Setup
I opened my eyes and looked around. Gone was my familiar office it had been replaced with a semi-clear blue platform that spread out in all directions as far as I could see. A few rotations around told me that it was the same all around me. I had been at work, even though this didn’t feel like a dream I figured I must have dozed off.
“Aren’t you going to pinch yourself to try and wake yourself up?” A voice said behind me. I spun back around, and now standing there was a woman. Not the most attractive woman I had dreamed about but still a solid 7 with nice curves. “Oh please I’m at least a 9.”
“Ah so we’re going with that kind of dream huh?” I asked.
“This is not a dream, and all my clothes are staying on, also you’re not dead either John,” she said.
“If this isn’t a dream and I’m still alive, what’s going on?” I asked.
“I pulled your conscious mind out of your body while you slept so that we could talk before everything gets tossed around,” she said.
“How is that different from dreaming?” I asked.
“Dreaming involves your unconscious mind watching home movies and bad porn,” she explained.
“Also, what was that about everything getting tossed around?” I asked.
“Now you’re asking the important questions,” she said. “First let me introduce myself. I am Newbina, the goddess of newbies.”
I got excited. “Is this one of those animes where I get dragged into another world to save it from a demonlord and get a harem of hot chicks dropped in my lap?”
“Nope, you’re staying right where you are,” Newbina said. “I’ll skip all the incorrect guessing about what’s going on and just tell you because time is short. Everything about your world is about to change, it’s being added to the Anti-Entropy System. It’s a thing we came up with to counteract the heat-death of the universe, you don’t need to know the specifics. Have you ever played video games? Of course I already know the answer to that. It’ll be a lot like one of those.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“You’ll have an interface you can access, it will tell you everything you need to know about things, yourself mostly. You’ll have stats, abilities, banes, blessings, feats, perks, powers, skills, spells, talents, and most relevant to you, classes and titles.”
“Why do I not like where this is going?”
“Because you suck. Anyway we randomly assigned starting classes to everybody on the planet over the age of 14 and you sir got a very, very, very rare one.”
“Can I reroll?”
“Why would you want to reroll, you have a very special gift now?”
“Special gift exactly, it sounds like I’m about to be the center of attention. I don’t want that.”
“But you were OK with being sent to another world, saving it from a demonlord and having a harem of hot chicks?”
“I was hoping to just help the girls see what’s really inside them the whole time and call the shots then retire to a small kingdom somewhere where I can just delegate everything to underlings and retire in peace.”
“You’re lazy,” she said crossing her arms in front of her.
“Damn skippy I’m lazy,” I said. “Why work hard? I’m never going to get rich no matter how hard I work, why not enjoy life?”
“I will pre-emptively weep for your world if you have the standard thought process among people on it. Anyway I had all kinds of useful information I was going to share with you, but you clearly won’t listen to me…”
“Woahwoahwoah,” I said interrupting her. “I didn’t say stop explaining.”
She was starting to slowly fade from sight. “Goodbye and good luck. You’ll need it.” She said waving as she vanished.
“Nonono,” I yelled jumping towards her and just barely missing her and vanished. “At least tell me if I respawn or not!” And just like that my sarcasm may have screwed me over real good.
“John, John, JOHN!” A screaming voice yelled at me as I was shaken awake.
I raised my head and took a quick look around. I was back in the IT office I worked at, although it was much darker than it usually was, the overhead lights were off and the familiar hum of the servers running was absent, also Jackie the offices assistant manager was standing over me and she looked pissed.
“Have you been asleep this whole time?” She yelled.
“Well, power outage, not much I can do. Figured I’ll be here most of the night fixing things up after the power comes back on so I may as well grab a quick nap now,” I said hoping that my guess about the power being out was right.
“The power outage is the least of our problems,” Jackie said. “Did you not hear the voice?”
“Never admit to having heard a voice,” I said.
“Damnit this is serious,” Jackie said slamming her hands on my desk.
I could sense that something was seriously wrong. The anger Jackie had of finding me asleep was starting to fade and was being replaced with concern. “OK what happened?”
“While you were asleep this booming voice was heard, saying we were all trapped in a video game or something and a bunch of us transformed into animal people and Steve took pretty much everybody else and left.” With each word she spoke her anger was being replaced with fear and I knew my ‘dream’ had been real. I found a skippable tutorial at the worst possible time.
Gearing Up
Jackie lead the way out of my office filling me in on what had happened. “After the changes to the people Steve rounded up everybody that was still human and left.”
I took a moment to look Jackie up and down, she looked the same as always from the rear, hair almost all the way down to her amazing ass. “You still look human,” I asked.
“I am,” Jackie said. “I’m just not dumb enough to go anywhere with Steve. Also the women that changed are terrified for the most part. I couldn’t just leave them alone.”
