Life After the Apocalypse

Clara thanks Grace and Brad for the heals throughout the fight, and Guy for offering her his sword. Before she can let out a sigh of relief, she remembers the reason they are out here in the fields in the first place.
"Did we manage to find the missing villagers?"

Grace happily replies, "It was a pleasure. We had a really close call, and I think that 6HP per round really made a—"

The irl-forty-plus-non-gamer is thrown as gamey jargon naturally rolls off her tongue (unlike the phrase "gamey jargon," which is cringey, as her one Gen-Z follower would say). When Clara mentions the missing villagers, Grace almost drops her baroque theorbo. She covers her mouth and turns to face the catfolk NPC.

"Did we…? Are we…? I…I?"

Did we fail to rescue the missing workers?
Are we too late to save them?
I’m asking a stupid question with an obvious answer, aren’t I?

Taylor waves BradL33 off. "No lasting damage. Have a bad taste in my mouth from the poison, or maybe the Elixir…."

"I’ll be honest though, I hope battles like that are rare. Everyone else more or less intact?"

Fren knees and rests his hands on his sword hilt. He is wounded and poisoned but still alive. "Heh, that was fun...I guess..." he has a bitter taste in his mouth, he feels like he can drink a whole lake.

>>>The lukewarm night air felt cool against sweat soaked bodies as a breeze flowed over the fields. The breeze mixed the scent of Aleflower and the acrid scent of it burning lazily in the field where the Adventurers gathered. The flickering light from the fires gave a warm glow to the scene which would otherwise be almost pitch black given the absence of light pollution common to what was once the Adventurers' world. The low stone walls that sectioned off the fields would keep the fire from spreading past the fiekd they were in.

>>>"I...think... everyone is okay?" the rising tone in Guy's assertion made it sound like a question. It probably was since he had no real idea now that the Raid Party had concluded and he didn't have access to anyone's detailed Status Screen other than his own. "I'm still 'poisoned', if that counts..." Taking a cue from Piphany, he lay down as well...bruised muscles making him complain all the way down. Tina came to sit beside him.

>>>"Same." Piphany just held her hand up as she lay in the ground. The exhaustion carrying heavily in her voice.

>>> BradL33 moved between the Adventurers using the last of his MP to cast Cure on those still afflicted. Oh! I totally forgot about the villagers!" he exclaimed as Calamity brought the subject to everyone's attention. "Once I saw the King Triffid, it totally slipped my mind..." he facepalmed and looked towards Maxime.

>>>"I had come to look for them as well but found the monster first..." he admitted. "Let us hope they had the common sense to hide from it." his whiskers twitched agitatedly as his concern grew. "With King Triffid gone, let us hope they will find their way back to town...in the morning..." His sentence tailed off as he spied something approaching in the darkness.

---

>>>It didn't take a cat's night vision to pick up a trail of torches approaching the fields. Soon enough a crowd of field workers has assembled just on the other side of the stone wall around the field. They were mostly silent; slight murmurs carried through their ranks as they filed in.

>>>"Gotta be kiddin' me, bruv.." Guy muttered exasperatedly. "Literal 'torches and pitchforks'??"

>>>Maxime held out his hand towards the Adventurers, his intent to stay any action from them. After a tense minute, Veskar the Field Hand came forward from the crowd carrying a torch if his own.

>>>"We watched the battle from town." he started, clearly unsure of what to say. Perhaps he'd been elected, or volunteered, as spokesman. "We're fortunate that you all were here to defend us from such a monster. We all are... grateful for your kind protection." In ranks and rows, the field hands and villagers bowed or took a knee to honor the Adventurers' efforts.
>>>Rising, Veskar continued, "We will make sure the Triffid left nothing behind in the soil awaiting daybreak. We will handle this. Varduhn has readied your quarters for you to rest and heal."
>>>The villagers slowly rise and filed into the remnants of the burning field to set about their tasks of putting out the remaining small fires and churning the earth looking for Triffid seed pods.

>>>"Go. Rest now." Maxine urged. He bent down and retrieved a gold coin from the charred ground, "I will make sure everything is retrieved and brought before you in the morning. Let us do this in return for your bravery in saving our village... Please."

Grace can’t resist an audience. "I grew up on a farm. Working the fields is a beautiful memory for me because I always worked to music."

If there’s a rock or a stump to sit on, she does so. Else, Grace sits cross-legged on the ground. She’ll gladly honor the villagers’ gratitude by leaving the manual labor to them.

