MaruMonzterz - 3. Bunnies Make Good Targets

Sunday, 5^th January 2014. Rumiko’s birthday.

As soon as Rumiko realised that she was standing alone in the street, carrying a MaruBall from a shop that had suddenly vanished without trace, she acted on pure instinct and fear. She ran back home, hid under the covers, and did not leave until her stomach and bladder demanded she take care of her biological needs. Rumiko had been so scared by the experience that she shoved her new MaruBall, Spirit Medallion, and MaruMind into the back of her wardrobe and vowed to never play MaruMonzterz again. She wanted to forget she had ever met Apapa and her friends, and most of all, forget about the creepy vanishing shop. Rumiko hoped that such strong denial would eventually erase the memories, allowing her life to carry on as normal.

So Rumiko never went back to the improvised arena looking for Apapa and her friends. She did not want to meet with them again, even though it hurt a little to reject people who had been so nice to her. It was probably the right decision, though, because had Rumiko tried to contact Apapa’s group, she would not have been able to find them again, or the arena in which they once practised. Just like Yukina Tomino’s shop, Apapa’s group had mysteriously vanished, leaving behind nothing that could suggest they were ever there in the first place. With their mission to introduce Rumiko to the world of MaruMonzterz finally completed, their usefulness to the current plot came to an end (and so, for a long time it seemed that their brief appearance in this story would serve no further purpose).

On the morning of her birthday, Rumiko woke up just slightly earlier than usual. She wanted to enjoy her favourite day of the year as much as possible, but she was also very aware that her bed held great persuasive powers upon her. It was a very comfortable and warm place, bringer of sweet dreams and nice memories, so she was understandably reluctant to leave its sanctuary to face the real world. When she finally did, she was met with a table full of chocolaty goodness that her mother had put together specially for her. There were chocolate biscuits, chocolate bars, chocolate pancakes, even a chocolate rice ball. The drink of choice was, obviously, hot chocolate.

“Wow, mum, is that all for me?” Rumiko asked Suzume. She could barely contain her will to pounce on the table’s contents.

“Yes, it is. Happy Birthday, Rumi-chan!” The mother smiled and watched her beloved daughter devour everything in less than ten minutes. Normally she would tell Rumiko to slow down and saviour the food, behave more like a young girl and less like a pig, but today she figured she could let it pass. “What are your plans for the day?”

“Can I eat chocolate for lunch and dinner too?” Rumiko asked, hopeful.

“I don’t think we have enough chocolate for that. And anyway, it’s not good for you to eat so much sugar and fat.” Suzume managed to keep her smile while she answered, so that her daughter would not feel too bad about being denied things on her special day. Rumiko scowled for a bit, but her energy soon returned. “How about we go downstairs and greet the new neighbours?”

“We have new neighbours?” Rumiko looked out the window, and sure enough there was a big truck parked in front of her building. Men in bright work clothes went in and out of the truck carrying loads of heavy-looking boxes. “We have new neighbours!” The unexpected occurrence gave Rumiko an extra boost of excitement. “Let’s go greet them!” The girl all but carried her mother to the lift, and right until the moment she met the newcomers, she tried to imagine what they would be like. Hopefully they were a small family like hers, with a girl her age who would become her new best friend. Hopefully they would not have intimidating pets, or creepy family members, or a doll that killed people.

Two men carrying boxes passed by her just as she approached the building’s front gate. Influenced by her imagination picturing a serial killer doll leaping out at her, Rumiko suddenly realised that the cardboard boxes floating in the air were a lot more menacing from this close-up. Now scared for dear life, Rumiko made a sharp turn to the right. Her head collided with something solid, and she fell to the ground with all the grace of a potato sack.

“Are you all right?” A girl’s voice asked her. Rumiko had been too busy massaging her bruised bottom to look at what had hit her (she was also scared to see what it was, in case she had ran into the killer doll, or an angry wolf, or a smiling clown), so she took a while to realise that there was someone else standing right next to her and offering her a hand to get up.

“Ouch, I guess I’ll be.” When Rumiko finally looked up, she thought for a second that Apapa was standing there. The girl in front of her had shoulder-length black hair, bangs that curved weirdly to the left, and a worried look that made her unlikely to be an immediate threat. She did not wear glasses like Apapa did though, and looked slightly younger. Rumiko accepted the hand and managed to get back on her feet with minimal struggle. “Thanks for that. Are you one of my new neighbours?”

