Yes or No
"Yeah, I'm sure," she said, flicking the burning embers into the ocean and turning to walk back inside. "Sure I could use a drink before I decide..."
A bright light from her center MENU panel flashed in congratulations and the panel right of the main menu displayed her Profile screen. A strange feeling bathed her in a woosh of what-the-fuckness and the light from her panels entered her person in a way that made her feel somewhat violated. When the blinding flash faded she glanced at the Profile partition, blinking rapidly.
Athios took in the sight of herself. Nothing seemed different from what she would have seen in a mirror. She saw a scrawny girl with dark hair, showing hints of gray very prematurely. Thin eyebrows she'd given up on trying to draw in like other girls her age did, eyelashes that were long and dark but uneven from when she would pick at them nervously. And, of course, all the same physical insecurities she'd always had. All the things she changed on her avatar when playing real RPGs.
‘What just happened?’
Athios’ eyes were drawn to the hands of the holographic representation of herself on the Profile screen. They almost looked as if they were fading away, like something superimposed, the hands of a ghost between two planes of existence, or between two dimensi…
"Oh, you've gotta be freaking kidding me!" she roared. "I said ‘yeah, I'm sure I need a drink’ - not ‘yeah, I'm ready to decide’!"
The accidental Dimensionalist calmed down by reminding herself that at least she wouldn’t have to think about that decision anymore and was finally able to move on to what happens next. As much as she hated the idea, Athios readied herself to interact with others. She tied her hair in a ponytail and practiced her breathing exercises - two-second inhales through her nose, four-second exhales through her mouth. She grabbed a box of energy bars and a few bottles of water and set them down on the table, then opened her backpack to put them inside. Then, something occurred to her. She opened her MENU panels and focused on the Items icon. Her inventory partition opened to the left of the main MENU, displaying a grid of mostly blank squares. She pulled a bottled water out of her backpack and a black, hand-sized disc appeared in front of her. She slowly reached out and pushed the bottle through, then retracted her hand quickly and the bottle was gone. She looked at the grid again and saw a new, filled square with a little blue water droplet icon.
‘Okay, that's pretty cool,’ she thought. ‘I should just go to the school. All I'm doing here is torturing myself with the idea of social interaction - it's never as bad as I make it out in my mind,’ she (poorly) convinced herself. ‘But first…’
She found Garath on her friends list and checked his location, he was on the move and she figured he would be at the school within a quarter of an hour. She expanded the Messaging option, then wrote and deleted a few sentences - nervous to say the wrong thing, but eventually settled on a message.
Private message from Athios to Garath - 00/00/00 @ 01:24AM:
I'm heading to the school now. You mentioned the outdoor basketball courts, isn't that next to an old church?
She nervously read her own message three times, wondering if she should have said something else before the response finally came.
Private message from Garath to Athios - 00/00/00 @ 01:26AM
Yeah, big red brick building. We'll be there soon. I look forward to meeting you in person! :)
‘Well that makes one of us,’ she thought. ‘But it probably beats going it alone, The Culling doesn't exactly sound cuddly. I would rather go it alone than have to rely on some newbs to watch my ass, but having experienced gamers around could be beneficial. Garath, why is that name so familiar? Had he played Frozen Throne Online?’
She put that thought to the back of her mind and opened the cabin door of her shoddy old boat. As she looked into the dark night, still reminding herself to breath with every inhale, Athios hoped she was making the right decision to group up with some guy she had never met. Even with an event designated ‘The Culling’ only hours away that promised 24 hours of monster attacks, meeting up with some guy from a mysterious apocalyptic system forum made her feel like she may as well be taking an unregistered taxi to meet a tinder date in a dark alley.
Chapter 6
Transformation
“I'm not going anywhere,” Mark stated firmly. He took off his rimless glasses and pressed his thumb and index fingers to the bridge of his nose. The middle aged banker sighed heavily. “Besides, I'm sure the authorities will handle everything.”
“The authorities? Seriously?” Garath asked incredulously with both hands raised in irritation. “Do you really think the authorities are going to be able to do anything to help? In case you haven't noticed, there's no power. Do you know what 'the authorities’ use to communicate? Telephones? Radios? Email?”
The dim, dank smelling apartment was dead silent as Mark and Garath looked hard at one another.
“I could be wrong,” Garath continued, “but I'd bet the government and military are just as leaderless as everyone panicking right out there,” he said, pointing a finger out the window at the streets below.
The eyes of the group of neighbors gathered in his living room followed his gesture to look outside and each of them, Garath included, silently hoped he was wrong. What they saw was raw chaos. Fires were already littering the landscape from car crashes - some had even spread to nearby buildings. Garath couldn't help wondering just how much money the insurance companies would have to pay out if anyone lived long enough to file a claim.
