Chapter 1: AUTO

Let me tell you a few things about myself.

Positives: I am a generally happy, kind and approachable person with plenty of politeness, I am able to work effectively in groups and with others, I am told to be very creative and imaginative, I have gotten high scores in almost all of my exams and I'm generally just a goody-goody two shoes.

Negatives: I'm a pervert, I'm also a compulsive liar, I'm generally lazy and unmotivated, I have a tendency to act weird for no apparent reason, I have a lot of suppressed rage, I am generally disinterested with anything that doesn't appeal to me, I have a 'get free stuff' attitude that will lead me to turn up to your birthday party and eat half of the provided lunch before taking the rest home in a bag AND...I don't like Naruto. Just...doesn't appeal to me really.

And that's all the background you're gonna get, and I'm ever gonna allow. How's THAT for brilliant exposition?

Hi. My name is Evan Cole. I guess I'm the protagonist/narrator of this story of mine...'cause y'know...I'm the one writing it. I'm a guy, I'm 18, pale skin (from obvious lack of sunlight) blue eyes and neatly combed dark brown hair. That's all you need to know.

Listen, I'm not asking you to believe what I'm about to tell you, but it's all true...where I come from at least. Apparently this is being sent across dimensions as a testiment to the scientific advancements and achievements our world has created. So, uh...you guys reading this...do you have two heads or something like that? Our world just has humans. You guys should be humans as well...right? Or are you all hippos or something like that? And now I just sound weird, don't I?

Okay, I just got an email back, no matter what, all you readers should be normal, so I'm gonna cut the crap now, because I'm gonna tell you all my story, about the day that changed my life, and how that led me on an insane path that made me who I am right now. Deep stuff, I know.

So then, I'm gonna be changing this to story mode in 3...2...1...action!

It happened on the first day of the summer holidays, that miraculous moment when you finally reach the glorious expanse of weeks that consisted of nothing but freedom/part time jobs.

I myself headed straight home, waving goodbye and good luck to my friends. I don't think I will tell you the details of where I live, because that would be weird. I will say though, that I tossed my bag aside, hung my coat up and flopped onto my bed with a great big sigh of relief as I felt all the expectations and stress melt away in the comforting feeling of laziness.

Deciding to treat myself, and also just feeling like it because, again, summer holiday, I flipped on the TV, only to find that my parents had left it on the news channel. I went to change it, but the subject matter instantly held my attention and prevented me from clicking one button.

"In other news, the online program AUTO has continued to expand to various new employees." The newswoman said as the logo appeared beside her. It was basically the word 'AUTO' in streamlined blue with three diagonal rings around the word, with a faint green background glow. "Still no information has been leaked on the surprisingly large and popular groups work or research, and there has apparently been no found link between the candidates the program has offered its jobs too. When AUTO workers were questioned on the subject, the response was always that they got invited to join through a confidential email which deleted itself soon after, and any traces have been unable to be discerned by even the top computer technicians."

I nodded to myself at the information, which was really just on repeat nowadays. AUTO was a big name in today's society, but the thing was, nobody knew just what it did! But it seemed to be working, as everybody who had been hired seemed to gain a good paycheck, all digitally registered into bank accounts no less! People had been trying to trace their sources for ages, but with no luck, and the group as a whole were really a big mystery, it was even considered at one point that they were a terrorist group!

"Despite this, all top executive businesses dealing with technological advancements in their services support AUTO, and back up its work, preventing any case courts against the online group." Yeah, THAT was the kicker. Literally all the big technological companies in the world were in business with AUTO, and were advancing extremely rapidly thanks to it! I figured at the time that they hired young prodigy's in order to work for these groups, and then they pay them in return.

Having heard all this before, I switched off the screen and retired to my room, dumping myself in front of my laptop and flipping it up before swiftly logging in, quickly opening up Google over my Monster Musume background, got in trouble for that a while ago.

