The Player Blackout Read online

  I winced. “How does one become an Arch-nemesis of the Ninja Guild, if I may ask?”

  “Don’t know,” said Cy with a shrug. “All I know is that you really have to go out of your way to deliberately piss off a faction that badly! Like I said, don’t worry about it. It’s pretty unlikely to happen. You’re more likely to bump into Maverick himself while grocery shopping than becoming an Arch-nemesis of some random faction!”

  Despite Cy’s reassurances, I still didn’t feel entirely safe. But I decided not to worry about it right now. Even if the Ninja Guild hated me now, it would probably be a while before I ran into them again. Right now, I should just be happy that that fight went so much better than my Origin Story fight. Having actual Powers really did make a difference in this game. That just made me want to get more and better Powers. Skills could be useful, too.

  Speaking of Skills, I checked out the notification I got when I dodged one of the red Ninja Assassin’s attacks:

  Skill unlocked: Dodge Level 1. Gain superhuman reflexes that allow you to dodge basic attacks. Unlike other Skills, Dodge works off your Evasion Stat, so as you increase your Evasion, you will make Dodge better as well.

  Huh. Given how low-leveled I was, being able to Dodge would be useful until I got stronger.

  A groan caused me and Cy to look over and see Dillo uncurling from his ball form. He was looking at the dead yellow Ninja Assassin with a grimace on his face. I wondered why he didn’t look happy. After all, we had just saved his life from those ninjas.

  “Hey, Dillo, are you okay?” I asked as Cy and I walked over to him.

  Dillo sighed as he got to his feet, which was when I noticed that he was even shorter than me. “Yeah, I guess I am. Curl buffs my Defense a lot, so I only took, like, one point of damage per hit. But I can’t fight back when I’m Curled so those ninjas would have probably killed me given enough time.”

  I stopped in front of Dillo and looked him over with a frown. “Are you supposed to be a tank or something? You look like one.”

  “It’s my Class,” said Dillo as he dusted off his armor, which was slightly dented from where the Ninja Assassins had been hitting it. “I’m a Powered Armor. That means I have great Defense and Energy, but my Strength is pretty low and I don’t get too many offensive Powers. So yeah, I’m basically a tank, which makes it hard for me to fight, but I’m pretty good at defense.”

  “Huh,” I said, scratching my chin. “Why are you so glum? We defeated the ninjas and saved your life.”

  “Yeah, that’s nice and all and I’m thankful for what you did, but …” Dillo shrugged. “I got a notification that I failed my mission.”

  “Wait, why?” I said in surprise.

  Dillo looked at me. “One of the conditions for completing my mission was that I wasn’t supposed to abandon the guy who hired me. Even though he didn’t get killed, I still failed the mission anyway.” Dillo looked at his feet. “And I needed to complete this mission, because a rare piece of armor that I need for my character was one of the rewards. Now, though, I’ll never get it.”

  “Can’t you just do the mission over again?” I asked.

  Dillo shook his head without looking up at me. “Nope. This was a special one-off mission, which means I will never get a chance to do it again. And I was so close, too. But whatever. I’m used to messing up at the last minute. It’s not a big deal. I’ll just have to save up the credits to buy that piece of armor from one of the stores later.”

  I frowned. I felt bad for the guy, even though I didn’t know him well, and wanted to help him, but it seemed like there was nothing I could do for him.

  “Cheer up, buddy,” said Cy, patting Dillo on the back. “It’s not the end of the world. There are always other missions you can complete.”

  Dillo, however, just shrugged off Cy’s words and turned away. “Thanks, but like I said, I’m used to it. I’ll just go back to my Base and see how my Sidekick is doing. She’s probably wondering where I am.”

  “But don’t you want to loot the ninjas first?” I said. I pointed at the dead yellow ninja. “Or ninja, I should say, because I blew the other one up into a million little pieces.”

  Dillo looked at me in bewilderment. “You mean you aren’t going to loot it yourself? But you killed it.”

  “I know,” I said gently, “but I doubt it has anything I want. Plus, you were the one who fought the ninjas. If anyone should get first dibs on potential loot, it should be you.”

