Start of Part 11__________________________________________________________________________________________

Explosion, death, war. A scorched battlefield and lines of soldiers in full battle armor. Oh, I’m dreaming. The thought disrupted the flashing images of death, destruction and mayhem. I opened my eyes to find a painted white ceiling. Looking around franticly I found that I was strapped to a hospital bed an IV in my arm, in a windowless room with white painted walls and a ceramic tiled floor. I knew immediately that it was Rachel that I had awoken as. Haris was asleep and who knows where. I had no idea how long I was out for but I knew that the minimum time a disruptors stun setting will knock a person out for is around 3 hours. But that’s very subjective to the person. Some people have been known to be knocked out for upwards of 12 hours with some on very rare occasion dying from the shock the disruptor inflicts upon your body. 

I took a deep breath to calm myself and killed my frantic thoughts. We can figure out the specifics latter. For now we need to not be tied to this bed. I closed my eyes and too another deep breath. This time however when I took my breath the bed, the leather restraints and the IV turned into golden mist and disappeared beneath my skin. My arse slapped the tiles jarring my tailbone in the process. With a groan a got up off the floor and rubbed my arse. That really freaking hurt! There was only one door leading in and out from the room. A sink hung off the wall near one corner and in that corner a shower head came out of the wall near the ceiling and hung over a drain. 

I sniffed my armpit and found I didn’t smell any worse than before I fell unconscious. Not that I would take a shower in the base of an enemy force but if I smelt real bad I would have thought about it. No, not al all. This was just my own way of confirming my belief that I’d only been out for a few hours at most. After trying the door I found it was locked. For a moment I was stumped as to what to do now until I realized I could just disassemble the freaking door. I slapped my forehead and touched the door before drawing it into myself. As usual it turned to shimmering gold mist and disappeared under my skin just like all the rest. 

Feeling a bit giddy because it was like I had superpowers I came into a hallway that had the same tile floors and white painted walls. Doors lined each wall and most likely lead into similar rooms as the one I’d just left. I opened one just in case it was different. As expected however the room was virtually the same other than a few minor details. There were clothes stroun about the place and a woman was sleeping on the bed soundly. She was wearing nothing but her panties and apparently the blanket was too hot for her. Getting a good eye full of her breast for scientific research purposes I quietly left the room.

I spent the next hour exploring before I realized I wasn’t actually wearing anything. Hah, must have slipped my mind somehow. From what I’d noticed while looking around this facility seemed to be more of a dormitory than a research facility. Then again looks can be deceiving and you never can know for sure what’s happening under the surface. While it feels quite free to walk around without clothes and I don’t actually care if someone sees me naked, I am a creature of habit. Beside that I feel more comfortable wearing clothes than wearing nothing at all. I searched through a pile of dirty laundry I found in a basket by a washing machine in what I assume in where everyone here cleans their clothes. I managed to scrounge up some jeans that only had what smelled like barbecue sauce smeared on the thigh as well as a yellow shirt with “I am awesome!” in bold red letters across the chest that smelled of corn chips for some reason. Both were a bit baggy but their were close and clean enough I suppose.

“What do you think you’re doing?” A woman voice asked from behind me.

Still elbow deep in the basket of clothes I jumped and did my best impersonation of a statue. If you don’t move they won’t notice you right? No, of course not… I let out a sighed and slowly turned to the women wearing a purple tank top with brownish shorts. She looked to be in her late twenties early thirties but that was blown away by her pale blue eyes that seemed to glow in the relative dark of laundry room. Her hair and skin was dark like obsidian to the point that seemed like like she was sinking into the poor lighting of the room and on the verge of disappearing all together. At a glance it would seem she simply had really dark skin but with close inspection it seemed more like her skin absorbed the light. My eyes went wide. She looked so fucking awesome! Not to mention that she had an incredible body and fine facial features. 

I’m a pretty asexual guy and don’t feel the instinctual need to bone every good looking woman I see. However! I narrowed my eyes and decided. She will be co staring in my library of Malinda sexual fantasies. I’ll have to get out of here somehow and find a new safehouse before I can spend some alone time on that however. I blame Malinda’s brainwashing powers for the fact I even have a list of perverted sexual fantasies. Ah, though maybe I should be thanking her? I think she inadvertently fixed my impotence.

“I asked what you think you're doing?” She asked me again.

Snapping out of my thoughts I clutched the dirty clothes to myself. I wasn’t going to let them go so easily, especially not after having to pick through some clothes that were kind of moldy and smelled like some unspeakable horror had manifested in the form of clothing. I’d rather brawl to the death than that.

“Stealing clothes.” I admitted.

