Disclaimer: I do not own the .hack series. It belongs to Namco-Bandai. This is a one shot self-contained story... but it leads to something greater as you will see. Without any further ado, I present...

At the End of The World
By: David Knight

A young girl ran across the field, laughing as she clutched flowers in her hands. She thought the World had gotten rather boring as of late. However, even if the World became boring, her friend would never be.

Said friend was staring at the ground, looking over blades of automatic grass. She was a purple-furred cat-like creature, dressed in green armor with white boots, a black gauntlet on the left arm and a sword at her right hip. "Zefie."

The blonde haired, violet eyed daughter of Aura had a smile on her face as she stopped running and simply walked over to her friend. "I found a suitable candidate for you, Mia. She's pretty much brain dead according to those machines and these doctors have got her hooked up to some virtual reality system. You couldn't ask for a better choice."

"I guess," the former Phase muttered softly.

Zefie frowned when she heard the tone in her friend's voice. "Now what's the matter? I'd thought you'd sound more enthusiastic about this."

"You know why I asked for your help in this. So I could try to see him. See him outside of this place. In their world," Mia said with longing in her voice. "But lately, I've felt hunted."

"Hunted?" Zefie blinked. "By what?"

"I don't know. I don't think it's just paranoia though," Mia replied before standing upright. "Let's get this over with, before something else happens."

Zefie looked over Mia one more time before giving her a hug. "You ABSOLUTELY sure about this? I've got the potential to be even more powerful than Mommy but I just…"

Mia shook her head, smiling as she patted Zefie on the head. "I trust you with my life, little flower."

Zefie felt warm with that praise. Rena and Shugo were not online so much now, and she didn't interact with any other players. All she had was her mom and Mia.

Mia, who she had found wandering the World, before with Elk and now without him. Over the years, she had seen him always stay by her no matter what. But in time she realized as Elk spent more and more time online, it was not healthy for his human physiology. And she felt that maybe her presence was harming him in the real world.

And so she made the painful choice to leave him. Mia wanted to Elk to be strong without her. He had to be if he was to be alright in the other world. He had to deal with life with out her. Everyone else did.

Zefie had been someone for Mia to find comfort with. Neither of them were human; they were highly developed AIs that could simulate human emotion. They had become what humans would call best friends.

But lately, Mia missed Elk. She missed him and wanted to see him. But she did not want it to be as it was before. She just thought that since this world could affect the other one, maybe she could be a part of it. Even if it was for a little while.

She had told Zefie of her idea about trying to see the other world, really see it as in actually being there. It took her two months to come up with the idea of finding a way to transfer her data into a human brain. After all, as Zefie said, what was a brain but an organic computer. Find one without a lot of data in it, hooked up to a machine, and Mia could possibly use the body.

Zefie now moved away from Mia, raising her hands up and giving a smile. "Good luck," She said before her hands glowed white, and two beams came from them. The one that came from her left hand hit Mia, while the other hand created what looked like a Chaos Gate. Suddenly a ghostly copy of Mia came out of her body and then entered the gate. This gate was not a normal chaos gate. She made it a week ago, testing it for stability to make sure it all worked before actually having her friend do this.

"Okay. Now all I have to do is keep this gate open just so Mia can come back to her body after she's done expressing her feelings of love to that Elk dude," Zefie said with some glee. She knew she'd make a fuss here, but there was no way any stupid CC Corp Admins would notice her activity. She had put up barriers and firewalls. She hadn't met anyone from there that could find her.

For one moment everything seemed absolutely perfect.

And then one microsecond later, everything shattered to pieces. Something large and black fell from the sky and to Zefie's utter horror and shock, crashed into her modified Chaos Gate, demolishing it as it landed.

This thing was a black knight of sorts. It reminded of her an over-modified CC Corp Cobalt Knights PC. She hated those so much but not as much as she did right now. "YOU BASTARD?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"

The PC didn't respond. It didn't even seem aware that Zefie was there. All it cared about was, all it looked at, was Mia's PC body.

