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“What the hell, Ryu! What’s taking you so long? It’s my turn to pee and you know it, you’ve been in there for like 30 minutes.” Nishinoya punched the toilet door.
“I need to finish this level! I can’t do that out in the open!” Tanaka yelled from inside the toilet.
“I don’t care, I need to piss!” Nishinoya finally smashed the door in half, revealing a Tanaka sitting on the toilet seat with a game console in his hands.
“Hey, what if I was actually pooping in the toilet?” There was a defeat sound from the game. “No! I just died again!”
“Oh hey! Isn’t that the game you were playing like, sometime before? The one with the dragons and the other stuff?” Nishinoya sat on the counter, all thought of ever going to the toilet gone.
“Yeah, it took an entire year for Sis to lend me this after Kageyama broke the other one.” Tanaka pressed the replay button. “And now, there’s another boss level and it’s really hard.”
-CHALLENGER 1: TANAKA RYŪNOSUKE-
“Okay, I’m charging!” Tanaka held the joystick button and angled it forward, the dragon getting closer and closer into view as he ran.
“You’re gonna get hit by the fire breathing!” Nishinoya pointed to the flickering danger area which was quickly changed into a big plume of fire.
Tanaka’s character got almost a half of his HP removed from the attack. He ran towards the enemy again, spamming the sword button as he ran, which greatly slowed his running.
Then the dragon sent rock flying towards him, Tanaka tried to run but he had run out of stamina while charging and got hit by most of the boulders, resulting in the loss of thousand-something HP.
Out of options , he pressed the superpower button, making his character dart towards the dragon with super speed in a torrent of ice.
“Yes! You can’t kill me now!” Tanaka kept pressing the attack button, only for the dragon to step on him, killing the character who had just said that they couldn’t be killed.
-game over-
“Why did you choose that character? His superpower was trash. Don’t you have a character with a long range combat style?” Nishinoya pressed into the character selection menu. “There's so much to choose from.”
“I don’t know how to use the other characters since I never use them, and also I probably need to go back, Daichi is going to get suspicious if I stay here for longer. I don’t care if you play, just don’t break it.” Tanaka got up from the toilet seat, going back to the dubbed “boring room”.
“Ryu, you can count on me.” Nishinoya put a hand on Tanaka’s shoulder, a shadow of determination crossing his face. “I’ll get revenge for you.”
“Yeah sure, do whatever you want.” Tanaka turned to go out only to come face-to-face (actually not face-to-face because of the height difference) to Hinata.
“What were you doing? Daichi is pissed. I barely got to go to the toilet.” He asked, looking at the game console, now in Nishinoya’s hands.
“Daichi is pissed? Oh, I’m so dead.” Tanaka left without answering Hinata’s question, muttering about how he was going to be cooked.
“Hey! Answer me!” Hinata cried after Tanaka. Tanaka ignored him.
Hinata looked at the console in Nishinoya’s hands. “Is that the super-hard game where we kept dying for the last time?”
“Which one looks the best?” Nishinoya asked him, flipping through all of them. “There’s this one that I think is pretty good.” Nishinoya went to one at the very bottom. “This guy looks good, his attack is pretty good and his superpower cooldown time is short, I’m gonna try him!”
-CHALLENGER 2: NISHINOYA YŪ-
“Revenge for Tanaka!” Nishinoya’s character ran towards the dragon, readying a finger on top of the roll button.
A red area started blinking, signaling an upcoming attack. “Rolling Thunder!” He immediately pressed hard on the sprint button, but instead of sprinting out of the attack area, he ran right into the middle of the attack, receiving a critical hit perfectly.
“That was so cool!” Hinata gasped at Nishinoya’s ‘perfectly’ executed ‘Rolling Thunder’ attack.
Nishinoya’s character jumped onto the top of the dragon, swinging his sword and attacking the dragon. The damage it dealt was…about 0.01% of the entire HP bar.
