.hack//etc - an epic fanfiction
Chapter 1 - Cocktails and E-mails
Six Months Later...
The raindrops pounded heavily on the large Hummer windshield as KJ drove. Though he usually thought of it as expendable, his seatbelt was buckled tight that gloomy night. The moon shone brightly through a part in two large thunder clouds, yet somehow failed to brighten up the cascading darkness that marinated the night sky. KJ pounded his fist into his steering wheel for the umpteenth time. It was frustration that easily got the better half of him, despite his trained demeanor. His brow was furrowed hard, and his teeth were begging to be bared, putting his face into a seemingly permanent grimace.
Trent said nothing about any of that. Scattered angry thoughts rambled through his mind. Each time he ran across the name "Trent" he gripped his steering wheel tightly and held it in place paying no attention to the road. The road, however, was miraculously empty on that interstate highway. KJ's obsidian hummer would not have been easy to spot on the road for nearby cars who would have had the misfortune of being directly behind or beside him when he had gripped the wheel and possibly caused himself to swerve. He shut his eyes hard and opened them again, shifting his focus to that of the road. A light sigh escaped into the air, and his shoulders slumped in his seat. His right hand found its way to the picture hanging from the rearview mirror; an oval shape attached to a string of silver Mardi Gras beads; the picture of his girlfriend. His face took on a slight grin as he fingered it in mid air. He frequently held the picture in his hand subconsciously on the road. Several times when he had friends in the car, he would look up to see them all staring at him, and receive a hearty helping of laughter.
That short moment of relief from the frustration tugging at his mind, however, was ephemeral. Almost immediately after the smile faded from his face, his mind was littered with thoughts about what Trent had been talking about. It couldn't be possible. The absurdity of his scheme was obvious. Wandering A.I. ? Hacking Illusion induced comatose? Worldwide ransom? These phrases bombarded his head over and over again, until it sent shivers down his spine and had him cringing to himself in his dazed state. But the reason why it sent shivers down his spine was the same reason why he couldn't get it out of his head.
He knew it was possible, because he knew what they were planning.
* * *
Liz Bricken uncrossed and crossed her slender legs again, making sure to keep them in a position convenient enough so as to not block the television. The television screen was brightly lit with a random rerun of Whose Line Is It Anyway, perhaps one of her favorite shows. She popped another sweet purple grape into her mouth. Liz was a very beautiful girl who, when standing, was five foot seven. She had perfect black hair that fell just below her shoulders, and a slightly caramel complexion that accented skin that any woman would envy. Perfect legs, perfect teeth. In fact, arguably everything about her was perfect. Liz was a model for several clothing lines including a couple of recent advertisments for Victorias Secret. Despite the supermodel lifestyle at work, she was just a normal college kid at heart. She was one of the six Florida State University college students who lived in Cocktail Point, the extremely large house, though around campus it was called a mansion almost subconsciously, was 3 stories of wow, as one of the mansion dwellers described it. It was because the moment you stepped in, to the moment you walk into the last room, you realize you've said "Wow" at least 30 times in the past hour. The six students, all of whom came from rather illustrious families, had chipped in to get the house together. The place quickly turned into one of the hot spots for college parties almost every weekend, being a mere block from the campus.
Aside from Liz, there were two other girls who lived at Cocktail point. Marcella Velarde, or Marci for short, was just as beautiful as Liz was. She was a brown-haired latina who was notorious for the famous line "Party It Up at the Cock House Tonight!" in the middle of the Florida State Courtyard for all to hear whenever there was a party at Cocktail Point. A charismatic young girl, she was the life of the parties. She was the perfect addition to the household carrying the title of the one who can cheer anyone up. However, everyone has their qualities to be redeemed. Marci was bisexual, and had many bachelorettes that frequented her bedroom without any notice. No one ever confronted her about it, however-- especially the other women of the household. They were all worried that talking to her about it would induce them into a different state of mind weak enough to experiment with their sexuality. That was not what they had in mind, to say the least.
Aside from the supermodel and the bisexual partymaiden, the other girl of the house was Mejin Omizu. Though she was surrounded by what seemed to be beauty queens, intimidation was not something she felt. Despite the fact that Liz and Marci both ensured her and ensured her again that she was just as beautiful, she knew that she could make up for her lack of supermodelishness with her personality, and it was the truth. Around campus she was much more popular than the other two. She was very much the girl to hang out with and the one everyone wants to have around. Mejin and her boyfriend KJ owned a Martial Arts Dojo 10 minutes from Cocktail Point. There they taught a good number of people Tae Kwon Do and Jeet Kune Do. Outside of sessions, however, KJ and Mejin would frequent the Dojo for private sparring. It was enigmatic; they were perhaps one of the only couples in the world that fought each other for fun, yet the feeling was mutual that during a spar session they were very much in tune with each other. The only other time they felt more connected was (tastefully left out of this fanfiction). KJ too lived at Cocktail Point along with Chris, Liz's boyfriend, and Twice, Marci's boyfriend. And not to avoid the cliche-- they were one big happy family.
