The two young boys looked excitedly out the window. Their father had been bombarded with texts from his brother saying that he had someone to set him up on a date with so he had come up with an amazing plan.

"This is your favorite arcade right?" He asked in his typical flat voice.

The boy sitting in the window facing the arcade cheered "Thank you papa!" His cheering face suddenly turning sly once he realized his brother was pouting in the other corner. "Hey Eeeerlaaaand," he said teasingly, "What are ya pouting about?"

"You know... Jerk" Erland huffed, not wanting to say in front of his father that he had managed to hack one of the arcade games and was therefore banned from the arcade for the rest of the year.

Their father, knowing that it would just cause trouble whatever Erland was doing decided to ignore it as they parked in front of the arcade. Their father handed them each 170 Krona (about 20 dollars in USD) "I'll be gone for an hour at the most. Don't cause trouble." And then he drove off.

As soon as he left Erland pulled out his phone, "Well since I can't go into this stupid arcade I might as well explore what's around it, I'm going to call Leopold so he can come with me. And if we aren't back by an hour just tell Papa I ran into him and he's going to take me home in a bit."

Peter giggled "What? You two gonna make out in an alley or something?"

Erland crossed his arms "Hmph! At least I have a love life!"

Peter laughed and walked into the arcade. The smell of cheap food and the sounds of bleeping and buzzing felt like home to the boy, he immediately went to the machine to exchange his money for tokens and went right to gaming.

{.•~*^^*~•.}

Peter cruised through the arcade, smiling smugly at his 3-letter code name on every scoreboard of the game:

S E A

it was on the racing games, the old 8-bits, just about everything. He swelled up with pride at the fact that this was not the cause of hacks, but pure skill. Heck, he could hear some other regulars talking about "oh it's that kid who has first place in all the games" in the background! He was king of the hill!

Ding ding! His phone notified him that someone had sent him a text, it was Erland.

"There's a little collection of shops a block away from the arcade, Leopold and I found a little art store and he's probably going to be in here for a year or so"

Peter snorted at the text but left it on read. He looked around again and suddenly someone caught his eye.

She definitely wasn't a regular yet everyone was surrounding her, her amber eyes blazing with persistence as she was focused on one of the arcade games. Peter being curious decided to join the crowd. It was just typical Pac-man, but she was on a level that looked oddly familiar. Peter then looked up at the high score to realize that she was dangerously approaching his high score.

He quickly turned around and excitedly texted Erland.

"HEY HEY THERES THIS GIRL THAT MIGHT BEAT MY HIGH SCORE AT-"

He was interrupted by a loud cheering and the sudden realization that she had in fact beaten his high score. But she didn't stop there. In fact she got a good 3 levels ahead before smiling in satisfaction when she finally got a game over. Suddenly everyone turned to him. One of the regulars had pointed him out. The girl walked up to him. "Are you the kid who is at the top of every high score here?" She scoffed.

Peter ignored the snide tone in her voice and lit up with pride "Yes I am!"

"Well, I beat all the arcade games back in Australia. I figured as I was traveling around here with my family I might as well expand!" The crowd of kids "oooooh"ed.

"Well I don't think I can properly challenge you without at least knowing your name!" Peter smiled, this should be interesting. "I'm Peter by the way."

The girl smirked back with mutual feelings about said challenge "Call me Wendy, so what is your challenge?"

"Try to beat me at every type of arcade game here!" Peter pumped his fist into the air.

It was game after game, both children looking intensely at their game. The crowd of children surrounding them grew. They had started taking sides, betting tokens, it was awfully odd for such a thing to be happening but no one really noticed. Game after game after game until finally.

"That's the last one! And I won!" Peter exclaimed, dragging out the I as one kid put a tally next to Peter.

Both Peter and Wendy turned toward the scorekeeper. "So, who actually won?"

He looked at the board, "Wow, it's a tie..."

"That's not possible idiot, there's an odd amount of arcade machines!" Another kid yelled.

"Oh, we forgot the pac man. In this case, congrats Wendy!"

Everyone cheered, tokens were exchanged from the betting. When Peter finally went to go find Wendy in the hyped up crowd she was busy on her phone.

"Hey Wendy! Good game right?"

Wendy looked up at Peter, "ah dang I would love to hang out more but my brother just texted me and said he needs to take me somewhere immediately."

"Oh, uhh... That's too bad" Peter felt his heart sink, he didn't realize it but there was something weird about Wendy, he felt it but he didn't notice it until now.

Wendy handed him a peice of paper, her face became flushed quickly "I-I'm only giving you my phone number so you can add me on the Game Center on you phone so we can challenge each other! Don't get the wrong idea!" Then looked at the window and quickly walked away.

Peter looked at the paper in his hand. Then after adding her to the contacts texted Erland.

"Hey, about you saying that I had no love life..."