“At best, 'the authorities’ will be able to organize on a VERY local level,” Warrion said - making exaggerated air quotes with both hands.
“Like shouting distance local,” Garath agreed.
“Still,” said Sarah from the love seat, “Mark might be right. Even if there are monsters or whatever, we're on the thirteenth floor. How would they even get up here?”
“Depends on the monsters,” said Warrion with a shrug. “Flying monsters, or teleporty monsters, or…”
Garath cut him off, looking from Mark to Sarah and back. “Or they could take the fucking stairs? Or even spawn inside buildings? The only factor that matters is that we don't know anything.”
“Well I think it's safer here,” Mark said stubbornly. He had been looking for a place to set his glasses on Garath's coffee table but the various paraphernalia and empty pizza boxes didn't leave him many options. He put them back on and looked at Sarah, Sharon, and Warrion in turn - hoping for some backup.
“Do whatever you want, Mark. I'm not going to be stuck in here when the monsters start coming,” Garath told him coldly.
“I'm with G,” Warrion agreed. “If monsters do manage to get in here, then this place is gonna be a fracking death trap.”
Garath looked to Sharon, hoping she wouldn't be as stubborn and stupid as Mark about the whole thing. He'd never known his own grandparents, and Sharon had never had children. Over the years, the gamer and the prickly old bird had become friends in a way, but more than that, too. Garath even considered the crass, bitter old woman family - and he went out of his way to keep an eye on her more than he ever had with his actual family, even before some game-like apocalypse rocked the world. She returned his gaze with a considering expression for several seconds before speaking.
“Do you really think we should leave?” she asked Garath with a delicate tone he'd never heard from her. For the first time in the years he'd known her, Garath could tell that Sharon was truly scared and returned the consideration of thinking before he replied.
“Yeah, I really do.”
Sharon#142 gave him a look that was both stern and yet, somehow, still genuinely concerned - an expression that didn't fit his taciturn neighbor at all.
“And are you sure you even want me to come along?” she asked.
Garath opened his mouth to speak but she raised her hand to silence him.
“Think before you speak. Really consider it, because I am not as spry as I used to be. I ca
n't run or jump or fight. I would just be dead weight.”
“I’m not having any of your defeatist bullshit, Sharon,” Garath told her seriously. “You're coming even if you don't want to. I just hope you have enough sense to make the call on your own.”
Garath was done trying to convince anyone of anything. He knew what to say next to head off any further arguments and hesitated to firm his resolve for only a moment before saying it.
“I want you all to leave my house right now,” he told them in a tone that did not suggest the topic was up for debate. “I'm leaving in a half-hour. If you want to come with me then go home, get whatever you want to bring with you, then meet me in the lobby. If you want to stay, best of luck.” He looked at Mark with mock sincerity. “I really hope it works out for you.”
Fourty-nine anxious minutes later, the hodge-podge gaggle of neighbors met up in the apartment building’s lobby on the first floor. Garath was surprised, but not exactly relieved when Mark showed up with a bulging briefcase hanging over one shoulder. Sarah made it down not much after Mark did with a carry-on-sized teal duffel bag. Warrion came down in a hoodie with nothing but an energy drink in one hand. They had to wait a while for Sharon to make it down thirteen stories of stairs, she adamantly refused to be carried and stated repeatedly that she would make it on her own time when Garath pushed for her to pick up the pace.
Together, the five of them made the short walk to the high school. The only grocery store between the group's apartment building and their destination was in ruin. Windows broken, door ajar, panic-stricken citizens ransacking everything within. As they passed, Garath wondered if the same thing was taking place all over the city, or even all over the world. Stalled cars were strewn across the streets, left where they had died when electronics had ceased functioning. It had only been a few hours since the prompt had appeared to shake the world and the streets already had the feeling of a true apocalypse. It made Garath sick that people had spent the last few hours looting stores instead of actually preparing. But at least they'd have snacks...
When they arrived, the group of neighbors huddled below the red brick building's front awning. The rain was finally letting up and a pale blue had begun to, almost imperceptibly, lighten the sky over the mountains on the eastern horizon.
Tarzan stayed curled up in the gym bag that Garath had carried her in, he wasn't sure what would happen when the game really got going - but he was sure the fluffy maine coon would be safer with him than on her own. What if the enemies that were arriving soon spawned inside of buildings? Were they just going to appear out of nowhere and start wreaking havoc, or would they have a set place and aggro range? A patrol path? Or even worse, what if they hunted? There was no way for him to know so he put the thought to the back of his mind.
