Vaudevillain

"Before you get offline and delve into the patch notes, can we make a plan for expanding Skyline?" Thomas asked. "Or at least get off and make the plan while reading the patch notes? We haven't made a concrete plan yet."

"Sure. But let's get Rampart as well," Jack said. "And anyone else interested in talking through the planning stages of Skyline."

"What time is it anyway?" Dylan asked.

"Three AM," Nikola replied. "And count me out for the planning. I've given my idea, and I don't want to sit around while the committee decides what to do."

Jack waved, "Aight, see ya, Nik."

Nikola waved goodbye and walked over to the edge of Skyline. Before Dylan could wonder what was happening, the player pulled a scooter from his inventory and jumped down. A second later, the man flew into the sky, a rocket propelling the scooter forward.

"I made that," Jack said proudly. "Took a bit of inspiration from your surfboard when people started asking for personal transportation."

"Cool," Dylan said.

"So, shall we log out and get started on planning?" Thomas asked.

"I'd rather not mess up my sleep schedule," Dylan said. "It would be better to plan our city in here if we're doing this right away. But I'm free to meet after I get off work if you all are."

"I'm fine with planning here," Jack said. "Just let me grab a laptop or notepad or something."

Thomas nodded, "I'll message the others and see if they're available."

The three players spent the next few minutes setting up their impromptu meeting. Thomas purchased a whiteboard and started writing out general topics while Dylan and Jack grabbed notetaking utensils. Rampart joined a minute later, Oro following behind. Sweet Dream and Riptide came in after that, the two surfing in on Riptide's board. Dylan smirked as Riptide jumped off to grab Dream before she stepped down. He didn't miss that blush coming from the woman.

"Is this everyone?" Thomas asked. "Shizuka already messaged me that she was going to mess with Zlo's minions. I hope you don't mind," Thomas said.

"It's cool, Cass was built to be the butt of the joke. She needs to be careful around Mabel, though. Behind that sundress lies a ruthless woman."

"No kidding," Rampart said. "And Merla and Titan aren't interested in the planning process. They're mostly here to have fun and make videos. So they declined to join."

"That looks like everyone then," Thomas said. "I've written out a small list of topics I want to try and cover, the main one being how we plan to, well, plan out the city."

Dylan looked at the whiteboard topics:

• Planning Skyline

• Recruitment

• Petition

• Tsunami Crime

"Is there one we can knock out quickly?" Jack asked.

"Tsunami crime is only a concept at the moment," Dylan said. "I brought it up to most of you, but the idea is to make the crime like the quests Vert issue. We'd plan out how the crime would go down and then announce it to the players."

"That's an awesome idea," Oro said. "It'd be like a Dragons and Dungeons session but in the game."

"I thought of it like a murder mystery party," Jack said.

"It can be like both," Dylan mediated. "But if everyone's excited for it, we can start working on the idea after the next patch. That way, we don't have any shakeups from Vert."

"I'm so pumped," Riptide said.

"It does sound fun," Sweet Dream replied.

Thomas crossed the item off the list, "The petition isn't vitally important either. We've gotten the number of signatures we wanted, and I've sent the petition off to Vert, but we won't hear back for a while. If ever."

Sweet Dream cocked an eyebrow, "There hasn't been any response from Vert? Hasn't one of the major gaming news sites picked the story up?"

"They have. Though no one reached out to try and contact either Vert or us," Thomas replied. "The news of Vert partnering with the big three drowned out a lot of other news."

"We should hear something from them," Jack said. "Pissing off parts of your fanbase isn't a good idea. And as far as I know, we're one of the major reasons people are looking into the game."

"What, really?" Dylan said.

Jack nodded, "Yeah. A lot of people were on the fence about sinking money into the VIS. Seeing your crimes and how flexible everything was despite the drawbacks brought a lot of interest. At least, that's what I've been seeing on the forums."

"It's probably a combination of us and Vert's announcement," Thomas said. "Let's be realistic here."

"Pessimist," Jack joked.

"At least my head isn't in the clouds," Thomas shot back.

"Dude, all our heads are in the clouds," Riptide interrupted. "We're in a flying city."

"Point," Thomas replied. "But seriously, don't let our new popularity go to your head."

"Speaking of that," Sweet Dream said. "What do we do with the Viewtube money?"

Heads all turned.

"What?" Dylan asked.

"Oh my god, I completely forgot about that," Oro said.

"Yeah, we've got about five thousand dollars total from all our videos," Sweet Dream said. "But I don't know how we want to split that up."

