The year was 2020, in a small corner of l'Atmella de Mar, a flea market was taking place.
As one, the residents of the town and the other that neighboured it, gathered their bits, their baubles, their trash, their treasures, and lined it all up for bored, half interested men and women to stare at, "Ooooh? Something caught your eye kid?" And occasionally buy if it looked interesting enough.
"A few things, but the other monoeyes are out of my price range, sooo–"
Manel Galanis sighed, pointing at the somewhat shoddily painted mech. He only knew one thing about Gundam: Monoeyes were king and the protag mechs could go to the trash where they belonged. "What can you tell me 'bout this one?"
He was pretty sure it was the OG monoeye with slightly different paint, but he wasn't about to take the chance and look like a fool.
"Oh, this one? It's a
Zaku II, High Mobility Type, from the original show," Getting up from his lawnchair, the middle aged man navigated around the large glass cabinets that dominated the surrounding stands and opened the one that held the model, "I bought it when gunpla battling just started, figured you couldn't beat the classics– and then ended up not using it."
Taking the small plastic figurine, he handed it over to Manel for examination, "First kit I did any real work on, tried to make the colours pop a little more, and do some highlighting on the details… It didn't exactly turn out well."
Having it in hand, the delivery-man could see what he meant. It was really kind of sloppy looking, a severe case of what one might call 'THIN YOUR PAINTS YOU APE!' and a chronic lack of airbrush.
"Little guy's going to be my introduction to painting these things too, then." Given that it was priced at 11€ when the others were rocking four to six times that? Yeah, it was a steal.
"Oh, a new hobbyist? You looking to get into just painting, or battling too? Might be able to point you towards a shop with a GBNO uplink and spruce-printer," Suddenly, the old man's eyes were sparkling with excitement and eagerness. Kind of like a puppy, "Never registered the kit on my old GP Base, so that makes things a lot easier too."
"Going to give it a fair shot, at the very least. Since my friend says that they finally got the sensory feedback sorted out." He was an immersion nut, for one. A little too sensitive to things being subtly off, for another. So he'd been content to wait until now, as much as fulldive was the dream of every nerd. "And yeah, should've asked about that first, shouldn't I?"
"What? The registering thing? Eh, don't worry about it pal," The man shrugged as he took out a large plastic case, and began rummaging through it, "Nowadays GP Bases aren't that important, when you go to the fulldive shop, they'll make you make an account, you can register it then."
"Oh, I meant asking if it was already registered." Manel corrected with a soft chuckle. At least he knew for a fact that as tiny La Seu d'Urgell was, they had both a Base and a fair few fulldive cafes. If you could call regular-ass cafes turning otherwise unused backrooms into fulldive cubbies that.
"Ah, my bad. Anyhow, here are the bits and options for the kit. The heat hawk, the machine-gun and the giant bazooka– ah, what the hell. I'll throw in a few more bits," Rummaging around some more, he pulled out random pieces of plastic, "Mostly just leftovers from other kits. Beamsabers, a spray beam gun, some e-caps, two three racks missile launchers and a fistful of gribble so you can customise it to your heart's content. Don't know what kit half of them came from. But it'll give you something to go off of to make that kit your own… and clears out even more stuff from my pile." Putting all of them into a small bag, he handed it, and his change, over to Manel. He keeps the fact he's completely overwhelmed behind a polite smile.
A few farewells composed of the man bemoaning his wife demanding he sell his kits before getting new ones, and that was that.
GasOrGrass: Okay, you pest. I finally got a funny robot man. Going to spend Semana Santa to paint it and spruce it up.
CHEEEEESE: 1mo ptg bbs t sleep
CHEEEEESE: sorry about that, had to bribe Morganne with a bedtime story (EDITED)
CHEEEEESE: at least her sister behaved
CHEEEEESE: …
CHEEEEESE: she's totally sneaked her game console inside of her covers, hasn't she?
