Disclaimer: Maplestory does not belong to me. It belongs to Wizet/Nexon/Whatever company is in possession of it at the moment.

6 years ago.f

Xemira Feonix was eight.

But he was recently ordained as a Fighter. This alone was a great example of his strength. But the neighbourhood Henesysians grumbled and he felt that his world was breaking, breaking, breaking.

'What in Sleepywood were his parents thinking? Like that, he'll grow up a killer alright.'

Xemira Feonix had a few close friends that stuck by him even when the rumours spread that he was a hacker. Some of them didn't, and he felt that his world was breaking, breaking, breaking.

'Umm, Xem?'

Xemira looked up at his best friend, Saella. The young archer girl was flanked by two burly warriors much older than he was. They looked menacing, with hefty spears and feral grins. He offered them a friendly smile, when in reality he was concentrating on the wild boars that threatened to gore him to death.

'Yeah, Sae?' Slash blast, power strike, drink a white potion. Repeat.

'I don't think I can be your friend anymore.' Saella blurted out, mortified. Xemira's eyes widened as he stopped in mid-swing, allowing a boar to ram straight into him. He winced in pain, but looked straight at Saella as he got up again.

'Why not?' The warrior tried to keep a level tone, but his world was breaking, breaking, breaking.

'Well, um. Jaymes said so! I'm sorry…' Saella quickly ran straight for the portal, the two warriors following more leisurely after her.

Xemira scowled as he continued killing boars. Jaymes Milligan was Saella's brother- 16, and already a ranger. To hear Saella speak, Jaymes controlled her entire life. And Xemira hated him.

But his world couldn't break anymore.

He smiled.

Three days later, he was training again. But this time at the land of Fire Boars. What had happened during these three days that had caused him to break off from his strict regime?

Xemira smiled to himself, but it was dangerous; malicious.

What had torn him from his precious training?

Why, Jaymes' funeral of course. Didn't you hear? He was slain horribly in the dead of night by some unspeakable coward.

Perhaps someone would have wondered how Xemira had gotten from level 30 to 42 in the course of a night. Maybe killing a level 78 monster, perhaps?

Rooftop, Tuesday

Sylph Arderson glared at the pretty-boy standing in front of her.

'You're weak. Weakness gets people killed. In the games, all that's gonna matter is maturity, skills, and strength. You got the strength, you got the skills, but you're about as mature as a piece of cheese,' she hissed, not sparing the youngster a single moment to answer back. 'And I'm not talking 'bout mature cheddar. That's what's gonna get you killed in the end.'

Xemira Feonix tried not to cry. He'd never been yelled at before, especially not by steel-tongued rangers who specialized in screaming sense into people. He clenched his fists instead.

'I don't care. I don't want to kill innocent people.' He replied, his voice shaky. The rangeress made a noise between a snort and a cry of exasperation. She stepped forward towards the young crusader and put a hand on either side of his armour-clad shoulders.

'Listen, kid. There are at least 10 people out there who don't give a flying orange mushroom about the rest of us. All they want is for you to get out of this place alive, even if it involves corrupting your oh-so-precious innocence,' Sylph sighed- she didn't want this kid to die. Kids should have a happy life, not die at the hands of random psychopaths. 'So get over yourself.'

Xemira shook his head furiously. Sylph made a face at her allies, Yascal and Yasa. They remained silent, but their faces echoed their disapproval. Nope, this kid had to get over his nobility and fight to kill.

Now.

Sylph gripped the kid's shoulders firmly and shoved him to the wall. She met his terrified gaze and grimaced. Was this what she was good at? Terrorizing little kids so that they'd survive?

'Kid.' She racked her brain for his name. 'Xemira. Do you want to die?'

'Not if it involves ki-'

'Do you want to die!' It was more an angry statement than a question.

'No.'

Sylph's pretty elfin features softened as she let go of the young Crusader.

'Then we have an agreement,' she replied, helping Xemira up as he collapsed to the ground. 'You protect yourself from the impending bloodthirsty maniacs, and we help you when we can during the Games.'

An almost imperceptible nod from the warrior was all she needed. But as she turned back to her two allies, she recognized displeasure in their tight lips.

Congratulations, they seemed to say. We just got ourselves another burden.

She was irritated.

'No, we've just potentially saved another kid's life. Suck it up, will ya?'

Rooftop, Wednesday.

Nic perched on the stone pedestal that resided on the rooftop of the Acer mansion. She had worked up the courage to ask him, and she reckoned she had the courage to face him as well.

How the heck do I start an apology? "Hey Jak, I'm sorry I ignored you for the past 2 years or so. Sooo. Are you still my best friend?" Aww man. That sounds bad, even to myself.

She practiced.

'Jak, I'm sorry. Forgive me?'

She cried.

I'm useless.

She sat there, head lolling gently against the stone lion. Waiting, waiting, waiting. She murmured sleepily into the night air, with her characteristic childlike innocence.

