FIRST COMPANION

“Ku ku ku ku! It’s a pleasure to meet you!”

The small girl before me boisterously greeted me, fists on her hips as she looked at me eye level with her chest puffed out. She was clearly proud of something, but it didn’t appear that she was being intentionally arrogant towards me—at most she seemed to be elated. Elated about what? About everything, probably.

“Nice to meet you. How are you feeling?”

I asked cautiously. She was just birthed into this world, wasn’t she? I wanted to make sure the configurations I made weren’t a hindrance, or caused any weird side-effects.

“I’m in perfect working order!”

She seemed hardy and full of energy, evident by how she seemed to buzz around in excitement.

I couldn’t help but smirk at how overly excited the tiny girl was, zipping about on her just-as-tiny wings. This turned out better than I expected, I thought.

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The Make-A-Friend store was capable of creating a variety of creatures. In fact, the variety and capability was so great, that I was reminded just how much of a cheat-code this Pay Store was.

Shit was broken.

Cementing this conclusion, was what appeared after I thought that a “fairy” would be a good helper. It was a classic trope in RPGs for fairies to take on the role of “guide”, so I thought it’d be useful to have one.

However, after the loading screen, what appeared was not quite what I expected.

Rows of new templates appears labeled “New!”, for a variety of creatures that didn’t quite look like the fairies I was thinking, but were tangentially related. I saw a strange black cat, a weird dog, some other bizarre creatures, some even looking quite like humans…

The interface had literally searched “Fairy”, found nothing, and generated a grand array of creatures that were loosely called “fairy”. The cat and dog for example were probably the Cat sìth and Cù sìth from Celtic folklore. Other creatures on the list were probably from similar fables, and all of them were noticeably more expensive than the human template before.

In fact, even the elf template was worth more than humans.

When I went back to check, I confirmed the very obvious reason; magic.

I wasn’t sure by what process magic worked yet, but the information given by the store itself seemed to imply that magic had both a voluntary and involuntary component. Humans could apparently use magic, but they had to do so voluntarily, which isn’t something that’s easy to figure out by accident. This revelation had me wondering if magicians existed back on Earth.

If so, could that explain my current situation…?

But most of all, does this mean I can eventually learn magic?

Well, whatever the case for humans, it appears some creatures can use magic subconsciously. In fact, some of the bigger mythical creatures need to just to stay alive, biology be damned.

Which brings me to the companion I ended up making in the end.

A small, tiny fairy that could fit in a pocket. She was about eight inches tall, wearing a simple sundress, with three pairs of long insectoid wings sprouting from between her shoulder-blades. They were thin and translucent, but decorated with various shifting colors. Each pair of wings had a distinct shape, meant to give her perfect control of her flight.

Her original template only had a few configurations.

A proportionally tiny human, whose only real magic—‘involuntary phenomena realization’ as the Pay Store called it—was that their consciousness operated at human levels, despite their brain-mass being the size of a rat’s. Just this much was worth 300p. Without the magic it would have been about 8p, but I wasn’t interested in a feral fairy… yet.

But this fairy would have been less so a “magical wonder”, and more so a “biological oddity”.

So I began customizing the template to my desire. I gave it the ability to naturally control wind so that it could fly at lightning speeds and even attack with it. I bumped up its wing number, and gave her the membrane the ability to contract and expand to produce different colors, in the same way octopus can change colors.

Part way through, I realized her tiny eyes may have trouble processing images at a human scale, so I found an appropriate ability to process that. At the same time, I boosted up her durability and regenerative ability to an absurd degree—she was a tiny fairy with all the fragility that came with it, and I was paranoid about her being stepped on or crushed.

These specs were easy to add from a list of countless options.

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The hard part came afterwards; shaping and adjusting her appearance.

Like any self-respecting character creation screen, there was an absurd number of sliders and switches, buttons for this and that. A texture editor that allowed him to determine her skin and hair down for individual regions, allowing him to add and remove blemishes like freckles and control how prominent a blush was.

So, I gave her long and wavy dark blue hair, deep violet eyes, and slightly tanned skin, with faint freckles dotting her face. I spent an hour sculpting a cute face and figure, before eventually going back to her wings and reshaping them to be both beautiful and functional.