Before you start jumping to any conclusions, no, I don't watch hardcore hentai, none of that tentacle stuff, just some ecchi and school romances. D-Frag, anybody? And no, I'm not a weeaboo, OTAKU, thank you, there's a difference. And yes, I watch a variety thank you very much. Gintama, Keroro Gunso, K-ON, Deadman Wonderland, Tokyo Mew-Mew.

...You didn't read that last one.

Anyway, I was just checking my emails, boring, before watching the latest episodes on Crunchyroll (Will they give me money if I advertise this to another dimension?...No? Crud.), things were a bit slow on the big anime updates, you know the ones I mean, but hey, Dimension W seemed to be doing well, and some smaller anime were picking up the pace.

Okay, okay, I'm rambling. It was about an hour after I finished watching that I received an email notification. Living in the 21st century I clicked on it to see what it was, only to fined the AUTO logo covering my entire screen. Naturally, I thought it was just another pointless news update, so I scrolled down to read, I couldn't be further from the truth.

Dear Mr. Cole

We at AUTO are very pleased with your work ethic and schedule, and we would like to offer you an unconditional role in AUTO. If you accept, further details will be issued to you, along with all descriptions and rules, along with rate of payment and training. If you are interested, please select the 'I Accept' button, or otherwise, the 'I Decline' button. We look forward to your answer.

Note: This email is confidential and will be deleted after use. Please do not disclose this information to anybody.

So, that was that. For a moment I just stared at the screen in dumb thoughtless shock. AUTO, one of the biggest, most mysterious, most controversial companies ever, just sent me an email offering an unconditional place. Really? Me? I thought for a moment there must've been some mistake, a different Mr. Cole, anything. There seriously wasn't anything discernable about me.

I looked at the monitor for what felt like ages, what exactly was I supposed to do? This was a once in a lifetime opportunity here! Hell, this was probably the first time ever that term applied to myself!

Thinking to myself 'Just do it!' I clicked on accept. In hindsight, I probably should have debated the positives and negatives with myself a bit more, but that might have stopped what happened next, which was another email.

Thank you for accepting. Please wait for a moment.

So I folded my arms and stared at the screen for something to happen, leaning in closer and closer FLASH! A sudden ray of light shocked my vision, and I clutched my eyelids as I was temporarily blinded. Then I felt my chair seemingly fall out from underneath me, and I fell shortly before landing on my back and crying out from the sudden impact.

In my confusion, I couldn't do anything but lay on the floor and squeeze my eyes tighter to block out the light, using my hand to try and find any leverage, only for it to touch the cold metal surface of the floor. As a side note, my floor is not metal.

Beginning to panic, I forced myself to my feet and blinked my eyes furiously to try and get them to work, until my vision finally started to blur into a sort of sense. I was in a room, not my room, not even a room, a cylinder. I was inside a cylinder, mostly white, but it had little green lights flickering around its curved walls. Goddamnit, everything hurt...look up, there's a little black screen with a camera lense inside it above me. I'm being watched, brilliant. I start to think that maybe I'd been kidnapped by a secret organisation...wait...what if AUTO were secretly slave-traders!? Okay, no, that's stupid, but that didn't excuse the fact that I was most likely in trouble.

Look down now, and what the hell was I wearing!? These certainly weren't my normal clothes! I was wearing some kind of black suit, it wasn't skin-tight, but it covered my whole body, including my arms and my palms, but had little holes in the ends so my fingers could poke out, whilst it also stretched down to my legs, forming flat-soled rounded shoes. Actually, I wore an outfit over this suit, consisting of a black zipped-up jacket with a hood and baggy arms, along with some black trousers, both seemed to be made out of a...rubbery material, whilst the suit was thin. Unzipping the jecket, I discovered a little circle-shaped silver index in the chest of the suit, with white lines running from it, forming streaking patterns across the chest.

Yeah, waking up in a cylinder wearing all black is not a good sign.

"Evan Cole?" I jumped at the voice and looked around for the source, it sounded robotic, but in the sense that someone was speaking into a voice modulator. "Evan Cole?" I looked up to see the camera adjusting itself. "Evan Cole, can you hear me? Can you hear me, Evan Cole?"

"...Yes." I replied, not knowing what else to do.