“Good call. Steve is an ego-maniac he sees all the men that went with him as fodder and all the women that went with him as breeding stock. You said women that changed, did any men change?”
“Only women here and we have no way of checking on the outside world. Powers out, phones don’t work anymore, cars don’t work either.”
“How bad were the changes?” I asked.
“Varies, Candice and Melissa grew dog and cat ears, claws and tails respectfully. Kelly grew some fangs and got really pale. Samantha grew like 3 feet put on 300 pounds of muscle and grew cow horns, her main problem is finding something to cover her breasts. Do. Not. Stare. Heather, Amanda and Beth got it bad though.”
“How bad?” I asked.
“Beth’s entire bottom half turned into a horse bottom half. She’s huge now she’s bumping into everything. Heather turned into a mermaid, thankfully she can still breathe but she can’t move around on her own. Amanda just kind of melted into a puddle of blue goo.” Jackie said.
“What?!”
“She seems to still be aware and trying to form herself into something and she hasn’t attacked anybody yet.”
“How is everybody mentally?” I asked.
“Scared. Why aren’t you?”
“I’m concerned.” I said. “But this is my time to shine, if it’s true we’re in a video game now I am so ready for this.”
“How can you possibly be ready for this?” Jackie asked.
“I have spent most of my life playing video games and my entire adult life preparing for a zombie apocalypse. Although this is not a zombie apocalypse there’s enough overlap in skills for there to be a bit of relevance. What do you bring to the table that qualifies you to be a leader?”
“My degree in business administration,” Jackie replied.
“That qualifies you to run a business not lead people in a life or death situation.” I said. “I’m the best choice for leader and you know it.”
Jackie pointed right at me, bringing her finger inches from my face. “I am in charge here. I value your input, but at the end of the day, I am in charge here. If you don’t like it, the elevators aren’t working, take the stairs.” With that she turned back around and started walking again.
We entered the main room of the office. Most of the cubicle walls were now knocked over and several computer monitors were on the floor as well. There was nobody in sight. “What happened here?” I asked.
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“Beth bumping into everything.” Jackie said quietly.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“Hiding in my office, when she transformed her clothes shredded.”
Further conversation was halted by a figure stepping out of the womens room. I looked over and saw Melissa, sure she had a set of cat ears now super sharp looking claws on her hands and a cat tail poking out from under her skirt. “You’re still here?”
“Yeah lazy mclazy here slept through the whole mess,” Jackie said.
“Did he change?” Melissa asked as though I wasn’t here.
“Nope still perfect in every way,” I said. “As much as I hate meetings we need to have one, all get on the same page about a lot of things.”
“Agreed,” Jackie said. “We can take a partition out of the walls of the meeting room and connect my office and HR to it so everybody can take part. Well except Amanda, but she can be in the room at least.”
It didn’t take long to gather everybody together, everybody had sure enough changed. In addition to the changes in Melissa, Samantha the cute little accounting girl was now hunched over in the corner so she didn’t bust through the ceiling holding a sweater in front of her chest to hide her breasts because her shirt had shredded in the change. She was 8 feet tall and now had a very muscularly build, she had a pair of cow horns poking out of her head above her ears, and a set of abs that you could grind meat on. Candice now had a set of wolf ears, massive scary looking claws, fangs in her mouth and a wolf tail, and was pacing around. Heather was still where she had been standing when her legs turned into a fish tail in the HR office and she had dragged herself over to the gap in the wall so she could listen and give input, her bright pink tail thrashed occasionally creating an echo. Amanda was in a bucket, a vaguely head shaped object poked out of the bucket, and in the middle of all the blue goo that made up her body now was a small red orb the size of a child's fist, which I suspected was her brain of sorts. Beth in addition to now being a centaur, had grown a few sizes shredding her clothes as well. I was beginning to think that whatever force had done this was a massive pervert. Kelly had much paler skin now and fangs sticking out of her mouth, given the fact that she had her back to the windows covering her face with her hands she was a vampire, apparently they can be in the sun they just don’t like it.
We had just finished going over our status screens I had explained most of what I saw, nothing to nonstandard for a typical RPG, and now we were looking at our inventories. We each had some kind of subspace pocket dimension that allowed us to store things, we each had two things in them, a starter box for our various classes, and a starter box for our various races.
I had a human and a titleist starter boxes, Jackie had a human and a paladin starter boxes, Candice had a wolfen and a rogue starter boxes, Beth had a centaur and an acolyte starter boxes, Kelly had a vampire and an apprentice starter boxes, Melissa had a felnid and a rogue starter boxes, Heather had a merfolk and a bard starter boxes, Samantha had a minotaur and a warrior starter boxes and Amanda had managed to materialize her two boxes a humanoid slime starter box and an apprentice starter box, although we had no idea how she was going to get her stuff out of them and only the person whose box it was could reach into it.
