[Vol. 4 pt. 6]

Me and Meadow arrived right in the city’s center where most players hung around all while she was still getting a piggyback ride from me. The moment she saw other people and other people saw her, she tightened her grip around me with both her arms and legs and whined.

“Damian!” she whispered at me. Only, her voice came into my mind rather than in through my ears.

Can we talk like this? I thought back at her.

“Yes! This—this is embarrassing! Let me down!”

You’re the one who’s clinging to me so tightly.

“That’s—that’s because I didn’t know what else to do!”

Are you sure you want me to let you down?

“I am! I need to hide!”

But you can’t transform or else everybody else will be suspicious of you.

“I have a plan! Just let me down!”

I didn’t know what she was planning on doing, but I let her down regardless. Then, as soon as I did, she let go of me and grabbed onto the back of my shirt to hide herself against it.

So, her idea of hiding was standing as close behind me as she could, pushing her face against my back, and clutching onto my shirt.

You know they can still see you, right?

“They can’t see me if I can’t see them!”

That’s not how it works.

“I should have transformed myself while we were teleporting! This is all my fault!”

It really kind of is. But don’t worry. I’m here, so I’ll protect you.

Meadow whined a little bit just in time for a player passing by to go, “Nice little.”

It took me a couple of seconds to understand what he was talking about, and I laughed once I got it.

“What’s… what did he mean by that?” Meadow asked me, still communicating telepathically.

He means a little in the DDLG sense.

“What’s that?”

Oh boy. Alright. DDLG stands for Daddy Dom, Little Girl. It’s a relationship where one person fills the caregiver role while the other fills the role of the ‘child’ being taken care of. The dom is usually referred to as daddy or mommy while the little acts like a child, dresses like one, plays like one, and so on.

“I thought pedophilia was illegal?”

I probably looked stupid for suddenly laughing at nothing since nobody else could hear what I just heard. It’s not pedophilia. It’s typically done between grown, consenting adults. You might find a twenty-year-old girl who wants to be a little or a thirty-three-year-old guy who wants to act like one. It’s a form of… coping for some of them. Escapism from the stresses of real life for others. And to some, it’s just purely fetishistic.

“Oh… I think I understand. So… one adult acts like a parent and the other acts like their child?”

Right.

“How… how young do they act?”

Anywhere from toddlers to teens, but most, I would say, stick between the nine and thirteen range.

“That… is… umm… well… are you—are you.. into… that?”

Nope. I’ve tried it out, but it was too much for me. But maybe that’s because the girl I was with got way too attached to me and wanted me to borderline, legitimately be a parent to her. She needed my help paying bills, buying things, going grocery shopping—it was too much. I couldn’t handle being a parent to an adult who isn’t even my actual child.

“Oh! Okay! Good. I—I was worried you are since you know about it.”

Creeped out by it?

“I… I think so. I don’t mean to judge anybody for what they’re into, but… well. I… I do kind of like the idea of… you being… fatherly… to me, but… not like that! I want you to teach me things, pet my head, and take me places! I don’t want you to actually baby me! And I—I don’t think I want to call you daddy?”

I’m going to be honest here. You would be perfect for the whole DDLG thing. I don’t want to have that sort of relationship with you, and I don’t want you to call me daddy on a regular basis, but I still want to hear you try to call me it.

Meadow tightened her grip on my shirt and rubbed her face from side to side against my back before gently whispering within my mind, “D-Daddy?”

Yep. You’re perfect at that.

“I’m not calling you it again! It—it made me feel strange. Not… not bad, but… not good, either. Or maybe… it was nice, but I don’t like that I like it, so I both like and dislike it, which means it neither bad nor good?”

Don’t worry. I won’t make you call me it. But if you ever do want to call me it just for fun every now and then, you’re welcome to.

“That… that sounds good to me.”

Now then, want to actually look around, or do you just want to hide behind me all day?

“I want to look around! I do! And… I think I’ve calmed down enough now.”

Oh, wait. One more thing. I forgot to mention what daddies usually call their littles.

“Wh-what?”

You’re my little princess.

“… whew. Okay. Good. I’m not into it. I just kind of like calling you Daddy sometimes.” With her fetish figured out, she let go of my back and walked around to my front before looking up at me with a gentle smile. “I’m ready for my tour! Wait. I’m not supposed to be getting a tour! You’re supposed to look for clothes and a tailor for the dungeon!”

“Oh. Right, I forgot,” I said, finally talking out loud with her.

There was actually one popular clothes shop right near the city center. Not only was it popular due to its prime location of being right next to the fast travel arrival spot, but it was popular due to—well.

Meadow could see for herself.

The shop’s front wall was a long window that allowed potential customers outside to see in. All the clothes on display were… very, very fitting for the kind of game we were playing. Bondage costumes, nurse and cop uniforms, corsets and latex suits, nipple tassels and ball gags—if it could be considered a piece of clothing or accessory, especially of the sexual nature, then the shop had it.

