This branches into two storylines, with the alternate one marked with an A

=====

The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[16]
For the Alt Branch [16A]

This was so far from where Giselle expected that any of this would take her. She adored the works of Carl Sagan. Science and the scientific method mattered to Jeremy and Rachel. Sure, they would occasionally joke about Slenderman, and Gerald relayed a near-death experience when he was a child. And they lived in the South, even though Rachel came from the Midwest. Jeremy knew small-town Southern culture well, but it also contradicted expectations. Finley had so many gun racks, but he also adored JRPGs and D&D along with death metal and country music.

Dale, for all the pervy complaints she could lodge about him, was a huge Star Wars fan, went yearly with his roommate to the state’s largest pride parade, loved the works of Satoshi Kon, and posted a monthly adult animation that made fun of everyone and everything. She learned that Gwen volunteered for groups that Giselle disagreed with but respected, helped out at soup kitchens, designed gaming modules for autistic children, and played bass for a metal band back in college that Giselle of course didn’t remember.

So many people she knew were full of that which could hold no label or easy clarification. Life was a mess in all the best and worst ways. So, heck, of course, shadow monsters, sure…Why not?

The first couple of speculations the text presented involved branch realities and alternate realms. It postulated the notion that there existed realms evocative of what we discovered in the physical world but echoes. She tried to grasp it like this.

Life was like the ultimate light of the big bang, stars, and the living universe. But it eventually ends. Life becomes brown dwarfs and stray matter and glimmers in the dark circling black holes. It’s ripped apart and devoured. The shimmer of the post-life is, at best, faint bioluminescence trying to eke its way along. And it easily outnumbers the visible contents of the universe in the same way dark matter and dark energy sit in sway beside normal parts. Something like Hanako and her sister shimmered against the cold darkness. And these blank, feral forces were endlessly hungry for these flashes of light because they couldn’t make any for themselves. The shadow crawlers.

A lot of it was rather abstract and philosophical. What she really wanted to know was how to kill and destroy them or otherwise banish them, so they never bothered anyone again. This is where the book dipped into spiritual warfare. Between the lines, Giselle was able to gather that focusing on a strong outside force was vital. Tying your emotions to love and resisting the lure of darkness. Resolve. Totem words and phrases invested with the best of yourself and those you love.

She squinted and sighed at some parts but wasn’t going to dismiss it entirely. She passed the book back to Blessin and the woman reiterated several of the same notions she already caught the Cliff Notes of. Her focus in particular was that humans with the determination of special rituals could cast and create remarkable spells that could go as far as the sort of transfiguration they saw with Dale and solemn protection. Giselle flashed her a particular look.

Blessin glanced over to see that Hanako was over by the other girls sitting with Dale as she came to grips with all this. Nodding quietly, Blessin then added, “Your friend feeds on human emotion. Strong human emotion. And one of these entities has attached itself to you as a dependent force. When I did an initial, automatic reading of you when you arrived, I felt that energy. That’s why I concluded that you had another life with you in a way I expected. It is an obvious luminous living thing existing with you. However…”

Giselle frowned. That was not a word she like to hear at all, especially in this context. Blessin quietly continued, “The description and the sense I get from these entities, has me concerned for you, your friends, and your loved ones. They eat human emotion. That sounds vampiric. Energy and emotion vampires. Some are classified under succubi and such. That’s just one folkloric tradition and that sort of thing gets corrupted by the passage of time. But I also think you should be careful.”

Leaning close, she reiterated, “No matter what these entities are, you can’t be certain that they will have your best interests at heart. You want your life and the life of those you love back. They want to absorb your most pronounced emotions until it gives them the life they want. Make sure what you need is guaranteed first. That’s all.”

Challenging that, Giselle pressed her about what *she* could do to guarantee that. Blessin rubbed at her thin eyebrows and pondered for a minute with her hands clutched under her chin before deciding, “I can do a spirit dive into you. You look into yourself and maybe we can find something to use.”

