Chapter Text
A few months before, Abigail had found an old VR headset in an abandoned office belonging to the major corporation of “C&A”, a tech company that seemed to be at the forefront of most of her town’s technological research. Her exploration of the building had been a bit spur of the moment, yet dull for her video content. How could she post urban exploration content if she wasn’t able to actually find anything interesting in such a company?
When she had laid eyes on the headset, a simple-looking piece of equipment with a slight vintage appearance, Abigail knew her few viewers would love to see her test out the aged thing.
At the time, she had assumed it was just a leftover purchase that never left a past worker’s desk, or some half-baked project of the company’s attempting to profit from the gaming community. It seemed like something a major corporation would do to line their pockets thicker with cash.
Still, it had been left to rot, like everything else in the building, so it wouldn’t have been a crime to take it home, possibly get it running for a free virtual reality headset to add to her attempts at playing video games.
Though, after spending a few days getting the thing to turn on, the result was disappointing. Rather than being able to hook up to her phone or having an independent game downloaded, it was blank.
Once slipping the headset over her eyes, the screen stayed lifeless for a few moments. Then, with a sudden, eye-straining flash, she was blinded by pure white light. Abigail pulled the device away from her eyes, throwing it onto her bed while trying to blink the black spots away in her vision from the defective machine.
For the rest of the day, she had a splitting migraine that stubbornly persisted through her use of pain meds and resting. The sharp pressure built at the back of her skull, as well as her temples, like her brain was violated by the strain. It wasn’t until she’d slept it off like a hangover into the next morning that her head felt correct on her shoulders again.
The girl had shoved the headset into a drawer after that, promptly forgetting about its existence.
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Until now, of course.
While falling into another late-night session of procrastination, instead of editing her latest video, she started cleaning her desk set up. Organization had never been her strong suit, as the feeling of starting at the beginning of the mess caused her to freeze with a slight overwhelming feeling in her chest.
Stress really wasn’t something a girl like her was built to deal with, it was a wonder she’d been a functioning adult after moving out of her parents' house with the little support she’d had.
It took her a moment to push herself to start, as it couldn’t be so bad if the procrastination was helping in another portion of her life, right? The cleaning went smoothly enough after that. Some garbage got thrown away, trinkets and souvenirs she’d found in some of her earlier explorations were all straightened out on her display shelf.
Eventually, Abigail got to the lower drawers of her desk and, upon opening the least used one, lost her motivation to clean entirely. There, still in the exact same place, what that old headset she’d taken from the office building. That video had gotten a decent amount of views after uploading. A few viewers had even asked about if the free VR had actually ended up being fixable, not that she frequently went through her comment sections.
As she picked up the old device, the metal was cool on her skin. She supposed it wouldn’t be so bad to look a few things up about the maintenance and repair of things like this.
The girl soon fell down a rabbit hole of content about the very basics of DIY wiring and screen connection, since it had seemed to be a screen issue at the time she tried it on. Truthfully, she was not at all confident in her ability to do this, though that did not stop her from unscrewing the bottom of its outer shell plating, digging her shaky hands into the wiring inside.
Abigail had never done any kind of circuitry work before. To her this felt like trying to pick the right wire to cut when disarming a bomb.
A few minutes went by, making sure the wires weren’t damaged. It was harder considering this looked more like a sloppy garage creation, rather than a large company’s work, but experimentation was always a part of success, she supposed.
There was no indication of her being done with whatever fixes she needed to do to get this thing running without blinding her, so the only thing to do was try to turn it on again while hoping for the best.
The moment she secured the device to her head, pressing the power button, she shut her eyes tightly. Repeating the migraine she’d had before from the eyestrain would not be any kind of reward for her attempt at this. If she saw the light from behind her eyelids, she’d just quit for the night without drama.
Only, rather than the intense white flash of the previous attempt, there was nothing. A few seconds of the same lifeless black forced her guard down enough to peek her eyes open, assuming the meddling she’d done had broken it more after all.
With no warning, the brightness of a sudden wall of white, centimeters from her exposed eyes, proved her weariness correct. It was far too late by the time her brain registered the need to protect her vision.
There, in the midnight darkness of her room, Abigail yelped, feeling the familiar burn of the screens stealing her sight, as well as any want to continue with the piece tonight.
She quickly pulled it away from her face and tossed it back onto the wood of the desk. The disorientation of a flashbang caused her legs to trip and stumble over each other on the way to her bed.
Without waiting for the effects to wear off, Abigail flopped onto her bed with little care, face squished against her pillow with a drained feeling at the ache in her skull.
A weak groan, muffled by the fabric, rose from her throat.
She was an idiot to think she could fix a piece of technology like that in the first place. Now she was definitely paying the price for that late-night cockiness. Her head hurt badly. It felt too small to fit her thoughts. Her inner dialogue was all discombobulated. She couldn’t even keep a string of thought going for more than a few words before it stopped making sense entirely.
The short woman shifted to curl up on her side, brow furrowing in an attempt to force her thoughts back into place. Thinking was already difficult when this late at night. Sleep sounded much more efficient in getting rid of the throbbing pain behind her eyes.
Just as her body began to relax for the night, a single thought rang in the back of her mind. A simple complaint that she thought she wouldn’t have to deal with headaches anymore after…
After what? Migraines had always been a constant in her life, happening even as recent as last week from cramming an online deadline. So why did it feel so much like the familiarity of the pain had worn off since then?
Pomni didn’t want to open her eyes. It had been too long a night already; the darkness felt peaceful, like it was embracing her.
The distant glow from her dimmed computer monitor faded away with a final sigh of contentment. She’d have to tell Caine to help if her headache didn’t cease by morning this time.
She didn’t even try to comprehend what any of that last part meant before sleep claimed her consciousness entirely.