My VR pod hissed softly, the gel cooling off my neck like stale breath. I blinked again as my apartment walls came into focus.
But so did the figure.
They stood up from my second-favorite seat, only then I could be sure it was a human.
My brain did a factory reset.
I sat up so fast I slammed my shoulder against the pod hatch, and screamed, "Who the hell are you?!"
White hair... Like, actual pure white, not like a cosplay wig, it shimmered like snow under the moonlight.
Her expression was unreadable, but the look of young maturity was apparent, she was like, what, late 20s, early 30? She was tall, slim, squared shoulders, and her eyes narrowed in judgment.
"Quite impressive, CJS69." She said, her voice low and smooth, like a knife sliding into a leather sheath, "You managed to bypass the code that prevents Hailie from dying... Who could ever anticipate your antics?"
"...You’re Hailie?" I croaked, cold sweat already crawling down my back as I tried to exit the pod and looked at my door, which was closed, and definitely locked, how did she get in here without a key.
This was not my first time getting doxxed, I once leaked my address by uploading a picture of the outside of my apartment, then I had to move. But no one ever saw my face... I was extremely cautious, even when selling my thigh pics online. She was probably the first in history to successfully dox me.
And she mentioned code? Was she... A developer of Darkmoon Adventure?
The strange woman stepped forward.
She leaned down where I was sitting, palm slamming into the pod wall beside my head, forcing me to lay back down.
Is this kabe-don? Is this flirting? Is this lesbianism? Or is this a threat?
IS THIS WOMAN FLIRTING WITH ME? WHAT? HAUHUAHUHHHHH?
I wanted to save my first lesbianesque interaction to a sword fight that ended in me saddling over her as we aggressively and passionately make out from spite.
But now, I was half-naked in a VR pod, cornered in my comfort cave by a beautiful ghost from the game I just committed war crimes in.
"I’m not Hailie," she added, her eyes locked with mine.
I paused, waiting for her elaboration, and she also paused, probably waiting for my question. But after a good minute of no one saying anything, she finally said:
"I’m her older sister."
Then panic slapped me across the face.
"YOU IS THE WHAT!?" I squeaked, failing my grammar lessons, trying to look for a gap to squeeze out of her arms.
"My name is Eirlys." She narrowed her gaze. "You’re the one Hailie mentioned. The weird player who groped her chest, walked behind her, and then Hailie just suspiciously got booted off the game with her account deleted. Almost as if she died."
"That’s a lie!" I shouted. "I didn’t grope... Ahem, fuck, okay, I did grope her, but why would you even make VR if you don’t anticipate that! Doesn’t everyone read the Terms of Service and realize that the developing company doesn’t take responsibility?"
Eirlys simply ignored me pleading:
"We put an invisible condition on her character... That she can not go below 99% HP, how did you do it?"
I paused, "...You achieved that by accessing the PlayerConditionSettingModifier library to add a minus ninety-nine by overwriting the original intended code to include a specific player username, Hailie for this instance?"
She was genuinely surprised, immediately grabbing me by my shoulders. Which... Kind of made me horny, but I was too focused on game lingos to really show it.
"How did you know????" Eirlys exclaimed.
"You know mods and hacks in the PC version are quite rampant, right? Half the reason why we can exploit your game was through the code... Albeit, VR made it virtually impossible." I tried holding back the urge to kiss her, "But I can guess that a lot of the codes from the PC version was ported over to the VR version... So that trick is still in the game... You know how there are bootleg versions of Darkmoon Adventure PC out there? I used to buy the source code and mess around..."
"I don’t care about that part, get to the how." She demanded.
"I... Uhhhh, in the Mid-Summer 2021 patch, that exploit was patched, even when it didn’t affect the main-game considering it was a server-side exploit and normal players couldn’t ever change the source code. But someone snitched about it after it got posted on the forum. Maybe you had some communication issue with the coding team, I see."
She sighed, letting go of my pod and sitting back down at the chair, holding her head.
I quickly stood up and rushed for my phone, wanting to call for help.
Until I realized that I actually enjoy the company of a strange, hot-looking woman.
So I sat back down on my pod without questions.
One of these days I’ll be on the news for a missing person report...