AN: Hi again. Well, apparently I got into a huge writing spree after
school and managed to write the fifth chapter. So here is chapter 5 a few
days early. XD I had a lot of brainstorming today for later chapters, and
three new characters have been developed (one being a guest appearance by a
friend of mine). So read, review, and enjoy! Btw, if I happened to have
mixed up Brit and Tiff's descriptions, please let me know. Thanks!
.hack//dimensions
Chapter 5: Popularity
Jenny reluctantly removed the headset as she logged out of the world. She turned off the computer and sat in the chair a moment, staring at the screen.
"Aoshi..." she whispered, remembering his face. Jenny couldn't believe that she had met someone like him, someone so amazing in an online RPG. Heroic, kind, and not to mention cute. She sighed as she melted into the chair, the happiest she had ever been in her life.
"Tomorrow I'll meet him again," she said to herself. "I'll get done anything else I have to do in a flash, and then hurry to the game. I have to talk to him, to look at him." She sighed a bit and got out of her seat. "I may be getting obsessive, but I want to find out all that I can about him."
Jenny headed out of the room and into her own. She lay down on her bed, and closed her eyes. "Aoshi..." she whispered, a smile on her face. The house was silent except for Jenny and her thoughts of the blademaster, the one whom she wished to be with now.
**********************************************
The alarm clock rang early in the morning, and Jenny jumped out of bed. "Yes!" the robot cried. "After school I get to play the game and meet Aoshi again!" She shook her head, trying to wake the rest of the way up. "No time to celebrate yet. I have to get through school first."
Jenny ran out of her room, grabbing her orange backpack, which had not been opened since taking out the game yesterday, and ran downstairs. In the kitchen she grabbed some motor oil and drank it down. Jenny noted that her mother was not yet home.
"The convention must have run later than I thought," muttered the teenage robot. "Well, I expect she'll be home by the afternoon. Heehee, guess I get the house to myself longer than I expected." Jenny looked at the clock, and ran out of the house. As she reached the yard, her pony tails turned into rockets and she flew off towards school.
The skies were empty except for a few birds, allowing Jenny's mind to wander a bit. She imagined a time in the World, where Kakera and Aoshi were alone together, unhampered by anyone else. They would walk through Mac Anu without any raving fan girls, and Kakera could gaze into the eyes of Aoshi.
Jenny shook her head clear of the daydream as she approached the school. With a flick of her legs, she landed in the front lawn of the school.
I'm gonna have to get my mind out of daydreams, she thought to herself. If I don't pay attention in class, I may get detention, and then it'll be even longer till I see him.
"Hey Jenny!" called out her best friend, Brad, from the top stairs of the school. He wandered past the groups of students, huddled in groups, talking. He finally made it to the bottom of the stairs where Jenny stood.
"Jenny, you wouldn't believe it!" he said.
"What happened Brad?" she asked.
"Almost everyone in the school started playing the World last night! That's all everyone has been talking about. I've already heard five people talk about how they went into a really hard level and died. Now I'm really glad we met up with Aoshi."
"Yeah, I'm glad too. And we get to meet up with him later!" Jenny smiled dreamily, and Brad raised his eyebrows at her.
"I know you like him Jenn, but you have to remember that we only met him online. He could be anyone, and you don't know what he may think of you, or what he'd want to do to you."
"I know," said Jenny, sighing. "But you gotta give me a break for having a crush on him. Hell, you saw how many fan girls were chasing him."
"Yeah, and I think a few of them go here," replied Brad.
"What do you mean?"
"A bunch of the popular girls have been huddling together, talking about him. They all think he's 'dreamy' and shit. Ugh, at this rate I'll never get a girl interested in me."
"Oh, I think you'll find someone eventually," said Jenny, smiling. "Besides, if someone does get with Aoshi, all the other girls will have to back off."
"True, true...."
"Jenny!" said a boy at the top of the stairs.
"Oh, hi Sheldon," said Jenny, looking up. The geeky boy had to maneuver, like Brad, down the stairs past large groups of talking students. Sheldon was having a much harder time then Brad had though. Some people had moved out of the way when Brad came through, but it looked as if hardly anyone would acknowledge Sheldon's presence.
"Whoa, I didn't realize that there would be this many people interested in the game," he said, as he finally reached his way to the bottom of the stairs.
