Scene #9710: The Gang Does Kepler-1652b (4)

Owner	Pose
Tamamo	'...I ¶solved/cleaned up/finished¶ the ¶Plot¶ so I did okay I guess.' "It was a game that seemed, to me, to wish for introspection. I wondered where it might result, like that. I did not progress very far, still -- through the first of the 'dungeons,' out the other side, and into exploring the fields beyond, perhaps? I remember fishing, and a great many things to cook. Did it leave a lasting impression, in the end, or was it a matter of novelty? Would you play such things again, or would you wish for more of... a sequel?" Nika starts wiggling back and forth in thought. '...y'know?' "I do." Tamamo smiles. 'That's why, by the way! Sterling, Pence...' "Oh, so that was it," says the woman who doesn't really remember Sterling among the sea of players, and isn't sure they'd met. She listens a bit to the radio, and then mutes it on her end, putting her phone back away. This doesn't stop her from hearing the chatter from everyone else using it, with ears like hers, but it stops it from buzzing and suppresses distant voices into the background.
Arthur Lowell	--- LATER ON... > Arthur: Get everyone to hang out Wretched fucking thing. Where did Arthur dig up this trash? Alchemizing like twenty copies of the same computer and game console over and over, he has somehow scammed everyone into joining him in some kind of unhinged LAN party. He informs them that the servers went offline when they were hit by a meteor, and he's never been able to get a full server of sixteen since, so they all have to, you know? The licensed movie-adaptation 'MIDNIGHT CREW IV' game received a rating of 2.5/5 Cool Hats in Game Bro magazine near the end of 2008, which might have been the highest rating it received in any publication. While it was praised for ambitious life-simulation elements and varied potential careers, and its character-creation was startlingly prescient for multiversal features, it was also universally panned for anachronistic graphical decisions, dependence on bad physics, and a suite of minigames that were seemingly both random and unintuitive. For a crime-thriller game, why is there so much bowling? What's with the cookout and picnic mechanic? Did it really need a collect-a-thon for brands of cigarettes? And the fact that the multiplayer mode just throws a bunch of people in the city and cycles events randomly made it incoherent, not to mention all the hacking and such. People just wanted to hijack cars and blow up cops!! Arthur is convinced it's the coolest shit in the world and he's made Problems until everyone on the boat, and some people off the boat, join him.
Petra Soroka	Yeah, Petra will play a dogshit video game, even if it's with Arthur Lowell. Frankly, she'd do just about anything on this ship as long as everyone else joins in. It's not like she was born early enough for a 'LAN party' to really be an age-cohort-appropriate thing for her to do, but she's heard legends of them, and so it's charmingly retro to be helping set up chunky computer consoles in a shared living space. It's a little bit like movie nights in LobCorp, and a little bit like sleepovers in the research lab on Io. As much of a weirdo freak pervert Petra can be about everything on this trip, it's not hard to see that the temporary collective living environment gives her pretty much limitless energy and enthusiasm. And so she is gaming. Within an hour, Petra discovers that hitting a particular angle on the hood of a car driven by someone else allows you to clip right through the windshield while it's still in motion, ending up superimposing yourself into the driver's seat without booting the previous owner out as you would when stealing a car normally. Her project in the game becomes collecting as many of these cars as possible and driving them into a private lot, shutting the gate behind her so that the kidnapped driver can't escape, and gathering NPCs into a sort of vehicular zoo. All of her actions in the game center around attempting to caretake for her driver zoo, which results in her obsessively grinding up her skills in every minigame so that she can impress all of the kidnapees with whatever bizarre niche skill is their personal fixation and improve her reputation with them. While showing off multiple cartons of cigarettes to one of her victims to make them happy, she remarks, "I can't believe this is how I finally learn the names of cigarette brands."
Tamamo	MIDNIGHT CREW IV The graphical choices are causing more of a disconnect for Tamamo than is usually the case, and she's therefore approached a game with life sim elements more 'as a game' than she usually would. She's still made a character with upward-pointed (fox?) ears and a (fox?) tail, yes, because it let her. But instead of, like she did with Bladecraft, hooking up with a party and discovering all the cooking recipes, she's been going around town poking into every single NPC's business and beating them at card games. No one is safe from card minigames, and she's plausibly hacked Arthur's servers somehow, since the RNG keeps letting her win when she rearranges the cards in her hand and then intentionally misplays. It just keeps happening. She even hits Lilian with a game that sort of looks like Hold 'Em if you squint and a deck that stacked itself, then giggles and nudges her shoulder to shoulder whenever she wins. It should go without saying that, if Lilian isn't safe, then no one is. Mostly, however, she uses this power to barge into places that NPCs are trying to keep her out of, and then narrate to the room whatever mildly interesting or extremely strange thing she finds there. Most of the things are strange, to her, due to the game's aesthetic choices. "My, what colorful robes. From where did these arrive?"
