Chapter 1: For Rare Games, Every Copy Is Personalized

Steam hissed. The factory floor hummed with life. The air smelt of chemicals- and with the right nose you'd know there was enough explosives here to topple one small country and blow up the next. Just enough to make a combat doll happy.

A stocky witch examined one of her weapon-like doll creations while her junior sobbed in remorse. 

The crying woman looked up "So you're telling me-"

"You can't take your dolls with you. I track my creations. They'd lead her straight to you." Her cool voice analytic cut through the room, but a subtle pressure grew within her voice. "You realize she's one of my most trusted business partners right?"

"And you can't help-"

"Absolutely not." The pressure increased "You can't just go around making enemies of the most powerful witches."

"But- you've always been-"

"I'm not here to clean up your messes." The pressure increased, "The basic rule of specializing in doll making is neutrality. And frankly, if you did to me what you did to her, I'd want your head too. I can't blindly take your side."

"But then- I'm not going to-"

"Suck it up, you're resourceful. I didn't mentor you for nothing. You're extremely competent when you're pulling bullshit." The pressure increased.

"Please! I have no one else-"

"Shut the fuck up and listen-" The pressure burst. A matronly sense of disdain contorted her features. The witch's eye bore into her junior "Now, listen up because I won't repeat myself. Because frankly, when she asks, this conversation never happened. If I were in you shoes, I'd ditch everything I had and lay low. Roll a dice. Pick a random direction. Leave and tell no on. And if I was feeling lonely like you are, I'd find some impressionable schmuck to elope off with. Someone I've never met before in my life. Even better- use them hide your tracks. You're damn good with a glamour. You could make it work."

She calmed down, exhaling deeply. "-And after a few decades, that's basically nothing in witch time, she will have turned her attention elsewhere. You're lucky she's such a traditionalist, those kind of witches have don't bother to hold onto a grudge for over a half-century."

The junior collected herself. Well, at least she had a plan now.

---

Lonely girl leaving her friends behind to go a long journey.
Seeking companions.
Must be wlw and like pc-98 games
...

Do I actually go?

Sober me had given up on dating sites in this dingy small town forever ago. But apparently not drunk me... Checking out her profile again, she seemed pretty but kind of normie-ish? Squinting at her profile pic, it was kinda hard to make out the details. Her picture screamed "boring safe protagonist designed to appeal to the masses." Maybe drunk me had lower standards, but when it came to 3D girls, sober me was picky.

And what's with this weird description? I scratched my head

Maybe she was actually a weeb?.. I let my screaming thoughts perform society anxiety calculus. Ugh. Fine.

I guess I'll go.

My anxiety starts multi-track drifting. Fuck. Now I had a new problem- none of my nice clothes were clean. So I had to choose.

Frumpy or Smelly?

Well if she's a real weeb she won't mind- but hey don't people pay for gamer girl sweat nowadays? No no no- don't be weird, that's why your last best friend left you- no, AAAAHHH!

I calm myself. I should have given up already. It'd take a miracle for me to somehow meet her standards while reaching my anime-warped expectations.

So frumpy it is.

My inner voices screech into overdrive as I walked out of my car with my hands in my oversized hoodie's pockets. Surely this-

What.

She was stunning in person. A young lady, raven-black hair, sharp purple eyes. Femme in that way that causes normies not to bother you, but with a touch of that boy-drogynous vibe that gives someone a lot of hidden depth. She was like if one of my OCs and reality had a compromise and met in the middle. My dream girl. My weeb heart danced and dueled my fraying thoughts. Would there ever be another opportunity like this?

Visions of me growing old alone flashed in my head. Fuck. Don't screw this up.

 Oh- and she was already drinking like a fish on this bar patio.

I mechanically made my way over and she nearly jumped out of her seat. "You really came! Oh I thought I was gonna haff to do this all alone!" She slurred and practically sobbed on me.

At her slightest touch my face burned a deep crimson. "Ah ah- yeah of course!" I stiffly sat down across from her.

She touched my hands briefly, and I thought I nearly died. Then a mournful look overtook her, like she was reminded how her favorite character came back in season 2 only to instantly be killed off.

The girl slurred into her drink "I screwed up soooo badly. I pissed owf the wong witch- I'm so new to this." She looked at me with kitten eyes "I had ta leave my dolls! Muh dolls..."

A thousand possibilities flashed in my eyes and my fight or flight reaction sputtered in neutral. Was this girl real?

