[fieldbox="Day 1, red, solid"]Anyone who knew Xenon even remotely was usually aware that mornings weren't his most glorious time of day. In an analogy, his morning hours were like the hours of a man who lived on dry humor alone. But regardless of how tasteless or bleary he could be in the morning, Xenon Zhu liked to believe he was sane.
It had begun with a simple window indicating that he was well rested, and continue with words floating above peoples' heads. Including his own:
'The Gamer'
Zhu, Xenon, Lv 1
He knew he needed sleeping pills, but he didn't quite realize how badly he actually needed them.
To his early morning self, the words were more like a hindrance. Just a fly buzzing about. Until he got to school, sobered up from a long night of performances, and realized
There are words floating above peoples' heads. Xenon's thought process revved from one to a hundred in an instant. It was like playing ping pong with old men, the ball whizzing everywhere at one. What were they? No one else seemed to be reacting to them. Did this mean only he could see them? What did they mean? What was his title? The Gamer? What was that? The train stopped when his eyes suddenly caught onto someone walking into the classroom. Artisia Jiancai. His friend.
Pushing out of his seat, Xenon approached her with a wave.
"Hey Artsie" he called out casually.
"Artsie?" she laughed.
"Is that a new nickname?" He shrugged, eyeing her title.
"It's morning, anything is possible," he supplied.
"You're an odd one Xenon... Speaking of odd, you know you don't happen to-" Xenon suddenly spoke, his words mixing into hers,
"By the way-" "suddenly see..." Both teens paused, trying to recollect the conversation.
"Oh, uh... Sorry..." Artisia interjected,
"You go ahead first." Xenon slowly nodded, straightening out his words.
"Wait so... are you seeing what I'm seeing?" he asked bluntly.
"What exactly are you seeing," she responded, seeming a bit apprehensive. Xenon breathed out lightly, then pointed a couple inches above the crown of his head,
"Blue text, right about here, right?"
Artisia moved suddenly, grabbed Xenon's shoulder and pulled him down the hallway.
"How did you know?" she whispered. In response, he blinked, then slowly began to peel away her fingers.
"Calm down Artisia, breath... it's too early to get worked up," he reasoned. Artisia lowered her hands cautiously, then spoke evenly,
"I'm not getting worked up. I just want to know what's going on. How is it possible that I suddenly wake up one morning and see names and levels above people's heads? That isn't normal." Xenon sighed,
"Yeah, it really isn't... but honestly? I can't think of a reasonable explanation to this. My best guess is that we were either kidnapped and drugged last night after the show, or we're both going insane." "Kidnapped and drugged? I don't think so," Artisia mused.
"At least, I definitely wouldn't let that happen!" she added defiantly. He chuckled at her sudden show of aggression,
"Good point. Though, that just leaves our sanity to be questioned."
"Hey! You're plenty sane!" Artisia said as she punched Xenon in the shoulder.
"Ow," he muttered.
"I'd say the same about you, but I am very hurt.," he said sarcastically. The red haired girl simply huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. Feeling a bout of stubbornness coming along, Xenon attempted to turn the coin.
"Just kidding. If you'd gone insane, I'd probably have a broken arm by now," he smiled, poking her arm for emphasis. Artisia simply turned away, her arms still crossed.
"I wouldn't have punched you that hard," she mumbled. Xenon poked her arm again,
"How would you know how you'd act if you were insane?" he asked. Seemingly frustrated, she began to walk away from him.
"Sh-shut up Xenon..." Xenon continued to talk as he followed her,
"I'm making a point, but hey." He tapped her shoulder lightly, just light enough for her to know he was there.
"We'll figure this out," he said in a knowing tone.
Artisia was quiet for a bit, then she picked up her pace and began to speak,
"Yeah, yeah. I know we will. Also, why do you keep poking me? That seems to be a strange habit you picked up." To that, Xenon simply shrugged,
"It's morning, anything's possible."
When they returned their class, Xenon slipped into his seat, his mind still thrumming with thoughts about titles and floating words. As he eased into the hard plastic beneath him, his fingers unconsciously found his pencil and began to twirl it. His mind wandered, peering at the words that accompanied other students. A majority of the students, he noted, had level 1 written above their heads with a few exceptions.
The class president, the basketball captain, a member of the kendo club... Xenon looked around, mentally listing the few level two's.
