Week 1: Aria's Date, Part 2

Having successfully beat a hasty retreat, Aífe let go of Aria’s wrist, allowing the blue-skinned girl to take the lead, lightly rubbing the skin where she’d been grabbed.

“Sorry if I was a bit rough.” Aífe apologized. “I kinda panicked a bit back there.”

“It’s cool.” Aria shrugged. “I probably wouldn’t like it if the others pried into my business like that, either. That said, you are gonna have to get used to it at some point—not like any of those girls are going to suddenly be less curious. They are competing to get in your pants, after all.” While Aria’s tone wasn’t meant to be judgmental, Aífe still flinched a bit, nervously scratching her head.

“Yeah, that definitely makes figuring out the group dynamic pretty awkward.” Aífe followed Aria through the double doors, only to be taken aback by a sudden onslaught of light and sound. Regaining her composure, she looked around to find that they were in a massive arcade. “What the fuck doesn’t this this place have?!” She raised her voice over the sounds of the machines.

“I know, right?!” Aria shouted with a grin. Aífe was fairly certain that that was the first genuine smile she’d seen from the alien so far. “Not gonna lie, I’ve probably spent about 20 hours in here across the past few days!”

“They even have a prize counter?!” Aífe glanced at the counter to the side of the entrance.

“Yeah!” Aria was starting to think that this might have been a mistake—they couldn’t exactly spend the whole day shouting. “I haven’t gotten anything, though! You can play on the machines normally all you want, but you have to spend BP if you want to earn tickets while playing!”

“Do you know what prizes they have?!” Aífe’s voice was already starting to tire, when the noise suddenly, and fortunately, died down.

“I think that should be better.” Sera spoke from behind them. “While funny at first, I doubt our viewers want a whole episode of you both barely being able to hear each other.”

“Thanks.” Aífe said as she rubbed her throat. Sera produced a bottle of water that she gladly accepted. “So, what kind of prizes do you have?”

“We have all the normal assortment—sex toys, dakimakura, lewd anime figures, et cetera.” Before either dategoer could object to those items being referred to as the normal assortment of arcade prizes, Sera continued. “You can get those just by playing for a bit. The real prizes, however, are for anyone who places high enough on the leaderboards—for every game that you place in the top 3 on, you get a figure of any one of our season’s cast—harem or staff! You can also purchase them with tickets from the machines, but they’re quite expensive.”

“Do you seriously have a shelf full of mini mes with their tits hanging out?”Aria scowled. If her likeness was going to be used as merch, she at least wanted a say in how it was used, not to mention a cut of the profit.

“Not currently.” Sera assured her. “They come clothed, but the clothes are removable. Now, even more special of a prize is what you get once you’ve managed to take the top spot on any of our games—one free meta TF!”

“Like the upgrades and path stuff?!” Aífe’s eyes widened. “Isn’t that a bit too valuable to put up as a random arcade prize? Those were like 1500 BP for the cheapest option. How much does it even cost to play for prizes?”

“500 BP buys a week-long pass. Or you can pay 100 for a day pass.” Sera answered.

“Yeah, but do either of us really need that right now?” Aria shrugged, glancing at Aífe. “Your TF was pure upside, and I can’t think of any way an upgrade would help me that much—I mean, it’s not like they’d let the upgrade make these any smaller.” She gestured to her enlarged bust. “It’d probably be more worth it to save our BP for later.”

“I do appreciate savviness in my contestants.” Sera smiled. “You are correct that we wouldn’t shrink your breasts—that wouldn’t be much of an upgrade now, would it? That said, it is possible that an upgrade could help in other ways, and do recall that I said a ‘free meta TF’—it doesn’t have to be an upgrade at all. You could, for example, remove a TF option from your future polls.”

That one caught Aria’s attention. On the list of concerns weighing on her mind, the next TF vote ranked fairly high. Unlike some others, her poll last time didn’t contain a “good” option, at least, in her opinion. She’d counted herself lucky that the least objectionable choice won. She still wasn’t out of the weeds, however, as the option that she wanted least got second, rolling over to the next one. If she’d known that earlier, she probably would’ve jumped at the chance.

