Annabel broke her way out of her bedroom with the bash bat, and immediately saw a rat the size of a pitbull barely being fended off by her roommate.
"Ethan, catch!" she called out, tossing the bat to him. Without missing a beat he caught it and slammed it into the giant rat, tossing the beast against the wall. Annabel started singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" again, and with the additional strength flowing into Ethan's limbs he took out the rat with the bat, causing it to disappear into a cloud of pixels. A couple oversized teeth and some coins were left behind.
It was a moment before either of them said anything to each other. Ethan spoke first.
"What… the fuck… was that? Also did your boobs get bigger? What the hell is happening here?"
Annabel looked down. She'd never been well-endowed enough to need a bra, but whether it was her Adaptable Body skill or the sudden increase in Charisma, she was now sitting comfortably at a B-cup. She wondered if she'd end up at her ideal body type once she put more points in. Annabel was fair-skinned with a prominent nose, skinny, and 5'6" on a good day. Her black hair was wavy and poorly cared-for, although she figured it must look way better now. She might not ever have to worry about frizz again.
Ethan, her roommate, was one of the few trans guys she'd met who was blessed with natural height and muscle. 5'11" with fluffy brown hair and ambiguously light brown skin, she'd had a crush on him from the moment they moved in together. He was also perpetually emotionally unavailable and prone to cluelessness, although that hadn't stopped her from hooking up with him on two separate inebriated occasions they rarely ever talked about. The first one was a natural mistake a couple weeks after she moved in at a "meet the roommates" thing the five of them living there put together. The second time was about six months later after Annabel had helped a girl from the bar bathroom into an ambulance alongside some other randoms. Poor thing had tried to do coke too soon after a nose job, and Annabel came home traumatized. Ethan had always been an incorrigible softie, and it's difficult to say who took advantage of whom. Neither one of them had regrets the next morning, and they laid in bed cuddling until the late afternoon. But that had been ages ago, and life goes on.
Annabel brought herself back from memory lane. "Video game style apocalypse apparently. Keep that, my strength stat is shit."
"Strength stat? What are you- Oh." Ethan was looking at something Annabel couldn't see, presumably his status window. "Is 10 strength good?"
"Very good. Mine is at like, 5 after a level up."
"5? Jeez Annabel I knew you were a wimp but-"
Annabel wasn't listening. She saw that she had gotten drops from the giant rat. There was an XP notification she dismissed too. She touched the teeth and coins and found she had an inventory system now.
"Hey Ethan think 'inventory' to yourself."
"What are you- Oh cool."
"You can probably put the bash bat in there. Try it."
The bat disappeared from the world. "Oh that's neat. You know this thing grants +1 Agility and bonuses to counter strikes?"
Annabel took a second to think. "That fits."
Ethan grinned and took the bash bat back out. "So we're, what, gonna party up now or something?"
"Sure, I guess." A subtle hum of energy passed between them.
Party formed. Members:
Ethan Dominguez
Annabel Thorne
"This goddamn hideous green!" Annabel was annoyed by the color of her windows. "Change menu background color to Lavender!"
Menu background color changed
Annabel blinked in surprise. "That worked? I'm starting to have a sense that this system is a bit… Hmm. No. Too soon to say that for sure."
Ethan looked at her in confusion but knew better than to pry.
Annabel met his gaze. "Have you seen the others? Jake, Lizzy, Yesenia?"
Ethan shook his head no. "For all I know they got raptured or something. Or they're in Greenpoint. Or dead."
"Right. Well. Better that than Staten Island. We should start throwing whatever we can grab into our inventories and get out of here. I have a feeling the NYPD will be as helpful as ever."
The two of them went back into their rooms to change, grab clothes and supplies, and ponder their next steps. Annabel discovered her black combat boots gave her a bonus to Endurance, so she threw those on along with some black jeans and a pink crop top the system had revealed would give a small bonus to Charisma-based spellcasting. Ethan was in sweats and a track jacket, and said the basketball shoes he put on gave him another Agility boost to add to the bat's. They were throwing most of the kitchen into their inventories when a loud buzzing noise got both their attentions.
Of course there were giant cockroaches. This is New York.
Ethan swung with the bash bat and missed, breaking the kitchen table into splinters. The cockroach flew at him in anger, tearing a gash across his chest. Annabel tossed him the lid from a soup pot.
"Shield!" she yelled. He got the idea, and the next time the flying bug came at him, he was able to block it, and strike back with the bash bat.
It turned into a puddle of goo which turned into pixels and vanished, leaving behind a pair of intact wings and some spare change. Ethan threw it into his inventory and attempted to catch his breath.
At which point three more of the damn things flew in through the window.