Copycat: A Displaced Tale

“Log One, First of Winter. Location, as of yet unknown. My name is… Was Adam Belle. And I seem to have found myself in a new body…? I’m making logs using this voice recorder I seem to have woken up with to help get my bearings and establish a basis of events, but I’m still struggling to get used to what I am now.

“I suppose keeping it military is just to fit the new outfit, but… Okay, I’ll just get to the point. I’ve become a big, violet, female cat with a weird cannon gun thing for an arm and some serious armor that makes me think of Mass Effect. I’ve even got this UI thing… And the name above the health bar that I assume is mine says my name is Captain Anna Belle.

“There’s more. The UI says my arm cannon is in Copy Mode. I don’t know what that means, but I figure I’ll find out when I use it… Until then, I can’t and probably won’t be able to switch it into any other mode. At the very least I found one of the triggers in this thing that shoots something resembling bullets. Unfortunately for me, they don’t seem to do a lot of damage… I feel like Samus. Start off with a Pea Shooter, and you have to steal abilities from others to get it to work better.

“I guess right now though, my first priority though should be survival. I need food, something my ‘Inventory’ didn’t contain when I woke up, but enough tools to harvest anything easily…. If I could use two hands. This stupid cannon is gonna get annoying, taking up my entire right arm. And that’s my dominant hand too.

“Whatever. For now, this is… Captain Anna Belle, signing off.”

Click. Anna sighed as she put the voice log back in her pack. After a moment, she stood up, getting off the tree stump she discovered while getting used to her new body. She looked down at the six sided stick resting over her hand - which she felt under that mess of circuitry and triggers. ‘So this is the only thing I’m armed with, huh? Some stupid pea shooter with the potential for godhood. I guess I can work with this.’ She thought to herself, halfway between pessimism and optimism. Honestly, to her it looked pretty much like a smoothed over version of Utsuho Reiuji’s arm cannon from Touhou. Or as some people might know her, “that winged girl with nuclear in her song’s title.” ...Except this arm cannon was nowhere near as long.

Anna sighed a little, letting the attached weapon hang at the ready in front of her, since that’s what it was for. After a while just wandering in a random direction - East, she couldn’t help but note - Anna ran across a few trees with strange rainbow colored fruit on them and a beautiful Rainbow Aurora above the trees. They looked like apples, but due to the coloring, she couldn’t be sure. She set her UI to scan one as she picked it, noting that it even felt like an apple…

After taking a bite of the apple, Anna immediately felt a surge of energy, and her mouth melted at the flavor. On her UI, the energy bar under the health bar, used to note how much energy could be routed to the gun on her arm, turned from green to a rainbow color, and the white 100 on it turned into an Infinity symbol. It lasted for a full minute after she finished chewing the bite. “Holy shit… I need to pack these things!” Anna then climbed the trees, picking the multi colored apples and digitising them into her previously mentioned Inventory.

Suddenly, a loud howl tore through the small orchard of strange apple trees, stopping Anna’s carefree attitude and causing her to spring into a ready stance. She held her weaponized arm at the ready, aiming ahead of where she looked. She was certain the howl did not come from a friendly creature. Down one unseen path, she saw a large wolf, the same size as a Clydesdale horse. It was one hell of an intimidating thing, especially considering her gun was no better than a Pea Shooter at the moment… But hey. A tutorial boss fight wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to her.

Anna immediately began firing her weapon, pulling the trigger as fast as she possibly could to deal as much damage as she could in a short amount of time. As expected however, they didn’t do much more than piss it off… Anna tried to dodge its charge, but was surprised when it stopped and instead headbutt her, stunning her with a bit of a concussion. Even stunned, however, Anna refused to stop fighting to handle the pain. She kicked out, the impact causing far more damage than her pea shooter. It looked like this gun was worthless as a weapon, for now. She backpedaled a bit and tried to kick the beast, but the weight of the armor slowed her down.

The wolf pounced again, stunning her again before biting down on her arm and flinging her into a tree. Thankfully, her armor protected her from most of the damage, but the impact still wasn’t very pleasant… nor was the remanent feeling of electricity surging through her nerves. The wolf charged at her again, and she barely had time to react. On impulse, she punched it in the face with a heavy left hook. In response, the wolf jumped back, disoriented.

“That easy huh?” Anna quipped as she stood up and aimed her gun at the beast again. This time, she pulled the Secondary trigger, causing a blue light to begin filling up like a circular progress bar on the end of the gun attached to her arm. It thankfully finished filling before the wolf recovered.

Stun Pulse acquired. Shots augmented with lightning, causing more damage with a 70% chance to stun.

Anna smiled at the text notification and pulled the primary trigger, this time unleashing a blue bolt of energy from her gun. The wolf took the blast to the face, causing its muscles to spasm wildly for a few seconds. It shook itself to recover, growling at Anna before running off, deciding to find an easier meal. Anna breathed a short sigh of relief, and stared after the wolf beast... almost wondering if she should have finished it off and "tamed" it...

Anna blinked at the thought as she realized a warm feeling had passed over her at the thought. "Oh no... I'm not..." she tried to deny, but as the warm feeling grew, so too did her dread. A status effect popping up under her health bar only confirmed her fears. "...I'm in Heat... I should have figured the Deities were gonna fuck with me..." she groaned. She almost face palmed, but then remembered she had a gun for an arm.

Deciding for now to ignore it, Anna set out to explore a little more. She dearly hoped she wouldn’t get into some kind of yiffy situation… At least she had a gun as defense against it. Thankfully she didn’t exactly get into one. Instead, she found a good clearing to set up camp in, and did so since the sun was beginning to set. After she set up camp, she took up her voice log and hit Record.

“I’ve set up camp for the night. The morning was rather eventful, beginning with an orchard of odd apples that, according to my UI, allows me a period of time in which my energy is not used by actions that normally require it. Ten seconds is my rough estimate.

“Another acquisition I’ve made is a new addition to my weapons fire. Whereas before it was comparable to a pea shooter, it now does a moderate amount of damage and is augmented by lightning. This came from using the copy ability on a large wolf-like creature with electric attacks. I did not take much damage from it’s assault, but it chose in the end to hunt easier prey.

“Not much else was yielded from exploration. Most of the forest seems quiet, but I will explore more after dawn. I hope to find some form of civilization soon. It troubles me that I may be alone here, but I will hold out hope that I am not. This is Captain Anna Belle, signing out.”