"Ugh...my head..."

A dull groan came out.

As if to follow the words, a metal hand grabbed the edge of a desk, and hauled its owner onto his feet.

"What...the...?"

The large man looked around. The view was familiar, but something past his addled brain told him that what he saw was all wrong.

"Wait...what the hell?!"

But as sleep slowly vacated his skull, the realization at what was wrong slammed into him like a runaway truck.

"Who the hell's...yelling so early in the morning?"

"Who...wha...?"

Due to the man's sudden outburst, two more figures rose up from behind their desks, irritation sprawled on one face and confusion on the other.

"Wait...Kelly? And Sherry?"

Irritation was swiftly wiped from Hawkins' face and subsequently replaced with surprise and confusion.

"Huh? Wha...I must be dreaming."

"We can't both be dreaming. But at the same time, this doesn't make any sense."

Hawkins put his hand on his chin as he went into deep thought and to mumbled to himself.

"We're...IN...Stella Nova...aren't we?"

"As impossible as that seems to be, that seems to be the case."

Turning to look as his companion, Hawkins answered Kelly's speculative question.

"That's gotta be impossible. Wait, where's Susannah?!"

Sherry rushed over to the next desk over and started to shake the last figure's shoulders.

"Susannah! Susannah! Wake up!"

"Huh? Sherry? Oh, what a nice dream..."

But as expected, seeing her friend's avatar right in front of her did little to convince the woman that she was actually awake.

"Hey! Wake...mrph!"

Refusing to awaken, Susannah wrapped her arms around her friend's head and buried it within the woman's great bounty.

"Mmmrph! Mmmmrrrph!"

With her oxygen supply quickly being depleted, Sherry furiously slapped her friend's arm as she tried to extract herself without hurting Susannah.

"Susannah! Wake up! You're strangling Sherry!"

The first to react was Kelly, though the closest was Hawkins. But unlike the more burly companion, Hawkins stood over the two figures in a fluster, unsure what to do.

"Mmm...? This...huh?!"

The prone woman fluttered her eyes open as the sight of her friends gathered in her view.

"This...a dream...?"

"Unfortunately, I don't believe in shared dreams. Fantastical as the alternative is."

"Wha...?"

Sleep still dominated Susannah's eyes, but the small amount of mustered awareness was enough for Sherry to pull out of the taller woman's grasp.

"Puhaa~! I thought I was going to die!"

"Doesn't seem to be a bad way to go, I'd say."

Sherry glared at Kelly for a moment before turning back her prone friend.

"Wake up. This isn't the time to be dreaming."

"Huh? Sherry? Is that really you? You're really here?"

"As best as I can tell. How long are you planning on laying there, sleepyhead?"

"It's really you? You're really here? Really?!"

"Wha...?!"

As light filled Susannah's eyes, she shot up, only to fall on top of her companion as she wrapped her fingers around the other woman's cheeks.

"You're real. You're really real?"

"As real as anything else here is, I think. Mmmrph?!"

"Wha...?!"

"Oh wow."

Hawkins and Kelly stood there, as the unexpected sight unfolded before them.

Sherry, on the other hand, froze. Her mind stuck unsure what do make of this situation as her vision was entirely filled with Susannah and something warm and soft pressed against her lips.

"Oh my god. You're really real! It's like a dream come true! No, it really is a dream come true!"

Finally, after a good minute of intimacy, did Susannah finally release her not entirely unwilling victim, and the view of everything else finally enter her eyes.

"Kelly...Hawkins...everyone's here...!"

Tears welled up in her eyes as her brain processed what she saw.

"Wherever here is, at least."

"The Blue Steel, isn't it?"

Kelly looked around the room, and while the difference in perspective baffled him, everything he saw was exactly as he expected. Aside from the fact that everything seemed to be real.

"That's not what I meant. The Blue Steel isn't real. These bodies aren't real. Stella Nova's just a game. Hell, the servers should've been shut down already, so none of this should even exist anymore."

"It's some kind of miracle then! Or a gift, or something!"

