Bright amethyst eyes stared back at his character. The intensity of her gaze was such that, for a moment, he almost thought he had indeed done something wrong.
But the feeling quickly dissipated as he took a better look at her.
Subaru's mouth was agape, at a loss for words at the sight of the woman. Or should he say, girl - more fitting for her age. Despite her accusatory glare, he couldn't stop himself from taking her form in, watching in an entranced manner how her long, white hair flowed elegantly like torrential waves from all around her.
Exhibiting a normally unattainable, exotic, form of beauty only known to him in manga and anime, the girl practically shone in his eyes as he admired her brilliant, lustrous figure. Were himself to be in the place of his character, he was sure that he would most certainly be overwhelmed by her sight alone, and would also be left to shamessly gawk at her for hours on end.
"I don't know why you are beating these men and behaving strangely, mister, but you really should stop!" the lady's soft voice brought him out of his voluntary daze.
Taking a few seconds to stop fawning over a video game character and to process her statement, he was reminded of his earlier predicament. "Oh, right. Right. The EXP thugs. She doesn't know, does she?"
He turned around to quickly check on his defeated foes. Seeing their knocked-out forms sprawled on the ground gave him another sense of accomplishment, as he had won the engagement with the most unconventional of weapons: a pipe.
'And a barrel too, for knocking out some HP from them. If it really did that...'
Turning back to the white-haired girl, he began to type his reply.
"oh yeah sorry about that. i beat them cuz they tried to mug me. that there is just fair and basic self defense dont you worry" The delivered message appeared on the right corner of his screen as his character 'spoke'.
At his response, the lady's gaze lingered at his character for a moment with a raised brow before she looked away from him and to the three bandits passed out behind him. Noticing that one of them held a knife whereas the standing man had only a pipe, her intense glare subsided upon realizing that he was probably saying the truth, but only a little.
"Hmm, you don't seem to be lying. I see. That is probably the case..." she began with a pause, "...but even so! You shouldn't go overboard or you will be just as guilty!" she spoke while pointing to his pipe, which had blood dripping from it. "And it's better to call for the guards if you are in trouble so you don't hurt yourself, or avoid these dangerous alleys altogether. Understand?"
Subaru, who was looking at his uncanny weapon in awe and surprise since the girl had pointed out the blood, was not paying much attention to her lecture, and left his character unmoving.
"I didn't expect to hurt them that bad but anyways, wow! Even the blood on the pipe in this game has realistic drippy physics! I guess at this point I shouldn't be too surprised, huh?" He mused to himself before perking up with another idea,
"Hmm. Let me see if this works..."
Meanwhile the lady, who was still awkwardly waiting for a response from the strangely clothed, unnaturally still, unexpressive man, was about to impatiently call out to him and berate him further for his lack of social etiquette.
That was before he suddenly decided to violently shake his entire torso up and down while simultaneously spinning in place at breakneck speeds whilst all the blood from his pipe flew everywhere, coating the ground and walls alike in ichor droplets.
The sudden change in action from the man made her take a few steps back in shock. For her, the scene was so surreal, so frighteningly absurd that she couldn't believe her eyes.
Her brain struggled to comprehend the movements he began to make as she watched him go. They were both literally and humanly impossible for even the most skillful mage to replicate, a fact which left her wondering just who was this man before her.
"Um... Lia. Just... what is that guy doing? No no, better yet: HOW is he doing that?"
"I-I-I don't know, Puck." she answered her cat-spirit as she watched the believed crazed guy slowly stop, facing the opposite way from her. "I've never seen a person act like that before... is he okay?"
"Well... he beat all three thugs by himself, so he'll be fine either way. " Puck concluded with a shrug, despite the alien-like mannerism of the boy before them. "But we have an insignia to retrieve, don't we? We can't waste too much time here, Lia. Let's get going."
"oi now wait a sec there's two of you?" The monotonous voice of the man caught both of their attention, who turned to see the him looking right at them, now without the pipe.
"...or not..."
His neck seemingly locked in place, he turned to look at Puck. "woah miss is that a small flying cat? thats a really cool pet you have there!"