CHEEEEESE: screw it, it's a problem for future me.
So, what kit you got? Plz tell me it's not an Entry Grade, those suck for battling.
As I never tire to tell you.
CHEEEEESE: but hey, pretty sweet you did. Gives me an excuse to get back into the battle side of the hobby, building's nice and all, but I wanna take the Likourn on a spin like old times (EDITED)
Ol' boy must be feeling neglected with me working on so many other kits
GasOrGrass: Already built Zaku II HMT from a flea market. Needs a makeover but otherwise it's good to go. Someone forgot to thin their paints.
GasOrGrass: I also got. Uh. A lot of extra bits. A LOT. Like, goddamn. The guy wanted to clear some misc stuff.
GasOrGrass: [LootPile.jpg]
CHEEEESE: that… is a lo- wait, see those little disks on the side? Can yo7 take a better pic? I'm like 90% sure these are Kampfer spider mines.
CHEEEESE: BUT YEAH. That's a lot.
CHEEEESE: Do yourself a favor. Don't touch
any of it
CHEEEESE: It's cool of him to have given you so much, but ATM, stick to what the kit came with: heat hawk, machine-gun and zooker. At most, take either a saber, or one of the missile racks to complement what you have
GasOrGrass: [DroppingPlates.jpg]
GasOrGrass: How's the lightsaber stack up against the
Baslok Heat Hawk?
CHEEEESE: define "stacks up"
GasOrGrass: Is one a straight upgrade to the other? Or do they have different niches?
CHEEEESE: Oh
CHEEEESE: Yeah, it's… eeeeh?
CHEEEESE: I'd say niches tbh. Hawks have issue with armor that the beams don't
CHEEEESE: but anti-beam coatings or shields tell beams to fuck off
GasOrGrass: Beam main, hawk holdout?
CHEEEESE: Sounds good. Also, beams lack
weight, it's way easier to block/parry one. Heat weapons are giant slabs of super heated metal
GasOrGrass: Speed melee vs heavy melee, gotcha. Except the heavy melee is bad vs armor for some godsforsaken reason.
CHEEEESE: heh. Kinda, but when I say issues, I mean more like armor that's thick enough will require some elbow to cut through. Heat hawks are fucking hot yo
CHEEEESE: Also, weight can be an issue on speedier builds
CHEEEESE: beams are harder to throw out the box now that I think about it, need to mod them a bit
CHEEEESE: a hawk can be yeeted real good, does good damage too
GasOrGrass: Delicious. Anyways, rate my setup.
GasOrGrass: [ThiccBoye.jpg]
CHEEEESE: Oh my God
CHEEEESE: Whyyyyyyyy
CHEEEESE: plz tell me it was a beginner?
CHEEEESE: but, yeah oaky, no shimmering
CHEEEESE: It's not
as bad as it could be, looks like regular hobby paint
Use rubbing alcohol, should do the trick well enough. IIRC I put some in the starter pack I sent you?
CHEEEESE: You're lucky it's not Plavsky-laced paint. So many beginners at my crack den think that because it boosts performance, it's a good idea to use it
CHEEEESE: It's really not, that shit's like liquid plastic you fuck up once, u're pretty much stuck with that fuck up forever
CHEEEESE: *You're
CHEEEESE: also, give it a little scratch with your fingernail, see if it flakes off a bit
GasOrGrass: Flakes off a lil
CHEEEESE: dont think you can get to the parts with the separator with pain that thick then. Try, but don't forget it. if you can't, get a tub and dunk it in there for a while
GasOrGrass: I have a huge bottle of the stuff, from when I got that road rash. Tub it is.
GasOrGrass: And good to know about the P-paint.
CHEEEESE: It's great, don't get me wrong!
CHEEEESE: I use it on my kit. But yeah, not for starters
CHEEEESE: Anyhow, gotta go, I can hear Morganne's switch
CHEEEESE: Lord have mercy on my soul, because these two brats don't
GasOrGrass: I warned you, brother. I'm glad I only have to deal with children a few minutes per at most.
