Kinuko looked at the pair like they were strange. Mostly because they had indeed given her an odd sight when it came to Tenha being all tangled with a bunch of cables with him looming above her.
“I see the two of you are having some fun.” She commented on the sight she had been given.
“Obviously not.” Tenha snapped back, irritated and humiliated her associate had witnessed her in this position. “Now can someone please get me out of this?”
“Whoa, calm down there.” He got to work quickly, but carefully. “If you break one of those cables, then it’s game over for us trying to use the console.” While the cost to find a replacement wouldn’t be high. Since this was not a game console in high demand anymore, the time it would take to get another cable would take away the rest of the day for fun.
“A game console? What’s that?” Kinuko asked.
“I thought fox spirits would know what these things were.” There wasn’t much for him to base that opinion on outside of Tenha’s knowledge. Though one could easily make the argument that she was more closer to an outlier when it came to the kitsune.
“Don’t worry about her.” Tenha said after she was freed from the trap she placed herself in. “That girl’s just a stick in the mud, so of course she wouldn’t know about cool things like video games.”
“I worry she might’ve been spent too much time interacting with humans during her time in the spirit world.” Even if she didn’t know what video games were, she certainly knew they weren’t a thing when it came to the spirit world. While there were no rules against the fox spirits from interacting or spending a lot of time with humans. It was frowned upon to do so and potentially risking giving away their true identity.
“There’s nothing wrong with getting away and having some fun once in a while.” Tenha defended herself from the subtle jab. “And there’s nothing wrong with pulling a prank every so often either.”
“Huh, I see…” He took that information in and wondered if the social media postings talking about certain spooky occurrences were here doing. “Anyway are you here to just talk or do you want to join in?” Nishiki hadn’t anticipated on the bigger fox girl to show up. Though when it came to gaming, the more the merrier. Even if some people that were part of the group didn’t care for the form of entertainment.
“I don’t see a point in me joining in your drivel.” She replied. “But I am going to stick around to get a status report on how she is doing as your servant.” Kiniko was as strict as ever. He was disappointed, but went about getting all the cables untangled and properly hooked up to connect the Gamestation 3 and his TV.
“We should play the game I picked out.” Tenha hastily reached into the bag and messily took out all the games. After a quick scolding telling her that if she wasn’t careful, she might damage the games and thus render them useless. Nishiki allowed her to insert the game disc of Hydra Adventure into the console after he booted up the console.
The game loaded up through its usual splash art and developer credits. Then the main menu opened up with majestic music and already Tenha was enamored. “Wow, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
“At least you can finally agree with me that older doesn’t mean obsolete.” He said, feeling affirmed that he was right. Though the game itself wasn’t as big to him as someone who had played a fair number in his lifetime. He could see why someone like her would be impressed by the simple display of what had been shown in the main menu. “Let’s get this game started then.”
He started a new game for them. They were able to make their own character, so they went with something that somewhat resembled Tenha. There was even a choice to make her race that of a fox girl.
“This is hardly accurate.” Kinuko commented as she watched them play. “You human don’t seem to understand that us fox spirits are a proud group. We don’t all wink and make high pitch squeaks in an effort to appear cute.”
“Can you blame us? We’ve never seen the real deal.” He responded. Nishiki certainly had different ideas in mind when thinking about fox girls. Even more so, he knew that everyone making these things didn’t believe they existed in the first place so who cared? “Anyway, since you’re the one who wanted the game. I think it’s fair you get to play it first.” The man handed her the controller after they were content with the appearance of their character.
“All right, time to get started.” She was confident, so much so that she nearly skipped the tutorial, but he persuaded her to do it since even masters don’t know everything about a game they’ve never played before. Tenha obliged then went through all the steps in understanding the mechanics of the game before getting into the meat of things.
“What is the goal of this?” Asked Kinuko. “What is there to gain by playing a game like this?”
“To have fun, that would be the first part.” He answered. While there were many different reason for people to play any specific game. Most would generally say they’d be interested in trying a game out if it looked like they would enjoy it. “For something like this, the story kind of matters a lot. So there’s that too.”
“So does that mean pressing a button when they’re talking to get them to do it faster is a bad idea?” Asked Tenha, who had already skipped a dozen of the dialogue boxes and didn’t even care what answers she gave to the other characters.
“At least pay attention to what you’re saying to them.” He scolded her. “I don’t care about the story since I don’t plan on following you play this all day. But part of the fun is how you react to what’s going on. So try to keep that in mind.”
“Okay.” She then went on to keep skipping all the conversations out of impatience in wanting into the actual gameplay. Eventually she reached her goal in getting there and now it was time to do battle against some lowly slimes. “These things are kind of lame, aren’t they?” She was underwhelmed by her opponents.
“Yes, I agree.” Despite saying she wasn’t interested in the game, Kinuko also added in her own commentary to what was going on with the game. “It looks more like something one would keep as a cute pet.”
“It’s just the start of the game.” He assured them things pick up down the road. After all, they were beginners so they couldn’t be fighting dragons already. Soon enough, she had reached her first boss.
“Wow, now that’s something I want to fight.” She took on a giant scorpion, one that that an equally giant stinger to go along with it. As she hit it with her sword attacks, the game would occasionally tell her the giant animal rose its tail for some odd reason. When she attacked while the stinger was up, it would then blast her with some powerful attack which wiped out her party with one blow. “Wow, that got hard all of a sudden.”
“Not really.” He didn’t tell her what she needed to do. Mainly because he thought she knew what to do after seeing what happened to the team as they reloaded to the last save. Again she would fight the boss, again it would raise its tail, then she would attack again, and it would take her party out again.
“Ugh, why is this so hard?” She complained out loud. “This game sucks.”
“No, it’s because you suck.” Surprisingly it was Kinuko who got more upset with her ineptitude than him. “Can’t you clearly see that it does that in reaction to you attacking when its tail is up? You’re so stupid that you can’t see the pattern emerging?” The bigger girl then went to take the controller out of her hands and begin to play it herself.
“Sheesh, you’re getting more into this than I am.” Tenha was a bit hurt about the harsh words and losing her privileges on gaming for a moment. “You’re always like this, trying to beat me at everything.”
“That’s because I do beat you at everything.” She replied as she started up the boss fight again. This time when the scorpion's stringer when up, she simple didn’t do anything. All the girl did was set her characters to defend as she waited patiently for the boss to continue to attack her party.
“How are you going to win if you just let it wail on you?” Tenha was losing her patience just watching the scene unfold.
“Just have some patience.” She responded, and soon enough her waiting was rewarded as the boss then tripped over itself from holding up the tail and left itself wide open for attacks. She then hit it with the best spells available at this stage in the game and quickly won the fight. “See, that’s how its done.”
“I would’ve figured it out eventually.” The small girl pouted, trying to get her controller back.
“That’s time no one wants to waste for you to figure things out.” However, Kinuko was now absorbed into the game. She kept the controller away. “Here, I’ll take care of beating this game.”
“No, I wanted to play it!” The pair bickered as Nishiki chuckled in the background. These two were having much more fun than he anticipated when starting the game. Even he too was having some of the best fun in a long while, and he wasn’t even the one playing the game.
