Work… Get… Sleep… Tomorrow…

Stra… Astra… Your Name… Astra...

Sleep… Ake… p... Wake up… Gotta

My eyes snap open. And I am greeted by the clearest of skies I have ever seen. White clouds gently pass above me. I sigh and close back my eyes. What a weird dream…

My eyes snap back open. Dream? Wait a minute! Where the fuck am I?? I remember… What do I remember? I can not remember anything! Astra. My name is Astra. Is it? Why does it feels so conflicting? I start to breath faster, panic is mounting. I look around in alarm, trying to find anything familiar. But I am in the middle of a grassy plain that seems to extend forever in every directions. No not every directions, I can see the edge of a forest in one direction. Not that that's important!

Where am I? Who am I? I do not know. I gulp and try to get my breathing under control. I close my eyes once more and put my head in my hands. That action brings another bout of panic. As my left hand makes contact my my head, I shiver at the sensation of cold metal. My eyes open and I am greeted by an arm covered in strange chrome-like metal. I try to jump away from it, and it follows. I end up sprawled on my back and as I get myself back up, I realize there is more than just my arm. Both my legs are also covered in the same material.

This time, I burst into hysteric laughter. What is going on here? WHAT! IS! GOING! ON!? I end up falling back down. I spasm on the floor along with my laughter until it finally dies down. My mind feels slightly clearer, but not by much. I am still reeling from my current situation. I stay down for a few minutes, maybe a dozens, who knows. Until finally I feel like I have calmed down enough.

So let's actually look at my situation here. Part one: I am not in my bed and… looking back up on the sky, then at the plains, possibly in another world. A part of me clearly knows there was no floating islands beyond the clouds where I supposedly am from. For indeed, now that I am looking around a bit more, I am starting to notice multiple strange details. Such as the aforementioned islands in the sky. Entire strips of lands gently hovering high above the clouds, almost high enough to be barely visible actually. Then, closer to me, there are the plants. Grass, nothing new here. Dandelions, little red poppies, still common and familiar. Sky blue sparkling flowers? Yeah what the fuck are you? But yeah, with that, I believe I am quite far from home. Where even is my home? How am I so sure I am not from here? Questions for later I decide.

Part two: My fucking body. I gulp and look myself over. Let's start from my feet, more precisely my entire legs. My legs are either encased in interlocked black chrome colored metallic plates or are black chrome metallic plated mechanical prosthetics, with plated gaps for joints. When I look at my knees, ankles and feet, I start to lean more into the mechanical theory. The visible rotating and moving mechanical parts are one thing, but my feet are also a pretty big giveaway. Because my feet are naked, but also still plated with the same material and my toes are absolutely not organic with armor on them. The curved blades that stick out of each of them tells me that rather clearly. It feels like I have vicious claws at the tips of my feet.

Going up, we get to the my pelvis and stomach. Full plated too. Same color, Nothing to show. I try to look at my back and see two things. My ass is also covered and a quick inspection reveals nothing but smooth metal, but also the start of a metallic spine. I had managed to seen its end but as I trace it with my right hand, I realize it goes all the way to my head. Interlocked cylinders that I can only imagine match my vertebrae one to one.

Going up from my belly, we get a bit of flesh. My torso and right arm are whitish in color. The delimitation between metal and flesh seems to be the start of my ribcage, it almost look like the metal parts are going inside my body, brrr. On my right arm is a circuit like tattoo spanning from my shoulder to my hand. It starts from my shoulder with a strange angry-looking wolf-cat stylized face in a circle. Circuits board connections streams from it to the inside of my elbow, where it connects to a second circle, this one with a simple X inside. More connections starts and ends on the back of my hand, onto a final circle with three eyes arranged into an arrow. The tattoo feels me with awe and apprehension the more I look at it.

On the opposite side is my left arm. Another clear mechanical prosthetic. What happened to me to need so many? Did anything even happen? My left arm is similar to my legs in terms of metallic plating and style: black chrome interlocking plates with plated gaps for joints. BUT! There is more. On my forearm is a large cyan glass oval. It seems to emit a bit of light. A similar spherical protrusion is also present on my hand. And this one is clearly blinking. I ignore it for now. Inside my palm, at the edge of my wrist is a circular opening closed by a metallic iris. And just like my toes, my left hand fingers also finish in claw like nails, although they are thicker than the ones on my toes.

Finally, I try to find a way to have a look at my face, but there is no convenient water nearby to use as a mirror. I only know I have neck long black hair mostly. I swear I saw hints of pure white strands when I inspected my hair. I also seem to have a two day beard all other my face, but it might be more prosthetics for all I know.

