Vista: A Clausten Fanfic

Chapter Five

Ninten offered them some coins, which they turned into tokens almost immediately. "Do you want me to show you around? Oh.. Lucas already took off."

Claus laughs, "It's kind of funny.. before the whole needles thing, Lucas used to be a coward. Seeing him run off on his own like this, even just for an arcade, it really is something else."

Lucas waved at the two of them before being gravitationally attracted to the skee-ball arrays and some claw machines.

"Well, the last time I went to an arcade... everyone gave me all the prizes anyways." Claus pouted, "I can't do that anymore, how good are you at them?"

Ninten gave him an honest shrug, "So-so. Want to team up so we don't go empty handed? It's your first trip here, so you can keep it. Winning the prize itself is all the glory I need to keep my head up high."

"Sure, where should we start?" Claus laughed, "Lucas is busy hogging up the claw machines, do you think he'll win anything?" 

Ninten wrapped a friendly arm around his shoulder guiding him around the arcade, "Who cares, come on, all we need to care about is.. this!" He demonstrated a coin pusher machine.

"This is going to give us tickets?"

"Oh, believe me, lots of them! Here, watch this." Ninten pushed some tokens into the machine and started playing. Claus watched intently as he tried to line up and time the coin to drop into all the slots for the "BIG WIN!" It took him a while, and a few attempts each time, but he managed to light up each slot and award him 500 tickets for his troubles.

"Wow, jee, that sure is a lot.. you're gonna keep at this?" asked Claus, leaning on the glass.

"Yep, until I get a huge amount of tickets, or lose all my tokens! Give me yours after, okay?"

"Whuff! I'm not watching you play this, that's boring! Finish this round, quick, and watch me play some games after, or you're paying for some more tokens yourself!"

Ninten rolled his eyes, "Okay, okay, but we still have to win something big, it's for... a super cool memory! That way whenever you look at it, you'll always think to yourself, 'Wow! That's when Ninten got me that suuuuper coool thing from the arcade! He's so cool!"

"You're just trying to grease yourself up, yuck! I bet I can beat you in, er.. that shooter game!" Claus pointed to a closed cabinet shooter.

Ninten quickly finished up the coin pusher, winning another 500 tickets, "Oh, really? You're going down, ginger! Hurry up!" he pushed off the stool and ran over, Claus running after him. They both clambered quite excitedly into the cabinet, flinging tokens inside the machine's mouth and firing up the game.

Claus turned to give Ninten a smug look before turning back to the game, readying himself. It felt almost natural, an unnatural naturalness to hold the fake weapon and aim to the targets. 

Muscle memory, he reminded himself, that's all it is. Muscle memory from something you didn't want to become. 

The game launched, and the boys had a whale of a time firing at targets and scoring points over each other. Claus did quite well, hitting the targets squarely as soon as they would pop up while Ninten did less than well. Despite their obviously rivalry in the moment, they laughed with each other often if Ninten would miss a target, or if one would steal the other's target and earning some bonus points. They both had lots of fun.

At the end, Claus was right, and he had won, "Not so good with a gun, huh, Ninty?"

"Ninty?! Don't call me that!" the black-haired kid gritted his teeth, "And so what if you're better at me than a dumb shooter game, aren't we supposed to be working together?"