Bonding
2849 Words
“…Are you kidding?” Byur said
“I wish I was, Maria and Nico…”
Morning had come, but with unexpected news. Lynn and Byur were on the phone talking to each other. Their plans had to be canceled for something none of them would have expected.
“Apparently, Byur, whenever you had that fight with James it inspired Maria to ask Nico out on a date. She’s been telling me she would for a year…but I didn’t think she’d do it. Hell, she better not come crying to me when Nico breaks her heart over something stupid.”
Byur sighed before speaking, “I’m happy for her, but now our plans are all messed up. Nico even told me the other day that this is no time for romance. I guess the two of us could do something, do whatever friends do. The problem is I have no idea what I want to do. I haven’t gone outside for a good eleven years.” The young man had lost a considerable amount of his social skills from all the time he spent cooped up inside his apartment. He pondered for a while and came to a conclusion.
“Since in my opinion it’s too hot to go outside today, we could always watch a movie. There’s no way I’m leaving my house in this weather, so I’ll just find something from the pile of films I used to watch. Do you like action movies?”
“Hmm, yeah, sure. That sounds good; I’m not a fan of the heat myself anyway. Our ‘pals’ went to the beach without us so we can’t do that either. I’ll come around 11:00AM.”
“Great, I’ll see you- wait what? That’s way too early, what are we going to do with so much time on our hands?!”
Byur heard Lynn laughing through his cell phone, “I don’t know, go buy a board game or something. À bientôt (see you soon).” Lynn said as she hung up.
“Was that French?” Byur thought out loud. “Let’s go see what I have to watch.”
Byur got up from his couch and approached his television. He crouched down and rummaged through a large pile of action films under the television. Most of them were not exactly suitable for children, but his grandmother had never denied him something when he showed great interest in it. This might have spoiled him if not for what Tenno had done. These kinds of thoughts ran through Byur’s head as he searched, he quickly dismissed them to retain his sanity, as he had always done. The old floorboards creaked and moaned in pain as he leaned on his feet. Byur had somehow never noticed how old and worn out his home was. Thankfully, it was exactly how he liked it.
His search yielded no results, there were no DVDs in any of the cases, a certain couple of friends might have been to blame for this, he thought. He stood, wondering where to look next, and then the doorbell rang.
“Who is it?”
“I’m an ‘OWL’ agent! I have the first month’s payment for a Byur Lambert.”
Byur quickly opened the door, in front of him stood a man not much older than him. Byur was handed a small package before the man left. He retreated back into his living room after closing the door and opened the package. Inside of it was 200,000 Euros. The outside of the package read “Annual Pay”.
“Dear god…that’s a lot of money” uttered Byur.
Despite the scorching heat, the young man bolted out of his apartment without even remembering to put on a pair of pants. Running at the speed of two horses he quickly entered and exited several stores, buying whatever his heart desired. It was a beautiful day if you could get past the heat, the sun was shining and many new plants had grown over the years, which Byur failed to notice the other day. The beauty of Barrik was astounding to him, but what was really important to him was the all new Entertainment System Five, otherwise known as the ES5. It was on sale and nothing could stop him from buying it.
With near two dozen bags and boxes in his hands he raced back to his home. Byur had no mercy for his door and kicked it opened, breaking it off entirely. Sitting in front of the deceased door was Lynn with the same clothes she had on the first day they had met. Byur entered and quickly placed a large plank of wood where the door used to be.
“Um, sorry, I came even earlier than I said I would. The door was open so I just…walked in.”
“Who cares about the damn time, I just bought some amazing stuff!”
He opened his refrigerator and stuffed all the food he had purchased into it. About 70% of it was varying meat types.
“The ES5 has arrived!”
“I think you’re being a bit too energetic, Byur” teased Lynn.
He “gently” slammed the console onto the floor, saying, “All the new best games are on this. Avenue Fighter, Steel Gear Liquid, Illuminated Souls, and even Requirement of Momentum, they’re all on this one console.”
