[Johanna]

Sola Oppenheim was lying on the floor of her room and dreamily staring at the ceiling. “Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, hm”, she mumbled to herself, rolled on her stomach and peeked at the clock on her desk. Not much time was left, until the new expansion of Gaia Reborn would launch. Only a few hours ago she had stumbled upon an advertisement for the game and its new expansion. She had never experienced a story with a massive amount of other people yet and she was curious at how this would work. Her character, Johanna, was already generated and was waiting for her entrance into the game world. Sola didn’t really care about how she looked and picked race and skills in a way that would ensure she could just start experiencing the story instead of having to be afraid of combat. She still wasn’t really good at that, although she had already finished some other games. In her honest opinion most games just used combat to stretch out the story. Only a handful fights in most video games she had played actually mattered. Combat in video games was very similar to the fluff used to stretch novels, just like love triangles for example. So unnecessary. Almost time. Sola got up from the floor and pulled her crumpled white shirt back down over her stomach. Then she sat down in the chair in front of her desk and placed her gaming headset on her disheveled white hair, while she put one of her bare legs under herself and the other next to it on the seating. Only a few moments later the log-in button wasn’t grayed out anymore.

“Quite the immersive experience”, she thought while her eyes slowly adjusted to her surroundings. She was standing on a street with a few people on it, which were staring at her as if she was a ghost. The buildings, the street, the people: all of them perfectly fit what she had seen in those Gaia Reborn advertisements. All of it was even more realistic than those advertisements, which was rather unique. Usually advertisements looked better than the actual game and not the other way around. Some of the people around her had stopped staring and had instead opted to give in to their fear of novelty. Children were hidden behind the backs of concerned mothers and fathers, the elderly fastened their pace to get home quickly and some of the middle-aged men and women started to lead others away from the street or into the buildings. Sola could not blame them. This was a reaction about to be expected in such a situation. In just a few days, however, they would accept it and even start working together with all these players popping in. Otherwise a grand fantasy story could not be told and the game could not function, not to mention that anything else would just lead to senseless bloodshed and people usually preferred to think that the bloodshed they were doing was meaningful. Sola looked down at herself and wasn’t surprised to see the plate mail she had selected to start out with. Different to her real body Johanna’s body seemed to not mind that bit of extra weight. She could barely notice it. “Right, Johanna is my name now. Let’s see. What should I, Johanna, do first?”, she thought and looked around.

And then she discovered a main character: A black woman of over two meters in height walking down the street, unfazed or ignorant of what was happening around her. She wore white plate mail covering her upper body, while leaving her upper arms and legs bare. On the bronze toned skin there were tattoos and from her back two enormous wings framed her silhouette. Johanna decided to follow the woman that so impressively stood out from the rest of the crowd. She would most likely lead her into some plot hook or story, which was all that Johanna cared about. Not long after that the woman went into a tavern. When Johanna entered herself, she saw a men and woman in distress leading the main character out of the taproom. Something tragic must have happened or must be happening at this moment. Perhaps the tavern keeper’s child was lying on its deathbed and they wished the woman to heal her deadly illness. This was a rather basic plot hook to say the least, but also not completely terrible. Johanna made her way across the room to the door that lead into the backstage parts of the tavern, but before she could enter it a tavern guest called her out: “Young lady, that door there is private. As a foreigner coming into a tavern one usually introduces oneself and orders a drink, before trying to steal the tavern keeper’s private belongings.”

The man, who had called her out, stood up with his tankard of wine or beer still in hand. The tavern, which had already been strangely quiet, went silent. “I am Johanna”, she replied, “what makes you think, that I would steal anything?” Seeing Johanna’s legitimate confusion in her eyes the man’s face softened up.

“I am sorry”, he said and walked over to her. “You must have just looked for the tavern keep, since no one is standing behind the bar. What do you want to drink? This one is on me. Nobody wants to enter a tavern just to find this atmosphere of a funeral.” He gave her an abrasive push towards the bar and then went behind it himself. Without much of another choice Johanna followed. “Just give me what you are drinking then.” It seemed that she had to wait for the woman to return now anyways and she was interested in what kinds of beverages were drunk in this world. She received a tankard of red wine.

“You see, the daughter of the tavern keep has been sickly since her birth. She is lying on her deathbed now. Most of us are here to bid her our farewell today and drink a last tankard on her life.” Johanna could see a tear roll down the man’s cheek and vanish into his beard. At the sight of this Johanna was not only impressed but also glad that she had seen the advertisement to this game. This was completely different to everything she had played before. Even human emotions were depicted spot on to the last detail. She took a sip of the red wine. It tasted terrible. “Thanks”, she mumbled and looked at the man in front of her with expectation. Maybe he would tell her more.

“It’s a shame; you will not get to know her. I hope you understand that seeing a new face is too much for our little sunshine to bear when facing the sunset. If she were still strong enough she would have jumped at you almost at the same moment you entered through this door asking you to tell her some stories of your life out there. She always greeted the newcomers first. Judging from your attire you might even have had some adventures to share with her.” He took a big sip out of his own tankard and grew silent overwhelmed by reemerging emotions. “Just make sure to not upset the old man, when he comes back.”, he mumbled and returned to his table looking down at the floor and thinking about whether he could have done something differently to help the now dying girl.

After a while the winged woman returned. Alone. Even before she shook her head, Johanna knew that the girl had passed away. That usually happened to the fatally ill, when the main character came to visit. The atmosphere inside the tavern grew even colder.

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Word Count: 1294
Total Word Count: 1294
Tags: Aminatu