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BB The streets of Kamurocho are... normal, to some people. To others, they are a rain-slicked neon dream of the evening, a land of demons and depravity. The Red Light District.

Majima Goro belongs here. This is his place. Sotenbori is also his place, but this place--

Has strange, red cubes hanging in the sky like fat lazy stars. The streets are prowled not by suited men and cabaret girls, but by strange demons and twisted youkai. Businessmen and school-uniform students walk among the far-taller demonic counterparts.

A narration track begins as Majima Goro awakens on his back in the middle of a major thoroughfare right off the main street in Akihabara.

"My adoraBBle violence sempai picked my heart up off the ground and carried it with him! That just makes me doki-doki even harder! This dreamworld is one I created to let your passions go wild! And since there's no fun if there's no stakes: It's also an escape game made by your adorable kouhai!"

A number of the suits spot Majima, and any +SUPPORT labelled assistants who are summoned in to the Dream Realm, color coded Red, Blue, and Green oni with wine-dark suits and sakura-petal pins. Each crack their oversized knuckles and seethe hate from their twisted, tusked teeth as they roll their necks and size up Majima And JRPG Party.

"I've prepared a special prize at the end -- but if you die, that's okay too! I'll just replace you in the real world with a better version! And no-BBody will be able to tell the difference~*!"

The world shudders. A battle track starts playing.
Majima Goro Majima is /very/ sure he wasn't that drunk last night, as he wakes up. His single eye looks around, and he lays back down for just a moment.
"Aiyaaah. ... THe fuck?"

And then, as he stares upwards, the red floating cubes get his attention. Now he's awake. He curls himself forward, springing onto his feet. At least he's dressed. Dressed is good.

His knife is kicked off his back foot, sheathe flying off and handle landing in his grasp. "... Alright. Who the fuck are you again? --wait."

His free hand to his forehead, the recollections hit him. Yes. Right. Some shit about a classroom, an upside down pyramid, and some crazy moon chick. "So...there's consequences to doin' shit, are there?" He raises the blade to his eye, glinting some of that ominous red cube light off of it, before roaring back.

"Neehahaha! Well. If you're gonna up and fuckin' replace me if I die, guess I can't let you do that, huh? You'll probably make me look like a schoolgirl or some shit." The knife is drawn back, and he lowers his stance. The first opponents have arrived. "...Well. If ya wanna see what passion looks like, I'll be happy ta show ya, BB-chan! Watch the knife carefully, so ya recognize it when I put it 'tween ya ribs!" He's not giving her the first strike this time. Last time she had that choice, it was crazy. He hops, skips, and then jumps into the middle of the Oni pile, landing on one knee. He kicks out, and then swings around, leg sweeps alternating with knife blade cuts in a dance. He's not fucking around with a bunch of nobodies. These guys have to go -now-.
Kale Hearthward > FINAL DESTINATION, NO ITEMS, FALCO ONLY

Kale looks around, not quite sure what's going on, why he's here, what's here or what this place is or why he's shown up in JRPG party formation with that nice guy with the eyepatch he met at Christmas.

"I'm not sure what's going on here..." he says. "I'm assuming this is the work of an enemy breath weapon, but..."

He breathes on his hands, and rubs them together, as if warming them up. "It looks like we have to fight, or maybe they're going to fight *us* if we don't fight them first, and that..."

He pulls both of his rubbed hands apart, revealing two balls of compressed pressurized winds. "That, I have no problem with! Hya!"

He takes off, getting some higher ground via jet boots, and flings first one windball and then the other - on impact they explode, knocking around whatever's within their blast radius!
Hanako Hirano      Well that's...sudden.

     Two minutes ago, Hanako Hirano had been reading a foreign book. His nose was buried deep in the pages, hiding it behind a textbook in the event that his mother walked in and found him slacking. It was a really good one, a real page-turner, the kind of thing that Zhenga novels hadn't yet caught up with.

     You know. *Extremely* trashy can't-put-it-down boudice-ripper stuff.

