This is based off of a dream I had less than thirty minutes before I began writing it. Sorry if it's a little weird, but my dream was just as freaky. Rating upped for graphicness and language.

-:-

As an agent, I should be appalled by the events of the last twenty four hours. Instead, I can only sit and wonder at the versatility of children. Sometimes, they are scared of Boogiemen; sometimes they are Boogiemen.

As my head is reeling, now, with horrible truths, I find it ironic that my mind keeps circling around the first day I was on this case, a day that was peaceful and happy for me, and the day that I got mixed up in Ultra-gaming. I didn't expect much to come of it. As always when I'm in my "Agent"-I'm so cool, I know everything- state of mind, I was wrong about so many things.

A Cyboro Agent is a mediator that goes into a game and patrols all of it's players. The Ultra-gamer's Corp. gave out special X Stations to the people who where interested and could pay and sent out a game to test them. When I ordered one, from my Minority Junction, Chicago flat, I'd heard that X Stations where the compiled efforts of all types of serious game producers to create a consol that brought together all game companies. This would make consumers buy this consol more than any others, even though all others were outdated and they really had no choice anyway, and all game makers wouldn't have to choose one consol over another for the best market, even though they really didn't have a choice either. Everybody gets a better deal. Note the sarcasm.

Honestly, I was never a serious gamer. I thought that everyone who thought of themselves as serious gamers were pathetic in the fact they had nothing better to do with their time. But I was interested in being able to play all my favorites, like the four part .Crackseries and Empire Souls, on one consol that would, with the proper attachments, put me right in the game.

When I got the package, I could've sworn they had only sent me half of what I'd ordered. The package fit in my arms like a birthday cake. I searched the box for a "No return upon opening" sticker, but found none. If I had I probably would've returned the damn thing right then and there. Instead, I took it to my kitchen/dining room and began cutting the industrial tape that was holding it in.

When I'd opened the plain white box, it occurred to me that the X Station looked suspiciously like a giant, black disk eating lady bug. It was dome like in shape, the top of which ejected out to accept the game disk. The power switch was at the base and the reset and eject buttons where at the top as well. There were no ports for controllers, but there were four remote receivers. Apparently, wireless was the way to be with the X Station. It only plugged into an outlet and the TV.

I read in the letter of thanks/instructions that the damn thing even had an instant uplink to the Ultra-gamer's satellites, allowing any online games to happen simultaneously for everyone without all the extra wires and garbage. It was only thirty bucks for a twelve month subscription; 5.99 for every month after without a subscription. I'd had it set up in moments.

I looked around for the demo game they promised me. I ordered more than three attachments, so I got a free demo game. In the bottom of the box I found the game Agents Cyboro. It wasn't what I'd asked for, but I'd gone to all the trouble of setting the damn thing up and there was no way I was gonna sit there in the middle of my "new toy" gaming rush and wait for those idiots in the Ultra-gamers Corp corner offices to get their facts straight. Just to make sure it wasn't mail fraud, I checked the lid of the box again. Yup; my address. My name and number on the letter of thanks too. Their loss.

I picked up the visor that was supposed to put you right in the game. It hooked up the same way the TV did. When I put the game in, I could hear the music from the Ultra-gamer's logo pulsing all around me. For the first time since I'd seen the box, I was glad I'd spent so much for all the little comforts.

Going into Agent Cyboro was like going into Fakez, the long time running simulation game. You got to design your character. Everything was customizable from what color your eyes were to what you wanted your bra size to be. I probably spent hours on that alone. I'm very picky when it comes to things like that.

My Agent name was, and is, for that matter, Kannazuki. I liked the way it sounded, and it's meaning was sort of special to me. Destiny. That is my name. Kannazuki means destiny. You do the math. I chose a teenager body base to start with. At the time, I believed that it was better for everyone to think I was just a kid playing a game; including myself. I get into things and take them way too seriously sometimes. Just ask my RPG partners.

