Application for betrayedbyrpg
Player Information:
Player name: Shamera
Personal Lj: tsukishirou
AIM and/or E-Mail: klotho@gmail.com, kl0tho
Timezone: -8:00, PST
Character Information:
Full Name: Prince (Feng Xiao Lan)
Series Taken From: 1/2 Prince
Power Retained: I don't know if REALLY STUPIDLY LUCKY counts as a skill, because seriously, this isn't just the main character hero luck, this is a thousand times more hacks than that. Prince has a very easy time winning games of chance and doesn't even understand how other people lose sometimes, and bad things that happen to him tend to end up turning into really good things. (I don't even know how I'd pull that in-game, haha~)
Background: The first thing to understand about Prince that he's never, ever going to tell anyone is that Prince isn't... well, he's not exactly male. Except he is. Physically, he is 100% a guy, and an exceptionally beautiful one, at that! The second thing to understand which might explain the first thing is-- Prince isn't real. He's a character from Second Life, a MMORPG game created a hundred years in the future, where virtual gaming has been taken to the 99.9% realism factor. Everything a person feels, experiences, touches, eats... anything in the game feels as real as reality does. Except the pain. Pain factor in Second Life has been cut down to 40%, because this is an RPG game, after all, and dying hurts.
So where, exactly, does the story starts? Well, it starts with a university student named Feng Lan (also known as Xiao Lan), who is this pretty little Chinese girl bored out of her mind during summer break. She's an avid player of MMORPGs, just like most of the world by that time, and her twin brother just happened to bring home the latest and newest game of them all-- Second Life! So that brat is bragging about how much better Second Life is, and how awesome he's going to be in it, and she just happens to mention that she's always a higher level than him in the other games. That gets him into a tizzy, and he claims that it's because she's a girl, and girls always level easier because the guys are there to protect them and give them items and stuff and the girls just mooch exp from fights without doing anything! So she gets super angry and decides that she's going to be a great warrior in this game and have gained this status herself and not rely on others for it, and he just laughs in her face. So that's it: the race is on.
Except Xiao Lan's a sly little thing and she cheats a bit by trying to sign on to Second Life before her twin... or anyone else, for that matter, since the grand opening of the game was that night. She signs into the game and encounters a girl who is there to guide her through creating her character... Xiao Lan decides that she needed to be strong to be a warrior, but doesn't like any of her character choices so asks if she could be a guy instead. Seeing as Second Life is 99.9% accurate to reality... this has never been asked before. But because she's actually the first person ever to sign on (geez, guess being a cheat pays off), the higher ups decide, ehh, why not? They grant her wish and Xiao Lan is now the first (and only) person on Second Life who's actually the wrong gender.
Deciding that she wanted to be more beautiful as well, she decides on being an elf, and from then on, the girl who was supposed to guide her through her character creation grew hearts for eyes and decided to finish the character creation herself-- with or without Xiao Lan's approval. So from there is the creation of 'Prince', Xiao Lan's character in Second Life: a white haired elven warrior who's almost too beautiful to be true.
So from the first moment that Prince is 'born' into Second Life, he's being chased around by girls who want him to train with them, do XXX things with them, or be their husband. For Xiao Lan, she never realized how terrifying it was to be a pretty boy- after all, she had always been the fangirl, and this was the first time she was on the other side of the fence. But either way, she's super happy to be a pretty boy- in fact, she's happy every time she looks in a reflective surface.
After adjusting himself (I'm just going to use the masculine pronoun for Prince, and feminine for Xiao Lan or else this will get really confusing fast) to the pain tolerance in Second Life, Prince teams up with Team Rose, who were nice enough to help this weirdo noobie wearing a mask so that he could gather his quest items to get into the warrior class. They head out to fight some wolves, but Prince chickens out last minute seeing their fangs and claws, only to start running away and have the pack of wolves chasing him. They attack him, and he pretty much snaps, thinking that it was a terrible thing for the wolves to be attacking a girl and finally attacks back, using all the techniques Xiao Lan knew about cooking meat, and pretty much butchers the entire gang of wolves, laughing at how easy it was while covered with blood. From that moment on, he gained the title "Blood Elf Prince" from how maniacal he looked then.
Prince parted with Team Rose and gained his warrior class, pulling out his new weapon, a black sword that he thought was really lame until a random girl beat him over the head about how amazing that sword was (and why didn't he contact her earlier?!), thus introducing Lolidragon- the girl who had helped create Prince's character. To his surprise, she's actually a hidden GameMaster playing as a character to report anything strange in-game. They train together, and she reveals that the sword was really rare- it was a weapon that would continue to level up with him. They eventually fight a boss that they could barely defeat, and Prince employs some moves that Xiao Lan saw in old video games and defeats the boss... really unconventionally. They rest, and Prince reveals to her why he wanted to be a guy in the game- not just because of the bet with Xiao Lan's brother, but because he wanted to be able to swear and not be called vulgar, fight and not be called violent, laugh at lewd jokes and not be called a corrupt girl. He wanted to do all the things that guys could do and not destroy Xiao Lan's image.
After hearing that, Lolidragon decided for them that from that moment on, they would create a new legend in Second Life- not to be the trophy wives of the best players, but to become the best players in all of Second Life.
So now you have the dynamic duo, pretending to be a couple so that girls would leave Prince alone (got into a lot of trouble, too- Team Rose got a new member, Fairsky, who fell in love with Prince at first sight and decided she was going to kill Lolidragon to have Prince), when they meet up with Wolf, a beast... priest? He helps them out in a situation and they go off training together, meeting Doll, the angelic necromancer. What an odd group they were gathering: a elven warrior, a hidden GM, a beast priest, and an angel necromancer? They all really picked the wrong race for their job classes!
Now, while they were all level grinding and such, they pretty much got owned by some random boss, and were all sent back to their rebirth points (where you go when you die- you also lose one level each time), where Prince decides to wander around the city for a little while before meeting up with his team again... this is when he first met Guistamos, the demon bard. Gui was just playing music on the streets when Prince's pretty-boy radar started going off because, wow, Gui's really pretty and Xiao Lan is a fangirl after all, so Prince was super excited when the bard made a beeline toward him. He was pretty much in fangirl heaven when Gui kneeled before him and treated him like a princess, until Lolidragon PMed him and he told her what was happening... and she reminded him that he was currently a male.
