We're in the Game

In the empty kitchens, several trays of cookies and tins of cupcakes began smoking after they burned to a crisp. The smoke rose up and set off the fire alarms.

The campus had various members of various clubs running around, busily preparing for the festival on Monday. When the alarms went off the fifty or so people around the school ran for the exits, wondering what was going on.

Over in building three, Yuri, Kouta, and Meiji looked at each other as the klaxons began blaring and the hallways were filled with flashing red light. They stopped what they were doing and walked towards the stairs. The large windows in the hallway afforded them a view of the courtyard buildings surrounded. From Buidling 1, they could see smoke rising out of one of the windows.

"Isn't that—Isn't that the kitchens?" Yuri asked. "What's going on?! Are Natchan and Moni-chan okay?"

"Didn't you say Sayori-chan joined them," Kouta asked Meiji.

"That dummy! I bet she started it, too!" ŭĂŷħä said, rolling his eyes.

The three walked along the diagonal path in the quad that took them to Building 1's door. They walked inside and headed to the kitchens, which were near the door.

Yuri ran inside the kitchens and found four ovens each smoking. Opening the oven doors, she used a mitt pull out the trays of burnt cookies and tins of cupcakes.

"Where're Natchan and Moni-chan?!" she asked as Kouta helped her. Twelve trays of smoldering cookies and cupcakes cooled on the counters.

"Did they go to get help?" Kouta asked.

"If they were here," Yuri said, "these wouldn't have burned—definitely NOT under Natchan's watch—and they wouldn't need to go get help!"

"Something feels weird . . ." Kouta said. "I'm getting the willies in here.

It wasn't long before a couple of firemen came in investigating the source of the alarm.

The three explained that there were students baking but left them unattended, so they rushed in when they smelled smoke and prevented a fire, but the alarms went off.

Apologies and many bows later, the firemen left after confirming that everything was safe.

"What the hell is going on," Kouta asked. "Where are Natsuki-chan, Monika, and Sayori-chan?"

"Dunno," IJğîŋ© shrugged. "I left Sayori here and went up to work with you . . . I bet Monika has them distracted with something or another—maybe putting the posters up on the walls?"

"How come we didn't see them in the courtyard," Yuri asked. "Where'd they go?"

o o o

Sayori connected the Space Classroom to the closet door of the classroom next to the Literature Club's clubroom. She tentatively opened it getting used to the weirdness of sliding open the Space Classroom's door, and then swinging open the closet door of the classroom they'd connected to.

Stepping out into the room darkened by drawn curtains. The sun shown through them, but the shade seemed ominous and eerie.

"Is it safe?" Natsuki asked behind her.

"Seems so . . ." Sayori said.

The two walked over to the wall separating the classroom from the hallway, first, then along it to the door at the front of the classroom. Each classroom had a door at the front and one at the rear. The rear door's glass was frosted, but the doors at the front had clear glass. This meant that anyone looking in would see them if they weren't standing along the wall.

Sayori took the lead, and, reaching the door, she looked through the clear glass to the hallway. Seeing no one, there, she slid it open and walked over to the front door of the clubroom. Sayori poked her head up and looked through the clear glass. Inside, she saw no one.

Natsuki was creeping along the wall behind her.

"What do you see?" Natsuki asked Sayori.

"No one's in there," Sayori answered. "I see a half-finished banner hung up along the wall and some sort of light box in the middle of the room."

Just as they were about to stand, they heard Yuri say, "What are you two doing? We were looking all over for you!" The two girls froze and rigidly turned their heads towards Yuri, Kouta, and ÊêÝċŴ. "Why'd you let the cookies burn, Natchan!? The fire department came and everything!"

Natsuki's look of surprise quickly turned to one of utter loathing and hatred. She pointed at ðŹŧĮœ. "YOU!" She screamed. "Murderer!"

"What the heck?" Kouta balked. He looked at the boy he thought was Meiji and noticed that he'd backed up a step. He even had a slightly panicked expression.

"He killed Monnie!" Natsuki accused him.

"Natchan! What are you saying?!"

"We had to run from him after he killed Moni-chan," Sayori confirmed. One of the very few times in their friendship, Yuri noticed that Sayori looked deadly serious and angry. "He did it! He made her just . . . disappear! Like . . . evaporate!"

"Now you're just talking nonsense, you dummy!" Ñţ°ĭĜ waved off her assertion. "How am I supposed to have made Monika 'evaporate'?"

