SLIDE // RELEASE

It'd been a sleepless night. Mostly because of the fireworks, though I had stayed up for a few hours after that drawing some art for fun. Hey, you can't blame a girl for indulging in her want to create!

That had meant I'd slept in a good amount, though. Like, half the day. On the one hand, woo! More time to be rested! On the other hand, I only had maybe 8 hours of being awake. Which was wholly not enough. I'd probably be aching for a better schedule come the start of the work week — I always liked to see Colin off, and his work started around 9 AM. It was 1 PM, so I had a few days to make sure I moved my waking time by nine hours.

Fun, I griped to myself as I made some breakfast. Speaking of Colin, he hadn't been at home when I woke up. Probably went on a walk or something, or maybe he'd gotten a little too drunk during the festivities and passed out in a bar? Wait, no. He went to the roof. Maybe he was in the hospital after he fell off, I mused.

Heh. No way that'd happen.

But I did wanna catch up. I ate breakfast at the table, and pondered how I'd do that. "Pondered". It was obvious, but I always had fun daydreaming about a dumb way to make his dense ass blush. I mean... not that I was into him, but it was pretty clear from what I could see that he'd repressed some part of himself. And I was uniquely equipped to peer into that repression, as a trans person who'd had a good eighteen years of repression behind my belt.

Lavie had stopped by and said hello last night, which was a surprise for sure. She said that Colin asked her to meet him at Avalanche Station, but... never specified a time? And then he'd forgotten to tell me. But hey, that's Colin for sure! She didn't have any issues with it, and we shared a good laugh while I constantly made ironic jokes about both of their "attractiveness quotients". Those always made Lavie chuckle just a little harder.

The act of flirting with your friends was always fun. I mean, bantering was fun too! Both were good, I just naturally leaned towards flirting because it made people embarrassed and look funny. Doubly so for eggs, whether those eggs be simply GNC or transfem or otherwise.

Anyways, as I finished up breakfast — and yes, it was breakfast. I "broke" my "fast" at two PM, so it was breakfast. — I shot a DM over to him on Pidgin. I'd always preferred direct messaging over simply pinging in servers. Just a different feel, you know?

catgirlBrave: Hey! Woke up pretty late, sorry I couldn't say good morning in person. How're you doin'?

Callin Balls: uhhh

Callin Balls: well that's pretty complicated

Callin Balls: listen now might not be the best time

All his messages came through nearly-instantly. Normally he was kind of a slow typer, at least on his phone... what was up?

catgirlBrave: I won't pry, but I do want to know.

catgirlBrave: You know I care, right? Is there any way I can help?

Callin Balls: maybe

Callin Balls: i guess now is as good a time as any, but you've gotta promise to not freak out or call the cops or anything

Callin Balls: ...or wait maybe do actually call the cops? i'm not honestly sure

catgirlBrave: Can't help if I don't know what's going on, buddy.

Callin Balls: alright fine

Callin Balls: okay so i think i got isekaied

Callin Balls: also i'm a robot now

Callin Balls: did you know that robots in this world have autocorrect by default? like, i'm writing all this down via my HUD and shit

Callin Balls: and it's all like "Hello, my name is Colin!" before i recorrect it, because i havent found the damn off switch for the stupid fucking

Callin Balls: anyways its a kinda cyberpunk dystopia capitalist thing i dunno exactly

Callin Balls: also i think i like the name berry more than colin right now

Callin Balls: for also complicated reasons

Eight messages sent in the span of three seconds was a bit anxiety-inducing, but it did sort of lend credence to his — their? — claims. But I did want a little more proof.

catgirlBrave: I mean... that's a little far fetched. Mind sending like, a selfie or something?

There was a brief pause, and then Berry sent a video. In the video was her and another girl — were those dog ears??? — sitting in what looked like the world's saddest chain restaurant booth. The girl on the other side of the table seemed to be looking forlornly down at her water, thoroughly not paying attention. Berry panned the video over to look at the window, which clearly held a ghost-like reflection of a girl with pink hair wearing a sailor uniform.

The girl in the reflection signed "V-A-L-O-R-NAME-YOU" in early-2020s American Sign Language, a dialect not commonly signed in its past form for at least three years now. Both Berry and I knew bits and pieces already, though, and since we hadn't super-broadcast it on the internet...

The video cut out. Seems Berry was really in another world now. But there was one thing I'd noticed...

catgirlBrave: You got fucking isekaied into an anime girl???

Callin Balls: Shut the fuck up Valor.

Callin Balls: shut the fuck up valor*

Callin Balls: however technically no

Callin Balls: this is actually a hologram so really i'm some kind of weird combat android?

Callin Balls: a Keizen Combat Android™

Callin Balls: that's what alice calls it

Callin Balls: uhhh alice is the other person in the vid she's normally a catgirl

catgirlBrave: Wow, you're really rolling in pussy right now, huh?

catgirlBrave: Before you say anything I'll shut the fuck up.

catgirlBrave: I hope you're doing well, though. It's... well, a lot. Obviously. You're not feeling any dysphoria?

Callin Balls: i've been doing my best to ignore all of the parts of how this feel until after i am done doing probably dumb things

Callin Balls: i mean i'm not sure where i fall now or whatever but like i've got more important things to do

Callin Balls: currently that involves sneaking into a gigacorporation's shell corporation's omega lab or something and stealing tech so we can take down the gigacorporation

catgirlBrave: Wait, are you serious

catgirlBrave: You know how direct action works, Berry. There's more involved than just stealing stuff and taking down corporations, that's how you get assassinated.

