1UP (TAG)

[Tayla Smith]

"Huh. Another one. Who the hell is this guy cursed with the initials 'AGG?' Sounds like someone getting punched or something."

Tayla shrugged as she popped a token into the Galaga cabinet at Eat N' Play and started her game. She'd seen a few games that had those same initials at the top of the high score chart, an AGG every time. Today, she decided she was going to beat some of them, just to see if she could. 

This was a new hobby she'd picked up recently. She couldn't remember if it was Felicity who said it or if it was a "suggestion" from the folks at Aegis, but either way someone had told her that maybe she should find a hobby, something fun to do so she wasn't obsessing all the time over this tyrant she was sure was going to pop up in this universe. So, one day she walked in to Eat N' Play, bought a pizza and a bunch of tokens, and gave the arcade a shot. Turns out, she was pretty good at classic video games. 

After a nice session on a single quarter, Tayla smiled as she punched in her initials for the high score. "T... E... S... Tayla Emily Smith. Beautiful."

A kid who couldn't have been more than ten was staring at her. She had no idea how long he had been there, but his slack jawed expression made her think he'd been there a while watching her unwitting performance. "Uh..."

She smiled and gave an awkward thumbs up. "Its... uh, it's all in the wrists. I think."

The boy nodded, continuing to stare. Tayla pointed off towards other cabinets. "I'm just... I'm gonna... yeah."

That had been incredibly awkward, and Tayla was glad that she would probably never see that kid again. "Now then, I think I saw an 'AGG' on Joust..."

One high score on Joust later, and Tayla turned to see the same kid watching her, sucking on the straw of a fountain drink. "SHIT! You're a quiet little bast... uh... shitter." Tayla winced hearing the words come out of her mouth. Just what she wanted, a kid to learn a fun new word from her, tell his mom this new word, and then point accusatorily in her direction. That was a fight she didn't want to have.

The boy stared at her. She stared back. After a moment, Tayla had to break the silence. "Okay look kid I'll give you like twenty tokens if you leave me alone and never repeat any new words you may have heard me use."

The boy nodded, and Tayla handed over the tokens. True to his word, he left her, but Tayla had to sigh when she heard him excitedly proclaim to a friend. "Yeah I got twenty tokens this time! It always works, you just gotta be patient."

"Little shiester..." she muttered under her breath. They started younger and younger it seemed. Tayla picked up her pizza box, took out a slice, and took a bite while she looked for her next target, eventually spotting Streets of Rage back past the Galaga machine, and began making her way over.

Alexis García
(Up to you how many high scores she's already taken over ;P )

[Alexis García]

Alexis had been at the arcade for a few hours already. Bags hung under his eyes and simply put, he looked like shit. Felt like it too. Despite needing to be well rested for later today as the band had a gig, sleep had evaded Alexis for the third night in a row. He only got a couple hours here and there, and it was surely taking a toll on the young adult. Alexis slept best when he slept with Mateo, but he had avoided that like being in the same room with his friend would kill him. Yet here he was, when he should've been nestled in bed. Alexis had been here an hour before they opened, slamming a couple cups of coffee, likely the cause of the irritating eye twitch he had going on at the moment. He'd spent his morning with his hood pulled over to cover as much of his face as possible, and walked around with slices of pizza. Normally, he detested the greasy food, always wanting to keep his slim figure. But today, he just couldn't bring himself to care much about anything at all. Alexis had pushed a handful of kids off of numerous machines, making a few cry as he taunted them from the background whenever they got a little too close to his high score for comfort. They now avoided the machines he stuck to, giving him nervous glances whenever he ambled their way.

Alexis was just about to make his fifth round through all of the games he played when he bumped into another group of kids. These ones however were his little devils in training and far more tolerable than all of the other nose pickers that plagued the arcade. One of the boys beamed up at him excitedly, thrusting out his hands to show the tokens that were pooled in them, "Look, Lexi!" he said with a giggle. Alexis normally didn't like kids. They were sticky, smelly, and looked funny. But he'd taken a liking to this one when the little con artist first tried scamming Alexis of his own tokens. It had failed miserably, but he liked the kid's ambition, and took him under his wing. He taught the boy all the tips and tricks on how to scam people of their tokens and it seemed someone fell victim to it today. Alexis gave a lopsided, half-hearted smile and rustled the kid's wild mane. Alexis stepped forward to the first game in his long rotation, only to find that he his crown had been ripped from under him. The kid followed behind him silently, counting his tokens over and over in glee.

"Looks like I just have to take back my rightful place at the top," he murmured, cracking his neck and muscles before giving the game his full attention. He managed to take back his spot at the top of the leaderboard but only passing TES by a couple hundred points. Satisfied enough, he walked away with a cocky grin. It continued on like that. He'd move to his next game only to find that TES had taken his spot up at the top. What started out as a casual beating, he progressively got more and more annoyed by the development. His face growing more and more red with every TES that had passed him. A blood vessel was surely about to burst. He managed to top her on every one, but the lead he had over her grew smaller and smaller with every game.

"Ok!" he huffed, coming to one of the last few games in his rotation to find that, TES, was once again there. "What the fuck?" he groaned, looking around the arcade suspiciously, as if expecting TES to just pop up over someone's head and reveal who his rival was. The boy from earlier had been there the whole time, occupying his time with some pizza and candy that Alexis had bought for him. Finally, paying attention for the first time, the kid tugged on Alexis' sweatshirt sleeve with one greasy hand.

"It's her," the boy said, pointing another greasy fingertip at some blonde headed woman.

