First Reply Shoot ‘Em Up

[Kayla Ordo-Shan]

Kayla braced her boot against the turret's footrest, knuckles bone-white around the trigger of her weapons system. The aging Corellian gunship bucked and groaned beneath her, hull plates rattling with every glancing hit.

Through the durasteel canopy, space was chaos: a swarm of Sith fighters darted like angry wasps, each one pouring blistering laser bursts into the ship's flickering shields. Alarm klaxons whined in her headset, red lights danced on her console, hit she ignored them. Red was bad, but being shot at was by far the worst. It could wait.

"Turret three! Hold them off or we're on the scrap pile!" A pilot's voice crackled, raw and frantic. She felt her pulse quicken, her eyes strained as she locked in her next target.

Kayla gritted her teeth. She swung the barrels, tracking a fighter banking hard across her arc. She squeezed the trigger, as turbolasers stitched the void in searing blue lines. The fighter split apart in a satisfying burst of debris.

Two more filled the gap immediately, one peeling high, the other screaming straight at her viewport. She cursed under her breath, fighting the turret's recoil as she tried to pin them both down. The shield flare bathed her face in harsh white flicker; too bright, too thin. The sensor display at her bottom right displayed fifteen more star fighters closing in-too many, not enough time to-

A blast thundered through the ship. Metal shrieked. Her harness snapped open under the sudden jolt, pitching her backward into the cold deck plating. She closed her eyes as a flash washed over her.

A heartbeat later, and everything vanished in a blossom of fire and static white.


Location: Holodive Arcade, Coruscant

Kayla groaned, opening her eyes and removing the visor on her face. This game was harder than she remembered.

The arcade machine above her flashed a crimson ‘GAME OVER’, as a clear ripoff of the ‘Last Starviper’ soundtrack blared through the cheap sound system. Disgruntled, she began to remove the headset, ignoring the sounds of the kids as they babbled some sort of nonsense. She just put her initials in and waited to see her final score.

Kayla sat up, ribs aching more from pride than impact. Around her, a knot of kids gawked at the high score list spinning above her head:

#0024-KOS-15,273,890,431 pts

A freckled boy, no older than ten, leaned closer, eyes wide behind oversized goggles. His voice was giddy with excitement. "You almost cleared the Sith fighter squadron! Nobody gets past wave seventy four!"

Kayla raked a hand through her hair, a crooked grin tugging at her lips. She felt like she could have done better, as she got to her feet, fixing her hair. She felt her hands doing the shaky thing again, and over a damn holo-game.

This was getting ridiculous. She shoved a hand into her pocket, and felt the remove against her thigh. She continued to hide it from the rabble near her.

"Almost, huh? Guess I'll have to come back tomorrow and try again."

She forced herself upright, ignoring the flicker of her heart still convinced she'd died thirty seconds ago. Trying to banish the tremble that was slowly working out of her system.

These sims were getting too realistic for her. Or, maybe she was just getting too old for them.

The starship alarms had faded, but her pulse hadn't slowed one bit. She took in several breaths trying to calm herself, her hands coming together, trying to make the tremble that they made.

It wasn’t real, calm down…

She told herself, and that almost made it feel better.

Almost.

She could hear the children about her as the ran off, a young Twi’lek girl teased one of the boys chanting:

‘A girl beat your score, a girl beat your score!’

She had to smile, shaking her head slowly as she walked away from the machine. She ran a hand along side it, and caught the faintest recollection of when her mother showed her how to cheat the software to get a higher score.

It was a good memory.

Maybe that’s why she was here.

….did you seriously just cheat at a children’s holo game?

She winced, waving her hand to the side. As if it would dismiss the unseen speaker.

Not now, having a moment.

She gave a huff, and with that, felt the disembodied voice of her ancestor take the hint.

Now, what should she play next….


