Round 1: Fight!

[VoltTurtle]

"I'll do you one better, Poppy, if you win, I'll buy you a pizza instead."

Natasha wouldn't let Poppy to up the ante on herself alone. Burdens are meant to be shared, both in competition and in life. Making herself look generous to those who didn't know her well was a side bonus. One she would make sure to take advantage of later.

"Maybe we could even share it?"

She smiled and winked at Poppy. Casual flirting might not advance her immediate goals, but it was fun. Nothing wrong with a bit of fun, and Poppy had a certain charm to her besides.

With that, she turned her back on Poppy, and her attention to the skee-ball machine. Grabbing another ball, her muscles repeated the same pattern as before, tensing up. She held her breath for a moment, but she exhaled a bit too early as she threw it. The ball shot up across the mat, hitting the rim of the 100 point chute before bouncing into the 10.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a frustrated sigh. The strategy of death-or-glory had its downsides. Without wasting another second, she grabbed another ball and repeated the motion, this time exhaling properly, and sinking another one in the 100 point chute. 210 points with four balls, now. Not as good as she wanted to be, but it would have to do for now.

Natasha shook her head. Might as well start some topic of conversation that could flow into more revolutionary avenues later. As much as she would love to jump to extolling why landlords were parasites, there were better subjects for her to begin with.

"Say, you all have been keeping up with the news, right? I've been doing a lot of reading on the global climate in particular."

Climate change was something that had been on her mind for a while now. The warming world would herald the end of global capitalism, in time. It was the ultimate cause of their current woes, and could not be sustained. Its growth-for-the-sake-of-growth production model was doomed to fail on a finite planet. It was also, conveniently, something that her generation was keenly aware of compared to their geriatric "leadership".

"The latest IPCC report was making the rounds recently. Much of the data went over my head, but I tried to read through the summaries. Have you all been able to give it a look?"

[Gundham]

Juanita blinked a few times. She had absolutely no idea what an IPCC report was, or what its data might say. It sounded governmenty. Juanita had never really had a keen grasp of politics; during the pandemic she'd occasionally been bored enough to read the newspaper, and most of the political stuff tended to get blurry and unintelligible a few sentences in, at which point she invariably flipped to the comics section. After a moment or two, she pieced together that the last two letters probably stood for Climate Change.

"I haven't really been following as closely as I should," she admitted. "Seems like everybody's talking about it, though, huh?"

Truth be told, Juanita didn't know anything about climate change. In fact, she wasn't sure what the difference between climate change and global warming was, or whether there even was a difference. But, in her experience, most people had two reactions to the climate - to be angry about it, or to be so not angry about it that they got angry about people who were angry about it. She assumed that Natasha was in the former camp, but she'd wait for the other girl to continue before she committed herself one way or another, just to be safe.

Besides, when it came down to it, Juanita was much less concerned about the impending global crisis than by a more immediate problem: the stakes of the game were being raised, and there was a distressing amount of empty space in her pocket. The quarters she had were enough to buy maybe one-and-a-half slices of pizza at the arcade's grossly overpriced rate. Were they expecting her to join in the betting? Would it be weird if she didn't? What if she did bet, and then had to awkwardly admit that she couldn't afford to pony up? Her ears faintly reddened at the thought. How embarrassing would that be?

One the other hand - were she and Chester even supposed to get in on this? Or was this just a Natasha-and-Poppy sort of thing? The two of them seemed to be flirting, and Juanita wasn't sure what kind of message it would send if she seemed like she was interested in pizza - or whatever else pizza might signify in this context. She decided to quietly bowl a few more shots, while shooting some side-eye towards Chester to see how he'd respond to all this. A measly ten-point shot betrayed just how out of her depth she was feeling at the moment.

[Ryuki]

Seems Poppy and Natasha were making a little side wager. Winner buys pizza. And it seems Natasha was going to win that wager, as she shot up to 210 points. Chester wasn't sure if he should get in on this deal, but for now, he just needed to focus on his game.

Chester rolled his next ball and landed another 40 points. That was four of his ten balls used. As he grabbed his next ball, Natasha brought up the global climate and the latest IPCC report.

