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Once upon a time, far in the distant depths of a virtual dungeon of death, secluded somewhere within its suffocating stone walls, in a room, one alike any other was where our story starts.
Two guys had a dream, a plan. One that would avert the inevitability that was dying prematurely. They wanted to form a team of complete and total strangers.
A team capable of squaring off against the ultimate danger that resided alongside them. One that would rid them of this long, long night of terrors and dread.
To accomplish such a feat, one of the guys, Jin, took hold of the other guy's finger, which belonged to yours truly, and spent a rather uncomfortable five minutes plowing through my menu at a rapid pace, dragging it around and flicking through dozens of open windows of many shape and size that for the life of me I could not decipher.
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An assembly of programming jargon that was only comprehensible by a select few that have worked with it everyday… people like Jin.
Comprehend it he did. The tight grip of anticipation, the hasty strides he's making my arm do across the endless stream of choices… I've never seen such total concentration on a man.
"Level with me, are you getting warmer or you still frozen?" I asked when the intense silence became too overbearing.
"Sora, I'm done when I'm done," He snapped impatiently. "Can't bring you up to Admin Level 2 with just a snap of my fingers."
"But can it be done?"
"Well… theoretically speaking, no. But never say never, I'm putting that theory to the test now," He brought up even more windows, filling the entirety of my HUD with the digital equivalent of Egyptian hieroglyphs. "Level 1 capabilities are limited but not entirely incapable. If I know what I'm doing, and if I'm doing it right, you'll be the first to know."
"Admin privileges, huh?" I contemplated the thought and felt my lips stretch to a slight smile. "Now that sounds like very enticing fun indeed."
Jin stretched my arm up high to a window above, straining it rather hard.
"Not a toy," he said.
"Speaking of toys - my hand, damn it, ease off. Secondly, I wouldn't worry too much. The wrong hands aren't my own, you just relax, alright?"
"Oh, I wonder about that."
An endless back and forth of trial and error configuration. My legs were getting stiff just standing there like a statue as he did what he will with my lifeless arm still tightly in his grasp.
Five minutes, nope. Ten minutes, nothing new. Thirteen minutes in, he broke the quiet.
"Doesn't seem like him to forget," He said, then realizing that ambiguity would only bring him nowhere, further elaborated, "Sukuinote, I mean. Don't really see him as the type to overlook this kind of thing."
The blurry daze of rectangular holograms gradually came into focus again as I returned from a dazed stupor resulting from sheer boredom. Jin's made some great strides… instead of like fifteen different screens open simultaneously, there were at least thirty now, albeit at first glance, could be a lot more veiling behind all the clutter.
I rubbed both my eyes with a free hand, "You're thinking…?"
"Can't have very well been an accident now, can it? No, Admin access was no accident. He wanted you to have it."
"So not only did he string me along on a suicide run, but he did so while also granting me half the steering wheel to the entire game?"
"Half of a quarter to be more precise."
On the surface, my ill-stricken plight seemed rather bare-bones. Delving a bit deeper, however, everything just seemed to be filled with countless contradictions.
A perplexing game of puzzles that puzzled me, "He stacked the odds so high against me only to give me something to topple it all down. I don't even know what he's thinking anymore."
"More than likely he wanted you to figure it out on your own," Jin replied, his eyes veering towards every angle possible, "But then… here I am, so that happened, and I don't really think I was a factor in his equation."
I scoffed, "You don't? What makes you so sure that my meeting you here was simply a matter of coincidence? How do you know Sukuinote didn't just provide me another helping hand in the form of you?"
"You want to stand here all night debating on what's pure chance and what isn't?"
"All I'm saying is…" I trailed away, my mouth still left wide open, finding a newly arisen sight had taken significant space in the corner of my HUD, "You did something."
"What?"
A monochromatic grey, a translucent square residing in the lower left, engraved within it was the foundation of every possible route to anywhere in the dungeon. Icons and symbols hovered over points of interest, while others had arrows signifying potential ways to either ascend or descend across the different planes contained within the level.
Anywhere and everywhere, charted and organized, compact tightly in a small view before my eyes.
"You just gave me a map of the entire dungeon tower."
Jin shared in my amazement, slackening his hold on my arm, and nodding profoundly, "So that's what that does… it's no Admin Level 2, but it's something, I guess."
My eyes began feasting upon the glorious sight. Something about it just oozes with a peculiar sense of satisfaction… as if what was once impossibility wasn't exactly as it seemed, an inkling of resistance, cheating the system that had us chained unwillingly.
Yet it lasted only for a moment so brief. Not a second later, in a violent screech that I had grown weary off throughout the night, the frenzied steps of feet began rushing from behind us.
My eyes met Jin's with a wary glance, "I don't think Sukuinote liked that very much, Jin."
"No, he didn't," He said, nudging me slightly before we tumbled into a sprint forward.