AnimeCon Harem Bonus: Super Slash Sisters (Old) (Patreon)

   “Waiting on your friends?” Lucas guessed, nonchalantly picking up one of the Gamestation controllers and cleaning it with a sanitary wipe. Although the latest generation of Gamestation controllers were wireless, the convention center had procured batches of wired ones that plugged into the console itself, as they were less likely to walk away from Game Room one in the hands of enterprising little thieves. Almost all of the controllers had been greasy with sweat following their official Super Slash Sisters tournament, and one of them’d actually had crumbs of cheese snack dust on it.

   “Um… no,” the lone player answered, staring vacantly at the screen. She was an Akane Kurokawa cosplayer with a trim, petite body and a cute face, sitting at one of the TVs that was set up for multiplayer matches. The tide of combatants and onlookers for the Slash Sisters tournament had come and gone, and this game room had all but emptied out. A handful of dedicated players were continuing to play Grail 5 over the gaming PCs connected into a LAN party, there were a few friends playing around together on one of the Rythm Dance Rebellion platform cabinets... and then there was this girl.

   “You alright?” Lucas asked, setting the controller down on its chair and moving on to the next one. As he stood there wiping it clean, he felt a bit like a bartender cleaning whiskey glasses in front of a distraught bar patron.

   But, Lucas Macrae wasn’t a bartender, or even one of the volunteer staff in charge of the room. He was the new Live Culture Correspondent for Radio 95.2 FM, here with a press badge to cover the convention. No one knew where the volunteer for Game Room one went, although Lucas suspected he was one of the dudes over there camped out on the Grail 5 server.

   “Um… no,” the girl said again. She was holding one of the controllers and gazing vacantly at the select a character screen as if waiting for him to join.

   Uh…? He gave her another look. The Akane cosplayer’s face was composed, it wasn’t like she was emotional or anything. Maybe she’s just having a shitty day?

   Feeling an awkward sort of tension build in the air, and never knowing any comforting words that he could use for total strangers, Lucas did what came naturally to him—he hit A on the controller he was wiping and selected a character, joining her game.

   Before his life went to hell, he’d been a semi-professional We’ll Play Livestreamer, playing live on camera for a multitude of fans. Trying to please everyone had burnt him out fast, however, and for three years he’d been trying to put a healthy dose of perspective in his life. Naturally, on his first real assignment for 95.2, he discovers he’s more or less the same pushover he always was, and finds himself pressed by one of the convention staffers into running the Slash Sisters tournament for them.

   In a burst of raucous theme music and pastel stars, Flarefox and Plumber Princess Maria dropped onto the series of platforms that made up their battlefield. Lucas had selected Flarefox by habit— she was by far the most competitive character. Princess Maria was… fairly garbage, in his recollection, so he determined this cosplayer girl must not be a serious player.

   I’ll just take it easy, play around a bit, Lucas decided. Watching everyone else play for several hours had him itching to get into the game again, but at the same time he was trying to take his new job seriously. He should be on his laptop editing his commentary over the tournament final’s audio feed. He was responsible for forty minutes of useable (and re-useable) content that covered various interests throughout AnimeCon.

   Princess Maria jumped to the central platform, arriving at the same moment Flarefox did, but Lucas had already prepared an attack. Flarefox, the fox-eared girl in the pilot’s jumpsuit fired her laser pistol towards Princess Maria, and then Lucas teched a fastfall that cancelled the after-firing lag, immediately firing again.

   Only his sense of guilt kept him from turning the shortened-hop double into a triple, and he let Flarefox stop in place for a moment while watching the laser bolts fly across the screen into Plumber Princess Maria. Or, at least, they should have. The two laser bolts arrived at different heights, and one of them should have either connected or necessitated a blocking move…

   On the screen in front of him, the Plumber Princess jumped, cancelled the jump partway through the air, and performed a split-second aerial dodge between the two lasers. She hit the ground sliding towards Flarefox and was attacking before Lucas could properly react.

   Oh, damn. She’s WAY better than I thought, Lucas swore, failing to escape her lunging jab-grab combo and getting summarily tossed off of the platform.

   “Something happen?” He finally asked, deciding to play seriously.

   “I don’t know,” the girl responded, shrugging. “It’s weird. Have you ever had something… supernatural happen to you? Something you can’t explain at all?”

   “Uh… I don’t think so?” Lucas replied. He managed to have Flarefox catch the edge of a platform and immediately segued into a ledge-hopped double laser, forcing Princess Maria to abandon her second charge.

   “This girl appeared, like, out of thin air,” the cosplayer said, not distracted in the slightest. “And, she knew things about me, about why I’m here and what’s going on, things that nobody could possibly know. I keep trying to figure it out. Or rationalize it somehow. But, the more I think about it, the less sense it makes.”

   “A girl ‘appeared?’” Lucas frowned, and his fingers danced across the buttons to mount a counterattack. “Appeared how?”

   “I can’t explain it without sounding crazy,” the girl sighed. “I was all alone one second, and then the next, she’s right up in my face, she knows my name, she knows what I’m trying to do. I don’t get it at all.”

   “Sounds like you picked up a stalker?” He guessed, triumphantly managing to shave off ten percent of the Plumber Princess’s health in a devastating point-blank laser barrage. Phew. Was worried I’d lost my edge, there.

   “I don’t know,” the girl sounded doubtful. “She was way too hot. It doesn’t make sense that this fifteen out of ten chick would give a damn about anything I was doing.”

   “Fifteen out of ten?” He laughed. “Why can’t a girl like that appear out of nowhere for me?”