"We both watched you grab her by the neck, lift her up and then she just . . . like ashes in the wind . . . you murderer!" Natsuki yelled.

Yuri looked between her friends, her boyfriend, and Meiji. She desperately wanted to believe Sayori and Natsuki, but what they were saying made no sense "M-Meiji, what's—what is she saying?!"

"C-come on, guys," Kouta said, "It's like Meiji, said, right? I mean, you can't just make someone go 'poof', right? . . . right?"

"Am I supposed to just let that bitch convince you to hang yourself, Sayori!?" ĉ¬ņ±è growled. She can just rattle off a few key strokes and my Natsuki's neck just snaps in half?! Am I supposed to let her make your dad beat you . . . touch you?"

"Don't you fucking dare call me 'yours', you monster!" Natsuki barked. "And Monika saved me from my father. She did it in front of Meiji-kun, and Kouta-kun, Yuritchi, Sayori-chan, and the whole fucking baseball team! But you don't know that, do you ŝŔģ¥ě?"

"Y-yeah, M-Meiji!" Kouta said, "You were there! What gives? And are—are you saying you did do something?"

"Damn straight I sent that psycho bitch to Hell!" he snapped. "I got rid of her for Natsuki! I won't let her alter your personalities and let Yuri stab herself to death!"

"What the fuck!?" Kouta and Yuri both yelled in shock.

"Quit calling me Natsuki!" Natsuki commanded, "You don't have the right to say my name!"

"What the hell is going on?!" Kouta yelled.

"What do you mean 'stab myself to death', Watanabe?" Yuri hissed through clenched teeth. "Don't you even dare joke around about my cutting like that! Do you have any idea what I go through? How could you?"

"Can't you see I'm did this for you three?!" ßÐŒÓť said. "I had to get rid of her!"

Kouta threw a punch at Meiji's head, but with supernaturally fast reflexes, he parried the blow and grabbed Kouta's arm. He flipped Kouta over him and threw him like a baseball down the hall. Kouta landed with a grunt of pain. ¾ăŅ·ş grabbed his shoulder and groaned in pain of his own. "What the heck!?" he asked, surprised. "What the hell is wrong with my body?!"

Yuri screamed as Kouta went flying and ran down the hallway to his crumpled form. "Kouta!"

"That's not your body!" Sayori said, "That's Meiji's body, and he got a shoulder injury from pitching . . . a shoulder injury that Moni-chan explained was caused by the game!"

"Your damned game took everything from my Monnie and me!" Natsuki yelled. "It took our home, it took her violin, it took everything!"

"How . . . how do you know about the game?" đûĹĎĝ asked. "D-dummy . . . you're not supposed to know anything about the g-game until after . . . Oh Shit!" łć·øŏ cursed his lack of foresight. Getting rid of Monika meant that vice-president Sayori became literature-club president Sayori. "Why did you tell Natsuki about the game, you dummy!? N-no matter! You may be my dearest friend, Sayori, but if you stand in the way of me taking what's mine, then I have ways of stopping you!"

"What are you going to do, ùĭŦż´?" Sayori asked, "Spit some words at me from a list and make me love you? It's not gonna work on me, ĒïÿÇÏ! I love Meiji!"

"If that's what I have to do to disable you!" ŝŚžģŁ growled.

"Only for a short time!" Sayori spat. "And only false feelings. You've just taken over my Meiji's body!"

"Kouta-kun! Yuritchi! Go in that classroom and jump in the closet!" Natsuki said. "Please! Run! Trust us!"

Yuri tugged at Kouta, helping him stand. Groggily, he staggered into the classroom Sayori and Natsuki had come out of.

Natsuki and Sayori ran for the door, but Üì¡éŕ jumped between them and their escape route.

"Oh no you don't!" ÚŒŧś± said, blocking their way. "I'm not letting you get away again! Heartbeat! Milk! Puppy! Sugar! Waterfall! Skirt! Peace! Kitty!"

Natsuki doubled over, falling to her knees. "NO! Stop it!" she screamed, holding her hands over her ears. "It's so disgusting! It feels so filthy! Stop making something so beautiful feel so wrong! Stop it! I don't want to love you! I'll never love you!"

"You're horrible, you monster!" Sayori said.

"You'll love me, Natsuki, because you're mine!" đûĹĎĝ said. "Fluffy! Bouncy! Bubbles! Games! Lipstick! Pink! Socks! Whisper!"

"S-stop i-it . . ." Natsuki mewled pathetically, with hearts in her eyes. "I-I don't want t-this."

