Creation began on 03-29-19
Creation ended on 03-28-20
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Eva Art Online: Alone Together
"…Well, it could've gone differently," Ritsuko told Misato as they were walking down the hall in the medical ward.
"No matter which way it went, we put those kids through the ringer because we were expecting the next Angel to be similar to the previous one," the purple-haired woman responded, "and the Fourth Angel was anything but similar! And if that wasn't bad enough, the Fifth Angel showed up two days later and nearly boiled the Fourth Child alive in Unit-03!"
Three more months after the Survival Times epidemic that took out over three-hundred-thousand people across the world came and went, and the world of the game was affecting real life to a crueler degree. During that time, two-hundred more people died in the game, and not because of its rules…but the factors outside it that could've been prevented. Because of the Fifth Angel incident requiring NERV to draw power from the whole of Japan, despite the dangers it presented to the hospitalized victims, there was limited access to the Internet and the life support didn't last long, meaning their presence in the game just ended. This put NERV in a bad bind due to at least thirty of these lives residing within Tokyo-3.
What was worse was how the American members of NERV had to sever their ties with the rest of the agency due to how certain personnel in the States had children stuck in the game and had to put them first instead of the possibility of the Angels attacking their country, which seemed unlikely to happen since the first three only appeared near Japanese waters and on Japanese soil.
"As of this point, the United States must part ways with the rest of NERV and look to the future of those still trapped within the game as we await their return," the representatives of the NERV branches in Nevada and Massachusetts explained to Gendo one day, and NERV was short a major power in its operation to defeat the Angels.
Not even the UN could force them to reconsider their decisions since some members of the organization had people stuck in the game.
Why haven't you beaten the game yet, boy? Gendo wondered; since the Geo-Front had its own emergency backup power source, they didn't need to worry about losing Internet access, but it couldn't have taken this long to beat a game that only had a hundred levels. Are you running away again? First, you retreat from reality, and now you retreat further?
-x-
Shinji, feeling as though he only lost consciousness for at least an hour, looked up at the wooden ceiling and sighed. Then, he got up and vacated the suite his friends and he were using, needing to be by himself for a while. One of the benefits of being outside in a virtual game realm was that none of the NPCs still present actually gave a damn about how he was currently dressed or even why he was out.
"You!" He stopped and turned to his right, looking down a path and seeing the redhead girl with the rapier. "I've been looking for you!"
"This is a safe zone!" He yelled back. "Fighting is prohibited here!"
"Do I look like I care about the rules?! I will not be one-upped by any man!"
He looked around…and noticed very few other members of the Scarlet Sirens present and hiding behind large objects.
"Where's the rest of your group?" He asked.
"They're gone," one of them answered, and he sighed with regret, looking down at his left hand.
"And you're still after me for my secrets to getting out of the game?"
"You're the only one we know of that has been a beta tester for the game and hasn't died yet! Just about every other beta tester is either dead or in hiding to avoid being killed by anyone that wants their secrets!"
That's when Shinji realized that he had to explain to them their futility in pursuing what was a lousy pipedream.
"You're all wasting your time!" He raised his voice to them. "Beta testers only know a handful of codes to get further in the game, but not to get out of the game! I know how to skip a few levels and access hidden safehouses, but there's nothing I know about the game that includes logging out! Have any of you ever stopped to consider that if any beta testers knew how to get out of the game, they'd waste their time refraining from telling those that want out?! If I knew how to get people out, I'd tell you, but I can't help you get out of the game because I don't know how to get out! We're all stuck in here, playing the levels and realms like we would any other game when we want to escape the real world because it hurts like a nightmare that you can't wake from! So do you really kill me?! Huh?! You wanna kill someone that you think knows the way out but won't tell you?! You're wasting your time! I don't know how to get out of here!"
Asuka felt bitterness and fury at him. If beta testers didn't know how to escape the game, then what was the point of pursuing them? Ever since they heard of them, anyone that started pursuing them, thinking that they knew the way to escape, had been met with either resistance or dead-ends. And now, here was another lost cause. A beta tester that reveals that none of them were going to get out through him because he didn't know how.
And the worst of it was…he spoke the truth; if beta testers knew how to log out, they would've logged out a long time ago, avoiding the horror they had witnessed, losing friends, families…and varying degrees of sanity.
"You…you're lying," Asuka told him. "You do know how to get out."
"Say what you want," he told her, "but I speak the truth. I don't know how to get out of the game. If you still want to kill me, wait outside the safe zone."
He turned and walked away, leaving these women to ponder their decisions.
