Head in the Game

Summery: People did not just turn into giant, anthropomorphic, video game, cats…It just did not happen! Evans, along with 700,000 players world wide, was playing Elder Tale like any other day when the Novasphere Pioneers expansion came into affect. What followed were the beginnings of a journey that would challenge, not only individual identity, but also what it means to be human.

Authors Note: I decided to jump on the OC bandwagon. There are just so many possibilities. A shout out to auraleek's, "The American Player," which inspired the writing of this fic.

Chapter 1: Elder Tale

Evans threw himself on the neatly made bed, taking an odd sort of satisfaction in messing up the bed covers. He then got up and did the same to the double bed next to his own. He was still disappointed that he had not received a complementally hotel pillow mint upon arrival. Revenge, no matter how small, was sweet. He bounced up and down enjoying the freedom of being alone in a hotel room.

Quickly, he pulled on an over large shirt, pants were for the weak, and dug through his suitcase, messing up his already shitterly folded clothes to pull out his laptop. The piece-of-crap laptop started up with a rattle, which he was sure meant nothing good.

But he wasn't about to let shit technology stop him from being one of the first to experience the long awaited twelfth expansion pack for Elder Tale. Elder Tale…the game he had played throughout his final years of high school and had probably contributed quite a bit to his crap grades. He had been anticipating this expansion since its announcement. So what if he had to he had to log on with the Japanese server, his laptop refused to connect to the others, in order to download the update in real time. The crapness of his laptop would not prevent him from being one of the first to explore the new modifications.

Evans smiled as the opening page lit up accompanied by the game's theme. A few seconds of fiddling with the computer's settings and a widow titled 'Homesteading the Noospher: installing,' appeared complete with loading bar. It was all in Japanese and Evens grumbled, he swore he had set the stupid thing to English.

While waiting he messed around with his characters, continuing to reacquaint himself with the game mechanics, which he had been doing over the past few days.

"Elder Tale: Homesteading the Noospher finished," flashed in the corner of the screen, followed by a, 'select character.' option.

Well… his Japanese account did not contain a lot of characters soooo…Evans move his mouse to click on the only level 90 character he had on that server. He briefly considered making a new one or picking a lower level character but decided against it, concluding that, if he wanted to get the most out of the expansion, he would need to be at his highest level. When he returned home, to his desktop, he could experiment with his other characters.

He clicked the mouse, leaning back and waiting for the game to load. He was feeling a bit hungry, maybe he would order room service as it would be nice to….

His vision blanked out… and Evans knew no more.

The flan in his laptop started up with a soft wirrr, filling the now empty hotel room with its low drone.

01001100 01101111 01100001 01100100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 00001101 00001010 00001101 00001010 01000101 01101100 01100100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010100 01100001 01101100 01100101 00100000 00001101 00001010 00001101 00001010 01001000 01101111 01101101 01100101 01110011 01110100 01100101 01100001 01100100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01001110 01101111 01101111 01110011 01110000 01101000 01100101 01110010

The fist thing Evens noticed upon regaining consciousness was the assault on his eardrums as every sound imaginable was magnified and enhanced a hundred fold until it was beating relentlessly against his brain.

BANG, CRUNCH, CRUNCH, POP, SWISH, FLAP, BANG, AGGGGGRRRRR, CRUNCH, it all swelled about him, consuming his other senses.

He groaned, falling to the ground from where he had been apparently standing, raising his hands to cover his ears. Only he then discovered that he had no ears…WHAT THE HELL! Evens frantically searched the side of his head before pausing in alarm. What was wrong with his hands? Why were his hands covered in odd furry material? He thought frantically, bringing the appendages down in front of him and opening his screwed up eyes.

What he saw made his heat drop. Where were his hands? These things- these weird, paw, things-were not his hands. Yet, they moved when he willed them, opening and closing at his command. His breath was now coming in short gasps. Someone shouted nearby and the sound was like a nail ramming straight through his head. In desperation, ignoring his weird hand-things, Evans once again tried to cover his ears discovering that, like his hands, they were misshapen.

