--Chapter Two— Criminals Amongst Murderers
I think I must have fallen asleep somewhere along the way, because my memory went black for a good while, because I don't remember the ferry ride over to the mainland, and the next thing I saw was a big green sign proclaiming, "Welcome to Konoha!" in big, happy white letters. I could picture a big ass smiley face saying it, too.
I sat up in my seat, straightening the belt that had gotten twisted in my sleep, rubbing at my cheek and staring out at my new home. The place looked bigger than Kiri, but that was probably because while Kiri was crammed on an island, this place had to make room for all the trees growing everywhere. Steadily, the big patches of forest gave way to more and more houses, until we were smack in the middle of the town, the only trees being the ones growing in carefully regulated intervals from one another, lining streets and making front yards look pretty. That smiley face was beginning to become something much more menacing in my head.
Leaning forward, I tried to catch glimpses of the faces of my new neighbours, mostly those that looked around my age. The key to success is observation, you see. If you understand which people are likely to try and kick your ass early on, you tend to avoid any problems in the future. I'm not quite sure if this same system applies to the species of 'friend.' Get back to me on that one.
My observation time was cut short, however, as we pulled into an apartment complex, and I was forced to get out of the moving van and help unload. A few people sitting outside stared at us as we hauled brown boxes up the stairs, frowning in the way that nosy neighbours do when they're trying to figure out if they want to bake you a fucking pie or not. Apparantly, three young men and a teenage 'girl' do not deserve a pie. It's a shame, really, but at least it let us know that the first thing that needed to go up were the curtains.
Finally, everything was out of the van and moved into respective rooms, piled into corners to make room for the mattresses we'd be sleeping on until we got beds set up. Not that it mattered much, I never really had a frame, so I was used to a mattress. When we were younger, Meizu got it into his head to watch "Chucky" with me in the living room and then plant a red-headed doll underneath my bed. He knew I always kept my crap under there, so when I looked under for Stewpot…
Well, I suppose it doesn't surprise when I say I ran screaming and crying and latched onto Zabuza's leg until he got the stupid doll out of my room and into the garbage. From then on I'd have to take running leaps and get into bed that way, always avoiding coming anywhere near the edge of it, and when I finally broke the bed frame doing so, Zabuza never replaced it. To this day, I've never asked him to.
I also can't seem to look at dolls for very long, either. How strange.
Either way, we didn't waste any time unpacking over the next few days, considering we had nothing else to do. As soon as I got my room done, I decided to go and 'help out' my dear brothers, which pretty much consisted of bugging the absolute shit out of Gozu and moving around Meizu's stuff when he wasn't looking at me. This soon resulted in Gozu losing his temper and chasing me around the apartment until I ran into an open door, effectively ending the game with a bloody nose. Bad luck, considering it was Zabuza who had opened the dreaded door in the first place, and he spent a good time trying not to kill Gozu before sending him to hook up the computer. Lucky bastard, because I was the one that got locked in the closet until the computer was ready.
The entire ordeal was a typical scenario: I wreaked havoc, I got sent to wreak havoc in a virtual world instead. That's probably the entire reason that Zabuza kept up the subscription for as long as he did, because things tended not to go to hell when I was otherwise occupied.
So, I was let out of the closet and led to the room where my machine was hooked up, and after a pointed glare from my guardian I sat my butt down to play. A sequence of button pressing and clicks, and I saw the monitor flicker to life, going dark before the screen was overtaken with the loading screen to my one true addiction. I must say, I am something of an internet junkie. Or, more specifically, a junkie of the Things That Drain Away All Semblance of a Social Life. Otherwise pressed into the letters of MMORPG. In case you didn't catch on, there are only three activities I'm concerned with: sex, the internet, and running.
Another series of clicks, and I watched my little virtual self wake up, the character soon blinking into existence on the main server, an elaborate little town of sorts where you can actually prepare yourself before you run off to get killed by people like me. I watched him idle for the few minutes it took to hook up my headset, another few clicks checking if any of my regular accomplices (whom I affectionately refer to as my minions of death) were online, before moving into the main hustle and bustle of the place to occupy my time.
With none of the regulars online, one's forced to make new friends, something that's much more easily managed if they happened to be represented by a bunch of pixels arranged in a pretty, colourful manner. What's hard, though, is making your first impression by words alone, so you have to be careful how you initiate a conversation. Or maybe that's just my being neurotic. Feel free to tell me.
Luckily, though, I got flagged down by another user rather than the other way around, and I made my way over to where he (I assume) was standing, by the main gate with who appeared to be his friend standing nearby.
"Oi! Sis!" I heard the kid call, the crackle of the headset coming to life in my ear, and I smiled to know that the creature was, in fact, a male. A loud one, but there we are. The one who waved at me was in the typical stereotype of the 'hit things with a sword until they die' method of doing things, heavily armoured to prevent him from getting killed in the process. The one standing to the side, however, was smaller, lightly armoured and armed with knives, apparently to use his friend as a distraction as he slit the enemy's throat. I liked him already.
"You want to party up with us, sis? We're missing a player, and we need someone at a long range." Came the crackle again, and my hand went to the volume to make things easier on my eardrums.
"Yeah, sure. On the condition you stop calling me 'sis.' Where are we going?"
"These coordinates," the slighter of the two finally said, and about a second afterward, the little text window popped up, and I plugged them in, watching the other two.
"Typical dungeon, huh?"
"The loser wants to level up."
"What! Bastard, who're you calling a loser?"
They bickered even as we all gated to the area, the louder of the pair apparently losing quite badly, made flustered by his friend's silence until he gave a groan and gave up. I thought it was all rather adorable, really. He must have heard me snicker to myself from over the headset, because his character turned to mine for a minute before he became even more sullen, running ahead of us to get to the dungeon quicker.
