.hackGODDESS
by SmkViper
Proof readers/editors: Sehet Xaui, Greybolt, Gen, Eponine, Cholene
Copyright
.hackGODDESS © 2003 SmkViper
Oh My Goddess! © Kosuke Fujishima
Japanese Language Version © Kodansha Ltd.
English Language Version © AnimEigo, Pioneer, Dark Horse
Project Dot Hack © Project Hack, Bandai, TV Tokyo, Comptiq
.hackGODDESS is a fan fiction work based off the
Oh My Goddess! and Project Dot Hack universes. It
is not affiliated with Kosuke Fukishima, Kodansha Ltd.,
or Project Hack. And resemblance to any person, living
or dead, is purely coincidental.
Author's notes:
Text in are a character's thoughts.
Chapter 3: Log Out?
The following day Urd walked out to the main living room to see Skuld sitting in the middle of a large pile of electronics with the computer in several pieces around her.
"Skuld! I was planning on playing some today! What the heck are you doing?"
"I'm finishing some modifications that will allow us to use our powers in the game, do you mind?" Skuld replied, glaring back at Urd. "Or maybe you would prefer not to be able to use yours?"
"Ehehe…sorry for bothering you…I think I'll go watch my soaps now," replied Urd with a sheepish grin on her face as she headed back to her room.
"Let's see…all I need to do is wire the power collectors on the headsets to the computer and I should be done."
Skuld bent over the various parts in front of her and continued working for another fifteen minutes before finally holding the headset up in triumph.
"I'm such a genius! I dub you Mr. Power Converter Mk. I!" Skuld said as she slipped the headset over her head. She booted up the game and started looking for a place she could try a simple water spell without being noticed. As she started casting the spell a few sparks shot out from the headset and a muffled explosion occurred which blew the headset completely off Skuld's head. Belldandy came running at the sound of the explosion and saw Skuld passed out on the floor, muttering something about ice cream and small little birdies.
"Oh Skuld! You shouldn't keep experimenting on yourself!" Belldandy admonished as she held her little sister and cast a quick healing spell.
"Wha…what happened?" asked Skuld. She sat up and saw her headset, now lying in a smoking heap a few feet away. "Oh no! What happened to you? You were so perfect! Well, guess I have to start on Mk. II!"
Belldandy sighed, wishing that Skuld would get things right the first time for once instead of hurting herself by going through four or five revisions. Hopefully "Mk. II" would be less explosive, but she doubted it. If anything, Skuld's inventions tended to get more explosive with revisions, even if they did fail less often.
A few hours (and explosions) later, Skuld had finally finished a working version, the "Mk. VI"
After dinner, Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld picked up the game for adventuring and testing out the new features that Skuld had added, while Keiichi keeps Shinobu occupied with a coloring book. The three goddesses appear in the root town and quickly teleport to a low-level field to practice using their spells in-game.
"So, Skuld, how do we cast spells anyway?" asked Belldandy.
"Just the way you normally would do it in the real world, the power converter in the headset connects to your markings, reads the spell you want to cast and produces the same result in game. You should be able to do any spell in game that you can do in real life. We should be able to use them more openly here since magic is a part of the world, but should probably hold back the larger ones for when they're really necessary since there is no in-game equivalent for them and they would look a little strange. Besides, you wouldn't want to exhaust yourself while playing anyway!"
"Ohohoho, I suppose I have a bit of advantage here then, little sister!" said Urd. "My spell casting abilities are much higher then yours! URD LIGHTING BOLT!"
"Oh yeah? I might not have your magic prowess, but I still have all my bombs! Eat this! NEO SKULD BOMB AWAY!"
A bolt of lightning shot down and struck Skuld at the same time a small spherical object sailed toward Urd and exploded. They both ended up with half health, which Belldandy healed.
"Hey, where did you get those you little brat! You didn't mention anything about other modifications!" said a scorched-looking Urd.
"So I made a few extra changes to my character!" replied Skuld, sticking her tongue out at her older sister.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here?"
Urd and Skuld turned towards the new voice to see that a twin blade character had grabbed Belldandy from behind while they were arguing and was holding one of his daggers against her neck.
"Looks like a few cute low-level newbies. Give me your member addresses or I'm afraid I will have to kill her," grinned the newcomer.
"Do you really want to mess with us?" asked Urd, with a smirk on her face.
