Collide Gamer

Fianna stared at the piece of paper in front of her. Boxes filled with boxes and circles and letters, some of them even arranged into words, formed a list of skills, abilities and parameters she scarcely understood. ‘I have no idea how to play this.’

Refusing to be the one to ask stupid questions, she used the Stat-granted intelligence of hers to commit the various terms to memory. After that, it was a simple matter of waiting for them to be mentioned.

“I always wanted to play this,” Lu Zhi declared.

The most powerful human woman in the world, if not the most powerful woman period, was the picture of a nerdy tomboy. Her hair was tied back in a low ponytail, her tongue poked out of her green lips, while she enthusiastically scribbled numbers into boxes next to boxes.

Fianna scanned the cheat sheet of steps for character creation. Going down it was actually pretty simple. What was not was selecting from the vast variety of Feats presented to her.

“U-uhm, if you’re having trouble looking through everything, h-here’s a, uhm… summary of the best beginner Feats for your chosen class,” Gnome said, sliding a helpful shortlist over to her.

“Thank you,” Fianna responded. ‘Was that too curtly?’ she wondered, then stayed silent when she did not find an answer in time. ‘If I add a ‘very much’ now it will be too awkward.’

Fianna concentrated on what was in front of her. That was how she preferred to live her life: ducks in a row and quiet harmony. No need to rock the boat, she could figure 99% of things out herself. When help was offered, she would take it. When help was needed and she could provide it, she would do so. Simple assumptions for the civilian day by day.

In the field, she would fulfil her mission. Singular focus, precise strikes, two pillars of her style of assassination that had recently found an addition: trust in comrades.

It had been a difficult thing to get used to, the idea that she could rely on someone else. As a mercenary, she had operated in solo missions. The few times others had served as tactical distractions for her, she considered them succeeding a potential bonus, not the crux of her operation. That mindset had served her well when she had operated with brutes and midwits. The rıghtful source is n0velfire.net

This new fighting force she was a part of was, without a doubt, the most well-coordinated engine of annihilation in the world. Being powerful had revealed to Fianna just how insignificant she had been before.

Once she had experienced what it was like to be part of a group of people of that power, she realized how insignificant even most other powers were. A regimental pride beat in her heart whenever she considered that she had been one to serve John Newman alongside the others. The greatest of men in the world, risen from little to govern with justice in his heart. One who set respectable boundaries in a chaotic world.

Fianna had thought she preferred working alone. Now she was starting to suspect she had never known what having competent help felt like.

Pledging her service to Fusion had been the best decision of her life, all due to the vision, wisdom, and care of one man.

“You know you have paper in front of you, right?” John asked.

“Yeah, and? You’re way more fun to draw on, way, way, way more!” Sylph scribbled something on the back of the Gamer’s hand. Lines from a ballpoint joined the overlapping display of the various marks on his fingers and wrist. In a zap, her hand moved to his cheek, quickly drawing a cute little heart there.

‘Gaia, that is adorable,’ Fianna thought, watching the ruler of the nation and her affection be so… silly. He tried his best to look annoyed by the energetic bunny, but the smile stayed in his eyes and the arm around her. Sylph was just so cute too. Fianna preferred to keep her emotions under three layers of vault doors. Sylph was the complete opposite and that made her enticing in her own way.

Fianna hid her blush by lowering her gaze and following the instructions to finish up her character. Salamander eventually pulled on Sylph’s hair to make her do the same. Ten minutes later, Gnome cleared her throat. “Everyone done?”

“Indeed,” John confirmed.

Fianna’s left tiger ear flicked. His voice sent wanton shudders down her spine. To sound that smooth and sexy was just unfair. How had she even resisted this pull for this long? There was nothing about this man that was not enticing. Which was not too surprising, he had the expectations of 25 women to meet. Fianna’s tastes were highly orthodox.

‘I am quite dull in that regard,’ she thought of herself, neutrally.

