Metamorphosis Online Complete Series Boxed Set; A Gamelit Fantasy RGP Novel: You Need A Bigger Sword, The New Queen Rises, Reign With Axe & Shield

by Natalie Grey

  “Ha! Made you laugh! Damn, I'm good.” Gracie was laughing too. “Seriously, though, why don't we just to do a normal video chat like Knect? That way you can eat—”

  “You mean, you can make sure I eat,” Jay muttered. His stomach growled disloyally. “But fine. I have Knect. My handle is jaythomas; super-original. I'll log on and then go get my pizza.”

  “Cool!" Gracie seemed very pleased with herself. "I'll give you a call in a minute. I just have to log in.”

  Jay grumbled as he logged out of Metamorphosis and took off his VR rig, but the grumbling was halfhearted. In reality, he was pleased that his friends cared enough to check up on him. He might not have a job, he thought, or any prospect of a job coming down the pipeline, but at least he had friends.

  He still felt a little bit like shit, but he reminded himself that things like this were exactly why Metamorphosis was so important.

  He grabbed the pizza, headed back to the couch, and paused for a moment before he accepted the video call. His finger hovered above the button. A moment ago, he had been focused on nothing more than pizza and beating himself up about his lack of a job, but in a flash, he realized that he was about to see Gracie for the first time.

  He stared at the ringing call for far too long, unable to make himself press the button. He told himself sternly just to do it. What was he afraid of? His mind resolutely refused to let him answer that question.

  In the end, it was annoyance at himself that prompted him to stab his finger down. He held his breath as the call connected—

  Only to see an empty couch and a blank wall. The mixture of relief and amusement at his own stupidity made him guffaw.

  “Sorry!” a female voice called from offscreen, barely picked up by the speakers. “I decided to get myself a snack while you were getting your food.” All Jay could think was that the voice sounded surprisingly normal. After knowing Gracie only through her Aosi character, he had gotten used to the strange, echoey voice. But a human voice worked far better with the way she talked.

  See? Jay asked himself. Nothing to be afraid of. He took a big bite of pizza as he heard Gracie say, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!”

  Then she appeared on the screen, and he choked on his pizza.

  In his head, he always pictured her as her character. He knew it was ridiculous. Obviously she didn't have blue skin, and she wasn't seven feet tall. From the beginning, he had told himself sternly that she didn't look like that. Hell, in the beginning, he had thought she was a dude. When he had thought about what she might actually look like, his mind had to run the gamut of height, hair color, face shape, and race. He had told himself that he was ready for her to look like anything.

  Except for being a dead ringer for her character.

  Gracie settled herself on the couch, carefully balancing a plate with two sandwiches and a veritable mountain of potato chips. She was tall and slim, with the sort of body Jay had always assumed didn't really exist. She swept long golden brown hair back over her shoulder with her free hand and looked up at the screen with a smile.

  “Hey! Wow, it's nice to actually meet you.” She waved. As Jay continued to say nothing, she frowned. “I think the video froze. One sec.” She laughed. “You're stuck mid-chew. Ugh, this always happens. I swear, it's a miracle we’re able to play Metamorphosis without all dying by lag. Come on, Wi-Fi, I believe in you!”

  “Um.” Jay managed to close his mouth.

  “Oh, there you are. Hi!” Gracie waved.

  “Uh, hi.” Did his voice always sound like this? All squeaky? He couldn't feel his hands.

  Gracie frowned as she chewed a bite of her sandwich. She swallowed with a gulp. “You okay? Jay?”

  “Uh…” Jay reflected that he normally knew so many words. Why could he not think of a single one of them?

  “Hellooooooo.” Gracie was grinning. “You look like you saw a ghost, man.”

  That, at least, gave Jay a lie he couldn't work with. He embraced it gratefully. “You look a lot like your character. Only, you know, not blue. It's just a little weird.”

  “Oh. Sure.” She looked confused.

  Abruptly, it was just too much. Jay could see it all unfolding in his mind’s eye. He looked forward to their meetings in-game and relished the jokes and the conversation, and he had been reasonably sure that she felt the same, but now that she knew what he looked like, everything was going to be different.