“Yes, I am. We are coming from Hiroshima. My father works at a bank and was just transferred here,” the girl answered. She seemed nice enough, so Rumiko tried to keep the conversation going. She barely noticed that her mother was doing the same to the girl’s parents not far from them.

“I see. I’m Rumiko Higurashi from flat 407. Today is my birthday and I just ate an all-chocolate breakfast.”

“Nice to meet you, Higurashi-san. I am Satsuki Kinomoto, and my family is moving into flat 709. I am eleven years old and I like books.” Kinomoto thought Rumiko’s introduction was somewhat random, but she played along because she had been taught to be polite to strangers who were being nice to her (and then to politely run away if said strangers suddenly decided not to be so nice anymore). “And congratulations for your birthday. May I ask how old are you?”

“I’m twelve now.” Rumiko looked at Kinomoto with a puzzled face. “Why are you being so formal? We’re almost the same age, you don’t have to act like my boring teachers.”

Kinomoto blushed and looked away. “I am sorry. I guess I am not used to talking to people my age that much.”

“How? Don’t you go to school? And what about your friends?” Rumiko had a vague sense that she was being slightly inappropriate with her questions, but she was too curious to worry about it much. Kinomoto blushed even more.

“I do not talk to people at school very often. I only speak if it is to answer a question. And I do not have ‘friends’ as such.”

“Why not? You seem like a nice person.” Rumiko was really curious, so much that she ignored the signs that the girl in front of her was now definitely uncomfortable with so much questioning.

“Thank you, Higurashi-san.” The colour on Kinomoto’s cheek began to resemble that of a ripened tomato. One would think that by this point Rumiko would realise it was time to stop asking intrusive personal questions, but sadly for Kinomoto, this was not the case. “I guess I just do not see much point in making friends when I know we are not staying for very long. I was born in Kyoto, but because of my father’s job we lived in Sapporo, Saitama, Shizuoka, Yokohama, and Hiroshima before coming here.”

“That is a lot of places.” For Rumiko, Kinomoto’s brief life story of hopping from one place to another sounded closer to an anime plot than to her reality. Rumiko had lived in the same flat since she was born, and the only times she went out of Tokyo were on school trips. “But isn’t it cool that you get to see lots of different things? You can’t get tired of routine that way.”

“I guess. But it also means I cannot get used to anything either. As soon as a place starts to feel like home, we are moving out again.” Rumiko finally realised that Kinomoto did not share her excitement for the topic. More of the Kinomotos’ belongings were being carried into the building, and Rumiko wondered what her life would be like if it consisted mostly of menacing brown cardboard boxes being moved from place to place. She would probably spend a lot of time hiding from them, avoiding the boxes and the men who carried them as if her life depended on it.

“I see.” Rumiko sighed. If Kinomoto never had any friends, she was probably very lonely. Rumiko tended to be alone at school too, because her classmates often made fun of her fears and low grades. She did not like to be alone, and this made her think Kinomoto did not like it either. “I think we could be good friends, though.” It was probably because Kinomoto resembled Apapa so much, but Rumiko thought that the new neighbour did not seem like the type of person who could be mean to anyone, even to an intellectually-challenged girl who was scared of their own plush toys. “Maybe it’s some kind of signal that we met on my birthday! What if we’re destined to be best friends forever?” Rumiko beamed, though Kinomoto did not share her enthusiasm.

“I am not sure I believe in those things.” What Kinomoto meant was that she did not believe in them at all, but she was too polite to say it to Rumiko’s face. “We can try to be friends if you want, but…”

“Cool! Then let’s be friends, Kinomoto-san!” Rumiko grinned so much her lips began to hurt. She was excited and relieved to have a new friend after all the weird things that had happened to her previous ones. Hopefully being with Kinomoto would make her forget about it quicker. “What kind of things do you like to do?”

“I like to read. Books are friends that I can take with me wherever I go, and they tell very interesting stories.” Kinomoto smiled a little. Rumiko sounded genuinely interested in getting to know her, and her excitement was contagious.

