Before you all freak out, Game Over is not abandoned. I just ... forgot where I was going with it and have writer's block. Yes, this premise is based off of the Anime/Manga/Light Novel Overlord and the prologue will start out like Overlord does; however, Jim will not be all powerful, he will not make calm and constantly rational decisions, and he will act human. This is pretty much a, "I'm bored and I can't think of an amazing storyline like my previous stories fanfic". Hopefully, this will not be too close to Plugged In. Fun fact, the game is based on my experience with Star Trek online, Star Trek the video game (voiceovers by Pine and Quinto), and Star Trek Virtual Reality.

In other news, I am writing an original story called, Blood of the Immortal. I would appreciate it if some of my long term followers would check it out and give me some feedback. It is a paranormal story with vampires, but there are other creatures as well including: ghouls, demons, Jack the ripper, Faust, ghosts, and powers. It's up on ficfun . com. I do ask for people to read at least 3 chapters because things that seem slightly off in the first chapter are foreshadowing for later and people seem to think its poor writing rather than intentional.

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship….

To a small boy from Iowa, space always seemed to be that unreachable, mysterious void just beyond his fingertips. Always just out of reach, no matter how hard jumped, no matter how high he flew. The wonders that lay just beyond the atmosphere was never meant to be his.

As a child, he would sit in front of the TV watching adventures of a captain and his alien crew traversing the galaxy, solving problems and fighting aliens. It made him want to grow up to be just like them, a suave space captain fighting for what was right and fostering galactic peace. Only problem was, starships didn't exist. Space shuttles and the ISS were the closest to that reality as he could get. So obviously, the next logical step was to aim for astronaut.

But even that soon became out of reach. Even without his asthma, baring him from being a candidate to begin with, the government spending on the space programs dwindled to almost nothing, constantly delaying experiments and shuttle departures. The Mars mission that was scheduled for 2020 was pushed back a decade, and talks about pushing it back further were already starting as the deadline approached. It was becoming impossible to break free and touch the stars even from afar.

The closest he could get was sitting at a desk working the numbers for NASA. Sure, it was a respectable job. If he told anyone about it, he'd be praised, maybe even envied, but it wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't going on an adventure. It wasn't commanding his own team to figure out problems that could prevent intergalactic wars. It wasn't being needed.

With a mindset like his, it was easy to fall into a rut, trying to achieve a dream that wouldn't even scratch his deepest desires. However, there was something that filled the void in his life.

During his last year of college, during the rise of virtual reality, a game simulating that old TV show he watched as a child came out. The graphics were subpar and the voice acting wasn't perfect, but it brought the world he had fallen in love with to life.

Every day he would log in, build and design his starship, go on missions, type up pretend logs, and personalize his crew, fine tuning each and every one of them with complex backstories and stats. He must have spent hours upon hours typing them up and balancing out skills on his bridge, not including the hours spent gathering materials to upgrade his ship and systems before going off to battle.

He was addicted. Spending real world money to gain the new upgrades, and boosters, and anything else he could get his hands on.

Five years he had spent on that game, coming home from work only to immediately log in to play. Five years of giving up a real social life to be surrounded by other fans of the show and genre. But life hated him. Due to the lack of popularity, the game was shutting down, and tonight would be the last day. The server would power down at midnight.

"─irk…. Captain Kirk?"

"Hm?" Captain Kirk sat up straighter in his chair, having drifted off in his thoughts. "Sorry, Bones. It's been a long day."

"And yet here you are instead of sleeping," the man gently scolded. "It's the last day. Why don't you sleep?" Well, Kirk imagined that his friend's tone was gentle. It was hard to read tone in text after all. Given how often his online friend worried about his health, Kirk could only see it as a compassionate voice on the other end. Today, the idea that his friend was speaking to him in such a placating annoyed him.

Kirk thinned his lips in defiance, though the game would not show it. Of course, he would be here. A captain would go down with the ship and crew. "I just wanted to go down with them, you know? It feels…right."

"You are probably the only one left in the fleet who feels that way. I think every other player has already logged out."

"Probably," Kirk agreed with a heavy heart.

There was a heavy silence between them. He had thought perhaps Bones had left when a notification popped up on his screen. 'Transfer request: Leonard McCoy.'

