Welcome to Gaia! ::

My sister and I are co-writing this. We don't know much about what we want to happen, but we just put this much together and wanted feedback.
*********

For some reason, the Doctor had recently been repeatedly drawn to early 21st century Earth. Today, he had arrived in Japan, year 2017. The TARDIS had been set to random, it could have gone anywhere in the galaxy. For some reason, it had come back to earth. That didn't happen often anymore. Not since Earth had become his only home rather than his home-away-from-home. Japan was new though. He hadn't been to early 21st century Japan before. So there he was, in a little cafe. Apart from the sweet young lady working there and a fellow customer seated halfway across the room with a game controller and visor that seemed to work as a sort of portable screen the place was empty. It was a quiet little place; nothing seemed to be going on, no concerned expressions or impending doom. It was nice, as it often was before things went horribly wrong. The young man did have quite the intense look on his face after all. The thought that perhaps his next adventure would be related to probably a difficult stage in a video game crossed, and was dismissed from his mind.
"Dining alone?" The girl inquired with a professional smile. The Doctor was briefly tempted to offer to have her join him, but he knew there was no way to phrase such an offer without coming off as flirtatious or worse. She was very pretty, and there was a certain exhaustion in her eyes that only someone fed up with sexuality to the point of sensitivity on the subject had.
So instead he nodded a single dip of his head followed by rolling it back a bit. "Yeah" he admitted. The girl's professional smile took on a note of sympathy. He got that look a lot lately. Was he really so transparent that everyone could tell he hated traveling alone? He felt he had to clarify "by choice!" realizing only when she looked amused that his voice had squeaked...and still not caring. Especially since she obviously didn't believe him.
"Well, what would you like to eat tonight sir?" she asked, gesturing to the hand-written on whiteboard menu on the wall by the door to the kitchen. He almost really wanted to invite her to sit with him then, noticing the faint lightening of her otherwise black hair that indicated a recent, failed attempt, to dye it blond. She was likely enamored of western culture, or at least appearance. He didn't though, not wanting to be any more interesting than he absolutely had to be. Honestly, he was in something of a mood for dull.
After looking past her long enough to skim the menu, he returned his gaze to meet her eyes. "Curry." he decided, having not really known what he was going to order until the word had been spoken. "Not the spicy one or the mild one, the one right there, right between them." he pointed past her, to the word. Then, turning his attention back to her, he continued, babbling about curry and his choice of curry and a few other things that he lost track of until they'd made her laugh.
Mostly, he'd lost track of his own words because of a vague feeling of something close. A major flux, a severe weakness in time. Space even, he'd almost say. As if this place had suddenly become a hotspot of, dare he think it, interdementional activity. His eyes turned to the man with the game, whose face had become pinched with concentration and...was that fear? The tie to this location and the small number of people involved made him feel like either abruptly leaving or bringing the other two as close as he could to protect them until the crisis passed. She made a joke back at him, something of a pun on whatever he'd said. He grinned in return. "Tell you what." he offered. "Why don't you bring out an extra bowl and join me? I'll cover it." She seemed to hesitate, then he added "Invite him too if you think you could get him to pay attention to something other than his game for a minute."
She looked over at her other customer, who was completely engrossed, pounding the keys of his controller furiously. She turned back to the Doctor, mouth open to answer when the first sign of everything falling apart occurred. The man with the game suddenly screamed, a terrified, agonized sound that pulled the Doctor suddenly to his feet and practically dragged him across the room to the man. As the Doctor approached, the game playing victim stiffened and collapsed. The Doctor caught him before he crashed hard from his seat onto the ground, barely keeping him from slamming his head on the edge of the table on the way down.
Lowering him gently to the floor, the Doctor checked the strange man for signs of consciousness. There were none. He checked the device over the man’s eyes, technology he wasn't particularly familiar with. After checking the man's closed eyes he turned his attention to the visor. For only a brief moment, he placed it over his own eyes. He pulled it back instantly, before what he'd seen had registered. Then he allowed it to register. Static, something fuzzing and breaking apart. Something had malfunctioned. The Doctor turned his attention back to the man, shaking him now, calling to him and trying to revive him.
