Loitering (open)

The market was busy as always, but most of the people that came around prooved to be NPCs. Olive found the boring, bland outcome of coding as nothing but something threw inside of the world of Project Aubade to combat the emptiness. A shudder passed down her spine as she imagined the same city but, deserted. It was a matter of time before the players advanced to the next level. After all, the man who had captured her and all of the other players could only capture children at a risk. And they were the main characters. There was no story without secondary characters to accompany them.

Olive leaned on the statue of the king, whistling absently and making a small spark dance atop her fingertips. She had decided to try some new types of magic. Eyes closed, she could feel the electric energy nibbling harmlessly at her skin, making her feel ticklish. Almost, but not quite. She was wearing her light mage cloak, the blue hood pulled over her face. It was cold outside, and she was glad to have clothing to protect her from the chily weather. Remembering the RPGs she sometimes played, programmers had an obssession with women wearing extremely inappropriate armor, which in itself could not be counted as such. There was barely any skin covered by the daring, useless outfits, and she always respected when her character was allowed to be beautiful while also wearing effective protective gear.

There was no sign against loitering in the marketplace, and Olive didn't care whether even in this virtual world it was outlawed. Well, of course she cared, but only if she recieved a penalty. She hoped not. 'Ratman doesn't care enough for us.' she thought. She allowed the spark to dance higher and higher, looking around from under her hood. An NPC kid stopped to gawk, but he sent him off with a stomp of her foot. The chilly breeze blew at the tips of her bicoloured locks. She sent the electric charge high in the air, watching it climb the height of the sky. Something rippled across the sky and she squinted. 'Weird.' 

She blew a strand of hair from her face, turning away from the unusual sight that had caught her attention in the sky. Olive didn't observe the person that had just walked past and the two bumped into eachother. The mage hissed and recoioed away from the other player. Above their head, unlike the other NPCs, floated a name. She dusted her cloak. "Hmph... sorry."

The mage wasn't phased as much as one would expect when he was bumped. In fact, Orland was in such a daze he hadn't even noticed it happen until he heard a frustrated voice apologize to him.

Turning his head, dirty blond hair flying behind him, the boy noticed the way the name floated above the girl he'd been near at the time. "Oh? I bumped into someone?" His face lit up, a smile pulling at both ends of his lips until they swept up his cheeks. A soft giggle escaped him in a puff of air.

"So your name is...Olive? I like that. I'm jealous your named a color. And a lovely color as well! I'm lucky to meet someone so colorful." He was blabbering a mile a minute, but his body stayed strangely still, hands clutched behind his back, a long mage's robe covering most of his body and fingertips. "Isn't this area pretty? A colorful name in a colorful city...If I had a paint set, I'd be the happiest person in the world!"

Actually, that was a lie. Even without his paints, Orland was intensely happy...Because this place, as beautiful as it was, gave him more inspiration than he'd ever gotten before. "I'm Orland Green. It's nice to meet you. Surely, meeting you wonderful!"

Olive took a great amount of time to register the words of the other person. She looked at their clothign and figured they were a mage, just like her. It was nice seeing a person just like her for a change. She was bored of all of the strong fighters and lancers, o the fast rangers and of the holly clerics. She just wanted someone that could produce fire, just like her. By the time Orland had finished speaking she was dizzy with all of his talk and disgusted. 'I've been kidnapped from by parents, almost died in some ruins, just to find out that the only other mage I know is a hyper-active chum who is ready to settle down in Roslare and live the rest of his life happily burried kilometres underground in a lab in Iceland and not move a finger?!'

She huffed at the radiant boy. Maybe she had high hopes, but until now, everyone had seemed pretty willing to do something to get out of here, but not this dude. He wasn't an NPC. Olive almost expected that he would be simply a coded creature ho could only babble one, painfully optimistic speech. She hissed and pulled her hood over her face, leaning against the statue again, falling quiet as she looked up at the sky, searching for the earlier ripple. As, expected, it was gone. The mage began to theorize and soon put the pieces together.

"Yo, are you aware we have been kidnapped." she rolled her head to look back at Orland. Something viciou inside of her willed to crush to hopes of the overly happy boy. It wasn't fair. They were all longing for home and he was talking about how pretty the town was.

