Meadow hay lava wave surfing

JZ recoiled as the girl summoned what appeared to be a turquoise status screen. "Is this real!? She's got a status screen straight out of an RPG! Am I on some kind of quest?" he thought.

The girl meanwhile was busy trying to figure out an anomaly. "Why isn't he showing up? He's right in front of me, and I can look him up just fine manually, so why? Why isn't Meadow Hay- Ugh, Okisato Tanabe, registering when I try to issue him a challenge?"

Okisato Tanabe was a young Japanese grandmaster that went to the same high school as Mimoko and Iori. He normally sported a deadpan look and personality to match, but that was all a front to hide his true inner sadist.

On the chessboard, he could turn into a maniac, seeking to break his opponents with unorthodox and dubious openings. However, he had not been present at Streama festivalen when the portal opened, and thus was not present anywhere in this world. But JZ bore an uncanny resemblance to him as aside from his eyes, he looked nearly identical to him.

As for the girl, she was an American SPCM and grandmaster named Mililani Paina, but was more commonly known by her nickname, Sherbert. The name was a deliberate misspelling of Sherbet, which Sherbert had chosen for herself due to her love of the desert, even dying her hair to match her favorite flavor of sherbet, rainbow berry sherbet.

As for her title of SPCM, it stood for secret puzzle cafe manager. SPCMs each served under maestros, operating a secret puzzle cafe in their respective countries. Unlike the maestros though, they could participate in tournaments freely to increase their ratings and hone their craft. This hadn't always been the case, but after some notable instances occurred, the WWCF decided to allow them along with deputy secret puzzle cafe managers, DSPCMs for short, to participate freely in tournaments.

As for the difference between DSPCMs and SPCMs, SPCMs were based in countries that had a maestro and always totaled in 7, while DSPCMs were based in countries without a maestro with said countries having anywhere from 1 to 6, depending on their chess power rating so to say.

Carol had actually just been granted the SPCM title by maestro Himitsu of Japan, just a few days prior, but Sherbert had been one of America's original SPCMs. As such, Sherbert had found herself pitted against Okisato as he aimed to take on the American maestro, as beating all 7 SPCMs in a maestro's domain was a requirement in order to challenge them. In that match, Sherbert was subjected to the Meadow Hay mistake, a dubious opening that went 1. a4 e5 2. Ra3 Bxa3. Since it sacrificed a rook early on and for seemingly no significant material or positional advantage, it was deemed a poor opening, making it all the more humiliating for Sherbert that she lost to it.

It fueled her desire for a rematch, but that seemed like a pipe dream, until she met someone that looked like Okisato in the form of JZ. But JZ was not Okisato. Something he explained as soon as Sherbert called him by name.

At first, Sherbert didn't believe him, but after getting up close to his face and staring at his eyes, she recoiled in embarrassment upon realizing her mistake.

"Ah! I'm sorry! I thought you were someone else!"

"Uh.. Whatever, it's fine. But I need to catch up to that cruise ship that's sailing away. Know anyway to do that?" JZ asked.

Sherbert regained her composure and kicked up her surfboard. "We surf after it."

"But don't we need some kind of propulsion like wave-"

BOOM!

JZ got his answer as the volcano erupted once more. And before he could protest, Sherbert had grabbed his hand and was running towards the rushing lava.

"Just hang on tight, wouldn't want you to fall into the lava," Sherbert smiled as she threw her surfboard into the lava and hopped on it with JZ.

Poor JZ hung on for dear life, screaming all the way as the two surfed the lava wave. The cruise ship was getting away, but the lava wave was big and strong enough to give them enough air to make the jump and land on the ship.

"Now what?" Sherbert asked.

"We find my friends... Perhaps in a stealthy kind of way. Those four that run the ship didn't look like the friendly types," JZ grumbled as he and Sherbert entered the door, leading to the ship's interior.

What greeted the two was a large casino like room.

"Uh oh, this is bad," JZ trembled.

"Why?"

"I'm not old enough to legally gamble."

Sherbert blinked for a bit before smirking and dragging JZ with her. "Just bluff. That's the whole point of gambling."

"Uh..."

It was clear the two were about to have a misadventure of their own onboard the cruise ship.