Chapter two: game world

Chaos Engine is a Massively-Multiplayer online Role-playing Game, also known as an MMORPG; this means that it is online with anybody who is currently logged on, around 13 million at any given time. This game is much like World of Warcraft but much more extensive, open, and because of these extra features it has a larger following. This is where she first met Hikaji, Headgamer, Rentaro, and Rachel. Though she has only met Rachel in the real world.

When the game started Sera’s avatar formed in the world of Chaos Engine, it was a neko-girl, and was basically a copy of herself, about5’3” with brown hair and green eyes, but it had cat ears and a tail. When the game started sera looked through her friends list to see who was on. Only Hikaji was on at the moment so she teleported her self to his location.

She first met Hikaji when she was about ten, and he was the best programmer she knew back then and still is now, though she wouldn’t admit it. His avatar was that of a 5’10”white male, and looked much like her father which was an odd coincidence, had a ninja outfit on and was at about level 60, incredibly high for the game being out for about six months at the time. She met him in an accident in which he saved her from a dragon that had escaped the “Slay the Dragon” event, and helped her with any code slinging problems she had; in fact he was the one who got her into hacking. Long story short if it weren’t for him she would be a very different woman today.

She appeared before very ominous gates to a very big wall that surrounded an area with a radius of about four kilometers. It was “Mortville” or “death city” the hardest training/event area in the game, and she should know her character is level 143 and she still can’t beat it. Unlike many MMORPGs creatures appear everywhere, there is no one place or level of creatures appear in, this makes it more chaotic. The tougher the area the smarter the creatures get. A creature of level 1 in Mortville is on par with a Genius, and can share information with other creatures. On the other side of the scale a level 100, the highest level for creatures, is about as smart as a rock in the beginner’s areas. There have been rumors that the lower level creatures in Mortville once made a very elaborate trap which they used to catch and defeat some of the highest level characters in the game, the gamers probably got cocky.

Sera did a well practiced had sign and made a map appear in front of her, it had a single dot just behind the door, that was where Hikaji was. She said “OK I can do that.” And opened the main gates and there was Hikaji, battle worn.

He said in a slight smile “Took you long enough, Kireinashi,” and he passed out, unlike most games you do actually get weaker as your health and stamina decrease. He had about 3 Hp left; Sera used one of her more powerful attacks, “Shikami”, and summoned a grim reaper to keep the creatures at bay until she was done with first aid. She pulled out a health potion and made Hikaji drink that raised his health about halfway then by using actual first aid techniques stopped the bleeding and cured poison to raise his health to be about 75 of his max. The programmers went for realism when it came to healing. Sera said “there that should keep you from dieing for a while, why did you try to take on Mortville by yourself?”

Hikaji replied “Because There’s a special event happening today, if you get to the center of Mortville, you’ll receive a package that will let you make your own ninjutsu and sell them.”

“Man I want that, How about this we work together then we can share the prize; if we work together it shouldn’t be very hard.” Sera said happily, knowing that Hikaji was about twice the level of even the strongest creature.

Hikaji said “Ok let’s go to the center of this evil city.”

The Grim reaper dispelled and they started into the city. Sera pulled out her scythe and changed her stance to give herself the maximum attack range. She said to Hikaji “Alright, I’m ready lets open us up a can of whoop-ass.”

Hikaji replied, “I don’t think that a can is going to satiate these monsters. I think we’ll need a whole case, and for that we need Headgamer, just a sec.” Hikaji logged out for a moment and logged back in and said “Headgamer should be here any second.

After Hikaji said that a tall white male wearing black pants, Grey T-shirt and a Grey travel cloak, with a small dragon on his shoulder teleported to there location. His avatar was obviously based off of Vlad Taltos from the Jhereg series of books. This is Headgamer, long time friend and rival of Hikaji and Sera’s.

He said “Hey, Hikaji, so what’s this I hear of a Ninja event.” He looked over to Sera and said “Oh hey Kireinashi did Hikaji rope you into this as well?”

Sera replied sarcastically “No, I logged on to relieve some stress and I figured what better way to relieve some stress then to go up against the most powerful and intelligent creatures in the game.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Headgamer replied.

Hikaji told everybody in his group “Now the reason I called you is that we have about an hour before the Admins decide to take out the engine. Now if we can get past the low level creatures the stronger ones shouldn’t be a problem.”

Sera and Headgamer both said “OK let’s do it.”

Headgamer got his dragon to fly off over the door into the next canyon, the doors only kept the area separate and a flying familiar is very useful in situations where recon is concerned. Headgamer closed his eyes for a moment, establishing contact with his dragon. When he opened his eyes he said “Teldra says that the next canyon over is full of zombies, lucky for us that there the only low level creature that doesn’t get any more intelligent with the harder dungeons, and they already seem to smell us. Kireinashi you should use “Earthquake of the Dammed” to get rid of them then we should travel through the canyon before any more can spawn.”

Hikaji told him “Good idea, you and I can be on the outside of Kireinashi to keep her from being attacked by any quick spawners, that attack will leave her drained of mana for a while, she already used ‘Shikami’ to save me.”

