[04] Pac-Man!

[Kill Town]

Pac-Man!

Description: The goal is simple: collect more pac-dots (floating yellow orbs the size of tennis balls) than the other team. The problem? A quartet of ghost (named Red, Pink, Cyan, and Orange for blatantly obvious reasons) partrols the maze and will instantly whoop your ass into unconsciousness should you bump into them. The only way to temporarily KO a ghost is the collect on of the six power pellets. Do whatever it takes to get more pellets than the other team, while at the same time avoiding those guys.

Hint: The other team is made up of a team of NPCs. Their names are Jack and Jill. Their personalities and appearances, should you even go into depth about them, are completely up to you. Be sure to talk to one another, if possible, to get the best sense of cohesiveness.

Participants: Ander, Ashe

[Ashe]

"Looks like we're going to be seeing each other on the other side," Ander had noted as he looked down at his own PAGER unit as shimmering blue portals opened around them. Playing the role of the gentleman, she found her hand quickly enclosed within his and lead from Trafford's side, her world quickly engulfed in the unsettling feeling that she found sometimes accompanied having her entire being reassert herself.

Her vision finally cleared up as her eyes adjusted to the darkened room they found themselves in. "What do you suppose is the goal in this one?" she asked her companion, looking around at what appeared to be a series of deep blue walls.

Ander held the white device up sideways and scrolled through the information. "Seems that we are in an event called..." he trailed off as he read over it. "2 Pac - Hey!"

She looked up to see him shaking the unit wildly. "What... are you doing?"

He grumbled and attached it back to his hip. "Nothing," he covered while trying to figure out why his unit had turned off suddenly. He feigned a yawn and stretched a sore muscle in his arm. "All it said was 2 Pac, whatever that means."

"What do you mean?"

"I have no idea," he retorted with a shrug. "That's all it said," he insisted once more.

"Huh," she resigned, thinking through the possibilities. "Um... Well, do you know if we are supposed to be working against each other or together?"

The darker haired man grinned. "Could be a battle of the sexes," he pointed out while avoiding the question.

Rolling her eyes, she held a finger up to tap at her lower lip in thought. "Well, the name of the event is some rapper's name," she turned over. "So I guess we are supposed to... rap?"

"Wrap what? There's nothing here," he mentioned, gesturing around them.

She pointed her finger at him. "No, I mean rap. As in the music." Realizing that he wasn't quite getting the point, she let out a disheartened sigh. "Ok, sometimes rappers have these things called battles, right? What happens is they create songs that are glorified rhyming poems and pretend they have some kind of creativity doing it. Occasionally they throw in some kind of catchphrase or chant to get people to walk around repeating it for marketing reasons, but mostly they just use a bunch of insults and dirty language."

"Ok," Ander slowly followed cautiously. "So we are supposed to make rhyming songs? That's it?"

She wrinkled her brow while answering, uncertain of herself. "I suppose. There's a few rules to it though, usually. You can't have a popular rap song without a couple of specific mentions - namely claiming that you get laid a lot, you love the clubs, you have lots of money and love to waste it, and finally, either drug use or how much you love the newest pop culture alcohol, which tends to be something that you take shots of or that goes in a mixed drink. If you mention wine or beer, you're doing it wrong. Only country singers think mentioning beer in every song is a requirement."

"You must follow music pretty strongly," Ander quipped.

She laughed a bit at the assertion. "Yeah, well, it's the universal language," she admitted, her cheeks turning slightly red.

"So..." he continued in thought. "What are the required mentions in songs for music that you do like to listen to?"

Feeling a bit put on the spot suddenly, she felt the air grow slightly warmer. "Nothing, actually. Stuff I listen to tends to be extremely creative and innovative. I like music that is a breakout and new, not that mainstream crap that gets assembly lined out onto the radios every week," she further explained, trying to make a point.

"Relax, I'm not here to attack your music taste," he conceded, holding up his arms in a gesture of surrender, despite her clear bias. "So we make up rhyming songs?"

