Never, never again would Kaneki underestimate a cat.

"Ah!" Kaneki yelped, snatching back his hand. He stared at his hand incredulously, watching the red claw marks slowly disappear. As the last of the blemishes vanished, he glanced up at the offender.

The cat, smugly licking a paw, simply flicked its tail and hissed, before disappearing into an alleyway.

Kaneki made a half-hearted attempt to follow it before sinking to the ground. He groaned, dropping his face in his hands. How hard was it to catch a single cat!?

Through his fingers, Kaneki peered blearily at the ground. A set of feet stopped in front of him. Kaneki looked up at Clover's offered hand and gratefully took it, pulling himself up.

"No luck?" Clover asked, smiling sympathetically.

"None." Kaneki swiped a hand tiredly over his eyes. This quest had sounded so easy. Find cat, find cat's stash, retrieve potions, teach the cat a lesson. Simple, right?

Wrong. What that outline didn't include was that the cat was a goddamn demon. Kaneki was convinced. No domesticated pet could be so evil, so cunning, so malevolent..! Kaneki had taken damage from it, dammit. He didn't even know he could take damage in towns.

"I could help you befriend that cat," Clover began, before Kaneki cut her off.

"Thank you for offering, Clover, really. It's just, I feel like I need to play this game without cheating. I want to play this game like it's meant to be played."

Clover looked surprised, before her face softened into a smile. "If that's how you feel, I can't really stop you, huh?" She reached out and squeezed his hand. "I'll be cheering for you!"

Kaneki squeezed back, before letting go. "Thanks for understanding. Now, if I want to complete this quest before I wake up, I better get going."

"Good luck!"

Kaneki jogged down a random street, keeping an eye out for the wicked feline. The path was dotted with NPCs going about their business, and a few players chatting. It was a peaceful part of the town.

That's what made what Kaneki overheard all the more shocking.

"Hey, have you heard?"

Kaneki glanced in the direction of the voice. Two players were sitting on a bench in front of a shop. They were girls, roughly Kaneki's age, and talking in hushed tones.

"There's a PK on the loose! Isn't that scary?" The first girl continued, leaning in towards her friend. "I heard they've been going around Metropolis, killing players and robbing them blind. You'd just be walking around, and BAM!" She brought her palms together loudly, making her friend jump. "You're dead."

"First of all, don't talk about these kinds of things so light-heartedly," Her friend began, hitting her lightly upside the head. "Second, so what? PKs are nothing special, especially in big cities like Metropolis."

"They say there's something fishy about this one. There's not even a screenshot of them yet! Even the Wardens have nothing on them."

Kaneki, aware that he had stopped completely in his tracks and was eavesdropping (and not very subtly), picked up his pace. So even in Gaiasphere, there were rule breakers and crooks. Crime wasn't so easily erased, he supposed.

Stopping by a small fountain, he splashed some water on his face, and stared into his reflection. Would he be targeted by those people? He knew he looked gullible and naïve, courtesy of the last remnants of baby fat on his face. And in Gaiasphere, he didn't know anything, so it was a very real possibility that he would be deceived.

He was letting out a sigh when a hard shove from behind ruined his moment, and because his day was going so well already, plunged him headfirst into the fountain. It wasn't a very big fountain, but his head and shoulders were soaked nevertheless.

He scrambled up, an indignant retort on his lips. "Hey-"his voice tapered off as he made eye contact with the culprit.

It was a teenage girl, and by the looks of her equipment, way higher level than he was. She was shorter than he was, but her long rabbit ears and thick soled boots more than made up for it.

She looked up disinterestedly in him, and muttered a quick apology under her breath before turning away.

Watching her walk away, Kaneki wondered what she was doing here. Wasn't this a town for people whose levels were in the single digits? It wasn't really his business, though. He was supposed to be catching a cat, not speculating on strangers' motives.

If only there was a map to help him track the cat, Kaneki mused. Or maybe some kind of item he could use? Anything to help him find the cat without having to traipse all over town.

Maybe, if he could lure the cat towards him, he could trap it… but how would he even find the potions? For that matter, if he did find the cat, he would have get it to go to its hiding place and follow it, without losing track of it. This would've been easier it the cat at least tolerated him. Instead, it was hate at first sight.

He suddenly caught a quick movement out the corner of his eye. "Speak of the devil," he said, facing down the very cat he hadn't wanted to see. He got ready for another round of clawing and hissing, but to his surprise, the cat simply disappeared around the corner, into the alleyway.

Kaneki was so dumbfounded at the lack of vehemence the cat displayed that he forgot to give chase. When he finally realized that it was getting away, and he was supposed to chase it, the cat had run halfway down the alley and was on top of a roof. How the cat had gotten up there, Kaneki had no idea, but he followed as best as he could on the street, occasionally stumbling over uneven cobblestone and nearly running into signs.

He followed it down side streets, through main roads filled with people (he was sorry for barrelling over that girl, he really was, but he needed to finish this quest, it was a matter of pride now), before the cat finally dove into what looked like a shed.

Kaneki realized that this shed was not even fifty metres from Bruce, the starting NPC.

Kaneki had run all over town trying to catch this stupid devilbeast, and he was tired, and he was extremely annoyed. He flung open the shed door, and there the pilfered potions sat, innocuously left in a clump of hay. Kaneki stuffed the potions into his inventory, and slowly approached the cat.

To the cat's credit, it didn't seem fazed at all, even when faced with Kaneki's best glare, which, admittedly, wasn't very scary.

Kaneki, reached a hand, and flicked its forehead, then ran for his life out of the shed, and hopefully out of range of attacks. Of course, karma was a bitch.

