Chapter 2 - The Enlightenment of the Gods, Part One

The Enlightenment of the Gods, Part One[/b]
 [/b]
Opening Song: I Want to Be a Wind 
Kako to mirari o narabekaete mo
Kotae wa mitsukaranai kara
Iikagen joonetsu gomakasanaide
Saisho no steeji ni katoo yo
Chansu wa itsudemo
Shinjiru kimochi no
Tsuyosa ni hirei suru
Nido te naide, kaze ni naritai
Kizutsukeau yori mo atsusa kisotte
Kimi o makikomu, kaze ni naritai
Owari no nai yume o ima
Oikaketau ne
 
*~*~*~*~*~
 
   Cream was a little, not-much-talked about place hidden in the shadier section of the city. With a brothel on one side and a tattoo parlor on the other, it was hardly the kind of place most people ever visited anyway. Anyone who did [/i]visit did so with as much secrecy as they could muster.
   Cream was a place where you could get a small selection of food, a passable selection of drinks, and a wide selection of men. It wasn’t exactly a restaurant, and it wasn’t exactly a brothel, but something in between, with a mildly dinner-and-a-show atmosphere that was darkened and sharpened by its mostly male attendance.
   For all that it was small and shady and the kind of place nobody wanted to be seen going to, a fair amount of people went—not for the drinks, and definitely not for the food, but for the boys, who were expensive but almost always worth it.
   This was definitely the reason Yano Tsuyosa came.
 