Liz popped another grape into her mouth, a tapped the mute button as Mejin trotted into the room sulking. She dropped to the couch and pulled a pillow to her chest. She frowned without a trace of subtlety, and tilted her head to the side, meeting gazes with Liz.
"You're pitiful," Liz commented. Mejin stuck out her bottom lip and distorted her face to look even more sad, if that were possible at all. Liz responded with stifled laughter and offered her a couple of grapes.
"If they're the grapes of sorrow," Mejin joked, placing the back of her hand on her forehead and tilting her head back dramatically. Liz pegged her in the arm with one, which bounced off to the couch before rolling onto the floor. Mejin jerked upwards, and Liz hopped up off of the couch. They had both heard it. Mejin looked towards the front door without making a sound. They listened closely. *Beep-beep*. Liz and Mejin both started screaming prematurely and waved their arms melodramatically in the air. Mejin hurried outside and jumped what seemed like a new world record in the long-jump from the walkway into KJ's arms, who barely caught her without falling to the concrete hard. Overdramatic kissing ensued prompting a long, drawn out "Aww" from Liz at the doorway. Two stories above Liz, a window opened from which Chris shouted a boyish, Frat-like welcome home.
"How was the drive," Mejin asked. KJ waited until he had made sure not to slam her head into the frame of the doorway before answering her. "Lonely."
Mejin awarded him another kiss on the cheek for being cute, and purred sadly when he sat her down. Liz tiptoed over to KJ and leaned over to his shoulder, looking him straight in the eyes with sad little puppy eyes, her eyelashes batting at him wildly.
"Yes, I brought you all something."
Mejin perked up. "What'd you bring me?"
KJ paused for a moment, before looking back down at her with a superficial grin. "The World, sweetheart. The whole world."
* * *
A wavemaster stood next to the chaos gate in a dark root town in The World. His looming figure gazed into the onset of the town, and surveyed the area with a stern calm about him. The servers root town was small, and had various oddities about it that were not normal in The World. There were no shops, for in this particular root town there was no need for such a thing. No NPCs of any type wandered it's streets. Kuja sighed, and brought his wand towards him, nearing it to his chest for inspection.
So bland... he thought. Perhaps
He began to walk forward, pondering different ways in which he could liven up his character to his liking. The dark, dull colors offered as basis for most wavemaster designs were uninteresting to him. Currently his robe was a dark pine green accented with dark brown cuffs and linings. It made him feel as if he were dirty. A few paces out from the chaos gate was as far as he made it before two figures appeared behind him. One of them, a female, stepped forward.
"It's finished now, I suppose," she said. Her eyes were scanning the area, checking the outcome of their hard work. It had taken almost the entire six months to get it perfect. The server was finally finished and CC Corporation hadn't detected it's existence yet. They only had one thing left to do, which was wait. And until then, they would have to level up their characters-- though some of them had already begun.
"Garaa will be pleased," Kuja called out, not bothering to turn and look. The woman walked forward and stopped next to him. Between her fingers spun her twin blades, a calm look about her face told Kuja that obviously she had been leveling quite a bit lately. Her handling skills were much better than normal-- as well as her confidence.
"What is your level now, Royce?" The girl looked down, and then back up again before calmly responding. "Eight. And rising."
Kuja nodded. It wasn't at all suprising. She had shown a particular interest in battle from the beginning. The fact that she had made enough time to level up that much in such a short amount of time was easily believable. The users from Japan, however, were still much higher than them, and it would be necessary to level up a lot quicker. And to all of them. The Y server, as they called it, was completely under their control, however. They could create the monsters in the field to defeat for their experience-- but the ones they created were impossible to defeat until they could figure out how. For some reason they always had an infinite number of hit points; a problem they all assumed would be fixed with time.
