Water…

Tom’s hand slid into a small stream, scooping up clean, yet icy cold water. The smile on his face was light, almost as if he was trying to hide sadness. He couldn’t hide the fact that the days were passing quicker and he was longing for something. But what? He had thought it over a dozen times that time, even in the middle of a test, but the answer never came. Why couldn’t it just sink into his brain like most things did?

His hand moved swiftly through the water, splashing some up and managing to scare a school of fish away. “Sorry,” Tom whispered. All he could do was watch as the tiny fish swam away down the stream, away from him. The teen looked down at the leaves around him, at the dirt that now covered his pants, and then at his wavering reflection in the stream. Finally he stood up, grabbing his backpack as he looked to the isolated path left for him. It was about a mile to his house, not to mention a good amount of homework awaiting him.

Tom scratched his head, running his hands through the slightly fuzzy blond hair that he now owned. Recently he had cut it, seeing as long hair was unpopular ever since Middle School ended. Or so it seemed, at least. A smile managed to appear on his lips at the memories of the peoples’ reactions to his new do. Some were positive, others negative. In High School, you really couldn’t get people away from spitting out their opinions, could you? That was the problem. People just had to say everything that came to mind. Maybe everyone had a right to their own opinion, but there was also the saying of “going too far” with something.

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Tom stretched, staring at his socks at the end of his bed with relatively lazy eyes. His computer glowed in the darkness, making his eyes beg for a nice, dark corner, but he ignored his needs. All he could do was stare at the device in front of him, staring at the writing imprinted on its screen. Then the message from his new partner came, making him sit upright. In the process of scrambling to the computer in order to reply, the boy literally flopped to the ground like a fish. That would have made a good video on YouTube was the only thought that came to his mind.

Tom’s light blue eyes glowed with delight as he pulled on the goggles, longing for something to do. ‘The World’ was one place that he had longed to delve into for a while now. It seemed to be the only fun in his life, the only place where he could really…be himself. No one criticized him, no one recognized him, and most of all, no one could do anything to ruin his fun. Unless someone issued a black out that would last years, it didn’t seem like there was going to be any end to his happiness. That was good. It always was.

Welcome to ‘The World’…

Mac Anu. The place was like a vast city populated with thousands of people, each a different person, each someone unique, someone could either be a friend or enemy. Now he stood there amongst the people, one of the thousands of players who played the game. Teishu, a low level Blademaster that would be going on an adventure today, one that would hopefully go as he wanted it to. No player killers, no hacks, no nothing. It was just a regular adventure where he could enjoy himself with somebody else, somebody that would hopefully try to enjoy herself with him. Hopefully…

Teishu shoved his hands in his pockets, waiting patiently by the Chaos Gate while keeping a close eye out for the girl he had talked to on the message boards. He patted the sheathed blade, trying his best to seem like your casual player. No squeals of excitement when he thought he saw his partner, no nothing. It was just him waiting.

He was just another player of ‘The World.’ The question was: Was his partner going to be just your ordinary player of ‘The World’ or someone different.

In minutes that would be the thing he would find out.

Yuu despertely tried to stay awake in her math class as the teacher prattled on about something having to do with triangles. She could feel her eyelids getting heavier and heavier with each passing syllable uttered by her teacher. Finally, her eyelids closed and the moment they did her teacher noticed. "Yuu Morino," the teacher said. "Am I boring you? How would extra homework sound?"

Yuu muttered something under her breath and replied, "No Mr. Matthews, I apologize." The teacher adjusted his glasses and responded, "Very well." He then returned to his math lesson. Yuu sighed and struggled onward through out the day until finally it was time to go home.

Yuu thought to herself how she would spend the rest of her day during the bus ride home, but nothing seemed to come to mind. The bus pulled up to her long stone driveway and she stepped through the asile of empty seats until she got to the front of the bus. She turned to the bus driver and said, "Thanks again for bringing me home Mr. Johnson." The man nodded politely and watched as his last occupant stepped off the bus. Her stop was the last one in Mr. Johnsons route because she lived on the outskirts of town with her mother and father.

Yuu walked down the stone driveway and kicked a few stones along the way until she made it up to her front porch. She lifted up the rug and pulled out the house key and opened her front door. Her parents worked most of the day and had off on weekends so she had the house to herself. She walked upstairs and tossed her bag to the wall and then hopped onto her computer. She watched it come to life with just a click of button on her keyboard.

Yuu really didnt have many friends and usually kept to herself since her sister died. She usually just read books or played videogames for fun or a substitute for human interaction. She recently got a copy of a game called the World from her mother and she wanted to play it. All she had managed to do when she first got the game was create an account and a character. Yuu put on the VR Goggles she had recieved from her father. Both parents tried to make up their lack of family time by spoiling their now only child. They had lost one to suicide and they didnt want to lose Yuu too.

Within moments of logging in, Yuu found herself immersed in an expansive city that looked much like Venice in Italy. It was bustling with a multitude of players of all shapes and sizes. Yuu was quite excited, but she also knew that here she could be her trueself and not have to hide behind a mask of a smile. Yuu brought out her sword from the holster on her back and began to practice swing with it using only one of her hands. Once she was satisfied with her weapon, the Adventurer, she holstered it back up again. She thouth to herself as she set out to find her partner.

The World's newest nightmare has just arrived....

Gibber gabber was all the Blademaster could hear as he looked off into the crowds, searching for the girl he would be adventuring with. Her name was Yuu Morino, or just Yuu. He knew that it was at least something along those lines. All he knew was that she was a Heavy Blade, the strongest class in ‘The World’ besides the Heavy Axe class. He could always send her a flash-mail, but if she was standing somewhere around here, it would be kind of stupid if she was standing just a few yards away.