Lilian Rook	The subject of another day being videogames quietly elates Nika, tires out Lilian after an exhausting day of sitting still and playing her own version of power wash sim previously, tempts Sakura into actually trying her hand at it, and first disgusts then mesmerizes Ash once they see just how inexplicably dogshit it all is. Nika, of course, intuits every stupid minigame by synthesizing the rules out of the akashic repertoire of all stupid minigames across everything she's ever played, and immediately starts fiending for the top. Her meteoric rise is slowed only by her enthusiastic and patient tutoring of Sakura, who has gotten a controller of her own (or rather, Nika has given her the powder blue one she likes and taken up the seldom touched pink-lavender one herself) and sidled up into Gamer Position besides her at the Ruble Battlestation. Sakura needs practically everything about what's going on explained, starting from basic presumptions on the level of 'when you start a platformer segment, you usually go right', but adapts to the execution remarkably quickly, needing little time to become proficient with 'handling a controller', and even less than that to internalize the 'feeling' of operating videogame space, once the task of understanding it is offloaded to someone else. Lilian finds this particular outcome utterly fascinating, and has been prying at her for what other hobbies Sakura has, which she is being somewhat awkward and cagey about. Nika, meanwhile, has discovered how to use any street corner aligned northwest to hurl herself into the sky, and shortly thereafter, learned how to break her fall with the use of a nearby car, and so she has commandeered Petra's car-stealing technique just to place drivers around the city like opportune scuttlebugs. Ash has chosen a particular monitor to hover over as if it were behind the Nika Couch, to backseat from, but they've mostly asked a million times where Nika doesn't just drive here or there considering how much she likes racing games and daring her to see if she can fall on top of Petra from the sky and kill her instantly. Lilian is only playing because Tamamo is, which tears her away only somewhat from hassling Sakura. Following her around the city all the time accomplishes very little. The first couple of times they play cards, she's perfectly game about getting rinsed at virtual cards, but soon her considerable wife-gal powers are at war with the urge to pout and complain about 'bullshit RNG', which draws Ash like a shark to blood.
Tamamo	...the urge to pout and complain about 'bullshit RNG'... Fufufu. "Shall we try another game?" Tamamo's absolutely going to lose anything without RNG, and she can't reliably take Nika down because she can't work through the wonky physics well enough to land a challenge card on her to force her into the right minigame. She can, of course, land it on Petra, but her ability obliterate Petra at any time in other contexts takes out some of the joy of making her lose at cards. She'd only still do that for the sake of entertaining an audience. ...which draws Ash like a shark to blood. Ah, there's an audience. Or, another victim.
Petra Soroka	Petra never really makes her video game icons look like herself unless they're actually meant to be her. Usually, they end up taller, cooler, and with longer, paler hair than she has. Who knows what's up with that! Due to her zoo of drivers, Petra can't be as free-wheeling as Nika and Tamamo are, which she obnoxiously refers to repeatedly as having 'settled down'. This results in her tagging along with whatever sidequests people get up to if they come close enough to her zone, or just being directed around at Nika's bidding wherever she's told to go. Having, in return, stolen Nika's physics launching technique after some practice, Petra lodges herself on invisible walls above the map-- because the buildings don't actually have roofs that can be stood on-- to scuttle around over people's heads and watch what they're doing. Soon enough, she also becomes fascinated with Sakura's extremely charming deft unfamiliarity with gaming, and lingers over her head to watch for a while. "This'll probably make watching Nika make a lot more sense, huh?" After another minute of Sakura's rapidly improving skills, Petra adds with no lead up, "Didn't you say something about, muscle memory versus psychological memory before?" Petra, also, is definitely egging Tamamo on to come and obliterate her without directly saying so. The longer Ash urges Nika to bombard her from the sky and kill her instantly, the more Petra slides into the role of being the local-hosted-villainess, referring to her people-stable as her 'minions' and handing out guns to them to 'defend her lair'. The goal of being a grandiose supervillain, both in game and in reality, is to either make it dramatic or funny when she's taken down and destroyed by the forces of good.