Lynn tried to hide her enthusiasm as hard as she could, although, it was in vain. She spent hours on the computer; she loved video games as much as he did. Her eyes sparkled at the ES5 as Byur plugged it in. It started up and the words “ES5” appeared on the screen, it then asked for a username and password.
Byur said, “What should our username be?”
“Something tasteful, like ‘N00BSLAYER69’.”
“Man that has to be the worst username in existence, and by the worst username in existence I mean the most patrician, high quality username we have had the privilege to create.”
The two began to play several different video games. After many long hours they had finished one of them, Byur took out Avenue Fighter in order to put in another. Lynn looked at him sternly and asked him how he was holding up.
“Ha-ha, well I’m glad my sight has returned to me. I couldn’t really ask for more at this point, other than accomplishing my current goal.”
Lynn stared at the ground and said, “After we put Tenno down for good, what are you going to do?”
Byur scratched his head, “Well, I suppose I’ll try and raise a family, it won’t be too hard with all this money I’ve been given. I just hope my Grandmother will survive by the time I’m done…”
“I’m sure she will; as long as you don’t slack off we’ll kill that bastard in no time.”
“Do you actually think I can win when the time comes? I believe in myself, yet I don’t want to be over confident.”
Lynn thought for a moment and told Byur the most straightforward answer she could give. “The moment I saw your power I knew you had great potential. However, even that might not have been enough. You are indeed a strange fighter, and your new technique might save your life more than once. Even though the battle has ended your power is still twice as high as it was when you went in to fight James.”
“That’s unnatural? Strange, I could have sworn those books you gave me said martial artists get stronger every time they’re taken to the brink.”
Lynn closed her eyes and flicked Byur’s forehead.
“Ow! What did I do?”
“You didn’t read properly, fool. Even the most serious fight will only provide you with a post-fight boost of thirty percent, 100 percent boosts are unheard of. I’m starting to think your life force is directly connected to your main power reserves.”
“Life force is not just how healthy I am, right?”
“No, it’s true that life force is the energy inside you that keeps you alive, but that’s not all it’s there for. Your life force is composed of your emotions as well. I suppose I see why a stubborn guy like you would be especially affected by it. Don’t rely on ‘Rising Phoenix’ too much or you might end up like a zombie.”
Byur stood up to grab a drink and said, “Well, I might not be a master, but I can tell you one thing. You’re wrong about the zombie part. Thanks to James I was able to understand the way my body and the technique work. Something peculiar was that the more I got up, the more I felt alive. Even now I feel incredible.”
“Interesting…Hey, Byur. Are you interested in knowing your exact strength?”
After sitting back down with a drink in his hand, Byur said in a confused tone, “What do you mean?”
“’OWL’ has a portable scanner that tells you the strength of you or the person in front of you.”
Byur raised an eyebrow. He never thought that a device like that could be created. ‘OWL’ had been responsible for the development of many unearthly products. The technology brought from off-planet organisms played a vital role in providing blueprints for such things. Those in the Organization of Legends were blessed to say the least. No one could comprehend just what it was like until they too had experienced it.
“Let’s try it out, then, Lynn.”
“Alright! The average sportsman has an energy level of twenty. Energy levels consist of one’s speed, strength, and pure energy magnitude. When I had unlocked your inner potential you were at approximately seventy three, give or take.”
“What about now?”
Lynn held the tiny silver device in her right hand as it made thousands of calculations internally. After a short time it beeped and its blue screen revealed a three digit number. Lynn’s mouth opened slightly before she told him the number.
“673”
“Wait, didn’t you say my power was twice as much compared to when I fought James?”
“I…I don’t understand. It’s working properly, but 673 is impossibly high for someone with such little training. James is at 195. Even my estimation of your strength was wrong. I’d expect at most 320.”
“Is it possible that my life force usage permanently makes me a lot stronger?”