     And then all of a sudden he's in an alien world, with red cubes, neon lights, and the kind of monsters you find in old stories of old days that have long ago passed, monsters from myths of glory and heroism. There's a narration track from a cute girl playing in the background. There's streets of stone and asphalt, buildings of steel and cement rising high into the sky. The lights dance, bright and electric, colors of every type dancing on the walls. There is the hum of lightning racing through the ground and an energy that could only be called 'fierce' lurking through the place.

     Hanako Hirano's eyes are wide.

     And then he hears Majima. Immediately he fumbles with his boudice-ripper, shoving it into his jacket pocket hurriedly. He puts on his toughest face - which, considering his upbringing, isn't all that tough, and mostly just looks like a very pretty boy trying to purse his lips and furrow his eyebrows.

     Majima busts out a knife. Hanako stares as Majima goes surging forward, smashing and dancing into the Oni pile. Crazy. Utterly crazy.

     Well...he can't give a poor showing in front of his own new senior, right? And besides, the guy's like, a professional bandit. Manly. Tough.

     Hanako draws a brush from one belt-holster and a pen from another as Kale kicks off into the sky. He slides forward under Kale's wind, hair and coat flapping in the breeze.

     "This, uh," he fumbles. But he recovers well, spinning around onto his feet and putting his pen-hand on his bandanna as it flaps around in the aftermath of Kale's blast.

     "This is-...ain't nearly enough of a dramatic showdown for my first appearance on the stage, right?!"

     He may be asking Majima.

     He may actually be asking Majima's opinion.

     Either way, though, the brush snaps upwards. The pen lances forward.

     Above, the sky grows dark. Each stroke of the brush is an unnatural cloud. Each swipe of grey paint from his hip-holster is another roiling nimbus. Lightning dances between them. Rain starts to pour from on high as Hanako finishes it off with a single flourish of blue paint, splattering it across the world.

     "That's more like it!"

     "Here!"

     The pen whirls around again. Black symbols coat Majima's knife and Kale's boots. They read, in the language of Zhenga, NULL VOID.

     Majima's knife trails nothingness behind, a literal void in the world. Kale's boots cut through the air and storm as if it wasn't even there.

     Hanako whirls the pen, brings the brush stroking downwards, and pulls a blast of lightning out of the now-storming sky.
BB The narration continues as questions are asked. "What's that? Kehehehehehe, of course there's consequences for doing 'shit', se-m-pai~! There's consequences for doing anything! BBut you see, my twonky cyakuzaclops --"

BB audibly swoons off-screen, the pat of palms on cheeks audible as Majima kicks to ready his knife. "I loved you so much I decided I was going to roll the BB Slots on your heart, since you picked up mine~! If you win: I'll give you a powerup! If you lose: I'll BBecome your power-up, and add you to my Second Archive in the sky! Then all your friends can summon BB Copies of you in normal, Alter, Summer, and all sorts of different versions! I'm already *drooling* over Majima Lily. The Sotenbori event will BBe the BBest!"

Apparently, if Majima loses he's going to become a Gacha Character... IRL?!

Kale earns extra narration as he asks about 'breath weapons'. "Just because my BBreath is a weapon doesn't mean be blowing you has to be painful! Don't think so hard, sempai. It's a game!"

Hanako, on the other hand, uncertainly steps upt to the rain-slicked plate and challenges the three Oni that Majima is already among like a blade whirlwind. "I didn't know! Your first time? Let's go with--"

Slot machine sounds work, a 'bladoo-doo bladoo-doo bladoo-doo BBing'!

"Melon, Melon, Melon? My favorite fruits! Kehehehe! It's time to dazzle up on stage, then!"

Majima's blade dance builds in fervor, caught by the whirlwind. He can feel it, pounding in his chest, a newly intense battle rhythm. The more he pushes, the more his heart hammers against his ribs, pushing heat through his body. The very opposite of an adrenaline purge, where the blood runs cold - his high-octane heart fills his veins with bursting Heat.

Catching the zephyrs up with surging colored flame, each knifestroke and flying limb is painted with an inkblot of black, of red, of magenta. Higher and higher he rises, the painted on and highlit column of combo damage builds until, simultaneously, the three oni are spit free, fountaining huge piles of (fake, BB-faced) bills.

From the sky above, arms crossed, a huge ogre-like oni wearing a red mask just stands in the air, reaching out a fist to grab Majima Goro. There's a cut-in.

