CHILD’S PLAY Part 2 (Warlord Kakito and the Darkness, Tetsuya Abe, Kaoru Nagamine, Meliaya Yaya)
It was a day like any other. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the annoying theme music playing loudly from the department store across the street was mixing with the double annoying pop music playing from the speakers. Among the shitty brightness of Fancy Burger, all yellow and gold like perfectly crispy French Fries. Stands THE DARKNESS in his yellow and white stripped uniform that contrasts his mysterious, shadowy eyes.
“Can I get you something?” he asks deadily to the salaryman talking on his phone in front of him.
“I want a uh, give me a number twelve with miso fries for the side,” business guy says before going back to talking on his phone about stocks. DARKNESS fingers the cash register professionally to make the order of an Udon Burger. An American style hamburger with deep fried udon noodles on top. Inwardly the DARKNESS seethes and roils to hear the SIMPLETON speak in the numbers of the orders and not the name of the menu item like a normal person. He takes the money and says nothing about the man’s obvious stupidity which is holding him back from the corporate ladder, like the failure parents of the DARKNESS who have not evolved past store managers yet.
Next customer. A woman with ugly looking teeth. DARKNESS wisely conceals his power level from calling her a chink to her face. “What can I chink for you ma’am?” god dammit.
She never noticed though. “Gimme a beef and onion bowl double size with two squeezes of teriyaki sauce.” What a disgusting creature. DARKNESS struggles not to gag as he punches in her order, searching through the machine buttons for the right order number. He hates when they don’t use the order number and he has to think about what he’s punching in instead of using his professionally memorized cash money skills.
More money changes hands. The people go away and DARKNESS knows the peace and blessed silence between orders while he waits for the kitchen to wreak their CURSED craft upon the world. Deep inside his heart, DARKNESS repeats the button inputs for his frame perfect speedrun of Super Mario World in his record winning performance. If only there were a way to share his talent with the world and make them appreciate him.
Happiness blooms in the heart of DARKNESS when he sees his only gaming friend Tetsuya walk into the store. In a black hoodie fitting for an ALLY OF DARKNESS concealing his DARK EYES, Tetsuya walks up to the counter. “What’s the special?”
“The double drizzled misoy chicken cube salad.”
“…. sounds…. ckin rancid..”
“Totally.” It feels good for the DARKNESS to know another soul in this world is RIGHT about something. “You want one?”
“…ve me two.”
DARKNESS wields a forbidden technique by applying one of his coworkers’ employee discounts to the order. There will be nothing done about it because the DARKNESS is untouchable to mere mortals. “..ta piss,” Tetsuya mutters and leaves the counter before he pays, leaving DARKNESS faithfully holding the cash register open while his friend goes to the washrooms.
Not two minutes after, a great ball of DARK FIRE burns through the window leaving a molten hole behind. DARKNESS looks on in abject joy as the Fancy Burger is awash with DARKLIGHT that swallows the light. People scream as their burgers grow teeth and long udon-noodle tongues and start licking and biting their faces. It is the great food revolution.
DARKNESS would appreciate it more if he did not feel so strange and lost, like his head is somewhere else from his body. Crackling cracks spread on the order monitor and DARKNESS turns to bare witness. Behind the glass it pumps like a TELLTALE HEART. Gleaming blue streaks across the screen, a blue screen of DEATH. White lines of text make out into an image. DARKNESS witnesses the horns and tusks of a DEMON. “You answered my summons, My Lord,” DARKNESS says softly with a non-mumbly reverence.
Little is said while the Demon Lord takes DARKNESS’ measure through ASCII eyes. It is understandable, one being of primordial DARKNESS would be recognizable to another. “Child of Man,” h o boy man he sounds so cool. “It was not thy efforts which summoned me here, yet they words ply my tongue to question. Why dost thou call for thine own destruction?”
