The Doctor walked down the hallway with a steamy cup of coffee in his hand and a book in the other. He brought the cup of coffee up to his lips to take a sip of it when it gently bumped against his mask. Thankfully, he was still drowsy, so the coffee stayed put inside the cup, waiting for another chance for him to drink it. "Oh... That's a disappointment."
"Haha! I didn't expect you to do that, Doctor!" Blaze exclaimed, approaching him from behind as she lightly slapped him on the shoulder, causing him to almost spill his coffee all over the floor.
"Ah, Blaze! Please refrain from hitting me like that!" The Doctor said as he balanced the cup. "Well, I'm just a bit sleepy, so you can't really blame me, can you?"
"I always blame you for everything, Doctor! Because you're our commander on the battlefield, so if something goes wrong, it's completely your fault!"
"Thanks for the encouragement… I'll keep that in my mind next time when I send you out on a mission."
A big drop of sweat rolled down the back of Blaze's head. "Er, please don't! You know that was a joke, right? Right?"
The Doctor continued walking down the hallway to his office, ignoring her question to leave her on a cliffhanger. He wouldn't give her anything she couldn't handle, not like anything challenged her much anyway, but stranding her with the prospect of it was amusing.
As he turned the corner to travel the final stretch to his office, he noticed Sona, the Flametail Knight, standing outside with a game controller in the form of a sword in her hand and a rectangular gaming headset fixed above her eyesight while her eyes narrowed onto something.
But as soon as Sona sensed someone was approaching her, she turned her head around to make eye contact with the Doctor. Her eyes sparkled with joy, but it was short-lived as the headset fell onto her face. "Doctor-! Oops..."
"Sona, or should I call you Flametail?"
"Sona is just fine!" She responded, making sure her headset was secured on her head. "I feel like we know each other enough to go by my real name instead of my code name!"
"I don't see why not, but what are you looking at? Aren't you supposed to be inside, helping me sign papers or something along the lines of being an assistant? Though I can't blame you since you're fairly new at performing the duties of an assistant…" The Doctor asked, inspecting her.
For someone who was supposed to be his assistant, she wasn't dressed like one. Her casual red crop top mixed along with her gray short shorts that cut a little too short, revealing half her thighs, was suggestive, but he wasn't one to judge when he usually wore the same clothes day after day because his work demanded more of his attention than choosing something nice for himself.
Maybe if she dropped her controllers or took the headset off, she would look more professional. But again, not his concern.
"Er... Papers? Um... I didn't see much of them this morning, so I thought we could spend the day having fun or something, but maybe not..." Sona answered with a nervous laugh. "Could you take a small walk then or something? I have to clean up your office from a teensy mess I made!"
"What? What did you do to my precious office?" The Doctor asked as he tried to make his way into his office while Sona stood in his way with an embarrassed expression.
"That's why I said take a walk or something! I'll have it cleaned quicker than you can say Margaret Nearl!" Sona exclaimed, but eventually gave up as the Doctor persisted.
When he stepped inside, he noticed she had moved some of the furniture away to establish a gaming set-up for her virtual reality headset to interact with in the middle of the office. A TV stationed in the center played the introduction screen of a game while a collection of weaponry that all had game controllers installed on the hilts lined up the side of the electronic mat laid on the floor. And next to the TV, two big speakers were positioned on either side of it.
It was quite complicated from what he envisioned the 'teensy' mess to be, and the worst part was, it was pushed up against his desk, where a small pile of papers quietly waited for someone to scribble on them.
"Margaret Nearl..."
"Ah, Doctor! You're supposed to say that when you get back from your walk, not now! I'm not that fast!" Sona exclaimed, shame written on her face. "But sorry, Doctor! I know I shouldn't be intruding in your office like this, but you looked tired these days, so I wanted to cheer you up with some games because they make me happy! Do you want to give it a shot?"
"Well, I don't mind that you desecrated my office like this, but maybe ask me next time, and I'll think about it." The Doctor replied, receiving a sheepish smile from Sona as he placed the coffee and book down on his desk. "As for gaming, I guess I could join after I see you play for a bit. How about that?"
"Fine by me! And I can clean this in a jiffy if you want it gone by the end of the hour! Or I can just grab Greynuty, Justyna, and Iwona to lend a hand too if you want it gone in three minutes!" Sona mentioned as she bent down to grab a small yellow towel sitting on the floor and put it over her neck before sliding the headset over her eyes to play the game. "Watch me closely, Doctor! Because this will be the greatest game you'll ever play!"
Sona used the controller to move the pointer on the screen to press play while the Doctor situated himself behind her on a chair to have a good view of her gameplay. The TV screen flickered as it transformed to a different page that displayed options on modes to play. She clicked on hard mode and the screen turned dark.
When it appeared again, it showed her looking around the room to survey the area she was in. She used the controller in her hands to move once the countdown on the screen went down to three. Several enemies popped out from the surrounding environment as she looked around frantically, trying her best to pinpoint all of them.
