"Jeez, what's
taking them so long?"
Shaking my head as
if to knock the memories out of my head, I looked over at Jinx. "What did you say?" Noticing a slight dip in my HP and an aching
in my back, I shrugged off the beginner's standard-issue bow that had been
digging into my shoulder blades and placed it on the table."I was complaining about Gerg and Vin being late," Jinx explained, pushing the weapon away from his side of the table with his index finger. "They were supposed to be here 10 minutes so we could all go and take on the event boss."
"Event boss?" I asked, surprised; the new patch came with an event quest in which the player was supposed to find and defeat this special projectile-using enemy, or something like that. "You found it?"
Jinx nodded and swiped his left finger in the air, opening his player menu. "Technically, Matt was- I mean- Mattias was the one who first saw it." He tapped a few buttons and a notification window appeared in front of me.
"Do you want to accept mapping data?" I read aloud, looking at him and raising my eyebrow. "Why would I want your mapping data? We start out with a fully explored map already."
"Not necessarily, buddy; special areas and specific town names don't appear on your map until you discover them physically," he corrected, checking something else on his menu. "In this case, I'm giving you my map data, complete with the location of the tagged boss."
"Oh ok," I said, tapping the <yes> option on the window and pulling up my map. "It's nearby; do you know if Auser and Mattias are close to here?"
"They aren't online, remember?" Jinx retorted, reaching over the table and ruffling my pale hair. "Ansonī has us all under his surveillance." He rolled his eyes as he said his eccentric roommate's name and pulled his arm back before I could smack it away.
"I completely forgot about that," I said, patting my hair back down. Ansonī abhorred any type of virtual reality technology after the Sword Art Online incident and was known for hiding his roommates' Amusphere's and, until recently, watching them like a hawk whenever they did go online. Rumor says that he had a cousin who had been a player of SAO and the whole experience had turned him off from the entire industry. "Well, can you see where Gerg and Vin are?"
"I just did," he replied, pulling his halberd out of the sheath on his back and leaning it against the side of his chair. "They aren't online right now; you need to log off and see what the heck they're doing."
"Why me?" I grunted, pushing my chair away from the table so that it balanced on its hind legs and crossing my arms. "You're the one laying on my couch right now."
"Because," Jinx said, reaching over and pushing my chair down, so that all of the chair's legs touched the wooden floorboards of the bar. "They're your roommates. Plus, it's not my fault that I had to use your house because my roommate's a freaking Nazi."
"Also, I'm pretty sure that couch isn't yours," Jinx added, pulling a toothpick out of the dispenser on the table and putting it between his lips. "I saw Gerg carrying it into the house a couple weeks ago."
"Your roommate's not a Nazi," I disagreed, standing up and pulling up my player menu. "He just cares a lot about you guys and VRMMOs scare him. And that couch is mine- I just needed Garrith to help me carry it inside."
"Well, that makes sense," he replied, repositioning the pick on the other side of his mouth. "The guy's a freaking giant; I'm sure he could pick up Vin's truck if he wanted to."
I shook my head at the image of my friend picking up Devon's old truck and tapped the settings tab on my player menu. "I'll be back soon, okay?" I said, tapping the log out button and skimming over the warning notice.
Jinx sat up and pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. "Okay," he said, tapping a familiar rhythm on the wood. "I'll be waiting here."
I nodded and tapped the <yes> button on the warning window and closed my eyes.
+++
I slowly opened my
eyes and waited for them to adjust to the bright light that was filtering
through the blinds. I'm back in the real world and that's my own decision, I thought to
myself, closing my eyes again. The real world... where the sights are real,
the sounds are real, the smells are....
"Ew ew ew
ew!" I screeched, sitting up so fast that I felt the blood rush from my
head to the rest of the body and I felt a little woozy. I had gotten a huge whiff of a mildew smell
that had wafted into my room from the hallway and the pungent scent now filled
my throat. "Dammit, Rafaeru, I told you to do your laundry!" I shouted, pinching my nose and gagging. Not hearing a reply, I set my jaw and reached my hands up to grab the NerveGear that was still on my head.
