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"Boooored."

The only son of the Tsunemori household, Ren, laid spread open on the floor of his room. The pose he was in looked like he was trying to make a snow angel out of all the scattered tech, books and clothes scattered messily around his room. Ren wasn't a particularly great role model when it came to keeping your life organized, but he did well enough in tests to have his parents get him a new game that launched a few minutes from the point he was at: Digital Monsters. It made use of brand new VR technology, a little band you'd snap around your wrist, to send your conscious into a whole new, digital world. There, people would start a new life as one of many duelists playing Duel Monsters, another game Ren was fond of.

Ren rolled over on his side, looking at the deck of cards he'd been holding in his left hand. "No, bad deck. I can't take you with me. It's against the rules," he said to the inanimate object. It's true; you couldn't take your real deck into Digital Monsters. Everyone would need to start from scratch, working together or against each-other, in order to build up a complete collection. The game hoped to attract newcomers this way, to have everybody on the same playing field. Ren picked his phone up off the floor and looked at it to count down the last precious seconds before the servers went live.

"30... 29..." he muttered and muttered. Right before the countdown ended, Ren opened up his most recent contact. He typed out "See you there." and sent it. In the next moment, he heard a little beep from the console on his wrist. Ren rolled onto his back again, held it up in front of him and said:

"Connect: Digital Monsters!"

In the blink of an eye, Ren's vision went dark. In the next blink, rays of light entered his sight as he felt himself floating down from the sky. Floating text surrounded Ren, as if he was in some kind of glitched environment. As he gently felt himself lowered onto some kind of solid-but-not-visible ground, a solid black ball of... something appeared in front of him.

Running protocol: Avatar.
Welcome, Tsunemori Ren.

The black ball changed its shape into a copy of Ren, mirroring his real-life appearance.

Please create a custom Avatar different from the one before you.

Sliders and buttons appeared all around him, parameters to tweak and clothes to pick out. Ren hadn't bothered to create an account ahead of schedule, so he was busy creating his character for longer than it had any reasonable right to take him. After going through more confirmation windows than one man knows what to do with, the Avatar protocol finished.

Running protocol: Eraser.
Please enter a custom name different from the one before you.

The name in question was, as one might expect, Ren's full name. He erased it and entered something new that he thought would match the avatar he'd created: Blazing.

Eraser protocol complete.
Running protocol: Root.
Welcome to Digital Monsters, Blazing.

A flash of light blinded Ren after the robotic voice welcomed him into the world, and the next thing he knew, Ren was sat in a horse-pulled carriage alongside several other people. Once everyone inside it had opened their eyes, the driver at the front looked back to start an automated speech introducing everyone to the world. The players on the cart all had different looks; some had gone for a beastman-type appearance, others had wings on their characters. The opening speech all placed them as travelers going to the city of Radix, the root of all journeys. In order to enter Radix, all of them had brought their own decks and duel disks, that registered them as citizens. He pointed to the roaming monsters off the road, saying it was dangerous to explore these lands, which is why all citizens needed their cards to protect themselves.

'Blazing' stepped off the cart as soon as he could and stretched himself as the gate closed behind him- presumably permanently- leaving the rest of the game world to be explored. He looked around, seeing some people immediately dash off to explore while others stayed in this spawning area to talk to each-other. Everyone mostly seemed to be ignoring him, though.

"...Come to think of it, I didn't ask her what her name was going to be." Ren suddenly said to himself. He looked to his left, then to his right. Then he took a deep breath. "Chiiiihaaaaruuuuuu! Wheeeeere aaaaare youuuuuu?" he said with a raised, though not shouting voice. When his first attempt failed to find him his friend, he started going around asking each and every single female player getting off the starting cart. He'd ask "Are you Chiharu?" and when the inevitable answer was "no", proceeded to completely ignore the person and move onto the next.

'Blazing' was well on his way of making himself out to be the resident weirdo of the game.

