.hack//Crimson Mirage

Log-in One: <start>

Three female characters strode purposefully down the main road of Dun Loireag. A tall, red-headed twin blade stood in the middle, flanked by another twin blade and a wavemaster. 
	As they approached the Chaos Gate, the red-headed twin blade drew the weapon for her left hand and held it out in front of her. “Ready, Nekoda? Seluwen?” Her gold eyes flickered over to her two companions. 
	“Define ‘ready’, Ruby-Moon…” Nekoda said nervously, running her fingers up and down the hilts of her still-sheathed twin blades. “We’re going to be—” 
	Ruby’s left arm shot out – the fan-like blade inches from her friend’s nose. 
	Nekoda’s silver eyes were wide and focused on the blade. Her eyes slowly rolled to the side and met Ruby’s gaze.
	The red head raised one gloved finger to her lips as her mouth curved into a tight smirk. “Don’t think of it that way, okay?” Ruby let her left arm fall away and raised her right fist into the air. “Chronicling…” 
Gold bands began to form around Ruby-Moon’s fist and grew as they ran down the length of her body. 
	Nekoda and Seluwen exchanged glances and also raised their right fist into the air. They finished naming the field with Ruby. “Hot-blooded Melody!” 
	The golden bands sped down the three bodies and send them to the field. 

	The bands faded and the three girls looked around.
	Nekoda held out her hand and a flute appeared in her palm. Bringing the instrument to her lips, the silver-haired twin blade blew a series of notes into the flute.
	A large, pig-like creature appeared and reared back on his hind legs. “Amoooore!!” As soon as the grunty appeared, the field music changed to the grunty theme.
	Nekoda hopped on top of her grunty’s back and waited for Ruby and Seluwen to hop on behind her. 
	As the grunty galloped across the hard-packed earth, Ruby’s body was stiff – as if the player had abandoned the terminal. (::gasp:: oo!)
	As soon as Nekoda’s grunty stopped in front of the dungeon’s entrance – a large, gaping gator mouth propped open by two thick poles – Ruby’s sim sprang back to life. 
“Seluwen!” the red headed Twin Blade shouted, jumping off the back of the grunty and drawing her second weapon. 
	The wavemaster held out her hands – her left hand gripping a scroll and her right hand gripping her staff. “Speed Charm!” Seluwen shouted. The blue-eyed wavemaster raised her hands above her head, then pulled her hands apart – the scroll disappearing. 
	The three young women sprinted into the dungeon with clouds of white dust, sparkles, and clocks swirling around them to indicate that the speed charm was in place. 
	As they crossed into the second room of the dungeon, Ruby called out to her companions. “Take the door in the middle, run straight through the next room, then follow the stairs down!”
	Nekoda and Seluwen nodded – hurrying to catch up with Ruby-Moon. 
	The rest of the trip through the dungeon continued on without much conversation – except for Ruby giving Party Commands and directions and the three young women exchanging tips and compliments.
	After one of many exhausting battles on the fourth floor, Ruby ignored the treasure chest left behind by the General Armor and sprinted towards the door in the middle of the wall.  
	Without wasting another second, Ruby, Nekoda, and Seluwen dashed to the Ziet  statue standing in the back of the room. 
The statue’s head was bouncing up and down – the jaw opening and closing at it did so. Stone arms gripped the edges of the hour glass’ cage. In front of the statue was a large, round clock. A hand was spinning around the face of the clock. 
Ruby approached it and touched it with one hand. 
“You’re time: 4:39. You are now honorary fifth place,” Ruby read, taking words from a screen only she could see. As she spoke, her voice rose with excitement. “You are now the designated ‘high speed tiger’!” 
“We did it!” Seluwen shouted happily, hopping up and down. 
“Woot!” Nekoda cheered with a giggle and a grin. She hugged Ruby then Seluwen. “What’d we get?!”
A small chime sounded over the dungeon theme and Ruby smirked. “A ‘time head-band’. Give you a skill to help speed up a party member.” 
The clock faded and Ruby-Moon turned to the other two girls. “Use sprite ocarinas!” she ordered with the party commands.
A flute played a series of notes over the dungeon theme and the golden bands reappeared to transport the party to the field.

