It was a fairly ordinary day for Liliana Rivera. Following the morning routine she almost forgot to follow for the second day since the last time she slipped her schedule, some exercise, showering and breakfast time, which had been spent in complete, boring silence as she thought of nothing but going back to her room so she could turn on the computer and ate as impatiently as her desire to get away from it all wanted her to. Following that, she'd turn the computer and spend hours, if not the rest of the day browsing random things on the internet, coding, playing games and lurking into online conversations.

By noon, she had just signed up on yet another online service that she'd never use again, and was now opening up her online email service in order to verify the account she had just created.

As she searched through the unorganized, clogged mess that her promotion-filled inbox had become, she found a rather strange e-mail with a message that, while sounding like a relatively normal kind of e-mail that she'd get, was sent by someone apparently called "Game Master".

She opened up this email and read the following:

- "Congratulations, Akasaki! You have been chosen among 7.9 billion people to play The Game."

"If you agree to the terms and conditions of this game, just push the button below to accept your invitation."
"Our inter-dimensional communicators will register you as a player and set you up as soon as possible." -

Skeptical, yet interested on what she thought could be the start of an interesting ARG, Liliana decided to click on the button, joining into the game as a fun challenge of sorts.

She then got directed to a link that automatically accepted her as a player and that she'd be able to start after a few minutes.

She thought nothing about it…

...or at least until she saw a suitcase zooming through her window.

This case looked slightly futuristic, with a black color and stripes that looked like they were some sort of light, and it didn't seem like it had any sort of identifiers, but given how it fell into the ground so quickly and that it had come only 5 minutes after she had answered that mysterious email, Liliana couldn't do anything but think that it had something to do with "The Game", which led her to opening it.

As she opened the lid, making sure she wasn't too rough with it, she found what seemed to be an anthropomorphic dog with an orange beanie, sleeping; as well as a skateboard and a strange, stereo-looking thing that seemed like it had some sort of face in it. From what she could realize, the inside of the suitcase looked rather soft, which would mean that whoever was in it was probably sleeping pretty comfortably.

Liliana then tried to wake the dog up, but somehow couldn't. No matter how much she tried, from telling him to wake up as slowly as possible to playing the loudest music she could find, he just didn't wake up; which made her increasingly frustrated.

Just as she was about to give up, she found a power button on top of the suitcase, and decided to first put the dog inside it, then press the power button.

After pushing the power button, the strips of light in the suitcase turned on, first to a yellow color, probably indicating that it was in some sort of process, with the lights blinking on and off, and after about a minute of this, which Liliana presumed had to take that long due to it being the first time she had actually turned the power on, the lights turned green and the suitcase opened itself, with the dog finally waking up after a long sleep.

The dog slowly tried to open his eyes, trying to make sense of the blurry surroundings around him in order to focus on his current situation until he could finally actually see clearly, then yawned and stood upright, trying to walk out of the case he was in. He then proceeded to pace around, his footsteps being slightly awkward as he had presumably not moved for some time, until he looked around and saw Liliana's face.

Liliana was at that time actually surprised that he seemed to be alive, and, having many questions about him that she wanted to be answered, decided to break into conversation.

"Um, hi – what's your name?" She said, breaking off the silence that had prevailed for a some minutes already.

"Hello! My name's PaRappa Rappa, and you can just call me Parappa. I like to rap, talk to others, and have fun, and it's nice to meet you, too! Hey, what's your name?" The dog then proceeded to cheerfully introduce himself, hoping the other person around the room would answer him back.

Liliana was shocked at the fact that she heard him talking, and in full sentences with a tone that would convince how genuine he really acted like to anyone on a first glance, which only led to more questions from her part: "How are you? Are you a robot? Where did you come from?" - and such other questions and topics that popped up on her head like if she was a random idea generator.

