State: Chapter 02: A Friend in Need
Concerned Characters: Currently Kite, Tsukasa, Sora, Mimiru.
Pairing: No pairings as of yet.
Disclaimer: See previous chapter.
A/N: I'm posting the second chapter quickly because, well, the other was more like a prologue and was very short. If you look closely, I'm sure you'll find errors with the lines and all. This is because I didn't watch the episode when I made it and didn't bother to change it since it was unimportant for the story. In theory, you don't need to watch the series again to understand it.
Sorry for the grammar and the weirdly phrased sentences this may contain, I'll try to improve it!
Enjoy!
Chapter 02: A Friend in Need
The boy had been lying unconscious on the ground for a while now. If anyone had been there, they would have wondered how someone could fall asleep in such a place. But there was no one there – just the boy.
The dungeon was cold and slimy. Its horrid atmosphere eventually disturbed his sensitive sleep. His muscles twitched slightly, nostrils flared as if testing the air. His eyes slowly opened, and he moved his hand to get up from his face-faulted position. He stopped however, as if realizing something. was not right. He brought his hand to his eyes and noticed the sluglike texture of the dungeon which slid between his fingers.
The white-haired boy sat up, examining everything around him. He then got up, using his nearby staff as a crutch and brushing his robe. He looked disoriented, as if he did not recognize his surroundings.
Whatever musings he had were interrupted by the arrival of a young and very scantily clad girl. Armor made up much of her clothing and she carried a long sword on her back, like all Heavy Blades did. At seeing the boy Wavemaster, she exclaimed, "Ah! Somebody is already here!"
The other stiffened at her voice. Clutching his staff protectively, he cast a purple-eyed glare at her. She did not seem to take offence at this and approached as the boy backed away. But all she did was examine his staff closely, then him, before cheerfully announcing:"Wow! I never saw a Wavemaster traveling without a party! You must be very strong!"
He did not reply again; if he was an animal, he would have bared his fangs and she would have understood. But that was not the case.
"Nice to meet you then, I'm Mimiru!"
Looking away now, the boy seemed to run various possibilities through his mind.
"Huh? What is it?" The brown-haired and tanned girl seemed to finally notice his uneasiness. But before she could say another word to him, the boy took a sprite ocarina from his items and used it, disappearing in a flash of three yellow circles.
Far from this scene, that is if you can use a term of distance in the virtual online game of The World, another set of players also had a very unpleasant interaction with a certain player. The black-haired Wavemaster was all alone now;, he cursed his lack of resurrecting spells as both his comrades had fallen down by the hand of a very particular enemy.
'Those Player Killers nowadays are becoming worse!' were his last thoughts as his character turned grey and fell on the ground. Mimicking a move of sweeping his blades, the terrible dark green-haired PKer by the name of Sora grinned widely as he hummed a tune. Those days, his victims were becoming worse and worse as they were killed.- that, or he was just getting better at beating them up.
To think he would not even need to kill them if they had just given him their member addresses! Well, he still would have, for fun, but it was definitely a little frustrating to never gain anything from his chases; just a little.
Like always, he quickly moved out of the lightened path of the donjon and hid in the shadow. It was always fun to surprise his victims in a predatory way. Still singing, he kept his voice down as he went deeper in the dungeon. He doubted there was anyone else here, but he wanted to make sure if that was the case. If not, he could always sell whatever idiotic treasures were kept in the Gott Statue room.
Upon passing a series of portals that were unactivated, the black Twin Blade began to suspect he was the only adventurer in the dungeon. After using a fairy orb, Sora continued toward the last treasure room of the dungeon. After a moment of deep attention to see if anyone was here, he sighed in disapointment and pressed his hand to the door.
But as it started to open, Sora retained an exlamation of surprise, realizing someone was actually there. He readied his blades, hoping he had not lost the element of surprise. The lack of any reaction from the other player made him press further on the door, finally opening it. Sora noticed then that the player who caught his eyes on his first try was just lying, face on the ground, like some unliving corpse.
Of course, Sora did not have to be a PK to know how ridiculous this idea was. Even a "newbie" would have known that players who were dead turned gray, and disappeared if the entire party was wiped out, like the one Sora killed not too long ago. Which meant the player was just faking death. The PK smiled, did whoever was lying here think they would go unnoticed by him if they faked being dead? His victims were getting stupider as they became weaker it seemed.
Curiously, the confident man approached the unmoving figure. He was still cautious. This entire situation was suspicious, and the idea of a PC playing opposum was really strange. Upon taking a closer look, he still had a hard time deciding if the player was faking. The boy who was lying here was a Twin Blade, the same class as him, but his avatar model was different. He looked like a short teenager, his hair was of a teal-greenish color, on his face were two wave tatoos in the form of two red triangles, one in another, bottomless, which rose up on each of his cheeks. Even without counting the floppy hat he wore his clothes were surprising. They were of a red-orange color which, he was sure, was not someting a player could choose upon the character's creation. Had this guy won a contest? If so, was he strong? Sora was excited at the thought. This could be interesting!