"Yeah, I guess your posters worked," said Jenny. "I didn't even realize that so many people from our school were in the World when we were on."
"Oh, so you guys tried it out then?" asked Sheldon, smiling. "What did you think?"
"It was awesome!" yelled Jenny, suddenly excited. "I met up with Brad and Tuck, and we went to this dungeon..."
"And we met up with this huge monster," said Brad, jumping in. "It was way higher than our level..."
"Ah, so you went to a really high level?" said Sheldon. "You're not the only people who did that. Actually, I..."
"Yo Sheldon!" said a boy on the stairs, interrupting him. "You got any other copies of this game? I wanna try it out!"
"Sure," replied Sheldon. "I have a few more copies in my locker." He turned back to Brad and Jenny. "I'll see you guys later!" Sheldon then ran off once more into the crowd of people on the stairs. The boy followed him, and they were soon out of sight as they made it to the top and walked into the building.
"How many free copies did he get?" wondered Brad.
"Enough to get a ton of people interested," replied Jenny. "Come on, the bell's going to ring soon." The two wandered up the stairs and went into the building.
The hall they entered was lined on both sides by red lockers. People were everywhere, talking, rummaging through their lockers, or just standing around. Jenny noticed that many of the lockers had "The World" posters on them, and there were several on the student bulletin board too.
"There are still this many up?" said Brad, impressed. "Usually people tear down anything Sheldon puts up the second it's there."
"I guess people got interested?" said Jenny, shrugging her shoulders. "I mean, you said it yourself. Everyone in the school is talking about it."
"Yeah, I guess."
As they walked down the hall towards Jenny's locker, they saw a large group surrounding two girls. Jenny could see as they got closer that it was Brit and Tiff, aka the Krust cousins, the most popular girls in school.
Brit was a tall black girl, with short silky black hair. She appeared very prim and proper, with bright red lipstick on. She had two pearly white front teeth sticking out of her mouth as well. Tiff was about half the size of Brit, had light skin, and black hair in two ponytails sticking out under a red cap. She had heavy black eyeliner on, and many earrings and studs sticking out of her ears. Spiked bracelets adorned her wrists.
One of the reasons they were so popular was because they were always on top of the latest fashion, and had new clothes all the time. Today, Brit wore a bright yellow sweater with a large neck that rolled down to reveal her shoulders. Deep blue bellbottom jeans were on her legs, and she had high heeled black shoes. Tiff wore a dark red t-shirt with the name of some new popular rock band on it. Her black jeans had rips and tears in them, and a bright silver chain hung down her leg. She had black sneakers to complete the look.
Brit and Tiff were surrounded by their usual group of girlfriends and admirers, and were enjoying the attention just fine. Brad had learned to ignore them long ago, but Jenny still liked to try to fit in with them and become popular herself. She was so busy thinking about Aoshi, that she did not notice when Brad stopped behind her to listen in on the conversation.
"Brad? What are you doing?" she asked.
"Shh! Jenny!" he said. "They're talking about the World. Brit and Tiff are playing it too!"
"What?" Jenny had never thought that Brit and Tiff would play a video game of any kind. But of course they are into anything that is popular at the moment, she thought to herself. And from the looks of things, the World is probably the most popular thing around here now. Jenny went next to Brad to listen into the conversation for herself.
"Well of course we've been playing the World for a few weeks now," said Brit nonchalantly to the group. "My father got us spots to be beta testers for the new server, so we are well set up in the game."
"What classes are you?" asked a blonde girl in the front of the group.
"I'm a Heavy Axeman of course," replied Tiff. "I go by the name of Akumu in the game."
"I have been playing as a Spearman, going by the name of Youkai," said Brit, smiling.
"So are you all here to find out about the club or what?" asked Tiff in an irritated voice. "We need more members; we're only at 3,427 now."
"A club?" whispered Jenny to Brad.
'"Shh..." he said still listening intently.
"Yes! Tell us about the Aoshi Fan Club!" said a brown haired girl near the back.
"Aoshi..." whispered Jenny, shocked.
"Why of course," replied Brit in a kind voice. "The Aoshi Fan Club has been formed to learn all we can about the mysterious blademaster, and get him for ourselves."
"Because everyone knows," cut in Tiff. "That Aoshi is a sexy beast."
"Tiff and I are the leaders," continued Brit. "So if we ever 'capture' Aoshi, then we would get to be with him first. But all are allowed to join and will be allotted time alone with him."
