After the launch of Dinglebarry Realisation tech, many theories emerged. It allowed users to bring their VR creations into the real world. Some suggested the possibility of extracting individuals' DNA and recreating them in reality. Many sought to clone highly successful public figures, envisioning the clones as servants, for promotions, or other purposes. It was crucial to emphasise that all these ideas were speculative. There was no proof that Dinglebarry technology could create and animate a human or a clone. Despite this, many believed in its potential. Creating pets and unusual animals became common, but making a human remained complex and fraught with risks. Recognising these concerns, the practice was outright outlawed.
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A mysterious figure strolled through the town of Berghwoodna. A hushed silence fell over the residents as this enigmatic presence glided through the shadows, methodically surveying the surroundings with unwavering intensity.
An active group of confused individuals exuded an eerie silence, all donning towels. Instead of the loud and energetic noises that characterised the rest of the towel-donning parades, they remained unaware of Ashlyn's deceptive status message about heading to Heart-Ling Swamp.
"It's him... the man with the long number," a hushed murmur arose among the towel-clad onlookers.
Another voice chimed in, "So the rumours are true?!"
A third added, "The assassin... is here?"
He was a ruthless killer with a heart as chilly as a popsicle, yet he never got cold feet—his toes stayed toasty while his heart remained icy.
They all looked at him. The assassin wore the black and pink polka-dotted night robe he had worn when Lillian made her daring escape, opening his front door and walking out.
One of the towel bearers, wearing huge fox-girl ears and painted-on whiskers, said, "Don't laugh at him! He means serious business! He is dressed in this ridiculous way as bait to entice people to laugh!"
A second person concurred, "She's absolutely right; those polka dots are notorious for taunting snipers, presenting them with numerous targets. But he knows no one will dare to take any action against him."
They stood motionless as several approached, gazing at them with intensity. Although they felt scrutinised, the reality was that he suffered from severe vision impairment.
In a feeble yet exalted voice, he addressed one of the individuals, "Wh-wh-why di-di-did you, uh, run from m-m-me?"
The girl looked troubled. "Run! From you?" she said nervously.
"W-well, you see, a-and, um, your eyes were movin' when you were, uh, speakin' before, b-but now they, uh, remain still when you speak. Y-you are, uh, an imposter... o-or maybe, um, her sister?"
"My eyes?! Huh? What?! I don't understand what you're saying. This... is not Lunar Vixen. This... is just a design on the towel! She's a fox-girl from space," she said, pointing at the design on her towel. "And I," she turned her hands over, "... am just little old me," she added nervously.
The man with the long number remained staring at the Lunar Vixen girl's smiley face embodied on the front of the girl's towel, not making eye contact with the person bearing it.
Then, a guy from the group proudly corrected the woman speaking: "Well, actually, she's not from space; she's from the planet Foxtron, the last survivor of her species... the illustrious Tail-Flap tribe. This is no ordinary fox... she is from an ancient tribe on a noble mission, guarding the world from those sinister Zoidlords. Just a little correction for the cosmic record, you know?"
The numerical man caught fragments of the odd words spoken by the guy and attempted to fill in the black gaping holes in the sentences through assumptions and guesswork. Turning his head around, he eyed the towel-draped figure with a focused intensity, resembling a terminator assessing its target.
The man's gaze then shifted to the wide-eyed fox-girl design on his towel, which the guy wore pulled up and wrapped around his torso, exactly mirroring how the girls in the crowd wore it and precisely as Lillian did in the photos Ashlyn took. The old man stammered at him, "C-c-cosmic Lun-Lunar Vixen, uh, you are not... lookin' too well. Y-you have lost too much weight, y-you h-have. C-come back to my place, a-and I will, uh, f-feed you up. Vixen's sister... c-come too."
The guy got irritated and fumed slightly, saying, "She does not have a sister! She is alone..." before a few people intervened to make him stop. Others hushed him to quiet him down. One of the girls nudged him and said in a hushed voice, "Be careful; that's the assassin, the guy with the long number. His code number is so massive that nobody can remember it to track him down. If you try to input it into any database, the number is so large it will crash the servers. Attempting to type the number into a calculator will cause it to malfunction and explode, rendering it useless. And if anybody types it incorrectly, they will suffer."
The geeky guy stood there, utterly incredulous at the sight of the old man, muttering under his breath like a cross-bred dog.
"That's... That's him?! I don't believe it at all," the guy scrutinised the old, decrepit man, shuffling slowly and clearly hard of hearing, draped in a black and pink polka-dotted night robe, hunched over in the freezing cold. The guy was about to say he looked absurd before the old man spoke and got a sudden burst of energy. They all gasped in unison, thinking he was about to do something to harm one of them who might have ticked him off.
"You've done it now, Pixel Destroyer!" the girl said.
"Thanks for telling him my name, 'Whimsy-cat.'"
The girl who had been speaking to the man beforehand just grunted.
The elderly man, with his numerical designation, moved swiftly—his pace defying his age. He leaped in front of every member of the towel-wielding brigade, executing a double foot-stomp before each person, all the while exclaiming, "Arghh!!" His antics continued even as a few individuals attempted a slow retreat, hoping to escape his notice. He intercepted each person of the towel-people, soaring into the air, creating a spectacle. His descent to the floor echoed with a thud, producing a curious mixture of amusement and bewilderment. Amid the chaos, he emitted wild sounds akin to "arhgh" and "rrraow."
He reached for something in his pocket that madeeveryone nervous, and they all panicked and screamed. Whimsy-cat was the only one who dared to speak and said, "Cosmic Lunar Vixen..." She tried to steady her nerves before finishing, "...would not want this... she is about love, caring, and saving the world." Pixel Destroyer was about to interject with a correction when Whimsy-cat deftly planted her foot on his, halting any impending correction.
