.hack/FRAGMENT

Saya

version 15.0

Slide in and No One Will Notice

new topic posted 2.19.06

Erika lay on her bed in her room, running her hands through her long dark hair as she stared at the white ceiling that reflected the light from the lamp beside her bed. She was thinking about how much she wanted to go online to play 'The World' but it was such a nice, warm, lazy day that she didn't feel like moving. Such a nice day…she wondered whether it was just as nice in Mac Anu, then again, the weather was almost always beautiful in 'The World.' She closed her dark eyes; the weather must be so nice in the game…

When the girl opened her eyes again, she was staring at the sky. She pulled her hair in front of her face to see; it was a pure, snow white. Erika jerked up to a sitting position and looked around, she was inside the game. But how, how had she gotten there? And most of all, why couldn't she see the screen again?

She felt something go off in her head and checked her e-mail the same way she had done it before, last time she couldn't see the screen. She read over a message from Balmung, asking her to meet with him, Shugo, and Rena in what had quickly become their favorite spot: the café.

Erika looked rested her arm on one of the sheaths at her side that held the blades she used as weapons in this world. Small bells chimed overhead as she pushed open the glass door to the café and immediately spotted Balmung with his long white wings, Shugo dressed in orange from head to toe, and Rena hailing her over with the oversized shining sword (I've done that before, it's actually a lot of fun, scaring the people around you with something that could hack easily hack them in half).

"What'd you call me out for?" (Come on, girl, don't say it that way, it makes it sound like they're challenging you to a duel or something stupid like that.)

Rena stopped waving her sword in the air and Shugo pointed to a fourth chair at the small round table. "Ever since you told us about those files and the whole Sky thing, we decided to go do a little searching on our own."

That piqued the Twin Blade's interest. "And did you find out anything interesting?" (Duh, why else would they have bothered you about it?)

The other Twin Blade shook his head (which usually means no, but apparently to Shugo it can mean anything). "Kind of, nothing we did worked against the corrupt monsters except my Data Drain."

"But that isn't why we e-mailed you," Rena continued on.

Only to be interrupted by Balmung (which was most unusual for him). "I still have some contacts in CC Corp, so I got some inside information on an area that's recently just become off-limits. Shugo's a hacker, so we can get in fairly easily. We're asking you to come along, to see if anything happens."

Erika grinned; she had been waiting for some sort of adventure to happen, things were just too boring for her in the real world. It was a good thing she came, though her means of getting there had been completely blown out of her mind. "Let's go."

The four of them looked up at the dungeon looming before them, well more like a castle really. They exchanged glances before stepping inside, Shugo and Erika at the lead (alright, I guess I have to admit that being a Twin Blade does have some benefits).

The area was just like any other corrupt area Erika had been to so far in the game. The screen fizzing out, that occasional buzzing in her ears, streams of data floating into the space above them only to disappear. And in the dungeon, patches of walls and floors that were still in data form or that didn't exist at all. But the monsters, they were ordinary, so far.

Ordinary, and extremely easy, though that may have been thanks to Balmung (just because he's stronger than me doesn't mean I'm not at his level…okay, maybe it does). The winged character brought his sword down to slash at one of the monsters and it instantly disappeared into a stream of data that floated not toward the ceiling as many others that they had defeated had done, but instead down the hallway and through a locked door. That meant there was another monster somewhere in the room that they had to defeat.

And it appeared quickly enough; Erika launched herself off the monster's shoulders, flipped around and slashed at the creature's back as she fell-headfirst to the ground while Shugo stabbed at the monster from the front.

A blue treasure chest appeared in front of them and Rena disarmed it while her brother took whatever it was that was inside. Not one word needed to be said; in fact hardly anything was said at all. But that was the way things seemed to go when Erika was in a party with Balmung. She relished the quiet, thinking back on the chaos that had ensued when she had invited both Death and Koto along.

The doors creaked open and Erika looked over at Balmung, who's attention was focused somewhere in front of them, through the door that had just swung itself open. "What's up?"

"Both those data streams went down this hall instead of disappearing."

"That means there's something there," Shugo said, sprinting forward with a head-start that none of the others could catch up to. In the distance, Erika and the others saw him stop. The white-haired teenager was about to ask why, but as they neared the question seemed unnecessary.

A purple haze seeped through the cracks in a door that loomed in front of them. "This has to be it," Rena said.

"You think?" Shugo replied, though not cruelly. They flung open the doors and found a large creature with patches of data and purple on its skin. One of those files had to be here, it had to. Erika could just feel it (there's also the added knowledge that whenever there's a corrupt monster, there's bound to be something it's hiding).

Balmung and Rena hung back as the two Twin Blades ran forward and hacked away at the creature, being the only two that could damage the monster in any way. Shugo ran back and forth, far and near, judging the best time to use the bracelet around his wrist while Erika slashed and cut at it continuously, never straying too far. She spun, slashed at the creature and ended up behind it to perform a special move, taking off just enough points for Shugo to hold up his wrist and yell, "Data Drain!"

Instantly the creature turned into something to weak to pay attention to, which Rena took care of easily, while Erika made her way to the blue treasure chest that had appeared. As she had expected, a strange file name appeared as she sifted through her items. "Well, try it out, open it," Balmung said, though it seemed that the other two had wanted to say the exact same thing.

Erika took a deep breath and opened the file…nothing. "Well, that was unexpected," Balmung said, bemused.

"I thought something really weird would happen," Shugo whined.

"Maybe it's because we used Data Drain to get it, instead of letting Erika just destroy the monster outright," Rena attempted to be reasonable. Either way, nothing had happened so the group made their way back to Mac Anu where they split up the party and went their separate ways.

Meanwhile, Erika stared at her hands and took a deep breath. Had she always been able to do this? To smell the soothing rivers of Mac Anu and to feel the warm breeze against her face and fluttering through her hair…she couldn't recall ever being able to do that before, but she kept this new knowledge to herself and logged out of the game.