Welcome to Gaia! ::

Giulia didn’t usually go to arcades. Even now, at age 11, it might not be inaccurate to say that for her, this was one of her first times stepping foot in a place like this. After all, she had lots of hobbies, like ballet, and painting, and sleeping in on the weekends, and watching movies, of course. She knew what an arcade was, and of course she had been to Shucky Sheesh, or whatever that one weird place was with all the animatronics that had basically had its entire animatronic existence turned into the plot of a terrible murder mystery. (She had watched Zora play that game- it was actually the worst, and the amount of times she and Lucas had wound up holding each other and shrieking while their older sister shrieked and cackled like a woman gone wild…)

Even now, hanging out outside the arcade waiting on the eternally late redheaded half-sister, Giulia was staring at the arcade ahead of her blankly. At first, she had been almost annoyed by the sights and the sounds and the roaring of zombies and the sad clanking of tokens, but eventually something had piqued her interest. That something took the form of a pair of green haired twins, who were running around and trying desperately to get something from one of the machines, though Giulia could not quite tell what it was they sought. It was only after she had crept closer, and stalked them more appropriately, that she had realized that they were actually throwing money into two different machines- and that the staff hadn’t quite caught on to the fact there were twins.

Ah, if only she and Aidan could be that confusing, but Aidan would have to get taller and Giulia would have to cut off her hair, and while one of those things was happening thanks to the onset of puberty, the other would only happen over her dead body.

While twin watching, however, something else had caught Giulia’s eye in one of the machines that the closer twin was currently standing at. A sweet little polar bear stuffed animal, with a purple tutu and pink accents and with a slightly glittery appearance, and large, shiny, beady plastic eyes, staring out at the world with all the apathy and hopelessness of the employees behind the counter. “I want it,” Giulia decided, and pulled out her cell phone to call her sister.

“I found a bear I want,” she said the moment the call picked up. Giulia wasn’t going to wait- Jada had a job, sometimes, and getting her while she was busy was the BEST way to make sure she got what she wanted.

“So buy it?” Jada replied, and then snapped something out to someone who was clearly Skyping her, something about stocks and sharing and buy-backs.

“Yeah, but it’s in an arcade. I don’t know how much it will cost, but it just looks so sad.”

“So buy it?” Jada replied, as if that was the answer to everything, and to be fair, maybe it was.

“Buy the arcade?” Giulia asked with vague concern, trying to think about how much allowance she had saved up. “I’m not sure my allowance will cover that.”

There was a moment of silence and then a querulous- “Giulia how did a bear get into the arcade? Are we talking about a real bear or a fake-"

“Bye sis!” Giulia chirped, deciding now that Jada was using her brain and ask questions that it was the best time to end the call, “I love you!” and then she shoved her phone back into her skirt pocket, and resolved to do exactly what she had been encouraged to do and buy it.

Step One: Approach the green-haired target who was slowly burying Giulia’s desired prize.

Step Two: “Hi!” Giulia greeted the total stranger with cheer, “I’m Giulia. Um, how much money have you spent so far trying to get what you want out of here? See, I want that ballerina bear that’s getting covered up, and I was just trying to figure out how much money I might need to like… uncover it, and win it for myself.”