Hello again or for the first time, Murayama Tsuru here. Recently I've been playing .Hack/G.U. and .Hack/Link and this story idea wouldn't leave me alone. It wouldn't leave me alone so much that I couldn't update my Gintama stories…(not really an excuse but still ^_^). So, here's a story about Ovan. A long time ago I wrote another .Hack/ story. Don't go read it, it's terrible. I really wasn't very good at writing back then. But I just can't get myself to delete that story off this site…well anyway, I hope you enjoy this story.

Disclaimer: I don't own .Hack/Roots or .Hack/G.U. or anything else .Hack/ related. It belongs to CyberConnect2 and Bandai Namco games.

His darkest day was undoubtedly a few days after his sister fell into a coma, not the day it happened. The day the AIDA claimed her seemed like an incredibly bad dream at first. He'd seen it happen, he was powerless against the thing that possessed his arm and stole his sister from him. But, it hadn't seemed real at the time.

The next thing he remembered was waking up, face down, on his keyboard. He sat up and winced, feeling like hell, his whole body aching from the position he'd slept in. And his left arm felt the worst; like someone had taken a sledge hammer to it. But when he looked at it, he only saw a small, almost black, bruise on the crook of his arm, that left him wondering if what happened wasn't a dream after all.

He then felt his cell phone buzz; he saw that he had at least five missed calls from his parents. His heart sank; that nightmare he'd just woken up from couldn't be true, could it? He then listened to the messages his parents had left him, and dread took hold of him; Aina had collapsed yesterday evening and hadn't woken up since.

Fully awake now, he bolted out the door of his apartment to his car, ignoring the growing pain in his arm, the pulse that ominously felt like someone was laughing at him. He drove to the hospital like a person on the run. In hindsight, he considered himself extremely lucky that there had been no cops around.

When he entered the hospital, he practically yelled at the receptionist to tell him where his sister's room was located. The woman looked up from her computer in a huff and took off a pair of what looked like goggles. He then realized that she had been playing 'The World' when she was supposed to be working. How had she kept her job with a work ethic like hers he thought? He then realized that she probably hadn't expected someone so early in the morning.

Deep in his angry musings, he almost missed when the receptionist asked, "Sir, what patient's room are you looking for?"

"Indou Aina." He said curtly

The woman checked her computer and, after a minute, told him a room number. He then took off running without asking her directions. Which may have been, in hindsight, a bad idea, but he was in a hurry at the time and hadn't spared a thought for directions.

When he finally made it to his sister's room, his mother was there waiting for him, "Masato, what took you so long?"

He could see that his mother had been crying, it made him want to cry as well, "I'm sorry, I came as quickly as I could. But, in my rush, I forgot to ask for directions to the room. I'm afraid the receptionist must think me crazy now…How is she?"

His mother gave him a small, sad smile, even his small joke couldn't cheer her up, it seemed, "She's stable now. The doctors don't seem to be able to give me reason this happened, though. I told them she had been playing on the computer when she collapsed. But, they brushed me off and told me it was unimportant." Pain lanced through Masato's heart, hearing that. He knew it had been that thing's fault; his fault that his sister was in this condition now.

When he saw his precious sister, she looked like she was sleeping. He felt an uncontrollable urge to shake her awake. But he didn't because he knew it wouldn't work. The despair that followed this realization almost crushed him where he stood. But he knew he couldn't breakdown here, in the hospital. If he did, his mother's breakdown would surely follow soon thereafter.

'There must be something I can do,' Masato thought desperately, 'Since 'The World' is the cause, the answer must be there as well.'

A while later, Masato left Aina's hospital room, seeing that there was nothing he could do and that he and his mother had run out of things to talk about that didn't lead back to Aina and Masato revealing something that would make his mother hate him. Numbly, he walked down the halls, returning to the front desk. Once there, the same receptionist as earlier asked, "Did you find who you were looking for? You took off without letting me tell you where the room was, I was worried."

"Yes," Masato said tiredly, "I found her."

"How was she?" the woman asked, wanting to make conversation. But Masato, not wanting to talk about it anymore, not wanting to relive, yet again, the details of how his sister ended up this way, evaded her question by asking one of his own, "I saw you playing 'The World' earlier. What character model do you play?"

The lady's eyes lit up at the question and she answered enthusiastically, her apology superficial to Masato's ears, "So you did notice? I'm sorry about that then. I play a Shadow Warlock named…"

Masato didn't hear the rest of her sentence; he felt like he'd just been punched in the gut that was the character model she had played as well. The reminder, again, that this was all his fault...

The pain crippling him afresh, Masato gave one last nod to the receptionist and staggered out to his car. After what seemed like an eternity, he finally arrived back at his apartment. Once he was inside his room, he logged on the "The World"

Once he was on, he knew something was wrong immediately. He had been logged in to not the root town as usual, but the place Aina had fallen into a coma. He then felt his arm pulse and when he looked down at it his eyes widened and his breath was stolen from his lungs.

