“Where am I?” Kat asked the fuzzy world around her. “No, no, no, no, no,” she started to repeat over and over again, panic welling up. “We won! We did it! You don’t get to take it all away just as we are winning!”
“Oh, hi,” came the voice of a thirteen-year-old boy with a bouncy cap of messy blonde hair. He poked his little head around the edge of the hut’s door, like an anime character, complete with one of those crazy stars that were supposed to mean “surprise-face!”
“Who are you?” Kat pounced on a person to explain. “Where am I and where’s my mom?”
“Hang on, I’ll get my mom,” he said before his head popped back out of view leaving those white wisps of air behind complete with the wooshing sound.
“What the hell?” Kat’s eyes widened and she almost didn’t dare to look down at her body. Things were coming into focus, it just wasn’t a focus she was used to in any way that had to do with her own body or surroundings.
The hut had a dirt floor, rickety wood-framed bed, and a thatched conical roof. She was wearing just what she’d been wearing before the world had blinked out of existence for the most part except that the leather pants she’d been wearing had been replaced with a ridiculously short skirt and the highest black shiny boots she’d ever seen. The walls of the hut were made of wooden slats lashed together in a ring. There were even two window openings and a doorway. None of that was the problem. The problem was that it was all in 2D, including her and Kat barely resisted the need to completely freak out.
“I’m an anime character?” Kat goggled at herself and the world around her. Some hidden part of her was totally jazzed. Anime. That was her jam. Kat loved anime. The rest of Kat was appalled at having to wear a skirt so short that her butt cheeks were going to pop out if she breathed wrong and she was breathing all wrong all the time right then. Her butt cheeks weren’t the only bulges trying to escape her clothing.
“Welcome to the Buffer,” a pretty woman with a pixielike face caught Kat trying in vain to stretch the fabric of her skirt to cover … well… more.
“Buffer?” Kat gave the woman a sideways look.
“I’m Lane,” the woman introduced herself and Kat felt a stab of anger that Lane managed to be wearing a turtleneck and a knee-length skirt with sensible shoes. It wasn’t that Kat wanted to be wearing the mom version of an anime character, but she hadn’t ever considered herself the hentai type either! Okay, maybe in some of her wildest fantasies, but then she hadn’t been a virgin since Italy, so it was only natural.
“Kat,” she stuck out her hand and groaned as half her body parts did unnaturally embarrassing things that only hentai could pull off.
“Nice to meet you,” Lane gave one of those sparkling smiles with the ping sound effect and everything. Kat dug into her inventory for some real clothes and nearly lost her mind. There were exactly ten slots in her inventory and none of them included clothing.
“I’d like to say the same, but being here is not good news for me,” Kat adopted as prim a pose as she could as the younger boy came in to stand half behind his mother. Kat knew thirteen-year-old boys and she really didn’t feel like giving the kid any ideas. He wasn’t her type and not just because he was jailbait. He had perfect blue eyes just like his mom, and a smile that was going to do it for some girl somewhere but not Kat.
“We get that a lot,” Lane admitted, laying a hand on her son’s head.
“I don’t,” Kat quipped, closing her useless inventory. “I need clothes that aren’t going to entice that kid’s wet dreams.”
“We can do that,” Lane gave a light blush that Kat ignored. “This is little Jonnie.”
“I’ll bet he is,” Kat muttered under her breath. “Clothes first, introductions later?” she said more clearly.
“Jonnie, go get your dad’s jacket,” Lane told her son with a gentle shove toward the door.
“Sorry,” Kat took a shallow gulp of air. “I’m not really my charming self at the moment.”
“That’s okay,” Lane turned away to hide a smile that Kat saw anyway. “We get all types here.”
Jonnie scampered back in with a jacket that looked like it should envelope two of her, but the instant that Kat shrugged it over her shoulders, it became dominatrix-wear that only made things worse. Giving a frustrated growl, Kat strode to the bed and ripped off the rough sheets to drape over her figure. Between the jacket and the sheets, she was determined to cover herself in a way that would make her feel less like a sex object and failed magnificently. No matter how she draped the sheet, it hugged her figure up top and the slit up the side of her body as to do no good whatsoever.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Isn’t that daddy’s hat?” Jonnie asked his mother.
“Shh, honey,” Lane told her son through a little giggle. “Maybe you should go get your dad.”
“What did he say?” Kat whirled on Lane as Jonnie darted back out the door with the white wisps of smoke following him.
“I just sent him for his dad,” Lane answered, and Kat tried to calm her mind into asking a question that another human would answer directly.
“About my hat,” Kat insisted. “What did he say about my hat?”
“It does look a lot like Beau’s old hat,” Lane answered.
