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Who: Pokey Minch (

gallitrap ), and OPEN to anyone who'd be in a game store
When: Wednesday Afternoon
Where: I dunno, some gameshop
Summary: Pokey's bored and wants to learn a new game, so Ruka decides to teach him about Duel Monsters
Warnings: Childish confusion/antics at learning
Format: Anything goes, I don't care

It had been a long time since Pokey'd been to a game shop, and he stared in wide-eyed wonder at the assortment in front of him. He was hardly a stranger to different types of games. In fact, he'd spent as much time learning how to play games in different universes as he had learning the other aspects of those places' cultures. Pokey adored the thought of playing or having fun, even if he didn't have anyone to play against. In many ways, it was as much an issue of aggression and competitiveness as a drive for fun.

He bit his lip as he looked at the foil-wrapped packs of Duel Monster cards, head tilted in slight wonder. Was there a difference what pack he chose? Oddly enough, for all he had seen, collectible card games were something all together new to him. He hoped Ruka would be there soon to explain it to him, as much as it hurt his pride having to wait for someone else.

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"Kiddo, we are getting ONE thing and ONE thing only, and don't you forget it," Anna said to her two-year old son. As much as she'd like to get him the store in a ribbon, he needed to learn that you couldn't always get what you want... and that Anna was pretty goddamned poor.

Still, poor was a step up from Post-Apocalyptic. She didn't want to deprive Archer. Just... everything in moderation, right?

She let him go off, chuckling, and keeping a close eye on him so he could intervene in case of Misbehavior.

Pokey tilted his head slightly at the mother and child as they entered the store, curiosity etched across his face. It always seemed odd to him to see parents and kids behaving like that with each other. Like they...cared about one another. It surprised him the first time he went over to Ness' house and saw that behavior extended to even in the home. Like it wasn't just a show.

He tried to break his sad little expression away as quickly as he could and regain his composure. It seemed like the lady may have come in here a lot. Maybe she knew something about the games here.

Walking over fearlessly to the stranger, Pokey looked up and asked, "Hey, lady? You know any good games here?"

Ah. So nice to see that there were cocky little brats in this world too. Hey Keenan, meet this guy, I think you'll get along!

She stifled her impulse to fight fire with fire and said, instead, "Not really, kid. I'm new to the area - though I think I'm officially a Citizen after that weekend -" (she rubs her arm) "- and looking for some stuff."

Anna rolls her eyes. "I know an old friend of mine was into D&D, but the city doesn't seem to have any copies. Just a bunch of adventure games and weirder games I've never heard of."

Tilting his head, he asked simply, "Did you go and fight the Nazis? ...I was going to, but I got separated from my friends and they wanted me to stay back so they could handle it."

Raising an eyebrow, he asked, "D&D?" The kid clearly has no idea what that means.

"Yeah," she sighs. "I took on the airship. Wasn't the one who scored the kill, but I saved some of our own, and that counts for a lot."

"Dungeons and Dragons," she said. "Way Derek explained it, you make up a character, something like out of Lord of the Rings, and pick some special abilities for them, then you get together and tell stories about them kicking ass and taking names."

"It does." And he meant it. It was something he wouldn't have meant a while ago, when he'd been off playing villain. But he thinks he's starting to get other people a bit better now.

"Oh, a RPG." Pokey responded. He knew what those were; he was from one himself, after all. "But aren't those video games?"

She laughs. "That's what the video game companies WANT you to think," she says. "The first ones you played at a table with friends, dice, and snacks. All we lacked back home were the snacks."

"Huh. That sounds fun." Pokey responded, touching the bottom of his chin with a finger like some children were prone to do. "Did you play any types of games back home, lady? And why couldn't you have snacks?" By the sight of him, it was clear that Pokey had never exactly gone without an adequate supply of food.

Her eyes narrow a bit. "I got in recreation where I could..." she said calmly, and thought Mostly through procreation... SHUT UP, BRAIN! "...But, what with the war on, and what happened to the adults, we weren't gonna waste our rations."

His eyes rise up a bit as he starts to get it. "Oh." He responds flatly, unsure how to proceed for a minute. "Yeah, I guess...a war wouldn't exactly get you a lot of leisure time. ...What happened, to cause it?"

"Psychic space aliens out of nowhere happened," she says. Calmly, which she didn't expect. "Actually, I'm not sure about the 'space' part. They knocked out the adults, my parents, everyone's parents but this one kid who had the misfortune of being our Commander's son."

She's very, very quiet when she says the next part. "Made 'em sleep. They looked happy. Called it the Bliss. Dunno why they couldn't affect kids."

Anna rolled her shoulders. She always got so tense talking about this... "So I fought back."

