To Miss the Mark

---

Well... that was a dangerous warning, and a concerning bit of exposition, but... it was only a piece of paper, right? It couldn't exactly be updated in real-time. No, you'd be fine. You were making quick work of all of this. Aside from the book, but even that had involved you walking on this weirdly magic rug and forcing your way through. So, the most important thing was gathering all of your possible resources and making your choice as informed as it could be. Even if... you felt like there were eyes on you now. Eyes that seemed to be close to focusing on you.

Still, the feeling passed, and you shook your head, shivering. Taking a breath, you touched the rug for support... and felt nothing. Panic grew and you started to move onto it, but the moment your hand crossed over a certain point, you felt the bliss and sensed stress draining from you. You paused, pulling back and noticing when the feeling vanished. Hesitantly, you touched a corner and moved your hand to follow the edge. When it reached the middle-most point, you felt the soothing drain once more. That implied...

You grunted, beginning to roll up the carpet, and soon the bare floor was exposed. The bare, hardwood floor, with a massive ritual circle burned into it. You stared, inspecting the circle, and noticing how... similar it was. To the programming language you had been learning. Everything fit together weirdly well- and you understood everything except for a number of sections near the center. What you did understand was mostly focused around gathering energy and power, and running various self-check routines. This was magical programming, and gave you a touch of insight into what your own System would be doing. Now, though, there wasn't anything that would stop you from working on your System. Especially if those eyes were going to come back...

So, you moved over to the computer, realizing your chair was above a smaller, more compact circle that had been hidden under the rug. It was similar, but also held even more complex sigils and symbols, programs you couldn't even vaguely guess at. It was complex beyond rationality. Sitting on the chair, you didn't FEEL different, but still. You took a breath and shook yourself. AT least memorizing the circle was easy- after all, with your newly enhanced mind, that took nearly no effort. Still an amazing rug, though.

{WELCOME TO SYSTEM ALPHA 0.1!}
{You have been selected to develop systems for heroes and villains to use across the entire omniverse and beyond! Here you will be granted the chance to program your system, selecting one Primary Focus, and one Secondary Focus, and then adding in as many subsystems as you have the capacity to utilize. As you travel and stress test your own systems, you will discover new subsystems for you to access and utilize!}

{To begin with, you have access to the following Primary and Secondary Focuses!}
{[Stats], [Skills], [Traits]}
{Subsystems are as follows: [Challenge Tracker], [Achievements], [Loop], [Live Updates], [Automatic updates], [Reality Integration Module]}
{You are expected to have (1) Capacity. It appears you have (4) Capacity. Congratulations!}
{Please make your selections and proceed to select a world by looking out the (Window) and selecting a World.}

---

Now we get to the meat of the game. You are a 'System Administrator' tasked with creating and testing various systems. I'll be describing the Focuses and Subsystems in a spoiler below. Here is where actual discussion may be needed. Regardless, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I will answer unless it would give away any actual plans I have for you. Subnautica was actually probably one of the best possible starts you could have chosen for this- a specified success condition, and a low-danger world. Nicely done. Now... to the Vote!



Now to build your System.

Please choose a Primary Focus:
[X] Skills
[X] Stats
[X] Traits

Please choose a Secondary Focus: (Cannot be the same as your Primary)
[X] Skills
[X] Stats
[X] Traits

You have 4 SC (System capacity), so you can select up to 4 Subsystems:
[X] Challenge Tracker
[X] Achievements
[X] Loop
[X] Live Updates
[X] Automatic Updates
[X] Reality Integration Module (R.I.M.)

Okay! I hope that's okay. Let me know if you have any questions!

---

You gathered your focus and set yourself down, deciding what to include and flying through the program. You didn't actually take very long to set up the system before you felt the eyes focusing on you again. Luckily, you were nearly finished. Unluckily, the circle under you began to glow, as did the larger circle. You finished, and saved the program as 'Alpha 1', immediately standing and moving to the window, shivering as the feeling and weight of that strange gaze dug into you. Opening the curtain, you realized you were moving, your little room beginning to slip out of the wall. You threw open the curtains and latched onto the first world to cross your vision-

---

{World selected: Subnautica}
{Congratulations on your first world, and evading dismissal. You have earned +1 SC. To earn more, complete more worlds.}
{Initializing world...}
{...}
{Complete. Stats assigned: Baseline, no bonuses.}

---

An explosion shook you awake, alarms beginning to blare as you gasped and launched out of bed. You scrambled up, muscle memory you didn't remember having sending you stumbling across the plain, simple room. You typed in a passcode to open the locker and grabbed your suit- space suit? Diving suit? Why... what was happening? You groaned, getting dressed on autopilot as you stumbled out of the room, snatching a strange pad before the door closed. Then you started running, letting your legs guide you down long, twisting hallways of silver, white, and chrome as another massive explosion blasted somewhere in the distance.

