Friday, August 29th, 2042, Home of the Porter Family, Maywood Park, Oregon.

From her seat, Megan stared out the living room window, finger pointing toward the growing crowd gathering around her father's van.

Kaelyn's stomach lurched. Gawkers and admirers, she could probably handle, especially if she was in-game. There, she absolutely could string them along. But here, in this partially transformed body, she felt like she could not muster any significant resistance. She hated feeling this powerless.

Inside, Ryan's anxiety spiked, like static building in a stormcloud. This raw, exposed vulnerability was a new and unwelcome experience for him.

We're working on it, chico.

"Dad?" Megan called out over her shoulder. "The crowd's getting bigger…"

The chicken and rice she had just eaten turned to lead in her gut, replaced by a rising panic. She slid off the stool, swaying slightly on her feet. Without any prompting, Megan stepped closer to allow her to lean on her if needed. Together, they walked closer to the entrance of the living room.

Brent rushed out of the dining room, Eduardo right behind him. They reached the bay window and scanned the street. Brent frowned. "No new cars parked out front. Probably just some nosy neighbours who woke up and saw the van."

Eduardo pulled out his phone, muttering something Kaelyn did not catch. Brent raised an eyebrow, but Eduardo gave a subtle shake of his head and pocketed the device.

Sarah entered behind them and spoke softly. "We've been getting messages nonstop since yesterday."

Lucia slapped a hand on the kitchen counter, her voice sharp. "I get why they'd be curious, but come on… This is a family situation. Leave us alone, you carroñeros,"

She crossed her arms, already stepping toward the door like she meant to confront them directly.

Megan snorted. "Maybe rethink the insult. Kinda makes us the carcass in that metaphor."

Brent closed the curtains in a single sweep, turning back to face them all. "Alright. Your father and I talked things through. Here's the plan. Grab what you need and head to the garage. I'll back the van onto the driveway, and you all load in. I'll drive us to the station. Once we're there, Eduardo and Sarah can reach out to the people I mentioned. If you say the right things, the station should be… accommodating, considering what they pulled."

Lucia stepped in beside Kaelyn. "Wait. We're just abandoning the house?"

Brent sighed. "Anyone left behind will get swarmed. The address is already online. Once it spreads, it won't stop. Journalists, paparazzi, weirdos, and worse."

He paused, scanning each face in turn. "Think of this like witness protection. We need to disappear. If we make it obvious we left in the van, some of the gawkers will follow that trail. Maybe that'll keep others from coming here."

Kaelyn glanced at Sarah, then Eduardo. Both looked tense—but resolute.

Megan headed to the front wardrobe and began grabbing coats. "Are you sure it's safe? Won't they figure out where we're going?"

"It's not safe anywhere if we stay still," Brent replied. "But a moving target's harder to pin down. That's why Ryan stays in the van with me. We'll dive while we're on the move."

Kaelyn tilted her head. "We?"

He nodded. "I'll be diving in to dig more into the company. This time I'll be backed with top of the line hardware. We've got a mobile generator, Faraday shielding, SatCom uplink. Safer than anywhere else right now. You'll be diving back in the game, trying to figure out leads from inside, aren't you?"

Lucia blinked. "You have the game installed?"

"Pre-installed by the network," Brent muttered. "After what happened yesterday, the station purchased a few licenses and added them to the software centre. Figured we might need it for future scoops. Probably a good move."

Kaelyn's fingers twitched. The idea of returning filled her with equal parts dread and longing. "Okay, but if we're both diving… who's driving?"

"I can." Megan raised one hand. "The vans are self-driving, but I can stay behind the wheel. Dad has let me drive him around before."

Brent nodded.

"Oh." Kaelyn offered a sheepish smile. "Didn't even know you had your license…"

"I'm surprised you don't, love. You can do the whole thing in VR now."

Lucia turned to go. "Right. Time to pack. Don't forget your ID or meds."

She hastily walked upstairs. Sarah hesitated only a moment before following. Eduardo stood vigil in the living room, keeping an intimidating eye out on their front yard.

Kaelyn stood still, unsure what to do with herself. A moment later, Megan reappeared and gently draped a windbreaker over her shoulders. The soft rustle of fabric snapped her back into her body.

"Got anything important to grab?" Megan asked.

Kaelyn held up her phone. "Everything's in here." She paused, then gestured toward the basement. "There's some old stuff downstairs."

"Anything you really care about?"

Do we?

