Cars drove noisily on the road, speeding by in the mist covered morning. Ira pulled up the coat he was bundled up in higher, using it to cover his face and breathing in the warmth. It had been a while since he had been in what most humans considered a modern world, much less one during winter.
Ira was standing outside of a smelly bar while his new Host was inside it on his first mission.
This was a BL world. As such, Ira's new Host was male.
The mission was simple, as it always was during the Tutorial Mode. Ira's new Host was inhabiting the body of Tanaka Akihito and was the protagonist's cousin. Unfortunately, Tanaka Akihito had ended up being murdered by a stalker, causing the protagonist trauma that was in the way of the story. The way to fix this was simple.
His Host — inhabiting the body of an omega — needed to find a mate and settle down so that his alpha could scare away the stalker. Biology would literally accomplish this mission for him. All he needed to do was go with the flow.
Ira didn't see how this mission could possibly fail.
The bar Ira's Host was in was the perfect place to meet the unfortunate victim who would mate his Host. Ira was waiting outside in the dark of the night and the cold because he was honestly kind of disgusted by all of the smells inside.
Ira was possessing the body of a mob character, in this world meaning an ordinary beta. Betas weren't in any way special. Unlike alphas and omegas, they didn't have fated mates or any extra biology. They were baseline humans and made up the vast majority of this world's population. However, because Ira had turned his sense of smell up, he could smell the wealth of pheromones alphas and omegas were constantly giving off, and it was headache-inducing.
Not to mention that some evil people were also drowning themselves in perfume, the combination of which was enough to literally make him vomit.
He had turned off his sense of smell entirely, but he couldn't forget it.
Ira shuddered in his warm coat at the mere memory of all of those disgusting smells. He didn't understand how his Host could stand it.
In his mind, he watched as his Host sat by the bar alone, drinking a beer and looking miserable. There were both alphas and omegas in the bar and it didn't take long for the bait to take affect.
An alpha approached his Host.
"Hey there, I haven't seen you around before." the alpha said in a weirdly manly voice. It was disturbingly deep and exaggerated.
His Host jumped a little in his seat like a startled rabbit and bit his bottom lip seductively. "It's my first time."
Ira was going to throw up again.
He brought up his mitten-covered hands to cover his eyes in despair and groaned to himself. This was worse than his last Host. At least she had had the ability to flirt. This Host was just... saying embarrassing things.
Unfortunately, his curiosity of how a world like this worked kept him watching while he quietly retched in his mouth.
His Host sipped at his beer as if it was a dainty ladies drink and asked the alpha, "So what should I call you?"
"Amano Yuuji. And you?" the alpha asked in a husky voice.
His Host smiled delicately and answered, "Tanaka Akihito."
Ira groaned again. Just watching this crap was embarrassing. What, did they think that they were in some kind of TV show? Just how cheesy could you get?
"You know, it's dangerous for a pretty thing like you to be out alone at night."
What a damn rapist alert. Ira watched on with despair as his Host giggled disturbingly at the walking predator.
Literally, alphas had evolved to be the ultimate human predators.
"I can take care of myself." his Host announced in what was probably supposed to be a strong voice.
The male alpha laughed condescendingly and said patronizingly, "I'm sure you can."
Did his Host not realize what bad news this guy was? Was he stupid? If it were him, Ira would have already kicked the guy in the nuts and stabbed him in the eyes before pulling his heart out of his chest. Seriously, how was his Host still sitting there and smiling pleasantly at the man?
Ira shook his head and leaned his head back against the brick wall. Above him stars were shining in the night sky. He could only make them out due to his superior vision, as the smog and pollution of the city kept one from seeing them normally. But the half moon could at least be made out, sitting there in the sky like it was about to fall to the earth and annihilate the human race.
He was completely serious. With the size of it, it must be much closer to the planet than what was recommended, which meant that it was probably going to crash into the planet one day.
It was certainly very pretty though.
Ira stuck his hands into his coat pockets and shivered a little as a strong wind blew over him, making it feel as if needles were stabbing at his exposed face. Snowflakes were slowly starting to drift through the air, melting as soon as they reached the ground.
He sighed as his Host continued chatting with the alpha, completely missing it when the alpha put something in his drink. If Ira had to take a wild guess, his money would be on a heat-inducer. Those flushed out of the system incredibly fast and thus were hard to prove, plus it essentially guaranteed the omega would be willing. For a very loose definition of the word.
Ira got the feeling that this world used a different definition than he was used to.
