My Dinner with Bats

Pisha hated Anma. She hated Anma more than she hated the A.O.A. Bats was easy enough to deal with, just treat him like an annoying little cousin. If you handed him a videogame, he’d stay out of your hair. But Anma, that damned woman wouldn’t leave her alone. It was always “study” this, or “train” that with her. Even now, she insisted Pisha learn proper gun safety.

Bang!

The pistol jerked up with a blinding burst. The recoil vibrated up Pisha’s arm as smoke billowed out the muzzle. Anma’s cold fingers straddled her own around the trigger.

The bullet punched into the padded wall, a full metre to the right of their target.

“…You didn’t even come close.” Anma’s nails dug into Pisha’s skin.

“Who cares?” Pisha wrenched her arm free. “What’s it matter if I can’t aim a gun? I can’t die, anyways.” She shoved the firearm into Anma’s hands.

The rest of the facility was a pristine white, but their training room hadn’t been so lucky. Its cushioned walls were singed, shredded, scraped, and sliced into a filthy grey leather that exposed the spongy foam underneath.

Ballistic training dummies stood spaced across the room, posed like mannequins in a high-end clothing store. A massive television monitor, the type of jumbotron you’d see a kiss-cam on, spanned the wall, flickering between training replays. The room smelled just as sweaty as a baseball game, too, blended with a tinge of gunpowder.

“We can die.” Anma rested her hands on her hips. “And considering your aim against the swordsman—“

“Shut up.” Pisha clenched her fists. “That was literally my first time holding a gun. Plus, it’s thanks to me we even won.”

Beneath the monitor, Bats pulled a machete out of a training dummy’s chest. “What’d you say?”

“Nothing, Bats,” Pisha muttered.

Like I said. Easy to deal with.

Anma closed her eyes. “You two give me a headache.” She approached a tablet slotted into the wall. “You’re dismissed. Go grab lunch while I compile our training data.”

Apparently, that was enough for Bats. He hooked his two machetes to his back and skipped towards the door.

“Fine.” Pisha pointed a finger at the idiot. “But don’t lump me in with him.”

“Before. I change. My mind.”

Pisha sighed, grabbing her jacket and slinging it over her arms as she followed Bats towards the exit.

The light above the reinforced doors flicked to green, and Bats wormed through the gap before they’d even finished opening.

She trudged out after him into the maze of unmarked doors that was the A.O.A. complex. If their facility was a videogame, it would’ve been critically panned for its repetitive level design.

Muffled chatter bled through the double-doors at the end of the hall. Bats swung them wide open into a room of one-way windows and metal tables bolted to the tiled floor. The mess hall. It reeked of burnt grease and cheap cooking oil. Excursors shifted between the tables, wearing the same uniform she and Bats did. Their silverware clinked against their muzzles as they shovelled in food through the gaps.

Nearly every Excursor glanced towards the door. Pisha slinked behind Bats’s back as they made their way to a slitted service window. There, a staffer behind an opening slid them a piping-hot aluminium tray without a word.

Bats grabbed his tray first and wandered away. As Pisha stepped up to the hatch, a lanky Excursor shoved her aside.

“Outta the way.” He ripped the tray out from the opening.

His arm suddenly convulsed, bubbling below his sleeve. It bloated outwards, inflating until it was as thick as a lamppost and burst through the seams of his uniform. He balanced the tray on the now-flat flesh-surface and marched off.

Pisha stood speechless for a moment, before shaking her head and grabbing the next tray. “The fuck?”

She calculated the logistics of replacing his uniform every time he transformed while deciding where to eat. Her usual plan was to sneak out to the restroom and slip into a stall. It wasn’t gross. Eating on the toilet was way quieter.

But that day, she found herself following Bats again. Before she knew it, she was in the corner of the hall, standing on the other side of his table.

Pisha dropped her lunch onto the table, silverware clattering against the tray. She slid onto the smooth bench across from him, though Bats didn’t even look up.

There was an at-least-six-box-high stack of meals next to him, and he’d already started scarfing them down. He swung the chopsticks around faster than his own machetes, like one of those American competitors stuffing soggy hot dogs down their throats.

“You eat a lot,” she said.

He levelled his spoon at her.

“Mmf, mmf,” he managed through a mouthful of food.

Bits of his meal appeared through his canine-like teeth.

“Ew.” She scooted out of the splash zone. “You’ve got to stop chewing for me to understand you, dumbass.”

He tilted his head back and swallowed.

“You got a problem?” he asked, wiping his mouth.

