John groaned as he stirred in his sleep. His body felt like it had been laid out flat and hadn’t been touched in a year. He had soreness going from his neck down to his feet. He had been out drinking the previous night. But there was no way he had gone that overboard. There were a good few hours he couldn’t recall however.
Pushing himself he tried to get into a sitting position. But he felt his body was restrained. Something was holding him on all sides. Like the world’s tightest tuck in.
Finally ready to face the worst part of a hangover. He opened his eyes and waited for the light to blind him. But to his surprise nothing of the sort happened. His vision was clear. And he wasn’t even seeing double. Looking down he saw that he was bundled by some kind of comforter. Trying to flex his muscles he found that there was something keeping the comforter around him in a vice.
Looking around he saw he was in a wooden room. There were circular windows up on the wall with yellow frames around them. Boxes and barrels were placed around the room. Was he in a storage room? Maybe he had gotten a bit too rowdy. And to be brought home he needed to be subdued. Seemed like a bit much. Though he couldn’t remember the previous night.
Finding his lack of information distressing. He closed his eyes again and attempted to brute force the recollection of the memories. He grabbed at the neural pathways formed from the previous night. And strained as he dug back deep into the alcohol clouded memories. This took a while as he didn’t even know what he was looking for. He began chanting in his mind. Think back. Think back. Just like in Louieville. We need to discover more about ourselves. That last sentence brought up something that John would have never expected. Gray boxes appeared in his vision. That would be weird enough. But instead of becoming all that she could see. The boxes were transparent. It was like they were a filter over his vision. And only lightly obscured his vision. Which strangely made it more confusing than if it took all over all his vision.
Name: Buggy
Species: Human
Age: 14
Hp: 60/60
Stamina: 65/70
Level: 3
Exp: 4,900 / 6,000
Power
Speed
Body
Will
Brains
Instinct
Personality
Luck
Effective
7
6
6
5
5
5
8
10
Total
7
6
6
5
5
5
8.4
9.9
With the gray boxes filling his vision he stammered confusingly as he tried to find a word to explain his current emotional state. It took him a second of soul searching. But he found the perfect option! “Waaaagh!” He screeched out in a loud shriek of a yell. It might have just been his imagination. But his voice sounded a lot more gravely than he remembered. His eyes glazed over the screen currently in his field of view.
Things started to click as he looked over the boxes. This was a status page. A very brief one. But something he was familiar with. He must have gotten drunk and fell asleep with his vr headset on. Not recommended. But for sure not the worst thing he fell asleep inside of. About to reach for the log off button mentally. He remembered his current situation. And figured this wouldn’t be the best place to leave off.
Ready to get the headset off of himself he rocked his body side to side. Rolling himself onto his front. Now that he was in the proper position he could begin inchworming his way to the door. Wiggling himself so he was lined up with the open door. John then lifted his knees into the air. And brought them forward to where his chest was. Then by lifting up his head and straightening out. He had successfully moved forward! A full 4 inches closer to the door.
John repeated this motion until he was at the door. Smiling at his accomplishment. His breath was heavy. Checking his status page he had used a significant portion of his stamina. It was strange that he also felt so exhausted. Usually in his games he wouldn’t actually feel his muscles getting actively exhausted. But he certainly felt it right now. His legs and his upper body throbbed with pain as he moved across the floor. “Eh! Almost there!” With another movement of his body his head was outside of the room. He could see the hallway that was right outside.
To the left he could see a hallway made of wood. He saw a door at the end of the hallway. There wasn’t anything interesting down that way that he could see. Turning his head one hundred and eighty degrees he looked to see what was down the other side of the highway. His vision was filled by a pair of red boots. He blinked a few times. He was curious as to what game designer would just put a pair of boots in the middle of a walkway. He looked up to see if he could see anything past them. But all he could see were a pair of red pants. Starting to understand what was going on he looked up higher. He saw a chest wearing a white button up shirt with the chest open. A head looked down at him past a tray. With messy red hair and a strawhat on top of the head. John stammered a bit as he realized who he was looking at. “S-shanks?”
The boy blinked twice before leaning over forward causing him to pour out some of the liquid in the bowl he was carrying. Unfortunately for John that liquid was hot soup. “Buggy? What are you doing out of bed?”
John of course had a perfectly reasonable answer for the question. “Yeaaaaawh!” The hot liquid pouring onto his face caused John to spasm in his restraint. Leading to the most dangerous interpretation of the worm to ever be performed. “Aaah! You bastard!” Though it seemed mostly insignificant. John took several points of damage from the hot liquid. It even triggered a prompt.
