Real Virtuality {MATURE}

[VirtualPlay]

Real Virtuality

In 2020, World War III came to an end, becoming the war with the fewest human casualties. This is because the war was not fought over land between multiple countries, but rather over the control of the worlds' computer networks, where both sides fought within every country. The White Hats, who want the networks to be used freely and openly, fought against the Black Hats, who wanted to control everything that everyone did and monitor everything so that nothing against them got out. Through sufficient technological advancements, the White Hats were able to overcome the Black Hats, physically locating and imprisoning the head of the group and many high up leaders.

But that's all in the past. Now it's the year 2024. Thanks to the need for advanced technology in WWIII, the same advancement of technology was quickly made available to the consumer in many household items when the war ended. Most everything became voice-operated; many appliances became smart and could figure out the technical programming of a simple command; computers went in two directions, powerful and wearable, but both became unbelievably fast. Even more impressive than the household items, though, were the things being produced by companies for use by the consumer (though far too expensive to be owned my most anyone).

Today, Square-Enix-Konami (commonly SEK, ess-ee-kay) has finally released a much-anticipated game; it's called Final Fantasy: Immersion. However, it's not the addition to the Final Fantasy line that has people so excited about it. It's because SEK has developed a new technology for the game play. Instead of holding or wearing a controller, a player would step into large, hard-as-diamond plastic spheres, and his or her brain would connect to the game through electron waves. They would then have the feeling of being inside the game, inside the character they are playing. The physical body of the player, disconnected from the motion part of his or her brain (as during sleep), would float inside the sphere.

Called Holo-Spheres, this new technology has been speculated to become widespread with popularity, putting a game station in at least every major city. The global grand opening in Japan has drawn many people worldwide, at least the ones who wanted to go and could manage to snag themselves a ticket.

You're one of those lucky people. You're absolutely ecstatic to be able to be at the grand opening. You look happily at the eight spheres being demoed, watching as people float inside, their minds connected to the game. You watch in amazement through in-game cameras as the players' characters defeat monsters, moving fluidly and very realistically. When you get in line, just before you're to go up a game host hands you a data pad, telling you to create the character that you will become in the game. Excitedly you do so, and as you go up, you see them plug the data pad into the console of the sphere you enter.

Once you're inside, the opening closes. You black out for a second, and you wake up and find that you're no longer in the sphere, but lying in a grassy field surrounded by seven others, the seven others who entered their spheres for the same game you did. You take a look at yourself and realize that you definitely are not yourself, but rather the character you created. You test your new body, try out the menus to make sure you know how they work, and begin to interact with the other players.

Not long after, the game goes to a battle, and everyone is ready to attack. When one of the monsters lunges, however, it freezes in midair for a second, as if it were slightly glitchy. But then it moves normally again, and you and the others battle through the rest of the monsters, as well as the following boss-style battle. The boss also glitches for a second, but you guess there must just be a couple bugs. After the boss battle, you go to logout as you were instructed, but the game glitches again and won't let you. You try saving, and the world goes black again.

But when you wake up, you're still your character in the game. A message comes up about the game being "patched." You try again to logout, but neither the Logout or Save commands can be found anywhere in the menus! Shocked and confused, you look up at where you are, noticing it for the first time. It's a fortress-like wall, and inside you can see a town of some sort. Suddenly a man comes out, greeting you as travelers and heroes...

In the real world however, panic and chaos are underway. The glitches in the battling were actually caused by some kind of malfunction in the game system, and something terribly wrong has happened, suddenly causing eight bodies to collapse into comas: the bodies of you and your game-mates. Your comatose bodies are hauled off to the ER, and the premises are evacuated, but nobody dares touch the machine anymore. The building is put off-limits and is guarded.

You know none of this, however, as the man who greeted you is taking you through the town, and you realize that you are suddenly "playing the game" that was demoed. But now that you are in the game, will you ever be able to get out?

----------

Characters
1. VirtualPlay -=- Mike Rampart | Miaka [White Mage]
2. Classy_cat18 -=- Nia Hawthorne | Kaori [Black Mage]
3. Kurosakura -=- Estelle Macchia | Akane [White Mage]
4. Crystal Tears -=- Ryou Saito | Akuma [Dark Knight]
5. Roy Karrde -=- Ryohei Chen | Yasuo [Gunner]
6. River -=- Sharika Narayan | Rei [Bard]
7. DivineAll -=- Joseph Masters | Takashi [Summoner]
8. Bear -=- Jay Weston | Kamuza [Thief]

----------

Name: Mike Rampart
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Country of Origin: America (Boston area), although he was born in England, so he has an accent that's a mix of British and Bostonian, though he speaks like an American.
Appearance: Tall, with dark brown hair that he's letting grow out, and bright green eyes; lanky build, and palish skin. Wearing a generic black tee and slightly baggy jeans.
Personality: He's recently been very quiet, often seen thinking deeply about something, or possibly nothing at all. However, he gets overexcited when something he really likes happens. He's usually one to agree with people rather than argue, and he's very pacifistic most of the time. He tends to get along better with girls than other guys, though he doesn't usually mind this.
Other: Maybe later...
----CHARACTER----
Name: Miaka
Gender: Female (see Reasoning)
Appearance: Average height, about 165cm (about 5'5"), with light brown hair down a little past her shoulders; her eyes are a bluish green, sometimes appearing more blue and, other times, more green; her build is a bit muscular, but not very much so, and her skin is slightly tanned. She wears a silky white knee-skirt with a bright red, 15cm bottom hem, a silky, white, long-sleeve robe top with a hood, also with a 15cm bottom/sleeve/neck hem; she wears simple, soft brown leather boots, and has her hair in two pigtails held by two small red glass spheres.
Class: White Mage
Weapon Description: It's a 145cm staff, made mostly of oak, but the bottom 20cm is covered with a silver metal, and the top 15cm is a large red spherical gem which glows when Miaka is holding the staff (and can glow brighter if she wills).
Personality Changes: Now as Miaka, she is feeling less 'down' and isn't as quiet anymore, possibly owing to how she's taken the female change; she actually ends up being quite cheerful after a little while.
Reasoning: Mike chose to play as a girl because he's trans-gendered, and wants to see if he feels more comfortable as a girl (or if he should just stay a guy), without going through the painful and semi-irreversible surgery.

~^~^~^~^~^~

Mike Rampart ~ British Bostonian
State of Pseudo-shock
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
"Hey! Final Fantasy XIII for sale here, mint condition! Own a classic!"

"Get the latest version of the Super-Glove controller, 2000¥ off for the next half hour!"

"You know you want to check out this new..."

Merchants all over were screaming out to draw people in, trying to sell their products or advertise their upcoming developments. This section of the floor was just packed with tables, and almost no space in between them. Navigating with all the people hovering was near impossible, it was a wonder I was moving through the area at all.

But I needed to escape, the constant crowds around me were cutting into what little personal space seemed to be allowed at this place. Muttering a few "Excuse me!"s and "Coming through!"s, I managed to reach a not-so-enclosed area of the floor. Which was pretty much everywhere else. The only other masses of people were either in line for the cameras, or for the game itself.

People were still just about everywhere, moving around between places, so it took me a good fifteen minutes to walk across the hall to the Vid-Sets. I stopped just outside the Vid-Set area and took a look up at the main game station; each sphere had someone getting in; I watched as they lost consciousness and started floating.

"Hey," a voice said, "d'you want to use this?" I turned to see a guy around my age holding out the controller for one of the Vid-Sets. He was standing in the next spot over.

"Sure," I said, walking over. "Thanks," I added, taking it from him.

"No problem, name's Jay by the way." He smiled widely and held out his free hand, which I shook.

"Mike," I said shortly, returning only a half-smile. I felt kinda jealous that he was so cheerful, but I had my reasons. I pulled the Vid-Set up to my face and started looking around the field as the group that was currently in the system got into a battle stance. The classic Final Fantasy battle music started playing in full orchestration, and a group of enemies.

"This is pretty amazing!" Jay said after a few seconds of watching the battle go on. I had to agree, the fact that all the characters in the game were moving realistically and not in some mechanized way gave the game some kind of life that I've never seen.

"Yeah..." I said, not really having much else to say. After a couple minutes all the monsters were destroyed, their bodies decomposing and disappearing. Out of nowhere a huge wolf appeared, and the music changed to being the more intense boss battle theme.

As I watched, I could feel my inner child start to well up. This was classic Final Fantasy, something I'd grown up with, and seeing it put this way just gave me chills of excitement. "Man," I said suddenly, "Look at those cuts and burns on the wolf just staying there. It's so much more realistic that way. They really did a good job with this!"

"I agree," Jay said, as the wolf boss dropped. "I can't wait to try it out for myself."

I pulled my headset off and put the controller down. "Yeah, I think we should get in line," I said, and we both headed over to where the line end was.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Basically the building is split into three sections: a too-small-for-its-own-good section for the Dealers (selling games/accessories and displaying upcoming products), a large floor with many tables/booths filled with the camera visors (with a controller to move the camera), and a stage with the 8 Holo-Spheres around a large rectangular box.

Also, I'm not going to demand it, but I would like very much if everyone used the format I did for my character topper; it's not as needed now, but when we get into the game it'll make it easier to remember who's who. The format is:

Name ~ Class (e.g. White Mage)
Current Status and/or Location

[Kurosakura]

Name: Estelle Macchia
Gender: Female
Age: 15
Country of Origin: Venice, Italy: She speaks English with a light Italian accent, and she isn't fond of it.
Appearance: [link] Estelle has shoulder length light brown hair that frames her face, gray eyes, and glasses. She stands at 4"8', and has an average build. She wears plain clothes, a white tank top underneath a black, baggy, shoulder less top, baggy black pants, and black ballet flats.
Personality: Estelle is a meek teenager with a severe inferiority complex. She is quiet and shy, but blows up every once in a while, since she bottles up all of her emotions. She plays games as an escape from reality. She doesn't like loud noises or attention, and tends to hide away into a corner, or try to, where nobody will notice her.
Other: She's quite intelligent academically and in the world of netnerds. She's written several game guides about playing different jobs/classes and what to do in certain situations under the name of SecludedAngel.
----CHARACTER----
Name: Akane
Gender: Female
Appearance: [link] Akane has wavy, bright red hair that goes a little past shoulder length and azure eyes. She stands at about 5'4 with a slim build. Her hoodie is reminiscent of white mage robes, red triangles bordering the hood, sleeves, and bottom, with what look like cat ears topping the hood, and a red sash runs around the bottom of the bust area. Her boots follow the same pattern as the hoodie, but with the triangles running around the top. A short red skirt and knee high red stockings complete her ensemble.
Class: White Mage
Weapon Description: [link] A silver staff about 4"6' long topped with a blue sphere and another smaller on at the end. A spiral of silver runs along the shaft and close the the larger crystal, ending in two small wings. Intricate engravings are etched around the base and the top.
Personality Changes: Being in an online game, Estelle is able to speak her mind as Akane, but she remains somewhat shy and is clumsy. She adapts easily to circumstances and isn't afraid to speak out against a bad tactic, and gets flustered quite easily when someone calls her "pretty" or "cute", since nobody's done that before.
Reasoning: Estelle usually plays healing classes in most games in order to feel useful and needed.

