Rising Shards

A bunch of athletes in tight bodysuits that had bright paint splatter color schemes dashed around upside down, held up with the same boots beam chasers players use. They dashed about high above an arena floor through a maze, looking for TV stands with big headsets connected to them with squiggly wires as rock music blared.

A woman reached one of the TV stands and frantically grabbed a headset, wiping sweat from her brow as she squinted at the movie playing in front of her. “The uhhh, their clothes are uhhhh—” A buzzer rang out, cutting her off. “NO!”

The camera panned away quickly from her despair, changing perspective to an athlete with perfect running form reaching a TV stand of his own.

“This shot has terrific cinematography, the actor’s putting in a great performance!” The guy yelled quickly before slamming a red button seconds before another buzzer rang. He took his headphones off, arms raised as the crowd roared.

“Damn it, I could have gone to this!” Kalei said, waving the shaky audience footage playing on her phone in front of us. “It sounded so dumb when my mom explained it to me, but this looks badass.”

“I don’t know this sport.” Kris said. “Then again, I don’t have time for a lot of sports…”

“Shocker,” Kalei said. “Could’ve gone to the extreme movie commentary rally then got home to play Scamblo: Sturvival. This could’ve been a great day. Instead, I’m trying to figure this whole thing out.”

“Scamblo: Sturvival?” Kris asked.

“Yep, badass team multiplayer game,” Kalei said. “Two badass things I could have been doing instead of this.”

“I don’t play many video games,” Kris said.

“Yeah, yeah, you don’t have any hobbies, we got it!” Kalei said.

“I do have a hobby,” Kris said.

“And what’s that?” Kalei rolled her eyes.

“Falling in love easily.” Kris said, eyes sparkling. “And looking at pictures of beautiful women.”

“Maybe let’s just focus on getting to Dr. Diast,” Oka said, patting Kalei in a vain attempt to calm her down.

We were getting a bit better at communicating with this guy while not getting completely stopped, but our progress wasn’t too fast as he moved from person to person. He’d given us so many presents we had to find plastic bags to carry them all in. It seemed like good stuff, but not anything particularly catered to individuals, just generic cutesy stuff.

“Plus side, definitely getting some euphoria from a guy that’s only into girls being into me.” Marmalade said. “And I didn’t have a total dysphoria meltdown going to Falling Shards like I was pretty sure was gonna happen!”

“Sorry you kinda got roped into this without warning,” I said. “I would have at least liked to talk that over with you before going.”

“No worries, I probably made it a bigger deal in my head than it needed to be.” Marmalade said.

I was eager to get some answers about this guy, or at the very least, a teacher I knew would tell him off.

“Dr. Diast!” I said, bursting into Dr. Diast’s office. “Er, oops.”

Dr. Diast sat at her desk, with a downtrodden Aira sitting across from her.

“Kind of in the middle of a meeting here,” Diast said.

“It’s fine,” Aira said. “Hey everyone. And…a random boy.”

“Hi Aira,” I said. “You don’t wanna know.”

Aira nodded to Diast. “Thanks for the advice. I’m trying, it’s just tough. I should probably get going.”

“Seriously, run away before he notices you,” Kalei warned.

Aira teleported away. Then came back a few seconds later. “I am admittedly curious about what’s going on.”

Dr. Diast had us wait in her room as she spoke to the boy outside.

“What do you think she’s saying to him?” I asked.

“Hopefully telling him to piss off.” Kalei said.

“And hopefully not becoming a target of his affection.” Oka said.

“Ew.” I said.

“Yeah, that would be an issue.” Kalei snickered. "A big issue, heh."

“Hm?” I said.

“Oh, nothing.” Kalei said.

We explained the situation to Aira while we waited.

“That’s…very creepy,” Aira said. “That sounds like something I read about before, though. My great aunt on my mom’s side, or one of them, collects weird Cani science magazines, maybe something like that was in one of those.”

Dr. Diast returned, shutting the door behind her before Kris could follow her in. He peeked through the window on the door, blank faced and still.

“Well?” Kalei asked.

“Yep, I’ve seen this before,” Dr. Diast said. “You lot picked up a Kris Krag.”

“A Kris Krag?” Oka and I accidentally said in unison.