"Yeah, climate change is doing some serious damage," Chester said, "My biggest complaint is that next to no one in government is taking the necessary steps to do anything about it."

Chester might have just let a bit of his personal political views slip out, but that was how he honestly felt. To him, both parties are bought out by the fossil fuel industry and big oil tycoons. It truly felt to him like the planet was doomed with corporate interests taking priority over preserving life.

"I just wish we had more capable leadership," he continued, "People who aren't easily swayed by dirty money."

Chester rolled his next ball, where it landed in the 50 point pocket. Current points: 190. Five balls to go.

[Pippi]

'Asdhjbsjgvsys.'

Is approximately what Poppy would have said, if her brain hadn’t just short circuited, and her mouth hadn’t completely shut down. She stood there, frozen to the spot and stock still, like a dummy (in every sense of the word), skee ball stuck in her hands like a mere afterthought. If she had been blushing a bunch before, it was nothing in comparison to just how bright, fire engine, double decker bus, postbox, Liverpool F.C. home kit, robin breast red her face was right now.

Because like??? Holy crap? Holy shit? Holy fuck, and well, holy a lot of things, you got the gist. She knew she could be a little bit oblivious to romantic tells at the best of times, but there was absolutely no mistaking what this was. This wasn’t just a friendly remark that she was taking for way more than that, no, this was 100% downright flirting coming from Natasha. Poppy hadn’t actually realised that she was into girls, so that was a pleasant surprise, and she guessed with her ever-so-subtle political leaning, it’d be exceptionally shitty for her to take an issue with your friendly neighbourhood trans girl.

So all in all, man. Wow. If that wasn’t incentive enough for her to play her little heart out, then she didn’t know what was.

Poppy shook her head, bringing herself back to reality, cheeks still tinged a lovely rosy red, the freckles across the bridge of her nose even more prominent. Right. Where was she? About three throws behind, at this point, she reckoned. And the conversation had moved onto the… IPCC report. Of course! Obviously! Was this the next step in Natasha’s flirtations? Poppy had thought it’d be something more along the lines of ‘Baby, you can seize my means of production any time’, and, wow, she was stopping that train of thought right at that station for the moment!

“I, um!” Poppy started, and jeez, her voice was like, two octaves higher than usual right now; she wouldn’t have minded if it stayed that way, to be totally honest. And, also to be honest, she hadn’t really absorbed as much of the report as she knew she really ought to have, and she was kinda just speaking on the fly. Juanita had given a very, as her parents would put it, diplomatic answer, which kinda suggested that they were both in the same boat, but Chester seemed to be fully on board with the sorta stance Natasha held. Maybe it’d be best to find a nice middle ground between the two?

“Yeah, um, I had a look at it. Briefly. That kinda thing stresses me out real badly, y’know? Like, my mum really drilled into how important stuff like recycling and reusing stuff is, saving water, turning off lights, all that sorta stuff, and then you get news like this and find out that some dipshit with an oil company has undone all of that hard work a gazillion times over, and it just kinda makes me wanna… lie down and stare at the ceiling for a while. Y’know?”

Poppy huffed a little, before looking back down her lane and sending her ball rolling along it. It bounced, it leapt, it sunk into the 50 point pocket. Better. Way, waaaaay better than her previous attempts, that was for sure. It wasn’t the 100 points she’d initially set as her goal, but she had a brand new, much more important objective now.

[VoltTurtle]

"Yes, it can be quite overwhelming to think about, Poppy," Natasha replied, darkly.

There was no other way to cut it, the whole situation was beyond grim. Evil, child-murdering billionaires were steering them all towards Armageddon with a shit-eating grin. Their peons in the government condoned and were complicit in their crimes against humanity, all to get their own slice of the pie. She wept for every person they had victimized. When the revolution came, she would make sure that they paid for every single drop of blood.

Now was not the time to fantasize about the coming revolution, though. She had piqued everyone's interest, so now she should nudge the conversation in the right direction. They would become more sympathetic to her stance once they understood. That much she was certain of.

"Our biosphere is being ravaged from the inside out by pollution," she continued, "new species are going extinct every single day, and thousands of people are already dying every year from the consequences."

