"Welcome to the Ramsey Center UNN Recruitment Facility. Please watch your step when leaving the train. The grav shafts at the end of the hall will take you to the street level-"
"Oh, cool, I fucking love these things," The soon-to-be soldier blurted out, ignoring the rest of the pre-recorded message. He ran over to the grav shafts and put out his hand, feeling it start to rise. "These things are fucking cool. It's like floating to the top in water, but it's just air," said the recruit, who should really stop cursing so much because I want to keep this fanfiction rated T.
"It's just a word, man. And can you give me a name? If you call me soldier the entire fucking time, I'll fuck your shit up," The recruit who was unnamed said, completely to himself as the narrator was not a real person. "Oh, and stop using said. That's a boring word. I didn't just *say* it, I... murmured it suavely. And if you're not going to give me a name, I'll do it myself. Call me... Jose," he 'murmured suavely'- wait. Jose? Really?
Jose nodded, "It sounds like a suave name."
...Okay then. Jose stepped into the grav shaft. Like in the title. But not exactly. He ascended, doing backflips like the easily entertained man-child he was.
"Screw you, narrator. This game is gonna get pretty spooky, I hear. I deserve a bit of fun."
Anyways, after bonking his head against the top of the Grav Shaft, he skipped into the huge building in front of him. Using a trick he learned from watching speed runs, he slid in through the advanced training and passed the basics entirely. Here he found himself at a crossroads. Marines, Navy, or O.S.A.?
"What the hell is the O.S.A.?"
The magics division. The place you get PSI powers.
"Oh, thanks. Isn't there a girl there, though? I want to be manly."
Then go for the Marines. Or Navy.
"...What do those do?"
At this point, Jose should have gone back and done the advanced training courses instead of talking to himself in the middle of the training and recruitment center. But he didn't. Because tutorials are for losers.
"You're darn right they are."
So Jose spun around in a circle a few times indecisively and went straight for the Navy. It was the one right in front of him, therefore it was the only right choice. And it was blue. Everyone loves blue!
"Yeah!" Jose exclaimed eagerly, heading off for the Navy. "This is going to be fun!"
"...this is not going to be fun," the soldier stared at another crossroads. "Holy cow, how am I going to get through the intro?" He stepped for the middle one again, but suddenly a voice blared out from the speakers. It informed him that "The UNN Lucille is looking for an engineer's mate to help maintain the ship's core energy systems. There's some heavy lifting involved-"
"Yeah, no. We ain't doing that. I'd rather eat worms or fight a hive-minded mass of flesh than do any heavy lifting." He went to the left next, and though it sounded cool there was still heavy lifting involved. The path on the far right sounded a million times worse, though. He would have to baby-sit a bunch of grown men?
Jose paced back and forth in front of the options in front of him, triggering the pre-recorded voice each time.
"The UNN Lucille- The UNN Lucille- The UNN Lucille-" it droned annoyingly, but Jose did not stop his pacing. He finally groaned, "Ah, I can't decide..."
Well, if he went to the far left, he'd receive a point in hack. Hacking is very important to the game.
"It is?" Jose muttered. "Oh, yeah. It is. I want to hack people! Hack them right open!" He began laughing maniacally and tripped through the far left door. The mission officer must've thought he was insane.
The rest of his choices will be skipped over, because it took an eternity. He ended up with two points in Standard Weapons and two points in Agility. After which, he was assigned to the Von Braun escort mission.
Promptly, everything went to hell.
"Cute! A monkey!" the soldier who had just figured out the basics of the game made an 'aww' noise as he ran for the monkey in question with his arms outstretched. He was eager for a friend after having a few terrible encounters with the zombie-men lurking about. Apparently the hybrid grunts weren't very good conversationalists. The monkey abruptly screeched, shooting magic at the lonely man. Jose yelped, "Bad monkey! No! Bad!" and swung for it with his weapon of choice: a wrench.