"So they are the ones who led the group that was chasing Aoshi," said Jenny, pulling out of the group and taking Brad with her.
"You should have expected that," said Brad, shrugging. "He said himself that he was popular in the game, and you know how Brit and Tiff are about anything or anyone that is popular."
"Yeah, I know," sighed Jenny. "But I just hope they don't get what they want this time. Not for mine, but for Aoshi's sake."
"I thought your number one priority would be to be the one to get to Aoshi first."
"You heard what they said about him. Putting dibs on him and passing him around like a toy. That would be awful for anyone."
The bell rang, breaking the conversations of people as they headed towards their classes.
"We'll worry about it later," said Brad, turning towards his first class. "I'll see you later when we get into the game."
"Alright," muttered Jenny. Now her daydreams of Aoshi and Kakera together would not reappear all day. Instead, they would be bad dreams of Brit and Tiff and their group tearing Aoshi apart.
**************************************
Jenny flew home from school that day exhausted. She had hardly seen any of her friends all day, not even Sheldon, who made an effort to meet up with Jenny between every single class. A fire downtown, two laboratory experiments gone horribly wrong, and an alien attempting to kidnap the mayor had kept Jenny from doing anything much at all that day. She would have to make up all the work for the classes she had missed that day tonight, along with all her homework that was due tomorrow.
"Ugh, I'll be lucky to get this all done and still have time to sleep," she muttered as she landed in front of her house and walked in.
"Hello XJ-9!" said a smiling Mrs. Wakeman as the robot girl walked in. "How was your day?"
"Exhausting," replied Jenny as she sank into a chair. "How was the convention?"
"Amazing! After the speech I had dinner with these esteemed scientists who designed many of the earlier models of the hovercraft, then spent the evening with some of the members of the National Science Foundation. This morning I was meeting with one of the creators of the MMORPG 'The World'..."
"'The World'!?" said Jenny, jumping up.
"Yes, a very interesting fellow. I had no idea how much work into developing that game."
"Oh no! I forgot I was going to play that later!" Jenny ran upstairs to her room, her book bag on her shoulder. She slammed the door to her room so she could jump into her work and get it done as quickly as possible.
"Hmmm," said Mrs. Wakeman to herself. "It seems that his theory on the game causing people to suddenly seem wakeful and set on a task in order to play the game was a true one indeed. Interesting..."
.hack//dimensions
Chapter 5: Popularity
Jenny reluctantly removed the headset as she logged out of the world. She turned off the computer and sat in the chair a moment, staring at the screen.
"Aoshi..." she whispered, remembering his face. Jenny couldn't believe that she had met someone like him, someone so amazing in an online RPG. Heroic, kind, and not to mention cute. She sighed as she melted into the chair, the happiest she had ever been in her life.
"Tomorrow I'll meet him again," she said to herself. "I'll get done anything else I have to do in a flash, and then hurry to the game. I have to talk to him, to look at him." She sighed a bit and got out of her seat. "I may be getting obsessive, but I want to find out all that I can about him."
Jenny headed out of the room and into her own. She lay down on her bed, and closed her eyes. "Aoshi..." she whispered, a smile on her face. The house was silent except for Jenny and her thoughts of the blademaster, the one whom she wished to be with now.
**********************************************
The alarm clock rang early in the morning, and Jenny jumped out of bed. "Yes!" the robot cried. "After school I get to play the game and meet Aoshi again!" She shook her head, trying to wake the rest of the way up. "No time to celebrate yet. I have to get through school first."
Jenny ran out of her room, grabbing her orange backpack, which had not been opened since taking out the game yesterday, and ran downstairs. In the kitchen she grabbed some motor oil and drank it down. Jenny noted that her mother was not yet home.
"The convention must have run later than I thought," muttered the teenage robot. "Well, I expect she'll be home by the afternoon. Heehee, guess I get the house to myself longer than I expected." Jenny looked at the clock, and ran out of the house. As she reached the yard, her pony tails turned into rockets and she flew off towards school.
The skies were empty except for a few birds, allowing Jenny's mind to wander a bit. She imagined a time in the World, where Kakera and Aoshi were alone together, unhampered by anyone else. They would walk through Mac Anu without any raving fan girls, and Kakera could gaze into the eyes of Aoshi.
Jenny shook her head clear of the daydream as she approached the school. With a flick of her legs, she landed in the front lawn of the school.