The boy laughed a bit, smiling. "Of course! I heard the announcement, and I remember when they set a fire and stuff. But I mean, I'm alive right? We're all here, so we're still alive even if we were taken away from home. If we do our best, we can get away."

His grin didn't fade. Instead, it grew as he gave a polite bow, then twirled as he opened his inventory to take out his standard staff. "With our magic, we can do all sorts of things, right? I may not be able to draw or read one of the books at home, but there's lots I can do here. It'll be a great story to share with my folks when I get home, too. Don't you think it's easier to look at it as an adventure than a capture?"

Olive looked at the mage uttterly dumbfounded before she snapped away, wishing to vanish from the pest's line of sight. She couldn't bear the thought that while she was missing home so dearly and probably some old man was writing letters of how great boarding school is great in her name to her family, somebody else was looking at this like an adventure. 'Just wait and see, buddy, ya won't be laughing after that.' she muttered to herself,mpushing through the crowd of NPCs.

The mage was angry as she made her way towards the pub. Maybe she was beginning to get used to the game, but now she found it a relief to go to the Watcher's every time she felt angry. Little did she care if the mage followed her, but nonethless waked fast to escape them.

Because of his innate sense of trust with the strange mage, the androgynous man was quick to follow her towards the bar. He wasn't sure how to continue a conversation with her, but he desperately wanted to. "You seem to know your way around town well, huh miss Olive? Do you wander here a lot?"

The closer he got to the pub, the more his brain was running overtime, pondering what he'd order. He didn't like to drink, surprisingly- but would they even offer a normal menu? Would plain water be too hard to get? "I wonder if they have something interesting and colorful to drink...It's a pretty place, so they probably have pretty drinks too."

His eyes kept darting from one NPC to another. "They're so realistic. I'll have to study them a lot while I'm here, this way I can draw even better when we get home."

Olive picked up Orlans's ramblings from behind her, thus realizing the other mage had decided to follow her. She sighed but figured there was no way of stopping him. She absently listened to him, but focused on making her was to the pub instead. She knew her way around pretty well, by now, and it wasn't long before they were at the pub. The mage couldn't see many players inside, and most of the characters inside were townsfolk. Olive marched towards the counter, hopping on a stool and drumming her fingers on the wooden surface.

"Huh, so I guess it's on me? Don't get yourself anything too expensive, hun." she mumbled at Orland, wandering why the NPC was taking so darn long to arrive and take their order. The mage was already was already decided she would have a tiny beer. It was funny in this world, there were no drinking laws, so she couls get whatever she wanted.

Orland was happy to take the seat beside her, surprised he'd been offered a free drink. "I was just going to get water anyway. Unless there's an interesting juice..." He stared idly at the menu, a soft yawn making its way out of his mouth. "Nothing interesting at all...Yep, just water please."

Taking a sip of his rather quickly acquired drink, he gave a glance to the girl he was drinking with. "Is beer tasty? I never liked alcohol. I don't like anything that changes the way I see the world...I want to see it just as it is." It was rare for him to admit to not like something. Even he felt a bit unusual hearing his own words. "Do you drink outside here too?"

Olive took a long sip of the alcohool, looking at her flass and the golden bitter-sweet liquid inside. 'No, beer is never good, but it's the only thing thag helps me forget and focus on getting out of here.' she wanted to, but sighed instead and took gulp of beer, finishing her drink fast. When she wasn't in a good mood, she could finish something in a matter of seconds, and only enjoyment kept her at the dinner table with her parents. She looked at Orland's watter blankly before finally answering. "Beer is... fine. I never used to drink at home but... times change." she murmured.

The pub around them was approaching rush hour as more NPCs started to wak in, mingled with the occasional player. She looked around, at the peole going about their normal coded routine. That guy stood the market for five hours then came to the pub and ordered a hot meal, ate it then talked to a friend and then went home. That other guy guarded the cathedral all day then came to the pub to drink a beer and soon as he was done. Olive wandered whether the NPCs observed the players as more than other NPCs. Maybe they observed a routine to all of her incomprehensible actions.

Her blank stare caught him off guard, but instead of reacting to it with his words, he decided to mimic her, staring at his water and then at the beer before her. "I've never been a drinker. I tried a sip once...That's it. You have a good point though, huh? Time does change. That's why we get older."

