V1P3R - An ODSMMO Adventure

Chapter Won, but not Lost Part- 2

“Thanks Phaze, get used to it or not, that’s your new nickname for me,” I say still laughing, to which she scoffs laughing then gives up arguing with me. She sends me a friend request as I finish the last of the adjustments and I accept it while cleaning up the area, then I help them climb out before connecting the power to the radiation shield and climbing out. I walk over to the engine control box Phazeon is standing at and lay on the floor sliding between her legs under the box causing her to giggle while Leeloo scoffs rolling her eyes. I make a few adjustments and notice a few things that can be improved, so I grab the multitool and use it to help upgrade a few of the ship’s main systems, then I signal her to start the engine. It starts up without a problem and stays running smoothly purring like a happy kitten, then I get up and out of the control box and dust myself off while the girls are celebrating.

“Thank you thank you thank you!” Phaze squeals while hugging my neck, “I don’t think I could’ve gotten it done, much less this quickly, without help. So you need to get off this planet? Where you want to go?” She asks as we walk to the elevator heading to the bridge.

“I’m not sure honestly, I met Kinaeris in the desert outside the city, then after talking to her and walking across the desert, I started to truly understand how infinite the possibilities are here in the ODSMMO,” I reply with wonder and curiosity, then the elevator stops at the crew quarters.

“Why don’t we just go to the hub world for now since it’s safe there and we can brainstorm later. Leeloo, would you mind going to the medbay and see if the AI core room is unlocked yet?” Phazeon taps her earpiece twice turning her comms on then opens her inventory swiping to a similar earpiece and takes it out handing it to me. I put it on my left ear and turn it on at the same time as Leeloo does then she steps out of the elevator and Phazeon presses the top floor button waving at Leeloo. She shoots us both a bird as the doors close, then Phazeon taps her earpiece and mine turning them off, “I love her to death but she doesn’t like strangers. I on the other hand love making new friends with new ideas, especially one who is a handyman,” she laughs. The elevator opens up revealing the captains cabin, I could not go here before since I didn’t have the authorization, “you said you met Kinaeris when you stepped through a portal that disappeared when she logged out right?” She asks while walking into the shower. I start walking around the room looking at her medals, trophies, achievements, and item collection that she has displayed.

“Yes, I helped her by fixing a broken R2-D2 and she asked about my life in reality, which today is my birthday. Then while my back was turned she pulled a screen up with my account details, upgraded me to ODSMMO Engineer class, and deposited 500,000 coins into my account. Then, before I could thank her properly, she left,” I circle the entire room once and as I get back to where I started, she steps out of the shower with a clean body, “why did you close the door if your body isn’t mature themed in its nude form? It just seems pointless since your normal form is a sleek and sexy metal body,” I raise an eyebrow in a confused look.

“Every girl has her right to privacy, and I chose this body because female androids are badass. I don’t think I have to list names, I assume you have seen your fair share of them, plus blue is my favorite color and I wanted something that wouldn’t look weird if different parts of the body had their own color,” she pulls her inventory screen up and starts browsing through her collection of apparel and accessories, “but you do pitch a solid argument,” she says as she taps the preview button which causes a distorted image of the item to appear on her body, “which of these should I use?” She asks flipping through her apparel collection while turning a full circle allowing me a couple of seconds to get a good view of the items. Fifteen minutes later she shows me the very last one, “this is the last one, so I hope you were paying attention because I’m not gonna do that again,” she laughs rhetorically with an exhausted tone in her voice.

“I made a list of the ones that I liked,” I hand her a file then walk to the shower, “if you don’t mind I’m going to get this oil and grease off of me,” I say entering the shower closing the door behind me out of spite causing her to giggle, “but if you must know, the corrupted gravity Zero Suit from the Metroid franchise is my favorite. The other two I liked more than the others is the Sarah Kerrigan skin and the Cortana skin,” I explain while my avatar is in the shower bathing scene. She does not reply immediately, so once the scene ends and the clothes reappear, I walk out of the shower to see her looking in the mirror wearing the neon blue and purple corrupted Zero Suit with pink tracer lights, and pink accent lights, “now that looks bad a*s, you should change your hair to white and pull it into a ponytail, and have your favorite pistol in a thigh holster,” I say giving her a thumbs up and she changes her hair into a bright white high ponytail that reaches down to her hips, then she pulls two black and neon blue meteor .44 handguns out of her inventory and a holster appears on each of her thighs. Then she holds them both up looking back at me taking a sexy pose, which I screenshot, then she smiles holstering the guns and turns around.

