Meanwhile...
Posted: Mon Apr 02, 2007 5:35 am
**This story is not about Lighteria, but rather the player behind the character... or what's become of him at this point**
**Please note. This may not have quite as many one-liners as one might hope with my writing. Jai's back-story was never made to be comedic but rather somewhat somber. If you're looking to laugh, try my older quests, this one's made for personal exploration. So fuck off :D ...No really, read it. I want the attention.**
Jai Heartyre. He was a student at the local high school up until a few months ago when he collapsed at the desk of his computer, stricken with a mysterious coma. In his home town, a few residents balked and gossiped, a few sympathy cards were given to the parents (all of which have been thrown away by now), and an angry speech from the mayor about how kids need to stay away from drugs was made... when the story first reached the headlines. All in all it was an interesting phenomenon for the community as they'd never had something like this happen before, but life, as it often does, goes on.
After all, Jai never was a very popular kid, mostly his own fault for being shy, so there weren't too many saddened faces. The kids at the school were rattled for a day, but mostly out of curiosity and self-preservation. I mean, it was a fellow high school student! It could happen to anyone! It didn't of course, the rumors of an Outbreak were laughable and nothing happened afterwards. Pretty soon the stories of 'that guy in a coma' died down completely and the lunch room went back to talking about the upcoming tests and who would win the football match. ...The only person really heavily effected by it may have been Mr. Polanski, the school's English teacher, who had always taken a liking to Jai's creative writing assignments. Jai was always striving to write something nice, so it turned into one of those little joys that made the long, gruesome road to tenure a little more bearable when you're surrounded by hormone-crazed adolescents bitching about how the last assignment, as they always so eloquently put it, 'sucked balls'. He'd often commented that Jai should keep pursuing the field, both in notes on his papers and talks after class... The good teacher really did his best to encourage him, considering the lack of such from the boy's parents... But now with Jai gone, the writing assignments have been rating on a scale of crap to bearable... at least in his eyes. 'Such a shame Jai was in that accident', he tended to think while reading through another paper where your and you're are used interchangeably... 'oh well... two more years...'
You would assume the most grief stricken people would be Jai's parents. After all, they lost their only son to a strange coma! During the underwhelming media blitz, they were often visited by reporters who wanted to hear every juicy, heart-breaking detail of the now grief-stricken parents. Best human-interest story in years for THIS town. Of course the interviews tended to all come out vaguely the same... saddened and woeful parents... mother coming to the brink of tears at the mention of her child's name, etc. As one reported noted: "The outpouring of grief from the parents is pretty much exactly what you would expect from the parents."
"A bit TOO much for my tastes." was later edited out by the head of the paper who didn't want their staff to appear insensitive. Outside the interview setting though, even the casual observer would note that life has indeed moved on in the house. The outpouring of sympathy had gotten the mayor to fund the hospital treatment as the perfect PR hook so the loss wasn't really much of a burden. Heck, knowing Jai wasn't in the next room was a real boon to what had been a deadening sex life. No awkward breakfasts the next morning... no nagging for the kid to wake up and get his butt to school... Jai's father, in rare moments, would remark to himself about how much... WORK it was, caring for a child. But hey! It wasn't anything THEY'D done, not even the doctors could figure out why he wouldn't wake up. Guilt-free and now with GOBS of spare time the two of them have been seen going out to dinner more often. Though you could sometimes catch the mother sitting in Jai's bed, thinking for a few hours, and straightening the sheets when she leaves. Losses may be hard, but not seeing his room a mess was sure... easy.
Perhaps the people who were TRULY the most effected were the Johansons, the token 'rich family' living in the biggest house in town up on Ceder Hill. Jai had been their part-time maid (man-servant sounded too gay to Richard Johanson, the husband and big-time investor/businessman) and despite his lack of good small talk, Jai really did a good job keeping the house clean. Richard knew he'd picked a winner when he noticed Jai's attention to details during the interview... he HAD been considering a raise until the whole coma thing made it a moot point. You'll often see him smoking his pipe out the window of his office, remarking to his dog 'trump' about how these new servants are crap and always whining about something. Sometimes he'll sigh, say he misses 'that shy kid', and lets out a big puff of smoke before wiping his chair cushion with a handkerchief and starting his next batch of paperwork.
The hospital nurse has long-since given up on monitoring his heart rate. Even the head-doctor remarked it was FAR too sporadic, FAR too often to tell what was going on. Jai is only to be checked on if his heart rate exceeds a certain level... around what you'd expect someone to have a panic attack. That may SOUND callous, but trust me, if you'd spent a full damned week watching his heart rate jump from rapid to calm and back to rapid for no discernable reason and no permanent change in his condition you'd put some lax standards up too. There was that ONE time he flat-lined... But that only lasted a second and he was back to normal in an instant anyway. Baffling case, but damned tiring after a while.
