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."

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 up could make up for it with her willingness to learn.

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!"

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."

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."

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!"

"These ones don't go online," at least not until Bambi needed to launch a vicious social media attack on the Agakis, but that was a plan B. "My online presence is extremely curated, and these don't fit."

Sophia seemed to ....not relax, that didn't seem quite right, but settle. Like she had figured something out, enough to think she had a grasp on their interaction. Perfect.

No one brought their A game when they thought they were dealing with a ditzy bimbo.

The crowd pushed them and she stepped around Sophia lightly. She led them to the skii ball machines, which was sparse with people, and still in line of sight for the adults at the party if they looked over.

When Sophia gave her a little fake cough and turned away, Bambi caught a glimpse of her sticking her gnarly custom PET back in her pocket. As much as she wanted to look over that PET, now wasn't the time. The cough itself was fine enough, as far as fakes go, but the uncharacteristically polite 'pardon me' would have revealed even a perfect fake. Time to call her bluff.

"Oh no if you aren't feeling well, we could go find somewhere to rest? They have benches over there where your family can still see you, so you know, I can't chase you into an alley to kick your ribs or anything," Bambi tossed her a wink. "I'll let you use my lap as a pillow, if you want."

Point took the opportunity to flicker back to Sophia's PET, spinning in greeting to Mothman. "We should get to know each other too! Do you want my prog customizer? We could color code them together." Pointe did a pas de bourrée couru to step closer and curtsied. "You really ought to close the IR scanner connection! It's very easy to get in here!"

"You probably won't believe it until you see a portal for yourself. I certainly didn't!" Bambi spent most of her free time trying not to remember the portal and what lay beyond it. She had stupidly followed a woman she had trusted - still trusted - and her worldview had been shattered an hour too late to save her from Agaki's attack and years too early for her to be mentally prepared to come face to face with -

Nah.

"I hope I'm the worst thing that comes out of that chatroom for you. When your first interaction started with someone trying to introduce your ribs to your lungs, it sets you up for a lot of anxiety when the next interaction comes." Mel had been fine. Milk had been fine. Eni and his entire entourage had been fine. But she still woke up in a cold sweat multiple times a week from a dream where something came through - sometimes a person, sometimes a thing, always an uninvited guest.

"I'm pretty. Weird men follow me around all the time." she shrugged. and turned her PET back to her. The pictures made it real, which was scary, but having pictures and being able to show them meant that its was the past. She flipped to a copy she had made of one and covered in GIF stickers and emojis.

"Thought I'd give you a treat by having your first interaction be with a hot nice girl like me." She flashed a cheeky grin at Sophia and framed her chin with her hands cutely. "You're welcome!"

"Oof, careful with words like that - I can't imagine people with schizophrenia like being used as an insult to conspiracy theorists." Even evil people needed to have standards. Dr. Regal would never.

Bambi shifted from foot to foot as she thought. "Not much honestly. Its ran by some program called Guardian who has like, a thing for brunettes? You said there was a blue navi that took down Gospel, right? There's tons of him in there, and his NetOP, but they're not always partners?" She avoided them like the plague. Netto and Rockman were nice, but they tended to be followed around by her own personal pain in the ass, and she didn't need another run in.

"I don't understand the science. It's not my thing. But these freak portals open up sometimes, and people or things come through, or sometimes they open up underneath you and you wind up face first in someone else's space. And whether you play into it or lurk around for laughs not believing in it-" like she had "-it doesn't go away and it will find a way to force itself into your life."

As the boy ran off excitedly, she waved until he was out of sight. She was a little disappointed to not be invited back for cake. There weren't any young children in her family so she didn't get the opportunity to see kid's parties, or chill family gatherings, often.

Bambi stilled a bit at Mothman's words, but if Pointe worried that his obvious attempts to poke at old wounds were affecting Bambi in any way past what the experience already had, her fears were squashed when Bambi sprung back to life. Bambi leaned in, hands up, the picture of a teenage girl dying to share her weird experience with a friend in excited confidence.

"Oh Buggy - oh sorry, Sophia - you wouldn't believe it - I got chased into an alleyway. Like a dame at the start of a gritty misogynist detective movie - straight up chased me through the streets while his navi sound-drugged me!"

Pointe is already flipping through the image library before Bambi can turn her PET around to ask her to do so. "Look at this- look at what he did to my beautiful skin! You can see my ribs in the bruises! You can see the pattern of his last-season shoes!" Sure enough, the images she had taken after the bruises had time to bloom purple across her skin showed where Agaki Marc had kicked her. Mottled blue and grey and violet showed darker on the lines of her ribs and revealed the pattern of his soles. "And then! Some weird cop lady showed up and she was okay but she took me on the worst trip ever!" Bambi did a twirl to dramatically drape herself across the ticket machine, throwing one arm over her eyes like even the memory was enough to make her feel faint.

She poked her head back up with a proud smile. "Oh but I'm all healed now though - see?" She moved her jacket aside to reveal the skin just below her crop top- now evenly tan and clear of any fading bruises.

Bambi let her fumble around. Her suspicions were fair enough, and she couldn't fault her for that. She made sure to keep her hands visible, and a pathway clear if Buggy decided to skitter off to her family.

"I'm not here to hurt you. You already said we're friends, so we are. You'll find out there's a tendency for a lot of coincidences in the chatroom." Bambi gave her another smile. If she kept it consistent, Buggy would relax.

