Disclaimer: I don't own the right to .Hack or any of their characters at all. The only things I own is my made up characters. Whatever.
A/N: OK. So it has been how long since I updated this story? Well, way too long for some and since my internet connection is finally wanting to cooperate with me, I can update. For those who love this story, thanks. Looking forward to reviews.
Chapter 3: Troublesome Times
I stood in the center of the Mac Anu bridge with my sword crossed with Balmung's. His strength was a great as my own and contributed that to him playing the game so long that he finally managed to get to a level where his strength was the same as mine, "I'm not here to fight you. At least, not today that is," I chuckled hoping he wouldn't call my bluff.
"Balmung let him go," DarkAngel pleaded with him, "I told you what happened to him so leave him alone."
Balmung seemed to give some ground and I shouldered my blade after he submitted, "Wow, I'm amazed you gave in so quickly. Things have changed in these last four years."
"Our score hasn't been settled," Balmung simply put it, "Angel told me about Morganna and how she possesed you during our last battle. Just know that we will fight again, but just not today being that I have work to do," he turned to DarkAngel, "It's time we reported in."
"Yeah, we should get going before they think we're taking a break or having one of our little interludes," she giggled at him and kissed his cheek.
"Could you not do something like that while I'm around," I groaned, remembering that they were an item, not only in the game but in the real world too, "What do you mean by job?"
"Balmung and I have been hired by CCcorp. as administrators, well Balmung was and one of his demands is that I'm his assistant," she grabbed Balmung's arm.
"He doesn't need to know about our personal lives, Angel. Let's just go," Balmung took flight.
"It's good that you're back Jon. I was really starting to worry about you being that you turned all hermit on us after you got out four years ago," she began to hover slightly off the ground as she flapped her wings, "I'll mail you sometime."
"Whatever," I could really care less what those two were up to, but knowing that they were administrators took me by surprise. I logged out and checked my mail to see that Lios had given me specific instructions on how to carry out my investigation. I really didn't read it over, because I already told him I wanted no interferance with my search and to let me do it on my own. If he wanted to set some restrictions for me, I wanted to see him try. I looked over the expansion set again and decided I should alter my current character with the newer classes. Each one had its own good and bad things to them. They all had certain requirements to them but since I was given the limited edition from CCcorp., I didn't need to have the requirements.
Werewolf: Strength of a Heavy Blade and fast as a Twin Blade and can transform into a wolf, but can't equip weapons, and uses hand-to-hand combat. I wasn't giving up my sword, enough said.
Angelic Knight: Simply a Blademaster with better phyiscal defense and wings, but losses magic defense and is a slower than a normal blademaster due to the mass amounts of armor on them. Balmung and Jasmine used this class, and I would rather kill myself than use that class.
Ninja: Uses Twin Blade and Blademaster weapons and has instant kill techs plus can use cloaking techs, but can't use a lot of armor and physical defence is lower. I admit the instant kill feature is cool, but I can't give up too much defence.
Elemental: Has the magic power of Wavemasters, and have the strength to deal with enemies with magic immunity. Problem with them is that the HP is very low and I'm used to having a lot, and armor was still limted to Wavemaster equipable.
Dual Sword: Uses two Heavy Blades type swords and can combine tech of each sword for more powerful ones. Drawback is that speed is decreased, SP is lower than a regular Heavy Blade, and hand armor was unusable. Being I just made my Raikiri, it would cool to use both of my swords, but I'm not sure if I want to give up armor.
After looking over each class I decided to go with the Dual Sword class being that I had two great swords now and letting one go to waste would be stupid. The character model was reformed without the hand armor and that the clothing seemed to be lengthened a bit. I logged in to get a first hand look at the new model. First thing I noticed was that I was wearing my normal sleaveless shirt but over that was a jacket with a hood in back. I sliced off the hood then checked my wrist to see that my bracelet tattoo was still there then noticed I had on long, light blue pants that I sliced into shorts. I got a good look at my face and noticed that my once spiked hair had fallen and hit the back of my neck. I found no point in messing with my appearance even more being that I look very similar to the way I did before, just with little changes. I pulled out my Tidal Sword and held it in my left hand while I summoned my Raikiri in my right. I admit, with both swords equipped, I felt weighed down and unable to move as well as I used to, but I just figured I would have to get used to it. I went to the Sigma server and found myself in the flying Fort Ouph. I walked around town and noticed a few players gawk at me and saying something about the message boards, but I didn't care too much of what they had to say. As I neared the weapons shop I noticed the blacksmith NPC was twitching a bit and figured it was a glitch, but then the NPC called me over and I noticed the voice coming from him, "What do you want now Lios?"
"I thought I gave you instuctions to stay inside the Lambda and Delta servers until I said it was alright for you to visit other ones," the gruff voice came from the pleasant looking blacksmith.
