Theme 51 of 100 in Variation 1: "Sport"

Inspired by the "Bloody Dragon" Kurogane cosplay photograph featuring ~Kaijo, found on ~KawaiiHagaren's gallery. ~KawaiiHagaren kindly let me use the idea for the basis of a picture, and this is what resulted.

In between the final chapter of Tsubasa and the special chapter of xxxHolic where the Tsubasa gang makes a cameo, the three men and one bun land in a world where there's nothing that really needs doing. Without any enemy to fight or mystery to solve, they get caught up in an interactive MMORPG which is so popular that it's like the national pass time of this country. Professional sports and World of Warcraft can only dream of being this popular when they're really, really drunk.

The important concept behind the game is teamwork. You have to play in two-person teams, with one "fighter" and one "specialist". The fighter can be any type of warrior with physical attacks such as archer, swordsman, shooter or bomber. The specialist can be anything with non-physical attacks, such as magic, electricity, chemicals and sex appeal. Once registered, teammates are linked by tattoos that appear on their bodies when they're logged in which allow telepathy (private chat) and sharing.

Everything is shared between teammates including inventory, health and stat points. You can switch stats on the fly, even mid-battle, and learning to use this sharing system well is crucial to survival. If, for instance, a fighter gets mobbed, their specialist might run to a safe spot and choose to throw all of their own agility and dexterity points toward the fighter and then concentrate on long-ranged support that doesn't rely on those two stats, like chugging medicine and then sharing health points. If both get cornered, the specialist might take all the agility to boost their dodge and give most of the defense and health points to the fighter, thus balancing the damage they take.

The object of the game is like any other MMORPG. Fight stuff, collect loot, and own anyone foolish enough to try and PvP you. Each job class comes with a limited selection of outfits, and upgrades come through the addition of power stones that you collect through battle and off of other players.

Kurogane naturally chose to be a swordsman class fighter, and he signed Fye up as a magician class specialist while the man was busy inquiring what the details were for specialists who used sex appeal as a weapon. Syaoran also took the swordsman class fighter job while Mokona became a sprite class specialist. Syaoran and Mokona did respectably, but Kurogane and Fye pretty soon became household names. Despite constant in-fighting they worked perfectly as a team, and Fye in particular took to the game like a fish to water. After a month or so he'd already collected seven of the largest and most powerful type of upgrade stones - an unheard of number even for long-time players - and so many smaller ones that he had to buy a ridiculous amount of jewelry just to equip them all. He equipped three of the large stones, forced two onto Kurogane, and gave one each to Syaoran and Mokona. Kuro-sama protested wearing any upgrade stones at all at first, but grudgingly came to accept that the speed boosts are pretty fun to have, and that it was only smart to up your health points as much as you can.

Everyone except for the noobs gave up trying to kill these two for their loot after a while, but Fye still received about 50 marriage proposals (mostly in-game) per week despite turning every one down flat-pat eye-bat. The company that owns the rights to the game experienced a severe drop in revenue once Mokona's earring signaled that it was time to head on to the next dimension/world, but they recovered by holding contests and games where the prizes were chunks of Fye and Kurogane's inventory, which were turned back over to the company once the travelers knew they had to leave.

[edit] If anyone would like to take a stab at coloring the picture, humongous lineart can be found here: [link] . I'd love to see it and link it here if you do! ^^