Big Bang
Xi and Otter_44351147 walked into the classroom one day. His teacher confiscated his game device. They were angry and tried to get the faculty at the school they went to, Lower Quadrant A Reticular School, to release them to it. They would not do so. Xi was chastised at home. He was still grounded eternally. They scolded him and they had dinner together normally. At home, he did his homework, stuffed it in to his backpack, and went to work on his old devices. He was at home with nothing to do. He leapt into his parents existences with aplomb. He was sitting on the couch with his dad and mom and annoying them. They let him do as he wanted. They were considered good parents to him. He was a playful child. He was in the back room doing something. He ate more food, faked that he needed a bathroom honey, and did other stuff. He considered it fairly normal of a Chinese school child who was locked in home. He considered this the worst time of his life. Outside, he was also going for a bike ride. He stole a little child's bicycle and the police arrested him. He was removed from the police station jail room by his parents. They paid for it with ¥500 and he was still grounded forever. He did it again as well. Against his wishes he leapt out of his bed room window and went to his friends house, who lived down the road from him. He went inside through his window and they played Eve all night and day together. He was not in school the next day at all. He had to get Auria out of the school system. He asked her to go out with him. She did not want to go out with him. She stayed in school and complained at him that he was being her least favorite person in the whole world right now. They went to his friend's house and played Eve together with his and his friends game devices. He had his from getting it back from school. But they had to let the battery charge. It was still full and ready to go. He used his and she used his friend Yuan's and they got in to the game world. He was playing Otter_44351147 and she was playing her main character, which she only had, Auria, who was brightly colored in her game world. They were at odds. They were both in different clans. This was a dangerous encounter. She could gank him and he could gank her at any time. In Eve, you could not gank a player in the same clan as you. It just was not targetable like that. You could use skills around it, but it would not harm them. There were no area of effect skills in Eve, shortened to AOE online by the community, so it was all one-on-one. The used the term 1V1 game often in the community. You had to target separate, or different, players distinctly. You did have some positive skills, like defensive, what the community termed buffs, which did effective things like distanced you from characters or healed you up some, and you had stats like HP and MP, which stood for, usually, by the communities' standards, Health Points and Magical Pool, or points, if some preferred, but in Eve, they just had them labelled with HP and MP, and if HP went to 0, you were dead. This was called being killed. The player, if one did it, as the monsters did not seem to be able to advance, got 1 reaper point if they killed a player. This could be used to gain a skill up. In the skill screen, they were usually busy to spend the point. Otter_44351147 had all the skills already. He used them in rotation. All were supremely necessary for the highest level playing style. He was the highest ranked player again. His team were all over the place. Auria was ranked #2. This meant she was right behind him. If she ganked him, then he would have to climb all the way back up to #1! But she did not. She chose to be his courteous friend.
She and Xi walked into the next town over, which was the safe haven for the Lower Sand Wastes. It was a sandy desert style area with camels and some odd features like the main opponents were sand penguins, who slid around like real penguins, but who otherwise were intruders to the main monsters. The penguins were called Pengai and a mascot character for Eve. They were a bit different looking from real penguins, who Xi and Mitsuru only knew from not really having ever actually seen them. The Pengai gave 100 EXP, but he and she were already maxed out, so this did not matter to them. Still, they fought them and got gold from wells and such. It was only 0 GP for him and 1,000 GP for her. He didn't see her get anything and vice versa. They explored there and fought no other monsters except the normal stuff. They ganked one player, Really Hot Dude In Queerqueg's Pantyhose, whose Chinese name was really long, and they had not had a hard time of it. They were over his level. They were 99, and he was just 47. They both ganked up on him. Two separate people from two different clans. That was not always unusual in Eve. Sometimes, in clan wars, and other areas, and between friends and so on, they fought as usual teams instead of clan mates or usual players usually did and steadfastly conquered as solo players. They were ganking up on foes and she was getting nice stats like his. But they quit after 11 PM to go get drinks and food at a place nearby in the town so far away that his mommy and his daddy had to take him there by a drive or sometimes even run by and grab him something, he thought. In Chinese, the words spoke fluently between them. They were having fun. But his friends at school were having less fun.