Gnome collected their character sheets, then went through them one after another. “Interesting, interesting…” she mumbled enigmatically, then handed the sheets back. “Let’s do the introductions in the game… let’s go and… see what Gaia has planned?”

“You’re the boss, big rock,” Salamander stated.

“T-then… I say we go! Umu!”

‘Adorable,’ Fianna thought once more, keeping her face straight.

They moved from the living room to the Gate of Light that marked the end of the Intermediary Barrier and the beginning of the darkness that could be filled with a regular Illusion Barrier. Except there was a purple mantle hovering in that darkness. A window hovering above it spelled out the words: Game Master’s Mantle.

“Well, we all know who that goes to,” John said.

“Y-yeah… Umu!” Gnome pumped her fists in an attempt to give herself more courage. Then, she strutted towards the mantle, plucked it out of the air and then put it over her dress of white and blue ice flowers. The darkness around rippled, a dark pond in motion. “Okay… I see… Nobody panic, I’ll just… disappear!”

Gnome popped out of existence. Fianna found that this sight was even less surprising to her than it had been just a few weeks ago. She was a child of the Abyss, she was used to supernatural occurrences. Immediate dematerialization was quite a paygrade above what she had been exposed to before her employment in Nightfall. Her realm had been that of people throwing fireballs the strength of grenades. Her limited involvement in the Macuil confrontation and then the Lorylim war had exposed her to many greater displays.

Also spending a few days with Nia desensitized one to such surprises.

“Test, test?”

“We can hear you,” John said.

“Loud and clear, very loud, very clear! Beautiful, beautiful sky voice! Very cute!” Sylph babbled

“Should I consider it sacrilege that one speaks to me from the heavens?” the Heavenly Jade Empress wondered.

“Oh, Mother Earth, I’ll just… lower myself to down here!” The voice of the season elemental shifted from above to below.

Lu Zhi laughed and adjusted her loose top. It was a simple white thing, hanging over her casually, hiding much of her waist but not enough for Fianna’s gaze to always stay away from the thighs clad in yoga pants and the hint of perfect ass above them. “I was teasing you, Gnomey.”

“O-oh, okay… ehem…”

“Relax and do your thing, boss rock,” Salamander encouraged. “We’re burning with anticipation down here. Oh… heh… burning… get it? Because I am… yeah, you get it.”

Gnome cleared her throat, then began her narration. Her voice, usually on the brink of, if not in the middle of, a stutter was suddenly even, confident and controlled. “You find yourself at a lakeside village.” The void pulsed and was replaced with the scene she described. A large lake, distant mountains, and standard fantasy wooden houses. “The village is quite wealthy, from what you can see. Cobblestone foundations and small stacks of firewood are the first signs. After that it is the general pudginess of the locals, everyone has a good bit of chunkiness to them. The biggest sign of wealth, however, is the large church, whose belltower rises far above even the tallest roofs in the village. You arrive from the northern road. The morning sun reflects on the surface of the lake.”

Fianna found herself transported to the described position, looking at the bright surface of the water.

“Please, describe your characters now. Sylph first, then John, Salamander, Fianna, and Lulu last.”

“I am Pithy, a halfling from the distant Burrowburroughs! I took to the streets because my parents wanted to marry me off to a fat, lazy old guy and I was, like, noooooooo and they were, like, yeeeeeeeeees, so I ran away! I have since made a living stealing coins from evil people and just being very, very, very cute and lucky!”

As Sylph described herself, her form changed. Her nudity was replaced with a leather outfit consisting of lots of belts holding many pouches. Her bunny ears disappeared, her pointy ears became rounded, as did her overall stature. The already short woman was compressed down to a stature of 1,20 metres, boobs and butt growing a bit during the journey. Her incredibly long mane of green shortened to the level of her lower back, then tied itself up in a high ponytail. Her face, however, remained unmistakably the same.

“Shortstack Sylph achieved, let’s go!” Pithy squeaked happily.

“My name… is Soggo,” John introduced himself, a hint of embarrassment in his voice.