"…If he doesn't know how to get out, then what was the point of pursuing him?" One of them questioned. "If none of them know how to get out, then what good is looking for these lousy beta testers?! There's no point!"
"He must be lying! He must know a way out, but he's too much of a coward to say anything!"
"If he knew, then he'd escape long ago when we found out about all of this!"
But Asuka couldn't believe that Shinji didn't know how to log out. No, he had to know of a way, even a small way. No matter what he said, she had to find out for real, even if it meant making a choice she knew wasn't as easy as piloting the Eva. Even if it meant she had to kill him.
-x-
With the exception of NERV's personnel and the commuters, Tokyo-3 had become a virtual ghost town. Even with the bill that would allow for increased energy production throughout the country, it meant very little if NERV had to suffer another Angel attack and it caused further damage to the city.
Misato found the silence of the city streets to be very troublesome, as Tokyo-3 was supposed to be meant as a fortress city, a stronghold against the Angels, but as people left it, it became a shadow of its former self. A city without people in it, making it appear unnecessary. Even if the only ones to still reside in it were of the paramilitary agency, it did little to lift her spirits.
And if Shinji and Asuka were around, this probably would still happen later on, she thought as she drove around the streets, barely obeying the speeding limits since there were fewer cars around on the road.
-x-
"I guess I wasn't the only one that didn't get much rest last night," Mari expressed when Shinji returned to the suite, scrolling through her accessories and reselecting her travel attire for the day. "So where'd you run off to?"
"Just went walking around the safe zone," he answered her, looking over at Kensuke, who seemed like a third wheel in the conversation, not really saying anything, despite wanting to. "I saw what remained of the Scarlet Sirens while I was out there."
"What'd they want?" Kensuke asked him.
"Like everyone else, they wanted to know how to get out of the game. I told them that I didn't know how to get out of the game."
"How'd they take it?" Mari asked him.
"They were either in denial or had accepted the truth."
To be honest with himself, Kensuke had suspected that neither Shinji or Mari knew how to get out after he met them, but gave up on trying to press them after a while. If they had known, they would've gotten out a long time ago. The only way any of them were getting out of this game was if they worked together, and teamwork wasn't much on anyone's agenda to either escape or make serious power grabs.
PING! An alert popped up on Kensuke's menu, and Shinji and Mari opened their menus, too, seeing that they all got the same alert.
"Looks like a surprise event is going on later this evening," Mari stated as she read the alert.
"But what sort of surprise event?" Shinji questioned.
"If we knew what it was, it wouldn't be a surprise event," Kensuke expressed, "but, yeah, I want to know what this event is, too."
They gathered their bearings and vacated the inn, leaving out of the safe zone…where they saw Asuka sitting on a large rock.
"I don't like being kept waiting!" She yelled at them as she jumped off the rock in front of them, brandishing her rapier once again. "I want the truth on how to get out of this game!"
Shinji sighed and responded, "I already told you! I don't know how to get out of here!"
"I don't believe you!"
"Lady, he's not the only beta tester that doesn't know how to escape the game!" Mari told her. "I'm a beta tester myself, and even I don't know how to escape! Nobody knows how to get out! Just give up! If you can't take being here and playing the game to win your escape, then take the coward's way out and off yourself!"
But Asuka just yelled and charged towards them, refusing to believe that they didn't know how to escape from here.
Shinji, up to his neck in the patience he tried to give this girl to accept defeat, brandished his katana and blocked her rapier…and knocked her to the ground.
"Is this really how you wanna go out?!" He yelled at her as she got up. "Do you really want to die here?! In some stupid game that got flipped upside-down and the stakes raised?! Huh?! What's it going to take for you to get it through that stupid head of yours that we can't cheat code our way out?! Beta testers only know how to skip certain levels or access weapons that other players can't get! We're not the damn gatekeepers! We don't guard hidden doors or hold sacred keys! We're as much prisoners here as you feel you are!"
She brandished her sword again.
"I don't want to do this!" He told her as he turned around…but then turned back to face her. "Okay, maybe I do wanna do this a little."
Raising up his katana, he waited for her to make the first move, which she did.
"Rrraaugh!" She roared as she charged towards him.
CLASH! Their swords collided…and Asuka fell to the ground again, her rapier broken in half.
"Come on!" Shinji yelled at her, but Asuka didn't get back up. "Are you done now?"
Still, the redhead didn't respond.
This was the first time Mari had seen Shinji lose his temper at someone that actually deserved his fury, but it was quite disturbing to see him go off on anyone and not finish the job.
