Team Game (II)

"Hello. I'm Sylph. You don't have to worry; this is a small communication link between Alive gears. I didn't infect anything," Sylph replied with a chirpy attitude. "In which case, I wished I did, but nooo, its company's protocol and safety feature." He grumbled in a low tone so no one else could hear.

"Excuse me?" Eve asked.

"Nothing. I'm just stating that everyone has a unique Avatar in their Alive gear. It's interesting to see one's persona," said Sylph with a false happy tone. "It's not every day I get to see something different."

Eve replied, "So what is the message you sent me about?"

"Watch it." Kiyro motions them. "You'll see what I mean." He patiently waited for everyone to watch the clip that Sylph had sent. He was wondering what they would say after they watched the whole thing. His fingers twitched nervously throughout the whole time waiting.

"Oh wow," said Isabel. "There are so many cats. Did this really happen?" She turned her head towards him in awe. Her large doe-like eyes stared back at him with curiosity.

"Yes," Kiyro replied. He couldn't help but stare at her cute face and tried his best not to stare. "I couldn't believe it at first. But, then, they just kept coming."

"This is not digitally fabricated, right?" Jack asked in an interesting tone. He was fast-forwarding through the video.

"Do you see me as a fool," said Sylph in an outburst. "Why would I record and add more cats that would take a very long time to animate? I HATE CATS!"

"Woah. Calm down, Mr. Birdie," said Jack raising his fingers towards his lips, trying to calm Sylph down. "It's just a question. You could just say no. Nobody was framing you for alteration."

Alex snickered. "It seems you ruffled a couple of his feathers. I suggest you give him some treats to calm him down."

"You don't say." Jack drummed his fingers on his chin and smirked. "The amount of cats is extraordinary. It's truly abnormal."

"Did you have a large bag of catnip or something?" Alex asked in disbelief. "Or did you spray some kind of pheromones that attract cats?"

"Neither." Kiyro expected these questions that they were asking one by one. He patiently answered each one knowing that they would have many more. He was more interested in what they would say about the whole situation.

"Wait. Did you see that?" Isabel said with a concerned voice. She stopped at a point in the clip where she was looking at. "There is some kind of moving human shadow. Were you followed through the whole ordeal?"

"There was nobody there."

"Are you sure? It seems like more than one was around you throughout the whole event." Isabel scanned through and took a snapshot of the spots where she found different humanoid shadows present. "Look. Here. Here and here."

A holographic image of all the snapshots was placed in front of the group. Each person came forward to see what she was talking about. Alex and Will had difficulty seeing what she was showing in the pictures before them.

"Where?" Alex asked. He looked diligently for what Isabel was talking about and leaned toward her. Isabel turns a bit pink from being close to Alex.

"I think she's talking about here. There seems to be a silhouette in the background on the edge of the pictures. It's constant throughout the others she has found," Jack pointed out one-by-one.

"You don't see it?"

"You're right," Will said in a shocked tone. "But it's very difficult to see. It's more like a blur than a solid silhouette."

"You're saying that's a human shape?" Alex asked in disbelief. "Are you sure you're seeing things correctly?"

"He's right. I see a humanoid shadow," said Will. "It's more definite when you watch it in play. You could see someone moving in the background." He replayed a couple of the scenes and even zoomed in on the areas where the shadows moved.

Alex watched the clips that Jack was playing. "I could see what you are saying that there "One last thing, especially in the last part of the video, there is a more definite outline of some kinds of shadows moving in the background."

someone there." Isabel brought up the last scene where a humanoid shadow attacked Kiyro and disappeared when he finished saying the verses.

"But why were you reading some kind of poem throughout the whole event?" Jack chuckled at his own joke. "What purpose did it serve?"

"I'm not quite sure," Kiyro replied. He scratched his head, looking for answers, but nothing came up.

"He was chanting and closing a door." Isabel cut in on the conversation.

Everybody turned their attention towards Isabel again. Isabel stepped back, a bit uncomfortable in their full attention. She unconsciously pulled on her clothes, trying to settle her nerves.

"What do you mean closing a door?" asked Kiyro. But, of course, he didn't expect to hear such an answer, nor did it make any sense. Though in this day and age, things were not making any sense after yesterday, making his brain ache with a slight headache.

"Well, what he was doing was chanting an incantation to close the tear from our dimension to the other side."

"Other-side?"

"Yes. A lot of people call it hell, or the place where dead people and creatures from darkness and light stay in. Other stories, legends, and views from different cultures and religions point to the afterlife, but what if all those stories of the other side are real?"

"Back up. You're saying what I was doing the whole time for the quest was closing a tear through dimensional space between two worlds?"

"Well, yes and no. It's not two worlds." Isabel racked her brain for a better answer. "Think of it like this. Earth is split into different dimensions from lower frequency to higher frequency. The dimension we live in is between the lower and higher energy frequency. So when we see supernatural things happening to us, it usually happens in the lower frequency, aka what people call hell. I call it the other side."