~*~*~*~*~

Estelle Macchia ~ Fresh from Italia
Claustrophobic and Suffocating

~*~*~*~*~

"R-Ryou!" a tiny, fair-skinned girl with unkempt brown hair called out to an Japanese boy in a light Italian accent. She struggled against the unruly crowd, getting knocked back and forth like a hockey puck. She felt like she was going to suffocate, there were too many bodies and so little room. The small girl shuddered and clutched her chest defensively, she never liked crowds. Especially ones at events as huge as this.

The boy turned and looked at her with his hazel eyes, giving her a small smile, holding out his hand. "Estelle," he said her name flawlessly without a trace of the usual swapping of the "L" sound for the "R" sound when spoken by most of the Asian population, but if one listened closely, he would've had a trace of a French accent instead. She took his hand gratefully and then hooked her arm with his, clinging on desperately as she tried not to get separated from him. A portly man shoved right past them roughly. Ryou retrieved Estelle and grabbed the man's shoulder with his vacant hand.

"Whaddya you want, kid?" the man demanded in Japanese with a Kansai-ben. "I've got people to see, games to play, things to do, now lemme go ya punk!" Her heart rate sped up and she gripped his arm tightly.

"You should watch where you're going old man," Ryou growled back in Japanese. "My girlfriend would've gotten hurt if I wasn't here, now apologize," he demanded, glaring daggers down at him.

"Yeah? Well make me, you damn brat!" he retaliated, cracking his fat knuckles, prepping for a punch.

"Did you want to be responsible for her medical fees if she were trampled upon? Take responsibility and apologize."

"R-Ryou, d-don't... it's alright..." Estelle muttered in her lightly accented English, her bottom lip quivering.

"Don't worry, this'll only take a sec," he reassured her, switching back to English, and shook her off gently. He took him down in one hit, his fist connecting with the man's nose, an audible cracking sound heard within a two meter radius, and loomed over his body. "Apologize. Now."

He held his bleeding nose and looked up at the girl beside his attacker. "S-Solly," he stuttered and apologized in a nasally voice, realizing that she wasn't Japanese and fled.

Ryou scoffed and took her hand, leading her through the Dealer's Room. Tables upon tables were set up in this cramped area, displaying their wares. Colorful posters and billboards were place either on or nearby the tables to attract attention. Estelle strolled with him contentedly, looking through their wares, ranging from skillfully sculpted figurines to tiny key chains to adorable stuffed toys to downright raunchy novelty shirts.

A table stacked with video games caught her eye, and she tugged Ryou toward it with childish eagerness. “Wow.. it's an original Pokemon Green...” she murmured excitedly. “I wonder if they still sell those old Game Boy Colors as well... Oh! They also have copies of Fire Emblem for the SNES!” He didn't seem to pay attention, he was more focused on the video game demos in the area across.

“Let's go check it out.”

“Huh? Okay... Looks like there's a long line for something...”

“Let's go see then,” he held her hand and walked with her over to the line, searching for the end of it and waited.

~*~*~*~*~

My brain hurts. xD

[Bear]

Name: Jay Weston
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Country of Origin: Scotland
Appearance: Tall and lanky, buzz-cut dark brown hair, green eyes. Wears a fitted green polo, medium shade blue jeans and brown boots.
Personality: Very extroverted and cheerful, talks so much it can be annoying at times. He has the mind of an engineer and analyzes everything. Prefers to play fast, fighter type characters like Ninjas and Monks
Other: WAKAKAKA means "hahaha" in Indonesian
----CHARACTER----
Name: Kamuza (pronounced Kom-za)
Gender: Male
Appearance: As his class might suggest, he is small and light, enabling him to be quick and stealthy. He stands around 5'6" and weighs not more than 120 lbs. He wears a close-fitting vest, solid dark green in color. His pants are white, also close fitting and made of a soft, clothy material. On his head is a green bandana that is dark green like his vest. Finally, his shoes are moccasin-like, dark brown, soft and leathery. Think FFT Thief. He wields a Main Gauche, his favorite weapon (see below)
Class: Thief
Weapon Description: The Main Gauche is a mid-length dagger, golden in color with a straight blade. In addition to being incredibly sharp and deadly, this dagger grants the wielder unusually high evasion, making him very difficult to hit.
Personality Changes: Opposite of Jay, Kamuza is extremely introverted, almost always silent. Most people think he is mute as nobody has heard him speak, but it is rumored that he has a soft and pleasant, almost musical voice. Likes to keep his intentions and loyalties hidden, and is slow to trust anyone.
Reasoning: Jay dislikes the fact that he talks so much and annoys people, and wants to see what it's like being a person who never speaks. In addition, he loves to be cryptic and mysterious.

`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`

Jay Weston ~ Scot
Status: Anxious and excited
Location: Vid-Sets
~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Och, this is wicked!" Jay exclaimed, semi-to himself as he watched the people in the Holo-Spheres do battle. He had never seen anything quite like this, especially not in Scotland. As he intently followed the movements of the characters, he spotted another guy around his age next to him staring at the holo-spheres in awe.

"Hey," Jay said to him, slowly removing his headset, "Would ye like to try it?"

The guy turned, realizing Jay was speaking to him. "Oh, sure. Thanks."

"No problem, Ah've watched enough alreadeh." Jay added, his Scottish accent apparent, "Name's Jay by the way."

"Mike." he replied quickly, shaking the hand Jay had extended. He didn't smile too much though.

Jay returned his attention to the main screen, where a panned image of the game being played was displayed. People without Vid-Sets could still watch the action from a general, stationary camera angle. Jay watched anxiously as a new group of players entered the Holo-Spheres and connected to the game. Jay grinned widely, like a little kid in a free candy shop. His eyes were glued to the screen as the players entered their first battle. A group of enemies appeared, their design and graphics having a stunning realism.

"Och! This is pretty amazing eh?" Jay gasped, giving Mike a light slap on the shoulder.

"Yeah..." Mike replied after a brief pause, not seeming nearly as enthusiastic as Jay. However, as the battle raged on his attitude began to change. Once all the enemies were destroyed, a large Wolf appeared, obviously a boss battle. Jay noticed a smile begin to cross Mike's face, and his eyes light up with excitement.

"Man, take a look at how realistic the cuts and burns are on that Wolf. They just stay there! They did a really good job with this." Mike said after a bit, sounding much more chipper than before.

"I agree," Jay replied, "I can't wait to try it out for m'self!"

"Yeah, I think we should go ahead and get in line." Mike said, and they both walked over to where the end of the lines was. Mike and Jay each took a spot at the end of adjacent lines.

"So where ya from laddie?" Jay asked Mike, not being bothered by how long the line was.

"Oh umm...Boston, in America." he responded, emitting a slight tint of a British accent. Jay picked up on this right away.

"You're not originally from there, are yeh?" Jay continued, asking him another question. Mike seemed a bit uncomfortable with the conversation.

"Uh...no, I'm from England..." Mike replied as shortly as possible. Jay detected his uneasiness.

"Want me to leave yeh alone?" Jay asked with sympathetic eyes, "I know I can be pretty annoyin' sometimes..."

"Oh it's ok, it's just...all these people..." Mike replied again, softly.

"Well, dinnae worry laddie. These lines are ken to be movin' pretty quickly, so we should get our turns soon." Jay said to Mike before turning back forward to watch the screen. He wasn't watching for long before his attention was again interrupted by voices near him.

"Well, let's go see then." Jay heard a male voice say. He glanced to his left to see a young asian man and a short light-haired girl finding spots in the lines next to him. They appeared to be together.

"Checkin' out the Holo-Spheres, are yeh?" Jay asked the guy with his usual smile, tapping him lightly on the shoulder. He turned to look at Jay.

"That's the plan, if we get there before Christmas that is." the boy responded, commenting on the long lines ahead of them. Jay chuckled a bit at his quip.

"Och, dinnae worry laddie, we'll get our chance!" Jay said, optimistic as ever, "So what are your names?"

`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`,`

TAG @ VP, CT, and Kuro

[DivineAll]

Name: Joseph Masters
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Country of Origin: Seattle, WA, USA
Appearance: Asian, without the accent. Has short, messy black hair wearing glasses. Is skinny and wearing a green T-shirt and blue jeans.
Personality: Often quiet and shy, yet very observant of himself, his surroundings, and others. More of a follower rather than a leader, very friendly, and the peace-keeper if things get too rough. Will get aggressive when the situation calls for him to do so.
Other: Besides video games, his interests are mainly in reading and "old" cartoons.
----CHARACTER----
Name: Takashi
Gender: Male
Appearance: 5 ft. 7 in. in height, has short, spiky sky blue hair and he still has his glasses. Wears a white tunic, yellow sash around his waist, slim gray pants, a green traveling cloak, and black traveling boots. Has a small, rectangular cube-shaped pouch attached to his left side.
Class: Summoner
Weapon Description: A deck of playing cards in his pouch. Each individual playing card has the image of a Summoned creature on the front and back. No two cards are the same, and some even serve as the bestiary, in case a player needs to know stats and items that a monster has.
Personality Changes: Not much change, except he's developed a strange sixth sense for danger and he's conservative about safety, money, and his fellow comrades well-beings.
Reasoning: Joseph has always respected the Summoner class in Final Fantasy games and the Summoned creatures based off of mythical and legendary creatures.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Joseph Masters - Native Seattle-lite
Cramped and annoyed

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

'Someone tell me how a casual gamer like me wound up here at a gaming convention in Japan consisted of mainly hardcore gamers." A young Asian teen thought to himself. 'Oh yeah, I somehow won a contest. Guess I'm bound to have some good luck once in a while.'

The teen then sighed to himself and continued his train of thoughts, 'I don't belong here. Frankly, I don't belong anywhere that involves hundreds of people associating with anything involving Japan. Sure, I'm Chinese in blood, and that should make me appreciate my Asian culture, but not surrounded by hundreds of people.'

The teen looked upon a nearby booth where SEK was showing off other smaller games they were about to release, such as the next Yu-Gi-Oh! video game and the next installment of Kingdom Hearts. 'At least, SEK knows how to show off their stuff.' the teen thought.