Deeeeeerp. That totally shattered Prince's fairy tale illusions, and he asked Gui if he knew he was currently kneeling before a guy, in which Gui responded quite enthusiastically that of course he knew, and Prince was so pissed off he accidentally on purpose killed Gui.
Cut a little bit forward to the team of four training and about to be killed (again) when an arrow comes out of nowhere and saves Prince. Surprise, surprise, it's Gui! The others are pretty impressed and, well, they needed an archer anyway, right? And so Prince was outvoted and Gui joined their little party.
The merry band finally went and registered their party under "Odd Squad" for their so many quirks. They continue to train and level up until they meet this weird team who introduced themselves as Dark Phantom and they totally get off on the wrong foot since Prince thought their leader was a girl when he wasn't (wow, look who's talking) and then the leader kicked him where the sun don't shine (geez, poor girl, but at least now she sympathizes with the male population) so Gui totally took offense since Prince is his man-crush and no one's allowed to treat him like that. They get into a huge fight which kills the entire team except for Prince and this dark elf Wicked from the other team, who called a truce because hey, he never cared about fighting Odd Squad, it was his team that did it. Since the fight was over and Wicked didn't seem to want to hurt him anyway, Prince tagged back with the other elf back to civilization (he has a terrible sense of direction- he might have been wandering for days, lost, if he hadn't done that).
So Odd Squad is ranting and raving about having their butts handed to them by another team, and Dark Phantom has issued a formal challenge to them since it was something of a tie anyway, that they would meet in official battle at the Adventurer's Tournament that would take place soon, so Odd Squad needs one more member since the requirements for entering the Tournament was six people! Luckily, this pretty human mage girl was listening in and felt moved by their fire and asks if she can join them as well-- what a refreshingly normal girl! Prince thinks she may be the first normal person in all of Odd Squad, but Lolidragon disagrees and sets up a test for their newest member Yulian-- for some reason, the girl didn't find Prince or Gui attractive at all, when there would probably be girls drooling at those two from the windows. Instead, she seems to be pining after Wolf! ...What a strange girl. But that's alright, because Prince and the rest of the team do a little group bonding trying to set up Yulian and Wolf together, and really, Odd Squad is like a group of bad high school girls in that aspect- when all else failed, they actually knocked Wolf out, tied him up, took Yulian dress shopping, and then pushed the two into a chapel to get married. Seriously. But because this is a game, it all worked out and Yulian and Wolf got married, hurray!
So the Adventurer's Tournament. They enter, and there's probably a bazillion people competing as well, so as Odd Squad slowly decimates the other teams, they're building up some strange reputations. And Lolidragon decides to use Prince's "Blood Elf" status to full effect, forcing him to act fearsome and strict all the time in front of the audience so that the teams that went against them would start nervous or scared. So Odd Squad slowly gained the reputation of being, well, really weird, having some really pretty boys in the team, and Prince's reputation as something of a cold-blooded killer who bathed in the blood of virgins and unicorns grew. It really didn't help that the first team they faced, Pretty Princess, had a pretty girl who surrendered to Prince but he killed her brutally even after she surrendered because Xiao Lan was pissed that she had this harem of guys around her and she didn't. No, really, that was her reason.
So lots of fights happen, and in the meanwhile, months have passed in real life and Xiao Lan is starting school again, so she gets to class and OMGTWFBBQ her new Chinese Literature teacher looks JUST LIKE GUI. She's half-convinced she's still in-game until he reveals that his name is Min Gui Wen and he played Second Life as a demon bard... at that point, Xiao Lan just gave up. Gui was her professor! What made it worse was that for some reason, he thought that her brother was Prince! Well, they did look alike, being twins and all...
What's funnier is that she met ROSE on the bus on the way home, and then WICKED. She's freaking out now because Prince is like a secret identity and what if everyone finds out? So she's all on the freak-out mode and then the guy who looks just like Wicked gets off at the same bus stop as her and FOLLOWS HER OMG HDJLKSHFJW. She's all prepared to either run or fight when he called out her name, and wow, apparently the guy who played Wicked in Second Life used to be her next-door neighbour! She remembers him now, she actually used to be really close to him-- called him big brother and everything (and what she doesn't remember is that as a kid she asked if he would marry her, and he totally agreed. He remembers this, and he's actually more than willing to keep that promise considering he tried to keep up-to-date with her life COUGHSOMEWHATSTALKERCOUGH and actually played with her on the last MMORPG). He's visiting her family and amazingly enough, her brother is completely happy about finding out their old neighbour is Wicked seeing as her twin brother is now the newest member of Dark Phantom.
And SURPRISE, SURPRISE, Rose comes visiting as well and it turns out she's distantly related as well, and on top of that, Xiao Lan's parents play Second Life as well and were defeated by Prince in the preliminary rounds of the Adventurer's Tournament so they're practically all gathered together to complain about Prince. Poor Xiao Lan, she's like their common scapegoat. And then her big mouthed brother revealed to Wicked that she's playing as a guy in Second Life!
Meanwhile, back in-game, Odd Squad's finally made it to the finals and Prince is still wrapping his head around the fact that Gui's actually his professor, and Wicked was the neighour, and Rose was related... even Wolf was her school doctor. Gaaaah, it's such a small world. But Lolidragon came back with some information- because of time constraints, instead of doing the final battles one by one, the GMs were going to have a giant battle royale with one hundred teams! So in order to survive, Odd Squad was going to team up with Dark Phantom and go training with them to increase their strength and agility and find methods to defeat nearly 600 players and survive. During this time, Prince is used to pull mobs (what? The only warrior on the team used to pull mobs? Another reason they're named Odd Squad) and he gets really injured, but not enough to die. The others are freaking out (read: Gui) and searching for him, but the first person to find him was actually Wicked... and Prince accidentally calls him by a name that only Xiao Lan called him by. Wicked's not stupid, and thus, he figures out that Prince is actually Xiao Lan.
