The Pirates have had a wild ride the past decade, but they think they like where they are now. They've got an apartment, a VR pod, and a steady-enough income to support all of that, including enjoying VR with their long-distance girlfriends, the Evenstar system. Things are pretty great, and they're looking forward to trying this new game with her.

Sable finishes tidying up a few things around the apartment to make sure everything's ready, and then slips into her own pod, donning the neural crown and relaxing into virtuality. She can't wait to see her girlfriend!

She awakens standing on a large stone plinth amid a writhing sea of tentacles, wearing absolutely nothing, a strange bracelet pinned through her wrist with the muted sharpness of VR-pain, and the certain knowledge that somewhere out in that squirming sea lies the remains of what civilization was before the tentacles came. 

Consulting her memory, she recalls that the plinth in the center of this small island produces a forcefield that disintegrates any biological matter that doesn't have human DNA — hence her lack of clothes. She won't be able to make a home here,  but the bracelet on her wrist will be able to recall her here with a thought. 

And then she catches sight of the Pirates loading in, and abruptly remembers she's naked. 

That knocks her right into her most vulnerable self — Audrey. 

"I, um, hi," she says quietly at whichever Pirate it is, blushing like a fool. She's getting a little more used to being nude in VR with her love these days, but she still has to deliberately supress the urge to cover up.

Sable bites her lip a bit and glances down at the feeling of the bracelet, blinking at the way it's threaded in between the bones.

Then she realizes Evenstar's there and looks up at her, smiling warmly and blushing. "Hi, sweetheart. Good to see you." She steps forward and pulls her into a hug, then kisses her lightly.

Ooh, friction. 

She hugs back, and a little of her fear ebbs away as she's gently embraced, quickly replaced instead by Horny. 

"Hey, love." She kisses back, and presses another kiss to Sable — she thinks it's Sable, the change in her voice is subtle but it's there — and leans in. 

Then she half-turns, taking in the tentaclescape. 

"... Quite the experience we've got lined up for ourselves, hm?" She giggles under her breath, tension and excitement making a bubbly cocktail of nerves. 

Sable grins over her own nerves. "That we do. It's going to be a ride, but I think we're gonna like it." Then she looks her girlfriend up and down for a moment, taking in the posture and tone of voice.

"I wanna say... Audrey or Sin, I think?"

"Audrey, yeah. I think I'm shading a little more towards Hannah as I gather my courage a bit though." 

She squeezes Sable and smiles. "And you're a — Sable? I think?" 

"Good guess, Princess." She grins a bit sharper and slaps Audrey's ass teasingly. "I suppose we've got to get out in all that to get started?"

She jumps and giggles, then leans closer into Sable and grins. 

"Looks like, yeah. It's pretty intimidating from a distance but it's a game, it should be winnable. We're not playing Better Than Wolves here."

Sable laughs and nods, wrapping her arm around Audrey's waist and holding her close. Fuck it's nice to be here, in VR, with her and Audrey in bodies that fit. 

"Yeah, we can handle this. We handled Vintage Story and Valheim, right? So tell me. You picked this one out, what's our first goal to keep in mind while we're out there getting fucked silly?"

"Uh, let me think — first resources are flesh and bone, bone is the first tool tier flesh is the first structure tier. For starting food it's tentacle goo and eating the tentacles themselves, I'm afraid. Some tentacle beasts can be minionized by feeding them enough orgone that the wrist bracelet learns their language, but we don't have orgone multipliers yet so stick to the small ones. Theoretically there will be small islands of regular soil out in the sea to find but they're slightly higher level so a bone weapon would be helpful."

"With all that in mind, I think our first goal should be finding bone."

"So find something with a skeleton while we're out there getting boned?"

She laughs. "Yeah, something like that." 

She steps over to the edge of the plinth and starts looking for a less obviously doomed way to step out into the tentacle sea. There does seem to be a kind of fleshy ground down there, and not all of the landscape is actively squirming... just some of it. 

"Oh, and keep in mind, if you have to hard-safeword you drop all your stuff."

"Good to know," she replies, blushing down at all the tentacles. "Maybe we try to team up on a smaller one, overwhelm it together, and use it to help take down whatever we use as a source of bone?"

"I haven't got a better plan! Let's do this." 

And hesitantly, Hannah steps out into the tentacled sea, staying far from the edges of the closest tentacle pits. Walking on the spongy flesh in her bare feet, she tries her best to balance and not fall over, and tries to sneak up on one of the smaller balls of tentacles that's squirming across the surface. 

Sable steps down as well, and tries to circle around, carefully avoiding the larger creatures, hoping to drive the little one back toward Hannah so they can capture it between them.

Between Sable and Hannah, they're able to corner a small pink one between a larger tentacle pit and the edge of the platform. 

"C'mere, you!" Hannah makes a lunge at it.

The squishy little pink tentacle-creature visibly startles, and catches Hannah in its coils. It hugs her close and starts to... tease her breasts? For a tentacle monster it seems to be a lot more gentle than one would expect. It almost seems shy.

Sable blushes at the sight and pounces into it from behind, sandwiching it against Hannah, burying her hands in its tentacles.

The tentacled beastie firmly grabs both of them, and seems to make up its mind; tentacles quickly press in between both of their legs, probing at their sexes as it coils in harder around both of them, pressing them to each other face-to-face to make the hold easier.

<!!!!>, it "says", the telepathic contact garbled beyond recognition.