Game On!
By ONNMT.
—THE PROMOTION OF MY THIRD-YEAR FANFICTION ANNIVERSARY! :D
Chapter beta'd by Wonder42—
WARNING: Contains crude language (cusses/swears). Credits coming soon.
Chapter 1: Pilot
The day that I found out that the Naruto franchise was gaining a new RPG was arguably one of the most uplifting days of my week; then, when I was informed that it was both massively-multiplayer and virtual reality, I could have pissed myself in joy. Hence, my impending reaction...
It was a Sunday afternoon, and the summer holidays had just started, leaving me with six whole weeks of free time. I had already eaten lunch, so I was just lounging atop my purple 'Hippy Dreams' duvet, listening to music on my laptop as I scrolled through Tumblr to kill some time. That's when I heard my mother's voice resonate from downstairs:
"Delivery!"
A beat passed.
"YES!"
In hindsight, I'm glad that no one else was present to see my frantic desperation to apprehend the post – dressed in a onesie, I threw off my blanket and scrambled out of bed, kicking away my slippers in favour of skidding across the laminate flooring with bare feet. My door already open, I bolted out of the opening and quick-footed down the stairs, swerving around the corner at the bottom of the steps to see my mum holding a moderately-sized cardboard box. I flailed my hands wildly, fluttering them like wings in my excitement before I reached forward to snatch away the package, squealing.
"ThankyouThankyouThankyou!" I cried; swinging forward in an armless hug, I span on my heel and jogged back upstairs to my bedroom, delirious with energy when I secured a spot to temporarily place the gift – I dumped the parcel on my desk and fell backwards onto my bed, smothering my face with a heart-shaped cushion as I came down from my high.
"It's finally here..."
It took me five minutes to recover from the adrenaline, another two to resurface from the fluffy pink fibres. Peeking over the top of the tiny pillow, I stared intently at the box, genuinely worried that it was just a figment of my imagination that would vanish at any given moment. Seeing it remain tangible, I sighed in bliss, rolling over to shut down my netbook and put it away before I turned my attention back to the source of my happiness.
The box had a reasonable mass, yielding no objection when I maneuvered it to my mattress and raked my fingernails under the brown tape. I peeled back the sticky material with a crisp rip, tossing the ribbon carelessly in the direction of my bin to instead prise open the firm flaps. Inside sat three items: a game console, a video game case, and a gaming manual.
"'Naruto: Become a Ninja!'," I read aloud, lifting the rectangular plastic carton that encased the game itself. As I had expected, the cover was bright and sharply coloured, pristine with a clean cover. The title was emblazoned across the top in vivid orange, with the original Naruto cast on the left and their Shippuden counterparts printed on the right. What made the art quirky was how there were four black silhouettes, two male and two female, with one of each gender on each side to copy how the canons had a younger and older version of them self. Flipping over the skinny cuboid, I scanned the blurb, absentmindedly grabbing the manual with my spare hand.
Rapping my knuckles on the brown hardback book, I dropped actual game to flick through the fresh pages.
'Holy cow,' I thought, marveling at how extensive the technology must have been to contain an entire virtual world. The development of Naruto: BaN had taken years to complete, but it looked as though every second spent had been worth it... The small novel placed face-down on my knees, I reached into the delivery box to withdraw the last piece of the expansion pack that I'd bought. The 'E-IS'; the Enter-It System.
I ran my fingers over the glossy white surface and eyed the vivid electric-blue streaks, trying to compare the familiar shape to something that I'd seen in an anime. Halting to remove my glasses and deposit them on my bedside bookshelf, I slid the device over my head and waited.
In all, it felt like some strange headset: the main frame was –for lack of a better word– a hairband, curling into a pair of headphones that rested over my ears. A translucent blue visor descended in a curve from a short wall that jutted out of the top, arching over my eyes and ending a generous couple of inches away from the bridge of my nose. My eyes followed the cord that snaked out of the side of an earmuff, joining into a sleek black instrument that was only as big as an A5 notebook. Realising that this was the Gameplace that I'd read about, I pulled it forward and squinted at the button that protruded from the front after automatically hooking it into a close power source.
"Okayyyy," I muttered, flipping the manual back up to slowly follow the start-up instructions with my poor-ass vision. "Ah, that sounds pretty simple."
Pushing up the visor, I felt it retract into the elongated bump at the top of the hairband as I reached over to stab the boot-up button and pop open the game's casing. Taking out the disc, I admired the rainbow sheen before the Gameplace's tray opened a narrow slit for me to feed the reflective circle through; doing so, the slot hummed and folded back into the main system with two blue flashes.
My hand, now free, then felt blindly for a nub that was apparently located over my left headphone, pushing in the rubber semi-sphere to trigger the faint starting buzz. Eyeshield growing back, I peered at the battery bar (full) and wifi signal (strong concentration), closing my eyes as recommended.
"Open!"
The splash of light that pierced my eyelids faded away smoothly, becoming enveloped in black, and I was lulled into a deep slumber...
(Word Count: 1,008)
—Chapter beta'd by Wonder42—
Author's Note: At long last, here we are again in multichap territory! The last time I posted an MC was wayyy back on my old account, so I'm as nervous as I am excited to jump back into the big pool. As seen in the current summary, this is technically a self-insert story, but I've labelled it as a "self-insert OC" because I will be taking myself and moulding my persona to differentiate the author (me) from the story protagonist, capiche? :3
For now, I plan on updating once every month or so; that isn't really working out at the minute, but I'll figure something out~
Looking forward to it,
-ONNMT