So now Wicked and Gui have this weird rivalry going on, and Prince somehow, SOMEHOW BECAUSE HE'S KIND OF STUPID THAT WAY, comes to believe that they're actually both in love with Xiao Lan's twin brother. ...Yeah, I never said she was smart. Or he. Both works. (He eventually figures out that Gui and Wicked are in love with HIM/Xiao Lan.) The finals start and everyone fights, and it seems that there are three factions to the groups of finals- beasts, angels, and humans- the three factors seem to have form giant guilds and battle it off, so Odd Squad and Dark Phantom have it easy... until Prince decides to grow a conscious and go rescue the human leader, Nan Gong Zui because he appeared valiant or something. More to keep the groups fighting, because if the three groups are taken out easily, the battle royale would start early.
And like any fighting manga, they bond over the fight and Prince gives some good advice and he and Nan Gong Zui are suddenly buddy-buddy and Wicked and Gui are NOT happy with this. But due to the interference, the human leader got to fight against the angel leader, which was all he wanted out of the Tournament. After the angel leader Fan died, Nan Gong Zui was killed by both Wicked and Gui and then Prince was killed... by Xiao Lan's brother. Oh, the irony. Amidst the chaos, the mages are released huge destructive spells and and everyone pretty much gets wiped out... except her brother! Did he win the Adventurer's Tournament? Everything thinks so, until he's brutally killed by Lolidragon, the last survivor on the battlegrounds.
That's right, Odd Squad managed to win by a total stroke of luck.
What do they get from winning? Apparently this little plot of land between all three cities on the Central Continent. Enough for their own little kingdom, so everyone in Odd Squad gets to work building and securing the perimeter and stuff and what does Prince do? Well, there's not much he can do, so they make him the city lord instead. Way to become City Lord- be absolutely useless in other other position. Oh, Infinite City. It has an idiot for a city lord.
So Prince is sent off to recruit some help since he's really pretty and despite being kind of an idiot, quite charismatic and very well-known by now. He gets Wicked to recruit Dark Phantom and goes off to recruit Nan Gong Zui and his group, finding out that the human leader had beef with Fan because the angel was using his step-sister, Ice Phoenix. Prince plays up his role as the cool bad guy and makes Ice Phoenix fall in love with him instead and lays the smackdown on Fan and he and Nan Gong Zui go off drinking in victory.
...Yeah, don't try to make sense of their manliness.
So Prince gets drunk and decides he wants to explore... being the directionally-challenged dingbat that he is, he manages to wake up on a ship. Traveling to another continent. Which wasted all his money. So now trapped on another continent with no way of contacting Odd Squad since PMs don't work that far away, he's trying to save some money for the ride back to Central Continent... by grinding, of course. Funny enough, he meets up with these two people who need help and... look... just... like Xiao Lan's best friends. Oh, gosh. This is getting ridiculous. (By the way, Xiao Lan managed to call Wicked's player and assure him that she was alright and would return as soon as possible.)
So those two are pretty much noobies compared to him, and he wears a mask and takes them under his wing to train them up so they wouldn't die horribly, like, everywhere. When they find out that he needs money, they show him this quest that they just happened to find... you gets lots and lots of money if you manage to bring back the hair tie of the demon lord. Prince (IDIOT) decides this is a good idea and the three of them go off to find this demon lord.
This is where we demonstrate that Prince has INCREDIBLE LUCK. Like... unbelievable. So they manage to find the demon lord, who looks like this certain redheaded samurai dude from a really old show that Xiao Lan loved, who is more than ready to whup all their asses for entering his domain, and Prince decides that he might as well try to BS his way out of the situation- no harm in trying, right? So he comes up with some real bull story about some girl who sent him for the hair-tie, and low and behold- the demon king stops attacking, and asks him who. Seeing as Xiao Lan absolutely loved Rurouni Kenshin (Yeah, I know, right? There might be some breaking of the fourth wall with some series here seeing as Xiao Lan plays Street Fighter and likes reading old mangas...), Prince responds that Kaoru sent him, and then the demon king just gives him the hair-tie.
What. Just. What. That's right. So now Prince is feeling really bad for taking the hair-tie and decides he has to find Kaoru and give this to her, and his two guppies Do Not Agree. In fact, they take the hair-tie and push Prince off a cliff. Great friends you have there, Xiao Lan. But somehow, by another SUPER INCREDIBLE STROKE OF LUCK, this activates some hidden side quest since the demon lord (named Kenshin, because, that's who he looks like) rescues Prince and leads him to this hidden palace to meet Sunshine. There, Kenshin tells Prince that he and Sunshine were once NPCs, yes, but ones who have now gained self-awareness. If Prince manages to complete their quests, they would become his human pets. But hey, these quests are super hard and really, not meant to be completed and Prince only triggered it be complete chance.
Kenshin tells him exactly what he was to do to complete his quest, and the two of them journey off to defeat the real demon king who imprisoned Kenshin (who was defeated by pure chance!), and then off to Snow Village because Kenshin already knows has his quest will end... he will look for Kaoru, and find only her grave. For a while, Kenshin is all emo because he figured if he never finished his quest, Kaoru would still be alive. Prince assures him that at least it's done-- she doesn't have to keep waiting and mourning for him anymore.
Together, they head off to do Sunshine's quest, and run into Xiao Lan's two friends again, who were in trouble from the local bullies. Prince beats up all the bullies and the two guppies apologize for what they did to him, asking him why he continued to help them. Because he can't say that it's because they're his best friends, he claims some bull about keeping his promise to help them, no matter what. So those two are now absolutely enchanted by him, and the four of them go off to rescue Sunshine. It takes a long series of quests (all solved with INCREDIBLE LUCK), and they finally rescue Sunshine and they head off back to the Central Continent on Sunshine's incredible flying carpet.
...And get back JUST IN THE NICK OF TIME since Fan was mounting an invasion of Infinite City and managed to breach the walls thanks to Ice Phoenix, that little traitor. But that's alright, because once Prince landed, he and his friends KICK EVERYONE'S ASSES, and then some. Yes. An entire army. That Odd Squad, Dark Phantom, Team Rose, and Nan Gong Zui's army couldn't defeat. He's just that awesome. (Mostly because Sunshine has this stupidly hack magic attack that can take out hundreds at once.)
