Just Dance, Dude! (Patty & Cecil)

School was out which meant her serfdom was up and Patty could go as she pleased. As always she had bolted from the classroom when the bell rang with a ceremonious Adios, losers! on her way out the door, nearly sprinting through the hallways and jumping down the stairs. She wasn't really in a rush, just glad to be out of that prison and eager to distance herself from it as quickly as possible. It really payed to sit near the front, not that it was her choice in the first place but hey take the good with the bad, right? Though being slowed down a few times her I'm gonna miss my train if I don't hurry! routine really saved the day in the end. It wasn't untrue. She was going to miss the train but she had nowhere to be until work started. Patricia was going to Arcadia instead.

The mind numbing lights and chaos did well to clear her mind and let her forget about school and work and her parents and anything else being a headache. She had two whole hours to screw around until she had to make her parole arrangement and they were getting wasted just like she earned the right for. Luckily for her she made the early train and the place was relatively empty, it's usually packed after school. Still in her school uniform Patricia would walk through the doors and glide her way straight to the Dance Retribution machines. It was a good way to kill time and none of the annoying no-lifes that did this all day every day were here yet. Feeding a dollar into the machine (a whole dollar was stupid but it got like five songs and even more if you kept winning) she queued up a song she liked and began to move her feet to the beat. Just the beginning of an entire late afternoon to waste and she planned on making the most of it.

You have greater uses for your available time.
And worse ones too. I'm barely out from school. Leave me be.
For all he was apparently one of a few fortunate in this city, and alive when he really had no right to be, that was something he found hard to appreciate. Not in itself, but in the finer details.
You know why I cannot.
Like that.

Whether he liked it or not, he was stuck with Ankou. And unfortunately for him, he'd yet to become accustomed to the presence in his mind.
Cecil sighed as he approached the arcade. He'd been meaning to take a visit for a while, but things just hadn't lined up for him. And now, when he had a proper opening, he had a dead guy in his head harassing him over actually doing so.
Can you at least let me be for an hour or so?
It had been a while since he'd come here. The myriad machines were a happy sight for him. Wasn't busy yet, only a few people, but the place would probably fill up before long.
Very well.
...this felt bad. He felt his eyes draw toward the Dance Retribution machines, in knowing anticipation.
All you need do is push yourself a little more than you would normally.

He knew what it meant. He knew exactly what it meant. And he dreaded it.
Not that he'd never shown interest before in the game, but the idea of actually getting up there and playing was one a few that was sure to make him incredibly self-conscious.
Worse yet, somebody was already there, perfectly placed to see how inept he'd be.
He'd just wanted to lose at CrimsonBurn for a bit!

Cecil's eyes move between the respective machines. ...you're not serious. Please tell me you're not serious. My...my earphones would go flying.
And you are more than capable of securing them.
I do not see the issue. This is something that appeals to you. You would even have a companion. Does that not seem agreeable, when you seek happiness from this place?
It was hard arguing with himself. He knew everything he did, and then some.
Worst of all, he couldn't get away from him.

The machine sung it's praises at Patty's ability to hit every step within the incredibly large failure window considering she was playing on Easy mode. It was a great warm-up and besides if you kept winning you kept getting songs so it was a great way to game the system. The only thing wrong with it was playing on Baby mode was boooooring. The delinquent was too good at this game to get any enjoyment out of it, she might as well be walking around wasting her time some other way. She hung back on the support bar rolling her neck and sighing as the timer ticked down for the next song to start. If she had anyone to play the game with they could just play on Terrible mode and win and she'd still get the free songs out of it. Like, she already paid for it so there wasn't any kind of drawback. She got to play the game she wanted and some schmuck got to dance for free. Win-win.

