The events in this section are to be in chronological order, but they can be sprinkled in between plot points of other chapters where it makes sense.

Scare Tactics

• Cami has a plan to scare Penny.
• She goes into Penny’s house house while she’s at work.
• Her big plan is to sit in her room in the dark and scare her when she walks in.
• She waits for hours. Eventually passing out.
• Penny comes home, super tired. The sound of her coming home scares Cami awake.
• She takes off her shirt and bra
• Throws it to the side and then crashes on her bed, asleep
• Cami is shown wide eyed and flustered. Penny was too tired to notice her there.

Medicine

• Crow is caught daydreaming about Penny.
  • She misunderstands and thinks that maybe he’s sick and sends him home.
• Penny picks up medicine for Crow
  • Feat. Dr Cavaticus cameo (@spiderdraws)
  • He gives her pure codeine.
  • When she brings it up, he just laughs it off and sends her away.
• Crow is home gaming with headphones on, playing an MMO with his guild.
  • his teammates KID and NyxGunlanceRoseblood can bee seen on screen.
  • His avatar is a short, busty, white haired catgirl, named Raven. (This is just Nekomancer)
  • Penny knocks on his door but no answer. His motorcycle is here and his door is unlocked so she walks in.
  • Penny find him gaming and watches him play for a few seconds, noting the avatar.
    • This furthers the misunderstanding that he’s into that type of girl (light haired cats).
  • Penny speaks up, spooking Crow.
    • She gives him his medicine and tells him he should be resting instead of gaming.
      • “Wouldn’t want you to miss work.”
  • Crow accepts the medicine, elated by her care.
  • He notices that the medicine is pure codeine.
    • Penny laughs it off and begins to leave.
    • At the door she tells him he doesn’t have to actually take it, then leaves.
  • Crow hears pings from his guild, interrupting his stupor. He turns back to his computer and apologizes for the interruption.

The Gift

• Crow approaches Penny and hands her a CD.
• He tells her it’s Melty Blood: Type Lumina, a fighting game.
• She says she’s never played a fighting game before. She wonders if it’s meant to help teach her some combat.
• Crow laughs and says it’s just for fun. He thought she’d like it.
• She thanks him and and immediately starts looking up frame data.

S Tier

• Penny is in her room, it’s dark. The only light comes from her computer monitor.
• She’s staring at the monitor, eyes bloodshot and baggy.
• Sounds of punching, catchphrases, fireball noises. “Rank up!”
• Crow kicks her door open, and Penny hisses. “ITS BEEN 18 HOURS PENNY TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK.”
• He pulls her by the legs, she fights back, gripping her table. “Nooooo! I’m almost S+!”
• Crow drops her and incredulously replies, “Oh, shit? For real?”

Pipsqueak

• Penny, looking upset, is being pat on the head by a smug looking Cami.
• Cami is saying, “Aw, what are you going to do about it, pipsqueak?”
• Penny, still upset, is bends Cami’s wrist. She says, “Did you forget where I work?” Cami is in pain, on her knees and is seen saying, “I’m sorry.“

Cat Nap

• Crow shows up at Penny’s house after work.
• He says he’s about to pass out and needs to crash on her couch, work was rough, she was closer.
• Penny laments somewhat, but she allows it,
• He passes out on the couch and she goes back to her room.
• Another knock on Penny’s door.
• It’s Orchid, saying she needs to crash here because-
• Penny, who has a soft spot for her, tells her it’s cool. She can stay here for the night.
• Orchid thanks her, exhausted. She closes the door and crashes onto the couch, asleep.
• Penny is walking through her living room on her way out, and sees Orchid sleeping on top of Crow. Thinking it’s cute/funny, she snaps a photo.
• Crows starts to wake up and locks eyes with Penny, who is giving him a tight-lipped blank expression as she puts on her ranger vest.
• Sleepily, he starts to put things together when he notices little Orchid (whom he’s never seen in his life) sleeping on top of him.
• Penny leaves before he could explain anything.
• Fearing whatever thoughts Penny may be having, he quickly gets up, dropping her to the floor with a loud thud.

Routine

• Anais puts her pencil down to stop drawing/writing. It’s 5am.
• She puts on her headphones and goes to sleep.
• Perhaps puts on something to keep her hair from being annoying? idk how girls with long hair deal with it.
• From the headphones, you can hear words of affirmation. (She hired a VA to voice her wolf OC boyfriend)
• Sun comes up and her alarm goes off. It’s 7am.
• She sleepily wakes up yawning.
• She gets up and stretches, limbers up.
• She picks up a bamboo sword and does 100 overhead swings.
• She does each Naruto hand sign in a row x5
• She rewraps her left arm with clean bandages.
• Brushes her hair (takes 45 mins)
• Gets dressed in her business clothes, gives a smooch to a framed pic of her oc bf, and goes to work.

