Being friends with Hazama Masayoshi brought with it a certain level of acceptance of the deeply unusual. Whether it be people transforming into strange creatures, kaijuu- level monster rampages through the city, or a straight-up alien invasion; Gotou Hidenori had long since made his peace with the fact that his definition of 'normal' had been forever altered. Despite Masayoshi's assurances that the weirdness was behind them now, Gotou's doubts remained firmly in place.
But, to his surprise — life did indeed level out. After a few brief hiccups (brought about by the odd, randomly-occurring, dangerously obsessed middle school student), things seemed to settle into some modicum of — dare he say it — normalcy. Okay, so Masayoshi was sleeping on a shelf in his closet, and Gotou was having to take a lot more cold showers than he remembered, but hey. At least there weren't any public-endangering exploding monsters straight out of a tokusatsu serial in their lives any longer.
So when Gotou opened his eyes to an unfamiliar sky, pain throbbing through his temples and his limbs feeling slightly heavier than normal, the only thing that came immediately to mind was: well … fuck .
That, and I goddamned knew something was going to happen.
Gotou sat up slowly, his head pounding like he'd had a long night with the tequila bottle. He hadn't been drinking, not that he could remember — his memory was strangely fuzzy; blank and patchy — but as far as he couldremember it had been a normal winter evening in. He had come home to find Masayoshi already returned for the night, having stolen Gotou's favorite hooded sweatshirt because it was warm ("that's mine, Masayoshi, don't steal my clothes!" "You could wear mine if you want, Gotou-san! We're close to the same size, you fit into my costum-" "That's not the point!" ) and sitting cross-legged on the forbidden zone of Gotou's bed, his own laptop open on his lap. As of late Masayoshi had been obsessed with a game that had arrived in his email in-box one day. He'd dragged Gotou into playing it with him upon occasion, and most anyone else he could puppy-dog-eye as well. (Miraculously, Ishihara, Masayoshi's manager, was completely immune to this trick in Masayoshi's repertoire. Gotou had been meaning to ask what method she used because he fell for it every time. Without fail.)
The fucking game.
Gotou held up his strangely-heavy hands and stared at the metal gauntlets he was wearing, and then looked up at the unfamiliar sky. It was blue, but not quite the right shade of blue, too purple — and while the sun was out and at its zenith; casting his seated shadow long across the grass there was something else in the sky too, unnatural, glittering and jutting at an angle up from the horizon until it faded out of perception into the sky above. The Tower of Eternity. " Fuck ," Gotou said aloud, sounding far calmer than he was. He opened and closed his hands, listening to the soft sound of leather and metal flex.
This was not actually happening to him.
He stood up in the grass, and felt the weight of the armor as he shifted his stance. Gotou woke on a grassy slope, not far from a dirt path, its ground well-packed from the many thousands of feet that had run across it. His movements made a grazing creature raise its head — a boar of some kind, but much larger, its head easily coming to Gotou's chest. It looked at him curiously for a moment, chewing, and then lowered its head to continue grazing.
Gotou exhaled, a little shaky. He was startled by the sudden three-dimensional appearance of the creature. It didn't seem to find him of any interest, which was great given that Gotou was reasonably sure it could bite his head off in one go if it were so inclined. "Fuck," Gotou said again, taking a few steps back and then staggering when his limbs moved easier than he expected, given the weight of the armor he was wearing. The beast continued to ignore him and started to amble away, head down in the grass.
What the hell were those things called, anyway? Gotou had not paid undue attention to the world behind the game, or its almost-creatures' names. Gotou rubbed his hand over his chin, looking around and instantly regretting his very casual stance toward this thing that Masayoshi had all but bullied him into signing up for. He had no idea where he was, or what was going on — but it certainly wasn't normal to wake up in a goddamned MMO , of that much he was certain.
Out of a mild curiosity, Gotou pinched his face between two metal fingers and winced instantly. Yeah, this was really happening to him. Of course it was.
He looked up and down the well-worn path. It curved down the slope of the hill and around a larger hill, out of sight — but in the distance he could see a body of water, sunlight glittering across its surface, far too blue and clean and not resembling any body of water Gotou had ever seen in reality. The other direction led up the hill, where the path split: one fork leading toward where the scrub transitioned to actual forest, mountains rearing behind it; the other fork disappearing over the crest of the hill.
As Gotou stood there indecisive, two people appeared out of the forest at a dead run. He watched as they cut across to the other fork, never slowing down nor acknowledging anything — and nothing emerged from the forest to explain their haste. He couldn't make out any details from this distance, but he could see that there was something floating over their heads, almost like a status bar. Curious now, Gotou glanced back at the boar-creature, which had lumbered some distance away, grazing contentedly. It had no such information, and he still wasn't intent on getting too close because again, it could easily bite his head off.
It seemed like the best bet at the moment was going to be either over the crest of the hill or toward the forest. Gotou moved to the path, and as he passed the boar creature he waved at it in acknowledgment, and then felt silly. The moment the palm of his hand passed over the boar, between him and it a little status bar popped up.
"Are you kidding me?" Gotou asked aloud, pausing. He held his hand out, as if he was selecting the boar with a cursor — and sure enough, a status bar with health and hit points popped up. The creature — identified now as a tog — lifted its head and stared dully at him. Gotou dropped his hand, rubbed his face again and looked up the path.
"Really hope that I'm not lying in a hospital bed concussed," Gotou muttered. "Because that would just figure. " He nodded at the boar again, and started up the bath at a brisk trot.
To his surprise, he moved quicker than he thought he would at that speed. It was not a dead run, like the people he had seen in the distance, but definitely more than the job he would usually do when working out, taking a morning run with Masayoshi because he wasn't allowed to sleep in if Masayoshi was up. The weight of his armor didn't seem to affect him, either — he could feel it, but it had no bearing on his endurance. Weird, but not as weird as the fact he was in a fucking computer game, so he wasn't going to complain.
