JESSICA : N/A

DAY 4 : D-DAY, FIRSTWEEK, AGNI, YEAR 1

PURGATORY 5 : INTERLUDE 4 : C.R.L.A.A.F.S.T.S.

[ BEGIN C.R.A.F.T. SELECTION — CONGRATULATIONS: NEW SKILLS ADDED TO MULTIPLE FORMS ]

[ BEGIN C.L.A.S.S. SELECTION — CONGRATULATIONS 1: NEW SKILLS ADDED TO MULTIPLE SPECIALTIES — CONGRATULATIONS 2: NEW SKILL CREATED FOR SUBCLASSES ]

[ WARNING: THIS CHOICE IS SEMI-PERMANENT ]

My Holo-clone disappeared in a flash of light. “Ack!”

Blinking away the image of myself now burned into my eyes, I stumbled backwards thanks in no small part to the clothes that no longer fit. A problem I didn’t manage to cope with before tripping over an uneven mound of grass.

Stumbling back up, I froze in place. My pants were… Wet?

I looked down at where I just fell, into the new and improved ass-print, freshly filled with the remaining vomit that had puddled in the same spot on the spongy ground. Oh god… Did I just fall into my own puke?

Fearing the inevitable, I felt my own ass. “Eeew… But also it was so nice and round and firm now… But also eeew…”

In a sudden grip of existential depression, I tried to step away, only to find that I was literally surrounded by the contents of my own stomach. Besides the one with the assprint, the puddles were all identical, each about a pace away from me in a different cardinal direction. And their contents were… Also identical?

On closer examination, I saw that… Yes, they were exactly the same.

But I hadn’t even eaten two quesadillas. Let alone four. And I’d only puked twice.

Hold on, had my copy duplicated both of them? Each? Well… Magical-hologram-clone aside, that still meant I’d vomited up the same thing more than once. Which was nonsense.

And hadn’t I spent however-many days laying in the grass? The bits and chunks of four identical quesadillas should’ve fully digested a long time ago. In fact, a lot of things should’ve happened a long time ago. And I still tasted stomach acid. So, while I’d definitely like some water, now that I thought about it, I wasn’t actually thirsty. Did my new body not need to drink? Or eat? Or… Anything?

I vaulted over and away from the puddles of my own last meal that would’ve been identical if not for the ass-and-footprints from when I hadn’t been paying attention to anything but my makeover. “You know what? Who cares?!”

What was I, this game’s QA? No! I was a badass hot elf princess and I wanted to kick some fucking ass already!

Except the squelch when I landed dispelled any illusions that I could keep ignoring the obvious. My feet were wet. Oh no…

Whimpering in despair, I took off my shoes and literally quacked when I saw the truth for myself. Fuuuck… It soaked through…

I started taking off my socks and pants. What? They were pukey. And I was pretty sure I was alone here. Who was gonna stop me? The Empty Field Police?

Careful not to touch the wet bits any more than absolutely necessary, I raised my voice as I threaded the needle on my depressingly high-stakes Undressing Operation. “Fine! Fuck it! If anyone’s watching this, then congrats, you’re a pedophile now! ’Cuz I’m doin’ it in my undies!”

Lower body coverings removed, I glared my accusation up at the suspiciously empty sky. “I GUESS!!!”

At least I still had my newly-too-large shirt…

Belatedly lowering my gaze, my accusatory glare settled on a new Jessica-clone further down the field. Except this one stood deep in the shadow of absolutely nothing. Almost like it was nighttime, but only for her. Even if she still matched all my movements like the last one.

I started to examine my shadow-clone further, but didn’t get very far before I got distracted by admiring my newly exposed legs. And waist. And more muscles than I’d known I had… And sure, the obligatory great ass and tits.

But as a former, I supposed, fat nerd, I couldn’t help being taken aback at the distinct lack of all the things that had always made me self-conscious. Like… Every problem I had with myself. Just fixed. Just like that.

Eyes lost and wandering in my reverie, I realized there was another clone of me over in the opposite direction. Except that doppelganger was glowing a pure, angelic white. Like she was cut from the universe of an overexposed photograph, and pasted into mine.

So which of these… Fuck it. James Method Time.

