Ep0.5 - Maine - Brey Harbour - 'Shopping' - Closed

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"Ya might,” said Sideswipe as the first song ended and the shuffle screen rolled back up a series of glowing song selections.

He was aware, peripherally, of the collection of humans gathering behind them. Great. The human pulls him out into public, then picks a game that draws an audience. Humans. Even through the strange cloud-sensory haze of his holo, Sides could feel the strange, watery EM fields they threw. So weak it was like the residual energy in a dead mech, each of them like ghosts to a Cybertronian. A planet of squishie, organics withs ghosts for souls, staring at him playing an alien arcade game whole galaxies away from his home world. Sure. Why not? Sideswipe slammed his ‘hand’ against the button, refocusing the solidity of his hard-light avatar into his palm as he spun the songs up the roster to the song he wanted.

“Two-hundred-ninety BPM, cuz.” He grinned at Cat, the bright flash of his teeth neon in the dark of his face. He jerked his head in a kind of ‘bring it on, bring it on’ sort of manner. “Expert. Ya ready, or what?”

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'Well shit.'

She was going to have a heart attack. Pass out. Feint. …But there was that face and she had to rise to the challenge! Else she'd never hear the end of it… Losing she was prepared for, for the simple fact that Sides was Sides and she was.. human, but forfeiting? 'I don't think so.'

"Yeah." And before she could have another thought she pressed the start button for him, the machine lighting up on the last of their tokens and the last burst of her energy.

…She lasted about a minute, before one missed arrow turned into two, turned into three turned into a helluva lot and too many to keep her in the game, and all in the span of just a few seconds. So it was perfectly acceptable, she thought, that she turned the little half-focused half-spin on one of the arrows into a half-lounging position on the back support bar.

It was a good enough go that she could sleep at night. Yeah.

"Good LORD. Okay. Have fun with the rest of that. I'll watch and… cheer you on."
Sinking back into the bar she took off her glasses, twirling them around in the air like a flag because… she lacked a real one. "Gooo, Sides." Which might have been convincing if she wasn't so monotone.

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Sideswipe kept thinking this felt familiar. Familiar as it could ‘feel’ through a collection of charged up particles broadcast a quarter mile from where he sat parked outside. But it felt familiar nonetheless – that energy of a high score as the numbers spiked insane up and up as hit after hit came fast. Flashing up, these arrow whipping up from the bottom, but coming in a pattern and patterns to a Cybertronian brain like Sideswipe’s came to pieces before him and in slow motion – his quick-twitch even through the long-distance sensor projection setting him perfectly in step to the rhythm of this machine.

It felt fake through the holo-form. His mind, not his hydraulics, not his mass-memory flashed to the task of beating this game but mathematics via the form of his avatar. Cat dropped out of the game, a GAME OVER flipping up on her side of the screen to the groans of onlookers and sideswipe just kept going and he thought to himself… I’m playing arcade games on an alien world while my brother’s in a coma in Africa. And he kept going anyway because what else did he do when Sunstreaker went down like this? He’d gotten used to carrying on. He’d been carrying on so long is couldn’t tell the difference between the struggle and the rest.

His avatar’s ‘sneakers’ hammered the warn touch pads on the stage into the final beats of the song and when the thing announced a perfect score to him, he turned to Catherine and said, “It’s past fifteen minutes, fam.” The dark of his eyes from beneath the brim of his cap were impossible to read, but the grin flashing bright was not. “Guess ya win then.”

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Having slipped in to stand at the back of the assembled onlookers midway through their last 'battle', Cleaver suppressed her smile the moment Sideswipe turned on the platform. As two holo-emitted Cybertronians, he spotted her instantly and she inclined her head towards one side. Moving away to a row of joystick-based arcade machines (she liked the retro games more than the shooters), the femme waited for her charges to weave away from their temporarily-adoring fans and join her.

Both youngsters assembled and happier than she could have hoped (though Sideswipe had reverted to his earlier posture), she folded her hands across her front. "I'm finished if you kids are. Just need to pick up Cat's oven, though I can do that on my own. You two can 'bridge back to base if Side's is getting antsy."

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Cat waited to fix her glasses back properly, letting the small amount of perspiration about her nose dry first. "Already? No way, that was only five minutes!" Grinning, she shoved herself from the bars, hopping down from the platform with Sideswipe to shift where the silver of Cleaver's hole was visible. …Joking, of course. She'd rather get a cookie than do more DDR of that intensity. So, she went with a tie. "Call it even. You kicked my ass in DDR, I got you for 15 minutes."

She was in the process of loosing her hair when they came to stand in front of Cleaver, wearing a secret little grin that might have had a strong nonverbal connection to the previous text message. "Nah, I think we're good. I'll stay and help you with the oven, let Sides get away from the squishies…" And she shot him a look, the only thing missing being a hip-bump. "Thanks for bein' a good sport. Wasn't so bad, was it?"

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“I almost forgot ya know,” said Sideswipe, a little dreamily. Though he said it to Cat, it was Cleaver who would have understaood that he was speaking about his brother not being there: a weight that was a physical press against the inside of his chest, like a fist punched through to his engine block sometimes. Fifteen minutes, he’d almost forgotten. Not very nearly, but it was an ‘almost’. The lambo-bot wasn’t going to elaborate on what he meant however, and steamed on ahead in Italian. “Okay, I’ll admit, that wasn’t half bad. Though this holo-thing is tricky and I don’t like it. Spent too long on this rock not using my hard-light avatar to not be stressed out using this thing in public.”

They left the arcade to the sound of Sideswipe complaining and alternately gloating about his victory. It was a good sound.

Fin?