My eyes opened on the same mountain range of tiny white spikes that consists of my ceiling as every other morning, although this time there was a huge, ugly crack in it; where I’d accidentally released some of my Metaki hearing Soshintsu Taiga talking shit about a Metaswordsman whose blade was “practically decoration.”
Seven years ago, my grandfather’s katana turned from both the symbol and instrument for making my dream come true to something that would surely be seen by Taiga-sensei as much worse than Takako Hatoya’s blade. It’d become literal decoration, hanging dormant on my bedroom wall until the day I moved out of my parents’ place, only to then hang dormant in my apartment bedroom wall. I only ever took it off when drunk or high, fantasizing about what it’d be like to be a real Metaswordsman, instead of actually going out and being one.
The wall my bed was pressed against started vibrating angrily. I fished for my phone, which had to be in between my bed and the wall. Almost dropping it back down the tight and awkward abyss, I carefully reeled my hand in, then put the phone to my ear.
“Moshi-moshi?”
“Hey, Nakano-kun.” It was Kobeni’s familiarly strange slurred monotone voice that she puts on when she’s really high on the stash of the live resin she keeps in her office drawer. “There’s another Sakamoto’s location that needs staffing. Can you head over there?”
“Are you gonna be alright running the Tori street location by yourself?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ve got my stash and I’m pregamed, just in case the day is stressful.”
“Um, okay. Can you send me the address?”
“Yeah…I don’t know what the address is…It’s the one on Araki Road. You know where that is, right?”
That was the same road as Tenka Dojo. “Um, yes, actually.”
“Alright, cool. I already told them you’ll be there in about 15 minutes.”
“Wha-”
“You said you needed overtime and stuff, right?”
“I don’t recall saying exactly that, but I guess I do.”
“Great! Glad this is all working out. See you there.”
“You’re gonna be there..?”
“...No, but…I mean, you are. I didn’t mean to say...Anyways, I’ve got a customer, so bye.”
Then she hung up. I’ve never said it, but I never liked her resin habit. Supposedly, she’d only take it to relax herself during busy days, but based on how it felt when I first tried some, I don’t know how it’d help someone relax. It made me unable to focus, to the point where concepts like basic arithmetic became incredibly difficult.
I got up, stretched, went to the bathroom, and wiped my face with the rag I used for everything, then picked up my uniform, which was sitting in a pile in front of the toilet. When I pressed my nose to the shirt to test whether it was still viable to wear without giving it a cloud of body spray, the pain of yesterday’s kick to my face dully rose back up. That got me thinking about Tenka Dojo again. If this Sakamoto’s location is on the same street, I thought, then I can go straight there after work to train. Maybe they’ll give me a Tenka gi. I smiled, thinking about how cool it’d be to get a gi from a real Metamartial arts dojo. I liked the family gi my mom made, but it really means something when you sport the kanji of a dojo. I started to get the feeling that this day was going to be a pretty good one. Hopefully I’ll get to do some training that’ll really show my potential.
I threw my clothes on, brushed my teeth, then grabbed my phone, wallet, and keys, and just before I left the house, I decided to throw my sword and gi into my duffle bag..
Every Sakamoto’s location is virtually the exact same, with the only locations that differ from the norm being known as “legendary" among konbini enthusiasts. The Sakamoto’s on Araki Road was no such legendary store, unfortunately. [DESCRIPTION OF THE STORE] When I pulled up and stepped inside, I could use exact the same muscle memory to walk in and clock in. The only difference was that this wasn’t an overnight shift, so the 10 AM late spring sun beamed happily in the sky.
When I walked in, the guy behind the counter looked at me and smiled like I was the answer to all his questions. As a matter of fact, he put his hands together and exclaimed, “ARIGATO, KAMI-SAMA!!!!”
“I’m…glad I could be of…service?” I uttered awkwardly. Having someone cover your shift was a relief when you could get it, but this guy looked like he was about to cry.
I decided not to dwell on that anymore and just get straight to work.
Work is hardly anything worth spending a lot of time describing. It’s just this loop of doing a small string of transactions with customers, then wiping down counters, mopping the floor, and replacing the items on the roller grill every time the place would empty out for just a few minutes. It got busy at around noon, but it still wasn’t so bad. The whole time, I felt like an NPC in someone else’s video game; a small, necessary, liminal interaction for everybody to have on the way from point A to point B.
