Aetuornos Beta 1-2

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1-2: Initialize Thaumaturge

"Whoa-waaAAagh!" Remus flailed around after feeling himself start to fall, and spun around in the "air" a bit as a result until he calmed down and actually looked around. "Oh, oh okay! Just—no warning about this, huh? First thing: Definitely have options for..logging in. Or whatever. If I was afraid of heights I'd be having a full-on panic attack right now, seriously." He slowly righted himself so his feet were below him, anticipating an eventually landing, and crossed his arms. Then he noticed the pull of his hair flying up around his head was more than expected, and reached up, pulling some of it down in his hand. The lock he got a hold of was longer than it should be, and its color was pinkish instead of read.

"Oh." He exhaled the end of a sigh. "I guess we're doing this already? Okay." He let go of the hair and looked down again, feeling a vague tingle and seeing the body hair vanishing off of his arms and legs. "Shouldn't be surprised, I guess. What else would come first?" The hair on his head was already so long that the "wind" blowing it upward couldn't keep the bangs from edging into the top of his eyesight, and the rest was curling up from just above his shoulders. The color was even more faded than before, too.

"Ghhgk." Remus shuddered, feeling a kind of chill run down his spine. This was followed swiftly by a pressure across his body that seemed to cause a rapid shrinking everywhere. His arms and legs slimmed, his shoulders and waist narrowed, and his face felt funny as it, too, grew smaller and rounder. "Yeesh! This is supposed to be a ge~entle..adjustment?" he paused, hesitating, when his voice cracked, and the rest came out at a higher pitch than before. "I feel we~eird! And..aah!"

He'd been about to complain of an especially strange tingling down between his legs, when it was accompanied by a sudden inward tug that made him feel warm, especially in his cheeks, and caused him to gasp for breath briefly afterward. "Hff..that was uuh, is that what it'd really feel like?!" His voice was unfamiliar now, a high tenor that was difficult to confidently identify as a man's voice at all, but that hardly deterred him from speaking. Remus looked down to see his body still getting smaller, while his shirt and shorts seemed to have shrunk with him, the latter even getting a little shorter in the leggings. Bright hair with only a faint reddish tint was cascading down his slim shoulders to almost past his chest, and still growing and fading out as it went. Running a small, delicate hand through the soft locks, he mumbled, "This looks like a pain to..mmf!"

The thought was interrupted by another tug downstairs. This one continued longer than the last, causing him to open his mouth in a loud, high gasp as he felt his manhood melting away, his shorts, along with some soft cloth that hadn't been beneath them before, suddenly pulling tight against a tiny, still-shrinking bulge. "Aah...t-this is..mnn~nngh..!" Remus's voice slipped out of male range now, edging toward a higher alto tone. "Aa~AAAaahh...!" As he cried out, squirming around through the air, he felt the last vestiges of masculinity disappear from between his legs, and at the same time her womanhood quickly formed into its place, asserting itself with a sharp, tingly, fuzzy sensation that was difficult not to enjoy.

"Mmnn~nnh..." The new girl helplessly groaned, huffing in some more breath, as she felt the rest of it forming into place in her lower belly. Her body was unbelievably warm, and her cheeks felt like they were on fire, but unfortunately it was hard to deny it felt good. She felt her shirt shuffling around on her tiny, petite frame, until she finally had the presence of mind to open her eyes and look down at the results.

"Wha—that looks ridiculous!" she complained. Her sleeves had torn off, attaching at the forearm and growing to nearly cover her wrists; the collar had dipped so far her chest was half-visible through it; and after only a bit more cloth it split apart in time to show off her slim, flat belly. "Ugh..I guess it's par for the course, though..mnngh.." Her chest began to tingle faintly, and pushed forward against the cloth; the skin there was suddenly very sensitive, and giving her aftershocks of the sensations from just after the change of sex.

