Kenneth Tanimura made his way to the back of the dojo to where his little rustbucket of a car was parked. He'd began working at this place, teaching silly white boys kendo, since he'd won a few competitions back in the day when he was in high school. His great-great-grandfather had emigrated to the United States from Japan at the end of the nineteenth century and had been shut in an internment camp during the war along with his whole family, but he had passed down sword skills from the old country to his descendants. As the inheritor of such a tradition, Kenneth thus rather enjoyed kendo, but teaching it to thirteen year old boys who largely didn't have the discipline or dedication to take it seriously was a big pain. It was only a few hours a week though, and paid rather well for a part-time job, so he didn't mind. After the unexpected death of his father a year ago, as the eldest he was now sort of the man of the family, and any extra money he could make was a big help.<br/><br/>He was 20, of medium height, something like five feet and eight inches tall, a bit on the thin side, with short, slightly wavy black hair. He had the epicanthic folds of his Japanese ancestry, but had also inherited his mother's deep cobalt blue eyes, which made him appear rather striking. Waving to one of his students whose parents had picked him up, he got into his own car and started driving back home. He needed to be home a bit earlier than usual.<br/><br/>His house was a small, rundown bungalow in a small suburban neighbourhood filled with houses of similar shoddy construction. Ken worried that the next major earthquake would send it all tumbling down. Parking in the driveway he made his way inside. His sister was there, slouching on a rather threadbare couch, watching television while messaging her friends with her phone.<br/><br/>"Hey Karin, where's mom?" he asked.<br/><br/>"Working at the restaurant already,<em>onii-chan</em>," she replied, not looking up at him. She was seventeen, and was growing up to be rather pretty, if also rather insolent. She had taken more after their mother and probably was better able to fit into high school than he ever could when he was her age.<br/><br/>"Don't call me that," he said, frowning at the Japanese appellation she liked to tease him with.<br/><br/>After a quick dinner of some cold pasta and getting changed into some lighter clothing, he got into his room and shut the door. On the bed was a full-dive virtual reality headset, about a year out of date, but good enough for the game he was going to play. The technology had found many applications after it had matured in the last decade, not the least of which were fully interactive and sensory immersive games like Magic Arts Online. He was among the top players of that rather strange game.<br/><br/>Turning on his computer and putting on the headset, he lay down on the bed and activated it. "Link start!" he thought in his mind, and there was the familiar tingle as all of his senses were absorbed and subsumed into the computer-generated hallucination of the Metaverse, and started his favourite game.<br/><br/>MAGIC ARTS ONLINE glowed in burning letters in his vision, and as the logo faded, suddenly he felt himself materialise in a circle of megaliths in the middle of a small field. In the game he looked pretty much as he did in real life, sort of a slightly more mature version of himself, more tanned and rugged but still pretty much him. The game it seemed would not permit the use of an avatar that diverged too much from one's appearance in real life. His hair was done in a<em>chonmage</em>topknot, and he was dressed in a black kimono and<em>haori</em>, with two swords at his belt, and a jade<em>magatama</em>pendant on his neck. In this world, he was known as the Magic Swordsman Raiken, the Lightning Blade, and was one of the top players.<br/><br/>It was a pleasantly cool spring afternoon as he made his way in the direction of the city of Mathena, where he was supposed to meet his long-time partner Aria. He could see she had just come online and was not far. He sent her a brief private message.<br/><br/><em>Hey, just got on myself. Meet you at Eadell Square in Mathena.</em>