Pressing Player 2 Start without asking
-
Sophia followed Bambi's cutesy finger wag towards the skii ball machines. Sure, why not. The area wasn't crowded and one of machines had a couple of leftover balls dispensed from an earlier game. Beats wasting any of her own Zenny.
"I said I'm fine, a stray crumb just fell down my throat." Bambi's emphasis on Sophia's family being within view didn't go unnoticed, but beyond a brief glance in their direction it provoked no reaction. What an empty threat, they never paid close attention to her! "If you want me to lay down on you like some weird cat, it's gonna have to wait." Sophia reached down and picked up one of the cork balls, tossing it up and down in her hands. "Don't you want to show off some amazing trick shots first?" Sophia asked Bambi with the most backhanded "enthusiasm" she could muster.
While Sophia may have been confident that she brushed off Bambi's attempts to get one over her, reaching for the ball left her PET at just the right angle to do a stealthy jack-in...
As much as the day was testing his patience, MothMan had no issue with biding his time on stake-out duty. Not that the skii ball setup was offering much; the machines looked too old to have any kind of jack-in capability, and there wasn't anything else close by of inter-
MothMan's surveying came to screeching halt with the sudden materialisation of Pointe within the PET's homepage. "Prog customizer?? Wh- How did you get in here?!" MothMan angrily baulked at Pointe's sudden greeting.
Wait, the IR sensor? Shit! It was essentially a souped-up jack-in port bolted to the PET after all... "You... look, what I said earlier wasn't an empty threat. I will fuck you up if you're here to pull a fast one." MothMan warned while flaring his wings.
While he really did want to fight Pointe then and there, wasn't he instructed to look for opportunities to fuck around with Bambi? And what better opportunity than having her Navi come directly to you? MothMan relaxed out of his combative stance and put on a more welcoming voice. "Buuuut sure, I would like to know more about you, Pointe. After all, I can tell you know a lot more than you're letting in on." MothMan leaned in with intent. "This isn't your first time snooping in on someone's PET, is it?" (Purely an educated guess, but it wouldn't be hard to recover if he was wrong...)
-
Bambi couldn't help a little laugh. "Trick shot? No no- I'm shit at skii ball! Its just quieter and if I did something weird or violent, your back up could be here in an instant." The mental image, though, of Sophia with her little noodle arms being some kind of unexpected skii ball master definitely piqued her interest. "Can you do trick shots? I'd love to see!"
She tapped her PET to the scanner and balls rattled out noisily. She picked one up, gave it a little toss to mirror Sophia. She gave a sweeping underhanded throw, and true to form, it pinged hard against the top left hole. The momentum carried it to loop that hole's barrier, and it bounced so hard off one off the second widest middle section that it fell right back onto the ramp to roll into her cupped hands. Ugh. "I'm bad at racing games too. I overcorrect the instant things go wrong and it takes me out every time."
She stood back a step to observe Sophia.
Pointe game a smile and then leaned over to waggle her fingers at a curious prog. "Oh, I know you would! I would do the same if someone tried anything on my NetOp. I still think about burning down Agakis house with him and his whole bloodline inside." She had done it to a couple iterations of Sims already, and maybe one day when the CopyBots were all fixed up, she could get a proper plan in place, with itemized lists and timeline breakdowns for what accelerate to buy and what order to seal the doors in to prevent escape.
But she wasn't one to count her chickens before they hatched, and Agaki still had something her NetOp wanted. Pointe was very good at being patient.
She pulled up a copy of the prog customizer she had brought as a housewarming gift, handing it over respectfully with both hands like a proper guest. "Here!"
Pointe gave him a smile. "I'm sure we can have a lovely and insightful discussion, Mothman! And yes, I was in your PET just a couple minutes ago actually! We needed to make sure we weren't dragging an unrelated party into chatroom business!"
-
Bambi describing the choice of location as a safety net in case she did anything nasty took Sophia by surprise. It really did seem like Bambi was doing everything she could to gain Sophia's trust, and it was getting harder and harder to subscribe some kind of hidden malicious intent to her actions. It always irked Sophia when that was the case.