"Pet...?" Puck sweatdropped. "That's the first person to ever call me that. I'm starting to think this guy is special. Poor fella, these days they come with a lot of birth problems."
"it talks too?"
"Yes. And... this is actually my spirit. Not my pet, mister." 'Lia' corrected the man, gesturing to Puck.
"a spiwit?"
"No. A spirit."
"a spew-it?"
"No... a spirit."
"a spin-it?"
"A spirit! You dunderhead!"
At her outburst, the girl noticed the man's torso slighly curl down while shaking, as if laughing at her expense. Strangely enough, his face revealed no other emotion other than a dead stare.
With a pout of indignation, she decided she had enough of the guy's tomfoolery and went to do what she had to do in the first place:
Look for her insignia.
Subaru propped himself on the table, laughing at the girl's authentic reactions to his fits of idiocy.
"The dialogue in this game is too good!" he spoke between wheezes, shaking his head with a cough, "Who even says dunderhead these days, anyway?"
He heard the girl sigh, "Well, if you aren't having any issues, then I must go." She simply said before turning to walk away.
"Wait. Just like that?" Subaru spoke, baffled, "Isn't she the main heroine of the story or something? Maybe the girl that might've summoned my character?" He thought outloud to himself, watching her move away in disbelief.
Panicking at the fact that she was going away, he thoughtlessly moved his character.
"hey wait"
She turned to look at him with a huff, "What is it? Look, just so you know, I don't exactly have the time to stay with you."
"I have a feeling that she wasn't very truthful with that statement." Subaru deadpanned. "Anywho..."
"just wanted to-"
"There she is, Lia! After her!" He was interrupted as he was typing his message. Looking up at his screen, he saw 'Lia's' pet cat call out to her, pointing somewhere up high.
"Huh?" Subaru quickly turned his character to where the cat was pointing. The sight of someone, another girl, running on rooftops while dodging and jumping over obstacles with near milimetrical precision surprised him a little, but left him momentarily confused as to why she was doing that.
"Sorry mister, but I really need to go!" Lia quickly said as she passed him, beginning to give chase to the mysterious parkour girl.
"Ough, what? Wait up!" Without bothering to type another message, he turned his mouse accordingly to follow her.
| SHIFT to sprint. |
"Ah! Another convenient pop-up tip! This must be part of the main story. In that case, I gotta follow her!"
Moving his character forward, he pressed the aforementioned button and took off after Lia.
At first, his character kept up relatively well with the two surprisingly fast girls as they sped through the busy streets.
In the following four to five minutes, Subaru straightened himself up on his chair, his expression concentrated as he held down shift, occassionally maneuvering or making his character jump to avoid bumping on obstacles or people in the way.
But after a few more minutes of endless running, his character had evidently gotten slower, as the girls were getting progressively further ahead of him.
"Hey! Why am I so damn slow all of a sudden?! Come on, move!" At his character's sudden loss of speed, Subaru pressed the W key on his keyboard with even more intensity than before, attempting to make his character to faster, but to no avail.
After a certain point, while his character was getting even more slower as he moved, both the girls were so far ahead that he started to lose sight of them amidst the sea of the town's populace.
Adding to Subaru's frustration and embarassment, he jumped in fright with a not-so masculine shriek by several carriages loudly passing ahead of him unexpectedly, missing his character by mere inches and blocking both his way and his sight of the two girls.
"Damnit!" he nearly shouted in exasperation, "I lost them. Now what?"
A few seconds later, the carriages all passed, allowing him to cross over the streets safely.
While he had completely lost sight of Lia, he could still vaguely see the parkour girl in the distance running on the rooftops.
"Hmm. No way I can reach them from here anymore." he sighed, before looking up thoughtfully, "But wait... if this game's engine runs a bit like Source, maybe I can do something else...?"
An epiphany.
He slowly turned his character to gaze at the ground on the screen, scratching his chin with a hum, "Won't know if I don't try, right? Well... Half-Life skills are a go!"
Bringing up the game's menu, he changed one specific control on his mouse wheel before dismissing it.
