M'Lady: Status: Happening (Patreon)

   “Okaaaay, what the actual hell?” I let out a nervous laugh as I scroll through more emerging news feeds with my finger. I keep my nails short because of how active my dance major is, and I need to schedule an appointment soon if I’m gonna remain committed to my acrylics.

   Maybe nails won’t be happening this weekend, though, I realize. A knot of anxiety is already tightening in the pit of my stomach.

   Twitter STATUS: HAPPENING memes are somehow already trending, along with a slew of warnings. DONT SHOW ANY1 UR STATS U FUCKING IDIOTS seems pretty sensible. Of course it does—and I literally just showed it to this random dude, here. Fuck my life, right? 

   People taking selfies with their status screens are popping up fast regardless, though. Glimpses caught swiping from image to image don’t paint a very clear picture. High school guy? Level five. Some young actress I’ve never heard of is a level nine. The little bars underneath their stat block seem more interesting—how can I not be curious?

   My extra little bars say dance and persuasion, which… pretty much sum me up, I guess? My status says level seven, which seems... low, I think. I’ve no real basis of comparison for reasonable expectations, but a number closer to like, twenty-two would be more comfortable. Twitter doesn’t show anyone as high as level ten, at least. 

   Notifications are arriving faster than I could keep up, now. UHH GUYS MY CAMRY JUST HIT SOMETHING, AND IT WAS NOT HUMAN along with increasingly panicked posts like JUST SAW GIANT RAT THING ON SOUTHEAST PARK ST and DROP WHAT YOU’RE DOING GET INDOORS.

   Police sirens are going off now, in several different directions, and a shrill scream from somewhere in the distance startles me from my phone screen. Oh fuck. Oh fuck. What, now monsters come out, or something? My eyes nervously flick from my Samsung Galaxy to the low hedges beside the dining hall. I even spin around in place, but there’s nothing weird out here—just me, and that random other guy.

   STATUS: HAPPENING is still being retweeted and SPIDERS, WHY THE FUCK IS IT SPIDERS appears, but now actual sensational photos are beginning to filter in.

   Inside what looked like the dining area of a McDonald’s, some... mostly-transparent pile of blue goop the size of a bean-bag chair is swallowing a table and its seats. Another blurry shot captures the image of a humongous rabbit darting amid the fleeing legs of a rapidly dispersing crowd of people. Rabbits don’t have horns, though—maybe it’s a jackalope, or something.

   If this is a large-scale prank or augmented reality promotion of some kind, it’s working. My heart is pounding, and despite years of therapy and closure it feels like I’m well on my way towards hyperventilating. Yay! Because that’s helpful. I clutch my phone tight and whirl in place again, stupidly searching my surroundings for anything out of place. Thank God I’m not alone right now.

   “Hey, um. Can you walk me to my dorm?” I stammer, staring at the guy. He looks—well, he’s some overweight neckbearded faux-intellectual type? Pretty much like the last guy you want to rely on in any given life-or-death situation. Yeah, of course he is. Perfect. “Please? I, uh, this is fucking terrifying, and…”

   “Why’s my cha negative?” The guy blurts out.

   What? I stare at him. Your... what? Cha? The fuck is your cha?

   My mind races. Chakra, tai-chi, healing auras and mystic energies run through my head for a moment before connecting the cha to the CHA abbreviation from the status screens. Apparently standing for CHARISMA. A negative stat? Some sort of debuff he gets for wearing a fannypack over a trenchcoat, right? Jesus, he doesn’t even have his phone out—he doesn’t know what’s happening!

   “Walk me to my dorm, real quick?” I ask again. “It’s, uh—I think it might be dangerous out here.”

   “Dangerous?” He repeats, staring back at me with that blank look.

   “Please?” I plead, growing more tense and frustrated by the moment.

[   Persuasion I (Pathos) Activated.   ]

[   Persuasion I (Pathos) Failed.   ]

[   Target afflicted with Delusion greater than X immune to control skills lower than X!   ]

[   Target Delusion XI Exception Error.   ]

[   Persuasion I (Pathos) Succeeded. Persuasion was Super Effective!   ]

   “Wait—wait, fuck,” My eyes go wide as a series of messages shimmer into the air, one after another.

   Saying please unintentionally activated a—what, a skill on him? Totally didn’t mean to do that—isn’t that a pretty serious major fuckup? From the text, it shouldn’t have worked, but… did anyways? Wait, does X stand for a variable, or for roman numeral ten? What kind of system would allow that to be ambiguous?

   “I will walk you to your dorm, real quick,” the guy agreed in a mechanical voice, nodding slowly. “It might be dangerous, out here.” 

   Okay, well that’s fucking creepy.

   “Wait—uhh I think I just accidentally glamoured you, or something?” I admitted, biting my lip. “Are you okay? Are you, um…?”

   Before I could undo whatever it was had happened, a giant wasp intervenes, landing with a thunk on the grass right in front of us. When I say giant, I mean this is the biggest fucking wasp I’ve ever seen in my life; a huge, nasty fucker as big as a seagull. It sports a daring red-and-yellow scheme which immediately evokes the thought of those rare, stupidly poisonous things that evolve warning colors.

   Aposematisism? Well, it works—I’m immediately four hundred percent ready to nope the fuck out and I cry the only natural response to seeing a wasp of that size.

   “Kill it, kill it!”

[   Persuasion I (Pathos) Activated.   ]

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