Wake up, user.

"Wha- huh?" I jerked awake, blinking my eyes blearily, before they widened.

Good morning, user. Please input your name for future use.

I blinked again. "What the fuck?"

You have chosen 'What the fuck' as your name. Is this correct?

"What? No! Where am I? Why is everything so dark?! And why do I hear you in my head?!"

Please input your name for future use.

"What the hell?" I said, then sighed. "My name is Matthew. Now where am I?"

Welcome user Matthew. Congratulations on being chosen as our 1,234,453rd adventurer. You get to spend one week on your world before our system transports you to a new world chosen at random at the end of each week. You are allowed to keep any items, skills, and abilities you are able to learn and keep on your person in the form of clothes or one standard sized backpack. As a new user, you are able to use our character creation system to change your appearance and choose your clothes and backpack style, or stick to your default appearance. Please note you are not required to keep these items and any item you gain to replace the standard items chosen that count as clothing or fit in your backpack.

All of a sudden the darkness disappeared, leaving me in what looks to me like either the Hyperbolic Time chamber from DBZ or one of the loading programs from the Matrix. As far as I can tell, everything is white and stretches on forever. I can't even tell if there's an end, because I can't see a horizon or anything.

All of a sudden, two windows appear in front of me that take the appearance of mirrors. One of them shows me from the front, and the other shows me from the back. I twist around to see if there are any cameras, but I see nothing. Looking back, I can see that the images of myself are copying my movements.

Next to the images of me, a number of tabs appear, and a helpful text box appears that gives me information on what I last looked at. Evidently I can pretty much use my hands on my 'avatar' to change my appearance to however I see fit, as well as change the color of myself by simple thought alone.

At this point, I'm not sure what to think of all this. Am I dreaming? This is crazy! Unfortunately there's no where to go, and if I'm understanding this thing, I can simply go back once I'm done choosing my appearance and new stuff. Does that mean I'll wake up then?

Shrugging, I examine the image, and belatedly look down to realize that just like said image, I'm stark naked.

Scratching my head, I consider my appearance, and wonder if I should even change what I look like at all? Then I shrug and decide I might as well have fun with it. Everyone's got their own little things that they don't like about their own appearance. Might as well make use of this while I can. Maybe if I really like what I see, I'll try and emulate it out in the real world if possible. And if not... well, I can dream can't I?

Looking over my appearance, I decided to keep my skin tone as white/Caucasian. Similarly, I left my height of 6'7" alone as well. My hazel eyes that look like blue or green depending on the light I left alone as well.

As for what I changed? I decided while I had the chance to strip my body of body hair completely. With that gone, I frowned at the appearance of mottled marks of a rash on my arms, and the few bits of acne sitting on my chest and face. Getting rid of those left my skin clean and smooth with the occasional freckles that I decided to leave alone. I don't want to look like some kind of impossible doll after all, and I like my freckles.

Just for giggles, I started playing with my musculature. I had a laugh as I gave myself body builder type muscles that would make Arnold Scharzenegger green with envy.

Shaking my head, and grinning, I returned my body to its previous state of somewhat lanky with corded wiry muscles found on a swimmer or sprinter. I did give them slightly more definition though, and made my singers gut flatten out into a flat plain. I didn't particularly care to have abs, though I did try that out for sheer curiosity.

Tilting my head, I considered the rest of my body. My legs are fine. My feet are large, but that's just proportionate to the rest of my body. My pianist hands are just fine as they are, though I did note that my nails need clipping. I found I could shape that too after trying and made my nails have a simple curved look that was nice without looking like I got them manicured. Likewise for my toenails. My arm length brought my hands to where my waist pockets are, so that suits me fine. My pectorals are odd, but I don't really see a reason to change them, and after trying out changing them a bit, I decided to leave that alone, a bit weirded out to see them changed.

My ears I decided to make the top points slightly more prominent than they already are. Before it was faint, but looking at me straight on would give my ears a slight elfin appearance. Now it's a touch more pronounced and easy to see. I like the look, so sue me.

As for my face, I decided to give my face a more angular look, but not too drastic though. Just what I'd look like if my stupid round cheeks would disappear along with my singer's gut, both of which were still round even when I was a 6'6" 170 lb bean pole that was just shy of looking anorexic in just about everywhere except the face and the gut. how fair is that?

I also found that I could actually change my eyes so I would no longer need glasses, since my near sightedness was mostly caused by stigmatism, making my eyes slightly off from being completely round. A simple shape change fixed that issue right up and sharpened my vision to what I'm normally used to with my glasses at 20/15 vision.

Now all that's left is my hair, and the stereotypical bit that makes me male.

Looking down, I sighed. I'm 6" and at the width of a half dollar, which I know for a fact is exactly average for a guy down there. Unfortunately, average for any guy looks small on me with my 6'7" frame. So I gave myself a small increase to have my wedding tackle be sized proportionately. Satisfied with my now 7.5", I turned to my hair, and regarded it curiously.

Of all things that I've pictured myself as looking different with, it's got to be the hair. Normally it's just brown with what looks like a blonde streak around the crown of my head when the light hits it right, and almost black when wet. All my life, I've had either a simple medium length business cut, or a short military crew cut.

In my head though? I've imagined myself with solid black hair, with the blonde streak being very prominent as a solid white that shines no matter what light hits it. I've imagined myself having dark red hair that's looks like a cross between Trowa Barton's one bang hanging over his eye, though nowhere near as prominent, and Aizen Sousuke's slicked back look. I've imagined myself with black hair with dark purple tips. I've imagined myself with long straight silver hair reminiscent of Sephiroth's... Honestly, I'm not sure what I'd choose if I could just change my hair.

Going through each example of what I'd imagined before, I decided I didn't look all that great with the white streak since it just looked odd. The dark red isn't bad, but I can foresee the hairstyle being a pain to keep in check, not to mention the hair hanging near my eye is bugging the crap out of me. Likewise, the silver hair like Sephiroth's was something I found amusing to look at, but ultimately, I hated the weight on my head, and the fact the bangs were huge, covered my ears, and laying down or even sitting would be a pain.

Ultimately I decided to go with black hair with purple tips, which ironically made it look a lot like Zackary Fair's hair, though much less wild. I liked the look. Now to decide on clothes.

As soon as I thought it, the other tabs disappeared and were then replaced by new tabs for just about every clothing combination imaginable. I ended up doing the equivalent of pressing the randomize button a bunch of times just to get some ideas of what to pick.

Eventually I ended up picking a pair of black army pants and a red shirt so dark as to be almost black. Over that I got a black peacoat like the Boondock Saints have, ultimately for the amount of pockets if I'm to be going on weeklong adventures to other worlds. A wide brimmed foldable hat, a pair of black combat boots, a pair of tough black gloves, and a pair of sunglasses completed the look, though I ended up stuffing the gloves and sunglasses into a pocket.

For a backpack, I ended up getting a black camel pack for water, durability, and storage. Satisfied, I nearly said I was satisfied with the selection before a last second thought hit me. I added a water proof mud proof military watch to my left wrist and added armor mesh to the pants, shirt, and coat. It added weight to it, but it might be useful.

Speaking of utility, I thought for a moment and wondered if I could add air conditioning to the coat somehow? Unfortunately nothing came up. Ah well. Stupid dream. I selected to continue.

Are you satisfied with your selections?

"Yeah, I guess." I answered. "So now what?"

Selections confirmed. Transporting user Matthew in 3... 2... 1...

Everything went black again.