I'm gonna have to get my mind out of daydreams, she thought to herself. If I don't pay attention in class, I may get detention, and then it'll be even longer till I see him.
"Hey Jenny!" called out her best friend, Brad, from the top stairs of the school. He wandered past the groups of students, huddled in groups, talking. He finally made it to the bottom of the stairs where Jenny stood.
"Jenny, you wouldn't believe it!" he said.
"What happened Brad?" she asked.
"Almost everyone in the school started playing the World last night! That's all everyone has been talking about. I've already heard five people talk about how they went into a really hard level and died. Now I'm really glad we met up with Aoshi."
"Yeah, I'm glad too. And we get to meet up with him later!" Jenny smiled dreamily, and Brad raised his eyebrows at her.
"I know you like him Jenn, but you have to remember that we only met him online. He could be anyone, and you don't know what he may think of you, or what he'd want to do to you."
"I know," said Jenny, sighing. "But you gotta give me a break for having a crush on him. Hell, you saw how many fan girls were chasing him."
"Yeah, and I think a few of them go here," replied Brad.
"What do you mean?"
"A bunch of the popular girls have been huddling together, talking about him. They all think he's 'dreamy' and shit. Ugh, at this rate I'll never get a girl interested in me."
"Oh, I think you'll find someone eventually," said Jenny, smiling. "Besides, if someone does get with Aoshi, all the other girls will have to back off."
"True, true...."
"Jenny!" said a boy at the top of the stairs.
"Oh, hi Sheldon," said Jenny, looking up. The geeky boy had to maneuver, like Brad, down the stairs past large groups of talking students. Sheldon was having a much harder time then Brad had though. Some people had moved out of the way when Brad came through, but it looked as if hardly anyone would acknowledge Sheldon's presence.
"Whoa, I didn't realize that there would be this many people interested in the game," he said, as he finally reached his way to the bottom of the stairs.
"Yeah, I guess your posters worked," said Jenny. "I didn't even realize that so many people from our school were in the World when we were on."
"Oh, so you guys tried it out then?" asked Sheldon, smiling. "What did you think?"
"It was awesome!" yelled Jenny, suddenly excited. "I met up with Brad and Tuck, and we went to this dungeon..."
"And we met up with this huge monster," said Brad, jumping in. "It was way higher than our level..."
"Ah, so you went to a really high level?" said Sheldon. "You're not the only people who did that. Actually, I..."
"Yo Sheldon!" said a boy on the stairs, interrupting him. "You got any other copies of this game? I wanna try it out!"
"Sure," replied Sheldon. "I have a few more copies in my locker." He turned back to Brad and Jenny. "I'll see you guys later!" Sheldon then ran off once more into the crowd of people on the stairs. The boy followed him, and they were soon out of sight as they made it to the top and walked into the building.
"How many free copies did he get?" wondered Brad.
"Enough to get a ton of people interested," replied Jenny. "Come on, the bell's going to ring soon." The two wandered up the stairs and went into the building.
The hall they entered was lined on both sides by red lockers. People were everywhere, talking, rummaging through their lockers, or just standing around. Jenny noticed that many of the lockers had "The World" posters on them, and there were several on the student bulletin board too.
"There are still this many up?" said Brad, impressed. "Usually people tear down anything Sheldon puts up the second it's there."
"I guess people got interested?" said Jenny, shrugging her shoulders. "I mean, you said it yourself. Everyone in the school is talking about it."
"Yeah, I guess."
As they walked down the hall towards Jenny's locker, they saw a large group surrounding two girls. Jenny could see as they got closer that it was Brit and Tiff, aka the Krust cousins, the most popular girls in school.
Brit was a tall black girl, with short silky black hair. She appeared very prim and proper, with bright red lipstick on. She had two pearly white front teeth sticking out of her mouth as well. Tiff was about half the size of Brit, had light skin, and black hair in two ponytails sticking out under a red cap. She had heavy black eyeliner on, and many earrings and studs sticking out of her ears. Spiked bracelets adorned her wrists.
One of the reasons they were so popular was because they were always on top of the latest fashion, and had new clothes all the time. Today, Brit wore a bright yellow sweater with a large neck that rolled down to reveal her shoulders. Deep blue bellbottom jeans were on her legs, and she had high heeled black shoes. Tiff wore a dark red t-shirt with the name of some new popular rock band on it. Her black jeans had rips and tears in them, and a bright silver chain hung down her leg. She had black sneakers to complete the look.
