Day at the Arcade

[Negi]

Here's my first shot at some fanfiction. Just had a thought about it when I was listening to my iPod waiting for my laundry, in the middle of drawing Rin as a Techpriest.
Glad I had some spare paper.


“It’s really hot today.” Emi said between sips of a cool drink. Hisao nodded in agreement as he slurped his own. Rin leaned in and stole a long draw from Emi’s cup as Hisao pointed to a large red sign in the distance.
“What’s that? Some new restaurant?” he asked, squinting to try and read the text. They moved closer to the relatively new furnished building, now able to read the sign clearly.
“Grand Opening - Free Play All Day.”
They looked to the doors, replaced with a set of opaque dark purple sheets of glass, supported with steel frames. The doors slowly began to open, fog edging out from between the doors. They gained momentum and slid open in a moment, billowing fog and smoke from the depths along with a blast of cool air.
“Hmm… Wha-” Hisao started to ask a question, but was abruptly cut short. A man in a Pac Man costume charged out of the darkness. Hisao and Emi both jumped back in shock, Hisao feeling slight tugs in his chest from the sudden increase in pulse. Rin stood relatively unshaken.
“WELCOOOOOOME TOOO ARCADIA NAMCOOOOOO!” the man proclaimed loudly with a megaphone, standing triumphantly as Emi tried to help Hisao sit upright and calm down. Rin moved closer to the two, prodding them both with her foot.
“It’s got air conditioning. Let’s go in.” Rin suggested, just as Emi began to give Mr. Pac Man an earful for almost scaring Hisao into cardiac arrest. Hisao took a deep breath and stood, pulling Emi away and following Rin inside as Mr. Pac Man shrugged off the ordeal and began blasting random passersby with the megaphone.
The three stepped into the cool tunnel and emerged into a massive room. It was filled with lights and sounds of games.
“This place is smaller on the outside.” said Emi.
“How’d they build this so quickly?” asked Hisao.
“Someone’s coming over.” Rin interjected, pointing with her foot to a man in a Ryu costume. He was walking over with 3 lanyards, small badges on each of them. He handed them all to Hisao, then returned to the counter. Hisao looked over the badges. They all had a magnetic strip and a small info section on the reverse side.
“Name, Address, Nicknam- Hey, they already have Nicknames! They have pictures too!” He held them up for Rin and Emi. “Jam, Sol and May.” Hisao said. He turned to a machine and saw that it had a swipe card slot. “They must all be a credit system or something like that.” Rin grabbed a card in her foot and reached, swiping it through a Tetris machine.
‘CREDIT ACCEPTED – FREE PLAY’ flashed across the bottom of the screen. Hisao looked at the remaining cards. “Want the other girl then, Emi?” he offered as he held out the orange card to Emi. She nodded and slipped the lanyard around her neck. Hisao slid his own lanyard around his head and dropped it in front of him. Emi picked up Rin’s card and roped the lanyard over her head.
“Hmm… Now we have an issue.” Rin said, lift her foot to press “P1” on the console. The demonstration showed how to play, making lines and moving the blocks. The game began, Rin starting to move the two sticks alternating when she needed to. Blocks started to fall slowly, and after a little floundering with the touchy control stick, fell into place neatly. Slowly but surely, she advanced through the first few levels. Then things got complicated as the blocks fell too quickly for her to move her foot between the stick and rotate buttons.
“Emi, give me a hand.” Rin said, nonchalantly as ever.
“What do I do?” Emi asked, stepping up a bit from beside Hisao.
“Tap that button when I say.” Rin began to concentrate, moving the stick more deftly as Emi put her hand on the button.
“Tap. Tap. … Tap. Tap. Taptap. Tap. Taptaptap. … … … Tap.” Rin spat out the command word like wildfire, Emi keeping up as best as she could. Rin’s score began to rise faster as the two worked as a perfect pair, Hisao feeling like he was watching Shizune and Misha speaking. Slowly but surely, the screen started to fill up with blocks as Rin could not say ‘Tap’ to match the speed of the falling blocks. Emi started to tap the button almost randomly until the final brick fell, ending the game.
‘HIGH SCORE – INPUT INITIALS’ flashed across the screen. Rin moved the cursor over the ‘R’
“Tap.” Emi tapped.
Then an ampersand.
“Tap.” Emi tapped.
Then the ‘E’.
“Tap. Tap.” Emi tapped twice.
‘HIGH SCORE – R&E 149028’ flared across the screen. “Thank you, Emi. That was fun.”
Hisao clapped for the two of them. “I don’t think I’ve seen that much synchronization since my game of Risk with Shizune and Misha. You guys were great!” Emi gave a triumphant smile as Rin nodded with a smirk. The three of them looked around the arcade.
“What should we play next?”

[ZystraL]

149028 is a SHIT score on Tetris.

I like how you've written this in Third Person rather than the usual First we see around these sites, but I think your writing has potential. Not sure if you plan on writing more, because you've left the end quite vague. There's no progression of story here, no building of the characters, and this isn't really good enough for a oneshot because there's not enough lulz/action/secks.

The plot itself from the first bit so far sort of left a lot to be desired, even if this was very short. It was okay, but I think you could have done a lot more.

[Negi]

Was planning on writing more. That's just what I had down on paper, and I sort of hit writer's block. I almost started writing more involving a DDR game, but wasn't quite sure how to work around it. More is going to come, just a matter of how long it takes Shuffle to get me into a writing mood again.