Brood: Joey looks to be in some hot water folks! Lets see what happens to our poor Joey now!

Zutsokaki: None of them will be pretty, I'll bet you...

Brood: Now Zutsokaki, you think I'd put Joey under all of that stress?

Zutsokaki: Yes.

Brood: No comment! On with the story! Oh yeah, sorry it took so long to update...well...anything...but the fact is that my computer has come down with a virus, so I had to write this thing really quick...yeah...so don't expect anything else *at least not quickly* from me until my compy is all better....even though Miss Sora Jade did send me a Scooby Doo bandaid for the compy...oO:;

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

CHAPTER 5
Joey took a deep breath as the Virtual Reality machine whirred to life. He felt a sudden jerk as he entered the virtual loading tunnel. As soon as the world loaded, he was dropped roughly to the ground.

"Oof!!" The air wooshed out of Joey's lungs and he managed a groan. He was still amazed at how lifelife these things were, if they could force the air out of his lungs like that. He wouldn't be surprised if Kaiba himself had timed a good hit to his chest in sequence to him hitting the ground.....

He stood up a little hazily and looked at his wrist. His deck was there along with the old duel disk. This time, it read 4000 LP instead of 2000. Maybe this meant that the game was harder now.

Joey took a moment to look at his surroundings. He was standing beside a road somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It was the middle of the day and very hot outside. In the distance he could see a small gas station. Joey looked in the other direction and saw nothing. A cactus about one hundred feet away, but that was about it.

Heaving a sigh, he began trecking towards the gas station.
Seto laughed heartily, his little brother watching him. "Seto, did you HAVE to start Joey on the hardest level, and the hot desert beginning?"

"Of course I did Mokuba! I wanted this as difficult for that dog as possible...."

Mokuba sighed as well and watched the little digital Joey walk along the status screen in front of him. Suddenly, the little digital Joey took a fall. Mokuba looked at Joey inside of the pod and saw his face contorted in pain. Then he looked up at Seto. He was furiously typing and hitting keys, chuckling along the way.

"Seto, are you rewriting the game while it's open!?"

Seto paused typing for a second and looked down at Mokuba. "All I did was put a really big log right in his path! That won't hurt anything at all!.....Well....maybe it would hurt HIM." He nodded his head over at the still slightly wincing Joey.

Mokuba grimaced a little at his brother, and then looked at Joey. There was no way of telling what could happen if Seto kept rewriting the program while it was open....
Back inside the VR world, Joey picked himself up after that collision with the log. He really could have sworn it wasn't there earlier. Joey looked at it and continued walking. The gas station was coming nearer now, and Joey hoped that the thirst he was beginning to actually feel could be quenched with something in there.

His hand reached out to touch the doorknob, and turned it easily. He took a tentative step inside the dark station and called out a quiet "hello?" There was no answer. He walked inside, looking at the dusty shelves and the dark labels on food items. Soon, Joey found something he liked to see. A water fountain. He let a smile flash across his face as he pressed the button and a stream of water sprayed out. He leaned down and expected the splash of cool water inside his mouth.

Instead though, he found a warm stream of something thick. He pulled his head away and looked at the stream. In the little light he could make out the color to be some kind of dark dirty color.

"Ooh man....." He tasted the liquid on his lips and shuddered, letting out a small moan, reminding himself that it was just a game..../Slime....it's slime coming out of that faucet.../
Seto cackled happily, hitting the keys and continuing to edit the game to his desire. He hoped he was sucessufully scaring the crap out of that pup. Once he activated the blood faucet, and saw that Joey discovered it, Seto looked over at the pod where Joey lay. He saw Joey's face contorted in disgust and disbelief... Well, if he wasn't fully freaked yet...he was just going to have to turn it up a notch....

"Big Brother....I really don't think it's safe for the system if you keep doing that! A log is one thing, but completely rewriting the sequence in the game!? Please, you could crash it!" Mokuba looked up at his brother pleadingly. He didn't want to see his brother locked up nights again working on this, nor did he want to see a scarred for life Joey. He WAS bad enough as is....but emotionally scarred and freaked over EVERYTHING?

"Quiet Mokuba. I'm having fun here. And you aren't going to stop it." Seto's eyes never left the screen and the keys he was hitting.
Joey reeled back quickly as the water fountain exploded, and a large Duel Monster flew from the debris and the new hole in the floor. It was oozing horrible slimes, and had an attack power of 2200. Joey fell over backwards onto his rear and pulled five cards from his deck. He rolled sideways as the creature hurled itself at him, and he remembered that in Battle City, creatures could attack undefended players life points. Which was what the creature was trying to do. Joey looked at his cards for something that could help him now that he could attack, and he could only find something to put in defence mode.