*   *   *
 
   “The VG Champion returnsh,” said a man at the bar, surrounded by mountains of empty glasses, swirling the contents of another in his hand. “Whatcha back for?”
   “How long have you been drunk?” Tsuyosa asked.
   “A week and a half.” The man raised his glass in celebration and dumped the liquid down his throat. “I think I pashed out yeshterday...or that two days ago? Don’t matter, I’m shtill going shtrong.”
   “You astound me, Genda-san,” Tsuyosa said, sitting down next to him. “I don’t see why a man as rich as you are is drinking himself to death in a place like this...”
   “`caush I can,” Genda Akio answered, swinging his hand purposefully at the shelves behind the bar on the off-chance that the bartender had turned into one of them, managing to knock over four empty glasses at once. “Could drink here the resht of my life. Will, too. You wait...shomeday I’ll be all alcohol and not water and die, and then I’ll be with Shakra again…”
   “Ah yes, your wife.” Tsuyosa quietly beckoned the confused—looking barkeep towards Genda. “I suppose drinking yourself to death is one way to go.”
   “Shome people ush gunsh,” Genda proclaimed dramatically, “shome people ush pillsh, but I, my friend, ush alho—aklo—alokol. Three more Shupesheeals, shir, and another bottle of sake. Be with my wife in no time.”
   “I’m sure,” Tsuyosa said.
   “Something for you, sir?” the barkeep asked.
   “No drinks.” Tsuyosa smiled slightly. “Bring me your newest kid...I’d like to try him out.”
   “He’s quite expensive, sir,” said the bartender, leering unpleasantly.
   Tsuyosa folded his arms and leaned them forward onto the counter. “You know me. Since when has money been an issue with me?”
   “Well, you won’t regret this one, sir, and no mistake,” the barkeep said. “He’s just come in a few days ago, and he’s a keeper. Stacked something insane, that one is, puts you in mind of that surfer star Ryusaki.”
   “That good, huh?” Tsuyosa mused.
   “I’ll get him, sir.” The old barkeep hurried off.
   “I don’t undershtand you,” Genda said conversationally. “Watsh the appeal? Ev`time you come here, you end up shpending...shpending...” He gulped down something from a random bottle, probably about as unsure about what it was as Tsuyosa, “shpending the night with a boy.”
   Tsuyosa grinned at Genda. “I’m sick and twisted and sadistic that way.”
   “Ish...ish...it makesh no shensh,” Genda grumbled, knocking over a few more glasses for emphasis.
   “I love it,” Tsuyosa murmured. “Having sex with a hard, innocent young boy, dominating him until he knows his body doesn’t belong to himself anymore. Until it’s mine.”
   Genda looked Tsuyosa up and down with a serious expression slurred by drunkenness. Tsuyosa was in his late twenties, with straight brown hair that fell to his collar and dark brown eyes, lit to glittering with a rising anticipation. He was tall and heavily muscled, his skin pressed against his light shirt and jeans with the volume of muscle that filled it. If you looked up “male” in the dictionary, there could be no better picture next to the definition.
   Genda shrugged and turned back to his drinks. “You need to get a girl, shir.”
   Tsuyosa decided to ignore this. But then there was a clumping on the stairs, and the barkeep came back into view, literally dragging with him a boy, and Tsuyosa’s attention immediately focused.
   The boy whom the barkeep had by the arm was of only average height and average weight, probably not even quite twenty yet. But he was indeed, as the barkeep had said, a keeper. Tsuyosa could tell now even with his clothes still on. His muscles were wiry, but hard and lean, marking ridges in his tight T-shirt as he tried to resist the man pulling him to the bar. He had short, unruly hair that was mostly red, but at the same time streaked with amber and honey and scarlet and gold and crimson, forming a shining, colorful mane that Tsuyosa itched to drag his fingers through. Some person, either practical or provocative, had forced him to wear jeans a few sizes too small, so the muscles in his legs were clearly visible as he tried to stand his ground. And most promisingly of all, despite the best efforts of the jeans and the shirt to hide it, there was a hugely distended bulge in the jeans that looked like it might be enough for several people to enjoy, even if Tsuyosa was one of them.
   “Excellent,” Tsuyosa said softly, feeling a familiar, throbbing ache in his groin. “Have fun, Genda.”
   “U2,” Genda answered, busily decimating a shot of The Special and not really paying any attention.
   “Oh, I will,” Tsuyosa murmured, standing up. “I will.”
   The barkeep shoved the boy forward. “Satisfactory, Yano-san?” he asked, glaring at the boy. “His name’s Naoki. Take`m upstairs and do whatcha like, short o` castrating him of course `cause that makes him useless to us.”
   Tsuyosa was about to say that there were much better things to do with a boy like this than castrate him when somebody blared, “Yano-san? Ya-no[/i]-san? Yano-san the VG Champ?”
   Tsuyosa looked around, and saw somebody he didn’t know standing up at a table. His friends were trying to pull him down, but it looked like he’d had one drink too many for tonight, because he shook them off like flies and stomped over to Tsuyosa.
