Forever Fantasy Online (FFO Book 1)

by Rachel Aaron

  “Wish they’d finished the job,” Neko grumbled.

  “We’re all lucky they didn’t,” Tina said sternly. “Like I said, we need his heals, but all that stuff adds up. The raid’s all we have out here, and Anders is a pariah. That’s gotta hurt deep, so how much punishment is enough? You just sexually harassed him a lot. When’s the buck gonna stop?”

  Neko huffed and gave Tina an annoyed look. Tina glared right back. “Also,” she went on, “I thought we were supposed to be keeping your real gender a secret. How the hell am I supposed to protect you when you’re blurting out the truth after riding on the back of your assailant?”

  The cat-girl’s ears went flat. “I didn’t think about that.”

  “Well, you need to,” Tina said sharply. “Because no matter who you are inside, you’ve chosen to be a girl in this world, and that means shit like this has consequences. I’ve seen plenty of girls try to use their bodies as weapons against dudes who hurt them, and it never ends well. What Anders did to you would mess anyone up, but this sort of revenge only makes things worse. I don’t know if anything can ever make it totally better again, but I bet some counseling would help. Zen’s a nurse. Why don’t you try talking to her?”

  “Okay, okay, Roxxy, gah!” NekoBaby cried, her face scarlet beneath her short fur. “I’ll chill, all right? Just stop talking! But I’m still mad at Anders, and I don’t trust him. Don’t you dare put us on any teams together.”

  “Works for me,” Tina said. “Thanks, Neko.”

  NekoBaby huffed and stalked off, tail still bristling. Unfortunately, Tina wasn’t done with awkward conversations. Now that NekoBaby was mostly sort of taken care of, it was time to talk to Anders.

  She found him alone, as always, dragging his feet dejectedly a good ten feet off to the side of the raid. Now that she had time to look, Tina noticed the ichthyian was far dirtier than anyone else. His robe was stained with ash from all the times he’d been knocked down or tripped, and there was a bloody stain over his ribs that none of their legitimate fights could account for. The rest of the raid watched out of the corners of their eyes as she walked over, but Tina didn’t want an audience, so she guided Anders back to the rear of the raid. The distance wouldn’t stop any really determined eavesdroppers, but at least it would force them to be obvious about it.

  “How are you doing?” she asked quietly, doing her best to keep her voice neutral. “I worry that Neko took her revenge too far.”

  The Cleric leaned heavily on his glowing staff. “To be honest, it doesn’t bother me. I got what I deserved.”

  She arched a copper eyebrow. “Really? ’Cause it looks like it’s bothering the hell outta you.”

  “I’m bothering the hell out of me,” Anders said, shoulders drooping. “I acted like a monster, and now I’m a literal one.”

  He held up a webbed hand with spines on the ends of his fingers, and Tina sighed. “We’re all different now, dude. I’m an eight-foot-tall lady made of rocks. And it’s not like you’re the only ichthyian.”

  “It’s not that,” Anders started then stopped, turning to look up at her. “Do you know what having Leylia’s is like?”

  Tina shook her head, and the fish-man’s hinged jaw clenched. “It’s hell. I never know what’s real and what isn’t. My parents can’t afford to have me institutionalized, so they hide me in the attic and tell our family I’m a vegetable. No one visits me except my mother, and she only comes up to bring me food. She doesn’t talk to me or stay longer than she has to. She’s never pulled it, but I know she keeps a Taser in her pocket. You know, just in case I confuse her for a monster.”

  His eyes dropped as he finished, but Tina didn’t know what to say. The reality of Leylia’s was horrifying.

  “I didn’t know Neko was real,” Anders continued, putting a webbed hand over his face. “There was no interface. That’s new for you guys, but for me, it’s every day. I had no reason to question what I was seeing or to think I was hurting a real person. I knew it was gross, but my life is so miserable… I just wanted to be happy for a bit, even if I hated myself later. As despicable as that is, though, it’s not even the worst part. The worst part of this is that I’ve ruined my own salvation.”

  Tina frowned, confused. “Salvation?”

