The Beginning

Buzz buzz, buzz, buzz. Incautiously I slapped my alarm clock!

'Wake up big brother, wake up, Wake Up, WAKE UP' gradually getting into a distinct voice. As I opened my eyes, I saw a blurry face very near to me, as if it was waiting for my eyes to open and it can gobble me up!

'Aahhhh' I screamed!

'What?' said Rika. Rika Suzuno, my younger sister.

'You devil, you nearly had me killed. Who on earth leans over someone's face while they are asleep?'

'Stop complaining already, mom said she wants both of us down for breakfast. And see it's your first day at school this year! I hope you don't want to be late for your entrance ceremony?'

'Yeah…? My first day… Right?' 'Now you don't get sleeping again, go get yourself ready, mom wants you in no time.'

'yeeaah', say her that I'm coming down.

Suddenly a year has passed since my junior high, but still I seem to be a little kid! But as far as I know, my little sister always addressed me as the devil! Since our childhood we shared a very good relation. She is three years younger than me and now she is in junior high. Today probably is my first day in senior high, guess who knows what will these years in senior high will bring me?

'I shouldn't make it longer, guess I have to go.' And as I heard from my friends, this year, we will have some new students in our class. You all might be thinking that I'm antisocial as I'm bothered about the new students but no, I'm not. I'm probably happy as I will get to make new friends. And now I got out of my bed and ran straight to the washroom as I heard my mom screaming. It took me no time to dress up. I came down with my senior high uniform on. But guess my timing could be no better. My mother greeted me with a glare as if she was going to rip my torso apart from my head and feed the carcass to vultures. Seriously she looked like a demon that came straight out of the hell!

'What did you say just now? Am I a demon? Now that's the way you address your mother when you are being so late?' said my mom.

'Wait, what? I'm just three minutes late mother. And now you are acting as if you were waiting for me since a year?' I protested.

In return it worsens the situation. 'Well, well, after all you are now in senior high. But be sure kid no matter what happens, how big you get, you still will be a small kid to me. Guess it's destined that you won't have a breakfast today.'

To be honest, I didn't see that coming, 'Seriously? Today is an important day in my life. How can I go there in an empty stomach?' I said calmly.

'Guess you have to find a way then.' She replied.

I started walking. Though I was excited about today's entrance ceremony guess my stomach didn't had the same feeling at all! In the mean time, while walking there happens to be a game shop, where every latest VR games happen to be available. It was not very far at that time. When I was about to cross the shop, a poster stole my attention.

'Whoahhhh!!! Finally, finally, it has been launched. The Rampage. It was the most developed VR game.' In that you will get to alter your real world with VR world. 'Well now I have a hot topic of discussion with my friends.' I was so busy in thinking about the game that I was nearly missing a beautiful sight. It was a girl in our school's uniform. To be distinct, she was wearing the girl's senior high uniform. But I didn't consider bothering as I was totally hyped.

Before I entered the hall, I met two of my old pals. They were Tomoyo Tsutsumuru and Ishida Fujibayashi. To be honest and precise we three made the perfect trio. In every game we played, we three suppose to be a team and basically ending up the game nailing it.

Tomoyo, he has blonde hairs, not so thin and not too chubby, but he has some descent looks. On the other hand, Ishida was of an average body type. That means no one in our group was too muscular. It was three years ago, when I joined this school as a transfer student from Tokyo. Back then I was a lonely boy, but by the time I could probably know, we three had already become friends. My schooldays were often boring but they turned my perspective about school upside down!

'Hey, Tomoyo and Ishida sorry for making you guys wait that long.' I said.

Ishida replied, 'don't apologize, even I showed up just now itself.'

'Now let us waste no more time and head towards the hall, the ceremony might start any moment now.' said Tomoyo. We went in and sat on our seats. Tomoyo started, 'Hey guys did you just saw the new poster that was kept infront of the game store?'

'It's the Rampage' I muttered as I was concentrating both in the ceremony and our little chat as I didn't want to miss either of the things. As the speech from the principal advanced, so do our conversation too.

'This is the best VR game ever made; you can even feel things in the VR world. As if there are two separate worlds.' said Ishida.

'Lets all buy it together after this ceremony is over.' I suggested. Well they all agreed to the plan.

Tomoyo asked 'hey guys, do you know who developed the game?'

Ishida answered, 'It's Kameshi Osaka'. Ishida was a living encyclopedia! When ever and whatever you ask him, he has the answer. And not to say, he was the genius amongst us. In the mean time our ceremony got over. We had our badges and headed towards the notice board where our names were written for the division of the classes. Luckily we ended up together again.

Tomoyo said, 'Hey guys, did you see the new transfer girl, she looks damn good. Hope I may have a chance.'

Ishida showed some interest and continued, 'are you talking about the red haired braided girl?' Tomoyo replied in positive. But at that instant I don't know what I was suppose to say, but I don't know why I didn't feel right when they were discussing about the girl.

'I too saw her, basically this morning before the ceremony. I ran into her. She was looking a little bit hesitant and nervous, as it was her first day at school.' I said.

'Man, she is damn cute; I would love her by my side!' Tomoyo said. I don't know why but I don't like how it sounded.

I could say that I was sad at that very moment. 'Why? Why? Am I feeling this? I even don't know her.' I asked myself.

'Hey Taki, did you say anything to us?' Ishida asked me to confirm. I replied in negative. But still something was not right to me. Anyway after the ceremony, as planned we three headed towards the game shop where we could buy the game for all three of us.