The Navi showing up and interrupting Buggy was a little frustrating. Buggy was already struggling with words. That was okay though. "Hello, are you her Navi? I'm Bambi and this is Pointe. I'm Doe_Eyed in the chat. What's your name?"

Pointe didn't flinch at the glare or the threat. She gave a smile, and curtsied again. A Navi getting aggressive because they were protective of their human was right and proper. He couldn't be too bad, if his first instinct was to jump in like this. Maybe should could teach him how to color code his Progs and organizational system. She'd just added 40 new color palettes to her collection. They could go over it together!

Bambi lifted her gaze back to Buggy's face. "I came because I wish my first physical run in with the chat hadn't gone so poorly. If I had known more beforehand, maybe I'd sleep better now." Maybe she would have made better decisions, chosen to scream for Dante at Caffiend instead of running or not followed that officer to her dimension.

"I know its a lot to take in, and you won't believe it on the first interaction, so I wanted to give you the chance to have a better time with it than I had. That's what friends are for, after all. They look out for each other!"

When the boy came running up, Bambi took note of his words. Sophia, huh? That was a cute name. The kid didn't seem to mind Sophia flinched and wincing at him. Bambi gave him a conspiratory smile, like she was letting him in on a secret. "Yeah, I'm Bambi! I'm from out of town so Sophia and I don't get to see each other much, so I was hoping to catch up. Sorry to steal her away, but can I have her for a little longer? Pretty please?"

Bambi gave a thoughtful hum. For someone trying to steal in broad daylight in a crowded establishment, she sure seemed easily shaken up. Prickly girls were so easy to throw off in real life. She might have been disappointed that another so called criminal was so soft, but well, moe gaps were her favorite.

"I wanted to mess around in an arcade, and thought I'd kill two birds with one stone by trying to meet my new friend!"

Bambi gave her best smile, careful to not step any more into her space. Buggy already seemed ready to bolt. "I didnt honestly think I'd be lucky enough to get the right I universe on the right day! Im either soooo lucky or the mods love me that much!"
Bambi held up her PET so Pointe could curtsey cutely, another spray of glitter lighting her up.

"So this is my Navi Pointe and shes the best. I told you my name is Bambi, and im also the best. What's your name? I know you said you wanted to be friends in chat, but now that we're face to face let's be IRL friends for real!"

Bingo. Buggy had caught sight of her. And she looked pissed about it too. God, Bambi hoped she was Throwawayaccount_307h. She needed her in her collection of crusty girls ASAP.

Then Buggy stopped looking at her and turned back to her PET. That wouldn't do. Bambi didn't get ignored.

Pointe gave her a conspiratory 'pssst' through her earbud. "They're using an IR scanner! He's in! But the door opens both ways."

Bambi smiled. "Yeah? You wanna do some recon? Make sure we got the right girl?"

"Tactical lesbionage action time!" was the only sign off Pointe gave before disappearing. Bug Girl's PET was a bit of a disaster, and Pointe resisted the urge to color code and sort while she was there. Progs were scattered, but they barely acknowledged her even when she waved and simply went back to the (probably illegal) mods they were handling. Amazing what acting like you belonged there did.

The chat was easy enough find, since she saw it in her own PET every day. She only gave it a quick glance, careful to avoid the DMs to maintain some level of privacy despite her current actions. She gave a victorious pirouette before logging out in a shower of holographic glitter.

"Mission success! She's the one!" She exclaimed.

"You're a dream, Pointe! Let's get our new girl!" Bambi chucked her empty water bottle into the nearest garbage can and disentangled herself from the loose circle of children still june-bugging to her since her little show. Buggy hadn't bothered to move from her line of sight, so she power walked her way through the crowd, not bothering to pretend she wasn't heading straight for her.

She seemed distracted, so Bambi gave her a polite tap on the shoulder to bring her attention back to its rightful place. "Hi Throwawayaccount, I'm Doe_Eyed, but you can call me Bambi!""

The arcade seemed unreasonably full, but the crowd seemed to congregate at one end. It left the dance machine open with an audience to entertain, so Bambi set up HQ while Pointe gathered intel via the cameras.

She was two songs in before Pointe sounded in. "It's a birthday party, little star, and I think your new girl is in attendance!"

Bambi took her time entering her name on the scoreboard and getting water while Pointe pulled up a swiped screenshot from the security cameras. Face mask check, bug theming check. Cute sulky edgy girl energy, super check!

"I couldn't hear the Navi through the cameras, but the NetOp was talking about Nebula being back and Officials." Pointe spun in place, before closing the image. "They're going to hack the ticket machines!"

"Great job, Pointe! Let me know if anything else comes up, but I think I've got the rest." Bambi gave the hologram a little kiss before Pointe disappeared. She needed to get the girl's attention, and that was easy enough. Bambi was hard to ignore regularly, but if the girl was a scammer, it wouldn't be hard to speed things along. Edgy girls like easy victims, especially if they thought they could knock them off a high horse.

No one had stepped up to the dance machine in her absence so she took up post again and spotted a young girl in a birthday crown. Perfect. "Is it your birthday? Oh my gosh, come up and dance with me! My treat!"

Birthday Girl was small enough that Bambi could hold her by the arms and spin her around on the dance mat to hit the buttons with more accuracy than an eight year old could alone. It wasn't anything like her own perfect score glowing at the top of the board, but it put her on the first page. and Bambi sent her off squealing in delight when she handed her the giant pile of tickets she had accumulated. A cute and loud siren to snag Buggy's attention, and a generous gift to establish herself as the honeypot worth trying to get into.