Chương 1: Not So Rude Awakening

Rich sunrise and the melodious chirping of songbirds tickled at the edges of Bella's consciousness, threatening to drag her from the depths of her pleasant dream. In spite of her work as a night shift security guard and her late-night gaming sessions, she wasn't unused to waking up early. The stereotypical sounds of sunrise did little to abate the voice demanding she stay in her cozy nest of a bed. She snuggled in, curled up into the warm body pressed against her, letting her thoughts fade again.

It was several minutes later when alarm bells ringing in her head finally managed to break through the haze of heavy sleep, forcing her eyes open and starting her brain chugging along. A cascade of golden hair filled her vision and tickled at her nose, nearly eking a sneeze from her. Something about the sight was off.

She slowly scooted herself away across the bed and was rewarded with the sight of a broad back, lithe in a way that spoke reverently of powerful muscles underneath and crisscrossed with knotted scars that stood pale against dark skin. Her hand inched forward to touch one of those scars in confusion before she caught herself and reeled back. Why am I…? Who is that? The questions rattled noisily in her brain and found no answer.

The last memory she held was of being in her apartment, sitting at her computer and gaming with her friends Holly and Cameron. They'd annihilated the corrupted goddess Irien, The Exiled Moon, final boss of the co-op RPG Ashes of the Exiled Moon, and proceeded the rest of the night on a voice call drinking, laughing, and roleplaying their heroic return and victory celebration in town.

She'd had to read through the game's quest journal to have enough fodder for their roleplaying, even though Holly had kept her own meticulous notes of everything they'd done and could pull quotes from any scene or battle they'd had. Bella planted her hands firmly on the mattress and freed herself from the bed's grasp.

The world expanded beyond bedsheets and an unfamiliar back to reveal a moderately apportioned room, not her own, sparse with worn wooden furniture but thick with the overwhelming scents of spilled alcohol and sex. A hotel room she had no memory of renting, drinks she had no memory of imbibing, sex she had no memory of participating in, a mysterious bedmate she'd never seen before. She turned her examination away from the bed and towards the room proper.

Early morning light filtered in through a thin sun-bleached curtain on the far wall, brightening the space. A small chest lay at the foot of the bed, containing the source of alcoholic stench. She wrinkled her nose at the pile of bottles and continued dragging her gaze past two sturdy chairs and a small table in the corner. Her search ended abruptly when she landed on the dull mirror hanging from a rusty nail on the wall, the gears in her brain freezing in place.

One trembling hand rose and touched her cheek, confirming the sensation was real and the reflection was hers. But that's not me, she thought uncertainly. Eyes of blue like the crackling underside of a glacier stared back at her, large enough to leave a sense of studious wonder. Alabaster pale skin, like it had never known the sun, dusted with a thick line of freckles from one rosy and rounded cheek over a button nose to the other. Plump lips parted in surprise, baring pearly white teeth and fangs.

Onyx black hair framed her face in a bob, bangs brushed to the side, her hair otherwise only parted by a pair of short cat ears in the same pitch black, contrasting the snowy white fluff that protected their insides. Her hand dropped slowly from her cheek, delicate fingers gliding over slender shoulders and a pronounced collarbone, then tracing a curve over the swell of her breast. Bigger than… Mine. She blushed slightly as she explored for longer than she cared to admit.

Finally, she pulled her attention away and drifted her hand down further, wrapping her fingers around the tail she discovered lashing back and forth under her focused attention. Even the sensation of her own fingers at the base of her tail was enough to drive a shiver up her spine. The twitching tail was as jet black furred as her ears, not quite prehensile – she felt some small amount of control over it but couldn't use it like another limb.

Instead, unless she applied a great deal of focus it seemed to be influenced by her emotions. Her hand finally retracted, and she returned her gaze to the mirror. Not Bella Hope, but Bellasora Hollyhope - the character she'd never admit she spent so much time meticulously shaping in the game's character creator. Adventurer, Shatterer of the Exiled Moon, Heroine of Lothlonde, Favored of the Gods, Archmage, wife of Gemma Hollyhope. Wife of Gemma Hollyhope.

She gulped hard and turned, ever so nervously, towards the other person in the bed. Her wife? No – my character's wife. She'd never – Bella made a distressed mewing noise, something her brain filed away as a strange new habit to investigate later. There, staring at her from the far side of the bed, was a face she was intimately familiar with. Gemma Hollyhope. A face she'd spent hundreds of hours pining over while she and Holly gamed together.

Delicately angled cheekbones led to long pointed elf ears, nestled in a golden cascade of intricate braided hair. Broad shoulders, trim and muscled at the same time, flexed as the other woman rose to sit up. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. The motion caused the sheets to fall and revealed more tanned skin and scars that did nothing to detract from her powerful grace.

And it took a great effort to tear Bella's gaze away from the elf's impressively toned stomach to find brilliant emerald eyes that glittered in the morning sun locked on her own. The pair stared for several breaths too long, expressions muddied with confusion.

"Bel…la?" Gemma croaked; she blinked furiously, as if trying to force her brain to make sense of the catkin before her.