Patricia turned around on the support bar to goad any passerby she could rope into her game into joining for free songs when she saw a kid she recognized from school. Cecil. She knew his name because she was trying to know everyone's names, it helped to be personable with people if she was going to win her election and besides Cecil was special. Didn't talk to anyone. Always kept to himself. If anyone was going to come to school with a shotgun and a grudge one day it'd be him, didn't hurt to be on first name basis with people like that when the inevitable meltdown happened. He didn't seem like the type that would come up and dance with her though. Then again he didn't seem like the type to tell a girl no either... eh, fuck it. Worth a shot.

"Cecil! Yo! Cecil!" she flagged him down. "Dude come dance with me, I need a partner!"


Patty turned around with an annoyed look, seemed like her minute was up. ...fuck it. Fuck it! Gotta risk it to get the biscuit! The outgoing girl quickly stepped on the pad to change her difficulty to Hard, enable another player at the cost of two songs and swapped her track to one that was challenging enough for her.
"C'mon get your ass up here before the song starts!" She would be merciful and leave his difficulty on I Suck mode, she didn't want to embarrass him or anything she just wanted free songs. The embarrassment could come before she left.

She knew his name.
Why the fuck did she know his name?!
Patty's callout earns her a look of shock and disbelief from her target. He quite obviously had questions, all of them best summed up as "Who the hell are you, and why are you acting like you know me?!"
It was enough to briefly overwhelm his reservations as he zipped away his earphones and stepped up, concerns over his performance set aside in his search for answers.

Once he was up, it didn't take long for it to hit him that a song was now starting, and he was now stuck here.
Crap.

The song starts up, and thanks to the graces of a lower difficulty, he manages to get by well enough despite the fact he still hadn't mentally caught up yet. His questions were temporarily set aside, his full mental faculties devoted to getting his head together enough not to utterly disgrace himself.
It wasn't something he really achieved, any other setting would have trashed him, but he scraped up enough focus to scramble in his inputs in time for the lenient windows.
And so, he made it through the song, making a prominently panicked display of uncoordination.

As the song finishes, he takes a breath, gets his head clear...and gives a very questioning look to Patty as he finally gets to ask what he intended. "Who are you? Why do you know my name?"

Patricia just smiled slyly to herself as the weird kid got up with her to dance. Worked like a charm. She let her upper body sway loosely as her feet moved in time to the rhythm of her more difficult song. Now this was more like it! It was challenging enough to get her engaged but every little misstep was just that, the off note here and there, nothing to kill her flow. She'd blame her mistakes on the guy to her right, flailing around like Bambi on the dance pad, trying to remember how his feet worked. She wouldn't laugh at him but her smile grew wider whenever she caught him in the corner of her eye. He didn't do terrible but he was playing on Wimp mode. Between the both of them they earned another free song to Patty's delight. Awesome. Like another hour of this and it'd only cost her a dollar for songs all day, she wouldn't be too mad at that.


Patricia didn't look at Cecil when he addressed her, her eyes glued to the screen as she tapped her foot on the pad to leaf through the collections of songs to find another she liked. The songs on this machine were kinda shit and she'd been through all of them at least twice, maybe she'd bring it up to the staff to get some new crap if they wanted people to keep playing. But right now she had been asked a question and Patty was inclined to fuck with they guy.
"I've been watching you a long time, Cecil," she spoke eerily, "Ever since you were born. My name is Satan, I appear before you in the form you find most desirable. I have a deal for you, Cecil..." Her head turned toward him slowly, almost robotically with an empty expression on her face before cracking into a smile.
"Dude I'm fucking with you, you go to my school. How come you don't know me? Running for Class Treasurer? Ring any bells? My pretty face is on a crap bunch of posters all over the halls?" Like seriously, what was the point of getting all those posters if they weren't doing their job? What did she have to do, take off her shirt and stand on the table in the cafeteria screaming her ad campaign? ...actually not a bad idea. Not that but she could probably make some promises and get sponsored by some randos in body paint at home games or something. She'd think about it. In the meantime Patty turned back to her... their game and continued to bounce between two songs she liked. One of them was pretty good but it was so fucking hard and another one was pretty dece but it was too easy. It was either take up a song or go for the easy shit. She'd wobble back and forth on her dance pad instead, swapping between them until the time ran out.