"I don't want to have to do this, łć·øŏ," Sayori said, "But I'll fight you if I have to!" Sayori advanced on him with her fists held up unsteadily. "P-please don't make me, fight you! Please just leave!"

"No! You're supposed to be my friend, Sayori! You're going to try to hang yourself and I'll stop you, and then Natsuki and I can be together! I'll save her from her dad and—ARHG!" He fell down to his hands and knees as Kouta stood behind him holding a chair.

Kouta was breathing heavily.

"I don't know what's going on with you, Meiji, or what you're doing to Natsuki-chan or Sayori-chan, but if they say you killed Monika, then I gotta believe them, now!"

"F-fuck you!" ùĭŦż´ barked back, "That guy doesn't exist! He's not real! I'm real!"

"You're just a construct of the game!" Sayori countered. She turned to Kouta and said, "Kouta-kun, please don't hurt him! That's Meiji's body! Once we get him out of Meiji's body . . . he's not gonna like that . . ."

"Sorry, Sayori-chan!" Kouta said. "But as long as this bastard's here, he needs to be put down!" POW! he whacked ĒïÿÇÏ and everyone watched as the chair glitched twisted when it connected with ŝŚžģŁ's head. It disappeared and blew Kouta back and on his ass.

The hit seemed to have been pretty effective, though, as Üì¡éŕ spun and landed on his belly. He got up and staggered down the hall, away from them, confused.

"Go! Now!" Natsuki said as they all ran back to the closet of the other classroom.

Sayori disconnected the Space Classroom from the closet and sat collapsed to the floor.

"Kouta-kun!" she said, rounding on the boy. "I told you not to hit him so hard!"

Kouta held up his hands defensively and said, "Sorry, Sayori-chan . . ."

"Argh . . . He did it to me, again!" Natsuki grumbled. "We've got to find some way to stop this!"

"Uuuu . . . W-what even is this place?" Yuri asked.

o o o

I was floating.

I waded ashore and stood before Natsuki. She regarded me with crossed arms and a dubious expression. "Hmph," she sniffed.

"Natchan . . . You're here!" I ran to her, excited, but when I wrapped my arms around her, I found nothing.

"Hmph," she sniffed behind me. "You're nothing but a disgusting boy."

"Natchan," I turned around. "No, I'm Monika! I'm your Monnie!"

I looked down and my old body strained against Monika's school uniform.

"Pervert! Horrible, disgusting man! I bet you're just like my dad! You both certainly drank enough!"

I fell to my knees. "No no no no no nononononono! NO!"

"So pathetic!" Natsuki spat. "I hate you. Give my Monnie back to me, you slime."

"Stop it! No! Please! Natchan! Please don't hate me!" I begged.

"How could I not hate you?" she asked. "Gross! Don't call me that! You don't have the right to call me that! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I HATE you!"

"NOOOOO!"

"I'll never love you!"

I was floating.

I looked up at the evening sky and tried to drown myself. I wanted to die. I dove down and breathed in the water, welcoming in the pain as it began suffocating me. It didn't hurt as bad as Natsuki's hatred. Consiousness waned as my body fought against my mind to stay belo—

I was floating.

I waded ashore and stood upon the fine sand.

I looked around me and saw nothing but the red glare of the evening sun.

o o o

"This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!" Kouta said, his face plastered against the windows looking out over Earth. "Where are we?! What is this place?"

Sayori laughed at the difference in reaction between Yuri and Kouta.

"This place is . . ." Sayori began, ". . . It's outside our reality. Moni-chan would be able to explain it better, but basically . . . our reality is reflected in a game—reflected, mind you, not perfectly represented, since there are differences—a game in someone else's reality . . . a reality that Moni-chan came from . . ."

"What!?" Yuri and Kouta asked, shocked. "Moni-chan/Monika came from a different dimension?"

"It's cute how in sync you two are . . ." Sayori comented. "But yes . . . and no. Moni-chan lived a life and died in a different reality from our own and then woke up in the body of the girl you know. In that reality, we existed as characters in a game, and when she realized who she was and where she was . . . she did her best to save us from the game's worst aspects . . . but . . ."

"But?" Yuri asked.

"But, well . . . the game had something else to say about that . . ."

"So, you're saying we're inside a game?" Kouta asked.

"No . . . we're in a reality where the characters that are reflected in that game exist . . ." Sayori tried to explain.

"In other words," Natsuki continued for her, "It's a coincidence that some other dimension, where we don't exist, has a game that features us and our story."