Not really, no. But thanks for asking.

Kaelyn shook her head.

"Alright. Then let's head to the garage and wait for the others."

Ten minutes later, the family was assembled and ready.

The garage door rattled open with a mechanical groan. On the other side, Brent was already waiting beside the van, one hand on the handle. As soon as the door rose high enough, he swung the back open and waved them in.

Outside, the onlookers had crept closer—no longer content to gawk from a distance. Eduardo stepped outside with a glare sharp enough to draw blood, sweeping his gaze over the crowd like a silent challenge while his family climbed aboard.

Kaelyn was the first to step inside. She paused at the threshold, breath caught in her throat. The van's interior was larger than she expected—tall enough to stand, and deep enough to house three full reclining chairs. Two of them were unmistakably high-end VR pods, their contours smooth, their casings matte black with pulsing green indicator lights. The walls were crowded with mounted screens and blinking diagnostic monitors, casting a cool glow across the cramped space.

The air was thick with scent—faint coffee, harsh antiseptic wash, and something biting and metallic, like ozone.

Lucia, Sarah, and Megan brushed past her. A second later, Brent slammed the door shut behind them, cutting off the view of the slowly encroaching neighbours.

He slid into the driver's seat. Eduardo followed, slipping into the passenger side. Megan stayed in the back, helping Lucia and Sarah buckle into the second row.

Kaelyn lingered, staring at the pods.

They shared the same silhouette as her home rig—but only in the way a street car might resemble a Formula One machine. Sleek, sturdy, and unmistakably professional. She had never seen anything like them outside of promotional videos.

"Take the left one," Brent said, nodding at one chair. "It's the newest model. Better hardware. But I haven't had the chance to fine-tune it to my liking yet. I've spent so long fine-tuning the other two."

"Right…" Kaelyn swallowed. Her hand hovered over the armrest.

Megan stepped closer. "You good?"

"Yeah," Kaelyn whispered. "At least I have a clear goal for today."

Megan helped her climb in.

As the pod powered up, a soft chime sounded, and the button to activate the automatic neural connection blinked.

"See you later, sleeping beauty," Megan said, brushing her knuckles along Kaelyn's forearm. "You've got this."

Kaelyn smiled, her finger pausing just above the button, suspended for a beat. Then she activated the connection.

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The pod hissed closed as the neural link smoothly inserted itself at the base of her neck.

The transition to the virtual realm happened almost instantly. Kaelyn opened her eyes in the familiar void of the loading screen. Her body shimmered—back in its proper shape.

She found the icon for the game, but before returning to the game world, she walked around, exploring the VR space. It was her first time using such superior hardware, and she had no idea what to expect. After all, consumer-level VR was already lifelike—more than enough to trick every sense into believing the illusion. What would a better processor, hardware bus and rendering hardware help with, exactly?

She knew something felt different—she just could not pin down what. It reminded her of the jump from twenty-four to sixty frames per second. Movies had trained people to expect choppiness as normal; smoother footage often felt uncanny, like CGI or ads trying too hard. Reality, somehow, had always been a little jittery. And here, she felt the same kind of disconnect. This reality was smooth—too smooth.

Everything was more. More weight, more sound, more real, almost uncannily so. Every step registered: the way her toes spread, the soft give of skin and muscle as she moved across the untextured ground.

"This feels weird, chico… It's almost too much."

I wonder how it'll affect the way the game feels…

Kaelyn grimaced.

Hey, before we jump in, can we check my inbox?

"Why?" She smirked. "Hoping someone from high school sent you a 'you good, bro?' email?"

She looked around for the mail service icon. When she found it, she noticed, without any hint of surprise, the notification bubble with a red '99+' over the application. She opened the software. Even she had not expected this.

"You have 93,481 unread messages."

Holy shit, Kaelyn…

Kaelyn flinched. Her ears twitched. "That's… more than a few."

She blinked twice. The number kept going up almost by the second.

"Oh... that's a lot. How many friends did you expect to message us?"

Half a dozen at most?

"How long would it take to read all this? I don't think all those messages are going to be worth our time."

Maybe we can throw a filter process on it, let an AI filter and summarise them in broad categories?

"I… I'm a bit out of my element here. Want to handle that part?"

She loosened her grip on the wheel, letting Ryan take the lead. Despite his efforts to hide it from her, she felt a sense of gratitude coming from him.

"You're up, university boy," she said. "You're the one with the degree in communications."