WHAT WAS GOING ON! Better that no ears at all, which would be impossible seeing as he was currently being overwhelmed by sound.

With ears, if you could call them that, now covered Evans frantically looked around from his curled position at the base of a tall stone building. That was a mistake for the world around him was even more disconcerting, filled with vivid colours and disorientating movement. Light hit his retinas with blinding force and the world was comprised of nothing but flitting shapes.

Evans gasped again, shutting his eyes to recover his equilibrium. More people were screaming and the only thing Evans could think of was getting as far away from the sound as possible.

Slowly, he inched up the wall, blindly feeling along it, stumbling as his legs refused to work normally. The difference caused him to topple over and he collided with the ground in a heavy thud. After falling back down a few more times Evan found that concentrating seemed to worsen the problem, for when left alone his legs appeared to know what they were doing, so he focused instead on the wall next to him. It felt odd under his paw-hand things almost like he was wearing gloves.

At least he was moving, he thought, distracting himself from the issue.

Evans almost leapt with joy when he turned off the noisy street and into a much quieter alleyway. With eyes still closed Evan's continued to grope blindly until he came to a damp door that was thankfully unlocked. He wasted no time in pushing it open and quickly moving inside, shutting it behind him. The silence that greeted him was a cool relief to his ears, causing Evans to release his held breath and sink to the ground. He let the stillness of the room envelop him, continuing to hold his ears, blocking out any noise that may have followed him from the street. Several seconds of sitting in the dank cold of the mysterious room passed before Evans pulled together the courage to open his eyes.

The colours and movement were not nearly the vomit inducing kaleidoscope of before but they were still disconcerting and nauseating, messy up his already precarious sense of balance. OK, there was a staircase to his left, Evan quickly confirmed, squeezing his eyes shut again. Slowly he rose and felt his way up the stares, oh goody he could walk up stairs at least, Evans thought slightly hysterically.

On reaching the next room Evans promptly inserted himself into the farthest corner, curling into a ball, eyes shut, hands coving his ears. This was all a dream or some crazy hallucination. In his head he was back in his apartment, lying in bed…safe. None of this was real.

Not real. Not real. Not real.

He did not know how long he sat like that, blocking out the world.

…..

Eventually, his brain gave a splutter then fired back up again.

His first thought: God it stunk in here. Had something died or what?

He had been so overtaken by light and sound that he had forgotten all about his other senses. Specifically, his sense of smell. And Oh boy could he smell. The smell of damp, rotting wood, magnified a thousand fold, combined with mold and some sort of animal piss, were all overwhelmingly strong. And all of it was mixed in with a bunch of other stuff he could not even begin to describe. It was all very overpowering, like the worlds worst perfume.

'Odor de Sink,' Trademark Evens Corporation, he mentally named the new discovery. Now to rake in the millions. Evans shook his head, giving himself a mental slap. He was done with the hysterics it was now time to open his eyes and assess the situation.

Don't be a wuss!

Slowly, he cracked an eyelid then did the same with the other, opening his eyes gradually and allowing them to adjust to the dimly lit room. Only, after several seconds, the room was not so dimly lit because everything seemed to snap into a sharp focus. The room was relatively small, littered with fine debris and lit by a small window in the corner. With no small amount of apprehension Evans scanned the space, almost jumping out of his skin when a bit of garbage was ruffled by a small breeze and his eyesight seemed to involuntarily hone in on the movement. He was then stuck with the bazar knowledge that the piece of trash was precisely two strides or one small jump away and if he so desired he could easily capture and detain the item. This process was repeated with the bit of waving cloth in the corner and the large beetle crawling up the opposite wall. Each moving entity immediately drew his attention and in the case of the beetle he could even give a ruff estimate about how fast it would move to avoid him when he attacked, based on its body and leg structure. Fuck…this was so weird…and slightly headache inducing. How the hell did his brain know this stuff?

