow, but hadn't expected the other to be pulled from the knife barrage. That complicated the encounter - he could heal Shenzi through the mages, but the assassins were trickier. They were pretty much players, having the combo output of a rogue, and way too much disruption, the sort of thing a 3-5 group would have no problem with, but a duo team - even one with a Mr Wiggles contributing - would have more problem with. And that was if the second person had armour. Shenzi, however, did not.

He scoped out the immediate threats. One assassin slept - thank god. One of the traps had missed, but it was still there - a kite would fix that - while the other had a mage. Not ideal but still reduced the output they were dealing with. That left one assassin as the biggest dps/disruption threat, and all the other bullcrap going on. So his position was obvious, running into the room, making his way to where he saw Shenzi's other trap was.

"Hey, ugly!" He activated his taunt, picking out the other assassin. "Come get some!"<

The hyena saw the fox suddenly dart into the room with a verbal taunt as she was in the air, and she realized what was happening when the goblin she was targeting turned to run after him almost immediately. She always forgot that support paladins still had a taunt! She tucked and rolled, hitting the floor with her shoulders and came up with her bow, daggers left on the ground behind her. Two quick shots, tagging two of the mages in the throat for a temporary silence, and she tossed the bow, bent for her daggers, then threw herself into high gear. As she hit the cluster of mages, she glanced through the doorway to check on the fox. He was up and not being made into fox tartare, which was the only important thing at the moment.

She put everything she had into cutting down the mages before they could layer crowd control on her, keeping an eye on Mr. Wiggles' cooldowns so that she could trigger the interrupt the very second it came back up. Then came a sudden moment of inspiration. The mobs were moving, for the most part, as mobs were supposed to. There was some obvious extra intelligence put into them, which might just be an improved AI for the tournament, or it might be actual player control. She slashed at the goblins' eyes to get herself a second to breathe, backed up a step, then put everything she had into a kick that hit it between the legs and sent it halfway to the ceiling.

>C'mon c'mon c'mon, hit it, hit it...

The assassin hit him, a pretty painful bleed, but that's when the trap triggered - easier to break than his sleep, but fortunately there was no reason for anyone to melee over here and as long as the knives were pointed elsewhere, he'd be staying put till they were ready for him and his kin. But that bleed was a nasty one - he could see his interface wavering, bars not as constant as they were meant to be. It wasn't really inflicting much damage, but if he was already having problems syncing with the servers, not having correct info, too, would only make things worse.

So the approach was mitigation - don't know 100% what's happening, you play conservatively. He lined up a large heal for Shenzi, then immediately chained an interrupt for his closest mage - it'd lock them out of casting even if they weren't in the middle of something, and a mage relying on melee damage was a pushover. There were no telltale signs of CC on Shenzi yet, so the cleanse wasn't needed, but... Again, unpleasant. His HP was falling - he might have pulled a second by mistake, but all that meant was that damage was getting distributed between them, still better than one person taking the full brunt. He prepared a second big heal... for Shenzi, knowing that the spillover would get distributed anyway.

C'mon internet, stop fucking me here and hit her up<

"Ah, fuck," Shenzi said as the slow from the airborne mage hit her.

It had been worth a shot, but if they had players behind the mobs, it was only for ability cycling and without full input. Oh well. She checked on the fox and had her first really bad hit. Not a physical one, but a mental one. His avatar was twitching and flickering, jumping spastically between two places about a foot apart. Lag. Fucking wonderful. But the heal hit her anyways, which was good. If he had to deal with it on a regular basis, she would just have to trust that he knew how to handle it. And he must to be ranked so highly.

So, she ignored the juddering kitsune avatar and turned her attention to pushing her limbs through cold molasses so that she could shank the remaining mages to death. They didn't have a lot of hit points, but the amount of debuffs that they could lay on was problematic. On the plus side, they should drop some potions that would let her escape further crowd control once they cleared the group. When Mr. Wiggles climbed up onto her shoulder, she opened her mouth to accept the small health potion that he shoved in, chomping it glass and all. The ferret launched back at the mage that was closest to spell completion, and Shenzi managed to get in a pair of good slashes before she was slowed a second time. Hopefully the fox would catch up, or his connection would improve, so that he could clear the debuffs soon.

>Two seconds out from the lag, one second out from the bleed. So an entire cooldown period behind everyone else in the room. And nothing he could do about the former in game - he'd have to rely on Bri sorting whatever was going wrong out there, hoping she could see from his output that he was still in combat.

That left him checking... debuffs, during the time, debuffs he could see hitting the gnoll in front of him. Ten seconds apiece, but stacking those made them atrocious, especially in a build that needed to inflict damage to make up for the damage it was taking. Easy cleanse there, but that still left him vulnerable, as he waited for his own debuff to go down. There was little point to him trying to contribute melee DPS to the situation - hard to hit something that can see you coming - so his focus continued to be on off-sync healing. He saw the pet helping on that side - god bless an extra 50% actions from that build choice - but still pumped another big heal into Shenzi, before looking and seeing...