  There was no way that a chick who looked like Gracie would want to hang out with someone who was painfully average—and that description was being generous.

  “You know, I just realized I have to go." Jay forced a smile. “I'll talk to you later.” When she said nothing, his smile took on a bitter edge. “See you.”

  “Jay.” Her voice was devoid of emotion, but he could tell there was a storm coming. “You want to tell me what's going on?”

  “It's not important," he said flatly.

  “Given that you went from being in a fairly good mood to looking like you got hit by a truck and you hate me, I'm going to believe that it is important." Gracie sounded angry.

  “What do you want me to say?" Jay knew his voice was rising, but he wasn't able to stop it. He didn't want to. He'd been through this so many times over the years, and for once, he wanted the girl to know how it felt. “You look like some crazy—I don't know, supermodel—and I'm me.”

  “What the fuck, man?” Gracie shook her head. “What are you even talking about?”

  “I'm talking about the fact that you're out of my league.” Jay put down the piece of pizza. He didn't want it anymore.

  She stared at him for a long moment.

  “What?” Jay challenged her. “Nothing to say to that fact?”

  She looked away for a moment, and when she looked back, he was surprised to see that she was absolutely furious.

  “What would you like me to say?” She bit the words off. “That games like Metamorphosis are important because people judge you on your abilities, not on what you look like? Not on all the superficial shit that doesn't matter?”

  “Yeah,” Jay shot back. “So people don't just write you off.”

  “Uh-huh.” She gave him a smile just as bitter as his own and threw down the gauntlet: “And what the fuck did you just do?”

  Jay stopped and blinked. “Look, that's not the same.” He shook his head. “I mean, when people won't associate with you anymore because you're not what they want.”

  “Says the guy who was about to sign off!” Gracie's jaw was set, and to his surprise, tears were glittering in her eyes.

  “Gracie—”

  “No.” She cut him off with a swipe of her hands and wiped her eyes. “God, I hate crying. Fuck this. Look, you can go If you want, but you're being a huge hypocrite. You want to know something? Yeah, being reasonably good-looking makes things easier in general. I'm not going to pretend that isn't true. But it also means I've had more than my share of trouble trying to find a group I could just do geeky stuff with. I was so damned happy to find Metamorphosis. To find people who cared about each other, people who judged me based on how I made them laugh and how I tanked, not on how they assumed I would behave or how they thought I owed it to them to behave just because they found me attractive.”

  Jay stared blankly at her.

  “I was scared to suggest video chatting,” Gracie said angrily, “but I told myself not to be stupid. I told myself that we knew each other well enough now. That we'd been through enough together that you wouldn't just write me off.” She paused, and then said, her voice very small, “And then you did, like the rest of the time we had spent together didn't even matter.”

  Jay swallowed.

  There was silence, then Gracie challenged him: “Well?”

  She sounded like she was going to cry, and part of him was angry, but he kept hearing in his head, “And then you did.” Those words had clearly cost her to say. She had wanted to say something angry, but instead, she had told him the truth.

  So he t
old her the truth in return. “Look, Metamorphosis was important to me because people have written me off for not being attractive enough. They can dress it up however they want, but that's why. It's just that… Well, you look like your character, and I don't look like mine. The second I saw you, I thought, ‘Well, that's it. She's just going to write you off.’”

  She swallowed. “Jay? Those people who wrote you off…were they friends like we are?”

  “No,” Jay admitted. “But you don't get it. You can't get it—”

  “No, you don’t get it.” She shook her head. “Listen to me for a second. I'm in Las Vegas. Everything here is beautiful. The buildings are beautiful, the fountains are beautiful, everywhere is full of beautiful people. It's part of the show, and there's nowhere like here, and yeah, I kind of love it. But it's not a perfect place. Underneath all the sparkly dresses and the makeup and the plush rugs and the money, people are just the same. Las Vegas is about putting on a show, and that's what appearances are—they’re a show. They're a mask.” When he frowned, she shook her head in frustration. “Everything you said was true,” she said, waving her hands. “About what’s real and what’s not. What’s real is the sort of friendship we built online. In the game. And I know it's scary for you to trust that I will stick around, but please, try to understand how scary it is for me to trust that you'll stick around. And for the fucking record?” She gave him a look with a capital L. “You've got a serious complex about your looks. You look perfectly fucking fine.”

