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 Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 11:09 pm
Anoki was equally enthusiastic about Etain's victory, actually jumping up and down and almost landing on Myung-Ki's tail. That was enough to sober him up a little. "S-so we just k-keep r-rolling?" There seemed to be an endless supply of balls, and if all they had to do was roll, the game would never end. There had to be some kind of condition. "D-do you try t-to get s-something?"
Curling his tail to keep it from being stomped on, Myung-Ki looked over at Watson. The silly Gold was almost upside-down! Such unbecoming behavior was definitely worth a laugh, and Myung-Ki wheezed his draconic equivalent.
"St-stop that," Anoki scolded, grabbing another ball. This time he took even more careful aim, and tried to give it enough force to get into the very middle one. After nearly a minute of set-up, he took a deep breath and rolled the ball. It zoomed up the ramp, hit the outer edge of the twenty point circle, and bounced into the ten. The scoreboard flashed again, and Anoki gave a small jump, but something was disappointed. That was good, but he wanted to do even better.
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Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 10:36 pm
Watson looked at the red dragon with a bland expression on his short-nosed face. After a moment of consideration, she bared her teeth and then promptly set to completely ignoring the other dragon. Harumph.
"I dunno. I didn't see anyone finish a game," Etain explained, digging another of the ski balls out of the chute, flinging it willy nilly up to ramp. It flew up, over, hitting completely off target but rather high, rolling down into the gutter. "Maybe you get crud when it's all over." He certainly saw people running around with huge strings of red tickets and a counter over at the middle of the arcade had all sorts of cool stuff like parachute plastic army men and kazoos.
He paused, taking into account Anoki's scoreboard. And if Etain frowned just a little, set his features into a determined expression, well...he was the unicorn-boy equivalent of eleven; not a whole lot to expect there in terms of maturity in the face of competition. Humming, he pulled two more of the balls from the chute, wound back with both at once and flung--
One hit the ramp. The other flew up, over his shoulder and somewhere behind him. CRACK! It hit the floor, rolling away out of sight.
Etain stared. "Ooops.
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Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 8:22 pm
"I'll g-get it!" Anoki offered, throwing the ball in his hand before running after the lost one. It rolled lazily up the ramp and disappeared into the gutter, but Anoki didn't even notice. He wanted to keep track of the missing one.
It hadn't gotten far. After just a couple of steps Anoki could see it rolling under a counter. With a cry, he ran faster, tripped, and fell on his front. His hands touched the ground first, preventing any real injury, but his knees scraped the uneven tiles. Undeterred, the preteen reached under the counter and retrieved the errant ball.
Watching with minimal interest, Myung-Ki sighed as Anoki faceplanted. That human needed some work. Having him fall like that was just plain embarrasing, even if he wasn't hurt.
Grinning awkwardly, Anoki trotted back, holding out the ball. "H-here!"
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Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 9:03 am
Etain watched Anoki trot off, clearly a little self-conscious about his oh-so spectacular throw. "Man," he said to no one in particular. "I'm bad at this."
Watson snorted in agreement, eyeing the other boy as she toppled over. The gold dragon winced slightly. At least Etain was slightly more coordinated.
For the most part.
Watson shot Myung-Ki a sidelong glance, grinning devilishly at the other dragon. 'Harhar,' the look clearly said. 'My kid could beat up your kid.' Or something like that.
Loitering around the base of the ski ball ramp, Etain accepted the retrieved ball when Anoki returned. "Thanks alot. Er, sorry," he managed before ducking away shyly, hunching his shoulders and turning back to the game. He flung the ball up the ramp, feeling rather foolish at it whizzed up and flopped down into the gutter.
"Da--...ngit."
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Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 9:12 pm
Myung-Ki stared back at Watson, not entirely sure how to react. If he were human, he might have raised his eyebrows in surprise. But he wasn't human, and not the eyebrow raising type. He didn't even have eyebrows. So instead, he bared his teeth and snapped, as if to say don't push it, buster.
"N-no problem!" Anoki replied cheerfully enough, watching Etain's next throw and wincing a little. "I th-think you need t-to throw it h-harder," he suggested, taking another of his own balls and preparing to throw. "L-like this."
The ball rolled up the ramp promisingly and shot over the hump, hitting the target. It overshot, hitting the upper ring of the 10pt target and rolling down, rocking back and forth before falling into the hole. The scoreboard flashed, but Anoki wasn't as energetic anymore. He wanted to get better at it.
"S-something like th-that," he shrugged, grabbing another ball.
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Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 2:15 pm
Etain nodded, chewing absently on his lower lip. Alright, throw it harder. He could do that. He watched Anoki roll again, squinting carefully at the way the other boy rolled it rather than throwing it to let it plunk with a crash on the game ramp itself.
Etain's eyes jumped to the scoreboard as it flashed. He frowned a little, scooping up one of the heavy wooden ski balls, wound up, flung it up the ramp. It sailed magnificently upward, plunking into the outer ring of the target.
Well, it wasn't a gutter ball. Etain indulged in a victory dance which, now that Watson seemed to be expecting it, didn't surprise the gold dragon quite as much as the initial flailing had. Instead, she untucked the quarter Anoki had given her from out of her cheek, spat it out between her forearms and began pushing it around with one of her nails.
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Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 8:47 pm
At least they were both scoring now, and his advice wasn't totally wrong. But that wasn't enough for Anoki. He held the next ball in his hands for a while, weighing it, feeling its shape and texture and wondering how he would be able to roll it better. His last few tosses had yeilded mixed results- some with too little force, which rolled into the gutter, and some too forceful, which ricocheted uncontrollably. He had to strike a medium. And aiming might not hurt.
