.Hack//ZERO SE:2000

SE:2000

Orca of the Azure Sea eyed his surrounding with an air of suspicion.

His hair was copper-colored and slicked back to show his forehead, and his muscular body was dyed with green paints.

He wore heavy iron boots with a tasset around his waist, but left his thick upper body almost completely bare aside from a bulky shoulder guard on his left arm.

He was dressed to project an air of confidence in his swordsmanship and physical prowess. That was the kind of character he had designed.

“They certainly got things back up and running easily enough.”

He spoke to himself with a full, deep voice that matched his physique.

Not even eight hours ago, the BBS forums had been flooded with posts about the servers being down. Yet now he was able to access the game again as usual. It was almost as if the incident hadn’t even occurred.

But how the server had gone down and recovered had been strange.

Under normal circumstances, server outages only occurred when the host computer wasn’t able to handle a sudden influx of access channels opening up.

But this time around, there had been no sign of anything like that.

And that was what Orca was looking around for.

The fact of the matter was that Japan had the second largest player-base in The World after the United States. But the issue of congestion should have been dealt with by the recent creation of a management center and additional servers off the coast of Urayasu.

And no notable events had occurred at the time of the issue.

In short – the cause was completely unknown.

CC Corp. Had yet to release a statement on the matter, either. And that was unusual for a company whose slogan was ‘Heartfelt & Useful for All’. Their users would have appreciated a more timely and quick response.

Suddenly, the voice of an idol stated playing in Orca’s ear. It was his alerts letting him know he had received a short mail.

Cutting off the lyrics at ‘I was almost brought to tears, and now I’m late’ he opened the message in his vision.

It only said one thing: I’m on my way, I’ll be there soon. But that he bothered to send it at all showed how dedicated he was.

“‘Sorry for the inconvenience’ he means.”

His partner arrived shortly after and – as usual – got right down to business.

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

Balmung of the Azure Sky – Orca’s partner – nodded in confirmation.

He had silver hair with a slight blueish tint, and his eyes shone like emeralds.

He was covered from head to toe in silvery-white armor, but even with all of that on, you could tell that he was thin underneath it all. Lean even, and strong.

And lastly, sprouting from his back were two large angel-like wings. They were a rare item which he had earned for completing The One Sin event, a legendary achievement within The World.

“Which means CC Corp. doesn’t know either.”

“Right.”

For being such a large, burly man, Orca was surprisingly mild-mannered. That personality, however, made him the perfect match for the reserved and brilliant Balmung.

Together, the two of them had conquered many difficult dungeons and events without simply relying on numbers. It wasn’t only The One Sin – together, they’d overcome events like The Gate of Tortured Souls and The Red Room as well.

Still, it wasn’t as though they were always together. More often than not, they both tended to play solo.

However, because of his caring nature, Orca often took on the role of guiding new players. He’d take it upon himself to explain proper online etiquette to them.

Even players who were initially intimidated by his appearance were soon taken in by Orca’s gentleness and quickly changed their minds. He never just lectured someone, he would explain calmly what was wrong, and won them over with his ‘big brother’ personality.

Balmung however was not the kind of person who would willingly get involved with others. He had a strong sense of duty, so if he were to get involved in something, he didn’t want to do so half-heartedly. He wanted to make sure it would receive his full attention.

That was his duty as one who had braved The World since the very beginning – his ‘Noblesse Oblige’, as it were.

That said, if anyone wanted to meet Balmung, it wasn’t all that hard to find him. All you had to do was show up for the biggest events in the server, and he’d be there.

Although actually trying to compete with him was a fool’s errand. Balmung won every event he participated in.

The best one could hope for would be to come second, and see just how close to Balmung you could get.

And so, this begged the question – how did these two individuals who seemed to have nothing in common – both come to be known as Descendants of Fianna and share the title of Azure? That mystery had persisted in The World for as long as anyone could remember.

There were rumors that their origin traced its roots all the way back to the Beta version of the game – Fragment – or that there used to be a Scarlet counterpart to them, but no one knew for certain.