The problem with a synergy build on a laggy interface was that when you missed your cycle, you missed it hard. He was already on five stacks for the faerie fire, everything else he was doing was just wasting additional stacks. So he waited for GCD again to use it again, the steady stream that a lagfree use would bring being replaced by a rather less soothing staggered release, feeling like pulsing bruises leading up his back. But the effect was what he needed, just a little bit less to deal with until his lagspike died down.<

Bradley got a sudden hard tap against the back of his VR helmet and things sped up around him for several seconds, like being fast forwarded in real life, jolting him back to the present. Brianne must have handled the lag spike, probably an automatic download that one of them had forgotten to disable. Thankfully, she had been quick about it, though the skip would disrupt him for a few seconds anyways as he tried to catch up with the current situation.

Shenzi let out her cackling cry again and found her dagger burying itself in the goblin mage with far more speed than she'd expected. The cleanse had finally come through. She popped her own cooldowns, interrupting all three mages, and focused her entire attention on the one that she'd kicked. She needed to even the playing field while the fox dealt with his connection issues, or they were definitely not going to get through this fast enough to make the cut. It was going to be difficult regardless, but being slowed to near immobility was severely cutting into her damage output, and her own debuffs were starting to drop in the interim. Thankfully, her focused attention, along with help from Mr. Wiggles, brought down the first mage. She turned back to the other two and started her cycle again just as one of them was nearing spell completion.

>Boom, Bri, you beauty.

He popped back in just in time to see the bar on a mage nearly complete for a satisfying interrupt, stunning them, and running in to contribute towards the dps. It was always amazing experiencing the difference between a good and bad connection, it was like peering into the matrix right afterwards. Batching turned to seeing abilities progress almost like microseconds - stun on the mage, a solid hit to the stomach to knock back another cast time. Any earlier and they could have gone back onto Plan A, but with so few mages left to hit down it was almost down to a hybrid - two clerics but only one target meant it was easier to finish off the mages first. So he queued up the big hammer to start falling on one of the clerics, knowing they could switch onto there as soon as the primary remaining enemy disruption/dps was finished with.<

Shenzi let out another whoop, this one just a verbal exclamation rather than a debuff, as she saw the fox snap into place. Oooooh, that was so much better, getting the debuffs cleared as soon as they stacked instead of having to try and fight through them.

She made much shorter work of the remaining mages, took just a second to heave in a breath, then charged towards the clerics who stood near the center of the second room. They'd had line of sight on the mages, which was all they'd needed to heal and buff. Her stacking damage ramp had been enough to overcome it, but taking them down was an absolute necessity before the assassins were taken on. That, and eliminating the last mage. So long as she could get to it while it was still disabled, her sneak attack should make short work of it. For now, though....

She didn't alter course as she ran between the two assassins, letting them slash at her to add their bleed effects to her Bloodlust stack. It wasn't ideal, but she was going to need every edge she could get. The clerics weren't standing quite close enough to engage both at once, but she needed to interrupt both of them from casting their big heals. It was going to be... active. Thankfully, her first interrupt was coming off cooldown, and her other two were getting there. She hit the first cleric with a warcry as she slammed her daggers into it, working on stripping its armor so that she could get the blood flowing rather than doing any immediate damage.

>Bradley was taken a bit back by Shenzi willingly breaking the CC on the assassins, but as soon as he saw the stacks going up, understood why. But as her DPS was going up, so was the damage taken, so he threw up one of his big CDs, upping his cast speed and output - a nice 'oh crap' button to use, and at least now it'd refresh before the next standard big encounter in the dungeon. There was being frugal and then there was being stupid, after all.

This part of the encounter was all about just buff management. He went in for a massive swing with his mace on the cleric Shenzi had done the most damage to, timing it with the last tick of his hammerfall. That paired with the increase to his output was enough to kill it - don't say paladins don't contribute to the kills - and then it was just about managing the three remaining folks who were up. Seeing Shenzi starting to really stack up the bleeds from the assassin attacks, he spent another big CD - one of his blessings, Freedom for this one. Immunities were important, and immunity to debuffs was massive in a goblin themed dungeon, given how much everything mounted up. But twelve seconds was an eternity with how much DPS Shenzi could put out were she unrestricted.<

When the bleeds on her suddenly disappeared, Shenzi knew it was time to pull out the final stops. She gave the cleric a quick stun that would only last a few seconds then rammed a pair of smoke pellets into the assassins. It blinded them and left them stunned and coughing. It gave her some breathing space. She took the opportunity to streak towards the final mage, hoping that she could get there before the last few seconds of its sleep ticked off. She threw herself into a tumble to call up combat stealth and raked upwards with both of her daggers. It was just barely in time.

Its eyes popped open in time to see its own spine eject from its mouth, which was a pretty fucking wonky glitch, but really cool nonetheless. Then she spun around and raced towards the cleric once more. There was no more time for playing around. While the assassins worked on cutting her to ribbons again, her ferret worked on doing the same to them. The cleric had to focus on healing just himself in order to try overcoming her output, and with only one caster to focus on, there was no chance of it ever completing a spell. It went down. That left the assassins, and the worst part of the setup.

