Gravitation Fan Fiction ❯ The DDR Fiasco ❯ The DDR Fiasco ( Chapter 1 )

It's large, square, made of plastic and I hate it. I wish the brat had never bought it. I am talking of course, about Shuichi's annoying, (recently deceased) Dance Dance Revolution mat.

Who thinks things like that up anyway? I mean far to many people dance badly enough as it is without the things supposed “moves” being added to their repertoire of dancing ability, if you could even call it that.

 

In retrospect I can see how the kid would find it amusing however. Let's look at the facts.

It plays loud, annoying techno tunes, makes the screen flash with sparkly bright colors and it involves him getting hyper, sweaty and jumpy while playing it. It's every annoying kids dream toy right? Actually, now that I think about it, it must remind him an awful lot of being at work. Funny, I always thought people played video games to escape the “monotonous toils” of everyday life. I guess I was mistaken, though I suppose Shuichi's work day could be described as anything but monotonous. It could also be described as anything but work as well, but let's not get petty.

 

I remember the day he brought it home from the store. It was a Wednesday if I remember correctly, though that is hardly relevant.

It was in a large, brightly decorated box with black silhouettes of assumingly attractive people dancing on it. They seemed to be having a lot of fun dancing on their dance mats, though I've never seen Shuichi play it quite like the box depicts. He spends too much time flailing about and falling on his ass when he tries to do songs that are way out of his league.

I suppose I'm not one to be talking though right? I mean it's not like I ever played the damned thing…

 

Well, okay I did play it once, when the kid was at work…It was what started my hatred and loathing of the artless machine. Which in turn led to it's ultimate, and rather untimely demise.

Sue me, but I had to prove I was better at it then the kid was. I don't often insult people without something to back it up. All my hours of laughing and ridiculing him needed to be justified.

 

I turned the Playstation 2 on and set up the mat in front of the TV. I waited patiently as about two minutes worth of game logo advertising and a countless amount of safety and health warnings flashed onto the screen. I was just about to turn it off out of sheer boredom when the games main menu finally came up. I was then prompted by an annoying male voice that was less than pleasant to listen to, to pick my game style. I ran through my options quickly, then moved my foot backwards, tapped down a few times, vaguely amused at the ingeniousness of the controls, and picked “Normal Mode.”

It seemed like a good place to start as I didn't want to admit I was a beginner and I was sure I was not an advanced or expert player. I mean I had been forced to watch Shuichi play the damned thing at least a dozen times already. Just how hard could it be? Surely not as hard as the kid made it look…

 

So then the screen flashed and wiggled and did some other crazy things that I'm sure would have made my sister feel motion sick, until it came to rest on the mode I had selected. It too was accompanied by annoying music in the background and bold flashing colors.

 

The annoying voice then asked me to pick a song and rambled on about being cool or something stupid like that. I made a rude gesture at the voice and was about to put the thing on mute when I remembered that I needed to hear the song to do the dancing, so I disdainfully left the volume up.

I had no idea what the little graphs beside each song title meant so I just picked one that had the fewest fluorescent colors on the label and waited.

 

The voice prompted me with encouragement and told me to “get my groove on”. I wanted to tell the voice to do something a little more vulgar and violent with it self, but I held back. It was only a child's game right? Certainly someone must be amused by the stupid voice somewhere, so I let it be.

 

All at once things started to move very fast. The song had a very quick beat and the arrows were flashing very brightly as they flew towards the bar of static arrows at the top of the screen. I panicked and started to move my feet as fast as they could go. I was doing alright I suppose, though I immediately began to sweat like I was doing some heavy duty weight lifting or track running. I hadn't sweated that hard since high school…well, okay I had done my fair share of extracurricular sweating since then, if you catch my subtle innuendo, but I don't ever remember it making me this tired, or at least not this quickly. The annoying voice began making more, stupid, annoyingly disappointed sounding noises, as if I was not amusing him any more and he wanted me to go away. The song progressed and the arrows started to join up in pairs and long glowing green lines that I had no idea what to do with and it was at that point that I screamed a very rude word and walked off the mat. Some animated metal doors slammed shut over my ruined game and the voice attempted to comfort me by saying, “Luck was against you…Maybe.”

 

I fingered the machine and decided that I would beat it at it's own game. I picked the song again, and instead of standing on the mat as I was instructed, I sat crouched over the thing with my hands on the left and right arrows. I was such a genius, I mean did they really think nobody would figure out how to beat it this way?

