Private - The First Dive

It was the voices that woke her.

Her eyes were closed, and the darkness allowed her to focus more fully on the sound. Still, it was impossible for her to make out exact words. Rather, the chorus of voices rose and fell in a sort of melodic murmuring, never venturing too much above a whisper. That was the first thing that Rayleigh experienced within the bounds of Terrasphere.

She had expected to burst from the black with the explosion of a drowning woman breaching the water’s surface. Instead, the transition was more graceful, as if she were waking from a deep slumber. And as her blue eyes finally opened, the sound of the voices retreated to the back of her consciousness, like the last lingering remnants of a dream. Perhaps that was all they were.

The sun filtered through the trees overhead, the breeze sending the leaves, and the light, dancing. They formed ever-moving shapes on her face, and for the briefest moment, Rayleigh simply relished in the warmth. This place was just as realistic as she had hoped it would be. She might have laid there for another hour, had she not paused to think about her own vulnerability. The woman was sprawled out on her back, in a particularly soft patch of grass, in what appeared to be a forest. If the game was anything like the animes Vincent had convinced her to watch, she was leaving herself open to attacks from computer-generated threats.

Vincent. As she clambered to her feet, Rayleigh’s gaze swept her surroundings, looking for her friend. They had decided to keep their real names in-game, to make finding each other easier. But would he recognize her? Something akin to pleased embarrassment flared within her. The character customization process had been, well, liberating. Fascinated with the feel of her new body, Ray ran her hands up and down her hourglass figure, over her wide hips, and across her sizeable chest. At the latter, a crooked smile quirked her lips. So maybe she had gone a little overboard, but it sure as hell beat the flat-chested reality she had lived with her entire life. The game was already shaping up to be worth the hassle of setting up the new full-dive system.

 

Vince opened his eyes and took a deep breath in, letting the gentle pine scent of the trees wash over him as he let everything settle in. Deep dive technology was a miracle of science, allowing one to cast off their current body to adopt a new persona in the virtual world. It was amazing, just moments ago he’d been lounging in his computer chair, staring at a screen that was surrounded by a veritable barricade of empty soda bottles and chinese take-out containers. Now he was laying in a forest clearing, some sort of tutorial zone no doubt. Sitting up he did a few basic stretches, taking in all the subtle stimuli from each and every movement, how his clothes rubbed against his skin, how his muscles strained as he stretched. Cocking his head to the side quickly, he was surprised to hear and feel his neck CRACK as his virtual vertebrae simulated stretching and locking into place.


This was the real deal.


Nothing like the shitty knock-offs that were running around on the main market. It was borderline real, or maybe it even was real, the difference was so razor thin that it would take the most expert of eyes to discern any difference.


Sufficiently pleased with his findings, Vincent lifted himself to his feet and looked himself over. He’d tried to be...close with his character creation. His olive skin tone was that of his summertime tan, although perfectly even and bronzed, less red and splotchy. His build and stature were all as close as he cared to get, there was no fudging of his height or proportions in any way. The main difference was a subtle amount of muscle he now possessed, nothing crazy like a six pack or bulging biceps, just a tiny amount of definition to make them...pop a little. His hair was silver, but hell, it was an MMO, silver is practically the new blonde online.


Once his once over was done, he looked up to see that there was a woman in the clearing with him too. She must have spawned in right after him, and she seemed a tad...pre-occupied with herself. That’s odd, Ray and I logged in at the same time, I must have beat her out of character creation... he mused to himself.


He clenched his fist and released it, opening up the UI for a moment and glancing over the menus, fiddling with a few things, before turning back to the woman and on a whim decided to try out this “Investigation mode” he’d heard about. Info on this...highly illegal game was hard to find, but he had managed to sleuth up some details on the basic mechanics. As his brown eyes turned silver, he glanced the woman over only to notice her nameplate.


“Really Ray?” He asked suppressing the urge to laugh. “Did you have a little fun with the sliders?”

 

At the sound of his voice, her hands dropped from her body as if her own skin had burned her. “Damn,” she huffed, the embarrassment flushing her cheeks. He had startled her, and it was just her luck that she had her hands all over herself. Rayleigh pursed her lips, urging the blush to fade so that she could face him with one shred of dignity.