Remus breathed in sharply through her teeth, trying not to lose composure again, even though there wasn't anyone to really see. Then she let out a low "Oo~ooh..mnnh..." as a pair of modest breasts finished filling themselves out, giving some cleavage for the low cut of her top to show and poking out as visible bumps even where they were covered. At the same time, she wriggled her hips back and forth, feeling them press outward as they grew wider, her thighs thickening up again and her rump rounding out behind her, giving the new girl a modest, but still quite womanly, figure. By now her hair was a pure, snowy white, with a few ribbons and bows holding onto it in various places, and it trailed down as far as those hips, even while billowing out around her from her continued fall. Finally, a pair of tall red boots fixed themselves to her feet, stitching themselves up as far as her calves and pulling tight.

"Hfffh...phew." She shook her head a bit to try and clear it, and felt her hair swish around all across her shoulders and back. Since she wasn't really paying attention at this point, Remus didn't see the ground coming, and landed on it a bit roughly, her front splaying out across the soft grass with an audible clunk.

"Ooww.." It didn't really hurt at all, of course, but hitting the ground was still a bit uncomfortable. For some reason, her hand instinctively reached forward and grabbed something—a long rod..a staff, she realized, and pulled it up with her, pressing the bottom into the ground he help push her up onto her knees. A black, brimmed, conical hat she hadn't had on her head before slipped off onto the red crystal topping the staff as she came upright, and stayed hanging there for a second as she looked around, taking in her surroundings as she heard footsteps coming closer. She was in a small clearing in a bright, green forest, it seemed. The trees looked huge around her, and perhaps they were, but it was difficult to tell for sure that it wasn't just a product of her drastically reduced height.

The footsteps stopped as someone leapt into the clearing, immediately drawing her attention: A tall (to her eyes at least), curvy woman with fluffy ears, a gigantic tail, and even more ridiculous clothing than Remus was wearing. "Aha! I knew I heard something. Hey there," she said, waving, her tail wagging like an eager puppy's.

"Uh, hello." Remus pushed herself up onto her feet with the staff; her eye level was about at this woman's chest, which made it..awkward to look that way without craning her head upward. She flipped the hat over onto her head. "I guess I tripped?" she said, trying to think of a plausible reason to be in that position within the setting. "My name's, uhh, Aranthra." She'd tried to think what she'd put on the character sheet at first, but the name came to her more easily by thinking of it as 'her own'.

"Oooh, it is you!" the wolf-girl said excitedly, putting her hands together. "I thought I shrank, but you're positively tiny!"

Aranthra held the staff in her right hand, letting it slide down so the base hit the ground, and put her free hand on her hip. "I told you this was a stupid idea, Marcus," she said.

"Ahp! That's 'Scylla' to you," the wolf-girl said, putting up an index finger admonishingly. "Also, your name's too long, so I'm just gonna call you 'Ara', 'kay?"

"Don't, that sounds dumb. Anyway, uh..I thought I got it bad, but those things.." She waved at Scylla's impressive bust.
"I like 'em!" the wolf-girl replied, poking one with a thumb. "If you're gonna go girl, go big! Otherwise what's the point?"
Aranthra shook her head. "That's an impending back hernia, in the real world at least. How long have you been in?"

"Just a couple minutes more than you. Oh! But I already got to fight some monsters," Scylla said excitedly. "I got to use some sweet samurai moves, like that thing where you pull the hilt out just a little bit like—click—and then you slash them and put it back and its like whoosh and you land and then the thing splits apart. It's so cool!"

"Heheh," the smaller girl chuckled, noting her friend seemed even more excitable than usual. "I'll relish the opportunity to try some spells out when the time comes, then," she said, slowly spinning her staff around in her hand. It was surprisingly lightweight for how big it looked; her strength score was very low, so it had to be another magic thing of some sort. "Although I can't imagine the experience is much like the real thing, at least it's much easier to 'learn'. I guess you didn't find a town or anything yet?"

"Nope! I was just gonna start looking when you dropped in," the wolf-girl said. "You wanna go with me?"
"Sure."

