Just Dance, Dude! (Patty & Cecil)

Cecil sighs as his inability to play for two people is announced out. Honestly, he hadn't really expected to be able to manage it, but he'd kind of hoped he might scrape by.
Guess it wasn't important anymore. Time to-
No.
Ankou-!
You must make amends, and see this through.
You don't seriously think that-
The thought is irrelevant. You are not done here.
You can't make me do-

"GAH!"

Cecil jumps as he's jolted from his internal argument, and looks over to Patty with an expression of dread and resignation. When he doesn't see the expected frustration, his face freezes into a gormless look as his mind tries to catch up with what she said.
It takes an embarrassingly long moment for the words to register, before he gives a relieved and frustrated sigh, and smiles awkwardly. "R-right. Sorry. Didn't actually mean to- ...nevermind." He swallows, scratching at the back of his head.
It appears-
NOT. NOW.
He suddenly feels an icy chill of disapproval in his chest.
AND STOP THAT TOO!

He shook his head clear, and this time, he actually caught what Patty said off the bat. "Hey, I wasn't expecting to have to handle the whole thing myself. Didn't realise that was the new standard." With a small grin, he flicked through the songs until he found something with a decent pace. "In any case though, I feel more like pushing my luck."
He locked in the track, though without touching the difficulty this time. "Who knows, maybe it'll be funny to watch me struggle. I'll try not to get the song ended too early."
He smiled once more, resigned to the fact this was probably going to go badly and determined to have fun in spite of that.

Of course when Cecil was finishing spazzing out he would find Patty's nonchalant smirk. Like, she wasn't going to wince at him like she wanted to, he looked like he was about to have a stroke or... fuckin'... freak out or some shit. Yeah he was a weird one but that was alright, it takes all kinds. Even if the kinds were odd as shit. Patricia wasn't going to say anything probably because it'd be it'd probably get her at the top of his "list" or some shit but mostly 'cause it wasn't going to make things any better than they already were. She'd just have to tone down on fucking with him. What a shame. The thug would just have to get her fun later but for the moment she resigned to being friendly. She wasn't about to be a super bitch or anything.

At least he wasn't flipping the hell out now but Patty didn't like what came next. He was still nervous, that was a given because he was a fuckin' dork that didn't know how to people good. But like, self-depreciating humor wasn't as innocuous as it seemed, it took a very special sort of personality to pull it off. You needed to be confident and secure in yourself, Cecil sure wasn't. It just came off as sad, it was like trying to morph your personal pain and shame into a joke to save whatever sort of face or pride you had or like not seem like you weren't uncool with what was happening. She saw through him like a screen door. Patty rubbed a tired hand across her face with a deep set frown.
"Dude stooooooooooop," she sounded out,


Unlike last time where there was a chiding tone her voice and face were 100% supportive. All she wanted was for him to relax and start enjoying himself because she totally wouldn't be able to until he fuckin' quit his awkward bullshit and just let loose already. She lolled her neck from one side to the other and faced the screen, bouncing on her toes as the clock ticked down to the next song.


Maybe he'd just stop getting hung up on crap and just dance already, it wasn't hard dude. In any case she wasn't going to flake out like she did last time.
"Besides, you might as well start having a good time before I whip your ass anyway," she taunted casually, giving him a challenging upward head nod. She planned on slowing her roll but not stopping it, she could still fuck with him a little bit. Patty was going to grind him into the dirt. That was a given. But she wanted him to like enjoy it anyway...? Kinda fucked up but hey, she was kinda fucked up.

He sure as hell hadn't felt nervous, but he wasn't very good at noticing these things.
At her callout, Cecil looks over at Patty, somewhat confused. As she continues on though, he's quickly back to grinning away. He nods, laughing a little to himself. "No point being miserable, right?"

He turns his attention back to the game, laughing as Patty taunts him. "Seriously? Come on, just because I find it fun to crank up the difficulty more than I really should doesn't mean I'm that kind of masochist."
As the timer ticks over and the song starts, he finds that the arrows for the track are coming in just a bit slower than he expected them to. Or at least, it felt that way.
Could've sworn it would've been faster than this.
It still wasn't exactly slow, but Cecil found himself managing better than he expected to. A quick glance at Patty's screen was more than enough to tell him he was nowhere near her skill level right now, but nonetheless, he found himself getting into a decent rhythm.
This really was fun, when you weren't arguing with corpses in your head or being accidentally offensive.