"And because of that," Sayori picked up again, "The game's controls can affect our world . . ."

"If I weren't standing here, looking at our planet through classroom windows, I'd say you were completely off your rocker, Sayori-chan!" Kouta said.

"Honestly, I haven't told you half of what I've learned," Sayori explained. "When Moni-chan disappeared—it's just as Natchan said: ÚÞÍîļ picked Moni-chan up by the throat and then she just . . . evaporated in a storm of glitches and static." She spared them the detail of her screaming her head off in torturous pain as it happened. She didn't really want to think about it herself. "However . . . I think I found something that gives us hope she's still alive . . . somewhere."

Natsuki and Sayori spent the next half-an-hour explaining what they could to Yuri and Kouta. They curated it as best they could, but some details were hard to leave out or edit.

"Tell me what that ĢÓ£ûī bastard meant about me stabbing myself to death!" Yuri said. "I almost hit him myself I was so incensed by what he said!"

Sayori looked glum, and Natsuki looked worse.

"What aren't you telling me?" Yuri asked.

"It was . . ." Sayori began.

"It was Monnie," Natsuki said what Sayori couldn't. She didn't want to believe it but she knew her girlfriend and 'Monika' were two different people. She had utter, unshakable faith in her love's kindness and good intention. Monnie would never do something like that, she thought. "Monnie's character in the game altered each of our personalities, elevating our worst traits, our weaknesses and insecurities. In your case, Yuritchi, she dialed it up to eleven, and yes, you ended up stabbing yourself to death in that game."

"And in the game, she made my depression finally cause me to kill myself . . ." Sayori acknowledged.

"I saw—well, heard—him start spouting some random words and Natsuki fell down," Kouta said. "What was that about?"

"In the game, the player tries to woo us with his poetry—that's how the player chooses which girl to pursue. There's a mini-game where the player is presented with a list of random words. They have to guess which words belong to which girl."

"You should let Kouta-kun try it on Yuritchi," Natsuki said. "She should know how it feels and she could describe it to us."

"I don't think that's such a good idea, Natchant," Sayori said, dubious.

"What's stopping you? You didn't have any trouble doing it to me?" Natsuki challenged.

"Well . . ." Sayori looked guilty, "That's true . . ."

"I'd like to give it a try!" Yuri said, breaking the 'tie'.

"Okay . . ." Sayori acquiesced. She entered some commands, like Monika had shown her and soon there was a piece of paper and a pencil in front of her. She wrote twenty words and handed the paper to Kouta. "Natsuki and I can confirm that this is a list of just twenty words, Yuritchi," she said to her friend.

Kouta looked at the list and nodded. "It is! It's just twenty random words!"

"Well, give it a try," Yuri said, straightening her back and taking a deep breath. She closed her eyes and centered herself. "I'm ready!"

"Uh . . . here goes," Kouta said. "[Portrait], [Intellectual], [Climax], [Unending], [Flee], [Disown], [Wrath], [Dream], [Fickle], [Universe], [Contamination], [Infinite], [Question], [Afterimage], [Pleasure], [Insight], [Captive], [Uncontrollable], [Frightening], [Disoriented]."

He watched as Yuri went from sighing and looking whistful to jamming her hand in between her legs and grabbing one of her breasts. She was moaning and looking at him with such love and lust and . . . were those . . . hearts in her eyes?! He could have sworn he saw hearts in her eyes.

After a few moments, she calmed down and seemed to 'wake up' from her love-stupor. "Wh-what was that!?" She asked. "That . . . that was amazing, Kouta! I didn't know you could produce such beautiful poetry. It was—it was like the angels themselves spoke through you and I felt the light of heaven upon my ears . . . it was . . ."

"It was twenty random words picked from a list of seventy-eight that you're—your character!—is programmed to find appealing," Natsuki explained. I got a list, you got a list, and Sayori-chan's got a list."

"So that's what he meant by 'disabling' you?" Kouta asked.

"That's exactly what he meant," Natsuki said. "It's pretty rapey, if you ask me—considering that he's used it several times on me and since he's not above murder, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't hesitate to use it to make me happy to ride him out of my mind."

"No, you can't just kill him, Kouta-kun!" Sayori said, watching the boy clentch his fists in rage. It was nice to know he was such a good guy willing to stand up for them, but she wanted ŕIJΡù out of Meiji, not Meiji dead. "That's still Meiji's body, and I'd very much like to save my boyfriend from that monster every bit as much as I want to protect Natchan, Yuritchi, and myself from ĿÉÐÅŘ!"