It did not seem that he would be waking up anytime soon, though. This disappointed Sora. He was now nearly certain the player was not faking his state. If so, he must have fallen unconscious from overwork and lack of sleep. The PK sat down and started to hum again. He was not going to let some juicy prey get away from him by sleeping. His player looked at the hour on his computer clock, there was still time before his curfiew. It would have been easy to kill him now, but it scarcely be entertaining. Crossing his legs, he settled in to wait.
The first thing Kite noticed, as he started to regain consciousness, was that he was not lying on his bed. The floor was cold and hard enough to hurt his face and his back. Thinking he must have fallen off the bed during the night, Kite groaned slightly out of displeasure. He moved a hand to stand up and go back to his couch.
But it just seemed like a lot of things were wrong to him. The first was that his hand could not feel the floor, as if it was protected by some barrier. The second was that the air on his face felt too cold compared to his room's normal temperature. The last was the air that had a disgusting scent to it, and went badly with a slight humming tune he was hearing.
Blue eyes snapped open. A feeling of fear sprung, tightening his stomach muscles as he recalled the last events he had gone through before falling unconscious. He sat up straight with surpising speed... Only to be met by two sharp and familiar blades, mere inches away from his face. The man who held them smiled widely.
"Hoya there! No need to be so fast on leaving. We haven't been properly introduced yet, right?" he sing-songed with a sickeningly happy tune.
Kite looked up at the dark-green haired man. His long hair held back with a purple bandana, red eyes, and black and purple clothing were awfully familiar. The boy's eyes widened in recognition as he recalled the trapped player in Skeith's wand. A coma victim.
And he was awake.
"Sora?" He questioned tentatively. It looked like it was his screen name. He had only heard his name once or so. His heart was beating fast now. If Sora was alright then the others were too, right?
"Oh? So you know my name then? I guess it is to be expected after all. This is going to make things easier for us." Something was not right with his tone, Kite could feel it. It was different from the time they "met" in the wand room. It was a darker voice and the gratefulness of the last time was gone.
"What happened Sora?" Kite tried frantically, wanting to know about the other comatose players, "Did we do it? Is She gone now? Is everyone okay? You were there right?"
Out of everything that could have happened, Sora never expected to be flooded with questions asked by a total stranger and soon-to-be victim. His annoyance grew at the same rate as his puzzlement. Maybe he should have just killed him after all.
"Now stop a moment." He brought his blade to Kite's throat to make his demand clear. Kite shut up. "I don't think it is particularly wise to anger someone you've never met with senseless questions. Especially when it's me you are questioning."
Kite's confusion only grew at this answer. He could understand he had showed too much excitement when seeing him, but he was astonished that Sora had failed to remember him. Was memory loss part of a coma's side effects? It was far from the first time he had realized something was wrong with all of this. Really wrong.
"Well, as you seem to have calmed down, shall we proceed then?" He grinned nastily at this and pressed his blade further on Kite's throat, which, surprisingly, made him choke a little. "Your member address if you please?" Sora's voice was slow and sounded as if he was enjoying himself.
The teal-haired boy was now invaded by a strange and tempered panic. He remembered having witnessed a very similar scene from one of the phantasmal memories in the cathedral. But that was it. There could be no more of it because...
"Are you trying to PK me?" His voice held obvious confusion, but no fear. "But you know that PKing was disabled in the new version right?"
It was Sora's turn to be confused. Was this guy nuts? He had to be! If PKing was disabled, then how could he have PKed that other team not too long ago? Besides, if such a upgrade was added, he would be the first to know of it.
"Well, if you are ready to risk your life at such idiotic assumption, I'm not going to do any favors for you." At this, he slashed his weapons at Kite's neck. The red-clad one barely avoided the hit with his quick reflexes. White strips of fabric from his tunic were torn off in the process. A voice in his head he had refused to listen to until now was chanting a disheartening refrain: This was too real. It was not something that should happen in the game; to feel the cold in a room, to smell its rotten odor... or to feel a blade going deeper into your throat.
He quickly got up and backed away from the PK, wishing for his weapons. As soon as the thought materialized in his head, he felt a weight appearing in each hand. He clutched the powerful blades and readied them in a defensive position. He had never held blades such as these in his life, but he felt as if they were a part of him. Another oddity. He hoped he would soon have time to think clearly about what was going on. He just felt he might go crazy otherwise.
"Then you CAN fight!" the dirty excitement on the other Twin Blade's face was not hidden in the least. "This'll be fun!"