“Thank you, I think this is going to be the new me until I get bored of it,” she says laughing then she pushes me towards the elevator, “I can tell you haven’t been to the avatar outfitter store yet. Where did you even find these dusty old rags?” She asks pushing the button for the bridge while turning both of our earpieces on.

“Hey captain, there’s a hole where the AI core used to be,” Leeloo says over the comm, then there is a long pause while Phazeon presses the crew quarters button changing our stop, “over.”

“You have got to start remembering to say over, especially when we use comms during a fight, over,” Phazeon scolds her.

“It’s not like we are using a CB...”

“I’m surprised you even know what a CB is cuzzo!” She interrupts Leeloo laughing hardily, “over!”

“We used to play with grandpa’s CB all the time when I would come to Alabama to visit you,” Leeloo’s voice trails off as she realizes what she said, “sorry...over...”

“Thanks a lot Sabrina! Might as well tell him our whole life story while you’re at it,” Phazeon says in an annoyed tone while face palming herself.

“It’s cool, really, you don’t have to worry about me,” I say putting my hand on her shoulder then I flip the lamp on next to me and pull a mirror up to the optics, “see? I couldn’t come find you if I wanted to. Outside of this room I’m pretty much useless, but I can still wipe my own a*s for now,” I say jokingly in an attempt to lighten the mood.

“I’m sorry, I always overreact because of bad experiences. It must feel great when you enter the OASIS and be able to do anything you want, that you can’t do in reality,” she smiles at me then I turn the lamp off as the elevator doors open to a large memorial board with a few names with pictures randomly placed on it in the middle of a hall. To the left is three doorways leading to the women’s restroom, recreational room, and crew quarters. To the right is the men’s restroom, observatory, and life support station. There are two paths on either side of the elevator leading to the mess hall which has three rooms from left to right with the first being a hackers black market infogrid with a virtual intelligence assistant drone, secondly the main battery where she has the stock 100mm double cannon, and lastly the medbay which leads to the AI core room.

“Yeah, I have dreamt of being able to play a game like this, or have a situation like James Cameron’s Avatar, Disney’s Tron, Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie, or The Wachowski’s Matrix where I could transfer my consciousness to another body, or into a system allowing me to continue living and learning. I know that sounds greedy, but after thirty five years, I still wish to keep learning. The one thing I love more than good food is learning, and with my condition I won’t really get the chance to,” I explain while we walk towards the medbay and I notice she stops when I say the word condition so I look back at her, “I’m not looking for pity or sympathy, I don’t have time for it. All I want to do is play to my hearts content and explore the worlds I grew up falling in love with,” I can hear her sniffling, and I knew she was crying, so I wait by the medbay door.

“You sound just like my big brother. He was just like you, always wanting to learn more, read one more page, get one more book, it was always ‘one more’ with him. He had a degenerative disease that started when he was twenty and he died five years ago,” she mentions as she catches up to me wiping her tears and blowing her nose, “I’m glad I met you V, I hope we become and stay good friends,” she hugs me then we enter the medbay joining Leeloo. Phazeon opens the door and a gust of sandy wind blows through the giant hole in the hull.

“Yep, I’d say that you got yourself a hole here,” I say in a hillbilly accent then burst into laughter as both girls start laughing, “sorry, I live in Alabama too and I couldn’t resist making a joke.”

“Heck, for all you know we could be neighbors,” Leeloo retorts still giggling.

“Nah, I got a look at his cute little face, we don’t know him. But it wouldn’t hurt us to meet up and have pizza one day, if you wanted to,” Phazeon offers closing the door and turning around, “so, V, do you think you could help me fix the rest of my ship? I’ll make sure to use the safe paths while flying back to the hub world so we won’t take any more damage than we already have,” she holds her hands together pleading to me.

“Yeah I’ll help you,” I say rolling my eyes and trying to fight back a smile.

“Yay! Thank you so much!” She jumps happily then hugs me again before running back to the elevator with Leeloo following close behind. I stay behind to assess the damage until Phazeon comes over the comms, “are you coming or not?

You can’t be near that hole when we take off, you’ll get sucked out into space and killed, which will cause you to Zip Zero, over,” I look back towards the elevator and see her beckoning me to come to her, and the term Zip Zero refers to being killed or dying, which will cause the player’s coins, inventory, and experience to revert back to zero leaving the coins and inventory to pile up for another player to claim.

“So you do lose everything if you get killed, I thought it was just a portion of your money plus what you had equipped, over,” I reply closing the door then I walk to the elevator joining them.