   “You’d piss yourself,” the cosplayer snorted. With precisely-timed dodges and a wave-dash, she completely avoided his next salvo of lasers and managed to stun-lock him. “It was scary as fuck.”

   “Yeah, to you,” Lucas shot back, happy that she seemed to be lightening up a bit. He mashed the buttons on his controller, but Flarefox was helplessly snared in an endless combo of hits, maneuvered by Princess Plumber Maria until her helplessly flailing form was at the edge of the arena. “Really? Really?”

   “Sorry,” the girl said. She sent both her character and Lucas’ way off of the arena platform. Flarefox had no means of recovering and fell helplessly down into the abyss below, while Princess Maria performed a skirt glide followed by an aerial lightning blitz that somehow placed her right back on the arena platform.

   “Damn,” Lucas swore. “You’re good, you would’ve placed in the tournament if you’d been here earlier.” There was a moment to spare as his character swooped back in on its next life, and he turned to look at his opponent. He’d meant to gauge her expression, but was immediately distracted by how her yukata had fallen open and was exposing most of a small breast, only covered by a thin veil of fishnet. He slowly turned his head back to the screen.

   “I shouldn’t even be here now,” the girl groaned. “I just. I was freaking out a bit, and needed to calm down.”

   “I shouldn’t be here, either,” Lucas admitted. Flarefox was dashing from one platform to another, spewing a steady stream of distance attacks at Princess Maria and whittling her health away. “The cosplay contest’s going on right now. Or maybe just wrapping up. I’m supposed to be getting sound bytes for my station.”

   “You’re not the staff dude here?”

   “Nah, I’m actually here on a press badge. Supposed to be getting all the interesting stuff at the con, so I fit it into a forty-minute segment.”

   “Am I holding you up?”

   “No, I just really don’t want to go,” Lucas sighed. His Flarefox closed the distance and managed to time a counter on Prince Maria’s surprisingly predictable attack, before flipping back out of her range again. “I wanna say that I got pushed into helping out here, but really… my ex is over there, at the contest. I really don’t want it to seem like I’m here at the con just to see her. ‘Cause I’m not.”

   “It’s always exes,” the girl griped. After a battering series of blasts, Princess Maria was forced to the arena edge, hanging on for dear life. “Hey, you’re not too bad at Slash Sisters, either.”

   “Yeah, thanks,” Lucas said. He’d started to smile, but it stiffened in place on his face when the girl used an edge skirt-cancel move for a brief moment to escape the laser bomb that should have cast her off the playing field and down into oblivion. She uses WAY too many advanced techniques to be some casual pick-up player. Not that I’m one to talk. The two of us could’ve changed the entire course of that tournament.

   “I’m Emily,” the Akane cosplayer finally introduced herself. She sent a surprise spam of firewads bouncing towards his character instead of a handshake. “Emily of Cerulean Cosplay.”

   “Luke Macrae,” he weathered the firewads without damage, pulling off a split second double-shine by using Flarefox’s deflector and then jump-cancelling into yet another deflector. His timing was good enough that his character never seemed to leave the ground. “I used to livestream for a living.”

   “Always wanted to livestream,” Emily said. “But, I just don’t have the tits for it.”

   “Me neither, turns out,” Lucas chuckled. The players during the tournament hadn’t been able to banter back and forth during their match—they’d been locked in a desperate, teeth-gritting struggle. Not a single one of those players had showcased the kind of technical skill Lucas and Emily were casually using, either.

   “It was great, at first. I loved it. But, it got to some point where, when everyone wanted to watch me play for hours and hours, I couldn’t say no. They were my fans. So, I messed up my sleep schedule, messed up my own groove, and well… I messed everything up.”

   “I hate it when that happens,” Emily said. Princess Plumber Maria swept Flarefox flying into the air and then skirt-glided underneath her to smash her back up into the air again and again. “You’re playing the game ‘cause you love it. But, before you know it, the game’s playing you.”

   “Shit, that’s exactly it, too,” Lucas shook his head as Flarefox tumbled helplessly off the arena. “That’s gonna wind up as my epitaph, or something.”

   “Epitaph?” She sent him a curious glance, and when he turned towards her he couldn’t help but notice her costume had slipped off her breast even more. A pale perfect handful of skin, with a pink nub visible through the netting of her body stocking. “Whassat?”

   “Uh, epitaph,” he blinked. “Like, what gets written on your tombstone.”

   “I get it,” Emily nodded, sending Princess Maria on a collision course with Flarefox as she spawned back in. “You’re gettin’ on up there, yeah. You’re what, thirty-five? Thirty-six?”

   “Twenty-nine,” Lucas winced, and Flarefox slapped Princess Maria out of the air and sent her smacking out in a sprawl on the bottom platform. “Which makes you… fourteen? Fifteen? I figured you were here waiting for your parents to pick you up?”

   “Very juvenile,” Emily rolled her eyes. The Plumber Princess made her way back towards Flarefox’s sniping position in a series of jumps, several times momentum-cancelling in mid-air to avoid the laser blasts raining down. “Why were you hiding in here again? Afraid of your ex?”

   “Hey now, you don’t know my ex,” Lucas griped. He sent his character into a dive roll away from Princess Maria as she took control of the uppermost platform where he’d been camping. “You’d better watch out, your costume’s slipping a bit there.”

   “Yeah, nice one, like I’m gonna—” Emily yelped and dropped her controller as she remembered what she was wearing and discovered he wasn’t kidding. “Fucking FUCK!”

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