Apparently New York had a beach as well. Rika thought it must be pretty sad compared to L.A.'s own beaches, though. She'd never actually been to one, but she'd seen enough Hollywood movies. "Maybe I should go to the beach sometime..." she mused. It seemed the other girl didn't have much interest in going to her own home either. Not like all the people flooding the chat channels crying out for their family. Rika had since made her peace with that.

Pori grabbed the lychee drink and chugged it down without hesitation, declaring her love for it. Rika was in the middle of deciding between banana and melon, but on the girl's recommendation, she supposed she'd give the odd drink a try. At first the sweet taste of peaches hit her mouth, followed by something a bit more unusual, but sweet all the same. "You're not wrong. This is pretty good." The taste of spice had largely subsided in her mouth, so she drank her second bottle a little slower, taking periodic sips.

Then the girl asked her a strange question. Do you value survival? "I mean, who doesn't?" she responded right away. After thinking about it a little more, it occurred to her that in this strange new world, there might be some people who treated it differently. Some who thought of it like a game - she'd seen mission boards crop up, and some people seemed to delight in finding monsters to fight, or even other people. Of course a lot of those people were probably dead now. "What about you?" She turned the question back on Pori. "I mean, even though you're just a kid, you seem to have it pretty figured out, huh?"

Pori

Rika wasn't quite sure what Fox had meant in his remark about the mountain lions, but she took it as a sign of confidence. Confidence was good, and that gun probably backed it up. "So I take it you've hunted before?" she said, fully expecting him to brag again. What he bragged about would tell her how much she could really trust this guy to look out for her.

Her eyes widened just a bit when he mentioned Vegas by name. So he had heard of the Strip after all? Well, it was about as much as she expected most people to know about the place. She'd never been to a show - her family had never been able to afford one, and the cheap motel she worked at never had any. She'd passed by the ads plenty of times, of course. "Yeah... don't gamble," she blurted out. "Trust me, it's not as much fun as it looks. You're more likely to ruin your life than you are to hit it big."

She doubted he would listen. He was a teenage boy, and they were known for doing impulsive and stupid things.

"Elemental gunner? So what, you shoot silver bullets instead of lead? You know I guess that could be useful for hunting werewolves, if we see any..." She hadn't heard any howls. Only the screaming of various beasts overhead. She shrugged when Fox asked her about her own class. "Kinda lame compared to yours really. I can walk a lot without getting tired, and I don't get heatstroke. Woulda been useful back home before all this went to shit, I suppose."

She didn't mention her core power. She didn't really even know how to describe it, herself. Being able to copy those she befriended? What counted as a friend, anyway? No, it was best to keep quiet and pretend it didn't exist. People would rightly believe that she had self-serving motives for buttering up to them if she blabbed about it, and they would keep their distance from her. It's what she would have done, anyway. "Oh, and I can shoot fire from my hands. So try not to stand in between me and the monsters."

She accepted the party invite Fox had sent her. "What brings you out here, anyway? Also gathering wood for a job?"

Fox Kingstone

Rika drew her gun, leveled it at the lead dog, and fired.

Nothing.

She slammed her finger on the trigger again and again, but it was stuck. Like her gun was being locked out by one of those fancy fingerprint sensors you saw in science-fiction TV shows. "What the fuck?!" An angry snarl manifested on her face. As the dog closed in, she took a step backward, and felt her back slam into the rough bark of the tree. She looked around frantically. Alfonso, Sheila, and for that matter no one else was anywhere to be seen. What the fuck do I do? What was all that she had read earlier-- what her "class" did? As she racked her brain in a panic, the lead dog lunged. And so did Rika.

She caught the dog in the side of the mouth with the gun. Teeth smashed against fist as blood - her own blood - flew. Two solid kicks and the lead dog was whimpering, lying panting on the grass. Rika broke away from the tree and tried to put as much distance between herself and the remaining dogs as possible, but they were gaining, slavering at the mouths in anticipation of chomping down on their prey. Her hand throbbed. She couldn't risk doing that again. She turned to face the dogs - too close now - and frantically seized upon a word she had remembered reading. "B--barren?"

Power gusted forth from her hands, a whoosh of mana that combusted into flame and lit dogs - and grass - alight.

She didn't stay to watch. The dogs caught directly in the blast writhed in pain and anguish, while the others scattered in all directions, trying to stay ahead of the wildfire now spreading in all directions. Rika turned and booked it, her hardened sole passive of no avail to her here as she pushed herself to her limits. She ran until she couldn't see anymore from the tears flooding her eyes, until her lungs were burning, and when she was finally forced to stop and gasp, what she mercifully inhaled was lungfuls of clean air instead of tainted smoke.

Before her was a vast expanse of water. She could see rocky reefs leading into and over the top of it. After a particularly uncautious maneuver left her with her knee sliced open, she learned to go slowly, and keep her bare skin off the sharp rocks at all times.

As Rika explored, a lump of darker blue caught her eye. Something was floating in the water. Upon closer inspection, it was a scrap of cloth with a pole attached to one end, and scattered white stars printed on the cloth. She had found it. The flag from the terminal! She reached an arm down to the water's surface to grab it, when something made her stop short.

A slowly spreading pool of blood beside it.

Sheila has left the party.

