Tiny stretches awake in the morning, their body feeling slightly rusty from growing pains and various other issues that only ever seem to crop up as soon as you turn seventeen. It had felt like a blessedly routine day for them, that is until a very not routine lock of hair flopped into their field of view.

“What the fuck?” They ask nobody as they inspect the lock of purple hair. long purple hair. As they stand they feel something just as unfamiliar as the hair shift on their shoulder. It sends a shiver due to the unfamiliarity.

They reach up to grab it immediately and feel their old AR headset.

Their old AR headset that they never wear. That their sister is the only one who knows about it.

“I’m going to kill my sister.” Tiny sighs internally as they breathe in and then shout. “SAAAAAAAARYN!”

It takes a few, but eventually Tiny hears the stomping of their sister’s feet. Then Saryn bursts into the room.

Their sister had the audacity to tilt her head. “Who’re you?”

“… Who am I?” Tiny asks. “Who am I?”

Saryn then holds her hands up in surrender. “Sorry, Tiny.” She gives up on the prank as her sibling looks like they might actually commit homicide.

“You can apologize by telling me how to turn this off.” Tiny’s eyebrow twitches.

Jims pops his head in “Just say ‘disable all apps’.” Jims says. “That should completely turn off all the effects.”

“Disable all apps” Tiny says, and is immediately confused by the weird pain in their chest when they see their arms return to normal. And their chest… recede. “Seriously, Saryn?” They ask rhetorically. “Using an illusion app to make me look and sound female?”

Tiny tiredly looks around their room, partially to feel out their neck and make sure it doesn’t have cricks.

Saryn lowers her head in apology. “Sorry, Tiny. I needed to talk with you today, and even a sleep deprived brick knows you don’t exactly enjoy leaving your room during the summer.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Tiny hisses lowly. “So why do you need me to leave my room?”

“… I kinda don’t?” Saryn tilts her head and scratches her ear. “Uh, we wanted to.. Ugh, sorry Jims, gonna let you handle this.” Saryn steps back and lets Jims come into the room first.

Tiny just shakes their head with an eyeroll. “You guys want to do something with me, and you’re pretty sure that I won’t accept under normal circumstances. Jims has the Best Friend Card right now so he’s able to force me to do any one thing so long as it isn’t disgusting or whatever. Just tell me what it is already.”

“We want to play a VR game with you. The recent one, uh, New Star Online?” Jims asks, looking hopeful.

Tiny sits on their bed with a sigh. “You both know I hate VR games and the like. Even the setup process grosses me out.”

Saryn seems to gain a second wind from hearing this. “The setup for this game actually isn’t bad at all. You said that you found it icky that they scanned your whole body, right?”

Saryn neglects to mention that she has a theory as to why, and barrels right along. “The game runs on it’s own system and only scans the position of your eyes on your head.”

Tiny perks up slightly at this, and while sighing for possibly the fifth time today, they give Jims a grabby motion. “I’m taking the BFC.”

Jims sighs, having seen this coming, he pulls what looks like a card collection game card out of his wallet and passes it over to Tiny.

The card is labeled and laminated.

|Best Friend Card|
|The card holder can force the person they give this card to to perform one action, unless said action is disagreeable to the person it is given to. EX. Anything sexual, doing homework for the card user, etc. If the card is used and an item required to complete the action is not available, card user must provide the item.|

Tiny then taps the side of the low table in their room, activating the holograms on it. “Alright, lay the exposition on me.” They say, sitting down north of the entrance to their room. Saryn and Jims enter and sit down to Tiny’s left and right.

Saryn starts them off, dragging a website into the holograms in the air and flicking it Tiny’s way, it's the main site for the game. “New Star Online, or NSO, is a VRMMO that launched last year. It depicts a world where things just... happen. I'm not exactly a lore nerd, but basically it's a new world created by several gods to serve as a melting pot of several other worlds. The players are called 'Newcomers' until they've had their character around for an in-game year, which is about six months our time. in which case the NPCs start calling the players generic 'Adventurers' You can opt to always be called Newcomer, since some just hate being called adventurer all the time. Or you may opt to be called by your title."