Arthur Lowell	> Arthur: Game, in your natural habitat "Alright, up NEXT for CARDSHARKING is the HIDEOUTS. You gotta do ENDGAME CARDGAMES while SMOKING around a BIG ROUND TABLE IN A HIDEOUT." Arthur asserts with a sort of startling authority.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell says, "You can set up a hideout in a DISREPUTABLE AUTO SHOP, a DISREPUTABLE WAREHOUSE, a DISREPUTABLE CASINO, or a DISREPUTABLE STRIPPING CLUB I think."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell said the "ing" there with a weird, conspicuous clumsiness. That'll come up later.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell says, "ALL ELSE BANNED, maybe? I think? Which is lucky 'cause those places are like NINETY PERCENT of the city, I guess it's something about ZONING?"
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell bursts into laughter when one of Nika's passing carmissiles rips the top off of his car as he heads towards Petra's peoplezoo. His character seems to be continuing to drive the lower half of the car without issue.
Lilian Rook	'Shall we try another game?' "Fine. But you'd better not job just to make me feel better." huffs Lilian. Glancing out the corner of her eye at Ash doing something, she scowls, and hastens to say "Lose on purpose.", which makes Ash cackle. 'This'll probably make watching Nika make a lot more sense, huh?' "Strangely, I cannot say that I am often confused." Sakura says, as if it isn't strange at all. Sat up straight, her face briefly dips out of view as she reaches for a bottle from a cooler that's been brought up from the basement, covered in new stickers, and thus kept permanently after a minor import trip (Nika said she liked its vibe). "Of course, Nika is perfect as ever at explaining anything I could possibly ask, so I wouldn't remain lost for long." she says, earning a full-body side to side groove-wiggle from Nika, which doesn't change her expression or focus at all. "But setting that aside, she has a way of going through things which reveals itself easily if you're able to watch from the beginning." 'Didn't you say something about, muscle memory versus psychological memory before?' Sakura holds her breath for a minute, to finish the thrilling and psychologically harrowing final round of a match three game used to represent deciphering evidence of ledger tampering. Then she says "I have. Does something about it trouble you?" 'You gotta do ENDGAME CARDGAMES while SMOKING around a BIG ROUND TABLE IN A HIDEOUT.' "Disreputable strip club!" Ash shouts immediately. Nika groans and says "Everyone knew you were gonna say that.", which elicits "So? None of you have the balls to do it." "None of us really wanna see ¶transgressive validation/pixel tits¶ as bad as you do Ash." "The fuck?! Nika!?" "You sound like ¶et tu¶ right now. It's so ¶funny/lame¶." "Well what's going to be interesting about a warehouse?! I wanna see what fucked up minigames they made for a strip club!" "You wanna ¶get a room¶ so bad . . ." "I don't wanna hear that from you girl!" "'Ash had forgotten about strip clubs being all ladies'." "I didn't forget shit! Look!" This sufficiently angers Ash to finally pull up a controller too. They hit random on an avatar until it looks absolutely horrible, hover over enter, and then backspace angrily to start manually adjusting sliders, having to eventually choose no voice type because all of the options kinda piss them off.
Lilian Rook	'ALL ELSE BANNED, maybe' "Casino it is." says Lilian. "I've always had a good time at those." says the woman who just lost nine card games in a row. "It's good feng shui." She's doing it on purpose. Tamamo is right there. "Seriously?" "Did I stutter?" "Your luck is shit. You're washed." "What does that have to do with anything?" "Huh?" "You believe in luck?" "You think you're so cool don't you?" "I cheat relentlessly every time I go to one, genius." "No fucking way. I don't believe you." "It may surprise you to hear, but she does, actually, Ash." "S-sakura? Were you--?" "Oh fuck really? Like with--" "Yes." "Obviously!" "I mean that's fucking sick, but like, why? You're rich." "Love of the game." "You're cheating the game." "Love of cheating." ". . ." "You know what I meant!" "I think if you love a game enough you can like it enough to ¶dissect it¶ for fun. That's what ¶randomness manipulation¶ is anyways. That's just an expression of dedication y'know?" "Well shit. Wanna go gambling sometime?" "My treat." "Ash, how do you plan on . . . ?" "Stealing the startup, obviously." "Ah." "Grind never quits." "Hell yeah!"
