Momo
Momo Smith opens her eyes to nothingness. No, that isn’t quite right, she thinks to herself. Everything is white as far as she can see, from the cool surface she is sitting on to the…well, nothing around her. There are no walls, no ceiling, and if it weren’t for the solid feeling under her feet she would say there is no floor either. She rubs her hands over her arms briskly to warm them up. The best part of menopause was the hot flashes, she thinks glumly. She hasn’t been warm in years.
“Momo Smith! Welcome! You have been summoned by the all-powerful Me to participate in an exciting new project!” A voice booms out from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Momo raises her feet out in front of her, marveling at how she can see the stark white nothing through their semi-transparent form. She is quite sure that she is a ghost, but rather than being scared, she feels a happy sense of relief.
A moment passes and the voice repeats its announcement, but she ignores it and swings her feet back and forth in front of her.
“Ahem,” the voice says with a distinct decrease in volume. “The stupid speaker must be fritzing again. I keep telling them it is a hardware issue but they won’t listen.” Something thumps loudly, like a person smacking a microphone.
“Oh for goodness sake, I can hear you just fine,” Momo snaps with a roll of her eyes. “I was simply ignoring you.”
Silence descends, and for a second she thinks with satisfaction that they’ve decided to not talk to her anymore. “Well,” the voice says, its tone flat. “That is just rude.”
“I apologize for my rudeness, but in this place a voice starts talking to me like you did it is a little disconcerting. ” She drops her feet back flat against the not-floor and flaps her arms at her sides. “You sound like you are going to try and sell me a bridge. Or like one of those cellular phone dealers at the shopping mall.” Her arms stop flapping and begin to trace large circles in the air like a windmill.
“Why would I sell you a bridge, I am trying to - would you stop flailing around, you look ridiculous!”
Momo smiles at the no longer grand-sounding voice. “It’s been a long time since my joints didn’t hurt when I moved, I think I will continue for a while, thank you.”
“I -,” it responds, obviously irritated. “Please hold, this great one needs to go check on something.”
“Going to go ask your supervisor how to make me stop twirling my arms?”
“Yes. No, this great one has no supervisor, I just need to go ask him, no I need to tell, no…oh shut up and wait.” The voice and the faint ringing noise that accompanies it cuts off and there is no sound in the nothing once more. Momo stands up and jumps a few times, giggling at how light her not-body feels. She has just begun to become bored with jumping around when the voice returns. “Momo Smith, I have…confirmed that it is too late to give this opportunity to anyone else because you have already been summoned. And no, you can’t decline it either. So let’s get this moving.”
She shrugs and sits down, diplomatically ignoring its muttering about how maybe she will die quickly and it can choose someone else. “I apologize, please do continue,” she says with a regal nod.
It mutters some more, then clears its throat and begins again, with every bit of its original domineering tone if less of its volume. “Momo Smith you have been summoned to participate in an exciting new project. You died in your first world but you can live on in a new one, complete with a system to help you grow stronger and adapt better to your new life. Please look at the screen in front of you and choose two skills to begin with, to help you get started.”
“A system,” she murmurs with interest, waving her hand at the light blue screen floating in front of her. She taps through the pages. “So this is like a computer program? Or like a game? I do love my RPG games.”
“That’s…close enough, yes! You will be the character in a game filled with magic, wonder, and fantastical creatures you have only imagined before, with quests that you must complete to gain new skills!”
Skills
Choose Two
Load Bearer Increased Strength
Level One Perks:
Passive - Innate physical strength increased by 10%
Take A Hit Increased Stamina
Level One Perks:
Passive - Health Pool increased by 10%
Trustworthy Face Increased Charisma
Level One Perks:
Passive - Speech Ability increased by 10%
Full Of It Increased Mana
Level One Perks:
Passive - Mana Pool Increased by 10%
1 2 3 > >>
“Ah, I see. Alright then,” she bites her lip and looks back through the list, frowning at the more obvious choices before going back toward the last page and tapping on two. The screen flashes and disappears.