She glanced back to the skee-ball machine, and it occurred to her to take another shot. She still had a game to win after all, and what better way to show off her verbal acuity than by demonstrating her physical prowess as well?

"And the worst part is that over 70% of the blame rests on the shoulders of just one hundred corporations."

Not to mention the United States by itself having more total emissions than everyone else combined. They didn't need to know about that yet, not unless she succeeded in swaying them to her cause.

Her hand curled around one of the skee-balls, her arms rearing back and gearing up for another shot.

"That's what happens when you have a global economy that puts profits over people, and when you allow your society to subscribe to the ideology of the cancer cell, growing without regard for the organism that hosts it."

Her whole body tensed. She exhaled, and let it loose. The ball skidded, bounced, and cleanly landed in the 100-point pocket. Good, she was finally warmed up.

"A better future is possible, but not if everything stays the way they are. Only radical change will save us from destruction."

[Gundham]

Juanita was surprised to find herself becoming more intrigued by the conversation as Natasha went on. Part of this was due to Natasha's personal gravitas - the girl's passion was evident, and it was hard not to be drawn in by the sheer force of her conviction. But what Juanita found more intriguing was that her words sounded curiously familiar.

"It's interesting that you say that," Juanita said. "The way you talk about the world... it's pretty similar to the way that people at my church talk sometimes. There are Bible verses about how money is worthless to God and everybody in the church shared according to their needs, and about how as people we're supposed to take care of the Earth and keep it in balance. There's even a story where Jesus even whipped some moneylenders in the temple for trying to profit off of people's suffering... I guess we both sorta feel like the world needs saving, and that people need to change and be more caring for one another, but, um... I guess, we see it in different ways. I just... I dunno. I think it's interesting, you know? That we have that stuff in common..."

Her voice petered out a bit, and she took a breath before lapsing into awkward silence, wondering just how monumentally lame she'd seemed just then. Juanita had never felt confident speaking up about her faith, even at Worship and Prayers club. That went double ever since the day she'd worn her club hoodie with the initials emblazoned across the chest to school, and discovered that W.A.P. meant something completely different to everybody else nowadays. She'd spent the whole day red-faced with embarrassment, and had to find excuses to keep her arms crossed in front of her as much as possible, so that people would stop quoting those awful lyrics at her.

Enough! Juanita mentally cuffed herself upside the head. Don't get distracted! You've still got a game to play!

Time to get Skee-balling. She hefted her sixth ball, and stared down the lane. Half of her shots were gone, and she was only up to a measly 210 points. She bowled for the fifty, hoping to boost her score a bit. The shot was good, sinking perfectly through the hole. She went for a follow-up; this one clipped the edge of the tube, and the ball rattled fiercely before being slurped down. She might have been lame, but at least she was... accurate. That had to count for something, right?

[Ryuki]

Chester refocused his attention to the skee-ball game. He could talk about how politicians and corporations were destroying the planet for hours, but he didn’t want to let that distract him from the fun game they had going. He picked up his next ball and targeted the 100 point bracket. Time to get serious.

Swaying his arm back and forward, rolling the ball up the ramp. It launched and danced around the ring before falling in, boosting his score up from 190 to 290! Chester gasped as his jaw dropped. He didn’t think he would make that.

Chester picked up his next ball and targeted the same bracket. Rolling the next ball up the ramp, it launched, but it bounced off the ring and tumbled down toward the 20 point bracket. Chester sighed in disappointment. Figures. You can’t make lightning strike twice.

He turned to Juanita. She had been sharing a story about how Jesus had whipped some guys for profiting off of people’s suffering.

“Well, I can name a few people that need a good whipping,” Chester said, “Like those evangelical con artists.”

[Pippi]

Jeez. This had all gotten kinda heavy really fast, hadn’t it?

Poppy listened, rather than talked, devoting the majority of her energy to the noble art of skee-ballin’. Part of it was that Natasha had, well, pretty much covered everything there was to say about the matter, nice and succinctly. Girl had enough energy and enthusiasm when it came to talking politics to match all the rest of them combined. And that nicely lead into the other reason why Poppy chose to stay silent for the time being; the ever-present worry that, if she did say anything, then she’d just cock it all up or say something totally wrong or inaccurate.