“Alright, alright.” Aria acquiesced. “Give me the day pass, then. It’s too late in the week for the other one to be worth it.”

-100 BP (1600 Remaining)

“Certainly.” Sera snapped her fingers and Aria’s watch lit up, showing that she had the privilege to play for prizes for the next 24 hours. “If that’s all you need, then I’ll be off. Good luck on getting your prize, Miss Aria—you’ll need it.~” Her voice trailed off as she walked away, leaving the arcade.

Aífe and Aria both frowned, worrying about those ominous parting words. It wasn’t until they went to one of the machines that they understood what she’d meant. Until someone had purchased a pass, none of the machines displayed their high scores, but now almost all of them showed leaderboards dominated by the same three letters—“SAL.” What’s more, many of those featured absurdly high top scores, only one or two steps below professionals in those games.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Aria lamented, though part of her was at least grateful that she’d only wasted 100 BP instead of the 500 for the weekly pass. “Who the hell is this ‘SAL’ chick?!” After thinking on it for a moment, Aífe suddenly flashed back to one of her previous dates this week.

“Wait, I think I remember Sera mentioning someone named ‘Sally.’” The redhead recalled. “One of her Host friends. I think she said that Sally runs a gamer season. It makes sense that she’d be good at them.”

“Yeah, sure, but these scores are ridiculous!” Aria complained. “How much time do you even have to spend to get this good? Shit, even I had better things to do than grind away at arcade games all day!”

“Careful, now.” Aífe jokingly cautioned. “If she likes games enough to make them her whole schtick, do you really want to risk pissing off someone with magic powers and enough free time to get this good at so many games?” She patted the alien on the back. “Come on—you’ve spent the money, so you might as well try them out. Who knows? Maybe her scores are that high because the points scale differently on these cabinets.”

Resolving herself to at least give them a shot, Aria sighed and walked to a House of the Dead style lightgun shooter for her first game. Picking up the gun, she very quickly discovered that, no, the points did not scale differently, only earning a fraction of Sally’s points on her first few attempts. Giving up on that one, she tried several other games—Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter II—she could occasionally get as high as 5th or 6th place, but she still wasn’t close to getting the top spot she was aiming for.

“Aaagh! This is impossible!” Aria yelled as she failed, yet again. “Seriously, are there any of these that she isn’t great at?!”

“Y’know…” Aífe said through the mountain of tickets she had in her arms and draped around her head and shoulders, “maybe we’re going about this the wrong way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, so far, all you’ve tried is video games.” Aífe explained. “But those aren’t the only type of arcade game there is. Maybe you should try one of the analog games, like hoops, or skeeball, or one of those coin pusher things.”

“Those don’t have scoreboards, usually.” Aria started to refuse before shrugging and going along with it. “Might as well check, I guess.”

As luck would have it, Sera had installed scoreboards on nearly every game in the arcade, including the basketball hoop and skeeball machine. Even more fortunately, Sally’s highest score on skeeball was only 68—not a terrible score, but one that was more than within reach with a few tries.

“This machine is unusual.” Aria commented offhandedly.

“How so?” Aífe cocked an eyebrow. These games all seemed completely normal to her—they hadn’t even been pornographic knockoffs like she’d been expecting, so hearing that a seemingly average skeeball machine was unusual piqued her interest.

“It’s the scores.” Aria elaborated. “Skeeball normally has increments of 10, from 0 to 50 for the normal rings with an optional two extra holes in the corners worth 100 points. Of course, some machines mess with it by making it units of hundreds or thousands, instead of tens, but the general scale is still the same.” Looking at the machine, it had holes worth 1, 5, 10, 20, and 30 points with two extra worth 50.

“This seems like our best shot.” Aífe encouraged her date. “So, what are you waiting for? Come on, skee those balls!”

With a chuckle and a roll of her eyes, Aria started up the machine. 9 balls rolled into the tray to her right. Shaking herself loose, she grabbed the first one and gave it a roll… promptly propelling it into the lowermost ring for 1 point. Adjusting slightly, she rolled again, managing to get 5. The roll after that scored 10 points, putting her at 16. She tried to lock in, but her next two only scored 1 each, but she was able to pull it together and land the next ball in the 30 point hole. Only two left, and she needed to make them count, but her next one slipped, landing in 1. This was it, the final ball. They watched with bated breath as it roll up the ramp… landing in the center hole for 20 points! Her final score was 69 points—she’d finally beaten Sally!