~*~

	Carrie sighed and leaned back in her chair. She was about to take off her head-set when an envelope icon appeared on her ‘The World’ desktop and a small chime sounded. ‘You’ve got mail’ the icon flashed. 
	Growling, Carrie grabbed her controller and double-clicked on the icon. 
	‘C.C. Corporation. Topic: Re: Recent Zeit Statue Champion!’
‘Dear Ruby-Moon – Leader of Crimson Mirage,
	‘We at C.C. Corporation would like to congratulate you and your two companions, Nekoda and Seluwen, on achieving 5th place among the Zeit Statue champions. Please try and further your ranking among the champions!
		‘—C.C. Corporation’ 
	Carrie snorted and deleted the mail. She was about to log off again when another ‘You got mail’ icon flashed onto her screen. “What is it with you people and mail?!” Carrie growled, clicking angrily at the icon. “I just want some… damn… oh damn…” 
	The young woman trailed off and peered at the screen behind her head-set.
	“What is it, Carrie?”
	“Nothing Roxs. I’ll tell ‘ya when I log off…” Carrie called back to her twin sister.
	‘Members of Immortal Adversity. Topic: Third Time’s the Charm’
‘To: Ruby-Moon – Leader of Crimson Mirage:
	‘You’ve got to be more careful around here, Ruby-Moon. This is the second time this week that The Followers have caught you hacking into the system. One more time and we’ll alert the higher administrators – or possibly even the president of C.C. Corporation himself. We don’t want to warn you again.
		‘—Immortal Adversity 
	‘P.S. Congratulations on gaining 5th place among the Zeit Champions.’
	Carrie deleted the e-mail and tore off her head-set. She slammed her palms onto the table top and pushed her chair away from the computer terminal. Kicking her socked feet against the leg of her swivel chair, Carrie spun around to find her twin sister staring at her.
	“What happened, Carrie?” Roxs asked, eyeing the blank Window’s desktop of her sister’s screen.
	“Aaron’s damn cronies caught me hacking again…” she muttered, standing up. Carrie pushed past her twin and headed towards the kitchen where Roxs had been preparing a dinner of Easy Mac.
	“I told you it was dangerous, didn’t I?!” Roxs called after Carrie, hurrying to catch up with her. “I’m going to call Leya.”
	Carrie whipped around, her long brown hair swirling around her shoulders as she did so. “Don’t,” the young woman demanded curtly, taking her half-frame glasses out of a pocket on her jacket and hooking them over her ears. 
	“Why not? Leya needs to know!” Roxs complained, her blue eyes pleading with her twin. “Leya’s my best friend and a member of Crimson Mirage. She needs to know.” 
	“Because this is my problem, Roxs,” Carrie stressed. She paused and looked at her sister – Roxs with her short, dyed hair – and sighed. “I’ll tell her tomorrow at school.”
	Roxs smiled. “Promise, Carrie?” 
	Carrie looked away from her sister’s face for a moment as the microwave beeped and the smell of Macaroni ‘n Cheese filled the house. “Promise, Roxs.” She smiled.

~*~

	“You can’t be serious, Carrie…” Leya said with a sigh. “I thought you said you covered your tracks!”	“Well, yesterday I was too busy trying to keep us under 4:45. And hey,” Carrie defended, “it was worth not covering up! I’ll just be more careful from now on.”
	Leya rolled her hard blue eyes and shook her head – her roughly cut, short light brown hair brushing against her cheeks. “You had better be… ‘cause I don’t like the idea of losing Seluwen after I worked so hard to level her up and all the fame Crimson Mirage has gained.” Leya grinned. 
	The three friends began talking as they walked down the halls of their high-school towards their third period class. 
	A gang of five guys heading in the opposite direction moved forward and stopped in front of Carrie, Leya, and Roxs. 
	“Ah, the lovely women of The World’s renowned Crimson Mirage,” a tall Asian boy said in a taunting voice. 
	Carrie let out a distressed sigh and rolled her green eyes. 
	Leya’s face slacked into an almost sappy smile before she caught herself and looked away. “What do you want, Jonathan?” she demanded darkly.
	“Just to warn you to be careful, ladies.” Jonathan shrugged in an off-hand matter. “Immortal Adversity is raising their security measures. We will be more alert the next time you start hacking, Carrie.” The young man winked. 
	Carrie sneered. “Shut up you—” 
	“Watch your language,” Roxs cautioned casually.
	“—hole.”
	“Oh, so the timid kitten has a bite,” said another young man – Raul. 
	“Shove it,” Leya warned, stepping forward. She shoved Raul backwards.
	“Hey!” a third young man, Chris, shouted as he caught his friend. “Watch it!” He jerked his head towards a tall man standing in the hall.
	The nearby proctor was giving the opposing groups a dubious look. 
	Jonathan stepped forward and stopped in front of Carrie, his shoulder pressing against hers. “Saturday, be logged into The World. I’ll send you a flash mail. “We’ll fight then, okay?” He locked eyes with her, then pushed forward, knocking Carrie’s shoulder out of the way.
	He made a motion to the four others behind him.
	As they passed, Leya and Roxs exchanged glances, then they each stuck out a leg – causing Raul and Chris to trip and stumble into the backs of the two in front of them.
	Picking themselves up, the five members hurried after a peevish-looking Jonathan.
	Roxs and Leya snickered, giving each other a high-five. 
	“We’ll be ready for them, won’t we, sis?” Roxs asked with a laugh. She turned towards her twin. “Carrie?”
	The young woman was looking at the floor by her feet, clenching and unclenching her hands. 
When Carrie heard Roxs address her a second time, she looked up at her sister. She forced a smile on her pale face. “Of course, Roxs. Now let’s head towards class so we’re not late.”
Without waiting for a reply from her sister and best friend, Carrie strode down the hall towards their class.