   “Yes?” Tsuyosa said.
   “Are...you...that...Yano...san?” the man asked slowly and clearly, as though Tsuyosa was hard of either hearing or understanding.
   “Yes,” Tsuyosa said.
   “I’m in VG too,” the man said, hitting himself on the chest. “VG Senshi Ikeda Kyuso. I’ve always wanted to see if you’re really tough as you act, or just another pretty face.”
   Tsuyosa concealed his annoyance at being interrupted as best he could. “Forgive me for saying this, Ikeda-san, but I really don’t give a damn what you want to see.”
   “Oh yeah?” Ikeda pulled out his gold-colored VG card and brandished it in Tsuyosa’s face. “What if I say I’m gonna challenge you, huh? Huh?”
   “I’d really rather you didn’t, seeing as I have other plans at the moment,” Tsuyosa replied evenly.
   “Yeah, I see,” Ikeda said, looking Naoki up and down in a blatantly voyeuristic way. “How `bout this, then. We fight over the kid. Winner gets him all night.”
   Tsuyosa was about to say no and drag Naoki out of the room before Ikeda could actually directly state his challenge, but then he paused. Fighting always got his sex drive going. Especially depending on what he could do to the other guy. The idea of having this Naoki was devilishly tempting, but having him while warmed up from a fight?
   What an interesting prospect.
   “All right,” Tsuyosa said.
   The barkeep looked a bit nervous. “Ah, um, gentlemen, um, there is no VG ring in here...”
   “That’s okay,” Tsuyosa said, indicating a wrestling cage that was currently standing woefully empty, everybody having abandoned wrestling for VG years ago. “We can use that instead.”
   “Good,” Ikeda rumbled, brushing past Tsuyosa and heading for the cage. “I’ll lend you a thought when I’ve got that boy between my thighs.”
   Tsuyosa didn’t say anything to this. He cracked his knuckles and gave Genda his wallet and VG card. “Hold onto these.”
   Genda was downing his third shot of The Special and probably wouldn’t have heard a brass band, let alone Tsuyosa.
   “Ready?” Tsuyosa asked, stepping into the cage.
   “For that boy,” Ikeda answered, charging.
   Tsuyosa sized up Ikeda in a heartbeat as the man ran at him. It was obvious from Ikeda’s build that he was an ex-wrestler who went to VG when his sport became obsolete. Tsuyosa had fought more of these than he bothered to count. He knew that Ikeda was ready to sweep his arms out to grab Tsuyosa whether he tried to evade right or left, grab him and probably put him into a suplex. So Tsuyosa went neither right nor left. At the last possible second, he went down.
   Ikeda suddenly found his legs in the air and his head cracking against the ground as Tsuyosa kicked his legs out from underneath him. The ex—wrestler saw stars, and shortly he probably saw suns and moons too as Tsuyosa kicked him unmercifully in the balls. Ikeda doubled up, hands between his legs, gasping like a beached fish.
   Tsuyosa stood there momentarily, wondering if this had ended the fight or not. But then with startling speed and strength and a far more startling recovery, Ikeda swept out his arm and knocked Tsuyosa over.
   By the time Tsuyosa got back on his feet, Ikeda was back on his, clearly in pain but strong enough to continue. Tsuyosa was mildly surprised, but not at all put out. That kick he had planted in the man’s groin had gotten his blood pumping, and he could feel his pants start to bulge. This would be a good warm-up indeed.
   He went down and out to evade Ikeda’s next charge, dropping to the ground and rolling out of the way. Ikeda’s momentum took him forward a few more steps, and by that time Tsuyosa had gotten around behind him. Tsuyosa punched him in the small of the back and sent him reeling into the side of the cage—then the VG champion jumped into the air and delivered a powerful spinning kick between Ikeda’s shoulder blades.
   Ikeda was slammed up into the cage with a roar of pain. He whirled around, his nose broken and bleeding, and Tsuyosa landed another kick, this one into his solar plexus. Winded, Ikeda fell back and slid down the side of the cage. Just because he could, Tsuyosa kicked him in the groin again, this time much harder.
   “Had enough?” Tsuyosa asked with mock solicitation.
   “Have you?” Ikeda countered breathlessly, and with another inhuman effort he raised his fist and punched Tsuyosa between his legs.
   The only reason Tsuyosa did not rip Ikeda apart with his bare hands the second he got his breath back—something he was entirely capable of doing—was that the sudden, unforeseen danger to his balls had set his blood on fire. Tsuyosa was aroused now, both as a fighter and as a man, and Ikeda’s usefulness as a warm-up was at its end.
   Ikeda lumbered to his feet, swaying slightly, breathing hard, but clearly still ready to fight.
   “You’re lucky,” Tsuyosa said, very softly, “I’m not going to kill you for that.”
   And suddenly Tsuyosa’s body became wreathed in golden fire, and in the space of a single breath he spun around once and slammed his fist into Ikeda’s side with the force of a bullet train.
   Ikeda was slammed so violently against the floor that he probably suffered a concussion, at the very least. This was Tsuyosa’s Hellfire Lariat, his specialty, his signature move, and so far, nobody in VG had ever stood up to it and won.
 
