Night of the Virtual Dead: Emilia and Ume (Part 2)

{Question #1: Emilia, greet your friend with a smile.}

“Okay Emi-chan you got this, the zombies are moving super slow right now and I can avoid them until we store enough mana to test out our magic attacks. If we can get off to a hot start we’ll save the physical attacks for emergencies only.”

“Okay.”

{10… 9…}

“Show me them pearly whites!”

Emilia looks to Ume, prepares herself mentally in order to force her way into a smile, but when she sees the first ten zombies inching closer to her comrade in arms, she freezes.

Ume immediately notices the princess’s hesitation.

“Ehh!? C’mon I know you can smile!”

“I’m trying.”

“That’s impossible! I see nothing resembling a smile!”

“....”

{5….4…}

Feeling her time running out and the heat of the encroaching zombies, Ume snatches onto the first thought that could potentially prompt a smile out of Emilia and lets it loose.

“I thought the dryer was shrinking my clothes, it turns out it was the refrigerator all along!”

That dad joke is accompanied by a playful tap on her head with the back of her knuckle and a comically doofy facial expression.

{2…1…}

Emilia’s Gesture Mana bar rises by 10 points.

She has revealed a lopsided smile.

“Uwaa great job!” Ume clenches her fist. “You’re so pretty and amazing!”

Emilia’s lopsided smile contorts into a purse of her lips, unsure of how to take that compliment.

“I wasn’t expecting that joke, you caught me off guard.”

“What does it matter, you smiled and it worked! Now loan me your mana so I can see what attacks I can use on these zombies.”

“Okay…”

Pressing a transfer link on the left corner of her view screen, the 10 points of mana are sent Ume’s way.

“Hell yeah!” Ume scours her options while dodging a zombie’s relatively slow lunge towards her. What she sees is a series of specific attacks with the mana price of each as though they were vending machine options.

The first option that catches her eye is the fabled Kamehameha attack from a popular anime she grew up watching. There are even levels of it that rise in total cost of Mana, likely meaning the more points used, the more powerful the attack will be.

“Let’s give it a go.”

She clicks on the 10 point option and prepares her attack.

“Kaaaaaaaa~~meeeeeeeee..!!”

Of course, she’s preparing it as dramatically as possible, reliving her childhood fantasies as a blue light begins swirling around her hands.

“Haaaaa~~meeeeeeeeee!!”

The energy has stored up in a brilliant display of pulsating blue light, and is ready to be sent forth. She takes aim at a group of zombies and bellows out,

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!”

The beam swirling in a torrent around her hands forms into a ball and blasts away from her in a flash.

However, the ball of energy travels a couple feet in front of her and comes to a screeching halt before sputtering out and dropping harmlessly to the ground. It even lets out a coughing noise as though it were dust escaping the seizing exhaust pipe of an old car as it vanishes into thin air.

“Oh my god!”

A zombie strikes her with its claws.

Her HP drops 60 points.

Using her knife, she slashes at the zombie a few times and cuts it down.

“What happened?” Emilia asks.

“My worst nightmare! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreamt of having malfunctioning super powers in my life. Nothing could be so cruel as this, damn you, Tani! He’s using his knowledge of my greatest fear against me to make things extra hard on us!”

{Question #2: Ume, you are in a grocery store and must ask for a bag.}

“Emi-chan, my princess, please help.”

“Right, repeat after me… Una busta per favore.”

Ume just about drops her weapon to the ground in shock. Her muddled brain has no idea how to articulate what she just heard. Emilia’s voice seemed to transform into a luminous life form of its own when she said that, her pitch rising and falling as naturally as an opera singer from a foreign play.

Even though it was only a few words, Ume has found herself completely lost in the spectacle of it as though she had just seen a UFO land in front of her.

‘SLASH!’

She’s struck again by a zombie.

-60 HP.

[5…. 4….]

“You should at least try to repeat after me.”

“Uhhh… Un booby faaverree?”

XXXXXX

-60 HP.

“Kimura-senpai, that was bad.”

“I tried my best!”

Ume is able to parry the next attack from an encroaching zombie, but is quickly finding herself overwhelmed. She pulls out her automatic rifle and lets loose enough rounds to blast through the remaining nine zombies with still thirty seconds left before the next ten rise up from the chairs they’re seated on.

“I thought you said we’d save those bullets?”