~*~

	“Nekoda, is Seluwen coming on now?” Ruby-Moon confirmed with her sister.
	“Yeah, she said she’ll be on in five minutes. She said that she just needs to finish eating her cereal…” Nekoda laughed.
	Ruby nodded and sent a flash mail to Seluwen asking her to come and join the party when she was ready.
	Nekoda looked up from where she was running through her item inventory. “What field did Jonathan give you?”
	Ruby paused for a moment, trying to remember. “θ Chosen Hopeless Nothingness,” she answered.
	Nekoda nodded. She looked to the side, then stated in a casual voice, “Seluwen is coming.”
	“Got it,” Ruby said, drawing her swords and approaching the Chaos Gate. 
As soon as the blue-eyed wavemaster appeared in a series of golden bands, Ruby added her to their party.
“Ready?” Seluwen asked, flashing a half-grin. The twins nodded at the same time and the three young women raised their right fist. “Chosen Hopeless Nothingness!”

The moment they appeared in the field, the members of Crimson Mirage knew that something was wrong. 
Strings of data materialized in the middle of the air at random intervals and the landscape was covered with missing patches of information.
Ruby and Nekoda griped their weapons tightly in their hands, inching forward. Seluwen cast a Fairies Globe to reveal the locations of the magic portals.
“Uh… girls?” Seluwen mumbled, turning towards her two friends. 
“Hm?”
“This field has no magic portals…” the wavemaster said, twinges of amazement and fear in her voice.
As Nekoda and Ruby leaned over to inspect the map that Seluwen brought up, a strange – yet familiar – wooshing noise filled the otherwise silent field.
No field theme… Ruby noted as the sound of a magic portal being released caught her attention.
The three young women whipped around, weapons ready, only to find a few of The Followers – lesser members to the elite group Immortal Adversity – behind them. 
There were six in all – including Jonathan, Chris, and Raul.
Great… Ruby thought, gripping the hilt of her blade until her knuckles turned white. He brought two parties to battle against us…
Jonathan looked around at the surrounding field – brow furrowed. He mumbled something to one of the five young men behind him. 
Chris and a scrawny tan boy Geoff shrugged.
Turning back to Crimson Mirage, the young Asian man strode forward, hefting his large blade over his shoulder. “Ruby-Moon,” he declared in an official voice, pointing a finger at the red head. “You have been caught and accused of hacking into The World’s system.”
Jonathan’s narrowed eyes stared darkly at Ruby-Moon. “You have been caught and warned numerous times to stop your actions – yet you decidedly don’t stop. As a member of Immortal Adversity and acting with Lord Audra’s beliefs in mind, The Followers and I challenge Crimson Mirage.”
“Name the stakes,” Nekoda shouted, quickly switching blades in result to the element of the weapons Raul and Geoff were holding.
Jonathan and Chris exchanged glances. Chris grinned and ran a hand back through his bleached hair. “If The Followers win, Crimson Mirage disbands and leaves The World.”
“But if we win?” Seluwen asked, leaning casually against her wavemaster weapon. 
“Then The Followers will disband and leave The World. Agreed?” Chris negotiated, sticking the butt of his spear in a patch of missing data. He stumbled forward when his long-arm didn’t find a solid base.
Snickering, Ruby stepped forward. “We accept.”
Jonathan and a few of the other Followers readied their weapons and dropped into battle mode. “Good-bye, Crimson Mirage.”

Log-in One: </end>