120. Fat yellow rat
"Are you ready to go?" Veronica calls. She's an early riser. You... not so much.
You groan in response from underneath your blanket.
The door opens and you can almost hear her disappointment. "Y/n..." she sighs, "I told you to get up twenty minutes ago. We're gonna be late."
The only response you can muster is a small, "Nn."
"You give me no other choice," she warns. In an act of utter betrayal, Veronica rips the blanket off your body. "Get up."
You curl up into a ball in an attempt to maintain your current temperature, but the air conditioner foils your plan.
Stupid air conditioner.
You whimper as you start to shiver, still too tired to use human words.
She sighs again. "C'mon, you big baby."
Your eyes snap open as she starts tracing the edge of your stomach with her finger.
You try to sit up, but end up falling over as you start laughing. "Ver, stop! Stop! I'm awake!"
She laughs mischievously and continues tickling you. "Not until you're out of bed!"
You struggle to crawl away from her and fall onto the floor, laughing all the way. "Okay, okay." You breathe out.
Veronica smiles and offers you a hand. "Let's get you ready."
You showered the night before, so your morning routine is simplified to washing your face, brushing your teeth, and changing. Veronica gives you an oversized sweater to wear, and you sigh happily at the softness of it.
"Alright, let's get going," she grabs your hand and the keys to your buggy before pulling you out the door.
"But where are we going?" You turn to her as you buckle your seat belt.
Safety first, kids.
Safety first, safety second, coolness third.
"We're going somewhere fun," Veronica smiles as she starts driving.
You laugh. "I don't know if your definition of fun fits mine. You remember that one time you had us filing reports for an afternoon?"
"That wasn't real fun," she snickers as she takes a left turn. "I just needed help with my overflowing stack of papers."
You cross your arms and frown. "So you're saying you used me to get your work done?"
"Yeah."
You gasp and put a hand to your chest. "I cannot believe you."
"But then I treated you to pizza afterwards, remember?"
"I guess that's fair," you admit reluctantly. That was some of the best pizza you ever had.
She parks the buggy. "We're here."
You look out the window. "What is this place?"
"It's somewhat of an old arcade," she explains as you get out of the car, "They were planning on tearing it down, but then the war got here and it was forgotten." Veronica walks alongside you and intertwines your hands. "To get people excited and readjusted to living normally, they decided to repair it."
"That's kinda cool," you look at the sign at the top of the building. It must have lit up at some point, but it's cracked and hanging off at an awkward angle. "Who are Dave and Buster?"
"Maybe brothers or something," she opens the door for you, "I don't know."
"The untold story of Dave and Buster," you laugh to yourself.
As soon as you step through the door, you can see that the focus of the repairs is the inside of the building. The entire place is free of dust, and the games are on, flashing various colors.
"Wow," you look around. "This is so cool! Do we need coins?"
"When they restored the games, they modified them to take these cards." She holds up both of your orange Garrison screens. "The shooting games have been improved and are scaled more accurately, so they can actually count in your record. A lot of the games have been left the same as they were, but some have been modified with technology we have available now. Like this one!" Veronica runs toward one labeled "Fruit Ninja," dragging you along.
She holds her card up to the scanner, and a circle lights up in the floor. Above the scanner is a screen with different fruits, labeling how many points each one is worth, although most of them just count for one point. Some of the fruits you have actually eaten before, like watermelons, mangoes, strawberries, bananas, cherries, and red and green apples. Others you've heard about from Veronica or her siblings, like coconuts, pineapples, lemons, limes, and oranges. A few you have seen at the store, but haven't bought because of the price, including the plums, pears, passion fruits, and peaches. Two of them, tomatoes and pumpkins, don't really seem like fruits, but apparently this arcade game is very scientific. Then there are some fruits you don't recognize, three to be exact: dragon fruits, pomegranates, and star fruits. They sound cool, though.
Veronica lets go of your hand to step inside the circle.
Around the circle, small lights flash, and a hologram of the number three appears on either side of her. It begins to count down, two... one. The number disappears and the holograms change to fruit shooting up from the floor. Veronica whirls around, "slicing" the fruit with her hands.