ETERNAL CHAIRMAN OF KAMURONICHO
HANNYA-MAN

Don don.

Reaching out a man-dwarfing fist into the tornado, the Akuma-like titan of Hannya-man piledrivers Majima, whirlwind of violence and all, into Kale and Hanako's staged and spotlit position on the street.
Hanako Hirano      'Your first time'

     Hanako's face instantly goes red. He almost drops the pen. "Th-that's not wha-"

     "I mean tha-"

     "I-"

     "I!"

     Oh, dear. The poor young man might be overheating despite the furious, pounding rain.

     Scratch that. He is definitely overheating despite the furious, pounding rain. Apparently he's not the sort of innocent, clueless JRPG protagonist one might normally expect. Nope! He's a seinen protagonist who reads boudice-rippers - he knows *exactly* what she means.

     Sort of.

     Kind of.

     He doesn't even get snapped out of it until the oni comes crashing down on top of him. The cloud of rock sends him skidding along the street, tumbling head over heels. He bowls over one of the business-suit demons and winds up upside-down against the wall. His eyes go up to meet her gaze. "S-sorry," he manages awkwardly, one hand going up in front of his face.

     His face is still very, very red.

     His concentration is completely disrupted. By the time he untangles himself from the situation, it's gotten progressively more complicated. The huge titan of an oni is a problem for pretty much everybody. But now it's down on the ground, rather than in the air. That's...useful.

     Hanako picks up his brush. The paint doesn't fall off in the rain. Red paint drips ominously from the brush's tip. He whirls it once, stabs it into a vial of yellow paint (how they don't mix is anyone's guess - probably something to do with the Divine Brush Arts), and swirls up orange.

     "Stand back for a second! I-I don't want you guys getting hurt! I'm gonna distract it!"

     The pen slides under the oni. The ground simply...vanishes. It doesn't break, it doesn't crack, it doesn't explode. It just disappears. Where there was ground now there is simply a blank white canvas that looks horribly out-of-place.

     Hanako's brush dances.

     And the canvas explodes. It's literally a volcano. He painted magma into existence. An eruption. A full-on eruption, raining rocks and fire down around the water.

     Majima told him to do what he's gonna do.

     So he's gonna do it.
Majima Goro Majima can listen to what BB is saying. He's moving rhythmically. Alright. He's not sure what that shit means, but he's got enough of it.
"...I'm only gonna ever dress up as a girl for one person, BB-chan. And you ain't got a suit stylish enough for it." He twists, preparing to leap out of his whirlwind and smash the biggest Oni with a spinning leg twist. It's going to be pretty great.

Except we're still in the beginning of the fight, apparently. His leg's caught. Majima's entire momentum stops, and he is lifted into the air.

"Eeeh?!" He tugs, but no avail. The piledriver goes off, and by all rights, it should be devastating. It should destroy him.

But at the last moment, as the tremendous suited Oni brings him down, his lip jerks to the side. A thought. The knife is tossed into the air, freeing both of his hands. He comes down, placing them both downwards. The down-driving pressure is rough, and the shock ruptures through his body. Elbows bend. He's brought closer. His eye is a half-inch to the ground before he finally manages to slow his descent to a stop. Has it still hurt the other guys? Absolutely. Meanwhile, Hanako's
"Hey! Stand back for a second! I-I don't want you guys getting hurt! I'm gonna distract it!"
"Ya wanna be fuckin' Concord?"

He twists himself out of the Oni's grasp, as Hanako creates a volcano. "...Then you do what the fuck you want." As the rocks start falling, Majima gets an idea. His knife's falling down, and with a spinning round house, he kicks it back into the air. The void trails behind it, as it spirals...

Back into the air. A ribbon of nothingness trails upwards. As one of the volcanic rocks passes through it, it cuts in twain, leaving the rocks sharper and deadlier as they continue to fall. And then, he draws another knife, and repeats. And again. A storm of knives flying into the air, because this is a Dream, and as long as he believes, he doesn't have to care.

This may be BB's creation, but it's still Kamurocho. It's still his city.

Once a veritable sheet of knives is in the air, the bat's out. He's not going to do much with each individual strike--it's meant to keep his opponent in one spot, as each knife lands back into the ground, Hanako's crackling void still remaining imbued..and in the middle of the storm, Majima delivers a direct spinning kick to the Oni's midsection.