Susannah's eyes glittered as she continued to take in her surroundings and her brain caught up with events.

"A miracle huh? Normally I'd dismiss such a thing, but everything's so impossible. Yet such a vivid dream just doesn't seem possible."

Hawkins grabbed one of the stuffed animals on off of Susannah's desk and gave it a squeeze before returning it to its place.

"So what? Suddenly all four of us became our characters and the game became real or something?"

"That, or we somehow entered a different world where all of our things from Stella Nova are real."

"They both sound equally as impossible to me."

"I doubt there's much difference unless if we can find out how and why this had happened."

"Who cares about any of that! We all got to stay together! That's what's most important!"

But with a few quick words, Susannah dismissed the other two's discussion entirely.

"Well, I guess. I've always wished Stella Nova to be real."

"I can't say I can complain either. Not having to worry about my student loans is nice."

"Weren't you in law school? You'd pay that back in an instant!"

"I hate law school. It was nothing but pure torture. I'm glad to be rid of it, frankly."

"Oh yea. Your parents forced it on you, didn't they?"

"'Get a law degree or become a doctor. Nothing less from our son.'"

"Geez. I wouldn't' have survived under such parents."

"No, you wouldn't have."

"Hahaha!"

"Then, this really is a dream come true for all of us then, right?"

Susannah beamed as she as Kelly and Hawkins lightly bantered.

"Of course! Flying through space beats hauling crap in a warehouse all day for next to nothing!"

"Or getting a degree in a field you don't even like."

Both Kelly and Hawkins grinned back.

"Ah! Sherry! What about you?"

But quickly realizing she only heard the opinion of two of her friends, Susannah turned to the last member of their group.

"Huh? Ah, umm..."

But the fourth member's normally pale face was akin to a ripe tomato. Now that everyone's attention was on her, she started to fidget as her eyes darted all around as if deliberately trying to look anyone in the eye.

"Maybe, you don't like this?"

"Ah! No! No. It's not that. This is a dream come true for me too. It's just..."

Sherry immediately denied any possibility that she wasn't in the same boat as the others. But the redness in her cheeks only deepened and her fidgeting grew only more furious.

"Oh, oh god. I'm so sorry! I kissed you, but I wasn't thinking I was so happy! Of course you wouldn't like that!"

"No. It's not that. It's not that I didn't like it..."

Sherry's eyes finally stopped wandering and she forced them to look up at Susannah in the eye.

"We're probably going to be living together for real, all of us...right?"

"Of course!"

"Sounds about right."

"Not like we have any real alternative for now."

"Then...I need to tell all of you about me, though especially you Susannah."

"What is it? I'm willing to accept anything!"

"I...I hope so..."

Sherry stated to fidget once more, but after a few moments of making the others wait, she looked back up at each of them in the eye before stopping on Susannah.

"I'm...actually a guy."

"""..."""

The room was so silent it was as if one could hear a pin drop.

"Oh yea. I forgot about that."

"You knew?"

Hawkins turned to Kelly.

"I suspected it when we first met, but I kinda forgot about it."

"Well, not like it mattered much in a game, and that was before. Sherry's clearly a woman now."

"No doubt. There's no weirdness to her voice anymore either."

"Ah, that's right. So that was because of a voice modulator then? I've always thought it was just because she had a bad microphone."

"Nah. Crappy mics don't sound like that."

"I suppose, now that you mention it. Still, you wouldn't know she used to be a man with how she's like now."

The two men eyed their compatriot. No matter how they looked, there wasn't a single trace of masculinity in the body that stood before them, not even in her voice.

"Eep!"

But under the intense stares, the small figure grew even smaller as she tried to cover herself up with her arms.

"Nnnh! Our bad."

"Yea, sorry."

Realizing what they had just done, both Kelly and Hawkins turned away, though in part to hide the slight warmth in their cheeks.

"It's...okay. Oh, Susannah...!"

But those two weren't the only ones to stare, and once that realization came to Sherry, she couldn't help but take a step back under the intense scrutiny.