Pretty much all the smart and athletic people... minus a certain raging redhead. He internally chuckled. Upfront, Artisia boasted an unwavering confidence that stood at a hefty ten stories tall. Though, that was not to say she was all bark.
No he thought.
She's got about twice the amount of bite as bark, Xenon mused.
So why is she level one? And what's with the gamer label? Isn't fighter a bit more suitable? Maybe bruiser? Brute force-r? he continued to think until class started and took his attention away. Well, at least partially.
Having a quiz first thing in the morning wasn't exactly his cup of tea, but Xenon found it to be easy enough. He finished quickly, jotted down the last few answers with confidence, then leaned back into his seat. With a flourishing twirl, he snapped his pencil into his sleeve, making it seemingly disappear. Just as he had begun to settle into his thoughts, however, a loud slam sounded behind him. His suspicions of the perp was confirmed with the teacher's following outburst. Needless to say, Xenon spent the rest of the quiz time stifling laughter.
Despite the day's odd start, school seemed to continue per normal. Teachers switched, lunch was spent, and after some painfully slow lessons, the students were released. Without any clubs or after school activities to go to, Xenon simply chose to go home.
"I'm home," he announced when he entered his family's cozy townhouse. The silent reply of the empty house signaled that his father was likely out chasing another scoop. Between his mother's late working schedule and his father's finicky and sporadic chasing, being left home alone wasn't uncommon for him. Not that he was complaining - laissez faire was actually quite wonderful for sneaking out at night. Sadly, his parent's particular brand of laissez faire left no room for question when it came to school work. With a resigned acceptance, Xenon pulled out his notebooks and began to attack his weekend work.
Though, to his pleasant surprise, the homework was done... bearably quickly. Even Japerican history, with it's seemingly pointless over exemplification of dates and dead people, was retained quite easily. While basking in his quasi success, Xenon's eye caught onto a window of some sort...
Your overall studious behavior and success in your studies today has revealed new potential within you. You can now unlock the 'Knowledge' Talent.
Knowledge (Rank 10, Cost: 5 AP) The measure of your general knowledge and smarts. Useful for basic subjects or learning new basic, general knowledge. Advancing in this Skill will open higher planes of knowledge for you.
... and also almost fell right out of his chair and onto the floor when he leaned too far to read it. After sitting back up, he eyed the window curiously.
"Knowledge... Talent?" he murmured in confusion. There was no doubt that this wasn't linked to the floating text phenomenon that begun that morning. But what did it mean? Xenon attempted touching the window in various spots with no response. Eventually, he gave in and closed it out with the 'x' in the corner, but not without leaving even more inquiry to the wind.
Night quickly came, and with his homework done and his parents out doing work for the night, Xenon suited up in a black dress shirt and red vest for his weekend show. His time slot was fairly early, so he decided to perform one of his silent routines - a mystifying blend of methods and music that tended to work best early when the audience was still fresh faced and awake. Xenon's choice of tune was the deep, rustic voice of Oren Lavie's "The Opposite Side of the Sea" as he turned ripped, shredded, and burned paper into live birds; Which by the end of his performance, disappeared into nothing more than a wisp of smoke huffed out of his mouth.
In the rush and adrenaline of the performance, he had easily forgotten about the whole enigma floating above his head. Once back into his house (up the tree and through the window), the thoughts came back, accompanied with the realization that he'd forgotten to catch up with Artisia before he'd left.
Tomorrow he thought idly.
I'll deal with everything tomorrow he concluded before sinking into sleep. [/fieldbox]
[fieldbox="Day 2, red, solid"]The next morning, Xenon woke up feeling clearer than usual. Sure, his body had grown more or less accustomed to staying up at night, but the newfound clarity was... unexpected to say the least. Perhaps it was something to do with the window in his face that said he was well rested? Nevertheless, as he had decided the previous night, Xenon chose to start exploring. His main hint was the fact that his title was "Gamer". As a kid, he'd played plenty of arcade and handheld games while moving about, so discovering menus came along as an odd reference to experience.
And Ma said that games had no real life application he thought with a chuckle. The other underlying thought that slept in the back of his head was the slow realization that his life was now apparently a game. Some poking and prodding allowed the discovery of stats, skills, and the inventory.
The inventory's boxes were all empty, but more out of caution than anything, Xenon chose to leave them be. Next was his stats.
By distribution, it looks like I'm agility based? he thought quizzically.
