Chapter Text
“Forty-six…”
Shizuka sat in the living room, an iced latte in hand to beat the summer heat, all nice and comfortable as she counted Natsumi’s push-ups for her.
“Forty- SIP - seven…”
“Grandma… can you sip… between counts?” Natsumi’s entire body was shaking as she tried to keep from collapsing. She was doing weighted push-up training with a bag that contained all of her schoolbooks. The load was significantly heavier than when she was in elementary school, which made for a great workout. And she always took her training very seriously. “You’re throwin’ off my rhythm!”
“I will sip when I want to sip,” Shizuka said, teasing her granddaughter with an especially loud slurp as she got near the bottom of the cup. “Just because you’re uncomfortable doesn't mean I have to be. Forty-eight, by the way.”
“Just two more…” Natsumi was really struggling, her arms and chest screaming at her to bring this torment to an end. “I can do it… Just two more…”
“Yo!” Ryuji came in, fresh from work, holding a book in his hand. “Natsumi! I got somethin’ for ya!”
“Just a minute, Dad!”
“Forty-nine…” Shizuka counted. “Last one, dear!”
“Book push-ups again, huh?” Ryuji walked over and saw the opening of Natsumi’s stuffed bag, with just enough space for maybe one more thing in it. “Perfect! Here ya go!”
“Fift-“ Natsumi was at the bottom of the push-up when Ryuji slipped the extra book into her bag. In truth, it didn’t add a significant amount of weight, but at this point anything to make her workout harder was NOT welcome. “Fift… fift… fift…” Natusmi kept repeating as she locked up, her stomach just a couple inches off the floor.
“You got it!” Ryuji chanted. “C’mon Natsumi!”
“You only have to push yourself up one more time!” Shizuka added. “Don’t give up now!”
“Fift… fift… fift…” Natsumi was really trying, but her arms just did NOT want to extend. But she had a habit of not listening to her body, so she wasn’t gonna give up now, even if she was locked in this position all night.
“Oh! Say Mom,” Ryuji turned to Shizuka. “Didn’t you say you got a new tub of cotton candy ice cream while shoppin’ today?”
“Oh, I believe I did,” Shizuka answered. “Seems like the perfect thing to crack open on a hot evening like this, once everyone’s ready to cool down for the night.”
That did it. With the promise of the ultimate post-workout reward, Natsumi found that last jolt of energy to push herself up.
“FIFTY!” all three Sakamotos yelled together.
“Uuugh…” Natsumi’s arms gave out, and she collapsed face-first onto the floor. She weakly raised her arms a couple inches behind her back. “Someone get this offa me,” she moaned.
“I gotcha.” Ryuji slipped the bag off of Natsumi, surprised at the weight. He’d forgotten just how heavy a full load of schoolbooks could get. Or, more accurately, he’d never been fully familiar with it, due to his tendency to leave certain books behind either at school or home, being the barely-functional student that he had been in his youth. “Great effort, kiddo.”
“Don’t gimme that!” Natsumi flopped over onto her back, glaring at her father as sweat poured over every inch of her skin. “I’m pissed at you! Why’d ya go addin’ more weight to me!?”
“What, this?” Ryuji took the book he slipped in out of the bag and showed it to Natsumi. It was titled ‘Pirate Legend’ and featured a man with a thin black mustache, black coat and hat, red sash around his waist, and a sword in his hand. “It’s like, half a pound, I didn’t think it’d make a difference. Plus, you wanted it so bad anyway.”
“No I didn’t!”
“That’s not what Ren said.” He dropped the book on the floor next to Natsumi. “He said you two got to talkin’ the other day when you visited the office and you wanted to know about our Personas, so he got Ryoko to take out a book Shujin’s library had about mine.” Ryuji puffed up his chest proudly. “Which is a great startin’ point, if I do say so myself.”
Ah. Clever move on Uncle Ren’s part. It wasn’t totally a lie. The Phantom Thieves had come to an agreement to tell each of their kids about their activities when that child reached age 13. Natsumi had learned about three months ago now, and of course she did have a lot of questions. Mostly about all the fighting they did. She wanted to know all about the powerful enemies they battled and the crazy weapons and magic they used to defeat them. The fact that her dad was swinging around pipes and clubs and stuff and shooting lightning thanks to a magic pirate in him was the coolest thing ever, and part of her hoped that she’d wind up in the Metaverse someday so she could unlock powers of her own like that too.
