savetheearth | [Text | Smartphone]

Fun Central.

15 minutes.

Bring your quarters, I'm going to teach you air hocky if you don't already play.

If you insist... [But of course standing aside and enjoying the company would be too easy.] I'll be on my way.

I do. Don't make me twist your arm to make you enjoy yourself.

[A remark he isn't going to fight to respond to in favor of showing early - just by a few minutes, but nonetheless.

He knows his way around by walking enough that he finds the arcade easily enough - but he hasn't been inside, to memory. Last time he'd been in an arcade at all must've been while he was elementary school age.

He goes on in - and so as to avoid losing himself in the Friday noise, he waits just inside the door, spotting outside for one of the others and looking back in for Bakura.]

[[Guess who's sneaking up from behind? This is what you get for being early, Anthony. Bakura's gonna get up close behind you and...]]

Boo!

[~~"!"~~

He starts, back bolts an inch straighter - and jarringly enough near-simultaneously with the reflexive half-turn to see behind him identifies Bakura.

Faint, humbled chuckle.]

- Hello...!

Hey. [[Grinning like a loon.]]

You got here before me. Somehow I shouldn't be surprised.

Really - ? [Silly response - he did stay intent on endeavoring to be on time for matters or better and had kept the pace even with the last two months' twists and turns for the wild and wearying.]

Er - who else was going to be here? I - haven't seen anyone else we know yet.

Dunno! We'll see who shows up~! But first, air hocky! [[He pulls out a pair of tokens and tosses them Anthony's way before heading for the table.]]

[He had agreed to that.

He in fact catches one of the tokens quickly - the other one skims just out of his grab, breaks its course in the air on his hand, and clinks on the floor. He scoops it up, blinks at the two tokens momentarily, then after Bakura, who he then hurries to follow up next to.]

Not so good at catch either? [[No mocking, oddly enough, with that smile.]]

[Anthony catches and appreciates that, hence that his return smile is slightly sheepish and yet not in any sensible measure ironic, or with any hasty defense along with the admission.] Hm -- not very...

[Lifts his voice a tad.] Should I - go ahead to the other side?

Would be hard to play it with us both on the same one. [[Points out with a grin.]] When was the last time you were in an arcade anyway? [[And why were so many of his numbers-club classmates so nerdy in the lame way? He had so much work cut out for him with this group!]]

...Five years ago perhaps. [Give or take a couple of years, most likely give.]

...seriously? [[Bakura looks almost appalled by that]] That's just nuts. You need to get out and have fun more! Five years... [[he shakes his head before it's DRAMATIC FINGER POINT TIME!]]

This summer! I'm giving you a mission! We're gonna hang out in the arcade and make up for that horrible lack of games in your life!

[No reaction articulates immediately but another flicker of a sheepish smile and a chuckle.

It's partly friendly teasing, he knows, but he's still got a despondent "Is it really that strange?" ready to say and restrained. Doesn't mean anything - and anyhow, evidently, it in fact is. It manages to turn into:]

All right -- I... guess we will...

[From preconception he feels himself reacting to this entire environment as not his forte, but that is easy to take. It was similar with Dungeons and Dragons, card games -- even fleeing a werewolf and gutting himself at the bottom of a mine pit, setting the guilt and embarrassment aside and shutting it tight in a box.

All of this, as far as he could reach, was friendship - with the ever-narrowing people who he wasn't obligated under pain of execution to hide what continuously grew to feel like everything - countable as a fantastic blessing.

Meanwhile, he's examining the coin slot from above, leaning with one hand on the edge of the table, as the one who hasn't been in arcade since he was perhaps-ten-being-generous likely oughtn't be the first to insert tokens.]

[[Bakura cranes his neck over, trying to hold back a laugh. Oh man, was Anthony clueless... Painfully so. Clearly, being good at school did nothing for being good at life.

He'll bat about the paddle as he waits, silently timing it and doing his best to not show on his face how amusing it was to watch.]]

[It takes Anthony a few seconds. And a rapid glance up, back down, and up again.

Oh.

Certain amount of haste in catching up and (pah but of course) fumblingly slipping the coins into the slot.]

[[he's rewarded with the WRRRMMMMMM of the table kicking to life and the CLUNK of the puck landing in the slot.]]

You can start with the puck, since you're the newbie. [[Grinning.]] Object of the game is simple! Score a goal without getting a goal scored against you!

[Blink at the sound. Looks down at the puck poking out of the slot, and picks it out.]

All right...

[He sets it on the table, watches it just-hover to the right for a couple of seconds, gives the paddle a gentle rap on the side of the table - and then strikes them.

Not well, in spite of the sound it made. The paddle wasn't in contact with the table, and the gesture was erratic, and the puck coasts leisurely into one side, then the other...]

.... Here. Put your paddle over the goal a moment and watch.

[[He reaches forward, clapping down his paddle on the puck and dragging it over to his side.]]

Paddle behind the puck, on the table. Ready and....! [[He knocks the paddle against the puck hard, sending it rickashaying back and forth across the table, slowing down to where Anthony should be able to clamp down on it with his paddle as it approaches.]]

Like that!

- Right... [He absently presses the paddle into the table - and then does slap it onto the puck, pinning half of it, letting go, watching it slide a few more inches as if it's a butterfly flitting just short of landing for a net.

Then he whacks it sharply with a flick of the wrist. It goes gliding just next to the corner on Bakura's end of the table.]

Better! [[And he sends it sailing back, almost as if passing it than trying to get a shot in]] Try it again! You have to get it so that the other person can't stop it from going in!

Of course.

[His coordination is such that aiming is not his strong suit. All the same he manages to gauge the speed for a diagonal strike and a ricochet of the side. It angles closer to the center of Bakura's end - though, even though he got the point of the pass, a level of compulsive politeness likewise kept the force and speed less than competitive.]

[[That and Bakura's competitive edge and experience with the game let him smack it away before the shot could be sunk.]] Don't be afraid to be aggressive with it, it's plastic, it can take it. [[Grinning now. Never thought he'd be coaching someone on air hocky...]]

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