Author's Note: I'm not sure if "Chuck-E-Cheese" had a significant presence on the East Coast during the early 1980's or not (I'm a native of the Southwest, and we were lousy with them when I was a little kid), so fair warning that the restaurant in this chapter might be anachronistic. Probably wouldn't be the first anachronistic thing in the story, but still.
For the record I do have very fond memories of Chuck-E-Cheese, but that doesn't change the fact that their food was terrible, the staff was (understandably) surly, and the animatronics were creepy as hell.
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"Game Crash"
Philadelphia – 1984
They ran for what seemed like hours, though it was probably less than twenty minutes. The adrenaline coursing through Penance's veins quickly dried up like a lake bed exposed to the sun. After a while he realized he couldn't go much further at that pace. Nor could he hope to defend himself. Heck, he was so drained right now that he wouldn't even be able to fight off a single sugar glider, if the need were to arise. Of course that was just silly to think about, really.
From his time in New Zealand Penance damn-well knew that sugar gliders liked to attack in packs.
Even Whip, bearing those fresh wounds from her beating, had more endurance than he did at this point. The boy plunked down beside some boxes in an alleyway. He panted like a dog and kept flapping his shirt up and down to ventilate his upper body. Sweat bled off his face in a mighty cascade.
"What the hell was that, back there?" Whip pointed behind them.
Penance held up a hand, still panting:
"I...hate... fighting... regular people. It's easier with Immortals; the Quickening 'recharges' my batteries..."
"B— but how'd you...you know, how'd you do all that?"
The boy slowly caught his breath and stood up. He shrugged:
"It's kinda just a thing, y'know—"
"A 'thing'?"
Penance nodded:
"Mmm-hmm. Immortals call it a gift from the Source. It makes us all a little stronger."
"A little?" Whip crossed her arms, brow cocked with adorable confusion. "How strong are you, exactly?"
"Dunno. I don't have a lot of muscles, obviously, but the ones I've got are really good muscles. I'd guess I'm probably about as strong as a fit person. An adult, I mean. Like a really ripped guy, you know? Bodybuilder, maybe."
Whip shook her head and pointed at the boy:
"But when we, uh, y'know, when we mugged you back in that alley and I took your backpack away you didn't—"
"I don't use my strength all the time, Whip." Penance shook his head. "I can't; I'd be found out. Sometimes I even forget I have it."
"So, with us—"
Penance looked the girl in the eyes:
"A few spare pairs of socks and undies weren't worth snapping your necks over, okay?"
The girl's lips scrunched. She slowly nodded in response:
"Fair enough," she whispered. "So, then if you're as strong as a ripped adult, then an older Immortal would be..."
"Stronger than that," Penance nodded. "A little, at least."
"Just a little superhuman, then?" Whip shook her head. "But, uh, why didn't you bust out of those plastic cuffs earlier?"
Penance crossed his arms and stared at his shoes. He realized that he didn't exactly have an answer for that question. He had an explanation, maybe, but not really an answer.
"Dunno," he mumbled. "I just felt... tired, I guess." The boy shook his head, tightening his arms over his chest. "Kenaz did what he did to me, and then you..." He looked at the girl briefly, but then both he and Whip looked away from each other. "Well, you did what you did to me. I guess I just got a little tired of it: me making these mistakes, and other people getting to me because of it. What you said back there is right: I was wrong about Kenaz being Immortal, so how could I trust myself to know that agent you called in was Immortal, or that he'd find out about me, or that he'd even wanna cut me up?" Penance shrugged. "I just don't know if I trust myself anymore, let alone anyone else. And maybe I'm getting too tired to even care."
"But you stepped in to save me," Whip mumbled. "Thanks for that, at least."
Penance nodded:
"I, uh, I owed you one, right?"
The boy gave another awkward little shrug and then turned around. He hiked his backpack on his shoulders and started walking off down the alley. Whip called after him:
"Listen, Pen: I want you to know that the only reason I sold you out is because..."
The boy stopped walking, waiting for Whip to continue. She didn't. When he turned around the girl shook her head:
"No," she said. "'Reasons' don't matter, do they? Only if you're trying to make some fool excuse. It's what you do that matters, so all that matters is what I did to you. I won't try explaining myself. I can't, anyway. The reason just ain't relevant..."
Penance nodded.