"Alright, here goes! Hopefully this works..."
Turning his character around, he jumped and crouched simultaneously while going backwards, steadily spinning his mousewheel as he went.
Subaru watched in amasement as his character slowly gained more and more speed while he jumped with his mousewheel, practically ricocheting on the ground.
"Holy crap it's actually working! I might actually catch up to them like this!" He cheered, elated that his idea worked.
As his character continued to gain ludicrous amounts of speed from the bunnyhop mechanic in a very short time, he was suddenly flung upwards, his screen slightly tilting as he impacted with a curved section of a small river bridge.
Now flying through the air like an airplane, he looked below, seeing that most of the capital's populace had noticed his absurdly impossible feat, looking at his flying figure in shock & awe as he soared over them from high above.
The sight would be quite comical if he wasn't preocuppied with catching up to Lia.
"Woohoo!"
After a few seconds of being airborne, he turned to the front to see he was quickly closing the distance to the two. His spirits were lifted.
But his speed was such however, that he also ended up going past above them.
"Uhh..." He frantically pressed S and both the A and D keys on his keyboard in an attempt to redirect the flight trajectory of his character or to stop speeding up entirely. Much to his dismay however, he quickly found out that unlike in Half-Life, he couldn't control his character mid-air.
"Oh you gotta be kidding me! Come on now, work!" he exclaimed.
At the top of the parabola, gravity began pushing him downwards. Noticing his descent was much more ahead than what he originally intended, he was about to vent his frustrations at this ineptitude at completing the game's objectives, when he noticed exactly where he was going to land on.
He widened his eyes. "...oh crap. Oh crap!"
Bracing himself for impact as if anything in the game would hurt him, his screen flashed red as he heard his character impact the fruit stalls with a loud wham, sending several fragments of wood flying everywhere.
He didn't stop there - his character swiftly slid along the floor, running over several more stalls and people in the process. A brutal mess accompanied his trail as he went: several surprised yelps of men, women and demihumans falling over; wood creaking and breaking; cloth from the stalls suddenly affected by game mechanic and being set lose in a bugged mess and flying away, knocking several bystanders over; fruits, spices, meat, pans and various forms of products were thrown askew; he briefly saw a carriage flipped over by the impact of his character, the ones behind colliding and breaking in a domino effect, the creatures that dragged them running wildly as their owners desperately attempted to both gather their bearings and control their animals.
When Subaru noticed that he finally had stopped, he had destroyed another stall, he didn't know of what, but the street was full of apples scattered everywhere.
He turned his character around to see what exactly he had caused on his slide; he was astounded to see that the mess was much worse than he thought it would be.
It was absolute chaos: wood splinters, food, clothes, pots, pans, fruits, people, knights; all littered the streets behind him. Some scampered around, trying to get back their merchandise, others helped themselves and people nearby up and the remainder were just too stunned or trying to process what had happened.
He was immensely confused at the sight of some Velociraptors and what appeared to be Ankylosauruses scurrying around in a daze while several people went after them. Luckily, they didn't do much more damage than him.
What was troubling was that, aside from the stalls and carriages, he had ran over some knights aswell.
"Whoops..." he sheepishly scratched the back of his head as he assessed his damage. "Apparently in this game, not only the environment is destructible, but everything is... That's impressive and all but I really hope nothing bad will come out from thi-"
"MY APPAS!" Yelled a voice from behind him.
"...appas?" he turned his character around. A burly, green-haired man, seemingly the owner of the... appa stall, looked completely livid at the sight of his broken stand.
"YOU!" He pointed to Subaru. "YOU'RE THE ONE WHO DID ALL OF THIS, AREN'T YOU?!"
At the man's claim, Subaru watched as everyone nearby turned to look at his character with various forms of disdain, including guards and knights, who were approaching.
"Oh hell no." Rather than responding or staying to see what would happen, Subaru positioned his camera parallel to the street and started to bunnyhop away.
"HEY COME BACK HERE! WE'RE NOT DONE WITH YOU YET!" The apple man shouted.