I found myself praying to Kami-sama for something new to happen, much like how the guy whose shift I'm picking up must've been. My eyes snapped open at the sound of the bell above the entrance door. The man who'd opened it refused to step inside, though, opting to keep his eyes glued to something up in the sky behind him. He stood with his hands pushing open the door and his torso twisted around to look outside for a few confusing seconds before I decided to clear my voice for his attention.
“Umm, sir?” I asked.
“There's two Metafighters going at it outside,” he replied.
I jumped over the counter and ran up to join him in an instant. The two of us stepped fully outside, ignoring our respective business inside to gawk up in the sky, where two human beings fought suspended in the air, matching each other blow-for-blow with a speed that the untrained eye could hardly keep up with. Tiny circles of Metaki burst off the two bodies with every punch, kick, chop, and block.
“Should we call the cops?” asked the guy.
“Hell no!” I told him.
“What if they hurt someone?”
“They’re not hurting anyone now, are they?”
“I mean, they’re probably hurting each other.”
“That’s the nature of Metafighting!
“I mean, the cops are probably gonna get here eventually.”
I sighed and looked at the man next to me. Based on his light brown skin and kinky hair, I assumed he was half-Black, half-Higanese, which was pretty common over here because we were right next to the border, but I guess he could’ve also been Midenite, or part Midenite.
“C’mon, don’t you know how important it is not to get in the way of a battle between Metafighters?!” I asked him, exasperated.
“Bro, what?” The guy asked with a chuckle.
“Those two guys up there are facing a clash of ideals that can only be resolved through combat!” I told him, clenching my fists, feeling tempted to bring out a bit of my own Metaki out of pure excitement. “If we were to get in the way of that, those two will never forgive us!”
One of the combatants kicked the other in the balls, causing the opponent’s knees to buckle together in pain. His arms also dropped down to protect his wounded family jewels; an opportunity that the assailant took immediately by following up with a roundhouse kick to the face.
“Yeah but if we just let them fight, and one of ‘em throws a Metaki blast, misses, and blows up your store, then what?”
The one who’d been kicked in the balls faltered in the air for a second, then charged his energy and flew back in his opponent’s direction, appearing to pull a baseball bat from somewhere around his waist, as if it was just in his pocket and it made perfectly logical sense for one to fit there.
“I…I’ll just…” Focused mostly on the fight, and thrown off by the sight of a man materializing a bat from an impossibly tiny space, I stuttered. “I can make sure no one gets hurt.”
I took my eyes off the sky and looked to the far right corner of the parking lot in front of the store. I shoved my hand into my pocket, fished out my key fob, then clicked the unlock button before running to my car and opening up the back door.
Just as I unzipped my duffle bag, I heard concrete being crushed behind me. I swung around and saw none other than Zenny-senpai in a small crater right in front of the store.
“HOLY SHIT!!” Exclaimed the bystander watching the fight with me. “IT’S ZENNY FUCKING OKAGAMI!!”
“Zenny-senpai?!” I screamed.
“YOU KNOW HIM?!” The guy next to me asked.
“Hey, Rei-kun. You mind tagging in for me, for just a bit? I need a minute to heal.”
“You want me to get in the middle of your fight?!”
“Just for a little bit. I just need time to eat a few of these hermit berries to heal.”
I looked up at Zenny’s opponent: a crazed white woman with wild, spiky blonde hair. A brown skin tight bodysuit clung desperately to her bony body. She was cackling like a crazed witch, and though I couldn't make it out at that moment, she had a Look in her eyes to match. I grit my teeth and unsheathed my sword.
“Oh my God. Oh my fucking God. I’m about to go fucking viral on PicTalk!” The guy I was watching this fight with fumbled his phone out of his pocket and began to record everything he could.
I started to imagine my life as a My Metahistory video again. “After I got my ass handed to me on my first day of training,” my imaginary future self narrated, “I got my ass handed to me AGAIN the next day by an ultra-rare white Metacrackhead on the ghetto side of Buji-cho, near Kenken-Ken!”
Then I blinked and the woman's face was centimeters from mine. This is where I got treated to her Look. The icy blue daggers she had for eyes shot right past me and into the core of the Earth.
Something thin, blunt, and solid struck my solar plexus, sending me flying a meter or two right into the side of my car. I slammed into the backseat door, denting it, shattering the window, and denting part of the car's body behind the door. Just as I began to stand, my opponent grabbed me by the collar and lifted me above her head with one hand. I then gulped and swung my katana into her torso. Because of the awkward position I was in, I couldn't swing it too well, and it bounced uselessly off her.
Before I could raise my arms to prepare another swing, a sickle chopped down into the crazy woman’s shoulder. Behind her, Zenny-senpai yanked the sickle toward him, jerking her backwards and shaking me in the air.