CHEEEESE: Yeah, yeah, yeah…
Saturday began like most other saturdays, with the loathsome ray of the foul ball of nuclear light beaming down upon Manel's face and dragging him into the waking world from his dreams.
It was
still a gentler wakeup than having an alarm screeching in his ears. He didn't exactly jump off of bed full of energy, but he felt rested enough to slide off without grumbling. Some morning stretches got him going just in time for the orange ball of fluff that was his neighbour's fat cat to start meowing at him for food.
Hopefully the little shit actually used the catflap he'd installed for it this time, instead of crawling down the chimney for the nth time. How it managed to do it safely he'd quietly put in the 'cat magic' mental box and thought no further for the sake of his sanity.
Unaware, or probably more accurately, uncaring, of the human's slipping grip on his mind, the cat rubbed itself against his legs before jumping on the bed and making itself at home for now.
At least it wasn't covered in soot this time.
Now, time to get breakfast ready for the both of them, then he'd get started with the gunpla he'd left soaking in rubbing alcohol overnight.
The cat followed along as he moved to the kitchen, before digging into its food like a ravenous beast that had not been fed for the last three months. Which of course meant it'd probably eaten not ten minutes ago.
While the cat demolished its plate of food, the gunpla turned out pretty well, most of the excess paint having sloughed off the frame, if leaving a fair chunk still clinging on. But nothing that a good polish with a toothbrush or paper towel wouldn't fix.
Now that it was (more or less) ready and had his model, he could choose from the shortlist of themes he'd been building up and go from there. Arts major aspirations, don't fail him now!
"Welcome to Mecha Mania!" The
man with grey hair and a genial smile called out from behind his counter, "Don't often I get customers so early after I open. Why, you pretty much showed up just as I flipped the sign!"
"Just an early riser, you know how it is." Manel chuckled. He had a flexible schedule, granted, but all that meant for him is that he got up early to be home by three or four.
"Aaah, I understand. By choice, I hope? I know for a fact that my son in law would much rather be able to sleep in. Fortunately, my darling granddaughters don't let that lazy bum sleep in one bit," He said cheerfully, "Anything I can do for you? Or merely perusing?"
"Just got the internal clock used to early mornings, so half-and-half, I'd say." The deliveryman said. Benefits of living in a tiny town like Seu d'Urgell, people were actually friendly and had time to make small talk. Barcelona was a very pretty city with perfectly preserved ancient facades, but the sheer noise and bustle weren't for him. "I'm here to get this little guy registered on a new GBNO account and give him a go."
As he said so, he gently pulled the newly christened Zaku Fishbone from his cloth bag, careful not to snap anything off as he pulled away the protective foam-cloth. It was a relatively simple job, just a largely uniform coat of deep blue paint with little pieces of colourful resin coral and fish skeletons stuck on. About the most complex bit was the eel skeleton on the left pauldron and the sailfish on the shoulder shield.
"Oooh?" Leaning in, the older gentleman eyed the model with the judging skills of a man that had breathed and lived modelling for a long, long time. Which considering the shop he owned, wouldn't be a surprise, "A beginner I see. Paint's a bit off at points, could have used some light highlights to avoid it looking like a blue brick. The corals are a good addition, but the sculpting could have used some more work. Overall, I'd give it a passing grade, but not much more. Still, good effort for a new kit."
"Yeah, I thought about giving it an effect like light filtering through the water surface, but I didn't feel confident juggling that with the sculpting." He admitted with a bob of his head. There was a reason his failed career as a twitter artist was just that, but he was satisfied with his work. It hadn't even taken the entire week, so he had plenty of time to take chargen through its paces. He was fairly sure GBNO didn't allow alts, so he wanted to get it perfect.