"Don't get your hopes up." Not a particularly enthusiastic response to Bambi's challenge, but Sophia wasn't the boastful type. She stood by idly and watched Bambi's attempts to play ball without comment.
It took Sophia just a little too long to realise that Bambi was letting her have her turn. "Oh, right." She positioned herself in front of the machine, and performed a casual underarm throw without much thought put into the action. The ball bounced it's way up the ramp, and made it's way into... the second-closest ring to the centre? Huh. All of a sudden Sophia was eager to see how well she'd do when actually trying.
Sophia grabbed a second ball. This time, she readied herself for an overarm throw, aiming for a bullseye directly into the highest-scoring hole. After contemplating the angle for a few seconds, she let out a forceful pitch! At first it seemed like the stars had aligned and the ball was about perfectly slide in, only for it to just barely catch the ring's edge, sending it right back into Sophia's fac-
BONK!
"AUGH! BLAST! DANG IT!" The ball didn't really hurt, but the shock of it clonking her so precisely in the face made her exaggerate the pain. Sophia briefly paced around, face covered in her hands, before getting a hold of herself and lowering her hands to glare at whatever Bambi's reaction was. She just knew this would be something she'd never hear the end of...
Agaki, huh? Interesting name, and probably directly related to Bambi's impromptu vigorous rib massage. MothMan made a mental note of it, but held back from enquiring further; not only would that be revealing his hand too early, but he was still registering Bambi and Pointe as a threat (especially with Pointe's idle desire for arson), and trying to invoke something that was a threat to them could lead to retaliation. He would find a better knife to twist in due time.
Pointe's offer of "PROG_CUSTOM.apk" was met with a bemused expression from MothMan, followed by him snatching the file and giving it a hard inspection, akin to someone glaring at a provocative newspaper article. Surprisingly, there wasn't anything particularly sketchy-looking about it. The application was digitally signed, all the metadata looked legit...
...he must have been gripping it a little too hard however, as before he knew it the file began extracting and installing itself! Despite his split-second panic, the quick installation and the very benign user interface that popped up afterwards lead MothMan to conclude there probably weren't any viruses snuck in with it. Before he could vocally question what exactly had just been installed, Pointe began walking him through the application's UI.
Knew it. MothMan felt rather vindicated to learn that Pointe had already been spying on them, as it gave him tangible fuel for his distrust. "You two really are serious about this chatroom business, huh." MothMan crossed his arms. "I hope you don't mind me asking, but have you been involved in any other... sketchy business?" His tone indicated that he, in fact, hoped they did mind the question. "Because I might just have some exploits of my own to share... if you're also willing to." He flashed a (somewhat) friendly grin.
-
The first throw got an excited noise from Bambi. Oh man, she hadn't taken Sophia for an athletic type, but maybe -
Oh. Oh no.
"Oh no oh no oh no!" Bambi stepped forward and tipped her head, trying to peer around Sophia's hands. "You... don't look like you're bleeding, so your nose probably isn't broken. Are you okay?"
When Sophia pulled her hands away glaring, the effect was ruined a little by it looking a little cross-eyed. Bambi turned to the snack counter. "I'm gonna get ice! Just hang on a second!"
The employee manning the counter seemed to have heard the commotion and was already sealing a plastic bag filled with ice, and Bambi look it carefully like it was precious cargo. It was a shame she wasn't sure a good review would stick when she crossed back, otherwise she'd write a glowing one. She shoo'ed away the people who were helicoptering around Sophia but not actually offering any help. "Come on - give her some space."
She pressed the ice pack into the other girl's hands. "How about we find something with less ... uh face smacking potential?"
Pointe scrolled through the interface, pointing out the color picker and the special palettes she had just uploaded with the specific green of Sophia's hoodie in mind (navy blue for a sophisticated touch, terra cotta for a bit of contrast, a couple different options with a couple different pinks because it was just too classic to pass up).
She listened with one audio receptor to the commotion outside and determined her NetOp had it handled.
Pointe turned to Mothman then, and stared unperturbed up into his eyes. "Mothman, if you want to dig for information, you'll find I'm not very receptive to beating around the bush. I can dance around a topic all day." Pun intended. "You either need to be better at being sneaky, or you need to be direct, or I will have every single one of your progs in a hat before I give you something you can find a 'c hnace 2 sdcrew w/ her' as your NetOp put it. I've been operational for nearly ten years, and my programming is built to deal with complex psychological situations for therapy."