Patty's initial routine falls flat. Not to say it was poorly delivered, but she wasn't about to get a reaction from him even if he hadn't been dealing with demons just the other day. Even as a joke, he didn't find it particularly funny right then, and she didn't get even a hint of a smile out of him.
So, she went to his school? Well, that much made sense. Certainly in the right uniform. But it wasn't a full explanation. "Not particularly. It's not something I pay attention to. Just not interested, 'pretty face' or not." He shrugs.
It is worth investigating, however. These matters may affect you.
I thought you were going to leave me alone?

He turned his attention back to the game, wary of the timer. His eyes drift to the difficulty options, and he ponders about shifting off of easy mode.
...not now. Not without getting his feet first.
Still had a little bit. He had a chance to continue his questioning. "You realise just going to my school isn't a full explanation, right? Maybe for someone else, but I'm well aware I don't have much of a presence."

The troublemaker rolled her eyes at Cecil's non-reaction. Seriously this was why people thought he was sort of creepy, he could of at least taken the joke. Or, like, acknowledged it in any way instead of giving her that death glare he was famous for. Whatever, fuck you dude didn't like you anyway. She pouted as she continued to lean back and forth between the two songs. Homeboy was so freakin' weird...
"Pssshyah no kidding, I thought you'd hear my reputation or something but I guess it's hard to hear stuff if you don't talk to people." It wasn't meant to be an insult even if it came off as one, it was just an observation. Nothing to get twisted about or anything. Patricia was pretty damn surprised he hadn't heard of her though, she was sort of polarizing in Seven Sucks right now. Half of people thought she was cool and funny and the other half thought she was a bitch and a thug, especially given her reason for being there. Which she didn't hide. Screw it, if she was sent there for doing drugs what was the big deal if people knew? What's past was past, she wasn't ashamed of it or anything, people just made a big deal over fucking nothing and it hit her in the teeth.

But no, couldn't be satisfied with the fact that she knew his name because she knew most people's names. He demanded an explanation may the court have mercy! Pffft, what a freak. But freaks were fun or fun to mess with, Patty liked the freaks. The usually didn't give a fuck and that was pretty respectable.
"Beeeeeeecaaaauuuuuuse I'm running for Student Council so I'm trying to learn everyone's name? Dude, you are not that special." Again, harsh but she could have told an even harder truth than that. People talk, Patricia listens. They don't say nice things about Cecil, he's worth paying attention to. Hey, maybe if she talked to him or something he'd chill the hell out, maybe not turn the school into a first-person shooter one of these days.


A slick grin overcame Patty as she watched the timer tick down. Without saying a word she reached over with her lanky legs and tapped at Cecil's dance pad, raising his difficulty up to Medium just before the song started, giving him no chance to change it back.



She turned to the guy wordlessly with a knowing smile as the beat began to drop, goading his reaction.

Even if it might sound like an insult to someone else, it didn't register as one to Cecil. He just shrugged it off - though one part did catch his attention. "Your reputation, huh?" He was a little curious, honestly. Given the way she'd acted thus far, he got the feeling that what he might hear would potentially be...interesting.

Once more, she said something that someone would probably take offense to, and he didn't do so. "Kind of the point. Wouldn't have thought I'd have been worth-"
His sentence stops short as it registers what she'd just done.
"...git!"

She was screwing with him. It was obvious the whole time, but now she'd started to step things up.
Fine then. Have it her way. But he wasn't going to repeat his brain-dead scramble again.
Cecil grinned, just a little. He was going to enjoy himself this time.

It took a little to get a sense for the track, but Cecil actually had a solid sense of rhythm. Not that his legs always kept up when things picked up, he wasn't used to this specific style of rhythm game, but his timing was pretty good once he'd acclimated despite some sluggishness. Enough to do fairly well this time, at least for someone who hadn't played before.
It was fun, though he knew could have probably done way better if he spent some time on the game.

