INSERT 25¢ TO CONTINUE : Into the AudoScape

Level 7: The Coin Snatchers

Taking the set off, Allope caught that same nauseating fatigue through her guts. She was out of breath and felt as if the batteries to her soul needed to be recharged, immediately. As she suspected, children gathered around Allope and Jack in obvious awe at something. It was best to quickly get the context for this; so naturally, she popped her earpiece back in, and turned around to see Jack's progress. "OH WOW!" the ongoing stacking onto a large gathering of tickets floored Allope. The game seemed to fix itself at some point in this round, as the knight's tomb level seemed to flick out of existence while Jack was in the middle of playing it. Dirk's animation still kept the habit of being a little bit off, even after the game glitched, but Jack was still able to strive through a manageable and semi-normal route before losing her last life 3-or-4 stages later. Altogether, the girls managed to gather around a little over 300 tickets just for somewhat fixing the game. When the dispenser stopped, Jack folded them nicely on top of one another and placed them safely into Allope's backpack. The game shut off before Jack could even consider playing again.

Allope fell to her knees right away. "Allope are you okay?" Jack asked while handing her the backpack.

"Yeah–of course!" Allope pushed out the words as much as she could, almost without an ounce of breath left in her.

"Well then that's good. 'Cause I don't think anybody else got over 5 tickets each; which means they probably have a little less than 100 altogether, which means we probably need a little over 600 more to our end goal." Allope scrunched her nose in disapproval while involuntarily panting like a dog left in a hot car in the summertime. "Allope? You look tired. Maybe I should give it a try," Jack snatched the headset in Allope's hands.

"NO!" Allope shouted with all the force in the world, "Jack–you don't want to do this. It drains you like a sink! What if it hurts you, just like what your momma said running too hard would do?"

"Allope is correct. This set has been automatically adapted to Allope and her mind when she first began gameplay. Audosphere headsets have to be manually transferred to a new host in order to be compatible with more than one player."

"Woah- it talks?!" Jack let go of the headset.

"Yeah. Sometimes," Allope placed it back top top of her head while attempting to pretend normal. "I'm okay now, I promise–see?" she lied, "Where to next?"

Meanwhile, Fred struggled in forging a ticket-giving arcade game that he hit close enough to home. This section of games was much more popular about 20 minutes ago, but all of those kids ran off to see something more close to the middle-back rows. "Ah! I give up-" Freddie chose the Atari Star Wars game, "I've seen that movie before. I should at least know something about it," He placed his hand on one of the steering handles to figure out what he was getting into before jumping straight into it. Something smacked him harshly on his middle-back before he had the chance to start it up. "Augh! what the-?!" he twisted around to see a small bratty-looking child wielding a lightsaber.

"Get outta the way, Space-Ace! I just found this coin on the ground near the garbage and I've been waitin' real long time just to play this one. How about you join everybody else and look at whatever Jack and Allope are doing."

Freddie sneered while rubbing his back, "Okay-okay; I'm going, I'm going-" being suddenly charged with such ill-mannered treatment made it difficult for his brain to catch up with what the 'little punk' just said. "Wait. Oh no. What did Allope do?"

The soul tied to Allope's mortal body felt that same missing pain, causing her to feel ill even without the headset on. When it came time for Jack to choose the next game, Allope bent down to her knees; not being able to catch a single word Jack spoke. Allope responded by guessing on whatever she just said. This was a natural response to deep-diving into the AudoSphere; Allope just didn't know that. Instinctively, she could always see all the weight her Father put on Freddie's shoulders finding a nice place to rest on hers. 'It's because I'm just a weak little girl,' was what it always boiled down to in Allope's mind. Freddie somehow wasn't enough for either of their parents; so how could Allope be when she's always 'weak'?