You have been hit with ‘Hot Soup’. You have taken 6 points of damage from this broth.
Realizing he was spilling the soup the boy did a swoop forward and up with the tray he was carrying. Getting the bowl back away from the edge. “Ah! I‘m sorry Buggy!”
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“Shut it! You could have killed me with that stuff!” John ended up on his back after his violent thrashing.
Before he could say another insult Shanks had picked him up by the back of the blanket. And brought him back to the bed roll he was on originally. “I wish you’d give up trying to follow the rest of them. Crocus said if you did too much that this fever could kill you!” There was genuine worry in the npcs voice. John figured they must have gotten the original actors to reprise their roles.
He then blinked as he laid on the bed. He had played the VR One Piece game before. And it used the characters from the show very sparingly. There wasn’t a section with Shanks in it before. And why was he kept being referred to as Buggy? Remembering the status screen he had looked at before. He focused his efforts to pull it back into his focus.
This time it took no time to pull up his status page.
Name: Buggy
Species: Human
Age: 14
Hp: 44/60
Stamina: 68/70
Level: 3
Exp: 4,900 / 6,000
Power
Speed
Body
Will
Brains
Instinct
Personality
Luck
Effective
7
6
6
5
5
5
8
10
Total
7
6
6
5
5
5
8.4
9.9
He took his time examining the page this time. But still found the opaque nature of the boxes to be disorienting still.
There were several interesting things now that he was going over the boxes closer. Firstly his name confirmed that he was the character Buggy. Had he downloaded some kind of mod to put himself in Buggy’s shoes? He had seen some mods do that. But he could never figure out how to get them to work properly. So the idea that drunk him had gotten the knack was…mostly unbelievable. Once in a while drunk John got a pretty big W.
Next were his stats. If this was Drunk John’s doing…then this was certainly not a W for him. The heavy investment into luck made him want to give a deep facepalm. This save had basically been ruined. His sheet had taken the two stats that did the least…and put all of his points into them.
Or at least…that’s what he thought. The boxes below the “Effective” boxes told a different story. His total luck was 9.9. And his effective Personality was 8.4. How had he gotten an uneven stat total? There wasn’t any info on what was causing the strange numbers. And seeing that he wasn’t going to get anywhere here. He decided to further explore his character sheet.
Looking at the bottom of his sheet he saw a few boxes at the bottom of the sheet. Going from left to right they were labeled. Character Sheet, Skills, Abilities, and Techniques. The Techniques box was totally grayed out. While on the other side the Character Sheet tab was only grayed out in the box. And the outline was the same white color as the other two.
He was about to start flipping through the tabs. But the Shanks npc interrupted his train of thought from his seat next to his laying form.
“Come on, Buggy. You can’t just mope all day. Have some of this soup. Don’t worry I ate the one I spilled.” Taking a spoon Shanks filled it up with soup. And held it out for John to eat.
Seeing this John blinked and his character sheet went away. He opened his mouth to say that he wasn’t hungry. But right at that moment his stomach let out a loud growl. The betrayal of his body made John hold his mouth open as he stammered.
Shanks just laughed. “Eh-haha! Looks like you can’t lie anymore Buggy. Your body’s had it up to here with your stubbornness!”
“Shut it! I’m not stubborn at all, you moron! And I don’t need any of your so-” Before he could finish the sentence. Shanks had shoved a spoonful of the hot soup into his mouth. As the spoon came out Buggy felt it all hit his tongue at once. “Yaaah!” The soup burned his soft tongue. Causing him to yell out more. And receiving another prompt.
‘Hot Soup’ has done 1 point of damage.
John took some time to blow out to cool off his mouth. And Shanks just kept laughing at him. “This isn’t funny! You’re gonna kill me with that soup!”
Shanks wiped a tear from his eye and set the tray down. “Alright. Alright. I’ll keep the evil soup away from you, Buggy.” Leaning back next to the makeshift bed. Shanks slowly crossed his leg as he got comfortable. “Are you sure you’re ok? You seem a little off today. Are you sure you haven’t contracted some kind of brain disease?”
John was about to respond to the comment. But when he turned his head to look at the young Shanks. An irrational annoyance filled his mind. It was like just existing in his vision made him mad. His initial dismissal response evolved in that moment and escalated quickly. "Some nerve you got. At least my hair isn't clown red!" Heat rose in his voice at the end of his sentence.
Shanks looked at what he thought was Buggy with shock. But it quickly turned into his own form of annoyance. "Who are you calling a clown? Did you forget about your big red nose?"
