Shall We Play a Game?
Stage 2
KarmaHope

:/initializinglocation_central

:/loading_maps

:/loading_npcs

… 98% … 99% … 100% LOADED …

… WELCOME TO AltEARTH …

Edward came to with a groan, his memory fuzzy. What had happened? The last thing he remembered was stepping through those weird double doors once again.

He forced himself to sit, pushing himself up from where he lay face-flat in a bed of soft grass. Wait, grass? He pushed strands of unruly golden hair away from his face as he squinted into warm sunlight. Indeed, he was sitting in a field of some sort. And if he was sitting in a field …

He was in the game! He was actually playing AltEARTH!

It was all he could do not to yelp with excitement as he leapt to his feet. It took him just a second to gain his balance, and then he spent several moments just staring at his surroundings in amazement. These graphics were stellar! He could see individual leaves on each tree, moving independently of each other and casting individual shadows. If it weren't for the tiny MENU floating at the bottom right corner of his vision, he could almost believe this was real life.

And that was the moment he realized the exact reason the word floated there. It would be so easy to get lost in this world; to think it was reality; to forget to log out.

He took a moment to cast an eye over himself as well. He was dressed in a simple white tunic and brown pants, with soft cloth shoes protecting his feet. Ed wrinkled his nose. Beginner outfits were always the worst part about starting a new RPG game. They offered no protection, no power boosts, and they were ugly as all get-out.

He wasn't sure what to do from here, so he fell back on years of experience. The first thing he would do was open the menu, but there was no button to press. Instead, the most intuitive method of executing the command would be … "Open menu."

The menu opened before him, the display hovering midair. It broke every law of physics, but then again, physics didn't really need to apply here, did it? He skimmed over the options, settling on the one that read Contacts. Cautiously, he reached out and poked at it with his finger. To his utmost surprise, the hologram resisted his touch.

Contacts led him to another menu that held the options Friend List and Add Friends. When he pressed Add Friends, it asked him if he wanted to find friends using the phone number he had entered. He agreed, and quickly found Alphonse and a couple other people he knew from school. Sending a quick 'whisper-message' to his brother – which involved literally whispering it under his breath – his next order of business was to get out of this damn field. As a spawn point, there was nothing that would kill him, but there was also nothing to do here, either.

In the main menu, there was a Map option, which he opened. Surveying the map, turning a bit to orient himself, he was pleased to note that he wasn't far from the outskirts of Central Town. The open menu turned with him, which was super cool. Closing both the map and the menu, he took off toward the town.

He met Alphonse at the town center. His younger brother was dressed similarly to how he was, the only differences being his shirt was a light blue and he had a rudimentary sword belted to his hip. Because they'd agreed to keep their appearances similar to real life, it was easy to pick him out. Of course, even if they hadn't looked similar, Ed would have recognized his username anywhere.

"Hey!" he exclaimed as he jogged up. "So, ShiningArmor again, huh?"

Al grinned. His first username ever had been KnightInShiningArmor, which had been shortened to ShiningArmor in subsequent RPG games. "I don't know if you're one to be talking, Fullmetal." He cast a critical eye over his brother, and his grin widened. "You did make yourself taller!" he crowed, "I knew you would!"

"So you went and made yourself taller, too," Ed grumbled. "I see that."

But Alphonse had not added quite as much height as Edward had, and so they were just about as tall as each other. Al had kept his hair fairly short, at least compared to Ed. It was shorter on the sides but longer on top, just enough that it fell over his forehead without hindering his eyesight. He too had made his hair and eyes more golden than they were in real life, though like in real life, they were still darker than Ed's. The only other differences Ed could note were that he had filled himself out a bit as well, and that his cheekbones were slightly more defined.

"And you still have that cowlick of yours!"

"I forgot to change it, all right?"

Alphonse laughed. "Come on, Brother. Let's go grind some levels like the noobs we are."