"Oh, I think I am more then a match for the three of you. Besides, if any of you move, she gets killed. Now, your member addresses please," he replied, tightening his grip on Belldandy.
Bell quickly sent a telepathic message to Skuld, Skuld, can we use our angels in the game as well?
Yes, anything you can do in the real world should work here, why?
Just make sure you have a few bombs ready, and Urd, cast a few bolts on this guy once I get him off me.
You got it sis replied Urd, her eyes narrowing, I'll distract him and you do whatever it is you're planning
"Well I suppose if we're going to give you our member addresses, you should at least give us your name," said Urd to the stranger.
"Of course," he replied, relaxing his grip on Belldandy slightly, which was all she needed. "It's Sora, now…"
While Sora was talking, Belldandy summoned her angel. Come forth, Blessed Bell!
To Sora's surprise, a flurry of wings erupted from Belldandy's back, right before a white fist impacted his surprised face and sent him flying backwards a few yards. Urd and Skuld then attacked him with everything they had. Sora never knew what killed him.
Belldandy shivered slightly at the memory of his grip while her angel shook her fist in an attempt to alleviate the pain somewhat.
"Wow Bell, I've never seen you use Blessed Bell like that. That's something I would expect from Urd, not you," said Skuld, shooting a quick glance at Urd, who glared at her.
Belldandy blushed slightly before recalling her angel. "Well…I couldn't let him hurt me, could I?"
"C'mon, lets head back to town before that pervert comes back," said Urd.
The three of them teleport back to the root town and go shopping for a few items before seeing a female heavy axe in a light blue dress flanked by two heavy blades in red who appeared to be questioning the people in town.
"Who are they?" asked Skuld.
"The girl is Subaru and the two people that are flanking her are members of the Crimson Knights, don't you read the BBS?" replied Urd.
"Of course I do! They try to keep order on the servers right?"
"Yeah, that's right, Subaru is their leader," said Urd.
At that moment, Subaru and the knights with her walked up to them.
"Have any of you seen or heard of a wave master named Tsukasa? He wears a grey robe and has grey hair and carries a silver staff with a red gem," asked Subaru.
"No, we haven't seen him personally, you might want to talk with some friends of ours, Bear and Mimiru, I think they may have seen the person you're looking for," replied Belldandy.
"Thank you for your time," replied Subaru, turning to leave.
"Wait a minute," said Urd. "Do you know of a character named Sora? He tried to kill us earlier before we chased him off."
Subaru's eyes narrowed. "Yes, I'm afraid we have, he seems to like to kill low level players for fun, where did you see him?"
Urd gave her the name of the field where they were attacked.
"Thank you for your help, we're doing the best we can right now but our resources are spread a little thin as it is. All I can do is to warn you to stay away from him as he seems to be rather powerful," Subaru said before moving off to question some other people walking by.
"Well, I hope they catch that creep," said Urd.
"We better log off for the evening," commented Belldandy. "It's getting late."
The three goddesses logged out from the server and put away the equipment. Skuld was about to shut the computer down when the screen began glowing and a young man fell out, rolling as he hit the ground. He stood up and started brushing himself off.
"Sorry about that, I was going to let you know I was coming, but I…uh…kinda had to leave in a hurry," said the stranger.
"Kenaz!?!" said Skuld with a look of surprise on her face.
Standing in front of them was a young man almost as tall as Urd, dressed in a light blue loose-fitting shirt and pants with a white cloak. He had a horizontally-elongated diamond under each eye and a diamond on his forehead that was split in half to look like two triangles. His eyes were blue and his long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail that reached down to his mid-back.
"Hello Skuld, long time no see," Kenaz replied, grinning nervously.
"You jerk!" yelled Skuld. "I know it was you who planted that virus in my computer during the Yggdrasil debugging class!"
"Ehehe…" Kenaz replied, glancing towards to door while trying to figure out if he could make it out before getting blasted by one of Skuld's bombs. "It was all in good fun! Really! I didn't know you would lose your final project!" he said.
Skuld reached into her jacket as was about to pull out one of her bombs when Belldandy stopped her. Kenaz peeked out from between his arms that were shielding his face, wondering why he hadn't been blasted yet.
"Skuld! That's no way to treat a guest!" insisted Belldandy.
"But he…"
"Skuld, he is our guest and will be treated as such. Besides, how long ago was that incident?"
