RELAY || Virtual Reality AU

7

More nightmares. More pointless battles ending in death and despair. More days of heroism and searching; unending, unchanging. The days rolled by in their turn and may as well have been identical given the way they merged into one unending battle against his body and the futility of his task.

***

It was a rarity for Toshinori to sleep until his alarm, but now and then he did manage it. Past a certain point, exhaustion kept even his nightmares away for a night or two.

Somehow it left him feeling groggier than ever when slept long enough to be woken by a shrill bleeping which proclaimed that his DUVET had finished for the night. He hauled himself out of bed despite that fact though, staggering over to his kitchenette to make the strongest caffeinated drink he could stomach. Some sort of unholy concoction which would no doubt turn his doctors green—but it managed to keep him awake. Toshinori knocked back a shot or two of it most mornings anyway. He could worry about the long-term effects if he made it that far.

He left his computer running through its start-up sequence while he washed and dressed, with the day's news and patches playing out into the empty room. If he didn't focus on what the synthetic voice was saying, it almost sounded as though someone else were there.

Finally there was no putting it off. He swirled the dregs of his morning wake-up in the cup and knocked them back before settling into his computer rig. Back in the good days, before he'd spent almost every waking moment hooked up to another world, he'd been proud of his setup. The government had funded his custom suspension chair as a business expense—at a rather irregular seven feet tall even in the real world, he'd needed a lot of custom gear in order to be able to function effectively in virtual space.

Even his apartment, spartan as it was, had been adapted specially. Once it had been two floors—the ceilings had been knocked through to give him plenty of headroom. This far below ground, there was no other way to manage it. It had left him lower on floor space than most other heroes afforded on their salaries, but what did that matter? He'd never planned on spending all that much time in reality, anyway.

Setting his jaw, Toshinori got to work adjusting his nerve-impulse sensors, and settled his headpiece in place. He still had time. There was still a chance, however remote, that he could find and capture All For One before his time ran out. One For All was still powerful enough to take him down, even if he didn't manage to find someone else to take up the mantle.

-:Now entering Orientation:- said a familiar, soothing voice in his ear, layered with digital overtones that denoted its age. No one permitted synthetic voices to sound artificial these days. -:Today's wake up exercises will begin shortly:-

There was a brief moment of lag as Toshinori rolled his shoulders and shook his head.

-:Calibrating:- came the voice of IWATOKO, so deeply ingrained in Toshinori's memory that the the words might as well have been playing out in his imagination instead. -:Please follow my instructions carefully for a smooth Kinetic Orientation experience:-

After so many years, he could more or less sleep through Orientation. He could think of quite a few occasions where he'd swear he had. Normally it was only when the exercises were over that he found himself really waking up. Those first few steps outside of his housing unit into fresh air were normally the highlight of his day.

And why shouldn't they be? Blue skies overhead; the wind rustling his hair. Birdsong somewhere in the distance. It was a new day. A fresh day, ripe and early and as yet unspoilt by anyone. His HUD wasn't flagging any incidents within range of him, and all the while that was the case, he meant to sit out in the sun and do some actual research . No doubt his past mentors would have laughed to see him, sat in his favourite quiet park with his HUD set to tangible so that people wouldn't disturb him. Against his large body, the tablet looked comically small, even with the aid of a mod to enlarge it. Sometimes Exploits could be as much a hindrance as a help, and his expanded digital frame was one such drawback.

He'd worked his way through a list of potential candidates which he'd been sent, under the guise of their being finalists in a competition. It wasn't so much that it was a bad way to scout people—Nedzu's ideas were always extremely well thought-out and reasoned—but part of him wondered if he wasn't putting them at risk, just by looking at their names.

True, it had been years since All For One had made any move. As far as most of those who were aware of his existence were concerned, Toshinori's fight with him had caused enough negative feedback that he must have been either deleted or permanently affected by it. He'd made contact, after all, and wasn't that exactly what he'd been told he would need in order for One For All to work?

For a while—a long while, really—Toshinori had allowed himself to believe that he'd won. The confrontation he'd had might have left him with some permanent scars, but in time, he'd be able to refresh his account, safe in the knowledge that One For All was no longer needed.

But if All For One was gone, why could no one restore Shimura Nana's account or correct her incorrect medical records? Why could no one create him a fresh account, free from viruses? Government staff ought to have had sufficient permissions to overwrite the lock on one person having a secondary account. Instead they were denied, time and again. The years had gone by, and his only access to the world he had dedicated himself to protecting was a virus-riddled avatar constantly sending pain impulses through his nervous system.

This wasn't victory. This was revenge. This was All For One. And if he had actually survived, he'd have lists of all the Heroes—past, present and in training. He'd probably have records of all the various Exploits they had, and how to counter them. Ultimately, would it even matter who Toshinori chose to take up the mantle? All For One would see them coming a mile off. Anyone strong enough to be his successor would likely have had their account flagged already.

It was a cycle, endless and depressing, which his train of thought fell into far too often.

Toshinori deactivated his HUD, not even bothering to type out a reply to Nedzu's latest batch of suggestions. He needed to think about something else for a while, before his thoughts turned too morbid. Increasingly, he found them turning towards surrender at idle moments. Found himself wishing he could simply stand down and accept the inevitable willingly, rather than fight and fight until his ability to do so was snatched away without his having any choice at all.

He was halfway to the spiral when the alert flashed up in the bottom right of his vision. A previously flagged griefer two streets over had acted up again, abusing his exploit to harass other users.

Realistically, it didn't need any Hero intervention—the guy was small fry, and his account had already been tagged. The easiest option would be to let the incident play out, and then rollback any stolen or damaged goods later and ban the offender remotely, right when they thought they'd gotten away with it. But Toshinori needed the distraction, and why let people experience the distress of being griefed when he didn't have to?

Life was easier when it was a simple choice between right and wrong, and it didn't get much simpler than apprehending those who violated the terms of use. Particularly when it was such a flagrant breach of the peace as stealing. He brought up the casefile on his HUD as he ran to the area, scanning through the information as best he could while running to intercept the griefer in question.

The fact that the culprit had been identified meant that someone had laid hands on him and filed a report. The fact the culprit was still on the run despite that meant his exploit had probably assisted in his escape. Reading over the information on file explained why—the man's exploit was listed as 'Intangible Avatar'. An exploit like that could have meant anything, but the headshot which accompanied the old report gave some much needed context. By the looks of things, the griefer's exploit made his body malleable and able to change shape, rendering him almost impossible to stop if he found an opening through which to squeeze. Looking over his case notes, Toshinori couldn't help wondering how the man had managed to hold onto his account for as long as he had. It was the sort of ability which practically invited misdemeanours in anyone of wavering morals.

He sped up, but didn't bother using his exploit to get there abnormally fast. By the sounds of things he'd need his wits about him, because it wouldn't be enough to simply grab the offender by the arm and haul him off of whoever he was bothering when caught. What he needed was preparation, and that took time. There was no point arriving to apprehend someone and then being unable to pin them down.