She squinted her eyes at me, “Is that my shirt?”

“Are you awesome?” I asked jokingly with with narrowed eyes in an attempt to be serious.

“You bet I am.” She said before flashing abnormally white teeth in a toothy grin that may as be screaming “I’m so damn smooth!”.

“I walked into that.” I admitted with a frown.

“You did.” She agreed.

“You must be the new girl they strapped up in a room hardly even an hour ago.”.

I nodded. That was most likely me.

“Well, I can lend you some clothes so put those dirty things back in the pile.” She motioned for me to follow her. 

I’d already been caught and with the promise of actually clean clothes I put the clothes I had clutched to my chest back on the pile.

“You’re probably worried that this is some weird testing facility or something right? Oh and I’m Farrah by the way.”

“Yeah… I was named Rachel against my will.” I said without thinking about it.

I had to admit however that I was perplexed why they’d tie people down if they weren't trying to freak them the fuck out. I’m pretty mellow so I can handle these kinds of things but someone the kids I knew in highschool would be having a breakdown right about now.

“Aren’t we all?” she said giving me another “I’m so damn smooth!” smile.

Well… at least she’s confident and knows she’s good looking. I guess? I’m a bit conflicted about this because I’ve never interacted with someone like this and had them pull it off without seeming like a smug sonofabitch! I still haven’t.

Deciding on a reaction I groaned in disatisfaction with this weird woman. She led me to a door that had a note sticky taped to it that read “Too awesome to be controlled” in rainbow letters. I cringed a bit at it before pretending I’d just hallucinated it’s existence.

Farrah’s room was a complete mess and ruined every illusion I’d had of how a girl's room should be. She had posters of ripped dude posing with different guns in various states of undress plastered across each wall. Clothes covered the floor but otherwise seemed clean. I noticed a cylindrical object on a small table in the middle of the room. Before I completely realized what it was Farrah blurred, the mystery object disappeared and she appeared by a draw which she closed before turning back to me and smiling as if nothing had happened. My brain felt itchy for a moment as I tried to erase the memory that this incredibly attractive woman has a drawer full of sex toys. I mean, yeah. I get that girls masterbate as well but does there need to be an entire drawer dedicated to it? Feeling like something inside me just broke and shattered into a million pieces, I sighed.

“Do you have anything that’ll fit me?” I started looking through the clothes on the ground because at the very least they didn’t seem dirty.

“Don’t bother looking through those I have something for you here. I had them ready for you since I’ve been assigned to help you settle in by Bailey. Bailey the facility manager by the way.” Farrah explained as she took out a pile of clothes from a closet that was inset into the wall.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

They were a yellow shirt with some anime character on it I didn’t recognize, a dark blue skirt and underwear that was a lighter shade of blue. I gave Farrah a weird look before I reluctantly put them on.

As I got dressed Farrah continued to explain, “Your parents had a bit more exaggeration of a transformation than you and most people. Though we couldn’t find anything visibly different about your father he was healing from his wounds far too quickly for a normal human so he was also taken in to be examined as well. As to the reason why we’d tied you up and waited for you to wake up, you could call it a test of sorts. See we sometimes people get violent as their transformations progress. So we run tests every few days to decide whether or not anyone needs to be moved to a facility better for them. I’ll never forget the days before we did this and suddenly half the residents lost their shit and started killing each other. That was a real shitty day. They don’t have to worry about me going crazy or anything like that because I’ve apparently completed my transformation. They got a bit more technical than that but that’s the gist of it.” She shrugged and laid on her bed, seemingly done with her explanation.

I finished getting dressed and just awkwardly stood there, not really sure what I should do.

Farrah sat up after I’d stood there for a bit and asked me, “A military unit was dispatched to your location because of an influx of P38-9N2 that was detected in the building. They’ve had to crack down on these lately because wherever it’s detected usually either a lot of people end up dead or something explodes. Considering the amount they detected I’m surprised they didn’t just outright shoot each of you dead. What were you trying to do anyway? Destroy the city or something?”

I shook my head, “It was apparently meant to teleport us.”

“Hah, weird. Almost sounds like magic when you say it like that.” Farrah muttered that last sentence.

“So who are you exactly?” I asked her.

“Officially?” She asked with a raised brow.

“I- I guess?” I replied skeptically.

“Previously retired General Farrah Rogers at your service. I turned 43 just a few weeks ago, I look pretty good for 40 right? They forced me to unretire once they figured out what was happening to me.” She smirked before getting off her bed and saluting me.

