Disclaimer: I don't own any Azumanga Daioh characters.
Note: Since the point of this story is not realism, the deaths don't matter. The story is written as though to depict one slice of what is a never-ending chain of events.
Note2: I got motivated to continue this when I discovered that there is an actual AzuDai fighting game. Now my mission is to get my hands on it...somehow.
Azumanga Game Series Part One: Versus Mode
Match 1.3
Kamineko yawned as he entered through the door of the announcer's box. He slipped his jacket off and tossed it onto the coat rack before making his way to his desk on the far end of the room.
Matsuyama was already there at his own desk with his laptop booted and ready. Hearing the approaching footsteps, he turned in his seat and smiled at the grey cat.
"Hey," he greeted with a genuine enthusiasm not found with the majority of people who worked the tournaments. He took up a stack of freshly copied papers from his desk and offered them to the feline.
"Evening," Kamineko replied, taking the papers from the boy as he walked by. He hopped up onto his own seat and made himself comfortable, sinking back against the cushion as he flipped through the sheets. Included in the stack were typed versions of his notes from the previous day, the lineup of remaining contenders, a list of sponsors, and relevant news articles. He sighed and looked out at the stadium.
Day had turned to night. The sky was black and hardly any stars could be seen beyond the massive, blaring white lights that were stationed at the stadium's four corners. The stadium itself was slowly reaching maximum capacity as people filed into their designated seats. Vendors patrolled their sections as always, and the usual maintenance team, wearing green utility shirts with "govt" written across the backs of them, was busy sweeping off the arena.
Kamineko turned his computer on. As he waited for the system to boot, he leaned his elbows on the desk and folded his paws in front of his muzzle.
In his experience, night games were twice as rowdy as their daytime counterparts. There was no specific difference that he could pin point as the cause of this, but there was a definite divergence of energy. Perhaps it was the surreal effect of surrounding darkness bringing focus to the arena on which fighters laid out their humanity and their lives for the sake of public entertainment, or it could simply be that a lot of people showed up to night games drunk.
He picked up his earphones and fitted them carefully onto his head, giving a small adjustment to the connected microphone. He checked his watch and then leaned over to bring the control panel of the digital link to the 'on' and 'receiving' position.
Exactly at eight o'clock, the lights at the corners of the stadium shut off. Two spotlights at the East and West ends turned on and began sweeping over the audience in figure eight patterns. The colossal TV at the North side showed its display of a blinking '23' amid a background of fireworks, all set to appropriately hard, metal music.
The audience responded instantly to these changes, riling up into all sorts of random outbursts. One fight had already broken out in one of the upper sections of the East end and was soon split apart by tournament security.
"Allll right," Kamineko announced into his mic, "The time is now and that time is this! The possibly twenty-third Versus Mode Death Match sponsored by," he paused and double checked his notes, "Bean Paste Sweet Buns. If you're a sugar-loving lactose intolerant who likes to avoid the misery and woe of an upset stomach, Bean Paste Sweet Buns is the sweet snack for you. I'm Kamineko, your host for the events, and if you missed the first part of the tournament you can catch yourself up at our website. Right now I'm looking over the tournament outline and it looks like there are three matches planned for this evening, possibly four depending on time constraints. As regular viewers know, some matches can last less than a minute, and others can drag on for hours depending on fighters' will to live."
The two inner platforms in the arena had descended to retrieve their randomly selected players. As he waited for the platforms to return, he shifted his notes to bring up some relevant information to report in the meantime.
"And in reference of our website, we had a lot of responses to the recent poll that we had up there. The question was 'Kagura: What kind of underwear?' and I'm actually kind of surprised at the results. Sixty-four percent said thong, twenty-two percent said boxers, eleven percent said jock strap, and the remaining three percent said granny-panties. I can understand the thong and the jock strap, and maybe if I'm in the mood for it then I can imagine the boxers, but if you're one of those people who voted that Kagura wears grannies, go ahead and send us an email telling us why. Likewise, if you think that she wears thongs or boxers, write us anyway. We love to hear your thoughts."
Out in the stadium, the steady stream of music that had been blasting in through the speakers gradually faded to silence and was replaced with a different beat.
The new music was not random, and its familiar, pulsating bass was so distinct out of all other compositions used in the tournaments that spectator tension rose tenfold in reaction to it. Similar to Sakaki's fan gatherings, the music was cause for another classification of Death Match devotees to rise from their seats and lose themselves with enthusiasm.
