Shatter the Vessel (3)
"Hut! Ha! Haaah!"
"...I'll admit it. Your talent for running away is outstanding."
A round of cheese drifted on a lake of milk, and across that pale surface a single chibi yellow mouse went bouncing along. Yugure Tama—Akaba Akane—watched the sight for a moment, then shifted her gaze to the upper right of the screen.
It was a minigame of shoving one another clean out of bounds. She had been the first to fall, and now she was quietly spectating. Tama had dropped, and Komori Sae after her, until only two remained: Mary Tepes, the yellow mouse, and Tachibana Rin, the white. Mary's present predicament was a frantic weave of dodges against Rin, who had eaten the hammer—a viciously powerful item.
"Ugh. Missed again."
"Fufun...! This is the prowess of a vampire queen, I'll have you know!"
Rin let out a low groan as her swing went wide once more.
The hammer carried tremendous knockback, a top-tier item that could blast you off the stage in a single blow if it so much as connected. If it never connected, though, it meant nothing at all.
In truth, Mary was not much of a fighter. MHIB offered exactly one attack: a punch. Even so, a whole thicket of tactics grew off that single move—fishing for the opener, opening the gap, punishing the lag at the end of an opponent's swing, hopping clear, jumping with them to match their height and punching then. For Mary, frail in any war of nerves, that entire realm was nothing short of rat poison.
...Had her opponent not been holding the hammer, that is.
A character who picked up the hammer had their jump sealed, and even without a key pressed the attacks poured out on their own, one after another. In theory, simply jumping in time with the swings made evasion completely certain.
"Ha! Hup!"
Whoom! Whoom! Whoooom—whoom—whoooooom!
A threatening sound, and yet Mary's manner was perfectly at ease. The timing of the swings had already been reduced to a pattern. All that remained was pressing the jump key to match it. The intervals were somewhat random, of course, but for Mary the fight had long since degenerated into a rhythm game with a pinch of randomness stirred in.
"First place is mine to claim!"
She even jabbed at Rin in the gaps between jumps. At that point the strongest item in the game was useless—worse than useless. Rin was being hounded harder than if she had been holding nothing at all. Even if she tried to open the distance and simply wait out the item's duration...
"And just where do you think you're running? I do not permit it!"
"Ahahaha! That's it, Mary-unnie!"
Picking up an item shaved a little off one's movement speed. Commit to the chase, and there was no shaking it.
"Smash that stupid snake to bits!"
How many people would willingly step into the range of a hammer whose every swing was instant death from every direction? Very few. One of those rare specimens was right here.
"This way, if you please!"
"Aah... She's definitely not looking at some powerhouse with the strongest weapon. She's just treating it as a nice, stable damage window, nya."
Damage kept piling onto the white mouse, and at last the dam burst.
"So this is how it ends. Maybe I was better off never taking the hammer."
Ding! With a bright chime, Rin's character dropped into a groggy state. She let out a sigh as she muttered. The hammer, its duration not yet spent, fell to the ground; Mary scooped it up and sent Rin flying with a solid whack.
"Fwaaah... I finally won...!"
Splash. And then, rising dead center on the screen—
"...Haa. To think she'd charge straight into a head-on fight against a hammer."
"Eeheehee, a scrub reptile who loses even holding the strongest item—"
"Shut up, brat."
"Nuh-uh! Losers don't get to talk!"
Sae, pouncing on the opening to needle her. Even as they bickered, the game rolled over to the score tally, and each mouse fetched a hunk of cheese from somewhere and stacked it on her own spot.
"I have done it. This is an escape!"
The number beneath Mary's place stood at exactly twenty. Having claimed those twenty points, the yellow mouse scurried up the cheese tower, sprang with all her might, and escaped the bucket—vanishing into a meadow lying open beneath warm sunlight.
"Unfortunate. If I'd won just now, that would have been the escape."
"It's still one to one, so don't sulk too hard, nya. We're back to square one, aren't we, nya."
"Sending it to my stream is pointless."
"Aaah! Send the superchat over here! Mary-unnie is on my team to begin with. Are you some dummy who doesn't even know that?"
"Be quiet, you miser loli."
"Hmph. Says the hag who's just as mad for money."
A sharp glare. The two avatars locked eyes.
"Could we not simply... get along?"
"If we could, we wouldn't have started this versus collab in the first place, nya."
Knew Rin was smart, but Mary was this good too?
The mice came scurrying in and stacked their cheese towers. A sidelong glance—Mary checked the score at the base of the tower.
If she took first in the next game... exactly twenty points. Victory. She swallowed, eyes fixed on the spinning roulette.
A game appearing for the first time on today's stream, though she remembered seeing it once on someone else's broadcast. Thirty mousetraps, each baited with cheese, and only three of them actually worked. Every time your turn came, you took one piece of cheese. Last one alive took first. A simple game.
In other words, a contest of pure luck. A little awkward for a round that might decide the whole match. Or—depending on how you looked at it—did the fact that no one could control it set the palms sweating? Mary tilted her head.
...It did not take her long to realize the latter was the correct answer.
Please! Please! Please...!
Not long after the game began, Mary had her hands pressed tight together, deep in prayer. She had never imagined a situation in which neither reflexes nor judgment could intervene would set her nerves screaming like this.
"Ack!"
"Cause and effect. Good is rewarded, evil is punished. What is meant to be... pfft."
"Ugh... and I just had to go and sound all profound...!"
Twenty-six cheeses remaining. Sae's red mouse, who had sprung a live one on the very first pick, was out.
"...Ah."
"Serves you right! Hag!"
"Still. You won."
"Ngh...!"
Nineteen cheeses remaining. Next, Tachibana Rin let out a squeak and became a mousetrap's victim.
"Uuuu......"
A one-on-one against Yugure Tama. Tama took a cheese, and now eighteen sat before Mary. Live traps remaining: one. The odds were one in eighteen. The odds of Tama springing it next, one in seventeen. Then Mary again, one in sixteen... No. It meant nothing.
Running the numbers didn't give her anything she could actually do. All that remained was to pray to heaven...
...Huh. Wait. Pray?
And in that instant, an idea flashed through Mary's mind. On any ordinary day it would have been impossible, but here and now—away from home—there was a means she could use. Mary drew in a deep breath, and opened her mouth.
"No, seriously, that is actually not okay, nya?!"
Mary Tepes had called a Buster Call.