Lost in Simulation

It is a typical Friday night. A group of players from the Wayfinders guild of the popular virtual reality MMORPG Pathfinder are in the middle of a dungeon run. The dungeon is one you've all played many times before, Hollow Mountain. You currently sit in your long rest camp near the final room of the dungeon, preparing your strategy for killing Alaznist again.

Eagleheart, a tengu with brown feathers and aquiline features, seems to be asleep, which is the game's way of showing that his player logged out for a bit. Soon enough, he wakes up and says "Ok, I'm done eating. Is everyone ready?"

"I'm good to go. Typical smash-and-grab?" Asks Alina, a raven-haired, long-fanged elf.

"Should be cake," the bulky, heavily armored tiefling paladin known as Cole Shademore nods. "But Alina, please try to actually avoid the opening fireball this time. It makes mine and Leona's jobs harder when you don't."

"It's not like I'm trying to get blown up," Alina replies through a laugh. "Just gotta hope luck is with us today."

"Oh, and remember to watch out for adds," says Eagle.

"We've done this a dozen times already, we shouldn't need to re-hash our strategy every time. Making plans to not eat in the middle of raid night anymore, however..." comments Traxex; her piercing, icy stare drilling into Eagle, framed by snowy hair.

"Hey, just because we've done it before doesn't mean we can't come up with even faster tactics," Alina counters. "Skill is no excuse for complacency."

"Hey, hey....let's all calm down and focus on the boss, there's no need to get sloppy just because we've done it before" Leona, a subtly color-shifting lizardfolk, says.

"No resting in rest zones, got it," Eagle says with biting sarcasm. "But yeah, whatever, let's do this."

Cole sighs. "Guys, we're on schedule and we've only got one more run to do tonight. Let's try and keep it chill, okay?"

Trax seems about to comment again, but withholds it

Business settled, the group moves into the boss room. Traxex gets a couple pot-shots off before Alaznist unleashes her trademark opening Fireball. Lightly scorched, most of the group closes in to fight with the Sinspawn. Smirking, Alina runs right past all of the sinspawn, before disappearing to appear right next to Alaznist. Baring her fangs, she sinks them into Alaznist's throat before running her through her heart with her sword, a wave of Force rippling through her body. As the boss's body fades out, she turns her attention to the fight below her.

Cole was surrounded by three sinspawn, that was normal, and it seemed one of the spawn had aggroed onto the backlines back at the entrance. "Hey Cole, remind me, how's your Reflex?!" Alina calls down from the tower, eyeing the three spawn around him. "I swear to Tanagaar Alina, not again!" An irritated Cole calls back, resulting in a very disappointed sigh from the Magus. "Fiiiine," She says, before teleporting back to the ground, sinking an acid-coated blade into a spawn.

Cleaning up the sinspawn progressed quickly from there.

"I told you it'd be easy! One of our cleanest kills yet!" Traxex brags as she quivers a held arrow with an overly-extravagant flourish.

As the menu comes up to collect the boss loot, something strange happens. The UI fuzzes out and statics. Instead of any normal boss drop item, the UI just shows '> : )' over and over again. In fact, the face character continues to repeat breaking the boundary of the UI. A strange robotic, static-filled laughter echoes not from any source but seemingly all around you.

"Well that's not ominous at all," Alina mutters, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she pokes at the UI with her free hand. "You guys getting this too?" She asks, looking over at her party-mates.

"Yeah....Maybe the servers are being hacked? I'm gonna log out" Leona says, going for the log out option.

The logout option has been removed from the UI. In its place is a middle finger emoji. When clicked you hear a strange, gruff voice yell "I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me."

"... really?" Cole pulls up his own UI to log out, to similar effect. "Okay so aside from this being pretty fucked up that reference is older than dirt."

"Hey, maybe we'll get some of those cool blades though," Alina chimes in.

Eagleheart rolls his eyes, assuming this is all just a bad prank. "Okay, har har, very funny. You can stop now," he says to the uncaring void.

"Look I like trashy 2000s anime as much as the next guy," Cole says, staring up at the ceiling. "But this is a pretty shitty way to reference it."

Eagle pauses, as if waiting for an answer, but no answer comes... After thinking for a moment, he then says to guild chat "Hey, did anyone else just get a ... disturbing message?"