The thing that had stolen Aina from him had attached itself to his avatar's arm. What used to be a normal arm was now a grotesque, demonic looking thing; the shoulder extended into a crooked triangular shape, the hand holding a wicked blade.

The thing seemed to convulse then, as if it was shaking in uncontrollable laughter. Suddenly a voice sounded in Masato's head, "So you've returned, epitaph user of the Rebirth."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Masato said, fury etched in his voice. He only understood about half of what his…arm had just said. Having read the Epitaph of Twilight to Aina many times, he knew that the Rebirth referred to Corbenik, the last of the eight phases of Morganna. But the rest of the sentence made no sense.

"So you really don't know?" the voice said finally, amusement coloring its voice

"No I don't. What did you do with my sister?"

"Oh her," it said, seemingly bored with where this conversation was going, "I guess I can show her to you…What's left of her anyway."

His possessed arm then moved in an arc to his side and large stacks of books that hadn't been there before appeared. Amidst the stacks of books, the sound of a rocking chair could be heard. Masato turned toward the sound, and for the second time that day, the breath was stolen from his lungs. There was his sister sitting in the chair, the Epitaph of Twilight sitting open in her lap.

Masato then started sprinting toward her, he had to know if she was alright. But before he could get very far, he stopped abruptly, feeling the cold steel of a blade against his throat.

"Ah, ah, ah," the voice echoed again, "I only said I'd let you see her. If you want to touch, you'll have to follow my instructions for a while."

Masato looked at the soulless form of his sister on the rocking chair; he then looked down at the wicked blade pressed against his throat. A frustrated scream tore from his mouth; he knew he had to do what that thing said. If he didn't the thing that had possessed his arm would kill him and he would never get the chance to save his sister.

"Fine…" Masato said, resignation coloring his voice, "I'll do what you ask."

"Good," the voice said, and Masato felt his arm drop from his neck, "then I will give you power beyond the system of this 'world' and you will become its God. But, there's still so much for you to learn…"

"Yes…" Masato said quietly, not really hearing anything, no thought on his mind other than reviving his sister. The voice said something else that Masato didn't hear and then, he was blinking at a blank screen.

After a few more blinks, Masato realized that somehow that thing had logged him out of "The World" and his was back in his apartment. There was a beat and Masato realized that he hadn't been able to save his sister right away. The crushing pain hit him yet again and he found it hard to breathe for a few moments.

And then, after thinking how his sister would reprimand him for moping about his current situation, he stood up, thinking that he needed much more information about these 'Epitaph Users' (Yes, I know, you guys are going to berate me for making Ovan-kun seem ignorant at the moment. But, I imagine that he had to start his quest for knowledge somewhere and this seems to be as good a place as any).


"You want to borrow a copy of the Jun Banshouya file?" Hino Takumi repeated, looking as if Masato had asked him something impossible

Instead of yelling about how urgent in was that he look at those files, Ovan put on a fake smile and nodded, "Yes, that is what I would like. It doesn't have to be the actual file; a copy of a copy would do just fine. But, I am assuming that you can't?"

Takumi gave Masato a look that reminded the older man that Takumi Hino actually was 17 and not much older than the age that he acted most of the time. Takumi then said, "That's fine, I can give you a copy of the Jun Banshoya file. But can't you just look it up at work? You do work at the Network Administration Bureau after all."

Masato shook his head, smile still in place, "No, I want to look at it in a more…personal capacity. Looking at it at work would just cause unnecessary trouble."

Takumi pursed his lips slightly and looked as he was about to say no. But then, after a while, "Sure I'll give you a copy. But, I expect my usual payment, though."

"Yes, of course," Masato said, "and what kind of information do you want this time Wiseman-san?"

"Why you want the Jun Banshouya file and why you can't look at it at work." Takumi said immediately

At that, Masato's smile dropped and he shook his head without saying another word. Takumi looked at him and Masato wondered if his younger friend could see right through him to the black pit that had become his soul since his sister had been taken away. After a moment, though, Takumi turned around and rummaged through a drawer for few moments. He then gave Masato a flash drive and said with a sigh, "Here you go, the Jun Banshouya file. You may not be willing to answer me now, but I will expect payment eventually…" Takumi trailed off, the 'even if I have to force it out of you' left unsaid, but hung between the two friends like an echo.

"I know," Masato said with a nod, "maybe when this is all over and she has been returned to me, I'll tell you about it. But for now…" he trailed off, unable to say anything else at the moment.

And with that, the conversation came to an end and Masato got ready to leave. As he was just about through the door though, he heard Takumi say softly, a twinge of both regret and conviction in his voice "I am going to find your secret out, old friend, whether you want me to or not. Now that you haven't told me, I have to know…"

Masato gave Takumi one last look and shook his head slightly, but said nothing in response as he walked through the door, letting it slam shut behind him.