All that was certain was that the pair had absolute faith in one another. Yet at the same time, it seemed as though they knew very little about each other in real life. To them, the characters Orca and Balmung were their real selves.

They only ever worked together when special events cropped up that required them to work as a team.

“So, what do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

They spoke plainly with one another. There was no need for pretense where the two of them were involved.

“Then don’t waste my time.”

Orca huffed, crossing his large, burly arms over his chest as he began to stroke his chin in thought.

“I’m worried too, you know.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter either way. It all amounts to the same thing in the end.”

Balmung shrugged and cast an indifferent gaze into the distance, but Orca let it slide.

Cold stone. Strong winds.

There were a lot of prying eyes here. The players wandering the streets here were probably watching them, wondering what the two high-profile PCs were talking about.

“Lot of people here with free time.”

“Doesn’t that apply to you too, Bal.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Orca’s teasing remark was met with a firm rebuttal from Balmung. “Something strange has happened in The World recently – or is about to happen. That’s what I think.”

“What a coincidence, I was just thinking the same thing.”

“We just need a point of inspiration. Everything will fall in place from that first spark. Like how it was for the great minds of Einstein and Archimedes.”

“What, you mean like a ‘eureka!’ moment?” Orca ran a hand through his hair. “Well, in our case, we’re still waiting on that moment.”

Just where did the urban legends that you would die from playing The World come from?

Those kinds of stories always seemed to crop up around MMOs.

A girl who sees a dead classmate in a field, in uniform, claiming to know some kind of dark secret.

If you collected 10 Gold Grunties, they would combine to become Harold Hoerwick.

There is a cursed area within The World, and if you reached it with just the right combination of words from the game’s 1.2 million possible combinations, you would die after 3 days, 3 hours, 3 minutes, and 3 seconds.

However, in this instance, Balmung sensed something that made it hard to dismiss it as just another urban legend.

At the risk of being labeled as insane, he trusted his intuition.

“You should have taken Helba up on her offer.”

Orca rubbed his hands together.

“Apologies, but I don’t work with hackers.”

Balmung snapped back.

It was rumored that players of The World had fallen into a comatose state, but this had gone unconfirmed now for over three months.

Yet at the same time, there were some strange disturbances within The World.

Things that others tried to pass off as bugs in the system, like monsters that can’t be killed.

The disbanding of the Crimson Knights.

And the appearance of the hacker named Helba.

The true identity of Helba was a surprisingly well-kept secret in spite of her notoriety.

In the background for The World, Helba was the name of a dark queen written of in the Epitaph of Twilight.

The player using her name rarely logged in, but it was said she hides her eyes behind golden goggles and wears a dress dyed in sunset purple and moonlight white. It went without saying, but this was not a character design that could be replicated only using CC Corp. Specifications.

People claimed that she had existed since the time of Fragment, but no one knew who she was in real life, or even if she was really just one person or a group of people.

They were probably Japanese, but that was assumed simply because she most commonly made her appearances within the Japan servers – and yet even that information wasn’t entirely confirmed.

So much was unknown about her, yet people still spoke of how incredible she was. But incredible how, exactly? Were they just saying that she was an incredible hacker? That seemed unlikely, because even the full extent of her skills in that area were unknown. Rewriting the top page of a website, hacking into a list of firearms manufacturers, or manipulating the New York stock exchange – whether or not she could do any of these things were all a mystery.

But the biggest mysteries of all were in why she called herself Helba in the first place? And just what was she planning? Both points were equally as unknown as her true identity.

Only her name and the fact that she existed were certain.

“But it’s not every day you get a direct call from Helba.” Orca shot Balmung a sly look. “Such a waste.”

“You must be joking. Don’t tell me you’re serious about this?”

Balmung glared at Orca through his bangs.

“Of course, I’m serious. I’ll take whatever help we can get.”

“Don’t confuse the ends with the means.”

“And that’s your choice to make. Some people will get it wrong, some won’t.”

“And you think you’ll be the one to get it right? You sure do sound confident.”

“Well, I am Orca of the Azure Sea.”

Balmung met Orca’s eyes and smiled menacingly. There was a hint of sarcasm to it though, so it just barely passed as friendly.