By the end of it, Cecil decides that now was the point he really ought to use the rest bar for once. How he'd failed to notice his legs had started to ache was a mystery to him, but they were, and he'd rather not have them stay that.
He takes deep breaths as he sets himself against the bar, shaking out his legs with a smile on his face. "Have to say, this is not how I was expecting things to go when I came here. My days usually involve a lot less dancing."

Now that was what she wanted to see. No fuckin' depreciating humor or other crappy attempts to mask that he felt like a loser. It seriously irked her when people did that, like, people needed to have more confidence in themselves. Unless it was actually funny. Or she agreed with them and they were terrible people. Then it was okay. At least she got him to laugh. Once he cooled it and relaxed a little she didn't have to worry about this dark cloud just blowing in from his direction and raining on her parade. Messing with people was fun but being a bitch wasn't. Most of the time. Sometimes it was pretty damn fun though.
"I don't know you man, maybe you're a freak, heh ha," the thug would chuckle. Personally she thought he was trying to one-up her or show off or make himself look good but she really didn't care why he was doing it as long as he wasn't being so... freakin'... pathetic about it and junk. Now she could focus on dancing with people instead of playing emotional minesweeper with dorks.

This time was tough but Patricia was up to the challenge. She tapped the toe of her foot on the dance pad, rolling her neck as the notes began to stream down. Patty intentionally missed the first ten or so notes just to fuck with Cecil and get him to look but he probably wasn't paying attention. But even with the self-imposed handicap she was driven to do well if anything other than to back up her taunt with some action. Like, you could talk big but if you couldn't put up then just shut up, y'know? Patricia put the beat down to a science and proceeded to give herself over to the song, moving naturally but with a certain purpose. She wasn't screwing around like she had been before and only missed another couple of notes outside of the first dozen. When the final note drifted upward the end result was about 96% which was pretty respectable considering the song sucked so much ass. Like it wasn't hard but there were a lotta throw off moments where you think you'd do one thing and have to do something else instead.


Looking over Cecil didn't do too terribly either, around like upper 80's which was pretty legit for the difficulty. Maybe he liked the song, who knows. The most important part was that he lost the sad face and wasn't acting like a pretender. She'd actually had to try this time around which meant she was sweating more than he was considering she'd been playing longer, the delinquent took his queue to step back and take a break. Fuck the song they just earned catching her breath was more important but she'd tone it down and not make a show of it, at least she wasn't about to collapse like he was.
"WHEW! ...shyeah no kidding. You were here to play the shooters, weren'tcha?" He looked like the type, most guys went to the arcade for the shooter games anyway. Or air hockey. Moreover she was saving herself from being offensive after his freakout, it'd probably get him in a bad mood again and she didn't wanna deal with it. Patty wiped her hair from her sweaty forehead and pulled her phone from her shorts pocket underneath her skirt to check the time. 6:13.
"Hahaha oh fuck!" she laughingly exclaimed running her sweaty hair back, "Haha I'm late for work heh ha!" It wasn't really funny but it was, like in a cosmic way? Like of course this fucking happened sorta? Whatever, she was just gonna give some bullshit excuse for it but it still meant she had to quit dancing. Fuckin' laaaaaaame.

Cecil can't help but scoff at the thought of going for the shooters. Ohhh no. Not only were they highly contested, they weren't his first choice in the first place. "I'll stick to the fighting games, thanks. Not everyone's taste, but hell if it isn't satisfying once you start getting things down." He taps his heels on the ground one at a time, feeling cold rush down his leg. H hoped he wasn't about to get pins and needles from the way he'd been resting on the bar. "Besides, have you seen the way lines can build up for some of those things? I kind of prefer to play games when I come to a place like this."

It wasn't as if his own choice of cabinet didn't get busy sometimes, but usually, things kept moving. There were more than enough cabinets to handle everyone most of the time, and even then a combination of etiquette and people getting the crap kicked out of them meant there'd be an open spot before long if there wasn't.
He was by no means the equal of some of the monsters they had here, and they sure as hell knew that when they were tearing into his health, but he got a little better each time. Maybe one day, he could keep up.