Parappa, shocked at how curious the girl who was in front of him was, stood a few seconds in silence – then responded – "I-I'm not a robot at all! I'm a living, breathing anthropomorphic dog, and the reason why you even needed to power be on was because I was pretty much rendered unconscious before coming here; I'm here because you signed up to play The Game, and I'm doing just fine! Thanks for asking!"

The answers left her both satisfied and perplexed, as she wondered if he had only appeared in her house because she agreed to play The Game, but now that he had confirmed it, Liliana wanted to know what The Game, as surrounded in mystery as everything apparently looked to be, actually was. This gave her to courage to ask: "Hey, Parappa. If you are here because I signed up for The Game, then what's The Game about?"

"The Game… It's more of a tournament than anything. You signed up, I appeared in your bedroom; and now all you have to do is to make an oath with me. If you don't do it by the end of the day, I'll just go somewhere else to find someone who's willing to fight alongside me, He explained, trying to make it as short and simple as possible, but also not wanting to scare anyone.

"A tournament? Why would you join a tournament? What are the consequences? If I decide to not join you, does that mean you go away?" She asked yet again, thinking that he only left even more questions unanswered.

"This tournament, The Game, I have to win it if I want to go back. I want to win, and I know I can win if I believe enough. If I lose, then I'll just die, you'll forget about everything that happened with me some time after; and the one who defeated me becomes more powerful.
And yeah, if you don't make an oath with me, you'll no longer be a player of The Game, while I'll just go away and try to find someone else."

"But I believe that you're the one. I know you care about me. If you didn't, then why would you ask me so many questions?" The dog talked about his goals for the game and answered the question that she had just told him, hoping that she'd join his side.

"I-I care about you? Are you kidding me? I mean, I definitely am a curious person, but I never thought someone would tell me that, especially someone who I just met minutes ago."

"But the truth is… I don't think I'm ready to sign an oath with you just yet. Can you stay here until the end of the day? I'll probably have made up my mind by then." Liliana admitted that she just didn't know if she could trust Parappa enough to risk her own life for him, and wanted to spend some more time thinking about it, as well as knowing him better.

In his usual cheerful and carefree tone, Parappa didn't mind at all if she wanted to wait a bit and know more about him. He also wanted to know more about her, after all; so he asked her if she could tour around her room and then the rest of her house.

Liliana thought on whether this would go fine or not, but since her parents wouldn't go back home until at least a couple of hours from the time it was at that point, she decided to accept his request.

Following that, the two of them looked around their room, noticing interesting details and objects scattered around her room, such as what every section of the shelves was dedicated to, from CDs, DVDs and other technological gadgets, to books, to art and writing notebooks, among others.

Parappa was quick to wonder what kinds of things Liliana did in her computer, and when he saw some code written on a text editor, he asked her what it was and if he could learn how to program, to which she responded with a no, or at least not yet, as they had yet to explore the rest of the house.

Once they were done with Liliana's bedroom, they went downstairs in order to explore the rest of the house. They then walked around the living room, with Parappa reviewing how comfortable the sofas were with "a little, but definitely not something really special", then the kitchen, with the two of them opening the fridge and Liliana microwaving some strawberry yogurt, her favorite, for him, talking about more random topics of interest as well, and once that was done they went around the rest of the house, checking on every little corner if there was something they didn't notice before. Along the way, Liliana talked to him about how she was like, her parents and current life situations, all of which Parappa attentively listened to.

After all of that was done, Liliana, who was now sitting just in front of her bed, right in her own room, asked Parappa, who was right next to her, a question.

"Parappa, did you like touring the house with me?"

She patiently tried to wait for an answer, but as she started wondering if he really liked it, he said yes. This led her to hype up for a bit, and suddenly hug him, which, despite his usually easy-going attitude shocked Parappa as she seemed calm and composed before then. And he began to wonder if she was the one who would join him, or perhaps not, which made him ask the question:

"Liliana… do you want to join me?"

