A boy and a girl stood opposite one another on a rooftop. The boy was clutching a box of chocolates while the girl was staring at the ground, fidgeting on the balls of her feet. After a few moments, the boy suddenly blurted out, “I like you! Please go out with me!” and for a few moments the rooftop was silent once again.
The girl’s head lifted up and the boy risked a glance to look her in the eyes. After a tense moment, the girl slowly said, “Sure.
“If you can tell me three things you like about me except the way I look.”
The boy’s mouth fell open, then closed again without making a sound.
“Thought not,” the girl said, turning on her heel to walk towards the entrance. “Let me know if you ever do figure that out, and maybe I’ll think about it.”
“W-wait!” the boy insistently said. “I- I- I-”
“Three Is. One breath. That sort of ratio makes you a bit of an egotist, wouldn’t you think? Bye now.”
And off she walked back into the school, soon flanked by two other girls on either side. The trio cast a striking image. On the left, Sumiko Asanuma. A short girl that was bubbly, cute and had a fair bit of a naughty streak to her. On the right, Sakue Yamashita. The tallest of the girls, in fact taller than any of the boys in their year. She stood out in any crowd, which was a shame given how completely shy she actually was. And then there was the middle girl. Yodo Murakami. Fairly average height, very pretty face that almost seemed like she was blushing at all times. Though anyone that knew her would tell you that she wouldn’t be embarrassed if her parents got drunk in the middle of town and started telling stories about things she did when very young, then started broadcasting pictures into the sky, then attempted to craft an image of her face into the streets using nothing but three-month-out-of-date cheese.
“My goodness, Yodo!” Sumiko chuckled, reaching up to slap the girl on the shoulders. “Here I was thinking you’d jump at the chance to get a boyfriend after spending all year being known as the daughter of the drunken cheese carvers.”
“Then you only know me slightly better than he does,” Yodo said with an eyeroll. Sakue nodded, not feeling the need to say anything at all. “He was just looking to get a little action just like all the boys.”
“Oh, come on, not all boys are like that!” Sumiko insisted. “If you don’t stop being so harsh you’ll never find your one true love!”
“Love? Pft. Love isn’t a real thing. It’s something humans invented to make themselves feel better. That’s all.” Yodo yawned all of a sudden out of nowhere. The sort of yawn that replaces the mouth with a bottomless chasm, the sort that makes statues feel sleepy when they see it.
“Trouble sleeping?” Sakue whispered. Well, to anyone else it would be a whisper. To her it was practically a yell through a megaphone.
“You could say that,” Yodo said, scratching the side of her head. “I had the weirdest dream last night.”
<hr>
You know how it is when it’s late at night, you’re exhausted, you’re trying desperately to sleep but there’s this noise. It’s not particularly loud. It’s just present. Sort of like chatter, quiet chatter, but way closer than you’d think it should be. Then suddenly there’s this flickering of lights, and before you know it you’re sitting up in bed thinking of very creative ways to get away with murder.
“Wha?” Yodo sleepily mumbled, looking around the room with half closed eyes. “Whowha?” Nobody answered because nobody was around. Yet still she heard it. Chatter. People talking among themselves. She looked around the room again, blinking <i>really</i> hard as she did so, then rolled out of the bed and crawled over towards the source of tiny lights and - now that she thought about it - where the chatter was coming from. Her underwear drawer.
Yodo leaned up against it, and listened with as much intensity as she could manage. She could barely make out the voices, but it sounded something like -
“Order, order! We must bring this meeting to order!” an official-sounding(?) voice said. “I would like to congratulate you all on today’s skirmish, but be warned! The enemy is implacable and unknowable! They will not surrender so easily. To become lax today is to turn victory into defeat! I trust in all of you! You will succeed where other teams have failed! For the sake of Mobile Organic City Yodo, we shall fight! And we shall prevail!”
Loud applause filled Yodo’s senses as she unevenly, sleepily blinked. Then stared at the wall ahead of her in a deadpan manner it really didn’t deserve.
“And now, I would like to introduce our tactical officer with an analysis of our performance today. Please, take the stage!”
… There was a stage in her underwear drawer that tiny people used to address audiences? Right, so clearly that chicken was a little dodgy.
“As with all Mobile Organic Cities (AKA humans), Yodo’s performance is entirely dependent upon her pilots. On this particular cycle, her pilots have performed admirably - save for nearly tripping on that second step at lunch, I would prefer not to allow that to occur again - and successfully avoided or defused any so-called ‘romantic encounters’ that could set off an enemy incursion. However! I feel it is likely that our friend Cities may soon become compromised by enemy activity. Stay alert at all times. We still do not know the enemy’s intentions, nor do we have a name for them. Until such time as we have more data, I can do nothing more but dismiss you all and hope you all have a good night’s recharge cycle!”
