Beat King

Clement Music Corner was once a lively place. Every day after school, a rowdy group of students would gather at that modest public performance plaza to set the night ablaze with beats and movement. On center stage, the DJ's fingertips would glide across the turntables, sending wave after wave of sound crashing over the crowd. Music shakes hearts, and dance moves eyes.

The upbeat rhythm spread like a tide through the students, drawing more and more people into this ocean of pulsing notes. But as time passed, as those original students gradually grew up, graduated, and left, Clement Music Corner slowly grew quiet…

…Until "it" appeared. "Why is it so loud in the middle of the night…" The security guard at Clement Academy's east gate rubbed his tired eyes and frowned in the direction of the Music Corner. "…Is there a performance? Didn't those kids from the electronic music club all graduate years ago…?" Upon arrival at the performance plaza, his flashlight didn't illuminate the lively scene from his memories. There was no DJ spinning tracks, no dancing crowd. Only a set of performance equipment floating in the center of the plaza, glowing with fluorescent light. The speakers, keyboards, and screens, all covered in graffiti bearing the electronic music club's logo, seemed to have formed some kind of living creature, automatically playing a deep yet tight drumbeat. A few curious and bold students were gathered around it. Fluorescent projections filled the plaza, forming a dance floor, and the volume bars on the screen jumped restlessly to the low-frequency beat, as if plotting a wild party. Suddenly, the display lit up brilliantly, and incredibly intense music began to blare out! Wave after wave of "sound blasts" that materialized from the rhythm came crashing toward them, and the students could only try their best to dodge, awkwardly twisting their bodies on the dance floor. The tempo kept increasing, layer upon layer of sound waves rushing at them. Some started missing the beat and were hit directly by the sound waves, sent flying to the edge of the venue, collapsing with stars in their eyes. Yet the remaining young challengers grew more and more excited as they completed the Rhythm Challenge… "Is this… an Anomaly? I need to contact the Bureau right away!" The security guard who witnessed this hurriedly pulled out his phone, only to see a green figure dash into the plaza like a gust of wind, leaping into the center of the stage. "CSU-2, Mint, here to assist… Whoa, what is this thing?!" Though a bit stiff at first, Mint dodged the increasingly dense sound waves released by the equipment. Gradually, she found some patterns in the rhythm and began handling things with ease while trying to rescue those poor souls on the ground, seeing stars and occasionally getting tossed into the air by sound waves before falling back down. PERFECT! PERFECT! PERFECT! The fluorescent big screen in the plaza displayed perfect hit judgments one after another, as the crowd of onlookers only grew larger. The green figure swiftly weaved through the dense barrage of sonic attacks, carrying the unconscious students off the dance floor one by one… Once all the students were saved, the equipment struck the final note on its keyboard with force, emitted a burst of electrical static, and scattered across the ground, returning Clement Music Corner to hushed silence. "Phew… What a troublesome Anomaly. I need to get these students to the hospital… Huh?!" The crowd burst into applause and cheers. Mint looked up and realized the performance plaza was already packed with an audience. "Not a single miss! That was amazing…" "Can you do that again? I didn't get the whole thing on video!" "That song sounds so familiar… Could it be that genius DJ?!" … The security guard smiled unconsciously among the cheering crowd and began clapping along. It had been so long since things were this lively.