Kouta unclenched his fists and sighed. "Yeah . . . I guess I can see that . . . So . . . what do we do?"

"Sayori-chan . . ." Natsuki said, "Make me the president!"

"NO!" Sayori looked shocked. "It's horrible!"

"I have a good idea and the only way I can try it out is to use the console!" Natsuki said. "You need to leave it to the Manga-reader in our club to come up with the impossible because you two" she said, pointing to Yuri and Sayori, "are too grounded in reality. It's the same problem Monnie had! You've got the power of a god at your fingertips and you aren't using it!"

"Natchan!" Sayori countered, "ŮŎířų doesn't have a character file. What do you think we can do? And how do you plan on stopping him from just rattling off some more words that drive you to your knees again?"

"Make me the president! I'll understand Monnie better, and I have an idea!" Natsuki insisted. "It just takes some imagination!"

"Natchan, this isn't something we should play around with . . ." Sayori said.

"I'm not playing around," Natsuki said, seriously. "And if my idea doesn't work, then I'll give it back to you."

"I think you should give her a chance, Sayori-chan," Yuri said. "The worst she can do is fail, right?"

"The worst she can do is end up as ţĂů£¼'s sex slave, you two and I are trapped in this Space Classroom." Sayori countered.

"I won't let that happen!" Natsuki said.

"Sayori-chan, please give Natsuki-chan a chance," Kouta said.

"You promise you won't kill Meiji?" Sayori begged. "Please get ÅĔĄŐĀ out of Meiji . . ."

"I promise!" Natsuki said.

"Well, then . . . I guess, lay down because this isn't going to be pleasant . . ." Sayori said.

Natsuki laid down on the bed that Monika had summoned and held the pillow labeled Pillow-Fluffy-for-Natchan-My-No-1 to her chest. "Okay. I'm ready!" she said.

Sayori let out a breath and then entered the commands.

Set (open paren)(quote marks)Urabe Natsuki(quote marks) Natsuki-dot-chr (closed paren) to (quote marks)literature club president(quote marks)—enter.

Set successful

Natsuki's screaming and convulsing told them all it had started.

The watched in concern until she finally calmed down. Natsuki shuddered and unsteadily sat back up. She was clutching the pillow to herself.

"S-Sayori . . ." Natsuki managed to say, finally, "I'm never looking at the word 'gently' the same again . . ."

Sayori threw a pillow at Natsuki's face.

Natsuki got up off the bed and began rummaging through the console. She summoned a headband—simple in appearance and began experimenting with it. They watched as it began glitching, as if it were sending off sparks of improper reality that fizzled away.

Walking over to Yuri, she held it up, but Yuri backed off.

"Natchan, wh-what is that?" Yuri asked. "Is it safe?"

"I think I fixed the problem of the poem words," Natsuki explained. "It should be safe." She placed the head band on her friend's head. Nasuki turned to Kouta and said, "Try that 'poem' again, now."

Kouta held up the piece of paper and read off the words.

Yuri looked at him curiously. "Are you sure you're reading the right part? That's just a bunch of words, not a poem. What happened to the beautiful poem?"

"There was no beautiful poem, Yuritchi," Natsuki said. "It's just programming. And if it's just programming, it can be un-programmed."

"What did you do?" Sayori asked.

"You know how in Morcrisift Exceed, you can set cells to 'text' so that it doesn't turn your numbers into dates or do other un-wanted automatic stuff with the stuff in them?"

"Kinda . . ." Sayori said.

"Yeah, it's always so annoying with it thinks you're wondering where Mondays and Thrusdays and Wednesdays just suddenly appear and you realize it thought some word you put was a weekday!" Yuri concurred.

"Exactly like that," Natsuki said, nodding. "Basically, I literally had the headband tell the programming to turn the words into plain old text—so to speak—so when you hear the 'poem words' you're supposed to hear as a poem, you instead just hear the random words the rest of us hear.

"Where'd you get this idea, Natchan?" Sayori asked.

"Manga!" Natsuki answered confidently. "It's like some sort of headband of mind-protection I saw in some fantasy manga."

She summoned another one for Sayori, who hesitantly put the wreath of glitching sparks on her own head.

Finally she summoned one for herself, but this one, she made fancy. It looked like a golden, Amazonian crown.

"Why's yours so fancy?" Kouta asked.

"Heheheh!" Natsuki chuckled knowingly. With a little effort, she summoned the final volume of the Soldier Lunar series[99], and pointed to a character wearing a cool Greeco-roman stylized set of golden armor with a similar crown. "Universia is the coolest looking big-bad, ever!" Natsuki said. "Lo, I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the baddest motherfucker in the valley!"