Still not ready to roll, Anoki leaned forward, one leg bent and slightly in front of his other, and eyed the targets. Too much force was bad, but too little wasn't good either. He swung his arm back and forth a little, in practice, but kept a firm grip on the ball.
Seeing that Anoki wasn't going to try another shot anytime soon, Myung-Ki curled up on the side of the machine and glanced at Watson. The gold dragon was too content for his liking, playing with that little trinket. He had a whole pouchful, which he jangled a little for emphasis. He could spare one to someone less... perfect.
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Posted: Wed Feb 28, 2007 2:53 pm
Watson seemed perfectly content to tinker with her quarter, apparently either utterly oblivious to the slightly resentful watchfulness of the other dragon, or simply utterly uncaring. After all, she had a nice shiny coin to push around as Etain made a right fool of himself slinging wooden balls around, what more could she ask for?
Alright, maybe a little less neon and a little more sunshine to bask in, but...
Meanwhile, Etain looked about ready to take his own fool head off, the way he was chucking the skii balls up the ramp, making loud whooping noises whenever one actually managed to sink into the target. Finally, bending forward to reach for another of the balls, his hand came up empty. He blinked, shifted, peered down into the chute and squint up the length of it.
Outta luck.
"Guess I'm done," he said, looking up at the scoreboard where a delightful '60' was displayed in blinking red LED lights. The whole machine made a god awful buzzing noise and then, click click click, the space over the coin slot exploded with tickets. If by exploded, one means spat approximately twelve and a half tickets.
"Cool."
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Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:41 am
It was no fun if the other one looked happy. Still, Myung-Ki managed to convince himself that the other dragon was just pretending to be content, and pawed at the pouch he had, fraying the once delicate fabric.
Anoki took longer to finish, making sure that he rolled each ball carefully and forcefully after his first several flops. Unfortunately, he didn't have too many balls left. While he did manage to score one in the next to center ring, his others were in the same ten or twenty point range, and a few still failed to score at all.
Sighing when he saw the chute was empty, he glanced at the flashing scoreboard. Eighty. Not bad, maybe a little better than Etain, but not good enough. Not when the list of high scores listed some people that got two or three hundred points. He wanted to get better at things.
It was then that he saw the trail of tickets that the machine had spit out. Frowning, he pulled them out and counted them. Fifteen little pieces of cardboard. "Wh-what're these?"
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Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:48 am
Etain folded his over, letting them accordian out again the moment he'd finished. "I bet it's for that," he said, glancing toward a large booth in the middle of the arcade where, sure enough, people were dragging heaps of tickets to the somewhat nerve-worn young teenage girl behind it, counting stuff out and getting, by the looks of it, cool stuff in exchange for bits of cardboard.
Weird.
Shrugging, Etain neatly refolded the tickets, popping open one of the pockets on the leg of his coveralls and tucking them inside, snapping the pocket closed again. "Looks like y'get stuff if you've got enough tickets."
Mmm, metal taste. Watson snagged the quarter between her teeth again, shooting Myung-Ki a long glance. Her eyes narrowed, head coming up just a little as she let her gaze linger over the pouch of coins. Harumph. With an overcompensating flick of her tail, the gold dragon pocketed the quarter on the inside of her mouth again. So there.
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Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2007 3:59 pm
Anoki followed Etain's finger, looking over the ticket exchange. Some of the kids had enough tickets to fill bags! Even the smaller, younger ones had handfuls of them. It made Anoki feel even more inadequate, but it also furthered his resolve. He WOULD get more tickets, and he WOULD get something super special from the booth. And then he could show Raven and she might, for a change, actually be proud of him. Or at least not yell so much when she came back from her meeting.
With a clear goal in sight, Anoki jammed the tickets into his pocket and turned back to Etain. "Wh-what now? Should we t-try again, or m-maybe try a n-new one?"
Playing with the pouch in his claws, Myung-Ki almost missed the subtle tail flick from the gold. Other dragons might have let it slide, but Myung-Ki was not other dragons. Glaring with unmasked enmity, he leaned forward and blew a puff of hot air in warning. His fire breath hadn't developed yet, but he could still try to make things very unpleasant for Watson, if he wanted to.
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Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 11:36 am
"Let's try something else," Etain said, shooting the ski ball machine a sidelong glance. He wasn't too great at this game anyway. Maybe... he let his attention skate over the entirety of the arcade, sorting through the bright flashing lights to examine some of the other machines. There were a whole lot of them... "Maybe that one?" he finally suggested, pointing across the arcade toward a similarly apparently-kinda-old game that seemed to have something to do with boats and water levels and shooting at a target with some kind of water gun. There were two kids playing, but from the looks of it they might almost be done.
As if on cue, the lights at the top of the machine suddenly started flashing and one of the kids whooped happily, snatching the tickets that spouted out of the dispenser.
Watson hissed right back at the red, proverbial hackles on end. She beat her wings distastefully and whipped her tail a little. Starting at the sudden flare of movement, Etain whipped around to finally shoot the two dragons a sidelong look. He shuffled backwards a few steps from them.
"W-what're they doin'?" he asked, glancing questioningly to Anoki.
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Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:47 pm
Trying something else sounded good. The first game had discouraged Anoki greatly, to the point that he almost regretted coming at all. But there was still the faint hope that he might be good at something. The game that Etain was pointing at now- whatever it was- was as good a place to start as any.
So this one had bite, did she? If Myung-Ki wasn't ticked off in the first place he might have found the spunk interesting, or cute. Since he already had a score to settle, however, he interpreted the gesture as a challenge, ignoring the fact that he had started the whole thing. Growling, he leapt to his feet and advanced purposefully.
It wasn't Etain's question that made Anoki turn, but Myung-Ki's growl. "M-Myung! St-stop that! Behave!"
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