“Come on,” the boy grumbled, looking about with impatience. He spotted a group of girls nearby, each carrying either a blade or an axe, but they seemed to have formed a party. He highly doubted that someone as low as she was going to just jump into a group like they had been best friends since Kindergarten. Plus it was plain impolite, but who cared about being polite to others these days? Manners have officially been drowned, Teishu thought glumly.

Putting his hands on his hips, the boy turned around, circling. Players, players, players, a player with a giant blade out, players, players, and…wait, a player with a blade out in the middle of Mac Anu. His eyes locked onto the player as she swung her blade, making a few people inch out of her way so their heads wouldn’t be swiped off. The teen, making sure he was out of reach, inched forward until he could target the girl. Her features were definitely…darker than his. Much darker. And her name just so happened to be Yuu.

The boy gulped and luckily, it was only audible by him. The first adjective to come to mind when he saw her was black, despite the noticeable white streak that was in her hair. Otherwise, she seemed like one of the people that liked to express their feelings and be imaginative at the same time. He, on the other hand, liked to just be imaginative. He didn’t exactly want to express his feelings by wearing all black or all yellow. Both would attract a lot of attention. Attention that he most certainly didn’t need.

Trying to sound all sorts of casual, the Blademaster stepped forward, small strips of his silver hair coming over his eyes in the process. “You must be Yuu! I’m Teishu, the…guy from the board that contacted you about going on a dungeon raid.” He smiled brightly and scratched his head, obviously lost. Now what? “Err, well, do you want to explore Mac Anu a bit first and get the hang of the controls in the field or do you want to just take on some monsters?” He looked to the right, then to the left. “The choice is yours.”

Yuu watched out of the corner of her eye, a blademaster with silver hair casually approach her, and then he began to talk to her. “You must be Yuu! I’m Teishu, the…guy from the board that contacted you about going on a dungeon raid.” Yuu watched as he began to smile nervously as he continued to talk. “Err, well, do you want to explore Mac Anu a bit first and get the hang of the controls in the field or do you want to just take on some monsters?” Yuu looked at him curiously and watched as he tried to avoid eye contact by looking to either side. Then he spoke again. “The choice is yours.”

Yuu smirked in amusement at the player in front of her and replied. "Teishu was it? I'm not sure what I want to do?" She paused for a moment and scanned the streets in front of her to wiegh her options and noticed that the streets were a bit too crowded to really try to learn any sort of movements. She looked to Teishu and then put her index finger to her lips, thus giving the appearence she was deep in thought. She soon lowered her hand to her sides and brought her hands to her hips and replied. "I did just start playing today, but I'm not usually the type who enjoys being around large crowds. So lets go to a field and I'll get a feel for the controls in mid-combat. Its usually how I play games anyways."

She waited for a response from Teishu and when he looked like he was going to reply; she interrupted him. "What sort of fields does this game have anyway? I only got to look at the player's guide briefly. Also, what sort of monsters could we possibly fight and what could you tell me about them before we go?" All the while she was just measuring Teishu as she boggled him with questions. She thought to herself as Teishu seemed to be thinking up an answer to give her.

Overall, he doesn't seem too tough, but I haven't seen any of the classes fight yet to be too good of a judge on strength yet. Plus, it would be better to try to actually make some friends before just randomly picking off weak strangers. I'll have to level my character quite a bit before I could ever start killing anyone here. It would be best I guess to first learn all I can from anyone I meet to help better myself. Once I feel satisfied with what I know, I'll have no qualms killing anyone here.

Questions. My worst enemy. Great.

To him, she didn’t seem too bad. She wasn’t in his face and she wasn’t as quiet as a mouse. From her appearance, he had expected lots of dark glances at him, but instead he found that she acted regularly. Although people were constantly trying to push past him, he really couldn’t get the past that she wasn’t all frowns and hate. Instead, she seemed bent on getting some answers that would make fighting through the dungeon much easier. That was a plus.

She wasn’t very sure on what to do at that point. Movements were a piece of cake to anybody unless they hadn’t touched a video game in their life, but if she wanted to, they could try to brave the crowds that would push them back up the stairs like a wall. She didn’t seem to want to travel into the crowds either, so again, that was a plus. Instead, she thought the field was the place to be. Teishu had hopes that monsters wouldn’t be waiting for them the second they got in.

When he started to reply, she again interrupted him, asking a question about the field and then about the types of monsters. She seemed much more eager than him to get on to slaughtering monsters. Then again, he was never eager to fight monsters. Nonetheless, he tried his best to answer. “Well, depends on what field we’re headed to. I think we could go to a level three field, which will likely hold some, uh…” He looked up at the clouds and scratched his head. Some what? He hadn’t been to one of those fields in months!

Finally, he got a lock on what monsters there were. “Well, we’ll likely encounter monsters like the Swordmanoid, which is basically a knight with a sword and a shield. Then there’s the Deadly Moth – that one’s self explanatory – and the Snip Snap and…” His voice trailed off. “At a level like that, there’ll be a lot of monsters. Just know that since you’re a Heavy Blade, you should have no trouble cutting them down.”

Hopefully that helped, he thought glumly. Then there was the field. “There’s a lot of fields. Fields with snow, plains of grass, forests, places with fire all around you, and even the places with darkness shrouding your every movement; that’s not even all of them, mind you.” Teishu smiled. “Any preferences? I prefer places with snow personally, but it’s your choice.” His eyes wandered and then something came into his head. “Oh! And what do you prefer? Lots of monsters in a field or just a few? It’s pretty easy to adjust that stuff.”

He could only hope that Yuu didn’t decide to go with a dark, evil place with lots of giant monsters. He hated those places. A lot.