Tags: Open to Anyone

 

[Klar]

​

CORUSCANT​

Holodive Arcade​

It was common knowledge that the punching machine in any given arcade was not only the most rickety, beaten-up piece of junk in the entire place despite being right by the door, but also that it cheated. Aggressively. A duplicitous, miserly machine designed to separate good souls from their hard-earned credits, the siren song of the punching machine was one answered only by fools and those desperate to impress. Klar was not a fool, usually. And she had nobody in the arcade to impress. But she nevertheless found herself squared up against the enticing bag, the mocking scoreboard, the ever-hateful punching machine. It'd already taken her coin. She wouldn't let it have her pride as well.

Bouncing on her toes, the four-armed Coodru-Ji shook out her hands to loosen up. She'd spent too much time playing Alley Brawler ALPHA DX TURBO and while she could acknowledge the need to give her wrists a break... some other girl had been tearing it up on the battlesim Klar ACTUALLY wanted to have a go at. Really impressive stuff, too. Wave seventy four was a solid twenty five waves further than Klar had ever managed to get to, and that'd been on an exceptionally good day. And she liked The Last Starviper enough to read up on and practice it.

She must've been a professional, Klar figured, because she hadn't seemed to be having much fun at all.

Re-tying her hair, the plainclothes Padawan took a deep breath and squared up with the punching machine. It gave a helpful countdown timer. She cracked her knuckles, dropped into a sturdy stance, and sent a whistling haymaker at the bag - the sort of move that twisted her whole body into the blow, that could leave you off-balance in an ACTUAL fight. Klar slammed the bag with every ounce of her strength, sending the bag rattling against the upper case of the machine.

'SCORE - 1519! ANEMIC RANCOR'
'TRY AGAIN??'​

Klar bit back a curse and turned away from the machine as the countdown music attempted to taunt her into wasting more credits. Luckily, Last Starviper was open. At least for the moment. It was crawling with kids eager to emulate Kayla's gameplay in an attempt to outdo each other. Klar wouldn't, couldn't deny their enthusiasm. Besides - why emulate when you could get your info from the source?

As Kayla walked away from the machine, Klar saw her opportunity to approach. She placed herself in Kayla's periphery with a friendly smile and wave, her lower hands stretched behind her back. "Hey! That was pretty amazing." She chirped. "My name's Klar. I've been stuck on fifty for weeks - got any tips? I'll trade you for an iced coffee." She offered eagerly.

 

[Kayla Ordo-Shan]

Kayla was in her own world for perhaps for all of forty seconds. She pondered if she was using her time wisely, if she should even be here, and yet she couldn’t think of anywhere else that might have been more demanding. Them, before she could decide on her next game, the actions of a shorter Coodru-Ji caught her. For a moment, she looked terrified, herself a grown adult, caught playing in an arcade; she would be mocked relentlessly for this!


Though it soon faded as the woman asked for tips. Another moment passed before Kayla played it off, a blush that threatened to crawl across her face was banished back to where it came. She fiddled with her flight jacket, shrugging her shoulders, trying to removing even a hint of her lingering shakes that she had from earlier. Though her right hand refused to yield. She kept it in her pocket, looking the woman in the eyes with her steely grey gaze. She tried to get a read on this woman, but for right now, she seemed pretty casual.

Maybe Kayla could ride with that.

“Kayla, it’s a pleasure and…I mean I can….just one iced coffee though?”

She asked coyly, shifting her posture a tinge. “I mean I got a few tips really, though, shouldn’t ruin it for the space cadets over there.”

She remarked, motioning behind her to the kids clambering at the game she just finished with. She found it a bit hard to believe someone would offer her an iced coffee for some tips on an arcade machine…but then again, stranger things have happened.


Tags: Klar

 

[Klar]

​

CORUSCANT​

Holodive Arcade​

Klar gave the woman a slightly surprised look, head canted at a slight angle - not unlike the canine she'd once been. "Two it is." She agreed after a moment of thought. The blonde grinned and fired off a brief finger-blaster. "But you're on your own for the cookie things. Those are WAY too rich for my budget."

