Press Start [Kevin/Cecil]

Ah, the arcade. People really loves to go here whether if they're a child, adult or even a senior citizen. The arcade is a happy place for humanity as it temporarily places their mind in a paradise that makes them forget their problems once in a while. Kevin doesn't really go to the arcade much due to the crowd, but he loves the arcade. Playing video games are fun but, it's more fun when you play it with someone. So, he invited his new friend to hang out with him. Taking his smartphone from his pocket, Kevin would type a text message with a smile on his face.

KEVIN: "Yo Cecil! If you're free today, wanna go to the arcade? Come on, let's have fun together

and... message sent! Now, Kevin pocketed his phone and stood in front of the entrance of the arcade, waiting for his new friend to accept the invitation and hopefully, will come to the arcade to play with him.

Huh? Why was his phone...
Fishing out his phone he checked to see and...
Oh. That was right.
He had friends now.
...god, did that feel weird to think about.

CECIL: Sure thing. Has to be SOMETHING I can beat you at.

Better get moving.


It'd take a little while for Cecil to show up, on account of him not actually being in the vicinity when the text was sent. But given time and a little patience -
"Here! I'm here!"
Cecil would be there, headphones around his neck, and generally a little bit out of breath.
"So, ah...what we waiting for?"

Something to beat Kevin at? What does that mean? Were they in a competition all along? Anyways, Kevin just laughed it off and considered it some kind of humour. Speaking of the devil, Kevin smiled as he saw Cecil running. Kevin waved at his buddy to acknowledge his presence. "Nice! You actually came. Let's go!." he said as he led Cecil inside the arcade. As Kevin explored the arcade, he wondered what games to play. Arcadia is so big that it has a wide variety of video games to choose from. He's not really a gamer, so he's having difficulties which game to play. So, he turned to Cecil. "Uhhh... hehe... I'm not really a gamer. So, I don't really know which game to play that involves two players." Kevin said with a weak smile on his face, humiliated. Going in an arcade and inviting a friend to it but in the end, he doesn't know which game to play.

"Of course I came. Wasn't gonna turn down the invite." He followed Kevin in, taking in the sites and sounds of the arcade once more in the knowledge that he was actually here with somebody he at least kinda knew for once.
It was a novel experience. Suddenly, Arcadia felt like a whole new place.
Cecil smiled good-naturedly as Kevin admitted his ignorance. "Take a look around, Kevin. See what strikes your fancy. There's plenty here, as long as you can afford it." He gestures to the area around him. "If you want some specific ideas, the gun games are always popular. Pick up a gun, load in a coin, and it's point and shoot from there. Pretty easy to get to grips with." He points to a few different variants, some featuring mock rifles each featuring a large button, others with smaller pistol-esque guns, occasionally featuring a foot pedal that seemed to be used for taking cover if you watched long enough. "If you want to know what I'd normally go for, just look over there." An assortment of cabinets for various fighting games fill the area he gestures over to. "Fighters can definitely be harder to get any good at than other stuff, but it isn't half satisfying when you start getting things down. I can probably find something simpler for you if you don't want to try the game I usually play just yet."

Cecil pauses, running his fingers through his hair. "I think there's a few kart racers about too...simplistic sorts of racing games, filled with items to turn the tides if someone happens to be doing too well. I, ah...don't exactly remember where any of them are, though." He shakes his head. "That's just a few examples, anyway. Look around, see what interests you. We don't have to stick to just one thing the whole time, anyway."
As he leaves Kevin to see what takes his interest, Cecil finds himself hoping that none of the Dance Retribution machines catch his eye. He wasn't quite ready for that right now.

Out of all games mentioned, the gun games piqued Kevin's interest and didn't even bother to listen to Cecil's explanation about the other games as Kevin focused his sight on the gun games like some beautiful girl walking in the school corridor. "Oooh" Kevin approached one of the gun games, this game is named "The Hall of the Dead", a zombie shooting game. Without any hesitation, Kevin inserted a coin into the game and started playing it. Perhaps, too excited to play the game as he didn't even wait for Cecil to insert his own coin to join the game. Anyways, since it's an arcade game, the second player can either choose to join the first player or play solo anytime.

