Marduk blasted music from his computer.
Majestic screams, unrelenting guitars, and drums reminiscent of heart palpitations waged war with the far less enjoyable, nor technically proficient, screams permeating the thin walls of Marduk's cramped, crumbling home. Posters lining his bedroom weren't enough structural reinforcement to block out the sound of two parents and siblings who had no healthier outlets for their emotions. They did, however, make the room he was bedridden in most of his days more pleasant. Slightly.
Sometimes, Marduk's own screams would fill the space. Only when the consequences of the last times he'd stood up for himself had faded enough so as not to be a deterrent. Or when holding onto every agonizing thought and feeling for days to weeks to months to years got just a bit too much that day. And no one was around to punish him for something as simple as catharsis.
That night, Marduk didn't have the energy to scream. He just let the soaring symphonies and vicious breakdowns render his family's voices less imposing and harder to decipher.
It kind of worked for a bit, but like it so often did, it just… stopped working after a certain point.
Marduk wished the world would freeze around him for the umpteenth time, and when it didn't, he begrudgingly grabbed his coat. The sound of his favourite band faded as he slipped it on and escaped through his bedroom window.
The park always felt different at night.
The lack of harsh sunlight, lack of screaming kids and parents glaring at him like he'll give their precious little angel drugs (not that he could find or afford them), and lack of stress over ditching class to come here while knowing he'll get penalized for needing freedom and fresh air and a space to think and feel, made it so much better.
Best of all, being there didn't cost money he didn't have.
Marduk plopped himself down on one of the swings, his monochrome pants plus coat failing to sufficiently protect his ass from the rough, frigid, and likely disease-ridden plastic below. Fingerless gloves partially shielded his hands as they gripped the suspended chains, showing the metal links exactly how much devastating power dwelled within his thin, exercise-averse body. He liked to think the chain necklace he wore was a warning to them: they were next.
Marduk thought about actually swinging, but opted instead to glance up at the night sky, swiping red and silver locks from his eyes as he did.
The stars were fine and all, but Marduk sometimes enjoyed watching the pitch black canvas between them. The distant suns and planets he couldn't see captivated his imagination more than anything. Everyone else could see the same twinkling lights in the sky, but whatever hid in the emptiness between was his to ponder, his to claim.
Marduk stayed like that for a while. Gazing. Breathing. Thinking. Feeling. Everything bubbled to the surface of his conscious mind. He found it all in the empty spaces between the stars.
...
A small, glistening light broke the emptiness.
Marduk watched, straddling the line between confusion and awe, as it descended in a vibrant display of pulsating green. It grew closer and closer until finally settling at his feet, splayed out in all its flat, rectangular glory.
A… card?
Marduk abandoned his seat, reached down, and picked it up. The green aura died down to let the card's details show; an obsidian base decorated with white, geometric patterns and, more prominently, 6 equidistant circles, each in a different colour; red, green, brown, blue, yellow, and the same black as the card's base, each containing a white symbol.
Marduk ran his thumb over the black circle, unsure which of his countless, nebulous emotions applied to this moment. The card felt perfectly smooth, and refused to bend no matter how much force he applied. Indestructible and unfathomable. Everything Marduk aspired to be.
Green specks danced in Marduk's periphery. They dotted the ground and peppered the air as far as he could see. Marduk grabbed the next closest one, then the next, then the next, until the park and surrounding streets had been cleaned of cards and even his numerous pockets begged for mercy. The dreaded walk home saw him crouching every few seconds to claim another one.
Marduk didn't know where the cards came from, what they were for, who made them, and what technology powered them. What Marduk did know was that they were free, and the pocketfuls weighing his coat down were his and his alone.
A moment ago, Marduk had nothing.
Now, he had the spaces between the stars.
Surprisingly, Marduk learned something useful at school.
Unsurprisingly, it wasn't during class, but rather during lunch break.
The only reason Marduk bothered attending for the whole day was to see how many of his peers made the same discovery, and to hear their theories.
"It's a marketing tactic!" What's it marketing?
"It's a new game!" How do you play?
"It's a prank!" Honestly not the worst hypothesis.
"It's aliens from another dimension!" Shut up, idiot.
About half of the student body brandished their own sets of cards. Some only had a couple, while others had bigger collections they showed off boisterously to their friends as they navigated the halls or leaned against their lockers. The classmates who dared take their cards out in class were reprimanded or, worse, had them taken away by the teacher, likely for said teacher to give to their own children when they got home from work.
