"Tome, this is nuts," came Daniel's human voice over twin-teamspeak. "Shade just captured us out at Ignis Ile. We were investigating a powerful source of magical energies up inside of one of the great caves here, and Shade used the darkness to grab us all," Dan said, with a sigh. "I don't think these new guys know what they're doing," he added.
"Yeah. It turns out that the leader girls Twister and Aqua invited all the other Dragons besides you and I to join the Game for the 14-Day Free Trial and that they were able to roll-up dragon characters," Tome commented, then yelped in pain over the twin-teamspeak.
"Tome, you OK!?" Daniel asked, trying to use Blaze's head to look around. The whole space around him was black. He wasn't in the Graveyard and he wasn't dead, so it must have been a Shadow Hold spell. "Speak to me, Bro!"
A moment of silence followed, and just as Daniel was about to logout and look to Tome's bed, he responded: "Yeah. Luster just captured the whole group. It was a blinding white light and now is just a sold white to me," Tome sighed. "I don't think I'm down with this whole Dragon Resistance thing."
"Yeah. Let's take stock with this… the two guys, Twister and Aqua--" Dan began, but Tome interrupted him.
"Girls," Tome said. "Their characters are male, but their voices are female. Aqua's been talking to me in teamspeak instead of In-Character. I think we have two girl Power-Levelers playing as high-level male Dragons," Tome growled a bit to himself.
"So they know their powers really well, but not the setting or the quests as they've probably gone through the Grind to skip all the Game Content," Daniel added.
"Right… they get their friends hooked up with Accounts, why? Because they otherwise they couldn't be dragons!" Tome said, angry. Dan was about to ask why that was, when his twin continued with the answer, "PHUK is all fucked up, right? The only people who get to make their own characters right now are New Players… Like Doug, remember? Charles was saying that from before! So these two ditzes ended up with super-powered characters and decided to screw around. They're trying to cause chaos in this part of The Kingdom, so they get a bunch of n00bs to pad their ranks."
"I bet some of these people… Willow, Silver, Luma, and Quake… I bet some of them have played in PHUK before and just made new accounts to have characters who were all the same," Dan said. "Actually, we could have thought of that."
Tome was silent for a moment, but then disagreed, "Yeah, but we're better than that. We can play characters to the hilt, unlike these dorks. I take my Role-Play seriously and they've got shit like forcing poor Luma here to do the most damage to a Bone Dragon so he'd… I mean she'd… jump eight levels."
The two humans behind the characters of Blaze and Frost remained silent for a moment as if thinking over their potential plans. Neither of them really wanted to make Trial Accounts, and they both kind of liked these Dragons (even if they weren't theirs). It was more the problem of who they'd ended up with… their team of two brothers turning into a party of eight.
"Who's a girl?" Daniel asked.
"Pardon?" Tom asked.
"I said: 'Who's a girl?' We have people taking In-Game and Teamspeak both In and Out of Character. I can't tell a dragon's gender, and I haven't heard everyone out of Character. You are better at keeping track of who is what when, so answer me this: Who is a girl?"
Tome thought about that for a moment, "Twister said we were sisters, but Aqua tried to cover it up. As you can tell so far, male and female dragons sound almost the same to human ears… at least until they patch the Game and change the racial voice-modifiers, which I heard they were going to do and--"
"Girls," Daniel interrupted Tome. "Focus on the girls, Tom. Who are girls? Are we girls?"
"Based on Aqua's reaction, I think she was trying to cover for the fact we sound like guys over teamspeak and act like them in the game, so she didn't want us to freak out because she needed more people. She doesn't think guys can play girl characters, remember? She's a bad Role-Player,"
"Right," Daniel said. "OK, so Aqua is a girl?"
"OK, you and I are guys," Tom started again. "We have female Dragon characters, I'm pretty sure. Aqua and Twister are guys, but I think they are being played by girls. I would guess maybe real-life sisters but, I'm just guessing. Not twins, I would think," he added. He thought about it and added, "Luma is a girl being played by a guy also, but Willow is a girl playing a girl," Tom said.
"And Silver and Quake?" Dan asked.
"I think they are both guys and I think they are being played by guys, but I really am just guessing on those. We don't know those two very well because they don't do a lot of Out of Character talking."
Daniel could feel Blaze's hands being able to move somewhere back in The Kingdom, the Shadow Hold weakening. "So, what do we do? I don't want to run with a bunch of n00bs for the next three hours before school," Daneil said. "I mean, I know PHUK is all fucked up, but I still think we could have fun."
"Right, well. I think Luma and Willow are together as twins, so they have the Twinspeak going on… but they do look like they're actually interested in the Game and want to move on. We could talk to them. Maybe they'll want to ditch their power-leving friends and really play the Game" Tome offered.
"Sensible people who don't go trying to take their lowbie friends against too-high-level content would be nice, yeah." Tom continued, "We don't know enough about Quake and Silver, but we know they too are friends with Aqua and Willow. Whatever we do, Aqua and Willow are going to be a problem. They are higher level male Dragons and if we oppose them, they might do us girls some harm," Tom laughed.
"Right, well," Daniel said, moving Blaze's neck around, the shadow beginning to fade out from view. "They're leaders of the Dragon Resistance, right? Let us turn-coat on them and sell them to Shade and Luster for ours and the other Dragon's freedom," he said.
"Hey, yeah. If we play these new characters to the hilt, we might get all the n00bs who don't want to go to the Graveyard to join us. Aqua and Twister will be pissed, but they'll be a long way away and dead while we take their friends and try and show them the Game."
"Think it'll work?" Daniel asked.
"Knowing how this story has gone up to this point?" Tome asked rhetorically. "Probably not."
"Well, if not, we sign out in three hours. Maybe PHUK will be back up and running when we get home from school… otherwise, we could always Summon Partner in case one of these two big dragons isn't around the other one of us, and then just leave for another land," Daniel said, moving Blaze's hands against the shadow and trying to part it.
Daniel sighed, "Worst case scenario, we die and just Resurrect at the Graveyard instead of running back to our bodies. Then we can just wash our hands of the whole ordeal."