Cause, like, the bottom line was that she fundamentally agreed with everything Natasha was saying. Not that she would have ever said the things the other girl was saying while using those exact words; regardless of how much they deserved it, Poppy’s approach had always been with the gentle hand rather than the stinging whip. You could be as positive as you liked, and Poppy had always stood tall and proud on Mt. Optimism with the very best of the world’s rays of sunshine, but you couldn’t shy away from the fact that some things in the world were irrefutably, totally fucked up beyond measure.

She looked down at the ball in her hands for a moment, the gnawing feeling in her chest slowly growing, the one that consumed her from the inside and left her feeling nothing but hollow, a barely-walking shell. ‘An economy that put profits over people’, that really did hit the whole fucking nail on the entire absolute head. They would tread over all people everywhere they could, all while attempting to fly the flag of allyship. ‘We’re doing our part to promote recycling and sustainable living!’, while building yet another factory to pump fossil fuels into the air. ‘We’re changing our logo to a rainbow version for pride month!’, while kicking out every LGBT person who made the smallest possible complaint. ‘We’re inclusive of all genders here!,’ while donating money to politicians who pushed as many anti-trans laws as they could get their grubby little hands on.

Poppy wondered whether anyone would mind if she just kinda lay down in the middle of the floor right now, sprawled across the carpet. Odds were that weirder stuff had gone down here before, after all.

It was really easy just to lose all heart and give up. It was easy to lock yourself into the mindset that everything was hopeless and that there was no way of bucking the status quo. But, man, for as angry as she was at the current political situation, for as much righteous fury she held for the current state of the environment, Natasha didn’t sound like she was anywhere close to quitting. Hell, far from it, it sounded like all the shit in the world that they all had to deal with was only fuelling her more and more to try and cut it all out. No wonder both Juanita and Chester seemed to be hanging on her every word; her passion and drive to make a change was damn well audible in every single thing she said.

Man, Poppy could practically feel the stars in her eyes as she, too, listened intently. She really could be a total disaster sometimes, huh?

“You can say that again,” she muttered towards Chester. “The sorta shit they do is just… fucking awful. Preying on the most vulnerable people who need their help the most…”

She felt a white hot flash of anger pulse briefly through her head, just as she was about to take her next throw, and the ball ended up taking a wild, wide arc, missing every single hole entirely.

“Aw, piss…”

Poppy sighed and slumped her shoulders. Well, so much for her goal of winning this whole thing; she’d been on the backfoot from the start, but it would’ve been nice to have actually put up a fight, rather than to have pulled a Team Dignitas and thrown at the critical moment. Thrown as in, y’know, thrown the game, as in, ‘snatched defeat from the jaws of victory’, not… not ‘thrown’ as in… ‘thrown the ball’, because that was, uh… the whole… point of…

Anyway! Chances of her being able to share a pizza with Natasha anytime in the near future were quickly dwindling from ‘slim’ to ‘nil’. She watched as the other girl took aim, skee ball in hand, ready to roll, and as she did, a kernel of an idea grew in her mind, quickly taking shape and form into something more concrete. It wouldn’t even be stretching the truth, really, if she said what was currently blossoming in her head, sooo… why not just go for it?

“So, like… what exactly can I do? To help out, I mean. Cause I’d much rather actually do something than the whole “take a nap and hope it all blows over” lark.”

[VoltTurtle]

Natasha was pleased. A mirthful smile crept onto her face as the others responded to her in turn. Everyone was receptive, her plan had worked. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. The seeds of revolution had to be planted in the hearts of the people, before it could blossom. She was doing her part, however small.

"Ha! One could make the argument that Jesus was the first socialist," Natasha quipped, in reply to Juanita.

Poppy's question made her pause, but did nothing to shake her confidence. What was to be done was the hardest question that anyone could ask. It was a question that had many answers over the years. There was no one-size-fits-all answer that she could reply with. Nonetheless, it was essential that Natasha replied. She could not afford to make herself look weak.

"You're right that we cannot sit by and do nothing, Poppy," she began, her voice swelling with confidence, "but in the long term, only revolution will bring the change we need."

She rolled her shoulders, cleared her head. She had gone over this in her head so many times on her own, and out loud with her Vanguard. She could do it again, for them.

