So, here's a fun and funny fact! Yue? Doesn't know Chen's sword flight technique! The ancient scroll she bought at market one fine afternoon taught her a personal flight spell, one that did not use a conduit. Another fun fact is that Yue is famously terrible at extrapolation! Yaaaaay! She knows what she knows and does not know what she does not know, and the basic principles from the first thing simply do not carry over to the second no matter how similar they may or may not be. Double yaaaaay! Want a third fun and funny fact? Ok! Since you insist! Bella? Ok, shh shh shh, don't tell anybody this, but Bella? [i]Incredibly[/i] heavy. You wouldn't think it to look at her but she must seriously be denser than Dense-ium (the densest mineral known to fox kind!) because, like, wowies meowies. It is a shame the only path to the Sky Castle involves Yue carrying her there the whole way! I'd tell you another fun fact about this but you are out of freebies. If you want to hear it, pay a fun fine. I offer very reasonable deals to first timers! "How did she know I was hurt? Nobody's said a word about it since it happened, not even Vesper. She wasn't even fighting me seriously, so what gave it away?" "Nnnnnnnf." says Yue, trying as hard as she can not to breathe more than she needs to or drop the cool cat lady she's holding several hundred meters above the ground. "...I should have known better. Every time I've ever thought I was at the pinnacle something came along and knocked me off of it. But I didn't even think people [i]lived[/i] here!" "Ynn?" "No. I'm not explaining it twice. You'll get your answer after I see this Jessic person." "......." And that is the story of how Yue just barely landed on the grounds of the Sky Castle, and why she immediately crumpled into a sweaty, breathless heap upon doing so. But hey, who wants another fun fact? It turns out, Princess Jessic is actually... Ha! You thought I was gonna say it, didn't you? Nerds. Ask someone else~ ***** "Oh wow, you got Snake Time! That's when the game hisses at you because you did so good! Congratulations, buddy! You must be a musician or somethin' 'cause I swear you're feelin' the notes." Kat beams hearts and sunshine at Dolce, wagging several tails at what is genuinely the highest score she's ever seen at that cabinet. Everyone's got a talent or six up their sleeves, right? Even if they don't know it yet. There is something about the combination of sights on display in this quietly buzzing little arcade, the sheep uncertainly poking every little button without an understanding as to how it works but also commanding them with such supremacy as to nearly set a track record with... what? Five attempts? Or so? That's just kind of... adorable. Y'know? "You're way better than the last guy I took videogaming. Though right now?" Her tail twitches, and through a shimmery haze she produces a small box of candy. Ridiculous, indulgent little things: a small cluster of hard sugar clumps around a soft gummy core. She pops one in her mouth and crunchy-chews with a delighted grin before offering the box to Dolce with a tempting little rattle and shake. "You're reminding me a lot of him." It is true that a body only gets one first arcade experience. There's no going back and redoing it, and no accounting for lost magic once that same body knows what to expect, even if just a little. That's all the more reason to try and make it as special as possible, right? Luckily there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see. The Skee Ball skees. It also balls, not that it matters. Its the sort of challenge you can't really brute force, a sort of becoming oneness with the little ball roll up the hard packed little slope and leap! into the air on its way to one of several cute little rings. It takes some getting used to, especially for a girl like Kat who has never been very keen on grinding past failure (unless there is a timer running), but with her good luck sheep in tow she very quickly completes the team up to heist enough tickets and foxgirl scheme her way into a Hatsune Miku noodle topper [i]and[/i] a soft, huggable deer plush to ward away bad luck and evil spirits. She gives both to Dolce with a wink and a kiss of his hand. The fighting games are games in which you fight. This particular arcade is very fond of them and has a whole row in the back wall dedicated to all manner of styles and specialties. A long time can be spent on pure, 3D simulation battle games where the most important tech to master is something called a Korean Back Dash, though exactly where and how this little double tappy wonder got its name nobody is quite sure. There are Princess Simulators, which instead of being tense struggles for positioning (until the timer runs out) are much more realistic rushdowns of Perfect Super Ultimate Death Shots that chain and counter off of each other into infinity (until the timer runs out). There are glitchy, ancient messes where everything moves at one quarter speed and pressing two buttons at the same time causes the cabinet to reboot. And everything in between. Kat is very gracious in her explanations for each game and character, keeping it concise enough not to overwhelm but never skipping past a question and only one time chooses a character in any of them she could describe as a "favorite" (a