"HE'S GETTING AWAY!"
"AFTER HIM!"
Subaru slightly turned his mouse left and right as his character accelerated backwards and away from the angry multitude of people hot on his trails.
"Sorry you guys, but I don't wanna get lynched on my first gameplay ever! See you all in a new game!" He spoke, his tone laced with a mix of nervousness and mischief.
He slowly gained significant distance from the crowd, guiding his bouncing character carefully so as to not hit anything else and be potentially stopped in place, especially with a mob behind him.
In all his care, whether it was a glitch or something he missed, he was still flung upwards once more by an unknown object.
"What!? Oh not again!"
Instead of crushing more stalls, he crashed against a building's window.
The glass shattered as he found himself inside, landing atop of a table and breaking it.
"What the fuck?!"
"Eep!"
Two voices immediately sounded off, both the masculine voice and the feminine shriek to his left side earned his attention as he turned to face the residents. Peering through the open doorway of the bedroom, he saw a catgirl who was timidly covering herself with bedsheets and a near nude man, who was irate at Subaru's break-in. The couple was about to get it heated before he interrupted, it seemed.
"Oh, u-uh... now this is awkward."
"Who the hell are you?! Why are you in my house?!" The man balled his fists as he quickly got out of the bed, "Get the fu-"
The man's words were muffled when Subaru quickly opted to close their bedroom's door and block it, dragging a dresser to its front.
While the man proceeded to beat against the door, Subaru frantically looked around for the exit, not wanting to stay a minute longer in a stranger's home.
Sighing in relief when he found the exterior hallway, containing stairs and several other doors, not unlike an apartment complex. Electing to waste no time, he descended the stairs.
"Why did this game render the interior of this building anyway? Is it for all of them? " Subaru mused while he moved, reaching the outside after descending the stairs. "My FPS didn't even drop a digit, but most importantly: why the hell were these NPCs doing that, specifically? Even their reactions were just too real."
"THERE HE IS!"
"Ah, shit."
In his brief time of reflection, he didn't notice he had gone to a dead-end. Every side was enclosed and the space was just too short for him to properly bunnyhop.
To make matters worse, the mob completely blocked off the only avenue of escape.
"now hang on we can talk about this" Subaru nervously typed.
The mob didn't seem too keen on wanting to talk. Instead, with fury present in their eyes, they slowly marched towards him with purpose.
"Oh this is bad! What now?"
Turning his mouse, Subaru looked around for an exit, noticing that one probable way of escape were the lines of windows on the surrounding buildings. That is, if they worked properly like the last one did.
The second way of escape were the pallets propped against the walls to his right near what looked like trash.
Thinking quickly, he paused the game to plan his escape by bringing up the menu.
"Good thing this is singleplayer." he sighed in relief.
'I don't really want to invade another apartment after that scene.' He shuddered as he remembered the couple. 'But I might need to again in this case. Then again: nothing guarantees that I'll be able to escape if I do, this mob might get even more outraged thinking that I'm a thief if I do...'
'But with the pallets, I do have an idea of what to do - almost guaranteed escape! I just need to find a way to get their attention off me first. How, though? Hmm...' Looking down, he scratched his chin as he thought of something.
He straightened himself on his seat again. Another idea!
Unpausing the game, he pointed his character skyward and typed:
"look out a flying dragon"
"Huh?"
The massive crowd stopped their approach to turn to curiously glance where he was looking. While the crowd was momentarily distracted by nothing, Subaru took the opportunity to sprint towards one of the pallets, grab one, set it on the ground, and jump ontop of it.
When the mob finally came to realize that they have been bamboozled by the oldest trick in the book, they turned to see Subaru casually flying away ontop of the pallet, ascending by an unknown means.
There was nothing the dazzled mob could do other than stare in absolute bewilderment at the man's dark magic.
Subaru, who was using the pallet as a means to transport himself to safety, landed ontop of a building's roof. Before proceeding elsewhere, he turned his character to the crowd, and bid his farewell,
"bye its been fun"
Refusing to elaborate further, he spun his character and ran away.
"Now, to find Lia..."