* * *
James Kinsten tossed his Playstation 2 controller to the floor and sighed. The clatter of the controller on the ground felt good for a change. Normally he would jump up out of his lazy position there lying on the couch and check to see if the controller was okay, but this time he just sighed. He ran his fingers along his jawline and felt the bristly hairs of a newly forming beard caress his fingertips. A smug grin crept onto his face. That usually happened when he got a new game that was so great that he ended up playing it for a long period of time and ignoring other responsibilities. He assumed that was the case with everyone in the world who loved games as much as he did. Complete dedication. There was no other way to truly enjoy gaming. His eyes fell upon the four empty beer bottles on his coffee table and then to the cell phone next to it. He wondered how many times that thing had rung during his time playing that Wild Arms 3 and he hadn't answered it. Quite the rebel he was being. And he didn't even check the messages.
He stood up from his couch and trudged into the kitchen, prodding through the refrigerator for something to eat. Settling with the remaining half of a Subway italian sub, he pulled himself to sit at his computer and bring up Internet Explorer. The italian sub's bread was soggy due to the oil and vinegar that he had ordered with it, but it still tasted just as good. Good enough that he found it was gone within a measly 5 minutes of pulling it from the fridge. He licked the rest of the sub from his fingertips and wiped his fingers on the side of his pants before grasping the mouse. He logged into IGN.com to check the upcoming and most recent releases for all platforms. There had to be something else to occupy his boredom. In the bottom right hand corner of his monitor a symbol was flashing an alert at him. The symbol was for outlook express, indicating to him that he had new emails to check. The rebellion had ended, and he double clicked the flashing symbol, bringing up the e-mail window. The last three were from his mother, oddly enough. He opened the most recent one and began reading.
"Where have you been? I must have left a million messages on your cell phone! Anyway, I was trying to get a hold of you to tell you that your father just quit his job at CC Corp for something else. I don't know what's gotten into him. He worked so hard with the new project they had going there--"
James stopped reading. The new project his mother was talking about was "The World". His father had been involved with the English Release of the game and finalizing its production. The game had to have been ready by now. He switched back to Internet Explorer and looked it up using it's Search engine. Before he even finished typing in the words he caught sight of the latest news update on the website.
"2 Million Copies of The World Arrive In Washington!" With no hesitation he jumped from his seat, tossing the balled up garbage from his Subway sandwich into the nearby garbage bin. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed Gamestop, which he had conveniently on speed dial. If this game was in, he was about to have another item added to the list of gaming under his platinum cards billing. He smiled as the phone rang in his ear.
God it's great to have a rich father.
Chapter 1 - Cocktails and E-mails
Six Months Later...
The raindrops pounded heavily on the large Hummer windshield as KJ drove. Though he usually thought of it as expendable, his seatbelt was buckled tight that gloomy night. The moon shone brightly through a part in two large thunder clouds, yet somehow failed to brighten up the cascading darkness that marinated the night sky. KJ pounded his fist into his steering wheel for the umpteenth time. It was frustration that easily got the better half of him, despite his trained demeanor. His brow was furrowed hard, and his teeth were begging to be bared, putting his face into a seemingly permanent grimace.
Trent said nothing about any of that. Scattered angry thoughts rambled through his mind. Each time he ran across the name "Trent" he gripped his steering wheel tightly and held it in place paying no attention to the road. The road, however, was miraculously empty on that interstate highway. KJ's obsidian hummer would not have been easy to spot on the road for nearby cars who would have had the misfortune of being directly behind or beside him when he had gripped the wheel and possibly caused himself to swerve. He shut his eyes hard and opened them again, shifting his focus to that of the road. A light sigh escaped into the air, and his shoulders slumped in his seat. His right hand found its way to the picture hanging from the rearview mirror; an oval shape attached to a string of silver Mardi Gras beads; the picture of his girlfriend. His face took on a slight grin as he fingered it in mid air. He frequently held the picture in his hand subconsciously on the road. Several times when he had friends in the car, he would look up to see them all staring at him, and receive a hearty helping of laughter.
That short moment of relief from the frustration tugging at his mind, however, was ephemeral. Almost immediately after the smile faded from his face, his mind was littered with thoughts about what Trent had been talking about. It couldn't be possible. The absurdity of his scheme was obvious. Wandering A.I. ? Hacking Illusion induced comatose? Worldwide ransom? These phrases bombarded his head over and over again, until it sent shivers down his spine and had him cringing to himself in his dazed state. But the reason why it sent shivers down his spine was the same reason why he couldn't get it out of his head.
He knew it was possible, because he knew what they were planning.
