After painting the car and then making arrangements for it to be shipped for testing by the FAA, Penny plopped herself on the couch and started staring blankly at a point in space. She was a little tired from working and wanted to do something fun for a change. She didn’t want to think about pulling a prank or her next invention or how to market what she already had made. Maybe she was going to play a game. They always cheered her up and gave her fun new ideas. Only… she had a lot more fun when she was part of the game and did things with her own hands, so maybe she would do that instead. Now she only had to choose the game she would play.

-Hey A.I.C.A. select a random game for me to play. Maybe a shooter or survival game. Something action-y.-

-The result of the random selection is a zombie survival game called Resident Evil 3. It has pretty good reviews online.-

-Great choice, let me gear up and I will dimension travel there…-

-No! It is far too dangerous to go there even with a bodyguard. You may be unable to bring the zombie virus to this dimension thanks to the principles of dimension travel, but you could still get hurt or even infected in a number of ways.-

“That is actually a good argument against me going. Guess I would have to be satisfied by playing the game through an avatar. Wait.”-An avatar. What if I use Raven as an avatar. I will rig the body to be controlled by the neural band, connect her sensors with the AR/VR glasses and wear the haptic suit to feel everything she feels. We could even program the interface to count every hit and would she receives as life points or something. And with a little tweaking I could convert the technology for quadriplegic and other fully paralyzed people to use. I was already planning to make it into VR technology, the avatar would be a great addition.-

And with just that one simple idea, Penny got to work making a new neural band, adding headphones and glasses to it and then downloading the full database she stole from the full dive VR companies into it. The Sextopuss may have been advanced tech, but it used just a fraction of the research of how the brain worked. But this, this required the full knowledge to work properly. And so she wouldn’t have to do this every time she choose to play with a different avatar, Penny made sure the new helmet could connect with all kinds of devices with just a few jack changes or software updates.

Next she made a few tweaks to the Raven body, so it could be connected to the helmet and not just A.I.C.A. That would have to do for a quick fix, until she customized a new body she would use as her avatar in extremely dangerous dimensions like zombie and alien infested worlds and many other threats to humanity. But that of course wasn’t the end of her preparations for her trip. She had shopping to do, because as every guide to how to survive the zombie apocalypse would tell you, you can’t survive unprepared. And it wouldn’t be bad to watch some of these guides on YouTube again as a refresher for what to buy.

Penny did a quick shapeshift into one of her less important identities, took a wad of cash from her casino run and then teleported to a few places selling zombie apocalypse supplies. She bought Motoped Survival Bike Black Ops Edition, which she stored in her pocket dimension, chainsaw that suffered the same fate, then she proceeded to visit hardware stores and scan hammers, crowbars, screwdrivers axes and she even found a place that sold machetes. Now that she had the detailed 3D scans of them, she could program her multi tools with the new forms and test them all against the zombies.

When Penny got back home with her purchases she took them out of her pocket dimension and started equipping Raven. First she dressed her in a TBRES, without the strength enhancer, then gave her the 2 multi tools with the new programed tools and all the old capabilities, then equipped the chainsaw to the Survival Bike, packed a hover board in a backpack and then marked Raven, the bike, the chainsaw, hover board and the multi tools so she could retrieve them from the other dimension. And now that she was ready, she turned the game on and send them to the game dimension after which she donned her new helmet and haptic suit and then started playing.

The first thing she stumbled upon was Jill Valentine being assaulted by a mutant zombie that on first glance looked like it was winning the fight. But a quick run through it with the chainsaw remedied that problem rather quickly. In survival guides for the zombie apocalypse chainsaws were mentioned as dangerous tools for both the zombies and the user, but if you were careful it was one of the most effective weapons and this case proved that point rather well. Penny didn’t bother further with Jill, the game being mostly on autopilot, which was very different from most other games. In this case even if the player didn’t control the avatar, while Penny was in this dimension Jill did everything herself like a story mode or like just another citizen of the dimension.

Penny, or rather, Raven, pushed the bike around, searching for an exit from the building and when she was out, she mounted it and started riding around the city, testing different survival tactics and weapons to see which were the most effective. The chainsaw worked pretty well, until it ran out of gas and stopped working. Besides that, the noise attracted a lot more zombies, which also wasn’t a good result. Raven attached it to the bike, then took of the crossbow that came with the bike and started shooting and reloading arrows at the approaching undead. It wasn’t very effective. It took too much time to reload the next arrow, which led to the zombies swarming her very fast. So, now it was time to try something else.