Gotou didn't really have much of a plan in place just yet. The first thing he needed to do was find an area where players congregated. Each mapped zone in the game had a main fortress that funneled the players toward the quests that would help them level their player-characters, and that would be the best place to start seeing if anyone else was currently in the same boat that he was. Once he'd established that baseline, the next item of business would be locating Masayoshi; because he was one hundred and fifteen percent sure that Masayoshi was trapped in this game somewhere too. Then, he was going to kick Masayoshi's ass , because goddammit , it was the fucking weekend , and he was not going to spend his weekend and only time off trying to figure out how the fuck to survive in an MMO.
Fuck . He needed a cigarette.
The alert tone startled him out of his reverie, and Gotou stopped dead in his tracks. A map had materialized in the air in front of him although it resembled a radar more than a map. He stared at it, recognizing the layout after a moment's confusion — and then realized that the alert meant he had been tagged by an aggressive monster. Gotou stared at the red dot getting closer to him, and then looked up and saw a huge wolf barreling down the path straight toward him, jaws open and snarling.
"Oh," Gotou said. "Fuck. "
The good news, Gotou thought as he sat cross-legged on the ground in front of the winged obelisk, was that the in-game mechanics still seemed to exist and apply to him. He could see his health bar at the moment, one hand out to look at his profile in this strange facsimile of a dashboard he could conjure at will. His poor health bar was pretty much empty, but it was slowly replenishing as he sat in front of the resurrection obelisk. The bad news was that getting mauled by a rabid worg hurt exactly as much as he'd expected it to.
Well, at least death was temporary in the game mechanics. He did have that going for him, at least.
The virtual dashboard looked different from what he had seen on his computer screen. With Masayoshi supervising, Gotou had set up his dashboard to access spells and attacks, scrolls and potions to buff his character, and other various forms of miscellany. It took Gotou a few minutes of tapping the air in front of him trying to figure out how to navigate it — something which, surprisingly, didn't earn him any strange looks at all. When he ad first resurrection, Gotou had leaped to his feet but everyone seemed to ignore him. There was no one else camping to regain their lost health points, so Gotou seated himself and watched players run back and forth for a little bit before he remembered the trick of waving his hand over someone to call up their status bar and information.
No one else seemed to be freaking out, so Gotou wondered if they were simply player avatars, or if there were other people like him, actually inhabiting the player character that they had created. He could not find a chatbox in all the controls he flipped through — he did find his friends list, and saw that Masayoshi's profile (FLAMEN RED, his user name in romanized all caps because to his eternal indignation someone was already using the handle "Samurai Flamenco") was highlight and active. Others were, too — casual acquaintances, both in the real world and players that he and Masayoshi had grouped with to run instances.
What if Masayoshi wasn't similarly afflicted? Gotou's finger hovered over the call button on his friends list. What if it was just him? He hesitated, and dropped his hand, bracing both of his hands on his knees. With his interaction ceased, the dashboard HUD faded out — although he had found a setting to keep status bars up so that he could identify people at a distance. This was, to put it mildly, freaking him out. He was in a computer game, what thehell was he supposed to do now? Where was he going to sleep?
"Hey, templar," someone said, and after a moment Gotou realized that he was being addressed. He glanced up to see a girl wearing something entirely inappropriate for questing, light armor that covered her chest but not her midsection and a pleated leather skirt. She had bright pink hair worn in twin tails, and two over-sized daggers worn on her hips. "You're not in a group? We're looking for a tank."
"Uh," Gotou said, a little stunned to be addressed so directly. "Sorry, no."
"You sure? You're geared to run, aren't you?" She looked at him critically, and Gotou put up both his hands, palms out, in a supplication gesture.
"Sorry, I'm waiting for my friend to log in."
"Your loss, cutie." The pink-haired player — whose status bar labeled her as NIX — blew him a kiss and moved on, her walk cycle not looking quite right. After a moment she paused and gestured — and suddenly faded out, having warped or used another form of instant teleportation.
Geared, huh. Gotou looked down at his hands and clenched his fists again. He stood up after a moment, and stretched his arms above his head. It was difficult to sit on the concrete, and he had realized after first resurrecting that he had a shield strapped onto his back. The sword at his hip was more obvious, but it was old and the blade looked rusted and worn; notches running up and down the length of its edge. Gotou needed a new weapon, and while he remembered the stats being somewhat low on his character's sword there was nothing like a physical representation of how shitty his weapon was to inspire that need. His shield was nice, at least — pentagonal, broad at the top and tapering down to a point. It had wear on it, too, scratches and scuffs that dinged the resplendent metal, but it was nowhere near as bad as his sword.
Gotou shrugged his shield back on, buckling the sword at his side and then gesturing to open up the menu. Before he could hesitate and talk himself out of it again, he tapped the 'call' button beside Masayoshi's name. He had to know, for certain.
The connection rang — it was strangely loud, but no one around him seemed to notice it. Gotou walked himself idly past the obelisk, toward an alley between two buildings just in case. There were non-player characters who roamed on set paths all around this small walled-in fortress, but he really didn't care if an NPC gave him a funny look for talking to himself. After a few far-too-long moments where Gotou grew increasingly worried that Masayoshi simply wasn't going to pick up at all, the connection opened and tinny though it was, Gotou heard the relief in Masayoshi's voice. "Gotou-san? Is that you?"
The thought struck Gotou suddenly that he shouldn't be able to hear Masayoshi at all, the call function just opened up a separate private chat. "Masayoshi, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Gotou-san, where are you ? I'm still at the instance entrance, why didn't you re-spawn where everyone was bound at the kisk? Or did you head back already?"
