Be helpful through the school day

"Fine, I'll help. But after school, I want to talk to Ivy, so that means the mask is done at the end of the day, right? That was supposed to be the plan."

"Yeah dude, no problem," Ivy casually said, as the two exited the storage room, looking at least mostly put back together, other than a bit of extra mess to Ivy's hair--surprisingly, no smudge to her makeup, but of course there wouldn't be, the digital mask was just creating virtual makeup, not real stuff! "She's all yours once you help me set up the account in the Ascend. It was a good thing they left the storage room when they did--one minute longer, one of the math teachers entered the room just a minute after they left!

The rest of the day was awkward, but not overly so. As Lucas pretended to be Ivy, James seemed to help her along, and supposedly James had Ivy's voice inside the helmet to give him guidance as well to navigate some of the social stuff. He didn't quite talk like Ivy, didn't quite move like her, and everyone knew something was off. The official excuse she gave was that her allergies were acting up, and people seemed to generally buy it. Even Beth and Cameron, Ivy's two best friends, were fooled. It was amazing that Lucas could keep up any sort of an act around Beth, given how much he wanted to get back together with her--but he hadn't been this close to her for months. He felt like a spy, using Ivy to talk with Beth about things like boys, and how maybe she should consider giving Lucas another chance once he's out of the hospital.

Ivy faked an illness for the last class of the day, and James pretended to walk her out of history class to the nurse's office. In actuality, they simply headed outside, not intending to return to class that day. They found a secluded spot over by the trees beyond the parking lot, where they could tinker with the headset for a bit.

"Okay, here we go," James said, looking at the manual. "Close your eyes, then squeeze your eyelids shut harder twice, that's like the activation sequence to get into the menu. You'll still be able to hear and talk, but your visuals will be the AscendOS virtual space. Ivy should even be in there, with a little virtual avatar, when you do this.

Ivy did as instructed, shutting her eyes, and then squeezing them tight twice like she was wincing in pain. But then she relaxed, her eyes remaining shut. "...okay, I'm in. Whoa, she is here too, yeah. I'd been hearing her all day, but now I can see this little orb with her name over it."

"Okay, first thing, you have to set an admin code, it's four digits. There should be a wall with all these prompts on it for things like apps and settings, that code is up in the top-left."

Ivy's head bobbed and moved, a physical echo of some of the mental moving Lucas was doing to navigate the virtual space probably. "Okay, done. I've got admin access. That's kinda... exciting, yeah? Okay, so, what next?"

"The receiver has an electrostatic lock, that's how it's clinging to your face right now. You can set it to disengage by grabbing the receiver under the chin and pulling forward, otherwise you need an internal command to undo it. Damn, good thing we're reading this, it seems like that should be the default setting, shouldn't it? You'd have to wait for it to power off otherwise. But anyway, you can do that, and then pull it off. As long as the receiver is on, though, you can keep adjusting the settings afterwards. There's a digital manual. Got it?"

"Yeah, I'm good, I changed all those settings. Keep the mask powered on, but I'm gonna take it off, got it?" Ivy said, eyes still closed. She didn't wait for confirmation, she simply reached up and tugged the mask away. There was some resistance, important so the mask didn't just fall off throughout the day, but it seemed to come off easily enough.

"Ivy?" James asked, as Ivy opened her eyes, her hand holding the Ascend receiver, staring at it for a moment before looking at James. He tried to read her emotion, to understand how she felt about the day she'd just endured.