Bit Beast

After my 'talk' with whatever his name really is - I'll just call him Dumb Shit from now on -, I found myself lying in a bed. I was busy staring hatefully at the ceiling for a while, but that's getting old. Plus, I'm hungry. So, I get up.

Immediately, I notice how small and scrawny I suddenly am. I guess I should have noticed this earlier, but like I said, I was busy. I wasn't anything special before but there is a significant difference between an out-of-shape, almost thirty year old, and what I'm guessing is at best a preteen. I guess it makes sense if I'm supposed to slip into the plot of this dumb story. If that's the case, then to match with the current cast, I should be…I should be…about twelve give or take.

I wanna bitch and moan about this, but part of me is a little happy. I've wished I could turn back the clock for years now. So, that's a plus to all this I guess.

Getting to my tiny feet, I look around the small room I'm in. There's a bed, a tiny closet with some clothes and shoes, and a desk with a lamp and a chair.

By the door is a large mirror where I can see my reflection. Looking myself over, I have short black hair, dull gray eyes, and pale but not noticeably white skin. Comparing myself to what I remember of the main characters' descriptions, I'm positively boring. Even Mob from Mob Psycho might stand out more than me. Oh well, not like I was all that unique looking before.

Wearing a blank white tee-shirt and gray shorts, I leave the room and walk out into a hallway. Across from me is an ajar door - through which I can see a bathroom. I turn to walk down the hall.

At the end of the hallway is a spacious room. One side looks like a living room with an old TV sitting atop a large chest with a couch and chair facing it. The other side is a dinning room-slash-kitchen with a fridge, a countertop, and four person dining table. Directly in front of me is what I assume is the front door.

I have questions. But, food first. Moving over to the fridge, I open it to find it basically divided into two sections. The top half of the fridge is filled with cans of Dr. Pepper and the bottom…Wait. Make that the top half is full of cans of Professor Spice. And the bottom seems full of bags of left over fast food. Mostly Burger King and Chick-fil-A…No, my mistake, make that mostly bags of Sandwich Queen and Poultry Steak. I'll give credit to that last one even if it doesn't make much sense.

Whatever. I grab a bag of Poultry Steak before taking a seat at the table to eat what amounts to a large fries and a pair of spicy chicken sandwiches.

Now that that's taken care of, my brain wants to question why a small child seems to be living alone. However, surprisingly it already knows the answer! I can feel the information trickling into my brain…Yeah, that tracks. Dumb Shit didn't really care for world building and cared more about epic action sequences. You'd be lucky if he offered any information.

What I'm getting is that this world streamlines anything not relating to the plot. So the stuff that gets brushed aside in the anime - like school, money, parents, etc. - is either irrelevant here and no one notices or simply does not exist.

The world itself supplies people with common sense and education. The more 'intelligent' you are, the more information in your head. This renders school obsolete and people go solely to hang out and because they don't realize there's no point.

It's the same with jobs. The world itself seems to automate everything and the only reason people work is because they think they have to. Walk into a fast food place, order, and they'll just give it to you. What if they run out of food? No worry, the fridge is never any less than it was before! The only time money or work becomes important is for plot convenience.

Just to confirm, I get up to check my fridge. Lo and behold the spot where I pulled out that bag of food that should be empty now has an identical bag of food in its place.

Parents seem similarly absent. Rather than have some lame explanation of 'they're always working' or 'they're oversees', this world simply spawns people into being as required and sets them up with whatever they need - like a house or appartment. Sure, marriage, parents, and families are a thing, but you'll find a suspicious number of young children living alone and no one questioning it.

This is why children are able to embark on epic adventures without concern for anything. Because there's no one to stop them or reason for them not to.

As I go over the information on how this world works, my doorbell rings. I go to answer it, but before I do, I look to my finished food and find all the garbage has ~mysteriously~ disappeared. Another conveniency of this world where garbage only exists if plot demands it.

I open the door to find a brown package sitting at my doorstep. I poke my head out to look around and all I see is the road, a tiny lawn around my house, and the identical homes of my various - though possibly nonexistent - neighbors.

Grabbing the inconspicuous box, I bring it inside and set it on the dinning table. Needing something to open it, I rummage around the kitchen until I find a knife and use it to cut open the box. I dump it out onto the table and inside is exactly what I'll need for the first part of this story.

Volume one of this book concerns Beyblade - a stylized recreation of spinning tops. I remember another anime that referred to a similar game called Sumo Tops. The idea is basically the same where two people send tops spinning inside a bowl and either knock the other one out or last one spinning wins.

What makes Beyblade more interesting is that the tops are built from interlocking parts that allow players to build and customize them. Additionally, to get them spinning, Beyblades come with a Launcher and Ripcord. Launchers come in various forms but all have the same windup mechanism with two protruding prongs that the Beyblade hooks into, and the Ripcord is exactly that - a long cord with teeth you put through the Launcher and pull to get it spinning.

What now sits across the table among a sea of packing peanuts is a palm-sized white Launcher, a white Ripcord, and a Beyblade.

