Chapter 2: The Basics

Well, shit. I don't really know what I was expecting, but uh...this was it.

Wherever I looked it was the same scenery, in the sense that we seemed to be in a big sphere, with sky blue colouring, and the same electric lights flickering around it, but it appeared to be made up of little squares forming around into the sphere shape. Looking back, we appeared to have walked out of a hexagonal built room, with several circular points on the end which I knew had to be the pods, one of which I appeared in. In order to make that easier for those of you who can't picture that properly, from above, it looks like a crown. And throwing my head to the left and right, I saw multiple looks-like-a-crown-from-above-rooms lined up alongside each other in a curve.

Directing my attention to the floor, I saw that the ground I was walking on seemed to be a mix of rubber and solid...how do I put this? You know those blocks that the Boos in Super Mario Sunshine turn into when you spray them?...No?...It was still like those. And every time I took a step, a white ripple resounded out along the path until it faded away. The floor also seemed to be...floating, in the center of the sphere. The end of the path seemed to split up into three paths; two leading to the edges of the sphere, which seemed to be exits, whilst the third in the middle led up to a large holographic globe with several information points pointing out of it. Several people were grouped around it, each seeming to wear the same clothing as me, but slightly different, with differing colours.

"As an organisation operating within cyberspace, we've kept our working area as minimalistic as possible to save up on transfer data." George explained. "It is split up into several different Zones as we call them. This is the Entry Zone, where we Log In for work. The holographic image you see in front of us is the Connection Hub." We walked up to it and looked up to see multiple smaller spheres within the big sphere, listing individual peoples names, or those of duos or trios.

"Um...sorry, but, what does this mean? And how does it tie into anime?" I asked.

"Oh, right, right, sorry." George chuckled. "I guess I'd better explain this later then. Here, this way."

We walked down the left path to the edge of the sphere, and as we walked through the door, I felt a slight tingling rush through my spine, like a zap of electricity, as we emerged into an area similar to the Entry Zone, only it was crimson red in colour. The most prominent thing was a large tower in the middle of the area, branching out into several different buildings from it, all mainly rectangular in shape. The tower itself started out with a rectangular base with lights pulsating from the door around it, then a long cylinder neck with windows spiraling around it, leading up to a frisbee (how else am I supposed to describe it?) shaped head with several strong beams of light shooting out from it, which on closer inspection were actually a stream of white 0's and 1's.

"This is the Social and Office Zone, the smaller buildings are for general meetings and group talks in various areas." We looked up at the tower whilst walking to it. "And this is the grand centerpiece of AUTO, the Link Tower, which controls all of our connections to both cyberspace and the internet. Think of it as like our anchor for all data connections."

"Still keeping an open mind..." I mumbled, gazing up at it dumbly.

We approached the glass double sliding doors, and he turned to me. "The ground floor is where the employees in finances and encryption work, so we should be quiet walking through." I nodded in confirmation, and we both walked in.

It seemed to be set out like a stereotypical american office, y'know, with the booths and things? Except the dividing walls were made of red rubbery material, and everybody I saw working (They all looked to be in their 20's/30's) were using holographic computers like in Iron Man or Terminator...or something similar. Whatever the case it was cool.

We walked over to an elevator pod with a control pad beside it, that only had two buttons: G and T, with George pressing T, making the elevator doors open. He gestured for me to go first, so I obliged, and when we were both in, the doors closed and it began to rise, whilst a familiar song played on the way up.

"Death Note's season 2 opening?" I thought aloud.

"Our boss finds it quite amusing." George said.

"What exactly is your boss like?" I asked as I listened to the admittedly hilarious misheard lyrics.

"They're...something." He nodded.

And as we reached the top, and the doors opened...I'd have to say 'something' was an understatement.

The walls were completely covered in posters. All hentai, hardcore. I'm talking KissxSis, Oppai Heart, Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid, Boku no Pico, some I didn't even recognise!...And don't ask me how I knew those four!

