1 Mania Downtown

To lead a gang in Ikebukuro is the greatest achievement a human can do. Happiness is what we live for, and in Ikebukuro nothing is as satisfying as having your own gang.

The land of Ikebukuro is free. On every corner you'll find either a bouquet of flow or a bloody knife. You roll that dice at every corner. That's why it's so alive.

I'm Racer. The Flower gang's boss. And that's 'Flower' from 'flow', pronounced Flow-er, it doesn't mean the plant. You be sure to remember that correctly, your life could depend on it.

For the longest time we, The Flower gang, lived in harmony with the other gang, Titular. And by Harmony I mean we tore into each other every single week. That was the best form of harmony you could hope for in Ikebukuro. It was the harmony everyone longed for. And us and those scholarly bastards had it. Every day was fun. And by fun I mean stressful life threatening situation. But that's the most fun to be had in Ikebukuro.

The Titular gang always used sneaky methods. They had a lot of geeks in it who would always hatch all sorts of weird plans. From chemicals that'd make our base crumble onto itself to building a 2 meter tall robot equipped with every weapon under the sun. But nevertheless they always underestimated the Flower gang's true strength. Unity. No matter what crazy plans they cooked up, my boys were always up for it. Quick on our feet, fast witted. That's how we rolled. Every day was a battle. And no battle we lost.

I'm sure this would've continued forever until one of us gave way. But unfortunately Ikebukuro wasn't happy. We've kept her entertained for so long, but now she's grown bored of us. What a fickle master Ikebukuro is. To have to resort to even aliens to pleasure herself. It's quite troublesome.

The thought of aliens before that point was unimaginable, but everyone knew, if it was gonna happen anywhere, it was gonna be in the belly of Ikebukuro. And so it did.

One day it fell out of the sky raining. Them round flying objects descended on Ikebukuro in one full sweep. I still remember that day vividly.

I was fighting hand to hand with Titular's boss, Harmona. She was a beautiful 30-35 year old woman who always wore glasses and had the most rotten smile ever. I always wondered how those glasses never fell off in any of our brawls, I could only assume she was born with four eyes.

We had decided on that day to go one on one with each other. And whoever leaves with his body in one piece wins.

As such we started. For a woman, she was a terribly amazing fighter. Her movements were smooth, flexible and they hit hard. She also used all sorts of gadgets on her. Strings, bombs, tasers, you name it; she had it. But even still it wasn't enough. I'm Racer after all. I don't go down easy. Her slick movements were quick but I was quicker. She hit hard but I defended harder. I couldn't get a lot of punches in but each punch hit like cement. I was in peak physical and mental condition around the clock. When we two brawled everything around us in a 2Km radius would clear. We would brawl all over town, on the ground, atop of buildings. Anywhere and everywhere it didn't matter. We were the kings of our jungle. In Ikebukuro we were gods, or at least I was.

It happened 3 hours into our brawl, the fight had moved to the top of a convenience store. She had better balance than me, so she was trying to fight on an uneven surface. When suddenly a large ball of fire fell onto the roof. It dropped away from us but the impact was enough to cause a crater a few 100 meters wide. We then looked up and there it was. Those weird spheres that now have become a common sight. They descended from above onto Ikebukuro. And that was the start.

"Let's put this on hold." I said to Harmona. She nodded with her eyes fixated on the purple spheres above, both of us were grinning our teeth.

The spheres came in thousands, each of them the size of a small convenience store. They were purple but they had a water-like reflecting surface on the outside. It was a scene out of a dream, but we had no time to snooze, we didn't know what that was, but we knew, if anyone has got to do something about it. It was us.

And in that moment, with me and Harmona standing atop of a convenience store with rubble all around us, in that moment we both looked at each other. We didn't know what those spheres were, we didn't know what their fire power was, we didn't know whether they were aliens or just Americans.

But the one thing we knew, was what to do.

And in that very moment the day that later would be called "Strike one" has started.

Then Harmona, sensing that this is an important moment preceded to gag just to ruin the mood.

What a bitch.