Sona ran around the area and sliced some of them down, but they actively changed positions, forcing her to stay alert as they used ranged weapons to aim at her.
The Doctor rested his head on his arm, wondering why she needed a TV screen to play with. Logically thinking, all she needed was a headset to play this game, otherwise, she could just use the screen to play with no headset. In the end, he concluded Sona wanted to show the game to him instead of keeping it all to herself.
Once Sona lost the round from all the damage her character accumulated, she took off her headset and wiped the sweat with her towel as a frown crossed her face. "I was so close to winning too...!" She picked up a water bottle next to the TV and drank out of it.
"Uh... Better luck next time?" The Doctor comforted, unsure what was so important about a game.
"That's right, Doctor! You know exactly how to help someone through their troubles no matter what they face!" Sona said with a smile. "By the way, this virtual reality stuff is surprisingly taxing on the body!"
"Hmm... On second thought, maybe we should go straight to work." The Doctor muttered.
"What? No!" Sona squeaked, a bit too suddenly. She laughed awkwardly and waved the controller around to distract the Doctor from her blushing face. "You promised me you would play after seeing how I perform!"
"Heh... Um... Well, I guess five minutes wouldn't hurt, right?"
"That's more like it, Doctor!" Sona's face lit up with joy as she took her headset off and handed the controllers to the Doctor. "But first, let me clean this from my sweat."
While she took care of the headset, the Doctor held onto the controllers awkwardly. He's seen nothing like it before, much less hold them in his hands. And the length of the sword wasn't helping much either, however, the weight of it wasn't so bad. Rather, he was afraid of striking the TV screen. Maybe the headset had some preventative measures to avoid such mistakes, but he wouldn't know until Sona placed it in his care.
"Done!" Sona walked over to where he was and plopped it in his hands.
The Doctor stared at it, pondering if he should put it over his mask or not. Deeming it more comfortable without his mask, the Doctor stood up to take his mask off and put his hood down.
Sona stared at him with interest as admiration twinkled in her eyes and her tail swished around in excitement. The Doctor chuckled as he held the headset above him and wrapped it around his head. He adjusted it to his liking and took his first look around the virtual world he stepped into.
It was vibrant and fascinating like a flashy movie that made use of the wide palette of colors presented to it. Gridlines suddenly raced around, indicating all the furniture planted inside of the area. It set up a boundary, so he didn't injure himself by colliding with any objects.
There were also menu options like he saw Sona interact with by moving the joystick on the controller around. He imitated the same action and saw the same pointer appear before his very eyes. That was when he encountered his first obstacle of playing a game.
"Uh... How do you operate this device in my hand, Sona?" The Doctor asked, shaking the controller around.
"Like this!"
The Doctor could hear her light footsteps making their way over to where he was standing. He suddenly felt her warm fingers wrap around his thumb and guide him around the buttons in the middle of the controller and one on the side. He could hear her talking, but the words entered one ear and left the other. He didn't expect her to touch him with no warning.
"S-Sorry for interrupting, but could you repeat that?"
"Of course!" Sona responded, going over the controls again with no hint of irritation in her voice.
Once she was done explaining, the Doctor experimented with the buttons and joystick on the controllers for a bit before Sona intervened to give him a taste of gaming by pressing tutorial mode for him.
"This will help you get into the flow of things!" Sona exclaimed as the Doctor stared at all the text floating up in the air, giving him specific instructions to follow.
The Doctor followed every direction the game instructed him to until he was done. After that, he clicked around until he chose the easy mode for the game. The screen turned black, and that was when the fun began. Except not so much.
The Doctor turned out to be a real amateur in gaming. Sona stood by his side from a safe distance to avoid any hits from him swinging the sword controller around and laughed at the hilarious mistakes he made.
As the round came to an abrupt end from his disastrous play, the Doctor gently removed the headset from his head and made a face of disgust. "Let's just say I probably won't play this game ever again. Also, it requires too much movement to be relaxing as a game."
"Ahaha! At least you tried it, so you know for certain you don't like games, but maybe we can find a more relaxing multiplayer game one of these days and play together!" Sona suggested, stepping up to where he was and gently dabbling a green towel over his head.
The Doctor closed his eyes as the towel drooped over his face. "As long as it doesn't demand exercise, I think I'll join when we don't have as much work as today."
"That sounds like a plan!" Sona cheered as she wrapped the towel around the Doctor's neck and bent down to pick up a water bottle for him to enjoy.
"Should we invite someone else to play with us like one of your friends?"
"You see, I only have one extra headset, so I don't think so!" Sona answered. It was a lie, but the good Doctor didn't have to know about that. Sona was going to have him all for herself when they played together one day.
Author's Note: This story is brought to you by my love for Flametail's latest outfit! It was certainly a surprise for me to see her enjoy gaming, but I decided to bring that outfit into an idea, and then into reality with a story dedicated specifically to her!
I hope you enjoyed this story about her because I certainly loved writing this one!
With retro love from your favorite writer, Out4Lunch!