If all goes well, he should be able to push his foe through bands of cutting void, just in time for the sharp, burning volcanic rocks Hanako's drawn to fall on him as well.

"KEEP FUCKIN' PAINTIN, HIRANO!"
Kale Hearthward "That sounds... wrong!" calls Kale, in response to the bit of extra dialogue he unlocks. "Also, I have a boyfriend already!"

He has other things to focus on, though. The young man that's joined him here along with the nice eyepatch man. "Hey - the stage, huh? You an actor, too? Or-"

His boots start glowing with VOID ENERGY. "Well! This is nice - let's put it to work! HYA!"

He kicks the boots into overdrive - and promptly runs straight into the swinging fist of the giant titan, since he's not quite watching where he's going.

Though he probably hurt the titan's fist in the process.
BB The large figure - easily ten feet in height and wide to boot - forward flips into a standing pose from his meteoric piledriver, arms crossed. Like a Mr. Shakedown crossed with an cartoon chariacture of demonic nature, the red-masked demon is limned in a halo of seething red like a heat-mirage. Majima understands: This isn't the demon's Heat aura. This is just a seething maryoku of violence. A primal armor of casual destruction.

He knows this, because it beats in his chest as well. The Essence of Oni that beats in the demonic heart transplanted into his chest. Whether dream or reality, this wicked-red maryoku power enhances his barrage of knives. An air-filling storm of knives pours into the Eternal Chairman's battle-aura, carving into it with glowing sparks that peel away the ablative layers while the knives burst into metallic goo that spatters the ground like raindrops.

Behind, it, the painting of the stage, the world, a volcanic brush-dance of earth that bears up Majima in a pyroclastic pillar of heat -- a heat his blood far outpaces. The earth melts as he moves.

His spinning magma kick smashes straight on to the center of the giant, forcing it back with a "GUOHHHH!?" as it gets Cutscene Smashed through a building, the entire fight -- volcano and all -- carrying into the convenience store.

As Majima is about to be PULVERIZED for his cutscene attack, a meat-fist aimed to wrap around him and throw, Kale surges into place, delivering a void-booted kick that parries the Command Grab with hurtboxes.

"THIS IS..." Heaves Hannya-Man. "MY VIOLENT PARADISE!"

Like Majima before -- exactly alike -- he begins throwing a fist into a falling flare of the legs, spinning on his neck, hands, and shoulders as his breakdance tornado raises to the low cieling of the Conbeni the party is in!
Hanako Hirano      Oh that's not good.

     Hanako barely has time to react. There's the very briefest of moments where something is scribbled into being, some orange-and-black doodle just that kind of appears in front of him. The thing moves to grab the Oni's arm and try and defend Hanako from its wild, flailing break dancing, and accomplishes exactly none of that. The oni punches straight through it. The strange doodle shatters in an eruption of ink. It splatters all over Hanako - as does the Oni's fist. The young man was already up against the wall, too.

     Now he's sliding down the wall, blood spilling out of his mouth after getting hit hard enough to crack the wall behind him.

     Oh.

     So this is what a fight is like.

     There's a cough. Hanako's head spins. He didn't think to draw himself any armor. He didn't think to draw himself anything. Stupid! Stupid, stupid. His ears are ringing. Stupid. Walk into the battlefield trying to grandstand.

     But then, Majima's not wearing any armor, either, right...?

     So maybe that's...just...how you're supposed to be, as a man.

     Another cough of blood. And the Hisuatsu don't wear armor. And the police don't wear armor. So...

     So he's just not good enough yet.

     Hanako grabs at one of the cracks above him. Fine. He can get better. He stumbles to his feet, clinging to the wall with all his might. There's another cough. He's exhausted.

     But he can't just not impress Majima, right? This is his future on the line. And that guy is super cool.

     So he clings to the wall, and he pulls out his brush, and he starts painting.

     He paints furiously at the first thing he can see - which, considering the placement and the howling wind and the rain, is Kale. The brush strokes left and right, sweeping as fast as Hanako can imagine.

     It's pretty fast.

