Work Text:
If there was one thing that annoyed Khonjin like nothing else, it’d be babysitting. It didn’t help that he was always tasked with looking after that self-satisfied snot-face named Ruther.
She was a hell of a schemer for her age— however old she was, like, six, maybe?— and constantly tried to get him into trouble. And when she didn’t, she was agonizingly boring. Unfortunately for Khonjin, he was always the first option when it came to babysitting Ruther. Of course he was! Why wouldn’t he be?! He didn’t know when it even started, and he barely even knew her mom, but she apparently trusted him enough that she would drop off her daughter at his house without so much as a second thought.
“Guess what?”
Ruther’s nasally voice slipped its way through his thoughts, already tangling his nerves into an infuriating knot. Khonjin couldn’t help but glare at the kid, even if she was impervious to how blatantly sick of her he was, “What? What is it?”
The girl’s smile widened, swiftly turning into a wry smirk. From behind her back, she pulled out an indigo cube… Was that…?
“I finally got my GameCube!” Ruther announced, holding the console under one arm and pointing her other arm towards herself, “Mom even gave me Monkey Ball like I asked her!”
Of course. When didn’t this kid get what she wanted? Well, at least she wouldn’t try to pester him about buying one for her.
“Oh, really?” Khonjin nodded, disinterested, “Wow, that’s cool.”
They both stood there in awkward silence for a few seconds. Khonjin refused to dignify Ruther with a response even as she glared at him. She broke the standoff, pivoting in the other direction and scuttling away, “Okay, I’ll go play Monkey Ball without you now.”
As she began to skitter off into the halls of his house in search of a suitable game room, a thought, no, an impulse, struck Khonjin like lightning. He needed to beat Ruther at her own game. That would finally get her to both swallow her pride and make it to where her mom would never let him babysit again! It was perfect!
“Wait, wait, wait!” Khonjin called out to her, following the sound of scuttling footsteps, “I know how to play it! I can show you the ropes!”
The distant slam of a door punctuated Khonjin’s plea, which was near instantly followed by hum rapidly knocking on said door and barging into what was supposed to be his room. Instead, he found an absolute mess of all his belongings scattered about, and Ruther was already setting up that stupid cube on his TV! But before Khonjin could reprimand her, Ruther turned back to him with a curious, yet skeptical look on her face.
“Really?”
Khonjin shoved his way past the disaster that was his floor and sat on the edge of his bed, a controller miraculously in his hands already.
“You weren’t even born when I played this for the first time! I’ll sweep the floor with you!”
A grin split across Ruther’s face as she hopped onto the edge of the bed to Khonjin’s right. The game was on, challenge accepted, bait taken, and many other phrases meaning that same thing.
“You wish!”
The TV flickered to life with Super Monkey Ball’s colorful title with a funky tune that flowed with an infectious energy and zest for life. Oh, yeah. It was time for some fucking Monkey Ball.
Khonjin mashed past the starting screen and its opening menu to reach the multiplayer options. Then, competition mode. Split seconds of their respective songs played, which was only accompanied by rapid clicking sounds from Khonjin’s controller.
“Can you stop skipping things?” Ruther griped.
“It really doesn’t matter that much, okay?! I’m just getting to the right menu!”
He continued his button-mashing until he reached the character select screen. Just like he had done dozens of times in the distant past, he flicked the analog stick right once and selected MeeMee, who made a cheerful chittering sound when she was chosen. It felt right, like seeing an old school friend who you only got to catch up with during lunch or recess outside of the setting, getting to be around each other longer than a short thirty minutes.
A question from Ruther sprang up, interrupting his rambling train of thought.
“Why are you playing as Girl Monkey Ball?”
“First of all, her name’s MeeMee,” Khonjin rolled his eyes, “And second of all, I’ve played as her basically forever.”
Ruther nodded sagely, “She’s your main.”
“Exactly! My m—” He did a double take her way, “My main? Who taught you that language?”