The girl stood over them, panicking. The Doctor looked up, calmly ordering "Call an ambulance." She complied, racing into the back room. He heard her dial, and make contact with an emergency operator who she was describing the situation to. He turned his attention back to the man, but was startled suddenly by the girl's use of the word "coma". His attention returned back to the man who was, in fact, suddenly comatose. The obvious question of how she had known from her mere glance deserved to be asked when she came back.
"They're on their way." she began when she did. Then she looked at the man and shivered. Before he could ask, she stated "I don't think I'll be logging on anytime soon after this."
"Logging on?" The Doctor echoed "What do you mean, Logging on?"
Unlike the surprise at his ignorance he'd expected, she reacted quite calmly, or as calmly as one could react in this situation, as if she'd expected him not to know. "To 'The World'." She saw his confusion, and continued."It's an online game. The one he was playing. I know...it's the only one the new MD2's are compatible with. There's been rumors on the forums for months about people going into real-life comas, but I...I just dismissed them as rumors. Forum fairy-tales, just people overreacting to the incident seven years ago. I didn't think..." she shook her head. "Not until now." Then she shivered, and burst into tears.
The Doctor stood, moving away from the comatose man whom he could no longer help at the moment. "Seven years ago?" he echoed, seeking both information and to comfort her some at
the same time.
She nodded, then shrugged. "I wasn't playing online games yet back then..." she looked at the man and a sob escaped her throat with a cry of "oh god!" and practically collapsed against him. He held her for a moment, but only a moment, before he took her by the shoulders and pulled her back. A glance at her name tag Mikoyo. "Mikoyo?" he spoke gently to her, then, more firmly "Miss Mikoyo." adding the term of his language that translated to the expected honorific in hers. "Miss Mikoyo, look at me." She did, eyes full and entire body trembling. "It's alright. You are alright, and he'll be alright, I promise you. Alright?" She didn't respond. "Alright?"
She nodded, and started to pull away, rushing to the door to open it for the paramedics. She held onto her strength as the paramedics studied the man and asked both of them questions. A quick flash of his psychic paper confirmed to them his identity as a European Doctor so they accepted his explanation of events and the earliest part of the man's condition. Words were exchanged to describe him, such as "Outdoor Introvert" and "Another one."
When the Paramedics left, the Doctor moved back to Mikoyo's side, placing a reassuring hand on her upper arm. She turned to him slightly and, voice hoarse, offered. "Thank you, Doctor." He smiled gently and nodded slightly to her in acknowledgement. "I would've completely fallen apart if you hadn't been here when..." she trailed off.
"Glad I could help." he replied. The words felt hollow, because, at the moment, as far as he knew...he couldn't.
***
When the cafe was empty and closed, the Doctor walked away from it, hands deep in his pockets and thought. Rumors about people falling into real-life comas while playing an online game. And not just rumors, he'd seen it with his own eyes. In his head, he went over what types of digital creatures existed, recalling that earth wasn't contacted by any of its virtual neighbors until late 21st century, and those communications were cut off when the respective societies realized their incompatibility. Standard internet had been replaced with new forms of wireless communication that had developed during the conflict, and the two worlds separated. It was something the Doctor knew academically, he had usually kept away from that particular factor of that era as the short war that had unfolded during that period was almost never in flux.
Still, the internet wasn't supposed to become dangerous for another seventy years at least. So the question was, what exactly had happened to that man today? The more he thought the more there was only one answer. The more he thought about that answer, the more he concluded that it was completely correct. That answer? There was only one way to find out what had happened...and that was to play for himself. This conclusion was cemented by his wandering having brought him directly to the front door of an electronics store with a poster boasting of their association with a game called "The World".
***
Some time later on the Tardis, the Doctor had finished studying the players’ handbook that had come with his new MD2 system and the software to go with it. There were a lot of complexities, something he was grateful for. Somewhere along the lines, it had sunk in just how much ordinary game play he would probably have to go through before anything serious happened. Given his luck that could be as quickly as his first login, but there was nothing to stop it from taking as long as it took him to reach the game's level cap.
