All characters mentioned from the Bloody Roar series are copyright their respective owners.
"Merry Christmas!" My aunt and uncle screamed as they barged in through the front door. That's the thing about Christmas at my house; no one plans when they come, they just show up through the night. Oh well, I thought, at least they bring presents with them. "Oh and here's something for you, Scott!" My aunt dumped a shoe box-sized box in my hands. She had covered it in bright, and I mean bright green wrapping paper. I tore it off and opened the box to find…another box. I could see my aunt laughing quietly with my parents about the gag whereas I just forced a smile and picked up the box inside. It was about the size of a DVD case, so I assumed that they got me some crappy movie. I tore off the paper and found it was actually a game.
"Bloody Roar: Primal Fury?" I read the title aloud. "What the hell is this?"
"It's a game!" MY aunt replied with a smile. "You like games, don't you?"
"…Yeah, you're right! Thanks!"
I ducked into my room and closed the door. If there was one thing I DIDN'T like about the holidays (other than bad gifts) it was talking with relatives I'd never seen before. Seeing as how it was either the game or the uncomfortable talk about what other relatives I have that I don't know about yet, I decided to pop the game into the Game Cube.
"Why am I even bothering? I've never liked fighting games." Then there was an opening scene. It was all anime and showed various people in different places. "…Ugly…ugly…hot…hmm, she's hot…ugly…broken mirror ugly…" I said to myself as I watched the characters go by. Then a man appeared on the screen and turned into some kind of wolf creature. "What the fuck!?" I said almost too loud; I was afraid my parents would hear me, but they were talking too loud to hear it. I sighed in relief and went straight to arcade mode and cyled through the characters. "Yugo? What the hell kind of a name is Yugo?...Xion…mm, maybe later…Busuzima…freak…Shina? Now we're getting somewhere!" I promptly selected the girl and moved straight to the first fight. It showed the two characters (mine and that green-haired jackass). Mine smashed her fist into her hand and said, 'You're goin down!' "I like her style." I thought out loud. When the fight began I simply mashed a bunch of buttons. About half way in my character transformed into a big ass cat. "How the hell did I do that!?" I kept fighting and eventually won both rounds. By then I had figured out which button induced the transformation, though I still didn't understand why they transformed. I paused the game when I got to the seventh round, ducked through a hallway full of relatives, and got to the computer to do a search. It turned up other Bloody Roar titles along with the stories to each of them, which I spent a good hour and a half reading through, complete with the occasional 'Wow' and 'Well I'll be damned' before I fell asleep at the keyboard.
"Rise and shine!" My mom told me as she walked into the room.
"Wha…What time is it?" I asked, prying the side of my face off of the desk.
"It's almost eleven in the morning. You missed the most interesting conversation with your aunt Claire."
"I wasn't missing anything." I told her as I stood up.
"You really need to talk more to other people. What are you going to do when you get to college?"
"When I get to college I'll worry about it." I walked back towards my room and saw the game left on pause. "Oh crap!" I picked up the controller and started playing again.
"You know you should try out some of your other Christmas gifts!" My mom told me.
"What would you suggest?" I asked. She walked out of the room and returned with an old book. "Who gave me that piece of crap?" I asked.
"This was a present from your grandmother." She set the book on top of the Game Cube. I leaned over to read the title.
"Bending Reality: How to Bring Life to Illusion. What, grandma was a witch doctor?"
"Stop calling her that!" My mom gave me the evil eye.
"Alright, sorry." I stood up and moved towards the book, flipping through the pages of it. "Let's see…naw, that's just corny…too gross…how about this?" I pointed to a section entitled 'Stories of Life'.
"Go ahead and read it. I have to go run some errands." She walked out of the room.
I started reading through the section aloud. "Let it be known that there are several realities aside from our own. Simple things such as dreams and stories are in fact glimpses of these alternate realities, which can be brought unto ours through the passage below." I admit that my interest was peaked. It said that by simply sampling a story or even a picture of the alternate reality it could be brought into existence with ours! I decided that I should simply read the passage without any kind of sample first, just in case this crap actually did something. As I was reading it I swore that I could feel the book shaking, but for some reason I just kept reading and by the time I finished it, the book was actually shaking up and down very hard. I took a few steps back and the book simply dissolved into a pile of ash on top of the Game Cube. "What…the…fuck?" I stood there staring at the ash pile for a good fifteen minutes before cleaning up the ash which, somehow, seeped through the Game Cube cover and got all over the game inside. Strangely enough the ash was bunched around it, like it was being attracted to it somehow. I decided to ignore it and cleaned up all of the ash. As I threw it out my mom walked through the door with a couple grocery bags in her hands.
"How was that book?" She asked.
"It was…uh…interesting." I said.
"You see?" She told me, "I knew you'd like it."
"Then the book just dissolved." I said into the phone.
"That's pretty messed up, man." My friend Alex answered back.
"That's not all. It seeped through the Game Cube and got all over the game; Bloody Roar: Primal Fury."
"You've already told me the game name, twice in fact."
"Oh, sorry."
"Does the game still work?"
"Yeah, and it's actually good, too. You see there are these things called zoanthropes and-"
"You've already told me!"
"Oh, sorry again."
"No problem."
"Well I guess I'll see you tomorrow."
"Yeah, damn school. I wish they'd let us off the day after New Years."
"Oh well, that's our school system for you."
"Yeah whatever. See ya."
I hung up collapsed on the bed. Tomorrow was going to be a living hell; I was going back to school for the first time in over a week. Oh well, I'd get through it. I set my alarm and fell asleep.