Chapter 8 - “Champion of Some”

Arath had finished studying early as usual due to the schedule that he made for himself that placed all four classes back-to-back in the morning. Though he was a man of midnight goofing off, it was better to wake up and take care of business so the other hours were left to be enjoyed his way. Buttons were being pressed and the arcade stick jostled in a controlled motion to input a special move that extended a combo, executed by his main character while playing Chain of Command, his favorite fighting game series. There was dedicated time to this machine cabinet that Arath spent every day, playing anyone that dared challenge him but often playing alone, perfecting his strategies and execution. His grades were high and he enjoyed studying in general but competition was the driving force in his life, but only in areas where he was passionate about such as gaming and music.

Thien would often blow off the stress that comes with being a medical student by also coming to the arcade but spending her time belting out nostalgic songs from her teenage years in a room with no one but herself. Though she was hardly an adult, just a few years removed from being a teenager, the songs she sang were reminiscent of the times before the stress and anxiety of adulthood, what felt like ancient, pre-historic times at this point. She often saw Arath in here but they had no personal connection until now. Today, she wasn’t at the arcade to sing but instead to talk with the previous subject of the club's investigation.

“Hey Arath, how are you?” Thien said standing next to him as he clacked on the game’s controls.

“Good, can you wait a moment?” Arath said hurriedly, his mind focused on the game instead. Thien leaned down to the coin slot and put in a token so that she could play against him.

“Oh, you play? Cool.” Arath’s attention was so easily bought this way. His match with the computer opponent interrupted to allow player two to join.

“Yeah, me and my sister grew up playing the second game in the series.”

“Hell yeah, Chain of Command: Barbed is a classic. I mained Yurlanda and secondaried Beux Hurnel. What about you? He said while being unusually chatty.

“You play the bikini diva and the giant slob? Interesting combo. I just play Tieralessa. Something about characters with whips intrigues me.” Thein replied, happy to go back in time in her mind to a childhood hobby for a moment.

“Man, her commands are really hard. Let’s see ‘em.”

“Round 1: Break the chains!” The announcer shouted as the electronically styled thrash music began to blast through the arcade cabinet speakers, their hands responding instinctively to the strategies that were programmed into their muscle memory. Arath's hands moved much quicker as he had never stopped playing the game the way that Thien did but she held her own as someone who had previously played for countless hours. Arath was using Yurlanda this time, a bikini-clad masked wrestler who wore revealing clothes but fought with deadly intentions, using punishing grappling moves that were easy to execute but had devastating damage and cinematic presentation. Yurlanda grabbed Tierlessa, piloted by Thien, and jumped in the air and back down into the ground like a striking meteor. Fire erupted upon impact and Yurlanda jumped back to a neutral position, as did Tierlessa, defying all real-life laws of physics where she would all but assuredly be a pile of barbequed, shattered bones.

“Nice! I forgot how much damage she does.” Thein said.

“Yeah, but she’s pretty slow so you can exploit that.” Arath replied.

Thien used Tierlessa’s whip to keep Yurlanda at bay, eventually inputting a hard command of down-back, down-forward-down-back, forward, A+B and grabbing the opponent by the ankles and slinging her side to side, smashing into the ground each time.

Arath made a huffing noise as if the damage was done to his own physical body and he had to exhale the damage out. They were going fairly even, to Arath’s dismay, before he finally hit a key combo starting move that led into one of his favorite sequences that ended in a powerful super-move that required most of his character’s built up special bar. Yurlanda jumped on Tierlessa’s shoulder, wrapping her legs around the character’s head and bent backwards with tremendous force that propelled Tierlessa into the ground headfirst where she was now bound to the dirt. Yurlanda jumped once more high into the air and gave a pose to the camera before diving headfirst down to the ground where she collided head-to-butt with the armored fighter, who was then sent into an early grave, 3 meters into the planet’s crust. The camera panned onto a cheering Yurlanda as she struck one more pose, exclaiming “Hope you like worms! I’m more of a noodle girl myself.”

“Sounds like a nice lady.” Thien joked. “Hey Arath, I came to talk to you about something.

“Fine, but that was only round 1. There’s still two more to go.” He replied confidently.

“It’s best of five. Don’t think I'll go that easily.” She said playfully.

They played two more rounds as Arath's experience proved to be too much, adapting to all of Thien’s strategies with more accuracy and precision each time. Once they finished, Arath nearly put in another coin before Thien kindly protested. “Please, just a moment and then we can play more.” They stepped away from the cab and sat at one of the tables in front of the concession stand.