Now that he looked around a bit closer, he noticed something. 'Okay, I know that at conventions like these, they're supposed to show off the latest in video games and their technology, but why is it that at least half the stuff they're showing off here is the stuff dad and grandpa played when they were kids? Maybe to show off the greatness that is the dawn of the Video game crash, or whatever the event is called. Great, now I'm mentally rambling again. Get yourself back together, Joseph!'

Joseph made his way through the crowd towards the main attraction that SEK had recently cooked up. 'Final Fantasy: Immersion, eh? Personally, I'm fond of the original 6 and the Nintendo hand-held spin-offs and remakes. Meh, might as well see what's the big whup about it.'

He then took a look at the demonstrations that the employees at SEK were performing for the game. "Okay, it's definitely impressive and looks like it lives up to the hype I've heard about when they made rumors about it on the Net. Might as well try it out for myself. I kinda always wanted to try a Final Fantasy game up close and personal.'

Joseph then took a place at the end of the line where a small group of people were engaging in conversation. 'Hope they don't talk to me. I'm not really a people person.'

[Crystal Tears]

Name: Ryou Saito (wow that sounds familiar…)
Gender: Male
Age: 20
Country of Origin: Technically Japan, but he’ll probably say Canada (Toronto, Ontario)
Appearance: Ryou is tall, with shaggy cut dark brown hair with some highlights and hazel eyes. He has a lean, athletic (runner) build and fair skin. He’s usually seen wearing a black shirt with various SE(K) symbols on it (notably the Heartless or Nobody logos), and slightly baggy blue jeans.
Personality: Not exactly the most charming individual (to many), Ryou is a jerk to most and can easily make others feel inferior and pathetic. He’s confident in his abilities, and to some that can seem cocky. But he has the skill to back up his claims, which gives him a sort of charisma that inspires people to listen and/or follow him (much to his dismay).
Other: His family moved from Japan to Canada when he was two, and is very proud of the country he calls his home.
----CHARACTER----
Name: Akuma
Gender: Male
Appearance: Clad in black armour that makes Akuma appear more like a Demon than a person, it’s smooth and sleek in its design with curvy, vein like engravings that pulse red at regular intervals. He has a torn, red cape coming from his left shoulder that has darker stains of presumable blood on it. His helmet doesn’t reveal anything of his face, with four horns resembling from a ram’s or a bull’s as they curve under and the tips point forward. Dark horns and spikes spawn from his hips and his armor boots are crafted to resemble a dragon’s or dinosaur’s foot with three clawed toes. His gauntlets end with claws on his finger tips (that are crimson coloured), and his eyes when the helmet is on, glow red, overall, Akuma is a very intimidating character (I will draw eventually to create a clearer image 8D).
Class: Dark Knight
Weapon Description: A monstrous sword, easily the size of some of the shorter characters or perhaps taller, the blade is a cruel looking weapon with a ragged, jarred, cracked and jagged blade that has a obsidian hilt and a dark-grey blade that seems to be stained crimson on some of the sadistic edges. The hilt itself has a dark eye in it, with no white but instead black, with a dark purple and red eyes and a slit pupil. The eye looks around the field, and glows when he uses an ability of his class. When not in use, it is on his back, a magical force holding it there until needed.
Personality Changes: Ryou personality is darker, it’s almost like the power of the Dark Knight consumes him. His charisma remains, but it inspires fear in others as well. Ryou is chillingly cold now, as little patience for whiney individuals and those who pick fights and look for trouble. He’s not quiet though, he’ll give his opinion on an idea or what-not, though past that he seems mysterious and disconnected from the group more than others.
Reasoning: He has some unresolved issues :3

Ryou Saito .: + :. Japanese Canadian
Remembering and Worrying

* * Recent Past * *

“Where are you going?”

“To Japan.”

“Oh.”

Such a simple word, and yet it was laced with such disdain and hatred. Ryou thought for a moment it must be hard for his mother to make a short verse like ‘Oh’ sound as if it was being spoken by death’s itself, but then again, she did it on a regular basis. Ryou found himself pondering exactly what he had done wrong, he was twenty, he had a life that didn’t revolve around being in this house anymore, and he’d only be gone a couple of days…

‘Why do I care?’ He mused and turned to his mother. “What?”

She looked at him with half-confused, scornful hazel eyes. “What what?”

“What’s wrong with me leaving?”

“Well I have to look after the house all by myself.”

Ryou frowned. “Good to know you’ll miss me.” With that he went back to packing.

“Your father is taking you to the airport.”

The man froze, crimson eyes focusing on the bag in front of him. “Why?”

“He wanted to see you off.”

“That,” He began with a snarl. “I highly doubt.”

* * Present * *

“Ryou.” He spoke and shook Jay’s hand, and then the other fellow’s. “This is Estelle.”

She smiled meekly at the two and sort of ducked behind Ryou as everyone exchanged greetings. He frowned slightly at the line, he had never been a patient person, not really, he could wait for an extent before growing tired of whatever appeared to be worth so much. But the rest of this place was overly crowded and Estelle didn’t much appreciate being bumped into (and of course, he had solved the problem in a particularly harsh way… But the guy was rude).

“So are you excited?”

“Uhh…” Ryou smirked a little uneasily at the man’s energy. “Apparently you are.”

“Sure I am! Been waiting a while for the game to finally be released for a while now, have you seen the graphics?”

He looked over at Estelle who was quietly viewing the game with the headset and controller. Ryou smirked a little and gently moved her out of the way of a few others passing by.

“I’ll wait for the test.” Ryou replied. “I’d rather be surprised.”

“They’re amazing!”

As Jay seemed overexcited for the game and went blabbing on about it, Mike and Ryou stayed silent. Steadily they grew closer and closer to the front and at an equal pace the room began to grow more and more crowded. Estelle took off the helmet and put it down with its controller where it was quickly snatched up by another.

“Do you mind if I use this?”

The group turned to the woman with dark skin and black framed glasses who gazed at them all with slight curiosity.

“Go ahead.”

She smiled and nodded towards them as she slipped on the helmet and watched. “Thanks, I’m Naomi by the way. Oh wow! Look at the graphics! They almost look real! I wonder what type of engine it uses? Probably…”

Ryou turned from the girl and the group for a minute as Estelle tugged lightly on his arm.

“Hmm?”

“There are a lot of people now…” She voice was almost overshadowed and muffled by the others talking amongst themselves.

“We’re almost there, don’t worry about it… And stop hiding behind me.” Ryou replied with a smirk, and thought for a moment about the pods and the system as he turned back to the group, and sort of forced Estelle into the view of others. “Isn’t there a danger about this system?”

Naomi, as she viewed the digital world, replied. “What? Like the matrix?”

“There’s no plug to my knowledge.” Jay joked, “What do you mean?”

Ryou frowned. “I mean what do we do if something goes wrong?”

* * End * *

[Roy Karrde]

Name: Ryohei Chen
Gender: Male
Age: 21
Country of Origin: China
Appearance: He comes from a mixed race Japanese/Chinese family, he has a short cut, almost shaved hair, and keeps it covered with a ball cap. He wears a jacket all the time, keeping his hands in his pockets almost as if he was always trying to keep himself warm even in summer. He wears long baggy blue jeans, that seem a few sizes too big for him.
Personality: He lacks a lot of empathy for others, he sees things as to how others can keep him alive, and will drop them if they endanger him or others. Most of all he sees keeping himself alive being his top responsibility but that doesn’t mean he won’t go out of the way keeping others alive. Prison has hardened him in so many ways, to the point that the light and energy he had in him as a child has almost completely gone out from the darkness of prison.
Other: As a child he was forced to spend several years in a Children’s Prison after being framed by his friends, causing him to have a very cynical view toward life and friendship.
----CHARACTER----
Name: Yasuo
Gender: Male
Appearance: He has tan skin, and a slight muscular build although not overly muscular, he has several scars including a small x on his cheek, and several larger scars on his back. Instead of being almost baled he has dark brown hair but it remains short and combed to the left. He has nearly ice blue eyes that can be very intimidating for many. He tends to have a loose demeanor, with his shoulders slacked, and a care free smile. He wears a white button down shirt that tends to be worn by upper middle class men in many towns, it looks as if he has worn it for years, the sleeves have been ripped off, with a few blood and sweat stains on it. He wears a belt that goes around his waist, that contains sets of multi colored bullets. His pants are a deep dark brown, almost black, and made out of leather, they contain several places where he has extra bullets in as well, as well as a small knife.
Class: Gunner
Weapon Description: He wields a double barreled sawed off shot gun, it looks rather old, the wood that makes up most of the gun has splintered and cracked in many places, the metal that makes up the barrel and trigger has lost its original silver shine, now being mostly dark gray, with small patches of rust along the length of the barrel. This gun is fitted to fire off several different types of bullets, from an armor piercing bullet, to a buckshot that sprays out in several directions, to a bullet soaked in flammable material, acting almost like a grenade.
Personality Changes: There are no real changes, he still lacks empathy for others, nothing really has changed other than now he finds the members of his group interesting.
Reasoning:

Ryohei Chen ~ Gunner
Has absolutely no idea where he is

I had been a drifter for the last few weeks, going from place to place, sleeping where I could, eating when I could, and fighting when I had to. This world was so bright, so busy, everyone rushing around, rushing to their jobs, rushing to get home. Huge bright screens of lights, bigger and brighter than anything I had seen on television back in China filled the buildings. There were nights where I would long for the simplicity of jail; there you knew what was going to happen, who was your friend, who was going to try to kill you, when you would eat, when you would sleep. Here in Japan everything seemed to be thrown to the wind.

I pulled my coat closer, drawing it in for warmth, my eyes and ears were always open, the woman behind me, the child to my left that placed his face against the window to gaze closer at the television behind it. It was something you learned in prison, to know who was around you, and what they could do to you. My eyes caught the reflection of a pretty young girl in the television set in front of me; displaying some kind of ‘game’ they called it.

“Shijiao” I whispered, my head turning to follow her, she was pushing her way through a crowd, I could only catch glimpses, her hair, a bit of her face. She looked like her, but could it be.

“Let him go, let Ryohei go” Shijiao’s cries still echoed in my head as the cops had held me down so many years ago, digging my face into the rain soaked mud as she rushed toward them, kicking one of them in the knee. I could only gaze up, my mouth filled with mud as the cop she hit struck her, sending her body spinning around and onto the ground, her head striking a rock causing blood to trickle down her forehead.

I shook my head, washing the thoughts away as I pushed my way through the crowd, she had stopped, and another boy had met up with her, possibly the one she was chasing. As I moved closer I caught sight of her back again, a man in front of her was holding his bleeding nose. For a second a smile crossed my face, could Shijiao had broken this guy’s nose?

“Hey if you are going to stand in line, at least move along with it…” Some annoyance of a man said behind me.