"There are a few ways to start the game." Jims continues. "One, you can play a tutorial by asking the NPC in your Church for help." He flicks three separate tabs Tiny's way. "Two, you can immediately just go ham and trial by fire yourself and three, you can ask a friend for help. All three give a basic quest or two. Trial by fire and Friend Tutorial both give a hunting quest and a gathering quest each."

"Speaking of hunting, since the game is played by so many people, the areas outside of cities and towns are instanced. The transition can be jarring but once you get used to it it's not really a problem. That also means that you can just run into a town or city if you accidentally drag too many mobs." Saryn picks up. Flicking another tab to Tiny's side of the table.

Jims seems to think for a second before flicking yet another tab Tiny's way. "And finally is the character creation and login process. First off they only really scan your face so you don't end up being unable to see properly and stuff like that. Unlike a lot of other games, you can create whatever character you wish, but, there's only one character creation slot. You do have one other slot though, and that is the AI Created Character"

Tiny reads the page that Jims sent their way.

-AICC-
The AI Created Character, or AICC is one of our gifts to you, for playing our game and one of our many apologies for having to monitor all brain activity.
It works via the Character Creator AIs, They read your brain activity and deduce exactly what you would find most fun to play as in this game. Some exceptions may apply, as not all people play games for fun.
The AICC cannot be deleted to create a new character. It will likely always remain the same, due to the AI running the program. You may reroll the AICC, as in reset all of your levels back to square one, but its appearance, race and class will always remain the same, some exceptions may apply, like extreme trauma changing a person.
The AICC can be a number of very special races and classes that the PCC or Player Created Character, cannot.
---

"Wait, this game monitors all brain activity? why?"  Tiny asks, slightly scared of that notion.

"Well..." Saryn starts, "The Developers of this thing, I think they're called Integra or something, they made the VR tech the game operates on, as well as a lot of other VR devices like my 'coffin'." She sarcastically says the word that her dad calls her VR pod. "They really seem to dislike what they have to do in order to make sure that their player base is safe. The hardware for NSO is cheap as dirt, but comes at the cost of not being able to see outside the pod in order to ensure the user is safe. Mostly because the hardware isn't a pod at all, its basically an AR headset with eye contacts. You can even download other apps on it, though the only game that it can play is NSO. Other things can run it, like my pod, but they made the headset because and I quote 'The game feels much better when played with the headset'"

Tiny looks at her sister, unconvinced. "You do realize that makes them sound fishy as all hell, right?"

Jims snorts. "The reason Saryn trusts them is probably because of the huge ass warning they blare in your face when you start the game up." He slides a screenshot across the table. It shows the end user license agreement, essentially, except scrolled to the top.

-THIS GAME MONITORS ALL BRAIN ACTIVITY, ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH THAT?-
Y/N
-no brain activity will be used in any capacity other than to log the user out if in an emergency and get feedback on our game.-

Tiny huffs through their nose and Jims takes it as a sign to continue. "So basically, they monitor vitals to make sure the user is safe enough to play, but since they can't really monitor panic attacks due to the tech putting the user to sleep, it has to monitor mental activity to make sure you don't need to be forced out due to a panic attack. If the panic attack is due to returning to reality, they let you stay in, but otherwise you can and will be forced out, even in a combat situation. There are a few other ways it helps, like if you're overstimulated or something it'll force some senses to stop or make you feel like a weighted blanket is on you. But in order to retrieve information like that, it was discovered that they have to scan the whole brain in the process."

Tiny nods. "Alright. Anything else before we get this started?"

Saryn grins, her time to shine. She stands and walks over to Tiny's mirror, which stands to the side of her sibling's desk. Fogged over and off, as always. She scoots a box with her foot, pulling it out of it's hiding place behind the mirror, she squats down after dragging it a few inches away with her foot. "All we need now is for you to put this on. I'll let Jims here teach you while I go grab my gear. I still need to fly a little ways to the starter town." She smacks Jims on the back before dropping the box in his hands and walking out the door.