"Um…about ten years ago…" replied Skuld, looking down at her feet.
"A little long to hold a grudge don't you think?" asked Belldandy.
Skuld just continued to shuffle around nervously.
"So, what brings you here Kenaz? We haven't seen you for almost ten years," asked Belldandy.
"Well, I was kinda nervous about visiting after what happened," he replied, glancing over at Skuld. "But then you three left for Earth all of a sudden and I got stuck with the debugging tasks that Skuld left behind."
"Serves you right!" replied Skuld, who was still pouting.
"Yesterday Kami-sama called me into his office, and told me that I had to come down here and help you guys investigate this problem with 'The World'"
"But why send you?" asked Urd. "We all know you're just a second-rate hacker!"
"Hey! I'm the best hacker in heaven!" retorted Kenaz.
"Yeah, right, that's why you always got detention after school," taunted Skuld.
"Well…" replied Kenaz, looking down at the floor. "I, um…I hacked Yggdrasil, and started browsing some of the personnel records, just to see if I could do it of course, and accidentally changed Freya's hair color to a fluorescent green. She got a little ticked off and told one of the sys admins who investigated and found out I did it."
"Stop it you three," said Belldandy, looking at Urd, Skuld, and Kenaz. "This is no time for an argument. We're all tired right now. Kenaz, I prepared the guest room for you when I heard Kami-sama was sending someone to help. If you follow me I'll show it to you."
Urd and Skuld went off to their bedroom while Belldandy showed Kenaz to his room. They bumped into Keiichi who was removing the last of his motorcycle books from the guest room into his room.
"Oh, hello Bell, who's this?" he asked.
"This is Kenaz, he was sent by Kami-sama to help us with our investigation. Kenaz, this is Keiichi, my husband."
"Pleasure to meet you Keiichi; I've heard a lot about you. You and Belldandy are quite a topic in heaven you know."
Belldandy and Keiichi blushed slightly at the comment.
"Nice to meet you too Kenaz," replied Keiichi. "Do you need any help settling in?"
"No thank you, I'll be fine."
"Well, don't hesitate to ask for anything." Keiichi said as he headed down the hallway to his room.
The following evening Keiichi, Urd, Belldandy, and Kenaz log onto The World and page Bear, BT, and Mimiru. Kenaz had decided to be a blade master character like Keiichi. While they wait for the others to arrive, Belldandy and Urd show Kenaz how to use his powers in game. They run around the area for a while to get Kenaz used to playing and to level him up slightly. Once Bear, BT, and Mimiru showed up they sat down and started talking.
"Have any of you guys met a guy named Sora?" asked Urd.
"Yes, it was a rather… unpleasant experience," replied BT, who shuddered at the memory. "He got the drop on me and asked for my member address. Of course I refused to give it to him and he killed me."
"We told the Crimson Knights about him but they seem to be spread rather thin right now. We were able to fight him off when he showed up however, so if you need any help with him, just send us a message. We'll be happy to pound that pervert for you," replied Urd.
"How did you do that?" asked Bear. "From what I hear, he's pretty high level and you guys don't look too tough."
"Well…we are more skilled then we look. We just had to surprise him, that's all," said Urd.
Bear shot her a skeptical look, but decided not to pursue the matter further.
"Anyway," said Mimiru, "have you four ever heard of someone not being able to log out of The World?" She looked at Keiichi, Belldandy, Urd, and Kenaz for a response.
"We, uh, heard about some odd happenings in the game through the BBS," replied Urd. This might be the guy we are looking for! "Why do you ask?"
"Well, this guy I met, his name was Tsukasa, seems to be unable to log out of The World."
Belldandy, and Urd glance at each other quickly.
"This wouldn't happen to be the guy that those Crimson Knights are looking for is it?" asked Belldandy.
"Yeah, why? Did they talk to you too?" replied Mimiru.
"Well, we told them to ask you or Bear about him since you had seen him before and not us," said Urd.
"So that's why they thought we knew something…" mumbled Bear.
"We don't think he's done anything wrong," said Mimiru quickly. "His guardian attacked us without provocation yesterday and he couldn't stop it. I don't think he knows what's going on either."
"His guardian?" asked Keiichi.
"Yeah, looks like a big, gold, dumbbell. Shoots sharp strands of something. We've heard that it can kill players in a single shot. It almost got me," said Bear.
