The Players: Staring Contest

[Belle Hibiki]

Of all the things Belle had expected, he would have never have guessed that Round Five would be so ... Mundane.

"Staring contest," the hybrid echoed the pager's audio instructions as the plain white room faded into view. There was a table, and two chairs, and across from him was a pink-haired girl that seemed somehow vaguely familiar. He had seen her before, but had never bothered to get to know her... For obvious reasons. "That's swell."

He and the woman pulled out their respective chairs and sat down. Adjusting in his seat, it only took a moment for Belle to realize that something was very ... off about his body. He frowned and reached up to touch his chest, and found that the conspicuous sacks of flesh that had terrorized him for the last three rounds were no longer present. His hands felt different, too - calloused and back to normal. And his voice ... Had he misheard?

"Hello. My name is Belle Hibiki and I'm a guy," Belle tested. Ashe gave him a funny look, but he didn't care. There was no mistaking it - his voice was back!

There was only one more thing to check.

Keeping his eyes locked with Ashe's, Belle slowly reached below the table and cupped his hand over the stretched fabric of the capri pants surrounding his groin. Definitely a guy.

He suddenly wanted to laugh. Or cry. He wasn't sure which, or in what order, or maybe he could do both at once. The utter relief that whatever program Wess had inserted had finally run its course was beyond anything he had ever felt. At last, he was free.

"Weirdo," Ashe made as if to roll her eyes, then apparently thought better of it and kept them on Belle. "Is that supposed to be sexy?" she asked.

"Is what supposed to be sexy?"

She tilted her head vaguely downward. "Grabbing yourself like that."

"What?" Belle looked at her blankly, then realized what she meant. "Oh. Oh, no! I... No. I'm just glad ... I have my penis."

Ashe's lips twitched upward. "I'm sure," she said blandly. "Nice shirt, by the way."

"Nice shir-... ah," Belle trailed off. Of course he was still in the girly clothes that Kaden had helped pick out. At the moment they were feeling more than a few sizes too small, but the shirt, with its bright pink trim, was the biggest issue. Pulling it over his head was out of the question as doing so would break his line of sight to the girl's eyes.

Left with few other options, Belle shrugged, brought his hands to the neck of the colorful tank, and pulled. The room filled with the sound of tearing fabric as the front of the tank split apart, and a second later Belle shrugged it off and threw it to the floor.

"How long do you think this'll last?" he asked, rotating his shoulders.

"What part?" Ashe countered. "The game, or this round?"

"Both, I guess."

The girl shrugged. "The first, I don't know. The second..." She smiled a bit. "Isn't that kind of inappropriate of you to ask?"

"Maybe," Belle admitted, shying back in his chair. Despite his recent spell as the opposite gender, he still did not like it when girls smiled at him. "It seems kind of stupid, though: that this is the kind of thing that could decide if you live or die."

"No argument here," his opponent admitted. "But this whole game has been stupid. I was just in a round where me and Ander had to play as Pac-Man."

"Pack Man..." Belle repeated, deciding not to ask what kind of game someone could play as a bag boy. If Ander had been with the girl, and if she was still in the game, it only stood to reason that the thief had lost in the last round.

Belle let out a long breath through his nose. Despite the fact that the thief had done more than his fair share to piss Belle off - stealing his Dragonballs, playing tricks on him, and putting a knife to Sayana's throat among the highlights - the hybrid had no desire to see the man die. Lose a few teeth, maybe, but nothing permanent.

"You okay?"

Belle refocused. "Yeah," he said, shaking it off. "Fine."

If he was going to win and make Gamer pay for what he had one, Belle was going to have to take things seriously - even if one of those particular things was a stupid staring contest. He drew up his legs and carefully folded them in a lotus position. Bringing his hands into his lap, he placed the tips of his fingers against one another and took another slow, deep breath, clearing his mind. During his training with Master Akiha he had often meditated under freezing waterfalls, upon hard rocks, and through storms. Compared to then, meditating in a relatively comfortable chair in a well-heated room was like breathing.

"What's your name again?" the girl asked, intruding on Belle's thoughts.

"Belle," the hybrid muttered. His vision was beginning to blur around the edges. "Hibiki. Belle Hibiki."

The girl snorted. "Pfuu-!"

Belle scowled. "Shut up! I didn't pick the fucking name, okay?! What's your name, anyway?"

"Ashe."

"That's a stupid name," Belle declared, breaking the touching of his hands and folding his arms.

"Now I remember; you were in the bar with Sage in Dante's Abyss, weren't you?"

"Sage? Oh, the blue-haired chick with the hard slap?" Belle nodded, carefully keeping his eyes trained on Ashe. "Yeah, I was there."

"Why'd she slap you?" Ashe asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Belle made a low growl of frustration. If her intent was to distract him from concentrating, it was working. "I kind of accidentally fell on her and touched her ... You know. Her chest."

"You groped her?"

"I didn't grope anyone, okay?! Why would I want to touch a girl's ... Girl's...- ?"

"Boobs?" Ashe helpfully supplied.

" ... Shut up," Belle grumbled. "Anyway, it was an ACCIDENT. And she stabbed me in the chest later with a goddamn piece of ice after I was nice to her, so I think we're even ... Even if I did almost sit on her while she was sleeping."

