Chapter 3: Fight Sticks – 3 Set Match Of Change

Two years of isolation really hadn't been good for me. 

I rubbed my tired legs while I rested on the park bench. The evening sun has sunk lower on the horizon. Too shy to ask anyone out AND tuckered out by such a short walk? I really had to get my act together.

 "Hey, want to play a round with me? I'd like to win a piece of your heart~"

 A sultry voice playfully called out to me. A goth looking girl with a pair of fight sticks? My inner anxiety hopped up like a rabbit. Was there one of those gaming conventions or something nearby? And why me?

 I looked around nervously hoping she was talking to someone else. Nope. Just me.

 She approached, her white hair and red eyes especially striking me and enticing my eyes. An amused look sprouted onto her face. This girl is just messing around with me.

 "Heeeeyyy, don't look at me like I’m some kind of villain. I’m just a little bored you see… I missed my bus and I have to wait here FOREVER now. Just see this as… practice.”

My nerves calmed a little. Practice. Yeah, I could use a little practice with people. Maybe she’s just fucking with me (do girls dress up all nicely just to fuck with other girls’ hearts?) but at least she seems to have some self awareness. I talk through my own anxiety. Yeah I’ll expand my horizons… with whatever nerd nonsense this girl was offering.

“I guess I’ll play.” I felt a jolt in the air.

She placed a laptop on a park ornament and slid one of those fight stick things into my hands. The laptop immediately booted into a sort of test screen. I fumbled with the controls, vaguely figuring out how to move the 2D test dummy on screen. It felt.. More intuitive than I expected? The goth girl gave me a grin from ear to ear.

“Looks like you’re ready.”

The screen jumped into one of those character select screens. Dozens and dozens of girls hopped to life, all with some kind of exaggerated feature or impossible beauty, filled the screen. This game looked… really trashy? This goth girl was DEFINITELY fucking with me. I wanted to leave then and there but my hands had picked a character in spite of me. Oh. A surprisingly tasteful sporty-looking girl with pigtails jumped into action as my character.

The laptop muttered some kind of nonsense, and then a big “GO”. Am I really doing this? I moved the sporty girl with surprising grace for mashing. But the goth girl’s character, an over-designed jester girl with the same red eyes and white hair, was always just a bit out of reach.

Unsurprisingly, the girl’s counter attack completely locked me up in some kind of flurry of blows. My character’s sweatpants and sports top were shredded to bits by this screen-filling scythe attack. Ugh, this game WAS trashy. Embarrassing to just watch. This is one of those Japanese porn games, right?

The laptop screen flashed. “K. O.” I felt a force push through me- no no, ridiculous. I must have just fallen off the bench.

Feeling completely humiliated, I got up and dusted off my sweatpants. Ugh, they got a little cut up in my fall and now my legs were kind of bruised. My heart and leg muscles clenched into full gear. I wanted to get out of here.

“I’m done with this! I don’t want to play your nonsense gamer trash!” The goth girl seemed fully amused, smug even. Like there was something I hadn’t noticed on my face, or maybe my chest. It only made my nervous instincts even worse.

Fine. I didn’t care what she was up to. I left her right there, on that park bench, and continued my jog home.

How dare she mess with me like that!

---

Why not? I bet I could squeeze in another candidate for my “community service” before retiring for the day. I let my instincts drive me forward (fae magic was always partially relied on feel) and found my next locale- an office building.

With a little bit of magic, I was right inside. With a little help from my glamor, I’d blend right in. I let the fight sticks do their work and choose a disguise for me. The faery told me they weren’t precognitive, but the fight sticks seemed to know how to find additional use. Best let them help me do the heavy lifting.

My old outfit was replaced with something, frankly, kind of bougie. A tie unfurled over my chest. My shirt warped into the most pretentious version of business casual. I felt like I was about to give some nonsense sales-pitch on disrupting the pants industry with machine learning. This disguise really wasn’t my thing. Would anyone here even appreciate what I could do for them? Whatever. The charade was enjoyable within itself.

In the evening like this the building was basically empty outside a few janitors. I pretty much had the place to myself. I went to put my feet up in some kind of recreation room. Pop! A bottle of champagne materialized. The best thing about fae magic is that it’s full of surprises.

