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@marty
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Marty
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select difficulty >EXTREME (Lewis) - Posted Jun 20, 2018 8:17:22 GMT -7
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The loud ka-chunk of staples was starting to get to him. No amount of virtuosic tendencies can make 2 hours of posting flyers anything but tedious, even if you had a habit for finding the rhythm in most tasks. At least he was inside for now, the drone of arcade games made it easy for him to just zone out.
Kaoru stepped back from the bulletin board and surveyed his work. The flyer was tattered at the top corners from people repeatedly tearing it down, but hopefully stapling the damn thing to the cork 10 times would send a bit of a message. He was just glad the owner let him post band flyers in the arcade, even if they didn't seem to do any good as far as actually attracting any attention.
Kaoru ran a hand through his hair in frustration thinking about it. Hamada had given him a lead to a potential member not long ago, but actually getting in contact with her was trickier than he had expected. Even if he did get in touch with Muramoto, there was no certainty in her agreeing to his plan, and even if that worked out, two members doesn’t make a band… wait does it? He knew of a few bands with only 2 or 3 members, some of them were even good. He gripped the roots of his scalp with irritation and took a few breaths, shoving his other hand into the pocket of his jeans.
He felt the clinking of coins in his pocket and paused for a second, counting his change. 450, maybe 480 yen… that was enough for a few plays. He looked around the arcade for a second, the first couple of students had began filing in not too long ago, once club activities were over the place would be a lot more crowded.
… And there was a plush in one of those crane machines that was definitely staring him down.
Just one play wouldn’t hurt, right? Kaoru couldn’t help the smile that krept onto his face as he flicked a coin out of his pocket and popped it into the machine. tags : LEWIS WAGNER notes : its probably some dumb sanrio thing let’s be real
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Posts
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40
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I. MAGICIAN
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6000
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@captjim
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select difficulty >EXTREME (Lewis) - Posted Jun 26, 2018 14:54:46 GMT -7
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"Son of a bitch! Motherfucker!" He stepped away from the machine, fuming, head turned down, and stormed away.
Arcades may have been a typical sight in Japan but for an American like Lewis they were a novelty; there had been a few around his hometown when he was a kid, but now most of them had gone out of business aside from a few pizzerias with 'arcades' boasting ancient early-80s Atari games and skee ball - basically, obscenities.
For him, it was always about the light gun games - you know, the ones that had you point a plastic gun at the screen and go to town on some zombies or dinosaurs or aliens or whatever. When he was ten, he played those so often he must have developed the reflexes of a spaghetti western protagonist. So when he ventured over here, he saw one and his eyes lit up. Time to blow the dust off of that part of his brain and jump in - should be easy, or at least fun, right? Nah on both counts.
So far he was getting his ass kicked and he could swear that the gun didn't work half the time, and that the bad guys' hit boxes were too small, and frankly it didn't make any fucking sense that a monster like the one that just sliced him up could take ten shots to the face without so much as a blink. The sort of things his mind left out when it was deciding what qualified for fond recollections. Call it the fallibility of memory, looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses, or whatever. Another little piece of childhood nostalgia ruined forever, like finding out that eating cookie dough gives you salmonella or that your favorite movie when you were a kid was actually total trash.
Eventually, after what felt like his two-hundredth loss, and after spending what felt like eighty billion dollars (it was closer to fifteen) and twelve hours (forty minutes) he gave up after rattling off a final string of obscenities. What the hell was he was he thinking when he was ten, playing shit like this? Thank God that he had moved on to objectively better forms of recreation, like screaming through his headset at his teammates when they fucked up in competitive shooting games.
Well, they didn't really seem to have those here, so what else was there to do? He shoved his hands in his pockets, sulking, and leaned against a wall while observing the rest of the room. Racing games, fighting games, never his thing... but he suddenly noticed there was one of those crane game right in front of him (you know the kind, the claw-grabby thing goes down and picks up a toy only to drop it on the way to the box): it was obscured by someone actually playing it - he thought the only people who fell for those were elementary school kids. He'd never, ever seen someone his age play it (or at least they appeared to be; their back was to him).
Well, at least he knew he wasn't the biggest sucker here. He took a few steps toward the machine and the player - someone very skinny and with long blonde hair - and asked in an almost-amused tone, "Hey, sister, you know those machines are all scams, right?"