The fact that the threat would probably be digital, meaning that rather than his actual technical skills he would have to use his digital characters skills to handle it. The creation of that character data went smoothly enough, he could still see the TARDIS interior from the corners of his eyes, but mostly his vision was occupied with game data. He wondered if it was as weird as it felt to have a name like Doctor and not choose to be a Harvest Cleric. The problem was that a healing class like that wouldn't be able to accomplish much in solo play, which was what he intended to mostly do. He wanted to avoid getting others involved as much as he could, seeing someone else go through what the man in the cafe had was something he had no intention of doing.
He considered the other classes, Shadow Warlock, Twin blade, Blade Brander, Edge Punisher, Tribal Grappler, Steam Gunner, he wasn’t really interested. Lord Partizon caught his eye for a moment, if only because of the word Lord, but the idea of a lance didn't really appeal to him. Instead, he went with the class that, oddly, was traditionally considered the weakest. It was odd because, in its way, the name of the class suited him well. Adept Rouge. In fact, it very nearly fit him too well, including its description as a Jack of all trades, master of none type character. Though he himself had mastered several as well.
Nothing quite like character design to remind you just how...well...brown you are. As the Doctor struggled to make the character look as much like him as the system would allow, he kept noticing his selection of the color brown. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown clothes...he'd never really noticed before. Somehow, he had become very brown, and he wished very suddenly for someone to ask their opinion of something so trivial so he could just have a conversation about it and be done with it in his head. As it was, he was certain he'd be considering it in the back of his head for days.
When he was through with character creation, he logged in. Suddenly, he was surrounded by stone walls glistening in light let in through a huge window at one end of the room from an either rising or setting sun. Just behind him was a glowing blue orb, the chaos gate, which he had arrived from. This was the dome at Mac Anu, the root town that led to all of the areas on the delta server. Taking a few moments to admire the graphics, he decided then to turn to the chaos gate and get started. He had only one set of area words, and he didn't dislike them.
Delta Fly Away Medium's Globe. It was dungeon area, level one, with a mission to collect the treasure from the Beast Temple. Doing his homework had paid off, the Doctor actually knew what he was doing. He warped there, and got started right away, running straight through two halls before he stopped and looked into the first room at his first monsters. Then he took a long, slow deep breath. Surprise attacks were preferred, though he wasn't sure about the concept of just attacking something that seemed to be standing there minding its own business. He knew that they really weren’t, of course. If he tried to cross the room without attacking they would attack him. Also, he was here to level up. Not to mention glowing swords with legs didn't really seem like the sort of thing he'd want to leave around. He tapped gently, approaching slowly. A question mark appeared over one of them, then another, than another. Finally an exclamation point, and they were attacking him. Better for his mind, not so good for his score. It didn't matter. He ran at them, character striking hard with the double blades it carried. Getting hit in return was disorienting, and it took him several moments to distinguish between the red numbers, meaning damage to him, and the white numbers, meaning damage to his opponents.
Miraculously, he succeeded in his first attempt at a Rengeki, and suddenly the battle was over, and experience poured in. He took another deep breath, held it, then released it, and moved on. A jar to the south of the map gave him a Health Drink, which he quickly used. His life had been down to half already. For all his lack of experience, book knowledge was working quite well. In a choice between North and West he chose north, moving across the room at a run. Another hall away, another room, the corner of what looked to be another monster. Another slow approach This time, he also succeeded in a surprise attack. During the fight, his mind wandered slightly, wondering if...if any of this was even worth it. It was a game, and not a very nice one at that. Warnings about a PK system, getting points for sneak attacking the monsters. Pretty typical early 21st century fare. He could have gone through Cyber Connect Corporation instead of putting himself through this.
Despite his distraction, he did better this time, mastering a few extra tricks, specifically guarding. A big help in keeping his HP up, and moved on. It was only one hall farther up that there was a dead end. There were no monsters, only other players. The Doctor had to wonder why, if they were here, there were monsters back on the path to here. He started to approach the attractive-for-an-animated-character female and short, squat beast character he couldn't tell the gender of at a glance when, suddenly, before he had gotten close enough to be seen, the beast character let out a yelp of fear and the human female attacked it.
For the first time, the Doctor reacted as if he weren’t just playing a game. Well, not entirely. The attack that came with the dashing brought by the skill trigger wasn't him in reality. The standing between the attacker and her victim guarding was. "Back off." he threatened the PK, who laughed at him.