“So this is really your first day playing huh? That’s what we thought too, but there are a few people who figured out some loopholes. If you have a secure base, ship, or place to store your stuff you can unload it from your inventory so it doesn’t get lost, but nobody has found a way to store coins yet,” Phazeon says as I enter the elevator then she pushes the button for the bridge.

“Investments,” I say thinking out loud.

“Huh?” Leeloo looks at me like a confused child.

“I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” I reply jokingly, “but the way to store your coin is to invest it,” I explain but still get confused looks from them both, “okay, so let’s say you buy a ship, a car, and a fancy weapon for a grand total of 100,000 coins. You take those to whatever you use as a secure hideout and put them on display or in a safe. Then if you need money you can sell something, but when you die you won’t lose as much,” I explain hoping they understood me then the elevator doors open and the girls exit first walking to the cockpit.

“That’s genius level smart thinking, good idea V, have you given any thought to where you want to go?” Phazeon asks looking back at me while I slowly catch up to them.

“I have an idea, but I want to do some more research before making that kind of decision. Plus I’m getting hungry and I just spent a couple of months in a hospital so I need a bath as well. When we hit the hub world give me your ship, I’ll fix it when I get back and send you a message when it is done. Does that sound okay to you?” I lean on the back of the pilot seat. She looks up at me smiling then pulls the ship out of the hangar and leaves the planet.

“Wow, she’s running better than when I first got her! What did you to her?” She asks ecstatically.

“The mass effect drives normally need the relays to displace the universe and make jumps, and since the relays don’t exist here, I just added the relay’s gravitational slingshot energy to the pylons,” I say trying to explain by miming with my hands but get the same confused looks from both of them, “the engine does not push the ship through space, it drives space around the ship...”

“You’re saying that the ship is standing still?” Leeloo interrupts me.

“Yeah, the universe is just moving around us,” I use my hands to mime again.

“Then why do we still get pushed back in our seats when she guns it?” She retorts.

“Because gravity still has its effects. It’s harder to explain than it is to learn, I’ll send you a file to link you to where I learned it,” I say pulling my inventory up to look for the file.

“No thanks, I’m just gonna take your word for it,” she says while looking at the map.

“She’s just like that, but I would like to read it. We are about to cross the portal to the hub world, I’m gonna swoop down and park it at the avatar outfitter,” Phazeon says as we approach a portal. The ship flies through it smoothly and we pop out over the main central plaza then she turns hard spiraling down after cutting the engine to slow down without hurting the ship.

“Where did you learn to fly?” I ask as she sets it down gently on a flight deck.

“Another story for another day, let’s get off this ship so we can all go eat!” She shouts pushing me and Leeloo off the ship then she shrinks the ship and hands it to me. She opens her inventory as I open mine and she swaps the ownership, then I put it in my inventory and notice I have a new friend request and a new message.

“I’ll shoot you a message when I finish with the repairs, see ya!” I say as they wave goodbye then I log off, remove the gear, and roll to the connecting hallway to the intercom next to the door and press the call button.

“Yes?” My mom’s voice rings through the speaker.

“Hey momma, I like how you got all of this set up for me, thank you,” I say laughing with joy.

“Of course, anything to make it any better or easier for you. You hungry yet?” She says with a quivering voice.

“Yeah I thought I’d take a break and get some food and a bath then go back in for a while. I have some work to do in there and it will probably take me a while,” I wait for a reply but after a few minutes I get worried that she walked away, “momma? You don’t have to bring me anything, I can come get it...” she opens the door interrupting me.

“Here you go, two banana sandwiches, a can of ranch Pringles, a cold one liter Dr Pepper, and two king size Fastbreaks,” she holds a cooler bag open to me then she walks over to the rig and puts the cooler on the table, “have fun but don’t stay up too late, you need to get some rest. I know it had to be difficult sleeping in those crappy hospital beds, goodnight love you,” she bends over and hugs me.

“Goodnight love you too,” I say in return continuing a tradition that started when I was 2-3 years old, although it has gotten shorter with time. Both mom and dad would say this phrase which was part of a daily bedtime ritual; night night sweet dreams dream dreams love you night night. It ultimately started a tradition that before anyone went to bed they had to recite the cadence with me. But now it’s just three or four simple words; night love you, or good night love you, and in doing so would end the day with both of you being on good terms just in case something happens during sleep. I could tell she was painfully holding tears back as she went back to her trailer.