"I told you I want no restrictions, and I meant it," I shot back, "I'm doing this my own way, and if you don't like it, then tough shit. Even if you took away my passcard, I still have this," I pulled back my sleave and brought the bracelet to life.
"CCcorp. has to keep some kind of control on you and I'm just following orders."
"Whatever. If you guys want to try and keep me from doing my job, then go ahead," I started to walk away, "One last thing, Balmung and DarkAngel are admisistrators now," I still wasn't convinced about what Jasmine had told me.
"Yes, Balmung is an administrator and DarkAngel is one of his assistant administrators. Why do you ask?"
"If your going to send someone to stop me one day, make sure it's him," I grinned as I continued to walk away. I knew then that Lios would either accept my terms or revoke my access card and sick Balmung on me. Either way, I get what I want. I walked over to the grunty pen and my little grunty, who I hadn't seen in years tackled me to the ground. At first I could tell from either happiness or anger, or a combination of the two. He snorted at me then scrunched his face at me then I knew the little animal was pissed that I hadn't fed him in years, so I pulled out a couple white cherries I had found and tossed them to him, which he ate before they hit the ground. After finishing the cherries, his body started to glow and clouds started forming around him to the point where I couldn't make out his shape. After a few moments of suspence, thinking that I had just killed my grunty, the clouds dissappeared to show a watery figure that was in the shape of a grunty. I walked up to it and touched it's watery surface which felt solid at first then my hand passed into his body.
The grunty laughed as I pulled hand free of its body, "Ah, blue-king, it's about time I've grown up. As thanks for taking care of me, I'll give you this grunty flute, and I'll trade you some items."
"Yeah, whatever," I continued through the fort as my grunty walked over to the weapon store. I found nothing of great interest in the town so I logged off and started to lose hope in my search being that nothing was happening. I looked over the message boards and ound an interesting threads that talked had the title, "Legendary Players." I looked into the thread and the first couple of posts were only about my returning to the game, my confrontation with Balmung, and people wondering if Balmung and I were going to have a rematch. I personally wanted one, being I could release some anger on him. The last couple of posts caught my eye cause they talked about Kite and Blackrose. Lan had told me soon after the other comatose players came out of their illness, Kite and Blackrose stopped playing the game like I had. Their sudden return to the game struck me as strange, but then again I was back. The last post said they were going to a training field which surprised me being that both of them had to be high levels, so why would they go to a training field? I quickly logged in to search them out and question them about the new coma victims. I had to admit, I liked having the power to enter administrator areas and use their equipment, because I didn't have to go around town looking for someone who had noticed the two enter the field. All I had to do was enter the player data and screen name, and the game searched them out for me, but after a few minutes the search turned up empty. I then ran a search for Kite and Blackrose's character models which anyone could be using but most likely not together like those two would be. I got only one match for each model and the two were indeed together in a training field so I warped there immedately. At first, nothing was wrong as I entered the field. The were random animals running around the field but nothing even a noob couldn't handle. After dealing with some little anoiances, a strange violet portal appeared in front of me and a Wyrm emerged from it. Wyrms weren't that hard of an enemy, but for a training field, it was definately out of place. I quickly pulled out my swords and sliced it's head off but as I started to walk away, the head floated back to the body and re-attached itself, "Fuck, a data bug," I saw the innerds of the beast to see that they glew a bright green which was a common characteristic of data bug, but this one didn't have the virus armor plating that previous ones had. I slashed constantly at the beast making it fall to the ground. The damage I dealt to this thing would have killed it thirty times, but it just kept on rising and tried to attack more and more often. I kept thinking to myself, when is this bastard going to enter "protect break" so I can drain him, but it never happened. I gave up hope on the protect break and pulled back my sleave to bring out my bracelet when my left arm suddenly became paralyzed.
"You musn't use your breacelet here," a fimiliar voice spoke in my head, not Morganna's, but Aura's.
"What are you talking about, if I don't use it, this thing will kill me," I shouted at the monster but meaning Aura.
"If you use your bracelet, Cubia will return and so will Morganna," Aura's voice rang in my head as I blocked the wrym's tail with my Raikiri.
"Can you be a little more helpful then," I sliced off the tail then it's wings but they only regenerated. She was silent which signaled she had no other idea and I was running out of options, granted I was only recieving little scratches but I didn't bring any healing items and I was running low on SP, "Fine, I don't care if she comes back, I'll kick Morganna's ass again," I brought my bracelet to life and shot a data drain at the data bugged wyrm. The data stream collided with the wyrm and bounced away as the the protection shield appeared around the beast. I began to lose hope, but soon after the field apperead it began to crack and shattered. I willed the data drain to loop around and strike the wyrm from behind and as the flying monster approached me, it froze right before it could attack. It's body began the dissolve peice by peice and the data returned to my bracelet.
