Shouta sat on the ground of his living room, staring intently up at the TV in a way that would probably hurt his neck in a few years. Forcefully, he tapped buttons on his controller, slowly growing more perturbed until a sorrowful chime announced the death of his character. He dropped his controller with a huff. It wasn't surprising. He'd tried this boss fight at least a hundred times today but without any luck! What were the game designers thinking? This was way too hard!

Lucoa softly padded into the room before taking a seat behind her master. Shouta slumped back against her as she passed him the glass of water she'd gotten up for. Looking through the article on her phone, she said "According to this walkthrough, after he changes into his second form, you're supposed to pick up the spikes he drops on you and throw them at him."

Shouta drank greedily, nodding as he listened. "But he electrifies the spikes and they shock me when I get near them!"

"Yeah, it looks like once you get them near him, they should electrify him instead."

The boy grumbled. "That won't be easy when he's still attacking me with his sword and I have to dodge."

Putting her phone on the ground next to her, Lucoa reached around and grabbed the controller. "Here, let me try."

She started up the game again. The intro cutscene played as the boss monster formed in a torrent of purple flame and blue lights. Its name and title appeared on the screen as a voice-over warned the player to "watch out. He's fast."

Shouta mumbled under his breath, "you watch out…"

Having previously picked out the best gear for the fight and downed some electricity-resistant potions, Lucoa set to work and immediately attacked the monster. When it countered, she jumped up, triggering a bullet-time event that allowed her to unleash a flurry of attacks. She repeated her assault a few times, dodging balls of electricity and charge attacks until the enemy was knocked down to about half his health. They'd gotten passed this part plenty of times, but this was where it got hard.

Another cutscene played, showing the boss screeching in rage. It ducked out, moving to the middle of the room where it lifted its arm into the air, summoning a bolt of lightning. When Lucoa regained control, she booked it out into the most open part of the map. Floating in the sky, safely out of her range, the boss rained down a series of metal pillars that stuck into the ground. One by one, they sparked before being struck by lightning. Lucoa weaved through the maze of electric fields and switched over to a magnet ability that would allow her to lift the pillars. She tried getting close enough to one but ended up being shocked. On her second attempt, she was able to get it in the air, but it was struck before she could maneuver it below the boss and caught him in the blast. Each spike was only hit with lightning once, so she'd have to be quick.

Shouta leaned forward, completely wrapped up in the action. His fists pumped up and down in excitement whenever they got close to hitting the monster, and he gasped each time Lucoa was hit. After a couple more tries, the older woman managed to get a fresh spike right next to the boss high in the air. The lightning zapped it, causing it to fall to the ground where Lucoa could reach it. Both Shouta and Lucoa cried out as they rushed over to the monster and slashed him as quickly as they took. The health bar was knocked down a few pegs before their enemy got to its feet and rose back into the air away from them. Rejuvenated by the short-lived victory, Lucoa put her full effort into repeating their success. Unfortunately, it was not to be, as she got caught into a devastatingly fast dash attack that took out all of her remaining life.

She fell back with a disappointed whine. She was going to apologize to Shouta for not completing her duties, but was interrupted when the child turned out to face her, leaning in to shout with the fire of pride in his eyes. "You were so close, Lucoa! You totally had him there until he ran after you like that! You have to try again!" She had to crack into a smile. For all the times he tried to act tough, she was sometimes reminded that Shouta was just a cute little kiddo who occasionally broke out of his shyness. Not wanting to disappoint, she picked up the controller from the ground. She wrapped her arms around the shrimp and pulled him closer while restarting the fight. Having completely forgotten any apprehension he had at Lucoa's physical affection, he gripped onto her arms as tight as he could and got sucked back into the fight.

Things progressed similarly as before. Lucoa was able to knock out half of the boss's health without taking any damage. With a bit of practice, she could navigate the falling spikes without getting hurt either. Each time she managed to at least pick up one of the pillars, even if it was still hard to get them close enough to the enemy to hit it. Even still, she got him once and absolutely laid him to him for as long as she could. Shouta cheered her on as she tapped the attack button ruthlessly. The pillar attack got bigger and faster afterwards, but some dodging and weaving allowed her to lift up another pillar and get it over to the boss. She got him a second time and got in just as many hits.

Nearing the end of its health bar, the boss pulled out one last-ditch effort. Out of its eye, a red laser pointed at lucoa with a dangerous sounding beep. Shouta recognized it from previous parts of the game as a devastatingly powerful attack. "Lucoa, look out!" His warning alarmed her enough for a feeble attempt to parry with her shield. She must have accidentally gotten the timing just right as the laser blast was knocked back right at the boss, taking the last of its health with it. Shouta and Lucoa's jaws dropped as they watched the creature writhe in defeat before collapsing into the ground in a dying puff of smoke. Shouta stared back at her as if she had regained her status as a goddess, truly an MLG pro gamer. "I didn't know you could do that!"

She averted her eyes sheepishly, unsure if she should admit that she did not either. The other worlder never claimed to be great at video games, but how could she reject the admiration Shouta was showing her? "I-It looks like we did it?" she shakily changed topics. "We beat the boss, Shouta! Now you can play the next part of the game, right?"

"Yeah! That was so cool! You took him out like it was nothing!" He shouted with enthusiasm, not even paying attention to what happened after the boss was beaten. "You're the best, Lucoa!"

The older woman put a hand to her chest like she couldn't contain the light that just filled it. Having a kid look up to you was just about the most flattering thing that could happen. Look at how happy she'd made him! She might cry. Finally, she'd found a way to get closer to the young boy and it was through the holiest of all means, video games.

After a moment, Shouta gently took the controller back to progress the game. He'd been stuck on this part so long. However, as things wrapped up and the player character reentered the overworld to continue their adventure, he found his previous impatience slowly waning…

"Hey um, Lucoa?"

"Hm?"

"Do you want to keep playing?" He asked, offering her the controller. He had been having a fun time watching her.

Lucoa was perplexed. "Well, I wouldn't want to stop you from playing your own game." Not to mention that she didn't think she could live up to her own hype a second time

"What if we put in a game we can play together?"
"We can do that." It was a compromise she could get behind.

Shouta hopped over to the container of game cases they had next to the TV eagerly. He dug through the library until he found a suitable co-op game: a fighter with both team and versus options.

The gamer saved his adventure game and ejected the disc to replace it with their new activity. After grabbing another controller and handing it to Lucoa, he sat back down in her lap without a second thought. It was a little odd that out of all of Lucoa's fantastical abilities, the only way she'd captured Shouta's attention was blind luck. Perhaps it was because he was already kind of used to the world of magic or maybe it was because he was still a child. Humans and dragons really weren't so different when they were young; both were fascinated by the simplest things. Well, what could she do? She was his familiar, after all, so she simply had to comply with his orders. She took up her controller, picked her character, and started the match.


Notes:

They're playing Breathe of the Wild if it wasn't obvious. The more I write Lucoa and Shouta, the more she becomes like my own sisters. Playing games together was always important to us. I usually preferred to watch them play because they were much better than me and I couldn't get passed most of the boss fights in Spyro and Zelda and stuff. I imagine these two get into similar situations where Shouta needs his big sister to help him out with stuff he can't manage on his own. I'm sure they'll have fond memories of this in the future.