I look around once more, taking in the empty view of endless plains and distant floating lands. And finally return to my left hand. To the blinking light upon it.I touch it. Multiple screens suddenly feel my vision. Dozens of lines scroll on each and then they all vanish. I blink, unsure as to what just happened and immediately get jumped by a massive screen with awfully clashing colors.

You are one of the lucky few to have been chosen to participate in a grand quest!

The Quest for the Marble of Many realities

You wake up in a world not your own, with a body that seems slightly off to you.

You do not know what you have embarked upon.

Not to worry! WE are here to guide YOU!

The world is dangerous!

The world is full of wonders!

The world is yours if you find the right tools!

NOW GO! AND TAKE OVER YOUR FUTURE!

Chaos, Knowledge & Hunt

I blink, shading my eyes from the obnoxious screen. The colors suddenly shift and become far more legible.

You are one of the lucky few have been chosen to participate in a grand quest!

The Quest for the Marble of Many realities

You wake up in a world not your own, with a body that seems slightly off to you.

You do not know what you have embarked upon.

Not to worry! WE are here to guide YOU!

The world is dangerous!

The world is full of wonders!

The world is yours if you find the right tools!

NOW GO! AND TAKE OVER YOUR FUTURE!

Chaos, Knowledge & Hunt

I blink once more and slowly read the now legible text. I read it once, then twice, then a third time to make sure. That title card is clearly right one one point: I have no idea what I have embarked upon. I suddenly realize something. I touched my hand and this screen appeared, but… I move my hand to be sure. Yep, the screen does not moves. So is it in my eyes? Can I interact with it? I go to reach it and the moment my hand touches the screen, it vanishes in a shower of pixels. Instead, a rotating icon with the words 'initializing' appears along with a smaller window pops for a few seconds

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Achievement got: Look Ma, Solid light! (Grabbed or touched one of the system screen)

The little wheel finally finishes rotating and a new screen appears. This one is clearly THE most important screen of all up to this point, not that there has been that many but still. It clearly is a menu screen, one that is clearly linked to my body.

User Interface v3.225a

User ID: Astra

- Inventory

- Equipment

- Upgrade Chips slots

- Body upgrades

User Status

Integrity: 100%

Energy: ◼◼◼◼◼ ◼◼◼◼◼

Coolant: ◼◼◼◼◼ ◼◼◼◼◼

MP: Untapped

Experience: 0

Bio-reactor clogging: 0%

User Party

Members: None

- Create New Party

- Add new member

- Remove Member

Submenues

Quest logs

- Main quest

- Hunt's Quests

- Knowledge's Quests

- Chaos' Quests

- Achievements

Exploration & Survival

- Monstropedia

- Pokedex

- Fauna

- Structures

- Materials

- Recipes

- Consumed foods

Others

- Ocular display options

- Tutorial

- Music Player

That… is a lot of things. That window does confirm my name is Astra… It still feels wrong somehow. Like a part of myself is telling me that it is a lie. I decide to keep that fact at the back of my mind, with the rest of the many questions I have no answers nor ways to answers at the moment.

Now where to start? I can… touch the screen right? I try it on my name and get a positive on that one. The little mention of 'this is your name' makes me smile. I then try the "tutorial" option, I might as well start with the basics.

A new screen appears and… it's empty. The screen that just appeared only contains an endless row of dashes with question marks right after. What is the point of a tutorial section if you have nothing in it? Is it for specific things? Wait one just unlocked.

'Welcome to the tutorial section, this section will in time contain informations on multiple aspects of the world and the multitudes of mechanics and science that makes it work. A tutorial will unlock every time you discover something new. It will be a summary of what you have discovered and sometimes will complete you understanding of the world.'

Uh… So I still need to try things before I get the explanations… That seems… useless. Here's hopping the complements it seems to advertise will help… Anyway, what else can I click? I open all the quest logs and what I find is twofold.

First, I can open a lot of screens at once. Second, if they expect me to do all those quests, they expect me to be here for a looooong time because just the 'Main quest' seems to go on forever. It's arranged in a decision tree-like fashion, with some quests branching further down the line into multiple different quests. and supposedly that is only part of 'chapter one: the basics'. Most of the quests are locked and unreadable. 'Hunt's Quests' and 'Knowledge's Quest' are similarly unreadable and 'Chaos' Quests' is just empty. The 'Achievement' has my 'Look Ma, Solid light!' achievement as well as multiple empty tabs with a large variety of pictures next to them. Multiple look like books, other have strange cubic designs, machines perhaps? I am not sure. The last type of icons are objects I do not recognize at all.