“Yep,” Diast said. “It’s a void monster, not a person. They’re hopelessly generic and trap their targets, luring them into their lair. Usually with lots of gifts. Which I assume…”

Lillia nodded. “Yes, all from him.”

“You might wanna throw those out.” Diast said. "Also, they're incredibly lucky in a gross way. Nobody take a shower until you're rid of this guy."

"How come?" Oka asked.

I flinched at a strange noise at the door. It took me a second to realize it was Kris pawing at the door, trying to get inside maybe.

“We can just ignore that,” Diast said.

“He sounds like my cat,” Aira said. “That’s what Io does when he’s blocked out of seeing me.”

“Can we just wait this out?” I asked.

“It’d take about five months if you do that."

“Five months?”

“Then if it’s a void monster, can we just…” Kalei did a stabbing motion. “You know?”

“I like the sound of that!” Iris said.

“The problem with that plan is that they’re incredibly durable,” Diast said. “And you can only take one down in their own realm. So you kinda have to play along for a bit.”

“We have to what?” I asked.

“Ooh, you know what would be a good way to explain these guys…” Diast said, rushing to her computer. She turned on her projector and put on an anime of a bunch of people in line for a space shuttle.

“Fifty-two of the world’s greatest…all trapped on one space station.” The narrator said. “The sommelier entrance exams are the most grueling tests in the whole world, so grueling they have to be…out of this world. Who will live and who will die? None can say, and so we begin…”

Standing among a group of wild looking characters all with costumes signifying their occupation (with a scifi bent to it, the chef had tablets sewn into her costume, the firefighter had a hose cannon built into their arm, etc.) was a guy that looked just like our Kris Krag.

“I don’t have any special abilities,” the boy said. “I’m just an average guy. How’d I end up here?”

“See, in Sommelier Saga, the main character is designed to appeal to as many people as possible, with a flat and simple personality so viewers can put themselves in his shoes.” Diast said.

“Alright, but I don’t relate to this dude,” Oka said. “I don’t wanna be in his shoes.”

“Well, the bigwigs making this determined that this type of character sells a lot, so this is what you get.” Diast said. “And it’s not just anime of course, you see it everywhere. Kris Krags aplenty. Oh, but wait…”

She turned away from us, getting pumped up as the first fight scene happened. We all got the picture pretty quickly after the third main girl got all blushy around the protagonist, complete with a flop on her face with some skirt flipping up just like what had happened to me. Oka had a realization what would probably happen to us after the umpteenth 'main guy walks in on girl in shower' scene, but maybe getting a break from our pursuer made us not as eager to get up right away. Still, after the third episode ended and the opening theme began on the fourth, I had to chime in.

“Dr. Diast, how many episodes of this do we have to watch?” I asked.

“I think Grielle is my favorite, she’s a cheese sommelier.” Diast said. “But you can’t go wrong with Bavis. She’s a cassette tape sommelier. Oh, and the chaos sommelier that pops up in the fourth arc is amazing.”

“Dr. Diast!” I said.

“Hm? Oh, sorry. It’s not bad when you ignore the main guy, right? Pretty entertaining.”

“I’d probably enjoy it more if said main guy didn’t have the exact same personality as the void monster that’s targeting us.” I said. 

“Right, right,” Diast said. “So you probably wanna get rid of that.”

“Yes!” We all said in unison.

“Can’t you just kill it?” Kalei asked. “Or do you want to invite him in and watch more of this show?”

“I unfortunately can’t do much attack wise, they're mainly vulnerable to their targets,” Diast said. “But with that in mind, I can help guide you on how to beat it.”

“That’s what we wanted from the beginning, why’d we have to watch anime for an hour and a half?” Kalei asked.

“It was a pretty good show,” Aira said.

“It’s pretty good, isn’t it?” Diast said eagerly.

“Stop getting distracted.” Lillia said.

“Sorry,” Diast said. “We’re going to have to go into the void, but not the usual kind of void trip. Like I said, you have to play along for a bit.”

Diast briefly explained the plan before we left for the entry building. Kris fell over right as we started the trek, collapsing.

“Ah!” I said. It was a really sad fall, it looked like he was embarrassed. He looked up at us sheepishly.

“A world without you ladies,” Kris said weakly. “Is one I don’t want to be in.”

He got better almost immediately and started hitting on Oka, making me feel bad for feeling bad for him.

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