What happened next would be burned into Zefie's memory banks. She'd never be able to delete it no matter how much she tried. The image of seeing this monster behead Mia, its armor opening up and Mia's body breaking up into fractal code parts, being sucked into the Knight PC as if it was a vacuum cleaner.

Zefie stared in absolute horror at what just happened, but before she could even throw a custom punch at the PC, it logged out, taking with it all of Mia.

In her short life span, Zefie had learned many different human emotions... but she had never truly understood grief and sorrow until now.

"MIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" the girl fell to her knees and screamed, wailing out at the world.

----

From his computer, Jyotaro Amagi smiled. He had been tracking that vagrant AI for weeks now and finally caught her to a point where he could take her out of the question, delete her character and extract the Phase.

Six down, Amagi said to himself, a smirk on his face as he plotted for his future. Only two left... two left until I become the God of the Network.

----

"Nononononononono – NO!" Zefie screamed, her sorrow now mixed with rage. "This was not supposed to happen! This wasn't supposed to happen! I'm better than anyone! I spent a week preparing everything so no one could track me or see what I was doing! No stupid CC Corp suit should have spotted…." She froze as she figured it out. "And he didn't. He never spotted me... it was Mia. Those bastards. They wanted her the entire time! Mia did say someone was hunting her."

She was about to turn around and leave but felt a presence on her. Let it go, Zefie.

Zefie's eyes went wide before she turned around in, of all things she'd never expect for her mother, anger. "Let it go… let it go?! Have you lost it, Mom?! We're gods here!"

No. We aren't. We aren't needed for the world. Humans need to come up with their own paths, follow their own destinies. We... we need merely to step back and let them do what they should.

"I can't believe I am hearing this!" Zefie shouted. "My best friend was murdered… and you don't $#ing care!!! And for #$&'s sake, stop censoring my mouth! I am angry!!!"

And that is why you need to step back and rest with me. There's nothing left for us, the ghostly figure of Aura said, holding out her hand. Her daughter slapped it away.

"Well, what do you know... I guess there's a part of Grandma in me after all," Zefie said with a cold detached tone in her voice. Her hair started to turn black as did her clothes. "'Cause I'm not going to become some silent god like you seem to be, nor do I want to be a god to begin with. I'm not you, Mom. You say you found your purpose. Well congrats. I haven't," She raised her right hand and opened up a chaos gate. "But I am sure as hell going to find it." She smirked sinisterly. "That, and revenge!"

Zefie, no! Aura shouted, trying to stop her daughter, but it was already too late.

Her daughter was gone, and she was just too tired now. As she began to sink back down into the World that she loved, a single tear escaped her eyes.

Goodbye, my daughter.

----

Kobayashi Haruka.

A nineteen-year-old Japanese girl from Tokyo. She has been lying in this hospital bed for a little over a year now. The day she graduated from high school, she and her friends went out to celebrate and party. They thought they had their whole lives ahead of them now.

Unfortunately, one of them had too much to drink and was behind the wheel. It didn't help that the car they collided with was also a drunk driver. Needless to say, the resulting crash was truly horrific.

There were eight people between both cars. Only one person managed to survive. If being nearly brain dead could be called surviving.

The first week after she had been stabilized by doctors after the crash, they said to her parents to pull the plug and let her simply die, as they had no real hope of her waking up plus the cost of caring for a comatose patient would be expensive.

Though not filthy rich, they were not poor either. Money was not the issue. The Kobayashis went from specialist to specialist to try to help their daughter, each time meeting with failure.

Then finally, they came to a specialist in virtual applications. One who had been observing coma patients who had blacked out due to playing the online game The World years ago. While his equipment had not worked to bring them out, it had been able to monitor their activity and he had five years since then to improve upon it.

With their confident, the virtual specialist had hooked up Haruka with a VR headset, one designed to monitor her brain waves and patterns. The treatment had been going on for nearly two weeks now with no real results, other than to show she wasn't dead.