“Firstly, I want to say again how grateful we are that you saved us and our friend. She’s still not awake yet but the last I checked, her energy is nearly at where she was before the incident.” Thien began to say. “Any idea why she’s still not out? She’s definitely not dying at least.”

“Well me and my uncle have a working theory but it’s hardly science based. The web can interact with things physically despite their spiritual source and it has special magnetic properties. It seems to draw energy in from the outside. Not anywhere specifically but the whole, well, everything. The cocoon seems to act like a concentration of life energy itself, which is why the ghosts or whatever seem to be sucked into it and filtered out into something else.”

“Hm, makes sense from at least what you’ve told us and what I've seen in Thawee’s recovery. Where did you get that idea from though if you’ve only captured ghosts so far?”

“Well I sit in my basement where I keep the cocoons of other ghosts that I’ve captured. It’s honestly just a gut feeling. I have this sense that I’m sitting in a crowded room unlike when I confront the ghosts where it feels more like there’s a gaping hole sucking everything up.”

“There’s more of them? We thought you just had the one. We have so much more to learn I guess.”

“We? Listen, I’ve been happy to help but I had some pretty unwelcome visitors the other night and I think I’m out. I’ll never finish recording my album with all these distractions.”

“Visitor? Who was it? We got one too the other night. He had an official message from the school. The club has been shut down for something we didn’t necessarily do.”

“Uh oh. Did it have anything to do with Druvy? He was one of the visitors."

“Yes! Some man came on his behalf. Left us a threatening letter and walked away. So and Khluen tried to talk to him and were attacked. They’re fine but it was definitely a warning beyond the club’s cancellation.”

“Hm, me and Uncle weren’t necessarily attacked but Druvy was alone at first and then a woman came to pick him up and really messed us up for a moment with some weird magic or whatever. We’re supposed to stay away from him ‘or else’ I guess.”

“What does the ‘else’ mean? We were warned about school expulsion.”

“Not sure, she didn’t say but she did see my basement. Told Druvy that his dad would be really happy to know about what she saw.”

“His dad definitely knows more than we do and is blaming us but we were honestly searching for you before all that mess. Sorry.”

“Me? Y’all were trying to take me out first? Figures.”

“We thought the spiders coming out of your pockets were more in charge of you instead of the other way around. This is all a first for us. All of the research and studying has ended up making us more paranoid than informed but that’s what we’re trying to change. Now there’s a real problem and we’d like to team up and solve it.”

“Hm, from attempted kidnapping to friendship, not sure if that’s possible. Plus that means you guys would have to come to my house and it’s really annoying to have visitors. It’s my grandma’s house after all.”

“We’d make it worth your while. Just let us inspect the cocoons and we’ll find another meeting place afterwards. We’ll share our notes and findings with you.”

“Oh the cocoons? All gone. Druvy slashed them open and the ghost that was inside him at the rest and escaped.”

“What?! That same night?! Seems like you could’ve led with that.”

“Well like I said, I don’t really want to be more involved than I already am. I have an album that I’m trying to record. It’s a mix of funk and -”

“There’s a monster eating other monsters that knows where you live, along with some mysterious lady that’s protecting a rich kid from a snobby family that’s threatening anyone he comes into contact with through hired soldiers or whatever?”

“Well she told him to not come to my house again. Problem probably solved?”

“And if not?”

“Okay, fine. One night, one meeting, you guys can come over. But for one reason and that’s because it’s my grandma’s house and if I bring any trouble to her, I’m dead.”

“Is she really strict or something?”

“No, loveliest and kindest woman on the planet. To me. Ask my uncle though and see what she’s like without grandson privilege. Still mostly love but with more deadly sandals.”

“Well let me get your number and we’ll set it up. I’ll even bring my old console with Chain of Command over and we’ll get in some games.”

“Nah, I already got them all so we can definitely play. Tell So to bring some pizza over though.”

The two exchanged numbers and Arath returned to the cabinet while Thien left knowing that she finally had befriended the previously most dangerous and intriguing student on campus. Now cleared of all suspicion, there was a new number one most terrifying and he was not only powerless, but also famously unmotivated yet Druvy’s familial connections felt like he was an apple on a tree lined with barbed wire and armed with artillery, waiting to defend any fallen fruit with permanent consequences.