Want to hang out? (Cecil / Tomomi)

With a subtle breath, Cecil smiled and eased his grip on the chair, grabbing some crisps and taking the remote as it was offered. As the other boy spoke up, he gave an almost dark chuckle at Tomomi's words. "Relax. You really don't need to worry so much about all of this. I came to see you more than to eat crisps and play games...though I gotta say, food makes everything better." He holds up the remote. "Besides, I haven't gotten a good chance to play Bash Siblings with anyone for ages. Gotta make sure I still got it!"

Maybe I can beat up Rife and pretend it's Rui...

Letting out a somewhat awkward laugh at the comment, Tomomi nodded. Right. No need to try hard. Right. Friend's visiting over was normal, Cecil must be used to this kind of stuff all the time, so, if anything, acting over the top hospitality wise would probably stand out more...

"Ah, right. Then yeah, we can both shake the rust off!" The boy declared with a laugh, turning on the game, and pushing a button to set himself as player one, and to skip the intro scene. Moving through the different settings, Tomomi set the game to "multi-player" and then to "local", before bringing up the character select screen, and, after a quick hesitation on deciding between Lunk, Roshi and Rife, the boy settled on Rife, changing the colours through the presets before going to a pink one. "This one's a simple enough character to get the rust off."

Cecil sported a truly vicious grin as Tomomi made their selection.
"Oh, this is going to be good..." As much as he was wondering before what he'd want to go with to start, seeing the selection of a pink Rife was not anything he was about to pass up. His cursor shot to Cobra as they were quickly swapped to their arctic camo palette, and Cecil mentally rehearsed the arsenal of explosives the character gave him to blow Rife to high hell with. "Well, Tomomi...it's Showtime."

The sudden change in expression from Cecil startled Tomomi somewhat, and almost made him forget to choose a stage. Quickly shaking the shock out of his system, though, the boy pressed the random stage button, waiting for the stage to load, followed by the characters. "So, um... I thought you said you were rusty too?"

Cecil almost seemed confused by the question, though that manically vicious expression just didn't leave his face. "Yeah? Haven't gotten the chance to play in too long. Probably not going to do as well as I would before." Did he open with the grenades, or did he put down mines and C4 and let chaos reign? "How come you're asking? We haven't even started yet." Ohh, Rife...suffering would come to them for their misfortune of looking like the wrong person.

"You just look very... Suddenly... Excited and serious. Like, the old professional gamers kind of expression..."

As the characters loaded properly, Tomomi shrugged. "Game on!" he declared, before making his character move forward and do a simple basic attack, basically just pressing the only button he remembered. Literally any degree of knowing how to play, and this round was in the bag for Cecil.

Cecil laughs. "I just really want to play. Bash has always been fun."
Poor, poor Tomomi. He had no idea what he was getting into.

As Tomomi sort-of-sprung into action, the grin on Cecil's face only got more vicious. Another time, he might have tried to tone it down a little...Tomomi wasn't kidding when they said they were rusty.
But right now, he was seeing red. Or more accurately, pink.
"Not making it that easy." Immediately, Cobra rolled through the attack and behind Rife, grabbing Tomomi's character and tossing them away as he sent a grenade to follow. "Need a reminder on what your buttons do?"

Was that a taunt?

It sounded like a taunt.

"Um... Nah, I think I'm fine..." Was all Tomomi said, before resorting to the oldest trick in the book. Button mashing. First moving towards Cobra, Rife first guarded, then punched, then tried to grab the air, before finally trying a Bash without the relevant requirements. Truly a sorrowful sight for any gamer.

Funnily enough, it wasn't actually a taunt. It genuinely didn't look to Cecil that Tomomi actually remembered what the controls were. And as much as that helped him win, it would be cruel to let him stumble blindly without the faintest idea of how to do anything.
What was about to happen was going to be brutal anyway, but you had to have some standards.

"You sure about that?" Rolling away and moving up to another platform, Cobra stuck a mine in the ground while he had the opening and continued with the grenades. "If you don't remember, you don't remember. I think you just taunted."

Thinking, Tomomi quickly made his character back away from Cobra to the other side of the arena, using it to test his controls while Cecil was at a distance. No longer would he be a button masher. Now, he would upgrade himself to the almighty echelons of being a newb!

And with that, Tomomi made Rife grab a nearby spawning item, summoning a giant hammer from one of the Hammer Sister's, and throwing it at Cobra! An easily blockable or dodgable attack, followed by Rife walking into a mine, and having his damage taken up to 60% already.

"There we go...!" Cecil let him go to get his controls straight, taking the chance to plant another mine and a remote explosive, and watched as the results showed quickly. He was getting better. Not that much so far, but he was improving.
At Cecil's direction, Cobra rolled through the hammer toss and grabbed a bumper, tossing it toward Rife and readying a controlled missile to follow up with whether they avoided the thing or got sent flying by it. The missile was honestly the less dangerous thing to be hit by at the percentages that they were reaching, but neither was exactly ideal.

It would have been even more intimidating had a poison mushroom not spawned where he was standing.

Remembering how to play a bit more at a time, Tomomi this time took note of the weapons coming in Rife's direction. Tapping the jump button twice, the pink menace jumped into the air in a double jump, before striking down at Cobra from above with his sword. Unfortunately, Tomomi never noticed the mine, getting launched away at being hit, before deciding to try and close the ground with a sudden spam of dash forward attacks, the boy hoping to close the distance before inevitably exploding again.

His health, now regrettably at 75%.

Cobra's missile never found its mark as the sudden shrinkage caused him to lose control of it, and the annoying piece of hitbox that was Rife's blade struck the pint-sized Cobra, sending him sprawling even without him having taken much damage.
Thank god for the mine.
Now, time to leg it.

"Not making it that easy for you!" Cecil sent Cobra running as fast as the tiny man could, hurling Jupiters, Smart Bombs, and whatever else he could get his hands on toward him in an attempt to keep him away. He only turned around after getting his hands on a firework launcher, sending the explosives arcing towards him for as much as his ammo would allow. "Have fun with thiiiiis!"

Quickly switching buttons, the boy switched strategy as the slowing attacks began, pressing the guard so that Rife was in a slowly shrinking bubble as the attacks harmlessly connected. As Cobra grabbed the weapon, Tomomi would press the jump button to get to the next platform and safely out of the way. Right, this character was simple, annoying, and zone based. Now he was getting it... Slowly, but surely. All that was left was remembering the combos... Up on the platform, Rife grabbed an item of his own, equipping the Mistress Sword! While not as useful as a ranged weapon would have been, the powerful item of the Mistress Sword none the less gave Tomomi his own chance for a come back, he just had to wait for Cecil to make his move. "At least make it hard to dodge!"

Cecil laughed, angling his launcher up...and past where Rife actually was. "If you say so!" A small beep was all the signal Tomomi got to react before C4 detonated beneath Rife's feet, following by a high-flying firework to catch him in the air. Cobra tossed the launcher as its last shot was expended, and grew back to his regular size, Cecil grinning all the while. "Come on, little early to say when you've only gotten one hit in!"

Cecil's lemonade lay by the wayside half-drunk as his continued his play. Petty revenge upon a mildly similar visage had started to fall by the wayside for the sheer enjoyment of play. This stuff was good normally, but it just felt so much better when you had a friend right by your side to taunt and beat the crap out of.