Cecil blinked at Patty's sudden exclamation, and checked his own phone. It looked like he could stand to be here a bit longer, though Rydia was promising hell if he didn't make it back on time.
He picked himself up, testing his legs as he zipped away his phone again. "I'm not gonna hold you up." Crap, he'd given himself a dead leg! How the hell did he do that? "I think I need to get off this thing about now anyway."

Fighters huh? ....yeah she'd believe it, that made sense. Like most guys just did the shooters because they were quick mindless fun and you got to kill stuff and anyone could do it but fighters were for game nerds. They were just as violent but she had some loser try to explain it to her one time and it was like playing chess backwards in Swahili, Patricia wasn't sure what a Crouching B Lag Cancel was but it was probably a hell of a lot harder than point the thing and pull the trigger, repeat until dead. To be honest she liked the shooters, her initials took the ninth slot in the House of Corpses game but she didn't consider herself a gamer dork like most people would. Games were fun and all but she liked arcade games where you got to do stuff, dancing, pointing and shooting, stuff like that. The sit down stuff was lame as hell. She'd probably do a fighting game if you actually got to put on gloves and beat the shit out of someone but it was just fighting at that point, you can't fix what isn't broken. Points didn't matter if the "winner" was face down on the floor choking on his teeth, a real life fighting game would be seriously stupid. Like that'd be pretty funny though.

"Aaaahhh, m'kay I see. So what you're telling me is you'd rather yank a stick around than shoot your load?" Patty grinned, sticking her tongue out through her teeth and making a pretty rude off-hand jerking motion. Like, rude but not insulting. Fuck dude it's a joke, c'mon. But when he said he wasn't going to keep her there her eyes opened a little wider. She was doing the thing again, the thing where Patricia forgets she has responsibility stuff to get done.
"Shit dude you're right, if I keep talking to you I'm gonna be here all night. Like, I seriously have a problem with that shit, y'know?" There it goes again. The degenerate bit her lip, rolling her eyes with a clenched fist. Seriously had to stop doing that. She shook her head and smiled incredulously, vaulting over the rest bar. Unlike Cecil she knew when to grab breaks. Also she knew how to dance and, y'know, did it a lot.
"Catcha later nerd." Patricia acted as if she was about to leave and left far enough away so as to take Cecil's attention away from her, only to sneak back up and yank on his shoulder while he was off balance to freak him out. She wouldn't let him fall, that'd be a dick move, but it'd be funny as hell to see him wig out. She'd laugh pretty casually no matter how he responded, he was just fun to mess with like that, but she'd back off anyway.
"Okay like I really gotta go now. See ya at school, dude!" She wouldn't take off in any hurry, if she was late she was late it didn't matter how much as long as she put hours in. Besides, being a little late with no advance warning was like some cardinal unforgivable sin but if you were an hour late and had a good story you could get away with it. She pulled out her phone to think up some dumb thing to tell her new manager, she was thinking she'd blame it on needing to speak to the school about her status or some shit. She'd probably buy that.

Cecil rolls his eyes, but grins nonetheless at the joke. "Sure, let's go with that."

As Patty continues on, the nuances of her behaviour end up flying over his head. His gaze follows her as she vaults the bar, and he waves as she says her goodbyes. "Bye."
He turns his attention back to his legs, getting up carefully-
"AGH! Fuuu-uuuck...pins and needles, pins and needles...haaaah..." He looks around again and Patty, and gives a rather weaker wave. "Ye-eah, see you...gaaaah, my leg..."

As Patty leaves, he walks awkwardly off the machine, working his leg until the circulation was flowing properly again. He checks the time again, and looks over at the CrimsonBurn machines, where things seemed to be in full swing. There was even one open.
He could get a couple games in. He takes a place, and gets into a match.
Was that experience worth such complaint?
Yes. That was a bloody mess!
It is not as bad as you make it seem.
...just leave me to this for a little bit. You said you would.
A knowing laugh resounds in Cecil's mind from the spectral voice, before falling silent.
He might deny it, but after that, he was probably going to be watching out for the girl he met in future.
...though he really needed to find her name on one of those posters before he talked to her again...

Stacy Patricia of the Devil Arcana and Cecil of the Devil Arcana have established a Social Link!