"Yeah, and they have to be about each other. Imagine some banging drum beat in the background like... this..." she said, clapping her hands together in rhythm so that he could know what to follow. "Let's use that as our base line. Now the point is to sorta insult the other one, but in a funny way. You have to act like you have an entire crowd standing around you cheering because you just told me how fat my momma was or something."

"Alright," Ander spoke up, putting an effort into sounding more confident than he felt. "I'll go first then... You ready?" he asked, taking position and clapping his hands quickly to get the beat into his head.

"O-k, al-right," he began, each syllable falling with the slap of a hand. "Looks like - we fight, I think - that's right. We fight - all night," he trailed off as she burst into laughter, holding up a hand to stop him while shaking her head wildly. "What?" he demanded.

"No, no, that's... terrible," she admitted with a bite to her lip. "I'm sorry," she apologized, her smile growing. "I know it's your first time-"

"That's never hindered my performance before," he insisted, but she continued.

"Yeah, well, maybe I'm the first to be honest about your performance," she laughed. "You are too stiff. You need to loosen up a bit," she instructed, trying to overcome his protests that he wasn't stiff. "Act like you are just the absolute man. Like you are on top of the world. Imagine that you don't have to work a day in your life and people just need to recognize how awesome you are. Imagine that everything you say is just the most hilarious thing in the world. Like you could interrupt even the biggest events without caring how rude anyone might think you are, because you are a voice of a generation and they just can't compare."

"You want me to insult you... with a rhyme?"

"Yeah, bring it," she challenged, getting into this. "Remember to loosen up, like an actual song poem, not whatever that was you were doing just now."

He sighed a deep breath and began, hearing the beat once more in his head. "You've got a big butt, and I cannot lie. But you've got such pretty eyes. You can run your mouth while we're heading south-" he continued, slowly getting the hang of it, but he found himself interrupted again.

"Alright, my turn!" she spoke up excitedly.

"I didn't finish!" he relented.

"Psh," she exhaled, pushing her hand at his face to get him to move back for space reasons. "Let me show you how it's done..." She'd been going over it in her head until she finally came up with something she found entertaining. "Ander probably has one tiny cock, motherfucker, I'll be fucking your shit up and down the block, those other bitches probably see you jerk it in a sock, cause bitch I'm tellin' you that I'll cap you with my Glock! You took up stealing cause you're not that appealing, you couldn't get ass unless you thieved it, believe it, probably convicted of treason, you can't get laid but don't see the reason."

In the middle of the room, she was standing there, throwing her arms around like she'd lost her damn mind. Somehow, in the spirit of competition, she'd given in to the raw energy flowing through her and had unleashed the beast, something that she would have to remember the next time it came down to attempting to use her Ki without putting too much effort into it.

"I bet you get touched less than Tickle-Me-Elmo, you try to get bitches, all you get is their elbow, you can't touch my rhymes cause they're solid like Jello. Hello? I know you want some but I'm tellin' you "Hell no," so let's go, show me what you've got, whip out all two inches of that baby cock!" she finished, finally opening her eyes again to look at her opponent.

He was sitting down.

He was actually sitting down. Her eyes lowered to see him in almost a backwards crawl, as if he'd been shocked so speechless that even movement had become an alien thought to him. His mouth moved but the words just didn't come out.

That was about the time that realization crept over her. "Oh crap," she stammered, the apology forming on her lips.

[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!"

[Ander]

Power pellets? Ander wondered. For someone who had taken third twice and supposedly should have been no threat to him, she sure knew a lot about this game. Once again, he’d luckily landed a partnership with somebody who could cruise him through the event and take another one home. After all, she danced perfectly in the palm of his hand at this point… save for one rather scathing rap that put a little bit of a damper on his mood. Sure, she’d apologized rather profusely for the lyrical jabs, but still, he’d been brutally schooled by a girl with pink hair. That didn’t exactly do much for one’s confidence.