"What stopped it?"
"I don't know for sure, it looked like a cat. It seemed to have control of the guardian. I want to talk to Tsukasa about it, but he hasn't responded to my e-mails."
"Well, he sent me a reply earlier today and says he wants to meet tomorrow in 'Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground'," said Mimiru.
"Why didn't you tell me about that earlier?" asked Bear.
"He said he wanted just me to come, and I didn't have time to tell you earlier today. But I don't really want to go alone; would any of you please come with me?"
"Sorry, but we all have plans to go to the beach for the weekend," replied Keiichi, indicating Belldandy, Urd, and Kenaz.
"And I have to work tomorrow," said BT.
"Bear? What about you? Will you come with me?"
"I don't really like this, but I suppose I can," Bear replied with a sigh.
"Well, we have to go get ready for our trip tomorrow," said Belldandy. "We'll talk again after we get back, alright?"
"Have a good trip," replied Mimiru.
Keiichi, Belldandy, Urd, and Kenaz then logged out of the game and started packing for the weekend before heading off to bed since they had a long day ahead of them. If any of them were to look up at the ceiling, they would have noticed a tile slightly ajar with two eyes with glowing red slashes looking down on them.
"Hahahaha! So they are going to the beach tomorrow are they?" said Mini-Mara from her hiding place in the ceiling. "I'm so glad that my new cloaking spell is working!"
"Not well enough you demon!" said a voice from behind her.
Mara looked behind her to see three small female ninjas, the same size as her in her current form.
"My name is Kodama!" said the one on the far right.
"I am Hikari!" stated the middle one.
"and I am Senrigan!" said the one on the left, "You are not welcome here. Leave before we chase you out!"
"You traitorous ninja! I'll get you for this someday!" Mara yelled as she took off. If only I could go full size without losing the cloaking spell I could deal with those troublesome ninja once and for all!
Back in her lair, the demoness Mara began formulating her latest scheme for getting rid of the goddesses once and for all.
"So, you are interested in our activity in The World, huh? And you look so helpless sitting in front of that junk pile that Skuld calls a computer. Soon, you will be forced to go back to heaven where you can bother me no more! Muahahahahaha!"
by SmkViper
Proof readers/editors: Sehet Xaui, Greybolt, Gen, Eponine, Cholene
Copyright
.hackGODDESS © 2003 SmkViper
Oh My Goddess! © Kosuke Fujishima
Japanese Language Version © Kodansha Ltd.
English Language Version © AnimEigo, Pioneer, Dark Horse
Project Dot Hack © Project Hack, Bandai, TV Tokyo, Comptiq
.hackGODDESS is a fan fiction work based off the
Oh My Goddess! and Project Dot Hack universes. It
is not affiliated with Kosuke Fukishima, Kodansha Ltd.,
or Project Hack. And resemblance to any person, living
or dead, is purely coincidental.
Author's notes:
Text in are a character's thoughts.
Chapter 3: Log Out?
The following day Urd walked out to the main living room to see Skuld sitting in the middle of a large pile of electronics with the computer in several pieces around her.
"Skuld! I was planning on playing some today! What the heck are you doing?"
"I'm finishing some modifications that will allow us to use our powers in the game, do you mind?" Skuld replied, glaring back at Urd. "Or maybe you would prefer not to be able to use yours?"
"Ehehe…sorry for bothering you…I think I'll go watch my soaps now," replied Urd with a sheepish grin on her face as she headed back to her room.
"Let's see…all I need to do is wire the power collectors on the headsets to the computer and I should be done."
Skuld bent over the various parts in front of her and continued working for another fifteen minutes before finally holding the headset up in triumph.
"I'm such a genius! I dub you Mr. Power Converter Mk. I!" Skuld said as she slipped the headset over her head. She booted up the game and started looking for a place she could try a simple water spell without being noticed. As she started casting the spell a few sparks shot out from the headset and a muffled explosion occurred which blew the headset completely off Skuld's head. Belldandy came running at the sound of the explosion and saw Skuld passed out on the floor, muttering something about ice cream and small little birdies.
"Oh Skuld! You shouldn't keep experimenting on yourself!" Belldandy admonished as she held her little sister and cast a quick healing spell.
"Wha…what happened?" asked Skuld. She sat up and saw her headset, now lying in a smoking heap a few feet away. "Oh no! What happened to you? You were so perfect! Well, guess I have to start on Mk. II!"