"They will come for you now," Aura piped up as I relaxed, "Cubia will not rest until she has destroyed your bracelet and Mother won't stop until she destroys you."
"Wow, people wanting to kill me, deva freakin vu," I shouted at the girl who wasn't anywhere near me, "I don't care about that. Cubia was beaten by Kite, right? I beat Morganna too so I can do it again. If you're not going to help me, Aura, then don't bother me," I stood and continued looking for Kite and Blackrose. I ran around the field for about thirty minutes before I started to give up hope on the field and was about to enter the dungeon when I heard a scream coming from my left and ran to see who it was. As I got closer to where it came from, I saw a player running from a golem, which was another mid-level monster that shouldn't belong in a training field. After getting closer, I noticed that the player was Blackrose, but why would she be running away from anything, much less a golem. The thing that caught me most was that she was running alone and not with Kite.
"Shugo, where the hell are you," she screamed out as she continued running. She was slowly outrunning the golem so I left her for the moment to look for Kite. Not even a mintue later I found the pale body of Kite and began inspecting it to see what had happened. I found that this wasn't Kite but somone using his character model named Shugo and that the bracelet wasn't on him. After finding out that he okay I tossed him a revive and sprinted back toward Blackrose before that golem caught her and killed her. They must have gotten far because I ran for about twenty straight minutes before I reached a large building and I heard Blackrose scream again from inside it. She came out onto a pathway that ended in a dead-end and I noticed the golem was going through the doorway out to her. The walkway cracked slightly under the golem's weight, and the golem looked puzzled at the sound, and Blackrose froze instantly in fear. The golem backed up a bit then raised a fist and I knew what was coming next and I couldn't do anything to save her. The golem smashed his fist into the pathway, destroying it and causing Blackrose to plummet to her certain death. I ran to her hoping that I could do something but I knew that was pointless, but someone caught her in mid-air and floated down with her in his arms. I got one look at who it was and noticed it was that bastard Balmung and as soon as he saw me, things would get much worse so I ducked behind a hill, hoping he wouldn't see me. He set down Blackrose as the golem jumped down and landed in front of them. Balmung slowly turned around and unsheathed his sword and charged at the giant rock creature. Like the wyrm I fought, this golem regenerated every bit of damage that Balmung inflicted and came back stronger than before and began inflicting Balmung with massive damage. Don't get me wrong, Balmung is strong, but no one can fight forever unlike data bugs. I was tempted to go out there and help Balmung kill the golem, but as I started to move I heard another voice shouting.
"Rena, are you alright Rena," he walked up and saw Balmung fighting the golem but hadn't seen me, "Who the hell is that?"
"Shugo, use the power of the bracelet on this creature to defeat it," Balmung shouted back to the confused twin blade.
"How do you know about it and hey," his wrist jerked forward and I now noticed that his left wrist had a gold bracelet around it. The bracelet shined brightly and blinded me for a second then the light faded and the golem had been transformed into a small scarecrow that ran from everyone. I saw that Balmung had left without any kind of trace which was his typical thing to do when helping other players. Shugo walked up to Blackrose and suddenly the scarecrow that had ran towards me was killed by a Rai Don spell. A wavemaster showed herself to Blackrose and Shugo and introduced herself as Mireille. She eyed Shugo intensely, mostly his bracelet, and I thought she was one of those wierd players whose sole purpose in the game was to collect items, but never use them. After a while I got tired of watching the three and began to walk off but a hand touched my shoulder and grasped it slightly.
"You think I didn't notice you huh," a high-pitched voice said, "Ice Demon Engima."
"And you are," I kept my cool being that I didn't want to cause something.
"Mireille the wavemaster," she eyed me evily, "and I know all about you Enigma or should I call you Jon instead?"
"You know a little too much for just a simple fan, or you might be an enemy," I reached back for my sword.
"So you're going to use your fabled Tidal Sword? To see such a rare weapon used is a great honor," she giggled and jumped up and down, "Although I have seen it before."
I grinned at her, being I had a stalker on my hands, "The incident at Mac Anu the other day. So you saw everything, didn't you, little wavemaster?"
"Yes, even your little scuffle with Lord Balmung," she giggled again, "It seems things aren't settled between you two."
"Whatever, I'm done with this game of twenty questions, I'm leaving now."
"At least give me your member address so I can contact you later," she pleaded. I saw no harm in it so I gave it to her being that she would follow me if I didn't, "Thanks a lot Jon."
"I'm Enigma here," I told her coldly. I only let my close friends call me by my real name in "The World". I logged out and went to sleep thinking about how that guy, Shugo got that bracelet. Aura must have given to him, but for what reason and why was it visible even when it wasn't been used?
Chapter 3 End\
A/N: I am using a new computer now that DIDN'T come with Microsoft Word, so I don't have spell check. Sue me if I'm not the best speller ever. Please review to show you really care. LATES.