Reiko sped through the faded city. Her ability was handy for this, it allowed her to run up walls and over water at a very high speed. There was also the rainbow trail. She loved rainbows. She liked how her avatar was a beautiful rainbow colour, and she wished she could make her room in real life rainbow as well, but her parents probably wouldn’t approve.
Anyhow, she was looking for Taro now. She was sure he was somewhere around, she had found a player that had been shooting at him and promptly ran him through with her magic rainbow unicorn horn before losing sight of him as he ran away. She had to wait for her skill to cooldown before she could chase him though.
She scanned the nearby surroundings for any sign of Taro, before hearing a small explosion in the distance. It sounded like a fairly low level mine, but Taro was also a really low-level player. She quickly activated her Rainbow Rush and sped towards the sound of the explosion.
She rounded the corner of a building and found…
A large scorch mark but no sign of Taro. She deactivated her ability to let it recharge faster.
Phew. She thought, relieved.
He didn’t die from that. But where is he?She decided to look in the immediate vicinity, when she started to hear someone talking. She quickly reactivated her ability and dashed around another corner to find…
An exceptionally cute sniper girl which she would remember for later, some other random sniper guy and most importantly of all, Taro, about 100 meters away.
“There you are!” She shouted, running towards him.
“I finally found you!”
“Hey.” Sten said, surprising Taro.
“Huh?!” Taro said, whipping around, his arms coming out from under him due to the sudden activity.
Support gone, he fell to the ground, head smacking on a rock inconveniently placed behind his head. Taro had wondered some time ago, whether or not you could stub your toe or something like that in deep ground, and whether it hurt or not. And boy did it hurt.
It didn’t do much health damage, maybe 1, but it was like the mother of all toe stubbings. On his head.
“Ow!” He said, grabbing his head in pain. He sat up and whipped his head around, looking at the speaker’s stats.
His quick look revealed a level 5 sniper named Solitary Watcher, leaning onto a wall.
“Rough day, huh.” He said.
Taro was immediately embarrassed. What kind of player took damage from his head falling onto a rock? Taro swore that the developers gave him magnified damage or something.
Damage aside, Taro was also suspicious. What was a level 5 sniper doing talking to him? He probably wasn’t planning to kill him because if he was, he could have just sniped him. And furthermore, he was a higher level than he had ever seen. To a level 1 who was bad at the game like Taro, a level 5 player was like an unreachable and unsurmountable wall, a far off dream for people to aspire to. Though he could guess why Solitary Watcher had called out to him.
One of the unfortunate side effects of having no deaths (and by extension, no kills), was that Taro was unexpectedly popular. This popularity usually took the form of people trying to hunt him down. Sometimes, though, sometimes people just talked to him out of the blue. That said, he wasn’t good at conversations.
“Um…” Taro said awkwardly.
Truth be told, he hadn’t had friends since his childhood friend left during the middle of primary school. He was too cowardly to make any friends and barely anyone had talked to him. He was elated when he finally made a friend early during his transfer. That said, he had no idea who she was in game, or if she had the game, and he would probably appreciate her help playing the game.
“Hello there!” A foreign voice called out. Taro whirled around towards the direction of the voice. His eyes revealed someone who was… well, the only word for it was moe. A small girl, with bouncy red hair and big eyes who was unbelievably adorable. That said, a massive sniper rifle adorned her back. And Taro wasn’t exactly any taller and he was suspicious of strangers.
“Nice bounce there, rookie.” She giggled. Taro was embarrassed. The sudden entrance took him by surprise, but judging by the way she talked, she must have been a serious player. He took a look at her character info and was shocked at what he saw.
Level 9?!?! If level 5 was a distant dream, Level 9 was beyond his wildest dreams. Stuffed Rabbit, Level 9 sniper and…
Red King?!!? What was the red king doing talking with someone like Taro?
Taro had been a little out of loop because of his sudden transfer 2 weeks ago. Looks like something big happened a month ago, the deaths of the 4 kings in real life. That’d been enough to scare off a lot of people, but it hadn’t deterred Taro. That said, the situation in Deep ground wasn’t the best for noobs and it was all he could do to avoid big groups and being killed. The end of the president’s speech earlier today just made it sound worse. With tensions running high, what did the red king want with Taro? A level 1 with no kills? This question was quickly answered.
“I couldn’t help but notice that you don’t have a guild… that’s a shame. But! Lucky for you, there’s one recruiting right now! The crimson Harleys! There’s no better place for you in the days ahead, it’s going to be full-blown war soon, so you might as well join now and we can get you up and swinging in no time! Hehe!” She said, getting to the point.
That surprised Taro more than anything. Pretty much everyone knew that he was almost the newest player. He’d picked up the game 2 weeks ago and spent the majority of the week running from every fight. This much he was pretty sure they also knew, it’d been spread around and a lot of people wanted to kill him just to kill the hardest-to-kill level 1 ever. And the red guild wanted to recruit him? Taro should’ve accepted her offer right there and then. But something held him back. Maybe it was the fact that not many had shown kindness to him and her words were a little hard to believe. As a 13 year old, he was still wary of strangers and the offer seemed to be too good to be true. But even if it was true, he wasn’t sure he wanted it.
If anything, Taro was confused as to why she wanted to recruit him, and why he was reluctant to accept.
“So, How about it?” The Red King said, holding her hand out and snapping him out of his thoughts.
“Uh…” He said, confused.
The red guild was fairly noob friendly, he’d heard, mostly due to their leader. But he didn’t know what he wanted. It’d be best to join a guild, but he didn’t know if the Scarlet Harleys were the right guild. And he didn’t even know he wanted to. He wasn’t sure why. His indecision was one of his worst vices and it gripped him firmly. There was only one way to fix it and it was coming. Coming fast. In rainbow colours.
“Finally!” She exclaimed, skidding to a halt in front of him.
“I’ve been looking all over for you.”
"What?" Taro said, turning around and becoming even more confused. A rain bow coloured unicorn princess appeared. Though her voice sounded familiar.
He looked slightly scorched, probably from the explosion earlier, and he looked very confused. There was also some other random sniper guy and a very cute girl who was also there. She was really small, just the right size for hugging but she had more pressing matters to attend to.
“You’re hurt,” She noted,
“Let me fix that.”Her second skill was mainly a healing skill, a very good healing skill in fact but it was a little strange and she hadn’t shown it to Taro yet but there was always a first time for everything. She started to cast her second skill.
Liquid welled up from inside her throat, but it felt surprisingly pleasant. Pressure building up in her mouth, she opened it slightly and directed it towards Taro.
”RAAAAAAIIIIIINBOOOOOOW” An unknown deep voice said. A jet of glowing, rejuvenating liquid jetted out like a fire hose from her mouth directly onto Taro’s face. The liquid quickly pooled at his feet and Taro started to glow in rainbow colours as the healing started to take effect.
She didn’t really know why that random voice always said the skill’s name whenever she used it, it always came out of nowhere and had no discernible source.
"Ah! What the heck?!" Taro said in surprise as the rainbow hit his body.
Random voice aside, she turned her attention back onto Taro. He was now back onto full health, and even more confused than before.
“C’mon,” She said to him, ignoring the other two.
“We’ve got an appointment with the Green King!”"Hey, wait a min-"With that, she picked him up off of the ground, threw him over her shoulder, activated her Rainbow Rush and ran straight up the next building and went off to the Fanged Rangers.
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