High Score [open]

The crowd was filled with local kids. They crowded around, murmuring quietly, murmuring quietly for others to stop murmuring quietly, the clerks in the juice bar leaning over their desks to get a good look at what the crowd had formed for. Over all sounds, all the excited whispers and jumping faces, was the intense sound of plastic buttons, of levers being knocked about. In the dark corner of the arcade, an old machine flashed blue light upon a girl's face, one who operated it vigorously. Her tongue stuck from her mouth, her eyes practically spinning in her head. Which each moment, a gasp sounded from the crowd. The tension had begun to fester, thick in the air like butter.

The Mario Bros cabinet whirred its Game Over sound. The audience gave a collective cry of disapproval, a chorus of aww's shaking through the small arcade as the girl disappointingly brushed her long hair from her face, hair that had begun to cling to her face with the sweat that beaded down her temples. Her score flashed above all the others, a mountain to summit, but she banged her fist in frustration at the number, the hard impact coming down on the machine. "Fuck!" she exclaimed, something that carried silence through the dissipating crowd. She blinked and blushed.

"Sorry."

The girl backed away from the machine, feeling in her pants for quarters. She still had a few left. Many of the games there were boring or too easy, games they'd put in a doctor's office for babies to play. She wiped her forehead, leaning against the claw machine. The air was stuffy with the breaths of teenage boys and the blasting of the heater.

Elliot had never even heard of this place before he first stepped foot into Beata Academy, but somehow, it felt all too familiar. He'd grown up in a town a bit like this, so maybe that was the bittersweet pang twinging in his heart with every footstep. The shops, the narrow roads, the sweeping mountains and wilderness that cloistered them in from all sides... It'd been thick forest back home, and the sky hadn't felt so broad and open, but it was close enough. The only difference was how busy it was here. Rosebury was less of a village in its own right and more of an extension of the school. Beata students and faculty probably outnumbered the actual townspeople twenty to one.

He'd been so busy fumbling around trying to find his way through campus that he hadn't gotten to properly tour the town yet. It was a bit overwhelming to think about getting lost in town when he could barely get back to the initiate dorms at the end of the day.

But, well, if he was being honest, he needed to shop. Desperately. He'd been making his way down to the thrift store when he stopped in the middle of the street, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Lights and sounds blared out from one of the shopfronts, disrupting the whole small-town-sleepy-village facade he'd come to expect out of a place like this.

"A game lounge...?" he murmured under his breath, rubbing the back of his neck. Like an arcade?

A voice squeaked out from the inside, distinct from the digital din.

"Fuck!"

Well, who could it hurt? Elliot pushed the door open and stuck his head in, glancing around at the rows of arcade cabinets and throngs of people clustered around one of the machines... The air was thick and stuffy, a stark difference to the crisp autumn weather outside. It was more than a bit disorienting. He stepped in, hunching his shoulders, and made his way across the room to see what all the commotion was about.

Huh. There was a familiar face.

"Funny meeting you here." Now that he thought about it, this did seem like her kind of scene. Elliot settled in beside her, leaning against the machine, glancing over the screen. 'GAME OVER.' A loose smile cracked across his face. "Not a great showing?"

Lucy had pulled out her phone, taking a long glance at the bright, anime wallpaper, the small notification, 2 Messages, Derek, she almost dropped the device as the boy came to greet her, pressing the power button so fast that she illuminated the screen once more. "Oh, Elliot!" She wasn't sure if that was his name, and instantly felt bad for jumping to conclusions, the girl mentally wincing. She had to talk loudly over the whirs and bells of the arcade. "Check again! Who do you think 'LUC' is?"

A smarmy smirk came across her as she pointed a pink-nailpolished hand to the flash of high scores. "You missed me, man, I wrecked some shit! I thought you were a dork asking for my number!" Her heart fluttered at the sparsity of these dorks. All that hard work, too...

"Didn't know this was your kind of place!"

Huh, so she was right. He skimmed over the list, catching her initials at the top. Not just at the top, but head and shoulders above any other name on the board. There was less of a gap between the second place score (some loser named 'RA1') and the last place finisher than between Lucy and the runner-up. "Consider me corrected," he said, his smile widening, but she hadn't exactly looked too thrilled about it when he snuck up on her. Just how hardcore was she? "Sorry for doubting you." Elliot laughed off the awkward number comment. Did he come across as that type of guy? Or was this the thing that picked up all the boys?

"I'm actually a bit of an outsider here," he admitted, glancing away from the machine. "This is my first time in a place like this."