But she was prepared for that. She was already stacked up with bleeds, and letting them get further hits on her was only going to make the fox's job harder. She popped Cloakdance from her rogue talents and Shadowmeld from the ranger, doubling her dodge and making her half-incorporeal. Even if their blows did manage to land, there was a high chance for her to pass right through her. And their own damage output was predicated on layering debuffs. Without the ability to continually apply them, it was only a matter of ticking down the seconds while doing her best imitation of a hibachi chef.

>And this is where knowing one's role came in. Sure he'd supplied a lil DPS to enable her to head off onto the next target, but now it was just about pumping healing now she was going full lawnmower on the remaining adds. So that's what he did - heal, heal, debuff, heal, fire, repeat. Enough melee hits to get the fifth stack, then back to support. Slower than ideal, but it would get them through the encounter.<

When the last goblin finally fell, Shenzi was absolutely covered in digital blood and gore, though that faded after a few seconds once the end of combat was registered. She stood with her hands on her knees for several seconds, then stepped forward to clamp both hands on the sides of the fox's head before pulling him into a hard kiss with lots of tongue, holding him for nearly half a minute before pushing him away. She huffed out a long sigh and dropped downward to sit on the floor.

"Fuck that shit... We probably lost points on the sloppy pull, and you had me worried for a little bit, but damn if you didn't pull through. You're good, foxy. Really damn good. You get that connection sorted out, you could jump a few ranks for sure." She glanced towards the rear of the room, and the first closed door that they'd come across. "Wha'cha wanna bet it's worse on the other side?"

>"Dunno. You think they'd code an extra room for qualifiers?" He looked at the door. "Got your stealth up or are we just rushing this?"<

"Oh, hell no, puto. We are taking our sweet-ass time to scope this out."

She shoved herself back upwards with a groan and moved towards the door, checking it over for traps as she pulled out her thieves' tools. The fact that it wasn't locked didn't give her any good vibes, and she was thorough in her examination. There weren't any physical traps, but runes were inscribed on the stone frame surrounding the door. A hard debuff to armor effectiveness and an instant trigger to pull the boss. Nasty. She used her dagger to scratch out the glyphs carved into the cornerstones of the doorway, deactivating the trap, then took a deep breath before cracking it open enough to slip inside. She shut it quietly behind her, leaving the kitsune to wait on her return. Or for a cry for help, whichever came first.

She took about ten minutes to look around before slipping back through the door to explain. "Aight, looks like probably three phases. Kitted out with a sword and shield in heavy armor right now, so probably melee first. There's four magic crystals in the corners, like Jastleheim, so probably he gets shielded while we deal with adds and try to break the crystals. Not sure what the third phase might be, but I'm betting there is one. Standard procedure. Just hoping there aren't four. First one's gonna be tough. Think you can keep me alive while I strip his armor? I'm not gonna be able to start my stacks until I can hit flesh."

>Glad we've got a rogue in here. Not used to thinking about traps.

"I can keep you up phase one. To be fair, if we're just gonna be chipping that phase, it gives my cooldowns time to come back. Wanna just hope phase 3 is just a race and burn him down?"<

"Once we get through two, I plan on burning all my cooldowns to max my bleeds and burn him down as fast as possible. Even the long timers should be up by then. When I pop my Bloodlust, just go loco on him, k? Don't worry about healing until the temp hp wears off. If he lasts that long, we're probably gonna be in trouble anyways. We're still under an hour, so we should make the cut so long as he's not built with, like, a resistance to everything but arcane spells..." She glanced back towards the door and groaned. "Fuck, I bet they did that... Well. If they did, we're fucked anyways. So... I guess give us a prayer, padre, and we'll go kick some ass, eh?"

>"Hell yeah, kick some ass."

He checked both their buffs - less than an hour on no deaths meant all the potions, flasks, and blessings should have still been up from the initial pull but you never knew if one could fall off mid fight, which were some GCDs he didn't want to trigger. So it all came down to not screwing up. Going for perfect.

"The pull is yours, then."<

"Okay. Be ready to pass me potions as soon as we hit the third phase. If my temps get knocked off, I wanna run through those while you keep up the DPS before we worry about healing."

With that, she moved back up to the door. As was obviously standard, she began to jog in place and hyperventilate, feeding oxygen to her muscles as she warmed them up. Mr. Wiggles stood on his hind legs to open the latch, but did not press the heavy wooden door inwards. Instead, he moved over to leap onto her shoulders. As soon as he was onboard, the gnoll turned her in-place run into a forward sprint. Her shoulder hit the door just as she unleashed her debuffing warcry, flinging it open to crash against the wall beside it.

She was throwing knives even as she crossed the room and hit the dark knight boss head first. Instead of immediately trying to attack him, she did something that the programmers probably didn't expect: she grappled his heavy shield. It made it rather awkward for the knight to try and hit her, and she was able to drag him around a bit as she tried to wrestle the heavy chunk of metal off of his arm at the same time, throwing him off balance. Mr. Wiggles leapt off her shoulders once she had a firm hold and began clawing at the boss's helmeted head, effectively blinding him while attempting to dislodge the protective helmet.

>Right, can't deal much damage yet, job is keep up and debuff...