The first level was called "Bust". It was like from a typical war or mafia game in sci-fi mode. You had a target, some limitations and bad guys and you could pick up weapons and ammo, all the while causing your basic destruction of all things stationary. I beat it easily enough, but, after all, it was just the first level. As I was playing, though, I began to think maybe I was getting too much into it, because I would feel my heart racing as I snuck around each corner and could nearly smell the blood of the enemy agents. I look back on that as the first clue I ignored. Stupid bitch.

It didn't stop me from moving on through the second, third or fourth levels. Each one was only a little different from the last, testing me on aim, self control, and efficiency. I began noticing that the higher my score went on each of the levels, the more my credentials meter glowed. It was a small meter in the upper right-hand corner and wasn't even the size of my thumbnail. But every time I passed a level, it would change color slightly so that every fifth level, it would be a totally different color. I never lost a life. At least, not until much later. Then I found out that your credential meter goes down a full color every time you do.

In the sixth level, we began the online training. It signed me on automatically, using my agent name as a screen name. I had the option of filling out a profile for other players to see. It asked my hobbies, country and state of origin and some other trivial things. I didn't think twice about my answers. When it took me to the sixth level finally, I was in an amphitheater. Everything was darkened. I moved to sit down. When I did, I began hearing a conversation. This was a chat room, I realized. I looked at my personal menu for customization and turned on the instant player profile choice. Now, every time I heard someone, their screen name and other things would come up. Convenient, huh?

That's when I got a message from a girl agent named Xena-sDaughter. The email in this game was more like having a personal board messager. It had a bar underneath her name that told me how experienced a gamer she was, her age and even showed me an avatar she'd picked out. She'd seen me come into the level and asked me if I wanted to team up with her on the next mission. Her personal signature was a bunny emoticon and her first name. Amy.

I replied and agreed. I really didn't see the harm in it. Besides, I'd never played a game in a real group before. She then told me she had another friend who was going to form a "mission party" with us. The boy's agent name was Apollo. I thought that these two where way too into their Greek mythology. But I didn't say anything. We were getting ready to go; to get into the main phase of the level, you have to leave the amphitheater. That's when the first shots were fired.

I looked back to see Apollo and Xena both holding their guns up on another player. The player that had been standing before him was now lying on the floor in an all too lifelike puddle of blood.

I thought this was a part of the level, and I was determined to show myself to be just as brave and ready as the two kids that were holding the guy at gunpoint. So I used the darkness of the back of the amphitheater to circle around the offending agent and cut off his exit. I was right up behind him when I put my hand gun right to the back of his head. In the visor, I could see him jump at the feel of cold steel. I felt so heady at that moment. It was beautiful. Apollo and Xena were smiling like cats who had the canary tied to a silver platter.

It was only a game. And we were winning. After that, our credentials meter was almost always purple.

Two days later, I was reading a newspaper at work during a slow moment. I worked the night shift, so it was usually always slow about this time. I noticed some particularly familiar images. The main photo for the story was an outline of a person on a cement floor; the type they do at murder scenes. I couldn't believe it. A 13 year old boy had been shot to death while playing his new X Station. But that wasn't the most surprising part.

I couldn't believe what I read so I pulled up the news on the work computer. I searched all the latest updates on the case. That's when I noticed. The picture in the paper had been at an angle I hadn't seen so I didn't recognize it… The boy was lying in the same position as the one that had been shot in the game. The police had yet to find the bullets that had killed the young man, but the wounds were definitely made by gunshots.

I went to the bathroom and was sick. I tried to convince myself that it was a coincidence. When all else fails, deny, deny, deny. My boss came in while I was having this episode. She told me I could go home, that the editorial staff weren't in any rush and wouldn't need the regular secretary for a while. I thanked her and ran home. It was a while off, and I usually found some sort of public transport, but at the time, I was thankful for the crisp night air and the solitude.

It was a coincidence. It had to be. Just to prove it, I'd get online tonight and talk to the boy that was shot.

In my email, though, was a message from Xena. She said we were going to be accepted as real agents. I sighed in relief. Surely they wouldn't promote us if there had actually been a killing. They'd shut down the game, right? I never bothered to email the boy. I was too scared to find out if he had died. I went on in my fluffy happy cloud of denial as if it had never happened for about two months as I was the commanding Cyboro Agent in an RPG game called Tsunami.

