Browser-tan!: Microsoft Explorer [Chapter 1 added~!]

[Merci]

This is a fanfic. Of the Second Browser Wars. More specifically, girl anthropomorphized versions of browsers, the protagonist being Internet Explorer as she somehow spirals into a journey to try and discover a way to become 'better'.

Uhm. So. Yeah. Enjoy.

[spoiler=0.1]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif]Windows are what make up the universe, encoding it and turning it into something somewhat recognizable, yet completely different as to the reality that it should be. It was like looking at a mirror; existing, but not quite on the surface. Calling it a window or a mirror, its light and image distorted, was one way of describing this strange digital reality.

The sound of voices echoed throughout a room packed with information. Words and images were scattered everywhere, and five girls stood in the middle of it all, in the middle of a meeting.

“Just because you’ve exceeded Ex in popularity, Chrome—”

A girl with longish red hair and strange fox-like ears stood firmly in place, wearing what appeared to be a formal school uniform. Everyone knew her as ‘Firefox’, or ‘Fai’ as a nickname. She was a fast, smart, and safe girl. Or at least, that was the slogan she had come up with for herself and her business.

The opposing her, Chrome, had a calm look on her own face. Unlike Firefox, her appearance wasn’t quite so flashy, with simple short blue hair and a dress – separated into red, green, and yellow – with a blue circle near the waist that represented her symbol. This was intentional. The main contrast between Chrome and the vixen was that Chrome had a minimal appearance with sophisticated abilities.

“Your point?” the sophisticated browser shot back. “I’m now the best, having exceeded her by four percent.”

“B- b- but when it comes to regionals-” Ex stuttered.

“I’m sorry, Ex, did you forget to bring your spellchecker, because since when was that a word?” Firefox mocked her. “Let’s see…out of all the browsers gathered here, which one has to rely on plug-ins for spellchecking?”

“Leave her be, Ms Mozilla,” Opera interrupted. “Explorer has done nothing wrong.”

Opera was the second oldest after Ex herself, and looked the most mature in the whole room. Her long silvery hair drifted easily, matching with the blue elegant outfit she had on, a large star on its chest. Her hands had opera gloves on them, and she wore a purple hat with a rose as well as her signature symbol on it; a big red letter ‘O’.

“Nothing wrong, eh?” Saf chimed in. “Despite being horrible in every way whatsoever, somehow she’s the most popular browser in the world! HELLO?”

She shot a harsh look mixed with envy and irritation at the frail browser, making her flinch. The girl, wearing safari gear suited for adventures, didn’t seem very pleased.

“I wonder how many times a C.W.S latched itself on you?” Firefox asked sarcastically. Ex shied away at that question.

“That’s why I deserve this spot, a true browser to triumph against all else!” Chrome declared triumphantly.

“I disagree,” Opera countered.

Chrome turned to glare at her, and the other browsers also looked to see what she would say. The elegant girl took a cup of tea and sipped it before starting her argument.

“The only reason you became popular is because you yourself came from Google, whose main attraction is nothing more than a search engine,” she stated. “You are the youngest out of us all, and in a way, you could be called a ripoff, merely using our concepts and mixing it into yourself to become ‘better’.”

At this, the subject of that statement winced.

“You’re one to talk, you and your alien ways,” Chrome shot back. “Rewinding, window fitting[/font][/font][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif], [i]automatic reloading[/i][/font][/font][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif]… Do you want to know why nobody ever uses you?”

“Why?” Opera asked, complacently continuing to sip from her tea.

“I’m the simplest and fastest of all the browsers, Fai is easily adaptable, Ex came from a well-known company, and so did Saf. But what about you?” she continued. “You’re ‘innovative’, but you came from this obscene Norwegian nothing, and humans are idiots. What they need is something basic, while you’re just a complicated piece of data that nobody will ever understand, and that’s why you will always stay at [b]one percent[/b] market share worldwide.”

“I know,” Opera replied calmly, and set aside her cup of tea. “However, I do not mind. To me, this is not a competition.”

“What is it then, oh princess?” Firefox asked, crossing her arms.

“It is an era.”