 
   Cream burst into cheers. Everybody in the entire bar (except Genda) had been watching the fight, and almost to a man they had been on Tsuyosa’s side the entire time. Tsuyosa had not been crowned the VG Champion of the previous year for nothing, and they all knew it.
   Leaving Ikeda where he lay for his friends to pick up, Tsuyosa left the cage and walked back to the barkeep and Naoki, rubbing his balls lightly through his jeans to make sure that Ikeda’s glancing, but powerful, blow hadn’t done anything...interfering. It hadn’t—his gut still ached from the contact, but his balls just felt electrically sensitive, which very well might prove to be a bonus instead of an obstacle.
   “I claim my prize,” Tsuyosa said, looking at Naoki.
   The boy looked back at Tsuyosa, his face carefully expressionless, but his eyes both angry and afraid. Tsuyosa noticed that his eyes were purple, like large and beautiful amethysts, and sensed that beneath the anger and fear, there was a glimmer of grudging admiration.
   “Enjoy `im,” the barkeep said, pushing Naoki towards Tsuyosa.
   Tsuyosa grabbed Naoki’s arms, and almost shivered at the feel of the muscles beneath his skin. This body, this strong, slender, beautiful body, was his now, to do whatever he wanted with. All night long.
   But then Naoki spoke, hurriedly and loudly.
   “I challenge you too.”
 
