Collaboration Planning Meeting

After a few emails back and forth, today they were finally meeting face-to-face inside BCD for a proper planning session. The venue: the Dungeon Braver shared home, reception-room type.

The fantasy-flavored reception room was, apparently, coordinated around the concept of an "Adventurers' Guild reception."

"Karona-jou, thank you for accepting our collaboration invitation."

The stiff, businesslike tone had already been cast aside; they'd agreed to interact in-character. Karona took Yamato's outstretched hand and shook it.

"Not at all, Yamato-sama. The pleasure is mine, and thank you for the invitation. And also…"

Karona shifted her gaze to the two players beside Yamato.

"I'm Sakura. Nice to meet you, Karona-san."

"Yuuta. Job's Thief. Nice to meetcha."

It was Karona's first time meeting them in person, but of course they were members of Dungeon Braver. "The pleasure is all mine, and I do hope we shall get along splendidly," she replied with a prim little Ojou-sama smile.

Incidentally, Sebastian and Kokuyou were standing at attention behind Karona.

"A butler and a maid, huh. Nice… yeah, real nice."

"Indeed. And your receptionist over there, why, she understands as well～!"

Dungeon Braver also had a Secretary AI: type "Guild Receptionist." She was seated at the table, unobtrusively taking minutes for today's meeting.

"Shall we call it 'worldview alignment'? Such splendid commitment to the theme."

"Same to you. Nothing could suit the Ojou-sama image better. Must be nice having two of them… maybe I should add a second one too? Though even if I doubled up on receptionists, the roles would just overlap…"

"In that case, next up has to be a Guild Master!"

"A Guild Master! Now there's an idea. It'd be perfect if he occasionally foisted some impossible dungeon run on us! I'm stealing that."

Karona and Yamato were really hitting it off over Secretary AI talk.

The two of them shared one key trait: they both loved roleplay.

"Well then, about today's collab stream… what sort of 'setup' shall we go with?"

"Hmm. If an Ojou-sama is visiting the Adventurers' Guild… an escort quest, maybe?"

"So Dungeon Braver would be hired to escort me through a dungeon run, I see!"

"Yeah. But it'd be hard to work our actual goal in that way, y'know… getting you to teach us cheap long-range attack methods. That's the tricky part."

"Mm-mm. True."

And thus this meeting. Not merely a meet-and-greet, but a planning session for the roleplay in their upcoming stream.

"Hey, leader. Can't we just, like, collab normally without the roleplay?"

"Wouldn't it be easier on Karona-san too if we just asked her to teach us straight up?"

At Yuuta and Sakura's perfectly reasonable suggestions, Karona and Yamato shared a companionable head-shake of mild exasperation.

"The whole point is that we do the roleplay. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Right. This isn't some spontaneous multi-player collab. We've got to stay true to our channel themes. For the viewers' sake, too."

"Well, I happen to be a genuine Ojou-sama from the start, but still. Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho!"

"Hmph. I know. And I was always an adventurer to begin with."

Setting Yamato aside, there were unmistakable signs that Karona was forgetting her own video catchphrase of "aspiring to someday become an Ojou-sama"…

"Sebas. Do you have any good ideas?"

"Mm, let me think. If I may be so bold… what about something along these lines. They take on a request for a 'Distance Competition,' and despite her being younger, they receive instruction from the foremost authority in the field, the Ojou-sama… how does that strike you?"

"Ooh. Secretary AIs answer questions like that too? Didn't know. Hey, receptionist-san, got any ideas?"

"Let me see. How about the Guild hires Karona-sama on as a temporary instructor?"

"Temporary instructor, that works too…!"

Oh, I like this, Yamato thought, nodding along.

In the end, they hammered out the remaining setup details without fuss, and the meeting wrapped up without any particular turbulence.

 

*

 

(Next time, the collab stream!)