Unfortunate though it was for the both of them, Ornery had actual, somewhat respectable reasons for digging his scaly nose where scaly noses should never have gone. He knew full well that if curiosity had killed the cat, it would also kill the lizard, and it would kill the man behind the lizard, and that it was completely irrational of him to be dipping his fingers into this particular pie.
He's never been a big fan of mystery meat products, and this proverbial pie was most definitely had a mystery meat kind of vibe. Mysteries were good. Mystery meat was in a different category entirely.
"Don't have to rub it in, lady. I know I'm a paranoid sack of shit. In a VR game with this many security holes, being perpetually eroded by so many viral loads that---uh, I was about to make an association with a word that starts with "bu" and ends with "ke", but I don't know how old you are, so if you get it, good, and if you don't, thank fuck. Anyway, in a game like this, I don't think I get to trust anyone without question."
Ornery nibbled at the tip of his gloved thumb as he considered his next words. Fortunately, in [The World], clothing damage was virtually impossible to actually impart upon somebody unless it was a scripted event or one was hacking. And he wasn't going to hack his own glove into a damaged model to make it look authentic.
The sharp teeth were a purely aesthetic choice.
"I'm not that worried about your intentions. I'm worried about the intentions of anyone else who might be looking into the events at the Wall, and I'm concerned that the corp's just going to sweep it all under the rug. It's obvious to anyone looking in from the outside that if any of this was publicized, R:Fusion's popularity would begin dropping drastically. [The World] has a poor enough reputation as is, and the corps want profit way before they want to fix what is, in their opinion, an insignificant bug."
He dragged a sharp heel against the floor, creating a dreadful noise, but no lasting mark.
"And so are we. Insignificant, eminently bannable bugs. Who cares about a couple players falling into a coma if talking about the Lost Ones openly would make their stocks drop? Under normal circumstances, I'd don my white hat and report all of this to whoever's willing to hear about it, but I know what happens to those who blow whistles. If I hope to get anything done, I need something slightly more substantial. Something even they can't ignore. Or, in an ideal world, I'd find the source of the corruption and we'd beat it up, like we live in a 300-yen issue of a shonen manga mag, and we'd be happy and shit rainbows all over the place."
Ornery clicked his forked tongue and sullenly powerwalked onwards.
"But this bitch ain't stacked in my favor, and I don't want to add to the body count any more than any of us do. I don't want to end up in a situation. I just... have to, if I want to backdoor other people out. I can't lie and say I'm not intrigued by any of what's happening, but fundamentally, I'd rather be reading about it on the BBS."
He ground to a halt as they reached the clockwork chamber, assessing it right off. A door. A puzzle box. A lot of ominous machinery.
"Sure. I don't mind puzzles that much, to be honest. My parents used to, uh---they'd kept some of the pre-Pluto OS running on isolated machines solely for old games, so I ended up playing a lot of retro stuff as a kid. Sierra games, especially. Like Torin's Passage. The cutscenes were so wonky in retrospect, but they scared the shit out of me either way... or maybe it was because they were so wonky, since I was used to different animation styles entirely..."
While talking, sufficiently distracted from his thoughts, Ornery wandered over to the trap door to check if it's currently locked.
"I think I still have some of their old hardware in the attic... Oh, yeah. Right. Questions. I'm supposed to ask you questions. Uh. What is "this situation" that you're referring to, in your own words?"