'Sorry, Jak.'

He hadn't come.

Rooftop, Thursday.

Ninja sat, fiddling with her rapidly expanding collection of throwing daggers. She wondered belatedly if they'd be taken away from her. She cursed- of course they would.

No one bothers to check here. That's why everyone comes up here. There is no danger.

She stroked the edge of the dagger, not even bothering to be careful of the impeccable sharpness of the weapon. She'd used them for too long to be ruffled by a small nick. Instead, she concentrated on the structure of the weapon, focusing on duplicating it, creating its' perfect clone.

It wasn't a hack per se- just a nifty little trick the Dark Lord taught her after she had informed him of her career choice. The Dark Lord had realized that with all the hefty living expenses of Kerning, additional cost for new daggers was not something she needed- but still, she decided to venture down the rarely-trodden path of the daggerthrower.

It suited her well.

Her hands were enveloped in an intense haze of black, but she paid no attention- her mind was already submerged in the essence of the new shadow dagger. After a few more seconds of it, the darkness faded and she made a small noise of satisfaction.

It was perfect- the exact replica of the original dagger. Perhaps it had lost some of it's original qualities, but still. Ninja allowed herself a small smile as she allowed the shadow dagger to meld into her skin. She could summon it again if need be.

She turned her mind to other tasks, selecting a well-sharpened Sai from her arsenal of daggers. Time to repeat. She would get a dagger in the Acer arena, or by God, someone would pay.

Unknown maze, Caele.

Jakiro

It was a maze. An endless maze. Yet another training exercise devised to gauge our potential, to label us with scores. This maze was a spinoff of Ludibrium's maze quest. Tacky chunks of multi-coloured plastic was on my left, right and most of the time, in front of me.

The lighting was set to night- I could barely see where I was going. But basically, you encountered hordes of monsters that you had to kill and survive hunger, exhaustion and your fellow unlucky people.

If you happened to meet them, well. First one to fall unconscious gets chucked unceremoniously into a portal that led out of here. The remaining survivor got the luxury of being healed by a cleric.

Knowing the nature of these games, we'd need it.

I was exhausted. I had met 3 of the permanoobs already and knocked them out into oblivion. I had taken on more Jr. Balrogs than I wanted ever to take on, several Crimson Balrogs and bizarrely, a Slime King.

I slumped against the endless corridor of plastic. Any warrior could pick me off now. Maybe even a mage. Quite frankly, lying down and dying would be better than trying to find a non-existent exit.

But the thing is, we couldn't sleep. In this strange world called 'training exercises', we couldn't sleep. Somehow, the hackers had managed to build little dimensions, quite literally lifted out of time.

They could keep us here forever and it'd still be around 9:47 am back on Maple World.

The downside was we'd still get exhausted, hungry and thirsty. We'd get battered to death by massive balrogs. We get digested by King Slimes. We feel the damned pain.

And take my word for it- it hurts.

There was a soft squishing sound as I dropped to the ground chunks of green slime slapping against the plastic. Awkward chunks of sticking out plastic dug through my clothes into my skin.

I sighed, tossing the hacker-issue Casters away. Maybe it wasn't the right way to treat a weapon, but let's face it. I could barely stand, let alone be dragged down by a kilogram of pure metal covering my hand.

I was just about to let my mind drift away in sleepless oblivion when I heard something. Several somethings.

Footsteps.

Scania knows I didn't need a wiseass warrior bludgeoning me with a chunk of plastic. I scrambled up and tried to make a run for it but I collapsed onto the ground. Jeez, maybe the constant dark-sighting and getting battered by monsters had taken its' toll on me.

I needed to win, though. These exercises could make people want to sponsor me. Potions, food or even a couple of subis could swing the entire Games in my favour. That is, if anyone wanted to sponsor me after I get the most pathetic score ever.

But seriously. If it was a warrior, I was screwed. I'd be down with brain damage or worse, especially with the Games looming up in a couple of days.

Death by plastic.

Great.

I braced my body for the impact, expecting to hear the connection between sword metal and bone. Instead, I feel a gloved hand on my face. This is it. It was a mage. Probably going to set me on fire. I'd go into the arena half scorched to death.

I felt trickles of soothing magic oozing over me, travelling from my face to my arms, my legs, the rest of my body. I didn't feel so sluggish and hey- I didn't even feel tired anymore. Maybe I was Heaven or something.

I blinked lazily, greeted by the sight of piles of plastic, all the colour of the rainbow. And surprised hazel eyes.

Nic.

Nic.

Maybe it had been a pretty good idea to team up with a fellow mage after all. She had told me that her name was Lupercalia. Strange name, but who am I to judge? Being a fire-poison mage, she wasn't that great dealing with overwhelming amounts of aggravated zombies.

And me, being the awesomely-kind priest I am, Shining Ray-ed the nasty undead mobs to oblivion.

C'mon. They were undead brainsucking zombies. I was a priest. Anyone could tell you that we were never going to get along.