"Ah, yes," The shopkeep said with a wince, "Definitely a good thing that you didn't. I've been modelling for most of my life, and
I couldn't even tell you how to begin with getting that sort of effect to look good on a gunpla. So! Since you're looking to register it on a new account, I'm guessing you haven't touched GBNO or any full dive stuff at all?"
As usual, KISS was a good maxim for dodging bullets. "Pretty much. I heard some bad things about the sensory data so I steered clear until they patched that."
"Bad? Oh, right the disconnect. Honestly, it was a bit like VR and seasickness, some people had it, others didn't," He explained as he walked around the counter, "Most of my regulars never had that issue. But yes, the patch they just dropped fixed most of the
off feeling people had when they experienced things in game. For the most part at least."
Guiding Manel to a backroom, the old man kept going, "A lot of it is dependent on how
real you consider things to be. If you refuse to let yourself be fully immersed, and constantly tell yourself 'this isn't right. I shouldn't be able to taste strawberries', then no amount of patching will change the sensory disconnect," Flipping a switch, the dark room light up, revealing four stations made up of a large computer screen, a slim, futuristic-looking headset, some joysticks and a huge, plush and sinfully comfy-looking chair, "Here are the dive seats. Just sit down, put the headset on and press both red buttons on the joysticks. It'll initiate the dive. Now, I have to tell you. This isn't a paid service, but I only have four stations, so I'm enforcing a three hour time limit to make sure no one can hog the equipment all day. Since it's your first dive, I recommend not even going above two hours at most. Get used to the sensations and all that."
"I'm a bit of an immersion junkie, so that shouldn't be an issue. And sure, fair enough." Hopefully there's a way to set an alarm fifteen minutes before his time runs out, so he can save his work. God knows he isn't going to finish his avatar in just two hours.
He wasn't finishing it in two hours.
Or three.
Or even four.
The starter options were sad and generic. Anime Man or Woman Number 9001 all the way.
Some options had basic sliders, others had slightly more advanced ones. But overall?
A true disappointment.
At least until he found the 'advanced options' menu his friend told him about.
And as soon as he poked it?
SLIDERS.
Sliders up sliders, sliders that caused new and hitherto unseen sliders to slide into view!
Sliders that controlled a singular freckle among a sea of them! A slider that dictated the colour of his skin! Another that could give said skin fluorescent highlights!
Oh mama he was
home.
Optics whirred happily as the latest round of tests revealed no jank whatsoever, no tearing in the iris membrane, no awkward tensing areas, no vein uh ohs… "Fucking
finally, anime emote eyes are a success!"
Sweet merciful god, that'd been four days of his life he wasn't getting back, but who the fuck cared? He had decided he was going to make the pinnacle of fashionframe potential and by god in his heaven he would deliver.
"O-kay, next on the li-" He paused, the optics of his placeholder avatar (something called a Haro, apparently) clicking and hissing as he ran a quick wash cycle through them. But, nope, he was seeing right. "...huh. Nothing left on the list. It's… it's done."
He floated away, putting a bit of distance with his… he'd call it an art project but at this point it was more of a magnum opus. There was a reason he'd quickly settled on 'Galatea' for a handle, the avatar he'd made deserved it.
It needn't be said the lady in front of him was pretty. What needed to be said was that he'd spent an entire
month idly tweaking every last detail of the facial features until he'd been left with something that painters would cream themselves at having so much as a grainy security footage picture of as a model.
The same degree of attention had been given to every last part of the body. He already knew he'd crossed a line when he started fine-tuning muscular weaves and adipose arrangements, but at that point he was deep in the feverish grasp of the methhead muse. He hadn't done anything as crass as to max the boob or thickness sliders (even if the avatar certainly had a hearty serving of cake), although he hadn't been able to resist cranking the height to seven feet because being the tallest person in the room was nice and so were legs.
Of course, that was simply the
base shape. The true miracle was how he'd spliced cuttlefish, octopus, hagfish and a few other fun critters in to make an unholy chimaera to satisfy his greed. See, his tastes for monstergirls were as wide as his urge to fashionframe was deep, so he couldn't just settle for a single flavour, oh no.