"The instance?" Gotou did not remember that. It took him a moment to even remember what that was , he'd been absorbing so much in the last hour or so. "Masayoshi, is anything … different?"
There was a long pause. Gotou's stomach plummeted. "Different, how…?" Masayoshi asked cautiously.
There was no easy way to say 'Well, I'm trapped in this fucking game, are you too?' so Gotou sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, other hand braced on his hip. "What happened at the instance?"
"I'm coming to you, hang on," Masayoshi said. "Where are you bound, at the citadel?"
Gotou looked up at the church-like structure that sat behind the resurrection obelisk — it wasn't a church, though; it was full of non-player characters handing out quests and rewards. He continued to crane his neck upward and looked at the glowing portal that hung suspended above the city like a Damocles' sword. "Yeah," he said. "The citadel in the fortress."
"Great, I'll be there in a second, don't go anywhere!"
"Right," Gotou said, and dropped his hand as the call disconnected, his stomach gone to ice.
Hazama Masayoshi put both of his hands on his knees and stared down at the plate armor gauntlets he was wearing. He was sitting alone by the kisk — the other members of the group they had partied with had already dispersed to collect their rewards for completing the instance. He glanced back at the portal behind him, swirling an ominous red-purple, pulsing and glowing. It was a strange color for a portal, they were traditionally green or blue, glowing and moving but not looking … threatening, for lack of a better term, like this one did. He'd never heard of it, but the quest had come up in his tracker when he logged in, and it wasn't difficult for two tanks to find a group to tackle it.
He had found the treasure chest back in the corner of the instance; it looked the same as all the others they had run across. The difference was this time it was just he and Gotou, and when he had kicked it open it had exploded instead of bearing loot. The subsequent flash had knocked out half his health bar in one go, and Gotou had been low already so it KO'd him, kicking him from the instance. Masayoshi had continued on with the group, trying to ping Gotou the rest of the way but he had not responded at all.
Then they exited the instance, and Masayoshi realized that things were different.
Very different.
He stood in the swamp water, felt it seeping through the joints of the armor he wore, and stared at his hands in utter disbelief. He craned his neck to look at the sky — he could smell the putrid swamp gas, hear the beasts who roamed the swamp and aggro'd on people trying to get through the area as they bellowed and brayed — he was really in the game, and he had no idea how that had happened.
Is anything … different?
Hoo boy.
Masayoshi sat cross-legged as he looked at the map before him. It had appeared in front of his eyes, virtual — like he had pressed a button but without a keyboard. The kisk had been dropped on a stone pillar, half-sunk in the swamp and away from the aggro range of the creatures. He had watched them for a little while — and unlike when he was watching the game screen they did not seem to roam in a predictable pattern. They did stay away from certain areas, though — and while some of the creatures stood away and watched him, none approached.
If Gotou was at the fortress citadel, he had a lot of map to traverse. There wasn't a flight pad near here — but he could also use a teleport scroll, although he only had three of those left and was uncertain how to get more since they were a quest bonus and not purchased directly from a vendor. He had so many questions now … did quests even work the same? If he fought one of those creatures now, what happened? Was there a carcass? Blood? Did hekill it? There was so much he did not understand at the moment, and it sounded like Gotou might well be in the same boat.
And most importantly, how to log back out of the game. Masayoshi had a photo shoot on Monday for a charity that Ishihara-san would quite possibly kill him over, if he didn't show up.
Masayoshi stood up. He wore full armor, although he'd taken off the helmet because once he popped out of the instance and into this, his new reality, he couldn't see out of the visor clearly. The armor was weirdly light, for being plate metal — he moved quickly and softly. Masayoshi had chosen his class for speed and the ability to hit the bad guys himself, and had finally collected an armor set that reminded him a little of his last (and in his mind, greatest), of his Samurai Flamenco outfits. The armor itself wasn't red, but it had red accents, so he was satisfied. He picked up his halberd and secured it over his shoulder in a motion he didn't even have to think about and probably wasn't actually possible if he did — and gestured to the air.
Selecting something out of his inventory made it appear, and when Masayoshi touched the cube holding the white scroll, it materialized in his hand. He looked at the scroll before he unfurled it, and read the quick incantation that activated it. As he finished the words, the scroll vanished, and the world around him seemed to fuzz out, and go black.
A moment later, Masayoshi appeared in the main square of the fortress citadel, arriving in front of the resurrection obelisk. Each main area had one — you could bind to a specific location, and then if you were to "die" you were transported back to that location to rest up under the watchful eye of a soul healer. As such, all transportation scrolls send you directly to the obelisk in the town that was named in the incantation, making it quite an expedient form of travel.
Masayoshi blinked a little in surprise — there had been absolutely nothing, no pain, no sensation, just the brief moment of black between being in the swamp and being here, in the busy fortress. It was a little unsettling, but here was here now — and Masayoshi craned his neck, looking up at the huge portal framed by rock floating in the sky above their heads. The scent of the swamp had followed him a bit, and Masayoshi waved his hand in front of his face to dispel the odor, not that it seemed anyone noticed.
The fortress citadel — Vertereon Fortress, the map had marked the location as — was a busy place. This was where the main quests and campaigns were handed out, where the broker and general goods market were, and where the flight transporter and teleportation pad were located. There were players and nonplayer characters everywhere he looked; groups bustling about, lone players running around completing quests and making exchanges, and characters that were frozen in idle motions as their players had stepped away from their keyboards. Masayoshi looked around and started moving through the crowd. There was a wide margin of customization for the player characters, so tiny ones would zip around past them, moving at top speed, and occasionally Masayoshi would find himself dwarfed by someone who maxed out the height and bulk stats.