The entire thing got a bit more complicated when he uncovered his ears and they began to pick up every small sound in the room. From the creak of the door hinges, to the rush of wind outside the window and the rustling of the god-dam beetle as it meandered its' way up the wall. Evans winced at the information overload as he quickly and involuntarily mapped out the room based on the amount of things moving within, visible and non-visible. He was pretty sure there was some sort of small animal crawling around in ceiling above him. And he did not even want to get started on the annoying fly that occasionally buzzed through the open door, demanding his full and undivided attention. When he really concentrated on his hearing he could even pick out the hum of voices and the trundle of, what he assumed to be some vehicle, off in the distance. It made for a very disorientating experience as the different sounds vied for his direct attention, causing him to snap his head back and forth.

Now sufficiently unnerved Evans turned his attention to the more pressing, and perhaps more disturbing, issue…What was he?

By the look and feel of his hands and face he was some sort of large animal. He cautiously lifted his hands to his face, moving them upwards, mapping his features. He came to his whiskers,-that was a scary thought- which were alarmingly sensitive, so pocking them a bad idea. His face was also oddly shaped with his nose and mouth protruding far more then they were supposed to. OK, Evans thought slowly, I'm some sort of large, bipedal animal- thing. Slowly, he stood, looking down at his feet or paws. Oh god why!? Unlike his hands, which were a mix between animal and human, his feet were definably that of an animal. No wonder he was having trouble walking. Evens eyed the appendages suspiciously, watching them shift and tense under his weight. He took a tentative step forward, swaying slightly, arms outstretched to steady himself. It was almost like walking on the balls of his feet. He found that concentrating on this idea lessened the feeling of unbalance, making moving not quite so overwhelming.

Once relatively stable Evans looked around for a reflective surface, zeroing in on the window in the corner. Time to face the music. Slowly he approached, glancing out into the alleyway below. Was that a rat, scurrying around behind those boxes? He eyesight once again prioritized, informing him about all movement occurring below. If it was alive and moved then it was important.

Shaking himself, he inched closer to the pane of glass, shifting around until he found an angle that revealed his reflection. Large, blue, slit-eyes gawked back at him. Holy Shit! Is this real? He froze, watching the creature's eyes widen. Evans stumbled back from the glass, heart pounding, hands shaking slightly. The weird design of his legs once again threw him off balance, sending him crashing to the ground and landing on his ass with a heavy thud. Cats, he concluded, were never meant to walk on two legs. And he was most certainly a cat…a giant, bipedal, human like, cat. To make sure it wasn't someone else's reflection Evans looked about the room again, confirming that it was just as abandoned and empty as before. Shit, shit, shit! How was this even remotely possible? The ground was hard, cold and smelt rotten but Evens refused to moved, opting to instead stare at his hands and slowly open and close them.

After checking that it was indeed himself he had seen, Evans dredged up the courage to move back to the window. A cold breeze wound its way through the empty room, disturbing dust particles, which danced in the cold light. Evans shivered despite not feeling the chill, staring into the bright blue eyes belonging to the feline face that was not his own. This could not be real…With one of his hands he felt along his cheek moving them through the coarse fur, pulling his features into a grimace, which revealed a row of sharp teeth.

However, something was not quite right…aside from the whole giant cat thing. It took Evans several seconds of staring dumbly at his reflection to pinpoint what exactly was bugging him.

He recognized the dark blue bandana, especially tied around the head of the slender cat-man who was staring out of the window at him. Then there was the black, long-sleeved shirt, which ended just below his elbows, complete with matching lightweight ceramic chest plate. He gawked at the equipment, which was all disturbingly familiar. And wasn't that funny, after turning into a giant cat, the thing that bothered him the most was the clothes he was wearing. Evans began inspecting himself more thoroughly, checking off a mental list as he went: metal arm guards, hand guards, fingerless gloves, and weird, ninja belt-thing. Weapon poaches…The Hell…he carefully pulled out a Kunai, staring at it in morbid fascination. Da fuck was he supposed to do with this.