Of course, that still left her with one big question.
“The thing that’s s’posed to help me is A BOOK!? What the hell, Uncle Ren!?”
Natsumi screamed into the new smartphone her parents had given her the other day. Since they were going to let her roam around freely during the summer break, they figured it was best she had a way of keeping in touch with them. And they had oh-so-helpfully already put in the phone numbers of most of the adults she was close with in case there was an emergency and she had to reach someone besides her family.
“Books are very helpful,” Ren calmly answered, idly wondering what the girl in the video call holding the camera way too close to her mouth had eaten to turn her tongue blue. “In fact, they’re probably one of the oldest helpful things in the world.”
“But what's it gotta do with the Big Bang Challenge!?” Natsumi pulled the camera away from her face enough for Ren to see her scowling at the book, limply holding it away from her as if it were a dirty diaper. “If this were a guide to competitive eatin’ I’d get that, but-“
“Oh, we won’t be doing any of that,” Ren said. “Stretching out your stomach every day, or eating tons of lettuce or grapes, and then starving yourself the day of the challenge? That might help in a meat bun-eating contest, but it’s not how you handle the Big Bang Challenge.”
“So how do you do it? ‘Cuz unless this book tells me some kind of secret way that pirates ate, this don’t seem all that relevant.”
“All answers will come in time,” Ren said, pushing his glasses up his nose in a haughty way that Natsumi couldn’t stand. “My ways are as mysterious as they are effective. For now, read that book. It’s not very long, so you should be able to do it in a couple days. Maybe even one day if you really get into it, but trust me when I say that this is the first step to achieving your goals.”
“You’re not messin’ with me, right?” Natsumi held the book normally, still looking at it uncertainly. “My parents say you like to play pranks a lot.”
“I do,” Ren admitted, “but this isn’t one of them. Read the book, and tell me when you’re done. Then we’ll move on to the next thing.”
“Ok, fine.” Natsumi sighed and tossed the book towards her bed. She’d start on it tomorrow. “This is gonna be so lame…”
The book was AWESOME. William Kidd was a badass. He was one of the most successful pirates ever, he got to be a pirate FOR the government, which was apparently called being 'a privateer', and he was so good at it that he lasted for like twenty years longer than most dudes who take to sea. Even when they killed him, there was something kinda rad about his final words: “I have nothing to say except that I have been sworn against by perjured and wicked people”. Sure, he was basically saying “Nuh-uh, I didn’t do it,” in a flowery way, which Natsumi guessed is just how people talked back then, but there was something ballsy about it too. And it turns out HE was where the whole idea of pirates burying their treasure came from. What a way to be remembered forever! Natsumi never really thought all that much about stuff like leaving a legacy or achieving immortality, but it just went to show, when you’re great at something, people remember. And as someone who was always trying to reach her own new heights of greatness, she found it pretty inspiring. All stuff she gabbed about to Ren when their families had dinner together a few nights later, and all which he was happy to hear.
And then he gave her ANOTHER book. One that was a lot longer. 'Master Swordsman'. It was about like, bushido and samurai and stuff. Which wasn’t stuff that Natsumi disliked, but the way it was written was a bit too dense for her to parse. Luckily, her mother, the biggest fan of samurai stuff she knew, was more than happy to read it with her and help her understand it all, believing that since Natsumi had read something that mattered to Ryuji now she was trying to do the same for her. Though with how busy Hifumi was they only had about an hour to read each night so it took them a week to complete it. All in all, it was pretty cool. It really showed how tough focused and confident samurai were. All that stuff about acting decisively, never backing down, and believing in yourself really resonated with her. It was basically how she lived her life already, but the fact that some of the most legendary warriors in history were the same way was just empowering. And she was happy to tell Ren that as she returned the book to him, but also…
“PLEASE tell me this trainin’ isn’t just all readin’ books.”
