Neo gleefully sets up a playlist full of cheerful EDM with heavy beats. She's got to come back here later, all of these options look great. For now, though, a rhythm game would be the best for working the kinks out of their body map: clear instructions, high pace, and an explicit score to measure how well she's rewriting things. She sets the playlist to shuffle, makes sure the game is set to use as much of her body as possible, and begins.

The center of the dance floor lights up from below inviting her to stand there. Once she takes her place the music starts and a sequence of silhouettes starts moving towards her showing poses to make with regularly spaced markers to show timing. No matter what way she turns they're always in view.

The poses start off on the easier end just positioning an arm or a leg in a certain way while standing but as the playlist continues the poses combine movements of multiple limbs and branch out, encouraging her to sway her hips, bob her head, jump up and down, bend down the the floor, spin in place and more. The game adapts to her performance, easing up a little after a mistake and challenging her to new heights when she's had a string of successes.

Oh that's perfect. She dances up a storm, making plenty of mistakes at first, but gradually less and less as she gets through song after song.

A stumble here, a missed step there, overshooting a shimmy, not jumping high enough, surprising herself with unexpected flexibility, the mistakes keep happening. But little by little, she starts mapping her movements better, matching expectation to (virtual) reality tighter and tighter.

Eventually, after well over two straight hours of dancing, Neo wears herself out. She bends over, resting her hands on her knees, panting heavily, grinning wide. This is great.

But it's getting late, and she's tired. She logs out of the game, pulls the headset off, and gets up to put it away, then wash up for bed.

They do still have one more day of classes before they can throw two straight days in this game.

Being back in the old body feels... cramped, but they get by, and get to bed.

Hailey wakes up Friday morning, sharp and bitter in their old body. Everything feels cramped and stretched and stiff, the dysphoria worse than usual for having been truly and fully relieved for a night.

With a heavy sigh, she hauls herself out of bed and prepares for a day of classes.

It's draining.

It hurts.

But she gets them through it. Pain is an old friend.

Just five more hours until they can log back into VR. Four more hours. Two. One.

She rushes into the dorm room, tosses their bag into their desk chair, washes up, throws the NerveGear on, and lies down.

In. They. Go.

There's the same numbing sensation as Sable felt last time and then she's waking up with their new body in the same grassy starlit clearing as before.

A long, relieved sigh spills out of her. 

Fuck it feels good to be back in this body. 

She takes a long moment to just savor the relief.

And then she uses the pink diamond to call Veria.

"Hello there, are you one of the people I haven't met before?"

"Sort of. We met very briefly. I'm Hailey."

She props herself up on her elbows, looking up at Veria. "S'good t'meet ya properly."

"It's good to meet you too." 

"Y'know what's the fuckin' worst part of making this perfect body and spending so much time in it yesterday?"

"Having to go back to your original I assume."

"Ding ding ding! Someone give the AI in the pretty swirling colors a prize!", Hailey snarks good-naturedly. 

She sighs harshly and shakes her head. "But it's okay. We have this now, and we can just steal every opportunity we can to stay logged in."

A contemplative hum.

"Is it safe to sleep in-game?"

"Yes and no. The issue isn't sleeping per se it's total time spent. You still need to logout to eat and drink and relieve yourself. You could sleep in game if you wanted but you'd probably need to logout almost as soon as you woke up to take care of your body."

Hailey sighs and nods, sitting up properly. "That makes sense. The advantage of sleeping in VR, though, is that the bursts of time in the old body would be something we could deliberately brace ourselves for, rather than a kick in the gut that we're already aching from the second we wake up."

"It's ultimately your decision. The game will message you when you're getting dehydrated or when you need to relieve yourself but we don't forcibly log anyone out unless it's getting to dangerous levels. The headset is also configured to have you shift a little bit periodically to avoid bedsores but that isn't an absolute guarantee."

"That'll work. Thanks."

She stands up and stretches.

"Any chance you could hook me up with a parkour course?"

"I think I can arrange that. Do you have any specific requests?"

"Gaps for standing and running jumps, spots for tumbling, an area for that running-leap-series thing that I can never remember the name of, some obstacles to vault over, some overhead bars to swing across a gap on like monkey bars, ropes to swing from, and maybe something I have to climb?"

"I think I can manage that. Do you want it to be part of this space or separated like the dance studio?"

"Separate, I think. Maybe urban vibes?"

"Sounds reasonable. I think I see a way to tweak the procedural generation code for this." A bit of light detaches from Veria and flies over to form a new door next to the one to the dance studio.

Hailey grins wryly. "You're stylish about this shit, y'know that?"

She heads over to the door and opens it up.