[ti]open[/ti][004] Catch a Cold

A tree rots and crashes down, causing a Mudsdale to stumble, the carriage on its back getting crushed, the unfortunate driver flung off to the side. The driver groans, only to scream and scramble to his feet, running away as the undead NPC horde move forwards as one.

Kazuki presses skip on the floating music player at the corner of his vision, letting his ears be filled with hard bass and a steady beat. He’s keeping pace with the Patrat up ahead. He should be able to wear it down soon.

But his rhythm is interrupted. He feels something grab his arm, causing his head to whip to the side to meet eyes with a stranger whose lips are moving with unheard words. A quick air tap shuts his music off, just in time for him to hear the latter half of the question.

“Your partner?” Kazuki asks, raising a brow. He must admit, this one is ballsy. What kind of suicidal maniac just walks up to a big shirtless guy covered in tattoos?

Green eyes trail down to the fluttering eyelashes and the hand curled over his bicep. Internally, he corrects himself. Horny suicidal maniac.

But he does squint. There is something naggingly familiar about this guy, from his face to his hair and his demure act. It irritates him enough that he doesn’t tell him to fuck off immediately, instead opting to see if he can do some sleuthing. Makes the rat chase more interesting at least.

“That depends. Is this the first time we’ve partnered up?” He says, faux-sweetly. “Could’ve sworn I’ve seen a face like yours somewhere. The cover of a magazine, maybe.”

The Patrat ahead of them squeaks, ducking as debris flies from the chaos wrought by encroaching disaster behind it. It needs a place to hide. Its panicked eyes dart around, before it pivots violently from the route, heading to an alleyway at the edge of town.

Novelist is another piece that slots into the puzzle. Kazuki’s brows rise, eyes darting up and down as if thoroughly impressed with this personal trivia. In reality, he’s checking the name that floats over this stranger’s head.

The face. The username. The ease at which he jumps at pretty things, blindly, with no heed for (stranger) danger—

Kazuki laughs. “No, I don’t model.” De Saint Sernin, he recognizes that name from his mother’s extensive knowledge of designers. It brings images of that nouveau pseudo-nude fashion bullshit that Kazuki could not care less about. He’s just a bastard who likes to run around shirtless.

He ignores what’s happening behind them. Tailing the objective leads them to stop before a wall, a tight alley— a dead end.

“Don’t... you know…” A voice groans behind them.

“How to catch…” Awkward silhouettes lumber into the alley, blocking the exit.

“Pokemon…?” Decayed hands tighten around Pokeballs, unable to grip for long. The empty balls fall out of the NPCs’ grips, leaving them only to reach for the players, their eyes milky, their jaws hanging open.

“Maybe,” Kazuki hums, pulling away from starlitlover to grab the gutter on top of the wall with both hands. Muscles tense as he hoists himself with ease, climbing over the wall. And would you look at that, the Patrat has popped out on the other side.

“You know, I can’t tell if I should be offended or flattered.” Kazuki says, looking back to starlitlover, who has been left with the shuffling zombies. “On one hand, you forgot me, but on the other, you’re still into me.”

He drops to a crouch, grinning down at the man, his eyes shining. “I guess you only liked me for my face after all. Right, little prince?”

He extends a hand, leaving starlitlover with the choice of either succumbing to death in the hands of man-eating NPCs or death in the hands of a man-eating ex.

Kazuki snorts, still smiling, his eyes narrowing as if he’s looking at something so small and adorable it makes him want to eat it.

Once upon a time, he woke up to those watery eyes. Once upon a time, they were together.

He grabs hold of Adarsa’s hand, calloused fingers wrapping around a palm that had never so much as thrown a punch. He doesn’t remember the details of their first meeting: just that it had felt as easy as pulling Adarsa up right now. Atsushi had been in California for a fight, and Adarsa had been the prettiest thing in the room.

He had no illusions of a lasting relationship.

He helps him up, the two of them now standing on a rooftop as the undead reach for their ankles. Adarsa’s arms hang around his neck. More déjà vu.

Atsushi never admitted to it, but having the man cling to him used to be satisfying. Even when they fought and Adarsa would storm out of his apartment cursing his name, he could always bet he’d return. His apartment used to be littered with his ex’s trinkets: a wealth of intricate little earrings and fine clothing that he would never personally own, a portion being gifts he bought for him. He was tempted to tally how often they would loop through this relationship. It had been a game.

Until it wasn’t.

But then Adarsa looks up at him, stammering out his words. He points out his facial tattoos and calls them pretty, and calls him by a nickname he hasn’t heard in more than a year.

It tears Kazuki’s smile right off, his amusement morphing into disgust. “My avatar has the face tattoos, Ada,” he says quietly. “I told you before, I’m not allowed to have them. My manager calls it career suicide.”

Right, that’s why they could never last. They had nothing in common, and they didn’t respect where they differed. They came back to each other because it was reliable and easy.

Kazuki casts the zombies a disinterested glance. “It’s a feature. The tutorial NPCs are meant to be harmless, but I’ve got a trainer class equipped that fucks up everything that touches me.”

Funny he should say that, while still holding starlitlover steady. He chuckles. “They might kill us, so—hold on!”

