Slum Online
Authors: Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Tags: #Action & Adventure, #Epic, #Fantasy, #Fiction, #Japan, #Science Fiction
SLUM
ONLINE
HIROSHI SAKURAZAKA
Slum Online
© 2005 Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Originally published in Japan by Hayakawa Publishing, Inc.
Bonus Round
© 2010 Hiroshi Sakurazaka, originally written for Slum Online Haikasoru edition.
English translation by Joseph Reeder
Cover illustration by toi8
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders.
HAIKASORU
Published by
VIZ Media, LLC
295 Bay Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
www.haikasoru.com
ISBN: 978-1-4215-3956-0
Haikasoru eBook edition, August 2010
> CONTENTS
I PRESSED THE
BUTTON and was no longer Etsuro Sakagami.
I had become Tetsuo.
Music spilled from the speakers. I sat before a twenty-fiveinch tube television, three cables snaking from inputs on the front of the set to a game console lying on the floor, a joystick held lightly in my fingers. Two more cords ran between the console and the wall, one to an electrical outlet and the other to a LAN jack.
My room was typical, nothing fancy. Shelves and racks lined the walls, filled to bursting with paperback novels, DVDs, and video games. Wires threaded their way between the piles of junk that littered the floor. I had a dresser, but most of my clothes were on hangers suspended from the curtain rail. Outside my room, an ordinary hallway led to a flight of steep stairs, and beyond that an ordinary living room. All part of an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood. This particular ordinary house belonged to my parents, and I called it home.
A motorbike
putt-putt-putted
down the road that ran past our house. A police car trailed close behind, orders to pull over crackling loudly over the bullhorn mounted on its roof. Beneath the road, a fat fiber optic cable had been laid through gas company-owned pipe space in the ground. The signal created when I pressed the A button was traveling through that cable right now, a compressed packet of data moving at the speed of light—300,000 kilometers per second in a vacuum, fast enough to circle the earth seven and a half times in the span of a second. The packet raced south beneath the asphalt, flying past the motorbike as it plodded along at a leisurely 36 kph.
A busy ramen shop stood on the street corner. Illegally parked cars lined the shoulder of the road near the shop, much as they did every night. A middle-aged man squatted beneath a light pole at the side of the road, vomiting up a partially digested broth of beer and noodles. A woman standing in line outside the shop, her brow knitted in disgust, shielded herself behind her boyfriend. Across the intersection a foreigner was robbing the clerk of a twenty-four-hour convenience store at knifepoint. Oblivious to the crime unfolding a stone’s throw away, the police continued barking orders for the motorbike to pull over, the staticky pop of their voices echoing through the humid night air. Rows of red taillights trailed off into the distance.
The packet left all that behind as it hurtled toward the hub that would guide it on its way. No sooner had the A button signal passed through a series of computers and reached the server than it turned back into a packet racing down the same fiber optic network it had just traversed. Past
Gimme all your
money!
Past
Stop the bike now!
Past
Ew, gross!
Then into the house, across the living room, up the stairs, down the hall, into my room and through the LAN cable stretched across the floor.
Tetsuo sprang to life.
The television screen displayed an aerial view that looked down on Tetsuo at a 45-degree angle. He wore a short school uniform with pants that looked like an old pair of bellbottoms. A white headband held back his spiky manga hair. On his feet were a pair of high wooden clogs. No socks.
The fingers of my right hand rested on the controller’s three buttons while my left held the stick with a light yet steady grip, the way a cook might hold an egg. Pressing the stick to the right would move Tetsuo forward toward the middle of the screen, left would move him backwards. The A button made him block, the B button punch, and the C button kick. Combinations of stick movements and button presses could make Tetsuo perform a variety of complex maneuvers.
I tapped the stick twice to the right and Tetsuo broke into a run. A wall of cel-shaded polygonal blocks scrolled by in perfect sync with Tetsuo’s stride. A polygonal road glided beneath his feet. Polygonal furniture set in polygonal houses peeked out from behind digital glass. A pair of too-perfect clouds like butter rolls drifted in the unreal turquoise blue sky. Light poles cast unchanging shadows on the ground, the sharp angles of their underlying wireframe almost, but not quite, concealed. Just another sunny day in Versus Town.
Tetsuo ran down the broad Main Street that cut through the center of town. In front of him a landscape of grainy pixels winked into life only to snuff out just as quickly in his wake.