This led to about a minute or two of silence, as Liliana tried to process what Parappa said in the best way she could and articulate a response that she could make sense of. Once she knew what to say, she then decided to spit it out:

"Parappa… we met each other just today, right? Well…"

"When I first signed up for the game, I expected it to not be anything particularly special. Perhaps like an ARG, which always interested me, but I never actually participated in one,"

"When the strange case I found containing you came, however, I was shocked at how unexpectedly that happened. I tried to open it, and I found you, because of course it had to have something in it for that case to be here of all places. I tried to wake you up, but didn't know how until I realized why there was a power button on the case, and I'm sure you know the rest,"

"During the time you asked me about what I thought was 'forming a contract', I said no because I didn't know what the Game entailed, or what would I do However, I was interested on who you were like, so I decided to let you tour the house and talk to me so I could learn more about you and you could learn about me,"

"And now… my parents are due to come soon, and I don't know if they'll take you seriously, so if I really wanted to do the contract, its now or never - but at the same time, I don't know whether it is the right time to just settle on how I'll play the game or not…"

After such a long-winded confession, Parappa, believing that she'd most probably be preparing to tell him that she'd accept started getting impatient, but Liliana told him to calm down or else she wouldn't say anything about it at all.

But as the dreary silence started to feel like it would never end, however, Liliana finally spoke.

"You know what, Parappa? I want to join you. I want to make an oath to you, that oath being that I'll join you and we will become companions. That we'll never betray or leave the other behind. That we will fight together,"

"It might be me trying to find a meaning on why I should take charge and make such a drastic decision in my life instead of keeping my life as it is, but I feel like an opportunity like this shouldn't go to waste – because this is what The Game means to me now."

"There are two options now, Parappa. We either become companions, or we say goodbye and travel our own independent journeys through life, with this day becoming nothing more than the moment we crossed paths once. It's your choice."

It was a life-changing choice, but for Parappa, it was also an easy choice.

He had been thinking about whether she'd make an oath with him or not from the start as he didn't want to force himself towards the disappointment of being told 'no', and given her behavior towards him, he was sure she'd have ended up accepting him.

The time had come, and Parappa was ready.

"Yes, I'll make an oath with you!"

He then stood up, walked a bit in order to be able to look directly at her and reached his left arm and hand towards her. Liliana stood still for a bit, not knowing exactly what to do, but quickly returned to clarity and reached her right hand towards him, creating what seemed to be a handshake together.

Once that happened, their bodies started to glow, and Liliana started noticing strange feelings and sensations, which she tried to ignore as much as she could on fear of making the ritual fail.

As the oath was sealed, both Liliana and Parappa regained their full consciousness, and, wondering if it was done now, Liliana tried to look at herself, finding out that her left ring finger had now, well, a ring, with a thin white light at the center that wasn't very faint, but not too bright either. She wondered what it was, and quickly discovered that it was the oath ring through Parappa's own words.

Liliana wanted to keep asking more questions, but as she realized that her parents were going to come home, the two of them were instead forced to find a way to hide Parappa from them, as she didn't want her mother and father to know that there was a sentient, living anthropomorphic dog in the house.

At first, they struggled, but as she tried her best to think about an appropiate 'hiding spot' in the house, she remembered about the case he first came in, putting him in and hiding the case under the bed, telling him to stay there until her parents are no longer likely to go to her room; which he accepted.

Once Liliana's parents came home, they asked her about what happened while they were outside, to which she answered with "nothing", following the promise she did with Parappa, at least for now, and after a few more minutes of waiting, she finally let him out of the case, as long as he wasn't too loud.

It had been the first day of many future to come, and since Liliana's day wasn't really busy at all, they spent the time both chatting and doing nothing in particular, as well as asking and answering questions about all kinds of things, from the contract to extremely suddenly random things and everything in between.

But the game was about to start, and they knew that at any moment, they'd be forced to fight.

A/N: I wrote this one-shot as part standalone, part a pilot of-sorts for a future crossover fanfic whose ideas for it are in the works right now. I'd be very happy if you give it kudos and comment.
Thanks for reading!