He no longer had a character locater on his map — but he still found Gotou all the same, sitting in the resting position in an alley between two of the merchant shops on market row. "Gotou-san," Masayoshi called, and waved as he came up. Gotou stood up slowly and patted himself, a distinctly un-animated movement. He was shorter than Masayoshi here, almost a head difference in height, his armor heavier. Templars sacrificed speed for damage and HP. Masayoshi smiled despite himself, and Gotou sighed wearily. "I guess I really screwed something up this time, huh?"
Despite the somewhat constant crush of players in the fortress, there were plenty of areas to visit that didn't receive quite as much foot traffic. The inner wall of the fortress was occasionally patrolled by the non-player character guards, on the lookout for an invasion that would never come, since this was not a PVP zone. Masayoshi sat on the edge of the inner wall, his halberd laying on the ground behind him and his armored boots kicking off of the aged stone. Gotou stood.
"So this is really happening," Gotou said, his arms folded. He wasn't looking down at Masayoshi, instead out at the sprawl of buildings clustered inside the fortress walls. The area wasn't huge — the handful of buildings were arranged in a semi-circle inside the fortress, the citadel at the back, leaving a large open area for players to congregate in. "How in the hell -?"
Masayoshi shrugged, leaning his weight back on his hands. He bounced the heel of his foot off the stone with a dull noise. "I don't know, Gotou-san. I haven't been in touch with the rest of the group we ran the instance with, but I think if this had become reality for anyone else, someone would have, I don't know, said something by now, don't you think?"
Gotou grunted, and finally sat down next to Masayoshi, laying his sword on the ground behind him, like Masayoshi's polearm. "I don't know," Gotou said, looking down at the drop beneath their feet. It was considerable, but not fatal. "I've never been stuck in a video game before, I don't exactly have a playbook."
"Yeah." Masayoshi said, his voice soft and considerate for a moment. Then he leaned back and pointed above their heads, at the movement above them, near the glowing white portal. He climbed to his feet without looking, and fortunately Gotou was watching Masayoshi and not whatever he was pointing at. Gotou scrambled to his feet in time to catch Masayoshi by the shoulder plate before he stepped right off the edge. " Masayoshi! " Gotou yelled, yanking him back onto the walkway. Masayoshi's arms pinwheeled in surprise, and the force Gotou exhibited made Masayoshi fall back onto his ass, armor clattering loudly.
"Wh- what-!? " Masayoshi yelped, clearly stunned. Gotou was a little stunned himself at how effortless his movement was. He opened and closed his hands, now at his sides, chest heaving. "Gotou-san, what- ?"
"You were about to set off the edge, you idiot!" Gotou said loudly.
"Oh," Masayoshi said, eyes wide and hair wild. "Oh, oh. " He sat up and crossed his legs, running a hand through his hair. "I would have been okay, Gotou-san, that sort of fall just knocks off a few HP, remember?"
Gotou's hand closed into a fist, he crossed his arms over his chest to hide the small tremor of his hand. "Just because it doesn't do a lot of damage doesn't mean it doesn't hurt ," he said sharply.
Masayoshi blinked at him — and then his face broke into a wide, sunny smile. "Gotou-san," he said happily. Gotou looked away from him, down into the town, and Masayoshi thought that his ears had gone pink. Gotou's gaze drifted up, just like Masayoshi's had. "First order of business, then," Gotou said, watching the figures far above their head, guards on an air patrol circling slowly. "We need to contact everyone who was in the group at the instance, make sure that none of them have been dragged into the circle of weirdness that follows you like the plague."
Masayoshi nodded his head, his own arms folded as he absorbed what Gotou said. Then he lifted his head and looked at Gotou again. "I don't think they have been," he said. "We were the only two who took damage when the treasure box exploded."
There was a moment of silence while Gotou looked back at Masayoshi, a peculiar expression on his face. "The treasure box exploded?" he repeated, the fragments of what must have happened floating around now in his head. "That's got to be it, then. Something about that triggered this. We need to get back into that instance and see what we can find out."
"But, it's a daily instance," Masayoshi said. "Hey, ow! "
Oblivious, an NPC guard had stepped on Masayoshi as he continued his circuitous patrol. Masayoshi rubbed the scuff on his armor and huffed in aggravation. "It's a daily instance," Masayoshi said again, glaring after the NPC. He didn't even have a name, except for FORTRESS GUARD. "We have to wait for it to reset."
Gotou nodded his head. He had expected worse, that it was a weekly instance or even a one-time event, stranding them forever — but a day, he could handle. Probably. "If you don't sit on their guard route, they won't step on you," he said as Masayoshi stood up again, picking up his weapon and slinging it over his shoulder in a clearly practiced move. "Where are you going?"
"I've got quests to turn in, don't you?" Masayoshi said with a loose shrug. "We've got a day before the instance resets, might as well knock off some of the things on our to-do list."
Gotou stared at him. "You're not thinking about grinding ?"
Masayoshi stared right back at Gotou, and it was distinctly unsettling to have to glare up at Masayoshi, but Gotou was getting the hang of it, jaw set. Then he realized that Masayoshi had turned a very faint pink hue. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine ," Masayoshi yelped, needlessly loud. "Never better, Gotou-san! Let's go turn in the quests!" That said, Masayoshi hopped right past Gotou and over the edge of the stone masonry. Gotou was not quick enough to catch him this time, but he heard the clatter as Masayoshi hit the ground out of sight. He leaned carefully over the edge and saw Masayoshi sitting on his butt, legs sprawled out in front of him, halberd off his back. Twenty percent of his HP was gone from the impact.
"Ow ," Masayoshi whimpered.
Gotou took the stairs.
It was a little eerie, interacting with the non-player characters. They didn't seem to have anything regarding a mind of their own — standing in silence, or completing idle animations in a loop until interrupted by an adventurer who needed something. It didn't bother Gotou when he was clicking on them with a mouse, but now that he was standing in front of somebody, awaiting acknowledgment — it was downright macabre.