As the game intro was interrupted by the insertion of the coin, the game screen transformed into the title screen, waiting for Kevin to press the start button. Kevin took a deep breath, "It's okay, Kevin. Just remember what your father taught you." He calmly took the gun and positioned himself into a stance, something like a police would do if he was using his gun. Then, pressed the start button. As the game started, Kevin would start to shoot at the zombies. Not like any other players, almost all of his shots were headshots. If someone would look at him, he has a really serious face but sweating, feeling a little nervous.

Strength:

Cecil looks back from the fighting game cabinets as Kevin makes a sound, only to see him already walking off. "Hey, come on! You could've said something!" Any attempt to inform the person who invited him is thoroughly ended as he rushes off after him.

Grabbing the prop shotgun and slotting a coin in, Cecil took aim down the sights and started firing himself. While not managing the crazy efficiency that allowed Kevin to tear through things and rack up points, he landed most of his shots and got the occasional headshot, most of his contribution being burying oncoming zombies in shotgun rounds and reloading quickly to continue. Occasionally, as he thought he could get away with it, he'd bury more shots into an enemy falling apart for the extra points.
Still - Kevin did better. He couldn't help but grin a little. "Sure it's your first time? You're making everyone else look bad."

"I only said that I don't really play much here, but I've been into the arcade" Kevin replied, letting out a small laugh. These kind of games was definitely was his favorite. But look, his buddy is taking up the challenge and gone competitive. Kevin didn't back down as he went more berserk and did a bunch of headshots along the way to gather some points. "Hell yeah!" Kevin was clearly having fun headshotting all the zombies. He wished that something like this would happen, but in this case, Kevin thinks he would be shooting demon asses. After that huge zombie wave along the way, the two players would then find themself in a clearing with no zombies or whatsoever. It's already obvious what time is it, IT'S BOSS FIGHT TIME! The titanic monster emerged from the ground. It's a gigantic police officer with a huge club made from human skulls. The game showed that it's weakness was the head.

The boss' movement pattern was: 1. swinging the club wildly while running, passing through the head from time to time; 2. After flinching from the first wave of headshots, the boss would then try to block its head using the club, though it's not blocking the head completely; 3. starts from number one again.

"That's not much better!" Cecil continues to grin as shell after shell cuts through the horde. Zombies fall one after another, their demise punctuated by the occasional TWIN SHOT! popup as a pair of zombies fall to the same shot. He'd occasionally open fire on seemingly random objects in the background, to be rewarded by some of them for the effort.
He laughs knowingly as a crate smashes open to the delightful sight of extra life. "Guess I have something on you."
His contribution to the score was still the lesser, but he did his best to keep as Kevin cut a bloody swathe through the opposition.

As the boss emerged, he nods to Kevin. "Time to get shooting."

Again, his aim was not the best, but lots of shots, a single target, and a blatantly specified weakpoint made life a lot easier. It moved an annoying amount, though.
The real annoyance was when it backed off after being battered to let more zombies try and swamp them down. "Come on! Let's get rid of these!"

Hmmm, Kevin noticed. Cecil has been shooting on breakable items on the background, it drops coins that also increases your score and sometimes, a life point. Kevin took note of that and will shoot breakable items in the background next time. As the zombie swarmed them, Kevin didn't hesitate to try to shoot them all in the head. Always aiming for the head, the zombie swarm went down to a pulp in a bunch of seconds, with the help of Cecil of course. Kevin realized that they were making a good team. "Hey, you're pretty good too. We make a great team!" Kevin told Cecil as Kevin took more zombies down with headshots.

After the horde was cleared, it revealed the boss who was fully rested and ready to fight them again. "Let's finish this!"

"Trust me, I'm not that great. You're the one putting in the work here."
It was easy tearing through the lesser zombies with Kevin's help, the boy proving rather adept. But the real fun started when the boss returned to the field.
Mainly because hitting his weakspot was such a pain.
For all they knew what it was, the motions got even wilder than before, and it wasn't that easy to tell where you were meant to shoot in the first place. Which was a problem, because if you weren't hitting that weak point, you basically weren't hurting it.
Rapid shooting and following its rough motions landed some hits, but he was struggling to track where he actually wanted to aim for on the body at this stage. Intense focus came to Cecil's face as he simply focused on hitting it goddamn this is boss one

"Nah, you're doing good. Don't degrade yourself too much, bud" Kevin said as he struggles to try to shoot the boss' weakness. God damn, for a first level boss, he's pretty hard. And now the boss is getting more aggressive, so is Kevin's health bar, it's decreasing aggressively. He needs to save some coins if he wants to finish this game with what he had in his pocket. So, he has to kill this big guy and to do that, SHOOT THE FREAKING HEAD. However, it's hard to do that now since it's protecting its head with its club from time to time. "Holy... Is this even the first boss?" As the boss swing its club, Kevin's health bar depleted, killing his character. He didn't bother to insert another coin because he can't just spend all his coins in one place. So, he waited for Cecil to finish so they can switch to the other games. "After this, let's try the fighting games this time."