Masato pored over the Jun Banshouya (I know it's transliterated at Bansyoya officially, but I prefer Banshouya because that's how it would be written in Japanese) file for days; he listened to all 12 entries so many times that he practically memorized them…and yet, he found nothing particularly useful in them. When they had been leaked to the internet (I don't know if they were leaked in .Hack/ canon, but for the sake of this story they were ^_^) Masato had looked at them like everyone else in his office. He hadn't thought much of the file, though, as it hadn't been of much interest to him (at the time), nor did he have the time to take away from work to look at it all that closely.

And this look-over of the files was just as useless as his first skim when it first came out. Sure, Project G.U. was interesting, and given other circumstances he would have thought more highly about the contents. But, his sister in the state she was, and not any closer to getting any better than when before he had looked at the file more closely, Masato could care less about Project G.U. or Epitaph P.C.s or the boy who first became an 'epitaph user', Misaki Ryou, or the boy who had started all this, Kite.

He did find it interesting that the Morganna Factors had begun to fuse with P.C.s in The World and it explained what that Thing had called him (even though the question of why that thing knew what he was, was still unanswered). But, the Jun Banshouya File contained nothing about how to save his sister, so it was a fruitless effort that made Masato despair.

Again, Masato thought to himself, that the answer would more likely be in the world than on a file about a previous version so Masato decided to log on again. It had been awhile as the Jun Banshyouya file had taken up a lot of his time because he kept hoping that he would find something in it that would cure his sister. But since there was nothing, Masato knew that he would have to go back to The World.

He logged back in and, somehow, he ended up back in that same white room where Aina rocked endlessly in that chair, staring out into nothing. But something was different, he didn't hear that Thing's voice in his head.

As he was about to walk over to Aina, though, he felt a pulse from somewhere inside him and another voice spoke to him, 'I have found you.' there was another pulse from within Masato's character and something seemed to burst out of him and envelop him in light that was at once painful and soothing at the same time.

And then, the sensation was over and Masato was left wanting more. Masato opened his eyes (not realizing that he had closed them in the first place) and his eyes widened at what he saw (this was becoming an unfortunately regular occurrence for him).

The ugly, monstrous thing that had been protruding out of his arm before was now covered by a large metal cylinder. As he was wondering what had happened, the second sounded in his head again, 'This is only a temporary measure. I cannot keep it contained forever…it will break out and take control of you when the seal weakens…'

Many questions flooded into Masato's head, but the only ones he seemed able to voice were, "What took Aina from me? Who are you? Why is this happening to me?"

The first question, the voice answered with a simple, cryptic, 'AIDA.'

The second question, the voice answered, even more cryptically, 'I am Corbenik. I am the Rebirth. I am you. You are me. We are one.'

The third question, the voice did not answer. Ovan then asked another question, "How can I save her?"

The whole room seemed to echo with the answer, 'Data Drain.'

Masato was about to shout in rage how in the world he was supposed to do that, but before he could say anything he felt another pulse from inside him and a strange blue space enveloped the white room. He looked down to see that he had changed once again. Now he was Corbenik, a sort of human-looking being with elongated limbs and torso. There were what looked to be leaves on its head that seemed to function as eyes. And on the chest, there was another eye that glowed in a dull, white gleam.

Masato felt like was watching from two places at once then, from inside Corbenik and from outside watching the scene in both horror and amazement. Masato watched as one hand began to glow and a large, red cannon sprouted out of seemingly nowhere and aimed at his sister, charging something of considerable energy.

As the cannon shot an energy ball toward his sister, Masato wanted to shout at his Avatar to stop; but something stopped the words at his lips. Something akin to hope bubbled up inside him as he remembered that Data Drain was something that could 'purge' corrupted data from something. And, as his sister was blasted with the ball of energy, he hoped that she would wake from her slumber.

But, as the blue space faded and Masato touched the ground again, his sister did not awaken. She did not even stir and Masato knew that he had failed. As he sank to his knees, head in his hands, he heard laughter and a voice said, "You thought you could save her like that, with your untrained powers?"

He had no answer to the AIDA's question so the laughter continued and Masato fell into despair once again.

And that is the end of the first chapter. At first this story was, perhaps, going to be a oneshot, but that just didn't happen. So, I think that it will have 3-5 chapters…maybe… Also, I think, maybe, Ovan (Masato) is a little out of character. But, even as I played the game I couldn't really get a handle on his character, so I hope I got close. Next chapter we will probably meet Shino and other Roots characters. So, until next chapter then. Reviews are always appreciated and I love to know what you guys think. Even if it's to tell me that this story is utter crap and I shouldn't try to write about Ovan because I have no idea what I'm talking about ^_^

-村山鶴