But she’ll provide the pure sound of the unplugged string, sans lyrics, starting with a slow acoustic bassline rendition of The Go-Gos’ We Got the Beat. Because that’s the beat she got the first time she helped mom and dad with the backyard garden.

Fren will gladly go to his bed and rest, he feel like real tired. Like he is back in reality and is exhausted after a 2 hour training session. Plus he feels his sore muscles and is bruised all over his body. How does a bruise show over his fur? And, strangely, he has no open wounds, just big bruises.

Raquel sits by Grace and sings softly to accompany her bass strumming, once more demonstrating an expansive knowledge of random song lyrics.

See the people walking down the street
Fall in line just watching all their feet
They don't know where they want to go
But they're walking in time...

Taylor straightens up and begins to shuffle over to the villagers. "I can help if you want it. Being tired is not a reason to put the work off."

It takes a while before their success hits Isbjorn, but once it did he couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably, his loud, booming voice scattering out the open field. He calms down once he sees the flock of villagers, and his heart swells at their feelings of gratitude. Maybe it's leftover adrenaline from the battle, but it feels like he still has a lot of energy left on him. Still, he'd gladly take the villagers' offer.

Isbjorn notices that Taylor, despite exhaustion plain on her face, wants to keep working, so he approaches her and gently pats her in the shoulder. "Let the villagers handle it, kid. It's good to rest when you need it. You can help the villagers plenty once you've got a good night's sleep, okay?"

>>>The field hands got to work turning the earth over with their crude tools while Grace and Raquel serenade them. The younger field hands cast about the ground with baskets as they collected up the coins and other items released from King Triffid as the older ones dug up anything suspicious and piled it together to burn before sunrise.
>>>King Triffid left a fairly long and wide trail from the woods and through the fields but the many hands made the work quick. Guy, Tina, Arga and Piphany followed Fren as the Fox Tail headed back to the village and BradL33 soon followed. Maxime prowled around with his hand on his Cutlass, intent on seeing to the safety of the field hands as they toiled by torch light.

---

>>>Those that return to the village find it mostly deserted with the lights that had been bright for the evening meal turned low. Aegelby and Varduhn are there to welcome them back and get them settled in the merchant's quarters. The building is the tallest in the village with two spacious levels. The bottom has a common area that looks like a fantasy tavern that takes up about half of the lower level; the remaining half is bulk storage and us littered with barrels and crates. The private rooms must be upstairs. A pitcher and a covered pot sat on the table alongside bowls and flagons.

>>>Guy wasted no time sitting at the table and scraping out stew into a bowl and digging in. The look on his face alternated between disgust and gusto in spooning down the meal. "Nope. No better than before..." he grimaced. "...but I gotta have something on my stomach. I'm starving!"

>>> BradL33 sank into a chair by the low fire, "I wonder if it's the Fatigue mechanic?" he sighed, mulling over the idea of a bowl of stew himself. "In the game... WHEN this was a game...you could fight but afterwards you might get hit with a 'Fatigue Status' if you'd been fighting too long or fighting a tough opponent. The only way to clear the Status was eating Food Items. I wonder if that's why you're so hungry?"

>>>"Could you...die...if you didn't eat?" Arga ventured to ask as he sat down at the table opposite of Guy and poured a flagon of water from the clay pitcher. "It'd take a lot to get me to eat, well, anything I guess. It all tastes so weird."

>>>"When this was a game, no. You couldn't die by not eating but it made it a whole lot easier for things to kill you, though. It dropped your attributes and MP until you did eat. Now? Who knows?
We really don't know how anything works in this world. Not really..." The thought seemed to bother him.

Clara returns to the village with everyone else as she starts to feel exhaustion setting in. Now she can sympathise why Cinnamon sleeps so much all the time.

Seeing Guy's expression as he gulps down the food, she replies to Arga. "I don't mind eating at all, except this food tastes... bizarre. Do you think it'd be any better if we cook our own food?"

Before heading to bed, she doesn't forget to ask. "What time are we leaving tomorrow?"

>>>"I don't know, now that you mention it..." BradL33 answered Calamity. "I'm used to waking up to the alarm on my cellphone and that's not gonna happen." At every turn there seemed to be a big adjustment for the Adventurers. "Varduhn said it was a half-day's trip from here to Mound City so as long as we leave around noon or earlier we should be okay." He didn't sound entirely convinced. "If we're not ready to leave by then, staying another day probably wouldn't hurt. Right?"

