Chapter 134: Arcade

FieryKathy

With our new fashionable armbands around our wrists counting down the time we’d ordered, we walk into the main arcade hall. 

“That’s rather cheap for three hours, don’t you think?” Carol asks, looking at the first machine, it’s some kind of fighting game called ‘Avenue Brawler’. 

“Yep, I expected quite a bit more.” I give her a nod. “Do you want to try out this game?” I then tap the arcade machine she is next to. 

“Hmm, fighting games are not really my thing but we can try. We’ve got plenty of time.”

I tap the side of the arcade game with my bracelet to which the screen on my side goes into the character selection. “I think you need to tap your bracelet to the other side, Carol.” 

“Oh, right.” She does as I say and then her side of the screen also gives a character selection. “I wonder if this means that you needed to have two paying players if you wanted to play against each other in the past.”

“I think it does.” Hailey says, she’s standing behind us looking at which character we are going to select. “Sounds like a bit of a waste of money doesn’t it?”

“I’m not sure. Depends on how much it costed because we can’t really tell now.” I look down but there’s no indicator to be found about what money was used.

“And is it really wasted money if they were enjoying it?” Carol continues and makes a pretty valid point. 

“That’s true.” Hailey nods.

I select a woman who looks like she can do some kind of eastern martial arts, while Carol decides to play some very muscular dude… -Now that I’ve said that, that doesn’t narrow it down at all, does it?- I just know that the models for both the men and women are quite ridiculous. My character has thighs that could probably bounce a cannonball or something like that. 

Anyway, shortly after we were engaged in an intense match of button mashing. Because neither me, nor Carol had ever played with these kinds of controls before, our characters spend more times jumping up and down near the edge of the screen rather than actually fighting each other. With sometimes, occasionally a fireball shooting out of my character towards Carol’s.

“How did you do that?!” Carol says while continuing to mash all the buttons.

“I don’t know and I wouldn’t tell you if I did!” I call back and continue doing very much the same. 

“I see how it is! Aaah!” 

Then the timer ran out for the first round of the fight and since I was the only one who managed to land one hit, I won this round.

“That was just a warm-up, Ami! I’ll be coming for you this round.” 

“I’m ready, come and bring it!” 

The next round our characters actually make contact and we both take some damage, but again, at the end of the second round, no one manages to down the other opponent. But this time Carol does end up on top. 

“One final round. I’ll take home the win for pink-haired-catgirl-kind.” 

“Brown-haired-catgirl-kind for the win.” 

This round was very close as our button mashing skills had both increased considerably in this five-minute timespan. With one final hit, my character manages to take down Carol’s. 

“Nooooo!” Carol calls out. “Oh, well, let’s move on to a different game.” 

I giggle as the instant tone switch was pretty comedic.

“Just wait a second.” Hailey stops us both. “I want to get a go at this too. Ami, I choose you as my opponent.” 

“Sure, I smile. But I need to warn you, I am the undefeated champion of…” I look at the screen again to double check the name. “Avenue Brawler.” 

“We’ll see about that.” Hailey grins. -This doesn’t doesn’t bode well for me…-

“K.O.!” The arcade machine calls out, merely thirty seconds after our first round. Hailey had picked the same character I use. But the way she controls it is so much more… controlled. 

“How did you grab my character’s head and kick her in the head?” I ask, bewildered of Hailey’s move-set. 

“Ah, that’s actually pretty simple. You need to be close to your character and then move left while pressing these two buttons simultaneously.” 

“What? You call that simple?” 

“It is, just try as I said.” 

I move my character close to Hailey’s and perform the combination that Hailey dictated to me. As by miracle, the character does exactly the same thing. “Wow!” 

“Good job.” Hailey smiles. “But now, let me just finish this.” 

“Oh no!” I try to move away from Hailey’s character but my fate is already sealed. A couple of smashing combinations later and the game screen shows my defeat. 

“K.O.! Player two wins!” 

“How did you get this good at the game? Didn’t you say it was your first time as well.” Carol is looking at her friend in complete confusion.