“Huh, ok, if you say so…” Rumiko winced. The only time she actively looked for books was when she needed something to make her desk’s legs level with the ground. Still, Rumiko did not want to give up on a potential friendship just because of this tiny difference of opinion. The girls were bound to have something more in common, and Rumiko would not give up until she found out what. “Any other hobbies?”

“I play MaruMonzterz. Have you heard of it?” Kinomoto asked rather naively. She had no way of knowing that the simple mention of the game would cause Rumiko’s heart to skip a beat as she remembered the yellow MaruBall hidden in her wardrobe, and the events that led to her getting it. All colour drained from her face, and Kinomoto became concerned. “Are you ok, Higurashi-san? Did something happen?”

“MaruMonzterz,” Rumiko whispered. Her hands began to shake. “They are scary things.”

“So you have heard of them.” Kinomoto raised an eyebrow. She thought Rumiko was referring to the life-like fights of armoured animals, or most likely to the fights that involved True Spirits. She had found them scary too in the beginning, so she thought she understood how Rumiko felt. “It’s ok, they’re not as scary as they look. Even the True Spirits aren’t that bad.”

“So you know about True Spirits?” Rumiko had been under the impression that True Spirits were MaruMonzterz’ most closely guarded secret, but if even her new neighbour knew about it, then maybe the knowledge was more widespread than Apapa’s group made it look like.

“I have one. His name is Flamelus and he’s a gryphon.” Something about Kinomoto’s matter-of-fact tone made Rumiko much less scared then she would have otherwise been. Her first encounter with True Spirits had made her believe they were uncontrollable beasts out for her blood (admittedly, her beliefs were largely shaped by her fearful personality more than anything else). But if Kinomoto, a girl of roughly the same height and body shape as her, could handle such a beast, then maybe, just maybe, they were not that dangerous.

“Wow, can I see it?” And just like that Rumiko forgot all about her resolution to never touch MaruMonzterz again. She had not completely lost her fear of the game, and she would still have the eventual nightmare involving disappearing side-streets, but she felt a lot safer playing the game with someone like Kinomoto than she felt around people like the scary Tokita or the creepy Lizard Boy. Kinomoto was rather similar to Apapa, but with the extra advantage of being younger than Rumiko, which made everything she did sound much more achievable.

“Not yet, sorry. My parents put it in one of those boxes. It’ll probably be a while before I find it,” Kinomoto answered, suddenly not so happy. Rumiko decided she wanted to cheer up her new friend, so she made an impulsive suggestion.

“Do you want to see mine, then? It’s in my room.”

“I guess, if it is ok with you and your parents…?” Kinomoto looked apprehensive. She had never been to a friend’s house before, and the fact that she had only known this particular friend for a couple of minutes before she was invited over messed with her internal sense of good manners.

“I’m sure it will be. We can go get it and then bring it here so we have space to play,” Rumiko suggested, realising that her friend was not comfortable with the quick intimacy.

“Then how about you go pick it up and I stay here? I think my parents want me to check that our things are being unloaded properly anyway…”

“Ok, fine. I understand. Please don’t go anywhere, I’ll be back in a moment!” Rumiko left before Kinomoto could reply. She sneaked into the lift just as the doors were closing, something she immediately regretted, because it meant she was forced to share a ride with two of the menacing cardboard boxes. It was a tense journey up, and Rumiko was relieved when the door opened and she was set free.

Considering how much effort she had put into hiding her MaruBall, it was surprisingly easy to find, almost like the little thing had found a way out of its hiding place on its own. Rumiko had to remind herself that this obviously could not be the case because MaruMonzterz were just lifeless toys. They did not move on their own. They did nothing on their own. She kept repeating those lines like a mantra all the way back to Kinomoto.

“Aw, it is very cute,” Kinomoto said once Rumiko showed her the yellow MaruBall. “What animal is your Spirit Medallion?”

“It’s a bunny. I hope it’s cute, I haven’t played with it yet.”

“Why not?” Kinomoto held the MaruBall level with her face. Its smiley expression made her smile back on reflex.

“I got it two days ago, I didn’t have time to do anything to it,” Rumiko answered. She did not want to share the real reason she had not touched her new toy for two days. Kinomoto would probably think she was making it up.

“I see. Well, if you want, I can help you set it up, code your attacks and everything,” Kinomoto offered, still smiling at the MaruBall. The thing was really cute.

