The sound of a chair creaking echoed in the plain dorm room, the clicking of a mouse the only thing accompanying it. There was silence for several minutes and hands brushed across a headset with the words "Fragment" labeled across the front in large black letters.

"...Well, I wonder if anything new happened while I was gone...?"

The headset was lifted up and placed across the boy's head, the visor falling down and clicking into place. His hand rested again on the mouse and he double clicked upon the icon upon his desktop labeled, much like his headset, "Fragment".

The screen flashed into whiteness as the game began to load, his visor reacting much the same way, and the main theme song began to play through the headphones mounted into the headset. The opening screen flashed up and the boy tapped away at the keyboard:

Username: Rei
Password: ********

The screen switched again, this time into his private messages. He scrolled down past several administrator annoucements and advertisements from several months ago.

"Hrm... I have to clear this box someday..."

He shrugged and clicked upon the button: Enter Frag

[CENTER]Welcome to Fragment,
Rei
Now Entering... Village of Requiem[/CENTER]

The background music of the village flooded into Rei's ears as he warped through the Chaos Gate, his metal plated boots making the faintly familiar chunk upon the stone titles on the floor as he landed. The Heavy Blade opened his eyes to the digital world all around him, and he blinked, a slight smile spreading across his face. "Whoa... It has been a while since I was on... Or maybe... I just don't remember how long I've been on..." He let out a light chuckle and paused. "...Was it the D-Pad I use or the control stick...?"

Rei shifted his weight upon his other leg as he raised his massive blade, propping it against his back. The blade itself was able to reach up to his shoulders, the handle extending several inches past the hilt, allowing more than two pairs of hands to grasp the handle. The groove in the center of the blade, the fuller, existed as a huge gap running through the blade and on either side of the gap were etched symbols that existed only as decoration. It was a high leveled blade, but not rare, it was never in Rei's nature to seek out rare weapons.

Rei only took another moment before he broke into a brisk walk down the stone titled pathway, his eyes briefly surveying the other characters that walked past him. All of them were unfamiliar to him, all new characters that were created while he was away. He had forgotten how often multi-player games changed. The Administrators constantly put up quests to keep their players busy and advertised for more players to join Fragment, while those who where bored to tears left the game for good. For all he knew, he may have been one of the only players who had played this game for several years, but that maybe was a bit too far fetched.

Rei's step came to a halt as he spotted another character standing before the center fountain of the city. It was female character, with a skin he had never seen before. She had no weapon, and was dressed in strange attire that made her appear like a dancer of some sort. A thief class maybe? Since when did the admin create new character classes? It wasn't until he came closer that he realized that the child was not an actual character, but an NPC. Rei let out a light laugh, rubbing the back of his head. "Hello, what're you here for..."

The female NPC stared at him with the computer generated smile and spoke with an almost robotic voice. "Welcome to Fragment, new comer. My name is Kioku, and I will help you come to understand how the game works. Please ask me whatever you want to know." As soon as she spoke those words, a blue screen appeared between Rei and the NPC, listing several questions.

Rei shook his head, attempting to close the window. "No, I don't need to know anything, I'm not a newbie..." He looked down at the screen. It didn't close, even as he continued to tap the X to close the screen. "..Eh? Am I lagging?" He looked up at Kioku and the child continued to stand there, her false smile plastered across her face.

The child stood still for several seconds, then suddenly twitched, her head jerking to the side and jerking back to its place, her smile not faltering even the slightest bit. Her character skin flickered, revealing for a split second the polygons that constructed her body. Just as suddenly as it happened, the child returned back to her respective place as if nothing happened.

Rei stared at her with wide eyes, slightly taken aback. He glanced around, wondering if anyone else saw what he saw, but the other players continued to walk past. There was the sound of static and the screen before Rei flickered and disappeared altogether. He looked up at Kioku again. "...Huh? Did something malfunction...?"

Indeed, something did look different than before. The smile still sat upon Kioku's face, except it held a more humanly essence, no longer did it appear robotic. The child's violet eyes looked unfocused, staring indirectly at Rei's own eyes, a slightly darker shade of violet than the girls. The NPC suddenly blinked, her hands, and eyes turning down to observe the dancer garments she was dressed in. Then, the smile dropped off of her face, replaced with horror. "Oh my gods! I'm a girl?!"

Rei's eyes widened into curiosity as Kioku patted herself down, her small hands gripping every article of clothing like a child would to something unfamiliar. So the Admin stuck an AI in here eh? She bent over and Rei could almost see a shadow of dread loom over her head, her ability to express emotions only added to Rei's curiosity. He stepped forward, towering over her hunched form. "You're pretty well made for an AI... Are you supposed to be another event or something?"