Did I know what a C.L.A.S.S. was? “Maybe?”

What about a C.R.A.F.T.? “Also maybe. But I’m just extrapolating from my assumption from the last thing, so not really.”

Okay, how about ‘subclass’? “Like a class, but more specialized.”

Then what was a ‘specialty’? “A more specialized version of… No idea.”

Hm… How about ‘Semi-Permanent’? “It means I can change it later… But only kinda?”

Sooo… “No.”

How about ‘skill’? “Nothing that doesn’t just extrapolate from my extrapolating on earlier extrapolations…”

This wasn’t working. I felt like I was supposed to build a bridge to cross the canyon of figuring out what the fuck was happening to me, but so far, all I had were five planks that didn’t even line up right. I was starting to see the limitations of the method James had incessantly made me practice. Shoved down my throat was more like it. And maybe it worked for him, but… But… James, I… I couldn’t deal with this right now. Later. I’d do it later. I wouldn’t repress it. Of course not. I knew from plots of things that was bad. Just as soon as I wasn’t actively doing something… Then I’d confront…

Commence Operation Just Try Some Shit.

Picking from the bipolar clones of myself at random and not for any other reason, I walked towards White Jessica first.

As I reached out for my unnaturally well-lit self, she did the same to me, altering the course of her arm as she seemed to see me reaching.

As soon as our fingers met in the middle, my clone faded to half opacity.

[ SELECT ROLE ]

I was immediately surrounded on all sides by three more of myself, only glowing distinctly yellow this time. They all faced me as they copied my movements exactly like the two others. Fuck this was creepy. And the creepiness seemed to get exponentially worse as more clones were added.

At least these ones had words floating in front of them as my attention landed on each.

[ ROLE: BUILDING ]

[ ROLE: DEVELOPMENT ]

[ ROLE: COMMUNICATION ]

Wow… Yep, that was pretty boring alright. So ‘CRAFT’ was literally just crafting? I’d been expecting… I dunno… More?

That also meant Black Jessica was probably where I’d find all the powers and stuff. God I hoped there were powers and stuff… If I went over there and there were no powers and stuff, I was gonna fucking scream.

But for now, I’d just go ahead and get this over with so I could spend the most time possible on the real decision. Better yet, why couldn’t this have been the step with the looping ‘NO’ option? Now was when I’d need it… And it would’ve been a good distraction while I lost track of time in the grass… Although now that I think about it… Fuck.

Oh. Oh no. I could be in major shit if whoever ran this thing was vindictive. Sooo… Okay, maybe I could show a little respect. Just this once. To God. Or at least close enough to God that I couldn’t tell the difference. And didn’t just that fact tell me everything I needed to know?

“SO… Um… I guess I don’t know if anyone can hear me right now… But just in case… I wanted to call out that I only just this moment realized I probably wasn’t technically SUPPOSED to use a Confirmation-Loop to keep resetting the timer back there. For what it’s worth, if you ARE watching, and were then, I AM sorry for that. I have a habit of looking out for opportunities to fuck with systems. And I really needed to… Anyway, I hope you fix it! So far, this whole thing’s been kinda buggy. But impressive. And also for what it’s worth… Thank you!”

No response.

Well great… So where was I? Oh right. Building, development, or communication… I couldn’t say any of them really caught my interest. But between the three, development sounded the most like something I’d be into.

Reaching out to touch that yellow clone, it faded to transparency as nine more Blue Jessicas surrounded me on all sides.

Wow… Yep, the creep factor was escalating just as predicted. Everywhere I looked, there was… Me. More friends than I’d ever had at a time, all just staring blankly into my eyes, with my own literal eyes.

Besides lonelier than I’d ever felt while alone, the goosebumps from this shit were making me actually feel cold for the first time since I got here.

I tried to get past how much this skeeved me right the fuck out. Breathe… Just breathe… Oookay… So anyway… Um… There was-

[ ART: SMITH ]

And next to her was-

[ ART: COOK ]

Then-

[ ART: ALCHEMIST ]

Well, that was a bummer. Once I got over the weirdness of it all, each option was literally less appealing than the last. Which made Smith the winner by default.

