Location~ Forest edge, outside of Grand Masai's wall
Feather ~ No one in particular, whoever decides to notice her in town
A discreet yawn tugged two lips apart, crinkling the skin around a pair of clockwork eyes which looked over the setting sun wearily. The lofty gold light should have been enough to comfort the little bell teetering precariously upon a thick tree branch. But instead, the setting sun thrust a grim expression upon her maturely childish face; it meant that soon enough day would turn to night, and her training would have to cease until a safer time. Feather had been out here for hours - so long she needn't attempt to remember what shade of sky attested to her first kill in Quest Online. There was no point in looking back. In a game like this - probably the last game she would ever get the chance to play, Li... Feather, would not waste time looking back on the events that bought her way into this situation. If she died here Feather intended to accept it as reality. After all, the remainder of her fleeting life would surely be spent in this hellhole-ish game.
Still, she tread lightly during the first few days. After the initial shock of the GM's sweetly twisted proclamation, the 11 year old gamer sought first to riddle out a plan of action that would last her through the first level, at least. But plans were much prettier on paper than they were on the battle field. She learned that rather quickly in her haste to procure sustainable capitol. On the first day alone, the rather small and physically diminutive gamer lost at least 10 of her short throwing star supply to an aggro of bears roaming across the fishing lake near Grand Masai. It was lucky for her to be so swift and resourceful with her hands and feet. Any one of those devilish beasts could have leveled her easily.
After that mortifying experience the lithe little elfin girl sobered up and began to realize that overzealousness would be the leading cause of death in this world. Sure, money was important; she couldn't very well purchase potion materials with thin air or pocket lint... not that pocket lint really existed in this pixel-perfect world anyway... Tch, but still, the point remained that money would be the only means for Feather to develop her first life skill. And that life skill would be crucial to her survival in this game, because really, the childish avatar she chose to start the game with wasn't exactly fit for warfare. And to top it off, she'd picked the seemingly coolest - and realistically least intelligent class and weapon for an unskilled eleven year old girl to survive on. Stupid throwing knives and shurikans.
After a bit of careful exploration and practice, Feather had at least worked out a sustainable method of killing creatures and collecting drops. She'd yet to venture farther than western forest and the fishing lake; after all, who knew what creatures roamed the unknown fields of this map? The groups of male-and-female warriors that burst from the town gates with overzealous vigor and returned short on bodies and confidence. That's who. Feather certainly wasn't one of those people. Matter of fact she had been trying her best from the start of the game to dance just out of sight; she had her reservations about associating with people. It was a much better idea to scale the trees along the forest's rim, sticking close to the wall of Grand Masai and taking down wolves one at a time as they happened by her secretive location.
Feather was smart about attacking - she had to be. Taking on more than one or two wolves at a time from her height in the trees would be pointless when she was still working out the kinks of her throwing skill. And each time she killed a beast or two she would have to climb back down to collect her weapons and whatever lucky materials the monsters left behind. By the day's end her pack had been adorned with a few mangy scraps of leather and 20 gp to go along with the 10 she'd somehow been able to procure in the first few days of hopeless wandering and defensive monster attacks. In the process, her weapon supply was now down to 13 stars and 21 knives. Not too bad of a loss, but there was no telling when she would be able to restock, either.
The raven haired girl hardly glanced toward the town gate after the first day. When food was required she ventured down to the lake and continued to practice her throwing skills by spearing fish through with a nimble blade. Sleep found her scarcely - in real life she wasted the least amount of time in bed possible to sustain life, and here was no different. By the second day she'd been somewhat smart enough to carve out a little resting area at the bast of a tree limb, suspended high enough that the thick leaves blanketed her dozing form from sight. There probably wasn't even a point to hiding so high. From what she could tell most people explored her area of concealment during the day, fearful of might what crawl from the boughs after sunset. It was a pretty peaceful place, but the hard trees hardly provided a comfortable bed, and after endless hours of hunting with very little time for food, Feather teetered dangerously close to giving up and setting aside her resentments with venturing into town.
The setting sun gilded her pale cream skin with light vanilla tones, scarcely filtering through the leaves of her currently occupied tree. Some time had come to pass since the last wolf happened across her path, and Feather doubted she would be able to locate her weapons under the darkening sky and tree shade if one were to come now. "Time to pack up. I'll have to draft today's course before anything else..." She'd made it a sort of ritual since day one to write out what happened after each day, so as to document her progress through the game and reflect upon the breakthroughs and revelations later, if her spirits ever dipped below her natural melancholy But it'd become quite dark already, and she doubted by the time she made it back to her nesting tree that there would be enough light to write anything. "Sigh... What a pain..." Just another reason to take refuge in town for the night. Only a few hours, really. She'd slip in and back out before making the acquaintance of too many people. Yeah, she reasoned lamely while scaling through the tree branches, that'll be fine. One night wont kill me.