 
   A hush fell inside of Cream.
   “What?” Tsuyosa asked, sure he had misheard.
   “I challenge you too,” Naoki said again, his voice clear in the silence. “To VG. For the right to have me.”
   Tsuyosa stared at him for a moment, and then, suddenly, the logic fell into place, and the VG champion could have applauded the boy for it. If Tsuyosa refused, he would get Naoki, but lose his reputation—a Champion turning down a challenge from a prostitute[/i] couldn’t hold the respect of the title if the story was bruited about. Ikeda he could have denied—Naoki, he didn’t dare. But if he accepted, he would have to fight Naoki—and if he wanted him in good condition for the night, he couldn’t hit him too hard, while Naoki would be under no such restraint. Therefore, he would have to let Naoki win, in which case the boy got to stay alone with himself, and Tsuyosa lost his night.
   It was well-thought out. There was only one flaw. What the kid obviously didn’t realize was that Tsuyosa knew a few different ways to win without hurting him—and one of them was right up this alley.
   “All right, kid,” Tsuyosa said easily. “I accept your challenge.”
   Naoki’s eyes widened. Tsuyosa could tell he hadn’t been expecting such quick acquiescence.
   “Shall we?” Tsuyosa asked, and he steered Naoki towards the cage where Ikeda still lay unconscious. Ikeda’s friends jumped up and hurriedly towed him out of the way.
   “Ready?” Tsuyosa asked.
   Naoki clenched his fists, inhaled deeply, and flung his hands open towards Tsuyosa.
   From Naoki’s heart exploded a blazing scarlet phoenix made out of chi, the same force Tsuyosa tapped into for his Hellfire Lariat. But this was on a whole nother level. The phoenix blazed like a funeral pyre and flew at Tsuyosa, letting out a challenging screech. Tsuyosa dodged, but the phoenix’s head turned, and its beak lightninged down to peck Tsuyosa’s leg.
   It hurt quite a lot. Tsuyosa now had to applaud not only the kid’s idea, but his experience. Where had he learned to shape chi like this? He’d better finish this quickly, before the phoenix pecked something vital. To either his life or his fun.
   Ignoring his leg, Tsuyosa got up and ran towards Naoki. As he expected, the phoenix soared overhead and landed between the two of them with another screech. Tsuyosa feinted to the left, and just after he took one step he threw himself backwards onto the ground.
   Naoki and his phoenix had both taken the bait. The phoenix’s beak hit the floor where Tsuyosa would[/i] have been if he had taken one more step. But Tsuyosa rolled, somersaulted, and was back on his feet, behind the phoenix and in front of Naoki.
   The phoenix’s head pulled up and turned around, but it was too late for Naoki. Tsuyosa almost flew forward—Naoki stepped back and hit the side of the cage—he tried to get out of the way, but Tsuyosa grabbed him by the front of the shirt, pulled himself so close that their faces almost touched, and shoved his hand down Naoki’s pants.
   It was one of the better experiences of Tsuyosa’s life. His fingers closed around the redhead’s briefs like a contracting cage, and Naoki’s face slid from fear into astonishment with a startled groan. Tsuyosa squeezed, and the phoenix disappeared, Naoki unable to concentrate on it anymore as a hard, aching, fiery pain filled his groin.
   Tsuyosa bore down, squeezing tighter and tighter, feeling the briefs turn to elongated stone beneath his hand. Naoki’s legs gave out, and if Tsuyosa hadn’t been holding him up, he would have fallen. Tsuyosa felt animalistically desperate to rip off Naoki’s clothes right then and there, or to let his fingers slide through the distended sides of the briefs to touch hot flesh, but he controlled himself by watching as guilty pleasure turned to throbbing pain on Naoki’s face.
   With a colossal effort of will, Tsuyosa finally let go of Naoki completely. The boy, caught by surprise, fell to the floor, his body limp, his pants straining to hold back their considerable contents.
   Tsuyosa composed himself with another colossal effort and addressed the crowd, watching like eagles.
   “Naoki challenged me to VG,” Tsuyosa said, and everybody strained to hear. “In VG, this would have been considered a Level 2 Victory.”
   The crowd was silent, but rarely was silence so loud.
   “I know you know what this means.” Tsuyosa looked down at Naoki, who had managed to get on his knees, huddled over in a ball, shivering uncontrollably. “I’d like you two—” Tsuyosa pointed at two young men, “—to help me, please. I don’t think he can get up right now on his own.”
   The two men ran to the cage, greed bright in their faces. Tsuyosa beckoned them in, and told them to take Naoki’s arms and help him out of the cage. They did so, and held him up in front of the bar. Everybody watched, not daring to breathe in case this changed the situation, which was about to turn paradisial.
   Tsuyosa strode up and ripped Naoki’s shirt off.
   The silence shattered into shouts of glee as Naoki’s chest—and the bulge in his pants—were finally, gloriously visible. Naoki let out a little cry, and tried to wrench himself away from his captors as he realized what was going to happen, but he still hadn’t recovered from what Tsuyosa had done to win, and the two men held him tightly, keeping him on his feet.
   Tsuyosa licked his lips at the sight of the bulging jeans, and finally relieved them of their burden by ripping them off Naoki as well. The shouts rose in volume—the barkeep was fluttering about, looking like he wanted to stop Tsuyosa from turning Cream into a strip bar but also looking greedily happy about the publicity this would surely draw, and even quietly lusting at the sight of the overflowing—though no longer quite so distended—briefs Naoki had been forced to wear.
   Brown eyes met purple. In Naoki’s eyes Tsuyosa read a plea, a plea for Tsuyosa to not finish what he had started. That Naoki had lost his body to Tsuyosa was bad enough. But for his body to become public knowledge to every person in Cream...Please[/i], Naoki’s eyes begged, please stop it.[/i] You have me already. Stop it. I’m begging you.[/i]
   Tsuyosa read the plea, and let the moment spiral on horribly. Everybody was quiet, knowing, waiting for what was coming next.
   Tsuyosa looked at those pleading violet eyes, and gave them a small smile and the smallest possible headshake before he tore away Naoki’s underwear.
   Naoki cried out as his endowments spilled out into open air, but he was drowned out by a tidal wave of cheers and catcalls from the onlookers. The bartender had not been kidding when he mentioned how well—stacked the boy was—his torture-induced erection was gone, but even without it Naoki was at least six inches long without[/i] any excitement, hanging over perfect balls the size of juicy cherries, wreathed in a corona of hair as beautiful as that on the boy’s head. The mere realization that he had been groping this package made Tsuyosa harder than ever.
   But there was something that called to him even more than Naoki’s incredible endowments. The VG Champion bent in close to his prize and held up his face. Naoki’s eyes had lost all of their anger, all of their fire, even all of their desire. They were jewels of fear.
   “You’re mine,” Tsuyosa whispered, so that only Naoki could hear him.
 
   That night was as close to rape as Tsuyosa ever came in all his life. Naoki fought, struggled, pleaded, threatened, but beneath Tsuyosa’s expertise and strength the boy was powerless. Tsuyosa satisfied himself with Naoki’s unbelievable body all that night, exploring every inch of him with his eyes and tongue and fingers until he knew Naoki’s skin better than his own, until Naoki realized the futility of his resistance and let Tsuyosa do what he wanted, until, as the VG champion had told Genda, Naoki knew that his body didn’t belong to him.
   And having left himself burned into Naoki’s mind, body, and soul, Tsuyosa left him naked and motionless on the bed with this for a farewell; “Thanks for your body. I enjoyed it.”
   This was the sadism of the VG Champion Yano Tsuyosa.
 
*   *   *
A Month Later...[/b]
 