"Whatever form it takes, it won't be pretty, but the ruling class will never surrender their power willingly. Peer into the prism of the past, and you will see that they have always clung to it like addicts, even as it brought everyone around them to ruin."

Her confidence built. She stood tall, like a priest giving a sermon.

"Every lasting victory has come at the cost of blood, be it the blood of the oppressors or the oppressed. Even the so-called peaceful movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. shed their own blood to make their victory possible, and they still acted in conjunction with the more militant movement led by Malcolm X."

She let out a sigh.

"Unfortunately, we cannot make that revolution happen by ourselves. The people must collectively come to the conclusion that it is necessary, and that will only happen when the contradictions of our current system drive it to the brink. We have seen this happen time and again with every civilization to ever rise and fall, and it will happen here as well, eventually."

Her smile grew wider. This was the part she understood, the practice to her preaching.

"So what we need to do until then is help wherever we can. We must educate those who will listen, fight back against oppression wherever it springs up, and assist those who need it the most. That way, when the time is right and the system must finally be toppled, they will know who their allies are. The Black Panthers understood this, and so do I, that's why my Vanguard has been trying to follow in their footsteps."

She picked up one of the skee-balls as her free hand absentmindedly slipped into her pocket, and pulled out her phone. She might as well land another 100 point shot, as punctuation to her speech.

"It is not an easy path to walk, but it is one I know well, if you're interested in learning and doing more, you could attend one of our meetings later-"

She abruptly stopped speaking as her eyes passed over the time displayed on her phone. It was getting close to when she needed to meet up with Abhishek to discuss the upcoming student council presidential race. Had she really spent that much time in the arcade?

Natasha sighed as she put her phone back in her pocket, before pulling out her pen and notepad and scribbling her phone number onto it.

"Unfortunately, I am needed elsewhere at the moment, so I cannot finish this game," she said, tearing off a page and handing it to Poppy. "Give me a call if you want to talk more, and feel free to share the number with the others. Maybe we can even split that pizza later."

((Then, with a wink and a wave, Natasha hurried out of the arcade and off into Salem proper.))

[Gundham]

Juanita had been percolating on a response to Chester, but before she’d said anything Natasha had gone into a filibuster speech for the ages, culminating in a theatrical exit. Juanita never really expected to hear the phrase “I am needed elsewhere” spoken unironically, but there it was. She gawped for a half second as the other girl waved and vanished into the constellation of blinking arcade lights.

She looked bewilderedly at Chester and Poppy, wondering if they were as confused by the whole scene as she was.

Truth be told, a lot of Natasha’s speech gone over Juanita’s head. She understood the general concept of revolution, but whenever she watched movies like The Matrix or V for Vendetta, it always seemed that the heroes got as far as completely destroying the horrible oppressive structures that governed their lives, and then the credits rolled before anybody in the cheering throngs got as far as asking the most inconvenient question: “What now?”

According to Juanita’s very limited comprehension of third-world countries where revolutions were more of a thing, the answer to that question was usually, “It’ll play out exactly the same, but with different actors in the roles.” Made sense why filmmakers cut to the credits rather than show that kind of thing. So, no, Juanita didn’t think it was likely that she’d become a communist any time soon. It seemed like a lot of pointless effort.

And speaking of wasted efforts… with Natasha suddenly dropping out of the game, Juanita mildly regretted overthinking the game as hard as she had. She resolved to just throw the rest of her balls and let whatever happened happen. Besides, Natasha had given Poppy her phone number, so she might as well give Poppy “Hey, guess who won the Skee-ball game after you left?” as a conversation starter.

She picked up her next ball to indicate that the game was going to continue on, Natasha or no Natasha. She bowled a slightly off-kilter shot at the hundred, which became a disappointing ten. As she reached for the next one, she remembered what she’d been going to say to Chester. It was probably a bit late to say it now, but she felt like she ought to say it anyway, just for her own peace of mind.

“I don’t like the evangelicals either,” she said, looking in Chester’s direction but not right at him. Eye contact seemed a little too confrontational for what she wanted to say. “Those private-jet preacher types really rub me the wrong way. So many people lost houses during the pandemic, or got stuck with medical bills they couldn’t pay. And I didn’t see any of those guys selling their planes or their Rolexes. It really bugs me that guys like that give religion such a bad name, you know?”