He carefully put down the weapon. This was getting kind of scary. He considered himself more the jokester than a fighter so waking up with a bunch weapons stashed in various places was a bit unsettling.

Over all, the equipment was familiar…in fact…it all matched up perfectly with his Cat-Man character from Elder Tale. Evans paused, now that was an odd thought. He moved closer to the window, realizing, with no small amount of trepidation that he looked exactly like his Cat-Man character. Everything from the blue eyes, large ears and style of dress, right down to the mottled grey fur, which he had chosen to match his Assassin persona. Seventeen had been his ninja phase.

But there was no way he could be his Cat-Man class-Assassin character, one of the first characters he had made in Elder Tale, because that was just too unbelievable. He stared silently at his reflection, moving his left arm up and down to reconfirm that it was actually himself he was seeing, resisting the urg to sprout off an inane line like, 'are you looking at me?' This sounded like some lame plot from a contrived B-movie of dim-a-dozen anime. People did not just turn into giant, anthropomorphic, video game, cats…It just did not happen!

OK. Don't panic. If this is Elder Tale then I can just log out and every thing will go back to normal. Perhaps this is all a dream and I'll wake up. A disturbingly realistic dream but a dream none the less. All I need is to find some sort of menu and…

It turned out you only needed to think the word, 'menu,' to make a disconcerting, floating menu appear before ones eyes. Crap, it was all in Japanese.

Stay calm, Evans calmed himself, so what if his ability to read Japanese sucked more then his ability to speak it, he could still do this. The layout of the applications had not changed. After all, he had not spent six years playing Elder Tale for nothing.

He navigated to what he was ninety percent sure was the log off tab, taping the space with a figure, holding his breath in anticipation. A red, 'X,' appeared, accompanied by a mocking beep. Evans stared at it in confusion. He then went and tried tapping all the tabs, perhaps he had been wrong and the layout had changed. After trolling through his skills, items, equipment, character stats and an assortment of other information he finally gave up and reluctantly concluded that he had read the menu correctly. He could not log out. He was stuck in the world of Elder Tale, confirmed by the existence of the menu screen before him.

He was officially:

SwiftDeath0

Race: Cat-Man

Class: Assassin, Lev 90,

Under that was a health and magic bar, stating that he was at full strength.

Oh god, he cringed when he saw the name displayed above his stats. Not for the first time he regretted the dumb choice, a decision only a seventeen year old him would have thought cool, mistakenly believing it to be some form of wit. He remembered rationalizing something along the lines of, because he was an assassin he needed a sufficiently deadly name. Queue the creation of his first character, which, as he became engrossed in the game, he wished he could rename something more original. He had definitely not anticipated actually turning into his character, if he had know that he would have waited and logged on with his primarily account and played his favoured HUMAN Sorcerer, Aten11. Or, you know… NOT LOGGED ON AT ALL! Evans rubbed he forehead in irritation before quickly pulling his hand away and eyeing it distrustfully. The cat thing was going to take a lot of getting use to.

After that he reckoned he spent a good half hour blankly staring at the alleyway beneath the window, amusing himself by estimating the distance between himself and various objects. He found himself watching the large grey rat, which was scurrying from hiding spot to hiding spot, and was bit too compelling. Despite being on the second level his brain seemed certain that he could easily leap down from the window and land, without injury, on the cobble stones below. Why wouldn't he…this was Elder Tale after all. It was a bit unsettling to see his reflection's ears swivel and flick, seemingly with a mind of their own. When he concentrated he could make them stand forward and found that the action was akin to a sound filter that apparently concentrated all his hearing ability of whatever was in front of him. In doing so he was almost sure he could almost hear the rat, despite the pane of glass and distance separating them. It was then that he noted the odd design of the buildings, reminding him of old English terraces. If he moved closer to the window he could even glimpse the street beyond and the occasional moving shadow as someone walked in and out of view at the ally's entrance.