The game had been already launched 5 days ago, so we expected a lesser crowd, so that we can easily walk in, pick the game out and check out, but to our amaze, the crowd was just the same like the other day when it was launched.

Tomoyo said, 'Hey Taki, do you have the Caron Strap? I heard that it is required to play this full dive VR game.'

'Well, uh, n…nope! But don't give pain to your head; I just happen to have enough money to buy Caron Strap too. No matter what, we will buy this game together and as soon as we get home, we will log into this baby and form our allies.' I said.

'Bet we will be the top rankers in the game. No one can defeat this trio.' Ishida said. At last it was our turn. We picked three game disks and a CaronStrap for me. Both of the other guys had one from earlier.

Tomoyo gasps while reading the instructions and said, 'Well, it looks we can't be the top trio after all. Here it says "If player want to form a team, the team must have four members at least for the qualification rounds, and if it is less than eight members, then the players will have to play solo in order to get into the next rounds. But if the players get into the next rounds they will have to be divided into clans. However the last day to log in and register is 5th April 2113, 5:30 pm. Players joining after the time period will have no rights to carry out the game objectives but will have access to free roam inside the game.' Wait what? Isn't today 5th of April? And what time is it now?' I looked into my wrist watch and busted,

'It's 4:59 pm, holy cow we have only 31 minutes, guess we have to hurry. See you inside the game bitches!' both of their houses were little far as compared to mine. It would only take 8-9 minutes to get there.

But while walking back alone, I saw her; yeah you are thinking the correct persone, the transfer girl. I don't know but all of a sudden my world become so colorful that I couldn't think of anything. It was a weird feeling though. My legs froze. For an instance I was into a different world, nope it was neither the real nor the VR world. But I couldn't put myself together to get what really that world was.

She came in front me and said, 'If you don't hurry up, you won't be able to compete in the game. Time is running away.'

'Wait, what??? How on earth did you know that I was going to log into the game? Are you a some sort of psychic?' I bluttered out incautiously.

'Oh no, common silly, anyone can say that, unless you are hiding the game disk and the CaronStrap which you are holding in your hands' she said. After that I don't know what she thought of me but I was sure that I was portrayed as a dumb champ; but soon, I couldn't guess what really happen but all of a sudden my heart started pounding as when she took her hand near the side of her face and removed some curly tangled hairs and tucked it behind her ear, it was when I asked her about her name. Out of nowhere she started running away from me, but not being offended, she left the place with a cute little smile and if I remember things correctly while leaving she said, 'My name, My Name…, My NAME is Mika Nagisaki, and nice to meet you. See you inside.' The name Mika Nagisaki echoed in my ears a several times then.

'Mika Nagisaki… huh?' I said. 'See you inside? What could that probably mean? Wait did I forget anything? Oh yeah the game… it's 5:09 pm now I got to run. Ill think about it later.'

The time I reached home, it was 5:15. I kept my bag and whooshed into my room. Plugged the CaronStrap, inserted the disk into my pc: and logged in; by all the chaos that I made was enough to make my mom go crazy like a bull in the ring, but thanks to my good luck, my bad luck was out of station! Guess what? My mom wasn't home; but as I didn't have a breakfast I was starving, anyway as my mom was out, I could finally get some peace in logging in. It strictly mentioned that the player should be laid before the CaronStrap was on as the whole body goes to sleep and the player will have no control over the body, basically CaronStrap is like a scuba diving glass with metal rim and a metal frame work to support your head from behind, it was the place where the chip was placed. The chip is called SMNE chip, which goes by Sensory and Motor Nerve Emulator. The main function is that, it controls both the spinal cord and the brain. It numbs the spinal cord to disable functionality of the body and controls brain, basically so that we can use it inside the game. It transfers the brain wave from this world to the VR world into our avatar.

To be just simple, it resembles just the nether gate between our and the VR world. It was just 5:28 when I finally logged in. Inside the game we could chat with our friends. I texted Tomoyo and Ishida; they said they were heading towards me. And now for the VR world, it just looks like our own world but looks like as if I'm living a fantasy dream. I had a sword with me. It looked a normal and an ordinary one. After a few minutes I came to know that there was no one beside me to spawn at that very region. I guessed I was too late and probably everyone had logged in already, so I might be the last one to get here. But little far I saw a cave, I thought 'why not go there and take some rest before those two shows up, after all the sun is burning me up.'

As I went inside the cave I saw something glowing, I was little afraid at that point but gathered all my guts and went nearer to the glowing spot. To my amaze it was a blue colored glowing sword. I took it, but a message popped infront of me, as if it was a hologram, it was like something was written on a stone piece floating around in front of me.

It said, "Note: this sword's name is Ejacuart Austin. There are only four Ejacuart in the Ejaltice, among the four, Austin is the one. Other three goes by Roiks, Frabble and Rotsova (pronounce Rosova). These are the most powerful weapon in Ejaltice. Be sure that you take good care of it and become a worthy yielder of the Ejacuart." Ejaltice is the name of this world. And there are four Ejacuarts, namely Ejacuart Austin, Ejacuart Roiks, Ejacuart Frabble and Ejacuart Rotsova as said by the notice popped up infront of me.

I was totally shocked to get one of those. 'Taki… Taki… where are you?' Ishida shouted.

I replied, 'wait I'm here, I'm coming out'.

I thought those two will get mad at me if they saw a sword which I had but they didn't. But to my amazement, Tomoyo said, 'GUESS YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE TOO!' I really didn't get what on earth he meant that time!