Game Jumpers

Beside me, Emily rolled her neck around, cracking a few things and making my wince. I hated when she did that. “So, Cam,” she drawled, her high blonde ponytails flipping as she moved her head. “You ready to dance?” 

I groaned, running a hand through my loose curls. “What choice do I have?” I started tugging on my beanie, and half-way unzipped my bright purple jacket, as my character design was meant to be. Oops, can’t forget the fingerless gloves, those were important. God, these outfits were so annoying some times. At least Emily’s was cute, with her red sundress and tights. 

Suddenly, the pink lights above us in our rooms flashed on. “Someone’s coming,” I muttered, looking over at Emily, who just nodded, and we headed out the door. 

We met with the other six characters, me next to Chris, the jockey character. The music started up, and we all bounced to the beat, as we were supposed to, when the huge screen showed up in front of us. 

The player this time was a young girl, probably around ten years of age. We were programmed as teenagers. She was standing on the control bad, and hit her foot on the left key. A pink box appeared around Emily beside me, at the end of the line. Hitting the button again, the box moved over to me, then to Chris, all the way down to Hillary, the cheerleader. The young girl smiled, and hit the ENTER button on the screen. Hillary jumped in the air, doing a small dance, and the screen flashed to white. 

When the light subsided, I had to force my smile to say as I saw I was the one the girl would be up against. She selected EASY MODE, and I groaned inwardly. That meant I had to mess up on purpose. A lot. 

Of course, she picked a popular pop song, one I’d easily memorized. As I danced the easy moves, I started doing the wrong move a third of the time. But even that wasn’t enough, as the girl missed almost every move, and I still ended up beating her. As per use, I fist pumped the air, and repositioned the headphones on my ears as I smiled at the screen, where the girl just looked back at me sadly. 

The red words GAME OVER displayed on the screen, backwards to me, and it went dark as the game ended. Instantly, Hillary and I were transported back to the main room, and exchanged a few words before we went back to our separate living rooms, mine I shared with Emily. 

I saw she was already sitting on the couch, adjusting her pigtails. “So, how was it?” 

I rolled my eyes, and grabbed a water bottle from the mini fridge. “You should know damn well how it went. She was ten. I won.” 

“I’m guessing Hillary didn’t like that much?” 

She had a point. Hillary got chosen the most by people, and by that, won the most. We had a bit of a rivalry, you could say. Half the people that came into the arcade, little girls, chose her because she was the prettiest. The other half, the teenagers, chose me because I was the edgiest. 

I’m pretty sure Hillary could be nice if she wasn’t such a bitch all the time. 

After another seven hours of boring work, the owner of the arcade locked the front door and turned off the lights, which meant we could roam around. 

“Where do you wanna go tonight?” Emily asked me as we started walking out the large EXIT door in our room. 

I shrugged my shoulders as we started walking through the long black hallway, to literally the light at the end of the tunnel. “I don’t know, Gem from the diner game invited us over, but so did some of the girls from the zombie game.” 

“Let’s hit the diner first,” Emily said excitedly, clapping her hands together as we walked through the blinding light at the end of the walk way. “I’m starved.” 

We exited the tunnel, and scanned the large room in front of us. There were dozens of other doors, all with labels above them. Our label was ‘DDR.’ I looked to my right, and waved at Mrs. and Mr. Pacman as they went to visit Donkey Kong. Apparently all the retro games were having a party tonight, no new games allowed. They think they’re so much better than us... Yeah, well, guess who has better graphics? Not Super Mario Bros, that’s for sure. 

We entered the red tunnel to Diner Gal, and were instantly greeted by Gem, a bubbly red-headed girl in a 50’s diner outfit. “You guys came!” she squealed as we sat down in one of the benches. “Great! You guys want the usual?” 

We nodded, and she hurried off to the back of the game to get our food as other characters found their way into the diner. Since ‘preparing the food’ was really just putting together a bunch of random codes, she was back with our meals in a few minutes, and left us to eat. 

“So,” Emily said with a mouthful of fries, “Where should we go after this? Hit the zombie game, shoot up some zombies before we head back?” 

Frustrated, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why should we head back anyway? It’s the weekend, we can do whatever we want!” 

Emily looked at me, clearly confused. “But... Everyone spends the weekend in their own games, preparing for the week. You know this!” 

“Yeah, I know that, and I also know that we don’t need to prepare! We’re not an interactive game, we either do the songs we’ve memorized, or the player controls us. It’s always the same. Why don’t we go out this weekend, meet some people we haven’t met before? I heard they just plugged in some new games.” 

She just looked at me in shock, a fry hanging off her pink lips. “B-but we don’t do that!” 

“Why not?” 

“I don’t know, we just-” She stopped, and her eyes widened. “Why don’t we do that?” 

I threw my hands in the air, and took a bite of my burger. “See? What’s the point of staying in our games all weekend when we can go explore?” I leaned over the table, and lowered my voice. “Ready to break some rules this weekend?” 

She grinned back, and hooked her pinkie in mine. “Let’s do this.” 

A/N:: What do you think of the new story? :D 

I really like it so far, I think it'll turn out pretty well :3

Tell me what you think!