Pointe smiled, and pulled up a particularly impractical fascinator with feathers that was just darling. "We have multiple dark chips, two copybots we plan on illegally upgrading, and contacts with black market merchants, current and former net terrorists, and darkloids. I'm not a battle navi, and Fawn isn't a net battler, but we're going to do whatever it takes to survive whatever this chatroom is."
She pulled the fascinator out, and starts adjusting the colors piece by piece. She offers it out to him, smiling gently, sadly. "And considering it doesn't care whether you believe in it before it tries to steal your NetOp from under you, it's good to have friends before something can go wrong."
-
Grabbing an ice pack seemed like an over-reaction at first, but the point of impact was starting to ache more and more now that the initial shock had worn off. And to make matters worse, the nearest arcade-goers had all dropped what they were doing to gawk at her. "What ARE you looking at?!" Sophia burst out at a random bystander, dropping her arms with her fists clenched.
Before anyone could escalate the tension, Bambi swooped in with an ice pack and broke up the crowd. Sophia accepted the ice with a muffed "Thanks..." and swiftly applied it. It was... soothing, and a welcome contrast from how stuffy the building was. "I... need a sit down first..." Sophia lugged herself in the opposite direction of where her family was seated, with Bambi in tow. While there already were benches nearby, Sophia was not in the mood to have half her family swarm her in shallow concern; her already low-capacity social battery was on the verge of leaking and spilling out corrosion.
The two girls shortly found themselves sat by the pinball tables; wasn't necessarily the least crowded place, but most of the patrons were too engrossed in their games to pester Bambi and Sophia. "My luck has been so crummy lately." Sophia confided, slapping the ice pack on the empty side of the bench. "Nothing I've done with MothMan has been going to plan, and you saw how well my attempt at having fun went." She let out a loud sigh. At least Bambi's presence was... tolerable. She seemed to give an actual darn about Sophia's feelings at the moment, and it didn't feel totally vapid either...
MothMan was hardly the decorative sort, but just fiddling with the colour options on a random Mr. Prog was making him begin to appreciate the gift of the customizer. It wasn't uncommon for the progs used by the PET's mods to have firmware errors or conflict with each other; some colour coordination would go a long way in diagnosing those issues faster. Plus it would make them stand out a little more against Sophia's, to be frank, shit file organisation.
A brief look at the hat menu was all that MothMan got before the outside eruption came through the PET's microphone. Crap, had he fallen for some kind of distraction?! MothMan snapped towards Pointe who... looked equally as concerned? He held off any kind of accusation and instead opened a camera window in hopes of getting more context to what happened...
...Not that the jostling view of the pocket's inside offered much clarity. But when it settled, there was just a small enough window through the pocket for MothMan to see Bambi applying ice to Sophia. Okay, so she just smacked herself with a ball? Christ, she still has no pain tolerance at all. MothMan closed the feed and exhaled. Good thing Bambi was doing something about it and keeping her comfor- No no no! These people are crazy, remember!? So what if Pointe is being friendly, accommodating and gave a useful gift with cute hats?! As long as they're spreading this portal lunacy, they can't be trusted! It can't be real...
...Fucking hell, did he really forget to close Sophia's typo bomb? MothMan froze for a second, but quickly pivoted to playing it cool. "I'll admit it... she's crap at speed typing." MothMan gave a mischievous chuckle, briefly pretending he was dodging Pointe's successful bluff call. "But seriously, I'll stop being coy. I do apologise for underestimating you." God, as if he wasn't feeling off his game already, Pointe was showing him up badly. They both were specifically programmed for psychology and had existed for far longer than he had. Best take Pointe's suggestion of being direct, lest he be read like an open book.
"What I mean is, Sophia and I have been making our livelihood through cybercrime for as long as we've been Navi and NetOp. All the tried-and-tested classics: BBS scams, reselling stolen digital goods, breaking into machines to get free shit, as you noticed earlier. I have the inkling you're also on the so-called 'wrong side' of the law, and I want to know all about it." MothMan turned back to the customizer to scroll through the hat selection, still keeping a stern demeanour. "If you want to gain Sophia's trust so badly, that kind of activity is the thing she respects being open about."