"Yup! You're still as cute as ever!"

"Ah!"

Against all of her expectations, Sherry found herself in a deep embrace. Though the fact that she was more than an entire head shorter than the other meant that she ended up keenly aware of the pair of soft globes pressing against her cheeks.

"Y...you don't mind?"

But forcing herself away from the enormous distractions, Sherry looked up at her friend and timidly asked.

"I don't care what you looked like before. This is you now, and that'd good enough for me."

Susannah answered her compatriot with a warm smile.

"R...really?"

"Really."

"Just to make sure you know, I'm fine with it as well."

"Same on the left."

"I...I...waaaah~!!!"

Receiving such unexpected acceptance, Sherry returned Susannah's embrace as she started wailing into her chest.

"I...I was so scared! When...they found out I hated my body...everyone...everyone made fun of me...!"

"There there. Nobody'll make fun of you here."

"Well, aside from the fact that you're a giant crybaby."

But as the words came out of his mouth, Kelly took an involuntary step back at the intense glare Susannah gave him.

"A, aside from this one time."

"You deserved that one."

"Shaddap."

Sherry continued to cry for a while while the others looked on warmly.

"Ugh. Sorry about that."

"No, it's nothing to apologize for."

Finally, after a long while, Sherry managed to calm down and extracted herself from Susannah's embrace. She timidly looked away, unsure what to do about the mess she made on her friend's chest.

"Well, anyways. What do we do next?"

Worried about doing something wrong, she gave up on that problem, wiping her face on her sleeve, and moved on to a different issue.

"How about we go and explore the ship. There might be things that are different from before."

"Sounds good to me."

Kelly quickly agreed to Hawkins' proposal.

"Oh, what about our comms? In case something happens?"

With some quick experimenting, Sherry managed to activate the screen built into the forearm of her matte black flight suit.

"Ah! The game's UI!"

"Hmm? Let's see? Oh, you're right. We can bring up the game's interface."

"I see. And it seems to work the same as in the game. The background lore stated that all members of the Pilots Association of Free Enterprise had a basic set of equipment for standardized features. It seems like we can use them just like in the game?"

Hawkins calmly analyzed Sherry's discovery and connected it together with Stella Nova as he scrolled through the different menus on his suit's built in interface. Aside from the inability to log off, all the options were as he had remembered.

"Awww. All our PAFE stuff is gone though."

Susannah complained. Though the others felt the pain just as keenly. Being such dedicated long time players, there were a lot of things connected through the organization's systems that were lost. From mundane things like titles and achievement records to much more important things like their bank accounts and access to items and ships stored on various stations and bases around the galaxy.

"You're right. This suggests that we're not simply in the game world, but a different world entirely and we simply gained much of the stuff from the game."

"Including these bodies and the Blue Steel? And presumably our personal ships as well?"

Kelly questioned Hawkins' explanation.

"I can only presume."

"Hmm..."

"Ah! Hello?"

Susannah jumped as a ringing entered her ear. But with a quick and practised motion, she answered the comm request that she had received.

"Ah good. Looks like it works."

The tall woman glanced over at the shorter one with a finger in her ear as she looked back with a smile.

"Well, looks like the interface is the same as before, so there's not much to explore there. We should check to make sure that the ship itself is in working order then."

"Agreed. Let's convene back here once we finish exploring. If something happens, call the rest of us using the interface comms. Alright?"

"Yup."

"'kay."

"Got it."

 

Several hours later, after exploring the Blue Steel to their hearts contents, the group of four gathered back at their starting point, sitting at their own desks in the centre of the room.

"Now that we're all back, who's going to start?"

"You're the most organized of us all. Why don't you start?"

"Isn't that just because you think I covered all the places you checked out? Well, I suppose that's fine anyways."

Despite his complaints, Hawkins ended up accepting Kelly's proposal.

"The first place I checked was the bridge. While the controls themselves seemed to appear the same as in game, of course now we'll actually have to use it ourselves rather than through our own flight sticks or keyboards."

