A/N – I hope that you guys like this fic...it might jump around a bit, but I'll do what I can to minimize the confusion.

Disclaimer: I don't own .hack...sad, but true.

The World.

There was a time where the famous – to some people, infamous – MMORPG had reached twenty million players on all of the servers combined. Of course, like any other game, The World had its fair share of bugs and glitches; unlike any of the other games on the market, however, some of these "glitches" and "bugs" were dangerous, even fatal: high-level monsters appearing in low-level areas, bugged monsters with no set health, people falling into comas in the real world after being defeated by said monsters...the list goes on. With the fire at CC Corp., most of the original files and data were lost, along with the majority of the characters' support.

Thus, The World R:2 was born.

The original game was redone, the character classes changed, added, or carried over from the old game; the human race wasn't the only one anymore, now accompanied by a few beast tribes, and the level of character customization was second to none. There were only a fraction of the players when compared to the original, but just like the last game, there were always rumors going about.

Every game has its secrets.

Kojima unlocked and opened the door to his apartment while sliding the small plastic bag that held his groceries and a VCR tape sized box to his hand, holding his books in his other; another long and horrid day at school, but that was normal for the sixteen-year-old high school student: constantly tormented by the other kids and living alone with no parents in a one person apartment in Sapporo, Hokkaido.

At least he had found a potential way to escape the rigors of the real world – if only for a little while.

He walked inside his living space after taking off his shoes, setting the books in the crook of his arm down among the sizable pile of other books and leaving the bag of foodstuffs, minus the box, on the small bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. He glanced at the front cover on the box: The World R:2.

He had already bought the things he needed in order to play the world renowned MMORPG: the M2D visor – freshly tested and debugged almost as quickly – was fairly expensive to the average consumer; then again, he didn't have to worry much about money nowadays; he always had the controller, since he need it to use his CPU. Kojima started up the computer and the screen flickered to life, greeting him with the default background and music, a ping signaling the arrival of a new email. Sitting down in his chair he picked up the controller and opened up his inbox, scrolling over the new message:

- - - - - - - - -

Kojima,
I know that I probably don't need to tell you this, but make sure that you get that project turned in; knowing you, that shouldn't be a problem at all. J
See you on Monday,

Katame

- - - - - - - - -

'Katame-sensei...' Kojima pondered, finally remembering the face of his Advanced Psychology teacher; a nice woman, but the niceness was heavily outweighed by the rest of her students, 'The bastards...' he quipped silently, remembering how one of them broke his left arm earlier that year: the older boy claimed that it was an accident, but the gleam that Kojima saw in his eyes betrayed thoughts having absolutely nothing to do with guilt.

Closing his inbox with a small huff of air, he opened up the disc drive, putting in the new CD and closing it, watching the little bar on the screen fill with a bright green light; he willed himself to stand up and walked out of his bedroom, putting away the rest of the foodstuffs he had brought and moving the few folders of drawings that sat on his futon into his room, setting them on his bed and checking the computer screen: it looked like the game was fully installed, two boxes meant for typing in information glaring at him from across the room. Sitting down again, he typed in what he needed:

- - - - - - - - -

USER NAME: JenovaClone
PASSWORD:

- LOADING -...- DONE -
- PLEASE CREATE A CHARACTER -

- - - - - - - - -

Cracking his knuckles loudly he began to create his character, the facial features and various wave symbols appearing and disappearing with the press of a button, finally satisfied with the final look: slightly pale skin, gray hair that wasn't awfully dark but not too light, and teal eyes; his character wore a somewhat loose fitting blood-red vest over dark gray, sleeveless scale armor, held together by leather straps – most were hidden under the vest, but four were visible in the front. His dark red leather gloves almost reached his elbows, a wave symbol showing on the backs of the hand portion: a single line with two perpendicular curves, appearing as fangs. The rest of his clothes were relatively simple: gray, loose fitting leather pants and brown, battle-worn boots.

Now, for the class. He didn't really feel like being stuck with casting – healing or otherwise – so he looked at the mêlée classes; he also wanted to stay flexible, able to adapt to whatever came at him. Further down the list, he saw two words that popped out at him:

Adept Rogue.

"Sounds alright to me..." he muttered to himself while selecting the class, picking out three of the "subclasses" without much difficulty. Thus, he was given a final glimpse at the changes made: his right arm was mostly covered in a plate mail covering, starting just below the shoulder and almost reaching his wrist from under the leather glove. His left arm, however, he changed on a whim, placing it in a light gray sling that was held together by leather straps as if it was broken.

Putting on the headset he entered his character's name as Zol, and took his first steps in The World.

A/N – I know; not as long as I had hoped, but the next one should have more content. Read and Review please!

Until the next chapter (again, hopefully),
Lloyd Redgrave