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dragonmarquise · 5 months ago

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Super Indulgent Canon x OC Ship, Part 3: Rise and Sai

FINALLY the last one of these!! For the first BRC ship I started shipping in earnest, Rise with my own Devil Theory OC Sai! This can be summed up as, “Two people who didn’t like each other start fake dating in order to mess with each other, but then it eventually turns into real dating much to their surprise (and initial denial)”, lol

Like with the others, starting with the long series of events of them getting together. Which will also effectively be an outline for the fic I’m planning for them, if my other two posts are anything to judge me by. :P

Before we really get into it, a bit of a disclaimer, that hopefully I don’t need anyways? But still: This is NOT a “I can fix him/her” type of situation, nor a “I’ll fix myself for him/her”. There is no fixing! It’s moreso them realizing they get along better than either of them expected, once they get some things straightened out on both sides.

Also Sai goes through his own character arc of being a better person (or at least not as much of a jerk like with pre-Algo Devil Theory; accepts that what they did was wrong, not pretending to be a good person just to get people’s forgiveness, etc.) before getting together with Rise. I’ve mentioned that several times before in regards to my Devil Theory OCs anyways! :u

With that out of the way:

Before the events of the game, Rise managed to get permission from Devil Theory to hang out on Pyramid Island. Though only because 3 of the 4 DT members are her fans and follow her online.

The only one who doesn’t already know her is Sai, because he’s not really “into” social media. He also doubts her reputation as a writer, thinking she’s just faking it for views and fans online.

This is actually what makes Rise interested in Sai in the first place. It’s definitely not a crush, moreso her trying to puzzle out how the hell any writer in New Amsterdam could not already have heard about her! Not to mention him not believing she’s skilled at all. She does have a bit of an ego, sure, but she thinks it’s justified given her skills as a writer. She may not be All City material, though mostly because she doesn’t care for it as long as she has plenty of people still respecting her talents.

So anyways, in regards to Sai, she’s taking it as a challenge to convince him she’s a top writer, and make a Rise fan out of him!

Some of her attempts to impress him: Tricks and combos far more complicated than Sai would do, tagging difficult to reach graffiti spots around the island (and not get frustrated by the island’s layout like most others), and even convincing him to help her with an impromptu photo session, similar to her little “side-quest” in the actual game.

By the end of all this, Sai mentally acknowledges that Rise is a skilled writer, but externally he never admits it out loud, and is still very cold towards her. He’s not stupid, he can tell what she’s been doing, and he’s not going to start fanboying over her just because she wants him too.

Rise is frustrated, not to mention genuinely insulted, that Sai still isn’t lavishing praise and compliments on her, like her fans and most other writers would have by now. Not even one compliment? How dare you! At the least, she decides to leave him be (for now) and enjoy her time on Pyramid Island.

Then eventually the events of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk happen!! Rise joins BRC shortly after the whole Project Algo fight, and Sai joins sometime after that. He had originally only joined in order to get revenge against BRC for DT losing Pyramid Island. But they all got that sorted out through the power of friendship! Also no holds barred beatdowns between Sai and Red.

(The previous bullet point is a whole separate fic outline. Also yeah Red and Felix as separate characters! Long story short, that ends up happening due to Felix accidentally finding a mind that’s in need of both a cyberhead and body, while trying to put the Red cyberhead back together to use as his new mask. This is also a whole separate fic, but now I’m getting off topic. :P )

But yeah, Sai joins BRC and becomes a (slightly) nicer person because of the experience. He’s still friends with his DT homies though, just to be clear.

Also him and Red having sparring matches sometimes! Mix of martial arts and wrestling moves, and just in general fighting. Most of the rest of BRC are cool with this, and watch as if it’s an actual event. Bel and Cueball even like to act as MCs for these matches, lol

With Sai now part of BRC, Rise decides to try again with her attempts at converting Sai into one of her fans. Asking him to join her for graffiti sessions, one on one score battles, and even feigning interest in Sai by complimenting his own skills, both as a fighter and a writer.