You came to a spot with an open hole in the floor, a ladder visible. You hadn't seen anyone else, and you slowly started to feel air being sucked past you and towards the direction you'd come from. It was quickly growing stronger and you hurriedly jumped in, sliding down the ladder and seeing the top seal itself shut. You rushed to one of the chairs, and locked yourself in. Then you were being LAUNCHED away and... and you realized you were in space. The ship you had escaped from was there... and then it blew up, shaking your vessel.

Subnautica. Which... meant you were about to get hit in the face by metal, weren't you? Indeed, as you started reentry, the pod began to shake, quiver, and rumble, and then the lights flickered as the metal piece you had expected flew off, banging around the pod as it's momentum changed before suddenly shooting towards you and slamming into your face- and everything went dark. At least you'd prepared for this...

---

You have 4 AP to spend every turn on various actions. First, would you like your character to be Male or Female?

[X] Gender?
-[X] Male
-[X] Female

What would you like to do? Each option can be selected more than once.
[X] Gather resources from a known location
-[X] Where? [Write in]
[X] Explore a nearby location..
-[X] [Write in, or leave blank and I'll pick something
[X] Examine your supplies
[X] Craft something
-[X] What? [If you have the supplies, I'll let you make anything you want within reason.]

Feel free to suggest a name you think would be fun.

---

The fire had been a nightmare for you to put out- and, for lack of a better name, you'd chosen 'Yu' as something silly and relatively effortless to consider your own identity. Especially since you seemed to be... indistinct on that regard. Or maybe undecided? Possibly just... not fitting into either category. It didn't matter. You were alone, so 'companionship' would never be a concern, and you honestly couldn't care less what you had in your pants, as long as it stayed clean- something that, weirdly enough, was a problem the suit handles for you, cleaning while you slept. Apparently. So... never needing to bother dealing with that again seemed like an AMAZING trade-off for wearing a suit 24/7. You were just glad your hair had to be short for the helmet to work properly.

Regardless, the fire. It was BLAZING when you'd finally woken up, dehydrated and overheating. Luckily, the fire extinguisher was functional, so it was easy enough to force the seatbelt thing open before diving for that to thoroughly blast the flames to oblivion. After that, you'd taken a moment to dig through the supplies you had and figure out what you had access to. Some water bottles, a nutrient bar, a first aid kit- which you used to cover and heal-up the burns- and a few flares. Plus the only partially used extinguisher that you had a hold of. Grabbing the water and the bar for later, you only had the flares and the extinguisher left...

You were going to need some more supplies and quickly. Food, some way to get water, and... and you were in Subnautica. On that Ocean planet. If you remembered you should hopefully be in the Shallows, and if you were lucky, you'd be able to catch the fish fairly easily. Swimming would have to be one of your two skills... maybe. Unless you could think of something more useful. For now, you had rocks to break and fish to catch. So you climbed the ladder, popping up and out of the top, sucking in a deep breath of fresh, salty air, and looking around as the bird-creature fluttered in your face before flying off. You looked around at the gorgeous view of your ship in the distance, the beautiful clear water surrounding you, the occasional fish leaping out of the water, and the endless, gorgeous sea.

You knew that there were two islands out there, one floating, the other possibly the only actual landmass on the planet. You also knew that the ship was going to explode in a few days. You were going to need to be fast if you wanted to avoid that. For now... you looked down, triggered the helmet, and paused, looking down and pulling the PDA out of your storage. You let it slowly boot up, and looked it over, nodding as it processed the Data of where you were and gave you the Data it had available. Slim chances of survival... sure. It had no idea how your leveling system worked, and you barely did either. You trusted your decisions, and how they would impact things. Though... you DID notice the PDA had a tab it wasn't designed for.

Tapping it brought a screen up that displayed 'survive the crash' and 'overlook the new world for the first time' as accomplished 'achievements'. Whether that would have some sort of effect was yet to be seen. For now, you put it away and calmed yourself as you stepped up to the edge of the pod, flexed your legs, and then leapt forwards. Diving into the water, you felt the oxygen tank kick in. Only a few minutes at first. You'd have to be quick. The game hadn't been perfectly reasonable as far as time management went. Thirty seconds to cross meters and meters of water? No, distance and time had been altered to make the game more viable. This was real to you, though.

So, you splashed into the water and... and it was beautiful. You felt weightless and the vast expanse of Creepervines beneath you left you uneasy. Still... you didn't have time to make a trek over to the Shallows. You'd have to make due with what you had here. That meant swimming down and hoping you could find the rocks you needed. The limestone outcropping actually... well, they weren't hard to notice. Certainly less abundant than they would be in the shallows, however, you had already caught a few fish- one or two may even be that one kind that turned into more water. Infected you too, but that was kind of unavoidable at the moment. For now, you focused, worked, and only slowed down when you grew tired.

You had to make several trips back to the surface, panting and groaning, adjusting to the physical exertion you weren't used to and pushing through it to make yourself work more. It was... not great, but it was a productive day. You noticed and carefully avoided the Stalkers, and did your best to catch food and water while gathering what mineral resources you could. Thankfully the Creepervine was right there, and both easy to obtain and quick to gather large amounts of. So you headed back up to your pod when it started growing dark and you felt exhaustion settling in. You slipped in through the bottom entrance, panting and flopping onto the floor as you gasped and heaved, resting fully for the first time in hours and hours. Your stats had gone up, but while your energy was relatively quick to come back, the physical consequences of all that exercise were still exhausting.