"What the heck!? What's this doing in my deck!? Oh well, it'll save my butt for now! NIWATORI CHICKEN IN DEFENCE MODE!!!"
Mokuba looked even more desperately at the editing that Seto was doing to the game. "Nii-sama! Stop it! You could short the whole thing!"

"Let's see, if he gets past the Slime Monster then he'll fall into a dark hole and land on a Blue Eyes nest, and reappear in a doggy suit.....Hush Mokuba, I'm busy!" He then chucked evilly as he hit the keys more rapidly, deciding on a quick notion to pump up the Slime Monster's attack power.
Joey watched as the slimy creature barrelled at his minute defences, and cringed, waiting for the blow. Suddenly, the uber-realistic scene in front of him glitched, and the monster stopped it's hurried advance, as if frozen.

"What's this?"
"What's this?" Seto looked at the fritzing computer console. Mokuba had an "I told you so" moment as he smirked, then he was brought back to earth quickly.

/If the game freezes and Joey's mind's still in it, he won't be able to get out until we fix it! And that could take weeks!/

Seto was currently trying, and failing, all of his emergency shut down codes in an attempt to save his system. His hands flew everywhere, and was obviously not taking to heart the fact that something bad could happen to Joey and his mind if he were stuck in a broken computer reality for weeks.

Mokuba heard a pop and a fizzle from somewhere in the control panel, and he knew immediately that the whole system was shot due to Seto's jerking around. Mokuba's body took over for his actions, and the next thing he knew, he was diving an "Emergeny Eject" button that would immediately open the pod and free the user, a large button Seto had conveniently missed.

The pod began to slide open, a still unconscious Joey inside. Seto was snapped back to reality by this, and realized that his codes weren't working, and that his control panel was about to blow. Knowing how he rigged his system, it would pass onto the pods themselves. Seto cursed his stupidity as he grabbed Mokuba's hand and dashed from the room. At least he had the room shock proofed in that sense, and nothing else except the contents of the room would be harmed.
This left Joey all alone in the room whose equipment was about to blow up. His eyes fluttered open slowly, and he took stock of what was going on. First thing he noticed was that Seto and Mokuba were gone. Next he noticed that the control panel was sending up sparks and that it was fizzling. Joey's eyes snapped open wider and he jumped out of the pod.

/That jerk left me in here to fry!/

Joey looked around for anywhere to hide. Then he caught sight of a large metal bookcase in the far corner of the room, filled with file folders and other things. Joey dashed over after grabbing his deck and knocked the files down off of the shelves. Then he tilted it over sideways and towards him, sliding the shelves out. He then tilted it further, got under it in the new large alcove he'd made, and scooted it as far as he could away. Then he dropped it over him and stayed there.

His heavy and nervous breath was quickly warming the enclosed area and his heart was pounding in his ears. Within the next thirty seconds, the control panel and pods did explode, and the shelf with Joey under it went skidding into the wall harshly, the shelf ramming into the wall again with each thing that blew.

After a minute or so, Joey finally deemed it safe to take a peek out. He lifted one side of the heavy shelf and looked into the dust attempting to settle. He crawled out, noticing that he could still hear things fizzing and sparking. Suddenly he heard the most unimaginable noise.

A cluck.

Joey jumped and looked ahead, but could hardly see through the smoke. Then some of the dust ahead of him cleared, and before him he saw a seven foot tall and slightly charred Niwatori Chicken.

"Ahh....what!?" The chicken looked down at Joey and clucked, cocking it's head to the side.

The door slid open and Joey heard Seto's voice. "Make inu! You still alive!!!??"

"No thanks to you, Lame Brain! And by the way, you might want a look at this!"

Joey could hear Seto's steps advancing, with another set of steps following that Joey guessed was Mokuba's.

Seto stepped into the sight of the large chicken and jumped. "Oh man! I KNEW I shouldn't have taken that power converter from Pegasus!!!!"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Brood: HAHAHAHA!!! Poor Seto and Joey's chicken...

Zutsokaki: ....Hmm...I see these computer virus's as a good thing. I get a good rest.

Brood: Hey! Anyway, you heard the guy, my compy is all virus ridden now....so yeah. I just did this to let you all know I'm still alive and kickin'! I'll let you all know when I'm back in full swing! Oh yeah, final results of the Fanfiction Contest are UP NOW IN MY BIO! Check it out! Later!