Magical Scribe Eleanor Slam versus Magical Juggernaut Heather Crunch

There's quite a commotion in the little alleyway. Here a vender of illegal wares argues with his customer over the price of smuggled goods. On the other side of the street, a lady has to wash her clothes in a small pink plastic tub, water from the nearby hose causing the suds to overflow and spill out. And beneath their feet, the dirt is cracked. Some poor schmuck rides in on a bike and draws leers from everyone there, but only for a moment. For I'm the main spectacle.

Well, myself and the chick trying to beat me unconscious.

She's agile, I'll give her that. She tries to approach with a flip through the air, ending in kick aimed straight for my head. But she's wide open to an uppercut that knocks her to the ground. I follow up with a spinning roundhouse kick that she hastily ducks out of the way of. Again she tries for a flying kick, so I grab her leg and throw her back down. By now she's unsteady on her feet and wide open to a good old fashioned leg sweep. Again she's making out with the dirt.

Still she staggers back up, determined not to go down easy, but I wasn't going to let her get in a single attack. A jab to the face makes her stagger back, and I shift towards her with a gut punch. She clumsily makes a kick at me, her movements sluggish and easy to read. More than enough for me to sidestep it and counter with a kick to the head.

Everyone can see it now : she's dazed and about ready to fall unconscious. Her sheer stubbornness is forcing her to stand upright. Which is cute and all, but it doesn't help her at all. Especially when I grab her and suplex her stupid face into the barren soil.

I can't even tell if she's still breathing at this point. But the small crowd that's gathered around us don't seem to care about her well-being. They cheer me, the victor.

My flawless victory is announced, and I look to my opponent, my expression carefully blank.

"You're bad at Street Fighter, ma'am."

The person who followed me home snapped the controller I gave her in two upon her hundredth loss, little grey bits of plastic flying around my mostly bare room. In our casual clothing - well, I am, anyway. She's wearing a stupidly frilly dress - we're sitting on the bed, across from the desk that holds my pathetically tiny television, playing the only thing I could afford from the pawn shop. She springs up and growls at me. "Fighting games are boring," is how she - Heather Crunch - justifies her loss. She sure stuck around a long time for somebody who dislikes them so much. "It doesn't feel anything like real fighting!"

"Yes, ma'am." Go fuck yourself. You're the one who invited yourself in and insisted on joining me in playing video games. I was already convinced you were trying to rape me from your creepy double entendres. I had to put everything back the way it was after your flamboyant ass wrecked it so I'd be allowed to get lunch, and then I had to hunt down something to eat after the cafeteria closed. After that I had to get back to the tortuous task of filling out forms written in Incubator-text for eight more hours because our Supreme Overlord Bunnycat the Sixth is an asshole. And I wish he'd figure out that those breathing exercises don't work when you don't have any fucking motor control so you can't fucking relax, you just get more and more antsy as the pain sets in and if that fucking bunnycat piece of shit bothered to ask in the first place he'd know that kind of thing but no of course not the boss knows everything about nothing and I just want to wring his smug little neck and feed him his own cold, black heart until he chokes on it. I hope he dies. Him and his brother from the Eighth. I hate them. I want those fucking things to die. Die Die die die diediediedie-

"So... this is all you do?" Oh. That pest is talking again, and I realize I've been staring blankly at the wall. I turn to her, and see that she's giving me an annoying look.

"I stay in my residence and use this old machine to entertain myself after work until I fall asleep," I find myself answering to her disappointed face, pointing to the game console. It'd be really fun to lie right about now. Just a little bit. Something that'd shut her up. But I can't bring myself to do it, so I continue spilling my guts. "On weekends I stay in here and do much of the same."

She's folding her arms over her chest. "Nothing else?"

"I also go out and replenish my supply of sweets for the week. Local store has stuff at half-price before 10 AM on Sunday." After she barged in, I'd forgotten that I had some hard candies stashed in the drawer beneath the television. No wonder I'm feeling so pissy. I remedy that by opening said drawer to access the clear plastic sack containing my latest haul. Not paying the over-exuberant bitch any mind, I take a random one out, quickly unwrap it, and pop it into my mouth.

Mmm, watermelon.

Bitchcakes looks like she's thinking up something really wicked. Turning her head this way and that, making her ponytails rock back and forth like a metronome. She's making obnoxious affirmation noises, too. I didn't think anybody actually did that sort of thing, and yet here she is.

"Aha! I've got it!" she exclaims, leaping up onto the desk and - oh come on! Not the TV! Get off my fucking TV! "It is my belief that you would BENEFIT from spending your weekend basking in my GLORIOUS presence!"

"ERGO!" she yells as she jumps down, bringing three fucking months' salary crashing to the ground in broken glass. "As rrrrrrrank leader, I am going to spend MY valuable time aiding YOU!" Stop pointing at me. "To find your inner weapon! And we are starting... Tomorrow!"

That thing. That loud thing that pretends to be human just forced me into working on a weekend. I have to do unpaid overtime. I have to work without pay. More work. No pay. No pay for the work. If she would bother to look , she'd see me scowling.

And yet, amidst it all, a ray of hope shines through : the horrible girl is at my door and is making to leave. Before she does, she delivers an ultimatum : "I wanna see you at the gym at 8-o'clock tomorrow morning! Don't you dare be late!" before the thing that would not leave... leaves. Stomping down the hallway, further and further away from me. Giving me a brief period of solace to think about tomorrow. She's probably going to make me exercise.

She's the first person I've met here that looks like a normal human being, and yet she's breaking my things and making me fulfill her strange whims. And I'm pretty sure she's some kind of deviant.

I'm staring down at the smashed remnants of my dearest friend. The plastic's bent and broken. There's shards of glass all over the place that'll need vacuuming. And I have a sour taste in my mouth that the candy cannot mask.

I've decided.

I hate her. Yeah, I... I think I really hate her.