Shrugging, I touched that blue Jessica.

At which point, 27 purple ones appeared all around. Okay, this was getting ridiculous. At least the exponential creepiness curve seemed to have flattened out. Apparently, being surrounded by a mob of doppelgangers was actually less viscerally disturbing than only a third of that number. Probably because so many of me in view at any given time felt more like a special effect than the Chara vibes I was getting from the blue ones.

But also… 27 was so many to choose from. And going by the obvious pattern, this wasn’t even the last layer. I was already well past thinking I could keep track of all my options with the purples alone. So picking one at random…

[ FORM: LIGHT ARMOR ]

Woah! Now there were sooo many more clones of myself… I couldn’t even count them all. But based on the pattern so far, I was willing to bet there were something like 81 new green apple flavors of me. Except…

Looking closer, I realized I was wrong. The ones that existed were green. At least insofar as holographic clones of myself could be said to exist.

But over half of them were just… Gone. They were less copies of me, and more me-shaped holes in the universe.

Walking over to a concentration of them, their insides remained completely static. Like they still occupied the same space, but all the rest of their very existence was cut out of reality by a divine yet rudimentary paint program. Inside that space was an untextured matte white. Except not even that. Not even anything. Just white… Whiteness.

Did they exist on a different layer of reality? For that matter, did reality have layers? Probably not… Or was that what the whole String Theory thing was about? I still couldn’t believe how much I’d retained from that class specifically, but none of the others around it. Like, what was the God Particle? I’d stopped paying attention the instant anyone called it that. But did it have anything to do with this!? I didn’t even know! With how much of my short life school had drained away, that felt distinctly unfair…

Fuck it, learning like a monkey.

Approaching one of the not-me-not-shaped things… I touched it. Except I didn’t. My hand stopped where it felt like it probably should, but there was no actual pressure from the touch. Was this what it felt like to literally touch nothing? Well that was… Pretty fucking cool, actually.

Jumping onto another, I bounced off nothing. Normally, that sort of thing would’ve hurt. But without the impact? This was fun!

I did it again.

Different angle.

Again.

I lost track of how many times. But it was just so fun!

How long had I been doing this for? Glancing at the timer, I saw it was down to six hours left.

Oh Fuck… Was I just doing that for two fucking hours? Thinking about it for a second… Okay, I still had plenty of time. But I’d also just burned a fourth of it, and was no closer to a decision than when I started. Hell, I still didn’t even know what my options were. Alright, I had to fix that. No more fucking around.

I was in Light Armor, right? That was the faded Purple Jessica in the middle of all these green and fucked-up ones. Hm… Not much I could do with the latter, but… I wasn’t gonna sift through the former either. Okay, let’s just go with a random one again.

I reached out for the first Green clone that occurred to me.

[ TRADE: Magic ]

[ C.R.A.F.T. SELECTED: DEVELOPMENT / SMITH / LIGHT ARMOR / MAGIC ]

This faded into the center of my vision under the left side of the original prompt. Below that was a new and old button all at once.

[ CONFIRM ]

At the same time, the sunny field faded to just the kind of lazy twilight that made you want to do nothing so much as take a nap. Outside. In a hammock.

But just as I was beginning to cope with my new lighting situation, or lack thereof, what had to be hundreds, if not thousands of red nodes appeared all around me. Like if I was standing in place of the sun in a solar system diorama. Except with way too many planets. And they were all orbiting at the same distance. And rather than anything like a disc, they surrounded me on all sides in a jumbled sphere.

So nothing like a solar system, come to think of it. More like an atom where I was the nucleus and these nodes were all inappropriately scaled electrons.

Except not really that either. Weren’t all electrons supposed to be identical? But here, the nodes higher up were both larger, and glowing a darker shade of red than those underneath. Following the pattern downwards, there were a ton of smaller nodes clustered around my legs. And those were green.

Alright, alright… I’d seen traffic signals before. I got it. You could only unlock green ones, right? And maybe the red ones turned green when you advanced a cultivation stage or whatever?

I tried to focus on a green node.

[ COMMON C.R.A.F.T. AUGMENT: MAGIC / BARRIER ]

Alright, I liked the implications. Pretty simple though. How about one from the other side?

