Shatter That Vessel (2)
Ding. A chime sounded, and the voice chat connected.
“Took you long enough. Snake hag.”
A girl with vivid crimson hair — horns corkscrewed like a cruller rising from her head, and at her shoulders and her ears, membranous wings like a bat's. Komori Sae offered a welcome (?) to the opponent who had only just stepped into the channel.
“Picking a fight from the first line? Come at me and I'll take it. Any time.”
The reply came from an expressionless woman of pure white. Hair closer to snow than to silver, skin just as pale, and pale-violet eyes whose pupils slit vertical, more reptile than anything human. Tachibana Rin — Komori Sae's senior by generation, and a VTuber who had a habit of getting tangled with her as a bitter rival.
“You're the one who was late, so everyone's been waiting. Introduce yourself to the viewers, Grandma.”
“Since when do you order me ar— No. Yielding is a privilege of one's elders. A self-introduction, I can generously accept going first.”
“Yeah, yeah. Honor your elders. Honor your elders.”
Rin leveled a thin glare at the girl snickering her pfuh-huh, and opened her mouth again.
“Hebinichiwa. Serpent god Tachibana Rin, of Anathema Production. Look after me today as well, viewers.”
“Thanks. Don't care for the nickname, though.”
She added a recommendation that they change it to RinSae, or Hebimori, as soon as they possibly could.
“Throwing a fit because your name isn't in front? This is why picky old hags are the way they are.”
“If you're going to bark, do it back in the stables. Recommended.”
Sae snorted at the deadpan retort and settled her voice.
“Elohim, Essaim! Anathema Gen 2. The archdemon Komori Sae makes her entrance!”
“Archdemon (laughs).”
Mary, hearing the reaction Rin had just produced, couldn't keep herself from butting in.
“You're saying the part inside the parentheses... out loud?”
“Mm. Expressing emotion is important.”
The face that delivered this remained bone-dry. Or rather — look closely, and the eyes held the faintest gleam of smugness.
“Whatever. The brat's introduction is fine either way. Straight to the point.”
Both of them had their streams up, and on both screens a game lobby was showing.
“Today's event for the God-Demon War is this game.”
Mouse Hell in the Bucket. The premise was mice that had fallen into a bucket of milk, stacking cheese in a bid to climb out. The number of cheese pieces, however, was finite, and so the mice — which was to say, the players — had to fight over that limited supply. A party game stuffed with minigames of exactly that sort: that was Mouse Hell in the Bucket.
“Anyone who saw the tweet already knows, but we have guests today. —All right, Tama-chan.”
At Rin's introduction, a woman's voice joined them. The tone of it was more than a little prickly.
“Nyahallo. Yugure Tama, enlisted on Tachibana Rin's side, da-nya.”
A bakeneko — a youkai cat. Onto the screen came a character with beast ears pricked straight up from the crown of her head. Her own stream wasn't live, so what showed was a still illustration, frozen in place: Yugure Tama of the sharp glare, whites of the eyes cutting at the rims. The character played by Akaba Akane, miko of Takaku Shrine.
“Tama-chan. Thanks for coming today.”
“Enough, da-nya. We're colleagues. Since when do we make a fuss of thanking each other over something like this, nya?”
“Cut the nonsense, nya, viewers. I'll say it as many times as it takes. Rin-chan and I are a business relationship and nothing else, da-nya.”
“Anyway. You're here, so crush that brat. Thoroughly.”
“Crush, what crush, nya. If there's a bitch you want to beat to death, handle it yourself, da-nya. Oh — and you too, kid. Look after me today, da-nya.”
A brief silence. Then Komori Sae, realizing a beat too late that she was the one being addressed, scrambled.
“Ah— yes. It's a pleasure to— I mean, yeah. You too.”
The logic of it was simple. Whether you went by the character model or by her colleagues' eyewitness accounts from real life, Yugure Tama left a decidedly fierce impression. Set a cocky little brat beside a scary older girl who gave off delinquent energy, and the latter was bound to be the former's natural enemy. Whoever had done the casting had probably taken that dynamic into account, at least in part.
“Anyway, hurry up and introduce the one you brought, nya. You planning to just leave them standing there, da-nya?”
“Yes ma'am. I mean— no. Yeah. ...Ahem. Mary-nee? Come on out.”
And only then did the last of them appear on screen. As with Tama, it was a still illustration.
“Konmea! I'm Sae-chan's reinforcement, the vampire queen Mary Tepes!”
“Thanks for coming to help.”
“Not at all. If it's Sae-chan who called me, then any time at all...”