Like most good arcades, there was a place nearby to buy the staples of a normal gamer diet. Fried things, easy drinks - most of which where some variation of energy-based - and snacks. Klar skipped it entirely, breezing past the line on a quest for the nicer and slightly more chic coffee place across the the plaza from the arcane. She was already fishing a membership card with several punches in it out of her wallet as they walked. Sometime in her next two visits, she'd be entitled to a free froyo. Klar already had it marked on her calendar.

"Those kids wouldn't know good advice if they heard it, I think." Klar sighed, mildly petulant. "I asked brown-haired one of the how he'd managed to blaze through the lower waves so quickly, and he told me I should use the double pistols more." She gave Kayla a mildly incredulous look, as though imparting news of some political scandal of mild but not critical importance. "Come to find out! Double pistols are awful! I watched him play, and he used a sonic shotgun for the first twenty waves!" The Coodru-Ji gesticulated wildly as she complained, though her complaints were quickly drowned out by easy laughter.

"C'mon. The place across the way has way better iced coffee than here. I love the mocha mint." Klar invited, walking backwards through the open arcade entrance. She walked with a bounce, her mouth and hands never really stopped moving. She was transparent, simple even - eager to share her nerdy habits with another person around her age and maybe learn from the experience.

"I've never seen somebody play The Last Starviper so well in person. Are you excited for The Rise of Starviper next year? I'm a little apprehensive about some of the changes, but I mostly play at a lower level, obviously, so it'd be great to ask a pro."

 

[Kayla Ordo-Shan]

She was absolutely thrown off her game as the woman agreed to take her to get coffee. What was happening? “I would never try and get someone to purchase those outlandish things…”

She would start, not ready to admit that she was part of the problem; she couldn’t help it, she loved them so. This woman was prepared as well. Kayla found this increasingly difficult to not believe this was a set up. Then the talk of shooting games distracted her from the possible red flags.
“Double pistols are a trap. It makes you think you’re doing more damage because you’re firing more shots, but you do less damage and are less accurate. I never pick them if I can help it.”

She explained with the confidence of a seasoned pro, which maybe she was by this point. She nodded in agreement with the woman’s assessment, that double pistols indeed sucked.

As her new friend took off, Kayla stammered for a moment, before following. Coffee and talking about arcade games? She was hooked. “I mean, I am but I’m concerned they’ll try to innovate too much, you know? My mother taught me how to play it when I was younger-she was a real pro. Unlike myself, I’m a mere, guess padawan if we want to come up with a scale system.”

She trailed off, doing a deep think now on how she would rate her own gaming skills now.

Klar

 

[Klar]

​

CORUSCANT​

Holodive Arcade​

Klar laughed merrily and layered two hands over her heart, spinning as though she'd been stuck. "Only a padawan, she says! I must be a child scrabbling at bugs by comparison!"

Recovering her balance - though she did teeter slightly, In flashed a grin while crossing the plaza. "Absolutely, though." The blonde agreed with her usual animation. She went from walking backwards slightly ahead to properly beside Kayla, hands behind her back and in her pockets. "Every time I see a good franchise get handed to some new face who wants to 'put their own spin on it' or whatever, my bones go on the attack." She babbled. "It's like - if this thing was good enough for a second part, don't muck it up or you'll change what made it great!' Or WORSE, they're just using the branding to do an entirely different thing that should have been its OWN thing."

"That said." Klar pantomimed taking a small box and setting it aside. "Some of my favorite stuff is because of new ideas so I guess I shouldn't complain TOO much."

"It's really great that you have that connection with your mother." She noted warmly, sounding only a little envious but mostly genuine. Like most of what Klar said, her tone was fairly easy to read. She gave Kayla a thoughtful look, visibly trying to decide if she should ask about her new friend's mother situation or risk stepping over a landmine like estrangement or death. She chose the safe path, saved by the proximity of a tidy little coffee shop near to the arcade.

"One iced, spiced chai with two shots, please." Klar ordered politely, pulling out her card while she made a slight 'ta-da' motion towards Kayla. "I've got hers."