After ages asleep, Earth, also known as Gaia or numerous other names, reawakens from slumber. With this awakening, the power that was being used to heal the world was no longer being monopolized, and as such the power known as magic returns.

Magic had been around for ages, but in such minute quantities, it was at best parlor tricks, but with it’s return things… happened. Tech was disrupted by the initial burst, but mostly not destroyed, just disabled for a time. Some things were destroyed. Anything capable of mass destruction was swiftly and safely obliterated by the planet’s consciousness, which usually wouldn’t interfere with her children.

With magic’s return, so to do the connections to magical realms, both good and bad. Heaven, hell, Asgard, and so many other realms that were the foundation of the world’s religions and myths were proven to be real. When faced with reality, many religions were reborn, while others were damaged or destroyed.

But with these connections returned great threats. Gaia’s hibernation was caused by damage from an invasive dimension, one that had overpowered and consumed many worlds, stripping them of life and power, and was barely kept from doing so by Gaia’s sacrifice in the past.

To combat the invasion individuals with hidden potential are awakened. The potential to awaken is rare, and those who do are well paid for their efforts, both in currency, as well as fame and political power.

This potential grows, and can only be awoken when it reaches a certain point, different for every individual, but never under the age of ten.

Awakening isn’t the end, with their potential being filled all at once. The awakened can still grow in power, it just allows them to use whatever abilities they awakened with, which are not set. Additional powers and abilities can be obtained, especially if one is able to obtain special crystals from the defeated invaders.

The Awakening happens each year, on the first day of spring. Since that varies a bit due to weather patterns, no one knows precisely when it will occur until it starts. A wave of power, visualized as an Aurora Borealis, starts at the north pole and covers the world. Since it happens so quickly, only taking three seconds to spread worldwide, even if the aurora lasts for a few minutes, disrupting most technology, there is no warning.

Where the wave has passed, those who are ready to Awaken begin to.

It is not necessarily a simple or peaceful process. While everyone has potential, even if few ever awaken it, it is not always a good thing, or resides within a good person. Some powers go out of control, their wielder requiring time to control them, time which is not always available as they may be put down as a danger to society. Others misuse their power intentionally.

Then there are some that do not even know they have acquired powers for a time.

Powers are as varied as individuals are. Some allow completely outrageous things, while others are barely noticeable. They are also frequently connected to the hobbies or interest of the awakened.

No one knows what kind of power will show up, or who will be wielding it until something occurs.

---

Having recently lost his job as an Awakened criminal destroyed the business he’d been employed by, Ben Steele was logging onto an MMORPG he’d enjoyed for years. It was old, having initially released over two decades before, long before the Awakenings began.

He had played it off and on for most of that time, having gone nine years on his last hiatus, but rejoining a year before after the company announced that they were taking advantage of advancements that Awakenings had made possible, FIVR. Full Immersion Virtual Reality.

His characters and their items still existed, though they were several expansions behind, allowing him to rejoin the game without having to start from the very beginning. He did have to do a tutorial in order to learn how to interact with the VRUI, Virtual Reality User Interface, but that only delayed him for a short time.

He, like so many others, enjoyed the game far more now than he ever had before. The visuals were still somewhat cartoony, but it was better than having to play on a screen. One could really immerse themselves in the game, take in the beautiful visuals, constantly being improved as the AI controllers and their Awakened creators improved their skills. One could see, hear, feel, smell, and best (or worst) of all taste.

As the AIs wanted to maintain the virtual world as realistically as possible, there were not just enjoyable parts, but also uncomfortable or annoying things. Like bad smells, rough textures, pain, and bad tasting food.

The last was the one everyone agreed was the worst.

While there was no satiety to deal with, the most common way to regain health and mana outside of potions was food and drink. While one could purchase decent food, it wasn’t as effective as user cooked food.

The company had updated the professions for VR users to require at least a minimum of effort, aka realism, in order to enhance the game. One could still mostly breeze through it with the press of a button, but there were consequences for doing so.

The more effort one put in, the better the quality the item might be, and vice versa. There had been a system before, about rarity more than quality, as occasionally luck increased the rarity during crafting, but with the crafting update the two were separated and quality became important. Higher levels allowed not only better items to be made, but made enhancing the quality easier.

Ben had dozens of characters, but his favorites were all on one server. After rejoining, he’d raised them all up to max level, both character level as well as in crafting. Their gear wasn’t great, barely able to pass muster for heroic dungeons, but he was working on that now that he’d finished maxing out all of the professions.

It helped that the common professions, Cooking, Fishing, Archaeology, and Gathering were shared across characters, since he’d HATED all the effort it had taken to raise Fishing to max on just one. The alts could only access stuff within the level they’d have been able to produce had they been the one it had been raised on, no level one noobs producing end game feasts, but at least it didn’t force people to swap characters to deal with that stuff.

Other than the common profession, each character had only two profession slots. For a few years people could have three, though one was only allowed to be a gathering skill, but since they were combined and made a single common profession named gathering, the third spot disappeared. The few non-gathering benefits or abilities from the skinning, mining, and herbalism skills were shunted into other profession if needed, or discarded if not.

There’d even been talk about doing the same with the other professions, making all profession levels be shared across characters of the same faction on a server, though limited by level, but nothing official had been announced yet.

Glad to finally have the crafting grind done, at least as far as level went, since there were still an abundance of recipes out there to acquire, Ben was in the game’s lobby considering which of his characters to hop into for some fun.

This server had twelve of his characters, up by two since rejoining the game, since he’d wanted to experience the story and world from the start after the initial rush after the VR release had ended.

Most of the characters were Alliance, though there were Horde ones as well. Not a single one had the same race as another, and most were female, though the dwarf had to be a male, and was his blacksmith. All of the Maxed professions were on the Alliance side, since while there was a limit to what could be shared between the factions.

As he was contemplating the choice, there was a ripple and then a wave of rainbow colored magic was visible as the game’s character selection lobby vanished as he lost consciousness.

Ben woke two days later, with light burns on his head where the game’s Helm had connected to his nervous system. It took him a while to force his stiff body to move, but he was able to do so when the foul stench became too much for him and he ended up reaching for a bowl next to his bed to dry heave into.

He’d kept the thing there since he sometimes had a poor reaction to returning from the digital world after becoming accustomed to his virtual bodies. He wasn’t the only one who experienced such things, and they were not entirely the fault of the games or hardware.

Slowly and painfully, he climbed out of bed and got himself cleaned up. While eating, filling the emptiness in his belly with easy to digest oatmeal, he logged onto his computer and filed a complaint with the game company. They’d assured users that there was no danger of anything going wrong with their gear, even in the event of abrupt shutdowns, including the yearly Awakening Aurora.

They’d been wrong. He’d been electrocuted, put in a temporary coma, and ended up needing to replace his bedding and mattress because of this incident, and to top it all off, his Helm had become no more than a hunk of plastic, burning itself out as it burned him out.

Nothing happened for the next two days, then he got a response from the company. It was in person. A team of people showed up at his house unannounced. He was ushered off to a hospital for a second checkup, he’d had one done shortly after sending the initial complaint and had amended it with the data the doctor had provided.

The scientists checked over the burned out Helm, consulted with the doctors who confirmed that the Helm was the only thing that could have done the damage, and a decision was reached. The fault lay in the equipment, with the user not at fault, so I was compensated.

Not only was my Helm replaced, with a newer, safer model, but a million dollars was deposited in my account and the company would be responsible for any future problems the incident may cause.

I was a little, not a LOT, surprised how quickly and easily everything was wrapped up. I’d expected to have to wage a legal battle to get anything out of them, but I hadn’t needed to. Without asking, I was given an explanation.

It is faster, easier, and cheaper to deal with stuff this way, rather than having to go to court and deal with that mess. I’d had a lawyer with me during this, just in case, and he agreed that the settlement was fair, and better than most would have been.

Case closed, I was warned to stay out of VR until cleared by a doctor, an appointment for which was scheduled for a month later.

I’d intended to look for a new job, but since I now had enough money to last a long time without a job, I took time off. I relaxed, enjoyed books, watched movies, played games, even cooked actual meals rather than quick ones that just required a few minutes in the microwave.

For some reason my cooking seemed to be really good. I’d been a passable cook when I put my mind to it, which was rare, but now it was like I’d become a master at it, and I LIKED it. It gave me a bit of a thrill, and didn’t take too long.

I debated for a bit, then notified the doctor in charge of my case. I did preface that I hadn’t noticed any negative effects, but this positive one could indicate that they were lurking in the dark.

I was rushed to a hospital and scanned. I was also asked to show off my skills, which I did, easily making a delicious meal in a quarter of the time it’d have taken me before. Mostly because my dexterity seemed to have increased and I could chop stuff up in seconds that would have taken minutes before. Cooking time was mostly the same, though I seemed to sense when something was ready, even if the timer disagreed.

Nothing seeming to hurt me, I was released and went home, leaving the doctors to play with the data. They did send me a report. There was some increased activity in my brain, but nothing appreciable. One of them jokingly suggested that I’d somehow Awakened Cooking as my skill.

I considered that. It was theoretically possible. Not all Awakenings were grand things usable in combat. Many were little things, slight increases in strength, speed, or toughness, the ability to barely float, find missing objects below a certain size, and so on.

I wondered if that was the case with me, but just ended up sighing. There was no way to determine if someone was actually an Awakened without a reasonable flashy power to test. Cooking wasn’t really a power. Plus, even with my improvements, there were still those out there who were better at it then me.

Even the lesser increases to base stats, strength, speed, dexterity, toughness, were hard to determine if they were Awakened, or just due to exercise. It was only after a certain point that it became obvious that Awakening had occurred and most at that level were brushed off. They could get better, stronger, but were not what the government was interested in. They wanted fighters.

It had been four weeks since this year’s Awakening, and I was on my way home from my niece’s birthday party. I was looking forward to my appointment with the doctor in three days. I’d gotten online and played some WoW, but it just wasn’t the same playing it on a screen after experiencing it in VR.

My musings were interrupted as a thunderous BOOM shattered the still air and my truck was suddenly flying away, flipping up onto it’s side, then it’s back before skidding to a stop of the wrong side of the road.

The airbags had deployed, so it took me a bit to discover what had happened, and when I did, I froze in terror.

The Phyrexians had attacked.

That wasn’t the species’ real name, but the grunts were a chaotic mess of machine and bio-matter, reminiscent of one of the most dangerous series of enemies in Magic the Gathering, so a nerd had used the name and it stuck. Unofficially. Officially the things were called… something else. Not sure what, since it’s not important right now.

A portal had appeared near where I’d been, the force of it’s appearance having been what caused my land-bound vehicle to have a brief stint of flying. The portals always devastated their immediate area when they appeared, the larger the worse the damage. This one was only a small one, maybe ten feet in diameter, so the damage was restricted to only three to four times that.

I’d been right on the edge of the damage radius, which is why I got flipped away rather than crushed into a pancake.

I couldn’t see anything but the portal, yet, and I didn’t want to. As soon as I recovered enough from the impact and my shock at it’s cause, I fought to extricate myself from my vehicle. I needed to get out of here and find a hiding place as soon as I could. It wouldn’t be long before the portal stabilized enough for the Phyrexians to pass through, and I’d already lost a lot of that time.

I’d just managed to crawl out of the vehicle, for once glad I’d never gotten that crack fixed since it made it easy to kick the windshield out, as it’d already mostly broken, when there was a second boom and a wave of dust rushed over me.

Crap. The portal’s stable. Here they come.

I quickly scooted around my truck and crawled under the back. It wasn’t the best hiding place, but to get to another I’d have to run without cover for far longer than was safe. It did help that the cab had crumpled a little on impact, though I’d come damn close to getting my head bashed when it had.

As I hid, I heard the howls and chittering of the invaders as they began to stream out of the portal and rush to spread out and fulfill their mission.

The grunts knew they were disposable, sent to cause as much damage as they could before they fell. The more intelligent of them would detonate their mana core, a gem in their body where their mana was gathered, when they knew they were about to die, which made it important to take them out in a single hit if possible. Others were forced to detonate by the leaders that commanded these forces, using them as bombs, even if they had no life threatening injuries.

Fuck. How am I going to escape this? I can’t even call for help since my phone was broken by the portal’s forming. Not that I needed to do so. Portals were detectable very quickly, so a team should already be on the way here.

I just hope they’re quick.

But I had little hope, since this was the first attack in this area in two years. While there were Awakened among the police and military forces nearby, they weren’t very powerful, and would likely need time to gather to attack together, rather than get picked off arriving piecemeal.

If only I’d Awakened. Or if I had, my power was something more than getting more fit and better at cooking.

A soft glow seemed to fill the hiding place. Me.

Oh hell, did they have something that revealed where people were by making them glow? I’d never heard of such a thing, but new bits of information did pop up from time to time.

I peeked out, and was glad to see that the light hadn’t drawn any attention. Yet. It was mid-afternoon, so the sun still shone brightly, making the soft, but growing, glow of my body not very noticeable. Yet.

If only I had some combat capabilities. Or weapons. Ah, why couldn’t this be a scenario in WoW, instead of real life. Then I could take the fight to the enemies instead of having to cower here and hope they don’t notice me.

Suddenly there was a flash, and my vision was covered by… a character selection screen?

The hell?

The flash drew attention and I could hear the clatter of the enemy approaching.

A stupid idea flashed through my mind. I couldn’t really believe it, but I was out of time and luck, so I’d just hope I wasn’t going insane. Further insane, since I maintained that sanity was like cake. A lie.

I mentally selected a character, and with another flash of light I disappeared, and was replaced by my WoW character.

I was also really uncomfortable. Wings do not fit very well in small spaces.

A UI like from the game appeared, and I grinned. If I could move like I could in the game, I had a chance.

Readying my weapons, a pair of Warglaives, I abruptly stood up, using my back to force the truck up, tilting it up so it stood on it’s front, then rushed forward, swinging my weapons to cut down the enemies in my path. It also allowed me to get out from under the truck that fell back down.

I shook my head slightly, letting my eyes adjust to full sunlight as I stood for a brief moment surrounded by enemies that attacked me on sight.

Then I danced.

It wasn’t a dance of joy or closeness, but one of death. I wove through my enemies, using my pair of double-bladed weapons to kill as many of the enemy as quickly as possible. I did so as I made my way towards the portal, the one more enemies were still streaming out of.

There was only one way to end this assault and close the damn thing. Fight through it and destroy the controls on the other side. It was easily done, one had to simply remove the control crystal from the console on the other side in one way or another. However, one had to fight through the encroaching horde, do so, then do one’s best to make it back to this side before the portal destabilized.

At least the thing wouldn’t unleash it’s energies on this side when that happened, rather it’d blow up on the other end, hopefully killing a lot of the enemy forces when it did so. The damage on opening on this side was because they were blasting a hole in space, but once the energy for it wasn’t making it’s way here, or had been used to make the bridge stable, no further damage could be done.

I slowly approached the portal, killing dozens, if not hundreds of the infernal creatures, and then I was there in front of it. Only a pair could cross through at a time, so I could hold out for some time, but I was feeling invincible, like I had to test myself, and so I advanced, leaving the Earth and entering enemy territory.

I’d already seen the hundreds, if not thousands, of enemies waiting to attack from the other side of the portal, but it’s different when they start to actually attack you. I quickly lost my feeling of invincibility as the swarm began to get through my defenses and leave greater injuries on my. I’d gotten nicks and cuts, injuries that I barely felt, but now I was actually taking damage, and the pain was starting to overwhelm me.

So I decided to try and finish this ASAP.

I used a buff. One that I’d been holding onto for an emergency, which I decided this was. I went into Demon Form. I grew in size, strength, speed, and my weapons did so as well, doubling my attack range.

I launched myself forward, headed for what could only be the control console. It looked like a glowing slab of rock with a single giant crystal sticking out of the middle of it. The thing was off to one side of the arch I’d entered through, so heading for it left the portal undefended, but the sooner I closed the thing, the better.

I was tempted to just launch my weapon at the crystal like a boomerang, but considering the crystals could be used for powerups, I decided not to. I’d do it if I had to, and not before.

I don’t know why, but it was shockingly easy to get to the console, not being very well defended. There were a pair of larger monsters, leaders, but they died so easily, just a couple quick slashes and they were down, and then the console was cut in half, and the crystal was in my hand. It’d be nice if I could stow it in my invento….

It disappeared. I tried and was able to pull up an inventory screen.

Yup. It’s somehow there, though it was marked with all question marks. I also had a ton of other stuff in inventory with the same question marks.

Ah, no time to play with stuff. Time to run. If I stay here, I’m dead.

I reversed course and used my rush ability to return to and through the portal, cutting down the enemies in my path as I did so. I caught sight of my inventory updating as I killed, so it must be the auto-loot function that had been part of one of the few things I’d purchased from Blizzard’s store, an inventory add-on.

The whole thing with needing to purchase and carry bags had been a dumb idea, especially in VR, so it’d been changed to be an inventory screen similar to the guild bank. Additional slots up to a certain point were purchasable, as well as shared inventory slots cross character. The auto-loot function was part of a special deal that’d only been available for a brief time before being taken down due to it’s brokenness. Those fortunate few hundred who had bought it got to keep it. I was one of them.