There, Prince is re-established as the city lord and is sent to work because the invasion pretty much emptied their inventories and funds. Lolidragon decides to whore him out as a singer and creates Infinite Band- consisting of Prince, Gui, Wicked, Fairsky, and Ice Phoenix... you know, Prince and all the people in love with Prince. Poor guy. So they take Sunshine and Kenshin with them as bodyguards, and they have this little concert tour thing and sell tickets for their main concert once they hit Infinite City again, and the whole thing is so successful that Prince is pretty much forgiven for spending so much money on the ship ticket to begin with.
Drawing to a close now, everyone else decides that they need their City Lord's reputation to be more amazing, so they send him off to train and call him honorable titles and such, and Prince is so very devastated by this because-- his friends! They won't even call him by name anymore, and they treat him so differently... he'd rather they pick on him and make fun of him again... he doesn't want to be a City Lord anymore if it meant they were going to treat him so differently.
That's when he and Lolidragon have their first fight, when she claims that he just wants to back out of their promise when things become hard and not so fun anymore, and Prince pretty much storms off crying, and Doll follows him because she's a sweetheart. She talks to him about the responsibilities of leadership, and this sounds really strange coming from the little girl who used to prance on about love and justice before. He asks her how she knows all of this, and she reveals that she's actually a real life princess.
Doll figures that Prince would feel better if he goes off and kills something, so they head out (she actually leaves a note for everyone else that says she and Prince ran away from home, it's very cute) to fight some really high level monsters and Doll ends up getting kidnapped by the boss. Prince can't defeat him, so he calls for help from Kenshin and a few others, who come and help him with the battle but then Prince realizes it's really dangerous for Kenshin and Sunshine to fight with him because... well, if he dies, he loses a level. But what happens if they die? So he's about to call the whole thing off when pretty much a whole bunch of people from Infinite City come to the rescue and defeat the boss (which Prince feels really bad about... what if he was self-aware just like Kenshin and Sunshine?).
OKAY LAST CHAPTER. So Prince goes back to Infinite City and declares that alright, sure, he'll take responsibilities as City Lord, but if they have to follow what he says, then his first order is that no one is to call him by any other honorary title than his own name. I mean, Prince is already a high class enough name.
Here comes the fun part- so by this time, Second Life has introduced the upgrade to make the game even more realistic... people now have to shower and go to the bathroom and stuff just like in real life (WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT? It's an absurd idea, but oh so funny), so now Prince is FREAKING OUT because, well, he's actually Xiao Lan, and Xiao Lan is a girl, and she doesn't want to... well... it was embarrassing enough having to ask Wicked how guys go take a piss, because she didn't know and really needed to go to the bathroom. He figures out that Xiao Lan's brother has totally figured out who he is, though, and in true method of loving siblings everywhere, bullies Prince into being more cheerful.
So Prince steps out all happy and such that Xiao Lan's family is being all supportive again, and is attacked by an assassin out of nowhere! The assassin is captured by Doll and reveals that one of the five Continent Lords wants Prince dead. So the plan now is for Prince to conquer all the cities in Central Continent while some people would go spy on the other continents and find out more information.
So there's Prince, exasperated over the new system upgrades and weighed down by new responsibilities and knowledge, signed out to go to school... and when he's signed in again, he finds himself in this old creepy house. Which means someone must have moved him when Xiao Lan was logged out. Damn it. Funny thing is, he can't seem to log out and the private messaging system seems to be down.
(But honestly, he's somewhat hacks in strength considering he can beat up armies so if he has a low strength, well.... I'd probably headdesk quite a bit.)
Sample Third-Person Post:
This... this... Prince huffed as he finished examining the baths. They didn't even have separate areas for boys and girls! Surely it wasn't on some sort of waiting scheduling thing? What if someone walked in on someone else? Well, surely the locks in this house worked superbly, but that wasn't the point!
Baths, showers... it didn't matter, anyway. It was all a real pain in a butt. Who in the world decided that Second Life needed to be that realistic, anyway? Did some weirdo designer decide that he really liked taking dumps and thought everyone else would as well? He liked the game as it used to be, thanks. He had enough weirdness in his (second) life without worrying about where to relieve himself in the middle of a forest. Bodily functions were for chumps.
He clenched his fist and struck a dramatic pose, mindful to make sure no one was watching. He would just have to beat Gui up when he got home again to take him mind off all of this stupidity. Eating, he didn't mind. Being a guy, he didn't mind. But he didn't want to be reminded of that every time he had to go to the bathroom or something! It was ridiculous-- sweet, innocent girls shouldn't have to touch... that... every time they needed to go to the bathroom! Even if he was really pretty and wouldn't mind himself as a boyfriend.
Still, he had to overcome. As cruel and unusual as the creators of Second Life were, he had promised Lolidragon, after all. He'd have to find a way out of this creepy house and get back to Infinite City so that he could figure out what everyone else was going to do about the invasions. It should be alright, though, all he had to do was smile and nod, and that ought to appease everyone. Well. Until they wanted him to do something, anyway.
...As long as it wasn't something like a band again. That had been more painful than he could have imagined. He never realized fangirls were that bad... (had he been that bad?)
Sighing, Prince closed the door of the baths behind him, and then for good measure, jammed some odd items underneath the door even after he locked it. Guy at the moment or not, he wasn't going to have anyone walk in on him during a bath. Because then he would obvious have to kill them, just to avenge his pride. And he didn't want to do that just yet.
Sample First-Person Post:
[[ have a white haired warrior elf in full armour banging at the front door and shouting really loudly-- ]]
LOLIDRAGON, I SWEAR IF YOU DRUGGED MY FOOD AND DID WEIRD THINGS TO ME IN MY SLEEP I WILL PERSONALLY-- well, I don't know what I'd do, but I'D SIC GUI ON YOU FASTER THAN YOU CAN BEG FOR MERCY! And maybe Ice Phoenix and Fairsky.
WHAT IS WITH THIS CRAPPY USER INTERFACE, ANYWAY? What is this, a PDA? That's so last century it's not even funny.
[[ BANG BANG BANG at door ]]
C'mon, guys, let me out already! This isn't funny, you know! Locking me up isn't a way to keep me out of trouble! At least TELL me when you're going to do something like this, instead of knocking me out and locking me up! This place is kind of creepy, you know! I thought we needed to talk about this assassin thing! C'mon, guys!