     Kale finds himself painted in armor. It's samurai armor, or near enough: light plates easy to move in that cover his arms, his chest, and legs; a brush-shaped crest on top of a sleek helmet that fits Kale's head perfectly. His wings are blade-sharp, each armored feather glistening in the lightning. As Hanako paints the armor becomes real.

     When he catches sight of Majima, Hanako takes another sharp breath. His tongue - bloody - licks the brush. He flicks it forward, sketching the blood in the sky.

     Majima feels himself grow two absolutely massive red arms out of his back. He can *feel* the oni arms as if they were his own. They're just...*there*, now. As if he'd always had them. As if he'd been born with them.

     Meanwhile, his pen scribbles in a black doodle in front of him. The thing flails forward and grabs at the oni with a black tentacle that cuts through the air like Majima's void knife. It's not pleasant to look at, but it's hasty. Of course it's not high art.
Kale Hearthward Kale, who isn't *quite* used to Toku logic yet, finds himself getting knocked into a convenience store along with the rest of the fight. He takes the hit kinda hard, and he's not - well, he's not in *poor* shape, but he's got more than a few feathers out of place as the tornado fist hits him and he goes stumbling into (and somewhat through) a display stand full of snacks, landing upside down with his head over his heels.

"(Okay, this-)" He spits out the Payday bar that found its way into his beak, "- this isn't real, right? It's all some sort of... metaphor? Or?"

He gets a better look at the convenience store as he gets up to his feet. "Dream? Or like a - wait - this is a Sotenbori store, isn't it?"

He points at Majima. "I've been drawn in as some sort of dream element into your dream, Mr. Nice Eyepatch, haven't I -"

Kale no sooner mentions 'drawn in' than he gets. Drawn in, that is.

"- Whoa..."

He looks down at himself. The armor. The sharpened feathers. The helmet that fits just so perfectly.

"Well, now..." he says, reaching back and drawing his drill sword, activating it with a quick puff of breath. "So this *is* a good dream."

He holds it above himself. Another tornado forms - but this time with Kale at the center, and the racks of snack foods, cases of drinks, and rotating spinners of cylindrical foods caught up in the cone. The motion of the winds close all of the convenience store detritus all in on towards himself - but they just ping uselessly against his armor and then spiral back out into a stable orbit in the tornado.

"TASTE THIS!" he yells as he runs at the oni, dragging his tornado of impulse purchase roadside snackery along with him. "EAST WIND TORNADO!"
Majima Goro Majima's used to fights going from place to place. After all, nobody *opens a door* in a fighting situation. You have to bash someone through it. It's basically a rule. He's flaring up with purple fire. Is he pulsing in time with the demon lord in front of him? Believe it. His heart's beating harder and harder, and his grin's growing manic.

One hand pulls to his collar. "Ya think you're a big-time demon, do ya?!" With a single, nonsensical fling of the arm, his jacket's gone. His tattoo is practically glowing red with each pulse. Each beat of the Oni's heart. Perhaps this is only for now, in this strange dream. But for now.

"...Ya want all kinds of fancy Majimas, BB-chan?! HAVE SOME!"

This does not seem like a particularly brave threat, even as the tornado threatens to bring the convenience store down upon them. But this is Kamurocho. Here, empowered by forces he could not care -less- about, swirling cups of instant noodles and bento boxes obscure everyone's vision, and then...

Everyone stands in an infinite parking lot, lit by occasional streetlamps. Indistinct cars dot the landscape, a generic metropolis on every end of the horizon. We had a good theme music before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV1lOo-T15I

We have a different one now.
A pink dump truck blazes down from the distance. Majima is nowhere to be seen, until, at the last moment, it becomes clear.
Who is driving the truck? Oh, no! Majima is driving the truck! How can this happen?!
                                  MAJIMA GORO                                  
                         PATRIARCH OF THE MAJIMA FAMILY                        


At the last, possible second, the truck swipes towards the demon lord, the turn designed to bring the full weight of the back of the vehicle towards him. Hit or miss, the vehicle drives off into the distance, in time for something to fall from the sky. A wrecking ball, held by an infinite chain. Majima stands atop it, shirtless, but wearing a hard hat.
                                  MAJIMA GORO                                  
                        PRESIDENT OF MAJIMA CONSTRUCTION                        

The ball comes down at an angle, and the man cackles wildly as the ball swings...swings..and misses the Oni entirely, before smashing into a nearby building. Was it there before? Great question.