“You did.”
“Oh.”
Khonjin’s shoulders went slack. That certainly sounded like something he’d say, but he didn’t remember ever actually saying it. A part of him was surprised that Ruther internalized anything he said at all. She always seemed too stubborn for that.
“Well, that she is! Always has been, probably always will be.”
Ruther’s brows scrunched together in a combination of repulsion and confusion, “That’s weird.”
Khonjin gripped onto his controller tighter, biting back a half-baked remark that he already started to forget through the irritation. Giving her a reaction would just encourage her to keep talking, he reminded himself, just don’t give her what she wants!
“Okay, I’m playing Baby Monkey Ball ‘cause he’s the fast one,” Ruther nodded in an agreement with herself, solidifying her choice, “Smaller is faster.”
Khonjin sucked in a sharp, scrutinizing breath, but shut himself down before he could correct her, “Okay, you’re actually right that time. His name is Baby.”
He thought that he’d sounded polite when he said it, or at least something adjacent to polite. It was worth a shot to try something different once and a while, right? Maybe, just maybe, something different could make her stop being the most grating thing in the universe. He desperately hoped it would as they moved past the character select and into the race, a horizontal line separating their perspectives.
“Why do we have to share a screen?”
Okay, nevermind, Ruther had just completely ignored him instead. Cool.
Khonjin narrowed his eyes, not saying a word. He’d never tried giving Ruther the silent treatment before, mostly on account of Khonjin himself not being a quiet person. For the briefest second, he wondered if she could even see him if he stayed perfectly still. Something had to work eventually, right?
Unphased, and unfortunately, Ruther rephrased her question, “Can you get your own screen?”
This was going to be a really long hour.
Oh, he didn’t even know the half of it.
Ruther was fervently pointing at the screen and shouting in a poor attempt to distract the laser-focused Khonjin, all the while she was still in control of her character. Baby wobbled in an unflattering squiggly motion that made it near impossible to see what she wanted him to notice.
“Baby Monkey Ball does run faster than yours, look!”
“Literally no he does not!” Khonjin rebuked, “His animations are just different!”
“Nuh-uh!!”
“What do you mean nuh-uh?!”
Baby built up momentum, reaching top speed in mere moments, only to slingshot himself off of the course. Multiple times in a row. What did she think she was accomplishing??
“Come on, Baby Monkey Ball,” Ruther muttered under her breath, “You’re better than that!”
Despite her scathing critique of Baby’s skills, he went flying off of the course once again with wild abandon. The poor fool. Having not learned his lesson, this process repeated for the next five minutes. With each attempt, Ruther put more and more force behind her controls, which only made the problem worse and worse. Then, as soon as five minutes turned to six, it clicked.
“I get it now!” With the dawning horror of someone who left the oven on, Ruther whispered, like it was a never-before-heard secret, “Baby Monkey Ball goes too fast!”
“Okay, no you don’t, I already told you they all go the same speed! You control how fast you go! It’s basic momentum!!”
Ruther spared no mercy as she promptly sent Baby flying off of the course once more. A moment of silence passed as Baby respawned. Ruther kept her ball completely still. The moment dragged on longer than it should’ve. Khonjin groaned, “Are you done?”
“Can we start over?”
“What?! No! We’re one track away from being done, you can wait!”
In the middle of his sentence, out of sheer dumb luck, Ruther’s stubborn-headed strategy paid off. Baby had accelerated like his last couple attempts, but he swerved to his right near the cut-off, which caused him to ping off of the wall and into the goal post’s threshold.
“Oh, nevermind.”
“See?” Khonjin gestured vaguely at his TV screen, “That would’ve gotten rid of all of our progress if we reset.”
“But I would’ve done better!”
