Ha, ha. Sorry, I had to revise the story. One, to incorporate new characters. Two, Incorporate a new plotline, but its very much the same. But I have made Shiu and Mika more different.

So it was said

A teenaged sophomore ran up the steps to the back door of the local auto-shop. Her short light umber tresses danced wildly about her face, weaving in and out of her hazel eyed vision. She wore a loose fitting tank-top, even though it was the middle of October, the leaves fell in sheaves of gold, red and orange. She pulled a key out of the back pocket of her jeans and opened the door.

“Mika! Oi! Mika!” She ran through the workshop to find Mika, her best friend.

Elsewhere in the shop, another young woman stopped in fixing an engine as she heard the trespasser holler about the shop. She stood up carefully from under the hood of a car, her light brown shirt was stained in grease. It was stuck to her from slicked in oil and grease, after several years of us, it had been torn, baring her pale skin underneath like a mid-riff shirt. She picked up a filthy white rag and wiped her hands down.

“Mhm? Shiu, I’m over here.”

She rested a still partially grimy hand on the wooden table laden with the tools she worked with. She rubbed her check with the clean part of her arm, wiping a bit of oil off of her face. Her terra cotta eyes looked over at the young lass that had been calling her name before.

Shiu ran over to Mika and quirked an eyebrow.

“Yo, Mika. What’re you doing?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing. Its Friday, you know the shop’s closed, so I work on the cars today. And why are you here, don’t you spend Fridays having archery contests with Daiki?”

In response Shiu waved a brass key in front of Mika’s face.

“Mika...don’t tell me you forgot. This is the second Friday of the month. I told you when we left school that I was coming to get you.”

“Hm? Get me for what?” Suddenly she smacked her forehead, “Oh dear. I’m going to get changed. Give me a moment.”

Shiu snickered, “Aw, I’m sure Kaito won’t mind.” She said the statement mockingly to her friend.

Mika froze, in anger, in mid-step, her voice had chilled a few degrees, “That womanizer wouldn’t mind if I came there in a canvas sack. Besides, I really don’t care. Its not fun playing with a greased bar and oily clothes, that’s all.”

“True that.”

Mika ran up a flight of stairs nearby, ten minutes later she raced down the stairs wearing a black body shirt, a looser red musketeer shirt, loose black jeans and a pair of red sneakers. She finished rubbing down her arm of a de-greasing agent with a damp paper towel. She slammed the hood of the car down and threw the towel away. On her shoulder was a black purse.

“All right, let’s go.”

Shiu shook her head, put the strap of her straw purse further up her shoulder and ran out of the house with Mika. Mika locked the front door behind the two of them. She looked down at her watch. “Aw, its already four thirty. Kaito and company are probably already there.”

“Great, we won’t be able to get him off.”

“Ayoka called, she had to go to her grandmother’s today.”

“And Eri and Roushuu are still in Japan for that trip thing. Meaning that we will be the only girls there, with like thirty guys.” She paused, taking in a deep breath of air as they half ran to wherever their destination was, “Fun.”

“I know. But of course, we wouldn’t want Kaito calling up and asking where you were...like last time. Though I wonder how he got your number.”

“Don’t remind me, and its isn’t like my number isn’t in the phone book. Damn, he’s bothering me all the time now.”

“True. I’ll ask Daiki to get him to leave you alone.”

“Thank you.” Mika shoved her glasses back up the bridge of her nose as they had fallen while they had been running. She suddenly remembered something and pulled out a black leather chord out of her purse, attached haplessly to it was a red gem, covered in black wire. The gem seemed to be eerily pulsing. She put the necklace about her neck, it would jump ahead of her and then land on her chest before jumping forwards again.

In twenty minutes they had managed to run almost completely across down, albeit it extremely winded. After catching their breaths, they walked into the local arcade. There was already a small crowd gathered around the DDR machine. The one DDR machine, even though it happened to be the most popular arcade game everyday, especially Fridays. Somehow, it seemed that the people in authority didn’t use their brains. They had also recently taken away the second most popular game.

Mika could hear the noise of the people in the arcade, people she knew in high school, many of them were in her classes. They had all changed out of the school uniform when they had gotten out of school to walk around the town.

Every other day of the week the downtown belonged to adults and little children. Old people, young people, weird people. Police men and firemen. Legal immigrants and illegal immigrants. However, there wasn’t a mall within a thirty minute drive from the town of nearly a thousand people. So, the down town had almost every type of thing one could find in a mall, maybe not everything, but clothing stores and whatnot. There were several arcades, all lined up next to each other. This particular one didn’t allow those under fifteen to even think about entering, this belonged to the high school population. And on Friday nights, the downtown was theirs. Although they were trusted and within the past few years, on Fridays, there wasn’t much to fear from the teenagers. They didn’t drink or highjack cars, that was for other nights of the week. Fridays, they were allowed to travel the town past normal curfew. It was their gift, and they used it properly.

Even though it was said that they were in her classes, that didn’t go to say that Mike was cold to them, and didn’t particularly like them. She graced them all with a brief glare. Mika gave an especially hard glower to the young man on the dance pad. He was playing by himself, while the other ten gathered watched him in awe. His slick and well groomed, but loose, shoulder length black hair almost danced as wildly in the air as his feet were on the four step pad. His feet moved extraordinarily fast, stepping on up, down, left and right almost five times a second, if not more.