Pointe humoured MothMan's request, and wow, he really had underestimated the two of them. "Heh, that's an impressive rap sheet. Can't say I've been anywhere near CopyBots myself, outside of hearing CyberCafé gossip." MothMan replied with a yet-unheard of degree of earnestness.
In spite of that, he had to put a pin in their Not a battle Navi, not a NetBattler. remark. While Pointe could just be acting modest, if there was any potential attack vector against these two, that was it. But as long as Pointe was squatting inside his PET, any hidden cue to tell Sophia to search the arcade for NetBattling equipment would have to wait. Besides, just playing along and not acting underhanded was getting him results.
MothMan took the fascinator with one hand, giving it a slow, quizzical inspection that gradually stilled as Pointe spoke their last sentence. He really didn't like the solemn way they were speaking about the chatroom; directly challenging his vehement denial, warning him it needs to be "survived", and something about the way they said "it tries to steal your NetOp from under you" felt... literal and specific. A redirection of the subject was in order.
"I wouldn't say we do what we do out of survival, it's just that we're not blind to how much of society is rotten to the core." MothMan lowered his arms and made eye contact with Pointe, fascinator still in hand. "And we're sticking on the side that avoids being consumed by that rot."
-
Bambi sat listening, gently running her fingers over the zipper of her big orange slice shaped duffle back. Sophia was so obviously frustrated, and Bambi could imagine. So many nasty surprises in such a short time had a way of making someone feel so small. She had worked her whole life to never be the prey animal, but that work was exhausting and it came crumbling so easily.
There were people tougher than her or Pointe who had gotten knocked on their ass by this. Faster, smarter, stronger, just plain better suited in every single way, people with power bordering supernatural and they still got hurt. People with power that the universe chose again, and again, and again, over and over in every different flavor and circumstance.
Not her or Sophia.
Bambi felt small plenty of times in her life - every week across from her father as he barely made an effort to even project an easier truth onto her, then even more so when he cut it to every two weeks, and every single time the Ijuuin heir made the news for whatever he was making the news for, and whenever she got passed up for a dancer who worked half as hard as her but had fairer skin and and and - but not like this. Not like a child being hunted by monsters no one else could see.
She needed something better than allies. She needed friends. She needed people who would have her back because she would have theirs. She needed to surround herself with people who could make her feel confident enough to fight back with everything she had, and who would feel the same with her in their corner.
First, though, she needed to give Sophia a sense of power she could take away from this. How could she build Sophia up? Bambi was great at building people up, but if she wanted it to stick, she needed to go slow, so Bambi wouldn't take that confidence with her when she left Sophia to home.
Bambi had made good progress with the ice, it seemed. Maybe start there?
She unzipped her bag as she thought, sat it between them. She dug and dug, looking for her carefully labelled and bedazzled pill box in search of the over the counter pain killers she kept. She dug past her extra clothes, sanitary and beauty products, the matchbox for Mel and Milk, the glasses cloth for Hiro and Officer Novella, her multiple box cutters, and kept digging.
"That sucks. Can't even have your whimsy in a arcade without it being a danger to your face."
Now they were getting somewhere!
Pointe beamed at him, scooping up a darling little prog with twitch in its claspers and spinning as she plucked the fascinator from his hands. The fascinator went to the base of the claspers and the movement of the feather when it twitched gave it lovely visual interest. She set it down with a kiss to the flat top of its head.
"We'll have to get them to talk about it then! Probably somewhere else since this is a public space, but they could really bond!" Pointe pulled up the menu again, and chose a fishing hat with colorful decorative lures. "Do you have a prog dedicated to phishing? This would just be perfect." She spins and looks at the progs who are watching them now that one of their companions has a fancy hat shaking fabulously with each tick.
Pointe considered Mothman. Considered the rot comment. He wanted to change the subject, going still at the idea of something taking his NetOp.
