You approach the screen to get a better look but even if it's a touch screen, you don't see any sort of entry field to type your name. You even tap the screen a few times to make sure but nothing happens. Not sure what else to do, you say your name out loud. Maybe it's voice activated, this all seems like it's out of some nerdy sci-fi manga anyway. "Yamagata Sakiko."
"Acknowledged. Please verify all data is correct."
As the vaguely female electronic voice answers you, the blank blue screen starts to actually fill up with text. Let's see, they have your name, your age, your birthdate. That's all standard and correct. But as you scroll down, it starts to get really detailed. They've got the schools you went to, not just your high school but your middle school and elementary school too. Not just your current address but every address you lived at while growing up too. Names of your parents, your grandparents, your extended family.
"Jeeze, this is really stalkery. Wait, are those my three sizes?!" You cry out in embarrassment and instinctively cover yourself even though nobody is around. That's private info damnit, only your manager and tailor are supposed to know that! And wait, they have your weight too! You're not that heavy! Except… okay, maybe you have been hitting the sweats a bit much lately… and you haven't been on a scale recently. "Dammit!"
Well, you didn't think it could get worse than that, but somehow it does. Because after scrolling through all your embarrassing mundane information, they somehow have details on your magic singing too. "Wait, what? 'Magecraft specialization: Bardic. Enhances vocal performance via magical energy infusion, creating an effect of deeper entrancement and stronger, longer lasting emotional responses'? Ooooh no no no no!"
You collapse to your knees, clutching your head as you panic. How did they find out your biggest secret? Are you in trouble? Are these the magic police? Are you in magic jail? Nooo, you didn't do anything wrong, you didn't hypnotize anyone or anything, you just made your singing better! Or, wait, are these guys the secret idol police!? You wail in despair. "I didn't cheat, I swear! It's natural talent, that's all!"
"Please verify all data is correct."
The electronic voice snaps you out of your downward spiral. For a moment you consider running, but even if the door you came in through would open for you, which you doubt, where are you going to go? It was freezing out there. You can't run away, you'll just die! At the same time, you don't think you can convince a random computer that you've changed your mind and you want to leave now, pretty please. You guess that the best course of action would be to finish up here and hopefully find an actual person you can talk to to figure out what's going on. You really hope you haven't been sent to idol jail before your career could even really get off the ground.
You get up from the ground and turn back to the screen, intending to get through the rest of the information as quickly as possible. You feel a little better when you see that your Origin and Element are listed as 'unknown', although you don't really know what those mean either. At the very least, these weirdos don't know absolutely everything about you.
"Data Verified. Thank you, Yamagata-San." The computer says as you push the 'Confirm' button on the screen. It's a little odd hearing an honorific when the computer has been speaking english this entire time, but oh well. "Please enjoy this simulated battle while you wait."
"Battle? Wait-" But before you can even protest properly, the walls shimmer with these glowing blue boxes you can only describe as digital looking and suddenly you aren't standing in a small white room anymore.
You're standing in the middle of a wide grassy field, covered in the most perfect bright emerald grass you've ever seen. The bright blue sky above you has only the occasional fluffy pure white cloud drifting across it and the cool breeze smells fresh and natural. It's like you've been transported to another world or something.
"What the heck…" You mutter as your mind boggles. This is, frankly, impossible and your best guess is that you're in a virtual reality environment somehow. The computer did say this was simulated after all. But while you've never tried a VR game before, you left otaku stuff like that alone, you have difficulty imagining that it could be as realistic as this.
"Master?" Again, a nearby voice jolts you from your thoughts. Turning around, you find three figures standing behind you. The first seems to be an armored knight, holding a sword and with a bright red plume sprouting from their helmet. The second seems to look more musketeer-ish, with medieval looking clothes, a single breast plate as their only armor and a red hat with a feather on it and a massive brim that flops in front of their face, making it hard to make out details. They're wielding a long spear. And the third also isn't fully armored, with a breastplate, greaves and gauntlets but also a long red skirt covering their legs. They wield a boy and while you can see their face clearly, it's so androgynous and generic, you have a hard time thinking of anything they look like. Hanging from their waist is a quiver full of arrows for the bow they hold in their hand.
"Master, enemies are emerging. Your orders?" The knight asks again, pointing in the distance where at first it looks like earth itself is rising up in lumps. But then the bumps rise further and you watch them take the shapes of giant, misshapen men made of stone. They must be at least 8 feet tall each and they glare at you with glowing red eyes.