I tried not to think about a mid forties woman masterbating. It didn’t work and I wasn’t sure if I should feel disgusted or intrigued. Actually I wasn’t sure what I was feeling about anything in general at the moment. I mean I got fucked up by the Brack hounds and then military goons showed up and stunned me. Now I’m talking to a walking physics violation and Malinda will probably die of starvation. This is not to even mention that my main body is somehow still asleep and who knows when it will wake up. Maybe it was all still too complex for me to comprehend with Rachel’s mind alone but I couldn’t get my head around all of it. Deciding to deal with it latter I pushed all that junk to the back of my mind and submitted to my fate as a test monkey for probably the rest of my life.

“You passed the test so let’s get you a room assigned. You can’t use the previous one because the bed and door went missing somehow.” She gave me a sidelong glance when she mentioned the bed and door going missing.

“Ah, those were me. I guess you could say I ate them?” I had no reason to lie but neither did I have a reason to tell the complete truth. 

Though I admittedly still didn’t trust her. Have I developed trust issues over the last three years? Yes I certainly have and for good reason. Because people be crazy at times. As my guild leader on TERA likes to say.

“Sure sounds like something someone around here would do.” Farrah shrugged.

Farrah took me around the facility. First showing me around what she called the female altered residential building which is where we were when she’d caught me searching the dirty laundry. The residential building had three floors above ground and five below, each floor having a communal shower room, lounge and forty bedrooms that could be customized to the residents specifications. Half of the fifth floor was dedicated to various kinds of games and apparently everyone had been getting into some VRMMORPG game called Dreams of Auore. I watched a few of the gameplay videos during the games beta. People tend to get really hyped about realism in games and really look forward to experiencing it for themselves but It all looked way too real for me. I mean when you have games like Dreams of Auore which pride themselves of their realism with permadeath, sex, childbirth, high pain thresholds, simulated wind and water currents, high end emulated tactile responses, the fact that each NPC is operated by a dedicated AI and die permanently once killed to make the world as alive and real as possible… There is such a thing as making something too real. Game companies and their games players just don’t seem to understand this somehow. I sighed and grudgingly listened to Farrah brag on about her imaginary adventures in-game and how much fun it is to crush other players hopes and dreams. Luckily Farrah seemed to realize that I really didn’t care and we moved on with the tour.

Before leaving the female altered residential building which I’ve decided to just call the Fem-east cage; Farrah took me to the building office and wrote me in on the registry as occupying the room across from hers. This was apparently because I was her responsibility. Which was annoying to say the least. Regardless I gave in without a fight. I’d already pretty much given up on free will the moment I saw the letters U and N in big bold writing painted on every other wall. I was now for all intents and purposes a slave of the United Nations of Earth and I didn’t have a choice in the matter as far as I was concerned.

End of Part 11__________________________________________________________________________________________

AUTHOR uses gardening as metaphor for learning: It's been about eight days(actually five but it feels like eight) and I have no actual reasons as too why it's taken me this long. I guess I'll have to admit to feeling uncomfortable about this chapter. Not for the reason you might think after reading the chapter though. I could have had this done days ago but I'd been putting it off in favor of reading and playing my games which I haven't touched in the last few weeks/month(s). I guess I really just needed a short break? Anyway because of that I ended up writing this chapter in small chunks over eight days and haven't taken the time to check for inconsistencies and blockages in the flow of the story other than a cursory glance. So yeah, there might be some dang bull shit floating around in this chapter that I need to spade out and throw in the garden. I just need to go get my gloves and spade and it's all good. Those of you that'll give me lip for this chapter? I'll slap you upside the head with an imaginary rubber chicken if you tell me the MC should just kill everyone or something similar!

On a more serious note I started playing TERA and ninja's are too awesome! My only wish is that I could be a man and not a furry fox/wolf/bunny/whatever little girl in far too revealing clothing in order to play as a ninja. *sigh* We can't have everything the way we'd like Korst. Sometimes we have to play games as virtual pedo bait so that we can play the game the way we'd like. *Re-flips table from a few chapters ago, catches it, calmly places it back where it was and eats breakfast*

EDIT: I just realized I wrote TERA instead of making up a game when I mentioned the MC's guild leader. I guess I'll just leave it as that because the stories world is really similar to ours if it was sci-fi. I suppose that would be the best way of explaining it? For example the year in the story is 2018 but computers were first made more than 500 years ago, inter-stellar space travel has been a thing for around 400 years and humanity has been at war with the Luudesi for around 40 years. Despite all this however I am not quite creative enough to make a full highly detailed and interesting sci-fi universe so in most cases everything is just a sci-fi version of reality. In which case I suppose it's fine if I just leave it as TERA. *shrugs*