Hey guys! Thank God it's a four-day weekend! (I say four-day weekend because I usually count Friday as one of the days because I get to stay up late even though I do that already) It's gonna be pretty busy though because I have to get my stupid car fixed and I think I'm going to go see Deadpool with my girlfriend. I don't know, she wants to go see it so I can't really say no to her lol. Anyway, I really really hope I can make this chapter long and get a few things written because I have been stuck in a writer's block on this story for the past few chapters even though it might not seem like it. Uhh...Please review and comment on the story because if you don't I get sad and I might cry. Not really but there's a possibility! Just kidding. Happy Valentines to anyone who actually likes the holiday, I don't. Don't kill me, I just don't like it for some reason. Okay finally, thanks for reading the story so far and it would be cool if you checked out any of my other stories. I've heard they're good XD. Here's the chapter!
Ch. 16
(Chris's POV)
Putting on the virtual reality helmet was somewhat awkward as I placed it firmly on my head. Thorn gave me a smile as he closed the door and I was once again left alone. I sat up in the bed quickly and took a deep breath. Putting this...awful thing on was bringing back memories and the fact that my breathing was becoming rigid was not helping in the slightest. I just had to calm down right now. If I didn't do this, it might ruin my cover.
"Here goes, I guess..."
I murmured to myself in a stubborn tone as I put the helmet on again. I shivered a bit but I think I'll be okay for the time being. I laid back down and sprawled my whole body on the bed. The bed was just long enough to fit my body since I was tall and fit. How did these things work again? I haven't seen one in about two or three years. And I don't regret not seeing one for that time. But I think I close my eyes and say something...What was it...
"Link start!"
I hear Suguha say in the room next to me. I nodded in memory and sighed. That was it. This is gonna suck...
"Link Start!"
I said before my vision of the room ceiling disappeared. An array of multi-colored beams shot in front of me as if I was going into "light speed". After that, everything just turned white. I was starting to get nervous after five seconds had passed but then I found myself in a street. I blinked and looked down at my body. Everything was intact and my hands felt as if they were real. I knew it was virtual reality but this environment felt much more realistic than the last time I had gotten in one of these. I turned my eyes away from my hands to look around at the tall skyscrapers that surrounded me. If I had to guess, this was obviously New York City. Oh wait, I'm in front of the Freedom Tower. Yep it's New York. I looked around for anyone else but did not see anybody. Suguha said that she would come meet me if we didn't transport to the same place so I should probably just stay here. I sat down on one of the curbs and crossed my arms. I may hate virtual reality but I have to admit, this is pretty realistic for a group of teenagers. I'm not seeing any artificial particles or pixels so I will give them that. They even got the sounds of the city right. It's weird because there are birds flying around, cars driving by with no one in them, and street lights switching every so often.
"Hey!"
I looked away from the distracting environment and saw a girl with long blonde hair walking over to me. I raised an eyebrow and tilted my head in confusion until she finally made it to where I was standing. She seemed to notice that I was a little confused and giggled.
"Hahaha sorry, It's me Suguha. But my name here is Leafa so I would like it if you called me that here instead. So...How do you like the game? This is just New York by the way. If you want to see the whole thing, we would have to visit every single major city in the world! Haha! That would be exhausting!"
She exclaimed with a smile. I nodded with the same facial expression and looked around again.
"It's very realistic."
I said. She smiled real big.
"I know right!? It took some time but I think I really got the details down."
"Wait, you did the designing by yourself?"
I asked her. She shrugged her shoulders and flipped her blonde hair behind her.
"Well not all of it. Charles, Asuna, and I are in charge of designing the game. I just really like doing the cities because I like to make the buildings all different but special. I know that might not make sense but that's okay. You don't have to know it. Anyway, I'm pretty sure we have America done. You don't see any glitches in the system do you?"
She asked me as we began to walk down the sidewalk. I thought about it for a second before pointing at the moving cars.
"There aren't any people driving the cars here."
I told her. Leafa waved it off and walked with her hands behind her back.
"Nah that's okay. We're going to add computerized people to the cars when we start tweaking out the little glitches during the "improvement stage". It's basically where we examine every single thing we have made and make sure that there isn't a problem with it. So far, we are just trying to think of some new ways to make the game even more fun. Maybe you can help us with that Miles. But anyways, when we are done with that, than we can start improving everything and then we can finally release the game! It's going to be so awesome bro!"
She yelled. I couldn't help but smile at her enthusiasm. Kind of wish some of the new rookie's had that determination back at the base...
"Where's Thorn by the way?"
I suddenly asked her when I couldn't see the teenage boy anywhere. I had almost forgotten about him. She looked around as well and swiped her hand down. There, came a holographic menu in front of her with all sorts of options on it. She clicked the "friends" tab in front of her and a message popped up:
You currently have six friends
Would you like to contact them or join their game?