Tsunami was a new type of RPG in that it was geographically based on earth, while it had many fantasy elements added. My personal favorites are the sky and ocean colonies. I also love the choice of wildlife and how easily we can commute to each part of the globe in this game. I wanted to play in this game to forget what had transpired before, and I did. For a while.

One day, one of the marketing engineers from Ultra-gamer's emailed me with a top secret notice. They had coded a special update for the Tsunami game and needed as many agents as I could spare to help transfer the data through the game. It had been a peaceful time, so I could spare all of them. I wish I would have thought twice about actually doing it, though.

What the email didn't mention was that there were now many enemies of Ultra-gamer's. Starting with several of the gamers themselves. I found that out on my own.

Xena and I were walking through one of Tsunami's many sprawling cities. During this visit, I'd chosen my "adult" character. Xena knew me anyway. We'd worked together a lot since that incident. We walked to what we thought looked like a drive thru, but no one had cars in Tsunami, so we weren't sure what it really was supposed to be. That didn't matter at the time. It doesn't now, either.

We were walking and talking. It's what we did. Patrol and communicate at the same time. We walked past the drive thru, and that's when I noticed her. She was standing on the roof of the building, pretty as you please. She was watching us with golden eyes that looked like the very definition of crazy. I was instantly on my guard. She saw this and smirked. I studied her. She looked like Flag from .Crack but her outfit and weapon were closer to White Lily's. I still can't figure out how she found me. She must've been watching Xena, but Xena was usually much more alert than that.

When Xena spotted her, she called out a greeting and announced that she hadn't realized people were allowed to loiter on Tsunami's rooftops. I'll never forget the look in the girl's eyes as she replied. Carolina Fanning in Play a Game was almost as scary. Their faces looked a lot alike, as well.

"I bet you also didn't know that people could be killed from this game, did you, Cyboro bitch?" She lifted her sword on her shoulder, clutching the handle with both hands. "This one's for you, little brother."

As suddenly as I could push Xena left and dodge right, she was on the ground, shoving her sword a good foot into the asphalt where we'd been. As Xena and I got up, pointing Agent guns at her; the only guns used in this game were for agents; she smiled a crazy smile that matched her creepy eyes. She lifted up the sword very slowly and we watched as an oily black liquid came spewing out of the hole. She then slowly backed up to the building, watching with morbid satisfaction as Xena and I kept our attention on the materializing black substance.

"You'd better ru-un." She sang to us. We looked back to see she was on the roof again. Apparently we looked too long, because the next thing I heard was a horrific howling screech. I turned in time to see a cobra like creature with two heads and two, dragon like legs. There was no such creature in Tsunami.

Xena didn't hesitate. She began firing on it. I shouted at her to hold still, that this wasn't a Tsunami creature, but she didn't listen. Her shots lodged into the creature's hide, but there was no indication that she was doing any damage. She began backing up and continued firing, hoping, I believe, to keep the creature at bay.

Every step she took backwards, he followed. His mouth was drooling. I remember how gross I thought it was. I finally opened fire on the thing when Xena had been backed against the wall. She continued to fire, and it continued to advance.

It was a little over two yards away from her when I heard the girl's shrieking laughter. It was as crazy as I now believed her to be. I didn't pay her any attention. I continued to fire, the images of the little boy on the news flashing through my mind. That's when the thing reared it's heads and spit at Xena.

I'd never heard such a horrific scream or seen such carnage as the thing's spit seemed to melt Xena's very flesh. She sounded like she was really in pain. When there was nothing left but a puddle of mucus, the cobra dragon finally began reverting back to it's oil like state. Now there were three puddles on the ground, I realized. One black, one blood red, and one that looked like what I'd had for breakfast this morning.

The girl's laughter was from some far off place now. Or maybe it was in my head. When I logged out, I was sick again. Two days later, I saw another newspaper. A little girl named Amy had gone missing and the only thing left behind was a puddle of digested bile in front of an X Station. Police were doing tests on the bile to find out it's origin and hopefully find 12 year old Amy. They never did. It never occurred to the police that the bile WAS Amy.