The deal had been to unlock all inventory slots on all characters, current and future, as well as access to the bank, personal and guild, a general supplies vendor, the auction house, and mailboxes from any location at any time outside of combat. There were also the ability to auto-loot kills, with it shoving any excess into the bank and the ability to auto-sell vendor trash and other items designated by the user.

So broken. So helpful.

It might have cost fifty bucks, more than twice what mounts cost, but the usefulness was undeniable.

Anyways…

Back on Earth I continued to fight, wiping out every enemy that attacked me, then searching them out nearby and killing them. The minimap helped, tagging them in red.

I’d finished them all off before anyone showed up, and I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to be known, yet, so after a quick wave, I ran away. No one was near where the portal had been, but if I just left things as they were, I might get found out… My truck was right there after all.

At least there shouldn’t have been any cameras nearby, the place had no street lights or telephone poles to mount them to… but there was a good chance there was a satellite looking down here, I just hope I could escape it’s notice somehow.

But how to deal with the truck?

It was surprisingly simple. I put it in my inventory. I had hope it’d work, but was also really glad it had. It also got marked ??? like all the loot I’d picked up from the invaders, the reason for my hope. I moved all the stuff I’d gotten today, including my truck, into the shared inventory, then I flew away.

Similar to how the Worgen got the Running Wild movement ability as a racial ability, Demon Hunters were able to learn Demon Flight as a class ability. We still had to pay to learn the various levels of the movement skills, but didn’t have to buy a mount.

Looking around, I found a place to hide, a construction site, but at least it had a roof to shield me from prying eyes. Then I tried something I’d thought up as the fight had been approaching its end.

If there was a character selection screen, was I limited to only the one I’d selected, or could I choose to change?

Opening the menu, I didn’t find what I was looking for, a logout button, but where it should have been there was another one. I found a character select button. Pressing it brought up the character selection lobby. It looked the same as always except for two things.

First, where the Demon Hunter should have been was a shadowed form, obviously indicating that I couldn’t select it.

Second, there was a thirteenth figure. One that hadn’t been there before, but was very familiar. My human body.

Overweight, though not as badly as in the past, it stood at the head of the lineup, staring at a Kindle held in it’s hands. OMG, that’s hilarious. Where the others are all holding weapons, that one holds a book. Though, there are some off hand items that are in the shape of books, so I guess it’s not unreasonable.

I wanted to see if I could swap between forms at will, or if there was a cooldown or something, but I needed to get out of here. I’d test stuff later.

I selected my elven druid and in a burst of light, my form shifted. The wings and horns disappeared, the skin lost it’s green markings, and a more natural skin-tone asserted itself. It was still purple, but the Demon Hunter skin was obviously the result of certain choices.

I tried out my new body, finding I could move it just as easily as I could the Demon Hunter one, as well as easily cast druidic spells, including healing, since I’d needed some… oh, I wonder what all the blood I lost is going to show up like?

Shaking my head, I finished healing, since apparently changing forms hadn’t changed my health bar, or mana for that matter, though DHs didn’t use that, having a fillable meter from dealing and taking damage.

Comfortably healed, I shifted into the druid’s flight form, a slightly over-sized raven. Then I flew away.

I spent two hours doing evasive maneuvers, moving from one place to another, pretending to be a bird, mingling with other birds, picking up shiny baubles that caught my eye, and then I headed home.

I spent a while looking around, seeing if anyone suspicious, or official looking, would show up, and for the moment, I seemed to be safe.

I hid in the downstairs window escape, then flashed back to my boring normal form.

Incidentally, it was marked with a level for some reason, just a one, but where a class would be listed was something I’d gotten familiar with. Question Marks.

I so hope my power up from the control crystal and all those mana cores will somehow allow me to fix that problem.

Yes, just like the control crystal, mana cores could also be used to power up an Awakened. It was just that they had very poor efficiency. It took at least a hundred of the low level cores the grunts had to make anything happen, and even then it would be a minor improvement at best. Leader cores were a bit better.

Back in my normal form, I left the emergency escape route and headed for the door of my apartment… I didn’t make it.

Fortunately it was only my mother, opening her back door to call out to me.

Yes, I still lived with my mother. Kind of. There was an apartment connected to a garage built to store construction equipment and vehicles. The place had been intended as an office for the business connected to the stuff that had been intended to be stored there, but that didn’t happen, so it got made into an apartment, and I rented it from her.

“BEN! You’re finally home! Are you alright?!”

“Yeah. I’m fine. I had to detour because, you know…”

“Then why didn’t you call me?! We all thought you’d been caught up in it! Especially since it was along the way home. We couldn’t reach you, everything went directly to voicemail.”

That’s because I did get caught up in it…

“My phone fell and broke.” When my truck was flipped over and I was nearly killed. I’d been lucky to save my Kindle, far less expensive an item, but far more important to me.

“They why didn’t you stop somewhere and borrow a phone?!”

Yeah, mom is so hysterical she was crying. She’d come out and was clinging to me. I held her and let her cry, though I did get her to unlock and pass me her phone, which I used to send a message telling everyone I was fine, but would be without a phone for a bit since mine had broken.

When she finally calmed down, we headed inside, and I apologized to her by making a nice dinner.

After dinner, I finally escaped her clutches, and retreated, because it was a retreat, to my domain. It was a relief to be home. Truly home. I just couldn’t relax unless I was here, by myself. I’m not a people person, much preferring solitude to company, of which I’d had far too much that day.

Night had fallen, but I wasn’t ready for sleep quite yet, so I hopped on my computer and played around for a while… after ordering a new phone online to be delivered the next day. One that was unlocked, and without all the bloatware companies liked to add.

It was NOT an overpriced, under performing Apple product. That shit’s just not happening.

Usually when playing around on the computer, I mean I’m playing games. Tonight, not so much. I was looking into the incursion that happened.

The public, fronted by the media, was NOT happy with how long it had taken for the official defence team to arrive. From what was said, they hadn’t arrived until nearly half an hour after I’d left. Which was just ridiculous. The portal opened in a mostly undeveloped area, but it was one that was surrounded by developed areas. Had I not appeared, tens of thousands of enemies would have made it through the portal before any help arrived and the incursion would have become a long and brutal campaign.

I was a little surprised when I found out it’d only taken me three minutes to shut the damn portal, and another five to clear up the place, though I had missed a couple of the beast types that’d taken off right after the portal opened. They’d savaged a herd of cows before they were found and killed.

The question of who the mysterious defender was was also raging.

There were some who believed that I was an actual demon, another enemy race. Hell really wasn’t a nice place, nor were the demons who’d visited Earth. We’d met them when the permanent portal to their realm was discovered, and they were greedy to try and get to Earth with it’s abundance of souls to steal. The portal was barricaded and none allowed through.

Most people believed I was an Awakener who’d hidden his power, or who’d needed a trigger to make it fully manifest. It was the second before the incident, but was now the first. Until I figure everything out, I’m going to stay hidden.

Satisfied that there was no mention of who I might be, at least as far as was publicly reported, I shut off my monitors and went to bed. I was tired. Slaughtering hundreds of cyborg demons was exhausting work, even if I was able to off the things in a single hit.

I knew that the ease with which I’d done things was abnormal. Most Awakeners have to spend years to become this strong, but I was really grateful I was able to skip that grind…

Well, considering I was using my alts from WoW, all of which I’d gotten up to the max level, 140 so far, you could say that I hadn’t skipped the grind, just done it in a different way.

I fell asleep with a question on my weary mind. Where would I go from here?

-----

I woke up to the sound of my alarm at seven.

I didn’t have anything to do, except collect my new new phone from the front porch when it arrives this afternoon, so I didn’t need an alarm, but I knew if I didn’t continue to be woken up at the same time my sleep schedule would go haywire. It’d done so for years before I’d gotten my latest job, which is now gone.

After doing the usual morning stuff, breakfast, bathroom, dress, I went into the garage. It was large, intended to house a backhoe and other construction gear, not that it ever had, except for the bits and pieces we’d kept after dad had died and mom sold off the rest, stuff they thought we’d be able to use. We hadn’t used most of it.

Right now only dad’s truck, a giant green diesel truck, was here. The other doors had nothing on this side of them. My truck should be here, but it wasn’t.

And then it was.

I’d started testing stuff after I was actually awake, one thing of which was the inventory. I was still in my base form, the human body I’d grown up, and out, in, but when I’d tried pulling up my inventory screen from it I’d been greatly surprised. It had worked! I hadn’t had anything there, but I also had access to all the same stuff as my other characters.

Which funnily enough included the auction house.

I’d wanted to try it out, but my transportation came first. I might be able to summon various mounts, I hadn’t tried yet, so it was still just a possibility, but I rather hoped that my truck would be repairable. I wanted something that wouldn’t stand out. The next closest things I had in my collection were the goblin trike, gnomish bike, and then the helicopter. All things made with engineering.

It’d be awesome to ride around on a dragon, but I didn’t want to try summoning anything living until I’d tried it out on the non-living items. I could always stow those away in inventory if I couldn’t dismiss them. I hoped.

But for the time being, truck!

I removed it from my inventory in the middle of the garage, not lined up with either door, since I wanted room to move around it. If it had retained the damage, which I was sad, but unsurprised, to learn was the case when it appeared, I would see if there was anything I could do about it.

At least the thing appeared on it’s wheels, rather then on it’s back like when I’d stored it. The cab was crumpled, the sides scratched all to hell, with the parts by the bed all bashed down. It was also leaking… I quickly stowed it away, but there was already a large puddle of stuff on the garage floor. That’s going to be a huge pain to clean up.

I thought through my characters, trying to remember if there was any with some ability to clean the mess up, but there wasn’t, at least not that I could recall. Most of the spells and abilities were combat based, though there were a good number that had other utility, like the mage’s teleport and portal. I really wanted to see if I could somehow set up end points without causing destruction like the Phyrexians did when they portaled in.

I’m sure if there was a real Azeroth, their mages would have a lot more spells than this, including utility spells like cleaning.

Grumbling, I grabbed the kitty litter and started pouring it over the spill, soaking up the stuff, then sweeping it up and throwing it away.

Then I prepared to bring my truck out again.

Yes, I was going to do it again, but this time I took precautions. I laid down a plastic sheet to catch all the fluids my truck would be dripping. I even threw a bunch of the kitty litter on it to begin with, so the stuff wouldn’t spread out… at least until the stuff had soaked up all it could.

Then I went back inside.

Why? Because I needed to be someone else for what was going to happen next. I don’t even know if it’d work, but I had to try.

I went into the pantry, closed the door, then lit it up and I changed bodies to my cute little pink haired gnome. As a gnome, I was actually taller than I initially thought I’d be, probably around four feet, when I’d been figuring on three. I was actually really happy with this body. It wasn’t as round as it’d been back when WoW began, being mostly like a small human. Some things been changed for VR since too big a change can make it hard to pilot.

I made my way back out to the garage. It was actually kind of interesting to see the world from this point of view. I was nearly two feet shorter than I was in human form, so everything looked a lot larger. I’m sure I’d be annoyed with it before long, but for now, I was enjoying myself.

I pulled my truck out over the prepared plastic. It appeared, and started leaking.

Almost instinctively, I pulled out my tool box and got to work. The box was small, but it contained an insane amount of tools, being a pocket dimension or something. I also knew how to use them all. At least for the moment. For some reason I doubted that’d last after I changed bodies again.

I spent all day in the garage fixing up the truck, only coming out around dinner time to collect my phone from my mom and have dinner. Lunch? What’s that? Does it need to be oiled and adjusted?

I’d only gone in for the phone and dinner because mom came knocking at my door. I’d had to flash back to my human quickly to answer it. Fortunately, the grease and grime didn’t carry over, so mom didn’t realize anything was off. Or did she? She was giving me a bit of a funny look as I cooked.

I played with my new phone as I waited for stuff to cook. Prep took next to no time, but I couldn’t just… Well, I probably could pop food into existence, if I became my mage. She could summon food and drink, but I wasn’t sure how it’d work in this world. Heck, since it was designed to restore health and mana, it might even heal wounds.

Well, I’d just have to wait till later to try that out. Also see what’s up with teleporting.

We had a good dinner, during which my phone was assaulted with incoming messages from when I’d been without one. And updating. Lots of updating, downloading the apps, mostly games, that I used, setting up the personalized ringtones for certain people, and so on.

I didn’t do much talking, leaving that to mum, as usual, and mostly just smiling and nodding.

Until she mentioned getting a new job.

I sighed. I hated working. I’m sure most people do, but I’d spent years between jobs, and had basically bankrupted myself because I just didn’t want to go back. She knew this, and didn’t want it to happen a third time.

“I’m going to wait a while before looking. I’ve got over a million in savings, most of it off gathering interest or being played with to earn me money by people who know what they’re doing. I barely spend anything outside of necessities, so there’s a good chance I could get away with never working again.”

“But…”

“Yes, I know, and I won’t do that. I’ll try and find an easy job that doesn’t drive me batty. Maybe I’ll put my new cooking skills to the test and become a chef.”

She gave me a look.

“I said maybe. Food service is not really where I want to go, anyway. Anyways… I’m not doing anything important until I get cleared by the docs. I’ve got an appointment for the day after tomorrow to see what they say about the whole brain zap thing. But I haven’t noticed anything bad.”

Nope. In fact, everything seemed to be good. VERY good. And I’d barely started to test anything, since I didn’t want to do it at home. Too much chance of someone coming to borrow dad’s truck. I swear someone borrowed it like every week to ten days. Mostly my brothers who get themselves caught helping people move stuff.

But to test stuff safely away from things, I needed to be mobile, and as mentioned before, I want to do so with no one knowing.

Mom wasn’t really happy with me putting off the job hunt, but she gave up and changed the subject.

Back in my domain, I flashed back to my gnomish body in the pantry, to hide the light, then returned to my work in the garage. I’d already stopped all the leaks, and was working on the engine. The cab and exterior could wait until the thing was operational, though I should probably do something so people (mom) don’t freak out if they see all the damage.

I worked through the night and all the next day finishing off the repairs to the vehicle. It was really surprising what I could accomplish as a gnomish engineer. I had needed to make a few runs to stores to pick up the parts I couldn’t fabricate at my portable forge, mostly plastic stuff, filters, lights, and fluids.

Having an inventory was great, since it let me stash the stuff away quick and easy. I barely even had to hide it. If I’d just popped stuff out of sight by touching it, people would know I was Awakened, but there were some that could make… you know, those recipes are still there, even if they’re mostly useless now.

Ah, I need to finish this thought before going on a tangent!

There were some Awakened who were able to make storage items. Magic bags, interdimensional boxes, storage rings, yadda yadda. Since Awakening was different for different people, some were magic, some high tech. The point is, it was possible for one to get their hands on the things, even if they were pricey. So I treated my backpack like one of those bags, disappearing the things when they were out of sight.

NOW it’s tangent time.

With the change in the way inventory works, we’ve moved away from using bags to expand carrying capacity. However, they did not get rid of the recipes for the storage in the crafting professions. Most of them were in tailoring, though there were a few boxes in blacksmithing and engineering that were magitech, like the engineer’s amazing toolbox.

We made the things, combining multiple smaller tool kits as well as resources to make the container. Really, the toolkit fell partially under Enchanting as well, since there were some of that stuff to actually make it a storage bag.

The bags were still usable, though they were mostly cosmetic now. A new equipment slot for a pack was added to the menu, which allowed people who wanted to to throw something in there. They didn’t have stats or anything, but could be used by VR players as a manual access to drop stuff into their inventory.

They were still marked with a capacity, but that didn’t really apply anymore.

Not in game.

Yet another thing to add to the list of things to try out. I pulled a notepad out and wrote on it. The list was long, with dozens of things to try, many of them weird things that had popped up like the bag thing had.

By staying up late into the night, I was able to have my truck repaired sufficiently to not draw too much attention as it drove by. The cab had been uncrumpled and the worst of the exterior damage dealt with, so my truck only looked like it had survived an accident with minor damage, rather than being half destroyed.

On the inside, the important stuff was operational… except the AC. I hadn’t had time to get in and clean that up, so it was on the waiting list, along with fixing the interior of the cab. Some things had needed fixing for a long time, like the radio and one of the interior lights. May as well update them since I got to do stuff anyways.

At the hospital, I found a parking spot away in the boonies so people didn’t take exception to the state of my truck, and hiked up to the entrance. Signing in, I waited for the doc to be ready for me. It took longer than anticipated, so I read a book while I was waiting. Then another.

The heck?

I’d checked after a half hour had passed and was told the doctor had an emergency come up and would be a bit late, but two hours late? With no explanation?

I tried again, and was told the same thing. I asked if I needed to reschedule, but was told that I’d be waiting another two weeks if I did so.

Then what about the other patients that have had their appointments delayed by this emergency? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. My appointment was supposed to have been the first of the day and take an hour or two. Not only was the FIRST appointment delayed, all the rest would be as well.

I sat back down. This time, I pulled my laptop out of my bag and got online. I had a lot of web novels to catch up on.

When I was finally called, I’d been waiting for nearly four hours, and had been considering heading to the cafeteria for some lunch. The doctor didn’t even apologize for the delay, and just started checking things. I was annoyed, and curious, but didn’t bother asking.

