...

...........

Okay. She is in a brain-messing-with facility, she is of... yeah, "unknown age" sounds about right, that's disorienting and she doesn't have a lot of being oriented to compare with...

Okay. Or, not very, but, hey, it's as okay as she has ever been! In her entire life! Which has lasted, like, a minute and change.

Okay! Why does she keep thinking that.

Cameras. There are cameras, and they would have noticed Imogene walking out, but Bella will - walk - differently? And this will let her walk out of here? What, stark naked? - maybe in fact stark naked, maybe at "ERO 35" an apologetic smile and a story about how she, uh, spilled... something... would go over all right till she managed to - buy clothes? With what money, if Imogene had any she doesn't have it on her.

Other Isabellas? - Hello hello, paging other Isabellas? Halp? ...no immediate dice.

Okay. (WHY.) She isn't going to try to steal the labcoat, that might wake up Mr. Messes With Brains Probably. She is going to get up and - trip on some discarded underpants, okay - catch herself and walk carefully, out of this room, yes, stark naked, trying to look like she belongs here.

This is her "belongs here" face!

The door into the room she's in isn't locked, and it's only one of many identical-looking doors dotting a long, wide, professional-looking corridor. The long carpet is rouge and the occasional paintings on the wall tend to depict naked people, but tasteful naked people, the kinds of naked people that go on museums and the more mainstream art galleries. One end of the corridor is dominated by a tall window, the view outside which reveals that the time is "the sun isn't out", and the other end opens to a cosy sitting room with an opening to a set of stairs down. Across the sitting room from the corridor is a set of double doors which open to what seems to be a large... yoga class? Or something. There are other nude people—not all of them female—doing self-directed exercises in perfect silence, in there.

Okay. She is going to copy the slightly spacey expression off a naked yogi over there and walk - why is she so bad at walking - toward the nearest EXIT sign. Assuming the place is up to code.

Lol no.

The room with the yogi does not seem to have an exit (and if she pokes her head inside there will be literally zero acknowledgement of her), so unless one of the many identical doors is an exit it's prrroooooobably the stairs?

Yep! This vacant-looking naked girl is going to the stairs! And down them, since the view out the window suggests she is not underground!

It's a reasonably long way down—"climbing down a set of stairs from the second floor of a mansion" long, not "going into the catacombs" long—and the stairs spit her down into another cosy purposeless room with another corridor attached—but this one is shorter, and the opposite side from the corridor seems to lead to some kind of reception area. The door between the room she is in and said reception area is open, but as soon as she steps through it she will see a person clad head-to-toe in combat gear, including a futuristic-looking helmet, holding a futuristic-but-still-deadly-looking two-handed gun, standing next to said door.

They do not move an inch, or acknowledge her existence in any way, if she steps through.

The dimness of the "reception" reveals no receptionist, or anyone else, really, other than her, the "security" next to that door, and two more "securities" standing outside the building. She can see them through the tall wide glass walls that seem to make up a lot of the front of this building (at least one would assume it's the front, she can see a street a distance away from that), one to either side of the entrance, also made of glass. That room itself is two stories tall, sumptuously appointed, and has other doors presumably leading to other places that may or may not have more vacant-looking people, but trying to explore all of that is very unlikely to be a good idea.

Also, for the record, there are, in fact, cameras all over the damn place, if she looks for them. There is not a single corner of anywhere that doesn't have at least two cameras within line of sight of it.

Well, being spacey is kind of at odds with looking at things, but yeah, she's glancing around vaguely and she is noting the cameras. These would certainly have caught Imogene, but apparently they - maybe for brain-messing-with reasons? - aren't using "what she literally looks like", so they're - not catching Bella? Unless there's a silent alarm and she's about to be swarmed by goons but just walking out has gotten her within sight of the door.

She pushes open the door and walks right between the entrance securities without acknowledging them.

They also fail to acknowledge her in any way.

On the other side of the door is a beautiful garden, the type of garden you see in those TV shows about unreasonably rich people which has a winding path between the gates and the actual entrance of the mansion to force every guest to appreciate just how beautiful and rich-looking the garden is before they step into the even more beautiful and rich-looking mansion. The style is Greco-Roman, because of course it is, but it is rather visibly... well, not to put too fine a point on it, ero. Fountains (which are up and running even at this time of night, whatever it may be) shaped like nude people in ecstatic poses, bodies intertwined in ways that aren't even trying to pretend these people aren't fucking.