The sulking demeanor had evaporated now, and he settled into that familiar I-know-something smartassed half-smirk. Since he actually knew something the player evidently didn't, Lewis figured he'd earned it this time.
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Marty
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select difficulty >EXTREME (Lewis) - Posted Jul 10, 2018 13:36:35 GMT -7
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“Hey, sister...”
Kaoru paused hovering over the → button, he took in a deep breath through his nostrils. Whoever this guy was, and Kaoru hadn't even looked at him yet, he was already making a pretty piss poor impression.
"You know those machines are all scams, right?"
Kaoru exhaled slowly, repeating various mantras in his head before turning around, a bit caught off guard by the guy standing there. Tall, pale, and with an entirely unwarranted simper across his face. Kaoru brushed a lock of hair from his face and raised an eyebrow at the young man in annoyance.
“Well, sister, I can’t speak for arcade machines in…” he scanned the guy up and down briefly, “... wherever you're from… but I've been coming to this arcade long enough to know about a little thing called strategy.”
He turned on his heel and faced the machine again. “Take notes.”
He pressed the → button for a few seconds, eyes locked on a lop-eared rabbit (Or a dog maybe? No, probably a rabbit) plush directly behind the square prize entrance. Once the claw was above the plush horizontally, he pressed the ↑ button for a few seconds, until the claw was just a little bit behind the toy’s center.
He stepped back and pressed his palms together, he hoped talking big didn’t give him bad luck. The little UFO at the top dropped down, the little claws coming together under the plush, and lifting back up. The claws didn’t grab the plush, but instead lifted it from below and overturning it… to get caught on the barrier around the prize entrance.
Kaoru clenched his hands together a moment, then dejectedly dropped them to his sides.
”That… isn’t how I intended for that to happen.” He crossed his arms and glanced behind him. ”Not gonna lie I fully expected to get that on the first shot.”
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Posts
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40
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@captjim
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select difficulty >EXTREME (Lewis) - Posted Jul 20, 2018 20:33:07 GMT -7
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As soon as the player spoke, Lewis was startled. A beam of disconcert and embarrassment cut through him. For a second, the smirk vanished. His cheeks only slightly warmed, but to him it had felt like hot coals were being rubbed on his face. He briefly felt like he was watching this play out from a third perspective. It had not been a girl playing the claw game to get a cute toy. It was the most bewilderingly gorgeous man he had ever seen. How could he have known?! That smooth, long hair and the graceful movement – actually, Lewis abruptly decided, he was going to stop thinking about this. By the time he was paying attention to his surroundings again, he caught most of the dude’s lecture. ”…wherever you’re from… but I’ve been coming to this arcade long enough to know about a little thing called strategy.”
Oh, alright, a wise-ass. Good, that was the perfect thing to drag him out of near-Earth orbit and back to the real world. Lewis huffed as the player turned around. He couldn’t speak for wherever this guy was from either (Japan. It was Japan), but it didn’t matter where you were – talk was still cheap. For a moment, it seemed like it would all play out perfectly. All the memories of afternoons spent in bowling alleys after school came flooding back – wasted money on these machines (or the other ones where if you pressed it at the right moment, you’d win a Playstation, but a second too soon and you’d get a ball of yarn or a pen or something) – did he really have a shot all along? Was seven-year-old him just going about things the wrong way? It seemed so. The UFO picked up a doggish-looking critter from below (did he ever try that?!) … but then it got stuck on the barrier, the last obstacle, the afterthought. Lewis burst into a good-natured laughter. So close, and yet – and yet! The player, obviously discouraged, crossed his arms and tried to play it cool… He playfully clapped the guy’s shoulder a couple of times. ”Oh shit, oh shit! That was great, short stuff, that really was! You had me goin’ for a second there!” He caught his breath and grinned (he didn’t know if they had an expression for it wherever this guy was from (which, again, was Japan), but in Lewis’s homeland this was traditionally known as the shit-eating grin). ”But, y’know, if you have to pay just twice to get what you should’ve gotten the first time, it’s still getting ripped off.”…Dude did have great hair, though. Lewis would have to ask him what conditioner he used.
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Posts
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21
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X. FORTUNE
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@marty
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Marty
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select difficulty >EXTREME (Lewis) - Posted Jan 8, 2019 9:18:23 GMT -7
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Kaoru glared at the simple face of the plush in the machine. Little bastard, smiling at him like that, taunting him. Pastel blue embroidery on his stupid cream colored face. After a beat of waiting for the kid behind him to calm down, his glare growing more disdainful with each pat the guy placed on his shoulder. Once he’d finished Kaoru shot said glare behind him and sighed, turning on his heel to face the other. He leaned his back against the machine.
