[Chapter 5: Claus's The Fox]
After the events that happened during the week, I jotted down a few more stand users in my book. I jotted down Morgan's name and then across from it I wrote retired. I also wrote down that Dylan was now an ally. The whole week had been stressful, but I was relieved to make it home on Friday. I played this game called Super Smash Bros, and every month, I went to a tournament with my friends. Angel, Tyler, and my friend Michael. Michael didn't go to Hahnville however. He went to a private school. We were never able to talk with him much, but every month, we'd all have a sleepover and then the next day his dad would drive us to a tournament. The tournaments were held at this little computer cafe called Dibbz. It wasn't very spacey, but it was comfortable and we liked everyone there. We had a lot of friends there, including some that were stand users. The week was tough, but the drive to spend Friday night and Saturday afternoon with my friends was what drove me through the week. When I got home from school, I headed to the Dollar Tree by my house and picked up a huge jug of sweet tea like I always did. I also picked up a Dr. Pepper for Tyler, another jug of tea for Angel, and a bottle of lemonade for Michael. "They're all paying me back...I'm not buying these for them without getting paid back..." I backed them into my bag and headed to Tyler's. I realized at the last second we were gonna have another friend over, so I grabbed him a giant bottle of punch and just figured I could at least pay for him.
I was lucky because I could walk to Tyler's house from both my dad's and my mom's houses. They've been divorced since I was in fifth grade, but in a way, it was convenient. My dad's house was closer to the dollar store, but my mom's was closer to Tyler's in general. In any case, it never took me long to get to Tyler's house. On the way to Tyler's, I actually ended up falling and scraping my arm pretty bad. It was in bad shape all the way to Tyler's house. I could tell the people driving down the street were worried because a lot of the cars slowed down as they drove past me. I couldn't blame them really. I was bleeding pretty bad. But, it wasn't anything to worry about.
After about 30 minutes, I made it to Tyler's. I knocked on the door and he let me in. I walked into his room to see everyone already there with their controllers plugged in and their eyes glued to the screen.
"What's up, guys? Sorry it took me so long." I set all my stuff down as the current match between Michael and Angel ended. "Yeah dude you've been gone for a- WOAH what happened to your arm?" Michael asked.
"I tripped." I simply shrugged. "You could fix it up, huh?" Michael nodded. "Nothing that Panic Stations can't handle." Michael's stand was called Panic Stations. Its forte was healing. It packed quite a punch for a healing stand as well. It quickly patched up my scraped arm. "There ya go." I checked out my arm. "Thanks man. Oh yeah, I bought drinks." I passed out all the drinks I had in my bag. "By the way all of you except James owe me." "Ha ha! Awesome!" James was sitting in the corner on his DS. He was probably the most friendly of all of us. He always did know how to make us have fun. His stands name was Ozzmosis. Very powerful stand with emotion manipulation. It wasn't very fast though, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Michael sighed. "Here, I'll just pay for everyone." Michael handed me three dollars and I pocketed it. I plugged my controller in and sat on Tyler's bed. Tyler had a large room, but his bed was the only thing to really sit on. The upside was that his bed happened to be pretty big. All of us could sit on it, but most of the time Tyler and James sat on the floor and just talked with each other while Angel, Michael and I talked about the first subject we could think of. And like any good conversation, they always snowballed. The nights at Tyler's were always really calm. Well, besides the occasional arguments. All we really did was play Smash and have a good time. Out of all of us, I just so happened to be the best. Behind me was Michael, then Angel, and then Tyler and James were pretty tied with each other. Our levels of skill just ranged from which one of us practiced the most, and I basically lived on this game. Anyway, the rest of our night was really calm, but the real talk usually came around super late at night. Mostly, it was rants. I would sometimes just rant about the girl I obviously had a crush on. Being a freshman, all I really did was get paranoid about it until I stopped caring for long enough. Eventually, we all headed to bed so we could be well rested for the next day.
Saturday morning we continued to stay on schedule. We got up, showered, and waited for Michael's dad to pick us up at around 11:30. "You guys have any goals for today?" I asked. Angel shrugged. "I don't really care. Just wanna go." "I can feel it...one of these days I'm going to win." I shook my head. "You say that every time, James. You should probably try warming up more at the tournament. It would at least increase your chances." James nodded in agreement. "My goal remains the same: I wanna get into at least top 8." For a freshman, I was surprisingly good at this game. I happened to be in the top 50 of my states players. I never expected much less than top 8 whenever I went. But usually...I didn't live up to it. Michael followed me up. "Same as Angel. I kinda just wanna hang out. As long as I don't get dead last." "That always does feel the worst." I added. Tyler never talked much during our hangouts, so he snaked his way around answering the question like he usually did. Tyler just liked to go to the tournaments. They were always fun anyway. Michael's dad had finally picked us up and we headed to the tournament. We got there super early every time so we had plenty of time to warm up. Pretty vital ritual for all of us. "Wow no ones here." Michael said.