"Aahh- I mean, it's really hard to part with collectables- I know." I stammered

Something's off here- She probably one of those girls whose mental health problems only come in acronyms. No. No. Calm down. She's drunk. Just be nice. Win some easy points with her.

I nervously shuffled. I patted her on head. She ignored the gesture.

"Anweyway... Drwink with me!" in one awkward motion she pulled a mug of alcohol out of her bag(???) I blinked. The drink was deeply purple, unnaturally, just like her eyes.

She wasn't real. My flight instinct put its finger on the trigger, "I'm sorry-"

"DRWINK!" She shoved to mug up to my face. Overwhelmed, I obliged and took a long awkward sip.

Was this even alcoholic? None of the familiar sting was there. But it felt like I was drinking something else. In went down smoothly, but the effects were weighty. I was seeing double? Just for a moment- It felt like there something being inserted into me. And like a disc, it felt like whatever was there before was being forced out. I briefly felt like we had switched places across the table. 

"Finish it." A surprisingly sober voice commanded me.

My flight instinct pulled the trigger, but my mouth and arm disagreed. Something pushed my limb and mouth to betray me and I finished my drink. I felt... ejected. Like I didn't exist anywhere for a moment. And then... I was staring at myself? Awkwardly uh, Sniffing myself?

I pointed at the doppelganger, accused them of this being some SCP shit, and got up to walk away. But my mind was drenched in alcohol. Like submerged. 20 feet under. So instead I knocked over a glass, slurred something about a hentai I saw once, and slouched over on the table.

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I could have sworn I watched as she (myself?) grabbed something from her bag next to me, and SNAPPED something off like a party popper.

There was no flash but my eyes felt like they were adjusting to something. Like I just got Men-In-Black flashed. I was staring at her, my date, again.

My thoughts jumbled. I wanted to have a word with my evil clone (or maybe hold hands) but I was the only me here right now. What was I afraid of?

"Wuuuh?" I moaned as she looked victorious. 

"Part one, done and done." she muttered herself "...now for...."

My swimming mind had no idea what to make of all of this.

"Are you familiar with... this?" she held a floppy disk to my face. I somehow found the focus to stare at it for a solid minute before coming to.

"Ah rare dooujin PC-98 game..." I slurred, proud of my deep weeby knowledge

I could see her mouth turn upward with the swaying of the patio.

"Exactly! Ah! I see you're enraptured. It's working already!" She smiled, as smug as a cat, "Now, let's get going on that trip I told you about..."

She struggled to pull me off the table and began to lead me forward. I moved forward with a weird grace- But also not so gracefully. I gracefully stumbled to and fro like a drunk ballerina.  The woman kept me on track, leading me by hand. I blushed- Wait, what about the drink bill? Oh. We were already gone.

I vaguely recall that my companion was struggling to corral me in the right direction. "You really don't exercise a lot, do you?" she huffed.

I was feeling fine though? What a silly thing to say. I wasn't tired. Just very drunk.

I also vaguely had the sense she was looking out for something, like someone could jump out of the bushes and steal everything away. I was about to comment but my mind was too slow-

"Ah we're almost there- we just need some privacy.." A building was ahead. She marched me into it and tugged me into a seat. We were in a movie theater?

The world seemed to spin less now that I was sitting again. Was I sobering up? But I still felt strange. Like I was long in different places and soft slightly differently and like... symmetrical? Not a bad weird. You had to be there.

The movie started. Some action movie. I steadied my breathing but then something else weird was happening. My date was... chanting? With that floppy disc out? Man, she really was into that hot girl new age shit. She stared at me awkwardly when I looked at her for too long. The part of my brain that realized I was on a date with the hottest girl I've seen in my life kicked in. Clearly, staring was a party foul. 

So I focused on the movie instead. 

Frankly, even wasted off my own ass I could tell this movie wasn't my thing. Normies shooting stuff and yelling. But not like, artistically. You know, like in a hall of mirrors or in an underground European club. It was nothing like that. So it was kinda boring.

Then, I caught a glance at something weird. The movie started to distort? I held my head. How wasted was I? I thought I was sobering up. But I could see it. Well-defined pixels on the screen. There was single moment where I felt a tightness all over me. It felt like I was be compressed? But then suddenly spit out the other side. 

Next thing I knew I was looking at something more... artistically hand-drawn? It felt like the rational part of my brain wanted to say something, but that part was still fast asleep. Man. This movie was suddenly SO much better. I loved the action anime girl with 90s spikey hair. She was good. 