"Mrrrw?" Bella mumbled in response. The confused exchange kickstarted her brain back into gear and several facts snapped into place. Gemma was in the same bed as her, but with the same presence and voice as Holly. They were in the bodies of their married game characters. And most distressingly, in a room that filled her sensitive nostrils with sex and booze. In the same bed as her. Oh. Sheets, skin, and little else to hide them.

Her eyes flew wide open and she flushed a rose blush, erupting from her cheeks and burning all the way down her neck. Bella launched like a rocket from the bed and landed with surprising grace on both feet, scrambling across the room in search of something to cover herself. Thankfully, the dress she'd always favored her character wearing was lying in a crumpled pile on the floor. She tugged it on with all due urgency.

It was a deep azure blue, with simple white lace around the square neck and more lace trim around the openings of the cap sleeves. Finally decent, she scrubbed the heels of her hands across her face and tried to forget the sight of the naked elf staring at her. Or maybe she tried to memorize it. Either way, it took several seconds of calming breaths for her to open her eyes again, peeking between her fingers to see … Gemma? … Holly?

standing beside the bed, tightening the belt on a pair of fitted forest green breeches matched with a cream-colored tunic. Much like her own simple dress, the quality of the outfit spoke of a middlingly successful merchant rather than their status as Goddess-slaying Heroines. It didn't matter. Even in her simplest roleplaying clothes, Gemma looked like – No, focus! Bella's voice finally broke the awkward silence, lilted in uneasy question.

"… Holly?"

"Yes, Bella?" Gemma answered as she finally turned fully towards the catkin, brow raised.

"So it… really is you. Not just your character." Her shoulders slumped with relief and the tension she didn't realize she was carrying drained from her.

"I was worried it was just me. And you weren't really you." Bella's thoughts started to catch up with the revelations, now that she wasn't wholly distracted by Gemma's gorgeous – Focus! She rammed her thoughts back on course and ran her fingers through her hair carefully.

"We're uh. In the game?" she offered hopefully.

"Just like the simulations!" the elf quipped back with a half-hearted smile. After a silent moment of staring, they both burst into a fit of nervous giggles. In the game. Three words that carried an immense amount of weight. And strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, an immense amount of delight.

"Isekai, right? Your favorite anime genre?" Bella nodded, " Yeah! And hopefully with no Truck-Kun. We're uh, oh geez. There's so much to figure out. Did we die? Do we know everything our characters know? Is this even the same world? Is it hundreds of years later? Do we have the same skills? Do we have health and mana and stats and – wait do we have magic?" Any anxiety around their sudden world-swapping evaporated as the tantalizing prospect of magic appeared.

Bella screwed her eyes shut and attempted her best effort at meditation, her attention drawn inwards. To her surprise the motion felt natural, as if she'd practiced it hundreds of thousands of times. Her concentration brought her to an ocean of energy that writhed within her chest, easily drawn forth. That energy burst into a bright ball of fire, burning steady in place over her upturned hand.

"Well, that answers two questions!" she stated triumphantly.

"We have magic! And that felt so natural, proving we know at least some of what our characters know. Knew? Are we our characters? Are they us? A weird split consciousness thing? We're gonna wanna figure that one out soon," she told Gemma matter-of-factly, as if she'd known and prepared for the inevitable scenario of waking up as her videogame character.

And perhaps she had, considering the countless late nights Bella had spent gaming with her friends and gushing about her favorite anime and books in the isekai genre. Bella paused for a moment and dismissed the flame from above her hand, then turned her gaze sheepishly to Gemma.

"I'm glad we're in this together." The other woman smiled warmly as she reached forward and squeezed the catkin's shoulder.

"Me too." Gemma's hand lingered for a long moment before she finally blushed and retracted it.

"You know, you made things easy. I can call you Bella still. But am I supposed to be Holly or Gemma?" She toyed with the end of her long braid, fiddling with it in thought.

"I… regret the backstory I came up with a bit, if I'm supposed to be Gemma." With a snort, Bella covered her grin with her hand.

"Lady Gemma, the last standing High Paladin Order of the Uplifting Spirit, the fallen princess of elven royalty, slayer of a goddess, hero of the realm, apostle of the gods?" she counted off on each of the fingers on her other hand, enjoying the rare opportunity to make her normally unflappable friend squirm with embarrassment.

"You hold at least three of those titles too!" Gemma protested back, though her squirming quickly turned into laughter.

"And you're the one who insisted on roleplaying it all out!" Bella laughed with her friend, lowering into an uncomfortably deep bow.

"Don't worry, your highness, I'll still treat you like Holly when we're alone."

"Okay, that's it. If I have to stay in character all the time, I'm going to go around introducing you by your titles." Bella squawked at the threat, grabbing a pillow from the bed and lobbing it at her friend. It hit Gemma square in the face with a quiet wumph before falling uncontested to the floor.

"Oh, now you've done it," the elf growled with a vicious grin, leaning down to grab one of the other pillows from her side of the bed. Before she could throw it, she was interrupted by a different kind of growling. Bella's face flushed red for the second time this morning and her hands clasped around her stomach in an attempt to quiet it. Gemma just laughed again.

"I suppose we should wage a war against that monster in your stomach instead of fighting with pillows."