Giselle checked in with the others as they flipped through a bunch of brochures that detailed signs, a bunch of aphorisms about the day you were born, and supposedly interconnected relationships. Finn noted that their particular brochures remarked that they would be perfectly antagonistic towards each other.

Giselle wrapped her arms around him and noted, “Well, you’re always gung ho for friendly fire in Halo. And you poisoned me the first day we started playing Minecraft. And you threw me into a cartoon buzz saw several times and chucked several exploding disks at my face in that one indie game. And then you blew me up in GTA Online when we started recording that first episode. And you put a hit out on me. And not to mention that golfing game where you downright pulled A Lion King, long live the king move launching me into a ravine… and so forth.”

Finn brushed her hair back, slipped an arm around her, and teased, “You’ve never seen The Lion King though…”

“I’ve never seen an episode of the Simpsons either, but I know all the lines because of the Internet.”

Blessin froze in place. “What did you say…?”

Giselle frowned and tried, “I just know all the lines from the Internet…?”

“No no no no no. What you said before, the crazy thing. The “I haven’t seen any episodes of the Simpsons” thing.”

With a shrug, Giselle told her, “My parents never really watched it and that’s all.”

“Do you live with your parents right now?”

Part of Giselle wanted to be a bit of a smart acre and relay that she did actually live down the street from her parents before they moved. But she simply answered, “No.”

“And I can tell you went to college, you got a degree, and I sense it was in some form of entertainment, right?”

Giselle gave a very long sigh. “Film.”

“Film! Entertainment, clever depiction of people and storytelling in the world. Maybe a little bit of satire. And yet the greatest written American satire of the 20th century… Not a single episode. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Raising a hand, Giselle had several explanations from the fact she worked all the time, to not watching broadcast TV, to not quite being at the right age, to already getting it through contemporary culture and stuff. Blessin threw up her hands, went over to the cash wrap, and pulled out some paper and a pen to write on.

She passed the note to Giselle. It had what appeared to be a password and a numerical string. Blessin fervently explained, “This is my Disney+ account information. One episode is missing in season three, so far as I know, but Disney can go suck a flaming cock about some of their choices. It’s fine. But! You must promise me here and now you will watch every episode they have from season…well you might as well start from the beginning but season one is not totally essential. But to keep it simple, season one to season eight. Some of season nine exists but nothing after that. I don’t care if it takes a year or two. Also, I can see your activity if you make an account on my account. I will be watching that you are watching. I have the intuition to know. Now. promise me…”

Out of everything, Giselle had to say this was easily the weirdest thing of the day. But she agreed. She also remembered that they had leftovers in their trunk, and she was starting to get a little bit worried about how they would hold up despite the mellow temperatures.

Finn slipped his arms around Giselle‘s shoulders and noted, “I guess we know what we’re watching during dinner for the next few months. And I’ll slaughter you with love in every virtual space for the rest of my days.”

“I know….Me too.”

Having cooled down slightly, Blessin fumed to Giselle‘s friends about her absence of television culture. Gwen quipped about how her friend only just saw the original Star Wars trilogy a handful of years ago. Blessin didn’t have as much of a problem about this, but she still shook her head. Giselle internally noted that was something she shared with Dale instead in the original version of reality. They watched it together and he stopped to explain the differences and highlight some really cool filmmaking aspects.

As Jeremy, she had resigned herself to a memory constantly overloaded by stress, probably some crazy genetics, and creeping age. As Giselle, it wasn’t perfect but at least she managed to remember the day of the week for as far back as the move. She accepted the way things had resolved. They had Tycho and none of their friends seemed worse off.

If she had to deal with some occasional new biology stuff, some unusual clothing, and warping of her social role then it barely seemed like an inconvenience. She still judged herself as a man in isolation, no matter what her flesh told her. It was weird and contradictory like everything else, but it was just the way she felt.

Blessin set up a lounge chair and gathered a few different materials. Giselle situated herself with her arms at her side and her head resting comfortably with her legs stretched out as much as possible. Because time was getting close, Finn went over to retrieve Dale’s discarded clothing from the other room and provide them for the inevitable reversion.

