BATTLE NETWORK CYBERSYSTEM: The Manic Saga
Vol. 1: The Darkness of Our Pasts
Chapter 2: The New Netbattler In Town
It's been three weeks since I moved into my new apartment. The apartment already had appliances and furniture in it, albeit they were fairly covered with dust and some pieces of furniture had blood stains on them, but I managed to clean everything up eventually. Now, it looked like nothing had ever happened in there. I didn't really trust the food in there, so I cleared it all out and went out to get new stuff. With some of the food in there, I could have sold some as antiques.
After the first week of actually cleaning up the place, I finally settled down and had everything unpacked and had my speaker system installed around the room. Finally, it was starting to look like my dream place. My own place.
However, after a while, I started to get a bit bored with just setting everything up at my apartment, so I decided that I would go check out the town.
"Hmm..." I wondered to myself aloud, "...might as well see if there's a good restaurant in town..." I picked myself up from laying on the couch and left my apartment.
The fresh air outside felt good on my face after being cooped up in that apartment for a while. I looked around the quaint little town of ACDC. There was a park and some various other places that I had seen just a few months ago, when I graduated from the high school here. It seemed like the town grew since I graduated. I walked down the sidewalk towards the park and found a bench to sit on and admire the town.
Amazingly enough, the town was fairly quiet and peaceful. The old people played chess in the park while the little children went through the playground there. There were a few young couples walking through the park holding hands as well.
I laid my arms on the back of the bench and looked around the town for a while, thinking about what I could do about getting a job. Work for the ONBA? Possibly. Keep running errands? Maybe. Work in the Challenge Hall? No. The Challenge Hall was a place where netbattlers from everywhere could go to do battle with high-ranking netbattlers to offer a challenge. Of course, the prize for winning would be one of the opponent's datasilver and respect among the others, but I didn't want to take part in actually sticking myself there. I didn't even have enough of a rank to actually put up a good fight, much less the datasilver. I resolved that I would work up my netbattling skill and actually be able to take on some of them, but that could wait until later.
Finally, I spotted a small diner off near the metroline station.
"Jackpot," I said to myself as I got up from the bench and walked through the park towards the restaurant. As I was walking, I looked up at the rooftops of the other buildings. They were fairly high up, about four or five stories. ACDC really was turning into a bigger city by the day. I also saw a person standing on the edge of one of the roofs. I watched as I walked as the figure jumped across the fairly large gap between the buildings over and over again.
*Hmm...* I thought to myself, *seems like he's having fun...*
I looked back to the park trail towards the exit and kept walking, putting my hands in my jean pockets. I then noticed someone walk past me. He looked normal and all, a bit shorter than I was, but he had a green stripe running under his hair. He walked past as I turned and looked at him.
*Nice hair...* I thought to myself as I turned around again, this time to see a girl with brown hair walking by with a broken PET. I turned my head to look at the pet briefly, then went back to walking forward. Many other people there, one pretty tall guy doing tricks with a yo-yo, a guy playing the guitar, another reading a book on a bench, et cetera. I was now nearing the archway that showed the exit out of the park when I heard some playful bickering around the corner. I didn't really pay any attention to it, but I caught the last part of it.
"Yeah, well Dad wanted me to have this money to pick him up some stuff for work!"
"Come on, Joseph! I wanna get a new adaptor bit!"
"Na-uh! Dad's money, Dad's stuff!"
"Not until I get it!" I noticed one was a guy and one was a girl. I was about to push it out of my thoughts until...
*WHAM*
My head snapped to the side as the girl mistakenly missed the money in the guy's hand and hit me in the cheek. I winced a bit as my hands were still in my pockets and slowly turned my head back to where it was.
"I'm so sorry! Are you ok!?" the girl asked me. I rubbed my cheek with my right hand.
"Good hook there," I said, still rubbing my cheek. I looked over to see who they were. The guy had blonde, messy hair with a green jacket on while the girl had long flowing brown hair and was a bit shorter than the guy. The guy tried to apologize to me my scolding the girl.
"It's ok, really," I said.