Instead, he'd made a shapeshifter.
The skin? Able to change texture, colour and do complex bioluminescent patterns. The hair? Not hair at all, but tiny tendrils so as to have the same options as the skin. Nevermind the octet of tentacles hidden under it to serve as any configuration of horns. How? By way of a crazy fucking biological patchjob to secrete resin from anywhere. It came in any colour of the rainbow, opaque or transparent, hard plastic or rubberised. Of course, he'd then had to figure out a dissolvent to make whatever was extruded pop off or outright disappear, but once that was done even the nails and teeth could be customised, their roots a socket of sorts where already extruded resin could be slotted in and glued with a touch more.
Then there was the tail. Equal parts his pride and joy and the bane of his existence. He'd had to borrow the cartilaginous skeleton of a shark to make it work, because he'd been hellbent on making it able to resize and reshape to the point it could flatten itself and curl around the body for when it didn't fit with the current getup.
The only thing harder had been the eyes, which had required the better part of a week of focused work just to work out all the kinks. All in the name of being able to do everything from glowing heart pupils to literally sparkly eyes.
Right now, all of this potential was realised in a homage to the sealife that'd allowed him to make his Galatea into a reality. The hair was arranged in thick braids, coated in opaque rubberised resin which lit up like an anemone crossed with a
sea slug, the colours hooked up to emotional responses in a setup he was fairly sure had taken a couple years off the life expectancy of the staff helping on the back-end. The eyes were, of course, arranged like a cuttlefish's, sclera shifted to look like an extension of the iris and the pupil contorted into that peculiar W shape with a bioluminescent rim. To compliment them and the hefty sprinkle of iridescent black scales framing the face and giving the illusion of freckles, he'd gone on to add scab-like growths of colourful coral. The most prominent was a horizontal line across the bridge of the nose, but a couple of thin lines and pockmarks livened up her left cheek and forehead. The teeth were, of course, patterned after a shark's.
The body proper continued in much the same fashion, just with
far more coral-scars and scale clusters breaking up the monotony of the stark white skin. The tail was the main point of interest, having turned into the unholy lovechild of an eel and a lionfish, all skeletal ridges and spines on a sinuous limb, deep grooves lit by bioluminescence matching the hair-tentacles.
The outfit was honestly a bit of a joke. A hawaiian shirt in deep blue with stark white skeletal fish patterns, left unbuttoned to show off the coral and scales on the torso (and the neoprene sports bra in the same colour, but that had been an afterthought for decency's sake), while the dark blue swimming trunks were contrasted by the side-tie rope fishing net he'd fashioned into a short skirt. Beyond that it was just a set of rubber sandals in the same deep blue and a pair of sunglasses pulling double duty as a sloppy hairband.
It was done. He was finally free.
Was this how the guy in Plato's cave allegory felt when he crawled out to touch grass?
"WELCOME TO GBNO," Once he pressed the accept button, a robotic voice echoed in the blank space of nothing that had been his home for quite some time, "HOME OF GUNDAM BATTLING AND THE HOPES AND DREAMS OF MANKIND. WOULD YOU LIKE A TUTORIAL?"
"Yes." He said. Hopefully it would be better than Warframe's, although DE
had improved it a lot since he'd played through it.
The world around him went from blank, to a large and colourful playground with slides, monkeybars, a pool, a ball pit and much, much more.
"ADJUSTING AVATAR, PLEASE REMAIN STATIONARY DURING THE PROCESS."
And suddenly, the default avatar began to fall away into sparling, digital particles. Each rising into the air before winking out of existence, leaving him with her new body. Which looked exactly as it should, but felt no different than the haro, or her IRL body. Which was–
"SYNCHRONISING SENSORY DATA."
–Oh god that was weird.