"We're still working through the morals of it. Fawn says we're evil now, and i suppose that's fair, if what we're doing is going against status quo. It all sounds very romantic like that." If a rotten society is what they concerned themselves with, though, they would need to get something out of the way. She hated to taint the relationship so early, but Bambi didn't just want to get someone on their side - she wanted a friend.
"We might be what you want to avoid though."
And friends don't keep secrets just because they hurt.
"Fawn is an Achida. We're very rich, and not newly. We're old money and old money is very very dirty."
-
Bambi's bag immediately got Sophia's attention, and she was confident that Bambi was very intentionally trying to get her attention, with the way she was fussing the zipper and placing the bag right between them. Mind games or not, Sophia was more than happy to be nosy at a stranger's belongings... or, well, Bambi wasn't much of a stranger to her now.
Sophia peered over as Bambi rummaged through her bag, spying for anything of interest. A mountain of makeup, a change of clothes, ...who needs that many box cutters at once? Odd. Bambi's digging soon unearthed her selection of Battle Chips, which did grab Sophia's attention due to how... bog-standard the collection was. A cut above weak starter pack fodder, sure, but they were all very straightforward attacking chips, and didn't seem picked with any obvious combos or Program Advances in mind. The only thing more exotic was some area denial and keep-away chips, includin- wait, huh?
"...Recov75? Is that even a thing?" Sophia couldn't help exclaim upon spotting that particular chip's label. Didn't recovery chips only exist in increments of ten?
MothMan had a hearty chuckle towards Pointe's idea of giving a phishing prog a fishing hat. It did sound quite cute, honestly. "No, but I wish I did now!" MothMan pulled across the window for a closer look at the hat. "That sort of thing we usually do the manual, old-fashioned way." (Maybe a more automatic solution would have helped avoid the cock up with the chatroom BBS, MothMan mused to himself.)
Achida. Pointe said the surname with a degree of gravitas, but if there was any significance to the name alone it was lost on MothMan. Probably for the best he didn't recognise it; it's been an uphill battle to have MothMan give Pointe any time of day at all, and him registering the name of some notorious rich family had the potential to reignite his lightly-simmering paranoia.
"Tsk, what money isn't dirty?" MothMan replied dismissively. "Not that most rich people will admit that's the case. The world has far too many nepo babies who insist they got where they are though 'hard work' or 'pure talent' instead of being drop-lifted a mountain of Zenny from their family." MothMan mimed out the scare quotes. "Closest thing we have to wealth is living in an oversized McMansion, all because Sophia's family wants to cram everyone under one roof like sardines."
Sophia's confusion over the recovery chip came through crystal-clear over the PET's mic, and MothMan's curiosity was piqued just enough to glance back at the camera window... and thanks to Sophia leaning over, the PET was poking out enough to give him a view! At the risk of Pointe taking notice, MothMan paused the feed and zoomed in to the chips, quickly coming to the same conclusions as Sophia. Very basic selection, no real synergies, lopsided balance towards support and recovery, all seemed to corroborate Pointe's claim that Bambi wasn't a NetBattler...
An extra-loud DING! reverberated from a nearby pinball table the very moment MothMan realised this was the perfect opportunity! He closed the camera window with a devilish grin as he prepared his address to the outside world.
As Bambi began to dig out her pill box, Sophia's PET vibrated followed by MothMan making his presence known. "You know Sophia, maybe we should share some of our own chips and technique!" He chimed in with an overly friendly tone, making sure to be loud enough to not be muffled by the pocket. "After all, what better way to bond than a friendly NetBattle, hmm?"
Sophia thought that was an odd interjection at first... but quickly put the dots together. "Man, do I even have good chips on hand right now?" Sophia ruffled her hands through her pockets, she always had some chips on her person, but... "Ugh, if we didn't get dragged out so fast we could have prepared for this..."
-
Bambi gave a little smile at Sophia leaning in to snoop in her bag. She wondered if Sophia was a younger sibling too. Nosiness tended to be a learned behavior. When the other girl found her chips, Bambi gave a shrug. "Yeah? Its just a standard recovery chip. Do you not have those where you're from?" Bambi had a ton of them. They had been a pretty standard chip in every bargain big since the month they had come out.