"You sure? That was some hit," the guy responded.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Sorry about that. My name's Joseph, this is my sister Shinzuka."
"Hi." Shinzuka squeaked out, still blushing that she hit me. She was kinda cute like that.
"Nice to meet you two, I'm Manic," I responded. We talked for a bit, getting to know each other for a while. They told me how they lived there for the most part of their lives while I told them I just moved into town.
"Oh, you'll love it here," Joseph said, responding to my statement about moving here, "it's kinda small, but it's a good place to live."
"Yeah, I love it here too!" Shinzuka added in. "The park, especially."
"Yeah, and the mall, too," Joseph teased. Shinzuka gave him a slug to the arm, then turned her attention quickly back to me.
"So, where ya headed, Manic?" Shinzuka asked me innocently. I smiled a bit at her straight-forwardness.
"I was actually off to get some lunch," I said as I pointed at the diner.
"That's grea--" Shinzuka was about to finish her sentence until Joseph covered her mouth.
"Er, we have to run an errand for our dad, so we gotta get going," Joseph said in place of Shinzuka, "well, hope we run into you again some time!" Joseph then grabbed Shinzuka's arm and ran towards the metroline station as Shinzuka looked back at me.
*Friendly bunch, I guess,* I thought to myself as I continued walking towards the diner. I opened the door and was greeted with sounds of a normal diner in Marine Harbor. Silverware clanking with plates, people talking about sports, waitresses taking orders from tables, chefs cooking constantly and finally the ring of a bell when an order was up. *This is heaven again,* I thought to myself as I asked a waitress for a booth near a window. She quickly found one for me and I sat down and asked for some water.
I stared out the window for a bit until the waitress came back with the menu.
"What'll ya have, sweetie?" she asked kindly, waiting for my order.
"Hmm... what's the house special?" I asked.
"Oh my, dear, you aren't from around here, are ya?" the waitress said. "Well, my friend Agnes wasn't from around here, too, ya know, and I always tell her 'Agnes, don't order the house special here, you'll end up with cramps for the rest of your life!'" the waitress laughed at her own joke while I quickly looked through the menu for something else. I finally decided on a simple cheeseburger and she went off to the kitchen.
"Phew..." I said silently to myself as I took a sip of water and looked out the window again. It really was a nice town, those two didn't lie about that. I could get used to this place, actually.
"Hey, what's up!" someone said as I felt a hand hit my shoulder lightly. The same tall person I saw in the park with the yo-yo came and sat down in the booth seat opposite me. He looked at me for a second, then cocked his head sideways. "Hey, you're not Enkou..."
"Who?" I asked him. He shook his head.
"Ah, nevermind. So, how are you?"
"Good," I responded lightly, not knowing who this person was.
"Oh, I'm Gregorio," Gregorio said as he extended his hand to shake mine. I returned the shake and he continued to talk. "You can call me GC, though. So, you new in this town?"
"Yeah, got here a few weeks ago..." I responded. "I'm Manic."
"Hey Manic," GC responded as he looked around. The same waitress came and GC ordered something and we talked for a bit more, eating our food. He wasn't from ACDC either, he told me, but he had been here longer than I had. I told him that I preferred using my own element against the opponent in netbattles while he preferred using poisoning tactics and using his favorite weapon and choice weapon of his past homeland, the yo-yo.
Another thing about netbattling is that everyone is unique in their inherent element. No one can really choose their own element, it's like a trait given at birth, more or less. There were six elements that people could have to use to their advantage or not: fire, water, earth, wind, holy and dark. My element was fire, which was another symbol for my flame pendant necklace.
After a while, we finished lunch and talked for a bit more about netbattling.
"Oh crap," GC said, looking at his watch, "I gotta go, I'll catch ya later, Manic!" GC then got up from the booth after throwing some money onto the table and walked out the door. I watched him walk towards the metroline through the window, then decided that it was about time that I left as well. I paid my end of the bill and walked out of the diner. Not bad food, either.
