Day 41: Sun Room

[feartehreaper]

Haseo's steps were heavy with the weight of righteous anger as he was escorted into the Sun Room, his posture so sullen and reluctant you could almost hear the nostalgic cry of an electric guitar. He was seething, and though perhaps it was a bit harder to be intimidating while wearing the uniform of an insane asylum and flanked by a bored-looking

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[cannotlogout]

Tsukasa was silent as the nurse gave him a small tour, ignoring her words in favour of staring at his hands. They were larger than his own ones in the real world and they... they had fingerprints on them, neat whorls that he knew had never been there before, even when he'd been trapped before. PCs just didn't have that much detail yet, no matter how good the graphics were, right?

He only really looked up when the nurse mentioned a bulletin board, expression turning a little desperate. "Can I use it?" he asked, relieved when the nurse agreed. There were sometimes boards in the towns. People posted messages there when they didn't want to use the BBS. The nurse nodded and showed him the way. He scribbled a quick message, hands shaking as he did so, and then the nurse nudged him gently in the back, telling him to go and sit down since he didn't need a shower right now.

There was only one person in that particular room and the nurse smiled, guiding him over towards the other boy. "Why don't you come and talk to Kai, Morgan?" she asked, making Tsukasa wince. "I'm not called Morgan!" he protested. Why was the woman calling him Morgan? At one time he would have just pulled away, saying that he didn't care about meeting anyone, but right now he wanted some kind of explanation.

"Here Kai, why don't you be nice to Morgan since you've both just arrived," she said, completely ignoring Tsukasa's protests and then walking off once Tsukasa was 'settled'.

Tsukasa looked the boy over, noting he red mark on his cheek. "Hello."

[feartehreaper]

Haseo didn't really think he had much interest in talking to someone else who had just gotten there, and he gave a dirty look at the nurse's retreating back for being presumptive enough to force him into a conversation that would probably only turn awkward.

Then again, it wasn't like he could forget the amount of bewilderment he'd experienced only a brief time before. If this guy had just found himself there as he had, he couldn't blame him for being a little off-center, especially since it looked like nobody was going to fly to his "rescue" like Endrance had done for him.

In fact, considering he wasn't screaming and about to fistfight a mob of orderlies, Haseo thought he was probably taking it a little better than he had at first... although the Adept Rogue was far from being anything like a psychologist. It was just... why couldn't they have found him someone else to talk to anyway?

"Fine," he said reluctantly, "I guess 'Morgan' isn't any more who you are than I am 'Kai.' What's--" Suddenly, Haseo froze, staring at Tsukasa for a long beat. Had he seen him before somewhere? Maybe a PC that looked similar in 'The World' or something but... it was strange. However, the moment passed almost as soon as it had come, and Haseo continued his question in the same vein. "What's your name?"

[cannotlogout]

Great. The nurse had to push him together with someone anti-social. Tsukasa could sympathise with not wanting to talk with people but it made things more uncomfortable for him now. He perched on the edge of the sofa, taking a moment to stare at his hands again while he waited for the nurse to leave. He didn't want to talk around her, not when she was calling him such a terrible name.

He shook his head in response to the boy's question. "I'm not called Morgan," he said with some distaste. He didn't want to be called anything so close to her name. He noted the way that the other boy stared at him for a moment and he crossed his arms over his chest defensively. "I'm called Tsukasa." he bit his lip for a moment. He could feel that too, could feel the texture of the clothing beneath his fingers. "I was in Net Slum before I woke up, and Carmina Gadelica before that. I don't know how I got here."

[feartehreaper]

This 'Tsukasa' looked so lost that Haseo almost felt bad, and he let out a breath in mild irritation as he too crossed his arms. Technically, he was the leader of a guild devoted to helping newbies, even if Silabus and Gaspard practically did that by themselves with only little interference from him. So... well maybe there was some sort of obligation to try and help the guy out.

However, Haseo wasn't used to introducing himself... over eight months of just letting people read their displays and almost just as many having his name (or 'The Terror of Death') pass on the lips of other players had left him without the habit. Instead, he tilted his head slightly at the place names Tsukasa provided, recognizing neither as anywhere in or outside 'The World' at first.

Come to think of it, Endrance hadn't really mentioned from where all the other patients were taken, aside from apparently nobody else having heard of the game both of them were from. How odd, then, that Tsukasa seemed to have wavemarks....

"Hey. You weren't playing an online game before you showed up here, were you?"

[cannotlogout]

Thankfully, Tsukasa had become fairly used to irritating people during the time that he'd been playing The World. Mimiru had snapped at him enough times that he could, for the most part, ignore it, even if he felt a little bad now. This was a stranger after all, not a friend.

He nodded seriously when the other boy mentioned an online game. "Yes. The World. I thought I was still logged in, but this isn't any field that I've ever heard of." He grimaced. It could be an event, but it just didn't feel right. It didn't fit with the tone of The World at all. But the other idea was nearly impossible to accept. He dug his fingers into the material of the loose trousers. "But I can feel things. Touch them. And..." he paused, wondering how wise it would be to say something. "I must be in a coma again, in the real world. That's the only way this could happen again." But he hadn't been data drained. Morganna was gone.

[feartehreaper]

"What? Seriously?"

Well that was a surprise, to just run into another player after everything he'd heard- Haseo had been practically convinced that aside from himself, Endrance, Atoli, and maybe the summoning-person Endrance had described, there wasn't anyone else from 'The World.'

