(Edit 2. I have proof-read this now one extra time. It should be clear, but I'll propably still revise it a couple of times before removing this note. Uhm... I noticed that you can't put together BB2039 and dot exe... for some reason it gets edited out automatically..? That does not make any sense.)
Chapter 1: Origin
Rain clouds poured water over the streets of Tokyo. Inside an experimental private hospital. A little girl age of seven had woken up from an unreal nightmare.
Her name was Aya Tanaka. She woke up screaming and crying. Her head was pounding harder than what her little heart could pump blood through her veins.
Phantom pain rippled through her missing hand like waves. A pain that could've driven even an adult mad. Monitoring devices inside her room had already alerted the doctors. Before she could grasp the reality, everything went black before her.
The neurolinker's most advanced commercial application was the medical application. Designed after the research data on medicuboid. It had the same effect as the one built by Kayaba Akihito decades ago in the past. Absolute removal or control of all physical senses.
Aya was in a two weeks stay for an experiment to attach a robotic hand to replace her lost one. She was a medical test-subject, scheduled for operation tomorrow. Operation that would take medicine one step closer to god.
This was considered as the final step in creation of cybernetic prosthetics. One that communicated with the brain directly using brainlinker as the intermediate. The fake hand would react faster than the real deal to signals given by the brain.
Aya had been chosen as the test subject for two reasons. One being that her compatibility score with neurolinker was perfect. The second reason was the need to treat her strong phantom pain symptoms that was even beyond the medical application's control. Her phantom pain appeared shortly after the amputation, which had happened years ago.
In short Aya was the golden opportunity for medicine to develop direct-link prosthetics.
Roughly in one week of calibrating and testing, the hand functioned without any noticeable glitches. Thus Aya went back to her home in Nagano. The operation was success in more than just one way, as she no longer had experienced phantom pain.
Since the day of losing her parents. Her mother's sister Akari Tanaka had taken her under wing. Stepping in as a foster parent. Years of treatment, combined with the technological advancement. Aya was finally able to enjoy normal life.
She was late with starting her first year at the school. But the preparations with readying her prosthetic hand had taken slightly longer than expected. Now was the time of introduction for the new exchange student. Starting her school student life in Nagano prefecture.
Her first year was in class 1-B where she gained her first and best friend Sachi Arata. Despite her right hand was elegant, there had been worries that people might begin to pick on her. She was lucky that they only spoke behind her back for the first year. The talking ended as people noticed that she was strangely easy-going and at same time mysterious.
The final nail to the coffin was when her sloppiness made her to take shower with other girls at the same time. They couldn't but help to notice the scars her body had. The mysterious scars made her seem like a clichéd anime fighting hero. She quickly became popular.
With good grades. Top five of her class, she progressed to class 2-A. She was studious in a good way. Her 'mother' was a teacher in a local high school so she was able to support Aya with the latest advancements of pedagogical research.
This also left a lot of free-time for Aya and she spent a lot of time drawing and painting. However Aya's easygoing life was going to change forever. The seeds that had been plated for already a year ago. Among the applications inside her neurolinker there was one executible file called BB2039.
A non-local burst linker who was on a road trip with his family had decided to accelerate and see, if there were any duel avatars. For Aya's misfortune, her name was the only one in the list.
I hymned my favorite song. I was travelling in the local monorail that would arrive close to my school. I was texting to my friends when I noticed that something was amiss. I lifted up my head.
The world changed before my eyes. In a flash the chair I had been sitting on, had disappeared along with the monorail and all the people. I stood in middle of a lush landscape in an era where humans had been long extinct. I had a premonition about the cause of this.
It had to be the strange application that had appeared to my neurolinker during my stay in Tokyo. I never dared to do anything with it as I was not sure, if it was involved with my prosthetic hand.
The rapid change of the world reminded me of a full-dive experience. I never was a big fan of the full-dive worlds. Yet this world felt like I had been here before.
In this world I could feel tension in the air. This was just like it was that day. My duel avatar's name was Blood Choker. Despite of the name 'blood' could have suggested, my avatar's color was eclipsed to black by a blend of extremely dark red. A highlighting hexagonal pattern surrounded my whole body, lined with a eerie slightly brighter red as the outlines.
I never dared myself to look at my right hand. But my left hand seemed like quite normal excluding red sharp claws. I could swear that the tips of the claws were slightly luminous.
My wanderlust was ended by sound of footsteps that I heard coming from my left. As I looked up on my HUD, I could see another name in english letters.
"Coal Burner?" I uttered, looking to my left.
The earth was filled with roots that had grown on top of the remnants of human civilization. Lush vegetations and trees taller than skyscraper dotted the endless landscape. Strange mutated birds flew high above the ground. And the sun was twice bigger than in normal world. Emanating strange blue light.