"Bones?"

"I thought you might like him. He was always one of my favorite NPCs. I think he'd prefer having you as his captain for his last few minutes."

Realization of what Bones was saying sank in. He wasn't going to stay until the end with him. Resentment towards his friend filled his chest though he remanded silent about it aloud. Without hesitation, he pressed accept. Seconds later, another notification popped up. 'Transporter activated. Leonard McCoy has been transferred.'

"I have work in the morning, so I should be logging off. Good luck with everything Captain Kirk."

"Have a good life, Bones." The video screen that had shown a picture of Bones' avatar during the conversation closed out.

Bones had been the very last one who still actively played in the fleet Jim had created. Well Kirk called it a fleet, but in reality, it was something akin to a guild where players could form small groups, trade, and organize large party events. It was unoriginal, but Kirk had been proud of its name. Starfleet.

Bones was one of 30 players that Kirk had gotten to know over the past five years, and as each player left for one reason or another, they all left Kirk with a little something. It was nice to know that their time together meant something for each of the members. Bones' gift was one of five he had received this week as each member made their final farewells. But gifts didn't fill the empty table in the ready room.

Perhaps he had spent too much time playing a game. Even now, he could feel his hand pressing the buttons of a controller and hear the background of his apartment's air conditioner. No amount of disdain he held for the real word would make it vanish entirely.

Standing from his seat, he pulled up his players menu, checking the time. He had about an hour left until this part of his life ended.

Feeling a heavy sigh coming on, he left the ready room, wanting to spend the rest of his time on the bridge. It would be the last time he would see it after all. Just outside the door was the new addition to his crew, Leonard McCoy was on standby, ready to be given orders. Leonard McCoy was of human class. His dark brown hair was trimmed short and his blue eyes were an electrifying blue like his. There was nothing remarkable about him that stood out about the character other than the medical scrubs that he wore. A generic design, something his friend Bones would definitely make. Bones had always lacked in creativity. Kirk was even willing to bet that McCoy was a replica of Bones himself, not that he would ever find out now.

Also waiting for him outside the automatic door was a Vulcan, a rare race in the game. The only way to obtain a Vulcan class character was during a game event during Christmas Eve. Kirk, being as unlucky as he was, missed the event due to working overtime. This particular Vulcan was a parting gift as well, given to him the day before by player Admiral Pike left the game permanently too.

The Vulcan's name was Spock. He was tall, lean, with straight black hair in the shape of a bowl cut. Kirk wondered why Admiral Pike would design him with such a bad haircut, but it did look nice on the NPC. It made him appear a tiny bit younger.

Unlike the McCoy NPC, Spock wore the science uniform, a blue shirt instead of the command gold that Kirk wore. It complimented the hint of green in Spock's skin tone.

Of course, both NPCs had a blank stare and awkwardly stiff facial expressions.

"Follow," he commanded.

"Yes, Captain," the automatic response from both NPCs responded. Their voices were chosen out of the database. While you could change the pitch, the differences in customized NPCs were limited. They were voices he had heard before.

Walking down the corridors of the ship he had spent years designing and perfecting, he observed the crew, standing at their posts having pre-scripted conversations and observations. Some of those conversations he had scripted out himself.

As he neared the NPCs, they would halt their conversation enough to say, "Good evening, Captain," and give a quick salute until he started to walk away to continue or restart the conversation.

There had always been a surge of happiness he felt when he was addressed like that. In that small instant, he was living out the dreams he could never achieve in the real world. As pathetic as that sounded, he wanted to live that way until the very last moment.

Entering the bridge, the crew was at their post. A Russian voice, young and energetic, announced his presence. The NPCs didn't move from there posts, doing the jobs Kirk had assigned them. It was things like that that ruined the illusion. If it was real, everyone would have stopped to salute him.

Sighing, he went to the captain's chair situated in the center of the bridge. This is where he wanted to be when everything went black. Still there was some time before the game officially shut down. With nothing else better to do, he pulled up he pulled up the specs for his new transfers.

