ACT I: THE PATH OF THE SPIRIT
Chapter One: Dissent
FANTASY NATIONS RP
The forum's longest-running (and technically oldest) RP had... a reputation. Which was one way of putting it. Looking at the big, silent, somewhat warehouse-looking building from the street, Thunderclaw found it was somehow not what he had pictured. He tentatively approached the large glass double doors, noting the dust and the poor lighting within. Half-remembered quotes from some of the forum's more prolific characters kept running through his head.
"I just don't think I'm manly enough for Fantasy Nations RP. I wouldn't do it justice."
"If Chocobo were alive today, he'd be a huge fan of Fantasy Nations RP."
"I am downright terrified of that [Fantasy Nations] RP. I'm peeing a little bit, just from thinking about it. I did use the bathroom a couple of minutes ago, so there's no actual pee, as such; but as you can see, I'm pissing blood just because of my body's biological need to piss itself when I'm as terrified as I am right now. Oh God, I can't stop talking about it either, and that just makes me think about it even more. Please help me."
He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head vigorously to help push the voices out, took a deep breath, and pushed on the handle. It didn't move. He frowned. The sign said 'Open', didn't it? He tried again. Nothing. It rattled a bit. He thought about giving up, but stopped himself there. Didn't he come here to learn about spirit? Was he just going to accept that he didn't even have enough of that to get through the door? He renewed his assault with vigor, trying the other door this time. Nothing. Was it a test? Did he just need to push harder?
Ten minutes later, he finally tried pulling on one of the handles, which swung open easily. A short, young Asian man looked up sleepily from behind the desk of the large, open room, which looked like an archive of some sort. Several dozen feet of filing cabinets lined each wall floor-to-ceiling.
"Oh, TC." Said Dragonruby, in a tired voice. "I was wondering who was making all that racket. What's up? You lost or something?"
"No. I, uh... I'm here for the RP."
"You what?" Dragonruby stared and rubbed his eyes, as if just now starting to wake. "For this? Fantasy Nations?"
"Yes. Are those the applications?" He pointed to a stack of forms on the desk. They didn't seem to have been used for quite some time.
"Well... yes."
"I'll take one."
Druby said nothing as Thunderclaw got to work on filling out the sheet, but was surprised to see him hand it back just a few minutes later, mostly blank. He looked it over. "So," he said, after a bit of a pause. "You'll be entering the simulation world as... let's see... human male, brown hair, white skin, age 'twenty-something'... name of 'Colonel Thunder', (that's dumb), faction: none?" He shook his head.
"Look, I don't really run this thing anymore. Nobody really does. You wanna put that into the computer, I won't stop you, but the sim-world kinda... runs itself. It's developed a lot since we first started it up. You throw in something that doesn't fit, that's gonna start desynchronizing it, and it's gonna start pushing back."
"Here." Setting the paper down, Druby reached over and pushed a button on the side of the desk. Suddenly, one of the smaller cabinets in the back of the room came to life and wheeled over to them with a mechanical whir. It stopped by Thunderclaw and opened, revealing a wide open, mechanized interior. Robotic arms unfolded, grabbed a massive stack of paper from within, and lifted it out onto the desk. It hit the wooden surface with a
wham, and TC couldn't help but notice that one of the floor tiles cracked underneath the table legs as it hit.
"This is the introductory material." Dragonruby continued, seeming unfazed by all this. "If you're going to go through with this, then I
highly recommend reading through all of it first. This RP breaks people." His voice lowered, almost to a whisper. "They still don't know what happened to Milamber."
TC swallowed. That was ominous. Then he looked at the stack of paper again. It was massive, and filled margin-to-margin with blocks of plain text. Reading all that would take a very,
very long time.
Did he...
- Read the material
- Skip the material,
- Skim the material
- Maybe just give up, try something easier instead?
- ???