Jims groans annoyedly. "And of course she leaves this part to me. Right, we have another thing we want you to do. Don't create a character. Log in with the AI Created Character."

Tiny raises an eyebrow "Of course I'm doing that. The site said 9 times out of 10 it's the most fun experience."

Jims huffs. "Well we couldn't exactly be sure of that. Okay, when you log in there will be a book, it floats in front of you no matter how you turn, double tapping a name instantly starts the login process. Just do that, don't look at the character preview."

"You're starting to sound pretty suspicious, but alright I guess." Tiny shrugs. "Now how do I use this thing?" They tap the box still in Jims' hands.

"... The standard startup process for AR devices, except you put the contacts in your eyes."

"You do realize the only 'Reality' tech I've really used often was a sword fighting game on my sister's pod a year or two ago? I don't use AR or VR enough to know what the 'standard setup process' is."

Jims rolls his eyes as he opens the box and passes the headset part over to them. "Put around neck, hit power button. you'll feel a prick in your neck for a half second, then you create your user profile after putting the eye contacts in." He holds a small zip lock bag of eye contacts of various sizes. "Your eyes are around this size." He pulls out one of the larger sized ones. "D'you want me to put it in or do it yourself?" he asks as Tiny finishes replacing their old AR headset with the new one.

Tiny clicks the power button and winces slightly at the small sting in their neck. "I think I can do it myself." They take the contacts and hold their eye open, sliding one into place. "Huh, easier than I thought it'd be..." They look back over to Jims, but he's entirely changed into a tall and lithe.. person, with translucent green bug-like wings. It's especially weird to look at with only one eye seeing the fae and the other seeing Jims.  "Jims, why are you a fairy?"

Jims snorts. "This is what my avatar in game looks like. There's an app that allows you to change your appearance to match in-game built in to the device. It only works on others with the contacts in. Granted I am a lot taller than this in game. I'm a forest fae druid."

"... I knew it. You're trans, or an enby aren't you?"

Jims eyes widen and he nods nervously. "Enby. I go by Jen now. and uh, They/Them." They breathe a sigh as Tiny just nods, commiting the new name and pronouns to memory. Jen then rolls their eyes as they remember exactly why Saryn and themself planned this whole thing.

Tiny puts the next contact in and a keyboard pops up in front of them.

|Name(Not Required, subject to change):|
|Genetic Gender Already Deduced. Subject to change.|
|Mental Gender Deduced. Subject to change.|
|Screen Name(Required, unable to change):|
|Favorite Color:|

Tiny fills out the form as best they can, for whatever reason they can't really bring themself to enter their actual name, so they leave the Name line blank. When they go to fill out the favorite color section, a color pallet appears and they play with it until they find a color they like a lot.

|Name:|
|Genetic Gender Already Deduced. Subject to change.|
|Mental Gender Deduced. Subject to change.|
|Screen Name: Tiny#9237|
|Favorite Color: Deep Purple|
|Accept| |Decline|

The UI changes color to match their favorite as they hit 'accept'. Then a few notifications pop up in view.

|Apps Require Updates: NSO, NSO IA|
|Start Updates?|
|Accept| |Decline|

They hit accept again and turn to Jen. "Alright, I think that's setup done. It needs to update NSO and the Illusion App. You probably still have to get to where I spawn in, right?"

Jen tilts their head, expression thoughtful, before shifting abruptly to lay flat on the ground. The pillow they used to support their knees now under their head. "Yeah, just realized it might take a minute for me to get there. I'll text ya from in game when you're clear for login. Oh, you can link up your messaging app by just tapping your phone to your headset. I think the sensor is on the right side. It'll link up all your compatible apps. Seeya in game. Launch New Star Online." Jen's eyes dim before closing, as though going into a deep sleep.

Tiny then notices that their door is open, so they go to close it before pulling up a video sharing app on their table and watching adorable animal videos. They tap their phone on the device almost absentmindedly.

|Headset And Phone Linked Up!|

The notification pops up and disappears within a few seconds.