But, as I mentioned, life goes on. All this is in the past. Present day brings a far more interesting take on things...
As is often the case when the server screws up, Lighteria... no Jai finds himself adrift in an endless static sea. For a moment, he hears the distant laughter of an innocent child echo past his ears...
My body feels weightless... like it's neither here nor there... ...I can't move... I feel like a piece of driftwood.
(#m~ ba*& #o^!, m* (&$t0e #oy. @ *#n^ &) +#-r #*l a#&u@ The #*t-i@% World.
What's this? I don't understand... ...What's going on? ...My body feels heavier now... ...I... I feel a heartbeat...
Jai's hand twitches a moment as his eyes begin to shift out of focus. His vision no longer completely clouded by static. For an instant his heart can be felt nearly beating out of control, his chest beginning to burn. Panicked, he gasps and inhales at the same time, filling his lungs and sending what feel like shockwaves through his head. He gasps out loudly, tiny sweat beads dripping from his brow, his breathing shallow. His eyes begin to focus lightly on the static in front of him again. This time though it seems... detached... and his head feels pressure on his ears. There's a few seconds where his body is numb but he quickly feels the pressure of the floor beneath his right side. The dulling pain in his side forces a groan as he reaches his hands towards his head, grasping the headphones of a VR visor and gently removing it from his head... purely by instinct. He lays the visor to the side, if just to be tidy.
"Ugghh... I must have passed out..." He groans out in a strangely soprano voice.
There's a silent pause as he lifts his hand to his throat and rubs it, a little confused... must be hearing things. His eyes trace back and forth a moment, taking in the surroundings. After a second, he gasps and sits bolt upright, eyes wide.
"This.. Oh my god! I'm.. I'm out of the game!!" He says to himself, short breathed and body trembling from the weight of the situation. "But how?! And what's with my voice?!" He quickly gets to his feet and looks around the room. He trembles in confusion, not recognizing a thing... the bed, the television, it's all alien to him. He stumbles around for a few seconds until he finally spots a large mirror by a makeup table. His knees buckle slightly from fear as he walks over towards it, slowly leaning in to mirror to look at himself.
"You've... ...got to be kidding me."
He lifts his hand slowly to his new cheek, rubbing it gently to make sure he's not dreaming.
"I'm... her?"
*Switching to ‘her’ instead of ‘his’ now that it’s no surprise. …lol suspense*
Her eyes widen a moment, looking over what apparently is Raven's real-life human body. Surprisingly enough, she looks somewhat like her game character... Long, dark hair flowing down to the small of her back, shimmering red eyes and a slightly pale appearance. ...The outfit though, was WAY different. She pats the tee-shirt gently, it was light blue and really quite comfortable, as were the loose-fitting pants with the tight belt.
"Hey, she wears ankle-high socks too." She remarks pleasantly for a second before shaking her head quickly, trying to snap out of casual observations and more towards seriousness.
What am I thinking?! Now is not the time to be admiring comfortable footwear! Something got ROYALY screwed up back there and I need to figure out what happened.
She swallows hard like one does when they're about to throw a foul shot, or diffuse a bomb... somewhere where you hold your breath to try and stop time, as she turns back to the computer. She kneels down to pick up the chair, apparently having toppled over when she blacked out.
That's an interesting question. Did SHE black out? Or did I black out? I mean, which one was in the body when we hit dirt?
Deciding that a manliness contest of 'who blacked out first' was just a little silly to have when you're stuck in a girl's body, Jai mentally moves on. Setting the chair upright, she glances a few quick sweeps over the desk, like you would if you were in a spy movie and you had to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary before the bad guy broke in and strapped you to a laser pendulum or some random death trap they put spies in rather than just f**king SHOOTING them then and there. I mean come on, an entire military complex full of armed men and it's like the only person who DOESN'T immediately pull out a gun and waste the dude is the super villain! You'd think he'd be the first to do that, considering that it's HIS brilliantly laid plans the dude is here to stop, right? I mean come ON, how hard is it to club the guy over the head, shrug and go back to doing evil? ...
....I have to focus more.
Shaking her head, she sits down and checks the monitor... on the desktop now for some reason. ...Pretty standard for someone who’s obviously a hacker. ...Got The World icon, E-mail icon, trash bin, computer files, preferred news channel, random folders, some... weird .exe that looks like her hacking program, actual computer programming programs, random junk... "...I can work with this." She remarks, picking up the VR visor from the ground and setting it on the desk as she brings up The World...
Oh cool! She's got one of those VR-Visor stands that keeps it all tidy. I wanted one of those but it seemed like a waste of.. ..FOCUS!!!