"Of course fucking not." Angel replied. "We're super early like we always are." Michael held his hands up. "Don't get too defensive, I was just saying." "Yeah but it was obvious. Come on." Angel said. They both just kinda shrugged it off and Michael set up his console so we could start playing each other until other people arrived. It took a good 30 minutes or so, but some people we knew finally walked in. It was our good friend Chomp. Well, that wasn't his actual name, we just called everyone here by their tournament aliases. Chomp also happened to be a stand user.
"What's up guys?" Chomp walked up to us and fist bumped all of us.
"What's going on, dude? Glad you could make it." Chomp nodded.
"I am too. Not fun practicing at home by yourself." I nodded I agreement.
"Hey, Michael, Angel. You guys let me and Chomp get the next game." "Sure thing." Michael agreed. After their match, they quietly got up and Chomp and I sat down in their place.
"You ready for today?" I asked Chomp. He nodded happily.
"Been waiting all week." I nodded in agreement.
"Pretty much everyone has I'm sure." We both laughed and started playing.
We did quite a few matches but we didn't really notice a lot of people walk in. By the time we were warmed up, a good bit of the venue had filled up.
"Jeez, we've been playing for awhile, huh?" I said as I started to wrap my controller's wire up. Chomp nodded. "We sure have. Well, let's break." I nodded and headed off to find my crew. I noticed another one of my friends had made it. An older guy we called BrawlerG. His real name was Gabe, but as I said before, this was a place of our own custom names. He happened to be a stand user as well. His seemed to be based off of a boxer, and it was called Survivor. I walked up to him to greet him. "What's up, Gabe?"
"Hey Gavin." He replied, smiling like he always did. "What's new?" I asked. He just shrugged. "Nothing much for me, but have you seen that kid Claus play over there?" He pointed to a small group of people gathered around a setup. I shook my head. "Is he new?" BrawlerG nodded. "Kids like 11 and he puts in major work. Check it out." We approached the setup and to my surprise, this kid was just as good as BrawlerG explained to me. Michael was fighting him and the kid put in an unreal amount of work. Michael got up and shrugged, shook the kids hand and grabbed his controller. As Claus looked up, our eyes locked, and I felt a strange aura emit from him. We both just returned to our business. For awhile everything was pretty calm. The tournament finally started and Michael had begun his ritual of complaining about his opponents. At the end of the day, we all did. The tournament kept going by pretty smoothly, all until I finally got into losers bracket where I had to fight none other than Claus. We sat next to each other and prepared for our match. There was silence. We both wanted to win. That was the fact of the matter. We quickly started our set without hesitation. After awhile, I had finally realized why Claus was so good. He had a stand. His stand appeared to be able to let him make precise movements with everything he did. No one was able to notice it until I glanced down mid match to see his stand's hand poking out of one of his sleeves. It threw the entire rest of the game off for me, and I ended up losing round one. I sat back in my chair and looked to the ceiling. "So what's its name?" I asked. Claus looked at me questionably. I glared at him. "Your stand I mean." His eyes widened and he turned red.
"I uh...don't know what you're talking about..." I shrugged.
"Whatever you say buddy." The rest of our set went smoothly until the last game. It was 1 win each and the next win took the set. Claus was using his stand like he had been doing the whole set. I decided it was time for payback. I summoned Puddle of Mudd and snuck a small drop of water into the jump button of his controller. He didn't know what happened until I knocked him off of the stage as his character fell into the abyss below. I ended up winning. Claus glared at me but shook my hand anyway, then he walked off. I sighed and got up. My friends were watching the set the whole time. They knew that I did what I had to.
Inevitably, I was knocked out of the tournament, but that didn't stop my buddies and I from having a great time. After awhile, I noticed Claus was by himself in a corner. Of course, I couldn't let him sit there alone. I approached him and he looked up at me.
"You know..." I started. "You never told me your stand's name." He formed a smile on his face. "I call it The Fox...I got it from a coach when my school's softball team went against another... my sister was on the team and I was there for the game...the opposing coach bumped into me and ever since then...I've just had it." I nodded. "Hey Claus." He tilted his head curiously. "Next time we do a match, let's do it with no stands. Deal?" He nodded and smiled as we shook hands. "Deal."
After that, Michael's dad had finally made it to Dibbz. It was time to head home.