I wandered around the town for a bit and noticed that the girl with the broken PET and the green-haired guy from in the park were walking down the sidewalk and talking as well. They both seemed to be formal as I walked past them, but they seemed to be friends nonetheless. In this town, it seemed like everyone here was a friend of another. I liked that idea about a town, being able to know the person walking down the street in a heartbeat and saying hi to them for no real reason at all.
After some walking around the town, the sun was starting to set into the horizon. I decided that it was about time to head back to the apartment right now, so I could get finally get some sleep. As I walked through the front doors into the lobby, the landlord's door was wide open, the television blaring with the news.
-In other news, there has been a chain of burglaries across all of Electopia this week. Not many things were stolen from houses except for at most some datasilver and adaptor bits from household netbattlers, but everyone please exercise caution because of this.-
I didn't really think anything of it as I walked towards the elevator and pressed the up button. The doors slid open and I walked inside and was about to push button seven until I heard someone shout at me.
"Hey! Hold that door!" I held the elevator doors open as the same man from the rooftops jogged into the elevator.
"Which floor?" I asked him. He had silver hair kinda like Joseph's, but it was longer with long bangs going off to the side.
"Floor seven, please," he responded. I found it a bit odd, but pushed the number seven anyways. He was dressed up in a kendo uniform, oddly enough, but I didn't really think anything of it.
"You move into town recently, too?" he asked me as the elevator kept rising towards the seventh floor.
"Yeah, I did... I'm Manic," I said to him as he and I shook hands.
"Kinzoku. Kinzoku Souten Hyoukai," Kinzoku responded with a smile.
"Heh, Manic Grave," I said with a smile back. The elevator stopped and its doors opened up. We both walked through the hall, talking about pretty random things, until I reached my apartment.
"Well, this is my stop," I said to him as we were in front of my apartment door.
"Funny... this is my stop," he responded as he pointed his thumb over to the door on the left. I looked at the door number, 778.
"Small world, huh?" I joked. We both laughed a bit and opened up our apartment doors just in time to see that both our apartments were ransacked. I was speechless and angered. I could tell, so was Kinzoku.
Vol. 1 Chapter 2 done! Review, please!
Vol. 1: The Darkness of Our Pasts
Chapter 2: The New Netbattler In Town
It's been three weeks since I moved into my new apartment. The apartment already had appliances and furniture in it, albeit they were fairly covered with dust and some pieces of furniture had blood stains on them, but I managed to clean everything up eventually. Now, it looked like nothing had ever happened in there. I didn't really trust the food in there, so I cleared it all out and went out to get new stuff. With some of the food in there, I could have sold some as antiques.
After the first week of actually cleaning up the place, I finally settled down and had everything unpacked and had my speaker system installed around the room. Finally, it was starting to look like my dream place. My own place.
However, after a while, I started to get a bit bored with just setting everything up at my apartment, so I decided that I would go check out the town.
"Hmm..." I wondered to myself aloud, "...might as well see if there's a good restaurant in town..." I picked myself up from laying on the couch and left my apartment.
The fresh air outside felt good on my face after being cooped up in that apartment for a while. I looked around the quaint little town of ACDC. There was a park and some various other places that I had seen just a few months ago, when I graduated from the high school here. It seemed like the town grew since I graduated. I walked down the sidewalk towards the park and found a bench to sit on and admire the town.
Amazingly enough, the town was fairly quiet and peaceful. The old people played chess in the park while the little children went through the playground there. There were a few young couples walking through the park holding hands as well.
I laid my arms on the back of the bench and looked around the town for a while, thinking about what I could do about getting a job. Work for the ONBA? Possibly. Keep running errands? Maybe. Work in the Challenge Hall? No. The Challenge Hall was a place where netbattlers from everywhere could go to do battle with high-ranking netbattlers to offer a challenge. Of course, the prize for winning would be one of the opponent's datasilver and respect among the others, but I didn't want to take part in actually sticking myself there. I didn't even have enough of a rank to actually put up a good fight, much less the datasilver. I resolved that I would work up my netbattling skill and actually be able to take on some of them, but that could wait until later.
Finally, I spotted a small diner off near the metroline station.