  Anders cupped his hands in praise of the Divine Sun, just as the game’s actual priests always did. “I haven’t had an episode since I got stuck here,” he said quietly. “I used to have them every few hours, but once I woke up here, all I’ve seen is what’s real.” He flashed her a sad smile. “That’s a miracle, Roxxy, and I’ve ruined it by letting my leftover delusions run away with me. I got a second chance at life, and I started it as a would-be rapist.”

  Tina patted Anders awkwardly on the shoulder. She wasn’t sure where she was on the spectrum of pity or disgust with the Cleric, but she knew her duty as the raid leader. “It’s not over yet,” she said, forcing cheer into her voice. “I’m not gonna punish you any more for what you did, and Neko’s promised to knock it off at least until we reach the fortress. Just stay alive, and I bet you can find atonement.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Anders said, his voice defeated. “I’m still a monster.”

  “You’re only a monster if you act like one.”

  “No, I mean I’m literally a monster,” he said, waving his webbed hand at her again. “I was saved, but this existence is already warping who I am. Who everyone here is.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tina asked, exasperated. “Yeah, we don’t look human anymore, but we’re still us.”

  “Are we?” Anders turned and pointed up the road at one of the elven Rangers walking in front of them. “What’s that guy look like to you?”

  Tina squinted at the archer. “Like an elf. Blond, pointy ears, maxed height sliders, default face and hair settings. Honestly, they all look kinda the same.” She winced. “Crap. That’s racist now, isn’t it?”

  Anders chuckled. “Yes, it is, rock girl. But that’s not what I meant.” His tone became salacious. “You don’t have anything else to say about him?”

  Tina didn’t like the way he said that one bit. After everything else he’d said, though, she didn’t think Anders was being sleazy, so she dutifully stared at the elf again. Unfortunately, she didn’t see anything new.

  “I give up,” she said at last. “What should I be noticing?”

  “Do you think he’s cute?”

  “No more than any other elf,” she said, getting frustrated. “I’m not in shape to deal with this, Anders. Just spell it out.”

  “So you’re saying the six-foot-tall male elf with a Photoshop-perfect face and the body of a god wearing formfitting leather armor doesn’t do anything for you? Nothing at all?” He shrugged. “Can’t spell it out any more than that.”

  Tina’s head whipped back to the elf Ranger, but Anders was right. He was insanely handsome to the point of being beautiful in a masculine way. Even worn out, tired, and limping from the long walk, he moved with a grace professional dancers would kill for. The human men were just as remarkable—tall and broad shouldered with the muscles and rugged good looks normally reserved for A-list action movie stars. But while a distant part of her brain recognized that as smoking hot, her body felt nothing.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “It is a little weird that I never noticed how many amazingly hot dudes we have, but I’ve been kind of busy. Why are you noticing?”

  “Because the same thing’s happening to me,” Anders said. “We’ve been here for less than a day, but NekoBaby isn’t attractive to me anymore. None of them are. I’m surrounded by women who are fourteen out of ten on the beauty scale with bodies crafted by 3-D modelers to be better than the human ideal. I loved that back when this was a game, but now they’re all just too…mammalian.”

  Tina recoiled at Anders’s confession. His sanity had been kind of questionable from the start, but now she was seriously concerned he was going off a whole new deep end.

  “Now, MarziPain o
ver there?” the fish-man continued. “The ichthyian Sorceress? She’s amazing. To the point of being really distracting, actually. She has beautiful crest ridges, and her gills…”

  He made a gurgling noise in his throat, and Tina cringed.

  “Okay, I get it,” she said. “You’re finding fish-girls attractive instead of humans now. I can see why that would freak you out.”

  “But it’s not just me,” Anders said earnestly. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The fact that you didn’t even notice you’re surrounded by hot elf guys proves that it’s happening to you, too. And if it’s happening to both of us, then it’s probably happening to everyone.”

  “Shut up,” Tina said. “Just because I don’t find some random elf sexy doesn’t mean anything. We’re running for our lives! How can you even think about sex right now?”

