Deep Dive Ch. 01 - New Me

It hit me again, the realization. That was me I was looking at. That wasn't she, there was no one else here but me. Just me. A girl. And I was gorgeous.

I stood there for a few seconds, then a while longer. And then I laughed. It wasn't my laugh, and it wasn't my voice but it felt amazing, so I laughed. It sounded like pure joy, like a promise of a great day, and like everything right that ever happened to me, so I laughed and laughed. I stopped only when I ran out of breath, but the feeling stayed for a while longer.

- Now that's something new all right - I said - This is a test. One, two, three.

I spun around, trying to get a look at myself in the mirror from another side. I stared at it and, to my shame, I stared some more. I had a great ass. Truly callipygian. In any other situation, I would have called myself stupid for acting like I was now, but right now, at this moment I didn't care. I have never used a female avatar in any game. I never even thought about it. But here I was, checking myself out while posing in front of a mirror.

The suit I was wearing was a single piece, but it had several different layers or parts, with white, tougher, and thicker padding at my knees, elbows, outer sides of my thighs, and a few other places, where I would need it for protection. But when I studied it closer, for purely research purposes, I felt like it had meticulously chosen parts, where the dark gray, thinner material was used. Like a wide part from my collarbone going down between my breasts, making it appear like a cleavage, but without actually showing anything. Or just below that, a piece framing them from below, that went down to my belly button. Or my inner thighs and my buttocks even further accenting my wide hips. And that same piece stretched to the front, between my legs, covering my... my...

The mirror disappeared. The shooting range did as well a few seconds later. I looked around, noticing more and more of the environment fading away. Only then I noticed my HUD faintly blinking. I nervously swiped my hand up, opening the menu. There it was. [3/3 other players found] and under it a text that made the panic set in.

[Joining in 09... 08... 07...]

- No, no, no, wait! - I shouted, frantically trying to stop the countdown, but every option in the menu was disabled. There is no access to settings, equipment, and most importantly, no access to the character settings screen. I tried clicking [Log out] but got the message [You can't log out during tutorial mission].

The entire room was disappearing, piece by piece, with me in the middle, desperately trying to prevent it.

[04... 03...]

- No, stop, fuck, this can't be happening!

[02... 01...]

My whole body started getting blurry as if it was turning into smoke. I shouted, but no sound came out, as I wasn't there anymore.

——————|V|——————

I was standing in a large room, made from metal. In the center of it, there was a machine. It looked like a fighter jet, but bulkier and with jet engines on the end of each wing. Near it stood three silhouettes, two male, and one female. One of them started walking my way.

- Hi - the man spoke to me, with a wide smile on his face - Valerie, right? That's what it shows on the party menu. Took your sweet time with accepting the join, have you?

He punched me lightly in the shoulder. It pushed me a step back. He looked at me again, this time frowning.

- Errr, miss? — He had to hunch down a bit to look me straight in the face — you okay there girl?

I looked down. Then back at him. Then back down at my unmistakably female body. I opened the menu. The log-out was still grayed out. I couldn't access the character settings either. Not because it was disabled, no. It wasn't even there.

In its place was a [Character] tab. I opened it. There it was, in mockingly big font [Valerie Lathi]. There was a section with character info. I scanned through it, searching for one, critical piece of information. Weight... height... dominant hand... eye color... sex.

Here it was. I read it. I saw it. I knew it. But still, I didn't want to believe it.

[Female]