A brown haired girl beyond the screen
A good family, a good environment and a good group of friends.
And she got 3 out of 3, which is more than half.
But she was a sensible girl, one who knew what was truly important in life.
So the lack of friends didn't bother her that much, she had more than enough entertainment at her disposal.
True, sometimes she felt a bit lonely, and when she heard how her classmates went out to have fun at the amusement park, or to a skating rink, or to the cinema, she felt like she was missing a big part of life.
But she just didn't click with the rest of the girls her age, and men were....monkeys in heat, at least at their age right now.
She didn't share any interest with the girls of 15 years old. She didn't care about idols, make-up or just boys in general.
She felt repulsed by the life idols had, she was smart enough to realize that there was something wrong with what they showed, no sane person could be exposed that long to the media without getting a few screws loose.
Make-up was just a chore she didn't see the usefulness of. Why would you need to put all that sh-..beauty products so expensive that she could physically feel her heart hurt, only to seem like someone you were not?
If you got the attention of someone due to it, wouldn't you be condemned to keep using them until the end of your life?
No, in her opinion make-up was just useless. If no one cared about you at your worst, they don't deserve you at your best.
And boys...meh.
She knew a few boys in her class had shown some degree of interest in her, but she didn't want to share her life right now, she was having fun being able to do what she wanted to do without needing a romantic partner.
Not to mention that no boy knew her, they only were attracted to her admittedly above-average looks.
And she was not interested in getting physical with anyone yet.
She liked boys, she was sure about that, but she just wasn't interested.
So the solution she found to spend her time was the Internet, the marvellous thing that obliterated any chance at being bored for absolutely everyone.
Novels, games, streaming sites, anime, visual novels...
She tried a bit of everything, and quickly found her likes and dislikes, which varied depending on the month.
But she had found a game a few months prior that caught her attention, Genshin Impact, a gacha game she took a shine upon.
Make no mistake, she wasn't enamoured by it, not by all means, just the predatory system made her recoil in disgust.
If you wanted a character and were not willing to pay for it, you would need 3 months at the very least to luckily get it, playing every single day.
But it was okay, she didn't mind missing a character, she would just save and get it in the future.
She started playing and the first experience didn't disgust her, so she kept going at it.
She logged in when she wanted, did what she wanted, and played how she wanted.
Primogems weren't a priority, she just kept saving them in case a character she really wanted appeared.
Which was...today.
"I will be in my room mom" she said towards the woman watching TV alongside her father.
"Aren't you going to go out with you- never mind" the mother stopped seeing Elise's deadpan look. "Do you need something from us?"
"No mom, I'm good" replied Elise with a small smile to reassure her mother before leaving for her room.
Elise knew her mother was worried about her, but she was truly fine.
A bit lonely at times, but knowing that her parents were behind her made her smile.
After a few hours of working on the assignments, she finally started up the PC, and after surfing through a few websites of novels looking for any relevant updates of the novels she followed, she started up the game.
The character she wanted to get was quite famous, even if it was more due to controversy than his usability.
Zhongli, the Geo Archon.
The reason was simple, meteorite.
He might not be 'meta', he might not be top-tier DPS, but he was cool as no one else was.
And sometimes some mobs in the Abyss were too annoying to deal with without a shield, so that was a plus.
"110 pulls, 70 pity" she muttered after a quick mental operation. "At least there is a pity in this game."
So feeling a bit more relaxed knowing that her win was assured, she made her first pull.
"Not you again..." she muttered seeing the small animated corpse that went by the name of Qiqi. "What do you have against me...."
But of course, the character didn't speak to her.
So choosing to delete the last 10 seconds from her mind, she pulled again.
The Bell.
The most useless weapon.
Pull.
The Bell.
"I swear someone is fucking with me right now" darkly muttered Elise. "I know I can get all kinds of things here, but why this?"
Her answer was yet another Bell, confirming that indeed, someone was messing with her.
"..." she angrily clicked again the bottom that so many people had ruined, and saw the now usual purple comet.
The Bell.
"Please..." her anger changed into pure despair that made her beg for forgiveness.