[[ BANG BANG ]]
...Guys?
Player name: Shamera
Personal Lj: tsukishirou
AIM and/or E-Mail: klotho@gmail.com, kl0tho
Timezone: -8:00, PST
Character Information:
Full Name: Prince (Feng Xiao Lan)
Series Taken From: 1/2 Prince
Power Retained: I don't know if REALLY STUPIDLY LUCKY counts as a skill, because seriously, this isn't just the main character hero luck, this is a thousand times more hacks than that. Prince has a very easy time winning games of chance and doesn't even understand how other people lose sometimes, and bad things that happen to him tend to end up turning into really good things. (I don't even know how I'd pull that in-game, haha~)
Background: The first thing to understand about Prince that he's never, ever going to tell anyone is that Prince isn't... well, he's not exactly male. Except he is. Physically, he is 100% a guy, and an exceptionally beautiful one, at that! The second thing to understand which might explain the first thing is-- Prince isn't real. He's a character from Second Life, a MMORPG game created a hundred years in the future, where virtual gaming has been taken to the 99.9% realism factor. Everything a person feels, experiences, touches, eats... anything in the game feels as real as reality does. Except the pain. Pain factor in Second Life has been cut down to 40%, because this is an RPG game, after all, and dying hurts.
So where, exactly, does the story starts? Well, it starts with a university student named Feng Lan (also known as Xiao Lan), who is this pretty little Chinese girl bored out of her mind during summer break. She's an avid player of MMORPGs, just like most of the world by that time, and her twin brother just happened to bring home the latest and newest game of them all-- Second Life! So that brat is bragging about how much better Second Life is, and how awesome he's going to be in it, and she just happens to mention that she's always a higher level than him in the other games. That gets him into a tizzy, and he claims that it's because she's a girl, and girls always level easier because the guys are there to protect them and give them items and stuff and the girls just mooch exp from fights without doing anything! So she gets super angry and decides that she's going to be a great warrior in this game and have gained this status herself and not rely on others for it, and he just laughs in her face. So that's it: the race is on.
Except Xiao Lan's a sly little thing and she cheats a bit by trying to sign on to Second Life before her twin... or anyone else, for that matter, since the grand opening of the game was that night. She signs into the game and encounters a girl who is there to guide her through creating her character... Xiao Lan decides that she needed to be strong to be a warrior, but doesn't like any of her character choices so asks if she could be a guy instead. Seeing as Second Life is 99.9% accurate to reality... this has never been asked before. But because she's actually the first person ever to sign on (geez, guess being a cheat pays off), the higher ups decide, ehh, why not? They grant her wish and Xiao Lan is now the first (and only) person on Second Life who's actually the wrong gender.
Deciding that she wanted to be more beautiful as well, she decides on being an elf, and from then on, the girl who was supposed to guide her through her character creation grew hearts for eyes and decided to finish the character creation herself-- with or without Xiao Lan's approval. So from there is the creation of 'Prince', Xiao Lan's character in Second Life: a white haired elven warrior who's almost too beautiful to be true.
So from the first moment that Prince is 'born' into Second Life, he's being chased around by girls who want him to train with them, do XXX things with them, or be their husband. For Xiao Lan, she never realized how terrifying it was to be a pretty boy- after all, she had always been the fangirl, and this was the first time she was on the other side of the fence. But either way, she's super happy to be a pretty boy- in fact, she's happy every time she looks in a reflective surface.
After adjusting himself (I'm just going to use the masculine pronoun for Prince, and feminine for Xiao Lan or else this will get really confusing fast) to the pain tolerance in Second Life, Prince teams up with Team Rose, who were nice enough to help this weirdo noobie wearing a mask so that he could gather his quest items to get into the warrior class. They head out to fight some wolves, but Prince chickens out last minute seeing their fangs and claws, only to start running away and have the pack of wolves chasing him. They attack him, and he pretty much snaps, thinking that it was a terrible thing for the wolves to be attacking a girl and finally attacks back, using all the techniques Xiao Lan knew about cooking meat, and pretty much butchers the entire gang of wolves, laughing at how easy it was while covered with blood. From that moment on, he gained the title "Blood Elf Prince" from how maniacal he looked then.
Prince parted with Team Rose and gained his warrior class, pulling out his new weapon, a black sword that he thought was really lame until a random girl beat him over the head about how amazing that sword was (and why didn't he contact her earlier?!), thus introducing Lolidragon- the girl who had helped create Prince's character. To his surprise, she's actually a hidden GameMaster playing as a character to report anything strange in-game. They train together, and she reveals that the sword was really rare- it was a weapon that would continue to level up with him. They eventually fight a boss that they could barely defeat, and Prince employs some moves that Xiao Lan saw in old video games and defeats the boss... really unconventionally. They rest, and Prince reveals to her why he wanted to be a guy in the game- not just because of the bet with Xiao Lan's brother, but because he wanted to be able to swear and not be called vulgar, fight and not be called violent, laugh at lewd jokes and not be called a corrupt girl. He wanted to do all the things that guys could do and not destroy Xiao Lan's image.
After hearing that, Lolidragon decided for them that from that moment on, they would create a new legend in Second Life- not to be the trophy wives of the best players, but to become the best players in all of Second Life.
So now you have the dynamic duo, pretending to be a couple so that girls would leave Prince alone (got into a lot of trouble, too- Team Rose got a new member, Fairsky, who fell in love with Prince at first sight and decided she was going to kill Lolidragon to have Prince), when they meet up with Wolf, a beast... priest? He helps them out in a situation and they go off training together, meeting Doll, the angelic necromancer. What an odd group they were gathering: a elven warrior, a hidden GM, a beast priest, and an angel necromancer? They all really picked the wrong race for their job classes!
Now, while they were all level grinding and such, they pretty much got owned by some random boss, and were all sent back to their rebirth points (where you go when you die- you also lose one level each time), where Prince decides to wander around the city for a little while before meeting up with his team again... this is when he first met Guistamos, the demon bard. Gui was just playing music on the streets when Prince's pretty-boy radar started going off because, wow, Gui's really pretty and Xiao Lan is a fangirl after all, so Prince was super excited when the bard made a beeline toward him. He was pretty much in fangirl heaven when Gui kneeled before him and treated him like a princess, until Lolidragon PMed him and he told her what was happening... and she reminded him that he was currently a male.