Belldandy sighed, wishing that Skuld would get things right the first time for once instead of hurting herself by going through four or five revisions. Hopefully "Mk. II" would be less explosive, but she doubted it. If anything, Skuld's inventions tended to get more explosive with revisions, even if they did fail less often.
A few hours (and explosions) later, Skuld had finally finished a working version, the "Mk. VI"
After dinner, Belldandy, Urd, and Skuld picked up the game for adventuring and testing out the new features that Skuld had added, while Keiichi keeps Shinobu occupied with a coloring book. The three goddesses appear in the root town and quickly teleport to a low-level field to practice using their spells in-game.
"So, Skuld, how do we cast spells anyway?" asked Belldandy.
"Just the way you normally would do it in the real world, the power converter in the headset connects to your markings, reads the spell you want to cast and produces the same result in game. You should be able to do any spell in game that you can do in real life. We should be able to use them more openly here since magic is a part of the world, but should probably hold back the larger ones for when they're really necessary since there is no in-game equivalent for them and they would look a little strange. Besides, you wouldn't want to exhaust yourself while playing anyway!"
"Ohohoho, I suppose I have a bit of advantage here then, little sister!" said Urd. "My spell casting abilities are much higher then yours! URD LIGHTING BOLT!"
"Oh yeah? I might not have your magic prowess, but I still have all my bombs! Eat this! NEO SKULD BOMB AWAY!"
A bolt of lightning shot down and struck Skuld at the same time a small spherical object sailed toward Urd and exploded. They both ended up with half health, which Belldandy healed.
"Hey, where did you get those you little brat! You didn't mention anything about other modifications!" said a scorched-looking Urd.
"So I made a few extra changes to my character!" replied Skuld, sticking her tongue out at her older sister.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here?"
Urd and Skuld turned towards the new voice to see that a twin blade character had grabbed Belldandy from behind while they were arguing and was holding one of his daggers against her neck.
"Looks like a few cute low-level newbies. Give me your member addresses or I'm afraid I will have to kill her," grinned the newcomer.
"Do you really want to mess with us?" asked Urd, with a smirk on her face.
"Oh, I think I am more then a match for the three of you. Besides, if any of you move, she gets killed. Now, your member addresses please," he replied, tightening his grip on Belldandy.
Bell quickly sent a telepathic message to Skuld, Skuld, can we use our angels in the game as well?
Yes, anything you can do in the real world should work here, why?
Just make sure you have a few bombs ready, and Urd, cast a few bolts on this guy once I get him off me.
You got it sis replied Urd, her eyes narrowing, I'll distract him and you do whatever it is you're planning
"Well I suppose if we're going to give you our member addresses, you should at least give us your name," said Urd to the stranger.
"Of course," he replied, relaxing his grip on Belldandy slightly, which was all she needed. "It's Sora, now…"
While Sora was talking, Belldandy summoned her angel. Come forth, Blessed Bell!
To Sora's surprise, a flurry of wings erupted from Belldandy's back, right before a white fist impacted his surprised face and sent him flying backwards a few yards. Urd and Skuld then attacked him with everything they had. Sora never knew what killed him.
Belldandy shivered slightly at the memory of his grip while her angel shook her fist in an attempt to alleviate the pain somewhat.
"Wow Bell, I've never seen you use Blessed Bell like that. That's something I would expect from Urd, not you," said Skuld, shooting a quick glance at Urd, who glared at her.
Belldandy blushed slightly before recalling her angel. "Well…I couldn't let him hurt me, could I?"
"C'mon, lets head back to town before that pervert comes back," said Urd.
The three of them teleport back to the root town and go shopping for a few items before seeing a female heavy axe in a light blue dress flanked by two heavy blades in red who appeared to be questioning the people in town.
"Who are they?" asked Skuld.
"The girl is Subaru and the two people that are flanking her are members of the Crimson Knights, don't you read the BBS?" replied Urd.
"Of course I do! They try to keep order on the servers right?"
"Yeah, that's right, Subaru is their leader," said Urd.
At that moment, Subaru and the knights with her walked up to them.
"Have any of you seen or heard of a wave master named Tsukasa? He wears a grey robe and has grey hair and carries a silver staff with a red gem," asked Subaru.