The Bell.
Clearly, the one messing with her was a vindictive person.
The Bell.
"...." Elise just gave up getting anything else until the promised 5-star, knowing that the next time he wanted to equip a greatsword in some character, she was going to see a lot of Bells laughing at her.
"..." by the time a golden comet appeared on her screen, she had lost her faith in Mihoyo, who due to an embarrassing mistake had changed their name to something far more ambitious.
'Is it weird for me to feel a sense of loss after pulling the 5 star?' she wondered.
She had spent the equivalent of 5 months saving, got a character she didn't want, got 5 or 6 copies of a weapon she didn't want, and only at the very end she got what she wanted.
Sometimes she questioned her sanity for playing one of those accursed gacha games.
But what could she do?
Baldur's Gate 4 wasn't out yet, and after the studio that made the 3rd game said they weren't working in the 4th, she lost all her hype for it.
But now seeing how the Bell appeared again, even in the final 10-pull, she wondered if maybe stopping from playing for a while wouldn't be a better idea.
But suddenly, by the time the 10th item she got was about to appear, her screen went dark.
"The fuck do you want from me now!" she shouted, but fell silent when she looked at the screen again.
A pair of ominous purple eyes with golden particles appeared at the top of the screen, and little by little, the dark screen gradually started to turn into a dark colour with some purple lines going around in a spiral around the centre, still obscured.
The eyes increased in size, but there was still some dark space around the centre.
And finally, with a flash, every shadow dissipated.
In the centre of the screen, a tall man looking downwards at the camera smirked, wearing a haori and with the same purple eyes she had seen previously and with a bright purple and golden orb in his hand.
"..." Elise, who hadn't heard anything about this, frowned.
She wasn't into any online Genshin community, so she didn't know if this was some sort of bonus invocation like Angra Manyu was in that even more accursed game, but she was clear about something.
"You are not the one I wanted" she muttered with a frown. "Someone is really messing with me."
And yet...there were no more Intertwined Fates left.
But she had one last hope.
Ascending this new character she was so pissed with, getting pulls from that other useless banner, getting some materials to buy pulls for the only worthy banner, and getting the 5-star she wanted.
Desperate times required desperate measures, and despair was the one thing he had enough for everybody in her country.
"Kenshin" Elise muttered the name of the character that appeared on her screen, and had to admit that he looked quite fine.
At least it had a somehow different vibe from all the rest.
But looking at the materials required for the ascensions, she now knew that the company was fucking with her.
'Despair'
"What the hell is this?" Elise asked in disbelief.
Genshin had good and bad points, and in her opinion, the overly exaggerated 'nice vibe' it had was maddening.
Every single chapter, even the ones who committed crimes, ended up being a good character that deserved respect, pity, or a mix of both.
Like that Scaramouche.
He had gone on a murdering rampage in Inazuma a few hundred years ago after getting tricked, and at the end of his 'redemption arc', he was suddenly someone to cry for.
So seeing that a character required 'Despair' from other people added a nice touch to the game.
"Maybe this character isn't so bad anymore..." mused Elise. "Still, how do I get this Despair?"
She refused to look for solutions in the net, it would take away the last fun she may have with this game.
Failing to get the character she had saved for 5 months when she had been supposed to get it was a hard blow.
So she walked around Inazuma, as it was what this 'Kenshin's' outfit told her he was from.
"Still, I didn't see him in any mission, and I don't think he has been mentioned" she mused, but she saw Yoimiya outside the building she was pretty sure was her house.
Which was weird, because playable characters tended to disappear from the game outside events.
So, now curious, she went to speak with her.
Obviously, with the new character she had just acquired.
"Kenshin!" said the female character on Elise's screen. "Do you want fireworks?"
And now, surprised by the familiarity Yoimiya had talked to Kenshin with, Elise was faced with a choice.
"Prank, or Nod" she muttered, reading the options the game gave her.
So the choice was obvious.
She had enough of playing nice, and her anger with the game had skyrocketed.
"No, I came here to give you one" said her character handing 'something' the developers never bothered showing to Yoimiya.