As the song wrapped up, he had a satisfied smile on his face. He took a deep breath, and looked over at the person who'd beside him with an eyebrow raised. "You're determined to mess with me, aren't you? Surprised you didn't rack it up higher."

"Yeah they call me the Virgin Killer, I thought you would've done your homework," she joked in response. This one was a veiled insult of course, though not a really biting one. She could do worse if she tried. But then the song began to start and her smile grew wider at his exclamation from increasing his difficulty. He was pretty fun to screw with, mostly because he was oblivious and it was so easy. Like, pretending to throw a ball and watching a labrador run after it.
"Ha ha, git rekt bitch!" Patricia laughed as she began to step into the tempo. This one was another simple one, she just happened to pick the song that was easier because that was the way she had to lean to fuck with Cecil's dance pad. Might as well give him a shot anyway, she didn't want to nuke him yet. That'd be a pretty big dick move.

Patricia got further into her own song with Cecil finally fucking relaxing for a damn second, swaying to the beat, stomping her heels in tune to the dead space, and lifting her hands over her head at times. She even styled a bit and took a full turn during one of the slower segments. She was actually sorta surprised he could handle Not Sucky mode, he looked like the awkward type, then again he always had his damn headphones on so maybe he knew what he was doing. Still nowhere near close to here though. While he was keeping up with Medium Patty was breezing through Hard, one step below Maniac. She could easily do like 90% of the songs on Hard and maybe 2 of the really fuckin' simple ones on Maniac but here it was a challenge without pissing her off losing over and over again.

"Dude if you don't suck why were you playing on Sucky mode?" she teased with a wry look after the song was finished. She was a little winded as well, too many alternating double steps on that one. She didn't really make a lot of mistakes but there were some here and there and she really had to try to keep up.
"I dunno, is it working?" she would goad at his accusations. He already knew she was fucking with him, she knew he knew and he knew she knew he knew. There really wasn't any point in playing coy, Patty didn't do weaksauce. But she could mess with him just a little bit more. Obvious reverse-psychology never worked but the subtle sort did.
"I didn't really think you could handle it," she spoke in a straightforward and honest tone, "I mean I wanted to give you a hard time but I didn't want to embarrass you, I'm not as big of a bitch as people think I am." The trap was set. Hopefully he'd take the bait and crank up the difficulty himself and trip over his own two feet. That'd be funny as shit. But if he didn't that was cool, she was still going to get free songs as long as they kept dancing and winning and she was having fun anyway.
"Yo pick a song, nerd. I picked the last two."

Cecil rolls his eyes.  "Come on, that one's more ridiculous than the Satan routine."

Cecil scoffs as she prods him about the difficulty, smirking slightly. This was way more manageable than what he was used to. "Figured I should get a better feel for things before I tried anything serious. New game, new controls, new would-be wind up merchant. Got to learn what I'm dealing with."

He makes an exaggerated display of considering what he'd been asked, tilting his head from side to side,
before speaking with a dry, matter of fact tone. "Well, you had a decent opening to start with-" He gestures with one hand, sloping downward. "-but it allll went downhill from there." It wasn't a serious comment, but it was no lie. If she was looking to seriously rile him up, then she was pushing the wrong buttons. Good thing too, really.

"So you're not completely denying you're a bitch, then?" It's delivered just as flatly as last time, though a small smirk betrayed his amusement.
Brushing off the comment on his skill as a simple statement of what she thought, he picked through the tracklist. It was all looking pretty unfamili-
Wait a moment.
Going back a couple of songs, he saw a track he was familiar with. One that, in fact, he knew very, very well indeed.
"Hello there." He grinned as he settled on the track, and after a moment's consideration, kicked up the difficulty.
Probably wasn't going to be easy on him, but in this case? He felt like he'd probably be fine.