Deeeeeerp. That totally shattered Prince's fairy tale illusions, and he asked Gui if he knew he was currently kneeling before a guy, in which Gui responded quite enthusiastically that of course he knew, and Prince was so pissed off he accidentally on purpose killed Gui.
Cut a little bit forward to the team of four training and about to be killed (again) when an arrow comes out of nowhere and saves Prince. Surprise, surprise, it's Gui! The others are pretty impressed and, well, they needed an archer anyway, right? And so Prince was outvoted and Gui joined their little party.
The merry band finally went and registered their party under "Odd Squad" for their so many quirks. They continue to train and level up until they meet this weird team who introduced themselves as Dark Phantom and they totally get off on the wrong foot since Prince thought their leader was a girl when he wasn't (wow, look who's talking) and then the leader kicked him where the sun don't shine (geez, poor girl, but at least now she sympathizes with the male population) so Gui totally took offense since Prince is his man-crush and no one's allowed to treat him like that. They get into a huge fight which kills the entire team except for Prince and this dark elf Wicked from the other team, who called a truce because hey, he never cared about fighting Odd Squad, it was his team that did it. Since the fight was over and Wicked didn't seem to want to hurt him anyway, Prince tagged back with the other elf back to civilization (he has a terrible sense of direction- he might have been wandering for days, lost, if he hadn't done that).
So Odd Squad is ranting and raving about having their butts handed to them by another team, and Dark Phantom has issued a formal challenge to them since it was something of a tie anyway, that they would meet in official battle at the Adventurer's Tournament that would take place soon, so Odd Squad needs one more member since the requirements for entering the Tournament was six people! Luckily, this pretty human mage girl was listening in and felt moved by their fire and asks if she can join them as well-- what a refreshingly normal girl! Prince thinks she may be the first normal person in all of Odd Squad, but Lolidragon disagrees and sets up a test for their newest member Yulian-- for some reason, the girl didn't find Prince or Gui attractive at all, when there would probably be girls drooling at those two from the windows. Instead, she seems to be pining after Wolf! ...What a strange girl. But that's alright, because Prince and the rest of the team do a little group bonding trying to set up Yulian and Wolf together, and really, Odd Squad is like a group of bad high school girls in that aspect- when all else failed, they actually knocked Wolf out, tied him up, took Yulian dress shopping, and then pushed the two into a chapel to get married. Seriously. But because this is a game, it all worked out and Yulian and Wolf got married, hurray!
So the Adventurer's Tournament. They enter, and there's probably a bazillion people competing as well, so as Odd Squad slowly decimates the other teams, they're building up some strange reputations. And Lolidragon decides to use Prince's "Blood Elf" status to full effect, forcing him to act fearsome and strict all the time in front of the audience so that the teams that went against them would start nervous or scared. So Odd Squad slowly gained the reputation of being, well, really weird, having some really pretty boys in the team, and Prince's reputation as something of a cold-blooded killer who bathed in the blood of virgins and unicorns grew. It really didn't help that the first team they faced, Pretty Princess, had a pretty girl who surrendered to Prince but he killed her brutally even after she surrendered because Xiao Lan was pissed that she had this harem of guys around her and she didn't. No, really, that was her reason.
So lots of fights happen, and in the meanwhile, months have passed in real life and Xiao Lan is starting school again, so she gets to class and OMGTWFBBQ her new Chinese Literature teacher looks JUST LIKE GUI. She's half-convinced she's still in-game until he reveals that his name is Min Gui Wen and he played Second Life as a demon bard... at that point, Xiao Lan just gave up. Gui was her professor! What made it worse was that for some reason, he thought that her brother was Prince! Well, they did look alike, being twins and all...
What's funnier is that she met ROSE on the bus on the way home, and then WICKED. She's freaking out now because Prince is like a secret identity and what if everyone finds out? So she's all on the freak-out mode and then the guy who looks just like Wicked gets off at the same bus stop as her and FOLLOWS HER OMG HDJLKSHFJW. She's all prepared to either run or fight when he called out her name, and wow, apparently the guy who played Wicked in Second Life used to be her next-door neighbour! She remembers him now, she actually used to be really close to him-- called him big brother and everything (and what she doesn't remember is that as a kid she asked if he would marry her, and he totally agreed. He remembers this, and he's actually more than willing to keep that promise considering he tried to keep up-to-date with her life COUGHSOMEWHATSTALKERCOUGH and actually played with her on the last MMORPG). He's visiting her family and amazingly enough, her brother is completely happy about finding out their old neighbour is Wicked seeing as her twin brother is now the newest member of Dark Phantom.
And SURPRISE, SURPRISE, Rose comes visiting as well and it turns out she's distantly related as well, and on top of that, Xiao Lan's parents play Second Life as well and were defeated by Prince in the preliminary rounds of the Adventurer's Tournament so they're practically all gathered together to complain about Prince. Poor Xiao Lan, she's like their common scapegoat. And then her big mouthed brother revealed to Wicked that she's playing as a guy in Second Life!
Meanwhile, back in-game, Odd Squad's finally made it to the finals and Prince is still wrapping his head around the fact that Gui's actually his professor, and Wicked was the neighour, and Rose was related... even Wolf was her school doctor. Gaaaah, it's such a small world. But Lolidragon came back with some information- because of time constraints, instead of doing the final battles one by one, the GMs were going to have a giant battle royale with one hundred teams! So in order to survive, Odd Squad was going to team up with Dark Phantom and go training with them to increase their strength and agility and find methods to defeat nearly 600 players and survive. During this time, Prince is used to pull mobs (what? The only warrior on the team used to pull mobs? Another reason they're named Odd Squad) and he gets really injured, but not enough to die. The others are freaking out (read: Gui) and searching for him, but the first person to find him was actually Wicked... and Prince accidentally calls him by a name that only Xiao Lan called him by. Wicked's not stupid, and thus, he figures out that Prince is actually Xiao Lan.
