"Well, if her commander asks for it, she cannot exactly refuse, can she?

But I get the hint. Serious talk break is over."

And she descended on him for another kiss.

And he let her have it right back.

"but you know..."

He kissed her neck a little.

"If we're going to keep doing this..."

And maybe her ear.

"We should probably go somewhere else." He kissed her on the lips and pulled away slightly. "If we're going to keep doing this right now."

And he clearly did, but wasn't really a fool.

"I could do with moving to a comfortable room ..."

She put her human heated mechanical hand out of the protective circle of the umbrella, under the pouring rain, then brought it back against his skin, now colder and the bad kind of humid:

"... But the truly fun stuff will have to wait until you've at least paid me dinner."

"So, more fun and games?" He indicated the arcade with his chin. He didn't seem to mind the rain touching. Ready for anything.

"Yeah. Will do for now."

She slowly removed herself from his embrace, with a hint of regret, and turned around in direction of the building, one leg already ahead in the rain.

"It was your turn to show off if I recall correctly."

"Is that what it was? I thought i was going to watch you dance a bit longer", he teased and fell in step next to her with the umbrella.

"Though before that", he said and opened the door for her. "I have something for you. So I guess i will be showing off."

"Uh?"

Slow brain Akemi raised an eyebrow.

He tugged her inside and let the door close, then shook out the umbrella before setting it down.

"Just a moment" he assured her and talked to the clerk at the counter, who handed Shokomaru a bag.

Turning to face Akemi, he held it out. "Here."

He pulled some of the bag away, revealing the head of a 2' megadon plushie.

"I won it for you last night, but you'd left already."

"Oooooooooooh!"

Akemi grabbed the plushie and raised it the sky to look at it better.

"That's really nice of you. I would say I could embrace you but, you know..."

She let the sentence die with a grin, then turned embarrassed.

"I... might have changed all of the tickets that I earned myself into candies... And eat them all. Guess that makes me the bad girl? Sorry."

"All in good time, punishment comes to the wicked", he said coolly. Then fixed her with a roguish stare. "But let me go grab a drink and you think about what game you want to see me embarrass myself at next." He walked past her with an exceedingly smug look of victory on his face.

Akemi found herself in the position of someone holding a giant plushie in her arms in the middle of a public space: Nice for a minute, then realizing you'll have to carry that for most of the day, in spite of the crowd and the rain.

So she returned to the counter and negotiated for a big bag in which to put that for easy transport and safe-keeping.

Shokomaru came back with some tea drinks in bottles from the vending machine, handing her one. He leaned against the wall next to Akemi and have her a probing look.

"So? Any requests? Or do I choose my own fate?" He popped the cap and took a swig.

She threw her hard-won waterproof bag adorned with a solid handle over her mechanical shoulder and took the bottle with her other hand.

"Decide. No fate but what we make."

"A good phrase for Crab and other soldiers everywhere", he commented, then walked down the isle to find something to play.

"Oh... this looks like They Walk", he stopped in front of a side scrolling fighting game called Samurai Street Challenge: Final 2. It displayed two samurai fighting a huge crowd of slow moving gangers in a city.

"The characters are Ichi and Roku still, but they're colored like a Lion and Crane instead of a while and black Daigotsu. And the enemies are druggie gangsters instead of zombies..." he watched for a bit. "They move the same, though."

He put in a coin.

"Same game, different skins depending on the clan you wish to sell it to? Seems like a good business model."

Akemi eyed suspiciously at the stick and the buttons, then grabbed the first one as it was a gear stick, palm first, and stretched her fingers in an attempt to brush all buttons at once.

"So... Uh... What are the controls?"

"Uh...just move around and slice things up. Red button for sword, blue button for kick, if you press both at once you do a spin attack but it eats up a little but of HP", he explained. "Just move around and watch out for the zombies...uh...gangers that throw fire at you."

He hit start and chose Ichi, the more dark and brooding Crane.

"Tsk...it's a shame he's a Crane, he's the black spider in our version but i'm better at him."

Thirty seconds in, Akemi's character was already mid-life after failing to react in time to about all the enemies of the first wave.

"Sorry commander, but I just don't think that's going to work. My fleshcraft has a tidy bit of latency time regarding movements I haven't carefully trained it for. Not a big deal usually... But for fast-paced inputs like this? I'm basically a dead weight."

Neither Akemi's expression or voice were angry as she said that. She was more blasé than anything else.

"That's fine, hohei", he said as he cut through another group of gangers, their 16 bit screams were rewarding on a deep, emotional level. "Just cover my back, the little guys are the fast ones but die in one spin, so as long as I hold the front you can just spam it even on low health."

He dodged a thrown knife from a ganger and Ichi kicked a barrel, sending it at the enemy and their friends. Naturally, the barrel exploded, setting them all on fire.

He bumped her hip with his. "Just keep up and stay behind me, I know that's opposite of your instincts, but act tactical with me, huh?"

Akemi's forehead was sweating from intense concentration.

"Okay. Trying to do just that."

Even if Shokomaru was babysitting her simply keeping up with his pace required all her focus, her vision reduced to a tunnel around her character and his, her other senses basically turned off. She was unaware of anything happening in the room or to her outside of a small portion of the screen.

"Stay closer...yes...like that", they cut through more enemies. The little gangers being slashed by Akemi's character as Shokomaru kept them moving forward.

His eye wandered a little, watching her concentrate. He smiled a little.

"No, closer. More...closer", he sounded chiding a little and double tapped the stick forward to dash. "Keep up."

But really they had already cleared the level and he'd dashed them into a loading screen.

He saw no one in particulat looking their way, and put a hand on her hip, tugging her at him.

"Closer."

But before she could respond, the level loaded and they were off again.