"Her?" he hissed, staring daggers into her back, way too riled up about the whole situation but so sleep deprived that it just made sense to him. He stomped over to the machine she was currently playing, analyzing and watching her every move. The boy came up alongside Alexis, watching her with a blank expression on his face, likely hoping there was some small hope he could finesse more tokens out of her. Alexis tapped his foot hurriedly, impatient and wanting to hop on this machine right after her to beat the high score she no doubt took over. He was hoping she'd stop and watch, and see exactly who she'd been messing with this whole time.

Tayla Smith

[Tayla Smith]

Maybe it was the fact that she had to rely on simulated touch from the bodysuit she wore. Maybe it was just something about how her brain was wired. But when Tayla played these games, she went tunnel vision. The world around her was just gone, it didn't exist, all that mattered was the pixels dancing in front of her. So it was understandable that she was surprised after her last life was forfeit to the machine, she smiled as she punched in her initials, and turned to see not only the kid that had been borderline stalking her, but also a very perturbed looking man.

"SHI- FU- DA-, uh, darn! I didn't see you. Sorry I took so long. Is this your kid? Look, I'm sorry if he came over with any new words, he's super quiet when he walks around and surprised me more than once and it just sort of slipped out and..."

That's when Tayla noticed something. This guy was glaring daggers, but they seemed aimed not only at her, but at the machine as well. Tayla started to put the pieces together.

"...wait are you AAG? Is that what's going on?"

Tayla's entire expression and body language changed. She crossed her arms, and looked at him with a smirk. This was a competition now, and she had met her opponent. She did hold out a gloved hand for a shake. "Name's Tayla. Nice to meet the second best person at these games."

Was provoking him when he was already kinda angry the best idea? Probably not. But nobody could say Tayla didn't have metaphorical balls. She gestured to the machine.

"If you want to try to take back the throne, be my guest. I think I passed your last score by about 4000 points though."

Alexis García

[Alexis García]

Alexis looked on with a strange mixture of sheer annoyance and also a hint of boredom. It dug under his skin that someone was better than him at something. The diva was used to being on top, whether that be through climbing the charts with his band, or something as meager as dominating at the arcade, it pissed him off. He was never below someone else. He didn't like the feeling. Therefore, he wasn't liking the girl in front of him too well and he was perfectly fine with letting that show. His eyes narrowed in contempt as she rattled on, freaking out that she had perhaps corrupted what she had assumed to be his child and stripped him of his innocence by uttering some curse words. Funnily enough, the kid probably had a far more vulgar vocabulary than the woman in front of the pair. Alexis knew the greasy little pizza eater more than he liked to admit. Not only was it merely embarrassing that the next closest friend he had to Mateo was a boy no older than thirteen, it would also be a stain on his reputation. What sort of popstar hung around in an arcade with a little boy? It screamed pathetic. He ended up avoiding any sort of comment. Frankly, he wanted to see her sweat a little. If she felt bad about it, he was content with letting her stress over it.

Then, it shifted. She put two and two together and realized just who exactly was standing before her. The very person who held the number one spot on almost all of the games worth playing in this dump was now before her. Well, had once held the number one spot on most of the machines. Alexis simply nodded in reply to her question, "Sí, I am AGG," he haughtily replied, putting an emphasis on his proper initials seeing as how she had messed them up.

"I assume you're..." he trailed off, looking past her to the flashing leaderboard screen, "..T..E..S..?" The way Alexis spat out her initials simply oozed of condescension.

Alexis' facial expression was easy to read. His annoyance over the whole debacle plain as day. "Alexis," he offered up shortly in response to her pleasantries. "And I'd say I'm still first best. You've just hit a lucky streak," he stated, rather matter-of-factly as he watched her extend a hand out, staring at her gloved hand with the same boring look of disgust he'd donned for almost the entirety of their interaction thus far. Alexis didn't exactly do handshakes. He did them for work when needed, but not outside of that. Brushing past her and her outstretched hand, he pulled up to the machine.

Alexis said nothing, but only snapped his fingers, black nail polish adorning the nails. At this gesture, the boy who had since disappeared somewhere in the middle of Alexis' and Tayla's short conversation came tumbling in with a pack of wipes. Alexis swiftly took one out of the package and cleaned off the joysticks to the machine, then without a word, made another gesture for the boy to clean off his greasy fingertips and rustled his hair before turning back to the brightly glowing arcade machine. Cracking his knuckles and neck, he settled into position. Retro arcade music filled the air and he fired up the game by promptly sliding in his tokens, a look of determination now plastered his face.

"Try to take it back? More like succeed and take back my rightful spot," he had huffed out quietly to himself. Perhaps Tayla could hear, but he was far too engrossed already in the game to truly care.

Tayla Smith 

[Tayla Smith]

Well. No handshake was rude. Tayla couldn't figure out yet if he was just playing up this newfound rivalry for kicks, or if he was actually upset yet, but she was having a good day so she was gonna roll with the latter until proven otherwise.

She watched the whole pageantry with the kid and the wipes with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. "I certainly hope your dad is giving you a good allowance for being his personal video game butler, kiddo."

Tayla leaned against the machine and looked over Alexis' shoulder as he played. "Luck doesn't exist. Or at least, if it does, it hates me. Everything I did was pure skill. Oooh, didn't quite make it to that turkey before it despawned. That'll hurt your score a bit."

At this point she was just ribbing him for kicks. He was actually doing pretty damn good, and was on track to take that top spot again. "Once you're done I'll have to beat your score again. See just how far we both can get before we can't swap back and forth anymore."

Alexis García