“We’re done with that part,” Ren assured her. “There aren’t any other books I know that could help you with this. Well, there ARE a couple, but with Shujin on summer break I can’t ask Ryoko to get them out of the library, so we’re gonna move on to something else.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’re gonna need some supervision for this next one…”
An eruption of screams rang out from the center of the movie theater during a screening of 'Pach Saw 11'. Most of them were from Natsumi’s friends from school, who had all come with her to this horror film even though they didn’t usually watch those. Natsumi said they all had to prove they were tough in mind and not just body, so that was good enough for them. The loudest screams came from Yoshio, who was the only person old enough to get them into the grown-up movie that was willing to go with them. He actually enjoyed horror movies, even though they got to him every time. Natsumi, to her credit, wasn’t screaming, but it was only because she was so freaked out her vocal cords had locked up, and she was clinging to her older brother’s arm with a death grip, her fingernails digging into his skin as she waited to see whether the woman with both her feet caught in bear traps was going to shoot her twin sister or not.
But damn, what a rush! That movie had Natsumi’s heart racing even more than some 5K runs she’d been on. And after all that excitement, she had a VERY hearty appetite, scarfing down three large beef bowls with a massive heap of ginger on each at Ore no Beko after. And she began to think she was seeing a method to Uncle Ren’s madness…
“So, it’s like, if I get all pumped up I can eat a lot, right?”
“Kind of,” Ren said over the phone. “In general, we’re trying to make you gutsier. You’re not at the Cosmic Tower’s level yet.”
“I’m not?” Natsumi felt a rare moment of insecurity at that. “I always thought I was really gutsy. Everyone else seems to think so.”
“You’re good, but you’re like, a 3 out of 5 for how gutsy someone can be,” Ren explained. “I’d say now, you’re staunch. To complete the Big Bang Challenge, you gotta be dauntless.”
“Huh?”
“Let me put it this way: You can’t just go into Big Bang Burger wanting to eat a lot of food. You’ve gotta turn yourself into someone with the willpower to push through all kinds of obstacles. Some of that can come from adrenaline, but what I’ve been doing is giving you knowledge and experience to draw on when that runs out.”
“You have been?”
“Yeah. Think of it like…” Ren scratched his chin, trying to find an analogy Natsumi might be able to connect with. His first thought was computer programing but this was the wrong audience for it. “Building up the muscle memory of your soul. We’re basically training you to be determined, and remember all kinds of things that keep you focused when that starts to slip. When that giant column of meat starts to feel like it’s too much to handle, you can channel what you’ve learned from fearless pirate captains, or noble samurai, or even just remember how that horror movie made you feel like everything was on the line.”
“That really works!?”
“It worked for me,” Ren said. “And the best part is, it becomes automatic. You won’t even have to think about it, your brain will just do it.”
“Alright then!” Natsumi very much liked the whole ‘not having to think about it’ thing. “I’m ready for whatever’s next! Unless it’s another horror movie. That last one kinda…” Natsumi’s voice grew quiet and sheepish. “…gave me nightmares.”
“Well, it’s not another horror movie,” Ren said, “but there’s one more thing I wanna try, and it won’t give you nightmares…”
“Great!”
“Probably.”
“'Probably'?" Natsumi felt a chill run up her spine. "What is it?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Don’t worry about me!” Natsumi yelled at Jean in the middle of Dr. Takemi’s lobby. “What are YOU doing here!?”
“Dr. Takemi’s been teaching me first aid!” Jean pulled out a pocket sewing kit. “Today she said we’re gonna start practicing stitches on medical dummies.”
“And we are,” Tae said. “Natsumi-Chan is here to help me out for the week. She’s going to be my assistant.”
“Like a nurse?” Natsumi asked.
“Of course not." Tae shook her head. "While I'm sure you'd look very cute in the outfit, you don’t have the training for that.”
“Then what? Uncle Ren didn’t really tell me what I’d be doin’ here.”
“Uncle Ren sent you here!?” Jean’s eyes widened and he looked at Natsumi and Tae with concern. “Dr. Takemi, you’re not going to use Natsumi to test drugs, are you!?”
“Now where would you get an idea like that?” Tae asked.
“My mom said Uncle Ren used to test medicine for you back in high school.”
“Well, that’s true,” Takemi said. “But I don’t do that anymore. I still develop drugs, but I send my samples to colleagues in more-advanced facilities for the testing now.”