"No... no I think I'd believe it if you told me you were a virgin," she'd say with her predatory smile while hanging loosely off of the rest bar, "Dude admit it, you didn't want to get called out and look bad, I like totally get that. But it's a dance game, they all control pretty much the same. Y'know, by stepping on the arrows?" Pffft, new controls, what a crock! Not like he was going to step up and wow her or anything, he didn't look like one of those no-lifers that was on the machine all day. Patty forced him up here anyway and didn't really give him a chance, it'd only get really embarrassing if he couldn't dance at all but guess looks could be deceiving. 'Cause he looked like a clumsy dweeb but he was pretty chill. Her expression became less amused as he kept going though, dude was getting pretty full of it and less cool the more he ran his mouth.
"Yeah dude I could probably say the same," said the delinquent, giving a half-hearted comeback. That line was pretty lame. Not like he was a roller coaster of fun himself.

Well he was fun right up until he got on her nerves. Patricia winced and furrowed her brow. There was uncool and decidedly not cool and what he just said was one of those.


Bitch was a pretty sensitive word, you couldn't just throw it around like that. Like yeah you could say it all you wanted in the impersonal like Fuck yeah, bitch! or Bitch you thought but a bitch? A bitch. That was pretty fuckin' personal, she didn't call him a fuckin' bitch that shit's rude as hell.
"Whatever man." No wonder he kept to himself he was freakin' jerk, nobody probably wanted to talk to him. Great, he picked a shitty song too. Whatever, she was already here might as well rip the bandaid off. Patty snorted and pushed herself off of the rest bar without any enthusiasm, prepared to slog herself through the suck, her demeanor noticeably a lot more frigid. She'd say it'd be the last time she'd be nice to creepos but who was she kidding? Just gotta get through this one crap song, maybe Cecil'd fuckin' learn some chill.

Cecil shrugs. "That wasn't anything to do with whether or not I was a virgin...any case, doesn't matter so much if they're all the same if you haven't played any before. Seriously, I needed to know whether or not I was about to trip over my own feet trying to keep up. Machine like this is a lot different to anything I'm used to." And wasn't that the truth? Most of the time, he just needed to worry about what he was doing with his hands. Here, he had something better equipped to take any flaws in his coordination and shine a spotlight on them. It wasn't like he wasn't fully expecting to get his ass handed to him, but he'd at least like not to injure himself in the process.

"Probably, but I'm not trying to screw with you like that either." He shakes his head. "Wouldn't know how to in the first place. That was never my area of expertise."

Cecil winces. Not overtly, but it's clear to see that he hadn't expected the response he'd gotten. As far as he'd been concerned, it was a throwaway comment with nothing behind it, but then again where he was concerned comments like this didn't tend to get thrown about when everyone wasn't already fairly thick-skinned. More than that, he was used to what he said mattering less than the intent behind the words, and to everyone understanding just what they actually meant.
Which was why it only hit him now how what he said might sound like.
He really hadn't meant that in the slightest. He was just plucking things out from her word choice. But the damage was done now.
Fuck.

Not trusting himself to say anything else, Cecil withdrew inward, any prior enthusiasm drained as he shifted to awkward discomfort. He regretted opening his mouth just then, saying what he did.
Should've known better than to think this would go well.
He had no idea how to deal with this. He didn't feel confident that he could handle this properly.
...it was probably for the best he didn't stick around much longer. At this point, that was probably better than him sticking around to fuck up again, and having someone that personally didn't care for him probably wouldn't end up changing things much from people's general apathy anyway.
Not feeling up to this any more, he looks back at the current difficulty selection, and ticks it back down to medium while he still had the opening.
Just get this done and go.

The two are relatively quiet as the song begins to play. The dark clouds around Patricia hadn't yet lifted, choking the air with silent hostility. This wasn't fun anymore, this was a waste of time. If she wanted to waste her time doing something not fun she'd go study or read or something lame like that, not waste her money on the dance machine with jerks. The punk has no problem keeping up with the song through her body posture isn't tense at all, it's dismissive and lazy. Flippant. Quickly her PERFECTS! begone to devolve into GREATS! and NICE! before she was missing them all together. She floated a disdainful look over to Cecil as the FAILURES! began to roll in. Patty didn't give a shit if she wasn't enjoying herself. About a third of the way through the song she quit dancing altogether and began to ride it out on the rest bar. The failure meter began to feverishly tick downward when... she smiled.

