Competition
A/N: I'm late today, sorry! I'll give you another chapter to make it up. People are confused by the family (no wonder), so here's my explanation:
Tom and Lisa are Booth's parents. Jimmy is Tom's older brother. Seeley is the oldest (a reviewer said Jared is supposed to be older, I didn't remember that when writing, and now I think we're stuck). Then comes Jared (engaged to Alice), Lilah (who is married to Mark and has three daughters, Susanna (8), Margaret (7) and baby Kelsey), Lucy (married to Greg, has 6 year old twin sons Jeremy and Kyle, a toddler Ben, and an infant, Chris) and Katherine (16). The four older Booth's are fairly close in age, I didn't feel it really mattered and I didn't want to clutter uneccessarily; if you really want to know, I can put it in the next chapter I post.
"We're here, we're here, we're here, we're here!" Parker yelled, thumping down the stairs. The twins had settled on the floor inches away from the screen, their father was being forced out of one armchair by the two little girls. Jared and Alice shared the other chair, heads bent together, Jared's expression intense and Alice rolling her eyes. Lilah was on the couch next to them and Greg joined her with a smile.
"I may be juvenile," he said, "But I'm not a Booth." Lucy, who had been doing laundry and was now standing behind the couch, cuffed the side of his head and jumped over the couch back to sit beside him. Tempe was crushed against Seeley.
"Move over, princess." The Booth father motioned to Lilah, on the other end of the couch. "Grandpas don't sit on the floor." Everyone squished and moved and in the end, Tempe was more on Seeley's lap than on the couch, Parker was sitting on his grandfather's knee and the other three adults were bickering and pushing in the middle.
"We're starting now!" Jared declared. He had a white board with a chart drawn on it.
"So, teams. We've got Seeley and Tempe, Alice and me, Jeremy and Kyle, Parker and Dad, Greg and Lilah, and Susanna and Margaret. We need two more teams to round it off."
"You're right." Seeley declared. "Kids, go recruit some more while we adults start."
"Leave your grandmother alone!" Tom warned as the five thumped up the stairs. Mark drifted out of the guest bedroom.
"Sorry, did we wake you?" Lilah asked innocently.
"I'm not going to get any peace until I do this, am I?"
"I wouldn't bet on it." Alice shook her head sympathetically.
"All right, Tempe and Seeley, me and Alice, Lilah and Mark,"
"No way!" Lilah said. Mark looked at her from his daughters' vacated chair.
"No offence, sweetie."
"Offence taken."
"Unwanted spouses have to stick together." Lucy declared, picking up a controller and sticking out her tongue at her husband.
"You wouldn't play!" he protested.
"I'm a Booth. I'll play anything."
"Right, so Seeley and Tempe, me and Alice, Lilah and Greg, and Lucy and Mark." Jared declared.
"In that order." Seeley said. Jared glared.
"We'll see about that." Jared started flying through menus.
"Get Yoshi!" Seeley whispered in her ear.
"What?" she asked, but a screen came up with lots of little pictures. She recognized the little green dragon/dinosaur thing and manoeuvred her cursor over him and hit the button.
"HA!" said Seeley.
"Now you're really going down." Jared pointed at him.
"What did you just make me do?" she demanded.
"Never mind." He said. And then, finally, it was the beginning of the race. Alice, Mark and Greg were frantically tapping buttons. She looked around in confusion as they all shot ahead when the light went green.
"I'll teach you before the next one." He promised, and then they set about trying to catch up. She soon learned what the items did. Red shells went after the person in front of you. Green ones just fired off straight ahead. The little bananas and the red boxes would stay in the road until someone hit them. Yoshi's 'special' was an egg that functioned like a red shell, but when it hit, also spewed out bananas, shells, mushrooms, which gave you a temporary burst of speed, and stars, which made you faster and invincible for a short time. She learned that the best time to throw a banana or a box was right after a blind curve or when you were right in front of someone, and a shell was best used when the target was right before a banana or course hazard, like a curve without a railing. This was a very bad place to use a mushroom. In the end, they came second to Jared and Alice. Jared marked down all their scores before they started the next race, and Seeley explained what the tapping was about.
"You want to hit the button at the exact moment the light turns green." He said. So she waited and got the timing just right, and they sped ahead of everyone else. This time, Jared and Seeley, still going after each other with every opportunity ("No, save the shell. I want to get ahead of Lilah before we use it"), lost miserably. Jared made a face as he marked down the 4 beside his name, but now the teams were pretty much even. The next two races left Seeley and Tempe one behind Jared and Alice. Lucy and Mark had come in third, so they teased their spouses mercilessly as a sleepy Katherine was persuaded to play with Uncle Jimmy to round out the junior pool.
Tempe had the time to relax as the children played. Lucy was surprisingly intense for someone 'clueless', and Lilah was every bit as bad as her brothers. It was not lost on Tempe that the Booths were in every single driver's seat. This time, Parker and Jimmy were driving, and the twins and girls would switch every race. When the four races were over, the little boys were stunned. They had been beaten by girls and an old guy! The little girls smiled sweetly and Jimmy grinned diabolically. Tempe had a feeling that he wasn't a bit feeble minded. Katherine shrugged, though she was as zealous as anyone during the races.
"Okay, okay, championship. And this time, you're going down." Seeley pointed at Jared. And they did. The courses this time were harder and everyone fell off at least once. Tempe was introduced to another method of attacking your opponents: pulling up beside them and punching them. Yoshi hit the other teams with his long tongue. At seeing this, she immediately began talking about the differences between frogs and dinosaurs, but eventually stopped when she realized that the screaming Booths and their only mildly more moderate partners were not listening. Nor were the spectators any better, cheering every time someone got hit and booing every time someone lost control of the car and fell off the side.
A/N: My brother's the only one who really games in my family, but my dad and my sister and I sometimes get sucked into tournament in baseball or go karts. We're not this intense.