The True Endgame

“I can play with you, right, right? I want to play with you!” Aiko whines to Ryouta after they’ve all placed their orders.

“Well, you already ordered yourself a headset, and it’s just a game, so I don’t see why not,” Ryouta answers.

“Have you ever even played a VRMMO before?” Cassandra asks Aiko.

“Nope! But I know that Serra never did either, so it’s okay! I’m sure it’ll work out as long as I have my Ryouta with me,” Aiko says, her voice full of confidence.

Alice chimes in, “I did not have much experience prior to Fantasy Tales Online either. No matter how inexperienced she is, I am sure my hero will be able to keep all of us safe.”

“Fine. What kind of character are you going to play?” Cassandra asks.

With Alice sitting at the end of the table and Serra sitting next to Ryouta, Cassandra has ensured that Aiko sits next to her so that she may keep distance between her and Ryouta.

Serra, meanwhile, is coloring in the picture on the back of her kids’ menu. The waiters and waitress of this restaurant know that she always wants one to color in even if she doesn’t look that young.

Ryouta notices something familiar when he looks at the coloring job that Serra is doing.

He looks at the wall on the opposite side of the room and sees a bunch of colored-in kids’ menus taped to the wall. While some of them look random and sloppy, there is a group that has been colored with a similar skill level to what Serra is doing next to him. Part of him feels kind of proud of her for being so popular here and having her colored menus up on the wall, but another part of him feels like he can never let anybody know that he’s dating a girl who colors kids’ menus. With how short and petite she is, and this newly-discovered hobby of hers, he’s worried about what people make think about him.

“Don’t know!” Aiko answers Cassandra. “Ryouta, Ryouta, what character do you want me to play?”

Ryouta’s attention is brought away from Serra’s coloring. “Uhh, no idea,” he answers. “Just play whatever you want.”

“I want to play what you want me to play!”

“I want you to play what you want to play.”

“I want to play what you want me to want to… you… that didn’t work. Anyways! I’ll play whatever you want.”

“Alright, alright. We don’t really have a tank, so we could use one of those to make our group more rounded.”

“A tank? Like one of the war boom-boom ones? Would you drive me? I – I want you inside of me, but I don’t know how I feel about being a vehicle and you driving me that way.”

Alice maintains a calm expression, trying not to laugh at what Aiko just said, while Ryouta and Cassandra almost spit their complimentary water out of their mouths.

“No, no – no, a tank, they’re like the real big and tough characters in games who stand at the front and grab the enemy’s attention while taking most of the damage,” Ryouta explains after swallowing his water.

“See! I knew you liked them big!” Aiko pouts.

“That’s – that’s not what I meant. I just mean like… big and flashy to draw attention, not big.”

“Hmph! I saw what sort of porn you like, and now this – if my Ryouta wants me to be big, then I’ll be big!”

Their conversation starts attracting attention from other tables.

“Don’t worry about it. Between me and the dog bastard, we’ve got enough durability even if we’re not proper tanks,” Cassandra explains. “It’d be better if you make yourself small and quiet so that you don’t get in our way.”

Cassandra’s and Aiko’s eyes meet. Ryouta swears he can see some sparks flying between them as the girls challenge one another.

“I’ll be even bigger than you are!” Aiko declares.

“You won’t be stronger. Good luck trying to catch up to me. It doesn’t matter how big you are if I’m stronger than you and end up tanking everything anyways,” Cassandra explains.

Their staring contest is only cut off when their server arrives with their food.

Ryouta got a fairly basic cheeseburger with barbecue sauce, onion straws, and lettuce. Alice got a lean turkey burger with tomato, lettuce, and one of the restaurant’s signature sauces. Cassandra got a regular burger with bacon and mushrooms.

Their three burgers are all relatively normal both in ingredients and size in comparison to what Serra and Aiko got.

Aiko’s burger is larger than all of theirs and has grilled pineapple, tomato, lettuce, a patty glazed with teriyaki sauce, and mango mayonnaise to top it all off.

Then there is Serra’s burger.