Shenzi was doing a good job keeping the big guy occupied - in larger groups, it'd be inconsequential for the DPS to keep chipping in while the tank just absorbed hits but here, she was required to do both jobs at once and, well, why not take advantage of real contact in VR, rather than the approximated systems of live games. Sure she was no barbarian, but a grapple would take both of them out of the game and that always suited the side with extra actions, least until the adds started spawning. So Bradley's job really was as simple as keeping her up against any random damage he was outputting on her.

But there was another side for him - while there was little use to buffing Shenzi beyond his standard aura setup, there was a point to debuffing the boss. Which on five stacks of his racial, he did, the fire burning purple on impact, indicating a successful hit. The boss was immediately more sluggish, the same effects that Shenzi would experience being reversed for him. Not wanting to stray away from the crystals so he could get on them as soon as the phase changed, this was what he did for the encounter. Big heal, chip in with holy damage from afar, smaller heal, smaller heal, damage, debuff. It was a simple cycle, as long as nothing changed. After all, the boss was also simple - it was the 2nd and 3rd phases that really complicated thingsl.<

"Ha-HA, bitch boy!" the hyena crowed as soon as the slow hit the boss. "Now you know how it feels!"

The biggest benefit of the slow was that the knight couldn't keep up with her as well, which in turn meant that she could get better leverage to wrestle the shield away from him. She managed to wrench his arm behind his back, her own pressed against his armored backside, and used one of her daggers to cut the leather straps that held the shield to his arm. She tossed it, then took a hard hit from his longsword when he whirled around. Then she got hit in the face by a combination of tuberat and helmet. It rang her bell for a moment, and she couldn't help but laugh. The boss, at the very least, definitely had a player behind the wheel.

She let out her warcry again before leaping to meet the knight, its face a grotesque mixture of lizardman and wolffolk. She dug her daggers into his shoulders while wrapping her legs around his waist, and the look of confusion was priceless until he realized that she was working her blades through the chinks in his plate to pry it loose. Then he started punching and pushing at her. Armored gauntlets weren't very pleasant against her ribs and stomach, though she managed to tuck her head and take it on the skull when he tried to smack her in the face with his sword pommel. That also lost her an ear when his jaws snapped closed on it, but that was a very small price to pay for not getting stunned or having her face chewed off. She had very nearly cut through the leather straps that held the front and back of the plate armor together when he suddenly got inspired. He grabbed her hips and gave a short hop, probably the best he could manage, falling forward at the same time.

"Oh fuck," she hissed, cringing at the pain that was about to come her way, but she didn't let him go.

Instead, she took the body slam with his full weight atop her. Endless hours wrestling with her much larger siblings came in mighty handy sometimes.

>Shit, Shenzi's fully pinned!

Stuns didn't usually work against bosses, but he could see that she was almost done exposing the guy. She just needed a chance to get an extra hit or two to the back, and the bulk of his armour would be done with, leaving him open to body shots and letting her actually start applying some proper DPS to him. The choice was obvious, then. Since the helm was off, he started up his big hammer, then applied his taunt to the boss. No time for RP and flavour text, he needed to breathe and focus on not getting wrecked by this guy - he was already angry, but he had enough protection magic to weather that.

"Protection!"

He felt the holy magic emanate, a second ring of armour to protect against what the boss was gonna throw at him. He readied a heal for right after the first hit would come in.<

"Oh, you little shit," the wolf-lizard growled as his head was yanked towards the fox.

Shenzi simply laughed again as the boss pushed himself back upright and began heading for the paladin, sword raised for a strike. She was winded, and if not for the fact that she was in a simulation, she could have sworn that several of her ribs were cracked at the very least. He swung for the kitsune paladin just as she felt the straps that held his armor on snap, and she was suddenly thrown back as light flooded the room. She hit the fox, bowling him over as she tumbled, and quickly gathered herself to brace against a strike before realizing that the bare-chested lizard-wolf was standing there, looking pissed but impressed, with his arms crossed over his chest.

And goblins were flooding into the room, three from each of the small entrances on the remaining walls aside from the one they'd come in through. And the fox was their target since he'd had the boss's attention last before the magical shield came up.

"Ah, fuck, gimme thirty seconds before you do anything," she commanded, sending Mr. Wiggles to nip at the green-skinned humanoids' heels while she stood ready over the fox.

Then she was in her element, a whirling blender that kicked up sheets of blood, slicking the floor with red as she quickly built enough damage to steal aggro, but she kept herself in place for the full thirty seconds before bulling her way forward to let the fox up. She wanted to make damned sure he wouldn't creep up on her aggro with his spells.

>... A hit that never came, followed by a throw he wasn't expecting.

He winced from Shenzi hitting him, getting knocked back... hardly great when you were the aggro target for a band of curbstomp hungry goblins. The number of goblins you'd normally get in a five player encounter, so the game wasn't playing around. Thank god that as heavy as she was, she was also an absolute lawnmower when she got going. Though he now felt bad about wasting the protection spell, even if it had soaked up some of the blunt damage from her hitting him. Still, they were still receiving healing from the tick damage on the boss, still advancing that counter, so he got back to supporting.

She needed an unbroken chain of hits to start getting going, whereas he was just keeping on quite happily. And with this many adds, breaking either of their cycles would be game over, no qualification. He couldn't afford that.<

Shenzi began shuffling slowly towards the first crystal as an unexpected crit chain managed to eviscerate one of the goblins. Unfortunately, as soon as it died, two more came running into the room from the spawn portal.