After being poked, prodded, shoved into a machine to scan parts of myself, and samples of everything being taken, I was released. As far as she could tell without running the samples, which had already been sent off to the lab for that to be done, I was fine, more than that, since I was far fitter than I had been initially.

I was told the final verdict and report would be sent to me after the samples were checked, which would take another three to five days.

Crap, more days of no VR…

Well, I still had plenty to do, but the guild was getting impatient, since I’d been one of the healers for the lower level raids, since I had been working on achievements and expanding my collection of pets and mounts. I could do it via screen, but the efficiency dropped.

My gear wasn’t up to current content raids, being most stuff good for Heroic dungeons so far, though I was slowly getting better gear, it was a little frustrating to do so for multiple characters.

I headed home, stopping for food and shopping along the way. I still needed some parts I hadn’t been able to pick up at the closer stores I could hoof it to, but they had been nonessential. Not all of the stuff I picked up was for the truck. Some of it was for testing other stuff once my truck was repaired completely.

It took me another day to finish the truck, getting it all nice and pretty, even better than it had been before the portal trashed it. I even had a new windshield without a crack all the way from one side to the other. And updated the radio. I now had USB and Auxiliary ports in it so I didn’t have to mess around with FM transmitters.

My tinkering hadn’t been to just restore the thing, but had even improved the vehicle, doubling the MPG, and making the ride a whole lot smoother than it had ever been. The knowledge that came with my gnomish engineer was remarkable, and also helped in learning how Earth stuff worked, since I’d had to look up a shit ton of stuff on the computer to complete the job.

When I was done, I was filthy, smelly, and satisfied with my work.

And ready for a bath. Too bad I’d have to make do with a shower.

I’d hoped that changing back and forth between forms would leave me clean, but I always reverted to the same state I’d left that body in, which meant my gnome was a dirty little girl, and needed a lot of time and effort to get cleaned up.

Doing so was quite an experience, since it was the first time I’d gotten naked outside of my base body. I hadn’t even needed to use the bathroom in my other form, since it seemed the digestive and waste systems were linked, and I could eat in any form, and empty myself in any other with no problems. I have no idea how that’d work, and I really didn’t want to question it.

I was short, an inch over four feet tall, I’d measured it, but my body was fully grown and mostly human proportioned. It was a bit different in some places, but was otherwise nearly human. The pink hair though, all natural. As above, so below.

Outside of the racial differences, there was also the fact that in this body, I wasn’t male, and so was lacking certain characteristics, while gaining others. My breasts, actual breasts, not the man boobs I’d gained by being fat, were small, but definitely present. Were I average sized for a human, they’d probably be B, maybe C cup.

And of course there was down there, where the twig and berries usually was…

Lets leave it at it took a while before I actually started the shower. Though the shower also ran till there was no more hot water and I had to deal with colder water till I finished. Thank god I picked up some stuff to actually help me get most of the grease, grime, oils, and other fluids from off my body and out of my hair. There was still some left, stuff that I’d need to actually get time in a bath to soak in before it’d loosen up enough to get out.

I’d borrow one of mom’s bathrooms to do that. I didn’t even need the master with the giant Jacuzzi to be comfortable, since I’d shrunk to a bit over two-thirds my former height.

After I was clean, I stayed in that form, wrapping a towel around my naked body as my clothes were run through the wash. I’d grown used to it, and decided to see how comfortable it was in a room built for those larger than my current self.

Some of it was nice, some of it annoying. My bed was loaded with pillows, and diving into them was amazing. Cooking something in the microwave was a pain, since it was one of those over the oven types, and a bit irritating even as a human. Thank goodness I’d taken to storing a stepladder in my inventory to deal with the height difference in reaching the engine from the top.

I was also amused, having pulled a graphic novel off a shelf to read, and it was like a was a child reading a picture book…

I had to run the clothes through the washer several times, and used ample amounts of soap and degreaser to get the majority of the filth out. Next time I did anything like this, I’d put on something else, not my best gear, which were nice robes, since the gnome was a priest…

Don’t priests have a Cleanse spell?

I found it and applied it not to another person to remove debuffs, but to my clothes…

Then I went around my entire place and used it on everything. My bathroom had never been cleaner.

The day ended with me gulping down a bowl of ice cream as I watched a movie nestled in a pile of pillows on my bed. It was a chick flick, and I didn’t care, because I was a girl, and there was nothing anyone could say about it!

Not that anyone did anyways. I’d watched enough with my mother, since she liked the clean ones and would often have them on when I visited her for dinner. Otherwise, I only watched them in the privacy of my room, alone. I’d kill the screen if I needed to answer the door and claim to be reading.

Yes, I was enjoying myself being physically female, while having only peeked out of my shell in private otherwise.

I went to bed dressed in a tunic that was like a nightgown on me, the only part of the original outfit I’d kept out of inventory was the underwear, since I didn’t have any others… A problem I’d fix in the near future, especially when I’d experienced my other forms as well.

---

A ringing phone woke me up, and I answered it.

“Hello?”

“Hello? Huh? I must have a wrong number. Sorry to wake you up.”

The line went dead, and I looked at it. What was the problem? Did my sister not mean to call me?

A few moments later the phone rang again, again my sister.

“Morning sis? What’s up?”

“Who is this, and why are you answering my brother’s phone?”

“Huh? But I am… Oh.”

And then I realized that I was still a gnomish priest, and was talking to my sister with a higher pitched voice than I would have.

I got out of bed and put down the phone before flashing over to my normal self. Coughing for a bit, I picked back up the phone.

“Sorry about that sis. Had something off with my voice. What’s up?”

“Don’t what’s up me? Did you finally get a girlfriend?”

Yes, I’d been without one for a long time, so my family teased me with it at times. My lack of love life equals my age.

“No I didn’t. That was me speaking.”

“Uh huh… well, I’m just calling to let you know we’re on our way to drop Tina off with mom and pick you up. You’d better be ready.”

It took me a moment to realize what was going on. Today was the first day for the Ren Faire, and we’d been planning to go together.

“Ah, sorry. I forgot to set my alarm. I’ll be ready by the time you get here.”

“You’d better, or you can drive yourself.”

She hung up.

I grinned.

When she arrived twenty minutes later, I was waiting in the main house with mom. I was carrying a bag with a bunch of stuff in it. Armor. I was also dressed in some more medieval looking pieces of clothing. I’d add the rest on after we arrived.

She looked me over and nodded before passing by and letting her husband in the door. She was dressed in a deep green gown with her hair beautifully coiffed, while he was in a fancy tunic and trows with an embossed leather doublet atop it. He didn’t have a belt, so like me he’d finish equipping himself on arrival. Some things are rather annoying to wear while seated in a confined space, like swords.

I was usually the one more interested in cosplay, but sis had been indulging in sewing after having made her daughter’s blessing gown with mom after she’d been born, and had been the one to create the dress she currently wore.

We’d be attending the festival as a lady, her husband, and their guard. Except the guard had just been upgraded to knight with the gear I had with me. I’d tried it on and it was surprisingly not too uncomfortable.

The child handoff was achieved and mom and Tina waved goodbye as we climbed into the car and took off down the highway to the Fairegrounds.

After arrival, I finished suiting up, surprising my family with the gear I was wearing. I’d dug out some of the heritage gear from my collection screen and was wearing the armor designed for paladins. Chain mail hauberk and mail reinforced chaises, armored boots, bracers, and I left off the helmet. Not very comfortable.

For weapons, I was wearing a long sword and a dagger. The sword was designed more for warriors, but since I didn’t care about the stats, and more for the looks, it worked. It was also sharp, so I’d slapped some zip ties on so they wouldn’t complain.

My brother-in-law was also wearing a sword, but it was a display sword, one that went well with his outfit. I doubted he’d have been able to kill a rabbit with it. Well, not that he’d need to.

We got compliments and picture requests. Some of the staff even thought we were part of the cast, which made us laugh.

We’d arrived early, and so got good ‘seats’ at the front when the show opening the gates took place, and then we were off. As expected, sis wanted to find some nice pieces of jewelry to help finish her look, and my brother-in-law and I followed along like the obedient men we were. I picked up a few odds and ends, things I thought might be beneficial in my testing. Or as souvenirs, since mom kinda wanted to come, but also kinda didn’t. She was just happy to have time to play with her grandkid.

The atmosphere was much different then back before the Awakenings began, since there were not just humans, but also those of other races. Many of them saw our Renaissance Festivals and laughed, before jumping right in. Now there were Dwarven and Elven craftsmen selling their wares, sometimes made right in from of you. Fairies flitted here and there, and were permitted to make light, fun, mischief. Anything overboard and they would end up imprisoned. Or at least in time out in a bottle.

We shopped, saw a few of the shows, ate lunch, and were altogether enjoying ourselves when there was a very familiar BOOM.

“Fuck.”

My sister and brother-in-law looked at me. I tried not to curse around the family, but they knew I had the foulest mouth of the family.

“You need to find a place to hide. That’s a…”

The place was flooded with a deluge of noise as every phone in the area went off. All had the same message. One I’d have gotten a few days ago had my phone not been destroyed.

[Emergency! Portal detected in immediate area. Seek shelter immediately!]

I shut my phone off, then stored it away, seemingly in my belt pouch, though I’d actually stowed it in my shared inventory.

“Don’t try for your car. There’s going to be an attempt at a mass exodus, and it’s just going to end up as a traffic jam. Find a place to hide.”

“Okay, let’s go… wait, where are you going?”

“I’ll explain everything later.” I pulled her into a hug and whispered in her ear. “This won’t be my first fight. I Awakened, though I didn’t know it till five days ago.” I let her go and pushed her to my brother-in-law. “Now run and don’t worry about me.”

I took off, ignoring her demands to explain what I’d just said. Five days ago was the day of the last portal, the one that happened on the path home. The one I told everyone I’d avoided.

I found an empty shop, one with a half ajar door to a closet. It wasn’t very big, but it was enough. After making sure no one was nearby to see, I entered it, pulled the door shut, then flashed into my DH body.

It felt nice and comfortable. It was taller than my human body by a few inches, and much stronger, while also being light on its feet. It was also very well formed, with curves in all the right places. Also wings… which is why I exited the closet as quickly as I could. My wings felt a little trapped in there.

Rushing back into the open, I drew some stares, and screams, as I reached an open spot, then spread my wings wide and took off into the sky, headed in the direction I’d heard the boom come from.

I arrived soon after it had opened, and was able to catch all of those who’d exited, and then stood guard and cut down any who passed through. After filling up my meter, I charged into the portal and took the fight to them. I’d limited myself somewhat last time, but not this time. I wanted this done as soon as I could, since I’d heard a team had been transferred into the city in case of other incursions.

Yeah, once a portal opened in one location, the chances of subsequent ones rose. Which meant I didn’t have very long before I could expect the defenders to arrive, so I needed to deal with this fast and escape if I didn’t want to be revealed.

On the far side of the portal, I used an AOE to clear the immediate area, then headed for the controls. It was better defended than last time, but not by much. There were five leaders instead of two, but they still didn’t last long, and then the crystal was in my inventory and the console spitting sparks and preparing to explode.

I returned to the portal, spammed some more AOEs, including the infernal laser vision, then retreated back to Earth. I defended the portal till it closed with a soft WHOOSH, then went hunting. Not many had made it to this side, so it took moments to clean up, and then I was off to hide.

I was a little late, as I took to the air, the defense team arrived, and I was the only target left.

“Get down on the ground, hands above your head!”

A voice from a loudspeaker sounded, and I followed the orders… but not until I’d triggered the one piece of gear every WoW character starts with.

“I’m not your enemy, but I really can’t afford to be brought in right now.”

And then I vanished as the ten second countdown for the Hearthstone to activate finished and I vanished.

Being teleported by the thing was… interesting? I was being pulled along by something and nothing. It wasn’t painful or anything, but it was slightly uncomfortable. Fortunately, it only lasted a few seconds, and then I was home. I’d noticed that the hearthstone for my gnome was set for my house, so had been happy to find that my DH’s was as well.

I really hoped there was no way to track that, but there had been no other way to escape. However, since they very well might be able to, I packed up to leave. After changing forms to my base form. Trying to move around my crowded apartment with wings wasn’t fun. I kept hitting them on things.

As I worked, packing up anything essential and storing it in bags or boxes, which I found allowed me to save inventory space, I pulled out my phone and called my sister.

“Hi sis, sorry I don’t have a lot of time, but the emergency’s over. I ran into some trouble, so there’s no need for you to wait for me to head home. I won’t be available for a while, so we’ll have to talk when I get back. Tell mom. Love you. Bye.”

She tried asking questions, but I didn’t let her. As soon as I hung up, I popped it into inventory and got back to work. Everything was quickly packed and stowed away, including my truck, and then I left. Just in case they’d tracked the use of the hearthstone and had a spy satellite overhead, I walked calmly towards mom’s back door, but then flashed to my mage form while out of sight.

It was the first time I’d been in this body, but I could easily use it. And it’s spells.

I went invisible, then started running. Over the fence, down some streets, and into the groves. They were large, and very little of the ground showed. The perfect place for me to hide long enough to take care of business.

What business? First, I conjuring some food, then switching over to my Worgen druid and taking on my flight form, I flew around the groves for a while, then found a flock of nesting birds. My presence spooked them, and they took flight, and so did I, using them as camouflage.

I followed the flock around for a bit, leaving them a bit scared, then headed in a different direction. It took a while, but I made my way back towards home, keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.

Nothing.

Perfect.

Still, I didn’t know if the response might just be delayed, so I got comfortable. I had enough food to last me several days, or at least I hoped so. I had a bit in my inventory from the house, but I didn’t know if the conjured food would do the trick, or last.

I’d been able to get it into the shared inventory and then into this character’s, a trick I’d found out about online, but I didn’t know how well it might last, or if my inventory space was time locked. Theoretically it should be, but that was a game, and this was real life. While there were an abundance of similarities, many things had changed, at least slightly, in order to be feasible.

I’d find out, and would go find some real food if I had to.

So for now, waiting.

---

Four days later, and there was no visible evidence, that I could detect that anything was amiss, so I decided it was time to return to my life.

I flew back to the grapefruit tree. The one that never got picked since none of us liked the stuff, but dad had insisted on planting when building the house just because. Hiding under the branches, I returned to my Worgen body, then flashed back into my original form before making my way towards the house.

Mom’s, not mine.

Time to face the music. I pulled my phone out of inventory, let it connect and update, then waited as it wailed at me with an abundance of messages, alerts, notifications, and so on. Had I paid attention to it, I’d have realized far earlier that the inventory was time stopped, since the clock was wrong when I’d pulled it out to call my sister after escaping.

Mom must have heard the cacophony, because the back door suddenly slid open as I was making my way across the astroturf.

“BEN! WHERE THE HECK WERE YOU! What happened that made you disappear, again?!”

Yes, worry will make you hysterical.

“I’ll tell you, but let’s go inside and sit down. I’d really like a comfortable seat.”

I was almost dragged inside, but I still had to take off my boots and armor before I was permitted to find a spot on the couch and relax. Oh, this was nice after spending days as a raven.

However, a voice brought me back to the present like the crack of a whip.

“Talk.”

I sat up straight.

“It all started the day of the Awakening…”

She already knew a bit about some of the changes, since she’d benefited from my cooking and had seen me start to slim down. Even I don’t know why I’d started losing weight so fast, but I was glad for it. I’d had issues with it all my life. Not dangerously, I just wasn’t able to easily drop weight, even with diet and exercise, but there I was doing so while only changing my diet while being a couch potato.

When I got to the incursion where I became aware of just how much I’d changed, I got a little sparse on details. Mom didn’t need to know just how many enemies there were, or how I thought I was going to die for a bit after crossing the portal.

Her face was locked into an expression of surprise and disbelief, but I continued plugging along, telling her of my flight, return home, and then what I’d done since, including the fight at the Ren Faire, and my hiding while keeping watch.

Just in case, I didn’t say anything about my other forms, nor their gender. I’d left it at having taken on a combat form, then a disguise that let me move about unnoticed, while I let her think I’d done the truck repairs as myself, not a gnome. If she hadn’t seen the pictures from the attacks, she might not realize…

Yes! I know I’m being totally eggy, and should just come out and tell her I’m not a cis male, and really enjoyed being a woman, but I was freaking scared!

When I came to the end of my story, she just looked at me for a long time. Long enough that I thought she’d fainted with her eyes open. I shrugged, and pulled out my book, but didn’t get very far before mom unfroze with a yell.

“YOU WHAT! Why the hell did you go out and risk your life like that! No, I am proud of you for what you did, but NOT HOW YOU DID IT! You should have waited for backup!”

OH. MY. GOD. My mom actually cursed. The world is ending.

“There wasn’t time! And I wasn’t ready to be outed to the world. I’m still not!”

“Do you really think you’ll be able to hide?”

“Yes!” I declared, before continuing in a softer voice. “Just not forever. I just want to find out what I can, and can’t, do before going public. Preferably without giving my secret identity away to the public. It’ll be bad enough the government will know, because they leak like a sieve. You’ve seen the news about all the Awakened who got outed because of government leaks, haven’t you.”

She shook her head.