The screen on the side starts a tally of how many of each fruit she destroys. She earns bonus points with her speed by getting "combos." One thing you had noticed when looking back at old games, texts, and books is that people used to really like abbreviations. And memes. Most don't make sense without context, but a few of them you will admit are funny. You think about the one with the frog on the unicycle, commonly referred to as "dat boi."
That frog is the embodiment of Lance. He truly is dat boi.
Veronica waves her hand in front of your face. "Hello? Y/n, you in there?"
You blink, snapping back into reality. "Ah, yes, sorry."
"Do you want to try the game?" She gestures to the other games available, "Or we could pick another one for you to try."
"That's okay!" You put on your game face and point at Fruit Ninja. "I'm going to do this one."
Veronica laughs and swipes your card in front of the scanner. "Good luck!"
The game begins, and you quickly launch into action, destroying as many fruits as you can. You destroyed the most watermelons, partially because they're the biggest. You should be called Melon Lord or something.
Once you finish, you look up at your score and smile. You didn't do too badly.
You step out of the circle to find another game with Veronica. She hands you your card. You turn the card in your hand. "Hey, do we get points or prizes for these?"
"Yep!" She points to a room on the other side. "Depending upon your score, you get a certain number of coins which are loaded onto your card, and with those coins you can buy prizes."
"Ooh, cool," you nod. "Let's do that game!" It has two guns that are glowing slightly green. On top, it's labeled "Alien."
You both swipe your cards, and the game loads up.
"Have we discovered any aliens like this?" You begin blasting as the aliens appear.
"Not as far as I know," she mutters, focused on destroying the alien eggs.
"That's good." You yell angrily as one of the babies eats your face. You pull on the trigger rapidly until it's gone, before moving onto the next targets.
Used to shooting things nonstop, you easily complete the level. It only escalates from there. Since there aren't many people - only two others - in the whole building, you can switch games without waiting. You go from shooting games to racing games to random ones no one really understands and then cycle through your favorites again.
After several more rounds, you've racked up a significant number of coins.
"Let's go check out the prizes!" You grab Veronica's arm and drag her along behind you as you run over to the prize section.
She starts looking over all the prizes available. "What do you want?"
"I'm not sure yet." Your eyes scan over all the items available before looking upwards toward the more pricey things. Stars form in your eyes as they land on the perfect prize. It's a stuffed animal, but it's even bigger than you. "Actually... I want the giant yellow lightning rat."
Veronica snorts before bursting into a fit of laughter. "Lightning... rat," she wheezes, leaning on her knees to not fall over.
"What?!" You pout and put your hands on your hips. "What's so funny about me call the giant yellow lightning rat exactly what it is, huh?"
"Y/n-" She's interrupted by her own laughter. Honestly, you don't see what's so funny. "Y/n, that's..." Veronica laughs, although a little more restrained this time, "That's Pikachu."
"That's Pikachu?!" You turn back around to look at the rat. You'd never seen a Pikachu item before, but you supposed it matched the description Lance had given you in the past. Yellow, red circles on cheeks, pointy ears, lightning tail. Now that you think about it, you might have actually seen Pikachu before. Nothing else looks that weird. "Well, I guess I want the giant Pikachu then." You reach over to swipe your card under the Pikachu, but Veronica beats you to it.
She smiles proudly as the Pikachu descends from the ceiling.
"Veronica!" You yell, "I was going to get that!"
She shakes her head. "As your girlfriend, it is my job to earn you prizes." The Pikachu lands in her arms (perfectly, somehow), and she holds it out in your direction. "For you."
You laugh. Instead of taking the Pikachu, you swipe your card in front of another prize. "Then this is for you." A giant stuffed banana falls into your arms. "Look how ugly he is," you coo. The banana is smiling, with teeth for some reason since bananas obviously have those, and it has a mustache.
"Why does it look like Coran?" Veronica wheezes.
You laugh, "I don't know. But now we can exchange gifts." You put the banana in the small gap between her and the Pikachu before grabbing the yellow rat. It's too big for you to completely wrap your arms around it, and you can't see past it.
Veronica laughs at the sight... or your lack of it.
"Uhhh... I can't see," your voice is muffled by the overwhelmingly large Pikachu. "You're gonna have to lead me out."
"Alright," she laughs again and places her hand on your shoulder, "Let's go home."
How many references can I put in a single oneshot? A bunch