  Before he had time to think, Jay was laughing. He wanted to be cynical, but this was Gracie. The way she spoke, the way she gestured—all of it was so familiar. She didn't have any time for bullshit, and despite everything, he was beginning to believe she was telling the truth.

  He gave her a nod, then groaned and dropped his face into his hand. “Ugh, I'm sorry.”

  “Nah.” She sounded sad. “It sounds like you came by your pathology honestly. I'm sorry people suck, but, Jay, I'm not going anywhere. You've helped me through some hard stuff, and right now you're going through some hard stuff too. I want you to be happier. I care about you. I'm here for screwing around in the game, and I'm here just to talk if that would help. Or not, if it wouldn't help.”

  Jay felt something unusually warm and relaxing spreading through his chest, and had a moment of panic where he wondered if he was having a stroke or possibly a heart attack. Did those feel warm? He gave a small, self-conscious laugh “I, uh—”

  “Proposal,” Gracie interrupted.

  “Er, yes?”

  “What if we were just done with this and never discussed it again?”

  Jay finally chuckled. “I like your style. Yeah, let's do that.”

  “Good.” She sounded relieved. “So, ready for the new content drop?”

  “Yeah.” Jay took a bite of pizza and tried to decide whether to tell her where he used to work. “I just feel like—” He heard a door in the background of the call. “Is someone there?”

  “Just Alex,” Gracie said. “Or a home invader, I guess. Oh, no, it's Alex. That's a relief.”

  “What's this about home invaders?” Alex asked from offscreen. “And are you not playing Metamorphosis? Have you been replaced by a pod person?”

  “I'm talking to Jay,” Gracie said with great dignity. She pointed at the screen. “Say hi.”

  “Hi?” Jay said as Alex stuck his head around the screen.

  “Oh, hey.” Alex waved, and Jay had the disgusted thought that it was apparently a whole apartment full of ridiculously good looking people. Luckily Jay didn't have to come up with anything to say because Alex said to both of them, “So, have you heard?”

  “Uh…” Gracie shook her head. “Heard what?”

  “Oh, my God.” Alex looked at Gracie and Jay. “Seriously? How am I the first one to know about this? You both have the day off!”

  “Yes, thank you for reminding us that we're both jobless,” Gracie said with mock-bitterness. “You're too kind. Really.”

  “Whoops,” Alex said. “Okay, wrong note to hit; I see that now. Well, maybe this will distract you… They dropped the new content patch early.”

  “What?” Gracie and Jay said in unison. Jay scrambled to open his browser and load the Metamorphosis homepage, and from the frantic typing on the other end, he guessed that Gracie was doing the same thing.

  “Whoa!” He heard her murmur. “This is freaking beautiful.”

  “It is.” Jay just couldn't shake the thought that something was wrong.

  A moment later, his suspicions were justified.

  “Oh, shit,” Gracie said.

  Oh, no. Jay forced himself to be calm. “What is it?”

  “They changed the rules,” Gracie said. “Now you can go in with your own gear. If we were even close to being on the same footing as the other guilds before, we’re not anymore.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Fuck.” Gracie slumped back on the couch. “Fuck!”

  All it had taken was this one tiny nudge for the whole house of cards she had built to come tumbling down. Who had she been kidding? She had known from the start that the ranking and the money that came with it weren't really hers to keep. She had known it was unlikely that they could ever manage to clear a dungeon before any of the big guilds.

  Yet, somehow she had talked herself into believing they could do it, and that maybe she could do this for a living instead of getting another crappy job.

  She had thought she was so much smarter than all of the patrons in her old job because she saw the true game behind the façade. When she started playing Metamorphosis Online, she had thought the same thing.

  Instead, all her experience had done was make her arrogant. She had thought she was so much smarter than everyone else, but she had fallen into exactly the same trap as them.