[ COMMON C.R.A.F.T. AUGMENT: LIGHT ARMOR / ROCKSTEADY ]

Just from the context clues, that sounded pretty useful. Much like the first. Also boring. Much like the first.

How about a red node from the middle of the pack?

[ RARE C.R.A.F.T. AUGMENT: MAGIC / FLIGHT SPEED ]

Holy shit, there was flying in this? That was sooo much cooler than the last two… These were what it meant by ‘Skills’, right? Which I could unlock… Somehow. And the higher-up they were, the cooler they got. Harder to unlock too, I’d bet.

Like, why would I ever take that other crap when I could have FLYING armor?

But naturally, I couldn’t just pick whatever, could I? I had to unlock a bunch of greens first. That was how this kind of thing was usually set up.

Speaking of which, now that I wasn’t trying to figure out what the fuck they even did, these nodes were… Beautiful. Like I was in some kind of mocap-cocoon. Or something more romantic. Whatever worked.

I absentmindedly reached out to touch the Flying Armor Node. Wait, was this the same as confirming my choice?

But it was too late. My finger had already made contact with the dot of light.

Which just sort of bobbed there, unchanged from before. Oh thank God… No confirmations from that, then.

The node felt nice though. Like the world’s smoothest marble. Well… It WAS floating…

“The GOD Marble…”

Anyway, it seemed like I could examine everything without actually selecting anything. The green nodes did the same nothing as the reds when I touched them. Were they just in some kind of preview mode?

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The prompt didn’t actually say I could pick Skills yet… So if Skills were a step too far, and ‘Magic’ was as deep as I could go in the chain… Then all this clone bullshit basically just boiled down to picking my favorite green Jessica?

I could do that… I was even a little tempted to just take this one and grind my ass off to make flying armor. But then again… If you could craft flying armor in this game, I’d bet you could buy it too. Or there was probably a Skill somewhere literally called ‘Flight’. And besides, I’d basically coin-flipped my whole way here. And I wasn’t about to commit to the first option I’d randomly wandered into.

Buuut just out of curiosity, what did one of the biggest, blackest nodes do?

[ MYTHIC C.R.A.F.T. AUGMENT: MAGIC / AWAKENING ]

Oh… That was… Badass? Probably maybe? Even if I had no idea what that actually meant. Just off the top of my head, it could be anything from talking armor, to astral projection, to just a cool flashy effect when you did stuff wearing it. Although, no matter what ‘awakening’ meant, it implied that maybe armor crafting wasn’t so boring after all? Even if it did tend to be the most tedious part of every RPG I’d ever played.

Still, who said I even wanted light armor? If there were a bunch of different kinds like that label made it seem, I could be shooting myself in the foot by picking any of them before I even knew what type of game this was.

Making sure not to mentally accept anything, I slowly backed away until the nodes disappeared, blessedly taking the ‘CONFIRM’ button with it.

As the field brightened back up, I gasped for air, releasing the breath that I’d apparently started holding at some point. It really felt like I’d been about to lock myself into running a pre-ruined toon if I ever stopped constantly willing the concept of ‘NO’ into the universe at large.

Or maybe that was just a remnant from lying for days in a field where the wrong confirmation would’ve more or less literally killed me.

And sure, maybe I’d regret this later. Like… Flying armor? But no, light armor wasn’t really my style anyway. It was in the purple section, right?

Looking around at all the technicolor copies of myself, only the greens and nothings weren’t transparent. The faded purple me’s were still there. They just didn’t have any labels over them no matter how long or close I looked… Why was this how this worked?

I glared up at the sky “GOD DAMN IT!!!”

I could barely even see myself with all the other myselves in the way. “Who the fuck thought this was a good User Interface!? How can technology be so magically advanced, but with controls this unintuitive?! It’s such a huge pain in the ass to do anything! Just give me a scrolling menu or something-ACK!!!”

As soon as I pictured it happening, the ever-present prompt moved to the upper-left of my periphery, and a new list of options slid in to replace it.

Oh thank God. Now this, I could work with. So it went up and down by thinking it should happen…. Same with selecting something.