I can assume this is some sort of care package courtesy of Dumb Shit. I guess he wants to set me up with the basics so I can't say I didn't have a chance. I'm sure there's some sort of catch here - he wouldn't be Dumb Shit if there weren't. Still, this is nicer than I was expecting. Oh dear Dumb Shit, I hereby grant you the name Dumb Dick from now on - D.D . for short. Better to be a dick than shit in my opinion.

Anyway, I get to looking the items over. However, my eyes fall on the Beyblade. Something about it seems…off. And I don't mean its weird appearance. I feel like I should keep my distance but at the same time am strangely drawn to it.

The Beyblades of this time consist of a Bit Chip, Attack Ring, Weight Disk, Spin Gear, and Blade Base - maybe a Face Plate for the fancier ones. The one I now have has an unusually wide, white Blade Base; a thick and heavy Weight Disk; a small, purple Attack Ring, and red Bit Chip.

Seeing something on the Bit Chip, I think I know what's giving me such strange vibes. To confirm my suspicions, I reach down to grab the Beyblade for a better look.

The instant it is in my hand, everything around me seems to disappear and in front of me appears a giant, fat, white maggot as big as I am with a gaping maw full of needle-like teeth exposing its red insides and stubby, useless, but clawed purple legs down its body.

Just as I thought. Though suppressing every urge I have to shiver in disgust, I look down at the Beyblade in my hand and see a depiction of the very same beast on it. Not only was I gifted a Beyblade to get me started, but it comes with a Bit Beast - an ancient spirit of some beast that possesses a Beyblade.

The lore of this story says that powerful monsters terrorized some distant planet. But one day, the people found a way to seal these monsters inside of stone and sent that stone into space so the monsters would remained trapped. Unfortunately, that stone would become the meteor that killed the dinosaurs on this planet. Breaking into pieces and scattering around the world, each piece would contain at least one spirit. Humans would later find these fragments and over time they would become today's Beyblades. While ordinary Beyblades are just hollow imitations, genuine ones contain the spirits of these extraterrestrial beasts.

How did space rocks turn into lumps of cheap plastic? D.D. brushes it off. However, a possible explanation pops up as part of some exposition in volume two of the story. Ancient humans came into contact with mysterious stones that possessed great power - speculated but never confirmed to be the meteor fragments. Strange phenomenon surrounded these stones and people worshiped them. However, over time, prolonged exposure to their power caused certain individuals to be born with mystical abilities. Able to channel the power of the stones, they eventually found a means to summon forth monstrous spirits and seal them within physical objects. Sometimes transferring them from one vessel to another, that is how they came to possess their current vessel of Beyblades - and other items in the world.

Turning my attention back to the writhing beast before me, I just can't suppress the shiver I feel. I don't like looking at maggots when I stumble upon the normal ones crawling on the ground - let alone one as big as I am. Combined with what I have to do next, I think I want to vomit.

Why do I have to get such an ugly beast? As soon as I ask that, I can feel the information entering my mind. D.D. arranged this on purpose and set me up with 'a bit beast as dumb and useless as [you]'.

I'm tempted to change his name back. But I won't. No matter what, the odds of me not dying without something supernatural on my side is realistically zero. No matter how gross or useless, this should still give me a fighting chance. At least this explains why the Beyblade looks so weird; it's a physical representation of the beast itself. Large rear end just like the Blade Base, probably slow due to being so big and heavy just like the Weight Disk, and while it has claws, their too disproportionately small to be of much use just like the Attack Ring.

I hope I can try to find some parts to improve this thing, but that's not the part I need to be concerned about right now. I hesitantly and reluctantly reach out my hand toward the beast's glistening body. It wriggles around fiercely - scattering saliva as it does - to look menacing but all it does is look even more grotesque.

Like ripping off a bandaid, I plunge by hand forward and press down on its head. Copying what I remember from the book, I try to impress my mind onto it to form a bond with it. I think it's working but at the same time it's like I can feel the thing's crawling on my brain!!!

As much as I HATE this, it has to be done. To fully make use of a Bit Beast, I have to form a bond with it. This will allow me to have some control over it when in a BeyBattle. This is how D.D. explains away how people seem to be able to control and instruct their Beyblades. Also, not only will forming a bond allow me to command the beast - and by extension the active Beyblade - but I should be able to feed it my energy to improve its performance during a BeyBattle. However, what I find to be the most important is that forming a bond will help focus the beast's power to form a special ability. While more powerful beasts can already do that on their own, weaker Bit Beasts sometimes need help to create these abilities. Even if my Beyblade and beast are useless, I may get lucky in developing an ability to bridge the gap.

After a moment, I can feel the beast's resistance fade and some kind of link form between us. The beast seems calmer and I pull my hand away. It vanishes and everything around me returns to normal. I look to my other hand holding my Beyblade. A name appears in my mind: Leech Worm.

"I guess it's nice to meet you," I say absentmindedly before putting it down on the table.

I let out a relieved breath. Now that that's over, I hurry to the bathroom to take a hot shower in the hope of ridding myself of this skin crawling sensation.