Welcome to Gaia! ::

It all began with the aptly content Zu sitting in his favorite chair in his most cherished of city hotspots; an ordinary internet café.

The Café was a place where he could easily blend in with the melancholy groups of nerds and starving college students. It had a small interior which resembled most cafés in that it was colored with drab coffee hues to accentuate whatever atmosphere the sadistic owner had in mind.

So, there he was, sitting in a soft comfortable recliner with a newly purchased hand held, dual screen console in his hands. It was certainly strange for Zu to even consider buying such a simple gaming system when his own mind could create video games almost infinitely more complex than anyone ever could, but this one was special to him… since it was green. The game he was playing was a simple RPG in which you collect monsters you trap in balls, and send them into horrific battles where they would faint upon loosing too many hit points. Zu was still fuzzy as to what these hit points were supposed to be; were they blood or magic? He hadn’t a clue, but the game was still as addictive as chocolate coated with nicotine sprinkles.
There he sat, furiously trying to catch a strange winged ice bird thing. He had two balls left in which to try to capture this bird and send it to do his bidding in the battles, and the simple music had him in a state of hypnosis common to small children when they play with their first flashlight.

He used the second to the last ball he had, but it failed. Zu’s fingers were tense around the small device; his eyes fixated on this bird thing he had worked so hard to find. There was a small voice in his head that told him there was reassurance, since, he if didn’t catch it this time he could just try again. But Zu said, “NO!” to this voice. He had walked too far to get to this damn thing and he had forgotten to save the game for the past hour of play. There was no way he would be trying again.
It was then that he hit the ‘A’ button and used his last ball. It flew through the pixilated air as elegantly as it could at fifteen frames per second… and it swallowed up the bird.
The first shake… was good. The second shake… was good, and Zu began to feel the pit of his stomach churn in agony at the tension. The third shake… and it was… gone?
He felt an immensely powerful tug at his hand held console, and it was suddenly floating through the air away from where he was sitting with the music still blaring. No one but Zu seemed to notice that his DS, along with the peak of all his hard work, was floating toward the front doors to the café.
Before he could react and yell at the nice woman walking in from outside, the door was opened and his console was gone; down the street.
Immediately he was up and out the door, chasing it through the streets.
“Stop that hand held!” he shouted to the people flooding the busy intersections, as he ran through crosswalks and was nearly hit by many motorists.
He chased it for a good ten minutes before he finally lost it in a massive crowd of what looked to be people waiting outside a convention center in the middle of the city.
The only thing that Zu could think… was, “WHY?!”

Doshell was pleased as punch he had found a glowing electronic thing that played weird music, and pranced about through the streets full of people who didn’t seem to see him at all. The green covering it was wrapped in felt nice on his teeth, and the music was vibrating through his head pleasantly. It was a definite prize for Dos.

Somehow, through all the sixteen bit sound bytes, Dos heard what sounded like a strange language that he understood completely.
It was then that he also turned to see another demon like himself, only much bluer and less green than what he had seen in department store windows on his romp through the city.

This was the first time he felt nervous in that he didn't want this other demon like himself to take what he had rightfully stolen from the guy at the café. So, he opened his jaws to show his teeth since it seemed like a good thing to do, and growled at Northridge.

Another thing he discovered was that when he opened his jaws, what he had in them thumped onto the sidewalk. This was nearly as alarming as seeing another demon, and his first reaction, since he now knew he couldn’t grit his teeth with something between them without that ‘thing’ falling out, was to sit on top of Zu’s stolen hand held.

The little Wini cowered in fear of Northridge’s mighty growl, and Dos soon found himself licking the air she was blowing into his face. It was a natural reaction. He had also backed up quite a distance away from Zu’s stolen hand held, but kept his two gold eyes fixed on it in case she would think about running off with it.
There was something else that intrigued him…. Something with a feint buzzing sound. Dos couldn’t quite figure out why he was suddenly hungry, but the sounds he heard coming from Northridge’s shiny silver watch were making him ravenous.
It was that moment that he conceived his first devious plot. He would use the thing he stole from his human to distract Northridge and then eat the shiny metal thing that was so effortlessly dropped onto the pavement. A proper greeting would have to wait, and for now, he only had food on his little scheming mind.

