Act 1 | Chapter 9

Not too long after heading out, Riley and I found ourselves standing in the parking lot of the Bate's City Pizzeria. It was a single floor structure on the far edge of the city. Its parking lot was completely surrounded by massive buildings. The plain colored walls had been covered in graffiti over the years, with some having to be painted over for profanity and inappropriate imagery. Those spots where the most obvious to tell, with lighter colors than the rest of the four walls. The front entrance was very simple and straightforward. A massive sign was plastered above the two rotating doors, with the pizzarias name, and the mascot holding a thumbs up in a very cartoonishly over the top drawing. Beneath that, was a purple awning that ran around the restaurant's length. Surprisingly enough, the buildings hardly had any windows, the few being ones that led to private party rooms and the two large glass panes beside the two front doors.

The two of us walked up and through the rotating doors. The flooring throughout the entire place was a consistent color of black and white tiles, with grey walls and checkered stripes along the middle. The first things guests were greeted with was a large plastic cut out of the mascot and the other animal friends he had. Behind him was the door to get into the actual building. We were met by the smell of fresh cheese as Riley and I walked through the doors. I took a long and deep breath, inhaling the smell. The main part of the pizzeria was a series of tables, aligned into several rows. Past that was two hallways, that led to private rooms. A security office was positioned between both of them at the very far end of the hallway, and that was also more or less a control room for all the things that went on here. On one end of the table's was a massive wooden stage, where the animatronic performers were set up. A sign was put beside the stage that said a new show would begin every half an hour. The restaurants main animatronic, a brown bear, was already performing on stage. His movements were a lot more smooth and fluent, compared to his two companions on stage. He even had voice lines that were actually kind of funny. The other two animal animatronics were older, and since they weren't the star of the show, they got less care, meaning their movement was more jagged and aggressive. Those two had not been updated in years, and it was painfully obvious. Their eyes looked as though they had no life in them, and their voice lines where a lot more old and distorted. Ever since I was a kid, I always got a chill down my spine whenever I thought one was looking at me.

On the other side of the table's was the arcade. A series of hallways, with walls made of arcade machines and bright flashing lights. You could find pretty much anything here. Skee Ball tables, pinball machines, shooters, racers lines up beside each other. There where the game's that gave you tickets, and the game's that were more or less virtual rides. A few games were rip-offs of old mobile apps that were turned into these massive machines. Those games were definitely more difficult than the real thing. My favorite games though were the ones in the back. They were made from Japan, so the theme back there was nothing but anime, and manga.

I was already familiar with the place, as it was somewhere Riley and I would hang out in pretty often. When I was a lot younger, and first moved school's to Bate's Elementary, I had a small birthday party, back when my parents actually cared 'a little' about me, and invited everyone from my class in hope's I could make a few friends. Not everyone came, however, and the great majority of people who did come didn't even know me or care, except for one person, and she was standing right beside me.

"Man it's been a while." Riley said, taking in a deep breath and smiling, "Haven't been here in I'd say a month?"

"Yeah, it has been a while." I looked around at the dozens of kids running around and laughing. Some had their parent's following them, and others whereby themselves. Looking at them all playing together, and fighting over who got to play what next, reminded me of when I was younger and coming here for the first time. "What do you want to do first?" I asked Riley.

"Play a few arcade games?"

"Obviously." I chuckled, "I have some money to spend on tokens."

Riley gave me a nod and beat me to the token machine. She quickly slipped in a twenty, and dozens of tokens fell out into a small cardboard cup.

"You're going to spend that much?"

"Got my week's paycheck Thursday. Part-time jobs pay off sometimes."

"Alright." I shrugged and watched as Riley collected the tokens. She put them in half and gave me a separate cup.

"What do you want to play first?" I asked.

"Whatever you want. We pretty much have all day."

Nodding, I quickly scanned the area. I saw game's where we could race each other, and others where we could simply compete for the highest scores. Riley eventually grabbed my shoulder and pointed out a newer machine.