He soon stretched himself across the bar, stretching his arms as far as he could with his hands grabbing at air. For once, his smile had become melancholic. "It's kind of funny...Time changes, but does it change the same way here? Will we age according to this world's time instead of our own, you think? If it's a game, normally we'd stop aging altogether. Kind of like a makeshift fountain of youth was made, just for us. It's kind of a lonely thought."

Sitting up straight, he shivered, took a big swig of water and shook his body out like a dog soaked from a bath. "Well, that may explain why we woke up in front of a fountain...But it doesn't explain why I wasn't given my art supplies here. There's too many pictures that still need to be painted!"

Olive listened to the other mage. He did make a point, and Olive hadn't thought about that beford. Maybe they would age, maybe they wouldn't. Olive was sure she wasn't just going to stand by as time passed. She wanted to get out of this virtual world as quick as possible. Orland kept on talking and she listened, ignoring the waitress that offered to refill her glass. 'I'm a drinker not a drunk.' she thought bitterly.

"I don't think they care enough. But... from where did they take you?" she asked, feeling like finding out more about this mage was crucial. Maybe Orland wasn't as mad as he seemed at first."I was told I was going to a school for gifted minds. My parents were so proud. Next thing I know they come with a big van to take me there. And then, after we were a coulpe of miles away from home, everything blacked out. Then I was here." she gulped.

As the stranger asked him where he was taken from, he was surprised at how detailed her own recollection was. To Orland, his last moments in the real world were vague and blurry, like a watercolor painting that had been smudged into unrecognizable pieces. He watched her with a small frown as she told him word for word what had happened to her.

"I can't really remember nearly as well as you can. My last memory before waking up here is kind of iffy. I know I was at a game convention with a company I recently was hired to do character art for...And there was some kind of explosion or something. I remember a lot of noise and chaos, and a distinct buzzing in my head, but...After that, it's all a blur."

Hearing his story, Olive brought her hand to her mouth, stiffling a gasp of shock. The awful images of buildings after something exlpoded flooded in her mind, whether they were from a news article or a social media post. One thing was for sure, that those things were horrible and spine-chilling. Had Ratman bombed an entire convention just to get to another subject, or were there more current players there? And what about the people.

"I guess he got bored of a swift approach after a while. He is a man that captures children after all." she laughed, a feebly and dry laugh, like the wheeze of an exhaust pipe. She drummed with her fingers on the wooden counter. Maybe she could trust Orland. He had gone through a hard time himself, but still, she had to be careful.

"So, what do you know about the game?" she decided to ask, eager to move on from the bone-chilling topic. The exchange of information could be vital and it would be important to know all about the game before they ventured in head-first. Not that she hadn't done that.

"I have noticed most people here seem to be younger than me," Orland confessed, taking the capturing of children note as a recognition he happened to be older than most kids. In all honesty, his real questions himself would be why it was mostly children targeted- if there was an actual targeting system.

He realized however, as she continued the conversation, that he would be futile to ask. "I don't know much. I've been playing with the menu recently, but it seems like people come here in waves. I heard some came maybe even a week before I did. Actually...I don't know how he chose who to take and who not to. I met a girl who was upset she was separated from her twin brother. If it's just children, why not take both?"

Stretching his arms up above his head, he began drawing shapes with his mind onto the ceiling. "Well, I also know that the artists involved had to have been pros. I've been painting since I was a kid, and as I said, I did art for games before I came here. This art style is a specific one. Based on the detail...It would take someone with a lot of money and actual resources to make it. I'm jealous of what the artists must have had access to to make all this so lifelike."

Olive shrugged and looked at the surroundings. They were indeed very beautiful, but the mage had never taken enough time to observe every detail. Nonethless, it was nice to take a look at the superb work, at the worn wood and the flame crackling in the cobblestone firelpace. The stains on the white walls, the reflection of light in her flask. "I suppose if you leave one home, their parents would just believe their other child got murdered and their 'living' child is going through a phase of denial. I don't know. It was more of a wrong place, wrong time situation." she guessed.

"But honestly, there wouldn't be a worse time to decided to kidnap a gang of angsty teens than while they are going throught puberty." she scoffed, wondering what her body was doing. The idea was odd, but now that her mind with sepparated from her body, she always thought about that.