There were two main options in the new window. ‘C.R.A.F.T.’ and ‘C.L.A.S.S.’. The former was expanded like a tablet folder. That had more nested folders to make my most recent selection translate to something like ‘Development / Smith / Light Armor / Magic’.

So if I collapsed the ‘Light Armor’ folder…

All the green and nonexistent Jessicas disappeared in the same wink that made the purple ones go opaque again.

I expanded the next folder to experiment.

[ FORM: MEDIUM ARMOR ]

Looking around, I saw more or less as many options as before. But I didn’t have time to analyze every one of these, and I needed something that wasn’t armor for any kind of useful data point.

So I skipped straight to the next.

[ FORM: HEAVY ARMOR ]

I fell over. “ACK!!!”

Oh for the love of… “Oookay, get a grip, Cathy.”

Grumbling both about and to myself, I looked around at what surprised me off my feet.

There were more of me now. A lot more.

Eyes wide, I neglected to circumnavigate that whole maze and instead scrolled through the list.

[ TRADE: MEDIEVAL ]

[ TRADE: GREEK ]

[ TRADE: POWER ]

[ TRADE: FANTASY ]

[ TRADE: SCI-FI ]

Wait a second… Every one of these new clones were green. But the crazy trampoliney null Jessicas were gone.

Huh… Well whatever, let’s skip down the list a bit.

[ SUBCLASS: ALIEN ]

[ SUBCLASS: MARVEL ]

[ SUBCLASS: DC ]

[ SUBCLASS: CARTOON ]

[ SUBCLASS: ANIME ]

Woah woah woah. Hold the fucking phone.

Of course, I opened the file the instant I registered its existence. This, I had to see.

Except nothing happened when I selected the option.

So I did it again.

Nothing.

But before long, I noticed that one of the green clones was pulsing a distinct red whenever I pressed it.

Oookaaay… “SEE???”

I made it flash red again. “BUGGY!!!”

I kept making it do that. “Whoever’s up there… You SEEIN’ this shit?!”

Projecting a sigh, I walked over and touched the offending green Jessica.

[ TRADE: ANIME ]

I was grinning the whole time, of course. Because, bugginess aside, fucking what?! Anime armor?! How was that a thing!? And also, yes please!

Practically the same instant that the sky turned to twilight and I was surrounded by more red-and-green orbs, they all disappeared.

The hundreds of my own clones that had surrounded me a second ago were just… Gone.

There were only the white and black Jessicas left. Although the white one looked more grey now. It was brighter than the black one, but…

“Um… Excuse me? WHAT???” Wait a goddamn second.

As I focused my attention on the original prompt again, it zipped to the front of my view. “Yep. Yyyep… Fucking YEP!!!”

There it was, clear as day, under the prompt’s left side.

[ C.L.A.S.S.: DEVELOPMENT / SMITH / HEAVY ARMOR / ANIME ]

The nail in the coffin was the solid black, obviously locked ‘CONFIRM’ button, struck through with a big green checkmark.

Fuck.

God fucking damn it.

I took in a deep breath. “I was… Excited! NOT MAKING A DECISION!!!”

So I was locked into Heavy Armor now? What, was I supposed to run a shop? Or was I gonna be a tank? Because in either case… NO. But I’d been excited for a reason, right? Like, I’d had a picture in my head when I’d accidentally confirmed… What had it been? I remembered seeing… I remembered feeling… But I couldn’t remember what the fuck it was.

Then it hit me. I was lying to myself. I’d fucked up. But it wasn’t so bad. I’d been doing the boring part first, after all. Now, I could sit back, relax, and carefully pick through the best part with my remaining… Four hours.

“Oh what the fuck!?”

I was technically on schedule… But… I mean goddamn it… Like… That was my only advantage. And god fucking damn it, I’d SEEN the Marvel one! I coulda maybe crafted an Infinity Gauntlet… I coulda maybe crafted two… That would’ve been the coolest… But wait, wasn’t that a weapon? Wouldn’t that be a different Form? Like Weapon crafting or whatever?

Oh what, was I trying to make myself feel better? I kinda did wanna cry… A System this open… And now all those doors were closed. Before I even got a good look, they were just… Gone.