"Communications tech," Ryan corrected, now in control of her body and mouth. "And if you must know, I had a minor in human systems and interface design."

Perfect. Interface this into something that won't give us a migraine.

Ryan rolled her proverbial shoulders and cracked her knuckles. Kaelyn hovered in the metaphorical background, watching like a cat with a laser pointer.

The VR interface warped subtly as Ryan leaned into the system. The background dimmed, and the mail client reorganised itself into a semi-transparent panel. With a thought, he opened the voice assistant overlay.

"Hey, Assistant," he said aloud. "Create new ongoing rule. Sort my inbox into groups. Flag anything from established companies—like business opportunities, press inquiries, sponsorship offers—in one category. Isolate messages from senders on my contact list, and group the rest by topic."

A soft voice echoed around the virtual space. "Tasks acknowledged. Would you like a visual summary, audio report, or both?"

Ryan raised an eyebrow, considering the question. "Visual summary," he decided. "Word cloud by topics. Also, condense duplicates and email chains, and gather all parasocial thirst traps into one file titled 'VR Net is Trash.'"

Inside his mind, Kaelyn snorted. Madre de Dios, I hope you're kidding.

"I'm not. I've read public comment sections before. We need to file any incriminating evidence."

As the interface began sorting, the email count visibly ticked down. Dozens of categories sprouted like branches: Media Requests (312), Collab Offers (1096), Fan Mail (23,484), Hate Mail (873), Theories and Conspiracy Essays (487), Feet Pic Requests (429)…

Kaelyn squinted at the growing list of categories.

We're a whole genre of weird now, aren't we?

But really, that last category…

"Yep," Ryan muttered, flipping open another panel. "I'm not touching that folder. That's a you problem."

Excuse you, we share this body. That's an us problem.

"We'll see!" Ryan smirked faintly and pulled up his streaming Creator Dashboard. The two recent videos were pinned at the top.

Introducing Golden Dawn - Is There More to Kaelyn and Vaelith's Chemistry? Watch This and Decide for Yourself! (Aug 27)

4.6 million views, 412k likes | 189k comments

Golden Dawn - From Zeroes to Heroes: How This Off-Meta Party Shattered Coralshade Cove's Record Time (Aug 29)

265k views, 14.4k likes | 2,456 comments

He felt his heart stutter. "Holy hell."

Kaelyn leaned in closer, almost whispering in his mental ears.

Not bad for a first-timer, huh?

"It's real." Ryan blinked. "We went viral. Twice. The second video hasn't even had four hours to breathe yet."

Deep inside, her chest felt tight, but not in a bad way. That many eyes. Watching her. Laughing with her. Seeing her. One of the girl's dream come true.

He scrolled through the comment preview snippets: memes, clips of her healing mid-fight, Leoric's dramatic bow, Elyssia's impossible martial combos, and, of course, Kaelyn's sass. Countless popular clips. The highest rated is dubbed "Kaelith: Kaelyn steals aggro and kites boss to save her cute dracan girlfriend."

Kaelyn laughed. They're shipping us with the dracan mage? Megan will be jealous.

Ryan frowned. "We somewhat seeded that one with the first video, didn't we?"

He quickly glanced at some of the highest rated comments on the first video.

"I would die for this catgirl priestess," "Where can I find a Kaelyn of my own?" and "Is it weird that this awakened something in me?"

Ryan lingered. He could feel something crawling up from deep inside—exhilaration, maybe, or dread disguised as validation.

People really watched us. They saw us. They saw value in us. That's all I ever wanted…

He did not answer at first, simply stared as the analytics graph numbers climbed like a heartbeat.

"Yeah," Ryan said eventually. "We didn't just make a splash. We detonated."

And now, he thought, they would expect more.

Ryan turned her head towards the game icon and slowly relinquished control.

Nothing more to do here; the Assistant will be busy sorting this for a while, and it'll keep filtering new mail. It's your show now.

Kaelyn raised one finger towards the game icon and exhaled. "Alright. Let's see what the grind looks like with a better rig."

The familiar logo of A Realm Reforged Again floated patiently in front of her. She clicked the login button, and the world—her world—materialised all around her in the shape of the city of Luminara.

"Here we are. Home, HD edition."

Even in this world, she could tell her entire being was fuller—more complete—today. She felt more aware of every muscle, pore on her skin, hair on her head and tail. Every part of her being hummed with life. Was this how her real body would feel once what was left of Ryan faded completely?