Having just finished a run, a shower, a healthy smoothie, and finally making sure to stretch out really well on her yoga mat, Chiharu had received a final text from Ren. "Guess it is finally time to do this." she said to herself. She looked around her room one final time before taking the plunge. "Bed made, check. Floor clear other than myself and the mat, check. School work done, check. Yep, mom can't complain about me playing games!" She looked over to her desk once more and looked at a picture of her and her sister after the swim competition. They were both wearing the medals they'd won smiling back at their mom who took the picture.

She laid out on her yoga mat stretching one final time before putting the device she'd got the very same day on her wrist. She was nervous but excited to try this out after all this time of not bothering with these types of things. It would be a new experience and a way to spend more time with her friend.

"Connect: Digital Monsters."

Chiharu felt a bit disoriented at being shifted nearly instantaneously. The next thing she knew she was floating in the sky with a black ball floating in front of her. She wasn't familiar with how this was supposed to work, but knew that games did some weird things from what she heard at school. Then words started popping up.

Running protocol: Avatar.
Welcome, Nakano Chiharu.

The black ball turned into her and the game wanted her to change her appearance. "Hm. I didn't think there would be so many options." Chiharu blinked a couple times looking at all the various options. She spent a bit of time trying out different ideas and then kept hitting the reset option. "I need to stop over thinking this. Okay, keep the blue hair, match the eyes. Choose something sporty still. Morph the face a bit mcolourore to still be cute, but not recognizable. Ummm. I guess that will do, yeah!" She finalized her appearance easily spending a good ten minutes or more after starting the process.

Running protocol: Eraser.
Please enter a custom name different from the one before you.

"Oh. I really didn't think this through...Sparkle? No. Crystal? No." This went on for several more minutes before finally she figured out a name. "Yeah! Luna will work!" With that the game finally moved on.

Eraser protocol complete.
Running protocol: Root.
Welcome to Digital Monsters, Luna.

Then with that finally over with twenty-five minutes after starting up the game Chiharu was brought into the starting carriage along with more beginning players. Granted she was too busy looking at her hands, shoes, playing with her hair, and feeling the material of her new clothing to fully pay attention to the guide. She was fascinated with the level of detail and textures. The only thing that she really caught out of the whole thing was that she was headed ot a place called Radix.

When she got to the town finally she saw a guy approaching every girl that was arriving at the city. At first she thought he was just some weirdo until she got close enough to realize that the person kept asking if the girls were Chiharu which caused her to giggle for a moment before going over to him. "I'm over here Ren!" she waved and called out as she approached.

Once she had got to him she paused looked around a bit and then smiled looking at him. "Okay so far not too bad. The creation step was a bit more than I expected so it took me a little longer to make my character, and I hadn't really thought of a name either, but I made it! Also I have to admit it looks a lot more real than I expected it too! So um...Yeah, I kinda missed the intro part while looking around. What's the plan? How does all this work?" She was smiling actually excited to learn more about the game.

"I'm over here Ren!"

Rubbing the cheek he just got slapped on, Ren heard his real name being called. He turned his head in the direction of the voice, blinked a few times and said aloud: "Mmm? How do you know my name?"

After a few seconds of silence, the gears in Ren's head started to turn. "...Chiharu! Why didn't you call me sooner?" Ren said to her, blissfully unaware that he, too, forgot to settle on a name to give her before starting the game. Chiharu explained how she took a while on the character creation process. "Oh, right, I guess I should call you Luna then huh... maybe I should've names myself Solar or something..." he mused to himself, slowly drifting back into the random and inane fantasies ever-present in his head. Before Ren completely lost himself in the soup of thought, though, Chiharu made sure to remind him that she had no idea what to do.

"Right, well, first thing would probably be to start a duel and..." Ren said to her, pulling up his arm to press buttons on his duel disk which... wasn't actually on his arm. "Eh?" he voiced, looking all over his body. "Duel diiiisk? Duel diiiiiisk?" he tried calling out, but nothing seemed to appear or be found. One of the people in the area- ostensibly one of the staff, judging from the large GM next to their name- came over to Ren to explain the problem.

"Our apologies, but in order to keep the starting zone from being too crowded, we have temporarily disabled dueling in the spawning areas. You will find your duel disk..." the staff member explained and droned on. Ren stopped listening about halfway through.