None of his classmates' collections were as impressive as Marduk's, though. For once, he felt kind of powerful shuffling to and from each class inside the concrete prison he spent too much of his life in. A prison built on chronic sleep deprivation; useless information; unaccommodating classroom settings; standardized tests that equated failure with incompetence; pressure to succeed or be shamed by parents and staff alike, and sentenced to more schooling and poverty; unpaid physical and emotional labour; and prejudiced, privileged faux-intellectuals getting away with being the worst examples of humanity to plague Marduk's existence (besides his family). Because who would believe or care that a troubled, black-clad, long-haired boy who got bad grades and skipped class was being physically and verbally harassed? Who would care about violence perpetrated by minors?
When did adults ever prove they could keep Marduk safe?
The unexpected lesson began mere moments after Marduk ventured out to the schoolyard. He'd barely descended the front steps and made his way to the benches surrounding a nearly leafless tree when-
"Hey! You get these, too?!"
Marduk jumped in his skin. The needlessly loud voice was attached to a girl from a couple of shared classes. She held a card between her fingers. Another girl accompanied her, giving him an amused, wide-eyed look Marduk had acclimated to over the years. A laugh without a laugh. A scathing comment without a scathing comment.
"No," Marduk droned, dropping his backpack beside him on the bench as unassumingly as possible.
"Really?" the girl shot back. "Everyone has at least one."
Marduk tried his absolute hardest to raise his shoulders more than a millimetre for the shrug he offered her. "Must've missed them."
The girl looked like she was gonna say something, then looked at the backpack beside him.
She snatched it before he could react.
"Give it back!" Marduk growled, rising to his feet.
The girl rifled around in the packed pocket where his card collection was. Marduk's body betrayed him in the moment, paralyzed by sheer shock at how people could lack such basic concepts as "human decency" and "boundaries".
It was only when she pulled out a card, his card, that he lunged at her.
The other girl tried and failed to intercept as Marduk and the villain of the week fell to the ground in a tangle of backpacks, limbs, and rage. Marduk shoved the girl's arms out of his face and clawed at her hand until he'd reclaimed his card.
As the girl's friend rushed to abet her in her crime, Marduk wished, once more, for the world to freeze.
Both of their cards glowed.
The girl went limp. Eyes wide, she let out a, "What-"
Marduk pushed off of her and got to his feet. Anger was quickly supplanted by another cocktail of confusion and awe as he took it all in. An endless plane of flat, colourless ground. A sky of 6 swirling, almost galaxy-like discs, each in almost all of the same colours from the cards. (Purple was the new black, apparently.)
"What did you do?!" the girl yelped from the ground. Whatever confidence she'd walked into the confrontation with had melted away, reducing her to a lost, scared child. Just like Marduk.
Marduk didn't say a word. Maybe he didn't want to. Or maybe he just had nothing to say. Either way, he grabbed his backpack from the girl's side. A single card spilled out of the open pocket and onto whatever the alien pavement could be called.
It expanded in a flash of yellow, then settled into a black-and-grey rectangle the size of a field.
Between one absurdity after the other, Marduk almost failed to notice the glow coming from inside his backpack.
Marduk opened the pocket, and immediately leaned back to let a torrent of radiant orbs rise from it. They hovered before him for a moment, their colours varied like the "sky" above but mostly defined by purple, yellow, and red. Then, as if discovering a newfound purpose, they flew towards the ground. When they made contact with the gigantic card below, they erupted into towering columns of blinding brilliance.
Terror joined the concoction of emotions swirling around in Marduk's head. The skyscrapers of light faded into forms he couldn't fully understand. Humanoids, animals, beings that eluded description, they all blossomed from their respective radiance and roared or screeched or bellowed or whatever it was their mouthless faces created and it was insane and horrific and gorgeous and it was his, it was all his-
The girl's breathing quickened.
Marduk's eyes met one of the creatures', a purple, oversized snake with dark sclera, bright irises, and angular patterns adorning its skin.
Marduk knew he should've still been afraid. TV, video games, and human instinct taught him long ago that giant monsters equals bad.
But there was something about the way the monstrosity's stare bore a hole through him. How it didn't move to attack but rather "stood" in place. Like it was every bit as thinking and feeling as Marduk. He felt… seen… safe…
Powerful.
Marduk glanced back at the girl, who hadn't left her spot on the ground, whose face had long since lost most of its colour.
"Don't come near me again," Marduk told her. There was no contempt in his voice, nor caution. If Marduk had to put a label on it, he'd almost have been tempted to use "happy".
"I wanna go back," the girl whimpered, her still glowing card clutched in her hands.
Marduk gripped his own card tighter. He wasn't sure how the whole thing worked, but he hoped that for once in his life he was in control.
Marduk's vision went white, and then they were back under the shifting shadow of the tree. Everything was as it was before.
Everything except the person Marduk used to be.
Marduk scrutinized the patterned, black and purple spheres in each hand.
People on the internet had long since settled on a few things.
1) Cards that manifested supernatural phenomena and creatures were meant to be used in a game.
2) That game, and its integral pieces, needed a name: Bakugan.