"Aah, me too, I was uber excited to check it out." Lucy said with an open-mouthed smile, wiping her forehead. She remembered reading the brochure for the school, about the town and it's main street. It wasn't that it caused her to enroll, but...okay, maybe it did. She bit her lip. "I wanna see you play, though. What are you good at?" Did she find a friend like her? She had assumed her days would be spent in her dorm, but it was nice to have options.

Uber...? "Really? Color me shocked. I thought this would be your paradise." Elliot held back a small stupid snort and ran his fingers through his hair, glancing around at the maze of cabinets and machines, racing games, fighting games... He wasn't about to topple anyone's high score, that was for sure. "Sorry to disappoint, but not much. We didn't have any games or anything back home." Lame, but she'd already beaten him out by default. "I could take you on in darts, but you'd probably kick my ass at anything else."

Darts? "I don't know how to play." She scanned the room for the dart board, which hung at the back of the lounge, on a door whose red sign read: "Do not open for risk of injury." She closed her eye and stuck out her tongue, raising her hand and making a fingerpistol, waving her index finger around until she rested on a comfortable aim. "I think I'd wreck you there too, though, Elliot," she said, tongue still out and distorting her speech, blowing 'smoke' from the gun and lowering it.

"Ha. You think so, huh?" He grinned at the goofy pose, but she might not have been wrong. With her gift, he'd hope she'd have some decent aim. Maybe it was self-defeating to try and beat her here.

"It's pretty simple." He pushed off the machine and made his way over to the door, unhitching the latch on the side of the board and taking out a handful of darts. There were three each, their fins trimmed with colors to tell them apart, red and green. Elliot just hoped she wasn't too picky. "We both start with five hundred and one points. You take away points for every dart that hits, and the first person to zero wins," he explained, tossing the darts over as he made his way back. "But it has to be exact. If you have five points left, and you hit a ten, it doesn't count. Got it?"

Elliot flipped the dart in his fingers and caught it by the steel tip. "Ladies first. This is an electronic board, so don't worry about keeping score. Just throw them all and try not to break them against the wall, shortstack."

"You're not too tall yourself," Lucy said, collecting her darts gingerly, pressing her fingertip to one and giving a disappointed look to its sharpness. It was an electronic board, after all. The girl began to measure up her shot, a little too long, pumping the dart back and forth. When she finally threw it, not being able to help herself, she let out a faint 'pssssht,' like a torpedo leaving its bay. Promptly, a burst of energy shot from her index finger, offsetting the dart. The silent projectile, it hit the board, knocking it down and singing it in a few momentary sparks. The dart struck over where the board had hung, embedded in the door.

"Watch it!" Lucy stumbled out the door as the owner went on about 'no powers in the arcade,' strongarming both the girl and Elliot out. The sternfaced man shut the door as Lucy massaged her wrist, the place where the man had grabbed, mumbling obscenities that apexed in the audible, "I didn't mean to, asshole!"

At least it was cool. Lucy began to bundle her hair up into a ponytail as the wind picked up, gritting a tie in her teeth and brushing bangs from her face. "Sorry 'bout that. Didn't know the owner was such a clod."

Maybe he had that coming. Elliot shrugged with a grin, stepping back to give her space to throw. Another extra step, just in case. It was a bit more dangerous than a video game, but what was the worst that could happen? He thumbed the tip on the dart, raising an eyebrow watching her wind up for the toss. Maybe he should've opened his mouth to say something. Maybe he should've expected what happened next. Maybe, after knowing what her gift was, he should've expected something like this. A blast of green energy shot out from her hand as the dart flew from her fingers, knocking the board to the floor with a loud crash. His eyes shot open, his shoulders jump, and he sucked in a sharp breath through clenched teeth the moment he heard the owner stomping over.

"Damn it..." he groaned, marching out obediently as he yanked him by the arm and pulled him toward the door over Lucy's stream of curses. "It was an accident!"

He threw them both out into the cold. Elliot sighed, running his fingers through his hair. So much for first impressions. "Does that kind of thing happen often?" he said. "At least we didn't have to pay for damages." Even if it meant he'd been kicked out of his first stop at Rosebury within his first ten minutes.

Elliot forced a weary smile, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "And it was a good first shot, at least."