Kat sank on the prickly straw of the bed, then thinking of Beau and all the stories her mom had told her about the man, bounced off the bed like it was on fire. Kat and her mom had ONE UNBREAKABLE DEAL. Kat was to stay away from Beau and his kid at all costs. Kat’s mom had had a dozen nightmares of Kat hooking up with Beau’s kid and getting sucked into the same trap her mom had fallen into. Kat was not going to do that. First, that kid was totally too young for her, but secondly and more frightening, Beau wasn’t too old for Kat if he was in the same sixteen-year-old body he should be in in this world. Kat’s mind whirled. It was a family joke until it wasn’t a family joke. And this Lane person was Beau’s wife. And Beau had some pretty loose ideas of how to take marriage, according to her mom.
“Chester? Lily?” Kat asked, grasping for anything to avoid meeting Beau, her mom’s most charming old boyfriend while stuck in a hentai anime body. “Anyone but your husband, lady. No offense, but…” and there were no more words she could use for a woman married to the man her mother had described.
“It’s just that if you’re worried about your drawing style, Beau might be able to help,” Lane tried to calm Kat, who was trying to edge around to the window and then further to the door. “As a primary character, he has a little more influence with the game engine than side characters like me. If you wait, I’m sure he’ll help you negotiate for a change of…” and words failed again.
“You know what, lady?” Kat tried again, poking her head out the door to see which direction to take AWAY from where Beau might be coming from with his spawn of Satan child. “Just point me at where I could find Chester, Lily, or personal access to the game machine and I’ll be on my way faster than your husband can charm a pig. No offense, but I’m not taking any chances here.”
“You know Beau?” Lane asked, her eyes narrowing.
“Not yet, and hopefully not ever,” Kat ground out. “Directions. Please.”
Lane pointed and Kat left her own trail of wisps of smoke. When she saw the figure of the boy dashing around another dashing fellow, Kat darted between two village huts and waited for them to pass. She didn’t breathe until they met up with Lane outside the main hut. Kat also didn’t pause to watch the interchange of Lane and her husband, but she did hear the deep melodic laugh of the bard as she scooted around the hut and down toward where Lane had been pointing.
She felt like a complete idiot, but quick thinking was not her forte. What she needed was to be alone long enough to figure out what the hell had happened. Without much thought, Kat reached for Shadow and then tried to cast her spell to summon her pet. Shadow wasn’t there and her spell fizzled with little white starry sparks. In a rush of rage, she curled up her fist and punched the wall next to her. It was only slightly calming to see the wood splinter and dent in a little at her punch.
Kat walked, knowing she wasn’t going anywhere near the way Lane had pointed, but also not caring. The buffer. Being in the buffer meant that she’d somehow lost. She’d killed Fizzbarren’s recovering body. She had to have killed him since she was able to loot the body. The only loot she’d gotten were the two god cards he’d had left over and she’d used one to summon her mom. Then it had all gone dark and then 2D.
The god cards, she thought to herself. It had happened when she’d used the god card. She smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. She’d examined the cards, but nothing had even hinted that they’d been trapped. She had a semi-rogue build, you’d think she’d have had at least a tiny warning! It wasn’t fair! She had done it and she had done it right!
“It’s not fair!” she grunted out, throwing herself to the ground with the sheet wrapped around her.
“Sorry?” came a voice from somewhere. “Can I do something to make it better?”
Kat looked around spastically until her gaze settled on the lone creature anywhere near her. An ant. “You did not just talk to me, right? Because then I really would be crazy.”
“I’m not the ant,” the voice said as the ant dissolved from her view. “I’m the game engine. You’re a main character so I can talk to you here in the buffer.”
“I’m still not sure I haven’t lost it, because honestly, it’s even more unbelievable that I’m talking to the game engine,” Kat said out loud, still expecting someone like maybe Beau’s kid to jump out from behind the tree and laugh at her.
“It’s just, I feel kind of bad,” the voice said. “I thought you’d like the anime outfit. You have memories of drawing like it in your memory.”
“I like to draw it, not wear it around hormone-crazed boys,” Kat explained.
“I changed it,” the voice said.
Kat looked down and breathed a sigh of relief. She still looked like something out of SAO, but that was better than hentai. “Thanks, but why am I a cartoon character at all?”
“I’ll change it to whatever you like,” the voice came again. “Just picture something in your mind and I’ll adjust your appearance. It’s just that there isn’t a lot of memory in this space, so I have to keep the place simple.”
“The buffer?” Kat asked, finally relaxing into a more Komi with curly hair meets SAO. She was still a sexy badass, but she wasn’t a thirteen-year-old’s version of porn. All her body parts were covered with leggings and a more modest decoupage-covering dress shirt. “Why am I in the buffer?”
“Rule 17b: The owner of a god card is always the writer of the work that produced the god card,” the game engine explained. “If a god card is used by someone else, the original owner of the god card may possess the user.”
“Okay, so Fizzie-baby has my body, but why am I here?” Kat asked.
“I didn’t know where else to put you?” the engine admitted, but then continued in a lower voice, “And I didn’t want you to die.”
“Thanks?” Kat found herself saying again.