"That's probably going to be the same for everything. Even our terminals have to be used a bit differently since they aren't mapped to keyboard shortcuts."

Sherry added her own observations.

"Most likely. It'll take some time to get used to, but for most basic things, I think we can all adjust quickly."

"I hope so."

"It's just about doing. We'll all get the hang of things pretty fast as long as we actually try things out."

Kelly quickly tried to encourage Susannah.

"Most likely. The controls are different, but things probably work the same as they did in game. Though, there was one thing that was different on the bridge. The command AI."

"You mean the autopilot?"

Unsure what Hawkins was trying to go for, Kelly asked.

"That's right. Though in the game, it was basically just the autopilot with some extra decorations. Now though...well, let me demonstrate. Command AI! Report our status!"

"Blue Steel is currently on standby. Antimatter reserves nearly empty, fuel reserves at five percent. All systems normal."

A crisp, light voice with a mechanical undertone rang out through the ship speaker system.

"That's the autopilot's voice!"

"I haven't heard lines like that from it before."

Sherry and Susannah stared at the ceiling, surprised at what they had heard.

"It's not just new voice lines. I was able to have a conversation with the AI itself."

"You mean, not like the usual handful of responses?"

Kelly looked back at Hawkins. Now even he was showing surprise on his face.

"That's right. I spent some time talking to it, but it masterfully passed the Turing test."

"The what test?"

"The Turing test. It's a basic test to see if an AI is able to convince a human that they're talking to a person rather than a machine."

Hawkins explained after Kelly's question.

"So, the autopilot's intelligent now?"

"The best I can tell, yes."

"That's...wow..."

Sherry looked like she would fall flat on her butt as she took in what she heard.

"If it...if she's intelligent, than she needs a name, right?"

Taking the initiative regarding the unexpected addition to their group, Susannah took the initiative almost as if she was a born commander.

"I guess that's not a bad idea."

"Umm, miss AI? Do you have a name?"

"I do not."

"Then...what would you like for a name?"

"I myself have no preferences. I will accept any name my masters chose."

"By master, do you mean all four of us?"

Hawkins caught on and asked about a particular detail.

"That is correct. While Commander Ivanova is the highest ranking, all members of Section Nine are considered my masters."

"Sweet."

Grinning from ear to ear, Kelly couldn't' help but express his pleasure.

"Wait, weren't you the one to change the autopilot's settings last, Kelly?"

Sherry looked at her large framed compatriot accusedly.

"Oh yea. She's probably still rocking that great body as well, isn't she?"

"Unfortunately, she was when I went to the bridge."

"Pig."

Susannah looked at Kelly with eyes full of disdain.

"Oh c'mon! You liked it too!"

"That's a different issue."

"Huh? Really?"

Sherry glanced back to ask.

"Really."

"Ahem. Anyways, we're getting sidetracked. We can take our time to think of a name later. For now, let's continue with what we found regarding the ship."

"Alright."

"Sure."

"'Kay."

"Aside from the bridge, I also checked out the cargo hold as well as the advanced facilities. The cargo hold is actually accessible now, unlike before, and there seemed to be some equipment to allow the movement of cargo installed. Aside from that, the inventory matched what I remembered the last time I had a look, which is to say, is pretty barren."

"Well, not like we had much reason to actually store anything there. Probably just leftovers that we were too lazy to sell off or use."

Kelly shrugged and offhandedly recalled his last memories on the topic.

"Pretty much. Though now that our PAFE accounts are gone, we're all penniless, so we should use what little we have left as start-up capital."

"That's probably for the best. There's nothing rare there, so we can always get more later on."

Trying to sound more like the wing's commander, Susannah gave her approval.

"My thoughts exactly. Especially considering the last section I checked out. The advanced facilities, while they are all still installed like before, the are all offline, like before."

"They ran through quite a lot of fuel to keep running, and we hadn't really had much of a need to use any of those facilities lately. We've got more than enough ammo to last us a while anyways," Sherry confirmed.

