Disclaimer: I think it's fairly obvious that I don't own .hack but I might as well say it. I don't own Maho and I don't even own the AI in this story. I do, however, own the AI's name and the plot of this story. I also don't own the dialogue near the end. Enjoy this oneshot!
Maho wasn't quite sure what had made her want to try The World. Mostly because everyone was talking about how fun it was. And she kind of thought it would be fun to go on an adventure and not have to worry so much about dying, because you could always come back. Yes maybe that was it. Maho had always been a bit cautious, to the point of being called a scaredy-cat. To add insult to injury, she was allergic to cats. Ironic, huh?
But this story is getting a bit off track, isn't it. Anyway, Maho bought the game and installed it on her computer. She wasn't to worried about finding an original username, considering her own name was unique just by itself. Next she designed her character. She was a Wavemaster with cute blonde pigtails, a soft white top with no neckline, and the bottom part could only be described as two skirts overlapping each other, both a pale blue. To top it off, the character had lovely dark green eyes, instead of Maho's brown ones. Maho put the headset on, picked up the controller and logged in.
"Hmm... Now what do I do?"
She had appeared in front of the blue, slowly revolving Chaos Gate. She had glanced at the instruction booklet and it had said it was best to form a party, but how exactly did you do that? She decided for the time being to wander around Mac Anu.
She was amazed at the realism of The World. There was no way any of this was really happening, but it felt like it did. Her character stood on the bridge and she admired the view of the sparkling water and gondolas. She was so caught in the bliss that she didn't hear someone walk up to her (though it'd be hard to tell anyway, with so many people coming and going).
"Hey there! You wanna trade?" A cheerful voice spoke up. Maho turned her head to see a very strong looking female knight. She had extremely long gray hair that protruded from a bun on the top of her head. She had something like a visor that nearly covered her eyes. Her armour, visor and the shield on her arm were covered with some sort of fancy design.
"Um, no thanks. I'm new here so I don't have many items." Maho turned her whole body around. It seemed kind of rude to her to talk to a stranger over her shoulder.
The knight smiled. "Wow, you're new! So am I!". Hearing this, Maho typed in the command to make her character smile.
"Maybe we could join a party and level up together."
"I'd love to, but I don't know how."
The knight crossed her arms. "Really? What, you just logged in five minutes ago?"
"Actually, yeah I did."
"Oh. Well, we exchange member addresses. You do know how do that, right?" Maho would have gotten mad, but she knew the girl was trying to be polite and help her. It took her a while to open the right window, but eventually she was able to email the address. She got another back, and added it to the empty list. The name Brigit showed up, along with character stats and a picture.
"Now what?"
"Now I'll ask you to join my party and you just accept it." Brigit was starting to sound a bit like an arrogant teacher or something, being so proud at teaching a person something.
Once Maho accepted, they started discussing which field they could go to, and they set out.
The area was snowy and had buildings practically placed at random. Golden portals glowed in the falling snowflakes. The two ran up to one where three goblins jumped out at them. Brigit attacked with her sword while Maho attacked with thunder and fire spells. The goblins died fairly quickly and the words 28EXP appeared on Maho's screen.
"What, that's it?" She cried out in disappointment.
Brigit sheathed her sword. "The monsters are stronger in the dungeon and give you more experience. But it's probably best if we stay out here for a while."
So that was how it went. Constant, endless training. Maho was getting bored rather quickly, but it didn't seem fair to Brigit if she logged out now. They'd already started chatting to each other about what they were like in real life. Maho had said she had a cat allergy and Brigit said that she had a twin brother and that she was soon going into 9th grade. That made Maho feel embarrassed. She was in 7th grade.
They eventually reached the final floor, which had the Gott Statue in it. They recieved a rare staff, which Brigit happily handed over, even though Maho said that she should keep it to trade.
They teleported back to town and Maho said she felt it would be best to log off. They said farewells, along with promises to meet up again.
A few days later, Maho wanted to see if she could fight solo. She instantly knew it was a bad idea. She used up all her speed charms in ten minutes because she had to run away from monsters. At the moment she was safe and panting from running. Though why she was panting, I'll never know. Anyway...