* * *
Liz Bricken uncrossed and crossed her slender legs again, making sure to keep them in a position convenient enough so as to not block the television. The television screen was brightly lit with a random rerun of Whose Line Is It Anyway, perhaps one of her favorite shows. She popped another sweet purple grape into her mouth. Liz was a very beautiful girl who, when standing, was five foot seven. She had perfect black hair that fell just below her shoulders, and a slightly caramel complexion that accented skin that any woman would envy. Perfect legs, perfect teeth. In fact, arguably everything about her was perfect. Liz was a model for several clothing lines including a couple of recent advertisments for Victorias Secret. Despite the supermodel lifestyle at work, she was just a normal college kid at heart. She was one of the six Florida State University college students who lived in Cocktail Point, the extremely large house, though around campus it was called a mansion almost subconsciously, was 3 stories of wow, as one of the mansion dwellers described it. It was because the moment you stepped in, to the moment you walk into the last room, you realize you've said "Wow" at least 30 times in the past hour. The six students, all of whom came from rather illustrious families, had chipped in to get the house together. The place quickly turned into one of the hot spots for college parties almost every weekend, being a mere block from the campus.
Aside from Liz, there were two other girls who lived at Cocktail point. Marcella Velarde, or Marci for short, was just as beautiful as Liz was. She was a brown-haired latina who was notorious for the famous line "Party It Up at the Cock House Tonight!" in the middle of the Florida State Courtyard for all to hear whenever there was a party at Cocktail Point. A charismatic young girl, she was the life of the parties. She was the perfect addition to the household carrying the title of the one who can cheer anyone up. However, everyone has their qualities to be redeemed. Marci was bisexual, and had many bachelorettes that frequented her bedroom without any notice. No one ever confronted her about it, however-- especially the other women of the household. They were all worried that talking to her about it would induce them into a different state of mind weak enough to experiment with their sexuality. That was not what they had in mind, to say the least.
Aside from the supermodel and the bisexual partymaiden, the other girl of the house was Mejin Omizu. Though she was surrounded by what seemed to be beauty queens, intimidation was not something she felt. Despite the fact that Liz and Marci both ensured her and ensured her again that she was just as beautiful, she knew that she could make up for her lack of supermodelishness with her personality, and it was the truth. Around campus she was much more popular than the other two. She was very much the girl to hang out with and the one everyone wants to have around. Mejin and her boyfriend KJ owned a Martial Arts Dojo 10 minutes from Cocktail Point. There they taught a good number of people Tae Kwon Do and Jeet Kune Do. Outside of sessions, however, KJ and Mejin would frequent the Dojo for private sparring. It was enigmatic; they were perhaps one of the only couples in the world that fought each other for fun, yet the feeling was mutual that during a spar session they were very much in tune with each other. The only other time they felt more connected was (tastefully left out of this fanfiction). KJ too lived at Cocktail Point along with Chris, Liz's boyfriend, and Twice, Marci's boyfriend. And not to avoid the cliche-- they were one big happy family.
Liz popped another grape into her mouth, a tapped the mute button as Mejin trotted into the room sulking. She dropped to the couch and pulled a pillow to her chest. She frowned without a trace of subtlety, and tilted her head to the side, meeting gazes with Liz.
"You're pitiful," Liz commented. Mejin stuck out her bottom lip and distorted her face to look even more sad, if that were possible at all. Liz responded with stifled laughter and offered her a couple of grapes.
"If they're the grapes of sorrow," Mejin joked, placing the back of her hand on her forehead and tilting her head back dramatically. Liz pegged her in the arm with one, which bounced off to the couch before rolling onto the floor. Mejin jerked upwards, and Liz hopped up off of the couch. They had both heard it. Mejin looked towards the front door without making a sound. They listened closely. *Beep-beep*. Liz and Mejin both started screaming prematurely and waved their arms melodramatically in the air. Mejin hurried outside and jumped what seemed like a new world record in the long-jump from the walkway into KJ's arms, who barely caught her without falling to the concrete hard. Overdramatic kissing ensued prompting a long, drawn out "Aww" from Liz at the doorway. Two stories above Liz, a window opened from which Chris shouted a boyish, Frat-like welcome home.
"How was the drive," Mejin asked. KJ waited until he had made sure not to slam her head into the frame of the doorway before answering her. "Lonely."
Mejin awarded him another kiss on the cheek for being cute, and purred sadly when he sat her down. Liz tiptoed over to KJ and leaned over to his shoulder, looking him straight in the eyes with sad little puppy eyes, her eyelashes batting at him wildly.
"Yes, I brought you all something."
Mejin perked up. "What'd you bring me?"
KJ paused for a moment, before looking back down at her with a superficial grin. "The World, sweetheart. The whole world."
