innocent sin online: chapter five (beware what you wish for)

[madimpossibledreamer]

main points: persona 4 .hack inspired au, this strange lack of capitalization only occurs in main points & stuff, not actual story. lack of capitalization is strangely fun but i'm not going to write a story in that because even i have trouble reading it sometimes.  haven't posted cieng's post.  don't intend to write the main website though that might happen eventually, maybe.  when i'm not in school.  neither of the other two character creation topics have been posted yet.  i might post ry's and the one cieng responds to next.

chapter summary: souji finds a changed yosuke.  in the past, he doesn't find useful information about the game and decides to try another day.
word count: 2112
rating: T

 

            The forums are full of interesting information, but in the end none of it helps Souji find the missing Koual, so he ends up heading back into the world of the game anyway.

            He barely logs in when the strange character Teddie runs up to him, arms akimbo.  “K-Kenshin-sensei!!  It’s Koual!  There’s something wrong!  He’s killing people...”

            Instantly the cold dread that he’d been trying to ignore, to pull away from, has somehow infiltrated his heart, and for an instant he wants to take the easy path.  Turn away, turn off the game.  Is Koual—is Yosuke worth this?  Are they really friends?  Does their bond mean anything?

            Yes.  This is terrifying.  Immortals are possible. Something is really wrong, and if he messes up…well, he could end up in a coma, just like Yosuke.  But he won’t turn a blind eye to the truth, no matter how horrifying.  He will find the truth.

            Souji runs a mental check of his current inventory, weapons, spells.  He’s as ready as he’s going to be for something like this.  And, well, if it’s one of the Immortals, he never will truly be ready, will he?  “Lead me to the dungeon, Teddie.”

            “I-I believe in you, Sensei!  If anyone can help out this world, it’s you!”

            Teddie walks on.  Kenshin follows.  Time for the truth.

            When they enter the dungeon, hidden in a little back alley that Koual had never shown him (and that’s a sign of something in of itself, as Koual’s knowledgeable about practically everything in the game) something’s definitely wrong.  Teddie freaks out the instant they enter.  “The smell!  S-sensei, I’ll just get in the way.  I’m sorry!”  And then he runs.

            Souji watches him for a moment and then concentrates on the scene.  It’s a field, trees and grass in it, and it would be peaceful but for…

            The music is unsettling.  It’s surprisingly cheerful, considering Teddie’s story.  It’s not something Souji has ever heard in the world, and it shouldn’t be here.  It doesn’t even sound like the right composer.  That, and the…

            The bodies.  He thinks that’s what they are, dead characters lying motionless on the ground, but none of them have teleported out to the hospital yet.

            He gulps and sets his character running in that direction.

            And stares in horror.  He’s never seen this kind of violence in the game.

            Limbs are at unnatural angles.  The ground is completely smothered with blood. Weapons are discarded, some untouched, some broken violently into pieces like their owners.  Some of the bodies aren’t even completely whole.  One has been stabbed in the stomach with…it looks like a hand, but a hand couldn’t possibly do that, could it?  Another seems to be missing a heart and most of a rib cage.  The sightless faces he can see are terrified, in pain.  It looks like a sadist was experimenting, playing with characters’ lives and pain as a young child would play with food.  He spares a thought for the people who played the characters.  Are they now in comas?  Even if this was not the case, how much would it have been traumatizing to watch your character die in such a way?

            “Well, well.  If I’d been expecting company, I would’ve waited and put on a show.”  He recognizes that voice.  It’s…

            It’s Yosuke’s voice.  Behind him.

            Suddenly there’s a hand on Kenshin’s shoulder, and it sends a shiver through him.  He tries to input a command, to pull his character away, but an odd shudder runs through him and it doesn’t work.  He can’t move.

            His arms feel awfully heavy.  Warm.  There’s something odd at his back, and…

            And he can feel the hand on his shoulder, and a hot breath at his neck.  Someone’s right behind him.  As he looks, he doesn’t see a computer screen with graphics, power bars, a map.  He can see the bodies, feel the hot, heavy blood at his feet.  At his boots.  The air is metallic and slightly bitter.

            “But don’t worry, Kenshin.  I saved the best seat for you.”  The hand moves down his arm in an intimate way, leaving a trail of hot, sticky blood.  The hand is clawed, inhuman.  The body behind his own moves closer, until the head is right behind his own, so he can feel the creepy chuckle against his skin.  “Well, that’s a shock.  You prepared a surprise for me too, didn’t you?  Souji?  How thoughtful.”

 

Previously:

            It takes a while for the game to download.  Souji, bored, is splayed out on the couch in his room.  It’s not often he allows himself to be bored.  He’s always doing something, so watching the progress bar go as slow as it’s going is a little excruciating.  At least tips are showing up at the bottom of the screen.  They’re interesting and tell him about the game he’ll play, so they’re useful.

            He scrutinizes the picture of the city skyline.  It’s somewhat boring, to be honest, but it looks like the city is a fairly large one.  It’s still too early to tell exactly what continent it’s on, though.  It might be interesting if it was in France, so he could practice his French.  It’d be a little more boring if it was in an English-speaking country, since he knew English better, but it’d still be a good chance to practice.

            His staring allows him to notice what he’s not sure everyone does on downloading the game—a blue butterfly appearing for a few instants, then fluttering behind another building.