I roll myself back over to the rig, lock the wheelchair in, pull the tray closer, set my food out, put the Dr Pepper in the drink holster, put the equipment back on, grab a pen and notebook out of my bag, then load up in the ODSMMO. I open the mail screen to see a friend request from R3AP3R, and chuckle knowing that he would have found me sooner or later. I accept it then a message pops up with his avatar, “hey dude! It’s about time you finally joined up, now we can go on real adventures together without having to worry about driving anywhere,” he laughs then points to his head, “this is cool that I finally look like I really want to in a game. For real dude, glad you’re still alive and kicking, we are immortals! They can’t kill us!” He shouts then the message ends and I laugh at how goofy he still is after all these years. His avatar is average height and lean, or what we would call ‘wiry’, tanned Caucasian skin, black shoulder length hair in a ponytail, black scruffy beard with two long braided goatee strands mimicking Jack Sparrow’s, and ocean blue irises on black eyes. He has blue glowing tattoos like how the tattoos are in the Fable series, obsidian cuirass with cobalt chain mail, shredder’s pauldrons, Batman’s gauntlets, Shazam’s cape, Blue Lantern’s ring, Ghost Rider’s belt and chain, six Pokéballs on his belt, Hwang’s pants and boots from Tekken, a sleeveless black trench coat, a custom designed keyblade, and Kilik’s staff from Soul Calibur 2 strapped to his back. I also noticed he had a calamity necklace on, which is something we started together back in 2010 when we would add charms, pendants, or other items to our necklace that would represent adventures we took. There is another message from someone named Shamen the Shaman, which concerns me since I do not recognize the name but I decide to open it anyways.

“Happy birthday V1P3R! We appreciate you playing our game. Jacky told me she met you on Tatooine and told me that you were very humble and fun to talk to. If you can, meet me at these coordinates at 9pm server time,” the message reads vaguely, but I can only assume that they meant well and I look at the server time to see it is 08:26pm, which is also Central Time, luckily. I had some time to prepare, so I checked the coordinates which leads to a blank spot where it looks like it might be filled in later with updates. I put a marker on it and enter the Avatar outfitters store to check it out while I am here, although I do not have much time to shop. The first thing I come to is the weapon section, and I browse through the options not finding anything that tickles my fancy until I reach the pistol section. I find a Kimber 1911 Sapphire Ultra- Vex, a Kimber 1911 Amethyst Ultra- Xev, a white leather gunslinger belt with a white leather thigh holster, and a black leather thigh holster with an additional slot for a knife, which gives a choice of several different types of knives. I choose a star patterned karambit then I give both guns snub nose suppressors, extended magazines, blue energy shot rounds for Vex, and purple energy shot rounds for Xev. I also purchase, and customize a Luna ZS-12 Revolver changing the overall color to onyx while changing the grip, cylinder, cylinder ejection button, trigger, and hammer to moon stone. I notice that it has an option to give it a keychain loop on the butt of the grip which I put on it, then I scour through the ammunition list hoping to find something unique, but I don’t see anything worthwhile. Then, just as soon as I think about calling it quits, I notice a bullet with a white flaming tip that has a variety of options for the bullet trail color, for which I choose shadow. The projectiles are an eerily white and they are spinning chaotically which causes the shadow trail to take on a unique, helix type, form as it lingers in the air. I equip the gunslinger belt, that has azure accents and details, putting the black holster on the left side of the belt, Vex in the right holster, Xev in the left holster. I put the ZS-12, or Chanceux, in the quickdraw holster, then I stock up on ammo before I forget and leave without any which makes me feel a little better knowing that I could defend myself, if needed, without having to open my inventory constantly. Before I exit, I catch a glimpse of a kiosk advertising keychains, so I mosey over to it and take a look. I buy a neon blue frosted marble three quarters the size of a golf ball with a celestial design equipping it to Chanceux as a keychain then I turn around to leave and I remember everyone having a personalized orb like ball that have multiple functions like a camera, streaming device, and many more. So I run over to the stand selling them and buy one while checking the time. Seeing that I still had some time left, I customize the camera orb changing the main color to a cold black with my custom V symbol in neon blue on each side, and the lights to neon hot pink. I leave the store having made a list, in reality, of the items I could see around the store, the ones I thought of while exploring today, and adding new ones as they come to me. I head to the coordinates while finishing my food, and as I approach the destination I notice an odd looking ball of light randomly floating around in the void in front of me. I watch it dart around as if it were enjoying itself when I hear someone walking up behind me and I cautiously pull Chanceux out of the holster pulling the hammer back.

“It’s whimsical and unique isn’t it?” The voice sounds like Shamus Machiavelli, Jacqueline Odyssey’s partner in Foresight Animation Technologies And Systematic Simulations, which is a very long name with a horrible acronym, and I turn around, g*n ready, to see that it is Shamus’s avatar.