pLance one shots

arcade

( you can also find this story on FFN and ao3 under the same name)

One of the many things Katie Holt loves to waste her time on is playing video games. She could spend hours upon hours playing video games and never get bored. Some of her favorites included : Battle of Marmora, Coalition Adventures, and Space Time. Of course these were all online games, however, Katie loved arcade games the most. Whenever her mother felt she spent too much time holed up in her room she'd send her outside to get some fresh air. However, the local Arcade was only blocks away from Katie's home so she'd just go over there and waste her weeks allowance of her favorite arcade game, Killbot Phantasm 1.

That brings us to a Sunday afternoon where Katie Holt sat at a counter table in Slav's Arcade. She was enjoying the arcade's signature greasy pizza and a large drink. After eating she went to go wash the pizza grease from her hands. As much as she loved the pizza she couldn't bear to smell like pizza grease for the rest of the day. When she went back to her seat at the counter table she found the owner, Slav, waiting for her.

"Good afternoon," Katie said as she approached him.

"A good afternoon indeed Katie," He said, "I've got a new game installed." Katie's face lit up, she loved when new games would get installed.

"Seriously ?!" She exclaimed.

"Yes," Slav handed her a bag of coins, "Go crazy".

She squealed and grabbed the coins from Slav's hands.

"Thank you!" She yelled back at him while running away to find the game.

After a few minutes of walking around the arcade Katie had found the new game Slav told her about, The Legendary Defender. By the looks of the game display Katie could tell it was one of those quest sort of games where you encounter beasts that you'll have to take down, similar to Killbot Phantasm. She played around with the joystick opening up to game's character display. While most people picked whichever character looked cooler, Katie had a more tactical approach when it came to deciding which character to choose in battle. She liked to look at character's stats before deciding which one she would pick. Once she played around a little bit looking at each character's statistics she finally decided on the Forest Paladin, Trigel. She picked Trigel because the character was equipped with a cannon (which could upgrade to a vine cannon), lasers, a shield, and a blade. Trigel was great in offensive and Katie suspected the shield would come in handy.

Once her character was chosen the screen display started to explain the game to Katie. It was a quest game, just like she thought, that had Paladins, along with their accompanied aircrafts, take down the Galra Empire. Sounds easy enough Katie thought. The screen changed and Katie found herself in what she presumed was Trigel's aircraft suddenly her screen started to shake and flash red. She realized she had been hit but from where ? The screen was still flashing red. She was frantically trying to figure out what was happening. She just kept pressing buttons and moving the joystick, however the red flashes kept coming. Ugh how do I activate my shield She was getting frustrated. Her aircraft just kept taking hit after hit.

"Wow you suck at this game" a voice came from behind.

"What ?!" She whipped her head around her whole body covered with frustration.

"Yeesh, don't look at me so scary," the voice said, "I'm just stating facts."

"Well nobody asked you," She snapped at him and turned her attention back to the screen only to see that fight was over and she had lost.

"Wow thanks to you I lost," she said grumpily.

"You were already losing," the stranger said.

She turned around to get a good look at him. He was slouching over one of the other games wearing a stupid grin on his face. What the heck is he grinning for she thought. He straightened himself up and boy was he tall. Katie estimated he was a about 6ft while she stood awkwardly in her 5'4 form. He made his way towards her and bent down to get to her height.

"This your first time playing?" He asked.

"Um..." Katie felt her face getting hot he really did not know anything about personal space.

"Well don't worry," He said while straighten up, "I can teach you."

"Um okay" she said nervously

"Oh and by the way," he said while walking over to the game's joystick, "the name's Lance," he put in a coin. "Lance McClain" he turned around to flash her a grin

Katie stood there in awe. Who does this kid think he?