So now Wicked and Gui have this weird rivalry going on, and Prince somehow, SOMEHOW BECAUSE HE'S KIND OF STUPID THAT WAY, comes to believe that they're actually both in love with Xiao Lan's twin brother. ...Yeah, I never said she was smart. Or he. Both works. (He eventually figures out that Gui and Wicked are in love with HIM/Xiao Lan.) The finals start and everyone fights, and it seems that there are three factions to the groups of finals- beasts, angels, and humans- the three factors seem to have form giant guilds and battle it off, so Odd Squad and Dark Phantom have it easy... until Prince decides to grow a conscious and go rescue the human leader, Nan Gong Zui because he appeared valiant or something. More to keep the groups fighting, because if the three groups are taken out easily, the battle royale would start early.
And like any fighting manga, they bond over the fight and Prince gives some good advice and he and Nan Gong Zui are suddenly buddy-buddy and Wicked and Gui are NOT happy with this. But due to the interference, the human leader got to fight against the angel leader, which was all he wanted out of the Tournament. After the angel leader Fan died, Nan Gong Zui was killed by both Wicked and Gui and then Prince was killed... by Xiao Lan's brother. Oh, the irony. Amidst the chaos, the mages are released huge destructive spells and and everyone pretty much gets wiped out... except her brother! Did he win the Adventurer's Tournament? Everything thinks so, until he's brutally killed by Lolidragon, the last survivor on the battlegrounds.
That's right, Odd Squad managed to win by a total stroke of luck.
What do they get from winning? Apparently this little plot of land between all three cities on the Central Continent. Enough for their own little kingdom, so everyone in Odd Squad gets to work building and securing the perimeter and stuff and what does Prince do? Well, there's not much he can do, so they make him the city lord instead. Way to become City Lord- be absolutely useless in other other position. Oh, Infinite City. It has an idiot for a city lord.
So Prince is sent off to recruit some help since he's really pretty and despite being kind of an idiot, quite charismatic and very well-known by now. He gets Wicked to recruit Dark Phantom and goes off to recruit Nan Gong Zui and his group, finding out that the human leader had beef with Fan because the angel was using his step-sister, Ice Phoenix. Prince plays up his role as the cool bad guy and makes Ice Phoenix fall in love with him instead and lays the smackdown on Fan and he and Nan Gong Zui go off drinking in victory.
...Yeah, don't try to make sense of their manliness.
So Prince gets drunk and decides he wants to explore... being the directionally-challenged dingbat that he is, he manages to wake up on a ship. Traveling to another continent. Which wasted all his money. So now trapped on another continent with no way of contacting Odd Squad since PMs don't work that far away, he's trying to save some money for the ride back to Central Continent... by grinding, of course. Funny enough, he meets up with these two people who need help and... look... just... like Xiao Lan's best friends. Oh, gosh. This is getting ridiculous. (By the way, Xiao Lan managed to call Wicked's player and assure him that she was alright and would return as soon as possible.)
So those two are pretty much noobies compared to him, and he wears a mask and takes them under his wing to train them up so they wouldn't die horribly, like, everywhere. When they find out that he needs money, they show him this quest that they just happened to find... you gets lots and lots of money if you manage to bring back the hair tie of the demon lord. Prince (IDIOT) decides this is a good idea and the three of them go off to find this demon lord.
This is where we demonstrate that Prince has INCREDIBLE LUCK. Like... unbelievable. So they manage to find the demon lord, who looks like this certain redheaded samurai dude from a really old show that Xiao Lan loved, who is more than ready to whup all their asses for entering his domain, and Prince decides that he might as well try to BS his way out of the situation- no harm in trying, right? So he comes up with some real bull story about some girl who sent him for the hair-tie, and low and behold- the demon king stops attacking, and asks him who. Seeing as Xiao Lan absolutely loved Rurouni Kenshin (Yeah, I know, right? There might be some breaking of the fourth wall with some series here seeing as Xiao Lan plays Street Fighter and likes reading old mangas...), Prince responds that Kaoru sent him, and then the demon king just gives him the hair-tie.
What. Just. What. That's right. So now Prince is feeling really bad for taking the hair-tie and decides he has to find Kaoru and give this to her, and his two guppies Do Not Agree. In fact, they take the hair-tie and push Prince off a cliff. Great friends you have there, Xiao Lan. But somehow, by another SUPER INCREDIBLE STROKE OF LUCK, this activates some hidden side quest since the demon lord (named Kenshin, because, that's who he looks like) rescues Prince and leads him to this hidden palace to meet Sunshine. There, Kenshin tells Prince that he and Sunshine were once NPCs, yes, but ones who have now gained self-awareness. If Prince manages to complete their quests, they would become his human pets. But hey, these quests are super hard and really, not meant to be completed and Prince only triggered it be complete chance.
Kenshin tells him exactly what he was to do to complete his quest, and the two of them journey off to defeat the real demon king who imprisoned Kenshin (who was defeated by pure chance!), and then off to Snow Village because Kenshin already knows has his quest will end... he will look for Kaoru, and find only her grave. For a while, Kenshin is all emo because he figured if he never finished his quest, Kaoru would still be alive. Prince assures him that at least it's done-- she doesn't have to keep waiting and mourning for him anymore.
Together, they head off to do Sunshine's quest, and run into Xiao Lan's two friends again, who were in trouble from the local bullies. Prince beats up all the bullies and the two guppies apologize for what they did to him, asking him why he continued to help them. Because he can't say that it's because they're his best friends, he claims some bull about keeping his promise to help them, no matter what. So those two are now absolutely enchanted by him, and the four of them go off to rescue Sunshine. It takes a long series of quests (all solved with INCREDIBLE LUCK), and they finally rescue Sunshine and they head off back to the Central Continent on Sunshine's incredible flying carpet.
...And get back JUST IN THE NICK OF TIME since Fan was mounting an invasion of Infinite City and managed to breach the walls thanks to Ice Phoenix, that little traitor. But that's alright, because once Prince landed, he and his friends KICK EVERYONE'S ASSES, and then some. Yes. An entire army. That Odd Squad, Dark Phantom, Team Rose, and Nan Gong Zui's army couldn't defeat. He's just that awesome. (Mostly because Sunshine has this stupidly hack magic attack that can take out hundreds at once.)