He was on Kite at those words, violently clashing his weapons against Kite's. This one held his ground as Sora used a series of complicated and multi-hit techniques. The whole attack would have already dealt a lot of damage to an ordinary target. Luckily for Kite, he was far from an ordinary player. And it was not just because of some hidden power; the red-clad Twin Blade had trained hard to fight for his friends and had come to be an extremely powerful character. Another reason why he was not too heavily affected by the attack was because he actually knew his adversary's weapons quite a bit and had used them for a while. What was more, his actual equipped blades were a few levels higher than those.
The attacks continued for a while, but his assailant seemed to tire out after a bit.
"Hum, you may be an idiot, but you know how to defend yourself." Sora had paused for a bit in his attacks. He was as frustated as he was excited by the fact that he had not been able to land any significant blows on the other player. Behind that stupid red hat were actually some hidden abilities after all.
Kite did not respond at first. He was not one to take offence at insults. But the entire situation was starting to get to him and not in a good way. Whatever had happened to Aura, The World and himself was a mystery to him. All he knew was it involved getting feelings in the game he should not have had and a coma victim brought back to life with apparently no memory of his previous state.
"You're strong, if you weren't so annoying you'd even be supportable." Sora heckled again, trying to push him off balance a little.
This time, the blue-haired kid answered back: "Well excuse me, but wasn't it you that came and talked to me in the first place?" he smirked a little at that. Were PKers supposed to have those kind of regrets?
The other Twin Blade frowned. "Sleeping in such a place! I was just curious!"
"Where are we anyway?" Kite suddenly asked.
"A dungeon from Lambda server." Sora did not seem to be bothered by the stupidity of the questions anymore. He was now interested in the other Twin Blade in a deeper way. How could such a powerful player go unnoticed by everyone in the game? And so colorful a character had to be noticed, simply by his design. And he did not seem to know very much about what was currently happening in the game. Sora had a suspicion he could be a hacker, but dismissed it. Hackers would not be so ignorant. But he still knew how to fight and his level was that of a veteran. Was he from an older version then?
"Lambda you say...?" Kite did not remember going to Lambda. He had been at the Omega server when the troubles started, like everyone else.
"Has the stupid old guy never heard of Carmina Gadelica?" The dark-green haired man asked in annoyance.
Kite neither pondered on how the other player came to the conclusion that he was old, nor did he care. "Why are you here anyway? Your level is much higher than the area's." Kite noticed.
"I could ask you the same thing," retorted the man. "But if you think about it, it is normal for PKers like me to take on a lower level to practice their skills."
"Isn't this cowardice?"
"It's the way I play! It's fun," smiled the other.
"But it's not for the ones you PK." remarked Kite.
"They have it coming," Sora shrugged simply, somewhat more moodily than he had wanted to. "All I ask is to be friends with them; that's all."
"But you don't have to kill them if they don't want to."
"I already told you, stupid old guy! It's fun!" Sora was a little more cheerful when thinking of his prey. "If they can't trust me with their member addresses, then they're useless to me." He was now looking at his blades with his red eyes. "And there seems to be a lot of sacrificial pseudo heroes these days."
Kite stared intensely at Sora for a moment before talking again, "So, you are telling me that all you ask from players is their member address?"
"That's correct."
"How about I give you mine?"
"WHAT!!" Of everything he had heard the weirdo say thus far, this was definitely the craziest! Was he not aware of Sora's reputation? Even knowing it, he could still ask for that?! It was the first time since his newbie days that another player had proposed to give him his member address - and totally out of their own, free will! A strange feeling he had not felt for a while started to rise from his stomach. Like crazy dancing butterflies or something.
"Well as long as you let me know yours," continued Kite with a shy smile, "I'm ready to be friends with you."
"Aren't you a little ahead of yourself? Asking for it after I nearly wiped the floor with you?" He was weary now, he was still talking in hopes of impressing the other, but knew he had shown his weakness to the veteran. "And trying to moralize me isn't something I'm going to tolerate."
"I'm not going to moralize you." Promised Kite, "But if you form a party with me, I'd like that you don't do PKing then."
"You're thinking of things that may never be." Sora smirked "Things such as a party and all."
"Isn't it what the member address system is primarily made for?"
"It is, But this doesn't mean I'll go for it though" He was lying. He was excited at the idea of going along with such a powerful ally. And a Twin Blade like him at that.
"Feel free, but I'm not going to let anyone get Pked before my eyes."
Sora grinned, but chose not to answer. After his ruthless assault had been so easily shrugged off by the other player, he would not have dared to try anyway.
They exchanged their member addresses. However, Sora was prevented from questioning his new ally by the arrival of his curfew. Disappointed but still happy, the player logged out, leaving his powerful character behind and going back to his real self, the ten year old Ryou Misaki, who was forced to go to sleep.
The only being still in the dungeon was a very disoriented Twin Blade, left to ponder his present and future decisions.
I thank HieiWannabe for proof-reading this chapter.
A/N: Here it is. Why would I choose Sora? Dunno, he just seemed good for the job. He is hard to write, I don't know if he was good in it...
The plot may take time to develop since I'm making it as I write. Review "If you please"!:p