It was finally Friday night, the weekend had officially started as William walked into his bedroom, all he wanted to do this weekend was sleep, eat and play FFXIV the whole time. He had been waiting for this moment all day, work had been extra slow after he found out that there was a "special" update for the game this morning. The game servers wouldn't be back up for another hour or so he decided it was best to heat up a meal and message his mates to find out when they would be logging in.
He walked to the back fridge where he knew some frozen meals would be, William looked through them and saw that they were all the same "I'll have to tell mum to get something else" he thought, as he was walking back to the kitchen his phone made a message received sound, He stuck his meal in the microwave and punched in the time needed to heat it up, he then reached into his pocket to read the message, there were two, one from the group of friends that were going to play FFXIV together and another from his girlfriend Jane.
William read the friends message first, they had decided that they would be hopping on just before the server go up, meaning he would have to kill about forty minutes or so by watching some anime he had been meaning to see. He looked at Jane's message next, which only read "I've got a little surprise for you tonight" he smiled, what did she mean by that? He thought, he went to massage her back but the microwave went off to tell him that his meal was ready.
As he walked back to his room, the message from Jane slipped his mind. William sat down at his computer and booted up FFXIV, he knew well enough that the update would be ready to download at this time, and on his second screen he decided to watch some episodes of 'My Hero Academia'.
After they had finished, it was almost time for the servers to come back up, William opened up Discord on the second screen but saw none of his friends in the chat rooms they had set up for FFXIV, so he jumped into it so that they could see someone was at least there to talk to. William then restarted the launcher for the game to see if it was up early, he knew that sometimes the servers would do so; there was only ten minutes left anyway till they were meant to be up.
As the launcher booted up, he saw that the play button was green, this meant that the server were up, excitement course though his body as his mouse hovered over the play button, so many questions were running through his mind, why did the players only just find out about this update hours before it went up, what was so special about it and many others.
He clicked play.
Everything was black, but as William blink his eyes, things started to come into focus, he was standing in front of a wardrobe, confusion washed over him, a few second beforehand he had been sitting at his computer ready to play and now he was standing in a strange room looking at a wardrobe.
He looked around the rest of the room and as he did so, William started to recognize the room, he had never physically been in this room before but he had seen it about a thousand times before, this room was the one he had created in FFXIV for his character. He continued to look around in amazement "This can't be real" he thought, his mind started racing with all sorts of questions but one popped out the most, "was this going to be like Log Horizon?"
Without looking down, he moved his hands to his chest but on the way up they bumped into something that he was half wishing weren't going to be there "This can't be real" William thought "This has to be a dream" he squeezed on his chest with both hands hard and pain shot through them, this was nothing like other dreams he had had in the past, he knew this had to be real. If out of instinct he reached out to the wardrobe and opened it up, he looked into the mirror inside of the door but instead of seeing his reflection, he saw her.
A Seeker of the Sun, female miqo'te with short black hair and dark blue tips, she had odd colored eyes with her right eye being blue and her left black, her left cheek had a small scar on it, he remembered giving her it after the events of patch 2.5, as he moved slowly so did the reflection, he reached for "his" ears and felt them then he moved for "his" tail "This can't be happening" he said out loud but it wasn't the voice he was use to, it was hers, the one he had imaged her having if she could talk.
He covered his mouth in shock, his eyes wide. "This can't be true" he mumbled through closed hands. He stood there for what seemed like forever just taking in the view. She was wearing a leonhart jacket with black guardian corps gauntlets, Picaroon's trousers of scouting, a pair of choka #55 and a redbill scarf. Everything he remembered glamouring her in. "That's me" he thought.
"I'm a fucking cat girl!" he managed to yell in shock.