Garath looked up at Sharon from his seat next to Warrion on the wet cement. His endearingly decrepit friend and neighbor was looking right back at him with a determined glare. Not for the first time, Garath noticed her brilliantly blue eyes and saw the hints of a woman who was definitely a knock-out about a hundred years ago.
"I don't want to tell you again, young man. I am just not religious. I will not become a Preacher. Preachy Bible thumpers are one of my biggest complaints about that damned God and you know it," Sharon was saying. “I'm certain we've talked about it before so it shouldn't be a surprise.”
"It's not even the same God, Sharon. And you need to pick a Class," Warrion told her.
Garath didn't know what the relationship between Sharon and Warrion had been like before that night, but Sharon lived in the apartment between the two gamers and the old bird rarely left the building. After seeing the two of them interact over the past few hours, Garath recognized the mutual bond between them - not unlike the bond he himself shared with the taciturn old woman. It almost felt like his best friend had just referred to someone else as their best friend.
"The Class description doesn't even mention A God," Garath said for the umpteenth time. "Sharon, it's going to give you the best chance to..."
"To what? Huh? To live through this... Whatever this is? I am seventy-eight years old,” she spat, a cough drop falling from her mouth. “I don't give a rat's ass.”
'Well she's got me there,' Garath thought. He also wondered if the rat's ass she didn't give was in reference to dying at seventy-eight or the cough drop that had shattered when it hit the ground. Sharon reached into the pocket of her frayed cardigan and pulled out another to replace it - hardly clarifying the situation.
"Fine. Do whatever you want, Sharon."
"I do want your help," said Sharon, her expression softening. "But I'm not going to choose Preacher. What else ya got?"
"Well, I also liked the Naturist and Chimerist," he replied. "The Naturist sounds like a druid of some sort. It's based on nature powers, the description hinted at potential healing abilities and said something about fortifying the defense of yourself and your party. It should make you pretty tough to kill."
"That's nothing new," she shrugged and waited for him to continue.
"The Chimerist is different from any Class in the games I've played. I think doing the BeastScape transformation is open to every class, but the Chimerist actually specializes in it. The description said they get unique abilities while 'BeastScaped' unavailable to other classes. It also said they can blend two or more forms to gain the properties of each. So, you could transform into like a cobra-bear or some shit."
"A cobra-bear?" she asked, her wrinkly old eyes open wide beneath raised brows. "I think I like the other one..."
While verbalizing the somewhat vague details of the Class, something dawned on Garath. If the game was allowing every class to BeastScape, and doing so modifies your abilities, then it was probably safe to assume that BeastScape would be much more significant than he had originally thought. Maybe a class that takes advantage of such a large focal point in the gameplay could be a real fucking power house!
'THIS is why there should be a probably option,' he thought grumpily to himself.
"Maybe cobra-bear was a bad example. What about a..." he started, then furrowed his brow.
‘What kind of fucked-up-mutant-animal-combination would best appeal to someone who knits and spends their spare time watching the weather channel?’ he wondered.
It didn't matter though, because Sharon had already opened her MENU panels and selected her Class - she was given the prompt to confirm, and chose yes.
That was when it happened. A white glow with hints of a pale green surrounded Sharon's hunched form and everyone watched as the soft glow grew in a second to a blinding flash. With their eyes accustomed to the dim blue before dawn, the flash may as well have been a stun grenade going off in their faces.
When his eyes finally adjusted, Garath's mouth fell open. In the brief seconds that the group was seeing spots, Sharon's body had completely transformed. Instead of a hunched over, frail old woman with patchy hair and a taciturn expression, he saw a beautiful woman in the prime of her life with thick, wavy blond curls and a taciturn expression - she was looking down at her hands in awe and her eyes filled with tears.
"How?" was the single word she could manage. After over a decade of not even retaining the flexibility required to put her own socks on without great effort, the newly revitalized woman twirled a happy little circle on one foot and the tears in her eyes cascaded in a tidal wave of emotion.
Nobody had an answer for her. Sarah just stared in amazement at the transformation. G wondered if the stat changes that took place when her Class was chosen had something to do with the effects on her physical body. Warrion just openly checked her out. But it was Mark - whose eyes were playing a game of ocular tennis between Sharon's wonderful new body and his own, less than ideal physique - who finally broke the silence.
“Wow,” said the portly banker.