Masayoshi did not seem to have the same issue that he did. He strolled right up to the quest administrator and tapped the NPC on the shoulder, which brought him to life. "Arieluma," the administrator said brightly, and then did something off the script, which was look between Masayoshi and Gotou. The NPC blinked, and then looked at Gotou, as if he were suddenly at a loss as to what to do next. "I…"
"I have a few quests to turn in," Masayoshi said cheerfully. That seemed to put the administrator back on track, and he turned to Masayoshi. Gotou watched silently as the transaction took place. It was frankly hilarious to watch Masayoshi produce pelts out of thin air, being very surprised by their existence, and then handing them over to the administrator who laid them out on the table behind him.
The quest administrator — an acknowledge NPC — had been nonplussed by speaking to two people at once. He also kept stealing glances at Gotou, as if expecting … what? He had no idea. Gotou observed silently, until Masayoshi was done and tucking the acquired gold coins into the pouch that had appeared at his belt.
"Don't you have any completed quests?" Masayoshi asked Gotou, who shook his head negatively.
"I got kicked out of the instance, remember? I didn't get to finish any of them."
"What about the hunting quests just outside the citadel? The one with the potcrabs always gets a lot of EXP and stuff." Masayoshi shrugged loosely and indicated the administrator, who had not reverted to his idle animation.
"I don't think I finished that one either," Gotou said. He didn't tend to log in to this game without Masayoshi, so he didn't do a lot of solo quests. "Does it really matter? We're just killing time until we can get into the instance again."
"Of course it matters!" Masayoshi said insistently. "Don't you want to level-up, Gotou-san? Learn new skills?" He poked the simple armor that Gotou was wearing with one armor-clad finger himself. "Get better stats on your armor?"
" You are way too into this," Gotou said, "for something that is absolutely not in any way toku or sentai related."
"Will … that be all?" The quest administrator looked between them. Masayoshi leaned forward and actually shook the man's hand enthusiastically, clasping his hand between Masayoshi's gauntlets gently.
"Thank you!" he said cheerfully. This nonplussed the NPC further. Gotou took Masayoshi by the arm and steered him away, casting a glance over his shoulder and watching for a moment as the man looked at his hand, and then looked at the wares all around him.
"Was that NPC acting weird to you?" Gotou asked.
Masayoshi looked down at Gotou and shook his head. "Not really, no. Are we gonna go work on quests?"
"Absolutely not," Gotou said.
Gotou stood on the sandy slope that led up to the fortress. There was a well-worn path that led under the raised portcullis, it twisted away down the slope and then reversed direction up into the cut-out side of the mountain, shadowed by the trees. Gotou swore he could hear the growls from the worgs that undoubtedly patrolled its shadowy depths.
Masayoshi stood next to him, hands planted on his hips. He looked just like Masayoshi — neither of them had been entirely creative with their character designs. His hair was fluffier, wilder — and just a touch longer, enough so that he could make a tiny spiky ponytail out of it, if he so wanted.
"Crabs," Masayoshi intoned, and Gotou sighed.
"We're not grinding," he said. Getting killed was not fun, he wasn't going to let that happen again, no matter how low a level the creatures were supposed to be in comparison. "Besides, what happens when we fight something? I don't want to get soaked in green crab blood or something."
"I don't … think that will happen." Masayoshi said. He didn't sound the slightest bit certain. "Look, this area isn't aggro, right? Let's just sit down and see what happens when someone else emerges to fight something down here." Gotou had his sword in his hand so he put it point-down in the sand and dropped into a seated position behind it. Masayoshi glanced over at him and nodded, before sitting down next to him.
"This is so weird," Masayoshi said, his legs straight out in front of him.
"Glad to hear you at least acknowledge it," Gotou said. There were lots of potcrabs scuttling about — crabs bigger than a small dog, that came up to his knee or higher, with pincher claws that looked like they could amputate a limb in one go. There were other creatures too, roaming about, all various forms of sea fauna, but none that seemed to trigger any alerts. Gotou tapped the air in front of him, and brought up his command menu, one eye on his enemy radar. "That's strange," Gotou said, more absorbed in his friends list than anything else. "Almost everyone's online."
"Well," Masayoshi said, halberd in the sand at his right side, leaning back on his hands as he watched the landscape. "It is Saturday by now, right?"
"Some of them work on Saturdays," Gotou reminded Masayoshi, scrolling through the list. He tapped the name of a coworker who had been playing the game for a while, his character at level cap. "Look, even Nick's online, and he said he doesn't play this game any more."
Masayoshi made a face, then gestured himself, clearly opening his own menu system. A few mid-air taps and he made the same puzzled noise. "Yeah," he said. "Even Pink's online. Last time we all grouped together she had signed off in a huff and said she wasn't playing again and the game was stupid. That's weird. " He tapped the air, clearly on her name. "I can't call her."
Gotou tapped Nick's name. A red circle with a slash through it appeared over the 'call' button. "What the hell ," Gotou said. He scrolled to Masayoshi's name and tapped it, and the same thing happened. "I can't call anyone. Not even you, and that worked earlier."
"I'm sitting right next to you, Gotou-san."
"That shouldn't make a difference." Gotou let his hand drop, the menu system fading out. "Just what is going onhere?"
"Uh-oh," Masayoshi said, his hand still in the air.
Gotou leaned back on his hands and sighed, even as Masayoshi leaped to his feet in a single, smooth motion, halberd in his hand. Gotou watched him with a furrowed brow, and then the enemy alert noise cropped up for him as well.
"What the hell-?" Gotou said, on his feet and sword in hand.