"Alright dude, you better kick it into gear if you wanna pass," she taunted. Patricia broke the tension the best way she knew how: by having fun and fucking with someone else. He'd really need to try if he wanted to keep dancing with her. The gauntlet had been thrown. Patty didn't care if she was beaten, she was here to have fun, and watching the rude kid flail around while trying to keep a perfect score was music to her ears. She'd keep a bemused look on her face as she watched what he'd attempt to do, was he gonna bitch out and quit himself or would he try to save face and earn the song back? Didn't matter. Patty had another song left after this one, win or lose, but she'd only get this opportunity once.

The chilling silence tore away at Cecil's nerves. He didn't dare look over at Patty. His focus remained on the screen in front of him, trying to keep with the patterns the game was throwing at him. His footwork was lacking and lethargic, but he kept on beat, not about to just not bother even if he didn't intend to stick around.
His gaze would occasionally drift over to Patricia's display, bearing witness as the once solid performance degraded beyond the point of even a token attempt being made. A brief gaze at the responsible girl herself was rapidly cut short as he saw her stood there, looking harshly towards him.
If nothing else was indicative of how badly he'd screwed up, that was.

At that point, he remained intent on the screen in front of him, only really focused on getting something right at this point. Patty's taunting drifted over, but at this point, he didn't really care. It was just another thing he had to get through, and his only concern as to his performance here was not having to listen to the game tell him he did poorly right before he went to go and Ankou started giving him grief again.
He didn't look over at Patty. He just picked up his movements from before, stiffly matching the inputs as they came as best as possible. He was more consistently hitting some of the trickier sections, but his overall timing suffered badly, and everything just felt clumsy and exhausting to him. No flailing, no panicked scramble - just an apathetic attempt at keeping up with the challenge he'd been presented.
It continued on like this until the track ended, successfully or not, his familiar mask overtaking his expression.

The kid's look of defeat and... freakin' creepy death stare caused Patty to frown. She thought she would have enjoyed watching him struggle to keep up with the new difficulty she imposed but this was just sad. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion only it still wasn't enjoyable. More like a kicked puppy. She'd feel kind of bad if he hadn't of mouthed off to her like he did but still this was a bit much, it was starting to bring her own mood down with his sinking attitude. Before he could look back to her the abrasive girl's predatory smile returned as the machine belted out it's conclusion.


"Geez if you can't handle it just go down a notch or something, it's not like you're gonna impress me," she teased ineffectually. Her smirk lingered for a moment before falling to a more serious expression when her infectious charm obviously wouldn't work. Dude was probably so bad at talking to people 'cause he never did it that she ruined his day. Fuckin' shit, whatever dude. She'd get him to relax one way or another. Patricia pushed herself off of the rest bar to stand tall against his slouch square off against him.


Her stance and her words were firm yet reassuring, more like instructions than a pat on the back. He was probably too much of a dork to realize exactly what he said so this was a teachable moment. It wasn't the hardest thing in the world to aggravate Patty but she usually didn't hold it against people, the drama that came out of it was typically more of a pain in the ass than it was to just move on. After a few moments of this her expression softened again into her usual devious grin and impish gaze as she crossed her arms, kicked one heel over the other and leaned her hip against the rest bar. She'd begin acting as the last couple minutes never happened because honestly she didn't wanna freakin' deal with it, getting tweaked because of something this stupid wasn't something she felt like taking away from her good time.
"Yo pick another song, nerd. Just uh, pick one you can do this time." Her typical probing attitude was back in full force as if it had never left at all, without a trace of her former aggression and annoyance. Seriously, she didn't feel like wasting her time on dumb shit like that, it was pointless. She came to Arcadia so she didn't have to deal with crap she didn't want to, she'd rather try to raise her own mood to get Cecil to quit his pity act so she could start enjoying herself again.