Meiru was walking toward the front gates of her high school, surrounded by the chatter of her peers, when she heard someone behind her shout, "Sakurai, wait up!"
Meiru's first thought was that somebody was feeling awfully forward. Her next was that it was probably natural, seeing as Junichi was her prom date and they'd already spent some time together. Following that was a hint of guilt; she'd said she was going to give this thing a fair chance, and there she was digging her metaphorical heels in. "Sure thing, Yamada!" she replied, leaving off the honorific with some difficulty.
"I've got soccer practice, so I've gotta be quick. But my friend works at the amusement park downtown, and she got me a pair of tickets—"
"Hi, Junichi," said an overly-sweet voice. Meiru turned to see a black-haired girl. She seemed rather on the small side to Meiru, but most girls of average height did. Her flinty smile was what set her apart; she meant trouble, no matter how innocent she tried to look.
"Hello, Kizuki-san," Junichi said, stepping toward Meiru.
"Interesting company you've got there," Kizuki said lightly. "Anyway, I was wondering if it was true you're already taken for the prom?"
"I am," Junichi confirmed, no malice in his voice.
"So you're really going to go with her?" she asked, feigning shocked.
"How rude!" hissed Roll from her PET. Meiru looked down to see that her Navi's face was bright red with fury.
Junichi was evidently a master at keeping things polite. "Yes, Kizuki-san, I am." He turned back to Meiru. "Anyway, as I was saying—"
"Sure, I'll go!" Meiru said.
"'Go'? Ooooh, that's fast!" Kizuki butted in.
"We're not dating-dating, we're just going to the amusement park. As friends," Junichi clarified.
Unable to resist, Meiru commented, "You seem to find it more interesting than it really is, Kizuki-san."
Kizuki pursed her lips.
"How does this Sunday sound?" Junichi asked, starting to walk them toward the exit and leaving Kizuki behind.
"Great!" Meiru said.
"So, is that the stalker?" Roll asked once the distance between them and Kizuki had increased.
"Roll!" Meiru exclaimed at first, but then recalled their first conversation as Galaxyman started talking.
"She's horrible! I was hoping she'd go away now that Junichi-kun has a prom date, but no!" Galaxyman's warbling voice made even his fuming sound cute to Meiru. "I can't believe she has the nerve!"
"Well, some people are just not nice," Meiru said with a sheepish smile. "I don't really mind. Trust me, I've heard worse."
"It isn't you as a person," Junichi said as they arrived at the gate. "You just need to socialize a little more, maybe join a club or something, and people'll see you're cool."
Meiru had been thinking of Black, Madoi, and many other villains who'd shared their gift for insults, not anyone at school. Sensing the danger in clarifying, she just smiled and nodded along.
"Anyway, I've got to get to soccer practice!" Junichi said. "See you Sunday!"
"You too!" Meiru waved to Junichi as he jogged away. "I think that went okay," she said.
"It was a perfectly normal conversation, Meiru-chan!" Roll confirmed cheerfully as her Operator started walking in the direction of home.
"I can't believe we're going somewhere. And so soon…" A sudden wave of nervousness gripped her.
"So, that was the boyfriend?" Meiru nearly jumped. She turned around to see Black standing behind her. "He's nice. Kinda cute. Bit pedestrian, though."
"What are you doing here, Black?" Meiru asked, focusing her best poisonous glare on him.
"It's not hard to find out that you go to school here," Black said. "They even have your picture. It doesn't seem very secure—I don't think you should keep going to school if you're serious about your work."
"It isn't secure if you hack in to find my picture on purpose!" Meiru took a deep breath, then managed to not yell out, "I don't know what I did to you besides be a Net Savior and have a life, but this is going way too far. Knock it off, or the next time, you're going to get your sorry butt landed in jail a little early."
"You can't do that, you have to catch me in the act," Black said.
"I'll find a loophole," Meiru said venomously.
"Whatever, Meiru-chan. Bye," Black said.
"What, that was it?!" He didn't respond. Meiru stared sullenly after him as he walked away. "This is the worst," she complained to Roll.
"No, it's not! You're going to the park with Junichi-kun, that's a good thing!"
"Unless Kizuki-san goes even crazier," Meiru said skeptically. "Or Black gets proactive with his hatred of all things prom-related…"
"It'd be a little weird if you and Junichi-kun didn't spend any time with each other before the prom. Besides, you already know you can handle Black, and I don't think Kizuki's smart enough to do anything." Roll smiled with amusement, then saw Meiru's expression and sighed. "Just… give it a shot, okay?"
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Meiru arrived five minutes before noon, wearing a sundress that she had bought a year ago and then never had a chance to wear. "The last time I was here was…"
"When Swordman attacked," Roll finished quietly.