Well, I didn’t blame her. I didn’t read the news too much either, not until the Awakening, since the world became like one out of a novel. One using pictures as the primary medium with words backing them up. Yes, I’m talking about graphic novels. Comic books for those who are not interesting in being literarily correct.

Yes, I’m also aware that Literarily is not a real word. It is now. Deal with it.

I’d followed a few of the Awakened, and wished I could become one. Well, my wish came true. And I was loving it. Except that I’d had two encounters with invasions in five days. If the trend continued, tomorrow would be another one.

OH!

I pulled out my laptop and powered it up. I needed to check my email. Mom might appreciate me having received a bill of good health from the doc about the mishap during the Awakening.

“Well, let me tell you. There’s a lot of people who wanted to remain anonymous, but some idiots in the government wanted to make a few bucks and sold the supposedly private data to news networks and who knows who else. And not all of the leaks have been found. So, yeah. Not really happy with that happening to me. It’ll lead back to you, and I doubt you want to have people camping out on the front lawn to catch a glimpse of me.”

“Okay, I get it. But that doesn’t mean I like you going into danger alone.”

“I know, and I have stuff to try out to see if I can avoid doing so. Worst case scenario, I’ll reveal myself. But only when I feel like I’m ready. Or have to.”

“Just, please be careful.”

I moved from the giant chair, one that’d be large enough for a tauren to sit in comfortably, to the couch and gave mom a hug. She hung on tight.

“I’ll do my best. Also, check this out. The blood work came back, and there’s nothing wrong with me. Except for turning into a Demon Hunter when I feel like it. Not that they know that last bit.”

She smacked me, not appreciating my cheeky comment.

“Fine. But now you have to call your sister.”

“Crap.”

---

I decided to NOT call my sister, but sent her a text instead. Told her if she wanted to learn anything, she’d have to come over Saturday for dinner. I also sent out a general message to the family about a gathering, after getting the okay from mom. I emphasized that it was important to be there if at all possible.

As it was in three days, there were a couple of people who couldn’t come, but otherwise everyone expected to be there. We’d be having pizza. I’d be making it.

I considered doing so in advance, them being all magician-like and plopping them down on the counter, but decided I should not reveal my having Awakened to the kids if at all possible. They’re blabbermouths. Especially my older brother’s oldest daughter.

I still prepared the stuff in advance, I just wouldn’t do the magic part. I’d figured out that food or items that are mostly the same will stack, so I prepared pizzas that just needed the toppings added and to be cooked to be ready. All the toppings were cut up, ready to be added, then stuck in plastic bags, then those were added to a larger bag and shoved into my inventory. That way it only took one slot, not one per ingredient.

I had a lot more room in there since I’d emptied stuff back into my room. I still had a good number of items with me, items I really didn’t want to lose, or would find useful. Like spare clothes, and toilet paper. I’d stacked up the second to 1000, which was the max items could go to. That was individual rolls, not packages.

I spent a LOT of time making pizza, and actually did cook a bunch of them. The normal flavors, Hawaiian, pepperoni, meat, cheese. Anything beyond that would have to be prepared and then cooked before it could be eaten.

While preparing, I also decided to prep a bunch of other stuff. Drinks, other foods besides pizza, more paper and plastic products, other miscellania.

I had a massive inventory, and I knew what to do with it!

The personal inventories were one page of two hundred slots each, while the shared one was the same number of slots, but with ten pages. Plus there was the guild that had six pages. All of my characters on the server were parts of the same guilds.

Yes, that’s plural. At some point, they decided to let people join two. I think the decision was so they could be in one for gameplay, while the other was for professions. I can’t remember rightly.

Anyways, I owned a guild for each faction that only had my alts in them, and was otherwise only in an Alliance guild that was mainly a group of friends, and their friends. I think they were up to two hundred people now. Though that did include a lot of alts. Like me, with 9 of them. Most people weren’t that bad, sticking to 2-3.

The guild, ForTheLulz was the name, had a couple of different groups. One that focused on current endgame, and another that focused on achievements, collections, and other stuff like that. There were also some PvP fanatics, but not many.

I was in the second group, since I wasn’t too set on raiding. It just tended to get too intense, with people screaming when you screwed up. Even the harder dungeon modes were like that, which is why I wasn’t the best geared, besides hopping around on a dozen different characters.

My three Horde characters also had their own guild, but currently weren’t part of another. I didn’t play on them enough, so had gotten kicked out.

So anyway, I had a LOT of storage space. Half of it was full of random crap. Event items, rare BoE gear, mats of all sorts.

I filled up a good sized corner with a large variety of different things. Usually a box or crate with a LOT of a single item in it if they were small. Individually if they were large.

I was all ready for the swarm to arrive. Or an emergency. That too.

People started rolling in ten minutes after the scheduled time. Not bad, considering they all had children to deal with. It wasn’t until an hour later that the last of them, that could make it, had arrived.

The kids were sent off to have fun outside under the watchful eyes of mom, while the rest of us gathered in the living room. I was all ready for this.

“Thank you for gathering here. Since we don’t know when the kids will be back, I’ll get right down to it. Exhibit one!”

I pointed to myself.

“Exhibit two.”

I turned on the TV. It took a few seconds to start up and accept the input from my laptop, currently turned towards the wall so people couldn’t see what was on the screen.

“I’ll be cooking. Come get me when the hubbub dies down.”

I walked off as the image on the screen came up. It wasn’t the best shot, but it was one that wasn’t apparently female, I was still too scared to say anything. But I also felt like I wouldn’t be able to deny it if questioned.

I also looked awesome in it. All wings wide, with warglaives held ready to strike. There wasn’t much blood, though there was some, both spattered on myself as well as slicking my blades. Definitely no corpses. The shot had them edited out. I was really pleased with whoever had taken the picture.

There was silence for a moment, then the expected explosion of noise began. I mostly ignored it as I finished preparing the pizzas with the chosen toppings from a note I’d written as people arrived.

It took them a couple minutes before it got quiet and I was summoned to the inquisition.

“Ben. You’re telling us that’s you?”

“Yep!”

“You Awakened? And can turn into a demon?”

“Yes and no. I Awakened, but that there is a Demon Hunter, not a demon.”

My older brother shot our youngest brother a triumphant look.

“I told you so!”

“Yeah, yeah. So you turn into your video game character. Can you show us?”

I froze. I didn’t mean to. I’d tried to prepare myself for the inevitable question, but when the time came, I godsdamned froze.

My shrink of a sister-in-law caught it.

“So you can, but for some reason you don’t want to.”

I looked away.

Unfortunately for me, my older brother decided to use that time to grab my laptop and search for other images. And he pulled up the best of them. One that showed beyond a shadow of a doubt the difference between us.

The picture showed me with a warglaive raised above my head, an enormous grin on my face, and on my chest two very conspicuous mounds. Ones that were obviously supposed to be there, unlike the ones I’d used to have on this body. They were mostly gone now.

I turned away to go back to the pizzas.

“Ben?” A hand stopped me in place. It rested gently on my shoulder. I could have easily escaped, but I couldn’t move. “It’s alright. We’re here for you.”

I broke. I couldn’t stop myself from crying, fat tears rolling down my cheeks as I collapsed to the floor and huddled in on myself.

My brothers didn’t seem to know what to do, so they just went outside to play with the kids, while my sisters tried to comfort me and get me to open up.

I did, eventually, though I ended up unloading the prepared pizzas and retreating to the basement first. There was no need to worry the kids, and we couldn’t keep them outside.

With a broken voice, I told them how I hadn’t liked myself, how I’d wanted to just die, and had tried, and failed to kill myself. Then about how I’d found some web novels that described characters with symptoms like mine.

Dysphoria.

I changed my lifestyle. Not on the outside, but in private. Found that I wasn’t just a girl like I’d first thought, but something in between. How it was this body I hated, not being male itself, though that’d faded a bit since I’d awakened. How I longed to be more feminine. How great I’d felt when I’d tried girlish things, and how I’d finally felt free when my dream came true and I got a body where I could actually experience being a girl.

It took a long time, but I finally got it out. Mom came to join us, and while she didn’t really understand, she said she still loved me, and gave me a hug.

It lasted a bit, but after a while, I had her let me go, then I retreated into my old room. The one I’d had for most of my childhood. Nothing from that time remained, but there was still some comfort in it, and then I changed.

My return led to gasps as they beheld me in all my purple and green glory. As a night elf, I was a couple inches over six feet tall, but I also had the horns and wings rising further above that. I had to be a bit careful not to catch them on anything. Especially as that damn door had a habit of swinging mostly shut on it’s own.

“Um, hi.”

I was acting a little shy, which I guess was weird for someone the size I was and had the build of a warrior, because there were snickers, then bursts of laughter.

Their reaction made me frown, which set them off again, with them claiming I had a cute pout. I glared at them, then went back to the room. They tried to stop me, but I was faster than them and quickly had the door shut and locked.

If they want to call me cute, then I’ll show them cute.

I was definitely not thinking straight, because I’d intended to keep the fact that I had multiple forms a secret, but there was a gasp when I unlocked and opened the door as not a 6’2” DH, but a 4’1” gnomish priest.

I hadn’t taken the time to put my weapon away in inventory like I had with the DH, so I was standing there in a white and gold robe with a bejeweled staff.

I got stared at.

“BOO!”

I had to do it. They all jumped, and there were some shrieks.

My sister, the blood one, bonked me on the head.

“Not funny Rynn. Now, how about you give us a little more information…”

Crap.

I was stuck explaining things for a while longer. I did not go into details, since I needed to keep some secrets to keep myself safe, but I did have to make some promises. Not that they were too bad. For one, I’d be getting some help on the clothing front. I wanted my characters, at least the ones that could pass with less notice to have Earth-style clothing, not just the stuff from WoW.

Yes, that included some of the non-humans, though I’d have to deal with clothes for the ones I wouldn’t reveal myself. At least I’d have experience from the group shopping trip on Monday.

The party ended up breaking up, far later than it usually would have due to my issues, already well into the night. I saw off my siblings and their families. As my original self, since it wasn’t safe for the kids to know I was Awakened.

There’d actually been a close call when one of them came down the stairs and nearly saw me as a gnome, but I’d ducked out of sight before she could.

As I went to bed that night, I was both relieved, as well as anxious. My secret had been revealed, so I wouldn’t have to pretend to not be… me. But also, how did they feel, knowing that I who had been a boy was now not? Kind of?

Binary designations make things easy, but when someone doesn’t fit in, it can make things confusing. Like there’s the term hermaphrodite, usually shortened to herm, but I didn’t know that I wanted to be called one, since I viewed those as having both sets of organs simultaneously. Same with Futanari, futa, which is the Japanese version, which usually ends up with a cock on an otherwise feminine body.

Gender fluid was a more correct designation, but I still felt awkward.

I should find some kind of support group. I really should have done that in the past, and had thought about it, but just couldn’t bring myself to do so. Something of a coward, this one is.

I also had the feeling that I didn’t deserve what I’d gotten. A common problem, but even knowing that didn’t help lessen the feeling much.

Plagued by these thoughts, my sleep wasn’t the most restful. I don’t know if I had actual nightmares, or what, but at least I didn’t have to deal with them after waking up.

I spent the day testing various things, and switching between all of my forms. I wanted to have at least been in each once. It was a little weird to go between them like that, but not bad.

And then as evening approached my alarm went off, and I smiled. It was time to get ready to log in.

Business was quickly concluded and I was soon cradled by my nest of pillows and pulling my new Helm onto my head. The one I’d been given when the last one zapped me, but had never had the opportunity to use due to the doctor’s instructions, and then just being busy the last few days.

Settling the Helm and strapping it on, making sure the connections were in the correct places and I was comfortable, I closed the visor and powered it on.

It took a few moments, time used to get the arm into a comfortable position, and then the screen on the visor lit up. I tested the mental controls, checking the menus to make sure my settings were imported correctly, then made sure I was completely comfortable and logged in.

My vision went white, then was full of colors as bars of light streamed past me like how it looked to travel through hyperspace, as seen in Star Wars, except colorful. It was also something of a tribute to the log in sequence from Sword Art Online, though not quite the same due to copyright issues.

And then I was looking at a very familiar place, but from a much closer perspective than I had since the last time I’d seen it. The character select screen.

I selected Sakura, my gnomish priest, and then I was about to finish logging in when I noticed something off. She wasn’t wearing what she had been last time I logged on. Instead she was wearing what I had been last time I’d been her.

Yesterday, I’d been dressed up in some stuff that had been left in my sister’s old room. There was a box with a lot of clothes, ones I’d occasionally visit and play with when mom wasn’t home, and I’d made the mistake of mentioning it.

Okay, yes, I enjoyed myself since I could actually wear the stuff now, even if it was slightly large on me. That it was only slightly large surprised me, and I claimed the box for myself. It also helped that there was a sports bra in there, since I was much more comfortable with that then the wrap I’d had to use as a bra before. I hadn’t even realized how comfortable I could have been until I’d tried it and felt the difference.

My family laughed at my reaction, and I’d glared at them and told them to try on what I’d been using. It was magical, so it’d resize to fit anyone, most of the gear was. No one took me up on it.

I’d had to change back to my original body since people had to leave, and hadn’t gotten back on her to change her back into her gear like I’d meant to. If an emergency happened and I needed to play healer, I’d wanted to be ready to go, not take a minute or two rearranging my clothing first.

At least I didn’t have to go through all the motions to get dressed. I just had to open my inventory and status, drag from the first to the second, and then I’d be wearing the item.

Of course that only applied to WoW items. As everything else was marked with ???, it meant that it wasn’t recognized by the system, so I got no assist. Or at least none in donning it. It came off really easy. Stuff got logged in the right spot if I put it on manually.

But I digress.

Sakura was wearing Earth clothes on the actual character select screen. I’d never seen that happen before. Then I thought about it and realized that this is the first time I’d tried logging in to the actual game without having changed clothes back in the real world first.

Like I’d said before, I liked having my bodies equipped to handle things without messing around with gear.

I was surprised, but I didn’t let it stop me for long, walking into and becoming that body, which is how one selects what character to use.

My vision cut for a moment, then resumes, and the busy streets of Stormwind became visible to me. I’d logged off just outside the auction house, and that place is always packed.

Quickly opening my character sheet and inventory, I switched to my gear, throwing the stuff from Earth over into shared storage.

How had I not noticed this stuff before? I should have seen the items I’d stuck in my inventory at least, even if I hadn’t left the clothes as a visible clue. After all, I HATED having a cluttered inventory. I did my utmost to keep my stuff reasonably arranged.

Was it because I hadn’t logged into VR? Had it updated to the game now that I’d logged in that way instead of on my computer? Or had I just not played on the characters I’d dropped stuff on?

I shook my head. I needed to get a move on. I needed to get to Northrend’s Dalaran, and then up to Ulduar, that’s what we were raiding tonight. I had most of the achievements, but there had been some I’d been unable to get since there needed to be multiple people involved to get the gimmick to work.

I opened guild chat and threw out a message as I made my way to the portal.

[Hey y’all! I got a clean bill of health, and am back in VR! I’m OMW to the raid. ETA however long it takes to get there from Dal.]

I hopped through the portal, waiting for reload as I changed zones, then headed outside the portal building to take off. After orienting myself in the right direction, I put my mount on autopilot and focused on the chat for a bit.

I’d received a bunch of ‘Welcome back’s and ‘Took you long enough.’ I retaliated to the latter advising them to have a freak accident and then see how much fun it was to be told to not play your favorite VR game.

I had to add the VR to game, since WoW was not my favorite game. I enjoyed it, sure, but Breath of the Wild was still my favorite. At least for the time being. There was a good chance both overall favorite and VR fave will change in the near future when Breath 2 comes out.

It’d gotten delayed, again and again for various reasons. I didn’t mind it at first, since they were aiming for a game better then the first, but then it got severely delayed when the Awakening took place and messed up a bunch of data. Then they decided that since FIVR had become a real thing, that they should rework it so it’d be able to use that.

Yes, I was looking forward to it. Yes, I was impatient. I’d wait… but if the game wasn’t damn amazing, I’m gonna write a nasty review on it.

I chatted with my guildies as I rode my rocket over the frozen lands of Northrend. I did have to make course corrections periodically, the autopilot doing no more than just keeping me pointed in the right direction and flying straight. I’d taken the route plenty of times, but had never gotten there without changing my route. Having a massive mountain in the way didn’t help.

I joined my usual raiding group, attacking the place and earning achievements, the last few I needed for the Ulduar meta-achievement. I was so glad when I got it. It’d been bothering me even before my last hiatus, and now it was done.

Since we were all high level, it didn’t take too long to get through the place. At level, it’d take several hours, usually over two to three session in the week in order to clear the place before the reset, but for us, two hours and we were done. We’d missed out on one achievement due to someone’s carelessness, but it was one I’d already had, so I was only miffed since it meant we may have to come back again if they couldn’t solo it. I wanted to move on.

The raid hadn’t run too late, so while a bunch of people had to leave, needing proper rest for school or work in the morning, a few of us stayed on and ran dungeons. Me being there meant they only needed to worry about waiting for a tank in the queue, since I was playing heals. Sakura was my second best equipped, after Telarynn, my demon hunter, because of this fact.