At this, both the vixen and Saf gave her malicious glares, while Chrome’s own became even more intense. Ex shifted uncomfortably at this situation and moved for the door.

“Why would you even think that?!” Fai said. “There’s no way that we’re just an era!”

“I can’t ever be replaced!” Saf protested. “I worked hard to get here, and there’s no way I’ll simply disappear!”

“You-” Chrome couldn’t put it into words.

“Look at Ms Netscape for example. Once upon a time, the most popular browser, where is she now?” Opera continued.

Then everyone’s gaze turned harshly to the fearful Ex, and her feet wobbled under such intense pressure. Opera opened her mouth, as if regretting what she had just said, but shut it again.

“For one, she was weak to let herself simply lose like that,” Saf said bluntly. [/font][/font][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif]“[/font][/font][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif]But then again, Ex did cheat by joining forces with Windows...[/font][/font][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif]”[/font][/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif]“I didn’t mean to do it…” she murmured sadly.

“She was unable to keep up with the times,” Chrome continued. “A disappointment to browsing.”

“That’s not fair…t- to her…”

“My mother couldn't prepare properly, and couldn't advance on like she should've,” Fai remarked, slightly annoyed that the subject had been brought up. "She was pretty stupid-[/font][/font][font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif]” [/font][/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif][i]“Nav was not stupid!” [/i]Ex yelled, letting her voice echo throughout the whole room.

Then silence passed throughout the room.

This discussion of theirs was a meeting between the five browsers waging the ‘Second Browser Wars’. It wasn’t a war per se, but still one nonetheless, and young Chrome had taken the lead. For a decade, Ex had been the dominant browser among all, that is, up until that very day. There had been three wars of this sort. The first war was named the Mosaic Wars, which had technically also been a war of browsers.

The browser who had yelled just then, Ex, had long blue hair, boots, a white dress, and a single heavy earring on the left side of her face in the shape of a blue ‘e’ that stood for 'explorer'. It was her symbol, her identity.

This shaky girl had once been the supreme victor of the First Browser Wars. Back then, she had possessed a similar personality to Fai, but this third war and having to face four others whittled her down to her current fragile state, though having been friends with Opera in the past, the improved elegant young woman defended her at times. [/font][/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif]However, there were also times when she was left all by herself to face the wrath of everyone else. This was one of those times.

“Your opinion is irrelevant to our meeting,” Chrome told her, in an annoyed tone. “You may be popular, but you’re useless. The only reason you’re still even here is because you’re the default in almost everything.”

“You’re out of your league,” Saf continued, a satisfied grin on her face. “Times change fast, you know, Ex, and people are quickly learning that you’re useless.”

“In fact, if every user knew that you weren’t the only browser out there,” Fai continued on. “You’d quickly be dropped, in favor us, and turned into nothing more than a second-rate browser. No offense.”

Opera remained quiet, closing her eyes, not wanting to join in such a harsh conversation.

“You all…” Ex began, lowering her head and clenching her fists. Tears began to well up in her eyes, and now her whole body was shaking at this unbeatable pressure. [i]“…are JERKS!!!”[/i]

With an incomprehensible wail, she broke down. She turned around and burst through the door, before running as far and fast as she could, through the corridor covered in piles and piles of information, crying heavily, the tears flying into the air behind her like horizontal rain.

The poor girl had never asked for this sort of cruelty. Even if she were to fall and be replaced by Google Chrome, why did it have to involve so much taunts and bullying? Had she herself been like that? Was this what her former nemesis Nav went through? She doubted it. Back then, the only first-rate browsers were her and Nav, nobody else. Everyone else, Opera included, had been part of the second-rate nobodies. It should’ve been as simple as that. To be honest, that was what she had been expecting.

When Firefox, the daughter of her former enemy, appeared and challenged her, she had welcomed it at first. Her old friend Opera also joined the fray, and Safari popped out of a company that should’ve stuck with making hardware. But it was Chrome that ruined it all, flying out of a search engine of all things and toppling the serene balance that had once upon a time existed.

