1 Fluffles

A black cat sat in an empty void. It turned its head, looking around before laying down to take its nap. Normally the VR helmet would attune itself to something familiar to the user to make it introduction.

A white orb floated down in front of the cat. "Welcome to Infinite Skies. With our near-infinite character creation, we ask you to take your time in making your ideal character." The void shifted to a large skybox with six planets overhead.

The cat bounced up, standing on its hind legs and smacking at the light with its paws "HISSSSS!"

"Please don't hit the help system," The orb floated away from the cat. "We sense a language barrier. Please wait as we adjust the system to suit your needs. Adjusting complete. Welcome to the game Fluffles."

"Don't disturb my nap!" she glared as she started to clean herself.

"Please create your character," The white orb repeated.

"I can understand you, but I don't understand. I don't want to create anything." She tilted her head.

"How about presets from your mind," The orb offered, trying its best to adjust to her. An entire row of characters appeared, showing humans, beastman, and everything in between.

Fluffles approached each one, not understanding what was happening, as it started pawing at the leg of a twin-tailed girl. The eyes were a stunning light green, almost white. The hair was brown and messy, going down to the neck. She enjoyed pawing at the tight leather pants the character model had.

"Very good, now that you've settled on a character, we shall decide your class," The orb floated around

"I haven't settled on anything!" Fluffles growled and turned towards the orb again, trying to claw at it.

The orb floated out of reach as Fluffles tried her best to claw it. "Close combat-oriented, natural weapons preferred, Brawler class selected."

"What are you talking about?" Fluffles started to hiss.

"Your starting location will be in urban fantasy the sixth world, in the slums of Bleakedge," The light declared.

"I'm not some alley cat. You can't just send me to the slums!" Fluffles shouted before being enveloped in a bright light. She awoke surrounded by people, NPCs, casually walking by. Small lamps lit the roads with blinking neon signs in multiple windows.

"You should head over to the marked indicator to start the tutorial," The white orb suggested, appearing around Fluffles. Her claws came out of her gloves as she tried slashing the light. "Please avoid attacking the help system."

Fluffles growled at it and tried to crawl along the ground but somehow found it uncomfortable. Dragging herself to a nearby wall, she slowly stood up, steadying herself just in case she fell. "This is unnatural. Usually, my servant walks on two legs." Fluffles let go of the wall once she felt comfortable standing and began walking forward.

"We suggest completing the tutorial to join other players," The orb repeated, floating above Fluffles.

"I heard you the first time, so shut up!" Fluffles hissed.

She approached the exclamation-marked person that the system wanted her to. They had a hat and wore an overcoat. The only thing you could see was their mouth. "Hello there, I'm glad you woke up. It seems the gods have answered our-"

"Where am I?" Fluffles interrupted, pawing at the NPC. "It's been a while since I got petted, so I give you permission to pet me."

"Our call and sent you to deal with this mess. multiple dark creates that look like humans have taken over the city and-"

"I said you could pet me!" Fluffles shouted, getting irritated.

"And we're hoping you could assist our group-"

"Why won't you pet me!" Fluffles clawed at his shoulder, causing him to kneel, an overreaction to being attacked as he looked up at her.

"How did you know I was lying to you? I wanted to use the god's power to assist my faction's rise to power!" The NPC shed its disguise as a hulking werewolf appeared before Fluffles. "If I can't use you, I'll kill you."

Fluffles hissed and take a step back, "I rescind your permission to pet me!" The werewolf swung its arms at Fluffles as she jumped back to avoid the attack.

The werewolf charged forward as Fluffles instinctively ran away from the monster but ran into an invisible boundary. "You cannot escape from this fight." The light orb stated.

Fluffles hissed at the orb before getting attacked by the wolf's claws. The shock of the attack did go through her body, but it wasn't nearly as painful as she expected.

She jumped against the invisible wall a kicked off it, turning around as her knee connected with the werewolf's head and followed it up with a scratch against the wolf's nose.

Something unlocked inside Fluffles, granting her the first skill of her class, poisoned weapon, activating it immediately. Her claws started glowing green, and after avoiding the werewolf's next attack, she shoved them into the werewolf's chest. Her attack created a wound that turned green and bubbled as the werewolf held its chest in pain.

A wicked smile appeared on Fluffles face as a new sense of control and power flowed through her. She grabbed the werewolf by the head, giving it another knee to its face before it collapsed, dissipating from being killed.

"You have passed the tutorial. Now you'll be sent to the other players in this world." The light orb announced as Fluffles was enveloped by light again.

She awoke in a city park, surrounded by new players like her. Out of habit, she brought her gloves up to her ears and start trying to clean herself as someone noticed.

"Ohh, are you roleplaying a cat?" A woman asked from behind, startling Fluffles.

"Ahhh!" Fluffles hissed and started smacking the person's head.

"ah, ah, I'm sorry for startling you. You don't need to RP that seriously, sheesh." The woman sighed, "and here I thought you looked cute trying to clean yourself."

"I am cute!" Fluffles pouted as she looked at the woman. She had a black trench coat and short black hair. Her eyes were a clear blue and had two small fangs coming from her mouth with the name Detrix over her head.

"So Fluffles want to level up together? We need to reach level twenty before we can start travelling to other worlds." Detrix suggested as a prompt to create a party appeared in front of Fluffles.

"Ah, what's this!" Fluffles shouts, her body twitching from the sudden prompt in her face.

"This is a friend request. You may accept by hitting the check or decline with the x," The white ball appeared.

"You still have your help system on? Is this your first time playing a video game?" Detrix asks, with both confusion and worry.

Fluffles accepted the party invite as she nodded her head, "first time, doing anything like this. I usually just lay around and relax, sometimes take naps."

"You seem to have an easy life," Detrix stated with envy. "Come on, let's do a few of the story quests, level up quickly and explore the other worlds.

They quickly accepted the first mission, which boiled down to protecting an NPC and bringing them back. "So let's show each other what we can do."

Detrix charged forward as werewolves appeared, attacking the NPC. She pulled out a katana and slashes the werewolf. Fluffles attacked a different Werewolf, getting used to the game as she activated her claws turned green again, scratching at one of the werewolves. Fluffles brought up her foot to kick the monster and jump back.

"Not too shabby," Detrix smiled and poured liquid silver on her blade, "as a hunter, I can alter the effects of my weapons depending on what I fight." She impaled the werewolf and slashed out through the side. "Hmph, the prologue boss was harder."

Avoiding the werewolf's attack, Fluffles ducked down and flipped back, kicking the creature in the chin. The poison made the werewolf sluggish as Fluffles closed in again and clawed the werewolf to death.

"Seems fighters get stronger late game, early game it takes you a bit longer to kill things."

"It's pretty fun killing these things," Fluffles announced with a smile.

"You'll get better, and maybe we'll keep being in a party to kill lots of things," Detrix offered.

"Thank you. For that I give you permission to pet me," Fluffles proudly announced.

"Huh?" Fluffles' statement bewildered Detrix, but she still reached over to Fluffles' cat ears and slowly started to pet her.

Fluffles started to purr, pushing her head against Detrix's hand. It was only for a few moments before Fluffles jerked her head away from Detrix's hand, almost clawing her.

"Okay, that's enough," Fluffles announced and started to clean her ears again.

"You like acting like a cat," Detrix stated, giving Fluffles a weird look.

"I am a cat," Fluffles stated, her ears twitching as she tilted her head. I took a nap inside a strangely shaped bucket and woke up here.