“Aurora-chan, please!” Zenny-senpai begged. “You gotta stop! This isn’t you! We’re your friends! I don’t wanna hurt you!”
White-san?! I thought as I carefully and discreetly gathered Metaki in one hand, palm facing away from the woman holding me in the air. It had been a very long time since I’d tried to channel Metaki for an attack through my own body instead of through a sword.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Friends?! I DON’T KNOW THIS NIGGA!!” The woman, who I suppose was White-san, shouted, gesturing to me. She then took the hand she wasn’t using to keep me dangling in the air and ripped it out of her shoulder. The deep gash simultaneously gushed blood and began to close up. “Also, what the fuck do you mean, ‘you don’t wanna hurt me’?! I’m fucking bleeding!!!”
“You know you can’t say that!” Zenny shouted back.
“Yes, I can, cuz–” White-san looked down at her shoulder and saw that it had healed up in a matter of seconds. “–I mean, I was bleeding...”
“I was talking about the N-word!!” Zenny shouts, snatching the sickle back. “That's racist! You can’t say that!” He then began to somehow stuff his sickle, blade-first, into a small pouch tied to the belt on his gi. Once the blade was in, he let go of the handle, which fell into the pouch like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“C’mon, it’s just a wor-” White-san’s defense was interrupted by my baseball-sized blast to the back of her head. In response, her head swerved back at me, treating me to another Look for a split second, immediately after which I found myself crashing through the glass doors of Sakamoto’s on Araki Road.
Aurora swaggered towards me, Metaki flowing off her body as she slowly charged her energy and prepared for another attack.
I stood up, shook the broken glass off my clothes, and readied my katana to defend myself.
“Can I please have an explanation on what’s going on here?!” I asked desperately.
White-san replied by grabbing the blade of my katana, to which I panicked, swung it upwards to yank it out of her hand, then down again, channeling Metaki into it, sending her flying back out of the store.
“Nice job, Nakano-kun!” Zenny-senpai congratulated me from outside. Holding a double-barrel shotgun in his hands, he approached White-san, who lay on the ground right outside where the door used to be. “Basically, Aurora-chan’s ability is messing her up,” he began to explain as he stood above her and cocked his gun.
“What’s her ability?!” I asked. “It looks like all she has is crazy strength, healing, and Metaki blasts.”
Zenny-senpai casually shot his dojomate in the head, then cocked his gun and shot again. “When she sleeps, she can bring what she dreams about into reality.” For a third time, he shot her. With every shot, her entire body jolted like it was being hit with a defibrillator.
“WHAT?!”
“Yeah. And so when she has bad dreams, like today, she gets a bit hard to handle.” Zenny-senpai cocked his gun again and took aim one more time, but didn’t shoot because his target’s body started changing. Her arms, legs, and torso started to shrink in size and began to fatten up to the condition they were in when I had first seen her the day before. Her hair also began to revert from the crazy, frizzy spikes they were in earlier into the tame rivers of yellow they once were. The form-fitting bodysuit also transformed into a white training gi.
“HOW IS SHE NOT THE STRONGEST?!” I screamed.
Zenny-senpai dropped his shotgun into his pouch, which, just like the sickle, simply fell in, not giving it as much as a tiny bulge. Then he picked up White-san, who slept rather soundly for someone who’d just taken six slugs to the face.
“Well, I did just beat her, didn’t I?” he asked with a grin.
“Hey, I think I deserve some credit too..!” I said.
“Ah! True! Now you’ve got something to hold against Rosa. Aurora-chan stole her powers when she started her rampage.”
“Right…Um, what’s Rosa-san’s ability, anyway?”
“I’ll explain on the jog back to the dojo. You coming?”
I pointed back at the counter behind me. “Actually, I should get back to work. I’ll be there when I get–”
Zenny-senpai tossed his head up and laughed. “Something tells me you’re gonna get fired,” he said.
Before I could retort, the screams of a police siren echoed into our ears from a distance.
“Kuso!” Zenny-senpai cursed. “I’ve gotta get back to the dojo.”
He then turned to the guy who had been recording the entire fight.
“Hey!” He called to him. “Don’t post that video.”
“Are you kidding?! This footage is gonna make me so much money!!”
“That footage could get you arrested. Delete it.” Zenny clapped back.
“Okay, fine!!” He then turned the camera onto himself. “I won’t post it, but I'll keep it for myself, though.” He then winked and gave his phone a thumbs-up before slipping it back into his pocket.