"Oh I see," he cut the staff member off and took Chiharu's hand. "Let's go look somewhere else, Chi- Luna. Luna-chi."

The events unfolding after were a display of Ren's magical ability to get lost even with an in-game map feature telling him which way is where. He and Chiharu spent a good fifteen minutes going around in circles, ending up seeing the same alley about ten different times, before finally managing to arrive at the town square. In there, it seems, dueling had been enabled. Several pairs of duelists were already going at it. Ren tried again futilely to magick his duel disk into existence, but he was repeatedly met with a "Duel cap limit for area reached. Please wait for duels in progress to end." message.

"Eeeeh? Why are so many people dueling in this area?" Ren asked, completely oblivious to the reality of an MMO-style game's first hub area often being its most crowded. He looked around the town square again and noticed something quite spectacular you'd have to have tried to miss- an imposing statue of a dragon right in the middle of the square's fountain. It looked like it had its eyes closed, even though it stood in a dynamic pose ready to swoop down.

"...That dragon... looks familiar..." Ren muttered, being unable to place his finger on what monster it was meant to be.

Chiharu stood there in the square a bit stunned. She had never really watched any duels before and seeing a square full of people that were all dueling for the most part was mind boggling. It had been a bit of a trip getting here of course, but it was good to get to know the area and she definitely knew how to do a circle in this town thanks to Ren. Her eyes finally landed on the dragon statue in the fountain at the middle of the square. "Woah. That thing is intense, is that one of the monster things in the game? If so it's pretty cool. Also Blazing, would Blaze also work? I also can't believe how popular this game actually is just almost an hour after launch, and people are still jumping in every second!" Chiharu was spinning around a little bit trying to take everything thing in at once.

"Well Blazing, shall we go somewhere else to try this out? Meet some locals? See if they have any start up events for free stuff like a lot of schools do for starting things? Try some of the food? Is there food? Will we be able to taste the food? I wouldn't even gain weight either since it's a game!" She was now completely rambling at a high rate and really fantasizing verbally only half talking to Ren. She threw her arms out and did a little spin stuck in her own head space waiting for Ren to make a choice, after all he was the expert on Duel Monsters which means he knew more about this stuff than her.

Ren pondered Chiharu's questions for a little bit. "Blaze was taken, actually... but isn't it cooler this way?" he said with a goofy grin. Then Ren added "I think I did hear something about an event, but it's not until later today. It should be here at the town square," and looked around him again. "This place really is crowded. I don't like that. Let's go where the monsters are!"

Without waiting for any input from Chiharu, Ren ran off into the metaphorical sunset. It didn't take too long to get outside the city walls, at least, not when compared to trying to find their way to the city square. There had been a protective barrier laid out around the city, which he passed through. As soon as he had, the Duel Disk Ren so desperately searched for earlier materialized on his arm. It was a retro design; one of the first ones ever released. "Ooooh. There it is. Now I can duel!" he happily said to himself.

The area he'd found himself in was a long, open grass plane, split in two by a dirt road that led into town. The same kind of carriage that had carried him and Chiharu into Radix came out from behind Blaze, operated by an NPC. They looked to be carrying some kind of goods on the back of their wagon, ready for transport to another location- probably wherever the road lead to. Ren looked back over his shoulder. "Luna-chi! Let's find a spot to duel!" he yelled back. While he wasn't looking, some sounds came from the direction the carriage went in. When Blaze went to look, a couple of monsters such as Change Slime and Dark Plant started to inch closer. The owner of the carriage was panicking and crying out for help. Ren blinked twice, then looked back to find his friend. "Luna-chi? I think this is some kind of event. Should we help?" Ren asked her nonchalantly.

"Hey! Wait for me!" Chiharu called out as she ran after Ren as he ran off out of town. Thanks to all her exercise it wasn't hard to keep up, though it would have been nice to be given a little more of a heads up before he just took off. She noted a few different types of stores along the way though. A clothing store, general store, and a few others. It was quite surprising how many different types of stores there seemed to be for an online card game. At the same time that just seemed to make it more interesting to Chiharu giving it a more real feel.