“What the hell! , swing it harder, be a man!” He held the superpower button. The character readied his position as fire ran up his sword, then he jumped onto the dragon and sliced it with a huge amount of force.
The attack dealt a surprisingly large amount of damage. But it backfired. Nishinoya’s character got kicked back by an invisible entity, sending him off the dragon’s back, and onto the ground far below.
Nishinoya pressed every button to try to stop his fall, but failed as his character fell on the ground with a comical splat, deducting all of his HP.
-game over-
“That was so stupid. Who gets hit by their own attacks?” Nishinoya threw the game console onto the toilet , disregarding the rule about “no vandalisation of the game console”.
“But the fire slash was so strong! How did you even do it?” Hinata asked, clearly not seeing the button labeled superpower with a kind of curve slash and clearly hadn’t seen him use it just now.
“You can hold this button,” Nishinoya pressed play again and demonstrated the suicidal action of pressing the button for a while, unleashing another fire sword attack that simply sent his character skydiving without a parachute. Then he died again.
“Wow!” Hinata gasped, enthusiastic about learning how to press a suicidal button.
Nishinoya clicked back into the character selection page, scrolling through the page. “Oh, look at this! This character has a base HP of 17050 and its defence is decent too.”
“What’s its superpower?” Hinata looked at the stats behind Nishinoya. “It’s a ‘Dendro’ type?”
“Basically, the character can make a floral ring that flies towards the enemy and returns to her. So a boomerang!” Nishinoya looked into the details displayed when he clicked the icon.
“They can make a boomerang? I wanna play that character!” Hinata took the console from Nishinoya’s hands, pressing play and ignoring the small font that clearly said, ‘Dendro characters not recommended for this level.’
-CHALLENGER 3: HINATA SHŌYŌ-
As soon as Hinata entered the game, he pressed the superpower button, throwing a grass boomerang at nothing. He chased the boomerang like an idiot and ran from it when it came back (unsuccessfully).
“You know your objective is to kill the dragon, right?” Nishinoya watched him play with the boomerang.
“But this boomerang is so fascinating, I have to check out all its functions!” Hinata moved the joystick to walk over to a tree. Then he clicked the superpower button. “It can’t cut trees. Cool!”
“Try that tree! It looks…fragiler.” Nishinoya abandoned the ‘kill the dragon’ objective and pointed at a curvy tree.
“Nope, I don’t think it works on trees.” Hinata tried it, the boomerang clipped through the trees and returned with the tree still perfectly intact.
As he moved to a bush to try, the red HP bar of the dragon appeared on the top of the screen. Hinata had alerted the dragon.
“Wait what? What did I do? Hey! Give me more time with my boomerang! I haven’t figured out if it could cut through cliffs yet!” Hinata yelled as he threw the boomerang again.
“It’s time to see if it can cut through a dragon!” Nishinoya said as he reached out to click the superpower button as soon as it finished cool-down.
The boomerang flew towards the dragon, but before it hit the dragon, the boomerang stopped an inch from the dragon, then it flew back to Hinata’s character.
Hinata pressed the normal attack button, making his character…shoot an arrow. A very weak arrow.
“Do I get close to the dragon?” He ran towards the dragon, shooting the boomerang again. This time, the boomerang hit, but the damage dealt was basically nothing.
The dragon roared and charged, slamming into his character and slashing its claws repeatedly, each slash deducing a huge amount of HP. In a blink, Hinata’s character was squished against a wall.
“I’m stuck! I can’t even do my normal attack!” Hinata kept pressing the attack button, trying to get a hit (no matter how useless) in. Then his HP bar dropped to 0, and his character disintegrated into nothing.
-game over-
“At least that boomerang was cool!” Hinata returned to the character menu.
“Agreed.” Nishinoya replied, eyes searching for another character he deemed cool.
Hinata was scrolling through the characters, pressing some occasionally, when a shadow appeared from the doorway.