"Giant crab," Masayoshi said, awfully calm. Gotou whirled and saw the thing bearing down on him, taller than he was and clearly capable of consuming him in two bites or less. Gotou's sword was in his hand, and he glanced over to Masayoshi to see if he was ready, but to his surprise Masayoshi was no longer right next to him. He had turned tail and run, heading up the path toward the fortress.
"Masayoshi, what the fu- " he yelled as the giant crab raised one enormous pincher.
God dammit .
"I'm so sorry, Gotou-san," Masayoshi said, standing in front of the resurrection obelisk and looking about as contrite as he could manage. Gotou sat on the ground, elbow on his knee and chin in his hand, thinking angry thoughts about seafood in general and crab in particular. "I had my radar up, that was a higher class of monster than we could take on at our current levels."
"So you left me as bait," Gotou said dryly.
"No!" Masayoshi protested. "I thought you would run, too!"
"I didn't know what we were doing! I can't read your mind, Masayoshi!" Gotou sighed, both hands on his knees now. "Stop hanging your head like I kicked your dog. I'm still here, aren't I?"
"Yeah, but you died. " Masayoshi's face had shifted straight over to heartbroken. Gotou stood up slowly, his health bar was only about a third of the way full now, but he could at least move around, and this made Masayoshi lean forward and hug him. "Don't die again, Gotou-san!"
He patted Masayoshi awkwardly. "Let me go."
"No! I'm supposed to protect you! I failed!"
A couple of players had looped the courtyard and come around again, slowing down to watch the display curiously. Gotou sighed and put one hand on Masayoshi's chest, shoving him away as gently as he could manage. "You're not supposed to be protecting me here, I'm the tank , 'yoshi. It's okay, just don't … run off and not let me know what's going on, okay?"
Masayoshi nodded his head, his eyes wide and watery.
"So, how long until the instance resets?" Gotou asked, leaning against the parapet, looking out over the sandy, pastel beach full of potcrabs and other various sea creatures. Masayoshi was sitting with his back to the wall, legs thrown out straight in front of him and hands in the air as he was navigating about his menus, going through his inventory.
"About twenty hours or so, Gotou-san," Masayoshi's fingers hesitated in mid-air — the friends function not only allowed you to chat and call other people in the game, but it was supposed to tell you where they were in the area maps. Most of the people logged in were in different zones, but… "Gotou-san?"
Gotou made a noise of affirmation, wordless. Masayoshi glanced up at him, certain he was still mad about the giant crab Whenever he grouped with people, the reaction to the giant crab was everyone getting the hell out because until you were a higher level than it, it was usually a one-hit kill. He had expected Gotou to bolt, and had turned around halfway up the sandy bank in time to see Pakisgue raise its claw and clobber Gotou.
Masayoshi had seen Gotou die in game before but it was different now. Watching it happen, the color fading out of Gotou like he'd been in the wash too many times, falling flat - that was different from what happened before , when he was just watching it on a screen; when a player's character would fall into a crouch, wings shrouded over them to show that they were inactive, waiting for another player to resurrect them or choosing to teleport back to the obelisk where they were bound. Gotou just fell, just like that — and then he was gone, and Masayoshi had tripped twice, banging his shoulder off the stone column at the entrance of the fortress trying to get to the resurrection obelisk. He found Gotou sitting there with a sour look on his face. His relief was palpable.
"Oi," Gotou said, breaking Masayoshi's reverie. "Did you have a question, or do you just like saying my name?"
"Your name is nice," Masayoshi said absently, his attention returning to the screens before him. "I show that, well—" The person's status information had changed while he was daydreaming. "Green was in our zone for a bit, but he's gone now. We could always go to the capital, the main city base and see if anyone turns up there."
"The one floating above? Way, way above?" Gotou shook his head sharply. "I don't think so."
"Why not? It's perfectly safe." Masayoshi let his hand drop.
"Let's just stick around here until the instance resets," Gotou said finally, hands resting on the colored sandstone. He winced a little, and Masayoshi head the yells of consternation. Facing into the fortress the way he was Masayoshi could see several people pop into existence arranged around the resurrection obelisk. "Pakisgue got them?"
"Fucking crabs ," Gotou muttered, mostly under his breath. He turned and slid into a seated position beside Masayoshi. "So, what do you want to do to kill twenty hours?"
"What quests do you have?" Masayoshi asked him, thinking of how much they could get done in that amount of time, uninterrupted.
"I could have sworn I said, no grinding."
Masayoshi pursed his lips. "So are you going to just sneak around all the monsters when we enter the instance, Gotou-san?"
Gotou opened his mouth to respond, then snapped it shut, glaring not at Masayoshi but out at the fortress. "That's dirty pool, 'yoshi."
"We could always go to the Holy Shrine and hang out there. It's really pretty there, I bet it would be amazing now, to see it."
"The one with the wind spirits?" Gotou nodded to himself as he thought.
Masayoshi leaned forward excitedly. "Yes!" He gestured broadly and brought up the map. "It's on the other side of this zone, but because the map is a loop it's just a little to the south of us. We can fly over the mountain." As he spoke someone opted to do just that, the giant green transportation bird flapping out from the teleportation kiosk near the fortress gate. They both watched the translucent creature flap into the sky and out of sight.
" I am not getting on one of those things," Gotou said and Masayoshi laughed, then realized Gotou was serious.
"Why not?" The birds were not uncommon, but there wasn't a lot of traffic at the moment. Gotou tilted back and looked at the portal above the city, and the small figures flying around it.
"Just seems like a bad idea, is all."
"They're perfectly safe." Masayoshi sat forward. "People use them constantly. "
Gotou lifted his finger in the air. "Yes, but those are player-characters. Not us. What if the rules are different, for us?"
"You resurrected at the obelisk," Masayoshi said stubbornly. "We're just here , the rules are the same."
