[04] Pac-Man!

[Ashe]

"I apologized!" she insisted at least ten minutes later. She was standing above him, tugging at his arm in an effort to get him to his feet but so far he'd only succeeded at gaping at her wordlessly.

Finally he put on his best - and convincingly real - grin. "You're lucky you're cute," he informed her, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet to brush himself off. "Hey, this thing isn't really my color," he mentioned, calling her attention to the yellow spandex suit that he had just noticed that he was wearing.

"Ugh, yeah," she agreed, looking over her own suit. "Wonder when they put these things on us... I totally didn't notice," she admitted.

He grunted in agreement. "Yeah, I'd say, you were totally in your own world for a moment there."

"Hey, not like you were sitting on the floor like you'd seen the boogey man or anything," she fired back.

"Of course I wasn't," he agreed. Gazing over her assets, front and back, he decided to score another victory. "Nice pink bow, by the way," he teased.

"Oh. Wonderful. I don't mind the color, but really? A bow?" she complained.

Before they could continue, a loud boom erupted nearby. At the source of the sound, they found another pair of individuals wearing all yellow spandex as well. They approached slowly, but the two strangers quickly rose to their feet. "Oh, it's you," the shorter fat one said unapologetically.

"Hi!" Ashe began quickly. "I'm Ashe and this is Ander!"

They stared at her before looking to each other in unison. The taller one suddenly fanned an arm in their general direction. "Ugh, they are even more disgusting than I thought!" a strangely high pitched male voice said. "Jill, we absolutely have to hurry this up and get out of here. This is dreadful."

The other person, who seemed to be a very masculine woman, grunted in agreement. "They'll be lucky to survive the ghosts," she said without a smile before the pair ran off into the darkness.

"Ok..." Ashe began. "They were... odd..."

"On the bright side, seems my PAGER is working again," Ander announced, looking over the data. "I'll see if there is anymo-"

"Hey! You never told me there was anything wrong with it before!" she suddenly realized.

"There wasn't," he covered up, continuing to peruse the data before she suddenly snatched it from his hand. "Hey!"

"And that device isn't yours! Yours is still on your hip, you jerk! You took mine again!" she cried out, giving him a light punch in the shoulder. Ignoring his arguments to the contrary, she scrolled through the information herself before looking back at him with absolutely no positive emotion. "Wow. You do realize the part where you said '2 Pac' actually said 'Team Members: 2 Pac-Man vs 2 Pac-Man'?"

"Well, it cut off before I could finish reading-"

"You totally deserved whatever it is that I said in those raps," she muttered under her breath before continuing. "We're supposed to get these floating pellets like in the actual game of Pac-Man. Since we are so late to show up to the party, those guys were the other team. They probably got a head start on us," she pointed out. "If we lose this thing, I'm totally blaming you."

"I wonder what they meant about-"

"GHOST!" she suddenly cried out, jabbing a finger at a distant floating object that appeared to be headed their way. "RUN!" Her hand flung out and caught his, snatching him away to lead down a quick escape. As they ran, the most annoying drone of WAKA WAKA WAKA kept echoing with every step.

They flew from corridor to corridor until finally Ashe slowed down, trying to catch her breath. "I can't... can't keep up..." she struggled.

The thief, in perfect physical condition, slowed down until he was doing a run in place, his legs continuing their motion until he finally stopped when he realized she wasn't at all impressed. "Why were we running from those things? I bet we could have taken them," he added with a flair of bravado.

"Yeah... Maybe... But don't let their... pixelated appearance fool you..." she managed in between bouts of air. "I don't know what they do... but I don't think we want to find out." Pointing a finger up ahead of them, she nodded at a series of floating yellow bubbles. "I guess those are our pellets?"

Ander approached them, which was fairly interesting given the disparity between his attempted effort in sneaking forward to the obnoxious WAKA WAKA WAKA that accompanied his steps. "Ashe?" he finally asked, prompting her to catch up. "Any idea why there is a banana just sitting on the ground?"

"Hey look, a cherry!" she burst out excitedly, looking to his left suddenly.

He turned, giving it a suspicious glance. "Let me see that a moment," he decided, reaching his hand out as she snatched it up in her hands.

"No way, I called dibs, this is my cherry!" She tossed her twirled it around in her fingers as she contemplated how to best consume it. "Besides, you might try to steal it," she teased.

"Bit late for that, I'm guessing," he retorted in fun.

"Watch it, or I'll stick that banana in your ass," she warned with the wave of a finger before approaching the floating yellow bubbles. "You know... I'm curious," she voiced, pulling the tied up cherry stem from her mouth and tossing it to the ground.

"What are you..." he began, stopping as he watched her stick her walk into the pellet shaped bubble with her mouth open and her tongue out.

The bubble popped at contact with her tongue and she grinned, turning to him. "It tasted like watermelon!" she announced, rushing to the next one with her mouth wide open, consuming it on contact. "And this one! It tastes like waffles!"

He experimentally reached forward to grab one of them and found his hand passing right through it. Narrowing his eyes in a glare, he swiped his hand through it a couple more times in frustration before Ashe ran up to him and grabbed his hand, wrapping her arm around his and holding it excitedly to her. "No, you have to do it with your tongue!" she exclaimed. "Like catching snowflakes."

To prove her point, she released his arm just as quickly and touched her tongue to it, the darker haired contestant watching as it disappeared on contact. This time, however, she wrinkled up her nose. "Ugh, oh man, that one..." she considered, trying to find the right words for it.

Laughing, he crossed his arms. "Nasty?"

"Not exactly," she said cautiously. "Just tasted like..." The words were in her head, but no force in this game could bring them out. "Bitter and salty," she finally spoke. "You would have loved it."

"Maybe," he agreed, considering his preference against overly sweet things, but not wanting to give her too much information about himself. After all, he'd just faked his way through an entire ice cream dessert with her. He coolly approached another and, growing curious, stuck his tongue out, bringing the tip of it to touch the ephemeral floating pixel. His eyes lit up as the taste washed over him. He wasn't really sure what it was, but he did like it.

"Violet, you're turning violet!" Ashe laughed, quoting a line from a movie. She grabbed his arm and pointed ahead of them at more floating pellets. "This way! I want to know what the power pellets do!"