Aliens, Zombies, And Mutated Dinosaurs (Open)

[Michael Rana]

While his mother was doing some shopping in another part of the mall, Michael headed towards the arcade. Having emptied out the change jar on his dresser that morning, his pockets were bulging with enough quarters for him to spend a good portion of the afternoon killing evil aliens, zombies, and mutated dinosaurs. Of course, he’d also planned on playing a few tickets games. At least enough to get a handful of candy.

At his age, it was hard to get to the mall on his own, so he always enjoyed when his mother wanted to go pick up a few things because it meant he could tag along. Although he hated it when she dragged him along to try on clothes. She was nice enough to always let him at least stop by the game store on the way out.

As usual for the summer, the arcade was pretty packed. But even though everyone was talking to their friends, or shouting at whatever bad guy they were trying to kill, the noises of the games drowned out most of what was said. Michael had always thought the arcade would be a great place for eavesdropping simply because no one expected it there. Not that anything of importance would be said, but it was always good for practice.

But he could do that on a day when he was low on quarters. Shoving a few quarters into the first open game he saw he picked up the gun, before realizing that someone else had put quarters in at the same time. “Wanna play two player?” he offered.

[Braxton Carson]

"Hey!" Braxton immediately jumped as someone placed a quarter in his arcade. "What?" He pushed the kid lightly away. "Of course no, it's MY quarter."

Braxton had been all day in the mall after Ethan convinced him he needed new clothes since the people that did Brax's clothes in Ethan's absence managed to damaged them all. Of course, after the first two stores, Braxton desisted and convinced Ethan to buy all of Braxton's clothes since he pretty much knew the boy's size and taste in clothes. Weirdly, Ethan said yes quick enough. If Braxton were any brighter, he'd have suspected that it was probably going to backfire on him with a cruel joke of buying only pink clothes (a color Braxton has never worn nor plans to), but he wasn't, so instead, he just parted ways with his best friend and went into the arcade place. Reason? Starbucks was closed and he had been banned from entering the mall's bakery anymore after an incident in the place's other store downtown.

"Now go the fuck away before I tell some manager that you're bugging me." He said to the kid before grabbing the arcade's red gun. "Now let's kill some aliens."

[Michael Rana]

For a moment Michael just stood there, still holding onto the second player’s gun. “But…” he started, looking over his shoulder as if his parents or some other trustworthy adult would magically appear there.

“But it’s my quarter too,” he said, struggling to keep the whining tone out of his voice. “You’re not being fair.” Straightening himself up, although he was still dwarfed by the older boy, he tried to put on what he thought was a ‘tough’ look.

As much as he hated bullies, he hated even more the fact that there wasn’t much he could do about them. After all he was small, young, and he didn’t even have some sort of cool meta ability to help out. “Come on,” he said, still gripping the gun. “Just one game?”

[Braxton Carson]

"Life's unfair, get used!" Braxton said with a mean look as the game started.

He tightened the grip on his red gun as he chose the first level and waited for it to load. He leaned his neck left and right attempt to crack it to no avail, he then attempted to crack his fingers with the gun still held in his hands but he found it more difficult than he initially thought so he just shrugged it off and kept his eyes on the screen. Any moment now he'd be in Area 51 killing aliens and whatever other bad thing that would appear on screen. He was also ready to shoot at any civilian girl that happened to be blonde, he knew they'd cost him lives but hey, he found it funny to shoot at girl's faces.

"Fine, fine, whatever," Braxton said after the kid's insistence. "grab the damn gun and hit the damn button." He agreed to the kid's demands just before the action actually started. "You're so whiny you know that, if you make us lose, you're paying the next round."

Finally some action. The two characters were in a seemingly deserted military base, Area 51, of course, and out of nowhere, terribly pixelated ugly green monsters, aliens, appeared from behind crates and barrel. BAM! BAM! BAM! Braxton managed to kill the first three in quick succession only to the kid's blue bullets hit the same places just after they had killed them. If there was anything that Braxton appreciated from his power training back in Hammel, besides controlling the side-effects, was very quick reflexes. Too bad the following mockery expression and sounds directed at the kid next to him made him cost a health point since an alien shot one of the green acid spit at him while he was too busy mocking the other kid.

"Take that bitch!" Braxton bit his lip in excitement as he shot his first civilian blonde. "Did you see that? I shot her in the face." It made him cost a second health point. "She even had her mouth open, she loved it."

Let's just hope the kid doesn't understand what he's talking about.

[Michael Rana]

Michael continued to frown at the older boy’s lame excuse. How many times have I heard that before? he wondered. He was still holding the other gun, although he was starting to doubt the older boy would change his mind about letting him play. Still he didn’t want to give up to easy.

He watched the game play for a bit. “Go through that door on the left,” Michael said. “There’s a health kit and more ammo in there.” Maybe if he seemed like he knew was he was doing he could be allowed to join in.

He couldn’t help but grin when he was finally told to join in. He slammed the two-player button. Still he frowned a little at the ‘whiny’ comment. “I’m not gonna make us loose…” he mumbled.

His feelings were forgotten for a moment when the game started again. He had played this game several times before so he had a good guess as to when the aliens were going to hop up and such.

“You’re not supposed to shoot the civilians,” Michael said, matter-of-factly. “You’re gonna be the one to make us loose.” Of course he had no idea what the older guy was talking about, but he wasn’t particularly worried about it. He had already decided that he was someone who picked on little kids for fun, which was a big no-no in Michael’s book.