Chapter 98: The Arcade
They had three days of mandatory downtime while Vex worked.
The party naturally splintered to decompress. Garrett took the rail lines out to the outer regions to see his sister and his two nieces. Dillon publicly announced his intent to sleep for twenty-four uninterrupted hours, wake up, and immediately consume half the guild cafeteria’s daily inventory. Elise mentioned something vague about "refining mana cycles" and vanished into the guild’s private training subterranean levels. Nathan suspected she would practically live there until the gear was ready.
Nathan decided to spend the time with Lucy.
She had been incredibly patient through the grueling grind of the last six weeks. She endured the long days of his absence, the nights he came home too battered to do anything but collapse on the couch, and the pervasive, underlying anxiety of having a Climber for a brother. She made toast that was only sometimes burned. She left sticky notes on the fridge reminding him to eat vegetables. She was eleven, and she handled their reality with far more grace than he felt he deserved.
So, the next morning, he announced a mandated day out.
"A playdate?" Lucy crossed her arms, fixing him with a look of withering, pre-teen skepticism. "I’m eleven, Nathan. I don’t do playdates."
"An excursion, then. An outing. Whatever you want to call it. I’m taking you to the arcade. My treat."
Despite herself, Lucy’s eyes lit up. "The mega-arcade at the Central Promenade? The one with the VR Tower simulators?"
"Those are tourist traps."
"They are fun! And I want to see if I can beat the high score. Mrs. Chen says my hand-eye coordination is in the top percentile for my age group." She paused, narrowing her eyes. "She also says you look like a walking corpse and need to sleep more."
"The arcade it is."
The Central Promenade was a sensory overload of neon light, booming synthetic bass, and the smell of fried sugar. Holographic advertisements the size of buildings flickered across the skyline. The arcade itself was a four-story cathedral of gaming, from retro fighting cabinets to full-immersion haptic pods. At the entrance, a massive, silent holographic dragon roared over the ticket counter.
Lucy dragged Nathan straight to the third floor.
She strapped into a VR climbing simulator with the practiced, terrifying ease of a kid who had meticulously studied every single one of her brother’s broadcasted climbs. The simulation booted up—a brightly colored, low-poly Tower wall—and she started scaling.
Nathan stood behind the rig, leaning on the railing. "Solid grip. Keep your center of gravity low to the wall. Don’t overextend your reach on that left—"
"I know!" Lucy yelled over her shoulder, not breaking her rhythm. "I watched your VODs! Even the one where you almost fell off the platform on Floor 7 of the Ash Tower!"
"I did not almost fall. I was aggressively repositioning."
"You were falling into the abyss. Mirko literally had to catch you."
"She didn’t catch me. She provided localized tactical support."
"She grabbed you by the collar and hauled you up!"
I did do that, Mirko’s voice chimed pleasantly in Nathan’s mind. It was an incredibly heroic feat. I considered composing a verse about it.
Please do not, Nathan begged.
Too late. The rhyme scheme is already finalized.
Lucy hit the buzzer at the top of the wall and unstrapped from the harness, beaming with pride. "Third place!" she announced, pointing at the glowing leaderboard. "Out of four hundred and twelve! That’s the top one percent!"
"It’s a tourist machine, Luce. The competition isn’t exactly elite."
"You are just jealous because my grip-to-weight ratio is vastly superior to yours."
They spent the next hour burning through tokens. Lucy annihilated him in three consecutive racing games (he suspected she let him win the fourth out of pity). At the shooting gallery, Nathan finally found his pride, utilizing a fraction of [Hunter’s Insight] to ruthlessly run up the score and win her a fluffy, slightly lopsided stuffed sheep. She immediately named it "Red Junior."
Then came the rhythm game.
Lucy stepped up, her small hands flying across the neon haptic interface with terrifying, instinctual speed. She matched the frantic beats and cascading patterns perfectly, securing a flawless combo that drew a small crowd of onlookers.
Nathan stepped up next. The machine selected a rapid, highly syncopated electronic track.
He failed out in twenty-six seconds.
"You have absolutely no rhythm," Lucy declared, utterly horrified. "It’s actually embarrassing. You can shoot a flying dragon in the eye from two hundred meters away, but you can’t step on a glowing square to a beat?"
"The machine is obviously miscalibrated."
"The machine is fine. Your internal metronome is broken."
She speaks the truth, Master, Mirko noted dryly. I have heard you hum while cleaning your bow. It is... an experience. Mostly for the wrong reasons.
Whose side are you on?
Yours. Which is why I must protect you from further musical humiliation.
They were wandering past the heavy-immersion combat simulators when Nathan stopped dead in his tracks.
Standing in a VR rig, surrounded by a crowd of slack-jawed teenagers, was a girl with striking silver hair and pale blue eyes. She was moving her hands across the control interface in tight, economical, perfectly precise patterns. Simulated enemies on the massive screen above her were dissolving into pixels faster than the machine could spawn them. Her score wasn’t just in first place; it had completely broken the scale of the leaderboard.
"Elise?"
She paused the simulation and turned around. For a fraction of a second, her pristine Winterhart mask slipped. It wasn’t embarrassment, exactly—more like the mild, internal horror of a cat being caught playing with a toy it pretended to hate.