Salamander immediately caught that. “Aww, someone shy?”

“Introducing my character is always my least favourite part of these games,” John returned. “It makes me feel self-conscious. Now shut up and let me get through this please?”

“I’ll allow it,” the apocalypse elemental teased.

“Right… Soggo is… I am a slime paladin of the Order of the Clear Waters. From the moment I was born in the Holy Spring of Tabitathia, my destiny was clear and I have been following the holy commandments of the goddess Aqua ever since.”

“The useless one?” Lu Zhi asked.

“I still have not watched Konosuba.”

“What?! How can I marry you when you haven’t watched Konosuba?!”

“We walk up to the altar and you say, ‘Yes, I will.’”

“Impossibru!”

Fianna followed the banter with a light smirk. It was enjoyable to stand next to people she actually liked having fun. The urge to participate in the conversation was muted. She would, if she had anything of import to say, raise her voice.

For the moment, she was too intrigued with John’s new appearance. He had worn a casual outfit before, all of which was now replaced with a tight-fitting armour that combined pieces of plate and leather. It was form over function, with a big window for his rippling abs, but that did not matter quite as much since the body inside the armour was liquid, consisting of an azure goo. Where Sylph had scribbled on him, those lines had turned into pink images, joining the deep blue Lover’s Will marks.

Soggo wobbled left to right. “So, this is what Undine feels like?” he wondered.

Attention shifted to Salamander, who let her shoulders hang and her back lurch. She spoke in a dramatically pessimistic tone of voice. “I guess I’m Spethica… I’m an undead Warlock, wielding the power of the Mistress of Graves in my task to bring an end to all efforts that distort the balance between the living and the dead.”

“Wouldn’t I have to attack her?” John asked, out of character.

“She’s an emissary of the goddess of the afterlife and thus a sanctioned undead, here to make sure no one else reanimates the dead with ill intent. You would still clash on some religious outlooks, though, and you can dislike her on principle. That’s your decision to make.”

“Noted,” John said.

While they talked, a tattered cloak covered Salamander’s form. Her skin went from red to a palish green, her body markings shifted from jagged lines to deep grey runes. Deep rings under her eyes suggested that she had not slept in years. Despite that, she was more goth than undead appearing.

“I am noticing that they all ended up very attractive,” Fianna stated.

“Uhm, uh… I… like GMing attractive people so I may have messed with the descriptions for player races.”

“Even if I had the energy for it, I would not complain,” Spethica groaned, her enormous tits jiggling beneath her robe. A long staff appeared in her hands, giving her hunched figure something to support itself. “Your turn.”

“My name is Anne. I am a human fighter.” Fianna felt the changes immediately. All of the acuteness to her senses she had gained since becoming the Cardinal Chosen were stripped away and then some. Even the Innate Ability she had before was dulled to the point of non-existence, until she was barely a superhuman anymore. In the back of her mind, she could sense her character sheet and the capacities she had written on it.

“Daring, aren’t we?” Salamander teased.

“This is my first time playing something like this.” Fianna held her hand out and closed it around the bow that appeared there. She put the weapon over her chest in the typical fantasy fashion. The tight leather armour she wore miraculously did not creak or squeak at all. “I chose something straightforward.”

“A wise decision,” John agreed with her.

“Alright, time for me,” Lu Zhi spread out her arms. “I’m Terzia, a kobold!” Like Sylph before, the Heavenly Jade Empress shrunk down. She stopped just a little taller than the halfling, with green scales going up and down her limbs. Her legs had turned digitigrade, her fingers ended in sturdy, thick claws, and her teeth had become much, much sharper. Four backwards pointed horns grew behind her pointy ears. “A kobold berserker,” she added with a sharp grin. “Coming down from the mountains on the mission of my master, the Dragon of Necessary Deeds, Dorathrox. You have my aid in killing the enemies of shinies.”

“Wonderful, everyone’s been introduced,” Gnome spoke from below. “Now, onto your mission…”