"Blood Choker, that is quite interesting name you have there. And your color seems quite nice. Not what I had been expecting. Yet I can't feel any presence emanating from you, shame." The sound was masculine. Coal Burner was standing few inches taller than I was.
Both of it's hands looked like they had flamethrowers attached to them and behind his bulky-frame were tanks of fuel. It's color was dark and rusty with orange painting all over it. Weighting at least as much or even more than a big gorilla from a zoo.
"Where am I?" I asked from the brute.
"Huh, are you serious?.. Wait, who is your parent..?" He asked, clearly confused. His expressions did not seem like he was going to attack me. Although the setting was suggesting the possibility that we are somehow supposed to fight.
"My parent? My parents are dead." I answered honestly. The flick of irritation made my right hand twist. I could feel the phantom pain of my amputated arm. A sensantion I had not felt in over a year. The pain that was supposed to be filtered off by my neurolinker's medical app.
"W-wha take it easy!" I could sense fear radiating from the other duel avatar. As I had stopped talking, I could feel a weird warming feeling to my right hand. It felt like an electric shock, I lost HP. My hp bar ticked down while at same time another gauge filled up triple to what I had lost.
I lifted up my right hand, screaming from my lungs as I saw it. I wasn't sure, if it was flesh or not. But sticky dark red substance that seemed to live of it's own life. Festering like rotten flesh. Almost like an alien parasitic being was attached to my body from my shoulder. The grotesque limb looked as if my left hand had inverted, it's inner core being now the outer. Yet it still was elegant and muscular. Perhaps a better description was that the muscular tendons were all in open but I couldn't say for sure.
And the claws of that hand were far more vicious than the ones on my left hand. More like daggers than any portration of claws. In my palm there was a gaping mouth, searing with a red glow. I had a lot of questions but I could only see my opponent preparing for combat. His flamethrowers, had a small bright blue flame lit. He seemed however as confused as I did. But I had this feeling that he was not going to stick around to wait.
One fact about the accelerated world was that this world was nothing of ordinary. If something like a trigger of trauma triggered a response inside this game, Aya might be able to give a lot in return.
For now the phantom pain in her hand was stronger than ever. She could feel her heartbeat pulse through her hand twice for every passing second. Her gut feeling had been correct all along as Coal Burner took the initiative. Digital modelling of napalm spewed from both of his flamethrowers.
"Whatever, just die!" Coal Burner screamed, his voice trembled in fear despite of the bold statement. No matter how mighty the attack was, it couldn't not remove that emotion. As scorching gel-like substance sprayed against my chest. I touched the pain and heat of this world, which still paled before something very familiar. It hurted less than that of what was in my nightmares.
"I'll break this broken world, with this broken hand of mine." That thought flashed through my head and was lost the instant it came.
Yet the power of that forgotten thought was real. I lunged forward in a mad dash, piercing my hand through the chest of the Coal Burner's chest. The motion felt natural. A sudden shock of an explosion came from Coal Burner's fuel tanks when my thrust had reached the end of the motion. His HP gauge vanished, while mine was still ticking. Nearing yet never reaching it's end.
"You Win!" the text proclaimed in front of my face. I didn't feel that victorious as I still had the sensation of pain that my whole body was burning.
And just like that I returned to the real world. To my surprise, despite the events had taken at least ten minutes the monorail had not moved an inch and the pain had been nothing more than a bad dream. I looked around me puzzled, did I just imagine all that?
I opened the menu in my neurolinker swiping through the settings just to open that strange software.
It proclaimed my existence as one of the originators. And consisted a list of rules within the game. To access my duel avatar, I'd have to use the commands given by the game.
In addition to the game, I also had the software to recruit and check whether a player was edible for brain burst installation.
"Brain Burst!" And with that commanded I experienced my first voluntarily acceleration. I was my big chibi cat avatar, staring at a realistic scene. It was me inside the monorail with all the people in it. Yet frozen in time. I didn't pay much attention to my surroundings. Instead I touched the strange B in my menu that I had not seen before.
Name: Blood Choker
Level: 1
Burst Points: 129
Matches: 1
Wins 1, Losses 0, Draws 0
Below that was menu with skill descriptions and manuals. Such as ability to see nearby players. I checked the nearby players and there was the familiar Coal Burner. However the utility to challenge that player to a duel was on a 24 hour cooldown.
There would've been so much that I'd have wanted to ask him. But for some reason I had not been myself during that duel. Being so violent and ferocious wasn't me, but he had to mention my parents.
It was like he asked for it.
Regardless of the self-reflection, I pulled down the menu to see my basic skills. For some reason it brought in my mind a classical RPG. A lot of the skills involved in tearing and clawing. However they did not feel that special. And what I did in my first fight didn't have anything to do with the basic skills in the list. So I sighed.