Then he turned to me, gesturing in the presumable direction of Tenka Dojo with a tilt of his head. “You coming?”
“Umm…” I stammered as the siren’s sound steadily swelled. “...This is all so…sudden…” I pointed at my car with my thumb. “My car…”
“Who said anything about a car?” Zenny-senpai asked. “C’mon, let’s do some roadwork.”
“I can’t just leave my car here!”
“Fine. I’ll meet you there, then.” He then bolstered his aura and ran off at an illegal speed.
After a half-second to watch Zenny-senpai disappear down the road in a matter of seconds, I grabbed my keys, unlocked the car, and rushed over to it, hurriedly mourning the loss of my back window and dented door before hopping in and trying to screech off the parking lot without making myself look too suspicious.
When I got to the dojo, everyone was gathered in the kitchenette, eyes glued to a laptop screen. Rosa-san was standing, patting Kahlon-san on the shoulder, like she wanted to comfort him, but was also smirking, as though somebody had just insulted her friend but it was kind of funny. Kahlon-san looked horrified, like how the manager of the Sakamoto’s on Araki Road probably looked after they saw the condition I left their store in. Malcolm-san and White-san looked at the screen with blank expressions, like they didn't know how to react. Zenny leaned against White-san’s chair with pursed lips like an IT guy trying to diagnose what's wrong with the computer. Tenji-sensei just had his eyes closed and shook his head.
Zenny-san was the first one to look up at me, and when he did, he smiled. “Well, if it isn’t Tenka Dojo’s new second-strongest member!” he greeted, gesturing theatrically at me.
Rosa swung her head at Zenny with a scrunched-up face. “HUH???”
“You scale Rei-kun above yourself, Zenny-senpai?” White-san asked.
“What?! No, I’m strongest! Rei’s second-strongest!” Zenny-senpai clarified.
“How the hell are you the strongest?” Rosa-san asked accusingly.
“I rit–I litelarry–” Zenny-senpai paused and took a frustrated breath to try and say the word correctly. “I literally just beat Aurora-chan with your powers just a few minutes ago!” He clapped with each syllable in the word “literally”, I guess to help him pronounce it correct.
“That ain’t the same thing as beating me, though!” Rosa-san clapped back, synching up with the last three words. “Obviously, Aurora didn’t know how to use my power properly!”
“WHAT THE FUUUCK?!?!” White-san, Malcolm-san, and Kahlon-san screamed at the laptop screen simultaneously. Tenji looked at the screen with a look of bewilderment, like maybe he’d just woken up.
“Huh?” Both Rosa-san and Zenny-senpai paused their argument to see what the other three were on about. “HOLY SHIT!!!” They both shouted at once.
I couldn’t help but feel compelled to see what the commotion was about, so I started walking over to the kitchenette. “Ano…what are you guys watching?”
“The news!” Zenny-senpai hurriedly explained, picking up the laptop, turning it towards me, and shoving the screen into my face before I could even join everyone else at the table.
Practically forced into my retinas was a selfie of legendary Metaswordsman Soshintsu Taiga, holding a longsword about two or three times wider than it should be, sticking his tongue out dangerously close to the blade, with the hand clutching the weapon holding up the middle finger below his chin. At the base of the blade were the four unmistakable kanji characters any Metaswordsman would instantly recognize, even if they didn't speak Higanese: 険拳県剣; Rugged Fist Prefecture Sword.
“Along with the photo was the caption, ‘The fighter’s block is over, MFs cancel ur plans’,” the voice of Mashu Tekker explained. “This has led to a lot of speculation about Taiga coming back into the professional Metafighting game after some forty years of absence.”
My eyes felt like they were going to pop right out of my skull. “NANIIIIII?!?!”
“Show him the segment before that one,” Kahlon-san commanded from his seat at the table. His eyes were glued to the tabletop, staring darkly at it, as though the laptop were still there. His fists were also stuck there, clenched and motionless in disbelief.
Zenny turned the laptop back to himself and spammed the arrow key to rewind the video, then swung it back around to me.
I was greeted by a very serious-looking Mashu Tekker, wide-eyed and raised-eyebrowed, hands folded and sitting up straight in the gaming chair in his bedroom, sporting his iconic black tux, lacking the usual “I ❤ ️Metafighting” pin to denote extra seriousness.
“Yesterday, some huge news in relation to the DOOMLAYERZ broke, courtesy of the vigilante gang, the Chitan Anti-Terrorist Association,” Tekker-san began. “At an emergency e-press conference streamed on Clash last night, the Association’s leader, Fraz Chitan, announced that he and his team had discovered the identity of the elusive anonymous leader of the DOOMLAYERZ.”
