Cesya seems pretty confident.

Of the three, the bratty red-head with the incomprehensible name caught the most of your interest. Her borderline-arrogant self-assuredness stuck with you even through the other introductions- and when you returned to it, Cesya's chat was certainly still just as full of excitement as it was full of salt. It was an undeniably infectious energy that drove the hooks in deeper- but you had to admit, it wasn't the only reason... and it definitely wasn't the biggest.

Inryo had an abundance of girls who classified as "short and wide", but Cesya was really taking the entire cake- directly to her thighs and ass, by the looks of it. The girl was doing a careful dance of inches all over the line of believability- never quite becoming wholly unbelievable in terms of proportion and scale, and yet, she always seemed to have an unfair advantage.

Just a couple inches shorter, just a couple inches wider than reality. Riding the line so closely that you were certain it was possible, and fairly sure you'd seen girls with the same blessings... just, never all at once... and maybe not quite to the same degree. Maybe her short stature was just making her ass look even bigger. Maybe being so wide tricked your mind into not registering her height properly. Maybe both worked in tandem to make her somehow seem more absurd than any other girl you could recall.

Maybe it was just the skin-tight suit emphasizing her every curve, the black fabric straining particularly hard below the waist- especially when she leaned forward, over the anti-structure rifle easily longer than she was tall.

"Looks like we're about to start! Before we do though, I'd like to remind everyone that VIP subscribers get access to a 360-degree camera, AND an automatic mode where a neural network controls the camera to capture every highlight from the best angle! You know, just in case your hands are busy for some reason."

Shameless. The way the camera circled behind her during that little advertisement was downright criminal- so much back there to show off that any angle was flattering, and yet, if the camera angle had just sunk a little lower...

"Anyway! You guys already know how our punishment games work- there's a challenge, and whoever can't overcome that challenge suffers a penalty, as voted on by you viewers! Even better, today's event is a race- that means only one of us can escape punishment in the winner's circle! Of course, that's going to be me."

Another wave of salt completely drowned out any text that may have been accidentally typed into Cesya's chat.

"What, don't believe me? Come on, we're playing Project 3K. Not just that, but a special mode created specifically for this punishment stream. That topheavy wannabe-knight barely plays shooters at all, let alone in full-dive, and Amaya's totally out of her league. This isn't some hundred-hour turn-based game with dozens of units on the field! In fact, this is a solo mission!"

Cesya paused. Maybe it was for dramatic effect, or maybe it was to wait for the tidal wave of salt to slow down. Maybe it was just so she could change her pose again, lest any of her viewers forget the allure of viewing her from certain angles.

"Basically, this is a lot like Raid mode. Just like that mode, the game generates a pretty big and totally random map. Now, normally, that mode involves lots of players, tons of loot, and plenty of potential objectives to complete, guarded by lots of enemies, and primed to set off random events and encounters... but we only kept those last two things. Each map will generate with the same single objective- to locate and steal a card key. Loot generation has been turned way, way down, too- and that's not even the worst stuff!"

Cesya gestured to the table full of military gear, then theatrically snapped her fingers. In an instant, the massive rifle she'd been using as a prop, along with eighty percent of the other items strewn all about, disappeared into puffs of smoke.

"A normal Raid sets a limit on how valuable the gear you bring in is. Normally, that's to keep things challenging and to prevent solo farming. For us, it's just another part of the challenge. Instead of a normal limit, ours is set so low we can't afford decent armor or guns. There is a silver lining, though- we don't drop our starter stuff when we're downed, so we'll never lose it. Loot we collect from runs works differently... but honestly, that'll be easier to show than to explain. And since my analytics don't have much faith in your attention spans, I think it would be better to move on to something a little more relevant..."

A camera transition heralded by a bubbling, wide-bottomed flask filled the screen for a few seconds, before fading back to the even wider-bottomed Cesya. Although a number of straps and other components over her stretched-tight suit indicated that she'd geared up for combat, she hadn't brought very much additional armament at all.

"So, starting equipment! You guys hopefully won't recognize much of this stuff- I'm not scraping the bottom of the barrel here, I'm digging a hole underneath the cellar to fit all of this into my budget. Seriously, a basic stealth kit and the tactical rigging to keep it in place puts me like three fourths of the way to my spending limit."

The camera dutifully swung around to Cesya's backside once more, lingering just long enough to show a small device secured to the small of her back. A web of straps and rigging ran out from the device, clinging to Cesya just as tightly as her straining suit did, bearing small hexagonal panels of a similar design to the device. When active, it would make her mostly invisible to visual and infrared methods of detection- though compared to more standard units, it had considerable drawbacks.

"If you've played more than ten hours of Project 3K, you know what this is- and even if you've played for a thousand hours, there's a good chance you've never even heard of the HX-1 Whisper. It's universally terrible- in exchange for access to the most basic of cloaking effects that actually lasts long enough to be relevant, we have to put up with a cloak so bad that it not only drains even when we're standing perfectly still, but also doesn't start recharging for a few seconds after we disengage it. It also technically makes it impossible to use most decent armor, but we could barely afford it anyway. We were never buying armor."

Cesya activated the cloak, and after a brief, flickering distortion, she disappeared entirely from view. When she reappeared seconds later, she was facing the camera directly, holding a silenced pistol in one hand.

"Then there's this awful thing. I've taken a C2000 pistol- only because starter guns cost nothing- and put a wipe-based suppressor on it, mostly because it's the only one I could reasonably afford. Ideally, I won't need to fire this thing ever, especially since I only have eight rounds... and the suppressor is only effective for about half of them. Being so frugal did let me buy one final piece of gear, though."

Cesya returned her pistol to a holster strapped to her thigh, the band holding it in place noticeably thicker than most of the others making up her rigging. Although it was probably an unintentional side effect of the specific models used and the way things had to be scaled to fit her frame, it did a good job of emphasizing just how much thigh there was to wrap around.

She wore a matching strap on the other side, which she turned to show off. Instead of a holster, however, it held a couple of white, cylindrical grenades with sky-blue stripes and yellow, stenciled-on lettering.

"Disruptor grenades. Since they already gave us a data-knife, I figured an insurance policy was my best bet. They emit a combined smokescreen, chaff field, and jamming pulse that'll put a stop to any and all sight lines, electronic detection methods, targeting systems, and so on- though, temporarily, and in a fairly obvious way. Just because they're expensive relative to other grenades doesn't mean they're actually expensive, and I've got to save some room on this rigging for better loot."

The camera did a quick spin around the red-headed idol as she struck a pose, giving everyone one final good look at her gear- and, naturally, her rear. It seemed like she'd be relying on a hardcore stealth approach to get the job done. High reward in theory, but high risk in practice- even for someone with plenty of experience. Armed with little more than the suggestion of a gun, any misstep on Cesya's part would invariably lead to failure- and failure meant more than just a setback. Failure meant drinking. Retreat meant more drinking. Any result that wasn't success lead to yet more drinking. As confident and arrogant as Cesya was, skill wasn't the only thing the game was designed to test.

It was a punishment game, after all- built from the ground up to thoroughly test her willpower, her endurance, and above all else, her capacity.