Pulling off the piece of VR technology, I smiled as my hair cascaded past my shoulders after being cramped in the helmet. I placed the first generation of FullDive technology on my bedside table and groaned when I heard the bottle of melatonin that I had put there roll off and hit the floor. I slowly stood up and flinched as the tips of a couple strands of my hair tickled the middle of my bare back; I had forgotten that I had taken off my shirt so that I wouldn't get overheated while playing ALO. Walking over to the mirror on top of my dresser on the other end of the room, I grabbed an over-sized t-shirt that was hanging over the end of my bed.
Looking at my disheveled hair in the mirror, I combed through the cyan-colored forest that my hair must of become while I was sleeping. Unlike most SAO players who found that their body had grown on without their input, I decided to keep my hair the length it had grown into and dyed it the bright color it is today. Part of this was simply the fact that I thought it worked out to look better this way. The other reason behind my decision was to prevent anyone from SAO from ever recognizing who I was. I smiled as I felt how soft my hair had become and made a mental note to keep using Devon's conditioner behind his back.
I started to check myself in the mirror, turning to see if I had regained any of the lost body fat from my time as a player of SAO. Even before the time of that death game, I had always been a skinny guy; because of that, it's taken me longer than most to regain my health. My stomach was flat and sunken in, whereas before it would have the slightest signs of abs. Looking at my stomach, my eyes drifted to the tattoo on my side. After we had managed to reunite in the real world, Katie had suggested that we all go and get tattoos of our guild symbol to match our avatars in SAO. At first, the idea might of seemed weird, but after everything we had all been through, it made sense to have something to show that we had survived that horrible death game.
I pulled the t-shirt over my head and started to walk back towards my desk before I stopped myself. Hung over my chair was Jinx's -Josh's- leather jacket, something that I rarely went anywhere without nowadays. Sliding my finger over it, I reminisced back to when he gave it to me.
When I woke up in the hospital that day and figured out the truth, I screamed. I screamed like I was being born again, into a world full of fire and brimstone. Tears poured down the side of my face as I just started to fully comprehend the magnitude of my actions. The true, appalling nature of everything that happened in the game was too much for me and I lost control. All of a sudden, I was my baby brother, crying out in pain uncontrollably as blood poured down my face.
A group of nurses had burst into my room and tried to calm me down but I just squirmed out of their reach, slowly losing my mind to the horror of myself. All of a sudden, a familiar face came into view and I felt my voice catch in my throat. Reaching his arms around me, Josh pulled me towards him with just a molecule of strength that he had left.
"It's gonna be okay," he had murmured into my ear, over and over again, as he rubbed my back. "It's not your fault." Josh rustled around a bit and I felt something rather heavy placed on my shoulders.
Sobbing, I felt my body being racked by each new wave of tears and I reached with both arms to feel the foreign object. My fingers touched leather and I knew that I was wearing Josh's trademark jacket. I had tried to pull it off and give it back to him, but he pushed my hand away and told me to keep it.
Since then, the jacket and I were inseparable; like a little kid's blanket, it didn't matter if I was wearing it or if it was just nearby, I had to have it with me. I shook my head and told myself that I didn't need it right now; I would just be going out of the room to go and check on Garrith and Devon.
My footsteps echoed slightly as I walked through the living room where Jinx was lounged out on the sofa, the red-tinted glass of his Amusphere casting a light magenta shade over his closed eyes. Grabbing a Sharpie off of the coffee table, I contemplated drawing on his face but decided against it and shoved it in my pocket. Turning away from my older brother-in-spirit, I headed into the hallway where the rest of the residents of this house's rooms were.
I checked in both of their rooms but neither of my former guild members were there; I started to get worried that they had somehow vanished when I heard Garrith's unmistakable chuckle from Rafaeru's room. Turning around the corner, I walked into a strange scene; Rafaeru was laying on his bed with an Amusphere on his head and my two other roommates were positioned around him, watching him.
Every former SAO player was required to live in a house of one non-SAO player, in case there were any unexpected side effects from being in that death game. These orders came straight from the Second Separated Advanced Network Division, Technology Bureau, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, or the Virtual Division for short, and were not a problem for most SAO players, because they had family members or roommates that never played the VRMMO. However, for people like me, Jinx, and Jesse, who lived solely with other SAO players, it required us to get additional roommates who had not participated in the death game. For Josh and his two roommates, that meant having Ansonī Sato live in their house with them; for Katie and Jeshika, Jesse's real name, it meant having a third roommate, Han'na Vanji, stay with them. For me, it meant having Rafaeru Yamamoto live under my roof and leave his dirty clothes all over the place.