You could tell he wanted to search the rest of his nightgown, but upon seeing all the eyes of Lunar staring at him, he decided against it and muttered, while scanning the towel-bearers' torsos, "Y-you're not the real Cosmic Lunar Vixen! You're just a bunch of cosmic c-copycats... copy foxes… Where is the real Vixen?! The real stars shine with their un-uniqueness, not by being clones of o-others. I heard about this cloning t-tech-technology on the radio."
"The radio?" one of the girls asked.
Another said, "What is that?"
A third said, "Dunno, but it doesn't sound as good as eBunnee. Probably just another copy-bunny app."
The old man, his voice trembling with emotion, stammered, "C-cosmic... co-smic... my space booo," his voice breaking into sobs, "The girl r-ran from me; now she has g-g-gone. I will never s-s-see her again. The planet has been defeated by her evil clones, and there is nothing I... can do about it."
Whimsy-cat sought to console him, gently stating, "We're not evil clones! I mean, we're not clones of people; we're just individuals wearing towels with Vixen's design. We're just, you know, fans of... Ash'... uh, I mean, we absolutely love the Cosmic Vixen show."
She further softened her voice, adding, "My skin is a completely different colour from hers to begin with." Using her hands to draw attention to one of the girls among them, she then stood in front of a guy and said, "And this guy here has facial hair, while the rest of us don't." Despite the man avoiding eye contact, she urged, "Mr... number... man... sit... Please lift your head up and look at us in our faces."
One of the girls said quietly, "Are you sure you want him to look at our faces? I hear he never forgets a face."
Another girl responded, "I am fed up with him not making eye contact with me and just staring at my upper chest area, so yeah, it might be a good idea."
The man only heard a couple of the words said and stammered, "L-l-l-look up! Th-that makes, uh, sense! She m-must be up... up in s-space," chuckling awkwardly.
Hunched forward, he straightened up, reaching as high as possible to meet eye level with the towel bearers. After a moment of struggle, he gave up, his gaze shifting to the collection of radiant faces. A warm smile broke across his features.
"I-I-I should've lifted my head up sooner! It's like stumbling upon a whole new world up here. Y-you're all so b-beautiful," he exclaimed before continuing. "I-I-I know. I had a black-and-white TV, but I'm young enough to have experienced it all in c-colour as well. I-I've even seen s-some poor-quality b-bootleg copies of my C-Cosmic Lunar Vixen in my time as well," he added, while making eye contact with Pixel Destroyer. A soft laugh escaped his trembling throat.
All the girls smiled at him calling them beautiful, as well as a couple of the guys, except for Pixel.
Whimsy-cat spoke up, "Oh, thank you so much! But of course, we are not as beautiful as your Vixen Cosmic Vixen... girl," tripping over her words.
The old man with the long number said, "M-m-maybe... maybe not. I-I can't recall wh-what her face looked like. I j-just remember her eyes. Eyes I can never forget."
One of the girls whispered, "I don't think he's thinking of eyes here."
A second girl playfully interjected, "Derp!"
Pixel Destroyer became frustrated, feeling like a fool during this encounter and desiring to redeem himself and appear cool in front of all the girls. He stood in the street, draped in a towel with a big-eyed fox-girl on it, wrapped around his torso like a woman would. He reflected on the rumours that he was an expert tracker and assassin. They said he could find any target. But he couldn't track down his little cosmic girl—for the obvious reason that she was a fictional character and didn't exist in the real world.
Instead of pointing this out, he chose a different approach, one that might make him appear intellectual. "Mr... sir... Hi... ummm." This was a bad start, he thought to himself before continuing, "If you want to find the cosmic girl... not that you need help, but... this eBunnee app... it tracks everything you do. It tracks your location, every message you type, and so on. It also tracks when you need to shower and times how long you take." He paused, then added, "It also stores and bakes cookies... tracking cookies to track people down. You could use eBunnee to track your Cosmic girl... I think... if you want to."
"Th-th-that sounds intriguing, y-young snapper. H-however, I've come to the r-realisation: C-Cosmic Lunar Vixen soared into s-space to rescue it from the universe's grasp. Sh-she will return one day, and wh-when she does, Meowington and I will be eagerly awaiting her. Sp-space, vast and open, is too ex-expansive; eBunnee won't be able to track her th-th-there," the man explained, pausing to catch his breath. "I-I would like to bring a r-replica of her home with me so I can ch-cherish the memory of her face... forever."
Nervously, Pixel glanced at all the other towel bearers and muttered, "Her replica?" Pixel asked with anxiety as the man with the long number pointed to the face on the towel he was wearing.
Whimsy-cat encouraged, "Just hand it over so we can move on... really, it's not a big deal."
Pixel expressed concern, "But I'm not wearing anything underneath... this."
Whimsy-cat dismissed his comment with a grin. "So what? Consider it a charitable deed. You're aiding an elderly, infamous person. Picture the buzz on eBunnee... the comments, the likes! You'll become an eBunnee sensation!"
Feeling the weight of the moment and enticed by the prospect of attention, Pixel swiftly unwrapped the towel, as if the views and likes encapsulated the very essence of his being. He extended it towards the old man, with Vixen's gaze meeting the elderly gentleman's eyes. The old man gratefully accepted it, looked down at Pixel, and said, "Th-thank you very much... code number 4."
Pixel smiled as he observed the crowd engrossed in live-streaming on their phones and exclaimed, "I... I got a number, just like the agent."
"You sure do," a collective of voices responded.