Disclaimer: Morrowind is not my idea. It belongs to the wonderful, wonderful people known as Bethesda, and I'm not making any money off of their work. This plot, however, IS mine. No takey. Rawr.

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Culture Shock: Prologue

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"I am going to KILL you!" I screamed as my younger sister fled down the stairs. It was a common phrase to hear around my house, especially from me. But could you really blame me? That little twat completely fried my computer! My life!

I started down the stairs before quickly deciding it wasn't worth it. She'd be in her friend's car in a moment, and then what was I going to do? Chase them down the street? No, I just did the only thing I could: Glared. Vehemently. With much menace. Maybe if I was lucky, she'd drop dead from fright. ..Oh wow, was she actually..? No, no, she was just leaning out to spit out her gum. Better luck next time, I supposed.

I trudged back down the hall, staring sullenly at the multitude of errors still popping up all over my computer screen. What had that idiot downloaded? For a few moments I simply watched in silence, then, sighing, I shook my head. I really didn't have the energy to deal with it just then. Leaning over, I tugged the computer's plug out of the outlet. I wasn't going to wade through all those pop ups to shut the thing down the proper way. The system's frantic whirring slowed gratefully. Before it had completely stopped, however, a loud, electrical crackling went off inside the box. I blinked, startled, as a disk was practically shot out of the CD drive. Well. That was unusual.

I cautiously crept over to the disk and peered down at it. Morrowind -- GOTY Edition. For.. the XBox. My sister had been attempting to play my XBox game on the PC? She had been complaining about not being able to download mods without the PC version, but surely even she wasn't stupid enough to think popping in the XBox disk would work? Except that apparently she was. I rolled my eyes and plucked the disk off the ground. Ah well. It wasn't as if I had anything else to do, thanks to my computer being downgraded to a steaming pile of junk. Turning to the XBox, conveniently in the same room, I replaced Fable -- yuck -- with my newly rediscovered Morrowind and settled down on the floor to play.

Humming along unconsciously with the opening music, I smiled. I'd neglected this game for far too long, hadn't I? Well, no more. I was about to reenter the best RPG known to mankind -- until Oblivion, of course. I grin abruptly faded, however, as I saw the words "Load Game" faded to gray. No.. that little fetcher hadn't... I helplessly pounded the button over the unresponsive link, and then, sighing miserably, dropped my head onto my knee. All my hard work, gone! My meticulously thought out characters had been murdered.

I sat there for some time, devastated. Then, gradually, I began to see a brighter side to the whole ordeal. All of my main characters were obscenely powerful by now, and while that had some ego-feeding appeal, it got old pretty quickly. And I had pretty much ruined my chances with the Thieves Guild with my only vaguely 'thief-ish' character when I'd stolen from South Wall corner club and, em, killed everyone inside when they came after me. (It was really late at night, okay?) With renewed interest, I shuffled over to pull my sketchbook out of a drawer. As luck would have it, I had actually drawn a Khajiit a few days ago. I flipped to the bookmarked page and admired my handiwork. Syvachiirr: a stunning albino beauty with a Siamese-esque face. White was hardly a good color for a thief, but that didn't really matter in the game, now did it? (Not that I could have chosen a white face anyway.. one thing I did agree with my sister on is that I should have gotten the PC version. So many beautiful mods were around!)

Excited now, I crawled back over to the controller and selected "New Game." Instead of the expected prophecy scene, however, I heard the same dreadful cracking noise inside my beloved XBox that I'd heard in the computer earlier. I only had enough time to look at the console in horror before the shock traveled through the controller.

And my world was nothing but pain.

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Author's Note: Yes, it was short, I'm sorry, but don't worry! This is only the prologue; actual chapters will be longer. Comments and criticism would be much appreciated!