"Jackpot," I said to myself as I got up from the bench and walked through the park towards the restaurant. As I was walking, I looked up at the rooftops of the other buildings. They were fairly high up, about four or five stories. ACDC really was turning into a bigger city by the day. I also saw a person standing on the edge of one of the roofs. I watched as I walked as the figure jumped across the fairly large gap between the buildings over and over again.
*Hmm...* I thought to myself, *seems like he's having fun...*
I looked back to the park trail towards the exit and kept walking, putting my hands in my jean pockets. I then noticed someone walk past me. He looked normal and all, a bit shorter than I was, but he had a green stripe running under his hair. He walked past as I turned and looked at him.
*Nice hair...* I thought to myself as I turned around again, this time to see a girl with brown hair walking by with a broken PET. I turned my head to look at the pet briefly, then went back to walking forward. Many other people there, one pretty tall guy doing tricks with a yo-yo, a guy playing the guitar, another reading a book on a bench, et cetera. I was now nearing the archway that showed the exit out of the park when I heard some playful bickering around the corner. I didn't really pay any attention to it, but I caught the last part of it.
"Yeah, well Dad wanted me to have this money to pick him up some stuff for work!"
"Come on, Joseph! I wanna get a new adaptor bit!"
"Na-uh! Dad's money, Dad's stuff!"
"Not until I get it!" I noticed one was a guy and one was a girl. I was about to push it out of my thoughts until...
*WHAM*
My head snapped to the side as the girl mistakenly missed the money in the guy's hand and hit me in the cheek. I winced a bit as my hands were still in my pockets and slowly turned my head back to where it was.
"I'm so sorry! Are you ok!?" the girl asked me. I rubbed my cheek with my right hand.
"Good hook there," I said, still rubbing my cheek. I looked over to see who they were. The guy had blonde, messy hair with a green jacket on while the girl had long flowing brown hair and was a bit shorter than the guy. The guy tried to apologize to me my scolding the girl.
"It's ok, really," I said.
"You sure? That was some hit," the guy responded.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Sorry about that. My name's Joseph, this is my sister Shinzuka."
"Hi." Shinzuka squeaked out, still blushing that she hit me. She was kinda cute like that.
"Nice to meet you two, I'm Manic," I responded. We talked for a bit, getting to know each other for a while. They told me how they lived there for the most part of their lives while I told them I just moved into town.
"Oh, you'll love it here," Joseph said, responding to my statement about moving here, "it's kinda small, but it's a good place to live."
"Yeah, I love it here too!" Shinzuka added in. "The park, especially."
"Yeah, and the mall, too," Joseph teased. Shinzuka gave him a slug to the arm, then turned her attention quickly back to me.
"So, where ya headed, Manic?" Shinzuka asked me innocently. I smiled a bit at her straight-forwardness.
"I was actually off to get some lunch," I said as I pointed at the diner.
"That's grea--" Shinzuka was about to finish her sentence until Joseph covered her mouth.
"Er, we have to run an errand for our dad, so we gotta get going," Joseph said in place of Shinzuka, "well, hope we run into you again some time!" Joseph then grabbed Shinzuka's arm and ran towards the metroline station as Shinzuka looked back at me.
*Friendly bunch, I guess,* I thought to myself as I continued walking towards the diner. I opened the door and was greeted with sounds of a normal diner in Marine Harbor. Silverware clanking with plates, people talking about sports, waitresses taking orders from tables, chefs cooking constantly and finally the ring of a bell when an order was up. *This is heaven again,* I thought to myself as I asked a waitress for a booth near a window. She quickly found one for me and I sat down and asked for some water.
I stared out the window for a bit until the waitress came back with the menu.
"What'll ya have, sweetie?" she asked kindly, waiting for my order.
"Hmm... what's the house special?" I asked.
"Oh my, dear, you aren't from around here, are ya?" the waitress said. "Well, my friend Agnes wasn't from around here, too, ya know, and I always tell her 'Agnes, don't order the house special here, you'll end up with cramps for the rest of your life!'" the waitress laughed at her own joke while I quickly looked through the menu for something else. I finally decided on a simple cheeseburger and she went off to the kitchen.
