Chapter 43: Fresh Faces
Major Valen, Gray, and the 11 other 'players' headed back towards the medical facility. Gray remembered that there were several incubation pods stacked upon each other when he first joined the game and now knew it was because each body was stored in them when the player logged out of Alterra Online. Now that they knew the secret of the Alterra Project, they really didn't need to log out anymore if they didn't want to.
"So anything we should worry about in regards to the new players?" asked Geoff.
"We don't expect you to babysit all of them, but keep in mind that the war will most likely start up again as soon as the treaty expires on September 1st. Emphasize the realism so they don't go overboard with their actions. For example, we don't want a male player trying to take advantage of a female NPC just because he is a player. We know they're actually real people and not just some made up artificial character for the player's enjoyment, but the player's can't know that yet." said Major Valen
Everyone nodded solemnly and the girls even looked a little fired up for some reason Gray couldn't figure out.
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Everyone walked into the medical facility and then into the back room where the incubation pods were kept. Several medical assistants were busy lining the incubation pods up along the floor. Gray tried to quickly count the number of pods lying around, but given the size of the room, he could only estimate about 200 to 300 pods.
"Alright, remember how you all felt when you exited your pod for the first time, the new players will be feeling the same thing. Use that knowledge to get them acclimated as fast as possible. Oh, and finally, you all will now have access to the real internet, not just the virtual world's enclosed network. You will be monitored so think of it like having access to the internet at work. The logistics or maintenance division can update your armlets for this access later. For now, get ready!"
Everyone kinda looked at each other with varying reactions, not really sure what Major Valen meant by 'get ready!' Were they about to be attacked or something?
Yurika looked excited thinking that something fun was about to happen, Stacia covered her chest for protection with a slight expression of fear, Caleb just shrugged at Stacia's weird action, and Geoff was covering his family jewels for some strange reason while Gray looked at him with even more confusion.
"Geoff... what are you doing?" asked Gray.
"Protecting the future of the Leray family! I will not go down without a fight!" said Geoff defiantly.
"Major Valen, sir, do you have a clipboard? I need to knock some sense into a teammate..." said Gray with a deadpan expression.
Geoff stood up at attention quickly with his hands at his sides "Just kidding, right?" then trying to laugh innocently.
Gray then put his hand on Stacia's shoulder and said to her "You can relax, we're a team so we can count on each other now, right?"
Stacia seemed to relax a little bit then stood straight like normal and nodded to Gray. "You're right, sorry..."
Everyone stood together, Major Valen was in front of them with a clipboard that had a list of what appeared to be names on it and the various medical technicians around had similar lists.
"Okay baby birds, split up into teams of 2 each so you can give a brief tour and orientation to the groups of players as they wake up!"
Of course Gray looked at Geoff and Geoff looked at Gray but Major Valen stepped in and said "I would prefer it if you two morons weren't together."
"Dang it." Gray thought because Geoff was his buddy, but thinking about it they would screw around less if they weren't together.
Major Valen reached out to one of the other males the other team, grabbed him by his head and tossed him to Geoff. "The rest of you pair up!"
Geoff looked at the guy that was tossed towards him with a slight expression of pity as he was just tossed around like a sack of potatoes. "I'm Geoff, you?"
The guy that was grabbed picked himself up and said "Paul, sorry for the inconvenience, the seven of us made a team called Team EXPANDS, which team are you guys?" Paul was a little taller than Geoff and Gray, but very skinny. His blonde hair was longer and one could tell he spent a lot of time taking care of it.
"Steel Wolves, only 5 of us though, I have to ask though, is it Team EXPANDS because it will keep growing?" Geoff asked Paul.
"Something like that... it's actually because we couldn't decide on a name and just combined all of our initial into a word." said Paul honestly.
The gears in Geoff's head started spinning away as you could tell he was trying to think of something, finally a light bulb went off and he asked Paul with a grin. "Is EXPANDS the only word you guys found that works?"
"...Yes" said Paul
"You missed the better one! SPANDEX! You guys could've been Team SPANDEX!" said Geoff triumphantly.