purple haired girl with a beret who fights with a combination of razor wire and a handgun). "Heh. That was all within my calculations." she preens. And then hands Dolce a very pretty, cold can of matcha latte. Being gifted with lots of open space and an obsessive manager, there are a great many kinds of games and things to do here. All at one's own pace, of course. The air hockey table with the warped surface is pretty cool, of course, or the pinball wing and the defunct gacha game arcade pods which haven't worked in hundreds of years but will still print out stickers of your favorite characters if you ask it to. Assuming you have a favorite character, of course. All around, there are people. Not so many that it makes a huge scene, but enough that the place doesn't feel like the ghost town that Shana's ramen bar is. Some are old, and some are very young. Some seem like absurd talents who belong in some kind of professional league, and others have only a passing interest in the claw machine full of cute girl figurines. Games aren't like duels, you see. Especially taken as a whole, there's no real way to say what being the best at them really means. Unlike sword fighting, which has a clear and obvious hierarchy with Yue at the top because everybody who has ever beaten her is a dirty stupid cheater and I hate them. Except the ones I don't, cheaters though they are. Anyway, it is possible to lose a very long time here, under the gentle guidance of friendly fluffy tails. I say 'lose' but it's really more 'misplace'. Certainly it cannot be wasted, not when it's all this fun. Some people seem to live here, others merely pass through. It could be everything, or it could be nothing. But it's enough to say that it is. Y'know? ***** Violet laughs. Well only, that doesn't really tell the story does it? Let's say rather that she [i]guffaws[/i]. She has a rich, not really so much melodious but all the same kinda sort musical, deep laugh that comes directly from her belly and never lets up. It shakes her chest and all the way to her shoulders until she's forced (forced I say!) to sit down again just to stay stable enough to not fall over and learn how well she can laugh [i]in[/i] the water. Probably... not very well. Good thing we don't get to find out! "Ahhhhhhhhhhh. [i]Man.[/i] That's a good line! I've gotta remember that one. Private hot spring. [i]Dang.[/i]" She looks half ready to lose herself in laughter again, but manages to just shake her head and grin. "Friends, then? Yeah. Hell yeah! Your name's... Dyssia? Sick, I'll remember it. Haha! All right then, you said you wanna talk about the... water? Ok, we'll..." All of a sudden and seemingly at random, the fight drains out of Violet all at once. She slides down into the water, past her neck, until she has to tilt her chin up to keep her mouth above water. She sighs as she floats there, and then switches from floating to slowly paddling around on her back, even though this really isn't the kinda place where people should be doing that. "We're friends, right? You said that, right? You're not gonna take that back?" She heaves a long sigh even as she surges a full 7 meters on one kick of her powerful legs, splashing the rocks in a profoundly petulant manner, "Alright well I'm holdin' you to that." She lifts herself up out of the water again to look at this very large, foreign snake-woman directly in the eyes. There's a fierceness in hers now that wasn't there before. It breaks again when she glances toward the exit and doesn't see a certain silhouette waiting for her. "...What does it mean to be 'cool', d'you think? I'm, like, all my life that's all I've really wanted to be. You know? Not the strongest or the fastest or the smartest, not even the bravest. The coolest! That's why I've always thrown myself at every challenge that catches my eye. I don't care if it's not in my skill set or whatever, or if my opponents are more experienced or even what it is I'm doing. Racing, fighting, hot dog eating, ghost stories around a campfire... I'm down, right? And I'm gonna be cool as hell!" She shakes her head. She is not, in fact, cool as hell. She is [i]moping[/i], Dyssia. The least cool thing anyone can do. "I really envy Scar. She's so... uh, what's the word? Driven? Yeah. Like her whole thing is bein' number one, and she works real hard at it. She runs every day to keep in shape, she takes me on motorcycle rides to keep her cornering sharp, and it's just always, like, aim for the top right? And I've always figured that ain't me! If you're cool then you should be able to [i]be[/i] cool no matter how things go down in the end, shouldn't you? But then, like, I kinda just run my mouth and then when I eat shit after I look like the biggest dork of all time. That ain't cool at all! I don't, like... know what I'm chasing, any more. You don't usually get that long in this game to make it all fit together and I'm just kinda spinnin' my wheels not goin' anywhere. What the hell is cool, anyway? What'm I after here, if it's [i]not[/i] that? Like I know I just said I'd fix things with Scar, but like honestly? I dunno if I deserve a girl like her." She laughs again, a little less pretty this time. "Ah, well. It'll work out one way or the other. Maybe I want to be cool because I'm just that lame. That'd figure, right?"