With his front right paw, he pushed the handheld a bit to the right and flipped open the second screen; revealing the game Zu had been playing. The 16-bit music was still blaring from the two speakers and the game was still running at the same spot Zu had tried so hard to get to.

The second she was distracted, he would dart for the tasty morsel that was calling his stomach like some wireless router trying to connect to a very eager computer.

As soon as she was far enough away from the shiny snack, Dos pounced for it and opened his mouth like a toothy tractor; clamping his jaws around watch.
In a near instant, he flung it into the air and chomped on it with a force so strong, some of the people around them could hear the twisting metal between his teeth.
It was the unfamiliar sound of a bailer crushing a thousand compact disks all at once, and nearly caused an automobile-accident nearby.
There were only two bites before the tasty digital watch was fully consumed, and as he settled back down on his rear, he felt something strange in his stomach. At the precise moment he spoke his first coherent words, church bells rang in the distance; marking that it was now exactly twelve o’clock P.M..
His little head turned to Northridge with his gold eyes staring into hers deeply.
“Twelve o’clock… pee ‘em.” Dos said, with a very mechanical tone.

“Northy! Temperature… fifty five degrees ‘ef! ”
Dos was certainly happy when she mentioned yummy treats, and had visions of them running through fields of shiny digital watches in his little gold eyes.
He picked up Zu’s hand held in his mouth and looked on a Northridge like she was the Queen of everything.
Deep down inside his stomach, he could feel the signal-like pangs of hunger for more electronics, and his big toothy grip on the cherished DS showed it in the most picture perfect way.

The food did smell nice to Dos, but it was the large flashy cardboard cutout of a big gasmask toting man that caught his golden eyes.
This was it. The thing that had been calling him since he met Northridge and began his short adventure through the mall. The game store. It was like a buffet made specifically for him. Dos’s instincts went into overclocking mode and he reared himself back like a runner at the start of a race.
Before Northridge could even react to his new posture, Dos was off like a bolt of lightening to his promised land.
Dodging the people walking through and even leaping clear over a smelly vendor, he took the most graceful pounce anyone could have ever seen a green demon make, and crashed into the cardboard gas-man.
Since the cutout couldn’t support his weight, it flipped forward and smashed into box display of some more expensive looking consoles and made somewhat of a mess.
The bearded worker behind the counter stared at the disarrayed display, as well as some customers he was casually speaking with, and then all looked on with confused faces.
Of course, Dos looked straight back at them with the happiest show of teeth he could give them as if to say, “Thank for the free food!”

Northridge's act of knocking the games off the shelves caught Dos's attention, and he immediately scurried over to sniff them for quality.
The first game said, "Dorokumen Adventures"... and he had no idea what it meant, so, he ate it package and all.
There was an immediate rush of information going on in his little head, and he was able to make out some of the humans words that were being tossed around the room. Dos looked on them like a spectator at a tennis game; back and forth went the conversation in the shop.
"I think this place is possessed man! I'm outta here." said one scruffy lookin' customer.
"Probably just a tremor? You know this mall is on a fault line... I think."
The guy behind the counter seemed as dumbfounded as to what was going on as everyone else.
It was then that Dos realized he'd be able to understand the world better if he ate more games, which was equally weird to him as it must have been for Northridge.
The next game he chomped to bits was a word learning game developed for elementary school students (a feeble attempt in marketing to everyone else). As soon as it was churning in his stomach, he turned to Northridge and asked, "What's with the humans? They are running out of the store when there is all this free food!"
The way he talked was a bit robotic at first, but it was because the game he ate hadn't a word of slang.