Coffee “Geeks”

• Penny meets Anais, who came to LPRO3 to talk about their insurance contract.
• Penny offers her coffee.
• Anais accepts, and says she’ll take it black, and makes a big deal about doing so (she hates anything bitter but drinks it to look cool).
• Penny is excited, being a coffee connoisseur. She takes this opportunity to geek out about different coffee brewing methods, asks Anais for her thoughts, overwhelming her.
• Penny makes her try a bunch of different brews.
• Anais is dying.

Cosplay

none of them know that they know each other in real life. crow plays as “Raven” (Nekomancer), the whimsical and sexy cat witch. orchid plays as “KID”, a large muscular male monk that she made to resemble Penny in a way. anais plays as “Nyx Gunlance Roseblood”, based on her self-insert original character of the same name, decked out in flashy cool armor with improper stat distributions to fit her roleplay.

one day, the guild decides to do a meetup at a convention for the MMO. anais convinces them to cosplay. they all show up, but crow looks ridiculous dressed up like his busty cat girl, and orchid feels awkward in her revealing monk outfit. when they all meet:

• anais and orchid are surprised to recognize each other as coworkers.
• orchid and crow are surprised to realize that theyve met before irl.
• crow and anais are surprised to recognize each other from a business related deal (anais personally deals with insurance for ranger outposts).

theyve all played this mmo for years and never knew they all somehow knew each other.

at the guild meetup, they discuss orchid and crows awkwardness about their cosplays. crow says it might be easier if they swap costumes.

anais takes them both to a nearby convention bathroom and has them each enter a stall and toss their cosplays over to her. she always keeps a sewing kit on her when she cosplays, so she does them a solid and fixes up the outfits.

• perhaps anais is the one who made the outfits to begin with? i can see orchid having made hers, but crow aint got the skill to make it. he has the money to commission someone for it, though.
• but i think it kinda makes more sense for anais to have made their outfits and surprise them at the convention with it, like “here you go put these on.”

crow now wears orchids monk outfit, and orchid wears the nekomancer dress (fitted to her much smaller proportions). crow is satisfied with the swap, thinking its easier and makes more sense. orchid is happy, thinking she looks kind of cute, and modestly adult.

crow mentally notes how similar she looks to his character, but that’s about all he thinks. orchid compliments crow, he accepts it but shrugs it off a bit. orchid sees crows musculature, definition, and is taken in by it. she reasons that of course he’s buff, he works the same job as penny. she also thinks about how nice hes been. she blushes, not sure what this feeling might be.

Sorry

• After the convention, Anais starts to become a more regular part of the group.
• Cami and Anais meet for the first time.
• Anais thinks, “oh no, she looks really cool. i have to look cooler than her.”
• Anais: “Behold, mortal. You stand before the Incomparable, the Mother of the Abyss, the Sanguine Flame of Darkness: Nyx Gunl-“
• Cam: “dark mommy”
• Anais: “what”
• Cam: “what”

Jello Shots

• Everyone is partying, each taking a jello shot.
• Crow eats it like a normal person.
• Cami is squeezing like 4 into her mouth at once.
• Orchid is putting just her tongue in the cup.
• Penny is eating hers with a spoon.

Have a Nice Trip

one day while the group is hanging out (cami/penny/crow/orchid) at a mall or something, penny and cami move ahead of the group to check a store out. crow stays behind, acting as a visual marker for orchid to catch up, not wanting to leave her behind.
orchid, not used to heels, trips and scrapes her knee.

crow, concerned, immediately and swiftly picks her, princess carry style.

he asks her if she’s okay. she is flustered and unsure what to say. he jokes about carrying her the whole time since she cant walk with those.

penny and cami meet back up with them, interrupting the scene, and causing crow to reflexively drop orchid at the sound of penny’s voice.

Backstory Time: Penny meets Cami

• Cami (junior year) is sitting in a remote spot behind a classroom. Angry, upset, sad. She had a bad fight with her girlfriend.
  • Cami, for a long time already by this point, has had walls up and rarely ever shows off her real self. Preferring to portray a cool / aloof version of herself to everyone else. She was made fun of for being easy to read (color change) in the past. Being this way in a relationship is obviously rough.
• Cami pulls out a cigarette and lights it up.
• Penny (freshman year) turns the corner and sees the cigarette.
• Before Cami can say anything, Penny has already snatched the cig from her mouth, threw it on the ground, and stepped on it.
• Already in a bad mood, Cami lashes out at Penny, “What the hell, kid?”
• Penny, being held up by the shirt but unintimidated, tells her cigs will hurt her, which hurts the people that care about her.
• Cami responds self destructively, saying there isn’t anyone to care.
• cami drops her, telling penny she doesn’t know her and to fuck off.
• Penny tells her she cares, and is going to check on her every day to make sure she isn’t smoking.
• Cami shoos her away and goes for another cig but realizes her pack has been taken.
• (Penny does this more so out of a general sense of justice/duty/morality, but it has a huge effect on Cami in the long run.)
• Penny keeps her promise, each day.
• cami forms her crush on penny here, feeling like she’s the first person to care about her that way.
• eventually she figures penny out, though, realizing its less about cami and more about penny’s own sense of justice.
• she can’t help but love her still.