"What are you gonna do about it, weakling?" the female Edge Punisher challenged, swiping at his guarding character, then stepping back for a charge attack. That couldn't be guarded against. In fact, if she was any higher than level three, it would be instant death for him. No, he had to remind himself, for his character. Not him. He would still be safe and sound in the TARDIS with no damage to anything but his ego. The knowledge that he had just gotten himself into a situation where he was about to be PK'd less than a whole dungeon into his gaming experience was already a bruise to his ego in and of itself. He'd thought he'd be better at this than that. Really what made it so hard though wasn't the ego bruising, it was the knowledge of his powerlessness in this situation that really got to him. He almost welcomed the excuse to log off and process this experience.
Then, suddenly, his character view was tipping. In one ear he heard the cry of "No!" and realized, all at once, that the very player he'd been trying to protect had just taken a strike intended for him. A strike that, at such a low level, was fatal. He yelled in protest, and got up as quickly as he could, guarding again, propelled by a startling level of rage for something as trivial as a game, ready to take on the PK. Or, so he thought for a moment. The first few clinks of her huge blade on his small ones, the closeness of the tip of her sword to his vision, it was unnerving in the way that only realizing someone with over twice your strength was attacking you could be.
Then, suddenly, much as he had on behalf of the beast character only moments ago, someone intervened. The PK was struck, hard, by a skill trigger attack. He heard the cry of "Lateral Moon!" and saw the PK go down, dying much as her victim had moments before. Easily a level six or seven player had just arrived to help, maybe higher. The Doctor turned and looked. The player in green with reddish hair smiled softly at him, a softness that, were this not a game, the Doctor would have been surprised to see in the face of someone who killed so easily. "Are you alright?"
"Fine." The Doctor assured. "I'm just fine. Thank you."
"You know." the other player commented non-judgmentally, but with a hint of an attempt to mentor "I get the appeal of solo play, but for your first couple levels it's really best to have a party to back you up." Just as the Doctor was about to resist the implication that he needed advice or help to play a game, the stranger smiled and added "If you want, I could go through the rest of this area with you, just to get you out safely. Then I'll help you make a party, if you'd like."
The Doctor stared at him, mildly awestruck by his kindness. He'd expected ego at best, but more likely bossiness. He didn't want to admit the real reason for his surprise though, even to himself. It was rare to be on the receiving end of this kind of aid from a complete stranger. "Thanks." he said simply.
The stranger smiled, a surprisingly genuine smile given that it was being portrayed by nothing but animated pixels. "By the way, I'm Silabus."
"Hello, Sillabus, I'm the Doctor." he introduced himself in return.
"Nice to meet you, Doctor." Silabus replied politely. Then "Ready to go?"
Nodding, he couldn't help his grin. He couldn't resist his usual response "Alons-y." and he tapped the analog stick to run back out of the room.
"Hey wait!" Silabus called behind him. The Doctor turned, and Silabus explained "Look...over there, those baskets have chim-chims in them. You'll need..."
"Chim spheres to get through the area." The Doctor finished "...right." at Silabus' slightly surprised expression that he knew "I read the player handbook." he winced as he looked at the wiggling baskets. "Can't say I'm looking forward to kicking the little things, but..."
He really, really hadn't been. Silabus didn't help with the kicking, explaining that the Doctor needed the chim spheres and as they weren’t in a party together he wouldn't get them is Silabus did the kicking. Needing them and liking the process of getting them were too very different things. All the Doctor could think was just how typically human this was set up to be. Attacking genuinely innocent creatures for what they could contribute to technology and progress. When he was through kicking and collecting and had a solid 25 chim spheres or so, he and Silabus set off again. Turned out, he'd missed a trap chest earlier, which he opened, successfully avoided getting shot by, and got another health drink from. Not bad.
As he and Silabus walked together, he had to ask "So, what's someone at your level doing in a measly little level one place like this?"
Silabus smiled. "Well, I'm in this guild called Canard. It's a support group for new players basically. So I guess you could kind-of say I was looking for you."
The Doctor smiled. Being this solidly on the helped side of this relationship was completely new to him. Yet, he found himself not minding. Silabus seemed like a good guy, the kind of person he would enjoy spending the time it would take to earn his first few levels with. They turned to the west at the intersection from before ,and quickly came to a patch of grass with a platform and a small creature with a question mark thought bubble appearing repeatedly over its head.
