that's not how this works. that's not how any of this works.

Are there arcades on Alrest? Probably, there aren't. After all, there isn't hardly even electricity, save what sparks out of Electric Blades and what was found smouldering down in Morytha. So in order for Organization Torna to be mounting a raid on a Round 1 (rather, a Dave and Monado Buster's), something particularly unorthodox would have to be shaking with the timeline.

Do I care what? Do you? Probably, you don't. You just want to see those funky little fugitives curse each other out on top of dirty intergalactically-patterned carpet littered with innumerable wads of stepped-over bubble gum and musty, crinkling popcorn. And it's not as if I, your ever-faithful narrator, have ever denied you of such a thing before. So, we proceed...

"Malos, do you have to keep shaking the machine like that? You're going to bring the whole building down."

Indeed, Malos stopped, almost as if to show that he was truly tethered to Jin's every beck and calling whim, but only for the briefest of moments. "So?" Back a-jostling he went.

"You act as if liberating Hello Kitty from her flesh prison is such a sacred duty - it's not even a flesh prison, she's made of stuffing!"

Without ceasing his crucial duty again, Malos rolled out the trademark philosophical soliloquoy: "Humans always treat us like we're part of one big arcade game anyway. Stick your paws in to the tank and see what trash you can fish up. Right? I just so happened to be marked as the shiniest prize."

"And that would explain why you're so perpetually priceless..."

The evaluatory taunt came muffled from under a pile of that selfsame fiberfill fluff, but its maker's diction made it clear as crystal - clear as plexiglass - nevertheless. And of course Malos, even with his Core cracked, still had the Aegis's preternaturally fine-tuned hearing. "What was that, Akhos?"

"N-nothing, Malos." Yes, even with the Core cracked, Akhos still trembled before Malos's power and prowess, both physical and mental.

"Shut up and keep digging."

"Malos, what are we even digging for?" Mikhail called over from his station at an adjacent machine where he was quite clearly not contributing in the least.

"Answers," said Malos, just as Jin replied, "Nothing, Mik. You're better off over there."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Patroka noted, uncharacteristically prim as she gave her fingernails a cursory glance and her geta a sharp tap on the disappointingly mute floor.

"Aw, Patroka, I'm trying to win Garfield over here!" Mik cried out. Momentarily distracted, he raised his arms back and wide of the claw's controls to gesture at the gravity of the world that presented him with such a dread task. "Everyone's favorite fat tabby cat - Patroka, Patroka, Patroka, you wouldn't stand between a man and his plushie, now, would you?"

Now she grit her teeth, half at the mode of the sentiment and half at the form of the address. "Unfortunately for you, Mik, Garfield's not the misanthrope, Jon is. And if you don't shut up and get over here to help us, the counter boy'll be back in five minutes and we'll all be fucking screwed, which means I'm going to turn into even more of a misandrist than I am right the fuck now. Capiche?"

Ah, yes. Capiche. Because the Blades, for no earthly or unearthly reason, know intercultural slang. Well, but there's no real trouble in that, is there? After all, it's almost 4100 A.D., isn't it? They're allowed. They're at the epitome (the ball pit) of slang...they're allowed.

Mik, meekly, went silent as the dead and moped over to join Patroka at her vantage point of the main point of attack (mind you again, the Hello Kitty emporium), but Akhos, unwise as ever, saw fit to pipe in. "Where ever did you learn those effervescently eloquent words, sister dear?"

"From you, brother dear." And never before (nor thereafter) was such an epithet such a venom-deadly threat. Akhos gulped yet again and surged closer to the bottom of the bucket, as ever to burrow himself tighter into the part, the role, the calling.

Jin, arms crossed, yet stood back and watched. The cabinet still wavered; the counter attendant still waived. It was true, at times he and Malos both lost sight of the true intrinsic importance of their shared goal, the one that they had passed down and again shared with their three more juvenile accompaniments herein resolved to assisting in the antisocial arcadia soirée. So what better way to reaffirm it than to...to go scavenging for strawberry-studded Sanrio merchandise?

"Malos, suppose I took you and the...kids, here, out on a date to the arcade WITHOUT the express intent to maraud the place in service of an allegory for our evolutionary plight. Would you still be attacking the Hello Kitty claw machine?"

Malos considered that for a moment. There were plenty of other collectibles arrayed on a conglomerated peg board and within individual stations across the dimly lit yet careeningly cavernous room, from Godzilla to Gonzalez to Rotbart to Roadrunner, complete with meddling coyotes and their do-you-in dynamite, each more appropriately themed to the Aegis and associates' mission than the last, and yet...

"Yes," Malos said shortly, and turned once again back to the bodily wresting of material goodness from the machine.

"You're lying, Malos."

"I'm the Aegis. I don't lie."

"You're telling alternative truths."

"Don't do that either."

"Malos." Dangerous.

"Jin." Dangerously pleasant.

"What's going on?"

The Paragon of Torna was nothing if he was not relentless, so it was Malos who had finally to relent.

"Look, I didn't want to say anything, because I didn't want Akhos to get all excited and start blabbing-" "Hey! I'll have you know I would never dream of doing any such thing!" "-but I heard Amalthus tell one of his goon friends one time that he dropped a third Core Crystal into one of these while he was out...huh."

Why had Malos stopped? Because nothing Amalthus did could ever be described as lollygagging, woolgathering, cavorting and dabbling in revelry; in short, partying, or rather the lack thereof.

"How do you even know it would be here?" Patroka, asking the smart questions. Malos, ever-prepared with a smarter answer: "Of course it was here. They have the best coin pushers."

"Then how come we aren't jacking up on those?" Mikhail exclaimed, as if the possibility had been a sudden lightning bolt to his brain. Malos glared; Mik shut up.

"Anyway. So it's in here."

Now Jin struck just-barely-unarmored palm to definitely-not-currently-masked forehead. "Malos, that was five hundred years ago!"

"Yeah?" Shake, shake, and shake some more. Hey, it's exercise, ain't it? "When do you think was the last time they cleaned these things?"