Night World Odyssey

“I’m ho-ome!” Madoka Suzuki bellowed as she flung open the front door.

“Don’t let the door hit the wall, Ma-Chan!” Her mother called from the kitchen. Madoka quickly grabbed the doorknob seconds before it would have left another dent and closed it carefully. The girl then kicked off her shoes and threw her bag on down before walking into the kitchen where her mother was washing the dishes.

“Hi, Mama!” Madoka exclaimed, hugging her mother tightly from behind. Selena Suzuki smiled and patted her daughter’s head.

“Welcome back sweetie! I went to the store. There’s more pudding in the fridge.”

“Ooh!” Madoka squealed happily and bounced over to the fridge. “Thanks!”

“How was school?” Selena asked “Fine.” Madoka replied emotionlessly as she hunted for her snack.

“What about math class? Did you ask Sensei to explain what you were struggling with?”

“There wasn't a good time to ask her. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Madoka! You’ve been leaving your homework incomplete for a week! You might not like it, but you'll really hate math when you fail your exams!”

Madoka emerged from the fridge and shut the door behind her. “Mom, I’ll ask for help tomorrow. I swear. Could you stop asking me about math class every single day? I want to forget about school at home, but it’s all you ever harp on and it’s annoying!”

Selena pinched her forehead as Madoka plopped down at the table. 'She's not trying to be rude. To her, I am making a big deal out of nothing because she doesn’t see her short-term grades being a big-picture issue. But if she does this long enough, her grades are going to tank, and I’ll have to find a tutor.’ Unfortunately, while she may have gone to university in Japan, that was years ago and her daughter’s curriculum was like a foreign language. She’d tried sending her to cram school back in middle school, but, after a week of meltdowns, she’d been kicked out for being disruptive. Madoka was easily overstimulated and stressed in educational settings and Selena had yet to find a perfect fix.

She turned and studied the fifteen-year-old as she shoveled pudding into her mouth. All Selena wanted was for her daughter to be successful and happy, but she just didn’t know what to do some days. The in workings of Madoka's mind were often just as mysterious to her mother as they were to outsiders. Selena threw the towel down and leaned against the counter. ‘Am I doing the right thing? I feel like I’m just subjecting her to socially induced stress. I should have taken her back to the US after the divorce. I’d have had more access to support, and she would be more accepted there. But she was four and the idea of taking her to a new country seemed too disruptive and I thought she’d get a better education here...’ Raising a child with Autism didn’t come with an instruction manual, especially when you were raising them in a culture different from the one you grew up in. ‘But it’s not like I expected my daughter to have special needs. Or for her dad to be an ableist piece of crap.’ Selena thought as she sat down next to Madoka. ‘And I was a naive, starry-eyed kid when I came to Japan for college. If I’d known how little support or tolerance there is for anyone who’s different, I’d never have moved here permanently.’

“Mama, are you okay?” Madoka asked. “You look pissed about something.”

“Oh, I do?” Selena blinked. While Madoka struggled to pick up on the subtle parts of human emotion, she was paradoxically great at picking up on feelings that people tried to hide. “I just remembered something annoying. Nothing important." They sat in silence for a few minutes, and Selene felt a pang of guilt for feeling frustrated with her daughter. "How about we play some games before dinner?” She offered, hoping to take Madoka's mind off of school.  

The girl's eyes lit up and she nodded vigorously.“Let’s play Night World!” She exclaimed, shoving the spoonful of pudding into her mouth before running off to her room.

Laughing at her abrupt boost in energy, Selena casually followed her daughter. “You sure love that game, don’t you Ma-Chan? I’m glad I entered the lottery for it.”

 Madoka was obsessed with video games and fantasy worlds. To her, a well-crafted plot made a game just as much a story as a traditional book. Ever since she’d learned to write, Madoka would scribble stories and fanfiction on any free scrap of paper. She was highly imaginative and spent extensive amounts of time disassociating with her mind far away in some world that she’d thought up. As she got older, that translated into an obsession with video games and animation. Selena had never particularly cared for video games but facilitating her daughter’s fixation had made her curious and eventually turned her into a gaming fan herself. It was a hobby they could share together and her mother engaging with her special interest made Madoka happy, so it was worth it.

Madoka was flipping through her game storage box as her mother entered her frilly, pastel room and sat down in front of the tv. “I love it! It’s so cool! It’s a fantasy MMORPG, but it has a lot of role playing, open world elements, and stuff to explore! I don’t mind fighting, but I like games where that’s just a part and there’s different games within the game and a high level of creative liberty and player choice. Visual novels have great stories, but they’re usually just clicking. RPG’s have cool story lines and actions, but everything is scripted out and you don’t get to personally interact with the story much. Night World is a perfect blend of everything! There’s enough lore to make it interesting but it’s also immersive enough to make you feel like you’re a part of the story and not just observing it.” Selena nodded along as her daughter rambled.

“Maybe we’ll have to buy the final edition when it comes out.” She suggested. Madoka stared at her. “Oh yeah! I forget this is just a test version. It creeps me out , the idea of some developers watching us play...bleh!” She shuddered. “I just hope they don’t change it too much. I think it’s perfect as-is. But since it’s just a test game, I bet they aren’t going to update it, so I don't have much of a choice but to adjust to whatever final product is released...” She trailed off; her mind silently pursuing trails of thought. 