“That would be nice. I really have no idea how to do any of that.”

“It is not that difficult. You just have to put your Spirit Medallion in the MaruMind, connect it to a computer, and it tells you what to do from there.” As Kinomoto talked, she showed Rumiko the slot for the Spirit Medallion located at the top of the MaruMind. It resembled the coin slots on supermarket trolleys, and were designed so that half the medallion stuck out. Kinomoto then pressed a tiny button beside the medallion slot and the tip of a small cable became visible. She pulled it out until there was enough cable to circle her palm.

“I didn’t know it did that,” Rumiko said, impressed by the small demonstration. She was glad she found Kinomoto before she tried to play with her MaruBall on her own (never mind her now-broken promise to never touch the thing again).

“Then I guess it is a good thing I can help you.” Kinomoto smiled to her new friend. She was beginning to like Rumiko, and she could tell that Rumiko liked her already. The girls were about to take a further step into cementing their friendship when they were interrupted by a strange voice.

“Hey, you! Let’s play MaruMonzterz!”

The girls looked towards the voice in question. It belonged to a boy slightly shorter than them. He was skinny and his bangs were so messy and illogical they could have come straight from an anime for teenage boys (the fact that they were dyed a vivid shade of red made it even more so). It was obvious from his body language that he was trying to look intimidating, but his lack of height and well-developed muscles drove him to inevitable failure.

“Who are you?” Kinomoto asked, raising an eyebrow. She had not fallen for his clumsy attempt to show dominance. Rumiko, on the other hand, swiftly hid behind her friend.

“I’m Ken Urashima and I’m the best MaruMonzter fighter in the neighbourhood!” the boy boasted. His voice sounded like he was trying really hard to make it sound deep and manly, but all he achieved was to make it sound like he was recovering from a severe cold. Kinomoto’s answer to that was to raise her eyebrows so much that they disappeared under her bangs.

“Are you stronger than Tokita-san?” Rumiko asked. She was already mildly scared of the boy (she was probably the only one ever), so if it turned out that he could defeat the scariest MaruMonzter player she had ever met, she would become downright terrified of him, size and lack of muscles notwithstanding.

“Who is this Tokita? I’ve never heard of him,” Urashima asked, confused. “I defeated everyone who ever challenged me, so I guess this Tokita person couldn’t have been very strong.”

“No, he was very strong! And scary!” Rumiko protested. “And he had a group of friends, there were five of them. Tokita-san sometimes lost to Takahashi-san, but she was nice and cheerful and not as scary. And Apapa-san was smart and wore glasses. And Togashi-san…”

“Whatever. I’ve never seen them before,” Urashima interrupted Rumiko. He was mildly curious about these people, and somewhat disappointed that there were potential rivals out there whom he had not yet defeated. “Are you sure they played around here?”

“Yes, they had an arena not far from here. They drew it with chalk and they practised every day.” Or so Apapa had told her. Rumiko had not been back there for three days now. Urashima’s questions made Rumiko reconsider the past days’ events. The way Apapa’s group appeared out of the blue, the way Lizard Boy and Little Kid disappeared so suddenly could only point to one thing (or so Rumiko’s mind thought). “Oh, no! What if they were ghosts?”

“Aaah, ghost fighters!” Urashima screamed, forgetting he was trying to look intimidating. His eyes doubled in size, his mouth opened in terror, and his head moved from left to right in quick jolts, desperately trying to detect said ghosts. In his panicked state, he approached the girls, and before either of them realised it, Urashima and Rumiko were hugging in near mental breakdown.

“There are no such things as ghosts,” Kinomoto told them, definitely not impressed by the duo’s antics. “Maybe the people Higurashi-san was talking about were just passing through Tokyo, and are now somewhere else.”

“I don’t know about that, smart girl,” Urashima said, still holding on to Rumiko for dear life. “I walk around here every day and I’ve never seen anyone like them. I think your friend was seeing things. Very creepy things.”

“But Higurashi-san lives here and she has never seen you either,” Kinomoto argued, still not convinced that there was anything strange about Rumiko’s friends. “You probably visited the same places at different times, so you always missed each other.”

