Dance Against the Machine

After Minny returned from the DDR machine, Kaneko quickly swiped the newly refilled card.

“So, uh, what songs are we playing?” Ace asked.

Kaneko was slowly looking through the list.“Does this version have Id-ism?”
“Wha– The hardest song?” Ace’s voice quivered.

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Kaneko nodded, confidently.

Ace took a second to respond.“You sure you wanna start with that? We can warm up on–”

“Sorry pal, you and I are dancing to the gates of Hades today.” Kaneko replied.

Ace didn’t respond, instead he quietly selected the song and waited to be told to start. He braced himself on the back rail, which Minny had seen plenty of good players do before, whenever she saw someone playing. Although Ace was kinda pathetic, Minny knew he was skilled enough that he could probably beat the level no problem. What she didn’t know, and what worried her more, was how good Kaneko was.

Kaneko never played any of Minny’s games at home, even when offered. As far as Minny knew, all she did with her free time was hang out, do homework and train with the tape gun, which she was getting pretty good at, Minny had to admit.

Kaneko had never even expressed interest in playing games before. Minny was a little worried to see her cousin lose.

Minny watched the match start as a cascade of arrows rose from the bottom of the screen. Ace braced himself against the rail, sinking deeper and charging more energy in his legs. As soon as the song really started, he seemed to go into a trance, stomping on the arrow pads with a fair amount of precision. He was definitely better than Minny thought she could ever be, but far from perfect. He seemed to get more “good” accuracy ratings than anything else, and he was clearly struggling to get that far.

And then Minny turned her head to Kaneko’s side of the screen.

Kaneko seemed to be standing motionlessly, arms folded, looking at the screen. Minny couldn’t see her face, but she was pretty sure that Kaneko was either smirking or looking completely uninterested. But Minny could have put money on the first one, when she saw Kaneko’s screen.

Every note was getting “perfect” ratings. But how? She wasn’t even moving. Minny took another look at her cousin and discovered that under her long skirt, Kaneko’s legs were swishing across the pad with extreme speed. Then Minny was entranced.

She only realized she was watching Kaneko like that when the song ended and Kaneko stopped moving. Minny blinked her eyes, needing to confirm what she was seeing, but it was real. Kaneko had gotten a perfect score. Ace had basically collapsed against the rail, while Kaneko turned to him, looking smug.

“I called it!” Minny thought when she saw her expression.

“What’s next, Ace?” Kaneko asked, antagonistically.

“I don’t even care! You won!” Ace collapsed into goo, rolling off onto the floor like slime.

“Ha! Your dance is grass, man!” Rapidly, Kaneko’s smug face reddened as shock overcame her body. “Ah!”

“What!?” Although Ace was still goo, he apparently still had enough energy to be scared of Kaneko.

“Stop making unnecessary comments!” Kaneko stomped on the pads a few times and squished her head in between her hands, trying to get the idea to stick.

“I didn’t say anything!” Ace exclaimed, understandably terrified.

Kaneko slowly calmed down and decided to choose another song. “Okay… this one’s fun.”

Ace didn’t join her, letting his side of the machine miss every note. He seemed fine being where he was.

〰

Kaneko finished the session flawlessly, earning Minny more than enough tickets to finally buy her figure. It was a dream come true.

Minny didn’t know what to say anymore. How could she even speak to such a legend of infinite prowess? She just stared at her cousin with a totally new and different admiration. Kaneko, the gaming god.

“Uh hello?” Kaneko asked while waving a hand in front of Minny’s face. Apparently she was staring.

“You- Thank you so much!” Minny hugged Kaneko before jumping back, sensing something familiar. “Woah. Do you feel that?”

Kaneko looked around, having gotten a little better at reading the direction of the monster. “Yeah… Let’s dump the tag-along and get goin– It’s gone?”

Minny felt it too. The feeling that usually alerted her and Kaneko to a new monster was suddenly gone. This hadn’t happened before.

“What’s going on-” As the words came from Minny’s mouth, she immediately regretted them. “Why’d I have to go and set off an event flag?! I thought I was better than that!” She thought.

The pair learned where it went very quickly.

Ace was floating a few feet above the floor, red energy surrounding him.

“Ace? They got Ace? What are they… Are they tracking us?” She asked, under her breath, before completely forgetting the thought in favor of what was happening in front of her.

He quickly started to shift, the color of his skin and hair radiating through the full spectrum of light. He looked like his body was being molded like clay by fingers inside his body. Slowly his limbs stretched, creaking and cracking as his hands and legs bent in unnatural angles. His skin had dawned a plasticy-metallic texture and his right thumb detached from his skeleton, slowly slithering up his arm before transforming into a mechanical snake. It wrapped around his arm while his real head expanded and became more rectangular. The facial features then descended into the face itself, plastic-metallic flesh filling in the eye sockets and nostrils and mouth.

Minny only then registered the fact that she had never seen a monster form like this. She wished she never had.

“We’d better change. Make sure there aren’t any people around.” Kaneko took the Tape Gun from her bag.

Minny checked their surroundings. “We- We’re good.” as she pulled her wand from a bag of her own.

The two raised their weapons simultaneously and began their transformation.

〰

Before Minny could think about what to do next, Kaneko charged ahead, probably trying to catch it off guard. This was the first time they'd ever been able to do that while a monster was transforming, so Minny almost got hopeful that it would actually work.

It didn't.

The Monster swiped at Kaneko with it’s arms, like whips made from live wires. She had to keep a good distance, constantly throwing out lengths of tape which were swatted away with ease. She couldn’t get in.

"We need a plan!" Minny yelled. The staff of the arcade were still nowhere in sight.