Bambi stiffened at the idea, hands finding her front-most dark locks and fidgeting. She wasn't a netbattler, because if Ijuuin Enzan was something she couldn't -wouldn't - be that too. Comparison to him had always been the one thing guaranteed to ruin her day and she would never invite that into her life. She wasn't a netbaltler. This was normally something she didn't care to shy away from. She had said it more times than she could count whenever get-togethers at arcades inevitably wound up with the group dividing into pairs around the netbattling machine.
"I'm not really a netbatler." she said, and she hated herself for how meek it sounded, when normally she was so flippant and casual about it. She normally didn't care, but she did here. She was good at so many things, so there was no reason to be shy about this one thing she couldn't do well. She did fine in the bare minimum virus busting class. Pointe handled Agaki's stupid ass bird like a champ, but straight on netbattling...
Her stomach lurched however, while the navis waited and Sophia patted her own pockets down.
God, what was she going to do? If she netbattled here, and this was the impression Sophia was left with....
"I'm not good at netbattling, and if you see it, you won't think I'm reliable or cool." Bambi whispered it fast, like she was ripping off a bandage. It wouldn't get any easier the longer she let is sit in her chest.
Pointe proceeded to chime in. Unseen by the operators, she popped beside Mothman in a puff of glitter, holding a Prog she had managed to get blush and long false eyelashes onto. "It's okay, Étoile! They're our friends now, so they'll still think you're wonderful! Maybe they can teach us!"
-
"First I've heard of this particular one." Truth be told, Sophia rarely needed to carry recovery chips as MothMan could just heal via grass terrain (and certainly not ones for such a paltry amount of HP), but she still knew generic chips well enough to know that "Recov75" wasn't a thing. Eh, it's probably just a misprint. Or more likely, Bambi got suckered into buying junk chips repackaged with a fake label. (Sophia still wasn't really giving any consideration to the whole "alternate dimensions" thing.)
Sophia was too busy rummaging inside her jacket to notice Bambi suddenly freeze up, until her meek, seemingly out-of-character interjection snatched Sophia's attention. Good grief, she may as well have been looking at a completely different person. All of Bambi's confidence and extroversion was rapidly draining away, leaving a nervous, fidgety wreck in the place Bambi once sat. Sophia's ogling certainly wasn't helping matters, though it was hard not to pay attention to the abrupt 180º turn in personality.
But this all part of the plan wasn't it? Sure, Sophia was slowly becoming receptive to the idea of being friends with Bambi, but she still wanted put Bambi in place. She was not going to let Bambi walk all over her, be the best at everything, or use her as a social asset. And just the idea of a NetBattle was helping to solve those problems, let alone an actual match...
...Although Sophia would need to actually find any darn BattleChips on her first. Ugh, none stuffed away in her jacket, maybe in her in jeans... hold on, was something in her back pockets the whole time?
Sophia stood up and promptly yanked out a pair of chips from behind her without much grace, both of which lacked proper labels in favour of black permanent marker text. ...HeatSide and BugBomb? Not great, but she could make those work.
"Well look, you're far better equipped for a battle than me today." Sophia fanned her chips over Bambi's stash, comparing the quantity but trying to downplay the quality. "I haven't even done that much NetBattling myself. You'll do fine." A half-truth. Sophia hadn't done much formal NetBattling, but she had no shortage of tussles with UnderNet Navis, net authorities and scam victims trying to defend themselves.
MothMan was briefly taken aback by the unsightly visage of the yassified Mr. Prog Pointe had dramatically appeared alongside, but tried not get hung up on it. He needed to capitalise on Ponite's words if the plan was going to work.
"Yeah, let's not be strangers here! Don't take it too seriously, Sophia isn't the ultra-competitive type. It'll just be some fun, low-stakes practice!"
MothMan was keeping up a friendly facade, but deep down he was revelling in his sudden lucky break. He was going out on a limb that maybe a one-sided NetBattle might be the thing that gets these two to stay the fuck away from Sophia, but to see it was an immediate, huge sore spot for Bambi? Now he was getting somewhere! Spirits are getting broken today, oh yes...