"I'm sorry..." the woman was saying. "I'm sorry... I just can't abandon someone when they're in need of help. So if you're not going, I'll have to go on my own." She turned stiffly toward the southern forest, and jogged off in that direction. Rika watched her fade into the distance. She didn't try to run after her, or call out to her. She'd made her choice. Hopefully it wouldn't get her killed.

Agatha the aardvark. So the weird animal had a name. "How about you keep an eye on your pet, and I'll try not to get between it and the enemies," Rika responded. She'd never had one growing up, and honestly it didn't appeal to her terribly much. Especially an odd animal like this one, that she'd never heard of before this weird kidnapping incident, much less had any idea how to take care of. No way was she going out of her way to risk her neck for it, or anyone for that matter.

When Alfonso didn't suggest a direction to head in, she turned and headed north, into the grasslands. They parted easily for her, and her pace was largely unhindered. Scanning the horizon in every direction, she could see desert to the left and the beach to the right, but no flag anywhere. There were sparse trees growing in the savannah, a little further on; maybe the flag would be hidden near one of those. She made for the nearest tree, a gnarled and twisted thing, and an unknown amount of time later, she would reach it.

None too soon. A howl echoed across the grass, and Rika could see a yellow dog about the size of a coyote, teeth bared and drool dripping from its lips. Three more figures stirred, to its sides and behind; a pack.

Rika backed against the tree. The lead dog-monster bounded forward.

Alfonso Gerudia

A few slimes in different bright colors bounced around the area as Rika sat. Surprisingly to her, they didn't seem to be aggressive. Perhaps they had gotten used to the humans, and didn't see them as enemies. Or maybe they were just weak and stupid.

They could be bold, though. A blue slime with rosy-red cheeks had the nerve to bounce right up to where Rika was sitting, as if they were both passengers waiting on the world's strangest bus line. She heard a sucking noise, and when she turned back to look, the slime had what appeared to be a royal crown stuck halfway out of its mouth. It was chewing on it like a baby with a pacifier.

"No," Rika said. Did the slimes even understand English? "You. Can't. Eat. Me." She pointedly slid herself to the far side of the bench, away from the slime, and sucked another piece of tteokbokki into her mouth. By now she was starting to feel the spice kick in, and her mouth winced in protest. Could she possibly-- no. She was not even going to think of it. No matter how much the slime looked like a blob of water, she'd rather die before putting her mouth on that thing.

A burbling noise emitted from the slime, like a stomach rumbling in hunger. Rika attempted to fix the monster with her fiercest glare, but it was broken when she was forced to exhale sharply, the spice tingling at her lips. "Fine," she sighed, dangling a piece of the cake over the gap between herself and the slime. "But if I feed you, you have to tell me something.

"Where the hell can I get a decent milkshake around here?"

Pori

So the other teen was... just looking out for her? She ran the logic in her head. All signs pointed to it being true. If he'd meant to shoot her, he could have simply done so while her back was turned, after all. Unless the gun was just a bluff... but in that case, she wouldn't have to worry about it anyhow. And it was true, there were all manner of things crawling about in these hills. Things that probably would have gladly made a meal out of two humans deciding to squabble out in the open. She relaxed visibly when Fox put his gun away. That solidified it. A show of good intentions she could play along with for the time being.

"Thanks," she said. "Yeah, really don't wanna get eaten by, uh... I don't think we have tigers though. Mountain lions, maybe." She listened as the boy introduced himself. Heartthrob, pro-gamer... Well, he was cute. She had to admit that. Not as cute as Mimi, but then again, he had the distinct disadvantages of having been traipsing through monster-infested hills. That would put a damper on anyone's looks.

"I'm Rika," she said. "Housekeeper at the Alto Strip... Not that I'd expect that to mean anything to you." What would a British guy know about hotels in Las Vegas, anyway. "At least, I was. Now I'm a 'wanderer,' and I don't mean that as a metaphor." She flipped through the system menu, bringing up her character data and showing it to him.

"Also, just between you and me, I would be a lot better able to take care of myself if someone hadn't fucked over my gun. I'm assuming yours... y'know. Works?"

Fox Kingstone

For all the messed up shit that had happened lately, Rika had to admit, she wasn't doing half bad.

Most of America had fallen to the wilderness, and good old-fashioned American exceptionalism demanded that it be taken back. There was a market for people who could walk long distances without getting tired. It was a delicate dance between risk and reward, figuring out which jobs to opt into that paid well enough to feed her for a reasonable amount of time without being likely to get herself killed. And she wasn't exactly in a great position to bargain. Few people were.

Thus it shook out that she found herself scrounging for fallen logs and twigs, along with anything that seemed edible - mushrooms and berries being chief among them. She hefted another branch into her arms, then let it disappear in a smattering of pixels as it vanished into her inventory proper. Perhaps it was time to head back. If she just doubled back along the trail she had marked for herself, she should reach the portal within a few hours or so. Give or take a few detours to avoid hungry monsters.

"Hey, watch out!" Someone was calling out to her, though she couldn't tell from where. She heard thumps through the underbrush growing louder and louder as something seemed to be rushing right at her. Curse her stupid pink hair! She whirled around, arms held up in a last-ditch attempt to intimidate--

Oh, it was just a person. Thank goodness.

But a person with a gun.

"H-hey there," she said, fists unclenching into open palms, in an attempt to defuse any tension. "What's going on?"

Fox Kingstone