Okay, so, enough of this. Yodo yanked open the drawer, and stared in absolute sudden wide awakedness at what was within. Little tiny grey figures, sort of like robots. Many were bipedal. Some were on all fours. Some hovered. Some seemed to be designed to roll around. All of them were staring up at her, and she could swear they were confused.
“Alright,” she suddenly heard ringing in her ears, as though it was being yelled right into the centre of her brain. “Who is the wise guy piloting the City?” A moment of silence as she reeled in place. “Come on, come on! Don’t play smartass! We all know you’re in there! Humans don’t pilot themselves! It’s not like they have a will of their own or anything!”
Screw this noise, screw this dream and screw those robots. She was getting a little sleep. Right here on the floor seemed kind of nice…
<hr>
So yeah, if either of her friends had told her about a dream like that… Well, she’d have boggled at them as well. Hardly seemed fair to blame them, really.
“So let me get this straight,” Sumiko said, pointing a shaking finger at her. Barely holding back the laughter. “You dreamed that - That humans are all piloted by tiny little robots, which are fighting against an enemy that attacks them in romantic situations?”
Yodo nodded. That was indeed the basic gist of her dream, summarised rather succinctly and accurately.
“It seems like your subconscious is trying to tell you something,” Sakue whispered while trying to ignore Sumiko actually and literally rolling about on the floor laughing. “M-Maybe you should consider dating after all?”
“An interesting idea!” said a voice that grated on Yodo’s very last nerve. Oh, sure, he was a handsome and charming boy. Athletic. Intelligent. But the very sight of him sent a shiver right down Yodo’s spine whenever he appeared, and if he didn’t back off right this second he was likely to lose something. Soh Tsubouchi. “Why not try dating me? I’m sure it would change your mind!”
“Not. Interested.”
“Such a picky eater!” Soh smirked, the sort of smirk that probably made other girls feel weak at the knees. All it made Yodo want to do was knee him instead. “You should know by now that I don’t take no for an answer. Please, all I want is to show you a good time. Let me -”
“Back off!” a new voice said, and suddenly Yodo was looking at someone in the back of the head. It took a moment to place who it was - the boy on the roof? “She - She said she’s not interested! Leave her alone!”
Two other boys suddenly appeared on either side of him, but Soh shook his head. Ugh. Was that where that smell was coming from? “No wonder it stunk in here!” Yodo said. “I should’ve known Ryu Nakatoni and Kazuhiko Royama would be around here someplace.”
“How dare you insult Soh by interrupting his conversation!” Ryu exclaimed, cracking his knuckles.
“It shows the absolute height of indolence and lack of grace,” Kazuhiko said, pushing his glasses up his nose.
“Now, now, I think perhaps you are being a little overeager,” Soh said, shaking his head. “Come along, it is even more rude to remain where one is so clearly unwanted. Goodbye for now, Miss Yodo. I shall see you again later.”
The three of them vanished, and Sumiko sighed. “They are going to beat the living piss out of you after school.”
“I don’t care,” the boy said. “I couldn’t let them hassle you like that. Bunch of creeps!”
“The gesture was appreciated, but unnecessary,” Yodo said, pushing right past the boy without even taking a look back. “If you knew anything about me at all you’d know -”
“Your bigger sister is a judo black belt, and likes teaching you at home,” the boy said. “You once went to a national meet, and completely crushed everyone there without even trying… Then never went again for reasons nobody understood.”
Yodo stopped completely in her tracks. Yep. That was something that happened one time. She’d gone out to see how much fun it was, and found the whole thing a crushing bore. But nobody knew that, not really. Nobody had the faintest inkling about that at all! How could this random boy even be aware of something like that when she wasn’t even living in this area at the time?
“I was your last opponent,” the boy sheepishly said. “When I saw the replay footage of how you won, that’s when I fell in love.”
<hr>
Deep within Yodo’s brain, several tiny grey robots were a-busy a-panicking as red light flooded the interior compartment and a loud alarm blared. “All hands to battle stations!” a voice cried out. “Identify target! Draw him out of the memory banks!”
The screen at the front of the room divided neatly in two, one half showing the boy’s face as Yodo stared at it in disbelief and the other was a fast whirl of faces and names spinning by far too quickly to be read. A matter of seconds later and a face was matched to a name.
“Katsumoto Kajitani,” the commander said. “So this is the name of our latest adversary, eh? Looks like a tough one! We’ll soon have you beat just like all the others! No romantic encounter passes by unchallenged on my watch! Just you see!”
- Backstory for the robots. What the hell is going on here?!
- One stray renegade robot decides to try actually talking to Yodo later on at night.
- Soh is an agent of the enemy, but what exactly is the enemy?
- Cue simultaneous parody of giant mecha anime and romantic comedy meet cute.
- Something else
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