“Yeah laugh it up, kid.”
His hand reached into his pocket, and another sigh escaped him. His head rolled back and thumped against the clear plastic window of the machine.
“And you know what the most pathetic thing is? I don’t even have enough to get a burger now.”
His pity party didn’t last long, as his gaze snapped back to the tall kid, taking in the shit eating grin the guy had plastered across his face. His own scowl returned full force.
“I’d like to see you do any better,” he gestured to the machine a bit “put your money where your mouth is, as they say.”
A small smile crept onto Kaoru’s face again “Oh but they’re all scams, right? Tell ya what,” He held up a finger to punctuate his upcoming proposition “If you manage to get one, I’ll treat you to the cheapest bowl of noodles at Naganoodle.”
He did the math in his head, if the kid did win, Kaoru could afford the 270¥ price of a small bowl and still get himself a hojicha jelly or something. If the kid didn’t win, he’d have a good laugh about it and could get himself a slightly more expensive bowl on his way home. Not necessarily what one would call “win/win” but the odds were pretty stacked in his favor.
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Posts
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40
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6000
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@captjim
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select difficulty >EXTREME (Lewis) - Posted Jan 22, 2019 0:48:05 GMT -7
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Lewis sized the guy up. He was no man to refuse a challenge – not that he could, anyway, after talking such a big game. He’d have grinned even bigger and smugger if it were possible. ”Alright, peewee, watch and learn. When you know it’s a scam, you know how to out-play it.”Of course, as soon as he walked up to the machine and put his money in, he remembered that he had no idea what he was actually doing. Never, ever, ever before had he come close to winning anything from one of these dumb games. As a kid he had thrown away fistfuls of quarters before he learned his lesson and stuck to the light gun games. He tried to remember what the short guy did to get so close to a win. Lewis lined the claw up behind another one of those stuffed rabbit…dog…things… and then pushed it back a few centimeters. Then knocked it back another couple for good measure. Then came the moment of truth. He punched the button. God, it’s in your hands now. As the claw descended, he saw the problem; in technical terms, he fucked up. The claw was too far to get a good grip, but not close enough to grasp anything else. Shit.He hoped against hope, and it barely, barely grabbed it – by the tag. The poor dog-rabbit (dabbit?) dangled uncomfortably from the UFO. Lewis stared almost slack-jawed at it. His odds still weren’t good, but he’d take the lifeline. Watching intently as it carried the stuffed toy to the little deposit box, wincing as he saw its abrupt turns, he did not notice the tag was straining from the toy. Evidently, whoever made it never thought it’d be carried by a robotic claw, the fools. Just before he was home free, the tag suddenly ripped free from the toy, and fell back to earth – beside, but not in, the box. The claw released, and the tag drifted to and fro, slowly down…but, ultimately, into the box. Lewis took a moment to process what had just happened before he leaned in, grabbed the tag, and turned around. ”That still counts.”(Tagged KAORU WATANABE !)
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select difficulty >EXTREME (Lewis) - Posted Feb 13, 2019 12:41:18 GMT -7
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Kaoru couldn’t help but hold his breath a bit as he watched the claw move across the top of the case. He was made to eat his words, and now any small amount of redemption he could get depended on this moment.
The claw descended slowly, picked up the toy by the tag, and Kaoru couldn’t have glared any harder at the damn thing if he tried. This kid had the toy dangling by a literal thread from the claw. It was pure luck, there was no refinement or artistry to it at all.
As the toy hovered ever closer to the box, the tag snapped, and the soft-furred friend fell squarely back to the floor of the machine.
You could hear a pin drop in the silence that fell on the two boys. It felt like a joke, a roller coaster of emotion that came to a screeching halt as the tag floated down, alone, into the drop container.
As the taller boy held out his ”prize”, an unbidden bout of chuckles escaped Kaoru. He reached out and plucked the tag from the boy’s hand with a smirk plastered on his face, then turned it over between his fingers, watching the holographic foil letters refract the harsh fluorescent lights of the arcade.
"Y’know what, kid? Fine, you gave me a good laugh." he handed the tag back to the other, as if presenting a business card, "I’d say this is deserving of one cheap noodle bowl, courtesy of Watanabe Kaoru, king of generosity."
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