"Oh, I might as well gate out. I haven't gained anything." She groaned, her avatar slightly bent over to exaggerate the defeated feeling going through her. And she was just about to hit the command when...
"Excuse me. Do you want to play together?"
Maho almost screamed, the sweet voice surprised her so much. When she skidded around she found herself looking at a young girl with short red hair, a simple white sun-dress and no shoes on her feet. She also had angel wings coming out her back. She(Maho) sighed relief.
"Oh my goodness, you scared me!"
The angel girl giggled and apologized. "Will you play with me?" She repeated. She looked rather cute, standing there asking for a play-mate.
"You mean you want to join a party?"
"Sure."
"Okay, what's your name and member address?"
"Don't got one."
After hearing this, Maho dropped her controller and quickly picked it back up. That was impossible.
"How can you not have a name and address!"
The girl shrugged, "Dunno. Just don't."
Maho tried to calm herself down. Maybe this was an event. Yeah that was it. CC Corp sometimes made up weird events like this all the time. She decided to play along.
"Okay, how about if I name you? You can be... Kami! Yeah, that seems like a nice name."
Kami gave a big smile and nodded her head enthusiastically.
"And we'll just stay here for now, okay?" This event was reminding Maho of caring for a little brother or sister or something. Kami instantly flopped down on the grass, asking if they could play Shiritori. Before she knew it, Maho's mom was telling her to get off the computer and get to bed. She told Kami she was logging out.
"Okays. I'll be right here when you get back.
So Maho and Kami spent most of their time together. They were forming a good friendship and whenever Maho felt down she'd just think to herself, I'll log into the World later and Kami and I will play together. It was strange though, how the event wasn't really going anywhere. Kami was maturing a bit more each time Maho saw her, but besides that, she never changed. She was almost always in the area where the two met, but sometimes she took Maho to another place, but they weren't anywhere that Maho couldn't have gotten to on her own. This event was weird.
It was one of the days that Maho and Brigit were together. Brigit will know about this. She loves the World. She knows everything.
"Hey Brigit."
"Yeah?" They were in Dun Loreig and sitting on a grassy bank
"Does the World sometimes... get glitches in it?"
Brigit got that teacher look back on her face. It wasn't huge, but she get a little bit know-it-all sometimes, but she was loyal to her character.
"Sometimes, but CC Corp fights against that. They've been having a lot of trouble with Vagrant AI's lately."
Maho was interested now.
"Ooh, what are they?"
"Well, NPC's are created to add a bit of realism to the World but sometimes something strange happens with them where they act almost human. Nobody can really tell the difference between them and players. Apparently The World has people who hunt them down and delete them. That way, The World's safe. If bugs and glitches existed all the time the World would be ruined and that's definetly no fun."
"Um, yeah." That was a lot of imformation to take in, and Maho was busy thinking. Does that mean Kami's an AI? That would explain everything
"Why are you asking?"
"Huh?" Maho lifted her eyes back up from the ground and looked at Brigit. The knight had a curious expression on her face and she probably wasn't going to let the question slip by.
"I said, 'why are you asking?'."
"Oh nothing really, just this weird thing happened to me yesterday that's all." Just then Maho blinked and was frozen in place for a few seconds. When she came back she explained that her mom was calling her and she had to leave.
The next day Maho and Kami were together again, just sitting in silence, a rare occasion. Maho had her legs crossed and Kami had her legs bent up to her chest.
Out of nowhere she asked, "Maho, do you think the world is cruel?"
This required a few moments of thought. Was she talking about The World or the real world? Did it really matter?
"No, I like the world just fine. I don't think it's cruel."
Kami blinked and seemed content, changing the subject by saying it was too bad that they didn't have cards to play with.
Maho disappeared for a few days. Not literally, but she had gone on vacation with her parents and wasn't able to log onto the World for a long time.
One one of these days, Kami was getting impatient for her friend to come and decided to look for her. She teleported herself to Mac Anu and looked left and right before walking around. She saw a heavy blade just ahead of her and decided to ask him.
"Um, excuse me. Do you know where my friend is?"
The heavy blade looked her up and down. "Who's your friend?"
"Oh, you don't know her? That's too bad, she's lotsa fun! Maybe you two'll meet each other someday." And with that she walked away to continue her search. The heavy blade stared after her and decided he should send an e-mail.