And once it was all done, I gave her a white sundress with light embroideries.

There was also various personality adjustments that were possible, but these were more loose, less well defined, and seemed more like “general traits and temperaments”. Changing these didn’t really affect the price at all.

By the way, the final price: 221,253p

The second most expensive item I’ve purchased.

Apparently a fire-breathing dragon was less than a hundredths of that.

The biggest price-jump was from the ability to freely control wind as second-nature. This was actually a number of different abilities that I wrapped into one.

Dragons meanwhile only had the ability to “produce and propel fire from a designated point”, (mouths) and to “control air density at a designated point” (under their wings). The extreme flexibility my creation has, as an innate ability, was apparently very unnatural.

I did stop short of giving her complete innate control of wind—mostly because any more than what I gave her would require more brain power, and the price would skyrocket further, apparently—but even without that, I still figured she’d be broken.

“Umm…”

I’m suddenly brought out of my thoughts, back to the cute girl floating a few feet from my face. Her face looked like she wanted to say something, but didn’t want to interrupt my thought.

“Yes? What’s on your mind?”

“A name,” she declared, her prior anxious expression turning serious, getting down to business.

So they don’t come with a name, I mused. I considered it was a possibility the Pay Store would prepackage companions with a name, but it made more sense that they didn’t. Thankfully, I had already come up with a name for her while crafting her.

“Aya. Your name is Aya, and you are a Sylph. You are Aya Sylph.” I paused for a second. Did she know my name…? Well, just to be safe…

“And I’m Anthony. Once again, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Aya.”

“Aya… Sylph…” She muttered the name to herself. The first possession granted to her after birth. Her lips curved up into a toothy grin, as she became childishly jittery.

“Aya!” she repeated the name as she began to dart around the cell at high speed, easily controlling her movement through the air at an unnatural and fantastical level.

Then, she stopped once more in front of me face, still ecstatic about her name, but also curious about something on her mind.

“What’s a Sylph?”

A simple question, but one hard to answer.

The Pay Store didn’t seem to label any kind of explicit species, and instead searched and organized things based on features I asked of it. It was different from how it treated objects from the normal store. So, given there seemed to be many types of “fairies”, I decided to give her a name that was more specific to her qualities.

“It’s the name of your species, you could say. A tiny humanoid with command over wind. For now, you are a unique existence, so I went ahead and used it as your family name.” Well, that last bit assumed she ever creates a family, and that depended on whether or not I created another of her kind…

Wait…

Was she compatible with humans…?

She has the durability so…

L-let’s not go any further with that thought for now.

“A unique existence?!” Aya said, her chest puffing out more than before.

I guess she likes being special, huh?

“Well, that’s right…” for now, I thought.

“Anyways, Aya. I’ve created you with a few tasks in mind,” I said, deciding to get back to business. Her expression turned serious at those words, as she quickly steadied herself with her thin, flexible hovering wings, and crossed her arms into an attentive pose. She sure switches gears quickly, I mused.

“You are my scout. A shadow in the wind,” I said, trying to sound as important as possible. Going by her personality, I figured if I was as grand enough in her assignment, she’d take her job more seriously… maybe.

“Yes sir!” She answered in an elaborate manner, nodding as she waved her arms and legs around, her serious expression having broken already. I wonder if being so tiny makes her too jittery…

“I’ll be your eyes and ear!” She affirmed with excitement, as if she were playing some game.

“Well anyways, right now I’m staying in this cell, but I need you scout around the city and learn about what’s going on. At the same time, you’re to stay hidden from site. Your wings can change color, so you should be able to camouflage yourself if the need arises. Don’t put yourself in unnecessary danger—I put a lot of resources into creating you, so you don’t have the right to die.”

I went over the general mission I had for her, but at the same time I wanted her to stay safe. It was true what I said about spending a ton of points on her—but I genuinely didn’t want such a cute girl to be harmed.

Aya nodded seriously, taking my words to heart. Or at least I hoped so.

Once she understood her task, I began debriefing her on my current situation, and what exactly I wanted her to collect. Soon enough, Aya had zipped off, completely unimpeded by the thick wooden door which had a big enough gap to fit food through.

Hopefully things pick up soon.