Fuck…he had become his character from Elder Tale…meaning he was in the world of Elder Tale. Finally, the notion began to sink his.

Elder Tale: A world of warriors, fighting and monsters.

Something which was so far outside his comfort zone it wasn't even on the god dam planet. Evans slowly backed away from the window. The situation had gone from bad to worse.

But maybe, he wasn't the only one, he was sure he had heard people yelling when he had first woken up. Hope fluttered in the pit of his stomach.

He quickly thought the menu back into existence and hastily navigated to open his 'friends' tab. Evans was immediately disappointed to find that his childhood friend, Shou, who he had initially played Elder Tale with and the reason for maintaining his secondary account, was not online. He felt an irrational anger swell within him. Shou had said he would be online for the release of the new expansion, the lying bastard had abandoned him. With an air of dejection he scrolled through the rest of his contacts. James, another good friend and whom he knew sometimes played on the Japanese server, was not there either.

A few other people he knew were online, but what was he supposed to do? Aside from completing a few quests together, he barley knew these people, having only had limited contact through message. His lack of skill when it came to writing and reading Japanese and over-reliance on his laptop's, hard-drive consuming, translator program usually made any encounters short and to the point. It had been fine when this was a game because his assassin character suited the silent persona. But that meant the people in his contacts were defiantly not the sort of friends you met up with in real life, heck, they were barely acquaintances. He looked mournfully at the woefully short list, wishing, once again, that he put more effort into fixing his laptop so he could have at least signed in with his main account. The discovery, that he was truly alone, left him feeling empty. Especially when, for a few moments, he had been so sure that he would be able to meet up with Shou and they would sort this mess out together. All optimism left him with a woosh. It was like being punched in the gut.

Evans turned away from the window, opening and closing his hands, at a loss. He considered perhaps venturing outside but the vivid memory of panic and sound caused him to freeze up in anxiety. This room, a small space in one of the many abandoned buildings that made up the world of Elder Tale, was familiar.

His eyes landed on the kunai he had placed on the ground earlier, which was sitting innocently in the corner where he had been cured not too long ago. Carefully, as if afraid the object would jump up the stab him, Evans moved to pick it up.

Since he had yet to build the courage to venture outside the next logical step would be to test out one of his abilities. It would be good to know how his new body handled the assortment of attacks listed in 'skills.' Would it be similar to the game? The small goal gave him a bit more confidence, distracting him from his worry. He brought up his menu panel, finding the process was getting easer and becoming less alarming every time did it.

Evans selected 'Rapid Shot,' which was a standard long rang attack and consisted of throwing a series of one to five kunai at an enemy. It was a pretty typical move with a relatively low damage rate but an almost instantaneous cast and cool down time, making it useful if utilized correctly. He stood in the middle of the dimly lit, dust-covered room, gazing stupidly down at the weapon in his hand-thing. Now what? The logical step would be to throw the dam thing. Slowly, he lifted his arm, centering his gaze on the beetle, which was still making distracting sounds from across the room. Feeling slightly ridiculous, Evans moved to throw the kunai.

Thunk! Snap! The kunai hammered into and through the wall at such a speed that Evans was sure that, had he not had enhanced eyesight, he would have missed it entirely. Overcoming the momentary shock, Evens moved forward.

He approached the hole into which the kunai had disappeared. Carefully, so not to unbalance himself, he bent down, catching a gimps of the light, signaling it had pierced the entire wall

Cautiously, he moved to the door, ears moving to reflect his nervousness, standing forward on his head. Save for a few small insects and bits of tin, which rattled occasionally, the hallway was deserted. As he walked he pocked his head into a few rooms, confirming that they were pretty much the same as the one he had started in.

Three rooms down he spotted the kunai embedded in a peeling wall. He moved to pull out the entrenched weapon. He had to admit…that had been pretty cool. Not only hand he thrown the weapon accurately but it had been strong enough to piece several walls. Despite the walls being pretty week due to decay that was still impressive. Was this the power of a level 90 assassin?