A small pink desk sat in the middle of the room, whilst the far end wall was nothing but shelves upon shelves of manga's, anime DVD's, figurines and pillows...you know the ones. The manga was a very diverse range, from Naruto to Fruits Basket and A.I Love You to To Love Ru. The entire right side of the desk was populated by boob mousepads, despite the fact that a holographic screen was up in front of the figure sitting behind it, whilst the entire left side was crisp packets and empty milkshake cartons.

"Seimei?" George spoke up.

"Argh!" A high-pitched voice screamed. "George! How many times have I told you to knock before coming in!?"

"It's an elevator, I can't knock." He shrugged.

The holographic screen quickly closed and I saw...I didn't exactly know what. I couldn't see their face, only two brown anime eyes staring out of the darkness between an upturned pink collar with an oversized zip, and the iconic hood from Himouto! Umaru-chan.

"That still doesn't mean you can just- hey, is this the new guy?" They asked.

"Indeed. Evan, this is the leader of AUTO, Seimei. And this is Evan Cole." He said.

"That's Seimei-CHAN to you!" They said as they jumped on top of their desk, and I could see their entire outfit. They wore a baggy pink jacket with sleeves clearly too big and long, covering their entire arms, whilst it was completely covered in stickers of anime titles, at the time I saw Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul, Soul Eater and Toriko. Meanwhile from the pockets on each side of the zip hung little chibi figures of anime protagonists, mainly Luffy, Naruto, Ichigo, Saitama, memorable ones like that. The jacket also covered their legs, so all I could see were two black boots with eyes on them...I think that was supposed to reference Parasyte.

"Nice to meet you..." I waved weakly.

"So your the new guy, huh?" Seimei asked. "Neat! I liked your computer background!"

'Don't say that so casually!' I begged in my head.

"She may not look it, but she is very capable at her job." George said. "In the aspect that all she does is watch anime all day."

"...She?" Was all I had to say, looking around. "But then...what's with all the-"

"I swing both ways." She stated, rather proudly.

'No shame!' I thought.

"Seimei-chan, I brought Evan here so that we could discuss AUTO in more detail." George explained.

"Yep, I know, I'll give the rundown." Seimei nodded as she sat in her chair, which was a rather luxurious black leather specifically shaped to her body. "First off. Hi, Evan! I'm Seimei, but you can call me Seimei-chan, and I'm the leader of AUTO! I created the cyberspace area we're currently in, and the pixelation transportation technology!"

"You did?" My tone was more surprised then I wanted it to be.

She gave me a half-lidded look. "Yeah, why? Think I can't do something like that?"

"No, no, no! Not at all!" I hurriedly replied.

"Good." She nodded, satisfied. "So I set up this tower so that I could spend all the time in cyberpsace, because real life sucks!"

'...Okay, I'll agree with her on that one.'

"And then, I discovered something!" Her visible eyes lit up with wonder. "I discovered data code connections to the cybernetic fingerprints of anime!"

"What does cybernetic fingerprint mean?" I wondered.

"A cybernetic fingerprint if basically a lasting evidence of something's place online." George explained. "It's like your own fingerprint, when you touch something with it, you leave a lasting impression, so to speak."

"When I first connected with them, they were just jumbles of codes." Seimei put up her holograph screen, which showed a bunch of 0's and 1's floating around. "But I wanted to stay connected with them, because, well, you can no doubt guess. But then! When my connections began to sync up, something incredible happened!" On the screen, the 0's and 1's suddenly all joined together and faded into a blur of glitchy colours, until it refocused as a little bubble, depicting a grassy plain with a white castle in the background. "The code suddenly evolved into an actual representation of their respective anime!"

I stared at the bubble. "Um...if I'm understanding this right...then does that mean...?"

"That's right! The entire anime worlds were created!" Seimei beamed. "The characters, the areas, everything matched how it was depicted! And using my pixelation technology, I could travel inside the worlds created!" A trail of drool ran down her collar. "Oh, the things I saw..."