Incidentally, my dwarf, Telerean, was my worst equipped since I didn’t care much for playing a warrior, or a tank, and he was both. I’d leveled him up and used him more to get blacksmithing maxed on him since he got bonuses to BS due to being not just a dwarf, but a Dark Iron Dwarf.

Sakura was also a BS, as well as an engineer, since it made some things easier as both professions used mostly the same resources.

We ran two random dungeons, one heroic, one not, before my guildies started disappearing.

I stuck around online for a while after that, traveling around and collecting resources all over the place. Especially cloth. I had some, but not enough for my purposes, and while I could have bought what I needed, I preferred to gather the stuff myself if I could. Unless I was getting to frustrated, as sometimes happened. Cloth is frequently a drop item, so I usually had to go hunting mobs to collect it, and that got annoying, especially when there was a low drop rate on the stuff.

I much preferred the most recent expansion where they’d added plants that weren’t for alchemy, but could be processed into cloth without having to fight hordes of mobs to try and get the stuff. There was an announcement saying they were going back and adding nodes for the other expansions and cloth types, but it’s not going to be implemented until it’s ready for all zones, so it’d take a while.

I was one expansion back, in the Shadowlands, so I was mob farming cloth. I wanted to make the biggest bag from here, since it was the last one that had a slot count, going up to forty-four. The inventory system had launched with the new expansion eight months ago.

When I’d finally collected everything I needed, it was eleven, so I decided to call it a night. I shoved everything necessary into the account inventory and logged off.

My eyes opened to darkness.

I wasn’t surprised. The visor with it’s small screen for setup and log in was down, and I hadn’t bothered turning on any lights before getting online.

The Helm was removed and placed on it’s stand by the side of the bed, and the cord with it. I didn’t want to get my foot caught on it if I flipped around in my sleep. I’d done that exactly once, and didn’t want to do it again, since it’d dragged my Helm off it’s stand and dropped it onto my shin. The thing isn’t that heavy, but it still was most unpleasant, plus there was the risk the device might get broken if it got jolted like that too much.

I called up my inventory, the shared account one, and there the stuff was. Everything I’d just farmed up was sitting in it.

I sat at my computer and logged in that way, running around and doing stuff, adding more to the shared inventory, then I pulled it up in the real world again. No change.

So the two worlds, the real and the game, were linked, but maybe only when I connect via VR? So how would that work if I took everything out of inventory, and then logged on? Would it update from the game side, or from my side? It’d be a nice duplication hack for reality if I could continually drag material from the game to the real world with no effort. Heck, even with effort, I could probably make a killing on stuff. Gold and silver were rare, but not iron and copper. Or mythril. Or many others, and perhaps…

Shaking my head, I broke that line of thought. It was a good way to get caught. Plus what would happen if Blizzard found out and thought I was cheating the game or something?

Actually…

I pulled up my inventory on the computer again. Huh, not here.

I’d been looking for all the stuff I’d put in from this side, but none of the Earth items showed up on the computer, not even the clothes I’d changed out of as Sakura. I’d have to try some stuff, since I didn’t want to accidentally destroy valuable items by mistake, but that could wait for tomorrow.

---

The next day was both a trial and an amazing experience.

At ten in the morning, I was bundled up in sis’ old clothes and taken shopping. There were four of us. Me, mom, sis, and one of my sister-in-laws.

While we stopped for lunch, we were otherwise shopping until nearly three when sister-in-law had to head off and pick my nieces up from school to take to their piano lessons. My nephew had opted out of piano and taken up the guitar instead, so he was taking the bus home, not wanting to endure the learning process.

I ended up with a dozen new outfits for Sakura, as well as a few for some of the others who I’d switched to and taken measurements of. They’d only seen three. Telarynn the night elf demon hunter, Sakura the gnomish priest, and Nezeria the human warlock. I’d been tempted to go fluffy and become my Vulpera Rogue, Kitsuryn, but hadn’t wanted to be subjected to mofumofu right then. The tail was just too fluffy to resist, even when it’s my own.

We headed home, and I retreated to my domain… at least for a little bit to drop off my bags. Sis was sticking around, and wouldn’t let me escape that easily. If I was going to spend time as a girl, I needed to learn about girl power.

I was given a makeover, as well as taught how to use the supplies myself. We were actually scheduled for another outing, with all the family’s females of age, this coming weekend. We’d be visiting a hair salon and getting mani-pedis. They’d been appalled at the state of my hands, and wouldn’t relent even after telling them my professions as Sakura.

Giving up, I’d just decided to endure it, or enjoy it. Whichever.

While I didn’t have much girl power yet as far as clothing and makeup went, my cooking abilities were superb. I actually could have done even better, but I’d have had to go furry and become Sanrong, my pandaran monk, since she got bonuses to cooking. Cooking as her had led to a noticeable improvement in flavor. But I didn’t. No mofumofu for them. Yet.

Sis didn’t stay long after dinner was over, since she had her own child to return to, one who’d been in the care of her husband all day. When she left, so did I, finally being able to escape to my domain and have some privacy. Even around family, I can only take so much peopleing.

The first thing I did on getting back to my apartment was something I’d been intending on doing for a while, and kept forgetting about. I summoned a pet.

It wasn’t furry, scaled, feathered, or anything like that. Since this was my first time summoning a living being, I summoned a mechanical pet. It was a little toy robot.

“Well hello there.”

Beep Boop.

Reaching out, I touched it, patting it on the head and getting a higher pitch, happy maybe, beep out of it.

I played around with the little guy for a bit, seeing what it could do. It was only a foot or so tall, a quarter my height as I was still Sakura at the moment, but it was much more capable than I thought. The ‘hands’ were just two little clamps, but it was surprisingly dexterous for how it appeared. He could even type on a keyboard, and faster than me at that, even with having to peck the keys instead of type properly.

After a while, I had to ask a sensitive question.

“How do you stay charged?”

It looked up at me, not very far, since I was sitting on the floor, then turned around and a panel popped open on his back revealing a little glowing crystal for a moment before it closed. Then it pointed at the computer, so I put him back up on the desk where he could use the keyboard.

[Energy core recharges with mana input. Current environment sufficient to supply passive charging over a period of eight hours of immobility with sensors disabled per twenty-four hour period.]

“Ah, so you have to ‘sleep’ just like I do.”

[Affirmative.]

“That’s great! I wonder if I could make up some kind of input to allow you a voice other than just beeping.”

My mind went off an a tangent about the possibilities. I doubt it would have happened if I wasn’t on an engineer, but I was. However, I was also brought back to reality when I realized summoning and interacting with the little guy was only part of why he was here.

“Ah. Do you know how your summoning function works?”

[Negative.]

“Then do you mind if I try and unsummon you? I need to do some testing.”

[Acknowledged. Please proceed.]

Nothing said that the little guy, who I’d taken to calling Robby, was upset about the possibility of things happening by being dismissed.

A little apprehensively, I dismissed Robby, waited five minutes, then resummoned him.

“Robby, do your records record this location previously? Or what happened after dismissal?”

[Location recognized. Earth, mistress’s residence. Recordings interrupted when not materialized. Battery returned to full charge.]

“Huh. So you don’t know time is passing when you’re not summoned, and you return fully charged. I wonder if you charge instantly, or just faster. Or do would other changes revert as well?”

I was thinking out loud rather than actually questioning him, but Robby responded anyways.

[Memory lapse confirmed. Additional testing required for other queries. Suggestion One: Unit to remain present for fifteen hours, before being dismissed and resummoned. Suggestion Two: Make change to unit chassis prior to suggestion one to test. Test one: Apply substance to check if it will remain. Test two: Scratch chassis.]

“The first suggestion is easy, and I will take you up on that. Please notify me when the time has passed. For the second suggestion, the first test is also doable with no problems, but for the second, do you really want me to leave a scratch? I’d hate to have to take you apart to replace the panel if the scratch remains.”

[Second test required. Apply scratches in agreeable pattern. Should they remain, will provide decoration.]

“Okay. Let’s do that then.”

Starting with a pencil, I carefully put a series of scratches on Robby’s chest plate. As a design, I used the Triforce, the winged version. I’d taken my time with it, so it looked pretty nice, but I’d intentionally left it somewhat sketchy in case making extensive changes might make it permanent.

Then I went to bed. By this time, it was one in the morning, and I needed sleep. I’d still be getting up with my alarm in six hours.

---

The next morning, after taking care of necessities like food and a shower, I went out into the garage. Robby followed me, unwillingly. We discovered that while he wasn’t restricted to being right on my heels like pets were in the game, there was still a limit of fifty feet. We hadn’t found that out until he popped into existence next to me when I’d gone out there to use some of the shelving for storage.

My original plan was delayed until we found out the radius of the restriction and how it functioned. Once we had, we resumed.

I cleared some space by moving boxes around, then started emptying stuff out of my inventory. I started with anything that wasn’t WoW related. With the exception of things that would decay or deteriorate, like the pizzas, almost everything with question marks was removed. That which remained was given its own entire page of the shared inventory. Other than one item that I left on the top page in a corner for testing.

Then additional stuff was removed. Ingots of metal. Bolts of cloth. Gems. All things that I’d be really happy if I could duplicate. Not that I thought it’d be that easy.

We went back inside and Robby was placed on the desk so he could play around on the computer. He’d been allowed to do so last night, and had really enjoyed browsing the internet. His favorite thing seemed to be cat videos.

“Okay Robby, here we go. If I don’t hear from you a minute after log in, I’ll exit and see what’s going on.”

We’d arranged that since there was a chance he’d be unsummoned when I entered VR. One could connect to the internet, and their phone, so they could still be connected while online. He’d be sending me a message via email a minute or so after after I’d logged on to show he was still present.

I put the Helm on and got ready to log on, but there was a bit of a problem. I got all the hookups placed correctly, but it seemed the thing couldn’t recognize me.

Ahh, I’d forgotten about that. Helms had to be customized for each user, part of the reason they were so expensive. And I was still Sakura.

“Sorry for the false start. I need to change for this to work.”

[Change? Input not understood. Please clarify.]

I pulled up a picture of me as Telarynn the demon hunter.

“Do you recognize this person?”

He paused and studied the image.

[Displayed entity designated Telarynn. Recognized as mistress. Unit recognizes Sakura as mistress. Error. Unit restricted to single owner. Does not compute. Clarification required. Error.]

“You are mine, but I have multiple names and forms. This form is named Sakura, that one is Telarynn. I have thirteen forms and names. I am required to be the human named Benjamin Steele, known as Ben, in order for my Helm to operate.”

A pause, then Robby responded.

[Information encoded.]

“Okay, so there’s going to be a bit of a flash, so I’m going to change forms in the pantry. Hopefully my changing forms doesn’t change you, but in case it does, what is your power level at?”

[Power level 63%.]

“Okay, be right back.”

I went into the room that was my pantry and flashed into my original body before returning. Robby was still present, which was a good thing.

“Robby, this form is called Ben, as I’d said earlier. Was there any interruption or change in energy level?”

[Appearance recorded. Negative. Power drain remains consistent.]

“Excellent, now to pop this on and see how that goes.”

I got comfortable on my bed again, slid the Helm on my head and logged in.

When the character select room appeared, I chose Telarynn to log in as, since she was one of my tailors, and a moment later, I was in my typical logout space, a rooftop in an unimportant part of Stormwind City.

I waited, and a little over a minute later, I got an email from Robby stating that there was no apparent change in status, meaning he’d stuck around. Excellent.

I replied back to check in every fifteen minutes, then found a comfortable location that wasn’t a rooftop and got to work. The reason I’d wanted to log in as a tailor was so I could make the storage bag to take to reality. I’d get my mom to test it, since I had a feeling if I used it, it would just drop anything into my normal inventory.

It took me ten minutes to make the thing. I was taking my time with it, doing my best to maximize the quality. It wasn’t as important with things like this as it was other gear or consumables, but there was still a benefit if I was able to make the bag well.

If I did poorly, it would reduce the number of slots. If I did average, it would be as expected. It I managed to make a better one, it would increase the slots. There were nine quality levels, so I could get plus or minus four slots, and I wanted to get plus something, preferably scoring a perfect and getting the max.

Failure. At least of the maximum goal. I didn’t get a perfect. I only got a superior, so it was a +2, giving it a total of 46 slots. At least theoretically. We’d find out if it worked when I logged out and had mom try the thing.

While crafting, I had noticed that the items that I’d removed from my inventory that originated from WoW were indeed gone. I’d try a few more tests to be sure, but assumed I’d have to collect or buy anything I wanted.

I shifted a few things around so as to know what to try out, then logged out.

I checked in with Robby, who’d had no problems, then started playing with stuff.

The bag got tossed on my couch for a bit, then I logged on via the PC and moved stuff around. The bag and other items were moved from one place to another, and I moved an ingot to the spot that on the computer looked empty, but in VR or on Earth was filled with a question mark item. It was just a dried up pen, so if it disappeared, I didn’t care.

I also tested out the Auction House on Earth, and bought a few things.

Verdict: Dropping stuff over ??? items didn’t make them disappear, but did make them get shifted around into an available space. I couldn’t cheat the system and duplicate stuff. What I did in reality took precedence.

Great, good to know.

I visited mom and had her try out the bag. It worked for her and she got a little inventory screen like the bags used to have, so I let her keep it. I’d make a bunch more. After getting the materials. Actually…

I went to a jeweler and showed them one of the small gems I had. I left a couple thousand dollars richer. Using the money, I bought WoW gold, legally by selling their tokens. Each one cost me twenty dollars, and brought in nearly half a million gold.

Heck, I’d been able to materialize the WoW currency, and could sell a single gold piece for a few hundred dollars, so I was essentially as rich as I cared to put the effort into becoming, though I’d have to be careful. The powers that be might not like me making money from nothing. I decided to see about creating and stockpiling magic bags to sell, after I’d supplied my family. Those I felt would not be a problem to sell, since I was actually putting effort into their creation.

That evening, I tested stuff with Robby. He recharged completely between summons, and any changes would be undone at the same time. I hoped that the same would apply to mounts and combat pets as well. I did find that I could still only have a single pet out, but for some reason their consciousness and memories were shared, though the personalities changed with each form…

Okay, I could understand that, since I went through the same thing to a degree when changing bodies. Like how as Sakura, I got curious about mechanical and electrical things and felt a desire to take them apart and understand how they worked. Or how as Telarynn I felt a bit bloodthirsty. And how I wanted to nibble on things as a Pandaran, but was otherwise very zen.

I had fun with the pets that were supposedly non-combat, since there were pet battles, meaning they could actually fight. In some cases surprisingly well. Like my Mini-Thor that had guns and missiles that magically replenished somehow. The damage was similar to assault rifles and RPGs.

Satisfied with my tests with my pet, who I kept the name of Robby for regardless of form, I moved on. It was time to test mounts.

I’d cleared out the garage for some of the tests, so I had plenty of room to test most things. I had no intention of summoning something like a dragon in such a space, even if the proportions from online made me think it might work.

I started with the mechanical mounts, the goblin trike and gnomish motorbike, then my rocket. Each popped into and out of existence easily. Then it came time to test the living mounts.

I summoned a frostsaber.

“Can you understand me?” A nod. “Do you and Robby share a consciousness?” A shake of the head. “Remember the number four, please.” It nodded and I unsummoned it, then summoned a different mount, a wolf. “What number did I ask you to remember?” I got four soft yips. “Perfect.”

I gave it scratches as a reward.

Since the pets and mounts didn’t share a consciousness, I’d hoped that meant that the mounts would. I named my mounts’ consciousness Asuna. I also checked and found out that it even included the mechanical mounts I’d first tried, but they didn’t have many ways to respond.

They would be able to move on voice commands, and had the same range restriction as Robby did, but it was four times as long, 200 feet, and they’d be unsummoned instead of pop into existence next to me like my pet.

They could also get hit and take damage, and like my pets would be restored by being resummoned. Which meant they could fight. Between myself, my pet, and my mount, there were three of us who could fight, and if they had a biological form, I could heal them so they wouldn’t ‘die’ and have to be resummoned.

There’d only been one fatality and it had scared the shit out of me. Robby and Asuna were sparring and she hit him rather hard and ‘killed’ him. He’d faded into nothingness before I could even try and heal him, and it wasn’t until I brought him back that I’d stopped panicking. That particular pet form was unavailable until it was healed, but I had been able to verify that it was possible. Even if they were essentially immortal as long as I lived, I didn’t want them to die.

Both pet and mount needed some form of recharging. Food or some form of energy. Resummoning would allow me to skip over that, but they preferred to join me in meals if possible.

I still had plenty of things to test, and the list was constantly having stuff added to it, but I ended up having to delay it.

There was another incursion. And not just in one place, but two. The second appeared after the first, and both of them were large and included many more powerful fighters than the earlier ones. One was being controlled, but the second was completely undefended and spewing forces into this world ten miles from where I had been.

“Crap. We’re going to have to go deal with that. I’m unsummoning you guys for a bit. I’ll bring you back out when I’m close.”

They acknowledged my words and vanished into nothingness as I pulled out my phone and opened the garage door.

“Mom. I’ve got to go. There’s a second undefended portal popping up while the first is being dealt with. Wish me luck.”