"Oh fuck! Move, move, move!" she cried.

Temporarily abandoning her combat cycle, she broke free of the group and ran towards the crystal, bracing herself just beside its podium to catch the goblins rushing after her. That was just cheating, the bastardos. Hydra-spawning adds were for raids, damnit!

Instead of laying the burden of breaking the crystals entirely on the fox, she set about doing as much work as she could on them while keeping her bleeds up on the adds. With her Bloodlust ramping her damage, so long as she kept most of her attention on the magical foci, it should be quick. The real problem came after the first crystal shattered. Each of the spawn portals spat out an additional goblin.

"Uh... uh-oh... Fuck. Foxy, take some of these guys out of the fight!"

She broke free of the group again and reset the two traps they had available on the run, tossing them behind her. This was going to be far more of a challenge than she had expected, but she had absolutely no intention of failing to some cheating-ass dungeon designer's fuckery.

>He saw the extra spawn. Oh. That ramped it up. Definitely, definitely a burn phase afterwards.

After all, the criteria for a clear was killing the boss, not leaving afterwards - an objective probably worded just for this scenario. And since the crystals were damage based, rather than just being a quick "Interact/Push" feature, Shenzi was still the best choice for taking them out, whereas in the standard form of the encounter - with no hydra mechanic on the adds - he could at least contribute when the adds were swinging on the low side. Ah well, busted mechanic meant it was time for exploits.

Shenzi couldn't get to the crystals if she was having to hit up the adds. Immunities would break the aggro list, and the adds would ignore non-tank specced pets, so their next target would be.... him. God dammit.

His protection spell still had a half minute where it'd be active, and paladins were meant to be off-roles anyway, but this would be painful. So he channeled his big blessing on Shenzi, and the effect was immediate. The next attack from a goblin bounced off the radiant light, almost hitting a comrade beside it, and looking at her debuffs, she was down to just magical effects and bleeds - he could deal with the first as soon as the crystals were done with, the second she'd just have to shrug off. His problem became switching from single target healing to multi targets - soon as the immunity fell off, she'd be getting the aggro of the adds and the boss back, and they needed to both be as close to full as possible before that happened.

For each hit that his armour deflected - praise be to raid-prep level plate - he felt another hit him true, and that had problems. Fortunately no slows - these were still only standard goblins, these were just wounds, the damage was mental, taking advantage of the system relaying harm as though it were real rather than causing legit debuffs - though each third hit that got through was applying a literal bleed as well. So he got to parrying - he didn't need to deal damage, just keep them occupied and keep healing until Shenzi was done progressing the encounter.<

The gnoll put everything she had into breaking the crystals as fast as possible. With the fox handling a few of them, it was enough to keep her from getting overwhelmed while she wailed on the rocks, downing a health potion as soon as she had the space on her health bar to accommodate it. That took some pressure off of the kitsune to mind his own health, and she used throwing knives to tag the third set of adds as soon as they appeared.

Hitting the third crystal, she decided that it was time to blow a cooldown. It took all of her remaining smoke bombs, but she wasn't intending on doing any more stealth. She stuffed the packet under the third crystal and headed immediately to the fourth. About the same time as she began wailing on the final rock, the one behind her was obliterated in a sudden explosion. That would have been nice to stuff down the boss's throat, but they had to get to a point where stuffing anything down his throat was even possible. A glance showed him bracing to charge as soon as the shield was down. With a grin, Shenzi moved herself behind the pedestal, blocking his line of sight. That would only buy her a few seconds, but a few seconds was all she needed.

The crystal began to crack, and she began huffing in fast, hard breaths again. The next little bit was going to be... fun. And chaotic. And violent. The magical rock only had a hitpoint or two left on it when she broke from behind the pedastal and raced towards the fox, throwing knives darting ahead of her to stab into his adds. More goblins trailed behind her, slowed by their bleeds but catching up quickly. A few slashes gathered up those on the kitsune before she flung a last dagger towards the final crystal while diving behind the pedestal that had held the first.

>Behind the red glow on his UI indicating his health falling faster than intended, Bradley tracked the progress of the crystals, assuming the same knockback would be in play on the second phase transition. He started backing towards the fourth pedestal, seeing that Shenzi was heading for the first - no matter which of them the boss tagged up first, they wouldn't be screwed by both getting knocked into the same spot or worse, dazed by the knockback and then charged into the wall, kind of asking for a two shot wipe. He appreciated Shenzi taking the aggro for the goblins - it played far more into her playstyle for her to get hit, he got no benefits from it - and started chaining up cooldowns for the start of what they hoped was the last phase. They needed to get this down fast, and they needed the freedom to do so.

Again, no benefit for clearing mobs - Shenzi would do that off incidental damage off cleaves or just blade placement anyway, they were purely there as chain relief.<

The shield went down with no other fanfare than the lack of light. Then a chilling roar filled the room as the boss came chugging across the intervening space towards Shenzi. He was very definitely pissed at her, and she just hoped that the fox hadn't tripped on his way to the other pedestal. That would give away the trick!