“Wait, when Uncle Ren was in high school?” Natsumi scanned Tae up and down. She’d overheard some adults talking about how the doctor’d had some work done over the years, but Natsumi wouldn’t be able to recognize the signs of it, and Tae seemed pretty youthful to her. Or at least not like she’d been a doctor for twenty years or however long ago her parents were in high school. “Dr. Takemi, just how old are you?”
“Natsumi, you’ll be my office assistant, doing some chores and helping me organize things,” Tae said, flagrantly ignoring the question. “And while you’re at it, you’ll be able to see me treat some patients. I hear you’re trying to develop a stronger stomach, and if that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place. There’s a lot of stuff in a doctor’s office you have to get used to real quick. Being nervous or squeamish helps nobody.”
That was an understatement. While Tae was teaching Jean how to stitch up a wound on a dummy, a man came in with a real gash on his face, hand pressed against his forehead to try and stop the blood from leaking out. Tae took the moment to help both of her young charges out, demonstrating practical stitching technique to Jean while Natsumi was forced to watch, and it was unsettling. Sure, Natsumi had been hurt before, even gotten some stitches herself, but she always looked away when it happened. And this might not have been as extreme as some of the gore in the movie, but it was real life! The movie was special effects, this was an actual guy who was actually bleeding with an actual needle poking through his actual face! It was not pretty to look at.
The rest of Natsumi’s week forced her to encounter a lot more of the unsettling, but more of it was gross than scary. Really sick people sneezing bullets of snot, or hacking up a lung with the wettest, rumbliest-sounding coughs she’d ever heard in her life. Sometimes she’d be made to observe Tae cooking up samples of medicine, watching as the seemingly-ageless doctor mixed together some thick, upsettingly-viscous liquids that smelled like death. There were x-rays of broken bones, pus-covered wounds on people who hadn’t been properly changing their bandages, and sometimes just a little kid whose condition wasn’t that gross or extreme, but seeing how miserable the little tots were in their illness just hurt her heart. It had been a very educational week, one that made Natsumi face a lot of the world’s ugliness, especially the human body’s, and she’d come out on the other side feeling like she had a better understanding of what it meant to be a living organism.
Or, as she so elegantly told Ren, “Gross stuff’s not so bad now.”
“Good,” Ren said. “Carry that with you when you eat the Cosmic Tower Burger. You’re going to hit a point near the end you stop seeing it as food and just see it as a greasy stack of flesh. This’ll help you push through that.”
“So what’s next?” Natsumi asked. “What do we train with next?”
“Nothing. You’re ready.”
The location, Big Bang Burger, on a Monday afternoon. The challenger, Natsumi Sakamoto, 13 years old. The witnesses, her best friends and classmates Eri, Saki, and Nami, as well as Morgana, who was there in Ren’s stead. And not sure that he should be, nor, for that matter, that anyone else should either.
“You know, back in the day, I encouraged Ren to eat this thing, but I didn’t really have any concept of just how much food was supposed to fit in the human body.” The grown, 26-year-old now-human looked at the tower of meat before them, intimidated by its presence in a way he hadn’t been back when he was a cat egging Joker on. “You sure you wanna do this, Natsumi?”
“It’s already on the table, Mona.” Natsumi cracked her knuckles and reached up to the top of the stack. “There’s no going back now.”
The timer began, and Natsumi got to eating. She really hadn’t been sure even up to this point if Ren’s training would work, but she was astonished by how quickly she was housing this thing. She’d devoured the first three patties in half the time it had taken her to eat the Gravity Burger, and she showed no signs of slowing down as she tore into the fourth.
“Keep it going, Natsumi!” Nami cheered.
“Yeah, you’ve got it!” Saki added. “Wreck that burger!”
“Try not to die,” Eri said flatly. “But if you do, I got dibs on your sneaker collection.”
“Dey’re nodeben youw sise,” Natsumi said with a mouthful of beef.
“They’ll be a memento of my fallen comrade,” Eri replied unconvincingly.
“She wants to sell them,” Saki said.
“NEVER!” Natsumi yelled with a clear mouth as she swallowed down the last of the fourth patty. She got started on number five, and was feeling a lot better than last time, but she was definitely starting to feel aware of all that food in her stomach. Not that anyone watching could tell.
“Look at her go,” Morgana said in amazement. “Say, now that I think about it, if Natsumi does this, she’ll be the youngest person ever to complete the third level of the Big Bang Challenge.”