  It might have seemed strange that I was being so nice to a complete stranger, but I couldn’t help it. Dillo reminded me of myself when I was younger, before I became confident in myself. It sounded to me like Dillo was having a bad day, so I wanted to make sure at least one thing went well for him. And besides, unlike Cy, Dillo was a player, which meant there was an actual human being behind that character, which meant I couldn’t be as snarky as I usually was when dealing with people in this game.

  A small smile appeared across Dillo’s face. “Thanks, man. I’ll go do that.”

  Dillo lumbered over to the dead ninja and quickly searched the corpse. He stood up and turned to face me, still smiling. “I found one hundred credits and about ten throwing stars, which I should be able to sell on the market for some serious cash. Then I’ll be able to buy that piece of armor I wanted to get from the mission for free. Thanks again!”

  Dillo turned to leave, but then he paused and looked over his shoulder. “By the way, my name is Dillo.”

  “Winter,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Same here.” Dillo hesitated. “Hey, um, do you want to be friends?”

  I blinked. “Friends? What do you mean?”

  “He’s talking about adding you to his Friends List,” Cy explained. “You can befriend other player characters by sending or accepting friend requests. By adding someone to your Friends List, you can see when they’re online and send them messages anytime you want.”

  I stroked my chin. “Well, I guess so. How do you—”

  I immediately heard a small ping and saw a folder in my menu labeled ‘MESSAGES.’ Opening it, I saw this notification:

  [Hero Dillo] has sent you a friend request! Accept? Y/N

  Seeing no harm in this, I accepted Dillo’s friend request right away and saw his name and avatar appear on my Friends List, along with a notification in my inbox informing me that Dillo and I were now connected on Capes Online’s Messenger app and that we could send and receive messages to each other whenever we wanted.

  “Thanks again,” said Dillo. He took a step back. “Well, time for me to go. See you around, I guess.”

  With that, Dillo turned around and ran out of the alleyway, leaving Cy and I standing by ourselves in the dark alleyway.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Gee, that Dillo guy sure seems like a nice guy,” Cy remarked once Dillo disappeared from view. “But he seems so scared and depressed for some reason. Not sure why. After all, life is pretty awesome.”

  I said nothing to that. Although I did not know the reasons behind Dillo’s depression, I knew that I was still rather depressed about my fate. While Dillo was just an ordinary player who could log on and off the game at will, I was stuck here for the rest of my life. None of my friends or family knew I was even still ‘alive,’ if you could call this living. All they knew was that I had died in a car crash trying to capture that idiot Bryce.

  But there was no way I could explain that to Cy, so I shrugged and said, “Maybe he’s just having a bad day or something.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Cy. He whipped his head toward me so fast that I was surprised he didn’t get whiplash. “Oh, I forgot! You leveled up!”

  I looked at Cy in bewilderment. “How did you know that?”

  “As your Sidekick, I can sense whenever you gain a new level,” Cy explained. “And you can see when I level up as well, although I unfortunately didn’t get to level up yet. But I’m not that far away from my next level up. Probably one more fight should do it. Anyway
, you should check out your Stat and Power Points and see what you can do.”

  Seeing as I didn’t have anything better to do, I nodded and pulled up my character sheet again:

  Secret Identity: Winter

  Real Identity: Nyle Ash Maxwell

  Level: 2

  EXP: 50/200 (150 EXP to the next level)

  Available Stat Points: 4

  Available Power Points: 2

  Alignment: Hero

  Class: Fighter

  Reputation: Unknown

  Powers: Super Strength [Level 1], Ice Beam [Level 1]

  Skills: Scan [Level 1], Dodge [Level 1]

  Equipment: Ice Man Costume [Powers: 1/5]

  Health: 20

  Stamina: 15

  Strength: 20

  Defense: 12

  Charisma: 5

  Intelligence: 11

  Agility: 18

  Evasion: 6

  Accuracy: 10

  Dexterity: 17

  Energy: 10

  Luck: 1

  HERO STATS

  Courage: 10

  Justice: 11

  Trust: 5

  Fame: 0

  Willpower: 9

  I stroked my chin in thought. “Hmm … which Stats should I increase?”