Now all she really wanted was to just slip away quietly and hope nobody noticed. She did try at times to keep up with the rest, but it was impossible. In her current situation, she didn’t deserve the position she currently held among the browsers.

It wasn’t possible anymore to keep up.

As the girl ran on and on, her eyes were shut and she herself didn't bother to look at where she was running, at where her feet landed. Then as should probably be expected, her foot suddenly tripped on something and her body toppled over down to the floor.

“Urgh…” Ex groaned.

She wasn’t fast like Chrome, adaptable like Fai, portable like Safari, or innovative like Opera. That one single trip had demonstrated it all; she was nothing, with neither merit nor worth, only a dying legacy.

“You okay?” a voice asked.

“Huh…?”

She lifted up her head a bit to see a tall guy standing by her. He wore a blue jacket and jeans along with a white shirt that had some sort of metal ‘M’ symbol on it, and his hair also looked metallic and shiny. But overall, his appearance just looked messy, untidy. When was the last time he had ironed his clothes?

“Who are you?” she asked him.

“I’m Maxthon.”

“Who?”

The guy, Maxthon, laughed a little.

“Of course, I doubt you’ve ever heard of me. I’m not all too popular when it comes to the world, and this is my first time here anyway,” he continued. “This place is a lot messier than I expected too.”

“Are you a program?”

“No,” he replied, grinning. “I’m a browser.”

Ex sniffled a bit and decided to get up, since there was no point lying before some second-rate browser. She closed her eyes and tried to wipe her face, drenched in tears, with her hands but it only got them wet too. When she opened her eyes again, Maxthon was holding out a towel. She took it and wiped her face with it.

“Thank you, Max,” she said. “So why are you here?”

“I wanted to chat with the top browsers,” he replied. “See, Microsoft recently removed Safari from their list of browsers, but I doubt they know that yet…”

He paused as if realizing something, before bending down until his eyes were level were hers.

“So what about you?” he asked.

Ex stifled a laugh before it could come out, though she made a bad attempt at hiding it.

“Ha- ha ha- you don’t know me?” she managed to get out, trying her best not to erupt into a mad fit of laughter.

“Not in the least,” the second-rate browser replied. “Should I?”

“Alright then, if you really don’t know me, then…”

With her free hand, she reached for the symbol earring on her left ear…and found it gone. In its place at her ear lobe was a strange liquid feeling, which she immediately identified as- [/font][/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif][font=lucida sans unicode,lucida grande,sans-serif]Quickly moving her hand away from it, she smiled faintly. Pain was beginning to register in her brain, and so did the cause. The earring had torn off while she had been running.

“Never mind, well, I’m a browser too, if that answers your question,” she told him instead. “Call me Ex.”

“I haven’t even dated yet, and I’m already talking to an ex,” the guy joked, turning around to face the exit, really close by. “I think you’re in the wrong place for browsers though. Why were you running?”

“The other high browsers scared me off,” she responded, truthfully.

“I see.” Maxthon nodded as if he knew what she was talking about. “Well, the rest of us lower browsers are gonna have their own meeting soon enough. I was actually intending to leave them and join the Second Browser Wars since I thought I was legible, but eh, I can’t just leave a damsel in distress, in distress here. So I’ll take you there, okay?”

A frown passed by Ex’s face, but it disappeared as fast as it came so he wouldn’t have noticed it.

Without the ‘e’ earring to make her stand out, he was no doubt mistaking her for another ordinary second-rate browser. She would have to hide the tear on her ear pretty soon though before anyone noticed it.

Not only that, but she was also a little amused at his statement, that he had been planning on joining the ongoing war. He wouldn’t last ten seconds against Safari, let alone the other three, just her personal opinion.

It also provided her with an opportunity to review the second-class browsers, and find out how to improve from them. If she was lucky, she might find a way to surpass Chrome and take her place once more and end up victorious once again in yet another Browser War, against all odds.

If not, at least she would have a few friends to soften her fall.

She hesitated for a moment to give a response.

“….Okay,” the blue browser replied.[/font][/font]

[/spoiler]

[?someone?]

Good, I guess? Odd premise, and I would prefer it a bit more tongue in cheek, but... ehhh. Good writing.