“I couldn’t help it, we need to come up with a better strategy for answering these questions if we wanna win this game. It looks like I’ll have to kill as many as I can with my remaining ammo to buy us time to think up something.”

Emilia has no problem taking the back seat on the decision making in this game, but even she doesn’t feel optimistic about this change of plans. Hearing Ume’s two disastrous attempts at pronouncing simple words and phrases in Italian tugs at the string of hopelessness.

“...”

“Can you teach me the basics I need in order to at least fake these Italian words? I don’t think I can repeat after you without a foundation to work from.”

Emilia holds her chin in contemplation when she asks, “Are you able to roll your tongue?”

“Actually I am!” Ume excitedly positions herself and lets out a jarring purr. “Bdldldldldldldl.”

“Ummm, I guess we can work with that. You also have gesture Mana to acquire, so maybe try to say a couple Japanese words while rolling your tongue and moving your hands. Use that same technique repeating after me when I answer Tani’s questions for you.”

“You’re a lblblot more capablblblblbe than I imagined, so much for the stereotypicablblb damselblblb in distress, I think we can do this!”

When rolling one’s tongue for Japanese words, it comes across more like a delinquent’s threats before a mugging in an alleyway. When using hand gestures like balling one’s fists to accompany those words, like Ume does, it communicates agitation. Ume’s positivity is lost in the jumble of crass sounding words and movements.

Emilia winces before a timid response.

“...Sure.”

The timer present on their VR screen hits zero, and the next batch of zombies rise to their feet and make their way towards them a fraction faster than before.

Ume points her gun at them and says, “Bring it on Tani, you'll regret underestimating me!”

Tani’s computerized voice rings in their ears, and Question #3 is presented to them.

--------------------------

9 rows of zombies out of 20 have gotten up from their seats and attacked Emilia and Ume, the result of which is Ume’s complete exhaustion of bullets.

Both have yet to answer a single question correctly, and Ume’s HP has dropped all the way down to 80. Another couple strikes and she’ll be killed.

Where has it all gone wrong?

Ume was quite confident just a few minutes earlier, now she is stressed out and desperate. She takes in a gasp of disbelief and flees towards one end of the auditorium, her foes in hot pursuit.

“It doesn’t look like you’re going to survive much longer.” Emilia says bluntly, her tone making that point sound all the more callous.

“Of course I wouldn’t be able to just jump right into saying and remembering words in a foreign language. It’s like Tani put me in this situation just to mess with me.”

“I don’t think he’s that cruel, he wants us to learn.”

Ume tosses her lone grenade directly behind her and runs in a circle, prompting the zombies to give chase in a tight bunch. The grenade blows up and all of her pursuers explode along with it, their pixels tossed into the air in a plume and vanishing in a display of crackling flashes.

With that batch taken care of and fifty seconds remaining until the next 10 rise to their feet, Ume has time to relax for a moment to gather her thoughts, and that’s all the time needed to come to a stunning realization.

She throws her hands on her head and shouts, “Actually, he totally is that cruel!! Why do you think I take so much HP damage for an incorrect answer or a slight attack from an enemy?”

“Excuse me?”

“How could I have been so stupid to not know what this is all about!? I’m not answering these questions correctly because I’m not ‘meant’ to answer them correctly. This is a Hopeless Boss battle, just like an RPG!”

Ume darts to the base of the stage and looks up at Emilia, the great revelation of hers is broadcasted with little jumps from her toes.

“I’ve been wasting all my items instead of allowing myself to fail like the game was pre programmed to do!”

Underneath her VR goggles, Emilia squints. “I’m failing to understand what you’re trying to say.”

“In every RPG, you face a version of the final boss you are designed to lose to, it’s a way of progressing the storyline and showing you how far you have to go if you want to be strong enough to beat the game. It’s no different now, I’ve just started this game of learning Italian like an hour ago, I’d be lucky to even do a little bit of damage at my level.”

“So we give up?”

“No, I become the support for the strongest character in the game to help beat the final boss. I'm meant to help someone with weeks worth of EXP points. Your Mana being transferred over to me so I can do the attacking was a total waste, you’re the only one strong enough to defeat these zombies!”

“That’s a lot of pressure.”

“It’ll be alright, trust me! First, I’m going to get myself killed and you’re going to use a Phoenix Down on me. I’m going to need all my HP returned so I can guide you through this.”