After the events that happened during the week, I jotted down a few more stand users in my book. I jotted down Morgan's name and then across from it I wrote retired. I also wrote down that Dylan was now an ally. The whole week had been stressful, but I was relieved to make it home on Friday. I played this game called Super Smash Bros, and every month, I went to a tournament with my friends. Angel, Tyler, and my friend Michael. Michael didn't go to Hahnville however. He went to a private school. We were never able to talk with him much, but every month, we'd all have a sleepover and then the next day his dad would drive us to a tournament. The tournaments were held at this little computer cafe called Dibbz. It wasn't very spacey, but it was comfortable and we liked everyone there. We had a lot of friends there, including some that were stand users. The week was tough, but the drive to spend Friday night and Saturday afternoon with my friends was what drove me through the week. When I got home from school, I headed to the Dollar Tree by my house and picked up a huge jug of sweet tea like I always did. I also picked up a Dr. Pepper for Tyler, another jug of tea for Angel, and a bottle of lemonade for Michael. "They're all paying me back...I'm not buying these for them without getting paid back..." I backed them into my bag and headed to Tyler's. I realized at the last second we were gonna have another friend over, so I grabbed him a giant bottle of punch and just figured I could at least pay for him.
I was lucky because I could walk to Tyler's house from both my dad's and my mom's houses. They've been divorced since I was in fifth grade, but in a way, it was convenient. My dad's house was closer to the dollar store, but my mom's was closer to Tyler's in general. In any case, it never took me long to get to Tyler's house. On the way to Tyler's, I actually ended up falling and scraping my arm pretty bad. It was in bad shape all the way to Tyler's house. I could tell the people driving down the street were worried because a lot of the cars slowed down as they drove past me. I couldn't blame them really. I was bleeding pretty bad. But, it wasn't anything to worry about.
After about 30 minutes, I made it to Tyler's. I knocked on the door and he let me in. I walked into his room to see everyone already there with their controllers plugged in and their eyes glued to the screen.
"What's up, guys? Sorry it took me so long." I set all my stuff down as the current match between Michael and Angel ended. "Yeah dude you've been gone for a- WOAH what happened to your arm?" Michael asked.
"I tripped." I simply shrugged. "You could fix it up, huh?" Michael nodded. "Nothing that Panic Stations can't handle." Michael's stand was called Panic Stations. Its forte was healing. It packed quite a punch for a healing stand as well. It quickly patched up my scraped arm. "There ya go." I checked out my arm. "Thanks man. Oh yeah, I bought drinks." I passed out all the drinks I had in my bag. "By the way all of you except James owe me." "Ha ha! Awesome!" James was sitting in the corner on his DS. He was probably the most friendly of all of us. He always did know how to make us have fun. His stands name was Ozzmosis. Very powerful stand with emotion manipulation. It wasn't very fast though, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Michael sighed. "Here, I'll just pay for everyone." Michael handed me three dollars and I pocketed it. I plugged my controller in and sat on Tyler's bed. Tyler had a large room, but his bed was the only thing to really sit on. The upside was that his bed happened to be pretty big. All of us could sit on it, but most of the time Tyler and James sat on the floor and just talked with each other while Angel, Michael and I talked about the first subject we could think of. And like any good conversation, they always snowballed. The nights at Tyler's were always really calm. Well, besides the occasional arguments. All we really did was play Smash and have a good time. Out of all of us, I just so happened to be the best. Behind me was Michael, then Angel, and then Tyler and James were pretty tied with each other. Our levels of skill just ranged from which one of us practiced the most, and I basically lived on this game. Anyway, the rest of our night was really calm, but the real talk usually came around super late at night. Mostly, it was rants. I would sometimes just rant about the girl I obviously had a crush on. Being a freshman, all I really did was get paranoid about it until I stopped caring for long enough. Eventually, we all headed to bed so we could be well rested for the next day.
Saturday morning we continued to stay on schedule. We got up, showered, and waited for Michael's dad to pick us up at around 11:30. "You guys have any goals for today?" I asked. Angel shrugged. "I don't really care. Just wanna go." "I can feel it...one of these days I'm going to win." I shook my head. "You say that every time, James. You should probably try warming up more at the tournament. It would at least increase your chances." James nodded in agreement. "My goal remains the same: I wanna get into at least top 8." For a freshman, I was surprisingly good at this game. I happened to be in the top 50 of my states players. I never expected much less than top 8 whenever I went. But usually...I didn't live up to it. Michael followed me up. "Same as Angel. I kinda just wanna hang out. As long as I don't get dead last." "That always does feel the worst." I added. Tyler never talked much during our hangouts, so he snaked his way around answering the question like he usually did. Tyler just liked to go to the tournaments. They were always fun anyway. Michael's dad had finally picked us up and we headed to the tournament. We got there super early every time so we had plenty of time to warm up. Pretty vital ritual for all of us. "Wow no ones here." Michael said.