X O
No Yes
She clicked "yes" and brought her finger over to the "contact" button. She then clicked Thorn's name. A little box popped up and a little loading circle appeared. I stared at it before Thorn's face popped up on it. His face showed some panic and guilt as he looked at Leafa from his side of the holographic scene.
"Where are you?"
She asked him. He laughed nervously and tilted the camera upward to show Big Ben in the background. Leafa's green eyes widened for a second.
"Why are you in London!?"
"Well...I had forgotten that I was working with Erin and Charles on the structure of Buckingham Palace and I guess I didn't go back to America before I logged out so I just appeared here. It might take me some time to get over there since we haven't created the "International Portal" system yet so just hang in there. Why don't you show Miles some of the cool stuff we have created like I don't know...The historical figures. I don't know, just show him Leafa! Okay love you!"
His face disappeared and the box went with it. Leafa sighed and swiped her hand up to make the menu disappear. She looked at me and smiled.
"Well I guess it's just you and me until Thorn gets his butt over here. Come on, why don't I show you some of the leaders we have created."
She took my arm again and walked over to a phone booth. I started to ask her what we were doing here but she shook her head and put her finger over my mouth to be quiet. She smirked as we both stepped inside the booth and closed the door behind us. She turned to the phone and punched in some numbers. I honestly had no idea what she was doing as I watched her put in a pattern of numbers. Before I knew it, the phone made a sound and we teleported.
"Holy crap, what was that?"
I asked as we got out of the booth.
"That, my good sir, is a teleporter. Thorn said we hadn't created the international version of it but we have made the domestic one. You put in the number of the location and it will send you there. There will be a phone book next to every single phone so players will be able to go wherever they want.
"Okay...Then where are we now?"
She pointed behind me and I turned to see the White House gleaming in all its executive glory. It actually seemed bigger here than it was in real life but other than that, it was like an exact copy. Before I could say anything, Leafa suggested to me that we should go inside it so we did. Unlike in reality, there wasn't any secret service members to stop us from entering the giant building. She walked the both of us to the Oval office and sat herself in the president's chair.
"So we have created historical world leaders that give you missions whenever you meet them. In our case, the year is Taft so his mission would probably be to help him whenever he gets stuck in the bathtub."
Why so in depth!?
She laughed and propped her brown boots on the brown desk.
"No I'm kidding. It would probably be something like...Go find the Titanic since he was president during that time. Right now though we got Reagan in office. The timeline of the game shifts a lot but we will make sure people know what year it is."
As soon as she stopped talking, President Reagan came in and sat in one of the chairs next to Leafa. My mouth almost fell open at the sight of him.
"Hello Leafa, how are you today?"
"Just chillin Ronald. What about you?"
The president frowned and sighed.
"Not well. I've been trying to find Nancy for an hour now. Have you seen her?"
He asked me as he turned his head. I froze up and shook my head. Leafa put her hand on his shoulder and gave him a serious look.
"Ronnie, I've told you a thousand times. We haven't made her yet."
"Oh yeah...When will you make her?"
Leafa shrugged and laid back in her chair.
"Soon. But for now, you gotta go Mr. President."
She made her menu pop up again and made the president disappear from his chair. I realized that my mouth was still open from the initial surprise of meeting one of my favorite presidents and I closed it before Leafa took notice. She grinned at me and stood up.
"As you can see, you can have conversations with America's most favorited leaders. We have made every single one them, even...Ugh...Jimmy Carter...No haha I'm kidding I have no idea about any of them. Thorn made everything in America that had to do with the historical aspect since he's from there. He said he didn't like Jimmy Carter so I just went along with it. Now, only the creators of the game can change which leader it is or what mission the player gets. There are seven of us so you could say we were like the "Big seven". Get it? Because there was a "Big three"? Yeah? You know what I mean! Oh and yeah, there are two other people in our group you haven't met yet but when they log in we will introduce them to you. So what do you think?"
"I think all of this is pretty cool and I'm impressed that you guys have gotten so much done. Is there anything else?"
I questioned her. I may hate these games but that doesn't mean I can't give these guys some praise. Let's just hope it doesn't turn into another SAO incident...
"Well you said something about making new game modes. What about that?"
Her smile went down a little and she sighed a little louder.
"That is one problem we are trying to work out. We just can't think of anything to put. I don't know why but I think the reason for it is because we have used our brain power to build everything else that there isn't any thought left to think of some cool modes for the game!"
She joked.
"...What about you, do you have any ideas?"