I smiled and waited for the voice to tell me to get my groove on. The arrows started flying up the screen and I was ready for them, hands poised and waiting. As soon as the first arrows reached the top line, I started smashing my palms crazily over the mat, trying as hard, if not harder then before, to hit all the arrows in time with the music. The voice was back again, encouraging me to watch the arrows and listen to the music. Not even a quarter of the way through the course the doors slammed shut on my screen once more, a large red “FAILED” scribbled across them, as if for some reason the person playing wouldn't get the hint that the large doors prohibiting them from continuing meant “You suck, quit playing” .

 

Now thoroughly exasperated I stood up once more to tackle the game and all it's ridiculousness. I am an Uesugi and there was no way in hell a computer game was going to beat me at anything. So I began playing again. And each time the doors would slam shut over my hard earned sweat and progress to tell me that I sucked, politely of course.

After about twenty minutes I had to stop playing momentarily to go and open a few windows and take my shirt off. It was a good green silk shirt, perfect for walking around the house lazily, being sexy and tempting certain individuals into much more fun forms of exercise, but said individual was not home and I was sweating like crazy in the heavy fabric, so I removed it.

 

I continued on playing, cursing the stupid voice and all it's encouragement. Encouragement my ass, I bet the voice never played a game in it's life so how could it be giving me advice?

It couldn't, but there was no explaining anything to the game. It was just that, a game. I could walk away from it whenever I wanted to right?

Wrong. I couldn't let the game win. Call me pig headed all you want, but there was no way I was going to let that thing beat me. And I was certainly not going to let it beat me on levels I had seen Shuichi pass. I at least had to pass them or I couldn't bug the kid anymore. Well I mean sure I could if I really wanted to, but it would lose meaning.

 

So I kept trying. And trying… And trying some more.

Until finally, after an hour and a half, I finally managed to beat Shuichi's favorite song five times in a row. It was a great accomplishment and victory never tasted so sweet. However I had come to far to stop wining as soon as I started, so I decided to try the same song on a harder level. It couldn't be that much harder right? I mean there were only so many beats in the song.

 

It was at that point that Shuichi walked in the door. At the time I was completely oblivious to his presence, but from threatening to beat the information out of him later on, I managed to get the kid to tell me what he had seen.

 

I was poised, sweating, breathing hard and shirtless, waiting for the game to start going. My eyes must have looked crazed at that stage, as the game had driven me past anger into seething hatred and I know how I get when I am loathing something. I want it to die, which was exactly how I remember feeling at the time.

 

The song started and my feet began to fly over the buttons. Shuichi walked in silently behind me, as he was perplexed to hear the sound of his game going, when he was obviously not home playing it himself. Curiously he peaked into the living room and saw what must have been a very amusing, and highly irregular spectacle. A near impossible sight now given the circumstances and the mats current whereabouts.

So instead of being nice and just gouging his eyes out like I so politely asked him to do afterwards, he went and got his digital camera like the little prick he is.

Now keep in mind that I was still dancing up a storm at this point, but the song was too damned fast for me. My legs got tangled half way between jumping on the left arrow with my right foot and trying to slide over and twist enough to hit the up button with my left. I felt myself going down and because my legs were twisted, I was falling backwards and away from the television. It was then that I vaguely remember seeing a flash, moments before I hit the ground with my face. The game slid it's doors shut on me, called me a loser very politely and I finally admitted defeat. I yelled that it had won and was about to turn around and break the thing in half when my stupid lover burst out laughing from the other side of the living room. He stood, camera in hand by the front door, as I sat panting, flushed red and swearing on the living room floor. If I hadn't been so tired I would have jumped up and strangled him right then and there, but I was exhausted and my mind finally caught up with the rest of my body and I slid back to the floor and fell asleep.

 

When I woke up, there was a blanket draped over my back, Two glasses of water near my head and propped on the glasses was a note and a backwards facing photo.

 

I leaned up on my elbows, grabbed the note and the first glass of water and proceeded to drain it's contents and I scanned over the note. It read:

 

Eiri,

I know you're going to want to kill me for this, which is why I am not home right now. Flip the picture around and just be prepared to scream.

Lots of hugs and kisses,

Shuichi.

 

There was a little happy face with a “V for victory” hand sign next to his name and a bunch of little hearts around the note. I grabbed the second glass of water and started to drink it as I flipped the picture around.