Kaneki slipped and fell, about three metres away from Bruce (the finish line!) and the cat, full of righteous vengeance, caught up. Kaneki watched his life flash before his eyes. It pounced-

"Gotcha!"

Kaneki had never been so happy to see a person in his life as he was to see Clover, with the beast safely contained in her arms.

He got to his feet, dusting himself off. "Thanks for the save."

"No problem!" Clover smiled, returning to petting the cat. Of course, it purred and burrowed into her arms.

"Bruce!" Kaneki called. "I got your potions back." He pulled them out of his inventory, handing them to him.

"Oh, Kaneki! You got the potions back! As promised, here's your reward." Bruce handed over the potions.

[You have completed the quest: Get My Potions Back!]

[NPC: Bruno]

[You have received: 10 Basic Health Potions, 10 Basic Mana Potions, 200 EXP]

[Achievement complete!]

[You have completed your first quest! May this be the first of many.]

[Reward: 100 EXP]

"Thanks! If you ever see me around town, feel free to say hi!" Bruce waved, beaming at Kaneki. His grin was kind of… unnerving. He was way too happy. Kaneki weakly waved back, awkwardly smiling back… especially when Bruce didn't stop.

Clover tapped him on the shoulder, the demonic feline still snuggled in her arm. "You have to look away before they change gestures. It's one of the little glitches they still have to fix. "

Kaneki obligingly looked away. Sure enough, Bruce was back to his normal, non-unnerving neutral expression. "Yeah… are they going to patch that soon?" he asked. "How well does the maintenance team respond to complaints, anyway?"

Tapping her lips with a finger, Clover scrunched up her face in thought. "It really depends. I think they've mainly been busy with all the PKs lately. Oh, and the hackers."

"Hackers?"

"Yeah, apparently there're some players with hacked skins. They also give themselves illegal buffs, I think." Clover explained. "There's not much known about them, 'cause they're good at hiding, especially because they're nothing really distinguishing about them. I heard they get EXP from killing other players, too!"

Kaneki frowned. "Is that not normal?"

"Yeah, it's actually really strange. No one really knows why. You see, usually you would lose fame, which gives you some EXP boosts. If it's negative, you get a debuff. It's to discourage people from killing each other."

"Huh. What about PVP duels and stuff?" Kaneki wondered. After all, why would a game actively discourage its players from using a feature that no doubt took a good amount of time to program?

"Duels are okay. You lose a bit of EXP when you die, but nothing like if you were killed." Clover gave the cat one last pat, and set it down gently. It scampered off with a loving purr for Clover and a half-hearted hiss at Kaneki. "Well, how long do you have left?" Clover asked, straightening up.

Bringing up his alarm screen, Kaneki was surprised to see that he had only a little under an hour left. That stupid cat had taken up half an hour! "I only have about an hour left," he dutifully informed Clover.

"Huh, I don't think you want to do anymore quests," Clover teased. "Hm, I was going to introduce you to one of my guildmates, but it seems like she got bored and left town. I was going to get her to teach you how to fight…"

"Can I even fight right now..? I don't have a class yet."

"You can use basic attacks, but no skills! Which is a shame, because that's what really makes the game fun. Actually, have you even seen your skills yet?"

"I have skills already?" Kaneki hadn't even considered that. He'd just assumed that skills came with classes… though it would make sense that he'd get some passives with his race. With some difficulty (Clover hid a smile behind her hand), he managed to pull up the skills window. It wasn't his fault that the skills icon was right next to the options menu, okay?

Lv. 1 Kafka [Class Not Chosen]

ACTIVE

-none-

PASSIVE

Determination (LV 1) – Mankind's resilience shaped history. You've always climbed back up after a fall. Upon resurrection, loss of EXP is decreased. (up to 5%)

Your Own Path (LV MAX) – Be who you want to be! [CLASS] experience boost +10%.

"It says here I have a skill called 'Determination' and one called 'Your Own Path'." Kaneki read. "Sounds like it's because of my race."

"Yup, I'm pretty sure those are the human passives. Anyway, we should probably get started on your class quests. They can be pretty lengthy, 'cause they're tutorials. Which class do you want to pick, anyway?"

Kaneki pondered the question. Honestly, he hadn't really put much thought into this beyond: A) It seemed like a pretty cool game, and B) Rize played it. Also, C) Hide would pester him to death if he hadn't gotten it. Even if he didn't ever see Rize - and it was plausible, Gaiasphere was a huge game- Kaneki thought he would really enjoy it. So the vital question: which class should he pick?

There were only a few base classes, if he remembered correctly. Mage, warrior, rogue, healer… were those it? Those were the main ones, anyway. He remembered something about specializations and subclasses, but the main issue here was which base class to pick.

Seeing the puzzled expression on his face, Clover took pity on Kaneki. "You know, there's more info on it in the Barracks. It's where you have to go to register, anyway. Want to go?"

"Please." Kaneki began following Clover, as she began picking her way through the small alleyways, grasping his hand as she led Kaneki through what she assured him was a shortcut. She kept up a quiet commentary about the lore in the game, and Kaneki was fascinated with the amount of storytelling. It seemed like Gaiasphere wasn't rated #1 MMORPG for no reason.

"That's the story behind the Aogiri Tree! There's a guild named after it, I think – We're here!"

Kaneki gazed up at the imposing building nervously. It was certainly… grandiose. Not to mention intimidating. With its colourful banners flapping slightly in the wind, and the flawless marble pillars, the Barracks was every bit as bold as it looked in screenshots.

Clover was already tugging him to the doors. Kaneki took a deep breath, and with no small amount of trepidation, stepped in.

Um, hi. I don't know if anyone is still reading this... but yeah. Here's your chapter... a year late.