3) Bakugan needed a life gauge and Bakugan power tracking device, in this case a smartwatch. Upon realizing there was a hot new children's gaming sensation to profit from, and hearing the high demand for such a device, one obscenely rich company began to design and sell them with surprising speed and quality. They called it a "BakuPod".
4) The game revolved around threes. Three monster marbles in any given deck, three Gate Cards, three Ability Cards, and three victorious battles against opposing Bakugan to win the game. Three chances to succeed or you sucked forever. It was a cute philosophy, Marduk figured. If only he had that many chances at anything else.
With arbitrary restrictions came tough choices. Some were mercifully less tough, like choosing his favourite colour / Attribute (black / Darkus) and strongest Bakugan. But when the Bakugan had roughly the same power levels (Gs, the internet also decided), it all came down to which was the coolest. Truly the worst dilemma Marduk had ever faced.
Sometimes, it was nice to worry about little things instead.
Another easy choice was whether Marduk would stay home all weekend with family or go outside and brawl.
Marduk took a generous gulp from his water bottle as he made it to what kids had collectively designated "Bakugan Park". Sadly, this wasn't the one closest to his house, instead taking forever on bike to reach. Being bigger, the problems that plagued the closer one multiplied. More people, more noise. Such was the trade-off for more brawls and more victories.
Marduk half-paid attention to keeping himself and his bike on the winding dirt trail, scrolling through his BakuPod to the global rankings section in the process.
Marduk: 189
Granted, the game was young, but a small smile plastered itself on Marduk's face nonetheless. It was especially nice how quickly he'd secured a BakuPod and climbed through the ranks considering how broke his fami-
"That's Marduk."
"-messed me up-"
"He has so many-"
"-looks cool."
"-looks emo or, like, punk, I guess?"
"-asshole."
"-brutal."
Marduk's eyes shot up, his smile gone as fast as it had appeared. Faces familiar and foreign exchanged whispers and glances as either they or he passed by, eyes darting away as soon as Marduk located their sources.
A brawler couldn't crack the top 200 without stepping on a few top 201s along the way.
"Give it back!"
Marduk spotted the source of the forceful pleas immediately; nearby, a girl quite a few years younger than him grabbed in vain at the raised arms of an older-looking boy. Through the gaps in the latter's fingers, Marduk saw the round forms of Bakugan.
"You suck too much to have them," the boy jeered, evading her moves to the cheers of his surrounding friends. If every high school bully on the planet with an affinity for violent sports and slurs could coalesce into a single person, that person would look like him.
Marduk kicked his bike's built-in stand down in one swift motion, then approached the two. "Give them back," he grumbled.
The boy looked Marduk's way, then eyed him from the ground up. Scan complete, he offered a hearty, "Piss off."
Just another 201.
Marduk pulled out a Field Card and flashed a grin. "Beat me, and I will."
One of the boy's friends laughed. "Dude, that's Marduk."
The young girl had long since stopped her commotion to stare at Marduk along with everyone else in the vicinity. Marduk only caught a glimpse of her expression, but the desperation in it only tightened Marduk's grip on his Field Card.
The boy pocketed his unearned prize, unleashed his unearned confidence in every movement as he sauntered towards Marduk, and pulled out a Field Card of his own. "Want me to beat you hard with my new toys, pretty boy? You into that?"
His posse burst into laughter. Marduk burst into flames.
Their Field Cards glowed, and Marduk's sight went white before settling down. The brawling space was the same as ever. Another worthless bully, another alien atmosphere, another seamless, off-white terrain supporting them both.
What wasn't the same was the teen girl standing a few paces to Marduk's right.
"Who are you?" Marduk demanded with a stare that could extinguish suns and a tone that rivalled the deadliest snakes on Earth.
The girl closed the gap between them at a glacial pace. Dark green and cyan curls fell over her forehead while the sides and back of her head were cropped so short as to almost be nonexistent. Her light brown eyes shone too brightly for comfort, as did her flowy, white and yellow outfit.
"Erra," the girl chirped, sending a relaxed wave to both him and the boy. She pocketed the Field Card she'd been holding.
Marduk furrowed his eyebrows. His free hand met his BakuPod's touchscreen, searching for the custom pearlescent BakuPod attached to the stranger's wrist. It pinged once it found what it was looking for.
Erra: 157
"This isn't your fight!" the boy hollered, glancing up from his own BakuPod. "Get out!"
"Afraid you'll have an audience when you lose?!" Erra shot back, her chipper demeanour unwavering.
The boy let out a barely intelligible, "Whatever," and opted to let his gaze wander instead of pushing the matter.
"Why are you here?" Marduk spat, brows narrowed.
Erra smiled. Her teeth were white as snow and offensively photogenic. Marduk felt a little worse about his own.
