#tangerinetales

It was what happened during the last time they transformed (which they now referred to The Incident) that really got the ToQgers worried about Akira. To be fair, over the past few months, the five of them had seen their fair share of weirdness, had experienced many, many unexplainable, downright ridiculous things, but this was –

“Akira?” said Kagura, carefully. He didn’t look up, and she glanced back at the other ToQgers, who were seated behind her along the window seats, for some kind of suggestion as to what do next. Right gestured for her to go on (you could tell that he was trying to remain discreet, but with Right, nothing was ever discreet). Tokatti winced as Right remained oblivious to how he had accidently knocked his friend’s spectacles off his face, prompting Mio to lightly whack Right, which then led to Right shoving Mio back (playfully, of course) only for her to fall over to one side and push Hikari and his kendama off the seat. In unison, though, all of them flashed her a thumbs up – she was the one chosen for this special mission after all!

(That was one way of looking at it; another way was that she had no choice, having lost the game of scissors-paper-stone meant to determine their sacrificial representative.)

Kagura took in a deep breath. I’m strong, I’m smart, I’m great, I’m going to be really really convincing!

“Akira, maybe it’s time you took a break from the screen. Mama always says it’s not too good for your eyes if you look at your phone for too long,” she tried again, moving closer to sit opposite Akira.

They weren’t too concerned at first. As much as they loved him and accepted him as part of their group, Akira was always slightly inscrutable to them. They had just brushed off his initial over-whelming excitement at his discovery as something inexplicably Akira – plus, they always loved it when they saw Akira genuinely happy with something. It happened too rarely, and no matter how much they tried sometimes, it was hard to make Akira smile.

But this whole thing was Right’s fault really (although, to be fair, most things usually were).

On one of those rare days that Akira was aboard the Imagination Express, Right had suddenly sprang up and darted over to Akira, practically yelling, “Do you think you can download games on your AppliChanger!”

“… Games?”

“Yea! It’s like a smartphone, right? So maybe there’s an application store or something, and you can download games. No, I don’t think so – I’m sure there’s something like that!” He reached over and plucked the AppliChanger from Akira’s hands and began scrolling through it, before Akira could even protest.

“See, look! There’s an app store here. I bet there are cool things you can find in it.”

And such a conversation was the beginning of the end.

It took a while for Akira to understand what the point of an application store was in the first place, but the other ToQgers were always amused when he passed them his AppliChanger to mess around with (what was this Instagram thing, and why were there so many pictures of him posted on it?), so he supposed that whatever this was wasn’t a complete waste of space.

To be honest, Akira had always found human relationships with electronics rather odd – wouldn’t it be nicer looking at the sky, than looking down at your phone? As Zaram, he remembered how one of the greatest ways he caused humans distress was by having his rain clouds pour down on their electronics, causing them to fizz out and die. He never failed to elicit such great amounts of darkness and anguish from such a move.

So suffice to say, his relationship with this newfound discovery of an app store on his AppliChanger was rather apathetic to begin with…

Until he found The Game.

“Akira, what are you doing?” It was another day, and Tokatti had stumbled onto Akira sitting under a tree, harmonica thrown carelessly to one side, eyes glued to his AppliCharger.

“Game,” Akira replied, barely looking up to acknowledge Tokkati. That was fine, Akira was gruff like that anyway.

“Oh! What’s it called?” Tokatti moved around to look at the screen Akira was staring so very intently at – and frowned. Wait, what?  “It… has interesting music.”

“You don’t do much on it, do you?” Tokatti asked, throwing a bewildered glance at Akira, who made no indication of having heard Tokatti at all. He was used to Akira’s intensity, but on something like this…?

“Akira?”

Was Akira even breathing? He was sitting so still it was hard to tell.

“Ah haha. Maybe I’ll just leave you to it then?” laughing nervously, Tokatti scurried away, but he could have sworn he heard Akira muttering under his breath as he was leaving, “Why aren’t they coming out? Maybe this is where I die.”

True to his nature, Tokatti relayed this incident to the other ToQgers, who brushed off his worry. “You know how Akira is like when he sees one,” said Hikari. “He’s probably just really excited about the game. I’m sure he’ll be fine in a few days.”

Such were the famous last words that Hikari would live to regret, when The Incident happened.

It began as an ordinary enough day. That is, if an ordinary day included rushing into battle against a Shadow and their foot soldiers. As Akira hadn’t been with them when they got the alert, the five of them were first to the fray, quickly yelled out their roll calls and jumped into the fight.

“Where’s Akira?”

“Wait! I see him.”

“What’s he doing?”

“No way.”

“I was right! There really is something we need to be worried about!”

Akira had shown up. But instead of the customary harmonica piece that the ToQgers had grown to love, Akira’s head was tilted down towards the screen of his AppliChanger, as that familiar game music blared from its speakers.

Letting out the deepest of sighs, Akira glanced up. “ToQ Change.”

And as the warm glow of transformation faded, the other four ToQgers realised how wrong they were about Akira’s love for his newly downloaded game –

“I TOLD YOU IT WAS SOMETHING WE HAD TO BE WORRIED ABOUT!”

Because instead of his customary orange suit, Akira had somehow ended up in a huge orange cat suit, complete with two pointy ears, three long whiskers on each side, and a long, luscious tail. He hardly seemed fazed by this, looking down at his glove-paws with his usual solemnity.

“YOU GUYS DIDN’T BELIEVE ME BUT I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG!”

As it was, luck was on their side for as much as the ToQgers were in shock over what had happened, the Shadow they were facing pretty much collapsed from laughter and declared they were going to post-pone the duel until Zaram wasn’t making a fool of himself (again).

The Incident was what prompted the ToQgers to realise that they needed to stage an Intervention somehow, which was what led to Kagura sitting, uncomfortably, opposite the immobile Akira whose attention was focused solely on his screen.

This is it. This is the greatest challenge I’ll ever have in my life! If I accomplish this, I can do anything.

Kagura took in a deep breath.

“Akira?”

She darted a glance at her team mates, whose strained smiles betrayed how tense they were feeling as well.