            Did that just happen?  Now that he has something to look for, he’s patiently watching.  It takes a while, six minutes in fact, but it happens again.  And again, in four minutes.  By the fourth time, he’s sure that it’s been included as…what?  Some kind of hidden inside joke or something?  Still, it’s much more interesting than just a flat cityscape background.

            By the end of the download, he knows that it’s important to group with other players for something called a ‘Shadow Dungeon’, if something goes wrong in the game, the help/suggestions choice from the menu can inform people called ‘GMs’, ‘Admins’ (Administrators?) may play the game too, you can view your current ‘Allegiances’ via the menu, it’s important to take a break when you play games, there are different types of missions and you can only have a certain number of them, it’s possible to create a character via a personality test or the normal way…

            “I’m going to have to do a lot of research even to be able to start playing, it seems,” he muses out loud.

            Part of him, the part that he’s quickly beginning to realize is just the voice of his parents (mother or father, it doesn’t really matter, because all he’s ever heard is a united front), the part he’s quickly coming to hate, is annoyed.  It’s a lot of work for something so wasteful.  It’s not practical.  It won’t help his grades or get into a good college or get a good job.

            But maybe it’s time he had some fun.  It will accomplish a few goals, such as pleasing his family, the ones that actually matter now, and if he’s going to experiment being someone slightly different, this game isn’t a bad place to start.

            He opens up a browser and searches the game.  A part of him cringes, but he clicks on the wiki article.  It’s not for research for a class, and in any case it’s just a start.

            He learns that the game has been around a lot longer than he expected—six years.  He doesn’t remember advertisements about the game before, but then, he wouldn’t.  Six years ago he wouldn’t have considered them relevant.  He learns about the histories of the involved companies and about the related video games.  That’s a touch worrisome, until he reads the interview quotation that says that Innocent Sin was designed to be understood without knowledge of the other games.

            That’s good for him and Nanako.

            It doesn’t say much about how to actually play, though, so Souji hits the back button and looks at the next result.  The official site, perfect.  It should have a lot of useful information.

            …Or not.  It doesn’t have anything on how to play, and Souji’s soon lost among pages and pages.  The first one just talks about awards that have been won by the game, as well as all the critics’ gushing about the game.  It’s not the best first impression, and Souji thinks about telling someone that, if there’s a way to do so.

            There’s pages on how this game relates to others in the same game series (video games, though…) as well as very basic pages on character creation and the world of the game.  Apparently there are demons and mythological beings as a huge part of the world, which is somewhat interesting.  More so, if they actually manage to get things right.  It might prove to be an education for Nanako, and even perhaps himself if they’ve done well enough.  On the whole, though, the information is so much less than he’s hoping for that he finds himself growling.  Do they even care about their customers?

            And then he notices another link on the left, this one to ‘official forums’.  He clicks on that, and there’s a bunch of topics represented by folders.  A few, he notes, are in English.

            Right away, he notices a couple topics called ‘Character Creation’.  One is a post by someone new to the game (named Ry) asking about character creation, and the person is then directed to two other posts, one by Saki and one by Koual.  “Odd name,” he remarks to himself, and reads the rest of the post.  “Those two have the most in-depth, though it seems with Saki’s hiatus hers hasn’t been updated in ages.”  He looks at all the posts entitled ‘for newbies’, ‘Character Creation’, ‘intro’, and the like, and comes to the same conclusion as the poster.  One, posted earlier today, was made simply to make fun of those who had only just started playing the game.

            “How do you think you got started?” Souji asks.  A hypothetical question, one that will never be answered.  As he’s trying to figure out the level of intelligence of the poster, the post count under the topic goes up, and curious, he clicks on it again.

            “This post has been deemed in violation of the Player’s Terms of Conduct #3 (if you particularly want to argue about it, that’s the one about harassment and abusive posts, and note that I cut parts out because I assume that if you’re playing this game you can read and give your consent for important documents that make this game a fun, safe environment).  ~Admin Cieng”

            Souji smiles slightly.  It’s amusing, and it raises his opinion of the people running this game slightly.  He’s not sure what an admin does, exactly.

            Fortunately, there’s a post detailing the duties of an admin, as differentiated by GMs and devs, and he scrolls through that.  It seems there’s a lot of language used for playing games that isn’t used by the rest of the community, or at the very least isn’t used the same as in everyday life.  He runs into a few other words he makes a note to research.

            He then reads through the post by Saki.  It basically consists of many requests by various people for Saki to do an in-depth guide on character creation, what basically amounts to an acceptance speech, and then various posts updating everyone of progress made.  There’s a joke about the amount of effort required, and possibly publishing it as an actual book, but only one very short post explaining the various steps involved in character creation.  It’s useful, and he thinks for a moment before taking out a notebook to take notes on the process in efficient, readable handwriting.  On a whim, he adds a flourish, just for fun.  He’s not going to get crazy, but he’s going to remember Dojima’s words and the fact that fun is now optional, not something useless to be avoided.

            Then he glances at the time and realizes that somehow, it’s really late.  Usually his sense of time is, like many other things, perfect or fairly near so, which makes the times he isn’t all the more agonizing.

            At least, that’s how it used to be.  He realizes that for how annoyed and bored he’d been at the beginning, the game has downloaded in the hours he’s spent looking, and he’s had a lot of fun.  Maybe tomorrow he’ll be more productive in his search.