“Great! Let’s see,” its voice trails off, then sighs and the screen appears again. “Try again.”
“Nope, won’t do.” Momo crosses her arms over her chest and nods as she reads the descriptions listed to the side of the two skills she has picked. “I like these two very much.”
“No, you must not understand. Those were added to the list as kind of jokes, you see. This world will be dangerous, filled with magic and creatures you have only seen in your games. Load Bearer would give you increased strength, or Have A Slice improves your edged weapon combat skills! You should pick those instead.”
“If you are so bothered by my choices then you shouldn’t have given me a choice. I served my time, I did my duty, and fought for thirty years. I’m done and ready to relax. You want them changed, you change them.”
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For some time, longer than ten minutes but less than an hour, the voice argues and tries to convince her to make the changes. At times its voice gets louder, more demanding, at others it is almost gentle as it tries to coax her. Momo has just decided to close her eyes and see if she can take a nap when a loud buzzer sounds and the screen blinks out, only to be replaced with a new one.
You have Chosen Sparkling Fresh Proficiency in Cleaning
Level One Perks:
Passive All items within one foot of body become refreshed at a rate of 10% per hour
Active Out Spot - Focus cleaning ability to a spot one foot cubed at a rate of 400% per hour
Available at Level Two:
Passive All Items within two feet of body become refreshed at a rate of 20% per hour
Active Big Spot - Focus cleaning ability to a spot two feet cubed at a rate of 400% per hour
Green Finger Proficiency in Gardening
Level One Perks:
Passive Improved health of green and growing things within three feet diameter
Active Up You Pop - Plants with maximum height of 24inches can grow without seeds
Available at Level Two:
Active Stem Repair: Heal damage to plants due to weather or incompetency.
“Fine!” The voice calls out in exasperation. “It's too late now, you’ve ruined your chances!”
“Maybe I have, but that’s what happens when people have choices,” she responds calmly. “Sometimes they make choices different than the ones you want them to make. These sound like exactly the kind of skills I want in my new relaxing life.”
The light of the nothingness begins to grow dimmer, and her body starts to lose the definition it had. As everything in front of her grows dark she hears it mutter, “Maybe she’ll get eaten quickly and I can start again with someone new. Nobody has to know it's the second attempt.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/yMK4ItS.png]
Momo jolts upright, her now solid arm smacking her in the face when she tries to use it to block the blinding sun that is suddenly overhead. She takes a moment to get used to having a body again, and to somehow being flat on the ground, then raises herself to a sitting position and looks around. It is a different nothingness than before. This nothingness is filled with sky, and dry brown earth in every direction. “Where am I now,” she whispers, standing up and brushing dirt off her plain pants. A window appears in the air in front of her, similar to the one she chose her special skills from.
The screen is black, except for a dirt colored circle in the very center with a flashing arrow pointing East. In that direction a pale yellow star flashes at the edge of the screen.
“Oh, that’s convenient! It doesn’t tell me much yet, but maybe it fills in as I move around.” To test her theory, she takes off in the direction leading away from the sun and watches the map before her. After a minute she trips over a rock she can’t see because she is so focused on the screen, but she can tell that the exposed area has increased from a small circle to a wiggling line that matches the path she walked. At the edge the pale yellow star still blinks. "I wonder what that blinking star is for.”
With the thought, the screen blinks away, and she again sees nothing but the broad expanse of dirt and sky. Momo makes a note to see what other information she has access to after she finds somewhere to rest for the night.
She walks along, chatting with herself aloud just to hear a voice. When she wonders why she feels better than usual while walking such a distance, the distinctive voice from the White Place speaks up with what is obviously a heavy sigh. “I didn’t change your age or body, but your system fixed some of your ailments when you loaded in..”
“Ah, then thank you to my system! It’s nice to not feel the arthritis in my knees today. Have you been listening in since I got here?”
“No,” it scoffs, then adds, “As for information, you have your map, your quest list, your ability screens, and skill screens that you can access. You don’t have to say the words out loud, if you think pointedly about wanting to see the map it will appear.”
