Gamer Girl Isekai

"So the first thing you should know is that before everything, there was darkness. I think. I wasn't actually there for this part. Apparently some asshole said something about light and then everything came into existence, materially speaking. There were other weirder forms of substance before then but none of it registers on this plane of existence, so there's no point in talking about it."

Emma could already tell this was going to take up quite a lot of her time.

"Wait, hang on, some asshole…said…light, are you telling me God is real?" That was a scary thought, last Emma checked he didn't like bisexual women very much. Or women, in general, really.

"Not any of the gods you've heard of," Larry sighed contemptuously, "not stop interrupting. If I have to answer every question your shitty little brain can come up with we'll be here until this universe has died."

Emma shut up, reluctantly. Prick.

"Alright, where was I?"

"Light."

"Right, light, yeah. Dick move, letting there be light, because with the universe becoming stable and slow, physics calmed down enough for life made out of physical matter to emerg. Eugh. That was where the trouble began, let me tell you." His disgust was palpable. "Now my kind are less crazy than yours basically. We have conflict and shit, but it's all…It's hard to explain, but pretty much the way meat creatures do things is just worse. The metal-heads are hardly better—"

—"metal-heads?" Emma interjected again, curiosity demanding it. Larry responded irritably as usual.

"By volume most sapient life is actually synthetic, made by either each other or organic beings, now shut up. All of you are crazy, dumb assholes who destroy things for no reason. And you stink. It bothers me that you're all alive. Still, I have a job, and I do my job. I basically work to stabilise the cosmos so that you assholes don't destroy all of reality by thinking too hard. Oh shit uh, right I should've started with this actually, reality is kind of created by human thought, and your world is a story told by someone else, as is that storyteller's world, as is the world of whoever tells theirs, etc."

Emma fell over. She wasn't exactly sure how, or when, kind of just lost a few seconds and…curled up. It took minutes more before she was ready to hear anything at all, and though Larry seemed eager to talk, and frustrated at her 'delay', Emma had a few more fucking questions for him.

"So I'm not real. Like…I mean, like I thought everyone was fake but—"

"Ugh you idiots say this every single fucking time!" Larry snapped. "Who cares? Before you thought you were created by random chance, now you know it was because some other idiot had a neat idea and daydreamed about it. What does this actually change? Nothing, so shut up and let me actually tell you important stuff."

Again, Emma shut up. This time it was majorly just because she couldn't really think as much as she needed to and still talk.

Larry apparently did not understand how he'd managed to mute her, nor did he care to. He just kept speaking as if he still had her attention, existential crisis or no.

"So by this point there was enough sapient life for us to emerge, and let me tell you we'd already had enough of you people by then. Watching you make the slow transition from ocean sludge to ocean sludge with fins, then walking on earth, then—"

—"wait," Emma cut in, "you just said you emerged from sapient life."

"Yes?"

"Okay, so how were you watching us when we were…what, evolving into fish? Single-celled organisms?"

"Oh, we don't experience time one way like you idiots do. Anyway, we were pissed with you long before you actually started genociding each other. That made my people have a bit of a falling out about how we should deal with it, so…you know. We started working on that."

Emma soaked that up and took her time in processing it before responding.

"Larry…Are you trying to genocide the human race?"

"Absolutely not," he replied severely.

"Are you saying that because you think it's pesticide instead?"

Larry became very quiet at that, and Emma groaned. She was doing that a lot lately.

"Where do we come in then? The Untethered, what are we heroically fighting back against you guys' murderous campaign?"

The head snorted at that.

"Mostly you just explode after misusing your powers and trying to channel more magic than you can hold, sometimes you get really powerful and just take over a universe. Or make one. I'm gonna be honest Untethered have a similar psych profile to the dipshits I trick into world-hopping for a living."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

That sounded about right to Emma, she couldn't lie. First thing she'd wanted to do with reality-warping powers was…basically that. The only reason she hadn't already was, well, her powers were still shit.

"And you don't use us in your shitty little genocide war?"

"I mean we sometimes do, obviously," Larry sniffed, "but you're a bit…unstable."

Emma remembered ripping his head off, and grinned. "You mean we're powerful enough to cause problems for you if you piss us off."

Larry grunted irritably at that, and Emma decided to stop prodding him. She still had stuff to hear.

"That's pretty much the current conflict put into words, I guess," Larry sighed. "Huh, do you know everything now?"

"God no, how are your people organised?" Emma had about a billion questions and was just asking as they occurred to her. This one seemed as good as any other.

"We're kind of not," Larry eyebrow-shrugged, "we don't have an official hierarchy or anything. Some of us agree or disagree with others and we act as we see fit."

Emma thought back to everything she'd seen of Larry and Suzanne, then instantly decided that what he'd said made sense.

"Then—"

—"I already told you basically everything now," Larry snapped, "if you want more questions then wait, I'm exhausted."