Next up came checking the juicy stuff. The killer-move. Sanguinary Sacrifice. Activated through self inflicted injury. Gain the effect of blood trance for a brief moment. I was puzzled. That move didn't make much sense.
For the remaining of the 30 minutes time while accelerated, I used for studying the game. I still had to go to school. Despite of everything that had happened during the morning, I acted strangely normal. Smiling like my usual self. However at the end of the day I felt like being alone.
But my opinion weighed little that day. I was dragged by my friends to the local karaoke place. Sachi Arata – who was my best friend, her father owned the local karaoke place. So she and our little group could use it for free. In addition to Sachi, our group consisted of three other girls. Yuki, Sakura and Megumi. Despite we usually discussed about everything including secrets. I had never told anyone about the mystery app.
Sometime ago a friend had noticed that most of the space in my neurolinker was reserved, despite there were hardly any apps. I lied without knowing the truth, saying that my hand requires that to work. The excuse was perfect back then. Still I doubt that I could pull it off in the future.
As we left the school's ground the day was getting hot. Thanks to my friends I hadn't been ashamed of showing my hand anymore. I would die to the heat, if I was still covering it like during my first year. During first grade, I generally had a bandage covering it all the time. But now my plastic laced cybernetic hand was my trademark. It made me cool and popular. Just like the occasional trends of cute eye-patches or such.
Supposedly one could say that Sachi's and Aya's bond was the glue of the group. Where the rest had been more of tag-along type that changed from time to time. Normally Aya was quite easygoing and easy to talk to. At least if they did not pay too much attention to her hand. Else people approached Sachi first and later Aya.
And Aya was fine with that. It was far better having this mechanical hand than living without it. She had chosen to embrace it. Smiling.
"Hey Aya, have you noticed Takao staring at you lately?" Sakura said. Something along the lines this was the exact reason why I wanted to be alone. My head was all jumbled up by questions related to brain burst.
"Takao, huh?" I looked at Sakura. My face must've been blown away with the changing of topic in my head. It was still going to be another ten minutes to the karaoke place. I wanted to escape.
Wait did she say that he was staring at me?
"No way!" Megumi elbowed Sakura.
Thank you Megumi.
"Do you like Takao" I asked sincerely from Sakura only to see her blush. This caused a ruckus among us.
So as a group of five we should have been a surprisingly closed for any attempts of approach. Yet a boy around our age. That none of us had seen before. Walked towards our group. He suddenly stopped moving. His eyes were intense. He was staring at Aya.
"So are you really in love… " Sachi was saying teasingly to Sakura as she noticed that I had stopped moving. The laughter and smiling disappeared from us. We all stared at him. He was a weird boy, with hair cut almost bald. He wore very bland and boring clothes. With a black bear on his overly sized t-shirt and too tight shorts.
"What does he want?" Megumi whispered behind my back.
"Let's just go. I want to sing already." Sachi protested and our group started walking. I walked past him and then he opened his mouth. Speaking in a bad dialect, yet clear enough to understand the meaning.
"Blood" I froze, it felt like my heart just skipped a beat. With time frozen I slowly turned around, having a completely different reaction than the rest of my group. Any kid could've just said that but my right hand was shaking restlessly.
As I looked at the boy, I was confused. The kid was looking back at me. Following my instincts, I took a photo with my neurolinker of the boy.
I looked over my shoulder at the rest of my group, giving them off a small smile.
"Go without me, I'll be right back." I knew they'd make me regret those words. But curiosity had taken a hold of me. I looked at the boy.
"Oh come on" Sakura moaned. But Sachi pushed the rest of the group forward. I really owed her a favor.
We stared at each-other. In silence. My mood was changing for worse like it was sand in a hourglass.
"So s-so... w-would y-you l-like to c-change mail addresses?" The boy asked. His face was gushing red from embarrassment. At least he spoke.
"Who are you?" I asked. Despite I knew who he was.
"Coal Burner." He almost made the name sound something different than what it really was. His voice was a quiet one. When I heard him pronounce Coal, he really got me lost. The part of hesitation was the only thing this kid shared in common with his avatar. He really struck out to me as the gamer type, whom were bad with social contacts and would just use all their time in full-dive worlds.
"I see. So you have this BB2039 too?" I asked.
"Shh! Not in here." He said. I sighed. I swiped my finger through neurolinker, to quickly set up a new mail address. One that I'd be sure to not use elsewhere and typed all my contact details wrong. On top of that it was a foreign address so finding out who I was would be near to impossible.
I swiped the mail address to him, the neurolinker should've shared it now through proximity.
"I g-got it. T-thank you. My name is Hide Moto. Here is my student card." He showed me his student card through the neurolinker. But I nibbled my lower lip. A voice of reason told me that I should not trust to this person so much, yet his reactions seemed somewhat sincere.