"Yeah, I guess that's true. And anyway, I don't really give a shit why you betrayed me, Whip..."
The girl returned Penance's nod and drew a breath. She turned toward a small offshoot in the alley and moved down the path. She paused, briefly:
"Still: I am sorry, white bread—"
"I forgive you, anyway."
The girl stopped mid-stride. She looked back at the boy with her eyes scrunched, blinking a few times:
"W— why would you possibly do that?"
Again Penance stared down at his shoes, and again he didn't really have a good answer, so he picked the best one he could think of:
"'cause I like you, I guess" he shrugged once again. "And I want to forgive you. So, you know, I just do."
That intricate constellation of freckles on Whip's face twisted about like a kaleidoscope twirling in the sun. If the skin of her face were drawn any tighter it might've torn apart like wrapping paper. Even under that bed of caramel colored skin Penance thought he might've seen a faint blush.
The boy turned around and stalked off down the alleyway, but then his stomach churned with force. The rumble was loud enough to reach Whip's ears.
"Worked up an appetite, did ya'?" She asked.
"I'll manage," he whispered.
"You've been living off cereal and canned fruit for the past three days," she said. "You're liable to pass out if you don't get a hot meal in you. Two meals, maybe..."
"That's not in the budget, right now," Penance mumbled.
Whip raced up to the boy's side and held up her share of Father Kenaz's wallet, playfully dangling the bills in front of the boy's face.
"My treat," she lyrically cooed.
The boy stopped walking, and then he looked at the girl skeptically.
"Now why would you possibly do that?"
Whip smiled faintly:
"I 'just do', too, I guess..."
X
X
X
They took back alleys, following the bus routes on foot. They didn't dare board one for fear that Penance's face might've been given to the drivers in the city. In time they crossed over Roosevelt Boulevard, moving northward into the Olney neighborhood. Here quieter residential streets replaced the choked and blighted sprawl of Whip's run-down neighborhood. Several of the stores they passed had signs written in a stylized foreign language. Whip called it 'Asian speak', but Penance recognized it more specifically as Korean.
After the boy nearly passed out from exhaustion Whip had to pick a restaurant for them to duck into on the fly. Her judgment was questionable, but Penance didn't have the wherewithal to object. Before he knew it he found himself inside a 'Chuck-e-Cheese', his head resting to one side on a sticky, smelly picnic-style table. The scent of undercooked cheese and dubious pepperoni ruled the air, while dizzying lights and noise exploded from the nearby arcade.
That ridiculous robot animal band show was done, at least for the next ten minutes. That was a good thing. Whip had to take Penance's knife from him when it started up for the first time. He'd gotten the irresistible, almost instinctual urge to spear the 'lead musician' through its forehead.
To either side of him a noisy party of little children celebrated birthdays. They weren't so much 'parties' as they were 'packs', he thought. And from his time helping to manage younger children's birthday parties Penance damn-well knew that little kids liked to attack in packs, too.
Whip brought one bland-tasting pizza to their table, and then two. She was wrong about Penance needing to eat two meals. It was more like three, and by the time he'd put away an indescribable amount of food he put his head back down on the table, much like a bloated crocodile sunning itself in after gorging on a wayward zebra. The girl took the opportunity to visit the restroom (and given all the rambunctious little kids tearing about the place, Penance could only guess the state of the bathrooms). While she was gone Penance got to his feet and wandered into the video arcade. He milled about the flashy console cabinets until he found a game that caught his eye. It was some kind of boxing game called 'Punch Out'. The graphics were truly incredible— some of the best he'd ever seen, in fact— and if the gameplay was a little repetitive at least all the colorful opponents caught his eye. He freely fed quarters into the thing and slowly inched himself up the learning curve; after awhile he was really into the thing, and he laughed his butt off at each new, ridiculous character that he faced.
Whip found him eventually, and she leaned against the side of the cabinet to watch him play.
"Want the next game?" He briefly looked at the girl while bearing a big, sloppy grin on his face.
She shook her head, reciprocating the smile:
"Not really my kinda thing."
"You kidding? These things're great!" Penance quickly returned his attention to the game. "My friend Johnny back in Baltimore had Atari at his place. I mean, that's some cool stuff! Trust me: if you grew up back when the only kinda entertainment a kid could get was a handful of rocks, you'd understand." The boy's face suddenly became more dour. "But then I dunno. Maybe it is all kind of a fad. I've seen a lot of those over the years, too. And I guess Atari's kinda all screwed-up, right now, too. They tried to get bigger than they really were— releasing way too many games, or something— and then they went bankrupt, I think. Or at least they're not releasing a lot of new games. Johnny told me all about it. It kinda sucks, really."
