D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

--- Kamiko ---

Shortly after everyone finished their ice cream Kamiko and… most of the others went to bed themselves. Kamiko Kat's two messages, the 'wait when' and a much longer one that could be looked over later. Kamiko did throw back a response of 'I actually don't know yet' which… yeah wasn't going to help things on Kat's end but nobody did know yet. They hadn't even argued about that properly.

Kamiko didn't expect it to be too long. A day or two longer at most probably. Meg might be willing to get things done early while the rest were packing to keep herself busy though.

Whatever the case? It wasn't Kamiko's problem. She just moved back down into the freezer and set up her bedding and going to sleep. It wasn't until she stumbled upstairs again the next morning, yawning as she left the kitchen that she realised her choice of sleeping location might have been a bit strange.

When Kamiko left the kitchen she saw Church and Brook still in the corner they'd claimed… but now Church was actually CLEAN and wearing clothes! It was a miracle! The pair were both wearing loose fitting shirts and pants but it was something. Between the two of them they were working their way through a list of some sort while munching on some cereal.

The pair did look a little tired though… were they really just waking up?

Corela on the other hand obviously hadn't slept. It was just in her posture. It wasn't a problem, after 'hibernating' for so long her body would need time to adjust. She'd claimed a whole table for herself, a number of holographic screens spread out across the table alongside open notebooks filled with scribbles.

Kamiko did wonder where the others ended up… nobody else was down in the freezer that she saw… though she wasn't really paying attention either.

Kamiko gave a shrug. Deciding it was best to just leave Corela to whatever it was she happened to be doing Kamiko made her way to the empty seat on the opposite side of Church and Brook. "Good morning, I'm sort of surprised to see you both up early so… what are you getting up to?"

"Good morning," agreed Brook. "Neither of us have actually slept yet. We tend to stay up over night… which is a weird habit when all of the lights and stuff are fake. We haven't seen real sunlight ever… so why does it matter? We're curious as to what is going to happen when we leave,"

"Oh, so you're definitely leaving then?" asked Kamiko.

"Well…" Brook glanced over at Church.

And Church took that as her queue to begin. "I've decided to leave and Brook wasn't willing to leave me on his own. Even confessed to me it was adorable,"Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"Oh… that's…" Kamiko glanced between the two of them. "Good I think? A bit of a stressful time to go forward with it… but good I guess?"

Brook sighed, "It's not actually the first time I've confessed to her but it IS the first time she thought I was serious…"

"Look, the first time you confessed to me we were eight and I agreed we should get married one day. Neither of us knew what that meant, so if you really want to go down this route? I could just say we've been engaged for over a decade at this point," retorted Church.

"You know that doesn't count," said Brook.

Meg shrugged, "Look, most of those confessions were all in video games! I admit it's sweet looking back on it, and you have to have manually coded in a bunch of them so because I doubt it was in the originals… but I never knew that and you didn't exactly give much of an indication it was important!"

Brook glanced away, "I was embarrassed okay… I wanted it to be memorable and I guess… I just sort of played myself? I edited a confession seamlessly into the games… but the first time? I made it draw our usernames at the time… and well… I'd spent like two months working on it okay! So I was trying not to be nervous when…"

"When 'XXX_Butsniffer69_XXX' and 'MorlogTrogKiller' agreed to date each other and we both burst out laughing," finished Church.

Kamiko grinned, "I can see how that ended in laughter,"

Brook nodded with a fond sigh. "Yeah and… now that we're officially together without misunderstandings I can look back on it and properly laugh. Cause see? The next one? I used our real names and made it a bit glitchy. I went overboard on the special effects to ensure that it was clearly not part of the game…"

"But he did a bit too well on that one you see," continued Church. "I thought it was the game trying to be creepy you know? Pulling a fourth wall break and implying that it wasn't the characters getting together but the players, the real people… and the fact that the names still had underscores connecting them.

So I was Church_Raton and Brook was Brook_ Arroyo which… yeah made me think it was the game,"

"Ok… that's still very sweet but it sounds like there was more of these?" asked Kamiko.

Brook shrugged, "Well I was in too deep at that point. My younger self thought that the obvious solution to avoid having Church notice anything weird was to keep modding the games so that stuff like that happened every so often instead of… you know confessing to her,"

"Eh, it all worked out in the end… and honestly probably won't change too much," said Church. Brook shot Church a look filled only with smug confidence. "Ok fine it will change a few key things whatever!"

Kamiko coughed lightly into her sleeve to try and hide her blush. "Um… err good for you. So um… now that that's… settled… I guess? What were you guys doing? Surely that didn't take all night?"

"Oh right that was your question," mumbled Church.

"We were going over inventory," said Brook. "Corela did manage to confirm we have some old spatial storage devices laying around and everyone is getting one… or at least those of us who are still awake. They aren't all created equal and Corela plans to raffle them off. So we're writing list of what to take with us based on what size storage we end up with. It has been… not overly hard actually.

Aside from the one debate,"

"What's that?" asked Kamiko.

"We could, potentially, take a large enough server to store all of the games saved here on the compound. The issue is we wouldn't have all of the equipment needed to play them… and charging the damned thing would be a nightmare. We're only getting a small solar charger for the tablet which has a lot of space as it is. Enough for our favourites if we split them across both devices," explained Church.

"Huh… so why do you want it then?" asked Kamiko.

"It's… it's like finding an ancient library or something! You want everything in it because if you don't preserve it who will?" explained Brook. "This is important to us and I'm sure the others will have similar stories. The main issue isn't the space… we'll either have enough for it or we won't… the real issue? It's how safe it would be to take with us. If anyone finds out we have it?

Even knowing its useless for the most part?"

"They're gonna want to steal it," answered Church. "They're going to come over and try to steal it for themselves. Maybe to ransom back, maybe because we think it's valuable, or maybe the kingdom will want it to tear apart and try to work out. Heck, maybe if we thought they had a chance to get anything out of it we'd let them!"

"Which of course led me to suggesting we provide some stuff they can destroy to keep them off our asses… but Corela has been… like that," Brook gestured over to Corela all by herself and a grumpy look on her face. "So we didn't want to tell her in case she's already thought of it and snaps at us for the suggestion,"

"I'm old not deaf!" said Corela from the side of the room. "I already know!"

"We've been whispering though!" grumbled Brook, actually whispering that time.

"Something you'll need to get used to then," said Corela bluntly. "You lot have normal mortal ears and bodies. I can easily hear you from here and while I haven't been paying attention to most of the conversation occasionally some key word does catch my interest. It IS a good idea and something I've considered… but it comes with its own risks.

Such as the kingdom asking for more when they fail… or when they succeed. I genuinely don't know which would be worse,"

Kamiko would spend the next few minutes pondering the question as more people started to filter into the mess hall. In the end? She found that she agreed with Corela. It was rather unclear what was worse. Either could be a major problem after all.