"Good. Please do not be alarmed, we do not aim to harm you." Well, THAT'S very reassuring Mr. Robot Voice. "Please wait a moment."

Guess that was that. I plodded around the cylinder, pulled on the components of this outfit which had been forced upon me and leaned against the wall with folded arms, tapping my foot against the floor.

Until finally, a door opened up in front of me, leading to an electric blue square room, with a jet black table, two chairs, and a door on the other end. "Please take a seat." The voice said.

Cautiously, I walked into the room and lowered myself into one of the chairs, looking around as I did. The blue walls seemed to have white lines darting across them every so often, and there was really nothing else discernible about it, not even any evidence of one of those one-way screens.

I heard the door opened, and I looked forward to see another human being walk in. He wore the same suit as I did, though his jacket was more stretched out, had pockets on the side, and was white to match his trousers, like a lab coat. He had pale skin, blonde hair that spiked up erratically whilst sweeping backwards, and sharp green eyes framed by black rectangular glasses.

"Greetings Mr. Evan Cole." He said as he sat down in the opposite chair, offering a friendly smile along with his hand. "How do you do? I'm George Law, Manager Number 3 of AUTO."

"Nice to meet you..." I practically whispered, shaking his hand rather pathetically.

"I understand that you probably have a lot of questions..." He said.

"A few, yeah..." I nodded.

"But let me first tell you that this is an incredibly unique and profitable offer, in more ways then one." George reassured me. "Okay, now questions."

"Everything." I stated plainly, still in some shock, waving my arms to gesture to everything. "Just...wh-where am I?"

"This is AUTO's place of work. You were brought here by incredibly advanced pixelation transportation technology." George told me.

"Alright...what am I wearing?"

"Standard procedure work clothes whilst around the main base, everybody wears it, but it can be customised to suit your needs. As for how you got it, it was swapped in with your other clothes during transfer, and please do not worry, your original garments are perfectly fine."

"...That's good." I said, finally managing to gain some composure. "So...is this why AUTO is so secretive?"

"Ah, now I have an excuse to talk about our work." George smiled giddily. "Er, these will answer most of your questions, so, do you mind?"

"Not at all." I figured.

"Excellent! Let me just say Evan that you will have to be a bit open-minded about this."

"I think I have plenty of evidence so far." I said.

"Then tell me, have you ever heard of cyberspace?"

"Yeah, the technology of alternate realities and existences with computers, right?"

"Good man. Because that ties strongly into us as a company." He leaned back in his chair and spread his arms out. "Our base, as it were, and all of our work, is located within cyberspace, a pocket of living, breathing, advanced cybertech. The travelling lights you can see around us are actually electrical currents travelling between computers." I simply had to look anywhere other then at him for that to be true.

"Soooo...you've mastered all of this advanced technology, is that why your backed by all the major companies?" I asked.

"Indeed! Those in our management, business, and economy sections, offer up the most advanced technological defences against viruses, as well as the best running systems, all for use by the worlds banks and top companies. As a result, we are quite profitable." He then leaned on the table with a knowing grin. "But you see, Evan, that is only a small part of what we do."

'Seriously!?' I thought. 'These guys make millions of pounds, dollars, yen, whatever, and that's only from a fraction of what they do!?'

"H-Hold on!" I stopped him. "I think you've got the wrong guy! I don't know anything about technology on this level! I can't help you with stuff like this!"

"But, Evan, we are not offering you a place like that." George said. "We're offering you a place in our main line of work."

"Main line?" I echoed.

He looked at me with clasped hands. "Tell me, Evan, are you an otaku?"

...What?

After spouting all of this incredible stuff, he straight up asks me how much of an anime fanatic I am!? What the hell!?

"It's not a trick question." George helped.

"W-Well, I..." I glanced around nervously, I'd never actually talked about this stuff. "I own a few manga's, have some merchandise, watch a few episodes..."

"More then a few." George whipped out a white tablet and looked at it. "2 hours on Crunchyroll a day, 5 on weekends, multiple purchases of goods, rows of manga's and a very fetching laptop background."