Because it's gone now. It's collapsing down onto the demon, as Majima vanishes into the dust and buildings. A moment later, even that wreckage collapses, once its job is done.

And Majima's back, in a suit. A fine black suit, with a red shirt underneath. Even the eyepatch is higher quality. The knife and bat are gone. In his hand is a single smart phone. "...ah...." That eye closes. "...someone call for a SPECIAL DELIVERY?"
                                  MAJIMA GORO                                  
                              HAND OF THE CONCORD                              

The smart phone appears to be on some kind of page where the 'cost' of delivery is a number that, in this dreamlike state, isn't real. It's just very expensive.

He presses the button, and high above, a satellite activates. Boxes are dropped from orbit. Boxes of munitions. Boxes of weapons. Boxes of food. All of which has 'CONCORD' labelled on the side, above embossed logo.

Boxes that are now being dropped on the oni with distressing accuracy.

And finally, as the food boxes smash open, everything is lost in a flurry of packages of instant noodles and candy bars...

Everyone is back in the convenience store. Majima flexes his arms. He has more than before. His normal ones have knives. The massive red ones each have spiked oni bats.

"NEEEHAHAHAHAHAHA! THAT'S SOME CRAZY SHIT!"
BB A painted-on armor blesses the one favored by the winds, a sparkling suit of OVA-quality armor whose more-than-real cladding renders Kale like a sparkling general astride the battlefield. His banner is a flag of soft green, and his drill-sword spirals on to the BBreaking point--

Game alerts start popping up. OVERGAUGE! 355 Damage!

Hanako's masterpiece overtakes the convenienece store as boxes begin to rain down from the sky. Majima's boiling-over demonic energy pours into an asura-array of violent arms and flows into the area.

It all falls away, a land of volcanoes and ukiyo-e seascapes of burning Heat tides. Framed behind the East-Wind captured Hannya-Man is a single gate of cherry-red wood like a closed temple gates. The doors open, as Majimas begin to fill the world with their own Violence. The violence that BB asked for.

The wooden gate parts, and behind it is a Kamurocho on fire, filled with endless fighting skeletons in Yakuza uniforms who, as they see Hannya-Man outside, all turn as one to reach out burning skeletal fingers for him to join them.

Each Majima gets a cut-in attack, blazing colored sigils of each of his styles in SPECIAL DELIVERIES.

With a finishing home-run swing, Majima HAND OF THE CONCORD smashes the titanic Hannya-Man with a spiked tetsubo and sends him out of the swirling wind vortex of the East Wind and straight into Yakuza Hell.

"GUAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGHHHHH!" deathrattles the boss, as fountains of BBucks litter the earth. The world begins to waver and fizzle.

"Looks like you're BBetter than even my wildest imagination of your demon power! Wow!" BB swoons in narration.
Kale Hearthward Everything falls away.

"So this *is* a dream, right?" asks Kale. "Just checking?"

He goes to pick up one of the stacks of bbucks and examine it.
Majima Goro ...

And with that, the fight is over. Majima ...hits the ground on one knee, holding himself off the ground entirely with a single bat. He pants. He stares at the ground.

A breath.

Another one.

"...What...the fuck...was any of that shit..." He says, checking to see just how many arms he has now. Yeah, okay, in the moment, you buy what's going on. Now things are over, and he can get to the important part of questioning what any of it was.

"...^Hirano, can ya get me a beer or somethin'? It's a dream convenience store, they oughta have it."
BB The convenience store re-appears, with BB behind the counter, leaning over the counter suggestively and smiling. She has a Convenience Store Clerk uniform on that barely contains her.

The racks are back to mostly-normal stuff, and outside, instead of a giant hole throught the pane glass window, is the rain-slicked entrance street to Kamuronicho, and past that, a void of endless cherry pink.. The bell-hung door out, however, seems to swirl like a warpgate. Over the swirling gate, instead of EXIT, is WAKE UP.

BB claps her hands. "If you want anything from my ConBBenience Store, help yourselves, Sempai! You all earned it."