  Anders arched a scaly eye ridge at her. “We’re all superhuman, in perfect health, with young, physically ideal bodies. Most of us have been secretly lusting after the FFO character models for years. Now we’re in real fully functioning versions of those bodies. Oh, and we’re all away from home and in the sort of danger that makes you want to celebrate being alive. If there’s anything weird here, Roxxy, it’s how are you not obsessing about sex?”

  “Because I’m busy keeping everyone alive,” she growled. “And you’re being ridiculous.”

  “Am I?” He nodded at the raid in front of them. “Haven’t you noticed how many people are walking in pairs?”

  She hadn’t, though now that Anders had pointed it out, it was painfully obvious how many hands, tails, and fins were being held between the raiders. “Fine,” Tina admitted. “You’re right. It’s senior prom night up there, but so what? I still don’t see how this applies to me.”

  Anders stopped and turned to look at her with his huge, double-lidded fish eyes. He held her gaze for several seconds, long enough for Tina to watch his gills flex and facial scales shift. “Stonekin don’t have sex, Roxxy,” he said in a pitying voice. “Your kind are birthed from magic in the realm of bedrock deep underground. I don’t know what sort of partners you preferred before we changed, but I find your lack of interest in sex now to be very appropriate to your new race. You sound just like that stonekin quest-giver from the Valentine’s Day event. You know, the one who can’t understand why everyone else is making such a fuss. Look at all those pairings and think about that.”

  With that, Anders turned and walked back toward the raid. Dumbfounded, Tina stayed put, staring at the group in front of her with new eyes. Now that she’d seen them, she couldn’t unsee the number of people who were walking shoulder to shoulder, leaning into each other in suspiciously race-compatible combinations. All except for GneissGuy, the only other stonekin in the raid. He was just plodding along, steady and alone.

  ****

  Tina spent the next mile in miserable, lonely silence.

  She’d always loved playing Roxxy. The stonekin was powerful and invincible, not to mention tall. She was the exact opposite of Tina’s real life, and though things since they’d come here had been painful and terrifying, they’d also been exhilarating. She’d gotten to be Roxxy in a way the game could never deliver, to live that power.

  Now, though, she was feeling the weight of her armor and her shield like never before. In her pack, she still had her ration of bread. Everyone else had long since wolfed theirs down, but every time she tried to eat, the bread was unappetizing. She wasn’t hungry, anyway, despite marching for a full day and most of a night, which only now struck her as alarming.

  Scowling, Tina reached up to scrape some of the dried silver blood off her temple. Anders had been right on a lot of levels. Being Superwoman was cool, but now that the reality of not being human had set in, it was unsettling. She’d never paid attention to the game’s lore beyond what she needed to run dungeons and beat bosses. She’d chosen a stonekin because they made good tanks, but beyond that, she knew nothing about her race. For all she knew, she didn’t need to eat at all.

  That was a scary thought. If she didn’t eat, was she even alive? Perhaps she was some kind of weird elemental robot now, and if so, how was she different from the undead behind them?

  Nervous, Tina glanced down at her reflection through the dust that caked the inside of her shield. Her granite skin was painfully close to the pervasive grayness of the Deadlands, and her copper metal hair looked like it had been welded, not grown, but it was the eyes that unnerved her the most. Roxxy didn’t have green eyes. Normal people had green eyes. She had living magical emeralds. Hard, sharply faceted jewels that focused and unfocused like camera apertures. Meeting their inhuman gaze in her reflection made Tina feel more like a monster than anything else had so far, and the fact that Frank and SB still weren’t back wasn’t helping.

  Lowering her shield, she glanced over her shoulder for the millionth time. As always, though, there was nothing to see. Just the dark, empty road running off behind her. She was scowling at it when NekoBaby appeared beside her.

  “Hey, Rocky Road!”

  Tina arched an eyebrow at the overly enthusiastic greeting. “I thought you were upset.”

  “Pfft, that was, like, twenty minutes ago,” the Naturalist said. “I’m cool now, especially since you pointed out how miserable Anders is.” She glanced over her shoulder at the empty road behind them. “So why the long face? You aren’t worried about TalkyBlayde, are you?”