His deep brown eyes were closed tightly, he was playing the game backwards, he didn’t need to see the steps to the song he was dancing to anymore, he had played it that many times. He wore a slick red and black retro looking shirt and equally retro looking black pants. His black shoes that were a cross between sneakers and boots squeaked on the plastic steps for every fast move he made.

The screen read almost continuous perfects, the occasional good and great. His step count number one hundred. Three girls were watching him, with almost desperate and despairing looks on their faces. Mika snorted in disgust at the two, but she could barely be heard over the pounding beat of the song playing and the other games that other people were playing while they waited for the boy playing currently to get his fill of the game.

It was tradition, this boy was allowed to play five turns in a row, and then would walk out of the arcade and wouldn’t return for several hours. They accepted this, besides, no one messed with a DDR god.

A boy the same age as the one playing now heard her though, looked up, nudged an African American boy in the should with his elbow and walked over to the two.

“Mika, Shiu. Glad you made it.” He said, blue eyes smiling through his blood red locks at Shiu, and looking over at Mika, and then quickly away under her glare. Shiu whacked the side of Mika’s head with the back of her hand lightly.

“Mika, chill out and be nice. You know he’s not like the rest of them.”

She shrugged, pulled five brass tokens out of her purse and then handed the bag to Shiu. Shiu accepted it, sighed, and moved to watch the incurring scene.

Mika walked up to the boy, his song had ended, as had the game. He stopped selecting his next, and final round to look up interestingly at her. A sort of suave look had come over his face, unaffected even by coldest of glares.

“Hey, Mika. What’s up?”

She tossed the coins a good half foot up into the air, and caught them again in her hand as they came down in a waterfall movement. A grin came to his face.

“Oh, so that’s it. Sure.” He held his hand out for the tokens she waved her hand over his, clearing the appendage by a good half foot, as it passed, the coins clattered noiselessly into the outstretched hand. He put all five in as Mika moved onto the second player position on the pad. She undid the only three buttons that had been buttoned on the red over shirt and tied it around her waist. The black shirt underneath was light, formfitting, and a tank top. The exact perfect shirt for playing DDR in, if it hadn’t been black.

When the boy had set up for the dance off rounds, he smiled at Mika, she gave him her death glare in return. He did nothing but shrug.

“Ah, you wound me, Mika. Won’t you talk to me?”

“Moron, you know I hate your banter.” Was what she muttered under her breath, only the boy heard. She moved down, set up how she wanted to play and got back on the pad.

“If that’s how you feel.” He reached over and selected a song. The song began, the boy played backwards, while Mika played facing forwards, put with her glasses safely in the breast pocket of her large red shirt. She was practically blind without the vision aids. The screen was a large flashing blur in front of her that blurred with more blurs.

They both were playing the same way actually. Although, the fact that they had turned the game into dark mode didn’t particularly matter as neither could see the screen. They were both playing the song from route memory. When the song ended, they had gotten twin grades, triple A’s.

Mika put on her glasses, and selected the next song. Her opponent grinned, they both started the song off in the same manner, backwards, after the first eight seconds when there was a split second lull in the song they turned around, Mika clockwise, and the boy counter clockwise. His hand brushed against hers, only accidentally.

In the audience, the girls gave Mika hateful glances and Shiu groaned.

“Kaito’s just signed his death warrant.” She rested her forehead in her hand.

“Huh? What do you...oh yeah. He should know by now that Mika hates that.” The red haired boy could only agree, his muscled arms were bare from sleeves as he wore a blue cotton tank top that had begun to stick to his skin, from sweat that came from the sheer sweltering heat of the arcade.

“Knowing him, he’s gonna use the excuse of an accident.” The black teenager had a gentle velvet tone. He brushed his loose slick mahogany hair out of his deep brown-eyed vision, only to immediately be rewarded with it falling in his face again.

“We all know better then that.” Shiu had sat down on a chair used for one of the shooter games. Her chin was resting in her hand, and her voice was slightly distorted, although the sarcasm couldn’t be missed.

Shortly they had finished the four songs they were allowed to play. Mika stepped off the pad, quickly put on her red shirt and then glasses. Through the curved pieces of glass, she was constantly giving Kaito’s back an icy cold glower as he picked up his cell phone and wallet and put them back into his jean pockets. Soon he strode over to the group, walking closer to Mika then he actually needed to.

Shiu sighed and stood up, quickly blocking Mika’s sight of him. “Mika, want to get out of here and walk around?”

Mika grumbled, and crossed her arms, she didn’t know at that point whom they would be walking around with. She considered for a moment, now that Kaito was leaving, the machine was most likely booked up for the next several hours by now.

“Sure, it’s too loud in here anyway.”

Shiu nodded, “C’mon guys.” She turned and started to walk out the door. Mika’s face was literally priceless. She was torn between shock, anger, and frustration. The red headed lad put his hand in front of Kaito’s mouth to keep him from making any sort of comment.

“Dude, do you have a death wish?”

Kaito moved away and sighed, “Guess not.” He walked towards the door, along with the two other boys and Shiu. He stopped when he realized Mika wasn’t following, he turned to look at her, “Aren’t you coming, Mika?”

“Not with you, no.”

“Come on. I promise I won’t hit on you for the rest of the night.”

Mika, paused, considered, and walked forwards, she muttered something along the lines of, “too damn loud in here” as she walked past the group.