But then the movie was over. I blinked. I felt more sober. But, the world looked more... pixelated? And swore I saw myself sitting next to me again- but she flashed back into my date before I could comment.

She smiled like one of those strategy gamers before their winning move. That logical piece of me finally kicked in. 

"Hey, what the hell have you been doing?" my voice modulating strangely. Wait. That's not even my own voice to begin with-

"Ehehehe, alcohol wearing off deary?" She slipped the floppy disc, the only thing with real definition left, into a case. "I really shouldn't have drank THAT much before we swapped over." She moved to escape. My adrenaline slammed into chase mode, but my soberness left me the moment I got up. I followed her awkwardly out of the theater.

Once I was outside I realized I wasn't local anymore. A giant... Mahjong parlor(???) greeted me. And a uh. I pinched myself before letting myself think this. It looked, kinda porn-y?

"I have to finish something up. but you should know..." Oh yeah, her. I barked out something at the woman before the words froze in my mouth. "Your table is ready!"

The words short circuited my brain. I felt... compelled to waltz straight up to the mahjong parlor and bust through the double doors. And well, it was somehow even more than what I thought it would be- Monster girls of all shapes and sizes, furries from different parts of the furry scale, robot girls in every model but a toaster. Damn. This place was the spitting image of a doujin-y PC-98 game. I was (respectfully) staring at a naga girl when my body rudely deposited me at a table.

"Ouch! Fuck!" my voice distorted again as my ass hit a hard stool and my elbows hit the table. Why did I get such a short stool when everyone got a chair? I was nowhere near tall enough before or after whatever my "date" did to me!

My train of thought was interrupted with dump of data. Tables. Moves. Quips and when to use them. I had no idea how to play the game of mahjong, but my hands were making plays all the same. My arm went to grab a tile, and it stretched unnatural, the rest of my limbs poofing a few seconds later to maintain my body scale. My stool felt a little more comfortable. The bunny girl across from me made eye contact with me and my body stretched to meet her gaze. Between the table look-ups taking up a painful amount of space in my head, I noticed I wasn't too small for the table anymore.

Them my head went into overclock without me. I was winning games? My view of my hand was now obscured by my way too revealed chest, but somehow my mind's eye visualized everything perfectly. Another winning hand? I think that was a victory quote that vibrated off my lips.

"Okay, you should see this. I mean, you are stuck here with me." a voice broke my trance.

The woman. Her voice had cut through my mahjong mind fog and I took the opportunity to wrestle my own brain cells back into obedience. Her summons were clearly coming from outside. I left the parlor quickly before I get body-jacked by PC-98-era artificial intelligence again.

On my way out, I caught my reflection in the glass. I had some ecchi'd up doujin body now? I thought I looked like some kind of witch giantess. I shook my head and made a mental note to make a thorough inspection later.

Outside, I found myself staring into a mushy void. It looked like an image that is almost right. Like some supercomputer's misconception of a cityscape. Everything was poorly defined except for the mahjong parlor, a cafe, a bakery, a love hotel, a library, and restaurant. No, wait. I can also see my doppelganger out in the void, in weirdly well defined window. Like a hole to reality. Or my old reality.

"That's that... I just gotta lay low for a few decades and I'm sure she'll forget all about me." I watch "me" drop that case with the floppy into a storage container. The hole fades and my double (my body that was hijacked?) flickers. The realism dissolved off of her, leaving a spunky-looking anime elf in an oversized sweater. 

After fully taking in what I was looking at, the ranting part of my brain took over. I fired off a thousand complaints from my lips- "What the hell kind of trip is this?" "What were you doing with my body?" "Why do you still look hot as a fucking elf?" "HOW long did you say this was going to be?" "I have so much life to get back to- wait nevermind" "Body thievery is NOT okay for a first date" "You can't just isekai me into a smutty mahjong game!" "Why do all my curves have OUTLINES now?" "When the hell-"

She grabbed my chin. My mouth stopped. My gay brain seized the helm. Somehow her being significantly shorter than me AND pulling this stunt burned a hole through that primate muscle in my skull.

She winked. I stammered. I became very aware that she was wearing nothing but the sweater.

"Now where was I? We got this whole place to ourselves, babe. Even if the AIs don't treat you right, I'll keep you company."

I began to protest but she pecked my cheek. I melted. My horny thoughts Cask of Amontillado'd my logical qualms in the deepest crevice of my mind palace.

"We've had a long day haven't we? Let's retire for the night- together."

Maybe... this would work.

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