[center][h2]Sunohara Ryou[/h2][/center]
With maintenance all but finished and the newest expansion pack pre-downloaded, Ryou was more than ready to dive into [i]Emerald Odyssey[/i] and start streaming. He had made sure that his setup was in perfect order the night before—triple-checked it, even—which left him precious little to worry about now. With a few people buzzing about in the pre-stream lobby, the young man was more than ready to greet his viewers and dive into the new content with everyone.

The amount of congestion the servers had to face on patch day was oddly absent, though—a fact that struck Ryou as odd, but one that he chose not to question. After all, looking this sort of gift horse in the mouth was a bit rude, especially when it was most certaily in his favor. But as he moved to log in, his character selected and the loading splash screen appeared on his monitor...

White. His vision was overwhelmed in an instant by something far beyond what any sort of monitor could produce normally. There was no time to react or respond, and before he could even make a single sound in response——

[center][h2]Shokatsu Yu[/h2][h3]Aluvera — Silverfield Inn[/h3][/center]
"...Eh?"

Blinding though that all-consuming white had been, the young man found that both it and any aftereffects that it might have left were nowhere to be found. While that might have been reason to breathe easy, it took no more than a few passing seconds for him to realize that something was most definitely [i]wrong[/i].

After all, his computer and everything around it had been replaced by a simple wooden desk, and his room far less... 'Modern' than he last remembered. Though that oddity was at the forefront of his mind, nothing had truly quite processed yet—not until he got up and looked out the window. It was the middle of the afternoon when he had logged on, but with the amount of sunlight streaming through past the curtains, it felt more like early morning instead.

Of course, even a single glance outside the window would cause things to start falling into place. He had read enough stories to understand what had happened, and though he was still unaware of exactly [i]why[/i] something like this had happened, it was almost undeniable that the world outside was undoubtedly a locale he was incredibly familiar with despite not being anywhere in Japan—or on Earth, for that matter.

"This has to be a joke, right?"

Though still somewhat in denial despite how his voice sounded slightly off, Ryou glanced around once before walking into the washroom, clinging onto some faint hope that this was all some sort of last-moment fever dream. But when he splashed water on his face and glanced at himself in the mirror, that hope, too, came crashing down.

After all, it was not the face of Sunohara Ryou looking at him, but that of Shokatsu Yu, his character.

"...I guess not."

Of course, it was not panic that overtook him immediately after; with a few deep breaths, [i]Yu[/i] had shaken at least some of the chaos running through his head as he began to consider the implications of what his current position was. After all, with isekai settings having become so commonplace, it wasn't as if he was left without any direction to center his thoughts.

"So I'm in the world of the game as the character I main. There was no indication of what the cause was, nor what will get me to return immediately..." he muttered to himself, flicking the water off of his face as he left the washroom, "...Which means that the first thing to determine is whether or not I'm the only one in this world now."

Centered though his words may have been, though, Yu could feel his heart pounding as he promptly left the room and the inn proper; whether it was out of excitement or fear, even he couldn't quite tell.

[hr][h3][center]Aluvera — City Streets[/center][/h3]
Clean though the air on the streets of Aluvera were (or, well, as clean as you could expect), the state of the actual city seemed to be... Less than orderly. There was nothing like rioting or havoc on the streets, but the amount of people clearly trying to process the situation was more than Yu could count. In this case, though, that was probably a good thing; after all, that meant that he wasn't alone here. The grander implications of that soon crossed his mind, though, and before long, Yu found himself walking through the city, trying to find someone—[i]anyone[/i]—that he knew among the crowd. All the while, of course, the young man began to half-awkwardly fiddle with the empty air with his right hand, hoping that at least some part of the game beyond his current personage was carried over. After all, finding something as basic as an inventory or friends list would be astronomically helpful at a time like this...