On the arena, the head of the maintenance team quickly swung his broom onto his shoulder and waved his arm to the other three workers.
"Hurry up!" he shouted, turning on his heel and making a mad dash for the separate platform that had lifted them.
Two of the other members had needed no further warning. They struggled to grab up their iron sponges, scrapers, buckets, brooms, and other items and remove themselves from the arena as fast as possible.
The fourth and newest member to the team followed the lead of the others by getting his own stuff together, though with a bit less haste.
"What's wrong? We still have two minutes!" he yelled.
The first of the two other men, the one struggling with two full buckets of water, shot a look over his shoulder.
"Just get off the arena! Now!" he shouted and ran faster towards the exit.
The fourth man scoffed, but nonetheless picked up his pace and followed the others off of the school roof. As soon as he had safely joined them on the exit platform, he dropped his broom and his bucket. Resting his hands to the small of his back, he gradually regained his breath.
"What's all that about," he asked his boss who was presently fanning himself with his uniform cap.
"The reason that you're working here in the first place," the man replied grimly. The other two men nodded, one nervously rubbing at the back of his neck.
Kamineko too had heard the auditory adjustment. His ears had perked for but a brief moment before flattening back. He expelled a sigh and rested his chin to his palm.
"Well, Match 1:3 is about to get underway. Competitor number one hasn't even made it to the arena yet, but her reputation precedes her. Love her or hate her, no one thinks nothing about her. Her erratic behavior and short temper make her one of the more feared players in the tournament, and she's the only competitor so far to have implemented a theme song. I don't know how she does it or why she did it, but her fans love her for it and the ratings are proof of it. She's a bitchin' ball of energy with a quick tongue and surly step, a raging pandemonium of emotion, the girl who won't talk behind your back because she'll say it to your face, Tomo 'The Wildcat' Takino!"
From the South side of the stadium, a third spotlight flashed directly over the platform that was just bringing its player into view.
Unlike the previous competitors, Tomo did not emerge to the arena like a standing doll. Dressed in a pair of tight denim shorts, a green button-up top, and a baseball cap, her feet were shoulder width apart and her arms were crossed in an X over her chest. Her head was bowed and her eyes were closed, but that changed in the very instant that the platform came to a halt. At that moment, her eyes shot open and she threw her head back with an ecstatic yell. Releasing her arms from their set position, she broke from the platform and ran out across the arena.
Kamineko watched the display with slightly less enthusiasm. He turned to his laptop and brought up Tomo's graphic profile which in turn displayed on the TV outside.
"In addition to being a melodramatic show off, Tomo is a statistical impossibility. I've never heard of another fighter who could lose so many matches and still remain so popular among fans. She doesn't carry the mystery that Miss Sakaki does, and she certainly doesn't have the charm of Chiyo Mihama, but Tomo is a girl who really caters to her followers. It's obvious that she loves the attention, and her fans love her right back for the same reasons that others truly dislike her."
Keeping Tomo's profile up on his laptop, he returned his attention to his hardcopy notes, flipping back the first few pages to a series of cut-and-pasted articles. "Like all of our fighters, the Wildcat is not without her share of rumors and scandal. I don't know if anyone else remembers the story run a few months back that claimed Tomo to be in an intimate relationship with another fighter, Koyomi Mizuhara. The claim was adamantly denied by both sides and seems to have created a definite friction between the two girls ever since. The last report covering the story published in 'The Present Times' several weeks ago said simply that the girls are no longer on speaking terms."
Tomo screamed like an acid-dropper on a bad day as she dashed to the very South end of the school roof and then circled back. With her very own specialized song filling the heads and controlling the attention of ninety thousand people, she fed them her energy and in turn fed from theirs in a sensational exchange that could only be comprehended between longing individuals and the object of their desires, the one thing that they could never touch and therefore never tire of.
In each section, first-row fans of the girl leaned over the railing that separated them from a fall to their deaths. They stretched their arms out with impossible hopes of bringing their finger tips within a few meager yards of the Wildcat's body as she passed by. All around the stadium there rose more hand crafted banners ranging in text from "Tomo Makes Me Randy" to "Wildcat Heat" to "Die Tomo Die" and still others conveying similar messages of love and hate, always with the idea of Tomo at the center of them.