“What?” she barked back when she finally rounded on him. “Don’t pretend you don’t like it.” Finally, she was able to see the changes that he had selected for himself. Vince was largely the same, save for new ribbons of muscle that wrapped his arms. His hair had also undergone an alteration, and it was now similar to her own moonlight hue. He looked good, but she would not be caught dead admitting as much.

“It isn’t like you didn’t change anything,” she continued. With one hand, she motioned toward his head. “New hair, and those muscles?” They paled in comparison to her added inches and curves. Even as she thought it, she saw the smirk curling his lips. So Ray crossed her arms tightly against her chest, only hesitating a split second when the feel of it threw her off. And added cup size… three or four of them.

The pout ghosted across her face. “My eyes are still the same.”

 

She's not wrong He thought to himself as he decided to close the gap between them. The real Rayleigh was...not as feminine as this form was. This one was a bombshell with a dynamite body, with almost a foot of height added. The other form was small and scrappy, less curves and more angles. He shook his head and chuckled with the eye comment.

"Sorry I was too busy taking in everything else to notice. I like your eyes." He crosses his arms to mirror her own stance and lets the detective mode fade away. "We're also twinsies on the hair, no clue how we both managed to pick silver, but given the nature of this game wild hair colors are the norm." He didn't bother justifying her other jabs, she was on the defensive, any further pushing would result in her wheeling back at him with that razor sharp tongue of hers.

"So...I have no idea how the tutorial on this game works, so we might be up a creek without a paddle here." He runs a hand absentmindedly through his silver hair, enjoying the feel of it. "And as far as I can tell there's no wiki, so I had to make all my vocation and mastery picks blind."

 

He liked her eyes. The one thing that Rayleigh had left untouched. Had she been more focused, she might have found some hidden meaning in the words. But she was too distracted by the same eagerness that rolled off of her friend.

At the mention of vocations and masteries, those baby-blues widened with excitement. "Oh yeah," she piped up, seeming to forget that a split-second earlier, she had been on the warpath. She changed like the weather, and with even more force. "I was curious which ones you would pick! I figured you'd be all over that illusion magic, but I wasn't sure what else." Fondly, the woman remembered how easily Vincent had led her through their first game of Dungeons and Dragons. He had excelled at crafting a memorable and vivid story for her, often proving that things were not as they seemed. Therefore, illusion magic was the perfect fit.

"I picked ranged," she continued on. "Picked a crossbow! I don't feel like hacking at things with a sword, and how badass is a crossbow? And I grabbed some tinkering stuff, because, you know, its me." Her excitement only mounted as she got to her favorite part. "And I went crazy and picked a summoning mastery, just because it looked like so much fun. I can just make things appear!"

 

He nodded along, not even blinking at her sudden change of momentum. She was like the weather in Texas, calm and sunny one moment, and all thunder and twisters the next moment. He listened to each of her picks with apt attention, listening to her every word as she spoke.

"Crossbows are pretty badass." He nodded. "The other stuff sounds right up your alley too. As for me? I took some illusion magic, slashing skill, and parrying skill. Im kinda hoping I can work in the illusion stuff to be all...sneaky stabby with my powers, but also I kinda feel like I can just be like this whirling dervish of blades with the right grinding." at that he opened the hud and fiddled with some menu. "Speaking of, do I just have trash gear or something?"

 

Rayleigh could not stop the smile from blossoming across her lips at the way Vincent described his aspiration. "Sneaky stabby?" she echoed, then gave a sage nod. "I can absolutely see that with you. Like one of those animes you're always going on about."

Vince had exposed her to a number of "nerdy" things over the past four years, morphing her into the woman she was now. Before college, and before him, she had never heard of anime. She thought "manga" was some sort of food, and "DnD" sounded sort of like that one song by AD/DC. But their joined interest in video games had brought them together, and proved to be only the first step in the best friendship - perhaps only friendship - that Rayleigh ever had.

Extending her hand, Rayleigh mimicked Vincent's motion. Once she had clenched into a fist, and rapidly opened it again, the HUD appeared. She gave a sharp whistle of approval. "Neat," she stated, as she began to play around.

After a moment, she glanced back up toward the silver-haired man. "Yeah, I assume we get some trash gear, but I'm having the damnedest time finding it." She scrunched up her face in an exceptionally un-ladylike manner, then muttered, "Maybe these stupid voices in my head can tell me how to unlock our gear. What do you think their purpose is? Are they the voice of a game master or something?"