"Nathan," she said, straightening her posture and clearing her throat. "I... did not anticipate encountering you here."
"In an arcade?" Nathan raised an eyebrow, gesturing to the glowing screen. "I didn’t expect to see you here either. I thought you were doing private training."
Elise recovered her composure flawlessly. "This is training. It refines hand-eye coordination, rapid threat assessment, and adaptability." She adjusted her cuff. "Furthermore, the simulated physics in these consumer-grade rigs are surprisingly robust. It is... moderately engaging."
"You’ve lapped the high score three times."
"Yes. I have been here for two and a half hours."
Lucy peeked around Nathan’s leg, her eyes going wide as saucers as she clutched Red Junior to her chest. "You’re Elise! From the broadcasts! You froze that giant centipede thing on Floor 9! That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!"
Elise blinked. She looked down at the small girl, then up at Nathan, then back down. "You are Lucy. Nathan’s sister."
Her tone shifted. The crisp, aristocratic chill melted away, replaced by the careful, deliberate gentleness of someone who wasn’t used to being warm, but was trying very hard to be. "Nathan speaks of you constantly."
Lucy’s eyes narrowed with sudden interest. "He does? What does he say?"
"That you are the sole reason he consumes vegetables, and that you make excellent toast."
Lucy beamed, a bright, gap-toothed smile that crinkled her nose. "I do! I only burned it twice this entire week! A new household record!" She held up the stuffed animal. "Look, Nathan won me a sheep at the gallery. I named him Red Junior, after Garrett’s summon!"
Elise leaned down slightly, studying the plush toy with the exact same intense, analytical scrutiny she had applied to the Legendary Frozen Heart. "The stitching on the left seam is entirely uneven. The right eye is misaligned by half an inch." She paused. "It has character."
"See? That’s what I told him!" Lucy crowed. "Nathan said it was just cheap."
"It is undeniably cheap," Elise agreed softly. "But those two qualities are not mutually exclusive."
Nathan rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a strange, sudden warmth in his chest. "We were just about to head to the food court on the second floor. Do you... want to grab something with us?"
He fully expected her to decline. Elise was a Winterhart. She had been raised in high-society dining halls, navigating the cutthroat etiquette of noble galas. A neon-lit arcade food court with sticky tables, screaming toddlers, and questionable sanitation was the antithesis of her existence.
But Elise looked at Lucy, then at Nathan, and offered a small nod. "I would find that acceptable."
The food court was a beautiful disaster of noise and grease. A children’s birthday party was raging three tables over, complete with a cake shaped like a collapsing Tower. The chairs were cheap plastic, the tables wobbled, and the holographic menu overhead kept glitching into static.
Elise sat across from Nathan and Lucy, her posture perfectly, flawlessly straight. She was eating a cheap vegetable wrap with the exact same precise, elegant table manners she would use at a state dinner.
Lucy was talking a mile a minute, gesturing wildly with a french fry. "—and I got top one percent! Nathan tried to say the machine was broken, but he’s just mad because his technique is bad!"
"Your brother’s assessment of his own limitations is notoriously flawed," Elise said, dabbing the corner of her mouth with a thin paper napkin. "Grip strength and center of gravity are paramount. Your score indicates a natural aptitude for both."
"See! Elise agrees with me!"
"She’s just being polite, Luce."
"Elise is never polite," Lucy stated matter-of-factly. "She’s honest. There’s a big difference." She took a bite of her fry, looking incredibly smug.
Elise’s lips twitched. It wasn’t a full smile, but it was closer than Nathan had ever seen in the middle of a Tower. "I am honest. For instance, your brother truly has absolutely no rhythm."
Lucy gasped, slamming her hands on the table. "You saw the rhythm game!"
"I observed from a distance. His performance was... catastrophic."
"The machine was miscalibrated!" Nathan protested.
"It was not," Elise replied, taking a delicate sip of her soda. "I reviewed the diagnostic calibration settings before beginning my own session. The hardware was functioning within perfect parameters. You simply possess the musical timing of a rock."
"Thank you, Elise. Really appreciate the support."
"You are quite welcome."
Lucy was watching the two of them with the sharp, calculating eyes of an eleven-year-old who had just pieced a puzzle together. She looked at Elise, then at Nathan, and then back at Elise.
"I like you," Lucy declared suddenly. "You should come over to our apartment for dinner sometime. I’ll make toast. The unburned kind."
Nathan felt a sudden rush of heat hit the tips of his ears. "Lucy, you don’t just—"
"It’s just an invitation!" Lucy shot back innocently, though her eyes danced with mischief. "You’re always lecturing me about making new friends! I am making a friend." She turned her brilliant smile back to the Winterhart heir. "You’re my friend now. That means you have to come over and eat toast."
Elise went perfectly still. For a moment, the noise of the arcade seemed to fade away. She looked at the small girl, her pale blue eyes softening into something genuine and unguarded.
"I would like that very much," Elise said quietly.
Nathan sat back in his cheap plastic chair, looking between his little sister and his party’s ice mage. Lucy was grinning like she had just conquered a Tower of her own. Elise looked more at peace amid the grease and neon than she ever had in the guild halls.