"Ha! Beat you!" I shouted gleefully as Pixitrixi64, my Christmas Gelert, knocked out the last of our Battledome opponent's HP. This feat was performed on account shared by meself, as well as my best friend Alex, who I had known for as long as I could remember. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the grin that spread across his tanned face as her surveyed our respectable victory. I was quite pleased myself, and said to him, "See? It's much more fun to fight a real opponent trhan one of the computer controlled ones." Initially, we had both wanted to fight in the battledome, but while Alex wanted to fight one of the automated computer-controlled opponents, I opted to fight an actual player. In the end, I won by holding over his head the fact that I was still in possession of a book he had loaned to me a while ago. The whole battle through, I had kept the same smug grin on my face that only expanded in the face of victory for the scond time. Even Alex couldn't deny the satisfaction of beating an actual player.
"Come on," he said, a silly smile still spread across his boyish face, "we had better heal Pix up. There will still be time to celebrate after," he added when I pouted. So with a melodramatic sigh, I clicked on Faerieland and visited the Healing Springs. I was gratifid by the fact that the water faerie brought my pets back up to full hit points.
"What now, captain?" I asked, looking back up at him. He paused for a moment, thinking, and a lock of his curly brown hair took this opportunity to fall in front of his steely blue eyes. He brushed it back, irritated, and straigthened up.
"Well, let's just play some games," he suggested. Without bothering to wait for my agreement, he leaned over my shoulder, took hold of the mouse, and clicked on 'Games'. However, instead of brining us to the familiar 'Pet Central' page as we expeceted it to, nad indeed it should have, it brought us to the 'Login' page, and defiantly claimed we weren't logged in.
"What's this?" I asked, puzzled. We had not logged out, yet we were not still logged in. The address at the top said , so we hadn't been directed to a false site, either. What on earth could possibly be going on here?
"Perhaps an error on the site's part?" Alex suggested weakly. We both exchanged an uneasy glance. "Well, why don't we change our password when we log in, just in case, okay?" I nodded quickly, deciding that this was indeed the best course of action. However, just as I was gonig to enter in the information requested, a pop-up appeared on the screen.
"What on earth...?" Alex's brows drew together as he studied the window with a frown. In bright, flashing letters a message displayed itself proudly on the computer screen, daring us to defy it. It stated simply, 'You have been infected with the Warp Hole virus." "What's this?" he muttered, reapeating what I had said moments ago. "Some sort of prank perhaps..." I found it hard to make myself believe Alex when he sounded so uncertain himself. "First we get logged out, and now we get a bogus pop-up claiming a virus... what could it mean?"
"Oh, it's probably... nothing," I siad, trying just as hard to convince myself as him. "A bizarre coincidence, that's all. Let's just log in..." With one more uneasy look at the pop-up, Alex clicked in the "X" to close the window and with shaky hands, I typed in our user information. And then, I had the hell acared out of me.
A glowing light began to emnate from the computer monitor, so bright it seemed tangible. It pulsed out, getting larger each time. The light seemed to spread around behing Alex and me, and it seemed as if it were not the only thing getting bigger... Suddenly, I realized-- it wasn't anything getting bigger, we were getting smaller! To my horror, I discovered I could not see Alex anymore. In fact, I could barely even see myself through the thick light. I struggled to break free, but all I succeeded in doing was finding myself further immersed in the light. Finally, when I couldn't even tell up from dow, the light faded away, leaving me standing beside Alex in the last place i ever would have thought I'd be-- Neopia Central.