Arnold was watching a video by a pick-up artist trying to give advice on how to be more confident and how to make women know you’re into them, when he got a loud beeping on his smartglass technology whatever. He paused the video and checked it.

A message from Kat.

She was ready to enter the game, ready to begin the path into the Tower of Somnus.

Arnold was absolutely giddy. So giddy he could hardly get himself to go to sleep when he laid down on his bed and turned off all the lights. Just the thought of finally being in the game with Kat, where the two of them would work together and inevitably bond until they were inseparable and until they were constantly going at it in the domestic realm.

Somnus did, in fact, have an intimate relations feature; he did very thorough research into that aspect before even buying the subscription. So they didn’t even need to sleep in the same bed to be able to consummate their passions for one another, which would really help for their class divide bullshit.

She’d finally get one over on that bitch Anna, who he not only beat in the aptitude test, but would be soon full-on cucking. And he’d get one over on his bitch mom, who forbade him from dating anyone whose parents were below manager level.

Arnold was already one of the most handsome guys in the arcology. Soon he’d be one of the most powerful as well.

Finally, with visions of bare breasts bouncing through his head, he fell asleep and his early Christmas gift came early...

He landed in the fantasy world, in a small village next to the great tower or whatever it was called, and Kat was already there waiting for him. And oh, boy was she waiting.

Her schoolgirl uniform, her Jawa Juice uniform, gone completely, and replaced by the default warrior class armor. Though calling it armor was a stretch, because it functioned to cover up almost no part of her entire body.

It revealed in taunting, almost begging ways the most vital parts of her body. Her legs, both of them, from ankle all the way up to buttocks, were all there in their shiny pale glory. The straps over her chest covered up her nipples, but only just. Everything else on her torso, from her cleavage to her supple little belly button, were on display. And those shoulders, man those shoulders...

Arnold couldn’t help it. He had to do it...

“Kat, you’re here!”

He ran to her with the greatest of speed and the most shining of smiles and literally glomped her with a hug, like the kind you would see in an anime or more likely an anime convention.

He hugged her tight, with the pretense of excitement, which was real, but of course the underlying desire to finally feel this womanly skin against his own body, to feel the warmth of this woman in her scantily clad starter armor. Real it was. Warm it was.

“Mmm...”

Then, violently, Kat pushed him off and he fell butt-first on the dirt. “Get the HELL off of me and never do that again.”

“Geez, I was just so happy to see you. Can’t friends have a hug?”

Kat blushed. “Not when I’m... When I’m like this, you know?” She held her body close, now, with incredible self-consciousness as to just how much skin she was showing off.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” he told her. “You look gorgeous. Any man would kill to have you by his side with a style like that.”

“That’s not why I’m playing, though... If I wanted company from a man, I’d just go to the eighth floor of the arcology and stand there until someone propositioned me.”

Prostitution... Disgusting. Arnold hated the very thought of such impurity. He was glad that Kat had chosen the more dangerous, more exciting life of a runner than to ruin herself like so many women in the arcology did. It was a choice they made, and one they would someday pay for with shame.

They were also too expensive to be worth it, in his opinion...

“So, want to get going?” Arnold asked. “There’s not really a tutorial or anything, so I’ll show you the ropes.”

“Can I please get better armor first?”

“I told you, stop worrying! You’ll do fine.”

The two of them traveled around, doing RPG stuff and adventuring. They did a lot of stuff involving stats and systems, but Arnold didn’t really think any of that was interesting, so he just sort of skipped over it mentally.

Then...

Then the alien came.

Dorrik.

That evil alien who would come and steal his girl.