And now I was stuck with my choice no matter what I… Actually wait, what did ‘Semi-Permanent’ mean? Okay, don’t jump to conclusions… The ‘Semi’ bit implied I at least still had some way to wiggle out of this. Yeah. That was right. It would all be okay.

I took another, deeper breath. “HEY WHOEVER THE FUCK IS WATCHING!!! THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!!! YOU FUCKING KNOW THAT, RIGHT???”

I’d been excited beyond belief only a minute ago. Now, I was just pissed. But with nowhere to direct the piss.

…What? What in the fuck was I even…

Maybe I wasn’t in a good state to be making decisions. “Now where’s a C.L.A.S.S. that’ll let me fucking kill something?”

Scrolling to the top of the menu thing, I expanded the only other folder at that level.

[ SELECT LANE ]

Just like the last time, I had three new yellow options to choose from.

[ ROLE: ATTACK ]

[ ROLE: DEFENSE ]

[ ROLE: SUPPORT ]

Wait… In the menu, the three options were yellow. But way back over where I’d started, there were only two yellows. Along with two blacks, one of which was transparent.

What did black signify, exactly? And that was right, ‘C.L.A.S.S.’ was white in the scrollable list, even though the clone had been black this whole time. So it wasn’t a designation, but a direction? Only one way to tell…

Expanding the Attack option, I saw that around the second black one, there was a circle of blue clones, along with, yes, another black. A good sign. Of those three, Attack was the only one I gelled with anyway.

But which of these blue menu options was the black one on the field? I’d lucked out last time on my first try with one-in-three odds. I’d been ready to brute-force it though. This time though? No. Too many options to do it with the menu. Not to mention the next step. And the one after that. I’d have to walk into the black would-be-green one anyway… Nothing for it.

Sighing, I started making my way over to the black Jessica interrupting the circle of blues. “Woah!”

This was… New. I was already halfway there and I’d only been moving for a few seconds. Aaand I could go faster!

I sped up.

I laughed.

More.

I was running faster than ever before. By a lot. And I wasn’t even winded. “This is… AMAZING!!!”

Bolting straight past the newest group of multicolored Me’s, I shamelessly Naruto-ran across the grassy hillscape. Except with my new body, I felt like I could actually be Naruto. No, wait… Sasuke. I was really more of a Sasuke. Obviously. Let's not be crazy, now. Or maybe Kushina. I’d be okay with that. Definitely a better match for my new hair.

I felt it fan out behind me as it billowed with the wind. The cool breeze I was running with only added to how absolutely fucking incredible this felt!

And sure, Kushina was pretty cool and all… Not a lot of screen time though.

Oh right, speaking of time, how much did I-“Oh shit!”

I had less than three hours left.

If I was being honest, I may have been subconsciously trying to delay the inevitable. But part of me still didn’t want to know where this thing was pointing. That part of me also happened not to mind the exercise. Which only felt worth mentioning due to how few parts like that I had, historically speaking.

Spotting the circle of blue Jessicas, I banked left and headed straight there. Over the last few hours, apparently, of running aimlessly around this field, I’d discovered and verified several times over that it infinitely looped back in on itself. No matter where I went, if I ran in a direction for long enough, I’d inevitably wind up heading straight for the cluster of multicolored Jessica-clones.

Aaand there was the black amongst the Blues.

I slowed to a walk before touching it, the label fading into visibility as I approached.

[ ARCHETYPE: MELEE ]

I’d already known that though. I’d known it since I first ran past the clone something like an hour ago. Now that I thought about it, that was probably why I’d been putting it off.

This could easily be something I was into. Or it could be sumo. What would I do then? I guess it could work with gauntlets or something.

Which only made me wish I’d picked Marvel again. But nooo, this stupid fucking game couldn’t even let me see what my options were before locking in my first fucking IMPULSE. And that, apparently, was the perfect recipe to make my anxiety fucking SKYROCKET!!!

Not really wanting to delve into that particular mental miasma, I searched the crowded circle of purple clones for the Black one hiding amongst the others way too well to be intuitive.

[ SPECIALTY: SWORDSMAN ]

“YES!!!” Now that’s what I was TALKING about!

