Thanks for your lack of bugging me to release the rest of this fic. Enjoy chapter 2...

June 2, 2013

I could barely make out the buzzing of my clock in the early morning hours. It was an uncomfortable feeling, granted it could sometimes make its way into your umpteenth "weird dream" in a week. It was always such a pain to snap back into reality. What bothered me even more was that I couldn't recall why I programmed that damn FOURTH Chaos Emerald to annoy me out of my virtual reality in the first place. Hell, I didn't remember what caused me to abandon Minnesota for a new life in a parallel dimension, where society didn't give a damn if you were a freak. Perhaps the fact that this was anything but my idea to begin with made the resulting side effects beneficial. And yet the feeling that I'd be stuck as a freak for the rest of my life made me numbly uncomfortable. If there was anyone else in this world having the same experience, I really didn't want to meet that dude.

As I limped into the living room, I was still slowly coming to my senses. In fact, I didn't notice the television on at all until I inadvertently sprayed cold water all over my face.

"...Level seven is impossible," said a guy going on about the talk of the town, a mere video game that ought to have been named Skyrim or Gangnam Style or Rickroll'd or even #THICKE. "If anyone beats it, I will [BLEEP] a brick. On camera. It's that hard!" That was all I heard as I started down the stairs to refresh the freak in which I could never get used to being trapped.

Trying not to think about the infinite amount of ways the day could go horribly wrong was only making me more restless. The radio-like sound that suddenly occurred to me didn't bother me much, as I was only turning the corner that led to the stairway to heaven...

"WHASSUP!" The impact of that little ambush was too much to handle.

I had to give the red echidna that had popped out of nowhere credit for giving me the true wake-up call that would render me damn vulnerable to panic attacks, even though I couldn't think of anything else that could make me go from zero to pissed-off in about half a second.

I heard a voice. "Yo... you alright, dude? Sorry about what Knuckles did to ya..."

I felt several taps on my forehead before I eventually came to. "Bro..."

As soon as I noticed some guy right in front of me, I got back up in a flash.

"Sonic&#$!? What was that all about?"

"Are you feeling ok?" The way he said it made me think he was staging an intervention. "Anything broken at all? Any sort of..."

"My dignity," I quickly interrupted the cobalt chump with that short reply. Thank God my first instinct was disproven. "Well... that little display seems to have fully snapped me into reality..."

"That's good to hear." He gave me the "thumbs-up".

"Question, does Knuckles ever have anything better to do than annoy me when he's not on Master Emerald duty?"

The blue blur took a moment to answer. "Actually, he kinda bothers the rest of us too, but hopefully he'll be off our backs when that new game comes out."

I was clearly lost. Not just that I didn't know what he was talking about, but he was being... friendly for once. But he was still going a bit fast.

Then as if answering my disbelief, he followed-up with "So what do you know about a video game called Game Over?"

"I heard that it's like a real-world spoof of Sword Art Online," I remarked. "I also heard that everyone in the world was gonna sign on and play it."

"Not so fast," he muttered, which I totally saw coming. "I read the health warnings. The game's a trap. You know how the back cover goes on about endless fun and fighting and first-person shooting?"

"No. Who reads the back cover anymore?"

Right about then he gave me the stink eye. "It's endless, alright. Once you login..."

"Right," I just had to interrupt, "like you haven't already given me this kind of talk with the sole purpose of scaring me out of going on these adventures that you like to take with your friends, am I right?"

Two seconds. "How often have I done that again?" he asked, picking his left ear.

"I don't know, only about four hundred million trillion kajillion bazillion googolplex v******y septuagintillion times?"

"Right..." he said unsurely, obviously not knowing what I just said. "I'm just gonna go up to my room and cry for an hour. When that game comes out, you play it at your own risk, ok?"

Right after getting done with that quote, he just sulked ever so slowly back up the stairway to heaven, looking as if I'd just hurt his feelings. And I'll admit that I kinda did.

