Once upon a time, not so long ago…

They call it the Catastrophe. When a new update was introduced to Eldar Tale, the most popular MMORPG in the world, thirty-thousand players found themselves trapped inside the world of the game, wearing the bodies of their game characters. It's a situation straight out of .hack, only on a much bigger scale. Once inside, they soon realized that they can't logout, that the player characters - Adventurers - can still be resurrected at the Cathedral, while the NPCs - Landers - became every bit as sentient as the players, instead of endlessly repeating the same scripted dialogues.

It was the best thing that ever happened to Tamano.

Tamamo tried to brush her long pink hair behind her ears, only to find that her ears were now on the top of her head instead of on the sides. She's fashioned after a fictional character she knew and loved, but looking at herself in the mirror, the face seemed so unfamiliar. She had always thought that the biggest changes about being a girl would be not having a dick and having boobs, but now that she's actually one, she realized that the real hurdles are the ridiculously long hair and the unnecessarily complex clothes. Seriously, how the heck do you walk in these things?

She moved to undo her belt and take a look at her body, but blushed and decided against it at the last minute. She would do it when the time is right. Maybe in a bath or a shower. It's only been a few days since the Catastrophe, and since their new bodies didn't seem to sweat, personal hygiene became strictly optional. She'd probably do it when she found something nice, like a hot spring or something.

Just then, she spotted a mosquito on the mirror. "Gotcha!" she yelled as she gently slapped the surface of the mirror...and accidentally smashed it into pieces. "Owowowow!" she groaned and pulled her hand back, but then she noticed that there was no wound or blood on her hand. In fact, it didn't even hurt. "...Huh." she mused. "Well, as long as it's not seven years of bad luck..."

Not that she's lucky to begin with, of course.

After checking out her new body, she checked her friend list. She used to belong to - and in fact, headed - a guild named Guardian of the Scale, composed of seven terminally-ill Type-Moon fans who each modelled his character after a Servant from the extended Fate/Stay Night universe; it was a mistake they committed because of youth, but it was fun while it lasted. From the list of members, she saw that three had quit the Guild and unfriended her due to her inactivity, while another two had not been online for ages now. Only one name remained green and online.

Tamano decided to send him a message.

Tamamo: Heya, Faker. You there?

EMIYA: Tama-chan! Aren't you a ghost from the past.

EMIYA: I thought you got married, or something.

Tamamo: I am. To you.

EMIYA: IRL, I mean.

Tamamo: Meh, no such luck.

EMIYA: Alas!

Tamamo checked the map. The last time she was online, she started out in Akiba and made her way toward Minami, and stopped at a Lander village in the middle of nowhere for… Actually, she believed that was when she left the game; she just kinda hung around this fluffy Lander village - where no other Adventurer came because there's no monster to kill nor any facility that they could use, not a shrine or a shop or anything. This is one of those purely aesthetic locations in the game, filled with NPCs who just keep welcome you and do precisely nothing. Until now.

Tamamo: Are you near Minami? Wanna meet up there?

EMIYA: I don't think that's such a good idea.

Tamamo: Why not?

EMIYA: Things are weird here, in Minami. Someone is buying off the city.

EMIYA: I don't think anyone should come here until we got this figured out.

Tamamo shrugged. She didn't see what the big deal was. You can always buy buildings in the game to repurpose it as your personal home, and you can even ban people you don't like from entering. But just like this village, the home in the game is pure aesthetic, since all of your gears and money are stored in the Guildhall instead, and you couldn't actually buy the Guildhall and punish assholes by banning them from retrieving their own gears and money. Or maybe you can? She laughed and shook her head, her hair tickling the back of her neck. Oh, don't be silly.

Tamamo: Alrighty. I'll see you around?

EMIYA: Not if I see you first.

All done, she walked out of the room. "Hey, thank for letting me use the..." she told the Landers outside. "...The room that is used for whatever purpose that you use the room for." she said lamely. It has a mirror, but neither toilet or bathtub, so it couldn't be a bathroom; it also doesn't have a bed or a mattress, so it's not likely to be a bedroom; as far as she could tell, the small room existed solely for the large mirror and the small dressing desk underneath it. She would call it a dressing room, but it's weird as hell to have one of these in someone's personal home.

She paused when she finally took a good look at the Landers before her. She saw something in their eyes that was unfamiliar to her, something she had rarely, if ever, seen thrown her way in the real world. It took her a long while to search through her memories and find something that remotely resembled what she saw in the their eyes: the look a mouse would have on its tiny face, when it was cornered by a nimble cat or a giant snake, when it knows that their life could be over at any moment, when their furry bodies shook from the prospect of imminent death.

Fear. It was fear. That was the secret in their eyes. She tried to think of something - anything - to say, to put their minds at ease and soothe their spirits, but couldn't. What could she say? She had just smashed a mirror with bare hands without getting cut, she can cast spells that drains the entire HP bar from a Lander in a split second, and she can probably come back from the dead no matter how many times she dies, if the Cathedrals still worked as before. As far as they know, she must be some kind of god...or monster. Not like there's much difference there.

But then a panicked shout cut through the silence like a knife, and everyone turned their attention to its source. "Goblins!" shout the young man running toward the crowd. "They're coming in!" Tamamo frowned. This wasn't an Adventurer city, so obviously it's not technically a monster-free zone; but the entire point of this village was to be as unappealing to Adventurers as possible, and in the years she played she had never heard of monsters anywhere near this place. Perhaps they changed it with the newest updates? Still, feels odd to use a village as a spawn point.