“I don’t really believe you, but whatever,” Urashima scowled. He let go of Rumiko and pouted like a cute child before remembering he was supposed to look intimidating in front of potential rivals. “If the ghosts come to grab my feet tonight, I’ll tell them to go after you!” Kinomoto rolled her eyes again, but Rumiko fell for the intimidation attempt. She hid behind Kinomoto once more, apparently forgetting that Urashima was actually just as scared as she was. “So let’s play, ‘cause that’s what I came here for!”

“Ok, but my MaruBall is not ready. I’ve never played with it before,” Rumiko said, holding her MaruBall protectively against her chest.

“Really? Meh, defeating a beginner is not that fun.” Urashima stuck his tongue out, changing from ‘scary-bully-wannabe’ to ‘comic act’ in half a second. Rumiko laughed, quickly forgetting how scared she had just been. Kinomoto, on the other hand, did not trust the boy’s change so quickly. She raised her eyebrows, waiting patiently for his next interaction before she passed her judgement. “You can challenge me when you get some experience.”

“How about you teach her, then?” Kinomoto suggested. She wanted to see more of Urashima to decide what he was really like. He was obviously not a threat (and his acting skills were somewhere between ‘dreadful’ and ‘deeper underground than a coffin’), but she was curious as to whether there was more to him than just desperate attempts to show off. “If you’re as good as you say, then you could help her get that experience.”

“I don’t know,” Urashima focused his attention on Kinomoto. He already did not like her much, mostly because she refused to be scared of him. And he did not want to do something a girl asked him to do.

“You said you were the best player in the neighbourhood. Prove it.” On the other hand, Kinomoto knew very well how to push his buttons. “Show us how good you actually are.”

“Fine. Let’s get Higurashi’s MaruMonzter set up and then fight to the death!” Urashima announced triumphantly, as if he had never questioned the idea before. He grinned wildly, making Rumiko more scared of his happy face than his intimidating one. Kinomoto had to nudge her forward for them to move on. “There’s an internet café not far from here. We can go there to sort things out.”

“This could be our birthday gift to Higurashi-san,” Kinomoto said. Urashima became even more enthusiastic and full of (scary) energy once he realised it was Rumiko’s birthday.

“That’s cool, I love birthdays! Mine was two weeks ago. It’s, like, the only day I can make my brothers suffer without my parents being mean to me!” the boy said. He patted Rumiko on the back and kept his wild grin on until they reached the internet café. Rumiko stayed as far away from him as possible, grabbing Kinomoto’s arm every time Urashima looked at her. She thought that grinning Urashima looked way too similar to a wild monster who just so happened to have a human shape.

(...)

At the internet café, Urashima urged the girls to the computer at the very back of the room. He claimed that they needed privacy if they were going to build the perfect killing machine, at which point Rumiko tried to say that she definitely did not want to turn her cute bunny into something that could harm even a fly. Urashima then spent the next five minutes trying to convince her that gratuitous bloodshed was the best thing ever, and that her bunny would be more useful with lots of blades attached to it. Finally, Kinomoto put an end to their argument by telling Urashima that Rumiko was the only one who could decide what her MaruMonzter would be like, and his opinion did not matter in the slightest. She was too polite to tell him to shove his opinion up where the sun never shines, but Urashima got the message all right. He shut up after that, though he kept telling himself it was because he had nothing to say, not because he had been intimidated by a girl. He had definitely not been intimidated by a girl. Not him. Not in a million years.

“So, Higurashi-san, what do you actually want your MaruMonzter to look like?” Kinomoto asked Rumiko while Urashima was still busy with his internal denial.

“I want it to look cute. I don’t want to be scared by it,” Rumiko answered. Kinomoto plugged her friend’s MaruMind to the computer and a yellow window popped up. The text was in a foreign language, most likely English, but Kinomoto changed it to Japanese. It offered Rumiko two possibilities: chose armour and configure attacks.

“Your Spirit Medallion starts with a thousand points for you to spend in any way you want. The usual strategy is to make an even split between buying defensive armour and creating attacks,” Kinomoto explained. “Once you gain more points and experience, you become able to choose more protective accessories and create more complex techniques.”