[Ryuki]

As Juanita responded to Chester's quip about evangelicals, and Natasha made her exit, Chester launched another ball up the ramp. It landed in the 40 point ring, just missing the 50 point ring in the center, bring his points up from 290 to 330. Three balls to go.

Natasha brought up some good points. The rich and powerful would not give up their reign easily, and there would be some pushback, even bloodshed, if any true change were to occur. The civil rights movement was still being fought to this day. They had come so far, yet there was still so much to do.

"If there is anything the pandemic has taught us," Chester said as he picked up his next ball, "it's how flawed our country truly is. People were suffering, and still are, yet those jerks up in DC barely did anything to help."

He swayed his arm back and rolled his ball up the ramp once more. It landed on the rim of the 50 point ring, teetered a bit, and fell backwards, bringing Chester's score up to 380. Two balls left. Better make them count.

"I wanna keep fighting the good fight," Chester added, "For my brother's sake, my parent's sake, and for those who paved the way for change."

[Pippi]

Well, she most certainly had an answer to her previous question now; yes. Yes, she was gonna blush all the way up and turn beet red at the very first wink and compliment from anyone cute and attractive. As if that had ever been in any kind of doubt.

Okay, first, to get the nitty-gritty out of the way; yes, Natasha’s little speech had been very dramatic and really intense, probably not something entirely appropriate for a family friendly arcade. Poppy was pretty sure she’d seen a couple of folks who’d been walking towards them do an abrupt 180° turn as soon as Natasha had mentioned blood being spilled. Again, while she didn’t disagree at all with the outline of what the other girl had been saying, her attitude towards conflict and confrontation had always been to avoid it entirely, or to get really really mad for a hot second before feeling awful about it immediately afterwards.

But, man, there had been something completely captivating about the speech, an assured confidence in Natasha’s voice that came about either via repeated rehearsals or through having total assurance in your own beliefs. Maybe it was just the burgeoning feeling of attraction, maybe not. But conflict in regards to a disagreement with friends was different to conflict relating to her own life, and her own livelihood. At some point, she had to stop sitting on her hands. One day, there might not be a time when people stood up for her.

… Okay, well, for the here and now, however, that blossom of attraction was definitely the main factor that had kept Poppy on the edge of her seat. Her heart was thudding away at her chest and her cheeks burned bright scarlet, as she stood facing the exit to the arcade, skee-ball held in one hand, little scrap of paper clutched tightly in the other, as if it would disintegrate and disappear if she let go. Slowly, her head lowered and her eyes scanned the number scrawled onto the page over and over, making sure it wasn’t just some elaborate trick of the light, or that Natasha hadn’t written ‘1800BONER-FART’ instead of her actual mobile number.

Oh man. Okay. Okay, she absolutely couldn’t pussy out of this and hide this deep into her pocket to get obliterated by the washing machine, or leave it on her desk and promise herself that she’d call Natasha tomorrow, day after day. She was 100% totally and earnestly gonna make that phone call! Even if she had to hype herself up for a full fifteen minutes beforehand!

… Later. She’d do that later. Because she was still in the middle of a skee-ball game, dummy, and it’d be more than a little rude to just up and abandon Chester and Juanita because she was being a hopeless bisexual mess. Poppy span around a little too fast to be natural, hastily folding the paper up and shoving it into her hoody pocket, face still a bright red beacon. She’d rejoined the other two at the tail end of their conversation; too late to have any idea of what they’d been saying but not late enough to have avoided being a part of it. Oops.

“Hey, uh, sorry, what were you guys saying just now? I was kinda focused on, uh…”

Poppy made a vague gesture towards the skee-ball slopes with her hand still clutching the ball, punctuating a point that had almost instantly sputtered out and run out of steam. Her free hand tangled a lock of curly hair around her index finger as, almost impossibly, her blush grew even brighter, freckles across her nose sticking out like stars.

“Okay, yeah, I was distracted by… stuff. Sorry.”