Despite Serra being the smallest of them all, her burger is by far the largest. It has two patties, each of which are covered in a sauce made from the world’s hottest peppers. It has tomatoes and lettuce, but it also has a layer of fried jalapenos and onion straws with pepper-jack cheese melted over the top layer of freshly-cut jalapeno peppers. The sauce alone smells hot enough that everybody at the table smells it.

Yet, Serra dips her finger in some of the sauce leaking out of the messy burger and licks it off.

She’s seemingly unphased and looks at Ryouta, Alice, and Cassandra, wondering why they look surprised.

“You said you’ve come here with her before, right?” Ryouta asks Aiko.

“Yup!” Aiko answers.

“Does she usually get stuff like this?”

“Yup!”

“Is it actually hot?”

“Nope!”

Ryouta eyes Serra’s burger.

Picking up on his curiosity, Serra takes one of the fries that came with her burger, dips it into some of the burger’s sauce, and then hands it to Ryouta.

“Thanks,” Ryouta says as he takes the fry to smell it. It certainly smells hot, but if Aiko doesn’t think it’s hot and if Serra is willing to eat a whole burger covered in that stuff, then it can’t be that bad.

Ryouta eats the fry and makes sure to get the part with sauce on it right on his tongue.

“H-how is it?” Cassandra asks.

Ryouta, looking at Cassandra with a face as straight as stone, says, “Try it yourself. It’s not that bad.”

The moment that Cassandra is distracted by picking up one of her fries to scoop some sauce from Serra’s burger, Ryouta looks away to the side, in Alice’s direction, and looks ready to cry.

Alice covers her mouth with her hands and looks at Cassandra with wide eyes. She feels as if she should warn Cassandra regarding what is about to happen to her, but she also wants to see how Cassandra reacts if her hero is currently trying his hardest to not cry like a baby.

Cassandra, with even more of the sauce on her fry than what Ryouta had, eats her fry.

“Huh… you’re right, it’s not hot at—” Cassandra stops mid-sentence.

Everybody at the table stares at her.

She looks at Ryouta and sees him sweating and guzzling water while watching her reaction.

“Bastard!” Cassandra shouts. “This is disgusting! It’s way too hot!”

The first thing she tries is grabbing a napkin and wiping it against her tongue in hopes of wiping up the sauce, but it’s too late for that. Then she tries drinking water, but as Ryouta already realized, that only brings temporary relief but makes the problem worse as soon as said relief is gone.

Meanwhile, Serra picks up her burger, opens her small mouth as wide as it can go, and takes a sizeable chunk out of her burger.

Ryouta and Cassandra watch in disbelief as Serra takes bite after bite of her burger without any issue.

“I thought you said it wasn’t hot?” Ryouta asks Aiko.

“It’s not… to Serra,” Aiko answers. “We’ve gone to some places in the city before where they have hot food challenges, and she’s beaten every single one! Actually, I’m pretty sure that they consider her the challenge at this point. Whoever can make something hot enough to defeat Serra would have the hottest food in the city!”

Serra, the camera-shy, deaf, petite girl that Ryouta has come to love, is apparently lacking in taste buds and can down the hottest of foods without needing so much as a single sip of water.

Ryouta wants to comment on her power level being too high, but more than that, he wants to tear his tongue out of his mouth to be spared from this suffering.

“Hah! You two try her burger there? The crew in the kitchen knows to make it extra hot when it’s Serra’s orders!” a man with a booming voice says from behind Alice.

Serra smiles from around her burger and waves when she notices the man standing there.

He is a large, hairy man with thick mutton chops and his hair pulled into a ponytail. The shirt that he’s wearing does little to hide the shape of his overwhelming gut, and one would think he just got out of the kitchen with how dirty his shirt is. Though, more defining than any of that is just how loud and unique his voice is. He has the kind of voice that one would be able to instantly recognize even after years of not hearing it, and his looks only make him even more memorable.

To make him even more special, he signs to Serra.

Ryouta wonders how many people know sign language specifically for Serra at this point.

Serra finally sets down her burger to sign back and answer the man’s question of who her new friends are.

He looks shocked when she signs that all of the new appearances at the table are her girlfriends and boyfriend.

Of course, rather than look at either Cassandra or Alice, the imposing man sets his sights on Ryouta.