The girls had all opened their boxes, we didn’t find any real big surprises, everybody had food, water, HP, MP, stamina potions and a bedroll in their racial boxes, exceptions being Heather who got some kind waterproof hammock instead of a bedroll, Beth got a large skirt that could accommodate her huge size, and Kelly who got 5 vials of fresh blood instead of food and water and a small coffin that would expand in size when she put it down instead of a bedroll, inside their class boxes was a typical assortment of things that their classes would need, including gear and some misc consumables.
Now it was my turn, the contents of my human starter box was identical to Jackies, no surprise there. I now stared at my class box Titleist Starter Box, what the hell was a titleist. I opened it up and saw the now familiar glowing light inside the box and reached in an pulled out my first item. My first item was a long robe, “OK so a titleist is a clothie,” I said reading the item description out loud. “Baby Titleists First Robe, looks awesome but protects you from nothing more threatening than a stiff breeze. So I’m super squishy, back row for me.”
“Aw,” Samantha taunted from the corner. “Does the big strong man need us girls to protect him?”
“First off none of you are young enough to qualify as a girl anymore you’re all women. Second off,” I said pointing right at Samantha. “47 strength score remember? You don’t need protection from anything.”
“You know it.” Samantha said flexing her muscles with a big grin. She went from struggling to get the groceries in on her own to champion weightlifter levels of strength in an instant, she was understandably excited.
I reached into the box again and pulled out a thick book, “A book titled, Baby Titleists Guide to His First Titles.” I opened the book and briefly flipped through it, 418 pages and it looked like mostly boring jargon.” I went to reach into the box again but it had shrunk down to the size of a small jewelry box like the other ones had when they were empty it was now a Beginner Storage Box which provides 4 inventory slots when placed into an empty bag slot in your inventory. “What the hell no weapon?”
“Looks like we’re going to be doing all of the work,” Samantha said mockingly from the corner. “What exactly do you bring to this group anyway?”
“Knowledge and experience with video games.” I said. “Which you are all lacking.”
“His knowledge and experience will be invaluable,” Jackie said. “Plus it would be wrong to just kick him out. This whole situation despite being very, very strange is no different than regular work. We need to set a goal and work towards it. What do we need to do first?” Jackie asked looking at me.
“I need to pick my children up from daycare,” Candice said looking up. “I left them there on my way in.”
“Me too,” Melissa chimed in.
“My daughter,” Heather said.
“I think we need to make a fundamental decision right now,” I said. “Are we going to function as a group, or are some of us going to go our own separate ways?”
Everybody started eying each other until Candice spoke up. “I need to go get my children, I am not leaving them to fend for themselves. If you all aren’t going to help me with that then goodbye.”
“I for one vote for staying as a group,” I said. “In my opinion the benefits far outweigh the downsides. Also I agree that find your three’s children should be a priority. Does anybody disagree with my assessment so far?”
“I don’t see why I need to put my ass on the line to go find her son,” Kelly said. “It’s not my kid, why is it my problem?”
“Because if we’re going to function as a team we need to get into an ‘our’ mentality,” Jackie said. “We need to consider going to find their children our goal.”
“I guess,” Kelly said.
“OK,” Jackie said. “We have our first mission now.”
“Wrong,” I said. “You’re getting ahead of yourself.”
“What could possibly be more important than getting to our children?” Heather asked.
“What are you going to do swim there?” I asked. “You’re basically immobile and I’m going to go out on a limb and say we have more than one daycare to go to. Which daycare are we going to?”
Heather, Candice and Melissa each gave a different answer to which daycare their children were at.
“Exactly,” I said. “My proposal is as such. Beth, Heather, Kelly and Amanda stay here while the rest of us go on a brief scouting mission to find a solution to our transportation issues and to try and gather more information on what exactly is going on and how bad the societal collapse is.”
“Societal collapse?” Melissa asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means that things are broken right now,” I said. “For maximum survivability we should assume that no help is coming and we’re on our own. For all we know we may all end up back here in a month back to work like usual.” I added trying to minimize worry. “But we should prepare for the worst so we can handle things if they’re better than that.”
“OK we have a workable plan,” Jackie said. “Everybody that’s heading out meet at the stairs in five minutes. Do everything you need to do here before that, that includes bathroom breaks. Dismissed.” Jackie stood up and left the meeting room.
“Good call on the bathroom,” I said realizing I needed to pee. “Kelly, Beth, while we’re gone could you two look around for anything that could be useful for our journey. If you think there is even a chance that it could be useful, put it in a pile somewhere, we’ll cut down later based on what we find for transportation solutions. A map of the city is the most important thing you could possible find though.” Kelly and Beth nodded at my request.