There, Prince is re-established as the city lord and is sent to work because the invasion pretty much emptied their inventories and funds. Lolidragon decides to whore him out as a singer and creates Infinite Band- consisting of Prince, Gui, Wicked, Fairsky, and Ice Phoenix... you know, Prince and all the people in love with Prince. Poor guy. So they take Sunshine and Kenshin with them as bodyguards, and they have this little concert tour thing and sell tickets for their main concert once they hit Infinite City again, and the whole thing is so successful that Prince is pretty much forgiven for spending so much money on the ship ticket to begin with.
Drawing to a close now, everyone else decides that they need their City Lord's reputation to be more amazing, so they send him off to train and call him honorable titles and such, and Prince is so very devastated by this because-- his friends! They won't even call him by name anymore, and they treat him so differently... he'd rather they pick on him and make fun of him again... he doesn't want to be a City Lord anymore if it meant they were going to treat him so differently.
That's when he and Lolidragon have their first fight, when she claims that he just wants to back out of their promise when things become hard and not so fun anymore, and Prince pretty much storms off crying, and Doll follows him because she's a sweetheart. She talks to him about the responsibilities of leadership, and this sounds really strange coming from the little girl who used to prance on about love and justice before. He asks her how she knows all of this, and she reveals that she's actually a real life princess.
Doll figures that Prince would feel better if he goes off and kills something, so they head out (she actually leaves a note for everyone else that says she and Prince ran away from home, it's very cute) to fight some really high level monsters and Doll ends up getting kidnapped by the boss. Prince can't defeat him, so he calls for help from Kenshin and a few others, who come and help him with the battle but then Prince realizes it's really dangerous for Kenshin and Sunshine to fight with him because... well, if he dies, he loses a level. But what happens if they die? So he's about to call the whole thing off when pretty much a whole bunch of people from Infinite City come to the rescue and defeat the boss (which Prince feels really bad about... what if he was self-aware just like Kenshin and Sunshine?).
OKAY LAST CHAPTER. So Prince goes back to Infinite City and declares that alright, sure, he'll take responsibilities as City Lord, but if they have to follow what he says, then his first order is that no one is to call him by any other honorary title than his own name. I mean, Prince is already a high class enough name.
Here comes the fun part- so by this time, Second Life has introduced the upgrade to make the game even more realistic... people now have to shower and go to the bathroom and stuff just like in real life (WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT? It's an absurd idea, but oh so funny), so now Prince is FREAKING OUT because, well, he's actually Xiao Lan, and Xiao Lan is a girl, and she doesn't want to... well... it was embarrassing enough having to ask Wicked how guys go take a piss, because she didn't know and really needed to go to the bathroom. He figures out that Xiao Lan's brother has totally figured out who he is, though, and in true method of loving siblings everywhere, bullies Prince into being more cheerful.
So Prince steps out all happy and such that Xiao Lan's family is being all supportive again, and is attacked by an assassin out of nowhere! The assassin is captured by Doll and reveals that one of the five Continent Lords wants Prince dead. So the plan now is for Prince to conquer all the cities in Central Continent while some people would go spy on the other continents and find out more information.
So there's Prince, exasperated over the new system upgrades and weighed down by new responsibilities and knowledge, signed out to go to school... and when he's signed in again, he finds himself in this old creepy house. Which means someone must have moved him when Xiao Lan was logged out. Damn it. Funny thing is, he can't seem to log out and the private messaging system seems to be down.
(But honestly, he's somewhat hacks in strength considering he can beat up armies so if he has a low strength, well.... I'd probably headdesk quite a bit.)
Sample Third-Person Post:
This... this... Prince huffed as he finished examining the baths. They didn't even have separate areas for boys and girls! Surely it wasn't on some sort of waiting scheduling thing? What if someone walked in on someone else? Well, surely the locks in this house worked superbly, but that wasn't the point!
Baths, showers... it didn't matter, anyway. It was all a real pain in a butt. Who in the world decided that Second Life needed to be that realistic, anyway? Did some weirdo designer decide that he really liked taking dumps and thought everyone else would as well? He liked the game as it used to be, thanks. He had enough weirdness in his (second) life without worrying about where to relieve himself in the middle of a forest. Bodily functions were for chumps.
He clenched his fist and struck a dramatic pose, mindful to make sure no one was watching. He would just have to beat Gui up when he got home again to take him mind off all of this stupidity. Eating, he didn't mind. Being a guy, he didn't mind. But he didn't want to be reminded of that every time he had to go to the bathroom or something! It was ridiculous-- sweet, innocent girls shouldn't have to touch... that... every time they needed to go to the bathroom! Even if he was really pretty and wouldn't mind himself as a boyfriend.
Still, he had to overcome. As cruel and unusual as the creators of Second Life were, he had promised Lolidragon, after all. He'd have to find a way out of this creepy house and get back to Infinite City so that he could figure out what everyone else was going to do about the invasions. It should be alright, though, all he had to do was smile and nod, and that ought to appease everyone. Well. Until they wanted him to do something, anyway.
...As long as it wasn't something like a band again. That had been more painful than he could have imagined. He never realized fangirls were that bad... (had he been that bad?)
Sighing, Prince closed the door of the baths behind him, and then for good measure, jammed some odd items underneath the door even after he locked it. Guy at the moment or not, he wasn't going to have anyone walk in on him during a bath. Because then he would obvious have to kill them, just to avenge his pride. And he didn't want to do that just yet.
Sample First-Person Post:
[[ have a white haired warrior elf in full armour banging at the front door and shouting really loudly-- ]]
LOLIDRAGON, I SWEAR IF YOU DRUGGED MY FOOD AND DID WEIRD THINGS TO ME IN MY SLEEP I WILL PERSONALLY-- well, I don't know what I'd do, but I'D SIC GUI ON YOU FASTER THAN YOU CAN BEG FOR MERCY! And maybe Ice Phoenix and Fairsky.
WHAT IS WITH THIS CRAPPY USER INTERFACE, ANYWAY? What is this, a PDA? That's so last century it's not even funny.
[[ BANG BANG BANG at door ]]
C'mon, guys, let me out already! This isn't funny, you know! Locking me up isn't a way to keep me out of trouble! At least TELL me when you're going to do something like this, instead of knocking me out and locking me up! This place is kind of creepy, you know! I thought we needed to talk about this assassin thing! C'mon, guys!
[[ BANG BANG ]]
...Guys?