Creation began on 10-02-16
Creation ended on 05-01-17
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Eva Art Online: One Day, One Feat, One Goal
One of the only things that kept any of the people sane while being stuck inside a video game with multiple genres and one-hundred levels to play in order to win it was the fact that each individual had a digital clock and calendar in their menu and HUDs to keep them up to date with how long they've been in the game since they got stuck in it. This and whatever else they had installed in their avatars before becoming trapped in the game. Installed music, videos, increased optimization of character performance and individualization, all things to pass time in the game.
It had been two months since they became trapped, and in those two months, there had been both progress and setbacks. When word spread of at least eighty-seven people dying after reaching the thirty-second level of one realm, other players that were revealed to be just elementary school kids became convinced that they would never escape the game and just stayed on the first level of their realms where it was believed to be safest. Other players just continued to press on in the hopes of reaching the final level and winning it. This was also true of Shinji, who had just made it to the thirty-second level of the realm of the medieval and feudal cultures, which were associated with the samurai lifestyle he had become accustomed to.
As a ronin, Shinji traveled alone, rarely interacting with others, except when he needed to restock on supplies at merchant locations on levels with designated safe zones where one could go without the fear of being harmed. And as a ronin, he didn't have to worry about anyone but himself. With a higher level and greater skill set, achieved mostly by continuously fighting and defeating creatures he had already beaten before on the lower levels, Shinji was able to get by in the realm he stuck to quite well. And he took it one day at a time.
"Even if I save my progress here, it wouldn't change anything later on," he told himself, walking into nearby cave to crash and burn for the next few hours until he was mentally rested up again.
While the game avatars weren't affected by fatigue like the human body was in real life, the players were subject to mental fatigue; even when the body is unspent from activity, the mind can grow weary of any further action at any time of the day. And because the players were now trapped inside the game, they had to be cautious of suffering mental fatigue more often, lest they risk a psychotic breakdown from over-exertion.
Setting up the fire for light and his blanket, even when he didn't really need the latter, Shinji laid down and tried to forget about the fact that he was in the game and somewhere else right now. It didn't always have the intended effect on him, but when he did lay down, he would lose consciousness for a little while and manage to undo some of his mental fatigue. Maybe it was the closest thing to actual sleep in the game, but it got some results.
"One day at a time, Shinji," he told himself in the form of a mantra. "One day at a time."
Basically, this served to remind him that he couldn't just escape the game as quickly as he dared to. If he was to get out, he had to have patience above all else necessary to survive. In his mind, one needed patience, stability, adaptability, endurance…and was knowledgeable enough to pass advice to others in the game if they needed it. This was how he got his sage-like knowings…and why he was rarely at his aunt and uncle's when they didn't want to see him.
-x-
"…Okay, you two," went Ritsuko to the two auxiliary pilots that the Marduk Institute selected to substitute the incapacitated Second and Third Children, completing their synchronization evaluation. "We're done for today. Hit the showers."
"Yes, ma'am," responded the pig-tailed class representative Hikari Horaki to her.
"Yes, ma'am," added the school jock Toji Suzuhara.
In the following weeks, both teens were approached by NERV and explained the situation and why they were needed against the Angels. It was fortunate that they were among the few pilot candidates that hadn't played the Survival Times game; when NERV got word that a handful of Tokyo-3's youth population had been enticed by the game, they wound up getting hospitalized, too.
Hikari and Toji were only fortunate to avoid the same fate a few of their classmates had suffered because neither demonstrated an interest in video games, either too invested in school or sports to do so, respectively. But still, it didn't keep either from visiting the hospital to see their otaku classmate, Kensuke Aida, who fell victim to the harsh outcome of the game's power.
Of course, Hikari visited him under the belief that, as class representative, she had a responsibility to see him daily.
Toji, on the other hand, just hated seeing his friend in such a state, but couldn't pretend that nothing bad had happened when his own sister came close to getting stuck in the game at a friend's house, saved only because of installation delays.
"…So, I hear the only way to get out of the game is to win it," said Hikari to Toji as they were walking down the hospital hallway to where Kensuke resided. "Do you think Aida can win it?"
"He didn't play Survival Times to win it, Class Rep.," he explained to her. "He just played it for fun. Whether or not he's able to beat the game is debatable."
-x-
Shinji had just defeated another bear yōkai to raise his level up to fifty-seven and obtained a treasure trove that the demonic bear was guarding against theft. He opened the trove and found three items of special necessity. A sack of healing orbs, a naginata, and most importantly, an additional life to the five he gained over the two months.
And to think, I went back to a level I had already completed, he thought, deciding to save his progress afterward. If I go any further, I'll probably have to join a group if I aim to get farther up to the one-hundredth level.