"What about that one?" The machine was built like a large box, with the exterior looking like a futuristic, dark spaceship. There were these long black serpent-like aliens crawling around on the outside and over the game's title. One of them was a three-dimensional model stuck on the top. It's long tail wrapped around the front of the machine, as it looked down at whoever entered. A smaller mouth extended out from the creatures and snapped rapidly like it was trying to attack people.

"Haven't seen it before?" I commented, walking over to it.

"Look's new," Riley said. The two of us pushed past the entrance, which was a simple black curtain. The inside was built to look like the interior of the spaceship, with two seats and large blasters being held in front of them. There was a red flashing light above us, with a warning on the screen. After a few seconds, a cut scene began playing that tried explaining the plot of the game, but I hit a button to skip it.

"I think these aliens were from an old sci-fi horror movie?" Riley explained. "It's pretty cool that they made a shooter out of them."

"Great." I said sarcastically, cringing at the word 'horror.' I could still remember everything from the night before and started hoping this game was nothing like it.

"Don't worry Zoe." Riley grinned, "I'm sure the horror here is replaced with more action."

"Okay." There was some hesitation in my voice. We both inserted out tokens, and the screen began instructing us on how to play. Shoot button was the trigger, reload was the button on the side, blah, blah, blah, I'm sure you get the point. The game started, and the two of us whee in a dark hanger bay. The game was simple and consisted of us moving from cover to cover, shooting at whatever came at our screen. The barrel of our gun provided light in the game to see, so we had to search around for the alien's to shoot. Once the first wave was done, the camera moved, and the next wave began. Simple enough. Riley and I played a couple of rounds, not at all being able to get past the fourth wave.

"Well, that was fun." I sighed, sweating from the heat that built up inside the machine.

"Yeah, it was." Riley smiled, "How are people supposed to play this on their own?"

"They have to be really good." I giggled, "Not like us."

Riley laughed and climbed out of the machine with me.

"Alright, I chose my game, now you choose one."

I glanced around, debating on wanting to do a game for tickets or for fun. The prize counter usually had small kiddie prizes for the majority of people who came by, but the big prizes were like game consoles and large board games. Bikes, and anything you could imagine, but those were almost never one. People never bothered saving up their tickets.

"How about that racing one." I pointed out. "That one looks new too."

"You sure? I might have an advantage being that I drive a car." Riley teased me, sitting down at one of the stations.

"Oh, I'm sure I can win." I teased back, sitting down and putting my tokens in. It was true though. My parents never paid for me to go to driver's training, so I never got the chance to learn how to actually drive. We put our tokens in and after picking the car's the tracks, and everything else, the game officially started. I was put behind Riley. We spent even more time playing the various different tracks the game had to offer. Some of them were simple loops and others were highly complex and action-packed courses. Like with a collapsing bridge and racing through a jungle. I beat Riley the first time when she got cocky, and I bumped the back of her car, forcing her to spin out. She glared at me and beat me the second game by bumping me off the road, and not giving me enough time to catch up. She practically yelled in excitement as she beat me the second time. It was a lot of fun. The two of us just hanging out and laughing. We played a few other games at the arcade-like a couple of ticket games and other fun small kiddie stuff. We played a match of skeeball, and it was obvious to tell that Riley let me win that game.

"Guess I need more practice." She said, looking embarrassed, being the more active person between the two of us.

"Well, we can keep going. Your buying lunch though."

"My stomach needs some cheesy pizza before I can continue with anything," Riley said, walking over to the counter with me. "What kind of pizza do you want?"

I glanced up at the menus above for a minute, but already knew what I wanted.

"Just cheese."

"Just cheese? No toppings? No pepperoni? Nothing?" Riley looked at me, a bit shocked.

"Nope. Just some plane cheesy pizza this time."

"Okay. Do you want it thin or thick?"

"Thick"

"Alright, I'll go order." Riley gave me a nod and walked off.

I sat down and watched her walk away to go get us our food. I couldn't help but glance over at the animatronics that just started a new show. The smooth and fluent movement of the center stage bear, and the jagged and unnatural movement of his other two companions. I felt a small shiver down my spine and tried to ignore it. Riley came back a couple of minutes later with two small pizzas. One really tick one with lots of cheese, and the other with every topping possible. I gave her a smile and dug in.