For a second I considered spinning around, grabbing his wrist and placing it behind his back before he could attack. It was almost second nature; I could see each move, each reaction, how long the guards would take to get here, what I could do in the time between.

Yet this wasn’t jail, and fighting my way out of the building would be messy at best. Too much trouble just to settle a insult, instead I would just move along in this.. ‘line’ where ever it was going to take me. “Sorry..” I replied in the best Japanese I could before taking two steps forward to advance the line.

[classy_cat18]

VP: My char's name is Nia.

Name: Nia Hawthorne
Gender: Female
Age: 13
Country of Origin: America (Birmingham, Alabama)
Appearance: short, skinny but not scrawny, African American, hair in long braids, and wearing a white T-shirt and overalls, wears a pair of glasses with black square frames
Personality: The bookworm type, Nia is curious about everything and loves to research. She tends to overthink things so it takes her a while to make a decision. She talks a lot when she gets excited about something (which is almost all the time).
Other: She likes games where she can obliterate stuff. And she likes the Black Mage character from 8-bit Theater so she'll quote him often.
----CHARACTER----
Name: Kaori
Gender: Also female
Appearance: Six feet even, pale skin and long black hair that is worn in a braid that goes down her back. Her eyes are bright yellow although not glowing like Vivi's. She is dressed in a dark blue robe that covers her from the shoulders down, with long sleeves that hide her hands. The brown hat that she wears is like a witch's hat, with a wide brim.
Class: Black Mage (duh)
Weapon Description: Magic rod, the one in the left
Personality Changes: Although she still likes to research and study everything, she's more composed. She has adopted a bit of a sarcastic and irritated streak, slightly mimicking her favorite BM character.
Reasoning: She loves BM. And she likes to destroy stuff. XD

"EEEEEEEEEEEE!" The man at the counter jumped back as I squealed in joy. "Eight-bit Final Fantasy sprite pins! This is perfect! Can I get a Black Mage pin?" I held out the money to pay for it.

The man nodded and took the money from me like I was a sleeping grizzly with his keys. Then I snatched the pin from him and squealed again. "My life is momentarily complete!" I said happily.

This wasn't the first purchase I had made in the Dealers' Room. Before the pin, I had annoyed my older cousin by staring at another display case, trying to decide between a mint condition Chrono Trigger or Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. "Chrono Trigger has multiple endings, a combo attack system, and an awesome soundtrack. Oooh, but Super Mario RPG has...Mario! And Geno!"

"You have both of them on your computer!" she had complained.

"But this is the original version! In mint condition! And they have the player's guides! I gotta have them!" I had whined and bounced around until she allowed me to get both.

Now I was standing in the line for the camera visors. And what a line! It was moving so slowly! I struggled to look around the people in front. "Urge to destroy world rising..." I muttered to myself.

The girl in front of me finally got finished with her visor and put it and the controller down. I snatched it before the boy with her could get ahold of it. "Do you mind if I use this?" I asked him, sort of remembering my manners.

I grinned and slipped on the visor. “Thanks, I’m Nia by the way. Oh wow! Look at the graphics! They almost look real! I wonder what type of engine it uses? Probably…” I kept talking even though I knew that the boy wasn't paying attention anymore.

“Isn’t there a danger about this system?” I heard the boy named Ryou ask.

“What? Like the matrix?” I replied as I killed off a wolf with a Thunder.

“There’s no plug to my knowledge," another boy joked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what do we do if something goes wrong?”

I took off the helmet and thought over. "You mean, what if the machines get struck by lightning? Or if there's a glitch in the system? Maybe someone will hack it! Or one of the players will be a PK! You know, a player killer!" I laughed it off. "I'm sure they're prepared for any emergencies!"

[Pichu Luver]

Name: Sharika Narayan
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Country of Origin: Mumbai, India
Appearance: She is a little over five feet and has a lean, willowy build. She’s very athletic as she is a background dancer. She has hazel eyes, light brown skin and straight black hair that ends midway down her back. She is wearing blue jeans and a gold kameez with blue jewels stars decorating its edges and part way up the sides. A kameez is basically a t-shirt that reaches to mid thigh. She often likes to wear long elaborate earrings and a couple of bangles on her left wrist. She also has a red gauze scarf around her neck and is wearing tan sandals.
Personality: She is very confident person as she is a very good singer and dancer; having made a fair amount of money. She respects her elders but among her own age group she’ll say exactly what she pleases. She finds a good ‘snark on snark’ conversation very enjoyable; she does like arguing in that way. She finds her life perfectly satisfactory and thinks anyone who whines about their lot isn’t trying hard enough. She regards those whose bravado is not backed up by their ability as contemptuous, and she admires and reciprocates honesty.
Other: A playback singer and dancer in Bollywood movies. When she gets back from this trip her parents are going to find her a husband (she has no problem with this). She got into Final Fantasy thanks to a younger cousin.

----CHARACTER----
Name: Rei
Gender: Female
Appearance: She hasn’t changed much physically her eyes are now sky blue. Part of her hair is done up at the back of her head in a braided bun. A feather is stuck in it and some jewelery dangles from it. For clothing she wears a form fitting red tank top that ends just below her rib cage. A gold, gauze-like short sleeved jacket covers it, and does up with only one button at the top (it ends at her midriff). Her lower half is covered by gold skin tight shorts and a light blue ruffled under skirt about mid thigh length. A nave blue over-skirt covers it, split up the front and it reaches to her knees. A brown belt holds it in place and anther light brown belt holds other various items. A tan cloak covers her shoulders and reaches to her mid-calf. Her lute is carried on her back. Her boots are deep red and ankle length. She still has long, elaborate earrings and a few bangles on both arms.
Class: Bard
Weapon Description: A lute. She sings and dances with it so while she could, she generally doesn’t bash people over the head with it…
Personality Changes: Nothing changed really; she just tones down her blunt honesty a bit to get along with people she might be stuck with a while. When learned she was stuck she was determined to make the best of it and find a way out. Or trust the designers would as there is not much she can do.
Reasoning: She always liked blue eyes; and she knows she wouldn’t be much of a fighter so that’s why she picked Bard, as its something she knows.



Sharika Narayan/Indian
Wandering the booths
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“There you are miss, very nice game you have bought. Very nice.”

“I'm sure it is, thank you.”

Sharika smiled at the dealer before moving away from the table. Her cousin would love the new game, Final Fantasy XVII; the only one he didn't have. Old enough it was hard to find but not old enough to be a rarity, and thus expensive. Sharika had made many purchases as there was quite a few games she had not seen before. She slipped through the crowd, looking for a break to place her latest purchase in the bag slung over her shoulder. She maneuvered through crush of people with an ease that comes from long experience with navigating large groups.

Reaching an open area near the wall she quickly stored her buy away and looked around. Currently she was standing underneath one of the screens showing a trailer of the new game, Final Fantasy: Immersion. Sharika watched it and was reminded of why she paid so much for the ticket to this event in the first place. The games had been very distracting.

Quickly she slid back into the crowd and made her way to a camera visor station. There was just one free here and she slipped it on. She came in just in time to watch the final boss fight. The wolf leaped in from off screen. It snarled at the group before launching an attack. The group attacked back and the way the cuts and damage to both sides remained made Sharika smile in satisfaction. There were rips in clothing that had obviously been there a while (the wounds had healed thanks to a white mage working away) as well. The sound to, around the music seemed to be very good.

She swung the camera around, away from the fight and looked into the background. It was just as well done, no glitches or pixeling that she could see, even as she looked every which way. It faded properly too and had the correct amount of detail for distance. The trees moved in a breeze, the grass flashed in the sun and flattened under the weight of the people and monster. The bodies from the previous fight were quickly decomposing, but still disgustingly realistic. In a word she was impressed.

“Definitely a step up in realism...” she mumbled to herself, turning back to the fight. It wrapped up and the Wolf keeled over. The people disappeared and she took off her visor. It was a bit disorienting taking it off, as the world had almost been as real as the one here.

Looking around she located the line and quietly joined the end of it. The previous gamers stepped out of the spheres and chatted animately with each other, obviously they were quite happy with their experience. The group ahead of her was talking just as excitedly, though one of them professed his doubts.

Sharika smirked at the young girl's enthusiastic response, “If I may add, considering they have pre-sold so many copies already around the world, it must be safe. They would not have a demo and say it was for sale if it was not trustworthy. It is fine. They have had many demonstrations today and there has been no problems.”

[VirtualPlay]

Sorry for the delay, been tired. Also, sorry for the length, my muse is being nice to me for once.

Mike Rampart ~ British-Bostonian
Getting quite excited...almost uncontrollably so
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
People around me in line were still talking about the game, but I had zoned out of their conversation; I was just getting too excited for my own good because I was finally going up to play the game I had been waiting to play ever since it was announced. Right now it didn't matter that I was probably looking like a fool with all my giddiness. I just kept my eyes on the spheres as the line gradually moved towards them.

When there were still a few dozen people in front of us someone walked by the line and handed us a little board. It was a data pad which had a list of the instructions for the game, which I figured out after changing the language. For someone growing up in the world of video games it was pretty easy to grasp and understand, though I wasn't sure if everyone in this line was like me in that regard. After I read through the instructions, it changed to a character creation screen. The first thing I noticed was that there was an option for gender. I stopped to think about that for a bit.

I hadn't told many people about this, but for most of my life I've had this feeling that something was wrong with me and how I was thinking and acting. It was only in the past couple years that I realized that I might have the problem of being trans-gendered—that is, a boy with the mind of a girl. I knew there were surgeries that might be able to physically change me, but they were usually painful and not properly reversible. If this made me feel like I actually was the character, then maybe by playing a female character I could see whether I felt more comfortable being a girl without permanently becoming one and finding out I don't like it.

Glancing around at the people still talking or working on their own data pad, I hoped nobody would notice what I was planning. Quickly I chose female, named my character (Miaka, "Beautiful Red" as red is my favorite color), and saw that it was replaced with class selection. Not wanting to get right up in the fighting I chose White Mage and watched as a small character appeared on my screen. There were controls all around to change the small details of the outfit and character appearance.

I made my character to look basically like a female version of myself, with small changes so it wouldn't look exactly that way. I then worked on the clothes with amazing control; despite the age of technology we were in, it still astounded me at what these computers could do. I could even put my character into pigtails or have her eyes vary between green and blue. I probably could have even done one eye blue and one green, but that would've been way too Yuna-esque; I mean, I was already playing a White Mage with brown hair.

I then got to select a weapon, and once again modified that a bit to my liking, matching it to my outfit as well. By the time I had finished with my weapon I realized that I was standing right behind Jay at the front of the line. I must have been really distracted by making my character to my liking because I knew there were a lot of people in front of me when I had started.

