Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, or the places or...you know, all the usual stuff that will save me from any form of court case.

Alrighties! Prologue! I don't usually do prologues, but I thought I would for this one It's almost 2am now, and I should be sleeping, since I have to wake up early tomorrow...But my favourite song just came on, so I think I can manage to post this (Empty Room by Marjorie Fair + Shimmer by Fuel equals love. Don't know why, but I'm addicted to them right now...). I've already got 3 chapters of this fic done so far, since I'm enjoying writing it! So hopefully updates won't be as scarce as my other Fruits Basket fanfiction...It all depends on the reviews, I guess! So enjoy, and don't forget to hit that review button

Twilight Town Code 384

Prologue

Welcome to Twilight Town

Have you ever had one of those days that just drag on forever? Like the gears in the clock seize and the hands linger on 2:30pm for the whole afternoon? Today was one of those unfortunately elongated days.

It was nearing the end of the year now, and everyone was already in holiday mode, despite the week of exams we had to suffer through once our week of classes was over.

"Hey, Roxas" a whisper hissed to my left. Why Pence was whispering was beyond me, since the rest of the class had given up hiding the fact that they were talking a long time ago, and it seemed the teacher was too fatigued to bother trying to hush them.

"Yeah?" I replied in the same low tone, darting my eyes to where he sat across the isle. It was exam practice, so we had been separated from our usual seating arrangements, into individual spacing.

"You heard about that new game?" Pence continued, still looking like he'd be sprung for detention at any second.

"No. What's it called?"

"Twilight Town"

Pence loved games. Loved them more than life itself, I was willing to bet. His build clearly showed it; he was podgy and round-faced. He knew all the game lingo and constantly used it in conversations, despite the fact that barely any of us knew what he was talking about.

"Never heard of it. Any good?" I knew a little about online gaming. Role play games, swords, spells, currency. But next to Pence I was nothing.

"Virtual reality, dude. Best out so far. Today's Friday, right? I'll bring it over this arvo. You can borrow it for the weekend"

"Yeah, sure" I agreed, giving an appreciative smile.

"Class, you may now leave. I hope that by Monday you have composed yourselves enough to concentrate on study for your exams!" our teacher boomed from the front, her voice accented with British background. Everyone bustled from the room, glad to be done with such an unproductive lesson.

There was only one class left for today, and that was calculus. Why I'd taken this class still eluded me. It was the most ridiculously frustrating lesson I'd ever had to sit through. Most of the time, sitting was all I did in it. My friend Olette, however, was a wiz at all things numbers. She was like the Hermione Granger of our grade.

"Roxas" she whispered out of the corner of her mouth, "are you actually doing anything? Or just staring at the board?"

"Staring" I droned, not bothering to shift my eyes to look at her.

She made a huffing noise and pulled my book towards her. She scrawled down the page numbers we were working on, accompanied by a small note reading: 'study these or you'll be unemployed for the rest of your life'.

It was slightly embarrassing to say I didn't have a job. Most of my friends did, even Pence. How he found the time between levelling his characters to serve coffee at Starbucks, was beyond me.

The final bell rang, and the class eagerly exited the room. All except Olette, who often hung back to talk to the teacher about upcoming studies. Our Calculus teacher was fresh from university. Estimated to be about 22; no one had ever had the courage to ask him. His sandy blonde hair was neatly messy and held in place with just enough gel. He wore glasses over his sapphire coloured eyes. Most of the girls in my class loved him, so it wasn't hard to tell why they were so wrapped in the subject. I slung my bag over my shoulder and left the room. I would have waited for her, but we walked separate ways home, and only god knows how long she'd be talking to our teacher for.

Pence caught me on my way out the front gates.

"There you are!" he shouted, waving one of his stubby hands in the air.

I waved back and came to a standstill to wait for him. He waddled over and we began the walk to his house. He only lived down the street from me, so it didn't take long for us to arrive at my front door, carting three boxes of what I could only assume was related to the game he'd mentioned. We carried the boxes upstairs to my room and placed them in front of my computer.

"Alright" Pence began, opening the first box. I watched as he tugged cord after cord from the inside of the cardboard package and plugged them into sockets I didn't even know my computer had. After watching in awe for at least ten minutes, I excused myself from the room to grab us some drinks. When I returned, the assembling was almost done. Several shiny objects made of cloth lay next to my computer screen, along with some wired glasses. I gaped for a moment, perplexed by the arrangement.

"What's all this do?" I asked with amusement, moving towards my desk.

