Lucas was hyped, really, really hyped. He was overjoyed, and for sure he wasn't the only one out there like that, it was, after all, the release of the first functional Full Dive VR system. Lucas did manage to get access to a Beta version of a game, the hardware was surprisingly the easiest part to make, according to SFM, the creators of FDVR, but a game itself was hard to make, the Beta could be in theory dangerous but something like that wasn't enough to make him scared, it was just amazing. He booted up his Full Drive, a terrible play on words which a lot of people cringed at when it was announced, and loaded up Drearie, one of the select games that had been released at the same time, he was greeted by an interface he was familiar with.

Welcome to Drearie

Your character model is now being loaded

Although you could edit character models in-game, models made from scratch had to be done before the game was booted up. Of course, included his, which he spent over three hours working on, after all the game's tool was so big you were sure to make a unique model. The model Lucas made wasn't too far away from his real appearance, his body type and face were mostly the same, he did change the hairstyle quite a bit, it was a short ponytail with two long strands on the front, and the color was completely unnatural, a deep purple with small touches of a lighter one. He wasn't sure if he would keep it that way but he had fun making it, adding small details like his tattoo under his left eye and all of that.

After being lost in thought about his character model he was so proud of a text box suddenly appeared.

You character model has been loaded.

Please enter your username:

He thought for a bit, during Beta Lucas went by the name of "LS", he just picked the first and last letters of his name, he didn't put much thought into it since it wasn't going to be permanent anyway. Not to fret, he had time to think about this, and he did so for the past month or so and had settled at the following, "Angelus", which he entered without a worry. Then everything went white.

Lucas was now standing, which he wasn't before, it was more like floating in emptiness. He felt the grass on his bare feet and the sun on his face, it was standard for a freshly made character, and all players were limited to one character, across all game since it was all made by the same company, to start off in simple gear, it was always white, the only difference is that men wore shorts and a shirt, and women a dress that went just under the knees. Lucas looked up at the sky covering his eyes from the sun and took a deep breath, then he noticed something strange and looked at his hand, it was quite slim, maybe he messed up at the character creation, Lucas wondered, but looking down at his hand things started to get stranger at his eyes focused not at his hand but at his clothing, he was wearing a dress.

"What.", Lucas said completely speechless apart from that one word.

He didn't know what he felt, anger, disappointment, confusion. Well, it was mostly confusion, topped with a lot of other emotions, how could have this happened, he clearly did not make this character.

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"Where is the tutorial sign, maybe that will clear things up", Lucas said looking around, "Oh, there it is".

"Welcome to Drearie, please follow the pathway, you will encounter NPCs that will help you in your journey". below that, it could be read "For the five who had it happen to them, know it is not a bug"

"Quite vague, but it was to be this, anyway it is not a bug huh, well I guess I can play along until I find a way to get it fixed, I should at least live the tutorial area, on second thought I also should make myself fully aware of my new appearance", he slid his index finger down which caused a window to appear.

It was his inventory, although completely empty, apart from the slot for the top dressing equipment which was in use, while the slot for the bottom part was blocked off with a red line, that because the dress was a piece of equipment that required both slots to be used.

Lucas slid his finger down again, this time it displayed his character model alone, in a smaller window, he or rather she was now clearly a girl. More surprisingly, her character model seemed to be based on the one she had created. Even the small tattoo she had made was still there. Overall she seemed to be shorter than before, the ponytail was gone, and her hair was quite long, but with the same colors.

"Well, I guess I look nice? At least I can tell it was indeed not a bug."

She walked past all the NPCs that tried to teach her how to play the game, and every single one frowned when she did that, she did know how to play the game but the game's AI was top quality and was indistinguishable from a real person, so it did get annoyed at that in a certain way.

She was now confronted by a giant marble board that had four paintings in it, one for each basic class, the game worked around three class tiers, the first one consisted as a base class that worked as a start for each character. Tier 2 classes acquired at level ten were the core classes, and those already had a bit more variety than the base four, but then came the Tier 3 classes which were in abundance. They had around two times the amount of the tier two classes but worked as a complementary class, with the function of smoothing the gameplay and making it more unique.

Back in Beta, Lucas used mostly the Spell Binder Tier 2 class, which worked around improving your weapons with spells. It was quite fun for her back then but Lucas was unsure if she wanted to stay playing that one class. She jumped into the painting that displayed a man rising his hand up in the air with fire coming out of its palm, it was the magician class, she did intend on using offensive magic, she could think about the Tier 2 classes at level 10.

She appeared at the other side reclothed, now wearing shorts that granted her good mobility as well as a white shirt, that topped off with a black hooded cape, and most importantly a pair of simple shoes. Just standard starting magician equipment, so she didn't give it much thought and headed to the city hall, the main area for getting quests, this was the starting city's hall so it only had starter quests, apart from a select few which were for end game players, Lucas stood at the entrance.

"There is no way I am playing this before I can be sure I can't change this model.", although you could edit your model, you couldn't change its gender, actually, normally you can't use models from the opposite gender at all, which made all of this stranger. "I suppose I will send a ticket complaining about this, maybe they will get it fixed". Lucas slid her finger down again and then to the left which displayed a few options, among them one that wrote "Log Off", she tapped it and everything went black.

Lucas reached for his head and removed the Full Drive, opening his eyes to the real world, he instantly headed to his computer and typed out the URL for SFM support, and sent a ticket asking for help. After that Lucas fell on his bed and went to sleep, he might have been calm about it but being turn into a girl, even in VR, was stressing, although honestly, it was mostly because the model he spent so much time on was now so different.