“Oh crap, really?” Nami asked.
“This would definitely be the record. I’m a junior executive at Okumura Foods, so I know we don’t even let anybody younger than thirteen try this for legal reasons.”
“Then Natsumi’s gotta do it!”
The promise of such a lofty accolade certainly spurred something in Natsumi, who got a surge of energy and literally bit off more than she could chew. With her mouth held open by the meat wad jammed in it, she was all but choking, desperately trying to close her jaw but unable to do so.
“So this is how Natsumi Sakamoto dies,” Eri said with a barely-visible smirk. “Not with a bang, but with a ‘GLECH’”. The callous teenager punctuated her choking impression by sticking her tongue out and dropping the side of her face down on the table. Natsumi, for her part, was not amused. She was used to Eri’s messed-up sense of humor, so the joke didn’t bother her. But even just the hypothetical was something she felt she HAD to prove wrong. Natsumi came here to beat a burger, not be killed by it. She wasn’t gonna go out like a chump. She probably would have tapped out and tried to get someone else to extract this mouthful of burger in the past, but that was before she trained, and she wasn’t gonna let all that training be for nothing. Natsumi managed to get her teeth into the burger just enough to begin grinding away at it with micro-bites, eventually shredding enough of the meat away that she forced herself to swallow the rest of it whole like a snake. Everyone watching her cringed in disgust at the sight, save for Eri, who found the grotesque display delightful.
“Holy cow,” Morgana mumbled to himself. “The Sakamoto gene pool is messed up.”
Natsumi finished the fifth patty, beating her previous record, and moved onto the sixth. She still had half of the time left in the challenge, but her stomach was definitely starting to feel full. She forced herself to ignore this feeling as she attacked the sixth slab, the remainder of the Cosmic Tower reduced to a comparatively-reasonable size versus what she started with, and kept eating at a steady pace. For a moment, Natsumi hit a groove, achieving some kind of burger enlightenment where there were no limits, just her and the pure carnal act of eating something greasy and delicious, and everyone watched in silence as she continued the challenge with a zen expression on her face, looking like the Buddha while doing something the Buddha would NEVER approve of. Natsumi cleared the sixth patty, and with two-thirds of the tower gone, it dawned on everyone how incredible an accomplishment she’d already achieved.
“Keep going, Na-Chan!” Saki yelled. “Make that Big Bang Burger your Big Bang Bitch!”
“Could you NOT yell such a crass thing at the top of your lungs!?” Morgana chided the middle-schooler. “Other people are trying to eat in peace.”
“No they’re not.” Eri pointed around the room. “Other people are watching the freak show the same as us.” Every single customer and staff member in Big Bang Burger had stopped whatever they were doing, captivated by blonde-haired 13-year-old with the impossible stomach. Unfortunately, this information took Natsumi out of the zone, feeling the dozens of eyes all on her, and slowed her down a bit as she began to tackle the final third of the challenge. Her stomach was starting to rumble a bit from all the grease and cheese, and her jaw was starting to get tired from all the chewing, definitely not helped by the giant bite she took earlier. She persisted and made it through, but by the time she finished the seventh patty, there was only a third of the time to finish the challenge left.
“I think you should pick up the pace a little,” Nami suggested gently. “Like, you still got time to finish, but if you go too slow, you might not.”
“It’s possible,” Morgana said, “but don’t force yourself to try and do something if you’re not comfortable with it."
“You got this, Sakamoto,” Eri said, offering genuine encouragement for the first time today. “Don’t listen to Mr. Morgan. He just doesn’t want his company to give out any of those pins. ”
“Are you serious!?” Morgana balked at Eri, realizing he did not like this girl. Leave it to Ryuji’s kid to find the only middle schooler even weirder than a Sakamoto in all of Tokyo to be best friends with. “Do you know how many of those Captain’s Badges we have in storage!? People barely ever win them! I wanted to give them away, but Haru won’t let me! She said it would devalue the accomplishments of the people who have completed the challenge!”
“And she’s right!” Saki pointed to Natsumi with all the passion of a lawyer fingering the evidence that would exonerate their client. “Na-Chan’s worked really hard to win, and she’s gonna be one of the elites to get that Captain’s Badge!”