"Of course fucking not." Angel replied. "We're super early like we always are." Michael held his hands up. "Don't get too defensive, I was just saying." "Yeah but it was obvious. Come on." Angel said. They both just kinda shrugged it off and Michael set up his console so we could start playing each other until other people arrived. It took a good 30 minutes or so, but some people we knew finally walked in. It was our good friend Chomp. Well, that wasn't his actual name, we just called everyone here by their tournament aliases. Chomp also happened to be a stand user.
"What's up guys?" Chomp walked up to us and fist bumped all of us.
"What's going on, dude? Glad you could make it." Chomp nodded.
"I am too. Not fun practicing at home by yourself." I nodded I agreement.
"Hey, Michael, Angel. You guys let me and Chomp get the next game." "Sure thing." Michael agreed. After their match, they quietly got up and Chomp and I sat down in their place.
"You ready for today?" I asked Chomp. He nodded happily.
"Been waiting all week." I nodded in agreement.
"Pretty much everyone has I'm sure." We both laughed and started playing.
We did quite a few matches but we didn't really notice a lot of people walk in. By the time we were warmed up, a good bit of the venue had filled up.
"Jeez, we've been playing for awhile, huh?" I said as I started to wrap my controller's wire up. Chomp nodded. "We sure have. Well, let's break." I nodded and headed off to find my crew. I noticed another one of my friends had made it. An older guy we called BrawlerG. His real name was Gabe, but as I said before, this was a place of our own custom names. He happened to be a stand user as well. His seemed to be based off of a boxer, and it was called Survivor. I walked up to him to greet him. "What's up, Gabe?"
"Hey Gavin." He replied, smiling like he always did. "What's new?" I asked. He just shrugged. "Nothing much for me, but have you seen that kid Claus play over there?" He pointed to a small group of people gathered around a setup. I shook my head. "Is he new?" BrawlerG nodded. "Kids like 11 and he puts in major work. Check it out." We approached the setup and to my surprise, this kid was just as good as BrawlerG explained to me. Michael was fighting him and the kid put in an unreal amount of work. Michael got up and shrugged, shook the kids hand and grabbed his controller. As Claus looked up, our eyes locked, and I felt a strange aura emit from him. We both just returned to our business. For awhile everything was pretty calm. The tournament finally started and Michael had begun his ritual of complaining about his opponents. At the end of the day, we all did. The tournament kept going by pretty smoothly, all until I finally got into losers bracket where I had to fight none other than Claus. We sat next to each other and prepared for our match. There was silence. We both wanted to win. That was the fact of the matter. We quickly started our set without hesitation. After awhile, I had finally realized why Claus was so good. He had a stand. His stand appeared to be able to let him make precise movements with everything he did. No one was able to notice it until I glanced down mid match to see his stand's hand poking out of one of his sleeves. It threw the entire rest of the game off for me, and I ended up losing round one. I sat back in my chair and looked to the ceiling. "So what's its name?" I asked. Claus looked at me questionably. I glared at him. "Your stand I mean." His eyes widened and he turned red.
"I uh...don't know what you're talking about..." I shrugged.
"Whatever you say buddy." The rest of our set went smoothly until the last game. It was 1 win each and the next win took the set. Claus was using his stand like he had been doing the whole set. I decided it was time for payback. I summoned Puddle of Mudd and snuck a small drop of water into the jump button of his controller. He didn't know what happened until I knocked him off of the stage as his character fell into the abyss below. I ended up winning. Claus glared at me but shook my hand anyway, then he walked off. I sighed and got up. My friends were watching the set the whole time. They knew that I did what I had to.
Inevitably, I was knocked out of the tournament, but that didn't stop my buddies and I from having a great time. After awhile, I noticed Claus was by himself in a corner. Of course, I couldn't let him sit there alone. I approached him and he looked up at me.
"You know..." I started. "You never told me your stand's name." He formed a smile on his face. "I call it The Fox...I got it from a coach when my school's softball team went against another... my sister was on the team and I was there for the game...the opposing coach bumped into me and ever since then...I've just had it." I nodded. "Hey Claus." He tilted his head curiously. "Next time we do a match, let's do it with no stands. Deal?" He nodded and smiled as we shook hands. "Deal."
After that, Michael's dad had finally made it to Dibbz. It was time to head home.