'Hey, Nic?'

I finished magic clawing the small army of slimes into oblivion and turned to the direction of her voice.

'Yeah?'

'There's a guy here. He's the chief bandit of Kerning.'

Jak.

I cringed internally.

'Coming,' I whispered back, teleporting over in a flash of blue energy. My smile dropped when I reached Lupercalia. Jak was, well. Saying he was 'in a bad way' was pretty much an understatement.

God damn it, heal, heal, heal.

A thin trickle of healing energy leapt from my hand to him. It flowed for a while but then thinned and became non existent.

'That's pretty much the last of my mana- you got another elixir?'

She rummaged around in the small pack and tossed me a power elixir, grinning as she watched me drink it greedily.

'I wasn't exactly expecting you to heal him, Nic,' she grinned, shaking her head. 'More like kick him while he was down.'

Oh. Right. Getting rid of the competition and all that. Now I remember.

'Oops?'

She shrugged, a little smirk still on her face.

'What's done is done. The best thing we could do is to get out of here before he wakes up,' She zipped up her pack and started making for another tunnel. I followed her quickly, grateful that she hadn't asked me why I had healed him.

Because I didn't know the answer myself.

Xemira Feonix

Warriors were not built for speed.

Why didn't someone tell me that before I became a warrior? Speed meant everything here. Never mind the fact that we could hit someone and send them flying with a well placed fist. Never mind that we could, as a matter of fact, hit people to death with sticks.

Monstrous strength didn't exactly help when you were trying to run away from a hermit, flash jumping eagerly after you with his scary pointy chunks of metal eager for your blood.

When I entered the games, I thought it'd be different. You know, maybe save the entire world or something without shedding any blood? Maybe that wasn't going to happen now.

The hermit was gaining on me, and my bulky armour that I had thought would protect me clanged annoyingly, wearing me down fast. What the hell could I do, just stand there?

I grinned.

I stopped running and quite literally, stood there. The hermit, oblivious in his flash jumping lust, didn't notice and just carried on jumping, his freakish laughter echoing down the hall.

I shook my head.

And they said that warriors were stupid.

Sylph Arderson

Yasa was surprisingly nimble for a warrior. With a graceful leap, she had jumped from Yascal's shoulder onto the top of the wall. Then she pulled Yascal up and he pulled me up. She raised an eyebrow at my confunded look.

'My mother's a hermit. I trained with her to be one as well, but then decided to be a warrior with Yascal.'

I shook my head in disbelief. Maybe I should've trained with a warrior so I could poke someone to death with some makeshift weapon.

She shrugged.

'Hey, you have a great sniping spot, don't 'cha?'

I grinned happily, loading my bow with a soul arrow lying in anticipation for a passing noob to pass over.

I didn't have to wait that long.

'Oh man, this is really, really fun.'

I noticed Yasa and Yascal exchanging a look that pretty much said: this is one crazy chick.

Ah, who cared? I was on a freaking high!

Ninja

'So, how did you like the training exercise for today?'

I rolled my eyes. I needed that training exercise like I needed some wiseass beginner repeatedly hitting me with a wooden club. Just for your information, I really, really didn't need that.

Maybe our silence was offending Mr. Organiser there, 'cause he started tapping his foot impatiently. From what I knew so far, when he tapped his foot and no one said anything, he'd find some way to kick our asses the next day.

'It was… enjoyable.'

As soon as the words left my mouth, I mentally kicked myself. What happened to 'don't draw attention to yourself'? Dead, gone, and battered with a shoe. He looked at me, eyes shining with what I could only describe as a maniac happiness.

'Really?'

I nodded my head slowly, wishing I could back away. I could feel nineteen pairs of incredulous eyes staring at me, mentally communicating to me the same thing: Who the hell do you think you're kidding?!

'Uh… sure. It… uh. Prepared us for what's going to happen in the games?'

'Wonderful, wonderful!' He beamed happily at me, making me cringe. 'Well, I'll cancel the rest of the activities I had planned for you all to recuperate! It has been such an exciting day!'

If exciting meant 'batshit insane', sure.

'Oh yes, do try to train a little more. The games are in 2 days! You wouldn't want to find yourself too weak, would you?'

2 days?

My eyes slid to the rest of people seated at the table.

Did that mean in two days, we would all be plotting and trying to kill each other?

The silence spoke it all as we shifted uncomfortably in our seats.

'Sooo. What do you guys want on your gravestones?'

We glared as one towards an obnoxious superbeginner. Maybe I was going crazy, but I think we were all thinking about the same thing: I'm going to kill him first.

The story does drag on a little, doesn't it? I was going to start the games here, but I'll leave it till the next one.

Character apps are still up!

No archers available. 1 mage position available. 1 thief position available. 1 warrior position available.

On the plus side, my exams. Are. Officially. OVER! Which means I can post more and stuff.

Also, what's this about the Maple community dying? D=