When they were outside the city limits a duel disk appeared on her arm which she looked at examining it deeply. "Um yeah, we could definitely start this duel thingy." she mumbled as she looked up and looked around realizing he had pointed out something in the distance. "Oh. Uh, yeah. I suppose it would be the right thing to do after all, but um. How do I do anything to help you help them?" she rubbed the back of her head laughing a bit embarrassed at how clueless she still was about all of this duel monsters stuff.

The game had been super popular for a while now and yet she had never taken an interest. If it hadn't been for the fact that she was trying to connect more with her friend she wasn't sure she would ever had bothered and the prospect of an online game that would put her at a starting level with everyone else as long as she started on it being opened up also helped her feel like she would have a chance. The two monsters going after the carriage were a bit curious and a bit concerning to see though. How were they supposed to deal with them anyway?

"Hmm... yeah, I don't know how to help them either." Ren said back to Chiharu. He crossed his arms and tilted his head. "Maybe we just summon our own monsters?" he mused, looking down at his Duel Disk. Ren drew a few cards off the top, said "Oooh, this one has high attack! Let's use you!" and placed the monster in question down on the duel disk. Nothing happened, though. Ren poked his card a few times, tried politely asking it to wake up, even picked it up to place it down again. No matter what he tried, the monster just wouldn't appear. Then, it was like he realised something. Ren balled up the hand holding his cards into a fist and clapped it into his other, open palm.

"Oooh! Luna-chi, the monsters must be duelists too! C'mon, follow my lead!" he told his friend, then dashed over to slide in front of the Change Slime. As soon as the monster saw Ren as a threat, Ren's Duel Disk sprang to life. The card on top of it and the ones in his hand vanished, his deck shuffled itself and the lifepoints on his Duel Disk counted up to 4000. "I knew it! Okay, so, just draw five cards to start!" Ren called back to Chiharu and did just that. He scanned over his hand. "Hmm... if you see a card with a yellow or a brown border, that's a monster! Try picking out one with the highest number next to its ATK and placing it down on the field vertically, like this! I summon Shadow Specter!"

A purple mist creeped up from the floor in front of Ren. It clustered together and a skull was floating in the middle of its haze. 500 points of attack were displayed for all in the area to see. Ren looked down at his hand again. "You should maybe have some purple and green cards in your hand too, but... forget about those for now! Just end your turn after summoning a monster," Ren called back. He wanted to keep it simple for Chiharu and figured the monsters they were facing wouldn't be too much of a problem.

Ren took this moment to take a closer look at the opposing monster, as some symbols and numbers were floating above its head. One of the symbols was obviously a card, but it only had 'x 3' next to it. It turned into 'x 4' once Ren had ended his turn. Next to it was just a floating '500'. When he thought about it he came to the conclusion those must've been the monster's cards in hand and life points. They started with a massive handicap against players.

Chiharu ran forward facing the Dark Plant monster alongside Ren who was up against the Change Slime monster. "So I just-" she started to ask but her duel disk sprang to life, the deck shuffling for her and then she did as instructed drawing the five cards. "Okay, here goes nothing! I summon Dark Witch!" she blinked as nothing happened. Chiharu tried placing it on basically all of the other slots worried she'd done something wrong. The monster definitely had the highest attack in her hand, a decent defense, and five stars. She just couldn't figure out what was wrong so she turned to Ren with a sheepish look to get more advice. After a small little talk with Ren she the learned that the stars had a purpose for letting her know the level of a monster and that other require sacrafices.

"Okay, this time for sure! I summon Petit Dragon!" With that a very small gold dragon rose from the ground in a small light show and it let out a small cooing noise. "Hey it worked!" Luna cried out with joy cheered up after her blunder was fixed. She went back and forth for a few rounds. Ren helped her grasp the basics pretty quick. She more or less understood that there were several types of spells, but for the most part they were something she used on her turn unless they were quick play spells. Traps had to wait untill at least then end of her turn that she placed them on. Apparently there were more things she'd have to learn as time went on, but for now that would be enough.