He hoists him over his shoulder as an undead hand claws over the gutter, the groaning NPCs beginning to scale the wall as they pile onto each other in a desperate scramble. The sound of the mob scares the Patrat on the other side back into a run, and Kazuki is quick to chase after it, initiating a mad dash across Briarbane’s rooftops.

Kazuki laughs, hair whipping in the breeze as they dart across the landscape, hopping over the wooden roofs of the Wild West-style buildings. He can hear the zombies behind them, but he’s moving so fast, they aren’t even a threat.

Until Adarsa begins to struggle.

“Hey, quit it!” He hisses, feeling fancy shoes kick into his chest and fists pound his back. They feel like nothing—Adarsa can’t hit to save his life, even in a game—but with how wildly the other man struggles, there’s a very real possibility of Kazuki dropping him.

“Ada! Fucking hold still!” He grits his teeth, trying to hold onto the man on his shoulder with both hands, his foot getting far too close to the edge of the platform. There’s a big jump ahead of them, and the mob is drawing close.

Adarsa’s foot slams into his cheek and he curses. There isn’t any time for this shit. He should just drop that deadweight already.

His hand traces across pale skin, the pad of his thumb sketching a simple shape for flowers to fit. “What about here?” Camellias are the first things to come to mind. Bright red, full-petalled, and undeniable; they’ve always been his favorite. Having them here would mark Ada as his. But they can be daffodils. If Ada allows it, maybe purple hyacinths.

“Then more people can see it on you.”

He leans down, pressing his lips to it despite Ada’s laughter and attempts to push him off.

His foot slips. They crash down, landing in the alleyway atop a pile of sandbags. Kazuki groans, shaking his head as he comes to, his body having cushioned Adarsa’s fall. “Are you out of your mind?!” He hisses, grabbing him.

His hand tenses as he’s greeted with panic and fear.

This again.

He’s watching Adarsa wander in his apartment, looking for a necklace, the two of them knowing damn well that isn’t what he’s here for.

His ex of the past few days yanks out the necklace in question, and it’s a little string of gold ending in sapphire that he recognizes. He had bought it.

“And what about the rest?” he asks, looking from where he holds the necklace, to the petals obscured in the shadow of his apartment. Wilting and wilting.

Kazuki swallows and forces himself to get a grip. This isn’t the first time this has happened. At least Adarsa hasn’t bit him. Yet.

There’s the sound of three loud thuds as the undead mob lands from the roof. They lunge for the trainers as Kazuki grabs a panel of wood pinned by the sandbags, using it as a makeshift shield. The wood creaks and cracks as the NPCs tear at it.

“Snap out of it!” He says. They’re pinned against the wall of the alley, cornered. “Ada, you need to send out a Pokémon! Do something!”

Adarsa thankfully hears him through the corruption, and after a few seconds of painful fumbling, finally lets out a Pokémon.

Oh, they are screwed.

“We’re literally fighting against the undead, and you managed to let out a Pokémon that looks even worse,” Kazuki deadpans. The wooden shield he’s using snaps, and a zombified MOM lunges, sinking her teeth into Kazuki’s arm. He cries out, dropping the razed planks and trying to yank her off him.

“Is this payback for lunch? I cleaned up!” He lights his fist on fire, aiming to land a punch—but it simply disintegrates as it collides with her.

Even the strongest Players are helpless against unkillable NPCs.

“Change of plans!” He collapses on the ground, getting dogpiled by the dead. They rip into him, coating the alley in the red of his blood. “Need to—OW, ow, fuck, fuck, that hurts like a—RAT!”

Skittering across the sandbags, the Patrat pauses at the commotion, its large target eyes gazing at the trainers.

“Throw an empty Pokeball at the rat!” The goddamn Toddlet trips over Adarsa's Dunsparce and collapses on top of him, snapping his jaws two inches away from Kazuki's nose. Kazuki grabs his skull and tries to hold him off, gritting his teeth as the zombie turns his head and begins gnawing his hand. “DO IT!”

STARLITLOVER CAUGHT A PATRAT!
TUTORIAL COMPLETE!

Atsushi is spared from death by the skin of his Mom’s teeth. The undead woman blinks, as if snapping out of a trance, before unhanding his arm, the young Toddigan and Your Rival on either side of her. The trio begin to clap.

“Congraatulations…”

“Knew… you could… do it…”

“Outstanding…”

It’s the most dismal applause he’s ever gotten, but Atsushi exhales and lies flat on the ground as if he ran a marathon. “You’re all nuts.” His comment is ignored as the three NPCs shuffle away, returning to their default positions. As they move farther from Atsushi, their decaying skin appear to mend and sew themselves, until they disappear from view as average people.

There’s an annoying pinging sound coming from the corner of his UI. His health bar begging for a trip to the shrine. He groans as he pulls himself up. He’s not going anywhere, not yet at least.

“I think we need to talk about this,” he says, baseball bat-blunt as he regards Ada. He gestures between them with a hand that has a chunk bitten out of it. “This, I mean, not the zombies.”

He snickers. “Unless you want to just pretend we never saw each other. Leave everything to last time.” On the phone, at the airport, boarding a flight to Brazil.