Teldra flew back to the side that Sera and her group was on and landed onto Headgamer’s shoulder. Hikaji opened the door and jumped onto the sea of undead when to keep the zombies distracted while Sera started doing the hand movements needed to summon an earthquake then she hit the ground with her hands. There was a rumble quite first then it grew into a shake so violent it shook the soul right out of the undead bodies. There was much loot to collect. Unfortunately, they had no time to collect, more zombies would spawn and, the time to collect the jutsu engine was ever decreasing.

Hikaji ran back to Sera saying “Oh no, the move must’ve drained her mana to 0 and used most of her Hp to finish the move.” He got to her and pulled out an N.R.G. drink and gave it to her she drank it and restored most of her Hp.

Sera said to Hikaji “Thanks, looks like I owe you yet another save. I need to stop doing that. Isn’t it up to like 30 or 40?”

Hikaji replied “Fifty-four actually, not that I’m counting or anything.” He threw a dagger right past Sera’s head startling her greatly.

Sera said “What was that for?” she turned around and saw what it had been for. There was a large corpse on the ground behind her. She said “Damn trolls, I wished the programmers had made them a bit louder, I can’t ever hear them sneaking up on me. Guess I’m up to 55 now”

Headgamer said “Alright lets collect the swag and get moving, the smell of a fresh kill is bound to attract more.”

Sera said “I doubt it has much swag, I mean it is a troll.”

Headgamer replied “There’s always swag my dear, always.”

Hikaji thought out loud “You know I always wondered how all these monsters manage to acquire so much gold, there must be some sort of monster bank.”

Headgamer said “Ok we got: 580 gold, 10 throwing knives, 1 elixir, and 1 hidden sound village headband. Hikaji you can have the head band, and throwing knives. Kireinashi you can have the elixir, you seem to need it more than Hikaji or me.”

“Hey.” Sera scoffed

“And that leaves the gold to me, which I’ll gladly take.” Headgamer finished.

Hikaji asked “How come you always get most if not all the money? Come to think of it I haven’t really ever seen you spend it on anything ether.”

Headgamer replied “I’m saving up for something and if everything goes according to plan I’ll have the hundred million that I need by the end of this quest.”

By this time they were all walking toward the end of the canyon, zombies were starting to crawl out of the ground again when Sera said “We should probably speed things up, if we don’t we may get surrounded.”

Everyone broke out into a run, except Hikaji, when the got to the end and closed the doors Headgamer realized “Oh, crap Hikaji is still on the other side.”

Over head Sera and Headgamer heard “Why did you guy’s do that? You made me use up some of my Mp to wall-walk, now I’ve got to use a potion to recoup lost points.”

Sera breathed a sigh of relief “I thought you were zombie chow.”

Hikaji replied “It’ll take more than a hoard of zombies to kill me got a few hundred Exp out of it too, so I suppose I should thank you guys. Now on a different note we are about one kilometer from the center point, to get in we have to pass over The Mountain of Horrible Giants and through The Swamp of No Return. We also have about 30 minutes to complete this task. So I figured we’d break up the tasks to keep fresh incase we run up against some difficult foes. Headgamer and I will take care of the Giants, and Kireinashi you can take care of transmuting a bridge over the swamp, because you’re better at alchemy than Headgamer or me.”

All three took off with blazing speed, the first Giants came down easily, Hikaji just proved his name and pretty much lit the entire mountain on fire, then the Giants came out from under ground this is where Headgamer came in and used a lot of illusions to make them kill each other. After about ten minutes of killing the giants, there were a lot of them, the mountain was empty except for the team.

Sera drew the necessary diagram onto the ground and shouted “transform.” The mountain began to dissolve seemingly into thin air for a second. Then the where the trio were standing a platform jutted out then grew longer and longer until it spanned the length of the swamp connecting just before the doors to a large and magnificent temple. Sera collapsed, her view in the game shifted to a 3rd person view until she recovered the required amount of hp.

Hikaji shouted “Kireinashi,” while he moved to catch her. Moving very gracefully as he ran to her he pulled out an Awakening, to restore the required hp, lowered the bottle to her lips and poured the drink down her throat.

Her view immediately reverted back to 1st person and she could move again. She stood up out of Hikaji’s arms and said “Thank you Hikaji; that could have been bad,” with that she started to walk down the bridge.

Headgamer ran to catch up to her and said “Good detail on the bridge this looks like it could stand up for a while, to bad I have to demolish it once were done and teleport us out of here.”

Hikaji yelled “Wait up guy’s,” he had staid at the end of the bridge to keep it monster free as long as possible but the others were already far enough through that it wasn’t much of a concern any more.

When they reached the edge of the bridge Sera said “ok, guy’s there might be traps so I think that I vote for Headgamer to go first.”

Hikaji replied “I second that nomination.”

Headgamer looked at his two teammates and said “Fine I’ll go, but if I die you better revive me.” He took out a lot of explosive seals tied to throwing knives and threw them back the way they had come, almost hitting some Pink Fluffs, and effectively covering the middle of the bridge with high explosives. A few seconds later the bridge was cut in half helping to stop the flow of creatures into the center of the area.