Tomo returned to the arena's southern most edge and stopped. There she ripped off her baseball hat and hurled it out towards the audience where it landed just within the first few rows. A woman caught the hat and was instantly attacked by the people sitting around her. Like starving dogs to a scrap of meat, they wrestled for the cap until finally a man grabbed it and ran as fast as he could for the exit. Several people chased after him just as security made their way to the area to restore order.
Still dancing to the beat of her own drum, Tomo laughed at the peoples' struggles with a satisfied grin as though she were completely separated from their turmoil. She lifted her hands to the top button of her shirt, and as soon as her fingers touched the plastic disc, from every direction the stadium flickered with camera flashes.
One after another she parted the buttons until her shirt was left open. Then with a sensual rolling of her right shoulder followed by a similar motion of the left, she let the piece drop behind her to reveal the light blue bikini top she wore underneath.
Kamineko pinched the bridge of his nose as he listened to the sound of audience approval at the Wildcat's show.
"Tomo has a way of creating new standards here in the Death Match tournaments," he said, "but they're not the kind of standards that anyone else, for the sake of their name and dignity, would bother to try and reach. To say that she is an attention whore would be an understatement. She's a mean girl with a disregard for limitations and a peculiar ability of detachment. Her entrance of last year's tournament is proof."
Changing into replay mode, the screen of the giant TV divided its image in half. Tomo's profile remained on one side while the other conveyed a clip from the last season.
The shot was of Tomo ascending to the arena, dressed in a Summer blue uniform. When the platform stopped, she jumped from it and suddenly sprinted off to the side. The camera angle switched to catch the crouched figure of a maintenance worker who was using an ice pick to scrape off a streak of dried meat from the ground. Suddenly Tomo, snarling and snapping like an animal, pounced upon him and knocked him forward. The man screamed and dropped his tool as he tried to stand and wrestle the girl away, but Tomo snatched up the discarded pick and wasted no time in stabbing it through the back of his neck. As the man fell, she wrenched the pick to the side in a motion that caused an audible crunching of spine. Then, screaming her victory, she thrust two fists into the air and jumped away from the body. In the background, Kaorin appeared from off screen with a broom gripped in both hands.
Kamineko cut the replay and looked to the Wildcat as she was presently.
Tomo had kicked her discarded shirt off the edge of the arena and folded her arms behind her head. While the cameras continued to flash, she turned herself left and right to offer the photographers any angle that they wished. She leaned forward and placed her hands to her knees, picking a point in the audience to smile towards. She then turned and tucked her hands into her back pockets.
Every person in the stadium with a camera was given ample opportunity to catch her in these poses, later to be edited and airbrushed to fit their every desire. As it usually happened, the photos would end up in magazines, personal collections, editorials, websites, and almost everywhere else that allowed room for a propagandistic element.
So intent had Tomo been on indulging the audience with her presence that she failed to notice when the second platform ascended to the battle field.
Kamineko glanced at the platform and did a double take when he recognized the new fighter. His disapproving expression disappeared and he took up his binoculars to get a better look.
"And we have our second fighter!" he exclaimed, "Tomo may have earned her label as the tournament's Wildcat, but she'll never be able to live up to the true meaning of the term. Our next fighter is all that and a quarter more. He's a fuzzy little wad of feline aggression who would just as soon curl into your lap as he would take a slice at your throat. He's great with the ladies and gentlemen alike, a manifestation of dangerously delightful kitty-cat-cuteness combined with a raw instinct towards predation of anything that moves: It's Maya the Iriomote wildcat!"
Maya stepped casually from his platform and looked ahead at his opponent. Had Tomo been any of the other tournament competitors, he would not have even twitched a whisker. Yet to the sight of the bouncing girl, he bristled visibly.
Only when her song ended did Tomo turn from the audience and place her hands to her hips. Looking across the arena, she spotted her competition and her triumphant smirk fell. At once she snarled and turned towards the referee penguin, one hand clenched and the other pointing angrily at the cat.
"What the Hell kinda crap is this!" she shouted, "This isn't play time! Get serious!"
The penguin only shrugged and shook her head in apology. The fights were indeed chosen at random and there was nothing she could do to control which fighter fought with whom.
Tomo glared back at Maya. Just the sight of him was enough to make the scar at the back of her right hand throb slightly.
"Stupid cat," she muttered.
Kamineko chuckled and leaned forward with new found interest in the match.