Jay smiled at me, "You ready for this?" He pointed up at the screens that were showing the current group on their boss battle. I suddenly had all apprehension flushed from my mind watching the screens.

"Heck yeah!" I shouted, a little louder than I meant to. Jay just chuckled, and we turned as the spheres opened up to let the people out. This time we could hear as they started talking about how cool the game was, which definitely didn't help control my growing enthusiasm.

Then someone came over to us and led eight of us onto the platform, each of us taking a sphere. One by one he went around and opened the spheres, took the data pads from us and put them into the console, then closed the spheres once we were inside. As I heard it click closed, I felt a strong tingling sensation and then everything went black.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~

~~~~~~~~

Miaka ~ White Mage
Slowly coming back into existence.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
I regained consciousness quickly, but my feeling came back quite slowly, as if it were determined to make me feel it all. It started with a tingling in my toes, which soon encompassed my feet and started up my legs. My legs felt more slender, yet not any less strong. As the sensation reached the tops of my legs, I braced myself for the weird feeling I only just remembered would be coming.

Sure enough, I didn't feel a certain tingling as it passed up to my hips. I might've thought I was just numb there, but I knew that wasn't it as I knew I was currently becoming a female. It was around then that I realized for a fact that I was naked, as I felt no clothing on the part that I knew needed it. As the feeling was restored up my newly-curved abdomen, I felt a bit embarrassed that people could see me naked, but that quickly dissipated as I realized I couldn't open my eyes and figured nobody else could either; I also knew that the people outside the game couldn't see as I remembered they got loaded into the game fully rendered.

I once again braced for a weird sensation as the tingling went higher, but I still wasn't ready for it. After only feeling a slight discomfort with not feeling my penis, I wasn't expecting to really notice how different having boobs would feel. But what was even weirder than suddenly having them was noticing that they were kind of floating, and as my shoulders started tingling into existence, flowing down my arms, I realized that I was currently hovering, as nothing was really having any weight.

I focused on the rest of my body to distract myself from that thought. My arms were slender but again not any less strong than I had felt before. As my small hands tingled into existence, my neck started appearing. My head followed, and I felt just how different my face felt. With a mental sigh of happiness, I couldn't feel any kind of facial hair, one thing I definitely hated about being male.

The rest of my head materialized, and I could feel the longer hair flowing behind me, again floating in apparent open space. With a jolt I realized I could see, but everything was a black void except for me. Me in my completely naked new body. I had never actually seen a live naked female body before, only textbook photos and diagrams, and the sudden shock of not only seeing one but having it be my own kinda left me at a loss for things to think about. I was pretty sure I was blushing.

Suddenly, white fabric suddenly materialized on my boobs and around my crotch, covering up the "offensive" parts. I felt tingly again, but this time from the strange feeling of the fabric on parts I had only just acquired. The skirt was the next part to appear, covering my legs yet not restraining them. The robe appeared and covered my top completely, including a hood that hung back for if I wanted to cover my head. My hair suddenly got tugged at and I felt it stick together into the two pigtails I had put in. The boots completed the ensemble, only feeling weird because I had no socks covering my feet.

As the last of my clothes appeared, I started to get a feeling of falling very slowly, and as I felt ground appear beneath my feet I realized I had been floating to the ground. Suddenly gravity kicked in and I was glad that my breasts were probably only a B cup as they definitely held some weight; my hair also fell onto my back. Another flash of color appeared in front of me, materializing into the staff I had designed.

Without meaning to, my arm reached out and grabbed the staff, causing the sphere to glow. Immediately the blackness started dissolving into blue and green, and before long I was standing in a field with seven other people, all of us in a circle. It didn't take long for me to figure out that they were the other people who had joined with me, and if the sphere we entered was any indication of our current position, then Jay would be...

My thought was interrupted by a totally-not-realistic message box, looking kinda like those projected-into-space screens that computers were starting to do back in the real world, only there was no computer to project it. It sort of startled me. I looked and read it:

Welcome to Final Fantasy: Immersion, Miaka!

'Nice welcome,' I thought to myself, reaching out and pushing the "OK" button below it. Another one took its place, saying how I called the menu up by thinking of it. Curiously looking around the box, I saw nobody else with one and wondered if I was slow or if I just couldn't see anyone else's boxes. Clicking on this box's "OK" I tested it out and managed to call up the menu on my first try. All of the options were grayed out, though, including "Save" and "Logout" which I noted for later.

Finally getting a chance to look around, I turned to where Jay had been, finding a shorter, leaner person standing there, holding a rather large dagger. I only knew he was shorter because he was only slightly taller than me and I had dropped more than half a foot, a fact that sunk in as I nearly jumped back when I saw the character that was on my other side. He looked like he must have been 6'6", though that might be an exaggeration, but his dark armor was enough to intimidate me even without the towering height difference.

Deciding to go talk to the person I assumed was Jay instead, I walked over, noticing that I seemed to already know how to walk properly despite my new weight balance. I opened my mouth a couple times before actually getting the courage to try out my voice. I managed to say, "So how's the game so far? Feel real enough for you?" As I had expected, my voice was slightly higher and lighter, without any deep resonance. I had to admit, I sounded cute. "I'm M-Miaka by the way," I added quickly, almost forgetting to give my game name.

"Kamuza," he said shortly, adding, "and it seems pretty real." He shrugged, then looked around. I wasn't sure if it was Jay anymore, as he really didn't seem to have the same personality, but that also could've been from the shock. Either way, I wasn't going to pressure him since I didn't want to reveal myself. I just hoped nobody would ask about me once this was all done.

Everyone started moving around and got everyone else's names. I even managed to build my courage up enough to ask the demonic-looking guy and find out his name was Akuma, which I told everyone else so they wouldn't have to ask themselves.

We were interrupted by a message box, and I confirmed that we couldn't see each others' boxes. The message stated that battle would start when everyone was ready. I hit "Ready" and watched others read and click as well. Battle music that sounded very similar to that from the original Final Fantasy started playing from seemingly nowhere, yet everywhere at the same time.

A slightly tinny swishing sound caused us to turn and watch as a few monsters materialized, each with a similar sound. After they all appeared there were ten monsters of different types: three wolves, four wasps, and three flan. Another message appeared, saying that battle techniques would come naturally. This message disappeared without me needing to press anything, and we all watched as one of the wolves leapt in for an attack.

For a second it seemed to freeze in midair, as if something was holding it back, but then it continued on its path towards Kamuza, who seemed to easily dodge to the side and slash a huge gash in its flank. The wolf was down, but not out as it limped back towards the group.

I was so intent on watching that I didn't see the wasp heading for me. By the time I noticed it was too late to dodge, and it hit me on my shoulder. I saw a gash appear and I braced myself for the pain, but was surprised to feel only a light throbbing, as if someone had gently punched me. As I looked more closely I also noticed that the cut was only on the skin, even though the slice probably should have taken my arm off.

Suddenly I remembered I was a White Mage, and remembering how the message said battling would come naturally, I thought of my cut said, "Cure!" raising my right hand in the air. My hand glowed white a little, and I watched as the cut magically healed up, including repairing the tear in my clothing.

Feeling a bit more confident, I ran around the field, casting Cure on those that needed it, avoiding any monsters that I could, and thwacked those I couldn't avoid with my staff.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
So a few things...
1) For the data pads, think the PADDs from Star Trek.
2) Everyone loads into the body and clothes, and while I made it seem to take a while, it really only takes about half a minute. And yes, I realized I took 6 paragraphs to describe it; I told you my muse is being nice to me right now.
3) You do not have control of your arm grabbing your weapon when you finish materializing, but you can move your arms and head around before then.
4) For the hovering menus think Washu's computer from Tenchi.
5) Miaka's initial assumption of character positioning is correct, so if your character would be the kind to focus on where someone was (such as someone they're in a relationship with), they'd be in the same spot in the game.
6) Nobody can see the message boxes or menus you have, but can see you moving your hand to touch through them.
7) Battle damage is real, as you'd expect, but the sensation when getting hit is as I described it: as if someone had lightly punched the part that was hit. Also, for example, if you got a gash on your leg that wasn't healed right away, and you moved around, every time you stepped on that leg it would hurt slightly more, as if it were lightly punched again (until you got it healed).
8) Don't forget to notice the glitch of the wolf when it jumps.

[Crystal Tears]

Akuma .: + :. Dark Knight
Forgetting Reality

The armor formed, sleek in its overall design, Ryou looked at his newly formed gauntlets in silent awe. The details were perfect, exactly how they were supposed to be, and that impress him even if he did not directly approve of the ‘mind-game’ of sorts. The armor felt distantly cold on his new body, but not foreign. It was almost familiar, like he had worn it before and this was just him unconsciously recalling the experience.

‘Just a game…’ He thought, trying to keep reality in the perspective., as the faint sensation of falling was replaced by his now reptilian-like boots (complete with claws!) felt ground underneath them.

Then it appeared; a sword maybe equal to the old buster sword of Cloud’s. It was massive, with a cracked, chipped and ragged blade that made it look as if it were hungering for battle. On the hilt was the notable eye, it almost seemed to look around before it focused its dark gaze on Ryou. Without a thought, the dark knight’s hand moved and grasped the handle, though no one could see it behind the helmet, the man was smirking.

He took notice of the group than, he was by far the largest of the people. He wondered exactly which one was Estelle, but if they appeared how they were positioned in the real world, Estelle would be right beside-

[Welcome to Final Fantasy: Immersion, Akuma!]

Ryou smirked at the pop up. ‘Still managed to retain that real world edge I see.’

Slowly he reached up and pressed okay, his entire body even felt heavier with the armor. SEK was definitely using people’s minds to their advantage, to even sort out details like this. Another pop up, explaining small details of how to call up the menu just by thinking of its existence.

‘As if I want to summon a pop up…’ He thought with a frown, but tried anyway. It appeared quickly and he found all the choices on the menu were grayed out.

After that, people began to introduce themselves. Not many approached him, but Akuma didn’t mind. ’if only it could be this way in reality…’ The knight mused, putting the sword on his back and taking in the very realistic scenery around him.

“H-Hello…” His red gaze fell upon a white mage; well he assumed she was a white mage… Her appearance was closest to the healing class. “I’m M-Miaka.”

“… Akuma.” Ryou was secretly surprised to find his voice was different, it sounded darker. Distantly it sounded like his original voice he supposed, though a bit older and he assumed what he would sound like if he were a spawn of Satan.

“N-Nice to meet you.” She smiled a bit, “well I’m gonna go talk to the others…”

“Alright.”

She left, and the second white mage approached, admitted, far more cautiously than the other.

‘I know who you are…’ He thought with a sly smile.

“Akuma…?” She questioned. “Are you who I think-“

He nodded, and a warm smile appeared on her face.

“I should’ve known…” She chuckled. “It’s sort of obvious, now that I think about it… Oh my name is Akane by the way…”

“Heh…” He shrugged a bit, thinking to himself. “You still walk the same.”

“I do?”

Ryou nodded, and then paused, another pop-up; stating how the battle would start when everyone was ready. He smiled; the one thing he truly wanted to test out in Immersion was the fighting style and how everything would apparently come naturally. He clicked the ready button and took a hold of his dark sword again.

Then they appeared, monsters: three wolves, four wasps and three flans; each with a distinctive call and just as realistic as the rest of the world, which in itself was amazing.

A pop-up confirmed the things he had read about Immersion, that they did indeed believe that the battling would be natural and techniques would come naturally.

As it disappeared, one of the wolves leapt in for an attack.

But it froze.

It hung in the air for a split-second before continuing its way towards… Akane had called him Kamuza, either way he nimbly dodged the attack before slicing a clean cut into the wolf. Who, was reduced to limping, but still posed a threat.

One of the wasps came for him, and instead of dodging like the others he took the hit, and still it felt natural. The stinger hit his armor and seemed to do relatively nothing damage wise, those that part was a little dented. Akuma looked at the instinct with a hellish glare and brought the demonic-blade crashing down on the insect. It let out a mangled buzz-cry and fluttered back, reduced to crawling as he had sliced the left wings clean off.

“Bugger off you stupid mutt!”

Akuma turned, stopping one of the wolves attempting to bite the… Bard, he supposed, only because she had a lute in her hands. That and she was dancing to avoid attacks, a side step there, a twirl, even a nimble flip before she kicked the canine in the snout as a attempt to deter it.

The dark knight turned his attention to the two white mages who were beating seemingly sticking together. “Finish the wasp.” He gestured to the creature crawling towards him, obviously wounded.

He moved towards her, coming up behind the distracted wolf and slamming it with the blade. The monster when careening to the right, letting out a yelp as it rolled across the ground.

The bard looked at him. “Akuma right?” He nodded, and they both watched as the wolf got to its feet and began to stagger over, blood oozing out of the wound. “I’m Rei, nice to meet you. How about we slaughter this monster?”

“You don’t seem like the type to…”

“Me? No, you obviously yes.” She twirled her lute. “Let’s get ready to rumble!!”

Then she started playing the lute.

It was reminiscent of ‘We Will Rock You’, especially when Rei began to sing the song…

Akuma had to stare for a moment, as did probably everybody else who was not about to be bitten, stabbed or otherwise attacked. He distantly wondered how exactly one instrument and a dancing girl were managing to nearly drown out the original battle music.

Despite that, he did indeed, feel stronger. He twirled his blade and faced the wolf again, who had called one of the wasps to its aid.

* * *

Tag VirtualPlay, Kurosakura and River.

[DivineAll]

Joseph Masters - Native Seattle-lite
Inwardly excited, outwardly indifferent

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Joseph instantly knew what job class he was going to be as soon as he saw the selection screen for all the job classes there were available for the game: Summoner. His outfit of choice would be half traditional Final Fantasy Summoner and, in his eyes at least, half Fire Emblem sorcerer. He still would look basically the same in facial appearance with the exception that he had blue hair.

When Joseph got to the weapon selection screen, he was surprised to see that cards were a legitimate weapon for Summoners to use. 'Okay, I know that as soon as Konami joined up with Square Enix, Upper Deck Entertainment has been more cooperative with the company considering the whole Yu-Gi-Oh! thing and all, but this is kinda ridiculous.'

'Then again, some characters in SEK games used cards as a lethal weapon before, like Setzer, Luxord, and the Trickster job class in A2.' Deciding it would be good for a laugh, Joseph chose cards as his weapon.

A few short minutes later, he and 7 other people were brought up to the platform where the odd spheres were to enter the into the world of VR Final Fantasy. At last, Joseph entered into a sphere then into the virtual world.

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Takashi - Summoner
Entering a new world

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

His first thought into this strange new land was this, 'Wow.'

Takashi looked over his new outfit. The tunic was definitely to his liking and so were the pants and boots. The thing he liked most about his clothing was his cloak. It was light, fashionable, and kept under Final Fantasy Summoner tradition of being green.

Then a small pouch appeared at his left side. Curious, he opened the pouch, and found his cards. Unfortunately, as soon as he looked over them, most of them were blank. 'Makes sense that I can't have a whole bunch of Summons at my side considering this is supposed to be the start of the game.'

Takashi did notice that there were three cards that were marked. The first was Chocobo. According to the description, it did a fair amount of Wind damage to one enemy. 'Makes sense since it was a Summon before.' The second, oddly enough, was Moogle. It's description said that it cast Float on the entire party. 'Kinda odd for Moogle to be a Summon, but I guess the effect makes sense.' The last card was Sylph. It's card description stated that it drained a single enemy's HP and gave it equally to the party. 'Similar to Chocobo in terms of Summon access. It's a shame that I don't use this at all in the other Final Fantasy games it's been a Summon.'

(Welcome to Final Fantasy: Immersion, Takashi!)

'Is the pop-up really necessary?' asked Takashi inwardly. 'Although I like the realistic touch.' He then saw a menu pop-up in front of him. 'This is new. Menu pop-ups by thinking of them.' Takashi thought while reading the instructions. He also noticed that all of the choices were grayed out. "Makes sense considering this is a demo. However, I can't shake the feeling something bad is going to happen because of this.'

Then it was time for introductions. Takashi was somewhat tempted to go near the demonic warrior, but he was given his name, Akuma, by one of the two white mages, Miaka. 'Odd,' he thought as he noticed the group more closely. 'Including me, there should be five males and 3 females in our group and yet I see an even number of both. Who's the odd guy/girl out?'

Shrugging it off for later, he noticed a new pop-up in front of him. Apparently, this one was asking Takashi if he was ready for battle. Thinking how in the world he was going to use cards as weapons, much less use the Summons, he thought back to Yu-Gi-Oh! yet again and confirmed he was ready.

Three wolves, four wasps, and three flan then appeared ready to strike him and his 7 comrades. A pop-up appeared stating that any and all battle techniques would come naturally. 'Huh, didn't know that. I was just going to use techniques I saw on TV and read from manga.'

As soon as he stopped his thought a wolf leapt up to attack... only to freeze in mid-air. Takashi shivered. "'There's that bad feeling from before again.'

The wolf continued it's assault after it's brief freeze towards the Thief named Kamuza. Kamuza performed a brilliant counterattack, but the wolf still was standing.

Taking his eyes off the wolfs and wasps, Takashi and the black mage, Kaori, focused their attention on the flans because, as any good Final Fantasy player knows, attacking them with weapons wouldn't do much, but attacking a flan with magic would cause major damage.

Takashi flung a card towards the closest flan yelling out, "Chocobo!" The card glowed as soon as he said the word, then it turned into a giant puff of smoke. Emerging from the smoke was a chocobo about his size ramming towards a flan. The chocobo disappeared after it's attack was done and he saw that it's card had suddenly reappeared in his hand, glowing.

Kaori went into an odd fighting stance then yelled out, "Firedoken!" 'Someone's been reading too much 8-bit Theater.' Takashi thought as he saw the three flans roasted by the faux Fire Hadoken spell combo. He also saw that the flan his chocobo had attacked was destroyed. 'One down, two to go.'

*-*-*-*-*-*-*

If it's okay with VirtualPlay, I'm planning on having the following other Summons and their effects with me as the RPG goes on, by earning them via sidequest, or main quest:

Shiva - Does moderate Ice damage to all enemies
Ramuh- Does moderate Electric damage to all enemies
Ifrit- Does moderate Fire damage to all enemies
Kirin- Casts Regen on the entire party
Titan- Does moderate Earth damage to all enemies, except airborne ones
Tengu- Does moderate Wind damage to all enemies
Unicorn- Heals all status ailments for all characters, except KO
Golem- Absorbs a lot of physical damage
Catoblepas- Petrifies all opponents, except all immune to Petrify
Carbuncle- Casts Reflect on the entire party
Fenrir- Casts Blink on the entire party
Hermes- Casts Haste on the entire party
Alexander- Does Holy damage to all enemies
Zalera- Does Dark damage on all enemies
Odin- Kills all enemies with Zantetsuken or does massive damage to one enemy; can only be Summoned twice per day
Phoenix- Casts Life on the entire party
Leviathan- Does massive Water damage to all enemies
Bahamut- Does massive non-elemental damage on all enemies

Let me know if I should take any of them out or if I should change their effects.

[VirtualPlay]

As long as you realize that all cards will require MP to cast, that list is pretty good. Only two I have a couple hesitations about:

Golem: It's fine, I just don't know the scale for HP the characters will have, so the 5k might need to be dropped lower. You could probably just have the description to say "absorbs a lot of physical damage."
Odin: I know it's a FF summon, but just make it so that it either has very limited uses per day or that it drains a LOT of MP to use (which basically gives the former effect, but can be worked around with MP-restoring items).

Obviously they'll be learned as time goes by, just make sure they get learned in an appropriate order.

[Bear]

Kamuza -=- Thief
In battle
~~~~~~~~~