"Seriously!? You could go into anime!?" I gaped. This was a frikkin' game changer! Was this really being presented to me!?

"Yeah...but then, a problem arose." She folded her sleeves in a stoic manner. "Not long after these worlds were created, they got infected...with Viruses."

"Infected?" I echoed.

She nodded. "I don't know where they came from or how they came to be...but they started popping up in all the anime worlds.

Suddenly, the screen changed to depict...I'm not sure what to compare it to. It literally looked like a blob of black goo with a spherical body shape, and two tentacles for arms extending out of its sides, acting as arms, whilst a red crest was shown in the center of it as a face. The Crest looked like a 'V', only the edges spiked out into dragon heads, and the outer side of it spiked out like shark teeth.

"This is a Virus." Seimei said. "Or rather...a primordial state Virus. This is the initial form all Viruses take, and is what they are most commonly described as here in AUTO."

"So...these things invade the anime worlds?" I clarified.

"Hai." Seimei confirmed. "However, as I just said, this is their primordial form, which they first emerge as. Given enough time, they evolve into their battle form, which could look like anything. I'll give an example."

The screen flickered, and the black blob was replaced by a dark red dragon head with yellow light glowing from inside of it, and black flames for eyes, with arms that ended in a black spike for a 'hand' and purple leathery wings extending from it. Purple spikes ran down its back all the way to its lower half, which was just a long tail with a smaller dragon head on the end of it.

"This is the first battle form Virus I encountered. I call it the Wildfirern." Seimei said.

"You named it?" I thought aloud.

"It's a cool little category thing!" She protested. "Anyway, Viruses proved to be very dangerous to the created worlds." The screen changed again, to show a primordial form Virus seemingly drinking from the ground. It was that same grassy field from earlier, only the area was now dark and grey, and everything seemed to be dying and deteriorating and glitching. "Viruses feed off of the codes data, breaking them down until eventually, there's nothing left. Essentially, they eat worlds."

"Lovely..." I mumbled.

"In the beginning I could deal with Viruses just fine on my own, but soon more and more anime worlds were created, and more and more Viruses kept appearing and I couldn't keep up! So that's when I decided to enlist help."

"So you created AUTO."

"You catch on quick, Cole! Yep! I started reaching out to people who would be willing to help me fight Viruses! It was pretty easy to find the right people when I could check their internet history."

George stepped forward. "That's how she found me. I was one of the original 5 she chose to fight Viruses, and we 5 became the AUTO Manager's." He then looked at her with folded arms. "And then?"

Seimei gave him an annoyed look. "But then I realised I just couldn't pull people out of their lives and away from any proper income...so I improvised! I also started recruiting office workers! Y'know, the guys downstairs. Being able to provide them with cyberspace technology, they've become the greatest technology supporters ever! That way, we could turn a profit to give to everybody, and make fighting Viruses a full-time job!"

"You created AUTO just to get others to help you?" I said.

"Pretty much." George said. "Although, now she's employed so many AUTO users that she can afford to sit there and watch anime all day."

"I resent that! Even though it's true!" She argued.

"And...your asking ME to do this? To fight Viruses?"

"Eeeeeexactly." She said. "With your otaku knowledge, your perfect to work here!"

"...I'd be able to actually go into anime worlds?"

"Yeah."

I took a slow, deep breath. "I'm not dreaming this, am I?"

"Nope."

"Please let me sign up!" I begged with a lit up face. "I'll work as hard as possible with whatever you need me to do!"

"Excellent!" Seimei nodded as the screen shifted to show a handprint. "Just place your hand here, then, please."

I complied and pressed my palm against the screen, wherein it quickly turned into a profile with my face, name, and a bunch of empty boxes around it.

"There you go! Your all registered!" Seimei cheered. "George, he'll be in your group, if that's okay."

"Fine by me." He nodded. "We'll head over to the Custom Zone and get him fitted."

"Good!" She nodded. "Welcome aboard, Evan Cole! Hope to see some fine work from you!"