“What do the armours look like?” Rumiko asked. Kinomoto promptly clicked on the armour option (represented by a ‘cutefied’ ox in armour) and the window changed to something that resembled an online shop catalogue. Single armour pieces (already specified for ‘bunny’ because of Rumiko’s Spirit Medallion) were presented in order of price, with the cheapest option being a protective cover for the ear tip costing 25 points. The most expensive item (found after a long scroll down the bottom of the window) was a full body armour suit with menacing spikes protruding from every available surface, plus retractable blades hidden in the ears. It cost 500,000 points.

“Do you see anything you like?” Kinomoto asked. Rumiko scrolled back to the beginning of the list and checked the cheapest items. All of them had a menacing aspect to them, except for a helmet that made the bunny look like it was smiling. Rumiko showed the helmet to Kinomoto. “It costs 850 points. Are you sure you want it?”

“I don’t like any of the other things.” Rumiko sighed. The more she looked at the armours, the more she felt like MaruMonzterz was really a violent game created to make people like Urashima happy.

“Well, it is a good defence, I guess,” Kinomoto said. “It will leave you with enough points for hopefully one basic attack, so at least you can cause some damage and earn more points, even if you don’t win fights.” Urashima looked over the girls’ heads and snickered at the cute helmet, but said nothing.

“Then I want it!” Rumiko decided. She clicked the ‘buy’ button and a cute 3D animation of her bunny appeared on the screen. The helmet fell in place and the creature did a little dance number to express its happiness. Bright letters on the screen congratulated Rumiko on acquiring her first item, and reminded her that she still had 150 points available. Rumiko had just finished reading those words when the screen returned to the main menu, where she was once again presented with the option of choosing armour or creating attacks. This time, she chose the latter (represented by a ‘cutefied’ arctic fox in strike position).

“Now you need to choose an attack,” Kinomoto explained. The new screen showed four options: bite (300 points), scratch (250 points), slap (200 points), and vomit (150 points). “Though it looks like there’s only one option you can choose.” As the three children looked at the screen and absorbed Kinomoto’s words, their jaws fell to the ground in surprise and amazement. Urashima was the first to recover from the shock, turning his surprise into sheer joy.

“Haha, vomit! What kind of attack is that? I’m really looking forward to fighting against you, Higurashi!” Urashima laughed like this was the best joke he had heard in weeks. Rumiko felt really embarrassed, but Kinomoto tried to comfort her.

“It is ok, this is not as bad as it looks. If you fight a couple of times, you will get enough points to choose a better attack.”

“It’s going to be disgusting. I don’t think I want to see it,” Rumiko said, just as she clicked the ‘buy’ button. To her utmost horror, however, the screen changed to a cute 3D animation of her bunny performing her chosen attack. The yellow creature’s face changed to green, its eyes closed, and its cheeks puffed up. The bunny retched twice before shooting a huge slime ball at a target. When the animation ended, the screen told Rumiko to select which combination of buttons would unlock the attack. A diagram of the MaruMind appeared on the screen, and Rumiko clicked on the green button. As disgusting as it was, there was no better way of remembering how to launch a slime ball.

“That was awesome!” Urashima beamed from behind the girls. He had taken a break from his laughing fit to watch the animation, but he soon returned to it with renewed vigour. “I can’t wait to fight that thing! Higurashi, let’s get out of here!” Urashima all but dragged the girls out of the internet café. He took them to a posh-looking residential building and opened the front gate. “We have a made-up arena here that we can use. It’s around the back…”

“Where are we?” Rumiko asked, amazed by the building’s modern-looking façade. Her building was old and ugly, but this one was beautiful (or at least as beautiful as a mountain of concrete and glass could get).

“I live here, but don’t worry, I’m not taking you up. Me and a couple of kids from the other flats built the arena a couple of months ago, when we heard about the Japanese Tournament, so we could have a decent place to practice. Obviously none of them can beat me, but…”

“There will be a Japanese Tournament for MaruMonzterz?” Rumiko asked. She vaguely remembered Apapa’s friends mentioning something like that, but she never got a proper explanation. Urashima’s face lit up in excitement, and the boy answered like he was a politician trying to sell his bill to a crowd of potential supporters.

“Yes, and it will be the best thing ever!” Or maybe ‘politician’ was not the most adequate analogy. Urashima came across as an eager fan boy willing to do anything it took to get as many people as possible to agree with him. “It’ll start early next month and will last for the whole of February. Whoever wins will represent Japan in the Asian Tournament in March. It’ll be awesome!”