"Thank you!" said Yoimiya, who quickly started running towards the back of her house.
Elise found this whole scene stranger by the second, so she made her character chase her.
"What is that" she muttered, seeing that a firework as big as Yoimiya was in the ground aiming at the sky. Seeing that nobody was moving, Elise made her character speak again with Yoimiya to trigger whatever was supposed to happen.
"I will light it up now!" said the excited girl. "It's the first time I see one so big!"
"Not the first time I hear that."
"Wha-!" Elise had to re-read what her character had just said.
A sexual joke in a Chinese game?
"Well, better enjoy the time we have left" shrugged Elise, expecting the world to end in a few hours.
The wick of the...rocket would be a more apt word, was lit, and in a dozen seconds, it reached the end.
phiiiii
Yoimiya looked in astonishment at the tiny little ball that left towards the sky, that came from a small hole in the big rocket's top.
"Enjoyed it?" asked Elise's character. "I spent a lot of money in the rocket-shaped case for it."
"..." Elise looked in astonishment at the interaction, until the news of obtaining a new type of item she had never gotten before appeared in her screen. "Despair."
Now she knew how to get it.
So choosing to ignore the devastated Yoimiya behind, Elise tried to find another playable character.
She had to admit, that while his character might be pure trash, she had found it funny.
"Yoimiya is too precious" Elise muttered, but quickly thought of other characters she would like to see on the receiving end of those pranks.
She didn't have anything against them, but she would like to see how they would react.
So of course, being in the mean streak she was after being scammed, she went for the hardest of them all.
So she made her character walk towards the Tenshukaku.
"What was that?" she asked herself in astonishment.
Because the moment she had crossed through the gates, a nearby guard had recoiled in fear grabbing his many parts.
"What the hell did my character do?" she asked herself in disbelief.
But she was on a mission now.
She entered the building, and her character automatically appeared in the throne room, in which by some chance, a few people were sitting around the table.
'Is this some sort of meeting?' thought Elise, who hadn't expected this.
A few people were sitting around the table, and Elise recognized them as the few ones who acted as the new leaders of the tri-commission after the Archon Quest of Inazuma, which in her opinion, had been rubbish for 80 % of it.
Too much text.
As always.
But she didn't care about the meeting, she wanted to talk with a person in particular.
The purple-haired woman didn't react to absolutely anything, always keeping a straight face.
Elise wasn't a mean person, except when she was, but what drove her now was the scientific curiosity of seeing how would 'Despair' manifest within this powerful woman.
So she walked towards her and made her character interact with her.
"..."
"..."
But nothing happened.
Frowning, Elise pressed the talk button that she normally feared pushing, as usually, she would waste up to 10 minutes of her life after talking with someone in this game.
"..."
"...hey"
And finally, her character talked, once again surprising her by the lack of adoration everyone in Inazuma seemed to have towards the Shogun.
And yet, she got no response, instead, a new choice appeared.
"Prank or leave" said Elise, not even needing to think about it.
"I brought this from Liyue" said her character, once again handing 'something' to the Shogun, who took it. "I know they are your favourite dangos."
Now Elise could understand what the joke was about.
She saw the Shogun's face change in real time, and ate one.
Or well, she approached her hand to her face.
Elise didn't know what her character put into the dangos, but she expected to face a tough fight with a character at level 20 with no weapons, no artefacts and 0 talents.
"Hmmm, they are delicious" and yet, what Elise got from the Shogun was simply a hum of relish.
"Did he fail me?" asked Elise to herself.
"I hope you enjoyed it" said her character, catching her attention. "Because it was the last one. I bought every single one for the next year and made the shop give them to those who were dying of hunger. So the dangos you like so much will be out of your reach for a year."
".... this guy is perverse" Elise shivered, realizing that her character's jokes were never what you expected. "Ah, there it is."
She now had 2 of despair.
The Shogun's face didn't change, but her trembling hands revealed her devastation.
Elise made her character teleport, wanting to find the last Despair while still in shock.
"I like this character a lot" she muttered. "Better equip it before a slime kills me."