  “Whichever ones you want,” said Cy. “It is totally your decision. All depends on what you want to do and how you want to specialize.”

  I frowned but was not surprised by Cy’s answer. I looked over my character sheet again and thought through what, exactly, I wanted from this game. Back when I played the original Capes Online, I had min-maxed my Energy Stat to ridiculous levels in order to maximize my ice Powers. Yet I felt very little motivation to spend too much time thinking about this when I didn’t have any real intention of staying here. A part of me still didn’t accept that I was going to spend the rest of my life in a video game and developing a growth strategy for my character seemed too final somehow, as if it would signify that I was not going back.

  Shaking my head, I closed my character screen and said, “I can’t decide. I’ll figure that out later. Right now, I want to explore the city and get to know the place a little better before I do anything.”

  “Okay!” said Cy. “We’re not too far from Main Street right now. Let’s go.”

  The two of us walked down the rest of the alleyway until we soon emerged from between the two buildings into a shockingly crowded street.

  Everywhere I looked, I saw tons of people, a mixture of players and NPCs of every stripe. The absolute variety of players was shocking. I saw one guy who looked like a massive golem, his huge stone feet leaving deep depressions in the pavement where he stood. I saw a big muscle-bound Fighter who was flexing his muscles in front of a couple of female Heroes who might have been twins, their Costumes resembling the yin-yang symbol. Overhead, a Hero who looked like a humanoid bald eagle soared overhead, his Sidekick—a sparrow-like humanoid—struggling to keep up with his incredible speed.

  Many players were either walking on their way to who-knows-where or else standing around talking. A busy outdoor cafe, Super Coffee, which had a sign with a coffee cup wearing a cape, was full of Heroes and NPCs in equal measure. I watched as players exchanged credits for cups of steaming hot coffee, although one Hero was flirting with a pretty NPC waitress, which I thought was kind of weird, given how NPCs weren’t even real people.

  But even from across the street, the scent of freshly brewed coffee made my stomach growl. It smelled almost exactly like the coffee served by the coffee shop in my hometown, except somehow richer and more delicious than any coffee I had smelled in the real world.

  In fact, there really wasn’t any way to distinguish between the game world and the real world, now that I thought about it. Even the NPCs acted almost exactly like humans, to the point where I had a hard time telling the difference between players and NPCs. It helped, of course, that I could see who was a player and who was an NPC. Players always had [HERO] as their title, while NPCs usually had [SIDEKICK] or [CIVILIAN], although I noticed a handful of NPCs had titles like [WAITRESS] and [HOBO], based on one particularly ratty-looking NPC who was sitting at a street corner with an overturned cap on the street before him that was already half full of money.

  More importantly, however, was the massive metal statue rising in the center of the street in front of what appeared to be the courthouse. It was a hyper-realistic depiction of a superhero I vaguely recognized. He was tall and powerfully built, with a wide chest and a long, flowing cape. He wore a simple Domino mask over his eyes, while his hair was combed back in a very neat way. His sightless eyes looked down upon all of the NPCs and players in the area like a watchful protector.

  “Here we are,” said Cy, spreading his arms wide. “Main Street Adventure City! Isn’t it awesome?”

  “It’s busy,” I said, stepping out of the way of an NPC [BUSINESSMAN DONALD] who was talking on the phone to someone about profits and losses this quarter. “Much busier than I expected.”

  “This place is always busy,” said Cy, lowering his arms. “That’s why I like it. There’s always someone new to see or talk to or hang out with. Even better, I’ve only been thrown out of Super Coffee over there once.”

  Cy said that while pointing at the coffee shop across the street, like it was a great accomplishment.

  “Um, do you get thrown out of coffee shops often—?” I said.