“You’re damn- URP- right,” Natsumi said as she managed to complete the eighth patty. There was only one left, but as she looked at it, it just wasn’t appetizing anymore. Honestly kind of gross. It had been sitting under all the other patties, getting cold as Natsumi had devoured its brethren.
But she began eating. What did Natusmi Sakamoto care about gross? What Ren said about working for Dr. Takemi rang true. Natsumi had seen a guy with toenail fungus all across both his feet, and this was just a burger. The vegetables had wilted, steamed and suffocated under everything else, losing the crisp that provided the sole reason anyone actually wanted them there in the first place. But Natsumi had seen a lady getting stitches on her butt after sitting on a rusty old bench, and this was just a burger. The bottom bun was pressed flat, a compact but also wet and limp sheet of bread with no fluffiness to it. But Natsumi had seen a dude keep blowing chunks to the point where she had to fetch three buckets to contain it all, and this was just a burger. The cheese was sloughing off, further melted by hot grease, making it extra gross to hold, with grease and dairy leaking down on her chin with every bite. But Natsumi had seen a kid coughing up phlegm so green it didn’t seem like the body could achieve that without drinking a ton of food coloring, and this was just a burger. This was just a burger. And Natsumi kept thinking that as she got through half the final level of the Cosmic Tower, the timer getting closer and closer to zero.
“C’mon Natsumi!” Nami cheered.
“You’re almost there, Na-Chan!” Saki added.
“It would be super lame to fail now, and I don’t hang out with lame people, so you’re GOING to finish, Sakamoto!” Eri yelled sternly.
“She’s really gonna do it!” Morgana said. “She’s gonna beat the Cosmic Burger! Go, Natsumi! Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!”
“CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP! CHOMP!” the chant started to spread around the restaurant, first among Natsumi’s friends, then the employees of Big Bang Burger, then the rest of the customers. Things had gotten so intense that there were people passing by who had stopped outside the restaurant’s window, recording the whole thing on their phones. Natsumi was being livestreamed a dozen times over, and as the burger got closer and closer to vanishing from existence, it was neck and neck with the timer counting down to zero.
Sixteen seconds left, and four bites to go.
Twelve seconds left, and three bites to go.
Nine seconds left, and Natsumi could barely keep holding the burger in front of her face.
Five seconds left, and Natsumi had taken a bite worth at least two.
Three seconds left, and the final bite was in Natsumi’s mouth.
One second left, and Natsumi swallowed it.
A buzz as time was up, and Natsumi looked at an empty tray, naught but the runoff of grease and condiments left.
And the roaring cheers of her friends and a few dozen strangers as Natsumi was presented with her Captain’s Badge.
“Hold it steady,” Ren said.
“I am,” Ryuji replied. “Just screw it in!”
“I can’t unless you hold it steady. The holes in the rack need to line up with the holes in the wall.”
“Fine!” Ryuji pressed the mount for the TV hard against the wall. He had asked Ren to help him with the installation since Ren was just better with tools. “Is that good enough?”
“Yup!” Ren twirled the screwdriver in his hand quickly and elegantly, his technique nearly matching the speed of a power tool without any of the noise. “Just keep it steady. I got one screw left.”
As Ren finished installing the mount, they heard a car pull up outside the house. A few moments later, Morgana entered the room, carrying a big bag of takeout in one arm, and supporting a bloated, disheveled Natsumi who could barely stand with the other, her newest trophy proudly displayed on her chest.
“Holy crap!” Ryuji rushed over to his daughter, picking her up. He noticed a LOT of extra weight as he brought her over to the couch. “You actually did it!? You beat the Big Bang Challenge!?”
“Mmhm,” Natsumi groaned, weakly raising a fist up in the air in victory.
“Well done,” Ren said. Natsumi replied by giving a thumbs up from the upheld fist.
“So, uh…” Ryuji wasn’t really sure what to say. As a father, he found himself torn between pride in his daughter for her objectively badass accomplishment, and a lot of worry for her health as a result of achieving it. In the end, he settled on, “so I guess you’re not gonna want dinner tonight, huh?”
Natsumi responded with a loud belch as she flipped her hand over, giving him an affirmative thumbs down.
“So what are you going to do with all these?” Morgana asked, holding up the bag of victory burgers.