"Dude, five thousand is so much money! I could buy all sorts of things with that," Riptide said.

"I don't need the money," Dylan said. "My current job makes me more than enough."

"As a broke college student, five-thousand dollars would get me a lot," Oro said.

"I didn't think about Viewtube payouts," Thomas said. "Can you keep it in the account for now? I'll look into our options and see what we can do."

"Sure," Sweet Dream replied.

"Great. Now that we're done with that. I want to talk about recruitment for a second before we really dive into planning Skyline."

Thomas laid his hands on the table and took a breath to prepare. "Now that our videos have been for a couple of weeks, I wanted to see what your thoughts were for recruiting players to Menagerie. While you've been collecting items, I reached out to a few people,"

"Like me."

"Like Jack."

Thomas continued, "But I've also gotten many messages from players who signed the petition. They want to join up with us."

"Why not accept them?" Dylan asked.

"Because we have no way to know how many are going to screw us over," Rampart replied. "I'm sure there's a ton of trolls out there who would love to break everything we created."

"Right. So we need to plan for that eventuality." Thomas said.

"Why not keep it like we have been, friends inviting their friends?" Sweet Dream asked.

"Because of how many messages I've gotten, mainly," Thomas answered. "There are a lot of players who want to join up. Some of them are interested in the PVP, some in the roleplaying, but there are a lot of them. And we don't have the structure for this many people at the moment."

"What if we split things up a bit?" Dylan said. "Create a Netchat room for anyone interested in joining and separate them by interest. It might take a bit of work to set up, but we'd have a clear view of what people want once it's done. You even mentioned the idea of having multiple different sub-guilds before."

"Are you going to oversee that?" Thomas asked.

Dylan shrugged, "I wouldn't mind doing the roleplaying. Though I doubt people interested in PVP would want me as their main contact."

"I wouldn't mind running the PVP side," Oro said.

"Alright, just to make sure I'm getting this right," Jack started. "We're going to let all the interested players join Menagerie? There's no test to take or anything? And are they going to be on Skyline at all?" She turned to Thomas, "You even said that some of them would be trolls and that we needed to plan for that outcome."

"I think what Zlo is saying is that we bring those interested into a Netchat group, and they can start making connections using some of us as points of contact," Sweet Dream said.

"Okay, that makes a bit more sense. Does that mean you're in charge of inviting new people?" Jack asked Dylan.

"I wouldn't say that. The main thought was to start getting people acquainted while we sort out planning. Heck, I say we don't even bother with the invites until we have a strong plan for Skyline. Until then, we should keep Menagerie invite-only."

"Wait, dudes. What if we used the tsunami crime as recruitment?" Riptide said.

The whole group turned to look at Riptide.

"D*mn, that's a good idea," Thomas said. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"I know," Rampart said. "Having recruitment be a part of our crime works so well."

"Riptide's not just a pretty face, you know," Sweet Dream said.

"I think you're the only one who thinks he's pretty," Oro joked.

A glob of chocolate smacked him in the face. "Hey!" He spluttered.

Irate, the golden hero wiped the chocolate out of his eyes and prepared to complain. He stopped when he saw Sweet Dream's complexion. Oro's face changed from upset to teasing as he looked at the villainess. The woman was redder than a boiled lobster.

"I take it back," Oro said. "He's the prettiest boy in the world." The man turned to Riptide, "Bro, would you do me the honor of going on a date?"

"No can do, dude," Riptide said. He grabbed Sweet Dream's hand and pulled her next to him, "I'm already taken."

Sweet Dream blushed even harder, "Shut up, you idiot."

"Awwww!" Oro teased some more. "Aren't you just the cutest couple."

"Shut up!" Sweet Dream yelled. She tossed another ball of chocolate at Oro, which the hero dodged with ease. Dylan smiled at the group's antics. He'd thought something was up when Riptide said Dream was making him study.

"I think this calls for a celebration," Dylan said.

"This is why I didn't want anyone to know," Sweet Dream grumbled. "You're all making a big deal out of it."

"They're just having fun," Jack said. "But if you keep teasing her after she asked you to stop, we're going to have issues." The last sentence came with a pointed look at Oro.

The hero raised his hands defensively, "Easy there, mama bear. I was only joking."

"We should get back on track," Thomas said, clapping his hands to get the group to focus back on him. "Everyone agree to tie recruiting in with the tsunami crime?"

"Yep."

"Yeah."

"Uh-huh."

"All good, dude."

"Excellent," Thomas folded his hands together. "Let's plan out our city."

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