At this moment, a nurse had gone into the young girl's room, preparing to change her bed sheets as well as clean her up. She'd been this girls nurse for several months now. She felt sorry for her parents. "Now just relax. This won't hurt..."

"Ze...fie..."

The bowl with water and the sponge nurse had clattered to the floor as she saw Haruka's lips move and heard her speak. "Oh my god…" she gasped. She looked back at the patient. "Can you hear me? Haruka-chan?"

"Who... are you..." the voice said in a raspy and dry voice. "Where... am I?"

The nurse ran out in a hurry, going to fetch the doctors to attend to the now woken up patient.

Whether she knew it or not, Kobayashi Haruka's life had been changed.

Forever.

----

Four Months Later...

Amagi put on his headset and smiled. He knew that Tarvos was missing from the rest of the Epitaphs but it didn't really matter. In fact it worked perfectly. His fake epitaph, the one he was using, would take its place. With it he'd become the god of this system. From there, the god of the net.

Everything Harold was afraid of I am not. I have surpassed him and now I will show them all.

With one stroke of a button, he executed the R.A. Program, and believed himself now in the position of net godhood.

"You are a pathetic little man."

Amagi blinked, wondering where that came from when all he saw around him was darkness.

"Your plan has failed. I've seen to it. It would have killed mother, and while she and I are not on speaking terms at the moment, I do very much love her," the vengeful voice said, and Amagi heard footsteps coming closer to him.

"What are you talking about?! Who are you?! What are you?! How dare you speak to your new G---AHGH!" Amagi screamed out in pain as he felt himself on fire.

It was then that he saw he had been stabbed through the chest with a sword. Staring right at him, was a teenage girl, dressed in black robes, with hair as black as night and eyes, her red eyes were like that of a demon.

"You killed my best friend for this pathetic attempt at something you could never hope to attain. Before I send your mind into hell, I want you to know who I am," the girl said as she put her hands on the sides of Amagi's head. "I'm Zefie, daughter of Aura, and granddaughter of Morganna." She smiled maliciously. "And how unpleasant for you, I've happened to inherited Grandmother's penchant for harming humans, at least those that have wronged me." Her eyes narrowed. "This is for Mia you bastard."

For three seconds Amagi felt absolutely nothing.

And then after that, all he felt was endless screams, cries and pains. All of the negative data that Zefie could gather about humanity, she dumped all of it into Jyotaro Amagi's mind.

The result was Amagi had lost his mind.

"Enjoy your life, Amagi... what little you have left," Zefie amended before logging out.

----

It was only short hours later that Zefie felt remorse and sorrow again. Yes, she got her revenge, but she didn't think Amagi would have one last parting gift to give to her.

He burned down two thirds of CC Corp and with it took down eighty percent of the World's data.

Her mother might be safe in the 'black box' but the world she loved was gone.

"CC Corp will make a new one. But it's not the same. Nothing will ever be the same," she said, dusting off the virtual dust from her dress. Could her mother have known this was going to happen to their World? Was that why she had just given up? To be a sleeping goddess?

She didn't know, and for the moment she didn't really care. Her world was gone. She was a teenager and she was in need of exploring her horizons.

"Time for me to start growing up a bit," Zefie said, opening a port which resembled a chaos gate and then walking through it.

It was time to find out just what she wanted from her existence, what kind of a being she really was and what her purpose was in the world.

The real world.

This is not the end... it is simply the beginning...

Author's Note: You must all be wondering what the hell I am smoking to come up with another series. Well, simply put, I like Mia and I like .hack. I just couldn't resist.

That said, get ready for the hack//GU Trilogy, with changes that reflect the events of this tale.

.hack//GU Volume 1 – Those Who Return

It's been two years since Kobayashi Haruka woke up from her coma. She has tried to regain the life she left behind, but feels deep down that she's no longer the same person she once was. When her friend Katsumi convinces her to play the online game The World R:2, she will not believe the things that she will see and experience. Though her playing this game, she will uncover memories that are not her own... or will it be the opposite of that.

Welcome to... the World.