Paul put his head down while frowning and thought to himself "I need a new team"...
Everyone else paired up by themselves leaving Gray without being able to pick his partner. He finally saw the only other girl from their group of 12 was standing around seemingly in a daze. The recent realization of killing someone from the mission a few days ago had still left her listless and Gray now understood why nobody picked her as it would essentially mean he'd have to do twice the work if she wasn't going to help.
Gray walked over to the girl as she sat on a chair against a wall with her legs tugged up against her chest while looking down depressed. "She couldn't be any more stereo-typically depressed if she tried." Gray thought to himself. Gray plopped down in the seat next to her without saying a word and she was slightly startled by this.
"I'm Gray with the Steel Wolves, you can leave the tour to me, just follow along. When you're ready to talk, we can talk, or not talk, just sitting with someone is nice too." Gray said with a smile on his face.
"...Xyra..." the girl whispered with a bit of a muffle as her mouth was covered by her thighs.
"What was that?" replied Gray
"...my name is Xyra, Team EXPANDS." the girl, Xyra, replied finally loud enough that Gray could hear her.
"Ok, let me know if I can ever help you with anything." Gray said confidently, his overly nice guy nature coming out in force again.
Xyra nodded as Gray was finally able to get a look at her face. Xyra could be described as a wild beauty, she had tan skin and thick black hair and black eyes that made her look like she may have been of pacific islander descent with her slightly slanted eyes and dark full lips. When she finally stood up Gray noticed that she was actually a little taller than him and very lean, not skinny, but more like she was very toned and worked out a lot.
"Alright, now that you're all paired up, here is a list of your players we're giving to you. We'll release them by team one group at a time. Team 1 will go to Geoff and Paul, Team 2 will go to Gray and Xyra, Team 3..." Major Valen went through the list of six teams assigning them to each pair of players and handing each of them a list of their assigned team. "...and Team 6 will be Stacia and Yurika."
Since this was the first time Gray got to see the incubation pods opening, he was slightly unnerved when he realized how similar to a coffin they were. Each pod first stood up at a roughly 75 degree angle by the bottom legs retracting and the top legs extending. The top parts of each player was visible form the chest up but their eyes were all closed. A few of the players started to move a little inside their pods. Each time someone's eyes opened the sound of a seal breaking could be heard and the incubation pod's door would swing open revealing the entire player at once.
Gray thought of something then whispered to one of the medical technicians nearby. "Everyone has a tight fitted shirt and shorts on, how were they put on?"
The medical technician replied "Once the body completes the final growth cycle, the last step is to weave those synthetic clothes on each person in their pod."
"Wow, that sounds complicated and I can't imagine how it is done." said Gray with amazement.
"Of course it's complicated, and totally made up, we just open everyone up early and put clothes on them after they finish their accelerated growth." said the medical technician while laughing slight at Gray.
Gray looked at the medical technician and was about to say something when he was interrupted by him "Don't get the wrong idea, we're all professionals here and nobody would giggle or laugh at any of the weird body modifications people tried to get by, plus only female techs helped female players and male techs with male players."
This made sense to Gray, we're all grown adults, nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. "Hey, what's the weirdest thing someone tried to do?" said Gray to the technician while smiling mischievously.
The technician hesitated for a second, looked around to see if any of the other techs were paying attention then whispered. "You would not believe at how many female players tried to be male players and vice versa, but we had a "squirrel-face" in your batch that tried to put his eyes on the side of his head, the weirdest one by far though was the guy that tried to swap his arms and legs around."
"Like left and right? That's not so weird..."
"No, top and bottom..."
Gray pictured two possibilities with that, either the guy would walk on his hands and then his feet would be at his sides where his hands would have been, or the guy would walk on his feet like normal with his head hanging upside down between his legs. "I can't even..."
"He wasn't allowed to use the customization system anymore after we had to recreate his body. Squirrel head as well, he would need a custom made neural link helmet due to that ridiculous eye spacing."
Gray nodded thinking about this some more but had to leave the technician be as players started to wake up finally.
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