Somewhere deep in a digital forest, an unlikely trio sat on a branch so massive that it could easily carry a house. The group consisted of two beautiful ladies, one with ridiculous pink hair and the other with blonde-bordering-on-white, as well as a tiny man that would be easy to miss if you didn’t know what to look for. Presently, the tiny man was fuming.

“So you can’t change me back?” he asked.

“Sorry, I can’t,” Rima replied, genuinely apologetic. “I don’t have an item that increases size – just one that shrinks.” She smiled mischievously. “I could shrink you again if you wanted.”

Gage scowled and ignored her last comment. “But you’re saying such an item exists?”

“I believe so. It’s pretty rare, and quite powerful too, but I’ve heard about it. It might be a bit of a hassle, but we could probably get a hold of it.”

“And you’re certain there’s no other way around this?” he pressed.

“Yeah, pretty sure,” the witch affirmed, her face remorseful. “I’m really sorry I did this to you. If I had known – ”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gage interrupted. “It’s in the past – you can make it up to me by helping me find the item that’ll fix me.” Rima stared, taken aback by how quickly she had been forgiven. Charis sent her a knowing smile – Gage really wasn’t one to gripe about anything beyond his control. The tiny man began pacing on the tree bark between the two women, rubbing his chin in thought. “Well now that that’s out of the way, could you please tell me everything you know about the procedure I underwent?”

The witch nodded. “Well first off, the procedure is called ‘jailbreaking.’ Don’t ask me why – it doesn’t make any sense to me either. As you probably already know, when you get into one of the VR terminals, a computer hooks itself up to your nerve endings while simultaneously drugging you into REM sleep.” Gage stopped walking and began to listen intently. Standing in front of Rima’s massive form, he felt like some sort of pilgrim paying his respects to a deity – the fact that she had her legs crossed in a decent imitation of Buddha certainly enhanced the effect. “Usually, the synapse between your own nervous system and the game is a mostly one-way street. The sensations come at you from the game, but your own nerves can’t send anything out save for action impulses. However, once you’ve been jailbroken, the game interfacing directly with your central nervous system. The effects aren’t fully characterized, but initially this new relationship manifests itself as quicker movements and reaction speeds. My theory is that you’re now moving at the speed of thought as opposed to the speed of your normal simulated body. But the real benefit of being jailbroken is that you can actually manipulate the game via your brain.”

This last part especially interested Gage. “What ways can you manipulate the game?”

“Well, I suppose the possibilities are theoretically limitless. In practice, though, it’s very difficult to get too much to happen until you’ve put in some time working at it. On the other hand, I’m seen some players with seemingly infinite power; there’s a whole underground society of these players that even I’m not a part of.”

Gage nodded. “Tell me what you think of this.” He then proceeded to tell the towering witch about his misadventures just after he had been shrunk, focusing in particular on how he had mysteriously appeared in front of Charis when he was about to get crushed by some girl’s stinking foot.

For her part, Rima winced several times, and she wore an apologetic look when she said, “Yeah, teleporting like that would definitely be in the realm of possibility. I’m really sorry about all the trouble you went through. I shouldn’t mess around with newbies like that but most of them are such dicks…” she trailed off weakly.

“It’s really not a big deal,” replied Gage firmly. “But what you’re saying is that I willed myself to be with Charis so badly that I just teleported in front of her?” A furtive glance backwards confirmed that Charis was indeed blushing.

“Pretty much,” she nodded. “It’s only unusual in the context of how recently you’ve been jailbroken and how you’ve spent essentially zero time practicing. For instance, I don’t think that I could teleport like that at all, and I’ve been working at this for six months.”

“Wow, for that long?” asked Charis. “What made you want to get jailbroken? If you don’t mind my asking,” she added hastily.

“Not at all,” Rima replied. “I actually got into a freak car accident a number of years ago… I became a vegetable, and Perfect Dimension was the only game at the time using the neural link interface; but it allowed me a way to interact with friends and family and actually have a life. The whole thing isn’t strictly legal, but the Administrators and whatnot hadn’t really established a policy on it at that time. Eventually, the game got so big that I think I just kind of slipped through the cracks.”

“Yeah, so how big of a problem has it been trying to dodge the Administrators?” Gage asked.

“Not that big of a problem, actually,” the witch answered. “Like I said, the game has gotten so big that the Administrators are always playing catch up when it comes to hackers and whatnot. In fact, while jailbroken players have the potential to do the most damage in the game, they’re less of a priority simply because there are so few people willing to sacrifice their real lives. Out of the hundreds of millions of players on Perfect Dimension, I’d put the number of jailbroken players at a few thousand, and they’re all are quite elusive.” Rima paused for a second. “What about you, Gage? Why’d you do it?”

Gage’s expression turned uncomfortable. “Just trying to get away from it all, I guess,” he said. “I’d rather not talk about.” Rima shot Charis a look, but she just shrugged.

Rima took the hint and changed the subject. “Well let’s think about what we need to do now.”

“What’s that?” asked Charis, trying to help move the conversation away from what was clearly a sensitive subject for her dimunitive friend.

“Our ultimate goal is to get that item that will restore Gage’s height. Theoretically, if he could teleport himself he should also be able to grow himself, but I’m inclined to think that that was just a fluke,” Rima said matter-of-factly. “Honestly it would take longer for him to train himself to that level than it would to just track down the item in question.” Rima reached into a pocket and then laid her hand in front of Gage.

“My items!” he shouted gleefully. He had already moved on – or at least that’s what he projected. He excitedly equipped all of his gear. “Thanks for holding onto these for me, Rima.”

“No problem,” she said with a rueful look. “I don’t know why I picked these up, to be honest. Just impulse I guess. Anyway, now that you have those we need to test the limits of your shrunken body.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gage.

“Well since you’re jailbroken and since you’ve got your items back you shouldn’t be totally helpless. Plus, I’ll try to train you a bit so that you can become stronger.”

“Who am I going to train against?” No sooner had the words left his mouth when a titanic boot crashed into the branch on either side of him. Gage craned his head backwards to see Charis standing over him and grinning wickedly.

“This is gonna be fun,” she purred. “And if you lose, I get to wear you in my boots and enter a few Tournaments. With that extra power boost you give me, first prize will be a breeze.”

Gage groaned and gave Rima a plaintive look.

“Don’t look at me,” she laughed. “Now let’s see what your little body can do…”