I thought for a minute before an idea popped inside my head. I'm a marine so war is obviously going to be the thing I'm almost always thinking about so that was my idea. But, I had to make sure it wasn't already used.
"Have you made any modes about war yet?"
I asked her.
"Well, some light Call of Duty-like stuff such as capture the flag or team deathmatch. You know, that type of thing but nothing that creative. That's why we need to figure out some ways to make it more exciting and realistic. We want the game to be like a real war. Just without people dying and nations getting conquered."
She said slowly. I walked over to her and smiled a little.
"Well I think I have an idea. How about we make this game even more historical by adding real-world battles that have occurred like D-Day or the Battle of Britain. We can also add some new battles that occurred during our war with Russia. So we would get the player in the battle by giving them a special objective and this would also give them a cool history lesson so they would get to play the game and also ace their history test. We could also change history like giving the players the option of assassinating Hitler."
"Oh that sounds really cool! Yeah, I think we can do that. However, these missions would be in a whole different world from this one. Like, this world would be the starting place where you can get missions and stuff like that and then the "War" world would be where you do those historical battles and conquer nations. Each player or clan would get their own world to play in so nobody would interfere unless they want to. If they do, then we can add a world where clans can try to conquer as many land as they can find and also battle each other. Wow, I think we can make this together Miles!"
She screamed with happiness as she hugged my arm. I chuckled a bit and nodded in agreement. She stepped back and grabbed the president's phone.
"We have teleporting stations in all of the phone booths but the president's phone is also one so let me teleport us to the military base of the game. Hold on, what was that number again? 938-4011? Yeah! That's it!"
Leafa said to herself as we teleported again. This time, I was amazed to see that we were in front of one of the best military academies in the world. West Point.
"This is the military campaign headquarters. So if a player wants to work on his training, he goes here. There are monsters all around the world but here you can gain more experience by paying for a training session. It's not going to cost that much in game currency but it will be certainly worth it. So let's go look into our little idea. Shall we?"
"Yep."
The two of us entered the giant academy and she showed me the war room. The room was filled with all kinds of technology and weapons. It made me think of my base back home to see all of those weapons propped up on the wall. I think I was caught into a daze because Leafa had to wave her hand in front of me to get my attention. I quietly apologized and she said it was okay. She got my attention because she wanted to show me the database where they had all of the military modes set up. She clicked on one of them and a little voice was heard.
"Hmm? Oh hey Leafa!"
Then suddenly, a little...fairy I guess...flew from the database and seated herself on Leafa's shoulder. My eyes widened at the sight of the tiny little girl and Leafa laughed teasingly at me.
"Oh sorry, well it's kind of hard to explain this but Yui, this is Miles. He's a guest of ours. Miles, this is Yui. She's Kazuto and Asuna's daughter."
My mouth fell open and my eyes got even wider.
"Daughter!?"
I asked in amazement. She laughed again and nodded her head.
"It's complicated. Basically all you need to know is that when those two were playing in Sword Art Online, Yui suddenly showed up and had no memory of where she was at. Because of this, the two took her in and then found out she was an AI created to help players in the game or something but because of the whole incident, it messed with her system. But, they all formed a bond and have stayed together ever since. She now helps us on missions and talks to us whenever we just want to hang out. She's also very smart and has information from the internet in her head. So be careful because sometimes she gives off data that you'd rather not want to give out yourself..."
"Hey!"
Yui screamed with her hands on her hips. I looked down and crossed my arms.
"So Kazuto and Asuna were also caught in the SAO incident?"
Leafa looked at me for a second before nodding.
"Yeah, do you know someone who was in it?"
"N-No...I don't..."
I lied. Yui tilted her head in confusion and closed her eyes like she was thinking of something.
"Miles, your anxiety levels are-"
"Leafa, did you get that mode set up!?"
I quickly cut Yui off and she stopped talking. She might be a problem in the future if she keeps doing stuff like that...
"Hmmm...Almost. We're going to need Yui's help on it. Think you're ready for the task Yui? Thorn should arrive here soon if he took a jet here or something. Yui grinned and gave the blonde a thumbs up.
"I sure am. What do you need me to do?"
And that is the end of the chapter! Yeah, I got a lot to do this week so I just ended this chapter with that but the next chapter will have some combat in it and stuff like that. And maybe our little under cover marine can show the group his military skills and kick their asses. But, that's basically the summary of the next chapter. Something like that, and I will also introduce our villain of the story so that will be cool. Please review and comment on the story and tell us what kind of ideas you have for the story. If you have an OC in mind, just keep the idea to yourself for a while because this story is overloaded with OCs lol. Uh...I got my car fixed! And Deadpool is a badass movie! Go see it now! Finally, thanks so much for giving us your time to read this and we will see you next time!