The next batch of zombies rises up to their feet, and they move alarmingly fast towards the two girls. Ume doesn’t hesitate to rush towards them, slashing her way through them with her knife before being struck down to zero. Upon her death, her little blue ghost floats above her frame, and Emilia sends a revival potion her way, instantly putting her HP back to 500.

[Question #9. Emilia, your friend did not show up for your planned Sunday play date. You confront them the next day at school, what do you say?]

“This seems like a high level question!”

Emilia doesn’t even attempt to wrack her brain for an answer to this impossible scenario. She even begins to suspect that she’s in an Hopeless Boss fight as well. Nonetheless, the timer begins counting down, but this time it counts down from 60 seconds.

Ume assumes that questions similar to this one will be the norm going forward, which would mean more time to complete them as the zombie levels rise in difficulty.

Aware of Emilia’s silence on this challenge, Ume begins her role as the support character.

“You were pretty bad at smiling earlier, and every other question you got asked before this required you to do something basic and uplifting. I think this time you should try to be angry.”

“Angry?”

“Have you ever been stood up before?”

“...No. I’ve never even met anyone outside of school. In fact, I would consider it an honor to even have the opportunity to be stood up.”

Ume shrinks back, the sharpness of that response took a vicious slash at her pity-o-meter. But she shakes it off, with time ticking down she knows they must stay on track and get through this problem as a team.

“W-Well… I have, and it totally sucks.”

“You of all people? But you’re so popular.”

Ume takes in a deep breath as though preparing herself mentally for a confession.

“People can still be cruel to you whether you’re popular or not.” Clenching her weapon tightly while fleeing incoming attacks, she meekly recollects. “The agreed upon meeting time passes by, you’re left alone at Ikkyu-an in Akihabara as other friend groups gather around you… But even though you haven’t received a text all morning and your instincts are telling you he’s not gonna show, you wait there for hours, gazing into the crowd and hoping to see that familiar face. Tell me Emi-chan, what would you say to the person who did that to you?”

Ume’s energy takes a dramatic turn, and like a black hole pulls hard enough that even Emilia begins feeling it.

“I could maybe cry over that.”

“No, there won’t be any crying!” Ume exclaims with an emphatic stomp of her foot. “No more crying. You only cry about that when you blame yourself for being bailed on. The truth is that it’s his fault! And you are allowed to be angry about it! Can’t you be mad for once? Don’t you deserve to be mad??”

“...Sure.”

“Then be mad! You’ve been stood up Emilia, tell him how you really feel!”

By now, Emilia is both bewildered by this sudden onslaught of emotion and moved by it. What strikes her is the palpable passion in which Ume is trying to reach the part of her that can tap into the answer of this pressing question.

But in the end, this pain isn’t something that she can empathize with, it’s far too foreign. No different than a person born rich and remained rich their whole life could empathize with someone born in poverty.

Emilia and Ume live in two different worlds.

However… Emilia finds it easy to be angry for Ume’s sake.

The thought of someone just leaving Ume alone in a sea of people and casually blowing her off upsets her in a way she can feel pounding at her chest and heating up her forehead underneath her bangs.

“He’s a bastard.” Emilia says, her eyebrows slightly lowered underneath her goggles.

“Yeah! Screw that guy!” Ume shouts with a roll of her tongue and a balled fist.

“How could he take the friendship of someone as cool as you for granted?”

“Yeah! I’m not so bad am I!?”

“You are kind and helpful, positive and fun, and very pretty. Anyone who could treat you badly is a total bastard.”

Ume clasps at her face and turns away. “Oh my, you’re making me blush!”

“If you were my friend, I would never hurt you like that…”

“Um, Emi-chan, we are frie---”

“Doesn’t that guy understand that there are people out there who would be so happy to be invited out for a day?” Emilia interrupts. Lost in her train of thought, her voice is steadily rising. “I don’t even like anime, but I’m sure I would enjoy Akihabara because my friend enjoys Akihabara, that’s all it would take for me to want to share that with them.”

Now, Emilia’s energy has shifted and feels almost radioactive. Ume can only look on in stunned silence.

“Why are people like that the ones that get to call themselves someone’s friend? Why do they deserve to have fun? Why do they get to be normal?”

Emilia’s hands share equal squeezing power with the VR wand and her school skirt, the pressure of which doesn’t do enough to quell a quivering lip. On the screen in front of her, the clock reaches its final 10 seconds.