"Yes!" I snapped to attention. "You can count on me! Thank you very much!" I bowed.

"Heh, polite. I like him. See you guys around!" She waved us out into the elevator.

As Death Note's iconic opening played, I rubbed my hands together anxiously. I mean, the amount of time in which all of this had been revealed to me was staggering. Should I have been more shocked? Should I have screamed? Fainted? I don't know, but all I felt was excitement and giddiness.

"What do you think of our boss?" George asked, bringing me out of my thoughts.

"She seems nice." I said as basically as possible.

"Well, I could think of more accurate terms like 'weird' or 'eccentric', but nice works well too." He shrugged. "Anyway, looks like I'm your AUTO Manager now, Evan. My job is to basically lay down the rules, show you around, and make sure you don't screw anything up. Sound good?"

"Fine by me." I replied.

"Great! Then let's get you sorted." He said before falling silent as we arrived at the office floor.

We walked all of the way out of the red zone and into a yellow zone, with the same platforms and asthetics as the previous two. Looking to the left I could see various yellow cylinder pods with a golden holodraphic 'C' hovering above them. Looking at their double slide open doors, some of them were glowing red, whilst some were glowing green, presumably for the standard 'In Use or Not In Use' code.

"That's stop two on our little tour of the Custom Zone." George told me, noticing where I was looking. "Since you're new here, stop one is here."

We halted in front of a rainbow coloured pentagon with several circular devices embedded into it, which was slowly tilting, like the earth.

"Place your hand here, if you please." George gestured to a holograph in front of him. I did as he said and the shape started spinning around wildly for a moment, until it halted with one of it's faces in front of me. Then, one of the circular devices extended out and fell down, forcing me to catch it. Now that I had one in my hands, I could observe it more closely. It was jet black in colour, and had a sky blue 'A' on the front of it, with three little arrowheads at the top, bottom-left and bottom-right, the top one being red, the bottom-left being yellow, and the bottom-right being green.

"Say hello to your new best friend; The AUTO-Pack." George introduced it. "This is the essential device for all AUTO field members. It fits nice and snug into your chest there." He pointed at where the indentation was.

"Like this?" I slotted it in, finding that it fit perfectly. Suddenly, the lines along my black suit lit up as glowing white energy lines. "Woah! What the-!?"

"There you go! All activated!" George nodded, pointing at thew new lines on the suit. "This is the indication of your AUTO-Pack's energy, shown through how brightly it glows. We call it P-Colour or P-Energy, short for Pack-Colour or Pack-Energy."

"Er...is the colour white a bad thing?"

"Oh, no, no, that's how they all start out. Don't worry, you'll be able to change the colour momentarily." He smiled. "Now then, a basic rundown. Press the green arrowhead, you can take it off to do so."

Deciding to, I took the AUTO-Pack off, causing the white lines, or, P-Colour to fade, and pressed the green arrowhead, causing a holographic screen to pop up in front of me, showing the same settings from when I signed up.

"This is your Status Screen, it basically shows you how you're doing, very useful if you're in a pinch. Think of it like any RPG menu." The spiky blonde said. "Now then, yellow button, please."

I pressed it, and the image changed to a list of empty rectangular buttons, whilst at the top was a white number: 39029771458 next to a yellow phone symbol.

"This is your Contacts List. If you make any friends here, register them up and you can call them anytime, or check how whatever world they're currently in." He then started walking. "Now then, let's head back to the pods you saw earlier."

"What about the red one?" I asked.

He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. "Oh, that's the fun one. We'll get onto that soon, I assure you." And he continued walking, so I quickly slotted the A-P back into its slot and ran after him.

The cylinders were lined up in rows as me and George walked along them. "These are our Custom Pods. Seimei created them as a neat little customization thing, like in games, to change appearance, hair style, eye colour, all of that."

"That is genius." I approved, when one of the red doors turned green.

"Ah, look's like someone's just finishing." We stood in front of it and waited for the person to come out.