“Wow, I didn’t think MaruMonzterz was such a big thing…” Rumiko was impressed. It was hard to believe that a game she had barely heard of until now was actually such a hit. In fact, she felt a little ashamed of having been kept out of it for so long.

“Do you think you have any chance of winning?” Kinomoto asked Urashima. The boy’ face immediately lost all traces of excitement.

“I don’t have a True Spirit, so unless my parents get me one on time for the tournament, it’s impossible, really.”

“You think your parents can get you a True Spirit?” Kinomoto raised her eyebrows. She had already mentally classified Urashima as a spoiled kid because of his brattish behaviour and lack of consideration for others, but she took this as the final confirmation of her first impression. “You think it is that easy? True Spirits are rare, powerful creatures. They seek their masters, you cannot just go to a shop and buy one.”

“How can you be so sure?” Urashima asked. He looked ready to fight for his convictions, but Kinomoto was not intimidated.

“Because I have one. My True Spirit was given to me as a very special gift.”

“You have a True Spirit? Then why am I wasting my time fighting the beginner? Where’s your MaruMonzter? Come fight me yourself!” Urashima was obviously angry. He returned to his intimidating posture and tried to sound more important and mature than he really was. His facial expression was not at all pleasant, and Rumiko thought for a moment that his red bangs were going to catch fire.

“My MaruMonzter is in a box somewhere in my flat. I just arrived in Tokyo today. If you want to fight me, you will have to do it some other day.” Kinomoto raised her eyebrows even further. It hurt her facial muscles to do so, but she could not think of any other way to express her feelings towards the boy. “Though as you just said, you probably have no chance against a True Spirit.”

“But you’re a girl! I bet you can’t even fight properly!”

Kinomoto counted to ten in her head, then to twenty, and finally to thirty before she recovered enough composure to reply. She had a strong urge to face-palm, or to hit Urashima hard on the head, but she was too polite to act upon those urges. “Look, I am not going to waste my time trying to convince you that I am a better fighter. If you do not want to believe me, then I shall see you at the tournament and I shall prove it to you in the most painful way.” Kinomoto noticed that Rumiko smiled a little, despite her overall need to hide from Urashima and his wild manners. “We came here so Higurashi-san could get some fighting experience, so let us get on with it.”

“You can’t boss me around, you know?” Urashima tried once again his intimidating posture, but if he was the kind of person who learned with his past mistakes, he would have realised by now that this tactics was useless against Kinomoto. Unfortunately for him, ‘learning’ was not part of his daily routine.

“But this does not change the fact that we came here to have Higurashi-san fight you. Are you telling me this is not going to happen now?”

“No, that’s not what I meant!” Urashima’s face became as red as his bangs, and he gave up the tough act. He took his MaruBall out of his backpack and refused to face the girls as he set it up for battle. Kinomoto took it as a personal victory and helped Rumiko set up.

“What we are hoping to achieve today is to get you to begin building up more points to improve your attacks,” Kinomoto told Rumiko. “You cannot hope to win against an opponent like Urashima-san with such a weak technique, but with the right strategy you can get a reasonable number of points.” Rumiko nodded, eager to get any advice. “I’ll try to help you with that, you worry about dodging his attacks to stay in the game for as long as possible.” Rumiko nodded again. Kinomoto smiled. “That’s the spirit, Higurashi-san!”

The two players took their places in the arena, to the right of their respective launch triangles. Kinomoto acted as referee, calling the beginning of the fight. Urashima’s MaruBall was fiery-red like his bangs, and its face looked comically confused. Once the MaruBalls splattered against the arena floor, a yellow bunny emerged wearing a cute helmet. Rumiko beamed at the sight of her very own MaruMonzterz. The creature was cute more than anything else, and Rumiko was glad it was not going to scare her anytime soon. Urashima’s MaruMonzter turned out to be a bear wearing spiked armour. It was a lot more terrifying and intimidating than its owner.

“Higurashi-san, attack!” Kinomoto ordered. Rumiko pressed the green button on her MaruMind as quickly as she could. Urashima did not try to counter attack, mostly because he was curious about how the bunny’s single technique worked. The trio of children watched intently as the yellow bunny hopped close to the red bear. It made disturbingly realistic retching noises and launched a big green slime ball towards its opponent. The bear suffered no detectable damage, though Rumiko got five points for the hit. “Well, that’s something…” Kinomoto said, upon noticing Rumiko’s new points counter. “Now hit him another thirty-nine times and you’ll be able to get a new attack.”