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell does cut in after a bit to ramble, "Nah, nah, STRIPPING, not STRIP. It's PAINT REMOVAL or something. The movie was aiming for something called 'PEE-GEE THIRTEEN'."
Lilian Rook	Having just finished character generation, hit start, and being in the connection screen, Ash turns around to stare incredulously at Arthur over their shoulder, and says "Fuck off. You're making that up."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell does, eventually, wind up at Petra's people-zoo. He hooked a street-food vendor's cart to the back of his (now half a) car, and sort of nudges it over the wall she built on the lot, in order to incite/aggravate the people she's trapped in there to start getting into and out of their cars repeatedly to try to interact with the cart and get hotdogs.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell turns aside to chatter with Ash. "Yeah, it was STRIPPING CLUBS. Also a bunch'a BUST-RELATED stuff which is mostly GIANT CELEBRITY STONE HEADS. Hey, lemme see your MIDNIGHT CRIMINAL." He chatters as he goes to get a screenpeek.
Tamamo	'But you'd better not job just to make me feel better.' Ash cackles. Tamamo did understand that one, but she's saving the response prompt for later. "Of course, it would be against the spirit of the thing. Rather, it will be a matter of who among us first deciphers the game's objective, and so, I could hardly do so by design." She could choose to stop hogging all the good luck, but she won't. There are plenty of minigames one can force without RNG, some even worse for it. 'Strangely, I cannot say that I am often confused.' "'Rarely surprised,' as well, I would guess. Ah, but that does make one feel as if they should try and surprise you." What a fond/dangerous expression. Arthur explains endgame cardgames. 'Casino it is.' "A casino, then." 'Disreputable strip club!' Chidingly, "He did not say 'strip club.'" Whether the difference matters hasn't yet been made clear, but Tamamo has a feeling -- a feeling that Arthur would be reacting more obviously if Nika and Ash were right about it.
Lilian Rook	'Yeah, it was STRIPPING CLUBS. Also a bunch'a BUST-RELATED stuff which is mostly GIANT CELEBRITY HEADS. Hey, lemme see your MIDNIGHT CRIMINAL.' Ash has created, perplexingly, a character that appears to be a sort of middle-of-the-road evolutionary offshoot of pretty-looking boy(?) that is neither-or quite ikemen slash bishounen slash 'femboy' in any particular energy. It's a strangely unholy combination, in that you could imagine a real person actually looking like this, but not without wondering which erotic fiction they unwisely read while at an impressionable age. ""That's fucked. That's so fucking stupid."" Ash says, immediately trying to find the clothes and accessories necessary to Tuxedo Mask this virtual freud-bait's identity. "That's not even funny. That's such teehee hoohoo bullshit. PG-13 means for ten year old boys, come the fuck on."
Tamamo	'I think if you love a game enough you can like it enough to ¶dissect it¶ for fun. That's what ¶randomness manipulation¶ is anyways. That's just an expression of dedication y'know?' "If the rules forbid 'having good fortune,' no one would give gambling parlors their patronage at all," Tamamo says, just on the edge of malicious giggling as she looks around for either another casino or, more likely, a target-- And she can't see where Petra's gone off to, on account of not thinking about screen-peeking to find she'd rocketed herself out of bounds. "Hm..." Aggressing a casino owner into a game of memory with ticking bombs under the cards and finishing with a sweep, Tamamo leans on the analog stick until she's spun her character around 900 degrees, loses her grip on the controller while pressing jump, taps the trigger with her nail and an, "Ah--" --and tosses her Calling Card skill (which she'd sunk most of her points into to uncertain effect) at an angle into oncoming traffic that bounces it off the sky box and into Petra's character, immediately sending them both into a bomb-filled game of card-matching in the parking zoo.
Lilian Rook	'Of course, it would be against the spirit of the thing. Rather, it will be a matter of who among us first deciphers the game's objective, and so, I could hardly do so by design.' Lilian opens her mouth, considers all permutations of words she could use to confidently declare she'll finish first, glances sourly towards Ash, and closes her mouth again. Ash, blissfully unaware, has no idea why Sakura says "You're overestimating them.", and given pronoun ambiguity, cranes their head to look around at what challenge Lilian is on. 'He did not say 'strip club.'' "I seem to recall 'stripping club' too." Lilian says, smugly. She totally thought it would be a strip club as well. "Yeah! Do you think he's a ¶monocle man¶ or something? Hehe." says Nika, who actually assumed it wouldn't be, but provoked Ash anyways, because she thirsts for every novel and/or telling reaction she can get. "Fuck you guys. You were thinking it." says Ash, who is now looking for potential 'stripping clubs' anyways because they're locked the fuck in now. "You talk soooo much shit whenever it's me, but--" They pause for a second. "Nah I guess I talk mad shit when it's you. Fair enough."