"Eugh..." before Sophia could say anything more to encourage Bambi or question why Pointe's voice was coming from her PET, the throbbing pain on her face suddenly resurfaced. (Why does it ache so much?! The ball didn't hurt that much, for the love of pete...) Sophia lurched back for the ice pack, clutching her forehead with the chips still hand. At least this reminder that she was supposed to be digging out painkillers might snap Bambi out of her current spiral...
-
Bambi rolled her lip between her teeth. Mothman wasn't exactly subtle with his intentions. Pointe's encouragement got her moving again. She looked at her chips, and started to piece them out. Her chips weren't especially powerful. She had picked up some basics, and hadn't wanted to get reliant on strong chips before she had the basics down. The only thing she hadn't hesitated on was higher level Recovery chips. The Recovery 75s had come from her attempts at the chip trader, which she had all but given up on after her 14th Recovery 75.
She offered out a handful. She wouldn't part with her 200s or 300s, but she could spare these. "Here. I have tons. You should at least have a couple support chips on you."
Pointe gave a celebratory spin. She practically glowed with pride. Her girl was so brave even when she was doing something she was nervous about.
"I'm so glad! You'll have to teach me a lot, Mothman!" Pointe turned, and clasped the other navi's hands in her own. "This is going to be so good for us! That awful man also has a flying navi, so this will be such good practice for shooting her straight out of the sky!"
Bambi went immediately back to digging. Her little medbox sparkled with a thick layer of rhinestones from the bottom of the bag. Bingo! The pills were individually packaged into doses, and carefully alphabetized, and she pulled out a baggie with a smiley face sticker stuck to the side by another smaller smiley face sticker. She fished out a new bottle of water and offered that out too.
If Sophia thought less of her for her net battling skills, she
could probably get Mel to beat her upcould make up for it with her willingness to learn. -
Never one to reject Free Shit
, Sophia wordlessly tugged the chip offering out of Bambi's hands, giving them a brief inspection. Some proper recovery chips would give her and MothMan more leeway to screw around with their opponent... assuming these chips were even what they said they are.MothMan was, yet again, taken aback a little by Pointe's forthcoming nature as they took his hands, but quickly replaced his expression with a polite smile and nodded. As much as he would love to drop some ominous veiled taunt about "teaching" them something alright, Pointe had proven they were smarter than they looked. Bambi probably was as well. MothMan couldn't be entirely sure if the two were falling for his ruse or not; playing this personality straight for as long as possible seemed to be the correct move.
And besides, it'll sting so much more if Bambi and Pointe build up the impression they ever stood a chance.
As Bambi was fishing out the medbox, Sophia was busy making a complete mess of herself; struggling to coordinate her hands to swap her chips for the ice pack while also keeping a hand rested on the aching area itself. Before she could tangle herself up any further, Bambi's handout fortunately got her to put everything down to grab the bag of pills. Unfortunately, her hand-eye-coordination wasn't the only thing being clouded by the aching. As Bambi turned back to her bag to fetch Sophia water, she took a long hard stare at the pills and the overbearing smiley stickers, and the wrong neurons in her brain activated.
"Are you trying drug m-"
Halfway through blurting that out Sophia realised how stupid of an accusation that was. What the heck was she thinking?! Bambi
was just trying to be a helpful friend to her!didn't need such a convoluted set up if she actually wanted to drug her! Good lord, she was making even more of a fool out of herself now!"Thanks..." Sophia meekly interrupted herself, failing to hide her embarrassment as she took the water bottle from a baffled-looking Bambi. "L-look away for a moment."
Sophia turned herself directly away from Bambi's sight, making certain she couldn't she her face before lowering her face mask, swallowing a couple of painkillers and chugging down the water bottle in one big gulp, all done in swift, well-practised motions. And while Sophia would have been perfectly fine with doing a dry swallow, it had been a while since she drank anything. Even the lukewarm bottled water was making her feel refreshed and better already, signalled by a large exhale as she finished her drink and threw her mask back on, followed by uncaringly dropping the bottle to the floor.
"...Let's get a move on." Sophia commanded, not asked, as she stood up fully and began to walk in the general direction of a yet-unexplored section of the arcade. Better she take charge before Bambi had the chance to hesitate again, and before they get any more weird looks from the pinball players...