>>>"Let's not get too used to living in Mayberry, 'kay?" Piphany interjected as she started climbing the stairs. "We're a little too 'high octane' for this place. It's nice and all. People are really...sweet...but what use does a place like this have for two Assassins, a Pirate Cat and a couple of walking WMDs?" She took a couple of steps further up the stairs,"I just... Just don't want to ruin this place. If I'm not up by the time we need to leave, wake me up. 'kay?". Her piece said, she climbed the rest of the stairs to find a place to crash.

>>>"Aaaanyway..." Arga tried to change the conversational tone Piphany left in her wake, "I don't know if making food ourself would help.I know There's a 'Chef' SubClass that makes food. Fancy food out of game ingredients, I mean. But I think there's some stuff anybody can make. Basic stuff like sandwiches or some kinds of soup. All you need is the ingredients and a kitchen. Couldn't possibly turn out any worse than the stuff we've already had." the sorcerer shrugged.

>>>"I'd kill for a trip to In-N-Out right now..." Tina offered. She couldn't bring herself to even try the stew again, however.

Grace sticks to the tempo as she joins Raquel singing the ‘they got the beat’ chorus, but she rises on the ‘yeah!’ and after the chorus, she livens up the tune to the proper tempo. As long as Raquel knows the words, the bard is happy to stick to backup vocals…

By the end of her set, Grace dares to be stupid and sings a soprano rendition of a Weird Al song: I Love Rocky Road. She makes her bass talk for the part that’s normally an accordion solo (which was O’Keys’ part, back in the day).

She finally bows out as the villagers finish their work, and admits to Raquel, "I finished with a song about food because, well, we should probably eat. I have no idea how these bodies actually work."

She hesitates a bit, but finally says it… "Speaking of… do you like, ummm.. your newfound ability to sing the Go-Go’s, Lauper and so on?" It was obvious in the bathhouse, but Grace offers a reassuring smile. "It don’t matter to me if you’re a guy in the real world. I’m not young and pretty anymore. Out there.

"Any giant beast tries to take this—" Her hands trace her body on both sides, then she holds up her bass like a baseball bat. "—I’ll knock him to Triffid’s great kingdom in the sky!"

She slips the huge bass into her tiny purse, then a little awkwardly. "Oh and… thanks for singing. Solo acts can be… kinda… less fun."

Raquel blanches when Grace correctly guesses her true identity. "Oh! Oh, yeah, well, uh... You figured it out. I guess it wasn’t that hard. I scanned myself to make my avatar then flipped the gender for fun. I never thought I’d end up becoming the female version of myself.

"I make a pretty lousy woman, don’t I? I don’t really know the first thing about it."

With a look of guilt, Grace shakes her head. "Sorry, I didn’t mean—not lousy. You can’t be a lousy woman because you’re a good person.

"I wasn’t trying to call you out or anything like that. I mean… I knew ’cause of the bath. You… submerged the towel. But I mean, I think you meant it as respectful, and I probably shouldn’t have said it, and… really, you’re still one of the girls here.

"And I just wanted to know, now that you’re stuck this way, do you… like it?" She softly gives Raquel an out, "You don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable. I’m just curious. And I think it’s cool that you used the camera on yourself and made the swap."

Realizing she had been coming off defensive, Raquel winces and adjusts her tone. "No, no, it's okay. You don't have to apologize. It's just strange enough adapting to a video game world. Having to do it in a different body is even more confusing.

"I haven't really had time to process the whole thing, but so far, being a girl has been... interesting. My old body wasn't anything to write home about, so it's kind of nice to have a fresh start. But my center of balance is different, and it still feels strange when I move if I stop to think about it. And if I could go back, I would have trimmed a bit off my midsection. Especially with it all hanging out in this armor." She pokes at her exposed belly.

"I'd eat the stuff they serve here if that was available." Taylor sighs as they slump into a table.

Grace glances down. Raquel’s abs are a little soft when they could have been perfect. And she didn’t need to need glasses.

"I like how you created your avatar, actually. The beauty is in the flaws…

"Like The Three Graces—the Baroque period paintings by Peter Paul Reubens? Are you familiar with his work?"

Before Raquel answers, Grace adds, "You know I’m not talking about Paul Reubens who played Pee Wee Herman, right?"

"I do know that... now..." Raquel replies, waving her hand as if to dismiss her mental picture of Pee Wee Herman painting a portrait.

"Three Graces, eh? Is that how you got your band name?"