It was then that Ed realized he had forgotten one crucial step in the 'New RPG' process. He hadn't checked to see what sort of starter weapon he had been given. He quickly opened his menu as Al watched on in amusement. There – Inventory. He opened it, and found … "a knife? Okay, I can work with that."

As an Alchemist, he would be focusing on boosting his Mana Points in order to make himself stronger. The weapon was only a backup until then, or if he tired out.

He grabbed the knife and closed his inventory. "All right," he said. "Let's go, Armorboy."

As they wandered through the town, Ed was once again fascinated by his surroundings. The game was set in a medieval fantasy land, so all the buildings were either wood or stone. Some had thatched roofs, while others were more sturdily built. NPCs waved at them happily, which they returned even if they were NPCs. Other players roamed the streets as well, whom they greeted in passing as well. It was evident that some people had started playing as soon as they had gotten home from the store, as those characters were already clothed much more nicely than they themselves were.

"It's weird to think that these people are all probably from around Central," Al said. "That doesn't usually happen in an MMO."

Indeed, that was one of the revolutionary things about AltEARTH. They called it the GeoLocation feature – each in-game town reflected a town or city from real life. The town that someone spawned in for the first time depended on where a player was in real life when he or she registered. While not every town had an AltEARTH twin, the creators boasted that there was a map of towns that covered the entire world, and that each person would be placed in a town closest to their true location. What more, the towns in the Amestrian part of the world looked different than those in the Xingese part, which were different from the area that would be Drachma.

That's what truly made AltEARTH an 'Alternate Earth.'

"No, it doesn't," Ed agreed. "But hey – maybe we'll make some new friends! That would be good, right?"

"And maybe I'll finally get a girlfriend," Al swooned. Ed rolled his eyes and cuffed his brother over the head as Al laughed.

"Get your head out of the clouds. Look over there!" They were leaving the buildings of Central Town behind now, and there on the outskirts were every RPGer's first test. It seemed that some things never changed, even if technology did.

"Ooh!" Al exclaimed as he drew his sword, "Slimes!"

Ed's hand tightened around his knife. He was inexplicably nervous. He'd fought thousands of Slimes in his lifetime … but back then, it had all come down to how fast he could click a button or form keystroke combinations. Now, he was actually going to be doing the fighting.

Awesome.

"Yaaahrg!" Al yelled, rushing forward with his sword raised. That caught the attention of the slimes surrounding them – a total of three in all. Ed watched for just a second as Al began hacking away at one of them, his dull sword cutting through the Slime's gelatinous body. The hit damage rose above the combatants' heads like it always had in the other RPGs that they had played, only this time in eerie 3D.

Ed wasted no more time, rushing into battle with a second Slime. Like Al, he fought with little finesse, stabbing and slashing with the knife and occasionally dancing backward as the Slime rushed forward in an attack. As a Level 1 player, he did not yet have the skill points needed to develop his alchemy, so the knife was his only option. The Slime's HP bar floated in the upper right corner of his vision, and he watched it fall with each blow he dealt.

Damn, was he actually starting to breathe heavily? This game forgot nothing, it seemed. Unfortunately, that included the way that long hair got in one's face when it wasn't tied back properly. He leapt away from another attack just in time – it actually hurt when the Slime hit him. Granted, it was more of a sting, but still.

At last, he dealt the final blow. The Slime – green and gelatinous and all-around generally disgusting with weird stalk eyes – exploded, smattering him with gooey ick. He and Al took the last Slime together, and despite both of them being Level 1, it stood no chance. The two brothers, both covered head-to-toe in Slime goo, grinned at each other.

"The drops!" they both exclaimed at the same time.

The next few seconds were spent hastily gathering the items and gold that the Slimes had dropped. The gold, thankfully, was not covered in Slime remnants. When Edward turned, however, he laughed at the expression on Alphonse's face.

"A Slimey Staff?" Al questioned, holding up the offending item. "Ew, gross. I'm definitely going to sell this when we get back to town."