Unfortunately for her, Sai is still not stupid and sees right through her. At first he’s content with just ignoring her, but eventually starts insulting her. She starts insulting him back, and the two of them are trading jabs and getting more and more frustrated with each other.

Tryce eventually steps in and tells them to knock it off. Either they sort out whatever issues are going on between them, or he’s kicking them both off the crew. The writers of BRC need to be able to work together to keep the crew on top, and they can’t do that if they’re wasting time fighting each other!

Things are quiet between them for a while, but Sai can tell Rise is probably planning something. And that turns out to be true when she approaches him with a proposal: fake dating! If Sai hangs around Rise as her “boyfriend”, he’ll see that he could benefit from associating with her.

Obviously no actual romance will be involved, they’ll just make other people think they’re an item, and then eventually “break up” but still be friends. Even after the fake break up, Sai’s reputation will skyrocket! Or so Rise claims. Not to her own level, but still. The way she sees it, what kind of writer would pass up the chance to have their skills acknowledged and respected by more people?

In truth, this is of course just another attempt to get him wrapped around her finger as yet another loyal fan. She fully acknowledges that, but only in her mind, of course she doesn’t want Sai to know that or he’ll refuse the idea.

To her genuine shock, Sai actually agrees to it! He says Rise has been (annoyingly) persistent, so he figures he could at least give her one chance with something like this. Plus getting more respect/rep from people would be nice, so why not?

Of course that’s not why he’s actually doing this. He’s only agreeing to this because he wants to mess with her and teach her a lesson about bugging him so much. He’s hopeful that this will finallyconvince her to leave him alone for good.

And so the fake dating commences!!

Sai at first considers acting like a gross pervert to chase off Rise, but decides that’s a low trick. Not to mention, harassment like that will just get him kicked out of the crew, since no amount of “I was pretending to be a pervert to make her leave me alone!” would justify it. So he tries to gross her out in a different way, with food!

At first he tries with Latino food, specifically a lot of the Puerto Rican dishes he makes for himself and his DT friends. Most people around New Amsterdam seem terrified of food that isn’t what they consider “normal”, from his experience at least. Too bad for him, that doesn’t work because Rise loves it!

Then Rise gives him a recipe to try and make for her, jollof rice. He makes two batches of it, one that follows the recipe and the other that he’s sabotaged to taste horrible. He meant to give the ruined one to Rise… but then gets them mixed up and gives her the good one by mistake, lol

He does like that Rise is enjoying the food after all, especially the compliments to his cooking skills, but of course he doesn’t admit to that out loud. :P

Then Sai tries rambling at her about video games and anime and manga, thinking she’ll just see it as nerdy crap and want to break things off with Sai to save her own reputation.

She doesn’t have as much interest in it as first, basically just politely listening but not actually paying attention while Sai rambles. But eventually she actually shows some interest, especially once he gets into stuff like sea monsters and ocean/water-themed things (like certain Pokemon and Digimon).

Sai is weirded out that she’s specifically interested in the ocean fantasy stuff, but is moreso just annoyed that his attempt to scare her away with “nerdy crap” didn’t work.

Meanwhile Rise is trying to impress him with her skills and reputation again. She tries to speak to Sai in Spanish, but he can tell she’s mixing up what she probably learned in school (i.e. Spanish with a Spaniard accent, since this is still Europe) plus whatever she managed to get Rave (who is half Dominican in my headcanons) to teach her.

Sai teases her about it, saying, “What, can’t even afford a bit of time with Duolingo or somethin’?” Rise is annoyed and embarrassed by that.

But, he does end up rambling a bit about Spanish, especially the differences between his own accent and others. Even ends up teaching her a few words!

She also shows off her social media, showing she’s got a huge following and tons of interactions on her posts. Sai pretends to not care, though he is genuinely shocked that she’s that popular after all, at least online.

