The player was satisfied it seemed, and hit ‘No, I am done here (Leave preview mode)’. “Have a good night. “ Jon said with a smile ” I am looking forward to our first proper meeting. ” before the tv faded to a loading screen and after a moment just standing there Jon realized he was no longer forced to follow the script and stepping back with a sigh of relief.
When he turned around he saw the room still looked the same, and so did Jon for that matter, which was a shame because Jon would have preferred the track-suit shown in the reflection to the uniform. Speaking of uniforms, from the altered angle, he could make out a typical japanese school uniform hanging beside the door in the reflection. Did that mean…
“As you see.” Sarah interrupted Jons train of thought “Outside of cut-scenes you are pretty much free to act as you want. Which will be most of the time. There are a few restrictions of course, to make sure you play along. You can make try to make yourself scarce for example, but hide too long and there will be a cutscene about say… a teacher asking a certain upstanding student to check in on the sick girl who missed too many schooldays in a row. A prime opportunity to win points by nursing her a bit….”
Jon shuddered at the idea. “Why? Why are you doing this to me?”
Sarah laughed “Why? Because I want to see you squirm a bit. And I am sure you’d done something similar to me. Or your dumpy little friend would have. ”
“I wouldn’t… ” Jon protested “ I mean, this is basically rape.”
“Oh stop whining.” Sarah shot back “If you are that afraid to see how the other side feels, you can always play matchmaker. It’s not like you are the only game in town. But fiiiine I’ll throw you a bone. I won’t spoil the surprise but I can tell you this much. I didn’t give the copy of the game to a jerk like Biff or Steve, if you couldn’t tell by the fact you are not a stripper. In fact… ” she gave a mean little laugh “…the Stud and my Ex will know exactly how you feel by tomorrow. So you can think of guiding the player their way as revenge for all the shit they put you through if you want.”
The news WERE a bit of relief, but at the same time…. oO I am pretty sure you put them up to some of it. And you weren’t any better yourself. Oo Jon thought bitterly.
“Anyway” Sarah said before Jon could open his mouth and say something he’d regret “It is getting late, so I’ll sign off for today and give you some privacy. I am sure you are eager to …explore your new situation. See ya.”
After futilely calling out his tormentors name a few times, Jon sighed. Apparently she was really gone. Not that he really knew what he’d done if she answered.
Well, he told himself, time to take stock. The Tv was still showing a loading screen, and going by the speed the bar was moving it would take at least a few more hours to finish. Short messages what the programm was working on flashed above the graph, but after staring at them for a few minutes Jon dismissed them as senseless techno-babble. He got the gist, that it all related to creating a town or building, but that was pretty much it.
And true enough, when Jon opened the door to the outside, he was greeted by a featureless black void. He was well and truly stuck for the moment.
The desk contained a tablet in one of the drawers, but when he started it up the screen contained only a single book icon: ‘AInO v0.9273 – Reference (Guide version) ’.
“Well, better than nothing” Jon murmured, turning towards the bed. He had always preferred doing his reading on his bed instead of his desk chair. The sight of his discarded clothes reminded him that he had another choice to make: What to wear.
He didn’t look forward to seeing his naked body once again (especially with Sarahs suggestion about ‘exploring’ rankling his pride) but he’d have to face the music at some point. After some hmm-ing and hawww-ing Jon settled into bed wearing only a t-shirt and the embroidered white panties that had come with the uniform (wearing something girly had won out over having to confront his naked groin again ).
The sight of his smooth thighs as he read, was an uncomfortable reminder of his situation, but Jons jeans had been far too tight for comfort. As expected the technical manual contained a lot of usefull information but it didn’t make for a very interesting read. Jon only made it half way through before exhaustion from his emotional ordeal caught up with him. After reading the same paragraph a third time in a row and still unable to remember what it said, jon put the tablet down, pulled the covers out from behind him where they had served as a backrest and lay down. Without the distraction of reading all the strange sensations of his new body came to the forefront of jons mind as he slipped under the covers. The slight tug at his chest whenever he moved, the way the padding on his butt made him feel like his hips were lying on a thin pillow, the different shape of his mouth as his tongue moved along his teeth. To Jon lieing there in the dark, becoming fully aware of his body it seemed like hours, but in reality it was probably just minutes before he slipped into a troubled sleep.
Jon couldn’t say what had woken him up, but he knew something was off as he opened his eyes. Then the sight of an unfamiliar feeling brought back the memory of Sarahs perverse punishment and he closed his eyes with a groan and rolled to his side to avoid the morning sun shining directly onto his face.
Wait… the room didn’t have a window last night! Jumping out of bed, Jon ran over to the new addition this his cell and stared in wonder at the street outside. He knew that street! Jon was back home! And there were real people walking around outside. Turning around Jon realized the room , and his body, had lost the artificial quality they had last night. The Tv was still displaying a loading screen, but it was in the last stretch. ‘Executing Maureen-Batchjob/Room/desk/base’ it said. A moment later the desk beside the window started to pixelate… no not pixelate exactly, square sections of it were rapidly changing to different sorts of wood or paint seemingly at random, merging when to neighbouring sections aligned until the entire desk was cycling though different variation on the concept of ‘desk’. It finally settled on a slightly battered looking wooden affair. Then the air above it began to dissolve into shifting squares, a look at the screen showed it working on ‘Executing Maureen-Batchjob/Room/desk/accessories’ as books and papers materialized out of thin air resolving into schoolbooks, supplementary literature and homework.
And so it went on, slowly transforming the spartan furnishings into the room Jon had seen in the reflection of Maureen. The whole process was so baffling, it took Jon a while to remember that he was supposed to be able to influence the process to a certain degree. There were limits to how far he could stray from the ‘serious student’ image and his tries to materialize a game-console were fruitless, but at least Jon managed to steer the process towards replicating his library of Fantasy-books and replicate a few personal knick-knacks.
Then without warning the process moved on to Jon itself, and a startled ‘Eeeeep’ escaped his lips as a hundred different fabrics touched his body as his clothes dissolved. Sections of his body shifting rapidly between being tightly hugged, loosely covered or exposed to air with no rhyme or reason was a disconcerting experience.
Jon had only a small moment to sigh in relief as his clothes stelled into the green tracksuit the girl in the mirror had been wearing. Then the entire room started vibrating, as Jons height slowly zeroed in on the one specified by the template. Feeling how his body filled out his clothes, was nearly as disconcerting as it had been when it was the clothes shifting around.
When the sensation shifted to his chest as the grand finale, Jon realized it had been a mistake to guide his choice of underwear towards a sports bra and alter his attire in general to be less figure hugging. He should have gone with a push-up bra, Jon realised as he felt his chest swell until it showed beneath the slightly bulkier sweater just as well as it had been in the mirror the evening before.
His….Maureens bust had looked nearly non-existent back then, but now, Jon knew, that was just her clothes downplaying her chest as best as possible.
Instead of following his first impulse of pulling at his collar to check the damage directly (or grope himself) Jon marched over towards the wardrobe. Pulling it open he was faced with three identical tracksuits to the one he was wearing and a neatly folded stack of underwear.
Pulling out a sports-bra Jon read the label before tossing it back with a frustrated sigh. Yep Maureen was officially a C-cup.
Scanning the changed room Jons eye fell on the notebook that had replaced the tablet he’d put down on the nightstand before falling asleep. If he remembered correctly it should be telling him more about the situation now that the game had finished loading. ‘So let’s see’ he murmured as he picked it up ‘ it said no matter what form it takes this device responds to the owners intent.’ So if he wanted to know who the player was….