I hung up and stored away my phone, then flashed over to my druid form and transformed into a raven and flew towards the battle.

It took me a couple minutes to reach it. Mainly because I had to do it in a roundabout fashion so I could summon my companions. In the parking lot of a closed down business, I’d landed and flashed over to my Void Elf Mage, Aniara. The demon hunter was great in many instances, but it didn’t have many AOEs. My mage did.

In a new body, I summoned Asuna, but in a form she’d never been in before. It was time to pull out the dragon. Robby came along as a dragonling. And then we were back in the air.

I’m sure there were cries of alarm or excitement as the people below us, the ones who hadn’t been smart enough to find shelter, saw us fly over, but I didn’t pay attention. No, my attention was completely on the portal I could see from a mile away. That I was above most of the obstacles helped.

“Asuna, can you breathe fire?” She nodded slightly, unable to move too much or it might disturb her flying. “Great. Use it and clear out as wide an area as you can, making sure to hit the portal to try and stem the reinforcements for a bit. I’m going to leave my back to you two while I blast them.

I had buffed us all and raised what protections I could, and then we were in the thick of it.

The portal had opened the middle of a park, but was close to a busy shopping complex. It’d been ten minutes since the thing opened, so there were already thousands of enemies on this side, and more pouring through in a steady stream.

We came roaring in, with Asuna laying down a field of fire around and through the portal, then she landed. I hopped off, throwing out a blast of ice centered on myself to make the ground safe for me to stand on. I really didn’t want to stand in fire.

Asuna and Robby worked at defending me from all the attackers that were streaming back this way as we’d presented ourselves as targets. Meanwhile, I focused on the portal.

The tide of enemies had been stopped for a few moments, and then it resumed, but not for long. I ran for the portal, and as the ugly bastards got in range, I started spamming my arcane explosion and other instant cast arcane spells.

The grunts went down in one, maybe two bursts, while the more powerful ones took damage, but usually died to my single target spells. I pushed back and stalled out the influx of enemies, then crossed the portal. The controls were a lot further away, and far more heavily guarded, then previously, but I wasn’t going to let that bother me.

Robby and Asuna had been following me, fighting off the enemies as I advanced. Asuna had it easy, since she was huge, large enough I was glad I hadn’t tried to summon her dragon form in the garage, so each of her steps was like ten of mine. Robby on the other hand was tiny. Even if he had little jet packs, he was still needing to deal with enemies larger than him, which slowed him down. Consequently, he got popped over to my side a couple of times, but that was just as well.

I had him cover my back, while I concentrated my firepower on clearing out the enemies around the controls. There was no way I was going to make it over there myself.

Finally, I got a clear shot and blasted the damn thing to bits, but after I retreated, the portal hadn’t closed. At most it was smaller. I cleared my way back in and looked around before noticing the problem. There wasn’t one control, there were three.

Fuck.

I couldn’t do much more than spam my spells to take out the enemies protecting the second one before I had to retreat. I was low on mana. Fortunately, Robby was able to launch a barrage of missiles and blow up the second control.

Taking cover under Asuna, I used my recovery ability, regaining 60% of my mana over a period of ten seconds, then popped the cork on a mana potion. It’d take time, but would restore 25% of my mana over half a minute. It’d be enough.

“Okay! Third time’s the charm! Should be nice and easy.”

Oh how wrong I was.

I was able to cross the portal, but there I found something far worse than I’d ever experienced before. An enemy Captain. These guys are nasty to fight, at least from what I’d read, with much greater defenses and are usually heavily armed, both physically and magically. I was so glad I had my shield up, because otherwise, I’d have been toast. As it was, my shield was flickering, but quickly gave out under the strike from a grunt.

I don’t know how my HP would work, so I was operating under the assumption that I was as squishy as a normal human until otherwise indicated. So NOT getting hit was my goal.

I raised a new shield and popped a couple explosions to clear the nearby grunts. Then I focused fire on the boss in front of me.

I did some damage… after I took down his shields. That attack would have offed a group of leaders or hundreds of grunts, if they’d been in a small enough space to all get hit, but to this bastard, it just burned and staggered him. He recovered quickly and was advancing towards me, firing off spells as he did so.

Rather than trying to be a mage tank, something that does not work for very long in WoW, I did my best to dodge his attacks. The few that damaged my shield were far less powerful than the first attack I took, so I guess it was a special, or required charging or to wait for a cooldown. Whyever it wasn’t used again, I was glad, since I didn’t want to get hit by that.

Robby was there with me, but was dealing with the grunts. If I had too many of them on me as well as the Captain, I’d be in far greater danger than I was now, and my current danger level was 9/10, where 10 is certain death.

I attacked, defended dodged, and eventually got what I was aiming for.

I didn’t know if I could beat the captain, but a group of leaders defending a relatively delicate control console? Easy. I trashed them, then dashed for the exit, using blink to speed up my retreat.

The captain shouted in anger, not that I understood him. Some linguists had deciphered the Phyrexian language, but considering most of what we heard were similar to what the Daleks continually repeat, most people didn’t bother learning the language.

I made my escape through the portal and ducked to the side as spells came ripping through the place I’d been standing.

I was alone.

I must have gotten more than 200 feet away from Asuna, and I’d seen Robby explode, taking a dozen enemies with him. There were still plenty of enemies around, but try as I might, I couldn’t summon either of them.

Fuck. I still have to deal with the ‘still in combat’ bullshit!

I was sniping the enemies, doing my best to save mana, since I still had a while for Evocation’s cooldown, but then a very big problem found me.

I’d hoped that I’d be able to leave him on the other side of the portal, but just before it closed, the Captain jumped through, shoving his minions out of the way.

…

So there I was, in the middle of a field, surrounded by hundreds of enemies, Asuna had done a good job of reducing the number, and one of them was twice my height and about to kill me.

What would you do?

Me? I Ice Blocked.

The attack that was sent my way must have been FAR more powerful than the one that had killed my shield earlier, because when it exploded against my supposedly impenetrable ice, it cracked it almost open and left a crater ten feet wide in front of it.

Thank god it seemed he had to recharge, since another attack didn’t come flying.

The ten seconds of invincibility ended and the ice vanished and I pulled the trigger on my spells, spamming them in the best rotation I knew in order to do my best to put down this monstrous mass of muscles. Without him, the grunts and leaders would be a hell of a lot easier, greatly increasing my chances of survival.

Just as I was on the last dregs of my mana he fell. He’d recovered from the exhaustion of his ultimate ability and had resumed his attack on me, but the delay had given me enough time to lay the hurt on him… and get battered myself as well.

Thankfully, I’d discovered that I was indeed much sturdier than a normal human, or elf since that’s what I was right then. But getting hit still HURT!

With the big guy down, I started cleaning up the underlings. Fortunately, and unfortunately, I ended up not being alone in this.

The defense team had arrived. I guess they’d been able to clear out the other portal.

At least I didn’t look like a demon this time, so they’d likely not try to kill me. I’d seen people preparing to send attacks my way as I was escaping from the last attack. While they might have just been holding them ready, I knew that demons actually were kill on sight targets, so wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d fired them off.

With the team having arrived, I took a moment to use Evocation and regain most of my missing mana, then was going to resume my attack, but was stopped by one of the agents.

“Ma’am, we’ll take it from here. Let’s get you to our medic. You don’t look so good.”

I didn’t feel good either, and mages do not have many ways of dealing with that. At least I’d staved off the mana fatigue. Did you know that being out of mana makes you feel really out of it, very unwilling to move, and your vision get dim?

Neither did I.

At least my ability pulled me mostly out of it. I was still extremely tired and didn’t want to move, but at least it wasn’t like trying to run when up to my waist in quicksand.

I followed the woman to a hover craft that’d landed nearby. It was one of two that had arrived. If I recall correctly, the team should have four of them, so either the others landed elsewhere nearby, or they were still out dealing with the remnants of the other portal. I was betting on the latter.

I was pulled into the vehicle and into a compartment set up as a small emergency room. There were a couple of other people here, but they at least looked in better shape than me. I was covered in blood, thankfully most of it not my own, and my clothes were ripped all to shreds. I should be able to fix that with one of my tailors.

I was made to lay down, and they approached me with scissors.

“You’d best not be thinking of cutting my clothes off.”

“Unless you can take them off, then yes. We need to get you cleaned up and those wounds seen to. Phyrexian blood is toxic, and we need to clear out as much of that and any other gunk before our healer can close your wounds.”

“Give me a moment and the clothes won’t be a problem.”

My UI could be controlled both by touch as well as by mind controls, and I was using the second method for a little shock and awe. When I was ready, I waved my head and my clothes vanished. All except my underwear. Those I always had to remove manually. Fortunately there were no wounds that needed attention around by lower parts, and I could use this as a good time to switch to an actual bra.

I still shimmied out of the wrap, since I didn’t want to destroy it. I wasn’t sure if I could replace the thing. It was on the list to check.

Nearly nude, I let them go to work.

It took them an hour to finish things up. Not getting me taken care of, since that only took half that time, but clearing out the enemy combatants. My arrival had enticed many of them to return to the portal to defend it, so while there had been plenty needing to be hunted down, it could have been far worse.

And it got a bit worse for me. After I was cleaned up and given a clean set of clothes, what I’d call a jumpsuit, but they called something else, a heavy duty, one piece overalls type thing, I was forced to join them in their journey to their home base.

I wasn’t mistreated, but I did get plenty of looks. I was an elf, but not like most they’d seen. My skin was darker than normal elves, a dusky purple-grey coloration. I’d seen dark elves online, but looked nothing like them. I was similar to the Night elves, but they were much more vibrantly colored than I was.

My ears were also longer. Actual elves had long ears, but mine were at least thirty percent longer.

And don’t even get me started on eyebrows…

People were talking softly amongst themselves, but no one tried to talk to me. I found out later that regulations called for unidentified personages to not be conversed with so as not to accidentally give info to spies. The few discussions around me were entirely of a personal nature. Dating, sports, yadda yadda.

When we landed, I was taken to the interrogation room. It wasn’t one of those barren ones, but one with a conference table and comfortable chairs. Unsurprising, since the team had taken over an office building from a company that had gone bankrupt, and it came fully furnished. At least as an office building. They’d had to bring in the racks of weapons, armor, and furnishings to make it a livable base.

“So. Who are you?”

My inquisitor was an older man, one whose looks screamed career military, even if he wasn’t wearing a uniform.

“My name’s Aniara. Can I have something to drink, please? All that fighting left me rather thirsty.”

He made a signal and a minion brought me a bottle of water. After a moment the man narrowed his eyes slightly as if listening to something and I caught a glimpse of an earbud.

“You are not in our records, so where did you come from.”

“Well, you see when a man and a woman love each other… Oh, so not that far back. How far back do you want me to go?”

I’d started off giving a cheeky answer that I’d always wanted to use, but stopped as his face grew red in anger.

“How did you get to this planet?”

He ground out his words.

“Ah, I’m going to have to go with my first answer. As a clarification, I was born here. No, I didn’t give you my birth name, and I am not required to. I checked the laws, and as I have committed no crime I am allowed to maintain my anonymity. Unless you can personally guarantee that anyone who might obtain access to my file is one hundred percent honest and would never reveal that information, I do not want to reveal my public identity.”

He wasn’t happy, but he knew I was right.

“Fine. Then tell me what happened. I want as many details as possible. I am referring to the attack on the portal, in case you aren’t certain.”

Smiling, I did as ordered. I didn’t give details like how my powers worked, or where the dragon had disappeared to, since again is was privileged information unless I had been caught committing a crime. I’d have liked it better if he’d asked nicely, but, well, military. They liked issuing orders over asking.

After I finished speaking, he started asking questions, trying to verify things. Some I answered, many I didn’t, or restricted myself to only do so partially. More would have revealed my power set.

The interrogation lasted late into the night, but they fed me decent food, takeout, and offered me a bunk for the night, but I turned the bunk down. I wanted to get home.

“I hope you don’t try to follow me home, as that could be taken as intent to break the laws protecting my identity.”

He grumbled that he wouldn’t, but considering he only promised it for himself, I didn’t trust it at all. Plus, I doubted he was the guy in charge here. A leader, yeah, but the top dog, no way.

I walked out of the building and made my way to the nearest Walmart. Why? Because I wanted to get out of these clothes. I might be being paranoid, but I considered the possibility that there was a tracker tucked into a seam somewhere. So I’d be ditching these. Not that I regretted it. It wasn’t very comfortable.

After purchasing appropriate clothing, I got changed and departed, leaving the jumpsuit behind with a note: Property of the US Portal Response Team.

I was now certain I was being followed, because the number of black SUVs was far higher than it should be. Just to annoy them, I walked up and knocked on the window of one. I knew there were people in it.

“I was promised that I wouldn’t be followed, but I should have known the government is full of people full of bullshit and lies. You can find your jumpsuit inside if you want it back. I don’t need it anymore. Also If you continue to follow me, I WILL consider it an attack and respond in kind.”

There was no sound or motion, but I knew they were there behind their tinted windows. My minimap told me so.

Actually, could I? I COULD!

The dots showed up like guards or trainers, and I could hover a virtual cursor over the dot and see their names.

“Just to prove, I know what I’m talking about, I know who you are. Agents Brown, Gerard, Javier, and Hunter. Please don’t insult my intelligence.”

I walked off.

There was scrambling behind me as the agents tried to get me to stop. I ignored them and increased my speed to a jog. They decided to follow. So I called the police. I’d picked up a prepaid phone, a cheap one, and didn’t bother activating it. As long as it had power and a connection to a cell tower, any phone could dial emergency services, they were just more restricted in how they could track you. Or so I’d heard.

Quickly relaying the fact that I was being pursued in an attempt to be illegally detained, and why, I requested assistance.

Units was dispatched and the agents were arrested. It was well documented, since I’d run back into the Walmart, which was bristling with cameras. I thanked the officers, and did some selfies with them, my face was on the news from the attack earlier in the day, and then I left again.

The agents wouldn’t end up being tried, but there was a lot of blasting the PRT from the media when it came out what had happened.

Me, I made a clean escape and found a quiet place where I could use my hearthstone. I could have used it at the store after getting out of the jumpsuit, even without buying clothes, but I felt a need to respond to the all too obvious surveillance.

At home, I shifted to my currently preferred form, Sakura, and popped into the garage to shut the door. I’d left it open in case I needed to fly back, which I hadn’t.

Pulling out my phone, I texted my family that I was home, and any who tried to call me before ten in the morning would regret it if it wasn’t of vital importance, before silencing my messages and notifications.

They should have known I was fine, since my face had been plastered all over the news as we’d entered the PRT building.

I collapsed into my bed to feed my need for slumber.

---

The next few weeks were good to me. There were no more local incursions, though there were some off in other cities. I got to mark off more and more of my questions about myself and my new abilities, as well as test many of them.

I’d picked up a new prepaid phone, the other one had been trashed since it was cheap and I’d intended for a single use anyways. Finding an out of the way cafe with free WiFi, I activated the thing, then set up shop. I was Aniara, but had hidden as much of myself, including my ears, as I could, passing as human, barely.

On my new computer, I created a free website, then started posting stuff. Links to the articles about me that I liked. Scathing reviews of the garbage as well as the PRT’s lack of reliability with their promises.

I’d gotten a few hits, but no one really cared much, thinking it was some fan site. Not until I mentioned my blog in a video I’d uploaded on my Youtube channel. Yeah, I know I was shit at this, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

And I hated social media. Facebook? Hell no. Twitter? Even more NO than Facebook.

“Need a refill?”

I looked up and saw the server had come up next to me.

“Please.”

As she was refilling my water cup, I’d found I couldn’t stand the taste of soda as an elf, she noticed my screen. It was a picture with me flying in on Asuna.

“Oh, that’s that new girl who took down a stage two portal all by herself. I wish I could meet her. Her arrival saved my son’s life. They were getting close to his school before they started chasing after her dragon.”

“Yeah, she took on quite a challenge. Nearly died doing it. Multiple times.”

“I know, I’d like to at least be able to thank her.”

“There’s an email you can send something in to.”

I pointed at the email address at the bottom of the page. She grabbed a napkin and wrote it down. She also wrote down the address to the blog.

I wasn’t there much longer, I’d taken care of everything I needed to, and I didn’t want to tie up a table for too long, and if I ate any more, I swear I was going to start gaining weight, the food was sooo good.

Before I left though, I had to do one more thing.

“Hey Susan, can I have a moment of your time?”

“Sure, hun. What’s up?”

“Can I take a selfie with you?”

She looked confused, but agreed.

I stood next to her, holding my phone out, but right before I snapped the shot, I dropped the hood I was using to hide my head. After the picture, I got it back up before she saw me.

When I left, there was a hundred dollar tip on the table.

I updated my blog with the picture, captioned ‘Just had a great lunch at the XXX Cafe. Susan provided excellent service. Would highly recommend the place. Might not be five stars, but it’s definitely worth the stopping by.’

I visited the place later as Ben and found a copy of the picture on the wall.

---

I didn’t just test things during this time, but spent plenty of time online as well. This was for multiple reasons. First, because I greatly enjoyed the game. I wouldn’t play it if I didn’t. Second was farming, game version. I needed a lot of stuff, and so I went after them.