I move on to the 'Exploration & Survival' section and find a grand total of nothing. Which in this case does not surprises me. This section will work more as a knowledge repository from my future exploration of this world. But right now, yeah, I have not moved yet.

The only other option accessible in 'Others' (eh) is Ocular Display Options. I'm calling that option ODO. The ODO option is pretty bare bone at the moment. I can make some things constantly appear on my vision, like part of my status, as well as other things as of right now locked. What I do find that is not locked is a marker. The moment I toggle it, a beam of purple light appears in the some direction, along with a square and a distance: 3.9km. The name of the marker is 'Frend?'. I am unsure if the typo is intentional or not. Or if it means something completely different.

I leave the 'User Party' alone for now. I'll try it when the time comes to actually form a party. touching the different stats under the 'User Status' mention gives me a quick explanation which immediately lodges itself in the Tutorial section. They are simple and to the point, almost obvious in hindsight. 'Integrity' calculates the damage to my body, 'Energy' is how much power I still have to keep functioning, 'Coolant' is how much cooling fluid I still have in me, 'MP' is at this point both magical point and magic potential, maybe it'll change once I do try magic, not that I know how. Finally 'Experience' is the amount of experience points I have acquired, which tells me nothing and 'Bio-reactor clogging' measures how much waste I have in my bio-reactor.

…

Wait what bio-reactor? I go look back in the tutorial screen and find a new entry. Oh… Oh I might be even more mechanical than I though. I do not have a stomach, I have a bio-reactor that, depending on what type of food I eat, will recombine it into burnable material and then burn said material fully to produce energy. It produces no waste BUT ingesting too much of the same kind of food can clog the reactor with uncombined remnants of the food. The recombination seems to have limits and needs different food source to work efficiently. Wow… Alright then. I still need to eat and have a varied diet. I'll also need to find a source of water too right? Another entry confirms it. Great.

So let's resume my current situation. I am a semi-amnesiac in a world I know nothing about with a mostly mechanical body with capacities unknown. Good. What do I do now?

----------------------------------------

The first thing he feels in his existence is sound. “He will have them. I am sure. But from me, he will get, I believe, his greatest. That shall be my gift.” Then silence. For a long time he stays coiled upon himself. Simply dreaming of nothingness. No though. No sensations other than the gentle heat of the fluid he floats within. Then, from beyond his closed eyelids, a little blue spark. Beyond the red blackness of his closed eyes, a little spark of blue beckons. He cracks an eye open, beholding a world of orange glow, and a single small blue rectangle. He looks at it, still groggy from his sleeping state, then closes his eye again. The little spark grows brighter beyond his eyelids and he tries to ignore it. But the damage is done, he is now awakening.

Grumbling, the sound coming more as a burble than a grumble thanks to his liquid environment, he opens both eyes and frown. The little rectangle seems to be an envelope of blue light. He looks at it. The envelope bounces a couple times. He just keep looking. It bounces once more, and he just cocks his head to the side. The envelope, seemingly annoyed by the lack of reaction, jumps forward and slaps him on his muzzle. He recoils at the sudden feeling of touch and bat the envelop away. In doing so, he touches it. The envelope explodes in a screen of clashing colors and unreadable letters, along with a little mention about an achievement.

What is happening? He wonders. The screen changes and he can now read the letters and words upon the screen. It is reads as a letter of felicitation, yet he does not remember accepting any sort of quests. What even is a Marble of Many realities? His doubts remain unanswered and the screen vanishes to be replaced by a new one. One that contains his name, or what he assumes is his name: Mewtwo.

User Interface v3.225a (redux version)

User ID: N/A (Mewtwo)

User stats:

Level: 1

Experience until next level: 10

Total experience: 0

Stats:

HP: 13/13

Attack: 6

Defense: 7

Special Attack: 8

Special Defense: 7

Speed: 7

Type: Psychic

Abilities:

- Pressure (Untrained)

- Unnerve (Untrained)

Stamina 100% (rested)

List of learned Moves:

--------------[+]--------------

The rest feels like gibberish to him. Statistics, types, moves. He is unsure what any of this mean. Touching the plus under the 'List of learned Moves' gives him a list of names along with what he assumes to be the type of the moves as well as the stamina consumption each moves would require to be used. Nothing more seems interactive.

Unsure as to what he is supposed to do he looks listlessly at the screen until a new message pops up in front of him.

You may think yourself alone, but you are not.

You may think yourself weak, but it is only temporary.

Strengthen yourself, find the other user and explore together.

He ponders the message for a few minutes and then dismisses it. Something new has appeared in his vision. A dot in the distance, with a mention above: 'Frend?' and '3.9km'.

Now how can he get there?