“Woah… this place looks perfect!” Meadow said. “There’s so much you could get here for the dungeon!”

“There is,” I agreed, placing a hand atop her head. “But we’re not shopping here.”

“How come?”

“Because. I prefer supporting small businesses. Also, this shop’s owner is an asshole.”

“What do you mean? About both of those.”

“Do you see how prime this location is for a player-owned shop?”

Meadow looked around for a bit before looking up at me again and nodding. “There are lots of people around here!”

“Exactly. It costs a lot of money to keep a store running here. Way more than you can actually afford from the store itself. This is where we get into the asshole part. The owner of this shop is an officer from one of the game’s biggest guilds, and the guild more or less runs the shop. You get charged insane prices unless you join the guild, at which point you get a massive discount. But you have to be a member of the guild for at least a month before you get the discount, and then you’re permanently blacklisted from all shops owned by its guild members if you ever leave.”

“Oh… wow. Okay, I see why you don’t like them and don’t want to support them.”

“Exactly. They’re just a bunch of manipulative, greedy assholes. The only reason their guild is so big is because they trick people into joining and then punish them so severely if they ever leave. The guild basically hoards all of the game’s top crafters by offering them huge incentives for joining, so you end up blacklisted by basically all the player-run shops that actually matter if you leave the guild. If anything, the crafters are the ‘real’ members of the guild while all the other players are just slaves who exist in the guild only to get discounts and to inflate their member count.”

“Finding a good tailor might be hard then…”

“It might be, but I’m sure we’ll figure something—”

“What if I be your tailor?”

I thought she was just being silly at first since I didn’t think she’d be able to do something like that without giving herself away, but she sounded serious. “How would you do that?” I asked.

“I just need an avatar I can control! If I can find an avatar nobody else would ever use… I could disguise myself inside of it to mimic what it would be like if a real player was in control. The only problem would be that I would need somebody to log the avatar in for me every time I want to play. And there are no good measures in place to track how long an avatar has been logged in for simultaneously, to the best of my ability, so I shouldn’t cause any suspicion even if I stay in the avatar for weeks straight! But it would probably still be a good idea to log out every now and then, in which case I would need somebody else to log the avatar back in so that I can take control…”

“How would that work if somebody has to control the avatar? Wouldn’t they be stuck in-game while you’re in control?”

“I… I’ve actually tested it with your avatar before. But only for a few seconds to confirm it would work! Basically, once somebody goes to log out, I can get into their avatar just before it disappears. Then I can trick it into thinking I’m the player, and I can use the avatar for as long as I want!”

Her plan might just work. “So,” I said, “if I were to get another copy of the game, I could make an account and character for you, and then you could take control of it whenever I log out. Then you’d just need me to log in after maintenance or loss of connection or whatever else.”

Meadow held her hands up as fists in front of her chest as she nodded. “It would work!”

“Then you could have your very own avatar and do whatever you want just like the rest of us without ever having to worry about getting caught.”

She nodded some more. “And I’ll do anything you want! I could even become the best crafter ever and make you all the clothes you could ever ask for and more! And we’ll show that guild who the real best is!”

“That’s some good spirit to have. Then, want to cut our trip to the city short? I could get you an avatar made within the hour.”

“So—so soon? Is it really that easy?”

“All I have to do is order a copy of the game online, register it with the code I get, sign in on my headset with the new account, and make the avatar. Easy. The only hard part is the registration part since they’re still using a website layout that looks like it’s from the start of the century.”

“What’s that?”

I forgot sometimes that Meadow’s knowledge of the world existed strictly within the game. She couldn’t leave it and had no knowledge about the real world nor how the rest of the internet worked.

So, how the heck was I supposed to describe what a website layout from the start of the century looked like? She had nothing to compare it to.

“Alright,” I said. “Imagine shoes that are nice and simple and all you have to do is slip them on.”

“Okay!” The way that Meadow looked up at me was so pure and innocent.

“Now, imagine shoes with a bunch of different colored laces that crossed over each other and went into non-parallel holes with absolutely zero order or sense of fashion.”

“That sounds horrible…”

“That’s what the site is like.”

“You—you don’t have to go through that for me!”

“It’s okay, I’ve got this. You know where the starting area is for brand new characters?”

“I do!”

“Then I’ll meet you there with your new body. Any preferences for how it looks?”

“Um… you can make it look however you want! Tailor it to your preferences!”

If she was going to say that, then I knew exactly how to make her look. “Are you sure about that?”

“I am!”

“Alright. Don’t regret that once you see your new avatar.”

“I’ll be too excited to regret anything!”

So cute.

“Ehe. I can still hear your thoughts.”

You know, I didn’t realize the implications of this before, but this is actually kind of creepy.

“I’m sorry! Should—should I stop?”

No, no, it’s fine. But at least let me feel like I’m thinking to myself unless I specifically think to you, or if you need something in an emergency, alright?

“Deal!”