They slowly raised their heads to see Daichi’s unimpressed face.
“What are you two doing?”
“Uh…peeing?” Hinata replied.
“What's in your hands?” Daichi looked pointedly at the game console.
“A…study device?”
“What are you studying on your so-called ‘study device’?”
Cue the silence as Hinata tried to figure out what subject exam he had.
“Japanese?” Nishinoya tried to save him.
“It's English, for god’s sake. If you're going to take an exam, try to at least get your subjects right.” Daichi sighed. “Can we start studying now? Do you want to be in tuition while we're in Tokyo?”
“What about we have a break first? They've been studying for hours, almost anyone would be tired.” Sugawara appeared behind Daichi.
“Please please please please please?” Hinata looked at Daichi hopefully, bouncing up and down.
“We promise we’ll fully attend the second session!” Nishinoya begged.
“Fine, I’ll let you guys off for a few minutes.” Daichi finally concluded, earning cheers from both of them.
“Kageyama! Try this game!” Hinata was already out the door, console in hand, screaming as he ran through the hallway, bursting into the room where they were studying.
“Woah, woah, woah!” Tanaka stopped him before he could give the game console to Kageyama. “You do know how this is going to end, right?”
“Kageyama’s going to obliterate the dragon?”
“What? No way! We both know he sucks at gaming!”
“Tanaka.” He immediately froze. “What did you say about my gaming skills?”
“Kageyama! Kageyama! Kageyama! Can you kill this monster!” Hinata cut in, jumping non-stop.
Kageyama looked at the console, his eyes narrowing as he considered proving his “wondrous” gaming skills. He snatched it from Hinata’s hands. “Let me show you how it's done.”
Kageyama started the game, pressing into the menu with the characters. As he scrolled through the page, he stopped at certain characters, inspecting their stats and attacks. Clearly, he was interested in the characters with high attack, completely disregarding the defence and healing stats.
After some time of looking and scrolling, he chose a character with ten-thousand something attack stat and clicked into the game stage.
-CHALLENGER 4: KAGEYAMA TOBIO-
The dragon’s HP bar came up on the top of the screen. Kageyama’s character ran towards the dragon. As soon as he was in range, Kageyama spammed the attack button, swinging the character’s flaming polearm again and again towards the dragon. The HP bar depleted little by little, doing decent damage despite being pure physical attacks.
“Press the supersuperpower button!” Hinata pushed the button for him.
“What are you doing? Why am I losing HP?” Kageyama threw him off the console, pressing the jump button to dodge an attack. To both of their surprise, the character jumped way over the dragon, then they started falling.
“You’re gonna die from fall damage!” Hinata took the console out of Kageyama’s hands, pressing the only available buttons, a button labelled with a spear and the jump button.
A pair of wings sprouted from the character’s back when he pressed the jump button, then quickly disappeared as he pressed the spear button, the character turning into a blur of motion as they accelerated.
“WHAT DID YOU JUST DO? NOW I’M GOING TO DIE FOR SURE!” Kageyama grabbed the console, watching as the character hit the dragon—alive. The HP bar of the dragon went down by an eighth with that hit.
“What was that?” Hinata’s mouth was open.
Kageyama didn’t answer, pressing the jump button and executing the attack again.
“Die!” The dragon’s HP dropped rapidly, going from almost full to a quarter left in a few ‘jump attacks’.
The dragon roared and leaped into a black hole opened in the air, disappearing from the battlefield.
“Did you kill it?” Tanaka looked back from where he was texting someone. “Woah, I’ve never survived to that point before. Is it dead?”
Before Hinata or Kageyama could reply, the dragon dropped onto the battlefield again. But this time, it was flanked by three other monsters, as evil-looking as the original one.
“Dang it!” Kageyama jumped again, but this time, the height was only half of the dragon. “Where did my jump boost go?”
“Why isn’t the supersuperpower button working?” Hinata reached over Kageyama’s head to hit the button.
