Tribute of Puyo Puyo

Zzz...

"Tee…"

Oh, I'm dreaming of an angel again…

"Tee."

What a nice dream...

"TEE!"

"Wah!" The captain bursted awake. He was dressed differently than normal. A far cry from his normal attire, Tee's pajamas were light, and flowed freely. His hair frazzled in different directions. The silver-hair boy looked up….

"Ringo!? What are you doing…"

"It's Puyo Day, silly! Let's go!" Ringo tightly gripped Tee's arm and aimed her hand at the ground.

"Combination!"

Fwoom!

A wind surrounded the pair, and poof! They were gone.

...

They zipped through a colorful tunnel: red, yellow, green, blue, purple! Tee looked at Ringo… huh. The yellow shirt was definitely different from her school uniform, but aside from that… same Ringo! Same red hair, same green pin, same mannerisms, same bright eyes, same giant smile… Tee had the sudden urge to fix up his hair. He began to think to himself…

Let's see, two four…no…ni shi...not that either...ah!

"Tsu-Yo!" Tee exclaimed out loud. Ringo chuckled.

"Yep! Be ready for a day of excitement!" Tee smiled. This wasn't how Tee thought the day was going to go, but he was sure glad he thought wrong.

...

"Do you think he went with her?"

"Of course; she's special to him."

Two people were out in an open field; a windmill blew the seasonal breeze enthusiastically. All around, the flowers were glittered with life; they were those same five colors of the vortex: Red, yellow, green, blue, and purple.

One of the two people was a boy. He wore a slick smile on his face. His purple hair covered both of his eyes, adding a sort of wonder to those who passed by him. He wore a dressy shirt with a yellow tie, and some black pants to go with them. He twiddled with a kendama (a ball game using a hammer) in has hand; sometimes he missed and shrugged; other times he landed, smirked, and reset the ball, as if nothing happened.

The other person was a… hm? He looked like half a squirrel, half a bear. He wore a lab coat and some pants, giving off a very sciencey vibe. Although a squirrel-bear might seem weird, In a world with talking fish, he was pretty par-the-course. A wind started to stir…

"Here they come, Ris!" the boy said.

Fwoom!

An excited wind dived towards the ground. Out of it emerged both the captain and the scholar. Ringo waved to the kendama boy.

"I got him, just like you said Maguro!" Ringo said. Maguro smirked. He faced Tee.

"How you doing Tee? Forget to get dressed?" Tee's face briefly went red, but then he sighed in submission.

"That's what happens when you guys gets me at 3:00 AM; Space Time Zones are stupid…" Tee replied. Ringo let go of Tee's arm; he walked over to Maguro and smiled. "Nice to see you again, fellow performer." Maguro chuckled.

"I'm glad you stuck around, Tee. I don't know if I could've stopped Arle's wrath." Ringo shuddered in fear.

"Don't remind me," Ringo said. She turned to face the squirrel-bear.

"You got the Puyo ready, Ris?" Ringo asked. Risukuma nodded and reached into his lab coat.

"Behold! The power of science!" Risukuma let loose a plethora of Puyo. "I've made everything! Red Puyo, Blue Puyo, green and yellow! Huge Puyo! Tiny Puyo! Sun Puyo! Treasure Puyo! PistpakdzisahislL…" a bunch of white foam started to come out of Risukuma's mouth. Tee looked at Risukuma, shocked; Maguro and Ringo looked at Risukuma, both of them sighing.

"It looks like he's Scienced himself out again." Ringo said. Maguro slyly smiled at Ringo.

"We're down a person now." Maguro said.

"Don't you dare." Ringo replied.

"Another player would be nice."

"It's too bad we don't have one."

"He made the portal for us."

"He's also a creep."

"..."

"..."

"...Tee wouldn't be here without him."

"AAAAHHHGHHH!" Ringo yelled out in frustration. Tee jumped back, startled. "Fine, you win. ECOLO, COME OUT!"

Out of Ringo's shadow, a bluish-blackish-blobby darkness emerged. It's head looked like a raindrop, while its face looked like a mistake; it had the stupidest grin.

"Sounds like fun! More time with Ringo, weeeee!" Ecolo said. He started looping around the sky in circles. Ringo looked at Maguro.

"We're doing doubles; guess who your partner is."

"... I've brought this upon myself."

"Yep." Ringo turned to Tee with an expression pure determination.

"We can do this Tee." She reached out her hand started preparing a spell. Tee looked at Ringo: she was excited, joyful, and confident. Tee slowly nodded his head and took a deep breath, and started making a spell of his own.

"I'm definitely not a Puyo Puyo Master, but I'll still do my best!"

"PUYO PUYO BATTLE!"

…

The rest of the day was battle after battle. Tee was amazed by the types of frenzies he experienced: Fever Fights, where a big-bang-blitz could trigger from counter attacks; Sun Puyo: enhanced Puyo that made the power of attacks even more deadly; Transformation Puyo, where he found himself growing both older and younger to fight against his opponents (Kindergartener Ringo was so cute!). Everything came at him in a flash: Tiny Puyo, Large Puyo, Ice Puyo, Bomb Puyo, even Underwater Puyo! Sometimes Tee and Ringo won, sometimes Maguro and Ecolo won, but it didn't matter to him: he was having the time of his life, and with Ringo nonetheless!

...

After hours of fighting, the sky turned beautiful shade of orange; sunset had arrived. The wind slowed, and the windmill froze. On the flower field, stood four players: the final battle was about to begin.
"Alright! For our final match… Tsu!" Ringo yelled out. All the players got into position… Go! And the game was off.