"I'll walk," Gotou said, standing upright. "We've got time to kill, anyway." He stretched his arms above his head, and then rubbed a hand through his hair and looked over at Masayoshi, who had crossed his arms and settled back against the wall, a frown on his face.
"You'd rather go through the worg-infested forest," Masayoshi said in disbelief.
"The other direction is faster, right?" Gotou looked toward the other path, that led along the water and disappeared around a stone outcropping.
"That … that takes us through the outpost ," Masayoshi said. "Tursins. Big ugly red guys with an attitude problem, remember?" He tapped his fingers on the shaft of his halberd as he thought. "If we go the long way 'round we would have to go through the Dukaki mining camp and the contaminated swamp," he reminded Gotou. "Are yousure you don't want to fly?"
Gotou looked back at the path, the down to Masayoshi. "Tursins? You're scared of Tursins? "
"Gotou-san," Masayoshi said patiently. "It's a group party area. They're made to be difficult to…" he hesitated a moment, the danced around the word. "…defeat." They'd been watching others grind potcrabs for a while, and the creatures definitely respawned, so it should be no more different for sentient enemies. At least, he kept telling himself that.
"I don't feel like dealing with the contaminated swamp," Gotou said. "I bet it smells like ass. Let's go through the outpost, it shouldn't be too bad, from what I remember."
Gotou knocked his head back against the resurrection obelisk, eyes closed. "Those fuckers are much bigger than I remember," he said to no one in particular, as his status bar slowly filled. Masayoshi's voice was a little tinny, like he was speaking into a can.
"I'm so sorry, Gotou-san! I should have protected you better!"
Gotou could still see the three huge, red-skinned monsters coming at him. "Don't worry about it, Masayoshi," he said. "Where are you? Did they get you?"
"No, I'm still hiding." Masayoshi's tone got hushed, conspiratorial. "I'm up on a rock. I don't think they look up."
Gotou wet his lips. "Are you going to be able to get back here? We'll go the long way 'round." Gotou stood up slowly and stretched, and looked for a moment at his piteously depleted experience bar. He glanced to the soul healer and thought about it. "Teleport, if you have to."
"Oh!" Masayoshi said. "I forgot, I'm not bound at the citadel, Gotou-san."
He sighed as he exchanged gold for his held-hostage experience points. "Where are you bound, then?"
"The holy shrine! I can meet you there, just go ahead and fly."
Gotou looked up sharply, but realized that the soul healer was staring at him. It was uncomfortable, and it wasn't a stare in the same way that the non-player characters would stare right through you, he was definitely looking at Gotou. Gotou stepped away and tried to let that roll off his back. The quest administrator, now the soul healer? As if this game wasn't strange enough.
"I'll walk ," Gotou said.
"Gotou- saaaaan ," Masayoshi said, dragging out his name, whining like a child. "Please, please don't leave me alone here? It'll only take a few minutes, please ."
"If you're so hell-bent on it, why don't you fly here and we'll go the long way 'round together." Gotou glanced around the square, then thought to check his inventory. As he was looking over his potions and scrolls, his stomach rumbled. After everything else that had happened, he had completely forgotten about the basic necessities. He sighed again, this time to himself. "I'll see you when I get there," Gotou said, and closed the call-tab. He had been surprised that it worked for them now, but then again Masayoshi was no longer in shouting distance. Still though, if he tried to call anyone else on his friends list it buzzed, but refused to connect.
The food seller was actually located inside a building. Gotou remembered it looking just like every other merchant in the game, a NPC behind a table, some wares out, you talk to them, exchange pleasantries, buy sustenance. When he stepped through the heavy wooden door, though, Gotou was greeted by some fantastic smelling food.
The interior looked like an actual tavern, with several long wooden tables and benches that a handful of adventurers sat at, eating food from bowls with spoons and forks. Gotou hesitated but then decided that he was hungry and Masayoshi could wait, so he ordered something that had 'porgus' in it, and took his bowl to the table to eat the stew. Masayoshi would be fine , and besides if he was bound at the Holy Shrine, then that meant if he did something stupid and got himself killed, he should respawn there, no problems.
But… that annoying little voice said in the back of his mind. What if he doesn't respawn?
Gotou waved the voice away with irritation, and tucked into his meal.
Masayoshi sat on the edge of the platform, behind the transportation pad. His feet dangled off the white marble, situated in the bough of an enormous tree. The branch that spread meters beneath his feet was wide enough to drive a truck along, its leaves he could sit comfortably on. There were several non-player characters who sat at idle along the platform, and a few players who would come and go, as well as the large green bird who acted as transportation which left and arrived with some frequency.
This had been the closest binding point to the instance — outside of the kisk that the group had dropped, but that was just a temporary marker and binding spot, and its usage time had expired already. While the instance was technically in another zone, there were ways to get there faster from here than there were from the closest resurrection obelisk in the other zone. Masayoshi had thought to bind here days earlier — this zone was a little below his current level but there were some coin quests and he had been eying a new set of armor.
He kicked his legs and leaned back on his hands. The sunlight's quality was different here — it filtered through the large canopy of green leaves, scattering across the air. At least there was sunlight up here — closer to the ground it was darker, dimmer, and a lot of the light actually came from the effervescent glow of the wind spirits and the glowworms that patrolled the forest floor.
A quick breeze sprang up as a player left the Shrine, the green transportation bird soaring up above Masayoshi's head.
There were so many little things. The breeze, the smell of sunlight and leaves, moss and loam … Masayoshi looked back over his shoulder. He was alone on the platform now, save for the non-player characters, which all were in their idle animation cycles … except for the one he had spoken with, to exchange wind crystals from slain wind spirits for coins. That NPC's cycle had changed, if he was even in a cycle now. He tidied his wares, looked around, sat down, stood up again. Masayoshi rose to his feet. He was bored, waiting for Gotou.
