The Mad Rat’s Lab

“Aaaaagh! This can’t be! It’s too slow!”

A high pitch voice can be heard in the morning. On her way to school, Clara is talking to herself.

“What can I do? I need more xp so that I can play with Andreu as soon as possible!”

With a worried and anxious look on her face, she tries to think of a way to reach level 3 as soon as possible.

“The fault is in those geeks from my class. Why are they so slow? Come and die inside my dungeon already! Death timers? Just ignore them!”

“And those excuses that nobody believes like ‘I have to study’ and ‘I have to do the homework’. Or my favorite, the ‘my mother has prohibited me from playing until next week’. Who would believe them?”

Then she makes an evil face and mutters. “Maybe I’ll have to discipline them… Fufufu!”

Some time passes as she laughs alone, imagining what she’s going to do. When she finishes, Clara starts talking to herself again.

“But can’t they see they are useless? They spend their whole life playing games, so when they have the chance to actually do something USEFUL, they should be on their knees asking to help! You should be ASKING me if I would ALLOW you to help me. Not the other way around! You should feel honored to help me level up so that I can play with my brother!”

Clara finds an empty can near the road and starts stomping on it.

*Crunch, crunch, crunch!*

*Crunch, crunch!* The can is completely flat, but she keeps stomping on it. After a while, she notices what she’s doing and stops.

“Haaaah… I shouldn’t be doing these things. I shouldn’t get so angry because of those geeks. Haaah….”

Finally, she calms down and resumes walking.

“Good morning, Marc.”

“G-good morning, Clara. H-how are y-you today?”

“I’m fine, thanks for worrying.”

Then, she looks upwards towards Marc, who’s a head taller than her. “So… I didn’t see you in the game yesterday. You told me that you would help me level up, but I don’t see you keeping your word, and it makes me very sad…”

Clara looks in Marc’s direction with a pout. Her eyes look as if she’s going to cry at any moment.

Marc anxiously looks at Clara, and starts talking in a low voice. “L-like I told you, m-m-my mother has prohibited me from playing the game until next week! S-so I can’t play… I-I’m sorry!”

“Oww… What a shame.” She stands on her tiptoes and gets close to his ear before whispering. “And I thought that we could have a nice fun time playing together after I reached level 3… Fufufu! What a shame that now it’ll take a lot more time…”

Beet red from having Clara so close to him, Marc is incapable of thinking and keeps repeating the same.

“I-I’m sorry! I’m sorry… sorry…”

“Clara! You should stop playing with him already! Can’t you see he’s already broken? You shouldn’t take advantage of him and his friends! Did you think I wouldn’t notice what you were doing!?”

Making an annoyed face, Clara faces the person who interrupted their conversation. Or whatever you would call what they were doing.

Taking this chance, Marc runs away, still beet red. Well, as far as a normal-sized classroom allows.

“Eva… What are you doing? Didn’t you see we were talking? You interrupted our conversation.”

“I don’t believe you can call THAT a conversation, you know?”

“So what? What we do is up to us two. You don’t have anything to say.”

“Oh? But I do? I heard everything started because you two play DMA…”

“Huh, we do. And…?”

“And I play too. So I’m going to help you with whatever you need. Just stop playing tricks on Marc and his friends, ok?”

“So you’re going to help me? If you ask so nicely, who am I to deny you? Fine! I’ll stop pressuring them...” Then, in a very low voice that only she can hear, Clara adds “...for now.”

“Nice! Then go to your seat already, that class is about to start!”

“Ok. We’ll talk again later.”

While walking to her seat, Clara keeps muttering to herself. In a low voice so that nobody hears her.

“Fufufu, it seems I found myself a new slave! Lucky! Now I should reach level 3 sooner than expected. Fufufu!”

This was the first of multiple clashes between Eva and Clara. Their contrasting opinions and personalities made them argue with each other almost every time they talked. Still, both of them kept their word. Eva helped Clara, and Clara stopped pressuring the geeks (well, she didn’t pressure them as much as before).

But… What would the future bring to those two? Would they turn into enemies? Rivals? Best friends? Or would it evolve into a bloodbath? Keep tuned to see what's going to happen.

To be continued. Or not.