"I hope it's changed," Meiru said. The thought of having the reminders of that day following her through her date with Junichi was not a pleasant one.
"Yeah, today should be about you and Junichi-kun," Roll agreed. "You know, it wouldn't give anything away about your being a Net Savior if you tell Junichi-kun that something bad happened when you were here with someone else, and that you'd like to find somewhere else to go."
"I don't know where else I'd suggest, though," Meiru said. She looked up at the roller coaster, no longer in pieces like it had been when her grip had slipped from its peak. "This is a lot harder than it seemed at first."
"I know what you mean," Roll said.
Meiru looked again at the roller coaster. It seemed like the cars might have been a different color, and the track might have been laid out slightly differently. If everything had changed like that, it was practically an entirely different amusement park. Then, it wouldn't be so bad.
"Sakurai!" Meiru turned to see Junichi jogging up to her. "Wow, you're early! Were you here long?"
"No," Meiru said. "You're on time, it's okay."
"Good!" He dug a hand into his pocket. "Where are they… ah-ha!" With a flourish, he pulled out a pair of tickets.
"Wow, it's for all the rides!" Meiru read. Even the tickets looked different; they were on plastic cards instead of being paper slips. She felt a little worry slip away as she looked at the pink and green lines that crisscrossed the front of the card. Things had changed here; this would be fine.
They fed the cards into the entrance gate and were admitted. "I never get to come here," Junichi said as they looked around. There was a new castle-shaped building to the left that seemed to be a haunted house, what with all the bats in the windows. "I've got soccer practice all the time, and most nights I help with theatre crew, so I use the weekends to catch up on sleep or hang out most of the time." Meiru nodded, thinking about how strange it was that a place could change so completely. "Sakurai, what do you do after school?"
"Oh, things are pretty quiet for me," Meiru lied. She couldn't think of anything else to do. What she did after school was a national secret, and her nonexistent home life wasn't something she wanted turned into another piece of gossip and spread around the school. "I just practice piano and study a lot."
"You're into music? That's cool. Why don't you join orchestra or jazz band?" Junichi asked.
"Well… I have to take care of a lot of things at home." Junichi looked curious. Meiru explained carefully, "I have pets that only I take care of, and one of my relatives is ill, so I do a lot of chores and errands… I'm really just too busy to take on any extra responsibilities right now." As they kept walking, and even as Junichi expressed his disappointment, Meiru mentally reiterated the main points of her story to herself: studying, piano, pets, errands for ill relation.
"You should try to do stuff with us on the weekends sometime," Junichi said next. "It's great that you care so much about your family, but you should be able to hang out with other people sometimes, too."
"Hopefully I'll be able to," Meiru said. "It depends on how Grandma's feeling." It gave her a slightly giddy feeling: now she had a grandmother who lived in the area! This lie was almost developing faster than she could embellish it.
"I gotcha. Hey, let's do the teacups!" There wasn't much of a line, so they were able to sit across from each other in a blue teacup moments after they walked up. "How fast do you like it?"
"I can handle pretty fast," Meiru said, grinning. "How fast do you like it?"
"Well… hmm. How fast does it go?" There was a clunk of machinery, and the ride came to life.
"Let's find out!" Meiru gripped the round plate in the center and started spinning. Junichi joined in, and soon their teacup was whirling around so fast that Galaxyman was cheering on Junichi's shoulder.
Roll tried venturing out for a few seconds, said, "Meiru-chan, I'm getting dizzy just by watching this," and retreated into the safety of her PET.
"This is awesome!" Junichi laughed, sitting back for a moment to enjoy the lights of the tent that enclosed the ride spinning around them. Meiru gave it a few more spins, then did the same. The park outside the tent was a blur to her, focusing her eyes on one person impossible for more than a second. Junichi reached over to keep it spinning, but the ride came to halt before he could return them to maximum speed. "I know how fast I like it now!" Junichi stood. "Whoa, I'm dizzy," he laughed.
"Same," Meiru giggled, steadying herself on the white center plate before exiting the teacup. She looked over at Junichi, and he grinned back. "Let's do the haunted house next!"
"Yeah!" As they walked, Junichi noticed something on the ground. "That's weird," he said.
"What?"
"There's train tracks, but then they've stuck the go-karts over some of it. No train," Junichi observed.
Meiru looked down to see them for herself, and then she remembered what had happened. The train had derailed itself and continued forward, and she'd been running for her life at Netto's side, and—
"I wonder what happened to it?"
—Netto had tackled her to safety, the train crashing somewhere behind them. It was one thing for the park to have completely changed; that, Meiru could deal with. Stumbling across this, the reminder that those kinds of saves would never happen again, was almost too much. But she knew that, had known that for years, and Junichi was not Netto. He wasn't even much like Netto.