Petra Soroka	[ansi(219,"But setting that aside, she has a way of going through things which reveals itself easily if you're able to watch from the beginning.")] "Yeah, that's true. She's got that ¶watch and learn/read it and weep¶ that makes it easy. I mean, I didn't know, like, fuck all about speedrunning or anything before." In place of all of her usual physical gesturing, Petra starts wiggling her character around on screen while explaining, making her crouch and circle and jump repeatedly until she lodges herself in an invisible wall hanging in space above Sakura's character. "But the ¶output¶'s different from the ¶vehicle¶. Once you know the physical sensation of it in your hand, it's like ¶mirror neurons/couch co-op/I was there too¶ to watch. I think there was some study about video game streamers, or something...?" Petra hammers jump on her controller until she physics her way out of the situation she physicsed herself into, launching herself so high off the map that the loaded tiles below fade out of rendering distance. This gives her the time to refocus on what her actual point was, after being prompted by Sakura. "Oh, right. No, not trouble. Just, like, video games and-- especially VR, really, like BCC-- are kind of totally ¶skill-expression¶ through knowledge and medium familiarity, instead of your body needing to do much of anything. So I kinda really wanna see how you'd take to VR...?" "Disreputable strip club!" After immediately saying that she wants a warehouse the moment the option is proposed, Petra bursts out laughing at Ash at the same time that Nika groans. "Really? Are you ¶lighting up next to a non-smoking sign/thirteen years old¶? If you wanna see 3D modeled boobs so bad I bet I can just find a way to strip." Petra wanders around looking for a wardrobe or mirror or something to change that, and realizes pretty quick that she can't actually go tits out in the video game. She decides to not say this out loud, and when Ash inevitably recoils from her trying to show them her tits (in game), she begins chasing around their newly generated character menacing with the threat of doing so by harassing them with things like "Come on, I thought you wanted to know about the minigames, Ash! Stop running!" The moment Ash does turn around to meet her, she drops a grenade on the ground to kill them both. Respawning, Petra wanders back to her people zoo and begins her chores of playing rock paper scissors with a cafe owner to scam him out of dozens of burgers to feed her minions. "Anyways, I still want a warehouse. You can build anything you want in a warehouse. I have to subdivide my zoo and make platforms." "It may surprise you to hear, but she does, actually, Ash." "Ha!!! You can't get away with anything!" The number of things Petra's done in Sakura's view that she shouldn't get away with is even higher than Lilian's, but Petra doesn't feel any shame! "Love of cheating." Petra momentarily makes side-eye-contact with Sakura, before having to cover for the hesitation by blabbering. "Cheating is the game. It's not like the games at a casino are fun in of themselves, they're basically just statistics and math or luck. The real ¶ARG/Machiavellian thrill¶ is seeing what you can get away with with the other people there and what they do about it."
Tamamo	Tamamo is, meanwhile, vindicated by the description of STRIPPING CLUBS, if not entirely understanding what they are. "Is it more 'cleaning' or more 'art'?"
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell squints at Ash's pretty-entity(?). Several dice roll across the nearby table for no clear reason, and there's an abrupt red flash in nearby lighting. "[Very Hard: Failure] - It's a hitbox exploitation thing?"
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell says, "Well, anyway, the MIDNIGHT CREW MOVIES were all TEEN-FOCUS yeah. They made the MOVIES-OF-THE-GAMES all KID-FRIENDLY or something. Then the GAMES-OF-THE-MOVIES-OF-THE-GAMES were stuck with that."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell winds up hijacking a new car and heading over to one of the "STRIPPING CLUB" icons, though he carefully circles around the "capture" zone for it so it doesn't start anything. There's just... vast murals all over the walls. Nothing creative either, just low-resolution textures depicting paintings of large crowds of people. "It's like some sort of ART REMOVAL thing. You know MADAME MURELE wasn't even in the MOVIE."