Backstory Time: Cami and Crow

cami is a year younger than crow and knows him as “pres,” since he was the student body president. crow found out cami smoked long before penny did, but was instead okay with it. hed show up next to her behind the music building where she’d hide. never making eye contact. hed ask for a cigarette, she’d give him one. sometimes theyd vent about shit, but they weren’t really friends.

Backstory Time: Crow

Crow was an ambitious, headstrong, achiever in school. Driven by a combination of his father’s influence and his own drive to do what rangers do, he excelled in school, even taking the role of student body president.

by the time his final year of high school came around, he had started to lose interest. to become burnt out. he hasn’t lost his ambition, though. he still wanted to be a ranger.

his father is an extremely important figure in the ranger society. he does not work at an outpost. he reigns higher. if crow is “vice captain” now, reporting to a captain, his father would be 2 maybe 3 rungs above that.

his father is not cold, but he is also not good at paying attention. he pushes crow to fit the mold that he wants him to without considering crows wishes. he incorrectly assumes crow wants the same thing, because crow couldn’t bring himself to say that he wants to be a boots-on-the-ground ranger. rising the ranks and dealing with politics are not his dream.

he knew his father would be a good resource to make it into the rangers, so he followed his instruction, even becoming the youngest known ranger (before penny). crow met jane in the academy. eventually they were both assigned to LPRO3

crow enjoyed his missions, feeling helpful and genuinely enjoying life as a person of action.

however, his father would repeatedly and consistently send him off to do political tasks, like pose for magazines, speak with important people on his behalf, join meetings way above his pay grade. basically prepping him for his “inevitable” promotions to admiralty (or whatever it would be called).

crow despised this and his burnout/jaded attitude only grew.

eventually, before penny joins, he told his father he didn’t want any of that. he told him his feelings. his father was stunned, disappointed. they fought. his father said some harsh things that showed he didn’t ever think about crow as a person, just clay to mold into his version of a perfect ranger.

crow and his father stop speaking with each other, but his father assigns him the fake title “vice-captain” at LPRO3, basically giving him the duties of captain, even though they already have one.

crows actual captain is extremely old, so he does the job anyway, to be of service to someone who could use it, not purely out of compliance to his father.

his father, however, does regret his words and actions. lamenting how he’s treated crow. he reaches out, apologizes, and tells him that the offers for promotion are there if he wants them, but he will stop trying to force it on him.

about a year after all of this, penny joins LPRO3.

Queen of Hearts

Cami is seen alone in her room. Back to the viewer, playing guitar on her bean bag chair. Some lyrics can be heard while she plays

crowned queen of hearts
but she can’t feel her own

Chase, chase, chase the rabbit
maybe one day you’ll catch it (you wont)
late, late, late it runs ahead
it’s not you it’s looking for in the end

the queen kicks and screams
“off with her head”
“off with her head”
off with my–

Same Coin

anais yapping at orchid: “…and so, in her hubris, she attempted to wield a second aspect too early and ended up burning her aether glands…”

Cami looking smugly at Anais: “Last day of pride month and you FINALLY decide to come out, huh?”

Anais sigh: “ugh. What are you talking about”

Cami, teasing, pretending to be lovestruck, holding her face and kicking one leg up, “I always knew you were in love with me.”

Anais, already sick of her: “Speak plainly, lizard.”

Cami: “It all makes sense.”

Anais, crossing her arms: “You’re an imbecile.”

Cami dramatically points at Anais: “Your dress! You reppin’ bi colors, girl!”

Anais, in wide eyed, mouth again, looking down at herself with a wide legged stance and pulled back shoulders, shocked at the realization: “HUH?! B-but I HATE you!”

Cami: “Love and Hate are two sides of the same coin, O’ Boobed One.”

Anais, on her knees, screams at the sky: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

later, anais, back at home, doodling some stuff. one of the drawings is a crumpled up and scratched out picture of her and cami kissing. the other is a cool picture of her with prosthetic limbs, a gun arm, a sword, and crown.

Chapter 5 – What if we Made a Band?