Kathryn was depressed. In fact, she had hit a valley so low that she was thinking of herself in her head as ‘Kathryn’ instead of ‘Kit.’ She didn’t know what happened, but she had a feeling this was a combination of the feelings overload she’d had at the party, and the puberty her mother had always warned her about. She was getting to be that age, unfortunately.
She honestly had no real idea why she was feeling all sad! She’d had a good day. She spent time with Min-seo, she gave a girl her number, she arranged a playdate with the
one and only Vanilla Sunrise, talked to Hailey Green — who seemed to like her, joined a new club with Min-seo, and she’d even met Min’s boyfriend! What was the big deal!?
She couldn’t think of any solution to her problem; not really, so she’d done really the only natural thing. After the Doc had picked her up after school, Kit wanted pizza. She’d made him drop her off at Captain Cuddles (she’d only ever had takeout from there, but she’d heard it had a SWEET arcade!), where she would spend a couple of hours until she got bored, sick, or full. Whichever came first.
“Get me another root beer float, Johnny. And make it a tall one,” Kit called out down the bar toward the person behind it. The man looked down at the young girl, and shook his head as he walked over to her — no root beer in hand. With a wide sweeping gesture at the four mugs in front of her, frosted glasses that were empty, save for some frothy ice cream and root beer at the bottom, the barkeep spoke.
“I think you’ve had enough. You’re gonna get sick and, like throw up all over my counters, yo. And for the last time — my name ain’t Johnny. It’s Ty.” Kit scowled at this, but she had to admit; he had a point. If she wanted room for pizza and stuff, she should probably cool it with the tall root beer floats. The adult behind the counter shook his head, as he reached underneath the counter.
“Here, kid. It’s on the house. You look like you’ve had a rough day.” He said, holding out a $10 roll of 40 quarters. Kit stared at him, and slowly reached out and took the quarters, before Ty added.
“Actually, you look like you might have had a bad week.”“Shaddappp. I look just fine, thank you very much. My hair is purple! And it’s beautiful!” Kit protested, but she accepted the offered coins and slid back away from the countertop. With one sad look at the root beer tap, and one that lasted longer as she gazed at the soft serve machine, Kit stepped away from the bar,
“are you cutting me off from pizza? Cuz, like, I paid for the buffet…” Ty shook his head ‘no,’ but sighed as he did so.
Kit seemed to accept this without much complaint, headed over to the pizza buffet and eyed the selection.
“Man, you guys suck on Wednesdays. Ya wanna know why I look upset?! Two regular ass cheese pizzas in the buffet is why I look upset!” Kit grumbled, but she ultimately grabbed two thick, heavy, greasy slices of cheesy goodness from the pan, and threw them onto a plate. Briefly, Kit considered a salad to go along with her pizza. They had a whole salad bar! After a few moments of careful contemplation, she
did grab a salad bowl.
A salad bowl which she quickly filled with a few more slices of pizza.
Who the heck went to a pizza buffet to eat salad?
Kit then turned her attention to the plan for the rest of the night: the row of arcade machines. Okay, it was a small row. She thought it would be better than this! This place touted itself as an arcade, for fuck’s sake! She saw… what? A Ms. Pac-Man machine, a Street Fighter: Third Strike (okay, she’d yield there. Third Strike was solid) machine, and… Tron? Was that Tron? Whatever.
Grumbling as she carried her pizza over to the machines on display in the room, and sat her pizza containers down on a nearby table. Carrying one piece with her, she took a bite and stepped in front of the Third Strike machine. She smacked the coin roll on the edge of the machine to pop it open, and pulled out two quarters, putting them into the slot. She hit the player one button, and the machine informed her that she didn’t have enough quarters in. Taken aback, Kit squinted.
“Dude, why does your Third Strike cabinet take three quarters? That’s highway robbery! It’s friggin’ Street Fighter, you butthole! I swear, if the Pac-Man one takes more than two, we are gonna have words.” Kit lifted up the pizza to her mouth for another bite with one hand, tearing off the delicious cheese before she reluctantly dropped another quarter into the waiting machine, and hit the button again.
Kit shook her head, “seventy-five cents… I can’t have another root beer float, but he can make me pay seventy-five cents to play Third Strike. Sigh.” Yes, rather than sigh, Kit said the word sigh aloud as she flicked the stick around, getting a feel for it. She should have done a button test first, but whatever. She wasn’t playing tourney rules or anything, in fact… she was the only person here. She didn’t need to do a button check to play arcade mode, and the stick felt… okay. It wasn’t FocusAttack approved, by any means, but it wasn’t like she expected some cheesy ass pizza parlor that touted itself as an arcade with three cabinets to have Sanwa buttons, or a high quality bat stick or anything that was
ideal.
Selecting Makoto, Kit crammed the last few bites of pizza into her mouth, chewing with her mouthful. It was too much pizza at once to be honest, but she had no choice! The game was going to start soon, and that was more important than her comfort. Her playthrough of Third Strike lasted ten minutes, and by the end of it, Kit’s mind was made up. Playing fighting games alone was trashy. She was going to start her own team, a group of people who played fighting games together, or something. At least video games of some kind. Locals were great!
She had eaten almost all of the pizza she’d grabbed, and Kit had to admit one thing at least. She was surprisingly full, and the pizza was
pretty good. Not good enough to make up for the complete lack of games that were in here. In this paltry excuse for an arcade. Kit grabbed the final of two pieces, and stepped in front of the Ms. Pac-Man machine, dropping two quarters into it — and she was happy to see that the game allowed her to play at that point. She stood there on her one quarter for almost half an hour, and when she finished the game prompted her to put her score in.
Scoffing as she realized that she was at the top of the leaderboard, Kit grumbled.
“Amateurs.” She’d put a sizeable gap between the #2 score (RAF, whoever that was) and her own. She punched in ‘KIT’ at first, and stared at it for a few seconds, not hitting the ‘enter’ at first. She glanced over at the guy behind the bar and stuck her tongue out, before she punched in different initials. Then, she moved to the next machine: the Tron one.
She slipped in her quarters, and got into her zone again. She wrapped her hand around the blue joystick and began to play. Never very good at Tron, she had the hardest time with the tank level… But, even so, she was apparently better than whoever it was that had the #1 spot on
this game too, as she climbed the ladder and made herself famous, knocking whoever AA was off the list too. She punched in her initials for that one too, editing them to match her plan.
“Oh, that’s realllll mature, dude!”Kit jumped as she heard the voice behind her, and whipped her body around to face the bartender from behind and stuck her tongue out.
“It’s about you, since you only have three machines in your 'arcade'!” Kit said, looking down at her phone that had informed her she’d gotten a text message from her mother, which she checked.
Behind her, the Ms. Pac-Man screen showed a new hi-score under under the screen. Held by someone with the initials ‘DUM’ to its right, was the Tron machine, touting a new hi-score owned by ‘ASS.’ As Kit stuck her tongue out in Ty’s direction, Ty frowned, and stepped past her, and toward an unmarked door that was placed between the two classic machines and the Third Strike machine. He put his hand on the knob, and pulled it open, revealing a sprawling arcade with pinball machines, normal machines, and even a few different ticket games. There was a ticket counter, and a prize booth.
“W-why wasn’t that door open!?” Kit pouted, staring longingly at the rows of machines.
“I just thought you’d open it! Next time, I guess.”Kit was ready to cry as she headed toward the door with her phone exploding with text messages from her mother, demanding to know what was taking so long. On her way out, Kit grabbed another slice of pizza to drown her sorrows in.
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