And then Tsukasa mentioned comas, and Haseo found himself even more surprised, only just below the level of gaping openly. It was true that rumors and tales about the game causing people to fall into comas had been going around, even if their tellers didn't have firsthand experience like Haseo, but those that did usually didn't imply that they had been the one to fall victim. In light of this new-found reason to pay attention to this other silver-haired teenager, Haseo quickly moved to explain himself.

"No, this isn't 'The World', but I was playing it too... I don't know what happened. And you're right, it's not supposed to be like... this." He paused for a moment, several different ways to phrase his question caught in his mind. "You've been in a coma before? Did you see any black spots? Messed-up graphics?"

Just then he realized his oversight on introducing himself. "I'm Haseo," he said shortly, the name feeling weird coming from his mouth.

[cannotlogout]

Tsukasa nodded, a little taken aback by his surprise. What other online game was there really? The World was pretty much the only one. "Yes. Helba was throwing a party to celebrate the defeat of the Cursed Wave." It might not make much sense to him admittedly. He hadn't managed to keep up with all of the news about it so he wasn't certain how widely spread that was.

And he'd been playing The World too? Then this was his PC? "I was in a coma, but I never saw anything like that. It's complicated, what happened," he added with a grimace, realising how confusing his words might have sounded. He wasn't sure that he was comfortable telling a complete stranger. The comas weren't too unbelievable since there had been a few of them since then, but what else had happened was probably pushing that a little.

He smiled slightly at the other boy. "Nice to meet you, Haseo."

[feartehreaper]

Once more the names Tsukasa were saying flew right over Haseo's head- Helba was clearly a person or organization, and... well, 'The Cursed Wave' must have been a quest or similar, right? Haseo had dabbled a bit in the Abyss quest (read: finishing it as it came along in what short spaces of free time he had), but there weren't really any others that he could remember that would warrant a party thrown upon their completion. It was more his friends' work to keep up with 'The World''s backstory and quests... even sweeping clean the Arena tournaments had been something done for different motivations than for most, clearly evidenced by how he had gladly given up the title twice and needed to be practically blackmailed to participate in the last.

Complicated indeed. Haseo paused for a long moment, his arms crossed close to his body. "Sounds like way," he said, mildly defeated, and then fell silent once more. It seemed that whatever had happened, obviously Tsukasa was reluctant to talk about it. Not that Haseo was really any different... he was far from just going and talking about how he himself had been lured into security and betrayed numerous times over in relation to the phenomena of game-related comas. As such, he didn't really have any choice but to treat Tsukasa as he probably would a "normal" player. His gaze moved to the board and back... perhaps Endrance would have better luck talking to him, ironic as that was.

[cannotlogout]

Tsukasa shifted a little awkwardly when Haseo crossed his arms and became silent again. He wished that he could explain it more clearly but some of what had happened was embarrassing or upsetting and he still hadn't quite come to accept it yet. He smiled apologetically. "Sorry. I'm not sure how much normal players know about what happened and a lot of it I picked up from my friends later on." He hadn't played much since waking up, too worried about Morganna and catching up with school to log on. "But there were a lot of people who fell into comas during the last year. They got data drained."

[feartehreaper]

Haseo was somewhat taken aback by the phrase "normal player," a phrase that had only ever described him for approximately thirty minutes, when he first started the game, before he had been PKed and Ovan, the then-leader of the infamous 'Twilight Brigade' guild, had catapulted him into the sights of what seemed like the entire planet. There had been a brief moment, some time ago, when Haseo had wondered what it would have been like to be someone who only played 'The World' for fun, but that was so far past him it was a fruitless path for thought anyway.

Fortunately, he certainly wasn't conceited enough to think that everyone had heard of him, but he was just about to correct Tsukasa's misunderstanding when the boy uttered something else that completely derailed the Adept Rogue's train of thought.

Data Draining... didn't normally send people into comas. Or rather, for long. Or, so Haseo thought. The whole deal with AIDA and Tri-Edge muddled things up so much it was hard to keep things straight. What was more important was how Tsukasa knew the term "Data Drain" in the first place.

In his agitation Haseo had the inexplicable urge to pin Tsukasa against something and threaten his life. Or ask his name, which was weird since he already had it. "Huh?!" he managed, then swallowed in an attempt to smooth his heightened emotions. It didn't really help that a man with long blond hair had taken it upon himself to suddenly wake up everyone in the room with a rather impressive imitation of a rooster. Haseo stared at him, momentarily at a loss for words, before turning back.

"How do you know about 'Data Drain?'" he asked, quiet and tense.

[cannotlogout]

Had he really said something wrong? Okay, perhaps the phrasing about 'normal' players had been a little callous. They were all normal players in the end, just thrown into extraordinary situations. But he hadn't expected a look quite like that from Haseo. He hadn't expected quite so much shock and a slight hint of what? Malice? Violence?

He glanced away for a moment, giving a baffled look at the man who was doing a chicken impression for some reason, and then turned back to the other boy. That wasn't quite the question that he'd been expecting. "I was data drained," he admitted with a shrug. "Several times." Three or four at least, probably more if you counted the time when he'd been pretty much mindless for days. "And I data drained other people too, thought they didn't fall into comas." He admitted this last quietly, still ashamed of how he'd acted then. If they'd fallen into comas then it would have been so much worse.