Ashe propped her cheeks in her hands and leaned forward across the table. "Sounds like you've had a lot of 'encounters' with her," she observed. "You sure it's not intentional?" she teased.

"Shut. Up!" Belle repeated. "I'm not interested in girls!"

"So you're gay?"

"I'm not interested in boys, either!"

"You're a eunuch?"

"I don't even know what that means!"

As Belle shouted, the room suddenly shook and canted to the side. Belle's hands snapped out to grab the edge of the table and keep himself from falling as the room swayed like a ship on storm-tossed seas. "What the-?!"

Ashe had gotten half out of her chair, but had managed to keep the stare contest going. "M-maybe it's one of the game's hazards?"

The room swung in the opposite direction. Popping open his legs, Belle stood and planted them wide, letting the floor roll under him - another trick he had learned on the Maiden's Dream during its more tempestuous travels. "Do like me," he said. "Don't tense up or you're gonna fall. Relax your legs."

A confused frown passed over Ashe's features. "Uh, okay!" she finally said. "Can I ask a question, though? Why are you helping me?"

Belle stared at her. "What?"

"Why help? I mean, if I fell over, you'd probably win."

"Oh." Belle frowned. "I... Didn't really think about that."

The room's swaying slowed, only to be replaced by a low-grade vibration. The shaking rose from the floor, growing worse by the second, until it felt like a full-fledged earthquake was blossoming underneath their feet. The table started to jump and clatter, and there was a yawning of stressed metal...

A loud, sharp crack sounded, as if from an enormous bolt of lightning, and the floor opened up beneath them. It was as if the ground on which the sterile white room stood had disappeared, the tiles fell through the empty, featureless void below, Ashe and Belle falling with them.

The pink-haired girl reached out to grab his hand. Steeling against his fear, Belle stretched his arm to try and grab her. His fingertips brushed the back of her hand, then briefly tangled with her's, before a sudden buffet of wind ripped them apart. Belle wasn't sure who broke eye-contact first, but he supposed it didn't matter. The darkness swallowed them up; the game was over.

~+~+~+~

Belle hit ground with a hard whump!

"Owww," he groaned. Death was sure a lot more painful than he had expected it would be. Dusty, too.

He sat up and opened his eyes. What seemed like a giant red-and-white veil had been draped over his body, like someone's sick idea of a 'cheery' bodybag. It wasn't until a few seconds later that he recognized the pattern as belonging to one of the carnival tents. From somewhere nearby, he could hear Ashe struggling.

Belle was just about to call out to her when a bright flash of familiar cerulean ripped a ragged hole in the nearby canvas. A second later hands was pulling him out, and Belle emerged from the cover, blinking and disoriented, to find Kaden, One-Eye, Chick number two, some asshole, and Ashe.

“What is going on?” Ashe asked.

“We’re not really sure. I think it’s a good thing, though," Kaden said with his usual penchant for casual banter while the world was falling down around his ears.

“How is someone trying to bury us under a… tent?! A good thing?” Belle demanded. He turned to look around as the others talked. Although the carnival looked the same, something was subtley different about it from before. It was very quiet; the occasional sound of an electronic game beeping in the distance reached his ears over the chatter of the others, but apart from that, he didn't hear or see anyone.

The carnival was deserted.

There was a familiar yawning of metal from somewhere up above, and Belle squinted into the sky.

“What do you think ‘Fission Mailed’ means?” Kaden asked.

"MOVE!" Belle barked suddenly. Before the others could react, he had already grabbed Kaden and Ashe's wrists and started to run. If it was necessary to drag them to safety, he would.

"Belle?!" Kaden hissed as the hybrid yanked on his arm a little too hard. "What are you-!?"

Kaden's next words were drowned out by a titanic creaking of tortured metal. All eyes turned upward as the enormous sign that loomed about the carnival shuddered, flickering rapidly before winking out. Then it started to fall.

The others didn't need a second warning. They started running with Belle as they tore through the alleys. Belle leapt over the obstacles in his way, pulling his charges with him. As he leapt to clear a large tent, he pooled his energy, flushed it through his body, and kicked off the air, rocketing through the sky like a missile.

Seconds later the sign came down. The ground trembled as several hundred tons of steel girding crashed to earth. The force was enough that a wave of dust and debris washed out from the impact, chasing their combined heels before slowly receding.

Belle finally slowed and lowered to the ground, dropping Ashe and Kaden to their feet before landing himself. "What the fuck is that asshole trying to do?" he demanded. "That's not part of the game."

Kaden rubbed his arm. "It's not part of any game," he said, his voice low. "I think ... This place is coming apart."

"What does that mean?" Belle demanded. "What happens if it comes apart? What happens if we're inside when it does?"

The courier ran a hand through his hair. Belle wanted to smack him; now was not the time to pretend like he was in a shampoo commercial. "We need to get out of here," he said finally.

"But how?" Ashe demanded. "The gate was locked."

"Maybe it won't be now. Or we find another way," Kaden explained. "I don't know about you, but I don't want to be here when the system crashes."

"We've had enough crashing already," Belle added, eying the downed sign. "Okay; you know more about this computer stuff than I do, so you guys lead the way!"

"Right." Kaden nodded, then glanced down. "Nice pants."

"... Shut up."