 

"Voices?" Vince paused and scrunched up his face rather unpleasantly as he listened for any noise. "Ray, there's no voices, the only thing I hear is the wind and some leaves maybe." He fiddled through the menus, tapping on things to glean a little more information on what was going on. "Okay, so thats Hp, that looks like...hunger, a...sleep gauge?" He would fiddle a little more, scrunching up his face. "Okay this will probably make sense in thirty hours of experience, but right now it is clunky and makes me mad."

He tapped over and finally found what he assumed to be inventory. "Ah, dope, I think..." he blinks a few times before tapping a thing or two and pulling out a sword. "Bam"

 

Vincent was clearly pleased with himself, the broad grin of excitement splitting his face in an almost comical expression. The look cooled to a smug smirk as he looked to Ray for approval. He found none. Instead, he found a very annoyed young woman, who glared into the empty space in front of her. Or, rather, at her HUD. Vince could not see it, as the HUD was visible only to the user, but it was pretty clear what she was doing. She was muttering, scrolling furiously, and burning hotter with frustration.

“I can’t find anything about the voices,” she stated, and even her tone was painted red. “Seriously, you can’t hear them? Be straight with me.”

He shook his head, and she scoffed. “Maybe my game is broken.” The wind that caressed the trees above, setting the leaves to whispering, did nothing to cool her flushed cheeks. A moment of awkward silence passed, Ray watching her menu, Vince watching Ray, before the woman gave a soft “a-ha.”

“Masteries,” she stated. “That’s got to have some answers. You and I are the same race, right? And both beginners. We just have masteries, and vocations, that are different.”

Her blue eyes flicked from one item to another as she read from her HUD. “Ranged, that’s for my crossbow. There’s tinkering, and spirit magic, and-”

She halted abruptly, her eyebrows shooting up, and then furrowing in angry confusion. “Spirit magic? What the hell is spirit magic?”

 

“Oh, rest in peace.” Vince chuckled. “That world famous misclick. Those two must have been next to each other since they both start with S.” He struggled with his menu for a moment with his HUD before finding the same tab.


“Yeah, no spooky voices here. All my shits straightforward, slashing, parry, and Illusion. My vocations are Astrology and leadership.” He paused and mused on the situation.


“So do you think the spirit magic is making you hear...voices?” He shuddered. “Thats fuckin cree-” he paused. “Immersive. That's really immersive.” He erred on the side of caution here, they might be in a virtual database, but Rays temper was real, and a swift kick to the nads would hurt just as much as in the real world.


“You don't think there's a way to change that do you?”

 

“There'd better be,” came her growl of a reply. She answered him through clenched teeth, and as she fell silent, her jaw worked. All hopes of summoning monsters to fight for her, an army of magical minions, were gone. In its place was a deep feeling of regret, a sharp pang of anger (mostly at herself), and the voices. Those god damned voices.

Rayleigh closed her eyes, and sucked in a deep breath. Once her lungs were filled to brimming, she paused, counted to ten, and exhaled. When her eyes opened again, they were clearer. That is not to say that she was no longer angry. Rather, she had just shelved the negative emotions for the time being. Odds are, they would explode in her face a couple of hours later.

“Okay,” she began, her voice strained, but overall, fairly level. “Let’s pretend I can’t change this stupid mastery. What do you think the point of it is? I honestly didn’t even read the description because it sounded stupid.” Even as she spoke the words, Rayleigh winced. This sucked. “What am I able to do with spirit magic? Are these voices in my head spirits?”

At the thought, Rayleigh began to pace. Strides, longer than any she took in real-life, carried her back and forth beside her friend. “So my superpower is that my head is filled with the complaints of spirits? How does that help me? Am I just some sort of screwed up Terrasphere Ghost Whisperer?”

 

“Well for starters you're way more attractive than Jennifer Love Hewitt.” Vince quipped taking an instinctual step back for fear of physical retaliation.


“But maybe its like one of those...combo masteries? You could tinker up like a cool robo bodyguard and then put a spirit in it to make some sorta familiar? You could make a really sassy gun named Baretta? The possibilities are endless”


Vince didn't know any of this for a fact, but he knew Ray, the longer she dwelt on the issue the more she would stress out. “I bet your skills are gonna have way more utility and synergy than mine. For now lets just uh...focus on finding the tutorial and figuring out how to level up."