Rise also mentions she sometimes does modeling work. The money she makes off her socials (mostly from fans giving her donations and stuff) is more than enough to live off of. So her modeling stuff is more of a part-time thing for her, she genuinely thinks it’s fun to get dressed up and have amazing photos taken of her. Not to mention the praise she gets for looking gorgeous!

Sai continues to act not-so-impressed and Rise gets annoyed by this. However, he ends up slipping that he admits it’s neat that she’s a model, “I guess”. Rise jumps on that opportunity and shows him a few of her photoshoots!

After a while of looking, Sai realizes, “Wait, shit, she’s actually kinda hot??”, but absolutely does his best to not show it all at. Too bad for him, he’s blushing and Rise has already noticed, hee hee. She tries to scratch him under his chin at this point to tease him over it, but he calls her out on it. Personal space much?! She has the good grace to at least apologize for it.

In another attempt to impress Sai using her status, she invites him to hang out for a night at an exclusive club in Mataan. Sai decides to ruin the evening by getting drunk, even though he actually hates drinking too much. They both get kicked out once drunk Sai starts a scene and gets into an argument with Rise.

Rise decides to just drag him back to the hideout (Sai is too drunk to give directions to where he lives, and he probably won’t tell her anyways) and hopefully sort things out tomorrow.

Unfortunately, during that trip to the hideout, Sai continues to insult her, and actually manages to hit a nerve without realizing it. He points out that, from his point of view, there really isn’t much to her besides status, reputation, fame, getting attention, being popular. Yeah, she’s got great skills as a write and she looks hot, he can (drunkenly) admit that much. But what else is there? Interests, hobbies, favorite things? To him, if you remove all the glamour and skills from Rise, there’s no one left, just a shallow person who cares about what others think of her and using that to her advantage!

This really pisses off Rise, but she tries to keep her temper under control. Once they’re at the hideout, she just leaves him on a couch to pass out.

The next day, Rise tries to get him to apologize for what he said while drunk. It takes him a bit to actually remember what he said, but once he remembers he defends himself.

He asks again, what else is there about Rise? He doesn’t even know about her hobbies and stuff like that, since Rise has been focused on only “sharing” her status and what other people think of her. If he only looks at her socials and how she’s been acting so far, she seems pretty damn shallow. Not to mention petty and egotistical.

Rise gets pissed off at this and tries to force an apology out of him, but Sai continues to refuse. He knows Rise has been trying to make him like her, but she needs to just accept that the way she’s been doing it isn’t going to work on him like it does with her fans. And if she’s still determined to “impress” him, then she either needs to change her tactics or just give up already.

Internally, Sai is hoping this is what finally gets her to leave him alone. He’s also a bit annoyed at himself for not trying something like this sooner.

But to his absolute shock, she does admit she probably did come off as “a bit” shallow. Especially compared to how Sai was at least willing to share with her things like his Spanish skills, his cooking, and even his hobbies with anime/manga games.

(Even though, at least for the latter two he mean to use them to chase her off, and Rise herself has suspicions that he probably meant it like that.)

Anyways, she does decide to share at least one interest she has with Sai, but makes him swear to never mention it in front of anyone else. That interest is marine biology! She starts off slowly, mainly going over facts about starfish. With encouragement and genuine interest from Sai, she starts rambling about other types of sea creatures.

She stops at one point and says if Sai wants to make fun of her for all of this, then he should get it out of the way now. Sai insists he’s not gonna do that. He thinks it’s neat that Rise knows this much about marine biology! He admits he probably won’t remember much of this afterwards, but he can tell Rise really enjoys talking about this kind of stuff.

Also, he says it’s only fair that he listen to her rambling, after she did the same with him and his anime/manga/game rambling. :P

Rise appreciates that he’s being nice/polite about this. She also tries to scratch him under the chin again, but he flinches in annoyance and she stops.

But they do end up having more talks like this! Sai rambling about and showing Rise his interests and hobbies, and Rise opening up more and doing the same with her own interests and hobbies.

Plus, they’re on better terms now! Sort of? They haven’t yet done the “fake break up” yet, but they’re starting to consider each other friends at minimum.