"No, we haven't seen him personally, you might want to talk with some friends of ours, Bear and Mimiru, I think they may have seen the person you're looking for," replied Belldandy.
"Thank you for your time," replied Subaru, turning to leave.
"Wait a minute," said Urd. "Do you know of a character named Sora? He tried to kill us earlier before we chased him off."
Subaru's eyes narrowed. "Yes, I'm afraid we have, he seems to like to kill low level players for fun, where did you see him?"
Urd gave her the name of the field where they were attacked.
"Thank you for your help, we're doing the best we can right now but our resources are spread a little thin as it is. All I can do is to warn you to stay away from him as he seems to be rather powerful," Subaru said before moving off to question some other people walking by.
"Well, I hope they catch that creep," said Urd.
"We better log off for the evening," commented Belldandy. "It's getting late."
The three goddesses logged out from the server and put away the equipment. Skuld was about to shut the computer down when the screen began glowing and a young man fell out, rolling as he hit the ground. He stood up and started brushing himself off.
"Sorry about that, I was going to let you know I was coming, but I…uh…kinda had to leave in a hurry," said the stranger.
"Kenaz!?!" said Skuld with a look of surprise on her face.
Standing in front of them was a young man almost as tall as Urd, dressed in a light blue loose-fitting shirt and pants with a white cloak. He had a horizontally-elongated diamond under each eye and a diamond on his forehead that was split in half to look like two triangles. His eyes were blue and his long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail that reached down to his mid-back.
"Hello Skuld, long time no see," Kenaz replied, grinning nervously.
"You jerk!" yelled Skuld. "I know it was you who planted that virus in my computer during the Yggdrasil debugging class!"
"Ehehe…" Kenaz replied, glancing towards to door while trying to figure out if he could make it out before getting blasted by one of Skuld's bombs. "It was all in good fun! Really! I didn't know you would lose your final project!" he said.
Skuld reached into her jacket as was about to pull out one of her bombs when Belldandy stopped her. Kenaz peeked out from between his arms that were shielding his face, wondering why he hadn't been blasted yet.
"Skuld! That's no way to treat a guest!" insisted Belldandy.
"But he…"
"Skuld, he is our guest and will be treated as such. Besides, how long ago was that incident?"
"Um…about ten years ago…" replied Skuld, looking down at her feet.
"A little long to hold a grudge don't you think?" asked Belldandy.
Skuld just continued to shuffle around nervously.
"So, what brings you here Kenaz? We haven't seen you for almost ten years," asked Belldandy.
"Well, I was kinda nervous about visiting after what happened," he replied, glancing over at Skuld. "But then you three left for Earth all of a sudden and I got stuck with the debugging tasks that Skuld left behind."
"Serves you right!" replied Skuld, who was still pouting.
"Yesterday Kami-sama called me into his office, and told me that I had to come down here and help you guys investigate this problem with 'The World'"
"But why send you?" asked Urd. "We all know you're just a second-rate hacker!"
"Hey! I'm the best hacker in heaven!" retorted Kenaz.
"Yeah, right, that's why you always got detention after school," taunted Skuld.
"Well…" replied Kenaz, looking down at the floor. "I, um…I hacked Yggdrasil, and started browsing some of the personnel records, just to see if I could do it of course, and accidentally changed Freya's hair color to a fluorescent green. She got a little ticked off and told one of the sys admins who investigated and found out I did it."
"Stop it you three," said Belldandy, looking at Urd, Skuld, and Kenaz. "This is no time for an argument. We're all tired right now. Kenaz, I prepared the guest room for you when I heard Kami-sama was sending someone to help. If you follow me I'll show it to you."
Urd and Skuld went off to their bedroom while Belldandy showed Kenaz to his room. They bumped into Keiichi who was removing the last of his motorcycle books from the guest room into his room.
"Oh, hello Bell, who's this?" he asked.
"This is Kenaz, he was sent by Kami-sama to help us with our investigation. Kenaz, this is Keiichi, my husband."
"Pleasure to meet you Keiichi; I've heard a lot about you. You and Belldandy are quite a topic in heaven you know."
Belldandy and Keiichi blushed slightly at the comment.
"Nice to meet you too Kenaz," replied Keiichi. "Do you need any help settling in?"
"No thank you, I'll be fine."
"Well, don't hesitate to ask for anything." Keiichi said as he headed down the hallway to his room.