People never see a debugger in person, even though they say they have, and that's because the debuggers usually shut a large area down before they do anything. If the other players knew about it, they'd say it was a stupid idea but the debuggers just liked their privacy, simple as that. As Kami continued her search for Maho she was one second walking through a bustling town and in the next second there was a complete ghost town. She stood there, looking around nervously, wondering where everyone had gone.
At that moment the sound of people warping into the area was heard and Kami turned around to see a large group of knightly looking people, all of them with the same design except for two. One was a woman with a strange looking outfit and black hair, and the other was girl with silver hair and a green dress. The woman raised the spear so it was pointing straight at Kami, paralyzed with fear.
"You, Vagrant AI, are to be deleted in the name of the Cobalt Knight Brigade!"
The little angel girl took half a step backwards and then turned and ran as quickly as she could. The woman yelled an order and they started chasing her. The poor girl ran and ran, dodging down side streets to try and shake off her pursuers. But they always seemed to keep up with her and she soon stopped, finding herslef in an alley, glancing frantically around for a way out. Oh, how I wish I could fly with these wings. Just when she finished that thought, a spear hit her on the back, forcing Kami against the alley wall, where all she could do was place a hand against the brick and shiver. The woman walked forward and Kami trembled at noticing that her eyes were different colors.
"You've been quite the handful." Another spear hit the AI's head, making her shriek. The woman continued, "You irksome little rogue NPC. Did some meddling hacker stick you in this server for kicks?"
The "irksome NPC" tried to plead her innocence, but now the woman was saying something to the other knights behind her, something about "employee" and "responsibility" and "pay cuts". The girl with the silver hair didn't seem to be doing anyhting at the moment. The broken angel started to cry, knowing that her time was coming soon. The woman turned her attention back to Kami.
"Rules have been set up to protect The World and it's users... Rules that must be followed. We cannot allow irregularities, such as Vagrant AI's to enter the system." She then gripped the spear in her hands, ready to swing. In a feeble attempt to be rescued, Kami cried out for help, but nobody was there to answer her. The spear struck her body and with a scream filled with pain, the angel disappeared, leaving only a single feather and the cobblestone.
When Maho came back from her vacation, the first thing she did after unpacking (and sleeping off the jet lag) was log into The World to check on Kami. But the girl wasn't in her usual area.
"Well, that's weird. Oh, I know! She must've been worried about me and started looking for me." And with that note, Maho gated out and went to Mac Anu, the most sensible to start.
In the town, Maho aksed everyone she met up with but nobody had seen a red-haired girl with angel wings. Starting to feel dissapointed and a bit worried, she walked up to a girl (at least, it looked like a girl) with a long, blonde braid and a green attire that made some people think of a maid's oufit.
"Excuse me, but have you seen a girl with red hair and small angel wings?"
Heavy (her name was displayed when Maho talked to her) thought for a few seconds, her head moving slightly back and forth. Finally, "I don't think I've seen someone like that but it sounds familiar. Hey, wasn't that the description of the NPC that got deleted?"
Maho jumped in surprise. There was no way her friend had been deleted.
"R-really? Where did you hear this?" She said, trying to keep her voice steady and uncaring.
"It was announced on the message boards this morning, I think, that CC Corp. had found a Vagrant AI, and deleted it. Good news for us, huh? That way The World is still fine."
Maho just nodded and thanked the girl. Walking away, she decided that maybe she should log out for now. For some reason, she remember the last thing that Kami had asked her.
Yes, she thought, yes, I think the world is cruel.
Okay, to start off, this took waaaay too long to write. It's not even that long, and really weak at parts. Mostly because the whole story was just supposed to be about the angel AI being deleted. Now you're probably wondering why I decided to write this. Simple, I had thought of doing a small thing of the angel girl's thoughts, and then after reading /AI BUSTER vol.2, I just felt that Maho needed something more so I sort of combined the two.
Maho's cat allergy and her being in the seventh grade are there just for fun, they have absolutely no relation to /AI BUSTER. Kami actually means "god" in Japanese and I thought would be a lot less obvious than "Angel" which was her name before "Kami" came up.
Anyway, comments are greatly welcome. Was this story good, weak, a bit of in between? I'd like to know.