Tastefully.

And the walk down the winding path does let her catch glimpses of other such statues hidden between hedge mazes and trees that are substantially more explicit—or at least they probably are, all of the angles seem to be professionally set up so that the impression of explicitness could still be plausibly innocent, maybe, if the sculptor was doing something very clever. Given all the everything else about this situation, they're most likely just sex, though.

The gates between the garden and the street are guarded by two more goons, but beyond them is—a street. Regular-looking, probably, maybe, it's the middle of the night and nothing's really open and while this isn't a suburb or an extremely remote part of whatever city or town this is it is still not the center of commerce and so the sounds of human life are all muffled by either distance or walls.

Stroll stroll stroll through the tasteful sex garden. Walking walking (CAREFULLLY AUGH) between the next pair of guards, straight out onto the street, stark naked, trying super fucking hard not to look like she kind of expects to be arrested.

Once she has turned around a corner and is no longer in view of the sexy mansion she gets another game notification.

Quest completed: I'm A Real Girl

Objective: You have successfully escaped the creepy mansion with the creepy personality-editing tech used to turn people into sex dolls for immense amounts of money that may or may not actually materialise whenever they are released back into being real people (which may or may not actually happen). +150xp.
Bonus Objective: Don't break character. +50xp.

Your level has increased by 1!

ERO Notification: Your ERO stat is much higher than your other stats and has been locked. You cannot increase it until you have at least one other stat within five points of it and one within ten points of it, and its influence in the world will be diminished to a level of effect compatible with 18 ERO; reality will not be retconned, but its least plausible elements will be less salient to you

You may spend stat points to increase the level of effect, but your actual ERO stat will remain the same until the above conditions are met. Be careful when picking this option; stat points are not refundable and you will be forgoing getting actual real increases in stats. In-game events and other situations where you push the boundaries of plausibility within the story may also increase that level of effect, but never in a way that breaks the above conditions.

You may of your own volition go looking for the higher-ERO situations and effects and unlock the stat in that way, but be prepared to increase your other stats if you do so; you'll need them.

Okay. (There's that word again. Maybe it's just the kind of thing you think a lot when you've existed for five minutes all of which you have spent playing a bewildering sex-themed game in someone else's body.)

If the ERO situation is going to be "less salient" she might need clothes. She also needs food and shelter. Money would solve all these problems. The obvious thing there is probably that in this situation she can take up hooking but that seems like more of a fallback option. Also she hears having fun is how you win and it doesn't sound fun. Is the universe going to present her with an obvious alternate strategy here? She could see, hm, what's on-theme enough that the universe might help her out, modeling? They give her something to wear, they let her keep it and let her at the snacks in the break room, she walks away with enough for a hotel room?

The universe does not, for the first few seconds, give her an answer. But then she hears a male voice, difficult to understand because of the distance but quickly approaching, probably on his phone given the lack of any other voices.

When he gets close enough for her to notice that he's just around the corner up ahead she can starts making out his words: "...look, man, your situation is highly unusual. And I'm not gonna say you're not hot, you are, I have eyes, but this industry isn't just about looks."

- is he talking to her - or, uh, is the universe probability-manipulating his conversation into her earshot in order to talk to her -

- or is he actually in an industry that is about looks but not just those, such that it's conceivable he might scout her when he spots her as long as she has whatever other qualities are called for?

She will distinguish these situations by... standing here... as though waiting for a bus, which she can't afford, but he doesn't know that, except in the sense that obviously she can't afford anything whatsoever because she is completely nude.

He turns around the corner and starts walking towards her but doesn't immediately notice her. He's a fit thirtysomething in exercise clothes and looks like he was probably just having himself a late night run, based on how sweaty he is, but he's not very winded.

After a pause he replies to whoever he's talking to on his wireless earphones, speaking quickly: "Like I said, unusual situation. You could try your luck with that pretty face, it's not guaranteed to go bad, but the smartest route, in my opinion, is to make sure you have other stuff to fall back to when your pretty face isn't enough, grind those soft skills. You'll need to talk just as much as you'll need to fuck your way into and out of situations."