Welcome to The World!
Name: Raven
Password:
...
.......
....#@&^!!!!
**Please note. This may not have quite as many one-liners as one might hope with my writing. Jai's back-story was never made to be comedic but rather somewhat somber. If you're looking to laugh, try my older quests, this one's made for personal exploration. So fuck off :D ...No really, read it. I want the attention.**
Jai Heartyre. He was a student at the local high school up until a few months ago when he collapsed at the desk of his computer, stricken with a mysterious coma. In his home town, a few residents balked and gossiped, a few sympathy cards were given to the parents (all of which have been thrown away by now), and an angry speech from the mayor about how kids need to stay away from drugs was made... when the story first reached the headlines. All in all it was an interesting phenomenon for the community as they'd never had something like this happen before, but life, as it often does, goes on.
After all, Jai never was a very popular kid, mostly his own fault for being shy, so there weren't too many saddened faces. The kids at the school were rattled for a day, but mostly out of curiosity and self-preservation. I mean, it was a fellow high school student! It could happen to anyone! It didn't of course, the rumors of an Outbreak were laughable and nothing happened afterwards. Pretty soon the stories of 'that guy in a coma' died down completely and the lunch room went back to talking about the upcoming tests and who would win the football match. ...The only person really heavily effected by it may have been Mr. Polanski, the school's English teacher, who had always taken a liking to Jai's creative writing assignments. Jai was always striving to write something nice, so it turned into one of those little joys that made the long, gruesome road to tenure a little more bearable when you're surrounded by hormone-crazed adolescents bitching about how the last assignment, as they always so eloquently put it, 'sucked balls'. He'd often commented that Jai should keep pursuing the field, both in notes on his papers and talks after class... The good teacher really did his best to encourage him, considering the lack of such from the boy's parents... But now with Jai gone, the writing assignments have been rating on a scale of crap to bearable... at least in his eyes. 'Such a shame Jai was in that accident', he tended to think while reading through another paper where your and you're are used interchangeably... 'oh well... two more years...'
You would assume the most grief stricken people would be Jai's parents. After all, they lost their only son to a strange coma! During the underwhelming media blitz, they were often visited by reporters who wanted to hear every juicy, heart-breaking detail of the now grief-stricken parents. Best human-interest story in years for THIS town. Of course the interviews tended to all come out vaguely the same... saddened and woeful parents... mother coming to the brink of tears at the mention of her child's name, etc. As one reported noted: "The outpouring of grief from the parents is pretty much exactly what you would expect from the parents."
"A bit TOO much for my tastes." was later edited out by the head of the paper who didn't want their staff to appear insensitive. Outside the interview setting though, even the casual observer would note that life has indeed moved on in the house. The outpouring of sympathy had gotten the mayor to fund the hospital treatment as the perfect PR hook so the loss wasn't really much of a burden. Heck, knowing Jai wasn't in the next room was a real boon to what had been a deadening sex life. No awkward breakfasts the next morning... no nagging for the kid to wake up and get his butt to school... Jai's father, in rare moments, would remark to himself about how much... WORK it was, caring for a child. But hey! It wasn't anything THEY'D done, not even the doctors could figure out why he wouldn't wake up. Guilt-free and now with GOBS of spare time the two of them have been seen going out to dinner more often. Though you could sometimes catch the mother sitting in Jai's bed, thinking for a few hours, and straightening the sheets when she leaves. Losses may be hard, but not seeing his room a mess was sure... easy.
Perhaps the people who were TRULY the most effected were the Johansons, the token 'rich family' living in the biggest house in town up on Ceder Hill. Jai had been their part-time maid (man-servant sounded too gay to Richard Johanson, the husband and big-time investor/businessman) and despite his lack of good small talk, Jai really did a good job keeping the house clean. Richard knew he'd picked a winner when he noticed Jai's attention to details during the interview... he HAD been considering a raise until the whole coma thing made it a moot point. You'll often see him smoking his pipe out the window of his office, remarking to his dog 'trump' about how these new servants are crap and always whining about something. Sometimes he'll sigh, say he misses 'that shy kid', and lets out a big puff of smoke before wiping his chair cushion with a handkerchief and starting his next batch of paperwork.
The hospital nurse has long-since given up on monitoring his heart rate. Even the head-doctor remarked it was FAR too sporadic, FAR too often to tell what was going on. Jai is only to be checked on if his heart rate exceeds a certain level... around what you'd expect someone to have a panic attack. That may SOUND callous, but trust me, if you'd spent a full damned week watching his heart rate jump from rapid to calm and back to rapid for no discernable reason and no permanent change in his condition you'd put some lax standards up too. There was that ONE time he flat-lined... But that only lasted a second and he was back to normal in an instant anyway. Baffling case, but damned tiring after a while.