He wasn’t even going to dignify that with a response. Besides, the final course was finally upon them. There was no time to lose. MeeMee shot off like a bullet, angled just so on a narrow pathway, keeping her momentum as she whizzed past the floating walls in a ricocheting blur. With an ancient, yet diligently practiced skill, she bounced off of the final tightrope-thin path, sending her directly into the goal post. A swift landslide of a victory was awarded to MeeMee– and Khonjin by extension.
He pumped his fist in the air, “Yes! In your… face…”
Ruther was staring down at her controller, now resting in her lap instead of gripped tight in her hands. She wasn’t crying, or even on the verge of tears, which was somehow worse than her bawling her eyes out. This felt… bad. Not the type of bad that stemmed from facing the consequences of his actions, but the kind that made him doubt why he had been so ugly in the first place.
“Hey, Ruther? Can you look at me for a second?”
The girl hesitated, but she’d eventually dragged her glum face back up to face him. Crestfallen, but not defeated. She was too stubborn for that, wasn’t she?
“How about we do one more course? You need to redeem yourself somehow, don’t you?”
“Yeah…” A light flickered to life in her eyes, freshly reignited with the idea of proving herself, “Yeah!!”
Ruther picked her controller back up and hopped onto her feet. With the impatient mashing of buttons, she started up a new game. Khonjin scrambled to get himself into position, his focus snapping between his controller and the screen in front of them, “Woah, hey, let me get ready first!”
It must’ve been another hour by the time they’d nearly finished their second duel. Or maybe it was only half an hour. Khonjin was never great at keeping track of time. Regardless of how long it had actually been, every second was agonizingly glacial to sit through.
He didn’t say it out loud, even if he really wanted to ask, but he wondered why and how Ruther was struggling so hard with something as simple as knowing that she didn’t have to constantly go full-tilt. Surely it wasn’t that steep of a learning curb, was it?
Ruther’s side of their split-screen had become noticeably more even-keeled compared to when they started. Sure, camera controls were easy to master, but Khonjin was trying to focus on literally anything positive. The bar was low and Ruther’s skill level was even lower.
Khonjin watched as she fell out, yet again. Ruther nearly made it to the end of the track this time– she was improving, even if she still had a ways to go. He held his tongue as best as he could as he fell out again and again, no matter how painful it felt to not just do the damn course, he needed to be patient. She almost had it!
Through trials and tribulations, of sitting there and letting her win by default, Ruther had learned so much more than Khonjin ever thought she was capable of. He barely even had to give her much input on the matter, she just kept discovering new methods on accident. All of that wasted time built up an amateur understanding that could only go further up from here. Hopefully.
When the final stage came back around, Ruther was ready.
It wasn’t anywhere near as flashy or concise as Khonjin’s, but her last few attempts at victory were fueled by spite and determination, and that just might’ve been enough.
Not really, Khonjin was letting her win, but she didn’t seem to notice nor care. MeeMee lingered beside the goal post as Khonjin idly thumbed at his analog stick, whirling around in tiny circles.
Baby inched closer and closer, meagerly crossing the threshold from a narrow path to the wide expanse that was the final platform. Baby barrelled forwards, bouncing off of the gate’s pole before ramming through the finish line.
At long last, after numerous courses, fall-outs and far too many minutes that Khonjin didn’t care to count, Baby reigned victorious over his mother. His high-pitched, illegible chittering was still audible over the announcer revealing the obvious winner.
Khonjin tore his eyes away from the television screen and glimpsed back to the spot next to him. Ruther was jittering in place, eyes wide with disbelief. Or was it anticipation, like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop? Regardless, she was dead silent.
“Oh no, you beat me.” He held his hands up above his head and rolled his eyes.
Her attention snapped towards Khonjin, brought out of her stupor by his sarcastic remark while also not comprehending it, “I beat you?”
“Yeah. You did it.”
Ruther’s mouth formed a small ‘o’ as gears turned in her head. She stared at her victory screen, Baby still hopping, but no longer squealing in that shrill tone. In its place was the chill, comforting theme of victory statistics no kid ever bothered to read.