She counted two seconds, then popped out from behind the short pillar to give the charging wolf-lizard the finger and laugh at him. He roared again and kept on coming. He hit the rope she had stretched between the two pedestals without ever noticing it. Shenzi hit her Adrenaline Rush as his expression turned from one of rage to shock and watched the world slow down. She consumed her Bloodlust stacks, activating the temporary hit points and the whole reason that Gnolls were usually barbarians. Then she popped Fan of Blades, and flung out the last few throwing knives, watching as each one duplicated itself a dozen times before hitting their targets, stacking fresh bleeds on top of the ones caused by her basic attacks. Then came the real fun.

To the kitsune, it would appear that she was moving in fast forward, and he likely never figured out how her daggers became shortswords. Her Ranger specialization allowed her to treat any weapon as one size larger in the presence of her favored enemies, and she threw in a Bestial Rage on Mr. Wiggles. The dire ferret doubled in size, its eyes glowing blood red, slaver drooling from its fangs. She stuffed a meaty pet treat into the wolf-lizard's mouth as he was still in the process of falling, and let out another cackle as her companion leapt to try and claw it out, shredding the boss's face in the process. And while her favored enemy bonus didn't count against this asshole specifically, she used her other ranger abilities to hamstring him, slice his wrists to disable his weapon abilities, and then laid into him with every ounce of energy she had. If the fox had thought she was a blender before...

>Wow. As soon as the green of his healing was done getting him close enough to full, the amount of red on the screen... it made him assume there was a visual bug - not unusual if they were focused on broadcast or encounter stability over player stability, maybe. Blender, lawnmower, he wasn't sure where the next step up was, but that was what Shenzi's damage output was emulating.

Almost makes me want to roll her build up next season, see what's ticking on the damage side of things, if we get the money to get this setup up to spec...

A rope acting like garotte wire, daggers clearly doing more than daggers, depleted stacks, and a bar heading south fast. He blew his own cooldowns - time for nova phase, full force, and went full attack combo. Swipe, instant speed holy power, swipe, channel a spell to take advantage of his own combos, swipe, faerie fire on Shenzi this time - fast to faster, take advantage of no system limit. If she could physically handle the speed, she'd be acting four times for each of his actions, that was exactly what they needed. Exploits at their finest. But that's what duos needed.<

The hyena let out a warcry cackle that sounded more like a banshee shriek to the fox at her current speed. In the ten seconds that it took for the boss to hit the ground and her haste buff to run out, she had done as much damage to him as would normally occur in a minute or more. Half his health was gone before her implied perceptions sped back up and resynchronized with the kitsune's. If only they'd had a mage to give her another dose of haste, she probably could have shredded the lizard-wolf before he even hit the ground! But he was disabled and helpless with the gnoll on his back and a gigantic ferret trying to crawl down his throat. Even as more than twenty goblins began tearing her own health apart, despite the paladin's healing and her own use of health potions. The boss was going down, and she kept her eyes very carefully on his percentage, waiting for the critical moment.

Fifteen percent. First, a finishing move from the rogue tree that consumed all of her bleed effects. All of them. The goblins looked like the end of a samurai fight, suddenly freezing before they began to plop against the floor in various pieces. The additional goblins that spawned didn't matter; they'd take time to reach her.

Ten percent. A disabled foe gave a ranger the ability to coup de grace, and she slammed both of her sword-sized daggers into his shoulders, chunking yet another large portion of his health bar.

Five percent. She had only one cooldown left, and it was one that she hated to use, but this was the time to do it if there ever was one. Frenzy. The enlarged ferret, its face stuffed into the boss's mouth, its claws having already peeled half the lizard-wolf's flesh from its skull, went even more crazy. The boss died messily as the goblins reached them, and Mr. Wiggles died almost immediately after from a heart attack. But Shenzi let out a sigh of relief, accepting the pain that followed, both physical and emotional.

They had made time.

>They had made time. They had made time.

He could hear the fanfare in his head, and waited to see the final timing, to see if his ranking had gone up. Again, Shenzi had already qualified so he hardly expected her to have the same sort of reaction he was having to this - she was clearly still waiting out the mental effects all these cooldowns had on the player, given the psychological element to bloodlust based effects. Besides, there was an awful lot of adrenaline going on.

There was no point healing up - there were no encounters, the goblins were scattering, despawning with the end of the encounter or scurrying when their boss was taken out. Neither of them were dead, that was a good start, that always looked good for qualifying runs. So he looked in his inventory - still in the tournament gear, but with the encounter cleared and the dungeon done, he had access to his standard inventory again, and with that came feasts, proper food, proper items. He decided to give her a bit of time to think about it, get down from the highs of combat, and just waited. What did this mean for him?<

The dungeon faded back into the blank preparation room, and Sheni flopped onto her back with a soft sob, gritting her teeth and curling her hands into fists. She completely ignored the giant "Congratulations!" that appeared in the center of the room, the fanfare, the confetti. Mr. Wiggles wasn't real, but... It felt like betrayal to sacrifice him just for better dps. It had been utterly necessary; if the boss had been given even the slightest chance to recover, he would probably have completely wrecked them. Yet if she had been there alone, she would have let herself die instead. She hadn't been alone, though.