Starting off, I hunted down what I needed for my magic bags. I wanted to give each family at least one of the big ones, but I could easily, and relatively cheaply produce the smaller ones. What was even better was that I could do so in the real world with a LOT more creativity.

When crafting on Earth I didn’t have the system assist speeding things up, so I couldn’t make something amazing in just a few minutes, but the trade off was that I could make things the way I wanted to. If in the game a netherweave bag, a 16 slot one from Burning Crusade, I’d get what was essentially a shoulder slung, one opening, messenger bag. On Earth, I could take the same materials and create one that actually looks like and functions as a backpack. Or a belt pouch.

It’d taken me a few attempts, and a bunch of wasted materials, to get it to work. I still needed a recipe to follow, which in this world would be called a pattern. I sucked at sewing without one. I hopped on one of my scribes to make them.

On Earth, I could actually make clothes from magical materials using the Terran patterns in order to get something usable that would show up with a name, stats, and description on the user interface. As long as the materials were all from WoW, that is. Any addition of Terran materials would make it a ???.

This didn’t apply only to clothes, but to all the professions.

Utilizing my resources, including the internet, I was able to make some very interesting things.

I also discovered that I could make better items if I cross crafted, using both of my character’s professions in making a single item. Like using Tailoring and Leatherworking when making a bag to make a leather reinforced backpack, which had a few more slots than it would have otherwise. And that was before the quality adjustments were applied.

I got really good at getting the higher qualities on items I produced in the real world. In game there was an element of luck, but IRL it was completely skill based. Taking my time and being careful made it a lot easier to get +3 and +4 items.

And like with the bags, since I could make things that wouldn’t normally be seen in the game, I was able to make some wonderful items. Like a pair of armored gauntlets with wrist blades. They even had some really good stats. Not top level, but still better than I’d expected.

I was even able to wear and use them as myself, even though they’d been made as using materials from later zones. They didn’t have level restrictions.

I’ll say again. Really good stats in line with the materials. No level restrictions.

I vowed not to use them in game. I could just see myself getting banned for somehow hacking in and creating an item designed for someone over level one hundred that a level one noob could use.

That didn’t stop me from running around the highest level zones and farming for tons of mats, literally in the case of the ores I’d mined, then using that to make clothes and gear for my level one self. Maybe if I can somehow raise that level I’ll be able to use the thousands of mana cores I have piled up in my inventory.

Despite many attempts, I had never been able to figure out how to use the things. I’d collected over a thousand of the grunt level cores, seven of the leader cores, and two of the control cores as Telarynn, but the big income had been this latest incursion. My collection had increased manyfold.

Every enemy whose death was contributed to by me was looted automatically. This included those killed by my companions. Yep! All of their kills got me loots. Plus even though I’d blasted the portal controls without extracting the crystals, I still got those as loot. They got counted as enemies to be looted, which was amazing.

Because of this, I’d tried it out on other stuff, ‘killing’ various items that were complicated or had something that could be extracted and used, but had no success. I’d had hopes for harvesting parts from computers, like the hard drive, but it had been a no go.

Animals, on the other hand, them I got loot from.

I’d purchased a few chickens and taken them out into the middle of nowhere, then tested things out.

Sanrong, my pandaran monk, and my best cook, had been where I started, and the results had left me both happy and confused. After lopping off the head, most of the bird disappeared. Anything that was useful ended up in my inventory. This included the feathers and the meat. The rest of the it just plopped to the ground where the body had been.

I thought the process left the body alone.

It took me a moment to recall that the only thing I’d ever gotten from the Phyrexians were the mana cores, which were small, a couple inches in diameter, so I’d never seen what happened when more substantial parts were removed.

Considering this, I was also surprised that I’d never gotten weapons from the enemies I’d killed either, but there was probably a reason for that to discover later.

The chicken’s remains were chucked into the hole I’d prepared in advance and I moved on. I started cooking, preparing the meat and getting it on the grill. It’s why I’d been on Sanrong, as the pandaran had the cooking bonus.

When that was under way, I stepped into the small shed I’d brought along and flashed over to Ben. The shed was ten feet to a side, square, and would eventually be made up as a small house. If I didn’t find something better that I could pick up. I didn’t know what the size limitations on my inventory were quite yet. But it served as a place to hide the blinding flash of light my change created.

Inhabiting my original body, I checked on the grill, but didn’t need to make any adjustments to the skewers yet, then headed for the cage with the other two chickens.

A chick chop, and the second one was dead and left a splatter of blood, guts, and the worthless feathers. So it seemed that even as Ben, I could still benefit from the autolooting function.

The last chicken was set free. Not that it lasted long.

My companions had wanted a hunt, and while it wasn’t much of one, it was something. They were in the forms of a nightsaber and her cub. I tended to summon them like that more often than not, since it was more interesting that way. The hilarious part was they actually acted like mother and child. Including Asuna grooming Robby.

Interestingly, I did not get the meat from their kill in my inventory, instead finding them nomming on it a little ways off. The feathers did appear. I added them to the rest. A bag of feathers took up less space than if they’d been in there as individuals, since there were over two thousand, taking up three slots.

I prepped the second chicken’s meat and made more skewers to add to the grill as the first ones came off. While Asuna and Robby didn’t mind raw meat, they did enjoy the flavor of cooked food, so they ate most of the food.

After the meal, we cleaned everything up, burying the hole that contained the remains of the trio of chickens that had filled our stomachs. Then it was back to testing!

Into the shed went a human male, and out walked an orc male.

For reasons, I’d wanted my shaman to be an orc, since that’s what Thrall was. I’d named him Calatair, and he was my only other male alt. Yeah, out of twelve, there were only two. Three now if you count my original human form bringing the total count to thirteen.

As a shaman, I was able to connect to nature and interact with it. It definitely wasn’t playing, because there was consciousness there. My goal this time was to see what I could do with the Earth. But before that, I summoned a pair of spirit wolves to play with my friends. Creatures summoned this way, as opposed to mounts and pets, had another consciousness.

Like with pets and mounts, this new consciousness was shared between the different summons, even across classes or when there were more than one like with the wolves. I’d also found that the summon time could be extended by pumping more mana into it. Which was fine. I had plenty and it regenerated quickly enough. I’d pumped in enough that they’d last for a couple hours.

Hunter pets actually shared the same consciousness as the time-limited summons, but didn’t have to be pumped up with mana to remain manifested. However, a hunter pet, or any summons tied to a class were unable to remain if I were to change to another self, disappearing when I did so.

During my experimentation, I’d learned that these summons were actually copies of my own mind, though more limited and bound to follow my orders. Not that they objected. Being lesser parts of myself, they were willing to do so. It also explained why they didn’t die when they were killed. The mind left the mana construct and returned to me.

Unfortunately, I’d discovered that even if they learned something, I wouldn’t benefit from it. I’d had the hope that Robby could do stuff on the computer and study for me, but it didn’t work out. When they’d been split off of me, they became their own entities, even if they were tied to me.

While they were amusing themselves, I got to work connecting to the Earth. As my character was maxed level, he had plenty of experience, but doing so was very interesting.

Gaia was like a massive computer, with billions or more little sub-processes that kept the world running. I was connecting to the lower levels, which was just as well. If I’d tried to connect to the heart of the world itself, I felt like I’d be burnt out.

Using my connection, I requested assistance in working with the Earth, shaping and molding a boulder as a test of my skills… and to see if I could do so.

Unlike many fantasy stories, in Warcraft it’s not mages who play in the dirt and can make things from them. It’s shamans. And using this power I was able to take a boulder a little larger than my changing hut and make a small house out of it.

The thing was still rough, but I was able to actually make it a house, twenty feet to a side and square. Four times the floor space of my hut. It had walls inside separating the space into three rooms. A tiny bathroom, a larger bedroom, enough that I should be able to get a pair of bunk beds in it with a little room to walk between them, and the remainder being an open area where a kitchen, dining room, and couch could be set up.

There were opening here and there for various things, measured off for items I hadn’t purchased, but had on a list. If everything worked out, I could outfit this to be livable relatively quickly, though I’d want to see if I could get the Earth spirit’s assistance for that bit.

Now came the moment of truth. The thing was large, both in mass and volume. Could I fit it in my inventory, or would I have to give up on my plans and make do with the shed?

I reached out and touched the thing, willing it to be stored. There was a moment of resistance, and then POOF it was gone.

It showed up on my screen, and I cheered.

I pulled it back out and tried again. There was still resistance, and it hadn’t changed from the first time. I’m not sure if it was because of the mass or the volume. I’d have to test it as I equipped it.

We stayed and played, with me adding more mana to my spirit wolves so they could stay manifested until it was time to go.

---

The next day, I went shopping. I was picking up all of the various things I needed to outfit my little house. Doors, three of them, with frames. Windows for the main room and a small one for the bathroom. Furniture to make the place livable.

All of my purchases were stored openly in a magic bag.

As Aniara, I’d done a raffle for ten of the things and given them away. Ben had entered it as well and been one of the winners. They weren’t very large, twenty slots, but even with that there had been over a million entries. At five dollars an entry… Yeah, I was rich.

In order to manage my funds, without getting found out by the government or becoming a criminal for tax-evasion, I’d gotten hooked up with a corporation that handled such things. They had plenty of lawyers and experience in keeping Awakened happy and anonymous.

That is not to say that their clients were never found out, it was just never due to the company’s error, and entirely on the client themselves, or who else they thought was trustworthy. I had an upper hand in that I didn’t need to show my real face, so being found out was much less likely.

It helped also that I’d figured out how the mage teleport worked in this world. As long as I had been to a place before and could recall it well enough, I could get there. I just had to work on the magical equation to get it right. Even opening portals worked, and I was happy to discover they were too low powered to be detected unless the equipment to do so was within a quarter mile of my portal site.

This meant that I should have no trouble getting to and from home… unless someone came up with a better detector or was close to my home.

Regardless, I was protected and had a second identity with which to make a living.

The company that assisted people like me helped me purchase a plot of land, with a nice house, as well as marketed the magic bags I could create. They only took ten percent of the profits, but considering it took me next to nothing to create them, it was nearly pure profit. I mostly spent time farming the mats, as I felt that I’d get punished if I bought them for game currency, and then a decreasing amount of time making them.

While crafting in the game would have sped things up, I refrained from doing so and did so in the real world. There were a couple reasons. First, so it’d be less cheaty and therefore made me less guilty at earning so much money for so little work. Second because I could customize the things IRL, rather than have generic bags.

I had made a hundred of the tiny six slot bags in game, though their actual capacity varied somewhat, usually increasing, though there was one I got horribly distracted while making that ended up with Trash quality, reducing the six slots to only two.

With all the practice, my creation speed was slowly increasing. While the first had taken several hours to make, subsequent ones took less as I got accustomed to it. It also helped that I could mass produce the different parts, then assemble them. Like being a one person assembly line. Cut the materials to the right size using the pattern, then focus on each task in assembling them before moving to the next.

It did lower the quality, but I was able to keep it mostly positive.

I could also reinforce and repair my gear in the real world.

My mage’s robes had gotten thrashed by that damn Captain, so I’d taken the opportunity to try out some stuff as I repaired them. I wanted to give them leather reinforcement, but didn’t in case it made them unwearable. I did put all my efforts into acquiring and using the best materials I could in fixing them up. I was able to increase the grade and quality of the things. And therefore the stat boosts.

Once I realized that I could do so, I worked on the other pieces, improving them. The increases were in line with the game, even if the visuals were slightly different. I just hoped that the changes wouldn’t trigger an alert when I was online. I hadn’t thought of that until after I’d already upgraded most of Aniara’s gear.

I’d shrugged and finished the rest. It was too late to worry about that now.

The sales from the magic bags made me fantastically rich. Even after the commission and taxes, I had an immense amount of money to play with.

As I didn’t need all of it, and could easily acquire more, I donated a good amount of it to trustworthy charities, while most of the rest ended up being invested in various things.

Then I got a call.

---

I’d had a rocky start with the PRT. They’d tried finding out who I was, despite knowing that they’d ruin my life if they were able to do so. As such, I didn’t like dealing with most of them.

However, I did become acquainted, and would assist as needed.

I’d kept the teleporting thing a secret for a while, not wanting to be viewed as a mere pack mule, shuttling people from one place to another. I’d done that on WoW when I needed to make a quick buck, but it wasn’t very profitable, nor fun.

However, more portals were appearing, and in a less focused manner, making it difficult for the teams to get to them before the invaders could do a lot of damage.

At this point, I was living most of my public life as Aniara, so it wasn’t uncommon for me to be hanging out at that house instead of back at my apartment behind mom’s. When I was away, I remained in contact via the company. They had a secure way of reaching me without giving me away, and I could get anywhere I’d been relatively fast by becoming Ani and porting.

Since I gave up hiding my ability, I had played not only pack mule, but also tourist. The PRT took me all over the place so I could acquire teleport sites. I had at least one place in almost every one of the fifty states, as well as a few other places around the world.

Unless I took certain precautions, it was illegal for me to port to another country. I needed to get permission, and then could only pop into specific locations.

Not that that always stopped me. I had a few places they didn’t know about.

Anyways, in the event of an emergency, I was often asked to send a team to as close to a portal as I could. There were some restrictions, since I couldn’t send over their large hovercraft, nor store them, as I had been able to define the exact limits of my storage abilities with a bit of help, but they’d developed smaller ones that I could.

Today, as I was playing around online, I got a notification summoning me to provide transport. A portal had opened in the middle of nowhere, Montana, and I could reduce the hour or two it’d take to get there from the closest team to fifteen minutes.

“Crap. Sorry guys, that’s work. I gotta go in or I’m out of a job.”

I was in the middle of a PUG random dungeon, but it wasn’t too bad for them since I was playing DPS with backup heals on my Lightforged Draenai Paladin, Tolania. They’d be able to get a replacement from the queue in seconds. It was fortunate we were between fights, since as soon as I got the notification and apologized, I was out of there.

Logging out as quickly as possible, I dashed to the windowless pantry and flashed into Aniara, and then I ported off to the PRT base. It took me maybe two minutes in all, so I wasn’t late. It took the team about five minutes to get geared and ready.

My arrival was noted and I got called out to by the dispatch officer.

“Ani, over here.”

I weaved through the rushing crowd and reached his station.

“Morning, Frank. What’ve we got?”

“You do realize it’s midnight, yeah?” It was a bit of a play, as I always greeted people the same way, regardless of the time of day. “So here’s the spot, the closest logged point you’ve given us is here.” He pointed to two different locations. “The team’s almost ready. It’s a level three, so we’re just the vanguard since we can get there fastest. After you send us through, hop on over to the Austin base and grab them too. It’s going to be a messy one.”

Fuuuck. I hate level threes.

There are five currently known sizes of portals, with the level rising as the size increases.

A level one is a little guy. Around ten feet wide, no more than two or three can come through at a time. More a probe than an actual attack. These are what I’d closed the first two times.

Level two, twenty to twenty-five feet wide. More enemy troops, faster, and with more powerful enemies. There was occasionally a Captain there, but not often.

Level three, thirty to forty feet wide. Definitely at least one Captain, sometimes higher ranks as well or if not dealt with promptly, which is why I hated the things. Also lots of leaders and their minions. After a landing site was secured, they brought in large, powerful beasts that they used like vehicles. I’d barely avoided that. I’d seen them in the distance, but they’d have usually been being brought over by the time I’d have arrived.

Levels four and five were rare. They were much larger, and their appearances made everyone rush to get to it. It had been one of these that had destroyed and occupied a good portion of Australia for six months before the world’s forces were able to get to the damn thing and close it. They’d had to nuke the thing to do so, it was so entrenched by that time. It’d taken another eight months to clear out the stragglers.

“Sorry to say, that site is the closest I got. They’ll have to move in from there. Didn’t have much interest in touring the place.”

“Noted.”

The hustle and bustle was reduced as people stood ready at their stations, most of them loaded up on a series of small transports, most holding eight people. Two in front with seats facing outward on each side behind them. These were the largest I could fit through my portals. A few were set up to transport gear, while others would be able to unfold after transit to fit more people.

Moving to my place, I got ready to open the portal. Holding one was a constant drain, so I wasn’t going to do so until everything was ready.

It took another two minutes, a minute longer than the expected five, so I knew some people were gonna regret the delay when things were over.

At the signal, I started casting the portal spell. It took ten seconds to do, during which I was performing mental acrobatics to deal with the variables involved in getting a portion of local space to be linked to the destination in Montana.

And then it was done, and a glowing blue portal was opened and a swarm of vehicles and troops passed through the portal in quick and practiced motions. They’d had drills once my ability to move people about, and its limitations, were revealed.

Within two minutes, the unit was through and I could close the damn thing, not that I was done. Only half of the local forces had gone through, since there needed to be reserves in case of a local incursion, so I was off to another base, one of the major ones in Austin, Texas.

They grow stuff big in Texas, and that seemed to apply to portals as well. They got a lot of level threes out there, and had even had a level four a few months back. That had been before my Awakening though, so I wouldn’t have been able to do anything to help them. They had a larger contingent because of this, so I wasn’t surprised that I’d be transporting troops from there as well.

After the portal was gone, I took a moment, then started a teleport spell. These were far more simple than having to open and maintain a portal, almost effortless in comparison.

