[Adelie]

"Nebs, Nebs! Ne-bu-la...!" A bright voice rang out in the crisp spring air, and the girl looked up, thoughts interrupted. She only had a moment to react to the shape careening wildly towards her, hands outspread, before it crashed into her with a delighted squeal.

"Nebs! It's so pretty! I can't believe it!" the intruding shape - now identified as a short young woman, dolled up with her weight's worth of gold and frills - burst out, holding her even more tightly. "The entire street's covered with decorations! I knew it was going to be amazing, but - but I didn't think it was going to be this amazing!"

Smiling, the girl leaned down a bit to pat her friend on the head. "It really is amazing, isn't it?" she said. From their vantage point on the hill, she could see the entire expanse of the Festival of the Golden Thread below them - the bustling streets, lined with vendors hawking treasures and trinkets from every part of the continent; the strings of golden decorations dripping from every roof and eave; the crowds of festival-goers in their costumes and bright outfits, preparing themselves for the Golden Parade.

It was hard to believe that only yesterday, this had been just an ordinary city.

[Adelie]

But that was to be expected. After all, this Festival of the Golden Thread was only a mere facsimile of the real thing.

The whole thing had started because shelter-in-place measures were still in effect. Although some restrictions had been loosened, a large-scale celebration that brought with it armies of tourists was certainly still out-of-bounds. But you couldn't just not hold the festival, after all. Cultural heritage, economic prosperity, citizen happiness - all those things hung in the balance.

So the city council had put their heads together, and the various companies based in the city joined them, and the people of the city offered their suggestions - some serious, some ridiculous - as well. Finally, they settled on the solution of hosting the entire festival virtually.

A virtual festival, full of virtual attendees. Not the easiest task to pull off for a bunch of technologically inept bureaucrats, so they'd enlisted the help of a local game company to set up the event. It wasn't entirely the same as hosting the festival in Aldrect itself - but it was close enough for the measure.

[Adelie]

There'd been some embellishments, of course. Server capacity didn't exactly come for free, and neither did the labor to create the assets and renders necessary; as a result, the game team had effectively created their own spin on the Festival of the Golden Thread, merging it with some previously planned in-game event and adding little hooks to advertise the game to new players.

Allegedly there was an entire questline - modified from the event that had been recycled into this one, of course - tied to the festival, but no one knew exactly how to trigger it or what it was. Perhaps the festival had to start first...

"Are you going to watch the Golden Parade?" her friend piped up, once again interrupting her thoughts. "I see a lot of people dressed up already... It seems like it's going to be an intense competition!"

"Well," she said. "It is a lot easier when you don't have to make your own costume."

[Adelie]

Ah, the Golden Parade. Years back, when she'd actually been in Aldrect for the festival itself, she'd witnessed it in person - and it was truly a sight to behold.

The city, bedecked in gilt and glamor, was only part of its charm. When the Golden Parade was in full swing, an whole army of people in brilliant costumes - like a string of exquisite jewels, or one of the golden threads that so symbolized the festival - snaked through the city. Each one was dressed in their own interpretation of the Golden Seraph or the faithful Dragon.

After years of holding the same festival and the same parade, the judges - and the audience - valued creativity above anything else. And so, each performer's interpretation was different from the last; each one sought to outdo, outperform everyone before them. Ridiculous, extravagant, beautiful - all those adjectives were no stranger to the parade.

There was something more surreal, more fantastic about the sight in front of her today - after all, the costumes people could don in-game didn't have to conform to the rules of reality. Yet strangely enough, it lacked some of the magic of the real thing.

[Adelie]

"Are we waiting for anyone else?" she asked, looking around. Apart from the two of them, the hill was deserted; most of the travelers had already made it to the city proper.

"I don't think so," the other girl responded. "Vers was really excited to participate too - he had a costume ready and everything! - but he messaged me last night saying his boss put him up to last-minute overtime or something."

"Overtime?" she asked. "You'd think his boss would want him to be here. The virtual Festival of the Golden Thread is the human interest story of a lifetime, after all."

Her friend scoffed. "You'd think so too! But apparently his boss thinks it's more important to go chasing after some conspiracy theory about how the cold virus is actually a bioweapon engineered by Evo-Lux Laboratories!" She shrugged helplessly, before continuing, "It really sucks for him, too. You know how much he loves dressing up, and we've never really had a real competition for him to show off at - and he gave me a sneak peek, too! I know it would've won over all the judges if he were here."