“And I am Balmung of the Azure Sky. I don’t want to owe anyone any favors.”

“Except for me, you mean?”

“Yes, except for you.”

Balmung nodded.

However, even if he wouldn’t admit it, the fact that he wouldn’t accept Helba’s offer was still an issue for them.

Helba had secured an area in The World that had been discarded by CC Corp. and was building her own foundation there. She’d even given it the rather gloomy name of ‘Net Slum’.

He wondered if it was possible that Helba was actually somehow involved with CC Corp. If that were the case, then it truly would be foolish to have rejected her offer.

Balmung grit his teeth.

The most unbearable part of it all was not being sure if refusing her had been the right choice or not.

“Do we really know nothing at all?”

Balmung turned to Orca, his heart beating uncontrollably.

“What were you hoping for?”

“Anything.”

“Unfortunately, we have nothing.”

Orca replied with a disproportionately easygoing tone. His demeanor did not match the seriousness of the situation.

But Balmung wouldn’t let that get to him.

“I’ve been combing through the BBS over and over, but there isn’t a lot of interesting info there.”

“It’s not over yet.”

Balmung insisted.

“I’m not saying that it is.”

Orca replied while rolling his shoulders and head as if his muscles were sore.

“I wish there was a more definitive incident to start from. Just having rumors to go on makes things difficult.”

“If it gets big enough, CC Corp. should come out of the woodwork to deal with it.”

When Balmung said that, Orca looked at him with a sigh and lowered his gaze.

“Sorry, I got carried away.”

“No……”

Balmung wanted to say that he understood how Orca felt, but he suppressed those words.

If the comatose rumors were true, it meant that this was already well beyond the scope of something that any single individual playing at being a knight of justice could handle.

Even so, Orca – who felt increasingly frustrated and inadequate for not knowing what was going on or what he could do to help – was right to expect a dramatic shift in this situation.

Which meant that he was expecting someone would fall to misfortune.

Even if you died in the game, you could always restart and come back to life. Your real body wouldn’t be harmed.

In the environment of online games, pain tended to be overlooked. Not just physical pain, but mental pain as well.

But in this case, it was the victims that chose to disregard it.

Orca was ashamed of his own carelessness.

“You know, I like it here. I like the people I meet here.”

Orca sighed to himself while looking off into the distance.

Many players meet and part ways here. Sometimes they’ll get along, and sometimes they’ll have a falling out.

Adults often say that virtual friendships are meaningless. That all you can expect from them is a brief relationship before you eventually part ways again.

But was that really true?

It was true that there was a danger to that kind of faceless interaction, but was it really any different in real life?

If you don’t want to have that kind of relationship with someone online, you could easily drop contact with them.

But the people here had already made their choice. They’d all decided to be here, online.

All they could do now was keep their eyes open and keep moving.

Orca’s hope was that what lied ahead on that road would be something good.

“Hey, am I just being too naïve?”

“No……”

Balmung lowered his gaze. For some reason, he felt suddenly embarrassed.

“Are we in over our heads?”

Then Balmung looked back up.

Orca waited anxiously for his partner’s answer.

“No. This is a matter of our pride as those called the Descendants of Fianna.”

Hearing that, Orca gave a wide, genuine smile, like that of a child.

“That’s right. We are the Descendants of Fianna. So, we have to aim higher than anyone else.”

“It stinks, doesn’t it?”

Balmung joked.

“Knock that off.”

Orca chuckled and looked around him with fresh inspiration.

An unexplained server outage – the cause of which was still unknown.

They didn’t mean to play at righteousness, but if there really was something unusual going on, they wanted to deal with it as quickly as possible.

And to do so before anyone else. Though that bit was just for their own self-satisfaction.

“Should we try talking to the PCs who were online at the time?”

Balmung offered a suggestion.

“Oh, are you starting to open up a little? It’s not much, but it’s the little things that matter.”

Orca shrugged his shoulders in agreement.

Their first crucial step was deciding who to question first.

“I knew it, it’s you!”

Suddenly, another voice cut in.

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