   Nijiiro had left his job at Bubblegum Ice Cream Parlor and was walking down the street singing Aqua to himself when Jin tapped him on the shoulder and proceeded to knock him about two buildings down the street. Nijiiro woke up a short while afterwards flat on his back with Jin standing over him, looking furious and fiercely joyful.
   “You’ve joined VG,” was Jin’s first statement. “You’ve joined VG. Do you know how long I’ve waited to be able to do that? I’m challenging you, by the way. You’re gonna get it now[/i], you fruit.”
   Nijiiro looked at Jin for a very long, disoriented moment. Jin was short and solidly built, not even really stocky, but very well-muscled. He was wearing the only thing he ever wore outside of school, which was a cosplay costume of Jin Saotome, complete with floor-length scarf, spike-ridden shoulder pads, and bared pectorals. He looked something between handsome and ridiculous, particularly from Nijiiro’s angle down on the sidewalk.
   “Why do you always call me a fruit?” Nijiiro asked, more to buy time for him to get his balance back than because he didn’t know the answer. “Is there a reason, or is it just lack of originality?”
   “Because you look[/i] like a fruit,” Jin said. “Some spray-painted peach, or something.” He pondered. “Maybe a banana. Yeah, a banana. You’re a spray-painted banana, Nijiiro, and that’s why I call you a fruit.”
   “Fascinating,” Nijiiro drawled, sitting up and blowing strands of his hair—down to his waist and dyed every color of the spectrum—out of his face. “Now remind me why you’re dressed up as a stripper?”
   Jin flushed. “Jin Saotome is not[/i] a stripper!”
   “How can you say that? When he taunts, he takes off all of his clothes!”
   “Hey, at least I don’t use Roll[/i]!!”
   “I can beat your butt[/i] with Roll-chan any day of the week, and you know[/i] it!”
   “Only if you’ve got Psylocke and Tron Bonne to back her up!”
   “Is that what this is about? My using Roll-chan to kick your butt every time you challenge me at Marvel vs Capcom II? Fine, I’ll just use Morrigan next time and kick your butt doubly[/i] hard!”
   Jin started to launch into a scorching retort, but suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute! This isn’t about Marvel vs Capcom! This is about VG! You’ve joined, I’ve joined, and now I can fight you MYSELF at LAST!! And when I Level 1 destroy[/i] you, you’ll embarrass yourself in front of the entire city and make this the best day of my life!”
   “I think you just want to see me naked,” Nijiiro said.
   “You’re hentai[/i], and most of what you think would shame a yaoi[/i] fangirl,” Jin retorted. “Like your little fantasies about Yano Tsuyosa.”
   Nijiiro shot to his feet, his usually brown eyes turning orange with anger. “HEY! Do NOT drag Tsuyosa-san into this!”
   “You’ve never even met[/i] him!” Jin bawled, ignoring the crowd of curious people that their shouted argument was attracting. “And you have some...some crazy long-distance crush on him!”
   Nijiiro’s now-orange eyes flashed. “It’s better than having a crush on a stripping video game character[/i]!!”
   Jin went scarlet. “I DO NOT HAVE A CRUSH ON A VIDEO GAME CHARACTER!!!!”
   “What the heck is going on?” a girl whispered to her friend.
   The other girl shrugged. “Lovers’ quarrel?”
   Jin heard this and rounded in the general direction of the girls. “WE ARE NOT LOVERS!!” Nijiiro made a graphic gagging sound. “I’M TRYING TO CHALLENGE HIM TO VG, BUT HE KEEPS BACKING OUT!!”
   “If you wanted to challenge me to VG, you should have just said[/i] that, instead of going off on this whole thing about Roll-chan and Tsuyosa-san and...spray-painted bananas!” Nijiiro flared. “I will take you on anytime, anywhere, at anything, and I’ll win[/i] every time! I could beat you at VG with both my hands tied behind my back!”
   “Yeah, well, I could beat you[/i] up with my hands and[/i] my feet tied behind my back!” Jin yelled. “You want me to ‘just say’ it? Fine, I’m ‘just saying’ it! I CHALLENGE YOU TO VG!! VG Senshi Suzuki Jin!”
   Jin pulled a gold VG card out of a pocket on the front of his Saotome-style jacket and clicked the top corners. The card sent out an electrical signal, and a console post slid up out of the street near him. Too impatient to even go over to it, Jin threw his card into the confirmation slot.
   “Confirming VG status...” said the post in a mechanical voice. “Confirmed. Standby.”
   Jin threw a glare at Nijiiro. Nijiiro took the hint, pulled his own VG card out of his pocket, and clicked the corners.
   “VG Senshi Ii Nijiiro,” he said, and slid his card into the post that appeared next to him.
   “Confirming VG status...Confirmed. Standby.”
   Just up the street, at the street intersection, the lights began to flash yellow, the sign of an impending VG match. All cars slowed to a stop. When the motion sensors detected stillness in the intersection, they sent out their own signal, and the street in the intersection folded away into four sections to reveal a rising VG ring.
   Every VG fighter in the city had a certain television channel tuned to their signal from the VG status posts. When Jin and Nijiiro had confirmed their VG status with the posts, both of their respective channels immediately began to broadcast footage of the ring chosen for their battle, recorded by video cameras attached to the stoplights.
 
*   *   *
 
   “Mr. Prime Minister,” said the Prime Minister’s secretary, “there’s a VG match coming on.”
   “Really?” the Prime Minister asked wearily. “Put it on.”
   The VG logo flashed onto the sixteen TV screens that usually showed security footage. However, when it turned a few seconds later to the footage recorded by the cameras, the Prime Minister sighed in exasperation.
   “Another gay match,” he grumped, turning back to his papers. “Why Reimi would let VG become mixed-gender...it’s ruined it, half the time it’s just man-on-man, and even when it’s a man and a woman the woman usually wins...screen the VG matches and only tell me if there’s a woman[/i] in them!”
   “Yes sir,” the secretary said, thinking that there was definitely something in the female employees’ accusations that the Prime Minister was a chauvinistic pig.
 