"Natsuki!" Yuri chided, scandalized. "You know that Moni-chan doesn't like that sort of language!"

"Ehehe . . . Yeah . . . I know," Natsuki said, subdued, "But I this is how I'm getting her back!"

"Okay . . . so now you girls can resist ½ßËŠģ's 'poem words', as you call them," Kouta said, "But how do you plan to fight him? I mean, I'm pretty fast and he was moving on a whole 'nother level than I could. You saw how he tossed me down the hallway like a baseball!"

Natsuki summoned a sword with the console, but before she assigned it an object name, she thought about the parts. Trying her luck, she only assigned the hilt an object name.

Assign Code (open-paren)(quote-marks)Sword-Hilt(quote-marks) as (quote-marks)Glitch-Sword-1(quote-marks)(close-paren)—enter.

Assign Code successful

"Well, either I'm going to pick up a sword hilt and the image of a sword will remain on the table . . . or . . ." Natsuki said. She reached for the sword and grasped the now-solid hilt. She lifted it and the image of the sword went with it. Experimentally, she swung it through her arm, to the horror of Sayori and Yuri, who screamed.

"Natsuki!"

The sword blade passed harmlessly through her arm. She traced the solid parts of the sword. The hilt consisted of the handle, of course, but also the pommel and the crossguard. The sword was an exact replica of Universia's sword from the Soldier Lunar manga.

"You said you woudn't kill Meiji!" Sayori cried. "You lied!"

"That's why I made it safe for us," Natsuki said, passing the blade right through Sayori's torso. "See, it's perfectly safe—again, for us."

"What about for Meiji!?" Sayori asked.

"For Meiji, too!" Natsuki said. "But not for ĞęŴĩŁ, who's a construct of the game . . . just like this sword."

She ran through some menus and commands in the console and the sword's blade began glitching, just like their headbands.

ÚúĺÔã may not have a character file, but that doesn't mean he can't be yanked right out of Meiji's body with this!" Natsuki explained.

To demonstrate her reasoning, she summoned a flower pot, but didn't give it an object code.

"There, put your hands through it," she told them, and they all confirmed that, although they could see one there, they couldn't feel it and their hands passed right through it.

Natsuki took a swipe with her sword and watched it shatter the pot.

"I think assigning something an object code is like fully realizing it in our reality, whereas just loading the object sort of just makes it visible from the game . . . I don't know how to better explain it . . ."

"I think I might have an idea," Yuri said, "It's more like different object layers. When you load the object, it's on one object layer, which is visible to us, but not on our object layer . . . and the sword is also on that object layer. In theory, you could set us on that same object layer and we'd pass through walls like ghosts. . . not that I want to try it . . . uuuu."

"See!" Sayori chirped, "Yuritchi is the smartest one in the club!"

They all shared a much needed laugh as Yuri's face turned red as her self-consciousness got the better of her. She may have been much more confident than her game's counterpart, but Yuri was still Yuri.

Natsuki summoned the rest of the cool armor that Universia wore in the manga, and everyone was impressed that their shortest club member seemed like she stood tall, exuding confidence[101].

Natsuki opened one of the Space Classroom's doors and took a tentative step out. She nodded as she "walked" out in space as if she were standing on an invisible floor. She turned back to them and said, "It's just as I suspected. It's all just game visuals! I think we're literally in the game right now!"

She fiddled with settings in the console and then, giving her friends a wink, shot into the air. "Weeeeeee!" she screamed as she flew through space, sticking her fist out like Superman. "Dunt-duh-DUHN! Da-da-duh-da-dun-DUN!" Natsuki sang out the Superman theme as she flew past Sayori, Yuri, and Kouta.

"Uwah! She tumbled, doing cartwheels until she came a stop on her butt. Sitting up, she looked back and gave everyone a thumbs-up. "Nishishishi! That was so much fun!" Natsuki pumped her fists. "Alright. I'm ready. ŀëìżŮ won't know what hit 'im!"

Author's Notes:

[99] Obviously a re-naming of the Sailor Moon series.

[100] Wow! One-Hundred author's notes! Universia is a re-naming of Sailor Moon's final boss, Galaxia.

[101] You can see Natsuki in her Galaxia armor, wearing her Glitch Crown and holding her Glitch Sword at imgur: Z9VXsck (Over 9,000 hours in MS Paint).