Click! He heard a sound and turned around, seeing a freckled boy around his age, raising an assault rifle at him.
The boy was dressed in a sailor uniform with a camouflage theme to it, equipped with a paratrooper's helmet and goggles.
"Healing remedies and weapons, fool," he ordered Shinji.
"Is this really how you want to play the game?" Shinji asked.
"Do you want me to kill you?!" The boy yelled him, pressing his rifle at his chest.
"Do you really want to kill others in order to survive?"
"What choice do I have?! We're all stuck in this game and we have to do what we can to survive!"
SLASH! Shinji brandished his katana and knocked the rifle out of the boy's possession, forcing him against a cave wall, the blade edge against his neck.
"Yeah, we do what we can to survive," Shinji told him. "That's the point of the game, but it doesn't have to make us all savages, warlords, criminals, even if it's part of the game to explore one's fantasies in a world without boundaries."
The boy just looked at him with a sense of hopelessness in his eyes, waiting for him to put him out of his misery.
But Shinji pulled his sword away from his neck and re-sheathed it on his back.
"If you want to survive, I suggest you listen to me," he told the soldier. "I'm a ronin, a samurai without a master, but I have a code of honor like any other samurai. You live by the code…and you die by the code. This applies to the same code of living and dying by the sword. If you are prepared to end someone's life, be prepared to have your life ended by someone else. The victory over the one-hundredth level of whichever realm you visit rewards you with the promise of freedom for everyone, but there's doubt that any one person can win on their own. Anything there will be powerful. Too powerful to face alone. Say that, instead of attacking others for their supplies, we set aside whatever feuds we have…and work together to get closer to the final level of wherever we have to go in the game? We're both soldiers, warriors. What do you say to that?"
The boy nodded in agreement with him, and Shinji picked up his rifle and threw it at him.
"You're from the Military Realm, aren't you?" He asked him. "Why'd you leave it to come to the Feudal Myths Realm?"
"I couldn't get past the thirtieth level there," the boy revealed. "The wars there had gotten more intense. All the members of my unit were killed around me. I got scared of what might've happened to me had I stayed and continue."
Shinji couldn't exactly sympathize with what happened to him, but he could understand why any players would fear dying; nobody wanted to enter the next world as a result of dying in a game. Not even he himself wanted to die…even when he had nothing to go back to in the real world but an inescapable of nightmare of abuse and neglect.
"For now, we'll stick to this realm," he told him, "and view other alternate realms as time passes."
Nodding in agreement, the military boy followed the ronin as he led him out further down the forest.
"Who are you?" Shinji asked him, never getting his name.
"My avatar name is AK-4700…but I don't make it out of this game, I might as well say my real name. It's Kensuke Aida."
"Kensuke Aida. I'm Shinji Ikari. My avatar name is Ronin-2004, like the masterless samurai that used to wander around the nation long ago."
"Ikari? As in…that little boy that was abandoned after the supposed death of his mother?"
"If I had a concrete memory of my childhood, I'd be able to answer that question. But, yes, I was abandoned by my father. Not that it really matters. Even if I make it out of this game, there's nobody waiting for me."
"If working together helps me to get out of here, you'll have someone waiting for you to return to the real world to thank you."
-x-
"…This program we tried installing into the game to trace and monitor the two children hasn't brought us the expected results," said Maya to Ritsuko; they were using the MAGI to monitor the progress of the people trapped in Survival Times, but using the supercomputer to observe the activity of over one-hundred-thousand people in a virtual environment was probably not in the original specs or one of its original functions.
"Still, the sooner we find them in the game, the better it'll be to keep track of them," Ritsuko expressed.
The MAGI was tracking the people through their email accounts, photo identifications, medical records, anything and everything in order to track them.
"I heard Captain Katsuragi requested a background check into the Third Child's guardians. Is this true?" Maya asked.
"Yeah, she suspected the boy was being abused when she found him at the hospital," she answered. "It turns out that when he was brought in, he had a series of bruises and fractures that didn't come from playing the game. What's more was that the boy's aunt was caught at the hospital the day before Captain Katsuragi arrived, trying to turn off the life-support systems keeping the boy's body alive."
"Wouldn't that be considered attempted murder?"
"The police don't know for sure. They let her go three days after he'd been moved. I guess there was no further point in keeping her in holding since he was no longer around to be harmed by anyone…until they know for certain that there's some hint of abuse."
-x-
"…It's so beautiful here," said Kensuke to Shinji as they stopped to rest at a scenic river in the forest. "So tranquil and quiet."
"That's the thing about this realm," Shinji told him. "It's often always quiet. It's only in places like castle dungeons and caves where the noises are heard, where the myths and legends come to life and you fight for the right to advance further."