[Adelie]

"Definitely," she said. A note of distraction crept into her voice - she'd spotted an interesting disturbance in the crowd, but at the distance they were at, she couldn't quite see clearly what everyone was gathering about.

Besides her, her friend was still talking. "I offered to enter for him, using his account, but he told me he didn't want to. I mean, I can understand - it's cheating, really, and it just wouldn't feel the same as doing it yourself, but..." She trailed off before continuing. "It's really just such a shame."

"Yeah, such a shame," she echoed hollowly, only half-listening. It wasn't that she didn't care, not exactly - she felt bad for Versailles, she really did - but whatever was causing that commotion was a far more immediate concern. Thankfully, it didn't seem like her friend had noticed her wandering attentions. "Should we head down, then? Don't you have an audition to make?"

A brief commotion ensued as her friend checked the time - and promptly freaked out. "Oh my god, I totally forgot! Five minutes... five minutes? Can we get there in five minutes? We can, right?"

[Adelie]

"I'm sure the judges won't mind if you're just a little late," she said, as nonchalant as always. "But there should be a shortcut around here somewhere."

"I hope so!" her friend said, gathering up the various frills and ruffles of her golden dress in her hands. "There's way too many people here for them to be forgiving! You only get five minutes to perform, and all the time slots are booked ahead of time. If I miss mine, there's no way I get another chance before the Parade starts!"

"Okay, okay," she said, carefully surveying the situation. Gesturing for her friend to follow her, she brought the two of them to a grassy overlook directly above one of the taller buildings in Aldrect. "Don't panic, okay? I'm sure we can get there on time. We just have to..."

And with that, she pushed her friend off the edge and jumped off after her.

[Adelie]

"...is that what you call a shortcut?" Ven said, picking herself gingerly off the ground. Their rather impressive entrance - plummeting a good eighty feet from the top of a hill to the building below, and then another eighty feet off the building - had attracted quite a bit of attention, mostly from new players who weren't used to people pulling off such unrealistic feats. "Thank god this isn't the real world! My dress would've been ruined."

"If this were the real world, you'd also be dead," she grumbled in reply - but in her heart, she was just a little proud of herself for coming up with this.

"I'm half-dead anyways from fall damage," her friend retorted, dusting off her skirts - an entirely unnecessary feat, considering that game outfits didn't get dirty or damaged, but one that calmed her nerves anyways. "Anyways, the stage is..." She looked around, completely ignoring the crowd of well-meaning - and rather impressed - civilians gathering around her, and reoriented herself. "It's that way! Nebs, let's go before I miss my timeslot!"

[Adelie]

"Sure," she said, following her friend's lead towards the stage where auditions were happening - a crowd of people had gathered around it, trying to catch a sneak preview of some of the performers before the Parade itself or an amateur trying something a little beyond their capabilities.

The stage was only a short walk from where they'd landed, but the landscape around them was rather different - this area was more a zone for festival administrative purposes, and there were far fewer tourists and hawkers about. Kind of moot, all things considered - with everything held virtually, there was no need for a separate administration zone. The organizers could be half a continent away or invisible for all that it mattered.

But old habits died hard, she supposed. And in an unfamiliar world, it was probably nice to have some semblance of normalcy.

One tent in particular caught her eye - a white one, in stark contrast against the gold and gilt so omnipresent across the festival. Someone had just entered it, and she could've sworn she'd seen that distinctive outfit in the commotion she'd observed earlier.

[Adelie]

Strange, she thought to herself. Another one of those things that made sense in real life, but didn't particularly make sense in a virtually-held festival. She would've devoted a moment of thought to it - but suddenly, a clear voice sounded behind her. "Please vacate this area, citizens!"

"Does that mean us?" Ven said, looking around frantically. A woman with a loudspeaker was directing traffic, a little ways away - she was saying something else, but it was covered by the sudden clamor of the crowd.

"I hope not," she said. "Seems like something's up over there, though." Looking more closely, she noticed the woman was wearing a white doctor's coat - another odd and distinctive choice. "Hey - I'm going to check it out. You can make it to the audition yourself, right?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Ven said. "I'll meet up with you after it's done."

Investigate Commotion.