Each player had their own way of playing: Ringo opened on the left side, piling an L of Red Puyo and surrounding it with snippets Green Puyo. Tee played the game like Tetris, and focused on sandwiching his Puyo together. Ecolo quickly smashed his Puyo down to the ground; it seemed incoherent, but at its fundamentals, there was definitely a chain being built. Maguro followed a similar style to Ringo, but was focusing on building an extension on the left first… there!

"Lock-down!" Tee yelled. Pop! Pop! Pop!He fired off a pretty small attack: only a 3 chain, but…

"Ah!" Maguro yelled. Maguro was too busy making an extension, and had no way to counter the measly 3 chain. The garbage quickly engulfed him.

"Nice work Tee!" Ringo said. Her chain kept getting more and more complex, and as a result, more and more deadly. Ecolo snickered.

"Farewell loser! Ringo is mine!" Ecolo exclaimed. He set off his chain… Pop! Pop! Pop! Tee stood flabbergasted… then turned his brain back on.

"5, 6, 7,8,9… no… a 10 chain! I can't fight that Ringo!" Tee yelled. Ringo remained stoic; she focused on her chain…

"Here...here…, ha!" Ringo yelled. She focused magic into her fingers and aimed at Ecolo. "I don't belong to anyone! Take this! Sine! Cosine! Tangent!" Pop! Pop! Pop! The Puyo kept popping. Tee started counting.

"8,9,10,11… 12! A 12 chain! You're amazing Ringo!" Tee exclaimed. Ringo paused; she briefly starred at Tee for a second, a blank look on her face. Then, she closed her eyes, and smiled.

"Thank you Tee… and it's done! Take this! PERMUTATION!" All of the power from the chain shot straight into Ringo's fingers. Bwoom! It easily pushed through Ecolo's chain, and directly inflamed over the creature.

"Itai!" Ecolo yelled. The spell pushed Ecolo; it went past the windmill! It went past the clouds! It kept going and going until… Tee stared upwards.

"...Ringo. I think you sent him back to space." he said.

"...Huh. Who would've thought. … OH HEY! WE WON!" Ringo exclaimed. She grabbed Tee's hand and jumped up in joy. Tee struggled to keep up with Ringo's erratic movement, but he was happy nonetheless. Ringo reached her other hand down to the pile of nuisance Puyo. Underneath all of the junk was one dazed kendama player. Ringo looked to Maguro and smiled. He smiled back, and grabbed her hand.

"That sure was a dynamic game." Maguro said; he turned to Tee, "good job with the early pressure, I might've had a huge chain if you didn't intervene." Tee chuckled.

"I'm still nowhere near as good as you two, but I try to do what I can." Ringo laughed and reached her arms out; she brought the three of them in for a hug.

"You two… there is nobody more important in the world to me than you two." Maguro smiled and joined in the hug. Tee still had his arms by his side, his brain still trying to process what Ringo was doing... but he eventually joined in as well.

"..."

"..."

"...Are we forgetting something?" Maguro asked. He looked to the ground. Right there, smack dab in the middle, was a still mouth-foaming squirrel-bear.

"Oh shoot!" Maguro exclaimed. He sped over to Risukuma's sleeping place. "I'm gonna go bring him to Witch's potion shop! Later!" Maguro grabbed Ris' unconscious body and ran from the flower field. All that was left was the Tetris King, and...

"...Um Ringo?" Tee asked.

"Hm...?" she replied.

"Maguro's gone… but we're still hugging."

"Hm… How about that."

She kept hugging him…

…

The sky had reached its final phase: the vibrant blackness of the night. In the middle of darkness, the moon emitted a vast, graceful light. The wind started to flow again, but it was a nice, gentle breeze instead of the energetic swiftness of before. The flowers seemed to have fallen asleep: the red ones mellowed, yellow ones soothed, green ones calmed, blue ones sedated, and the purple ones at peace. In the middle of it all, a red-haired girl lay down on top of a hill, staring at the luminescent moon. From the bottom of the hill, the space captain began his ascent up to the girl. Seeing her position, he got on the ground and lay down beside her. Ringo turned her head.

"So, how did the call go?" She asked.

"Well," Tee replied, "to quote O, 'Pi Pi Pi Pi Pi!'"

"...Heh. Ha...Ahahahahahaha!" Both of them burst out laughing. When they calmed down, Tee continued.

"O said that the Tetra will take a few days to get here, so I can spend some time with you here in the meantime." Tee said.

"Heh Heh! These next few days should be fun," Ringo replied. She turned her head back to gaze at the moon. Tee followed suit.

"..."

"..."
"Puyo Puyo sure is something, huh." Ringo said.

"Yeah," Tee replied, "It's a fascinating game…"

"And it's done so much," Ringo said, "Before Arle fell out from the sky, I was just living a normal life with my friends, and now… I've traveled and discovered this huge world, an entire Nexus of Puyo players. I've made so many new friends along the way. I've practiced so much at Puyo, learning and loving its intracices, spending hours coming up with new strategies. Heck, without Puyo, I wouldn't even play games like Tetris; it's helped me with areas in life that seem so different, yet it still works!" Ringo exclaimed; she turned her head to face Tee. "And of course, I wouldn't have met you without Puyo Puyo…"

"...I think there's only one more thing we need to do." Tee said.

"...Sure. Let's say it, together." Ringo said. And so, starting into the moonlight, Tee and Ringo uttered four words. These words were not just for themselves, but for everyone, everyone who's had their life changed by one simple game:

Thank you, Puyo Puyo.