"This is so COOL! Oh!" I flinched as a young woman with bright blue hair jumped out, sporting a rack that had to be an E-Cup from first glance.

...Oh yeah, thought I was half-hearted about the whole pervert thing, huh?

"Sorry about that! It's free to use now!" She apologised before hurrying off, with me staring after her. Looooooooong after her.

"...You like that?" George asked.

I gave him a thumbs up. "Indeed."

"Your turn now, don't worry, it's easy to use." He pushed me in and the door closed behind me. Looking around it seemed to be blank, only there was a mirror behind me and a button next to the door. I clicked it and the doors turned red.

"Welcome, Customization On." A robotic voice said as a holographic screen appeared in front of me, several different rectangular boxes with the categories 'Body', 'Hair', 'Eyes', 'Nose', 'Mouth', 'Jacket', 'Trousers' and 'P-Colour'.

"This seems simple enough." I thought aloud, clicking on 'Body'. It was quite simple, with choices for skin colour (I don't really know who'd want a purple skin tone, maybe DBZ fans) and sliders for limbs and muscle mass.

"It can't really be this simple." I tapped my finger on height and slid it along, and got a shock as I extended in height rapidly, banging my head against the ceiling. "Ouch!" I rubbed my head using my now freakishly long arm. "Maybe it is. No thank you." I clicked the 'Return' button, which reduced me back to my normal height. "I think I'm okay body wise."

I moved onto hair, and moving the slider along my hair suddenly extended and flopped down over my eyes, making me quickly return it to standard length. "Let's see what I can do here..."

I eventually made my hair have two, sweeping, blade-like strands down either side of my face, with the rest of it being swept back, apart from having two spiking strands jutting off in a 'V' shape just above the back of my neck. I also changed my hair to a neon green colour primarily, whilst giving both sets of extensions a dark green in contrast.

'Eyes' was a bit weird. I initially had a pink gear spinning around next to my iris (that was weird), then my sclera turned bright violet (had to fix that), but I eventually just kept my blue eyes...with a crimson red highlight for emphasis.

I left nose untouched, didn't want to mess with that, but experimented a bit with my mouth, giving myself buck teeth for a split second before fixing it. I essentially just moved onto 'Jacket' which was obviously what I was wearing. There were a bunch of extra features too like scarves and hats, so I got to work.

I changed the jackets main colour from black to dark red, and I kept the sleeves baggy, but with a more funnel design so that they were thin up until my elbows, which I accentuated with a dark pink DNA loop around, whilst also having dark pink spikes painted along the wrists. I had kept the unzipped design, though I added a pair of mean-looking orange eyes to the hood, and I changed the zip from silver colour to bronze whilst including two dark pink 'X's on each side of the zipline at the stomach, plus a little keychain of a blue star hanging from my zipper for good measure. My trousers were now a light, sandy brown, and were much more crisp and long, with baggy pockets and little black cartoony skulls on the knees.

Finally, there was my P-Colour. Seeing as how it was going to be emphasised across my suit the entire time, I decided to go with a nice electric green, upon which the lines actually did fade into the more appealing colour.

After double checking my new appearance and deciding I was satisfied, I clicked confirm and felt another slight zap run up my spine.

"Customization Complete." The voice beeped, prompting me to turn around and unlock the door before stepping out.

"Niiiiiiiice." George approved as he walked over with a cup of coffee, the mug being a bland cream colour. "I hardly recognise ya. Like the choices though."

"Thanks." I smiled gratefully. I didn't feel at all different to be honest. It was still me, just with a lot more colour, I guess.

He chugged down his coffee before speaking. "Ahhhh...right then! I think your finally ready! Follow me." As we walked, he talked. "Obviously, we've recruited you to fight Viruses, and in order to do that, you've gotta know how to fight. Or rather, use what's been given to you effectively. In order to do that, you've gotta do some training!"

We halted in front of what looked like an electric yellow sphere in a spidernet structure. "This is Training. One basic round in here and you'll be all set for your new job."