“No, I didn’t mean—” She hunched over her tray. “Forget it.”

And just like that, he returned to his obnoxiously loud chewing.

She poked the glob of grey pork curry with her fork. The meat quivered like a store-bought Jell-O. She’d never been to jail, but the food there probably looked the same. Hell, it might’ve tasted better, too.

I’ve never missed convenience store meals so bad. She almost salivated at the thought of a fried chicken wing.

The sound of Bats’s chewing stopped. She glanced up, finding him tracing the edge of his tray with a chopstick.

“Hey,” he started. “I’ve been wondering.”

He prodded his meal with the chopstick. “...Dying. Does it hurt?”

“Huh?” Pisha’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

Where’d that come from!?

She shifted sideways on the bench. “Why do you ask…?”

“Nothing. Just curious.” He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “Uh, unless it’s too personal—“

“Yeah.” Pisha stared at the still-hot grey pork, the steam stinging her eyes.

Obviously it hurt.

“Like hell. If I could, I’d never do it again,” she said.

Bats chewed his lip. For the last minute, he hadn’t even given his food a single glance.

“Damn.” He nodded slowly. “Yeah. That makes sense.” His fingers tightened around an empty meal box beside him, the cardboard creasing.

He shoved his tray forward.

“Thanks,” he said, lurching to his feet.

Pisha flinched as he crushed the stack of cardboard boxes with one fist. Her fork slipped out from her grasp and into her lunch below, splattering her jacket with medium-hot sauce.

As if he hadn’t noticed the mess, Bats stacked his flattened garbage onto the tray and meandered towards the exit. She was left with the awful taste of overcooked pork in her mouth.

“Guess I’ll keep my mouth shut next time…”

For some reason, she wasn’t hungry anymore.

* * *

In the dim room, blue monitor light shone across Anma’s lenses. Bulky computer towers and whirring server fans surrounded her. Normally, the sound helped her focus, but that day, they were irritatingly loud.

The chill from the fans coated her arm with goosebumps. She clicked the mouse, rewinding the body-cam footage again. It was the moment the swordsman carved into Bats’s chest. The moment Bats had almost died.

The recording froze on a gash of red pixels in his uniform. She had replayed it twenty times that day alone. The individual frames had practically burned themselves into her retinas. Her chair rattled as she leaned back, its wheels spinning underneath her.

A flashing yellow pop-up buried the footage under a wall of text. A Humans First demonstration was forming in Koto. Sector five.

The mouse cursor coasted towards the “X” in the corner. Those sorts of protests had become a weekly nuisance. The police usually dispersed them within the hour. It was their problem, not the I.E.’s.

A shadow fell over the keyboard.

“Go away,” Anma said. “I’m busy.”

“You’re always busy,” Bats said, his voice thin.

He leaned beside her, slipping a torn newspaper clipping over the monitor.

“Free ticket.” He hovered it in front of the computer as if it were live bait on a fishing line. “Expires tonight. We could both use a break.”

She eyed the scrap of paper between his scarred fingers. The clipping was wrinkled and stained, the text barely legible.

Koto Cinemas. Buy two. Get one free.

“Bats, there’s a protest in the next sector over,” she said. “Besides, we’re only—“

Anma stopped herself. That wasn't true anymore. It wasn’t only the two of them. Not since she had petitioned for that girl to join.

“Yeah. Forget it,” he said.

An uneven smile crossed his face. It was the same kind he would give whenever his parents were mentioned. He crumpled the coupon up and stuffed it into his pocket.

Anma glanced back at the notification. The demonstration was in sector five, not sector four. It shouldn’t have been dangerous, either way. And she had already spent years turning him down, hadn’t she? Was she only letting him down again?

She clicked her tongue. “Fine. You owe me.”

Bats froze, his hand still in his pocket.

“…Deal,” he said, straightening up.

“And if we’re late to training again, you’re explaining it to the Director.” She shoved her seat in with a creak.

They left the room together, leaving the monitor and its glowing notification behind in the darkness. The pop-up blinked red, casting a macabre glow over the empty chair.

* * *

Intercity Excursion Force, Case File #04

Subject: The Takae Institute.

Description:

In 1982, an organisation of academics known as the Takae Institute isolated and contained the earliest recorded appearance of an Othered. The existence of Othered, alongside the Takae Institute’s research, remained unknown to the public until the Shinjuku Incident of 2002, after which the Institute provided its findings to the Japanese government. The Institute was subsequently restructured under government funding to form the Association for Othered Advancement.