“Uh... what do I do now?” She asked like she’d needed permission for something. She always asked for permission, didn’t she?
Khonjin shrugged his shoulders, “I dunno, celebrate? That’s what I would do.”
A beat passed as Ruther began to shake, a wide, ear-to-ear grin split across her face. Her voice rose in her throat before exploding in hoots and hollers, whooping about victory as loud as she could muster. It was shrill and cacophonous, cringeworthy at best and excruciating at worst, and yet Khonjin didn’t find himself hating it as much as he would’ve hours ago.
Meanwhile, somewhere completely different, yet practically identical, a pale blue sky gingerly faded into a soft pink between clusters of clouds, tinting the beachfront city below in warm shades. The day had been lazy and uneventful. To some that would have been boring, but for two runaways hailing from the recently ruined Nickville, it was just what they’d needed.
A man stood at a crosswalk, waiting for the pedestrian sign to light up. In one hand he held a plastic bag with a corner store’s logo printed onto it. Inside of the bag were a few items– a pack of pens, some batteries, m&m’s, and a few cans of cat food. In the other was his phone, which was held up to his ear. He hummed and nodded every other moment.
“Did you know that game had a party mode? Y’know, with entire minigames!”
His best friend and housemate had originally called to ask for something from the store, but it never took long for their conversations to spiral off into random directions. It turned out that today’s topic was Monkey Ball, of all things.
“Seriously?” He shifted the weight of the plastic bag back onto his shoulder, trying not to jostle its contents too much, “Why would it even need one? People only play Monkey Ball for the races, so what’s the point?”
“Well, hell if I know! I’m pretty sure I never even played it– probably because it’s multiplayer. It’s not like anyone ever went to my house.”
He hummed, half out of thought, and half to let her know that he was listening. She never talked about her childhood, and he never pried about it. Their conversational “rules” didn’t change too much at the end of the day. Besides, it wasn’t like either of them would be able to find those memories to discuss in the first place.
The pedestrian sign flickered from a hand to a figure walking. Finally, Smack mused. Walking and talking kept himself moving forward, and hopefully gave his brain the hint that it should do the same. It was time for Monkey Ball, not regret.
“Speaking of which, what even brought this up? You’ve been talking about Monkey Ball for ten minutes straight.”
“I…” She dragged the vowel sound out, followed by faint rustling, then the distinct creak of a certain spinning desk chair, “Have no idea. I guess I used to play it a lot when I was younger?”
“You must’ve. I doubt you’d know so much about it if you didn’t care about it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” She sighed, then muttered to herself, “I probably had a lot of fun with it, didn’t I?”
Her murmuring gave him pause. So many minute details made up her entire life up to this point, and yet she couldn’t remember a vast majority of them. He couldn’t help but feel an echoing guilt tug at his stomach. Things were different now, he had to remind himself, but that didn’t mean it had to be left alone. This sounded like a nice memory, so why not?
“How about we get it sometime?” He suggested, “We already set up the Wii at our new place, and we barely have anything that isn’t Smash, so it makes sense.”
“I mean, it’s probably expensive, right?” Her voice lowered to a mumble as she audibly clacked away at her laptop’s keyboard, “Oh. Maybe not.”
“Well, I’ve never played before. Maybe we could figure it out together.”
“Maybe,” She repeated, her grin audible over the line, “but watch out, my muscle memory could still be intact, you don’t know! I could kick your ass to next week!”
A chuckle slipped its way through his words, “Yeah, we’ll see about that. I’ll be back home in a few minutes.”
“Cool, great. And, hey, uh, Victor?”
The use of his first name gave him pause. It wasn’t a bad name by any means, but that didn’t change how rarely anyone actually used it. “Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
In that moment he felt exactly like the setting sun. Warm oranges, pinks, purples, a comfortable navy blue. Everything had changed between them and yet it was still familiar. Same but different, no matter where they went.
Victor smiled, “No problem, Shelby.”