Since she was the melee fighter, Aranthra let Scylla take the lead, and followed behind. Moving around in this form felt different—not the least because of her hips swaying a bit and the severe reduction in size coming with a similarly extreme reduction in her stride length—but it didn't feel particularly uncomfortable or unfamiliar. It felt as natural as if she'd walked this way all her life, although..keeping up with the excited wolf-girl was still no easy feat.
"Fff..ff..hey! Slow down, Scylla! I'm not a physical class!" she yelled when they started to really get separated. The wolf-girl turned around, and her ears spiked up in surprise when she saw the distance between them.
"Oh! Sorry, I just felt like I was walking normally," she said, coming back Ara's way. "I'm not used to having this kind of crazy stamina. I should really try working out or something!"
After catching her breath, the mage nodded. "Yeah, you do that. For now, try to remember someone's following you."

"Okay, okay!" Scylla turned around, and did at least seem to try to slow down. It was tough, but Aranthra at least felt physically capable of keeping up this time.

"Seriously, I can't believe you didn't go for any exotic traits."
"I'm half elf," Aranthra said, brushing back some of her hair to show the mild points to her ears.
"Noo, I mean—this is an opportunity to see what it's really like to have a tail, or wings, or like horns! Without having to commit to anything major on your real body. How could you pass that up?"

"Being female is a drastic enough change for me," the mage said, shaking her head. "I happen to like the way I normally am. This just feels weird to me."

"New experiences, risk-free!" Scylla swept her arm around at the beautiful, false nature around them. "Isn't that what VR is for?"

"I wouldn't say risk free," Ara said. "I just said that the extent they went to to guarantee nobody would get body-jacked, or stuck in the game, or mind-rent, looked acceptable to me."

"I dunno what more you want from them. One of the gods taking over as head of security?"

Aranthra shook her head in a shrug. "I just think a disgruntled low-level worker could still wreak havoc on a small scale once the audience for this gets big enough for a couple of little details to slip through.

"..Still, I admit. I never imagined anything like this would be possible for another two lifetimes or so; and, it probably wouldn't have been before the Unveiling. How real this all feels, definitely drives home that we are living in the future."
"Yeah! That's the spirit," the wolf-girl said. "Hey!" She stopped in place, turned, and then suddenly ran off at a right angle to their previous course.
"What!? Where are you going? I can't follow that fast!" Aranthra yelled, following behind briskly but cautiously enough to avoid tripping over the uneven terrain.

"I smelled somebody! Yess! I think another player landed here," Scylla announced, already stopped in a small clearing similar to the ones they had begun in. Once the mage got there, she observed that the grass did look a bit disturbed, and a visible trail was going out in another direction.

"Well, what do they smell like?" she asked—half as a joke. The wolf-girl pointed her nose into the air and visibly sniffed a few times, taking the question seriously.

"I dunno, kinda...sheepy? Is what I'm picking up, anyway. You wanna go find them?" she said excitedly, her eyes practically sparkling.
"Well, we were sorta trying to find a town and if this person came in after we did then...oh, all right," Aranthra said, finding it difficult to resist the puppy-dog eyes the initial signs of rejection produced. "I can always use another meat shield, if they'll come with us." This was evidently what it felt like to be bent to the will of someone with much higher charisma, she thought.

"Yaay!" Scylla wound up to take off in the stranger's trail's direction.

"Slowly, so I can actually keep up with you!" the mage reminded her.

"Yeah, of course!" nod-nodding, the wolf-girl took off at a comically slow pace at first, and only after Ara walked ahead of her to cross her arms and shake her head did Scylla take on a relatively normal pace in the direction of the scent, giggling briefly at her own joke.

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Being well aware that I'm already writing a "people in an RPG" story, in many ways I'm intentionally setting this to have an opposite situation to TBRE. Everyone knew what they were getting into and agreed to it willingly; everyone can log out whenever they want. It really is a virtual reality video game, with no ambiguity about it being a real other world. For that matter, it's such a cliché of this kind of story that people get stuck in the game, so I'm wondering whether I could make an interesting story without that particular hook. Hopefully this will all lead to a pretty distinct story. As usual, I don't really know where this is going to go from the start; I just have ideas and run with them.