Garath looked up at Sharon from his seat next to Warrion on the wet cement. His endearingly decrepit friend and neighbor was looking right back at him with a determined glare. Not for the first time, Garath noticed her brilliantly blue eyes and saw the hints of a woman who was definitely a knock-out about a hundred years ago.
"I don't want to tell you again, young man. I am just not religious. I will not become a Preacher. Preachy Bible thumpers are one of my biggest complaints about that damned God and you know it," Sharon was saying. “I'm certain we've talked about it before so it shouldn't be a surprise.”
"It's not even the same God, Sharon. And you need to pick a Class," Warrion told her.
Garath didn't know what the relationship between Sharon and Warrion had been like before that night, but Sharon lived in the apartment between the two gamers and the old bird rarely left the building. After seeing the two of them interact over the past few hours, Garath recognized the mutual bond between them - not unlike the bond he himself shared with the taciturn old woman. It almost felt like his best friend had just referred to someone else as their best friend.
"The Class description doesn't even mention A God," Garath said for the umpteenth time. "Sharon, it's going to give you the best chance to..."
"To what? Huh? To live through this... Whatever this is? I am seventy-eight years old,” she spat, a cough drop falling from her mouth. “I don't give a rat's ass.”
'Well she's got me there,' Garath thought. He also wondered if the rat's ass she didn't give was in reference to dying at seventy-eight or the cough drop that had shattered when it hit the ground. Sharon reached into the pocket of her frayed cardigan and pulled out another to replace it - hardly clarifying the situation.
"Fine. Do whatever you want, Sharon."
"I do want your help," said Sharon, her expression softening. "But I'm not going to choose Preacher. What else ya got?"
"Well, I also liked the Naturist and Chimerist," he replied. "The Naturist sounds like a druid of some sort. It's based on nature powers, the description hinted at potential healing abilities and said something about fortifying the defense of yourself and your party. It should make you pretty tough to kill."
"That's nothing new," she shrugged and waited for him to continue.
"The Chimerist is different from any Class in the games I've played. I think doing the BeastScape transformation is open to every class, but the Chimerist actually specializes in it. The description said they get unique abilities while 'BeastScaped' unavailable to other classes. It also said they can blend two or more forms to gain the properties of each. So, you could transform into like a cobra-bear or some shit."
"A cobra-bear?" she asked, her wrinkly old eyes open wide beneath raised brows. "I think I like the other one..."
While verbalizing the somewhat vague details of the Class, something dawned on Garath. If the game was allowing every class to BeastScape, and doing so modifies your abilities, then it was probably safe to assume that BeastScape would be much more significant than he had originally thought. Maybe a class that takes advantage of such a large focal point in the gameplay could be a real fucking power house!
'THIS is why there should be a probably option,' he thought grumpily to himself.
"Maybe cobra-bear was a bad example. What about a..." he started, then furrowed his brow.
‘What kind of fucked-up-mutant-animal-combination would best appeal to someone who knits and spends their spare time watching the weather channel?’ he wondered.
It didn't matter though, because Sharon had already opened her MENU panels and selected her Class - she was given the prompt to confirm, and chose yes.
That was when it happened. A white glow with hints of a pale green surrounded Sharon's hunched form and everyone watched as the soft glow grew in a second to a blinding flash. With their eyes accustomed to the dim blue before dawn, the flash may as well have been a stun grenade going off in their faces.
When his eyes finally adjusted, Garath's mouth fell open. In the brief seconds that the group was seeing spots, Sharon's body had completely transformed. Instead of a hunched over, frail old woman with patchy hair and a taciturn expression, he saw a beautiful woman in the prime of her life with thick, wavy blond curls and a taciturn expression - she was looking down at her hands in awe and her eyes filled with tears.
"How?" was the single word she could manage. After over a decade of not even retaining the flexibility required to put her own socks on without great effort, the newly revitalized woman twirled a happy little circle on one foot and the tears in her eyes cascaded in a tidal wave of emotion.
Nobody had an answer for her. Sarah just stared in amazement at the transformation. G wondered if the stat changes that took place when her Class was chosen had something to do with the effects on her physical body. Warrion just openly checked her out. But it was Mark - whose eyes were playing a game of ocular tennis between Sharon's wonderful new body and his own, less than ideal physique - who finally broke the silence.
“Wow,” said the portly banker. "I gotta pick a Class. Sharon, what Class did you pick?"
Hearing her name as if for the first time, Sharon turned to look at him. "Naturist," she said, beaming lik
e a child.
The Culling of Man: A litrpg adventure (Peril's Prodigy Book 1) Page 4