Lucy made a sigh akin to a sputter, turning on her phone quickly, the blue light deep in the darkness of the street. 3 messages. "Kinda. You think I'd learn, but..." Though the sentence seemed to have promise of continuing, Lucy succumbed to typing. She tapped away at the phone screen for a solid minute, her eyes sparkling white, her lips slanted and sideways, until she paused for a moment and shoved the device in her pocket. "I guess we should go back to campus. Ayy dee kay, I don't know many other places there." She gave an inspective look, and made a tsk, a click of her tongue, her eyes resting on Elliot.

It was too dangerous to just chalk up as a harmless slip-up, but that's why they were all there, wasn't it? There wasn't any point in badgering her over it. "Well, I guess that's just h—..."

Err, was she even listening?

She looked glued to her phone, her fingers a flurry as she typed away.

"Ahem..."

Lucy kept typing.

After a minute or two or three, silent except for the light clicking from her nails against the screen, she finally seemed to remember he existed. Ayy dee... what? He let out a sigh, rubbing at his arm where the owner had gripped him. "Yeah, I guess so," he muttered. Elliot was starting to get the idea she had a bit of an addiction. The initiate shifted on his foot and started back toward the school. "Your first time in town too?" Besides, he needed a guide back to campus anyways. There was all that shopping he needed done, but he'd already gotten kicked out of one building today. Right now, he just wanted to bury his face in a pillow until he forgot about it all.

"Yup." Lucy bunched her arms closer to herself, suddenly cold in the early autumn night. Her breathe whispered tangibility, gripping to reality in a quick fog, a ghost whipping across her cheek. She went to kick a pebble strewn over the dilapidated roadway, and missed, scuffing her heel across the asphalt. Ehem, no use in bringing more notice to that...

"I heard there's a kaw--...cute little cafe around here," she said lowly, the send half of the sentence softer than the first. "The rest are old people with antique shops, which sounds kinda scary." A vision of walking into an old, creaky store, an elderly man glaring at them the whole time, tapping a cane on the floor as he wobbled in his rocking chair: it sent chills up her spine the air couldn't deliver. She kinda wanted to just go home. If she couldn't find games in town, she'd make due in her own space.

She remembered the glances of the fellow initiates as she set her PC up in her bunk bed. Not using it would mean that was all in vain.

"Oh?" Antique shops didn't sound so bad to him, but he kept that to himself. Maybe I am a boring old man after all. He nestled deeper into his coat, glancing up at the clouds overhead. This had been his favorite kind of weather. Once. The hint of a frown etched into the corner of his lips, but he broke it with a forced grin. "A cafe, huh? I could go for something like that. I feel like I haven't eaten any real food in months..."

It felt like a petty complaint. Before he'd shown up at Beata, he might have actually starved. But now...

You could only have so much cafeteria food over the week before you stopped looking forward to your next meal. It stopped being a blessing and started becoming something routine. The menu was broad enough for a school, it had to be, but in the end, it was just a school cafeteria. A week straight of dry chicken sandwiches was better than starving, but he couldn't deny how much the idea of an actual, real, genuine restaurant tantalized him right then. For whatever reason, it hadn't even been something he'd considered until she brought it up. Elliot shifted awkwardly, brushing his bangs out of his eyes with a flick of his head. "How about it? You hungry?"

On second thought... "As long as you don't blast any waitresses..." he tacked on in a lower tone, forcing the words through his teeth.

Lucy placed a hand on her stomach, noticing how empty it was. "Gaming is hard work, it wouldn't be a bad idea." However, she quickly pouted at his final statement, crossing her arms in exaggeration. "I didn't mean to. Shooting things irl doesn't get you any points."

It sounded better in her head. What started as self-deprecating humor sounded a bit too much like an actual statement. She laughed quickly. "Let's check out this cafe."

It took a few moments for the two to find it, after walking around like tourists. Each building looked the same to Lucy, the small signs only making themselves apparent when they got close. Perhaps she needed glasses. Perhaps they needed to light up their businesses a little more. When they finally found the corner cafe, highlighted by a bright canopy whose colors were only marred by the twilight that approached, that blued its strawberry pizzazz.

And the strawberry continued as they stepped inside the brightly lit cafe, on the walls and on the cakes, oh so many cakes that stretched across the transparent lower-half of the counter. There some waitresses chatted, and said silent hi's as they walked in. Lucy, however, was gravitationally attracted to the cakes. She pressed her fingers to the glass, and would have pressed her nose there too if the cabinet were taller. One in particular stood out, a velvet-colored swirly cake with a strawberry placed lightly on top, floating on the cloudlike icing without a single speck of stray white adoring it. It was pure, the cake unblemished by its placement. "Whoa," she said silently. "That looks amazing. I saw a cake like this on Reddit once...