 

His words pleased her, which was evident from the way her lips curved into a smile. But Rayleigh, always content to hold onto a good mad, let the expression go no further. Instead, she gave a sharp huff and shook her head stubbornly. “No one is more attractive than Jennifer Love Hewitt,” she told him matter-of-factly. “She’s a goddess.”

But the exchange, and the way that Vince had rationalized her new spirit magic, went a long way in dulling her edge of anger. So Ray sighed, reaching up to rub at her face with the palms of both hands. It was as if she could massage the annoyance out.

“Okay, so maybe you’re onto something. Building a mech army, and trapping the souls of the dead inside of them, could be kind of cool.” Her blue eyes flashed devilishly, as if it were something the woman would be willing to do. Vincent took comfort in the fact that she exhibited largely chaotic good tendencies. Or, at least, that’s how he would label her after his years of DnD experience.

She opened her mouth, as if to speak again, but it was a shrill squeak that shattered the tranquil silence. A short distance off, a rat was crouched, eyeing the pair warily. Rat, she supposed, was an understatement. The creature looked like a rat, but it stood at the height of a large dog. The disgusting tail spilled out a full two feet behind the beast, and as it snarled, beady black eyes tracked them.

“Of course,” Rayleigh drawled. “The first thing every good adventurer encounters is a rodent of unusual size.”

Suddenly realizing that she had not even equipped her weapon, Ray quickly summoned her HUD. “Trial by fire,” she told her companion, “and it looks like you’re up first.”

 

”Oh boy, I love stereotypical enemies in my MMOs.” Vince grunted as he looked between the rat and Ray. He'd been so wrapped up in calming her down that he didn't even see a big honkin rat sneaking up on them. He waggled the sword a bit and took a deep breath, then charged forward.


In real life, running any bit of time would have left him winded, but this was a videogame. Itd be lame if he was bound to base stamina and the like. Instead he found energy welling up in him as he wound up his strike and rather sloppily swung his sword. The blade grazed the beasts flank, and perhaps a trail of red effect followed, he couldn't tell, but the end result was mediocre at best.


“Well shit” Vincent spat as the beast reared that big ugly tail of his and swung it like a mace right at his face. With little time to think he took a step back, unconsciously activating his illusion to leave a rather...unconvincing afterimage of himself. The tail swung through the shadowy figure, missing his own face by mere inches.


He staggered back a few steps, keeping himself between Ray and the rat. “Feel free to start helping at any time”

 

It was simply luck that had Rayleigh glancing up from her HUD just in time to see Vince dodge the snake-like tail. Dodge, perhaps, was an understatement. What the boy did tore a startled gasp from Ray, and she found herself staring, despite the pressing matter at hand. How in the world had Vince accomplished such a feat? For a split second, there had been two of him, she would have sworn it. Yet as the rodent’s tail lashed through the forward-most Vincent, it simply disappeared.

By then, Vincent had already called out for help, but she was still sorting through what she had just seen. Sure, such things would not be uncommon in a game like this, but this particular sight threw her for a loop for two reasons. First, it was the first time she had seen a someone use magic in such a realistic, full-dive game. Second, she was not aware that Vince was capable of using his skills.

Once she had snapped free of the trance, she put voice to her thoughts. “How did you do that?” she cried out to him. But he merely cast her an expectant look over his shoulder, still focused on the threat that circled them. He was waiting for her to join the fight, and she was caught flat-footed.

“Right,” the silver-haired woman muttered, swinging her attention back to her HUD. She scrolled feverishly, trying to find some symbol that looked like a weapon. As she worked, a small part of her considered the voices in her head. “Alright spirits,” came her whisper, “help me out.” The reply was a steep increase of volume, as the murmurs roared like an angry rapids between her ears.

“Arg,” Ray grunted. That had not worked, but fortunately, she had finally found the small crossbow symbol. Selecting it, she watched the crossbow materialize on her hip, and felt the quiver of bolts as a new weight on her back. Clumsily, she loaded one, and took aim. The bolt flew from the crossbow with a smart snap, and cut through the air with impressive speed.

And buried itself in the ground, a full three feet from the rat.

She swore loudly.