Right next to it was…

[ SPECIALTY: ENERGY ]

[ SPECIALTY: ELEMENTAL ]

[ SPECIALTY: SPEARMAN ]

[ SPECIALTY: FORCE ]

And a battalion of others along those same lines. Elemental might be cool… Could I be an airbender in this game? That seemed more likely to let me fly than anything else I’d seen. But I could check around after the black one.

Actually more excited than anxious for once, I practically skipped over to it. And finally landing in front of my shadow-clone, I gave her a high five. Sure, my hand passed right through hers on contact, but I still tried to stop at the right time so that it at least looked real. From a distance… My palm may have been a little bit inside my clone’s by the time I stopped moving. But whatever. Of all the things I had to worry about, my own personal hitbox was a lower priority than, say, trying not to jinx myself.

And then I noticed. “Whaaat in the fuuuck…”

There weren’t 81 Jessicas this time. Sure, I hadn’t exactly counted last time either. But now… There were thousands. Plural. Several thousands. If not tens of thousands. And not even remotely in a circle this time. More like line upon line of soldiers, all standing at attention. What they lacked in military decorum, they made up for in perfect synchronization. Or at least they would if not for every Null Jessica’s general lack of an outline.

You know, I hadn’t actually known that real things had outlines. That was before I’d seen something, or lack thereof, without one. And it was hard to notice anything but thousands of nonexistent outline-less holes in the universe shaped like my own body, just kind of blending together into the same white void wherever they overlapped.

If I looked closely, I could spot a few green Jessicas here and there as well. There was…

[ SUBCLASS: MILITARY ]

[ SUBCLASS: CHINESE ]

[ SUBCLASS: FANTASY ]

But I was mostly surrounded by a literal battalion of me-shaped absences of space. And it didn’t help that they were all my height. So I couldn’t exactly see over them. No matter where I looked below a certain point, it was just a vague sea of white nothingness, occasionally broken up by a splash of green or blue or purple. Like some kind of fucked up sci-fi horror movie for the visually challenged.

So… Did that mean I could eventually unlock all of these? Obviously not at the same time, of course. But if this was representative of the others, then there was… Something like 3 times 9 times somewhere between 27 and like a hundred, times somewhere between 81 and several thousand… Equals… A fuckton. More than a million.

As soon as I realized that, the actual math became irrelevant. At least the math made sense. It just didn’t make common sense. This was… Too much to process. Not right now.

I knew because as soon as I tried, I got dizzy and had to sit down. Oookay… Just think it through. How was I going to get through that many options in two hours?

I wasn’t. Obviously. I’d have to look through something like a hundred subclasses per second. And I couldn’t do that. Nor could anybody. Not even with the full eight hours that everyone apparently started with. Assuming this was something that anyone else had ever done. I still couldn’t dismiss the possibility that this was all just some sick cosmic joke with me as the punchline.

I couldn’t dwell on that though, or else I’d never get anything done. At least this time, I seemed to have a rational justification for thinking my life was all just a show for some sick fuck’s amusement. Usually, it was the depression’s job to make my mind go there.

But something this unintuitively convoluted could only have been made. With a clear purpose. Which meant the timer was on purpose too. I must not have been expected to actually evaluate all my options here. Whelp… It was official. I’d done fucked up.

Abort Operation Just Try Some Shit.

Okay, new plan. First, I’d see where this needle-in-a-haystack bullshit was leading me. Then, I’d work my way through as many file folders as I could and keep a running list of the stuff I liked the most. Finally, with five, no, ten minutes left, I’d force myself to stop and decide the winner from between those. Then, I’d spend the last five minutes making my way back to whichever Jessica was my top choice by then.

Alright, that’s what I’d do… No time to pick a better name for this.

Commence Operation Affirmative Action.

Now then… Where was that black clone?

Several minutes of an utterly headache-inducing search through a sea of not-quite-there shapes of myself later, I finally found it.

[ SUBCLASS: ANIME ]

I froze mid-step. I couldn’t quite believe this. Was it because of my CRAFT? Had the black one switched once I confirmed it? Could it really have been a coincidence?

Pivoting on the spot, I made a beeline for, as the operation name implied, my first priority.