"It's one wildcat versus another in this first-time face off. For a long time there have been rumors surrounding a supposed confrontation between Maya and Tomo that happened somewhere outside of the arena. Unfortunately there were no eye witnesses to the events, but Chiyo Mihama hinted in an interview that the tension between them did not come from nowhere."
Tomo sighed as the bell for the Blitz round sounded. She knew that the fans came to the tournaments for a show, and giving them a show was the main reasons that she loved to fight. Even though there was not much entertainment in kicking a cat around, there was no task that she could not make interesting in her own way.
She ran to the penguin and snatched the microphone from her chest. The penguin made a small attempt to take the item back, but she was not about to invoke Tomo's bad side.
Tomo examined the microphone for the 'on' switch as she returned to the South end of the arena. Flipping the switch, she then blew onto the piece to test it. The sound reverberated through the stadium and resulted in cheers from the audience.
"So," she said, pausing when more screams arose.
Maya had seen more than enough. Ears flattened back, he shot off towards his opponent who had been stupid to keep her back turned to him. The closer he came to her, the louder the audience grew.
Tomo mistook the crowd's new enthusiasm for more fanfare directed at the brashness of her actions with the microphone.
"There's more than one way to skin a cat," she continued, "You guys wanna see the first one?"
She turned, but was suddenly hit full in the face with an angry little ball of fur. Screaming, she dropped the microphone and thrashed wildly. Try as she might to grab at her aggressor, she could hardly manage to grip him without being rewarded with a bite.
Maya sank his back claws into Tomo's head and swiped with his forepaws. He managed one lucky slice to the girl's face that resulted in a gash across her left eye.
Kamineko looked dull as he watched Tomo scramble around the arena with Maya clawing around her head.
"Well," he sighed, "This could be a lot worse I suppose. Tomo is many times bigger than Maya, but it looks like her stupidity is show enough for anyone."
Tomo screamed louder and finally grabbed the cat by the neck. She slammed him full force against the ground, but not in time to avoid a bite between her thumb and index finger. Falling back, she pressed both hands to her face.
Kamineko winced. "Once again Maya proves that there's no greater advantage than the element of surprise. I admit enough to say that Tomo can be formidable competition when she puts her mind to it, but she's lacking in common sense. This time it looks like it cost her some eye sight."
Maya got to his feet and hissed. His impact with the ground had probably fractured few of his ribs, but it hadn't been near enough to incapacitate him. Ignoring the throb in his side, he lunged at the girl again with the intention of taking out her other eye.
Tomo rolled away and scrambled to her feet. For a moment she ran to keep herself a distance from the cat as she checked her hands. A mixture of blood and vitreous fluid had smeared against them, the same combination that ran down her left cheek. Both of her eyes remained intact, but the left one now bore a deep gash.
Maya followed the girl and pounced on her back. As she whirled about to catch him, he held on and managed to sink his teeth into her shoulder.
Tomo yelled at the punctures before she was finally able to grab a hold of Maya's tail. Using this new advantage, she tore the animal away and spun in a circle to gain momentum. At the right moment, she let go and set him flying over the arena's edge.
All of Tomo's various fan clubs wildly cheered the victory while the rest of the audience simply clapped. The death had not been very glamorous and they therefore had nothing to gain from the experience.
The clock buzzed and the penguin stepped forward to announce the victor along with two paramedics who arrived from their own platforms.
Tomo sank to the ground and held her hands to her face. Rocking herself gently, she screamed with her mouth shut tight.
Kamineko raised an eyebrow. "All I can say is 'ouch' and 'ouch'. This one didn't make it past the Blitz round, but I'm sure that things will get interesting enough for our surviving Wildcat later in the tournament. That injury is going to complicate her chances at victory, but knowing Tomo she'll probably find a way to surprise us all one more time. For now we're gonna take a break but don't go anywhere. We have a lot more blood to spill here on Versus Mode: Death Match."
He cut the link and slipped his headset off.
Matsuyama approached the window stood beside the cat with his hands in his pockets. Together they watched as Tomo, keeping her face hidden in her hands, was escorted from the arena by the paramedics.
"That's never happened before," said the boy. "You think she'll be alright?"
Kamineko shrugged. "What's it matter? You got a soft spot for the players now?"
Matsuyama made no reply. He returned to his seat and brought up Tomo's profile to edit. Another match, another statistic, another point already fading with time for everyone but the girl who had created it and suffered its consequences.
Note: This chapter could have been longer, but I'm not one for depictions of animal cruelty, even if it is just a jest.