The platform in the tree extended back to a large covered area supported by columns but open along all sides. Masayoshi had ignored this area in the past as there were no NPCs with dialog stashed away back there, just a pair of unnamed guards who patrolled the circumference of the building in a slow, lumbering pace.
Masayoshi moved quicker than the guards, even at a walking pace and not the swift jog/run he usually used to move around areas. He looped the building once; then again, this time stopping at the furthermost point from the obelisk and transportation pad areas. It was a different view from over here, he realized as he stepped up on the ledge, one hand on the pillar for balance.
The foliage was thicker here, the tree branches no less so. Between the, though, he could see the glow of the distant portal that led to the swamp, where the instance was tucked away — the portal as big as a city building, it did not glow so much as waver in the air, showing the swamp to those who got close enough to investigate it.
A tree branch did extend out just about a meter or so down from where he stood. Masayoshi considered it for a moment, then dexterously hopped off the ledge and onto the tree branch. In the past, if he had tried to stray from the platform is was like his player character ran into an invisible brick wall; but such constraints seemed to be lifted now that he was really present in the moment. All the same, Masayoshi moved slowly, one hand out in front of him lest he run smack into an unseen obstacle. The last thing he wanted was to get knocked off the branch.
Fortunately, no such obstacle appeared. Masayoshi walked to the end of the branch — or, at least where it started to taper off and sway with his every footstep. Here the sunlight was stronger, as there was a bare patch in the huge holy tree that allowed it to trickle through. From this angle he couldn't see the strange monolith in the sky, and for a moment, looking up through leaves big enough to serve as blankets he could almost pretend it was a regular mid-afternoon sky, and a regular tree. Masayoshi shaded his eyes and smiled. Gotou would like this view, he thought.
He had been bothering Gotou on and off for weeks to join this game. Masayoshi thought it was a great way to get his mind off … things . Gotou had been doing better, recently — he didn't seem to slip into a melancholy quite as often, although Masayoshi would still sometimes come home to find him curled up on the bed, all the lights off and a darkened cell phone clutched in his hand. What better way to try to help than to play a cooperative game together? Masayoshi nodded to himself, arms crossed as he stood on the tree branch. It had been Master's idea, to do something together , have him focus on something else! It was as good an idea as any, especially coming from Master.
Well, but now they were both trapped in the game and there was weirdness afoot, and Masayoshi could almost guarantee that Gotou was going to burn his laptop (or at least uninstall the game and system restore the computer) whenever they finally managed to escape back into the real world. Masayoshi let out a breath, turned on his heel and raised one hand to call his menu screen when he looked back up at the Shrine and froze.
Sitting atop the blemished white marble building, lazing over the side and watching him as intently as a cat eying its dinner was a gargoyle.
It had not triggered his enemy alert yet. It was just watching him, aware — which meant that he was at the very edge of its aggro range. The gargoyle was huge; four legs and a thick torso, a long tail with wicked-looking sharp fins, and huge wings that looked ratty and tattered. Its head was broad and flat, and it had twin curved horns above its brow. Masayoshi had his halberd in his hand before he even thought about it, the motion to arm himself in-game overriding his conscious thought.
"Nice gargoyle," Masayoshi said out loud. "I don't want to fight." He edged a foot closer to the platform, and the gargoyle lashed its long tail, draped over the edge of the building. "I just want to get back into the Shrine." One more step forward. Masayoshi exhaled the breath he was holding … he might be able to run and make it underneath the gargoyle and into the shrine properly, but what would that mean ? Would it forget about him, or, would it continue to attack, thereby putting the NPCs — not to mention any other players who had arrived — in danger? But, fighting it out here, on the branch… Masayoshi flexed his body, which made the entire limb bounce slightly. Yeah, that wasn't going to work either.
The gargoyle shifted again and rose up on its four feet, extending its wings. They were tattered, with holes in the thin skin that sunlight could be seen through. It shook its entire frame once and the enemy alert sounded just as it roared. "Ah," Masayoshi said, gripping his weapon tight in both hands. There was only really one other option, and that was to take the fight to it. But he hadn't tried out that particular option since he arrived, because he wasn't quite certain how well it was going to work, but … at this point, his hand was forced.
"Here goes," Masayoshi breathed, bracing himself.
Gotou stood in front of the transportation pad in the fortress. It was a busy place, and the players who took the in-game flight (clutched in the talons of a fucking huge translucent green bird, what, you couldn't even ride on top of it like a civilized human being…) did not seem to notice Gotou's hesitation. It wasn't that he was afraid to fly, per se … but the thought of making the trip clutched in some ridiculous giant bird's claws, a mere hairs-breath from being dropped … that was what he was afraid of.
The other option, of course, was to take the long way 'round; but as Masayoshi was already on the other side of the map Gotou did not want to make that journey solo. He took a few deep breaths to steady himself before he spoke with the flight transporter, and just as he stepped forward to speak with her a teleportation portal opened practically on top of him, and he was almost flattened by a player leaping through.
"That's it," Gotou said to himself, side-stepping the oblivious female player character and marching up to the flight transporter. The NPC had a name above her head — Mirdiena — and she cocked her head and looked at Gotou curiously.
"Where do you wish to go today?" she asked, tone polite but expression not quite matching it.
"Ardus Shrine," Gotou said automatically. When there wasn't a response from Mirdiena he hesitated, his hand at his hip for the gold exchange.
"Ardus," she repeated slowly, as if she hadn't said the words before. "Shrine."
"Yes, the Holy Shrine," he said. "How much gold for-?"
"Oh yes," she shook her head and gestured, giving him the total. Gotou exchanged the gold, and she hesitated again, then nodded her head. "Safe journeys."
"Yeah," Gotou said as he stepped on the transportation pad and closed his eyes. "I hope so."