That's when Kensuke began to notice that Shinji sounded like he had versed himself in old sayings, and saw him reading a digital book in his hands.
"What is that you're reading?" He asked him.
"It's Hagakure," he answered, sitting against a tree. "It's been my salvation within the game…and my retribution outside it."
"The way of the samurai."
"Basically."
"What is the way?"
"There are many ways to the samurai. It all depends upon the way you choose."
"And which way did you choose?"
"The path of the ronin. To have no master of which to serve is to be free from servitude, to have no retainer of which to devote one's life to."
Creak! Both boys heard some twigs breaking under heavy feet, and Kensuke saw a woman of maybe twenty years of age dressed in an outfit reminiscent of those demon exterminator outfits from the Inu-Yasha franchise, only all black with a long, purple scarf or sash wrapped around her neck, and her hair was tied in a long ponytail.
The soldier raised his rifle up, but Shinji raised his left hand up to stop him from shooting.
"First rule of the martial arts," he uttered to him. "Never fight unless someone else starts."
Getting up, Shinji stood in front of the woman and bowed his head to her.
To Kensuke's surprise, the woman bowed back.
"Ghost Dog of Survival Times," she uttered, performing one of those hand gestures people did in the old martial arts films. "Merciful ronin."
"Elegant exterminator," Shinji responded, performing the same gesture. "Always see everything to know everything, virtual sister."
"There is a phantom castle up in the mountain terrain controlled by a band of demon ninja. Only a party may face them to move on to the next level. The rewards for victory are said to be immense. A small concern in freeing the neighboring the village from the grip of the demon ninja. Are you enticed?"
"I am enticed. Only through teamwork will many prevail."
Now Kensuke was confused. Confused at whether or not Shinji knew this woman.
-x-
The Warrior Goddess Realm, one of the more brutal realms to exist in Survival Times, was populated by at least eight-hundred players of the opposite sex…with only fifty-seven members of the male sex just hanging there because they felt it was safest to be. There, it was ruled by several factions of young women that followed in the footsteps of goddesses who believed in the power of conflict. One such faction was called the Scarlet Sirens, and their leader was a thirteen-year-old redhead with a serious attitude.
This was Asuka Langley Soryu, who took control of the faction from a fellow Scarlet Siren due to her merciful nature. In her mind, to show mercy was to show weakness, and she refused to be merciful, even when the situation called for mercy.
"Mistress Soryu," one of her cohorts uttered as she sharpened her sword against a stone wheel. "You asked one of us to seek out strong adversaries from other realms, and she came back with a tidbit of information that you might want to know about."
"Well, what is it?" Asuka asked.
"A survivor from the Military Realm has joined up with a young man from the Feudal Myths Realm. A so-called beta tester by the name of Shinji Ikari. There's a rumor that the two and a woman are about to reach the fifty-second level of that realm."
Asuka was now upset about this. The Scarlet Sirens had barely made it to the fifty-first level, and they didn't tolerate any male surpassing them, no matter which realm it was done in. And the fact that this boy was a beta tester meant that he had played this game many times before it was released to the public and, as a result, knew the cheats to the game's workings.
If we have his secrets, we may have the means to break free from this game and go home, she thought, missing the sight of her red Evangelion. "Gather the others. We're heading for this Feudal Myths Realm to find this boy. Whatever secrets he has, they'll be ours to know."
-x-
Shinji checked his map of the multiverse that displayed the thirteen realms that existed…and each one he either visited or considered visiting. The only time he had ever left the Feudal Myths Realm was when everyone was summoned to the thirteenth realm, the Primordial Realm, where all the players are supposedly to begin their journeys from. After that day, he hadn't gone to any other realm in the game since.
"It'll be raining soon," the woman told him, and he checked his weather app on his menu, confirming her words to be true.
"There's a small cave nearby," he uttered. "We can shack up there until it passes by."
"Did you two hear something just now?" Kensuke asked them; he wasn't trying to deceive them, for he really heard something.
Shinji looked down the river and sighed; there was a change in the wind. He smelled something of strawberries…and blood.
Lately, all the people stuck inside the game found their senses being affected, such as smelling things that they shouldn't have been able to smell, as smell was among the senses that weren't possible within the game.
Everyone wants to escape the game so badly, they'll go to extremes when you can't rush these things, no matter how hard you try or no matter what you attempt. He thought, feeling the need to unsheathe his sword, but holding off from doing so yet. "We should run. Don't stop until you reach the cave."
They ran into the forest.
To be continued…
A/N: Here's the new chapter. It'll be awhile before the next chapter is up. I don't know when.