But the stupid thing was too short! The force of the swing got the tool to collide with a door frame. Which made a very loud 'CLANG' sound. Which alerted several nearby grunts to Jose's general area.
The monkey sounded like it was laughing, and Jose felt no remorse as he knelt down and brained it with his wrench.
"Uh-oh. Ugly motherfucker, dead ahead," came the sigh of Jose as he dashed forward and smacked a grunt upside the skull. Or tried to crack open its head. He only got it in the shoulder, and it whirled a complete 180 degrees, swinging the pipe. "Silence the discord!" It roared, hitting the soldier in the stomach. To which Jose reacted by slapping it in the knee with the wrench. "Are these things really tall or am I just that short?" he questioned the air as the grunt fell.
Jose whispered, "Dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun ber-ber-na-nyeeeew, ber-ber-na-nyeeeeeew, dun-dun dun-dun dun-dun-" as he rounded a corner. One might think that he was trying to make up his own theme song. One would be right.
Jose froze up as he heard a noise. He backed up behind the corner and took a peek. The hybrid grunt that Jose found himself watching was continually walking into a fence, like some sort of faulty videogame AI or something. The soldier held back a laugh at first, but then something changed in him. Deep down, underneath his soul, something burned. Something turned... feral.
The wild Jose in an unnatural habitat. The soldier pressed himself to the ground, crawling forward in an animalistic manner towards his quarry. A pair of goggled eyes leered up at a particular part of anatomy, located far below the shoulders. The previously unsuspecting hybrid grunt seemed to instinctively feel hunted, as it growled, "Something... out of place..."
The wild Jose stared at the booty. And then, he gave it a whack with his wrench.
"Aaargh, kill me!" The hybrid grunt wailed as it died from the fatal stab to the butt. "I just did!" Jose told the dead body proudly, reverting to normal. Or at least what was normal for him. How did he get accepted into the military again? The psychological evaluation machine must've been broken that day.
Wandering the Engineering deck was stressful and boring. Jose couldn't find the thing he was supposed to find. In fact, he had hardly a clue as to what he was supposed to do in the first place, even though he'd listened to Polito's order transmissions several times.
But life got a little sweeter when he found the grav shafts. Specifically, the grav shafts near the area where he could look into space and see that the 'final frontier' was actually a box. Staring out windows was fun, but what he was about to do with the grav shafts was more fun. Fun and... scandalous.
"Weeeeeee~!" Jose cheered, floating to the top. And as he reached the top, he flipped upside down and pushed himself off the ceiling, diving back down. He only got to about half way before being pulled back up. Down, up. Down, up. Down, up. For some reason, the repetitive action mesmerized him.
Somewhere, in a different universe...
"Weeeeee~!" the gamer laughed, suspecting -hoping- that their friend watching the broadcast was having fun too, despite the fact that any progress had just ground to a complete halt. "I can't believe that with all the playthroughs I've watched, no one ever mentions this! Then again, the only playthroughs I've had patience for were speedruns." The action that 'this' was referring to was the phenomenon that occurred when one rode the grav shaft all the way to the top before looking down and pressing the move forward key. It caused the character to move down the grav shaft halfway before rising back up.
"This is such a nice break from all the horror and spooks I've been subjected to," the player who had never liked many horror games said to theirself. "Hahah, 'please step into the grav shaft' indeed..."
So, uh, this is my first fanfiction. A milestone in my life. If you couldn't tell, this is very loosely based off my own experiences with System Shock 2 (I did not try to hug the monkeys). No, I haven't finished it myself. Yes, I do love this game, despite (or because of?) the horror that makes me want to stop playing immediately (Translation: I'm a scaredy-cat chicken. Cyborg midwives freak me out majorly). I hope this story at least mildly amused you as it did me while writing it. All criticism is appreciated and accepted unless it's only a simple 'this sucks' or something to that effect, because that's not really helpful to me as a writer.