Title: Star Sand (Hoshi-zuna)
Author: Mir
Date: December 2013 (updated April 2014)
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Author's Note: There are series that just grab your attention more than others. After watching the first half-dozen episodes of this, I couldn't shake the urge to write something, anything to breathe more life into its characters and explore the possibilities of their referenced backstories.
This will be a collection of one-shots updated when the urge strikes me. This first one actually takes place before the apocalypse when the Debauchery Tea Party was still active. The light novels go into more detail on Shiroe's and Naotsugu's friendship than the anime (so far) and note that they have actually met face-to-face in real life.
Disclaimer: I receive no compensation for any FF and do not claim ownership of anything related to this series.
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Chapter 1: Waning Quarter
The sun sank steadily into trees lined like bristles on the distant hills, and the small band of travelers exchanged farewells, then one-by-one disappeared like ghosts into the deepening twilight. The latest raid had hardly challenged their collective strength and strategy - much to the disappointment of the party's strategist.
'Unlike a human, the AI can't improvise new responses and is thus predictably limited by its programming.' After the others had left, he'd lingered at the edge of the cliff, gazing outward at the traces of red and orange smudged across the horizon. 'Each expansion pack introduces new enemies, but once we understand the range of their actions, beating the AI is just a matter of simple calculation.'
Given the complexity of the game (you'd expect no less from the world's largest MMORPG) and the depth of coding that gave even mid-level monsters a wide range of expressions and actions, these calculations were of course no trivial matter. But the Debauchery Tea Party's strategist was no ordinary planner.
'Tonight's margin was acceptable, but the front line expended HP needlessly, and we had too little MP in reserve. If the enemy had coordinated a focused attack at our weakest spot, we'd have been forced to retreat and regroup before launching the final push...' The numbers - attack stats, health levels, spell cast times, debuff effects - swam through the night sky before him like a sea of stars. Rolling and churning beneath the white froth of luck and chance, they told the story of each player's performance. Like a composer contemplating variations on a melody, he methodologically compared the sum of the encounter against unplayed possibilities.
'It's never enough to just win. The true victor understands why he won.' He was so deep in thought that he simply didn't notice the second player slouched casually against the boulder to his right.
"Oy, Shiroe. You're thinking real hard tonight."
Naotsugu, a veteran player whose sturdy eponymous Guardian character was the cornerstone of the Party's defense, a compatriot whose dependable support lurked unwavering behind an uncensored fascination for female underwear, a friend trusted enough to know Shiroe's real name - Kei Shirogane.
"Huh?" He started at the sound and pulled the camera's view angle around, only to find himself face-to-face with his own reflection in Naotsugu's enormous polished shield that lay propped against the rocks. The surprise faded into familiar companionship. "I thought you'd left with the others."
"I was about to go." A pause, a long moment of uncharacteristic hesitation. "But I thought... well, there was something I wanted to ask you."
In Shiroe's mind, the tiered arrays of numbers scattered into trails of fading pixels. "What is it?"
Naotsugu gathered his resolve and threw the weight of being Shiroe's senior by two real life years (a fact he usually forgot) into his words. "We've know each other now for years, long enough to have probably killed at least one of every monster in this place. Heck, I'd follow your directions to the edge of the Japanese server and back because you're always one jump ahead of all of us."
Shiroe listened quietly, his breath soft against the microphone, eyes tracing the dark outline of his friend's armor beneath the evening's waning quarter moon.
"Our next raid won't be until the end of the week, so I thought maybe we could meet up informally." Naotsugu stood and paced forward until his broad figure almost completely obstructed the camera's view. "Meet up in Tokyo, I mean. You know, the real Akihabara or something."
The words - half-statement, half-question - filled the space between them, and when Shiroe closed his eyes, the bright illumination from the oversized monitor washed over his desk and imprinted itself on the inside of his eyelids. Around him, the landscape was an irregular pattern of university textbooks and empty can coffee containers, of laundry that needed washing, and two week's worth of recycling stacked into an unsteady mountain against the far wall.
It wasn't that he never went out. Or that he didn't like other people. No, but there was something different about meeting people in the game, that controlled universe where everyone knew what was expected of them, and only their voices were able to transcend the distance from monitor to monitor.
"Akihabara's crowded." It was true enough, but where in Tokyo isn't it crowded?
"Then somewhere else." Naotsugu's reply was soft but firm, a far cry from his usual light-hearted banter.
The silence stretched, broken only by the occasional background noise from the game and the rusty clank of bicycle wheels that passed by on the real street below. It had rained earlier, and the spray of water from tires spinning through puddles beat brief patterns on the concrete sidewalk.
"Naotsugu, I've never met..." Renowned within the game for his glib tongue and stern negating prowess, he grasped hurriedly for words that slipped away like loose marbles. "...never met anyone in, you know real..."
"I know. Neither have I." It was those words, succinct and honest, that won him over.
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So he learned that Naotsugu (the real one) looked much the same as Naotsugu (the game one) and that come April, he'd be starting work as a full-time employee in downtown Tokyo. Despite the possibility of pretty girls in short suit skirts, it was far more likely that full-time employment would bring little more than long hours, long commutes, and little energy left over for online adventures.
"I just wanted to let you know," Naotsugu began, his voice both deeper and clearer in real life, "that's the reason why I'll have to leave the Tea Party."
They'd talked about the game and their teammates, about growing up and unwanted responsibilities. And when the words between them had run their course, they laughed together about nothing in particular until the shadows grew long and the streetlights flickered into pools of white above the asphalt.
Those final months before the Tea Party's disbanding... They were both excellent and bittersweet.
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Author's Note: I aimed to start deeply embedded in the virtual world and gradually pull the POV out into the real world... Not sure how well it ended up working. But I wanted to capture both Shiroe's abstract introverted thought process as well as Naotsugu's serious, dependable side (vs. his usual goofing off). The next one might be from Akatsuki's perspective. I haven't decided yet.
This FF community is still very small. Here's to hoping that others discover this series and decide to put pen to paper!
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