Kale and Hanako have labelled gift bags full of macarons and square watermelons and other fun japanese snacks.

The label says <FRIEND POINTS>.
Hanako Hirano      Majima still has the arms.

     Hanako is laying there against the wall. He slipped back down when he ran out of strength. He apparently painted some bandages on himself - nothing that's going to heal (he doesn't appear to have that power) but enough to keep him from bleeding out. One arm's in a hastily-drawn sling that even looks like it doesn't match the pseudo-reality they're in. He looks up at Majima blearily.

     "Huh?"

     "Oh, um..."

     "Sure, I...guess." Hanako reaches up with his pen and sketches a person into existence. They look a lot like a Yakuza member, but monochrome, with bright white skin and greyscale eyes and hair, marker-thick tattoos dancing across their torso, a knife in one hand, and the lower half of a kimono around their waist. The Yakuza-looking guy sizes up Majima for a minute in the way that all thugs everywhere do when they meet one of their own, then turns and goes into the convenience store with a bunch of BBucks.

     It comes out with three cases of BBeer and a bunch of food, which it promptly puts down on the ground for Majima. The Yakuza-thing squats and stares at Kale balefully.

     "Pretty sure it's not," Hanako manages to Kale as he waves the Yakuza thing back down. The gift bag falls into his lap. He stares at it for a moment, coughs, and the Yakuza thing picks it up in one hand. Another doodle just gets drawn into existence to prop Hanako up.

     As if he just remembered something, he checks for his book-

     -only to find it soggy and covered in blood. It's completely ruined.

     "...."

     "......"

     A sigh. Well, at least neither Kale nor Majima can see what it was he was reading.
Kale Hearthward "... Huh. Dream food. Alright."

He examines the bag of macarons, considering. "... Hrm..."

The armored bird looks over at BB. "Alexa, are macarons vegan?"
Majima Goro Majima should, really, be in a rush to leave the creepy dream death world. But, right now, he's reasonably bruised and beaten, and you have to *address* that, like a normal person. So he takes a bottle of BBeer, one of his oni-arms bending over to flick it open with his knife. With the other oni arm, he withdraws a cigarette from a pack. It is held out to the Painted Yakuza Goon to light for him. He's *not* lighting his own cigarette right now.

The painter gets a look as Majima presumably smokes his cigarette for a puff. "..Huh. Shit, sorry bout your book, there. I'll buy ya another one, eh? What was it?" In the meantime, he cracks a beer open for ^Hirano-san as well. He'd offer it to the bird, but there's a chance there's gelatin in the finings, and he wouldn't cheat someone out of their Vegan Edge.
Hanako Hirano      Hanako freezes midway through putting the book back in his coat.

     "Oh, uh." He's bleeding, he can't think straight, but right now this is the most important thing in the world for him to focus on. His brain tries to skim from 'enormous pain' to 'avoiding enormous shame.' A title. A title. A title.

     "This is...just something I picked up, ha ha. I, uh," He fumbles, "I bought it for my mother. It's fine. I can get another one. I-it wouldn't be the same if somebody else bought a gift for her, right?"

     That sounds...kinda...convincing...

     The painted Yakuza goon clearly does not fully understand what Majima wants. Slowly, though, it figures it out, and lights the cigarette.

     Hanako takes the beer and stares at it. His face is really red. There's definitely the sense that he's never had this before. So, of course, in one of those extremely stupid decisions, he knocks it back and drinks it down in one gulp.

     It is *horrible*. Of course it is. He's used to...well, he's used to *not that*. He's used to way more...fancy drinks, upscale drinks. Sipping sake in the yard under the cherry trees. Even that he only started to do last year, other than the occasional sips from his mother's drinks when being shown off to guests.

     He coughs afterwards. His face turns *really* red, and he turns away from Majima and Kale as the weird doodle thing supporting him hurries him out the door. The painted Yakuza thing reaches out to catch anything falling out of Majima's suddenly-nonexistant oni arms. Apparently the painted people only go away if Hanako wants them to.
Majima Goro Luckily, by this point, Majima's back to using his regular arms. The painted Yakuza just catches his pack of cigarettes for him. "Ah, huh, thanks."