Still, you managed to drag yourself upright and over to the crafting station, pushing all your Creepervines into it and then gathering the fibermesh as it was made before shoving all of that into the device to make First aid kits. You only made a few, saving the rest of the fibermesh to create a makeshift bed on the floor. Storing away all of your gathered gains, you paused before laying down as a screen appeared. Seems you had to decide what tomorrow would look like as well...

---

{Congratulations on surviving your first day!}
{Your System has noticed several Skills being used throughout the day, would you like to assign a skill to an available skill slot?}
{Available Skills: Swimming, Hunting, Sneaking, Exercise, Crafting, Exploration, Survival}
{Please Select 2.}

Any skills you choose will have information gathered about them which can be used to improve them after this world is completed.

[X] Please pick two skills
-[X] Skill One:
-[X] Skill Two:

You have 4 AP. Any option can be selected multiple times, unless stated otherwise.

[X] Please select two activities for what your day will look like tomorrow.
-[X] Gather resources from a known location
--[X] Where? [Write in]
-[X] Explore a nearby location..
--[X] [Write in, or leave blank and I'll pick something]
-[X] Craft something
--[X] What? [If you have the supplies, I'll let you make anything you want within reason; this can craft multiple objects at once.]

---

You chose Swimming- obviously- and Survival. The reason you went for Survival instead of Hunting or Crafting or something like that? Survival included basic things like hunting and swimming and holding your breath under it's aegis. You already got the benefits of the broad knowledge base being instantly and permanently encoded in your mind, but you also knew that- as a broad knowledge-focused skill- it would lend itself to numerous other skills you could utilize during your next system making session. Really, the Swimming was only chosen instead of something like 'Exercise' because you'd be doing SO much of it. It seemed stupid to waste the opportunity. Besides, Swimming wasn't mostly knowledge- it was an outright activity. That synergized with Survival, which would further enhance what you could get, since Survival would handle the knowledge aspect, leaving the supernatural boost to be purely on Swimming's end.

Overall, it was exciting to witness your System adjust and compensate for the situation, adapting and working overtime to provide what it could. As you went swimming, you hunted for more resources. You got more of the creepvine with ease, but that wasn't the main focus. No, your main attention was on Ores, and you... sort of managed that? You found some strange teeth that looked like the ones from the stalkers, and ended up gathering three or four of them. You also found some metal salvage from the wreck, and even a wrecked piece of tech not in your PDA! But without a scanner it wasn't much help. Still, you noted it for later. After all, even if it was useless now, it could be useful later!

Your swimming improved massively as you continued, your system occasionally pinging you with updates letting you know you had leveled, and it had come up with a new possible design for how to upgrade and improve the skill. Even still, your Survival Skill was the one paying the most dividends. Your movements were growing just a little smoother as you adapted faster to the unfamiliar effort and environment, your eyes instinctively tracking the fish and adjusting your assumptions about how your body would move. It was so much easier to catch fish like this, even if you didn't have any real instinct for what to do or how. Catching the fish from earlier left that first step already taken, and the rest was simply gathering and refining knowledge on your Skill's end.

So you gathered several fish and headed back, getting into your pod and groaning as your body ached and demanded rest. Still... it was easier than before, and you were adjusting, your Swimming Skill finding an unexpected side-benefit by helping your body adjust to and heal better from the exhaustion the swimming had caused. It was so minor that it would be unnoticed once you included the Health and Stamina modules that your knowledge of fiction told you would eventually be unlocked, but for now? As new as all this was... it was notable, and you wondered if you could possibly do something with that...

Still, you moved, dumping your supplies in your storage and crafting a pair of copper wiring spindles. You tossed those into storage as well, stretching and sighing, trying to think of what you'd do the following day while you cooked and ate some fish and crafted some water... out of more fish. Such a weird world... You'd have to get your system to record the animals somehow for the future... surely you could manage that. It'd come in useful, probably... Somehow. For now... you made everything, ate a fulfilling meal, and headed off to bed.

---

A/N: Only One person voted on what to have your guy do, so that will be what happens. Sorry for taking so long on this. College has been a bit of a nightmare the last few days, but that should be mostly over until next Semester.


You have 4 AP. Any option can be selected multiple times, unless stated otherwise.

[X] Please select two or more activities for what your day will look like.
-[X] Gather resources from a known location
--[X] Where? [Write in]
-[X] Explore a nearby location..
--[X] [Write in, or leave blank and I'll pick something]
-[X] Craft something
--[X] What? [If you have the supplies, I'll let you make anything you want within reason; this can craft multiple objects at once.]

Your Radio has alerted you to the presence of other lifepods in your surrounding area, and the danger of the exploding core of the Aurora.
-[X] You would like to go on an expedition to a site...
--[X] A nearby Lifepod
--[X] A distant Lifepod (Costs 2 AP)
--[X] The Aurora (Costs 2 AP, Radiation Hazards)