Right, the computer did say battle. Ugh, you're so not interested in video games. But if this is what you're stuck with, you might as well try it out. "Uh, fight them?"
Not the most in depth orders, obviously, but the archer draws their bow while the knight and the spearperson rush off to do battle And 'rush off' might be a bit of an understatement. The knight kicks up dust and debris as the ground beneath their feet practically explodes with the force of their first steps and the spearperson is even faster, requiring you to reinforce your eyes just to be able to keep up.
You can only watch in stunned amazement as the battle rages. The archer's arrows are pinpoint accurate and slam into the rockmen with the force of tank shells, the spearperson's weapon is a blur as they stab dozens of times in a second while dodging every attack that comes their way and the knight just meets the blows of the rockmen head on, sending out shockwaves that you can feel dozens of meters away as they simply smash through the living stone.
"W-what the hell is going on?" You ask, laughing nervously. It's like you're in a movie or something, standing right in the middle of a superhero fight. No wonder civilians are so useless in those movies, you're completely stunned by what's going on. You don't think you could turn your eyes away if your life depended on it.
As it turns out, you're wrong, you can look away if your life is in danger. The ground rumbles nearby and another one of those stonemen rises from the ground right in front of you. Your archer reacts faster than you, firing an arrow into the monster's face. Unfortunately, these things are tough enough that a single arrow isn't enough to put it down, no matter how lethal-looking the arrow sticking out of its forehead looks. It continues to move, swinging its arm as it finishes rising from the earth and hitting the archer with enough force to send them flying away. And then it turns to face you.
Only by flooding your legs with mana do you manage to jump out of the way as its arm smashes down where you were standing a second before. Its attack leaves a crater, blasting up a mess of dirt and grass, most of which lands on you. For one delirious moment you want to cuss it out for getting you dirty, before rationality reasserts itself and you turn to run. Unfortunately, you hear the rumbling steps behind you, shockingly able to keep pace with you even as you push your magic the limit enhancing your body to run faster.
"Aaaaaaaah!" You scream as you run, too scared out of your mind to do anything else. Then another monster explodes up from the ground in front of you and you have to juke to the right to avoid running right into it. As you do, you catch a glimpse of the knight smashing one of the first rock monsters to bits, reminding you of which you had temporarily forgotten in the adrenaline rush.
"Save meeeeeee!" You shout at the top of your lungs and a second later the spearperson slams into one of the rockmen chasing you like a lighting bolt.
What follows is an unending hell of screaming, combat and almost dying way too many times. Almost dying once was already way too many times. But eventually, the warriors under your command destroy the last of the rockmen and that's that.
"Simulated battle complete. Congratulations, your rank is: E." The computer from earlier and the simulation breaks down, leaving you in that same white room as before, taking the ground, grass and grime that covered you with it.
What it didn't fix was how tired, sweaty and gross you felt. Your clothes were a rumpled mess, you were sure your hair was simply awful and you were so out of breath, you couldn't summon up the slightest bit of cuteness. You could have taken the time to fix your appearance, you probably should have in fact, but you were just too tired to care. You didn't have a mirror to check anyway. What you did have was a massive splitting headache. All you wanted was to find a bed to nap in and then, maybe after sleeping a week, someone to shout at until you felt better.
The interior door slid open and you stumbled through it. It opened into a long, white corridor that was kind of lacking in details or maybe that was just the way your vision was blurring. You managed a few steps, wobbled as everything went white for a second, walked a few more steps and suddenly found yourself on the floor.
"Mm, soft floor…" You muttered. You never realized how comfy the floor could be before. Why you could fall asleep right here and now. And so you do.
When you wake up, you will be greeted by a colored blur. What color will it be?
[ ] Pink and Black
[ ] Peach and Turquoise
[ ] White and Orange
[ ] Brown and Blue
[ ] A whole group of blurs
[ ] Orange and White
[ ] Orange and Green
[ ] Black and Red
[ ] Purple and White
[ ] Gold and Blue
[ ] White and Black
[ ] Violet and White
[ ] Brown and Black
[ ] Blue and Black
The first option is, perhaps obviously, Mash. Hopefully that hint is enough for people to make guesses about who the rest are. Some of them were tough to make fit the format and one I kinda... well, if I made it clear, they would have had the exact same colors as another option, so I used a rarer color scheme for them.
