Open Source Code (OSC)
Disclaimer: This story is fiction. All the characters, names and places belong to their respective owners.
"Talking" – Thoughts/Implication – (Scenario) – Important
=[Prologue]=
Video games, yes… we all love video games. Some of us more than others, but we all love it in one form or another. Video games comes in many flavors; from casual to education; from simple puzzle to role playing to epic strategic battle where vast armies would clashes against one another on a massive and interactive map. But what make a video games work? Was it the storyline that made up the game world, where the protagonist would overcome the obstacles and win the girl in the end? Was it the high definition graphics and great music? Or was it because of the interactive, user interface or numerous branches plotlines?
No, it wasn't any of those above. What makes games work was simple; one and zero. Just two very basic numbers that everyone learned from the moment they could speak. Yet, with millions upon millions of them, adjoining together in a script, line by line, page by page, they become something special. The codes were the life blood of the games, and they create the world where a player would enjoy. They form a guideline and the rule that manipulate the virtual world and all those existed within it. Every character inside the digital space must follow a set of rules, and they cannot go beyond the boundary that the codes dictated. The more rules there were, the more life-like those living within would be.
When a game reaches sufficient complexity, it would be called reality. Are we actually living in the real world or just a very complex game where our senses were simply programmed to give the illusion of living; self-aware?
XxXxX
"Ah fuck! The teme killed me," Naruto cursed in frustration before noticing the enclosing black void. If this was the afterlife, it sure lacked substances. The blond examined his chest and found the gaping hole that should have been there missing. He was sure he got stabbed through the heart, but then something bizarre occurred. Last thing he remembered was strange static lines ran across Sasuke's face as the idiot pierced his chest with a lightning technique called Chidori.
It was really painful.
Sasuke had missed his heart completely, but then for some reason, Sasuke's body shifted to the center of him and gave him a fatal wound instead. Naruto saw the Uchiha's face broke into pieces crumbling building before the world turned dark.
Naruto's eyes widened, seeing the pitch black abyss shifted. Distortions with strange gray and white dots surrounded him before forming two distinctive numbers. They quickly disappeared, leaving the blond alone again.
That was weird, he thought with a shrug. Naruto checked himself in the darkness, making sure nothing had change. However something glowed in front of him that caught his attention.
A black screen with thin white border formed. He jerked backward, seeing the almost transparent panel in his face. The unfamiliar window flickered as if power was fluctuating before displaying a letter one by one from left to right.
"Reset?"
"Who are you?" Naruto asked on reflex, looking at the words displayed on the screen. The word deleted itself one by one until there was only a small under scroll. The small horizontal bar blinked several times before displaying text again as it accepted the verbal command.
"Unknown command"
Naruto scratched his head and blinked with confusion. Why did it write something that? He didn't know. He thought for a moment before asking: "What are you?"
"Closest response: Developer Interface"
Naruto blinked yet again, reading each word with confusion. The twelve year old wasn't sure what each word indicated in the context. He scratched his head more and asked several things, but got "Unknown Command" as a response for most questions. However, he understood the gist of what it was after hours of trial and error. It was some sort of interface that supposed to be hidden, but somehow he could see it and interact with it.
"So my whole life is some sort of fucking game?" Naruto asked himself with a heavy sigh.
The word "Unknown Command" appeared on the black screen again. After idling for a sufficient amount of time, the screen displayed the first request again. "Restart?"
Without anything else to do, Naruto pressed the only button on the screen which was just a circular arrow. The blackness around him crumpled, breaking into black cube, revealing the bright white light they were hiding. He saw the whiteness of the world before slipping into unconsciousness.
XxXxX
Naruto opened his blue eyes as someone was shouting his name. He looked around and almost died of a heart attack, seeing he was hanging off the Hokage statue with a paint bucket and brush in each hand. Before him was the faint blue screen with a lot more icons on it now around the edges. If this was a game, everything felt incredibly real. He could feel the summer breeze on his skin like he remembered.
"Hey! Stop causing trouble!"
"Stop doing this every day!"
Naruto blinked, turning around and noticed the mass of villagers shouting at him from below. Somehow he went back in time.
"Hey! Didn't I do this before?"
"Of course you did! You idiot! What the hell you doing during class time?" Iruka shouted from below as Naruto eyed the chunin. Naruto wondered why Iruka didn't say anything about the screen floating before his eyes so he pointed at the blue screen.
"Hey Iruka-sensei, do you see this?"
"See what?"
"There's an almost transparent blue screen right in front of me?"
"… Stop messing around! Get down here, you idiot!" Iruka called out as the Hokage by his side drew in the sweet tobacco from an old pipe. Naruto looked through the blue screen to Iruka and Jiji as their figure had outline with a circular ring around them. There was some information displayed next to them.
Iruka Umino, Chunin
Hiruzen Sarutobi, Kage
Naruto pressed on Jiji, making the screen flickered. Everything in the center cleared away and a leaf symbol formed in the back ground. The Hokage's image appeared on the left side with thick green borders. To the right, first thing, was the name Hiruzen Sarutobi, followed by numerous lines stating other things.
Naruto tapped Jiji's name on curiosity as a vertical blinking line appeared in the middle of some letter. A bunch of letter in squares popped up at the bottom. He quickly pressed "X" at the corner as he wasn't sure what that was. The keyboard rolled off to the side and disappeared. Naruto decided to play it safe for now and did exactly like what he did last time during class. Except this time he did a naked version of Iruka instead, causing everyone to laugh.
"YOU DUMBASS! I DO NOT LOOK LIKE THAT!"
After some more shouting back and forth, Iruka ordered him to stand outside while he dealt with the rowdy classroom. On the way out, Naruto noticed some of the students in the room he didn't know as the screen displayed their information. He was sure he never saw them again after this day so they must be unimportant people.
Standing outside, Naruto checked over the screen. At the bottom of the display he noticed a strange icon that looked like a world logo. He pressed it and the screen shown the entire building like someone looking through it from the top down. He noticed a little box on the right of it was titled radar. The text was on red background.
"What is this?" Naruto asked himself and pressed on it. The button background color switched to green, and the schematic of the building immediately filled with miniature size icons that represent people, including Iruka as the name were displayed below them. He noticed they were moving around in the building.
"Wow… that's kind of awesome!" Naruto called out excitedly. He checked more stuff to the side bar of the holographic display. He noticed the zoom button located at the bottom right. He pressed on it as it the map zoomed out to the whole village as if the spying was pulled up into the sky. Messing around with the interface, he could move the map in any direction with a slide of hand, seeing numerous presentations of people all around the world. Naruto was spying on people everywhere without them noticing.
Author Note:
This story is not a gamer crossover. For one, I don't intend to have Naruto grinding for stats, that's boring and waste time, and frankly, I don't want to do that. Naruto actually got a Developer GUI which supposed to be removed from the game. The game glitches out as he wasn't supposed to die by Sasuke in Valley of the End and it rebooted in some sort of debug mode.