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"Beats me man! 's why I got into the habit of talking so much y'know? Didn't make putting me into a locker all that smart 'cause I kept making enough rukus to get out again not long after except at that point Mr. Swirly came in and well... yeeeeeah." No further comment your honor.

"Ohho! So you do know who it is! Critical hit of awesome!" ...Wait, about what time did the music get played again? Alex wondered if he was making a mistake, asking for the music to be turned up so late at night. Poor, poor Alex didn't know what he was getting himself into.

The notes were flying up the screen faster and faster, and Alex's tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth as he concentrated. Red, red, orange, green, blue, red, red, hold out the yellow -- he probably should have picked a song he was more familiar with, rather than going with the song that had the nifty-sounding song title.

"I gotta say, you got a good taste in music! Saves me from having to mess with my playlists when you've pretty much done the job for me, y'know?"

Alex would have to be careful or perhaps find a new method of recording when it came to doing his weekly YouTube show. He didn't want too much background noise to interfere with his shows, and yet... Wait, wouldn't the music cover up or at least muffle what he says? On that note, why doesn't he just go ahead and film the action first, voice overs later?

He tilted his head to one side in thought before the boo's and hisses from the game brought his attention back to the game. "Aw crit!" He whined, then struggled to build up a chain of combos in order to catch up.

"What'cha think I'm doing now man?!" He shot back, laughing. The boy leaned forward and scooted to the edge of his chair, eyes narrowing. It was just him and the notes now -- he had his pride and honor as the king of the arcade to hold up!

Or at least, that's what it was to him -- there were still some games whose champions he couldn't defeat. Some of the fighting games still were not graced with his presence in the #1 slot. Obviously he had some catching up to do.

"Showing you up in terms of style!" Alex replied, getting to his feet and attempting to rock out while playing the game. The controller was heavy, and his attempts to be a rockstar seemed to involve a lot of flailing and over-emphasized guitar strums, but he gets points for trying, right?

Riiiight?

...yeah, okay, so the kid was a huge dork. At least he broke his combo maybe once or tw- okay, so he broke it several times at first, but it was building up steadily again now.

You know what this was? A very, very bad idea. Alex's hands were growing tired, and there was a very large noticeable gap in scores. The gap only grew larger and larger until finally the song ended, whereupon Alex just strummed "AAAA" into the highscores. "Oooow man!" He whined, removing the guitar and returning it to the machine and stepping away, rubbing at his neck.

"Those are so crittingly LAME man! How can you even hold them for that long?!" Alex leaned back and winced. "Don't tell me those are heavier than the old ones. It's starting to make me wish we were playing those gross sticky controllers instead, just to prevent either of us from getting a hunch-back after hunching over those critting heavy things. Ooow!"

Alexander stared. He stared at his rival suspiciously, wondering if he was being serious. Wait! Oh crit what if STAR was affiliated with Skynet which meant he was secretly a Terminator?! Man oh man this quick-time event sucked even more now. Crit, crit, CRIT!

The boy shrugged, stretching again and taking a discreet step away from the other, just in case. "That arcade machine is anything but little, man -- did the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game come with seats? No. Nunchuks? No. Swords? No again and if it did I'd try to steal it. That machine's a monster that devours quarters and sucks the soul and money from video gamers while banking on musicians' talents! Just lookit the song selection man -- where the hell is the classic Mario theme, hmm?"

Time to date the Terminator! If he didn't know who Mario was, then it was high time to haul a** out of there.

PRAISED BE TO THE MIGHTY PROGRAMMERS! Alex heaved a sigh of relief. "Fine with me man but the classic version could easily change the sounds produced by the controller to be the bloops'n'bleeps of the great and awesome Nintendo Entertainment System y'know? It wouldn't be that hard considering how far technology has advanced and in all honesty that'd be pretty kickass and I'd spend my entire allowance just to get used to those crittingly heavy controllers just to prepare for a rematch and own you one day."

Alex stopped for breath, then realized that Demy had left while he was speaking. "Aw maaan," he whined.

Then he looked around.

Quietly, he snuck back to the machine and picked up the controller. He settled down and began to play, determined to try and beat his rival.

Long story short: he didn't. But at least he managed to get number one on one song, number two on three songs, and countless other lower positions that were marked with the AAAA of shame.