Much of what Akihiko says goes in one ear and out the other. I'm that shocked by all of this. I'm only able to process that he created this world in order to control us, and if we die in this game, there is no respawning. If anyone tries to remove the NerveGear, it will send an electric jolt through our bodies and kill us. I'm freaking out as the crowd yells at the robed madman. Voices from around Asia transcend the translation features. I can pick out some of the shouts. Cries of "You can't do this!" and "This is madness!" rise up from the crowd, and soon I'm joining them.
"Baka!" I yell, reverting to my native Japanese. "This is crazy! You can't keep us all in here!"
Akihiko doesn't respond, his face invisible under the hood. "Oh, I almost forgot," he says. His voice bounces off the walls of the plaza. "One last gift."
He tells us to look in our Items menu, I comply, curious, and I feel something changing about me. I'm growing a little bit shorter. My hair feels heavier, like it did in my normal life. I look around, and everyone looks slightly different than they did. I reach for my hair and find it back to its original form: long, dark brown, and wavy.
He's literally brought us into the game, hasn't he?
The red-hooded figure disappears and all of us are left to wonder what happens next. A boy in front of me starts to fall and I catch him.
"They took it off..." he mutters before exploding into millions of small, blue shards. It's horrific knowing that he won't be back. He's died in the real world as well as this one.
We're stuck here.
A/N: I know I do these a lot, and I'm trying to dial down on it, but I forgot to thank my buddy Haruko Kurosawa (the real one) for letting me use her name in this story! Luv ya!