"You haven't even done anything!"

"I've talked, which for me means using about ten percent of my body-mass. Anyway, you need to set off soon right?"

Emma hesitated. He wasn't exactly wrong, annoying as that was.

Their destination was unfortunately far away, a good two hundred and fifty miles. Fortunately, they actually had a mode of transport that was faster than the plane they'd crash-landed in. Emma hoped it was less prone to randomly disintegrating than Scurlga's vehicles too. If not, she may have to accept that it was just her.

Aexilica and Kruger were standing bolt-upright and almost militarily tense as she approached with Larry under-arm, while Vari leaned against the side of the vehicle panting. It was actually pretty impressive that he could remain on his feet while the vast majority of strength in his body wasted itself as sweat and panting.

Not impressive enough that Emma could bear to look at him for long though. Fortunately, with the arrival of Temi, they were all bundled into the vehicle and soon taking off to glide a few metres above the ground fast enough that hitting a rock would probably have killed everyone. Or maybe just Emma, considering she was easily the most fragile person there. Typical.

Aexilica and Kruger were at the front, both wanting to stay by the vehicle's driver in case someone killed them. Emma actually approved of that. It did leave her and Temi alone to watch Vari while he snatched some more rest at the back, though. Emma decided to try and strike up a conversation while they had the chance, no harm in getting to know a woman who might be fighting alongside her.

"So, neither of us is alone anymore huh?" Emma began, with a smile. Temi smiled at her, though seemed confused.

"Uh…what?"

"You know," Emma grinned, "two girls from earth eh? We both know what it's like to be oppressed."

"Oh…Wow!" Temi beamed, her smile seeming somehow strained, "that's…wow."

Emma wasn't sure what the woman was thinking, or why her expression had such a forced look to it, but before she could ask about either Temi was speaking more.

"What can you do exactly"? she asked, "I'll need to know that if we're to be fighting alongside one another."

Emma told her quickly, making sure to convey everything and, fortunately, having Larry helpfully chime in with any details she'd missed out. Temi seemed suitably impressed by the time she was finished, and a good deal more confident.

"That's useful," she noted, "my powers are a bit more narrow than that. Electricity and electromagnetism. I can make heat, visible light to some extent, and I'm working on using it to control metal like Magneto with…mixed success," she winced for a second, but remained bubbly enough.

"Oh, so like my Force power," Emma grinned, "or you know, part of it. I guess you can't affect gravity and stuff either. At some point I might be able to alter nuclear forces too, though I can't yet."

For some reason Temi's face fell as Emma said that, but her smile quickly returned with force. A bit too much force, maybe.

The remainder of their journey was carried out in more silence, though Emma was pleased by the fact as it gave her more time to prepare. She'd already mustered a few potions from the hours-long delay before they could set off, standard physical enhancement of course, and was now focusing on expanding her powers as usual.

Fundaments:

Energy 4, Matter 3, Force 3, Entropy 1, Cognition 3, Space 1, Time 1

Crafts:

Alchemy 2, Talismans 2, Enchanting 1, Animacy 1,

Cores:

Attunement 21, Mastery 10

The extra point to Alchemy was a nice bonus, though Emma wasn't sure what it would allow her to do that she couldn't already. Other than that she was feeling the sting of both her slowing progress and, once again, her idiotic decision to spend a week jerking off instead of actually practicing.

Looks like I never change, no matter the world.

Emma didn't know how much progress she truly made, having long since passed the point of quick level-ups. By the time she considered spreading her time more into her other Fundaments, to better use the journey, she'd almost arrived.

"Before we arrive, there's one last thing all of you need to be ready for," Temi cut in as she held up a bundle of…clothes? Oh, Emma saw where this was going.

"We're going to dress up like strippers and seduce our way in!" she grinned at the idea.

Temi just stared at her for a second, smiling nervously but slowly shaking her head.

"Uh…n…no, we're…disguising ourselves."

Oh. Emma had to admit that made a lot more sense, even if it was the less cool and exciting option. Vari chose that moment to cough up about a cupful of blood, which made her feel suitably terrible for even getting distracted about such things at a time like this.

After daubing Vari's mouth, Emma braced herself and fed the warrior her only non-enhancement potion. All of them stood back and watched as its effects took hold and…did little.

Little permanent, at least. Vari regained strength and mobility, standing again and actually moving quite easily. Emma kept watching him in anticipation of another gory explosion, or excretion, or just for him to fucking die on the spot. Fortunately none of that happened, and Vari soon looked no paler than…well, someone who grew up in a generic viking fantasy land instead of Florida.

"Can you fight?" Kruger asked him. So did Aexilica, in her own way. By swinging once for Vari's head and watching as he halted the blade with his hammer. They eyed one another for a second.

"You held back," Vari noted.

"Not as much as I thought I'd have to," she replied.

Larry looked disappointed that Vari had not collapsed.