He lights up again. "...Anyway, Hirano, you--eh? Yeah, well. ...I ain't gonna give ya shit over it. Live ya life." He shrugs, before looking to BB.

"So, what's the deal with this heart thing goin' on? I was feelin /real/ weird 'bout that big-ass demon from before, and I'm figurin' it meant something."
Kale Hearthward "Yeah, I mean - I never got your name?" says Kale, to Majima. "I just met you during Christmas with everything else going on, and then I ended up here?"

"In this dreamworld - or maybe not a dream world - where it seems kind of directed at you specifically."

He goes over to stand near Majima as BB gets addressed, also, curious about getting answers as well.
BB BB looks into the gift bag. Her phone buzzes on the counter - the lit up screen reveals: BB Channel! Except it's just an Alexa on a stool.

"French macarons contain egg, and are not Vegan." It explains.

BB smiles at the counter, snaps out a baton, and waggles it over the package. The french macarons become coconut macarons.

"Those are Vegan. Enjoy!" BB clerk-smiles. The register dings as she handles BBucks, which are emblazoned with her cheekily smiling chibified face tongue-out like a cartoon character.

She sits on the counter while addressing them. Distance is odd around BB, cut out like a comic frame to speak. "This place? I had a lingering connection to Majima-san, because he took the heart of my paradox copy when helping out Shirou Emiya. Since he makes my heart--" She places a hand against her chest, fingers wide. "--go 'doki-doki~'! Who just picks up the heart of a foreign god and jams it in their pocket? I had to know!"

"I had to have it. So, I drew you into this place - Minus Space - where my evil is law, and ran a little game! Heads: You get a power up! Tails?:"

Her eyes flash red, pupils purple hearts. "I *own* you. Forever. Hehe! Fair, right?"

She sighs, fanning herself with a gloved hand before moving into a shrug.

"But I guess you win! Ho-hum. Rank up complete! Enjoy your new heart, Ma-ji-ma-san!"

RANK UP COMPLETE:
Some Stupid Looking Chunk Of Meat E-- --> Pumping Hannya-Man Demon Engine EX
Majima Goro Majima stretches out a bit. "Shit, it's random stuff ya get after doin' some crap that makes no sense. I'm used to that. One time a girl asked me to pretend to be her boyfriend and her dad handed me some kinda belt that made it harder to break weapons." He gives BB this look.

"So, yeah. I'll put up with this shit this time, BB-chan, but if ya start makin' a habit of it..."

His eye glints. "Then maybe I'll eat your heart for real, eh?"
Kale Hearthward "Oh, nice," says Kale, going to try a vegan macaron, and deciding he likes it.

"So that's that, then? Enjoy your new heart, I guess - don't get what the focus is on hearts," he adds, as he starts heading towards the 'WAKE UP' exit.
BB "It's better than random crap!" BB complains petulantly, lips pouting as crocodile tears form in the corners of her eyes. " You make things interesting, Majima Goro. I love Berserkers like you -- especially the ones that have the Battle Continuation to keep pounding all night~." She teases, waving with a gloved hand while leaning on the counter. "If I make a habit of bothering you, you'll make a habit of eating me? That's a deal, Ma-ji-ma-san! I look forward to seeing your mouth work!"

Hanako is given a blown kiss. "And for your first time, Foreigner, relax! Love confidently, and you'll be so much sexier. Ciao!~"
Majima Goro     Majima rubs his eye with a palm. "Aiyah. Fuck it. Guess ya ain't gonna be dissuaded, then." He starts walking towards the pink, swirling exit, finishing one last beer.

"This is gonna be one of those fuckin' things, ain't it..."
SUBSTORY END
Hanako Hirano      Hanako pauses.

     He tugs on his shirt collar.

     Yeah, he's probably overheating again.

     No, scratch that. He's *definitely* overheating. Even the painting that's helping him out sort of fumbles. The Yakuza guy he painted into existence fumbles and drops the cigarettes.

     "I."

     "Uh."

     "Um."

     His voice gets really quiet.

     "ok"

     And then he's hurried out of the 'dream' by the doodle, and the painted Yakuza just kind of pops into a puddle of ink. It is not suggestive at all.

     Probably.