For some reason John just couldn’t let this comment stand. He felt anger crawl up through his throat and attempt to claw out the little red hair bastard’s eyes. He settled for the greatest insult that was close to his heart. “You flashy moron! Who are you calling a big nose?” Ouch. Swing and a miss. He had no idea why that was the first thing that came to his mind. It didn’t even sound like something he would say.
Shanks responded by grabbing the small bit of his shirt that poked out of the chinese pillow trap John was stuck in. Lifting him up and staring down at him. Looking back up into the eyes of the red head. John saw a brotherly rage that he recognized for some strange reason. “You dumbass! All I tried to do was feed you soup! Why do you have to be so difficult? Crocus said if you didn’t get your rest. You could have died from that disease you caught!”
John blinked twice as he stared back at the other kid. Though before his anger could die any. He snapped right back. “Come on! You really believe that? Nothing can take me down. I’m Buggy! Unlike you nothing can phase me. I’m invinci-” Interrupting his own grand speech. His own stomach chimed in to let both of the boys know that he was hungry! Leaving John to stammer as he stared back at Shanks with a look of embarrassment.
“Dahaha!” Shanks leaned back as he listened to Buggy’s stomach betray him. “Invincible, huh? Looks like you’ve been beaten by a bowl of soup! Dahahaha!”
Those words sent his emotional state into a nose dive. The embarrassment fed into it’s parent emotion of anger. Causing a vein to swell on John’s forehead. The pillow roll holding him back showed indents of his limbs pushing out against the edges. Then a few more bulges showed on the side. And just as Shanks tried to calm down his friend.
The pillow bursted open. Being torn into tiny shreds. Giving way to John’s limbs flying off to different corners of the room in a single burst of power. “You flashy idiot! There’s no way i’d let you beat me with soup!”
Shanks fell back as Buggy bursted open from the homemade sleeping bag. “B-buggy!”
John blinked as he regained control of his senses. He had no idea what kept coming over him. He hadn’t had this much trouble getting a handle on his emotions sense he was a teenager.
Afirming his emotional control. He had to blink again as he looked around. John was up near the ceiling. Weirder he looked around and saw strange chunks around the room. He went to scratch his head. But found his hand wasn’t anywhere near where it should have been. Turning his head to try and find his limb. He saw his arm floating towards him. Disconnected from his body. And floating in mid air. John’s reaction wasn’t anything more than any other regular person would.
“AAAAAAAAAH!” A shrill scream came out of his mouth. The arm he was screaming at had stopped and raised itself as if it was outstreched upwards on his body. On instinct he attempted to get away from the arm.
But as he zipped backwards the thought occured to him. How was he moving this high in the air? He looked down and saw no body connected to his neck. This sent John into another scream. This time with a large stream of tears coming down his eyes. “What’s going on?”
Back on the ground Shanks looked up into the air in suprise. The pieces that Buggy had seperated into flew around the room in random patterns. Not only had Shanks never seen his friend use his ability so freely. But also just the day previous the blue haired idiot had been as sick as a dog.
His red nose had been glowing a faint soft red. He had barley been able to eat solid foods. It was especially bad last night. Buggy’s temperature had soared into the low hundred tens. And Shanks was afraid that the red nosed doofus wouldn’t make it. But Buggy had seemed to recover over night.
“Buggy you lucky son of a bi-” Shanks had been interupted by the loud scream Buggy let out upon seeing his arm. Rasing an eyebrow Shanks stood up and tried to get his freind’s attention. “Buggy.” He waited a few seconds before repeating his call. “Buggy!” Looking up with a glare he saw that Buggy had been freaking out soley because his body was detached.
It was then that Shanks became worried about his freinds well being again. He didn’t know how to get the attention of his friend. Until he looked over and saw Buggy’s legs trying to run away from…himself. Shanks took up a sprint making his way to the pair of legs.
“BUGGY!” Accompanied by his howl Shanks reared up his leg and swung to his Buggy in his balls. The impact sent pain all throughout Buggy’s body. Even though his pieces were all across the room. And several feet away from each other.
The hit had stopped Buggy’s active movment of his body. But the momentum he had already put behind his body pieces continued to move his body parts with small dips in height. The most unfortunate part of his body for this to happen to was his head. Which smacked against a port hole. Nearly knocking out Buggy. All of his body parts fell to the ground. Laying on the ground. John’s sobs became voiceless. And his health sat near empty.
The kick to his balls and the hit to the back of his head left him in the single digits of health. Deciding that whatever was going on. Wasn’t worth this kind of pain. John mentally called for the menu to his vr system. But nothing came. Trying to pull up the system data just pulled up his stat page again.
It then came crashing down onto John. He wasn’t playing a video game.