“I think you have to get energy points to use it again.” Tanaka said. There was a half-coloured circle which was the supersuperpower button.
“How do I get energy points?” Kageyama frantically pressed the attack button over and over again. The circle did not fill up.
“I don’t know! Maybe the superpower button?” Tanaka pressed the available button in the middle of the attack and supersuperpower button.
The character shot through the dragon, doing some damage while restoring one tiny bit of energy in the supersuperpower circle. Kageyama hit it again, his character stabbing through the monster closest to the dragon. The cool-down was ten seconds.
The dragon jumped up and a red area appeared around Kageyama’s character.
“What-” The dragon landed squarely on the character, dealing a critical hit that dropped his HP to a third of the bar. The dragon clawed around it, dark slash marks appearing on the floor.
“No!” Kageyama pressed the sprint button so hard, the screen dented. Thankfully for him (and for the console’s life), the dodge was successful.
The door swung open and Nishinoya stepped in. “What did I miss?”
“Kageyama might actually beat the dragon!” Hinata said excitedly.
”What! How?”Nishinoya ran over, staring at Kageyama’s progress. “IT’S ALMOST DEAD! LET’S GO!”
“But he’s almost dead too!” Tanaka pointed at his HP bar. “I bet ten yen he’s going to die!”
“I bet the same amount that he lives!” Nishinoya and Hinata said at the same time.
While they talked, Kageyama had collected enough energy to use the supersuperpower. All four of them stared intently as Kageyama plunge-killed the monsters, which had less HP than the dragon. One by one, they dissolved satisfyingly.
The dragon jumped,the red area appeared, but this time Kageyama learned his lesson. He dodged out of the way at the last second, and the dragon landed on thin air.
“Ooooo!” Nishinoya whooped. “That was the best dodge I’ve ever seen!”
“Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!” Hinata cheered as Kageyama attacked again. The HP bar of the dragon had just a bit left. Kageyama jumped into the air, finger poised at the attack button. His character plummeted towards the dragon.
“VICTORY!” Kageyama yelled as his character hit the dragon. The battlefield disappeared, along with the dragon.
“Give me your ten yen, Tanaka! Kageyama w-” Nishinoya started to say, but faltered as the screen showed the two big words:
-game over-
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN! I KILLED IT FAIR AND SQUARE!” Kageyama threw the console on the floor, stepping on it brutally. “HOW DARE YOU!”
“What is happening here?” A young woman’s voice came from the doorway. It was Tanaka’s sister, the owner of the console.
“Uh…we were playing…a game…” Tanaka stuttered out, standing in front of Kageyama’s murder session.
“Nope. No more games for you. Ever.” Tanaka’s sister picked the console up from the floor. She left the room, with the destroyed console.
“Come on, it wasn’t me!” Tanaka ran after her.
The room was silent after Tanaka left.
“So…we owe Tanaka ten yen and a new console” Hinata broke the silence.
“No, we don’t.” Nishinoya held up a finger to his mouth. “If he doesn’t remember, no.”
Kageyama was still seething with rage. He kicked over a chair. “I CLEARLY WON!”
“Apparently, you didn’t~” Hinata teased him, only to get whacked over the head.
“I AM EMAILING THE DEVELOPER.” Kageyama grabbed his phone and started furiously typing, including a few curse words here and there.
Daichi walked into the room, “Break’s over…” He trailed off as he processed the carnage: a broken chair, a furious Kageyama and two in-debt idiots.
“Looong story. Basically Tanaka’s sister lent him a game…” Nishinoya explained.
“And Kageyama lost and now he’s angry?” Sugawara finished, knowing Kageyama’s anger issues.
“Yep.” Hinata evaluated.
Silence.
“Open your textbooks.” Daichi changed the subject, drawing down the whiteboard on the wall.
And so the study session continued, with the lingering scent of ragebait in the air.