  “Of course I’m worried,” Tina snapped. “He and Frank are still missing.”

  “They’re fine,” the cat-girl said flippantly. “Frank’s a tank, and SB’s a machine. He’s farmed the Deadlands so much, I bet he knows this zone better than the developers. You know, before I joined the Roughnecks, I used to think he was a bot.” A mischievous light gleamed in her eyes. “Say, Roxxy, you know ’Blayde in real life, right? You guys make all those tanking videos together, so you must talk outside the game.”

  “We talk,” Tina said, which was the understatement of the century. She and SB texted all the time when she wasn’t online. She’d nearly gotten her phone confiscated over it back in high school. “Why?”

  Neko pounced on her. “What’s his deal? He’s always online.”

  “So?” Tina said defensively. “We’re on all the time, too.”

  “Not that much,” Neko said. “I’ve checked his log on the guild screen. Dude plays FFO sixteen hours a day, every day. That’s not normal.” She clapped her hands together. “I bet he’s a NEET! You know, one of those Japanese kids who turn their backs on life and hole up in their parents’ houses to play video games all day. Either that, or he’s a creepy forty-year-old Japanese salaryman playing FFO from the office so he can hit on teenage girls.”

  “Okay,” Tina said. “First, there’s no job in the world that would let you play a full-immersion VR MMO on the clock. That’s just stupid. Second, SB’s not middle-aged. He’s only a year older than I am.”

  “How do you know that?” Neko prodded. “Have you ever seen him IRL?”

  Tina clenched her jaw. She and SB were as close as two friends could be. They’d been playing FFO together for seven years now, but in all that time, she’d never actually seen his face. Not a picture, not on webcam, nothing. It felt crazy considering they’d been running an FFO video channel together since before she’d gone to college, but though SB provided tons of in-game footage, she was the only one who recorded her actual face. She’d tried to get a photo out of him several times, even tried to trick him into it once, but SilentBlayde was as slippery in real life as his Assassin was in game. No matter what she did or how pointedly she asked, he always found a way to change the subject and slip away.

  If he hadn’t been such a stand-up guy in literally every other area, Tina would have called bullshit years ago. By the time it had become an issue, though, he’d already become a pillar of her life, and she’d never been willing to risk that over something as trivial as a photo. Neko was poking her in the ribs, though, so Tina gave the only answer she
knew.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, slapping the cat-girl’s hand away. “SB’s always there for us, and that’s what counts. Why do you care, anyway? It’s not like any of our IRL stuff matters so long as we’re stuck here.”

  “I was only curious,” Neko said grumpily. “He’s such a social guy. I swear the dude knows everyone in the game, and he’s a legend on the forums. I just can’t imagine someone that outgoing living in his mom’s closet, you know?”

  Tina had never been able to, either. Before she could say so, though, a distant voice shouted behind them.

  “Help! We need help over here!”

  Tina whirled around and squinted through the dark and the dust until she spotted Frank running up the road after them. She almost didn’t recognize him because, for some reason, he’d taken off all his armor, leaving him wearing nothing but the human-racial starter leather breeches as he staggered to a stop in front of her.

  “Break time, everyone!” Tina yelled, banging on her shield before reaching out to steady Frank. “What happened?”

  Frank shook his head. Poor guy was panting so hard he looked as if he was going to throw up. Tina was about to ask if anyone had some water left for him when he grabbed her arm. “Roxxy!” He gasped. “SB needs a healer! He’s dying! Zen’s barely keeping him alive!”

  Tina felt like her stomach had just been kicked down to her feet. For a moment, she just stood there, frozen in panic, then she whirled around. “Killbox!” she bellowed, running down the road in the direction Frank had come from. “Neko! Come with me! Everyone else, break for ten minutes. After that, get marching whether we’re back or not.”

  Leaving the raid leaderless was a bad idea. But while the rational part of Tina knew that pointing a headless mob of players down the road was asking for disaster, the rest of her didn’t care. Saving SilentBlayde was all that mattered.