His friend just looked at me and shrugged, as if to assure me this was typical behaviour, and we set off at a run after him, ignoring all the nice little tidbits in the field, headed for the fortress that served as the field's dungeon. Which was a shame, because I'm usually anal about harvesting everything from a field before going in for the kill. Oh well, I'd just return later to make myself feel better.
We entered the fortress, me behind the slighter, apparently user-named Shiro. We stood still for the two seconds it took us to find Kyuubi, that amount of time made shorter by the fact that the character was making such a display as to be utterly impossible to miss.
No, really. If you jump up and down waving your arms, you tend to get noticed. Unfortunately for us, however, it also attracted the attention of the thing he was trying to warn us about. I darted to the side the second I saw the other players coming at us, pushing myself out of range of any attacks that could be operated in a split second. I watched Shiro dart around as well, though he kept closer than I did. None too surprising, as his weapons demanded getting up close and personal. Plus, Kyuubi was in there, and wouldn't last long by himself. A tap of a key, and I watched my meter go up, loading up on the magic necessary to operate my spell, pushing Kyuubi's health meter back up into the green.
That was about all the help the pair needed from me, operating in perfect synchronization with each other, Kyuubi lashing out with his broad sword, knocking their assailants back into Shiro's waiting daggers, and soon enough two of the lower level players were toast, their pixilated bodies fading into nonexistence with a trunk of swag left behind. That left the two higher ones, one pushing at Kyuubi and Shiro to keep them back while the mage worked up a spell of her own. Considering how long it was taking her, I had a very bad feeling that it wasn't something Kyuubi would be able to walk out of, and that would leave Shiro to get hammered by the melee fighter. I whirled, calling at Shiro to support Kyuubi, a potion pushing the latter's health back up to acceptable levels as I went for the mage, running behind her and landing several throwing knives into her back. The massive spell cancelled, she whirled to face me, backing up a few steps closer to her partner, holding still long enough to try and call forth a quick offensive.
Not quick enough. Each time she tried to complete a spell, another knife would find her, interrupting her concentration as I got closer and closer, her health bar dropping rapidly. By this point all her concentration was fixed on healing, her magic stores depleting almost as fast as her health was. Wait for it, wait for it, and then it came: the long pause between healing and hasty retreat that said that she was out of magic, now entirely focused on what potion stores she had. I grinned, pulling back long enough to launch into one of my own spells, one of the few offensive ones I had in my repertoire. Blue light appeared around her, before there was a crack, ice erupting into existence beneath her feet, freezing the character solid as the ice pushed upwards in a spike, impaling the mage where she stood.
The noise must have alerted her partner, because he was breaking away from where Kyuubi and Shiro were, pulling back to try and make a run for the exit. I moved, ignoring the fading corpse of my previous victim, skidding to a halt in front of the exit to block the other player, pushing him back into the cavern with a few knives until he was far enough away for another spell, this time encased in ice until more knives shattered it, him along with it. All three of our characters shifted, coming out of the fighting stance programmed into the game, standing there and staring at one another until I moved to collect the spoils, opening the chests left behind and rifling through the contents for anything good.
"Who the hell were those guys!" came a yell, and I was suddenly very glad I had turned the volume down, "Coming out of nowhere and attacking us! That's not allowed except in the arenas!"
"I don't think they cared, loser." The nickname went unnoticed, though, so deep was Kyuubi's anger towards the players we had just eliminated. Shiro, however, was watching me. "Who exactly were those guys?" he wondered aloud, though I had the sneaking suspicion that the question was aimed, specifically, at me.
I considered my options, then decided to warn the boys now before this happened again. No doubt our usernames would be spread like wildfire, and where I had no reason to worry, these two might.
"Those, unfortunately, were Heretics. Player killers. Of the Krieg clan, to be specific." This bit of information caught Kyuubi's attention as well as cementing Shiro's suspicions.
"How do you know all that?"
"What does a heretic imply, loser? Someone that goes against an established doctrine, against the will of the church, normally."
I gave a nod at that, and Shiro smiled. "Good job. And?"
"Well, why else would a player killer be called a heretic? Not because they go after other players, because there's already a name for that. You also named a specific clan, a way to identify them. That would mean you're a player killer yourself."
Kyuubi whirled to stare at me, and I could almost see his brain working to decide whether or not to draw his weapon on me. I raised my hands, and he froze in place.
"Guilty as charged, but don't worry about me. I have very specific tastes, which you two don't fall under."
"And why should we trust you?"
"Because he would have killed us by now, otherwise. Isn't that right, White Rabbit?"
"Bingo. However, you two are in a bit of trouble by this point. The characters may be dead, but the people behind them aren't. Your usernames will be all over the clan by the time they resurrect themselves, and Krieg is infamous for grudges."
"Our usernames? What about yours?" I laughed a bit at that, though it was more of a sarcastic noise than anything else.
"I'm already on their list." I moved forward then, opening up the trading windows to bestow the stolen goods on my newfound teammates, keeping the status items for myself. It was something to busy myself with as I let them mull things over. I usually waited for an opportune moment to explain my status in the virtual world to new acquaintences, but this happened to be something of an emergency. Like hell I was going to leave the other two in the dark, waiting and looking over their shoulders for the minute someone came to collect the life-debt owed.
"What are we supposed to do, then?"
"Nothing at all, if you choose to. I'll be sure to tell my people to keep an eye out for you two as they're doing their thing, if I happen to not be online. Think of it as body guarding." I rifled through my inventory for a few seconds, before grinning, distributing two identical items to each of the other two players. The symbol was easy enough to recognize, a black ribbon with a white rabbit slashed across it, one of the more simple types of 'armour', edited much like any other clan's distinguishing marks.
"Welcome to the Church of Stewpot, boys."