"Exactly. So, that's what I had found. Who's next?"

"I had a look at the communal areas and my room. There isn't much to say there, though all the various equipment I tried worked as intended. Though I didn't try everything."

"Ah! I was wondering, but did you take a bath then?" Raising her voice a little, Susannah asked.

"I did. You did too, right? I heard someone using it when I was thinking of cleaning myself up."

"You should've come in if you noticed!"

"I, umm, there's no way I could've. I mean, I'm..."

"We're both girls here. You should've knocked at least."

(Isn't that basically me asking if I can join you?!)

Sherry's face grew hot as she did her best to stop herself from letting out such an accusation.

"No, I mean, just because we're girls, doesn't mean..."

"Sure it does! There's no harm there! And you've only just become a girl today! There's so many things I can teach you! The bath's the perfect place for that!"

"Uh, no, I mean, that's...I can figure that sort of thing by myself."

Sherry's cheeks started to resemble a boiled octopus as she squirmed. She even started to rub her thighs together as she thought about what she had already experienced in the bath by herself.

"Sure, you can. But it'll be so much faster and better if I teach it to your body directly!"

"My, my body?! No, I mean, together...that's...I mean...I couldn't impose..."

So overwhelmed by her own embarrassment, Sherry didn't even notice how Susannah's cheeks had gone flush and her breathing had grown a bit ragged.

"It's okay. I don't mind. In fact, I'd love to be the one to teach you everything about a girl's body!"

<Hey, I know about girls going to the washroom together, but do they really do that sort of stuff in the bath as well, like on some of those shows?>

Tapping furiously on his terminal, Kelly sent a private message to Hawkins as he stared at this impenetrable aura that stood between the gender divide.

<How would I know. I don't even have a sister.>

<Yea, sure. I guess Sherry doesn't know either, right?>

<Probably not. Of all of us, Susannah's the only one who would.>

<Isn't that bad?>

<Well, Sherry's probably aware of that even more than we are.>

<Shouldn't we do something then?>

<Like what? I'll tell you now, but I've got no intentions of angering Susannah.>

<No, well...I guess. The idea of getting between a girl and her dessert is a bit too scary.>

Before they knew it, Susannah was behind Sherry fixing up her braids that she left undone after her bath.

"I think you should cut it. These bangs are covering your cute face."

"I like it that way. It's a cash shop haircut you know."

"It's supposed to be for really sexy characters I think."

"I did max out the boob slider though."

Sherry lifted up the soft weights that were a new addition to her life. With how small her new hands were, the warm mounds effectively dwarfed her dainty fingers.

"Your figure is sexy sure. But you're pretty baby faced. I'd say you fit under cute more than sexy."

"I'll think about it. The auto stylist is offline, and we can't afford to turn on any of the advanced facilities on the Blue Steel until we make sure we can refuel her easily."

"Well, fine. I do wish we have a ribbon to tie off your bangs though. It's funny what sort of things are missing from the character outfits when you think about it."

"The setting's pretty different from most other games after all. And my hair gets hidden under a helmet too. Nobody'll see it."

"That's no good. Looking good isn't just to show off for others, but for a girl it makes her feel better as well."

"...I can't imagine it."

"Well, maybe it's something you need to experience for yourself. There. All done now."

"Thanks."

Sherry checked her hair quickly and confirmed that it was properly braided as Susannah returned to her desk. At least to the best she could tell without using a mirror.

"Are you two done now?" Hawkins cautiously asked.

"Ah, sorry. I forgot, the report!" Sherry straightened up.

"Well, it's not like we're in a hurry." Kelly quickly added.

"That's right! We have all our lives to look forward to in this new place!"

"How...how long is that, anyways?" Sherry wearily looked over at Susannah with a curious look.

"Huh? I mean, we're all just over twenty, right?"

"No, she has a point. It's better to presume we age depending on our characters, rather than our original bodies."

"Ah, right. We're all supposed to be adults, but our characters hasn't visibly aged in the entire time the game's been running."

