Akiyama Arcade Social (Open)

Tucked away in a distant corner, a young girl clad in all black swayed softly to the sultry vocals, the powerful bassline trickling out from within her hood.

Bloodless fingers daftly moved over the buttons, the joystick to her left ablaze as the sounds of fist clashing upon ooze and steel rang out from the speakers. Then came the sounds of gunfire, bullet after bullet rattling off before those three words of triumph were spoken. “Hyper… Viper Beam!” The screen in front of her practically lit up before her eyes. Hyper Combo Finish! You win! Her score still climbed as the credits rolled. Her performance was exemplementry. She finished the final round in just under thirty seconds, she received a full health bonus. And in all the rounds she played, even as she conquered the final boss, she had not lost a single team member, thus she earned a “perfect” completion bonus. As she watched the numbers rise, a young man glanced over and took a peek as well. Though a good distance away, and peering through smudged glass lenses, he could see the final results. And what he saw forced him to rip his glasses off, clean them, and look again.

“No… No way…” he gasped. His body shaking so much, he could barely contain himself. “Hey!” He was practically jumping up and down, running down the aisles, trying his hardest to grab everyone’s attention. “Everyone! Come here! She broke the old record on Marvel Vs Capcom 2! Look at her score!” Her score? She had gotten up to 1,697,360,750. That bumped her up to first place in a flash. In fact, that score was almost as high as the world record. What an achievement… And yet she certainly didn’t want to bask in the afterglow.. Her shoulders stumped, the tall, pointed bunny ears on her hood drooping right after her new biggest fan took off running and screaming. A soft sigh slipped through her lips as vocals in her hood began to fade. All that was left to do was leave her name for the records. With a few swift rocks of the sticks, and a few button taps, it was finished.

REM


Only enough space for three letters. Good enough. Now it was time to make a swift and daring escape before this guy brought on the masses.

After some time had passed as the boy began to learn the tactics of this game just barely avoiding the four minions of destruction that seemed to turn a delicious blue every time he ate a large yellow cookie. He was dodging through them just barely as he began to approach upon the tenth ranked score which began to start attracting a few onlookers attention. The battle of the boy and his yellow cheese wheel pizza monster of death was a sight to behold. It was as if pacman got reborn as a speed demon as the timing of most of his evasive manoeuvres were so close that someone watching intensely nearly died as three minions converged to nearly capture, it looked almost as if they actually made contact. Little did they know it was just a matter of him not having human standards so the game almost appeared as slow motion to what he was used to.

Then the time game as he began to pick up on some of the lingo of the game, people were calling it Pacman and the four monsters chasing him were called Ghosts. In the end there could only be one winner in this ultimate battle between Pacman and Ghostmen.

“Hm…”

Yes, “Hm…” was right. Who exactly would be so bold as to cheat in front of a crowd of onlookers? Who would even have the skill to do so in such a way, no one would notice? If you really stopped to think about it, that in of itself is… actually quite remarkable. In fact, if you were that deft, that clever, why would you even need to resort to cheating? This actually stirred Remi’s curiosity a bit, made her ponder. Before she knew it, she had positioned herself right behind Eevee’s chair, leaning in right over her shoulder, her pale fingers lost within her hood, carefully poised at her chin. Her eyes were scrunched up into a squint so exaggerated, she had to be joking. Through the razor thin  line of vision she allowed herself, she followed the graphical user interface, all the various programs as they booted up, the chat box, and of course, that curious little display that showed “Doom” as it was played from afar. Yeah, it’s was pretty obvious now: the young girl who sat in silence, who had turned her mind to steel, was more than just a fine connoisseur of the gaming arts. This could be fun to watch… so fun that Remi decided then and there that she was going to just order takeout instead of cooking up a storm back home.  With the extra time that would give her, she could watch, be amazed, and still have the time to get back home and complete all her chores. Yup, what could go wrong?