Headgamer walked up to the doors of the temple and saw a large sealing tag. And said “Hikaji this is your area of expertise, the doors are sealed.”

Hikaji walked over to the doors and by making the necessary hand seals removed the seal without any trouble. He said “Piece of cake.”

Then behind Hikaji the doors opened up and there was what looked like a giant dust-bunny. It rolled out of the door way and attacked.

Sera yelled “Oh, crap, we should probably run.” She turned around and ran behind the ruins of the bridge she had made.

Hikaji turned around and said “what because of this thing,” and threw a knife into it. The knife went into it like it wasn’t there. A second later the knife that had been thrown into it flew back out of it straight at Hikaji. He dodged easily and sent a hail knives with explosive notes attached to them. All of them hit their mark, but instead of a big boom the knives flew out back at Hikaji. He ran over to Sera to escape the blast. There was a large explosion, then looking around he asked “Where is Headgamer?”

Sera said “I don’t know I thought you knew.”

Headgamer shouted “Dragon Breath Jutsu”

They heard a terrible roar and the sound and smell of something burning. Sera looked around the corner of the column she was hiding behind and said “Headgamer got the Jutsu engine, made a jutsu and is attacking the fluff demon.

Hikaji asked “Really?” while looking around his own column.

Headgamer stopped and yelled “Here, help me!”

Sera heard another voice, a very familiar one that said “ability Acquired: Dragon breath jutsu.” This all too familiar voice was that of the game’s acquirement system, whenever she got some thing it would state the thing and then how to use it if that’s the first time she got the item, ability, or weapon. Then she heard “To use shout ‘Dragon Breath Jutsu’ while performing the tiger hand seal, then open your mouth for the flames to shoot out.” She did like she was told and shouted “Dragon Breath Jutsu” and after she did the hand seal, then felt a burning in her chest swell and go in to her mouth. She opened her mouth and a very large jet of flame shoot out of it, catching the fluff demon and everything around it on fire. When she was done she looked over and saw that Hikaji had done the same.

Hikaji said “Awesome, now I have another thing to put in my pyromaniac arsenal.”

Headgamer said “OK, I’ll hold what’s left of the fluff demon off while you two go in and get the jutsu engine.” He preformed the Dragon Breath jutsu again and made the fluff demon retreat close to the edge of the swamp. Sera and Hikaji ran into the temple to find a pedestal illuminated by a beam of light. On it was a place to put your hand. Hikaji walked up and put his hand on the pedestal, when he did the beam widened to encompass him as well. A moment later he stepped back and said “your turn Kireinashi.”

She did the same and was illuminated and heard “item acquired: Jutsu engine. To use please look at special library for C+ and please program in that language.” She felt her pack get heavier, and opened it to look inside to see what looked like a new item, they glow for the first hour that you acquire it; it looked like sphere embedded into a book. She pulled it out and opened it. It read just like a regular book, it had further instructions as to how to make a jutsu, and it had a library with just about any graphic you could want for a jutsu, and had a vast collection of pre-made functions, and methods. In the back it said “To use press down dome on front of book, then use window that opens up.” Sera closed the book and did as the book told. When she pressed the dome it popped and a window popped open with s holographic keyboard in front of her. With a little examination she recreated “Katon: Housenka no Jutsu” and ran out to help Headgamer with Hikaji close behind her.

Once again living up to his name sake Hikaji used shouted “Katon: …” nobody could hear the rest because the roar of the fire was too loud, and with that the giant fluff and a large part of the swamp it was trying to flee to was turned into ash.

Sera said “Hikaji remind me to never get on your bad side.”

Hikaji replied “like you could ever get on my bad side, lets just get out of hear, I think I saw a new café in the sci-fi area.

Hikaji gave the coordinates to Headgamer and Sera and they teleported to this little café in what looked like a dystopian future city. Sera sighed “I never like coming here it always feels like so confining, and it doesn’t help lift the mood when one of the NPC enforcers are around, I’m just happy that they can be killed like one of the monsters out in the quest areas, I don’t like having to hide out after dispatching them though.”

They headed into the café to find it had a wide range of entrées, Hikaji and Headgamer just got coffees and got a table. Sera got a pizza and soda and joined them.

Headgamer said “whoa, looks like we have a mighty hungry cat at our table.”

Sera replied “shut up, I happen to like being able to eat what ever the hell I want and not need to worry about my figure when I’m in here, haven’t you noticed how many places are filled with food, I mean there is a freaking candy land. If you look there you’ll see mostly women, I have heard stories about this place helping people get over their anorexia because chaos calories don’t count in the real world.”

“Wow great rant, I thought you wouldn’t ever stop. Now my turn to speak, are you guys going to be at DEFcon? There’s going to be some pretty interesting things going on this year, I hear the first completely hacker made Halo game is going to be shown off.”

Sera became excited and said “You’re going to be there; finally I can meet you guys in person. Now I can’t wait.” She looked at a wall clock and exclaimed “crap it’s already 8:00 am, breakfast ends in a half an hour, I gotta go guy’s well I’ll see you later, bye. And with that she logged off, and woke up.