ragtag

Sallas sheathed the omerast into it's custom crescent cradle with a smooth fluid motion and got her bearings. To her back lay the northern hills of Thyngull full of the recent dead, to her left spread a wide and wild plain which gave way to a ragged tear of yet unnamed peaks, before her undying face the ruins of Nomenesti crumbled in a mockery of organized chaos. She allowed herself a moment to close long lashed curtains over her pixel 9 eyes. Immediately the interface cursor warmed up to a slim bar of magenta...pulsing in anticipation of her command. Sallas felt fatique creep up her muscles as acrid drops of sweat fell against her neck. A quick almost imperceptible inner tuck of her lower lip and her mind's eye became a menu of options.

~~

Kimberly Simmons hated the sudden rush-drop of reality. Shouldn't serial time stop giving it's suscribers sore limbs? Kimbe started stretching as Chopin's Nocturne in E minor switched on and was quickly adjusted to softer tones and slightly quicker meter. Kimbe sat with legs folded in the new locu position that her counselor had patiently taught her last wednesday and let the haunting passages of frederick chopin, her frederick's nocturne bring her heart back into normal parameters. As the piano paused between tracks she found that it had been raining.

rain.
sallas. She had been playing as Sallas again. Always Sallas when it rained. Always Sallas and always undefeated until the Administrative Knights of Interface Registration and Execution sent her into fatique.

Bentie had said that the SallasCR was some super-virus that the "grippy ol' bastards" found lying dormant, some kind of cypoenerd urban legend, and that it had somehow inserted itself randomly into her headspace so that it could finish it's original program.

But Bentie was full of theories and Kimbe was smart enough to realize that it could all be some elaborate pick up line to get his jack in her h-space...after all BT wasn't exactly the down-on-his-luck wirehead you'd bring home to meet the family. But all that aside, the feeling of unease lent sudden weight to her friend's conspiracies, so she blew out her candles, silently admonishing herself for her carelessness, and threw on a jacket before heading out the door of her 1/2 room canti.

~~~
to be continued...
~~~