Summary: Hope somehow convinces Lightning to play video games with him. Kinematics universe.

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On Video Games

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It sounded like the silliest game in existence; definitely not something a teenage boy would be playing.

"Why, exactly," Lightning enunciated carefully, not sure whether she wanted to laugh or shake the boy. "Would you want to play a game about... dolls?" She wasn't sure whether he was making fun of her of not, but if he was... well, she would probably scuff him a good one.

"It's not a game about dolls!" Hope sounded offended, bringing the box down from where he had thrust it in front of her face. "It's a video game. And a good one, from what I've seen of the reviews."

She wasn't convinced. There was definitely something the boy wasn't telling her, since she knew him well enough to know that his room was stocked with survival horror genre. Hope had never given a second look to a game with poppets. A building, dress-up, hopping and sunshine-rainbow type of game. She had seen him play enough games with zombies, vampires, evil monsters and demons to know that he wasn't at all interested in what looked like a little girl's version of video game.

And that was putting it lightly.

Lightning had originally shrugged and accepted the plea to look after Hope when Bartholomew Estheim had called her two days ago, asking quite frantically if she or Snow or Serah was somehow available the next three days as he had been suddenly called into an emergency Sanctum meeting about things he had only mumbled into slurring, derogatory terms. Seeing has Serah had recently discovered her pregnancy and now Snow was hovering over her every moment of the day, Lightning had taken some time off already just to be ready to pound Snow into the ground if Serah ever ran crying to her about how he was being too overprotective.

But seeing as that hadn't happened yet (in fact, Lightning thought sadly, Serah looked only too happy for the extra attention), she figured the newly-wed love-y dove-y couple wouldn't miss her for three days. She didn't mind spending a few days looking after Hope.

Especially away from those pesky Team NORA.

Or just away from Maqui.

Did that boy think she was blind?

Either way, they had two uneventful days of lounging around; her training when he was at school, ordering take out (neither of them were very good in the kitchen), and watching movies. It was so normal and uneventful that Lightning was half surprised she wasn't ready to tear her hair out in boredom. (In fact, she was surprised she quite liked shopping with Hope for the largest, most extravagant and decadent pie just to see how much they could eat of it before their stomachs forced them to stop.)

And then he brought that game to her.

"Weren't you going to finish playing the newest Bioshock?" She asked, trying to divert his attention to something else. She had seen him playing that yesterday, shouting at the television as his character was chased by large, hulking robots.

"That's a one player game." Hope lamented. "You're leaving tomorrow and I want to play a game with you."

Lightning eyed the bright and happy game box with obvious distaste. "I'll play Resident Evil with you."

"No way." And this time, Hope grinned unrepentantly. "You'd kick my ass. This game, at least, we'd both probably suck at."

"You assume I play video games, which I don't." Lightning responded logically. "You can just find a game you're good at, and we'll play."

"But..." And here he tried to give her a pleading look. "But this game is cute?"

She gave him a disbelieving look, not needing any words.

"Okay," He relented, looking sheepish. "That was a stupid reason. But I just got this game and figured it'd be fun!"

Still a stupid reason. She wasn't buying into that crap for one moment, and honestly, she shouldn't even have to voice that aloud. He was smarter than that.

Hope put up a brave front for all of thirty seconds before he caved, "Igotthisgame'cause-Maqui-and-I-were-supposed-to-play-this-together...?"

Lightning blinked, and very calmly put down the magazine she had been reading (something about survival in the wilderness... it was somewhat rubbish. She liked picking it apart for all its wrong facts) back on the table before responding, "...What?"

"I got this game 'cause Maqui and I were supposed to play together." Hope admitted with a hint of embarrassment staining his cheeks (why! Why in the world would he be embarrassed?) and looking down. "He plays racing games and I play shooting ones... we picked at random for a genre as a middle ground. B-but I really want to play with you, too!"

Lightning felt her mind go a bit blank at that statement. She couldn't understand why Gadot continued to try and bring food and flowers over to try and connect Lightning with Team NORA, especially when she had already lost her sister to Snow (admittedly, he wasn't that bad now that she got to know him. Still, though, there wasn't anyone on Cocoon or Gran Pulse that would be good enough for Serah, and she wanted him to understand that at every turn). Yuj trying to ask her on a date before she slammed the door in his face was bad enough, but did Maqui really have to intrude in her life as well? What was next? Was Lebreau going to ask her to a slumber party?

"Please?" Hope was asking, biting his lower lip as he tugged on her sleeve with one hand while half hiding his face with the game box. "I'm not technically supposed to play this before we found time to play together, but..."

Lightning allowed the teen tug on her hand, half remember how he first did that to try and win her approval back in Palempolum, and half thinking that his mom must have been really tough if she had been able to win against that pseudo innocent look. She wasn't stupid, she knew that Hope wasn't as childish as he looked or sometimes acted still.

But wait. If he and Maqui had to pick a new genre because they were good at different games, did that mean that it was a competition?

She eyed the box with a new light. "Two person, you say?"

Hope looked relieved that she finally said something. "Up to four, actually."

"Versus?"

"Depends," he admitted. "It's mostly teamwork, but there are supposed to be games where you have to compete against each other."

She reached out and pulled the box from his hands, skimming over the colorful cover and turned it over to read the back. It didn't look like anything that would contain much in terms of storyline... or even in complexity. But already, ideas were forming in her head.

"Alright, then." She finally said after reading the back of the box. She stood up from where she had been sitting in the dining room, and shoved the box back at him. "You get the system started up. I'll make sure you don't lose to the teen Snow-wannabe."

"It's not really about competit-"

"Go, Hope."

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"This is screwed up!" Maqui cried in disgust as he finally threw the controller onto the carpet and crossed his arms. He huffed, trying really hard not to be irritated at the younger boy sitting beside him. "You need to stop getting me killed, Hope! This is about teamwork- teamwork!"

"I'm sorry!" Hope's pale green eyes were wide and somewhat panicked even as his grip on the controller tightened. "I can't help it! After playing with Light-"

"You weren't supposed to play until today!" Maqui muttered darkly under his breath.

"-I can't seem to get her training out of my head!"

Maqui took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's try this one more time. You step on the stones, and I'll run under the spikes, okay?"

Hope nodded quickly, still looking somewhat twitchy and far too tense.

After watching his character die twenty more times on the screen ranging from being dropped into a fire pit, on spikes, crushed, or electrocuted because Hope couldn't stop running forward as if it were a race to get to the goal, Maqui realized that Miss Lightning really did have it out for him- he just never expected she would use Hope to kill him that many times in a sitting.

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AN: Anyone else looking forward to LBP2? Or Portal2? I know I am, and I'm the most TERRIBLE person to play video games with. I'm naturally jumpy, and when there's someone else on the screen with me, my competitive instincts kick in like nothing else. Even if it's supposed to be teamwork. I die or kill other people like crazy on LBP, even when I try not to. ^^; I'm perfectly fine in 1-player, though!

I apologize for the dashes. [ actually deleted the entire sentence many, many times without dashes. So it looks stupid now, but at least it's there?