"Now I sacrifice my Petit Dragon to summon Dark Witch!" The small golden dragon was then replaced by a woman with dark hair, dark wings, pointed ears, dark gloves, a golden dress, and wielding a red spear. She was facing down the Dark Plant's Flame Manipulator. "Now attack his monster!" The Dark Witch sat up and lunged forward plunging her spear through the chest of the Flame Manipulator shattering it in an explosion of hundreds of pieces and the Dark Plant behind it also exploded once it's Life Points were drained to zero.

Chiharu turned to Ren giving him a crushing hug. "I did it! I can't believe I did it!" She was a bit surprised at how good she felt over all. It was a card game online, not physical like all of her sports or anything, yet she still felt really good about winning for the first time as she giggled and laughed doing a quick little spin with her arms out wide.

Aside from Chiharu's early struggles due to Ren's scatterbrained explanation, she'd been holding her own against the Dark Plant without too much trouble. Ren, for his part, had been paying more attention to that duel than his own. Almost like he was disrespecting the Ai opponent, Ren slid a card into his duel disk without even looking at it. It was Insect Armor with Laser Canon, boosting up the 300 ATK Petit Moth he'd summoned a turn earlier up to 1000 ATK. Taking his eyes briefly off Chiharu, he glanced at the change slime and said "I'll use Book of Taiyou to change that face-down monster face-up." The monster revealed by Ren's spell card was 8-Claws Scorpion, who's attack was much too low to withstand Petit Moth. Ren threw his hand forward and commanded his Petit Moth to "Attack that monster!" with the creature obeying so. The canon which was now on its wormy little back flared up and shot right through the scorpion, hitting the Change Slime behind it and causing both to melt away into a goop. Ren could hear Chiharu finishing her own duel, but he didn't get a chance to congratulate her.

"Gngh-!" Ren choked, feeling the crushing weight of Chiharu's arms collapsing his ribs despite being inside of a virtual world. Ren wasn't exactly sure why he could feel the pressure of his friend's grip leaving him to struggle for air, but whatever the case was, he tapped her hands with his own. "I give up...! I give up...!" he choked out, trying to get the overly excitable vice of death to let go of him. Ren coughed a few times when he was released from Chiharu's grip, they had a laugh about it and he praised her for a job well done.

"That was good for your first time, Luna-chi! Maybe next we should-" he said, about to suggest dueling each-other, but was cut off when he noticed something squirming behind Chiharu. Ren stepped around and in front of her, thrusting out his arm to block another Dark Plant from approaching his friend. "Oops... or not. Seems like there's still more coming!" he yelled back at her, powering up his Duel Disk again for another round. Despite his intent to protect Chiharu, more and more monsters started to gather around the cart they were protecting. Chiharu didn't have a choice but to throw herself back into dueling again.

They each finished off another two or three monsters, but the amount gathering around them was increasing at a faster rate than either of them could handle. The monsters started taking them on in a two-on-one, then three, leading to both Ren and Chiharu almost getting overwhelmed by their numbers. Just when the situation started to get dire, though, another person's voice rang out. "From my hand, I activate the spell cards Raimei and Sparks!" it cried, small bolts of lightning and a mild fire igniting one of the Dark Plants Ren was facing. Having come from a blind angle, another person was standing next to Ren with his Duel Disk activated.

Ren was about to ask where the silver-haired gentleman came from, but he got about as far as "Where did you-?" before his saviour cut him off.

"There's no time for that now. Watch out, more of them are coming!" he sternly warned Ren. Together with this mysterious stranger, and the help of a couple of other players who eventually noticed the commotion and joined in the monsters were successfully repelled... after a time. After the exhausting ordeal, the merchant who the players had saved started handing out cards to the participating players. The more monsters they had defeated, the stronger the card reward was. The man who'd helped Chiharu and Ren out approached the duo to introduce himself after it had all been resolved. "Sorry about earlier. I had spotted you two having some trouble from a distance, so I thought I'd come help out. My name is Silver_Bullet, but you can call me Silver if you'd like."