Chapter Text
It all happened in an instant. One second she’d been exploring an abandoned building, donning an old VR headset to grab a quick thumbnail for her newest video, the next she was falling into something. Something she could feel physically. It was solid, warm, and weirdly fuzzy – she barely had two seconds to register the texture before she tripped over her own feet and hit the ground face-first with a surprisingly realistic amount of pain. Virtual reality…wasn’t supposed to be able to do any of that.
That something turned out to be someone. Maybe? He was purple, lanky, and apparently a rabbit. Huh. Annndd he was talking to a giant set of talking dentures. Something about a new character? Cool.
Alright, that was enough of that.
She immediately began to pull at the headset. This had been fun and all but there was no way she was sticking around to figure out what the hell those other things were. It was crazy though, no matter how hard she pulled, it didn’t budge. There was no give at all. It felt like the headset had been fused to her head. There was no discernable shape to it either, it just felt like pulling at her hair and face.
What she didn’t realize at the time was that someone else had noticed her efforts. If she’d known what was coming next, maybe she’d have reconsidered going straight for the headset. Maybe she’d have calmed down, looked around, maybe talked to a couple of the characters first before panicking.
But she didn’t.
Instead she heard a set of words that, she’d realize later, were one of the only things she could recall from her life before. A phrase that she’d rejoiced over when she first found it on her wrist, it was so specific, she’d never hear it from anyone else. Something she’d been waiting to hear for almost her entire life. As heat rushed through her body, she felt a single moment of pure unadulterated joy. Whatever this insane scenario was, she knew at that moment she couldn’t regret it, because she’d been meant to be here.
She’d found her soulmate.
“Just keep grabbing at it. That worked for all of us.”
It was only later, after her tour of the grounds, introduction to the rest of the cast, and poor Kaufmo’s abstraction that Pomni began to understand the reality of her situation. She’d met her match in a digital world, where no one knew their name, there was no perceivable way out, and she had absolutely no idea what she’d said in reply to his statement. Did he even know she was his, just as much as he was hers?
God f&$#@ing d@*n it. This was going to be complicated.