ANNIE, ARE YOU OKAY? [Q/C]

Eye contact, finally. “Hey! Want to give me a hand with these posters?” August practically shouted at the poor girl. There was relief in August’s posture as she was struggling to hold onto everything, but her eyes were quite obviously filled with determination. She needed assistance and the other girl was already making the right steps to helping her out. Another hand in the quest would benefit them both.

“I’m afraid I don’t have enough hands,” she laughed to herself as one of the rolled up posters fell to the ground. “Oops, better get that.” As August leaned down to grab the poster, another one fell out from the other side. Sighing, she tried to pick that one up too and miraculously managed to do so without dropping a third.

She looked back over at Toto and grinned as widely as she could. Be friendly. Use your charm. They were in a non-combat area at the very least August had that going for her. There was no chance of August killing the stranger in a place like this and that was all people seemed to fear. Scratches could easily be fixed with potions in this place, but death sadly could not.

August was beyond relieved that Toto didn’t even put up a fight about helping her. “Yep! I’m sure the two of us will be able to hang up all ten posters in time!” she assured her new quest mate. August handed the two items over without hesitation. “I hope you’re good at aiming,” she joked, “I wouldn’t know what to do if you accidentally hurt yourself.”

Probably look around for a place to buy a health potion or a band-Aid. She wasn’t really of much use as a level one character, but August wasn’t going to let her stats stop her from being resourceful and helping people if they happened to be in pain.

“It’s nice to meet you Toto. You can call me August,” she said with a smile. Setting all but one of the posters on the ground, August unrolled the remaining one and started to plaster it onto the bulletin board. “It’s made from a really sturdy material, probably to stop it from getting beaten up too badly by the weather,” she sighed as she struggled to keep the paper from rolling back in on itself. Eventually, August just gave up and made sure one corner was flat, “we can just do this one at a time since it’s been uncooperative.”

She felt a chuckle escape from her lips. “Not the season no,” she corrected, “August is a month.” A season screenname would have been cute, but they were unfortunately all taken by the time she registered. Not surprising given how (admittedly) unoriginal they were, but she remembered still being a little disappointed when she found that out.

“Got it,” August assured Toto as she continued to hold up the corner. Admittedly, she was still a bit nervous about Toto hitting her own fingers, but August decided to simply hold her breath and allowed the girl to ease her worry.

It didn’t take as many hits as August would have expected to drive the nail through the poster and onto the bulletin board. “Looks like this is going to take less time than I originally thought,” she commented cheerfully as she moved on to flattening out the other corner for Toto to hammer in. “If your arms get tired, let me know. We can switch on and off.”

August just hoped that using tools wasn’t another skill she’d have to re-learn. It was devastating enough figuring out that she no longer had the proficiency to cook, if she was unable to use basic tools then there was even more incentive for her to start gaining the means to re-teach herself basic tasks. Although, everything else had managed to transfer over just fine besides the fact that nothing she had attempted to do in kitchens ever turned out right anymore.

“I registered pretty late,” August admitted with a grin, “so the more obvious names were already taken. I had to get a little creative.” The two of them were working fine with one another, which was a good sign. Although, there wasn’t much that could go wrong with a simple quest like that. Just as Toto had mentioned, it was a low leveled quest.

With one poster done, August placed her hands on her hips and smiled. “Great! There’s only a few more left,” she chirped as she bent over to grab the remaining posters. “Let’s just hang them up on any wooden surfaces we can see. It’s going to be pretty difficult to drive nails into any other material, I think.”

There were a couple of brick walls that they could potentially hang them on if needed, but wood was softer and required less effort when it came to hammering.

“Just curious,” August remarked, “have you been adventuring a lot outside the towns yet?” Toto didn’t look heavily armed, but then again there was no reason why someone would need to be in a place where there wasn’t any immediate danger. “I haven’t really been out there myself, so I don’t really know what to expect,” she admitted.

“I think that’s a cute name! It reminds me of the furry fellow from Wizard of Oz. You know, the little black dog that travels in a basket?” It was an extremely old American movie and an even older American book, but oddly enough August remembered watching it a few times when she was a kid.

Although, the reference might have been lost on Toto; they couldn’t have been that far apart in age, but even August ran into people her own age that didn’t know what that movie was.

“Well, we put up one, so there are nine more,” August nodded as she answered Toto’s question. She listened intently to the girl’s advice. Yes, it was smarter to be overly prepared than to end up in a tight bind, especially when lots of things here could kill someone. “Oh...I suppose we could, but that wouldn’t really help the NPC out, would it?” she asked, “maybe we can put them all up in a row, like those wanted posters in the Wild West. We’d save some nails because the posters would each be sharing a set of nails with another poster.” That would save the two of them some time while also making sure August’s conscious was clean of cheating the system.

Oh, clearly she had hit a nerve. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way,” August promised, “at least your namesake is a cute dog. That’s much better than other alternatives.” Maybe she should just drop the subject, she clearly wasn’t doing anyone any favors by continuing to talk about it.

“Okay, okay,” August interrupted. Clearly the girl was done with this quest. Whether it was impatience or the fact that August had struck out one too many times with her conversation was unclear, but either way she didn’t want to keep the girl any longer than she wanted to be there.

A part of her did forget sometimes that they were in a game and about how none of this was real. It was hard to remember given how realistic everything was and given how August’s knowledge of video games in general was pretty limited, she didn’t really know what shortcuts where acceptable to take.

Lining up all the posters into one big pile, she smoothed them out at best as she could and held them in the center with both of her hands. “Let’s go,” she cheered with determination.