Pushing herself back up, she wiped at her eyes and tried to keep the hitch out of her voice, holding her hand out towards the kitsune.

"Grats on qual. Name's Shenzi, by the way. In case you hadn't noticed. And, yeah, the original. You?"

>"B-Bradley." Wait, did she mean screen-name? Oh who cares, they'd all be going by chosen names offline anyway. "Yeah, Bradley. And, erm, yeah, I saw. Saw you on the first qualifiers of the season." He looked at the hand, in some amount of disbelief.

"We qualified? I qualified? But... you carried me a bit there."<

"Heh, well, that's what I built for," she said with a self-deprecating shrug. "Glass cannon and all. So, you wanna celebrate? I need something to take my mind off of Mr. Wiggles the Sixth." She heaved a soft sigh.

"Y'know, he was only the second one I frenzied. The rest of them died of old age..."

Even as she spoke, her fingers were working at her leathers, undoing ties and toggles, peeling it away from her fur to leave herself bare. She'd gone to the expense of custom colorization, matching her natural fur patterning, though the avatar was more along the size of her sister than herself.

>"Oh! Oh, erm..." He saw her starting to strip, immediately feeling more rigid in his armour - not as easy to remove for most but... "Ohhhh..."

It wasn't often that you had a half naked - increasingly fully naked - gnoll warrior in front of you, even as a virtuous and honorable paladin, famed across... drop the RP, as a down on his luck fox, exploring VR RPGs as a way out of IRL issues. Shenzi was so many of the things he wasn't used to, didn't really feel up to, it looked like. Muscular, firm, forward, unafraid to just put herself out there. But he was spoken for, he had someone outside of here - literally right outside of here - who'd be looking at him. And he knew he did things for money, they both did, but this wasn't money, there was no reasons for this. This was just for... relief. Relieving everything.

But he could feel his sister through the latex, through the harness. She was on his face, and on his crotch. And there was a message in his personal chat, from outside the VR application.

Go for it. You've earned it.<

She saw him stiffen, caught his moment of realization, and double-checked his profile. He was adult-content-enabled. Though, admittedly, the preparation environment was still technically under public scrutiny. She stopped stripping to pull up her interface and sent him a friend request.

"Join me at my place? If you want. Hey, we can just chill together. Just don't expect me to keep wearing clothes when I don't have to, eh? I got others who will be plenty willing to help me out, but I do wanna talk. You definitely earned your rank. And I can introduce you to some folks. Maybe get you a sponsorship. Maybe."

She was babbling, thrown off by his silent yet visible discomfort with her offer. Though, she had to admit that the second offer was legitimate. She knew people who could use his skill. She just wanted something to fuck to wipe away the taste of her traitorous actions at that moment.

>A second message, this one a request, one he accepted before he heard the audio alongside it. Look, you didn't refuse requests from people higher ranked than you - if this was just a quick indulgence, she could have easily left with a quick comment and a feigned DC, she was interested in something, and that meant accepting and seeing what that was.

But then he did register the comment. Chill. Together. Something about clothes.

And he'd already had the blessing, and felt the weight lift from his crotch, but something still registered on his face. That was a promise for later too, he suspected. He pulled out a teleport crystal from his regular inventory, hoping she wouldn't catch the shaking hand as things pieced together in his head. Qualification, friend requests, sponsorships, introductions. Help. Someone wanted to help him, help them. And they were talking about it before the catch, but what catch?

He felt like he hadn't contributed, but here someone was saying he had, he'd earned it, he'd earned it. Bri wouldn't mind, she had to know it meant nothing to him. It was just something that was expected at higher ranks - the talk of the hotels back when events were full in person, analog based, said everything about that. So of course...

"S-sure! I've got a few of these spare, gimme the coordinates, the server! We can meet and greet! Definitely!"<

Instead of offering him the coordinates, she opened her inventory and pulled a medallion from it instead. It was keyed to her personal sanctum, a place that only she and those she specified could access. In most cases, an invitation was enough, and she could always boot the player when she was done with them, their access revoked as soon as she had gotten her rocks off. Instead, she tossed the amulet to the fox, transferring ownership. Giving him his very own key that could never be revoked, only returned if and when he decided he no longer wanted to go there. Then she pulled out her own and hung it around her neck.

"See you in a sex, zorro. Sec! Second. Fuck me... I... shit..."

She slapped a hand across her face with a heavy sigh and activated the medallion, vanishing in a quick glimmer of magic. She arrived on the teleport pad at her sanctum and immediately flopped forward onto the mattress that lay directly in front of it, growling at her stupid mouth and the disconnect between it and her brain.

>Oh she definitely just said sex.

His brain yelled at him. No pretence at all there, jesus. So he went straight to the adult content SAVIOUR for plate wearers in NSFW scenarios, the auto unequip. He could blow the teleport crystal on an AoE port to his own safe spot, then get right back to... the personal sanctum. In nothing but casual clothing. Well, in for a penny... He activated her medallion, entering the teleport pad in a more relaxed, well on edge but not as frustrated he assumed, posture than the gnoll had left in. It was nice to see someone else feeling less than 100% comfortable.