[Gundham]

Juanita blinked for a second, then smiled politely at Poppy. "It's all good!" Everybody in the room knew exactly who "stuff" was, and Juanita was half-tempted to teasingly say so, but it seemed like a bad idea when Poppy was turning redder than the Soviet Union.

In a weird way, Juanita admired Poppy and Natasha for having the guts to flirt openly like that. Juanita couldn't even conjure a mental image of herself giving her phone number to a guy with that much confidence - or receiving one with anything more than an awkward and self-conscious "Thanks." It was kinda cute that Poppy was all flustered by it, too. Juanita shot her encouraging thumbs-up and a little nod, by way of encouragement. Go get her, Poppy!

She turned her attention back to Skee-ball. The game was almost over, and it was time to focus, darn it. Juanita happened to glance over at Chester's scoreboard. Three hundred and eighty points? She only had three hundred and twenty, and she only had two balls left! She'd gotten way too overconfident, and allowed herself to be distracted by religion, lesbians and communism. Rookie mistake, Juanita.

She pursed her lips, and summoned all of her focus. Two balls left. She could do this. She sighted the hundred-point hole, intent on a strong finish to the game. A slightly off-kilter release made her heart skip a beat, but her aim was true, and the ball went in. Despite her good fortune, lightning didn't strike twice. She flubbed the last one and picked up a measly twenty points for her troubles. Final score: 440. Not bad, but nowhere near her usual best.

Still, she'd had fun and gotten to meet some interesting people, and that was a good enough reward, right?

[Ryuki]

Poppy looked redder than a strawberry. Guess Natasha’s speech really had an effect on her. If she liked Natasha, that was fine. People will like what they like.

But now, it was time to get serious. Gotta make these last shots count. Chester aimed for the 100 point pocket again, and rolled the penultimate ball up the ramp. The ball launched, just missing the mark, landing squarely in the 50 point pocket instead.

Current score: 430 points.

Juanita had finished up her game. Her final scare was 440. Their scores were so close! Chester just had to get at least 20 points to win.

Chester grabbed his final ball. He aimed once more at the board. He didn’t need to try so hard and get 100 points. He just needed to get enough to edge out Juanita. He aimed at the 20 point ring, brought his arm back, and released the ball from his hand.

It rolled up the ramp, and launched!

The ball teetered a bit on the 20 point ring, then it dropped.

Final score: 440 points.

Chester threw his eyebrows up in surprise. He looked over at Juanita.

“Guess we’re evenly matched,” he said, awkwardly smiling through his mask as he put his hands behind his neck.

[Pippi]

Poppy… did not quite make it to the four hundred points mark.

Her final ball left her hand, and like a salmon swimming upstream, rolled gracefully towards the ramp, making its final leap up the last few rapids. Then, like a salmon being smacked away and into a rock by a huge and hungry bear, it dropped, falling in an almost perfectly vertical line down into the 10 point pocket.

She puffed out her left cheek in a pout, folding her arms as she waited for her final score to register. 310 points. Although she totally should have had, like, 30 or 40 more points than that, her last ball had been totally rigged. She had definitely thrown better than the 10 points suggested, there was probably a magnet in the final ball and the hole it zipped into. Or some kind of invisible skee-ball gremlin that had tried to sabotage her right at the last play.

… Not that it would have made any difference to the final standings even if she had sunk the 100 pointer right at the death. At least she had the legitimate, genuine excuse that a certain attractive individual had used her wiles and charm to totally throw her off of her game. She’d do way better next time, probably!

“Eesh.” Poppy muttered, glancing one final time at her score before turning to face the other two. “Yikes, sorry I didn’t put up more of a fight! I was, uh… well, you both know why I wasn’t at the top of my game.”

A fresh coat of rosy red paint was applied to Poppy’s cheeks, and she busied herself by grabbing her root beer and taking a long, long sip from it.

“Anyway, good job guys!” she said, once she’d dealt with her thirst. “So, like, how do you wanna settle this thing? Do you wanna flip a coin or something, or do you both wanna get a victory ring? Ooh, or maybe we could just get one and cut it in half!”

The last suggestion was not entirely made in seriousness, but it was very silly and the mental image made Poppy giggle, so it was the one she was desperately hoping they picked.