capeandcowllogs | Pinball Wizard

Current Location: The City

Entry tags:

Pinball Wizard

WHO:

inspirefear
WHERE: A Downtown GameWorks knock-off Arcade
WHEN: Saturday afternoon (1/30/2010)
WARNINGS: ... twelve year olds.
SUMMARY: The only cure for seasonal depression is bright lights, terrible pizza, and Big Buck Hunter.
FORMAT: Words! probably switching to action spam after setting the scene

The place was a lot larger than Ruka expected, and a whole lot louder, too, with a mild crowd of kids out of school for the day. Arcade machines of all different sorts filled the huge room — some she was expecting, with nothing but buttons and joy sticks, or pinball machines lining one wall, but others were really strange. Plastic guns, fake guitars, drums, snowboards, platforms covered in arrows, some machines stuffed with toys.

It was obviously the right place; as Ruka made her way deeper into the labyrinth of fighter games and dance simulators, she pulled out her communicator and typed out a quick private text. Ruka had never met the guy, after all, and didn't know what he looked like in person. Lingering by a claw machine near to the front entrance, she waited.

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It wasn't as if Alex wasn't feeling his own sort of seasonal depression, though his was more of just missing home then anything else. Going out to the arcade with a stranger his age seemed like a perfectly good way to rid himself of the negativity. At least, that was what he kept telling himself.

She only had to wait a few minutes after texting him for him to appear in front of her, sporting a somewhat disheveled look.

"Ruka?"

With her back to the machine, it was easy to see Alex's approach, and she felt an honest relief when he called her name. Even for as long as there have been people from other worlds in this city, Ruka still occasionally had strangers approach her just to ask about (or make fun of) her hair. She smiled in reply, and slipped her communicator back into her pocket.

"Yeah. Alex, right?"

Alex hadn't even taken notice to the peculiarness of her hair. After living with two extremely eccentric aliens, hair styles barely even registered on his scale of weird things.

"Uh huh. Sorry to keep you waiting." he nodded, offering her a small smile. "Shall we?" Alex turned his attention to the seizure inducing lights inside the game center.

"Sure." Following along, she was pleasantly surprised by how little attention was given to her appearance. It was one less thing to worry about today, at least.

"Is there anything you want to do first?" he asked, shoving his hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt.

She shakes her head, looking around. "I've never played anything like these, so I don't have any preference."

"Alright," he says. "Let's just start with some basic arcade games, the racing and fighting ones-- maybe some Pac-man. Then we can progress to the more advanced and slightly humiliating ones. That sound cool to you?"

"Yeah," she starts, but gives Alex a questioning side-long look. " ... 'Slightly humiliating' ?"

He grins, "So you were listening, huh?" Alex leads her toward the Dance Dance Revolution area. "Let me show you," he motions her to take a look at the two people who were currently occupying the game, one who was mediocre at best and the other who was doing much better.

The first thing to notice is, of course, the extremely loud techno-dance-pop-monstrosity thing blasting out of the game's speakers, then the people bouncing on a huge platform. It takes her a moment to notice the screens and what they're stomping on in the first place.

"... what are they doing?"

"Dancing, of course," he nudges her gently and smirks. "Wanna try it after they're done?"

"Ehh?" She shakes her head, already looking embarrassed. "There's no way I could do something like that!"

Alex's grin widens, "Come on, it's fun. If it makes you feel any better, I'm not to hot at DDR, so we'll both look like fools."

She's still a little reluctant (and embarrassed) by the suggestion. "Well... you said we were going to start with the easy stuff first, right?"

"That's true. Alright," he backs down, for now. "We'll start with the light stuff and work our way up."

Alex leads them away from the dance machine and toward the rows of fighting and racing games. "You get to pick from this vast assortment, choose wisely."

Sparing one last glance to the people on the dance machine —the winner shouting about something-flatly—before she goes, Ruka hurries to catch up with Alex.

When prompted, she pauses for a moment before pointing to an empty joystick-and-buttons-only machine a few machines away. "Will that work?"

"Unless it's broken, I don't see why not," he pulls coins from his pocket and inserts them into the Soul Calibur II machine.

The machine starts to make noise, nothing out of the ordinary, though. Alex hits the red button. "This is to move your player," he points to the joystick and then he draws her attention toward the other buttons. "These are what you hit to make them fight, it's self explanatory."

He gives Ruka a moment to take in the information, during that time he picks his character, someone swift looking.

She follows along with the instructions easily enough, giving each button a light, experimental tap. Finished, she looks up at the character selection screen, and with some finagling of the joystick manages to select one of the few female characters available.

"Ready?" he looks over at her. The game is simple enough, anyone can understand it but he can never be sure. It dawns upon him that he isn't even aware of where she came from or anything other than her name. Alex leaves a mental note to ask her later but first, video games.

"Ready!"

Fighting games probably won't wind up being her style, but it was worth giving a shot. The controls seemed easy enough, at least. She keeps her one hand on the joystick and the the fingers of her other resting atop the buttons.

And it begins! Alex, obviously a natural at these sorts of games, takes it really easy on Ruka. He wants her to enjoy herself after all.

In the end, Alex still beats her with his fancy and flashy sword moves. Though, all the throw moves are unintentional, he can't help it, they are almost like natural reflexes.

Her fingers don't move nearly fast enough for her to put up much of a fight against someone as good as Alex — even if he is (probably) not trying his hardest.

"This is harder than it looks," she decides, glancing at his character's victory posturing. "You're really good at this, aren't you?"

"Hours of nothing but video games does seem to pay off," he smiles at the screen and then turns to her. "Alright, what's next? Racing?"

Not knowing just how diverse video game types could be, Ruka just nods in approval. "Sure. That sounds fun."

Turning from this console on their way to the next, she adds, "Are games like these your hobby?"

"Alright," Alex led leads them to the rows of various racing games, nearly identical games with a different names.

Once again, he allows her to choose from the various, but incredibly similar, games.

"It's something I use to pass the time, yeah."

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Man too bad they can't play marvel vs. capcom

Alex would cry.

It would provide ample opportunity to trash talk people, though. ALAS.

They can totally do that without the game.

This is true. This log: secretly bashing the marvel universe (and also card games)

lmjhgfdsa

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