Tamamo	'Yeah! Do you think he's a ¶monocle man¶ or something?' 'Fuck you guys. You were thinking it.' "Certainly not." An idea worth a scoff -- though it's not clear if Tamamo was responding to one or both. 'It's like some sort of ART REMOVAL thing.' "That seems a bit mean," she says, while playing with bombs and seemingly cheating at cards.
Petra Soroka	"Yeah, it was STRIPPING CLUBS. Also a bunch'a BUST-RELATED stuff which is mostly GIANT CELEBRITY HEADS." "Everything you do is characterized by being total complete bullshit, Arthur. If you saw the kinds of games they release on itch you'd hurl." Petra has navigated to the stripping club eventually out of dire curiosity, looking up at the massive, texture-wrapped head of Lindsey Lohan. "... I think more people would jerk off to this than to an actual strip club." > calling card! And then, a digital card plants itself in the back of Petra's head, and her screen relocates over to her zoo several seconds before the game server catches up and starts properly displaying her character there too. "Wah-?! Oh, shit. Fuck." Petra starts hopping around to select her cards, and not being either lucky or particularly good at memory games, immediately blows up and loses one of her three hearts. Amidst the sound of a bitcrushed explosion she says, "Have you ever played card flip with your life on the line?" and then blows up again.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell says, "What? ITCH? Why are you getting GAMES for SKIN? Is this about when you were PART ROBOT, did they let you keep ROBOT SKIN?"
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell turns back to Tamamo, "Yeah, gotta RESPECT THE ART." He wasn't looking at his screen so he promptly crashes his car directly into one of the walls of Madame Murel's Stripper Club.
Lilian Rook	'But the ÷output÷'s different from the ÷vehicle÷. Once you know the physical sensation of it in your hand, it's like ÷mirror neurons/couch co-op/I was there too÷ to watch. I think there was some study about video game streamers, or something...?' Sakura, in the midst of trying to find a car she can legally commandeer somehow, stops to look up at Petra's avatar, as if this were a contingent factor of having a polite conversation, because she's forgotten everyone can see her on the screen. "If you could find it, I woud be happy to read it." she says, once again with devastating earnestness about the dumbest obscure bullshit Petra can find. "Thank you very much for thinking to mention it. I have an opportunity to consider what may have changed from hereon, which I would easily miss if you hadn't thought to say so." Nika hits her with a "Pff. No you wouldn't." 'So I kinda really wanna see how you'd take to VR...?' Sakura, at an oblique angle to the camera, makes a pensive-thoughtful look at a new angle. Nika glances over to her, hands still moving on the controller, and says at an oddly intimate conversational volume ". . . If Lilian gets the stuff, I can set up the ¶private server/walled garden¶ and ¶plant the world seed¶." Sakura leans over to Think in the other direction. "If Tamamo would as well . . ." 'If you wanna see 3D modeled boobs so bad I bet I can just find a way to strip.' "You're so desperate to go 'Look! Boobs!' and then when I look away from the screen you flash me. You're so desperate it makes you look killable." Ash declares this with all the heat they can't actually aim at Nika. They declare it with such fervent, heartfelt belief, that they put down their controller after Petra throws the grenade, look over at her, and say "After this I'm gonna say 'the least dangerous game' and that's your signal you've got one minute to get as far ahead as you can. Then Im gonna hunt you for sport." 'Ha!!! You can't get away with anything!' "Blow me." Lilian rolls her eyes, fully well knowing Petra has it worse, excepting if she's counting twenty seven semi-similar past lifetimes of psychological insight on Sakura's side; who remains silent. 'The real ÷ARG/Machiavellian thrill÷ is seeing what you can get away with with the other people there and what they do about it.' "One day . . ." Sakura sighs. Nika nods, on some topic of silent understanding, and says "With the fancy cocktail dress right?" 'It's a hitbox exploitation thing?' "It's an exploitation thing." No, Ash does not clarify.
Lilian Rook	'Everything you do is characterized by being total complete bullshit, Arthur. If you saw the kinds of games they release on itch you'd hurl.' "Not to argue with the objective truth, but what in God's name are you talking about?" 'Have you ever played card flip with your life on the line?' Nika snickers for unclear reasons. 'Yeah, gotta RESPECT THE ART.' Lilian grimaces at the explanation. "You know, for once, I agree that it is 'filth'."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur Lowell says, "Anyway, EXPLOTATION or ART or WHATEVER. Doesn't matter! Let's get the WHOLE GANG on a TABLE. There's a SMUG-ASS-LOOKING MEGA-SOPRANO I'm seeing on the horizon and he thinks he's KING OF THE WASTE-DISPOSAL CRIMINAL FRONT INDUSTRY or whatever. We gotta SLIGHTLY UNDERMINE HIS CONFIDENCE AT CARDS."
