Flag Race Read online

  By the moonlit half, however, surrounded by a beautiful forest, stood a large Eastern-style fortress, whose great courtyard featured an endless variety of food and drink. Astonishing long-tailed birds flew everywhere, reflecting the light of the moon, while magical fireworks illuminated the sky.

  “Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Asuka asked as soon as she saw them. “Since this is my locus, everything I create in it is permanent! Sigurd is the one who helped me arrange it all nicely like that!”

  “Yeah...” said Ace’s friend, blushing, “I gave her a hand with the castle and fortress bits...”

  Bashful, Sigurd didn’t know where to look. Ace was happy for his friend, who was showing more and more affection for Asuka.

  “Yeah, this locus isn’t half bad, I guess!” they heard.

  “Bobby!” shouted Ace and Mary in a single voice.

  “That’s me!” answered the large stone giant.

  “Of course he couldn’t be left out of our celebration!” Asuka remarked. “And, speaking of that! It’s time to party now! We are the champions, after all! Kerah’s by the beach already! Let’s go!” She began taking timid Sigurd by the hand, while her outfit was turned into a bathing suit. They could see Kerah waving from afar, still in her alien form.

  They celebrated and laughed together, content with all they had accomplished. Much fun was had at that paradise created by Asuka.

  Dante and Kerah laughed as they dueled riding sea serpents. The Runner got all the enjoyment he could from the few years he still had ahead of him, having fun with his favorite game. When he was finally gone, his friends got a statue of him erected in the Flag Race server, together with many other players who’d made history in the game.

  Erik, the real name behind Kerah’s controller, was a rich forty-three-year-old businessman, who would soon open up a special school in his locus for students who wished to learn how to play Flag Race professionally. That was where Rodrigo and Marcelo, then cured of that disease that had troubled their family’s life so much, would get their training to become great Runners.

  Bobby had fun splashing huge amounts of water everywhere as he enjoyed that wonderful beach. A few years later, once he was old enough, he’d become the head of his own Flag Race team, on which the twins would play as well.

  Sigurd and Asuka were racing through great water slides. His friendship with the seventeen-year-old girl would soon become a beautiful long-distance romance, up to the point when Luiz finally moved to Japan. Akemi (as Luiz would come to know her) entered his life to bring a drastic change, for the better, to his luck. A confident Luiz would now get to write his own destiny. Together, the couple would become one of the best locus designers in the world.

  Ace and Mary jumped from the ledge of the cloud castle, going through rainbows as they dived down the crystal waters of that blue sea. They’d still be together for the upcoming years, both in and outside the Neuralnet. Even her dad would come to accept him, even if slowly, as he understood the boy would always do everything he could to make his girl happy.

  With the locus they’d earned, Pedro got his parents’ marketing company to start acting inline as well. His plan worked, and soon profits started coming in. The boy, his girlfriend, and his brothers would start to proudly wear the company’s logo stamped on their virtual clothes, further increasing its success.

  Nobody ever heard of Blazkowicz or Thiago again, but somehow Pedro and Luiz knew he would be paying for what he’d done. The truth was the boy’s father had done all he could to hide the fact his son had been sentenced to house arrest and denied Neuralnet access. When he was finally able to go on with his normal life, his credibility had been shot and he didn’t have his father’s financial support anymore to fulfill his every whim.

  After a while, Dante called his friends together by the sea shore.

  “Guys, I’d like to propose a toast!” He made a couple of cups and filled them with delicious drinks for his friends. “A toast to each one of us, who have achieved all these victories! I’ll always remember my greatest victory was finding friends like you.” He raised his cup up high.

  Everyone smiled and nodded in agreement, bringing their cups together with Dante’s.

  “Hang on, hang on!” Asuka said. “I want to take a holopicture with my Neurolink of all of us together!” She spent some seconds setting her device up. “OK! On three, everyone! One, two, three!”

  “Flag Race!” all of them cried.

  * * *

  [1]Called “Com Quem Será?” (“Who Will It Be?”), this is a traditional children’s song in some parts of Brazil that is often sung right after “Happy Birthday.”