“I'll pay this kindness back with my body next time♡”
“...N-neheh?!”
Even from an illustration that didn't so much as change expression, the voice was flustered enough that the feeling came through raw. Komori Sae, listening, grinned from ear to ear.
“Oh myyy? Whatever were you thinking, to react like that? All I said was that the next time Mary-chan needs it, I'll come help her stream the exact same way♡”
“Eh, um, I mean...”
“...Don't tease a naive kid so much, nya. You horny little brat.”
Tama shut it down, a small sigh along with the words. Say what you liked about her, she was someone who often got stuck playing mediator once a collab was underway.
Once the noise had settled into something like a lull, Rin picked the explanation back up.
“Anyway. Introductions are done, so I'll move us along.”
“Win condition is set at twenty points. First side to take three rounds wins.”
First place in each minigame scored three points, with second and third taking two and one, which meant a single round took seven minigames at the fewest.
“And the penalty is... eating spicy food. We'll get the recipe from Aki-chan later.”
“Heeh— You sure you're okay, Grandma?”
“Worry about yourself. First.”
The two of them were famous inside Anathema Production for being unable to eat spicy food. As penalties went, this one was a genuine threat.
“You okay with spicy food, Mary-chan, nya?”
“Mmm, it's not that I can't eat it at all. No, wait... if I had to say, I actually handle it pretty well?”
Mary had eaten it often enough alongside Sion, who liked the stuff. She'd grown fairly used to it compared to the beginning, and measured against a Japanese palate her tolerance was probably on the sturdy side.
“Though once it's on the level of Aki-senpai's special cooking, then, well...”
“You could drag someone over from Korea and it'd still be too much, da-nya.”
Even that had a limit. Enjoying heat of that degree wasn't the territory of enthusiasts — it was the territory of masochists. At the very least, it was penalty enough to make all four of them get serious.
“All right — we start!”
The game kicked off at once, and the roulette to decide the first minigame spun.
A five-second count, long enough for the players to brace themselves. When it passed, the screen changed again.
A long road of cheese afloat on a sea of milk, and at the far end of it, four mice.
“The lead is mine.”
“Ah— you're not stopping there?!”
“No racer in this world stops just because you tell them to.”
They broke forward together at the blare of a horn.
“Hup! This much isn't going to stop me!”
“I'd like to pick up a little speed, but... this is pretty annoying, da-nya.”
The obstacles in their way came in three kinds. First were the ones made of cheese, ranging from walls that simply refused to let you through to chunks that stunned you for three seconds on impact. Three seconds in a race was no loss you could shrug off — but the truly fatal piece was elsewhere. It was when those met the second obstacle: the milk. Miss a step and drop through one of the holes along the course, or let the milk tsunami surging up behind the mice overtake you, and you died on the spot. Elimination, instantly.
“Hoo.”
Tachibana Rin, out ahead in the lead, drew a long breath. Flinch for even a moment, too careful on the jump, and she might give up first — still far better than dying to a fall this early and coming in fourth. So she stopped for a beat before a wide hole, and committed to the jump—
Thud. Splash!
“Ngh.”
“Ahaha! Scru-ub♡”
“Damn it. This goddamn brat.”
And the third obstacle, the real spice of a party game — that was an attack from another mouse. Timed to the exact instant of the jump, Rin's white mouse took the hit from Sae's red one, caught a stun in midair, and dropped straight down into the milk.
A pathetic little jingle rang out, and the word 4th stamped itself across Rin's profile.
“Baaaka. This is just how the game works, you know? The one who lets their guard down is the stu—”
Splash!
“Hyah?!”
“I'll have you know I'm on the same team as that idiot. But the one who lets their guard down is the one in the wrong, da-nya?”
A punch from the tan mouse followed through. Sae took the plunge the same way Rin had — into the water, no. Into the milk.
And then Tama, who had been building speed to clear the hole herself, stopped dead and spun back around.
“Ah.”
“Twice, maybe. Do it a third time and you're a moron, da-nya.”
“Ehehe......”
Her eyes met Mary's — Mary, who had picked that exact moment to charge in, all set to shove her. Caught at the scene of the crime, Mary laughed, sheepish.
“Thinking of going a round with me right here, nya? You want a duel, I'll take it, da-nya.”
“Ah, n-no. Please, go on ahead. Let's... let's keep this peaceful.”
Mary wilted on the spot and backed away.
“Then I'll gratefully go first, da-nya.”
From that battle, Yugure Tama came away with three pieces of cheese.