Hwan was deeply disoriented, in both time and space. How long had Natasha been carrying her through the brightly-lit bowels of the internet? Minutes? Hours? Months? It all seemed to blur together, like the packets of data that shot past their heads at the speed of light.
When they eventually were dropped off on the desktop of another computer screen, Natasha let the small fox out of her grasp and dusted herself off. Not that there was any dust to speak of in those fiber-optic cables. She checked the time. "Hmmm, two point seven milliseconds," she muttered. "Not too bad latency, since we had to go through that regional hub server to get here."
Hwan, meanwhile, immediately turned her attention outward. On the other side of the glass, she could see the school's computer lab around her. The students were slowly wandering in, with class about to start in a few minutes. Among the crowd, she spotted Amber, who was carrying a little plastic doll - that had to be Isabella.
"Amber!", Hwan shouted at the top of her lungs, the digital sound coming out with the same crushed frequencies as if she was blowing out a microphone. "Amber, over here! I need to tel-" Then the sound abruptly cut out. Hwan was still trying to speak, the lips of her pixelated snout still opening and shutting, but all she heard was complete silence ringing in her ears. She looked up at Natasha in confusion, who had just reached into the corner and pulled the volume slider down to zero.
Natasha opened a notepad window and began to write. "Sorry," the note began, "but we're not technically supposed to be here, Hwan. I got us past the firewall, but if the Tech Ed teacher sees us, he might think that we're malware or something. I don't want to know what would happen if he tries to delete us." Both of them shuddered at the thought when those last words appeared.
Right before reaching back and unmuting them, Natasha held a finger up to her lips. Hwan nodded. "So how are we going to get Amber's attention?", she said in a whisper as soon as the sound came back.
"We don't have to," Natasha replied. "I made sure to send us to the same computer that she normally sits at. At least, I think I did," she added nervously as they watched Amber pull out a different chair and begin to sit down. "Um, maybe I got the IP address wrong. They're all so similar to one another - it was probably one digit off." And then an acne-covered freshman boy started to sit down in the chair directly facing their screen. "Uh-oh. Hwan, hide!"
Natasha quickly minimized herself out of sight, leaving Hwan stranded. She had no idea how to do the things that Natasha had learned in the past few days. She wasn't even sure where the other girl had gone, leaping off to another computer or just disappearing into the background on this one. But she realized quickly that, at her tiny size, she didn't take up much space on the screen. Maybe she could successfully hide in plain sight.
Just above her on the bare desktop was a row of icons, shortcuts to open different programs. Those icons were pretty close to her size - maybe she could blend in alongside them? She climbed up the screen toward them, realizing as she did that there was no such thing as gravity here. She just put one paw in front of the other and suddenly she was right next to the other icons.
Hwan only realized just how perfect her hiding spot was when she had already sat herself down in it. Right next to her on the screen was another small, pixelated fox - the logo of the FoxFlame internet browser, clutching a big blue globe in its paws. At a quick glance, the two orange-colored sprites would look almost identical. She sighed in relief - maybe a little too loudly. The other fox's ears twitched on top of its head, and a moment later it turned around to look at her.
"Whoa, mama," the browser icon said in a low, sultry, and surprisingly masculine voice. The flame on the end of his tail started to burn a little brighter when his eyes met Hwan's, and he climbed up on top of his globe to get a better look at her. "I don't think I've seen a vixen like you around here before. You must be some new software that got installed while I wasn't looking. Maybe as a companion program meant to be... used with me?"
Hwan's fur-covered face felt warm, and not just because of the flaming tail that was waving a few pixels away from her head. This fox, she had to admit, was hot in the other sense of the word as well. "I'm flattered, but..." She knew she needed an excuse, but couldn't decide what to say. Was there any point in trying to explain to him that she was actually human and wasn't supposed to be a computer program at all? Probably not. "I already have a girlfriend."
Meanwhile, the boy sitting at their computer terminal didn't seem to notice any of this. He just double-clicked on one of the other icons, causing a new window to open that covered the whole screen. That gave the two foxes, sitting on the desktop background, some much-needed privacy. They could no longer see the world outside the computer.
"Aw, that's not a problem," the fox icon teased. "I can open up an incognito window, for just the two of us. Nobody else will ever have to know what we did in there - it'll be like it never even happened. Just say the word, and I can show you a good time."
Hwan grew flustered. It was starting to seem doubtful that she would be sneaking out of here and finding her way to Amber anytime soon. And the fox's offer did sound enticing. But she couldn't just give in to instinct as easily as that. "W-wait," she said uncertainly. "Aren't you just a corporate mascot? What do you know about showing a... 'vixen' a good time, anyway?"
The fox gave a toothy grin in response. He leaned in a little closer, the globe underneath his paws spinning a little bit as he brought his snout closer to Hwan's. "I know everything," he said confidently. "Well, everything the internet has to offer. You wouldn't believe the stuff people look up on me. Not just your average, run-of-the-mill porn, either. I've been around every block there is. In fact, right this minute, somebody halfway across the world is using me to masturbate to a story about a girl getting turned into a stuffed animal, then sent into a digital realm. Crazy, huh?"
Hwan blinked. She had to wonder if he knew exactly what she was and how she had gotten here, or if his choice of example was just a weird coincidence. But she was running out of excuses. And the temptation was only getting stronger. "I can X out of you any time I want, right?" Her experience with losing her virginity had made her understandably wary about the idea of getting... stuck in a situation she couldn't get out of.
"Of course," FoxFlame said. "You wouldn't be the first to close me down the moment you get your fill. I don't mind. I'll be here any time you want to come back."
Hwan bit her black, elongated lip and glanced back at the clock in the corner of the screen. Another 45 minutes until this class was over, and she probably wasn't getting out of here any sooner than that anyway. "Okay," she finally said. "But let's make this quick."
With a flying leap, she dragged herself onto his icon - and promptly disappeared from the screen.