The information for the NPC Leonard McCoy popped up over his screen in the form of a holo screen, slightly transparent where Kirk could see behind the menu, but clear enough to be read without difficulty. Everything about the NPC was visible to Kirk, from his work history to how long it took him to be promoted at each level. Bones had positioned Leonard McCoy to be the Chief Medical Officer of his ship.

From his specifications, Bones had obviously spent a lot of time and money on creating McCoy. His knowledge on xenobiology, chemistry, biology, and medicine were maxed out. He was solely made to be a medical officer and a good one at that. He even had a couple boosts that increased the chance of crew survival during an attack. McCoy's background also well thought out, citing why he decided to join Starfleet and what his personality was like. There was an interesting note that he disliked space and was wary of technology which was odd, but it reminded Jim of Bones in a way. Bones came off as a type to be reluctant to try new things.

Since Leonard McCoy was better suited as a CMO than the one Kirk had created, he set Leonard McCoy as the CMO for his ship even though the change would no longer matter.

Next, he opened Spock's profile. As a Vulcan, he already had skewed traits. He was pretty much maxed out level wise for all the sciences and his physical traits were maxed out as well. His backstory was much longer than McCoy. 12 pages worth. Pressured for time, he just scrolled to the end, reading only the last paragraph. He seemed like a boring old Vulcan. Very textbook.

Growing mischievous and part revengeful, Kirk edited the bio, just adding one line. "Secretly likes to question his orders." A rebellious Vulcan. That put a smile on Kirk's face. What would that be like? Granted, writing the biographies of characters didn't change the personalities of them. It was just for the creator's amusement, but almost everyone who had been part of Starfleet, had done it for their favorite customized NPCs. Everyone had spent money to make each one as special as they could, even going so far to install mods or resort to hacking.

On a whim, he made Spock his First Officer and Chief Science Officer. He had a vacancy in his science department after a difficult mission that cost him his Science Officer and he had deleted his previous second in command, Gary Mitchell. The character Gary Mitchell had been based on his secret crush at work. That was until he found out the guy was a complete douche bag. Pissed off, he deleted the character.

By the time he had finished, it was only a few minutes to midnight.

He had work in the morning. He had to get up at four to finish his report on the collapsing neutron star observed in the Andromeda galaxy. Not that it mattered when it happened 2.5 million years ago by the time it reached human eyes. Maybe if he had motivation to view it from afar, he would care more about his work performance.

11:59:01 …

What would he do now that the game was ending? As far as he knew, there were no plans for a sequel. Not that it was a surprise since this game hadn't sold well, and there was no way in hell he ever planned on dating.

11:59:30…

He didn't have many friends at work either. His coworkers enjoyed the work they did and could sense his lack of enthusiasm for the subject matter, too busy daydreaming about being one of the people he worked to send up there instead. Should he try to start socializing? Did he even want to?

11:59:51 … 11:59:52… 11:59:53…

He closed his eyes. Maybe he should quit and create his own game. Something like this but better.

11:59:55… 11:59:56… 11:59:57…

Wouldn't that be nice.

11:59:58… 11:59:59…

….

….

0:00:01... 0:00:02…

Kirk opened his eyes. The sounds of the ship were still humming. The instruments were still beeping. However, he could also feel the small vibrations from the ship underneath him, smell the recycled air. He didn't feel the remote in his hands or the headset on his head, and the graphics had become as sharp as if he was in real real life.

"Captain Kirk?"

A voice he didn't quite recognize called out to him. Slowly, Kirk turned to the person who had called him.

Spock took two steps forward away from the science station that had been assigned to him. That couldn't be. That wasn't possible. "You appear to be bracing for impact. Is something amiss?"

Captain's log, stardate 2258.49. Captain James T. Kirk became the official captain of the USS Enterprise.

I know. I know. The prologue is written different from my normal writing style, but it will go back to normal starting next chapter. I was really tempted to write the prologue in first person. It was a struggle not do that so it ended up feeling like an observation from afar rather than being close to the protagonist. Please comment and tell me what you think. I'm hoping no other fanfic in the Star Trek fandom has done something like this. If it has been done, well I may take it down. I pride myself on my unique fanfic concepts. Also if anyone can think of tags, let me know. I have no idea what tags I should use.

I don't expect this fanfiction to be popular, but please leave a comment if you enjoy it even a little.