Luckily, rape was something that he was obliged to stop if it was something about to happen to his Host (or his Host doing it to someone else). It was one of those things that could get a System suspended from work if they allowed it, so there was always an alarm waiting to ping at the sign of it in his head.
However Ira was at this smelly bar for a reason and he had no intention of interfering unless he had to. For now, he stayed where he was and enjoyed the view.
Inside, his Host was overwhelmed by the power of his heat, as it was the first time he was under it's spell. Ira watched on passively as his Host finally understood what was happening and made an hilariously stupid face. It was like he didn't understand the mess he was in? Seriously, going alone to a bar where he didn't know anyone? What did he think would happen?
In a world without omegas and alphas it might be different, but in this one... well there was a reason Ira hadn't visited one before.
They got really bad reviews.
Neither Host nor System really wanted to mess around with worlds like this, where the biology itself worked against them in truly stupid ways. In addition, more often than not, the laws were heavily in favor of alphas and suppressers for the heat and pheromones were always ridiculously expensive.
Usually, it wouldn't qualify as a world suitable for the Tutorial Mode. However, in this particular mission, it was the biology that would get it done.
As Ira had thought, it didn't take long for the heat-inducer to take affect.
Soon his Host was panting and sweating to a gross degree as his temperature rose so high that if he hadn't been an omega, he would have been dead three times over as his blood literally boiled in his veins.
Ira pushed off from the wall and took a deep breath as he made sure his sense of smell was entirely turned off. He walked over to the bar's door and stared at it apprehensively while he waited to see if he had to interfere. The offending alpha grabbed ahold of his Host's body and moved to bring the omega out. Ira watched on as nobody did anything to help, rather they leaned away as if they were disgusted.
Just as Ira was finally about to walk in there and interfere, another alpha stepped back into the bar proper from the bathroom. Ira stalled on his feet and watched as this new alpha realized what was happening and showed a pissed off face.
"What do you think you're doing?" the new alpha had the typical strong alpha appearance. Scarily tall, thick muscles and permanently glaring eyes.
He was giving off angry pheromones in waves.
The new alpha tore the other alpha off of Ira's Host and grabbed Ira's Host. The unknown alpha male held up his Host and made a face when he smelled the clogging scent of heat. He growled low in his chest and pulled Ira's Host along to the bar's exit. Ira stepped back from the door and watched with his physical eyes as it opened and the alpha and his Host exited, his Host leaning his whole weight on the alpha.
He frowned. He wasn't really sure what to do in this situation. This wasn't the alpha that had used the drug, but he was still affected by his Host's heat. Was Ira supposed to follow? Was he supposed to grab his Host back?
But the alarm was tied to his Host's thoughts. It would determine if the Host was truly unwilling or not to have sexual relations with somebody and alert Ira.
There had been many Hosts and many Systems. As such, Systems had had to face the reality of human kinks that sometimes meant that a human's word couldn't be trusted. And thus, this new and foolproof system was set up and uploaded to every System in existence. Before it, many Hosts had gotten pissed off and made things difficult because they got pulled from worlds that didn't actually have any danger to them before the mission was completed.
Ira had been on the receiving end of this rage many times in his youth.
He decided to just turn up the sound of the alarm and wait for it go off.
Ira burrowed his mitten-covered hands into the coat's pockets and pushed his head down into the collar of it to hide from the cold. He breathed out deeply and felt the warm air hit his face. The cars on the road drove by often despite the late hour and Ira decided that he would go back to his new body's home before he ended up dying from the cold.
Just because he couldn't feel it didn't mean that it wouldn't hurt him.
The goal was to attract as little attention as possible as such his abilities had to stay within the world's probability.
While Ira walked, his Host was in the back of a limo, being carted off into the unknown. The alpha his Host had snagged was already caught up in the pheromones and his Host was long lost to his heat. However, this was Tutorial Mode. As such, his Host was able to think clearly when under the use of an aphrodisiac.
It was the only advantage that Hosts got during the Tutorial Mode and it was never revealed to them for one very simple reason.
They would test it out.
It was a failsafe just for situations like this. His Host looked to be in the full grip of it, and this was true. The body was long lost to the drug. But the mind would be able to determine if it truly wanted it or not. If it decided that it didn't, the alarm would ring and Ira would pull the Host out. They would proceed to another world for the Tutorial mission and the current mission would be null and void.
Don't let it ever be said that Systems were heartless. They just weren't human.