Tamamo	Tamamo doesn't so much 'take it easy' on Petra as 'drag out the card-fight as long as she can without taking a single hit' to watch her scamper, jump and fidget and then explode anyway. "Is that from a movie? It sounds familiar. Something... with your 'death on the line'... no, that was about a Sicilian." Turning over the last six pairs in a row, Tamamo watches curiously to see if the bomb explosions do anything to the people-zoo, but the rules of minigames restrict the explosions to just Petra. "Just as well." '. . . If Lilian gets the stuff, I can set up the ¶private server/walled garden¶ and ¶plant the world seed¶.' "Oh? Oho? That was a rather romantic choice of words, Nika." 'Then Im gonna hunt you for sport.' "You are so 'kind' to her, Ash." That doesn't sound... insincere. The emphasis is for some other reason. 'We gotta SLIGHTLY UNDERMINE HIS CONFIDENCE AT CARDS.' "Come along, Ms. Soroka."
Petra Soroka	"Is this about when you were PART ROBOT, did they let you keep ROBOT SKIN?" "They didn't, but I did anyways." Arthur gets jabbed in the head by the Silver at Petra's command. And then to actually answer the question when Lilian asks it instead, Petra explains, "It's just, like, a website where people put games they make. Since there's basically no actual barrier to making games besides publishing them, there's just, like, a million people making weird esoteric solo projects and putting them there. Val was talking about it before." She has to backtrack through her thoughts to remember why she actually brought it up at all, once Lilian prompts her onto a tangent. "Oh, because all of Arthur's shit is deflecting away from doing anything anybody ever wants. Like paint stripper instead of boobs, when obviously what they were actually thinking about is boobs. When it's just one person making a game it's just all what they want." "If Tamamo would as well . . ." "She did beforeeeeeeee~!" Petra can so so so easily imagine the opposite-but-similar angles of approach that Lilian and Sakura could take talking about a shared VRMMORPG game together. Yes she wants to be hopelessly lost as a third wheeler in the light party while the two of them go on some incomprehensible tangent about the art of swordplay and training or whatever! That's all she wants in the world! "You're so desperate to go 'Look! Boobs!' and then when I look away from the screen you flash me." "Oh, if that's too much, I could make you play a match-three first. Eheheheh." Petra's gremlin snicker is about as holistically unsexual as any conversation about showing someone her boobs could possibly be. Surely she can't possibly mean it. "With the fancy cocktail dress right?" Petra whirls around so rapidly to face the screen that she skips a frame, palms slapping against the table as she stares wide-eyed at the Sakurascreen. A text box appears at the top of the screen warning you that the events of this timeline have been irrevocably changed, but all she says after several seconds is, "Yeah." "Just as well." While hopping around on her bomb cards and failing repeatedly, Petra attempt to keep up the vague supervillainess bit she's been acting out all on her own. "Heheh, by winning at this wager I will allow you to free one of the souls I've trapped in-- aw man." The game-losing explosion causes her character to keel over in a pile of soot while all of the many 'minions' she had stand around unharmed and unhelpful, ambling around to chatter with Tamamo over her corpse. When she respawns, she repeatedly taps the hotkey that makes the sweat droplet emote appear in a bubble over her head. "Come along, Ms. Soroka." "I've been defeated...."
Arthur Lowell	> ==>? Arthur's body twitches oddly, once, at something Petra says. "That shit sucks." He mutters. "Not supposed to be how things work. A game's supposed to be more, be, I don't know. More sacred. It's not even supposed to be about what someone wants. It's supposed to be one more angle on the true shape of stuff. Facet on the gem, ray from the sun. Don't tell me that's more contaminated crap." His hand's on his mouse, and something is cracking in it. He's digging nails into the other palm. "You ever feel like that's not fair? Like the reason games have so much of what you want is, you're in a game yourself, and it's a shit one? Like some crap on a board or some spinning disk is enough to be fairer than the world, so how could they just..." > Arthur: Be normal "WEIRD WEBSITE. I don't think they had it BACK BEFORE." He laughs. "Anyway, you can find ONLINE BOOBS EASY. GOOGLE!"