“Thirty-nine? That’s a lot!” Rumiko exclaimed, though she pressed the green button again. Another hit, and more five points were added to her count. Urashima was too busy laughing at the attack’s overall (lack of) effects to fight back.

“Thirty-eight…” Kinomoto helped her count. The yellow bunny was allowed to continue its offensive for a while, because Urashima was really entertained by the vomit machine. Once Rumiko got seventy points, though, the boy finally got bored.

“That was fun, Higurashi. Thanks for playing with me. I guess I can call you when I want to make my stomach hurt from laughing again.” And with that, the boy ordered his bear to attack. The red monster slashed the bunny full on the face, and it immediately ran out of HP.

“I lost in one hit?” Rumiko sounded disappointed, even though this battle outcome had been implied pretty much from the beginning. Surprisingly, Urashima also looked disappointed.

“I got only 200 points from a one-hit KO? That’s not fair!” He complained. Because the winner was allocated a bonus equivalent to the total points won during the fight, it meant that his fatal single hit was awarded only one hundred points.

“The weaker your opponent, the less points you get. You should know this if you claim to be the strongest in the neighbourhood…” Kinomoto pointed out. Urashima pouted.

“Well, yeah, I know you can’t get a lot from destroying weak players, but I didn’t think it would be worth so little.” Urashima retrieved his MaruBall from the arena. Rumiko did the same. Despite losing the fight so badly, her MaruBall did not appear damaged.

“I guess it is a way to prevent very strong players from bullying beginners,” Kinomoto suggested. Surprisingly, Urashima agreed with her. He walked towards Rumiko and offered his hand for her to shake.

“That’s true. It wouldn’t be fun or fair if all the strong people got something out of destroying the weak. I like it better when I’m facing someone as strong as I am; it’s more challenging and fun. I hope you’ll get there some day, Higurashi. Then we can have a real fight.”

Rumiko shook Urashima’s hand. “I guess. It was fun, even if I lost so badly.”

“It was disgusting, actually.” Despite his words, Urashima was grinning. “Which is why it was so fun.” The boy laughed. Rumiko and Kinomoto failed to see the connection between disgusting and fun, but they made no comment. “Maybe we should do the same thing tomorrow? Let’s see how long it takes for you to get decent attacks for your bunny.”

“We could.” Rumiko smiled slightly. Urashima seemed much less intimidating now that the fight was over and he was not trying to look bigger and stronger than he really was.

Rumiko and Kinomoto soon returned home. Kinomoto had to help her parents unpack their most essential possessions (sadly her parents did not include her MaruMonzter in this ‘essential’ category), and so Rumiko spent the rest of her birthday looking at videos on the internet about MaruMonzter fights. She found footage from the 2013 Japanese Tournament, and was surprised to see a boy who strongly resembled Ichigo Tokita winning the final. The only reason she knew he was not Tokita was because the video said his name was Koichi Yuy. Other than that, they could have been the same person: they were both far too strong and muscular for their age, and looked just as intimidating. Koichi’s bangs covered his eyes completely. To add to the general creepy feeling of the video, Rumiko noticed that Yuy stood to the left of the launch triangle, just like Tokita had done. ‘Fight me now, and the next time you are faced with an intimidating left-hand opponent, you will be less scared’, Tokita had told her. But Rumiko was definitely not any less scared of Koichi Yuy than she had been of Ichigo Tokita. She hoped she would never have to face him in an official battle.

This kind of wishes rarely came true, though, particularly if one was a so-called Main Character. Of course, Rumiko still had no idea of her role in this story, but many outside observers should be able to figure out that Tokita’s suspiciously similar substitute would not get a name-drop out of the blue if he was not to make further and very plot-relevant appearances later on.

Rumiko went to sleep still thinking of MaruMonzterz fights and tournaments. The next day would be the first day back at school, back to a place and a routine she hated. But thinking of her yellow MaruBall (now resting safely on her desk) and vomit-prone bunny acted as a natural relaxing agent that allowed her to have sweet dreams, despite her now near impending doom.