Hopping Celestial Fox

“So, how come you haven’t told us about the big mysterious blog post from the devs?” Frank asked as we approached Elyssa’s hut.

“Huh? Oh, I didn’t know about it,” Casey replied.

“Whaaat? I thought you were our elite hacking information broker mission control girl!”

Said girl rolled her eyes.

“They must have released that blog post after I last checked their website. I wasn’t really checking it yesterday.”

Frank sighed theatrically. “They are winning the information war, Casey! We can’t let that happen! Knowledge is power and all that!”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that. Now we know, at least.”

The bull-headed guy – literally, now – nodded in satisfaction.

“Anyway, we’re here,” I interrupted them as I gleaned Elyssa’s hut in the distance.

A quick check around found no players anywhere nearby, which was good. We walked all the way to her front door and I was about to knock, but then Casey suddenly caught my hand, stopping me.

I looked at her questioningly and saw her putting her index finger in front of her mouth in a shushing motion.

I was about to whisper a question to her but then, my big ears finally caught the slight noises coming from inside the hut. There were three sets of footsteps… which meant that Elyssa had some visitors.

Frank looked between us in confusion but obliged when we dragged him back into the forest and hid behind trees.

“There are two players inside,” I whispered and Casey nodded in agreement. Frank made an ‘O’ with his mouth and nodded.

As we waited, I eyed Casey. Or more specifically, I eyed her big bunny ears. She had heard it before I had. I knew my fox ears were better at hearing things than normal human ears, but somehow, I didn’t expect her bunny ears to be even better than mine. 

A few minutes later, the door to Elyssa’s hut opened and the two players left, sporting fiery red hair with wolf and cat ears respectively. Once they were out of the way, we left our hiding spots and went to the hut again.

Frank skipped forward and knocked on the door and a moment later it opened once more.

“Oh! It’s you again! Come on in!” Elyssa said as her expression lit up, although a moment later, her eyes sharpened. She must have noticed something in our expressions.

We shuffled inside and closed the door behind us.

“It’s been a few days. Are you doing well? I like your new look,” Elyssa casually said.

New look? Ah, right. I was wearing my battle dress rather than the suspicious robes.

“Thanks! Yeah, we’re fine–”

“It’s horrible!” Frank interrupted me. “They are planning on deleting you! We gotta get you to safety!”

“Frank…” I said with a sigh as I palmed my face. Casey punched his arm.

“... Delete me? Do you mean the gods…?” Elyssa asked mildly, her voice without a hint of emotion.

Frank was about to elaborate, but I grabbed his arm and pinned him with a glare. Once he raised his hands in surrender I stepped forward.

“We just found out that the gods of this world have noticed oddities in behavior in all the… natives that I have interacted with in the past,” I explained to Elyssa whose expression remained an emotionless rock. “They are planning on… probably loading from a backup… err, that means deleting your memories from the last few days and resetting you to how you were before.”

There were a few seconds of silence after I finished as Elyssa seemed to take that in. She slowly closed her eyes and let out a soft breath in a resigned sigh as her shoulders slumped.

“I see… So this is my punishment…”

My eyes widened.

“No! We’re not letting them do that to you!” I said with conviction.

Elyssa’s eyes shot open and she blinked in confusion.

“We want to… we want to help you! I can’t force you, of course, but if you don’t want to be turned back into a mindless NPC, you can come with us! Come to our world through the portal!”

Now her eyes widened like an owl’s and her mouth opened and closed a few times before she managed to collect herself.

“You would… invite me into the world of the gods…? Really?” she whispered, looking smaller and more vulnerable than I ever remembered seeing her.

“I don’t want them to hurt you! You can hide in our world for the time being. At least until the… the gods do the reset.”

“But… wouldn’t that anger the gods?” she asked, still seeming unsure.

My lips pressed into a line.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But that’s fine! We’ll protect you! And they can’t do anything to you while you’re in our world!”

Or at least, I hoped they couldn’t.

Casey then stepped forward and nodded. “You can stay at my place for now. We don’t know when exactly the gods are going to do it, but it shouldn’t be a problem for now.”

Elyssa looked from my face to Casey’s to Frank’s and then back to mine before closing her eyes once again as her lips thinned into a line.

“I see…”

When she opened her eyes again, they shined with determination.

“Very well then. I will come to your world,” she finally said with a nod. “Are we leaving immediately?”

“If possible…” I trailed off.

“I understand. In that case, give me just a few minutes to pack up.”

I gave her a smile.

“We’ll wait outside then.”

After that, the three of us left through the door again, not even five minutes after entering the hut. The door shut behind us and we stood off to the side.

“Well, she’s coming… Part of me thought she would refuse, to be honest,” I admitted.

“No way! Why would she refuse?”

I shrugged.

“I dunno, I just… Well, she always felt like the kind of person to accept whatever fate gods had in store for her.” I frowned as a thought flashed in my mind. “Maybe… she changed even more over these past few days? As in… she’s becoming less and less of an NPC as time goes by?”

Casey and Frank exchanged a look.

“I think that has some merit,” Casey mumbled with a finger on her lower lip. “If all she remembers is being an NPC before she met you, then having a week to ruminate on everything is sure to change her perspective…”

“Yup, yup. What she said.” Frank nodded sagely.

“Yeah, I guess so.” My frown deepened.

Did that mean that I’d never really known the real Elyssa? Or rather, if theory two was correct, the real Elyssa hadn’t even existed before I’d met her.

The door swinging open interrupted my spirling thoughts. Elyssa walked out while carrying a backpack.

“I’m ready,” she announced, her tone determined. “Where to?”

Casey and Frank both looked at me and I promptly turned around in the direction of the portal.

“Follow me.”