My face burned hotter then the sun at the reveal of what I thought was personal information. "Wh-What does any of that have to do with why you emailed me!?"

"It means everything." George said, putting away the tablet. "You see, we deal with anime much more deeply then you think. In fact, anime is our main line of work."

"Anime is? Really?" This just sounded weird. AUTO, the big mysterious company, had a main line of work involving anime?

"Indeed." George nodded. "AUTO is actually an acronym. It stands for Anime Universe Truthkeeping Organisation."

I stared at him in slack-jawed bafflement. "What...does that mean?"

"It means..." He stood up out of his chair. "That AUTO deals with the threat posed to anime and our existence outside of it, by accessing the cyberspacial worlds created by them and eliminating all known threats."

"...Huh!?" I cried in confusion.

"Perhaps I should explain in more detail." He walked over to the door and grabbed the handle. "Let's have a little walk and talk to explain things further."

I just sat there for a few minutes, not really knowing what to do. For some reason, probably out of curiosity, I stood up, and followed him out of the room, as he closed the door shut behind us.

NOTE: Remake!

Okay, I'm gonna be honest here. This is an idea I've had since I was, like, 10. And for some reason I thought of it again and decided 'Eh, why not? Some people might like the idea' and wrote this.

Basically the premise is that the organisation, AUTO as I have named it, recruit otaku's to send into anime worlds created through their cybernetic fingerprints as they were, and eliminate the threat of mysterious enemies known as 'Viruses' which seek to destroy the anime world.

You can tell this idea was thought up by a 10 year old.

But I myself think this concept is really really cool. And hey! If you guys like it too, then by all means make your own AUTO-like stories! I think mainly this story is to inspire, and to see what you guys think of it!

And yes! I've made this a SYOC! I actually want to see how you guys reading would create a character to suit this concept, and, who knows, if enough people seem interested and I get enough OC's, I might even continue this story!

So, without further ado, here's the OC Form!

Name: First and last, please

Gender:

Age:

Appearance (Original): This is how they look whilst not working for AUTO, that means normal hair, eye colour, skin colour, everything like that.

Appearance (AUTO): This is how they look whilst working for AUTO. Here you can go wild since its free customization. You can change your characters hair colour/style, eye colour, skin colour, body proportions, to whatever they like, within reason of course.

Outfit: Every AUTO worker wears the standard black suit, but the jacket and trousers can be customised however you want!

P-Colour: This is your characters main colour, which becomes the main colour of their weapons and attacks.

Weapon: This is what your character uses to fight Viruses. They all originate as AUTO-Packs which fit into the indentation on the front of their suits. They can morph into whatever you can think of, but with limits. The weapons start off weak and only gain stronger through experience, like leveling up, and they can only have three basic forms. It can either be offensive or defensive based, but it has to be unique! I don't want simple swords and shields, think about how you can turn a fan into a fighting machine!...Or something!

Personality: To make a truly great OC, this section must have AT LEAST five sentences. What are their fears? What do they love/hate? How do they react in certain situations?

Anime: Now THIS is the good section, which is divided into three parts. NOTE: Your choices don't have to be action/adventure, they can be slice of life, romance, or anything similar. Lucky Star, anyone?

Favourite Anime: This part consists of the main anime your character watches, the rule here is that the anime in question must have over 30 episodes to its name, and you can only have 3.

1.

2.

3.

Watched Anime: This is anime that your character still thoroughly enjoys. There are no limitations to the anime listed here, being of any genre or length, only that you can only list 5.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Guilty Pleasure Anime: You know exactly what this section means. The limitation is 3.

1.

2.

3.

Romance: Do you want your character to fall in love? And this applies to either another AUTO worker or a seperate character in an anime. NO MAIN ANIME CHARACTER ROMANCES!

Other: Anything I've missed?

As an example, I've listed some features of Evan below:

Name: Evan Cole

Gender: Male

Age: 18

P-Colour: Electric Green

Weapon: Secret

In any case, thank you all so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy this idea!

Also, NO BOKU NO PICO!