Her mother didn't mind the abrupt conversation crash.While Madoka booted up the console, Selena got the controllers ready. ‘I like the gameplay formatting, too. It reminds me of Club Puffin and Unlimited Realms; those virtual world games I’d play on dad’s computer as a kid.’ She mused. 'Maybe I was always destined to become a gamer mom one day?' Selena was always on the lookout for new releases or obscure used games that might interest her daughter. One day, when she was at her favorite game shop, she saw an advertisement for a nation-wide lottery to win protype copies of a MMORPG called Night World Odessey. The winners would technically be beta testers, but everything would be recorded and analyzed digitally. All the winners had to do was enjoy a game that the general public wouldn't see for a few years. It sounded like a fantasy world kitchen sink, the kind of game setting Madoka would adore, so she'd entered. But she never expected she'd actually win a copy! 'Definitely a mom win! It’s Madoka’s current favorite thing ever...though I’m a bit worried she’s too fixated on it...well, if push comes to shove I'll just have to limit her game time. But it hasn't come to that yet.'

Madoka switched the tv on before plopping next to her mother on her pile of plushies. Selena handed her a controller and the two waited for the game to boot up. “Hey, mom?” Madoka asked suddenly. “I’ve been wondering, why did you choose to be a dire wolf? Of all the species you could pick, why’d you chose to play as an animal?”

“It was something different.” Selena shrugged. “ thought it would be interesting to see the game from the perspective of a creature that's more animal than human. And I chose a wolf specifically because wolves remind me of your grandma.”

Madoka perked up. She was always curious to hear about her mother’s life before she moved to Japan, but Selena rarely talked about her own parents. Madoka got the sense that, with her grandparents dying suddenly during her parent’s divorce when she was little,  it was too depressing for her mom. “Why do wolves remind you of grandma?”

“Well, mom had a thing for wolves and would collect little knick-knacks of them. I modeled my character on the wolf in one of the paintings she used to have.”

“I guess grandma liked to be surrounded by things that made her happy to look at, like me.” Madoka commented, not sure what else to say. She fidgeted in anxious anticipation as the loading screen flashed on the tv. "I just wanted my character to be a mage, and I chose her design because I wanted her to be cutesy looking. And I like pink” After logging in, the game offered the option to edit your character’s appearance prior to spawning. Madoka didn’t know they planned to do so she left her character in her standard outfit.

*Mahannana-Chan is spawning into Yamia!* flashed on Madoka’s side of the tv screen while her mother tinkered indecisively in the character editor. Madoka’s character; a lavender-haired mage in a pink, fur-trimmed robe and  hat; suddenly plopped onto a cobbled street with a bounce. *You are now in Yamia: the town of beginnings! *

“There’s a whole world to explore here, but we’ve never been out of Yamia yet.” Selena noted as she hit the ‘spawn' button. “It's a cool starter town, but the world of Nyxaria is big. Should we try teleporting to one of the other locations today?” She suggested.

“Hmmm...” Madoka did want to explore the game world more, but she usually ended up getting into a groove with the gameplay in Yamia and ended up staying there the whole time. She liked the familiar feeling, but she was also curious about the other locations and maps. And if they just kept doing the same thing her mom might get bored. “Can we play in Yamia for like thirty minutes first?”

“Of course.” Selene’s massive silver and black wolf, loaded with traveling packs, spawned next to Madoka’s character. *Sel has spawned into Yamia!*

“And of course you also chose to just go by your real-life nickname. Boring!” Madoka complained as she flicked switches and buttons and sent Mahannana off on a leisurely jog towards the tavern she resided at.

“I’m not as creative as you are, Ma-Chan. At least I can pronounce my character’s name.” Selena retorted as Sel the wolf clomped after the mage through the town. “Going to see if Esmae has anything she needs help with first?” Madoka had a love for their characters' landlady and always had to visit her when they played. 

Madoka nodded. “She’s funny and sassy, but nice. And I like it when she sings. My favorite NPC for sure!”

“Won’t argue with that.” Selena conceded as their characters voyaged to check in with their landlady. “I wonder who voices her? Her singing is gorgeous, so it must be a drama actress, I bet.”

Suddenly the screen froze; the mage and wolf suspended mid-run.

“What the heck?” Madoka aggressively spammed the buttons on her controller.

“Ma-Chan, you'll break it.” Her mother put a hand over the controller and inched forward to the game system. “It’s beta version, remember? It’s bound to have some bugs.” She flicked the ‘on’ button multiple times before sitting back down. “If we restart it should be fine.”

The screen powered back up, but, in the dead center of a black screen, their characters remained frozen in the same position. “Okay, what the hell?” Selena groaned. “Is something wrong with the tv?” 

The mother and daughter watched as the background of the screen started to flash blue binary code. In the blink of an eye, their character’s had disappeared, leaving only solid black silluets behind as the numbers scrolled on. Madoka crawled close for a better look “Hey, you’ll wreck your vision that way.” Her mother warned. Something was off about the outlines. As Madoka looked on, the inky blackness within them was replaced with static. Mesmerized, she wondered ‘Is it just me, does it seem like it’s getting closer?’

Selena frowned and crawled forward, kneeling next to her daughter. “What in the-?! Why’s the static expanding like that?” She said with a tone of concern. Madoka suddenly realized that it hadn’t been her imagination from fixating on the details of the screen. Slowly, the staticky figures were growing and taking over the screen.

“Doesn’t static normally cover the entire screen?” Madoka questioned. “Why does it seem like our characters themselves are making the screen glitch out?”

Selena laughed, moving closer to inspect the tv cables. “That’s silly Ma-Chan! There’s probably just some sort of glitch or malware in the game that made the tv crash.”

Silently and without warning, a blinding blue light flashed out of the tv and enveloped them. They didn't even have time to process what was happening. The two shirked and covered their faces before everything went black.