The same park, then, but different enough.
"Are you okay?" Junichi asked.
"Just fine," Meiru said.
"You sure? We can sit down for a second, if you want…"
"Nah, I'm good now," Meiru said cheerfully. "Come on, let's go!"
They got into line. Meiru looked around at the bats hanging above the queue and made sure she still had her story: study, piano, pets, sick grandmother. Maybe she'd had some kind of malady overtake her while riding that train—a heart attack, maybe?—and that was what Meiru had been thinking about.
The ride attendant wordlessly gestured Meiru and Junichi into the entry, where coats and umbrellas sat covered in dust. "I heard they don't dust in here," Junichi said. "That's why it looks so real." On the mantelpiece, the owl statues turned their eyes toward Meiru and Junichi as they approached. "Do you think they've got people in here?" he asked as they walked past and to the hallway.
"Probably not in the spring," Meiru said, looking around at the self-opening and closing doors. At the far end, a knocker raised itself from the door and fell, rapping three times before going still again. Organ music began to play as they approached the only open door, which light flickered from. "It's weird how quiet it's been so far, though—"
Inside stood a figure wearing a white sheet, surrounded by a horde of bats—no, Meiru realized as she looked closer, bat robots, probably every single one in the haunted house—that were coming for them even before the figure dramatically raised its arms. With a yelp, Meiru fled for the end of the hallway, Junichi close on her heels.
"That was legit scary," Junichi said.
"I don't think those were supposed to be there," Meiru said, pointing behind them. The bats were still coming, low enough to the ground to hit the two teens if they were allowed to keep coming, and the figure in the sheet was looking at them from the doorway.
"What does that mean?"
"That we need to get out of here so I have room, right now!" As they turned the corner, Meiru heard some of the bats hit the wall.
"Keep explaining!" Junichi said as they ran past a self-playing organ.
"They're not very smart, so this isn't a Navi—it's a bunch of viruses, probably one in each—" A grotesque face was suddenly inches from Meiru's nose. She screamed and nearly backpedaled into Junichi. Once they'd regained speed, Meiru finished, "I'm going to fight them off when we get outside, but the quarters are too close here and I can't be dealing with this stuff on top of Operating!"
"Should I just leave that to you, or what?" Junichi asked as they pelted past an ice-themed room, not even stopping long enough for whatever sensor was there to catch them.
"It depends on what we're dealing with." Junichi, to Meiru's surprise, was still keeping up just fine. "And whether we find a baseball bat."
"Not my strength, but I'll do the best I can. Soccer player, remember." Now the keeping up made sense to Meiru. She rounded the corner into a graveyard, which was still not in the park itself but which at least had a higher ceiling. Probably for the best; there was no need to endanger the other guests needlessly—
"Geez, Meiru! I knew you were scary, but I didn't think you were Queen of the Vampires!"
Meiru could have recognized that voice anywhere. "Stop stalking me!"
"Don't yell at me!" Black seemed miffed as he moved his PET arm to join his head in peeking in from the stone archway at the exit. "I wasn't here to follow you and your dumb frizzy hair around, and before you ask, I certainly didn't do any of this!"
"It's wavy, not frizzy," Meiru snapped. She lifted her PET toward the cloud of bats and heard Roll leave shortly after.
"So you guys know each other?" Junichi said.
"Yep!" Black replied with a far too cheerful grin as one of the bats fell to the ground.
Netto had gotten away with half the school knowing he was a Net Savior, but Meiru had always been sternly told to not follow in his footsteps. "Don't you dare." She looked down at her PET to find that Roll was already in it.
"I think Galaxyman can help," she said, sounding a little bewildered. "They're just Metools."
"Awesome!" Junichi said, sending his Navi to join in.
"Don't I dare what? It's like you said. I'm your stalker," Black chirped. Another bat fell, and he looked down at his own PET display. "Wow, whoever did this didn't know what they were doing."
Rather than push the subject and give Junichi a chance to pry further, Meiru asked, "If you didn't do this, who did?" Her eyes narrowed. "Was it that girl with the short hair?"
"Like Yumi would care about ruining your date," Black said, rolling his eye. "No, I have no idea who this is."
"They certainly aren't very bright," Meiru noticed. While their Operators had been conversing, Roll, Punk, and Galaxyman had already taken care of another five bats. "I wonder…"
"Look, whoever it is, don't worry about it," Black advised. "If you can survive me, you can survive anyone."
"Thanks?"
Black nodded in a way that seemed kind of like a 'you're welcome'. Meiru had nearly turned her attention to how the Navis were doing when Black gasped, "Oh, you guys are here for the prom, aren't you?"
Meiru immediately turned back around. "No!"
"That doesn't happen for another month," Junichi explained. Meiru thought it was amazing how friendly he could sound to, between Kizuki and Black, what had to be every sort of terrible person on the planet.