Quietly, Dale asked towards Hanako if they could do this again sometime. She relayed that she would be glad to accept his assistance again but cautioned that wearing out the same possibility would lessen his emotional energy. He wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he made sure she knew she had his permission.

But that wasn’t Giselle‘s concern, Blessin made her focus as she wielded a small pendulum. Hypnosis. She had never really been good at being put under but then her only real experience was at a circus for a comedy routine, and she was left off because the instruction to let her arms feel heavy didn’t work. Her mind raced too much and all sorts of thoughts, as usual, flooded her entire thought process and…

“You are now in a deep, relaxed state.”

Dang, she was good. Even being aware and cognizant of what was happening didn’t break her trek down into this state.

The first thing that Blessin tried was to encourage her to search her body and her spirit for the presence clinging to her. She imagined it as a room that started out dark and slowly filled with a warm and welcoming light. The shape of it looked vaguely like the dome within her own skull. Glancing around, she soon glanced and felt a presence gripping at her side.

Turning, it was easy to see a child clinging to her hip as if life itself depended on her hold. Her whole little body trembled as she looked up into her eyes. She had the icy blue irises that matched Hanako‘s form. Compared to her sister, she seemed smaller and thinner as though she hadn’t had a full meal in quite a while. Her hair didn’t have the sharp ivory blankness of Hanako‘s but rather looked like dust and coal l tainted it with discoloration to make it a shade of unwashed gray. Her face appeared a rough tone of red, especially around the eyes, as though she had been crying for a long time and the traces of it lingered. She wore the same initial, white toga-like garment as Hanako, but it appeared shredded like the start or the beginning of a roll of toilet paper with too few ply.

In the smallest, frailest squeak, she asked, “Do you want me?” Her eyes rolled the same as Hanako‘s sometimes did, but they shot around, as though she barely had control of her head. Giselle brushed her hair back gently and cradled her shoulder with an arm.

No matter the consequences, she resolved right then to help. Gradually, she heard Blessin pulling her out of this state. She waited, but something else was tugging at her at the same time. It was beyond the strange arching boundaries of this place.

A blink seemed to bring it into focus like manipulating the aperture of a camera. She was in a theater hallway. One of the older ones but around where she grew up. The nearest entrance advertised a film adaptation of some game she vaguely remembered came out about three months ago. It had been mentioned in chat and talked about quite a bit. But, as was usually the case, things were so crazy that they couldn’t find a day to see it.

As she stood in this new space, Giselle felt like herself but also felt kind of weird, like she was small, about as small as when all this started. But her hair was long and blonde too. The restroom was up ahead. Blessin’s voice encouraged her to describe what she was seeing and press forward.

Something was in the bathroom. She had a creeping suspicion of what it was, but she couldn’t voice the words. Her heart raced. She didn’t want to go in there. But Blessin encouraged her to take a look, to see what it was. Despite a sick feeling fighting through her entire body, she opened the door and stepped inside.

From there, something seemed to draw her forward like gravity, like a trap from which there was no escape. Half the lights above were out, and others looked like they were about to quit. She didn’t want to go any further, she didn’t want to go any further, but she was compelled, like in a horror movie or a nightmare, to look and see what was around the corner. Just as she crossed the threshold, she looked out into the bathroom.

Instantly, she snapped back into the room with the lounger spread out behind her but a thick upwelling of sweat drenching every limb. She noticed Dale was back to normal and everyone was standing around with concern.

Blessin had to ask, “What did you see?”

Giselle just shook her head. It was like a censor inside her brain. What had been was already erased, filled with a void she shied away from, as she resolved, “I don’t know. But that both was me and wasn’t me. Like that book said about realities. I don’t know but… I don’t know.”

[Since this is meant to be interactive, feel free to suggest ideas and prompts for future/alternate branch storylines. Some branches are already written but this will allow me to best pick new/alternate ones. I'm currently mostly rolling dice.]

Poll below