As if it were instinct, Kamuza had dodged the wolf's attack and countered as if it were nothing. He said nothing, but in his mind he was shocked at the enormous agility and speed he had been graced with by the game.

"It feels so natural, as if I was always this fast and nimble" he thought to himself, returning his attention to the task at hand. The wolf was injured, but still appeared to be every bit as ferocious as before. It seemed to be completely focused on Akuma and Rei, who were fixed in battle stance and ready to strike. Turning to his left, Kamuza saw that Nia and Takashi were squaring off with the Flans, casting all manner of magics and summons. Suddenly, Kamuza heard a pair of voices from behind him.

"Protect!" one shouted, Kamuza recognizing the voice as Akane's.
"Shell!" the other one chimed in, having to be Miaka.

Kamuza felt a peculiar sensation rising up from his feet toward his head. Pale, translucent glows of green and blue pulsated in front of and around him. Kamuza felt...tougher, as if he could endure any hit. Then it clicked in his head that this was still part of the game.

"Oh yes...Protect and Shell...how could I have forgotten?" Kamuza thought to himself again, remaining silent to the rest of the group. Glancing to his left, he noticed the final party member that had not been identified. Kamuza did not know his name, but noticed that he was equipped with a gun of some sort. As Kamuza looked on, the 'gunner' was taking aim at the wasps who had not been engaged by the group yet. Kamuza silently agreed with his idea.

"Ah yes, wasps. Small and fast, right up my alley." Kamuza thought, once again to himself, drawing his Main Gauche again. He felt an extra surge of speed flow through his body as the weapon left its sheath. In a move that was almost instantaneous, he leapt toward one of the wasps, spun behind it and sliced one of its wings off, returning to his original stance when he was finished. Even Kamuza himself was amazed at his speed, readying his blade for the next strike. At that point he glanced to his right, and noticed a small blue vial dangling from a chain around the wolf's neck. He quickly identified it in his head.