"Really?" Black sounded genuinely astonished. "But you were making such a big deal out of it already!"
"We have to prepare for it!" Meiru explained, trying to take a cue from her companion.
"Oh." Black seemed even more confused after hearing that. "What do you do at a prom, anyway?"
"It's like a party," Meiru told him, confused at his confusion. "You dance… There are snacks…"
"There's usually a theme," Junichi supplied.
"So it's… a ball," Black said, a bit disgusted.
"It's not that fancy," Junichi corrected. "I mean, I still have to wear a tuxedo, but it's not that formal."
"So it's like a ball, but everyone's actually nice to each other," Black said.
"Who's inviting you to a ball?" Meiru wondered.
"No one. I serve the food and watch," Black said.
"You've really never heard of prom before?" Junichi asked.
"They don't have them where I'm from," Black said. "I don't think they do, anyway. I didn't go to school after elementary school, so I don't know." For a moment, Meiru thought she could feel some sympathy for him; it seemed like he'd missed a lot of life experiences wherever he'd been studying, and it didn't sound like compensating for that had been a high priority. "Why are you asking so many questions, anyway? It's like you've grown twice as annoying now that you've got a boyfriend, Meiru-chan."
Meiru's pity evaporated. "Then bug off like you obviously want to, Black," she snapped.
"Or like you've grown a second head," Black added as if she hadn't spoken.
"Meiru-chan, we're all done," Roll reported.
"Thanks, Roll." A sudden realization came to Meiru. "I bet you're here because you're jealous that I have a life now!" she said, pointing at Black.
"N—no!" Black's head disappeared behind the archway, and Meiru heard a flustered, "I've already got a life! Going to school and stupid dances and whatever is a waste of time, anyway!"
Meiru smirked and folded her arms. "Then how come you can't come out here and say that?"
"Um, guys… shouldn't we figure out who did this?" Junichi asked.
"Yeah, you're right!" Black said with considerable relief, peeping back out from the behind the archway.
"I didn't see anyone in a white sheet come out while we were here. That person might still be inside," Meiru said.
"Maybe park security already got him," Junichi speculated.
"Or maybe he's so dumb that when we took care of his bats, he didn't know what to do next," Black said. "He might be hiding inside still."
"Let's go!" Meiru said, starting back toward the corridor. The three turned the corner to see the end of a white sheet disappearing down the opposite end. "I guess you were right for once, Black!" Meiru said. "Well done!" They re-entered the ice room to find the culprit trying to hide between two of the ice blocks. "You know you're not supposed to get that close, right?" Meiru asked.
A skeletal figure dropped down in front of the sheet-covered figure, who screamed and scrambled back toward the group. Junichi pulled off the sheet to reveal Kizuki.
"Who are you?" Black asked scornfully. "And why would you attack a—" Catching the look Meiru gave him, he substituted, "—seasoned Netbattler with anything as poorly put-together as that?"
"We know her," Junichi explained. "She's another student at our school."
"Did you really think that was going to make Junichi decide not to take me to prom?" Meiru asked. "There's a difference between 'bad luck follows me around' and 'an obvious prank'."
"Well, whatever! I don't know what makes you think you and your dowdy grandma clothes can just take Junichi out from under everyone else's noses!" Kizuki said indignantly.
"It wasn't her idea," Junichi said.
"And even if it was, you're wasting your energy by trying to go after her," Black said. "You'll never win against her with attacks that weak."
"Not to mention how your prank resulted in damaging park property, so now you get to go talk to security," Meiru added.
Kizuki's reply was a startled "Um, what?"
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Once they'd dropped Kizuki off at the front of the haunted house with an explanation of what the staff would find scattered throughout, Black announced his departure with a melodramatic, "Goodbye, Queen of the Vampires." Meiru just sighed as Black left, too worn out to do much else.
"Hey, Meiru…"
Meiru looked over, startled out of her tired stupor. "Yeah?"
"I know there's a lot more to you than I can see. Y'know, with your grandmother and everything…" he said, gesturing in the direction Black had left in.
Meiru flushed red. "I'm sorry. I know him from something I can't tell people about, and—"
"No, no, it's okay, you don't have to tell me 'till you're ready." He turned toward her. "Like, you're kind of mysterious, and that's cool at first. But you're also really cool yourself, underneath that. I'd like to be a good enough friend to get to know you one day, but until then, you don't have to tell me anything."
"And… you're okay with that?" Meiru asked hesitantly.
"Well, yeah. I get that you're pretty different from anyone else at school, but that's okay. And it's no reason for you to be by yourself." Junichi grinned. "Let's get out of here, 'kay?"
"Sure, I think I've had enough excitement for one day," Meiru said.