We both walked in to see three different doors with names above them: 'Basic', 'Advanced' and 'VS'.

"You'll be wanting this one." George sad as we walked through the 'Basic' door, zapping us into a little square room comprised of yellow cubes, and, really nothing more. "It automatically generates your own private training room for you and anybody your training together with. In that regard, Nora is probably either in her own training room, or she's already finished. Remember Nora?"

"Definitely." I nodded dumbly.

"Great! Now then, one practice battle should get you enough experience! Ever been in a fight before, Evan?"

"Not really."

"Yeah, not many new recruits are. Let's change that, shall we?" He stood in front of me. "Time to show you the final feature of your AUTO-Pack. Press the red button." Nodding, I did as I was told.

A red screen suddenly popped up in front of me, making me jump back. It depicted several white outlines of various weapons from cannons to sabres to...dolls.

"The red screen is where you store your weapon." The mentor explained. "We create the codes for all forms of weapons, which is then transferred into your pack. When first created, weapons are simple in their coding, but become stronger and adapt to their users fighting style, in order to make them truly unique. Think of it like a weapon level-up system."

"There sure are a lot..." I mumbled, flicking my finger to scroll through them...wait, was that last one a pair of socks?

"They're made by some of our more technological employees. Everybody can tell they just love going overboard with them." George admitted. "Since your new, this screen will only show up once, and once you pick a weapon, it'll be with you forever."

"No pressure or future consideration, then." Sighing, I spun the cycle, watching the outlines fly past me. "There are a lot to choose from...maybe I should just pick the one it stops on."

I watched it scroll slower and slower, but then I tapped the screen in order to stop it. "Hold on, was that a...?" I rolled the scroll back to see something that had caught my attention.

It was a ring. Nothing more, nothing less. It had a basic design, with a single line circling around it.

"What's this one?" I asked, pointing it out.

George stared at it with a puzzled expression. "Huh...I've never seen that one before, actually. Must be new."

"A ring, huh?" I thought about that for a moment. Could a ring really be a weapon? Maybe if you swung it hard enough...or you could choke someone with it, but that seemed a bit dark for me. Still, it did seem like an interesting concept...and I was really indecisive anyway, so otherwise I'd be here forever. "I'll go with it."

"Really? In that case, give it a tap." George gestured.

I hit the screen with my forefinger, causing it to disappear, as a blue code suddenly formed in the air, materialising into the ring, being about the size of a hula hoop. As it fell, I instinctively reached out and caught it, and as I did, it became a neon green colour, the same as my P-Colour.

"So this is my weapon..." I gave it a few experimental swings. It felt really light to me and easy to wield, but it also seemed to have a weight behind it.

"I look forward to seeing how it evolves under your ownership." George nodded. "Since its your weapon now, you can name it like in Bleach."

I stared at it for a moment. A few things came to mind, but I don't think calling it 'Donut' would make me very intimidating. Beware, Evan, wielder of giant delicious pastry. In the end, I decided on the only thing I could think of.

"Zero." I dubbed it.

"I gotta admit, I like the way you think." George approved. "So then, what do you say we put it to the test?"

He tapped one of the cubes on the walls, and suddenly something materialised in the centre of the room. It was literally a silver ball with yellow robotic eyes. "This is a VC, or, Virus-Copy, designed as a training method. All you have to do is hit it until it's eyes turn into little crosses."

"Makes sense." I gripped Zero with both hands and held my new weapon out to the side as I shuffled towards it, whilst it just stared at me.

"Your suit gives you all the basic abilities of an anime protagonist; increased speed, reflexes, durability and jumping. Just know that it's still gonna hurt when you get hit." He warned me.

I stopped shuffling as I was right in front of the VC, before I pulled my ring back and swung down with all of my might. Only for it to roll away, leaving the ring to just bounce off of the blocky ground uselessly and make me come dangerously close to dropping it.