"There's this neat new invention called the metro system," she replied with light in both her eyes and breath. "It lets me visit the best brawling sites I can find and see if anyone's worth watching. Think you're one of them?"
Marduk smirked, then pulled out a Gate Card from his pocket. "I know I am."
"Let's do this!" the boy roared.
Erra stepped back, letting Marduk and the boy cry out, "Gate Card, set!"
Knowing the outcome didn't change how satisfying it was.
When the battlefield faded, the boy gave the young girl her Bakugan back, and then motioned for his perplexed friends to leave with him. If staring down Marduk's undefeated victory streak hadn't already put him in his place, the threat of all his Bakugan looming over him sure did.
"Thank you so much!" the girl told Marduk.
Marduk smiled. "Anytime. Keep practising, and someday no one will hurt you again."
The girl cradled her Bakugan as she walked away.
"I admit it, you're right," Erra mused. "You're so worth watching, oh my god."
Marduk shrugged as he let out an effortless, "Obviously."
Marduk and Erra settled on a bench by a fountain. The wind blew gentle spring air through Marduk's hair. He watched the spout at the center of the fountain burst to life, settle down, and repeat while the two of them talked and talked and talked. About Bakugan. About where they both came from: Erra from a loving home at the other end of the city, Marduk from a cesspool filled with verbal abuse and sleepless nights in the middle of nowhere. About how much people absolutely sucked. About life.
And best of all, about bands that made loud music.
"I love that one!" Erra exclaimed, throwing her head back. "I think it'd be so cool if we, like, wore masks like they do, but as brawlers. Just for the mystique."
Marduk chuckled, something that took him completely by surprise. Erra's powers extended past brawling prowess and headed straight into emotional manipulation. "That is, no joke, such a good idea."
With contact info exchanged, and a vow to test each other's strength when they weren't both dead tired from socializing and travelling, Erra departed. Marduk watched her go, took one last glance at the fountain, and then began the long bike ride home.
As he left, the dread that usually blossomed in him met a little more resistance than usual.
Erra was weird.
Firstly, she didn't stick to a single Attribute for her Bakugan, instead juggling Haos, Aquos, Ventus, and "sometimes Subterra if I feel like shaking things up".
When Marduk asked, "Why not Pyrus or Darkus?", she responded with, "Everyone I know who mains red in games is usually a guy with egomania, and Darkus is the evil Attribute."
Marduk opened up about how that's exactly why he gravitated towards Darkus, because he was taking what people associated with evil and fear, and embracing it, making it his own. The only comment Erra offered was that he was cute. (In an objective way. She liked both girls and boys, but Marduk wasn't her type. Marduk felt relieved when she clarified that. The last thing he wanted was to disappoint the only person he didn't hate.)
That was the second thing. Marduk didn't hate her.
Marduk's computer became more than a mere vehicle for playing heavy music and escaping into cyberspace. Now, he was using it to call Erra almost everyday. At least, whenever his computer privileges weren't taken away for failing or ditching class, criticizing his parents, drowning out his family's screaming matches with music, or getting roped into fights with his siblings over the stupidest things. Having a BakuPod his family didn't know about helped Marduk stay in touch. And when he did have his computer, he didn't have to keep his voice down or hide his arm from his family's view, and could chat for hours and hours.
When spring became summer, Marduk and Erra updated each other on how their brawling masks were coming along.
"It matches your hair and outfit and everything!" Erra gasped when Marduk held his finished product up to the computer camera, a modest little thing that only concealed the top left quadrant of his face, resting just above his cheek. It had a largely opaque yet see-through black oval where his left eye would be, and above it were 2 red marks to roughly simulate eyebrows. Light from the mid-afternoon sun lent the mask a warm, ethereal glow.
"I know, I'm awesome," Marduk said, leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head. "Okay, now yours."
Erra headed off-screen to rifle around her belongings for it. Marduk took a moment to envy how spacious and tidy her room was before she returned.
Erra came back into view. She held her pride and joy up to the screen, tilted it side to side for maximum showoff-iness, and then put it on. Hers covered her mouth and nose, letting her eyes shine in all their luminous glory. Pastel splotches constituted the base, with swirling, earth-toned patterns weaving through the multicoloured canvas.
She sang, "Ta-da! It's fashion and function!"
Marduk grinned, leaning closer to inspect the details. "It's a bit too cheery for my taste, but still cool. It's like… kawaii meets gang violence… meets surviving air pollution."
Erra leaned back in her own chair to scrunch her face in barely contained laughter. "Exactly! I'm chaos incarnate. A total enigma. No one will know what I'm all about until they're face to face with me on the battlefield!"
The shouts flowing through the cracks in Marduk's bedroom door prevented Marduk from laughing genuinely, but he made an admirable attempt anyway. "We're gonna win in style."