I never wanted to play that stupid game again. I wanted to trash it and hide under my bed. But I'd made a promise. I had to help get that upgrade to the proper place. I just had to make sure that girl didn't show up. Then I'd be fine.

The day that I was supposed to meet with Ultra-gamer's top men for a strategy pow-wow, I sent Apollo. He hadn't heard what had happened to Xena. He hadn't made the connection between her and the mysterious disappearance of Amy.

It wasn't my concern. I wasn't talking to anyone. I'd been put on mandatory vacation at work because everyone seemed to notice a "drastic change in my attitude." I'd become paler, quieter, and moody. Frankly, I was scared. I couldn't deny what had happened to Xena the way I had that little boy. Xena had been too close to me. I had been there when it happened.

The next day, the email in my X Station inbox was not very reassuring. Apollo had made it to the meeting, but there had been an "anonymous" raid on the meeting and he had not sighed back on since a strange player destroyed him. If I'd looked bad before, I looked downright shitty now. All the color in my face was gone. My hair was dead, I'm sure, from lack of proper nutrients. The only thing holding me together was the thought that I was the only one left.

It seemed like everyone around me was dropping like flies and I had no idea why. The next train of thought I got caught it was revenge. That girl had to be the cause of this. I'd take her down, and everything would be fine. But mostly, I was scared.

The day of the transport came. I'd created a character specially for this. It was a male character that looked like the Operatives from the hit movie The Milieu. Gravestone sunglasses and all. We were in the building that had been used to store the upgrade. I went into a room with glass walls to retrieve it when I noticed that some of my agents were fakes. I could recognize the hair from that girl. She seemed to be hanging around with two particular boys.

The upgrade item was a white box, like the one my X Station had come in. I switched the upgrade for a useless item I had, called the Blue Bomb. If it hit water, it would cause a massive explosion. But who needs that when they're an agent and has a gun?

That's when the girl brazenly walked in and offered to go the rest of the way with the transport. I smiled at her from behind my dark glasses and handed her the box with the bomb inside. "Good Luck." I saluted her. She smiled the same old crazy smile. I walked out of the room, down a flight of stairs and was about to hurry down another when I noticed a small boy character sitting there. He had haunted looking eyes and flaming orange hair. His character looked like he hadn't eaten for a week.

I felt compelled to sit and talk with this little kid. Right in the middle of getting the heck out of dodge, and I want to sit down and exchange words with a kid. That's how crazy I was. I was even crazy enough to sit down with him and ask him if he was alright.

That's when he smiled at me. The same crazy smile that the girl had worn. "My sissy's been taking good care of me." He looked at me curiously and stated as an after thought, "Do you taste good? My sissy always brings me people to eat, but I've only had a few that taste good that she hasn't over cooked. Can you cook?" His crazy smile that rivaled his "sister's" made me wonder exactly which one of us was crazier.

I laughed. Despite the horror, despite the morbid, sickening belief in my gut, I laughed. I pulled out my gun and shot the kid in less than the time it took me to think about it. But I still laughed. I laughed until I cried. I shot the sprinkler system out too. They turned on all over the building. I was still laughing.

Then, I heard the explosion. The little boy's body exploded a few seconds after I heard it. Come to find out, the four kids I saw that day were living together in an old abandoned building on the southern part of town. It exploded that day for some unknown reason. I didn't really keep up with the case. The children where 5, 10, 13, and 14 years of age. The girl's name, I found out, was Jenna. She loved .Crackand Tsunami games.

I signed out with the upgrade item in my inventory. I never logged on again. I keep waiting for someone to come and assassinate me for holding up progress, but apparently…

Everyone's gone mad. No one realizes what happened. But I killed the monster. Good agents always kill the monster. I did it. No one else can ask me to do anything. Even if the monster was a baby. Does that make me a monster? Too much thinking…

My X Station learned to fly today. It flew really well until it hit the road and the 18 wheeler smashed it. I'm not a serious gamer, after all. And Kannazuki will just have to find someone else to screw with.

-:-

Opinions anyone? I'm totally open to all reviews. I wrote this in the middle of the night after a nightmare. You can imagine what it was about. Flames welcome too. I'll use them to destroy that dream in my head.