Still pondering whether or not to trust that dude, I said quite unsurely, "Alright, I'll check it out, but only if everyone I know starts blabbing about it."

June 4, 2013

I am so evil was the thought embedded into my head at 5:55 am. Who cares about health warnings. I'll show them I'm a true gamer. Even if I'll never be able to save the world from some dreaded, nameless peril, I can just pop in a disc and live in a virtual world for two years. Even if I've never played Halo or Combat Evolved... oh yeah, they're the same game. Whatever. Call of Duty, God of War, Uncharted, Madden 25, Shadow the Hedgehog... everything. It's about fuckin' time I really fit in with the whole world. Yes. When are they gonna open that door?

I found myself tapping my foot repeatedly while looking at my watch. 5:58 am. Smuggling time was in two minutes, because video game stores are pretty much unheard of on Mobius.

Every human waiting impatiently for the GameSeven shop in that long-ass line babbled to one another about random nonsense possibly having to do with planking as a hopeless means of killing precious minutes on the clock. Precious minutes that might have determined exactly who would get a crack at the obviously limited supply of that headgear associated with virtual reality gaming for the Xbox 720, which to my surprise (I'd grown up as a PSFreak) played games like that much more smoothly than the PSPi. That was why I switched last year.

"You actually play video games?" remarked the teenage girl fidgeting behind me.

"No. I just like to hang out here when it's really busy." Yes, that was a lie, but obviously she wasn't gonna buy it, so it was a little more like messing with her.

"So how do you expect to get your copy of the game?" she inquired.

"You mean the game comes packaged with the hardware?"

"Yeah." Then as if answering the follow-up question I was about to ask, she continued, "They did say it was gonna be DLC, but they changed it just two days ago, so now the supply is even more limited than it oughta be."

Right about then I noticed a piece of glass swing open. I alertly dashed through the would-be conga line, right past the guy who opened it, and I was in the shop in an instant. Of course I didn't stop there - I scrambled all over the place looking for either a DVD case with "GAME OVER" printed in bold, a dorky-looking piece of headgear shaped like a helmet of some sort, or possibly both at the same time. Then I found both bundled together, hidden between Halo Pi and Halo Durf. (Yes, they're both real numbers. Don't let your math teacher convince you otherwise.) Then I grabbed the bundle and scrambled to the checkout desk, placed it on the desk, and sat on it.

All that before the first human in line could actually walk through the doorway.

Then as if pulling an April Fools joke, I announced, "Sorry, guys. This is the only copy they had!"

Everyone just grumbled and started to walk away and take the money.

"I'm messing with you. There's a shitload over there." And just like that, the place was crowded as expected.

I felt the awkward sense of someone behind the counter, quite possibly plotting an attack on me. As soon as I saw that guy, I remembered what I was going to say: "How much is this game, sir?"

"You actually play video games?" he remarked. He just stared at me funny.

"Yes. Xbox is better than PlayStation, and the only thing Wii is good for is Super Mario."

GAME IN PROGRESS

DO NOT DISTURB

DO NOT DISTURB

DO NOT DISTURB

WHAT RHYMES WITH DISTURB?

DON'T DISTURB

seriously... DON'T DISTURB!

DO NOT DISTURB

You know, there's really no one in here anyway, so...

DON'T YOU DARE DISTURB!

Yes, I read the health warning. But after a round of having to touch every stinkin' part of my hedgehog body, a creeped-out me took out the fancy-schmancy headgear.

Now how does this thing work? I wondered almost out loud as I tried to put this gear on. Getting my quills to fit in there was a nightmare.

"Aha," an almost startled me reacted after finally securing the gear on. "I'm awesome. Now what?" was the last thing on my mind as I pushed Start.

Stay tuned to find out if I get writer's block along the way. If that ends up being the case, hopefully I'll have a side project to tide you over for the time being (which will ultimately go down as the worst story ever).