A small smile comes to Cecil's face. "Well, if you insist."/font]
"'Fraid so - crap." Cecil can't help be alarmed as the better shot out of the two is taken down. That left him to handle the rest since Kevin wasn't using any coins, and he definitely wasn't so sure that that was a plan that would go well.
Sure enough, he wipes out too.

Slotting the shotgun back, he perks up a little as Kevin mentions going to see the fighters. "So you were listening when you went off!" He starts heading off to the cabinets, gesturing for Kevin to follow.
He stops before the selections, turning to face Kevin. "Well, if we're looking at fighters, there's a couple of more obvious things to shoot for. CrimsonBurn is what I tend to shoot for, though getting to grips with that might end up being fun for you. Zizzania's a lot simpler as far as control and stuff goes, but that's a 3v3, so be prepared to work with someone you don't know. And...there's everything else, I guess. Can't say I know all of these too well. Just see what looks best to you, I guess."

"Of course, I was listening" Kevin said, letting out a savage smile. As Kevin followed Cecil to the cabinets, there are more people in here than usual. Kevin knows most males would prefer something full of action. So, he wasn't even curious if there are barely any even cabinets to play on. "Uhhh... what?" Kevin is actually surprised to hear that the fighting games here were 3v3. "3v3? I thought fighting games are supposed to be 1v1?" Kevin asked Cecil. This will be his first time playing a fighting game and he has little knowledge about it. It's better to be prepared before playing.

Kevin looked at the two games Cecil mentioned what piqued his interest was the Zizzania. In fact, he was familiar with the characters in it. "First Fantasy?" the first word he uttered as he saw the game. "Woah seriously!? A fighting game based on First Fantasy. that's pretty awesome!" He was actually a fan of RPGs and First Fantasy was one of his favorites. "C'mon let's play this one" Kevin dragged Cecil into the Zizzania cabinets.

After inserting the coin, it's character selection time. There's a variety of character from the series. But Kevin only has favorite and fortunately, she was there. Pipa, a female that is able to fight using martial arts technique. Then, waited for the others to get ready.

"Moooost of them are. But then you get ones like, you know, that one." He shrugs. "At least it means I can help out."
Cecil grinned wide as Kevin showed a...quite demonstrable interest in Zizzania. He was familiar with the cast. Perfect. "Yup. It definitely is." Nodding and laughing at his enthusiasm, he followed to the cabinet beside Kevin.

He hadn't played in a bit. Let's see...there we go. From one of the earlier First Fantasy titles, Cecil locked himself in as Aquon, master of every armament under the sun. Someone else showed up at the cabinet beside him, and picked the Shining Champion for their character.
On the other team, they ended up with...another Aquon, Vapor, the childhood friend of Pipa, and Leo, a fighter wielding an awesome looking gunblade.
"Alright, get ready. Gotta work together."

Oh the nerve that Kevin felt as the fight was about to start. After all, this was his first fight and he is already fighting with human enemies instead of an A.I to train him a little. But, it's too late to complain now. It's time to fight. "All right, time to kick some asses" or the opposite would happen thanks to Kevin's amateur skills. As the battle started, like any beginner player at fighting games, Kevin charged for Vapor and mashed random buttons. But it failed, not all buttons are for attacking. He was struggling which button was for the attack, it's either that he's jumping in front of Vapor or dashing to him. Also, there's this attack button that does no damage but it raises the number above Pipa's health bar. "Ughhh Cecil, a little help. How do damage this dude? I seem to be attacking him but his health bar didn't decrease. But, the numbers above Pipa's health bar are rising." Kevin asked Cecil for help. Damn, he should've asked questions before the game started. He didn't expect the controls would be so complicated. The battle is also really fast and dynamic that Pipa was getting her ass kicked by her childhood friend as Kevin asked his question.