The next few minutes Raven tried every weapon available to her to try and kill the horde approaching her. She tried an axe, with its long reach and heft, working pretty good, but if she was in her body and not an avatar, she would exhaust herself swinging it around. Next she tried the crowbar, swinging it around both like a golf club from below and a shorter baseball bat from up and the sides. The blunt force trauma also worked like a charm, but she had to get a lot closer to every individual zombie to be effective. The hammer also did a good job if she swung it with enough force. If not, she had to repeat the hit a few times to cause enough trauma. The machete did almost as well as the hammer and she was able to behead a few and make it out of the encirclement. The only thing that wasn’t very effective, but was advertised as such was the screwdriver. She had to aim at a specific spot in the brain to stop the zombies from moving and with all the adrenaline that should be coursing through a survivor’s body, which should be a hard thing to do.

Raven continued roaming the streets, eliminating zombies and saving survivors where she could. At one point Penny started questioning if when she killed the mutant zombie, she allowed Jill to board the helicopter and leave the city. If that happened, then she better visit the objectives that would have been left to Jill and help move the story in the right direction. This time however, she wasn’t going to test more weapons. She took out the hove board from her backpack and using duct tape she fastened it to her left arm to use as a shield that could use the acoustic levitators repulse the enemies she encountered. In her other hand she transformed the multi tool into a coil gun that shot subsonic bullets. It was both quieter than a gun and shot faster than a bow or a crossbow.

The next hour was spent killing zombies, busting doors open with a crowbar and fulfilling objectives. She restored power to the subway, visited the station and input a new route, collected different colored gems, herbs and first aid sprays, then found her way to the subway to tell them they could depart. Only, when she arrived there, not everyone was present. With the absence of Jill Valentine, they had send someone else to fulfil the objectives. Of course that wasn’t something that concerned Raven and after a quick conversation, she left the subway and made her way to the local hospital, where she was hoping to find Dr. Bart.

While the others were trying to do what she already did and searching for the doctor in the police station office of S.T.A.R.S. Raven arrived at the hospital and started cleaning house. She didn’t bother searching the hospital for ammo, keys, access cards or voice recordings and just brute forced her way by hacking… electronically and slashing her way everywhere. From time to time she did use her multi tool to take the form of a key, but that was only when she didn’t want to break a metal door to continue forward. And since she arrived here before everyone else even knew the doctor was here, she found him alive and well, barricaded in his office, recording messages about what the corporation did.

The thing was, Raven wasn’t here to save the doctor or find the vaccine or any other game related reason. She was here to copy all of the doctor’s knowledge into a magic crystal with the help of magi craft. The same spell that could transfer knowledge to golems could be used to copy that of other people onto a magic crystal and later be read by someone with the same magic. And Raven had the modifications that allowed Penny to cast the magic through her. She didn’t really plan to start a medical company, but since she was already here and had a person with abundance of biotech knowledge, why waste the trip? Raven rendered the doctor unconscious so he wouldn’t fight the process and then cast the spell. She put the crystal in Penny’s pocket dimension, since she had access and then continued on her way underground, bellow the hospital in search of the motherlode of vaccine. She may as well save the city while she was playing.

On her way down Raven killed everything that moved with extreme prejudice, mostly using her coil gun, but from time to time she also resorted to transforming the multi tool into a vibration blade for increased cutting power. On the way she only stopped to dispatch zombies, mutants and collect fuses, then she copied all research in the machines around, hard copy documents and then destroyed everything in a test tube, except the samples with liquid she found in a refrigerated compartment. That she suspected was part needed for the vaccine, so she took three with her. Then she found a machine that transported 3 more vials to her, that she suspected were antigens. She definitely needed that for the vaccine.

For the last step of the process, Raven found the machine used to synthesize the vaccine and used one sample of the two vials to make one, but kept the other samples in the pocket dimension for future study. With all the research here and these two samples it was possible for her to find cures to all kinds of diseases when she started her medical company. After all if she published the research now, how would she explain where it came from? And creating a new identity with degrees in biotech, then making the identity renowned enough to explain this level of research was harder than simply accumulating enough money to hire people in the field and spoon feed them the research.

If she relied on the game, the only creature left in the facility was the giant blob last boss and Penny wasn’t in the mood to fight such a monstrosity, so she controlled Raven and got her out of the hospital and on her way to someone who could make decisions. She had a viable vaccine in her hands that could be replicated and samples of the components. Maybe the city couldn’t be saved, but the people who would otherwise wipe the city with a missile instead of risking the spread of the infection, with the vaccine could send armed forces who wouldn’t fear getting infected and could search for survivors and clear the city. And after delivering everything, Raven was teleported out of the dimension and back to the lab, where Penny thoroughly disinfected every part of her.

-You know, the next time I visit a zombie dimension, I am going there with another type of avatar. Maybe a predator or a xenomorph. Can you imagine what would happen in a world with only zombies and a single xenomorph alien on the loose? I will have to try and see what could happen. Maybe even try to hatch one from a zombie to see the result. After all, I would be perfectly safe in another dimension while the creature rampages on an entirely defenseless Earth.