-
Pointe gave a flourish with her hands as she spun, and logged back over to her own PET (and if a couple adjacent progs she had been secretly eyeing turned a new color, he would have to see them once her glitter cloud disappeared).
She had never been inside of a arcade netbattle machine. She had never had any interest in it. It was always a thing that people used that she didn't need to, so why waste processing power on it? But now... now it was something new for her and Bambi to experience together. This was exciting!
Bambi gave a stiffled giggle at Sophia's unfinished drug accusation. Sophia was cute, getting worked up, calming herself down, like every other girl their age. It made her feel normal in a way she hadn't in quite some time. She was a teenager making friends at the arcade, and the world felt a little less scary. It turned down the sting of admitting her own shortcomings in front of someone new.
"They're factory sealed, silly! The stickers are just a bonus so you get a treat when you need it most!" She swipes an extra sticker and puts it on her cheek, pointing at the holographic cartoon face then her own to show off their matching smiles- big, glittery, bright. It pulled a bit as the apple of her cheek rounded with the grin.
When Sophia told her to look away, Bambi stood and turned with her back to the other girl. She hooked her fingers into the belt loops at her hips so her jacket could fan out like a barrier between Sophia and the rest of the arcade. When the pinball players looked, Bambi made uncomfortably direct eye contact til they took a hint and went back to their game. She didn't appreciate people encroaching on her title of being the nosiest person in the room.
Bambi turned back when the bottle was dropped, and frowned in disapproval. "Shame on you!" she said, scooping up the empty bottle. She didn't bother with the trash, walking past Sophia in long strides to the recyclable bin past the netbattle machines. "Gimme back that sticker. Litterers don't get smiley faces."
-
Sophia couldn't return Bambi's big smile. Not just because the aching or her embarrassment hadn't worn off, but because it felt so artificially saccharine. Feel-good stickers were something you gave to children.
(Wasn't there also a game in this arcade where you got chased by a killer smiley face upon taking too long? For some reason that seemed to stick out in Sophia's mind)
Of course Bambi would raise a stink about the bottle. As if the kids here weren't knocking about trash or ticket clippings everywhere. "Fine, you can have it back." Sophia was clearly feeling better, as her response dripped with sardonicism while she dropped the stickers right above the exact same spot she dropped the bottle. Nothing to smile about in my life, she jeered to herself.
While Bambi was preoccupied with bin duty, Sophia kept moving and took her place at one of the netbattle machines. Oddly, she seemed to be the only person stationed at the netbattle machines; the rest remained in a fruitless attract mode, despite being set to free play. Not that Sophia thought much of said observation as she jacked MothMan into the machine.
If Bambi was expecting any kind of fancy jack-in catch-phrase or pose, Sophia's mundane point 'n' press was sure to disappoint.
After the jack-in process completed, MothMan found himself in what appeared to be a spectator's area: a large, rectangular border overlooking and surrounding the actual netbattling arena. Judging by the sets of benches outlining the edge of the platform and the skybox of stick-figure audience members, the comp seemed to be a very abstract and downscaled representation of a stadium.
MothMan didn't spend much time taking in his surroundings, and instead flew towards the conspicuous control panel straight ahead. Even with Bambi cleaning up after Sophia, he was expecting Pointe to catch up with him quickly (and almost certainly in a surprise burst of confetti); he didn't want to waste any time he had to configure the match settings in his favour before Pointe showed up, just in case they raised an objection while he was going through the options.
(Perhaps MothMan was trying to be a bit too fast though, as he had to dig in his heels while landing to narrowly avoid smacking his whole body into the panel.)
First order of business: picking an arena well-suited to his abilities. MothMan hastily flicked his finger across the row of stage thumbnails in search anything ideal for hi- aha! MothMan stopped scrolling with a decisive finger press. As the thumbnail lit up, each individual tile making up the arena began to flip over one-by-one, clicking back into place with different tiles on the underside and gradually revealing MothMan's choice of stage: A large square of grass with a thick border of regular panels, with rocks laid out in a 5-point dice shape. Perfect for both his abilities and getting a good HeatCross shot in!
The sound of another Navi jacking in filled the air just as MothMan gave the arena a satisfied look.