That... sounds about right. Strength seems to be more of Artisia's thing. Last was the skills window. The first division, active skills, left nothing to be found since it was empty. The second one, passives, had two skills that seemed to heavily emphasize that he was now a "gamer". The last tab was talent skills. This one seemed to have the most information:
Sleight of Hand (Rank 10, 6 AP) (Level 1, 3/10 SP)
Charisma (Rank 9, 8 AP) (Level 1, 2/12 SP)
Night Owl (Rank 10, 6 AP) (Level 1, 1/10 SP)
Stealth (Rank 9, 7 AP) (Level 1, 0/12 SP)
Knowledge (Rank 10, Cost: 5 AP)
The terms seemed pretty straightforward and by the looks of it, he noted that he had gained "SP", which seemed to be like experience points for skills. None of it seemed to make much sense out of the whole gaming concept. Though, if anything did stick out, it was the "Knowledge" talent, which Xenon remembered, had appeared the previous day. The text was grayed out with a small lock over it, implying that it was locked. He assumed that it could be unlocked by paying the cost of 5 AP, but like yesterday, his deduction ended there, since he was unsure of how to obtain AP, or what it even was.
While Xenon would have been perfectly content trying to figure out more things about the whole shebang, his mother had different plans for him. Plans that included going to the store and getting groceries. While walking around and picking up various vegetables, he also took the time to chat with some shopkeepers. Most were incredibly nice to him and many complimented his charming manners and calm disposition. Some even gave him a couple free items. Though, if there was one thing that Xenon could have gone without, it was the notorious cheek-pinching of middle aged women. With red cheeks, he wandered home from shopping with three extra cabbages, crabs, baby bak choi, and distilled vinegar.
After quelling his mother's suspicions of thievery (Are you up to the magics again?), Xenon took a while to practice some tricks for his night show in the sanctum of his room. Unlike the previous night, his time slot was pushed back to a much more rowdier crowd. To adjust, he chose to do a comedic anecdotal performance with the cups and balls. All in all, it seemed to run smoothly throughout the relatively fast paced narration with equally rapid sleights in quick succession to make the illusion of the balls disappearing and reappearing. By the time he had finished, Xenon felt like he had picked the performance to the bone in front of his three way mirror. With a relatively good amount of time before his show, he donned his usual attire and set up his room to make it look like he was sleeping. Before he left, he took a moment to look at his menus again to notice that the SP in the Sleight of Hand Talent had risen by two. He quickly correlated the practice to the rise and decided to bring it up to Artisia if he managed to catch her after the show was over. So, with that, he Xenon left quietly through his window and into town.
The show itself started well enough - a grandiose little jingle and a round of applause welcomed him to the stage. For the first few minutes, everything seemed fine. All of his opening tricks went fairly well, accompanied by some well placed improvised one liners that really piqued the crowd. But when the time finally came for the closing trick of his set... Well. While he was narrating the story of how he was walking down the supermarket, one of the balls that he had been using flung out during the sleight and rolled innocently to the edge of the table. In plain sight for the audience to see. Compensating, Xenon continued shuffling the cups in a false shuffle with one hand, and picked up the stray ball with the other. Without skipping a beat, he continued speaking, modifying the story before slipping the ball back in and finishing out without any more hitches. Despite the small hiccup, the audience was still applauded generously as he took a bow and left the stage for the night.
Xenon had managed to catch Artisia unlike the previous night and to no surprise, she had figured out just about everything he had - the menus, skills, and whatnot. But both of them still seemed to lacked information to bring reason to the table. So, after parting for the night, Xenon snuck back in with a little extra caution due to the hour, then slept like a dead man the moment he laid his head down. [/fieldbox]
[fieldbox="Day 3, red, solid"]Mornings seemed to be the prime time for surprises. The beginning of the third day as a gamer was no different:
Other's Like Me
Issued By
A Passing Thought
Objective
Find others who bear the class, 'The Gamer'.
Rewards
6 EXP
More information on 'The Gamer' power.
Failure Results
Unknown
After accepting the quest, Xenon found himself rapidly piecing together the fact that there were indeed other gamers other than Artisia and himself. Right as he made the connection, the telltale sound of his phone notification went off. Upon checking it, he smiled. It seemed like she had already figured it out as well. To a stranger it may have seemed like he was uncharacteristically excited for no good reason, but to Xenon himself, he liked to think that it was the magician in him that pushed for answers. He rushed through his morning routine, finishing a shower in five minutes flat and running out the door to the destination spot no more than ten minutes within waking. [/fieldbox]