At one point, Rise jokingly bets to give Sai a kiss if he can beat Red in their next sparring match. He ends up surprised at himself when it actually motivates himself to beat Red after all!

Rise holds up her end of the bargain, even if she only meant it as a joke. To Sai’s surprise the kiss is on the lips, with Rise commenting, “What, ya thought you’d get just a peck on the cheek after going all out like that?”

She lets him kiss her back to make them “even”. He kisses her on the cheek, but she teases him about it since he did it so gently she barely felt it!

Other friendship-building activities going on between them:

Rise gets caught by the cops at one point, and Sai manages to save her. Later on he gets his skateboard broken while the two of them are fighting off cops and trying to get away. She buys him a new one as a thank you for last time! She also makes it clear that this is just a thank you gift, and isn’t expecting him to pay her back.

Sai helps her get to a hard-to-reach heaven spot, and Rise asks him to help her with her piece. They start having graffiti sessions every now and then afterwards!

They go see a horror movie together, mainly because each of them assumes the other will get scared, and they think it’d be funny to see it. Not only do neither of them get scared, but they end up just heckling the movie until they get kicked out for it, lol

Around this time each of them realizing how much they’re enjoying spending time with each other. And they both get worried it might be actual love. “No no no, this is just platonic love, right? Right??”

The two of them find themselves holding hands or sitting/standing closer to each other, when neither of them meant to. Also Sai is finally letting her scratch him under his chin, though he tells her not to look into it too much.

At another point, Sai offers to help Rise home after a long day. They almost have, gasp, “a moment” between the two of them, but stop each other at the last second.

Eventually they’re both getting frustrated by how things are going and decide to try and rip off the bandaid. Sai and Rise accuse each other of being “in love” and to just admit to it, but of course neither of them want to confess!!

Sai even leans in to almost kiss, sees Rise’s reaction to it, and points it out as proving his point! She denies it.

They have a huge argument about it, one trying to force the other to confess already, and they “break up” for real.

But of course, that’s only temporary, especially since they both end up feeling awful about how they handled it. They talk things out, apologize, and finally be honest about how they feel.

So then after that they’re officially dating, for real this time!

And now for lovey-dovey activities!~

Okay admittedly they’re only really lovey-dovey in private. The most they do in public is hand holding and quick hugs/kisses, otherwise they kinda act like “just friends” in front of the rest of the crew. Which confuses the crew because of how Rise made a big deal about the apparently “fake” dating, but yeah. :P

Also Sai sometimes effectively acts as Rise’s bodyguard. She sics him on anybody who annoys/threatens her, even if it’s their crewmates, lol

Sai sings for Rise! He mostly likes to sing ballads and salsa songs, both English and Spanish. He’s better at it than most people would expect. That being said, he hates singing in front of other people besides Rise, so he only does it in private when it’s just the two of them.

There’s also dancing! Not like cypher dances, but more like dancing together like with salsa or tango. They both find this a lot of fun, but this is another thing they only do in private (in this case they’d both hate to do this in front of other people).

Rise has a very deep love for homemade gifts, seeing them as something incredibly special and unique. She even cried a bit when Sai gave her a bracelet with seashell charms he made for her!

Sai finds out that Rise has a weakness for puns. He starts carrying around a notebook of pun jokes he can tell her. Rave and Shine (both being Rise’s friends in my headcanons) also contribute to the pun book, along with a few other BRC members who are made aware of it. Rise both loves and hates this.

Also she especially loves puns that can work in multiple languages when translated right. Sai has a field day with this using certain jokes in English and Spanish. Like, where do cats go when they die? Purrgatory in English, Purgatorio in Spanish, lol

Related to the last points, Rise sometimes snorts when she laughs! Inspired by one of @mechanical-magician 's headcanons for Rise, hee hee. Rise thinks it’s embarrassing, while Sai genuinely thinks it’s cute.