*   *   *
 
   Jin and Nijiiro got into the ring, both with a bit of difficulty because it was designed for people with longer legs than either of them had. Nijiiro made it over without mishap, but Jin wobbled and almost strangled himself with his scarf before a helpful bystander untangled him. Nijiiro snickered.
   “No holds barred!” Jin shouted, to cover the mishap up.
   “Is strangulation by scarf considered a hold?” Nijiiro asked, to uncover said mishap.
   Jin flushed red all the way down to his visible collarbones. “SHADDUP!! HIYAAAA!!”
   Totally typically of Jin, he broke into a headlong charge. Nijiiro indulged him by running to meet him—then, at the last second, he jumped and flipped in midair and kicked Jin in the back, his feet suffused in rainbow chi, shouting as he did, “Starlight Rain!”
   Jin stumbled and tried to regain his footing, but stepped on his scarf and got his head yanked back, completely destroying his balance and sending him flat on his stomach. Quite a few of the people standing around the ring to watch the match (mostly girls, but more men than you might have thought would gather to watch a VG match between two boys) laughed.
   Jin’s face was turning burgundy as he got to his feet and rounded on Nijiiro. “I HATE it when you yell out your attacks like that! It’s DUMB! Do you think I’m so stupid I have to have warning[/i] of what you’re gonna do?!”
   “I thought it’d probably help you, yeah,” Nijiiro shrugged.
   Steam practically shot out of Jin’s ears. “I DESPISE you!”
   “I don’t like you either,” Nijiiro said lightly. “Here, try this one.”
   Nijiiro ran at Jin, who looked astonished for a moment, then tensed, clearly ready to counterattack. But when he was still several feet away, Nijiiro flipped into the air and shouted, “Solar Rain!”
   Immediately Nijiiro’s entire body flashed with blinding iridescent energy. Jin was not alone in finding his vision replaced by rainbow sunbursts, but he was[/i] alone in feeling something white-hot streak down the front of his chest.
   Jin fell back, and felt his scarf fall away. Rubbing his eyes furiously, he looked up and nearly exploded as he saw Nijiiro holding his scarf, with a teasing look on his face.
   “YOU—YOU—YOU-” Jin spluttered, his vocabulary devoid of words to properly describe Nijiiro, especially once he realized that that white-hot streak (Nijiiro’s feet again, charged with even more of his chi than before) had sliced open the front of his jacket.
   “YOU RUINED MY COSTUME!!!” Jin erupted, getting back onto his feet, trembling with barely suppressed rage.
   Nijiiro raised his eyebrows as he tied the long white scarf around his waist like a sash. “I’m sorry. I thought Jin Saotome was supposed to blow his clothes off while he fought.”
   “YEAH!! BLOW THEM OFF!! AS IN I TAKE THEM OFF!! NOT YOU!!”
   Nijiiro paused. “Wait. Is that supposed to mean that you’re going[/i] to take your clothes off?”
   “YES! NO!! THAT IS—I—WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP?!?!?!?!?![/b]”
   Nijiiro was ready. When Jin ran at him this time, he (unknowingly) did the same thing Tsuyosa had done against Ikeda Kyuso, dropping to the ground and rolling out of the way. However, Jin wasn’t accepting this. He jumped after Nijiiro, and more by luck than judgment landed right on top of him, entangling them both in Jin’s scarf and Nijiiro’s hair.
   “Gimme back my scarf!” Jin shouted into Nijiiro’s face.
   “Jin, this is a little public,” Nijiiro said, because Jin was lying down on top of him, his bared chest pressed against Nijiiro’s shirt, their faces nearly touching and the rest of them definitely doing so.
   Jin flushed, but didn’t get off. “Shut up! You’re just trying to embarrass me so you can get away!”
   “Well, yes, but mainly I just really don’t like being caught in a compromising position with you[/i] on global TV,” Nijiiro groaned.
   Jin remained quite still on top of Nijiiro for a second while this sunk in. Then with a kind of strangled yelp, he half-jumped off Nijiiro and half-threw him away from him, his chest heaving rapidly, a blush staining his skin to the collarbones.
   Nijiiro sat up and threw his hair out of his face. “Okay, Jin, I’ve had just about enough of this now. Sorry, but...”
   Nijiiro ran towards Jin again. Before Jin could even really react, Nijiiro flipped forward and ended up in a handstand.
   “Iridescent Wheel!” Nijiiro shouted, and he spun both his legs together, streaming prismatic energy in his arc, to land a chi-enhanced slamming kick to Jin’s side.
   Jin flew about six feet, hit the ground, and skidded right towards the edge of the VG ring. The Jin-supporters in the crowd gasped and screamed, but Jin didn’t manage to stop himself in time. His head and shoulders slid into open air over the edge of the ring, and he only stopped the rest of his body from following by grabbing the bands that fenced off the ring.
   Nijiiro got back to his feet, Jin’s scarf becoming entangled in his hair, and looked over at the VG scoreboard hanging nearby.
   BEEP BEEP BLIP BEEP...LEVEL 3
   “DAMMIT!!” Jin roared, still hanging partially outside of the ring. “DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT!!![/b]”
   Nijiiro grinned brightly and struck a pose, giving the crowd around the VG ring the V-for-victory sign. “Yes!”
   The pro-Nijiiro fans (most of the girls) screamed their approval. The pro-Jin fans (the rest of the girls and almost all of the boys) booed and blared militantly.
   Nijiiro’s grin turned wicked as he turned his attention back to Jin, who had fought his way back into the ring.
   “My poor, dear Jin,” Nijiiro said with mock sorrow, “it appears you have lost on Level 3 in the match that you[/i] challenged me to. You know what you have to do now—should be easy for you, considering your costume...”
   “Dammit!” Jin yelled. “Why—what—oh, DAMMIT!!!”
   “Yes, you’ve said that several times,” Nijiiro waved. “Less cursing, more stripping. You remember what Level 3 entails, right?”
   “I KNOW!!” Jin bellowed at Nijiiro, and very quickly, as though trying to get it over with, he threw off his jacket, ripped off his gloves, kicked off his boots, and with another muttered, “Dammit,” tore off his pants.
   It took a lot of willpower for Nijiiro not to stare at Jin’s body, particularly at his truly Jin-Saotome-style loincloth. But for nothing in the world would Nijiiro admit that he was in any way attracted to his worst enemy, so instead he let his hair fall over his face and twirled his finger. “Let the nice people see you, Jin. They want to see more than I do.”
   Grinding his teeth together, Jin forced his hands out into the air and turned around slowly, uncomfortably aware of the hundreds of pairs of eyes taking in every detail of his still-heaving chest, his well-worked arms, his sinewy thighs, and of course, the slightly-too-revealing loincloth.
   As soon as Jin’s back was turned to Nijiiro, the rainbow-haired boy finally let himself look at Jin. Somehow it made his stomach churn, and gave him the sudden impulse to Do Something. With Nijiiro, action usually followed impulse. So he unwound Jin’s scarf from his waist and ran up behind him.
   Jin suddenly saw the world turn white as Nijiiro whipped the scarf over his eyes, wound it tightly around his head, and tied it into his hair.
   “MMPH?! MMRPH!!” Jin said indistinctly, gagged by his scarf. “MMRPHMM—MRRUMPH!!!”
   “Have fun, Jin,” Nijiiro called, and on an even more sudden urge he leaned forward and kissed Jin just beneath his left ear.
   Jin froze for a full thirty seconds, turning pure burgundy all the way down to the band of his loincloth. It took those thirty seconds for the catatonic shock to hit, and then Jin suddenly started roaring so loudly that even gagged it was possible to tell exactly what he was calling Nijiiro.
 
