The next morning, they found the doors of the Empath Temple standing open, as they usually were. From talking to other players and evesdropping, they discovered that new monsters had shown up in the area, and had been making attacks on the town. One particular variety, could not be destinguished from normal players by any outward apperance and could even disguise themselves as players they had killed. Most folks assumed that these creatures were being run by GMs and were part of some story line they had cooked up. The one thing about these monsters was that they could only come out at night. It was for this reason that the Temple was being locked up each night and visitors turned away.
They made their way upstairs to the area where they could access their bank boxes. Yim and Jessica retrieved the keys to their house and took out a little spending cash. Talon was already involved in this as deep as they were, so they invited him to join them at their house. They were sure the Feds wouldn't be too pleased, but this was their show, and as weird as things were getting, they needed all of the allies they could find.
Talon sought out an architecht and cashed in his house deed. He had a feeling he wouldn't be needing it anymore.
Fluffy chased some rabbits and cats around and tried to remember something about a bone that seemed very important last night. People kept approaching him and saying things like,
"Come here, Fluffy. I always wanted a pet like you".
and
"Will you be my friend? I promise to take good care of you".
One person took a swing at him with a very blunt sword... and then ran away screaming when Fluffy tore out the seat of his pants.
Just before noon, they all gathered again at the Temple and headed North East.
Along the way they overheard several rather interesting converstations
"No, man... I'm telling you, I can't log out. I'm flatscreened so I can always walk away from my terminal, but I can't log out of the damn game, so I have ta go to my house and hide. I don't wanna hard boot because it could screw up everything else on my machine... so it looks like I'm stuck in game until the Dev Team fixes whatever bug this is."
"I gotta pigeon from my wife in RL. She was saying get out of the damn game and get ready for my lunch meeting... but I can't get out... now she's screaming about being a UA widow and threatening to divorce me... and on top of all that, I can't make my meeting and I could lose my job".
They arrived at their two-story marble house about an hour later. DS Redwood, was what the sign said.
Inside was a number of chests with supplies, including deeds for various house add-ons. Yim turned to Jessica with a troubled expression.
"I'm going to log and check in with the Man".
She stood there with a blank expression for a minute, and then furrowed her brow.
"Bev, I can't log out... you try".
Jessica also had no luck logging out.
"Looks like we're stuck here," she said.
"Welcome to my world," commented Talon.