"Phew..." I said silently to myself as I took a sip of water and looked out the window again. It really was a nice town, those two didn't lie about that. I could get used to this place, actually.
"Hey, what's up!" someone said as I felt a hand hit my shoulder lightly. The same tall person I saw in the park with the yo-yo came and sat down in the booth seat opposite me. He looked at me for a second, then cocked his head sideways. "Hey, you're not Enkou..."
"Who?" I asked him. He shook his head.
"Ah, nevermind. So, how are you?"
"Good," I responded lightly, not knowing who this person was.
"Oh, I'm Gregorio," Gregorio said as he extended his hand to shake mine. I returned the shake and he continued to talk. "You can call me GC, though. So, you new in this town?"
"Yeah, got here a few weeks ago..." I responded. "I'm Manic."
"Hey Manic," GC responded as he looked around. The same waitress came and GC ordered something and we talked for a bit more, eating our food. He wasn't from ACDC either, he told me, but he had been here longer than I had. I told him that I preferred using my own element against the opponent in netbattles while he preferred using poisoning tactics and using his favorite weapon and choice weapon of his past homeland, the yo-yo.
Another thing about netbattling is that everyone is unique in their inherent element. No one can really choose their own element, it's like a trait given at birth, more or less. There were six elements that people could have to use to their advantage or not: fire, water, earth, wind, holy and dark. My element was fire, which was another symbol for my flame pendant necklace.
After a while, we finished lunch and talked for a bit more about netbattling.
"Oh crap," GC said, looking at his watch, "I gotta go, I'll catch ya later, Manic!" GC then got up from the booth after throwing some money onto the table and walked out the door. I watched him walk towards the metroline through the window, then decided that it was about time that I left as well. I paid my end of the bill and walked out of the diner. Not bad food, either.
I wandered around the town for a bit and noticed that the girl with the broken PET and the green-haired guy from in the park were walking down the sidewalk and talking as well. They both seemed to be formal as I walked past them, but they seemed to be friends nonetheless. In this town, it seemed like everyone here was a friend of another. I liked that idea about a town, being able to know the person walking down the street in a heartbeat and saying hi to them for no real reason at all.
After some walking around the town, the sun was starting to set into the horizon. I decided that it was about time to head back to the apartment right now, so I could get finally get some sleep. As I walked through the front doors into the lobby, the landlord's door was wide open, the television blaring with the news.
-In other news, there has been a chain of burglaries across all of Electopia this week. Not many things were stolen from houses except for at most some datasilver and adaptor bits from household netbattlers, but everyone please exercise caution because of this.-
I didn't really think anything of it as I walked towards the elevator and pressed the up button. The doors slid open and I walked inside and was about to push button seven until I heard someone shout at me.
"Hey! Hold that door!" I held the elevator doors open as the same man from the rooftops jogged into the elevator.
"Which floor?" I asked him. He had silver hair kinda like Joseph's, but it was longer with long bangs going off to the side.
"Floor seven, please," he responded. I found it a bit odd, but pushed the number seven anyways. He was dressed up in a kendo uniform, oddly enough, but I didn't really think anything of it.
"You move into town recently, too?" he asked me as the elevator kept rising towards the seventh floor.
"Yeah, I did... I'm Manic," I said to him as he and I shook hands.
"Kinzoku. Kinzoku Souten Hyoukai," Kinzoku responded with a smile.
"Heh, Manic Grave," I said with a smile back. The elevator stopped and its doors opened up. We both walked through the hall, talking about pretty random things, until I reached my apartment.
"Well, this is my stop," I said to him as we were in front of my apartment door.
"Funny... this is my stop," he responded as he pointed his thumb over to the door on the left. I looked at the door number, 778.
"Small world, huh?" I joked. We both laughed a bit and opened up our apartment doors just in time to see that both our apartments were ransacked. I was speechless and angered. I could tell, so was Kinzoku.
Vol. 1 Chapter 2 done! Review, please!