* * *
A wavemaster stood next to the chaos gate in a dark root town in The World. His looming figure gazed into the onset of the town, and surveyed the area with a stern calm about him. The servers root town was small, and had various oddities about it that were not normal in The World. There were no shops, for in this particular root town there was no need for such a thing. No NPCs of any type wandered it's streets. Kuja sighed, and brought his wand towards him, nearing it to his chest for inspection.
So bland... he thought. Perhaps
He began to walk forward, pondering different ways in which he could liven up his character to his liking. The dark, dull colors offered as basis for most wavemaster designs were uninteresting to him. Currently his robe was a dark pine green accented with dark brown cuffs and linings. It made him feel as if he were dirty. A few paces out from the chaos gate was as far as he made it before two figures appeared behind him. One of them, a female, stepped forward.
"It's finished now, I suppose," she said. Her eyes were scanning the area, checking the outcome of their hard work. It had taken almost the entire six months to get it perfect. The server was finally finished and CC Corporation hadn't detected it's existence yet. They only had one thing left to do, which was wait. And until then, they would have to level up their characters-- though some of them had already begun.
"Garaa will be pleased," Kuja called out, not bothering to turn and look. The woman walked forward and stopped next to him. Between her fingers spun her twin blades, a calm look about her face told Kuja that obviously she had been leveling quite a bit lately. Her handling skills were much better than normal-- as well as her confidence.
"What is your level now, Royce?" The girl looked down, and then back up again before calmly responding. "Eight. And rising."
Kuja nodded. It wasn't at all suprising. She had shown a particular interest in battle from the beginning. The fact that she had made enough time to level up that much in such a short amount of time was easily believable. The users from Japan, however, were still much higher than them, and it would be necessary to level up a lot quicker. And to all of them. The Y server, as they called it, was completely under their control, however. They could create the monsters in the field to defeat for their experience-- but the ones they created were impossible to defeat until they could figure out how. For some reason they always had an infinite number of hit points; a problem they all assumed would be fixed with time.
* * *
James Kinsten tossed his Playstation 2 controller to the floor and sighed. The clatter of the controller on the ground felt good for a change. Normally he would jump up out of his lazy position there lying on the couch and check to see if the controller was okay, but this time he just sighed. He ran his fingers along his jawline and felt the bristly hairs of a newly forming beard caress his fingertips. A smug grin crept onto his face. That usually happened when he got a new game that was so great that he ended up playing it for a long period of time and ignoring other responsibilities. He assumed that was the case with everyone in the world who loved games as much as he did. Complete dedication. There was no other way to truly enjoy gaming. His eyes fell upon the four empty beer bottles on his coffee table and then to the cell phone next to it. He wondered how many times that thing had rung during his time playing that Wild Arms 3 and he hadn't answered it. Quite the rebel he was being. And he didn't even check the messages.
He stood up from his couch and trudged into the kitchen, prodding through the refrigerator for something to eat. Settling with the remaining half of a Subway italian sub, he pulled himself to sit at his computer and bring up Internet Explorer. The italian sub's bread was soggy due to the oil and vinegar that he had ordered with it, but it still tasted just as good. Good enough that he found it was gone within a measly 5 minutes of pulling it from the fridge. He licked the rest of the sub from his fingertips and wiped his fingers on the side of his pants before grasping the mouse. He logged into IGN.com to check the upcoming and most recent releases for all platforms. There had to be something else to occupy his boredom. In the bottom right hand corner of his monitor a symbol was flashing an alert at him. The symbol was for outlook express, indicating to him that he had new emails to check. The rebellion had ended, and he double clicked the flashing symbol, bringing up the e-mail window. The last three were from his mother, oddly enough. He opened the most recent one and began reading.
"Where have you been? I must have left a million messages on your cell phone! Anyway, I was trying to get a hold of you to tell you that your father just quit his job at CC Corp for something else. I don't know what's gotten into him. He worked so hard with the new project they had going there--"
James stopped reading. The new project his mother was talking about was "The World". His father had been involved with the English Release of the game and finalizing its production. The game had to have been ready by now. He switched back to Internet Explorer and looked it up using it's Search engine. Before he even finished typing in the words he caught sight of the latest news update on the website.
"2 Million Copies of The World Arrive In Washington!" With no hesitation he jumped from his seat, tossing the balled up garbage from his Subway sandwich into the nearby garbage bin. He grabbed his cell phone and dialed Gamestop, which he had conveniently on speed dial. If this game was in, he was about to have another item added to the list of gaming under his platinum cards billing. He smiled as the phone rang in his ear.
God it's great to have a rich father.
