"Yeah...To be honest, I'm terrified...but I can't let that stop me now!" -Kite

The player character Kite hails from the .hack// world, or, to be more specific, The World. Kite was invited to The World by his best friend, Yasuhiko, who was known as "Orca of the Azure Sea" as well as a "Descendent of Fianna" in The World. However, in the first dungeon they visited, tragedy struck. The two friends encountered Aura, the child of Light, who gave Orca the Book of Twilight, which was "A great force...the power it holds can bring forth either salvation or destruction at the whim of the user." Immediately, Skeith, the Terror of Death and Aura's pursuer, busted in and Data Drained Orca, causing his mind to be trapped in The World while his body went comatose. Kite narrowly avoided being Data Drained due to the luck of a system error, and somehow received the Book of Twilight. After reentering the world, he began to look for a way to revive Orca and find Aura, gathering allies around him. Eventually, he was able to find Aura again, but before he could ask her something, she was Data Drained by Skeith. Enraged, Kite defeated Skeith using the power of the bracelet, which had been derived from the Book of Twilight. However, in defeating Skeith, Kite had triggered the awakening of Cubia, a gigantic monster the likes of which The World as most knew it had never seen before, which then proceeded to pwn Kite like crazy.

This started the next leg of Kite's journey, wherein he had to revive Aura and the defeat the dreaded Wave mentioned in the Epitaph of Twilight, the basis for The World. Through this journey, Kite gathered more friends around him, including those that initially did not trust him, such as the system administrators and Balmung of the Azure Sky, Orca's partner. He also met Mia, a mysterious cat-like Player Character who began to act strange when The World started to get all glitchy. Nevertheless, Kite went on to defeat more Phases of the Wave(of which Skeith was the first), which caused The World to become more and more corrupted. Inside the second and fourth Phases, Kite found fragments of Aura's data, which created an Aura that was pretty much comatose. However, each time a Fragment was added to Aura, Cubia would appear and battle Kite. After taking out five of the Phases, Kite makes a horrible discovery; Mia is the sixth Phase, and he now had to defeat her after she transformed into some freaky monster thing. After beating her, Mia reverted to her old form for a few moments, allowing her to say goodbye to Elk, her good friend in The World and also another party member. Enraged at Kite and heartbroken, Elk logs out, pretty much leaving the party until the end of the game. Anyhow, Kite received the last Fragment of Aura and used it to restore her fully, causing Cubia to appear yet again. However, this time Aura warns Kite that he can't fight Cubia and tells him to run; Kite beats Cubia anyway. After taking down the Seventh Phase, Kite and co. encounter the creator of The World, Harald...sort of. What they find is a gigantic floating rock with a weird voice and poor mastery of the space bar. After some talking, Aura appeared and finally told Kite why he can't beat Cubia for good; Cubia is the shadow of the bracelet, and if Cubia is destroyed, so is the bracelet. With one Phase left, destroying the bracelet would be a big no-no. And, of course, Cubia would pick that moment to start destabilizing the area in preparation to attack. Harald offers up some words of wisdom and then proceeds to shatter. Aura, of course, runs away. Big help there. Anyhoo, Kite and company battle Cubia, which would normally be easy if he wouldn't completely revive himself. After a few rounds of this, Kite destroys the bracelet, destroying Cubia...and the only way they have to stop the Wave.