“Nice!” They shouted in unison, high-fiving and sending tickets scattering.

While the two of them were celebrating, Cecilia was pretending to look at Fuyumi’s wares as she snuck glances at Erica approaching the TF shop. She hoped the bunny would be able to do her job properly—keeping Sera distracted long enough for her to execute her plan.

Earlier that morning

“No, I’m not doing it!” Erica steadfastly refused as Cecilia gave her an irritated glare. They were currently in the Rose Suite, discussing the task that the redhead needed help with.

“Come on, it’s simple.” Cecilia argued. “All you have to do is keep asking her questions to occupy her attention, while I go check her office to see if I can find any valuable information. You know, like how to get out of this place, or, at the very least, what the challenge is going to be.”

“I think it’s you that’s simple if you think that’s actually going to work!” Erica rebutted. “There’s no way she’d just leave that shit lying around, not to mention that she probably booby-trapped her office to make sure we couldn’t snoop around.”

“Well, I’ve checked everywhere else, so this is the only option left.” Cecilia pressed.

“Or you could—I don’t know—try playing the game instead of coming up with dumb schemes.” Erica refused to budge. “Besides, why would I help you in the first place? In case you’ve forgotten, we don’t fucking like each other.”

“You’ll help me because if you don’t, I’ll go find Aoba and get her to help me.” Cecilia played her trump card. She knew that Erica had quickly grown attached to the shy oni, and wouldn’t want her getting dragged into this. “And, before you argue, do you really think I wouldn’t be able to browbeat her into helping me?”

“You’re a dirty bitch, you know that?” Erica growled, seething at her roommate.

“Yeah, I’m not gonna hear it when we’re dealing with stakes this high.” Cecilia brushed off the insult. “If it helps me avoid getting turned into some brainless sex doll, I’m going to do what I have to.”

“Fine.” Erica tersely agreed. “Just don’t blame me when your plan goes tits up.”

Current time

While she couldn’t quite hear it, Cecilia was able to see Erica call for Sera’s assistance from her vantage point in the clothing store. Once the Host seemed fully occupied by whatever questions Erica was able to improvise, Cecilia slipped out of the front, careful to avoid ringing the bell on the door. She quickly, but quietly, made her way back to the lobby, spotting the door by the empty front desk that led to the manager’s office. Checking to make sure the coast was clear, she ducked into the office, closing the door behind her.

Cecilia’s eyes widened in surprise. Stretched out before her were rolling fields of grass under a bright blue sky. Roughly 20 feet away from her was a small white table with two chairs, situated under an ornate patio umbrella. Several feet beyond that was a mahogany door labeled “Employees Only.”

“What the hell?” Cecilia proceeded with caution. “Why does her office look like the old Windows desktop?” Snapping back to attention, she dashed over to the other door, opening it to find a small, but well-furnished, private office. The desk was full of papers, and there was a small green couch to rest on on the other side of the room. As she walked by said couch, Cecilia noticed a bundle of fabric draped over one of the armrests. “‘I was in the Circle 69 of ‘25, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt’? Ugh, did not need to know that much about what she does in her free time.”

Throwing the shirt back onto the couch, she quickly walked over to the desk. Glancing at the stacks of paper, she wasn’t seeing anything of note, only financial reports, invoices, memos, and other assorted business documents. Her eyes scanned the other items on the desk, catching on a framed photo of Sera next to a tall, dashing, blonde woman. They stood arm in arm, both wearing warm smiles. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was a photo of a couple, and Cecilia briefly remembered Sera mentioning that she had a wife. The next thing that caught her eye was a second photo next to it. This one, however, was placed face-down. Cecilia, curious about what it might show, was suddenly caught off guard by a voice behind her.

“You really are quite stupid.” The familiar, dour tone of Umbra’s voice rang in Cecilia’s ears. Before she could turn to face her, she felt herself falling into a pool of inky, black shadow.