A/N: Welcome to my first attempt at fanfiction, paying homage to two of my favourite pieces of web fiction and comic. Chapters are short, and will update pretty fast. The initial quality of writing is terrible, but it improves. If you are annoyed with the first few chapters, please bear with me, If the fic still can't hold you at the end of the first arc, feel free to curse me and quit.

Here's my disclaimer for the whole story. I don't own the rights to Worm or The Gamer, and am making no profit off of my silly dabbling in their multiverses. If you encounter differences from canon, consider this a mild AU.

Critique much welcome. Without further Ado, it's time for an OC SI Worm/The Gamer crossover, enjoy!

Brockton: In Venatus

Installation 1.0

I was playing in the park with my cousin, as hyperactive as a 7 year old can get - while dada (that's what we call an elder brother/cousin, pronounced the-the), fresh into puberty, was trying his best to look like he was in control of the misguided missile that was me. "Aveek! don't jump from the monkey bars. Auntie will kill me if you break your legs!" I wouldn't listen, I was in a huff because no one wished me happy birthday since the morning - my life was unfairness - everybody gets wished happy birthday dammit! Hence I prepared to jump, and promptly missed my footing because of the wailing Endbringer sirens.

Ah, it's that dream again, oh well, ten years of the same dream and you kind of get used to it. Though in my family's defense they were planning a surprise party, hence it was dada's job to take me out to the park and distract me. The party I didn't get, but surprise, what a surprise.

Everyone was running in mindless panic, trying to climb up whatever structure they could. The sudden storm clouds and rain just added to the chaos, dada was carrying me on his back, my knee was a bit banged up, but I'd stopped crying because there was a fucking two storey tall roaring wave about a hundred metres behind us approaching in almost slow motion, on top of it rode the fucking two story taller lizardman like the water was a magic carpet - you kind of forget to cry when you see that.

Yeah yeah, bloody overgrown salamander, whose big idea was to go to Hyderabad to meet the rest of the family? Couldn't they have just come over to Calcutta like they were supposed to? Oh, wait, I insisted that we travel that year instead of dada's family. Riiight.

Both the wave and the monster were closing in, most others had found sturdy trees or houses to climb up by then, dada was a 13 year old carrying a 7 year old on his back, didn't much help his ground speed. I was thin though, but sadly so was he. I was still kind of processing things, screaming at him to let me down, banged up knee be damned, we could both run faster.

On hindsight, I'm still proud of myself to be able to think coherent thoughts at that point. Damn I was such a cool kid.

I'd almost resigned us to be swept away, and was trying to suck in as much breath as I could hold, and 'pop' appeared the guy in the black turban, black scarf covering his face and black overalls, grabbed dada's shoulder, looked up, and 'pop' we're high in the sky, nothing but the rain here, below us the city was being subsumed block by block from the flooding river. It was sort of tranquil I guess. The rain was slowing down, oh, okay the rain was not slowing down, we were falling, before I could open my mouth to let our black turban ninja man know of that factoid - 'pop' again - and now the sky is a roiling mass of clouds below us, the river and flooding nowhere to be seen, highrises hanging from the ground above, dada's scream slowly building up to a proper shriek, my highly analytical mind manages to proffer expert commentary, "We're falling up." Turban Ninja Man gave a surprised guffaw and said, "Yes we are," hand still firmly on dada's shoulder. We stopped falling up, rain splashing against our feet, it really was tranquil, even dada stopped screaming. The final 'pop' had us standing on top of the Golconda fort on a big red trampoline-cushion thingy, two rescue workers running towards us, Turban Ninja Man nodded at them, ruffled my hair and vanished with another 'pop'.

We later got to know he was a 'Thanda' mercenary called Jhapki, a line-of-sight teleporter who conserved momentum between ports. He died trying to rescue more survivors. So it goes.

Dada vanished, the red trampoline-cushion-thingy turned into the green backyard of the school, the running rescue workers turned into two high-school jocks who charged at me and started kicking me with unrestrained fury, because I wouldn't let them copy from me during the physics test, one of the kicks landed solidly on my nose with a meaty crunch. Ow, pain.

Really? Now this one? Smooth, subconscious, very smooth.

This event still has better connotations for me, though my broken nose healed forever slightly crooked, this attack was recorded on my friend's cellphone and got those two expelled. That was the start of the Nerd Watch, we all carried cellphones which would sit snug in our breast pockets, a hole cut out for the camera, constantly recording and uploading (the security on the school wifi was a joke) to a server. We managed to get quite a few bullies suspended or expelled, one of the victims was related to a surveillance tinker who gifted the Nerd Watch with low-tech (for him) glasses which did the recording and uploading riding on any carrier network that was present, also hooked us up with an anonymous server which stored all the feeds. It was even used as evidence for a sexual assault case last year, came out in the news and all that. Nasty business that one. My friend who recorded it had to go in hiding for a few days because the molester was the son of a local politician.

The pain dissolved, the surroundings dissolved, I wasn't even in the scene anymore, I saw a man sitting in a futuristic looking setting, his face obscured by a smiley face surrounded by spinning letters...

"Happy Birthday Aveek! Wakey wakey, I've got gifts for you!"

Huh? That's not one of my usual dreams. That didn't even feel like a dream!

I woke up with a jolt, head twitching around, disorientation, disorientation, less disorientation - Ah, I'm in my new bedroom, this is our new house, in Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, USA. I'm not in India anymore. No need for panic, all is cool, I was just dreaming the usual, when the laughing man woke me up for gifts...

Uh, Righto, cool, new room, there are all my unpacked boxes, there's my new table, here's my new bed, new sheets, and the new glowing blue panel saying my HP and MP have recovered...

You Have Slept in your bed, your HP and MP have recovered to full,

all status effects removed.

What?

"What the Fuck?!"

QUEST CREATED!

What the Fuck?!

Find out what is causing this strange blue panel thingy to appear!

Success: 100 XP + Knowledge + goodies!

Failure: Life of ignorance

[ACCEPT/Y] [DECLINE/N]