Well that would be more helpful if she HAD ANY STUFF but her pretty face. Like. Literal things. She doesn't have a phone or a home or a bus pass or a dollar to her name. Would she take some other job that landed on her completely pantsless lap, sure, but being naked is not a job skill for practically anything! Except that this universe is weird so maybe she is about to be introduced to the exciting world of competitive naked parliamentary debate!

"Okay, so—" But now he does look up and notice her. He does a once over and offers her a very appreciative grin and wink—not lecherous at all, or at least not obviously so—then turns his attention back to the conversation. "Sorry. What I was gonna say was, you do have some untapped resources for self-improvement. Hell, I even showed you some related stuff when we were talking earlier today, just before you had to go. Look into that, start slow and then look for opportunities to apply what you learned, rinse and repeat. I'm telling you, you'll need that, the gay porn industry is a nest of vipers and you'll want every advantage you can get to come out on top..."

And now he's too far to be properly heard again.

It... wants her to spend stat points? On fucking what? She literally can't make ERO go up, her pretty face is already pretty damn pretty, upping FUK or SED seem like they go down the road of "taking up hooking" which, like, it's not that she'd rather starve but it doesn't qualify as having fun, what would even be the possible remunerative benefit of being kinkier or hornier...?

Okay, no, step back, she doesn't literally need money in cold hard negotiable cash right now. She could make do for the moment with crash space and permission to raid a fridge. And, yeah, okay, following the theme, sure, one way people find crash space is by sleeping their way into it.

...

With fucking whomst, Erogame dear.

Well. She'll start walking again, increase the search radius for the goons if they notice Imogene did not leave by authorized channels, take particular care to check out people and signs and whatnot for messages from the universe, she feels so psychotic right now and she never even got to try not being psychotic, ugh.

Does the floating game message make her feel more or less reassured about her grip on reality?

Quest initiated: One Step After Another

Look for opportunities to start down the road of becoming the ero protagonist you are destined to be!

Success: You are a protagonist! Plus whatever side rewards you might get in the process of doing this.
Failure: Quest continues until completed.

She's looking, she's looking!

Okay, where does the kind of person who Bella wants to - date? hook up with? look vaguely appealing to? - in exchange for a place to stay and dinner hang out. Bookstore, maybe, or library. During the day, though. Or they're at work - who's at work at night, doctors? She could try to check into the ER and attempt to set up some kind of sexy nurse plot but there's nothing wrong with her, even her feet are actually holding up really well to all this barefoot wandering around she's doing. Or she could find a cute house that looks like it would belong to someone nice, knock on the door, look as bedraggled as possible given that it's not raining, and be like "it's a long story". "Out on a walk in the dark" is not implausible but also it's what she's already been trying and the universe seems to want her to work a bit harder than that.

Let's see how implausible the universe wants to be for her here. She wants to find somebody who lives in a cute little bungalow that has roses out front and a novelty mailbox that displays some personality and a light still on so she's not waking them up.

The universe does not offer her that immediately.

It does offer her that after a couple of blocks around a left corner. The novelty mailbox is shaped like an adorable little robot with the standard red flag thingy as an "ear" to make it clearer that it is in fact a mailbox.

Okay, that's cute. She pats the robot on the head and -

- right, what's her game plan here. The Erogame wants her to spend points, and maybe this calls for it. SED? It's... mind-altering, but in a skill-up way, right? Probably? If she can trust the nigh-omnipotent entity that dropped her into Imogene's body and wants her to be a sex game character, which, if you can't trust that entity, who can you trust, that's right, nobody, because you have met zero people in your whole brief life and came into existence inside a sinister brainjacking facility! Glad that's settled!

She smells the roses.

She takes a point of SED, just the one, to see how that sits.

It... doesn't feel like anything, at least in the sense of directly-noticeable changes. Perhaps all skill improvements were purely supernatural and wouldn't modify her own mind at all? Except her special perk seemed to imply otherwise.

It sure did imply that. Okay, what would she open with if she opened the door right now. Something like, "Hi, I know this is bizarre, but..." Or maybe just, "I need help"?

She pokes SED again to reevaluate from there, though it's possible it's entirely about, like, cold-reading people so she can maneuver through their reactions more effectively and she won't notice a thing till she talks to another human being, which she has never done ever in her entire life.