"I am having instant regrets." I affirmed aloud. "How exactly am I supposed to fight with this?" I tried swinging with it again, only for the robot to bounce over. I jumped after it and holy shit did I overshoot it. I underestimated my overpowered anime jumping capabilities and smacked straight into the wall, brusing the entire front of my body as I fell flat on my back.

"You okay there?" George asked.

"Give me a minute!" I scrambled back to my feet, only to see the VC rolling back and forth in a taunting manner. "Oh, it is on!" I chased after it and swung wildly, only for it to pull a Sonic and spin dash away, bouncing off of the walls in the process.

"Ha!" As it rebounded of a wall, I timed my swing just right and hit it, throwing it across the room with sparks erratically shooting out of its spherical body. "How do you like that!?" Not very much, it seemed, as it turned towards me with angry eyes.

"Oh, now you've done it. It's going into battle form." George pointed.

Suddenly the two sides of the sphere popped open, and two arms with a silver gatling gun on the ends of each extended out, whilst the bottom popped out into four mechanical legs. What was previously it's face glowed completely red as a smaller head emerged from the top of the body, with a single red scanning eye.

"...Fudge nuggets." I cursed as I rolled out of the way of the gatling gun fire. "You give these things gatlings!?"

"Gotta up the challenge level." George reasoned.

I ran around behind it and hit its back, only for it to smack me across the head, making me fall to the ground with a headache. I quickly jumped away as it stabbed the ground where I previously was with one of its legs, then landed against the wall and jumped back off of it, holding the ring forward all Superman style and crashing into its body. If I wasn't being viciously attacked I would've been amazed at how awesome I was currently being.

It began to glitch from the fatal wound, but as I tried to pull my weapon out, I found it to be stuck, giving the opponent the chance to aim both of its gun arms at me. Thinking quickly, I planted both my feet on its body and jumped back, pulling Zero out and launching myself back, thankfully out of the way of fire. Taking the chance, I gripped my ring tightly and swung as hard as possible, crushing the VC into a pancake, and making it burst apart into code that quickly disappeared, allowing me to sigh in relief.

"Well done, Evan." George clapped as he strolled over to me. "Not bad for your first try."

I panted to regain my composure. "Hah...don't just throw me in like that."

"Sorry, part of your contract." He joked. "Since your finished, just press the red button on your AUTO-Pack, and your weapon will turn back into it." I did so, and watched as the weapon broke down into code before flying into the device now on my chest. "You okay?"

"I think so...but wow! That felt awesome! I could, like, jump and fight and, and, just be a hero!" I exclaimed.

George smirked as he folded his arms. "If that's your comment, then I think you're ready."

"Do you mean what I think you mean?" I giddily questioned as he nodded.

"Let's head over to the Action Zone."

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Thank you all for the great support that I was given in the first chapter! And wow! I got a ton of OC's! I don't think I'd be able to accept all of them and still give them all suitable 'screen time'. In any case, there were some really good ones! In case you guys are interested, here are the top candidates for acceptance:

Vaati Star

WildFang14

CTChronos

ShinBP

Shiranai Atsune

Yukihana Kye

pine swiftwings

KorianneAnders

dualitydisorder

Assassinkai742

Those are the top choices so far. If you weren't listed on here, that can only mean one thing...you got lazy with the personality. I need long, unique, specific details that will make them an interesting character! And another thing! This applies to you guys listed here too: Don't give your characters names like 'Dragon Star' or something like that! They're real people! If you do, I'll give them a name myself. And I can assure you, it will be bland and forgettable. You ARE still free to submit, but the margin is very narrow now, you'll have to pull out all the creative neurons in your brain to have a chance.

And that's all for now, folks! Thank you again so much for showing such interest in this story! In fact, I created an almost identical concept alongside this one, titled 'GEAR' (Game Exploration And Recreation), which, as you can guess, is a similar concept, only revolving around videogames! Say if you're interested in this concept at least.

Thank you for waiting patiently, and I'll see you all next chapter!