"Hi," Lorelei said with a huge smile on her face. "You a good baby?"
"I've been playing," Claudia answered carefully. She hoped that would be good enough to get her sister to leave them alone. Not arguing, not denying being the baby. For today at least, she would let Lorelei do whatever she wanted, and try to stay on her good side. "Have you been good? I thought you were watching TV."
"I'm big sis today. You're the baby."
"Okay. I'll be the baby. Does that make you feel better?"
Lorelei laughed for a minute, like she could see the joke that nobody else got. "Where you going?"
"I'm just going to the bathroom. Then back to playing. I'm doing what the babysitter says. Being a good little sister, just like you wanted."
"Good. But you're the baby sister."
"Yes, I'm the baby," Claudia said, and nodded. She was blushing now, but she knew that disagreeing would only get her in more trouble. The trick here was to roll with it, and not let the humiliation get to her.
"Can you go potty by yourself? Do you need help?"
"I'm okay. I can go potty," she hesitated, and took a deep breath to help her say the things she knew Lorelei wanted to hear. "I had an accident before like a little baby. And the babysitter punished me, so I have to wear a diaper. So I have to go by myself now. So I don't get punished again. Please can I go to the bathroom now, Lori? I need to go." She even did a little dance on the spot, although she didn't really need to go that badly. She just hoped that if she looked pathetic enough, Lorelei might think that she'd suffered enough, and not try to punish her further.
"Awww poor baby!" the little girl giggled gleefully. "But you're a baby. You can't go potty. You don't know how. Get a drink. Then go and play more! Pee your diaper when you gotta go. You got to, you're a baby. And you can't tell Adam. You got to wait for him to check. You got to. That's the rules. Now go!"
Claudia nodded and turned around, stepping over the clutter on the floor and heading down the back stairs again. Behind her she could see Lorelei bounding uncertainly down the other staircase. She didn't like it, but she hadn't made the rules. So she got herself a cup of coffee in a spill-proof cup, and after a few seconds to think she decided to make one for Adam as well. Then she headed back up the stairs to her room, hoping that Lorelei might just get tired of this game and change her mind before she was really as desperate as she'd pretended.
* * *
"You okay now?" Adam asked as soon as Claudia came back into the room. "Did you go all by yourself? You're such a big girl, aren't you?"
She just nodded, blushing a little, and held a cup out towards him. She wanted to tell him what Lorelei had said, but that wasn't an option yet. She couldn't tell him, and that was more humiliating than anything else. Instead she waited while he took his drink, and then sat down on the bed again, picking up her controller and looking quickly over the match roster. It looked like there were an even mix of dual and multi games going on right now, but until they'd played a few times she wouldn't be able to guess what the criteria were for allocating tournament points this weekend. Every event was different, so she needed to work it out quickly if she was hoping to get a platinum medal this weekend. Even in a somewhat awkward situation, she was determined not to lose.
She tapped through the list and picked another dual. Two players, each leading a squad of six AI marines. Alien and zombie presence unknown; she could probably rely on Adam to scan for those on his phone before she encountered any. The match mode was set to 'revolving door', which was a new one. Presumably the tournament update added more new things than she had first realised, but she was sure they would figure it out soon enough.
She selected the game, and a little explanatory text appeared on the screen, accompanied by the usual recording of a world-weary sergeant yelling at his men to pay attention and look into the shadows. In the original War of Aegis series the audio would have been a curt summary of the expected terrain and weather conditions from the buxom Admiral Book, but the developers had apparently thought that a more realistic and gritty military briefing was more appropriate for the prequels. Claudia just had time to swallow a mouthful of coffee before she had to give the game her full attention, and then there was no time to think about anything else.
* * *
The revolving door, it turned out, meant that the match didn't end when they managed to obliterate an unranked player who acted like they'd never played a tournament match before. After the second or third enemy defeated, it became clear that when the battle would normally have been over, a new enemy spawned somewhere on the map. One member of the squad could be healed as well, if there were no aliens still in the room, but there was no recovery for the walking wounded, and no automatic ammo restock. The shortage of medkits and reloads on this map made it clear that if they kept on going, the game would get harder and harder.
"We're losing sectors," Adam commented. Claudia assumed more explanation would be forthcoming, so instead focused on leading her men back to a large storage chamber where she would be well placed to ambush SgtAxelH3llSpoon. "Some kind of damage from the meteor or something. Each time a new player squad spawns, the map gets smaller. Guess that means there's less time for hunting with each one."
"Huh. Hope we're getting good points for this."
She concentrated on her own screen. There was little that she needed to know from the satellite player, unless he got advance notice of an ambush. This time she would be ready for the enemy's arrival, and she could only hope that being down one man wouldn't be too much of a handicap. If the enemies were all this weak, she was sure they could take out half a dozen of them before the accumulated injuries and lack of resources put her at enough of a disadvantage to lose.