Work Text:
Friday 1st August 2042 (Gregorian), 15:22
216 Kleopatra's Stable Orbit Operative Station "Mark Anthony",
Commercial District C-2, University Hospital, Inpatient Care Room 306.
"Sorry."
Si-woong's unusually feeble voice as he cuts the call still lingers in Jack's ears.
It fills them like the ornate 'Quest Failed' screen fills the monitor of the gaming laptop he's lending her. Lingers beyond it, even, her lonely respawn to the base camp leaving a bitter taste in her mouth after this particular hunt—she didn't even stop to read the results screen. Why would she? Bad. The result was bad.
This hunt…It shouldn't have been this hard.
Like, yeah, sure, Gore Magala is not meant to be a exactly a walk in the park and ever since Wilds revealed its classification as a Demi Elder, the year before she was born, the devs started upping the stakes release after release, to match the players' growth.
But they were ready for it. Indeed, they killed it several times before today, too!
They were meant to get the last parts for her armor today not leave with…Whatever this was.
And as Jack takes the chance to restock on potions and ingredients, she makes the tally of this disastrous attempt, trying to make sense of it—OK, getting snatched mid air every now and then happens. Si-woong is good with the insect glaive, but there's limits to what he can do to dodge an unfortunately timed swipe while airborne.
But missing nearly every stun window? Wasting precious mount time by bracing like a noob instead of moving to wound a different spot? Overreaching and losing both the finisher and knockdown?
They're almost as bad as how he fainted thrice and failed their hunt.
Arite, one of those was just bad luck. Snatched on a jump and slammed for good measure.
But the other two? Walking right into its frenzied slam's telegraph? Diving back in after getting clawed and forgetting to heal?
None of that is how this always-cool control freak plays.
Then again, Jack reminds herself closing up the game and laying back against her pillow, several things have not been 'how he plays' in the past couple days, offline, too.
On one hand, she's not seen him in person in like three days. The first day was 'planned'. He told her he wouldn't be around much and might see texts late, too…But he did promise her on that same day that he'd bring her more stuff to watch yesterday, and was a no-show. Apologized by saying he's caught a bug or some other crap like that when she poked him in text, added that if they wanted to play together it'd have to be online for a while, and that was it.
But on the other, it makes sense. Being sick would also explain why he played as bad as he sounded.
No, that's not what feels wrong.
Jack snorts and clicks her tongue as she grabs her phone, or 'pager' as they call them here — something to do with how it uses different frequencies than a regular smartphone — and starts scrolling through their chat history, methodically going through keywords to answer one simple question: Has he ever apologized for anything, before yesterday, or did she trip on a red herring?
No results to speak of. Even the few times she chanced upon where a normal person would have said sorry, he'd use a 'lol' instead, and it's not like they've known each other long enough to need any serious apology between them…
Then again, their chat history is really short, so, maybe, she shouldn't give this half the thoughts she's giving it. She's kinda curious though. Will soon ask Artem to lend her red yarn and a boar—RIGHT.
Artem. She can ask him?
She's not sure she can ask either twin, he's probably different with them? But Artem? She knows they know each other, but the few times they interacted they felt more like polite acquaintances than anything. Just like they are, kind of. They're gaming buddies, her and Si-woong, but haven't been for long and don't really talk of much else, unless she's got questions…Which makes this perfect, cuz it means that if he's not heard him apologize, then hers is not just a small sample bias! Probably.
He did give her his number in case she needed anything brought over or whatever, which is technically not covering this use-case. But he's basically her grandma, in the body of a linebacker in his mid-twenties. So she can ask him, right? He's not going to bite her head off nor anything like that, right?
Oh, well. Asking is free, as her gram says. Just needs. A little push. A few breaths between closing her DMs with Si-woong and opening Artem's chat.
Hopefully she's not being a weirdo with this…