He rolled over the event in his head: catch more flavored bubbles than a team comprised of two bickering opponents, run away from colorful 8-bit ghosts, gather up random fruit, and use something called “power pellets,” which could only mean something really cool and really amazing.

Ander allowed himself to be led around the arm by his vivacious companion, letting her set the pace of their progress as they stumbled around the mazelike structure, their footsteps accompanied by that peculiar and unidentifiable noise.

“There’s one now!” Ashe pointed out excitedly.

Floating near a cluster of bubbles rested a large, yellow sphere, the color matching their ridiculous spandex outfits. The pair approached it, neither daring to reach out and grab it, Ander for uncertainty, and Ashe because she knew that whatever their function, the pellets needed to be carefully conserved in their perilous quarrel against the ghosts of the maze.

“Soooo…” Ander said. “You said you don’t know exactly what these things do?”

“No, and something tells me these things aren’t flavored,” the girl replied.

Before either of them had a chance to contemplate the subject further, Ander noticed a pair of ghosts creeping up behind Ashe.

“Uh, time to find out!” he blurted. He grabbed the pellet, feeling a firm texture, and yet once he grasped it between his fingers, the sphere crushed in his grip, emitting a quick flash. The ghosts, colored a misty cyan and a bright orange, suddenly reverted to a deep blue, offset periodically by flares of white. They halted their impending charge, their wide eyes shrunken to little dots and their mouths beset with squiggly frowns. In fact, once the pellet burst, the ghosts reversed their direction to flee instead of pursue. Ander quirked an eyebrow, putting two and two together that the pellet was the cause, but unsure of what exactly it did. Before his partner could stop him, the thief bounded after their humorously frightening enemies.

“H-hey, wait! What are you doing?!” Ashe called after him.

Ander didn’t stop, his curiosity getting the better of him.

[Kill Town]

“Ugh, where are you going!?” Ashe shouted after the thief, half demanding and half pleading. Ander, on the other hand, had no intentions of stopping, especially now that the odds were finally starting to bend in his favor. Sure, the girl seemed to have some innate knowledge of what was going on in this place, but the thief was no fool. After all, such a simplistic game was simple to figure out: eat the pellets, gain the power pellets, and kick the pasty colored asses of every ghost that had enough balls to chase after them in the first place.

He caught up with one of them and threw a lunging punch. The aura surrounding his fist was still clearly visible, and upon contact, the ghost blew up in a puff of smoke. Laughing, the thief darted towards the next one, who hadn’t even stopped to look after its fallen friend, gaining a head start in the process. They were obviously afraid of his new state, and though that would invoke some sense of sympathy from most people, it was them who had pushed the issue in the first place.

Ashe, on the other hand, knew what was really about to happen, and made a mad dash in an attempt to stop her comrade from making a giant mistake. Another ghost bit the dust, so to speak, in the meantime, creating a smile on the thief’s face in lieu of his sated curiosity. Unfortunately for him, his aura began to flicker and fade, though it wasn’t necessarily something that he could see. The pink-haired teenager rounded the corner and her target was in sight, his power up very visibly fading. She cried out to try to gain his attention. “Ander, those power ups don’t last forever! Come back, we need to find another one!”

Her words fell short of the man’s hearing capabilities, however, and he carried on his pursuit. He raised another fist to attack the remaining ghost, but just before his appendage reached its target, the power pellet was used up. Without the power to destroy such enemies, Ander’s attack was ineffective. In fact, just touching the ghost meant his demise. Ashe screamed upon seeing the thief spin in the middle of the air and shrink into nothingness, sounding a few beeps and bloops on the way. However, her mourning was short lived as the ghost redirected its sights on her.

She ran as far and as fast as she could, much of her trek fading into obscurity as she replayed Ander’s death over and over again in her mind. Pellets were collected along the way, and suddenly, her PAGER went off, flashing the word “WINNER” across its display as a portal opened.

Despite the loss, she lived to fight another day.

Winner: Ashe

Ander will wake up in prison.

I’m just glad I didn’t have to kill you off, Sandmander.