Brit and Tiff were surrounded by their usual group of girlfriends and admirers, and were enjoying the attention just fine. Brad had learned to ignore them long ago, but Jenny still liked to try to fit in with them and become popular herself. She was so busy thinking about Aoshi, that she did not notice when Brad stopped behind her to listen in on the conversation.
"Brad? What are you doing?" she asked.
"Shh! Jenny!" he said. "They're talking about the World. Brit and Tiff are playing it too!"
"What?" Jenny had never thought that Brit and Tiff would play a video game of any kind. But of course they are into anything that is popular at the moment, she thought to herself. And from the looks of things, the World is probably the most popular thing around here now. Jenny went next to Brad to listen into the conversation for herself.
"Well of course we've been playing the World for a few weeks now," said Brit nonchalantly to the group. "My father got us spots to be beta testers for the new server, so we are well set up in the game."
"What classes are you?" asked a blonde girl in the front of the group.
"I'm a Heavy Axeman of course," replied Tiff. "I go by the name of Akumu in the game."
"I have been playing as a Spearman, going by the name of Youkai," said Brit, smiling.
"So are you all here to find out about the club or what?" asked Tiff in an irritated voice. "We need more members; we're only at 3,427 now."
"A club?" whispered Jenny to Brad.
'"Shh..." he said still listening intently.
"Yes! Tell us about the Aoshi Fan Club!" said a brown haired girl near the back.
"Aoshi..." whispered Jenny, shocked.
"Why of course," replied Brit in a kind voice. "The Aoshi Fan Club has been formed to learn all we can about the mysterious blademaster, and get him for ourselves."
"Because everyone knows," cut in Tiff. "That Aoshi is a sexy beast."
"Tiff and I are the leaders," continued Brit. "So if we ever 'capture' Aoshi, then we would get to be with him first. But all are allowed to join and will be allotted time alone with him."
"So they are the ones who led the group that was chasing Aoshi," said Jenny, pulling out of the group and taking Brad with her.
"You should have expected that," said Brad, shrugging. "He said himself that he was popular in the game, and you know how Brit and Tiff are about anything or anyone that is popular."
"Yeah, I know," sighed Jenny. "But I just hope they don't get what they want this time. Not for mine, but for Aoshi's sake."
"I thought your number one priority would be to be the one to get to Aoshi first."
"You heard what they said about him. Putting dibs on him and passing him around like a toy. That would be awful for anyone."
The bell rang, breaking the conversations of people as they headed towards their classes.
"We'll worry about it later," said Brad, turning towards his first class. "I'll see you later when we get into the game."
"Alright," muttered Jenny. Now her daydreams of Aoshi and Kakera together would not reappear all day. Instead, they would be bad dreams of Brit and Tiff and their group tearing Aoshi apart.
**************************************
Jenny flew home from school that day exhausted. She had hardly seen any of her friends all day, not even Sheldon, who made an effort to meet up with Jenny between every single class. A fire downtown, two laboratory experiments gone horribly wrong, and an alien attempting to kidnap the mayor had kept Jenny from doing anything much at all that day. She would have to make up all the work for the classes she had missed that day tonight, along with all her homework that was due tomorrow.
"Ugh, I'll be lucky to get this all done and still have time to sleep," she muttered as she landed in front of her house and walked in.
"Hello XJ-9!" said a smiling Mrs. Wakeman as the robot girl walked in. "How was your day?"
"Exhausting," replied Jenny as she sank into a chair. "How was the convention?"
"Amazing! After the speech I had dinner with these esteemed scientists who designed many of the earlier models of the hovercraft, then spent the evening with some of the members of the National Science Foundation. This morning I was meeting with one of the creators of the MMORPG 'The World'..."
"'The World'!?" said Jenny, jumping up.
"Yes, a very interesting fellow. I had no idea how much work into developing that game."
"Oh no! I forgot I was going to play that later!" Jenny ran upstairs to her room, her book bag on her shoulder. She slammed the door to her room so she could jump into her work and get it done as quickly as possible.
"Hmmm," said Mrs. Wakeman to herself. "It seems that his theory on the game causing people to suddenly seem wakeful and set on a task in order to play the game was a true one indeed. Interesting..."