So she opened the character screen to see what weapon did he use.
"Oh, I can put every weapon?!" she asked in shock, not expecting that greedy company to make a character she could equip all her weapons to. "...what the hell is this?"
She equipped a 5-star weapon she got from the useless banner, only for his character to speak.
"This is so goddam heavy I won't be able to walk with it".
Elise, with a dark face, took out the Wolf's Gravestone, realizing that maybe a greatsword was indeed too heavy.
But then again, the little girl called Sayu was able to use it.
"This is too goddam-"
"Got it" Elise stopped the character from speaking, and unequipped the sword.
"Thi-"
"Fuck you" shouted Elise, unequipping the BOOK she had given her character.
So, knowing that there was nothing else to be done, she tried to at least try how the combat was.
Horrible.
Her character started to insult and provoke her enemies, with surprisingly good results against humanoid ones.
And lastly, after a long while, she got the ultimate charge.
"...." Elise opened her mouth in shock after she used it.
A black area appeared around her character, and suddenly she found her character along with the few hilichurls she had been fighting against in an expanse of green with an enormous tree in the distance.
She tried to press the attach button, and building-sized spears appeared all around her character, shooting towards the hilichurls, making an explosion that made around 10% of their lives.
Taking in mind that there were 80 levels of difference and her character had nothing but the clothes he was wearing, that was impressive.
So, after throwing more and more spears at the hilichurls until he ultimate ended, she liked her character a lot more.
"I need more Despair" she thought, desperately looking for another person to devastate, not caring who.
And she found one near the place she was in.
A blue-haired man who had magically left the meeting she had seen him in.
"Sorry Ayato, suffer for my amusement" muttered Elise, wanting to ascend her character to enjoy those devastating attacks making BIG numbers.
She made her character speak with the girl, waiting for the infamous choice to appear.
"Hey soda-drinker and man I puked on"
Once again, Elise wondered what kind of lore her character had.
"What do you want now Kenshin" said Ayato with a tired expression. "Want to 'prank' me again?"
"Really, what has my character done..." muttered Elise, feeling that Ayato was on the verge of Despair just by talking with her character.
But faced with a new choice, she pressed Prank again.
"You know, the ships will stop coming tomorrow" said Kenshin, making Ayato sigh.
"I have enough drinks for at least a quarter of a century" said the blue-haired man.
"And here I thought you would care more about your sister than some drinks" said Elise's character shaking his head.
"My sister?"
Even Elise was able to see the black aura that seemed to leave Ayato's body.
"Here" once again, Kenshin gave 'something' to Ayato. "She wrote this before leaving."
Ayato opened that 'something' that turned out to be a letter, and after 5 seconds, started running.
Elise, who hadn't expected it, quickly made her character chase him.
"What the hell, isn't Ayato too fast?" asked Elise in shock, seeing that the blue-haired character seemed to be breaking the limit of the speed characters could move.
He was a sis-con after all.
"Didn't I tell you?" said Elise's character, who had unknowingly used all the stamina available in a mere 3 seconds. "No ships today."
Ayato fell to the ground, and Elise obtained the last Despair she needed.
But she wasn't satisfied with the situation, she hadn't been able to understand what was in that letter.
"She met that young man a few years ago during her stance in Liyue, and after a few years of exchanging letters she finally chose her future" said Kenshin, patting Ayato's shoulder. "All we can do is wish them good luck."
The light in Ayato's eyes disappeared, making even Elise grimace.
"Brother?"
And yet, Elise saw how Ayaka approached the scene with an inquisitive expression.
"I should run" said her character, but Elise wanted to see what happened. "I should run."
"I somehow feel that my character is begging me" Elise murmured, but she still stayed.
Ayato slowly looked towards Ayaka in Elise's screen, before turning towards Kenshin.
And suddenly, after a flash of blue, the screen You Died! appeared on the monitor.
"...well, it was expected" shrugged Elise. "If you give, you take."
She revived her team, and she could swear her character was scowling at her.
"I think I'm going to have fun with this guy" smirked the girl.