Arcade Games

Who was this new girl leaving her name all over the arcade? He'd let it slide when that MADMAX kid had knocked him off the top score of the Last Starfighter machine, but this was too much!

Sitting before the Megaranger cabinet, seeing those three letters above his own three-character acronym, KEN, now demoted to second place, Date Kenta felt an overwhelming sense of frustration.

"Dee-wah," he said, trying to make the shape of the foreign letters make sense in his mouth. "Dee… wah."

English was not his strongest subject. Actually, no subjects were his strong subjects. He had got to grips with the three letters he used to denote himself, mostly because they were just the first character of his actual name, but reading something else, that was another matter.

With more than a little annoyance, he rooted through his pockets in search of more change, anything to try again and put his name back at the top of the scoreboard where it belonged; after all, he was MegaRed, how stupid was it that he should be in second place? Being a Megaranger was his actual job. Well, sort of.

It was true that he didn't get paid for his role as a member of INET's actual Megaranger team, not unless you counted the rare occasion in which he could convince old man Kubota to treat him to Korean barbeque—something that was becoming increasingly rare.

It had been a month since the anniversary of the death of Shun's mother. No one really spoke about it and he had been warned off making a comment when Shun, genius programmer that he was, had repurposed one of the remaining androids left over by the attack of Neo-Bat Nezire.

No one called her #168, no one mentioned what had happened between Shun and #167, but it was a thing, and it was happening, and if Kenta hadn't been so concerned with trying to get back to the number one spot on Megaranger, then maybe he would have worried more about it. Right now, however, not even the threat of flunking out of classics and earning the ire of Ms. Ohara could sway him from his singular goal of reclaiming his rightful place at the top of the game's rankings.

He should be number one, right? He was MegaRed! No one else had that kind of experience. The coin slid into the slot and he cracked his knuckles, not bothering to cycle through the character select screen, instead slamming his palm down on the start button as soon as the likeness of the MegaSuit he wore so frequently appeared within the faux 3D display.

Effortlessly, he slid the fingers of his left hand under the joystick and poised his other hand over the four input buttons, each of them a vivid neon green in colour.

'Here comes a new challenger!' the game abruptly barked and he blinked in surprise, suddenly realising that someone else had slid down into the seat opposite him.

For a moment, seeing only the long, dark hair through the display between them, he thought it was Shinjuku Black, back to try and salvage something of his reputation.

It took a moment to realise that his opponent was a girl, a bright pink bomber jacket decorated with patches, a black baseball cap low over her eyes, an illustration of a cartoon rabbit on the front. And the headphones she wore! Massive headphones that stretched across her head, angular, pointed, rising up from her head like mechanical rabbit ears.

She must have been the same age as him, maybe a year older at most.

Effortlessly, she skipped through the character select and tapped down as MegaPink appeared, glancing up at him and smiling broadly, mischievously.

"Think you can keep up with me?" she beamed.

Still grasping the joystick, the arena yet to load, Date Kenta had a terrible, terrible that the next few moments of his life would be tenser than any battle with the Nezireija.