“Yes…it’s possible. Your technique makes you infinitely stronger, that’s just crazy. The weirdest part of it all was I asked Maria to damage me, but I wasn’t able to use it at all…Be careful, if you use up all your life force at once, there’s no bringing you back.”
Byur reassured Lynn by placing his hand onto her shoulder. His smile that followed it was enough for her to understand that he knew exactly what he was doing.
“I don’t plan on dying anytime soon. If anyone is going to stop Tenno, it has to be me. You can bet anything on that.”
The young lady gave a light chuckle and said “A moment ago you were so unsure of yourself.”
Byur let out a hearty laugh while patting Lynn’s back. “Why don’t we check your strength, eh?”
Lynn tossed the device up into the air and Byur caught it on its way down. “By the way, this thing is called a ‘scaler’.”
Byur held it at chest level and pressed a tiny black button on the right side of the scaler.
“Keep in mind, my power is well hidden. It’ll only show two percent of my maximum.”
This time it took half a minute for a result to come up. Byur looked at it for a second. It slowly slipped out of his hand and hit the floor. Lynn picked it up and put it back into a bag she had brought with her.
Byur couldn’t find any words to describe his surprise, so he repeated the numbers he had saw.
“38,000” he said as he looked into Lynn’s eyes. “You’re not pranking me right? 38,000 multiplied by fifty is 1,900,000.”
“Impressed? I’m a prodigy, so that much at my age is superb. Tenno, on the other hand is thirty years old and even more talented than I am.”
Byur turned around and mumbled some words to himself, he then said, “How strong is Tenno?”
Lynn sat on the floor and put in another game into the ES5. “92,000,000”
There was a cold silence in the room. Byur laid down on the couch in front of his television. Lynn played Steel Gear Liquid by herself to give her friend some time to take in what he had just heard.
“We can do this, right?” Byur asked himself.
It was 2AM and the two friends had both knocked out playing games. They had become far closer than they had been. Lynn had assured Byur that they would find a way to make him as strong as possible.
The young man dreamed of his grandmother and prepossessing green mountains. Lynn dreamt of her childhood, times she wished she could go back to, peaceful times. Although she was a great fighter, the truth was she despised fighting. There were times where she wished she did not possess her powers. Her meeting with Byur was a large turning point for her. She had not thought that she would ever find an apprentice strong and confident enough to one day rival Tenno. No one had the courage to think of fighting him, let alone defeating him. Even a small chance at victory was enough for her. Byur did not know it, but she was proud of him. The training she provided to him was extremely trying. He had in fact lived up to her expectations; however, she did not wish to show it just yet.
The wooden plank covering the doorway was slowly removed from its place. Two dark figures stood over Byur and Lynn. One of them grabbed Byur by the collar of his shirt and yelled, “What the hell are you doing?!”
Byur woke up flustered, saying, “What? Nico is that you?”
“You bet your arse it is! Why was my sister leaning on your shoulder like that?”
“Hold up, Nico, we both fell asleep while playing games, I swear! Besides, you went out with Maria when you said we have to pay attention to finding Tenno. I should be mad at you, not the other way around.”
Nico flinched a bit when he noticed his hypocrisy. “Well…damn it, I don’t care!” Nico began to chase Byur around the house with a nearby ladle while screaming at him. Lynn woke up to see Maria sitting next to her.
“Why are they making so much noise, damn it.” Lynn stretched her arms and rubbed her eyes with her hands. “How was your date, Maria?”
Maria smiled and said “I had fun, I finally saw Nico doing something other than working. So there’s that. I see you and Byur have been getting along.”
“Yeah, he’s a good guy, just a bit naïve.”
“Are you going to ask him out?” Maria whispered.
“Pff, no, it’s been a while since I’ve had a close friend, and that’s exactly what I want him to be. This isn't a romance anime."
“As long as you’re happy. Want to play something?”
Nico was still chasing after Byur; Lynn tripped Nico and turned to Maria.
“Sure!”
- Writer