"I'll show you in a minute, just have to get all of this installed onto you PC. Those things there are sensors. Don't touch them"

I pulled my outstretched hand away from the small black devices linked from my wall to the computer tower. I instead took to sipping my Coke and watching Pence fiddle around with some CD's. Before long we were ready to go. Pence seemed quite pleased with himself. He fitted the cloth around my forearms, ankles, neck, stomach and slipped gloves onto my hands before pressing the glasses to my eyes. He snapped two wires together at the back of my head, and the shades almost suctioned onto my face. I gasped in shock as a selection screen flashed before my eyes.

"See anything?" he asked, adjusting something on my back

"Yeah. It's asking me to select a name"

"You've got voice sensors on those glasses. 100 accurate. Just say a name you want, and then select"

"Uh…ok…Destiny13...select"

Pence quickly pushed something small and cold into my ears, from which an automated voice informed me the selection was successfully, and that I had to wait for something to load.

"'Destiny13'? Hah, dude, where do you come up with these things?" Pence laughed mockingly.

I glowered in my defence, but quickly snapped to attention when music began playing in my ears.

'Please select a class' a soothing voice instructed me, showing me a list.

"Mystic" I replied, finding it the most interesting of the list.

A landscape suddenly popped into view, and there stood an image of me, holding what looked like a staff.

"Whoa. What the hell?" I muttered, unable to do anything more than stare.

"Pretty good, huh? You can choose to look like yourself, or someone else in this game. See the buttons to the left? The sensors on your wall will pick up your movement. Just press them to select stuff you can't use your voice for."

I must have looked weird, standing in the middle of my room, pressing buttons in mid-air that weren't actually there.

In the end, I wound up with a character that looked like me, wearing a light blue cloak rimmed with patterns, and holding a staff. I added some swirl tattoos under my eyes to add effect, and pressed 'done'.

"Welcome to Twilight Town." the same soothing voice resonated in my ears. The screen suddenly turned 3D, and Twilight Town swam into view.

"Yo, Rox, I'm heading home" I heard Pence's voice drift through the music,

"Oh, ok." I replied briefly, turning my head to look at him, though all I could see was the town; the rest of my room felt very far away from behind my glasses.

"If you like the game, we can go get it from the store on Monday afternoon. I'm sure your folks wont mind forking out a bit of money. They've got enough!" he laughed.

I gave a small chuckle in reply and nodded,

"Alright, sounds good. I'll seeya later!"

I vaguely heard his footsteps leave the room, before my senses were pulled back into the game. The town was huge from where I stood. People raced around everywhere. Some sporting fashionable clothing and dangerous weapons, while others looked quite plain and ordinary. I could hear people talking to each other about items and quests; making deals with merchants; haggling others for weapons. It felt like I'd just stepped into another town, rather than a video game. A town where everyone loved cosplay.

"Roxas!" I heard a yell from downstairs, even through the babbling of the other players. It was Olette.

At this point, it occurred to me that I had no idea how to remove any of the things attached to me. Lucky for me, Olette was never one to wait for an invitation to walk into your room. There had been more than several occasions where I'd been getting changed and she had invited herself up. Although it never seemed to bother her. She was more like a sister to me, than a friend.

"What the HELL is all that?" I heard her remark from the door.

"Game. Don't know how to get it off…" I whispered, conscious of people watching me in-game, now.

"You just press the buttons on the side of your shades" a familiar face appeared to my right, and they motioned towards their eyes. I lifted my hands, gave a grateful nod, and pressed hard on the small bumps near my temples. The cords around the back of my head released, and the glasses fell into my palms. I sighed in relief.

"How'd you do that?" I heard Olette ask to my left.

"Someone just told me how to. The glasses have voice sensors, so they must have heard me…"

"Wow. Looks pretty high tech to me. What's it called again?" She looked impressed. Which was odd for Olette, since she usually detested video games.

"Twilight Town" I replied, tugging at the buttons on my ankle bands. She was thoughtfully silent for a moment.

"So I guess you wouldn't want to join me for ice-cream this afternoon?" she sounded slightly dejected at the thought of being replaced by a game. We almost always got ice-cream on a Friday afternoon. It had become a bit of a routine over the past two or so years.

"Of course I would!" I smiled, tugging harder at the cloth around my neck. She smiled back and hurried forward to help me untangle myself from the hardware.

"For a moment there I thought you were going to pull a Pence, and preference a game over a social event!" she laughed

"Haha, nah. It's just a game" I smirked, stepping over the last of the wires and towards my door.

"Come on, let's go!"

Aaaand that's all for the prologue, folks! Boring, yet essential information about the game, pretty much. But hopefully it wasn't too boring for any of you! I didn't get to edit it 100 percent, since I'm so tired I'd probably miss any errors anyway. Anywho, see that review button? Free cookies for you if you review! -waves cookies around- so get writting! And thank you for reading

Ciao for now! -wave-