Pokey openly tenses up at the mention of psychic space aliens. That strikes a cord, considering he had been the personal servant of one such creature for about a year. Now he's uncertain how he's supposed to be around the older woman.

"...Sleep as in actual sleep, or the sleep?" He didn't want to outright ask if it was death. That wouldn't exactly endear him to anyone.

Biting his lip, he asked, "...Is the war over, or is it still going on?"

"...it wasn't exactly death," she said. "But if there was any way of waking them... we never learned it."

She shudders, and grabs herself. "I... I just had a horrible thought about that. I'm not sure I want to tell you, we're practically strangers..."

Which reminded her. "Sorry for the spaz attack. Anna Lin."

He frowns a little. He...feels bad for her. He doesn't really know her, and he still feels bad for her. That's a new one on him.

He nods. "Yeah, I understand. There's a bunch of crap I don't want to tell people either."

"Pokey Minch." He holds his hand out to her. "It's nice to meet you, Ms. Lin."

"Sure is here too." Unexpectedly: never judge a book et cetera. "I'd introduce you to Archer here, buuut I think you're a tad older than him..."

Archer took that moment to tug on her shorts, holding up a Nerf crossbow with a smile. Anna started to giggle at that, but otherwise apropos of nothing. She patted him on the head and said... something to him in Mandarin, clearly some manner of praise, then in English, "Maybe I'll need to stop calling you by your nickname, yeah?"

She turned to him. "Gonna ring this up. Catch you round."

Pokey tilted his head. He recognized it as a dialect of Chinese, but nothing beyond that. He waved to the mother and her child as they turned around. "Sure. Take care, Ms. Lin."

Enzan wasn't quite sure why he had actually bothered to enter the game store (except that he was; this was exactly the kind of spot where you'd expect to meet Netto. Perhaps, he mused, part of him did still hope to meet one of the others… how foolish of him).

He took his time - he had it in spades right now after all - as he looked through the video game section. His lips twitched in amusement as he pulled a game out of the shelve every once in while, reading through the descriptions, sometimes softly reading out a title when he wanted Blues to take a note of it - mostly strategy games, things that kept the mind sharp. Everything else was just a waste of his time. He had no desire to buy one in near future, not when he had to secure a stable income (he would have to change that soon), but sometimes after that perhaps.

Rifling through the sets of Duel Monster cards, Pokey took notice of the older boy in the video game aisle. Huh. He hadn't noticed that section earlier, but it was nice to know it was there. Pokey was oddly fond of video games, despite being from one himself.

Going over to the other boy, he tilted his head and tried to look at the game he was purchasing before saying, "Whatcha' getting, mister?"

He looked up and over to the kid, eyebrow slightly raised in amused question at being called 'mister' - not that he minded, but that kid couldn't be that much younger than himself after all. He threw a short look back at the game before returning into the shelf.

"Nothing." he said, before turning to the kid. "I'm just looking around a bit."

"Oh." Pokey replied simply, watching as the other boy returned his game to the shelf. "What kind of games do you like to play? I like RPGs, myself." He said this with a small smile; that answer amused him every time.

Enzan took a moment - he wasn't quite used to this sort of small talk - but he decided to humor the kid.

"Strategy and Tactics, I suppose." he said with a shrug; that was the genre printed on most of the games he deemed interesting at least. "What about it?"

"Just curious." Pokey replied with his own little shrug, pretending to go through the games himself. He was trying to get used to small-talk himself, though the two weeks he had been here had made him more used to it than he had ever been before.

Tilting his head as he took games out of their slots, glanced at them quickly, and put them back in, he said, "Y'know, the kind of games someone plays can say a lot about them. Are you strategically minded, just patient, or both?"

"Hm… I'd say I'm both." he answered, tilting his head as well, eyebrow still raised in curiosity and amusement at the younger boy.

"So… what does your liking in 'RPG' say about you then?"

He laughed slightly at the older boy's question, looking a bit more thoroughly at the cartridge currently in his hands. "Y'know, I never really thought about it before."

Tapping the cartridge against the side of the shelf for a moment, he began slowly, "I guess, for the most part, I'd say it means I appreciate the customization in some of them. While a lot of games offer customization in how you build your characters or avatars in them, RPGs have been some of the few that offer that kinda junk to points of absurd minutia. I like the concept of min-maxing, to be honest, as a means of trying to downplay the flaws of someone while increasing their strengths. To try to make a perfect character, or something close to that ideal."

Shrugging, he put the cartridge back in its place and said, "That, and I like swords and magic and crap as a form of escapism, I guess. Don't like fantasy junk much beyond that, though."

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