It may have been eleven o’clock at night, but Versus Town was just waking up. There were other people on the street with Tetsuo, all of them running along the right side of the road. Not a one was standing or walking at a regular pace.
Tetsuo rounded a corner. He hopped a wall and then turned another corner. A man was coming straight toward Tetsuo along the left side of the road.
I pressed the A button to stop. My fingers tilted the stick, commanding Tetsuo forward and to the left. A fraction of a second later, Tetsuo responded by planting a foot and veering leftward. Tetsuo and the man brushed against each other, each spinning around the point of impact. If I hadn’t stepped to the side when I did, they would have collided head-on.
I pulled out my keyboard and started hammering, my words appearing in a bubble over Tetsuo’s head as I typed.
> Watch where you’re going!
Judging by his fighting stance, the man standing before Tetsuo was a capoeirista, and a heavyweight at that. He stood a full head taller than the middleweight Tetsuo, and the capoeirista had the bulk to match the height. The capoeirista remained silent. Unsatisfied, I continued my tirade of text.
> Ever hear of walking on the right side of the road?
He wore a camouflage-textured tank top and a red wristband wrapped tightly around his right arm. Tetsuo put his hands on his hips in a gesture of frustration.
> Helloooo? Anybody home?
The capoeirista answered with a kick.
There was no way to see it coming. Like a frog staring at an unsuspecting fly before flicking out its tongue, the capoeirista’s expression never changed. No feelings manifested on that polygonal face to betray his thoughts.
Defenseless, Tetsuo took the full brunt of the capoeirista’s sweeping kick. The force of the blow sent him flying. Spinning as he sailed through the air, Tetsuo slammed into a nearby wall and fell crashing to the ground. A meaty, exaggerated thud burst from the speakers. Crack details marred the concrete blocks at the point of impact. Tetsuo’s health gauge fell by 10 percent.
Text bubbled over the capoeirista’s head.
> Shut up, karateka.
I adjusted my grip on the stick. My hands blurred over the controls. Tetsuo vaulted off the ground with a kip-up, putting some distance between himself and the capoeirista. The capoeirista charged, unleashing a forward kick as Tetsuo got to his feet. I didn’t bother with the A button. Using only the stick, I maneuvered Tetsuo back and to the left, sidestepping the attack. The capoeirista was already well into his next move.
Capoeira is a traditional martial art from Brazil that makes extensive use of foot techniques. Their kicks and sweeps trace graceful arcs that make the fighter look half a dancer in battle. But behind those kicks lurks deadly strength, especially when delivered with the force of a heavyweight.
A low sweep. A torso kick. An axe kick. A step-in roundhouse. The capoeirista left no gap between his attacks, putting Tetsuo solidly on the defensive. When the barrage finally ended there was a brief, but significant, recovery time before the capoeirista could move again. Heavyweights packed a lot of power in each attack, but they took longer to recover too, leaving them vulnerable. That was the price they paid for their raw power.
I timed a flying knee to land after his next lunge. Tetsuo’s knee made contact with a satisfying
thunk
that signaled a successful counterhit, and the capoeirista soared. I kneed his body once more in the air and then crouched to meet him with a punch as he landed. Before the punch animation had even finished, I was already inputting my next command: two quick taps on the stick. The instant the cooldown from his last attack ended, Tetsuo dashed forward. Pressing the A button to cancel out of the run, I followed up with a low foot sweep. Tetsuo dashed again and brought a punch crashing down squarely onto the fallen capoeirista’s back. As his opponent rose to his feet, Tetsuo jabbed with his fastest punch. Now the capoeirista was playing defense.
I canceled out of a punch-kick combo and tapped the command to speed-dash. Tetsuo retracted his right leg midswing and darted forward.
Time for a throw.
Tetsuo grabbed the capoeirista by the scruff of the neck and hammered him with a head butt that sent him sprawling on his back. Tetsuo moved after him so quickly he might have been the heavyweight’s shadow.
The capoeirista rolled to one side, sweeping out with his leg as he regained his feet. It was the textbook response, and I’d seen it coming a mile away. Tetsuo dodged the attack with ease before firing another knee strike. It connected with a mighty crunch. Tetsuo snuck in another knee as the capoeirista hung suspended in the air, and the heavyweight went flying into the wall.