Kensuke was visibly frightened by Shinji's temper. If he had done to himself what he had almost done to Asuka, he wouldn't want to risk igniting the guy's anger, either.
Once he felt he had calmed down, Shinji opened his menu's inventory…and removed five healing remedies and threw them down at Asuka's side.
"Damn it," he sighed as he walked around the girl and left.
Kensuke and Mari followed suit, leaving the girl on the road.
-x-
"…The Third Child had a little dispute with the Second Child," Ritsuko informed Misato when she arrived in Central Dogma with two cups of coffee.
"Oh, really?" Misato questioned. "How did things transpire between them?"
"I guess you could say that the boy has quite a temper when provoked. He broke her sword without killing her."
"Being stuck in the game is enough of a situation for him without having to become a killer, Ritsuko. He'd probably be unable to live with himself if he did kill someone, knowing that they'd die in real life."
"That being said, he gave her five healing remedies and left her alone."
"Really?"
"It turns out that beta testers in the game are as much prisoners as regular people are. They don't know how to get out any more than the next person does. All they can do…is try to reach the last level of the game."
"Is there anything about the game that's helpful in trying to communicate with them?"
"Unfortunately, no. I did, however, find out something that may explain why the people playing the game got trapped inside it. Have you ever heard of a woman named Etheria Nogareru?"
"Etheria Nogareru? Wasn't she one of the wealthy pioneers of the technology used to enable people to play online games without relying on joysticks and buttons?"
"Yeah, but then she became a recluse in her last five years. She was also the subject of some shady rumors that most people didn't understand much about. Some say she was becoming paranoid while others believe that her reclusiveness had something to do with her terminal condition that she retreated from by working on Survival Times, said to be her crowning achievement before she died."
"Didn't she die, what, three months before the game was distributed?"
"That's right, but she was still entitled her share of the profits of the game, which then went missing after this fiasco with the trapped players started."
"Are we sure Ms. Nogareru is dead?"
"Oh, she's definitely dead. She was found dead at her home in Hokkaido, leaving behind a note on her tablet that said, 'Let one of them decide'. After which, she was cremated three days later."
"What does that mean?"
"Nobody's sure. Not even her small medical staff knew, and they were three people she trusted during her time dealing with her terminal condition."
-x-
With her sword reforged, Asuka wandered around the level of the realm, trying to decide what she was going to do next. The fact that that boy she went after didn't know how to log out of Survival Times made her have to reconsider her priorities, whether they included trying to survive the game until someone made it to the final level and did what they had to in order to beat it…or take the coward's way out.
Ping! She received an alert on her menu and looked at it.
What sort of event is this supposed to be? She wondered, checking the time and location it was set to happen at. The Modernity Realm? That's the one place in the game that's grounded in reality's present-day world, just twisted to meet the requirements of being full of thrills.
At the bottom of the alert, a message reading, "Knowledge that you can't shy away from. A challenge that you won't turn away from."
Knowledge and a challenge? What sort of knowledge…and what sort of challenge?
-x-
The Modernity Realm was clearly a place in Survival Times that hadn't been met with much activity from the players that started off in other realms as other creatures of interests, such as fairies or soldiers or warriors of nobility instead of regular people that actually belonged there. Left and right were tall buildings made to resemble a massive city that was indistinguishable from those that once existed before Second Impact and, as the process of modernity and expansion showed over the years and generations, could be improved upon by the inclusion of more buildings that were larger and newer. There were very few trees and cars around.
"Looks like those that remained all came for the event," Mari expressed as she, Shinji and Kensuke stood atop a skyscraper with a garden that was occupied by at least twenty other people from other parts of the game.
"Hey, do you know what this event is all about?" A man dressed like a cowboy asked them.
"No, sir," Kensuke answered. "We're as in the dark about this as you are."
"We'll all know in the next…five minutes," Shinji told them, checking his menu's clock. "Any chance you've been able to reach any level that's past seventy?"
"I wish. I've been unable to go beyond level forty-three. I lost my wife a week ago in a battle. I've been contemplating whether or not I should kill myself."
"Why would you wanna do that?" Mari asked him.
"I failed to keep her safe. I knew her for eight years…and I failed to do right by her."
Shinji sighed and suspected that this man's wife was important to him…but his conscience and morality refrained from letting him take his own life.
"How often have you thought of eating your own gun?" He asked him.
"Long enough to know that she would hate me for being a coward," the man answered him.
BASH! Something like a gong somewhere afar had made its sound heard, signaling that the event was starting.