The following evening Keiichi, Urd, Belldandy, and Kenaz log onto The World and page Bear, BT, and Mimiru. Kenaz had decided to be a blade master character like Keiichi. While they wait for the others to arrive, Belldandy and Urd show Kenaz how to use his powers in game. They run around the area for a while to get Kenaz used to playing and to level him up slightly. Once Bear, BT, and Mimiru showed up they sat down and started talking.
"Have any of you guys met a guy named Sora?" asked Urd.
"Yes, it was a rather… unpleasant experience," replied BT, who shuddered at the memory. "He got the drop on me and asked for my member address. Of course I refused to give it to him and he killed me."
"We told the Crimson Knights about him but they seem to be spread rather thin right now. We were able to fight him off when he showed up however, so if you need any help with him, just send us a message. We'll be happy to pound that pervert for you," replied Urd.
"How did you do that?" asked Bear. "From what I hear, he's pretty high level and you guys don't look too tough."
"Well…we are more skilled then we look. We just had to surprise him, that's all," said Urd.
Bear shot her a skeptical look, but decided not to pursue the matter further.
"Anyway," said Mimiru, "have you four ever heard of someone not being able to log out of The World?" She looked at Keiichi, Belldandy, Urd, and Kenaz for a response.
"We, uh, heard about some odd happenings in the game through the BBS," replied Urd. This might be the guy we are looking for! "Why do you ask?"
"Well, this guy I met, his name was Tsukasa, seems to be unable to log out of The World."
Belldandy, and Urd glance at each other quickly.
"This wouldn't happen to be the guy that those Crimson Knights are looking for is it?" asked Belldandy.
"Yeah, why? Did they talk to you too?" replied Mimiru.
"Well, we told them to ask you or Bear about him since you had seen him before and not us," said Urd.
"So that's why they thought we knew something…" mumbled Bear.
"We don't think he's done anything wrong," said Mimiru quickly. "His guardian attacked us without provocation yesterday and he couldn't stop it. I don't think he knows what's going on either."
"His guardian?" asked Keiichi.
"Yeah, looks like a big, gold, dumbbell. Shoots sharp strands of something. We've heard that it can kill players in a single shot. It almost got me," said Bear.
"What stopped it?"
"I don't know for sure, it looked like a cat. It seemed to have control of the guardian. I want to talk to Tsukasa about it, but he hasn't responded to my e-mails."
"Well, he sent me a reply earlier today and says he wants to meet tomorrow in 'Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground'," said Mimiru.
"Why didn't you tell me about that earlier?" asked Bear.
"He said he wanted just me to come, and I didn't have time to tell you earlier today. But I don't really want to go alone; would any of you please come with me?"
"Sorry, but we all have plans to go to the beach for the weekend," replied Keiichi, indicating Belldandy, Urd, and Kenaz.
"And I have to work tomorrow," said BT.
"Bear? What about you? Will you come with me?"
"I don't really like this, but I suppose I can," Bear replied with a sigh.
"Well, we have to go get ready for our trip tomorrow," said Belldandy. "We'll talk again after we get back, alright?"
"Have a good trip," replied Mimiru.
Keiichi, Belldandy, Urd, and Kenaz then logged out of the game and started packing for the weekend before heading off to bed since they had a long day ahead of them. If any of them were to look up at the ceiling, they would have noticed a tile slightly ajar with two eyes with glowing red slashes looking down on them.
"Hahahaha! So they are going to the beach tomorrow are they?" said Mini-Mara from her hiding place in the ceiling. "I'm so glad that my new cloaking spell is working!"
"Not well enough you demon!" said a voice from behind her.
Mara looked behind her to see three small female ninjas, the same size as her in her current form.
"My name is Kodama!" said the one on the far right.
"I am Hikari!" stated the middle one.
"and I am Senrigan!" said the one on the left, "You are not welcome here. Leave before we chase you out!"
"You traitorous ninja! I'll get you for this someday!" Mara yelled as she took off. If only I could go full size without losing the cloaking spell I could deal with those troublesome ninja once and for all!
Back in her lair, the demoness Mara began formulating her latest scheme for getting rid of the goddesses once and for all.
"So, you are interested in our activity in The World, huh? And you look so helpless sitting in front of that junk pile that Skuld calls a computer. Soon, you will be forced to go back to heaven where you can bother me no more! Muahahahahaha!"