"PLEASE BE AWARE THAT NON-HUMAN AVATARS WILL REQUIRE A LONGER ACCLIMATISATION PERIOD."
At first, it felt as if every single of her senses beside sight were turned off completely.
She couldn't hear, she couldn't feel, taste, or smell.
Then just as quickly, they began turning back on, one after the other.
Touch was the first. And the air felt
bizarre against her new skin. She could sense a slight breeze, but not on her skin, rather it felt like it was tickling a thin membrane that covered the entirety of her body. An odd, wet-ish feeling that covered the entirety of her body.
Then the rest came back as well, without much fanfare. Leaving her in a new body that felt
off in a way that couldn't really be put into words.
"Haro-haro!" With a little shower of sparks and confetis, a haro appeared right in front of her, "Welcome to the playground! Here you can test your new body to your heart's content! Please be aware that pain responses are all toned down to 25% of real life."
"Than-" She cut herself off, jolting at the voice of liquid sex that came out from her mouth. She was pretty sure this would be where a normal person would be having ungodly dysphoria. Her, meanwhile? The dissonance was making her light up in swirls of pink and yellow. "Ahem.
Thank you."
Now, time to see if she could take a single step without falling into her finely sculpted ass.
It was a good thing that the floor was padded, because as soon as she took her first step forwards, she took half a dozen backwards when a
mass behind her unbalanced her and made her fall on her butt, tail twitching and waving around.
"Well, at least I didn't tell Erovan to wait for me." She laughed at herself, folding her legs underneath her as she took a few minutes to get used to her tail.
Now that she was aware of it, she could feel it as part of her. Moving it though? That was a different question, it was like trying to flex a bunch of muscles that she'd never used before, which was wild in and of itself, because she
felt said muscles tense and loosen as she tried to make it go to the right, only for it to go left.
It was fun!
It took her one more day to get used to her new body, with the haro helping quite a lot by giving her exercises and routines to work on. Yoga was actually a blast when you could put most contortionists to shame.
But by the time she was done with them, her body felt like it'd always been hers… Well, almost. The shapeshifting worked, but it always left her feeling like she was tensing a bunch of muscles, or holding her guts in for as long as it was on.
With any chance, that'd slowly go away in time.
At least it seemed like she got her current form as a freebie that felt natural to hold, otherwise she'd have had to drop her eyes and tail to default.
"Next stage of the tutorial, please." She called, knowing that the haro could hear.
"Congratulations on getting used to your new you! GBNO's tutorial on gunpla piloting will take place in GBNO proper. Please wait as the necessary resources are loaded…. Loading complete, credential recognized, full dive initiated," Galatea's body began to fall apart, dissolving into what looked like sparkling seafoam as the mini-robot cheerfully chirped at her, "Welcome to GBNO, player Galatea!"
With this first chapter posted, a few words:
First, this thread will happen in universe- kinda. For those that don't know, the Gundam Build series (both fighter and diver) take plan in GUNDAM VALHALA, AKA a brighter, nicer version of our modern world.
I won't go into details here, but long story short, this thread will exist as a forum in universe. And depending on how things go characters will mention it more than once (the plan is, in part, to use it to help Ni's character decide how he wants to build his gunpla by reading advice- and getting screamed at), so I encourage all of you that decided to read this fanfic to talk about figurines, gundam, gunpla and the likes as much as you want!
Seconds, this is
not a FI. Manel is controled by Ni, but he's as much of an OC as any DnD character. Ni is also generally aware of the plot of Build Diver Re:Rise, so discussing it is generally fine. Just avoid the REALLY big twists I didn't tell him about (Eldora being real, the ancients and the EL-Divers are ones we talked about)
(also those parts of the thread will be ignored in universe, for rather obvious reasons)
Third, as this is a AU, the timeline is a bit different, my plan is for the changes to be introduced organically. Though, I'll most likely make an apocryphia post that goes into more details later. But in essence, this is a merged timeline of Build Figthers and Divers.