"A Potion! I bet I could steal that" He deduced, sheathing his dagger and wiggling his fingers in anticipation. In another swift and fluid movement, he darted over to the wolf, grasped the Potion firmly and yanked it off its chain. Before the wolf even knew what had happened, Kamuza had once again returned to his position beside the Gunner. Pocketing the little blue bottle, he again wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his Main Gauche.

"Now...where were we?"

[DivineAll]

Fixed both effects of Odin and Golem. Also, I already know it costs MP to use the card Summons and that I'll learn all Summons slowly and steadily over time, and in the order I posted them in. The only thing that's left to think about is how some of the cards act as the bestiary and not as actual Summons, still working on that.

[Pichu Luver]

Sharika Narayan/Indian
Fillin out the Sign up
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

‘You know I’m actually fond of my name.’ Sharika frowned at the sign up controller thing. Apparently you had to pick something Japanese. Sharika was not exactly fluent in the language (even if she did like many of their games) so pressed the random name generator next to the space. It came up with Rei. She shrugged, ‘Sounds fine to me.’

Next came the class and she had to think about that for a bit. She thought swinging a sword might be interesting but not really realistic for her. Looking through the classes she saw ‘Bard’. A smirk flitted across her features and she quickly pushed yes. If anything she was good at (considering how she made her living) that was it.

She quickly filled out the rest of the form; having a bit of a laugh with the different styles she could get her character into. Ended up she basically kept her same looks, just added blue eyes as she had always wished her eyes were that colour. She dressed up the costume to fit to her cultural tastes. When it came to her ‘weapon’ (she chuckled at that) she chose a lute as it could do a fair amount of damage if she felt the need to bash it over someone’s head. With one last check she was finished and watched the ending scenes of the people directly in front of her group of ‘game testers.’

When the group had cleared the platform Sharika quickly stepped up and found a free sphere. The assistant took her data pad and she carefully stepped into the orb. She just had enough time to think how weird it felt to be suspended there when she blacked out.

~~~~~

Rei/Bard
Amused (mostly)

Rei watched as she slowly came back into existence and her (admittedly slightly funny looking) new clothing formed over her. Feeling completely like herself (except some of her hair was now in a braided bun) she smiled, already eager to try out her new abilities. He lute appeared in front of her and her right hand had no choice but to grab it.

The second she had a hold of the lute she gently dropped into the new FF universe she had been watching. It was just as realistic as the vid-glasses had shown, except better as she could actually feel everything. Noticing the group she had been with was now in a circle (and all looking slightly ridiculous in their current garb had they been in the real world) she was just about to turn to look behind her when a screen popped up.

Welcome to Final Fantasy: Immersion, Rei!

“Uh!” she said surprised. It took her through a quick tutorial which she filled away for later. Looking around she watched the others interacting; but she was slightly more interested in the detail behind everyone and the realism she felt from her feet on the ground to the slight wind brushing her clothing against her skin. Rei strummed the strings of her lute experimentally and they came out quite harmoniously, and Rei had the feeling they could come out with many different sounds.

Another box popped up asking if she was ready to fight. Eagerly pushing yes to find out just what she could do, Rei got ready to rumble.

The creatures appeared and the wolves snarled in their menacing way, before one leaped to attack. She frowned as it froze in mid air.

‘Guess there’s some glitches with multiple uses. Ah they’ll fix it.’

The others with weapons swung, fired or sliced into attack mode but Rei… Well she did a lot of running.

One could almost say too much.

One wolf, perhaps recognizing she was one of the few unable to directly attack it (much, anyway) came for her. She danced, twirled and ran away from its jaws. Getting slightly scratched as she narrowly missed it claws or teeth. Finally in desperation she kicked it in the nose. It yelped, not that her ‘attack’ deterred it much. Thankfully a knight in demonic armour saved her.

Exchanging some dialogue she finally was free to do what Bards do best.

She sang, danced and stomped her feet to a tune nearly everyone in the world should know.

She was greatly amused by the versatility of her lute and the looks she was getting from her fellow battlers. They did seem to be doing more damage though, and she was pleased with her efforts.

When the song ended she looked around and noticed the White Mages were looking a little run down. She had benefited from their two protective shields so decided to return the favour as best she could. The Summoner and Black Mage might benefit as well.

She strummed her lute and felt the song fill her being. With a grin she took a pose and said.

“Ladies and gentlemen this is Mambo Number 5.”

(This song will cause the MP cost to be zero while she sings)

[Roy Karrde]

Sorry for the wait, between job hunting, finishing a portfolio, and struggling to get back into character it has taken a while for me to post.

Ryohei Chen ~ Gunner
Stuck in a line, where it goes he doesn’t know

I continued to look blankly at the glowing screen in my hand; it responded to my touch and had displayed the words in Chinese after a bit of messing with it. Yet I still had no idea what to do with it, others in line had seem so intent on creating a specific pattern with their own screens, for me all I wanted was to get out of the line and to find that girl. Yet if something were to happen, if I did step out of line and it brought out the guards like what happened in prison, things could get… messy.

I turned my head slightly to the side, my eye focusing on the person a couple meters back in the line, he had just received his own glowing screen and was vigorously punching in at the character screen. My thumb and finger followed his movements, tracing across the screen perfectly.

“Excuse me?” A voice snapped my head around; an attendant was standing in front of me, waiting to take me to one of the spheres like the others. “Please follow me..” She said politely as my fingers finished with the character on the screen.

I was led into one of the spheres, the glowing screen taken from me, as the sphere closed I began to feel a rising sense of anxiety, there was no quick escape from here, nothing that could be used for a weapon. My heart rate continued to increase as the sphere clicked, I was about to make a move to try and get the sphere open again when everything went black

~~~~~~~

I flipped open and close the weapon in my hand, idly swinging it forward to unhinge it, before swinging the muzzle back up to hear it click back with the handle. I was standing a bit further away from the group, eyeing each one of them, sizing them up. The girl’s wouldn’t provide much of a problem if needed, the big guy in armor would probably get my hands dirty, but nothing that I didn’t think I could handle if needed. But then again I was stuck with these people, inside of who knows where, so it was probably best if I remained a good boy for the time being until I could figure out how to get back to the real world.

“Who are you?” A tale pale skinned girl asked in perfect Chinese which caused me to turn, in the months that I had spent as a drifter in Japan I hadn’t heard much Chinese, and the few words I did hear was usually mangled and poorly spoken.

“Just a drifter.” It was my usually response to any question and something that usually shut people up. I swung the weapon open again as a screen popped up in front of me, asking me if I was ready. I clicked yes out of pure curiosity and music seemed to begin out of no where.

A gasp from the woman turned my attention to where she was looking, three dog like animals and four bugs, and three creatures, and I use that term loosely had appeared in the room. I clicked the weapon shut and propped it up against my shoulder.

Finally, something to kill.

[Kurosakura]

~*~*~*~*~

Estelle Macchia ~ Italian
Not so claustrophobic anymore

~*~*~*~*~

Estelle knew exactly what job she was going to be as soon as she was handed the data pad. The first thing she did was change the language to Italian, she couldn't really stand her inability to read or even speak Japanese. After scanning through the instructions, a character creation screen popped up. After selecting her gender she looked at the thing in thought. "Okay, so I know I'm female... what the heck should I do next?" She frowned and skipped over the name and worked on her appearance. "I'm not particularly attractive... but I guess I shouldn't make other peoples' eyes bleed."

She fiddled around with her appearance for a while before deciding on red, wavy shoulder-length hair and bright blue eyes. As for her outfit, she decided to base it on the generic Final Fantasy white mage robes, but included the Final Fantasy III devout cat hood. Instead of it being a full robe, she decided to divide it into a hoodie and skirt, completing the ensemble with stockings and matching boots and glanced up at the name again. "Since my character has red hair... I'll name myself Akane, then. 'Brilliant red.'" She BS'd the weapon design and realized she was was nearly at the front of the line.

"Let's go!" Estelle exclaimed and nearly dragged Ryou over to the spheres with her.

"Woah, calm down!" he laughed as she turned several shades of red.

"S-Sorry! I guess I'll see you in a bit?"

"Yeah."

She climbed into a sphere, nearly tripping and faceplanting, but luckily caught herself before any mishaps could occur. As soon as the sphere closed, everything went black and her senses seemed to have malfunctioned.

~*~*~*~*~

Akane ~ White Mage
Slowly regaining consciousness

~*~*~*~*~

The girl woke up with a start. She seemed to be regaining her senses and felt her clothing materialze somehow. She saw her staff floating in what looked like mid-air and grabbed it involuntarily. "Well, that was weird..." she thought to herself and felt her feet hit solid ground.

[Welcome to Final Fantasy: Immersion, Akane!]

"Oh... kay..." Akane was looking at the floating textbox with a slight look of distaste and glanced around to see if anybody else could see the window before pressing the 'OK' button, bringing up what looked like a beginner's help window. She called up the menu without any difficulties and saw that many of the options were grayed out, including 'Save' and 'Log Out'. "I guess it's so early on that there is no real need to save," she thought to herself and exited out of the menu, finally looking around at everyone else who came along. She let out a sigh of relief knowing that there was another white mage in the 'party', but the tall guy with the dark armor caught her eye. She made her way around the others, introducing herself and learning a bit about the others before towards him cautiously. It seemed like the other white mage got to him before her, which irritated her slightly, but she shrugged it off and overheard that his name was Akuma.

"Akuma... are you who I think-" she asked timidly, surprised that her voice was a little different. It sounded more... feminine? She had no idea how to put it.

He nodded and she smiled somewhat shyly, blushing slightly. "I should've known..." she chuckled nervously, "It's sort of obvious, now that I think about it..." she paused for a moment, feeling a wave of relief before realized she hadn't 'introduced' herself. "Oh, my name is Akane, by the way..."

"Heh... You still walk the same."

"I do?" she was utterly confused. "Was there some sort of specific way I walked?"

Her thoughts were interrupted with a pop-up that said something about combat beginning when everyone was ready. She pressed the 'Ready' button and held onto her staff tightly. Soon enough, the monsters came out: three wolves, four wasps, and three flans. A message box said that the techniques would come naturally, and she readied her staff. The wolves seemed to freeze in mid-air for a moment and then resume normal movement. "Maybe the game's lagging?" she mused, "I mean, it must take a lot of energy and stuff to power this thing..."