Despite his appearance, Rafaeru wasn't your everyday lazy roommate; the 18 year old was an agent from the Virtual Division, sent to watch and report about me. After SAO ended, I was put under heavy questioning due to my large number of player kills. Deciding that I was acting under self defense and defense of others, I was excused from having to do any jail time or go to court. As assurance that I wouldn't turn into some sort of violent killer, I was assigned a (supposedly) high profile official from the Virtual Division to keep tabs on me. This official turned out to be anything but official and one of the most irresponsible young adults that I have yet to meet.
"Hey, what's up Eric?" Garrith said, his deep voice booming, as he turned to see that I was standing in the doorway. He was leaning on Rafaeru's dresser, opposite from the end of his bed, and from the look of his tense, muscular frame, he was trying his best not to crush it. Before SAO, Garrith was one of the strongest people that I had ever known and he was devastated to see how his body had deteriorated after SAO. He quickly worked up a physical therapy schedule and soon had his body working like a well-oiled machine on all kinds of activities.
"Not much," I replied, watching how the sun coming through the window glinted off of his styled, short dark brown hair. "What's going on here?" I leaned against the doorway and crossed my arms.
"We were planning on messing with Raf whenever he logged off and maybe get some answers for why he's using an Amusphere," Garrith replied, chuckling. No doubt he was planning on scaring the living daylights whenever Rafaeru got done with what he was doing online.
"There's no we," Vin contradicted from his spot in the chair in the corner of Yamamoto's room. He ran his hand through his jet black hair, the pale skin of his hand creating a harsh highlight against a background of deep darkness, and smirked. "I have no desire to get on Mr. Sergeant Lieutenant's bad side."
My eyes outlined Vin's slender frame, lounged over the old desk chair, as I walked over to the side of Rafaeru's bed. As usual, he was dressed in all black, though the usual dark eyeliner was missing from his face today. In a way, me and Devon were alike in fashion sense; we both wore eyeliner and black nail polish, despite being guys. However, the similarities ended there; while I tended to wear clothes from the punk era of the 2000's, Devon was comfortable in almost any outfit, as long as it was black. "Well, we need you guys in ALO for the event boss."
Gerg sighed and shook his head, his dark grey eyes looking into mine. "I'm afraid I've gotta bail on that, boss. I wanna see Raf's face when he logs off and gets the shock of his life. Why don't you ask Kitty and Jesse for help?"
Before I could reply, Devon snorted and said "Yeah, I doubt that'll happen, with Kitty's attitude towards Jinx right now."
I sighed and pulled the Sharpie out of my pocket and twirling it in the air with my fingers. "What'd Jinx say this time that has her all wound up?"
Devon shrugged and pulled his knees up close to his face, so that his feet could fit on the seat of the chair. "I don't really know what he did this time- anyways, Jeshika and Katie are out on a shopping trip with Han'na or something." He rolled his eyes, indicating what his feelings were towards shopping and Han'na.
"Well, would you like to help us complete the event quest?" I asked, raising my eyebrows at my former second-in-command. Usually, I could rely on his help, especially in the virtual world; however, from his tone, he was focused on something else at the moment.
"Nah," Devon replied, confirming my suspicions. "I'd like to see how this turns out." He gestured with his head to indicate Garrith and Rafaeru and pulled his legs closer to himself.
I nodded and, leaning over my oblivious roommate, uncapped the permanent marker. "Well, I'm gonna give Mr. Sir Sergeant Lieutenant something to get back at him for stealing my group members for the day." I remarked, drawing a flowing moustache on Rafaeru. Devon smirked and Garrith laughed behind a covered hand.
"Well, I'm off to go back to ALO," I said, capping the marker and slipping it back into my pocket. "Thank you for convincing me to try it, guys. I think this might be what I needed." And with that, I turned and walked outside of the room to participate in what could be one of the hardest fights in my life.
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