Ed laughed as he opened his menu to check his stats. It didn't take him long to discover that he could keep his stats in his line of sight, similar to a Heads-Up Display. He had lost a few hit points in the scuffle, but they were slowly replenishing the longer they stood around. "Come on," he said, wiping slime off his face. "That's only the beginning."

:/partyinvite_shiningarmor

… ACCEPT PARTY INVITE? … YES … NO …

Edward accepted immediately. "Good idea, Al. I should have thought of it sooner, but I was super distracted."

"I was too," Al said. "Now … how about we grind some Slimes?"

Ed grinned. The Slimes had respawned, crawling out from the tree line like depraved translucent slugs. "Yeah," he said, receiving an alert that ShiningArmor had changed the party settings to evenly distribute all drops and gold. "Let's salt these bastards."

And so they did. For hours, they fought Slime after Slime, until one might think they had taken a bath in Slime goo. When they hit Level 3, they moved on to the Rats that lived outside the town. Then they tackled the Rats of Unusual Size. When at last they stumbled back into Central Town as Level 10s, they hosed themselves off at the spigots on the outskirts of town, likely placed there for that exact purpose.

They made a beeline for the nearest trader's post as soon as they were dry, which didn't take long in the warm afternoon sunlight. There, they traded their numerous Slimey Staffs and other Slime- and Rat-related drops for gold, which they then used to buy their first armor.

It was nothing special – it was leather armor that covered the shoulders, chest, and back. Edward splurged for a good pair of boots and a hair tie, while Alphonse decided to buy a less-expensive pair of shoes and begin saving for a sharper sword. As they walked out of the shop, Ed finally managed to get his hair up off of his neck and out of his face.

"Well," he said as they stood by the fountain in the middle of the square, "What now?"

"Well, we fought the Slimes and Rats for about four hours game-time, so we've only actually been playing for about two. I say we go a little further out now that we have our new gear – I want to try my new skills, too!"

Ed grinned. Now that he'd leveled up, he could actually start using rudimentary alchemy, and it was something he was eager to try as well. Al would be getting no complaints from him – it wasn't like they had any pressing commitments back in the real world. "You wanna try actually taking a quest?" he asked his brother, pointing to where people were gathered around a bulletin posted outside the inn.

"A quest? Yeah, let's do it!"

The two ran over to the billboard, joining the throngs of people around it. "Excuse us!" Ed said, "Can we get though?"

No one listened, as everyone was trying to get close enough to read the board. Impatient, Ed began shoving his way through as Al hung back. One man cursed when Ed accidentally elbowed him in the stomach.

"Hey!" he said sharply, "Watch it!"

Edward barely glanced at him. "Watch it yourself," he shot back. At last, he got close enough to the board to read the postings. He quickly found one meant for a Level 11, but he took it anyway without reading it. He could check the details in his menu as soon as he escaped this madhouse.

Getting out was even harder than getting in, and he stepped on quite a few feet in his haste. His hair got caught and tugged, and he winced in pain. It was a relief when he finally got back to Al, to say the least.

"So?" Al asked eagerly scrolling through his menu to the Quests tab, "What's our mission?"

Ed opened his menu and finally read the details of the quest he had picked. At last, he said one word:

"Wolves."

Author's Note:

This is quickly becoming an exercise in 'how many RPG cliches can I write in one fic?' Sorry it's starting so slowly, but I'm a huge fan of worldbuilding. Like, how does this game work? What are its features? What would it actually be like?

Seriously, thank you to those of you who reviewed. It really means a lot.

Winry will be introduced in the next chapter!

Edit 11/1/2015: They reached Level 10 in four hours instead of Level 3. They also fought Rats and Rats of Unusual Size in addition to Slimes. I realized Level 10 was more reasonable when I made a new character on the one online RPG I play and leveled up to Level 2 in like, ten seconds.