Hawkins nodded to Kelly's interjection.

"According to the lore, all pilots have nanomachines injected to help maintain the body. They keep us healthy and repair any damages."

"That's to explain why we can heal being shot so quickly, right? And why we don't get sick?" Susannah responded.

"That's right. Most wounds are closed in minutes. Of course, the medical pods cover anything that the nanomachines can't do."

"Okay, so that's cool. We can get shot, but heal up before we can bleed out. Makes living our lives like in the game a lot less scary."

"No. Not just that." Hawkins shook his head to Kelly's naive response. "The nanomachines, together with the medical pods, repair ALL damage to the body as far as we can tell."

"Yea, what about it?"

"Biologically speaking, aging is considered a type of damage to the body as well."

"We...we won't age?" Hawkins nodded to Susannah's trepidation.

"Wait, didn't time move a lot faster in the game? The in game clock ran several times faster than in real life to better represent travel time, right?"

"That's right." Hawkins nodded to Sherry's realization. "Twelve times faster, to be exact."

"Wait, doesn't that mean our characters, if we presume they were made at twenty years old, should be about ninety now?!" Kelly jumped up, his hands slamming onto his desk causing some of the scattered items to fall over.

"Exactly. These bodies are of ninety year olds, yet there isn't a single indication that any of us are outside of the prime of our lives."

"I have bad knees in real life, so I thought it was amazing being able to move around so easily. But thinking that we're all old enough to be in walkers yet I feel even younger than even in real life..."

"You had bad knees? Aren't you only two years older than me?" Kelly looked at Sherry with a raised eyebrow.

"I was pretty tall. Almost enough to touch the top of a door frame with my head...and I had an eating disorder..." Sherry's voice petered out, and the others only barely caught the last of her words.

"Huh. Well, I practically lived off of junk food, so I kinda get it. You made your character the opposite of what you were like in real life because you didn't like what you looked like, right? I'm not really any different there." Kelly scratched his cheek while looking away awkwardly.

"Ahem. Well, the point is that the nanomachines will handle at least some of the usual health issues. And we'll have to consider the long term when it comes to the things we do. For decades to come if not centuries." Sensing the problematic direction things were potentially headed, Hawkins forced the topic closed. "Is there anything else you noticed regarding the Blue Steel, Sherry?"

"Ah, sorry. We went off rails again because of me."

"No, it's fine. It was an important discovery, even if it's beyond us to really understand right now."

"Umm, okay. So the emplaced items I tried out seemed to work as you'd expect. Both in the communal space and in my own personal room. So, the other thing I checked out was the hanger. I was able to confirm that everyone's ships were there as expected, though I didn't actually go inside any of them. Also the basic service equipment were all there, though I couldn't test them without taking a ship out first."

"Well, that's reasonable. While I do want to test them out, it's probably safe to presume that all the basic facilities are working as intended."

"Right. While we can't replenish our munitions without gathering the materials, we do have a good stockpile and enough fuel to fill our personal ships a few times over. And presumably we can repair minor damage on our ships as well."

"Major ones would require building parts packages. We do have some, but I'd rather not have to use any. At least until we can replenish them." Hawkins paused for a moment as he thought to himself before turning back to Sherry. "Did you find anything else?"

"No. After that I came back and had a bath, then you called us together."

"Alright. Who wants to go next?"

"I mostly just checked the communal and personal rooms. It seemed like everything was how they were before." Susannah reported. "Ah, but the closets changed a lot. They actually open now, and all our outfits are in there. But they are a bit hard to put on."

"Ugh. It took me ten minutes trying to get my flight suit back on after my bath..."

"It does take some time to adjust everything to be comfortable." Susannah smiled awkwardly.

"Alright. What about you Kelly? Did you find anything else?"

"The shitter works."

"That's...actually quite important now that I think about it. Though considering that we only have one toilet on the entire ship, I think it's important to build and install more as soon as we can."

"Ah, true."

"I guess so."

"..."

Susannah and Kelly responded casually, though Sherry turned a bit red in the face.