Kaneko grunted, jumping backwards. "We can do the same thing we did last time! We just try to catch it off guard, right?"

She had a point.

"Okay, you run around the machines while I hold it's attention. When the time is right, start wrapping it from the back." Minny says.

Kaneko sighed, not proud to have even thought this, "What if it destroys the machine?"

"Then don't let that happen!" Minny had to prepare herself. Every encounter with these guys has been getting harder, and this one was probably no different. Minny had to find its weakness... Just like a video game, right?

As Kaneko retreated into the forest of arcade machines, the monster previously known as Ace tried to give chase, then Minny started yelling at it. “Hey! Hey! You big ol’ dummy, over here!”

It completely forgot about Kaneko and concentrated all its focus onto Minny immediately. Unfortunately for her, she never considered what that actually meant. The hulking mechanical brute began to claw at her, forcing her to spend all her energy dodging.

Minny huffed and hawed around the game floor and Kaneko was nowhere to be seen. Minny could feel her limbs getting less responsive to her commands, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She had to set Ace up for Kaneko. This had to work out.

“Rragh!” a distorted, annoyed-sounding metallic groan came from the speaker atop the monster’s neck as it continued to try to attack Minny.

She was doing her best, barely managing to evade its barrage, until she finally tripped over her own legs.

“Oof.” Rolling around onto her back, Minny saw that the monster was about to finally get her. She raised up her arms to shield herself, but she knew what was about to come. Minny shut her eyes and braced for the hit.

She waited for a moment, but nothing came.

Slowly, Minny opened her eyes to find Kaneko on the monster’s back, using a length of tape around its neck to pull it back and choke it. Well, it didn’t exactly have any purpose for oxygen considering that it was a robot… It seemed to work all the same.

“Minny! Hit it!” She yelled.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah! Minny took the staff that she was clutching and used it to prop herself up with all possible haste. Then, she bopped the monster right on the head-speaker, causing it to recoil in pain and throw Kaneko off.

“Raawwgr!” Kaneko rolled adeptly onto the floor as the monster supported itself on a nearby Guitar Hero Arcade machine. It wasn’t shrinking or returning to Ace’s original form though.

“It didn’t work?!” Kaneko exclaimed, angry.

“Yeah, I saw!” Minny shouted back, not appreciating her cousin stating the obvious. She had to think! “It’s not going back to Ace… Is my staff broken? No! I just gotta find its weakness. Like a video game. Video game…”

The monster was beginning to steady itself and returned its attention to the girls. Kaneko ran to Minny’s side, just in time for the monster to start charging at the two of them.

Watching it push closer, Minny couldn’t move. She couldn’t tell if it was because her muscles were tired or if she was just stuck in shock, like a deer in the headlights. Kaneko managed to dive out of the way, bringing Minny with her, snapping her back into action.

The monster had rushed past them into another aisle of arcade machines, allowing the pair to recuperate before having to get back to the fight.

“So, what’s the plan?” Minny asked.

Kaneko looked at Minny, out of breath. “Don’t you have anything? You’re the one who wants one so bad.”

“Oh, come on. That’s stupid. You can come up with a plan just as well as I can, Kaneko.” Minny argued.

As it walked further, Kaneko gave a sarcastic and somewhat dull “Sure, of course.” and they spent the next few moments in relative silence as the monster wandered quietly in the background.

“Maybe we just have to hit it again?” Kaneko posited.

Minny shook her head. “No, it can’t be that easy. Plus it’s too different from what we’ve had to do in the past. Even Sylvia only took one.”

“You have a point, but it’s not like it’s got another head for you to whack.” Kaneko

“Wait a minute…” “Wait a minute! That’s it!”

A loud grumble emanated from behind them.

“Shh!” Kaneko silenced her cousin “Also, what? You have an idea?”

“It does have a second head!” Minny enthusiastically whispered, “That snake thing on its arm!”

Kaneko raised her head in between a few machines to try and get a look at what Minny was talking about. “Oh. That tiny thing? You really think that’s gonna work?”

“I think it’s the only thing that makes sense. Anything else would be really bad game design.”

“Okay, don’t go pretending this is a video game. You’re gonna end up doing something stupid.”

“Like mindlessly attacking a massive monster?”

“Exactly.” Despite what she was saying, Kaneko had a big grin on her face. She was ready for action.

〰

Kaneko ran out from one side of the machines, calling out to the monster. “Hey, subwoof ding wad! Over here!”

At the same time, Minny was running out from the opposite side, taking advantage of her partner’s distraction to run up on the monster from behind. She didn’t have the clearest line of sight, but Minny swung her staff anyway, aiming to hit the snake's head from behind. She ended up whacking it’s wrist.

It did not like that.

It swung its claws at Minny, spinning its massive body like a top.

"Aiiieee!" Minny yelped as she ducked out of the way, the impossible force grazing one of her twintails.

"Hey! Get away from her!" Kaneko shouted. The monster flipped back around violently. Once Minny got back on her feet, she saw that Kaneko had attached a length of tape to the monster’s shoulder and tugged it’s arm so hard it spun around. “Pastel Princess, now!”

“Why does she keep saving me?” Minny thought briefly, before focusing back on the monster. The monster’s snake hand was now clearly visible to Minny. Just one more swing and the fight would be over. She swung fast, only hoping that she’d be able to hit it.

Thankfully she did; Minny’s wand connected with the head of the metallic snake. It shrieked in pain as it split and slithered back up Ace’s arm to his neck and down to his thumb. Almost imperceptibly the body began to shrink, regrowing its body parts, the metal peeling off to reveal Ace’s olive colored skin.

“Finally, its over.” Minny sighed.

Of course, that wasn’t true.