What I saw made me spit water all over the living room furniture.

I put two and two together and realized that I wasn't delusional, that it had been Shuichi that had caused the flash as I fell and it was me in the picture. If you could call it a picture that is. It was a photo of me, moments before I hit the carpet. I was bent at an odd angle parallel to the ground, my face had an expression that could only be described as shocked, retarded constipation and my hands were nowhere near ready to catch my face, which hit the carpet full force if I remember correctly. I was beat red in the face and chest, my hair was stuck up in crazy spikes and I was dripping with sweat. To top it all off, I was shirtless and the failed sign on the game was just about all the way across the TV screen in the background.

 

I was so angry I was strangely calm, which is a very scary thing. I didn't know what I was going to do, or to whom at that point, All I knew was that Shuichi had to die. The picture had to be destroyed. And I would never play DDR ever again. Ever.

 

When I finally calmed down enough to see straight I called Shuichi and demanded that he and the picture return home immediately. He asked if I was going to kill him and I said yes.

He reluctantly agreed to come back as long as he could stay in the bathroom while we talked about what would happen to the picture now.

I agreed only because I knew that if worse came to worse and I really needed to murder him I could break the door down and strangle him with his favorite green towel.

 

He came home, and dashed for the bathroom. I stomped over to the door from my study and demanded that he destroy the camera.

He began yelling back at me and laughing sporadically. He must have been looking at the picture while discussing it's fate with me.

We argued and he taunted me for over half an hour before we finally reached a compromise. I would pretend to love him for, as he has so boldly dictated “An entire month, even during meal times, when I'm at work and at night too!” and he would destroy the picture.

 

It was a horrible ordeal to endure, but I knew I could manage it somehow with the right combination of hard alcohol and cigarettes.

 

He came out and I made sure to delete the photo off of the camera myself.

Things were great…at least for him anyways.

The month went slowly. He made me take him out to movies and we even went bowling a few times, despite my protestation. And who knew he had that strong of a sex drive given the opportunity!

Near the end of the month I was beginning to get used to his constant company and even followed him to work one day.

 

He didn't know it at the time, but I had planned to surprise him with a lunch date. I was sneaking into the NG building to speak with Tohma and K about it, when I noticed people in the building look at my strangely. I mean even stranger then before. I didn't really think anything of it, until I got to Tohma's office and he…he…complemented me on my dancing abilities.

 

I was mortified, but in cool nonchalantness I asked him what he was talking about. He motioned for me to follow him out of his office, which I did. I was still very confused and really …really hoping that he was not referring to what I thought he was.

 

We stopped in front of a room marked “Video Surveillance” which Tohma had to open with two separate keys. We walked inside and sat down in front of a bank of monitors. There were numerous shots of empty or half empty hallways, the lobby, some offices and the elevator cars.

He pointed to one particular screen which looked to be showing an ordinary office. I asked him what he was on and if I could get some from him, but he just smiled and grabbed a little joy stick on the console. He touched a button and he took control of the offices camera. Tilting the view around, the screen slid over to show a desk that was running horizontal to the room and was located nearest the camera. I saw a familiar little blob man mug located on the desks top and I knew that this had to be Shuichi's office. There was nobody else in the world stupid enough to bring that dumb of a mug to an office building. Tohma pointed at a small, picture frame on the desk and told me to watch.

After turning some knobs he zoomed the camera all the way in on the frame and tilted some switches until the image of it was crystal clear. It was the picture I had personally destroyed off of the brats camera. The picture of me falling and looking like an idiot…

 

Tohma looked at my face and seemed to enjoy the harsh silence that had filled the room.

“So you like to dance huh?” he asked me smugly. I turned a mortified face to look at him and was at a loss for words.

Shuichi must have transferred the picture onto Hiro's computer or something before he came back home, because he knew I would make him delete it. And I still had to love him for an entire month while everyone at NG laughed at me and my existence!

I wasn't sure what I was going to do, nor how I was going to do it, but two things were very clear. Shuichi would pay dearly for what he had done. And the DDR mat was going to meet my good friends Mr. Paper Shredder and Mrs. Sewing Scissors as soon as I got home. The mat never saw it coming.

 

~~~~~~~~

Don't ask where this came from. It was an on the spot, spur of the moment type thing. Some of my own feelings towards my DDR mat are expressed here, though obviously exaggerated. ^_^

I hope you enjoyed it.