  Cy nodded, his smile never leaving his face. “Yep. Every time I drink too much coffee, the caffeine gets me going like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve been banned from …” Cy quickly counted on his fingers before shrugging. “Pretty much every coffee shop in the city at least once and half of them twice. But don’t worry. The lady who runs Super Coffee likes me. Or at least I think she does. Women can be hard to understand sometimes. If she throws burning coffee at your face, does that mean she likes you or dislikes you?”

  I was now starting to wonder if Capes Online had deliberately given me the one Sidekick in the game who always seemed to get in trouble. Maybe Chuck did it just to get back at me for yelling at him in the Waiting Room. He seemed like the kind of guy to behave passive-aggressively toward people he didn’t like.

  “Yeah, I can imagine caffeine probably wouldn’t be good for you,” I said. I rubbed my stomach. “Let’s go get some coffee. I haven’t had a good cuppa in a while.”

  “Wait,” said Cy. “We don’t have any money, though. How can we buy coffee without money?”

  I glanced at my wallet and grimaced at the big fat zero. “You’re right. Well, maybe we should complete a mission first before—”

  A small ping in my ears alerted me to a message from Dillo. I opened the message in my inbox and read:

  Hi, Winter. I feel bad about running off on you like that without properly thanking you for your help. Hope I didn’t come across as too ungrateful.

  Even though you told me to take all the loot, I still don’t feel right taking it all for myself. So I’ve attached half the credits and half the loot to this message. You can sell the ninja gear if you want or use it yourself, but I wouldn’t do that if I were you because the Ninja Guild really doesn’t like it when people use ninja gear without their permission.

  Thanks again,

  Dillo

  That was when I noticed the attachment to the message. Clicking the attachment, I immediately saw 50 credits appear in my wallet and five Ninja Throwing Stars and a Ninja Mask appeared in my inventory.

  Surprised but pleased, I sent Dillo a message back thanking him for his generosity and closed my inbox and said to Cy, “Well, looks like we’re going to be able to get some coffee after all. Dillo just sent me half of the money he looted from the ninjas. It’s fifty credits.”

  “That should be more than enough for a cup for both of us,” said Cy. “Come on. Let’s go get some.”

  The two of us made our way across the street to Super Coffee. Although the coffee shop was nearly full, we managed to find a single table near the street that was comp
letely abandoned. Once we sat down, a pretty brunette waitress—who reminded me far too much of Sally—came over to us and took our orders before vanishing into the cafe and reappearing almost immediately with two steaming hot mugs. She placed them both on the table between us and I paid her for the drinks and then she left.

  “Yummy tea!” said Cy as he picked up his mug and sipped it. “Deee-licious!”

  I paused before sipping from my cup. “Tea? I thought you ordered coffee.”

  “I wanted to, but you know what caffeine does to me,” said Cy with another sip of his cup. “So I try to drink tea when I can, although I do miss coffee sometimes.”

  I nodded and sipped my own cup. It really was delicious. It was the richest and smoothest coffee I’d ever tasted, just hot enough to be comfortable but not so hot that it burned my mouth. It was so good that I practically downed the entire thing in one gulp and put the now-empty mug on the table.

  “Whoa,” said Cy, staring at me in surprise. “And I thought I was the caffeine fiend around here!”

  I smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s just been so long since I’ve had a good cup of coffee that it surprised me how good it was.”

  Truthfully, I was surprised at how realistic it tasted. I shouldn’t have been so surprised by now, because Capes Online really was incredibly realistic, aside from a few concessions made to make certain things easier like respawning upon death.

  “It’s good stuff,” said Cy, nodding.

  That was when a new notification appeared in my vision:

  Buff added: Caffeine. Agility and Stamina increased +10% for three hours.

  Interesting. So it seemed like what you ate and drank in this game could affect you. I dismissed the notification before going into my settings and disabled random notification from popping up during battle. I still remembered how these dumb notifications had gotten me killed in my Origin Story and I had no intention of letting that happen again.

  Closing my settings, I sat back in my chair and said, “Cy?”

  “Hmm?” said Cy, who was in the middle of sipping his tea.

  I gestured at the other people sitting around us. “I see lots of Civilians, Heroes, and Sidekicks, but I don’t see any Villains.”