Meanwhile, she realised Ryan was focusing on the changes, too. Unlike her, he was not inspecting her physical body, but the flow of her mana. Intrigued by his sudden interest, she grabbed her sacred staff with both hands. She gathered enough mana for one cast of the Cure spell, trying to discern if she would perceive any difference.

Other than the extra everything she could feel because of the better rig, Kaelyn failed to notice anything unusual. Smirking, she stowed her staff away and placed one hand on her hips. "What's troubling you, chico?"

I was just paying closer attention to the way our magic works. You know, the way mother Vervaine taught us. How we're taking in the darkness, instead of bringing light.

Kaelyn's smirk faded. "Right. That."

Just wondering if this issue of ours will still apply when we unlock shifter.

"It'll be fine, I'm sure…"

But even in her confident voice, Ryan could hear the same uncertainty echoing back at him.

Kaelyn shook her head and opened the party interface.

Leoric Stargazer, Galán, Ranger 20. Myrknar Woods.

Kaelyn Moonshadow, Encantadora, Priest 18. Luminara.

Vaelith Dawnscale, Ícono, Mage 18. Offline for twelve hours.

Elyssia Windwhisper, Guardián, Martial artist 19. Offline for twelve hours.

Elyssia and Vaelith would likely not log on until much later in the day. Leoric, however, was already online, which came as a surprise.

"Hey look, el guapo is online already."

And already hard at work, I see.

As she clicked his name to open the messaging interface, a direct message appeared from him.

"Kaelyn! I didn't know if I'd ever see you online again. Are you okay? I saw the news…"

"Concerned about me, bello? I'm flattered."

Hiding behind sarcasm, again?

"Hush you…"

"I'm serious, Kaelyn. You got publicly doxxed, and yet you're in-game, leaving your body unattended in the real world?"

"It's not unattended—I've got people with me. Trustworthy folks."

"Okay. Good. That's a relief. Look, I'm not mad—I was actually hoping you'd come online, since I've got no other way to reach you."

Kaelyn and Ryan both raised an eyebrow in surprise. "… Okay? Did you have something important you wanted to say?"

"Yes… Yes, I do actually. But even if I didn't, is it so surprising I'd want to check on you when you're going through a crisis like this?"

"I…" Kaelyn hesitated. Part of her wanted to tell him how she had zero expectations from internet strangers. But she bit her lip and held back.

He probably sees us as more than that. More than someone he just met online two days ago.

"I understand, and I appreciate your concern. I'm doing okay, all things considered. Fairly sure I'm safe for the time being. No idea when my life will ever return to 'normal', whatever that will mean for me a few days from now."

"Right. About that—"

Kaelyn rolled her eyes, bracing for something gross.

Give him time to explain himself, at least.

They waited for him to continue.

"It's not just you. There are others going through the same. It's happening to me too."

Kaelyn's breath caught. For a moment, everything else—the inbox, the crowd, even the game—faded. She was not alone.

"Oh… bello… For real?"

"Yeah. I guess there will be at least two of us with animal ears out there. Possibly more, though."

"You know, chico," Kaelyn started, "I think Vaelith might have tried to tell us the same thing yesterday."

Right—that time when you basically stopped me from telling her about us.

Kaelyn felt a pang of regret and shame at the memory.

"Probably more…"

"Oh, and another thing…."

"Yes?"

"I can relate to the other big thing you're going through right now. You know, the whole gender/crossplay aspect."

Kaelyn froze at the message. She felt Ryan stiffen beside her in the quiet space they shared.

"Oh."

"Yeah…"

"Well… it's my time to ask. If this is all happening to you too, why are you even online, then?"

"Like I said. I was worried, and it's the only way I have to reach you three. I don't have your contact details outside of the game."

Kaelyn's breath hitched. Not because she doubted him—but because hearing someone else say it made her feel, for the first time, a little less like a glitch in the system. A little less alone.

"You're worried about us, but aren't you worried about yourself? You're going through the same thing. Reversed, but same…"

"Me? I'm not bothered by it. My parents will absolutely make a fuss. My sister's confused, but doing her best to help."

Kaelyn tried to think of a reply, but her thoughts were interrupted by two back-to-back system messages.

"Party member Vaelith Dawnscale has logged on."

"Party member Elyssia Windwhisper has logged on."

"Those two are here early," she replied.

"Elyssia, especially. Wonder what that could mean…"

Both Kaelyn and Ryan wondered the same.

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