"Protect!" Akane yelled and cast the spell on the thief, Kamuza, who just dodged a wolf and sent a gash down its flank, but it wasn't down for the count yet since it limped back toward its group. She could hear the other white mage, Miaka, cast Shell on him, and smiled slightly. She sort of wove in and out of the party and monsters, casting Protect as Miaka casted Shell; the two of them seemed to have had some sort of unspoken agreement and split up, casting Cure when needed on the respective party members closest to them.

~*~*~*~*~

Ahhhhh, it's been a while.

[VirtualPlay]

Miaka ~ White Mage
Having fun sitting back and healing.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~
I moved around the field, zigzagging behind people, skirting monsters, and casting Cure and Shell on people that needed it. It was really quite fun healing, and Rei's (the Bard) music was quite entertaining as well, especially when Mambo Number 5 started playing (how could one little person make so much music?) and I could feel all of my spells becoming easier to cast, not draining my MP.

But what I liked most about the game? I felt happy. Not just happy to be playing a game, exclusive or not; I'd played so many beta tests and exclusive releases before that it wasn't anything new. No, I was almost certain that my mood was better because I felt more natural in the female body I had been placed in. I wasn't about to go and make a decision from one experiment, though; I would have to immerse myself a few more times to be sure.

"Could I get a heal?!" a curt voice cut into my thoughts. I looked and saw the gunner, Yasuo, with a large gash down his arm. I cast Cure and apologized profusely for letting my mind wander. He just snorted as he reloaded his weapon, adding, "I can't kill stuff if I'm dead."

Reminding myself not to irritate him again, I watched as he fired a large shot that finished off one of the wasps; its body fell, twitched, then dissolved into nothingness, creeping me out just a little bit. All around me the battles were winding down, monsters were falling, and people were starting to relax a bit.

As the Black Mage, Kaori, finished the last flan with a Thunder, and Rei's song came to a close, the stereotypical victory fanfare played. It was cut short, however, as a more intense battle theme started playing. Another one of those windows appeared, saying the boss fight was about to start, and that we would have access to our class's higher level spells.

I hit OK and waited for everyone else to do the same. As the last person waved their hand, a loud "SCHLORP!" sound rang out, and I looked around to see a Malboro Menace staring at us. Without warning it charged at us, but stopped suddenly. I had enough time to think, 'It froze just like the wolf...' before it spat out a nasty gunk at us, coating us all.

I was suddenly blinded; I looked around and tried to clear my eyes, but nothing worked; with a jolt I realized we had just been hit with Putrid Breath, and I had been afflicted with Darkness. I heard a couple people screaming in pain, and realized that some people had probably gotten Confused and were attacking allies.

Just as I was about to start panicking, I remembered one of the White Mage's most basic moves. Thanking whatever gods there were in this world that I wasn't Silenced, I yelled out "Esuna!" and with a relief my eyes opened again and I saw the carnage that was taking place as people ran around blindly, attacked others randomly, or just looked sick or immobile.

I scanned and found Akane, clutching at her throat; she had not been as lucky as me and had gotten Silenced. A quick Esuna on her and she excitedly thanked me before the two of us ran through the field, casting Esuna and Curaga on everyone to get them back up and running.

Curaga was definitely needed, as the Malboro Menace had not stopped when we were all hindered. A few people had taken some pretty nasty hits and we were having trouble getting them all restored. Rei suddenly launched into an interesting rendition of "Heal the World" and I could feel my healing power suddenly well up. It became easier to cast my heals and Akane and I seemed to restore people even more quickly than before.

"Miaka, look out!" Akane yelled suddenly, but I didn't have time to react. Somehow I had ended up right next to the Malboro and it had decided I looked like lunch. Its jaws were suddenly around me and I felt my life draining as it chomped on my midriff. It spat me out, and I flew down to the ground, hitting it hard. The pain was all numbed, but I still could tell I had been hurt pretty badly. So badly, in fact, that I couldn't move; I could only lay on the ground staring up at the sky.

'I must have run out of HP,' I thought, wishing I had paid more attention to where I had been running. Suddenly there was a bright light above me, and some sort of winged spirit flew down from the sky towards me. She was fairly beautiful, despite basically being monochrome, and as her hand reached down I felt mine lift up so that it grasped hers. Without warning, she pulled up and brought me to a standing position. Immediately she disappeared, as did all of the light that had appeared.

"Oh thank goodness that worked!" Akane cried, almost literally as she looked close to tears. "I was afraid you were..."

"It's a game, Akane," I said, comfortingly. "I wasn't going to die. Not literally, anyway."

"Sorry," she said, "I guess this game seems just a little too real." I saw her put a smile on her face, but she still looked a bit upset.

I went to say something else, but got interrupted by, "Could we get a bit of healing over here please?!" We both gave a start, then ran back to the rest of the group and started casting our heals. But as we went, I noticed a feeling that I hadn't had before the Malboro had tossed me. I couldn't quite place it; it wasn't my MP or HP, I had felt those feelings before. Deciding to dwell on it later, I put my focus towards healing again.

As we healed, I glanced occasionally at Akane, and realized that I had basically had a "girl moment" with her. It was something that I found myself enjoying the memory of, adding to my feeling of "right-ness" at being female. This was definitely turning out to be a great experience.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~

For those who are confused as to what happened, our boss encounter is: Marlboro Menace
It ambushed us and cast Putrid Breath, which causes random status effects on everyone: Poison, Darkness, Confusion, and Silence; pick one or two to be afflicted with (Miaka had Darkness and Akane had Silence).
It used Chow Time on Miaka (which on a White Mage is pretty nasty), and Akane used Full-Life on her to revive her.

[classy_cat18]

Nia Hawthorne/Kaori ~ Black Mage

Welcome to Final Fantasy: Immersion, Kaori!

I smiled inwardly at my character's name. I always did like that name. And things only got better as I got a look at myself in my character's skin. The weirdest thing was seeing myself with lighter skin, but it wasn't a bad thing. "Nice interface," I commented as I closed the box, then brought up the menu just for fun. “Very nice.”

I was now standing in an open virtual field, not very close to anyone else that had joined the game. My right hand wouldn’t move, but it probably only needed to move when I used my rod. The rest of my body moved just fine, so I walked until I found the others.

Not long before I told everyone my name, the battle started with the nostalgic fanfare. I refrained from jumping in excitement and faced the enemies: three wolves, four wasps, and three flan. It was a good balance; being a Black Mage gave me the privilege of easily taking out the flan with my magic.

A message flashed, assuring me that the battle techniques would come naturally. After it disappeared, the monsters charged. One of the wolves leaped into the air for an attack but froze in midair for a short moment. I blinked in confusion. A glitch? Well, it is a demo. Not everything can be perfect.

One of the wasps flew for me and I took this as the perfect opportunity to try one of my spells. My right arm finally rose as I fired a Blizzard spell, noticing how my arm felt slightly cool. The wasp was damaged but not dead, and it got in a nasty hit on my shoulder. I held my shoulder and slammed my rod into the monster’s head. Strange, I was suspecting pain. I did feel something.

This made the way to the three flan easy. Takashi pulled out a card and summoned a fierce Chocobo that totally trampled one of the flan. A song from the bard only made things more exciting. I could feel myself get pumped up. “1, 2, 3 4 5, everybody in the car so come on let’s ride!” I sung while I did a little dance. The magic energy in my body felt bottomless.

Not satisfied with a simple Fire, I gathered energy in my hands and formed a ball of flames. I smirked wickedly at the fiends. “Firedoken!” I cried out as I released the attack. It hit all three, the one that Takashi’s Chocobo attacked vanishing. “Ha! Two more to go!” I crowed.

One last Thunder from me finished the battle. I waved my hands in triumph when the battle victory fanfare sounded. Right after that, however, a more intense battle theme rang out. “Boss battle!” I shouted. I got a message that I now had access to higher level spells. “More power! Whoo!”

My cheers died down when the Malboro Menace appeared. My right eye twitched. “Oh crap,” I groaned. The thing charged at us, but froze in mid-charge like the wolf did in the previous battle. Two glitches in one demo? Something’s fishy.

The boss shot a ball of gunk right in my face before I could get the chance to dodge it. Even when I cleaned it from my face, I couldn’t see anything clearly. Everything was blurry and multiplied. “Great, I’m confused!” I tried firing a Fira at what I thought was one of the Malboro Menaces, but only ended up hitting Takashi.

“Hey!” he yelped.

“Sorry, I thought you were a bloodthirsty fiend,” I said in a flat voice. While I was busy trying to find the real Malboro Menace, it had grabbed the opportunity to go to town on my HP. I was almost sore all over. By the time Akane had healed me, I was hunched over and panting heavily. “Thanks.”

[DivineAll]

Takashi - Summoner
Having fun Summoning

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To say Takashi was using his Summon ability too much was an understatement. He was using it like crazy ever since the Bard cast Mambo Number 5. He was either casting Chocobo or Sylph on one enemy at a time, every chance he could. It was fairly slow and tedious, but he was having a good time and so were he companions, as he observed.

When the last enemy fell via Thunder spell from Kaori, the familiar victory fanfare Final Fantasy was known for rang through. However, the music was cut short for a more intense battle theme. 'Must be boss time.' Takashi thought.

As if on cue, another pop-up window appeared indicating that a boss battle was coming up and that the mages would have access to their more powerful spells and the bard would have access to her more powerful and useful songs. 'Better be careful then, just in case.'

The next thing Takashi knew, he and his party was face-to-face against a Malboro Menace. The giant plant monster lunged in for an attack... only for it to freeze in similar fashion to the wolf from earlier. Takashi shuddered yet again. 'That's either from the boss, the glitch, or both. Most likely both.'

The Malboro Menace continue from it's brief freeze and shot out a goo-like substance from it's maw onto the party. 'Yuck. Definitely taking a shower after this. ...And maybe some aspirin because I suddenly have a headache... and feel numb... and sick to my stomach. Ugh... have I been Poisoned? Not... good.'

Next thing he knew, Takashi was knocked off his feet onto the ground with a Fira spell from Kaori. "Hey!" he yelled out. “Sorry, I thought you were a bloodthirsty fiend,” she said in a flat voice. 'She's either been Blinded or Confused.'

Takashi's pain was added when the giant plant monster made a powerful physical assault against him. 'Need potion... and antidote.' Miaka remedied his suffering with an Esuna and Curaga. "Thanks. I needed that." he expressed gratefully.

Takashi took a quick glimpse at his new card Summons, making sure to avoid the Malboro Menace's attacks. 'Okay, I have Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, and Kirin on me now. However, some of the other cards kinda bother me a little bit since they aren't Summons at all and we just fought and killed them. Must be a bestiary or something like that.'

Takashi put this thought aside for later and raised one of his new cards high above his head. "Kirin!" he shouted. The giraffe-like Summon appeared and cast it's light upon the party. Everybody felt their strength slowly, but surely returning to them. 'Now for Ifrit.'