"I see. Hide Moto... Unfortunately I was there only to observe the fight between you two. You see, I am one of the originators." I took a huge gambit with those words. But then he nodded.
"Ooh, that makes me super-lucky! May I ask your duel avatar name?" He said. His tone and expression proved that my bait was taken.
"Isn't it bad manners to talk about this out in public?" I asked. I was holding my best poker face today.
"You're right, we shouldn't talk about this in here. We should accelerate and..." The boy had regained his confidence out all all sudden.
"No that will not do. I promised that I would spend the evening with my friends." I said in a cold demanding tone.
"S-sorry. B-but I-I'll be l-leaving s-soon from here. C-could ..." I had broken his confidence.
"No I will not." I said sternly, interrupting him.
He swallowed and bowed me, apologizing.
"I gave you the mail address didn't I?" I sighed heavily. I was slowly getting bothered by all this.
"I'll m-mail you. I p-promise. Y-you are p-pretty..." He kept stuttering.
"W-what!?" My voice had a hint of agitation to it.
"Oo-ops! S-sorry... I'll l-leave... S-sorry, s-s-sorry!" The boy turned around and started running away. I followed his distancing silhouette for a moment. By the end of the road he met up with a tall man and woman.
I used my neurolinker to take another photo. It seemed like those were his parents. I didn't doubt his story but I felt like it was a good idea to remain cautious with anyone affiliated with Brain Burst. The reason for my doubt was underlying the basic mechanics of the game.
Each time you accelerated, it meant that you lost one point. By the look of things I had something around 100 to 120? starting points. Which meant that after the first duel that I had won, gave me points. But the same amount was subtracted from the loser.
Yet at the same time besides to the points won or lost. Another one extra point was permanently lost from this game due to the cost for accelerating. A point that no player could win over. This wasn't just a game that you would play.
With the functionality of brain burst, I could already picture a ton ways to exploit it. The ability to freeze time was phenomenal. But on the other side it meant that it could get real ugly. Knowing that people would do anything for that power, I'd have to guard my identity.
I couldn't deny the fact, that this Coal Burner had been the first duel avatar I had come in contact with. Despite having the application for almost two years.
A secondary question is about levels. Should I try to level myself up? Perhaps I could go to Tokyo and try to challenge a couple of people to duels and try to rake up points. My gut feeling was that I was probably quite good at this game.
I was on my way to my friends when the conversation I had been having with the boy struck me. I whispered: "Brain Burst."
I swiped the menu open and looked for the display of local players. I found the name Coal Burner and read through the interface. According to it, you could choose to follow a player. If they were to duel inside the normal duel field. Then you'd automatically accelerate to observe the duel, without losing any burst points. I chose to follow Coal Burner.
I returned to the normal world. Running to catch up to my friends. We started our little karaoke. As expected they were asking about the boy. Who he was and what was my affiliation with him. My reaction to the questions was a simple shrug of shoulders. Saying that I had never seen him, which technically was the truth. But I added a lie about that, he said that I looked like a princess in one of those full dive games.
That did clear all suspicion on me. But on the other hand it really had turned into a joke of one night. My friends knew they could push me to agitation by calling me princess. They were sure to use it against me in future just like they did during karaoke.
Putting this farce behind. There was one question about brain burst that I couldn't shake off. Should I check the compatibility of my classmates and then recruit whoever I could? Would it change my classmates and the school for better or worse.
The possibility of them running out of burst points to cause the program to uninstall, was definitely not a scenario that would've been welcome, if I started recruiting them. Even when prioritizing friendship, I still had the ugly thought about exploiting my classmates for burst-points. I tried my best to dismiss that thought.
Next saturday after the karaoke night, I received a mail from this Hide Moto. The duel avatar Coal Burner that I had defeated earlier.
"Topic: BB From Hide.M145 ********.jp To: Yuujin2739 *******.org
Sorry about yesterday.
Yuujin that is your name? I never asked your name. So I presume that is your name from your email address. So about this Blood Choker, she was quite powerful for a burst linker. I was level three but her level must've been one because I lost 30 burst points at the end of the duel. She must be a direct-striker type. I was expecting a ranged attacker because the name made it sound like it was a red duel avatar.
If you knew anything more about her, could you please tell me, please.
Also what is your level? Mine is level 3
- Hide"
I sighed, I didn't know how to react to that mail. Should I delete it or reply to it. Perhaps I could just let it be.
At this point I was thinking about taking a day trip to Tokyo. I was in any case supposed to go and show my hand at the hospital soon. So decided to ask my parents, if they could reserve it as soon as possible.
They called the hospital and it was fine with them, if I came to visit them next weekend. In one week I could try the brain burst for real.
End of chapter 1. - To be Continued...