  What an idiot.

  Alex saw the look on her face, and he glanced at her computer screen and looked at Jay for a moment as well. “Guys? Can I say something?”

  “What.” It wasn't really a question. Gracie wasn't in the mood to hear inspirational shit. She could hear the resignation in her own voice.

  “Look, it was always going to be a long shot,” Alex said. He looked between the two of them again and gave them an encouraging smile. “Isn't that kind of the fun thing about something like this? You take a long shot; shoot for something you have no hope in hell of winning.”

  “No hope in hell?” Gracie demanded. “Thanks a lot, man.”

  “Oh, come on.” Alex threw up his hands. “Isn't that the fun of it? Isn't that part of why everyone in our guild is so cool? Everyone told me I had to settle down with my girlfriend and get married. After the divorce, everyone told me I had to start dating again and get married so I could have kids. I didn't listen. I came out here, and I'm enjoying the hell out of my life. Gracie, your parents wanted you to be a stockbroker for a CEO or something and marry a douche like Kyle. You didn't listen, and you're much happier because you didn't listen. Jay… Look, I don't know you all that well yet, man, but you didn't put up with the bullshit of your boss telling you that you had to do something wrong. That's what I like about you guys; you aren't afraid to head off in your own direction. Life can be grim enough even when we get all of the fun we can out of it. Don't make it even grimmer by avoiding that.”

  Gracie chewed on a fingernail. Despite her bad mood, she had to admit that Alex was making a good point.

  “And just so I'm clear,” Alex's voice held the faintly mischievous tone Gracie knew so well, “why exactly did we decide to give up on this without even trying?”

  Gracie shot him a glare. As far as she was concerned, he had absolutely no right to be making such good points, especially not if he was going to look so goddamned smug about it. Indeed, Alex was practically radiating smugness as he got up and drifted out of the room.

  “Damn that man," Gracie muttered. “I hate when he has a point.”

  “Yeah.” Jay was clearly trying to sound annoyed, but
Gracie could hear a laugh bubbling up in his voice. “He's a real asshole, your roommate.”

  “You just wait," Gracie said darkly. “Next he'll offer to get everyone online so we can do a run.”

  “Already on it!" Alex called from the next room.

  Gracie gestured in his direction as if to say, “I told you so.” To her surprise, Jay wasn't laughing anymore. He was looking into the distance with the grimmest expression she had ever seen.

  “What’s up?" Gracie asked him.

  “So…” Jay sighed. “There's something I haven't told you.”

  Gracie stared at him blankly. She could not for the life of her think of what he might need to tell her. After all, it wasn't as if the members of their group knew each other in real life, right?

  She had a crazy worry that he was going to do something like to tell her he was a long-lost sibling, but before she had too much time to think, he heaved a breath and said, “I worked for Dragon Soul Productions. The thing I told you about, where I got fired because I wouldn't do something that was the wrong thing to do? They wanted me to undo all of the ranking points you got from the kobold quest. And then, when they couldn't do anything, they tried to ban your account.”

  Gracie stared at him. Whatever she had expected, it wasn't this. It was so out of left field that she literally couldn't think of anything to say.

  “Wait…” she said finally. “Wait.” Then, still confused, “Wait, what?” Out of the corner of her vision, she could see that Alex had drifted back into the room. He was staring at the computer with an oddly intent expression, as if he didn't believe what he had just heard.

  Gracie was with him on that one.

  Jay had sunk his head into his hands. He spoke now without looking up, his voice muffled. “You triggered an Easter egg quest. Forgot who got ousted from the company—Harry. We think it was his work. The thing is, your character isn't under their control now—”

  “Back up," Gracie said. She held up a hand. “Wait. Go back. So, when we first met after the kobold quest—”

  “Oh, I didn't know about any of that stuff then,” Jay told her. “Honestly, I was just intrigued by the conversation we’d had—” He broke off and ran his hands through his hair. “Right. Back even farther. In order to fine-tune the AI, we had live people behind some of the NPCs. I don't know if you remember speaking to the hill warden?”