She didn't have to wait long to confirm the existence of the goblins with her own two eyes. They were right there at the gate, wielding various makeshift weapon like clubs or stones except for one, an intelligent-looking (by Goblin standards) one who had a bow and a quiver of arrows. She fumbled at how to use her skills without a mouse and a keyboard, but ultimately she figured it out - with a short incantation and quick gesture and a lot of thinking about what she wants to do - and she was able to put up a barrier before the Goblins could land an arrow on her.

"The Holy Curse of Mirror!" she shouted while a magical mirror took shape above her head, its surface reflecting sunlight before it was fully formed, its golden frame slowly solidified out of the reflected sunlight. A reference to one of the three Imperial Regalia of Japan and a metaphor of the Sun, the mirror drained life force from the Goblins in the form of sparkling bubbles to send it to wounded Lander as rays of light that healed all it touches. She is no DPS, but given the level gap between her and the Goblins, she made quick work of them by simply spamming the mirror.

"Well, that did it!" she exclaimed with a sigh, slightly exasperated from the exertion. "So, as I was saying - " she turned back to the Lander, but their attention was no longer on her; instead, they were crowding around a young man with an arrow in his chest, someone Tamamo must have missed in her frantic solo fight against the Goblins. From the hushed whispers all around her, Tamamo learned that the wounded was none other than the son of the village head, a brave but reckless young man who always dreamed of being an Adventurer. The irony was not lost on her.

"Lemme take a look at him." she said, and before anyone could say anything she knelt down and inspect the wound. "A clean penetration...likely punctuation of the lungs..." she muttered in the same matter-of-fact tone you would see from a surgeon in a medical drama. The wound actually wasn't severe; if this was the real world, he could have been saved with emergency aid and a quick transfer to a hospital. But it wasn't; according to the setting, this world was thrown back to the Middle Ages by a rogue AI, and there's not a single surgeon in this world -

Until now.

"I need a knife, a needle, a roll of thread and a pair of...chopsticks." she told the young man's Father, the village head. "Oh, and some candle or matchsticks to burn, just in case. "

"Why -" the old gentleman stared at her blankly.

"Just go!" she snapped, and the man complied.

She tried her best to treat him, given the tools available to her. Cutting the wound open with a fruit knife instead of a scalpel wasn't ideal, but it was close enough; subbing a pair of chopsticks for a pair of pliers was considerably harder, and she only pulled it off because of her appetite for Chinese takeouts; closing the wound with needle and thread is much like in real world, but this wound was much too large, and she had to burn part of the tissue to close it with scar. But in the end it wasn't enough; she could see his life, his soul leaking out of him as sparkling bubbles.

"You did your best, Adventurer, and I thank you." the village head put a comforting and grateful hand upon her drooping shoulder. "We Landers are not like you; we're fragile and mortal, and no one can bring us back when we're dead; not even an Adventurer such as you." his tone was tired, dejected and resigned, a defeatist and fatalistic talk about the inevitability of fate and men's powerlessness in front of the senseless machination of the world. Tamamo hated that shit. There must be something, anything, that she could do, that she could at least try and -

"- Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say," she began, crossing her fingers as she recited a prayer she read from a novel with a title she couldn't remember, because she didn't know any Shinto prayers and would be damned if she go back to Sunday school, much to the confusion of the Landers around her. "I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness." she tried to imagine the wound, how the tissue was damaged, what it would take to make it whole again.

"Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body," light enveloped the young man's body as she prayed, preventing the sparkling bubbles of his soul from escaping, even drawing some of them back from their ascent into the sky above. "I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit." the warm light became brighter and more intense with each word she uttered.

"I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself," before their eyes, the body began to heal itself, the wound closing while the scar tissue reverted back to healthy flesh. "But which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony." the Landers were stunned by disbelief, but Tamamo was seeing none of this, because she had closed her eyes at this point of the incantation.

"Amen, allahu akbar, om mani padme hum, namo Amitabha, flying-spaghetti monster, Hail Elvis, Zelany was the name of the author and the book was Creature of Light and Darkness, Q.E.D."

After lamely wrapping up her agnostic prayer with an eclectic mix of words borrowed from many major religions (along with a last-minute realization of just what the heck she was reading from and who wrote it), Tamamo kept her eyes shut for a heart-stopping moment, long enough for the Landers to wonder what she was trying to do. Tamamo, knowing this, was beginning to plan a profound apology followed by an expeditious retreat should things turn sour. Just when the suspense between the Adventurer and the Landers rose to a breaking point -

"What - what just happened?" the young men asked when he opened his eyes. Total silence descended upon the gathered crowd for a few seconds, as they all basked in awe and marvel, which soon turned into a deafening cheer that startled Tamamo, and she opened her eyes to inspect her handiwork. Holy Mother of Christ, it worked! she covered her gaping mouth with an overblown sleeve. It actually fucking worked! I can't believe - but her train of thought was swiftly cut off when the Landers did something unexpected: they got down on their knees and bowed.

"Tamamo-sama!" they cried. "Yulara incarnate!"

"Wait, what?" Tamamo blinked. Why does that name sounded so familiar? Think, Tamamo, think; you're a hardcore roleplayer; you know the setting of Eldar Tale better than most 90th level elitist pricks; you even know it's a post-apocalyptic setting instead of a straight-up fantasy. Who is this Yulara they're fussing over? If she recalled correctly, the setting has its own Pantheon, much like in Dungeons & Dragons; each server and thus each region of the Half-Gaia has its own unique Pantheon, and Yulara is a goddess in the Yamato pantheon... Oh, crap. "Hey, I'm not a - "

"Goddess!"