But, as I mentioned, life goes on. All this is in the past. Present day brings a far more interesting take on things...
As is often the case when the server screws up, Lighteria... no Jai finds himself adrift in an endless static sea. For a moment, he hears the distant laughter of an innocent child echo past his ears...
My body feels weightless... like it's neither here nor there... ...I can't move... I feel like a piece of driftwood.
(#m~ ba*& #o^!, m* (&$t0e #oy. @ *#n^ &) +#-r #*l a#&u@ The #*t-i@% World.
What's this? I don't understand... ...What's going on? ...My body feels heavier now... ...I... I feel a heartbeat...
Jai's hand twitches a moment as his eyes begin to shift out of focus. His vision no longer completely clouded by static. For an instant his heart can be felt nearly beating out of control, his chest beginning to burn. Panicked, he gasps and inhales at the same time, filling his lungs and sending what feel like shockwaves through his head. He gasps out loudly, tiny sweat beads dripping from his brow, his breathing shallow. His eyes begin to focus lightly on the static in front of him again. This time though it seems... detached... and his head feels pressure on his ears. There's a few seconds where his body is numb but he quickly feels the pressure of the floor beneath his right side. The dulling pain in his side forces a groan as he reaches his hands towards his head, grasping the headphones of a VR visor and gently removing it from his head... purely by instinct. He lays the visor to the side, if just to be tidy.
"Ugghh... I must have passed out..." He groans out in a strangely soprano voice.
There's a silent pause as he lifts his hand to his throat and rubs it, a little confused... must be hearing things. His eyes trace back and forth a moment, taking in the surroundings. After a second, he gasps and sits bolt upright, eyes wide.
"This.. Oh my god! I'm.. I'm out of the game!!" He says to himself, short breathed and body trembling from the weight of the situation. "But how?! And what's with my voice?!" He quickly gets to his feet and looks around the room. He trembles in confusion, not recognizing a thing... the bed, the television, it's all alien to him. He stumbles around for a few seconds until he finally spots a large mirror by a makeup table. His knees buckle slightly from fear as he walks over towards it, slowly leaning in to mirror to look at himself.
"You've... ...got to be kidding me."
He lifts his hand slowly to his new cheek, rubbing it gently to make sure he's not dreaming.
"I'm... her?"
*Switching to ‘her’ instead of ‘his’ now that it’s no surprise. …lol suspense*
Her eyes widen a moment, looking over what apparently is Raven's real-life human body. Surprisingly enough, she looks somewhat like her game character... Long, dark hair flowing down to the small of her back, shimmering red eyes and a slightly pale appearance. ...The outfit though, was WAY different. She pats the tee-shirt gently, it was light blue and really quite comfortable, as were the loose-fitting pants with the tight belt.
"Hey, she wears ankle-high socks too." She remarks pleasantly for a second before shaking her head quickly, trying to snap out of casual observations and more towards seriousness.
What am I thinking?! Now is not the time to be admiring comfortable footwear! Something got ROYALY screwed up back there and I need to figure out what happened.
She swallows hard like one does when they're about to throw a foul shot, or diffuse a bomb... somewhere where you hold your breath to try and stop time, as she turns back to the computer. She kneels down to pick up the chair, apparently having toppled over when she blacked out.
That's an interesting question. Did SHE black out? Or did I black out? I mean, which one was in the body when we hit dirt?
Deciding that a manliness contest of 'who blacked out first' was just a little silly to have when you're stuck in a girl's body, Jai mentally moves on. Setting the chair upright, she glances a few quick sweeps over the desk, like you would if you were in a spy movie and you had to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary before the bad guy broke in and strapped you to a laser pendulum or some random death trap they put spies in rather than just f**king SHOOTING them then and there. I mean come on, an entire military complex full of armed men and it's like the only person who DOESN'T immediately pull out a gun and waste the dude is the super villain! You'd think he'd be the first to do that, considering that it's HIS brilliantly laid plans the dude is here to stop, right? I mean come ON, how hard is it to club the guy over the head, shrug and go back to doing evil? ...
....I have to focus more.
Shaking her head, she sits down and checks the monitor... on the desktop now for some reason. ...Pretty standard for someone who’s obviously a hacker. ...Got The World icon, E-mail icon, trash bin, computer files, preferred news channel, random folders, some... weird .exe that looks like her hacking program, actual computer programming programs, random junk... "...I can work with this." She remarks, picking up the VR visor from the ground and setting it on the desk as she brings up The World...
Oh cool! She's got one of those VR-Visor stands that keeps it all tidy. I wanted one of those but it seemed like a waste of.. ..FOCUS!!!
Welcome to The World!
Name: Raven
Password:
...
.......
....#@&^!!!!