"Is that..." The Doctor began.
"A lucky animal." Silabus returned. "Wanna go after it?"
The Doctor considered a moment, inhaling through his teeth. "It's...part of the game." he concluded, and charged in. He "caught" (by kicking, again) the creature fairly quickly. Its high voice touched the line between cute and annoying slightly on the cute side, and he certainly appreciated the extra experience points it gave him, already he was very close to level two.
Chim door, Trap room he had no trouble navigating immidently followed, then they took time to talk as they walked down the corridor to another chim door. "So how long have you been playing?" the Doctor asked.
"Oh, a few months at least." Silabus replied. "It's a great game."
"Except for the rumors" the Doctor half commented, half prompted.
"Rumors?" Silabus echoed.
"Yeah...you know the ones. Ghosts, viruses, Ghost viruses, people falling into real life comas...that kind of thing."
"Oh." Silabus replied, looking suddenly uncomfortable.
Not sure if it was because the topic frightened him or because he knew something, the Doctor pressed. "Have you heard any of those rumors?"
Silabus nodded. "Yeah...I...uh, I have a couple friends who are really into looking at that kind of thing. They generally say I should stay out of it...and really I don't have much problem listening." he paused and "I don't deny that some weird things have happened in this game...so I worry about them sometimes."
Here it was, the Doctor had been led right to it. He was about to ask to be introduced to Silabus' friends when they got to the chim door. The Doctor let them through. When they got through, there were more monsters to face. Somehow, it felt much more right to be fighting with someone else at his side. Someone who reminded him to kick the jars at the far end of the room after destroying the monsters and before moving on.
So it went. When they got into the second block, there was a small creature with a teardrop bubble on the ground. Silabus explained that it needed Chim Spheres, and was part of the follow-up to a quest. Without hesitation, the Doctor complied and gave it the chim spheres it asked for. He continued walking with Silabus, a few more battles, a few more chim spheres to collect, even getting briefly trapped in a place that demanded ten spheres to get out. Silabus handled that one. They took an extra side hall, much like the one they'd met in to get him leveled up further and by the time they reached the Beast Temple, he was very nearly level three.
"Go ahead." Silabus encouraged as they approached the treasure.
Approaching the statue was almost intimidating. Almost. He'd read the back-story, this was a statue of the god of law. When you had the intention of actions that you weren’t entirely sure complied with the law, taking a treasure from a statue of a god of law could easily cause irrational fear. He kicked it, as you did everything you wanted anything from in this game, a theme he wasn't sure he liked; at all. His prize was a Wind Gai Gu, Duel swords level 1: rapid attacks. He looked at Silabus for a moment, equipped his prize, and thanked him.
"It's what I'm here for." Then "Let's go back to town." Silabus started for the platform, and the Doctor followed. As he returned to the town, a rolling score chart told him he had gotten an A overall, with S's and A's for each segment, and had earned a new area word. Dark Tree.
Back in the town, the Doctor smiled at Silabus and, again, thanked him. "No problem." Silabus assured, then "here" a notice that the Doctor had been given Silabus' member address popped up in front of his eyes. He was saying thank you allot today, so had no trouble saying it again then. "Call me if you ever want to form a party, and we could go level up together or something."
The Doctor nodded. "Sounds great." Then, finding this as good a time as any to bring it up. "You could invite some of your other friends too."
"I think I might do that." Silabus agreed. Then, he said goodbye, with the information that, unfortunately, he had some commitments in real life to keep, and logged off.
It had been a crazy day, getting settled into this very different kind of investigation. A quick stop at the save shop so he wouldn't lose his items when he shut down the system. Then he logged out, and pulled off the visor. The unrestricted view of the TARDIS interior was welcome, and he almost felt as if he had actually been out for the last several hours and had just come home. Getting up, he left his game on the bench, and started for the door. It was time to visit some coma patients.

Ah! Good story! .Hack/Doctor Who sounded weird at first, but it actually makes a weird kind of sense. I like it.

But I have to agree, it would be alot easier to read if it was spaced wider.