The two of them still ramble about their interests with each other, and even sometimes about general gossip/news/movies/shows/etc. Rise rambles about marine biology the most, but then she starts looking into other science stuff too just for the love of learning. Sai doesn’t always remember everything, but he still loves to listen to her being so passionate about something!

Sai willingly cooks for Rise now, and is even teaching her how to cook stuff too! Rise is the type to need very precise instructions and measurements while cooking (“The hell is ‘a pinch’ and ‘a dash’ supposed to mean?!”). But she’s been getting better at it!

Sai also starts teaching Rise fighting moves too. She now knows how to properly suplex people!

Rise is also learning more Spanish between Sai and Rave, and is getting a lot better at it. Especially since she practices by talking with them in Spanish.

Sai tries flirting with/giving compliments to Rise but keeps getting embarrassed by it. Mainly he feels like he’s not making it sound genuine, thus he thinks he’s being cringey. Rise asks him what about it makes it feel “less honest”, and Sai says it just sounds weird in English. So she tells him to do it in Spanish instead, and it works! Sai feels like he’s being more sincere with his love, and Rise gets flustered by it but genuinely enjoys it~

And of course Rise flirts/compliments him back too. Sai is not the kind of guy that’s used to getting compliments at all, so he’s even more easily flustered by it!

They have pet names! Rise calls Sai “wolfboy”, it’s a joke from her calling him “the Big Bad Wolf” when they first met on Pyramid Island. Otherwise, Rise calls him “love” and Sai calls her “amor”. :3

Rise getting more into anime/manga thanks to Sai! But mostly she ends up focused on Pokemon and One Piece the most. Also anything else with mermaids, the ocean, etc. :P

She also gets into video games! Mostly she’s of course focused on ocean-themed/-focused games (Dredge, The Wind Waker, Abzu, Blue Ocean, etc). Sai like to watch her play these sometimes.

And then all the nerdery eventually leads to… cosplay. Rise gets cosplays made for her to wear at local cons, and she has Sai tag along as her personal photographer! Also Rise mostly dresses up as characters that Sai has admitted to having/had a crush on, which is her way of teasing him for it, lol

They do more photoshoots for Rise’s socials too!

Rise is trying to get Sai more “into” social media, to at least promote his own art and get more clients that way (he’s a freelance artist). It does work, and he thanks her for her help of course!

Rise is also trying to improve Sai’s wardrobe. He’s mostly a t-shirt + basic pants + hoodie kind of guy. Sai reluctantly goes along with it, but eventually appreciates the new styles she’s having him wear. It’s nothing too flashy, but still stuff that Sai thinks look cool on him too! She also bought him a really badass-looking leather jacket at some point, and he mostly wears that one for their date nights.

On that note, they usually split the bill for meal dates, unless it’s a fancier (and more expensive) place that Rise picked. In those cases, she covers the whole bill since she knows she has the money for it. Sai feels bad about it at first, but Rise insists it’s fine and he shouldn’t worry about it!

Also, Sai is still not quite wrapping his head around the fact that he has a rich/popular girlfriend now. He sees Rise as a wonderful, smart, and beautiful woman, with “rich” and “popular” being just extras on the side. Rise says it’s better that way, especially since she’s had past exes who were only with her for her money and/or rep. (including Faux, unfortunately)

OKAY THAT'S IT!! I think this is a lot longer than the posts I made for Vinyl x Nunchaku and Cueball and Bō. But tbh, it's mostly because I've been shipping Rise and Sai a decent amount longer than the other two, even if it's only maybe a handful of months difference. There's been more time for the ship to cook, y'know?

Anyways! Finally done with my self-indulgent ship ramblings! Will maybe-hopefully do more BRC headcanon posts as before, but otherwise I'm open to people sending in asks/replies with what they might like to see from me next. :D

#bomb rush cyberfunk #brc rise #brc devil theory #devil theory #devil theory OC #brc headcanons #bomb rush cyberfunk headcanons #Wren's BRC Headcanons #I ended up just remaking this to fix the 'not showing up in Tumblr tags' problem :u

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