“Oh, ye, it was.” Hailey smiles. “But there’s a little touch-screen here that says how the basic controls work for every character. I was reading the move-set of Ami’s character while the two of you were derping around.” She points at a little stand behind us that has a touch screen on top of it. Somehow both Carol and I had walked past it without noticing. 

“Hailey, couldn’t you have let us know beforehand?” Carol pouts. 

“Oh, but the two of you looked like you were having fun so I left you to it. And it was also pretty funny to watch.” 

“Ami, your Goddess powers can detect stuff made of pure evil, right? Can you try it out on Hailey?” 

I hold out my hands as a joke. “Oh yeah, she’s completely full of evilness.” 

“Muahaha.” Hailey launches into a fake evil laugh. “Anyway, should we go on to a different game now? I think I saw a pair of motorcycles over there?” 

“Motorcycles, really?” I look in the direction Hailey is looking, and indeed, in the distance I can see the side of a motorcycle. “Oooooh. Let’s go there!” I decide to march on. 

Carol chuckles. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to follow then.” 

When we turn the corner of the row of fighting-style arcade games we come into a row with six motorcycle arcade machines.. Their screens are all synchronized. 

“Oh wow, does this mean we can all race against each-other?” I run up to one of the machines. 

“It looks like it.” Hailey says as she joins me at my side.

“Nice! Let’s do some racing!” Carol hops onto the second bike to my left and holds her bracelet against the machine. 

“Player one ready!” The machine excitedly calls out.

“C’mon girls, what are you waiting on.” 

“Yeah yeah, just give us a sec.” Hailey shakes her head while smiling. 

“But time is money!” 

“Fair enough.” I smile and get on my bike as well. I’ve never rode a bike before so it does feel somewhat strange to be in this position. “I hope this thing has a tutorial.” 

“Who needs a tutorial when you can just roll with it.” Carol smiles. 

“You know, there’s again one of those screens here…” Hailey points at the touchscreen behind her. 

“Eh, how hard can it be. It’s just riding a motorcycle, isn’t it?” 

The answer is: it’s pretty hard for three girls who’ve never, in their entire life, ridden motorcycles (at least not in a sidecar). That being said, the racing was really fun though. 

While it was not easy to begin with, after a while I did get the hang of driving the bike through the pixelated environments. 

“Go, Ami, you are almost there!” Hailey is cheering me on. I had taken the lead away from Carol not that long ago and since then Hailey had been rooting for me. 

“C’mon bike, go faster, you can do it!” Carol talks to her arcade bike but alas, the bike can only go as fast as the program was programmed to. And since I am not making any mistakes anymore, the win is in the bag.

“Hehe.” I pump my fist in the air shortly after I cross the finish line, after which I slowly lower it down again out of embarrassment. 

“Congrats, Ami.” Hailey claps for me, letting go of her handles. 

“Are you not going to try to finish anymore?” I ask, just as I do so, Carol crosses the finish line. 

“Uhm, I would want to, but…” she points at her screen. “I somehow got stuck in this tree and I don’t know how to unstuck myself.” 

“Have you tried reversing?” Carol hops off her bike and joins us. 

“I did. I’m not stuck behind it… I’m literally in it. See?” She points at how the front of her bike is clipping through the model of the tree. 

“How the heck did you manage to do that?” Carol asks. 

“I don’t know.” Hailey shrugs. 

“Game bugs are of all ages apparently.” I giggle. “At least you will get unstuck after the timer runs out.” These kinds of games have pretty fast ‘did-not-finish’-timers so people didn’t have to wait minutes on end before starting the next race. And Hailey’s timer is just about to run out. Launching us back into the start screen. 

“Do you want to do another race?” I ask. 

“We can go around and try the other games first. This one is fun so we can get back to it later but it would be a waste not to check the others out, right?” Hailey smiles as she finally gets off the bike herself. 

“That’s true.” I look around and spot a couple of other interesting looking machines in the neighborhood. “Let’s try those now.” 

“Aye aye, captain Ami.” Carol salutes me. 

“I’m not the captain.” I pout. “My girlfriend is.” 

“Aye aye, captain’s wife, Ami.” Carol salutes me again.

That makes me blushy blush quite a lot. -Carol… why…- 

FieryKathy