He put the kunai back in his pouch, pulling up his equipment screen to see what would happened. In the game, when he threw kunai they were gone for good and he would have to buy new ones. It was a bit of a hassle but they were relatively cheep. He watched with interest as icon indicating he had thirty-nine DarkBlade Kunai, he was pretty sure that was the translation, once again returned to forty. He looked at the large number then down at the small pouches attached to his thighs within easy reach. There was no way he had enough space in the two pouches, which didn't look like they could hold more that five knives each, for forty kunai. They were advanced equipment pouches capable of carrying twenty DarkBlade Kunai each which made sense…in the game…but in real life they appeared far to small. And that did not even take into consideration all the other, much higher-level weapons he apparently had stashed on his person. It was like every bag was its own little dimension or perhaps this was real live hammerspace in action. But, as exciting as it was, to have his own subspace compartments, the fact that most of them contained weapons he had never touched in real life was a bit off-putting. It was one thing seeing it on a screen from the safety of his apartment, it was another to actually be decked out in literal arsenal of nearly a hundred old school weapons of varying uses and strengths.

Evans shifted uneasily under the weight, feeling out of place, standing alone in that room. He winced as a chuck of decaying wood fell from the ceiling, causing, what he considered to be, an all too loud crash. His ears flattened slightly in alarm, driving home the lack of control he had over his body. The idea of exploring his capabilities was becoming less inviting. Suddenly, the feeling of the bags and equipment was illogically uncomfortable, causing Evans to fidget about.

Then he quickly began to strip off all his gear with a manic-like urgency. He unclipped the pouches from his thighs, which fell to the ground with heavy thuds. Proceeding to pull off his belt, practically ripping through the fancy knot that fastened it just above his tale bone. With it can the assortment of ridiculously small packs he knew to contain shuriken. Then came the thin satchel strapped to his lower back, the one he had obtained on a high level escort quest and contained all his high level kunai. Under this was a ninjato, specifically for close combat, which he tried to avoid since he had fashioned his character as more of a long rang specialist.

It was all familiar. He knew what it all was and what it all did and yet everything was strange and so other. None of this was him. This stuff…this body…it was not him.

He tugged his roll-up 'magic' travel pack that fitted below his shoulder blades and was defiantly too small, it was barely the size of a loaf of bread, to contain all his food and inventory items. Next he undid the straps of his light weight chest plate and metallic arm guards and any other armor he came across until he was left the long-sleeved top and pants that finished just below, what could be considered, knees. All the clothes were black and he would have pulled them off too had it not been for the fact that being naked would have made him even more uncomfortable. He was definitely not ready to see the rest of his body.

Evan's stood, panting, surrounded by various equipment pouches and items of armor, attempting to stop himself from falling into a further panic attack. Seconds ticked by and Evans rubbed his shoulders subconsciously, feeling a bit silly at his overreaction. It took a few seconds of controlled breathing to completely calm himself, after which he gathered up his things and promptly returned to the dusty room overlooking the ally. His freak out now over Evans fitted himself back into the corner, flicking through his various menus with disinterest. He pulled his legs to his chest so he was in more of a defensive ball.

He noted in his apathy that he had a twenty four hour clock available in 'location stats,' not that it mattered because it was impossible to tell how long he had been in this world as he did not know his arrival time. He was also in the city of Susukino, again, it made no difference to him which city he was in…he was still trapped.

Evans signed, gazing mournfully up at the ceiling, idly noting that that small creature from before was back and scratching around behind the decaying boards. The level 90 assassins was a powerful character. As it should be, considering how many hours he had poured into developing it. He did not feel like a level 90 assassin…he felt like Evens, the lazy collage student. Softly, he hit is head on the wall behind him. But most of all he felt confused, frustrated and lost.

Thud…Thud…Thud…the sound echoed in the silent room. Outside the window the murmur of people seemed to quieten. Thank God for small miracles, Evans sarcastically commented to himself.