With the change in topic, I feel the mood becoming much more amicable. As we finish up the main dish and prepare for dessert, the sound of someone comes from the front door. Seconds later, Emi enters the back room, looking tired yet satisfied. "I'm back!" She says with a small pant "Did I miss anything? Sorry for being late. Training took much longer than expected." Her entrance is met with a small smile. "No worries, we saved some for you. But... don't you want to get a shower first and get changed?" I ask, looking her over. Emi looks down at her white shirt and red shorts, seemingly confused. Then, her face shifts through several different expressions as it seems to dawn on her that she's still wearing her sports attire. Looking closer, she did at least remember to take off her running blades. The dark beige colour of her leg prostethics is just visible over the cuff of her knee-high socks. "Oh... Uhm... Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I'll be back in a bit then." By the she finished her sentence, Emi is already halfway to the stairs. As the sound of Emi's footfalls makes it way upstairs, we finish with our dessert. Well, all but one of us. As soon as she's finished, Maki gets up, thanks us for cooking and excuses herself. So, that leaves four of us to enjoy our dinner together. As we enjoy a simple serving of yogurt with cereal, I speak up. "Hey Fuuka, Nia... could you two do the dishes tonight?" The two girls give me a nod in acknowledgement. "Thanks. I don't know what I'd do without you." After helping to clean up, I go upstairs to get everything set up and make sure everything will go smoothly tonight.
As I enter my bedroom, I start moving stuff around. I shift the sofa so that it faces the large TV in my room properly and set up the pullout bed. Next, I start moving pillows around to make it extra comfortable. I also pull up a few bean bags to form a comfy seating area beside the makeshift bed. Mumei comes into my room and looks around curiously. "Oooooh, so this is where you keep all that stuff you buy. Awww, look at these little guys." She says as she's almost immediately distracted by my plushie shelf. "They're all so soft and cuddly." She picks up a large white snake and wraps it around her arm.
As she starts dancing, flailing the snake around, I start booting up my PC. "Hey Mooms? Did you have any particular preference for tonight?" I ask her without even looking back. "Uhhhh... not really. I'll just kinda watch as you go at it and just sorta... try to play along." "Hmmm, I see. That's actually sort of a good thing. We'll just start with our standard routine and you can sub in whenever you want. That work for you?" I say as I boot up Steam and start scrolling through my library. "Sounds good to me. I'm just glad I get to try this with you. Especially since this is my first time." Mumei makes herself comfortable on the bean bags and starts playing with the white plushie in her hand.
Meanwhile, my job is to handle cable management. I start checking all my controllers, making sure they all still work.
"You have any preference when it comes to controllers?" I look over my shoulder at Mumei, who is completely lost in her own world. She turns to me and her eyes slowly come back into focus. As we make eye contact, she stares at me unsure of what's happening before the corners of her mouth curl upwards and she gives me her adorable smile. "Haha, sorry, what did you say?" She giggle lightly. "... God that's cute." I think to myself as I repeat the question. "Oh, well, I don't really have a preference." "I see, in that case, you'll get the third option." I pull out a controller that is notable a lot dustier than the others. "Note to self, clean controller rack."
As I run a quick calibration test to makes sure everything works as intended, Nia enter the room. "So, who's ready for a hustle?" She notices me fiddling with the cables. "You not done yet? I was sure you'd be all hot and bothered waitin' for me." "Well, setup is a lot of work. Usually, I would have done this before dinner, but sadly there was no time today. Also, I needed to check if this thing still worked." I hold up the rather unique controller. "Really? That thing? I'd call you a raving lunatic for giving that thing to a newbie." "I think this might actually help with figuring out the controls." "Eh, fair point, I suppose. Is mine still available?" "Oh yeah, it's on the couch already." I point to her end of the couch where an Xbox 360 controller lies, its green light indicating player 2. I grab my stick and walk over to the other end of the couch, sitting down and using the wireless mouse to open something on my PC.
After a few seconds, the speakers come to life. "GUILTY GEAR... STRIVE!" The voice seems to immediately intensify the atmosphere in the room. "Now it begins. Lemme see if you still got it." Nia says menacingly. As soon as we hit the character select screen, the fight is on.
"Giovanna WINS!" The announcer cries as I let out a grunt of frustration. "When did you get so good at defence? I seriously thought I had you with that mixup." "Well, how about you stop trying to press buttons when you're blocking? It's way too easy to bait you." "I can't help that I like pressing buttons. Also, you absolutely should have gotten hit by that Dust." "Sucks to suck." Nia simply replies. "Oh, now you're gonna get it." I hit rematch and the heavy metal start up once more.
"ABA WINS!" "Oh... COME ON! That was bullshit! Stop using that move" Nia exclaims as I turn to her with a massive smirk. "Oh really? Maybe you just need to get better. You know, if you keep getting hit by a cheap move, that means you keep doing something wrong." "Argh, I'm gonna kill ya." She hits rematch as we go at it once more.
"Here we go, final round. This one is for all the marbles." The score is even, with both of us a round down. Round 3 will decide the winner of this whole set. I manage to get a cheeky hit in right at the beginning and the following combo takes off about 25% of her health before she manages to block. I risk using a bigger move to get past her defences, but she manages to see it coming and counters me with a quick punch. The combo that follows takes about half my health away and ends in a Wall Break, causing us to reset to neutral positions. I managed to land a raw Super and get in close. After another combo, Nia is down to only about 10% health. She manages to catch me off-guard however and punishes my whiffed button successfully. After the counter hit, she can easily land her Super and now we're just about even again. I try to finish it quickly by using my air dash and Dust to try to cross her up, but she manages to catch me out with a well-placed anti-air.
"There! In your face!" Nia turns to me. "Don't taunt me like that. ever. again." She then looks past me. "Hey Birdie, you wanna try come at me?" Mumei looks back and forth between me and Nia. "Uhm... Sure?" she says tentatively. "Okay, I'll take it from here, if you don't mind." I go back to the main menu and boot up training mode. "So, first of all, as you have never really played one of these games before, pick a character. I know it seems weird, but just see who you vibe with. I can give context about lore and playstyle if needed." Mumei gives me a small nod as she looks at the screen. "So... What's with this controller? Where's my arrows?" She holds it up to show that instead of normal directional buttons, this controller just has a black circle. "So, that is to get you more accustomed to this type of game. That circle is you D-Pad. Since you're gonna be making a lot of half-circle and quarter-circle motions, I thought this would work best. You're always free to try a normal controller or even my fightstick if you want to." I explain to her. "Ah, okay. Neat. Let's see... Who looks cool here?" She takes her time looking over each character in turn. She suddenly stops. "This one." She says as she selects a rather gothic looking person with a blood red scythe. "Okay, good. Now you get to pick a colour for them and then we can get started in earnest." She decides to just go with the standard colour 1. After the loading screen, the characters appear on screen and numbers and symbols are all over the place.