“You guys can eat ‘em,” Natsumi said. “Just not ‘round me. I don’t think I wanna see a burger for a few days.”
“Well, I mean…” Ren eyed the bag greedily. “If Natsumi doesn’t want them, I suppose I could take them off her hands.”
“Uh-huh,” Ryuji said flatly.
“Sure.” Morgana matched Ryuji’s energy as he handed Ren the bag. It was a rare instance of the old rivals being on the exact same wavelength.
“Go ahead,” Natsumi said. “Consider it payment for the trainin’.”
“The WHAT?” Ryuji glared at Ren.
“Go ahead and tell him, Joker,” Morgana said. “Tell him how you’ve been training his daughter to gorge herself behind his back.”
“WHAT THE EFF, REN!?”
“She made a very convincing argument,” Ren said. “And her current state will pass in a few days. But that badge? That victory? That’s forever.”
“Dude, I am like three seconds away from kickin’ your ass all the way to Antarctica!” Ryuji balled his fists, clearly holding himself back with great difficulty. “Don’t you EVER pull that kinda shit with my kids without tellin’ me!”
“You’re upset, and you’re not wrong to be.” Ren immediately went into politician mode, trying to spin the situation. “I wanted to tell you, but this required a certain level of operational secrecy and- WHOA!” Ren’s spiel was cut off by Ryuji grabbing him by the collar and pulling him in close, their faces barely an inch apart.
“ANT. ARCTICA.”
“Morgana, a little help here?” Ren asked.
“I’m with Ryuji on this one.” Morgana shook his head in disgust. “I’m ashamed that I got caught up in this. Just because Natsumi did it doesn't mean it’s ok. At the next board meeting, I’m going to INSIST that we raise the minimum age for the Big Bang Challenge to legal adulthood.”
“You can’t.” Natsumi craned her neck up, just barely enough to see Morgana. “Not ’til, I beat level four.”
“Level four!?” Ren and Ryuji both asked, both with raised voices, but expressing their surprise at that revelation with very different emotions.
“Gotta get… the Admiral’s Badge.”
“There’s an Admiral’s Badge!?” Ren slipped out of Ryuji’s grasp and looked at Morgana. “Since when!?”
“Since two years ago,” Morgana answered with a sigh. “After 1000 people across the nation had beaten the Cosmic Tower, some members of the board got the idea to add another, even harder challenge. I voted against it. Unfortunately, the tie-breaker was Haru, and you know how she is with this kind of thing.”
“How did I not know about this!?” Ren asked.
“Because I told Makoto, who made Haru promise not to tell you.” Morgana turned his nose up at Ren. “Nobody wants you getting a heart attack, Joker.”
“It’s a really fancy badge,” Natsumi said. “It’s gold-plated.”
“For real!?” Ryuji’s eyes widened. “You guys are givin’ away gold for eating burgers!?”
“Gold-PLATE,” Morgana corrected. “Still a precious metal, but just a tiny bit of it on the outside. It’s mostly tin.”
“It’s a stack of twenty burgers,” Natsumi added. “They call it, ‘The Universe Burger’. I think I’m gonna need more trainin’, Uncle Ren.”
“No way in hell!” Ryuji literally put his foot down as he protested. “I'm makin' a dad executive decision! Natsumi, so long as you’re livin’ in this house, you are NOT allowed to try and eat twenty giant burgers at once!”
“Y’know what? That’s fine.” Natsumi felt herself starting to fall asleep. “I think I might not wanna do it for a while anyway… ZZZZZZ…”
“Well, this has been interesting.” Ren handed Ryuji the take-out bag. “You know what? I don’t need these after all. I’m gonna go.”
“Go where?” Ryuji asked suspiciously, already knowing the answer.
“Not to Big Bang Burger, I hope?” Morgana added, more of a suggestion than a question.
“Certainly not,” Ren poorly lied. “So if Makoto asks about my whereabouts, you have no reason to tell her that’s where I am.”
Diet Member Ren Amamiya went viral that night for completing a grotesque eating challenge. He was not publicly seen for a full week afterwards. When asked by her colleagues, Assistant Commissioner Makoto Niijima informed them had he had a stomach bug, with a notable lack of sympathy in her expression for her beloved husband.