Callin Balls: yeah i know

Callin Balls: but uh

Callin Balls: technically i'm the way to level the playing field?

Callin Balls: since i'm stolen keizen tech in this world, i have a lot of anti-assassination measures

Callin Balls: like, for instance, the hologram thing and also advanced combat protocols

Callin Balls: most of the missing firepower we have is gonna be in the corporation we're stealing from

Callin Balls: so itll be okay i promise

catgirlBrave: Stay safe.

Callin Balls: i will, mom

Callin Balls: but seriously im doing my best

Callin Balls: this seems like the perfect stealth heist, esp. since the company in question is small enough that keizen won't give a shit and their security is lax because theyre in relatively nameless suburbs

Callin Balls: according to alice, who's the estranged daughter of the fucking CEO

Callin Balls: so we dont have much of a reason to lie to each other

catgirlBrave: Yeah, fair. I'm not happy, but I can't really do anything to help.

catgirlBrave: Ah, shit. I just realized. You don't have any other option, do you? No ID other than being "stolen tech", so...

catgirlBrave: Dang. Yeah, best of luck.

Callin Balls: you know i kinda hadn't considered that a lot but

Callin Balls: yup

Callin Balls: anyways, our sting is probably gonna happen soon

Callin Balls: hope this line's encrypted

catgirlBrave: Actually, yeah. How are you even still on the Pidgin network?

Callin Balls: a question for the ages

Callin Balls: i have no fucking idea

Callin Balls: wait, uh

Callin Balls: okay so i know this is stupid but can you help me change my pidgin user

Callin Balls: my laptops already signed in, i left it in my room

Callin Balls: password is "irish reunification of 2024"

Callin Balls: all lowercase

I snorted. Here we go.

catgirlBrave: What to?

Callin Balls: don't you dare fuckin make fun of me

Callin Balls: but uh

Callin Balls: could you change it to "chamberry"

And there it was. I knew they had better things to worry about (and I thought I was being very accepting by not immediately making fun of them for being an egg and instead taking their plight seriously!) but come on.

Still, it was a request I could fulfill easily.

catgirlBrave: Consider it done, my beggy friend.

catgirlBrave: Uh, *[non-sexually-charged rendition of "Berry" and "Egg"]. Sorry.

Callin Balls: nah that's a fair point

Callin Balls: glad im a robot because that would have made me snort and it'd look dumb to stare into space and then randomly start laughing

Callin Balls: also, can you make up a reason for people to not text me for the next bit

Callin Balls: distracting + i dunno how much i can say without coming off as a giant liar

Callin Balls: so

catgirlBrave: Got it. Want an order of fries with that?

Callin Balls: hell yes

Callin Balls: gotta go now

Callin Balls: ttyl valor!

catgirlBrave: Of course. Stay safe, friend.

As I got up from my position hunched over the phone holding an anomalous link to another world, I reconsidered whether this was something to freak out about.

Yes. Obviously.

But freaking out was not a good decision right then, and it still wasn't right now. I'd scream at Berry for being dumb later! Besides, they probably had their own person to scream at them for being stupid. Anyways, I made my way to their horribly-organized room and logged into their account, changing their username while trying to think of a reason they wouldn't want to be bothered.

Something realistic, that's sort of a half-truth. Ideally speaking, it's not something we'd get questioned endlessly over. What would that be? For their closer friends, just requesting genuine patience would work, but for the people who knew her in servers... meh.

Ah.

Well, they'd hate me for it later. As was the point, I giggled to myself. But, in my defense, it would be really funny to say that they found someone they want to get to know better and are taking a brief camping trip out to the wilds with them...

Heh. Yeah, that'd be great. The look on their face would be priceless.

I was glad they were actually aware that this'd effect their gender, though. They were always a little dense, but this sort of thing was probably sparking euphoria or dysphoria in them. And it was a prudent point to save that little internal epiphany for later, when they had time! Hell of a way to get your egg cracked for most people. "I Was Isekaied Into A Cyberpunk Dystopia As A Girl-Flavored Robot?!", now on TV from 3:30 to 4.

Hm. On the subject of cyberpunk dystopias, we were steadily on our way to that point before the whole Revolution thing happened. And now that our technology was advanced enough to have stuff like digitized time dilation and localized time distortions, I wondered how the other world had it? Tech-wise.

That'd be something for sure. If things worked the same, I could probably give Berry quite the edge — time distortions and such as an addon to her one-person insurrection would be useful...

The forefront of temporal distortions, at least right now, was the budding full-dive VR technology employed by the team behind Beyovaria's Horizon. There was absolutely more — real-life time distortions were commonplace in some Factory Runner domains around the world — but those were clunky, large buildings focused around making the surrounding area function faster than the rest of the world while keeping those working there alive for a standard amount of time.

No, the team behind BvHz was able to localize those time distortions in their server farms, and even implement limited technology into their dive-pods. It was almost man-portable. That would help. And, well. I had a bit of clout to throw around as an active artist since before the Revolution. I quickly found they were hiring artists, to nobody's surprise.

Maybe I'd just send in one little job application, and we'd see how it went.