I was lounging for nearly half an hour when I felt it. It was time. I adjusted my tie, and looked away from my drink and fight sticks attached to my laptop. As if on cue, a sleepy-looking office worker poked her head around a corner. Oh. Mousy, young. Kind of nervous and squirrelly. She’s the extreme overworking new type, huh?

“Heeeeyyy, you’re a new face. Wanna play a round with Sales? Why don’t you tell me some more about your department.” Her ears perked up. Bingo. Reeling them in was the best part.

“All I want to win is a piece of you- I mean, just a piece of your time.” I let my words slur a little. It didn’t matter how I framed it, as long as I spoke something like the magic words. Fae magic is flexible like that.

The girl looked befuddled. She seemed a bit intimated, conflicted even. Clearly this was on the outer bounds of polite work protocol. I poured her a glass enticingly. That got a reaction.

“Yes- uhm, I guess so. I mean, I would like the drink” she fumbled over her words  but she agreed. Perfect. With her agreement the hard part was over. She cautiously moved towards the drink with an almost zombie-like energy.

I took a long sip of champagne and tapped impatiently. The young woman clearly WANTED to leave with her drink. Maybe she even wanted to just pass out. Instead she stood there, with a tired shiver. Her heavy eyes kept darting back to the fight stick, like she was trying to resist the temptation of this alien device. Eventually, she gave up with a sigh. She awkwardly slid onto the couch next to me, looking weirdly at her own hands on the fight stick.

Better get this over with before she passes out on me. I booted my laptop straight into character select. So what new character would she add to my collection? A ceo ojousama? Makes as much sense as anything.

I didn’t waste any time starting the match. Even with the nudges from the fightstick, she played like she never touched a video game before. Easy-peasy. My on-screen double slams a super (A glowing reaper’s scythe) right through her on-screen double’s upper body. A “K. O.” announces my victory.

The little office worker fell off the couch onto the carpeted floor. Her new fancy blouse was cut to ribbons and teased at more expensive undergarments and additional mass beneath. Her new make-up and blush were completely ruined. Her hair, now previously pulled up into an elaborate bun, spewed luxuriously onto the ground.

“In all my years working at this company- you marketing folks are the worst!” She gave me a death glare. She must have seen my devil-may-care smile, because she pushed her lips into a pout and stormed away.

So adversarial. I helped a girl out with some confidence issues and this was my reward? This was exactly why I didn’t care for office settings. I promised myself to find someone more fun to grace with my presence tomorrow, before taking my own leave.

---

Even the summer sunlight was strikingly ephemeral in this city. Rain poured down from the sky. And it was such a nice day too.

I sighed as I collected my reading material. I unceremoniously dumped my romance manga and light novels into my backpack. Why did so many of my spur of the moment walks end with me getting soaked? At least, it felt cathartic sometimes. The rain made the lounging in the heart feel sweeter.

Ah. I can day dream once I’m dry. Where to go? I walked on a park trail and then broke into a jog. I had picked this park randomly because I had never been here before. I had no idea where I could find relief from the rain.

Finally! Peaking out of the bend in the dirt path was a shelter. Picnic tables stood unused underneath. As good a place as any to continue my reading.

I jogged up to the shelter and dumped my purse and backpack on the table. I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t see her before but there was another woman in the shelter.

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She looked like she was in some kind of cosplay. A hollywood version of some young-looking romance protagonist. Everything felt perfect, except for her long white hair and striking crimson eyes. I felt completely dumbfounded.

“Want to play a round? I’d love to win a piece of your heart~” Her words snapped me back to attention. She muttered those words with such self-assured smugness while pointing at some fight sticks and a laptop. Was she for real? It felt like less of a suggestion, and more of a command. With her eccentric outfit, I couldn’t help but find it charming.

“What on earth are you doing?” I held one of my yuri mangas up as a comparison and she looked like had jumped right out of it.

“Just trying to pass some time.” Her words descelated her invitation but not her tone. She stared at me cattishly.

Perhaps her sense of mischief got to me. My heart sometimes feels as fickle as the weather. Why not say yes to overly aesthetic weebs?