   Of course, Nijiiro wasn’t there anymore to listen to it. Right after he had fallen prey to that unusual impulse to (shudder) kiss Jin, he ran off the VG ring and somehow managed to disappear into the crowd of people. You’d think a boy with waist-long rainbow hair wouldn’t be difficult to find, but Nijiiro was a master at escaping, and soon he had made it into an alleyway which he knew from experience most people paid very little attention to.
   Safely hidden for a minute, Nijiiro leaned against the wall of the alley, just to calm himself down. He couldn’t believe what he had just done. Not the scarf—he’d been doing things like that to Jin since elementary school. But kissing him? He might have been vulnerable and muscular and practically naked, but he was still Jin, and Nijiiro should have been able to remember that. It wasn’t like he particularly liked Jin, or anything. So why—
   No. Oh God. No.
   “Hey.”
   Nijiiro almost jumped out of his skin. Standing in the alleyway was a boy around his age—no, a little older—dressed in worn-out, holey jeans and a threadbare, overlarge sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was too large for him, swallowing his torso in fabric, the collar somewhere around his shoulders, leaving his face the sole property of his unruly red hair and violet eyes.
   Ooh. Violet eyes.
   “Um, hi,” Nijiiro said, poised for flight but held by interest.
   “You seem decent at VG,” the boy said bluntly.
   “Yes, I guess,” Nijiiro said, wondering where this was going.
   “I need help,” said the boy.
   Nijiiro hesitated, then stuck out his hand. “Hi. I’m Ii Nijiiro.”
   The boy hesitated longer, but eventually took Nijiiro’s hand gingerly. “Hayami Naoki.”
   “Okay,” Nijiiro said. “What do you need help with, Hayami-san?”
   “I’m looking for Yano Tsuyosa. Do you know who he is?”
   “Do I know who he is[/i]?!” Nijiiro lit up like a bonfire, making Naoki start. “Are you kidding?! I just idolize[/i] him! He’s so cool! He’s the VG Champion! He’s like a male Jahana Reimi! I love[/i] him!”
   Anybody on the planet could have seen Naoki flinch at every sentence Nijiiro gushed in Tsuyosa’s praise. However, Nijiiro had flown away to Seventh Heaven on the subject of his idol and long-distance crush, and therefore was not on the planet to see that Naoki obviously didn’t share his viewpoint of Tsuyosa.
   “You know him, then. I want to fight him. Where can I find him?”
   “You want to fight[/i] him?” Nijiiro repeated incredulously. Then a sneaking suspicion crossed his mind. “Wait. Are you in love with him?”
   “No,” Naoki said flatly.
   “Oh. Okay. Then, are you some VG prodigy? Trying to take his place as VG Champion?”
   “No.”
   “Then why do you want to fight him?” Nijiiro demanded. “I can’t think of any other reason if you don’t want either him or his title!”
   Naoki fixed Nijiiro with a hard amethyst glare. “It’s none of your business.”
   Nijiiro glared right back, his normally brown eyes turning to the color of steel. “It is so[/i] my business if you want me to help you!”
   Naoki did a double take. “Ii-san, your eyes are turning gray.”
   “My eyes change colors. Deal with it. Why do you want to fight him?”
   “Look, I...have reasons. Personal reasons.” Almost unconsciously, Naoki ran his fingers through his hair, making it even more unruly than before. “Just...leave it at that, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.”
   Nijiiro considered pushing the matter, but rather wisely decided not to. It was the “personal reasons” that did it. Few people know more about personal reasons than boys who dye their hair all the colors of the rainbow.
   “Anyway, where can I fight Yano Tsuyosa?” Naoki asked.
   “Are you in VG already?”
   “Yes.”
   “Really?” Curiosity shifted Nijiiro’s eyes from gray towards green. “What restaurant do you work for?”
   Naoki hesitated for a moment, then muttered, “Cream.”
   “Never heard of it.”
   “You don’t want to. Can you just tell me how I could find Yano Tsuyosa?” There was a note of something almost like desperation in Naoki’s voice now. “It’s important to me. Just accept that. Please.”
   Nijiiro threw his hair back off his shoulders. “Yes. Yes I can. You have to win a regional VG tournament to qualify for the nationals. You have to win the nationals to qualify for the finals. And you have to win the finals to fight Tsuyosa-san. That’s what you have to do—win the Japan final VG tournament, and you get to fight Tsuyosa-san. That’s the only place you’re sure to find him. Otherwise, he could be anywhere. And that’s anywhere on the whole planet—he likes to travel, and he took his real estate in Germany so he can go all around Europe. I think he’s only in Japan about one month out of the year. Total.”
   “The nationals,” Naoki repeated to himself.
   “The nationals,” Nijiiro confirmed. “It drives me crazy, that he’s so close, and yet so far.”
   “Yes,” Naoki said quietly. “Me too.”
   There was a brief, slightly uncomfortable pause. Then Nijiiro cleared his throat. “Are you…from around here?”
   “Not really,” Naoki said in an offhand way.
   “Do you have anywhere to stay?” Nijiiro’s eyes were fading back to their usual brown. “Do you have family here, or friends, or something?”
   “No, not really,” Naoki replied, still very offhandedly.
   Nijiiro looked at Naoki closely, then grabbed him, pulled him into the alleyway, and spun him around.
   “What are you doing?!”
   “Just stay here,” Nijiiro said impatiently. “I couldn’t see you well before, the sun was getting in my eyes. Just stay still! I’m just trying to look at you!”
   He did so. Naoki was about a head taller than Nijiiro, his scarlet hair streaked with colors that were obviously as real as Nijiiro’s were unreal. His violet eyes were hard and wary, and so were the lines of his body, every muscle tensed, ready to fight. Nijiiro wondered why he was so suspicious of him, wondered with a pang if it was his hair—and all that entailed.
   Pushing that old hurt aside, Nijiiro continued to appraise Naoki. Disregarding his obvious tension, he was a very handsome young man, even despite his hobo’s attire. Nijiiro was pretty sure the clothing wasn’t picked by choice, though—Naoki looked like he had fallen on hard times, if there had ever been good times for him.
   That pretty much clinched it. The hard times, not the handsomeness.
   “You can come stay with my family if you want,” Nijiiro offered.
   Naoki’s responding look was not encouraging.
   “You look like I’m going to rape you,” Nijiiro said impatiently. “Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I’m going to jump you at midnight.” He didn’t think. “Besides, even if I wanted[/i] to I couldn’t, because I sleep with two of my sisters and one of my brothers and if I tried anything my mom would know before I even got out of bed.”
   Naoki now looked as though he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or run away until he reached Osaka.
   “C`mon,” Nijiiro urged, grabbing Naoki by the arm again and trying to pull him back onto the street. He almost flipped over onto his back; Naoki wasn’t budging. “No, really! Mom’ll love[/i] you, she loves[/i] having people over, and we can afford to give you room and board for a little while...oh, come on[/i], stop being stupid! You just told me you don’t have anywhere else to go! Were you telling me the truth or not?!”
   Despite this show of confident irritability, Nijiiro noticed that Naoki was looking baffled, and not by his brilliant oratorical skills. Naoki looked baffled in the same way you would look baffled trying to figure out how to explain to a cat why you were taking it to the vet. It was therefore rather surprising when Naoki finally shook himself and said, “I…all right. Uh…thanks, for letting me stay with you.”
   “Sure,” Nijiiro said, recovering quickly. “Don’t worry about it. C`mon, let’s go before Jin gets that scarf off and he comes after me.”
   “Jin is the guy you were VG-ing with?”
   “Yes.” Nijiiro led Naoki down the street, away from the VG ring and the audience, which was slowly filtering away now that the fight and stripping were over. “He’ll be furious I won, and apoplectic I tied his scarf around his head. He’ll probably be over today to try and challenge me to a rematch...I must ask Himeko-oba to answer the door today...”
   “Why does he bother?” Naoki asked as Nijiiro dragged him down a side—street. “You won, didn’t you?”
   “Yeah, but he and I have had this thing going on since elementary school,” Nijiiro explained. “I used to play tricks on him, and he used to try to beat me up. Except my siblings didn’t really like that, so after the first time, he never managed it again. I guess that’s why he’s trying to beat me in VG now.”
   “Before you did VG him, he said something about being happy if you got a Level 1 loss...”
   “Yes, well...he really hates me,” Nijiiro said lightly.
   Possibly because he had made such a point about personal reasons earlier, Naoki let this go without saying anything. In fact, neither of them said anything more until they were standing in front of the house in question.
 

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