“So what would I say to someone who would stand their friend up like that?”

[7…6…]

Emilia’s shoulders rise.

[5…4…]

Her head cants forward.

[3…2…]

Her chest expands.

[1…]

She lets out a wail.

“Go to hell, you shitty bastard!!”

Gesture Mana +50

Inflection Mana +75

The question has been answered, and just as the next batch of zombies make their way to their feet.

“Emi-chan...”

Deep breaths that shake her body soften to the point that it looks as though she has got a handle on herself. Her whitened knuckles gripping on the items in her hand release their tension and relax at her side.

“Okay…” she says, clicking on her mana points flashing on her screen.

The options for her attacks are as follows. Fire: 10 MP.  Ice: 10MP.  Water: 10MP. : Meteor: 75MP. Ultima: 150MP. Supernova: 250MP.

“What’s this Meteor attack option?”

“Only one of the coolest attacks ever!”

“Cool, huh? Alright.”

With a galvanized smile, Ume rushes towards the corner of the room furthest from Emilia to draw the twenty zombies away from the stage. These particular ten are moving at a faster pace, but Ume is still able to outrun most and dodge the strikes of the others with relative ease.

Again, Ume runs in a tight circle, and this bunches the zombies together. With a wand wielding hand raised high above her head, Emilia throws it down towards the ground and lets loose her Meteor attack. The entire room is illuminated by crimson light from above, and a huge fireball comes flying in from the roof and down atop the heads of the attackers.

BBOOOOOOOOSSHHH!!

The sound is so deafening and the light is so blinding that the assault on their senses trick their minds into believing they could actually feel the heat from the blast on their skin.

Once the smoke clears, they find that each of the 20 zombies have vanished. The attack was brilliantly effective.

“Great job!”

“That was pretty cool.”

“Yeah! I think we ought to shift our strategy around these high powered magic attacks. If you think Meteor was cool, wait till you see the Supernova! I will act as a diversion to keep the zombies away from you as they multiply in numbers, all the while you will be answering the questions correctly to store the Mana so we can kill all of them with one giant attack at the end.”

A few short minutes earlier, there would be no way she would accept the optimistic thought of obtaining that much MP. But with the aftereffects of letting loose an emotion long thought locked away still fluttering in her chest, Emilia believes she is capable of anything with Ume’s help.

“Let’s do it.”

“I’ll probably die again before we get to that point, but we have some Potions and one more Phoenix Down to spare. We will definitely win this game!”

The corner of Emilia’s lips rise.

“But while we have time…” Ume says, walking up to the base of the platform and looking up towards the shining princess. “Thank you for getting mad on my behalf. I wish I had that in me back then… Even now I don’t think I’d be able to do it on my own.”

“...Kimura-senpai?”

“So I’m glad to have a friend who would do that for me.”

“You mean to say that we’re friends?”

“I would really like to be, if that’s okay with you?”

Emilia is at a loss for words, she can’t believe what she just heard and stands there frozen.

It’s then that Tani’s voice rings in their ears saying,

[Question #10. Ume, say friend in Italian.]

It would seem that the omnipresent Akihiro Tani’s voice is not a pre-recorded narration after all, at least this one isn't. But the two pay no mind to the potential that he has been looking on from his headquarters the entire time, maneuvering the two girls towards this very destination.

“...Amico.” Emilia says softly, her face meekly turned to the side.

There is no rolling of the tongue needed in this word, no hand gesture to empathize a point. In fact, the word sounds so uncannily Japanese that it feels wrong to be this easy to repeat.

But even so, Ume leans in a little closer to the stage and asks, “Can you say that again for me?”

Emilia can’t help but smile now. A real, genuine smile that lights her face up. A smile that blossoms into a beautiful crescent shape. In it reveals traces of relief, but beams out happiness plain to see.

She looks to Ume, and through that smiling mouth she says loud and proud,

“Amico!”

Ume ignores the numbers counting down in front of her and focuses solely on the smiling princess who has become the newest piece of her current life. With a warm heart, Ume returns her smile, and says with the smoothness of someone born and raised in that foreign land,

“Amico.”

Pronunciation Mana: +10

Calm Repetition Mana: +10

Remembrance Mana: +10

All 30 points are immediately transferred to Emilia.

They will beat this game as friends.

Night of The Virtual Dead: Ume and Emilia… Success!