Momo chuckles, kicking a little rock and watching it skip along the ground ahead of her. “I believe you, you were certainly not listening as I talked to myself about that earlier. So why have you appeared now? Did your supervisor yell at you about something?”
“No.” It didn’t speak for a few minutes, and Momo wondered if it was gone for good. “Fine, yes, I was supposed to explain about your quests before you left.”
A new window appears in the air.
Active Quest
Go to Yanniston and meet with Head Guard Farrel.
Reward - 35 EXP
With a thought, Momo dismisses the window and calls up her map, stopping this time so she doesn’t trip again. A circle around her shows the area a few yards to every side, and behind her the trail stops suddenly at the end of the screen. Thinking of her smartphone, she pinches her fingers together in front of the screen and the image zooms out. In the center is her tiny dot where she is standing and a little trail behind her that leads a few inches toward the southwest. Far in the distance, along the general direction she’s already heading, the blinking star sits on top of the town of Yanniston.
“Oh, my. That’s pretty far.” She looks up toward the sky, blinking as she tries not to look right at the sun directly overhead. “I’ve already been walking for a couple hours, if the movement of the sun is the same as back on Earth. That little marker on the map is pretty far off. Are you going to help me get there?”
“No!” It shouts angrily.
“That is awfully sad. Poor innocent old lady like me, all defenseless, and weak, and innocent. And did I say defenseless?”
A length of wood, cut into a standard plank measuring around a yard long, drops from the sky in front of her, accompanied by a growl of irritation. “Weak, my non-corporeal foot! You have more medals in your closet back home than any of your contemporaries! Whatever, you can have this weapon, now get moving!”
“And I thank you for this,” she says as she hefts the board and swings it experimentally. She waits for another response, but when one doesn’t come she dismisses her map and marches on. ‘Won’t hurt to go in that direction,’ she thinks to herself, aware now that her words might be listened to. Not that she cares what it thinks of her words, but a person should be allowed a modicum of privacy, or so she has always argued to her family.
In the distance, a dark shape begins to form through the haze of heat. As she walks toward it, she begins to make out the shape of legs and arms, and two points on top of what looks to be a rather oddly shaped head. The smell hits her before it is close enough to make out much more than general shapes, and she gags, covering her nose with the sleeve of her shirt. ‘How wonderful that the wind is blowing right at me. Has this kid never bathed?”
She frowns at the shape that seems to be picking up speed, dropping her sleeve from her nose and gripping her board with both hands. As it approaches she can see the shape isn’t that of a child, but something else. The points are ears, green ones on top of an oblong green head sporting only one eye. A hole rests where the other eye could be expected to be, with dried brown stuff around it. Momo gags at the smell and the sight, and her eyes grow wide. ‘Well I’ll be, that looks like one of the goblins from Frizzlethorp! Looks a bit worse for wear though…’
For a moment she thinks fondly of her favorite RPG game and the special town of industrious little goblins. She calls out to the little creature shambling toward her, but it doesn’t respond and continues the last few steps to reach her before opening its mouth wide and lurching forward. Momo steps to the side, deflecting its outstretched hands with her board and sweeping the wood in an arc to connect with the backs of its knees. The creature falls with a thump and begins to get back to its feet so she kicks it onto its back and uses her board to pin it into place.
“Oh, my,” she exclaims over the scrabbling sound its fingers make against her rudimentary weapon. The missing eye is not the only damage that the little creature has suffered. Two fingers end in ragged stumps, and one foot is missing entirely, explaining its awkward gait. She nudges at the torn tunic it wears, gagging as the gaping cavity below is exposed. “How are you still alive, you strange creature?”
It lurches forward, fingers grabbing onto the closest pant leg, and Momo reacts without thinking. She lifts her board and swings it down on the creature before it can bite her leg with its stained, pointy teeth. The board hits it on the head and it collapses. She nudges the creature twice, but it doesn’t stir. “Alright, mysterious voice,” she calls out to the sky. “Did I just kill a zombie goblin?”