The visual switched to a clip of the ebony-skinned, barrel-chested bald man that I kept seeing on the news and social media as a topic of much debate, wearing a lavender suit with what I wondered were shoulder pads or just his incredible natural frame. With the stern expression of a father disciplining his son, he held up his gigantic hand, onto which floated a photograph of a white man with expertly distributed wrinkles, black-and-white striped hair, and a smile that looks like the type a kid might have when he has a juicy secret. Instinctively, I sucked air into my lungs in a much more subdued shock, unsure how to really process what I was seeing as the name belonging to the face on Chitan’s hand came to mind: Dethro Broadus, the Vice-president of Liberty Moon.
“This motherfucker duped all y’all niggas,” Chitan announced sternly with his almost impossibly deep voice.
The visual changed back to Tekker-san as he continued the report: “Currently, the public awaits a response from either Presidents Duckworth or Yamamoto.” He then spins around in his gaming chair, and when he’s visible again, his familiar carefree and relaxing smile returns to his face and his “I ❤ ️Metafighting” pin is returned to his chest. “In somewhat lighter news, but maybe not if you’re a Metaswordsman, Soshintsu Taiga is making waves on the internet once again with another new controversy, this time with a selfie on PicTalk–”
Zenny paused the video and closed the laptop.
“So…what exactly…does this mean..?” I asked, not even sure what to not be sure about.
“It means that the age of the political revolution is dead,” Kahlon-san said bitterly. “The grimy, geriatric fingers of the powers that be are already in the batter of change before you’ve even mixed the flour with eggs.” He folded his arms, laid them onto the table, and rested his chin upon them. “We the people cannot cook, for we are already cooked.”
“...Huh?”
“Haven’t you been following the news about the DOOMLAYERZ?” Kahlon-san asked, looking at me incredulously. “They were only the most pertinent thing going on in modern politics.”
“Well, I don’t really follow politics,” I said with a shrug.
“Ugh. Great,” Kahlon-san groaned. “Another sheep.”
“Ain’t you the sheep for wantin’ to join a terrorist organization cosplaying a revolutionary army, which was being controlled by the vice president of Liberty Moon?” Malcolm asked.
“Okay, so we're all sheep, but that's the problem! We have no real power anymore, because politicians have their hands in everything now.”
“The DOOMLAYERZ never came off as revolutionaries to me. They seem more like wannabe villains,” Zenny said.
“Everyone who wants to change the status quo is seen as a villain,” Kahlon-san said. “Until we actually do. Then we're known in history as ‘heroes’.”
“Fuck you mean, ‘we’?” Malcolm-san asked with a laugh.
Kahlon-san sat up, puffed up his chest, and smirked, his feelings of devastation having apparently melted away. “I guess I should speak for myself. I intend to tear this system down. One way or another.”
“By overreacting to the news, or by reading instead of training?”
“Speaking of training!” Tenji-sensei’s voice commanded everyone’s eyes onto him. “Aurura-kun’s little rampage is no excuse not to skip today’s regimen!”
“Speakin’ of that,” Rosa put her fists on her hips and turned to White-san. “What the fuck was that? Taking my power and my ability to say, ‘nigga’?! Can we address that? There’s some weird shit goin’ on in that subconscious of yours, sis.”
“I know…” White-san looked down at her legs sheepishly. “I guess sometimes I just wish I was you…”
“You can discuss it later. Right now, you all need to do your roadwork. As for you, Nakano Rei-kun–” Sensei then turned his eye to me, redirecting everyone’s gaze accordingly. “We need to get you fitted into a Tenka Dojo gi, and prepare you for the Twenty-Band Rain Dance.”
“T-t-Twenty-Band Rain Dance..?” I echoed waveringly. I’d heard of the exercise before. It comes from the Midenites. They would wear these heavy weighted metal bands all over their bodies and perform a dance that supposedly changes the weather when one masters Metapneuma. It’s known for being extremely difficult, to a point where when you first start wearing the bands, it feels like you’re basically paralyzed. It can take days to muster the strength to lift a single arm, and you’re only allowed to take the bands off when you successfully perform the dance, which is designed to exercise every major muscle group in your body.
“Isn’t that…” I gulped and tugged at my collar. “...Cultural appropriation..?”
Kahlon-san laughed. “Nah. I’m Midenite. It’s cool.” He gave me this sadistic Look, like he was excited to see me struggle.