It wasn't coincidental that Feather was so close to the wall surrounding Grand Masai. She'd chosen this area of the forest specifically to be in some sort of "safety zone", at least until her skills were good enough to venture farther for money and items without great risk. A few short minutes after quitting her tree Feather found herself near the wall's edge, dangling precariously from the end of a rather thin branch that only measured up to the stone partition half-way. "Ku... what to do in this situation..." There was still quite a bit of distance to climb, and with no footholds to grasp she would have a hard time breaching the gap between her and the town. For a brief moment she considered dropping down to the ground and walking around, but the gate was far away and walking through the woods this late probably wasn't a good idea. But... she wasn't completely without resources. In her pack was a supply of small blades that, with a bit of effort, could be stabbed into the wall and lift her to ascension Whether it was realistic or not, she would let fate decide. It was already too late to procrastinate.
She decided to use the throwing knives; seemingly the more reliable of the two at this level. Four blades were retracted from her pack; two of which were pierced into the two inch thick soles of her black combat boots, mostly for support rather than actual climbing. The other two she gripped carefully in her palms, making sure the bladed edge would not catch her tender flesh. And so she slammed her first palm into the wall, heaving a heavy breath for courage that calmed her enough to begin scaling the wall. Her movements were rigid and tense; how could she not be nervous, performing a task so risky with no back-up plan? If Feather fell from this height her body would crumple upon impact, no doubt about it. Then again, the idea of dying here wasn't completely unappealing in the first place. And maybe that was why she was so willing to attack this game and take risks. When you had nothing to lose on the other side, what reservations did one have to consider?
Feather was coming dangerously close to the top of the wall when her first bout of trouble stirred. Having become a little too comfortable with her position, she allowed her bladed strikes against the wall to pierce a little too deep, and consequently lodged the blade in her left boot too far to pull back out. She was stuck there for a few panicked minutes, trapped in place by the very blades that up until now worked for her survival. Initially she attempted to lodge the tip of the second knife into the rock around the first, but her legs came together awkwardly and she found her fingers slipping around the other two blades from sweat. Taking a deep breath to calm the cluster of nerves gnawing on her throat, Feather re-positioned her body so as to lean the hostage hip against the wall. Then, with slow and methodical kicks, she drilled the free-footed blade into the crevice her trapped foot created. When both blades finally fell loose from the wall a startled yelp stole her breath away; a result of the near-fall she took from losing the support of her feet on the wall. Her hands tightened painfully around the knives on instinct, one of which bit into her shaking palm and sliced thinly.
The rest of the trip was spent muttering curses under her shallow breath. When she finally reached the top, her right-footed blade had cracked and was pretty much useless. The others were fine, if only dull from the extreme use. Tucking those three into her pack she lifted the crumbling blade with disgust and launched it into the forest with irritated strength. At one point Feather wondered whether the distant yelp that followed her angry outbreak was even real, but she was too frustrated to stick around and investigate. With everything packed up she darted like a lithe shadow along the length of the wall's top, bounding over small gaps when necessary and coming dangerously close at times to the dark edge. She reached the gate after a small amount of time, and for the first time was relieved to see the intercity lights.
That small wash of content lasted for about as long as it took Feather to notice the obnoxiously massive group of people huddling just outside the gate. Startled she took a low crouch on the wall, attempting to hide her figure from view; pointlessly, too, because by now it was probably too dark for them to see her even if they were interested in looking so high above. "Idiot, I'm such an idiot." Her curses were muttered with half-hearted resignation however, because when it came down to the facts her curiosity was piqued by the collection of gamers. And after a few short minutes of hiding she dared a peak over the wall, attempting to discern with her birds-eye view what the commotion was about.
From what she could tell a mob had come out to huddle around one massive man. Whispers of "bastard, heartless, PKer" caught her ear, and vaguely she thought back to the flashing purple text from an hour or so before. She hardly payed attention to it at the time, but given the circumstances it was likely related to this. Feather was disheartened by it all, if anything; a sigh fluttered from her lips as she watched the man. It was troublesome to see one person targeted and isolated from the rest - whether he truly killed another player was meaningless in her eyes. From what she could tell based on his speech, this man was an oaf with hardly the intelligence of a five year old child. But Feather wasn't one to concern herself with this sort of thing. It was getting really dark, and yet she still hid atop the wall like a raven.
After a few minutes of watching the scene unfold she forced her clockwork eyes away and traversed a small distance over the wall, so as to drop down farther away from the gate. She found an opening for access into the city by way of a slightly tall building pushed up against the inside of the fortress. Hopping down onto the roof and tumbling into a clumsy roll, Feather was able to leap down to the ground and look upon Grand Masai from its base level. She spared no time in moving through the back alleys, attempting to remain somewhat disclosed as she traveled into the heart of the town. Food first, argued her growling stomach - then a place to stay. She would visit shops in the morning before too many people were awake, and flee to her nesting tree before anyone bothered her with conversation.