Whip cocked her head at the arcade cabinet:
"Why doesn't one of these companies start making games for all the kids at home, then?"
Penance scoffed, his eyes still fixed upon his game:
"Well, it's not that easy. I mean, yeah, this game is fun, and all, but you could never get graphics like this on a home console. Also, whatever company makes this game—"
Whip leaned to one side and read the manufacturer's name off the cabinet, slowly working out each syllable:
"'Nin—ten—do'."
The boy scoffed, giggling.
"What're they, Japanese, or something? Oh, yeah: people would totally buy a Japanese console for their home." He shook his head. "Nah, these things probably really are just a fad. But still, as fads go, they're a pretty good one..."
The girl watched Penance play his game, and she smirked at his overeager efforts.
"We can't all be timeless, can we?" She said.
The boy's brow ticked at this, but he didn't respond to it directly. Instead he gave the girl a brief, curious glance:
"I've noticed something," he said. "And if you don't wanna talk about it, it's fine, but I'm kinda curious..."
"About what?"
"Every time you talk about your brother, you talk about him in the past tense. Y'know: 'was', 'would've', 'had'..."
Whip quickly looked down at her feet, and she ground one shoe into the grimy red carpet beneath them.
"Yeah, I do," she whispered. "He was older'n me. Four years my senior. And uh, he died awhile ago."
"What happened to him?"
"He had a palsy, they called it. It made him all clumsy in his limbs, and his muscles didn't work right. He had crutches, an' pulleys, an' all manner of things to help him move around. One day he..." Whip drew a breath and looked away from the boy.
Penance, so transfixed by his game, noticed the change in the girl and turned his attention to her. His character quickly got the ever-loving snot knocked out of him, but the boy ignored it:
"Sorry. If you don't want to—"
"He had lots of problems meeting new people, and getting along in school, you know. That's part of the reason he loved those foolish comic books and fantasy stories, I guess. Let him think he could go places he never would, an' do things he never could." Whip rested her back on the arcade machine and slumped down onto her rear, hands on her knees. "He did better with people in high school, though. Even started gettin' along with the fairer sex, y'know?" The girl smiled and shook her head. "One day he was tryin' to get himself ready for a date, cleanin' up in the bathroom to look all dapper 'n nice, an' he slipped and fell." Whip looked up at Penance. "His head hit the side of the tub, an' that was it."
Penance sat down with his back to the opposite arcade machine:
"Sorry," he whispered.
"Don't be sorry for me," Whip grumbled. "Be sorry for him!" The girl quickly dialed back from her outburst and looked away. Her eyes trembled. "Now can I ask you a question, white bread?"
Penance nodded.
"Wh— what's the worst thing that you've ever done in your life?"
This caught him by surprise; Penance caught a lump in his throat, and he didn't answer right away.
"'Cause you didn't see me at my worst, today," Whip said. "What I did to you earlier today, Pen, ain't half of the worst I've done in my life..."
"Well, with the Game, and all, I've done things I'm not very proud of—"
"Uh-uh," Whip shook her head. "No: you just defend yourself, so what you have to do isn't so bad. I'm askin' if there's anything, y'know, worse."
Penance rested his head against the arcade machine. For a moment he stared out into the aisle, watching as a sea of unruly little children blitzed about like waves on a stormy ocean. For just a moment he thought he could see a little girl standing at the center of this squall, body completely still, and her massive green eyes locked right on him. The child's raven hair seemed to billow about as if kicked up by some supernatural gust of air (that, or she was under an air conditioner vent). As soon as she appeared she disappeared, subsumed by the sea of children, and no trace of her was left in their wake.
"Struana..." the boy mumbled.
"Hmmm?" Whip looked up at Penance, and then she tried to follow his gaze. When Whip looked back at him he met the girl's eyes, and his face was brutally cold:
"Not everything I've done in the Game was simple 'defense', Whip. Not everything I've done can be so easily forgiven. You really wanna know the worst thing I've ever done in my life?"
The girl nodded gently, balling her legs up against her chest.
"Alright," he said. "I'll tell you, then."