“So what game are we playing?” I approached and slid up to her.

“You’ll see. So I’ll take that as a yes?” She retorted, staring at me expectantly.

I grabbed one fight stick. “So do you just challenge random people often? I don’t recognize this brand of fight stick at all- is it custom?”

“Yes or no?” She gave me an annoyed smile.

I stared at her again. She looked no less unreal in front of me than before. Was she some kind of yuri-based cryptid? Well I missed out on the cryptid novelty soda vending machine. I won’t miss out on this one.

“Yeah sure, why not?”

As if responding to me, the laptop kicked into life, showing me some kind of training screen while the game loaded. I messed around with the controls just long enough to realize it's the basic “light, medium, heavy attack” set-up.

It flickered right into a character select screen. I looked over at the woman and she had already picked a jester-esque character with a lot of knives and scythes. I let my cursor hover over a number of characters of various degrees of anime until… well a character that seemed to jump out of the ether. The fighting game equivalent of the early college yuri protagonist. It seemed on-theme for the day, so I might as well pick it.

“Hey- I still have no idea WHAT this game is.” I leaned back but my hands felt glued to the control stick. “I’m not a real expert on fighting games but… this doesn’t look like any of the 2D anime fighters I know of” The woman gave an innocent sounding ‘hmph’ as the introdro sequence kicked in. “Fiiiine. I guess it’d ruin the fun if you told me now.”

The game jumped into action. I didn’t play a lot of fighting games but what I did know seemed instantly applicable to this game. I tried to zone out most of the attacks with my characters' lithe form and high mobility. I found a few attacks that felt pretty safe and threw them out to some success. It felt like I found some kind of parity with her. I barely got in any attacks, but I guarded almost all of hers. My health bar was pretty healthy, although my character started to look pretty beat up. Ah- was this one of the fanservice-y anime fighters?

After a while, she chipped away at my defenses. I took a bunch of real hits from low pokes that went under my guard. I started to overcompensate with low guards and took a few hits to my face. Finally, a low slash from the jester girl knocked out my character.

“K.O.”

“Fuck!” I fell over into some dirt. Everything… kind of hurt? I coughed a little, my voice feeling a little horse, like someone kicked me in the throat. I coughed over and over. Each cough sounded like a quarter of an octave higher.

“What the hell!” my voice didn’t come out right, like my throat fought against making sounds in the english language. It didn’t exactly sound bad though.

“Why did you have to shove me like that?!?” my voice sounded genuinely accusatory- but I was genuinely confused. The woman gave me a smile of angelic inculpability. As I got up, I saw my long skirt had been ripped to shreds.

“Oooooh! It was sooo cute too!” I tried to knock some of the dirt out. Wait… I don’t remember owning thigh highs like this… or panties with a lil bow. And this outfit… it doesn’t really match at all? The innocent looking pastels of my shoes, skirt, panties, and thigh highs contrasted with my dab top and coat.

I looked around, embarrassed. At least, with the rain, there was any one else other than us two here. Skirts weren’t supposed to be this fragile!

“Aaaaaahhh, looks like I won fair and square.” the woman seemed pleased and slowly started gathering up her things.

Something burned within me, between my thighs. No, I wouldn’t let her get away that easily. I waited a moment, for when she was looking away, and gave her a resolute shove to the ground. The logical part of my brain was ready to leave it at that. But she instantly looked up at me with a sort of hunger that immediately egged on a thirstier part of me.

“I hope you’re not planning on leaving so quickly after baiting me like that!” A part of my brain scrambled to make sense of the events unfolding- the outfit, the challenge, the thirsty anime game, my messed up clothes- this was some really round-about way of flirting with me, right?

I didn’t need to act on my conclusion. The woman rolled me over and shoved me into a patch of grass. “Finally, someone who’s at least a little fun~”

“Hey, there’s no one else here but me, dummy!”

“Then it's a perfect time to begin~ If I may?” She shoved her knee up between my thighs. I squeaked in a cute tone that surprised myself. When did I get so sensitive?

Blood raced to my face. “Y-yes! I won’t let you leave me unsatisfied!”

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