“I am the DARKNESS,” holding his arms out at his sides, DARKNESS cranes back his head and smiles a wide, demonic smile. “I yearn to shed this human shell and offer up my soul to TRUE DARKNESS!”
“What a ridiculous creature thou art,” the Demon Lord says, obviously awestruck.
When he lacks something to say, DARKNESS’ instincts kick in and his rehearsed lines happen on their own. “Did you want to order something, sir?”
“Order? Now thou demandst orders from me?” the glass cracks further, like the jaws of an open mouth opening.
Big tusks.
DARKNESS raises a hand to the menu above his head. “From the menu. We sell food here, Demon Lord, sir.”
“Know me as WARLORD Kakito,” the Demonic voice booms. His glass jaw clenches tightly and he says just as tightly. “Tsukumogami are of no worth. Their Idea Material is unable to satisfy my hunger. I will accept thy soul, for in thee I witness a glimmer of dark potential, miniscule though it may be. In exchange, thou shalt be a hunter in my name, and collect for me worthy feasts.”
“T totally.”
Best day of his life.
It expands and swallows the DARKNESS in the bright blue and the white lines. It's like the Matrix. He feels overwhelmed. A shape looms before him, vast and impressively large. One textular arm reaches out, rippling with digitized gamer muscles.
So they clasp hands. The tender and skillful hands of a DARKEST GAMER in the large and warm and a little sweaty grasp of the Demon Warlord Kakito. Then the other hand reaches back in a fist and for a moment even the DARKNESS knows FEAR as the fist punches into his chest. His screams cry out like a howling wolf. An expression of his POWER more than his FEAR!
The pitiful mortal body of the DARKNESS collapses and in the hands of the Warlord his oddly bright DARK SOUL is molded like puddy into a new form. A stronger form. With blazing red hair, he breathes his first breaths:
RED DARKNESS.
“I have awakened!” DARKNESS declares when the big blue hands set him down. The world is world again, the blue Matrix is gone and DARKNESS is once again at home in his keenly honed senses. “What is your command, Warlord Kakito?”
“Go forth. Find worthy opponents in this bleeding of the worlds and harvest what remains of them,” his new Demonic Master proclaims.
Then, as their deal is struck, a KERSMASH comes from the window. Landing smoothly on the tile floor is another RED warrior to match the new power of RED DARKNESS. His visage hidden behind a DARK helmet, the spiky warrior thwacks a gnashing burger that was chewing on someone’s face. Behind him, a woman with robotic arms and legs lands like a jet pack and shoots a noodle snake wrapped around the ugly toothed chink woman’s neck.
“Scarlet Senshi – watcher of the watchmen!” the red man strongly declares in his surprisingly delicate and sensitive but unmistakably male voice.
“And me, Amelia Steamheart!” the other girl says.
Cracklingly and crunchingly, Warlord Kakito's image turns to look upon them like insects in his teeth. “How interesting. The warrior that has left the Shinigami’s most pathetic servant trembling with rage in his latest cage.” He gives THE LOOK. “New warrior. Go, test their mettle.”
“Y yes my Warlord!” climbing over the counter, RED DARKNESS underestimates his new POWER and throws himself violently across the room tumbling in many directions at once.
Meanwhile…
Trapped within the bathroom stalls as a Bleeding Zone forms, Tetsuya Abe squeezes his bowels desperately. On the floor in front of him is his stupid robot thing, staring at him. God he hates looking at this thing in person and being reminded how small he is in that form. “Fuckin’ god dammit!” he says under his breath. “I can’t go fight like this.” His unconscious body would fall off of the toilet and he is not taking that walk of shame back to his apartment. “Get out there and solve this shit. And st..p star…n… at me… freak…”
“Eheheheh,” the machine giggles disgustingly. Falling sideways on the bathroom floor, it rolls out from under the stall and Tetsuya hears its guns locking and loading. His only regret is that he won’t be there to personally pump more things full of bullets.