"Err, knock knock?"<

Shenzi's head shot up when she heard the wind chime jingle of the teleporter, and she rolled over to prop herself up on her elbows, surprised. Oh, right, she'd offered him a talk regarding some future-making contacts and such. She hastily pulled the front of her armor back up as he loaded in.

Her sanctum was more of a dojo than anything else, lots of training dummies, punching bags, that kind of thing. The floor was all padded, with several places piled with cushions, and a few different mattresses laid about. And, of course, there was plenty of bondage gear and sex paraphernalia lying about as well. Well, he was gonna get whatever ideas he got.

"Hey, welcome to mi casa. It ain't much, but make yourself at home. Uh..." She glanced down at herself, felt stupid, and dropped the armor again before starting to peel the rest of the way out of it. "I did say not to expect me to wear clothes at home, eh? But, don't worry about fucking if you don't wanna. I ain't about that kinda shit. I offered you some contacts, and that was genuine. Just wanted to clear a few things up first."

>He didn't really see any seats, anything really raised outside of the mattress she was already in the business of taking up, but the padding implied most of the place was good to sit on - really looked prime for being thrown on, really, which given the rest of the gear strewn around her personal sanctum implied that was totally on the menu, if things went that way. A person's sanctum, if you could afford to get one, always reflected the intent of the owner. He had never really bothered getting one, going home to home or group to group, surfing other guild establishments, but this one was lived in. He smiled at her, resting on a spot across from her - the place was intimate enough that it would be hard to miss anything, either on her or him, and he was forced to spread out a bit, not having the space to go full cross legged. He was more open than he wanted to be, crotch in clear view, relaxed back, plush.

"Yeah, I heard a lot there, and I didn't want to leave you waiting."<

"So. Bradley, huh?" She stared at him for a long moment before continuing. "How in the fuck are you not on a team? You're top hundred with lag spikes. I saw how you handled that. You're used to it. And you still managed to hit top hundred, even if just barely."

>"Err... hmm..." He sometimes wondered that himself, honestly. "My guilds never really, err, see it that way. Like, I'm used to internet problems, delays. It's why I played this game, y'know? Spell batching, a bit of hit scan... you get benefits in PvP from being able to respond in real time like... man, the way you grappled that guy..."

He could tell he was fangirling, going from unsure to starting to signal things, act out what she'd done with his hands. "You were awesome! You were awesome because you were great with the system stuff, and you were great with the stuff you need real experience in! But I could never do that... You go for a punch and the guy's gone, you lose the input. And that's all my previous guild, team, group leaders were seeing, I think? I was the easy cut. Why take a healer who can only play half the game?"

He looked down at the plush flooring. "But that's what I'm trying to fix here. You can't get better there without getting better here, more budget, more time, more ability. You need the time to improve, the time to build, the time to learn how other people do it. The time to show that you learned something, not just getting thrown out because there's no results." He looked back up at her. "And that's what this qualification gives me. Doesn't matter that it's the last one. I'm in the mix, I'm there. And people have to give me the time now, the time to show what I'm doing, what I will do."<

Shenzi listened to him then nodded her understanding. "Okay."

She slapped her hands against her thighs, then sat up properly, resting her arms atop knees. She knew that it made her naughty bits even more visible to him, but that wasn't what she was focused on at the moment.

"So, lemme tell you something, vato. Whoever you been running with before, they're fucking idiotas. First off, I am not easy to heal. This build? I tuned it over the last five years just for today. Me, I can't get a healer to bother with me 'cause no one takes me seriously that I can tank like this. Had to get my sister to help, and even she thinks I'm loco for trying it. But I did it. I pull so much fucking dps that there's not a tank alive can keep aggro off me, even with all their taunts, and healers see the damage on me and go 'ah fucking dps, watch your aggro!' But you, my friend, you kept me alive, just us two through some shit that was obviously set up to give a five-man trouble. You got it in you, hermano. So I'm gonna give you a bit of a signal boost, aight?

"I can't get you on anything for this season, obviously. I might be able to squeak you a bench seat, but that's iffy at best. However, I am going to make absolutely certain that you have a placement next season. I got some favors I can call in. That won't do much for your connection issues right now, but..." She shrugged and gestured around her. "You don't have to start out at the top to get there, eh?"

>He kinda had to take a deep breath already - felt like he'd just talked her head off - and exhaled, feeling a weight off his chest. That was what the whole night was, honestly. One big weight, gone. Sure he now had a tournament to prepare for, but he had something to wait for. And she was offering to help. Sure, not for this one - he'd have to do his own searching, see if anyone had spots clear but, with a limited number allowed, someone would have to have spots clear. And, with her putting his name out there, people would notice. Sure he'd be under their thumb for the tournament - he'd have to say goodbye to some of the personal touches on his build, fall in line to keep in with their tactics - but it was a start, it was time in the spotlight. His job was just to do a good enough job to stay in it.

Having said his piece, he didn't know what else to say, so he just went with, "Thank you."<

"Cool. Now, you wanna fuck or not?"

>He couldn't help but laugh, "Sure, we can fuck. I think we've earned that."<

She grinned, widely and genuinely. "Excelente!"

THE END...