[color=ff99ff]"Oniiiii-chaaaan! It's time to wake up! You're gonna be late for wooooork![/color] Standing above the scared man with lifeless eyes was a girl in a bright white and blue schoolgirl uniform. She had floppy dog ears and making puppy eyes at him, as usual.[color=ffbf00]"Alright Inu-tan. I'm up, I'm up!" [/color] The man was floating in a black, featureless room. he simply re-orientated himself to be standing. Inu-tan took out a little tablet and filled the walls with holographic screens. She rattled off the usual. [color=ff99ff]"You have five new messages! One from your boss and... the rest are ads, sorry. Today's going to be a freezing 35 degrees Fahrenheit, Pweaaase wear a jacket today! The time is currently 0430AM"[/color] Adam Dietrich preferred to sleep in the wired. His brain operated faster here, and the only noise was the kind he invited. Here, there was no outer world, just him, and his personal assistant/sister/daughter. Well worth the three months of pay he needed to save for her. After tending to his morning business, he jacked out.

     Now he found himself back into meatspace, and in his meat. He slept in a military surplus Rigger Cocoon. Meant for drone operators who jacked into their drones directly. It was a bulletproof shell, a Faraday cage, and sensory deprivation tank all in one. With a satisfying WOOSH the hermetic seal was broken, revealing a shabby, 500 square foot studio apartment. It was a coffin with only a single window looking at nothing, but it was... a place to rest your meat.

     After Adam got reacquainted with the flesh, a the wolf girl stood besides him in augmented reality, now wearing yoga pants,a loose hoodie, and a whistle around her neck only he could hear. [color=ff99ff]"Shake the atrophy away! You'll need to be in peak physical condition if you wanna protect that dragon lady! Hup-to! Hup-to![/color] And so they begun their morning calisthenics. Adam suppressed his breathing as to not wake his only friend Nektarios up, but in the parallel world of AR, his now instructor and workout buddy could cheer him through the pain and exertion.

     The mind/body duality imposed by being Combat Rigger was always tempting him to leave his body behind. The feeling of becoming the machine he was piloting, and being able to send your mind everywhere at once was more addicting than nova-coke for him. If he didn't have someone reminding him that he still had a corporeal form, he would have died long ago.