Okay, Jessica… You could do this. Just don’t consciously ‘Accept’ anything. Not even as a concept. Not until you’re actually sure of something for once. Even if you could barely think straight just now…

This place seemed to interpret my thoughts however-the-fuck it wanted, whether I agreed with the interpretation or not.

My heart was beating at about the same rate and with the same trepidation as when I saw the laser mark on James’ back before I made it kill me instead.

Getting the slightest bit of a grip, I touched the final black Jessica.

I knew for sure it was the final one since instead of fading to half opacity and spawning more clones, Shadow-me disappeared entirely.

The field faded though, from midday back to twilight as I was once more surrounded by the red and green God Marbles, just barely within arm’s reach all around.

And there was that ‘Confirm’ button under the prompt’s right side, along with a new label.

[ C.L.A.S.S. SELECTED: ATTACK / MELEE / SWORDSMAN / ANIME ]

Glancing at a few green dots, I couldn’t help some disappointment in what I found. None of it was detrimental or anything. Well, the Named Attacks one was… But I supposed these were the first Skills you could unlock…

The layout looked similar to the last Skill Sphere I’d examined. Except all the node placements were different. Then did they still get better as they spread up and out from the greens?

I looked closer to the top.

[ MYTHIC C.L.A.S.S. TOGGLE: ANIME / SHUKAI ]

Huh… The fuck was a shukai..?

[ MYTHIC C.L.A.S.S. TOGGLE: ANIME / FEELINGS ARE INTENSE ]

What did that even mean?

[ MYTHIC C.L.A.S.S. ACTION: ANIME / FULL COUNTER ]

Oooh, now we were talk-

Panicking the moment I realized what I’d just done, I jump back out of the Skill Sphere. Okay… Nothing disappeared. Nothing got confirmed either.

I was afraid I was about to do it on reflex again. And not to get it twisted… I did want this CLASS. But as much as I would’ve wanted something else? I didn’t know. I just thought an all-purpose counter to everything would’ve been cool to have. And badass. At least it sounded like it would be.

But that brought up another question. A Subclass called ‘Anime’? Really? It only just now occurred to me, but it didn’t make any sense. Why would this game even have that?

It… Wouldn’t. Not unless it actually knew what anime was. Like, really KNEW. Not unless it was… Accurate? But how? If all these Skills were based on cultural touchstones of pre-Collapse Earth, including one I’d supposedly added myself, presumably by having watched a lot of anime… How would the game even do that?

Probably the same way it did all the rest of this… Probably the same way I was confident the frozen atom constellation thing was actually called a ‘Skill Sphere’. I’d definitely never learned that phrase. I just sort of ‘knew’ it. And I was supposed to be, what, okay with that?

I took one more deep breath. “AND ANOTHER THING!!! THIS KNOWLEDGE-IMPLANTING MIND-FUCKERY BETTER NOT LITERALLY INCLUDE INCEPTION!!!”

Or else I was gonna…

I sighed. I’d probably never realize it was happening.

Well, if I did figure out that’s what was going on, I’d at least be annoying about it, if nothing else. “I solemnly swear…”

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Head in the game… I could do this.

Trying to tell myself how calm I was now, I still couldn’t help but feel like every Christmas in my whole life just came at once.

It was in this inadvisable state of mind that I risked another subconscious confirmation, re-entering my Shadow Clone’s radius to see the nodes again. There were so many though. How could I find… Wait, were any of these black?

I spun around twice before finally spotting nearly invisible shadowy node next to some green ones.

[ COMMON C.L.A.S.S. PASSIVE: SWORDSMAN / VIBRANIUM JAW ]

…What? “Well, fuck you too!”

I’d gotten all excited for that?

But just as I was about to start another of my signature indignant rants to nobody, my stomach clenched.

Around the upper-middle of the pack directly above the Vibranium Jaw Skill, there was another Black node. I’d zoned in on that first Black skill so hard that I didn’t even see that there were two. Three, actually. But only one this high up.

Now what was this skill called?

[ LEGENDARY C.L.A.S.S. PASSIVE: ANIME / SANTORYU ]

Oh.

Wait, No, FUCK!!!