"So you're saying there are two dimensions? One is the earth we physically live in, the second is the world of the dead?" remarked Will. Kiyro was wondering as well.

"Well, that's the thing. I think there is more."

"Come again?"

"I'm not sure how many more, but there are more secrets to this world than meets the eye. I don't know all the answers to the questions, but there have been rumors that there are up to nine lower and higher dimensional levels. It's just that this plane is the mediator between the dimensions. Think of this level as level one for both realms, so seventeen dimensions are all layered like a pancake, all converging into one space."

"Why does that sound so familiar…." Eve spoke. "It's at the tip of my lips. I just can't remember it right now. I hate how the answers are there, but it's elusive."

"That's a rumor. Not a fact and something difficult to prove," said Alex. "Let's stay with the facts for now. All-in-all we have an assumption that Kiyro here was closing the door."

"He was. You all saw the rune stone inscribed with pictures or words. Then he placed them all in different locations setting up magical connections between each stone. Doing this creates a pathway for the energy to travel from one location to another. As I stated before, stones have a natural affinity to Earth and already know what it needs to do without us forcing anything. It's all about what you know about the earth and how you control it."

"How do you know all this?" Alex asked. "You sound pretty confident about all this. Where do you get this information from?" His demeanor turned intimidating for Isabel, and she took more steps backward. She held up her hands, grasping her clothes.

"I-I have a couple of Fri-i-iends that believe in the same things I do. They are more advanced in thinking about supernatural things." Isabel stuttered and replied.

"Give her a break. You're scaring her," Kiyro held up his arm to stop Alex from coming closer to Isabel. "Give her some space. It's not useless information. It's something we could search into later."

"Actually, after watching what you sent me. I think I have some small odd experiences in my earlier real quest as well now that I'm thinking about it," said Will.

"Come again?"

"My quest was really simple. There was no chanting or anything like that source. But, oddly enough, I needed to get to a specific location and spend the night with some talisman."

"Wait, a talisman and spend the night?" Alex asked in disbelief.

"I was in an abandoned church. One of my guildmates, Tom, was there with me as well."

"So what happened?" Eve scooted in closer, holding onto his every last word.

"Nothing, much except the lights, went on and off throughout the night. The church was kind of creepy staying there. There were broken chairs, fallen crosses and an overgrown plant. I wouldn't have thought it was a church if there wasn't a cross there. Though the whole time we were there, five cars broke down throughout the day in front of the church. I have never seen so many cars break down in the exact same spot."

"You kidding, right?"

"Tom was present; we even watched it happen every time."

The others were silent at what they heard. Five different cars broken down in front of an abandoned church was something you don't hear as often. Was it possibly karma, or was something more happening at that church? Kiyro thought. It was something that caught his attention, but it was not something he would like to go to an abandoned church to find the answer to.

"Did you get a chance to record any of it?"

"No. I thought it was nothing so special, so it wasn't my top priority. The night went by so quickly that there wasn't much to talk about but those strange occurrences."

"Well then, Let's get this quest done with. We might find more answers to what's happening with this game and this world. We'll miss the train if we stay here any longer." He pointed towards the train. "We can have our conversation while we head to our next location."

"He has a point." Jack agreed.

Kiyro's small band of people moved forward together onto the open doors of the train. It was rush hour, and many people moved in and out of the train station. Even though it was not packed like the New York bus line, there still were many people. Kiyro's group moved to the corner of the train near the end, where they could find a couple of seats.

Eve and Isabel sat together while Kiyro, Jack, and Alex stood around them, holding onto the silver bars to keep their balance from the moving train. As the train bolted forward, Kiyro stepped forward to stop himself from stumbling onto the floor. Unfortunately, Eve and Isabel were busy talking about girl talk, so he wasn't too keen on starting a conversation.

Kiyro zoned out for a moment, thinking about everything he heard from Isabel and the quest. Even the mission he was given by Danketsu Ryu Academy to become one of the quests was unexpected. Even though the Academy had standard requirements on missions, a game quest was something he would never have guessed to become a possibility.

He remembered the time in the Academy when he took on missions. His mission's rank than he did in the past ranged from B to A class, while only a very rare certain few got the privilege of S class missions. Even he did not receive one mission during his stay at the Academy. It was considered a class with a very high chance of death. Even A class missions were considered something to be wary of.

Students with lower belts were given the option to take on E and D class missions. Students who had experience and higher ranking took on tasks that were C and B class missions. The A-class missions were only given to the top twenty students in the Academy.

He could still remember his first mission, given that it needed two people to complete. He and his brother were the ones who were specifically sought out and handed to. Like a distant memory that happened yesterday, he could still remember it like it was today.