[Adelie]

A few minutes later, she found herself standing in the rather deserted center of a couple of tents, staring at two women - one in a casual tank top and pants, another in a proper lab coat and tie. They looked ... out of place, to say the least. "If you're so interested in poking your nose around, we uh, could use some help!" one of them offered brightly.

She had an inkling of what was going on, and at the same time, she had no idea at all. This looked like a quest. This felt like a quest. But the way these two doctors interacted and spoke to her - even when she asked a few non sequitur questions about what exactly they were investigating - didn't seem like something a NPC would do, at all.

Either there'd been a sudden advancement in the field of artificial intelligence while she wasn't looking, or the game producers had started hiring human actors to fill in their plots. Or, as was more likely - she'd just run into some normal players LARPing out a plotline of their very own.

Well, even if it were the last option - she could still count herself interested.

[Adelie]

"Sure, I'll come question the staff with you," she said. That felt like the right choice, at least - the other required her to take action on her own, and without a clear grasp of the situation she'd rather follow the more 'guided' option.

Besides, it would give her a chance to investigate just how deep this rabbit hole ran. "Where should we start?"

The prim and proper scientist looked at her like she was seriously reconsidering recruiting her on this mission. "With the staff, of course. Just follow me. I'll ask the questions, and you can chime in if you hear anything that sounds strange."

"Strange?" she echoed. But the scientist didn't seem particularly enthused to elaborate, and she didn't feel particularly excited to follow up - and so she simply followed the scientist into one of the white tents, feeling more and more confused all the while. There were no familiar faces here, but that seemed only to be expected with the influx of new people for this event.

Were all of them in on whatever was going on? Was this all one elaborate prank? Or was something actually going on?

[Adelie]

She wondered briefly if she'd catch a glimpse of Ven here, but that seemed unlikely - they were still quite a few tents away from the main stage, and the people in this area seemed primarily focused on dealing with sound and audio.

A man hoisting a pair of high-tech speakers on his shoulders passed them by and was immediately stopped by the researcher in question. She couldn't exactly find fault with that choice - it was rather strange to be carrying around speakers in a virtual world where someone could simply program music into playing. Or in keeping with the high fantasy setting, simply magic sound into being.

But then again, it didn't seem like anyone in this tent had gotten that memo. Stranger and stranger, she supposed.

"Do you have any questions?" Just as she was pondering this, the voice of the doctor jolted her back into reality. Maintaining her composure, she suppressed the little urge to jump she had, and tried to recall what the man and the woman had been discussing just now. Nothing about lizards, or lizard tails, or anything quite so fancy - he'd mentioned a few suspicious individuals, but based on his descriptions it sounded like a man who left his headphones in the wrong place would be considered suspicious.

"No, I don't think so," she said. "Whatever it is you're looking for, it doesn't seem like he's run into it."

[Adelie]

The scientist shot her a glance that suggested that she was not particularly satisfied with her answer - and she shrugged back. No one said she was particularly good with people, after all.

Hopefully this plot - or story, or conspiracy, or whatever this was supposed to be - didn't require her to make friends with the scientist. Just from their few interactions so far, she could already tell that was going to be an impossibility. "We should probably try asking someone else," she offered.

"You pick, then." There was an underlying murmur of 'well, if you know so well, then you do it!' already.

"Hmm," she muttered, looking around the tent. Everyone looked... normal. Shockingly normal, if she had to provide an additional adjective. If she was supposed to figure out clues based on appearance, the creators of this quest line certainly had some more work to do. "Let's talk to that guy," she said, pointing to one pretty much at random. "Maybe he knows something."

[Adelie]

The staff member in question was, at the very least, slightly more helpful than the previous person they'd talked to. "Suspicious individuals, you say?" he said, holding his hand up to his chin in what was almost a parody of thoughtfulness. "I don't know if I've seen any myself, to be honest..."

"Yourself?" she asked, pinpointing the odd moment of hesitation in his voice.

"Well," he said, breaking into startled laughter. "Alex over there was freaking out about some weirdo he ran into earlier this morning! Said he'd seen some guy with lizard eyes. I told him it's probably just some cosmetic effect - one of those custom player profiles, you know? - but he was adamant about it being some lizard person conspiracy!"

"Interesting," the scientist said, taking charge of the conversation once more. "And where is this Alex you speak of?"

"He works with props, so he should be in their tent right now. Haven't seen him since this morning, though, so I can't be certain." Helpfully, the man pointed out the direction of the prop tent.