I appeared in a designated location and found the troops ready to move out, so with a bracing breath, I moved to the right location and opened my second portal of the day.

This one was open longer, since more troops were being sent from here, and when they were all through, I joined them, letting the portal shut behind me.

The location I stepped into was a good deal cooler than where I’d just been, being much higher in altitude as well as latitude, and I started shivering for a moment before popping up a fire shield to keep me warm.

After some experimentation, I’d found that the specialization restrictions could be done away with, letting me play with any of the spells, but losing the other non-spell benefits that came with them. It was worth it. I could blast an area with fire, then freeze it. It also worked great at breaking things when I did that, using thermal expansion and contraction in my favor.

Most of the combat units were en route to the fight, leaving a few to secure this location as a staging area. This included a medical unit, because there was no way we were getting out of this without injuries, especially after the bastards had a minimum of fifteen minutes to prepare for our arrival.

My help wasn’t needed there, so I summoned Asuna and Robby, then headed off to the fight. Before leaving, I’d been given a little communicator that linked me into the comms traffic, as well as displaying a HUD with important information, including directions to the portal.

The fight was nasty. This portal was one of the worst level threes. Not only was there Captains, three of them, there was also a Warlord. These guys are even worse than the Captains, and even larger. Great targets, but without advanced weapons or abilities, it took a lot to get through their defences.

Add to that the fact that they’d gotten a lot of their war beasts on this side before out guys arrived, and you had a FUBAR situation.

Asuna was able to provide some air cover while I pelted groups of enemies with AOE attacks, but some of their beasts could fly, so it wasn’t long before we had no time to pay attention to the fight on the ground and were in a dog fight. Or dragon fight, since the abomination we were facing kinda resembled one if you used your imagination, screwed up your eyes, and used some hallucinogens.

We were able to get rid of them, but as we were coming in to help with the ground assault, we were hit by one of the Warlord’s attacks. Asuna vanished, having taken enough damage that she’d have died if she wasn’t a summons.

It’d take a lot of healing before she’d be able to use that dragon form again.

I meanwhile had taken plenty of damage, enough to stun me and take me down to the red zone, under 25% health. Fortunately, I was able to cast featherfall before slamming into the ground… right into a group of enemies one of the other guys was blasting with his powers.

Unlike mine that could somehow differentiate friend and foe, his did not, so I got hit along with them. Screaming in agony, I was able to Blink over to some of our guys before passing out. For some reason, I also felt like my skin was crawling, and not in a minor sense like goosebumps, but I didn’t have time to understand what was going on.

---

When I woke up, I was not happy. I had the headache of all headaches, and the lights above me were close to making it evolve from that to a migraine. I also ached all over. I could hear

“Aughh. Did anyone get the plates of the truck that ran me over?”

I had plenty of stuff on my list of things to say before I day, and this was another one off of it. I could have gone with ‘an unfamiliar ceiling,’ except that it wasn’t actually a ceiling, but a tent roof.

There was a lull in the noise around me, but only for a moment. It also allowed me to hear exactly what I said. And how it sounded.

“Fuck my life.”

“Yup, that’s a pretty good summation of the circumstances, Ani. Or would you rather me call you by your legal name, Ben?”

“I don’t really care. I’ll answer to any of my names. Secret’s out?”

The one I was talking to came into view. It was Doctor Kowalski, the one who had patched me up back when I first debuted as Aniara. We’d become friends, though I’d been able to keep myself out of her clutches by staying mostly uninjured, and the few times I failed, they were minor wounds.

“Yes and no. It’s out to the PRT, but hasn’t hit become public yet. Someone was smart enough to throw a tag on your file claiming you’d refuse to assist any more if you got outed. Along with a warning that the ones who did so would be tried and put to death for treason and crimes against humanity.”

“Good. I’d definitely say that… though both of us know those threats are empty ones.”

“Hmm, I could see you following through on it for a while, but yeah. You’re way too soft to keep it up for long. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Ha… Ow… Don’t make me laugh. It hurts when I laugh. Speaking of, how bad am I?”

“Not too bad. You got off easy, some burns, bunch of cuts and scratches, a broken leg. Nothing I can’t fix up in a bit. I’d do it now, but I’m saving my energy for any messy cases that come in. They’re still fighting at the portal.”

“Still? How long’s it been now?”

“You’ve been out for almost a day.” To my exclamation of alarm, she went on. “Yeah, so the portal being a level three seems to have been a trick. It drew in a smaller response, but then they were somehow able to bump it up to a level four, and all hell broke loose. We held the line until reinforcements got here, but haven’t been able to close the damn thing yet. Right now, we’re just able to keep them from getting through, though that should be changing shortly. Enough forces to counterattack and close the portal should be arriving in the morning.”

I sighed in relief. If they were holding steady enough that there weren’t any serious casualties coming into the medic’s tent, even after a day of fighting, then this should be in the bag. Not that I was counting on it.

“So, you’re a boy…”

Ah, of course that would come up.

“Partly. I consider myself gender fluid, and will accept the use pronouns in line with what I’m currently presenting as. I’ve found I prefer being female over male, though.”

“That why you’ve been prancing around as a pretty elf lady?”

“Aww, you think I’m pretty? Thank you! You are as well. I’d try and make some flirty comments, but I suck at them, so I’mma stop there.”

She laughed.

“Those kind of comments will get you nowhere with me, as you well know. You’ve met my husband.”

“Yeah, but it distracts me from the pain. Actually, I wonder… I’ve never really gotten a chance to really try this.”

The last was said under my breath, but she heard me anyways.

“What shenanigans are you pondering this time?”

She arched an eyebrow at me. I’d taken advantage of the PRT to try some stuff out, and it had gone it a very different direction than intended. Not bad, things still worked out, but it’d gotten me a bit of a rep as having funny ideas. They weren’t wrong.

“Oh, nothing bad, just planning on filling my empty stomach, if that’s all right?”

“That’s fine. I’ll get you something to…”

“No need. I got the food with me.”

“Of course you do… I always suspected your magic bags were being used to hide something.”

I grinned at her. I’d found that I could use the bags as they were without accessing the inventory screen, but I had to be deliberate about it, and they were much more limited in how big the items could be, or the stack size. They also wouldn’t stop the progress of time for stored food… unless it was all from WoW. Even using Terran salt would negate the time stop. Not water though, that’s fine for some reason. Even the container had to be from WoW, though it’d work if the stuff was cooked in Terran pots and pans, then transferred.

I reached into my inventory… okay, I accessed it, since I didn’t actually have to reach for it, and withdrew one of the stored Azerothian cuisine. I’d have used the summoned mage food, but it vanishes if left in the shared inventory or on a character while I was in different body for more than 15 minutes.

It was a bowl of hearty stew, and even came with a spoon to use. Both bowl and spoon would disappear when the food was gone. In game, it was consumed over twenty seconds, here, it lasted until I finished eating or left it be for very long.

Therefore, I started eating. And my hopes were confirmed. The stuff was restoring my health, which in this case meant it was fixing my wounds. I could have also used a potion, but they tasted like poison, so I avoided them unless necessary.

By the time I finished the bowl off, I was back to full health. My headache, aches, and pains were all gone, though I still had bloody bandages and a splint on me.

I was also receiving a very fierce stare from my good friend the doctor. I pulled another bowl out and passed it to her.

“Have someone injured eat that. And they need to keep eating with few breaks or it’ll go poof.”

She took the bowl and tested it on… fed it to another of the injured who was awake nearby. He’d been eavesdropping, but pretending not to.

It worked? Kind of? It started him healing, but didn’t do it all the way like it was me, so we came to the conclusion that it had a limited effect. The second bowl still didn’t take care of the problems. Four probably would have, but I wasn’t wasting any more of my food.

“Can you make more?”

“Yes, but since it’d take a LOT, it’s not feasible. The bowls of stew have to be made individually, not by the pot, and it takes a while to do so.”

A half minute or so each in game. I was half-lying about the individual bit since out of the game, I could increase the yield by using more ingredients, but it took much, much longer to make since it had to stew for hours, and if I didn’t do it right, either over or under cooking it, there’d be no effect.

She frowned. She’d hoped that I’d be able to provide another miracle, like I had with the portals. I couldn’t… and I could.

But should I?

Probably, but it’d lose me even more of my privacy and secrets.

“Doc, can you keep a secret?”

“Yeah, but if you’re about to pull something, you should know that there’s cameras recording this place as per regulations.”

Yeah, the malformed bastards had a few tricks up their sleeves, including ways to sneak around that couldn’t get caught by the mark one eyeball. I’d never seen them, but there were cameras all over the place when dealing with a portal of the Phyrexians coming out of them, since they could trigger an alarm and be used to find and dispose of the infiltrators.

“Well, I don’t really want to do this, but I can’t go back to being Aniara right now, so she will have to do.”

I’d checked my transformation list, and saw that the form of Aniara was lying down as if dead, and there was a timer that was at 147:23:14 and decreasing. I took that to mean that I was locked out of becoming Ani for a week since I’d been defeated as her. I really wish I had some guides about this stuff, but there weren’t any, and I did not want to test things by getting blasted to hell again.

I stood up, then sat back down. I waved away the doc’s concern. It was just a head rush. I’d tried to stand up too quickly.

“Bathroom?”

She pointed and I made my way over. It was more of a latrine than a bathroom, but it’d do the trick. I flashed over to Sakura.

“Ani?!”

She must have seen the flash, and cried out in concern.

“It’s fine. I just had to get changed, and didn’t want to blind anyone.”

Her eyes were bulging as she took in my now much shorter form.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Sakura, and I’m a priest.”

And with that, I cast an area heal. I had to do it twice before I was sure everyone was back to full health. The spells filled the tent with a warm glow, one that drew attention from outside making one of the guards peek in. Seeing it was nothing more than a priest at work, he pulled his head back out, before stumbling in.

“Sakura?!”

“Huh? You know my name?”

I tilted my head in confusion. Yes I’d just said my name, but I hadn’t been loud enough for it to reach out the door unless the guy had exceptional hearing. Also, his voice sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. He wasn’t one of the guys from my home base, having a patch for a different unit on his sleeve.

“I must be hallucinating. Doc? Am I seeing things, or is there a pink haired gnome standing there healing people?”

“It’s not nice to call shorter people gnomes. I think the politically correct term is…”

“Gnome. Laventein had it correct. Sakura is a gnome, just like Aniara is an Elf.”

“Aniara?! Okay, if it was just one, I’d take it as coincidence, but two? Rynn? Is that you? It has to be, you know my gamer name.”

“Yeah, It’s me. Didn’t expect to meet any guildies IRL. How’s it going.”

“Not bad, except the whole being deployed and missing raid night thing.”

“Oh, crap, you’re right. If yesterday was Friday and I slept most of a day, the guys are probably all wondering where I am.”

“Yeah, they’re missing you. But enough of that. You Awakened and brought your game character’s to life? No wonder no one could find anything on you. Though, the whole World of Warcraft thing was theorized because of the spells you use. I know there’s two, what about the others?”

“Ugh. Yes, but don’t say any more, please. Though at this rate, I’m sure it’ll be an open secret before long.”

He chuckled. Then froze.

“Wait, if you’re using in-game stuff IRL, does that mean…”

He stopped there, which was annoying. There were a lot of different directions he could take that comment, and I had no idea what way he was going to go.

“I really want to ask, but I really shouldn’t.”

“Oh? Were you wanting to ride my rocket?”

I couldn’t resist and asked the question in as sexy and flirtatious way as I could for being a four foot tall gnome.

His face went beet red and he started stammering incoherently.

Doc Kowalski came to his rescue.

“Okay, so you two know each other, but I haven’t been able to comprehend half of what the two of you are talking about. Care to explain it to an old woman?”

““You’re not old.””

Me and Lav spoke as one. Conditioned male response. The Doc might have been older than us, but couldn’t have been more than mid-forties. As a gnome, I looked to be in my early twenties, other then the height difference, but she knew I was mid-thirties. Lav didn’t look any older than I was, and was probably younger

It was the Doc’s turn to blush, but it was a fleeting thing.

“Thank you for that. Now, explanation?”

Us gamers looked at each other for a moment, then I sighed. There was no use hiding it. I give up.

“My various bodies are the characters I raised in a video game called World of Warcraft. I can do what they can, only more here in the real world. But of course there’s plenty of differences, and not all the stuff from that side works on this side the same. I should leave it at that. Everyone here should be good, so I should see what I can do to put you out of a job at the front lines.”

“OH! Are you going to go DH?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. Probably not. You know about the kill on sight order on demons. I’d rather no one thought I was one.”

“I thought about playing heals as Sakura, or maybe doing off heals and some DPS as Tolania. But then again, Draenai are one of the origins of the demons in WoW, so maybe she’s a bad idea?”

“Go as the Pally. She’ll be a better fighter. Plus with the shiny gear, there’s no way she’ll be taken as a demon. Heck, if someone gets killed, maybe you can Rez ‘em.”

I turned to Kowalski who was looking lost again.

“Am I cleared to head out? Don’t want to break doctor’s orders.”

“Yes, go, you confounding weirdo. Try to keep anyone from dying.”

I threw out a gods-awful salute and headed out. Lav returned to the post he’d been abandoning by chatting with me.

“Hmm, now how should I shock and awe them?”

I was speaking to myself, but hadn’t been keeping my voice down.

“If you’re talking about mounts, go with the bronze dragon. It may not be gold, but it’s close enough that it should go well with your pally’s armor.”

“Excellent thought. I’ll do that.”

Waving goodbye, I made my way to an open area, drawing attention from the few people awake and moving about at this hour. When I found one, I summoned my companions, as bronze dragon and dragonling.

We took off, headed for the battle. On the way, I took the opportunity to change from Sakura to Tolania. Hopefully, I was far enough away from everyone that even if they did see it, they didn’t get blinded.

Unless it was an enemy, in which case, I hoped they’d get blinded.

As I arrived, I drew plenty of attention. And cheers. After all, dragons were Ani’s thing, even if I rode a crimson one since the fire breath was nice and destructive.

I landed at the rear, not wanting to barge into the middle of a firefight. It was best to coordinate with whoever was in charge, rather than barreling in and making a mess.

I approached the command tent, my presence drawing attention from those who weren’t manning the front. Amongst the babble of voices, I even heard a few voices raised in question say the word Draenai. Yep, even in militaristic organizations, there are still gamers.

At the command tent, I introduced myself as Aniara, and after a few minutes was let in.

“So, our elven mage has returned as… what are you supposed to be?”

My voice came out in a Russian sounding accent.

“This form is a Draenai, a star-faring fantasy race. In it, I have the name Tolania, though I will still answer to my others. I’m sure you’ve become aware of my civilian identity?” Nods from some of them, but not all. “I’d request you keep that as secret as possible. The warning about revealing my identity that has been added to my file is there for a reason.”

I smiled at them. I didn’t make or confirm the threat about cutting off my aid, but I let my words make it seem like I had.

“Now, let me tell you a bit of what I can do, and you can tell me where to go so I don’t cause a bigger mess than this already is.”

Briefly detailing my abilities, primarily suited towards melee combat, healing, and tanking, though I was shit at the last, I was given orders to join the line near the side of the portal. For the moment, I didn’t have to worry about any healing. The Phyrexians had been trying to get their forces out and around it, rather than charging head on into the lines. It was also mostly a long range battle for the time being, and I wasn’t very well suited to that.

As I headed towards the lines, I held up my hammer, which blazed with light as I shouted.

“FOR THE LIGHT!”

Light spread out, buffing my allies.

---

It was a long night, and there were several close calls, but we held, and in the morning the reinforcements arrived. Over a thousand people, among them some of the more powerful of Awakened and after some preparations, we began out counterattack.

I was not in the vanguard. I was actually in the rear, being a squishy priest again as I buffed and healed my allies, and occasionally smote an enemy down. It took hours, but we were successful, and there were very few casualties. I got the chance to try out my Resurrection spell on one of them, but unfortunately it was no good. I guess this world didn’t give second chances like that.

I had been lucky to survive myself, the attack I’d taken should have finished me off, and it was only by sheer luck I’d managed to get out before my transformation was released and I became extremely fragile.

When I’d been discussing my abilities, I’d told them about my healer, and they decided that would be a better use of me than throwing me into the thick of things and risking my death. Healers were rare. They also really liked my ability to move stuff easily.

There were others who’d Awakened some kind of teleportation ability, but it was usually far more limited, usually personal or with only a few others. None of them could ship out entire groups like me.

There WERE better healers out there. I was good, but there was one woman who had been given the title Saintess for how powerful her abilities were. Due to the fact that she was a staunch and devout Catholic, the Vatican had made it official.

Outside of the teleportation thing, I was a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. Not the top in anything, but very powerful. In every other field, there were people who could outperform me. And I was fine with that. I didn’t need to be the best. I just wanted to be… me.

Not that that didn’t mean I didn’t have some envy about some things, but it was pretty mild.

Overall, my status in this world was close to the one I had in WoW. I could make money easily, was strong enough to take care of most things, had friends and allies who’d both laugh with and fight beside me.

I was happy.

And with these people I was going to enjoy my life, even if we had to counter-invade and conquer the enemy’s worlds to do it.

The End.