A light in the clear sky had appeared and took the form of a woman. It was the very same woman that appeared to tell them that they were all trapped inside the game.
"How dreadful it must be for those of you that remain," she greeted them, which earned snarls and frowns of contempt from the majority of the players. "Of course, even if I told you who I was, I doubt your frowns would turn upside-down. But I will tell you, regardless, because I want you to know why I wanted you here."
Her face's ethereal glow dimmed to reveal the face of an aged, Japanese woman with short, ebony hair and gray eyes.
"She looks like Etheria Nogareru," Kensuke expressed.
"For those of you thinking such a question, the answer is I am Etheria Nogareru," she told them, "and, yes, I am dead. Even I can't escape the mortality of a terminal illness that ate away at my body. But it was here in the game that I found a brief reprieve from death…and now I have all of you here, but not as prisoners. No, you're here…as challengers."
Shinji looked at his friends and wondered what this woman that had a role in the creation of the game wanted from them. If they were to fight each other, this would make being here less tolerable than ever before. Worse was that he didn't want to cross the line with his friends or anyone else, no matter what they did or have to do.
"Those that have survived up to now…can now go further if they seek to win more than just their freedom. Prior to my demise in the real world, which was a dull and dying place after Second Impact, I spent my time installing a series of coding in Survival Times to reflect my final wishes. The first of which was to leave behind what most of you know in the game culture as an Easter egg, hidden here in the game. But what is it? Where is it? And why do you need to find it? Oh, there are many reasons to why you should go looking for it. Searching for it changes how you escape from the game…and obtain all that's left."
"All that's left?" Shinji questioned.
On the city streets, near the riverside, Asuka, showing up to the event, wondered why this woman that was dead wanted them to look for some dumb egg. To her, it didn't seem like much of a difference between making it to the last level of any realm and logging out for freedom.
"The first player who finds the egg…shall receive my admin status within Survival Times, bestowing upon them total control of the realms…and the players within them…while in the real world, they'll inherit my share of stock that I've accumulated over the years of creating the tech that enables you to play this game, estimated at around half a trillion in US currency."
Everyone that was present within the Modernity Realm looked at one another, unsure of whether or not to believe her. If this egg granted one of them her admin status, they would be able to enable each and every one of them to log out of the game, to have complete control of the landscapes, the items that was littered within them, cheat codes that even the beta testers didn't possess, basically, the powers of a virtual god. And to receive her fortune that she didn't use to deal with her terminal illness over the years, even the smallest person on the planet would be the equivalent of a wealthy individual.
"To find the egg, you will need three special keys that I've hidden within the realms of the game," Etheria continued to inform them. "Three challenges to test for only the worthiest of traits that would award you the keys to the gate that will keep you from the egg in the end. But these keys won't be hiding under a rock or in some treasure chest underwater. I guess you could say that, like all other objects kept safe from the wrong hands, the unworthy hands, they're hidden within the deepest, darkest caves…in the deepest, darkest of labyrinths…within the mind itself. But I trust you'll find out on your own. I'll be waiting with the keys to your future. On your marks…get set…play."
Then, she vanished into thin air, leaving them to process this information…and move on from it. The game had just shifted dramatically. Now, instead of fighting to make it to a level they may never reach, they had to find a hidden object a dead woman left behind for them. Not only would finding this prize mean they could all get out of the game, but the person that finds the prize would receive a financial bonus in the real world.
"First to the key," Asuka expressed, now feeling invigorated to find this egg and get out of this world, "first to the egg."
"Greed will imprison us all if we choose to fight each other for the wrong reasons," Mari stated; she only wanted for those that remain trapped within the game to escape, not look for a get-rich scenario in which they all fought each other to the death.
"Three keys, one egg, one new shred of hope that can save us all," Shinji uttered. "But where will we find the first key?"
Suddenly, the city shifted around, frightening several of the players, until they could see a large, long road in between the skyscrapers, leading towards a bridge across the water.
"Oh, great," went Kensuke. "It looks like we're going to need some wheels if we want to find the first key."
That was going to be a problem for Shinji and Mari, as neither possessed any vehicles in their inventories; neither had ever ventured into realms where cars, planes or even spaceships were a necessity in traveling from one place to another, even for challenges.
"Come on," he told his friends. "I know where we can go get cars to customize for personal aesthetics and performances."
To be continued…
A/N: Now the game has shifted. To escape, those that remain must win a contest comprised by a dead woman. Win the contest, you win not only your freedom, but everyone else's freedom.